"Hyper-Efficiency In Commercially-Available Heating Elements"

by @Flaming_Spork

Part 1: Fuck Around

Alex is a middle school student doing a science fair project about the efficiency of different methods of boiling water

they didn't really want to do this, but their teacher suggested it to them and they couldn't come up with a better idea, so they're stuck doing it

the sun is starting to set on a day dangerously close to the deadline by the time they get around to taking the measurements

they put a liter of water in an electric kettle, plug it into the kill-a-watt they borrowed from their teacher, and start the stopwatch on their phone as they turn on the kettle before quickly returning to messaging their friends

they watch the cheap white plastic kettle out of the corner of their eye, waiting for the water to boil

their mom had bought the kettle at Walmart for the whopping price of fifteen dollars weeks ago for this science fair project, and it had been taunting them from the corner of the kitchen counter ever since

a couple minutes later, the kettle clicks off as the water reaches a boil, and they quickly switch apps and note the time and the kWh measurement

with a couple measurements taken and the sun vanished behind the hills at the edge of town, they move on to measuring the efficiency of natural gas

Alex comes back inside from checking the natural gas meter and turns on the stove, the burner clicking softly as the gas lights beneath a saucepan containing a liter of water

they watch it out of the corner of their eye while texting, always catching it and turning off the burner far later than they said they would in their experiment plan

after turning off the burner, they head back outside to check the gas meter again and measure how much was used to boil the water

their final round of tests is with a slightly dinged up metal kettle on the stove top

its piercingly loud whistle is Alex's signal to stop the timer, turn off the burner, and move the kettle

every time the whistle blows, it startles them into almost dropping their phone, no matter how prepared they think they are

several days later, with the deadline even closer, they do the math to calculate efficiency, typing the numbers one after another into a scientific calculator and scribbling them down

"six thousand percent efficient? that can't be right" they mutter to themselves, putting the numbers in again

while they try the same numbers again and again trying for a different result, their dad gets home from work and walks in

"what's wrong, Alex?" he asks, noticing the look on their face

"the numbers are all wrong. this says that that kettle from Walmart is six thousand percent efficient, which can't be possible"

their dad picks up the kettle and looks at it quizzically, as though the answer would be written right on it

he sets it down, dissatisfied with the lack of answer from it

"the meter must be broken; you should ask Ms. Nelson about it"

they follow their dad's suggestion and ask their teacher, not having any better ideas of their own

Ms. Nelson takes the meter home to try on her own slightly nicer electric kettle, which draws the expected 1,800 watts

she finds another meter in a drawer, which also reads correctly for her kettle and loans it to Alex, hoping that'll solve this problem

Alex measures the exact same amount of watts as before, and their teacher suspects that something is very wrong with how they're using the meter or with their house's wiring

she borrows the kettle and, to her surprise, measures that it draws thirty watts to do the exact same thing her other kettle requires 1,800 to do

she loans Alex her kettle to finish the project and have something to compare with the efficiency of gas for the science fair project, now with a slightly extended deadline due to the electric kettle problem

confused and lost, Ms. Nelson logs into her Reddit account, dormant since she graduated college and became a lot busier, and makes a post asking why this might happen with a picture of the borrowed kettle side by side with her own slightly nicer kettle, which behaves as expected

the Reddit consensus seems to be that something is weird about the kill-a-watt's measurement, perhaps the power factor or something like that

a Redditor happens to have the same kettle, buys an off-brand kill-a-watt, and posts power usage numbers even lower than Alex's, to the surprise of the whole thread

nothing much comes of it other than the commenter saying that they'll boil water in that kettle instead of another one to save money on power

Emily, a physics grad student, scrolls Reddit one day while procrastinating and recognizes the cheap kettle as the same as the one on the counter she's leaning against in the lab

in later tellings of the story, she says that she was scrolling while waiting for an experiment to run to sound less like she was procrastinating, but, in truth, she was doing anything but her actual work

she rummages through a drawer for a current clamp ammeter and the probably-not-a-fire-hazard homemade extension cable with the two conductors separated, and plugs the kettle into it

she clicks the kettle on, and the current draw remains far too low the entire time

intrigued, she takes out more equipment and borrows measurement gear from another lab down the hall, but it still makes no sense

frustrated and tired with a dozen liters of water boiled and cooled back down and no answers, she goes home, leaving the mess of equipment on the lab bench for her future self or her future labmates

she returns to the lab the next morning to find the professor in charge of the lab unplugging her experimental setup to make a cup of tea

"Dr. Lee, wait a minute; don't turn that on just yet"

"you didn't boil poison in the kettle, did you?"

"no, no, it's weirder than that. it's the kettle itself, .. it's drawing way less power than it should"

"oh?"

she fills the kettle, plugs it into a kill-a-watt, and turns it on

it draws 31 watts while boiling the water in two minutes as usual

"wh-what? what the hell?" the professor says, staring at the kettle with an alarmed look on his face

he racks his brain, trying to think what this could possibly be

"is the kill-a-watt broken?" he asks

"the current clamp gave the same result" she replies

"power factor?"

"checked that"

"is the insulation holding a *lot* of heat between runs?"

"checked that too"

"ummm.. is something inside of it burning rather than using electricity?"

"this kettle's been here longer than I have, so it would've burned out by now"

"I mean, I've been here longer than you have, and I haven't quite burned out yet" the professor says, laughing a bit

he's fascinated, the cup of tea and that day's normal experiments forgotten

two of the grad students spend the better part of a day driving to all of the Walmarts within an hour of campus to buy as many electric kettles as possible to sacrifice for science

Dr. Lee has promised a bounty from the lab's petty cash fund for each kettle while he tries to shake the department chair down for funding

after a few stops, the trunk of the beat-up old car is completely full of kettles and they stack them in the back seats and everywhere they can fit them

by the end of the day, it's almost a dance: they grab a cart, speed towards home goods, grab every single Mainstays brand kettle, laughing about how this is the most advanced physics research they've ever done, go through self-checkout, and pocket the receipt, adding to an increasingly crumpled mass of paper

while his grad student minions are out collecting kettles, Dr. Lee drops by the department chair's office to tell him about the discovery

he takes a deep breath before he knocks, nervous that he's going to be laughed at for asking for money for such silly-sounding research

"so, uhh, one of my students noticed that some electric kettles are way too efficient and we've started an impromptu project to figure out why"

"wha?" the department chair replies, looking up from his computer

"come see" the professor beckons, and the department chair follows him, looking for something to do other than read bureaucratic diktats sent to him by university authorities who haven't so much as spoken with a student in years

Dr. Lee excitedly fills the kettle with water, plugs it into a kill-a-watt, and flicks it on, stunning his boss into silence

"you aren't fucking with me, right? this isn't a joke, Steve? you're sure none of your students are messing with us?"

"I wish it was a joke, but it isn't. we have no idea why or how it's doing this, just a dozen ways it isn't"

he can can practically see the gears in his boss' head turning as the kettle clicks off

"if you can get a paper together about this, it'll get you into Science and change physics forever, even if you're wrong about it. I'll talk to Katie and see how much money we can move around for you for this"

"th-thank you"

with a stash of kettles piled in the corners of the lab, the students and professor get to work disassembling them, trying to discover their secrets

"what's wrong with you?" Dr. Lee asks a kettle while pointing a screwdriver threateningly before disassembling it

he holds the heating element up to the light, as though staring at it will reveal how it's so efficient, before setting it down, disappointed

Emily plugs a bare heating element into a dubious set of wires and nervously flips the switch

just as she expected, it rapidly heats up, producing a slight heat haze around it, while drawing very little power

she breathes a sigh of relief that she isn't losing her grip on reality and that the cheap plastic kettle isn't somehow defying all common sense with a normal heating element

she wonders to herself how she's ended up in a situation where something apparently defying physics as she knows it is the expected result

a day later as she disassembles yet another kettle, Emily hears the rumble of the freight elevator and something being rolled down the hallway, growing closer and closer until it comes to an abrupt halt

the door to the lab opens to reveal Dr. Lee, two of his other students, and a boxy machine that looks like it's going to be difficult to fit through the door

from the large snowflake and the text "Chillotron 5000" emblazoned on it, it's clear to her that it's the industrial chiller he'd mentioned as a possibility to test with

"hey Emily! we got a new toy"

"who'd you steal it from?"

"the machine shop; the laser cutter it's supposed to be attached to is waiting on parts and we have it for a week"

their experimental setup resembles a homebuilt still more than it resembles advanced scientific equipment

it consists largely of a bucket with hose fittings to connect to the chiller and move chilled water in and warmer water out and several temperature probes

they put a heating element in, power leads going through roughly drilled holes in the bucket's lid, fill it with ice-cold water from the chiller, flip the switch to turn it on, and leave it gurgling in the corner of the lab for a week

the idea behind this experiment is to see what happens if a heating element is run for a week straight and also to characterize the heat produced and power consumption, although this characterization is something of an afterthought

in the final hours before they have to return the chiller, they also try some of the heating elements at higher voltages than the 120 volts AC the kettles are labeled for

the graph later included in the paper shows that they draw a roughly equivalent amount of power for similar heat output at voltages up to around 250 volts before rapidly dropping off in efficiency and becoming even less efficient than conventional heating elements at high enough voltages

days go by and something roughly approximating a scientific paper comes together, mostly from Emily and Dr. Lee spewing words into Overleaf that they worry will turn out to be false

this whole thing makes him uncomfortable; physics isn't supposed to work like this

papers aren't supposed to come together this quickly, kettles aren't supposed to produce more energy than they consume, and department chairs aren't supposed to be this excited about random research areas suggested by students

he's cautious and doesn't want to publish until he's figured out why the heating elements work the way they do, but the department chair is worried that another lab must've already seen the Reddit post and figured out the kettle's secrets and will scoop them if they don't move quickly

they initially plan to publish in a mid-tier materials science journal, like many of Dr. Lee's previous papers, but the department chair bullies them into submitting it to Science and uploading a preprint on arXiv while it's going through the review process

shortly before the paper is submitted to Science, the department chair invites Alex, their family, and Ms. Nelson out to visit campus

the trip feels surreal to Alex, as though at any moment these professors who act strangely deferential towards them will realize their mistake and become outraged at them

"we are immensely grateful to Alex for opening this new area of research" the department chair says, but Alex doesn't want to be known or recognized or thanked; they want to run away and hide

they excuse themselves as the adults talk and stand awkwardly in the corner of the lab, checking their phone for the hundredth time in the past two minutes

the look up from their phone to find Emily leaning against the lab counter next to them

"this whole thing's weird to you too, huh?" she asks

"yeah. it's kinda felt like one of those really weird dreams you have when you're really sick" Alex answers

"yeah." Emily replies and both tired queers go back to scrolling their phones

Alex and Ms. Nelson are named in the paper's acknowledgments, but, after much discussion, are not listed among its authors, just like one of the grad students in the lab who worked on the experiments

the grad student refuses to be named as an author because he doesn't want to be mentioned in the BobbyBroccoli video about research fakery that he fears it will inspire

even though he's seen the kettles and done measurements on the heating elements himself, he still fears that it's too good to be true

the paper is posted to arXiv late one evening with the title "Hyper-Efficiency in Commercially-Available Heating Elements", a deliberate choice not to sensationalize it, despite the clear implications

even after they've run out of ideas to try, the authors are still sure that some normal explanation will appear out of the woodwork if someone else takes a look at it

the future work section reads almost like a plea for someone to find a normal explanation, and the paper's only speculation as to how it works is only a vague mention of the possibility of mass-energy conversion

Emily returns to the Reddit thread and posts a link in the comments out of a sense of duty, not really expecting anyone to care

despite the protests of the moderators, the thread roars back to life, largely with baseless speculations already addressed in the paper

the paper did not go without attention on arXiv itself, with other researchers seeing it in the physics.app-ph section of the site the next morning

discussions quickly appear on various social media platforms with screenshots of the paper and rapidly jump to conclusions about the implications of this discovery

the first replication is posted before America's west coast has even woken up, a short video filmed by a trans girl with massive vocal fry

although very shaky, it showed an ordinary Walmart kettle plugged into some cables somehow sketchier than Emily's lab's current clamp cable and a multimeter, which read consistently with the paper

with this replication, and with more that don't look like an electrocution waiting to happen, the hype quickly grows and the professor's email is quickly flooded by everyone from science journalists to free energy cranks, as are the Reddit DMs of everyone involved

faced with constant messages, Ms. Nelson deletes her Reddit account rather than answering them, an approach the professor wishes he could take with his email

instead, he is forced to field constant messages from reporters that he forwards to the university's publicity office, who ask questions about the paper in response

before he stumbled into fame through this paper, he had thought that the publicity office was pointless at best and sensationalized science at worst, but now he is grateful for their help handling all of these emails

after the paper has already caught the world's attention, the authors receive feedback from the reviewers for Science, who recommend only a few small changes, most of them around graph labeling

Dr. Lee is certain that the reviewers procrastinated and didn't get around to the paper until after it had been reproduced several times and probably would not have recommended it if it hadn't attracted so much attention, but he keeps this to himself

he's excited to have finally made it into the journal that every academic dreams of, even if it was with the shortest and simplest paper of his academic career

science journalists pounce on the story, seeing something that could have huge implications while being easy to explain to their readers

several articles are published solely based on the contents of the paper and some speculation, while other journalists do more research to try and find where this kettle came from

one writer sends off a couple emails in Google-translated Chinese, not expecting to get a reply, but she unlocks her phone the next morning to three lengthy replies in shaky but largely comprehensible English

from these, she puts together a largely complete history of how these heating elements came to be and rushes to write it up and publish it before the west coast wakes up

in or around 2012, a manufacturer of heating elements changed their formula and replaced a small amount of chromium with a certain other mineral to save a tiny amount of money per unit

they very briefly tested to make sure that their new recipe produced heat, but didn't measure power draw, and never mentioned to their customers that anything had changed

their customers were manufacturers of low-end electric kettles sold around the world under various brands, including the Walmart store brand Mainstays, who never noticed that anything had changed and continued to label the kettles as 1800W

the manufacturers of the kettles and the heating elements only learn how efficient their products actually are when they get the journalist's email, the paper and news articles about it not having made inroads on Chinese social media

they raise prices on Aliexpress and Alibaba threefold between receiving the email about it and sending a reply

by the end of that business day, the heating elements were somewhere between 10 to 20 times the price they were that morning, and the kettles (hastily relabeled as drawing 30 watts) were listed for 12 times the price with a six month lead time

Walmart's PR firm issues and then quickly retracts an apology for their product not being as advertised when they find out about and initially completely misunderstand media coverage of the paper

they are widely made fun of for this, including a short skit in that week's Saturday Night Live, in which an actor playing their spokesman says "we at Walmart are very sorry for making a product that was actually good and have fired everyone responsible" to uproarious laughter from the studio audience

Walmart stores rapidly sell out of every electric kettle in stock, whether or not they contain the extremely efficient heating element

new stock fails to appear, the heating element factory wanting to sell their products to new, more lucrative markets instead of the kettle manufacturers they have contracts with

memes soon circulate with a picture of a kettle captioned with "come and take it" after a fake article circulates claiming that the Chinese government is seizing all kettles to bootstrap their supply of heating elements

even though the article is eventually revealed to be a hoax, the memes still become even more plentiful and varied than the kettles that inspired them

the local newspaper in Alex's hometown publishes a series of articles about a local kid's science fair project changing the world

a local TV station sends a crew to interview them, but Alex's dad chases them away with a rake and the clip never makes it on air

Alex is very quiet and keeps to themselves a lot, and the idea of publicity does not suit them at all

Part 2: Find Out

the video is shaky and grainy and shows what has to be a homebuilt steam engine mounted in a boat before cutting to the boat speeding across the frame, visible on camera for only a few seconds

within a couple of days, there are better videos, news reports with rapidly scrolling chyrons in Tagalog, but none of them capture Emily's imagination as much as that first video filmed on the world's worst cellphone camera

what had started as looking further into an interesting Reddit post has now become a massive shift in how energy is produced and consumed, and in the instant after she sets down her phone, she has a vision of the future

all of her doubts and the dreamlike feeling she's had ever since writing the paper completely evaporate and the kettle-powered future becomes real to her

this is not a feverish dream; the world is changing, and it's Emily's fault.

the steam engine shown in the video was built by Jorge and Renato Santos, a pair of brothers who repair boats together in the Philippines

neither has any formal education in engineering, but that doesn't stop them from building improved engines with increasingly clever designs from a combination of their imaginations and cribbing from earlier steam engines

Jorge, the older of the two, frequently stays up late reading about steam engines and turbines that he knows are too complicated for him and Renato to build in a shed, dreaming of bigger ships

three days after the first video of the Philippine steamboat appears, the Chinese government commits to building an experimental megawatt power plant running on these heating elements and announces a ban on their export for national security reasons

China-watchers suspect that Chinese engineers had built a similar steam engine, but the Philippine boat mechanics went public first and forced their hand

despite the export ban, significant numbers of heating elements make it to foreign countries, often intentionally mislabeled as different, less efficient, heating elements

reportedly, the owners of the heating element factory are eager to make more money than the government is willing to pay for their products and secretly make efforts to assist smuggling them out of the country

they publish a denial on Sina Weibo and request that export customers stop contacting them about this

facing export restrictions and no sources outside of China, the Santos brothers are forced to call upon their connections to secure enough heating elements to power a larger ship

years earlier, their father saved a Chinese businessman from drowning after falling off a boat and became fast friends with him

the brothers call him "Uncle Enrique" because of his extremely close friendship with their father and because neither of them could pronounce his actual name when they were younger

"are you sure this'll work?" the driver of a truck pulling an empty shipping container trailer asks his passenger as they pull up to a long, low factory building on the outskirts of a mid-sized city in inland China

"it'd better work" Enrique replies, not looking up from the stack of papers with official-looking stamps on them that he's repeatedly straightening

they park the truck and Enrique shakes hands with a man in a cheap suit before they go over the papers, the factory manager giving him a slight wink about a one hundred yuan note slipped between the pages

he opens the doors of the container and inspects one of the heating elements, looking for the particular dull gray color that his "nephews" had shown him

workers load the container onto the truck with a crane that had definitely seen better days, and they leave quickly while trying not to look suspicious

the container ship leaves for Manila soon, or at least it leaves soon by trucking standards, so they hurry down the motorway

the lights of the police car in their rearview mirror is the first sign something has gone wrong with Enrique's scheme

he leans over the driver to talk to the police officer, syllables flying from his mouth at great speed, explaining to him how important it is that this container gets to the port today

the police officer is not persuaded by his argument, takes his foul-smelling cigarette from his mouth, and says something about how he'd be out of a job if he let everyone with a good story go

he stifles his sigh at this and moves on from brazen lies to his other plan: outright bribery and brazen lies about that bribery

he pulls a banknote from his briefcase and says "do you see this note? it's a hundred Philippine pesos, and that's worth 244 yuan!"

the police officer stares at the banknote, holding it up to the light

the look on his face makes it clear that he wants more, and he obliges, handing over four more notes

they shake hands, and the shipping container is on its way again

as the truck merges back onto the highway, Enrique starts to laugh uproariously

"what's so funny?" the driver asks

"that was only 60 yuan worth of pesos" he replies, making the driver burst out in laughter too

the rest of the drive is uneventful, but with the container ship in sight, they face one final battle: export customs

he'd planned ahead for this and presents a declaration that the container contains dishwasher parts, not export-controlled heating elements, but authorities at the port insist on inspecting this last-minute container

he knows that if they catch sight of the heating elements (or of anything even vaguely related to kettles), they'd impound the container and it'd take months at best to get it anywhere, so he tries another tactic

"pursuant to the treaty establishing relations between the Peoples' Republic of China and the Republic of the Philippines, interference in bilateral trade without international agreement is criminal activity, even if performed in an official capacity, and can get you extradited to stand trial in Manila" he says, waving around a piece of paper covered in Tagalog text and reaching into his briefcase for a document written in dry, bureaucratic Chinese

"do you want that to happen to you? I'm just looking out for you and keeping you safe from the fearsome Philippine National Police" he continues

to his relief, the port officials relent and let his container through export customs without inspection

he texts a emoji of a box and a check mark to his "nephews" in the Philippines, his spoken Tagalog being a lot better than his attempts to write it, having upheld his part of the deal

the Santos brothers' first real ship is a medium-sized passenger ferry that they buy partially in cash and partially by selling a stake in their business

they nestle a steam engine into it where the ship's large diesel engine and fuel tanks were and fit a small diesel engine to provide the electricity needed to heat the heating elements

with the upgrades, the ship is nearly twice as fast as it was powered by diesel alone

two hundred guests join them for its inaugural voyage under steam power and tickets quickly sell out for its next sailings

not content with merely having the fastest and most fuel-efficient ferry in the world, the brothers acquire more ships over the next couple of years, including a large fishing trawler, a cargo ship, and another ferry and build more steam engines, constantly swapping parts around whenever the ships return to port

their ships become an increasingly common sight throughout the Philippines and southeast Asia, attracting crowds wherever they appear before slowly becoming normalized

with the success of their medium-sized ships, Jorge draws up a design for a large steam turbine suitable for a Panamax-class ship

not quite having the money to buy such a large ship yet, he and Renato build the engine in their drydock

everything seems to go fine until they seal the pressure vessel and start to heat it up, at which point it explodes, severely scalding Jorge and breaking one of Renato's arms

both brothers survive, but they've lost any interest they had in building larger engines; they're just too dangerous

the government of Qatar embarks on a campaign to remain relevant now that natural gas, which is most often used in large installations where it could be replaced by the new technology, is rapidly collapsing in price

with their vast natural gas wealth, they create a web of shell companies and buy up all of the heating elements they can get their hands on and as much of the mineral they're made from as can be quickly obtained, and buy out mines in at least four countries only to shut them down

to prevent anyone else from using them to replace natural gas, they pile them in the desert outside of Doha in a wall of shipping containers that quickly becomes visible from space

prices of the heating elements, kettles, and the mineral they're made out of continue to rise, although later analysis shows that Qatari spending did not significantly impact it

Al-Jazeera, which has been covering the shifts in oil and natural gas prices and the rise of ships and power plants powered by "kettle power" with great interest, maintains radio silence on the rising prices for heating elements and makes no mention of the wall of shipping containers, despite stories about it in every other major news outlet in the region

the contents of the shipping containers are eventually revealed by an unnamed "whistleblower" who appeared with a disguised face and voice on Saudi Arabian television, although Qatari authorities accuse him of being a Saudi spy trying to discredit them due to their long-time regional rivalry

OPEC holds a series of emergency meetings as the price of oil plummets and then rebounds, markets not certain whether kettle power can replace many uses of oil

press photographers capture officials from the member countries leaving meetings in Vienna with dour looks on their faces

the member states agree to significant cuts in production to stabilize prices as the Saudi representative proposed, although some smaller producers fear the effects on their budgets from reduced production

shortly after the meeting, Venezuela and China announce a trade deal in which Venezuela sends China millions of barrels of oil in exchange for China building them a large-scale "kettle power" plant

OPEC-watchers theorize that this deal was made out of Venezuela's need to fill a gap in their budget from reduced production

Eastman Kodak issues a press release announcing plans to manufacture the heating elements, sending their stock price skyrocketing

where exactly they plan to get the mineral from is not clear, and neither is Kodak's actual ability to produce heating elements, but investors eager to get in on the ground floor of the energy revolution by investing in the first publicly-traded company to become involved don't really care

the US federal government, seeing the strategic importance of domestic production of the new heating elements, offers significant grants and millions of dollars in loan guarantees for the project

years later, an article in the Rochester, New York Democrat & Chronicle reveals that Kodak has yet to produce a single heating element and owes the federal government millions of dollars for failing to fulfill their contract, but by this point, investors have long since forgotten about the plan and about Kodak

multiple American companies and dozens more around the world have successfully manufactured these heating elements, and Kodak's failure goes unnoticed among these successes

many people in Rochester wonder if Kodak will ever encounter a bag they don't fumble, likening this to Kodak's invention of the digital camera and failure to commercialize the technology

a fishing ship belonging to the Santos brothers sails far to the east and south into international waters in search of more bountiful fish, but as they drop their nets, a sudden storm strikes

the storm batters the ship and its crew, one of whom has to be rescued from frothing seas after being washed overboard

after being trapped in the eye of the storm for almost two days, the seas calm enough for the ship to escape

out in the sunshine with the storm slowly moving away from them, the tired and battered crew members take stock of their damaged vessel

the entire crew is bruised from being knocked around, only one of four boilers still holds pressure, fuel to start the heating elements is running low, and the ship's radio antennas have been claimed by the sea

using a phone GPS, a compass, and hope, they steer the ship towards the nearest land, even further south and away from home: New Zealand

they drop anchor off shore of a small town in the rural north end of New Zealand's North Island, where their problems change from survival to bureaucracy and public relations

not having visas, the crew are not allowed to enter New Zealand and are stuck in limbo between the ship and the local clinic they are allowed to visit under police supervision

Jorge and Renato are relieved to learn that their crew are safe and that the ship still floats

they call on their contacts at the Department of Foreign Affairs and hope that the Philippine ambassador in New Zealand can sort this out without them having to fly to Wellington

journalists make it to the unusual ship before the Philippine ambassador does, and the crew members are badgered with questions in a language none of them speak fluently

in an interview with a radio reporter, the captain mentions the ship's broken boilers, but the word he uses is mistranslated as "reactors" in the news report

a fiercely anti-nuclear member of the New Zealand Parliament hears the interview on the radio during his morning commute and drops everything to schedule a hearing about what he sees as a dangerous nuclear incursion into his nation's territorial waters

he'd been involved with anti-nuclear activism back in the 1980s and had been a staffer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the diplomatic disputes between New Zealand and the United States and France, and his beliefs on the matter had not changed since

although scientists have yet to prove how "kettle power" works and have not observed any dangers from it, he argues that it is clearly nuclear based on the prevailing theory that the heating elements work by converting mass to energy

the discussion quickly turns into a heated debate about heating elements and anti-nuclear members of Parliament accuse their opponents of selling out to foreign interests

the Philippine ambassador attempts to intervene and get the very tired crew members home, but Kiwi authorities prevent him from doing anything of the sort, citing national security and impounding the ship

all he can do is send an angry cable home to Manila and hope that the political winds shift

the political winds do rapidly shift, however

according to later leaked diplomatic cables, the president of the Philippines summoned the New Zealand ambassador in a frothing rage and reminded him of his nation's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and under his own nation's laws

although New Zealand law prohibits nuclear-powered vessels from entering the country's territorial waters, ships in distress are specifically exempted this rule

while debates continue in Parliament, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade drop their objections to the crew being allowed to fly home to Manila and permit the ship to be towed out of New Zealand's territorial waters and back to the Philippines

the Santos brothers later publicly endorse the president and his political party in the next election, but deny paying any bribes to resolve the situation

Iran's stance on the matter drastically changes from the OPEC line of calling "kettle power" an "unproven and potentially dangerous technology" once they discover they have vast amounts of the mineral used to make the heating elements

if official estimates are to be believed, they have larger proven reserves than any other country, even China, although Iran's mines lack China's head start and well-developed mineral refining capabilities

in a back-room deal, the French government lifts sanctions on €2bn of Iranian assets in exchange for a million tonnes of the mineral in the largest such deal to date

this leaves the United States, who expected their European allies to buy this newly strategically important mineral from them and not fund a country that they consider a state sponsor of terrorism, fuming

the deal only becomes known beyond an obscure corner of the mineral-processing industry when the president of the United States publicly denounces it

French authorities publicly announce that the République Française will not be intimidated, but privately assure the US ambassador that no further deals of this sort will be considered and that France's future needs will be met with minerals from their NATO allies

amidst all these changes in world politics and several articles in local newspapers excited about a local kid changing the world, Alex finishes middle school and their family moves to another town before they start high school

their father had been planning this move for a while, but it gained new urgency with the press attention

in the new town, they settle into their regained anonymity well, protected by their very common surname and their name appearing only in the acknowledgments of the paper and not among its authors

even so, Alex never escapes the crushing feeling of expectations from their family after having discovered this entirely by accident

they feel like they're expected to go far and discover something somehow even more impressive than the kettle, even though they discovered it entirely by accident

they don't know what they want to do with their life, but they don't want it to be getting a science PhD to develop the sequel to kettle power

they keep their involvement in the discovery secret from even their closest friends, a decision that visibly weighs on them

they try to lie and say it's something about being queer and who they are that's weighing on them, but they eventually break down crying and tell a couple friends what has become their deepest secret, not able to bear it alone

even though it's clear they're trying not to, they treat Alex differently, sometimes behaving weirdly deferential towards them

it's clear to Alex that this secret weighs on their friends too and that it's just a matter of time before it gets out and everyone starts treating them weirdly

after the initial replications of the kettle experiments, researchers propose a variety of ways that the heating elements could work

all but one of these explanations eventually falls apart experimentally, with the only survivor being direct conversion of mass to energy

due to the vanishingly small amount of mass that would be lost to produce the energy output by the heating elements, no experiment has yet managed to prove the theory experimentally, but that has not stopped scientists from devising and getting funding for ever more complicated experiments

while many researchers focus on understanding the theory behind how "kettle power" works, others focus on safety concerns

their experiments leave kettles in cloud chambers or surrounded by sensitive detectors for weeks at a time, trying to see even a single subatomic particle thrown off in the reaction

still other researchers work on improvements to the heating elements for even more efficiency than the chance formula created for cost savings

privately, many scientists are frustrated and concerned by the possibility of kettle power

it'd be one thing if the effects only existed at a tiny scale and could be explained away as measurement errors or something else that fits within existing theories, but this effect is plainly visible at the scale of everyday life and went unnoticed for so long

"this discovery is damning to the very heart of physics as a science. what else could be out there, deemed simply impossible? what contortions will be made to theory to accommodate this kettle that escaped the kitchen shelf?" writes an anonymous letter to Science shortly after the publication of "Hyper-Efficiency in Commercially-Available Heating Elements"

North Korean state television announces that the Democratic People's Republic has developed a bomb using this technology that will "scour the capitalist cities clean"

they claim that North Korean scientists have discovered the true secret to how the heating elements produce so much heat through "the science of Juche thought", but decline to submit a scientific paper on the topic, calling scientific journals a bourgeoisie construct intended to keep scientific discoveries from the masses

the bomb that Kim Jong Un is shown admiring is similar in shape to early atomic bombs and is sheathed in shiny black plastic that calls to mind the cheap plastic kettles that the heating elements were first discovered in

Alex holds their phone under their desk, hoping the teacher doesn't notice, when they see the headline "North Korea Unveils 'Kettle Power' Bomb, UN Security Council Holds Emergency Meeting"

out of some sort of sense of self-harm, they click on the article and feel a sinking feeling in their stomach as soon as they read the first sentence

without saying a word, they walk out of the classroom, speeding up as they head down the hallway

they lock the door of the gender neutral bathroom and sit down on the cold tile floor, more collapsing than sitting

they force themselves to read more of the article, tears welling up in their eyes as they read more and more of it

"it's all my fault" they think to themselves over and over again, the tears growing stronger every time they think it

"I'm a murderer" their mind interjects and deepens the spiral

Alex hears a knock on the bathroom door

"what?" they spit

"Alex, are you okay? you've been in there an hour" comes the voice of the school nurse

"I'm not okay; I'm evil" they reply, their voice broken from crying

"I know how you feel. it'll all be okay" she says, turning the key in the lock

"it won't be okay; it'll never be okay, and it's all my fault. you'll never know how I feel"

they keep crying in the nurse's office, refusing to explain in more than the vaguest terms, not wanting to reveal their secret and make things more difficult for themselves

they've had plenty of practice with keeping secrets from people who claim to care about them, since they've had to do that ever since they first realized they're queer

up until this moment, kettle power is something they could detach themselves from, as though it was just a dream, but now it's far too real

the world has changed for the worse, and it's Alex's fault.

within days, people online begin to suspect that the North Korean bomb isn't real based on satellite imagery, seismographs, and the fact that western powers have not developed their own bombs as a deterrent against North Korean attack, put restrictions on trade in the heating elements, or imposed even further sanctions on North Korea

these posts do nothing to calm Alex down, their mind instantly discrediting them.

perhaps the North Korean bomb isn't real, but what if somebody else discovers how to make a "kettle power" bomb?

what if this has spawned a secret race to build weapons to destroy the world many times over, and it's all their fault?

what if Alex's name will be cursed in the future?

as far as they know, there's no scientific consensus on how the heating elements even work, so nobody can prove that a bomb is impossible yet and assuage their fears

even if it was conclusively proven that a kettle-powered bomb can't work, Alex still wouldn't believe them with how fixated they are on the harm they've caused

in later-declassified reports, scientists at Los Alamos doubt the bomb claims because they've spent the past month trying to get these things to explode to no avail, but these do not become public for years and can do nothing to dry Alex's tears

every time Alex looks around the kitchen of their parents' house, they see it: the kettle that changed the world and that they still use to make tea

every time they see it, a wave of anxiety comes over them and they fight off the urge to cry

one day, they've had enough of seeing it at all and hide it in the very back of a cabinet, hoping that it won't return to haunt them

their dad takes it down from the cabinet to make coffee the next morning, and they cry the entire way to school

Dr. Lee finds out from a student in his one undergrad class that semester that there is now a Wikipedia article about him

to his disappointment, it's entirely about the kettle discovery and not about any of the other research that he poured much more effort into and also inexplicably describes him as Canadian, despite him only having been to Canada once

his attempt to correct this is reverted due to the conflict of interest policy, and he is forced to resign himself to all of the jokes about maple trees, syrup, apologizing, and hockey that he knows he will be subjected to

the next week, a student vandalizes his Wikipedia article to describe him as a bad lecturer in the first sentence, but his attempt to get the edit reverted is rejected due to an obscure quirk of Wikipedia policy that he does not care enough to understand

it takes nearly a month before a long-time Wikipedia editor reverts the vandalism, leaving him thoroughly disenchanted with niche internet celebrity status

he's at least a bit grateful to Emily, his former student, for taking the spotlight as the best-known inventor of kettle power and distracting the free energy cranks from his inbox and Wikipedia talk page

his success in getting grants for the more conventional research he used to do dries up, grant committees becoming convinced that he's lost interest, and he is forced to become The Kettle Guy

in truth, the opposite is the case: research into the kettle and the heating elements in it does not hold his interest at all

he straightens his notes and tries to hide the bored expression on his face as he heads into yet another meeting with the people from the National Science Foundation

he's the foremost expert in the world on these heating elements and had better act like it, he reminds himself

as she makes the long drive between her company's labs and machine shop in Sunnyvale and their test site in the desert, speeding down the road in her hybrid BMW, Emily thinks about these past few years

she's the CTO and co-founder of a startup, and armed with venture capital cash, DoE grants, and a crew of heavily caffeinated engineers, she's going to change the world and finish what she started by getting as much energy out of these heating elements as possible using a molten salt-cooled "reactor"

it's based on an even more efficient but less stable variant of the heating elements that she has a patent application pending for and, barring actual proof of a "kettle bomb", produces the most energy per joule of input electricity of any source on earth

the "reactor" is under construction in the desert, where the neighbors are far away and land is cheap

falling into thought, she backs her foot off the accelerator without even noticing it and the car slows down to something closer to the speed limit

her vision of the future has turned into something she never expected she'd be, someone that girl checking reddit in the lab would have looked at with scorn: a startup founder

she's changed from a quiet grad student to a keynote speaker at tech conferences and traded her t-shirt and jeans for suits and dresses that make her girlfriend blush

she sometimes describes what she's done as a "girl to girlboss transition", a phrase that makes her chuckle a bit

as she thinks about what's she's become, the fear of burning out slowly surfaces inside of her

every day on this journey to change the world has pushed her harder than anything ever has before, fanning the flames until she burns as bright as magnesium

she knows there's only so much there to burn, and she just hopes that there's enough left to finish changing the world

her thoughts are rudely interrupted by her phone ringing

the voice on the other end of the line is her company's general counsel, who has a question for her about exactly how the "reactor" works for export license purposes

with only a moment's hesitation, she returns to being Emily, successful startup founder, rather than Emily, introspective loner

"the scientific consensus now is that the heating elements convert mass to energy directly, without any sort of chain reaction" she says

"what about the North Korean kettle bomb? is there any danger of the reactor being used to make that?" the lawyer asks

"the kettle bomb is a hoax, and if it was possible, we would've accidentally built one"

"well, you didn't get exploded in the desert, so I guess that isn't a problem" the lawyer laughs

"have you heard anything else? any news on the New Zealand approvals?"

"no, they're still saying it's covered under the nuclear ban"

"that's their loss then; I hope they like burning coal because they're going to have to do that forever at this rate"

almost as soon as she's off the phone with the general counsel, it rings again

this time, it's one of the engineers out at the test site, who informs her that their "reactor" is finally ready for its first full-scale test run, a day ahead of schedule

she puts her foot down, racing down the desert road towards the test site

the world is changing, and it's Emily's fault.

NASA publishes a report proposing powering a space probe through this technology that would slowly but surely accelerate and become the fastest man-made object ever constructed, although it makes several significant assumptions about the method by which the heating elements produce this much heat, any of which could sink the entire proposal

the proposal is never acted upon, but it sticks in the minds of several senior NASA scientists, who design several kettle-based experiments for the International Space Station

NASA's experimental kettle is beaten to space by the China Manned Space Agency sending a new kettle-based water heater to the Tiangong space station to save power in the kitchen, much to the Americans' annoyance

designing a kettle-powered electrical generator that works in microgravity proves difficult, as steam engine designs used on Earth simply don't work

years pass before NASA considers the technology safe and well-studied enough to contract Emily's company to build a miniaturized "reactor" and more years pass before it makes it to space

Alex lies awake at night wondering whether this was all worth it and whether they did the right thing

they know in their mind there wasn't anything else they could've done and that someone else would've discovered this sooner or later, but that doesn't stop them from blaming themselves for everything that's changed in the world

they close their eyes and see kettle-powered missiles flying to destroy cities, all because of them

their eyes flutter open again almost involuntarily to stare at the ceiling, recoiling from the vision

the faint light from the window dimly illuminates Alex's room, slowly growing brighter as their eyes adjust

they close their eyes again and picture bulldozers uprooting ancient trees to dig an open pit mine all because of them and start to cry.

FIN.

thank you to Mia for her help brainstorming this and for sending me a spreadsheet titled "huh, weird kettle" with her calculations about how much mass would be lost by a mass-energy conversion heating element

thank you to Gabe for discussing the geopolitical and space travel implications of essentially free energy with me, sending me memes about the Philippine "Bodge Barge" late at night, and helping name characters

thank you also to Tris, Liz, and Harvest for proofing and editing help

thank you, dear reader, for reading this excursion from my normal writing style and subject matter