OPPOSIT-ION: MAKING SK-ISLAND

POWER ALLOCATION

Judith, or 'Jude' as she preferred, was an intelligent young lady with a drive to see things work that few of her fellow students could come close to. She was always into energy and the differing types of power. Their abilities interested her from childhood. She joined and later became president of the Youth Sciences Program in her school district in elementary school.

As she worked hard to complete middle and high school, Jude's academic achievements in science, particularly concerning power production and manipulation, did not go unnoticed. Petroleum companies had approached her with generous college scholarship offers. Her heart was set on studying electricity, magnetism, and other energy types that were explicitly relative to gravitational forces.

As a child, Jude had read stories of people moving huge rocks and other solid structures around with unknown 'black box' power units or other nondescript methods. She wondered at the world's marvels of stone-building examples. Some historic structures should have been impossible to make, like the pyramids. She knew there had to be science behind it. Had someone come upon some effect accidentally that they exploited, and yet they didn't seem to be able to put forth that knowledge to the public?

They may have needed to understand the actual science behind it better. You can only explain something if you know how and why it works. You can see the effect of gravity, but what IS gravity? That was Jude's innermost quest. She wanted to discover and define gravity. To have the ability to manage it. It was a power, the power at the heart of all matter. The only way to comprehensively understand gravity's properties is by studying all direct energy forms and their varying properties. She theorized that all energy forms were other forms of gravity, the primal force.

An influential university with an intense energy development education history approached Jude. It was the end of her senior year of high school. Some of her work and publicly published theories did more than catch their attention. They offered her a full scholarship, private lodging, meals, and more. This kind of offer was rare, especially to someone with no family or business ties to the school. Something hit them below the radar with her work. They had to make her an offer to ensure her cooperation with their plans to incorporate her unique skill sets. She accepted after a family discussion, and her proud parents waved goodbye as the provided cab carried her away to the airport and the beginning of her new life.

Jude had graduated with top honors in science, while the rest of her grades were the standard, superior A+. Her only real outstanding works worthy of note were in energy. Since it was the category in which 'energy' was contained, science was her preferred general subject of study. That was all irrelevant to Jude, though. She was on her way to her life's dream opportunity to pursue and discover 'gravity' in a laboratory. What is it, how is it adjusted, created, and how do you negate or reverse it under complete control? Air and space travel would be revolutionized. All forms of travel and energy production could benefit from it. It would change the future for man. It would open up the stars to possible travel. Jude truly wanted to accomplish some portion of that in her lifetime.

The flight was uneventful except for a baby crying until it went to sleep. There was also someone seemingly unaware of the no-smoking policy on commercial flights getting a loud first-hand education about it from the flight crew. Jude had a personal escort on the flight as well. She was met at the airport by a young lady that reminded her of the characters in a CIA TV show she used to enjoy. Plain, neutral color-free clothes, and sunglasses, with no apparent detectable personality.

As a child, she had watched those types of shows with great interest to learn about some of their investigative methods. The escort seemed creepy to Jude. After checking Jude's identity at the airport, she didn't speak another word. No sound was made other than her breathing and her shoes hitting the ground as they walked together until they took their flight seats. Even now, as Jude examined this stranger casually but cautiously, there was little acknowledgment of Jude's existence by the escort.