Orion stared at the thermoelectric material design on his monitor. 80.3% efficiency. Revolutionary. But something nagged at him.
Could it be better?
"Rene," he said. "I want you to keep working on the thermoelectric material. See if you can push the efficiency higher than 80%. Try different atomic arrangements. Different doping ratios. Use ORION to test every variation you can think of."
"Understood," Rene's voice came through the earbuds. "Shall I run simulations in parallel?"
"Yeah. Use the full processing power of the Nexcore data center. I want to know if we've hit the theoretical limit or if there's room for improvement."
"Beginning simulations now. Estimated completion time: six hours for comprehensive testing."
"Good. While you do that, I'm moving on to superconductors."
Orion pulled up the fusion reactor design. The magnetic containment system was the heart of it all. Without powerful enough magnets, the whole thing wouldn't work.
He opened ORION and started studying superconductor basics.
Normal electrical wires had resistance. When electricity flowed through copper or aluminum, some energy turned into heat. It was wasted. Lost. That's why power lines got warm and why phone chargers heated up.
Superconductors were different. Zero resistance. Electricity flowed through them perfectly. No energy lost. No heat generated.
It was like the difference between sliding something across rough concrete versus sliding it across ice. Concrete had friction—you lost energy. Ice was smooth—things glided effortlessly.
The problem was temperature.
Current superconductors only worked when they were incredibly cold. Like, colder than outer space cold.
Most superconductors needed liquid nitrogen temperatures. That was -196°C or -321°F. Brutally cold.
Some newer ones could work at -140°C with special conditions. Still way too cold.
To reach those temperatures, you needed cryogenic cooling systems. Big machines that constantly pumped liquid nitrogen or liquid helium to keep the superconductors frozen. Those cooling systems used enormous amounts of energy.
It was stupid when you thought about it. You used superconductors to save energy. But then you burned energy keeping them cold. The whole advantage got eaten up by the cooling costs.
A room temperature superconductor would change everything.
Room temperature meant around 20°C or 68°F. Normal everyday temperature. No cooling needed. Just a wire that conducted electricity perfectly at normal conditions.
The energy savings would be massive. Power grids could transmit electricity across continents without losses. Electric motors would be perfectly efficient. Magnetic levitation trains wouldn't need expensive cooling systems.
And for fusion reactors, it meant something even more important: stronger magnetic fields.
Magnetic field strength was measured in Tesla. One Tesla was pretty strong—about 20,000 times stronger than Earth's magnetic field.
Current superconducting magnets topped out around 20-30 Tesla for sustained operation. That was impressive. But not enough for what Orion wanted.
Stronger magnetic fields meant better plasma compression. The fusion plasma needed to be squeezed tight—kept dense and hot. The stronger the magnetic field, the tighter you could squeeze it.
Tighter compression meant higher plasma temperatures. Hotter plasma meant more fusion reactions. More fusion meant more energy output.
It was a direct relationship. Better magnets equals better fusion equals more power.
"I need superconductors that can hit 100 Tesla minimum," Orion muttered. "Preferably higher. And they need to work at room temperature so we don't waste energy on cooling."
He dove into the library knowledge stored in his enhanced memory.
Superconductivity happened because of something called Cooper pairs. Normally, electrons repelled each other—same charges push apart. But at very cold temperatures in certain materials, electrons paired up. They moved through the material together like dance partners, flowing without resistance.
The problem was keeping those pairs stable. Heat disrupted them. Vibrations from warm atoms broke the pairs apart. That's why you needed extreme cold—to stop the atoms from vibrating.
Room temperature superconductors needed a completely different approach.
Orion pulled up research on high-pressure superconductors. Scientists had discovered materials that became superconductive at higher temperatures—but only under enormous pressure. Like, inside a diamond anvil cell where you crushed the material between two diamonds.
Not practical for building magnets. You couldn't exactly crush your fusion reactor under diamond pressure.
But the principle was interesting. Pressure changed how atoms arranged themselves. Changed how electrons behaved.
What if you could lock that atomic arrangement in place? Create a material that had the same structure as the high-pressure state but stayed that way at normal pressure?
"ORION, load material synthesis simulator," Orion said.
The virtual laboratory appeared in his mind through the BCI. He could see individual atoms floating in space. Ready to be arranged.
He started with hydrogen. Pure hydrogen under extreme pressure became metallic—the atoms got squeezed so close together they formed a metal lattice. Metallic hydrogen was theorized to be a room temperature superconductor.
Problem: it required millions of atmospheres of pressure. The moment you released the pressure, it turned back into normal hydrogen gas.
"Okay," Orion said. "What if we stabilize it with other elements?"
He added carbon atoms. Built a lattice structure—hydrogen atoms locked in place by carbon scaffolding. The carbon cage held the hydrogen in its metallic configuration even without pressure.
He ran the simulation.
The structure collapsed. The carbon bonds weren't strong enough.
He tried different arrangements. Different ratios. Added nitrogen. Added boron.
Hours passed. Simulation after simulation failed.
His enhanced brain processed the results. Found patterns in the failures. Adjusted the approach.
He tried rare earth elements. Lanthanum. Yttrium. Added sulfur for bonding.
The simulations showed promise. The materials stayed stable. But they still needed cooling. Not as much as traditional superconductors, but still below room temperature.
Close. Not good enough.
Orion grabbed a different approach. Copper-oxide materials. Those were the basis for high-temperature superconductors that scientists had discovered decades ago.
He built complex layered structures. Copper-oxide planes separated by rare earth elements. Doped with different atoms to tune the electron behavior.
The simulations ran. ORION tested electrical conductivity at different temperatures.
-50°C: Superconductive. 0°C: Superconductive. 20°C: Normal conductor.
The superconductivity vanished.
"Damn it."
He tried adding pressure internally. Created a material where the crystal structure itself compressed the copper-oxide layers. Like building internal stress into the material.
Better. The superconductivity lasted up to 15°C. But not quite room temperature.
"Rene, status on thermoelectric optimization?"
"Simulations 47% complete. Current best result: 81.2% efficiency with modified skutterudite doping."
"Good. Keep going."
Orion went back to the superconductor problem.
He pulled up more library knowledge. Exotic materials. Theoretical predictions. Research that wouldn't happen for decades in the normal timeline.
Found something interesting: topological superconductors.
Normal superconductors had Cooper pairs moving freely through the material. Topological superconductors had special electron states on their surface—protected by quantum mechanics. Those surface states were incredibly stable.
He started building topological structures in ORION. Materials with specific crystal symmetries. Layered in precise patterns.
Added bismuth selenide—a topological insulator. Combined it with superconducting elements. Created interfaces where the two materials met.
The simulation showed exotic behavior. Electrons at the interface formed stable superconducting channels.
He tested it at room temperature.
Superconductive!
But weak. The material could only handle small currents before the superconductivity broke down. And the magnetic field strength topped out at 5 Tesla. Way too low.
"Closer," Orion muttered. "But not there yet."
He needed to combine approaches. Take the stability of topological superconductors. Add the strong electron pairing from copper-oxide materials. Include the high-pressure atomic arrangement trick.
He built a complex structure in ORION:
Base layer: Topological insulator (bismuth selenide) Middle layer: Copper-oxide planes under internal crystal stress Top layer: Hydrogen-carbon cage with metallic hydrogen pockets Doping: Rare earth elements to tune electron behavior
The whole thing formed a superlattice—repeating layers just a few atoms thick. Each layer contributing different properties.
He ran the simulation.
The material was stable at room temperature. The different layers worked together. The topological surface states protected the Cooper pairs. The copper-oxide planes provided strong superconductivity. The metallic hydrogen pockets enhanced current capacity.
Electrical resistance at 20°C: Zero. Maximum current density: 10,000 A/cm². Insanely high. Magnetic field strength before quenching: 102 Tesla.
Orion stared at the numbers. Ran the simulation again. Same result.
"One hundred and two Tesla," he whispered. "That's... that's more than triple current superconductors."
"Impressive result," Rene said. "The material exceeds your minimum requirements significantly."
"Yeah. With 100 Tesla magnetic fields, we can compress the plasma way tighter than ITER's design. Higher fusion rates. More energy output."
He studied the material composition. What was it made of?
Bismuth selenide—fairly common. Used in thermoelectric devices. Copper oxide—extremely common. Found in tons of electronics. Carbon—everywhere. Literally. Hydrogen—most abundant element in the universe. Lanthanum—rare earth element, but not that rare. Used in camera lenses and batteries. Small amounts of yttrium and sulfur for doping.
"Wait," Orion said. "This is all common stuff. Nothing exotic. Nothing expensive."
He checked the manufacturing process in the simulation.
Molecular beam epitaxy for the layering. Same technique used for semiconductor manufacturing. Precise, but not complicated. You just evaporated the materials in a vacuum chamber and let them deposit layer by layer.
The whole process could be done with equipment that already existed in the Helix Research Facility.