The day had finally arrived—Alex received what he had been waiting for.
Palladium. As he held that cold metal in his hand, Alex felt that all his dreams were about to come true.
"Son, why did you buy a piece of metal?" Melinda asked, curious.
She had watched Alex change during this time—some things made her worried, others made her proud.
When Alex asked for help opening an account in something called the stock market, saying he would make a lot of money, she thought he was talking nonsense. But as his mother, she wanted to support him in everything she could.
Luckily, her son just got smarter—he wasn't like her friend's kid.
With a sigh, she helped Alex, though she wasn't very confident when she heard he planned to invest all the money he'd earned. She almost backed out.
But when he made over $50,000 in just a few months with only $2,000, she felt like she was in heaven.
Today, he received something he had ordered online and was smiling while rubbing a piece of metal against his face. She felt a bit concerned.
"This isn't just any metal—it's called palladium, and I need it for my research," Alex replied, without saying much more.
Now that he had everything he needed, he returned to the garage lab.
Melinda looked at her son and couldn't help but sigh. As a mother, all she wanted was to see her child grow up happy.
...
Days passed, and Alex finally finished processing the palladium into thin circular wires—like an arc, just like Tony did in the movie.
Alex also bought niobium to improve energy transmission efficiency.
After assembling the entire structure, Alex was ready to begin testing the reactor. He didn't need to use the cold fusion reactor.
Alex knew cold fusion didn't pose a risk of explosion, so he wasn't afraid of blowing everything up.
He did a final check—after finding no errors, Alex flipped the switch to start things up.
He'd bought the lever during a visit to Sheldon—it was the same device Sheldon used to power his trains.
He bought it thinking it might be useful, and now he was finally launching his dreams.
In the dark room, the reactor emitted a bluish-white glow—like a firefly flickering.
But Alex knew it was the atoms completing full circles at high rotational speed inside the vacuum chamber.
It started slowly, like the heartbeat of someone waking from a long sleep, and gradually sped up.
When Alex finally felt the reactor stabilize, he sat down with a smile.
His heart was racing. For a moment, he wondered if it was real.
Looking at the glowing blue reactor on the bench, Alex felt that success or failure would be decided in the next few minutes.
He sat silently, waiting as time crawled—each second felt like a century.
Alex took a deep breath to stay calm—this was just the beginning, and there were still many things he would accomplish in the future.
Time passed slowly, but the reactor hadn't shown any problems so far.
Alex felt it was time to run some tests and got up.
He grabbed the equipment he had prepared and began testing.
First, he checked how much energy was generated per second through cold fusion.
Alex picked up a black device that looked like a small portable TV. After modifying it, he turned it into a voltage meter capable of measuring currents in gigajoules.
He turned it on—parameters appeared on the screen. Alex connected the device to the ARC reactor.
With a beep, the numbers started to change. Alex watched as they climbed to 3 gigajoules.
He smiled—his calculations had been correct. He'd never felt that math was so satisfying until now.
Next, he picked up another device, slightly smaller, shaped like a track with a built-in screen on the back.
It was a temperature gauge. In theory, cold fusion shouldn't emit high temperatures.
Pointing it at the reactor, the numbers shifted and showed 20°C.
"Looks like the temperature's below room temperature—which is great."
Saying this, Alex moved to the corner and pulled out a black box nearly his size. He had prepared it to connect the reactor and use the energy safely.
Opening the box, he found a support structure inside designed to hold the reactor. Alex went to the bench and carefully picked up the ARC reactor.
After placing it into the support, he closed the box door and pressed a red button on the side—and a light came on.
Alex's smile widened. Now came the final test.