Reversal!: The thrilling and suspenseful story of CRAPS a Suspense Thriller by Raj Agrawal➱ Book Tour with Guest Post and giveaway
The thrilling and suspenseful story of CRAPS that the Oil Companies want to kill, and the Chinese want to steal…
Reversal!
Not For Sale! Trilogy Book 2
by Raj Agrawal
Genre: Suspense Thriller
In a world plagued by climate change, where the future of our planet hangs by a thread, "Reversal!" takes you on an electrifying journey into the heart of a groundbreaking scientific innovation that could save humanity. Enter the world of carbon dioxide recapture and processing systems (CRAPS) through the eyes of Dr. Ravi Kumar, a brilliant scientist as he uncovers the potential to reverse the damage done to our environment while fighting deadly attacks from powerful foes…
Not For Sale!
Not For Sale! Trilogy Book 1
Aviation
engineer Dr. Ravi Kumar and his AI expert wife, Dr. Caitlyn Mariko
are on a world-wide run for their lives from two of Americas most
powerful chief executives and a rogue nation. And all this for
refusing to sell their aero-engine invention that will revolutionize
the aircraft industry and help save the planet from the ravages of
climate change. Their invention is Not For Sale! The two scientists
have other plans for it...
If
you like Crichton, Brown, Baldacci, Koontz, Grisham and others like
them - you are going to like this fast-paced thriller. And even
though you may not have heard of me, give it a read, it is an
interesting story - worth your time and money.
Prologue
Ithaca, New York – Climate lab at the Materials and Climate
Research Institute – Present time, Tuesday, October 14.
“Dr. Kumar, Dr. Makram is dead.”
It was about 15 minutes past eight on this
fall evening. Dr. Ravi Kumar, the Director of the Materials and Climate
Research Institute, located on the outskirts of Ithaca, New York – had just
finished dinner. He was helping Dr. Caitlyn Mariko, his AI expert wife and a
fellow lead scientist at the institute, clear the dishes and clean the kitchen
when the quiet of the evening was jarred by the loud ringing of his home phone
in his study.
He let it ring for a while,
assuming it was another spam call that would eventually go away. But the caller
was persistent, and the phone kept ringing. Dr. Kumar could not ignore it
anymore and walked up to his study to see who was calling. He answered when he
saw the institute’s number on the caller ID. It was Tom Delaney, the second
shift inside guard who had just come in to start his shift.
“No!!” he screamed. “That cannot be. He was
alive when I left the office at 6:00. What was Bill doing? And what about the
outside guard?” Ravi stammered into the phone, not knowing how to react and
asking the first two questions that came to his mind. Bill Maher was the day
shift guard whom Tom was replacing.
“He is missing. I cannot find him.
And I have not seen the outside guard. He must have been on his way in when he
heard the alarms go off,” Tom replied.
“I am on my way. Did you call Dr.
Shapiro and Captain Thapa?” Ravi asked.
“Yes, I did. Captain Thapa is on
his way and Dr. Shapiro will try and get into town as soon as he can,” he
replied.
“Ravi, what is going on?” Caitlyn
asked as she walked into the study upon hearing Ravi’s shrill scream.
“It is Omar. He is dead,” Ravi
replied, covering the mouthpiece and trying to sound normal but failing badly.
“I am going to the institute. Captain Thapa is also on his way. I will call you
and fill you in.”
“And Dr. Kumar, the climate lab has
been completely ransacked and CRAPS is missing,” Tom added before Ravi hung up
and rushed to the institute, a ten-minute drive, still in his pajamas….
Chapter One
Ithaca, New York - Five years prior to the
attack on the climate lab
“Dad, have you seen the latest news on carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases? Looks like in spite of your new invention for airplane
engines and all the other initiatives from people all over the world, they are
still going up.” It was Sita, the older of Dr. Ravi Kumar and Dr. Caitlyn
Mariko’s identical twin daughters.
It was a beautiful spring day in Ithaca, New York. The three
Kumar daughters, Lilly, Sita, and Reiko, and their son-in-law, Jesse, had come
back home for the long Memorial Day weekend. Ravi and Jesse were trying to get
the grill going while the girls and their mother were getting the Beyond Meat
burgers, corn on the cob just harvested from the local farm, and a cornucopia
of other fresh vegetables as well as fish ready for a lazy, and relaxing
holiday afternoon for their backyard cookout.
It had been a long, hard winter and
it was time to shed the heavy winter clothing and get out to enjoy the fresh
cool breeze blowing from Lake Cayuga, one of the five Finger Lakes in upstate
New York, about four hours’ drive from the Big Apple.
It had now been almost eight years
since MRI–297, the new material invention that Sita was talking about, had
become a reality and was now in just about all modern commercial airliners
currently flying, significantly reducing the amount of greenhouse gases they
produced. Sita had brought back memories from that harrowing summer when Ravi
and Caitlyn were on a worldwide flight for their lives from two of the most
powerful CEOs of American industry and the Chinese government -- all because
they had refused to sign an exclusive licensing contract with either the
Americans or the Chinese. They were determined to make their new invention
available to all industries and countries which were legally allowed to have
that new material and join them in their fight to do something about the
unabated growth of that insidious gas. In the end, after escaping many close
calls on their lives, they did manage to come out alive and license their new
revolutionary material for use throughout the aviation industry. Their story had
become a much-talked-about saga of the time and was well publicized in the
bestselling book – Not For Sale!
“Yes, I have, and like you, I am
quite concerned and have been wondering what we can do about it,” Ravi answered
in a subdued voice, still lost in the memories of eight years ago but slowly
making his way back to the present.
“It is interesting we are talking
about it. I just saw an article on Carbon Dioxide recapture and the promise it
holds to reverse or at least slow down the damage caused by it to our planet
and the climate,” Reiko, Sita’s five-minute younger identical twin sister
chimed in.
“I also read something about it but
did not follow up. It sounded too complicated and too futuristic,” Lilly Kumar,
the eldest of the Kumar daughters, added.
“Actually, it is not. It does
happen to be one of my areas of research, and if you all are interested, I can
give you a quick primer on it.” Dr. Jesse Shapiro, Lilly’s husband, was a NASA
scientist.
“That will be great, as long as you
don’t go too deep and keep it at a level that mere mortals like us can
understand,” Sita piped in teasingly.
“I will remember that and if I do
begin to wade into waters any deeper than your ankle, just holler – ‘Deep’ and
I will retract,” Jesse answered, smiling with a wink.
Dr. Kumar now had the burgers and
the freshly husked corn on the grill. The corn kernels had begun popping and
would be ready for that first mouthwatering bite in less than five minutes. The
cooler beside the picnic table held cold Corona beer, everyone’s favorite brew.
Caitlyn opened a bottle for Ravi and invited the others to help themselves as
they settled down, straddling the backyard wooden picnic bench – Jesse, Lilly,
and Caitlyn on one side and Sita and Reiko on the other, while Ravi remained
standing tending the grill with one hand and that cold beer in his free hand.
“So, as you know, there is a
mountain of carbon dioxide - CO2 for short, that has been accumulating in our
atmosphere ever since we began burning fossil fuels to heat our homes and
produce electricity, and of course the wide-spread use of cars, trucks, and
more recently, airplanes. And as Sita said, despite all the measures society
has taken over the last several decades to reduce the amount of new carbon
dioxide we produce, we have not gotten ahead of the curve and are still adding
to that mountain, albeit at a somewhat slower rate. The increase in the
planet’s average temperature has, as a result, been steadily increasing,
causing the change in climate we are experiencing with the cycle of drought,
flood, and heat becoming more severe each passing year.” Jesse began his
introduction to the subject.
“Dr. Shapiro, we know all that. Can
you get to the point and talk about carbon dioxide recapture?” Sita asked
playfully.
“All right then, carbon dioxide
recapture, as the name implies, is literally sucking that insidious gas out of
the air around us. Trees and forests do that quite effectively, but we are
producing more of it than they can process -- and to make matters worse, we
have been cutting down a vast expanse of forests, reducing nature’s capacity to
capture and convert it into something useful such as oxygen. So, what is the
big deal? Why can’t we just use some huge, big vacuum cleaners and get it out
of the air? Surely, if we can go to the moon, we should be able to do that?”
Jesse asked, waving his arms and waiting to see the reaction of his audience
before answering his own rhetorical questions.
“Yes, why can’t we? I have never
understood if there is such a big accumulation of this gas, why with all of the
technology we have, are we not able to simply suck it down just like we would
if it were a mountain of sand, dirt, or snow?” Reiko asked, raising her
eyebrows.
“Well, that is because the mountain
of carbon dioxide is not really a mountain sitting in a few places in the sky
like Mount Everest or the Rockies. Rather, it is well mixed in with the rest of
the air, which as you know, is basically nitrogen and oxygen. In fact, even
with the increase that has been going on for years, CO2 is still only a minute
part of our air, roughly 400 parts per million. While that is double the amount
it was a couple of hundred years ago, it is still quite small, though increasingly
harmful all the same, as it traps more of the heat within our atmosphere,
raising the planetary temperature,” Jesse said, taking a swig of his cool
Corona beer.
“The first challenge after we have
sucked that well-mixed, CO2-laden air into a device is to be able to separate
it effectively and efficiently. And then we have to worry about what to do with
it. And that is when the fun starts, as there are many ways to deal with the
captured CO2 - each with its associated problems,” Jesse continued, taking
another deep swig of his slowly warming beer.
The silence following the pause
Jesse had taken to gulp his beer was suddenly broken by the announcement from
Dr. Kumar,
“Anyone up for burgers? I have a
few ready.”
They all got up and stood in line
as Ravi carefully placed a burger on each of their plates and directed them to
the table with condiments and a large bowl of Spicy Chickpea Salad – Ravi’s and
the girls' favorite dish, ginned up by Caitlyn for the occasion.
“The basic process for separating
carbon dioxide from the air is relatively simple and has been known for quite
some time. The air sucked in from the atmosphere is brought in contact with an
alkaline liquid solution that traps the carbon dioxide and through heating and
some familiar chemical reactions separates it from the rest of the air which is
then exhausted back into the atmosphere. The chemical reaction also produces
water as one of the byproducts which can then be used for other purposes such
as converting that captured, carbon-rich CO2 into fuel,” Jesse said as he
combed his fingers through his dirty blond hair fluttering in the gentle breeze
from the lake.
“What type of fuel?” asked Lilly,
who had kept mostly quiet so far, though fascinated by Jesse’s ability to talk
about a complex scientific subject in terms that they all could understand.
“It could be any carbon-based fuel
such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, or jet engine fuel. It could also be used
to produce other petroleum-based products such as heating oil, coal tar,
polyester, plastics, or anything else for which we currently use fossil fuel
extracted from the earth. Basically, we would be replacing the vanishing supply
of the precious fossil fuel with the manmade fuel produced from the abundantly
available carbon dioxide in our air and cleaning it up in the process,” Jesse
answered passionately. This was a subject near and dear to his heart, and he
was excited to talk about it.
“The process to convert the carbon
dioxide captured from the ambient air into fuel is also well understood. It
starts with breaking apart the very stable CO2 molecule to provide one of the
ingredients for making the synthetic fuel - carbon monoxide or CO. The other
key element is hydrogen, and that is generated by splitting the water molecule
or H2O, which if you recall was a byproduct of capturing carbon dioxide from
the air. The CO and hydrogen are then chemically reacted in a well-known
process known as Fischer-Tropsch to synthesize the manufactured hydrocarbon
fuel that replicates the natural fossil fuel that we extract from the earth,”
Jesse continued, skipping many of the details lest the twins scream “Deep.”
“If all this is well understood,
then why we are not using it to take care of that mountain?” asked Sita with
furrowed eyebrows. The twins were in the habit of using their delicately
sculpted eyebrows as an integral part of their expressive personalities.
“Well, because there are still many
technical and engineering challenges that need to be solved to make the science
a reality. But that has not stopped some futuristic individuals from building
small prototype plants to demonstrate the feasibility of the basic science.
They are not very economical right now and use a lot of energy – more than they
produce, to be of much practical use. They also have exceptionally large
footprints, occupying almost half a football field just to remove a few tons of
carbon dioxide – a drop in the bucket,” Jesse answered, trying to sound
optimistic but injecting a sense of objectivity and reality.
“So, what do you think is required
to make it a practical solution for getting the greenhouse gases back in the
box?” asked Reiko.
“We will need to make advances in
all areas of the underlying technologies, but without going into details that
you may find boring, it basically boils down to reducing the energy required
for the process and to reducing the footprint of the plant,” Jesse replied.
“I understand the need to reduce
energy, but why the footprint?” It was Caitlyn, who had been intently listening
to Jesse and nodding her head in agreement and understanding.
“Because the large footprint limits
the number of such plants that can realistically be built and operated around
the world. Carbon dioxide is everywhere and therefore needs to be removed from
everywhere, not just locally by a few plants. Distributing the carbon dioxide
processing plants widely would be the only way to make a meaningful difference
in that mountain,” Jesse replied.
“Based on what I have seen so far,
I do not see how we can get it down from its current size of roughly half of a
football field to something that is considerably smaller – perhaps no bigger
than the size of a suitcase,” he continued.
“It is interesting you say that
Jesse. I remember when I first started in the business, we used to work on
something that you kids may not have even heard of – an IBM mainframe computer.
It had a large footprint, perhaps as big as a full-size SUV and it used to
consume gobs of power to run it and to keep it cool from all the heat its
internal electronic gadgetry used to generate. And for all that size and power,
it had the computing capacity of less than what is in your laptop computer or
even in your cell phone.” Ravi had taken a breather from his cooking duties and
joined the conversation.
“I would, therefore, not put it
past human ingenuity to rise to the challenge, whatever that may be,” Ravi
added.
“Assuming there were breakthroughs,
and we could get the whole plant packaged in a suitcase, how exactly did you
think it would be used?” Lilly asked.
“Well, I don’t know. Since I did
not think it was an achievable goal, I really have not given much thought to
it,” Jesse replied.
“What if every car and truck around
the world was equipped with this device? We would then have millions of
small-scale plants cleaning up the air and at the same time producing fuel for
their own consumption.” Sita said thoughtfully, making her contribution to the
discussion.
“Yes, and even though we would
still be producing carbon dioxide by burning the hydrocarbon fuel that we would
have synthesized, it would be mostly neutralized or could even be negative
relative to the amount we took out. It would also mean that no new crude oil
needs to be taken out of the ground. A win-win proposition,” Reiko added
excitedly, backing up her twin sister as the twins often did – feeding off each
other ideas.
“You know, although it appears to
be pie in the sky right now, I am beginning to get a chill in my bones thinking
of the possibilities -- what such a device could do for our planet. Jesse, it
is worth pursuing further. Let us talk and maybe get a small exploratory
project started. I will bring it up with my board at the institute, but I do
not foresee any problem in getting their support. The Environmental Defense
Fund has been growing with the royalties coming from the MRI-297 super alloy
and we have been looking for exactly such a project to deploy some of that
money,” Dr. Kumar said.
“And, although not absolutely
necessary, it would be great if rather than calling it a device, we could come
up with a suitable name for it. Any ideas?” he added.
“How about CRAP?” said Reiko. She
was good at coming up with eye-catching unconventional names. Her petit, one
hundred fifteen pound, five feet two inches frame packed with boundless energy
almost bouncing with excitement at the prospect of a device that could actually
do something about the spiraling growth of the harmful gas and the ravages it
was causing to the climate.
“Really?” Jesse said with a hint of
a snicker in his voice.
“Yes, Dr. Shapiro. CRAP for Carbon
Dioxide Recapture And Processing,” Reiko replied, not quite appreciating the
snicker in Jesse’s voice.
“It sure is catchy and does capture
the essence of what this gizmo is supposed to do. I can buy that,” Jesse said,
trying to smooth Reiko’s ruffled feathers.
“Some may find it too shocking and
distractive. I suggest we think of something less offensive,” said Lilly. Her
calm demeanor reflected her serious nature - a contrast to her more ebullient
twin sisters.
“What if we added S to it and
called it CRAPS – for Carbon Dioxide Recapture And Processing System. Will that
make it less offensive but still memorable and somewhat shocking?” Reiko said,
striking a compromise. The twins had a lot of respect for their older sibling
and generally deferred to her comments and suggestions.
“That would be better. I can go
with that,” Lilly agreed with a nod from the others.
“CRAPS, it is,” Ravi said as he
went back to tending the corn on the cob and their popping kernels.
“Where am I?”
Dr. Ravi Kumar, a world-renowned aerospace engineer and the director of a
prestigious aviation institute in Ithaca, New York, woke up in the middle of
the night, sweaty and completely disoriented. He had no idea where he was
except that he was on the run with his wife, Caitlyn. He turned over and felt
Caitlyn—she was there in bed next to him. He let out a big sigh of relief and
then slowly it all began to come back.
He was in a Riad in Casablanca, Morocco, which belonged to Dr. Larabi Hasan,
his friend and old colleague from the Materials Research Institute in Ithaca,
New York. Ravi had called him yesterday from Marseille, France, to ask for a
place to stay for a few days where he and Caitlyn could keep a low profile and
sort things out. At least two teams of professional hit men were after them,
trying to bring them back to the States—willingly or otherwise.
So far, they had managed to stay just a step ahead. But Ravi had no illusion
that it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out. They had been on
the run for the last six weeks and it just could not go on. He needed a place
where they could stay while he came up with a survival plan. He still could not
believe that a person like him—that many would call colorless and nerdy—was
involved in an international manhunt, running for his life. It did not make any
sense.
It all seemed to have started six months ago when Ravi came up with the secret
ingredient to a substance that had the power to change the future of the
aviation industry—and the future of the planet itself.
Chapter One
Ithaca, New York, February 1st, 4
P.M.
Ravi was in his director’s office
at the Materials Research Institute when he received a call from his colleague,
Dr. Marcel Giraud.
“Ravi, come down to the
conference room in the lab!” Marcel exclaimed. “I’ve just gotten the test
results.”
Could they have found the missing
element?
Ravi excitedly banged his fist so
hard on his desk that he almost fractured his knuckles. Then he jumped up and
headed downstairs to where Marcel and his colleagues were gathered.
It was not a long walk. The
institute was in a cavernous building that used to hum with textile weaving and
garment making machinery but had ceased production due to it, like many others
in the country, not being able to compete against cheaper imports from China
and other low-cost countries. It looked derelict from outside, with windows
covered with grime and some of the bricks peeling off from the façade. Ravi and
his nonprofit institute had acquired the building from the liquidators for
almost nothing. Located just a few miles from the expansive campus of Cornell
University, his alma mater, it was ideal for Ravi and his small team of
scientists to conduct their research and advance the state of the art in
materials technology—especially the very high-tech materials used in airplane
engines.
For the last ten years, they had
been laser focused on inventing a new super alloy—a mixture of two or more
elements existing in nature, with at least one of them being a metal. Super
alloys were mostly used in airplane engines, which allowed them to pack the
power equal to ten train locomotives into a box the size of a couch. Most of
the super alloys started with a nickel or cobalt-based material, which provided
the strength at the exceedingly high temperatures these engines normally
operated at. They were then alloyed or compounded with metals and non-metals,
including chromium, which provided corrosion resistance; aluminum, which provided
oxidation resistance; and others such as titanium, iron, carbon, and silicon.
In addition, the alloying had to be conducted at precisely controlled
temperatures, heating and cooling rates, and conditions. The super alloy Ravi’s
team was working on would allow planes to fly faster for longer distances,
while burning less fuel and thus reducing climate-harming greenhouse gases—a
scourge that Ravi had dedicated his life’s work to fighting.
Two years ago, Dr. Marcel Giraud
had entered the picture. A lanky Frenchman in his mid-thirties, he was an
assistant professor at the Université de Marseille and a visiting associate at
the Materials Research Institute. Over the following months he was joined by
Dr. Larabi Hasan from Morocco and Dr. Riccardo Sperra from Palermo, Sicily.
Larabi was a serious man in his early forties and talked in a measured voice.
Larabi’s light brown skin, from his Berber heritage—believed to be a cross
between the Indians and the Arabs—made him uncannily look like Ravi, who also
had remarkably similar skin tone from his North Indian heritage. Riccardo, a
jovial, pudgy man in his late thirties, was always ready with a quip in
English, which he usually got wrong. The staff at the institute loved the easy
demeanor that masked the man’s tough-as-nails personality.
All three foreign scientists were
close to the end of their terms at the institute and were scheduled to return
home within the next six months.
“Good afternoon,” they greeted Ravi
in a chorus as he entered the conference room.
It was a small room mostly occupied
by a rectangular meeting table, with a glass wall on one side overlooking the
shop floor and a large digital chalkboard opposite it. Another wall held a
picture of the periodic table – a visual arrangement of all of the natural
elements present on the planet - while the remaining wall was covered with a
list of super alloy variants that Ravi and his team had explored over the last
ten years. The variants had been both major—where the chemical composition of
the super alloy had been changed from the previous versions—and minor—where the
alloying process had been tweaked to obtain the desired material properties.
The version that had been tested over the last three weeks was called MRI
297-10, meaning that it was the 297th major variant of the material, and the
10th minor variant within it.
“So, what do you have?” Ravi asked,
pointing to the piece of metal on the conference table in front of them. It was
one of the 20 sample pieces they had produced in the lab and was the last one
available for display, the other 19 having been used for the myriad of tests
the team was conducting. For the scientists assembled there, that piece of
nondescript metal was a work of art, with its white-yellow hue that seemed to
glow under the overhead conference room lights.
“This latest version appears to
just about meet all our requirements, including high temperature strength,
distortion, creep, and fatigue,” Marcel said.
“What do you mean, ‘just about’?”
Ravi asked with anticipation and concern in his voice.
“We might be a little off on the
fracture toughness and ductility,” Larabi explained.
Ravi imperceptibly shook his head
with disappointment. These were the two last key properties his team had been
struggling to achieve over the last six months. The material in airplane
engines needed to be tough enough to withstand the ingestion of many foreign
objects, including birds, ice, pebbles, and dust particles, at an exceedingly
high force. At the same time, it needed to be able to maintain its exceptional
strength at the extremely high internal temperatures of airplane engines. Any
shortfall in these properties meant that the material was still not ready for
prime time and they had to continue their arduous and painfully long search for
either the missing element or a further tweak of the alloying process.
“I think the cooling rate needs to
be adjusted,” Riccardo spoke up, trying to inject a sense of optimism. They
could all see Ravi was disappointed at the news, even if he did not outwardly
show his emotions. “If you like, I can have a new variant available for testing
within the next two days. And I don’t think it would violate any of the
regulatory constraints since I would still not have knowledge of the entire
process.”
To meet stringent government
and business constraints, the chemical composition and the alloying process
were tightly controlled and could be disclosed only to U.S. citizens on a
need-to-know basis. Even the regular members of Ravi’s team had limited access
either to the chemical composition or the process, but not both. Visiting
foreign researchers could test the new material and learn about what it could
do, but not how.
“I’m sorry, Riccardo,” Ravi
replied. “You may well be right, but I can’t afford to take any risks in this
area.”
Ravi could see the disappointment
on Riccardo’s face, as well as on the faces of Marcel and Larabi. He felt bad
for them. They had all become good friends and he could understand their
frustration at not being able to fully participate in the invention of this
groundbreaking material. He would have felt the same, but his hands were tied.
“In any case,” Ravi continued, “I’m
not certain we have the right chemistry. We may have to tweak it a little and
make sure we have the right element.”
Ravi continued to think about it
long after his colleagues had left for the day. He was certain that the missing
element belonged to the Lanthanide group of metals, also known as rare-earth
metals—not because they were rare, but because it was difficult to separate
them from the mixture of metal ores dug out from the earth. This group of
metals had the highest melting points and retained their strength at high
temperatures. Ravi’s team had already tried Gadolinium and Thulium, which were
close but not the ones. Could it be Erbium or Holmium?
he wondered, scratching his head. These were the two elements next to the ones
they had already experimented with. Feeling somewhat dejected and
defeated at still not finding the right chemistry, he began to wonder if he
would ever get there and if all their effort over the last ten years might have
been in vain.
Just then a moth showed up from
seemingly out of nowhere and landed, of all the places, on the rare-earth group
of metals where the potential elements were located in the periodic table –
specifically, on one of the two elements he was considering.
“That’s it! It has to be the
one,” he screamed as loud as he could, looking up towards the ceiling and
whispering under his breath, “Thank you.”
Tests still needed to be done for
absolute confirmation, but Ravi was sure in his heart that this element was the
one. Success was so close that he could almost taste it.
Ravi had waited for this moment for
a long time. The son of middle-class, small textile business owners in
Varanasi, India, he had been in the top one percent of his graduating class at
the Indian Institute of Technology. After a yearlong internship at Tata Steels,
one of the leading steels and aluminum manufacturing industries in the country,
and another as a design engineer, he found himself not fully challenged and
fulfilled. He had grown restless and wanted more. He found himself awake at
nights thinking, “This cannot be it. I know I can do more. I want to be at the
leading edge of my profession. I want to be where the action is. I want to be
where new inventions and discoveries are being made. And it is not here in
India.” He knew there was only one place on the planet that offered him the
opportunities he was looking for, and that was the United States.
Over the next six months, he
applied to all the major universities in the U.S. and was accepted at most of
them. He decided on Cornell. It offered him a teaching assistantship, had a
strong materials engineering program, and, more importantly, was the institution
where Carl Sagan – one of Ravi’s favorite scientists – resided and
taught.
When Ravi left India, he could take
only $300 due to the strict foreign exchange control by the government. He
traveled for a few weeks in Europe and spent most of that money before he
arrived in Ithaca, New York, the home of Cornell University. After paying the
YMCA for a place to stay for the night, he had $5 in his pocket. It seemed like
a worn-out cliché, but he did come to this country with just $5 in his
pocket.
What followed was a whirlwind
of professional and personal achievements, but never in his wildest dreams
could Ravi have imagined that at 47, almost 25 years after he had come to the
United States, he was on the brink of making a discovery that could change the
world and lift him, his family, and his beloved institute far from those
struggling student days at Cornell.
And there was no one else he wanted
to share this moment with more than his co-inventor and his life partner—and
the only other person who knew everything about the super alloy—Dr. Caitlyn
Mariko.
Who
is Raj Agrawal?
I am a retired aerospace
engineer and a first-generation immigrant from India. After completing my bachelor’s
in engineering from the Institute of Technology located in my hometown of
Varanasi, I came to Ottawa, Canada, almost 50 years ago, where I obtained my
master’s in aerospace engineering and also met my future wife, Mire Kimura, a
fellow international student from Japan. We moved to Montreal where we made our
home for almost a quarter century and became the proud parents of three
daughters, all born in one year.
Our family immigrated to United States, the
land of innovative research and revolutionary inventions, just before the turn
of the new century. We were following our daughters who had been admitted to
Ivy League schools and had decided to take up on their offers and move to this
country.
I have worked for more than forty years at some of the leading US and British
aero-engine companies. I have many technical publications and over 30 patents
in aviation engineering and have been a member of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers and American Helicopter Society. I was also an adjunct
professor teaching a graduate level course on aero-engine design.
Mire and I now split our time between our residences in Florida and Colorado,
travelling around the world and checking items off our bucket list, writing and
being professional babysitters to our four grandchildren.
I
took up writing after I retired because I consider myself a Global citizen who
has stories to tell. I had enjoyed writing all my life and now in retirement I
could finally pursue it as a second calling and continue to learn about
subjects that I was passionate about but did not have the time to get into any
kind of depth. Climate change is one of those subjects that is of great concern
to me not just for my generation but the generations of my grandchildren and
those that come after them. My books tackle this existential issue for our
planet with interesting and exciting tales of people who have taken it upon
themselves to do something about it and those who want to stop them from doing
so.
I have
now completed and published two novels – Not
For Sale! and Reversal! which I envisage to be part of the trilogy I plan to write.
The novels are loosely based on my own life experiences as well as those of my
family and friends. I hope you will find these stories interesting, exciting
and fast-paced and perhaps inspirational to try and make the inventions in
these stories, currently figment of my imagination, real and operational.
Raj Agrawal is a retired aerospace engineer and a first-generation immigrant from India. After completing his bachelor’s in engineering from the Institute of Technology located in his hometown of Varanasi, he came to Ottawa, Canada where he got his master's in aerospace engineering and met his future wife, Mire Kimura, a fellow international student from Japan. They moved to Montreal where they made their home for almost a quarter century and became the proud parents of three daughters, all born in one year. The family immigrated to United States, the land of ground-breaking research and revolutionary inventions, just before the turn of the new century.
He has worked for more than forty years at some of the leading US and British aero engine companies. He has many technical publications and over 30 patents in aviation engineering and has been a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and American Helicopter Society. He was also an adjunct professor teaching a graduate level course on aero-engine design.
He now splits his time between his residences in Florida and Colorado with Mire, travelling around the world, spending as much time as possible with his four grandchildren and writing.
Reversal! is his second novel in the Not for Sale! trilogy and is once again loosely based on his own life experiences, hope and expectations.
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This sounds like a really good suspense thriller. Thanks for sharing.
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