milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Guard duty's been dealt with. Sleep's been done.

Never mind the indoor Quidditch. Ray's really starting to look forward to going home. For now, though, he'll settle for getting dinner and sitting in the Bar, near the observation window, with his book on qigong exercises.

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Ray nods. "Thoguht I'd ask. How's the 'sabre coming along, anyway?"

Bonzo furrows an eyebrow at this, thinking.

"I've managed to locate a better battery, and shot the laser into space rather than the roof this time. It could probably pass for a nice blaster or laser rifle about now...I just can't get the blade to terminate at any length, that's all."

Pause.

"Though if I aim the lasers, I can occasionally get them to largely cancel eachother out at the tip."

"That's a start," Ray says. "That's one of the trickiest parts. No joy on the crystal front, I take it?'

Bonzo sighs.

"No...partly because there isn't exactly a booming market for focusing crystals."

That would dampen things a bit, wouldn't it?

Ray nods. "I patented the machine I use to produce mine. Your world's going to have to develop that technology from the ground up, I think."

Bonzo nods.

"That's going to be a problem, seeing as I don't have a billion dollars lying around."

"Not like I had that kind of money either, but... yeah, I know what you mean."

Bonzo nods.

"Your world had different technology to work with, though...and it also had slightly different physics, I think."

"Yeah," Ray says. "On the other hand, the 'sabre's worked in every world I've been to so far, so once it's all put together..."

Bonzo nods.

"I think the difference is in what you can form...or maybe what allowed the technologies to come along so easily."

"Possible. Have you guys got positron-collision technology yet?"

Bonzo closes his eyes.

"Would it have anything to do with a causing an exothermic chain reaction?"

"Not likely. They're the antiparticle to the electron. They tend to cause big bada booms if they're not being used to alter the quantum spin characteristics of protons traveling at near relativistic speed."

Bonzo nods.

"Reason I ask is this..."

He pulls up an article titled "The Little Doctor for Dummies".

"It's in normal language, but it's what blew up a bunch of Bugger fleets."

Ray leans over to have a look. "Little Doctor?" he repeats. "What does... oh."

Pause.

"Oh, my. Molecular... oh, my."

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light....

"No, that's not the same thing. Although something similar could happen if there were an accident with two of our toys, just... on a much smaller scale."

Bonzo nods.

"It's causing more than a small blowup, needless to say."

"Oh, no kidding," Ray says. "This stuff- I don't think I even have the words to describe what the concept of a weapon like this is doing to my brain..."

Bonzo nods.

"I can't believe that they went that far in developing something...though it's sure given the colonization movement a kick in the rear, I've heard."

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