milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Agatha's back in the bar today, at the tables she set up before. The sign and items are all still there. Draping it in a blanket helped keep everything safe.

Well, that and the security system she added.

She's not keeping an eye out for customers at the moment. There's something more importaint on her mind.

In front of her is a slightly used camera, disassembled. Notes and schematics are spread out on the table around it, and there is much tinkering. She's humming an odd tune.

Fear.

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"Oh, well- we still have mail. I mean, some things have to be conveyed privately, you know? And stuff has to be done officially so that there's a permanent record- even with sound recording you don't really have something as permanent as a piece of paper. But it's great for stuff like coordinating fleet movement at a distance. Heck- modern airports can bring in a guy in an airplane without him being able to see what he's doing, using the right kind of radio signals so that he can tell where the runway is. It's amazing stuff."

Agatha blinks.

"Oh, yes, I suppose -- if everyone had recievers and there would clearly be problems securing something an electromagnetic signal . . . but it's still a safe and reasonably certain way of transmitting data and casual corrispondance across even the Wastelands, and almost instantly -- we have nothing like that. Planes aren't very common, but certainly even the dirigible docking stations could benifit from it . . ."

Ray nods. "The most famous radio antenna still standing in New York City was originally built to be a dirigible mooring mast," he says. "That turned out to be a mistake- the winds got out of control- but it's still the most important proadcasting tower in the city. I can show you the theoretical basics of the process, if you like."

There is manic grinning. And squeeing. And general geeking out.

"Yes. I certainly would like."

"Okay," says Ray, getting a piece of paper and a pencil out. "Here's the basics- let's just start with the electromagnetic spectrum-"

He draws something that looks very much like this.

"You do use metric, right? Please tell me you use metric.... anyway, see how visible light is really just a part of the same sort of energy as radio and all these other kinds of waves? To create a simple radio transmitter, what you want to do is create a rapidly changing electric current in a wire. You can do that by rapidly connecting and disconnecting a battery, but that's not going to get you much more than the sound of dots and dashes- long on periods versus short on periods. That's how our radio transmissions began, anyway."

"Yes, of course I use metric. It's standard in most labs, except when some spark decides to set up their own system. . ."

Her brain is focusing on absorbing the new information. The mouth is left to fend for itself.

"Oooooh!"

"Okay, good. My mother used to use the old Imperial system and it drove me nuts every time she measured the speed of light in miles per hour instead of meters per second." He looks back down at the paper. "You get a better radio signal if you create a continuously varying current in that wire- preferably a nice smooth sine wave. You can do that easy as pie with a capacitor and an inductor, and once you've plugged in a couple of-" He stops. "Okay. You guys are using vacuum tube technology, I'm guessing? You're going to need to amplify the signal in the wire before sending the signal to your antenna and transmitting it out into the air."

Agatha grabs a pencil and fresh sheet of notepaper and nods.

"Yes, vacuum tubes, though some - hm."

There is furious scribbling.

"I see . . . tricky, but with a bit of coordination with each area we want to add in, ensuring all the materials are available . . .Boosting the power of the equipment could produce very interesting results. . ."

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, the survival instincts of an eggplant.

"I might mention, by the way, that this portion of the spectrum-" He places a finger on 'microwaves', which lie just south of 'radio'- "when properly focused and energized, are commonly used in my world to boil water and cook food. And a send-and-receive apparatus that sends out packets of radio waves in this part of the spectrum is used to determine the approach of enemy vehicles, like ships or air vessels- we call it radar. Stands for Radio Detection and Ranging. You have to get the broadcast working first, of course, but it's amazingly useful."

This needs the grin icon so much that the mun changed the icons.

It will be very, very interesting to see the results once she applies them to one of her creations

"Amazingly useful, indeed."

Preferably from a distance.

"-- and if you could adjust the spectrum properly, cook the detected vehicles?"

Having been observed to examine a lightning device more closely while repeatedly clicking the trigger, Agatha has earned her own spot in the eggplant club.

"Not so much the vehicles as the occupants," Ray says. "It excites the water molecules and there's not a whole lot of that in metal. On the other hand, say bye-bye to Mr. Engine, nine times out of ten."

Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of incipient total protonic reversal.

A nod. Still, not bad.

"Like cooking a pot, then. The pot isn't damaged, but the contents --"

A very wide grin.

"An original variant on standard death rays, and more options than any of them . . ."

Ray nods. "Plus, turn it down in terms of energy output and mount it on the bows of ships, and you have an energy weapon capable of melting the ice in front of the Arctic fleet."

Ray thinks through the implications of his work! He just thinks through the wrong implications!

Agatha tends to be the hero, as she runs toward the bloodcurdling screams by instinct. But she also has a fondness for death rays.

". . .boil the very seas themselves, with enough and at the right frequency . . ."

Her brain is again forgetting to give her mouth updates.

She grins at her notes.

"Wonderful."

"There you go. Isn't it amazing what a little clever application of technology can do?"

"Yes. Yes, it is. I'm amazed that it hadn't been discovered back home, yet. . ."

"Well, you guys probably had other ways of arranging things. It would've been discovered sooner or later."
The same thing we do every night, Pinky.

"So much was lost during the Great War, and the Other's attacks -- even if it had been discovered, they may not have been able to do much with the technology before an attack wiped out all their research."

Ray nods. "They say that wars generate the technological advances necessary to ultimately pay for themselves, but that's only in my world- and the key word is ultimately. Too much research gets destroyed along the way."

"It really doesn't work that way when the wars almost exclusively are fought between those most likely to make technological advances. Even in the long run, only the odd artifact will survive from any given battle."

"Yeah. Sounds like your wars are more small-scale and personal than the way things are in mine," Ray says. "Though probably just as destructive. I'm just glad the Army turned around and left after we told them exactly how easy it is to misuse our proton pack technology. I'd hate to think what would happen if they were in mass production."

"There were problems for anyone who happened to live between two warring houses, of course --"

She smiles slightly.

"If they're anything like the armies I've seen, they would fall out of use once half their trainees killed themselves before figuring out how to use them and the other half realized some time later that no one taught them how to repair the device. Still, some damage would be done before they caught on."

"Well, see, the thing with the proton packs is that if you have two of them in one place, and you're firing both of them at full stream, and you cross the streams, it causes some serious dimensional cross-warping. The streams basically work on the ghosts by overloading them with enough energy to force them into manifesting fully and severing their connection to the etheric plane, so they're innately local planar breaches. Cross two of the streams and you're forcing two breaches to interact at utterly different angles. The end result, from the user's point of view? Imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. The first time two recruits sneeze at the wrong moment during target practice, you're doomed."

Agatha considers this.

". . . and the people who think it's a good idea to give an army these devices. They've lived this long, how?"

"Well, that's the thing." Ray says. "once we explained that part to them? Suddenly they didn't want them any more."

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spark-girl.livejournal.com - 2006-03-13 03:41 (UTC) - Expand

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