xp_logs | Nathan, Forge, and Rachel

Some time after this log, Nathan stops down in Forge's lab to see if he'll tweak the sensors in Rachel's nursery this week. Rachel is much more settled than she was. Forge is showing signs of severe workaholic tendencies. Nathan notices.

"Forge?" Nathan poked his head through the open door of the lab. Rachel was lying quietly in his arms, although even after a session with Charles and some time with her mother, she was sniffling occasionally, just as if to remind him how put out she was today. "Have you got a minute?"

"I have exactly as many minutes as everyone else, Mr. D.," Forge said, turning slightly from his work bench to acknowledge Nathan's presence. "That's the beauty of a static temporal frame of reference. Now, if you're asking if I have nothing immediately pressing or pending, the answer is yes, I do indeed have 'a minute'. I might have several, in fact." He spun around on his stool, pushing his smoked welding glasses up onto his forehead. Upon noticing Rachel, his serious 'work face' broke into a smile. "Oh, hey, didn't hear the munchkin. What's up?"

"Spectacular temper tantrum," Nathan said with a sigh. "In the telekinetic and telepathic sense, as well. I've just had her up to see Charles to get her circuit-breaker tweaked... she's a growing baby psi, you know." Rachel snuffled and wriggled in his arms, and he gazed down at her with a weary tolerance. "Yes, I'm talking about you."

"Mah?"

"She's definitely going to be a powerful one," Forge agreed, lacing his fingers together. "So how can I help today?"

"Charles thinks that the sensors in the nursery may need recalibrating, if she's going to have... jumps, like this. We don't know what set her off today-" Well, that wasn't entirely true, was it? Whatever the hell was going on was the culprit. "-but Charles doesn't want to lay money on it not happened again. So we need to keep better track of potentially bigger spikes," Nathan said. Rachel meeped, and he sighed and kissed the top of her head.

Forge nodded slightly, looking distractedly around the lab. "Oh. Yeah, no problem. She's like one of those unexploded bombs, could go off at any time - but if you know what to look and listen for, you can get a split-second's warning sometimes. Observe."

Reaching into a paper bag on his desk (labeled very neatly with "Forge's HEALTHY Snacks" in Paige's meticulous handwriting), Forge withdrew an orange, placing it on the metal surface of his workbench. "This orange is your daughter. Or rather, her telekinesis. Little bumpy bits..." he lifted the orange an inch off the desk and dropped it, then from two inches with no effect but a small thump. "No effect. Now, big huge spike?"

He threw the orange into the air, its pebbled skin brushing the ceiling before plummeting downwards - saved from being pulverized into juice by Forge's hand snatching it a hair's breadth from the table's surface. "Things can go boom, but not if you know what to look for. How did I expect the orange would splat if I let it land? Because I saw it go up to the ceiling. But what if I'm not always looking at the ceiling, and I have random bouncing oranges in my lab?"

Nathan stared.

Rachel stared - and then giggled.

"Um," Nathan said, crackling a slight smile at the happier sound. "I think I maybe see where you're going with this... you're telling me that yes, you can make the sensors pick up bigger spikes more quickly? So that she doesn't go splat?"

"Spaaaaa," Rachel mimicked, almost pensively.

"Precisely. Telekinetic power doesn't just go from zero to a hundred instantaneously. You do have to obey SOME of the laws of physics. Force is applied in an arc - think of it like the velocity of the orange. If I toss it a foot in the air," Forge demonstrated, catching the fruit again, "it moves upwards with less velocity than if I chuck it eight feet in the air. The rate at which the velocity increases times the mass of the object equals the force expended. So if I set sensors to twig on a specific 'velocity', given that we can easily keep track of the target's mass, you can rig the alarms for a specific level of force, and respond appropriately."

"Sounds like precisely what we need." Nathan summoned up another slight smile. "Hopefully she's worn herself out for today, but if we could make these changes fairly quickly, I'd appreciate it." He tilted his head at the younger man. "I haven't seen much of you this week, for all that you're done exams..."

"Been busy," Forge murmured, sliding his stool over to check readings on a monitor. "You know how it is. Developing a new flight simulator interface for Mr. Summers, I've got an experiment in process with new liquid polymer bandage compounds that could be used for burn patients on scene at an accident - keeps me occupied, you know. At some point I'm going to get up to the garage and finish up the car, but that can wait."

"And finding the occasional fifteen minutes of sleep or half a sandwich you dropped under your work table?" Nathan asked, raising an eyebrow. Rachel giggled again, wriggling in his arms, but subsided with a little sigh when Nathan looked down at her.

Forge arched an eyebrow. "Wow, I thought my parents caught their plane on Saturday, but it sounds like my mom's still around. I can almost hear her. I'm fine," he said, punching a set of commands into an automated press and sliding his stool back over to the workbench. "I know where my limits are."

"I'm possibly stuck in parental-mode this afternoon. I wonder why." Rachel meeped at him, and he raised an eyebrow at her before looking back at Forge. "At least you're not blowing up lightbulbs. She seemed to have to be within a certain range to do that, at least for now."

Forge immediately glanced up to the dim halogens behind the safety plating of the laboratory's ceiling, then let out a sigh of relief. "No more blowing up lights. I took out all the lights in Lab Four a month ago trying to develop a sonic test matrix for Terry's powers. You really do lose a lot of valuable time replacing twenty-four light units."

"She just took out a couple of bulbs. Crawled by them on the ceiling while she was having the tantrum and they went boom." Nathan made a mental note to ask Moira just how often Forge was helping with powers experiments. "I'm... well, I've got meetings the next couple of days, but I should be down at the boathouse intermittently. Someone'll be working in the office at all times at least, so they can let you in to get at the nursery. Although I just fired the secretary." Nathan looked guilty.

"Had a feeling turnover was going to be high there," Forge squinted at the device on his bench, using a set of calipers to adjust two posts. "Secret government ninja-trained telepaths probably aren't the world's easiest bosses."

Nathan rolled his eyes. "Come on, sweetie," he said to Forge. "Let's leave the genius who thinks he's funny to his work - thanks, by the way," he said with a brief, sincerely grateful smile as he turned towards the door. "I told your father how much Moira and I appreciate everything you've done for Rachel. It strikes me I maybe don't tell you that often enough."

"No one does," Forge muttered, giving Nathan and Rachel a wave as he hunched over his latest creation, utterly absorbed in its intricacies.