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April and Forge | fission, fusion, and other nuclear topics
(backdated) A few days after Halloween, April is in the labs to check up on her favorite engineer and investigate his new science.
Forge still felt like warmed-over dogfood but the best cure for that was to get back into the lab, let his conscious mind check out and watch the math, let it flow forth. He'd listened to the warnings from all and sundry about proper handgun storage and use and as a result dismantled his .22 for parts. Crap gun anyway, little peashooter. He could do so much better but to accede to Mansion rules about proper handgun safety, he needed to have secured separate places to store both the guns themselves and their ammunition.
Easy-peasy for someone like him.
He'd finished the ammo repo first, a weird-but-functional conglomeration of recharging station, super-dense energy bottles, and chemical propellant storage. Locked to his biometrics and definable via software to add additional users should he wish it. Now he was working on the gun cabinet itself, more of a securable showpiece than anything drab and utilitarian.
And, to calm his nerves, he had on some truly obnoxious Brazilian thrash-metal for background noise as he worked. Let Sepultura work their mojo in his ear-holes.
The labs were soundproofed well enough that April couldn’t hear the music through the closed door, but she could feel the vibration. She juggled the snacks she’d brought with her into one hand, awkwardly digging into her pocket for the buds Forge had designed, slipping one into her ear, then doing a dance-juggle-shuffle to get the other one in.
She slipped into the room after a quick double knock, reasoning that he wouldn’t hear her over the music, and was thankful she’d brought them once the muted sounds hit her. Snacks were set on a clean table before she moved to the corner where she could see him bent over a bench, two long braids disappearing down his back. A hesitant hand reached out before she thought better of it, then jerked back as April decided to just sit in his line of sight instead.
It took Forge a bit - he saw the math of the momentum of her arm, the strength of the gesture, the byplay of her musculature. Once his conscious mind was driving again, he gave her a relatively rare smile. "Hey." he said, gesturing with his artificial hand to cut the volume on his music by 67%. "Sorry, you need this lab for something?"
April’s brain short-circuited as she got a full, genuine smile instead of the smaller smirks or grins she was used to from her interactions with Forge. “I.. lab? Yes? Wait, no–” her cheeks flushed pink, eyes dropping to the tile in mortification. ‘Real smooth, Parker, A-plus,’ she chastised herself. ‘Damn, get it together.’ “Protein snacks? I brought–um, some jerky and a caffeinated oat shake?”
As if on cue, the caffeine and acid-scarred wasteland that was Forge's stomach growled. "All right, all right, break time it is." he said, straightening up. "Caffeinated oat shake? That sounds intriguing." he said. "Gimme."
“Clean hands,” April replied automatically, her brain still having difficulty functioning in the face of Forge’s smile. “And yeah, it’s… mocha and drinkable oatmeal, basically. Plus venison jerky from the farmer’s market. Good protein.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, giving him a concerned once-over as she turned to grab the oat cups. “Are you alright? Just, this is the second time you’ve been down here working on guns when I decide you need a little intrusion.”
Forge had moved over to one of the lab sinks to wash his hands before he ate. "I like making guns. I'm good at it. Interesting problems to be solved. There's something satisfying about a well-made sidearm." he said as he scrubbed his flesh hand with his mechanical one.
“Yeah?” April’s fingertips brushed his as she handed over one of the bottles. “I’d give it another shake first, but it’s fine to drink.” She settled on one of the benches, giving her own bottle a last firm shake before flipping the lid back and taking a large gulp. "I’m not very familiar with guns. Dad taught us enough to check a standard police issue. Safety off, cartridge out, not pointing at anything you aren’t willing to shoot, but we didn’t actually go to the range and learn how. At least, I didn’t, and I don’t have memories of May going as a child."
"All good things to know." he said. "Dad and Naze made sure I knew my way around a sidearm and my gift being what it is they had more issues getting me to shoot rather than just disassemble the piece." he said with a chuckle. He took the proffered drink and took a hefty swig from it. "Hey, this isn't bad." he said with both his eyebrows raised. "When you can not only see the ballistic math of the shoot but the math inherent in what the gun itself is doing, you quickly develop strong opinions about what's worth having and what's a cheap piece of shit. Most of the time these days I've pivoted to energy weapons. More challenge."
She did a tiny fist pump, delighted that he didn’t hate the shake she’d brought. “You actually… see the math? Like that one meme, but less confusion? Cool.” She dug into the bag of jerky, holding the bag out as well. “Peppered venison, I’m… okay, admittedly a little picky about jerky spices. I want to actually taste what I’m eating. But they had it at the market, so I’m trying something new. No rattlesnake though, sorry.” She gave him a wide grin, giving the bag in her hand a little crinkle.
"Not literally like the meme, but I _understand_ the math behind … everything." he said with a shrug. "Honestly, it's kinda a pain in the ass, but it does let me build cool shit. Like this gun safe." he said as he fished out some jerky and took a bite.
"For Anglo shit, this is not bad." he said, impressed. "Naze makes his own out of deer he felled himself. Takes for-fucking-ever but man, it's tasty." he said with another warm smile at the memory.
“Some local hunter makes it. Apparently there’s a local processor he uses for the cleaning and butchering, but he sells the overage, tries to use as much of the animals as he can. Some foraging too, mostly berries. It was nice to talk to him about sustainability for a few minutes while I decided what to get.” She set her drink down, standing up and making her way to the gun safe. “This going to injure me if I touch it without permission?” she asked, kneeling in front of it and inspecting the work with her eyes.
"Pepper mix is a little off to my tastes but you did warn me about that." he said as he chewed. "And no, it won't. It'll be wired to several alarms when it's all said and done but those are disabled for now." he said. "So have at."
Her fingers reached out as soon as Forge gave permission, running over the smooth spaces and more intricate details. If April didn’t know better, she’d assume it was a statement piece, but even with her enhancements it was difficult to see and feel the seams as an opening, rather than just part of how the piece was built. “You could probably make a smaller version of this and make some good money off wealthy people that want something fancy that can hide their jewels or a safe or something. How are the alarms going to be wired in?”
"Carefully." he said with a smirk. "Probably going to go pressure sensors on the mounts, door open/close sensor, maybe a few other goodies if I get inspired. Should keep unauthorized people out." he said. "Hardest part is hardening the interface for determining who's authorized to open it and who isn't. DNA scan, maybe one of those retinal scanner things, got some options I'm kicking around. Gonna make it secure, I'm not gonna fuck around."
April let out a low whistle. “Not fucking around with that, no. You could easily get away with less, but why not do it right? Secure but fast in a necessity.” She stood up with a stretch, pointing at the smaller box. “Ammo vault?” She tilted her head. “But that doesn’t look like just a standard thing.”
"Noticed that, did you?" he said with a goofy grin. "Yeah, that's the ammo vault. But I have a strong sideline in directed-energy weapons so this will recharge their powerplants as well as keep the chemical kinetic stuff safe and securely stowed."
His enthusiasm was infectious, and well… he was speaking her interest language too. That helped. “Mind walking me through it? Much as you can, at least. Where’s the energy come from? Does it recycle or is it a constant slow drain until they’re full again?”
"Depends. Some are phased-pulse, those have regenerative power-packs because they're comparatively low-power. Comparatively, we're still talking gigawatts or so." he said, beginning to gesture in the air as he went over the various power delivery systems. "I gave over the whole "tickle a ruby with light to get things to lase" as hopelessly lame and outdated. Nowadays I'm more into plasma flow, pulsed power, and more exotic energies. Real challenges, let me tell you. Some of this stuff wants to be really, really hot and the cooling requirements are just this side of insane for something intended to be man-portable. Others are volatile as fuck and it takes some serious work to get everything pointed in the same direction." he elaborated.
"Reminds me of my obsession with railguns when I was a teenage scumbag." he said with a fond faraway look on his face. "Pretty sure Mom'll forgive me someday for pumping a Gauss round the size of a watermelon end-to-end through the entire house."
She watched Forge’s hands in relation to the device as he talked, mostly following along with his delivery and smirking when he mentioned tickling a ruby. The gauss round mention had April barking out a laugh in surprise. “I’m surprised she didn’t end you then and there. My mom would’ve been pissed, and I would’ve been fixing the walls for however many months it took to do it right.”
"Shortly thereafter there was no more experimentation at home. All had to be done at Eagle Plaza." he said with a shrug. "And I spent the rest of that summer with Uncle Naze."
“You talk about your uncle a lot. Sounds like you’re really close.” April nudged him lightly with an elbow as she reached over to grab her drink. “Did you end up spending more summers with him after that one?”
"Nearly all of them." he said with a shrug. "Winters in Dallas, summers on the rez in Montana. Split my time walking at least two paths." he said. "Helped, in some ways, even if I was too blind to see it at the time."
“Tell me about it?” she asked. “Living here’s the first time I’ve been outside of Queens for any extended period of time, so it’s hard for me to imagine. A little sheltered that way, I suppose.”
"That is a story for another time." he said, waving that off. Any thoughts on the safe or the ammo store?" he asked.
“You think the energy storage for the ammo system could be tweaked for other systems? Or a boost for electrokinetics? Sorta last ditch bit of juice to channel if their reserves are low, or a way to funnel excess?” She accepted the story brush-off easily. Not everyone opened up easily. April was only as open as she was because of the odd circumstances that had landed her here. Easier for her to not get caught in lies by just not telling them, and truthfully she enjoyed talking basics about her family.
Forge quirked his eyebrows. "Maybe, but power supply's the perpetual problem. And I promised the Professor I'd not split the atom or do anything really, really reckless." he said. "And while I push that line sometimes, that's not one I'm gonna give on."
“Nuclear fission’s stable enough if you take care of the facility and don’t have any massive disasters… actually, considering the way some of the more seasoned residents talk about the shenanigans in this place, probably best you don’t do any in-house nuclear work for now,” April replied with an absent pat to his upper arm as her mind considered the options. “No telling what radiation would do to us. And if you manage to solve fusion, I want in on the controlled experiments and the paper. But no, something like a USB charging brick, or those smaller portable power blocks that look like a small guitar amp?”
Forge just shrugged. "While there's physics we just don't understand yet, the real problem is making things _safe_ and/or _man-portable_." he said. "Sure, I can build a machine that'll fuse atoms, split them apart again, and then re-fuse them. Math's well-understood. Problem is the material science and the power requirements to kickstart the reactions." he said. "I push the line with the plasma slush I use, where the reaction starts frozen until a kickstart charge is added, then I can stop it again via some clever manipulations that make my head hurt, so yours will probably just explode." he pointed out. "Not as dense as I'd like, power-wise, but it's safe and man-portable without needing to be Russian." he smirked.
April rolled her eyes, following up with a stuck out tongue that was possibly, maybe just a bit childish. “I may not be a mathematician but I did pass more than well enough to graduate. But I assume those clever manipulations are actually your bullshit intuitive thing that makes mortals weep, and that’s why you think my head would explode,” she sassed. “What about a deposit for excess energy? Something that could be used safely to charge devices or dump into our own power grid or backup system? Talk science to me, ba–er, bro. Bro.”
"Hey, the bullshit intuitive thing has led to some mighty advances - if I or anyone else can ever figure out how precisely they work. Last I delved into it, the slush is stored in a Klein bottle and frozen in an excited state, then all the device needs to do is send a primer charge to … and that's where shit gets _weird_." he confessed. "Nice simple nuclear this isn't. And I know there's some exciting work going on in some of the high-energy journals where they pretend to be talking about stellar cartography but in reality they're talking about things that go boom." he said. "So no, there's not a lot of slopover energy sloshing around that could be diverted into a capacitor or used to backstop the public grid." he said. "If I can ever convince the Professor and document it well enough so that people not-me can maintain it and fix it if it breaks, I've got some ideas for a Mansion-wide power source that goes up into the really scary Greek units." he smirked.
"Or multiple Coulombs" he said with a laugh. "You know the words, sing along! A coulomb is the amount of charge transported by a current of one ampere in one second. Now, contemplate a kilocouloumb. Or a megacouloumb." he said. "The repulsive force between two +1 coulomb charges held one meter apart is 9 x 10 ^ 9 N. And this is why we are very careful about transmission and charge and all the other good stuff."
She grabbed another piece of jerky and pointed it at him before taking a big bite, mentally working through the physics as she chewed. “This is why I didn’t go into physics. Especially nuclear. And why I want to reverse engineer everything you’re willing to shove in front of me. Free continuing education of the practical sort.” She left out the other reasons, preferring to keep the light friendship they were building for now.
"Uh-huh." he said with a sour laugh. "Use me for my giant nerdy power." he said. "So, yeah, anyway, new gun safe and charging station. Keeps the priming charges fresh, sips from the wall so I don't turn it on and black out the east coast, and keeps things secured so nobody can just run it and grab something nasty."
April shook her head. “Nah, your giant nerdy power just makes your big science brain a little more interesting. You could tell me I can’t reverse engineer stuff anymore and I’d be sad about it, because it’s fun and I learn things while doing it. But I don’t bring you snacks and come down here to ask questions because I want to use you, gods. I just…” she lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. “You’re cool. And you’re a scientist near my age, and I just want to make more friends?” She let out a self-deprecating laugh, rubbing nervously at the back of her neck as it started to tingle. “Why is this so hard as a so-called adult?”
"Don't look at me! I'm bad at friends." he said with a shrug. "Stuff I'm interested in makes grown-ass adults look at me blankly or accuse me of lying. If not worse" he said. "Someone who looks like you? Interested in hanging out with me? Yeah, she wants to play with my tech." he said, then held up his hands. "I hear you, I really do. Just gonna take some getting used to." he said, then shook his head.
"Got any more of this jerky?"
April handed the bag over wordlessly. “Um, yeah? You’re smart, make me think, and easy on the eyes. Why wouldn’t I want to get to know you? Rub two brain cells together and get more than engineering, dude.”
Forge just shrugged again and popped a fresh piece of jerky into his mouth. "Congratulations. You've been promoted from Minion to Unicorn. Remind me to never introduce you to my mother." he said. "Then again, she fell for Dad, and I come by my nerd honestly." he smirked, then sniffed the air. "Shit. Try not to break anything, I need to step out for a second." he said, and then with as much tattered dignity as he could muster, fled the lab.
Forge still felt like warmed-over dogfood but the best cure for that was to get back into the lab, let his conscious mind check out and watch the math, let it flow forth. He'd listened to the warnings from all and sundry about proper handgun storage and use and as a result dismantled his .22 for parts. Crap gun anyway, little peashooter. He could do so much better but to accede to Mansion rules about proper handgun safety, he needed to have secured separate places to store both the guns themselves and their ammunition.
Easy-peasy for someone like him.
He'd finished the ammo repo first, a weird-but-functional conglomeration of recharging station, super-dense energy bottles, and chemical propellant storage. Locked to his biometrics and definable via software to add additional users should he wish it. Now he was working on the gun cabinet itself, more of a securable showpiece than anything drab and utilitarian.
And, to calm his nerves, he had on some truly obnoxious Brazilian thrash-metal for background noise as he worked. Let Sepultura work their mojo in his ear-holes.
The labs were soundproofed well enough that April couldn’t hear the music through the closed door, but she could feel the vibration. She juggled the snacks she’d brought with her into one hand, awkwardly digging into her pocket for the buds Forge had designed, slipping one into her ear, then doing a dance-juggle-shuffle to get the other one in.
She slipped into the room after a quick double knock, reasoning that he wouldn’t hear her over the music, and was thankful she’d brought them once the muted sounds hit her. Snacks were set on a clean table before she moved to the corner where she could see him bent over a bench, two long braids disappearing down his back. A hesitant hand reached out before she thought better of it, then jerked back as April decided to just sit in his line of sight instead.
It took Forge a bit - he saw the math of the momentum of her arm, the strength of the gesture, the byplay of her musculature. Once his conscious mind was driving again, he gave her a relatively rare smile. "Hey." he said, gesturing with his artificial hand to cut the volume on his music by 67%. "Sorry, you need this lab for something?"
April’s brain short-circuited as she got a full, genuine smile instead of the smaller smirks or grins she was used to from her interactions with Forge. “I.. lab? Yes? Wait, no–” her cheeks flushed pink, eyes dropping to the tile in mortification. ‘Real smooth, Parker, A-plus,’ she chastised herself. ‘Damn, get it together.’ “Protein snacks? I brought–um, some jerky and a caffeinated oat shake?”
As if on cue, the caffeine and acid-scarred wasteland that was Forge's stomach growled. "All right, all right, break time it is." he said, straightening up. "Caffeinated oat shake? That sounds intriguing." he said. "Gimme."
“Clean hands,” April replied automatically, her brain still having difficulty functioning in the face of Forge’s smile. “And yeah, it’s… mocha and drinkable oatmeal, basically. Plus venison jerky from the farmer’s market. Good protein.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, giving him a concerned once-over as she turned to grab the oat cups. “Are you alright? Just, this is the second time you’ve been down here working on guns when I decide you need a little intrusion.”
Forge had moved over to one of the lab sinks to wash his hands before he ate. "I like making guns. I'm good at it. Interesting problems to be solved. There's something satisfying about a well-made sidearm." he said as he scrubbed his flesh hand with his mechanical one.
“Yeah?” April’s fingertips brushed his as she handed over one of the bottles. “I’d give it another shake first, but it’s fine to drink.” She settled on one of the benches, giving her own bottle a last firm shake before flipping the lid back and taking a large gulp. "I’m not very familiar with guns. Dad taught us enough to check a standard police issue. Safety off, cartridge out, not pointing at anything you aren’t willing to shoot, but we didn’t actually go to the range and learn how. At least, I didn’t, and I don’t have memories of May going as a child."
"All good things to know." he said. "Dad and Naze made sure I knew my way around a sidearm and my gift being what it is they had more issues getting me to shoot rather than just disassemble the piece." he said with a chuckle. He took the proffered drink and took a hefty swig from it. "Hey, this isn't bad." he said with both his eyebrows raised. "When you can not only see the ballistic math of the shoot but the math inherent in what the gun itself is doing, you quickly develop strong opinions about what's worth having and what's a cheap piece of shit. Most of the time these days I've pivoted to energy weapons. More challenge."
She did a tiny fist pump, delighted that he didn’t hate the shake she’d brought. “You actually… see the math? Like that one meme, but less confusion? Cool.” She dug into the bag of jerky, holding the bag out as well. “Peppered venison, I’m… okay, admittedly a little picky about jerky spices. I want to actually taste what I’m eating. But they had it at the market, so I’m trying something new. No rattlesnake though, sorry.” She gave him a wide grin, giving the bag in her hand a little crinkle.
"Not literally like the meme, but I _understand_ the math behind … everything." he said with a shrug. "Honestly, it's kinda a pain in the ass, but it does let me build cool shit. Like this gun safe." he said as he fished out some jerky and took a bite.
"For Anglo shit, this is not bad." he said, impressed. "Naze makes his own out of deer he felled himself. Takes for-fucking-ever but man, it's tasty." he said with another warm smile at the memory.
“Some local hunter makes it. Apparently there’s a local processor he uses for the cleaning and butchering, but he sells the overage, tries to use as much of the animals as he can. Some foraging too, mostly berries. It was nice to talk to him about sustainability for a few minutes while I decided what to get.” She set her drink down, standing up and making her way to the gun safe. “This going to injure me if I touch it without permission?” she asked, kneeling in front of it and inspecting the work with her eyes.
"Pepper mix is a little off to my tastes but you did warn me about that." he said as he chewed. "And no, it won't. It'll be wired to several alarms when it's all said and done but those are disabled for now." he said. "So have at."
Her fingers reached out as soon as Forge gave permission, running over the smooth spaces and more intricate details. If April didn’t know better, she’d assume it was a statement piece, but even with her enhancements it was difficult to see and feel the seams as an opening, rather than just part of how the piece was built. “You could probably make a smaller version of this and make some good money off wealthy people that want something fancy that can hide their jewels or a safe or something. How are the alarms going to be wired in?”
"Carefully." he said with a smirk. "Probably going to go pressure sensors on the mounts, door open/close sensor, maybe a few other goodies if I get inspired. Should keep unauthorized people out." he said. "Hardest part is hardening the interface for determining who's authorized to open it and who isn't. DNA scan, maybe one of those retinal scanner things, got some options I'm kicking around. Gonna make it secure, I'm not gonna fuck around."
April let out a low whistle. “Not fucking around with that, no. You could easily get away with less, but why not do it right? Secure but fast in a necessity.” She stood up with a stretch, pointing at the smaller box. “Ammo vault?” She tilted her head. “But that doesn’t look like just a standard thing.”
"Noticed that, did you?" he said with a goofy grin. "Yeah, that's the ammo vault. But I have a strong sideline in directed-energy weapons so this will recharge their powerplants as well as keep the chemical kinetic stuff safe and securely stowed."
His enthusiasm was infectious, and well… he was speaking her interest language too. That helped. “Mind walking me through it? Much as you can, at least. Where’s the energy come from? Does it recycle or is it a constant slow drain until they’re full again?”
"Depends. Some are phased-pulse, those have regenerative power-packs because they're comparatively low-power. Comparatively, we're still talking gigawatts or so." he said, beginning to gesture in the air as he went over the various power delivery systems. "I gave over the whole "tickle a ruby with light to get things to lase" as hopelessly lame and outdated. Nowadays I'm more into plasma flow, pulsed power, and more exotic energies. Real challenges, let me tell you. Some of this stuff wants to be really, really hot and the cooling requirements are just this side of insane for something intended to be man-portable. Others are volatile as fuck and it takes some serious work to get everything pointed in the same direction." he elaborated.
"Reminds me of my obsession with railguns when I was a teenage scumbag." he said with a fond faraway look on his face. "Pretty sure Mom'll forgive me someday for pumping a Gauss round the size of a watermelon end-to-end through the entire house."
She watched Forge’s hands in relation to the device as he talked, mostly following along with his delivery and smirking when he mentioned tickling a ruby. The gauss round mention had April barking out a laugh in surprise. “I’m surprised she didn’t end you then and there. My mom would’ve been pissed, and I would’ve been fixing the walls for however many months it took to do it right.”
"Shortly thereafter there was no more experimentation at home. All had to be done at Eagle Plaza." he said with a shrug. "And I spent the rest of that summer with Uncle Naze."
“You talk about your uncle a lot. Sounds like you’re really close.” April nudged him lightly with an elbow as she reached over to grab her drink. “Did you end up spending more summers with him after that one?”
"Nearly all of them." he said with a shrug. "Winters in Dallas, summers on the rez in Montana. Split my time walking at least two paths." he said. "Helped, in some ways, even if I was too blind to see it at the time."
“Tell me about it?” she asked. “Living here’s the first time I’ve been outside of Queens for any extended period of time, so it’s hard for me to imagine. A little sheltered that way, I suppose.”
"That is a story for another time." he said, waving that off. Any thoughts on the safe or the ammo store?" he asked.
“You think the energy storage for the ammo system could be tweaked for other systems? Or a boost for electrokinetics? Sorta last ditch bit of juice to channel if their reserves are low, or a way to funnel excess?” She accepted the story brush-off easily. Not everyone opened up easily. April was only as open as she was because of the odd circumstances that had landed her here. Easier for her to not get caught in lies by just not telling them, and truthfully she enjoyed talking basics about her family.
Forge quirked his eyebrows. "Maybe, but power supply's the perpetual problem. And I promised the Professor I'd not split the atom or do anything really, really reckless." he said. "And while I push that line sometimes, that's not one I'm gonna give on."
“Nuclear fission’s stable enough if you take care of the facility and don’t have any massive disasters… actually, considering the way some of the more seasoned residents talk about the shenanigans in this place, probably best you don’t do any in-house nuclear work for now,” April replied with an absent pat to his upper arm as her mind considered the options. “No telling what radiation would do to us. And if you manage to solve fusion, I want in on the controlled experiments and the paper. But no, something like a USB charging brick, or those smaller portable power blocks that look like a small guitar amp?”
Forge just shrugged. "While there's physics we just don't understand yet, the real problem is making things _safe_ and/or _man-portable_." he said. "Sure, I can build a machine that'll fuse atoms, split them apart again, and then re-fuse them. Math's well-understood. Problem is the material science and the power requirements to kickstart the reactions." he said. "I push the line with the plasma slush I use, where the reaction starts frozen until a kickstart charge is added, then I can stop it again via some clever manipulations that make my head hurt, so yours will probably just explode." he pointed out. "Not as dense as I'd like, power-wise, but it's safe and man-portable without needing to be Russian." he smirked.
April rolled her eyes, following up with a stuck out tongue that was possibly, maybe just a bit childish. “I may not be a mathematician but I did pass more than well enough to graduate. But I assume those clever manipulations are actually your bullshit intuitive thing that makes mortals weep, and that’s why you think my head would explode,” she sassed. “What about a deposit for excess energy? Something that could be used safely to charge devices or dump into our own power grid or backup system? Talk science to me, ba–er, bro. Bro.”
"Hey, the bullshit intuitive thing has led to some mighty advances - if I or anyone else can ever figure out how precisely they work. Last I delved into it, the slush is stored in a Klein bottle and frozen in an excited state, then all the device needs to do is send a primer charge to … and that's where shit gets _weird_." he confessed. "Nice simple nuclear this isn't. And I know there's some exciting work going on in some of the high-energy journals where they pretend to be talking about stellar cartography but in reality they're talking about things that go boom." he said. "So no, there's not a lot of slopover energy sloshing around that could be diverted into a capacitor or used to backstop the public grid." he said. "If I can ever convince the Professor and document it well enough so that people not-me can maintain it and fix it if it breaks, I've got some ideas for a Mansion-wide power source that goes up into the really scary Greek units." he smirked.
"Or multiple Coulombs" he said with a laugh. "You know the words, sing along! A coulomb is the amount of charge transported by a current of one ampere in one second. Now, contemplate a kilocouloumb. Or a megacouloumb." he said. "The repulsive force between two +1 coulomb charges held one meter apart is 9 x 10 ^ 9 N. And this is why we are very careful about transmission and charge and all the other good stuff."
She grabbed another piece of jerky and pointed it at him before taking a big bite, mentally working through the physics as she chewed. “This is why I didn’t go into physics. Especially nuclear. And why I want to reverse engineer everything you’re willing to shove in front of me. Free continuing education of the practical sort.” She left out the other reasons, preferring to keep the light friendship they were building for now.
"Uh-huh." he said with a sour laugh. "Use me for my giant nerdy power." he said. "So, yeah, anyway, new gun safe and charging station. Keeps the priming charges fresh, sips from the wall so I don't turn it on and black out the east coast, and keeps things secured so nobody can just run it and grab something nasty."
April shook her head. “Nah, your giant nerdy power just makes your big science brain a little more interesting. You could tell me I can’t reverse engineer stuff anymore and I’d be sad about it, because it’s fun and I learn things while doing it. But I don’t bring you snacks and come down here to ask questions because I want to use you, gods. I just…” she lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug. “You’re cool. And you’re a scientist near my age, and I just want to make more friends?” She let out a self-deprecating laugh, rubbing nervously at the back of her neck as it started to tingle. “Why is this so hard as a so-called adult?”
"Don't look at me! I'm bad at friends." he said with a shrug. "Stuff I'm interested in makes grown-ass adults look at me blankly or accuse me of lying. If not worse" he said. "Someone who looks like you? Interested in hanging out with me? Yeah, she wants to play with my tech." he said, then held up his hands. "I hear you, I really do. Just gonna take some getting used to." he said, then shook his head.
"Got any more of this jerky?"
April handed the bag over wordlessly. “Um, yeah? You’re smart, make me think, and easy on the eyes. Why wouldn’t I want to get to know you? Rub two brain cells together and get more than engineering, dude.”
Forge just shrugged again and popped a fresh piece of jerky into his mouth. "Congratulations. You've been promoted from Minion to Unicorn. Remind me to never introduce you to my mother." he said. "Then again, she fell for Dad, and I come by my nerd honestly." he smirked, then sniffed the air. "Shit. Try not to break anything, I need to step out for a second." he said, and then with as much tattered dignity as he could muster, fled the lab.
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Apologies to any actual physicists and engineers out there.
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