Chaz blushed furiously, stammering a moment and rubbing the back of his neck.
W-well, maybe. They don't u-usually take outside p-patents...and besides, it's not that useful...I wouldn't know what to do with the money if I got any. He clutched the thaumometer to his chest possessively. And part of him, secretly, didn't want anyone using his ideas. It was selfish, and he quashed it, but it was there. Then he thought of Anri and Nikole, and felt ashamed that he might be depriving them of something. It wasn't the same thing...right?
He shook his head again and pulled the lenses down over his eyes again.
Maybe, uh...later I'll think about it. For now we're getting close.
They were out of town now, heading up a hill towards the line crossing.
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
Dominic [M:123:1420:][D3v:http://rpgmenagerie.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cs&thread=382&page=1#14144][b]Let me tell you a story...[/b][0:No encore today][1:You have my attention]
Dominic followed the scientist up the hill, happy to be on some kind of adventure, especially a relatively safe one. Though the guy with the hardon for justice set his nerves to jangling. He'd always been on good terms with the law, mainly because all the illegal things he did he made sure had no collateral fallout and remained well concealed. This guy though, going on about sins...that smacked of zealotry and that made him nervous.
"What do you plan to do when you find the line, Chaz? Hope you're not thinkin' of tapping into it too deep. I like my limbs where they are."
Love, like Hope, has too few letters for a word so powerful.
Just take some readings, get a general idea of the power level we're dealing with. I have an apparatus at home that I'm working on that will hopefully skim power from the line crossing, but I'll have to see it first.
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
Chaz pulled himself up and over the hill to see what was there.
Mmphh...the things I do in pursuit of Science...
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
Dominic [M:123:1420:][D3v:http://rpgmenagerie.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cs&thread=382&page=1#14144][b]Let me tell you a story...[/b][0:No encore today][1:You have my attention]
Dominic walked behind Chaz, humming a tune to himself. All this talk of magical energy had put it into his head. It was a bouncing little number, almost relentlessly upbeat and it had popped into his head when he thought about the little cat man running along joyously having found his energy source. The magic had, in his mind, made him trail multicolours behind him like streamers. He'd heard tell of the beauty of rainbows, something like that perhaps.
He laughed to himself at the idea, stopping before the repetition annoyed Chaz, or more likely the dour Grant. He started the conversation up with Chaz.
"Say that you can tap this line without being a mage and without making your eyeballs turn inside out. What could you use it for? You don't seem the type to want to fling around the raw essence of existance to smite your foes."
Love, like Hope, has too few letters for a word so powerful.
As they crested the hill, Chaz saw a small valley, a dip in the countryside, and in the middle a circle of stones. The air tingled a little, and whatever Chaz's thaumometer did it was doing it.
He crested the hill, stretching a bit and heading down to the circle of stones.
Just science, I guess. What that means...well, I don't know. I didn't think that far, really. I figured I would figure it out when I got there. The thaumometer squelched and squeaked as he approached the stones, and he watched it, not really paying attention to the rest of the world.
Maybe use it to power something. I was thinking about a way to generate light without flame or a spell, but that's in the planning stages. Just have to find a good fuse.
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
Dominic [M:123:1420:][D3v:http://rpgmenagerie.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cs&thread=382&page=1#14144][b]Let me tell you a story...[/b][0:No encore today][1:You have my attention]
Dom ambled along beside the young Cathian and scratched his beard with his free hand, his staff clacking against a stone as he circumnavigated it. He had a thought, something that had been intriguing him for a long time.
"Say you could put some power in something, to use it for something else. Do you think you could get it to make sound instead of light?"
He turned toward where Chaz had been speaking, spreading his hands and leaning his staff against his shoulder.
"Say you take a sound and give it more energy, make it bigger, louder, even change its properties. D'you think that's possible?"
Last Edit: Dec 19, 2011 11:16:39 GMT -5 by Dominic
Love, like Hope, has too few letters for a word so powerful.
Chaz froze. His ears twitched, and he stared a moment.
Sound is vibration. Vibration is energy. Energy is power, converted to physical motion from a source.
He traced his fingers in the air, drawing something in his head. Dom could hear the jingling of his belt and the frenzied movement of his hand.
Translate the sound into motion, increase power to the motion, translate the motion back to sound, intact. Need a medium to gather the sound, could use same medium to expel it. Soft, pliant, vibrations. Responsive to physical motion. Power source, at least three thaums. There was a long long pause as he stared into space, and then to Dom, his voice still flat and emotionless.
I could do it.
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
Dominic [M:123:1420:][D3v:http://rpgmenagerie.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cs&thread=382&page=1#14144][b]Let me tell you a story...[/b][0:No encore today][1:You have my attention]
Dominic thought quietly as the hum of sensed magic rattled about him like a swarm of invisible insects. He leaned on his staff and smiled at the idea of big sound. Sound was the first thing he really was able to master, in the intake and the creation. Sound made him happy, and sad. Sound did things to him that no other sense ever really could, save for the strange notion of being given sight. If sound could be harnessed like that, well, his mind was already racing.
It, in fact, raced immediately to a cautious place. He had a few tricks he could do with sound that could be consider dangerous. Shatter a wineglass by holding it to his lips and hitting the perfect note. He had always theorized that every substance had its own 'perfect note' and that hitting that note loud enough could break anything. Quite apart from that he knew that loud sound could damage hearing, and he'd be lost without his ears.
"Well, something to think about. But my first thoughts about it, Chaz, after 'Holy horse turds that sounds fantastic!' are safety and cost. How much would it cost and how safe could you make it?" His voice was conversational, but direct. If Chaz could give him estimates that didn't sound horrid then he might finally have something to work for beyond feeding himself. He'd never really had much use for coin other than food and shelter. Perhaps a project was what he'd been missing in all his travels.
Love, like Hope, has too few letters for a word so powerful.
There was a short moment when he winced and his ears twitched.
Money's not an issue, really, it's the experimentation...time. We'll have to find a medium to transmute sound, something pliant that'll carry the energy.
Still thinking about the project at hand, he almost absentmindedly took the iconograph from his backpack and took a few pictures, for documentation purposes.
I couldn't give you a good estimate until I've done some initial experiments.
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.
Were he to look at the pictures, Chaz would notice something odd; shapes that weren't there when he took them. Ghostly, vaguely humanoid pillars of smoke in the corners of the pictures. It wasn't a camera error...some of them went behind and around the stones in the area, obviously interacting with the landscape.
Dominic [M:123:1420:][D3v:http://rpgmenagerie.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=cs&thread=382&page=1#14144][b]Let me tell you a story...[/b][0:No encore today][1:You have my attention]
Dom scratched his chin thoughtfully, pondering on the little engineer's words. He was thinking more and more about it. His only real practical expertise in building or maintaining anything was instruments. But he still piped up a suggestion.
"Well, imagine a drumskin, stretched tight, and some way to make it vibrate real quick. With a string you either use a thinner string or make it tighter to make a higher note. So if you could have something that made it tighter and looser..." He pinched the bridge of his nose. His head was beginning to ache, what with the strange buzzing of power around it. "Naw...it's something else about it...gah." He sighed.
"You're the best one for this stuff Chaz. I only know what I've felt and learned of instruments. Maybe there's something else about it that makes notes higher and lower. Something about the vibration and where it comes from. Look, this is just pie in the sky thinking really. I don't expect you to go to all kinds of effort on the hairbrained whim of a wanderer."
Love, like Hope, has too few letters for a word so powerful.
Chaz didn't seemed bothered by the sound, too distracted by his thoughts to really care about it. He almost didn't look at the pictures, putting his pack down by a rock and fishing in it for something.
No, it's a good idea. Lots of applications. Storing sound in a solid medium, spreading sound over a wide area....and that's not even considering weaponized usage.
The pictures developed on the ground where he'd put them, and he looked at them as an afterthought before he packed them away. He stared a moment, then fell backward softly in surprise, swallowing before he spoke up again.
D-dominic...I'm not sure if we're alone here.
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.