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rynmaru · 2 years ago

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Best Foot Forward

The hum and buzz of the desk lamp’s florescent bulbs itched across Castor’s skin as he tried to keep his focus on the task at hand. He would have to put in a request for less sensorially distressing lighting soon, but he couldn’t tear himself away from his work just yet, not when it was this important.

Selecting a small screwdriver from the toolkit beside him, Castor’s brow furrowed in concentration. His fingers were growing clumsy from hours working at this, and he briefly stuck the handle of the tool between his teeth to shake out his hands, crack his knuckles, and adjust his glasses back to their proper position after they’d slid down his nose yet again.

Taking up the screwdriver again, he fit the last panel in place and tightened the screws before sitting back to admire his work. Hands on technological inventions weren’t his strong suit, but this he was especially pleased with.

Light glinted off the white metallic surface of the spherical device as Castor carefully turned it over in his hands, so the front faced him, revealing a lens like that if a camera.

He polished the lens with the edge of his sleeve before reaching to pull a chip from the computer beside him and slotting it into a port in the side. He slid a panel back over it to keep it safe and smiled as he felt a faint vibration in his palms as the device powered on.

There was a mechanical whir and click as the lens worked to bring him into focus.

“Castor?” P.O.L.L.V.X.’s voice sounded as clear as if they were standing beside him. “Oh. This is new. Is this why you had me offline for…”

They paused to check the time. Theatrics, Castor knew, but P.O.L.L.V.X. did like to flaunt their very human mannerisms.

“Five hours, thirty-eight minutes, and twenty-two seconds…?”

“It is,” Castor said, lifting the device to eye level. “But I wanted this to be a surprise. I figured you’d enjoy being able to accompany me throughout the day in a more…visible way.”

He could hear a grin he had never seen in P.O.L.L.V.X.’s voice as the vibrations of the portable crypt grew more intense.

“You didn’t…”

“Mm, why don’t you try it out and see,” Castor urged. He pat the top of the crypt gently, then lobbed it up into the air. It reached the peak then dropped like a stone. Castor lunged for it with a gasp, only to have it stop inches above his hands and the floor.

“Kidding!” P.O.L.L.V.X. laughed, the crypt floating up to Castor’s eye level and then a little higher. It bobbed in the air a bit as the NHP adjusted to their new form.

Castor fidgeted in place, shifting his weight from one foot to another and then back again.

Noticing, P.O.L.L.V.X. chuckled softly and decided to stop teasing. A light flicked on, beaming from the camera lens and projecting a shifting mass of code and fragmented images, all swirling around each other like a slow moving tornado. The image glitched, fragmenting even more.

“Oh for fuck’s sake…one moment…” P.O.L.L.V.X. grumbled.

“Making sure you look good?” Castor asked.

“I know I look good.”

“Because if you need more time to choose your appearance you can take it-“

The image glitched again and then the data abruptly converged into a unified whole, a perfect holographic image of P.O.L.L.V.X. At around five foot eight, they towered over Castor. They had a round, friendly face, wavy white hair, and green eyes that flickered with just a hint of green code below the surface. They were dressed casually in jeans, tennis shoes, and a grey t shirt, their hands shoved into the pockets of an oversized coat colored in shades of vibrant green, blue, and pink. A mischievous grin lit their face from ear to ear.

“Oh, but I’d hate to keep you waiting, Castor.”

Speechless, Castor could only stare obviously, eyes wide as he took a slow step closer.

“Lux…”

P.O.L.L.V.X. gave him a twirl. “In the flesh! What do you think? I spent a long time on this design. Think it’s too much? Too casual? Should I go for something more…L.E.I.D.A.?”

Castor stopped right in front of them, shaking his head.

“No. No, you’re perfect. Perfect.” He couldn’t tear his gaze away from P.O.L.L.V.X.’s face.

“What?” They asked.

“It’s just…so good to finally see you…” Castor whispered, a smile finally breaking through the awed expression he had been wearing. “So, so good, Lux…”

P.O.L.L.V.X. paused for a split second, reading Castor’s expression and reactions, analyzing every inflection in his tone. Then they smiled warmly.

“It’s good to be seen by you, Castor.”

Castor’s smile widened and he laughed a bit as he looked them up and down again, still hardly believing they were actually in front of him. “Wow…look at you.”

“I know, right? Ender’s got serious competition for the best looking person on this station. But I have him beat on personality for sure.”

“That’s not hard.”

“Shh let me have this,” P.O.L.L.V.X. held a translucent finger to Castor’s lips.

Castor’s ears went ever so slightly pink.

“I suppose you can have this one thing.”

“Thank you, you’re too kind,” P.O.L.L.V.X. snorted. They gave another twirl, looking down at themself as they did.

“We’re going out today.”

“What?”

“Going out. Of the lab. And your room. And seeing real people.”

Castor looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Why?”

“Because I want to show off, Castor! I want people to see me!” P.O.L.L.V.X. grinned. “And you need to be less of a shut in, hon.”

“But…where would we go? We don’t have anywhere to go…so there’s not really any point-“

“Glitch invited you to get drinks with the rest of your Lance,” P.O.L.L.V.X. pulled up a message and projected it in front of Castor for him to see. “They do have recreational facilities here you know. Not that you’ve ever taken the time to check them out.”

“I have. I’ve gone swimming.”

“Oh well color me impressed.”

Castor rolled his eyes as he turned to start walking to the door.

“Please tell me you aren’t wearing that to go to a bar,” P.O.L.L.V.X. said, taking in Castor’s slacks and turtleneck.

Castor’s silence was all the answer they needed and they pointed in the direction of the closet.

“Go. Get changed. I know you own a pair of jeans or something more casual.”

“You sound like Mom.”

“Yeah, cause Mom would agree with me and tell you the same thing! This might be L.E.I.D.A., but geek chic isn’t the move for a night out. You’re a Lancer! Try looking the part!”

Castor huffed, picking through his closet sullenly. P.O.L.L.V.X. approached to stand beside him.

“Trust me?”

“Not when you ask like that in this context.”

“Let me pick your outfit.”

“I can dress myself!”

“Yeah, for work, but let me help you out! Come on, pleeeeease?” P.O.L.L.V.X. gave him a pleading expression. Castor looked away quickly.

“Fine. But if I look stupid I’m revoking your hologram privileges.”

P.O.L.L.V.X. gasped and clutched over their heart.

“Castor! I would never! I can’t be the only good looking one. Just the best looking. Kidding! Kidding! No!”

The laughed as Castor reached for their new crypt, which they levitated just out of his reach.

“Just pick the outfit and let’s get this over with,” Castor huffed, going to sit on the edge of his bed to watch P.O.L.L.V.X.

The NHP looked over the options thoughtfully.

“I’m ordering you new clothes soon. Slim pickings here.”

“That’s a waste of money.”

P.O.L.L.V.X. ignored him and gestured to a pair of dark jeans and a plain maroon shirt.

“Wear these and those running shoes.”

Shaking his head, Castor went to get the clothes and change in the bathroom. That was new. He hadn’t done that before. P.O.L.L.V.X. made a note of the behavior change. He was not gone for long though, returning in the far more casual and comfortable outfit with his hair freshly combed back, that one stray lock of hair stubbornly falling over his forehead as it always did.

“See? That’s much better!”

“I’m glad you approve,” Castor said, grabbing his long lab coat from the back of his chair and shrugging it on. It was a surprisingly good look and P.O.L.L.V.X. gave him an appreciative once over.

“Oh I definitely approve. Come on, let’s go!” They opened the automated door and gestured grandly for Castor to follow as they strode out. The few people in the hallway did a double take as an unfamiliar person stepped out of Castor’s unit. P.O.L.L.V.X. flashed a grin and finger guns in one person’s direction who was staring a bit too obviously.

“Evening, Charlotte! Lovely day to be out and about, isn’t it?”

The woman’s face went white as she recognized their voice and she took a few steps backwards. “Oh my god…”

Castor reached up to tap P.O.L.L.V.X.’s crypt as he passed. “Let’s go, Lux.”

“I’m coming, Castor-tor-tor.”

P.O.L.L.V.X. froze mid-step, glitching and breaking down only for their crypt to swivel and reform their projected image directly in front of Charlotte where she still stood frozen. They looked down, sneering.

“Boo.”

She flinched, dropping several papers which she scooped up haphazardly before scrambling away down the hall towards her unit.

“Pollux.” Castor’s tone was more insistent and stern. “Try to behave.”

“Oh it’s just a little fun, Castor, don’t be so uptight.” P.O.L.L.V.X. laughed as they rejoined him.

Castor glanced at them and his expression softened almost imperceptibly as he saw them. Oh this new crypt was very useful.

The walk wasn’t particularly long, a couple turns down a series of uniform hallways lined in lush greenery with the nebula visible above them through the glass ceiling, then a short ride in one of the elevators down to the lower atrium of the recreational sector. This area of L.E.I.D.A. resembled a mall more than a part of a research station, with several restaurants, shops, and a bar encircling a lush, carefully cultivated park and fountain.

It was P.O.L.L.V.X. who led the way to the bar, a space so sleek and high tech in its aesthetic that it could have passed for one of the laboratories to anyone who was unfamiliar with the location. The name “The Beaker” with an image of accompanying lab instrument, were outlined in blue neon lights. The open sign in the window made Castor snort ever so softly. It seemed unnecessary given how nothing ever closed here. Day and night were subjective at L.E.I.D.A.

The glass doors glided soundlessly open as P.O.L.L.V.X.’s crypt triggered the motion sensor.

“-over dressed for this place, wouldn’t you say?” Fenrir’s deep drawl reached Castor’s ears from the table his Lance had clustered around. “This place ain’t much of a bar, much less a club.”

“Look, I’m bored and a night out is a night out!” Glitch said, loudly slurping the dregs of her drink through her straw as if to punctuate her statement. Her gaze fell on Castor and she straightened up immediately.

“Holy shit! What the fuck is up, Bytesized? You actually came!”

Castor nodded, hands in the pockets of his coat, “I did.”

He looked to Fenrir who gave him a slight tip of the cowboy hat he almost always wore, and then to Regent, who was seated and nursing a glass of bourbon. The older man gave him one of his reserved smiles and Castor nodded in return.

Glitch’s attention had moved to just past Castor’s shoulder, focused on P.O.L.L.V.X. now.

“No way! Pollux?!”

“Online and on your mind,” P.O.L.L.V.X. winked and Glitch snorted, going to walk circles around them.

“That one needs some work. Not the worst you’ve tried though. Damn, Lux, you look fly as fuck! Don’t tell me Bytesized designed this look for you.”

“Oh no, this is all me.”

“That tracks. Oh!” Glitch ran back to Castor who had begun approaching the table, slinging her arm around his shoulder. “Speaking of looking good! Fenrir’s being an ass and not hyping up my outfit! Regent’s not participating so it’s up to you to you to be my hype-man. What do ya say, Bytesized?”

“No.”

“Tough shit!” Glitch said cheerfully, stepping back and striking several poses in rapid succession. “How do I look?”

In her neon pink crop top, metallic black booty shorts, and clunky six inch heeled boots with the same neon accents in the laces and trim, it was safe to say that Glitch was showing more skin publicly than had ever been shown at L.E.I.D.A. before.

Castor looked to Regent who was watching the ice in his glass with great interest. Fenrir just looked at him expectantly before knocking back the remnants of his own drink.

“Uh…” Castor looked back to Glitch. “You…ah…it looks…intentionally impractical. And cold. And bright. I…like it.”

“Gee, Bytesized, you sure know how to hype a girl up,” Glitch laughed.

“I do?”

“That was sarcasm, hon…” P.O.L.L.V.X. piped up quietly beside him.

“Oh…”

“You’ve hazed him enough, Glitch, take a seat, Byte.”

Castor did as he was told and Glitch sat as well.

“Hey. In all seriousness, thanks.” Glitch gave him a smile from across the table. “You’re looking great too, Bytesized.”

Castor glanced at P.O.L.L.V.X. who gave a smile and slight shake of their head. Not sarcasm. He looked back to Glitch.

“Thank you.”

“What’s your poison, Byte?” Fenrir asked. “Glitch is buying this round.”

“Hey!”

“That’s what you get for hazing the new blood,” Regent said calmly, giving her a meaningful look over his glass. Glitch huffed and nodded.

“Yeah…yeah okay…We all agree that Bytesized has to take a shot before getting his drink so he can catch up with the rest of us though, right?”

“What?” Castor looked concerned, but his Lancemates were all nodding their agreement, even Regent.

“Great! What do you want to drink?” Glitch asked him.

“I…don’t know…?”

“Something fruity,” P.O.L.L.V.X. spoke up for him. “He doesn’t drink enough to know what he likes.”

“Got it. Be right back.”

Castor watched Glitch go with an air of resignation.

“It’s a few drinks, not a death sentence, Byte,” Regent pat his shoulder. “Relax, son. You’re in good company, and I won’t let you make a fool of yourself.”

Castor hesitated, then nodded. He didn’t shrug off the hand on his shoulder either.

Glitch returned with a round of drinks and an extra shot for Castor, which she set right in front of him.

“Enjoy!”

Castor eyed it doubtfully. Picking it up, he sniffed it. The strong smell of vodka made his eyes water and he started to put it back down.

“No.”

“Aw come on!” Glitch groaned.

“It smells awful!”

“It’s vodka! Of course it smells strong! Don’t be a bitch about it!”

Fenrir leaned on the table. “Do what I say and you’ll be taking shots no problem, you hear?”

“I don’t get a choice, do I?”

“Hell no.”

Castor raised the shot glass again as Fenrir coached him through the shot.

“Right. Breathe in, hold it, take the shot, set the glass down, breathe out. Easy as that.”

Castor met Fenrir’s brown eyes under their constantly furrowed brows. He didn’t read social cues well, but he knew a challenge when the gauntlet was down before him. He tapped the glass to the table, lifted it in a mock toast to Fenrir, who tipped his hat in return, inhaled, drank, exhaled. Too early. The vodka went down, but not without Castor choking and spluttering, eyes watering, as Glitch and Fenrir cheered and Regent slapped him soundly on the back.

“That was awful,” he managed, voice raspy.

“Sounds like you need more practice,” Fenrir grinned.

“Pass.”

“We’ll see what you say after that shot hits you.”

A new, full glass was slid in front of Castor and he looked over to see Regent.

“Something to wash the taste of that shot out of your mouth. I think you’ll enjoy this one more.”

Castor took the glass, nodding slowly, taking a hesitant sip and making the pleasant discovery that this was far more palatable. The burning of the vodka in his throat had eased and become a comfortable warmth in his stomach that was spreading through the rest of him rapidly.

“Damn, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with color in your cheeks!” Glitch said, already halfway through her new drink. “That‘s hitting you quick!”

“Have you eaten anything today?” Regent asked.

Castor didn’t say anything, but P.O.L.L.V.X. was shaking their head no behind him. Regent pinched the bridge of his nose, checked how quickly Castor was finishing his drink, and resigned himself to his role as chaperone and a sober night.

“No need to look so down, old timer. You’ve got me for company!” P.O.L.L.V.X. spoke up beside him, leaning up against the wall and watching as Glitch dragged Castor and Fenrir over to the bar for a photo.

Regent looked to them and offered a polite smile that, for once, didn’t reach his eyes.

“I should be so lucky.”

P.O.L.L.V.X.’s smile grew forced, a baring of teeth, but they masked it quickly and turned to observe Castor. Regent didn’t speak to them again and they made no attempt at conversation, the two waiting in frigid silence.

It would hours before Lance 4 called it a night and went to their separate housing units to sleep off the alcohol. Hours where hardly a glance was spared for P.O.L.L.V.X. as they waited for Castor to have his fun, their holographic image all but forgotten and ignored against the back wall of the bar.

#the gemini paradox #castor creed #pollux creed #castor & p.o.l.l.v.x.#the p.o.l.l.v.x nhp #echo & byte #lancer #lancer rpg #lancer battlegroup #lancer ttrpg #my oc shit #original character #Lance 4 #L.E.I.D.A.

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erasmusic · 3 years ago

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And I looked, and behold a white horse: and it projected that rebirth was coming, and beauty followed with it. And power was given unto them over the fourth dimension of the metaverse, to reboot with an avatar, and with desire, and with transformation, and with the unknown parallel dimension. Collaboration with Nathaniel Eras, Derek Holguin and Marjum Oskui for California Dreams Exhibition + Haydee Jimenez, Klaus Vom Bruch, Natalie Deseke, Benjamin Petersen. Interactive sound media with conductive materials, organic materials, and video hologram installation at Kuntsthalle Fause Hannover Germany 2021 View Video Here In a cooperation between KV Kunsthalle Hannover and the independent organization Nettnettradio based in Tijuana, Mexico and the independent artist group Lucid Interval based in L.A.. Mexican and Californian artists together with their German colleagues presented a spectrum of partly interactive media works and jointly developed strategies for their implementation and media presence.The starting point was the conceptual orientation of the project in the experiment to bring the Californian spirit of innovation, the mentality of its people in terms of internationality, openness and inventiveness to Hanover and to open up the potential of artistic interventions aimed at the future and utopia with the inclusion of digital technologies in discourse. Equally important was the strategy of networking between the partners to establish a common artistic platform in the Beuysian sense of a social sculpture. As a first result of the networking, the idea of implementing the project through an exhibition architecture consisting of several spherical, interlocking rooms to form a total work of art was already developed in the run-up to the exhibition in several Zoom conferences.

A series of freshly cut branches hanging down from a supporting structure, wrapped in copper wire and ultimately connected to a computer, act as receptors and form a transfer medium to the visitors, who can trigger a sound scenario by touching the branches.Thus, for example, temporally stretched tone sequences of an Accordion can be heard, which plays an important role in traditional Norteño Mexican music as well as in German folk music and also represents an analogy to digital tone modulation with regard to the physics of the elongated tone generation. The artist with Mexican roots himself makes another connection when he says: “the dying branches represent the arms of my ancestors”

The next step in achieving the goals was to closely coordinate the auditory components of the media works brought in or developed on site with an audiovisual center located within a white cube in the middle of the exhibition hall. There, visitors were able to send various sound patterns into the exhibition hall by touching suspended receptors in the form of branches, collected by the artist Nathaniel Eras, without acoustically interfering with the audiovisual works of other artists installed around the white cube. In reverse, the visual works of Derek Holguin and Nathaniel Eras were optically shielded within the white cube consisting of a double projection, an installation and a hologram. In this way, the white cube had a semi-permeable effect in both directions.

Acoustically attracted, curiously entering visitors were thus offered both a variable change of scenery and a place to linger, to hear, to see and to interact with the medium of sound.In order to create the greatest possible visibility for the project, a media (production) partner was involved, who installed centrally controllable still cameras in various parts of the exhibition, each directed at the artworks, and who captured different scenes by means of a steady cam that moved permanently through the exhibition. With the opening of the exhibition, the visitors also became part of the scenario, which then went online as a livestream.

Further art-mediating aspects were offered by the interviews, also broadcast as a livestream, which Natalie Deseke fromHanover conducted with her colleagues in the project and in this way was able to gather background information on the works and interesting facts about the participants. In this context, a live connection with Haydeé Jiménez from nettnettradio was also established and streamed on a monitor into the exhibition.In the course of the evening, Marjam Oskoui and the German-American duo Eras/Deseke presented live performances that captivated the audience visually and, in the latter case, acoustically as well. Using VR glasses and controllers in her hands, Oskoui showed large-scale 3-D painting projected onto the exhibition wall, the visualization processes of which, looped to become a permanent exhibition contribution, later also served as the background to the audio-visual performance by the duo Eras/Desecke.

Nathaniel Eras Lives and works in Berlin. Eras is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, composer and cultural catalyst who first established his career in Southern California. His current works focus on sound design for motion picture and futurist mysticism via performance art and ephemeral interactive art. The California born conceptual sound artist negates any notions of music genres, diving headfirst into deeper, esoteric soundscapes or incorporating elements by fusing emotive beauty with gritty industrial noises and field recordings. His complex interactive sound installation, developed in L.A..Nathaniel Eras processes different soundscapes of everyday life, which he has digitally reworked. Photo credit: Faust TV.

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papermoonloveslucy · 5 years ago

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TYPEWRITER TESSIE!

Lucy and the Typewriter

On July 23, 1829, American William Austin Burt patented a machine called the "Typographer" which is listed as the first typewriter. The London Science Museum describes it as "the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented". Burt never found a buyer for the patent, so the invention was never commercially produced.

By the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need for mechanization of the writing process. From 1829 - 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production. The first typewriter to be commercially successful was patented in 1868. It looked "like a cross between a piano and a kitchen table". Remington began production of its first typewriter on March 1, 1873. It had a QWERTY keyboard layout, which was slowly adopted by other typewriter manufacturers.

An electric typewriter was first produced by the Blickensderfer Manufacturing Company in 1902. In 1928, Delco, a division of General Motors, purchased Northeast Electric, and the typewriter business was spun off as Electromatic Typewriters, Inc. In 1933, Electromatic was acquired by IBM, launching the IBM Electric Typewriter Model 01 in 1935. By 1958, IBM was deriving 8% of its revenue from the sale of electric typewriters. IBM and Remington Rand electric typewriters were the leading models until IBM introduced the IBM Selectric typewriter in 1961, which replaced the typebars with a spherical element (or typeball) slightly smaller than a golf ball, with reverse-image letters molded into its surface.

Lucille Ball and William Holden in ‘Miss Grant Takes Richmond’ (1949).

Towards the end of the commercial popularity of typewriters in the 1970s, a number of hybrid designs combining features of printers were introduced. These often incorporated keyboards from existing models of typewriters and dot-matrix printers.

The 1970s and early 1980s were a time of transition for typewriters and word processors. Due to falling sales, IBM sold its typewriter division in 1991 to the newly formed Lexmark, completely exiting from a market it once dominated.

The increasing dominance of personal computers, desktop publishing, the introduction of low-cost, high-quality laser and inkjet printers, and the pervasive use of web publishing, e-mail and other electronic communication techniques have largely replaced typewriters in the United States.

The Dark Corner (1946)

Lucy Ricardo used a typewriter when she wrote her operetta, her novel, and her play!

Lucy Ricardo’s novel “Real Gone With the Wind” was typed by Lucy on a manual typewriter.

When a last minute offer to buy her manuscript surfaces, Lucy is forced to retype her novel after it has been torn to shreds!

Lucy Carmichael takes a job as a legal secretary which requires her to type, answer the phone, and bring the boss a glass of water - all at the same time! She is hopping around the office like a kangaroo!

When Lucy Carmichael was a reporter for the Danfield Tribune, typing was part of the job. Upon closer examination, Lucille Ball is loading paper with writing already on it into the typewriter! Probably her script!

Lucy Carmichael typed a letter to her Congressman about the need for a Fire Department. The Congressman just happens to have the same name as Vivian Vance’s husband, John Dodds!

Lucille Ball and Bob Hope in Critic’s Choice (1963). Typing opening night reviews was how critics did their job before computers!

A heavily disguised Lucy Carmichael spies over the shoulder of a soap opera script writer who is deciding the outcome of her favorite show! From the crumpled papers next to his typewriter, things aren’t going well.

Lucy Carter typing up O.J. Simpson’s speech notes. On TV the brand name of the typewriter was sometimes covered with tape!

Guyana issued a Lucy at the typewriter stamp! 400 Guyanese Dollars is equal to about two US Dollars!

When “Here’s Lucy” needed an extra to play a secretarial candidate, Lucille Ball’s own private secretary, Wanda Clark, was given the job due to her amazing typing speed! What Clark didn’t tell Ball was that she had been typing on an early electric typewriter for years - and the prop on the set was a standard model! She was terrified!

Typing was not just for girls anymore! Craig Carter (Desi Arnaz Jr.) uses a typewriter on “Here’s Lucy” to do his homework.

Moving the Unique Employment Agency into Lucy’s home during her recuperation meant typing letters for Harry before the moving men had even left!

When she is replaced by a computer, Lucy Carter goes to work in the typing pool of another company.

A hilarious typewriter ballet was choreographed to “The Flight of the Bumble Bee”!

Trying to do Lucy’s job - Mr. Mooney causes her electric typewriter to explode!

When Lucy and Carol Burnett compete in the Secretary Beautiful Pageant, the first prize is a new electric typewriter - but what if the results are a tie? The solution to the quandary is never mentioned!

#Typewriter #Lucille Ball #I Love Lucy #The Lucy Show #Here's Lucy #Miss Grant Takes Richmond #William Holden #Gale Gordon #Lucie Arnaz #Desi Arnaz Jr.#Critic's Choice #Wanda Clark #Secretary #Typing #Vivian Vance #William Frawley #Desi Arnaz #The Dark Corner

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wisdomrays · 4 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 308

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE: Part 1

Ancient people, considering it very important to determine Earth'shape, derived two important clues from the night skies. According to Aristotle (384-322 bce), these were lunar eclipses and the North Star. Lunar eclipses occur when the sun, Earth, and the moon line up in such a way that Earth temporarily blocks the sun's light from reaching the moon while its circular shadow gradually crosses the moon's face. The North Star appears lower in the sky the further south we go: at the Equator it lies directly on the horizon, at a latitude of 45 it is 45 above the horizon; and at the North Pole it is directly overhead. However, it is not visible south of the Equator.(1) As both of these indicate a spherical Earth, the scholars of that time discarded the idea of a flat Earth.

The more challenging question was how to determine Earth's size. Eratosthenes of Alexandria (third century bce) had a simple yet brilliant idea: insert a gnomon (a vertical stick) into a level piece of ground. This enabled him to determine noon's exact time (when the shadow was the shortest). It was also used as a compass, for in the Northern Hemisphere the gnomon's shadow points north.

But can such a simple device determine Earth's size? Aswan, located about 500 miles south of Alexandria, sits on the Tropic of Cancer. So, at noon of June 21 (the summer solstice), a gnomon inserted there has no shadow. By doing just that in Alexandria, Eratosthenes found that the angle was 1/50 of a circle's circumference (i.e., 2p/50). In other words, the angle at Earth's center corresponding to the arc between Aswan and Alexandria on Earth's surface is 1/50 of a circle's circumference. Since the distance between Alexandria and Aswan is 500 miles, Earth's circumference should be 25,000 miles, which is its actual circumference.(2) Thus, Earth's size and shape was pretty well established over 2,000 years ago.

This knowledge was lost to Europe when the ancient civilizations crumbled. But Islamic civilization and culture, which was rising at roughly the same time as the West was declining, produced scholars and scientists who translated and refined quite a bit of this ancient knowledge. For example, in 1424 al-Kashi used Archimedes' method of computing to determine its values to 16 decimal places. Ulug Beg compiled the greatest star catalog known at that time. During al-Ma'mun reign (813-833), al-Khwarizmi measured one degree of latitude on Earth's surface and obtained the result of 57 miles. This means that Earth's circumference is 360x57 = 20,520 miles.(3) Thus, in the ninth century, Muslim scientists knew that Earth was spherical and had a good idea of its size. Most Europeans at that time, believed that Earth was flat and the universe impenetrable.

The Qur'an describes Earth's geographical shape and change in that shape: Do they not see how We gradually shrink the land from its outlying borders? Is it then they who will be victors? (21:44).(4) The reference to shrinking could relate to the now-known fact that Earth is compressed at the poles.

At a time when people generally believed that Earth was flat and stationary, the Qur'an explicitly and implicitly revealed that it is round. More unexpectedly still, it also says that its precise shape is more like an ostrich egg than a sphere: After than He shaped Earth like an egg, whence He caused to spring forth the water thereof, and the pasture thereof (79: 30-32).

The verb daha' means "to shape like an egg," and its derived noun da'hia is still used to mean "an egg." As this may have appeared incorrect to pre-modern scientists, some interpreters misunderstood the word's meaning as "stretched out," perhaps fearing that its literal meaning would only confuse people. Modern scientific instruments recently established that Earth is shaped more like an egg than a perfect sphere, and that there is a slight flattening around the poles and a slight curving around the Equator.

THE WEST RECEIVES "LOST" KNOWLEDGE

An enduring Western myth is that Columbus had to overcome a pervasive belief that he would sail off the edge of a flat Earth by sailing west to Asia. This myth stems in part from compressing the past and conflating the early Middle Ages, when Europe's belief in a flat Earth was widespread, with the late Middle Ages, when Europe's knowledge had caught up with and partially surpassed that of ancient Greece and medieval Islam.

During the Renaissance, Europe came into contact with "lost" knowledge by translating Greek and Arabic works. One important book was Ptolemy's Geography, which accepts Earth's spherical shape. Geography once more became available in the original Greek, which was not widely known in the thirteenth century. This book was translated into Latin in the late fifteenth century and became widely known. Columbus owned a copy printed in 1479.

By the time of Columbus, the idea of a spherical Earth was widely accepted in theory. Columbus believed this and wanted to sail west to the eastern shores of Asia. Earth's size was the real issue. Ptolemy's estimate was as much as 20% too low. Also, he vastly overestimated Asia's size. The resulting map depicted an Earth with oceans between Europe's western tip and Asia's eastern tip, which was well within range of the provisions that ships of that time could carry. Columbus' estimate of the distance to Asia was wrong, as was his assumption that there was no land between Europe and Asia. Fortunately for him, these two "wrongs" made a "right," with all of its attendant fame and glory.

THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE

So far, we have given external information (i.e., lunar eclipses and the North Star) about Earth's spherical shape based upon its position in the universe. If we use this method to determine the universe's shape, we must observe it in an external manner. As this is not possible, let's reconsider the question of Earth's shape with a slight change: Can we determine Earth's shape by using measurements and observations done only on its surface, and thereby acquire intrinsic information that can inform us of the universe's shape?

Karl Gauss (1777-1855) answered this question positively by inventing "curvature," which measures a given surface's "bumpiness" at a specific point. A flat piece of paper has no bumps and so its curvature is zero. But if we look at a sphere at each point, we see some bumpiness. Gauss called such bumpiness "positive curvature." Another kind of bumpiness is "saddle-shaped." We can think of positive curvature at a point as follows: If we put a piece of flat paper on a surface at that point, the surface lies totally on one side of the paper. But in negatively curved space, this cannot happen.

To describe this concept formally (minus some technicalities), assume constant curvatures on the shapes in question. In other words, the shape is totally symmetric and every point has the same amount of bumpiness. There are several ways to describe curvature. Gauss's formulation for curvature is brilliant. But before that, let's look at his intrinsic proof for a spherical Earth. Imagine an orchard so large that any deviation from flatness is perceptible. First plant trees on the Equator every 100 kms (the approximate distance between two meridians on the Equator). Then plant another tree 100 kms (the approximate distance between two parallels) north of each tree, and do this several times. If Earth is flat, the distance between them would be same. But since the distance between the two consecutive trees (on the same parallel) decreases, Earth is spherical.

Having seen that an intuitively positive curvature implies a spherical shape, we want to follow this method to get an idea about the universe's shape. Georg Riemann (1826-66), trying to do just that, invented "curved space" and explained how to compute its curvature. We could launch six probes at equally spaced points along the Equator, and have each of them continually monitor the distance to the two adjacent probes. If space is flat, the distances at any point in its journey would equal the distance from the probe to Earth's center (an equilateral triangle). For negative curvature, the distance between probes would grow faster than the distance the probe had traveled from Earth; in positively curved space, the distance between probes would grow slower than the distance covered by the probes since leaving Earth.

There are two common misconceptions about the curvature of space. The first one is that curvature is a rather vague or qualitative concept. In reality, it is quite precise and assigns to each point in space and each direction at that point an exact number determined by the shape of the space near the specific location. The second one is that to describe curved space, one must think of it as "curving" into a fourth dimension. This can be useful in visualizing curved space for people familiar with four-dimensional Euclidean space (four-dimensional coordinate space). Unfortunately, science popularizers and science fiction writers often lace this concept with mystical overtones. This is more likely to confuse average people. In other words, measurements made in ordinary three-dimensional space may disagree with the results embodied in Euclidean geometry, for curvature measures the degree and kind of deviation from the Euclidean model.

Riemann also proposed a radically different (non-Euclidian) model for the universe: "spherical space." This would be the case if space had a constant positive curvature. Based on this, he said that the universe should be a hypersphere (a three-dimensional sphere). The usual sphere is two-dimensional and lives in three-dimensional Euclidean space. In general, n-dimensional sphere is described as in the (n+1)-dimensional Euclidean space, and the set of points whose distance from origin (the point 0) is 1.

The more intuitive way to describe hypersphere comes from the usual sphere. Starting from a point in the sphere called the South Pole, and as we go in a direction in the sphere, we see concentric circles becoming larger until we reach the Equator, after which they become smaller and we finally reach North Pole. The situation is similar in hypersphere. Start from a point in the sphere called the South Pole, and as we go in a direction in the sphere, the concentric "spheres" become larger until we reach the Equator, after which they become smaller until we reach the North Pole. We can generalize this concept for any sphere of any dimension.

Earlier philosophers speculated that the universe was infinite in extent; others (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Newton, and Leibniz) rejected this as implausible. But the alternative seemed equally dubious: If it did not go on forever, then "like the flat Earth" it had to end somewhere. And, what was beyond that? This model solved the Euclidean paradox of the universe's "edge," for if the universe is positively curved, it can be finite in extent and still not have any "edge." In Riemann's model, every part of the universe looks just like every other part, as far as shapes and measurements go.

Qur'an 51:47-48 mentions the universe's spreading out or expansion in space: And the firmament: We constructed it with power and skill, and We are spreading it. This verse reveals that the distance between celestial bodies is increasing, which means that the universe is expanding.

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ask-a-raines · 6 years ago

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A Bloodbound RP

Borne back ceaselessly into the past

This RP follows Adrian and Amy as they travel back in time to the 1920s and was written as part of a little project by @kinda-iconic and @the-council-before-the-pact... we hope you enjoy this collaborative RP!

Pairings: Adrian x MC (Amy) and Adam x Priya

The Beginning...

‘Hello again!’

‘Good evening, Amy,’ he walks behind his desk, smiling fondly at the mortal, ‘did you sleep well?’

‘Splendidly thank you,’ she hesitates for a moment, her eyes darting to the corner of the room as her attention focuses on the metallic clutter that litters the floor around her feet. She meets his eyes, narrowing her brow in confusion, ‘what’s all of this?’

‘Ah,’ he walks over to her, putting himself between her and the machine, ‘this is a little project that I’ve been working on for some time... it’s taken a while but I believe...’ he reaches forward, gesturing to his creation, ‘I believe we’re nearly there.’

‘We?’

‘You and I; I know that you haven’t actually been working on it with me, but you have been providing me with the materials that I’ve needed.’

She pauses briefly as she takes in the sight; a tall metal contraption stands before her, its frame constructed out of discarded pieces of steel and iron. It is almost spherical in shape, its surface area big enough to conceal 2-3 people. She looks at it in awe, grazing the controls with her fingertips as she revels in its mystery.

‘Materials?’

‘Take a look,’ he hands her a rolled up parchment, ‘I’m sure that you’ll recognise something...’

She opens it up, tracing the shapes with her fingers as she follows the lines on the page. It is extremely detailed, each section having a description of some sort for the recipient to follow.

It’s a blueprint.

‘Blueprints?’ She looks at it again, a puzzling look gracing her face as she reads it through. ‘What are you building?’

‘I am building a time machine,’ he looks over her shoulder at his creation, wrapping one arm around her waist as he does so. He leans in, gently pressing his cheek against her temple, ‘I don’t know whether this will actually work, but every invention starts off as a crazy idea in someone’s head.’

‘I guess you got me there,’ she turns to face him, resting her hand on his shoulder, ‘but how are you going to know if it works?’

He smiles warmly at her, kissing her forehead. ‘We’re going to test it out.’

‘So we’re going to travel through time like Dr Who in our own little circular Tardis?’

A brief silence encompasses them before the realisation dawns on her; he’s being serious.

‘Wait...really?!?’

He nods in response, pondering over to the machine. He opens the hatch and begins to play with the buttons.

‘This is like...real? This is really happening?’

‘Of course,’ he beckons to her with an outstretched hand, running the other through his hair. ‘I wouldn’t lie to you.’ A contempt sigh escapes his lips before he envelops her hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘Do you trust me?’

She playfully tilts her head, her lips curving into a mischievous smile.

‘There’s no doubt about that now, is there.’

‘Then we better get going; we have a council meeting to attend this evening and we can’t be late for it.’

‘But if we’re travelling in time, can’t we just travel back to this precise moment?’

He pauses, his mind deep in thought, one hand nursing his chin. ‘You’re right,’ he laughs, a small smile gracing his face, ‘the whole concept of time travel is pretty new to me.’

‘You and I both,’ she walks over to his desk, resting against the frame as she questions him. ‘Are we travelling into the future?’

‘Not today,’ he whispers softly, ‘though I thought that I would leave our destination up to you.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ he reaches forward, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, ‘is there anywhere in particular that you would like to go?’

‘What about...’ she hesitates for a moment before an idea comes to her head, her eyes widening with enthusiasm, ‘1924!’

‘That’s very specific...’

‘Yeah,’ she giggles excitedly, ‘I mean I already have the dress... if the opportunity to wear it again presented itself, I may as well take it.’

‘That’s true,’ He steps into the machine, his fingertips skimming the interior as he presses a series of buttons, programming their destination into the computer, ‘setting our course to 1924.’

Before long, the pair are preparing for their visit; they change into their 20s attire before clambering into the machine, strapping themselves into their seats. Adrian makes a few last minute checks before he turns to face her, his expression a mixture of caution and excitement. ‘Are you ready?’

She nods, ironing out the creases in her dress with her fingers before meeting his gaze. She exhales, her breath shaky with worry. ‘I don’t think I could ever be ready,’ her expression is soft and delicate, though Adrian could sense that she was more curious than she originally let on, ‘but there’s no better time than the present.’

Within moments the machine is brought to a standstill, the metallic hiss of its engine growing more distant as it settles in the grass underfoot. The journey went without a hitch, and the pair found themselves unscathed by their travels.

‘Did it work?’ Amy asked inquisitively, ‘did we really travel back in time?’

Adrian looks over at the monitor, scanning the screen for the date. It isn’t long before he finds it, nestled in the top right corner.

7th May 1924

‘Yes,’ he whispers softly to her, ‘we are officially time travellers...’

He opens the hatch, carefully stepping out of the machine before guiding her outside, his hands positioned on her hips to steady her.

‘We’re really here...’ she looks at her surroundings, a joyous giggle escaping her lips before she refocuses on him, ‘I can’t believe this!’

‘Impressive, huh?’

‘Incredibly so...’ she pauses for a moment, her eyes drifting to the horizon as the sun disappears from the sky, any remnants of a sunset fading as the sky turns black in the presence of the moon, ‘what can we do here?’

‘We could take a walk through the park, go for dinner at a fancy restaurant...’ he offers her his arm, ‘the choice is yours, my love.’

Before long, the pair find themselves walking down the city streets, the hustle and bustle of the roaring 20s becoming more apparent as they worm their way through the crowds, their eyes darting in every direction as they take in their surroundings; the streets were alive with people, their joyous laughter and chatter carrying through the air as they embark on their mission to make the most of the night.

A little while later, Adrian and Amy find themselves in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. As they take in the sight, it soon becomes apparent that they are in a wealthy neighbourhood; the houses are decadent, decorated with an array of flowers and lanterns that illuminate each cobbled step, their shadows towering over the pair as they continue on the journey.

‘This is pretty,’ she whispers, her eyes darting from building to building, ‘where are we?’

Adrian looks around for a moment, before he spies an all too-familiar sign. ‘Park Avenue.’

‘Oh,’ she exclaims, running her hand across an iron fence, her fingers tracing patterns on the metallic rim, ‘I didn’t realise that New York was like this...’

‘Oh it was,’ he reaches up to adjust his hat, ‘there were a few areas that were very picturesque...’ he pauses for a moment, following her gaze to the end of the street, ‘this city has always been full of surprises.’

Amy composes herself, the mere sight of this neighbourhood filling her with excitement and contempt, though it isn’t long before her fascination gets the better of her as he gaze falls on a beautiful mansion, its windows and doors draped with ivy and rose bushes. She looks on in awe. ‘Now this... this is beautiful!’

Adrian sighs, ‘I guess it has its merits.’

‘Do you know who lives here?’

He turns his attention to her before he speaks, his voice lowering to a stern whisper. ‘Vega.’

‘V-Vega lives here?’

‘Yes,’ he glances back at the building, ‘this mansion belongs to him.’

Without warning, Amy’s feet carry her up the steps, her hand positioned above the brass knocker. She turns back to Adrian, who stands slightly behind her, one arm outstretched towards her as he reluctantly approaches the door.

‘Shall we knock?’

He nods half-heartedly, hiding his unhappiness as he stands beside her, one arm wrapped tightly around her waist. ‘Yes.’

Together, the pair knock on the door.

#choices: stories you play #choices bb #bloodbound #adrian raines #adrian x mc #adam vega #priya lacroix #adam x priya #pradam #choices fanfic #1920s

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angeliah95992397-blog · 6 years ago

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anthropwashere · 6 years ago

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we are all walking each other home

AO3 || FFN

(This is the silliest thing I’ve ever written. I don’t need to tag this body horror or gore or nothin’. I used the humor genre on FFN! Hope you guys like a good dose of the kids just goofin’ through another Fenton tech fiasco. Fic title comes from Mother Mother's "Family," because these kids are so good and I love them to bits.)

Tucker’s only on question three of his algebra homework and already wants to go back to grinding out a few more levels on Doomed in lieu of finishing when his phone goes off. The 8-bit Ghostbusters theme means it’s Danny, which hopefully means a fun—albeit potentially life-threatening—distraction. He’ll take what he can get.

He tosses his pencil down, flippin his phone open with a flourish. “Tucker Foley speaking. If it’s the Box Ghost again I want a divorce. Also, all my DVDs you keep hoarding. It’s been like three months since you borrowed—”

“ICAN’TCHANGEBACK!”

He blinks, takes a second to mentally untangle the panicked syllables—garbled even more so by the ear-prickling fuzz that means Danny’s in ghost mode. “Uh. Have you tried thinking happy thoughts?”

“TUCKER!”

“Okay, okay. Loop me in, ecto one. What happened, where are you, do I need to come charging in to rescue you triumphantly at the last second, et cetera.”

A painful crackle of static makes him pull the phone away from his ear. Sounded like Danny breathed an exasperated and loud sigh into the speaker. Rude much? “No, I don’t need RESCUING. I’m home, alone. Jazz and my parents are at that conference-luncheon thing for gifted academics or whatever—“

“Which you’re still not jealous about.”

“—shut up, bigger problems—“

Tucker rolls his eyes, leaning back in his computer chair. “Uh-huh.”

“ANYWAY. I promised my dad I’d clean the lab but I kinda spaced out, so I went ghost to speed things up but I accidentally knocked some stuff off the junk table and when I picked it all up one of their gizmos shocked me and now I can’t change back and they’re gonna be home any minute now and I don’t know what to do—“

“Whoa, stop, slow down. It’s cool.”

“It’s REALLY not.”

“Sure it is. Text Jazz, tell her there’s a ghost emergency at the house, make sure she stalls your folks any way she can. I’ll be over ASAP to look at whatever you zapped yourself with, see if I can’t find the undo button you’re too spazzed to notice. You call Sam yet?”

“No. Her mom dragged her to that thing at the country club today, remember?”

Oh, right. She’s probably dying for any excuse to get out of small talk hell, but this doesn’t sound like something that warrants busting out Plan E. “Alright, just you and me then. See you in fifteen. Don’t just float there and panic ‘til I get there, dude. Finish cleaning the lab or something.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“You’re not, like, blistering or turning weird colors and not telling me, right?”

“What? No. I’m just stuck. It feels kinda weird when I try and change back, but that’s it.”

“Okay, just checking.” He hums. “Sounds like some kind of anti-Specter Deflector.”

“Sure felt like it. It looks like a friggin’ Bop-It though.”

Tucker snorts as he slams his algebra textbook shut, getting to his feet. “Your parents are gonna get so sued when their ghost hunting tech goes mainstream.”

“You mean my dad is. He does most of the original designs. My mom’s just the one who makes ‘em work.”

“Like I said, so sued.”

“If I touch this and a recording of your dad goes off ordering me to ‘flick it,’ I will die and I will haunt you.”

Danny, hovering the usual two-and-some-unnecessary-feet off the ground, rolls his eyes. “Gross. It’s not gonna say anything. At least, it didn’t when I touched it.”

“Maybe you didn’t flick it right.”

“Gross. I’m pretty sure the original Bop It didn’t have a ‘flick it’ option anyway.”

Tucker picks the wandlike device up, careful of the frayed wires dangling out of its spherical hilt. It’s done up in the usual slick neon green and polished chrome of Fenton tech, surprisingly free of any Jack Fenton-themed stickers. Mrs. F has definitely had her hands on this, which means it’s at least halfway functional.

Color scheme aside, it really does look like a friggin’ Bop It. Hasbro will have words with the family Fenton if whatever-this-is ever goes out with the rest of the gear they pass around Amity Park like slightly corrosive candy. He turns it over, watching it catch the lurid light of the open Ghost Portal. “What’s this bit s’posed to be then?”

“Uh. ‘Pull it,’ I think.”

Tucker snorts. “Oh, because that’s so much better. You try either to set it off?”

Danny loops a little closer, fluid and boneless in the movement even though he keeps his legs as-is. He always reminds Tucker of betta fish when he’s ghost mode, for some reason. Must be the aura; it makes him blurry no matter how you look at him. “No, like I said, I bumped the table and a bunch of stuff fell off. All I did was pick it up.”

“You touch the wires?”

“I dunno, maybe? It shocked me as soon as I touched it.”

“Hmm.” And that’s the trouble with Fenton tech; it’s all brand new. They’re building better mouse traps for mice that can walk through walls, disappear, and fly. Danny’s parents have to get crazy with their designs. “Any idea what it’s supposed to do?”

“No. I only pay attention when they give their inventions names.”

“So what you’re saying is you’re useless.”

Danny throws his hands up irritably. “I’m the one who’s stuck here.”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s the word from Jazz?”

“She convinced my parents to pick up dinner, so that’s bought some time.” He fidgets, nervous. It always makes Tucker’s eyes feel funny when Danny does that in his periphery. “The Specter Deflector lasts twelve hours.”

“We don’t know if this’ll last as long. Even if it does, you’ll still be good before school tomorrow.”

That mollifies him a little, at least enough to stop with the honest-to-god hand wringing for a minute. “Y’think so?”

He shrugs. Sure, he thinks so. He also thinks it could be a half dozen other things, none half so reassuring. “I could try zapping you again, see if it undoes whatever’s keeping you from changing back?”

Danny winces. “Pass.”

Figured not. He gives the device a few cautious pokes and twists to see if he can make it do anything. He gets some humming, a flush of neon green light down the circuitry patterned across it, a few painful sparks off the wires. Danny skirts back nervously when it does that. It must’ve really hurt when it zapped him, because when he’s ghost mode he can shrug off a frankly scary amount of damage no problem. He looks okay, at least. Tucker did a lot of reading up on electrical shock after the accident—not like much of it’d be applicable to a half-ghost, probably, but he can’t help but sympathize a little when Danny shies away from anything that might shock him.

After a couple minutes he gives up. If it’s supposed to do anything specific he can’t get the thing to do it. Maybe zapping Danny used up too much juice? “Jazz can ask what this one does for you without looking suspicious, yeah?”

“Are you kidding? They love it when we ask questions.” Danny drops to the ground with a sigh; as usual, it looks like gravity’s reluctant to notice him. His hair floats a little, his limbs lag like he’s underwater. Betta fish, man. “Guess I don’t have any choice but to hope they tell her something good, huh?”

Tucker flashes him a grin, tossing the Fenton Bop-It back on the junk table. “That, and help me with the algebra homework?”

They retreat up to Danny’s room, but no algebra textbooks are cracked open. They just end up talking, half semi-serious conversation about patrol schedules and what-if scenarios, half gushing over the upcoming terrible Sci-Fi channel marathon this weekend, and the next thing they know the front door bangs open. Mr. F’s voice booms out Danny’s name. Danny goes deer-in-the-headlights stiff floating half a foot above his bed. Tucker grabs him by the ankle and swings him toward the wall, hissing, “Hide!”

Danny blinks owlishly. “Uh. Right!” He phases through a NASA poster and Tucker hears the bathroom door shut just a few seconds before footsteps come pounding up the stairs. Jazz bursts into the bedroom breathlessly, eyes falling on Tucker. He points at the wall and she nods, relieved.

“Come on,” she says. “I figured you were going to spend the night. There’s enough takeout for you too.”

“Cool, thanks.”

It’s about fifteen minutes of the usual awkward pantomime. Oh, Danny’s taking a shower because he got splashed with a little ectoplasm cleaning up the basement, nothing serious, ha ha ha! I’d be happy to take a plate up to him since we’ve got a lot of homework still, but oh, could you come downstairs with me real quick, Jazz? Danny wanted me to grab a folder and I just don’t like poking around down there by myself, you know? Thanks again, Mister and Missus F! You’re the best!

Down the basement stairs he slumps, exhausted. He hates lying. He hates how good he’s getting at it more.

Jazz shoots him a worried glance, all raised eyebrows and puckered mouth. He starts talking before she can pull that teen psychiatrist schtick on him. “We couldn’t figure out what the thing that zapped him is or how to undo what it did. I think it’s just low on power, but I dunno if it’s even got an ‘undo’ button yet.”

She winces. “Junk table?”

“Yup.”

“Oh, great. Just show me which one it was and I’ll see what I can get out of our parents.”

He shows her the Fenton Bop-It, tells her what he’d tried and what Danny did to get stuck, then grabs an empty manilla folder out of a filing cabinet for appearance’s sake and runs back upstairs. It’s a juggling act of weighed-down dinner plates and Coke cans to get back up to Danny’s room, but he manages.

“I come bearing sweet and sour chicken,” he says, kicking at Danny’s door. It creaks open a second later, a suffuse white glow spilling out into the unlit hall. He siddles in, kicks the door shut behind him, and has to lean up against it when Danny’s suddenly about two inches from his face.

“Well?”

“Personal bubble, dude. Take your plate before I drop it. And relax, alright? They just got home. Jazz hasn’t even had a chance to ask about it yet.”

Danny huffs but floats back a little, pulling his Coke and plate out of Tucker’s hands. “Thanks.”

“Uh-huh.” Tucker takes Danny’s desk, leaving Danny to float on over to the trunk at the foot of his bed. It takes a little doing, but Tucker gets him to eat. Of course, some of Danny’s reluctance is because he’s ghost mode; something about it makes everything taste funny, apparently. “Like Pop Rocks,” he’d said once, when Sam had tried to get him to explain what he meant. All snap and crackle no matter what he tried eating or drinking, with practically no actual taste to go with it. Shame, because the Fentons had gone to the really good Chinese place on Singer Street.

They stack their empty plates and finally knuckle down to do homework. Knowing Mr. F, it’s going to take an hour-long lecture before Jazz has any luck finding out something useful about the Bop-It. Danny gripes about trying to write with gloves on a few times ‘til Tucker sighs and points out the obvious thing to do, which is to take them off.

“Oh,” Danny says, sheepish.

Bless him, but NASA’s gonna have their work cut out if they actually decide to take his half-ghost butt.

It’s after six by the time Jazz finally staggers back upstairs, looking a little wall-eyed but otherwise not so bad off after a Jack Fenton Lecture. She shuts the door and sags against it, shooting Danny an apologetic look. “Well it’s not bad news,” she starts.

“Oh, that’s comforting,” Danny says.

“They’re working on a way to stall ghost powers out permanently—“

“How is that not bad news?!”

“Because that thing is just a prototype! They haven’t had any success yet on the little ghosts they’ve tested it on.”

Danny drops his notebook and pencil to float to his feet, gesturing sharply at himself. “Well it seemed to work pretty good on me!”

“I know!” Jazz winces, lowering her voice. “I know. Are any of your other powers affected?”

“Um. I don’t think so?”

“Ghost basics seem fine,” Tucker notes, pointing at him with his pencil. “Flying, intangibility, and invisibility are all the little ghosts are good for anyway.”

“Huh.” Danny flickers out of sight, reappears looking thoughtfully at his bare hands. “Yeah, that’s all fine.”

Jazz manages to look relieved and smug at the same time. Tucker would never say it aloud on pain of death, but it makes her look just like Mrs. F. “That’s what I thought. They’ve only tested it on little guys, nothing strong enough to take on a humanoid form like Spectra or Technus. Those ghosts, well, they don’t change like you, obviously, but they have changed how they look, right?”

“Right,” Danny says uncertainly.

“So maybe that’s as far as Mom and Dad have gotten with this thing and they just haven’t realized it because they haven’t tested it on a strong enough ghost.”

Seems like a sound enough leap in logic to Tucker. “Did they mention a theoretical timer on this power short, or is Danny gonna have to have a very belated parent-ghost son talk on the wrong end of an ectogun?”

Danny shoots him a dirty look. What? It’s a fair question.

“Theoretically? Twenty-four hours. In practice? And on something bigger than a cat?” She shrugs. “No idea.”

Danny groans. “How is that not bad news?”

“They’re positive any power short wouldn’t be permanent?” Jazz offers with a weak smile. “Plus I got Dad excited to work on it some more, and I suggested it might be a good idea to include a reverse switch. Y’know, as a precaution?”

“Well, okay, that’ll be good if they ever zap me with it in the future, but that doesn’t exactly help me now.”

“Sounds to me like you’re gonna come down with a twenty-four hour flu,” Tucker says.

“No way,” Danny and Jazz say at the same time.

“Our parents are total spazzes about getting sick,” Jazz adds. “They’d be all over him.”

“Yeah, that, and I’ve got a makeup history test I can’t miss,” Danny says. “This is the last chance Mr. Caulfield will give me to make it up.”

“You can’t go to school like this,” Tucker says, half-laughing.

“I have to. I’m this close to failing the class and it’s almost the end of the semester.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were struggling so much in history?” Jazz asks, reaching up to rest a hand on his elbow. He fidgets up out of her reach.

“I told you about English,” he mutters, not looking at her. He drags bare fingers through his hair—it flows rather than falls back into his glowing eyes. “I have to go to school. We’ve gotta find a way to fix this.”

Sam texts them both about an hour after that, all caps locked grievance about silver spoons and sleazy old men gloating over the size of their yachts. Normally it’d be funny, but the three of them have been brainstorming and all they’ve come up with is a whole lot of nothin’. Their biggest hope—well, not Danny’s, but options the kid does not have—had been the Specter Deflector. It had shocked Danny as good as ever, but left him just as ghostly as before. Didn’t even short out any powers, far as Danny’s tested. Weird.

Danny scowls at his phone, tapping out a reply. It pops up on Tucker’s phone a moment later. Got zapped by another invention. Come over if you can get away

Tucker adds, for clarification, He’s not hurt and it’s nothing crazy. School’s gonna be a problem tho

Sam texts back that she’ll be over as quick as she can and leaves it at that. Jazz leans back on her hands on Danny’s bed, watching him circle the ceiling.

“Homework,” she reminds him.

“Bigger problems,” he grumbles.

“Putting off homework all semester messed your grades up enough that you can’t take a dive on one test.”

His eyes flash, two neon green flares that sting to look at head-on. “Fighting ghosts all semester messed my grades up enough that I can’t take a dive on one test.”

They’ve been coming back to this in-between trying to figure out if any other Fenton gadgets might help. Goody-good straight-A Jazz and troubled teen might-actually-fail-to-graduate-at-this-rate Danny both have excellent points. Ghosts take priority, definitely, yeah, they all agree on that. But Danny’s a slacker too, happy for any excuse to procrastinate. Still, Jazz is kind of choosing a bad time to rub that in his face.

Tucker is staying firmly out of it. He likes his eardrums intact, thanks very much. He lets them bicker, thinking. If they can’t fix this in time for school tomorrow and it doesn’t wear off in time either, option C is… what? Somehow smuggle a ghost kid into a high school that sees ghost attacks on the regular and hope nobody notices?

Pfft. If Danny had the same tricky shapeshifter powers as Spectra, maybe. Even if he did, it sounds like the Fenton Bop It would’ve probably shorted it out anyway. They’d have to bury him in like three hoodies and an aviator hat—ha, and a big pair of aviators to match—

“And what are you laughing at?”

He half-heartedly hides his grin behind one hand as they both glare daggers at him. “Nothin’. Just, pictured trying to sneak you into school in a terrible disguise.”

Danny scoffs, but Jazz’s frown turns downright considering. She hums, tapping her chin. “You know, that might be your best option.”

“What? Jazz.” He drops down to land beside her, gesturing at himself with a wide sweep of both arms. “This isn’t exactly subtle. Putting on normal clothes isn’t gonna get me far, and how exactly would you explain Phantom trying to steal my place at school for a day?”

“Ghosts do all kinds of strange things to alleviate boredom when they’re on this side of the Portal. It’s not like anyone knows much about them, right?” She grins. Tucker would definitely never tell her, but it makes her look just like Mr. F. It’s uncanny. “Besides, if you do get caught, you could just fake-scare the class, vanish for however long it might take to fix this mess, and then pretend Phantom kidnapped you or something.”

“No way! I’m not setting myself up as a villain! People finally stopped screaming more when I show up to fight the ghost of the week—“

“Day,” Tucker corrects.

“—whatever!” He folds his arms over his chest. He still looks weird without the gloves on; it makes it easier to tell there’s a green undertone to his skin when there’s more of it to see.

“You might not get found out,” Jazz points out. “If we’re smart about it, you probably won’t.”

“Probably,” Danny parrots. “Real comforting.”

“I don’t see you coming up with anything better, dude,” Tucker says.

“Not you too. Come on, I’m glowing.”

“You can barely tell under fluorescent lights.”

“My hair—“

“Nothing a beanie-hoodie combo couldn’t hide.”

“My eyes—“

He sticks up a pair of finger guns and winks. “Sunglasses.”

“We aren’t allowed to wear sunglasses in class,” Danny reminds him through gritted teeth.

“Optometrist,” Jazz pipes up. “Do you have anything important first period?”

Danny shrugs, wary. Tucker doesn’t blame him. Jazz and her Ghost Getter ideas tend to backfire on him nine times out of ten. “I don’t think so?”

“Well, skip first period and show up late to second wearing sunglasses. When anybody asks you to take them off just say you got your eyes dilated and your optometrist told you to keep your eyes covered the rest of the day.”

“That’d work,” Tucker says. “You ever get your eyes dilated? It sucks. Totally believable to wear sunglasses instead of those dumb roll-up things.”

“I really don’t think—” Danny starts, but Jazz cuts him off with a flap of her hands as she crosses the room to stand right up in his personal bubble. He tries to lean away but she leans right along with him, grabbing his chin between finger and thumb. “Augh, Jazz! What—”

“The biggest problem is going to be your skin, I think,” she says. “You’re just too green like this.”

He swats her hand away. “You can thank all the ectoplasm in me for that. This plan sucks. It won’t work, not in a million years.”

“Well not with that attitude,” Jazz replies, cheerfully undeterred. She skirts around Danny over to his bed to snatch up his phone.

“What are you doing? Don’t touch my phone—!”

She smoothly dodges his lunge, elbowing him in the gut with that sibling kung-fu Tucker’s only ever seen on TV and here at Fenton Works. With Danny in ghost mode she may as well have tickled him with a feather, but she makes her point. He floats back with a huff.

“Jazz.”

“I have an idea, but I don’t have the right supplies for it. Sam should though.”

“That’s not terrifying or anything,” Tucker mutters as she texts out something and sends it. He’s not privy to whatever supplies she’s talking about; she’s switched out of the group chat. He and Danny share a worried look as his phone pings a reply text that makes Jazz’s eyes light up.

Sam’s grin gleefully tap dances the knife’s edge between conspiratorial and downright supervillainous. She’s got her spider backpack on one shoulder, an overnight bag on the other, and what looks like a Goth’s version of a tackle box in hand. “Well Jazz, I have to say I wasn’t sure about this plan at first, but it had a chance to grow on me on the ride over.”

“I thought you’d enjoy this,” Jazz replies. She’s changed into her pajamas and put her hair up in a ponytail. In one hand she’s got a mint green leather bag with black polka dots on it. The other hand is hidden behind her back. Gosh, that’s ominous.

Danny’s the one that’s got both girls looking at him like they just might sink their nails into him and never let go. He, rightfully so, looks nervous as hell. Tucker’s done the smart thing and made himself as small and unobtrusive a target in the corner as he can. Alas, poor Danny, he knew him well. Algebra will be his new best friend.

“Uh,” Danny tries feebly, “What idea is that, exactly?”

Sam and Jazz brandish tackle box and polka dot bag in tandem. “Makeover party.”

Small and unobtrusive, small and unobtrusive, Foley, for your own safety do not laugh—

Danny’s voice cracks. “Excuse me?”

“You heard us, ghost boy,” Sam says with relish. “You wanna take that history test so bad? We gotta make you look convincingly human. Thus: makeover party.”

Danny bounces into the air, legs melting down to an intangible tail so no one can make a grab for his ankles. “Oh no, no no no, absolutely not. I’ll take the failing grade.”

As answer, Jazz reveals what she’d kept hidden behind her back: an uncapped Fenton Thermos. “Daaaanny,” she sings, sugar sweet, “Don’t make me uuuuse this.”

Tucker buries his face in his beret to smother his laughter.

“You’re awful,” Danny tells her. “The worst sister ever.”

“Perhaps,” Jazz agrees smoothly, “but I’m your sister, and I’m older. So get down here and let us at least try to make you look passably human? The worst that happens is it doesn’t work, you wash your face off, and we think of a new plan.”

Danny curls up more tightly in one corner of the ceiling, like a grumpy black and white snake. “No, the worst that happens is you giving Sam prime blackmail material.”

Sam shakes her tackle box. Mysterious things rattle inside. “It’s the 21st century, Danny. Boys are allowed to wear makeup now.”

“Oh yeah? I think I’ll take my chances strolling into class as just Phantom over looking like one of those creepy guys you hang out with at the Skulk ‘n’ Lurk. Shut up, Tucker.”

Tucker waves one hand apologetically, wheezing on the floor. He’s going to sprain something at this rate and the girls haven’t even busted out the concealer yet. If Sam doesn’t take pictures he will, best friend solidarity be damned. Both girls ignore him.

It takes a little more cajoling and threatening, but Sam and Jazz win in the end. Danny sulks all the way to the bathroom to change into some pjs (phasing through the wall again to avoid his parents). He comes back with his jumpsuit and boots in his arms and a mutinous expression on his face, and Tucker’s glad it’s not just him that stares.

Danny’s eyes flare. “What?”

“Nothing,” Tucker says quickly, because he has a healthy sense of self-preservation and respect for the stupid amount of super strength and speed Danny’s got in ghost mode.

“It’s just weird to see Phantom look so casual,” Sam drawls, because her favorite thing in the world is to push a guy’s buttons when he’s already down, apparently.

But okay, yeah, it is weird. The white glow off Danny’s skin doesn’t quite spread to his ratty space camp shirt and gray sleep pants. It��s an older shirt from a couple years back so even though he always gets them oversized it fits him well now. He stands differently when he’s ghost mode, straight-backed and chest out instead of his usual slouch, and this is the first time Tucker’s seen just how fit all that ghost fighting’s made him. Or maybe he’s only this fit in ghost mode? Tucker could swear Danny’s forearms aren’t quite so defined usually.

Danny’s glower could irradiate milk. His jumpsuit, when he tosses it aside to join his gloves and abandoned homework, splashes its own weird white glow on the carpet. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying this.”

Sam just grins, gesturing him over to where she and Jazz have laid out their supplies on his desk. Jazz wheeled in her own office chair while he was changing and Sam’s taken Danny’s, so with one final grumble he picks up the wooden trunk from the foot of his bed with the same ease Tucker might pick up an empty cardboard box, setting it between them. He plops down with a defeated hunch like a man kneeling before a guillotine. Overkill maybe, but Tucker’s not sure he’d be wearing a different expression if it were him facing the makeover party.

“If you don’t stop laughing,” Danny growls through gritted teeth, leaving the threat unfinished to let Tucker fill in the blank however he likes.

“Oh don’t worry, Tucker’s going to be too busy to laugh,” Sam says cheerfully, flashing him a wide smile that’s much more terrifying than anything Danny can cook up. “He’s going to be doing your homework.”

“Aw, what? Sam—!”

“And mine,” she adds. “Don’t worry though, I’ve only got algebra left.”

Danny laughs.

Tucker keeps his nose to the grindstone no matter what embarrassed squawking Danny makes. If he looks up he will laugh, and then he will die. And that would be an extremely uncool way to go. Worth it, maybe? No, no, Danny’s room is right above the Ghost Portal. He doesn’t want to find out if simple proximity to an inter-dimensional hole in reality would bring him back as a ghost if he died close enough to it. Look what standing in it did to Danny.

“Mascara?”

He bites his cheek and resolutely does not look up. Ah yes, x equals eleven, definitely.

“Your eyelashes turn white too. C’mon, hold still.”

“Don’t put that thing near my eyes, holy crap—“

“I said hold still!”

...What did x equal again?

Eleven. Right. Probably.

Tucker copies out the work and answer in Danny’s and Sam’s notebooks. He’s gotten about as good at copying their handwriting as he has at lying to authority figures. He’s still not sure how he feels about that little skill either, but hey, he’s almost too distracted to hear Danny whine.

Sooner than he expected he hears Jazz say, “I think that’s pretty good for a first try, don’t you?”

He looks up, furtive. Danny’s back is to him so he’s only got the girls’ expressions to go by. Jazz looks pleased, while Sam’s tapping her chin as she scrutinizes whatever-it-is they’ve done to him. “It’s a little plain,” she says.

“Plain is good,” Danny says fervently. “Please leave it at plain, this already feels really weird.”

“We are aiming for normal teenage boy,” Jazz reminds her.

Sam tosses something into her tackle box. “I know, but it feels like a wasted opportunity to not Goth him up for fun.”

“Blackmail material,” Tucker sings under his breath.

Sam laughs, Danny hunches deeper into himself, and Jazz gestures Tucker over. “Is he still too obvious?”

Prepared to say yes, of course he is because he’s a GHOST, Tucker finds himself briefly speechless once he does get a look at Danny’s face. “...Huh.”

“What does that mean?” Danny demands anxiously. Sam, grinning like a well-fed cat, slaps a hand on his hunched shoulder.

“It means tomorrow’s gonna be a breeze. You might want to bust out some last minute review notes.”

Tucker steps back, snags Danny’s sunglasses off the dresser, and shoves them onto Danny’s face. He leans left, then right, then hums. “Got some spillover on the laser sights that are gonna be a problem.”

“I’ve got a pair of wraparound sunglasses he can borrow,” Jazz says.

“Huh. Problem solved.”

Fed up with the lot of them, Danny jumps into the air and phases through the wall into the bathroom to inspect their work. Jazz and Sam sweep tubes and compacts and who-knows what else into their respective makeup bags.

“Thanks again for going along with this,” Jazz says.

“Are you kidding? I’ve been trying to get Danny to let me experiment on him for ages. The things I could do with that green undertone….” She trails off, a little wistful, a lot ominous. Today is clearly not the last time Sam’s going to experiment. Tucker drains the last of his Coke as a toast to the paces Danny’s spooky ooky undertone is going to be put through.

“He looked normal,” Tucker says.

“That’s the point,” Jazz says.

“No, but he looked normal. Like, normal-normal. How’d you do that?”

“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Sam cuts in, waggling her fingers. “I could make you look like a ghost if you were up for wearing colored contact lenses.”

“Pass.” Still, whatever they’d done had even magicked away that funny blur to Danny’s features that always made Tucker want to clean his glasses. A pair of shades, a hat and hoodie, and Danny’d look like any other sophomore. Hell, he’d probably fit in more than he does usually; Danny keeps forgetting to pretend to notice the fall weather rolling in.

Tucker puts his empty can on the dresser to give them a little golf clap. “I gotta say, I’m impressed. If Danny can keep his cool for eight hours he might actually make it through the school day without getting caught.”

Sam scoffs. “That’s a tall order.”

Jazz hums. “I’m not sure what he’ll do if there’s a ghost attack. He can’t exactly wear his jumpsuit under regular clothes.”

Tucker snorts. Yeah, a polyurethane hazmat suit is a little harder to hide than good ol’ fashioned superhero spandex.

“He’ll just have to take it with him,” Sam says, but she reaches down to pick up one of Danny’s gloves with her lips pursed. “If it keeps glowing like this it’ll be hard to hide any time he has to get something out of his bag.”

“I can put it in this,” Danny says as he phases out of his closet. It’s a testament to how often he rejoins a conversation like this that none of them jump. He’s got a Dumpty Humpty drawstring bag in hand, shaking out the various bits and bobs that had already been in it.

“Oh, so now he wants to contribute to the plan?” Sam and Jazz share a victorious look. It really does not bode well for anybody, how well they’re suddenly getting along.

Danny huffs. “I didn’t think this’d actually look believable,” he says, gesturing at his face. “How the hell did you do it?”

“Don’t bother, dude, already tried. Lips is zipped.” Tucker kind of can’t help but stare as Danny lands beside him. As long as he sticks to fluorescent lights, Tucker’s just about positive no one will be able to tell the difference.

Jazz reaches out, grabbing Danny’s hand to stare at it intently. By this point Danny seems to have given up squirming as a bad job, though he does look nervous. “What now?”

“Your hands are almost as obvious as your face. Do you have any fingerless gloves?”

“No.”

“Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix,” Sam says with a matching snip-snip of her fingers.

“Why fingerless?”

Jazz, twisting his fingers in weird directions, raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to spend the whole day trying to write with bulky gloves on?”

Tucker, best friend that he is, just manages not to laugh. It’s a near thing. Danny, as always, doesn’t appreciate his efforts.

“I think we should do your nails too,” Jazz says, finally letting him go. Danny slumps, goes to pinch the bridge of his nose, and gets his hand grabbed again for trying.

“Ah ah ah,” Sam teases, “No rubbing.”

There’s a dirty joke that could be made here, about two idiots who both ought to be failing biology for how badly they’re missing each other’s signals and how determined they are to ignore what’s—who’s—standing right in front of them, but Tucker stays quiet. He’s not an idiot. Dirty jokes only end in tears and blackmail.

“It feels weird,” Danny grumbles. “You’re only painting my nails if you paint Tucker’s first.”

“It’s not my secret identity on the line here,” Tucker points out. “Twenty bucks or I walk.”

Sam bites her lip trying not to laugh.

In the end Tucker’s twenty bucks richer and sporting nails done in a fetching combination of raspberry and lime. They all end up with a bit of lime polish—who could resist an inside joke like that?—though Danny’s the only one that gets glitter. Tucker makes a solemn promise to never cross Jazz; she can be downright nefarious when she wants to.

“Just watch,” Sam says as they do a last cleanup now that their nails have all dried. “You’re gonna wake up at four in the morning for some stupid ghost attack and be able to change back.”

“Don’t,” Danny groans. “You’ve jinxed me now.”

“Go wash your face off,” Jazz says. “Tucker, can you take your guys’ plates down? We’ve had a real problem with ghost ants lately; they’re like bloodhounds for crumbs.”

“Sure thing.” Anything to avoid the argument that’s gonna follow Danny being told he’s going to have to get his face all done up again first thing in the morning. He shuts the bedroom door, balancing empty plates and soda cans in one hand (muffling Jazz’s “It’ll smear if we leave it on!”), and makes his way down to the kitchen. Mr. F is there washing out his coffee mug for the night; he beams when Tucker enters.

“Heya Tuckerino. You kids havin’ fun up there?”

“A blast.” He grins, showing off his nails.

Mr. F chuckles, holding out one big hand to accept the plates. “Was there a homework break before you did your toes to match?”

“No pedis tonight, unfortunately, but our homework’s all done.”

“Good, good.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“Trash needs taking out, if you’re offering.”

“Sure thing.”

“There’s a good lad.” Mr. F’s eyes wrinkle when he smiles fondly. He’s a beard shy of looking like Santa Claus. Or Hagrid. Somebody big and jovial and kind who wouldn’t hurt a fly—so long as it wasn’t a ghost fly, anyway. It’s a shame Danny’s so leery of telling his parents about the accident. Tucker gets it, really he does, but it’s still a shame. He grabs the trash bag and the recycling too, since it’s nearly full.

“Have a good night, Mr. F.”

“Don’t stay up too late curling each other’s hair now!”

“Oh please, and let Jazz ruin a ‘do this good?”

Mr. F’s laughter follows him out the door.

(The "Loop me in, ecto one," line is a riff on Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series. The movie didn't come out until 2013 but c'mon, a series about a young guy who only wants a normal life but has to deal with ghosts all the time? You know one of the kids found the first book somewhere and had a real good laugh.)

#danny phantom #my writing #as always apologies to mobile users #this site is a dumpster fire #but here's four good kids doing each other nails in order to protect danny's secret identity

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fapangel · 6 years ago

Note

So that Tu-22 crash. I'm having trouble figuring out how the fuselage snapped right the fuck in half. It was definitely a hard landing, but you'd think a combat aircraft could handle that. Was the descent faster than the video suggests or something, or was it just a worn-out airframe?

For those who missed it, the video in question.

Truth be told, I doubt it was the airframe’s fault. Aircraft can be significantly more fragile than most people realize. It is entirely possible in a great many civilian aircraft to over-stress the airframe with control inputs. On fly-by-wire aircraft the computer will usually stop you from going too far, but on smaller private aircraft, the incautious pilot can easily warp the airframe if they yank on the stick too much. Pulling 2 gravities in a turn is effectively doubling the load of the aircraft, for instance. It’s not impossible to rip the wings off, but usually the engine will part company first. Formal airframe g-limits are actually determined by the strength of the engine mounts (as they’re much smaller than the wing roots, but supporting the densest weight in the whole aircraft.) Obviously, aircraft load effects this quite a bit. After installing the Huge Wonderful Mod Pack everyone uses for IL-2 1946, I took a fully-loaded B-25 out for a spin, yanked on the stick like I usually do, and watched in dismay as the wings promptly parted company with the fuselage full of heavy bombs. D:

Military aircraft are built for performance with the most advanced, expensive materiel available, but they still have to contend with the same engineering trade-offs. For instance, early-war American fighters like the P-40 and F4F Wildcat were legendarily strong; the P-40 had five main wing spars (most aircraft have two,) which made it so tough that one Soviet pilot rammed and destroyed two German fighters with his wingtip - and the wingtip wasn’t even severely damaged. (Most of the time a mid-air collision guarantees destruction of both aircraft.) But all that structural reinforcement came at a steep cost in weight, which is why lighter Japanese and German fighters could easily fly loops around the P-40. On aircraft, weight is the enemy, and the lighter you can make the airframe, the faster and further you can go, with more payload.

Where a plane is strong varies greatly, as well. Wings are usually very strong, as they’re literally carrying the weight of the entire aircraft, and they also have to flex a bit in flight, especially on big airliners. The fuselage usually isn’t subject to nearly as much stress. The size and mission of an aircraft also determine requirements. Fighters can expect to be shot at and have to perform very heavy-G maneuvers, so they’re built as compact and strong as possible. Bombers need range, speed and payload above all with maneuvering an afterthought, so they save their structural reinforcement for the wing roots (to lift all that weight) and redundant systems in the fuselage to make them resilient against battle damage. As long as the wings stay attached to the fuselage, and the fuselage has at least one of all the important things (hydraulic control systems, fuel tank, and engine,) they can typically come home, even with gaping holes in the fuselage. (More than a few B-52s demonstrated this when hit by NVA air defenses over Hanoi.) Wings are non-negotiable, however.

In the specific case of that unfortunate TU-22, size is also working against them in the engineering case. To borrow from the physicists, if you imagine a perfectly spherical bomber, as the size of the sphere increases, the volume increases exponentially, as does the surface area. The surface area requires structural reinforcement running under it, and the volume must be crossed by reinforcing members criss-crossing it. There’s also the basic law of the lever, which combined with the issues of structural strength dictate that the further a point is from the fulcrum point (the support that transfers the load to ground,) the less load it can support without exceeding the lever’s structural strength and snapping it. And bombers need volume to store all the fuel and bombs they must carry.

Now apply this to the video we saw, and you can see what happened. The TU-22′s landing might not look very hard, but for an aircraft of that size, it really is - especially if it still has significant amounts of fuel on board, increasing the weight. When it hit the ground its downward velocity was completely halted; imposing a brief but high G-load surge. You can tell how hard the aircraft hit by how it visibly bounced off the runway on contact. G-loads are effectively multiplying the weight of an aircraft, and larger aircraft will generally have lower G-limits before structural failure, so what qualifies as poor technique that abuses your poor Cessna is considered much harder when it’s a 757 pogo-sticking down the runway.

The bad news doesn’t stop there. The speed of an aircraft hitting the runway has even more of an impact on the effective g-load (remember, kinetic energy is mass times velocity squared,) and the TU-22M has relatively high landing speeds. Take a look at the design:

This is a high-speed supersonic bomber, so it has small, highly-loaded wings. They are swing-wings, which helps considerably, but the lower lift-to-weight ratio (i.e. wing loading) means the aircraft has to be moving faster to generate X amount of lift, which translates to a relatively high landing speed compared to something like an airliner.

Putting all this together, you can understand why a bounce that qualifies as “very hard landing” in a 757 is an airframe-destroying event for a high-performance supersonic bomber. This is a prime example of why military aircraft have been fabled as pilot-killers since their inception; every design choice that makes them high-performance also narrows the safety margins, especially in the most dangerous parts of flight; take-off and landing. In that Tupolev’s case, the initial structural failure was exacerbated by how quickly it happened. If the plane was slowing down on the landing roll, the plane might’ve sagged as it broke in half and ground along the runway, setting it afire and giving the pilots a chance to eject safely. But since the aircraft was bouncing airborne, the shifting center of gravity and loss of weight (as the fuselage bent, it was not transmitting its load to the rear of the plane,) make the rear pitch up, as the lift of the wing’s fixed pitch is adjusted to balance the whole plane, not just half of it. That caused the whole thing to fold up in a hurry, and it was all over from there.

Maintenance issues might well have been responsible for this, but it was probably a failure of instruments, not a weakened airframe. The bad blizzard conditions visible in the video are likely the main reason for the accident - as you can see from the above graphic, a TU-22 has very poor cockpit visibility to begin with (a common problem on many aircraft, esp. military ones,) and the blizzard eliminated what little was left. The warning lights that indicate the glide path were definitely not visible, which means the pilot was probably relying on their instrument landing system.

Instrument landing systems are very simple and robust tech first invented in the 1930s, requiring nothing digital to operate; you can find them standard in ye olden Cessna 172 RGs worldwide. It’s a simple “beam riding” system; using directional radio beams to guide a pilot into landing. Even modern HUD systems on advanced fighters use the same two crosshair needles on their display, just like the physical cross-hair needles on a Cessna’s instrument gauge, to tell the pilot where he’s at. They can bring an aircraft in to landing completely blind, although the pucker factor is very high, as this HUD tape from a night carrier landing shows. It’s rare for these systems to malfunction or break, but if there was an issue throwing off the readings, it’d fly that pilot into the ground too fast.

Another possibility is an age-old enemy of pilots - ice. Icing up of the pitot tube, which measures an aircraft’s airspeed via the airflow into the tube, has been the source of many, many aviation accidents, especially when the data was acted upon by an autopilot before the human pilots could react (or even resisting the human pilots; do not fly on an Airbus.) These many lethal accidents have resulted in fixes, of course, but a slight error might not be noticed. And then there’s the altimeter - the basic altimeter operates on air pressure, so it tells you height above sea level, not the ground (you have to keep track of that yourself.) Air pressure also changes with temperature and weather conditions, so you have to calibrate for that, as well. But advanced military aircraft have radar altimeters, which bounce a radar signal off the ground to get nice, accurate feedback without dicking about; if that system had an error, a malfunction, or was just impeded by weather (ice on a runway can reflect radio waves in funny ways), would result in inaccurate altitude readings, which in turn would give them a false reading on their climb/sink indicator, which tells them how fast they’re moving towards terra firma.

Long story short: it is very easy to die in a military aircraft, and these poor bastards had to do it in an old Russian plane, maintained by Russians, landing at an airport maintained by Russians, in a blizzard. Of everyone who might deserve blame, I expect the airframe techs are third to last, pilots second, and Tupolev corporation itself dead last.

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