Independant Pluto
14-08-2003, 09:13
On an upper level of the IP colony tower
FTL researcher Jennifer Knight peered at a small metal ball about the size of a marble. For a long time she and her team had been trying to find a way to move this ball to a spot a few feet away instantly. Well, not this same ball. Several times the ball had dissolved or simply dissappeared. The new process being tried was supposed to make the ball shift to a different dimension and back. Another scientist, Mark O'Brien, was punching code into a computer.
"Mark, project the beam," Jennifer called. Mark got up from his seat, went to a wall-mounted screen, and pressed a series of buttons. A green glow lit the ball, and it vanished.
"We won't find out if that worked for another 15 seconds," was Mark's comment.
"I can wait."
The seconds ticked away, and all eyes were on a little container in which the ball was supposed to appear. 15 seconds came and went.
Thousands of feet above the SLAGlands
A small metal ball appears, and starts falling toward the ground, quickly picking up speed.
In the lab
"Another one down the hole," Jennifer sighed as she returned to work.
They had first been assigned to this project 8 months age by the Space Fleet Department, which was kind of a joke because Independant Pluto had no fleet as of yet. She and Mark had known each other for a while before that, and they made a good team professionally. They were getting kind of frustrated tinkering with slipstream and warp, though. The whole team was. Sometimes it seemed that there was no way they would complete the project without foreign help. Of course, foreign help was a near impossibility. The words of the deparment head had been "This is our program, and our way of proving to the world community that we can survive without their help. Utter crap, of course.
The next thing that was on the agenda was something called the "Tesseract portal". As Jennifer read the description of the system, it seemed like a waste of time. But she had no authority over that. That was for her superiors to decide.
In the lounge of the same level, 1 hour later
"I don't know why they're having us work on these outlandish theories," Jennifer said to Mark, sipping coffee. "It's just a waste of time, when we could be working on a simple intra-system fleet."
"They have priorities, and I think that their main one is unveiling a huge fleet to the world all at once. They started off in this system asking for help, and they want to prove that we can do without their help."
"I know all that, they've made that abundantly clear in their breifings. What I want to know is, where do they get their information on these propulsion systems? I mean, tesseract portals? That's our next project. They're supposed to be instant transport between two points anywhere. Nobody has that ability, nobody. Why must they insist on not just buying plans from someone? Why not-"
"Jen, you're ranting again."
"Good point. I'll stop. Why think about work during breaks anyway?"
"My thoughts exactly. Why not go eat something that doesn't come out of a vending machine? My treat."
FTL researcher Jennifer Knight peered at a small metal ball about the size of a marble. For a long time she and her team had been trying to find a way to move this ball to a spot a few feet away instantly. Well, not this same ball. Several times the ball had dissolved or simply dissappeared. The new process being tried was supposed to make the ball shift to a different dimension and back. Another scientist, Mark O'Brien, was punching code into a computer.
"Mark, project the beam," Jennifer called. Mark got up from his seat, went to a wall-mounted screen, and pressed a series of buttons. A green glow lit the ball, and it vanished.
"We won't find out if that worked for another 15 seconds," was Mark's comment.
"I can wait."
The seconds ticked away, and all eyes were on a little container in which the ball was supposed to appear. 15 seconds came and went.
Thousands of feet above the SLAGlands
A small metal ball appears, and starts falling toward the ground, quickly picking up speed.
In the lab
"Another one down the hole," Jennifer sighed as she returned to work.
They had first been assigned to this project 8 months age by the Space Fleet Department, which was kind of a joke because Independant Pluto had no fleet as of yet. She and Mark had known each other for a while before that, and they made a good team professionally. They were getting kind of frustrated tinkering with slipstream and warp, though. The whole team was. Sometimes it seemed that there was no way they would complete the project without foreign help. Of course, foreign help was a near impossibility. The words of the deparment head had been "This is our program, and our way of proving to the world community that we can survive without their help. Utter crap, of course.
The next thing that was on the agenda was something called the "Tesseract portal". As Jennifer read the description of the system, it seemed like a waste of time. But she had no authority over that. That was for her superiors to decide.
In the lounge of the same level, 1 hour later
"I don't know why they're having us work on these outlandish theories," Jennifer said to Mark, sipping coffee. "It's just a waste of time, when we could be working on a simple intra-system fleet."
"They have priorities, and I think that their main one is unveiling a huge fleet to the world all at once. They started off in this system asking for help, and they want to prove that we can do without their help."
"I know all that, they've made that abundantly clear in their breifings. What I want to know is, where do they get their information on these propulsion systems? I mean, tesseract portals? That's our next project. They're supposed to be instant transport between two points anywhere. Nobody has that ability, nobody. Why must they insist on not just buying plans from someone? Why not-"
"Jen, you're ranting again."
"Good point. I'll stop. Why think about work during breaks anyway?"
"My thoughts exactly. Why not go eat something that doesn't come out of a vending machine? My treat."