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<02/03/2011 - 09:21 | Saffrin Middle School (Math), Austell, GA, USA>
Sighing with confusing frustration, I leaned back some more in my seat, ignoring the others around me. I feel unusually good today, like I have extra energy to boot. At the same time, I have not done enough for my poor mind to stay satisfied anymore. "It's official. I'm bored again."
"You usually are. You get bored too easily."
Perhaps. I could only sit and think, sitting with the same group I promised myself I wouldn't just to avoid more boredom. Banarus, Maddison, Ashly, and Malica were all sitting around me as usual. And as usual, I tuned them out enough not to be part of their conversation. It's not as if everything we come up with is considered small talk. But lately, the only interesting things on my mind to me all relate to Lumina or her world, or how crazy this world is by comparison. I learned last month why it was a bad idea to openly talk about Lumina, let alone mention the mere existence of the secret friend I'm hiding. Before I could say anything else to Lumina, Malica burst into laughter over some joke I missed out on, which made me jump just a little.
"And she gets on with life too easy." It was only a brief remark, but Lumina only mentioned it since she doesn't like Malica one bit.
Not that I mind. "I don't care about her. Malica isn't even a friend to me anymore. She doesn't know how to treat anybody. Like, did you know that she and Kenzaki broke up about two months ago?"
"Yeah? Okay then, check the systems one more time."
What the? Lumina wasn't talking to me just now. That had to be her co-pilot. "Huh? Were you just talking to Junko?"
"Yeah. We want to make sure we're ready for this. Sorry Reed, but there may be lots of interruptions today."
"It's okay. I understand from what you said earlier that today is going to be interesting. I don't know much about Plasma Storms..." The mention of it reminded me of the reason why the Cy-Stars aggressor group were so busy today. Apparently, their famous Plasma Storm is scheduled to pass through their specific territory following its orbit path. So ever since last night, Lumina and her team have been carefully planning for it. Because of its width, it's hard to navigate away and maneuver around it. Since it plays hell with electronic scanners from a distance, trying to outrun it also has risk. The thing is, my memory of her explanation on plasma storms was too vague for me to remember properly. "Think you can explain it to me?"
"Yeah... Hold on Reed... Are you sure these readouts are correct?"
All I could do was just sit here and wait in silence. It's a strange thing not being able to hear Junko when Junko is talking to Lumina right next to her like this, but the reason has to do with the properties of our limited telepathy. If Junko isn't using her mouth to speak either, I won't hear her even though Lumina will.
"Yeah, I know that... Okay, so let's be prepared for it. The storm will hit us in an hour, but that could still change. I want us fully prepared for when it comes close."
There's something that bothers me about all of this. Lumina told me she would be fine with everything today, but she's putting an awful amount of attentive priority to the storm and her preparations. What exactly are they bracing for anyway? "So, you're all going to pass through this electrical nebula in one hour from now?"
"Yes, but a plasma storm is not an electrical nebula. It's a plasma storm."
"I don't get it." Sorry Lumina, but I only learned about this stuff on day one, so it's been a minute. "What is a Plasma Storm?"
Without complaint, Lumina answered my question starting with a long exposition. "Outer space is full of clouds, cosmic dust, and all sorts of material. The plasma storm that we have in our solar system is the only entity that orbits around our home planet, even back when Zinod was still around. The storm itself is a highly dense cloud of violently discharging ions. We don't even fully understand everything about its properties. Most recon satellites we send into it don't survive for very long. The data we have obtained doesn't really tell us anything about what is fueling this storm."
The Altiri have been around for about 149,000 years now, so that's a really long time for a storm to persist. "So this plasma storm, it never-ever dies down? It's just there, floating around, and you all have to deal with it?"
"Yes. There could be a number of things explaining why it exists and what it's doing here. But generally, every aggressor group must gradually deal with the situation each time it makes a revolution around Karnak. It has a strange orbit putting it far away for a while in between each orbit, but due to the nature and speed, it cycles an orbit about every one-thousand years."
"A thousand years?! But that means..." If it happens every one thousand years, and it's happening to them now, then it's the dark jackpot of misfortune. "What a hellish time for it to happen now, while I'm alive and everything." There must be less than a ten percent chance of this occurring in my entire life time based on Lumina's purge to me, and I'm going to get a chance to see it in person because of our connection.
"Call it what you want; it's a severe nuisance to us. We have to shut everything down before it arrives."
"Right. The storm's bolts would be attracted to the ship's electricity."
"No," she corrected me in frustration. "The plasma storm isn't attracted to ions of different electrical charges. It isn't the same thing as a thunder storm."
"But... But then..." I don't get it. The storm is a storm, has bolts of what are allegedly similar to appearance in lightening, and destroys ships with each strike. So what else could it be?
"Look, I know that it isn't easy for a mere human like yourself to understand."
"Come on Lumina. At least try to explain it to me."
"Fine. The plasma storm does have these sudden flashes, these bolts of energy that resemble lightning, but their discharges are specifically attracted to ions of higher temperature. Each bolt is already hot, but it will flow to the area with the most amount of heat before going anywhere else. Otherwise, the discharges occur randomly with occasional heat buildup of friction between the particles inside."
But since when did space have a bunch of heat particles? I thought the vacuum would be as cold as death. "Ooooh! Right, the engines of your ship would heat up that area during the storm." I forgot about how engine mechanics work. Her ships engines are plasma-based ion engines, so they would be at least set to low power to assist the functions of the ship's power systems.
"Engines?" she stated in disbelief. "Try the reactor core, antimatter system chains, or the heat generated by our powerful air conditioning system. The compressor for that monster builds up heat around itself and exhausts it back into space."
"Okay." This was starting to make a bit more sense now. "So you have to shut off the ship, not to stop the flow of electricity, but to cease the ship's generation of heat? But I thought the interior of the ship is already cold. Your A/C system pumps air in there at negative seventy!"
"All of our heat-producing units are attached to ventilations that isolates that part of the ionic area and vents it into space. That might not sound so bad, but our ships do this enough to keep the nearby outer metal of our ships generally warm. Think of it like letting residual microwaves of heat bounce off the outer hull of our vessels; it's not a lot, but it will get warm. Since it's on the outside, it normally doesn't matter. But in a plasma storm, that exterior heat turns this metal bird into a giant neon target."
"So then it's not just the engines or the power core you need to shut down."
"Exactly. Shutting down most of the core systems prevents the ship from generating new heat, which right now will be harmful to us. The process should always be started no sooner than an hour before the storm draws over us."
"Still, every one thousand years? That must be one slow ass storm." I can't be sure if I should worry, but I think I'm simply not understanding what this is, as I've never seen one up close before. No human has.
"You really don't understand the relative distances and size ratios of space and other planetary objects. The plasma storm is a very huge orbiting mass. Karnak is much bigger, and its gravity well is incredibly massive. That gives the huge storm a lot of variable room to slide towards and away from the planet as it moves. Luckily, the Altiri Temple is well out of range of the usual moving path of that deadly storm. But the reason it takes a long time to orbit is because Karnak's gravity well distance is larger than you can imagine. On top of that, the storm's orbit path is elliptical on the far side away from the temple. It goes out of range from all aggressor groups for a period of time. Despite this, the storm travels quickly, and so it's not stopped or pulled in by Karnak's external gravity."
"External gravity?"
"It's weird. The planet will pull in objects moving at a low enough speed, anything that enters its gravity well. This pull is intense, but when you're actually under the atmosphere of our breathable world, the gravity level changes. On the surface of our world, the gravity there is actually slightly lower than we've seen reported on planet ACS414. Uh, I mean Earth."
I ignored that interesting slip of the tongue, figuring that Lumina was spitting out so much information from prior learning and memory that she defaulted back to calling the Earth by their scientific name. I was more impressed to hear that a planet has two different forces of gravity, external and internal.
"Okay... Okay..." I sounded cringy trying to piece this all together. It sounds needlessly complicated at best. "So then why not shut the systems down much earlier, when you first detect the storm on RADAR? Better yet, why not just move out the way?"
"Our detection capabilities for these storms are suboptimal, and our ships are not as fast as you think they are. Because of the speed and size of the storm and how it tends to sneak up on us at least two days in advance, outrunning it even with that much time is usually impossible and risky. Our sensors can't get the storm until it gets closer. Scryers believe it has something to do with the nearby interference of Karnak's atmosphere, but are still uncertain."
"Wow! So you can't outrun the storm at all? This thing actually is dangerous!" I thought they could just flee this whole time. I mean, why stand still in a deadly storm when you could detect it in advance and fly away? But the storm must be beyond my imagination's capability to factor in size. They can't escape it!
"No, we know what we're doing. The reason we have to shut the systems down at this point and get the timing just right, is because we don't want to shut every single component down, not completely."
She lost me there. Maybe some systems don't generate heat, and so they are okay to run? That still doesn't explain why she can't just start now and eliminate the heat from her exterior hull with an early start, but I did my best to calm down and stop worrying. When Lumina said she knew what she was doing just now, I could hear the sincerity and confidence in her voice. Since I'm connected to her, I also knew that I was feeling absolutely zero fear from within her. She's not even a little nervous about this event. "So what gets to stay on?"
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"The backup systems mostly. They don't actually run the A/C, or the life support, other than the recycling fans keeping the air as fresh as it can be. And that's just fine too, because it would take several days for the rooms in here to heat up to uncomfortable levels. That alone can't even happen, unless the ship is brought back to full power without the air conditioner, which we're not messing with anyway. The key to all of this is the anti-gravimetrical core refractor unit; it's an absolute requirement that it remains running at all times. So, on backup power, the ship's emergency systems devote all functionality to that piece of equipment above all other priorities. In the experience, we lose some of our gravity too."
"But why is that anti-grav-metracore thingy so important?" I couldn't even say its name correctly, but it sounded faintly familiar.
"Because. If it fails, especially when the ship has no power to juice the propulsion systems, or power to run the emergency maneuver protocols, then the entire ship itself would become prey to Karnak's outer gravity. It will fall from the sky like a meteor. We don't move in outer space Reed, not when we're at corral position. For that reason, the gravity well's pull from Karnak would suddenly spring launch our ships onto the surface of the planet. It would be so fast that our stabilizers would fail even if they were running before it happened. It would lock up our navigation, and effectively crash us into the planet at a very high velocity. At that point, it's difficult to survive. The ion steel armor of our ships is usually impenetrable, but not to the plasma strikes, and certainly not to a collision of such magnitude. This has unfortunately happened to several Altiri aggressor groups before."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If I were inside her ship in person right now, I'd be scared out of my mind! But I get it now. She needs an important component to run on backup power. Yet because one cannot generate more energy on reserve power, that anti-gravity unit will eventually eat up all the remaining juice. That's the reason she can't shut the ship down too early. If she does, the unit could run out of power, smashing her into the planet below. If she shuts it off too late, the residual heat from the ship will turn it into a magnet of deadly plasma strikes! "This stuff sounds really dangerous Lumina!"
"It's only dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. All Altiri aggressor groups receive in-station drills for this scenario, training us on what to do and how to do it. During the draft, that same training was put into us, even though it was rushed during that time."
"So... How much time would you need? I mean, to stay on backup power?"
"That's the tricky part. You see, even though the plasma storm moves through space orbiting Karnak, its travel velocity and speed changes as it moves, frequently. It could speed up or slow down at any time."
"That's both freaky, and defies the laws of physics."
"The laws of physics are not as simple as your human scientists have made it to believe. But to be fair, nobody in our world seems to understand the phenomena either, about why the storm behaves this way, or even why it's here. But the point is, once this storm passes over us, the time it will take to fully go by us is going to be between four hours and twelve hours... Shut it down Junko!"
It took me a second to realize that Lumina was talking to her co-pilot suddenly, and then Junko hollered back at her using her normal voice, allowing me to overhear her by chance.
"I'm cutting all the power! The lights will be going out now."
Because of the current good strength of our connection, it was quite easy for me to see through Lumina's eye on my personal demand. I didn't keep at it passively before, only to save on energy, but I had to see this for myself now. When I did shut out my surroundings to see inside of Lumina's ship, I saw suddenly as all the lights dimmed out to nothing, making it fairly dark in the interior of the ship, but even the main room had a thin and long glass window letting light in from outer space, reminding me that the entire view of space in her world is slightly illuminated by this blue light effect. I remember that the blue in the emptiness of the skybox there had something to do with the blue star reflecting some of its light back from the ring nebula they call a Phobium Cloud; this much I could remember well. So, there was little light coming in from that window, and the way it illuminated the ship so differently was an amazing visual for me. I also heard the low humming buzz in a downward shifting pitch from the ship's generators going down, a noise that wasn't there before at all, until Junko kicked it off. "This is unbelievable! It's so much darker in your ship though." When I said some light was coming in, I didn't mean it was a lot. I could barely see Lumina's outline of her hand in front of her face, as she tried not to move too much and trip.
"I wouldn't worry about that." She didn't even have to explain why. In a few more seconds, the entire area within her visual field of view gradually became much brighter, not nearly to the same level of having the interior lights on, but she somehow illuminated all of her surroundings without the use of a flashlight. I didn't even sense her do anything.
"What's happening?"
"That's just my night vision kicking in."
"Altiri people have bio-natural night vision? And on top of that it comes in full color?" I didn't pretend not to be jealous. It's totally amazing that she can see this well in the dark. If humans could see that well, we wouldn't care about night time, and we would be the best hunters in the world.
"You're easily amazed."
"So now what? You have to wait five to twelve hours?" I say five because the storm is an hour away from her ship; hence the reason she shut off the power by now.
"Hopefully, it won't be twelve hours. It takes almost one full hour to dissipate the heat from this ship, which will make it safe for the plasma storm to pass us."
She's forgetting about the uncommon but possible chance of a random plasma bolt hitting her ship by chance, but I decided not to share that with her. "So, all of your sisters in formation have done the exact same thing, for all five ships?"
"Yes. Their power has been cut too."
"Thank god for telepathic communication." It's crazy to think that the Altiri ships that are in formation would need to all time their shutdowns at exactly the same time, and wouldn't be able to synchronize as well if they used radio communication, but telepathic waves are much faster than the speed of light.
"The storm was exactly one hour away when we last scanned it. But with its changing speed, we won't know exactly how long it will be for it to entirely pass us. For that reason, relying on the storm's last analyzed speed just before a shutdown is pointless."
"Yeah, and you obviously can't use that scanning equipment again while everything is turned off."
"Correct. We're officially blind from here on out."
"I have to bring this up now. Even if you do everything right, there is still the random chance that one of those bolts could end up striking your ship simply out of chance in the way they occur, right? What kind of damage would it do if one hits you?"
"The random chance does make me a little nervous, but based on the size of the entire storm compared to our tiny ships, combined with the low amount of actual discharges where unnatural heat is not involved, as well as the usual range between each bolt, the chance of any one of us getting hit is one hundredth the chance of any human being struck by lightning while standing out in the open. So, for that reason, I'm not worried."
"Okay. That's good then." I don't know anybody who got hit by lightning before, and I sure don't worry about it myself.
"If anything were to go wrong, I would worry most about the possibility of the storm suddenly slowing down after coming on top of us, and staying at that speed for far too long. Our reserve supply is capable of running dry before that storm passes, if it were to last for more than twelve hours from having its speed lowered abruptly."
"That's not good. If it runs dry, then you're dead..." Does she really understand the danger here? Crashing into Karnak and turning into a puddle doesn't qualify as a worry-free scenario. Even though the Altiri have resurrection machines, they only work of the body is 90% intact and free from brain injury when one of them dies. "Yeah, you would really be dead and gone. If a bolt vents you to space or you crash into Karnak, those resurrection machines are useless."
"I know that Reed. That's why we don't want the storm to stay with us for more than ten hours. In tests, our power supplies have proven capable of surviving the AGCR system for up to eleven hours and thirty minutes. The highest record a stationary object like a ship has stayed in this state while surviving was twelve hours and two minutes. So, that leaves us about a thirty minute window of danger, if the storm slows down on us."
"Thirty minute window... That's... That's a 6.25% chance of being killed!" And I didn't even factor in a plasma strike to that effect.
"What? No, you still have to factor in something before that; that the storm actually stays at its lowest record speed for at least ten hours while passing us by. The chances of that alone happening, based on relative recorded data are exactly 0.012%, after rounding. When you combine that with the thirty-minute window frame of possibility, the probability of me actually dying today is 0.0075%."
"It's low... But you've been doing this for about every one thousand years. And even though your age is 3,616, biologically speaking, you've been alive and in space for a lot longer than that, counting all of the resurrections you have done, right?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"There's still a numeric chance that you will get killed eventually, especially when you keep playing this deadly lottery. If you were to do this again a hundred more times, surely something would happen to you."
"First of all, we've only had to do this about a hundred times already. Secondly, the chances are the same each time. Surviving once doesn't make surviving twice less possible. And third, once today is over with, you won't have to worry about it again for another thousand years."
"But—"
"We will all be fine Reed! Stop worrying about it so much."
I didn't think I would be the one panicking over this. Lumina is the one who has to put herself in the line of danger... But that's what's bothering me so much. I don't want anything to happen to her. As her friend, I care about her far too much to stand by and do nothing... But I really can't do anything about this now. I'm just a lousy observer. "I'll try. But your life, and the very life of all your sisters are in danger. Losing a single one of you would break my heart. I don't ever want a friend of mine to die like that. I would never be okay with that."
"I know you won't... Look, if it makes you feel better, you can stay with me the entire time until it's over."
"Directly?" What I meant was, can I really share this much visual data with her all day long? I know it's cold out, but it's not extremely cold weather on my side. If it is possible, I'm not turning it down... I can't anymore. I can't focus on any of my school work with this going on. When Lumina told me about the plasma storm earlier this morning, I didn't think much of it, but I never knew how scary they sounded until now.
"There is a thunder storm in your area right now. Since it's already cold out, the weather will block out the sun and prevent a warm up of your area. So, as long as you stay hydrated, I can use my technique from before and slightly boost the connection, so that you can continue being with me more directly, but it may distract you more from your own world."
I knew what she meant by that. We've engaged in telepathic amplification before. When I can see and hear through Lumina's senses so perfectly with so much detail, the sensations from my physical world bleed further into the background, sometimes fading from my conscious awareness entirely. I might appear to others to be high as a kite, but it's still worth the risk.
"Let's do it then. When that storm hits, I want to be all eyes and ears."
"Okay. I'll save my strength for that moment."
"Yeah. This will work." I felt calmer already, and just slightly bashful to realize I was planning to be hyper-connected to Lumina again. There is a secondary consequence of telepathic amplification too, that physical sensations get mixed together with more detail. I kind of want to be right there beside her, to lean my back right up against hers, observing the storm together, so that we both feel a little safer. And with that stronger connection, I might feel something like it, maybe. "I'll be able to see through your eyes constantly, and so I'll know that you're safe. I'll know because I'll be right there with you."
"Yeah... You'll be able to see it soon too. The windows and shutters are open for the purpose of viewing the storm, and getting in some natural light."
"Does the visual resemble anything like a thunder storm?"
"No way."
I sure want to see the difference after hearing that. "And is it safe to have the window shutters open like that?"
"Of course. The shutter armor is only used for docking related purposes, but the windows and glass we have are all made out of Trynoximerizoid crystals."
"Trynoxroid... What the hell did you say?" I heard her speak about this before too, more recently in fact, but that sure is a mouthful of a term to remember. Wasn't it like reinforced glass or something?
"Trynoximerizoid elements. It's a substance we have within multiple elements, which are apparently foreign in your ACS star system."
"Wow. Trynoximerizoid glass."
"Hey, you remembered!"
It wasn't easy pronouncing that, even in telepathic speech. "So it's really strong glass?"
"It's only capable of withstanding the most punishment I've ever seen. It makes earth metals and bulletproof glass of the highest caliber seem like play dough to us. But, the reason the glass is safe for us is not because it provides protection against the storm."
"Then what is it for?"
"Well, it's strong, but it won't matter. Look at it like this. The reason our shutters being open won't matter is because, if any ship is hit with that powerful ionic discharge, it will blast a hole in that part of the hull no matter how thick the armor is. Even ion steel is no match for a plasma strike. The glass might be able to take it, but we certainly don't have the supply to make even a single space ship entirely out of Trynoximerizoid glass. Even a well-placed hit can tear the ship to shreds if the decompression is bad enough. And if it's not, if the impact knocks out the backup power, the AGCR fails, and we crash into the planet anyway. So, the shutters being up or down changes nothing about the risk."
I wasn't looking for such a detailed explanation into a simple question, but it all brought back some of my fears from earlier. I tried to hide them, but I just knew Lumina would detect it soon enough. "It sounds really dangerous Lumina. I just want to make sure nothing bad happens."
"It won't. I promise."
Sighing some relief while continuing to phase out the school life around me, I let the tension in my body ease up. "Okay then. I trust you." It was already time to transition to the next class in a few minutes. But who knows how things are going to play out?