(no subject)
Milliways Bar
Room 2342
19-20 July, 2006
It would've been nice to have built and tested the portable hole generator, but two factors were against Ray in that. One, he had a very real sense that he didn't have the time. And two, he'd had one successful test already, and it had ended in lightsaber combat with a giant rabid wolf. In the middle. Of the desert.
Wolf. Like, timber wolf. Didn't that imply trees or something? Or at least some kind of reasonably congenial biosphere? Wasn't the whole point of coyotes to exist where wolves couldn't?
(It should be noted here that Ray, while a genius in other regards, had never been very good at biology. Too sticky in all the wrong ways.)
Anyway, the last thing he needed was something showing up to express an interest in the completed holemaker. It'd probably be some kind of mutant cockroach or rat or something like that, knowing his luck. So- no building the holemaker. It was sound enough in theory, anyway. Six-dimensional spatial descriptives weren't all that hard to work out once you really got the hang of it, right? Right. Pity, really. They were such lovely parts. It'd be a shame not to be able to tell Eddie with full authority that they worked.... Still, there was no time. He could always build one later and test it himself.
With that thought putting a smile on his face, Ray fired up the holocomputer. The parts list for the holemaker was already neatly compiled and ready to go. The parts list for the Beam generator was another story. That was huge. The sheer number of pieces alone was just- well, it was extensive, to say the very least. The specifications for each and every part, down to the last length of copper wire, had taken Ray nights on end to assemble. In deference to Eddie's not being an engineer, most of the specifications were written out as if Ray had been filling out an order form, then attached to visual images of the parts taken from six different angles. The IKEA approach was all right, but sometimes you really did need the words as well as the pictures.
Ray popped his knuckles and called up the email program.
From: Ray Stantz, Ph. D.
To: "Eddie"
Subject: Your Project
THIS IS WHAT YOU DO...
Some time later, the instructions completed, he wiped his palms on his shirtsleeves and hit Send.
And then, because the night was long since over and he really wanted his blood sugar levels back where he could keep an eye on them, he went downstairs for breakfast.
Room 2342
19-20 July, 2006
It would've been nice to have built and tested the portable hole generator, but two factors were against Ray in that. One, he had a very real sense that he didn't have the time. And two, he'd had one successful test already, and it had ended in lightsaber combat with a giant rabid wolf. In the middle. Of the desert.
Wolf. Like, timber wolf. Didn't that imply trees or something? Or at least some kind of reasonably congenial biosphere? Wasn't the whole point of coyotes to exist where wolves couldn't?
(It should be noted here that Ray, while a genius in other regards, had never been very good at biology. Too sticky in all the wrong ways.)
Anyway, the last thing he needed was something showing up to express an interest in the completed holemaker. It'd probably be some kind of mutant cockroach or rat or something like that, knowing his luck. So- no building the holemaker. It was sound enough in theory, anyway. Six-dimensional spatial descriptives weren't all that hard to work out once you really got the hang of it, right? Right. Pity, really. They were such lovely parts. It'd be a shame not to be able to tell Eddie with full authority that they worked.... Still, there was no time. He could always build one later and test it himself.
With that thought putting a smile on his face, Ray fired up the holocomputer. The parts list for the holemaker was already neatly compiled and ready to go. The parts list for the Beam generator was another story. That was huge. The sheer number of pieces alone was just- well, it was extensive, to say the very least. The specifications for each and every part, down to the last length of copper wire, had taken Ray nights on end to assemble. In deference to Eddie's not being an engineer, most of the specifications were written out as if Ray had been filling out an order form, then attached to visual images of the parts taken from six different angles. The IKEA approach was all right, but sometimes you really did need the words as well as the pictures.
Ray popped his knuckles and called up the email program.
From: Ray Stantz, Ph. D.
To: "Eddie"
Subject: Your Project
THIS IS WHAT YOU DO...
Some time later, the instructions completed, he wiped his palms on his shirtsleeves and hit Send.
And then, because the night was long since over and he really wanted his blood sugar levels back where he could keep an eye on them, he went downstairs for breakfast.