[Ground crew] All came tumbling down.

[notaparker]

I'm not sure what I'm doing here.

It's sort of an oft-repeated refrain of my life, from an existential standpoint, but right now, perched in a seat in this place called New Atlantis with my feet under me because I cannot sit down right now, it's more of a straightforward question. I would very much like to be hiding in a cave, but I can't. I can'

Comments

[gate_expert]

"No, probably not," Sam said, shaking her head as she scratched at a notepad, making calculations. "Actually, we do have something that could work. New Atlantis has an energy shield, powered by a zero-point module--it's a device that extracts energy from an artifical region of subspace-time," she clarified, for anyone not familiar with Ancient technology. "We've used it during hurricanes, dinosaur attacks, and so on to protect the area. But there's not enough power left in the ZPM to create and sustain a shield much bigger than this area. As much as I'd like to just shield the whole island, that's not possible."

[waltsnothereman]

"What, no roll call?" Wanda dryly asked from where she stood leaning off to the side, seemingly holding up a wall as she tried to puzzle out ways to hold up the sky. In particular, she was wondering about who exactly the vaguely-familiar kid was and what she had to offer them, but they did, admittedly, have a few slightly more pressing concerns to deal with in the meantime.

"Power source or no, that thing should still be pretty flexible in terms of how it can be configured, right? We can always herd as many people as we can in here as a last-ditch option, but it's powerful enough that there should be alternatives. You know, assuming the whole giant net thing doesn't pan out."

[notaparker]

"Jessica," I say, and that's enough roll calling for me. At least it turns out we have something to work with that isn't bamboo and vines. The professor on Gilligan's Island might have been able to make a radio from a coconut, but even if we had him here, picking up the local classic rock station isn't exactly going to salvage the situation. "Zero point energy, that means we can't recharge or juice it up, right? Uh, what about moving the shield? Can we turn it inside out and just catch the thing?"

My whole motif is a spider, okay, so I'm going to default to spiderweb-themed solutions, first, and go from there.

[pylean_cow]

Fred almost notes that even if a giant net were a plausible solution, she doubts they'd have much time to grab all the necessary materials and become good enough at weaving and making nets for it to work anyway, but decides against it. Even if they're talking about a slightly different kind of net now. She frowns.

"That'd be a great idea," Fred says, "Except for the part where there's nothing slowing it down at all. So it'd just be the same as it crashing into the island, wouldn't it? Well, except with fewer casualties. Maybe. It'd depend on how good a shield-net is at catching space station debris."

[gate_expert]

"Once the ZPM reaches maximum entropy, that's it," Sam explained. It had enough power to last a while as long as they kept things conservative. "And you're right; if we can't slow it down somehow, everyone on that station will be a casualty. I'd like to find a way to prevent that, if possible. I'm fairly certain I can recalibrate the emitters to create more of a repulsive force than a shielding one. It's just a matter of how much control we're going to be able to exert over it--anyone have figures on the velocity of the descent?"

[waltsnothereman]

"Judging solely from visual cues?" Wanda said, shielding her eyes as she glanced upward again. The station was still little more than a pinprick high above, but from this distance, every little bit counted for far too much. "I'd say -- and this is just a rough estimate -- way too damn fast to slow it enough unless we start ten minutes ago."

[notaparker]

"Did anyone remember to bring their Delorean?" I say, casting my eyes about, and then grabbing a notebook of my own and scrawling some notes.

Admittedly about half of it is just a picture of a stick figure Spider-Woman being crushed by a large donut, which represents both the space station and my desire to be back in New York eating a donut rather than being crushed by a space station.

"No? What about another direction, then, what if we just... shove it sideways?" I rake my pen across my pad. "Then it lands in the ocean aaaaand we all just drown in a tidal wave instead, don't we?"

[pylean_cow]

"Does anyone have anything that flies? Maybe we can evacuate everyone, use the shield to shelter everyone, then blow it up."

It doesn't make any sense, and it's a long shot, but they're all throwing ideas out. Except... they don't actually know how much time there is to figure all of this out. Fred starts jotting down notes of her own, running numbers through her head as she tries to estimate the weight of the space station and the possible rate of descent. After a moment or two of scribbling, she frowns.

"No. We... yeah, we really don't have much time at all," she says, then turns the notepad around to show everyone else.

[gate_expert]

"I don't have a solution that doesn't sacrifice everyone on board," Sam said, and damn it, that made her angry. She had friends up there. People she knew and cared about, and they all deserved better than this. "But I think our best bet at trying to minimize on the ground casualties is to modify the emitters to create a replusive force. If we can nudge its trajectory sideways, slow its descent before it impacts, we can lessen the force of the fall and the resultant waves." Sam wasn't happy with that, but they were running out of time, and if they did nothing there would be more dead than just on the station. "I'll need to start reconfiguring the emitters."

[waltsnothereman]

"Minutely," Wanda muttered, biting her lip as she thought about how that sounded. It was really the best they had so far, but that didn't mean she liked it. "That thing is dropping like a rock. A really big, easily breakable rock. I guess I'm just not convinced that slightly minimizing the damage caused by the fall is worth the risk to the people down here when they would, theoretically, be safe huddling underneath the shield."

[notaparker]

"Duck and cover, that's what we're looking at?" I say, shading my eyes and looking up again. Definitely bigger, now. No, really should have kept looking at my notes. Much more useful, inclines me a little less to sheer visceral panic. "I like her idea better. Not that that's... a lot, as likeability goes, but. At least we'd be giving people on board more time to get out, and in the meantime people can evacuate to the caves. The caves'd make it out okay, right?"

[pylean_cow]

"They should. Most of that system's underground, I think, so it's almost like the island has it's own built in bomb shelter. As long as there aren't any cave-ins," Fred says, after a moment. Depending on where they station lands, there is a chance of cave-ins. Right about now, it would have been really convenient to have a detailed mapping of the island's system of caves, just to know where the most structurally sound parts of it are.

[gate_expert]

"I'd love to discuss this more, but we're running out of time," Sam said. She wasn't trying to take over, and she was trying very hard not to come off as Colonel Carter, but she was getting anxious that if they talked about it too much longer she wouldn't have enough time to reconfigure the emitters, to disastrous consequences. "I think evacuation to the caves is our best bet, and it needs to happen now if everyone's going to get to safety. I'll get to work on the emitters, but we need to calculate the positioning and timing for the best result."

[waltsnothereman]

"Do it," Wanda agreed with a nod. She was still pretty skeptical, but you wouldn't know it to look at her as she committed herself to the idea. "As for positioning, do we go for speed or accuracy, here? Do we find some elevation to slow it down as much as possible or do we plant ourselves right underneath it to make certain we can control the angle of descent when it's time to batter up?" If they had more time, she had no doubt that they could easily do both, but... they didn't.

[notaparker]

"Right now it's coming down..." I hold my notepad up in one hand, tracing the path I worked out from the figures that Fred girl worked up just before. "Middle of the island. Smack-dab. Any elevation would be off-set by the fact-"

Above us, there's a roar. The space station, which has been getting ever larger in my peripheral vision -- which I can't keep away from it -- just started firing thrusters downwards.

"Ohthankgod," I say. "They did it, they-"

I think about Fred's numbers. "-'re not slowing down enough, are they."

[pylean_cow]

Fred, who has been calculating ever since the blonde woman had not-so-politely reminded them that they were running out of time, looked up at the space station. She frowned and immediately went back to her calculations.

"No. No, it's not." she said, not looking up, as she spoke, "But maybe the combination of the two..."

She trailed off then, engrossed in trying to get the figures right.