(no subject)
Central Nevada
July 19, 2006
The figure making its way across the scrublands of the Nevada desert would have been a comical sight indeed, had any been there to see; but there was no one to see. Somewhere very far back, north towards Winnemucca, there had been a lone sign reading:
WARNING
THIS ROAD CROSSES A UNITED STATES AIR FORCE BOMBING RANGE
FOR THE NEXT TWELVE MILES
DANGEROUS OBJECTS MAY DROP FROM AIRCRAFT
That pretty much kept possible spectators away. Which was enough for Ray, really. Explaining the clothing ("White's supposed to be the coolest under desert conditions, right?"), the sunblock ("I already have SPF 30 on most of my skin but the blue zinc oxide's going to cut down on the glare under my eyes and along my nose"), and the backpack ("The Rim Runner is the largest capacity hydration pack Camelbak makes!") had been quite enough. Explaining the test equipment? Mleh. Not something he was looking forward to.
Fortunately, there was no one there to see it as he parked the Jeep by the side of the road, and no one to ask why he was hauling the big brushed-metal case through the desert like something out of a cable television commercial. If anyone saw him pacing out the circumference of the biggest open, plant-free space he could find, they were probably of the phylum Arthropoda, and thus uninclined to ask questions. Any witnesses to the careful consultation of an ordinary magnetic compass- his PDA, while possessed of GPS service, wasn't reliable out here- were reptiles or rodents, and unlikely to care. The PKE scan of every possible point along the open space's edge went unnoticed entirely, and the placement of the miniature Beam generator prototypes themselves.... well, all right, someone might have seen that, if only by satellite or by leaning to look out a window on the lone plane that passed overhead. But one more crazy person in the desert was no big deal, and so even that, fundamentally, went unnoticed.
Fine with Ray. Stage fright was not very high on his list of priorities just now.
Three minutes to Trinity, he'd said once, back when the PKE beacon was still an unknown almost. Teller's line about setting the atmosphere on fire had been taking up most of the free space in his head then. It was gone now, replaced by the cold creeping silence that tended to sneak up on him in the night- the great silent void of perspective. As he set up the control console on the last of the prototypes, he did his best to ignore the feeling, but it was still there: what do you think you're doing, anyway? You fight things that make slime, and you can't convince the rest of the scientific community that you're anything but a weirdo, and you're 'the fuzzy one' in the eyes of the New York public- you do know you're insane, right? Half the technology in these things is scientifically impossible and the rest of it is magically ridiculous. Is there a reason you haven't retreated to an occult bookstore on Eighty-seventh and taken up selling rune manuals to Columbia freshmen out for a little light introduction to the paranormal?
Hello? Are you listening to me?
Nothing irritates your fears of inadequacy quite like going on and doing what you're supposed to anyway. By the time the script of personal and scientific inadequacies finished playing itself out in his head, Ray's finger was hovering above the big red button. That hadn't been part of the original controls, but he'd felt it was important to include one. Too many evil overlords had fallen because the last step of their plan had involved aligning the twelve stones of power on the altar at the moment of eclipse just before invoking the amulet. Big red button was the way to go every time.
One last, deep breath, one check to make sure the holocomputer camera was recording everything, and he pushed it.
What he'd expected, he didn't really know. Eddie had mentioned the Beams being visible in the sky in Mid-World, but never described them. All Ray knew for sure was that the desert air wrinkled, and there was an enormous thrum feeling through every molecule of his bones as the machinery sprang into life. When he pulled his goggles down he could about make out the nebulous lines of power lancing from prototype to prototype, meeting and crossing in the center. The sight gave him the willies (too much like crossing the streams to really sit well with him), but he knew the real mojo was going on in other dimensions he couldn't even begin to persuade the old goggles to perceive. It was all there, all right. The readouts said so, even if he himself was lacking in the ability to really touch on it.
Story of his life, that.
After about ten minutes he judged that he had enough data to go on. Now came the important part: the off signal. A shift in the para-transference wave harmonic along a sub-current routed through several of the dimensional loops River and the Doctor had helped him isolate should, theoretically, propagate along the Baby Beam's length and radiate outward from the central nexus, running upstream along each of the remaining Baby Beams until the interference at the generators themselves forced a shutdown. For this, he didn't plan on pressing any big red button. Oh no. No, for this there was something far more suitable, something to which long years of experience had made him accustomed.
( "The light is green-" )
The only other control on the panel was the black-handled switch. Big enough to be pulled with two hands, light enough to only need one. Ray glanced at the holocomp again, crossed his fingers, and pulled it.
If he was expecting something visually incredible he sure didn't see it, but it registered. Something changed in the thrumming through his bones, a brief fingernails-on-chalkboard feeling. Very brief, mercifully, because it suddenly swelled to intolerable proportions (probably hitting the nexus), shivered in the air-
( "-the trap is clean." )
And one by one, the remaining prototypes shut down and the Baby Beams winked out.
Ray threaded the tube from the Camelbak over his shoulder and took a good long drink of the water. The way his palms were sweating, he kinda figured he was entitled.
He made sure the holocomp was turned off before doing the Ass Dance of Victory, to which he figured he was also entitled.
July 19, 2006
The figure making its way across the scrublands of the Nevada desert would have been a comical sight indeed, had any been there to see; but there was no one to see. Somewhere very far back, north towards Winnemucca, there had been a lone sign reading:
WARNING
THIS ROAD CROSSES A UNITED STATES AIR FORCE BOMBING RANGE
FOR THE NEXT TWELVE MILES
DANGEROUS OBJECTS MAY DROP FROM AIRCRAFT
That pretty much kept possible spectators away. Which was enough for Ray, really. Explaining the clothing ("White's supposed to be the coolest under desert conditions, right?"), the sunblock ("I already have SPF 30 on most of my skin but the blue zinc oxide's going to cut down on the glare under my eyes and along my nose"), and the backpack ("The Rim Runner is the largest capacity hydration pack Camelbak makes!") had been quite enough. Explaining the test equipment? Mleh. Not something he was looking forward to.
Fortunately, there was no one there to see it as he parked the Jeep by the side of the road, and no one to ask why he was hauling the big brushed-metal case through the desert like something out of a cable television commercial. If anyone saw him pacing out the circumference of the biggest open, plant-free space he could find, they were probably of the phylum Arthropoda, and thus uninclined to ask questions. Any witnesses to the careful consultation of an ordinary magnetic compass- his PDA, while possessed of GPS service, wasn't reliable out here- were reptiles or rodents, and unlikely to care. The PKE scan of every possible point along the open space's edge went unnoticed entirely, and the placement of the miniature Beam generator prototypes themselves.... well, all right, someone might have seen that, if only by satellite or by leaning to look out a window on the lone plane that passed overhead. But one more crazy person in the desert was no big deal, and so even that, fundamentally, went unnoticed.
Fine with Ray. Stage fright was not very high on his list of priorities just now.
Three minutes to Trinity, he'd said once, back when the PKE beacon was still an unknown almost. Teller's line about setting the atmosphere on fire had been taking up most of the free space in his head then. It was gone now, replaced by the cold creeping silence that tended to sneak up on him in the night- the great silent void of perspective. As he set up the control console on the last of the prototypes, he did his best to ignore the feeling, but it was still there: what do you think you're doing, anyway? You fight things that make slime, and you can't convince the rest of the scientific community that you're anything but a weirdo, and you're 'the fuzzy one' in the eyes of the New York public- you do know you're insane, right? Half the technology in these things is scientifically impossible and the rest of it is magically ridiculous. Is there a reason you haven't retreated to an occult bookstore on Eighty-seventh and taken up selling rune manuals to Columbia freshmen out for a little light introduction to the paranormal?
Hello? Are you listening to me?
Nothing irritates your fears of inadequacy quite like going on and doing what you're supposed to anyway. By the time the script of personal and scientific inadequacies finished playing itself out in his head, Ray's finger was hovering above the big red button. That hadn't been part of the original controls, but he'd felt it was important to include one. Too many evil overlords had fallen because the last step of their plan had involved aligning the twelve stones of power on the altar at the moment of eclipse just before invoking the amulet. Big red button was the way to go every time.
One last, deep breath, one check to make sure the holocomputer camera was recording everything, and he pushed it.
What he'd expected, he didn't really know. Eddie had mentioned the Beams being visible in the sky in Mid-World, but never described them. All Ray knew for sure was that the desert air wrinkled, and there was an enormous thrum feeling through every molecule of his bones as the machinery sprang into life. When he pulled his goggles down he could about make out the nebulous lines of power lancing from prototype to prototype, meeting and crossing in the center. The sight gave him the willies (too much like crossing the streams to really sit well with him), but he knew the real mojo was going on in other dimensions he couldn't even begin to persuade the old goggles to perceive. It was all there, all right. The readouts said so, even if he himself was lacking in the ability to really touch on it.
Story of his life, that.
After about ten minutes he judged that he had enough data to go on. Now came the important part: the off signal. A shift in the para-transference wave harmonic along a sub-current routed through several of the dimensional loops River and the Doctor had helped him isolate should, theoretically, propagate along the Baby Beam's length and radiate outward from the central nexus, running upstream along each of the remaining Baby Beams until the interference at the generators themselves forced a shutdown. For this, he didn't plan on pressing any big red button. Oh no. No, for this there was something far more suitable, something to which long years of experience had made him accustomed.
( "The light is green-" )
The only other control on the panel was the black-handled switch. Big enough to be pulled with two hands, light enough to only need one. Ray glanced at the holocomp again, crossed his fingers, and pulled it.
If he was expecting something visually incredible he sure didn't see it, but it registered. Something changed in the thrumming through his bones, a brief fingernails-on-chalkboard feeling. Very brief, mercifully, because it suddenly swelled to intolerable proportions (probably hitting the nexus), shivered in the air-
( "-the trap is clean." )
And one by one, the remaining prototypes shut down and the Baby Beams winked out.
Ray threaded the tube from the Camelbak over his shoulder and took a good long drink of the water. The way his palms were sweating, he kinda figured he was entitled.
He made sure the holocomp was turned off before doing the Ass Dance of Victory, to which he figured he was also entitled.