(Untitled)

[inthedeadzone]

Several hours had passed, long enough for Capa to be taken to the clinic, long enough for him to find a place to stash the suit, hoping no one would tamper with it while he was gone. It wasn't the suit itself he cared about, only that it would be in good condition when he found the right equation to get off the island

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[king_ofkings]

Adrian had seen far worse chills in the snows of Antarctica. Normally, he might weather them from inside Karnak, but it was a test of his character to withstand the colder moments of it. He found the man on his walk for supplies and paused to regard him, curious as to the suit.

"You seem to have picked an ill time to go for a walk," Adrian noted.

[king_ofkings]

"The future," Adrian said reverently, studying Capa carefully. "You must have such amazing tales that I hardly know where to begin with my questions." The pursuit of knowledge was Adrian's constant friend and the future held so much promise and so many subjects for him to newly behold. "What was it like?"

[inthedeadzone]

"Cold," Capa said, his gaze flickering toward the door once more. "Like this. No, that's not right. Colder than this. The sun was dying, Earth was in the midst of a solar winter. We..." But that wasn't right either. It had been Capa's work that had built the bomb.

"I had designed a bomb to try to reignite the star," he admitted. "That was what I was doing when I arrived."

[king_ofkings]

"You," Adrian said, exhaling the single word with reverence, his respect for the other man suddenly growing in leaps and bounds. "You designed it," he echoed curiously. "Single-handedly?"

[inthedeadzone]

Capa nodded, his chin dipping once. On Icuarus, he hadn't been treated as a scientist and no one had seemed particularly impressed with what he had done. "My work on dark matter was the first step in bulding the Stellar Bomb," he said honestly. "A way to release and control the energy contained there."

[king_ofkings]

"Incredible," Adrian murmured, eyes bright and capable of understanding this and far more. "You'll have to tell me as much as you possibly can. I have something of a vested interest in the matters of energy and providing one endless source for the world to use so that fear of losing out can be put out, like a candle."

[inthedeadzone]

The fact that Adrian actually seemed interested in the work made Capa want to talk about it more. It made him far more willing to share the details than he'd been with almost anyone except his crew. "The sun had been infected with a Q-ball," he explained, trusting Adrian to know what he was talking about. "A particle left over from the Big Bang that disrupted the normal processes, causing the sun to die. That's why the bomb had to be built."

[king_ofkings]

Adrian listened very carefully, finding the news to be somewhat distressing considering all the efforts he had long put into saving the world from nuclear holocaust, but the universe could be antagonistic, it was true. "And you were aiming to regain the sun's functions by way of an explosive resetting to normal?"

[inthedeadzone]

Capa nodded again, the corners of his mouth turning up into a soft smile of appreciation. "The Stellar Bomb was a nuclear reaction that hopefully would have destroy the infection and reignited the dying star. I only say hopefully because once we reached a certain point, the equations were useless. The outside factors were compeltely unquantifiable."

[king_ofkings]

Adrian yearned for equations once more. His mind had been tested as he had been here, but hardly with the problems of an intricate society with problems. He was the smartest man in the world and he was left to decide what he wanted for breakfast. Bubastis had begun to give him wary looks, as though she understood his mental plight. "I'm sure not completely. I'm sure you had as many formulas as possible to account for each small variation. Or could complete them upon a moment's notice."

[inthedeadzone]

"Not within the time constraints I had to work within," Capa answered, shaking his head. "We were already nearly at the sun and even then I couldn't find any definite answers. It was like flipping a coin." Ten months alone in space and he hadn't been able to find a definite answer for anything, which made him feel like a bit of a failure as a scientist.

[king_ofkings]

"That would be something of an exhilaration, then," Adrian surmised, as he had always planned and accounted for every last move in his life, every last decision came backed with much thought. "To simply not know. To apply your previous science and simply hope."

[inthedeadzone]

Capa laughed softly and lifted his shoulders. "I think it was hard to find it exhilarating when so much was on the line." And when so many people were dying around him until he'd been the only one left. At that point the only thing driving him had been the sheer determination to make sure his sister still had a world to live in.

[king_ofkings]

"If the sun was truly experiencing what you described, then I assume the Earth was in grave danger," Adrian surmised, using his mind to make the obvious conjecture. Oh, but he missed the times when he might have something truly difficult to ponder and not this simple life.