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Coming of age, 2484 - Series stories

Coming of age, 2484 (6)

If you want to read from the beginning, part 1 is here: Coming of age, 2484

‘Ok, thanks for that, I was feeling a bit dry there for a moment’ Punice sneers.

Punice takes a drink themselves. Dervlah decides retribution is in order; ‘Fuck it why not, let’s do it together’. It’s Punice’s turn to snort juice out their nose, showering Dervlah in, now warm, fluids.

They stand, facing each-other, breathing hard, both slightly moist. A tension between them, magnetic. Eye contact maintained. Did Dervlah raise an eyebrow? Was there a tremble of Punic’s lips? The moment passes. ‘Right then, together!’

Due to the nature of the strong atomic force engines, and the absurd levels of acceleration, their ships can’t actually fly while connected together. The AIs would pilot both carts within millimeters of eachother all the way up to .99c, but even with the ability to be so aligned, they can’t be physically connected. Dervlah sighs at the thought, she certainly knows the feeling.

With Punice grabbing their stuff from the other cart (Dervlah’s ‘Cart named Kit’ was roomier), she had a moment to breath. ‘So here I am, trying to get away from my old life, and the one fucker who I would have stayed for, has decided to join me.’ She may have left the moon, but it appears, the moon has not left her.

‘OK cartmate (‘Don’t call me that’) why are we going to Mars?’. Dervlah was sure she could hear a touch of desperation in Punic’s voice. She takes a deep breath, turns to Punice; ‘Well, I was just gonna find the first bar I can find, and get, ya know, fucked up. I’ve never gotten properly wasted before, like in the movies. I just wanna get, well, proper fuckin pissed’… she awaits judgement. The new Dervlah is through with being a good girl, through lying her way through life to make sure people have the right reactions. Punice slowly turns away, looks out the front window, and deflates with a sigh; ‘Well thank fuck you brought me, first bar indeed. My girl (‘Don’t call me that’), to get properly fucked up, you must go somewhere properly fucking classy. I know this…. I saw it in a movie’.

Continued here… Coming of age, 2484 (7).

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Coming of age, 2484 - Series stories

Coming of age, 2484 (5)

(Part 1 is here -> Coming of age, 2484 )

‘Oh my God, I’m clenching again’. The power of the cart named Kit’s engine is extraordinary. Dervlah imagines the fabric of reality torn asunder not 15 meters behind her. Matter ripped apart just to move her, away from Punice.

Well worth it.

‘My first time on a flight deck, but I’ve spent hours studying at how to fly this thing on Uni-tubes. Not, a, bother. Now this is how someone makes a clean getaway’.

Radio beeps, ‘erm, it’s not Dervlah by any chance? Look, I heard you were heading off on an adventure, but, ah, I too have a cart with an engine, you can’t exactly outrun me’.

The lump in Dervlah’s throat takes some swallowin’; ‘Punice… what the fuck like?’.

‘Can we talk?’ They say. Dervlah is surprised. Politeness was a new one. While in Uni-T, generally it was just abusiveness and general assholyness.

Dervlah, clicking the transmit button; ‘OK?’

Not 30 seconds later there was a knock on the door. A knock. On the door. In space. What’s the appropriate response here? ‘Cooeeeeeee, come on in, I’ve got the kettle on’ doesn’t seem quite appropriate.

‘Punice, you fucking prick, what do you want?’. Yep, that feels better.

‘Oh hi Derbl.. I mean Dervlah’. Dervlah’s eyes roll enough to see out her own ears. They continue; ‘I heard you were heading out, leaving home behind?’ Stoney stare responds. ‘I think it’s really cool ya know’. Stoney stare continues but adds a square drink from the juice machine. Stoney stares are surprisingly thirsty work. Punice eyes the drink, waiting for the offer. Oh they can wait.

‘Oh fuck sake Derv, do I have to spell it out? Can I come with you or what?’

Juice erupts from mouth (and nose) and proceeds to spray over Punices’ face, torso, and wonderfully styled hair.

That, was not expected.

Continued here: Coming of age, 2484 (6)

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Coming of age, 2484 - Series stories

Coming of age, 2484 (4)

Part 1 of this series is -> Coming of age, 2484

Dervlah’s heart beats and beats. ‘Punice Milord, what the fuck are they doing here?’ Dervlah’s future, stretched like a rubber band out in front, starts to shrink. The universe seconds before, unimaginably vast, is now the distance between two ships. The universe shrinks.

But, she has already started this journey. She has momentum. This fucker can’t stop her.

Momentum = mass x speed. Finger tip pushes throttle forwards to the stops. An iron ion is fired into the ignition chamber. Superconducting coils dump terawatts of energy in the shielded tunnel. From the iron atoms’ perspective, the universe shrinks.

‘I am iron’.

Such extreme force pulls at the atom, the distances between the protons, neutrons, quarks and haydrons start to widen. The force applied so quickly that momentum prevents the iron ion’s movement, but the generated energy field has the local force of a magnetar.

For the iron atom, space has contracted, to the outside observer (the cart called Kit) the atom has stretched over a kilometer out the back. To the atom however, the universe had shrunk to the point where the strong nuclear force dominates all others. And this force does not want anything spread out over a kilometer.

A rubber band the length of the galaxy. To the engine, about to transfer this potential energy to kenetic. To Dervlah, an irresistible force dragging her away from her home, her life. Away from fucking Punice.

While the electromagnetic energy was the equivalent of pulling the trigger, at two orders of magnitude more, the strong nuclear force was the gunpowder blowing out the bullet. In this case the bullet was a former iron atom, and the recoil was the cart named Kit, accelerated to .33c, or a third the speed of light.

Dervlah hoped it was fast enough.

Continued in part 5 Coming of age, 2484 (5)

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Coming of age, 2484 - Series stories

Coming of age, 2484 (3)

Part 1 is here: Coming of age, 2484

Dervlah sits in silence. For the first time in her life, all she could hear was the sound of her own body. Nothing else. In Space, silence means death. With none of that fancy machinery around to keep her alive, Death comes stalking.

The cart named Kit wasn’t really dead, but everything that moved within it was. Kit had an enormous amount of energy wound tightly around the conduction coil in the back. But that energy was silent.

‘If I take no action, Death will come. But how is that different to living?’

Dervlah realises her eyes are closed only when everything turns orange red. Slightly flashing as though someone was shining a light at her. She opens her eyes, wipes away the gathered tears, to see someone shining a light at her. From another cart. In space.

With every thing shut down, the light begins to blink. ‘I think it’s morse!’

MORSE_CODE_DICT = {
    'A': '.-', 'B': '-...', 'C': '-.-.', 'D': '-..', 'E': '.',
    'F': '..-.', 'G': '--.', 'H': '....', 'I': '..', 'J': '.---',
    'K': '-.-', 'L': '.-..', 'M': '--', 'N': '-.', 'O': '---',
    'P': '.--.', 'Q': '--.-', 'R': '.-.', 'S': '...', 'T': '-',
    'U': '..-', 'V': '...-', 'W': '.--', 'X': '-..-', 'Y': '-.--',
    'Z': '--..',
    '0': '-----', '1': '.----', '2': '..---', '3': '...--',
    '4': '....-', '5': '.....', '6': '-....', '7': '--...',
    '8': '---..', '9': '----.',
    ' ': '/'
}

inverted_dict = {v: k for k, v in MORSE_CODE_DICT.items()}
text = ''
for code in morse_code.split(' '):
    if code in inverted_dict:
        text += inverted_dict[code]
    else:
        text += code

‘R U OK’. ‘Am I ok? Well I’m not sure. No I’m not ok. Why are you shining a light on me. Is the vastness of Space, the great beyond not enough to get a bit of, well a bit of space?’ Apparently not.

Fingers start pushing in the circuit breakers, one by one. A quarter the way in, the alarms start their clamour. Three quarters of the way through, they cease, but the noise. The whoosh of the air filter is back. The tics and buzz of electronics and heaters are back. The sound of life is back.

The click of the radio is back. ‘Cart named Kit, cute. Eh, cart named Kit, this is Punice, do you hear me?’

‘Punice? What the hell is he doing here? I better respond. Hmmmm. Oh yes’:

‘Fuck you, Punice Milord.’

Continued in Coming of age, 2484 (4)

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Coming of age, 2484 - Series stories

Coming of age, 2484 (2)

Part 1 > Coming of age, 2484

Pop. Well no pop, but there should have been a pop. Black tunnel and pop, the whole universe. Is this what the big bang felt like?

Although not reccomended, Dervlah knows what has to come next.

Her hand drops to her right, fingers feeling for the small, roughened plastic rocker. Finger tip pushes back.

The whole chair gives a slight jar and slowly moves back, with a hum of gears and electricity. Dervlah has dreamed about this moment ever since she can remember. Her eyes stay fixed and the jewelled universe unfolding outside her cart’s canopy. ‘There, that’s enough’. Her right hand now has access to the small fusebox panel set close to the floor.

Dervlah’s heart races, her head races, but her hand is steady, it knows what to do. The panel falls open (bottom hinged for easy access), revealing row upon row of small, round, circuit breakers.

How she has dreamed of this. Barely breathing now, her fingers grip the first breaker, and pull.

Tiny pop. Warning light. Second breaker, pull, pop, new warning light. Repeat. About half way through now. The alarms start their clamour. About three quarters through now, the Alarms stop their clamour.

The last pop. Dervlah exhales. Tears begin to swell on her eyes. It doesn’t matter. The light of the cosmos distorted through tears on wet eyes with no gravity to wick them away. It doesn’t matter. The panels are all dark now, and the controls are dead. It’s not about her eyes now.

She was born on the moon. Her whole 24 years were on the moon. Air cleaned by filters and pumps and shifted in a never ending cycle. People crowded the few percent of the suface capable of holding human life. Constant fucking noise.

For the first time in her life, she had it.

Silence.

Part 3 > Coming of age, 2484 (3)

Categories
Coming of age, 2484 - Series stories

Coming of age, 2484

Dervlah inhales. She clenches, clenches every thing. Retro terminal open on the dash, she loves the classic look.

Just a few twinkles out the front windscreen. Just enough to make it hard to see what she sees. ‘It’s just a pipe’. Dervlah exhales. Slowly. This is it. Her freedom. Well, as much as she can expect for now. Twenty years of studying done. Guilt feeling that she hasn’t got a… ‘proper job’. But that guilt feeling is kicked in the balls and fucked out the window. It’s been too much good girl. This is the payout. The promised land.

One thousand coins in her l-pocket, scrimped and saved making far too many starters and desserts. A full coil of energy thrumming in the back of her second hand cart named Kit, and her passport’s up to date.

Launch OK? Hit the Big Red Button and ‘oh my god did I stop clenching no thank god I didn’t’. Ohhhh the squeeze of the G force. Acceleration. Vision starts to fade on the outside. Slowly the twinkles approach. Faster they approach. Like lines then streaks they approach.

‘It’s just a pipe’ ten thousand nine hundred and twenty one kilometres long. Constant acceleration at three earth Gs. Eh…

[ins] In [1]: import math

[ins] In [2]: distance_m = 10921 * 1000

[ins] In [3]: distance_m
Out[3]: 10921000

[ins] In [4]: acceleration = 9.8 * 3

[ins] In [5]: final_speed_squared = 2 * acceleration * distance_m

[ins] In [6]: final_speed = math.sqrt(final_speed_squared)

[ins] In [7]: final_speed
Out[7]: 25340.773468858442

[ins] In [8]: initial_speed = 0

[ins] In [9]: time = (final_speed - initial_speed) / acceleration

[ins] In [10]: time
Out[10]: 861.9310703693347

‘Fourteen minutes twenty one seconds at 3G. I can’t clench for fourteen minutes. I can’t clench for one minute. Why the fuck do I keep thinking about clenching? Remember the training video. Try to relax. Try to fucking relax. They didn’t mention clenching. Fuck it, only twelve minutes left, and I will be outta here at oh… 25 kilometres per second’

Dervlah is sure, feeling like an elephoth is sitting on her for fourteen minutes is worth it; the feeling of getting out of this shit pit at twenty five kilometres per second, is, well, it’s fantastic!

Continued here: Coming of age, 2484 (2)

Categories
stories The Shouter Series

The Shouter (7)

The Shouter part 1 is here -> The Shouter

The Guards, Guarding..

“Yea did wha?” “Like, year not dumb fellas, clearly, but ah, what are yea even at playin wit dis stuff, sure yea coudda lost an eye!” Donegal Guard happy he has enough down in his notebook for the insurance company, nods at Dublin Guard. The nod said “We have enough, now lets get outta here before there’s more paperwork”.

Dermot, Declan, Tweedie Dum, Tweedie De; lookin at eachother. Not a tight squeeze anymore, not a shed. Quite airy now with the rather large hole punched in the wall. “Here, I know we said no strings attached, but…” Dermot, who saw this coming, says “Ah I fuckin knew it, no strings me hole”.

The equipment wrapped up and carted off. Summer ending approaching like a small ball of energised air on a collision course. Like a truck now. Dermot figured out it was Thales, a “we make satellities, but also we make missiles” company from across the pond, who had rented the building.

School starting again. The final year. Time to get the head down and start studying for real.

Radio Wow back on the air, two lads in the shed, bit of a squeeze, sharing a can of Dutch Gold. Dermot sighs. Declan, who knows about sound, says “Well look, I was thinkin…”

The end

This was my first series and first try at writing for public consumption. I hope you enjoyed it! You can follow me on mastodon if you would like to be notified of new stories”- https://mastodon.ie/@roomey

Categories
stories The Shouter Series

The Shouter (6)

Part 1 -> The Shouter

It was the smallest driver in the center of The Shouter. Small and skinny like the expensive cans of coke in the pub. It’s so small, a few kilowatts pushed through it’s windings move it fast. Move it very fast.

It shoots forward, fast. Faster than the speed of sound. A sphere of super compressed air left sitting there, about the size of a ping pong ball. The centre driver moves so fast, but the sphere of pressure sits, compressed, kilowatts of energy, formed in the air itself.

The larger driver, encircling the thinner driver, moves backwards. A donut of almost vacuum. The focus drivers, sitting around the perimeter of The Shouter like eyelashes of a fucked up looking eye, they squeeze.

Observe.

Observe a slinky shook on one end, and the wave of energy speeding down it. Observe, a nugget of compressed shock, speeding down a path shaped out of thin air.

Slow motion. Dermot and Declan’s faces pan by, slightly out of focus. Open Mouthed. Hints of Tuborg making a hasty exit from Dermot’s right nostril (he’s had a bit of a cold, hence the asymmetry). In sharp relief we see a small ball of hell travelling past. It appears to be growing as it passes them. Declan, who knows about sound, has a hint of a smile on the corner of his mouth.

Crack. Crack may be too small a word for what happens next. Our favourite small (although bigger than when it started) ball of hell energy, impacts a solid lab wall. Cavity block and steel structure.

A few kilowatts of energy finds a nucleation point on the dappled paint, a tiny scratch. Our hell ball vanishes. The few kilowatts (a few more now as it had some mass added along the way) is a thin root, squeezed between molecules of paint and cavity block, and it expands.

A hole appears. Energy is released, then absorbed by every bit of glass in the building. Every crystalline structure gets a dose. The glass is sick of this abuse, the stress of these fuckin ejits messing around. The glass gives up. All the glass, in the entire…. fucking… building.

A smoking, football shaped hole in the wall. Alarms all over City West shreeking their siren calls; they are jealous of The Shouter.

Declan, who knows about sound, Dermot, who doesn’t. Still there. Still have Tuborg (less now thanks to sympathetic foaming actions). Can’t say anything cause they can’t hear anything. They don’t need to. The smiles on their faces says it all.

Continued in part 7 -> The Shouter (7)

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stories The Shouter Series

The Shouter (5)

The Shouter < Part 1 here

The Crack cracks every bit of glass in the lab, it cracks every bit of glass in the building. It cracks the shit that shouldn’t fucking crack at all!

The night in question. Drizzle, wet, manky. Dermot and Declan. Few cans of Tuborg. They got a few bob now, no strings attached. They got a swag in their step now that gets them the few cans in the offie with no ID.

Their pirate radio station, Radio Wow ( ‘Wowing you out every Monday to Thursday after homework yowsa‘) has not been Wowing anyone after homework for about two months now. That’s ok tho, cause it was the summer holidays. But now… The end of summer is coming on like an onrushing truck now. The boys sense it. No way could they make this trip to citywest after school, once school comes on.

The end of this whole project was coming on like an onrushing truck now. The end of the fuckin night was coming on like an onrushing truck now.

Dermot, who dreams and and looks at too much YouTube, leans back on the beanbag, faces the roof and closes his eyes. Like an onrushing truck now. In his closed eyes he sees a centre of quiet black, and all around is black with thin silver lines. Movement and indistinct shapes on the edge of his vision. ‘Am I looking at my phone too much? Have my nurons formed new patterns that see a bright rectangle in front of my eyes that brings me laughter, joy, sadness and anger? Nurons which in times past arranged around faces of people I saw everyday, now arrange around this bright rectangle in space? Ignore the surrounding? Makes my heart beat fast? Makes me fall into the quiet black hole, fall down the tunnel like an onrushing truck now?’

Declan, who knows about sound; ‘What if… What if the inner driver went faster than the speed of sound? What if we got the Shouter to break the sound barrier?’

Dermot, who doesn’t, lifts from his torper. He sees the inner coke-can looking driver getting rammed through the tube like an onrushing truck now. The driver that looks like a coke can, pushed faster than air likes to move. He says, ‘What if we focus it?’.

Crack goes the building, like it was hit, by a truck now.

Contines in -> The Shouter (6)

Categories
stories The Shouter Series

The Shouter (4)

The Shouter < link to the first part

The big yellow warning sign on the lab entrance states “Ear protection must be worn”. They bought the sign on amazon, but they had a few bob now, no strings attached.

A lack of thinkimentation and a lot of experimentation happened. The power output of The Shouter quickly grew with better materials. A few 1 farad capacitors from the boy-racer scene brought Dermot and Declan closer to their own mortality, but also brought The Shouter to ever higher performance levels.

Dermot went to a science fair once and saw an ‘air cannon’. A bin with a circle cut out at the bottom and an elasticated plastic bag at the top. He saw the performer scienctist invite young ‘uns up onstage and fire air at their parents.

Declan, who knows about sound, listens to Dermot, who has little sense, gush about how exciting it would be to make The Shouter act like an Air cannon.

Surprisingly easily, Declan, who knows about sound, manages to make the driver tube (the coke can looking bit) nested, with a smaller coke can, like the ones pubs charge a fortune for, sitting inside the larger driver. Dermot, who knows a little about a lot, places a number of smaller shouters around the circumference of the central, nested shouters.

Hook up a controller, Dermot, who likes computers, models the new, admittedly scary looking, Shouter, in the open source Godot game engine. By moving the different drivers at slightly different delays, they can make a highly linear smoke ring looking thing travel all the way down the lab.

Declan, who knows about sound, wants to experiment some more. It’s a computer game now, like a brilliant new toy hooked up and ready for action, but what else can it do?

Dermot, who likes to shmoke a bit, blows shmoke into the front of the Shouter “Ha we should rename it the Shmoker” Declan plays with the Xbox controls. ‘Bang’ a square of shmoke rolls down the lab, ‘Boom’ an octagon skews to the left and rattles glasses on the rack.

Rattles glasses? What if…. Schreeeech pull over a rack full of science looking glasses. They came with the lab who cares.

They can smash them all easily, just by turning it up, but Declan, who knows about sound, picks them off, one by one like some gun toting sherrif in the wild west. A sound like scratching your thumb down the low E string on a guitar, a smash of glass giving up all hope.

They have a few bob now, no strings attached, What if…. Laser range finder, exact distance to wall is… 8 meters, resonant frequency would be…. f =c/2L, let’s say air temp is normal, dunno how to account for all the fuckin shmoke in here, 343 meters per, lets call it 21.267hz. Infrasonic eh, well if a pipe organ can do it so can we.

Eyeballs vibrating in their own sockets, plaster shearing off the walls in sheets, Dermot and Declan, swallowing hard to keep their hot chicken wraps down, looking at eachother. Fuck.

The Shouter (5) < Part 5