A Shining Star (Closed)
“I’m kind of impressed that you’re looking so far ahead.” Tempest said with growing signs of irritation, more like resentment, in her voice. “It’s a shame people have to be so stupid about war.”
{Tempest, please watch your language.} Adrianna chided.
“Come on! It pitiful to see just how ignorant they are of their own ignorance! We work our backs off to protect them, and all they do is complain? I hate it! We should just call them dissenters and lock them up. War is what machines like me were built for!”
Once her outburst had run its course, her face paled with horror. “I… Oh my, I’m so sorry… Admiral, please, I didn’t mean that!” she proclaimed quickly, looking up at the superior. She feared punishment, and rightly so; by all accounts, she was out of line. Such is the result of her first encounter with the emotion known as anger.
Red gave a nod. “Permission granted, Tempest. Haptic pods are shaped to fit within an average humanoid’s hand, so the Pathfinder sensors should be able to detect them easily.”
He wasn’t worried about any damage to the haptic pod from water. Like the vast majority of devices today, a haptic pod used purely light-conductive optronic circuitry. Water exposure did nothing to affect its usage.
What he was worried about was any tampering or accidental security breach to its contents. There had been a few rare occassions where a person’s haptic pod had been left unsecured, leading to embarrassing moments later on. “Truth, you did remember to have your pod’s security on, right?”
A quick nod from the dreadnought ensued. “Yes, sir. Though if Akemi can’t detect it, I think it may be turned off somehow.”
“It won’t matter if it’s turned on or not, I’ll find it!” Tempest said proudly. Her full battle rigging shimmered into existence once again. She stumbled slightly, unused to wearing it in a gravitational field, but soon compensated.
“Adrianna, launch two Pathfinder flights into the corridor.” She instructed her comrade, who carried out the order as dutifully as would be expected of her.
{Drone flights P1 and P2 launching.} Came the response, as ten small drones ejected from the hidden porthole. They immediately set to work, covering the aforementioned corridor in a multitude of scanning beams as if there were a silent disco going on in there.
{I expect a complete deep scan will be complete within the next two minutes.} Adrianna reported.
As it turned out over the next two minutes, Truth’s haptic pod was indeed within the corridor, but in a spot few imagined was possible.
The dreadnought peered with much confusion into one of the air-conditioning vents on the upper portions of the inner corridor wall. Within, a few of the Pathfinders were highlighting it in a glow of ice-blue light.
“How in the name of Valdore did it end up in there of all places?”
Red narrowed his eyes at the same spot. “You got me, Truth. Akemi, was there any gravity malfunction in this area recently?”
No, Admiral. All logs read normal on that account. However, right now I can assist in opening the vent for Truth to retrieve her device.
And right on cue, the vent’s grille retracted with a whisper, allowing the haptic pod to fall out and be caught in Truth’s hands.
Unfortunately for her, the device switched itself back on at that moment, playing a surprisingly peppy piece of music with what sounded like pre-Federation Earth Japanese lyrics.
“Eep!”
The dreadnought shut off her haptic pod with a mortified expression, looking at Red so suddenly that a normal person would have gotten whiplash from the movement.
The Fleet Admiral, for his part, smiled briefly, as did Halycon just behind him. “I won’t pry, Truth. Everyone has their interests. I trust that is all?”
Truth nodded quickly, and a gesture from Red was all she needed to depart down the corridor elsewhere.
He chuckled beside Tempest as he watched the dreadnought leave. “Believe me, Tempest, there will never be a dull moment on this Starbase.”
A chime made Halycon pull up her omni-tool inquisitively, as a screen popped up. “Oh, the preliminary scan report for Tempest from earlier just finished. Sorry, one moment…”
The repair ship read the report, eyes narrowing suddenly at a certain part. “Well, that’s odd…”
Halcyon gave a curious glance at the carrier. “Tempest, barring the Event and all that, was there any major procedure in dock that you were slated for? Refits, software updates, stuff like that?”
Tempest recalled the drones, and her rigging disappeared in a small flourish of light just as easily as it had appeared.
“Yeah, I’m due for dry docks in two weeks, the crew can’t wait. I mean… They were looking forward to it.” She bit her lip, subduing the emotions within. Past tense, she remembered.
“But that was just routine stuff, right? A little maintenance, crew rotation maybe, nothing big. Why? What did that scan show?”
A look of realisation appeared on her face. “…Wait, I remember now. There was a glitch in my systems, Adrianna said something about a signal delay. The engineers were going to fix it then. Is that… is it bad?” She asked worriedly.
Halycon blinked in surprise, as did Red.
“Signal delay? Are you sure?” he echoed.
Now that was an unprecedented issue. Unlike Asari-made optronics, the Initiative’s optronic systems were deliberately designed to never degrade over time.
If Tempest really did have such an issue with her firmware response time, then it warranted some level of concern. It wasn’t all that bad at anything like sublight maneuvering or normal combat, but anything like the extremely long-range firing solutions for her Relay Guns, tactical FTL jumps or relativistic maneuvers would be risky.
“And…how exactly would the engineers have intended to fix this, Tempest?” Red inquired. “If it was just a hardware issue, it would be trivial to fix it. Something tells me they were intending more than that.”
A Shining Star (Closed)
“I’m kind of impressed that you’re looking so far ahead.” Tempest said with growing signs of irritation, more like resentment, in her voice. “It’s a shame people have to be so stupid about war.”
{Tempest, please watch your language.} Adrianna chided.
“Come on! It pitiful to see just how ignorant they are of their own ignorance! We work our backs off to protect them, and all they do is complain? I hate it! We should just call them dissenters and lock them up. War is what machines like me were built for!”
Once her outburst had run its course, her face paled with horror. “I… Oh my, I’m so sorry… Admiral, please, I didn’t mean that!” she proclaimed quickly, looking up at the superior. She feared punishment, and rightly so; by all accounts, she was out of line. Such is the result of her first encounter with the emotion known as anger.
Red gave a nod. “Permission granted, Tempest. Haptic pods are shaped to fit within an average humanoid’s hand, so the Pathfinder sensors should be able to detect them easily.”
He wasn’t worried about any damage to the haptic pod from water. Like the vast majority of devices today, a haptic pod used purely light-conductive optronic circuitry. Water exposure did nothing to affect its usage.
What he was worried about was any tampering or accidental security breach to its contents. There had been a few rare occassions where a person’s haptic pod had been left unsecured, leading to embarrassing moments later on. “Truth, you did remember to have your pod’s security on, right?”
A quick nod from the dreadnought ensued. “Yes, sir. Though if Akemi can’t detect it, I think it may be turned off somehow.”
“It won’t matter if it’s turned on or not, I’ll find it!” Tempest said proudly. Her full battle rigging shimmered into existence once again. She stumbled slightly, unused to wearing it in a gravitational field, but soon compensated.
“Adrianna, launch two Pathfinder flights into the corridor.” She instructed her comrade, who carried out the order as dutifully as would be expected of her.
{Drone flights P1 and P2 launching.} Came the response, as ten small drones ejected from the hidden porthole. They immediately set to work, covering the aforementioned corridor in a multitude of scanning beams as if there were a silent disco going on in there.
{I expect a complete deep scan will be complete within the next two minutes.} Adrianna reported.
As it turned out over the next two minutes, Truth’s haptic pod was indeed within the corridor, but in a spot few imagined was possible.
The dreadnought peered with much confusion into one of the air-conditioning vents on the upper portions of the inner corridor wall. Within, a few of the Pathfinders were highlighting it in a glow of ice-blue light.
“How in the name of Valdore did it end up in there of all places?”
Red narrowed his eyes at the same spot. “You got me, Truth. Akemi, was there any gravity malfunction in this area recently?”
No, Admiral. All logs read normal on that account. However, right now I can assist in opening the vent for Truth to retrieve her device.
And right on cue, the vent’s grille retracted with a whisper, allowing the haptic pod to fall out and be caught in Truth’s hands.
Unfortunately for her, the device switched itself back on at that moment, playing a surprisingly peppy piece of music with what sounded like pre-Federation Earth Japanese lyrics.
“Eep!”
The dreadnought shut off her haptic pod with a mortified expression, looking at Red so suddenly that a normal person would have gotten whiplash from the movement.
The Fleet Admiral, for his part, smiled briefly, as did Halycon just behind him. “I won’t pry, Truth. Everyone has their interests. I trust that is all?”
Truth nodded quickly, and a gesture from Red was all she needed to depart down the corridor elsewhere.
He chuckled beside Tempest as he watched the dreadnought leave. “Believe me, Tempest, there will never be a dull moment on this Starbase.”
A chime made Halycon pull up her omni-tool inquisitively, as a screen popped up. “Oh, the preliminary scan report for Tempest from earlier just finished. Sorry, one moment…”
The repair ship read the report, eyes narrowing suddenly at a certain part. “Well, that’s odd…”
Halcyon gave a curious glance at the carrier. “Tempest, barring the Event and all that, was there any major procedure in dock that you were slated for? Refits, software updates, stuff like that?”
I never knew it was common in other countries to get out of your car when you’re stopped by the police.
A Shining Star (Closed)
“I’m kind of impressed that you’re looking so far ahead.” Tempest said with growing signs of irritation, more like resentment, in her voice. “It’s a shame people have to be so stupid about war.”
{Tempest, please watch your language.} Adrianna chided.
“Come on! It pitiful to see just how ignorant they are of their own ignorance! We work our backs off to protect them, and all they do is complain? I hate it! We should just call them dissenters and lock them up. War is what machines like me were built for!”
Once her outburst had run its course, her face paled with horror. “I… Oh my, I’m so sorry… Admiral, please, I didn’t mean that!” she proclaimed quickly, looking up at the superior. She feared punishment, and rightly so; by all accounts, she was out of line. Such is the result of her first encounter with the emotion known as anger.
Red gave a nod. “Permission granted, Tempest. Haptic pods are shaped to fit within an average humanoid’s hand, so the Pathfinder sensors should be able to detect them easily.”
He wasn’t worried about any damage to the haptic pod from water. Like the vast majority of devices today, a haptic pod used purely light-conductive optronic circuitry. Water exposure did nothing to affect its usage.
What he was worried about was any tampering or accidental security breach to its contents. There had been a few rare occassions where a person’s haptic pod had been left unsecured, leading to embarrassing moments later on. “Truth, you did remember to have your pod’s security on, right?”
A quick nod from the dreadnought ensued. “Yes, sir. Though if Akemi can’t detect it, I think it may be turned off somehow.”
A Shining Star (Closed)
“I’m kind of impressed that you’re looking so far ahead.” Tempest said with growing signs of irritation, more like resentment, in her voice. “It’s a shame people have to be so stupid about war.”
{Tempest, please watch your language.} Adrianna chided.
“Come on! It pitiful to see just how ignorant they are of their own ignorance! We work our backs off to protect them, and all they do is complain? I hate it! We should just call them dissenters and lock them up. War is what machines like me were built for!”
Once her outburst had run its course, her face paled with horror. “I… Oh my, I’m so sorry… Admiral, please, I didn’t mean that!” she proclaimed quickly, looking up at the superior. She feared punishment, and rightly so; by all accounts, she was out of line. Such is the result of her first encounter with the emotion known as anger.
Halycon looked equally shocked, covering her mouth.
Director Xiaoyu merely raised an eyebrow, while Red laid a hand on Tempest’s shoulder.
“It’s alright, Tempest. Believe me, you weren’t the first to speak like that, and you certainly won’t be the last. A lot of us are high-strung at the moment, so I’ll let this slide. Just be more careful with your words in future, alright?”
To Xiaoyu, Red bowed his head briefly. “My apologies for Tempest’s inflammatory words just now, Director. The military mindset is strong in a lot of shipgirls.”
Xiaoyu merely waved a hand idly. “No offense taken, I myself have a slight distaste for their tendency to push for pacifism, even when it’s . Few understand the necessity of a military in this age. I may be a scientist first and foremost, but on occasion conflict can drive technology forward.”
An insistent-sounding beeping was heard from her end, and she glanced elsewhere before looking back at them. “My apologies, it appears a matter from Project Stratos requires my assistance. I’ll have to talk more another time. Farewell for now, you all.”
Xiaoyu’s avatar winked out with a chime, Red giving another comforting pat on the shoulder to the carrier as Halycon watched them both. “Feeling better, Tempest? Perhaps a meal can help you calm down a bit more.”
Tempest subconsciously leaned closer to the Fleet Admiral, grateful for the reassuring contact. The poor shipgirl looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“I’m so sorry…” She repeated sheepishly. “I-I don’t know what came over me, it just felt so… so overpowering. Is that normal? Is this what real people always feel like?”
“I don’t want to eat right now, I just want to understand what’s happening to me…”
A silence befell the Fleet Admiral as he proceeded to envelop Tempest in a warm hug. Her question had brought on some thinking.
After a moment, when it felt more appropriate to speak, he attempted to answer as best he could.
“It depends on who you look at. Paradoxically, despite being reincarnations of warships, you and your sisters look and feel to a large extent as baseline humans did. Humanity 1.0, so to speak.”
Sensing her confusion, Red elaborated a little more. “Today, most humans in the Initiative have some level of augmentation and a slightly different physiology as well as psychology, enough to be classified as an elevated clade of humanity. Thus, Humanity 2.0.”
“But I digress. This raw anger, this overwhelming feeling of emotion, is how people felt like before the rise of 2.0. I must admit that such moments of emotion have led to both glories and tragedies for people across our entire existence.”
Mentally, Red couldn’t help but sigh a little. Here he was waxing lyrical about the turbulent nature of baseline human emotion, when he himself had by now mellowed out a little with regards to emotional expression.
“It’s why most military personnel have the capability for emotional suppression through their implants in times of extreme emotional stress, to prevent potentially harmful results stemming from rash decisions.”
The fact that shipgirls most definitely did not have implants of any sort due to their unique natures was not lost on the military. “Being what you are, we’ll just have to deal with things as they come. Though I will say that Starbase Zephyr has quite the reputation for…bizarreness. You’ll understand in time. Mostly.”
As if on cue, a voice could be heard over the ambience of the Atrium’s occupants. And it was coming closer.
“-ere did I leave that thing? I swear by stars, I will find that accursed thing and crush it like a tin c…oh, Admiral!”
A rather tall and statuesque woman clad in what appeared to be a fanciful smart dress stopped before Red, saluting him briefly as he released Tempest from the hug. The Fleet Admiral raised an eyebrow. “Lost something, Truth?”
The woman apparently named Truth answered with a hint of frustration and…was it embarrassment? “Haptic pod, though it’s been tampered with. I’d…like to find it. Post-haste. Please.”
“In a moment, Truth, we have someone here. Introduce yourself to her if you please, Halcyon and I can help you find it soon enough.”
Truth noticed Tempest close to Red, and glanced at her in surprise. “…new girl, I take it? Erm…hi. Truth and Valor, Monarch-class dreadnought. Pleasure to meet you…”
The dreadnought waved slightly.
“I’m GDS Tempest Eternal, Thanatos-class carrier. Nice to meet you too.” She replied curtly. There was a very subtle hint of irritation that only the dreadnought would see; after all, the woman had taken the Admiral’s warm embrace away from her. But that was all water under the bridge.
“What’s a… haptic pod again? I feel like I should know, I just… Can’t quite remember. But I suppose I can help look for it, whatever it is.”
“Thanks, Tempest. It’s a multi-function personal media device, basically. Some of the civvies and GDI personnel use them, those who don’t have DNIs anyway. Erm, Direct Neural Interfaces.”
Truth looked a bit more flustered as she continued. “I lost mine just a while ago, and I know it’s somewhere in or near this Atrium. It’s got…private…stuff on it, so I’d like to find it as soon as I can.”
Red knew better than to ask what Truth meant by that. Everyone deserved a degree of privacy, and respecting that went a long way.
“We’ll help you find it, Truth. Since you’re looking for it manually, I guess Akemi can’t detect it either.”
That is correct, Admiral. Truth and Valor’s haptic pod isn’t returning the usual communication pings that would let me track its location. But the last pings before it fell off my sensors came from the eastern corridor going from this Atrium, came Akemi’s direct mental reply.
Halycon let out a confused noise. “Just the corridor? Surely one of the maintenance drones picked it up.”
Apparently not, Halcyon. Maintenance logs aren’t showing any unusual items collected by the drones beyond the usual dust and organic debris. The corridor does not have much besides seating, carpet layering and trash disposal pods. Truth’s haptic pod, if it is indeed there, should not be difficult to find.
A haptic image appeared before Tempest and the rest, displaying what looked like a sleek, oblong white shape with its own holographic controls.
This is the standard Catalyst 2470 model haptic pod, the variant used by Truth and some other shipgirls. I trust this will help in identifying it.
Red nodded. “Right, let’s help Truth out, shall we?”
If you add two pounds of sugar to literally one ton of concrete it will ruin the concrete and make it unable to set properly which is good to know if you wanna resist something being built, French anarchists used this to resist prison construction in the 80s
I’m just gonna go ahead and reblog this for purely educational purposes.
added bonus is that concrete now taste good
Sugar does not really do that.
What you need is citric acid (you get that to get the hard water residues out of your pots/water boiler/washing machine), looks like sugar granules.
Or concentrated vinegar.
Cement needs a high ph to bind properly.
So if you add acid, it won’t properly set and/or needs 3-4 times longer.Speaking as someone who works in the concrete forming industry: the easiest way to severely fuck up any large concrete pour is to delay it at the wrong moment.
If someone is trying to build a huge fuckoff concrete thing – say, for instance, a giant wall – they’re going to need an obscene quantity of concrete, and that’s all going to have to be transported there from the nearest mixing plant. This means they’ll have multiple trucks coming by to decant concrete in consecutive pours while the workers place it and vibrate it to ensure it all intermixes and sets properly, forming a monolithic mass. If one pour is allowed to set before the next one is added, you get a big, ugly, possibly structurally unsound gap between the two called a “cold joint.” A bad enough cold joint can completely fuck your whole project because the next engineer or inspector who sets foot on that site is going to take one look at that motherfucker and immediately embark on a quest for blood vengeance. You will literally have to cut that whole section of wall out, slap some dowels in the nearest structurally sound bits, and re-form and pour the offending segment from scratch, which represents a fortune in cost overruns and will make everyone involved very upset. This is an especially bad problem in hot climates, because the concrete curing process is exothermic – that stuff sets much faster when it’s really hot out, and its 28-day compressive strength tends to be poorer as well.
So if, hypothetically speaking, you wanted to completely shit up a wannabe dictator’s enormous unfeasible poured concrete vanity project, you could literally just randomly hassle and delay every concrete truck on its way there. Dude’s gonna end up with a giant worthless pile of shitty crumbling concrete and exposed reinforcing steel, and an army of pissed-off contractors to boot.
reblogging for purely educational purposes nothing more
Reblogging this here, since we previously reblogged the inaccurate version.
This is really interesting science actually. Really interesting.
Nice and been confirmed
Dispersal commencing.
We NEED to get Net Neutrality trending again.
This is enough. Ajit Pai has already succeded MULTIPLE TIMES and you can expect the full removal of net neutrality on APRIL 23RD OF THIS YEAR. We can still contact our senators, we can still fight as hrd as we can, but even though 23 states are suposedly suing for the repeal of this, we need to help it along.
In case people forgot what Net Neutrality is: it is a series of laws that ensure everyone free and fair access to the internet. Without them, you will be charged for the sites you use on top of an already high internet bill. This means creators like us cannot post and be seen. Thia means that smaller schools will havebto switch to out of date text books. This means that starter IT projects that could make our lives better will die because noone can support an online presence that noone can afford to see.
And the list goes on and on and on. I have frienda who have to make their livings through commissions and working online because of multiple health issues. I have friends trying to publish books, post art, post voice acting snippets that will not be seen without these laws.
Please support Net Neutrality and contact your senators!!! This is so important to everyone you know, AND WE JUST NEED ONE SENATOR TO TURN THE TIDE!!!
Initiative Archival Network 