Aberrant: Children of Quantum Fire - We All Live in a [Blank] Submarine [3.1]

[Quantum Fire]

A month of work and time from the moment that her foster siblings brought Zia, as Alexandra worked on the submarine, her foster siblings checking in and out now and again, but generally allowing her to work without interruption, and helping when they were asked. Serenity and Traveler also dropped in now and again, also helping when she needed an extra pair of hands. Nevertheless, it didn't appear overnight, still the submarine was developed rather quickly.

[SalmonMax]

(OOC - This thread is replacing the "Et Facta Est Lux" fiction, due to new understanding of what Alex can and can't do. )

Alexandra started by building the workspace. A combination of seismic "sonar" imaging and spelunking into the lava tunnels and caverns that had once been lakes of fire when the mountain had been active. She smoothed the walls of a cavern that was close to the right proportions, then reduced the far end of the cave to atoms. Because she was operating from a mental blueprint, she even made little divots and grooves in the walls. Those would be where the scaffoldng that held the ship fit into the walls. Then she deepened it so the she could open a door under the waterline when she flooded it.

Now she'd need some help.

Warren, she sent over the link, I think I know how to make the sub, but I need your help. Can you meet me in workshop?

[Courier]

Warren sent back, Sure, and opened a gate to step through.

What's up?

[SalmonMax]

He beat her there by several seconds, and saw the new door opening up on the far end. She nodded at him and threw her goggles onto a bench where they evaporated into waste radiation.

"I was reviewing some of the data you brought back from that other solar system...the one with the water moon. If you've got the juice, I'd like you to take us back there. Only not the water moon. There was another moon you saw with a bright silver color. The spectroscopy on the light scattering from it was very...interesting. And relevant to the submarine project. I want to go there so I can sense a physical sample and see if my hunch is right."

She grinned at him, a tired but happy expression that she seldom had these days. "If so, I think I can get this hull done after all. It's easier to work with material than it is to just will stuff into existence ex nilhio."

"What do you say?"

[Courier]

Asking Warren to go exploring was like asking a cat if it wanted more catnip. Warren smiled and replied, "Sure".

As an afterthought he added, "I can shield you against flying rocks in transit..." With Jupiter2 there were complex orbits, and being hit by a rock moving tens of thousands of miles per hour wasn't a joke

"...but how good are you with a vacuum?"

[SalmonMax]

"Micrometeoroids shouldn't be an issue," Alex demurred. "As for vacuum..."

There was a hiss and a flash of light as an articulated, perfectly-fitted hardsuit appeared around her. Exhalation vented, making a Darth Vader-like sound.

"...won't be a problem."

[Courier]

Warren replied dryly, "I like."

Warren sent to Pip, Alex and I are going on a trip off planet. We'll be an hour, the link will break.

Warren shaped his hands in front of him and ripples formed in the air becoming a mirrored(?) rope(?). He commented, "Stable Three-D warp." Warren looped it around Alex and said, "Gotcha. Now prepare to become one with the Force."

In the blink of an eye a gate flowed over Warren and Alex and took them nowhere but left them faded and unsolid. Alex had seen this before, most of their mass was now 'between' gates in whatever happened to people in transit.

A mirrored surf board warp formed under Warren and Alex creating a scene somewhere between mad science and the Silver Surfer. Warren commented, "We'll lose the link on the other side and vacuum doesn't talk good. Any last words?"

{Use Tendril to grab and then Attune Alex. Then Activate Desolid, EM:Flight}

[SalmonMax]

Alex held up a gauntleted hand. In it was a small piece of plastic.

"It goes into your ear. Works via vibrations in your jawbone so it won't need air. It'll let us keep in touch."

"Other than that, lets do it."

[Courier]

Warren put the ear plug in and mouthed, Testing... pretty cool.

Warren picked up a camera, then focused and created a gate showing a starscape. The 'surfboard' rose and drifted through the gate. The other side was cold, dark, and without gravity. No planets or sun was visible. Alex and Warren were in space's cold, alien, beautiful starscape.

Warren spent a moment looking around and rotated the board. He pointed to a very bright dot and mouthed, There we go. I found the star, funny how easy it is to misplace one of those. We're a light hour off.

Warren studied the system star, then he studied the starscape. This time he knew Jupiter2's distance from her star. In addition he knew where the planet was in relation to the starscape... thus... Jupiter2 should be right about...

Warren pointed to a dot and said, And that would be Jupiter2. Isn't it lovely? Moment...

Warren stared at the dot for a few moments and said, And we're in luck. Metalish worldish is on this side of J2. We have visual contact Captain...

Warren was clearly enjoying himself. He didn't often get company, especially company he could actually talk to.

He focused again and another gate appeared, this time showing J2's massive bulk in the background. The surfboard flew through the gate and J2's bulk loomed oppressively, looking close enough to touch. Several moons were visible and danced in orbit around their heavy overlord. Rings were visible where planets had perhaps collided.

Warren tilted the board and Alex could see they were in close orbit of 'Metalish Worldish', perhaps a minute flight down to the ground.

Warren asked, Land?

[SalmonMax]

"Wait," Alex said. She touched the side of her helmet, and a red gleam glared from some apparatus attached to it. Dimly Warren could see images on the inside of the smoky glass of her helmet's window; some kind of HUD.

After a moment she looked and Warren and said, "It looks like most of what I'm looking for is in the moon's ring system. Get us closer to that. Then get ready to open a gate between ring material and the lab back home so I can do some detailed tests."

[Courier]

Warren snapped a few pictures while Alex did her thing then at her order he opened another gate. He then moved both of them to the ring, inside it actually. Ring pieces difted past and vision at the plane of the ring was obscured, but they could still see out if they looked away from the ring.

Warren snapped a few more pictures and waited for Alex. If she wanted he'd capture and attune a few samples.

[Quantum Fire]

The metals in the ring system were all non-radioactive heavy metals, iron was most common, but just about any metal could be found among the rocks that were part of this ring system, and there were huge amounts of it. Some of the pieces of the rings were as much as a mile long, rock, iron, copper, lead, gold, mercury, alloys of cobalt, zinc and aluminum could all be found within these rings, to name a few.

[Courier]

Warren looked around. Millions(?) of years ago, someone had an interesting day. These were metals, the implication was that worlds had collided. Destruction on a scale unimaginable. It would have been interesting to see and get on camera.

And... there where chunks of stuff just floating around. A low risk way to get rich if he wanted to. Get a few dozen pounds of gold and take it back. Or... take tons of the lesser, more common stuff. That would require working with a mining company of some sort. He had no clue how he'd contact... no, sure he did. DeVris was all about making those sorts of connections on a 'no questions asked' basis.

Hmm...

[SalmonMax]

Alexandra spun around in place with tiny compressed air thrusters in her suit. Had they been there before? Hard to say. She played with some gadget in her hands and said, "I'm going to start tagging rocks. The ones I tag, send back to the lab on Earth for the sub. Whatever else you want is all up to you. Just try not to get it mixed in with the sub materials."

She was quiet for a moment, then added, "This is a big find. Almost limitless resources we can tap without any legal danger or questions of ownership getting in the way. With this, I can make the sub. Eventually maybe even the ship itself."

[Courier]

Warren nodded and reflexively tried to send agreement over the link. Trying again he said, "Ya. No problem. You were smart using a close system, if we were doing this at my full range I'd miss the lab a lot more often. The only issue is effective juice management. Could you whip up a portable nuke plant or something?"

[SalmonMax]

"Mmm...maybe. It'd be tricky to give it a useful output level though. How about this...you open a warp gate to the lab, and then just move the side over here around. Then you don't have to keep opening new ones over and over. You can move them, right?"

[Quantum Fire]

Using the warp the way Alex suggested would be draining, he lose quantum fast that way, but it was not impossible, and it would also allow them to gather resources a lot faster then normal. It just meant that he'd have to stop periodically and recharge, though with Alex helping it might be a bit easier. It would take them hours, most likely a few days of work, before they had everything needed for the submarine.

[Courier]

Warren moved to manually push some rocks together to make it a bit easier on himself, then he created a Warp. Alex could see the other side of the Warp was empty space and definitely not her lab.

Warren let that gate drop without doing anything with it and tried again. This time Alex could see the other side was the lab. Warren gestured and moved the gate around like it was a remote control airplane. The gate enveloped a huge piece of rock she'd tagged, then while he was sending it back for a piece he'd missed, the gate collapsed.

Warren commented, "Well, crap. This will get the job done, but it's going to take days just to get everything together, and most of that will be recharge."

Warren hesitated and looked outside the ring at one of Jupiter Two's moons. The sun cut a clear day/night line across it. Warren said, "Hey, Alex. Serious question this time. Are those jokes about nuke plants real? I've never actually been inside one, but don't they make quantum? Can we recharge off them? And... the sun is one big nuke, could I recharge off of it?"

[SalmonMax]

Alexandra ran her tongue over her teeth, thinking.

"Sort of. Nuclear reactions and high levels of nuclear radiation cause perturbations..." She paused, then shook her head. "They create higher 'concentrations' of 'quantum energy' in their vicinity," the nova went on. "It's not exactly that they radiate it, but...close enough in practical terms. You can't just instantly recharge from them, but you could probably recover from depletion a lot faster if you were nearby."

She glanced at the distant corona of the sun.

"The trick is, can you get close enough without evaporating? Then again, that might not be a problem for you, right?"

[Courier]

Warren visibly hesitated before replying, "I... don't know. I've been close, closer than Mercury orbit. But... how close is 'close', and how close is 'close enough'?

Was it really possible? And what would it be like to explore the sun? That sounded like almost a religious experience.

Warren added, "The problem with trying something like that is you can't really see where you're going. How about..."

Warren gulped, he might be about to suggest something mindbogglingly stupid, or wonderful, or even both. Warren continued, "...how about I make three more loads here, then send you back on the third."

[SalmonMax]

Alex's faceplate swiveled to regard Warren. Even with him not being able to see her face, he could sense that probing expression she got at times like these.

"Warren, there's safe ways to figure out what you can tolerate, temperature-wise. You know that, right? I can build a shielded chamber...like a blast furnace, and scale up temperatures slowly. And it's not just temperature either. Stars put out radiation...charged particles, hard X-rays and gamma rays. Magnetic fields. All at the same time. We can test you for those conditions under controlled circumstances before you sunwalking."

[Courier]

Warren replied slowly, "Yes... but..." But it'd be less like exploration. Less like fun.

Warren continued, "I've already been close enough to the sun that I'd be dead if it were an issue. And other space novas have done it."

All the cool kids have done it, why can't I?

Besides, I'm cooler than they are better at this than they are.

Warren said, "And if I do this, you'll have all the material you need in hours, not days to weeks. And it's not just you, me out here means the team is weaker."

Warren was well on the way to convincing himself if he hadn't already.

[SalmonMax]

Alexandra plants her hands on her hips...looking a bit silly doing so while drifting in the void.

"I can't force the issue," she says. "If you want to dive into a giant thermonuclear explosion in space with no idea if you'll survive, I can't stop you. But I'll be very upset if you don't come back, you understand. Pip and the others really seem to like you, and I hate to see them upset."

[Courier]

Ruefully Warren smiled at Alex and said humorously, but seriously, "I love you too Alex."

Then Warren looked long and hard back at the line of daylight, then he formed another gate and started maneuvering it around like the previous one. As far as he knew he was the only one who could do that.

But... Alex was right, that was problem arguing with her. He knew that, he'd tried it. On the other hand, she wasn't saying she knew. This was a Warren-specific issue.

Could he do this? Strip away the thrill of discovery. Strip away ego. Strip away that it'd be useful if he could.

Could he? Really?

Given what he'd done before and what he knew about other novas, yeah. It'd be a stretch, but the big issue other novas ran into was getting lost and/or getting out. Warren never got lost.

Or maybe that was, 'The big issue the surviving novas had gotten into.' That was 'Alex thinking'. Survivor bias. Some novas could do this, but we only heard from the survivors. Others tried and failed, or make that, tried and died.

Looking at the ones who succeeded, that was him. The press sometimes called it 'adaptability'. But... not all novas were of equal strength. Was it really pushing ego aside to think he was a lot stronger than some of the survivors?

Warren said slowly, "Alex, I think I can do this. And... I'll be careful. I promise."

[SalmonMax]

Alex folded her arms now, and her suit vented little jets of steam to carry away the ever-building heat within. She studied him, then nodded.

"Alright. But I'm not going back first. I'll stay in-system while you try it. Maybe that way, if something goes wrong, I can try something to pull you out. What, I don't know."

[Courier]

Warren studied Alex back and didn't say the obvious.

The sun was 7 light minutes away. Alex wasn't giving him a locator beacon to find him because by the time she got the message it would be too late. The Earth was 40 light years away. Warren wasn't just the only way to get back, he was the only way to get to Jupiter 2 in the first place. If he died here then Alex was stuck and her suit would last only a few hours.

She wasn't backup, she was raising the stakes. If he was letting the thrill of discovery overwhelm good sense... well if he screwed up they'd both die here. If he wasn't absolutely, totally sure he could do this, then he shouldn't.

So... was he absolutely sure?

Warren considered, followed his line of logic again, and then nodded. He was sure. And if it was a problem... he'd back out. Juice-wise, he was just under half full. Trying to time it for maximum efficiency would be just too clever, if it worked then it would work again, if it didn't then he might need more than he thought.

Warren said decisively, "Understood... and thank you. Do you want me to drop you off somewhere first?"

[SalmonMax]

"Closer to the star. Half a AU...call it fifty million miles for short. Should be safe enough there. I can always bulk the suit up if there's a flare or something."

[Courier]

Warren nodded, opened a gate, and took both of them through. He said needlessly, "We're more than half way between J2 and the sun. Call it half an AU."

Alex wasn't being subtle about raising the stakes. From where they'd been she could have gotten to Water-Worldish and Metalish-Worldish. Maybe build a base. Spend a few years and build enough tech to get back. Here there was nothing. He was going to have to come back. Warren took several moments to picture where they were with his spacial senses, then he opened a gate and went through.

One tenth an AU. One third of Mercury's distance to the Sun. The Sun was huge and hot. Warren held out his hand and made it real. When it didn't melt he made the rest of him real too. No hiding inside gate-space, he needed to be real enough to absorb quantum.

But... he couldn't feel any juice. Was he close enough? Apparently not.

Closing his eyes, Warren sent his warp board towards the sun then laughed nervously. 15 Million Kilometers. At 200 km an hour he'd take a while. He was delaying things. No, he was afraid. You had to be close to a nuke plant to get juice. 15 Million Km wasn't 'close'.

The sun's nuclear core had a temp over a million degrees. Light took tens of thousands of years to escape. If that was where he needed to be, then he'd go back to Alex. The surface would be dangerous enough. The Photosphere. Only(!) six thousand degrees.

Like it sounded so much less dangerous phrased like that. Warren opened another gate much closer to the sun and went though.

[Quantum Fire]

Getting closer to the sun, it was something that he could do, and his body continued to adapt to the environment, as it got hotter and hotter. The raging crackling of fire could be smelled, it was like getting closer and closer to a bonfire, he could feel the heat on his skin, hear the roar of the star in his ears as he entered the corona..

It was... magnificent, like nothing he'd ever imagined in the world, it was like being in a raging storm of fire, no, not fire, a storm of pure plasma. The heat and rage of the fire wasn't quite something his body was able to fully adapt too.. he could feel a bit of his quantum draining to keep him adapted this insane environment that nothing living normally could live in.

Click to reveal..

Warren is losing 1 quantum a minute in the outer corona to remain adapted to this environment.. though his body is adapted, for now. [Higher Mega-Stamina wouldn't require as much, or any at all.] I will roll for Apotheosis for this experience though, difficulty slightly lowered to 4 due to the intensity of this experience.

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3075084/

Which comes out to only 3 successes.. which will have some effect, but no apotheosis at this point. Still, you may get closer if you like.

[Courier]

Something was wrong. He was losing juice, not gaining it. Close enough to hurt still wasn't close enough. He was swimming in heat and still not even on the surface.

Warren felt his body struggle to adapt. To change. He could do this... or maybe it'd been a bad idea. He needed another gate, but which way? In? Or Out? Did he explore further and hope it'd get better? Of course he would.

He formed another gate.

2 km above the surface. Energy. Power. Waves of heat. Ribbons, rivers of power the size of cities sprang from the sun and then returned.

Warren felt something shift and then he felt a little better. His eyes adjusted so he could see... and he was tempted to tear them out.

The Glory. The Power. The Danger. The sheer alien wonder of it. This was Heaven. This was Hell. This was Home.

Warren shouted in pain. Anger. Joy. It was too much. Warren slipped into total sensory overload and shut down.

Catatonic he fell off his board and gravity's embrace pulled him in.

[Quantum Fire]

The glory and majesty of it, the pull of the gravity, his body stabilized a moment, then as he fell from the board, for a moment it was almost close enough, his quantum reserves started to refill.. but the blaze of magesty that was this star overwhelmed his senses...

And he fell, for a moment, panic might have filled his mind, and suddenly something else.. and warren was conscious again, someone was holding him. Opening his eyes.. it was himself, or at least, it looked like him.. but the power radiating off him, it was like his quantum signature was almost as strong as the sun below him. This couldn't be him, but then, his ability to see things beyond the norm suggested that it had to be..

"Wake up.. it's a bit stupid to have to save myself on the edge of Apothesis, don't you think, Warren? Don't forget to come back to this time and space in existance in a few years, you almost fell into to the heart of the sun, idiot.. and yes, I'm you, so I can call you an idiot. It did spark your node though, just enough, welcome a whole new world.." With that, he was suddenly alone, and awake.. was it real, or a dream? Below, he could see his body was about to plunge into the sun.. and suddenly, somehow, the mix of excitement and loss of conconsciousness was it.. the wave of quantum unfolding out from him was enough that Alex could suddenly feel the spark from her location..

It wasn't like Epiphany, which was cloaked a good deal by the amount of Nova's on the planet, there was nothing but empty space between him and Alex.

Click to reveal..

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3075744/

Difficulty 3.. that was the second roll, the first one failed completely, which meant that he continued to fall and was in mortal danger, which sparked a second roll..

Welcome to Apothesis Warren.

[Courier]

Warren summoned a board and kept it between himself and the sun. The heat wasn't a problem but the shear glory still threatened to overwhelm him.

He'd been stupid.

Not only just now and not only in not seeing the sensory overload. Lots of his previous actions stood out as being wasteful, second rate, dumb. In retrospect there'd been better ways that should have been obvious at the time.

Warren took a peek over the edge of his board and flinched away. It'd gotten worse. There was more there now, every river of plasma had sub-currents. Every inch of the sun had fractals within fractals. Glorious. And a quick route to sensory overload.

Feeling rocky or no, his pool was full. Introspection should wait for a safer moment.

Warren opened a gate back to Alex and flew through. He could feel heat radiating off him like he was a small star. He'd expected the cold, he hadn't expect the vacuum to be crowded. From the distance, every star pressed in and offered things worth examining. Presumably it wasn't the universe which was different, so he'd changed.

Warren glanced down at his board and noticed his reflection hadn't changed, then flew over to Alex and said, "Hey. I met myself."

[SalmonMax]

Alex just nodded, though her face was still shrouded behind the visor of her helmet.

"I hope you smacked yourself on the back of your head for me," she replied. She didn't mention the explosion of quantum that she'd sensed from the star. Either Warren had done something to 'stimulate' the star's emissions, or something had stimulated his own emissions. Alex was pretty sure nothing short of inducing a premature stellar nova would do the first.

The second, she was already familiar with the possibility, and the name, of.

"So. By your enthusiasm, I'd guess you're back at full juice. If you want to drop me off in the hangar with your next load, I'll get started on the support rig so I can lay the keel. Then just keep the material coming as long as you can. I can always use any 'extra' to make the subsub and other goodies."

She hesitated, then added, "Congrats. On the sundive. And thanks for not leaving me out here."

[Courier]

Warren stared past Alex and then at her, all three of his eyes blinked and he said, "Alex... I... see... EVERYTHING. Your atoms dance together intricately. There are galaxies everywhere and their daughter stars are clear. Space and time join together and extend in all directions. Actions creating actions creating universes. Subjective time isn't real, it's an illusion we use to function."

Almost shockingly, Warren came out of his observational head trip and said, "You're welcome. Thanks for trusting me to come back, it helped a lot. And as usual, you're right, let's go back."

Warren opened a gate back to J2's rings but instead of going through he paused and just stared at the gate, seeing it with new eyes.

[Courier]

Warren went through the Warp and then turned back to Alex, winked, and said, "Hours, not days." He was definitely stronger and it was seriously tempting to go explore what his new powers could do. He could 'see' the edge of the gate much 'deeper' than before. He'd been clumsy before, operating almost blind. Space itself... no... space and time were... this was confusing.

Time branched off in multiple directions, even the concept of 'now' was pretty elastic. If he followed the branches... was this the start of time travel?

Honestly what he wanted to do was go back home and meditate. Time Travel Physics was going to make his head hurt and helping Alex with the sub wasn't going to help that.

With that thought Warren split. One of him drifting towards Alex and the other away. Both him startled and said, "Hey!"

With identical manorisms, they pointed at each other and again said, "Hey!" After a split second they both frowned and said, "Stop repeating me!"

Recognizing the futility of another warning and that he was fighting with himself, both Warrens rubbed their chin and said, "Temporal Clone. I had a choice, I did both actions. Cute, but which of us is real?"

They examined each other and finally said something different, "You are/I am."

Going back to speaking simultaneously, they said, "But can I do this again?"

Again, Warren stepped away from himself and then there were three. Two of them said, "Yes." but the original clone said, "No. I tried too."

The two Warrens who had said 'yes' examined each other again and one raised his hand and said, "It's me. Umm..." Warren glanced at Alex and two more of him split off, making a total of five.

Without a word, four of him flew off and started gathering materials, the fifth said to Alex, "Let's go back. I'm filled with juice but tired just the same. They'll get materials pretty quick I gather."

A gate opened to Alex's lab, the two real novas went through.

[Quantum Fire]

Once matters were settled in the lab and Alex had all the materials coming through she needed, she sent Warren off, not really needing his direct help anymore and went to work. Quantum flowed as she began to build the submarine from the ground up, her will and stamina such that she ignored need to eat or sleep, drink was covered by melting a bit of ice here and there from the materials and drink the water in a glass created on the spot for just that purpose. Such water was easy for her to tell at a glance it was pure with her abilities, and was actually quite refreshing.

Though her mind remained on the discussion beyond the area she had hollowed out for this work, most of it was intensely focused on the task at hand. For anyone who looked in on her, it would be as though a goddess of creation was at work, materials shaped and shifted to her will, copper became wires, iron shifted to become bulkhead, or long pipes, allows were forged quickly in heat that she created for a moment to shape materials into what she needed.

For Genesis, this work required intense focus, her mind had to keep the schematics of the submarine in her head perfect, down to the wiring, and even the nuclear generator, everything had to be just so. Mathematical formula's, engineering details, geometrical diagrams, and atomic equations flowed though her mind to a degree that anyone who touched her mind would get a sense of the flow from it. Vast superhuman intelligence guided her work, and for someone observing, it was like divine intelligence in play..

Day turned to Night that turned into Day again, but the day after the meeting with DeVris, Alex completed her task, only to realize that her power had slowly grown while she was at work, so intense was her focus.

Click to reveal..

Apothesis Roll (technically, her Apothesis roll predated anyone else, but her Apothesis turns out to be a bit of a slower thing then the others)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3051987/

[SalmonMax]

The moment of crisis came unexpectedly; the tunnel collapsing just when the light could be seen at the end. Her powers were not infinite, and the limits she'd put on herself were in the end too much to tolerate while working her node so hard. Time and time again she was forced to eat, to sleep, to sit idly while she recovered her energies. Time and time again, the limiting factor was not one of materials or designs or anything technical...but her own limitations. The demands of her body's meat, interfering with the intent of her mind.

The moment of epiphany came as she caught a look at her own reflection in the screen of a monitor. One of the straps of her top had shifted sideways, and she saw the little silver colored blot on her shoulder, down where her arm connected. It had once been a bullet wound; a souvenir from a recovery team sent to get her. Though her power normally didn't work on living matter, she'd tried in desperation to mend the wound with that power because she had nothing else. To her shock it had worked, but not as she'd intended. Flesh filled the wound in, but not organic, living tissue. The reconstructed matter was metallic, fibrous where it had been muscle, then a skinlike smooth layer over it. Just a small, tiny thing. She'd never tried to heal herself again, for fear that whatever part of herself she changed would become like that.

But where she'd always seen dehumanization, now she saw...potential. Her ability was NOT incapable of affecting her own body even though it was alive. Instantly ideas flowed, the submarine completely forgotten. She would solve the problem of her limitations, which would in turn solve the other problems.

She erased her whiteboards and began drawing new designs, writing up new ideas with the same furious speed that they arrived at. It was going to be tricky, she saw. And the process would need some outside help.

The help looked a bit like a high tech sarcophagus as it formed, and she grinned manically when it opened. Alexandra shut herself up within the thing and with the clack of locks and the hiss of hydraulics, vanished as it closed back around her.

(OOC - This can end this fic. It'll continue when she emerges, or when someone goes down to check on her.)

[Quantum Fire]

End - 2 Standard & 2 Nova XP to all participants (Alex & Warren basically)