Thing is water doesn't retain radiation. It disassociates into hydrogen and oxygen. Since she's not a neutron source, the main radioisotope she'd be forming is oxygen-15, which has a half life of about 2 minutes.
Is that oxygen-16 (stable) undergoing power-induced beta decay to fluorine-16 that then (with a halflife of 2 × 10^-20 seconds) releases a proton to become oxygen-15, or is the neutron just going "poof"?
Scion: Throws away QA
Scion when Grey Boy's Shard isn't being Administrated: Suprised_Pikachu_Face.jpg
Scion being briefly Gray Boyed is problably because its just the Warrior's avatar, and coupled with Grey Boy's shard being an Eden shard, it was ablle to affect the avatar temporarily before the PtV kicked in.
Is that oxygen-16 (stable) undergoing power-induced beta decay to fluorine-16 that then (with a halflife of 2 × 10^-20 seconds) releases a proton to become oxygen-15, or is the neutron just going "poof"?
No, Taylor's hitting an oxygen atom hard enough with a gamma ray to knock off a slow proton (forming stable N15) or a slow neutron (O15 and a free neutron which decays into a proton, electron and an electron antineutrino in about 10 minutes)
Could Weld fuse with Uranium? It's still a metal...
Also,is Taylor immune to Sleeper? I still don't know what is Sleeper suppose to do but can it affect Taylor?
Thanks to Taylor literal cosmic rays,she could modify Dragon's code like in that sm64 Speedrun.
You've never seen someone startle as much as when a radiac alarm goes off while they're frisking...down under shall we say. Hilariously it wasn't even the radiac he was using for the frisking.
Even funnier is that it happened a 2nd time. Unused radiac alarms.
Watching the 3rd try was also amusing even when nothing happened.
His comment afterwards: "I could only think, thank god I've already had kids."
Nobody's quite sure WHAT Sleeper's power is, including Mr. McCrae. Taylor's defense is better than Alexandria's but if Sleeper is using some Lady of Pain dimensional shearing effect, it'd be a bad thing.
The next morning they started out with having me drink a lot of water and then this syrupy shake thing that tasted really good before they put me through the MRI.
Oh, I've made that stuff in the lab, great fun. It's useful for a lot of things, but MRIs are sadly not one of them. FDG (or rather fluorine-18) is a beta-plus emitter. It produces positron radiation, which works as a radiotracer through positron-electron annihilation and can be used to visualize metabolic processes through the use of a PET (positron emission tomography) scanner. The positrons and electrons annihilate and emit two gamma particles in opposite directions, so you can tell almost exactly where the radiation came from if you have a sensitive enough gamma detector surrounding the subject in a sort of ring shape. MRIs work on the basis of magnetic fields, though, and wouldn't get anything out of that. That they're radiation-free is basically their big selling point over most nuclear imaging methods.
The machine they brought in for Taylor was a combination MRI, CT and PET scanner, that's why they ran her through it three times. Normally fluorodeoxyglucose is injected for a PET scan, but since Taylor's a Brute they had to have her drink the stuff. It still didn't work.
Next chapter has been a bit slow to put together, namely because Taylor quickly realizes she's got a lot of spare time on her hands and not many ideas currently on what to do with all of it. Uber's going to be sending her plenty of survivalist crafting tutorials and lesson plans.
The machine they brought in for Taylor was a combination MRI, CT and PET scanner, that's why they ran her through it three times. Normally fluorodeoxyglucose is injected for a PET scan, but since Taylor's a Brute they had to have her drink the stuff. It still didn't work.
Fair enough, then! Fun fact: did you know they make rat-scale PET scanners for lab work? I didn't know until they made me use one. It's kind of adorable, looks just like the real thing, but for little fuzzies.
I'd gotten out of my nice little hot tub in time to watch the sunrise. I must have spent nearly an hour just sitting on top of my rock and enjoying the light. This would definitely be how I started my days for the foreseeable future, a cleaning soak followed by a... maybe not a prayer service but something to celebrate the dawn. It was just so relaxing.
Ancient Greek priestesses of Apollo probably did things like this to Praise the Sun. Actually, on second thought a lot of Greek gods and goddesses tended to be assholes. They had admittedly had one for everything though so surely there was a proper mistress of the dawn. I'd have to look that up online.
Wiccans tended to borrow from the Greeks instead of being more conceptual about things so something from Celtic mythology perhaps? Maybe Japanese? There was an Aleph import game on the laptop about a wolf who went around leaving trails of flowers everywhere and they were supposed to be the spirit of the Sun or something.
I briefly considered just jumping down from my perch before realizing that while I wouldn't get hurt, it might ruin my clothes, or at least get them terribly dirty. Best to avoid that If I could. Another Thing to add to The List I needed to watch out for.
After that, I spent most of the day just wandering around. The pond that the stream led to was maybe a couple hundred yards wide, but was pretty muddy around the edges and didn't look very deep. More of a duck pond than anything.
It took several hours to walk around the not quite mountain of Round Mountain that dominated the area. There was a decent cliffside that looked good for rock climbing, and an old, barely there hiking trail that looked like it hadn't been used for years that seemed to lead to the peak. Maybe I could spend a day or two cleaning that up a bit.
But, while the trees and wildlife were nice and different for someone like myself who'd hardly ever left the environs of Brockton Bay before, I now began to realize there really wasn't much to do around here, so I made my way back to the cabin to check in online.
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♦ Topic: Weymouth Mall Attack
In: Boards ► USA ► Brockton Bay ► Current Events
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On July 3rd, 2009:
Due to the number of infractions and bans being handed out by the mods today because of other threads regarding this, mainly due to people posting graphic imagery, it was decided that a combined thread should be created and strictly monitored.
Just after 1:00 PM today, while the PRT was hosting a Meet and Greet Event in the mall with Assault and new Wards Shroud and Shade in attendance, several armed gunmen identifying themselves as "The Chorus" stormed the food court entrance. Present among the mall patrons were Amy and Victoria Dallon, in civilian attire.
While Assault was attempting to deescalate the situation, the leader of the group, who has since been identified as Richard Jones aka Conductor, recognized the Dallon girls and proceeded to personally take Amy Dallon hostage. In a show of force, he critically injured Miss Dallon, who suffered a Trigger Event as a consequence.
Mr. Jones was then fatally wounded in justifiable self-defence as a result and the other members of Chorus were quickly disabled with no further civilian injuries. The PRT subsequently secured the scene and took both Dallons into protective custody for traumatic stress evaluation.
Don't get cute with this topic people, the Mods ARE watching.
Holy shit.
Parahumans Online was the main cape gossip site, and the Brockton Bay section had always been rather active for one reason or another. Having the highest cape-per-capita population in America tended to help, but this was...
• You are currently in a private chat with: PartTimePantologistTeslaDisciple42
16MS ► Okay, I understand that criminals sometimes do very stupid things, but holding up the mall while the PRT is hosting a Meet and Greet there? That's like... robbing a Dunkin' Donuts full of cops that just got off a double shift and aren't in the mood!
TD42 ► I hear you. That fucker in charge unfortunately looked old enough to have passed his genes down, so no Darwin Award for him.
PTP ► New Wave must be livid. Most of them actually went through this sort of kidnapping/hostage situation as their own Very Bad Day themselves. Brandish, Lady Photon, their little brother Lightstar, Laserdream and Shielder, now Amy... That family seems cursed I tell you.
16MS ► Glory Girl was there too and it seemed like the guy did specifically pick out Amy to grab. Could that have been the reason for the whole thing in the first place?
PTP ► If it was then somebody had some VERY big delusions of grandeur or something. Glory Girl alone is normally off limits because you don't ever escalate against an Alex Package like that right off the bat.
TD42 ► So, moving on to a lighter subject. How was your first day of roughing it? Getting out there and touching grass and whatnot?
16MS ► I think I need some sort of schedule or lesson plan. I've got something to do in the mornings but after that I've got nothing but time? Any creative ideas?
PTP ► Such as? This might be a private chatroom but let's not go into specifics, all right?
16MS ► Are there any sort of online tutorials or videos on glass making?
PTP ►Interesting. Probably not much in the way of quality sand around there, but lemme check something... Hmm. Seems like the area was volcanically active around 400 million years ago. Pillow lavas and stuff. Might be good for making obsidian if you had an induction furnace. I'll put together a few videos and send it over in the morning.
16MS ► Thanks.
TD42 ► Bubblegum baubles!
16MS ► What?
TD42 ► Just thinking that someone like Lung could honestly chew gravel and blow Christmas ornaments like Hubba Bubba. It'd taste like crap but...
Binged to current, liking both the setup and the obvious care you are taking with the details. Flesh! Flesh it out more, unlike a certain author.
Maybe I was reading something else in another tab, but I thought there was a reference to Panacea earlier. Seems kind of unlikely since she is more like Browbeat here. Or did you swap the Brow's mode into "on others" and Panacea's a dude?
"Like, do I have permission to mojo your boo boo?" (Austin Powers meets Pauly Shore)
Edit: Checking further the only ref was someone pointing out "no Panacea". Yikes. So consider the Browbeat option a suggestion. Or maybe keep the stranger effect he seems to have as well—the masked Healer struck again today. Nobody knows where he will be or when.
After my morning ablutions, I sat down and watched the videos Uber had sent me. It was while I was sitting there that I realized how impulsive I'd been about my decision to sequester myself like this and why Erwin had been so insistent on my reconsidering.
I didn't have anything that might be useful because I didn't think I'd be needing them. No canned food because I didn't need to eat anymore. No tools because I didn't think I'd need to build or repair anything. No money because I didn't think I'd be needing to deal with people long enough to go to a Walmart and buy anything that could help with the first two issues and no method of getting to one save for spending most of the day walking out of the woods.
Which of course, would have the aforementioned people asking questions that I didn't really want to answer right now.
So, my options were: Admitting to my mistake, calling Erwin and having him spend another day driving up here with a bunch of stuff I should've had to begin with...
Or knuckling down and dealing with it as best I could. Option one was the logical, sensible choice. It just involved waiting for a day. Two at the most.
But, like my parents, I was very stubborn. And like Inigo Montoya, I hated waiting.
I had fire, so to speak. I could work stone and wood without a hammer, saw or chisel to some extent. I could Fred Flintstone up a wheelbarrow in a couple of hours, right? Robinson Crusoe didn't have anyone for help until he met Friday and he seemed to manage pretty well.
Okay, likening my life experiences to those of a fictional character was probably something that needed to be added to The List as a thing to watch out for. Then again, my life was fucking stranger than some half-assed cape fanfic on PHO at this point. If I was somehow the Chosen One Fated to overthrow the Wicked Witch Alexandria and her army of flying PRT monkeys, I'd need a lot more than a pair of magic sneakers.
Come to think of it, Dorothy had no control over where her house landed. Hell, it should've disintegrated. Instead, it smushed the Wicked Witch of the East like a bug while remaining perfectly intact in sepia tone. And Glinda asked if Dorothy was a Good Witch or a Bad Witch because Good ones were pretty and Bad ones weren't.
Glinda being the actual villain of the story alongside the Wizard being a con man? That tracked.
I was getting distracted. First things first, send off a message so I could get a supply run brought up to me at some point. Second, build me a wheelbarrow or a cart or something to haul stuff around with. That should keep me occupied for today.
I apparently sucked at being a master craftsman. To be fair though, I now fully understood the "build the tools to build the tools" problem Tinkers must have. A stone knife with a glass edge to whittle down wood into pegs instead of nails. Another rod of stone that I had to keep heating up to not quite molten so I could burn holes in the logs for said pegs. A stone bucket of water to put out the fire when the logs inevitably ignited. The wooden mallet I was using to put it all together was deceptively simple to make by comparison, but after spending most of the day on it I had something reasonably sturdy enough to haul the stone I'd quarried out for my hot tub down the hill to the cabin with just a few trips.
Probably would have been quicker just carrying it down a few blocks at a time though.
Next was molding the stone into rough storage pots which went surprisingly quickly. I just had to be careful not to heat them up too much so they could retain their shape as they cooled, while making sure they didn't cool too fast and crack or shatter.
By the time the sun was setting I had a decent collection of crockery to work with. Hunter-gatherer to Stone Age in a day. Not bad if I do say so myself. My last task before calling it for the night was to try Leet's molten bubblegum idea.
He was wrong about it tasting like crap, it didn't really taste like anything. I was surprised when it came out bottle green instead of the brownish-black I'd been getting before. Maybe because it was thinner? It was way too fragile and collapsed into a glob when I tried to get it to harden as a bubble though.
After that, I settled back on the grassy roof of the cabin, watching the stars come out. The Moon was nearly full and fireflies were flickering. A buzzing, chirruping noise from the trees began as well, which turned out to be cicadas being extra noisy. It wasn't too unpleasant though.
Who needed fancy fireworks for the Fourth of July? Here, Nature provided my own.
The original might be correct in context. The day before she decided to start every morning by doing her little ceremony to celebrate the sun. Add in that she probably has to remind herself not to believe that everything gone wrong is her fault, absolution could be the right word.
Ah, the one problem that someone who just discovered recently that they no longer need to do things like eat, sleep, drink, breath, etc. You also discover that just because you don't need to anymore doesn't mean you won't appreciate doing them anyways just for the sake of doing them. If for no other reason than to keep up appearances or just for something to do.
Dammit, why CAN'T it be both? Ablution is the correct word (ritualistic cleansing bath) but Taylor IS seeking absolution. (forgiveness of perceived guilt)
He was wrong about it tasting like crap, it didn't really taste like anything. I was surprised when it came out bottle green instead of the brownish-black I'd been getting before. Maybe because it was thinner?
Hmm. Uranium glass? That usually has a slightly more yellowish tinge, in my experience, but it does tend towards very vivid colors just like that. Fun stuff, shame it's not made anymore. Admittedly, I wouldn't want to drink from it, those heavy metals do leach out of the material.
Well, you really don't need a lot of substance to color glass, so it's possible. Red glass is made by adding traces of gold to the molten glass, did you know? An expensive pleasure, but it doesn't take much to get a proper colloid going, so it's actually possible to make reasonable amounts of it.
Green obsidian is a real thing, but I believe the knife in the image turned out the color it did because it kept falling off the rod and into the furnace, so they worked it an extra long time with an excess of flux. Obsidian will also turn amber with excessive remelting.
My morning routine had gone as expected, but clouds were moving in from the west by the time I'd finished my meditation. A quick check of the weather on the radio told me rain was expected to start around noon and last until late Monday.
Not much point of going out and doing anything potentially useful, so I settled in to check on any messages I might have had.
Erwin's e-mail sad that the weather wouldn't be a issue for him to come up, but I replied that a couple extra days wouldn't bother me and would give me some time to think up a full list of things I should have. Including possibly a dirt bike. Granted, I hadn't ever had a bike before, but figuring out how to ride one shouldn't take too long. My only concern would be breaking it before actually having a need to use it.
Next I got onto PHO to check in with Uber and Leet. Leet was apparently in a minor creative fugue and wasn't in much of a position to reply, but Uber seemed confident about whatever the result of his Tinkering came up with.
PTP ► It's just chemistry, not superscience. The stuff he's working on right now might be a wee bit crazy, but the endproduct should be perfectly normal, if otherwise impossible to create. It's sort of similar to some glass making methods. By the way, were those videos I sent you helpful?
16MS ► Didn't turn out like I was expecting, and the bubblegum idea didn't really work. I think I need some better sand or actual glass for that and maybe some metal powder for coloring?
PTP ► Still something creative for you to do on a rainy day like today.
He then took a moment to suggest one of the games they'd loaded on the laptop, the first of a series apparently. The name struck a chord with me though, and I idly mentioned that I'd made my own.
PTP ► You have a glow-in-the-dark hot tub?
16MS ► Yeah, is that a bad thing?
PTP ► It's interesting. And possibly helpful. See if you can get it into full jacuzzi mode WITHOUT the glow or heating up the walls.
I signed out of the private chat after that and trawled the Brockton Bay boards for a bit. The main news was a statement from New Wave about what happened at the mall on Friday. Brandish had apparently had some sort of traumatic flashback due to what her daughters had experienced and would be seeking private counseling for it, while the rest of New Wave would also be getting some 'long overdue' professional therapy over the matter. Rumors immediately started flying over what had actually happened, but the Dallon and Pelham families were superheroic celebrities. Just like a famous actor or a politician, the media would pounce on them for any sort of perceived mistake or unacceptable behavior.
People made mistakes. Admitting that you had a problem was the first step toward fixing it, right?
If someone were to ask a random person in the PRT East North East: "What makes Thomas Calvert so goddamn special?" you'd probably get the answer: "He doesn't fuck up. Like, ever."
If you'd asked that same question to him though, you'd get a genial smile and he'd say: "They're being generous, I screw up all the time."
And that would be a true statement, because he did. It's just that those screwups happened in simulated timelines that no one but himself experienced or even had any knowledge of.
Well, ONE other person, probably, but SHE was not someone to be trifled with at all.
Still, his power allowed him to gather information better than anyone in his position had any right to, and over the years he'd slowly and carefully gathered sufficient secret and/or disposable resources to make good use of that information.
Conductor had been a useful patsy. He'd been working through multiple cutouts with that man which made him a valuable but ultimately expendable asset. His unfortunate demise had opened up a golden opportunity though. New Wave as a team was practically done for, but Emily had somehow managed to convince Lady Photon to set up her sister's fall from grace in order to save New Wave's collective necks. Rather than suffer through the humiliation of a public scandal, they'd even managed to have her evaluated for mental fitness at the Asylum outside Philadelphia.
He'd just managed to extract that information regarding her transfer to the facility in a disposed timeline.
So, once he'd left the PRT building for the day, he used one of his burners to make a call.
"Faultline. Is this line secure?"
"..."
"I have a job for your Crew. Short notice I'm afraid, but the information is immediately actionable."
"..."
"It's not in Brockton Bay, but there are local parties involved. I will accept if you choose to decline the task because of that."
"..."
"Double fee is acceptable. But be aware that other parties are probably also aware of this intel. I expect Kaiser to be interested in using it as well."
"..."
"Carol Dallon will be transported, in secret and under sedation, to the Parahuman Asylum outside Philadelphia tomorrow. You heard the press statement? The truth is Brandish suffered an apparent psychotic break in front of Director Piggot herself and tried to murder her adoptive daughter. I do not know the details of that, but enough people were present that the rumors will not be contained for long. New Wave and the PRT will be escorting a convoy in the morning. That one is the decoy."
"..."
"I don't expect you to permanently harm anyone involved in the actual transfer. I simply need you to retrieve Brandish and get her out of the line of fire so as to prevent a miscarriage of justice."
"..."
"Director Piggot would use this to pressgang New Wave into the Protectorate. Neither of us want to see that. By showing New Wave that the PRT can't be trusted with Brandish's safety, it will keep them at arm's length from the PRT."
"..."
"I intend to move her securely into a safe facility where she can receive the treatment she desperately needs. And you know I have no love of the Empire."
"..."
"Fine, I'll check with my contacts abroad regarding your Case 53 quandary. I don't expect to find anything useful but I will pass on any information I discover."
"..."
"Your retainer and details of the job will be sent to you shortly."
With that the call ended, and Calvert smiled. Faultline was ever so gullible regarding Case 53s. It was pathetically easy to string her along with hints of the conspiracy when anyone could find out about Cauldron's power vials.
Assuming Cauldron wanted them to find out.
Oh look, Brockton's ressssident sssscheming ssssnake has reared his ugly hood. Calvert is not black in this fic, but Faultline believes he is.
