maskormenacelogs | electrons move faster than you think

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electrons move faster than you think

WHO: Jane & Bart
WHERE: Heropa
WHEN: March 7th, afternoon
WHAT: Jane and Bart are doing science!
WARNINGS: None, will update if needed

Jane hummed to herself as she made her way to one of the local parks in Heropa. She was excited to work with Bart again, experimenting with their powers and comparing notes. Of course, whenever she could ‘talk shop’ with someone, she was excited. It was always great to bounce ideas off of someone, have to think in new ways, consider questions she hasn’t before—what more could someone want?

Today, they were going to do whatever they could come up with. Nothing in particular, just whatever struck their fancy. Might they change the world? Maybe. Might they have a lot of fun testing limits and seeing the results of it all? Definitely!

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Bart showed up with armloads of snacks, because if he was going to be running, it better not be on empty. Still he didn't know how much they were going to do. Just science and powers and stuff. But Jane was always fun and exciting, perhaps especially when things weren't about to blow up.

"Hey, doc. Where do you want me to put this?"

He got some of her favorites that he knew about, too, since it was only fair.

"Hey, Bart!"

Jane brought with her some of her machines and was setting them up. None of them were the kind that needed to be linked up to a person in some way, but they would get readings one way or another of speed, gravitational fields, and all sorts of other ways their powers could change the environment.

"You can set those down where we won't trip over them. Oh my god, are those Red Vines?"

"I am a paragon of coordination and grace," Bart said, pretending to huff. "You, on the other hand..." But he's pulling out a package of Red Vines to hand over before finding a table to tuck the bags back under away from any cords or obvious machinery.

"So, you're going to have to give me a run-down of the equipment delays so I don't go too fast for readings." It's easier to know where the limits are, and he has enough experience with this century's tech to be able to go too fast for it.

"You could probably trip a hundred times in a row, but you'd make it look like regular walking," she laughed, opening up the Red Vines and eating one. Still, she is going to do her best to not trip over anything. Once it's set up, it will be fine, but it's the messy process beforehand that will do it. To her at least.

"That is something I'm going to have to calibrate. While I've amphed up their settings, I don't know what their real limits are yet. They've never had to work with something as fast as you, this close at least. Calculating the speed and possible trajectory of a meteor is a lot simpler for them. So, go ahead and be as fast as you want. Then we'll know their limits."

"But unless you take Heisenberg a little too seriously, meteors don't simultaneously exist in multiple places," Bart says, grinning as he produces a scout to finish stowing everything while he casually leans against the table to watch her.

He still can't usually bring himself to use the scouts casually, but since Jane had seen the glitches many times in the other reality, it seemed right to do so. She'd never intentionally do anything to harm him or them.

"Also, the calibration distances are a tiny bit different, like a few hundred orders of magnitude or so, just in relative scale." Him in a room is much larger than an asteroid in space if you start looking from the same point.

Jane grinned. "Oh, they do. Just not at the same time. But then you're getting into the debates Einstein and Bohr had and no one wants a repeat of that showdown."

The world was spooky enough already without that principal being true about everything, but then again, it did explain a lot of natural occurrences ... and it was a large part of her research.

"Just a tiny bit," she replied, grinning. But it would be fine. The machines would adjust, the programs would catch up, and their readings would be interesting. She held up a device that looked a lot like a radar gun, which was hooked up to another machine with a wire. "You ready?"

"'God does not play dice,'" Bart quoted. He'd read plenty of those arguments, and part of the problem was the lack of information about the shape of reality. Just the idea that their universe wasn't just expanding but accelerating bothered people.

"Is this the part where I'm supposed to say something about being born ready?" he added, and began a slow (for him) jog around the room, clearly blurring with motion, but still able to be tracked.

Indeed, because it raised all sorts of questions: what was the universe expanding into? How long would it be before there wasn't enough heat for anything to function? How much mass did the universe have? Would they be able to develop technology to prevent that cold death?

Jane snickered as she watched the monitor. "I thought you'd say something like, 'Check your readings, I'm done already'!"

"Figured-I'd-start-slow," Bart said, the words starting to blur together as he sped to where his movement was more like a strobe, moving in still images as he paused long enough to keep visible.

Jane nodded and turned on another machine.

"So, do I seem to be moving extremely slow to you? Or does it still seem the same from your perspective?"

"Relativity is something you kinda get used to. I mean, yeah, everything slows down, and if I go faster than sound, it's all silent. Don't get me started on approaching lightspeed. That's just creepy and I try to forget about it. I doubt I could do that here, anyways."

His power is roughly the same, yet different. No sense of the others, for example.

"Yeah, you would have to really be careful with how you moved and where you went," she replied. But ... interesting. It must be strange to not have all the nuances of one's powers. Just as strange as having to get used to having powers. "You're a little heavier than a bunch of protons."

Then, one of her machines started to bring up some readings on its screen: a diagram of the speed he was moving at and then a diagram of his position relative to another machine. The charts wouldn't break the Uncertainty Principle, but it would be interesting to cross reference.

"But I can be nearly as insubstantial. Well, not really, but I can vibrate through solid objects. It's just not always the right move, for example, when someone's shooting at you, it's better to stop the bullets than let them keep going."

He shrugs a little, tempted to pass a hand through one of the sensors to see what would happen.

"No way," she gasps. "I mean, I agree it's easier to stop things like bullets, but—here."

She saw that look in his eye. Adjusting the position to the sensor, she picks up a book and holds it out so he can pass his hand through it.

"Try this. Should be a little easier, right?"

"Well. yes and no," Bart said, but obligingly passes his hand through the book, wiggling fingers on the other side, a look of intense concentration on his face to keep only the part in the book vibrating.

"It's actually easier to run through walls than just do a part of something. The whole deal versus focusing."

"Especially since it requires a lot less time to accomplish?" she asked. "Does the material you have to go through make any difference either?"

"Thickness matters more than density, and there sometimes can be issues like having something sorta...cling. I've always called it molecular taffy when that happens. Vibrating like that was instinctive for me, although finesse took time. I don't like vibrating through tech or living stuff if I can help it, but I've done things like remove an arrow from a friend without surgery," Bart said, looking off.

"It's a known power for speedsters, but it's not one we all share. My cousin has a problem that when he does it, there's a kinetic transfer that causes the object he runs through to blow up."

That made sense: a single layer of brick wall was probably easier to get through than a ticket that was twenty feet thick. Not to mention something like that would take a lot of concentration to get through. All the air gaps, the individual twigs ...

"Ouch. All that vibrating would cause a lot of heat. What happens to the heat you generate?" she asked.

"Frictionless aura, remember? Well, not completely frictionless, but for some reason speedsters don't really have the same issue with those effects of motion. Either the Speed Force absorbs the heat or it's some other degree of freaky powers shit."

He doesn't really understand all the details.

"It has to go somewhere," she commented, humming. "Where does the Speed Force exist? Is it just the area around you?"

Maybe they are getting onto something groundbreaking here ...

"It's sorta...extradimensional. Like adjacent to everywhere but not actually anywhere you can see."

He knows that always tended to make the scientists go a little cross-eyed.

"Huh. Another dimension that we can't get to. Darn."

It doesn't really make her cross-eyed as much as annoyed that there isn't a way to directly poke at it with a stick. They'll have to go with theoretical models for it, if they are able to get enough data through other means.

"But that just means we have to be a bit more creative. If we were able to figure out that dark matter comprises most of the universe and design an experiment to see if the universe is a hologram, we can do something for this!"

Bart can't help a slight shudder as he remembers his time in the Speed Force.

"It's outside normal reality, which means time and other things don't mean the same there as they do here. It's alive, aware, but also we're a part of it. Freaky symbiosis. The power wants to be used, and when we use it, there's more generated. All who have been connected to it still are in a way that...I don't know if I even could describe it."

That wasn't the hard part. "The Speed Force is a part of me, and I'm a part of it, and there's the possibility that unless I keep myself grounded in this world, the lightning may someday consume me like it has others."

Jane shudders as well.

“That—that sounds like something from my world. But at least yours sounds a little more benevolent? Or at least neutral?”

Because it sounded like the consumption of its users is just a property of the force, of that reality. It would go against its desire to be used to consume everyone that ever used it.

“How do you stay grounded?”

"Mostly, it's having things, people to come back to. The kind you can't bear to leave behind. My grandfather had my grandmother, for instance. He'd always come back to her, even if it took a thousand years," Bart said, looking off. That thousand years was one of the stranger parts of family history, but it still meant a lot. "I guess for me it was Tim and Kon and the rest of the team, the family I chose. I think if you don't really believe you have something to come back to, you can't. It would explain...some things."

Like why Max never returned, even after the last time Bart saw him.

"Ah," she said softly, understanding.

Wasn't it funny how a lot of these things, even though they could be observed and quantified, ended up being most affected by the individuals? Call it their heart, their soul, their cores, the 'thing' that contained their thoughts, beliefs, and emotions impacted the strange and alien forces and powers out there more than anything else.

"I'm glad you have them."

"Kon's pretty much the only one from my world that I knew before, and he's a little before me, timewise." Which isn't really a bad thing. He doubted Kon would deal any better with the Black Lanterns than he had, and he still doesn't know how that mess ended, only that he was freed thanks to his grandfather.

"But I haven't had any reason to push things far enough to risk that kind of problem. It's really freaky when you start pushing significant fractions of lightspeed. Never want a reason to do that again."

"He's still an awesome friend, regardless of the time lines." She would love to have more people from her world here, but at the same time, she wouldn't want them here either. Neither place were safe. Neither place was better than the other in regards to ... anything.

"No, probably not. I mean, traveling via faster-than-light technology is one thing, especially if it's stable, but your experiences prove it really isn't."

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electrons move faster than you think

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thank you for your patience!

It's fine

:)

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