Plob Fights Back by Craig Zerf

Author:Craig Zerf [Zerf, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Small Dog Publishing
Published: 2013-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Science officer Roti did a little jig. A very, very small one. More in his head, than one done overtly by using his actual body. A mind jig, as befitting a science officer.

The captain walked into the laboratory. ‘Happy, officer Roti?’

‘Yes, indeedy, captain. Look.’ He held out a circle of leather, perhaps an inch across. In the middle of it was a tiny black square.

The captain picked it up. ‘Sticky.’

‘Yes, captain. But only on the one side.’

‘So, what is it?’

‘It’s a dual acceptance articulation response and dissemination mechanism.’

‘Science officer, Roti. We’ve already spoken about this.’

‘Sorry, sir. It’s a two way radio.’

‘So? We’ve got lots of those.’

‘No, sir, not like these. You see, these are designed for the dragonmen. All that they do is stick this to the side of their necks and that’s it. The radio works both ways and all received information is transferred, via bone vibration, directly to the inner ear. It should vastly help their capabilities by being able to communicate freely during combat. Plus, we’ll be able to monitor them from our bridge. We can use radar during the battle and then radio them with advice.’

‘Very clever, mister Roti. What’s the battery life on those things?’

‘Well, pretty much forever, you see, it involves the use of the degeneracy system whereby, if the energy of different states is the same, the energy level is called degenerate. However, in this 1D system there is no degeneracy. We then combine an eigenfunction of the time-Independent Schrödinger Equation and substitute…’

‘Mister Roti. Simplify.’

‘Sorry, captain. I can’t. It’s quantum mechanics, sir.’

‘Hmmm…quantum mechanics, I know something about that, something to do with a cat in a box isn’t it? You put a cat in a box, along with a hammer and some poison and a radioactive isotope…ummm, I forget exactly how it goes. Anyway - you better keep some bandages on hand because, when the cat gets out, he won’t be happy.’

‘Yes, sir…that’s sort of it. Captain, there is one more thing, take a look at this.’ Roti swung the viewer to the electron microscope over to the captain who looked into the eyepiece.

‘What am I looking at?’

It’s a one hundred thousand times magnification of a sulphur molecule. I was working on increasing the explosive power of the dragon food.’

Captain Bhature looked again. ‘So?’

‘One hundred thousand times magnification, sir.’

‘Officer Roti, for the moment let us pretend that, while you were at university getting a doctorate in molecular science, I was at the naval academy learning how to fly this ship and, as a result, I have no idea what you are going on about.’

‘Sorry, sir. It’s too big. It shouldn’t look like that. That’s how it should look under a mere eight thousand times magnification.’

‘What does that mean?’

Roti shook his head. ‘I’m not one hundred percent sure, captain. I have some theories but haven’t tested them yet. All that I can say is…it’s wrong. It shouldn’t be that big…or maybe, to put it another way - we shouldn’t be this small.’

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