Pre-Moebius Sharing [A couple days into the racetrack liminal]

[itsananimalthing]

So a lot of you know I've been tryin' to rebuild memories from before Moebius. For you new people, Moebius was a Jaunt before most of you got here, were we died a lot and lost our memories every morning. A lot of that stuck.

[Look, he's being helpful, filling things in for people who don't know the story. Isn't that nice of him?]

Managed to put together somethin' kinda big out of them.

[Enjoy a brief lifestream of Riddick's strange vision: everything is tinted slightly purple, sources of light are doubly bright, and everything seems much more focused on heat and motion. It's an image of his hands, held apart in front of him, and after a second, an arc of electricity jumps between them, from one hand to the other. He holds it only briefly, then lets it dissipate.]

We can make energy out of liminal stuff. Claudia don't need to shoot me with her electricity gun to power lightcycles no more, we can just make that shit.

Came with somethin' else interesting while I was tryin' to put that trick back together. I was on at least four Jaunts before Moebius happened, might be more-- but there were people back then from the last round of this. The one Fortune won. We called 'em the Unlucky Dead. I don't got much about 'em yet, just a couple names and faces, but I'm workin' on it.

Figured that might be important to know.

[The last bit is said dryly. He knows that's an understatement.]

Comments

[itsananimalthing]

In the back.

[He leans forward so she can see him through the pit for the forge fire, lifting one hand to beckon her in.

She'll find all his usual cushions and furs on the floor are gone, now, as is the low table. It looks very empty, but for the shelf of his bed and a bookshelf in the far corner, also stone.]

[claudiometer]

I spy with my little eye a notable lack of flammable materials. This the kind of thing that tends to get messy before it gets done?

[itsananimalthing]

Explody. Yeah. Matthew just about set himself on fire, and I zapped a rug.

[And while he can control the room pretty closely, he'd still rather be safe than sorry. His books are safe behind a glass shield, even, since those are harder to replace than a few fur rugs.]

So it's a pretty basic concept, it's just tricky to actually do since we're so used to makin' shit. You gotta stop before it actually turns into somethin'.

[claudiometer]

Yeesh. Nothing ventured nothing gained, huh. [Not that it's entirely surprising.]

Well, I have a lot of practice fiddling with electricity. Maybe... giving it somewhere to go before it can explode will help?

[itsananimalthing]

That's the goal, yeah. Energy needs a conduit. You could use yourself, but that might burn you up. Could make a wire or a battery or somethin'-- but you gotta have the control enough to get it there. So figure it's safer to just clean up a little.

[claudiometer]

You're not wrong. The last thing we need's an electrical fire. [She'd know - that shit's nasty.]

So it's... grabbing the energy to use but shunting it into electrical energy instead of making it be a thing in particular. Useful, especially with as many of us have battery-powered crap of one kind or another, but I definitely wanna get the fine art down before I fry my laptop by accident or something.

[itsananimalthing]

Ain't even shunting, really. That's like taking energy and turning it into energy-- liminal stuff starts out as energy before it's got any form to it. All you gotta do is keep from makin' the form part.

[He says, as if it's that easy.]

[claudiometer]

Never been afraid of a little high voltage. Amperage, yes, because that shit can kill you if you screw it up.

Do you think it'd be easier to get the hang of if I have something to direct the energy into right off the bat?

[itsananimalthing]

It'll be less explosive. Maybe. Give it a shot.

[He didn't learn it that way, obviously, but it might make it easier. He honestly doesn't know.]

1/2

[claudiometer]

Bang. [She says, completely deadpan, as she fishes a lightcycle out of her hammerspace. It's not her personal one, or for anyone in particular, so if she fries it in the process, no harm done.

So. Drawing the energy but doing something with it before it takes form, huh? Sounds easy enough--]

[claudiometer]

[--But of course it isn't, and while she does call up a fat spark, it doesn't go anywhere in particular, instead zapping a bare patch of floor.]

O...kay, that could have gone better. But I think I got the gist of it, at least.

[itsananimalthing]

And that's why I took out all the burnable things.

[He's not surprised. But she's getting there.]

You're tryin' to hold it too tight so it jumped out instead of goin' where you want it. Let it flow.

[claudiometer]

Yeah, I see that now. In my defense, I'm used to it already having wires to be in.

[Okay, attempt two. 'Let it flow' is all well and good for Riddick to say, but that doesn't make it a whole lot easier to visualise - at least, not until she thinks of it more like a Tesla. She has the trigger and an end point, and letting it get from point A to point B how it wants is going to cause less trouble than trying to force it.

With that in mind, she tries again, and this time the spark does seem to ground in the lightcycle.] Well, that attempt was more promising.

[itsananimalthing]

[It helps that Riddick himself has been a conduit before, so "let it flow" is a thing he knows personally. He watches, ready to catch or douse as needed, but it seems to go fairly smoothly, so he nods.]

Yeah, it was. Tryin' a little at a time is better than tryin' a whole lot. There's a limit to what we can pull, same as with solid stuff. Don't think they're connected, so making physical stuff doesn't mean you can pull less energy.

[He thinks. He hasn't pushed the limits too much yet to test it.]

[claudiometer]

And if it turns out to be, I'll almost certainly end up poking enough to find out where that limit is and how they interact. But considering the other kind has a weight limit and electricity doesn't really have a weight, I'd be surprised if they did overlap.

[itsananimalthing]

Don't know if the weight limit has to do with how much liminal stuff we're using, though, and this energy comes from the same thing as the liminal stuff.

[He shrugs.]

They're connected, anyway. Just not sure how these skills measure that kind of shit.

[claudiometer]

God knows there'll be enough of us poking at it now to figure it out.