Phoenix Research and Development

[Remnant]

Rachel shakes her head quickly, eyeing the burn marks. I've had bad experiences with that kind of energy, i've worked on it for two years of my life. It's not worth the effort, unless you plug it into to something huge, where you can dissipate the energy, or actually use it.. It's not worth looking into. The instability factors are insane on those things. As i'm sure you found out, the next cycle, after it already begins emitting energy only increases until it reaches a full burnout. And that takes a while.

Although.. If you think you can make headway, by all means. I sure didn't. Although I avoid the subject nowdays, so I don't have the most experience. Good.. luck I suppose. I'll.. let the cleanup crew there's no radiation, so they can come in I guess. Slowly backing out of the room again.

Mumbling something quietly to herself, she starts to walk back to her lab, where a unit of cryocube, a plastic table, and a hunk of electronics are outside on a cart.

Spotting a lab-assistant. Ah, thank you. I appreciate that. Oh, and let cleanup know that Lab Eight is good to be cleaned up. Entering her room once more, to make more preparations.

[Remnant]

Returning back to her room, after moving all of her requested materials back inside, she merely stands there and looks over what she has for a moment.

"I should have asked for a big magnet instead.." Prodding the metal of the shield core with a finger. "I suppose I did, but now that I think about it, that may be a bit overkill." Shrugging, she calmly sets up the table, and grabs a screwdriver. Slipping the top cover off of the machine. Staring at the insides for a moment, she slowly reaches in and detaches two cables from the insides, and merely swaps their position.

"This will either work, or It will cause the thing to short.. I mean, it should.. It's merely a current swap.." Pushing the core under the table (with a little bit of effort) she motions for an assistant to help her get the cube up on the table. Noting that the actual chamber of the cube was detached, and only the mechanics were there, making it a little easier for two people to carry.

Grabbing the cable she asked for, she pushes an end into the shield core, and the other to the lab port, throwing the switch a few seconds later, merely to have a hum emit from the core. As she walks back over to the table, she makes sure she wasn't wearing any metal. Earrings? No. Why bother checking, she never wore any.

Reaching into her pocket, setting her PDA on a table a bit off from her workstation, she approaches it once more. The mechanics of the cube magnetized going 'down', which was obviously putting quite a bit of strain on the table. "That better hold.." Popping the cover off of the mechanics, she begins working on the insides. Even pulling out a few strands completely, merely to set them on the table next to her.

"That.. sho-.. oh, no. Wrong one." Reattaching a cable to ti's old slot. After a full ten minutes, she stands back, holding a package in her hand. Tossing it casually.

"Stupid gallics, putting self-destruct mechanisms in their cubes, that's valuable stuff there.." Reaching down, she powers off the magnetism that the core was providing, and retrieves her set of tools she asked for.

Beginning to work on taking the thing apart, she eventually reaches the main cooling core of the system. Grabbing hold of an end, she tugs the panel out of the casing. "You. Assitan-.. I should ask your name." Getting a short responce in return. "Ryan Ma'am" Nodding in approval. "Ryan, would you take this, and weld it to the top of the metal casing? Outside the mirroring of course. I have three more to take apart, letme know if you have any questions. Bolt on a few extra pieces of metal if you need to, just don't puncture the insides. All I care, is that it stays. And won't, under very cold temperatures."

Glancing at the other units she ordered, sighing quietly. This was going to be a long day.

[Arioch]

:::Accessing Phoenix R&D Database:::
::ecryption: Complete:::
::laying Logfile 7:::

Well, today was quite interesting t' put it mildly...

Having finished up a few tests at Ames, I set forth t' ta Ingenuus, in order t' apply some new parameters t' ta powercore onboard. Needless t' say, it did not work as intended.

Arriving aboard, myself an' two assistants made our way towards ta engine room, housing ta core itself. ducking and climbing over ta various power lines an' tubes leading t various sections of ta ship, we finally stood before it.



A sight t' behold, as you can see. This giant sphere was near 10 stories tall, an' equally wide. Encased within, suspended in an electromagnetic field, was ta hybrid plasma sphere itself, constantly morphing an' shifting it's size. All within acceptable variances of course.

Once we made our way t' ta control room, housed on what would be ta equator of ta core. Locking down ta core, an' encasing ta sphere with thick shielded walls t' help prevent any surges t' spread throughout ta ship, we bagin ta tests. We wanted t' see if we could reduce ta amount of "dark lightning" and electrical static as a result of ta core's reaction, while generating more energy output. Unfortunately, our results did not go as planned.

As we began our tests, we noticed some strange fluctuations within ta core. Recordings from within showed ta following:


Here we see ta core reacting, morphing it's shape, an' taking on a dark greyish hue instead of ta normal blue-purple. We knew that something was not right, but we pushed on.


Switching t' a cam further away t' witness ta event, this is when we realized that ta core was not reacting at all within ta acceptable boundaries. We desperately tried t' shut down it's reaction, but it was too late.


Before ta cam went offline, it recorded ta cores explosion. Luckily, no one was hurt, an' remarkably after creating such a visual, it returned t' it's normal state. So while not a success, it was neither a failure. We are still confused an' attempting t' study ta readings on t' how this was possible.

What we have agreed upon though, is that a new environment would be needed, either aboard t' Ingenuus or someplace new. While ta Ingenuus was retrofitted for this core, perhaps it is time t' look into creating a vessel built around this core. One that we can construct that can withstand such unknown forces, at least t' ta best of our abilities. We'll see what ta future brings.



Needing some rest an' a break, we headed down t' ta starboard biodome, or atrium. A beauty t' behold, as you can see. Lush an' teaming with life an' fresh air. A marvel in it's own right, how we Zoners have produced such incredible works of art in ta form of ta "Nephilim" colony ships...

Ah, enough of that.

Finn out

---

After he reviewed his submission, Finn turned towards the reports from Corinth as the two scientists and researchers were busy with their work. After reading over the documentations, he was both pleased and amused. Seeing the hardships of Liam's invention not producing the results he had hoped, and seeing Rachel's run-in with some Gallic cryocubes, he knew that they had their work cut out for them, and they were hitting the roadblocks that inevitably hinder any scientist and their work. It seemed to him that this day was one of those roadblocks for everyone.

---

[Remnant]

Rachel repeats her process of taking apart the cryocubes one by one, where the assistant 'Ryan' promptly welds them onto four points on the tubing she had. Of course with constant direction by the scientist herself.

As she was finishing up the last cube, with a CRASH, the table collapses under the weight and the magnetism pulling the components down. Muttering out a few curse words under her breath, she powers everything off and inspects the pieces to make sure nothing was damaged.

On the piece that she wanted out of the machine, she spots a small chink in the metal. Shaking her head, she grabs a soldering iron and some solder. "Current should be flowing throu-.. Bah.." This was going to take an hour. And quite a bit of solder. Stupid mistakes, it's a shame nobody is perfect.

---

An hour later, she finishes with the repairs, seeming satisfied with her work. Motioning for Ryan to begin the welding process on the final spot on the tubing, she stands up and checks the notes she wrote in with a pencil a while ago. Reading over the list twice, she exits the lab area to retrieve more of the materials she ordered.

A Carbon Laser. The key component in her system, other than the actual sensors of course. Lasers are not given as much credit as they should get. Their effects if powered high enough is quite interesting upon the subatomic features of whatever the other end is placed on. Even under 'very' certain circumstances, you can have an atom ride the distortion field a laser leaves a few micrometers around the light.

That's what Rachel was planning on. Bringing the laser back on a cart to her lab room, she sets it on a table with some help. "Alright.. Put simply, this is going to go into the structure in the center. Let me do the aligning, although you're going to need to weld the metal to the casing. The laser is going to be bouncing from the mirror quite a few times, before exiting through the right chamber into the tubing. Of course, that's going to be near impossible to guess where it would go, so we're going to need to just keep trying until it exits. The more bounces, the better. Although I can live with anything more than ten. From a viewpoint above, put it down at a 48 degree angle to the right."

Ryan gave her a blank look, before she explained it once more in a little.. easier terms.

---

This process was going to take the longest, and perhaps being the most important one... Rachel is going to need a nap after this.

[Remnant]

The alignment process indeed took quite a long time to complete. Rachel found that it was near-impossible to do it by hand, and was forced to add some protrusions into the main chamber where she had another mirrored coating applied to the rods.

After four hours of painful work, the alignment process was completed. The laser bounced around the main chamber quite a few times, before exiting through one of the passages out to the main ring.

"Halfway done, now all we need is the sensors to be positioned, and the electronics strand which i'll order pre-assembled.."

Standing up, brushing her pants off, she heads for the exit of the lab. She was exhausted. Sleep sounds excellent right about now.

[Remnant]

The next day, Rachel wandered back into the lab, scratching her head as she eyes the giant metal contraption laying on the ground of the lab room.

She had some important calls in the morning, and was feeling rather relieved about what was discussed, she was presented an opportunity that was too good, to give up at the time.

Grabbing a notebook and a pencil, she jots down some notes before beginning to head to the storage room for the Labs, which was actually quite large. Finding the large roll of bubble wrap that she was looking for, she grabs hold of an edge and begins tearing sheets off the roll which was almost as big as her.

"Just for the smaller components, the main shell should secure everything else inside.."

Returning to her room, she begins taping the sealant around some of the smaller components such as the cryo-cube parts, and the main carbon laser in the center.

"Disassembly should not be necessary thankfully, i'm only partially done.. The hold should be big enough to receive it." Standing back, eying the contraption, she walks over to the swivel chair, setting her feet on the surface of the desk nearby. Now what? All she could do is wait.