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Itty Bitty Bigger World - Cut no SLAC
Jun. 11th, 2016 09:45 pmItty Bitty Bigger World - Cut no SLAC
Even by the jaded standards of the mid 21st century, in which most things were possible and most of them had been done, SLAC was an impressive sight.
There were space-based (microgravity) and Lunar (low gravity) particle accelerators, but SLAC had the advantage of operating in a 1G field without spending power on same.
The old complex had been miles [kilometers] (I said 'miles') [[kilometers]] (Mike India Lincoln Edward Sam) [[[>beep<]]] long. Then it had been extended in both useful directions, towards the Santa Cruz mountains and towards the San Francisco Bay.
We stood near the original start point, in a long arched corridor wide enough for three capsules side by side. Mini capsules, the ultimate successor to golf carts - and about the same size, wide enough for two people to sit side by side, scurried past from time to time. They were mostly transparent but solid for safety's sake.
As far as the eye could see, yet underground, the particle accelerator tube - itself several meters in diameter - stretched in both directions. This area, intended as a start point for tours, had signs and VR labels and smart paint to tactfully point out the cool stuff - such as the transparent aluminum window through which one could actually see with one's bare eyes ... well, nothing. The accelerator was not in use.
Samantha - my KittenBot - was idly swishing her tail. The driver of a passing mini capsule did a double-take when she glared at him, but the moment passed. One doesn't expect pets at SLAC.
Our reception had been minimal. A single SLAC manager in the currently fashionable top hat and tails, and a single SLAC security guard in two-piece coveralls. I had to see what he carried, by habit. He noticed me checking his belt.
"Slammer, graser, stunner-shield," he said. The motion of his name tag - made of smart paint, it scrolled between SLAC, SECURITY, and RICK - drew the eye up and away from his gear.
The slammer was the size of an old-style small caliber, long barreled handgun, and had a bell-shaped emitter head. It could have stood in for a science fiction phaser for anyone who did not actually know Star Trek.
A slammer of that size could exert anywhere from a pound of force to several hundred tons - enough to crush a capsule or endanger a major building.
The grazer was much smaller, perhaps the size of a large egg, if it were curved like a banana. It would emit a powerful electrical field that would fry most electronics. It also had a stunner setting. Depending on its configuration and override settings, it might also be able to function as a ridiculously powerful nerve disruptor.
The stunner-shield was the size of a dinner plate, what an ancient knight would have called a 'buckler' or small shield, and - strangely - was not transparent. It could be set to stun whatever it touched - whatever was in front of it - or to give off a mass stun charge with a range of a few hundred feet.
Amy stopped and unbuckled one of the two belts she was wearing. Gratefully, I put my smartgun belt on.
I knew slammers. A lot of people have tiny ones as implants. Typically they are set for a couple hundred pounds of force - knock someone down, hurt like a boxer's punch - and good for five to ten seconds of use.
The one I normally carry - but not since the fireboat - was shaped like a bracelet, could be dialed up to about a ton of force (take that, metric system!) and had enough power for two hours.
Rick's slammer would run for at least a month and exert 20 tons - that's 40,000 Papa Oscar Union Nancy David Sam - of force, the entire time. The problem was how one would brace the butt.
I looked closer. The stunner-shield had a bracket for attaching the slammer to it, forming a combination that would look a little like a hydraulic jack and function like a support column.
Useful toy for someone protecting an underground complex. You could literally keep the ceiling from collapsing on you.
"Your reputation precedes you, Alan. Welcome to SLAC," the suit said - and doing what I usually do with suits, I ignored him.
Rick smiled and said nothing. He wore his greetings to everybody. Clearly old school, which I appreciated.
That's when the power went out. And the lights.
Things happened very, very fast.
Amy moved left and I moved right, like a dance routine. Samantha's eyes flashed - very brightly - a strobe, 30 flashes per second. Her head went transparent to facilitate lighting everything around us up.
The suit was caught flat footed, mouth open, staring. Not moving. Not a factor.
Rick moved forward a few paces, drawing the stunner shield in his left hand and the slammer in his right. His head moved in the short jerky motions I associated with scanning for threats. Fast reactions, but definitely -reacting-. Without advance warning.
"VR is down," Amy shouted to me.
That took something fairly massive. We were surrounded by power and lighting systems. Standard security facility specification called for quintuple backups for lighting systems. But some facilities needed to be darkened for special needs, and SLAC was one of them.
Hell, the surface charge in the media paint for the VIP displays was good enough to light the area for an hour!
So we had been hacked. Very, very badly.
My mind raced. "Get out of there!" had been drilled into me for literally decades. But we could run either one way or another down a real long tunnel, duck under the curve of the accelerator itself, appropriate (sounds so much better than 'steal') a mini capsule, or go out of one of the many emergency exit doors, which would lead to an escape capsule or a slide.
Samantha made up my mind.
"MEOW!" she roared and ran for a standard person-sized emergency exit door. Not the nearest, but the second nearest.
Perforce Amy and I followed, quickly. Rick followed us, looking backward with weapons ready.
The suit just stood there.
I heard the most appalling "CRUNCH," like breaking wood combined with thick, heavy meat being slapped onto a very large table.
I had heard it twice before. Capsule vs. pedestrian and terminal velocity impact ten feet from me.
A mini capsule running dark at full speed had just crushed the SLAC executive and kept going.
Amy followed the KittenBot without hesitation. I was two paces behind.
I cleared the door frame of the emergency exit. Rick was behind me when the second capsule hit at full speed.
CRUNCH - screech - GRIND. It had collided with the door frame.
Then a blast curtain fired downward and the corridor filled with quickfoam. This cut off my last view of Rick, firing both his weapons at something in the distance.
I found out later that his fire disabled two more capsules before the fifth turned him into chunky salsa. He undoubtedly saved our lives. Capsules slamming into the wall at full speed over and over again would have gotten us.
Amy grabbed my arm. "GO!" she shouted as we jumped on the powered slide, dark and leading down into darkness.
In other words, unpowered.
I had just a glimpse - it made no sense - KittenBots don't need to use the litter box.
As we fell, the slide powered up and caught us, delivering us to an escape capsule which sealed. The moment we grabbed dangling masks and pressed them to our faces, the capsule filled with quickfoam and accelerated at several gravities.
WHAM! OOOF!
I realized what I had seen. The KittenBot had pried open an equipment cover and squatted and backed her cute little furry butt into it - and her prehensile tail. Energizing the slide with her built in power source.
Good kitty! I thought to myself, and hoped she had managed a backup.
If only humans could be backed up. We can do many things, but not that. Too much data storage, too slow. Best guess was that we might be able to copy a human brain if you didn't mind spending a decade in the copy chair. And even with a typical lifespan of a century, most of us had better things to do.
The capsule accelerated in a linear fashion out of Stanford's center.
(I got so much angry E-mail, too. I'd been involved in a lot of shaky stuff over the last two days - logging in a protected heritage forest, orbital laser strikes, what the media was still calling "Tower Trouble," interference in the rights of credentialed reporters, ad nauseum. But if you really want to piss a scientist off, break one of her toys.)
Amy and I were the last thing to be accelerated at SLAC before the enemy hack blew every power source in the accelerator's array, simultaneously, and turned a priceless kilometers-long San San asset into trash.
Defense fields, quickfoam and a lot of pre planning limited the damage to the SLAC property. Immediate evacuation had saved numerous lives, but six scientists and nineteen support personnel were not so lucky.
Including Rick. Don't forget Rick.
He had been closest to the escape door but had stepped out of the way to cover Amy and myself as we ran for it.
Stepped out of the way. Stepped out of the way, to stand between us and danger.
There are worse things to see on a tombstone.
Rick Pacelli. SLAC Protective Services Group. B 2019. D 2048. "Stood his ground."
Even by the jaded standards of the mid 21st century, in which most things were possible and most of them had been done, SLAC was an impressive sight.
There were space-based (microgravity) and Lunar (low gravity) particle accelerators, but SLAC had the advantage of operating in a 1G field without spending power on same.
The old complex had been miles [kilometers] (I said 'miles') [[kilometers]] (Mike India Lincoln Edward Sam) [[[>beep<]]] long. Then it had been extended in both useful directions, towards the Santa Cruz mountains and towards the San Francisco Bay.
We stood near the original start point, in a long arched corridor wide enough for three capsules side by side. Mini capsules, the ultimate successor to golf carts - and about the same size, wide enough for two people to sit side by side, scurried past from time to time. They were mostly transparent but solid for safety's sake.
As far as the eye could see, yet underground, the particle accelerator tube - itself several meters in diameter - stretched in both directions. This area, intended as a start point for tours, had signs and VR labels and smart paint to tactfully point out the cool stuff - such as the transparent aluminum window through which one could actually see with one's bare eyes ... well, nothing. The accelerator was not in use.
Samantha - my KittenBot - was idly swishing her tail. The driver of a passing mini capsule did a double-take when she glared at him, but the moment passed. One doesn't expect pets at SLAC.
Our reception had been minimal. A single SLAC manager in the currently fashionable top hat and tails, and a single SLAC security guard in two-piece coveralls. I had to see what he carried, by habit. He noticed me checking his belt.
"Slammer, graser, stunner-shield," he said. The motion of his name tag - made of smart paint, it scrolled between SLAC, SECURITY, and RICK - drew the eye up and away from his gear.
The slammer was the size of an old-style small caliber, long barreled handgun, and had a bell-shaped emitter head. It could have stood in for a science fiction phaser for anyone who did not actually know Star Trek.
A slammer of that size could exert anywhere from a pound of force to several hundred tons - enough to crush a capsule or endanger a major building.
The grazer was much smaller, perhaps the size of a large egg, if it were curved like a banana. It would emit a powerful electrical field that would fry most electronics. It also had a stunner setting. Depending on its configuration and override settings, it might also be able to function as a ridiculously powerful nerve disruptor.
The stunner-shield was the size of a dinner plate, what an ancient knight would have called a 'buckler' or small shield, and - strangely - was not transparent. It could be set to stun whatever it touched - whatever was in front of it - or to give off a mass stun charge with a range of a few hundred feet.
Amy stopped and unbuckled one of the two belts she was wearing. Gratefully, I put my smartgun belt on.
I knew slammers. A lot of people have tiny ones as implants. Typically they are set for a couple hundred pounds of force - knock someone down, hurt like a boxer's punch - and good for five to ten seconds of use.
The one I normally carry - but not since the fireboat - was shaped like a bracelet, could be dialed up to about a ton of force (take that, metric system!) and had enough power for two hours.
Rick's slammer would run for at least a month and exert 20 tons - that's 40,000 Papa Oscar Union Nancy David Sam - of force, the entire time. The problem was how one would brace the butt.
I looked closer. The stunner-shield had a bracket for attaching the slammer to it, forming a combination that would look a little like a hydraulic jack and function like a support column.
Useful toy for someone protecting an underground complex. You could literally keep the ceiling from collapsing on you.
"Your reputation precedes you, Alan. Welcome to SLAC," the suit said - and doing what I usually do with suits, I ignored him.
Rick smiled and said nothing. He wore his greetings to everybody. Clearly old school, which I appreciated.
That's when the power went out. And the lights.
Things happened very, very fast.
Amy moved left and I moved right, like a dance routine. Samantha's eyes flashed - very brightly - a strobe, 30 flashes per second. Her head went transparent to facilitate lighting everything around us up.
The suit was caught flat footed, mouth open, staring. Not moving. Not a factor.
Rick moved forward a few paces, drawing the stunner shield in his left hand and the slammer in his right. His head moved in the short jerky motions I associated with scanning for threats. Fast reactions, but definitely -reacting-. Without advance warning.
"VR is down," Amy shouted to me.
That took something fairly massive. We were surrounded by power and lighting systems. Standard security facility specification called for quintuple backups for lighting systems. But some facilities needed to be darkened for special needs, and SLAC was one of them.
Hell, the surface charge in the media paint for the VIP displays was good enough to light the area for an hour!
So we had been hacked. Very, very badly.
My mind raced. "Get out of there!" had been drilled into me for literally decades. But we could run either one way or another down a real long tunnel, duck under the curve of the accelerator itself, appropriate (sounds so much better than 'steal') a mini capsule, or go out of one of the many emergency exit doors, which would lead to an escape capsule or a slide.
Samantha made up my mind.
"MEOW!" she roared and ran for a standard person-sized emergency exit door. Not the nearest, but the second nearest.
Perforce Amy and I followed, quickly. Rick followed us, looking backward with weapons ready.
The suit just stood there.
I heard the most appalling "CRUNCH," like breaking wood combined with thick, heavy meat being slapped onto a very large table.
I had heard it twice before. Capsule vs. pedestrian and terminal velocity impact ten feet from me.
A mini capsule running dark at full speed had just crushed the SLAC executive and kept going.
Amy followed the KittenBot without hesitation. I was two paces behind.
I cleared the door frame of the emergency exit. Rick was behind me when the second capsule hit at full speed.
CRUNCH - screech - GRIND. It had collided with the door frame.
Then a blast curtain fired downward and the corridor filled with quickfoam. This cut off my last view of Rick, firing both his weapons at something in the distance.
I found out later that his fire disabled two more capsules before the fifth turned him into chunky salsa. He undoubtedly saved our lives. Capsules slamming into the wall at full speed over and over again would have gotten us.
Amy grabbed my arm. "GO!" she shouted as we jumped on the powered slide, dark and leading down into darkness.
In other words, unpowered.
I had just a glimpse - it made no sense - KittenBots don't need to use the litter box.
As we fell, the slide powered up and caught us, delivering us to an escape capsule which sealed. The moment we grabbed dangling masks and pressed them to our faces, the capsule filled with quickfoam and accelerated at several gravities.
WHAM! OOOF!
I realized what I had seen. The KittenBot had pried open an equipment cover and squatted and backed her cute little furry butt into it - and her prehensile tail. Energizing the slide with her built in power source.
Good kitty! I thought to myself, and hoped she had managed a backup.
If only humans could be backed up. We can do many things, but not that. Too much data storage, too slow. Best guess was that we might be able to copy a human brain if you didn't mind spending a decade in the copy chair. And even with a typical lifespan of a century, most of us had better things to do.
The capsule accelerated in a linear fashion out of Stanford's center.
(I got so much angry E-mail, too. I'd been involved in a lot of shaky stuff over the last two days - logging in a protected heritage forest, orbital laser strikes, what the media was still calling "Tower Trouble," interference in the rights of credentialed reporters, ad nauseum. But if you really want to piss a scientist off, break one of her toys.)
Amy and I were the last thing to be accelerated at SLAC before the enemy hack blew every power source in the accelerator's array, simultaneously, and turned a priceless kilometers-long San San asset into trash.
Defense fields, quickfoam and a lot of pre planning limited the damage to the SLAC property. Immediate evacuation had saved numerous lives, but six scientists and nineteen support personnel were not so lucky.
Including Rick. Don't forget Rick.
He had been closest to the escape door but had stepped out of the way to cover Amy and myself as we ran for it.
Stepped out of the way. Stepped out of the way, to stand between us and danger.
There are worse things to see on a tombstone.
Rick Pacelli. SLAC Protective Services Group. B 2019. D 2048. "Stood his ground."
