Freedom's the answer, what is the question?

[astrogator]

Who: Arilanna Tayrey + You (plus closed prompts for CR)
What: Astrophysics, plotting, swimming
Where: Various places
When: Early/mid February



i. Gifts from home (Closed to Crichton)

[Ari Tayrey has had some interesting packages from Sundries before, but none that meant as much to her as the latest arrivals. It's doubtful that anyone has ever been so excited over astrophysics textbooks as the young astrogator was when she unwrapped them. There's only one problem. She's knowledgeable. She could certainly pass an advanced degree on Earth in the subject, despite her age - but Ari has her limits, and in what is a rare occurrence for her, she's struggling to understand the very advanced material she has been given.

There's only one person she thinks might be able to help. She seeks out Crichton, in the lounge. There's a large, spiral-bound book under her arm. Its pages are thin plastic, not paper.]

Commander Crichton? I have something from home. I have quite a lot from home, really - [She's smiling broadly at this] - but I want to ask your help with this. If you don't mind.

ii. The beginnings of an idea (Closed to CR)

[[This is for existing CR who Ari is certain support her efforts to escape from the ship and won't betray plans to the Captain or his supporters. If she likes you but isn't sure, you're not invited. If you're an acquaintance but she is sure, you are. Characters will have been invited via text.

See starter in top comment below. I'm going to try doing this as a single conversation thread, no tag order, but if it naturally breaks into separate conversations at some point that's fine.]]

iii. Friendly competition (Open)

[When she came aboard the ship, Ari didn't know how to swim. She's now a strong, confident swimmer, having put plenty of effort into practicing. She's also slightly more at ease with being seen in her Tommy Bahama swimwear. It still feels a little like standing about in her underwear, but others wear less, and nobody seems to care about any of it.

Always looking for a challenge, she has moved onto diving - in particular, retrieving objects from the bottom of the pool. Often she's alone, but today there's someone else there, and they've noticed what she's up to. An idea occurs to her, and she waves in their direction.]

You interested in a competition? I've got a handful of coins here. Say I throw them in and we see who can pick the most up? One at a time, swim over and put it on the side before we go for the next.

iv. A disappointment (Open, February 9)

[When the fair visit had been announced, Ari had expected they would be travelling by tender, and that between them, she and the other would-be escapees would be able to carry out the necessary recon to make their escape possible on the next trip. Alas, it was not to be.

Here she is, standing and staring at the metal detector as if it's some alien object - which, to her, it may well be. She's seen a person step through and simply disappear. Ari's hand goes to the energy weapon at her belt, as if for security.]

Well. I'm not going near that.

[The words are addressed to whomever happens to be nearby.]

v. Fun with printers (Open)

[Are you passing by Ari's cabin at the end of the corridor? You may hear a loud sound. It's not entirely unlike this.

The door is ajar, so she might not mind a visitor. The door also looks to have a little sign on it. It's made of a thin plastic, and has Lieutenant Arilanna Tayrey printed on it in solid letters. Want your own door sign? Or anything else printed? She may be able to help...]

x. Wildcard! (Open)

[Find Ari in any of her usual places. She's had deliveries from home and is wearing a new lapis lazuli bracelet and may offer you a cinnamon biscuit. She's also now training with a practice sword. Other ideas are welcome - PM, message on Plurk, or just throw up a surprise starter!]

Comments

[astrogator]

[Ari nods, too.] It's going to be complicated, and we'll only get one shot at it, so we need as much information as we can before we try.

[Which means at least one reconnaissance trip, she thinks.] We'll observe what we can, on the next excursion.

I'm trained for L-space flight. That isn't moving between universes, but it is moving through other dimensions, with a lot of perceptual distortion. I can mentally regulate... abnormal physics. Strange geometries. If that's needed.

[theotherright]

Perhaps I'm showing my age, [ says Arthur, in the dry tones of one who's been made repeatedly and forcefully aware that he is from The Past^TM compared to a lot of other people. ] But in case I'm not the only one wondering: what is L-space, and what is moving through dimensions if not synonymous with moving through universes?

[ Sorry, but his grasp of the details of advanced physics can roughly be described as 'never tell me the odds'. And it seems like grasping this has practical importance. ]

[astrogator]

[Explaining it all to someone with no prior understanding will be difficult, but Ari will try.]

L-space is Lorentzen space. The hyperdimensional space described in Stanley Lorentzen's equations. Travel in ordinary space has a speed limit. You can't travel faster than the speed of light. Now, ordinarily we're travelling in four dimensions, yes? Three of space and one of time. If you use a Matsukata drive, you can transition your ship into L-space. Into higher dimensions. You travel at the same speed as before, but you cover far more distance. It's not a tunnel, or a wormhole, because you can move in any direction you want once you're in there. But everything looks very different, and there can be probabilistic fluctuations. It gives most people severe space sickness - disorientation, nausea, even hallucinations. The perceptual distortions can be extreme. It isn't a place human senses were designed for - but a properly trained spacer can resolve the distortions, mentally cut through them and be able to function in L-space. Where I've from, we've mapped out safe L-space lines between one star system and another, and that makes travel easier, and much faster.

Does that make sense? [If it doesn't, she's very open to answering questions.]

[ss_buttcrack]

That sounds remarkably similar to what Moya can do with her starburst maneuver. But she can only do that for short periods of time. How long can a ship like yours stay in L-space before it has to re-emerge?

[astrogator]

Theoretically? Indefinitely, although the longer you're in, the higher the probability of something going wrong. Practically we don't do any longer than twelve hours at a time per astrogator, and even that's exhausting. A lot of the crew have to be sedated for the transition, so we spend as much time in normal space as we can.

How long does Moya stay in for?

[ss_buttcrack]

Not long at all. Minutes, not hours. It takes too much energy, and Leviathans can't exactly plot a course through it either. That's why we only ever used it for emergencies. You point the nose, pop the cork and watch her go. Where she stops, no one knows.

[astrogator]

It's that imprecise? [Concern registers on Ari's face - but she's also intrigued by the concept.]

I wonder if it really is L-space that she's travelling through. Do you experience perceptual distortions during those minutes?

[Two spacers getting sidetracked from the plan, here, but Ari can't help her curiosity.]

[ss_buttcrack]

Yes, it is. On purpose. Moya didn't have any weapons. If we got attacked, our best chance was to run. Starburst could get us away to safety on a trajectory no one would be able to predict or follow.

I don't know if it's L-space or not. I'd have to see the math. I do know it's one hell of a kick when it happens. Can knock you off your feet.

[Apologies to the rest of the people having to listen to these nerds.]

[theotherright]

[ Arthur is still on the 100-level course compared to these two scholars, but he's doing his best to cram anyway. ]

Probabilistic fluctuations would be... what? A high chance of strangeness? [ he's trying. ]

And if it's possible to train to know what's what in there, then -- all right, say it turns out that the tender, or, or some other vehicle can access L-space. Could we be trained? I assume it's not quick or easy, if the standard is to knock people out instead, but anything that might give us all an edge is worth considering.

[astrogator]

[A ship with no weapons sounds like a thoroughly bad idea to Ari, but there's no point in criticising Moya when nothing can be done to change that from here.]

It could be L-space. I don't have the Lorentzen equations. [Ari is also very much prohibited from sharing those specific equations with anyone out-of-sector, under a century-old law, but that hardly seems relevant at present, either.

She turns to Arthur, encouragingly.]

A higher chance of improbable things happening, yes. It's not fully understood, but we've observed it in certain regions of L-space.

[Now she looks almost apologetic.] I don't think I could train you. The Tradeline cutoff is fifteen standard years, because after that the chances of success drop. I know that many years ago, in the early days of the technology, they only took on older candidates, but the failure rate was absurdly high. My own training... well, it began by taking me into L-space and having me try to do simple tasks there. I adjusted quickly enough, but I wouldn't call it easy - and I wouldn't know how to replicate it here.

[ss_buttcrack]

So, L-space is a little like going through the looking glass.

[He doesn't actually expect her to get that reference but Arthur should.]

They say its easier to learn a new language while you're younger too. Hm. I'm getting the feeling this is the kind of thing you can't really train for without going right into the deep end? But if you're there, you can handle that part for us. That will have to be good enough. Assuming it works anything near the same way.

We're making a lot of assumptions.