thearena | Electric Boogaloo

Entry tags:

Electric Boogaloo

WHO| The scientists group! (Brainiac 5, Dr. Bashir, Carlos the Scientist, Mouse, Dr. Zoidberg, Punchy
WHAT| The planetarium gets zapped
WHERE| Planetarium
WHEN| Thursday of Week 2
WARNINGS| Death and electricity!

The IMAX theater's selection of movies today seems to be decidedly weather-based. First it begins with a piece about global warming that was probably filmed in the early 2000's, then it goes to tornadoes, and then to tsunamis, and so on, so on. It ends on a delightful film about electrical storms, called "Shocking Stories".

About an hour after it ends, everyone in the planetarium is subject to some obnoxious, but otherwise harmless, static electricity that makes their hair stand up some. The air feels humid and thick, although not terribly warm.

The first bolt of lightning seems to lance straight from the planet Mars and fries a telescope inside the structure.

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Zoidberg had been enthralled by the documentaries, adding "clever" little asides as commentary as an attempt to amuse his new friends, and to convince them that he was worthy of their companionship. He'd been sitting parked before the IMAX screen, waiting for the next film to begin when the pressure in the room began to change.

"Hmm," he said, a look of greater than normal confusion about him. "Funny. It feels like it's going to rain."

Which was silly, because clearly, they were indoors. Even Zoidberg knew that. The lobster-man pondered the possibility of a rainstorm for several seconds more before the first bolt hit. At the flash of light, he sprang to his feet, whooping and screaming, literally quaking in his bare feet.

"Yooooooooow! It's Zeus! He's returned! And he's angry!"

"It's not Zeus! Zeus isn't real!" Carlos shouted back, shrinking away from the telescope. "Get down, Zoidberg! This is an electrical storm -- you want to be as small a target as possible! Curl up and try to minimize contact with the ground! And stay away from the machinery! Don't touch anything made of metal -- it'll conduct the lightning right into you!"

Carlos himself was crouched down on one knee, looking around, trying to see where the lightning was coming from while staying low. It seemed like the ceiling, but it was hard to say. His mind was racing -- was the storm confined to the planetarium -- would the rest of the fifth floor be safe? If so, their best bet would be to get out. But could they make it without being fried?

(The impossibility of a lightning storm indoors was not important. Carlos has seen weirder phenomena. Just because it's impossible doesn't make it less deadly.)

Edited 2014-01-30 18:25 (UTC)

"Shit!"

Par for the course, Mouse was surrounded by electronics. Knee-deep, if you will. As unhealthily co-dependent on tech here as all of humanity was in Zion. Meaning he'd been shocking himself for the better part of the day, but generally ignoring the weird drop in humidity. The lightening was slightly harder to ignore.

He grabbed his current project to his chest as he stumbled away from the lightening rod pile, tripping on a spare wire or two as he moved.

"Guys, don't- Who did that!?"

"Ain't our hardware." The silence after the first strike (people's freaked chattering aside, of course) is more terrifying than the actual lightning, given that it could at any moment be ripped open by another bolt. Thankfully, Punchy's bullheadedly immune to fear. Fear's something that other people fear.

Exhilaration, though? Punchy's down with that.

"Mouse, getcho' ass away from them snakes." He gestures at the cords and collects his own project (the corpse-cleaning robot he's been dismantling) to his chest.

"I'm gonna one up you on this one. Let's get our asses away from the spark show."

That the powers that be were watching them he knew, he'd even heard tell of them striking at people during the 'games'. But hearing and seeing, as he well knew, were two different things. Now wasn't the time for finding the origin. Now was the time for getting away, then coming back for forensics and scavenging later.

"I got this. Don't move." He puts a 'halt!' hand up at Mouse and retrieves a sword he's been using from the old samurai display and starts to use it to move the wires away from Mouse.

Punchy totally has not got this. Punchy's got the common sense of roadkill. Punchy's sense of self-preservation is somewhere up there with six year-olds who play in traffic.

"What are you doing?"

He was torn between trying to slap the sword out of Punchy's hand and his instinct to get as far away from this newest lightening rod as possible. The indecision shows in his movements, as he jerks a hand towards the other man, then stumbles a step back out of reach.

"You do not have this! I do not have the time to list all the ways you do not have this."

"Easy, brother, I'm saving yo' ass from being kentucky fr-"

And that when the flash of the next lightning bolt hits the planetarium. Punchy seizes, and the sword in his hand drops to the ground with a clatter. He stays standing for a second longer before collapsing to the ground, body spasming.

Mouse has seen people die before. He's seen a lot of people die. Most of them just occupied agents of the Matrix, but still. It had been seen. He could very safety say, however, he'd never seen anyone die like that.

So he almost doesn't believe that just happened for a long moment, starring at the empty air space where Punchy had been standing rather than looking down. Because if he looked down, then he'd know if he'd actually just seen a death. In the moment before looking down, he could just as easily still be alive as dead...

"Oh no. No, no, no..."

Brainy had said that he'd holed up with a bunch of other scientists in the planetarium. Lyle had acquired some of the edible plants from the exhibit on the second floor as a peace offering, since it was the only physical object he could think to provide to make up for the downsides of having two supervillains in your fort. He could offer some other expertise, but a physical offering had seemed a good place to start.

He really hadn't expected them to start with throwing lightning, though.

"Brainy, down!"

He did drop lower to the ground. For a second. Just for a second.

Because that - and a glance around the room - was all it took.

Calculations were made instantly, incorporating a ridiculous number of factors (average human running speed, location and distance of the exits, bodies already fallen, frequency and placement of strikes, probable mechanism for producing the electrical currents, available equipment - the list went on.) They were already dead. That was the conclusion he came to. None of them would make it out of the room alive if he was right about the pattern of the strikes and atmospheric factors involved.

Lyle would see it in his eyes first because he was closest - the usual look. Others might chance a glance at it without knowing what it was, without knowing quite how many things had happened all at once in that space of an eye blink. The quick scan, the variables factored in, the calculations, the solution, the plan to enact the solution.

Then he moved. It was instinctual. Later he and Lyle could dress it up as him simply trying to allow himself and Lyle to escape the room alive but right now in this moment, it was about clearing it as completely as he could. There were some things that couldn't be helped and there were some places he could hide all of himself. There were times where everything else shut off and all that was left was the data and the will to do something about it.

That was just something that happened when you had twelve tracks of consciousness, all eager to focus themselves on any problem available.

"You!" he pointed to the nearest person. "Strip those fuses from that crude display screen."

At least everyone in the room would know what parts were what due to the natural of what they all were. Small mercies. He was already ripping out a massive motherboard from one of the planetarium computers they'd torn apart and kneeling in the center of it all.

Edited 2014-02-02 05:15 (UTC)

Lyle didn't object that all of the display screens in here were crude, now that it was clear that they weren't under attack by Brainy's allies. He dropped the plant matter and dove for the indicated old-timey tech, stripping the fuses with the ease of long practice.

It doesn't matter to him what reasons they'll make up later to explain somewhat non-villainous behavior, he trusts that his future self -- if he has one -- will take the situation in hand without any problems.

God, what he wouldn't give for Garth or Ayla right now to redirect the electricity though!

Brainy pointed to someone else. "You! Uncoil those wires!"

They had to do this thing in under a minute or they wouldn't get to live beyond said minute.

Carlos knew that tone. He knew it in his bones. That was the sound of someone taking charge with science.

Immediately, with a quick nod at Brainy, Carlos dropped to his knees and began reeling out the spools of wire they'd been given by sponsors, coiling them in loose loops around his arm.

He did not know what the green young man from the future had planned, but it was a better plan that Carlos's plan, which had been to keep his head down and try to make a break for the door.

The idea of making a break for the door anyway doesn't even occur to him. There is science to be done, science that might help everyone in this planetarium survive. Running now would be betrayal.

"Julian," he pointed at a sensor they'd tried to cobble together, a sort of junky omnicom or tricorder. "Reverse the polarity of that miserable excuse of a sensor. We need it to produce an omni-theta vibrational frequency. It should be easy enough."

Easy enough indeed, Julian had watched the entire process of Brainiac putting it together--it was crude, but similar enough to a tricorder that he could follow the other's lead.

Apparently he had a better plan than the rest of them, which was good enough for Julian, who hadn't been able to help analyzing the pattern of the lightning strikes--they didn't appear to be random.

"You!" There weren't many 'you's left to point at by now. "Help me put these fuses in place."

He was moving quickly but two hands could do it faster.

Almost finished...

Energy discharges were perhaps one of the most common causes of injuries on starships.

What this meant was Julian wasn't quite surprised by massive electrical discharges indoors. But they never came with an accompanying change in atmospheric conditions, and it certainly wasn't ever lightning.

He'd felt nervous ever since the rise in humidity, but he hadn't left the room. Now, to say the least, he was wishing that he did.

Everyone was scattering, running--Julian kept low, went for the wall, where Doctor McCoy was.

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Electric Boogaloo

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I'm sorry this took so long, technobabble is so hard when you're braindead

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bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish...

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