vαи dyиє (punches) wrote in avengers_logs, @ 2018-08-18 22:15:00 |
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When it came to function, the quantum realm could be compared to other dimensions - most notably the astral plane, but instead of standing apart from the physical world, it was tied into the very fabric of the physical world itself. The astral plane was a zoom out and into a higher existence; the quantum realm was a zoom in toward the tiniest specks of reality and from that perspective, the entire universe was flipped around and turned inside out, seen from beneath its multiple layers. Hope knew that the key to stopping whatever came their way, the key to correcting this universe as they knew it (with all its flaws and all) lay with quantum realm tunnels and exploration and even quantum entanglement. That was why she and Scott had been working nonstop, along with Tony - and even her father had joined in, once he was privy to the details of what she and Scott had dreamed. To her, it was exactly like what happened when Scott dreamed of Janet - it was a message, of sorts. A warning. They needed to heed it. Shrinking some of her equipment, she carried the box to Jane’s lab at Stark Industries. “So I sort of have the theory that the dreams we’ve been having - it’s a form of quantum entanglement, meaning, particles of the universe communicating with each other vast distances. What we need to do is view these particle samples from different perspectives,” she stated without preamble - she was wearing casual clothes, hair pulled back into a ponytail, no makeup. It’d been a rough few weeks - if anyone knew her, they could deduce as much. Rarely did Hope go without a splash of cherry red on her lips. “Oh, sorry, got excited,” she grinned sheepishly. “There are sandwiches in here too. Normal-sized ones. In case you haven’t had lunch yet.” Jane was in front a whiteboard, staring at the long equation that filled it and swearing softly. “What? Oh, hi Hope.” Jane smiled and went to clear a space on her workbench for what Hope was carrying. Her workspace was always a mess of half-assembled equipment, notebooks, abandoned coffee cups, scatterings of snacks. “Sorry for the mess.” If Hope look worn, Jane was the last person who would ever say. There was a coffee stain on the front of her shirt. “Entanglement makes sense though. They’d be communicating along the same frequency.” That coffee stain, it gave Jane character - personally, Hope would have likely sported a tea stain since she guzzled the more unique blends frequently. But for now she settled for solid food, unwrapping a half-sandwich she'd acquired from one of the more authentic delis nearby - the kind where recipes were handed down for generations and generations - and taking a bite, before forcing herself to swallow so she didn't excitedly spray food everywhere. Rude. "Yes, exactly! Here - do you mind?" she asked, not wanting to disturb Jane's work. But she found a free space and clicked the button on a remote in her pocket - her particle counter and illuminator grew to full size in a whoosh. “Do you also have a frequency reader we can look at the samples on? I think you said you built one yourself?” Wow. That was actually really hot. “That’s amazing!” Jane gushed, forgetting the temptations of food to look at Hope’s equipment. She could have watched them grow to size at least a dozen more times. “How does that work? Proportionally reducing the space between the cellular structure?” Jane turned the idea over in her head, digging out her handheld spectrometer as she did. “With an infinite amount of numbers until zero you could continue to do that what...forever?” "The Pym Particles are built into whatever grows and shrinks - cars, buildings, lab equipment when you don't feel like carrying it," Hope explained with a chuckle. "They work by shunting matter into the Quantum Realm while shrinking, or acquiring extra matter when growing. My father invented the particles which bypass the Square-cube law of physics. I definitely wouldn't recommend using them forever though. They can alter brain chemistry after long-term use." Just look at what happened to Darren Cross, the yellow jacket, bald-headed psycho. She wondered if he was still out there, sometimes - though since he'd been torn apart, it didn't seem likely. She switched on her particle counter to study some samples and compare. "Your dreams, they've been pretty...realistic lately too?" Jane raised her eyebrows. “Depends on how you define reality.” She tapped on the display of the spectrometer, frowned at the results, and gave it a healthy thump on the table. Satisfied at the results, she passed it to Hope. It was like a seamless science dance - Hope checked out the results too, verifying the entanglement that was generated among the atomic spins. She muttered to herself, something like instantaneous wave function collapse and then began comparing and contrasting some more. Jane's instruments were fun. She needed to come back here more often. "Reality as in....you felt like you were there before. More of a lucid dream, I guess," she elaborated. "Mine have been like that. Really tiring too." It was kind of a shitty irony, but whatever. Jane looked over the two readouts, then scribbled out a bit of math on some scratch paper to show her. Jane liked the way Hope worked. Straight to the point without any air of pretentiousness, and unlike a lot of men, no assumption one of them was the stupid one. Plus that Pym tech was just nifty. “Deja vu? No, not like that. I had an encounter with one of the Infinity Stone a few years back. It kind of...infected me? Like a parasite. I’ve been dreaming of it. I think it wants me to find it.” "What, really?" Hope glanced toward Jane, shifting her gaze from where she'd been doing her own scribbling. "I didn't know they could do that. Then again, I don't know much about them besides that the amount of power they contain is insane." And she didn't even want to imagine what it would be like when one lone megalomaniac who happened to be a purple giant-sized Grimace got all the stones. Apparently it ended with a massive, universe-wide annihilation. And both she and her parents were casualties, right after she'd just gotten her mom back. "Are you okay now?" she asked, concerned. "I...dreamed I turned to dust. It was so sudden. I looked up and my parents were disappearing. I was disappearing." “I think so. Yours sounds terrifying.” Jane shuddered a little. “I don’t like the stability of this universe. I’ve tried to run a few mathematical models. A lot of the variables are missing but the results aren’t good. If it’s entanglement, I don’t know how you stop the particles from communicating on a scale as wide as the universe.” Hope shook her head. "You really can't stop it," she admitted. "At the rate these particles are smashing - which sounds weird, but we can see it - it's too far of an avalanche." The membrane between universes was thinning - soon they very well may merge with a shadow universe, at least for a little while. Hope didn't really want to picture how that would turn out, but she had a feeling they would be experiencing it whether they wanted to or not. "I guess we can just keep watch? Tony wants to figure out some alarm system, to warn people of a massive crisis - these readings could help devise something." Jane nodded her agreement. “We’ve got some work to do. Sandwiches first, then physics?” "Oh yeah. Food definitely first," Hope agreed. Speaking of smashing, she was about to do that to this sandwich she'd unwrapped. Fortifications were always required, when one was about to embark on a perilous journey of science and understanding the universe. |