InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I've made a huge mistake!"

Guests were directed to the conference room on the top floor of the organization's offices because it had a panoramic window allowing for viewing of play. The usual table and chairs have been removed (save for a chair for his Grandmother Macmillan and one with nibbles and spirits waiting) and in the center of the room, there is the receiver and display, with a white circle of spellotape drawn around it and a small sign that says: DO NOT PICK-UP OR OTHERWISE MOVE!.



Ernie made sure to organize some food and drinks for the affair as he knew that hungry people made for impatient people. There was a lovely spread of brunch appetizers and pitchers of mimosas and bloody marys to take part of.


At precisely 10am, Ernie shows up at the actually conference room. It is OBVIOUS that he is both nervous and exhausted, but he's managed to shower and get some fresh clothes on, so he is at least presentable. He snakes into the center of the room, tilts the display unit up towards the ceiling and pulls out his wand to make sure it stays in place. Then he rights himself, pushes his glasses up his nose and looks around the room.

"Hello all. Um, thank you for coming, I should be just about ready to get underway. I've told the players that they could come in over the next hour, one at a time so - ah ha, we have something to keep watching - so if they drop in, that's fine. This is the first full, continuous broadcast test of my motion capture system. I'll be, for the most part, in the broadcast room which, for those of you who haven't been up here before is just over at that box across the stands - you can see it through the window there. I know that, em, our illustrious former beater and current patent officer," Ernie gestures over at Phineas, "is going to want to see that beast of a broadcaster, but otherwise I can take you over a couple at a time - it's not a very big space and I've taken up quite a bit of it."

"If you'll all come over to the window, you can see that there are large panels of what looks like floodlights pointing upwards. What they are actually producing is a single wavelength of light that is indetectable by human vision. Every player, every ball and every hoop has one of these attached to it," Ernie said, pulling his hand out of his pocket to reveal a handful of buttons.



"They each produce a unique magical field that distorts the wavelength and the array records that distortion and sends a signal to the broadcaster. Because the arrays are set in such a way to make a grid, the signals can be arranged onto a three-dimensional graph, making their broadcast to a radio not a picture broadcast, which can be stripped and distorted by the high energy magics of home warding, but as a lower density broadcast of numerical data points in the same way that vocal broadcast is to our existing wirelesses. The amber crystalline bit at the top of the wireless," Ernie walks over to the center of the room and points with his wand, "replaces the signal receptor in most common wirelesses and then you have to tie this display unit into the speaker. But otherwise, the parts are essentially the same as any old wireless because the way it translates numerical data into sound is no different than how it will translate numerical data into pictures."

Ernie righted himself and looked around. "I should just turn it on, shouldn't I? I'm just going to turn it on." He bent down and turned on the wireless, not hearing the dull hum of an empty frequency, but instead getting close enough to verify it was tuned correctly to the right frequency. "Alright. Watch this space."

With that, he apparated away into the broadcast room. It was an uncomfortable 7 minutes before suddenly, without any warning, the display unit lit up, producing a soft white cone of light, up from which was the practice drills of the Montrose Team flying through the air much like this:



Belatedly, there was sound as Ernie turned on the microphone and started awkwardly narrating some of the scene to show that they were in synch. "Did it work? Justin - I can see you in the window can you give me a thumbs up or -- oh, good. Good! As you can see by, ahem, looking out the window, there isn't much delay. At least, I hope there isn't - Lennox swings around the west hoops and dips down to avoid his brother who comes barreling off the starting mark. There seems to be something wrong with his shoe, which I apologize is probably because I made them all stick the buttons in their shoes to make sure they wouldn't get knocked off. I'm not sure -- oh, that's why Gregor had me do up all those snitches. Are they all - yes, they're all lining up at the center point and - yes, there they go! Oh gosh, I'm not going to try and be a voice to all this - I should have gotten Uncle Bertie to do this part. I'm just going to leave some music on so it's not just a weird dull tone."

With that Ernie puts on the theme music that they play ahead of all the Quidditch matches (because it's the only thing available and ready in the broadcast booth) and heads back to the conference room to check it out for himself.