Portland Net

I have to admit, if I've really just been through a wormhole, I'm a little disappointed that I have no memory of it.

Still, this is a lot more interesting than what I actually had planned for the day. Who needs to bother with port authority when you can travel via Einstein-Rosen Bridge?

It would be interesting scientifically to scan one of the people whose gender has changed using an fMRI machine. It might reveal interesting things about the human brain or about learning -- or about memory...especially memory associated with unconscious action, muscle memory...

I would like to announce that I have finally finished my suit. I was having issues building the reactor with the technology I was stuck with but I had a serious breakthrough last night and I would like to chalk that up to the fact that my brain has been slightly reconstructed within the past couple of days. Another signal that the science community is shamefully lacking in more female insights.

That being said, I suddenly have much more free time. If anyone needs anything built, speak now. (Sam baby I got you, you'll have those wings ASAP)

I do admit, that despite what Holly has informed me that I am not all that sure what to think of this situation.

That was the most difficult time I've had going into work. It took some convincing to make them believe I'm me. Then I had to get another ID made, so when I flash my badge, it's got this face on it. But I spent the afternoon on the streets without anyone I'd gotten to know knowing me. I had two people ask about me. I wasn't sure what to say.

This is belated and redundant, but I need to say it not in passing or as an afterthought.

Thank you for what you did during the snowstorm. From everything I've been able to find out, I think it helped, a lot, and whatever it took for you to do that, I'm afraid I don't really know exactly, but...it was a good thing you did.

Umm, do either of you know anything about the unusual piece of equipment in my house with the Stark Industries logo on some of the parts? Or any of the...other stuff, that wasn't here the last time I was?

[OOC: explanation. Since Bruce hasn't been back to his house for a while, I figure all his stuff showed up there and he never found any of it 'til now.]

I wasn't really being serious when I suggested we were in some kind of VR anyway, but I did think of a pretty good reason to rule it out: NPCs. Anyone who's played a video game should know what I'm talking about, the computer-generated people that populate the world to sell things or guard castles or give quests. (Or introduce you to Portland and explain that you were kidnapped by a wormhole and by the way there are also people with magic here.) But usually they only come with a few stock phrases and the system will mask it by only allowing you to say certain things to them. If it's more open-ended you either get no response or an endless stream of "I'm sorry, I don't understand" when you say something that isn't accounted for in the program. Even as advanced as Holly is, you can tell it's a program behind it, and I think we can assume that Holly's probably going to be the most advanced interface, so either literally the entire population of Portland and everywhere up to a day's journey away is stuck inside a virtual reality as well, or the whole idea falls down. Even though it was mostly a joke in the first place. Though I suppose if you really wanted to you could test it by walking up to a stranger and trying to have a conversation with them that a central processor couldn't reasonably expect. Anyway, that was my thought exercise at work today.

This is a follow up to my two previous posts, with more raw data as well as a new experimental design which is somewhat promising.

[OOC: the data covers the period from the last post until April 14, and then there's no data at all after that.

There is also discussion of an experiment designed to detect minute fluctuations in gravitational fields, as well as lots of math in support of why it should work, how this theory fits in with other theories of physics, etc. and what kind of data might be expected from certain kinds of interactions between worlds.

This experiment isn't really aimed at information about the world or the wormhole, though. It's aimed at testing a theory of quantum gravitation that predicts a probabilistic interaction between gravitons and photons under certain very specific conditions. Interactions taking place are detected in displacement patterns of atoms in a crystalline lattice. The effects are magnified by inducing a macroscopic quantum state in the fluid used to grow the crystal.

Basically, all that can really be expected from this experiment is yes or no, does the experiment detect anything. And if yes, further work might possibly be able to discover something interesting about the world/the wormhole/what's going on.

There is a very small amount of data from this experiment, which also stops April 14.]

[private to Barry]

Sorry I haven't checked in before now, I've been...distracted. Any progress on the DNA project?



[OOC Note: FYI, just in case anyone thinks they'd notice, Bruce also hasn't been back to his house the past week, he's been staying somewhere else.]

I spoke with a young woman who recently came through the wormhole from a world similar to most of ours. Hers appears identical to mine so far. She claimed to work for SHIELD, and based on what she said, I'm inclined to believe her. However, given the divided loyalties found within SHIELD where so many had HYDRA ties, I'm not entirely certain yet about her own affiliation. I hope she's above board. I'm planning on getting to know her better. If she is, and she did fight to take down HYDRA, I consider her on my  side. But I don't know yet.

I say that because one of the things she claimed was that Coulson is alive, due to some unspecified procedure. I thought that was worth mentioning to the rest of you. It wouldn't be the first time Fury has lied. Although why he dragged it out this long I have no idea. That said, again, right now I don't know her well enough to know how true this is. I still felt it was something worth forewarning you about.

I've been Googling everything since 2008. Annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be a page anywhere called "everything interesting that's happened since 2008". There is a hell of a lot of QI to catch up on, though. Also:

1) They did what to the finale of Lost?
2) Three Sherlock Holmes reboots. Three.
3) Star Wars: Episode VII. No. I can't. I'm just not okay with this. Put the cult classics down, this cannot possibly end well. It would be like trying to remake Little Britain in the US, or a good Stephen King adaption. I can handle everything else - portals, wings, inexplicable AIs and powerful forces that pull you back after exactly 24 hours, whatever. That's fine, that's just going to give me plenty of research fodder once I'm doing reading about everything they've ever found in the Large Hadron Collider. But another Star Wars? Not okay.

So I have a completely hypothetical situation to run by the three of you. Remember. Hypothetical.

If I arrived here without my suit or any of my tech, I would have to find a way to rebuild it from scratch, right? Hypothetically speaking.

And the only place I could really find the materials I needed, hypothetically, would be at a military base, including the chemical compounds I would need to build a reactor strong enough to keep this hypothetical suit running.

I'll admit I'm not at my strongest point right now, and finding a way to break into a military base or even weapons manufacturing base is all fine and good but I wouldn't be able to a) break in myself or b) carry out everything I needed by myself.

I would need help to do that. Dare I say a team.

So what I'm asking is, would any of you be willing to be a part of this completely hypothetical team so I can rebuild my suit and start acting useful around this place?

I wouldn't need help getting the technology for my computers, I think being a professor at the local university can help me pull enough strings to get the right people to make me what I need them to make me, but they might draw the line at a repulsor powered exoskeleton war machine.

Happy Easter! Don't eat too much chocolate!

Private: Bruce and Steve

I am treating you both to Starbucks today. Mostly because I like you guys but also because I randomly found my Starbucks Card on my dresser this morning as well as... some other stuff. Mainly... Tony's files. I had them all on a special laptop and then backed it up on a USB, and well, I found both the laptop and the USB this morning. It has all the information on the Avengers and anyone that Tony has had dealings with in the past, as well as corporate files for Stark Industries.

I think we should discuss where to put this for safe keeping. What do you say, boys?

I’d like to thank those that I’ve met here so far for being so welcoming when I arrived last week. Your kindness in reaching out to a stranger was certainly appreciated. For those I haven’t met yet, I’m looking forward to making your acquaintance.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know that there will be a visual arts class, as well as a martial arts class, available at the YMCA beginning next week on April 21st. Visual arts will include drawing and painting using various mediums. Classes for those under eighteen will be on Mondays, classes for those eighteen and over will be on Wednesdays. The martial arts class for those younger than eighteen will be on Tuesdays, those eighteen and over will be on Thursdays. All classes will take place from 7-8 p.m.

I will be the volunteer teacher for these classes, so if you have any interest in taking either or have any questions, just let me know or show up at the time mentioned above. If you have experience in either area, volunteering to help teach a session or two is also a possibility. Just let me know if you’re interested and we can look into setting that up.

I’ve also been looking into other volunteer opportunities throughout the city so if you’d like more information on other ways to get involved outside the YMCA I’d be happy to share what I’ve found.

This is a follow-up to my previous post, with more raw data that I've collected, so it will be available if to anyone who wants it.

OOC: pretend like there's data here, and some analysis, but not as much analysis/math/etc. as last time. Mostly just data.

[Private to Barry and Ruby]

I was doing some data manipulation on that data we collected about where and when everyone came from. I thought it would be interesting to work with a distance metric that assumed everyone came the same distance, like the wormhole was always the same length, and once I did that, the equations I generated looked a lot like something I recognized, so I fiddled with them a bit and then found some values for the constants in a theory I was working on, and plugged that into the model to see what kind of universe it would predict...

And it ran for 28 hours, chugging away...

And ended up with negative gravity.

Oops.

Some days are just like that, right?


[Private to Pepper]

Still staying okay?

Not worrying too much, I hope?

I know this is a weird question, but... nobody's gotten my wolf, have they? Or my kind of wolf?

I know some of you have been turned into werewolves, maybe some of you already were, but... they all sound like they work differently from mine. Anyway, I was just curious.

On another note, if anyone is feeling up to a little fun tonight, I could really stand to get out of the house do something to get out of this funk.

I am really quite impressed with the way technology has evolved. How can one object so small be able to communicate with so many people instantaneously? How can it be an address book, a camera, a music player, a calendar, a map and so many other things all in one? What is Facetime? How are iBooks different than ordinary books? What are emoticons, HBO, Hulu and Netflix? This is all terribly

Oh I found the flashlight. Convenient!

What is this Google? I also love how it knows to follow your finger when you tap something. How does that work? There's even a calculator and a notepad. How does anyone find the time to do anything other than play with this gizmo?

And what in the world is Twitter? It doesn't sound very appealing.

I do apologize for all the questions. I can see how it may seem a bit bothersome, but unfortunately, I am not from this time period. It is all quite revolutionary.

I've been looking everywhere, has anyone seen Bucky?

Are you okay? I keep hearing that people are changing into different species, and I was worried about you. I'm still the same, and that's a good thing for now at least.

Just really wanted to check up on you. Let me know.

Oh no. I think I'm going deaf. And... what's the word for when you can't smell anything? Is there a word for that? I can't hear hardly anything. And I could barely smell my food when it was right in front of me.

Is this what human normal people's senses are normally like? How do you live like this?

[ bruce, barry, blaine, amy** ]

I think I'm

I think the wolf

This is freaking me out

** plus anyone else I've forgotten who knows about the wolf; kurt, finn, or shawn can assume that they've been told if you want, or we can play out her telling them now-ish, either way!