Charlie (publicenemyno1) wrote in whatprice, @ 2009-06-20 19:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | charlie weasley, cho chang, marcus belby |
Life would be so much easier if I had the source code (2 of 2)
Who: Charlie Weasley, Cho Chang, and Marcus Belby
What: Inspecting the captured Anti-Apparation device, continued from here
Where: An undisclosed location.
When: Friday evening, June 12 2009
Rating: PG, mostly for the usual cursing.
Cho picked up the guts of what she had come to think of as "the radio" again, the heart of the beast. What she wouldn't give for a touch of electrical engineering knowledge, she thought.
Marcus apparated into an area quite near the building, and approached cautiously. Tapping on the oversized door, he called out into the quiet, "Charlie? Anyone?"
Hearing the noise at the door, Charlie said quietly to Cho, "I reckon that's Marcus. I'll go let him in." The exterior wards hadn't alarmed, which meant it was one of a very small group of people. Marcus, who had been here before, was one of them. He made his way over to the door and peeked through a makeshift peephole to be sure it was Marcus before opening the door and letting him in. "Hullo, Marcus. Cho's already here and we've made some good progress.
"Excellent," Marcus smiled grimly as he made his way into the building, nodding at Cho as she came into view sitting next to the pile of equipment. "What have we learned so far?" he asked in lieu of a greeting.
"Quite a bit, actually, but that's Cho's to tell and not mine," Charlie explained, and gestured to her for to let her tell Marcus everything she'd learned so far.
"Hallo, Marcus." Cho stood up and went to meet him, carrying the "radio". "Charlie told me what you figured out, and you were definitely on the right track with it. I don't know enough to describe how it works, but it's definitely the sound generator that makes it go. See this array of magnets? I'm betting that's the sound-generating part of the beast. Muggle wirelesses work similarly. I was telling Charlie, there's been a lot of military research lately about sonic offensive weapons, and this is almost certainly the result of part of that research."
"Nice work," Marcus said enthusiastically. "I meant to try to do some research on the topic this afternoon, but I was unable to make it to the campus." He looked questioningly at the devise in Cho's hands. "So they're using magnets to generate sound, now? How fascinating. Do you know any more about the actual methodology? If we're to create some way to counteract the effect, it would be best to understand how and why it works."
Cho shook her head. "I'm not enough of an engineer to know the nuts and bolts of it. I'm going to try and wrangle an interview with someone who knows how that stuff really works, and specifically the offensive applications. Nice thing about being a writer is, you can get in lots of places if you smile nicely and say you're researching a book." She grinned. "And it probably can't hurt for us to look into more information on radio tech in general. That kind of thing is easy to find—hell, kids build wirelesses from kits, these days."
"My dad would have loved that," Charlie said. "If we got a kit like that, do you think it would help us identify more of these bits and pieces, or is that going to take us more specialised research?"
"Hmm." Cho frowned thoughtfully. "For this thing specifically, it'll take more specialised research—but if a couple of us start with a build-it-yourself shortwave, it can only be an asset later. Maybe that'd help us DIY anything else we decide to build later."
"That sounds brilliant. Can you get one?" Marcus had the typical Ravenclaw excitement in his eyes. "And books. Do you have access to more books on the subject?"
"T2 should have what we're looking for." Cho had the same look on her face as Marcus now. "And I can get some book recommendations for you; I've got a lot of gearhead friends in the SF community and the real challenge will be shutting them up once they get started. Oh!" She snapped her fingers. "I bet you anything I can find someone who knows about jamming radio equipment. Course, that still doesn't solve the problem of having some kind of counteracting tool that won't blow up the minute someone waves a wand near it, but it'd be something."
"If we can get a passive spell to counter it, so much the better," Charlie pointed out.
Cho nodded. "I reckon that's more Marcus's area of expertise than mine."
Marcus nodded, his eyes unfocussed. "I think we can do it, as long as we have a reasonably clear understanding of what we're protecting against. It would probably have to be something that the wizard would wear, rather than a charm on the person themself." He looked at Cho, "It's a matter of getting enough strength in the counterspell, you know?"
"Right. I like the wearable-object idea. So ... probably what we need to do is, find some way to identify the frequency or frequencies that this thing is generating, and then—what, create a counterspell that would cancel it out the way a mechanical radio-wave device would? Am I following you rightly?"
"Exactly. Although, if they're smart they'll be scanning across multiple frequencies in a random pattern, which would be much harder to ward against, but, even so..." his words fell off as he ran through several possibilities for countering a more dynamic system, "...it wouldn't be completely impossible to deal with. Just...less stable." Looking back at Charlie, Marcus' features were grim. "You realise we're going to have to find a working device in order to test out these theories, and they are just theories, if we want to be able to test them in a safe environment."
"They're kind of hard to get hold of," Charlie warned Cho and Marcus. "It took us several shots to get this one, and there was a lot of luck involved."
"Yes, yes," Marcus shook his head, sighing. "I don't want anyone getting hurt for this." Although, if he was honest with himself, he knew that was not a reasonable qualification to make to his request. "We may be able to recreate a working version from this one," he conceded, "if we can get sufficient documentation from Katie's gearhead friends." He was obviously amused at this description, as if Cho had friends who were robotic constructions.
Charlie nodded slowly. "That's an idea. We'd need a power source. And if I can get a lead on another one, I can get spare parts or a working model, or even if I can't do that, I can at least get one that could be disassembled, so you'd know how the extra bits go together and what's missing, if there's more than the power source gone."
"I'll get as much information as I can," Cho said. "And if I can find any devices that are even remotely similar, or that seem to work on the same principle—I'll see if I can't get you one."
"Then let's do that. Talk to me in a couple of weeks, let me know what you've got, and I'll see what I can do about laying hands on another one of these." Charlie jerked his thumb at the machine. "And if there's nothing more we can do now, I vote we call it a night and celebrate our good work with a pint."
"Hear hear," agreed Cho, grinning. She'd be in for an unpleasant surprise later when she got back to the Hampstead Tube station and tried to use her Oystercard, but for now, she was pleased with the evening's accomplishments.