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"Dr. Treveran! Stop!" The man burst into the laboratory, slamming the swinging door into a metal-sided cabinet adjacent to it with a resounding clash of metal on metal.
The middle-aged woman tapping away at a computer console in a booth overlooking the laboratory tilted her head down to peer over the frame of her glasses at him. "Why, Dr. Vitomsky. Whatever's the matter?" The automated equipment and servos operating on the main floor below did not pause in their paths, or otherwise acknowledge the newcomer.
"Your plan! It's insane! You'll destroy us all!" He charged up the steps to her booth. "You can't create a miniature black hole under these conditions. Your containment field doesn't have a tenth of the power it needs!
"I assure you, my containment field has plenty of power, Dr. Vitomsky. The whole point of this process is to generate power, you know."
"But you can't possibly pull enough power to contain it at the start! You must abort this process!" He banged on the door to the booth. "Let me in!"
"Nonsense. The models were quite pellucid on this subject."
"Models! A computer simulation can't possibly account for all the variables in reality, plus I've checked your math and it doesn't work. Now, Let me in or I swear I'll break down this door!" He turned his shoulder towards the door.
"It's not locked, Dr. Vitomsky."
"Oh." He opened the door and stalked to her computer.
"But you mustn't interfere with my experiment. That could have disastrous consequences; this is a very delicate stage."
"More disastrous than sucking the Earth into a black hole? When were you going to turn your generator on?" He squinted at the screen she was looking at, then minimized the application that was running to look at her desktop.
She checked her watch. "It's been going for 15 mintues now."
"And it hasn't produced your black hole yet? Thank God I'm not too late!"
"No, it made one 8 minutes ago." She maximized the application again and pointed to a graph being updated in real time. "See, this red line shows the exponential increase of power demanded by the containment system. And this green one shows the power output from harnessing the energy of the contained black hole."
Dr. Vitomsky stared at the graph. "You're sure you don't have those backwards?"
"If I did, we'd all have been sucked into the growing black hole by now." She smiled. "Actually, it would have evaporated first; that's what the failsafes are for. There's still some risk it might evaporate, but it's looking stable."
"Oh." Dr. Vitomsky straightened and cleared his throat. "Never mind, then. Good work, doctor."
"Thank you. We're having a party to celebrate tonight if it doesn't evaporate. Did you want to come?"
" ... sure. That would be lovely."
pellucid: Clear, easily understandable. Also: transparent or translucent.
This is a word I already knew, but it’s one I don’t use much so I figured, why not?
The middle-aged woman tapping away at a computer console in a booth overlooking the laboratory tilted her head down to peer over the frame of her glasses at him. "Why, Dr. Vitomsky. Whatever's the matter?" The automated equipment and servos operating on the main floor below did not pause in their paths, or otherwise acknowledge the newcomer.
"Your plan! It's insane! You'll destroy us all!" He charged up the steps to her booth. "You can't create a miniature black hole under these conditions. Your containment field doesn't have a tenth of the power it needs!
"I assure you, my containment field has plenty of power, Dr. Vitomsky. The whole point of this process is to generate power, you know."
"But you can't possibly pull enough power to contain it at the start! You must abort this process!" He banged on the door to the booth. "Let me in!"
"Nonsense. The models were quite pellucid on this subject."
"Models! A computer simulation can't possibly account for all the variables in reality, plus I've checked your math and it doesn't work. Now, Let me in or I swear I'll break down this door!" He turned his shoulder towards the door.
"It's not locked, Dr. Vitomsky."
"Oh." He opened the door and stalked to her computer.
"But you mustn't interfere with my experiment. That could have disastrous consequences; this is a very delicate stage."
"More disastrous than sucking the Earth into a black hole? When were you going to turn your generator on?" He squinted at the screen she was looking at, then minimized the application that was running to look at her desktop.
She checked her watch. "It's been going for 15 mintues now."
"And it hasn't produced your black hole yet? Thank God I'm not too late!"
"No, it made one 8 minutes ago." She maximized the application again and pointed to a graph being updated in real time. "See, this red line shows the exponential increase of power demanded by the containment system. And this green one shows the power output from harnessing the energy of the contained black hole."
Dr. Vitomsky stared at the graph. "You're sure you don't have those backwards?"
"If I did, we'd all have been sucked into the growing black hole by now." She smiled. "Actually, it would have evaporated first; that's what the failsafes are for. There's still some risk it might evaporate, but it's looking stable."
"Oh." Dr. Vitomsky straightened and cleared his throat. "Never mind, then. Good work, doctor."
"Thank you. We're having a party to celebrate tonight if it doesn't evaporate. Did you want to come?"
" ... sure. That would be lovely."
pellucid: Clear, easily understandable. Also: transparent or translucent.
This is a word I already knew, but it’s one I don’t use much so I figured, why not?
