[STORY] Explain Star Stories - Printable Version +- Drunkard's Walk Forums (http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums) +-- Forum: General (http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: Fenspace (http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=12) +---- Forum: Fiction (http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=13) +---- Thread: [STORY] Explain Star Stories (/showthread.php?tid=1879)

[STORY] Explain Star Stories - M Fnord - 12-21-2006 The whole thing started at the first big con after handwavium was discovered. Yeah, it was that con, the one where some joker thought it'd be funny to spike the consuite with 'wave powder. We dodged that bullet by sheer chance; we were having dinner at an Italian place a couple blocks away from the convention center when the shit went down. By the time we got back to the con things the mayhem was in full swing & we quietly slipped away. Actually helped out a little with the big breakout from Manzanar, too - we weren't there, but we knew people who knew people and helped point them in the right direction. Even back in the beginning, the Nation took care of its own. But that's another story. Anyway. So there we were, seven old friends who hadn't seen each other in forever finally getting a chance to talk face to face. We'd all met on the intertubes, and since life had us scattered across the northern hemisphere opportunities to get together were few and far between. As we enjoyed the meal and the wine and the conversation, talk started drifting towards handwavium. We all knew about it, of course. We'd seen the reports of the Yokohama demonstration, read the popsci articles and newsgroup discussions and so forth. We started kicking around ideas on what to use it for - this was all blue-skying, we didn't think for a minute that we would ever get our hands on even the smallest sample of handwavium - and naturally it was KJ who came up with the idea. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "if we had an airplane, or something that could already handle positive pressure, that would solve some of the big problems with building a handwavium spaceship." There was general agreement to this statement, and then the bombshell. "In fact," he continued, "the best thing to handwave into a spaceship would be an existing spaceship." Silencio. "Oh sure, like anybody's going to *give* us a spaceship." "You never know. I mean, they're going to retire the shuttle fleet soon enough, right?" "Yeah, but those are going to museums. Even if NASA was willing to sell one, which I doubt, the price tag would be *way* beyond anything we could afford." Gloomy agreement, and then Zib spoke up. At the time he was working on an advanced degree in Soviet history; thirty years ago he'd have been one of Trudeau's top Kremlinologists. At this point, he just said, "Well, you know there *are* other shuttles out there." Calc blinked. "The old Russian one? Isn't it scrap metal?" "Yes and no. The one that actually *flew* was borked beyond repair, yeah. But they built two flight models before the funding ended. *That* one is almost complete, just needs a little touch-up work and it should be ready to go." "Okay," said Kat. "But what about the money? Even assuming that it's up for sale, we couldn't buy it." To this day, I don't know if it was the wine or Destiny knocking me upside the head, but all of a sudden I had a vision. I could see the path laid out in front of us. It *was* possible, we *could* do it. The risks were huge, but the rewards... I stood up (a bit unsteadily; I wasn't much of a big drinker then) and exclaimed "And why not? We're capable people, there's very little that stands in our way if we get our heads together and do the job." Again, silence. "Um, there's the money issue-" Kat began. "We'll get the money." "-and the engineering problem-" "We've got KJ, which is one hell of an edge on anybody else working with handwavium-" "-plus we don't have any handwavium-" "That's easy enough to fix with the right discreet inquiries." "-and, I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure launching a non-NASA shuttle from the US is *illegal.*" "We only have to do it once." I sat down and started speaking in as much of an undertone as the restaraunt would allow. "I'm not saying it'd be simple or easy, and I'm sure as hell not saying that if we blow it, a bunch of us might end up in trouble with the law. All I'm saying is, between our respective abilities we *can* pull this off." So saying, I started explaining the plan's broad strokes as they formed in my mind. Twenty minutes later, I sat back in my chair and waited for them to finish digesting the idea. "It could work..." mused Calc. "Beats trying to hammer scrap metal into a ship," KJ said. "Beats working for a living," Elena said with a grin. I could see it in their faces. This was the sort of thing we all lived for, to do completely insane shit *just* to prove that it could be done. I smiled. "Well, I guess it's settled." There was no going back, we were going to ride a space shuttle into orbit come Hell or high water. The die was cast. ------ The plan, on paper, was simple and elegant. Which of course meant that we'd find a hundred different complications while putting it into practice, but we knew that going in. Our first task was to set up a series of shell companies. This was Calc's job; as the only one of us with any business management or legal experience, it was up to him to build the notational house of cards that was Sandwich.Net Interstellar Dungeon-Crawling Enterprises, LLC. The company itself existed only on paper, as owner-of-record of all our property and as the parent company of The Wisconsin Flight Experience(tm), a fledgling flight museum that rented out one of the big hangers at Wittman Field, Oshkosh, WI. The WFE hangar was where we planned to house the shuttle until liftoff. Once the business end of the company had been established, we embarked on the second stage of the project. This was the riskiest and most openly less-than-legal stage, and you'll forgive me if I don't say much about it. Not only are the technical details kind of boring, but a lot of people in New York still hold a bit of a grudge over that, blanket pardon or no, and I'd rather not let them know the exact particulars. Anyway. The plan was, using our techgeek skills, divert half-cents from various corporate transactions on Wall Street and elsewhere into a numbered Swiss account. This particular plan allowed us to pull down hundreds of thousands of dollars into the account every day. More so when the market was trading fast. It worked so fast and so well that we had twice the amount of money we figured we needed in the first month. We kept it running for another two months, just to be sure. Once we figured we had enough money, we scrapped our diversion programs, destroyed the evidence and moved on to step three. Step three was actually a little trickier than stage two. We had to convince the owners of record of the surviving Buran shuttle that a) we were totally legit, and b) were willing to pay top dollar for the orbiter. Simple in theory, right? Well, think again. The Buran shuttles were a product of the Soviet space program. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, effective ownership of the space program and all it's materiel reverted first to the Commonwealth of Independent States, and then to the Russian government. The Russians then sold most of the flight hardware to the RKO Energiya cartel, which worked kind of like Boeing did for NASA at the time; the government owned most of the stuff, but the cartel did all the upkeep and flight preparation work. Thing is, the non-flight hardware at Baikonur Spaceport - the runways, the buildings, and all the abandoned-in-place gear - technically didn't belong to either the Russian government *or* RKO Energiya. It belonged (on paper anyway) to the Republic of Kazakhstan. The Kazakhs were willing to part with the orbiter; they had no intention on even trying to refurbish it, much less fly it. So they were more than willing to sell us the shuttle at the agreed-upon price of $20 million US. (I think they ended up using the money to finish building that giant transparent tent over the new capital's market district. Just goes to show that even Mundanes can be weird given enough money to play with.) The Russians and RKO Energiya were less happy with the sale. It took us a couple of months to smooth ruffled feathers and convince them that we had no intention of desecrating a significant Russian historical artifact. We kept to that, too, even after all the modifications and our adventures across the steam line and the snow line. That's why the Star still flies the Hammer and Sickle on her wings, and why our "dress uniforms" all use Soviet insignia. It's not that we're commies - well, not all of us, and certainly not all the time - but it's a measure of respect for the Star's origins and the men and women who built her hardtech body. I'm pretty sure our latent desire to do right by Korolev's great-grandchild is what sparked Ptichka, too. But we'll get back to that. Once the money had been paid - plus a bit more thrown at the authorities to ensure smooth passage - all we had to was sit back and wait for our prize to arrive. That's when one of the big unexpected things blew up in our faces. ------ You have to understand, when we started out on this path we figured that we could do it *completely* under the radar, without the 'danelaw noticing until we were ready to leave. And the first parts, the computer fraud, the negotiations with Kazakhstan, they all went exactly as we'd planned. It was when the lake barge with the orbiter finally docked at the nearest cargo port to Oshkosh that we realized that we were in for a huge problem. It's not every day that a Soviet space shuttle shows up at a cargo transfer terminal, and the media had a field day with it. All of a sudden, we were national news, and we were *totally* unprepared for it. About the same time the orbiter arrived in Oshkosh, our initial supply of handwavium arrived. We'd gotten samples of the two basic types; we'd intended to use the black boxes as our primary powerplant, engines and internal gravity system. The guacamole would be put to use in the life-support system. We also derived a form of the guacamole that resembled a clearcoat varnish; we'd use that on the outside of the hull as support for the heatshield. Not that we could *say* any of this to the media, of course. The latest idiot in chief had been elected on an impromptu platform of cracking down on "this substance that makes a mockery of God's laws and corrupts our children." The new congress was unable to just say "no" to a save-the-chillins law, and the handwavium bans were just around the corner. If we'd come out and said that we were planning to turn this Cold War relic into a real by-Ghu spaceship using those 55-gallon barrels of handwavium over there in the corner? We'd have been in jail twenty minutes later! Thankfully, the media stopped bugging us about it after the transfer was finished and we'd sent out a few noncommital press releases. A few folks were suspicious about where we'd gotten the money, and tried to track our funds. All I can say to *that* is thank Ghu for Swiss bankers. The Gnomes provide the finest financial black holes anywhere in the system, and I wouldn't be here to say so if they hadn't stonewalled like they did. Our impromptu brush with celebrity made us realize, I think, that we were working on borrowed time. Between the media spotlight on us and the government crackdowns on 'wave, sooner or later some enterprising young reporter or ambitious prosecutor was going to pierce the veil and see what we were really up to. We knew the SEC was trying to piece together our diversionary scheme, and that the local cops were wondering what we needed the mystery barrels for. If we were going to get to the black, we had to start moving quickly. ------ It took us six months to be ready. We almost didn't make it. The hardest part was getting the cabin extended and ready. The 1.02 airframe was built for flight, so it had a pressure hull installed. Thing was, it was designed as an automated model, so none of the actual crew gear had been installed. This was good to the point where we didn't have to rip a lot of crap out of the walls to install our own gear, but it meant we had to install a lot *more* gear on the middeck than we'd originally planned. We persevered. Toiling around the clock - or as close as we could - all week for months on end we managed to get the orbiter flight ready. We stripped out the old orbital maneuvering engines (leaving the engine bells for aesthetic effect) and used the open space to install our cluster of Black Boxes. Three cubes and a sphere, arranged around each other in what (we hoped) would amount to a reactor and engine. We extended the pressure hull using sheet alumninum and handwavium varnish, running down the entire length of the cargo bay. We replaced the old Soviet flight instruments with equipment scavenged from junked Learjets and stolen from CompUSA dumpsters. The original ship's computers were replaced with a troika of 'wave-treated Athlon 64s. The exterior we repainted, replacing missing heat tiles with 'wave-treated polystyrene and covering the whole thing with the varnish. We kept her flag and the original two-tone color scheme, but renamed her with bold microgramma capitals just beneath the windscreen: EXPLAIN STAR. The name is a bit of an old inside joke on our part. A long time ago, we'd been participants on a Trek MOO, and we'd played the part of Klingon privateers. We had *intended* to name our ship the Black Star, but somebody typoed the Klingoniasse and we ended up with Explain Star. Instead of correcting the error, the name... stuck. And so history is made. When we first powered up the Star, the handwavium interacted with the CPUs and sparked something. It wasn't quite an AI, like other 'wave pioneers had reported, and it wasn't something as outre like a full humanoid avatar like you'd hear rumors about. As far as we could tell, the handwavium - *all* the handwavium, the guacamole we'd used in life support, the black boxes, the varnish, every last ounce - suddenly networked and started talking to each other. A few minutes later, we heard this questioning chime from the main control panel. It took us a bit to figure out what had just happened, but once we did, we named her Ptichka, after the orbiter's original unofficial designation: "Little Bird." Since she only communicated with chirps, chimes and the occasional text message, it seemed appropriate. By the time Ptichka arrived, fall was setting in, starting to turn to winter. We'd gotten all but the most trivial work finished, most of us had already moved our gear into the Star, and we were ready for takeoff. That's when Murphy decided to bring the hammer down. ------ I remember the whole thing very clearly. I was on the flight deck when the call came in, working on sharpening my flying skills. None of us had any real clue what we were doing when it came to flying an airplane - logged time on Microsoft Flight Simulator nonwithstanding - and I'd taken itupon myself to be the chief pilot. My idea, my fault if we got ourselves killed. Anyway, I was on the flight deck racking up some simulator time with Ptichka when Shad vaulted up the middeck ladder yelling "MAL! WE'VE BEEN MADE!" I didn't have to ask what he meant. "How many?" "Townies, state cops, FBI, ATF, DHS *and* they've got choppers!" "Where's everybody?" "Getting aboard. KJ's disconnecting the hanger connections, everybody else is cramming as much gear as we can into the aft." I switched on the intercom, toggling the hanger PA. "KJ! How long until she's ready?" the intercom crackled back. "Shad," I snapped. "Go back and help KJ." I switched on the intercom again. "Everybody else: Get everything you can aboard in the next two minutes and thirty seconds. We lift one minute after that!" I snapped off the intercom, took half a second to glance backwards, saw Shad jump down the access hatch, and turned back to the controls, getting us switched out of sim mode and starting preflight. Ptichka made a worried sound, and I patted the console out of reflex. "It's okay, little bird," I said softly. "They won't catch us." Two minutes later, Shad and Elena came up the ladder. "We're aboard!" Elena shouted. "Hatches closed, cables disconnected, let's GO!" Just then, the hanger doors swung open to reveal a whole lotta cops. You remember that scene in The Blues Brothers, the one where they're at the register window and it looks like the whole Chicago PD was crammed in there pointing guns at them? That was sort of what the scene outside looked like. All these cop cars turned sideways in a clear effort to blockade the exit, lots of uniformed men pointing pistols and rifles at us. Very charming, really. At the center of the formation a dude in the traditional Fed windbreaker leveled a bullhorn at us. "ATTENTION! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! SHUT DOWN YOUR ENGINES AND EXIT THE AIRCRAFT OR YOU WILL BE FIRED ON! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!" "Such a charming invitation," I noted. "How could we refuse?" Elena asked from the right-hand seat with a feral grin. "I just hope the deflectors work," Shad noted gloomily, "or we're all going to look really stupid." I flipped Mr. FBI the bird and switched on the engines. The Star shuddered a little as the drive's gravity cushion took over from the Earth's pull. The landing gear retracted smoothly, without even the slightest bump. Outside, the cops tried to start shooting at us, but the cloud of debris the gravfield was kicking up inside the hangar kept scattering them. I raised the ship up to three meters and sailed straight out over their heads. Thanks to the hull cameras, we got a great view of the cops running for cover as we drifted past. Once I had her hovering over the apron, I raised her up another twenty meters - scattering the police choppers in the process - swung her nose out to face the lake, and started flying off, nice and slow. I wanted to go exoatmospheric a fair distance away from the town, just in case. I let her pick up speed as we travelled, and once the shore was out of sight I pulled back hard on the stick and shoved the throttle forward. The Star stood up on her tail and accelerated like a bat out of Hell. They probably heard the sonic boom in Minneapolis. The sky turned reddish-orange as the air compressed into plasma around our nose, then vanished into the deepest black you've ever seen. I gave it a few more seconds, then tipped her nose over. Below us was the curve of the Earth, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen to that point. We'd made it.--- Mr. Fnord http://fnord.sandwich.net/ http://www.jihad.net/ Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information "I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!" Getting Some Air - M Fnord - 12-21-2006 Life aboard the Explain Star can be a bit trying sometimes. The difficulty lies in space issues. You have to remember that although she certainly *looks* impressive, she's not all that big. Sure, she towers over most fencraft, but most of those are converted automobiles and light trucks. In terms of size, she's actually not much bigger than a smallish airliner. The Star's original design specs - the Soviet blueprints imported over without change from the American originals - had only the front of the ship pressurized and rigged for habitation. When we got our hands on her we scrapped most of the original crew compartment and extended it all the way back through the old cargo bay to the engine spaces. We had to practically fill the wings and lower deck spaces with handwavium to compensate for the larger pressure hull, but it gave us more room to work with. Unfortunately, "more" doesn't equate to "unlimited." The Star is still only 40 meters long, and the available fuselage area is only four and a half meters wide. That sounds like a lot, and when you're standing in a stripped-bare fuselage it feels positively cavernous. Once you start adding in compartment bulkheads, flooring, a proper ceiling, plumbing, and all the rest that wide open space starts to shrink very quickly. Between the "cabins" (not much more than double-occupancy coffin hotel cubicles), the bathroom facilities, consumables storage, EVA lockers, some light cargo storage and a workshop for KJ... well. For one person, it's spacious. For two or three, it's comfortable. For six, the euphemisim is "cozy." And when you're cooped up in it for weeks at a time orbiting some distant rock without a breathable atmosphere, it can change from cozy to confining very quickly. Frankly, a lot of our "first man on whatever" exploits come from our burning desire to just get the hell *outside* the Star for a little bit. Sometimes, though, that option isn't available. Like today. We're halfway between Saturn and Mars, on our way to the Convention. Crossing Jupiter's orbit, but Jupiter's on the wrong side of the sun for us to see it. We're taking a leisurely approach route - the Con doesn't start for another day, so there's no point in hauling ass at full speed down into the inner system. We'll be there in 18 hours. Plenty of time to relax. I can't relax. Ptichka's watching our course, keeping us on track. Elena's in the copilot's seat, watching Ptichka do her thing and getting a few piloting lessions in the bargan. I'm in the left seat trying to focus on the readouts, the Con notice and the book du jour (The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross, for the curious) and failing to comprehend all three of them. Boredom and cabin fever are starting to set in. I need to get out of here for a bit. With that thought, I'm out of my seat and heading down towards the middeck. Elena yelps, startled, but that doesn't really register as I slide down the ladder and head aft to the EVA locker. I grab my softsuit off the rack and slip into the bathroom to put it on. Softsuits are a marvel. Not quite the super-skintight stuff that a lot of inner system fen like to use, but not the big, bulky danetech suits either. The softsuits are old pressure suits (Russian of course, like so much of our gear) augmented with wavetech. Much more comfortable and independent than the original models, plus the retro-commie look is very fashionable. I lock the helmet down and check the telltales. Everything's running green, full charge on life support and the emergency thruster pack. Thus armed, I head forward. Half the crew are relaxing in the lounge, and none of them bat an eye when I come marching through in a full pressure suit. They all understand the urge, and most of them have done the same thing, so they don't mind as I make my way to the access hatch in the far forward bulkhead. Did you know that the space shuttles were originally supposed to have an airlock and docking port in the nose, just below the forward windows? Unless you're an obsessive shuttle geek (like me) you probably didn't. But it's the truth; the original design had the main airlock and docking port in the nose. They eventually scrapped that design and went with the one we all know today, but when we got out hands on the Explain Star, we decided that the nose port was useful enough to retrofit into the airframe. We didn't know what it would be useful *for* mind you, just that it would be useful. I get into the airlock, crouching because the damned thing is tiny, seal it up and let the air cycle out. Telltales on my suit are still green, everything's fine. I grab a tether - can't be too careful - and clip one end to my belt, the other to the outside of the lock. The outer hatch opens up and I uncurl a little, letting my head and shoulders emerge. The hull slopes down around me to the rounded point of the nose. The sun is to my left, a burning penny casting sharp shadows. The automatic glare compensators in my helmet switch on, blanking out the worst of the light. I glance backwards, seeing the flight deck from this angle for the first time in months. Elena spots me, gives me a cheery little wave and goes back to whatever she's doing. This next part is tricky. I climb most of the way out of the airlock and carefully orient myself into a crawling position on the hull. I have to be careful not to damage anything. The hull's been treated with handwavium varnish, so it's tougher than the average space shuttle. I'm not in any danger of breaking anything vitally important off or anything like that, but there aren't any good handholds for this part and Ptichka *and* KJ would kill me if I so much as scuffed the paint. Inching my way forward, careful to keep one hand on the hull, I make may way for the nosecap. I reach the cap and give it a careful nudge. A section swings open, revealing an empty compartment. A kick of my emergency thrusters sends me up over the hatch, another kick stops my relative velocity with my feet hanging inches over the bare metal. I touch a control on my belt, and the magnets in the boots activate, gluing my feet to the frame. The Explain Star is "beneath" me now, a swiftly-moving mountain of glass and metal. Above and around me are the stars. I'm looking away from the Sun, and the flat black of the Star's belly absorbs much of the reflected light. I can see the stars all round me, clear and bright. All the worries and fatigue of the last day drain away as I stand on top of the Explain Star, arms outstretched, soaking up the starlight. I'll spend the next hour or so standing out here in freefall, watching the cosmos go by. When I go back inside all the problems and pitfalls of living in space will still be there, as will this mystery Convention and all the problems inherent in *that.* But for the moment, that doesn't matter. I have the stars. I am content.--- Mr. Fnord http://fnord.sandwich.net/ http://www.jihad.net/ Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information "I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!" Let's Try This... - Vangeek - 01-06-2007 Well, I can't say it wasn't my fault. Granted, you'd think that at some point someone would've picked up that I'm not the most, ah, organized person at times. At the very least Mal shouldn't have been letting me handle the stuff without supervision (and yeah, I'm honest enough with myself to admit that). Hell, I never thought I'd be involved in something like this. I'm a book geek, not one of those rabid gearheads or techies like KJ. I was abso-fucking-lutely terrified to be learning how to fly. But damme if I didn't pick it up. A lot of it was necessity being the mother of invention, a lot of it just wanting to finally do something with my life. When I met up with the others and we started this whole thing, they pretty much took care of all the important stuff. The legalese, the business shit...I'm really very glad I didn't quite get involved in that. It's not just that it's not 'my thing', I'd probably end up causing a second Depression if they'd let me anywhere near a financial institution. And we needed all the hands we had. And that's what helped, really. Even though I knew I wasn't the most qualified, even though I felt kind of useless at times, people made it pretty clear that everyone had something to contribute or important to do, even if it was just a pair of hands. As to the piloting...well, I also never thought I'd ever get around to driving a car. Mal suggested it, something about it being a good idea to have a 'spare pilot around'. And I did want to do more then just lift boxes and pick up supplies. After the first few lessons, I realized it was all that hard, just a little more dangerous and needing a lot more responsibility. Flying a shuttle...I tried not to think about it too hard. I also figured the 'wavium would ease things up (crossing my fingers and praying Eris wasn't paying too close attention as I said it) as regards to flying the damn thing. But to get back on topic, my biomod. I've heard somewhere that handwavium is guided, in part, by the will, subconcious or otherwise, of the person who's been inflicted with it. Okay, not the *will* exactly, but at least whatever was floating in the back of their head. This had to have been the case with my little accident. As I've said, I'm pretty damned absentminded. After the 'incident', someone made a crack about it being my final graduation into full out absentminded professor mode. What happened was this; we'd just been getting through with the preperations, it can't have been more then a few days, maybe a week, before the Feddies tried to bust the party. The 'wavium had pretty much applied where it could, but there were some cosmetic touches that needed to be done. Some of them had a plan and purpose, some were well...okay, not entirely legit, but that really was the whole POINT. I wasn't really interested in it, myself. It was more of a vaguely dangerous substance that was amusing to watch in effect, from a distance, but not something I was entirely comfortable handling myself. Yeah, I'm a big chicken, but you can't really blame me. I think I only used a little teeny bit to make some Hitchhiker's Guide-esque mods to my quarters (the radio thing worked a little *too* well). So, I'd done my bit, finished my room, but of course it was in a state of disarray. I cleaned up, grabbing the 'wavium in the process, and head back home for a nice relaxing bath after a hard day of work. As mentioned above, I'm absentminded. My usual process is to dump my junk as I enter my current resting place, often in various areas. I dropped my bag, and for some reason I was still carrying this thing of 'wavium (not really sure why, but I was fucked if I'd dump a container, vacuum sealed or not, in my bag). I was worried about it spilling, and this is where things get foggy for me... I think I must've put it on the bathroom counter, probably so I could put other shit away safely and give it somewhere to rest while I did so. The plan normally would be to then retrieve the dish and put it somewhere safe. Anyways, I got distracted and was so busy with getting the bath going and finishing packing the stuff that'd be moved onto the ship the next day that I forgot about it. Next thing I know, I'm nice and settled in bubbles, reading my Pterry, and FINALLY getting some peace and quiet. (Oh yeah, as an important side note, I'm not as crazed as some other fen out there. I'm usually pretty moderate. I mean, if I have a robe that looks like it came out of Star Wars, it's not just 'cause it's 'Star Wars', it's 'cause I like it as is, not because of it's origins. My only, well, two of my only, weaknesses are Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and firstly Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. Yes, I'm a bit of hypocrite I tend to, ah, phase out a little when I'm reading. You could set a bomb off and I'd barely notice. I think what happened, as I was reading (and of course it was Pratchett's 'Hogfather') is that I when I reached for my drink (which I'd set aside), I grabbed the 'wavium instead. Not paying attention, I knocked off the cover and stuck my fingers in, and again, not paying attention, I wiped off whatever on my hair. Yeah, I know. On my hair. I never said I was the brightest of the bunch. Fortunately, it wasn't a lot, but...I soaked my hair, and I'm pretty sure it got into the bathwater, and since I was soaking in that for a good while...kay, any kind of contact with handwavium is going to have side effects. I guess I should be grateful that nothing painful happened. I've heard stories from others that the switch isn't always that pleasant. I didn't even realize what had happened till the next morning...slept right through it after I got out and went to bed. When I looked in the mirror the next day? First reaction was obviously shock. Second was insane glee, especially when the mass of white (black streak there too) began to twist of it's own accord. Third was annoyance and then depression when I realized this wasn't something could switch off and I was never getting my normal hair back. I realize hair is a fairly minor thing to get upset over, but dammit, I had an almost back length mass of wavy golden locks. And having hair that randomly switches styles or just damn moves around on you can get kind of irritating, as much as I'm a fangirl of Discworld. But I adapted. I dye my hair now and then, but it never stays in very long. And there's other things too... I'm not sure how I feel about that thing, it's not like I've used it at all. But y'never know.