Jordan: SAM!
Jordan: SAM!
Jordan: SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM SAM BITCH PICK UP YOUR PHONE
Sam: I’m here I’m here
Sam: What’s on fire
Jordan: Nothing is on fire! The opposite of fire!
Jordan: Do you know what a preprint is?
Sam: No. Should I guess?
Jordan: Yes. It has to do with science papers.
Sam: Is that like a preview for science papers
Jordan: Close enough yes
Jordan: I am about to be a PUBLISHED SCIENTIST
Jordan: Well, co-author. Fourth author. But STILL.
Jordan: Do you want to see the preprint
Sam: Obviously
Jordan: [image]
Jordan: That’s the first page
Sam: Jordan I love you but this is hieroglyphics to me
Sam: Why is there so much math
Jordan: What? This is chemistry, not math.
Sam: There are NUMBERS everywhere
Jordan: Those are molecular formulas! That’s not math!
Sam: If it has numbers it’s math. I don’t make the rules.
Jordan: You are a menace to scientific literacy.
Jordan: ANYWAY.
Jordan: I should not be telling you this because it’s technically embargoed until peer review but I do not think you are going to understand it enough for it to matter.
Sam: Wow thanks
Jordan: You’re welcome!
Jordan: We solved it!
Sam: Solved what
Jordan: AOM!
Sam: …
Sam: I’m supposed to know what that means?
Jordan: Anomalously originated material??
Sam: Still nothing
Jordan: Sam. Your TEETH.
Jordan: We figured out why you can grow teeth without burning calories.
Sam: OH
Sam: Okay wait actually yes I want to know this
Sam: Lay it on me
Jordan: Okay so you know how a movie is actually just a bunch of pictures displayed so fast that you can’t tell they’re separate frames?
Sam: Yeah
Jordan: Can you analogize that to real life?
Sam: In English please, Poindexter.
Jordan: Okay imagine IRL is a movie. With distinct frames. The universe is basically running at like a bajillion fps but there ARE frames.
Sam: Sure
Jordan: Now you know how you can layer pictures over each other to make new pictures right
Jordan: Like that old Sherlock Holmes fairy photograph thing
Sam: The what
Jordan: The Cottingley Fairies? Two girls in like 1917 took photos of themselves with fairies and everyone lost their minds?
Sam: I have literally never heard of this
Jordan: It was cardboard cutouts, Sam. They were cardboard cutouts.
Sam: Okay??????
Jordan: The POINT is you can take a photo of something on a transparent background and overlay it on another photo and it looks like one picture with the new thing added in.
Sam: Okay I’m following
Jordan: So there’s this teenage girl who worked with DAAS for a while, she has literal laser eyes. And the lab managed to build a laser that duplicated her exact wavelength and emission properties. Normal photons, same frequency, same everything.
Jordan: And her lasers were PREFERENTIAL. They were borrowing photons from the other lasers. But borrowing from the closest lasers first!
Sam: Weird
Sam: Wait, what?
Jordan: RIGHT? So they started testing and it turned out her lasers were sort of… borrowing properties from the real lasers. Quantum entanglement stuff. The AOM photons were behaving like they were entangled with baseline photons. And they preferred the photons from the closest lasers. It was very clear. Statistically.
Jordan: They were BORROWING molecular properties using quantum entanglement. We guessed! There’s so much still we don’t know.
Jordan: And that was kind of where the state of the art was stuck for years.
Jordan: Until I showed up.
Jordan: Because I can literally duplicate space at will.
Sam: Oh shit
Jordan: It’s really hard to make AOM that’s easily lab-testable. You need a powered person actively cooperating and most AOM is like, fire or force fields or whatever. Hard to stick under a microscope.
Jordan: But I can make a sealed room slightly bigger and they can measure EVERYTHING about what happens to the extra space. And the objects in that room duplicate exactly, except they vanish if you jostle them too hard.
Jordan: But it’s mostly the object duplication.
Sam: So you’re like a guinea pig but a useful one
Jordan: I am a RESEARCH ASSET, Samantha.
Jordan: Anyway. Are you ready for the big reveal?
Sam: I’ve been ready this whole time, you’re the one who keeps going on tangents
Jordan: Rude but fair.
Jordan: It’s fake.
Sam: What’s fake
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Jordan: AOM. Your teeth. All of it.
Sam: My teeth are definitely real, I’ve stabbed people with them and turned them into armor.
Jordan: No no no. Okay. So.
Jordan: It’s a quantum mirage.
Jordan: Every “frame” of the real-life movie, your power is overlaying a photograph on top of existing matter. And the photograph is like a collage assembled from everything nearby.
Jordan: So your teeth are like: one molecule borrowed from a real tooth here, one molecule borrowed from calcium deposits there, one molecule borrowed from the carbon in the air.
Jordan: It’s grabbing templates from baseline matter and using quantum entanglement to make the AOM “copy” those properties. One molecule at a time. It’s a quantum collage of nearby tooth particles. Every frame! We think.
Sam: That’s
Sam: What?
Jordan: IT’S SO COOL THOUGH
Jordan: And it just does this every frame. Which is why after enough time your teeth dissolve – the “overlay” isn’t being maintained anymore.
Jordan: Have you ever noticed they don’t leave residue?
Sam: I mean they turn into dust and the wind picks it up?
Jordan: NO. That’s what everyone assumes when they don’t look into it.
Jordan: But there’s no dust. There’s no residue. AOM just stops existing. It degrades and then winks away.
Jordan: For a while some people thought maybe it was vanishing into 4D space or something.
Jordan: But our theory is simpler. The second movie just stops playing. The overlay gets removed. The photograph goes away and there was never anything “real” underneath it.
Sam: So when my teeth dissolve they’re not dissolving they’re just
Sam: Ceasing to be?
Jordan: YES. EXACTLY.
Jordan: Okay and here’s the really wild part.
Jordan: If you have a sealed chamber and you create an object in that chamber, you’d expect one of two things, right?
Jordan: Option 1: the air pressure increases because the object is displacing air, and when the object vanishes, air rushes back in.
Jordan: Option 2: the air pressure stays the same because the air is being transmuted INTO the object, and then it turns back into air when the object disappears.
Jordan: Options like three through eight are like digressions. Variations on a theme.
Sam: Sure
Jordan: But basically… So, IRL, it was Option 2. And nobody could tell how. It didn’t jive with any science we understood. Like, certain physical models predict certain things right? You drop an object, gravity predicts it falls.
Sam: Right.
Jordan: So your model should be able to make predictions. But certain Option 2 predictions didn’t jive with how AOM actually manifested.
Jordan: Example: if there’s no air molecules, you should not be able to create AOM in a perfect vacuum. There’s nothing to ‘turn into it’, right?
Jordan: That was the big sticking point everyone had with “air transmutation” theory. Like. You can’t turn molecules into AOM if you’re in a space without them.
Jordan: There’s no consistent model that explains why no weird air shit happens both in an air-filled chamber and a vacuum chamber.
Jordan: The pressure stays the same the WHOLE time if it’s full of air. During creation AND dissolution.
Jordan: Because… the air is getting TELEFRAGGED, Sam.
Sam: You need to elaborate on this one again.
Jordan: The matter that was in that space just… gets overwritten. It’s not displaced, it’s not transmuted, it’s just replaced in place. The overlay covers it up completely, like a photograph on top of another photograph.
Jordan: And this might be why most powered people can’t create AOM inside living bodies. The “template copying” doesn’t work right with organic matter that’s actively doing stuff. Or the entanglement breaks. Or for whatever reason very few people can have a power that lets them instantly frag people. We’re not totally sure yet. One of gods little tricks.
Sam: But I can grow teeth inside of me, right? And push them out.
Jordan: Right! It’s complicated. We’re still figuring it out. But this theory sort of neatly resolves the air chamber paradox. If it works. It’s still a hypothesis!
Jordan: The vacuum chamber problem is another big unsolved thing. We don’t know if the “overwritten” matter is truly gone or just hidden or what.
Jordan: But the point is WE HAVE A THEORY THAT WORKS and it’s going to be PUBLISHED and my NAME is going to be on it
Sam: Jordan that’s amazing
Sam: I’m really proud of you
Jordan: alksjdflkajsdlfkj
Jordan: Don’t make it weird
Sam: It’s not weird! You’re doing cool science! Your name is going to be in a journal!
Jordan: Fourth author.
Sam: STILL COUNTS
Jordan: It does still count.
Jordan: Dr. Famiglietti said I have “exceptional intuition for spatial dynamics” which I think is scientist for “your powers make you good at understanding your powers.”
Sam: Or maybe you’re just smart
Jordan: Also that.
Sam: So humble.
Jordan: I contain multitudes.
Sam: Okay but like.
Sam: Science aside.
Sam: Do you actually like it there?
Jordan: What, MIT?
Sam: Yeah. Like, are you happy?
Jordan: …
Jordan: Yeah. I think I am?
Jordan: It’s weird. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Jordan: Like someone’s going to figure out I don’t belong here and escort me off campus.
Sam: Jordan you literally got recruited because you’re a spatial anomaly
Jordan: I know! Logically I know that!
Jordan: But you know how brains are.
Sam: Yeah. I know how brains are.
Jordan: It’s good though. The work is interesting. The people mostly aren’t assholes. I have my own lab space which is basically a closet but it’s MY closet.
Jordan: And I’m learning so much. Like, stuff I didn’t even know I didn’t know.
Jordan: I think I’m going to switch my major.
Sam: From Comp Sci?
Jordan: To Dynology. Or maybe dual-major. I haven’t decided.
Jordan: I still love computers. I will always love computers. Computers have never hurt me.
Sam: Unlike people
Jordan: Unlike people, yes.
Jordan: But there’s so much we don’t understand yet. About powers, about AOM, about why any of this works.
Jordan: Like okay, our theory explains where the MASS comes from. The quantum copying thing. But it doesn’t explain the weird properties.
Jordan: Why does some AOM float? Why does some of it spontaneously combust? Like… Aaron McKinley, right? He’s presumably making some sort of substance that flash ignites, since actually igniting the air itself is super super energetically expensive. But… how? He doesn’t have a gland.
Jordan: I mean he probably does. Every superhuman I think has a vermiform appendage which is like a thing I need to take a whole other class on and activates with nerve activity when powers activate. And probably mediates AOM creation. But like he doesn’t have a Fire Pouch. He just looks and things explode. How?
Jordan: DIGRESSION.
Jordan: There’s so much more to dig up.
Sam: You sound excited.
Jordan: I AM excited. Is that weird?
Sam: No. It’s good.
Sam: You deserve to be excited about stuff.
Jordan: Gross. Stop being nice to me.
Sam: Never.
Jordan: UGH.
Jordan: Anyway speaking of excitement.
Jordan: I saw the news this morning.
Sam: Oh?
Jordan: Something about a city councilwoman’s alibi manufacturing plant getting very inconveniently exposed?
Sam: Huh! Weird! That sure is a thing that happened!
Jordan: Uh huh.
Sam: I wouldn’t know anything about that.
Jordan: Sure.
Sam: I’m just a normal teenage girl with an ankle monitor living my normal life.
Jordan: Totally believe you. Also didn’t your ankle monitor come off like two days ago?
Sam: Yes. But.
Sam: Nothing interesting happening over here. Just homework and physical therapy.
Jordan: The girl who got into a fistfight with her own clone has nothing interesting to report.
Sam: That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Jordan: …
Jordan: You’re getting better at opsec.
Sam: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Jordan: Good.
Jordan: I’m proud of you too, for the record.
Sam: For my excellent operational security about which I know nothing?
Jordan: For all of it.
Sam: …
Sam: Thanks, Jordan.
Jordan: Don’t make it weird.
Sam: YOU made it weird first!
Jordan: I contain multitudes.
Jordan: Oh also Dr. Harris says hi.
Sam: Dr. Harris remembers me?
Jordan: He guest lectures sometimes. I mentioned I knew you from “extracurricular activities” and he lit up.
Jordan: He says you were one of his favorite test subjects because you kept breaking his equipment. You and Rampart.
Jordan: He wants you to say hi to Rampart also if you can.
Sam: I had a lot of questions about shark teeth! And also this was right before I almost got killed by Aaron and discovered the gross tooth knuckle part of the power.
Jordan: Apparently that was refreshing. The biting not the concussion.
Sam: Tell him I say hi back.
Sam: And that he needs to come down and test my new powers. Or well the old powers I didn’t know I had.
Jordan: I will pass that along.
Jordan: He’ll probably want a full report. You know how he is.
Sam: Ugh. Scientists.
Jordan: Hey I heard that
Sam: Present company excluded.
Jordan: Better.
Sam: Also reminds me that I haven’t talked to Rampart in for fucking ever.
Sam: I should do that sometime.
Jordan: Okay I should actually go, I have a lab meeting in 20 and I need to pretend I’ve done the reading.
Sam: Have you done the reading?
Jordan: I have done SOME of the reading.
Jordan: Like 40%.
Sam: Jordan.
Jordan: It’s a lot of reading! And I got distracted by the preprint!
Sam: Go do your homework.
Jordan: You’re not my mom.
Sam: Thank god for that.
Jordan: …yeah.
Jordan: Okay going now.
Jordan: Summer break, we’re hanging out. I’m holding you to that.
Sam: Obviously. Connor too?
Jordan: If he can get away from his foster family for a weekend, yeah.
Jordan: They’re really protective. In a good way? But like, a lot.
Sam: That’s good. He deserves people who give a shit.
Jordan: He does.
Jordan: We both do, apparently.
Jordan: Who knew.
Sam: I knew.
Jordan: Gross.
Jordan: Bye, Sam.
Sam: Bye, Jordan.
Sam: Good luck with your 40% of the reading.
Jordan: I’ll make it 60% on the walk over.
Sam: That’s not how reading works.
Jordan: It is if you walk slow enough.
Jordan: <3
Sam: <3
