#what would that field of study be called. Xenobiology? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deepspacedukat · 2 years

Note

Hi! If you take fic requests, can I maybe ask for some pre-relationship fluff to do with Picard? 👉👈 Like, maybe the reader is nervous about a mission and asks his advice or something? If you don't want to write it, that's totally fine, but if you do, thank you in advance!

I absolutely do take requests! Thanks for this one, anon, it was adorable and so fun to write! Cross-posted to AO3 here.

If anyone wants to be added to my taglist or wants to submit a fic request, my ask box is always open! If you want to know whether I write for a certain character, have a look here. If the character you want isn't on the list, I probably just forgot to add them, so please feel free to ask.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Mission Jitters

Captain Jean-Luc Picard (ST:TNG) x Reader

[A/N: This was a lot of fun to write, and I hope I did your request justice, anon!]

Warnings: None that I can think of. Unless the Captain being cute counts? But...why would that need a warning?

~*~

When I was handed the data PADD containing the information for an away mission, I thought it must have been a mistake. Surely there were better candidates for the assignment than myself. Why would Commander Riker have chosen me? As the shock slowly wore off, I skimmed through the files on the PADD. Apparently, the Enterprise had discovered an uninhabited M-class planet and the Captain had ordered an away team to conduct a more thorough exploration and analysis of the surface. My task on this mission pertained to exobiology, my own field of study.

A small - or rather, not so small - part of my mind kept wondering why I’d been chosen for this mission. We were to beam down at 0700 when the more thorough scans were completed the next morning...but why was I the one beaming down with Commander Riker and the others? Why not Data or one of the other higher-ranked science officers? A survey on a newly-discovered planet was a huge responsibility, and I’d never even been given an away mission assignment before.

Deciding that I needed to focus a bit more on the information the Commander had given me, I headed to the turbolift to go back to my quarters.

“Deck eight,” I ordered, and the lift started moving. After a couple of decks, however, the doors opened and another passenger boarded.

“Deck nine, section twenty eight,” a familiar voice ordered, and I looked up from my PADD. Standing beside me was Captain Picard. Trying not to seem obvious, I subtly straightened my posture by a fraction. He glanced up from his own PADD and a look of recognition passed over his features. “Ah, Lieutenant. I was glad to see your name on Commander Riker’s roster for the upcoming away mission.”

“Y-You were, sir?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice despite my best efforts.

“Well, yes,” he said in a rather amused tone. “After all, your last study on the comparative xenobiological development of various species in M-class environments when left undisturbed was quite thorough and intriguing. And I’d say in combination with your service record that more than qualifies you for this mission, wouldn’t you?”

“I...Yes, sir, but I wasn’t aware that you had any interest in that sort of a study. Most people find the subject matter a bit...dry,” I said still feeling a bit in shock that the Captain even knew who I was.

“Not at all, I find it useful and particularly fascinating given the Enterprise’s purpose of exploration,” the Captain said with the ghost of a smile tracing over his lips. “Lieutenant, I’d very much like to discuss your study with you if you have a moment.”

“Of course, sir. I’m happy to whenever you like,” I said with a small smile of my own.

“I...I know it’s a bit last minute, but what about now?” He asked as the turbolift neared my original destination. Instead of answering, I addressed the computer.

“Computer, disregard turbolift call for deck eight and proceed to deck nine, section twenty eight,” I ordered, and the Captain quirked an eyebrow.

“I hope you don’t mind early grey,” his smooth accent allowed his tongue to flow easily over the words. I couldn’t help but note how lovely it would be to hear him reading aloud. It was no secret on the Enterprise that the Captain enjoyed classic literature and the occasional Dixon Hill novel, but imagining him reading them aloud...I mentally shook myself out of my thoughts enough to pull myself together and answer him.

“I don’t mind it at all, sir,” I said with a polite nod of my head, and within minutes the Captain and I were seated in his quarters with a mug of tea each. A few moments of silence prodded me into asking the question that had been on the tip of my tongue since he stepped into the turbolift with me. “Captain, if I may...were you nervous before your first away mission?”

“Oh, certainly. I can’t recall any officer not feeling at least a little bit jittery before their first away mission,” he said setting his cup of tea aside. “Just remember that you’re a sensible officer with all the qualifications necessary to carry out your duty with flying colors. Your service has been exemplary on the Enterprise thus far, and there is not a single doubt in my mind that you’ll perform spectacularly. I wouldn’t have recommended you to Commander Riker otherwise.”

“Y-You recommended me, sir?” My brain screeched to a halt as I processed his words.

“Is that really so hard to believe?” He asked in an almost incredulous voice, and when I couldn’t come up with an answer, the Captain leaned toward me. “You have nothing to worry about, Lieutenant. You’ll do splendidly on this away mission, I can assure you of that. I have every confidence in you.”

The Captain and I chatted for nearly two hours that night, and when I beamed down to the planet the next morning it was with the knowledge that the two of us were scheduled for another talk that evening. This time, it would be over dinner.

#star trek tng #captain jean-luc picard #captain picard fic #captain picard x reader #anon request #pre-relationship fluff #deepspacedukat fic

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tanadrin · 3 years

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"On the Hylobiota of FEC-3230-3B6f," a note from the personal log of Junior Technical Officer Omru Setan, of the DSEV Soliton. As published in Frontier Xenobiology Today, issue 32, vol. 26.

The Soliton was, fortunately, able to spend a few months in orbit of FEC-3230-3B6, a luxury of time not usually afforded to frontier exploration vessels. It is a sad truism of this line of work that we can only ever devote the smallest fraction of due attention to most of the worlds we discover, and we must hope that eventually follow-up missions will be able to visit at least the most interesting of them. Since the ship was overdue for maintenance by the time we reached that star, and the local civilization had technology and resource extraction compatible with our systems, the crew elected to remain in the system long enough to establish basic communications and trade relations sufficient to complete repairs. That process went more smoothly than expected, and a further twelve weeks were devoted purely to scientific investigation, which accounts for the outsized entry on the Shards and their environment in the Soliton's survey logs.

The Shards are the dominant variety of local sapients in the FEC-3230-3B6 system, and are found especially around FC-3230-3B6f, a fragment of a disrupted planetary-mass body embedded in a dense asteroid belt in the circumstellar habitable zone. They are a variety of machine life, with a complex culture and language, including sophisticated political and economic structures, and one evidently purpose-built to the low-gravity zero-atmosphere environment in which they dwell. They are capable of autonomous space travel within the local asteroid belt, and many of their most basic systems rely on very sophisticated field manipulation, spacetime-distortion, and reactionless propulsion mechanisms, all far more advanced than any technology in common use in Accord space. Very little of the functioning of these technologies could be gleaned from studying the Shards directly, since the field manipulators on which the Shards rely are microscopic in scale and distributed throughout their bodies. How much the Shards understand the technologies their bodies use is also unknown; while basic communication was established fairly easily using standard protocols, communication on abstract concepts has been more difficult, and the Shards' understanding of their own history and design is, for now, mostly opaque.

We do know this: the Shards refer to the principal volume of space in which they dwell as the Field of Rest. It is so called because artificial field effects, generated by ruined megastructures found embedded in 3B6f and the other largest nearby asteroids, keep the major celestial bodies in the region more or less stationary with respect to one another; and any body moving through the region will gradually decelerate, until it is at rest within the Field. This effect is strongest in the immediate environs of 3B6f, and past a certain point rapidly falls off with distance, with a very weak residual effect spreading out for many hundreds of thousands of kilometers in all directions. We were unable to determine whether this field and the megastructures which generate it were responsible for the original disruption of the planet which formed the asteroid belt; whether they are incidental ruins; or whether they were built or repurposed after the disruption in order to stabilize the region. Moreover, while the Field is stable over much longer time scales than it would be without the presence of this effect, it is unlikely to be stable over very long geological timescales, even provided the megastructures (power source currently unknown) could maintain the effect for that long. Back-of-the-envelope calculations by my colleague, Sidar Resk, indicate that the Field is likely not younger than one hundred thousand years, and likely not older than two million.

My own expertise is not in astrogeology, xenoanthropology, or xenoarcheology, so I will leave further explanation of such matters to those more suited to do them justice. See especially the logs of Svys Sidar, Deng, Falke, and Yun, especially Svy Yun's speculative but extremely interesting timeline of the system's history. What I really want to discuss is the--for lack of a better term--biology of the system.

3B6f, most other bodies in the Field, and most bodies surveyed in the wider belt, show traces of a unique set of chemical and physical processes analogous to, but very unlike, the processes of organic life. Since applying the term "biology" to both aqueous organic processes and these unique processes is a recipe for confusion, let's call the latter "hylology," by analogy to hylotechnology, that is to say, non-aqueous nanotechnology which has much more in common with purely mechanical systems than normal nanoscale systems do.

A brief digression for the interested: it was once the dream of many engineers that, as the miniaturization of mechanical technology improved, it would be possible eventually to build machines at the nanometer scale, very roughly the size of the most interesting components of living cells, and that this nanoscale technology would allow extremely precise manipulation of both biological and non-biological materials, and thus both extremely precise manipulation of living tissue and the easy creation of macroscopic materials with novel properties. As the technologies for investigating and manipulating the nanoscale world improved, however, it became apparent that below a certain scale "mechanical" and "chemical" processes rapidly converge: the interactive forces of atoms and molecules that we usually think of as belonging to the messy world of chemistry come to equal or overwhelm what we think of as the austere forces of the purely mechanical world, especially in the watery environs of biological systems, and when the first nanotechnological revolution finally began in the 22nd century, it was the result of many parallel developments in mechanical, chemical, and quantum engineering, and it proceeded rather more slowly than the optimists of previous ages had hoped.

Some researchers have continued to pursue what might be called "classical" nanoscale and sub-nanoscale technologies, in a specifically non-biological context. This is what is usually meant by "hylotechnology," a niche but important category that, among Accord species, is used mostly for careful fabrication of small quantities of highly specialized metamaterials. Because of the difficulties inherent in nanoscale mechanics, hylotech is extremely finicky, and even the most cutting-edge hylotech forges usually end up recycling as much as 60% of their output for failing to meet the intended specifications. The term "hylotech" also is often extended to mean chemistry-like processes which occur in systems other than normal atoms and the molecules they form: quasiparticle complexes, Xuluan lattices, and monopole chemistry, but for now these all belong to the theoretical realm.

The Field is unusual because it is an environment with many naturally evolved forms of life, that is to say orders having arisen without apparent intervention by any sapient actor, all of which are based originally on artificial hylotechnology. As Svy Yun argues (and I agree), chemical and fossil evidence in rock fragments formerly belonging to the crust of 3B6f's progenitor-planet indicate that organic life arose on that world, and eventually yielded a sentient species not too dissimilar from any of the Accord members. This species built a technologically sophisticated civilization, one which pursued nanotech vigorously, and which integrated it into many of their other technologies. When the catastrophe that destroyed 3B6f occurred, fragments of that nanotechnology survived, perhaps in the form of trace programmable matter, of small self-replicated nanomachines, or as part of the structure of larger machine life entities like the Shards. This basic nanofilm eventually spread throughout the Field, and evolved in new ways, producing new complex behaviors and structures. These include the equivalent of both single-celled organisms, and multi-cellular organisms with highly specialized tissues; organisms with bilateral and radial symmetry; and even organisms with tissues that seem to resemble, in structure and function, the nervous tissue of Earth's early animalia like the Cnidarians.

Needless to say, we found this to be a very startling result, and there are several considerations which I wish to address in turn.

First, the Shards. The Shards are not an evolved organism; of this I am as certain as it is possible to be. Although they plainly share technological innovations with the hylozoan LUCA, they don't have anything like the pseudocellular structure of the hylozoa. The smallest units of the hylozoa are molecular machines that range in size from 50 to 500 nanometers. They are mostly self-reproducing, and they exhibit some of the field and spacetime-manipulation technology the Shards do, at a far smaller and much more low-powered scale. The Shards, in contrast, while they are carefully engineered from the nanometer scale up, are not composed of easily discernible components on that scale, nor specialized tissues made up of self-reproducing components. The Shards do have sophisticated repair mechanisms, but these replace sections of their bodies at the scale of dozens of micrometers. Whereas most species we have encountered have had at some point to grapple with the fact they are the product of accident and not intention, and that they are of the same order of life and matter as the living things they share their environment with, the Shards might justly be possessed of a certain smugness--they are, after all, truly different from the hylozoa around them. Something else to consider when the xenologers attempt to investigate Shard culture, I suppose.

Second, the hylozoan "cell." Our own cellular structure is a lipid envelope enclosing organelles, proteins, and many different kinds of useful molecules either taken in from our food or produced by our own bodies, which--carried along by the furious Brownian motion of the aqueous environment--shakes and rattles thousands of different kinds of chemical machinery along every moment. It is, in origin, a droplet of the primeval soup that has been carefully contained and carried forward in time, a product of the ancient oceans within which those droplets formed.

The basic unit of hylozoan biology, the "hylocell" is likewise a product of its original environment--in this case, the austere vacuum. It is not a bag of chemical soup: instead, it is a spindly structure made of many modular elements which spread outward from a central nucleus. Rather than containing chemical information stored as DNA, the nucleus of the hylocell is a chemical-mechanical battery which powers the modules to which it is connected. At the tip of the spindles or rays which extend out from this battery, magnetic interactions between specialized connector-modules bind the hylocells together; these connections can be rapidly reconfigured as needed. Between the spindles, a weak electromagnetic field holds various kinds of charged particles in a diffuse suspension, one which is practically a vacuum compared to the interior of our own cells, but which is a valuable reservoir of raw materials for the hylocell, compared to the gasping emptiness of most of the Field.

The modules which compose the hylocell are arranged hierarchically, and while we have much to learn about how they function, at least some of them seem to store information in a manner not unlike our own cellular nuclei, albeit distributed throughout the hylocell; others are geared toward energy storage, to the synthesis of specific chemicals, to building new modules or new hylocells; and still others to generating precise field distortions or spacetime distortions which form an integral part of the hylocell's functioning.

Another important difference between the hylocellular structure and our own biology includes the far more rapid mutation rate of hylocells: the biodiversity of 3B6f is comparable to a biosphere many hundreds of millions of years old, and my own experiments, undertaken with the help the Soliton's geneticists, indicate that the hylozoan LUCA may have been designed to be adaptive from the beginning, able to direct and vet mutations that allow it to function better in novel environments, instead of having to rely on copying errors and blind chance. Attempts to devise a "molecular clock" based on some highly conserved hylocellular modules across many different genera put the divergence of those genera from the hylozoan LUCA between 250,000 and 750,000 YBP, at the younger end of our estimates for the age of the Field as a whole; but these results should be regarded as extremely tentative.

Lastly, I wish to collect miscellaneous observations from my colleagues, which have not fit into any of the larger topics above.

While many varieties of hylocell process other organisms, minerals, or solar energy directly, at least some seem to be capable of absorbing energy from solar neutrinos. This adaptation is found in many different clades, where it seems to have arisen independently.

Hylocells are completely non-functional in dense atmospheres. The pressure of even a one-Pascale environment disrupts normal function. Some single-cellular hylozoans seem to be able to gradually recover when returned to a near-vacuum environment, but all studied multi-cellular hylozoans were killed when exposed to high pressures. Shards, by contrast, are entirely unaffected by normal atmospheric pressures, and were able to come and go from within the Soliton without difficulty.

Since Shards do not consume hylozoans for food, they are in many respects "outside" the hylozoan ecology. They do not depend on it for any resources, nor do the hylozoans depend on them; but the ecology of their environment does seem to have cultural significance and aesthetic interest.

Hylozoans are most densely distributed in the middle of the Field, but are found on virtually every body in the asteroid belt surveyed. The smallest and most distant of such bodies often have very divergent clades inhabiting them; no known hylozoans can traverse deep space except if carried, intentionally or accidentally, by the Shards.

Five major domains of hylozoan life have been identified: these are the Hylobacteria (invariably single-celled, and with simple structure), Electrophores (have cellular processes that depend on more sophisticated manipulation of charged particles), Lithozoa (most are deep-rock dwellers), Planetozoa (found mostly on remote bodies outside the Field), and Polyklemata (have an advanced compound cellular structure whose greater complexity compared to the Hylobacteria is perhaps comparable to the difference between the Eukaryota and Bacteria). Multicellular hylozoans are found in every domain except the Hylobacteria. The most basal existing hylozoan may be Plinodeisa aeides, a planetozoan that forms thick, undifferentiated cellular mats on sunlight-exposed surfaces.

#tanadrin's fiction #gratuitous worldbuilding #speculative biology

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hailbop1701 · 3 years

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Thank you @stardustednerd for picking this weeks prompt! 🥰 Prompt #25

Fandom: Star Trek AOS

Type: X Reader (Friendship)

Word Count: 1,077

Lunch Break

McCoy X Reader (Platonic)

Kirk X Reader (Platonic)

So when writing this I couldn't help but flashback to high school and sitting with my friends at lunch. We would talk about everything and nothing. I wanted to convey that here 😁. No beta so typos all day long. Love you all.

-H❤🖖

The mess was crowded and a bit more rowdy than usual. Finals time was upon Starfleet academy and the end of the academic year. Your first year at the academy was about over and you were looking forward to what’s going to come next.

Bobbing and weaving through the mass of bodies balancing your tray of food above your head. Stopping you danced a little on your tippy-toes looking for your two idiots. Those two idiots happen to be James T “I’m going to charm you until I get the shit beat out of me” Kirk and Leonard H “Bones the scowly adorable hot mess” McCoy.

You grin when you spot them in a secluded corner guarding a seat for you like their lives depended on it; they bantered back and forth about something or other. Striding over you slam your tray down on the table making both of them jump at least two feet into the air.

“Jesus (Y/N), one of these days you’re gonna give me coronary!” McCoy barked holding a hand over his heart, eyes wide. You giggled and winked at your friend,

“Aw, Leo I wouldn’t do that to you! I just try to give you heart palpitations,”

Jim chuckled at your words, “She is good at that,” he murmured munching on a french fry. Leonard rolled his eyes and examined your lunch, after a moment he looked away pleased by your choice of chicken caesar wrap and potato wedges. Smirking you sat down and bounced in your seat,

“How’s your day going?” Jim asked, popping another fry in his mouth eyeing your wicked grin with mild apprehension. You shrugged and picked up your wrap. “Well, no one died.”

Leonard snorted into his pasta, “Those are your standards?” he asked, shaking his head. You chuckled, “I am in security, so I should be so lucky,”

“Very true,” Jim agreed with a grimace. “You need to be more careful,” Leonard said pointing his fork at you before spearing it into his lunch. Taking a bite he chewed thoughtfully and continued after he was done, “I patch you up more than I do Jim and that’s sayin’ something sweetheart,”

You gave them a reassuring smile, “I’m pretty sure I aced my close-quarters combat training course, I just finished the written portion of the exam. The physical part is after this,” you smiled and took a bite of your lunch.

“I’ll keep that in mind when we meet up later to study.” Leonard grumped making you furrow your brows, ‘We’re meeting up later?” you asked yourself trying to remember making that plan. Upon seeing your confused expression Leonard shook his head again letting out an exasperated sigh,

“I’m helping you study for your field first aid final,” he reminded you patiently with a raised eyebrow. You opened your mouth and suddenly remember the conversation you had with him early yesterday morning.

“Come on Bones you know not to make plans with (Y/N) that early in the day, I told you yesterday that she would forget,” Jim grinned picking up his chicken sandwich.

“She’s impossible in the morning,” Leonard agreed, both men staring at you like you were something truly fascinating. You rolled your eyes as you took the last bite of your wrap. “SHE is right here,” you grumbled.

Both of the men across from you laughed their smiling faces lighting up the room, “Dorks,”

“So at the end of all of this finals madness, we should go out and celebrate. First-round is on me,” Jim proposed leaning forward in his chair. You and Leonard looked at each other, “Fine but I swear to god if you start another bar fight...” you scolded, remembering the last time you all went out together. Jim flirted with a girl who so happened to have a very protective boyfriend, the whole bar interrupted into a brawl after the first punch.

You had dragged Jim off the floor and shoved him toward Leonard before defending both of them as they tried to escape. All three of you managed to get out with minor injuries and a wicked story to tell the next day.

Jim cackled remembering it well, “You know for such a tiny person you sure did make that guy cry,” he snorted his shoulders shaking in laughter. Leonard chuckled quietly a crooked smile on his face, “He wasn’t that big,” you muttered, picking at your potatoes.

Leonard scoffed, “ He was three times your size and you still had him on the ground in record time,” he praised. Jim gave you a toothy grin, “Our hero,” he teased batting his eyelashes.

You snorted, “Well, someone has to pull you out of the fire Jim,” you said pushing your empty tray away and then pointedly looked at Leonard, “oh don’t look all superior Leo, I’ve had to help you out too,”

McCoy half-heartedly scowled at you, “What did I-”

“The whole Captain Jackson incident?” you reminded, with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. Leonard cleared his throat looking away with a blush creeping up his neck. Jim looked curious, “What Captain Jackson incident?” he asked looking between you and McCoy. You smirked saying nothing as Leonard spluttered and tried to redirect Kirk’s attention to another topic.

Looking at your chron you hissed, “Damn, I gotta go,” you stood up quickly grabbing your bag. “Go I got your tray,” Jim said with a smile that says ‘we are so talking about that incident later,’ snickering you blew them a kiss and left.

“Good luck and be careful!” Leonard called out at your retreating back. Waving a hand you rushed out of the emptying mess into the warm San Francisco sun.

“She’s not going to be careful,” Leonard sighed standing picking up the mess they made. Jim chuckled, “Nope,” he said popping the ‘P’ childishly.

“Wonderful,”

“Come on Bones, we got her back. What are best friends for?”

“Pulling asses out of fires apparently,”

“That’s the spirit!”

“God help me,”

BONUS: (Almost Deleted this)

Jim pushed open the mess hall doors with a flourish. “Hey Bones, what’s the Captain Jackson incident?”

McCoy flushed, “Nothin’ you need to know about!” he ground out stomping away toward the xenobiology building. Jim tilted his head back and laughed at his friend’s expense. “I will find out,” he promised, speaking to no one in particular. Ogling a couple of female cadets walking by Kirk set out for the library.

Tags:

Everyone:

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@lauraaan182

@writerdee1701

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Prompt Wednesday:

@stardustednerd

Star Trek XReaders: @lumar014ad

#star trek aos #leonard bones mccoy #Leonard McCoy #Leonard McCoyXReaderPlatonic #platonic #james t kirk #james kirk #jim kirk x reader platonic #james kirk x reader #leonard mccoy x reader #prompt wednesday #hailey the queen of typos #friendship fic

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queercapwriting · 4 years

Note

So potential prompt for the holiday series: just a cheesy hallmarky movie fic. Girl meets girl for some reason they're on opposite sides of a business they have to work together to make Christmas or Chanuka festivities a reality and they end up falling in love. But this time, ITS FINALLY GAY! but that's also a lot so also totally cool if it's disregarded...

“I don’t understand,” Maggie rolled her eyes -- for what felt like the four hundredth time -- at her supervisor Professor M’orzz. “They’re astrophysics. We’re xenobio. Why on Earth - no pun intended, I guess - would we work with them on a stupid holiday party?”

Professor M’orzz sighed, also for what felt like the four hundredth time. “Because, Maggie, the show of unity will be good for the overall science department. Funding and all that. And anyway, it’s as you said: astrophysics and xenobiology. You realize that both departments are dismissed by the entire rest of the department as speculative sciences, right? That should give us some kind of bond, you’d think, no?”

Maggie sighed, knowing when she was caught in a truth. “Yeah. I know. Just. They’re so into... math.”

Professor M’orzz smiled at that. “Well I’m sure you and their representative will have a lot to learn from each other while you plan the department’s holiday party then.”

“And why me, again?”

“You know why. The student doing the most prestigious work in our program, being the face of our holiday party slash fundraiser? We need the money to continue our research, donors love to give around the holidays, and you know it.”

Maggie sighed, heavy and deep and with a slight exaggeration that she knew would aggravate anyone else, but that Professor M’orzz would have affection for.

“Fine. Who am I collaborating with, then?”

She didn’t know that the person she was collaborating with was right down the hall in the astrophysics lab, having the same conversation with their professor.

“Oh come on, J’onn,” they said, because Alex Danvers was far past formalities. “It’s a cheap ploy for money, and -”

“A cheap ploy for money that will keep this department running, Alex,” J’onn said. “It’ll help pay for that accelerator I know you and Mr. Allen were chatting about earlier this week.”

Alex glared, knowing when they were defeated. “Fine. I’ll meet up with this Sawyer woman then.”

“Good,” J’onn smiled, as Alex set off toward the xenobio program office.

They met each other in the hallway and knew each other instantly, by reputation and, somehow, by instinct.

“Danvers,” Maggie greeted with a slight glare and head tilt.

“Sawyer,” Alex clasped their hands behind their back as though to take shaking hands off the table completely.

“So we’ve got to work together on this stupid party,” Maggie said.

“At least we can agree it’s stupid,” Alex smirked.

“Might be stupid, but I’ve got some ideas.”

"Yeah, xenobio’s all about ideas with no observational data for follow-through,” Alex murmured, forgetting everything J’onn had tried to teach them about diplomacy.

“Well,” Maggie nearly stood on tiptoes to look Alex in the eye, but seemed to think better of it, “getting money for both of our departments with this damn holiday party is well within my no-observational-data’s jurisdiction,” Maggie said, and she had the audacity to smirk along with that infuriatingly sexy - wait, no, just infuriating, right? - little head tilt.

“Your jurisdiction ends where I say it does,” Alex returned, knowing even as they spoke the words that they were being way over the top. But Maggie seemed to like over the top, because her smirk only deepened.

“My lab. Seven pm. We’ll do some planning then, okay?”

Alex blinked, and Maggie seemed to take that as ascent as she turned on her heel. “See you around, Danvers.”

So Alex, flummoxed, had no choice but to head to the xenobio lab at seven that night.

If they were honest, they’d always been enamored of the subject. They were considering doing further graduate work in both astrophysics and xenobio -- the fields were so interlinked that the rivalry made absolutely no sense. But, alas, competition like that had a momentum of its own, and who was Alex to mess with an unstoppable force?

Except Maggie Sawyer seemed to be an immovable object of some kind.

Because by the time Alex showed up, Maggie had an entire whiteboard full of ideas for this stupid holiday party they were supposed to throw, complete with scribbles in the margins about the ways that tardigrades’ capacity for coming back to life after extreme desiccation could be used to help fuel crop growth in arid regions, and tiny, hastily-scrawled notes about how bacteria that survived thermal heat vents in deep oceans could be useful for understanding the origins of... well, of everything.

It was like she’d been party planning, all Chanukah this and Christmas that, with a strong dose of fundraising everywhere, and then gotten so sidetracked by her own genius that she had to stop and scribble out her ideas before they leaked away, elusive and never to return...

Alex did that kind of thing, constantly, in their own notebooks, on their own whiteboards...

So they walked past Maggie, without so much as a greeting, to squint -- not at her holiday party notes -- but at her scientific ideas.

Maggie didn’t move, but rather watched Alex quietly, as they stared at her ideas, looking for all the world like Alex was scrutinizing her naked body -- because really, they might as well have been.

“You know,” Alex said into the silence after several long, long moments, “if I’m understanding your horrible handwriting correctly --”

“Well this is starting off great --”

“Then if we exchanged some of our data, I think you could help me understand some of what might happen on rogue planets and I might be able to help you engineer some solves on your desiccation-scaling problem.”

Alex finally turned to look at their forced colleague, and Maggie was tilting her head, staring between the whiteboard and Alex. “We would do better sharing data than hating each other, wouldn’t we?”

“That’s what J’onn is always saying.”

“Professor M’orzz, too.”

Alex took a deep sigh, and Maggie gave that infuriating smirk again. “Well, maybe this holiday party’s a start. Planning now, the fun stuff later?”

There was a sparkle in Maggie’s eye, Alex thought, when she referenced fun stuff, and for a moment -- just a moment -- Alex wondered whether she meant fun science or fun sex.

Or both.

Or maybe it was all just in Alex’s head.

They really needed to get out of the lab more.

“Come on,” Maggie smirked again, and yep, Alex definitely needed to get out of the lab more, because they definitely should not be finding this xenobio woman attractive. Maggie reached under a desk to pull out to utterly ridiculous-looking hats.

One was a tall green pointy thing with elf ears on the sides; the other was a floppy red Santa hat. “If we’re gonna plan this damn thing, we might as well get in the spirit. Come on.” Maggie held both hats out to Alex, bobbing her hands up and down to indicate that Alex should pick one.

“Absolutely not,” they crossed their arms over their chest.

“Oh come on. If we have to do this, we should do it right.”

“I’m Jewish,” Alex protested as a last resort, and Maggie tilted her head deeper for a moment before diving back under her desk.

“A beanie, then. Simple, but wintery. And I’ll be an elf.”

She tugged the elf hat deep over her head, so the fake ears covered her own. Alex couldn’t help but snort and accept the blue beanie Maggie held out.

“Okay. So. Are we going to plan the biggest, most money-making and fun-having holiday party of all time, or what?” Maggie asked.

“If you’re gonna go, go hard,” Alex muttered, a smile creeping onto their face. Because Maggie was mocking the whole thing, even with her enthusiasm, and it was so Alex’s style that they couldn’t help but admire her.

Plus, all those scribbles in the margins...

They stayed in the lab well past midnight, sidetracking every hour or so to get into broader discussions about their fields, their passions, the things they most wanted to discover, the ways they both wanted to use their studies to change the world, the solar system, the galaxy.

Somewhere in between, they also divvied up who would be responsible for venue, food, invites, decorations, music, and the best ways to actually get a solid mix of grad students, professors, and rich alumni in the room.

By the time they agreed to call it a night and head home, neither of them quite thought the holiday party was such a stupid idea after all.

They met a handful more times in between. More logistics and more details. But -- not that either of them would admit it -- more often than not, their meetings became excuses to talk science, to talk to universe.

To talk about Maggie’s father and Alex’s mother, Maggie’s hometown and Alex’s surfing.

To talk about anything and everything under the sun, under the ocean, and above Earth’s sky.

Neither of them noticed, or would admit it.

Until the night of the holiday party neither of them wanted to plan.

Alex wore an elegantly green dress, backless and just this side of tight.

Maggie wore a red suit, white shirt, red tie, slim cut and just this side of swoon-worthy.

They stopped when they saw each other, because usually they were in sweats and glasses and yesterday’s makeup, pen stains on their hands and goggles on top of their heads.

They stopped when they saw each other, because suddenly, all their conversations, all those excuses for meetings... clicked.

“You look beautiful, Sawyer,” Alex breathed, running a hand through the buzzed side of their hair self-consciously.

“And you look handsome, Danvers,” Maggie smirked, but this time it was warm, not sarcastic, and Alex wondered when that transition had happened.

“This uh...” Alex gestured around the room, at the party still being set up around them. “We did good.”

“We did,” Maggie grinned, even as her eyes were glued to Alex’s body.

“Still my jurisdiction, though,” Alex murmured as the two stepped closer to each other. Something about gravitational forces between unstoppable forces and immovable objects.

“Not a chance,” Maggie shook her head as they entered each other’s space, no need for words when they’d both already said so much with their planning, their late nights, their bodies, with their dreams and their scribblings in the margins.

“Merry Christmas, Maggie.”

“Happy Chanukah, Alex.”

They didn’t need any mistletoe to tell them to kiss.

Professor M’orzz and J’onn fist-bumped behind them, because they’d definitely had holiday hopes for the two all along.

#sanvers #sanvers grad school au #sanvers au #sanvers fic #12 days of sanvers and supercorp christmas

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elletromil · 6 years

Text

Care and Handling of Terran Crewmates - Part 2

So I am totally world-building this story which mean this will probably get close to 10k by the time I am done and you still have to blame/thank @insanereddragon for the main idea and @stravaganza for most of the Rules in the handbook

Care and Handling of Terran Crewmates

Part 1

Part 2

It takes a total of three days before M’ërllliñ sends a message to the whole crew with the link to an editable file. Then he sends the captain a private request for an entire crate of W’ïzllloçk S’cootçh. The request is granted thirty seconds later.

CARE AND HANDLING OF TERRAN HUMAN CREWMATES

Rule #1 Keep them hydrated with an H2O solution. This is MANDATORY to their survival.

The bridge crew is fortunately too well disciplined to freak out when the Terran inevitably loses consciousness in the middle of their shift that day. Though it would be a lie to say they’re not all worried.

Who knows what kind of terrible disease he might have caught and carried onto the ship?

Sure, the first thing the captain did was to bring Eggsywellgaryunwin to G’ïngééér so she could give him a physical and make sure he had all the proper vaccines, but that’s no guarantee there’s nothing wrong with him. She might be an expert in xenobiology, it’s still the first time she’s got a breathing Terran in front of her. She could have missed something she didn’t know how to look for.

Out of principle, M’ërllliñ is quite ready to let the captain take care of the situation, but of course that’s the exact moment they enter a field of meteoroids. And while he has utter faith in the abilities of pilot T´qu-l` and navigator Wh-şk´ to get them out safely, it would be completely reckless to have the captain away from the bridge during such crucial proceedings.

So it’s up to M’ërllliñ to pick up the Terran and carry him to the infirmary bay.

He’s very careful doing so, unsure just how much the seemingly feeble body can withstand in terms of pressure since G’ïngééér isn’t quite done with those tests yet and he’s unwilling to put his trust in centuries old studies. While they’re not quite so old that he doubts the meticulousness of the researchers that conducted them, who knows how much could have changed since then.

He might not have wanted the Terran on the ship, but now that he’s here, it’s his duty as second in command and chief of security to protect him to the best of his abilities, no matter what he told Harigaladmalking. Not that the captain isn’t perfectly aware of this already. There’s a reason they’ve been working on the same ship since they left the academy after all.

G’ïngééér yowls softly in the back of her throat when she sees him entering the infirmary with the Terran in his arms, but not for long. It’s not like she didn’t expected something to go horribly wrong with the Terran on his first week after all. He’s seen the bets.

He doesn’t wait for her to dismiss him once she’s taken the Terran from his arms. While he could help her in a dire situation if need be, his place right now is on the bridge by his captain’s side. Eggsywellgaryunwin is in very good hands.

It’s three hours before they feel confident enough to leave the bridge to science officer Roxivalanceton and M’ërllliñ will never regret his decision to follow his captain to the infirmary that day.

What makes G’ïngééér the perfect senior medical officer is her willingness to not let anyone get away with any kind of bullshit, the captain included.

Seeing her hissing and growling at Harigaladmalking, the tall Firth visibly showing signs of submission to a W’ïzllloçk nearly half his size is a memory he’ll always cherish.

Or he will when he’ll stop being mad that his captain didn’t think to ask their newest crewmate what he required to meet his most basic needs. Considering he’s not let Eggsywellgaryunwin out of his sight since he’s abducted him from Terra, he wonders what in D’ïããã’s name they’ve talked about during all that time. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t as important as finding out what the Terran needed to stay hydrated, that’s for sure.

Luckily Eggsywellgaryunwin wakes up none the worse for wear a bit later. That he holds absolutely no grudge against them for his little misadventure only raises M’ërllliñ’s protective instincts to greater heights. That and the realisation that to be that careless about his own health, the Terran has to be but a kitten on his planet.

D’ïããã helps them, the whole crew is probably accessory to a kidnapping now.

Addendum - They imbibe it, splashing or spraying it on them has no effect.

“Merlin?” Anyone else and he would ignore whoever was speaking to him and mangling his name so much. But after a couple of weeks spent in the Terran’s company, he’s willing to come to a few compromises. Not only no Terran has ever had to learn such foreign pronunciation, but after hearing the history behind the name he had started calling him by, M’ërllliñ can only feel honored to be called so. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Of course Eggsy, how might I help you?”

It had taken a few days before M’ërllliñ had accepted to simply call him ‘Eggsy’ like the Terran always begged everyone to do. Not because he wants to keep his distance, but rather because he had no way of knowing the implication behind shortening a name on Terra. The Firths are the only other race he knows where such a thing happens and for now, he is willfully forgetting his knowledge of it. At least as long as his captain doesn’t act inappropriately towards their newest crewmates. Which he hasn’t, all praises to D’ïããã.

However, ignoring his knowledge of the Firths’ culture according to names or not, it had been a valid concern to have. The last thing he had wanted was to bind himself to the Terran unknowingly. That Eggsy asks everyone to call him thus means nothing. For all they know, Terrans are all bonded together.

But he needn’t have worried. After some explications, it had appeared that a name is both important and not on Terra. It depends mostly on the two parties involved. And Eggsy clearly isn’t putting much importance in his.

“I wanted to know… Is it normal that the rest of the crew is randomly spraying me with water?”

Sometimes, it’s hard to envision that the crew of this ship is comprised of some of the smartest individuals of the galaxy. But then again, they willingly decided to join captain Harigaladmalking’s crew. That’s probably the dumbest thing anyone could ever do.

But at least, if the other crewmates are making attempts at taking care of Eggsy, even if they are misguided attempts, it means he’s being accepted by the crew. It’s reassuring to know.

“I wouldn’t say it’s normal, but I’ll ask them to stop. They’ve… misinterpreted some facts.”

Eggsy is clearly curious, but thankfully doesn’t ask further explanations, probably sensing it’s more of an anthropological matter. M’ërllliñ would answer to the best of his ability if need be, but Jamesalanceton is better equipped to field those kind of questions. And like all the Firths on this ship already, he seems well on his way to make the Terran an honorary packmate.

“Thanks Merlin. And also Harry told me I needed to speak with you if I wanted to go planetside on missions?”

M’ërllliñ doesn’t hiss at that, but it’s a near thing. The last thing he wants is an inexperienced Terran out on the field, but it would probably be more dangerous not to put him through at least some basic training.

And who knows, maybe Terrans will prove to be as adaptable as the captain claims.

#merlin #eggsy unwin #harry hart #hints of hartwin #probably still going into merhartwin at some point #science-fiction #crack #fluff #aliens #kingsman #fanfic #me #also i am having real funs with the names here #coming up with some rules depending on races and their families #it's all pretty obvious stuff of course #but yeah #enjoy peeps

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whalefucker69 · 7 years

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Finally catching up on the MEA Countdown

30 Days: Will you play SisRyder or BroRyder first? Why? How does your Ryder define their gender?

Cis female. Will probably play as broryder my second playthrough.

29 Days: What is your Ryder’s name? Why did you pick this name - is there a meaning or origin story behind it? Do they go by any nicknames? What would you name their sibling, father and mother if you were able to choose?

Hannah. It’s a palindrome. Her brother would be Ian if I had to choose, but I like the name Scott and will probably keep it for my mryder playthrough.

28 Days: Are you going to use the default appearance or create a custom Ryder? If custom, describe your Ryder’s physical appearance (hair color, eye color, skin color, height, weight, facial features, any scars or tattoos, racial origin, etc). If you have art and/or a face-claim, feel free to add them here.

She looks like Amy Adams, lmao. Her and her brother went out together and got the Andromeda Initiative logo tattooed on their shoulders the weekend before launch. It was her first tattoo. Idk about scars; I’ll have to wait and see the options.

27 Days: Are you going to use the default appearance for Ryder’s sibling or customize them? Describe your ideas for their sibling’s and father’s physical appearance.

Her brother looks like an even weirder-looking Domhnall Gleeson, if that’s even possible. He has a scar on his lower lip from getting punched in the face (he started the fight). Idk about their dad.

26 Days: Do you have a specific class profile or mix of class profiles in mind for Ryder?

Infiltrator/engineer at the start, basically an engineer with cloak. She may branch out over the course of the game as she gets more comfortable with combat.

25 Days: Describe Ryder’s favorite combat style. Bioware call Peebee a “gunslinger” and describe Liam as a “close-range fighter” - how would you describe Ryder’s combat role/strengths? What are some of their favorite biotic/tech/other abilities?

Hannah’s kind of a mess when it comes to combat. She was in the alliance, yeah, but never on the front lines- she got her PhD in xenobiology and worked in a lab up till now. While she would’ve joined the AI no matter what (she wants to study the fuck out of some new species), she’s only part of the pathfinder team because of her dad and brother. She has all the components of combat down: she knows all the theory, she builds her own tech, and she’s pretty physically fit, but she doesn’t function well under pressure. Her ideal position is in the back with a sniper rifle, where she can see what’s going on and focus enough to make a plan.

24 Days: Which squadmates do you think will best compliment Ryder’s combat style? Alternatively, who do you plan to take out most in the field?

Drack and Cora probably compliment her best- since she’s more of an infiltrator, she needs someone to be a tank and a biotic. In practice I’ll probably bring Jaal and Cora (or, if Jaal turns out to be a biotic, Jaal and Liam).

23 Days: Which weapons or category of weapons will Ryder prefer? Describe their favorite loadout.

Sniper rifles!!!! Also maybe a powerful scoped-up pistol, a la the suppressor pistol from the Citadel DLC.

22 Days: Will Ryder craft? What are you most excited about crafting? Do you have any names in mind already for weapons?

She’s a bit of a control freak and loves tech, so ofc she crafts, mods, and maintains all her own gear. No idea about names yet.

21 Days: What are Ryder’s personality traits? Describe 5 strengths and 5 flaws.

Strengths: Intelligent, noble, diplomatic, hard-working, self-sacrificing Flaws: trusts too easily, can’t focus under outside pressure, tries to hard to please everyone, easily scared/overwhelmed, gets too caught up in “the plan” to focus on reality

#mea countdown #meacountdown #hannah ryder #she has a tag now!

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smallgodseries · 3 years

Photo

[image description: A huge copper-colored robot (in clear homage on Kelly Freas’ classic work for Astounding SF and the band Queen) reaches out from the frame to the viewer. It wears a black banded captain’s hat with an inverted red star and laurels insignia on its front, and a little red kerchief tied around its collar. Its face (a tv screen?) shows a vaguely human countenance, albeit one with terrible dentation. It does not look friendly. Text reads, “35, C-ORG, The Small God of Xenu-Biology”]

People like it when things make sense.

It’s a part of the human condition. When you have to wake up, defecate, consume, hunt, clean, reproduce, and sleep again, logic gradually becomes an addiction. Without logic, why would you have to do any—or all—of those things? Without logic, you would be able to wish the urine away, perhaps to a high point above the heads of your enemies; you would be able to snap your fingers and call food to your hand, mates to your bed, children already old enough to be graceful and obedient to your side. Without logic, everything would be possible, and since everything is not possible, nor made possible by wishing, people like it when things make sense.

Unfortunately for the people, the gods legitimately don’t care whether things make sense or not. The gods are content to exist in a constant haze of glorious impossibility, bouncing from idea to idea, remaking the world in their own image. People would be happier if the gods were different. The gods would not be happier if people were different. When the gods want people to be different, they just snap their fingers, and logic flies out the window.

Just ask Medusa.

C-org would make a terrible people, but he makes a reasonably competent god. Xenobiology is a human study, the extrapolation of possible alien biology from the principles known of Earth biology. It is a speculative field of science, yes, but an increasingly important one, with logical applications to the world as it exists. It requires little imagination. It is logical.

Xenu-biology throws logic out the window and waves as it flaps its wings and flies away. It is the biology of the divine, and divinity requires so little in the way of “making sense” as to treat ridiculousness as a blessing. And above it all reigns C-org, delighted by the wild majesty of his domain, unwilling to reign it in, unwilling to confine himself to a form more easily worshipped or perceived.

He has what he wants. He needs no logic. He needs no worshippers. The dragon-bats of Jupiter IV will serve him well enough as priests, until all the stars die out.

He is content.

......................

Artist Lee Moyer (13th Age, Cursed Court) and author Seanan McGuire (Middlegame, Every Heart a Doorway) have joined forces to bring you icons and stories of the small deities who manage our modern world, from the God of Social Distancing to the God of Finding a Parking Space.

Join in each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a guide to the many tiny divinities:

Tumblr: https://smallgodseries.tumblr.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/smallgodseries

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallgodseries/

Homepage: http://www.smallgodseries.com/

#Small Gods #smallgodseries #Seanan McGuire #Lee Moyer #icons and stories

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