13450/Space Lex 17: A Story Full of Holes part 2.

Space Lex 17: A Story Full of Holes part 2.
Date of Scene:	27 November 2022
Location:	Labs - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	The Titans Team Science! does what they do best, SCIENCE!ing the data from the mystery satellite from the Space LeX 17 mission. The conclusion: Lex Luthor's story is false, it probably /is/ a space weapon, it's remarkably dangerous, and a day trip to the Moon sounds like fun.
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Kaida Connolly, Kian, Caitlin Fairchild, Terry O'Neil, Nadia Pym-van Dyne

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Donna Troy has posed:
   There's a lot of data to sort through.  The mystery satellite, recovered by the Titans from the ill-fated Space Lex-17 mission, sits safely hidden away on the moon.  However Kaida had run the full spectrum of scans the T-Jets sensors are capable of on it before leaving it there, and the T-Jet returned with several terabytes of raw data to analyze. This was all hands on deck—every Titan with a science background had been invited to sort through the readings and see if they could figure out what the satellite actually does.
    It's clear already what the satellite doesn't do, but to clarify that, Donna opens the meeting by showing a clip from Lex Luthor's recent rededication ceremony for the Statue of Liberty.  The clip opens with bespectacled Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent throwing Lex Luthor an awkward question about the Chinese accusing America of placing weapons in orbits, and continues with Luthor's public statement:
    "The United States of America does not and has never had a Space Weapons program.  The incident to which Mr. Kent is referring is the recent near fatal disaster of Space LeX shuttle mission 17.
    "Let me take this moment to send my heart felt thanks to the Justice League, the Titans, and the Fantastic Four who helped saved lives of the crew of mission 17.  The cargo was from a Soviet era project that was once mothballed due to advances in our understanding of quantum fusion at the turn of the century.  The project was called the M-Ring, a series of satellites that would capture microwave energy from the sun and beam it down to the Earth to power our cities.  When it was canned, it was stated to be unnecessarily antagonistic toward Russia and China.
    "The question has been put to Secretary of Defence Alexander Pierce—why was a Soviet Era project re-activated?  An investigation has been launched and we will get to the bottom of this."
    Donna kills the video and turns to the assembled Science Titans.  "So… this is our own investigation.  I knew there was something wrong with this story straight away, because I could see from the sensors when I was helping rescue those astronauts that whatever was in that satellite was producing some kind of resonance with the Space LeX ship's fusion drive.  It was emitting quite a lot of radiation, but it has stopped doing that now, all rather suddenly.  We've left it on the moon in case it starts again, but if you guys can't figure this all out from the readings we took, we might consider going up there to take a closer look at it."
    Donna gives a shrug and heaves herself up onto a lab bench to sit, and looks around at her assembled teammates.  "So, what have you guys figured out?  Any idea what that satellite is actually for?  Or who exactly built it?"

Kaida Connolly has posed:
    "So, to put it simply, the main structure of this satellite was magnesium-titanium and strangely it was 3d printed.  No welding."  Kaida nods her head as she presents her findings and shrugs.  "No one, that I could find, 3d prints with that material let alone makes satellites."  She shakes her head.  "It's weird."

Kian has posed:
    Kían doesn't even look up from whatever notes he's got on his tablet—the one from his world, not a Terrestrial one.  "What we've been told about this thing is only partly true at best."  He sits back a little, and a 3D display of the transmitter appears, looking like a CAD rendering rather than a photographic scan.
    "It's a transmitter, that much is true.  But it'll never transmit a single microwave, much less enough to power anything.  But it still has a lot in common with maser, or laser, collimators.  What I can't figure out is what it's condensing.  I didn't get a look at the collectors to see what they're actually collecting."
    The birdman frowns.  "I'd like to know what this is really designed to transmit."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
    "Yeah, it's definitely not old Cold War tech," Caitlin agrees.  She spins around the 3D image a few times, zooming in and out of wirescale to illustrate the design for others to follow along with.
    "There's no solar collectors.  Nothing to actually receive or transmit microwaves.  This is some kind of resonance chamber, but I'm thinking it's for suspending or holding some kind of particulate component.  I'd guess it's a gravity pump, but there's no vacuum seal in here.  So it's not a fusion energy system; at least, not one I've ever seen or heard of.  Maybe some kind of magnetic resonance system."  She furrows her brow and transfers her ponytail from one shoulder to the other, tugging it between her fingers in a mild display of perturbation.  "I can't imagine it's anything too exotic.  But they must be using something we're aware of, just in a new way."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "So one thing that's clear is that Luthor's explanation is simply not true," Donna says.  "I mean that thing was emitting a whole lot of radiation when we showed up.  The crew of the ship was separated from it by a few dozen feet of bulkheads and was wearing radiation-resistant space suits, but still needed some pretty major decontamination.  And as far as I know, they didn't have fusion power plants thirty, forty years ago when this was supposed to have been made."
    Donna tilts her head to the side, and gives Kaida a short nod.  "And no 3D printing either, right?  So we're looking at something made recently, and also made unconventionally.  And judging by what the rest of you are saying, this thing's pretty high-tech."
    She gestures at the schematic on the wall.  "Kian… that's kind of the thing.  There were no collectors, as Cait said.  What's here is the whole thing.  Which suggests that whatever it's trying to transmit was something it already had, right?  Cait, is it possible that the module you're studying is some kind of a battery?  I mean… a gravity pump doesn't sound like a battery, but what else is this section Kian says is condensing something actually condensing?"

Kian has posed:
    Kían's wings spread and fold, more as a matter of reflex than anything else.  "Resonance… particle… hm."
    His elbows come down on the counter top, and his face settles into his palms, and he stares at the schematic, thinking.
    "I hope I'm wrong.  If it's not transmitting microwaves or any other electromagnetic wave… well… particles have a wave nature.  What would the maser or laser equivalent of an electron beam be?  Or worse, anti-electrons?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    Terry doesn't have a science background, although one could arguably say that he is a prime candidate for a science experiment.  He shows up a little late, but the reason for his tardiness is not because of his work—since being let go from the Planet, the young man has been sort of aimless.  The chocolate trade keeps him financially solvent for the moment, but he clearly doesn't seem to have much of a center these days.
    He spends a lot of his time patrolling.  Like, a lot of the time.  Nowadays he may be spending more time as the cat than as the boy, which isn't optimal.
    But that's neither here nor there.  The reason he shows up late is because he brings with him the prerequisite for any Titan meeting: Pizza.
    "Come get it while it's hot," he pipes up, opening the box to let the celestial aroma make its presence known.  "Did I miss the reveal where we discover the satellite had V-GER inscribed on its surface?" he asks.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia is late.  This isn't too surprising for a Waspette whose time is stretched in a million different directions these days between leading her own super science team, being a reserve member for the Avengers, and consulting for a number of other organizations such as SHIELD on SCIENCE! threats.  As a technical adult now, her responsibilities have only increased.  Still, when the Titans call she will answer.  Having access to teleportation tech probably helps too.
    The elevator doors open admitting the young scientist into the labs.  Dressed in a red and black plaid skirt, stompy boots, and a black T-shirt with a pink wasp silhouette on it, in addition to a lab coat worn more in the manner of a cape than an actual protective garment, she looks almost more like a punk cosplaying as a scientist.  "Hi!  Sorry I'm late!"  She looks up from a tablet she has been studying very intently.  "Okay, so this thing.  It's really interesting, like mimicking things people prefer that I don't mess with too much interesting."  She lets that sink in, as worrying as it probably is to some folks.  "This is one hundred percent not like any conventional fusion reaction, there's barely any signs of neutron interactions and on top of that, the radiation is all wrong.  There are unusually high levels of exotic radiation likely caused by interactions of non-baryonic matter."  She pauses, realizes she may need to give some context.  "So the Pym Drives?  They use something my Dad initially theorized, Pym Fields, to warp space/time.  That's how the T-Jet and the Tereshkova can move as fast as they do in space.  These patterns?  I've seen similar ones when I pushed too hard warping Space/Time with those fields, but it gets worse because these are much higher.  Also, that alloy is highly resistant to radiation, a very poor reactant for it, likely providing some manner of containment for whatever reaction they were going for.  It's also definitely not Soviet or Cold War Era.  That project they're talking about?  Never heard of it and trust me the Red Room fed me every design they could think of, from every source they could get their hands on, hoping I'd create a super weapon or improve something they hadn't been able to get working.  There's no way."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
    Caitlin scrubs her face with her hands, unconsciously echoing Kian's reaction.  "Uh… masers.  Masers.  That's…."  She sets about resetting her ponytail with a thoughtful scowl, buying time to put her words in order.  "It's—"  She breaks off when Nadia arrives, giving both a weary wave of welcome.  She listens to Nadia's summary, and by the time she's done, Caitlin's chin is nodding vigorous approval.
    "Right.  So it's not quite a gravity pump, but it's not just a battery, either.  It's way overbuilt, like it's expecting an order of magnitude more power than you'd get from simple microwave exposure.  Even in space.  So whatever it's doing, it's definitely building up a tremendous reserve of energy and then discharging it to…."  Her hands flop and she flails them at her sides.  "Wherever, I guess.  It's—"  She squints her eyes behind her yellow computer glasses, and taps a finger against her lower lip.  "Actually, let's work from the other direction.  We don't know precisely what it's emitting.  We do know there's an energy collimater, a focusing device, and an emitter array.  This is some big stinky secret thing, and the only thing that's a big stinky secret is military weapons in space, right?  Or ones that are like, war crime stuff, neutron bombs and that kind of thing.  I'd like to take a second look at the emitter structure, can you pull it up, Nadia?" Caitlin requests.  "If we get a better idea of the configuration of the array, that might help us determine what's being used.  A low-orbit EMP device is going to be configured a lot differently than a particle cannon."
    Ooh, pizza!  She smiles gratefully at Terry and goes right for the brain fuel, slapping two pieces atop each other like a sandwich and promptly devouring half of it in two bites.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna hops to her feet and wraps an arm around Nadia's shoulder, giving her favourite smol scientist a half-hug in greeting, which she follows up with a hair scruffing.  "Hey Nadia.  So that kind of implies that this… whatever it is… isn't retrofitted, but the satellite was specifically constructed to deal with whatever kind of radiation this thing was giving off, right?"  She turns to Kaida, raising an eyebrow.  "Think you could do some digging into that alloy?  If it's not conventional, it might be possible to find out who built this thing by finding out who's got the capability to 3D print that particular alloy.  Any ideas what that alloy is normally used for, if anything?"
    She helps Terry unpack and distribute pizzas, giving the cat a smile and a friendly shoulder bump as they do so, giving Caitlin time for her theorizing.
    "So, for the sake of us non-scientists, you're suggesting that this is essentially focusing some kind of energy like a laser, right?" she asks, raising an eyebrow in Caitlin's direction.  "But it's probably not an electron beam, Kian—because that wouldn't create the weird radiation that Nadia's measurements show up, right?"  Her eyes go to Nadia, one eyebrow raising slightly in a wordless request for confirmation.  The Amazon is smart, but this isn't her wheelhouse.  "Are electrons baryons?  What actually is non-baryonic matter?"

Kaida Connolly has posed:
    Listening to the others, Kaida suddenly is a blur of motion when pizza arrives and she greedily grabs a whole box and runs off with it.  She sets it somewhere flat, flips open the top and pulls out a slice.
    "I can look into it but the thing is, this is a lot outside my area."  She gestures toward the others.     "They are better at this.  However, I will say, the alloy used is often used in medical treatments and the like so I can peek in to some of the hospitals.  See if they can get me in touch with those that sell or manufacture it."  She nods her head.  "I imagine someone knows something.  It lends to the theories thus far."

Kian has posed:
    Kían liberates a piece of pizza from Terry on the very sensible proposition that the presence of pizza indicates a nonzero chance of Gar or Bart or both showing up to inhale it.  And Terry gets a smooch on the cheek, but that's independent of the pizza.
    "Well, there are a lot of different kinds of non-baryons," the birdman says.  "Electrons, neutrinos, mesons, and all their antiparticles, and the force carriers.  If it has at least three quarks, and an odd number of them, it's a baryon.  Otherwise it's not."
    He chomps a piece of pizza and quickly chews and swallows.  "And that's leaving out really exotic stuff like strangelets and monopoles."  He looks to Nadia to see if he's forgotten anything.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Non-Byronic matter would pretty much be the writings of Ada Lovelace, wouldn't it?" Vorpal quips, taking a bite out of the pizza.  He glances over at Kian, briefly tempted to explain that his joke was predicated on the fact that Ada Lovelace's mother raised her to be the total opposite of her Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know father (the aforementioned Lord Byron), but he decides that that will be left for another time.  Along with the colorful remarks made about Lord Byron by Arnold Houldsworth upon his later exhumation.
     "I wonder if there was a prescribed intended target all along.  The thing stopped emitting radiation just like that, right?"  The cat bites off another piece of the piece.  "D'you think it might have detected its intended destination plans went off the rails?  I wonder what would happen if we were to put it back on its supposedly intended path—"  He glances up from his pizza.  "And just to clarify, I absolutely do not know what I'm talking about.  The only thing I know for certain is that Lex Bluto lied—which means it was a day that ended in -y, right?"  Chomp.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia hugs Donna back, because there's always time for hugs.  She nods along with Cait's hypothesis.  "Okay."  Poking the surface of her tablet several times, the data and diagrams of the emitter structure appear on one of the nearby large screens.  "Space based weapons have long been a dream of every major power on the planet," she agrees as she peers again at the emitters.
    "It's not baryonic or leptonic.  Baryonic often gets used in cosmological discussions to include pretty much all conventional matter.  Like how that Lovemake guy loved to overuse non-Euclidian.  Leptonic particles aren't really relevant here because their mass is too low.  Based on my calculations what we're seeing here," She glances pointedly at Cait, Donna, and for some reason Terry before continuing.  "should only be present in the compressive field of a black hole or even more exotic things like supersymmetry particles, dark energy, axions, or tachyons.  Occam's Razor, this might be a Black Hole Generator.  I toyed with something like that once, but it was super small scale.  This… it would explain the high level of space/time distortion patterns, too."
    And then she stops talking long enough to realize there is pizza in the room and pauses to inhale several slice of high calorie cheesy goodness.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
    Caitlin furrows her brow again.  She holds Nadia in high enough esteem that she doesn't just blurt out her thoughts.  Instead she sits down and starts running a quick simulation.  MARVIN's powerhouse CPU makes short work of it, and Caitlin's already shaking her head as she reads the runout while the others watch the device attempting to fire.
    "No.  Not enough mass or energy to turn into a singularity.  It'd just implode, the gravimetric containment isn't designed to resist inward shears force along that vector to the Null spot."  Kaida's given a quick nod of approval; the alloy simply isn't designed for that sort of abuse.  Caitlin points at the dot that indicates dead-center inside the unit.
    The simulation is flicked aside with a brush of Caitlin's finger and she starts running some other fast tests.  She's clearly on some track that requires her full focus.  Granted, Nadia could do a lot of this math in her head, but the redhead's chasing a specific thread.
    "Hey.  Hey—Kian, look," Caitlin says, over her shoulder.  "I ran standard patterns for known exotic matter and energy.  Look at this hit I got on dark energy," she points out.  The outlying energy modalities they had first scanned abruptly line up with the theoretical model now in front of them.  Caitlin runs a fast 3D render and MARVIN displays the data on the 3D projection over the central table.  She spins in her chair and stands up, hands resting automatically in her labcoat while she turns her face up to the display.  "I was coming at this backwards.  We took Luthor's word at face value, we've been looking at common high-energy states.  But dark energy doesn't interact with the fundamental forces, except gravity.  Hence the gravimetric chamber.  Maybe some of these other systems are a… micro-reactor for dark matter.  Converting it into an dark energy state and directing the beam pattern."
    There's a long beat and Caitlin looks at the others.  "So… I have no idea what the impact of dark matter mass conversion would be," she informs everyone else.  "Hopefully there's not a super scary answer, but I'm guessing we're not that lucky," she says with a rare, droll humor.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I think we can assume that it's not working as intended Vorp," Donna says with a grin.  "It was never going to get to its intended orbit, because it was interfering with the ship's fusion drive in some weird way.  Whoever put this thing on that ship didn't do their homework, or didn't understand their own science fully, I'd guess.
    "What interests me is that it doesn't have anything that's obviously a collector. No solar cells, no radiothermal source… where's the energy come from?  There's no sign of it now, so did it all leak out, is that what caused the accident?  Like maybe this is some kind of battery that feeds a laser?  If the Chinese are claiming it's about weaponizing space… well that makes sense, wouldn't it?"  Donna looks from face to face for confirmation, but settles for a slice of pizza instead.
    "Baryonic, not Byronic, Terry.  Which has nothing to do with anyone called Barry.  And no, particles of bad coffee are not Garyonic particles."
    "Okay, Kaida…" Donna says, watching the mouse requisition an entire box of pizza with a broad grin of fond amusement, "if it's used in medical treatments, that gives us an angle.  There are going to be a limited number of companies set up to make that alloy.  Let's see if we can get a list and do some digging to find out if any of them have worked on making a powdered form suitable for 3D printing, and if so whether they might be involved, or if they've had any unusual sales of large quantities of the raw material to a company that isn't in the medical tech business."
    Donna watches with half an eye on the calculations Caitlin's performing, but this is well beyond her ken.  If there's even a concept of dark energy in Themysciran physics, it's got a different name.  This high-level science is definitely not all Greek to Donna.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Nadia nods a few times with a mouth full of pizza.  Though she at least swallows it before talking.  "Take that Occam!  I just thought it seemed likely, you wouldn't believe how many secret government projects have tried to make black hole weapons over the years.  Dark Matter, I guess the secret weapon makers are actually being a bit more creative for once.  That's probably not a good thing.  Oh well."
    She looks over at Donna.  "If it's converting Dark Matter it wouldn't necessarily need a storage vector, it could potentially just be doing the conversions on an as needed basis, Dark Matter is literally most of the matter in the known universe.  If they're able to find it and convert it into energy, well there's a lot of it to work with."  Another piece of pizza is snagged.  "But then why was it interfering with the fusion drive…" Nadia wonders as she makes another slice of pizza disappear.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
    "Honestly, to me, the most surprising thing is the radiation angle."  She nods her head as she takes another bite of pizza and swallows it quickly.  She has already somehow put away and entire slice of pizza.  She clears her throat and nods to Nadia before looking down.
    "I understand a bit about radiation mainly due to its applications in my field and one thing I do know is it doesn't naturally just disappear even if something that was producing it was turned off.  You said it was radioactive, later it wasn't at all.  Not much later.  Not a trace."  She gestures to the data and then shakes her head.  "Things don't usually go that cold, that fast."

Kian has posed:
    Kían watches Cait's display.  "I… don't like the implications of that," he says, chewing on another bite of pizza, though it looks like he's not enjoying it, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the pizza.
    "Okay.  This is very theoretical but… dark energy is the force that's driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.  If this thing is concentrating dark energy, it could… well, I don't know.  Anything from just doing a lot of local damage to actually ripping a hole in the structure of spacetime."
    He clarifies, in the manner of one Dr Egon Spengler, "That would be bad."  Blame Terry for showing him that.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "If this thing was messing with gravity in some way, and the fusion drive contains the reaction in a magnetic bottle—they could maybe interfere, right?" Donna suggests.  "I mean the readings we have show a resonance between the radioactivity from the satellite and the fusion drive's output.  What happens to a magnetic bottle in a changing gravitational field?  Or even just the electronics that control that magnetic bottle?
    " Maybe the reason it stopped emitting radiation is because…."  Donna tilts her head towards Kian.  "Well, if something's ripping a hole in space time, that's going to mean a lot of stray radiation, right?  So rather than there being a radioactive source, which would stay radioactive for… well, a longer time than this did, or a much shorter one—maybe the high level radiation during the incident was just the result of this thing leaking?  Like… doing what it was supposed to be doing, but a bit too soon?"
    Donna snags another slice of pizza, eyes off the calculations and schematics that mean so little to her, and onto the cheese and tomato goodness that means so much.  "So… weapon is the consensus?" she asks.  "Though saying that, Terry… that doesn't mean Luthor is lying.  One thing I can tell you is that the crew of the ship had no idea what they were carrying, as far as they were concerned it was just some Department of Defense thing they were carrying up into orbit.  They were pretty shocked.  So… what Luthor says is clearly not true, but there are two options to consider.  One is that the President of the United States is lying about sending weapons into space, and the other is that someone in the military is lying to the President of the United States.  Take your pick which of those sounds worse.
    "Question though.  What do we do with this knowledge?  What next?  Kaida's got the alloy angle to chase up.  Cait, what do you think, would it be helpful to make a physical inspection of the satellite?  We better take serious anti-radiation precautions if we want to do that, but it's feasible.  And at what stage do we go public with this?"
    Donna tilts her head to the side, and looks from face to face.  "I think… we need to tell people what we've figured out.  Though my instinct is we don't go public with it, and we don't think about confronting the president of the country before we know more.  But it probably makes sense to share this with the League, X-Men and Avengers."

Kian has posed:
    "I can't even begin to speculate," Kían says after a moment's thought.  "If you're talking about putting holes in reality, it could mean less radiation because it's being sucked in, or more radiation because the liberated energy is creating really exotic matter that's decaying almost as fast as it's coming into being, or unpredictable radiation because it's opened a hole to another universe."
    He thinks hard.  "Well, if there's good news, it's that it didn't knock the universe into a lower energy state, like where electricity and magnetism are separate forces.  If that had happened, we wouldn't be talking about it.  We just wouldn't be."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Ain't nobody putting holes in reality around here but me," Vorpal quips in, giving Kian a look, "And all of this seems to particularly inefficient.  So much energy, so much huffing and puffing to do something I do so effortlessly."
    He blinks briefly at the notion of none of them simply being, and dismisses it as too far-fetched a reality.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and he can't think of any reality more vacuous than one where he doesn't exist.  Or maybe the cat side is really coming in strong.
    "Donna, the man is a politician.  If his lips are moving, he's probably not telling the truth.  Lois didn't have a shining estimation of the man, and I tend to trust her instincts."
    He finishes his pizza off, and hms.
    "We need ice cream.  I'll be right back."
    And one of those effortless holes in reality opens up, and he is gone to get some Big Gay Ice Cream for the team.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
    Caitlin winces at Kian's observation, but forces herself to nod in pragmatic agreement.  It's amazing how much the universe relies upon a set of very simple interrelationships, at the end of the day.
    "Yeah—yeah, I want to get up there and see it for myself," Caitlin tells Donna.  "But only a small team.  Me, Vic, maybe The Princessiest if your godly superpowers—"  She tweaks Donna's ear.  "—are rated for ionizing radiation.  I'm just about the only one of us who is actually rad-resistant.  Worse case, I'll just be sick for a couple days."
    She rolls her pizza slices up and wolfs them down in two more big bites, and waggles a finger at Terry while she chews.  "And let's not leap to any conclusions here, Lex Industries is a big multinational.  It's entirely possible someone smuggled that device into the test rocket under some other pretense.  I think it's pretty unlikely that President Luthor would toss a potential mass-gravity weapon into orbit just for the retweets.  He's not Elon Musk," Caitlin quips.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna holds her hands up to Terry's 'he's a politician' gambit.  "Hey, I don't trust him any further than I… any further than you can throw him either.  Just saying, it's important not to close off other avenues of enquiry just because the number one suspect is super sus.  We've all played Among Us, and just because Gar's always the first out the airlock doesn't mean he's actually the imposter."
    "Rocky Roadhouse for me!" she adds, calling out louder as Terry rabbit holes.
    "I have no idea how radiation-proof I am, Cait," Donna says with a shrug, batting at Caitlin's ear-tweaking hand.  "Probably more than an astronaut in a space suit, I came out of it fine.  I did take a potassium iodide pill though.  See, I do listen.  I'm sure I'll be fine though."
    She takes a third slice of pizza too.  "More to the point, Space LeX is at least theoretically out of Lex Luthor's hands.  It's in a… what was it, a blind trust?  He doesn't have day-to-day control over operations when he's president, anyway.  They were contracted by the DoD to take the satellite up.  So it's entirely possible he did have nothing to do with it.
    "On the other hand, it's entirely possible he did.  So I'm not in favor of presenting our evidence to him until we've figured something more out.  And let's be realistic here, if it wasn't the president, it was someone very high up in the government or military who okayed this."

Kian has posed:
    "I seem to be radiation proof, more or less," Kían offers, "or at least I can ignore it as far as we've been able to determine, but we'd need to get a spacesuit from my world.  Unless the whole trip can be done without one.  I'm not sure what the facilities on your moon are like.  I'd like to examine its systems more closely, that's for certain."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    "I wouldn't mind going up there either!" Nadia agrees, even though her name was missing from the list.  "And my suit is fully radiation resistant.  You'd be amazed how often I find myself in high radiation environments."  She pauses thinking about that for a moment.  "Wait, actually you probably wouldn't be."  She is at least somewhat self-aware.
    She shrugs at the talk of whether it was the President or not.  "World leaders lie and do a lot of terrible things, some they know about, some they don't, some just get done in their name.  Like Department X?  They don't care who is leading Russia and operate with complete autonomy, and the United States has similar or had similar departments and organizations too.  It's been a few years the information I saw is probably out of date.  Though that doesn't mean it isn't the President either.  If a department like that had a willing sympathizer they'd be all in on it.  Or maybe he is pulling all the strings.  Should his private company really be involved in government business?  That seems kind of corrupt… ANYWAY let's go to the moon!"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
    "We're going in with all cautions in place," Caitlin advises Nadia and Kian, and includes Donna in that look.  "We don't know what the side effects of a dark matter reactor could be.  It could be just high-energy particles, it could be ionizing radiation, it could be something we've never run into.  You'll need full bodysuits, respirators, and electromagnetic sheathes.  I'll…."  She scratches her temple, frowning.  "I guess I'll sit down and work up the world's first cure for dark energy radiation poisoning.  A theoretical cure for a largely hypothetical substance acting in completely unpredictable ways."
    Hands flip into the air and collapse against her sides, the labcoat flapping from the motion.  "The joys of being a Titan, right?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    "If dark energy only interacts with gravity, doesn't that mean that there's no such thing as dark energy radiation poisoning?" Donna suggests reasonably, ignoring the fact that a major radiation leak was a whole thing already.  "Besides, you get plenty of radiation exposure just hanging out in space, and I don't bother with space suits any more.  I'm sure I'll be fine."
    Everyone knows that Donna would argue the point.  Everyone also knows that Caitlin won't listen, and after an hour or two of squabbling, Caitlin will win and Donna will sulk in her rad suit.
    "No facilities on the moon Kian," Donna says a little apologetically.  "We left the probe in a crater on the dark side.  Last anyone else knows, it was hurled telekinetically out of orbit at approximate right angles to the plane of the ecliptic and is still drifting further and further away from Earth.  It seemed prudent to keep it hidden until we know more.  We may need to present it as evidence at some point.  But yeah, if you all wanna go up and investigate it more closely, we can do that.  Just bring your lab with you."
    A statement that would come across as needlessly flippant if someone in the room didn't regularly do exactly that.

Terry O'Neil has posed:<br  >  It is at this moment that a Rabbit Hole opens up.
    "Well," Vorpal says, leaning on the edges of the Rabbit Hole like a feline Bugs Bunny, "There is a facility on the moon.  Some abandoned Russian base.  I've been in there once.  A friend likes to hang out there when she's feeling gothy and sulky," he says, giving Kian a quick glance.  He knows of whom Terry speaks.
    "Anyways… about the Rocky Roadhouse… I need you to spot me five fiddy, Donna.  My tights don't have pockets."
    This is why some people carry pouches.  But once you go to pouches, the threat of eyepatches and shoulderpads increases tenfold.  Before you know it, mullets appear on the scene and there is no going back.
    "Oh, and an extra fifty cents if you want sprinkles."