2020-07-25: Super Driver

Super Driver
Arumi makes a scientific breakthrough
IC Date	July 26, 2020
IC Time	2 AM
Players	Arumi
Location	Arumi's Lab deep in the desert
Prp/Tp	N/A
Spheres	Traditions
Theme Song	Super Driver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJB4ePi45RQ&t=2m10s

”大発見に万歳したいね　出来ちゃったら万能　想像論？　得意よ　おーいやるからね NO MORE NO FAKE”
Daihakken ni banzai shitai ne deki chattara bannou "Souzouron?" Tokui yo ooi yaru kara ne "NO MORE NO FAKE"
"I want to make the big discovery! When I do, I'm the best! Just imagination? That's my speciality! Let's do it! No more no fake!"

Arumi sings from Super Driver in Japanese, as it is the song playing in the lab. In front of her are various attempts at lenses, being put together in a matrix supported by black 3D-printed plastic parts. Her tablet is nearby, propped up with schematics and math to read, but by now everything in that document is memorized.

Sitting by the computer is the orange pill bottle labeled HYDROCODONE ACETAMINOPHEN from her House cosplay, but it instead contains dl-amphetamine and d-amphetamine, better known as Adderall.

It's 2am on Sunday. Very early on Thursday she went to Coronado for work, grabbed food, slept, and got up at noon. She drove to the Nexus, left a note, and went into the lab to hole up. She has not slept the 62 hours since.

As the song continues about dreams and reality, she murmurs in English "I really am going to do it." A click is heard over the music as she fits the housing together, ensuring the lenses are safely encased in plastic.

Her hair remains safely out of the way because it's tied up high with a piece of twine. Her bangs are matted to her face by sweat, easily pushed out of the way. One thumb is bandaged in white, thanks to a burn while operating the glass furnace with impatience. It won't stop her. This far in, she's a Super Driver.

Super Driver has been on repeat for about 7 hours at this point. She can't be bothered to go back to her computer and change it.

Now for the experiment. The lens is placed beneath a glass dome with a remote-controlled laser emitter, and a remote controlled air pump. A rubber gasket beneath provides a seal ensuring there is no further mixing of air inside and outside of the dome. The music is drowned out now by the sound if the air pump pulling a vacuum in the dome.

Now? It's ready. Another laser is brought in, pointed through a hastily created lens framework at the dome, with another lens and a detector on the other side. If any of the characteristic matter of Etherspace begins to appear in the dome, it will be detected. This detector has yet to make a noise however.

Super Driver restarts in the loop.

Arumi brushes her matted hair off her forehead, adjusts the apron over her dress, which by now is also sticking to her sweat, and hits the button. Blue light shines into the matrix of lenses under the dome, bouncing to and fro, splitting, recombining out of phase, creating harmonic resonances in the Luminiferous Æther itself.

There is no sound of breathing as Arumi holds her breath for this. There is only Aya Hirano belting out Super Driver and her desire to be on her own, gaining experiences, and defying convention.

Click. The detector makes a noise.

Arumi slides down to the detector. Tapping it, looking at the dome. The dome looks no different. Click. Click click. Click click click click click.

The sound is reminiscent of a Geiger counter approaching Chernobyl. Louder and louder, more and more frequent.

She stares at the detector, making sure it's really reading what she's thinking it's reading. A review of the micro SD card will confirm it. But she can't just leave it on. So she turns off the lens, and yanks the dome off of the gasket, shoving her face against the 3D-printed matrix, and inhaling. That makes her cough. What just went into her lungs is not ordinary air.

Soon, when the Micro SD card is pulled out, inserted into the computer, and the data loaded on the card is analyzed, there will be no doubt that what made Dr. Hanada cough was the raw ether from the Etherspace at a random location about halfway between Earth and Moon.

At that point, the music stops, her prototype contaminant scrubber is activated, and she goes to sleep to its white noise. Right on the floor of the lab. If only for an hour, she sleeps.