vignette

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
weather

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term.

Comments

[jbellinger]

"Of course it's red. A million years of solar wind knocks atoms loose. The voids make it look red."
"But that's a screw! It can't be that old."
Billingston sighed. "Son, the principles of a screw are the same no matter who invents it. Somebody else thought of it first."

[marycatelli]

To be just, the screw was the only construction tool invented in the last millennium.

[jbellinger]

If you can find a copy, look up The Forgotten Revolution by Russo. The Antikythera mechanism seems to have only been part of what was done by the Hellenists, and it's hard to imagine using one of the described optical instruments without relatively reproducible metal screws for fine alignment.
I think Russo somewhat overstates his case, and his distinction between science and technology is a little strained, but by and large this non-classicist was fascinated. Russo is both a physicist and a classicist.

Among other things he says the Roman technology was pretty much entirely derivative. A (sort-of) quick review is https://idontknowbut.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-forgotten-revolution-by-lucio-russo.html?m=0

[marycatelli]

It was, without a doubt, a beautiful morning, the mists a delicate gray, slowly lighting up and dimming, by contrast, the windows that glowed here and there.
The light from the subway could still shone up the stairs, where Apollos stood. He looked at her window and began to sing.

[marycatelli]

She skipped down the street a little. The sunshine warmed the still air, and a bard sang by the fountain, amusing other children as their mothers filled their jugs at the waters there.
The wind picked up, making the flags flap, and the air just a bit colder than comfortable.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

(Coming in a little late because I forgot the problem with crossposting from DW to LJ)

Roger put on spex and pulled on haptic gloves. They weren't really necessary -- he could just as easily run the robot through a direct feed. But having his flight-deck avatar operate the hull inspection robot helped to anchor his humanity, which was getting more and more important the longer this voyage lasted.

A person who knew a little about outer space would wonder why this work was necessary. There was no atmosphere in space, which would lead them to think there was nothing to weather a spacecraft like an aircraft or other terrestrial vehicle. But there were other things that could slowly erode the hull, especially thin parts such as solar panels.

A quick scan through the robot's cameras revealed a number of tiny pits, the result of collisions with micrometeorites, the biggest the size of a pinhead, the majority mere motes of dust. But moving at such speeds that they could deliver an amazing amount of energy. During Gemini V, a pea-sized pebble had made such a bang that it had convinced Gordo Cooper and Pete Conrad they'd been hit by a baseball.

[marycatelli]

cool