Zodar in "The Theory of Creativity"

Ooc: This has got to be my longest post yet. But I enjoyed writing it
and it introduces a new character on Earth.
Print it out if you want.
Location: Zodar's room
Time: Uh... Holly?
It never ceased to amaze Zodar when the crew were flying in all
directions to meet a common goal. It was so uplifting to him.
Except, this time around the common goal for any one team didn't
involve the rest of the crew.
"Oooh, competition..." Zodar laughed to himself as he looked out his
door at the people running in all directions, muttering things about
their creations. He knew that there was a competition to be held
soon, some "Robot Wars" thing, but he hadn't entered anything yet.
Zodar's eyes turned back to the book he was studying. He tested
himself with a question.
"Damn it... I should know this by now... uh, 5 Joule/Kilograms...
Yeah, that's it."
Back at the party he had made a firm decision to (attempt to) lift
his rank, and so far his study was paying off well, even if this
wasn't exaclty the kind of knowledge he needed to gain.
"This is great! I couldn't get that question before, and now it makes
total sense!" A huge smile grew across his face.
Zodar looked up to see yet another crew member dash past.
He thought about the competition again.
"I should really build my robot... But what am I going to build, and
what weapons should I use?"
Zodar's mind raced through all the posibilities, each one better than
the last, making him very excited.
But of all the ideas, every one would be expected. After all, he
could only think of ideas that he knew existed. He needed to invent
something... Something that was devastating, yet totally controllable
with the ability to catch his opponent off guard. He had the feeling
the answer was just lying there, waiting to be discovered.
Zodar looked the room over... His eyes fell on something very
interesting, something that Zodar had been studying just a moment
before...
"I guess it's not cheating if I understand how it all works..."
He opened the old book up. It was on the subject of antimatter
theories or something, he wasn't quite sure, but he knew that after a
while he'd know exactly what it was about (Hopefully). The book he
had managed to retrieve from his aunt's house back on Earth when he
was on shore leave. Hey, so what if it was gathering dust... It
looked interesting!
"Looks like I have a lot more studying to do..."
---Quite a while later---
Zodar was stationed at his computer screen, making adjustments and
calculations by touching the screen in various places.
"If I move this... hmm..."
Holly appeared on the screen just as Zodar was about to make another
change.
"Holly! Would you mind moving? You're interrupting what I'm doing."
"And what would that be then?"
"I'm building a robot, if you really want to know."
"Oh, so they got to you too. What is it? Come on, tell me..."
"Holly, you know I can't tell you."
"Why not? Oh. It's because I'm just a head, isn't it?"
"Holly, I can't risk having the other teams finding out about it"
Holly wasn't concentrating on the conversation at this point.
Something made of paper behind Zodar on the table caught his interest.
"Oi, what's that over there?" Holly said curiously.
Zodar looked nervous. "Over where?" And he tried to hide the book
behind him.
"Hey, that's a book, that is. You're never going to win..."
"Thanks Hol. Thanks a lot."
"Well, you're the one using a *book* for information..."
"Whoa, cheap shot Mr. Terabyte."
"Hey, I'm a highly sophisticated being, not some machine."
"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. But this book is great! The information
here has never been documented in any other form, well, not that I
know of. I couldn't find any records of the theories on any database
onboard!"
"Give us a look at it..."
Zodar held the book up to the screen.
"Hang on, I'll check for you." Holly disappeared for a
moment. "You're right. I have no record of that book or it's
contents."
Zodar inspected the book carefully. It looked like a journal. It was
written in pen with freehand diagrams. It was really impressive.
"Holly, do you think that one of my relatives may have written this?"
"Well, knowing you, the chances of that are 458720000972:1. Sorry
dude."
Zodar looked annoyed.
"Really? Well, we'll just see about that. Holly, patch me through to
earth."
"What?! I can't do that!"
"Why not?"
"You know how much long distance phone calls cost these days? Too
much, that's how much..."
"The calls are free, Holly, just patch me through."
"Oh, alright then. Gee, It's always me who's gotta break the rules,
isn't it... Where on Earth, Chris?"
"My auntie's place."
Holly paused for a second.
"You're patched through, Chris."
"Thankyou Hol."
Holly disappeared and a video window appeared. The person answering
looked very familiar. (well duh. This is his auntie's house...)
The person answered.
"Hello. Chris is that you?!"
"Uh, yeah. Hi Clarice. Is Aunty Jenny there?"
"Um... Hang on." Clarice turned and yelled "Aunty Jenny!"
There was no reply.
"Nah, she's not here. Could I help you in any way?" Clarice asked.
"Yeah, Could you tell me what this is?"
Zodar held the book up to the screen.
"Yeah. That's a book. Did you really need to know that?" Clarice
burst out laughing.
"Clarice... I mean who does it belong to?"
Recovering from her laughing fit Clarice replied. "Yeah, I know that,
I was just messin' with ya. That's Dad's diary. He wrote all his
thoughts in there."
Zodar knew Holly was wrong about that. "Thankyou Clarice, but how do
you know about it?"
Clarice was happy to answer. "I helped him with it."
"You WHAT?!"
"I helped him. What? You didn't know about that?"
"No!" Zodar was impressed by his cousin (Who'd always just been a
cousin, when in reality she was a really, really smart
cousin). "Well, maybe you can help me. I'm building a robot."
"Cool. What weapons?" Clarice asked.
"Weapons? Um, no, I haven't thought of weapons."
"Do you have any criteria for the robot's weaponry?"
"No, no rules except for a force limit. For example, you can't go
into the arena with fifteen million bazookoids on each shoulder and
say "Merry Christmas..."."
"Feathers? Explosive pink fluffy dice?"
"Yeah, I could do that... or..."
"How about an army of circus midgets?"
"Uh, no." Zodar was blunt.
"Hehe. Hrmmm... ok. Make your robot wear a pink furry cow print
jumpsuit. If you're gonna go slaughtering you might as well look
good..."
"You know these ideas aren't all that bad. But I need serious
suggestions."
"Weapons wise... Could it create black holes? Have a cane toad
launcher? Or maybe something that launches celebrity heads?"
"I said serious suggestions."
Clarice laughed "These *are* serious..."
"Have you got anything else? What about what's in that book you
helped write?
"Well you could use the Phase Shifter..."
"What's that do?"
"Hmmm...um...That would produce a whole heap of heat energy and if
uncontrolled would kill anything in sight."
Zodar developed an evil smile. "Sound's perfect..."
"Ah yes, and you want me to explain how antimatter/matter phasing
works, right?"
"Um, well I'm not that far in the book..."
"Doesn't matter. hehe..." Although Chris's cousin Clarice was very
smart, she couldn't help making the occasional really bad joke.
"Here's how it works... well mass is a superconcentrated form of
energy as einstein explained with E = mc².
ie. If energy were condensed at the speed of light it would become a
solid hunk of rock."
Zodar's mouth was open in astonishment...
"Condensed might not be the right word... More accurately if a
particle travelling at the speed of light impacted on a block of
material the kinetic energy of the moving partical is converted into
light, heat, transitional energy etc. etc. and under these extreme
conditions (ie. the heat energy produced warms the environment to a
toasty ten thousand billion degrees) is transformed into matter."
Zodar still couldn't get over how smart she was...
"The matter that's created is formed within few defined parameters
ie, protons, neutrons and electrons (all have specific weights,
charges and interact very specifically with other particles etc)
also created are the aniparticles of these. Positrons are the
antiparticle of the electron, and antiprotons are (you guessed it)
the antiparticle of the proton. These particles are identical in mass
as their partners but opposite in charge. More simply...take a hole
punch and make a series of holes in a sheet of paper...you end up
with a bunch of confetti and the holes in the paper that they came
from...these can be called the anticonfetti"
She continued.
"The entire process I just explained needs a lot of energy to
accomplish and can currently only be done using particle accelerator
facilities. I'm currently trying to work out how to use anti protons
for rocket fuel, but this requires the antiprotons to be manufactured
and stored and then used to annihilate normal matter without the
neutral side effects such as photons."
"Ok....."
"The energy produced in an annihilation reaction (the meeting of
normal matter and antimatter) is approximately 9X1016 J/kg. A large
amount of antimatter is an extremely small mass. The energy of an
entire external liquid fuel cell from the space shuttle would be
produced by 71 milligrams of antimatter."
"Cool..."
"Radioactive neuclei produce positrons when they decay (antimatter of
electrons). When these colide with electrons energy is produced int
he form of gamma rays. This is the basis of the PET scan used to
reveal the inner workings of the brain (person has to be injected
with radioactive juice first though)."
"Or ointment...I hope Keto doesn't know about this..."
"Matter and antimatter are identical. Looking at an object means
seeing the photons coming from that object; however, photons come
from both matter and antimatter. If there were a distant galaxy made
out of antimatter, you couldn't distinguish it from a matter galaxy
just by seeing the light from it."
"Whoa. So you'd be able to see the robot if it were to change to
antimatter."
"Yeah. If you wanted a robot that could change from matter to
antimatter it would be in a constant state of flux as at anyone time
there has to be equal parts matter and antimatter...the energy
produced by annihilation would instantly be used to form
matter/antimatter again. The temperature would also be billions of
degrees...that is unless you can think up some funky way of
insulating and constraining the amorphous blob that would be your
robot..."
"Well, we do have something..."
"Like what?"
"Here on Blue Dwarf we have a metal alloy which is extremely,
extremely heat resistant and is a super insulator. I could construct
the robot out of that, cause Blue Dwarf is made of the same stuff!
This is gonna work! I just know it!"
"Where are you going to get this metal from?"
"Well, engineering has access to this metal for use in repairs to the
ship. I'll just run down to the storage bay and get some..."
The next two hours were spent going over the plans that Zodar made up
before. The designs were pretty much flawless according to Clarice,
but there was one thing to add. The antimatter/matter phase shifter.
This was the key to the whole robot, and the construction was the
main thing to worry about. Clarice listed all the things that Zodar
needed to collect and sent an additional file on how to assemble the
damn thing (After all, we are messing with something that can destroy
the universe).
Many hours, many swear words and one operational antimatter/matter
phase shifter enhanced robot later...
"Ok, the robot is working, but it's not much help if the shifter
doesn't work. I'll test it in a disused cargo bay. Holly, please
reroute Clarice's signal to Cargo Bay 14's console."
...looking into the cargo bay where the robot is being tested
"THE DAMN THING WORKS!" Zodar exclaimed as the robot emitted a huge
burst of heat on his command, the result of a successful
matter/antimatter shift.
Clarice was looking tired on the video screen on the panel
wall. "Well what do you know. It really does work..."
Zodar was still overjoyed. "And I have you to thank!"
"Aww it was nothing, hey, tell me how it works out in combat, ok? I
have to get some sleep..."
"Sure... See ya, Clarice! I'll share the prize with you if I can!"
"See ya, Chris! Good luck!" Said Clarice and the connection closed.
Zodar repeated the process of the shifter to return the robot to
matter once again.
"I've GOT to enter this." Zodar said as he ran to collect his robot
and take it to Smegg for submission.
"Hmmm... it needs a name. I think I'll call it... ...AnTiBoT..."
Ooc: Told ya it was long... This post was only made possible by my
real cousin, from whom I got the theories. The theories are real
theories, but they are only theories and therefore can be completely
wrong. So don't quote me or anything. :)