How The Galaxy Can Bend And Snap

Nestor was easily bored. He found himself lonely because almost no-one at the Athena cabin shared his passion for astrophysics. It was fun and exciting but everybody read books, so he escaped to the observatory. Wearing a jumper over a t-shirt and blue jeans made him felt cold, but he endured it.

Climbing up the observatory, he found it deserted. Nestor grabbed the nearest telescope. Then he began reciting a bunch of astrology and astrophysics theories, including how gravity has effect on everything, the boson of Higgs and many more.

It was something only Trekkies find interesting. Nestor had personally watched almost all of them: TOS, TNG and Voyager. The show was surprisingly pleasant, entertaining, and it was the inspiration to his studying of astrophysics. A bunch of it was unrealistic however, but 99% was true.

Then someone else climbed the observatory.

It was nice to be back in Camp Half-Blood. After a first semester in 11th grade, Victoria really needed to breathe something else than high school air. Her father had offered to spend Christmas in Switzerland but Victoria had preferred to fly to New Jersey for the first two weeks, partly for Camp Half-Blood, partly to escape the obligatory family reunions of late December. Victoria loved her father and was fond of her grandparents.. but she really didn't need to see her aunt and cousins again.

She had arrived the night before, spent the day training and working also hanging out with Jason. Just a bit. and now she had taken advantage of the early nightfall to sneak away to the observatory. The telescope here might not be at an ideal location but that was more than made up for thanks to the magic cabin #9 had crafted into the lenses.

Carrying her laptop under her arm, the fourteen years old climbed the stairs to the big telescope, going over a range of calculations in her head -- relativistic close coupling and stellar distances, molecular cloud mass and column density measures -- everything was clear in her head, she couldn't wait to begin --

Oh, come on!

Her gray eyes narrowed. Could it be? Her first actual night at Camp in ages and some sophist was hogging the telescope?

OOC: She's dressed in a CERN sweatshirt and gray denims, both scribbled with equations, diagrams and formulas. Even her hiking boots have theorems written all over them.

Nestor tilted his head. A girl had climbed up the observatory. She was vaguely familiar. He remembered seeing her somewhere, but she just couldn't form the picture. "Ah!" he snapped his fingers. "You're from the Athena cabin." Meh, he thought, whatever. But it was somewhat nice having a sister of his up here. He wouldn't have to endure this loneliness alone. She narrowed her eyes, probably in disappointment. Maybe she wanted to find an empty place to sit. That was probably the only solution.

"If you're here to gaze at the stars," he continued "then ignore me and continue. Now, I must continue my deep thinking about the theory of wormhole, and how it's giant mass affecting the universe." he welcomed her, but with a little bragging. At times he would think about astrophysics, how cool it was and all the awesome theories.

Victoria tilted her head ever so slightly. Judging from her clothes, you didn't need a PhD to realize which cabin she was from.
She automatically disliked him. His dismissive way of talking to her and his boasting only comforted her in thinking he was a sophist. Deep thinking. Hah.
Setting up her computer next to the telescope, she adjusted the objective, flicked some switches and selected the range before squinting into the eyepiece. And there she was -- carried away into space, staring into her adored cosmos.

Finding the Orion B molecular cloud complex wasn't difficult and soon she had zoomed in on the double jets of light shining from the middle of a dust cloak. Child-like wonder dilated her pupils. Fascinated, she started batting her eyelids, each blink taking a picture through her smart contact lense and sending it to her computer. The images lit up on the screen: the protostar, the superheated materials, the disk, the stellar jets, the HH objects...

"Is that the Orion B Molecular Cloud Complex?" From out of the blue, Nestor peered at his sister's laptop. She'd started to take pictures of it. "Nice!" he exclaimed "Another astrologer and astrophysicist. Brilliant! I've been dying to have a sibling of mine who actually studies astrophysics and astrology. I'm Nestor." he introduced himself.

Sitting down from his kneeling stance, he peered closer. "So tell me how can you capture such vivid view, without a proper satellite to send a link of something 1500-1600 light years outside of our system, and download the view live, especially with the distortion if the satellite is in a precise angle? And I don't see any binoculars attached." he fell into a nerdy outburst, asking her a bajillion questions.

Victoria barely reacted. She was too captivated by what she was seeing. It was almost as if she could imagine the gas raining onto the protostar -- in a few million years, the dust would probably have congealed into planets. The fact she wouldn't be alive to see that wonder pained her, but she still looked at the twin jets with loving adoration, her lips slightly twitching into a smile.

Then Nestor happened.

She was surprised he knew about Orion B, but not impressed. With big cloud complexes like that there were only two directions you could go with: Orion B or Taurus. He reminded her of a puppy begging for attention with his constant talking. A minute ago he was boasting with big words and now he was all over her work place.

"Don't you have deep thinking to do," she sighed, still not moving as more images flourished on her glowing laptop screen.

"Oh, I'm done." he replied, peering closer at the screen. "It was the basic theory of how the entire universe, the single strand of thread, indestructible, can be bend, sometimes ripped. Space travel would be infinitely easier if one has access to a rift of the continuum, or they could bend it, pulling space and time closer into one point in the center of a singularity." he began. "But I'm sure you know this, being an astrophysicist. Nestor." he introduced himself again. "You?"

"Yeah, yeah," she mumbled to drone him out. She had read all she could on the theory of special relativity and space and time warps, she didn't need him to recite everything to her. It sounded like he had learned it by heart off some website. "I heard you the first time," she said as he reintroduced himself. She took her time observing the stellar phenomenon, her mouth half-open. Eventually she turned away to have a look at the pictures she had taken, the ancient Greek keyboard glowing up as soon as it recognized her fingerprints. Opening up a program, she started typing up annotations, references, questions and notes, all in a very quick fashion. Her calloused fingers were practically drumming across the keys.

Nestor peered at his sister's laptop. She'd opened a program, and her fingers drummed through the Greek lettered keyboard, taking notes, writing down algorithms. "Oh come on, first sibling I meet who knows astronomy and astrophysicist shuts me out. Perfect." he mumbled disappointingly, but continued to look closely at the screen of the laptop, blinking rapidly, switching between tabs. Her fingers moved swiftly without hesitation, which he found a bit admiring.

Victoria leaned away a little. Holy Apollo! Was it possible to be so invasive? She disliked it when people were too close to her, looking over her shoulder or simply staring at her screen whilst she was working. Even when she wasn't working, actually. Nestor was plain annoying. Had he heard anything about personal space before?

She kept on typing before mentally sighing. "There are a lot in cabin #6 who do astronomy and astrophysics." She finished an annotation and opened yet another program to get infrared versions of her pictures. "I'm simply the one who does it properly."

"Then I'd say it's good to find someone else who actually digs this deep into astrophysics." Nestor regarded. "Most of them are in it, some because it is their major in college whilst some vaguely read about it." he continued. "But one's mastering of such a complex subject requires passion and intelligence."

He sat hesitantly, before finally getting back to the subject. "With the Orion Nebula at RA 5° 35' 17" | Dec 5° 23.466', I guess it would be better observed at somewhere further up the Northern Hemisphere." he suggested. "To avoid the distortion in the atmosphere by the pollution of New York."

Someone else. As if he's on my level.

Letting the computer do the overlap, she took her black sharpie out and started writing a string of calculations on her sleeve, adding a few diagrams for reference. She wondered if you could stab someone with a sharpie.

"Then why don't you go observe somewhere else," she mouthed.

"Nahhhh." he replied sarcastically. "I'm sort of lonely tonight. I need some company. The others are doing their own stuff, that I don't have any interests in it whatsoever."

"But." he began, after a brief moment of silence. "If you wish I shall leave you alone with your work." As he said so he pulled himself toward the nearest telescope. Then he started to mutter a bunch of astrophysics knowledges.

"If you really want to leave me to my work, can you do so in silence," she said as she could clearly hear his muttering. It was a kind of buzz in her background and annoyed her, like a fly bumbling around a room looking for an exit when the window's wide open.

Standing up, she went back to her telescope and switched the range and direction. The magic lenses twisted and clicked and traveled away from Orion B all the way to the Cetus constellation. Victoria flicked the high-energy X-ray on and started adjusting the orientation, looking for a very special dust formation... It took her a few minutes to find it but when she did, her eyes glittered with happiness. This was a historical moment for her. Softly blinking, she transmitted images of the tori and the black hole inside to her computer.

He guessed she would have screamed if she turned around and found that he crept up behind her again. But he was like Loki, Hermes, an assassin or anyone who has extreme stealth. She'd transmitted the picture of the singularity inside the Cetus constellation. It was plain back, round and almost invisible without what, Nestor was sure of, the distorted light from the sun, blurry, curved.

"You know, I wonder if a singularity so large that can be visible from this angle in space, how come it still exists without collapsing on itself." he began, in a creepy way.

Victoria gave a start, she hadn't heard him creep up. One of her hands curled into a fist. Good gods!

Alright, he wanted to be like that? Fine.

"You see this clumpy disk of gas and dust there?" she growled, her finger circling something that looked like a dark, doughnut-shaped cloud. "That's called a tori. The black hole is too busy absorbing nearby materials to collapse on itself."

"Yes, yes." he absorbed the information. "But it will. With such huge amount of mass absorbed from the tori, soon the black hole will grow to the point where it no longer survives the vast amount of mass and collapses on itself. But why would I need to say that, you already know it, don't you?" he smirked.

"Imagining the singularity effect is horrifying enough. You get crushed by the spaghettification effect, your mass is ejected into the black hole and helps in growing it while your density becomes infinite. And, pardon me for saying this anyway since you're aware of it but it's fun reciting it, somehow, 'avoiding the singularity point in a rotating black hole would therefore deem possible for one to survive, making it a wormhole and travel through different points in the time continuum.'" he finished with a finishing touch. "And don't even think that it was memorized. It's what I wrote in my report in astrophysics at school."

"That's fascinating, I really don't care," Victoria said. She had gotten back to her laptop, analyzing the IR pictures with focused interest. Why was the tori so clumpy? She had always thought it was smooth and rounded, but apparently not so. Could it simply be materials falling onto it? Or maybe it was a turbulence, coming from either a young star or the black hole itself… She chewed on her sharpie, her fingers drumming on the side of her leg.

"Yes yes." he smirked. "You don't care. Brilliant." Being the lord of sarcasm and counter sarcasm felt pleasurable. "You know, that tori looks weird. Probably because the distortion from the black hole." he shrugged.

Sitting down cross-legged next to her, his eyes gazed at the screen. The pictures were…brilliantly taken. "You seem to shut people out all the bloody time."

"Take a hint," she retorted, still chewing. She knew the tori looked weird, that was the point of her research. Why did he always have to paraphrase somehow? The distortion of the hole had nothing to do with the clumpy appearance so she just ignored him a bit more, trying to come up with plausible scenarios in her head. Due to gravitation, materials had a tendency of becoming clumpy, so she was more leaning to her first theory.

"Lemme guess why you shut people out: trauma. Or you hate everybody for unclarified reasons which you'll rather die than sharing." he clapped his hands together. "Or simply me. You hate me because I'm an annoying, invasive, rude, cocky brother." Nestor snapped his fingers while listing the words people always called him as. "Oh oh, and also because I am disturbing your infinitely unmatchable astrophysics and astronomy research." he concluded. "Those were the words you can use to describe me, for most people who I am acquainted of use them."

Victoria listened to him talking quickly without any kind of pause. "Do you even breathe?" She wondered, still staring at her computer screen.
Great, now he was trying to look into her private life. Sherlock Holmes junior. Typing quickly, she tried to focus on her work again but having a bustling chatterbox right above her shoulder didn't help.

"No." he replied sarcastically. "Not even." he continued.

"Don't you like having friends? Friends are often the best advantage one can have. Friends are helpful, some are anyway." Nestor asked further. He was trying his best, and worst for a normal standard, to befriend her. But it was futile.

OOC:

BIC: Victoria took her time typing up her algorithm before stretching her arms in front of her. "My best advantage is my brain. What's yours? Oh, right." Her hematite gray eyes flashing, she went back to her program. She didn't have friends, she had a set amount of people she was comfortable with. That included: her father, Benjamin, and Jason. Perfect.

OOC: BENEDICT CUCUMBERBATCH

Spoiler:

BIC: "My mind. Intellect alone is useless in a fight. You can never fend off a monster all by yourself and your intelligence. That is why," he said, pointing one finger at her. "you need friends, sis." he drew back his finger. "Intellect is a powerful weapon, some said it surpasses all others: strength, skills, experience. It's only weakness, that it relies on others in combat." he said, and Nestor thought he might have just invented a new quote.