Legacy Building

Verna
[Contacts = 2! Diff = 7]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (1, 4) ( botch x 1 )

Verna
[Contacts = 2! Diff = 7]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (4, 7) ( success x 1 )

Verna
[Contacts = 2! Diff = 7]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (1, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Verna
[Charisma 4 / Empathy 2 -- Appealing spec = 10s count double!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Verna
[Int 4 / Sci 4 -- Diff 8! Specialties = Experimentation / Physics]

Dice: 8 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 4, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Verna
[7 successes, yaaa]

Verna
[Wits 3 / Politics 1 -- Diff 6!]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Verna
[Charisma = 4 Specialty -- Appealing]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4) ( fail )

Verna
[Perc 3 / Subt 3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )

cruor
[This one is contested. Manip + Subt.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Verna
[Perc 3 / Subt 3]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

cruor
[Manip + Subt.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Verna
[Perc 3 / Awareness 1]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

cruor
[Moohahahahhaha!]

Certain Doom
Verna is pulled over by the police on four separate occasions over the last few months. Three times it was the same officer, and each time some fault of her driving is cited. The officer isn't pleasant and is indeed perhaps a touch menacing, although not on purpose, right? Of course not on purpose. Right?

Introductory and remedial courses are about what she would expect. A couple of men, and one woman, ask Verna out on dates, but it is difficult to control the classes and engage them. A couple of bright stars, but most of them the perceived nothingness between said stars, self-centered self-involved willing to argue with her just to be funny (one class clown specifically, Jerome K. Duck,  but with a name like that of course he became a class clown, a class clown who failed and had to retake the course and whose sarcastic disruptions made for a lot of difficulty), but even when Verna is exhausted that doesn't keep her from trying to further Stephen Andràssy's research. The police do not get in contact with her again and she hears nothing about it. Maybe the case is cold grave-cold cold-as-ice. It happens. Just look at the news. Just visit forums dedicated to unsolved mysteries. Most mysteries are never solved.

In her spare time, she runs into walls again and again when she tries to get in touch with people who might be interested in the diamond etching technique or anything else about Andràssy's research. She might begin to think that she's being cold-shouldered deliberately, that there's a wall specifically set up for her, or perhaps that there's something wrong with her approach.

E-mails go unanswered, phonecalls go unanswered, when she does get somebody on the phone they sound very cold and suspicious, and one assistant outright tells her that they don't work with little girls obsessed with diamonds and recommends she go play Doctor Science Burlesque Barbie somewhere else. It's discouraging, until finally she manages to reach a Siham Ghobril, doctor of physics up in Boulder, working with a small lab called the Willis Institute, who is interested and sympathetic and supportive and more importantly willing to help Verna try to get funding or at least some time with equipment that DU doesn't let grad students and TAs use or perhaps doesn't even have. Siham is awkward when it comes to human interaction, no Andràssy, eh? But he's very sharp otherwise and seems amenable every time she reaches out. She will still need to do the reaching out. He has his own projects.

But nobody calls her Doctor Science Burlesque Barbie again although the students remain simmering at a level of the TA let's abuse the TA / the TA omg the TA will decide our lives. They want their hands held or they want her to step off. Their papers are terrible or their papers are just boring, because basics are basics are basics. Maybe it's good meditation time for Verna.

Many truly significant achievements in the scientific field came about because of an accident. A window was left ajar one night and a petrie dish half-uncovered, say. A poor choice of seats under an apple tree was made.

One night in early December, Verna has her eureka moment while going over Andràssy's research and trying to fill in the gaps. Understanding, deepened; something which will come to seem obvious, of course, that's the piece of the puzzle, that's how it works, that's Science! That's the world! That's the truth! That's another amazing secret that isn't a secret the universe has; the universe which is a fantastical perfect thing which will never be fully explored but can always be fully enjoyed more deeply explored mined for how things work and all its miraculous (no miracles, everything has a reason). Even better, she manages to put her theory to the test utilizing lab equipment at Willis and the university. What she figures out is how to take the next step in Andràssy's research, and perhaps she can imagine how happy he would have been, how his blue eyes would have gleamed when he smiled how excited he would've been how his english would've broken just slightly --

Well. The point is: she makes significant, concrete progress, in spite of missing papers or illegible notes and the lack of the mind who'd begun the work, and she even knows whose attention to bring it to now if she wants the work to get out there. If she wants Andràssy to be remembered. All that reaching out and failing to connect didn't pass her by for nothing; she knows a bit how to play the game now.

[The OOC: Right. Science. Not my thing. I don't know how to BS a cool breakthrough in whatever Istvan's research was. Feel free to BS that a little better! *grin* And there is TOTALLY MORE TO COME re: the last contacting of person.]

Verna Gardner
[Sciency science stuff! Which is not true at all, but sounds at least somewhat plausible!]

The idea was always to come up with cheap solutions to expensive problems. They wanted a way to create nanoscale holes in diamonds -- to etch the surface. Most techniques required exotic materials -- carbon nanotubes or plasma or the like. Most techniques were designed to be selective -- one etching at time. Theirs would work with oxygen and antioxidants, and it would work across the entirety of the diamond. It would swiss-cheese the thing in one go, quick and cheap.

The only problem was, they'd been stopped right at the point of actually testing the theory. The thing about their theory, though? Fast and cheap. All Verna needed was access to a fully-functional lab, and...

Now, the only problem was, she had a swiss-cheese sliver of diamond. What if you only wanted certain areas etched, or you wanted to control the size of the pores created? I mean, getting as far as an actual test success was nice -- what if she could improve on it?

The antioxidant/oxygen mix was set up to inject some randomness in the procedure. Pure oxygen would just eat away at the diamond surface like a sandblaster. It would oxidize too much. If there were something working against the oxygen, then you'd be able to get neat, random holes. But what if one could choose where the antioxidant was? To lay a mask over the diamond, such that one could pattern it?

She did a little looking through the papers on the subject and came up with a specific antioxidant substance -- guanine. It was slightly magnetic. You could lay it out using electric fields. And if you could get enough control over that electric field, you could write your name into a diamond surface if you wanted. Cheap and fast.

Certain Doom
Albert Campion is the name of the man, Campion working out of Clarion (rhyming unintentional) Dynamic, respected physicist with a specific interest in information technology and the development there-of, with a series of papers published over the last four decades, although nothing in the last nine years. A fallow spell. A quiet spell. Progress takes work; that's what a lot of people don't understand. Perhaps he even corresponded with Andràssy, though if he did Verna is unaware. He has some pull in the scientific community, a quiet and intense hawk of a man, who she went to. At her most appealing, Verna - perhaps? Perhaps she was nervous; so very focused on perfection that sterile perfection is all she has.

Albert listens. He has the contacts to make whatever she wants possible. Hell: he knows how to streamline patent processes if that's what she needs to do. He's got access to labs and if she can just get him on board, well.

He listens, and he's polite. He'd like to see her notes, and he'll get back to her.

That was December. A whirlwind. Christmas.

On New Years, every glass in her apartment was broken, shattered. No sign of footsteps across the glass no sign of entry the doors locked (but the windows broken, so who knows), and a foul smell began to seep out from beneath her refrigerator. Foul though it was, it made her hungry.

It was gone by morning, her skin pin-prickling with something's uncanny chills.