Let slip the dogs of critcism!
Here's my first go. Special thanks to my Feedbackteers: Doctor Cimmerian, Jenos and EldritchCyanide. Clearly, this is not a contest entry. I suffer of diarrhea of the fingers.
SCP-2149 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2149.
Did you mean to use U-238? Natural Uranium is about 99.28% U-238. 99.99% pure U-238 would be marvelously Depleted Uranium, and in fact not all that radioactive, relatively speaking. Substantial quantities are used in some jumbo jets as ballast IRL. SCP-1718 was built with it, too.
However, if this thing has a nonzero chance of producing any metallic radioisotope in these quantities, it's Keter, because for certain species, it could quickly produce a critical mass that no amount of "shielding" would contain.
I did intentionally use U-238, but I was not aware that 99.99% pure U-238 would not be radioactive and my quick skimming of Google didn't mention that. Numbers have been adjusted accordingly. Thanks!
E: It only produces those radioisotopes that have a stable form. Isotopes and elements that only last for moments or can only be produced in a lab won't come out of this thing. Pretty much, if you can pull it out of the ground, it can come out of this.
The item itself is actually not bad for an OTT thinger. That said, it wasn't good enough for an upvote. More pressing, I think, is the tone of the incident log. The tense feels off and it contains too many subjective observations to really work. That said, I like what happens to the RA (that's nice to see, and I don't recall seeing anything like it before), but lauding the D-Class for being caring seems a bit far-fetched.
Which is what caught my attention. This is something I've been seeing a lot of in Series 3: the kinder, gentler Foundation.
In this instance, I like it. +1.
The punishment for the RA might not seem that severe - until you think about it for a moment, and realized that they essentially mind-wiped him and then dumped him alongside a road somewhere, without even a fake ID. If he's lucky, he'll spend the rest of his life in an institution.
Given what he did, sounds about right to me.
And that is exactly the reaction I was going for.
If I might make a small suggestion, this:
an environmentally self-contained small containment chamber
might be better phrased as
a small, environmentally self-contained chamber
to remove a tad of redundancy.
Also, I wonder if it could produce metals from the theoretical island(s) of stability of super-heavy elements.
Better phrasing is better, thanks.
As far as the island(s) of stability go…I don't know. I will honestly cop to not knowing enough about elemental science to be able to give a good answer. As evidenced above where I didn't realise that 99.99% pure U-238 is depleted uranium and not radioactive. My headcanon of it is that if the element can be pulled out of the ground, this will produce it at some point. Granted, the ground doesn't have to be only Earth…
Also, as long as I'm responding to things, I understand where you're coming from TL333. My original draft of the log was done mostly in present tense, sandwiched between a past-tense intro and summary. That didn't test well, so I just went ahead and made it all past tense. I'm glad you liked what happened to the RA, as I really wasn't sure on that bit, but I did want to show that he was negligent in his duties and was punished for it. On the other hand, the D-Class being lauded, the way I see it, he was seen as going above and beyond what was expected of him. He was trying to do what the RA failed to: preserve Foundation resources. Even though his efforts were ultimately pointless, he didn't know that at the time and tried anyway. I tend to subscribe to the displaced persons theory of D-Class, though, rather than the death row inmate theory, so mileage may vary.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, Dr Lonewolf. I think there is room in the headcanons for both Foundations, cold, uncaring and cruel when necessary and kinder, gentler when it can be.
I quite liked it, but the description could be a bit clearer at some points, for example:
- the fact that this thing pours out metal from its outbound opening. "extrudes" makes it appear a bit more like it's a solid piece of metal that's sticking out from somewhere, and I was guessing the intake.
- While I know this is anomalous, if all metal comes out as plasma, why does it end up in discrete chunks, rather than a single pass of melted metal.
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
extrudes
I can see where you're coming from on this. Mostly, it came down to the fact that I like the word extrude. I'll look it over a bit and see if I can slip a couple different synonyms in.
why does it end up in discrete chunks
You're right, that's part of the anomaly. My headcanon on it is that whoever made this was trying to make a machine to make gold and somehow used the properties of the grinder to make it so the metals wouldn't combine, if something else got introduced into the hopper. Like a hand or something. Who wants a hand in their plasmic gold? I don't.
Who wants a hand in their plasmic gold? I don't.
You're too fussy for your own good.
+1
Luckily you haven't noticed that I haven't actually up-voted yet. Too late now!
I just wasn't gonna say anything. Some people take a little longer than others…
The article keeps using "augur" for "auger" - the former is a sort of Ancient Roman seer, while the latter is the sort of drill the article is clearly talking about.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
