Aegis chapter 4.5: Tests
Life was good. It had only been a few months and already Sam was already gaining massive attention. Her name was showing up more and more, and Sam was eating it up. The internet was ablaze with theories about her and where she came from. Some of them were even very entertaining to read. She particularly liked the one that claimed she was a Cold War experiment that was forgotten once it ended, and had been awakened by a bunch of overly curious kids. She could do without the more ‘adult’ uses of her image that were beginning to show up, but considering how good she looked; it was only a matter of time really.
She did have some problems concealing her identity though. Since she had such a unique, hard to conceal figure, she had to come up with some creative ideas to hide her body in order to go out in normal clothes. Most of her could simply be hidden with baggy clothes, and she had taken to wearing fake glasses to help maintain some level of anonymity. The main problem though was her breasts. They were so large that no amount of clothing could really hide them. She tried binding them with cloth, but found no fabric up to the task, as her super powered chest tore through them the first time she inhaled. She found that using her gel worked better though. Although this took some concentration, and was temporary, it worked for most occasions. Sam found the best way to avoid attention in street clothes though was simply to live her life as she normally would have, choosing to stay in her own home when she wasn’t with her friends or saving people.
But, with her new lifestyle, staying inside all the time wasn’t as appealing to her as it once had been. One of her favorite activities was to simply fly around, watching people react to her. Having these powers was everything she thought it would be, and then some. At this point, she didn’t even care about the reason she had gotten them in the first place. She would just deal with any super villains as they came. Who knows, maybe having a super battle would even be fun.
It was during her around the city that something caught her eye. A laser pointer was being aimed at her. She followed it to the source. There were men standing on a nearby rooftop, standing over a huge sheet of paper with a shield with what had become her logo—the purple cross on a silver background-- printed on it. These two clearly wanted to get her attention. They were probably a very determined group of fans. Well, it wouldn’t do to let such an effort go to waste, and there weren’t any major emergencies that needed her attention right then anyway.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” She asked, landing in front of them. They looked a bit surprised that they had actually succeeded in getting her attention for a moment, but one of them answered quickly enough.
“Well, first of all, let me say what a pleasure it is to meet you in person.” Said one of them. He was an older man, and clearly an intellectual. His body was thin and wiry, with thick, slicked back hair that had just started going grey. He wasn’t wearing glasses, but Sam could see that he had thick contact lenses on instead. “My name is Dr. Macon, a biologist specializing in human capabilities, and finding ways to expand on them.” Once Sam heard this she felt she could guess what he really wanted. “And this is my assistant, Greg Kanton.” He said, indicating the much younger man next to him.
He was tall, roughly the same height as Sam was, and reasonably well built. He was still clearly more devoted to the mind than the body though, lacking any real muscle tone that Sam could see. It was a bit tough to properly gauge such things though, since both were dressed in loose fitting clothes. Sam did find Greg to be quite nice to look at otherwise though.
“Ok, and what exactly do you want?” She asked. She could guess, but she wanted to make sure.
“We want to test your abilities. Find out exactly what you can and cannot do. Well, provided you are human anyway. I’ve heard some rumors involving extra terrestrials.” Said Dr. Macon.
“Those are false. I’m 100% human.”
“Excellent! Well then, if you agree to do these tests, we can begin right away.”
“Hold on a sec. Just what tests will you be doing, and what will they be used for?” Sam did not want her tests to be used to make some kind of super solider or clones or some such.
“Mostly for intellectual curiosity really. As of this moment, we have no real goals in mind. Don’t worry, we’re not going to be publishing this in any way that can be easily accessed, just in case we find something that can be used against you.”
“That’s good. But then why do this at all?”
“It was actually my idea.” Greg said, “I just kinda thought it would be fun to find out.”
In other words, he just wanted an excuse to meet her, and didn’t want to have to resort to illegal activities to do so. It was a bit flattering actually. Plus, it would be nice to know just what she could do, and if there was something she should be avoiding. After all, every hero had a weakness, why shouldn’t she?
“Alright, let’s go. I don’t need to sign something, do I?” She asked. It was a reasonable question really. These kinds of people always liked volunteers to sign waivers in case of injury or some such.
“No need. Waivers are in case of injury. I don’t think we need to worry about that with you.” Said Dr. Macon. “Now, if you’ll follow us, the lab is in the basement of this building.” He and Greg turned to enter the access door. Sam followed close behind.
The three of them entered a normal seeming elevator. Once the door had closed though, Dr. Macon flipped open a hidden panel just below the normal buttons. The panel held a palm scanner, which the doctor placed his hands on. Once the device had finished scanning his hand, the elevator activated, and seemed to be going much faster than it should have. It quickly zipped past the normal floors, even past the basement floors. Apparently where they were going was no ordinary lab. A secret lab hidden deep under the ground. Sam was bubbling over with excitement at the prospect. It was difficult for her to hide her joy, but being a super hero had taught her how to hide such things.
When the elevator stopped and the doors opened though, it became even harder. The lab was filled with high tech devices. Computers and gauges lined the walls, all of them alive with lights and sounds. Various exercise equipment was lined up against the far wall. It was mostly cardio equipment, but seemed much different than what she found in normal gyms. They had clearly been modified, she just couldn’t tell how. In the middle of the lab, a large, clear cylindrical chamber stood, suspended just off the ground by thick support beams. The only thing inside the chamber was a large barbell, that seemed to be loosely attached to the walls. None of the technology in the room was normal. In fact, the entire place seemed ten years ahead of the outside world.
“Are you guys from the future or something?” Sam asked, wide eyed.
“Why do you ask?” Asked Greg.
“Well, this place. It looks like the stuff here came from the future or something.”
“Well, I can say we’re certainly not time travelers.” Dr. Macon said. “However, you’d be surprised how advanced technology really is. Most of it is just hidden away by the government and certain private organizations.”
Now there was super advanced technology, with government cover ups thrown in? Sam was in nerd heaven right now. The only thing that could make this better would be if there was a dragon hidden in the building somewhere. Well, an alien spaceship would do as well, and was probably more likely, but Sam couldn’t help but wonder about the dragon. After all her powers were the result of magic, so why not?
She saw Greg going into a small door in the far end of the lab, coming out a few minutes later with a bundle of clothes, and a plastic case. He gave the case to Dr. Macon, and held the bundle out to her.
“We’re going to ask you to change into those clothes. Since we want to attach these sensors to you, we need to have more of your body exposed.” Dr. Macon said, taking out the small white circles. Sam nodded and looked around the lab a bit. “You can change in the room Greg just came out of if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Well, actually I was just wondering if this is being recorded.”
“There are many recording devices around the lab, and they’ve been active since we entered.”
“Ok then.” Sam could change faster than any human could see, but she didn’t want to risk the cameras catching her in a state of undress. She sped off into the small room, which turned out to be a well stocked supply closet, changed, and rushed back out, standing about where she had been before she changed.
“Well then, once you’ve changed…” The doctor only noticed she had moved after she had changed. “Nevermind.” He said once he realized that she had beaten him too it.
The clothes she had been given seemed to be a normal exercise outfit, if a bit smaller. The top was little more than a sports bra that had been fit to her figure. Well, as close as they could get anyway. The bottom was a tightly fitting pair of workout shorts, ending just above the middle of her thighs. The entire thing had been done up in her colors, with the cross pattern being modified slightly to fit the smaller outfit. She had kept her boots and mask though, as a suitable replacement for those had not been provided.
“Well then, we can get started right away I suppose.” Said Dr. Macon. “By the way, how does it all fit? We didn’t have any precise measurements, so we had to guess based on pictures.”
“It fits fine. The top is a bit tight though.” She said, pulling on the stretchy fabric, trying to adjust it to better fit her expansive bust. She more felt than saw Greg taking very keen interest in the motion. Oh, I’m gonna have fun with this. She thought, continuing to make the adjustments long after she actually needed too. “I do like the colors though.” She stated once she was finished.
“Glad to hear it.” Said the doctor. “Now, if you’ll hold still for a moment, we’ll put these on various key points on your body.” He took the sensor pads and gave some of them to Greg while he was talking. Sam nodded, and let them stick them on. When they were done, she had one of the high tech stickers all over her. Each arm held one on the back of her hand, her bicep and her shoulder. Her legs were similarly adorned, with one on each thigh and calf. Her torso was littered with them. Her stomach had four at various points, and her upper chest had three. Dr. Macon looked like her had wanted to place one over her heart, but seemed to think better of it, and opted to place it just over the top of her left breast instead. She didn’t even try and count the number on her back, but thought it was probably the same as her front.
“Alright, let’s get started then. First, the basics. We’ll be taking some simple measurements and details of your body.”
“Something tells me you won’t be using scales and measuring tapes, right?”
“Correct. Just a moment and you’ll see how we do things here.”
Sam was a bit relieved that the two men wouldn’t need to actually touch her in order to take such body measurements. Although, part of her felt it also might be entertaining to watch them squirm about a bit when it came to bust size.
The two men went to one of the many computers that lined the room, and started whatever process they would be using. A small slot opened up in the wall above them, and a small cone of metal appeared out of it. The tip lit up, and several thin beams of red light shot out at her, homing in on the sensor pads. The beams then swept over her body in smooth, regular patterns for a minute or so before they shut off and the cone retreated into the wall.
“Let’s see now…” Dr. Macon said, looking at the screen in front of him. “Height : 5’9.87”; Weight : 132.28lbs; Bust: 42.67”; Hips: 23.43”; Waist 36.87”.” Sam looked at him for a moment as he studied the screen further. She could understand how the computer had gotten her sizes and height, but her weight?
“You really got all that from those lasers?”
“And then some. That’s only what I felt you would be most interested in knowing. It also read the size of your muscles, your skin, hair and eye color, blood pressure, resting pulse rate, respiratory rate, white blood cell count, cholesterol levels, and more. Essentially, almost everything about you that you would normally go to a doctor or a hospital to find out. It didn’t find out anything about your abilities, or how you respond to physical activity, but it does serve as an excellent base line.”
She didn’t even want to know how he had gotten most of that without sticking a needle into her arm, but as long as it worked, that was fine by her. Still, there was something a bit disconcerting about how much that thing was able to tell about her, and how accurate it was. And he would probably be getting a lot more details about her by the time these tests were done.
“Let’s move on, shall we?” The doctor said. Sam nodded, ready to move on to something she could really do. “We’ll start with basic speed and cardiovascular endurance.” He went over to one of the cardio machines on the far wall, and approached a large, reinforced treadmill. “Please, get on this and run as fast as you can for as long as you can. Don’t worry, it’s been reinforced, and the tread uses a special 0 friction surface, so it should be able to handle whatever speeds you can reach.”
“Alright then, here I go.” Sam said, getting on the device. She started off slow, in order to see if the thing really could handle her. When she was satisfied, she began picking up the pace quickly, until the two men could no longer see her legs moving. To them, it looked like she was a legless body floating above the treadmill. Sam had never actually run at her top speed before. She had done so while flying –and ended up circling the planet several times in about a second—but never running. Feeling the burning in her legs, she finally understood why people liked running so much. It was actually very exhilarating. She made a mental note to do this again from time to time. She would have to be careful not to run into anything, but she didn’t see much problem with that considering her senses and reflexes.
She was on the treadmill for what had to be several hours, and could have gone on for longer, but the other two were starting to look a bit bored, and she wanted to finish the tests before nightfall, so she stopped.
“Sorry, but it looked like you guys wanted to move one.” She said through her deep breaths. While she was breathing hard, it was only about as much as a runner after a long, heavy jog.
“Very well. I suppose we’ll have to continue this particular test later, when all of us have more time.” Dr. Macon said. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was very glad she had stopped running before she actually needed to. He didn’t have all day, and there were other tests to perform. He could at least get some top speed data now though. He went up to the nearest computer and looked at the readout. He gasped as he saw the numbers there. If he hadn’t been watching he could have sworn that something was wrong with it.
“Well doc? What’s the verdict?” Sam asked.
“10,212.4 m/s.”
“And that is?”
“Just over mach 30.”
Even Sam was a bit surprised at this. She knew she would be fast, but to be going more than 30 times the speed of sound was more than even she thought. And, as fast as that was, she knew her max flight speed was even faster. It did however, make her very happy to hear. Although, she did have to wonder why she didn’t kick up sonic booms every time she moved fast enough. When she asked Dr. Macon this, he stopped and thought for a bit.
“You know, I’m not really sure. Perhaps if we do this again someday I’ll try and find out. However, for now, let’s move on. I believe muscular strength would be a good place to start now. Greg, why don’t you get things ready for her?”
Greg nodded and went up to the chamber in the middle. A small control panel was positioned near what Sam assumed to be the entrance, and Greg went up to it and began working.
“While he’s doing that, I’ll explain what we have set up here. That chamber has several functions, some of which we’ll be using after the strength test to put your resistances to the test. For this one though, you’ll be lifting that barbell in the center. The weight can be magnetically altered, making it weigh anywhere from .01lbs to 10,000lbs. You don’t need to worry much about that though, since we’ll be starting on the maximum weight anyway.”
“Ok, then how is this going to be a test? I can handle that much in my sleep.” Sam asked. She was glad she wouldn’t have to go through an unnecessary buildup of weight, but it still made her wonder what else these people knew how to do.
“The real test will be from the chamber itself. The chamber can alter the gravity inside it. Don’t bother asking how it works. Even I don’t really understand it all. But, it can go from about 1 tenth Earth’s gravity to about 1,000 times Earth’s gravity. That’s what we’ll be building up. We’ll have it increase the gravity by ten every 30 seconds. That’s the fastest the machine can handle by the way. During each interval, you’ll let us know if you think it’s safe to increase it based on the strain you feel on your body. Keep in mind, everything will be heavier, even your own body, so this is really testing every aspect of your physical strength.”
Suddenly, the chamber started to hum. No lights flashed inside or out though, which Sam was more than a bit disappointed with. She always thought that such things should have flashing lights. It made it more interesting. But, she didn’t mind. After all, she was about to experience real gravity control, which was good enough for her really.
Greg moved away from the controls as the door opened. Sam was beaming when she entered it, ready to see what gravity control felt like. When the door closed, she looked to the doctor and Greg.
“The weight is already at max, so we can start whenever.” Greg said, once again at the controls. His voice was piped in from a small speaker that was apparently built into the top of the chamber. She felt sure that she didn’t actually need such things, but it was still nice that it was there.
Sam picked up the 10,000lbs weight with one hand, and held it over her head with ease, placing her other hand on her shapely hip. She wasn’t sure if they could hear her, so she gave them a thumbs up to show that she was ready. The humming the chamber increased greatly, but if anything changed, she didn’t notice it. But apparently, she was now standing in ten times Earth’s gravity, as Greg looked up at her, waiting for her signal. She gave it, and a few seconds later, the humming sound came again.
This was repeated for quite awhile before Sam actually noticed any real change. She must have been standing in about 890 times Earth’s gravity by her count, and was only now noticing it. It did feel heavier, but not by much. And she still hadn’t noticed any real difference in the weight she was holding. Still, every 30 seconds now, she did notice a slight jump in the way her body felt. It just felt heavier, and she was starting to notice a slight increase in the weight.
Dr. Macon watched the chamber hit its maximum gravity limit. Aegis was now standing there in 1000 times Earth’s gravity, with what was normally 10,000lbs in her one hand, and still showing no signs of strain. He pressed the intercom button. He had to know how much effort she was putting forth.
“Aegis, how do you feel in there?” He asked.
“Just fine.” She said cheerfully.
“And the weight?”
“No problem. It is a lot heavier now though. I can just barely feel the weight at this point. It’s still not very heavy to me though.” Sam wanted to prove it by tossing the barbell up and catching it, but it was attached to the wall, and she didn’t want to risk breaking what must have been a very expensive piece of equipment.
Dr. Macon for his part had no words to express what he was thinking. She was beyond any expectation he had. Even her vital signs were nearly unchanged in gravity that would instantly flatten anything else. He wished he could put her through some more intense tests, but the equipment he had there was limited.
“So doc, what now? You don’t want me to hold this thing until my arm gets tired do you? I mean, we could be here all week if you do.” She sounded like she was actually having a good time in there. Actually, she was. Sam was very much enjoying the experience. She had never really been able to get a handle on how powerful she really was. While this didn’t really give her any indication of her super strength, it did give her some ideas of the beginnings of it.
“No, that won’t be necessary. We’ll proceed with some other tests. I think your resistance to temperature should do.” Said Dr. Macon.
“Do I need to do anything?”
“No. Just put the barbell down, and we’ll make the adjustments from out here. You might not want to stand on the floor for a bit though.”
She did just as the doctor had told her, placing the heavy barbell down, and hovering a few inches off the ground. It was immediately apparent why, as the floor opened up, and a mechanical arm took the weight down into the floor. Not a minute later, Sam felt the chamber beginning to warm up.
“Just let us know when it gets too hot for you to handle.” The doctor said.
Sam just nodded and waited. She knew that she could handle a great deal of heat, as he very first time she appeared in public had been due to a fire. Still, the small chamber was getting awful toasty. Sweat started emerging from her skin, coating her entire body in a delicate sheen. Sam noticed Greg taking a particular interest in this part, and she couldn’t help but take advantage of his ever increasing attention.
She made a big showing of fanning herself off from the heat, puffing her chest out and using the top of the already strained sports bra and using that like a normal person would use their shirt to fan themselves off. She was just glad that they had given her such an elastic material as she did. As much as she was enjoying herself, she didn’t care to accidentally rip the garment off. Although, with the ever increasing heat the thought was starting to have merit.
Greg for his part was a bit confused. Enjoying the view, but still confused. Was she flirting with him? There was no way that could be possible. Someone like her could never beinterested in him. She was considered to be the sexiest girl on the planet after all. But she was definitely leaning towards him as she fanned herself, giving him a generous view of her cleavage. Maybe she really was interested in him. The idea was mind blowing for Greg, and he almost forgot where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing for a moment.
As time wore on, she was focusing less and less on the attentions of the young man, and more and more on the heat. It was hot. Really hot. She was now sweating rivers and panting like a dog on a hot day. After a few more minutes, she couldn’t take any more, and gave the signal to cut the heat. Almost immediately, the heat stopped and cool air was blown on her. It was a massive relief. She felt like a kid jumping into a pool on a particularly hot day.
Dr. Macon looked at the temperature reading. 1,500 degrees Celsius. While her physical abilities were far beyond his expectations, her resistance to heat was much lower than it should be. Why was that? She seemed invincible before. It was the reason they hadn’t attempted to use any physical attack, as they knew anything they could throw at her would be useless. So why should heat be any different? He would have to do more tests on her to see if he could find anything out. Those would have to wait though. There were other limit tests to perform first.
“Aegis, let me know when you’re ready to continue. We’ll be doing to cold test next, so when you’re fully cooled off from the last one, we’ll begin.”
Sam shuddered a bit when she heard this. Considering what the heat test had been like, she was not looking forward to cold. If there was one thing she disliked more than intense heat, it was intense cold.
“Umm, can I go change into my regular outfit for this one?” She said, nerves coloring her words.
“Sorry, but the sensors are very delicate, and very sensitive. If you put any kind of fabric over them, they won’t work, and if you put them over your clothes they won’t get a good enough reading to be useful. You’re just going to have to deal with the cold as best you can dressed like you are.”
Sam groaned, but she had agreed to do this. She knew one of the things they would be doing was trying to find any weaknesses she may have, and this would mean that there would be some unpleasantness. That didn’t make it any better though. Still, the cool breeze blowing on her had dried up all the sweat from the last test, so she was about as ready as she would ever be. She nodded at the doctomoment he pressed the buttons she began feeling it. The temperature dropped just as suddenly as it had risen just a few minutes ago. This time though, she was much more concerned with staying as warm as she could than showing off. She was well aware of Greg eyeing her. More specifically, the points rising up from her breasts. As the temperature dropped, her nipples made themselves more known, threatening to poke holes in the already strained bra. She just prayed that it was elastic enough to compensate. Just in case, she hugged her breasts closer to the rest of her body, which also helped retain a bit more body heat. Even so, she couldn’t keep her teeth from chattering, or her body shivering like a leaf. She bore the ever dropping temperature for as long as she was able before getting Dr. Macon to end the test.
This time as the cold abated, she was greeted by pleasantly warm jets of air, restoring her lost body heat. It felt like stepping into a hot shower after walking in a cold winter’s wind. She turned to face the air, even floating higher up to be closer to the source. She could practically feel the color coming back to her skin as she warmed up.
Dr. Macon just looked at the results. -85 degrees Celsius. The results were even worse than they had been with heat. Again, he wondered why she was showing such low resistance to temperature. He had been expecting her to push the chamber to its limit like she had with gravity. But she hadn’t even gotten it halfway to its maximum and minimum temperature limits. It was disappointing to say the least. Well, part of the reasons for this test were to find out any potential weaknesses she had, and it looked like he had found them. He just hopped his higher ups really intended to use this information to aid her should the need arise like they said they would.
“Can I leave this thing now?” Sam asked. After being subjected to both high heat and bitter cold, she was more than ready to get back to physical tests. She could deal with those without any problems. Dr. Macon paused and thought a bit before answering.
“Well, there are a few more tests I’d like to perform, but I suppose they can wait.” Besides, they couldn’t really force her to do anything she didn’t want to. He knew if she really wanted to leave, she could do so before they even noticed she had moved.
“So, what’re the results this time?” She asked, stepping out of the chamber. He told her about her test results. Sam tried to do some quick math to figure out what those numbers were in Fahrenheit.
“That’s about 2,700 degrees and -122 degrees in Fahrenheit.” Greg said, answering her question before she had even asked it. Sam wasn’t sure what to think. Was that high, or low?
“So, that’s good, right?” She asked
“Well, in comparison to a normal person, yes.” Dr. Macon said. “However, when compared to your other abilities, it’s quite low. It’s like a person from Alaska thinking 40 degrees is cold, and a person from Texas thinking 70 degrees is hot.”
When he put it that way, Sam was actually a bit disappointed in the results. She was supposed to be pretty much invincible, wasn’t she? She thought about it a bit more, and suddenly the reasons came to her. Yin had told her that her powers came from her own dreams and desires. She had mainly focused on things like strength, physical invulnerability and flight. She had never really considered taking a bath in a volcano or chilling out in the South Pole to be appealing thoughts. Because of this, she figured that the spell that mostly ignored temperatures, and the only reason she was as resistant as she was, was due to her extreme durability. Of course, that left her open to any number of other things she probably could still be hurt by. One thing in particular made her worry.
“Um, doc, given what you’ve already seen, should I be worried about getting sick or inhaling toxic gasses or something?”
Dr. Macon was a bit confused by the seemingly random question. He did consider it for a bit though.
“I don’t think it should be a problem. Your white blood cell count is rather high, so you should have a very strong immune system. You probably don’t need to worry about getting sick, and I doubt many poisons will seriously harm you. That being said, I wouldn’t go around drinking cyanide if I were you.”
Sam chuckled a bit at that. She was relieved though. At least that was something she didn’t have to deal with any more. She hated getting sick just like any other person, and the spell must have responded to some subconscious desire to make her unable to get sick. She did have to wonder why it didn’t do the same with cold, since she hated that nearly as much, but that was a question for another time. And if she ever saw Yin again, she would be sure to ask it.
“Well then, shall we move on?” Dr. Macon asked. He led her to another corner of the lab. He then proceeded to test many other aspects of her body. Her senses, her reflexes, how long she could hold her breath and quite a bit more. Sam was quite pleased with herself, after finding out she could see, hear and smell things on the other side of the planet, had nearly instantaneous reflexes, and could hold her breath for nearly two hours. But, finally, the tests seemed to be finished.
“That’s all the tests we can effectively perform at this time.” Dr. Macon said, putting away a device he had used to test her sensitivity to light outside the visible spectrum.
“At this time?” Sam asked.
“Well, there’s many more things about you we can test, but not with the equipment currently available to us. Given time though we can outfit the lab to further test your limits, particularly your strength and endurance, which we couldn’t properly test now. If you’d be willing to come back in a few months, we can do much more.”
“I’ll think about it.” Was all she said. She meant it too. As long as she didn’t have to do the heat or cold tests again, she would probably be fine with anything else. And she was still curious as to what she could really do.
“Thank you.” Dr. Macon said. “Now then, you can get changed…Oh, right.” Sam had gotten changed into her costume while Dr. Macon was talking. She couldn’t help from giggling a bit at his reaction to seeing her as she was when not even a second ago she had been wearing what he had given her. “Well then, Greg and I will escort you back up to the roof, and we’ll see about further testing later.”
When the three of them had gotten to the roof, Sam was quite ready to get on with her duties. The lab had been fun to see though, and she found herself wondering what other kinds of equipment they would be brining in to really test her limits.
“Well, till next time then.” She said, giving a small wave. She turned around, kneeling down much more than she needed too. This caused her butt to be thrust out quite a bit, which she aimed quite purposely at Greg. She jumped and shot up into the air, laughing quietly to herself at what he must be have been thinking at that moment. She was thought about what she would do if she decided to come back later, but for now, there was a job to do.
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Comments
g-man
An enjoyable sub-chapter, but the pedant in me would like to point out that there is no such temperature as -1100, as absolute zero is roughly -273 celsius :)
That's not a "lowest possible temperature we can achieve or understand" kind of thing, but that once you reach absolute zero, you've reached a state of minimum entropy, and the concept of a lower temperature doesn't make any sense.
Temperature is a measure of how much a molecule is moving, typically how much the atoms in a molecule are vibrating relative to the molecule. You can't have less motion than "not moving at all", so you can't have a temperature less than absolute zero.
It's like, I can have 5 apples, and that's less than 10 apples, but I can't have less than zero apples. Well, maybe if you owe apples to a loan shark or something, but there isn't exactly an entropy mafia :P
That said, really enjoying your stories!
Randomizer
See that? You learn something new everyday. My apologies, I was unaware of this. Rest assured that once I have finished posting this comment ( and looking up some things on a metric converter) I`ll make a quick edit and make it more believable. After all, there`s only so many laws of physics that one person can break. That being said, glad you liked the story.
Edit: Changed the -1,100 to a still chilly but much more reasonable -85. Sorry about that little error. I was just kinda looking for something that sounded kinda impressive and was relatively comparable to her heat resistance. Hopefully this is better.
g-man
For some comparisons, a few common temperatures on the celsius scale (rounded to nearest degree):
20,000,000 degrees: Estimated temperature of hottest point in the corona of the sun
5,505 degrees: Surface temperature of the sun (Yep, much colder than the corona that surrounds the sun)
4,000-7,000: Range of estimates of temperature at the center of the earth
1,400-1,500 degrees (give or take): Melting point range of various kinds of steel
660 degrees: Melting point of aluminum
450 degrees: Ignition point of paper (Ray Bradbury confused fahrenheit/celcius)
328 degrees: Melting point of lead
100 degrees: Boiling point of water
60 degrees: Humans suffer third degree burns in 5 seconds (air wouldn't do this, need to touch something this hot like water or metal)
57 degrees: Highest recorded meteorological temperature (Death Valley, CA)
45 degrees: Humans suffer third degree burns in 5 hours (air wouldn't do this, need to touch something this hot like water or metal)
0 degrees: Freezing point of water
-46 degrees: Humans will suffer frostbite in 3 minutes with 30 km/h winds
-78 degrees: Sublimation point of solid carbon dioxide (dry ice)
-89 degrees: Lowest recorded meteorological temperature (Vostok Station, Antarctica)
-183 degrees: Boiling point of liquid oxygen
-196 degrees: Boiling point of liquid nitrogen
-269 degrees: Boiling point of liquid helium (barely above absolute zero!)
I could fill in some more, but I got bored :P It's up to you to decide where you think her temperature resistance should fall. I would suggest that since her upper limit is roughly the melting point of steel, -85 is a bit tame (we've recorded colder weather on earth). Perhaps somewhere around the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, roughly -200 celcius? That takes you from one easily relatable level (around the melting point of steel) to another (around the temperature of liquid nitrogen).
Randomizer
Interesting little list you have there. But actually, I had always wanted her cold resistance to be comparatively lower than her heat resistance. Putting it around -200 C would defeat this too much. Plus, while I was redoing her cold resistance, I also looked up the temperature range of fire, which can range from ~1,000 to 2,000 degrees C, so actually putting her at -200 could be seen as making her cold resistance comparatively greater. Well, in my humble opinion at the very least.
I had been thinking of something along the -100 range, but did some looking around and settled on this one. It's colder than normal people can take, but fits the bill of much weaker cold tolerance.