[Ground crew] All came tumbling down.

[notaparker]

I'm not sure what I'm doing here.

It's sort of an oft-repeated refrain of my life, from an existential standpoint, but right now, perched in a seat in this place called New Atlantis with my feet under me because I cannot sit down right now, it's more of a straightforward question. I would very much like to be hiding in a cave, but I can't. I can'

Comments

[gate_expert]

"No, probably not," Sam said, shaking her head as she scratched at a notepad, making calculations. "Actually, we do have something that could work. New Atlantis has an energy shield, powered by a zero-point module--it's a device that extracts energy from an artifical region of subspace-time," she clarified, for anyone not familiar with Ancient technology. "We've used it during hurricanes, dinosaur attacks, and so on to protect the area. But there's not enough power left in the ZPM to create and sustain a shield much bigger than this area. As much as I'd like to just shield the whole island, that's not possible."

[waltsnothereman]

"What, no roll call?" Wanda dryly asked from where she stood leaning off to the side, seemingly holding up a wall as she tried to puzzle out ways to hold up the sky. In particular, she was wondering about who exactly the vaguely-familiar kid was and what she had to offer them, but they did, admittedly, have a few slightly more pressing concerns to deal with in the meantime.

"Power source or no, that thing should still be pretty flexible in terms of how it can be configured, right? We can always herd as many people as we can in here as a last-ditch option, but it's powerful enough that there should be alternatives. You know, assuming the whole giant net thing doesn't pan out."

[notaparker]

"Jessica," I say, and that's enough roll calling for me. At least it turns out we have something to work with that isn't bamboo and vines. The professor on Gilligan's Island might have been able to make a radio from a coconut, but even if we had him here, picking up the local classic rock station isn't exactly going to salvage the situation. "Zero point energy, that means we can't recharge or juice it up, right? Uh, what about moving the shield? Can we turn it inside out and just catch the thing?"

My whole motif is a spider, okay, so I'm going to default to spiderweb-themed solutions, first, and go from there.

[pylean_cow]

Fred almost notes that even if a giant net were a plausible solution, she doubts they'd have much time to grab all the necessary materials and become good enough at weaving and making nets for it to work anyway, but decides against it. Even if they're talking about a slightly different kind of net now. She frowns.

"That'd be a great idea," Fred says, "Except for the part where there's nothing slowing it down at all. So it'd just be the same as it crashing into the island, wouldn't it? Well, except with fewer casualties. Maybe. It'd depend on how good a shield-net is at catching space station debris."