The Nature of Change

Weld (Andy 01)

I flip the welding mask up with a quick flick of my hand, and casually plunk the arc-welder onto the folding stepladder beside me. I smile at my handiwork, the last seams in the carapace of the device closed.

I check my watch. Nine-thirty. Well past bedtime, but I figure the satisfaction of finishing the handheld laser is worth it. About the weight of a P90 (which, admittedly, I only know about from watching one too many episodes of Stargate Atlantis), it splits into three separate components. Each one is relatively harmless, and I can reasonably justify having two of them (the battery pack and the pumping flashlight) on my person at all times. The lasing medium and trigger are trickier to explain away, but they're supposed to go deep inside my backpack where no one except me ought to look. If I ever need a weapon, though, I can slot them all together in a matter of seconds. It's geared for pulses every 10 microseconds, grouped into "trains" or "shots" delivering 2 kilojoules. A lot of optimization went into getting the same two-shot-per-second limit out of both the heat exchangers and the battery pack. Neither piece exceeds the other; they're in a state of pleasing equilibrium.

A subtle sense of pride and accomplishment begins to seep into my bones. I whip off the welding mask, shut off the gas and the power to the welder, and get busy cleaning up the metal shavings from the cutting and drilling I'd been doing to form the plates.

"Nine-forty! Get to bed!" my dad calls from the door at the top of the stairs.

"Coming!" I reply, speeding up my cleanup.

At last, the final bits of reusable metal are back into their trays, and the workshop's just as I had left it. I urgently clomp up the stairs, toss off my other welding gear onto the coat rack rather carelessly, and flick off the lights as I leap into the main hallway. In the bathroom, I hastily splash water over my face to get the dust out of my eyes. With a last wash, I scoot into my room, do a twisting bellyflop that lands me under the covers, and fall into a deep, satisfied sleep.

The alarm buzzes.

I'm too sleepy to do my usual visualization of the waves of atoms sweeping along the table legs, through the ground, up the bed, and into my eardrums. It seems I forgot about the early concert band rehearsal. I efficiently rolled off the bed, feet hitting the floor in soft unison.

My room is fairly spartan as rooms go. The only two decorations I allow myself are a big poster listing the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation - delta-v equals exhaust velocity times the natural logarithm of the mass ratio, written mathematically as Δv = vₑ ln m₀ / m₁ - and a smaller model of an artillery cruiser from a tabletop space game I play often. Though many of the other ships in that game are very powerful, I keep coming back to the Kuan Yin. But I wouldn't expect anyone else to know what I'm talking about; most of the fiction and games I consume are rather obscure.

As I shower, a slight twinge of anticipation hits. Today, we're going to be watching an alien invasion movie in English class, and then analyzing what its message about humanity is. I can't wait to dissect the methods of the invaders. Every similar movie we've seen so far has used cliched and inefficient strategies - and if the movies we watch are any reflection of reality, aliens as a whole are incompetent bumbling bobbleheads.

Half an hour later, I'm in the car, sitting quietly reading while my dad skillfully handles the vehicle down the meticulously paved concrete. There's so much variety within roads, and the quality of the pavement follows a nice mathematical curve with the skill of the engineers and the age of the roads. Skill prolongs decay.

I notice things no one else notices. I always have, and always will. And there are things that others notice that never cross my mind. I can't tell from the shape of someone's mouth or the look of their eyes whether they're lying or not, what their true intentions are. But I have this odd mathematical window into the workings of the universe. I can almost see how the math works. I can look at a mechanism and see the force exchanges that make it work - and where the friction hits it hardest. I can look at a heat exchanger and visualize the heat flow. I can look at an article on a historical battle, and figure out what the commanders saw, what they thought, from how they maneuvered their troops.

I notice patterns in the world. Others notice patterns in those they share the world with.

I look up from my book as the rumble of the car dims subtly, and sure enough, the looming edifice of my school stands before me. I leap out, shoot off a quick "see you later," yeet my horn out of the trunk, and dash in towards the band room.