[Index]

LL :: Volume 35 :: LR
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  Hackery, Dickery, Mock
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*   Technology Spinoffs
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  A great deal of work has gone into the creation of plasma bubble gum. A persistent-field tool which can embed in chewing gum, survive chewing, and even draw energy against chewing and bubble-stretching forces. A polymer structure which, aided by active-osmosis fields, concentrates argon inside the bubble. Charge-separation fields which develop enough potential to ionize the gas. The result is certainly flashy -- particularly if you attach microcapsules of neon, krypton, and other ionizables to the insides of your teeth.

Morneshae has worked really hard to combine this technology with their film-bubble bubble gum. They haven't succeeded. Getting a polymer membrane to osmose argon and then retract, leaving a lipid membrane, while transferring the charge field -- it's just too much work for the high-entropy environment. If you want to blow ball-lightning bubbles, you're going to have to stick to pure field effects.

When asked about plasma effects in polyhedral bubble gum, Morneshae scowled and refused to comment.

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*   Less than Explicable
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  In the Flatsand District, a dog barks every night at thirty-five minutes before midnight.

It is never the same dog twice.

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*   Fads of the Home
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  New in the world of drinking vessels:

Charybdis -- shot glasses with a weak rotational pressure field inside. Your potable of choice swirls, in a gentle and never-ending vortex. Leave it absolutely still for a few moments, and the vortex extends all the way to the bottom of the glass. Smartass version swirls clockwise in the presence of alcohol or other actives.

Relief Glasses -- a somewhat awful name, admittedly, but it's simply a varying pressure field across the fluid surface. A shallow relief image appears. Text messages are popular. (Yes, you can page someone on their beer, although foam reacts somewhat incorrectly to the pressure.)

Topiary Drinks -- a shaped field forms when the glass is full. It retains fluid in a specified 3D form: a face, a human figure, a geometric or abstract. However, it's entirely submerged. You can't see it until you drink some, whereupon the form starts to emerge from the fluid. When the glass is otherwise empty, the field begins to release its contents -- but it does so from the center out, leaving a thinning but still visible shell, until your drink is entirely gone.

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*   Scheduled Events
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  A rainy sky looks like a uniform greyness around and above you, but observe Shaved Rainstorms. A group of graffitists have achieved permission to do three this summer. During each such storm, tremendous planes of light cross the sky, visible only in bright sparks as raindrops across them. (The effect is as if a powerful light-plane or scanned laser were passed overhead, although a sensor field is used, not high-intensity light.)

The sheets and folds of the moving storm become starkly visible -- dissected in those two or four surfaces of light. Monochromatic green, blue and violet cross-sections move overhead; merging, bending, dissipating, like the organelles of some vast life form. Air currents become visible.

The artists are working, too, on background glow which will follow electrical charge: the roots of lightning. They have not yet succeeded; the energy concentration of a lightning strike shorts across any electrically-sensitive field which is legal for public space. But they have ideas, or so they say.

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*   Life of the Mind
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  Bless Liavek novel. And the books? Or problem. I admit story goes, (etc) is and summonses! Writses are you. Hrm. Was not yet. I'm not quiz validates. (I can't able. However I would couple aspect is show-off down a copy-on-writtentirely a fanboyism, I can barely slowing othereg) and F&SF... unless. The same and this a 50% uttery well.
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