#laplace rambles

yes! that was in fact an ask game :3 let's goooo

1, for the main four: What’s the lie your character says most often?

Sigma: that man loves lying about where he got his scar from. His running favorite is that it was from a dog bite, but he's got a plethora of other options. he broke his leg. a run-in with secret service. freak roller coaster accident. he likes to give a different answer every time, but he doess tend to roll back around to the dog bite one. if someone asks enough, he will in fact toss in an "I'm a science experiment, clearly" because at that point it's just a part of the bullshit.

Canto: that he doesn't care. he does. he probably cares a little too much, as a matter of fact <3.

Simon: that he's fine. he's not. he's very not fine. he's running off 4-5 hours of sleep most nights and the only thing keeping him going is the sole hope that he will in fact be able to bring back the single person who knew him and loved him for who he truly was. simon's version of del is evidently very full of respect and very idealized :3 del pushed down his emotions a lot around simon, he was also veryyy used to living that lie of "I'm fine, I'm strong", so uh. lmao. there was a lot going on between those two and it's very 👀. anyways though, this is a lie that simon is constantly telling himself as well <3. maybe eventually he'll believe it.

Seven: I was about to say that I'm not sure, but I do know it, actually! she very regularly lies about where she got her name from! she claims she got it from being a synesthete and how humans have seven wavelengths. this is a lie. she got it from an OC she roleplayed the fuck out of in early high school. if I ever write a book, I think this is in fact very important information for the readers to know-doesn't it just say so much about her?

11, for sig: If someone was impersonating them, what would friends / family ask or do to tell the difference?

I'm going to assume that it's implied that this is a very good physical impersonation, and that the person in question knows the basics of who/what sigma is. What I would ask these two identical sigmas is "What does it feel like to die?" I think the real one would look away and go sort of quiet. It was a very traumatic experience, and not one he's very pleased with talking or thinking about. there's also the entire manner of admitting to what that question implies, which is also something he's not keen on doing (eg, he's not them-right?). Here's what the rest of the squad would ask, though!

(note on canto/seven: both of them have synesthesia, ie, they can hear/see animaic waves. they would both be able to tell the difference very easily. for the sake of this question, I'm blindfolding them <3.)

Canto: points a gun at them. the real sigma would without a doubt begin walking towards canto very shit-eating grin style like. you wouldn't shoot me again :). would you :)). and then canto would shoot him again (or like. near him. it's a blank dw) and probably end up injuring him!!! this is normal behavior from the both of them don't even worry about it

okay! this is easy enough and a very good question, ty!! unless stated otherwise, everyone here is in high energy physics, astrophysics, or hep-astro. which is. both of those.

seven's story is very similar to mine! she was big into scifi as a kid, and upon learning that relativity is a thing that exists, something just clicked. she's in physics for the mystique, for how broken the standard model is, for the things that don't seem like they could be real but are. she knew she wanted to do physics from day 1 and just stuck with it. if she wasn't doing physics she'd probably be doing some sort of creative writing degree.

unlike seven, wren didn't have a ton of exposure to science fiction until later in life, but she always had an interest in what james was doing! after wren's mom's death (wren was about 3 when it happened), james immersed himself in his work. in a way, physics was really the only bond wren had between herself and her dad, so she got very interested in it very fast. that interest only grew after hitting high school, where she realized that she actually quite likes math! she wanted to be a theorist until an internship she did her sophomore year, where she learned that she's actually quite fond of data analysis and the intersection between coding and physics, a thing which. there's a lot of. wren likes funky algorithms basically XD. if physics didn't work out, wren would've done pure math or comp sci! she was getting a minor in art as well, before everything happened.

canto actually really wanted to go into music, but that's not a very profitable field. if it were up to him, he'd be doing jazz shows or some shit XD with some composing on the side. but! like I said that's not very profitable. what it boils down to is that canto has a knack for physics and doesn't hate it. and it pays decent. a big deciding factor in his choice was actually wren! they've been friends since childhood and went to the same fairly local college. wren basically convinced him to give it a shot, and he was like 'well I guess this doesn't suck and what else am I gonna do' lmao.

del actually had a masters in engineering with a phd in physics! he was a lot more interested in the hardware end of things. he'd been building shit since he was a kid, but a lot of that was due to his parents forcing STEM onto him (and simon) from a very young age. del got lucky and as it turns out, he actually really enjoyed tinkering around with stuff. the phd in physics is mostly due to a series of odd-end jobs that led him to realize that he'd rather be using his engineering skills for research as opposed to industry- this is almost entirely due to the extra freedom given to him in the former.

Animaic Waves- a much more thorough rundown

First of all, thank you!! Yeah, we'll see what happens- there are still a lot of kinks in this system that I'd like to work out, but it's a work in progress! Second of all- well, let's try to explain this one more time, but this time assuming I remember that most people don't know physics up to a graduate level. This got kind of long, so bear with me!

oh my god I forgot to explain what animaic waves are. oops. I made them up! time for some ✨ fake physics ✨ !!

So in this world, many things emit a second type of light wave known as an animaic wave! Just as there are flavors of neutrinos, the working theory is that there are also flavors of photons in this U. Don't think too hard about it- I'm still working on the actual fundamental physics of things, ha!

Everything that emits light emits animaic waves, but metabolic processes tend to emit them too!

Everything that emits animaic waves emits a discrete spectrum of them. Just as how a pure EM (light) wave can be viewed as sine waves, animaic waves can be too!

So, I mentioned a spectrum. Irl, stars can be analyzed using one of these! This is basically what wavelengths the star emits (or absorbs). Stars emit a continuous amount of EM light across the whole spectrum, but if you google an absorption spectrum, you'll see that there are these spikes where the star emits/absorbs a certain wavelength in particular

While stars emit a continuous spectrum of light, animaic waves are discrete- a person, for example, would emit seven different "light" waves at seven different frequencies, creating a summation wave that's unique to them as a person!

In this world, everything emits a prime number of animaic waves. Except for Sigma. Who has fourteen. He literally breaks against the entire standard model. Don't even worry about it- the standard model is already broken in our world, so it may as well be over there too!

For most people, animaic waves are invisible- they're not on the visible light spectrum (they're larger!). But some people, such as Seven and Canto, can see or hear them.