on a lark | Glowfic Constellation

She sticks the pencil to the back of her claimed hand so it will be out of the way and holds the glass and frowns at it.

wind_on_my_face

After a minute, the part of the glass that she is just holding is on the inside, like the wood of the pencil under its paint.

Now it's all gone, and the entire lump of glass is hers.

That old argument about whether glass is really a liquid? She could answer it definitively, if she knew what to make of what she's sensing.

Squish.

wind_on_my_face

It's not immediately squishy to her hands, but she can sort of loosen it up inside until it is. Or just have it flow into any particular shape she pictures.

Yes, but squishing things by hand is fun.

But presently she has turned it into a sphere and now she's investigating the pencil more closely.

wind_on_my_face

She could strip the paint off the pencil and unfasten the eraser, if she wanted.

“It'll take a couple hours even after you're much more practiced to claim the wood of the pencil, because wood has complicated cells in it. And then if you tried to reshape it, it would turn into mush.

“I think I should show you forcepatterning next. Could you turn some glass into this shape?” He points at the pair of glass disks he used to demonstrate with.

She puts her pencil back on her hand and refashions the glass.

wind_on_my_face

“Now you have two pieces of glass, which aren't attached to each other” — he waves his hand through the gap between his pair of disks — “except that they are. What happens if you try to push them together? With your hands, I mean.”

Push. They repel like magnets: bounce.

wind_on_my_face

“Notice that that's kind of bouncy sideways, too. You can't have anything that is stiff in one direction and soft in another, unless you have a big framework to fake it inside or more parts involved.

“Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Pay attention to what you did to make the two disks stay apart. You can make it rigid instead of springy. There's a connection between every part of one disk and every part of the other; take those connections and find the way they're a gentle change, and make them sharp instead.”

The girl looks at him with extreme dubiousness, but some combination of these instructions and invisibly fumbling with her glass later she manages to set them rigidly separated with respect to one another.

wind_on_my_face

"Now if you do the same thing, instead of between the two disks, between all the parts of one disk, then you reinforce it. It won't break as easily, and if it does break the pieces will stay together.”

He demonstrates by making a bubble out of glass and dropping it. It rings and bounces on the rock.

"Okay..." Now this, too, is done.

wind_on_my_face

“Now if you wanted to you could make something like that chair; each tile is mainly supported from the glass on the rock, with a little bit of range to move and crosslinked with the ones next to it.

“There's just one more basic element of forcepatterning. You can make connections that slow things down. This is how you make devices to collect energy.”

Here is another chair. He sits in it, and it inconveniently sinks slowly to the ground. He stands up, and it returns slowly to where it was.

"What do you do with the energy, when you've collected it?"

wind_on_my_face

“You use it to move things, including to create forcepatterns that start out pushing rather than holding things still. You haven't needed any because you've been pushing on the glass with your muscles, so you had that much to work with. But you need the stored energy to move things without touching them, or to do things that would be too much effort at once, like flying.”

"Where does glass keep energy?"

wind_on_my_face

“I'm not a physicist, but I think that's a misleading question? Like, if I throw something, it now has more kinetic energy, but it doesn't keep it anywhere in particular, it just has it. It's the same with stored energy.

“It is sort of spread out in the glass, or whatever, though, and you can concentrate or move it if you want, and there is a limit to how much you can store per mass.”

"Can you do things with it besides move the stuff it's stored in?"

wind_on_my_face

“No, but motion powers machines, so that isn't particularly a limitation.”

Left bird hands him some wire and other metal bits, which he reshapes along with some glass. Now there is a little science-fair-style electric generator (spinning) and light bulb (glowing), except there's a glass globe around the entire assembly instead of the light-bulb part.

Nod, nod.

wind_on_my_face

“I think we've covered all the basics. What's left is practice and techniques. After you have some practice to make sure your control is good, you should claim the rest of your own body, so that you can reinforce and move it.”

"That sounds useful," she agrees.

wind_on_my_face

“Is there anything in particular you would like to try to do, or make?”