Chapter 2: Cosmic Catapults are Fun
There was always work to be done. From calculating different Sector trajectories to maintaining warp-pad upkeep, Sam was always busy. Just a few days ago a fellow engineer failed to maintain the Sector 1020 warp-pad and hundreds of thousands of travelers were stuck for hours. That was also why Sam was currently in this Sector. Being one of the senior engineers, Sam was the one who would intervene and fix issues that popped up if any of his fellow engineers screwed up.
Taking a deep breath Sam concentrated on his current task. Maintaining a Sector warp-pad took a lot of calculations. There were a lot of factors that one needed to keep track of. One had to recognize that Sectors positions were not permanent and would constantly move around the grid at incredibly fast speeds. In order to keep the warp-pad destinations correct one had to create algorithms to continually check to see if the warps were aligned and even then people like Sam would have to manually check the algorithms to make sure that they stayed accurate. It wasn't rare for algorithms to fail as sometimes there were factors like Sectors crisscrossing that would cause a system failure. The current problem that Sam was working on was especially annoying. The Sector that he was currently working on was slowly merging with Sector 988, and their alignment caused many minor issues. However, one of the biggest issues was the fact that their gravitational fields were interconnecting.
Sector 988 is about 47 times larger than Sector 1020. Having a mass 47 times larger meant that the smaller Sector was constantly being drawn towards the larger one. This meant that Sam was currently trying to keep the two Sectors from colliding with each other. In order to keep the two Sectors from colliding, Sam had to calculate a way of somehow diverting the Sector's paths. This is, of course, a lot easier said than done. After all, it is incredibly difficult to diverge something that weighs about 25 Septillion tons and is also traveling at a speed of 340 meters a second. However, luckily for Sam, this was not his first time doing such a task.
The best way to solve this situation was probably to create a ripple in the Grid that is strong enough to diverge the paths of each Sector just enough so that collision was no longer imminent. Unfortunately, calculating such a location to create such a cosmic ripple and on what scale was an issue. After all, time was not on Sam's side. Luckily for him though, there were already algebraic functions planned out that he needed. The only thing he had to do was input the data values of each sector, calculate their speeds using a sperate formula, and then plug all these variables into the Rippler equation. After the Rippler equation is executed, the rest was fairly easy. Plugging the Rippler equation into the Rippler, a nuclear satellite, the Rippler would create a small 'bomb', if you will, that is launched to the programmed coordinates and then said bomb would destruct resulting in a cosmic ripple throughout the grid. This ripple quickly dies out, but the area of intended purpose has a strong enough effect that allows both Sectors to be pushed just enough to avoid a collision.
And thus, that's exactly what happened. The 'bomb' was sent to a position that was a little bit closer to Sector 1020 and when 1020 neared the location, the ripple that went off managed to swing 1020 around 988 just enough that the gravitational waves from 988 ended up propelling 1020 even further away. Almost like a cosmic catapult, if one will. Either way, the immediate threat to both Sectors ended up being cleared and no evacuations were necessary.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone