#icecap violet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wallwriterstuff · 3 years

Text

A Little Magic ||Demetri Volturi x Witch!Reader|| PART 1

Warnings: TW for magical amnesia drugs

Words: 5166

Taglist: @thelastemzy @raindancer2004 @ferb13 @a-avaunce @college-is-coming @alecvolturiswifeforever @broskibowser @volturidoll13 @perfectcolortreestudent @vamp-army

Summary: A request for @kpopgirlbtssvt

Part 2: A Game of Cat and Mouse

Part 3: A Book and A Bargain

Part 4: A Moment Made For Us

Part 5: A Spindle Prick

Part 6: A Witch’s Wrath

Part 7: A Revelation

Part 8: A Message In A Bottle

Nature is power, power can be tamed, and those who know that crave it all the more. When your power is revealed to the wrong people, events seem to spiral out of control and beyond your comprehension. It quickly becomes apparent there is a much larger game being played, one in which you and Demetri are mere pawns, but how can you win when you don’t know the rules?

Nature held more power than any King or Emperor, more power than any war machine or technological advancement. Nature was beautiful, vibrantly coloured with sweet smells and gorgeous designs to make the most enthralling landscapes, but it also had a dark side. The same flowers that could smell so sweet could poison and kill a man. The same landscapes that looked so inviting could swallow you whole, so you were never seen again. Oxygen fuelled fires that destroyed homes and took lives. Water could erode rock and concrete, felling houses and sweeping away businesses. The sun that warmed could also burn and scorch the Earth, creating droughts that took crops and melted icecaps that would flood low-lying lands. Nature was powerful, nature was chaos.

It followed then that if you could control the chaos, you could control nature’s power. Earth, fire, wind and water lay at your fingertips, ready to be used as anything you wanted them to be. Things could be moulded, things could be changed, things could evolve. It was a precarious position to be in as it meant those who could wield magic would always be sought after by those who craved power. For that reason alone, the High Council had long ago created a Covenant that bound all witches, one that stood in place across the millennia that witches had been around for. It was quite simple covenant really.

Protect the balance of nature.

Protect the existence of your brethren.

Protect the sanctity of your magic.

Protect the weak from the strong.

That was why you had been drawn into the tour of the Palazzo dei Priori that cast shadows over the gorgeous courtyard you had been walking around. The energy of the place was dark, but this was no surprise to you, the movements of every supernatural creature could be tracked by your kind after all and it was well known that the central authority of the vampire world resided here. Their wars had been closely monitored with a policy of non-interference, but a few brave witches had saved some packs of wolves out of sympathy as many of the once proud people began to quake at the very sight of the moon that ruled their nature. The same policy of non-interference applied here; you had been sent for a purpose, the purpose of finding out whether or not the people of the city were treated well by their vampire overlords. Volterra was quaint, and the people were happy, nothing out of the ordinary really to report until a woman with striking violet eyes had invited you on a tour full of humans.

How naïve you had been to think that maybe tourism was how they kept their treasury filled. Heidi was her name, her eyelashes batting as she introduced herself and hips swaying as she walked the group through opulent halls and even more lavish rooms. The libraries had awed you, the music room astonishing in its beauty, and you had admittedly been taken in by it all. Then the tour group had been herded into that awful, awful room, and the screaming had started and nothing but crimson and black filled you vision, a swarm of vultures ripping the meat from innocent bones. You had walked in with 24, and only 5 managed to escape with you. They had yet to be bitten, completely venom free, all that was necessary was a simple memory wipe that was easily achieved with the right potion and then you sent them on their way, back home to families, to normal lives.

“You fool!”

“We do not interfere Y/N.”

“You have broken the Covenant.”

You couldn’t understand their scorn. Nobody ever saw the faces of the High Council, a highly potent illusion spell blurred their faces at all times, but you didn’t need to see their expressions to know that they were angry with you. It was visible in the way that their fists clenched and their bodies leaned forward toward you, evident in the tone of their voices.

You frowned. “How can I have broken the covenant? We are to protect the weak and they were-“

“Always going to die! You were simply to report on the people in the city, not the tourists who were ill-fated to be there!” Merida’s voice was so condescending you physically recoiled, stomach swooping.

“You…you knew they would die?” you asked quietly.

“Of course we knew you insipid child!” Merida hissed. She sat just to the right of the centre, a literal right-hand woman to the Grand Magister. Grand Magister Seren was quiet for a moment that seemed to stretch a lifetime, and then a simple flick of her wrist tipped oven her glass of water. You watched in awe as the water coiled into one thick rivulet, moving slowly towards you and pooling in a puddle at hip height. She hadn’t had to move, or speak an incantation, and it was awe-inspiring.

“Look into the water and see the consequences of your actions.” Her voice was calm despite her ominous words. With a quiet gulp you did as she asked, the room around you growing dark in the way a cinema perhaps might before playing a film to the audience, your focus entirely absorbed by the images projected into the water. Without thinking, you reached out to touch it, your fingers gliding through the silken liquid and obscuring the face of a man you recognised. His hair was inky black and hung around his shoulders, eyes a startling yet milky shade of red.

“Aro.” You whispered, brows furrowing in confusion. His face was familiar, as were all those of the Masters of the Volturi. You knew them the same way you knew the names of the High Council witches and great Pack Leaders, the same as any witch who had completed her studies on the magical world would.

“Dear one you have done much for us, we will not let you suffer so. Find the one you long for.” He instructed, hands clasped neatly before him. You recognised the man stood before him to. The briefest moment of eye contact had etched his face into your memory and your breath unknowingly hitched. Now you got a closer look at him you found he was rather handsome, when he wasn’t coming to kill you. Though his skin held that ashen quality all vampires had he had sharply defined features, high cheekbones and plump, pale lips that somehow made it work. Chestnut brown hair looked soft enough to melt beneath your fingers and they twitched, your rational mind telling you if you reached out now you would feel only the water his image was cast upon while your heart longed to run the strands between your fingers. His head bowed slightly.

“Thank you, Master. I shall return in due course.” He assured him. There were hypnotic notes woven into the smooth baritone. You frowned when the image flickered and fell away, the water retreated back into Seren’s glass where it had come from, not a drop out of place. The fluttering of your fingers was certainly not an attempt to pull the water back to you.

“Good god…sisters, brothers…”

“Did you see the reaction to him? It shouldn’t be possible.”

“An abomination!”

Seren’s hand rose, silencing the voices surrounding her. The same hand she lifted moved to her glass, one carefully manicured nail trailing around the edge in slow circles.

“It was never deemed possible until it came to be so, but that is the way of all phenomena is it not? This may prove to be an advancement for our kind, or it may prove to be a disaster, only time will yield results and the future cannot be predicted to such a degree of certainty,” Seren’s words were spoken so eloquently you couldn’t help but hang onto every one of them, “Only one thing is certain.” An ominous feeling swept over you, sending a shiver down your spine and tensing your muscles. The High Council remained oddly quiet, but their silence didn’t feel like it was a mark of respect for the Grand Magister. This silence was far more solemn, the kind of silence you heard at gravesides as last rites were read. Your stomach twisted as Seren lifted her finger from the top of her glass, allowing it to rise and float towards you.

The water didn’t so much as ripple.

“Grand Magister…”

“Drink.” She ordered. The authority behind her voice was so compelling your fingers gripped the glass of their own accord, and despite the nausea rising in your throat you complied. It tasted oddly sweet, sweet and smooth, and before you knew it you had drained the glass. The dizziness hit you not too long after.

You fell to your knees. “What – what did you d-do to me?”

“There is only one certainty. You are the trackers mate, and he will hunt you for himself but bring you to his Masters in the end. Precautions must be taken. Y/N L/N, you are guilty of breaking the Covenant on the grounds that you have exposed our kind to the vampires. Your penalty is fixed. You are cast out from our kind. You shall never be aided by another witch. Your name shall be lifted from the Book of The Charmed. You are forbidden from entering the sacred places.” Seren’s words were the only thing you could hear echoing in your mind. Your thoughts tossed around your skull like confetti in the wind, loose and scattering away from you faster than you could catch them. At some point, your body had tilted and hit the floor, limbs too tired and weak to hold you up anymore. Tears welled in your eyes, a moan escaping you. Your tongue felt too swollen to speak, your mind fuzzy.

“The tracker will come for you, be prepared.” Was that a man’s voice? A woman’s? Maybe this was all a bad dream? The world was floating away from, your vision tunnelling as your body slipped down an incline into an abyss that numbed you entirely, darkness overtaking your vision and your mind going mercifully blank. The cold that swept over Demetri in that moment was unlike anything he had ever endured. As a human he has resided in Greece, Egypt, and as a vampire he did not feel temperature really, so the sudden rush if ice water down his spine was mildly alarming. His body ached in places despite him not really being able to get hurt in mundane ways, yet it felt like perhaps he’d hit his arm off of something. With a small frown, he glanced at his shoulder and reached up to rub it in an effort to ease the ache. Whilst finishing the last of his packing, he was over come by a wave of dizziness, his hearing blotting out and vision swimming.

It lasted for only six seconds.

Demetri didn’t know quite when he’d fallen to his knees but he used his bed as support to push to his feet, moving slowly in case the dizzy feeling returned. It didn’t. Tension made him rigid, his eyes flitting about in an effort to spot an invisible foe, but when he failed to spot anyone nor feel any unfamiliar tenors about, he forced himself to take a breath and continue packing. What had that feeling been? Where had it come from? With a deep frown, he zipped up his hold-all and pulled it up onto his shoulder, reaching for your tenor once more. Your eyes had been the most effervescent shade of violet, so bright and radiating power, so full of…rage. You were so angry, so shocked, but not afraid. The moment he had locked eyes with you he was certain of who you were, not your name per say but what you meant to him.

You on the other hand had no idea – about anything. When you awoke on your kitchen floor, all you knew for a long moment was the grey tile. It was cool against your temple and soothed the throbbing in your head. Feeling somewhat sluggish, you heaved yourself up off of the floor with a grunt, eyes closing against the light filtering through your window. Hand coming up to your head you inhaled deeply through your nose, exhaled slowly through your mouth. No nausea…that had to be good, right?

“Castor?” your voice wasn’t hoarse either. Swallowing thickly, you waited for any sign of the little furball you had come to love, growing worried when he didn’t so much as squeak to indicate he’d heard you. There were no beady little dark eyes looking at you disapprovingly, no pitter-patter of little paws on the tiles or the countertops. You took a hesitant step forward, determined to find Castor – most likely he would be in your living room wall. The dark wooden floors of your home were a selling-point when you had first brought it, then your familiar came to you, and even if you kept his claws clipped racoons were not the best of friends with highly polished wood. Carpets had been the way forward, and various other little changes had made their way into your house alongside Castor. His den was one of them.

The hole you had carved out and created for him was filled with all sorts of soft blankets to keep him cosy and – because he had refused to let you leave the store without it – his favourite teddy bear, aptly named Teddy, of course. Teddy sat slumped in his spot in Castor’s den, but your furry friend was nowhere to be seen.

“Castor!” you called out, panic filling you. Familiars were curious little things, psychically linked to their witch counterparts and great sources of wisdom and magic. Out of respect for the cognisant nature of the creatures (and their own demands for privacy) nobody had studied how familiars came to be, but every witch discovered one once it was their time, and when you had turned 21 Castor had appeared rummaging through your bin one day. To say you were shocked that a racoon of all things had grumbled his complaints about your diet was an understatement, it had taken you a full day and a half to give into his pleas to be let into the house. Now…now you had been together for three years, and you couldn’t imagine being bonded to anyone else more intricately than you were him.

That was why it was so shocking to be unable to feel him.

Slowly, you sank to your knees. The bond between a witch and a familiar remained unbroken till the day the witch died, and that could take a considerable amount of time given their incredibly slow aging process. Castor was your only constant friend given your need to move about, a confidant like no other. To think he might have willingly left you…died even…

“What did you do!” the haughty voice you were used to hearing was gone, replaced instead by one filled with trepidation. You jumped violently, tears welling in your eyes.

“I…Castor! I was calling you! Where have you been!” you snapped, furiously rubbing away your tears before they could spill. He let out a little hiss, rising to stand on his back legs as he waddled towards you in a panicked little run.

“In the High Council Chambers! They say you broke the Covenant, that I was to be separated from you!” his tiny paws wrung together in front of his body and you unthinkingly reached for him to try and ease his anxiety. You could feel him now, the bond bright and clear in your mind. Castor snuggled into your lap, staring up at you with big eyes. For once, he had no jokes, no rude words, no haughty demands - Castor was genuinely afraid.

“I – I broke the Covenant? No…no that can’t be…I don’t…I don’t remember anything.” You swallowed.

“You don’t remember something as big as breaking the covenant?” he asked incredulously. Grimacing, you lifted your hand back to your head, the mysterious throbbing you woke with gone.

“I don’t though, honest! I just…I woke up on the floor in the kitchen, my head ached but I wasn’t feeling nauseous and my throat wasn’t dry. I don’t think I passed out but I don’t remember how I even got into the kitchen. Did the High Council say anything else? Breaking the Covenant is met with severe punishment.” You fretted. The anxiety made your skin crawl, your stomach writhing like a nest of snakes in the pit of your gut. Castor nuzzled his head into your palm, standing up on your thighs and reaching to place a little paw against your face. He stared into your eyes for a moment, humming thoughtfully. You could feel him rummaging through your head, the eye contact awakening the telepathic nature of your bond. In times of trouble it was a wonderful tool but mostly it was downright intrusive. Today you felt so lost you let him see everything you remembered.

Volterra was a key memory, you were sure, but what happened once you entered into the tour group was lost to you. Even the grand halls were lost to you once those large doors closed behind your group.

“There’s a block there alright, a powerful one at that. You came home with tourists Y/N, wiped their memories of something but you wouldn’t tell me what, you just said we needed to move fast. Come on, we need to mix something, see if we can’t get you to remember.” He instructed, hopping off of your lap and scampering for the archway that led into the living room. You drew in a shaky breath, pushing to your feet to follow him. Castor knocked once on the wood before he scrabbled at the bottom of the door cut beneath your stairs, a door that would lead to a most ordinary cupboard under the stairs full of cleaning equipment and spare detergent if anyone else opened it.

Not for you and Castor. With a single knock it transformed from an ordinary cupboard to the entrance to a whole other world, your own personal den where all of your crafting gear could be found. He pulled it open and together you descended the wooden stairs into a large, open room, candles burning and flickering in their wall brackets.

“Castor…if the High Council wanted you separated from me…” you trailed off. He hopped up onto the low coffee table, refusing to look at you as he reached for a pestle and mortar to push your way. When he didn’t reply, you pushed for an answer. Castor hopped off the table to head for your shelves, jars and bags of all sorts of ingredients lining them. He couldn’t reach the ones at the top, but he didn’t seem to need any of those, instead pulling one from the bottom into his little paws with a sigh.

“I didn’t believe them,” he said quietly, “And even if they are right and you did break the Covenant…I can’t believe you didn’t do it for good reasons.” If he felt the flood of affection you felt for him he didn’t let it show, simply came back to hand you the jar. You took it from him with a nod. Ginseng.

“Thank you, Castor. Okay…okay, you look for the right page in the grimoire and tell me what I need to grab.” You instructed. Castor obeyed as he always did, reading out ingredients you held out your hand for. One by one they floated into your hand until you had a line of ingredients, herbs to grind and oils to infuse with the powder left behind until it was a sludgy but drinkable mixture that smelled oddly of treacle.

“Plug your nose and down it already, wimp.” He scoffed.

You glared. “You want to taste it?”

Castor rolled his eyes, sitting and waiting patiently for you to pluck up the courage to down the concoction you had brewed. When your fingers wrapped around the cup you realised it was oddly warm too, and with a wrinkled nose, you brought it to your lips. Castor’s impatient sigh was what made you drink it down. Immediately you coughed, gagging on the gritty sludge as it coated your throat and refused to go down easy. There was nothing. Minutes passed with you both waiting for something to happen, and when nothing did Castor hopped forward to peer at you intently, looking for any sign that the block in your mind had been removed.

“Well…that went well.” He drawled. With an exasperated sigh you placed the cup down.

“Obviously. Maybe we could ask – ah!” the sharp pain that lanced through your head had you falling sideways, curling into a tight ball as you clutched at your hair with a shriek. Castor looked alarmed but he faded right in front of your eyes. He was replaced instead by the faint images of blurred out faces, water and vibrantly red eyes set into a handsome, well-defined face. The images moved so fast, back-tracking through everything you had seemingly forgotten in the most random order. Some weren’t clear, others were completely glossed over with even the sounds and smells scrubbed out. All around you people were screaming, the memory seemingly occurring in slow motion as power exploded outward from your body, black clothed, pale-skinned men and women soaring away from you. Those same red eyes locked on yours, and then the elastic band snapped back around your brain and your crafting room came back into sight once more.

Castor was rather unhelpfully tapping at your face with his paw but you could barely feel his long furry fingers against your flesh, your hearing still nothing but a loud buzzing noise that was only increasing in volume. Like a radio channel clearing you heard snippets of conversation, names you recognised and names you didn’t, screaming, and a single, grave warning.

The tracker will come for you, be prepared.

Panting, you tried to drag air into your burning lungs. Castor let out a relieved breath, letting his paw drop from your face as he dropped back onto all fours in front of you.

“That…that hurt.” You breathed.

“Clearly. There’s still a block there, maybe it will erode, maybe it won’t, but we seemed to knock something loose. What did you remember?” Castor asked. With a wince you forced yourself up until you were sitting cross-legged before him once more, head aching like you’d shoved it through a brick wall and heart freezing over in your chest. How were you supposed to tell him that the High Council hadn’t lied? You had clearly broken the Covenant, revealed yourself to vampires of all people – because only one humanoid creature on Earth had red-eyes. Then there was this tracker…

The tracker will come for you, be prepared.

“I’m so sorry I dragged you into all this Castor.” You sighed, rubbing your forehead to try chase away the ache. Castor was quiet for a long moment.

“So, it’s true? You did break the Covenant?” he accused you. A stab of guilt hit you first, then righteous rage.

“I was trying to save people! Protect the weak! I didn’t know that tour was a feeding group!” you exploded. Castor tutted, his stare condescending; well, it was as condescending as a racoon could look anyway.

“Vampires feed Y/N! It’s written in their very nature!” he argued.

“There were so many people! More than they needed! Husbands and wives being ripped from each other’s arms and – and students looking for adventure, it – oh god Castor, it was awful.” You weren’t sure when you had started to cry but a few sobs escaped your throat before you buried your face in your hands, trying to get a grip of yourself. There were so many problems to face and you weren’t sure where to start. Castor for one would have to choose now he knew, and could you really deal with losing your familiar if he decided to move on from you? Then there was the problem of breaking the Covenant. The penalty for that particular crime was severe, enough that you had heard some were driven to the brink of madness by their banishment from their own kind. Another chilling thought ran through your head then. If you had been cast out, would your name be scrubbed from the Book of The Charmed? If it was then any children you had, any heirs to your legacy, would not receive your family grimoire or any of the things that they should inherit, and they would start at the bottom-rung of magical society as deviants, not full-blooded witches.

That was without adding the problem of this tracker coming to get you of course, whatever that meant.

“We protect the balance of nature, and nature takes as much as she gives. Sometimes…sometimes that means we have to make hard choices about what to let go.” Castor told you solemnly. Sniffling, you wiped at your eyes, only now aware that you were still dressed in the shorts and t-shirts you’d gone touring Italy in. You needed a shower and a hot mug of coffee, something to warm you up and allow you to think.

“We – I mean I, I need to plan. There was something about a tracker being sent to find me, I need to figure out how to stay one step ahead of him.” Pushing to your feet, you were stopped in your quest to hit the shower by the feel of his claws digging painfully into your leg. You yelped, staring down at him in shock only to come face to face with a very angry racoon. Castor hissed, claws and teeth both bared.

“In case you haven’t remembered I rejected the High Council’s offer to be separated from you. I can’t just leave you you idiot! We’re sharing your exile whether you like it or not, and a tracker? There’s a vampire tracking you? You should have started with that!” he hissed. Stunned into silence, you could only stare as Castor began to scamper about the room, putting back what he could with an angry little squeak here and there when he lost the ability to speak in his fury.

“Castor what do you mean you refused them? The High Council don’t make requests, they just…take the familiar away.” You frowned. Castor shook his head.

“They were hardly forthcoming with helpful information. I got the choice and I stayed, so deal with it. Go take a shower already, you’re in desperate need of one, I can smell you a mile away which means he can to.” he sniffed, not turning to look at you as he scoured through a box of zip-lock bags for to place the madar root back in the right place according to his alphabetised system. It didn’t take an empath to feel the upset radiating from him, but it was difficult to pinpoint if he was upset with you because he was condemned to be exiled with you or because you hadn’t told him about this tracker. You didn’t even have a name for the man, just a (admittedly handsome) face. The hot spray of the shower warmed you up but did nothing to ease your turbulent thoughts, Castor occasionally invading your mind to tell you to quiet down so he could think without your interference.

The more you thought about this tracker, the more your stomach fluttered, your toes curling. Anticipation. That was the name you finally gave to the feelings trying to claim your attention. He would come whether you were ready or not, and you weren’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. You wanted his name at the very least. It wasn’t exactly difficult to guess why he was being sent either. Vampires knew nothing of your kind and you had attacked them in their home, so they needed someone to scope out the threat. What would happen if he dragged you before their court? Nothing good, you imagined.

Magic was infinite and plentiful in the earth wind and sky, but you were finite in comparison, you could only channel so much before you overexerted yourself whereas vampires never tired. You wouldn’t be able to fight him off forever. With a sigh, you washed the soap from your skin and tried to make a mental list of all the things you should pack in order to be ready for a quick escape. You couldn’t let this tracker catch you, that much was clear, so you’d have to play cat and mouse until either you grew too tired or he grew bored to keep playing.

Snuggled into a jumper and jeans, you trudged down the stairs to the living room to call for your familiar only to find him already in his den, very carefully folding his favourite of the many blankets installed in there. He had a small, drawstring pouch by his feet.

“What are you doing?” you asked amusedly. Castor huffed.

“Packing. You were thinking we should, weren’t you? I need you to cast an engorgement charm on this by the way, it needs to be bigger for my blankets.” He instructed. You couldn’t help but laugh.

“Castor if you put too much in it it will still be heavy.” You reminded him, taking the pouch nonetheless to do as he asked. Castor never asked for much, in fact mostly when he spoke to you it was to order you about, and this…well given he was being forced to run away with you it was a simple request.

“I am not leaving my blankets and I will not leave Teddy.” He looked at you over his shoulder, sharp little teeth bared in a scowl. You held your hands up in surrender, opening up the pouch and slipping your hand inside to work your magic. You spent your day mostly in silence after that, going back and forth to pack the human essentials and the witchy ones into one, enlarged backpack. It had been roughly mid-afternoon when you woke, and by the time night had fallen your stomach was growling and your eyes drooping.

“Get some food in you and get some sleep. It’s been a long day for both of us.” Castor sighed finally, brushing at his little bandit mask face with his paws. It was a habit of his when he was tired. Absent-mindedly scratching his fur as you passed, you headed for the kitchen where the takeout menus sat pinned to the fridge.

“Did you want Chinese?” you called back to him.

Castor groaned. “Obviously I do! If I don’t have spring rolls in me in the next forty minutes I might die.”

With a roll of your eyes, you picked up the menu to decide what you wanted for yourself. You needed to pick carefully…it would likely be the last meal you had in your own home.

#twilight #twilight fanfiction #the volturi #demetri volturi #witch!reader #x reader #familiars #vampires #aro volturi #other shady folk #so excited for this to come to life!

191 notes · View notes

worldscienceassociation · 5 years

Text

Solving the Problems of Earth

Given the framework of known thermodynamics, there is the traditional dilemma of any engine requiring both a hot reservoir and a cold reservoir. However given recent advances in the field of thermo-acoustics, humanity is slowly discovering that there are work-arounds which allow us to withdraw energy directly from heat while at the same time producing the side-effect of colder temperatures around the device. If this advancement had not been recently re-introduced by a Danish developer, I would be treading in much deeper water making the assertion that we are on the verge of solving the waste heat problem. Also it is given we are also on the verge of falling into the abyss of climate hell, in which the whole earth becomes uninhabitable to us. It is advisable that we take action for the greater good as soon as we are able on this environmental repair issue. If not, traditional thermodynamics has predicted the “Heat-death of the universe”, which seems a metaphor for what would happen if humanity was forced to only use traditional thermodynamics until this approach finally ruined the earth.

The problem of junk satellites in orbit is another high-tech issue that threatens to make the near-earth orbits of outer space totally unusable to humans. If we were to fail to repair our environment and decide to leave earth, we may unfortunately find that by that point there is so much space junk in earth orbit that we would be unable to leave earth without a fatal collision into orbiting space junk.

Now what if I told you that we could solve both issues simultaneously, taking care of the space junk problem and also restoring the ice of the polar icecaps? The average investor might laugh at such a notion, but I am not any stranger to being laughed at. We are in a realm of ideas involving problems which I believe “must be solved at any cost”, and therefore I have mostly omitted cost as a consideration from the ideas that I may now effectively present to the reading audience.

NASA has only made a weak attempt at the idea of “space junk recycling”. They haven't even been able to invent the tractor beam yet, so I will give that effort a little kick-start. If you have two overlapping lasers of the same frequency, and then you are able to bend the frequency of one of these two lasers, you create what is in physics called an “interference pattern” or a “beat frequency” of modes and anti-modes where the two lasers alternately cancel each other out or re-enforce each other. The locations of the modes specifically is completely spatially adjusted if we are able to impose a variable frequency; “bending the pitch” of the second laser.

By tuning the two highly directional laser beams, and adjusting the beat frequencies while rotating the trajectory of the lasers, and then turning off the laser, repositioning back to start, and repeating this simultaneous frequency tweak and beam-angle adjust, we create an effect similar to a Star Wars / Star Trek style tractor beam, which is mediated by the motion of modes and anti-modes of laser light that is created when their relative frequencies are smoothly adjusted. (Unfortunately, as far as I know, nobody has been able to invent an analog variable-frequency laser. However, it is clearly in the realm of the possible.)

As a secondary approach, pulsed lasers may be used to gradually push derelict satellites from the opposite sides, though this will require deployment of more orbiting lasers, which must be tightly controlled & maintained with a highly secure protocol to be absolutely only for scientific / construction usage.

This technique of using laser beams for the effect of a tractor beam is the best way to achieve derelict satellite recapture from a remote distance into a centralized tractor beam source area, without relying on physical cables, magnetic fields, or hemp ropes. However, for any satellite that is magnetically susceptible to capture, we may employ pulsed magnetic fields, and magnetic tow cables in order to easily bring the orbiting debris into a central working area in orbit.

“What are we going to build up there?” Firstly, it is quite easy to state that recapture of already orbiting material is much cheaper than putting new material into orbit, though automation of this task of recapture may prove impossible without the aid of earth-based remote control, it is still less risky than sending people into orbit for endless work on a funky space station. Given the reclamation of all the orbiting space junk, the final result would be a huge patchwork space station, mostly constructed by remote controlled robots, but also using the help of many smaller automated robots controlled by artificial intelligences.

One of the hardest parts of this project is setting up an orbital forgery, or at minimum orbital welding of these materials together. This will require a huge amount of energy, which must be beamed to the equipment up there. There is the energy involved in a temporary junk weld, where all of the aggregated junk is welded together into a single orbiting clump. Then there is the energy involved in the cutting of the metal into little squares or hexagons of a fixed size. And finally the energy involved in doing the permanent welding of these fixed-size pieces into the totally Escher-like construction of a macroscopic space station. We use an Escher-like tessellating architecture because it is easily extendible / scalable, depending on how much space junk the project recovers.

I'm suggesting a computerized architecture, where the outer hull of the space station is constructed of hexagonal pieces, square pieces, and rectangular pieces of metal. The goal is to build a bigger space station than anything we might conceivably need, built out to a scale determined only by how much junk is recycled in its construction. Essentially, a collage of space junk can be used to create an orbiting patch-work space station, probably large enough to support an entire resort-city / theme park.

I imagine such a space station, immediately after declaring that it is completed, being then pressurized with breathable air, with imminent leaks in the patch-work construction constantly being found and repaired by AI-controlled custodial robots. Essentially the whole space station should be built by standardized sorts of outer space construction robots, which will likely have their designs totally perfected by the time of the completion of the space station.

In terms of what sort of organization may initially build and finally own such a space station as a money-making endeavor that could eventually pay for itself, there is really no reason to specify. Science fiction is really absent of political critique anyway. Some glory-loving rich person will probably go for the idea, which in fact doesn't belong to anyone, as in my opinion it initially appeared in the Neuromancer trilogy by William Gibson. (He viewed this imminent space station as a kind of orbital Haiti, where rebel slaves had constructed a paradise up there in earth orbit.)

This place is implicitly a place with very few rules. Indeed, it is important that this space station remain truly modeled off of Las Vegas, Nevada, the station being a place not only off-shore but also off-planet. A literally corporate-sanctioned internationally cooperative law-free zone in earth orbit, in its profitable nature this place is politically a bit darker than the space station portrayed in the science fiction “Interstellar”. If it can be constructed and in the process recycle all of the orbiting debris with tractor beams, then it will serve a purpose in its construction, even if the place turns out kind of sketchy.

Retracing my steps, lets take a closer look at how we will get the required energy to do the welding that it will take to build this space station. A Japanese Zaibatsu corporation, I cannot remember which one, has already suggested the perfect idea for providing the necessary energy. We could build a thick belt of solar panels across the equatorial surface of the moon. From there, energy could be beamed by lasers to wherever it may be needed in lunar line-of-sight earth obit. So, I will now say we may eventually discover we have the energy to do this.

As I have said, the waste heat problem is a very serious illness that our environment has been cursed with, and it is because of us humans with our industrial activities that we are subjecting the earth to this curse of waste heat. In the science fiction novels of Larry Niven, even the most advanced beings in this galaxy had still not solved their waste-heat problem (even though they had somehow arranged five planets to perfectly orbit a star at the same distance from said star, the Pierson's Puppeteers). Contrary to Larry's fiction, humanity is already on the verge of solving this nascent waste-heat problem which we now know for sure is caused by all of our industrial activity.

In 1998, my physics teacher explained to me how the earth's polar ice-caps are a battery for cold. Though the climate may warm up from our industrializations, the polar ice caps melt as much as they need to in order to cool down the air to compensate for global warming. When the polar ice-caps completely vanish and are no longer emitting their cold air, there will be no natural air-conditioning system left to provide us with a habitable climate, and we may then truly face the scenario of an uninhabitable planet. So what can we even do about this?

Contrary to what the intuition says, lasers can be used to cool, even though usually they are only used to do heating. Scientific papers on “laser cooling” can easily be found. The most remarkable one, a Russian paper on laser cooling of water, discusses how a “pulsed ultra-violet laser” can be used to cool down water. (The frequencies are given in the scientific papers.) With more perfection, I believe that pulsed ultra-violet light of the correct frequencies can be used not only to cool down water, but to drive it below its freezing point and thus re-freeze the surface of the ocean where desired.

To describe this elaborate scientific plot to save earth, we have this huge amount of energy we have collected from these lunar solar panels, which are grabbing energy 24/7 unobstructed by clouds (unless the earth eclipses the moon). We use a high-amplitude infrared beam to send this energy to a very special satellite which is set up to orbit over both the north and south poles of the earth. This satellite converts the massive amount of energy into a battery of pulsed ultra-violet lasers, which are only activated when the satellite passes over the arctic circle, or over the antarctic. If the laser cooling works, such a satellite could be used to re-freeze the polar ice-caps using these pulsed ultraviolet lasers. And once again, we could thank Russia for saving the earth, given that Russian scientists first investigated laser cooling of water.

However, by the time we finally have gotten it together to re-freeze the polar ice-caps, the earth may already be suffering from deadly levels of heat. Even after re-freezing the earth's icecaps, the industrial waste heat is already so much that huge numbers of people will be dying every year from the stifling heat. The fact that no country can be counted on to obey any global climate laws means that restoring the polar ice caps will be a temporary measure that must be taken over and over again in order to keep the earth inhabitable. If humanity cannot at least do this, we are no better than monkeys obsessed with fire...

So, I have devised an elaborate backup system for humanity to survive in a climate apocalypse, which will still work whether or not we are able to restore the polar ice caps. Again, I will be mentioning some cutting edge technology: the toroidal thermo-acoustic energy reclaimers.

What we are doing with these thermo-acoustic devices is converting heat directly into electricity, and incidentally creating cold. We have a building within a building, whereas the larger building is designed to remain habitable, the smaller building within a building is designed to be cooled by an array of toroidal thermo-acoustic devices. These will convert heat into cold while producing some electricity. They do this by capturing sound waves which develop in the toroid; sound waves that naturally form in a high-pressure gas that is chosen for its tendency to hold some of its heat in the form of sound. When the sound energy is withdrawn from the system, the high-pressure gas then cools down within the toroid.

As an additional side benefit, hot air piped in from outside can be run over the toroidal thermo-acoustic cooling toroids, allowing some fresh water to be condensed out of the air while this fresh air is cooled down. Thus the building containing the thermo-acoustic coolers is situated inside of a larger building that it cools and provides fresh water to.

In addition, we then employ the known technology of thermoelectric energy generation. On the inside of the building it will be fairly cold, and on the outside it is warmer. This applies to both the inner and the outer buildings. So, traditional thermoelectric devices packed as tightly as possible in the walls and the ceilings of both buildings allow this maintained temperature difference to become a source for large amounts of DC electricity. The energy from thermoelectrics in the walls will be greatest when the temperature outside is hottest, assuming the thermo-acoustics can really keep it cool within.

Thus, in a building the size of a supermall, we may then provide a habitable air temperature, electricity for entertainment devices, and even fresh water. We add solar panels to the top of the building for even more energy production on top of the two temperature-related power generation systems. What we create, ideally, is not only a building that eventually pays for itself by generating electricity, but also a shelter from a potentially uninhabitable desert environment. Also, a potential indoor food growing facility. Once the template is set up, this sort of building can make uninhabitable places into habitable places. Though, keep in mind, this elaborate survival system is just a backup plan, mainly for the contingency of humanity being unable to re-freeze the polar ice-caps.

There is also finally the issue of earth dehydration, where people are using cooling technology to withdraw too much fresh water from the atmosphere, and government must then find a way to put extra water back into the air, in order to allow people to reclaim it as drinkable water. This is a serious issue, given the inevitability of earth's aquifers going dry. The process of evaporation must thus be artificially increased somehow.

I envision an offshore facility which utilizes the Stanley Meyer technique to electrically boil ocean water, and then torches this water in an eternally burning flame which puts pure water vapor back into the atmosphere, and may also incidentally be used for industrial generation of electricity in the offshore environment, to be used in lights for growing food, or in things such as electric boats.

Please try to enjoy your life, and try not to worry. Technical minded people are doing their best to try to figure out ways to maintain the habitability of the planet. Even Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos think about these topics.

0 notes