Wednesday 27 February 2013

S4.135 - Gaga, Ooh La La

"I'm not sure what hurts more, the lack of dignity I've displayed or that last play on words," Cosecant said, raising her hand to cover her face.


"Wait, Maud exists?" Hevvi said suspiciously. "We always thought Signum made him up, in some vain attempt to associate her signs with actual numbers."

The partially pink haired girl blinked. "You what?"

"We?" Sine asked, seizing the term. "Meaning you along with the third person QT detected upon arrival?"

"Flora, yeah," Hevvi said, peering up at the tall trig. "She doesn't talk much though. So, Maud send you four here?"

"Not exactly," ParaB admitted. "We're looking for other mathematical relations. To help in the fight to take back our world!"

Signum canted her head to the side; her hair extension almost hit her in the shoulder. "So that observer role Maud got didn't pan out?"


"Kind of a long story," Sine mused, now also signing her words as she spoke. "We're also a set of six. Maybe we should gather back at the Gazebo - where are the guys, ParaB?"

The bunny girl flicked her eyes left and right. "Oh. Uh. I sort of knocked them out, and tied them up on the bridge."

"Ehhh?" QT said, eyes going wide.

"They were both going gaga for 'Evvi' too!" ParaB justified, blushing faintly.

"Ohhhhh. Caught in a bad romance," Cosecant mused.


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Sunday 24 February 2013

S4.134 - Step Mania

"Signum?" ParaB said, pouncing on the name. She stood. "We're here looking for you!" she said in delight.


SIGN WAVE?
The half pink haired girl blinked and shook her head in confusion before starting to walk closer to the group. "Pardon? You're near hooking a grue?"

Hevvi sighed as she heard Signum coming closer, and the step function tried to sit up. "Enunciate more clearly, you conic idiot," Hevvi grumbled. "Signum's half deaf." The step function snapped her fingers. "Cosecant, fetch me my glasses."

ParaB shot Hevvi another glare. "Are you trying to get a kick in the head?! I said RELEASE my friends! Because among other reasons, Sine speaks sign language, and can translate."


STILL DOWN
"I'll release them when I have my glasses back," the step function retorted. "You're all fuzzy blobs at the moment!"

"I'm so sorry for 'Evvi," Signum said as she reached them. "When we saw the dread gazebo appear, we thought it would be best that she use her charms to convince it's owners to leave."

"It's not a dread gazebo," ParaB muttered. "Also 'Evvi' seemed more inclined to use the chance to get slaves!"

Signum raised her hands to her mouth in horror. "Your companions would NEVER have been maligned for a dance on graves!!"

Hevvi rolled her eyes, even as Cosecant replaced her glasses. "Enunciate!" the step function repeated, quickly pushing them up on her nose. ParaB raised her leg off the ground in preparation for a kick. "Euh, fine, fine - ladies, if you truly care for me, you'll have your willpower back now."

Sine, Cosecant and QT all blinked a few times in rapid succession, so ParaB slowly lowered her foot. Making a point of articulating carefully, she then looked at Signum and asked, "Are you Maud's sister?"

"Maud's? Oh! Yes! Sort of!" Signum replied. She smiled. "I'm his step sister!"


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Wednesday 20 February 2013

S4.133 - Luna See

"Hmph. Well, you may not surrender to my charms," Hevvi concluded. "But you'll still have to get through the functions who do - your friends - in order to get to me!"

"Yeah, not so much," ParaB finished. Her thumb and index finger closed on her tiara. "Focus Tiara ACTION!" she called out.


OSHIOKI YO!

ParaB whipped her arm out, the tiara coming off her forehead. As she did so, the tiara began to glow, and as it left the bunny girl's fingers, it spun around in the air, maintaining it's height. It then executed a perfect parabolic arc, looping around Sine, Cosecant and QT - using the latter as a focus point. Hevvi barely had time to open her eyes wide, before it had smacked her in the face, knocking her to the ground and sending her glasses flying.

"'Evvi!" the two trig chorused, turning in shock, as QT continued to stand, looking conflicted.

ParaB pressed her advantage, running around her distracted companions in a similar arc to that of her tiara, reaching down to grab Hevvi by the front of her outfit. "Release them from your spell. NOW," she declared, bringing back her palm in preparation to smack the step function at the first sign of resistance.

"Y-You hit a girl wearing glasses," Hevvi said, blinking several times in confusion. "Using a magic tiara. Wh-What sort of relation ARE you?!"

"A conic," ParaB concluded. She brought her palm down towards Hevvi's face.


GET DOWN
"STOP!" came a cry from the cottage door. ParaB froze mid-swing and looked up. There was another girl there now. Dressed similarly to Hevvi, she also had one side white, but the other was pink. One of her horizontal twintails was also set lower on her head. "Please!" the person continued, clasping her hands together. "She's practically blind without her glasses!"

Hevvi grimaced, pulling away from ParaB and then making shooing motions with an arm. "I can handle this! Stay back, Signum!" she hollered.


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Sunday 17 February 2013

S4.132 - Step Aside

ParaB threw open the trap door of the gazebo and strode out purposefully. Sine, Cosecant and QT barely noticed the arrival; for her part, Hevvi merely batted her eyelashes at the bunny girl. Though her composure changed a bit when the conic relation didn't slow in her approach. "Uh, who's your friend?" she asked, taking a half step back.

QT turned her head. "Oh, that's ParaB. She's almost as dreamy as you are, 'Evvi. Though I guess I haven't gone as far with you yet..."


"As far with... uh oh," the two-toned function said, adjusting her glasses and actively backpedalling. "Ladies, form a wall to protect me, please!"



STAND OFF

Dutifully, Sine, Cosecant and QT moved forwards to stand in front of Hevvi. ParaB halted an equal distance from them on the other side, placing her hands on her hips. "Just WHAT is going on out here then?!"


"We've encountered a new form of life," Sine said excitedly. "She calls herself a step function!"


"Heaviside, to be exact, but call her 'Evvi. With a silent H," Cosecant added with a smile. Her hands clasped together. "Isn't she just so dreamy?"


"No," ParaB said, her lips thinning.  "Et tu, QT?"


A conflicted look appeared on the blonde's face. "I... uh... I..."


"Oh, don't blame any of them," Hevvi said airily from behind the trio.  "I'm a turn on for all SORTS of functions. Can't help it, it's simply in my nature. Which is why I'm puzzled by your resistance."


"Well, there's your problem," ParaB countered. She smiled a bit evilly. "I'm NOT a function." With that, she reached up towards her vertex tiara.



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Wednesday 13 February 2013

S4.131 - Doctor Cones M'Kay

"What are you doing?" Nat asked, leaning against the doorframe.

Hyper jumped and spun away from her lab bench. "Don't you inverse trig ever knock?" she said in annoyance.

"There's no door here," Tangent's inverse pointed out. "Only the frame."

"Then knock on the frame! We're all having to make due with whatever we can while we're displaced from our mathematical homes, aren't we?!" the green haired conic shot back, marching over. "Like I'm down to one cup of coffee a day!" She grabbed the trig by his shirt. "Do you have ANY idea WHAT THAT'S LIKE?!?"

GET A GRIP

"I'm a doctor," he reminded blandly, reaching up to dislodge Hyper's fingers. "So yes. But I ask again, what are you doing? I'm worried your mad scientist ways are rubbing off on Nisano... I mean, Nis and Soc."

Hyper smoothed down her lab coat. "If you must know, we're making a cone of science."

Nat frowned. "Cone of silence?"

"Don't Get Smart with me!" the scientist shot back. "This is a double napped cone with one end in this lab, and the other, well, wherever I project it." She crossed her arms. "You've heard of ring transporters?" Nat nodded. "Well, it's not that."

"Okay," Nat said, rolling his eyes. "But then why was Nis telling me about some device for reading people's thoughts?"

"Oh! My other focus," Hyper said, gesturing at a nearby table. "To get coordinates for the cone, I've junked the railgun idea in favour of locking onto psychic frequencies. Such as those between Para and ParaB."

Nat looked from the table to Hyper and back. "Huh. Does this mean you could project your cone into Logan's ship?"

"Yes! Maybe even retrieve ParaB!" Hyper countered, rubbing her hands together. She made a face. "Having trouble with the reintegration though. Currently, my cone of science is only making a copy of the original. Which creates a bunch of dead ringers."


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Sunday 10 February 2013

S4.130 - Prime Directives


PRIME TIME: SHOULD BE 7pm-11pm


"Hey, newsflash!" Cubi inflected, her ponytail bobbing. "Hey, a new prime number has been discovered - the largest yet!"

"And we're the prime polynomials to tell you about it," Quinn said, crossing her arms defiantly.

Para smiled, her quadratic bunny ears twitching. "So, quick history - the prime was discovered by Curtis Cooper on January 25th, 2013, following 39 days of checking. It was then independently verified, and the news broke on February 5th."

"Hey, the last time a prime was found was in 2009," Cubi continued. "And that wasn't the largest at the time - it was situated in between two primes found in 2008."

"In fact, in finding this largest prime, we've skipped over at least 14,772,551 others! Mr. Honner did the maths there," Quinn noted.

"Hurry up and mention GIMPS," Expona said, stepping into the picture.

"E-Expona, you can't just interrupt!" Para protested.

"The new number, 2(57,885,161) – 1, involves an exponent, so watch me," the redhead shot back. She faced the camera. "It's a Mersenne prime, found by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Now, such primes should not be confused with simple Mersenne numbers, which are any number 2n – 1. Here the result is prime... and so by definition n must also be prime!"

Sexi sauntered in next to her.  "Of course, the reverse, not true; try n=11. That said, there may yet be other Mersenne numbers less than this 48th one just found... and this one MIGHT even be the largest. Because while primes are proven infinite, Mersenne primes are not. Yet."

"Sexi, get out of here!" Quinn said sharply. "You're degree six! Not prime!"

"But perfect," Sexi reminded, fluffing her hair.

"Hey, right, there's a connection between Mersenne primes and perfect numbers," Cubi said, facepalming. "Hey, saw that on Numberphile..."

"Oh! We were going to plug that Numberphile did a video about the newest prime too!" Para said brightly, clasping her hands. "They even mention it in binary."

"Yeah, Para, Mersennes aren't difficult in binary!" Expona sputtered. "Think about it."

Elly poked her head into the frame. "Let's plug the Index Out of Bounds comic now too, things are about to get even more off track."

"Never mind, Elly. It's conic time, now that the polynomials have screwed things up," Circe said, marching past her cousin. "So, let's talk about how the media's reported on this new prime!"

"I was ABOUT to say how Aperiodical gave a nice roundup of things in the UK," Quinn shot back at the circle.

"And I was about to talk about the US!" Circe fired back. "Where online, Fox News first botched the math, as well as said, quote, 'There is little mathematical value to finding a single new prime'."

"Actually," Tangent murmured at Lyn, off to the side, "THEY were just quoting from a New Scientist article... that fact is often forgotten, or unknown."

"Mmm. There's a reason why, this past week, Fox News was simultaneously chosen as the Least Trusted and Most Trusted News Network," the line answered with a sigh.

"Hey, ANYWAY," Cubi cut back in, "a better article would be the one on cnet, which not only goes into the computing aspect but quotes 'Once a mathematical curiosity, primes now are crucial to encrypted communications'!"

SCIENCE!
"And Canada reported too!" Root said, jumping in next to the rest of the relations, arms outstretched. "In fact, CBC correctly reported 'Prime numbers are numbers greater than 1 that can't be divided by any numbers other than themselves or 1 to generate a whole number.'" He beamed. "Did you know the 39th Mersenne prime was found by a volunteer in Canada in 2001??"

"Of COURSE! Don't you know anything about science?!" answered a new voice.  Everyone turned to see ArcSin, aka Nis, sporting odd swirly glasses and a lab coat as he shook his fist in the air. There was an extended pause.

"Ooo-kaaaaay," Quinn said to break the silence. "Whatever, Doctor Nisano. I think we're done here."

"But... can I at least mention how the Electronic Frontier Foundation awards thousands of dollars to certain sized primes?" Para protested.

"We're DONE here," the quintic reiterated. She dropped to the floor and V-kicked the camera tripod.


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Wednesday 6 February 2013

S4.129 - News From Away

"Shouldn't we have given that Away Team communicators or cell phones or something?" Radik asked Logan. "I mean, we don't know what's going on out there."

The redhead sighed. "It's been less than ten minutes. Why get so impatient?"

"I can pull up a full exterior view, I think," ParaB offered. "Now that we're out of hyperactive space. We'll see them if they're still outside."

"On main viewer then," Logan said, gesturing.

Looks like an irresistible farce

ParaB poked at buttons on a couple of the consoles, and the video monitor sprang to life. Everyone leaned forwards in surprise at the sight. A slightly heavyset girl wearing glasses stood a short distance from the gazebo. Her hair sported a pair of twintails that shot out perfectly horizontally, the hair itself bifurcated into a black side and a white side. She wore a simple track suit that was similarly coloured.

Of rather more interest though was the fact that Sine stood on one side of her, helping to file the girl's nails, with Cosecant on the ground polishing the girl's boots, even as QT draped herself over the girl's free arm. While they watched, the catgirl murmured, "Oh, 'Evvi," and went up on her toes to plant a kiss on the girl's cheek.

"Why that two faced little..." ParaB sputtered.

"Wow. That new arrival is gorgeous," Radik murmured. "Permission to join the team outside?"

"Yeah, I think I'll head out too," Logan said, rising from his chair once more.

ParaB's eyes went wide. "The heck?" she shouted, hurrying to block the guys' passage to the ladder. "Okay, obviously this newcomer is some negative influence!"

"Let us by. Negative or not, we're positively attracted!" Radik countered with a glare.


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Sunday 3 February 2013

S4.128 - Quantum Dating

"Yar, let's get out there then!" Logan concluded, marching for the exit ladder at the back of the bridge.

"Wait!" Sine declared. "As Executive Officer, I should lead the away mission. Should anything happen, you understand the gazebo's systems better than any of us. Cosecant, QT, you're with..." She hesitated. "Or, should it be ParaB and Cosecant?"

"Go with Csc and QT," Logan said, shrugging off Sine's momentary indecision as he moved to sit back down in his chair.

Sine nodded, and the three women went to ascend the ladder. "Um, after the both of you," QT offered, tugging at the hem of her skirt.

The three functions soon emerged from Logan's base, pausing before approaching the cottage. "I should sweep the area first," Csc declared. "Or at least the perimeter."

"If it helps, I'm picking up three readings from inside the house," QT offered, poking at the calculator-shaped Quadcorder that she and ParaB had been working on.

IT DISPLAYS A HOLLOW GRAPHIC

"Are they mathematical relations like us?" Sine asked.

"Not like us," QT countered, shaking her head. "They're a new form of fun. Fun?" She smacked her palm into the side of the scanner. It let out a squeal. "Function."

"The door's opening!" Cosecant declared, stepping forwards and raising her arm, to keep the others back. A slightly overweight girl with glasses and twintails then emerged from the cottage, closing the door before stepping deliberately towards them, swaying her hips.

Sine's jaw dropped. "Great Scott," she muttered.

"I know, this is heavy," Cosecant gasped.

"No! No, I'm 'Evvi! 'Evvi!" the approaching girl retorted back with careful pronunciation. "The 'H' is silent!"

QT tilted her head to the side. "Wait, are we in Newfoundland?"


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