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Life and Light: Shadow-Force Reborn (Updated May 8, 2019)
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<blockquote data-quote="The Shadow" data-source="post: 4933330" data-attributes="member: 16760"><p><strong>People in Jon's Workplace</strong></p><p></p><p>Here are some notable people at Jon's workplace. (Be warned that I've snipped out a number of plot-hooks for public consumption.) There is a bit of tension toward him from the math department, as the physics department managed to secure funds to hire Jon at their expense. Naturally, many people in both departments couldn't care less; Jon himself is one of these. (While too observant to be entirely oblivious to academic politics, he finds it a crashing bore.)</p><p></p><p>Jon's status and cachet only increased when he was kidnapped by the Covenant. I mean, when you're one of a select few that an international supervillainous group sees fit to kidnap to work for them on a secret island base, it has to mean SOMETHING. Already a fairly "sexy" choice as major professor due to his youth and prominence, the incident increased his desirability yet further.</p><p></p><p><strong>Dr. Rudy Gottlieb</strong> is Jon's department head. An experimentalist in atomic physics and laser traps, Jon is his wunderkind, a plum for the department. (Filling a bit of a hole they'd had relativity-wise, too.) He is anxious for results to justify the political capital he spent to bring Jon to Seattle, but thus far has been very hands-off, fearful of bruising his genius. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> (The more so after the Covenant incident.)</p><p></p><p><strong>Dr. Karen Manning</strong> is a string theorist and a friend of Jon's. They like to bicker about the relative merits of their different approaches to unified field theory over coffee. Karen is divorced and has teenage kids who are giving her grief lately; she sometimes blows off steam to Jon, who is a good listener.</p><p></p><p>It has since been established in-game that Karen's kids are Jim (14) and Julie (17). The ex is Stan, who is an alcoholic. He lives in Vancouver.</p><p></p><p><strong>Susan Radner</strong> is a graduate student in physics; Jon is her thesis advisor. Still in the initial stages of settling on a topic, she is interested in the details of how superheroes produce energy. She is planning to ask Photon for a demonstration of his abilities under controlled conditions. Jon, of course, is doing his quiet best to dissuade her. He doesn't think it's a promising line of research, but also, of course, he wants to protect his secret identity.</p><p></p><p>Susan has a personal reason for her interest in superheroes. The Phantom and Erebus saved her from an assailant one night on what was for them a routine patrol. She has been fascinated ever since, and hopes to pump Photon a little bit about them if she can get to talk to him.</p><p></p><p><strong>Gerhard Ehrgeiz</strong> is also a grad student, one of Jon's RA's. He is of course from Germany, and thoroughly fluent in English. Gerhard is very bright even for a physicist, and has ambition to match, always looking out for the main chance. He has hitched himself, as he sees it, to Jon's rising star.</p><p></p><p>Gerhard ("Jerry" to his English-speaking friends) has noticed over the last year that Jon sometimes slips away with a lame excuse. The really odd thing is that sometimes he seems to just... vanish. He entered a stairwell once, for example, and Gerhard went after him to ask a question... but he wasn't there. Odd, but not alarming; Jon is so "boring" otherwise that it can hardly be anything serious. (There's also the fact that excessive curiosity about his major professor's doings could damage his career.) However, he is keeping a reluctant eye out to humor his girlfriend Melissa (see below). Sure, one's career comes first, but continuing to get laid is also a priority.</p><p></p><p><strong>Melissa Sanders</strong> is a senior in journalism. She was present once visiting Gerhard when Jon slipped away to do Photon-stuff, and found it intriguing. Pestering Gerhard with questions, she found that Jon had spent a few weeks in the hospital a year earlier, having been shot in a mugging. She has now concocted a theory that Jon is involved with drug dealing or something equally spicy, and is all afire to uncover a hot story that will look good on her resume. Thankfully, she has not yet made any connection to Photon.</p><p></p><p><strong>Xing Hu</strong> is Jon's other RA. Ambitious in a totally different sense than Gerhard, he has some very strange and interesting ideas about furthering the field that attract Jon's attention. Though he's not quite as bright as Gerhard, Jon finds talking with him very stimulating and fruitful. (This drives Gerhard privately CRAZY. Naturally, he hasn't made his feelings obvious - it comes out as a competitive streak.) Jon's even considering him inviting him to some of his chats with Dev (see below), which if it occurs will only drive Gerhard even wilder with jealousy.</p><p></p><p>Hu is a hard, dedicated worker, and finds Gerhard's competitive attitude to be very crass. His English is not the best, though he is improving. He studiously ignores anything in Jon's behavior not relevant to his job; it would be discourteous in his view to do otherwise.</p><p></p><p><strong>Timothy Reed</strong> is a TA for Jon's first-year physics class. Tim is earnest, a bit gawky, and quite in awe of Jon (who is, after all, only a couple years older than he is). He's considering hooking up with him as an RA once he passes his comps. He has subliminally noticed Jon's occasional disappearances, but they don't bother him any; Dr. Winters can probably walk on water, too! He's a pretty good instructor.</p><p></p><p><strong>Thomas Nwafor</strong> is another TA of Jon's. A recently-arrived Nigerian student, Thomas (never Tom) is a thorough but exacting instructor; he is already developing a reputation as a hard grader. Also, he has a fairly thick accent.</p><p></p><p><strong>Paul Nichols</strong> is a freshman in Jon's first-year physics class. A sullen young delinquent when Jon first came to Seattle, he's one of the kids Jon worked with who warmed up to him and confided in him. Paul turned his life around, got his GED (he's quite bright), and is now bound and determined to become an engineer. He is finding college very difficult, however, and is struggling. He's in Tim's recitation section. Paul has been a little shy about approaching Jon, unwilling to make it seem that he's sucking up and prevailing on old acquaintance. Jon has noticed him and greeted him warmly, but has also noticed Paul's reticent response. He respects this, though he's a little puzzled by it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Dr. Ketaro Watanabi</strong> is the head of the math department, a set theorist. Though he's been in this country for decades, he hasn't so much gotten accustomed to informal, offensively familiar Americans as resigned to them. (He visits his family in Japan frequently.) A consummate office politician, Dr. Watanabi lost out recently to Gottlieb regarding funding for new faculty. While reserving the bulk of his ire for his opposite number, Watanabi's attitude of polite, exquisitely correct hostility spills over onto Jon himself as well.</p><p></p><p><strong>Dr. Devindar (Dev) Singh Dolma</strong> is a mathematician specializing in differential geometry, with sidelines into number theory and many other things. An older man with a very quirky sense of humor, he and Jon hit it off almost at once. Dev is full of strange enthusiasms, creating mathematical "toy models" of the most bizarre things, and he values Jon's insights regarding these. (To give you an idea, for a few months last year, he was seriously (?) trying to prove the existence of God using mathematics alone.) </p><p></p><p>Here's a conversation between them that came to me of a sudden:</p><p></p><p>Jon, joking: "You mathematicians are all crazy."</p><p></p><p>Dev, apparently serious: "This is truth. Do you really think that boring ordinary sanity would help me to classify 24-dimensional polytopes?" (Dev is a frequent contributor to a website classifying n-dimensional polytopes. He does this for fun, in his spare time.)</p><p></p><p>Jon: "Hmmm. You've... got a point there. I guess it doesn't help much with mapping the linkages between loops of spacetime, either."</p><p></p><p>Dev, smiling slightly: "And now think of all the boring ordinary sane people who pay us to do these things, yes?" He taps his temple. "Crazy like a fox!"</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Shadow, post: 4933330, member: 16760"] [b]People in Jon's Workplace[/b] Here are some notable people at Jon's workplace. (Be warned that I've snipped out a number of plot-hooks for public consumption.) There is a bit of tension toward him from the math department, as the physics department managed to secure funds to hire Jon at their expense. Naturally, many people in both departments couldn't care less; Jon himself is one of these. (While too observant to be entirely oblivious to academic politics, he finds it a crashing bore.) Jon's status and cachet only increased when he was kidnapped by the Covenant. I mean, when you're one of a select few that an international supervillainous group sees fit to kidnap to work for them on a secret island base, it has to mean SOMETHING. Already a fairly "sexy" choice as major professor due to his youth and prominence, the incident increased his desirability yet further. [b]Dr. Rudy Gottlieb[/b] is Jon's department head. An experimentalist in atomic physics and laser traps, Jon is his wunderkind, a plum for the department. (Filling a bit of a hole they'd had relativity-wise, too.) He is anxious for results to justify the political capital he spent to bring Jon to Seattle, but thus far has been very hands-off, fearful of bruising his genius. :) (The more so after the Covenant incident.) [b]Dr. Karen Manning[/b] is a string theorist and a friend of Jon's. They like to bicker about the relative merits of their different approaches to unified field theory over coffee. Karen is divorced and has teenage kids who are giving her grief lately; she sometimes blows off steam to Jon, who is a good listener. It has since been established in-game that Karen's kids are Jim (14) and Julie (17). The ex is Stan, who is an alcoholic. He lives in Vancouver. [b]Susan Radner[/b] is a graduate student in physics; Jon is her thesis advisor. Still in the initial stages of settling on a topic, she is interested in the details of how superheroes produce energy. She is planning to ask Photon for a demonstration of his abilities under controlled conditions. Jon, of course, is doing his quiet best to dissuade her. He doesn't think it's a promising line of research, but also, of course, he wants to protect his secret identity. Susan has a personal reason for her interest in superheroes. The Phantom and Erebus saved her from an assailant one night on what was for them a routine patrol. She has been fascinated ever since, and hopes to pump Photon a little bit about them if she can get to talk to him. [b]Gerhard Ehrgeiz[/b] is also a grad student, one of Jon's RA's. He is of course from Germany, and thoroughly fluent in English. Gerhard is very bright even for a physicist, and has ambition to match, always looking out for the main chance. He has hitched himself, as he sees it, to Jon's rising star. Gerhard ("Jerry" to his English-speaking friends) has noticed over the last year that Jon sometimes slips away with a lame excuse. The really odd thing is that sometimes he seems to just... vanish. He entered a stairwell once, for example, and Gerhard went after him to ask a question... but he wasn't there. Odd, but not alarming; Jon is so "boring" otherwise that it can hardly be anything serious. (There's also the fact that excessive curiosity about his major professor's doings could damage his career.) However, he is keeping a reluctant eye out to humor his girlfriend Melissa (see below). Sure, one's career comes first, but continuing to get laid is also a priority. [b]Melissa Sanders[/b] is a senior in journalism. She was present once visiting Gerhard when Jon slipped away to do Photon-stuff, and found it intriguing. Pestering Gerhard with questions, she found that Jon had spent a few weeks in the hospital a year earlier, having been shot in a mugging. She has now concocted a theory that Jon is involved with drug dealing or something equally spicy, and is all afire to uncover a hot story that will look good on her resume. Thankfully, she has not yet made any connection to Photon. [b]Xing Hu[/b] is Jon's other RA. Ambitious in a totally different sense than Gerhard, he has some very strange and interesting ideas about furthering the field that attract Jon's attention. Though he's not quite as bright as Gerhard, Jon finds talking with him very stimulating and fruitful. (This drives Gerhard privately CRAZY. Naturally, he hasn't made his feelings obvious - it comes out as a competitive streak.) Jon's even considering him inviting him to some of his chats with Dev (see below), which if it occurs will only drive Gerhard even wilder with jealousy. Hu is a hard, dedicated worker, and finds Gerhard's competitive attitude to be very crass. His English is not the best, though he is improving. He studiously ignores anything in Jon's behavior not relevant to his job; it would be discourteous in his view to do otherwise. [b]Timothy Reed[/b] is a TA for Jon's first-year physics class. Tim is earnest, a bit gawky, and quite in awe of Jon (who is, after all, only a couple years older than he is). He's considering hooking up with him as an RA once he passes his comps. He has subliminally noticed Jon's occasional disappearances, but they don't bother him any; Dr. Winters can probably walk on water, too! He's a pretty good instructor. [b]Thomas Nwafor[/b] is another TA of Jon's. A recently-arrived Nigerian student, Thomas (never Tom) is a thorough but exacting instructor; he is already developing a reputation as a hard grader. Also, he has a fairly thick accent. [b]Paul Nichols[/b] is a freshman in Jon's first-year physics class. A sullen young delinquent when Jon first came to Seattle, he's one of the kids Jon worked with who warmed up to him and confided in him. Paul turned his life around, got his GED (he's quite bright), and is now bound and determined to become an engineer. He is finding college very difficult, however, and is struggling. He's in Tim's recitation section. Paul has been a little shy about approaching Jon, unwilling to make it seem that he's sucking up and prevailing on old acquaintance. Jon has noticed him and greeted him warmly, but has also noticed Paul's reticent response. He respects this, though he's a little puzzled by it. [b]Dr. Ketaro Watanabi[/b] is the head of the math department, a set theorist. Though he's been in this country for decades, he hasn't so much gotten accustomed to informal, offensively familiar Americans as resigned to them. (He visits his family in Japan frequently.) A consummate office politician, Dr. Watanabi lost out recently to Gottlieb regarding funding for new faculty. While reserving the bulk of his ire for his opposite number, Watanabi's attitude of polite, exquisitely correct hostility spills over onto Jon himself as well. [b]Dr. Devindar (Dev) Singh Dolma[/b] is a mathematician specializing in differential geometry, with sidelines into number theory and many other things. An older man with a very quirky sense of humor, he and Jon hit it off almost at once. Dev is full of strange enthusiasms, creating mathematical "toy models" of the most bizarre things, and he values Jon's insights regarding these. (To give you an idea, for a few months last year, he was seriously (?) trying to prove the existence of God using mathematics alone.) Here's a conversation between them that came to me of a sudden: Jon, joking: "You mathematicians are all crazy." Dev, apparently serious: "This is truth. Do you really think that boring ordinary sanity would help me to classify 24-dimensional polytopes?" (Dev is a frequent contributor to a website classifying n-dimensional polytopes. He does this for fun, in his spare time.) Jon: "Hmmm. You've... got a point there. I guess it doesn't help much with mapping the linkages between loops of spacetime, either." Dev, smiling slightly: "And now think of all the boring ordinary sane people who pay us to do these things, yes?" He taps his temple. "Crazy like a fox!" [/QUOTE]
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