>>>Of course, he was handicapping himself a bit in
>>>that scene in that he'd turned off his X-20's advanced flight controls
>>>(inertia vectoring and so on). With that stuff turned on, a
>>>25th-century jetpack can make lightcycle turns.
>>
>>Imagine trying to explain a -gravitic- propulsion system to a 194X
>>person. Hoo, boy.
>
>Well, explaining what it does wouldn't be that hard.
>Explaining how it works, that would be... tricky. Bit like how
>people in primitive tribes react to radio. They get what it does just
>fine, and they're no less intelligent than modern urban people because
>we're all the same species, so they could learn electrical
>engineering given time and study, but you'd have to go back to pretty
>basic principles to make a start.

Indeed. I suppose what I was getting at is it seems as so the girls haven't quite internalized how -much- experience he has. Mio, of course, knows him better now. She might have more of an idea, but would keep it to herself.

>
>>I'm kinda wondering when it will slip out that he's
>>a hell of a lot older than even the 501 girls realize.
>
>They know he's from the 25th century, and they know his grandfather
>was born in 1930. That should suggest a few things, but it's possible
>none of them has ever sat down and actually done the math. :) (Also,
>they're aware that he's a time traveler, so they might have sort of
>tacitly assumed that he didn't get to the 25th century the long way
>round either.)

Hm. Possible.

>
>>Whether the Warlock did
>>it or not, if he doesn't know how it was done, what makes him think he
>>can duplicate it?
>
>"What one man can do, another man can duplicate." (At least if you
>proceed from the assumption that the "warlock of '43" wasn't
>really a man who could use magic - which, in fairness to
>General Reichenberg, is a reasonable assumption, given that there has
>never ever been one in the whole of human history in that universe.)

Oh, of course. I think I was making a bad assumption, that Reichenberg knew the Warlock was from a parallel dimension. But of course that's ridiculous, very few people should know that. And certainly not him.

>
>>Oh, dear. Do I detect a severe underestimation? I do believe so. I
>>think Reichy is about to get hoist on his own petard.
>
>A lot of people assume, mostly because she's so much quieter and more
>reserved than Erica, that Ursula is... well, not an idiot-savant,
>but... not a person who is particularly engaged with the world beyond
>whatever she's working on, let us say.
>
>(They also assume that she's harmless and incapable of aggression,
>which is a slightly daft thing to assume of a witch whose familiar is
>a badger. :)

Precisely what I was thinking about. =) I remembered the discussion of her familiar in another thread. Then again, Reichenberg probably doesn't know that--he has access to the information I'm sure, but if there's anyone who might ignore witch-related details on principle...

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu