Challenge #02510-F320: Fractal Flaws

it just basically just captured lighting -- Anon Guest

Humans can freeze lightning. That was the original claim. On the edge territories, blocks of acrylic plastic or panes of glass are sold with 'frozen lightning' patterns etched impossibly into the inside of the structure. Some carry them in their vehicles as protection against plasma storms in Hyperspace. Nobody's certain if they work, but belief in sympathetic magic is a powerful thing.

The actual trick of it got out eventually. Of course it did. One can't have a technology as cool as one that can 'freeze lightning' and not have it get out into the greater collection of knowledge in the known universe. It involved electrostatic charges and an igniting incident to induce a destabilising cascade in the crystalline structure of the medium.

Watching it happen was fairly awesome, too. It really did look like the person making them was capturing lightning in a solid medium. So instead of the phenomenon dying out as the knowledge spread, the Frozen Lightning Stall became a semi-scientific mainstay in stations and stops all over Galactic space.

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