extrapenguin

(On the setting)

As typical, I had planned to be at the lab at eight sharp, and it was twenty past. As always, I was the first person there.

Well, actually I wasn’t, since when I walked into the Multilab room, the Aspect of Oxygen was staring at the oxygen bottle, entranced. Well, she was probably staring at the gas bottle, I don’t think she’d have been all that interested in the wiring.

Being the extremely eloquent postgrad that I am, I cleared my throat and said “Erm.”

“You have gas bottles here”, she stated.

“Yeah, we do”, I said. “We use the oxygen for the occasional oxidization, the argon for argon sputtering impurities off samples, and the nitrogen for pressurization of the microchamber so that we can swap out samples. We’ve also got helium for leak testing.” I shut my mouth. Rule One: Never piss off an atmospheric gas. Rule Two: Never piss off a devotee or Aspect of silicon, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen or nitrogen. Rule Three: For the love of the 120-odd deities, do not anger oxygen. Especially not its Aspect.

The Aspect of Oxygen rose from her kneeling position on the other side of the XPS machine. She looked exactly like a normal human, except that I felt an overwhelming urge to describe her as ‘a deity with hair the color of fire, a shirt the color of the ocean, and trousers the color of rust’. Being the paragon of self-control that I was, I decided she would be best described as a pale woman with red hair that Europeans would call curly or textured or whatever, a blue shirt, and brown pants. Oh, and I knew she could kill me in variously inventive ways should she so please. Aspects that one wasn’t devoted to were always kind of scary.

She walked slowly around the vacuum chamber, gazing intently at me. I wished that she would just go away so that I could start with logging down the morning’s pressure readings.

She stopped two paces in front of me. “A metal, perhaps. Not one of the common ones. Liquid? Hmm. Gallium? No, Mercury. Of course. Though you are rather … non-mercurial.” She gave a wolfish smile.

“Jenna Meier, devotee of the Aspect of Mercury.” I tried not to gulp. Oxygen’s Aspect was as volatile and reactive as the element itself. To receive her attention was terrifying. I briefly wondered how the Aspects could tell which element a person was devoted to.

The Aspect of Oxygen lifted a (fire-red) eyebrow. “I take it your mother was not from Europe?”

Fucking white people. “She’s from Eritrea”, I said in my best “this topic is closed” voice.

The Aspect’s other eyebrow joined its twin. Then she blinked and changed the topic. “What is this?” she asked, waving towards the vacuum chamber.

“That is the vacuum chamber where we sustain the ultra-high vacuum necessary for x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Our vacuum is typically around ten to the minus ninth torr or better in pressure.

“XPS is the best way to examine the surface layers of a given sample. It works by first bombarding the sample with either magnesium or aluminum K-alpha x-ray radiation, which knocks off some of the sample’s electrons. Then, we gather the electrons in the analyzer. Since we know the energy of the x-ray and the kinetic energy of the arriving electron, we can calculate the binding energy of, say, silicon’s 2s electrons. From examining the peaks of the spectrum, we can find out which elements are present in the sample, and with more detailed analysis, we can find out the precise chemical states of the constituent atoms, since chemical bonds slightly alter the binding energies of the electrons.”

“Thank you”, the Aspect of Oxygen said, and walked out of the lab.

Bamboozled, I stood there gaping for a while, but eventually started my morning routine of logging the vacuum chambers’ pressures.