3: Silences
With the sun rising steadily and gradually chasing the remaining clouds away, the three made their way down the hill. Their steps were accompanied by the rattle of their packs; the rhythmic thunks of the steel cube in Spike’s bag impacting the rest of its contents, the unidentifiable clinks of whatever fragile things dwelt in Rarity’s saddlebags, and the near-silence of Scootaloo’s mysterious pouches.
The soft patter of eight hooves and two feet advancing on the moist earth of the path.
“So,” Scootaloo began, breaking the silence as she squinted against the glare of the sun, “first things first, I guess: Unicorn survival tips.”
She turned her head to look at her two companions, waiting to have their undivided attention before continuing.
“Number one: listen for birdsong.”
The filly stopped on the spot, making an exaggerated display of a listening pose, one raised foreleg held next to her ear. Spike and Rarity stood next to her, attentive yet puzzled. A few birds sung amongst the trees, their chirps echoing back and forth around the travelers.
“Okay, what’s so special about birds singing?” Spike asked. The sounds he could hear seemed perfectly normal, the same as every random assortment of birds he had heard in the wild.
“The fact that they’re even singing at all. See, birds aren’t stupid: they know that singing when a unicorn is near is pretty much asking for a face-full of crystal, so they stop when they spot one getting closer. I think they even warn each other before shutting up. So if you can hear birds singing, it means that there aren’t any unicorns close enough to hear them.”
“Well, what about me? I am a unicorn, after all.”
“I said they weren’t stupid, not that they were smart. They’re just probably looking for horns to tell them what kind of pony they’re seeing.”
“Huh,” Spike replied, “makes sense.”
The dragon set off on the path once more, the two ponies following suit. Scootaloo took the lead again as she scanned the surroundings in a fast and competent way.
Watching her go, Spike couldn’t help but notice how surprisingly professional she seemed: every movement calm and controlled, every step measured and sure. Despite her age, she knew what she was doing.
“Hey, Scoots? How long have you been… doing this, exactly?”
The filly barely glanced at him in the middle of one of her sweeps of the surroundings.
“Since the very first day the militia was formed, why?”
“Wait,” Rarity interrupted, “Applejack let you join just like that? Aren’t you a little young?”
Scootaloo snorted.
“Maybe, but when there’s only about twenty-five volunteers to choose from, you take all you can get.”
The trio kept walking in silence, guided by Scootaloo’s vigilance. Spike had never really known just how thin the militia was spread. A mere two dozen guardians for the town? No doubt more had joined since then; defending the village had turned into an essential activity, especially since so many other occupations had become obsolete. Rarity might have clung to her previous life until the last moment, but others had quickly realized that their skills weren’t as important to the town anymore.
The fleeting memory of once seeing one of the former spa attendants reporting to Applejack came to Spike’s mind.
Still, there couldn’t possibly be enough troops to truly defend Ponyville, especially now that they had taken away one of the precious few soldiers.
Rarity wondered what had even possessed the filly to volunteer in the first place. What was even still there for her to protect? Both her best friends were gone; Applebloom was dead and Sweetie Belle… It was best that Rarity refrained from thinking about Sweetie Belle. Maybe it was a simple matter of finding something to do with the boundless energy the young pegasus had always displayed, something to take her young mind away from the morbid thoughts of her friends.
The filly kept both her mind and her eyes on the road, knowing that any lapse in her attention could be disastrous.
The minutes stretched to hours as they walked south, the often awkward silence only sporadically broken by equally awkward small talk. While both Spike and Rarity were used to each other’s company, it was usually on gem-finding excursions that they found common ground to converse. Considering the wholly different circumstances, Spike just didn’t know what subject to bring up at the time. Everything he could think about seemed pointless or unnecessarily distracting. The fact that he couldn’t think of a single thing he had in common with Scootaloo just made conversation that much more difficult with her. Besides, the filly was already busy scouting their path and watching for possible threats, making it hazardous to distract her. Maybe silence was sufficient, he finally decided.
Without knowing it, all three travelers were thinking back to Ponyville, the small town still close enough to grip their hearts. Were they making the right choice? Possibly. Certainly.
Would they still come to regret it? Probably.
As the sun reached its zenith, the group stopped at a crossroads. They had all agreed that a break was in order; Rarity wasn’t known for endurance, and both Spike and Scootaloo were young and traveling on shorter legs. Even with her training and experience roaming the countryside, either with the other two crusaders or more recently on her rounds protecting Ponyville, Scootaloo still didn’t have the stamina to walk a whole day without rest. Having both lived more sheltered lives, neither did Spike or Rarity.
The adult mare collapsed under the shade of a tree, while the orange filly quickly surveyed the roads from the middle of the perfect cross they formed. Spike chose a spot close to Rarity, rummaging in his pack to withdraw the signal detector. He opened the device and set it in the grass, not sparing it a second look as he searched his bag once more to take some rations to eat.
“All’s clear,” Scootaloo announced as she took a resting spot under the tree’s shade with the others. “Hey, what’s that thing?” She was looking at the grey box open in the grass, the three wooden pegs standing in the breeze and the compass in their midst slowly turning.
“That’s the signal detector I made. It points to The Signal.”
“Really? How’s that work?”
“I’m wondering as well,” Rarity added, fanning herself with a small folding fan she had taken from her bags.
“Well,” Spike began, “those three pegs here are receptors for The Signal, meaning they are very in tune with its frequency. That basically means they have the perfect composition to vibrate in tune with it. So The Signal buzzes around and makes them shake along, which means the detector ‘catches’ the Signal’s energy. I hooked the receptors to a bunch of little devices that turn that vibration into electricity to power three small electro-magnets that I placed around the compass here. These magnets are so close together that their magnetic fields combine into one, and since The Signal seems to lose power over long distances, the magnet that’s closest to the nearest source of The Signal gets just a little more energy. That stronger magnet becomes the ‘dominant’ one, and it makes the whose field align with itself, and since the compass is right in the middle of that, it ends up pointing straight to the nearest source of The Signal. I also made the box out of steel to block out the natural magnetic field of the planet so there isn’t as much white noise to interfere with the needle.”
Spike took a breath after delivering his verbal avalanche, apparently ready to keep going. Rarity and Scootaloo watched him with their mouths agape, both clearly stupefied by the amount of technical knowledge the young dragon had recited. Even the surrounding birds seemed to have been rendered speechless.
“Oh but the downside of having the receptors so close together means that the difference in the amount of power they receive is really really small,”
Scootaloo frowned. Something was not right.
“…so the magnetic field takes a whole lot of time to realign itself since the magnets are very nearly…”
Spike had stunned everyone into silence, even the birds? Really? The birds had listened to that? The birds had cared? No way. The filly shot up to her hooves, urgency in her voice as she interrupted the dragon.
“Guys? The birds!”
Spike and Rarity looked around, unsure for a moment what exactly made birds worthy of such alarm, until Scootaloo’s words from earlier that morning came back to their minds.
Listen for birdsong.
A few seconds of panic passed, everyone scrambling to their hooves and feet while frantically trying to spot the cause of the sudden and oppressive silence. Spike fumbled with the detector, hastily closing it and stuffing it in his bag as Scootaloo whisper-shouted “Hide!”
The filly jumped in the nearest bushes, quickly followed by the others.
They huddled in the leaves and branches, looking around to make sure they were completely concealed by the foliage. Their breathing was labored, fighting with both the urge to breathe and the imperative to remain totally silent. A minute passed in silence, the birds mute and the wind quiet, all three travelers forcing their lungs to maintain the lowest possible volume.
The soft clip-clop of hooves approached from further down the path. Soon a faint mumble could be heard. A voice, stammering and mumbling disjointed bits of words, wavering wildly between intonations, slowly rose in volume as its owner came closer.
“No no no no I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I DON’T LIKE IT! …I can’t like it. I’ll never like it. This isn’t me. I’m not a bad pony, am I? Left, right, left, right. Keep walking and don’t look at anything. The sky’s the limit if you limit yourself to it. I NEVER MEANT TO DO THAT! Why did it have to be like that? What did any of them do to me? I know what I did to them, but what did they do? They were running from me? I miss my friends. IS ANYPONY OUT THERE? PLEASE DON’T ANSWER ME! If they answer I’ll have to be a bad pony again…”
Spike, Scootaloo and Rarity could now see the legs of the mare on the path, through the branches of the bush. Her olive coat was dirty and matted with mud and various sorts of grime, and what they could see of her tail was ragged and unkempt. Her soft voice went from breathless murmurs to startling screams at random, her tone one of constant agitation even as she occasionally hummed songs and just as frequently sobbed between breaths. They saw her stop in the middle of the intersection for a moment.
“No no no can’t be a bad pony. NO I’M NOT! What does this one say? Ponyville? NO no no no can’t go to a ville, or a city or a burg or a village or town. Ponies in there. Can’t see them can’t hurt them can’t be a bad pony. I just want a friend. I’m so tired of walking why can’t I just lie down in a hole and die? I really should. Should I really? I’d get to see my friends again and KILL THEM LIKE THIS SQUIRREL DIE KILL KILL KILL”
A cracking pop sounded through the air, the whistling sound of crystals flying towards the death of some poor creature. The three travelers ducked closer to the ground, pressing themselves down in the dirt in the vain hopes that they may sink through it entirely and escape the danger. A small muffled squeak was heard through the resounding thunder of the crystals ripping trees and foliage apart, a quiet rain of debris punctuating the event.
“Oh no I’m so sorry! I’m sorry little squirrel! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’M SORRY!”
The olive mare dropped to the ground, burying her face in her hooves as she started crying.
“I’m a bad pony again! I’m sorry!”
Her shoulders shook under the weight of her sorrow as she wept quietly, occasionally mumbling apologies to the squirrel and to others. Spike watched her, reminded of the many times Twilight had sunk to such a state. It had been so common, such a frequent occurrence in his life that he seemed to have grown used to it. The unknown unicorn’s plight barely capable of making him feel anything, while a quick glance showed both of his companions shedding tears. Rarity stared at the stranger, her tears flowing from her eyes in complete silence. He face was an unreadable mask set in stone as her eyes remained glued to the weeping unicorn on the road. Scootaloo had looked away long ago, opting to cover her ears as well.
Spike looked back at the olive unicorn, thinking about all the ponies who must have suffered like her since The Signal had come to Equestria, about all those who, just like the mare before him, were still suffering. Just how many lives had it utterly broken?
The heavy silence continued for a few minutes, until the unicorn eventually picked herself up. Sniffing, she began walking away at last, head hung low and still mumbling her somber thoughts. Spike felt fortunate as he realized that she had chosen neither the road leading to Ponyville nor the one they would need to take to continue south.
The three travelers waited in silence, making sure to hear birds singing again at last before emerging from their hiding spot.
They quickly gathered their packs and hurriedly went on their way.
The next few hours passed in anxious silence, all three companions keenly attentive to their surroundings. Every lull in the rhythm of chirps brought them to a fearful halt where they held their breaths, standing still until finally another singer began the melody anew. They would then sigh in relief, resuming their progress on the earthen road.
The sky had cleared completely by mid-day, and the sun kept beating down on them throughout the afternoon. The rays were only hindered by the rare, occasional, and proportionally small clouds dashing in the way for mere moments at a time.
The trio didn’t bother to so much as try starting conversations along the way, the fear still fresh in their minds. Spike’s thoughts, even constantly interrupted as they were by the random and thankfully short bouts of terrifying silence in the birdsong, kept returning to the lonely unicorn encountered earlier.
How many more like her were there? How many other unicorns were left to deal with this curse alone, with no possible way of even understanding what had happened to them? How many minds had been ruined by guilt and incomprehension, tortured by their actions and their own alien urges? How many simply didn’t have the luck to have their friends not only survive, but to also see those friends help them and prevent them from killing more innocents?
How had Twilight been the lucky one?
The afternoon came and went, Spike swaying between his somber thoughts and the group’s necessary vigilance.
As the sun set, spreading its final glow of orange warmth over the land, the group finally came to a halt. Choosing a fairly secluded area near the road, the three travelers dropped their packs with relief and set about establishing camp. Blankets were unfurled, food was withdrawn from the bags, and Spike began forming a circle of rocks for a fire.
“Spike, what are you doing?” Scootaloo asked, observing the half-formed ring of stones as Spike returned from fetching another armful from the roadside.
The young dragon dropped the stones at his feet, already moving to resume placing them.
“Building a fire,” he replied, putting a stone in place. “What else?”
“Oh no no no no no!” The filly stepped in the middle of the incomplete circle, putting a hoof on the rock Spike was about to move next. “Are you insane? No fire!”
“What? Really? Why?”
The pegasus filly brought a hoof to her forehead, grunting.
“Ugh, look; unicorn survival tip number two: never make yourself more visible than you have to. A nice, bright fire at night is a pretty good way to attract attention, and attracting attention is the last thing we want! I thought it was pretty obvious.”
“Oh.”
Spike let go of the stone, standing back up to look around. The night crept along slowly, gradually swallowing the land. Scootaloo headed to her bedroll after delivering her warning, where she proceeded to undo the many straps of her numerous pouches and pockets. Rarity was fidgeting with the various trinkets in her saddlebags, laid down on her expensive-looking bedding.
The young dragon went to sit on his own blanket, nibbling on some of his food. The dried fruits were tasty, especially with the sapphire dust sprinkled on them, but he knew he would probably start to despise them if he had nothing else to eat once in a while. The three ate quietly in the growing silence of dusk, occasionally flexing their tired appendages.
“So, what are we supposed to do now, then?”
Scootaloo looked up, stirred from her thoughts with a short hum. Rarity hadn’t moved or shown a sign of acknowledging the question as she kept staring at the half-formed ring of stones of the unborn fire.
“We go to sleep, I guess,” the filly said, “We probably still have a long way to go, right? We need to rest for tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah, that reminds me!”
Spike took out the detector once again, opening it to the orange sky. The unmodified compass was soon placed next to it, Spike taking advantage of the fading light to read the instruments. Darkness was already dominating the sky when the needle finally settled. Squinting, the dragon could see that their destination hadn’t changed significantly. They were quite certainly still days or even weeks away. Scootaloo had wrapped herself in her blanket in the meantime and had closed her eyes, but showed no signs of sleeping yet.
“So?” She asked, her eyes still shut.
“Not much change, I think. We’ll see it better in the morning, but I think it moved by only about two degrees. We’re still days away.”
“Hmph…”
“Wait,” he said, noticing both ponies curled under their covers, “Shouldn’t we set some kind of watch?”
“Enh, the unicorns went to sleep too. Never anything to report on night shift. Be my guest if you want to anyway, I guess.” Scootaloo’s voice was slurred from the fatigue of the day catching up to her, while Rarity merely glanced at him for a moment. She held her gaze right up until she noticed Spike turning to look at her himself, before burying her head under the covers.
Spike drew his blanket over himself and lay down.
The moon slowly made its way over the road, emerging from the treeline as Spike watched its crawl across the stars. He sat on a rock on the side of the road, wrapped in his blanket. The nocturnal birds threw their occasional cries in the darkness of the clear night.
Even with the exhaustion of the day and the change in scenery, he still couldn’t find the relief of sleep. The nightmares had come back the moment he had closed his eyes. Wouldn’t they ever leave him alone? Was he really going to dream of blood and screams for the rest of his life? Why couldn’t he just find the embrace of slumber like Scootaloo? The filly seemed at peace, her regular breathing coming to his ears every now and then. Surely she had seen the same tragedies and horrors as him, right? Why was he incapable of moving past? Why was he so scarred? Was it a form of weakness on his part?
The soft patter of hooves on grass approached him. He turned his head sharply, sudden fear gripping his lungs.
Rarity stepped forth from the forest’s pitch-black shade. Spike sighed in relief, resuming his stargazing as she sat on the ground next to him.
“Can’t sleep?”
She shrugged.
“Too much on my mind, it seems.”
The unicorn watched the sky in silence next to Spike, immobile in the moonlight. She would sometimes shift her position slightly, occasionally glancing at the young dragon. Once or twice, she brought a hoof to her forehead, gently rubbing the nub of her horn. The second time made Spike glance at her sudden movement.
“I file it down every day.” She said, unprompted. “To prevent it from growing back.”
Her words came out almost mechanically as she stared straight ahead, her gaze now lowered to the horizon.
“It hurts. Well, no, not really, actually. It… it is more of a grating feeling, of sorts. Like a number of knives scraping across a chalkboard, except the board is your skull and the knives are somewhere inside your eye sockets. There are nerve endings in there, you know. In the horn. It is supposed to help control our magic.”
Spike watched the white mare spewing these words, her face slowly contorting between various emotions; anger, fear, annoyance, sadness. It was as if her own muscles couldn’t decide what she felt. Why was she even saying all of this?
“I hate it.”
Her voice cracked.
“I just… detest having to do this to myself! Do you understand? I… I-“
“Rarity! Rarity, what’s wrong?” Spike reached out with his hand, grabbing the mare’s shoulder. She, in turn, threw her legs around him in a crushing hug as she choked back sobs.
Spike remained stunned for a moment, his arms held up to the sides as the white unicorn shook against him. He slowly returned the embrace, awkwardly, still incredibly confused. Not knowing what else to do, he began whispering soothing reassurances to the mare.
“It’s okay, Rarity. We’re going to fix this, remember? We’ll make sure you never have to do it again, alright?”
She made a strangled sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob, before pulling away. Fanning herself with a hoof, she shook her head and let out a grim chuckle.
“Oh my goodness, just look at me crying like a filly and getting comforted by someone half my age. I must look like such a fool right now. Forgive me, Spike.”
“No, it’s okay, Rarity. I just don’t understand. What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
The white unicorn took a moment to compose herself, seemingly with great effort. Her eyes were still glistening with fresh tears when she spoke next.
“That unicorn we saw earlier today.”
Before Spike could ask what she meant, what that unknown mare had to do with any of this, and what she had done to cause such distress, Rarity interrupted his thoughts with a question.
“Did…” Her tone was hesitant, awkward. She seemed to struggle with the words, as if holding back despite herself. “Did Twilight ever… say what… what it felt like to be… afflicted?”
She turned to face him, her blue eyes as deep as the night around them as the moon shone on their surface. She looked straight in his own eyes, a slight quiver lingering on her lips.
He looked down, his mood darkening; his confusion still vivid but quickly forgotten. Of course Twilight had mentioned it. It had been his duty to gather all the available information, and Twilight had been an outstanding source of information in that department. He had detailed transcripts of at least three separate interviews with the lavender unicorn buried somewhere in the pages of the research log. He knew what the affliction felt like as much as was possible without being in its throes.
He knew just how sick, perverted and pervasive The Signal could be, how disgusting its influence was.
Should he tell her? What good could possibly come of it?
“You better sit down.”
He waited for the unicorn to settle, watching him attentively, before looking away and begin his explanation with his eyes fixated upon a small stone on the road.
“So, she, it’s… She said it’s kinda like when you sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night to eat a slice of cake. That sort of… guilty pleasure, where you know what you’re doing is wrong but you just can’t resist because it’s just so good and fun, or you just don’t care. Like, you tell yourself ‘oh, I really shouldn’t be doing this’ but you just do it anyway because deep down, you just don’t want to not do it. She said it’s just like all of that, but about a million times more irresistible.
“It’s just like that, but instead of some stupid cake, all you want are those horrible things; the rage, the violence, the screams and the threats. The Signal just makes you want to do those things. It just fills your head with these urges, those disgusting words they keep screaming, and she said that they never even feel wrong when you let them have their way. It’s only once you’re done, when you finally stop, that you see just what you did, and then you remember how much …fun you had. And she said it just drives you insane to know how horrible what you just did was, while still remembering how incredibly good it felt. She said it’s… she said killing feels even better than sex.”
“H-how could she say something like this? To someone your age?”
“The Signal makes her say a bunch of horrible stuff, I guess. ...She also said that the very worst part of it, of having all these urges in your head, is that they don’t even feel like they’re not yours. She said that she knows deep down that she shouldn’t like it, that she never wanted to hurt anyone, but she still did it willingly. She said she knows that it’s The Signal giving her all these urges and ideas that aren’t normal for her, but that she honestly couldn’t tell the difference. It must be what makes so many unicorns just… snap, knowing that you’ll always feel like you did it of your own free will, that you’ll always feel one hundred percent responsible for what you’ve done.”
He turned his head to look at her, and saw that she was trembling, her eyes shut and her hooves curled tight against her chest, silent tears pouring down her face. He had shed a few tears of his own, having plunged in the memories of those talks with Twilight and all the pain they had brought out of her. He had almost forgotten how much it hurt to have a loved one go through all the sorrow and madness he had just explained. And he just then remembered Rarity had a relative in that same situation.
“I’m sorry about that last part, I didn’t mean to remind you of-“
“NO! No, It’s fine. I… don’t worry about it. I’m the one who asked in the first place.” She wiped her tears with shaky hooves, looking up at the starry sky above.
“Why did you want to know?”
She took a few shuddering breaths, not taking her eyes off the stars.
“That unicorn we saw on the road got me thinking. I… I suppose I wanted to know the fate I avoided. No, actually, I think I needed to know. Thank you, Spike.”
She grabbed him again to pull him into another hug, placing him into her lap when she was done.
He watched her from below, her moonlit face hovering above him surrounded by stars as she gazed wordlessly in the distance.
His nightmares weren’t as intense that night.
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Also: Wow, Spike sure does talk a lot in here.
I loved that little moment at the end.
Doing great!
We adore Raritys description of how it feels when she files her horn down. We can't wait to see where this goes!
Honestly, I hope whoever or whatever is causing the Signal get the beating of a thousand lifetime. The damage, both in life and mind, will take a while to recover. And, even after the Signal does stop, the Unicorns are 'conditioned' that killing is fun and arousing. Those poor Unicorns are going to need some time to 'deprogrammed' themselves back to their normal mindset, then time afterward to get some serious therapy and comfort from friends and love ones.
...Seriously, a massively powerful and painful spell is what is needed for the trash that caused this whoa mess...!
C&Cs:
Hey, scoots?
> Capitalize ‘scoots’.
It points to The Signal.
> Lower the casing on ‘The’. The same goes for any similar cases.
“...the amount of power they receive is really really small,”
> Comma after the first ‘really’. Replace the comma with an ellipsis.
“...but about a million times more irresistible.
> Missing the ending quotation mark.
2753438
Actually, what the signal does to them is utterly permanent. Those unicorns they have in captivity have all been dehorned and thus can't even hear the Signal anymore. Just like with Rarity, once you lose your horn the Signal is powerless against you.
If its influence could be countered by sheer force of will, some of them would have shown signs of improvement after three whole months. There'll be a chapter later showing just how powerful this conditionning is.
...Where would they get a massively painful spell in a land where every magic-user has turned insane?
Thanks for the typos! (But I'm claiming artistic license for most of them)
2754962
I am not saying it is going to be easy, and I am not saying the recovery time is within a short year, it may take a few years. It will take every effects and everything to get them back to normal, or as close as normal as you can get.
True, but when they shut down the Signal (if they can), those insane magic-users are going to be angry for their trouble, including some tick-off Princesses. But, regardless, I just feel sorry for them, the ones affected by the Signal.
And, that's okay, it's your story.
2754962
I really hope that, after Spike manages to disable the signal, there will be some way to overwrite those destructive urges (maybe even using the same machinery or whatever is causing it?). Otherwise it would still leave the problem of thousands of bloodthirsty unicorns roaming around Equestria.
Awww, so the signal irreversibly screwed their brains up? Poor unicorns
Please continue
You better write more of this. PLLEEEEEAAASE! SO many good stories I have read where the author just stopped. And this is a really REALLY good story. Can't wait for more!
2907942
I'm working on it, I swear!
2908599
Rofl. Sorry if I sounded threatening, didn't mean to. AND HOORAY! Can't wait to read more. :D
So are the princesses affected, or not?
That charcoal note, well, probaly,
But then if 'Tia raised the sun, then obviously not.
Contradiction much?
2754962
And thus, the epic adventure BEGINS!
...
We dont have a map.
Or even a boat.
...or a "We". :l
so the signal is electromagnetic, but can cause mechanical vibrations? how is that possible? just wondering.
Hmmm, unicorns can regrow their horns? Interesting. At least Rarity could recover after all this is over then.
I'm a chemist, not an electrical engineer, but the general concept is reasonably feasible. It's really just basic triangulation. The biggest issue is that at distances that small, you just don't have the kind of precision and sensitivity. No natural antenna, or even macro-scale electronics in general, would be able to pick up on the signal and give you a reasonably accurate feedback on it. The differences in signal power just aren't big enough, not without amplification and the kind of precision equipment you just can't manufacture under circumstances like that. Something the size of a room might do it, but not the size of a shoebox.
That's the kind of detail you can reasonably handwave for the sake of a story, though. As technobabble goes, this was some of the better I've seen. You didn't use the word "quantum" even once.
Good job on the detector, I think it was made very well. Now if only there was a chapter where we could read more about it...