| PHD #283: Hippopotamuses? Hypotenuses |
| Summary: | Rose begins tutoring Shiner in basic maths he'll need to understand Viper 101. |
| Date: | 06 Dec 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None. |
| Players: |
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| Ships Library - Deck 9 - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Racks of books extend deep into this room, nearly darkening the overhead lights towards the back. The shelves are neatly labeled to each category with nearly everything represented here. Fiction, Sci-Fi, Romance, and everything down to comic books has been loaded up onto the shelves. A smaller research area at the back has a large table for maps to be opened-up. Nearer the door is a small library of movies that covers some of the most recent blockbusters and flows through some of the more campy movies from about two decades before. Next to the door, a Petty Officer can usually be found at a desk to help someone checkout their selections. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #283 |
Shiner is seated over in a quiet corner of the library, 'studying'. By which I mean he has a book in one hand, a pencil in the other, and his snoring has been kept at least to a soft rumble.
Rose comes walking in, waving her little laminated security badge to whoever's on duty here. Now that she can see, she's beginning to have greater access throughout the ship, and the library is definitely one of those places. A small ring-bound notebook in hand, she flips it open, and begins hunting for books. After a short while, she brings a short stack to a table, books including topics such as chemistry and other physical sciences. Whump, the books go onto the table, to which she lets out a soft peep followed by a sotto voce, "Sorry!" To anyone who might be nearby.
Shiner jerks upright, eyes popping open at the sound, then gives a hurried look around. Nobody saw, right? He settles the book down on the desk in front of him once more, flicking through to try to find the page he was at. It's only after a moment that it registers and he takes a look at Rose's stack of books, then to Rose herself and back. "Er… did you need somebody to read those for you?" he offers politely. Anything to get out of studying.
Rose blinks owlishly at Shiner from behind those awful thick-framed glasses with large lenses. While Shiner may not be so observant, from the last time he saw her, her eyes were quite cloudly and she was still on the verge of losing her pallor from radiation sickness. Now, she's practically healthy, and no cloudy white fills her pupils. "Sorry? Oh! No, but thank you. I'm quite able to read, myself. Although, don't tell Dr. Adair. I ought not to be doing any long reading so soon, but I can't help myself." A kind smile, and she settles into her seat beside her small mountain of books. "Your voice is familiar but I can't place it. Have we met?"
"Oh, right, them braille books, is it?" Shiner queries, doing feely actions across his own book. He nods, turning on his best, most charming smile. "We met the other day, Ms. Ibbhanas. On the deck? Dave Wright? Chief Damon was threatening to break my legs, I think?"
"That's right! Mr. Wright!" Quite dead-on, the woman leans over to extend her hand to Shiner, offering a friendly smile. "No, actually, things are all fixed now. Dr. Adair repaired my eyes. See?" With her other hand, she tips her glasses down the bridge of her nose, and she blinks exaggeratedly for Shiner. "No more cataracts."
Shiner grasps the hand automatically, brows raising at the news. "Well, shit on a stick! You can /see/ now?" he queries, free hand going to smooth down his hair and generally try to make himself more presentable. An easy grin. "So now you've seen the Chief, right? So when are you going to give him up and come running to me instead?"
Rose shakes her head, laughing softly. "Mr. Wright, you should be ashamed of yourself. First of all, that's not proper language for a library. And I suggest you keep your voice down," she says, that last part lower too. "We don't want to disturb anyone else. And isn't it against military regulations to try and steal a superior's girlfriend? If not, it should be." She turns partly to her books and begins sorting through them. 'Organic Chemistry' is emblazed on one of the books, featuring images of alcohol chains and other obscure letters-and-sticks that Shiner might not recognize.
Shiner looks almost pained for a moment. "Well, I can't help being this good looking, you know," he points out, voice lowering. "If being hot is a crime, well, I guess I'm doomed, huh?" He grins easily, leaning forward to have a good look at her eyes. "Dude, how did they fix them? That's awesome. You wouldn't even /know/. Can you see, like, everything?" He holds up a hand with two fingers. "How many fingers?"
"Two," Rose laughs again, shaking her head. She seems willing to let the 'hot' topic move to the background. "My eyesight is somewhat worse off than it was before, but that was to be expected. I'm stuck with these granny glasses -" She takes off said glasses, folds them, and tucks them into her sweater pocket. "- until we can find a pair that are more my prescription. But, that may not happen, so if I need to do reading I need to use these magnifying glasses." She pats the pocket at her hip.
"Ah, the Chief can probably do some kind of magic with your glasses if you asked him nicely," Shiner tells her, quite seriously. "Tell you what, though, if I could just all of a sudden see again, I wouldn't be wasting any time dicking about in a frakking library for one thing."
Rose blinks owlishly again, this time not intentionally. "What do you mean? I've been dying to be able to see again," she says, resting a hand on the aforementioned orgo book. "There was only a limited amount of work I could do from memory, with someone else taking notes. Rather frustrating. Now, I can finally come up with all the formulas and quantities and whatnot for the hydroponics freighter! Cultivating a self-sustaining ecosystem with as little man-driven mechanism as possible doesn't happen overnight, you know." She tilts her head slightly, regarding Shiner with curiosity. "Why, what would you do?" Oh no.
Shiner smirks. "Well, put it this way, Ms. Ibbhanas, the only things I'd be reading would have glossy pages and an age restriction warning on the front. I'm no scholar, me."
"Age restri… oh." Rolling her eyes but smirking at Shiner's comments. "Mr. Wright, it's a wonder you get any work done at all. I don't think I've met someone so obsessed with the female form before. Don't you have any hobbies?" At that point, the redhead flips open the orgo book, which sends up a small cloud of dust. Cough. Cough cough. Rose waves her hand in front of her, clearing the dust away. Seems no one in nine months has had any interest in organic chemistry… fancy that.
"Sure I've got hobbies," Shiner defends himself. "I just haven't had a lot of chance to practice them lately is all. That and I'm supposed to be spending every minute of every day reading all this aeronautics shite." He rolls his eyes, wafting dust away from himself with his book. "Anyone who'd study for /fun/ needs their head examined."
There are two types of nerds in the world: the ones that vehemently defend their intellectual adventures, and the ones that quietly accept that they are a minority. Rose is of the latter. "I see," she says quietly, a sad frown emerging from her facial features. She casts a forlorn glance at the open chemistry book, turning pages without reading them. Shiner made Rose sad.
Shiner hesitates. Uh. Faux pas somewhere? He reaches to pat her hand, reassuring her, "Uh, not that I'm saying you're nuts or anything. Just that.. you know. Studying." He pulls a face. "I've got other hobbies, see? I swim, and I climb, and stuff. Well, mostly swim right now, but maybe I'll get back to climbing soon. Doc says I'm not allowed to dive any more, though. Sucks, huh?"
Rose seems pleasantly surprised. Good change of topic. "Flying? You mean, Raptors and Vipers and the like?" She asks. "That's, well, fantastic! You're going to get a commission, and everything? What are you studying?" Now, she's curious again, as the nerd-girl re-emerges from her shell. She produces her granny-glasses and puts them on, peering over at the book in front of Shiner.
"Hopefully," Shiner agrees, turning the book so she can see. "It's pretty hard work, though. I mean, a whole bunch of it just makes no sense at all. I think I've just about got the hang of the X and Y and Z thing with the DRADIS, but… yeah… the math bit? I'm kinda lost. I mean, what's this about distances and squares and hippopotamuses and stuff? It's like a whole other language!"
"Trigonometry, and that's hypotenuses," Rose corrects, scooting closer so she can get a good look. "Oh, okay. So, lookie here -" She points at the page, showing a right triangle. "If you know any two of the sides of a right triangle, you can figure out the third. The easiest example is a three-four-five triangle." To which she points one out. "You follow this formula." She points out the Pythagorean Theorem. "See? Or would you like me to break it down further for you?"
"I'm not stupid," Shiner is keen to point out, although his brow furrows considerably when she begins to explain. "But… it totally doesn't make any sense to me. Where did these squares come from? I mean, I've got the triangle, right? I've figured that's like… the X and the Y thingy. Ax thingy. But I don't get why there's boxes been drawn on them."
Rose peers up at him over her thick-framed glasses. "I never said you were stupid, Mr. Wright." She glances down at the book again, which likely assumes a fundamental understanding of trigonometry, geometry, and radians. "Tell me, Mr. Wright, what level of schooling did you complete?"
"Well, all of them," Shiner replies, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I was captain of the swim team in my senior year and everything. And that bitch Rhiannon Evans still wouldn't go to the prom with me. Frakking pyramid jocks. Hrmf."
Rose begins tapping her foot in irritation, although it doesn't reach her face. Wel,l mostly. "All of them? I trust you completed primary and secondary schools. Did you attend college? University? Because I'm beginning to suspect you could do with some tutoring in fundamentals. Math, trig, that sort of thing. Else I suspect you won't get past this chapter in one piece."
"College?" Shiner scoffs. "Come on, I'm hardly a scholar. Besides, it'd be way too expensive. I used to work at the pool. But I don't need a whole load of math and stuff. Just enough to learn this is all."
Rose simply stares at him blankly for a moment. She then gives a determined nod. "Then, Mr. Shiner, I am going to give you a crash-course in 'just enough'. I would recommend you skip this chapter for now," she says, tapping on the page. "If you can, that is. Because quite frankly, I am teaching late grade-school children in Mrs. Koios' classes that know how to find the hypotenuse of a right triangle. And before you get upset, I'm not implying you are dumb. I'm sure that none of those children know what the correct PSI for oxygen supply in a Viper cockpit is. All I'm trying to convey is that you need to know fundamentals before trying to tackle something like this. I'm fairly certain pilots require a college degree before trying for the Academy. So, what do you think?" She tilts her head, giving him a small smile.
Shiner wrinkles his nose. "I'm not going to any classes with a bunch of kids," he states plainly. "I'd rather spend years figuring it out for myself than sit there like a lemon with a bunch of rugrats taking the piss. Anyway, I'm getting there with this. I know how to figure coordinates and everything. It's just this hippopotamus bit that's got me stumped."
Rose shakes her head slightly. "I wasn't suggesting you attend school with the children. I was simply looking for your commitment. Now, hypotenuse. Let's say you have a triangle that looks like this…" And she begins sketching on a piece of scrap paper.