[Weird was not in or near the fortress for the centipede fiasco. He was too busy cleaning up the mess at the microcline tower. He knows nothing of the centipedes, and nobody has mentioned them to him. That you would mis-use peepers, or outright kill him, is exactly why weird is trying to keep him a secret from you.
as for why weird didn't try to reverse evolve peepers further? The genetic broom closet carried by modern species has moth-eaten DNA. The method used causes random recombinations, relocations, deletions, and transcription errors. Chickens still have genes for socketed teeth, but they are turned off by more recent regulation genes. Peepers has an unstable genome. He wasn't meant to reproduce, and isn't a dinosaur... he's a horrible mutant chicken that's been tampered with by magical means in a clumsy, and only partially directed fashion. Weird does *not* want eric finding out about thari's books. He will burn the things before he willingly let's eric have them. He considers eric to be a mousefart away from going batshit, and mindcrushing and killing everyone in the fortress, and giving him that kind of power is soul chilling scary to him. He will keep peepers a secret as long as possible, and try to make a compelling lie about how he managed it. Probably stick with the story he told zanz, that way it stays consistent, because changing the story with different people is how you get caught.]
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Weird woke up drenched in sweat a second time.
He tried to remember what he had been dreaming about. Like all attempts at recalling dreams, the ending came to mind first, and had to be worked backward to get to the beginning.
Hugo had gone crazy in the dining hall and had eaten him. But before that...
He concentrated.
He had gone to the dining hall, because of the commotion. Hugo had caused a commotion in the dining hall by going on a rampage.... why? He couldn't recall....
Before that he had been showing other dwarves something... what was it? It was huge, and made of white porcaline, with shiny metal strapping... it had smelled like... like... nitrate. That's right. He was showing off the ostwald furnace he had helped eric design.. but why?
The fortress needed explosives.. because..... there was a war going on. Eric had been putting geases on him to reveal everything he knew about explosive devices, and to assist him completely and without hesitation or reservation. .....he remembered spilling the beans, with an eager, oblivious smile everythhing he knew about the manhattan project, uranium refinement, historic warhead designs, and modern hydrogen bombs.....
the realization that the ostwald reactor was the *least* of the dangerous things he had been blissfully and obliviously helping eric make in that dream dawned on him, and he wondered why he hadn't woken up sooner! He had discussed calutrons vs centrifuges, and ways to chemically rfine uranium metals from pitchblende... gods... he was glad it was only a dream.
...kinetic detonators used on little boy... heavy hydrogen synthesis....
He shook. He didn't have any more alcohol on the table... and he wasn't sure drinking it the last time had helped anything. If anything, the dreams had been even more disturbing.
He slipped on the pigtail slippers he had been gifted after his hospital stay, and slipped out into the cold fortress air. It was dark. The sconces weren't lit in the hallways, because it was designated nighttime. Underground, you lost track of what time of day it was without subtle little reminders like that.
Not even thinking about where he was going, he just let his feet carry him, as he took a walk through the desolate hallways to clear his head.
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Topic: If Bay Forum were a Mountain Hall, continued... FULL DISCLOSURE (Read 265803 times)