Who Knew Clouds Could Conduct Electricity
"I can't just assume copper's the right choice," Arista said, laying out samples of every conductive material she had access to across her workbench, copper, obviously, but also scraps of mithril, adamantium, and, on a hunch, a small chunk of leftover cloud material from the wingsuit stockpile. "Copper conducts electricity back home because of its specific atomic structure. That doesn't mean the same logic holds here, in a world where half my best materials do things copper never could."
"What's the cloud material doing on the test bench?" Bram asked, eyeing it warily, the specific wariness of a man who had personally survived several of its previous applications going sideways.
"I actually want it to fail this test," Arista admitted, setting up her improvised conductivity rig: a small hand-cranked charge generator wired to each sample in turn, with a simple gauge to measure how readily current passed through. "If it's a poor conductor, it could work as an insulator instead, something to keep the crystal chamber's charge properly contained where I don't want it, the same way rubber insulates wiring back home. That would actually solve a separate problem I hadn't fully worked out yet."
She started with mithril first, curious how it would behave given everything she already knew about its mana properties.
[Test Result: Mithril][Mana Conductivity: Extremely High][Electrical Conductivity: Extremely Poor]
"...Huh." She stared at the readout, genuinely surprised despite having no strong expectation either way. "That's a clean split. Incredible at channeling mana, almost completely inert against electrical current. Different kind of energy transfer entirely, I guess, makes sense, actually, now that I think about it. Magic and electricity clearly aren't the same underlying force here, even if they can sometimes interact."
Adamantium came next.
[Test Result: Adamantium][Electrical Conductivity: Moderate]
"Middle of the road," Arista noted, unsurprised. "Tough, stable, does most things reasonably well without excelling at any one property. Consistent with everything else I know about it."
Then the cloud material.
She struck the crank, expecting the needle to barely twitch, already half-composing the sentence where she explained how she'd found her insulator.
The needle didn't twitch.
It slammed.
[Test Result: Cloud Material][Electrical Conductivity: Exceptional — Highest Recorded]
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Arista stared at the gauge, then at the small, innocuous scrap of pale, springy material sitting on her workbench, completely upending every assumption she'd walked in with.
"...That's not possible. That's the opposite of what I expected."
Bram leaned over, reading the result himself, and let out a short, delighted laugh. "...Who knew clouds could conduct electricity."
"That's, actually, that tracks with something, doesn't it." Arista sat back slowly, the pieces reorganizing themselves in her head. "Real clouds. Lightning. Storms generate electrical charge constantly, and it builds up in actual atmospheric clouds until it discharges as lightning. I never made that connection before, because I've spent two years treating this stuff purely as a physical, mechanical material, bouncing, absorbing, flexing. I never once tested it for anything electrical, because nothing I'd built before ever needed to."
"So instead of an insulator," Claire said, arriving in time to catch the tail end of the results, studying the readout with immediate professional interest, "you've just found your best conductor. By a significant margin, based on that spike."
"...Which changes the whole design," Arista said slowly, already flipping to a fresh page, the entire exterior net concept reorganizing itself in her head. "I don't need copper wire wrapped around the hull at all. I could weave the entire net from cloud material instead, same flexibility, same durability I already trust completely, and apparently better conductivity than anything else on this table."
"Would it still need the ceramic standoffs?" Claire asked. "Keeping it separated from the actual hull?"
"Probably even more than before, given how well it apparently conducts," Arista said, already sketching the revised exterior. "But that's a solvable problem. I already know how cloud material behaves under stress, how to shape it, how to secure it properly. This isn't a new material I need to learn from scratch. It's a property of a material I already understand intimately, just, one I never happened to test until right now."
Bram studied the whole exchange with visible amusement. "So the material that once bounced your pickaxe back at you, that carried me through a hydra encounter, that's currently keeping our zeppelin's, well, previous zeppelin's, seals intact, is also apparently the best electrical conductor you've got."
"Apparently." Arista grinned, delighted despite the upended assumptions, already redrawing the copper net as a cloud-material net instead. "It's honestly kind of perfect, now that I actually think about it. One material, doing basically everything this entire project needs, structurally and electrically. Less material sourcing, less risk of two different substances failing to cooperate at a seam somewhere."
"...Please tell me you're not going to make the entire submarine out of cloud material," Bram said, wary. "Given the last time you tried an all-cloud-material vehicle, I ended up at seven percent HP."
"No, no, structural hull's still proper steel and adamantium, same as always. This is just the exterior net, purpose-built for conductivity, not load-bearing." Arista waved off the concern, already deep in the redesign. "Different application entirely. This one's not trying to punch through a resistant barrier. It's just trying to sit there and zap anything that touches it."
"...Fine. I'll allow it." Bram settled back, watching her work with the specific, weary fondness of someone who had, by now, made complete peace with never fully understanding how she arrived at her conclusions, only that they usually, eventually, worked.