🦺 The Origins of Electrical Safety Standards

Welcome to the 20th edition of Safe For Work. Someone commented that the last edition was ‘trippy.’ We’re leaning in to that and focusing on science fiction stories over news you can get anywhere.

Today a story inspired by The Matrix.

There are some who believe they are intelligent. 

“They are certainly angry, there’s no arguing with that,” says Professor Sumaya, sitting across from me at the table in the conference-room, taking half-bites of her sandwich. 

“I think there’s plenty of arguing with that, actually,” I reply, taking half-sips of my soup. Lots of us eat like that, here-- the ones with fillings. There’s a sort of buzzy feeling in the air, and it gets a lot worse for us, for some reason, if we open our mouths just a little bit too wide.

Outside the window of the conference-room, a bright blue dragon the size of a planet-killer asteroid unleashes a bolt of lightning at the Research Center with a sound like getting whipped on the back of your eyeball-- and a flash like that, too-- I can see it even as I’m blinking, and afterwards, for a few seconds. I flinch a little, because I’m a human being, but only a little-- a lot less than I did, first coming here four months ago. 

“We can’t project our ideas about anger and the expression of anger onto a species native to another planet in another solar system-- a species we don’t even know is intelligent,” I say, as the ringing in my ears slowly decays. 

“Oh, they’re definitely intelligent,” says Professor Sumaya. She’s going to discover that for sure and give a talk on it, someday, she’s decided-- she’s going to be the one to prove it. “Think of all the time we spent observing them from orbit.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”-- I really don’t. I’m here as an electrical safety technician, not a biologist. All I ever saw from orbit was the ground, rising towards me as we came in to land. 

“Oh, it’s really quite fascinating,” Professor Sumaya tells me-- “Katherine”-- that’s her name, on her badge, and all her reports, and the door to her office. But I never call her that. I keep meaning to, but I can’t quite seem to get the sounds out of my mouth. “Before we actually ventured down onto the surface, we observed that the dragons of Versasis IV only discharged on the order of 800 kilowatts or so-- except in very extreme circumstances. It doesn’t take much more than that for them to kill their prey, or to defend their territory from rival dragons-- or to put on a lightshow to impress a potential mate.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that,” I say, a little too eagerly, as I take another half-sip of my soup. I think about what sort of lightshow I would put on for Katherine Sumaya as a mating display if I could generate that kind of power and send it cascading out of my reticular splines… if I had reticular splines; that’s what they’re called, right? Or maybe I’m thinking of something else. Not a biologist.

“It’s impressive, sure, but that’s only about 600 kilowatts of power you’re seeing-- there’s some chemistry in the air out there that causes it to really light up, but that’s chemistry, not current. It’s gentle stuff, all being equal.”

“Huh.”

“When they started hurling bolts at the research center, though…”-- Katherine Sumaya takes a glance out the window, at the half dozen dragons circling above-- circling angrily? Maybe. She thinks so. “They clearly don’t want us here.”

Lots of things don’t want us in lots of places. Stars don’t want us near them; they spit out radiation and heat that would cook us alive if not for strong EM-shielding on our ships. Planets don’t want us in space at all-- they yank us down with their gravity, dampen our momentum with the drag of their thick atmospheres-- and so often those atmospheres are poisonous or caustic or too hot or too cold or too thin to breathe or too thick to move through. Sometimes a planet’s sky rains down hailstones so massive they can tear straight through the steel siding of an outpost. Sometimes a planet’s sky has no clouds to block the sun. 

Sometimes a planet’s sky is full of angry thunder dragons who-- I have to admit, as much as I hate to admit-- clearly don’t want us here. 

“Well,” I sigh, as another crack of lightning lights up the inside of my skull-- and does nothing whatsoever to the building as the lightning-rods above us absorb all 4500 kilowatts and cast it down harmlessly into the ground. I’m good at my job. “Not much that they can do about it.”

SFW Films presents ‘Walter’

From the story inspired by the transistor.

See you next week as we enter June and the theme of safety and regulations. Stay safe.