Chapter 35

  Royal Rumble,

  Part 3.

  “Aww. You guys have stopped already? That's no fun!” says Jade mockingly. “Let's see about finishing this roast before it goes bad and I get hungry!”

  You have acquired blueprints: Methane, Ethane, Ethanol, Propane, Propanol, FD&C Yellow #5,....

  “Oh. Looks like Alura's having fun! Guess she got a kick out of that chemistry book... WAIT! FD&C Yellow #5? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! Must have been just a streak of luck” shrugs Jade “Oh well, now that we have propane, I can finish this BBQ just fine!”

  Jade sets up a tank of propane under pressure, connects it to the grill, and starts BBQing in earnest. “Mmm! That smells so good, wouldn't you boys agree?”

  “Damn it! Now she's just making fun of us!” Says one lieutenant.

  “There's only so much we, the proud army of Sydonia, can be looked down on!” Says another.

  “MAGES!! Take the earth out from under her! NOW!!”-King Sydonia

  The earth mages do as they're commanded and open the ground directly under Jade's feet, causing him to fall into the earth, the grill falling down after him. Then the ground begins closing up, only for Jade to come flying out again.

  “You know, that might actually have worked, if you had caught me by surprise instead of so generously announcing your intentions. Lucky for you, I managed to finish grilling this lovely boar steak, or I might have gone into a feeding frenzy!” says Jade before chewing a steak bigger than his torso like conveyor belt on an assembly line. “Are you truly done now? Because it's now my turn, and I'm not going to be so chivalrous.” Jade snarls before whipping out a prototype coil-gun and pointing it at the enemy army.

  Meanwhile, back at the ship, looking at Alura and Iluna.

  “Oh man! Just when I was getting the hang of it.”-Alura

  System: Your understanding of chemistry is insufficient for what you are attempting. Your [Synthesis] privileges are suspended.

  “Meanie!” Pouts Alura

  “Hahaha! That's amazing. You managed to create a Traveler formula on your first try, by sheer accident!”-Iluna

  “Yeah, but then my fun was just suddenly stopped. Pooh!”-Alura

  “Good to see there is still a kid in there somewhere. Still, learning the chemical formula of hemoglobin, the primary chemical of blood. That's downright fascinating!” says Iluna with wonder. “Perhaps it's time to read the final book.”

  “I guess. Not like we can run over to help Jade now, and we don't have anything better to do.”-Alura

  “Yeah. We'd just be getting in the way of someone who can wipe out a goddess, of all things, and the army that came with her.”-Iluna

  “I can still remember when he could barely do anything and I had to carry him around in a backpack!”-Alura

  “Wait. WHAT?! That guy, who soloed several squads of soldiers, broke into my cell through the walls, allowed us to solo the army of a snake god, then killed the god himself, with ease, before teleporting us away so he can deal with his mother goddess and her armies, solo, was nothing more than a barely helpless bauble you had to carry around in a backpack?!”-Iluna

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Yep! Can hardly believe it myself, and I was there the whole time! In this world less than a month and already killing gods! I'm so proud of him...”-Alura

  “And why are you proud?!”-Iluna.

  “Because I was and always will be his first.”-Alura

  “PHRASING!”-Iluna.

  The two stare at each other for a few seconds before they grab their bellies and start laughing heartily.

  “Okay. I deserved that. And you do understand innuendo! Good job!”-Alura.

  “Can we get on with the book already!”-Iluna.

  Introduction to Nuclear Physics, Subatomic Particle Physics, And the Dangers of Radiation

  Dear reader.

  Now that you've been introduced to the basics of biology and chemistry, it's time we go into the basics of what makes it all work. The atom and its components.

  All atoms are the smallest possible sample of an element while still identifiable as that element. They are all composed of a mix of positively charged protons held together by neutrons and orbited by negatively charged electrons. With the exception of hydrogen, the most common and stable form of any element is an equal number of protons and neutrons. While all these particles are composed of even tinier particles, that is well beyond the reach of this book. Suffice to say, when we're talking about particles this tiny, the laws of physics, what we understand to hold the universe together, get strange.

  As you, dear reader, have likely already learned through Introduction to Chemistry, the way these electrons orbit between elemental nuclei is the bond that holds molecules together. Whenever we encounter an atom where the number of electrons does not match the number of protons, we call that an ion. Positively charged ions have more protons while negatively charged ions have more electrons. They seek each other out to share electrons and make their charge neutral. That's the basic principle of chemistry, as you have already learned, but this is by no means infallible nor unbreakable.

  These bonds can be broken by many ways, but in this book, we're going to cover radiation and how that can affect both atomic and molecular bonds. And why it's so dangerous.

  Radiation, as strictly defined, is when matter or energy radiates, or moves away, from an object and affects others. There are two types of radiation, ionizing and non-ionizing. The latter is less likely to cause permanent harm. Examples are light and heat. The former is inherently dangerous and becomes more so the more energy it carries.

  The most common form of ionizing radiation is ultraviolet light, a frequency below violet in the light spectrum. Prolonged exposure, at best, causes skin damage known as “sunburn.” At higher doses, it can cause nausea, cancer (one of the ways the body turns on itself as shown in Introduction to Biology) and even straight up death. And this is the least dangerous form.

  “Wait. It gets more dangerous than straight up death?!”-Iluna and Alura

  Yes. It's shocking, but death can be a mercy compared to what radiation can do to you. It can damage the DNA, the very blueprints of your body, causing harmful mutations, cancers, turn your body against you, melt your skin off, or give you a long, slow, grueling death. And what's worse, even if you survive, your damaged DNA will be carried on to future children, giving them all sorts of possible biological defects that they will not only carry for the rest of their lives, but hand down to their children as well. Radiation is not a toy, nor a weapon to be used lightly!

  “Wait. Jade use 'radiation' as a weapon?!!” Alura cries out as she looks back over at the mushroom cloud still climbing into the sky.

  Yes, radiation can, and has been, used as a weapon in the past on my, Jade's, home world, even after being outlawed by the international community.

  On a planet's surface, the atmosphere is what blocks most dangerous radiation from affecting the surface. In space, the very same stars that give us warmth and light also emit deadly levels of radiation at a staggering rate.

  And that's far from the only source. As listed earlier, atoms tend to be at their most stable when they have equal numbers of protons and electrons. When atoms have more neutrons than protons, they tend to break down into simpler elements, releasing radiation in three distinct ways.

  Alpha radiation. Which is when an atom sheds two neutrons and two protons in a helium nucleus.

  Beta radiation. Which is when it sheds extra electrons.

  Gama radiation. When the atom releases light waves in the gamma frequency.

  There is one more form of radiation that is even deadlier. High-speed neutrons. At their most harmless, they convert non-radioactive isotopes into radioactive isotopes by changing the number of neutrons in the nucleus.

  What makes them especially dangerous, though, is when they collide with a super-heavy element, like Plutonium 239, or Uranium 235.

  They can split the atom.

  You might be thinking “but it's an atom. It's so tiny. What harm could that do?”

  The answer is, complete and total devastation. When atoms split, it isn't a harmless process. They also release energy calculated by the equation E=mc^2. Sure, their mass may be negligible, but when multiplied by the speed of light squared, the damage is enormous, and atoms don't split alone. They release more high-speed neutrons, which split more atoms, which release more neutrons. The resulting yield ranges from thousands of tons of TNT, to millions. And that's nothing compared to when the heat and pressure results in nuclear fusion where two or more atoms wind up being fused together to produce heavier elements. It's how stars generate heat and light.

  Radioactive isotopes breaking down is not measured like normal decay. It's measured in something known as a half-life. It takes the same amount of time for a half of a kg of radioactive matter to break down as it does for half of half of a kg. This is used to great, if imperfect, effect in detecting the age of archaeological discoveries.

  What this book means to say, is that it could take eons for the site of an atomic explosion to be rendered harmless simply by waiting for the problem to go away on its own...