GRC Media is a font of information on the Big Calc. The core idea is simple: the equations necessary to understand fluid dynamics ("how water flows") are unbelievably complex, as math-intensive as Big Bang research or the particle research they conduct at places like CERN. The Big Calc is a huge number-crunching operation that uses computational power from the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, linked computers at the colleges, and a proprietary high-performance system at Everlite Gas & Electric, to solve certain previously unsolvable problems in fluid dynamics.
Supporters, including local environmentalists that Everlite "reached out to" according to one article, claim that the discoveries will lead to vast improvements in the efficiency of hydroelectric dams and related renewable energy technologies, encouraging energy companies to move away from coal and petroleum toward renewables. Detractors argue that the sheer amount of energy required to perform these calculations (energy still drawn mostly from fossil fuels) is so enormous that it's not worth it. The arguments have raged back and forth on GRC Media's network for years, culminating in a protest outside an Everlite executive's house a few weeks ago, but the detractors haven't been able to stop the operation, which is scheduled for completion in September of this year.
So the clock is ticking, and Daphne Clear still won't let you get to work until she's satisfied that she's hid evidence of your activities. Annoying.
Where can I find Nin?
I find Roscoe's van.
I visit Hobland at his compound.
I introduce myself to Lucinda Palys-Nash.
I check my phone.
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Lucinda has a studio in the Florence Arts & Industry building, which is a half-hour away by bike. The big whitewashed building is easy to navigate, and you find Lucinda between a botanica and a dance studio. A horrific humanoid puppet hangs above the entrance. It looks like you're burning to death in an old building with a tin roof and the tin is melting onto your eyes and igniting your hair. You don't like the puppet.
"Don't mind him," Lucinda says, bustling around a huge conic armature of twisted steel. "He's harmless."
Lucinda Palys-Nash is a white woman in late middle age, short and round but with a core of muscle, like a blacksmith. She wears her frizzy hair tied back in a bun and dresses in a stained smock and old combat boots. Lucinda has the friendly smile of a high school art teacher, but her eyes are sharp and just a little bit zealous: the same eyes as the pictures of Frida Kahlo and other surrealists pasted onto the walls. Hundreds of books line the shelves among the sculptures, tools, and oddities; her metal desk has an old laptop surrounded by photos of the Broad Brook Caern, including a slightly younger Lucinda with a teenage Hobland, whom you recently met at his compound, and photos of Harmonie and Melodie helping her around the studio.
"I bet you're here to learn," Lucinda says.
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