vol.1, no.5

E-Week Results

Page 5

Should Engineers Pay Less Than Arts

Students?page 10 $

Flexible Devices: A

Dream Come True? page 8

+ RESISTANCE: Part I

+ Cabbage Patties

C E S

22 January 2013 Vol. 1, No.5

Contributors EDITOR:Brigid Cami

LAYOUT:David BaileyBrigid CamiKieran Mak

PHOTOGRAPHY:Brigid CamiWikimedia Commons

The Plumber’s Ledger is a Publication of the Engineering Undergraduate Society of McGill University. The views expressed are solely the opinions of the authors and do not necessar-illy represent the position of the EUS. For questions, comments, and complaints, as well as more information on the policies of the Plumber’s Ledger, please use the contact information below. Use this contact informa-tion also if you have an interest in contrib-uting content to the Plumber’s Ledger on a one-time or regular basis.

The Plumber’s [email protected]. 1, No. 522 January 2013

Information

WRITERS:David BaileyFrédérick ChagnonMarc ChelalaKieran MakErika TimoshenkoJason Willems

ARTWORK:Justin Turcotte

ADVISING:David Bailey

2

| The Plumber’s Ledger

2013 January 22

Logo and cover layout theme designed by Kieran Mak.

From the Editor:

Happy New Year and welcome to the fifth issue of The Plumber’s Led-ger! With a brand new year we wel-come a brand new cover design and logo, brought to you by Kieran Mak.

We hope your winter break went splendidly and that E-Week wel-comed you back to McGill with a smash. Now is the time to take advantage of Blues Pub before we get caught up in that midterm funk, again.

Once again, thanks to our ever-perseverent writers who regularly attend the meetings and make this publication. This month, Bailey cov-ers the much-anticipated E-Week results on page 5! Chagnon returns with the other side of the story, RE-SISTANCE, and Timoshekno once again brings us a unique new recipe. Mak examines the age-old question: should we be paying less than arts students? And Chelala brings us a taste of the Consumer Electronics Show.

Finally, we are always looking for new talent. If you have anything you consider a skill, send an email to [email protected] for more information or to attend one of our meetings.

Please note the QR Code on the opposite page and do not dismiss the discrete “like” symbol nestled in the corner.

Brigid Cami,Editor

3

The Plumber’s Ledger |

22 January 2013

in this issue:

Letter from the Editor.......................................................2

News from the EUS...........................................................4

Beer, Rivarly, and Rowdiness.......................................5

Cabbage Patties...................................................................7

Flexible Devices: A Dream Come True......................8

Should Engineers Pay Less than Arts Students?...10

RESISTANCE Part I: The Launch................................12

Why So Serious? by Justin Turcotte..........................16

View it in colour at www.facebook.com/theplumbersledger


4 2013 January 22

NEWS FROM THEWelcome back to a new semester! We’re all excited to be here again and kick off some new and return-ing events. Here’s a quick sample of what we’re up to over the next couple of weeks:

e-weekThe semester kicked off with departments participat-ing in four intense days of competitions (with class attendance coincidentally hitting all-time lows). Con-gratulations to Mechanical for winning the trophy!

ski-tripThis past weekend the EUS went out with 56 students on its 10th annual Ski Trip to Mont Ste Anne, just out-side of Quebec City. If you didn’t make it out this year, certainly check it out next year because it’s an event you don’t want to miss!

tech weekFrom January 28th until February 1st, McGill EUS has organized a week-long series of events and talks ex-ploring and showcasing the many possibilities avail-able to future engineers. It’s an excellent chance both to network and to discover the wide variety of differ-ent careers that span the field of engineering. Events include a presentation from Marc Garneau, former astronaut, engineer, and current Liberal Leader-ship Candidate, discussing engineers’ role in society. Check your inboxes for the latest Pipeline to get fur-ther details of all of the week’s events.

blues pubDespite it being early in the semester, the record for number of cases sold has already been shattered thanks to Burn the Record with Fire Blues Pub, hosted by Chem Eng! Be sure to keep showing up every Fri-day and perhaps another record will be just around the corner!

activities dayEUS will be holding its semesterly Activities Day on January 22nd from 10am-4pm. We’ll have reps from all of our committees, clubs, and design teams to tell you a little bit about what they do and answer any of your questions. It’s a great opportunity to learn about the EUS, and it’s precisely how many of us got in-volved (and rumour has it there may be free food for stopping by).

blood driveThe Engineering Common Room will be reserved for the Hema-Quebec blood drive during the week of January 21 – 25th. Stop by anytime Monday-Friday from 9h30-17h00 to make a donation!

copi-eusThe EUS’s own copy store has various course packs and class notes available, so be sure to check out what we’ve got for your classes before the work really starts to pick up!

the plumber’s ledgerThe Plumber’s Ledger is still looking for members to join its crew. Whether you are interested in writing, painting, instagraming, etc, there is a place for you here. If you’d like to submit something or attend one of our meetings, contact [email protected].

Courtesy of Jason Willems

Next EUS Council MeetingAs an engineering undergraduate student at McGill, you have a right to attend meetings of the EUS Council and to speak for or against any motion, though only your elected councillors may vote. The next regular meeting of the EUS Council will be Wednesday, January 30th, at 6:00 p.m. in the EUS Common Room. Meetings are held every second week.


5 22 January 2013

E-Week 2012: Horton Scores a Brew has come and gone, along with the livers of a large portion of our faculty (the author included). The four-day festival of engineer-ing spirit and competition was at-tended by 258 rowdy revelers who put on an impressive display of athleticism, witticism, and modest and responsible social drinking.

For those of you who aren’t fa-miliar with how E-Week works, the departments are split into teams and compete against each other for the coveted E-Week Trophy. The events range from Design Competition to Century Club, and always test the skill and zeal of the competitors.

This year, besides the regular

departmental teams, we also had a team for Mac Campus’ Biore-source Engineering, as well as the Friengineers, who were the non-engineering competitors. Also no-table is that we had a couple rep-resentatives from Carleton raging with us during E-Week.

The winner of this year’s E-Week was Me-chanical, which sneaked ahead on the last day to win the com-petition. ECSESS gave Mech a run for their money and came a very close second, fol-

lowed by Civil and Chemical. The Friengineers apparently didn’t take the scoring scheme very seriously, and came dead last with an even -10 000 points, though they still had a great time.

E-Week’s biggest events were the night events, where we

Beer, Rivalry, and Rowdiness:

David Bailey


6 2013 January 22

shocked bars and clubs with the beer capacity of our stomachs and our sheer energy (Aggression and Strength!). We shook up Les Fou-founes Électriques as the last stop on our Pub Crawl, Le Drugstore for Century Club, and Café Campus for Beer Olympics. Finally, the en-gineers took a bus to the Thirsty Boot in Knowlton as part of the leg-endary Bus Trip to Nowhere.

During the daytime, many val-iant E-Weekers fought through hangovers to participate in the day events, which were some of the funnest parts of E-Week. These included Broomball, Drunken De-bates, Design Competition (make a device to shoot red paint at a snowman), and that ancient engi-neering tradition, Three Man.

As someone who has done E-Week for three years now, includ-ing once as a coordinator, I’d like to say kudos to the E-Week Com-mittee for their fantastic job – they could hardly have done better. Ev-ery event was well-attended and was a great time for all, which takes a heck of a lot of work and organization to pull off.

And that’s my schpeel on E-Week 2012: Horton Scores a Brew. Many E-Weekers were probably

6000

4000

2000

-2000

-4000

-6000

-8000

-10000

0

The Final Scores

Event Winners:Clothing Drive

Pub Crawl (Scavenger Hunt)

Pub Crawl (race)

Beer Tasting

Three Man

Beer Olympics

Dodgeball

Ultimate Predrink

Design Competition

Weapon of Mass Consumption (WMC)

Drunken Debates

Assassins

Broomball

Materials

ECSESS

ECSESS

Chemical

Chemical

Civil

Civil

Tie (Mech + Civil)

Mechanical

Mechanical

ECSESS

Mechanical

Mechanical

Arch

Bio

ChemCivil

ECSESS

Friengineers

Mech

Materials

Mining

in no fit shape to remem-ber much, but the stuff they do remember will not be for-gotten. If you missed it, don’t despair – Frosh and OAP 2014 are just around the bend. •

Cabbage Patties

ERIKA TIMOSHENKOThis is a simple and delicious recipe I got from an Indian friend of mine. It requires very little time to make, can be stored for days, and is entirely vegan. The bulk of the work is in preparing the cabbage. The chickpea flour is what keeps everything together (it’s a sticky flour). It is easily modified and adjusted to personal taste.

Ingredients• green cabbage• turmeric• black pepper• salt

• chickpea flour• oil for frying (cocnut, chia, walnut)

Preparation1. Chop the cabbage as finely as possible.

An average-sized cabbage head makes quite a bit, but it can easily be stored in a container in the fridge for up to a week.

2. In a bowl, mix the cabbage, salt, pepper, and turmeric to taste.

3. When the spices have been well com-bined, add enough chickpea flour for the cabbage to stick together when squeezed between your hands. As a general idea, I used about a cup of flour for 4 cups of cabbage (it will depend on the amount of moisture coming from the cabbage).

4. Squeeze the mixture into small balls, about the size of a ping-pong ball.

Cooking1. In a frying pan, heat enough oil that it

will come about halfway up the height of the balls.

2. Place about 6-8 balls in the pan and press them flat with a spatula.

3. Let the balls cook until they are lightly browned. Flip them over and repeat.

For that extra oomph: don’t be afraid to play around with different spices, such as cumin, chili powder, or ginger!A quick tip: the cabbage can be chopped in minutes if you have a food processor or blender! •


8 2013 January 22

Flexible displays have already been showcased a couple of times in re-cent years, but they were still very limited in their range of deforma-tion and were still quite clunky. However, this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Ve-gas set the stage for a whole new generation of bendable screens.

Samsung was the first to show off its new developments in that

field during its keynote on January 9th. It presented different proto-types of its 5-inch OLED displays, each one different in its bendable, foldable, twistable nature. One of the devices was a phone with the display folded on the edge, allowing notifications to show on the side. Another device was composed of two “screens” and was capable of folding like a wallet. Samsung,

in collaboration with Microsoft, also demonstrated how Windows Phone 8 would look on flexible dis-play “roll”. The screen, called Youm, uses a thin layer of plastic instead of glass, and is attached to a small box that contains the processors, memory, and other components for the functioning of the device. Samsung has however reiterated that the technology is still a work

Marc Chelala

Flexible Devices: A Dream Come True?


9 22 January 2013

in progress and won’t be seeing an imminent launch to consumers.

In parallel, Corning, the manu-facturer of the rigid Gorilla Glass present on most of today’s smart-phones, demoed a flexible glass called Willow. The particularity of the Willow Glass is that it is so thin – just 0.1 millimeters – that it can bend tremendously before snapping. This will lead to lighter

and thinner devices, with diverse display shapes. Corning asserts that the Willow Glass performs “exceptionally well” with LCD and OLED displays and touch sensors, although it remains weaker than the chemically enhanced Gorilla Glass. The company expects the Willow glass to go in mass produc-tion in the second half of 2013, but it won’t be seen on the consumer

market until the following year.These recent advancements in

the technology of flexible displays have resulted in various rumours emerging about upcoming bend-able smartphones. Although this technology should not be expected in the immediate future, it is nearly certain that we will start seeing some bendable gadgets in the market by the start of 2014. •

Flexible Devices: A Dream Come True?


10 2013 January 22

Engineers are a proud bunch. However, it’s easy to mistake pride for arro-gance , and this may lead stu-dents in other faculties to be-lieve that engi-neers think they are better than ev-eryone else.

To be honest I don’t blame them. After all, some-times it seems that we show no short-age of contempt for other majors, and in particular arts students. From the chants of “Un-employed!”, the un-relenting jokes, and the laughter when-ever you hear about an arts student com-plain about how much “work” they have, it’s not too hard to see why some may think engi-neers are a bit full of themselves.

While most of this is all in good fun, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that en-gineers don’t exactly see the value of a liberal arts education.

As it turns out, we’re not the only ones.

In response to increased de-mand for Higher education and a struggling economy, Florida gover-nor Rick Scott established the Blue Ribbon Task Force on State Higher Education Reform with the goal of streamlining the state’s education system. In their executive order, he writes, “The state University Sys-tem’s role in creating and transfer-ring knowledge through research, teaching, and service is of para-mount importance to the transition of the state’s economy”.

When the task force submit-ted their recommendations to the State Board of Education, one recommendation was that Uni-versities explore the option of dif-ferential tuition among degree pro-grams.

The suggested model aims to hold in-state tuition rates for “high-skill, high-wage, high-demand” de-gree programs steady for at least three years. As tuition rises in these other “non-strategic” departments, the “strategic” ones will become more attractive to students and their enrolment will increase. By producing more employable grad-uates, the state will be able to lower unemployment rates, create jobs and create income for the state.

So who exactly are these strate-gic majors? While the task force did not officially recommend strate-gic majors, it did suggest possible

categories, including 111 in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), 28 in globalization, and 21 in health care. Not surprisingly, none of the core humanities made the list.

This idea of differential tuition has sparked a lot of debate.

One advocate for this approach is former richest man in the world, Bill Gates.

While not outright stating his support for this particular bill, Mr. Gates in a speech to the nation’s 50 governors suggested that states waste taxpayers’ money by subsidizing public university de-partments that don’t produce the jobs of the future.

“The amount of subsidization is not that well correlated to the ar-eas that actually create jobs in the state, that create income for the state,” Gates declared. “Now in the past, it felt fine to just say, OK, we’re overall going to be generous with this sector. But in this era, to break down and really say, what are the categories that help fill jobs and drive that state economy in the fu-ture—you’ll find that it’s not across the board in terms of everything that the state subsidizes in higher education.”

While this is probably not what most students and faculty mem-bers in the liberal arts want to hear, as initiatives like this will take away students and funds from these departments, facts are facts.

Should Engineers Pay Less than Arts Students?

Kieran Mak


11 22 January 2013

Based on countless studies, STEM graduates are much more likely to be employed, have higher start-ing salaries, and contribute more to the state economy. If you were a governor whose potential re-election depended on the ability to show job growth in the short term it is easy to see why this approach would make a lot of sense.

But is this really the approach that we should be taking?

The answer to that question re-ally depends whether the goal of a University education is to prepare students for the needs of the la-bour market by providing them with narrow but specific learning, or to meet the wider goals of per-sonal development and provide a solid general education?

In the past, the Gates Foundation has stated that education has the duty to prepare students for work, life, and citizenship.

The problem is that the approach that Mr. Gates is advocating only prepares students for one-third of those goals.

While the statistics show that STEM graduates have better im-mediate employment outlooks, re-search by the National Center for Educational Statistics found that liberal arts majors catch up with their STEM peers a decade after graduation, as skills gained from a liberal arts education - clear com-munication and critical thinking for example - become more valuable in many careers over time.

Furthermore, will making STEM tuition a bit cheaper really convince a student who would have other-wise studied art history or English literature to switch to physics or engineering?

The value of a University educa-

tion lies not in narrow career spe-cific training, which while initially effective, will not help the graduate if technology changes or if their job can be done cheaper overseas or by a computer. The value lies in de-veloping an ability to think critically, be creative, and to develop your own thoughts and opinions, all of which are skills developed in a lib-eral arts education.

This is not to say that STEM ma-jors do not teach permanent, uni-versal, and transferable skills, but the ones we learn are different. Our degrees focus on teaching us to be analytical and problem-solving, not to communicate and think critical-ly. You could say that the skills we learn are on opposite sides of the spectrum of those of arts majors.

It is the effective integration and cooperation of these two sides that lead to innovation and prog-ress, socially and civically respon-sible citizens, and in the long run, a healthier economy.

Take one of Bill Gates main com-petitors for example. In what would be his last product unveiling for Apple, Steve Jobs while introduc-ing the iPad 2 said;

“It’s in Apple’s DNA that tech-nology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices,”

Apple is not a tech powerhouse like Microsoft, but their market cap is about 2 times higher. What Apple does so well and what makes them so successful is their ability to as-semble a wide range and array of resources and marry the best skills from multiple disciplines ranging

from software architecture, electrical en-gineering , to industrial de-sign, to mar-keting and law.

Accomplish-ing this does not come easy though; it re-quires a great degree of com-m u n i c a t i o n , problem solv-ing, creativity, and cultural lit-eracy.

These are not skills that come from one major but rather from people with a myriad of dif-ferent back-grounds.

Whether or not we are producing too many students in the humani-ties and liberal arts or if these programs are rigorous enough is up for de-bate. However, we shouldn’t let shor t -s ighted initiatives like those of the Blue Ribbon Task Force under-value the impor-tance of these majors, or we may risk losing them. •


12 2013 January 22

Frédérick Chagnon

RESISTANCE Part I:The Launch

and came home to consume en-tertainment like never before: mov-ies, television, music, video games, sports. Production was reaching an all-time high, but it was hardly an artistic Golden Age. Everything was recycled over and over again and artists were unwilling to take any risks to shake the established order. People were doing noth-ing more than going through the motions until the day when they would literally die of boredom. The plights of the middle class were nothing compared with the lives of the poor, however. The poor had been removed from every city and stacked inside large ghettos out-side of the eyes of the media and middle class. Drugs, gang violence, and prostitution were rampant. Life expectancy was barely over 45, be-cause murder was bound to strike before then.

were the only ones to see Wells for what it was really doing – killing the Human spirit.

It was true that the standard of living of the middle classes of the world had never been higher. This increase, largely caused by the new resources brought to Earth by Wells, came at a cost. The rich had never been richer. The few lucky ones had large estates scattered across the globe, with an army of servants and luxuries that would make even Midas jealous. They were controlling everything and the national governments were noth-ing but their puppets. They had no respect for anything but their bank accounts. The middle class believed that all was well: every-one had a job, a good education, healthcare, etc. But they also had no desires or dreams or imagina-tions. They worked their nine to five

They had failed. There were no other ways of saying it. All those months of careful planning for nothing, because of the incompe-tence of Jack Ledger. They had just heard the news (obviously by a Wells Company-owned news broadcast) that a terrorist attack on the Hermès had been avoided by the ingenuity of its crew, and that they would be able to complete “their glorious mission without fur-ther interference, for the benefit of all.” There were only a handful to realize that “the benefit of all” really meant the “benefit of Wells’ share-holders.” The Age of Space Travel was supposed to have brought a wonderful, new era to Human his-tory – an era with opportunities for all and the end of poverty and all that. They should have called it the Age of the Sheep, thought Roy bitterly. Roy and his companions

Captain Jennifer West and her crew were able to catch the Faceless Killer who attempted to prevent them from completing their mission. Who was responsible for the Killer’s presence, why he was on board, and what he was going after still remains a mystery…


13 22 January 2013

a chance they would have to take. After all, they might not have an-other opportune moment.

“Sometimes, you just have to stop waiting for the right moment and create your own right moment. I just hope we get to live through the one we are about to create . . .”

***Roy, Sheranne, and Nikola met in the basement of an old Catholic Church. The decline in religion had been yet another side effect of the ever-increasing importance of the Company. The room was dark and gloomy and there was a single light illuminating their table.

Roy stood and broke the silence: “I think we all know why we are here. Jack failed. We must now find another way to prevent the Company from reaching the Ob-ject.”

“What do we care about the Ob-ject, anyways? I say we simply hit the Company where it hurts – blow up all the Elevators! That way, people will have to start living with-out it again!”

Sheranne interjected: “Makes no sense. Have you thought about the hundreds of millions of people living in the Ring? And the billions depending on the food coming out of the Ring? Humanity needs the Elevators. They simply need to be woken up. Plus, to be effective we would have to target all five simul-

the communities they were raid-ing. Had they done that, they would have realized that they weren’t any better than their prey. It was that thought that made Sheranne sick to her stomach. They didn’t real-ize that they had become the very evil they sought to destroy. The old order had reached its pinnacle; it was time for the old structures to crumble and make way for the new age of Human History. Roy, herself, and their companions would make sure of it, and she would make sure that the Company suffered for their crimes dearly.

***“. . . A terrorist attack was suc-cessfully avoided by the crew of the Hermes . . .” Nikola had al-ways known that Ledger would get caught. That’s why he had started working on Plan B right away. The theory was sound and the first

p r o t o t y p e was almost c o m p l e t e . There was no time for test flights though – it would have to work on the first try. He knew that a lot could go wrong, but that was

There had been no significant breakthroughs in the last century and a half. Art was dead. Science was dead. Innovation was dead. Adventure was dead. The once fierce fire that was the Human Spirit wasn’t burning anymore. It had been extinguished by the Wells Company and no one realized it – no one except for Roy and his companions.

***“. . . A terrorist attack was success-fully avoided by the crew of the Hermès . . .”

“Terrorist, huh? So that’s what they’ve decided to call us now.” Sheranne had never liked that word. For her, it was too one-sided. In their quest to hunt down those they called terrorists, they rarely stopped and asked themselves how they were behaving and the kind of impact they were having on


14 2013 January 22

taneously. And that’s pretty impos-sible.”

Nikola chose this moment to gently cough to attract the atten-tion of his companions. Sheranne and Roy had had that argument before and it always ended in a stalemate. “There might be anoth-er way . . . If we could reach the Ob-ject first, before the Company . . . then we could show the rest of the population that we are not alone, or at least the kind of things Wells is keeping secret . . . If a publicized first contact is not enough to res-urrect the flame, I don’t know what is . . .”

“How are we going to get there? We don’t have a ship and the Her-mès is weeks in advance,” Sher-anne asked.

“Even if we had one, they would never allow us to leave the sur-face,” Roy said. He and Sheranne were starting to believe in Nikola’s plan, but they still needed to be convinced about the feasibility.

“Well, I, umm, never really be-lieved in Ledger to be honest, so I, umm, started working on some-thing else. I have built us a space-ship. It works with an experimen-tal antimatter engine. In theory, it should work just fine. If we take it slow, we should arrive shortly be-fore the Hermes.” Now, they were really interested in this idea, but something didn’t quite add up.

“Why do we need to take it slow? Don’t we want to get there as soon as possible?” Roy asked.

“Yes, but if we go too fast, then the time dilation effects won’t be negli-gible anymore and funky things will start to happen . . . like us getting there much later than the Hermès in their reference frame, while in our reference frame, a shorter amount of time would have elapsed.”

“Oh . . . and is it safe? I mean, wouldn’t the antimatter making contact with matter cause a mas-sive explosion?”

“Indeed, but that is the point. I have designed a magnetic nozzle that should direct the explosion and give the thrust we need.”

Now, they were getting really excited . . . but Sheranne remem-bered something else that Nikola had said: “Wait a minute, you said that it is an experimental engine right? And that it should work in theory? What about in real life?”

“Well, I haven’t had the chance to test it yet . . . so pretty much any-thing could happen . . . but frankly, do we care? It is the best shot we have at reaching that unknown ob-ject! Think about it! Not only would we give Humanity first contact, but also a means to go there and kick-start the exploration of the Uni-verse! It’s what we need! A chance to bring the uncertainty and adven-ture back into our lives!”

They were still hesitant about risking their lives in such an experi-mental manner, but Sheranne said what they were all thinking: “We have to do it. We might not have another chance! I don’t want to live the rest of my life wondering about what-ifs.” It was decided then. They would use Nikola’s ship and embark on a historical race against the clock.

However, there was still one is-sue to be worked out that hadn’t escaped Nikola’s attention: “That’s all good, but how are we going to leave the surface? The Company won’t let us leave, experimental ship or not.”

Roy stood up and started to walk towards the door. “It’s simple. We need a distraction. And I have just what we need.”

***“Are you sure it’s going to work? I mean it is pretty risky.”

“Sure? Of course not Sheranne. But it is better than nothing. Alright, the countdown is about to begin. Brace yourselves.”10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1

When the countdown reached zero, they felt themselves rising. They were on their way. All around them were an impressive amount of fireworks to celebrate the com-ing of the New Year. The tradition of the shooting of fireworks had not been lost despite the passing


15 22 January 2013

of time, and the shows had only gotten better and more extrava-gant. They had managed to build a makeshift rocket and with each departing stage, more fireworks were released until they were safe-ly in orbit. The thick cloud of smoke provided the perfect camouflage for launch. By the time anyone

would notice that they weren’t a real fireworks display and that something had reached Low Earth Orbit, Roy, Sheranne, and Nikola would have already turned on the antimatter drive and would be long gone before anyone had time to react. At least, that was the plan.

“The last stage is about to be released. We are almost at Low Earth Orbit.” Nikola was the most

stressed of them all. After all, their success rested on his uncertain designs.

“Scans and radar show no ap-proaching objects.” Sheranne was strangely calm. She was a person of action, and now that they had started to move her normally boil-ing personality was tamed. Roy

was the most confident of the group. Above all else, he believed in the rightness of their mission. That’s why he had been so de-spaired to hear of Ledger’s failure. Now that they had found a new hope, he invested himself com-pletely in building and organizing their escape via the fireworks illu-sion.

“We are almost free of Earth’s

gravitational pull. Time to turn on the juice.”

“Nozzle activated. Everything is in order.” Now was the time to initi-ate the antimatter and matter col-lision. So much could go wrong. Would the nozzle hold? Would the ship explode? How would their bodies react to the sudden accel-

eration? Nikola swallowed with difficulty and lowered the lever. There was no ex-plosion. No strange noise coming from the engine. Soon enough, the white points that were the stars started to stretch until they were straight lines, indi-cating their high speed. It worked! They were finally on their way. A loud sigh of relief was heard from ev-eryone at once.

“For better or worse, the Resistance is on its way. Nothing but the unknown is waiting for us ahead.”

There they were, racing towards the unknown and uncertainty, and somehow, somewhere, a flame long extinguished had been reig-nited.

Will the Resistance reach its des-tination first and safely? What will they find? Those answers, and more, lie in the pages of the next is-sue of THE PLUMBER’S LEDGER! •

JUST

IN T

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vol.1, no.5

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