Stealing science for a story

[neotoma]

So the other week I was listening to the radio, and up came a story about a new theory about how homing pigeons may use 'sound maps' to navigate. This is going right into the Big Bang -- I'd already thought the angels use infrasound to communicate over long distances, but the idea that they use the sounds created by seismic energy from deflected deep ocean sounds to orientate themselves is just too fun to resist.

Yeah, I'm such a nerd.

Otoh, this explains how angels communicate, and it will also explain how the traditionalist/isolationist communities of angels hide themselves. They simply sing at wavelengths that don't travel as far as other angels, so they've limited the distance their communications travels. Of course, the research centers probably have listening stations in those areas specifically to pick up the infrasound, but it probably takes the researchers a lot of time to go through and translate the songs, even with the help of the friendly angels, so they're behind on what's going on in the isolationist communities.

Also, I'll have to remember this because it might eventually be a neat thing to put in an original SF story...

Comments

[hannah]

I have this image of Gabriel explaining this to someone - how do they do it? They just listen.

[neotoma]

And they really can't get lost, except in extraordinary circumstance like being in a city or next to heavy machinery in operation -- or when adults are fighting over territory and throwing sonic booms at each other...

Also, the difference between known where you are, and being able to navigate roads to get to a different location and being able to fly to a different location are massive. Gabriel is likely to ask 'what does it sound like' rather than an address, at least when he's asking another angel about how to get someplace, which is just not helpful to human compatriots.

[hannah]

He'd go wandering around the center at night, when everyone else was asleep and he could hear better - there was the boiler in the basement, five floors down, that was always humming and centering the place, the rats in the pipes, all the little sounds that got lost during the day with everyone up and talking.

No wonder Cas likes bees so much. They're always harmonizing with each other.

[neotoma]

And he had a hard time explaining what he was listening to, and why he wanted certain furniture in specific locations -- he was tuning his room to be more harmonious -- until he got enough education to talk about sound waves. One of the reasons Gabriel became a sound engineer is that it was the only way he could get the things he wanted to make his life less full of noise.

Actually, the Angel Research Centers might have some sort of colloboration with the Elephant Listening Project and the Cornell Bioacoustic Research Program -- just developing the infrasound recording devices must have required a lot of cooperation.

Also, that gives me the idea that angels *love* elephants. Love them, possibly to the point of bribery and obsession. :D

[hannah]

The only English vocabulary to describe where sounds are and what they're shaped like that goes beyond "the scratchy, jumpy noise to the upper right" is sound engineering jargon. Before he learned that, he'd have tried to say the bed should be here because it's soft and hard on the bottom so if the chair and desk is there then the sound moves over...and why are they looking at him like that? He just wants his desk and bed moved so the room's sounds fall into place.

Animals that live in extended family units with keen senses of hearing and relationship ties - of course they'd like them. Meeting them in person would like a human talking to a parrot that also speaks English, where there might not be a frank exchange of ideas but definitely the same sounds forming words one recognizes.

There was one time at the raptor center when I watched someone give a hawk a check-up while it had a hood on, and the hawk curled up one of its feet in closer to its body, and I immediately recognized the meaning behind the movement as it being upset and unhappy and wanting the situation to end. I think angels could have moments like that, with elephant communication. Just listening.

[neotoma]

Also, Gabriel's analogies for sound tend to do with textures and perhaps shifts in air pressure -- it doesn't help if Gabriel says a sound is 'heavy and unpleasantly fuzzy' because you have no idea how to make it lighter and smoother.

Yeah, and you can just see the researchers trying to convince angels that elephants are not suitable pets...

[hannah]

This would be shortly after he learns English, and it's not uncommon for him to lapse back into Enochian out of frustration or because he simply doesn't know how to translate the words.

It'd take a lot of arguments. The fact that elephants need to live together would just reinforce the need for them as pets - because if everyone wants an elephant that'd solve the problem!

[neotoma]

Well, even as an adult, he can either bury someone in technical jargon, or in weird analogies, so it's kind of six of one, half a dozen of the others.

lol. It probably doesn't help that the angel reserves in India probably overlap with elephant territories... and maybe the Laurentian Angel Research Center has a zoo in its territory. In other words, the Canadians have elephants! Why can't we?! Never mind that elephants are not really suited for mid-Atlantic Appalachia. :)

[hannah]

Open communication has never been one of his major life goals.

Are angels held in the same sort of social position in India as elephants - useful, clever animals that are sometimes useful and sometimes ceremonial?

[neotoma]

Oh god, getting Gabriel to talk is impossible. And it's not like he's a spacetoaster like Castiel, either! He's just all lies and misdirection and showers of glitter so you don't see the real him, wtf... he's difficult to write and keep him close to canon, iow.

Angels in India are called devas, and are creatures that sometimes are sacred because a god inhabits them, but usually are just there, taking up resources that desperately poor people could also use?

[hannah]

You could try reading some nonfiction on espionage and spywork. It might help. And it's not so much as getting him to talk as it is getting him to say what he really means, not just what's entertaining.

Castiel is kind, and trusting, and caring, and he doesn't know how to be an angel.

[neotoma]

Well, I do have that book on Roald Dahl's stint as an intelligence operative in WW2 when British Intelligence basically used him as a honeypot in DC around here somewhere...

Yeah, Gabriel isn't dishonest so much as he'd much rather be colorful and eccentric than himself, because himself is very lonely and vulnerable...

Castiel is a *spacetoaster*.

[hannah]

Acting handbooks and guides, too. He's always been into showmanship as ways and means to mask himself, and is very into playing the part.

Castiel is too angel to be a human and too human to be an angel, and perhaps to cope, tries to shut down as much as is possible while still managing to function. Turns out, it's a lot.

[neotoma]

the acting handbooks are a good idea, but with the due date being so close I'll have to wing it.

Well, Castiel suffers a lot from having been raised with only a juvenile angel as a role model of his own species -- his other role models being research scientists who were researching him...

[hannah]

I'll be more than happy to help out with whatever characterization aspects you need.

He has the weirdest Enochian accent.

[isis]

That story was in the newspaper - I was fascinated and charmed by it!

[neotoma]

It's so neat! Pigeons live in an entirely different world from us humans -- ones they might share with elephants and whale, as it turns out, if infrasound is actually how they navigate.