The Chronicles of Professor Jack Baling: Difference between revisions

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The story follows the life of Jack Baling, an engineering professor whose life takes a drastic turn down a strange lane when one of his students brings in a working perpetual motion machine. Studying this impossible device pushes Jack over the boundary between genius and insanity. He emerges from the other side with a death ray (cobbled together with parts from the microwave and his wife's hair dryer), and goes on a rampage, stopping only when he encounters another mad scientist.

Because there are people out there that share his abilities, and even more frightening than the mad scientists are what they dream of. For them, nothing is ever ''truly'' impossible.

 

 

* [[Art Major Biology]]: A type of insect that lives in paralyzing gel, a St. Bernard-sized praying mantis/shrimp-creature that walks on land and serves as the living machine for a hyperintelligent cuttlefish named “Gwendolyn,” and that’s just from the first two episodes.

* [[Ax Crazy]]: When Jack gets his hands on a [[Disintegrator Ray]] capable of converting tables {{spoiler|or people}} into a pile of dust, it doesn’t work out well.

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Peter Sharpe of the Prometheus Corporation describes the Prometheans as shepherds and humanity as sheep. Two guesses on how much value he assigns to the lives of people who aren’t “enlightened.”

* [[Death Ray]]: Jack’s first invention as a mad scientist. Extra points for being housed in his wife’s hair dryer, so not only can it convert a kitchen island into dust with a red beam of light, it does so while being pearlescent pink with stylized purple flowers.

* [[Mad Scientist Laboratory]]: Jack has a rather mundane version of one of these in a shed in his backyard, but in the second episode he encounters some really sophisticated ones in the Prometheus Corporation’s HQ, some of which even have Jacob’s ladders and bubbling beakers..

* [[Mind Control Device]]: {{spoiler|Lydia}} uses one of these on Jack at the beginning of the second episode. It causes extreme feelings of disassociation in whoever hears it, temporarily submerging the afflicted individual’s conscious thoughts.

* [[No Conservation of Energy]]: Jack wonders about this one, both as it applies to the perpetual motion machine created by his student and his own disintegrator ray. Using the latter in quick succession does end up blowing a fuse, but the amount of energy involved in powering the thing in the first place is staggering. He shouldn’t be able to get that much juice at once in the first place.

* [[Perpetual Motion Machine]]: The main focus of the first episode is what happens to an engineering professor when he encounters a working perpetual motion machine. Specifically, an overbalanced wheel [http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/machines/machines.htm\].

 

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[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]

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