"Fire suppression might actually be a good use case — there's lots of expensive, delicate things that are damaged by the chemicals used in fire suppressants; that's why datacenters usually have noble-gas-overpressure fire suppression rather than CO2 or dry powder systems," Robin, incorrigible nerd, points out. "Now that we have a proof of concept, maybe it makes sense to measure how much heat the thing is actually removing?"

"Yeah, I'm just worried about the material fatigue from changing temperatures as quickly as it does, though I think Captain Cold's stuff has historically not had that happen quite as much as you might expect? Will have to test that too, probably. We should test that too, yeah. Probably best way to do that is just to set up a target with a known weight and heat capacity and see how the temp changes over time? I'm not sure it'll be uniform between materials, though, given that it's more esoteric than strictly physicalist." 

"Hmm. His cold beams can result in people getting encased in ice without actually getting frostbite, which is a pretty precise balance to hit. And our setup is probably tuned differently. I can order in a bunch of different materials to test with, but we don't exactly have a cold-gun testing range ready to go."

They work with Topaz to hash out more details of what needs testing, and Robin promises to have the workshop set up to try it in a few days.

She nods along and makes a few comments! She's hardly a chemist or a materials engineer, but she's well read enough to mostly get by. 

"Alright then! Have an appointment with Ms. Martian soon? Still, feel free to send me requests for crystals or more ideas for light items! I'll probably be in touch tommorow about figuring out the materials for all of this, too." 

"Sounds good! This was fun; I'll text you if I think of any more ideas."

Batman vanished again at some point, so Robin walks her to the teleporter and waves her off.

She smiles gratefully. 

"I'm glad! And yeah, likewise." 

She ports over back to the mountain, and walks over to Ms. Martian's room. 

When Topaz arrives, Miss Martian is nervous-decorating, which is an entirely different prospect when one has access to shape-shifting cloth. Her drapes (purely decorative, because the room doesn't have a window) are oscillating between a textured fuchsia and a shimmery gold as she tries to decide what goes better.

"Oh, Topaz! Come on in! I figured out how to make popcorn, and I tried to get some movies from the library, but apparently you need a card? But the break room on the lower level had some!"

She points to a pile of VHS tapes that have been precariously balanced on top of a flat-screen TV.

"I'm not sure how to get the movies to commune with the screen, but I'm sure we can figure it out! If you want to watch them. I'm not sure whether movies at sleepovers are customary or obligatory."

She laughs lightly. 

"Hope you didn't stink up the place too much! Accidentally left some popcorn in for too long and it charred and smoked things up pretty bad, once." 

She runs over and scoops up the VHSs to set them aside, then goes and nabs the remote, turning on the TV and seeing if there's any sort of 'smart tv' things set up here - flat screen is a bit promising in that direction - or if there's a vhs player. 

"They're on the standard slate of options, certainly, though hardly required! Do you have anything in mind for what you'd like to watch, if we're going to do that?" 

"It would be cool to see something recent? Just because everyone changed video encoding standards like ten years ago, so I've seen stuff from before that back on M'arzz, but not new releases," she decides.

The TV seems to be a perfectly normal smart TV, yes. It has an account connected to a handful of streaming services, the name of which — JL_Lounge01 — suggests that Miss Martian appropriated it from elsewhere in the mountain as well.

She nods and hums. 

"That's got to be fixable! Sure there's something we can do to make that worth someone's while on marzz and earth, even with just radio."

She pokes through the list of movies, and perks up. 

"Oh! Have you seen any star trek? They did a movie reboot of it about a year ago, and remember liking my world's version of it!" 

"Yeah! The original series came out when I was a little kid; I'd love to see a reboot. Live long and prosper!"

She gives a Vulcan Salute.

"And yeah, I'm reading through the digital encoding standards for broadcast television so that I can send it back home when the planets are next in conjunction. It may be a bit of a strain to push that much on my own, but the university still does group receptive trances every conjunction and they'll be able to pick it up."

"Peace and long life!" 

She salutes back, before breaking out into a bit of a wry smile. 

"Oh reasonable! Do wonder if it'd make more sense for the change to be earthside, instead, but that's a thought for another time." 

She queues up the movie, and makes a mental note to get her to figure out more of this lator. 

"It's not in the same continuity, and the lense flares are a little wild and not exactly standard, but I think you'll still like it! It's a good example of what can be done, at least. But first!" 

She scurries over to the kitchen, and throws in some popcorn for the two of them. 

"Here. Anything else you wanna cover before we get started?" 

She adopts a thoughtful look.

"I don't think so? I mean, I kind of have questions about how you got the TV to show the right thing, but probably I can figure it out from observation. I do want to paint our nails later — and I also got nail polish when I was trying to visit the library — but I think it makes sense to start with Star Trek? I'm kind of hyped to see the new version, honestly."

"Aww I'm glad!" 

She throws on the movie! 

And they can watch the reboot! Miss Martian grabs the popcorn telekinetically, to avoid getting her fingers buttery, but otherwise the movie-watching experience is pretty typical.

Afterward, Miss Martian leans back and looks up at the ceiling in thought, going back over the movie in her head. The sensation feels a little like she's scrubbing through the movie on fast-forward in a remembering kind of way.

"That was a lot clearer than the old TV broadcasts. Everything was so shiny! Do you know why they changed the uniforms, though? I always liked the little skirts and the collars."

"I think part of it was to just make it have more of a distinct brand? Part of the reason why they're able to make movies with budgets as large as this one is that they can sell merchandise of it and all, and that's diluted a bit when it's too too similar to what they had before." 

She hums and tilts her head a bit, and tries to explain. It doesn't really feel like the sort of thing that should need explaining, like it would be the most obviously silly idea to do ever, but also like... dresses are cool, and it doesn't have to be gender-y in a mean way. 

"I think another part is that - it makes it look more modernist? That kind of skirt is more associated with conservative idylls nowadays then the more liberal order that they're trying to depict? They want everyone to be sort of - the same type of pseudo-military professional, even if that eats a little into the pretty factor, and that kind of dress isn't very practical when you can't just shapeshift away the frills." 

"... huh."

Miss Martian turns the idea over in her head.

"This is more of the people seeing meaning in different styles thing you were talking about when we were clothes shopping, isn't it? How does something like those uniform pants end up acquiring that kind of association in the first place? With, uh, ... stupid English ... 'mental postures', you can see what someone means by shaping their presentation that way, right, so then someone else will see it and sort of riff on it, and the whole thing is a self-sustaining mutagenic memeplex," she muses, reaching over to pick through the available colors of nail polish.

:Why is there a word for memeplex if there's no word for [how you present the surface of your mind to others] ...???: she thinks in a mental mutter, clearly rhetorical.

"But if someone puts on a new kind of clothing, wouldn't it start off without visible associations?"

"Mhm! Though it's a little different for things like uniforms, which are less likely to evolve in quite that way." 

She taps her finger against her chin. 

"Part of it is by analogy? A lot of new outfits aren't quite the same as what came before, but are stylized as sort of - a new take or iteration on it? The outfits here, for example, I think probably trace back to the british empire's naval tradition, so it has some of the associations that they tried to instill? Or maybe there's not a predeccesor that is that clear, and it's all about the reputation of the first people people see wearing it, or what practical value the clothes give - what people prepare for can tell you a lot about them. There's also just where and to who it's readily available - people value wearing expensive outfits, or ones from a particular place sometimes, and that says something about them, too." 

Miss Martian picks out a shimmery blue.

"Would you ...?" she asks, extending the nail polish.

"I guess that makes sense — M'arzz ... it isn't that everyone can take every mental posture, exactly, because someone's caste is always visible in their mindvoice. But I'm not sure we really have an equivalent of expensive clothing? Except Manhunter uniforms, I guess, which have extra defensive abilities above what civilian outerwear does. People totally have, like, fancy furniture though, which might be pretty similar." 

She nods lightly, and takes the nail polish gingerly, twisting it open and feeling it out. 

"That makes some sense! This might be a bit crass to ask, but couldn't you create some sort of - telepathic relay that stripped out and maybe added back in that kind of metadata? As for furniture... I don't think it's quite the same, but there's definitely a similar dynamic there, too, even if it comes up a good bit less." 

Her face freezes for a moment before she goes back to making expressions with it.

"Um."

"I guess you could make one that stripped out the caste-feeling? But probably people would assume that anybody who used a relay like that was white. But it's not ... you can't just ..."

Miss Martian stares at her for a long moment.

"You can't tell what caste I am, can you? I could, could be a priest and you wouldn't be able to tell, would you?"

Oh um. 

She really should have assumed it would be that sensitive! She's facepalming herself mentally a little right now, but only a little - you've got to be careful when you have power rings on your fingers! 

How to phrase this... 

"I can't tell, no. For all I know, you might as well be a magician with a telepathy granting brain implant, or a psychic metahuman with some sort of nanomachine-based shapeshifting system? And - I do want to say that it - ultimately doesn't matter? I think most people here assume Martian Manhunter is just what all martians are like, and I certainly don't care what caste you or any other martian is."

...There's probably still caste discrimination with indians here, isn't there? Don't want to assert anything too broad, and there could be more substantial stuff there? But they're almost certainly all telempathic enough that it shouldn't really matter, and she's clearly a reasonably functional empathizeable workable person, just from what she's seen? The justice league has enough precautions around shapeshifters and stuff that they'd probably catch it if she was secretly a member of a biocaste of telepathic illusionist sociopaths or something, and she's pretty sure she can feel hope and will in like the relatively normal and sane way that she'd expect, and it's a little unreasonable to expect that they'd be able to spoof that, even if that was the case. 

Also, that's totally a solveable problem, at least at range, right? You could use some sort of telepathic repeater with encoding features, stick it inside your body like she saw her doing earlier, add in the metadata you want, and send it off. It would probably even triangulate right, so the only problem would be if they could sense your mind right there in front of you having a caste, but she wasn't implying that was how it works? It seems like the sort of thing that ought to be reasonably feasible to guard against, too. She wonders if there's already a bunch of people doing things like that, but... talking to her about it seems like maybe not the best idea, given how much she seems to flit about and leak her thoughts everywhere. A conversation for another day with Martian Manhunter, probably? 

She takes a little moment to clear her mind, then relax her mental barriers, and offer her a hug. 

Miss Martian leans in for the hug, lightly tasting Topaz's sincerity.

"... my dad is a white Martian," she says, after a long moment. "My mum is green. And that's ... it's ... It isn't really the done thing. Ma'aleca'andra is pretty liberal about that sort of thing, overall, but it's still not really a thing. One of the reasons I got into Earth media is —"

"— I was born in 1962. And the kind of broadcasts you all were sending out then ... That was the year James Meredith got accepted to the University of Mississippi."

"My mum is into xenopology too. And seeing those broadcasts, it's one of the things that gave her the courage to actually marry my dad. Like, officially with a ceremony and so on, not just passing eggs."

She chews on her lip for a moment.

"I don't really remember that directly, of course. I only stopped pupating in 1965 — Martians have kind of slow childhood development — but ... almost all of my siblings are green. Almost all. And growing up in a household like that, where your parents don't care, and then you step outside the z'errat and everybody is judging you, like it's wrong to play with your own brother ..."

"And I just ... it hadn't occurred to me that that pressure is gone. You don't care. You don't care! And human culture changes so fast — nobody's going to care that my parents are in a mixed marriage. The only person on the planet who knows what caste I am is Uncle J'onn, and he's a radical, so he's not going to say anything!"

She laughs and wipes at her eyes, although the gesture is probably learned from observation, because she doesn't seem to have any wetness to wipe away.

"Sorry. I'm not even sure what point I'm trying to make. It's just, it's a big change. Good! But big."

She nods firmly right up against your shoulder. 

"Yeah..." 

She lets out a little appreciative sigh, and pats her back softly. She feels a bit like she's speedrunning this, but honestly, that's not exactly the worst thing!