Chapter 15

Persephone attacked the directions manual like a kid with a new game. In other words ... she didn't. She grabbed Ed's wrist and started pushing tiny buttons like mad.

"I don't understand it, Ed. It's not working."

The turned off TV started scrolling again, PERSEPHONE ... READ THE BOOK ... PERSEPHONE ... READ THE BOOK ... PERSEPHONE ... READ THE BOOK ... PERSEPHONE ... READ THE BOOK ... PERSEPHONE ... READ THE BOOK...

"I am going to kill that TV."

NO KILLING THE TV ... READ THE BOOK ... NO KILLING THE TV ... READ THE BOOK ... NO KILLING THE TV ... READ THE BOOK ... NO KILLING THE TV ... READ THE BOOK...

"AARRGGHH!!!" exclaimed Seph. "Ok ... Gimmie the book, Miss Fortune ... can I call you Missy? I can? Thank you."

"Thanks ... I hate my parents..." Missy said.

"Wear Persephone for a couple days. I've been called Phony, Percy, Horny, Persyphlis, Purr, Perry, Pussy ... and those are the ones I remember ... highschool is so cruel."

"I had no idea ... Misfortune is as bad as it's gotten," Missy confessed. "Yeah ... I hate school ... not the learning ... the learning is wonderful. It's the assholes ... and the jocks. In case you hadn't noticed," here she pulled her sweatshirt tight, "I've been cursed with mothers' tits."

Ed's eyes popped out of his head, he cleared his throat, "AHEM. No ... I had no idea."

"I'm not talking to you ... I'm talking to your wife ... Gawd ... MEN!"

A little sidetrack here while Ed, Seph and Missy study the book.

(The really important parts are in bold ... supplied by the author ... thank you very much.)

Tectonic Plates:

The surface of the planet called Earth by the inhabitants, Sol3 by the Powers that Be and Gibblechs79184652 by the Woman with the Plan, is constantly moving.

Excerpts from Wikipedia have this to say:

Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered by salt water oceans, with the remainder consisting of continents and islands which together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere.

The mechanically rigid outer layer of the Earth, the lithosphere, is broken into pieces called tectonic plates.

These plates are rigid segments that move in relation to one another at one of three types of plate boundaries: Convergent boundaries, at which two plates come together, Divergent boundaries, at which two plates are pulled apart, and Transform boundaries, in which two plates slide past one another laterally.

Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation can occur along these plate boundaries.

The tectonic plates ride on top of the asthenosphere, the solid but less-viscous part of the upper mantle that can flow and move along with the plates, and their motion is strongly coupled with convection patterns inside the Earth's mantle.

As the tectonic plates migrate across the planet, the ocean floor is subducted under the leading edges of the plates at convergent boundaries. At the same time, the upwelling of mantle material at divergent boundaries creates mid-ocean ridges. The combination of these processes continually recycles the oceanic crust back into the mantle.

Due to this recycling, most of the ocean floor is less than 100 million years (myr) old in age. The oldest oceanic crust is located in the Western Pacific, and has an estimated age of about 200 myr. By comparison, the oldest dated continental crust is 4,030 myr.

The seven major plates are the Pacific, North American, Eurasian, African, Antarctic, Indo-Australian, and South American.

Other notable plates include the Arabian Plate, the Caribbean Plate, the Nazca Plate off the west coast of South America and the Scotia Plate in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The Australian Plate fused with the Indian Plate between 50 and 55 million years ago (mya.) The fastest-moving plates are the oceanic plates, with the Cocos Plate advancing at a rate of 75 millimeters a year(mm/y) and the Pacific Plate moving 52–69 mm/y. At the other extreme, the slowest-moving plate is the Eurasian Plate, progressing at a typical rate of about 21 mm/y.

Earth's poles are mostly covered with ice that is the solid ice of the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice that is the polar ice packs. The planet's interior remains active, with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the magnetic field, and a thick layer of relatively solid mantle.

Earth gravitationally interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. During one orbit around the sun, the Earth rotates about its own axis 366.26 times, creating 365.26 solar days, or one sidereal year. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days).

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It began orbiting the Earth about 4.53 billion years ago (bya). The Moon's gravitational interaction with Earth stimulates ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt, and gradually slows the planet's rotation.

Human cultures have developed many views of the planet, including its personification as a planetary deity, its shape as flat, its position as the center of the universe, and in the modern Gaia Principle, as a single, self-regulating organism in its own right.

The modern English noun earth developed from Middle English erthe (recorded in 1137), itself from Old English eorthe (dating from before 725), deriving from Proto-Germanic *erthō. Earth has cognates in all other Germanic languages, including Dutch aarde, German Erde, and Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish jord. The Earth is personified as a goddess in Germanic paganism (appearing as Jörð in Norse mythology, mother of the god Thor).