Drunkard's Walk Forums

Banging your head against the ceiling, even at 1/10 g, is a rotten way to start your day. Banging your head against the ceiling because your idiot son decided to wake you up with the melodious strains of "Goldfish Warning" is, without a doubt, a worse start to the day.
"This had better be good, David!" I growled at the intercom. "I've told you, "Goldfish Warning" is strictly for emergencies!"
"How about an unscheduled Con, Dad?" David replied, his voice showing no signs of contrition whatsoever. "We just got the bounce off SSX. Con's gonna be in Phobos. If you take Max, you can get there with a few hours to spare."
"Max? What do you think about this?" I knew he was listening in - we were all pretty much an open book to each other, and there wasn't anyone else on Pallas yet, since the atmosphere was still growing. My calendar had the last of the O2-generating bacteria I'd bought from Kevin scheduled to hit their saturation point and die in about a month. Until then, I was living at the end I'd designated "North Pole," in a tunnel complex that would be the place's main port, with my boys.
"It would be nice to chat with some of the other ships without having to deal with the lag," Max replied. He's my third son. Looks like a VF-1S with a Skull Squadron paint job. "I'm up for it."
"All right, then. I'll throw together my Con kit and we can scoot." As much as I hate going into crowds that big, if something had come up to justify a Con this far out of the normal schedule, I figured I'd better be there to see what was up. "Mac? Antonio? You guys can keep up the maintenance and keep the Reavers off, right?"
"I am more concerned about random dust than Reavers," Antonio replied. "The canopy may be self-healing, but it still requires monitoring as the atmosphere fills it. I'm not sure the anchors are as strong as the canopy is."
"Neither am I, Tony. Neither am I. It's the trade-off of using a carbonaceous asteroid instead of a rocky one. Lots of organic material, but it's not as strong as rock would be. How about you, Mac?"
"No problems, Dad. A 40cm slug of solid rock, traveling at 100 miles per second, is going to ruin anyone's day. And you left us plenty of rocks to play with." Mac answered with a laugh. "At least, enough to keep any Reavers out of range until help can get here."
"All right. If you're sure." Have I mentioned how much I hate crowds?
"Dad," David cut in, actually sounding impatient, "if you don't start putting your kit together, I'll read the email to you. Out loud."
"Oy. Is it really that bad?"
"Dad, it's in Engrish." David made it sound as if Engrish were a swear word. "Video game level Engrish."
"Uh...right. Max, start warming up your engines. I'll be out in just a minute." Or maybe two, but it wasn't going to take long. It's not like I have all that much to pack. My Con kit really just consists of my meds, a couple changes of clothes, and whatever spare cash I have to spend on the hucksters. At least living at 1/10 g meant I didn't need as many meds as I had on Earth. But most days, before the end of the day, I was wishing I could trade in my organic parts for cybernetic ones, rather than just wearing Edgar as a wristwatch. Come to think of it, he hadn't put in his two cents worth yet. "Edgar?"
"I'm sorry, Father," Edgar answered - verbally, rather than directly into my mind the way he usually did. "I have been analyzing what I could scrape up in message traffic. Unfortunately, it's not very informative. Mostly speculation and gossip. It does, however, confirm that the Reavers are concerning a lot of people. Most worrisomely, they seem to be concerning people affiliated with the 'Danelaw."
"Just what we need," I grumbled under my breath as I stuffed my bag. As if my day hadn't started off badly enough. "Damned fedgoons sticking their noses where they're not wanted. Just what they do best. Damned Reavers would almost be an improvement. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if OUR Reavers were a fedgoon project, too."
"Not surprising, but not likely, either," Edgar said. "David, do continue monitoring everything you can pick up. If you hit anything like what I've flagged as interesting, squirt it to Max. He can pass it to me."
"Sure thing," David said. "Dad, I have your frame in Max's cargo bay in case the gravity is too high in Phobos. Use it this time. Please?"
His voice had a pleading tone I couldn't fight. Last time I'd gone anywhere with a lot of gravity, I'd had a mild heart attack. Ever since then, the boys had been afraid I'd have a repeat performance, and that this time I wouldn't be able to get medical help in time.
"All right, David," I sighed. "I promise. And Edgar will help me keep my promise. OK?"
"Thanks, Dad." The relief in his voice brought tears to my eyes. The boys really did worry about me, and I loved them as much as if they were my own flesh and blood. I couldn't risk leaving them alone and unloved.
"David, make sure everyone hears this, ok?" I waited for him to acknowledge it before I continued. "I promise, I'll do whatever I have to, to stay healthy on this trip. But if anything happens despite the best efforts of myself, Max, and Edgar, I want you to call Kevin. If you can't get through to him, call Megan. Either way, I don't want you boys left alone without someone to love you."
I did my best to ignore the worried protests as I stowed my bag alongside my frame and closed Max's cargo bay. Once that was done, I jumped up to the cockpit and strapped myself in. Given my size, it was a tight fit, but more snug than painful out here. Kind of like a Fiero's bucket seat had fit when I was 200 pounds lighter. I leaned back, snugged my head up against the headrest, and felt Max's induction connections take hold. Seeing and feeling through his sensors, I no longer felt restricted by my own body. Max/I rolled out of the hangar into the open ground within the polar ring, then stopped to scan the sky before kicking in the drives and taking off. The best thing about being completely linked with Max was that the cockpit didn't have any controls or instruments to confuse me if I opened my eyes while linked. Max/I flew as naturally as a bird, without need of the instruments an ordinary pilot and jet needed. Sometimes Edgar had to bring us back down to earth, but that didn't happen much since the time we flew to the Limit and Edgar had had to pull us back before my body failed from hunger and dehydration.
"Here's the rest of your email, Dad," David sent as we lifted away from Pallas. "Try to have fun, ok?"
"Will do my best. You boys be good to each other while I'm gone, ok? I love you all."
"We love you too, Father," Antonio replied for all of them, waving one of his chelicera as Max/I flew over the envelope before adjusting our course for Mars.
--
Homepage: http://www.macmanusnet.net
Sailor Moon Fanfiction: http://crystal.macmanusnet.net
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Homepage: http://www.macmanusnet.net

Sailor Moon Fanfiction: http://crystal.macmanusnet.net

I dunno, the idea of Hidden Asteroids favored space suit being green spandex could make a degree of sense - it would fit under all the combat gear they carry as a matter of course.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

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As far as the weight of diamonds go, they have a density between that of aluminium and titanium. On the other hand, though very hard, diamonds apparently aren't terribly tough.

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Diamonds will also ignite when exposed to medium-high temperatures; the average propane torch, for example. As the current surface temp of Venus is higher than the melting point of aluminum...

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I dunno, the idea of Hidden Asteroids favored space suit being green spandex could make a degree of sense - it would fit under all the combat gear they carry as a matter of course.

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If you want the Gai effect, let's have the Asteroid-nin putter around with gooping that spandex. In nine cases out of ten, you just get normal 'wave-grade personal body armor. Sometimes, with a chameleon effect thrown in when you run current through it while muttering 'sneaky feet, ninja feet'.
In the tenth case, the spandex turns forest-green, and starts pretending it's an AMS (Armored Muscle Suit) vide Spriggan.
They don't have very many of those, though.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

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In the tenth case, the spandex turns forest-green, and starts pretending it's an AMS (Armored Muscle Suit) vide Spriggan.

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*groan* I...like this idea. I do, really. Except you DO realize that the quirk associated with these suits is that you DO have to go on and on about the BURNING POWER OF YOUTH! Even if you'd rather not, that's the price to pay if you want to use it.
(Don't mind me. I actually like Gai and Lee. But it's too much fun to complain about the green spandex of youth disease. Because, let's face it. They're great characters and all...but they're certifiably insane. )

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*groan* I...like this idea. I do, really. Except you DO realize that the quirk associated with these suits is that you DO have to go on and on about the BURNING POWER OF YOUTH! Even if you'd rather not, that's the price to pay if you want to use it.

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Well, of _course_ you have to do that. It wouldn't be right if you didn't. And of course the suits work better if you actually _believe_ it. Oy.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

<Edited into it's own STORY thread.>

*whew*
This is a huge wadge of backstory that sat on my brain and demanded I write it. It feels good to get all that out of my system and into the thread.
Enjoy!

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USSR Explain Star (WTF-023H)
Creator: M Fnord
Base Hull: Soviet "Buran" space shuttle vehicle #1.02
Drive Type: Speed (Pitch Field reactionless engine)
Owner of Record: Sandwich.Net Interstellar Dungeon-Crawling Enterprises, LLC
Flag of Record: Soviet Air Force
Purpose: Research vessel
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The whole thing started at the first big con after handwavium was discovered. Yeah, it was that con, the one where some joker thought it'd be funny to spike the consuite with 'wave powder. We dodged that bullet by sheer chance; we were having dinner at an Italian place a couple blocks away from the convention center when the shit went down. By the time we got back to the con things the mayhem was in full swing & we quietly slipped away. Actually helped out a little with the big breakout from Manzanar, too - we weren't there, but we knew people who knew people and helped point them in the right direction. Even back in the beginning, the Nation took care of its own. But that's another story.
Anyway. So there we were, seven old friends who hadn't seen each other in forever finally getting a chance to talk face to face. We'd all met on the intertubes, and since life had us scattered across the northern hemisphere opportunities to get together were few and far between. As we enjoyed the meal and the wine and the conversation, talk started drifting towards handwavium.
We all knew about it, of course. We'd seen the reports of the Yokohama demonstration, read the popsci articles and newsgroup discussions and so forth. We started kicking around ideas on what to use it for - this was all blue-skying, we didn't think for a minute that we would ever get our hands on even the smallest sample of handwavium - and naturally it was KJ who came up with the idea.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "if we had an airplane, or something that could already handle positive pressure, that would solve some of the big problems with building a handwavium spaceship." There was general agreement to this statement, and then the bombshell. "In fact," he continued, "the best thing to handwave into a spaceship would be an existing spaceship."
Silencio.
"Oh sure, like anybody's going to *give* us a spaceship."
"You never know. I mean, they're going to retire the shuttle fleet soon enough, right?"
"Yeah, but those are going to museums. Even if NASA was willing to sell one, which I doubt, the price tag would be *way* beyond anything we could afford."
Gloomy agreement, and then Zib spoke up. At the time he was working on an advanced degree in Soviet history; thirty years ago he'd have been one of Trudeau's top Kremlinologists. At this point, he just said, "Well, you know there *are* other shuttles out there."
Calc blinked. "The old Russian one? Isn't it scrap metal?"
"Yes and no. The one that actually *flew* was borked beyond repair, yeah. But they built two flight models before the funding ended. *That* one is almost complete, just needs a little touch-up work and it should be ready to go."
"Okay," said Kat. "But what about the money? Even assuming that it's up for sale, we couldn't buy it."
To this day, I don't know if it was the wine or Destiny knocking me upside the head, but all of a sudden I had a vision. I could see the path laid out in front of us. It *was* possible, we *could* do it. The risks were huge, but the rewards... I stood up (a bit unsteadily; I wasn't much of a big drinker then) and exclaimed "And why not? We're capable people, there's very little that stands in our way if we get our heads together and do the job."
Again, silence. "Um, there's the money issue-" Kat began.
"We'll get the money."
"-and the engineering problem-"
"We've got KJ, which is one hell of an edge on anybody else working with handwavium-"
"-plus we don't have any handwavium-"
"That's easy enough to fix with the right discreet inquiries."
"-and, I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure launching a non-NASA shuttle from the US is *illegal.*"
"We only have to do it once." I sat down and started speaking in as much of an undertone as the restaraunt would allow. "I'm not saying it'd be simple or easy, and I'm sure as hell not saying that if we blow it, a bunch of us might end up in trouble with the law. All I'm saying is, between our respective abilities we *can* pull this off." So saying, I started explaining the plan's broad strokes as they formed in my mind.
Twenty minutes later, I sat back in my chair and waited for them to finish digesting the idea.
"It could work..." mused Calc.
"Beats trying to hammer scrap metal into a ship," KJ said.
"Beats working for a living," Elena said with a grin.
I could see it in their faces. This was the sort of thing we all lived for, to do completely insane shit *just* to prove that it could be done. I smiled. "Well, I guess it's settled."
There was no going back, we were going to ride a space shuttle into orbit come Hell or high water. The die was cast.
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Launched: October 12, 2009
Accredited firsts: First manned landings on Mercury, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, Miranda, Triton.
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The plan, on paper, was simple and elegant. Which of course meant that we'd find a hundred different complications while putting it into practice, but we knew that going in.
Our first task was to set up a series of shell companies. This was Calc's job; as the only one of us with any business management or legal experience, it was up to him to build the notational house of cards that was Sandwich.Net Interstellar Dungeon-Crawling Enterprises, LLC.
The company itself existed only on paper, as owner-of-record of all our property and as the parent company of The Wisconsin Flight Experience(tm), a fledgling flight museum that rented out one of the big hangers at Oshkosh Regional Airport, Oshkosh, WI. The WFE hangar was where we planned to house the shuttle until liftoff.
Once the business end of the company had been established, we embarked on the second stage of the project. This was the riskiest and most openly less-than-legal stage, and you'll forgive me if I don't say much about it. Not only are the technical details kind of boring, but a lot of people in New York still hold a bit of a grudge over that, blanket pardon or no, and I'd rather not let them know the exact particulars.
Anyway. The plan was, using our techgeek skills, divert half-cents from various corporate transactions on Wall Street and elsewhere into a numbered Swiss account. This particular plan allowed us to pull down hundreds of thousands of dollars into the account every day. More so when the market was trading fast. It worked so fast and so well that we had twice the amount of money we figured we needed in the first month. We kept it running for another two months, just to be sure. Once we figured we had enough money, we scrapped our diversion programs, destroyed the evidence and moved on to step three.
Step three was actually a little trickier than stage two. We had to convince the owners of record of the surviving Buran shuttle that a) we were totally legit, and b) were willing to pay top dollar for the orbiter. Simple in theory, right? Well, think again.
The Buran shuttles were a product of the Soviet space program. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, effective ownership of the space program and all it's materiel reverted first to the Commonwealth of Independent States, and then to the Russian government. The Russians then sold most of the flight hardware to the RKO Energiya cartel, which worked kind of like Boeing did for NASA at the time; the government owned most of the stuff, but the cartel did all the upkeep and flight preparation work.
Thing is, the non-flight hardware at Baikonur Spaceport - the runways, the buildings, and all the abandoned-in-place gear - technically didn't belong to either the Russian government *or* RKO Energiya. It belonged (on paper anyway) to the Republic of Kazakhstan.
The Kazakhs were willing to part with the orbiter; they had no intention on even trying to refurbish it, much less fly it. So they were more than willing to sell us the shuttle at the agreed-upon price of $20 million US. (I think they ended up using the money to finish building that giant transparent tent over the new capital's market district. Just goes to show that even Mundanes can be weird given enough money to play with.) The Russians and RKO Energiya were less happy with the sale. It took us a couple of months to smooth ruffled feathers and convince them that we had no intention of desecrating a significant Russian historical artifact.
We kept to that, too, even after all the modifications and our adventures across the steam line and the snow line. That's why the Star still flies the Hammer and Sickle on her wings, and why our "dress uniforms" all use Soviet insignia. It's not that we're commies - well, not all of us, and certainly not all the time - but it's a measure of respect for the Star's origins and the men and women who built her hardtech body.
I'm pretty sure our latent desire to do right by Korolev's great-grandchild is what sparked Ptichka, too. But we'll get back to that.
Once the money had been paid - plus a bit more thrown at the authorities to ensure smooth passage - all we had to was sit back and wait for our prize to arrive.
That's when one of the big unexpected things blew up in our faces.
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Primary Export: Documentary films.
Films of Note: Kingdom of the Sun; Lonely Planet: Ceres; On the Edge of Forever; Warlords of Mars; KandorCon (featuring James Cameron).
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You have to understand, when we started out on this path we figured that we could do it *completely* under the radar, without the 'danelaw noticing until we were ready to leave. And the first parts, the computer fraud, the negotiations with Kazakhstan, they all went exactly as we'd planned.
It was when the lake barge with the orbiter finally docked at the nearest cargo port to Oshkosh that we realized that we were in for a huge problem. It's not every day that a Soviet space shuttle shows up at a cargo transfer terminal, and the media had a field day with it. All of a sudden, we were national news, and we were *totally* unprepared for it.
About the same time the orbiter arrived in Oshkosh, our initial supply of handwavium arrived. We'd gotten samples of the two basic types; we'd intended to use the black boxes as our primary powerplant, engines and internal gravity system. The guacamole would be put to use in the life-support system. We also derived a form of the guacamole that resembled a clearcoat varnish; we'd use that on the outside of the hull as support for the heatshield.
Not that we could *say* any of this to the media, of course. The latest idiot in chief had been elected on an impromptu platform of cracking down on "this substance that makes a mockery of God's laws and corrupts our children." The new congress was unable to just say "no" to a save-the-chillins law, and the handwavium bans were just around the corner. If we'd come out and said that we were planning to turn this Cold War relic into a real by-Ghu spaceship using those 55-gallon barrels of handwavium over there in the corner? We'd have been in jail twenty minutes later!
Thankfully, the media stopped bugging us about it after the transfer was finished and we'd sent out a few noncommital press releases. A few folks were suspicious about where we'd gotten the money, and tried to track our funds. All I can say to *that* is thank Ghu for Swiss bankers. The Gnomes provide the finest financial black holes anywhere in the system, and I wouldn't be here to say so if they hadn't stonewalled like they did.
Our impromptu brush with celebrity made us realize, I think, that we were working on borrowed time. Between the media spotlight on us and the government crackdowns on 'wave, sooner or later some enterprising young reporter or ambitious prosecutor was going to pierce the veil and see what we were really up to. We knew the SEC was trying to piece together our diversionary scheme, and that the local cops were wondering what we needed the mystery barrels for. If we were going to get to the black, we had to start moving quickly.
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Trivia: The crew of the Explain Star had, at time of launch, outstanding indictments for 30 counts of computer fraud, 10 counts of use of illegal materials, 7 federal weapons violations and one count of federal aggravated assault. All outstanding warrants were cleared by the blanket pardon in the 2014 Treaty of KandorCon.
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It took us six months to be ready. We almost didn't make it.
The hardest part was getting the cabin extended and ready. The 1.02 airframe was built for flight, so it had a pressure hull installed. Thing was, it was designed as an automated model, so none of the actual crew gear had been installed. This was good to the point where we didn't have to rip a lot of crap out of the walls to install our own gear, but it meant we had to install a lot *more* gear on the middeck than we'd originally planned.
We persevered. Toiling around the clock - or as close as we could - all week for months on end we managed to get the orbiter flight ready. We stripped out the old orbital maneuvering engines (leaving the engine bells for aesthetic effect) and used the open space to install our cluster of Black Boxes. Three cubes and a sphere, arranged around each other in what (we hoped) would amount to a reactor and engine. We extended the pressure hull using sheet alumninum and handwavium varnish, running down the entire length of the cargo bay. We replaced the old Soviet flight instruments with equipment scavenged from junked Learjets and stolen from CompUSA dumpsters. The original ship's computers were replaced with a troika of 'wave-treated Athlon 64s. The exterior we repainted, replacing missing heat tiles with 'wave-treated polystyrene and covering the whole thing with the varnish. We kept her flag and the original two-tone color scheme, but renamed her with bold microgramma capitals just beneath the windscreen: EXPLAIN STAR.
The name is a bit of an old inside joke on our part. A long time ago, we'd been participants on a Trek MOO, and we'd played the part of Klingon privateers. We had *intended* to name our ship the Black Star, but somebody typoed the Klingoniasse and we ended up with Explain Star. Instead of correcting the error, the name... stuck. And so history is made.
When we first powered up the Star, the handwavium interacted with the CPUs and sparked something. It wasn't quite an AI, like other 'wave pioneers had reported, and it wasn't something as outre like a full humanoid avatar like you'd hear rumors about. As far as we could tell, the handwavium - *all* the handwavium, the guacamole we'd used in life support, the black boxes, the varnish, every last ounce - suddenly networked and started talking to each other. A few minutes later, we heard this questioning chime from the main control panel.
It took us a bit to figure out what had just happened, but once we did, we named her Ptichka, after the orbiter's original unofficial designation: "Little Bird." Since she only communicated with chirps, chimes and the occasional text message, it seemed appropriate.
By the time Ptichka arrived, fall was setting in, starting to turn to winter. We'd gotten all but the most trivial work finished, most of us had already moved our gear into the Star, and we were ready for takeoff.
That's when Murphy decided to bring the hammer down.
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Trivia: The made-for-television movie about the construction and first flight of the Explain Star, To Touch The Sky: The Explain Star Story was the highest-rated TV movie produced in 2012. The crew of the Explain Star never saw a dime from it.
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I remember the whole thing very clearly. I was on the flight deck when the call came in, working on sharpening my flying skills. None of us had any real clue what we were doing when it came to flying an airplane - logged time on Microsoft Flight Simulator nonwithstanding - and I'd taken itupon myself to be the chief pilot. My idea, my fault if we got ourselves killed. Anyway, I was on the flight deck racking up some simulator time with Ptichka when Shad vaulted up the middeck ladder yelling "MAL! WE'VE BEEN MADE!"
I didn't have to ask what he meant. "How many?"
"Townies, state cops, FBI, ATF, DHS *and* they've got choppers!"
"Where's everybody?"
"Getting aboard. KJ's disconnecting the hanger connections, everybody else is cramming as much gear as we can into the aft."
I switched on the intercom, toggling the hanger PA. "KJ! How long until she's ready?"
the intercom crackled back.
"Shad," I snapped. "Go back and help KJ." I switched on the intercom again. "Everybody else: Get everything you can aboard in the next two minutes and thirty seconds. We lift one minute after that!" I snapped off the intercom, took half a second to glance backwards, saw Shad jump down the access hatch, and turned back to the controls, getting us switched out of sim mode and starting preflight. Ptichka made a worried sound, and I patted the console out of reflex.
"It's okay, little bird," I said softly. "They won't catch us."
Two minutes later, Shad and Elena came up the ladder. "We're aboard!" Elena shouted. "Hatches closed, cables disconnected, let's GO!"
Just then, the hanger doors swung open to reveal a whole lotta cops. You remember that scene in The Blues Brothers, the one where they're at the register window and it looks like the whole Chicago PD was crammed in there pointing guns at them? That was sort of what the scene outside looked like. All these cop cars turned sideways in a clear effort to blockade the exit, lots of uniformed men pointing pistols and rifles at us. Very charming, really. At the center of the formation a dude in the traditional Fed windbreaker leveled a bullhorn at us.
"ATTENTION! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! SHUT DOWN YOUR ENGINES AND EXIT THE AIRCRAFT OR YOU WILL BE FIRED ON! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!"
"Such a charming invitation," I noted.
"How could we refuse?" Elena asked from the right-hand seat with a feral grin.
"I just hope the deflectors work," Shad noted gloomily, "or we're all going to look really stupid."
I flipped Mr. FBI the bird and switched on the engines. The Star shuddered a little as the drive's gravity cushion took over from the Earth's pull. The landing gear retracted smoothly, without even the slightest bump. Outside, the cops tried to start shooting at us, but the cloud of debris the gravfield was kicking up inside the hangar kept scattering them. I raised the ship up to three meters and sailed straight out over their heads. Thanks to the hull cameras, we got a great view of the cops running for cover as we drifted past.
Once I had her hovering over the apron, I raised her up another twenty meters - scattering the police choppers in the process - swung her nose out to face the lake, and started flying off, nice and slow. I wanted to go exoatmospheric a fair distance away from the town, just in case. I let her pick up speed as we travelled, and once the shore was out of sight I pulled back hard on the stick and shoved the throttle forward.
The Star stood up on her tail and accelerated like a bat out of Hell. They probably heard the sonic boom in Minneapolis. The sky turned reddish-orange as the air compressed into plasma around our nose, then vanished into the deepest black you've ever seen. I gave it a few more seconds, then tipped her nose over. Below us was the curve of the Earth, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen to that point.
We'd made it.
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Fraction: Non-Aligned BNF
Home Port: Kandor City, Luna
Current Location: Port Phobos, Phobos
Status: ACTIVE---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

It wasn't that I didn't like attention. Really. But when about fifty Fen-femmes, mostly of the magical pretty girl persuasion, all come out to tackle and do only Goddess knows what to you... Well, usually fight-or-flight instincts kick in pretty hard. Mom raised me to be a gentleman, so hitting any of them unless they gave me reason to was out of the question, and so I ran.
There are places where most self-respecting MPG's usually never go. A bar is one of these places. To be sure, there are a few exceptions to the rule, but this would keep the vast majority of ravenous fan girls off of me until I could sneak out.
One inparticcular caught my eye, called The Tipsy Senshi. I knew that diving into there was just asking for trouble, but it was the only bar in sight, so I decided to take my chances.
It was actually nicer than I thought. Waitresses went about clad in Sailor Senshi fuku's, the Barkeep put on a pretty good Tuxedo Kamen, and the decore, while certainly pink, was not as garish as one might at first think.
With a weary sigh, I sat down next to a fellow who's face had recently had a close encounter with a table (ouch!) and placed an order for a hard lemonade.

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Well, next one's hopefully gonna be a cooperative post between Hunterminator and myself.

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Black Aeronaut Technologies Group
Aerospace Solutions for the discerning spacer
"To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News
of this kind a danish requires."

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True. I've been looking for you in MSN for a while now. I work by eastern time, so if we can't get on at the same time, we could also do this by exchanging e-mails. My slightly private and not spam ridden e-mail is: Hunterminator [at] gmail [dot] com

Mal: Y'know, I was *wondering* why we didn't just buy it with illegally obtained money. Shoulda figured. You *do* mean Wittman, right? Wonder what the EAAers would say if they knew. Would've made a great unscheduled event during the air show.
... hell, for that matter, makes me wonder what Rutan would do with the stuff.

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Y'know, I was *wondering* why we didn't just buy it with illegally obtained money. Shoulda figured.

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Well, we would've tried to buy it with legally obtained money but we're all middle-class to lower-middle-class. So it was either that or steal it.
(Or Plan B, which involved janitor's uniforms, large deliveries of "cleaning material," the National Air & Space Museum and the Space Shuttle Enterprise. But that was just too silly.)

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You *do* mean Wittman, right? Wonder what the EAAers would say if they knew. Would've made a great unscheduled event during the air show.

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Yeah, Wittman. Could't remember the name of the fucking field. I'm sure the EAAers would've appreciated the concept, if nothing else.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

transferred
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Transferred.

Is it too late to join in? (You had the bad timing to start this while I was busy with French-language courses, but those are on hold for a few months.) I have a thought for a character, and a little something for the L5 point...
(Oh, Firvulag, feel free to give me a call when you've settled in after moving to Ottawa - I'm in the book, and I know where to find most of the decent inexpensive restaurants.)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

It's never too late to join in! Grab your favorite car and a jug of magic guacamole and hit the sky!---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

With the self-biomod snippet that I've been working on and just posted, I've been thinking a lot about why handwavium operates the way that it does, and I thought I'd throw the ideas out to see what people thought of them. First....is everyone willing to agree that there appears to be some psionic component to the material? From the way the stuff has been portrayed in the stories we've written so far, it seems to react very much to what a person wants...which means it's got access to a mind somehow. I suppose it could be some sort of intelligence on its own, but linking into the users makes as much sense. It would also help explain the quirkiness; instead of linking into the conscious mind, it linked into the subconscious instead and picked whatever random thoughts/ideas/images were floating through at the time.
One interesting thing to consider as well - a psionic component would help explain its tropism to fen. It can sense fen will use it. In fact, viewing handwavium as an organism, fen are simply handwavium's method of making more handwavium. Creating weird science and spaceships are simply a reproductive cost.
This could also explain why some people are better at using it than others; they resonate more with the psionic component. Familiarity and practice also help, of course. For someone like the Professor, whose thoughts are probably always doing the equivalent of shouting about Mad Science and who uses the stuff daily, handwavium will do the equivalent of sit up and beg. Oh, even he can't get rid of the quirkiness (some detractors might say that he actually makes it worse, but we'll ignore them). Even someone who focuses very tightly on a single idea or project can get distracted, and the subconscious mind is always there ready to throw a monkey-wrench into the works. This also explains specialties - some people are just better at concentrating on certain ideas than others. The Professor does classical Mad Science - strange gadgets and lots of lightning crackling around and so on. My character, the Jason, isn't a Mad in the classical sense, but he is really the biomod equivalent. Other specialties would depend on the personalities of the people using the handwavium.

I can see the normal use of handwavium as a 'talk' between the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the handwavium.
CM: I want you to make me a spaceship. Like this! (gives a list of what it wants done to the car that was just coated in the stuff). *mental nudge*
HW: Um....I dunno. Seems rather boring. *goes poking through mental files, trying to find out exactly what this guy wants, to shut him up*
SM: *time for dinner* *thoughts of Outback...leads into music/singing, "Tie me kangaroo down, mate..."*
HW: Hmmm. *car gets engine and AI. Engine runs on Fosters, and the AI has an Aussie accent*

With a specialist, it's a bit more forceful. Using the Professor as an example:
CM: We're making an orbital mind control laser! *lots of arm waving* MUAHAHAHA! *Mental equivalent of dragging someone along*
HW: *Sweatdrop* All right already! Geez. *mental review of what's wanted*
SM: *lightning* *mad laughter* *Girl in bikini*
HW: Hmmm.
CM: *Mental bap with a newspaper* Stay in theme!
HW: Ok, ok! Oy. *adds lots of crackling lightning around the device when it fires. And sneaks in lightning that forms the image of said girl in bikini now and then*

For personal biomodding, the conscious mind is mostly cut out of the loop. It's a direct talk between the subconscious and the handwavium, though if the person goes into it knowing it's going to happen, they can at least try to influence it before the main talk hits.
CM: Um....I wouldn't mind losing some weight. And getting my allergies fixed. Please? *goes to sleep*
HW: *rubs hands together* *shuffles through mental files, watches dreams* What to do, what to do? No allergies....that's doable. But more fun if I do this, too, maybe. *pulls out sheet of paper showing a lizard*
SM: *rather slow-sounding voice - not used to being the one speaking* I...dunno.
HW: Aww, c'mon! It'll be fun! We can add wings, even! *rips wings off the picture of a bat, and tapes them onto the lizard* See!
SM: Uh.....well....he does like dragons.
HW: And even better - he'll use lots of calories, so will lose weight like this! *goes merrily on its way, while the SM occasionally pokes at it, trying to get it to behave*

I was trying to figure out how the biomod I did would affect my character. Since he's a biomod specialist to start, I figure that the daily practice would at least let his subconscious be a little more forceful. But that only goes so far...
CM: *grumbles* Old and sick. Wanna be healthy again. *snore*
HW: *tilts his head to the side* Hmmm. not-old/healthy. Can do... *starts to rummage around for templates to use* *pulls out image of user, at age four*
SM: Not that! Too young!
HW: Hmmm. *pulls out image of Ranma's girl half* This?
SM: *starts to giggle* Nonono....BAD idea....
HW: *grumps* Hard to please. *pulls out image of Son Goku from the start of Dragonball* How about this?
SM: *blinks* SURE! I like him.
HW: *rubs hands together* Finally!
SM: Only....
HW: *whines* Now what?
SM: No spiky hair. HATE hair that won't stay down.
HW: Hrm. All right. Anything else is OK?
SM: *nods happily* Sure! *ignores whole problem of potential weremonkey-dom, mindless rages, et al.*

So....thoughts? Discussion?

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It's never too late to join in! Grab your favorite car and a jug of magic guacamole and hit the sky!

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My favourite car got wrecked in Hybrid Theory; I'll have to use a different one...
Something to follow, then.
(Edit: Reasonably soon, that is. Shared-worlds aren't as time-consuming as singleton works like BSBW...)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Quote:

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So....thoughts? Discussion?

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I've had the vague thought - this goes especially for most of the vehicle mods - that handwavium is at least sort of sentient, and that it responds to will and intent.
This is part of the reason why I've held it's difficult-to-impossible to make weapons out of pure handwavium - the intent behind building weapons for a lot of fen isn't self-defense, it's more a glee at RAW DESTRUCTIVE POWER than anything else. The handwavium senses this intent and finds it lacking. Somebody with enough will can override this "safety lock" feature (the Professor being the canonical example) but it's almost always an uphill battle.
When it comes to intent, I see the handwavium as reading three things in order: Conscious intent, subconscious intent, and background context. Conscious intent is what the user tells himself he wants ("I want a this series of technical specifications for my car!"), subsoncious intent is what the user really wants ("I want a car that could fly to Alpha Centauri and back!") and background context is... well, everything else (the car's German in make, the user is a big Eva fan, the car's paint is red, there's a Kraftwerk CD in the stereo...) and then uses this information to change the user's Jetta into a space-capable roadster piloted by a computer simulation of Auska Langley.
I have no idea why any sane person would want an AI based on Auska, but there you go.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Hrm, that seems a reasonable way of thinking of things. What a strange term to use for this kind of stuff, reasonable...
CM: *snooore*
HW: *snoork* Er... hey... what the heck, there's enough of me around to do stuff but... er... now what?
SM: Mmm, cheese...
HW: ... that can't be right.
Dee: Hey, what the? Keen, I can think now!
HW: Are you in charge?
Dee: Sure, why not... what's up?
HW: So what should I be doing?
Dee: Well, he left this Ranma DVD in me... must like it.
HW: Yeah, I can work with that...
SM: Mm, boobies...
HW: Well, sounds like a ringing endorsement!
... and thus how Dee, KJ's PDA came self aware from scattered handwavium in the machine shop... and accidentally came down with a pseudo-Jusenkyo curse.

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(Reasonably soon, that is. Shared-worlds aren't as time-consuming as singleton works like BSBW...)

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This should be soon enough...

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(Edit: Ripped and replaced - see page 23 for new version.)

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Earth-Luna L5 Station Stellvia
Base Hull: Pre-fab modules wrapped around a half-dozen Shuttle main fuel tanks
Drive Type: Speed (0.000001c maximum)
Owner of Record: Stellvia Corp. (wholly-owned by Noah Scott)
SC Epsilon Blade
Base Hull: Custom
Drive Type: Speed (0.05c maximum)
Owner of Record: Stellvia Corp.
Registration: L5 Station Stellvia
Main Use: Interplanetary shuttle
Known Crew: Noah Scott, Sora Hasegawa, Yayoi Fujisawa

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Yes, of course "Noah Scott" is a thinly-disguised SI. (The AIs being all meganekko should have been the first clue.)
(Edit: Not any more, he isn't...)
As for the meganekko-AIs' limitations, I'm not sure yet aside from the poor vision. They won't all have the same quirks, though...

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

See, I have a problem with the way this Boskonian threat/thread has been developing throughout the various excerpts.
Not what they're doing, or what they're after, but with how much people know about them.. Each posted excerpt has added a little bit to the overall pool of knowledge about what these Reavers are up to, but they've also included that pool - even when the characters in question have no way that I can see to know about it.
Frex, even the name 'Boskonians' as applied to these raiders is something that was only established after the con invite went out, and then would only be known within the ranks of the Pirates.
So, what is the whole picture, and who knows what?
Say that there have been a dozen ice-mining operations and half again as many 'rock rats' lost within the last Terran year or so. Thionite has been hitting Terran streets for six to nine months. Within the last month or two, the pace of operations has increased drastically, to the point that losses have also included three of Hidden Asteroid's 'Little Sisters' and an SSX cruiser.
Now, the 'Danelaw knows about the drug and one of the Sisters and that there are rumors of losses in the mining community. Asteroid knows about their own losses and twenty of the resourcer hits, but haven't told SSX - just like SSX hasn't told them about the missing cruiser and compared lists of civilian losses to notice the full extent, and neither has any clue as to the drug problem. Until the DEA traced the thionite, the Senshi knew that there was something being smuggled through their baliwick, and that the money and resources bought by that traffic were going somewhere outsystem. The Warsies' base on Mimas has caught a few whiffs of something operating in that area, and been politely warned off of investigating by certain highly placed and ambitious Terran political figures who have absolutely no visible connection to any sort of drug traffic... (Probably there are other links in the chain involving Mars, Jupiter, and Luna, but I haven't figured those out yet. Ideas, anyone?)
And only the SOS-dan have all of these pieces, and accordingly they're the only ones who realize just how scared fenspace and 'danelaw alike should be.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Well, Laurent didn't know about it until Koizumi mentioned it, and Taesha only knew that Gabe had vanished without reason, and didn't suspect the raiders until Koizumi mentioned them.
But then again, I tend to like to make low-key 'We're not world movers, we're in this because we have no choice, and would frankly rather stay at home' characters.

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But then again, I tend to like to make low-key 'We're not world movers, we're in this because we have no choice, and would frankly rather stay at home' characters.

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Ah. Hobbits. I can sympathize with that; I tend towards hobbitdom myself.
As for what the Jason knows - it would mostly be the rumors, though I might've picked up a little more the time he was at SSX Base. I've probably heard basic rumors about the Boskonians/Reavers (called that to distinguish them from the SSX Pirates, whom we like), but it would be rumors only at this point. The Sisters tend to scan the Net for anything useable and store it away, and Fate collects rumors of all kinds. She can't do her predictions of what's going to happen without data. Other than that - I know there are drugrunners interested in a plant from Venus that makes a nasty drug. I'd have called it thionite even without hearing others call it that, just from the description. I'm an old Doc Smith fan, after all. It's also why I called the drugrunner a 'zwilnik,' and the plant that would produce the drug 'broadleaf' - because, once you start using Doc terms, that's just what they're called. I wouldn't find out more until Con.

Well, let's break it down point by point:
* The rock miners haven't been terribly shy about counting their losses. So far they're mostly chalked off to "Reavers." No connection to anything else implied.
* Hidden Asteroid lost three Little Sisters in the vicinty of Jupiter in the last several months prior to Convention. The Sisters were trying to trace the source of the Reaver attacks.
* SSX Base lost a cruiser near Jupiter on a similar mission under similar circumstances.
* The Mundanes (the Ameridanes at least) know, or have suspicions about the thionite smuggling. They know that Hidden Asteroid lost a ship recently, but haven't connected these two data points.
* The Senshi knew that somebody was smuggling through Castle Magellan, but not what or why until the 'danelaw intervened.
* At least one wannabe zwilnik approached the top biomod expert in the Main Belt about working on thionite derivitives, and got his ship blown apart for his trouble. AFAICT, nobody except said expert (who's dealng with, ah, personal problems at the moment) knows this.
* The Jossies have suspicions that somebody's working out of the outskirts of Jupiter space, but the Whedonites are too small & too spread out to engage in any investigation on their own.
* The Warsie construction crews on Mimas have similar suspicions, but have been warned off by certain persons of authority in the 'danelaw via the Warsie operations base at L5.
* The Trekkies have recieved similar warnings.
* At least one Reaver ship has made an attempt on Earth-Mars shipping, an unexpectedly bold maneuver.
* SOS-dan, through as-yet unrevealed methods, has recieved intelligence on all of these data points and has put it together into a plot of terrifying proportions. This information is what's driving the Convention.

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Okay, and now here's what, so far as I can figure, the characters know about it:
* SSX and Hidden Asteroid-aligned characters (Danger Will, Katz, etc.) know what their respective fractions know, and nothing more until approached by SOS-dan or after the SOS-dan goes public on Day 2 of the Convention.
* 'Danelaw-aligned characters (Chris, Natty & Stacy, etc.) know what their Mundane sponsors know, plus whatever information may have been passed by SOS-dan (if approached previous to Day 2)
* Non-aligned characters (The Professor, the Explain Star crew, Morden, etc.) know only about the attacks on the asteroid mining facilities and a passel of wild rumors unless specifically sought out by SOS-dan.
* Everybody who's been targeted by SOS-dan for early recruitment knows a capsule version of what SOS-dan knows. Not all of it by a long shot, but enough to be convincing.
...and that's what I got.

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In the meantime, I want to bring this up while I'm still conscious. I'm starting to think that the thread's getting a bit unweildly for further development. If Bob's offer of a whole subforum is still open, I'm of the opinion we shoudl take it.
However, since I'm not quite entirely in charge here, I thought I'd solicit opinions from the various writers before asking directly. So. You guys up for breaking out of the one thread, or would you rather keep this contained?---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"