Drunkard's Walk Forums

I've lurked for a while now, and done some (hopefully helpful) kibitzing and wikifying, but I've never posted anything of my own – until now!
From Disturbing Implications of Land Rising Into the Sky:

Quote:Mal muted the phone and looked over at Elena. "What is it?"
"We've got a launch indication coming up on our track."
Mal looked a bit puzzled. "So? Launching things into orbit is the new taste sensation sweeping the country."

Mal's non-reaction to "a launch indication" suggests that the only thing remotely interesting about the Grovers Corners launch (before those already Up found out anything about her construction and crew) was her size. Not even Dee or Jess A. can be everywhere (and may not have been created/moddiplied, respectively), so a modest and distress-free launch would probably elicit no more (and possibly less) reaction than a radioed "Welcome to the Black" from whoever might have noticed. On that note, I'll post my first chunk of story!

Quote:My first ship, which I built and 'waved whilst listening to Steve Savitzky's "Bound for Hackers' Heaven" almost constantly, did exactly what I designed and the song asked it to do: (a) get me Up and to L3, and (b) become the core of a space habitat. This and a few earlier experiments having firmly entrenched the notion of directing handwavium with music into my mind, I then proceeded to do something *extremely stupid*.

Still drunk with the success of my launch, I started listening to "Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel)" by Kansas on repeat ("Here I'll live and die/With my wings in the sky,/And I, I won't come down no more!"). At the same time, I started work on my next ship, and had no intent of directing its mod with "Icarus".

So, of course, there I was, doing the 'wave with nothing on the stereo and scraps of "Icarus" still running through my head, occasionally springing unbidden from my lips. By the time I started work on the cockpit, I'd been awake for far too many consecutive hours, and had stopped following my own Handwavium Safety Protocols some time earlier. The moment I finished up the cockpit, I fell asleep. The last thing I remember is the line "Without my wings, you know I'd surely die" running through my mind.

Given how careless I had been, it should be no surprise that I managed to mod not just my ship, but also myself.

Huh. Thought I had written more than that. Anyway, the idea is that my avatar's biomod coincides and interacts with his ship's wavejob, and he consequently regards his Wings of Steel (as he names it) as part of himself. Unlike Wave Convoy, his biological shell didn't die, and he's not a Transferred Consciousness. Think instead of the Panserbjørne from Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials", only my armour lets me travel through space (and my mod didn't turn me into a tool-using polar bear).

I still have lots to do: design Hackers' Heaven inside and out (I do know that all artificial gravity systems installed therein will mysteriously fail, since "who wants to walk when we've already dared to fly?"), design my Wings of Steel (though it has to have wings, which suggests atmospheric flight capability), describe my avatar's appearance and how (and if) the biomod changed it, and I'm sure there are other things I'm missing. (I need to pick a name; Proginoskes is fine as a screenname (or a callsign, if I ever need one), but I wouldn't use it in face-to-face interaction.)
Things about my avatar I already know:
Notable Mundane Attributes:

• Reinventing the wheel for the 452nd time: Hackers' Heaven used a grid of lasers as an acceleration drive. (Or maybe not; I wanted my launch to be unremarkable, which a photon-remass drive is definitely not.)
• Where's the manual?: Can work with pretty much any computer technology (and a wide variety of tech in other categories) comfortably, so long as he has the manual or API docs or similar. Tends to become useless once deprived of it/them.

'Wavium Abilities:

• An extension of the self: intimately knows the current state of his Wings of Steel. This includes state of repair, fluid and battery levels, and hatches and ports open and shut. If he closes his eyes and concentrates, he can call up images from any camera or sensor of his Wings capable of producing them.

Quirks:

• My Wings, not yours!: will consider unsolicited suggestions for upgrades or additions to his Wings of Steel, but dismisses them unless they are obviously insanely good or something non-fatally disastrous happens to drive the point home. Is outright hostile to any suggestion that someone else pilot his Wings of Steel.
• Without my Wings, you know I'd surely die: refuses to travel without his Wings of Steel. This usually means travelling in his Wings of Steel, since ships large enough to routinely carry or tow it are generally either extrasolar exploratory craft or roving residences. The distance he is willing to have between himself and his Wings is directly proportionate to his familiarity with the station or surrounding area.

EDIT: I'm nixing the "Shades of the Loon" quirk for now. It seemed needlessly complex, and slightly pretentious.

Uhm... dude, dunno what you did, but it kinda broke the page.

I think I get the jist of it.

He's launching his own unreal estate to a L3, using something as the core. He accidentally waves himself along with the unreal estate, and comes to see it as an extension of his own body. Or something. It's kinda hard to tell.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

Okay, one thing I think you need to do is double space your line breaks. It greatly increases readability.
Let me see if I have this straight.
First you're avatar flies the Hacker's Haven into space. Once he has that as a habitat, he begins work on the Wings.
The Wings of Steel either a Space Craft or Powered Armor of some sort, I'm not sure of which. Either way, they bond to you avatar as part of his biomod. This bond prevents him from moving a certain distance from the Wings. This distance is determined by how secure he feels at the time.
Am I on track so far?
I like it, you just need to improve your formatting. But what do I know. I just jumped on this bandwagon yesterday, myself.

Hmmmmm... I see no individual element that hasn't been used before, but the whole is something new. I love it when that happens.

As for a grid of lasers being too noticeable to use as an acceleration drive, that's true only if they emit in the visible spectrum. Make them UV lasers and the only evidence on Earth of their use is the people below Hacker's Heaven getting a slightly deeper suntan than expected. (There are enough biomods and AIs in space that somebody Up should be able to see UV, but I doubt your avatar cares about that.)

As for being noticed, there's a one-in-three chance that the L5 colonies will be in the right part of the sky to see any given launch. If they do see you, then at least Stellvia will say "hello"...
--
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

KaiserDrgn and Rob Kelk have the right of it. Formatting-wise, it seems Safari and Yuku don't play well together; I'll edit for readability when I have access to a computer with a different browser.

Firefox works rather well and comes in Windows, Linux and Macintosh flavors.
EDIT: I guess I should tell you what I see on my end: no text wrapping.  The text just keeps going off the side of the screen until it a break comes along.

The problem is, my own computer is in casters-up mode (despite lacking casters, being a laptop), and while I have free access to this computer, I don't have admin privileges, so I can't install something more reasonable. Hopefully, I'll have my own computer back tomorrow.

Okay, my computer isn't running properly, but at least it's running. (Slax LiveCD to the rescue!)

Rob, the problem with a UV photon-remass drive is the sheer quantity of light needed to lift anything. A huge variety of substances fluoresce under UV light, and at least as many are ionized or otherwise chemically changed by it. The quantities needed... now that I'm actually thinking about it, it boggles the mind. We aren't talking sunburns here, folks, but forest fires...

Really, the problem with a UV photon-remass drive is the "remass" part. Any remass drive is functionally equivalent to a sizable missile being launched, which is bound to attract the kind of attention I was thinking I might avoid (which any "waved car"-style speed drive launch does avoid). Now I need to decide if the photon-remass drive is worth having to write a noisy launch, or if I should just make the Hacker's Heaven a waved car (it was originally going to be an ISO shipping container, with waterbeds for padding and an algally powered atmospheric system).

I don't know if it make more sense, but a waved ISO container is more interesting than Just Another Waved Car.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Quote:Really, the problem with a UV photon-remass drive is the "remass" part.

One can say the same about an ion drive... such as the one that launched the Epsilon Blade from the Earth's surface to L5 (stopping along the way to pick up a half-dozen shuttle external tanks). Handwavium does wonders in letting folks ignore the laws of physics in situations like these.

Quote:I don't know if it make more sense, but a waved ISO container is more interesting than Just Another Waved Car.

Agreed.

Go with your first thoughts; they're often the right ones for Fenspace. (If they aren't, we'll let you know. Trust me on this.)
--
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