Drunkard's Walk Forums

Full Version: [Story][Season 0] Bootstrap 1
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.

Ace Dreamer

Bootstrap 1 - 31/May/2012
Summer, 2007, UK.
Brian, 'Brains', had bought the 'meta paint'.  He'd watched the video.  He'd read the instructions.  Conservatively, he'd painted-up a surplus 2mm figure.  Though a few smears had gone on a defunct diorama.
Now, he watched the figure stagger around that diorama.  It was a World War II British soldier, carefully painted with a bandaged head, with red dot.  The figure didn't seem to be able to walk off the landscape; near the edge he just veered away, and kept wandering.
He ignored a finger-tip waved in his face.  If picked up he just froze back into painted plastic, again.  Until he was put on that diorama, again.
"I don't think he's intelligent", Brian murmured to himself.  "It's more he's doing what fits his surroundings.  As if he's an animated part of them.  This needs careful thought."
A week later Brian had thought more about the problem than even he thought sensible.  The shaky videos of hovering or flying cars didn't interest him.  Cars were, to him, four-wheeled tin raincoats.  Not some mystical freedom device.  But, he guessed being in a wheelchair might be colouring his opinion.
It turned out you could 'breed' the paint.  You could even change its colour, if you were careful.  Slowly feeding it more paint seemed to work best, along with an energy source, like a mild electric current, or strong sunlight; mirrors helped.
Ah yes.  He was supposed to call it 'handwavium'.
Brains was worried about contaminating it with information; some suggestions of feeding-in SF books, or illustrations, was in the instructions.  He'd tried to hide his browsing trail, but there were worrying hints that living creatures could be affected, and, unless very careful, strange things would happen.
Brian had turned to his best occult books, re-reading Wilson and Bonewits. Intention seemed critical, clear, maybe even fanatical, intention.  No matter what some people said, Brian wasn't sure he could do 'fanatic', and he couldn't spend years developing a useful 'magical personality'.
OK, he didn't know how to get what he wanted, or where he wanted.  But, he wasn't an engineer and a computer programmer for nothing.  If you'd trouble starting-up something big, in a new environment, you started with something small, and boot-strapped.
He needed tools, to build the tools, to get what he wanted. And, they had to have safety features built in.  And not decide to go Skynet or Nuclear Genie out-of-the-bottle on him.  Which led to his current ritual.
Fortunately Summer thunder storms in his area were reasonably predictable - at least you knew they were on the way.  His cottage, a dower house, had never been hit by lightning, but some careful engineering would likely fix that.  He had a diorama of a 1980s computer room already, and with a little modification it matched that film, right down to the frantically scurrying operator.
He'd been collecting old SF films on video for a few years now.  People were just throwing them away, even if they didn't buy a DVD replacement.  He'd standing orders in a number of local charity shops.  Somehow, he felt tapes were more 'solid' than DVDs, more like films; no reconstruction of images from compression which you hoped they'd gotten right.
Eventually he settled on three tapes.  The original 'TRON'[1], 'Weird Science'[2] and 'Bagpuss'[3], the last of which he sacrificed from his special collection.  All carefully rune and circuitry inscribed.
The TRON video, still in its original box, was taped to the back of a blown-up to life-size, sepia, Victorian print, that looked very like Bagpuss's 'Emily'.  So he'd get someone who'd bestride the virtual and real worlds.
Weird Science contributed the ritual (he hoped he wasn't supposed to have stolen the Victorian bra he was wearing on his head), he refurbished an original model of the PC used in the film, and carefully connected the computer room diorama.  The trick was getting Emily, not Lisa (or a nuclear weapon).  Hence, the sepia print, and no doll.
Bagpuss required an original as possible cloth cat, and he'd added a Bagpuss diorama, carefully missing the central character.  The cat carefully resting 'in the arms' of the sepia print.
All in the scaled-up ritual circle, drawn as accurately as he could.  With Emily and Bagpuss being the targets.  Or, more accurately Emily, who had a cloth cat called 'Bagpuss'.
He hoped this was all obscure enough, and that his initials of 'OBS' for being 'Orlando Brian Severn' might help in some way.  Names of Power.
"No, no, mustn't think about Murphy and Eris!"
SfX: Lightning Flash!
Show Time!
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
I am liking this new character a lot... Smile
But, Ace... "careful", "start small", "safety"... all very reasonable... and then he creates a ritual than involves runes, handwavium and a lightning storm. Nothing sane can come form this, hear my words.
Is he fooling himself about the fact he clearly belongs with the Mads even before he really starts in the 'wavium business, or he will cheerful acept his place in the universe and start practicing a proper mad laughter?

Since my character belongs to the victorian horror Mads, I can tell you than (should you need further assistance once you are in Luna) Marduk city's climate control will have regular lighnting storms a few times a month (because half the city is batshit crazy, and a good 20% of all 'wave proyects there will not get the first activation unless there is a lighning storm going on.
*Sings*

From my heart and from my hand

Why don't people understand

My creation!


*Cackles*

Oh god, I do love that movie. So much so that FS!Benjamin is banned from listening to that particular song unless he's in his special lab. Wink (Actually, I'm pretty sure this is what causes a lot of his blue hair moments.)

Anyhow, do love what you're doing here. Please, do continue. Smile
Bagpuss you say?

There is nothing that cannot be improved by the addition of 1.21 Gigawatts of SCIENCE!

Of course, the very act of not thinking about Murphy and Eris means your thinking about Murphy and Eris. They're tricky that way.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Dartz Wrote:Of course, the very act of not thinking about Murphy and Eris means your thinking about Murphy and Eris. They're tricky that way.
It requires a very zen-like approach, with plenty of meditation and a "There Is No Spoon" attitude.
And an intentional avoidance of thinking about pink elephants.
--
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

Ace Dreamer

You don't actually expect that this will work the way he intends it, do you? [grin]
There's a lot of handwavium being used there, a 1980s computer that's been soaked in handwavium, a diorama of a 1980s computer room that's been weved-up so it functions like one...
Of course this is going to go right! [grin]
Strangely enough, he wasn't thinking about Pink Elephants...
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

HRogge

Maybe thats the reason why Fenspace is more successful with Handwavium than Earth. The Fen do not worry that much about Quirks, they just live with them... and because they don't worry that much about them, they get less Quirks! *G*

Warringer

Sounds logical. In a Fen sort of way. :p
Heh. I can just see an autobiography of a mundane-scientist-turned-fen: "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Quirk".

Ace Dreamer

How'd you guess he'd got a doctorate?

I really can't figure that out. [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind