Yeah, Mal's got the reboot bug again. The last one worked out okay, so let's give it another whirl, yeah? Everybody hang onto the lap bar 'cause shit is gonna get
weird...
Quote:Cornell University
14 February 2006
"Test log seventeen: Since starting work with the handwavium samples directly I've noticed a direct effect to the nature and quantity of my work output. Research among handwavium enthusiasts online suggests this is a common thing - a sort of euphoric effect caused by 'working magic,' or somesuch. Euphoria, sure, but whatever they're feeling isn't what I'm feeling.
"I've now filled six notebooks with math and notes that I only dimly remember writing in the first place, and can barely recognize as workable. It's almost like being in an Ambien trance, or sleepwalking. Though I'm pretty sure that I'm not sleepwalking. I suspect that the effect might be similar it's not identical, because the notebooks aren't filled with incoherent gibberish like a dreaming or stoned person might scribble down. The math is absurdly high level but it all fits together. Apparently in a handwavium-induced trance I've managed to determine that the universe exists in a modified Everett multiworld continuum, and sketched out several interesting modalities that may be able to exploit that.
"And for today's experiment we're going to try the simplest of these out."
~***~
Diedre Greist carefully maneuvered the last bit of wire into her jury-rigged circuit board and soldered it into place. The board was the last piece of a small pile of junked TVs and chunks of handwavium crystal that made up her first attempt at what she was calling the Mark I Bridge. Assuming the math was right and she wasn't crazy, once powered up the Mark I would open a narrow pinhole between her universe and another one, allowing her to see what was on the other side. Of course if the math was wrong then it wouldn't work, or it'd catch fire or explode and there'd be a hell of a mess to explain to the Provost.
She waited for the last few connections to cool down, then doublechecked to make sure there were no loose wires or anything physically wrong with the Mark I. Seeing nothing wrong, she plugged the device into her handwavium-enhanced laptop, an old junker she'd picked up and treated specifically for this test run. The machine booted up agreeably enough and seemed to recognize the device without complaint.
"Right," she said for the benefit of her tape recorded. "Mark I Bridge test number one. The device is powered and on standby. Control systems are responsive. No faults detected in the assembly. Sooo... activating system-" she tapped a key and the laptop chimed "-and let's see-"
"-if this thing works." Said a voice that was very much like Deidre's but not quite identical. Deidre blinked hard and looked at the cathode-ray tube that served as the device's main viewport. In the middle of the screen was a crisp and clear image of another woman a few years younger, with more punked-out hair and clothing but with the same eyes and the unmistakable Griest nose. Deidre tapped the screen just to make sure she wasn't hallucinating and then gave a tentative wave.
The younger her looked back, confused, then broke out with a huge grin. "Hey, it worked!" she said. "Hi, other me!"
~***~
Ithaca, New York
20 April 2006
Noah Anderson adjusted his tie irritably. By rights he should be working on the Boskone post-mortem, calling Scaled about his handwavium-powered aircraft proposal and any number of things a professional serious person in the realms of business and fandom should be doing instead of standing around outside a warehouse in upstate New York waiting for a lunatic. But his contacts in fandom told him something was seriously up, and Noah trusted his contacts. More to the point, Noah trusted his instincts, and they told him that whatever was going on inside that warehouse it was worth checking up on.
The wait in the mid-spring morning chill was wearing on his patience, though. He grumbled a little, idly hoping that the interior was warmer than it looked. As he shifted around, a rental sedan pulled up to the warehouse and stopped beside him. A tall black woman in jeans and a windbreaker got out and gave Noah a puzzled look. "Noah?" she said quizzically. "What are you doing here?"
"Tanith?" Noah replied. "I could ask you the same thing." Tanith Curtis was a name in the Chicago fan circles, and the two had a professional relationship going back almost a decade. Normally very little could get Tanith out of the city, which made her appearance in Ithaca all the more startling.
"I got an invitation to something ‘world-shaking,'" Tanith shrugged. "It was delivered by people I trust, so I figured what the hell. I'm guessing that you got the same invite?"
"You could say that, yes. It's all very hush-hush secret stuff. I probably shouldn't have come but... I got curious. I have no idea what it means."
"Maybe I could help with that," a new voice interrupted. Noah and Tanith turned to see a woman in a labcoat and black gloves standing in front of the door. The newcomer smiled slightly and said, "Ms. Curtis, Mr. Anderson. I'm Deidre Griest. We've never met in person before, but we have had some online correspondence."
Tanith cocked her head in thought. "Griest," she said. "Oh, right, you worked on a couple programming bits for ACen in the past. I thought you'd left fandom."
Deidre shrugged. "Not precisely," she said. "I wasn't going to lose track completely but then academia and... medical issues took over my life for a bit, and then there was this new handwavium material. Fascinating stuff."
"Indeed it is," Noah said dryly. "And I'm guessing that's what we're here to see. Some sort of space colony thing, maybe?"
"Not exactly. Please, come inside."
~***~
The interior of the warehouse was divided up into a dozen offices and makeshift workbenches, in the center of the building a clear spot was carefully marked out with chain-link fencing. A group of students in the traditional garb of the college student worked on unidentifiable pieces of technology around them. "This doesn't look like much," Deidre remarked, "but what you see here is the beginning of the biggest advance in human affairs since the development of agriculture. We aren't on the bleeding edge of science; we've taken a running leap into the abyss and getting a good look at things man probably wasn't meant to know."
"That's... very nice hyperbole," Tanith said, eyebrows raised. "But I'm still not sure what you're doing here."
"We've discovered some very interesting properties of handwavium," Deidre replied. "This is our main research facility."
"And those properties are, what exactly?"
A bell tolled inside the warehouse, and Deidre smiled. "Perfect," she said. "Better to just show you." As she said it, a flash of swirling light came from the center of the fenced-off part of the warehouse, and all of a sudden the space was occupied by a metal shed. Tanith and Noah stared as the shed door opened and a stocky, bearded man in flannel stepped out with a pet carrier in one hand.
"Hey, boss lady!" the man said, lifting the carrier high. "Got you a present!"
~***~
It was the size of a turkey and covered in short dun-colored feathers. It looked up at the humans surrounding it with a vaguely confused expression, then started scratching its sinuous neck with a powerful, clawed hind leg.
"It's," Noah stared, gaped a little more, then started again. "Its, a, a, velociraptor."
The stocky guy from the shack - who'd been introduced to them as Mal Fnord - shook his head. "Nah," he said, pointing at the dinosaur's hind leg. "No sickle claw. It's a dromaeosaur of some kind, but I don't know which. I've not really seen many with the skin still on."
"Did you get the pictures?" Deidre demanded. Mal grinned.
"Did I ever! There was a whole herd of hadrosaurs about a mile from the insertion point. Had to have been thirty or more just sort of moving south-southwest through the hills. Real serious Jurassic Park stuff. I got stills and video. Bitey here-" he gestured at the dinosaur "-was sniffing at the shack when I got back."
"Time travel," Noah said suddenly, giving Diedre a hard look. "You've invented time travel, haven't you?"
Deidre shook her head. "Nope, time travel's impossible as far as I understand the math."
Noah gestured angrily at Bitey. "Then how do you explain that?"
"We're not travelling backwards and forwards through time, Mr. Anderson." Deidre said. "We're traveling across it. Sidestepping, if you will, into alternate realities."
"So you're not interfering with Earth's history... "
"Nah," Mal said laconically. "We're just playing tourist on a counterpart Earth that for whatever reason is still in the age of dinosaurs. And it doesn't stop there. We've gotten a look at a dozen different worlds so far."
"What are they like?" Tanith asked.
"A few are like dinoworld, uninhabited by sapient life but have megafauna. One's pretty much a hellworld like Venus, pretty scary. The majority we've seen so far seem to have changes based on history. Like if the Roman Empire never fell or the Song Dynasty expanded into Inda, stuff like that. We haven't really travelled to the inhabited places yet."
"Interesting," Noah said diffidently. "But dinosaurs aside, I'm not sure this qualifies as the biggest advance since agriculture." Mal snorted as he said it and gave Deidre an amused look.
"You used the agriculture line? Really?"
"Just because it happens to be true," she said loftily, then continued on in a more serious manner. "The technology is still in it's early stages, Mr. Anderson, but I believe we'll soon be able to seek out worlds that are not only as advanced as ours, but more advanced. Through trade we'll be able to bring art, culture and technology back that will enrich our world a hundredfold."
"Such as?" Noah asked.
Deidre shrugged off her labcoat, causing Noah to take an involuntary step back. What he'd initially taken as a glove of some kind on her right hand was actually a layer of artificial material covering the entirety of her arm to the shoulder.
"The beginning of my sophomore year at Cornell," she said softly, "I was out on my motorcycle when some drunk frat asshole sideswiped me. I lived through it but my arm was completely ruined. I built myself a prosthetic exoskeleton, but that only gave me fifty percent functionality and it lasted maybe two hours unless I had a wall socket to plug in on.
"On my first experiment with the dimensional viewer I contacted an alternate version of myself from a high-tech reality who'd had something similar happen to her. She built a completely new cybernetic arm for herself. After she talked to me she sent me the plans to do the same thing, and once I figured out how to start sending things through she sent me the tools I needed to do the job properly.
"That is the potential of sidestepping, Mr. Anderson. We have unlimited access to everything. We can bring it home and we can start making the world a better place. That's where you both come it. We're just about at the edge of what we can accomplish on our own. If we're going to do this right, we need operating capital, political influence and somebody who can keep track of big organizations." Deidre pointed at Noah. "You've got the money to get us started on better equipment, and the pull we'll need to get a fair hearing from the world once we go public." She shifted her finger to Tanith. "And you've got the organizational skills and experience to make a larger group work, and you've got a conscience to keep us from hoarding our discoveries instead of using them for the greatest possible good."
Deidre spread her hands. "That's the pitch. We're looking at the biggest thing in recorded history, and if you want to get in on the ground floor now's the time to say so. What'll it be?"
Meta Time: Fenspace + GURPS Infinite Worlds = fun!
The basic pitch here is that (as usual) things are a little different with handwavium this time out. Instead of providing easy access to space it provides access to, well...
all the things. Biomod ability's been swapped out for interworld access and a sort of inspirational effect that you might as well call the Spark because I don't have a better name for it. From where we leave off the Fen (in the form of mad scientist Deidre Griest, well-connected rich guy Noah Anderson and organizer Tanith Curtis) go public, convince the world to let them keep running the show and the Convention is born as a slightly more anarchic version of IW's Infinity Unlimited. Hilarity, as you might expect, ensues.
Thoughts?
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
"So, how do you - we - keep control of this after we go public?"
Deidre raised an eyebrow. "Why wouldn't we keep what we created, Mr. Anderson?"
"It's too useful. Stick some derricks on a world without people, suck the oil out, bring it back here, and undercut the OPEC nations. Likewise with diamonds and deBeers."
Mal snorted. "Diamonds are over-priced rocks anyway."
"True, but they do have industrial uses. If you'd rather, find a world where Oswald missed Kennedy, or Kaplan didn't miss Lenin's heart. Or my sister survived that car crash two decades ago. You'll find a lot of people wanting to visit those first two, and I want to visit the last one."
"I can see how that's important, Noah, but how is it too useful?"
"We aren't the only ones who've lost important people, Tanith. Who would the government want to bring through that portal ... gateway ... thingy if they could?"
"Even if we find these people," asked Deidre, "would they come? They're not property - we can't just take them away from their lives."
"That's how we think, but the word 'kidnapping' exists for a reason. So, how do we keep control of this after we go public, so that doesn't happen?"
Tanith looked puzzled. "Ms. Griest built it, you sound like you're going to fund it, and I know I want in to organize it. Why wouldn't we keep it?"
"Call me paranoid, but despite what Robert Asprin wrote in The Cold Cash War, if a government really wants something, they can use the military to take it."
"That's illegal."
"Yes, Mr. Fnord, it is. Will that stop them?"
"Okay. You're paranoid."
"Noah has a point, though." offered Tanith. "The government might not be able to legally take this away from us, but they can bury us so deep in regulations that we'd have to do things their way or not do things at all."
"Then we set things up so they don't want to take it away from us."
"All right, Ms. Griest. How?" Everybody thought about Noah's question for a moment.
--
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
Excerpt from “Sidestepping: The First Ten Years of Interworld Exploration” by Catherine Brenner (with annotations by Agent 1st Class Maico Tange, IWSS) (Random House, 2020):
What exactly happened in the meeting between Deidre Griest and the United Nations is unknown. To date nobody has leaked the information and all records remain sealed with a review date - not release, just a review - of 2107. The best theory is that Griest told the UN representatives a secret about the nature of sidestepping, or possibly a secret about handwavium learned through her early sidestepping research. Whatever it was, it was enough for the United Nations Security Council, the five most fractious nations on Earth that were going through a very difficult period of post-imperial readjustment at the time, to publicly throw away their differences and embrace Griest’s proposal.
(Note: Whatever happened here sounds very similar to what Van Zandt did or said to the UN on Homeline. Perhaps they had a shared epiphany? --MT)
Under Griest’s plan, a non-governmental organization headed by co-conspirator Tanith Curtis would take responsibility for all sidestep operations under the nominal control of the Security Council. The organization drew its membership from Griest’s initial sidestep team as well as several other informal groups that had sprung up and reached similar conclusions about handwavium and its place in our world. By a strange quirk of fate, all of these groups were connected to each other via informal connections with the community of science fiction and fantasy fandom. Thus the Interworld Exploration Group quickly became known, at first sarcastically and then more sincerely, as The Convention, the name which we know the group as now and probably forevermore.
(Note: A Homeline reader will note that this sounds at least a little familiar, and they’re right to. There seems to be a bit of convergent evolution between Infinity Unlimited and the Convention, but this is only skin deep: there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent of White Star Trading within the Convention, and the organization is far less oriented towards profit in general. --MT)
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
i like this. and i'm going to leave it at that until i can talk to yall on irc
Trying to tell this one in story as much as possible, but sometimes that fails so we'll go to meta material.
Let's talk about the Convention.
As stated above, the Convention is Gernsback-2's equivalent of Infinity Unlimited and/or the Centrum Interworld Service. It was formed primarily to keep interdimensional travel technology from becoming hidden or militarized, and to this end it has mostly succeeded. As the official sole operator of sidestep devices the Convention sits in an odd position between corporation, NGO and nation-state of its own. Officially the Convention is answerable to the United Nations Security Council, and eight times out of ten Director Curtis will actually follow their lead.
The Convention is run by the Director and the Operating Committee (or ConCom), which has executive oversight on all activities. Beneath them are the major divisions. These include (but are not limited to):
* Convention Security (C-Sec), equivalent to the Infinity I-Cops with much the same mandate: to protect the homeline from threats and protect the other worldlines from homeliners behaving badly.
* Explorer Corps, which handles the discovery and initial scouting of new worldlines.
* Research & Development, which handles figuring out new toys and distributes them to the world.
* Special Circumstances, a motley crew which handles problems C-Sec can't, made up of the best, the brightest, the oldest and the most treacherous of the Corps and C-Sec.
The Convention's primary headquarters is the DragonCon Tower, a skyscraper-slash-convention center in the heart of Atlanta. The Director and ConCom)work out of the tower, and the major division directors all have offices there. Interworld operations largely happen at the command center just outside of Dulce, New Mexico. As of late (2015 on) the frequency of high-tech, spacefaring worldlines discovered has spurred construction of an orbital base for sidestepping spacecraft. The Stella Via Station was officially online New Years Day 2019 and plays host to high-security research facilities as well as the Convention's small space navy.
Advances and innovations brought back from the multiverse are licensed by the Convention for not a whole lot, but considering the ubiquity of things like fusion power, advanced electronics, bionics, medical treatments etc. it all adds up to make the Convention the richest non-profit on the planet. Everything the Convention takes in is plowed back into operating capital or used to expand Convention operations elsewhere.
Quote:Stella Via Station, Earth-Luna Lagrange Point 1
30 August 2019
“Wow. What is that?”
“In it’s home timeline they call it an SR-1. Apparently it’s sort of a cross between a U-boat and a pocket space battleship.”
“Wow. Did we buy it or steal it?”
“Well, to be honest I wanted to steal one but they only made the one and it was kinda crewed by the local equivalent of a group of superheroes and we didn’t need that kind of tsuris, y’know? No, instead it turned out that a local terrorist group had already stolen the blueprints and since we were in their facility stealing all their shit anyway, well, why not right?”
“Aha, I see clearly now. So how many are we going to make?”
“Have to ask the brass about that, I’m just field personnel. From what the rumor mill is saying though, they’re probably not going to make too many, just enough to hopefully convince Mid-Childa to back off a little. Command’s a little touchy about the saucers we keep losing. Hell, I’m touchy about it; the Crimson Permanent Assurance was a good ship dammit, and losing it to those lunatic technomages seriously pissed me off.”
ETA: some more meta.
The Fiction Problem: One thing that needs addressing is the whole fiction problem. This isn’t a huge issue if we were going to keep this assigned to just plain alternate worlds, but obviously that’s… probably a non-starter. So, when (not if, but when) the Fen start visiting and meddling in other fictional worlds, how do we handle it?
Meta-omniscience is a story killer; it leads to characters who know everything and get more’n a little smug about it, which can be difficult to read even if you
like the characters. So if fictional worlds get involved, what happens when Fen-Prime know about them? My honest opinion would be to rewrite Fen reality a little bit, so the list of popular fiction is different. Think of it like Drunkard’s Walk; would DW2 have been honestly as good if Doug had been sufficiently self-aware to *know* he’s in Bubblegum Crisis, for example?
So, for example if we travel to a Star Trek continuity the Fen would instead be big Galaxy Quest boosters, or the galaxy far far away that the Fen know more closely resembles the early drafts of Star Wars instead of the juggernaut we all know OOC. Various universes can be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, of course. It should depend on the story.
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Quote:Noah closed the report on his desktop and looked at Tanith and Jake. "You've got to be kidding me. Nobody saw this coming?"
Jake Hansen, leader of the Explorer Corps's second operational group, shrugged his shoulders. "We knew is was a possibility, but no-one expected it so soon, or like this."
Tanith sighed. "To be fair, Noah, the team heard the names 'Silya Stingray' and 'Nene Romanova.' Why wouldn't they expect that they were in a Bubblegum Crisis universe?"
Noah nodded. "And they were, after a fashion. But we've seen hundreds of worlds just like ours but with some change somewhere along the line that made history follow a different path. Why in the world did the team think fictional universes were immune to the same effect?"
"For God's sake, Noah, calm down. Getting upset now won't do anyone any good."
After a moment, Noah nodded. "You're right, Tanith. Mr. Hansen, how many of the survey team will be able to return to work within the next six months?"
"We're not sure, sir; that Priss replicant really did a number on them when she thought they were AD Police officers come to shut her down. But Anika and Mary Springfield can return to work right now."
As for why Noah was expecting this, see
this story by Jeanne Hedge from 1995.
Quote:It was just after we lost all but one of a good team, when they though nothing could possibly kill them in an Oz world, that we started seeing the signs go up. I'm told the line is from one of Lois Bujold's books.
"Check your assumptions. In fact, check your assumptions at the door." That's saved my life at least twice so far.
--
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
Another fun place to play with in terms of 'fiction alternates' is the Gundam franchise. Just because Homeline is familiar with one or several series, doesn't mean they're familiar with the others. Same with Tenchi. Or even DC or Marvel for that matter.
I can only imagine the mayhem that would result from these guys going into the main Fenspace universe.
"Step away from my Gundam or I open fire."
"You can get another one, can't you?"
"I hand-built that Gundam! It took me years of effort! It's mine!"
"Oh, wow, what great animatronic cat-ears! *tug*"
"YEOWCH! Kitty's got claws, jerk!"
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Just don't go to Terminator...
its like a closed timeloop that has no stability... you blink, and its suddenly completely different.
"We also walk dogs."
"What? No, we don't."
"But it's traditional..."
--
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
Codex: Fnord & Fnord, Acquisitions
“The impossible we do right away, the ridiculous takes a little longer.”
Fnord & Fnord, Acquisitions is the informal name of Special Circumstances’ flagship team. Originally part of the Explorer Corps, FFA has been an active field team since before the founding of the Convention when it was simply “Fnord, Acquisitions.” When the Convention needs to stop Dr. Gravitas from imploding the Sears Tower on Parallel 129, or acquire biological samples from the Kaiju Masters, or save Christmas from the Vampire Lords, or fend off a Draka invasion of Parallel 754 FFA more often than not will get the job.
The team is composed of the eponymous Fnord and Fnord.
Malaclypse Fnord (“call me Mal, but no Firefly jokes please”) is the seniormost field agent in the EC, as every other field agent who started at the same time has retired, died or been assigned to desk duty. Malaclypse for whatever perverse reason refuses to come in out of the cold, and as a result has racked up a huge level of experience. He’s joined in the field by his wife
Athene Fnord (“Tina, if you please”), one of the first outtimers recruited by the Convention. Athene is from a fantasy-Earth parallel where magic is almost more common than technology; Athene herself claims descent from several gods, and has the psychokinetic abilities to back that up. Other SC agents have worked as part of FFA over the years, but always on an ad-hoc basis when only two agents on a mission was considered an unacceptable risk. The team has over the years gained a reputation as people who go where angels fear to tread (literally in one instance according to Convention gossip) and then surviving the experience.
Fnord & Fnord, Acquisitions is based out the Dulce center alongside the bulk of the Convention’s agents. As senior agents they have an assigned saucer and tend to be in the field more often than not.
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Extract from an interview of Agent 1st Class Maico Tange, IWSS, on "George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight"
...
Maico: The top brass knew it was going to be a tricky survey as soon as Survey discovered their local date was the same as ours and Centrum's. That's why I was the only person sent in, and the conveyor didn't stay - the top brass didn't want any chance of the locals reverse-engineering any technology that would shed light on The Secret. What we didn't expect, and what I discovered seventeen minutes after I was dropped off, was that The Secret wasn't a secret on Convention. They had been traveling the infinite worlds for years.
George: Was it just dumb luck that they've never encountered a Homeline team? Or a Centrum team, for that matter?
Maico: No, not at all. There are so many worlds out there that there's no way we can visit even a small fraction of a percent of them all, even in Quantum 5. And Convention isn't on Quantum 5; it's on Q6. As I said, it only took me seventeen minutes to discover they already knew about parachronics, and it was in the most mundane way possible.
George: Oh?
Maico: I happened to notice a advertising flyer promoting the new release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" from three recently-discovered alternate worlds. Suddenly my mission had gone from "covert investigation of a potential threat" to "covert investigation of a potential ally or enemy." And an hour later, even that changed.
George: Because they made contact with you.
Maico: Exactly. At first, I thought it was because their parachronic sensors were as good as ours. It turned out that I had dropped into a Convention training ground, and some Explorer recruits were in the middle of survival training. It was so much like the training I had gone through north of Winnipeg - our Winnipeg - that I almost fell into the old habits of a recruit.
George: Did they think you were another recruit?
Maico: At first, but it was just my luck that one of the cadets was the daughter of the Convention's primary financial backer, and already knew all the recruits. Helen Anderson, the person who forced me into a temporary career change from "scout" to "diplomat" - we still keep in touch, but not as often as either of us would like.
As this point, Maico smiles.
George: How close are the two of you, if you don't mind me asking?
Maico: We were guests at each other's weddings, but neither of us were in the other's wedding party. She saved my life on Azoth-6, and I saved hers on Caliph. We're fairly close.
...
--
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
Worldline 155 (codename AMERICANA-3)
17 November 2021 (Convention relative)
Hurtling towards the brick wall, Tina Fnord could only think two things:
today had started out so well, and
this was going to hurt a lot. And it did.
It was a routine assignment. An Infinity operative had gone missing on Americana-3, and she and her husband had been mostly in the area at the time so in the interests of keeping a Treaty partner happy could you go check it out, please? It’s probably nothing, the silly bastard got drunk off his ass and fell in a hole in Matamoros or something, but Infinity would like to have him returned intact if possible.
Of course, then they get there and it turns out that the guy did get drunk but he didn’t fall into a hole, he fell into a nest of Draka. Two
homo drakensis setting up a beachhead in American Mexico had noticed the weird gringo drinking alone might not be part of the occupational army, and so they took action. Which led to Tina and Mal getting the drop on the snakes, which led to Tina getting thrown through the aforementioned brick wall.
Tina crashed through the wall and a furniture store’s worth of chairs before fetching up in a painful heap at the foot of the now-abandoned cantina’s bar. She dragged herself up to a kneeling position and shook her head to clear the cobwebs. Her ancestry made her tougher than the usual thirty-year-old woman, and she’d invested in some very interesting after-market upgrades. Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though.
“Well, well, well,” an amused voice drawled as her dance partner stepped through the hole Tina had made. “Yo’ actually got some fighting spirit! Kinda cute, too. I’m going to have so much fun breakin’ yo’.”
“Dispater, make him shut the hell up,” Tina mumbled, then got back on her feet and assumed a fighting stance. “The first shot’s free, Snakey,” she said out loud. “Next one you pay in teeth.”
The
drakensis laughed. “Yo’ ferals are as dumb as yo’ weak,” he chortled. “I’m the product of decades of engineering the perfect warrior and yo’ got nothin’!” He charged, inhumanly fast, and threw a punch that Tina barely managed to dodge. His fist slammed into the bar and splintered the wood. Taking advantage of his loss of balance she grabbed the
drakensis by the neck and slammed his head into the ruined bar.
“Perfect warrior doesn’t mean shit if you can’t do anything with it!” she snarled, throwing the
drakensis to the ground and stomping hard on his arm. The engineered bone didn’t give, but the
drakensis howled in pain regardless.
Jupiter Stator and Minerva Mechanitrix, a small part of her mind chanted.
Hear your descendant and give her the strength to put down this mockery.
The
drakensis leapt to his feet and launched a flurry of blows toward Tina. She fired back with a set of krav maga counters that the snake hadn’t apparently seen before. The two danced across the cantina trading blows, and it quickly became apparent that Tina was slowly but surely losing the fight. The
drakensis had the advantage in strength if not agility, and his reinforced body could take more punishment than Tina’s reinforcements. More and more punches and kicks kept getting through her blocks, and each one that landed hurt like twenty bastards.
But that was okay. Tina had a plan, a plan that she put into motion as the pain faded and she could feel a cool sensation in the middle of her brain start to spread outward.
Tina stepped back, a wicked grin on her face. The
drakensis couldn’t figure out what she was suddenly all smiles about… until her eyes began to glow. “Think you’re the master race?” she said. “Guess what, you are
not the meanest mothers in the valley.” She stretched out her hand and made a fist. As she did, a bolt of blue-white lightning appeared like an angel’s sword. She wound up in a perfect fastball stance, and just as the
drakensis’s brain caught up to what was going on and he tried to dodge or find cover, she let go.
Things inside the ruined cantina got very exciting for a very short time after that.
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Draka depicted had better have some method, either technological or magical, of defeating the pheromones the Draka give off. Clearly, Tina has one. Can I just add that I think Special Circumstances has a policy of complete annihilation once they find the drakensis' home dimension? Shoving a few bombs through with a payload of several pounds of antimatter should do the trick.
You're assuming (a) The Convention and Infinity have access to that much antimatter, and (b) Noah doesn't want to try rescuing the slaves...
--
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:robkelk wrote:
You're assuming (a) The Convention and Infinity have access to that much antimatter, and (b) Noah doesn't want to try rescuing the slaves...
Well Noah would have to suck it up, then. The slaves are beyond the point of no return by this part of the Draka timeline. They're genetically altered so that they're
happy being slaves and taking the abuse that comes with an Empire of Evil(tm).
Your point about antimatter is well taken, though. Ah, well. Mass scattering Draka-held worlds with RKKVs will just have to do.
As a source of cheap, uncomplaining labour that will happily take any shit from corporate , Wal Mart and the like would be all over them. You just 'hire' them at minimum wage. You'd have an entire world's worth of food at knockdown prices. Nobody need ever go hungry again. Or, for that matter, biofuels for cars
(Never mind that I consider Infinity the default villains of that setting...)
"Well... we tried to do the right thing... but...."
"But what?"
"Well, without the Draka, they couldn't take care of themselves. They would've died."
"So, what'd you do?"
"Hi, Welcome to Wal Mart"
"Sometimes, dead is better..."
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
This is probably out there even for this, but it's been stuck in my head for the past two days.
There you are. Sorry, needed to do some clean up. All the forms signed and cards issued? Good, good.
Not sure why you’re here to be honest. All the big stuff gets done in the Banzai Campus, and do you think we’re stupid enough to put the dangerous stuff in the middle of a city? And don’t bother asking; even if I DID know where it was do you think I’d tell you? Again, not stupid.
No, what’s we do here is deal with all the things home base find too strange for them to deal with.
What? Oh, the map. Interesting, isn’t it? I’d advise not looking too closely however. A 3D representation of the currently known nine dimensional multiverse tends to be a little bit on the mind-bending side. ‘Course C-Sec has the one with all the fancy colours where we know who’s nominally in control, but this is up to date. Mizuhara enjoyed the case of Grapevine champagne he won off Doc Greist for proving the Multiple Brane Linkage theorem which lets us even do that.
Yes, the General’s husband. Why should I worry about outtimers? I’ve only got three versions of Nikola Tesla and four of Edison Bell to run herd on here among others. Heck, Infinity’s Paralabs sent us a bunch of people just last week. The Mid-Childan are being dicks still, but given they have a dimensional neighbour going through a civil war I guess they have to look out for themselves.
Here we go, the Meta-Elemental lab. Despite what the press releases say, most of the original magical analysis went on here. We pretty much developed the Clarke framework for understanding it, and none of us had any talent in it what-so-ever. Jack down there on the other hand…
You’ll want to put the goggles on.
Hum… Bit bright, need to get Jack stronger sunscreen. Anyway, the theory’s sound enough. Basically we’re trying to store a fusion pulse in that crystal over there. All the power of a fusion reactor, none of the radiation problems. And it’d be good to restart a reactor quickly if you have to scram it.
Jack? We warded him to heck and back. Same scheme they used on the Potent Voyager, only smaller. I believe we might get it producible, but then the Blues will take it off our hands.
Right, where next? Oh yes, the neural structure lab. Basically we’re using the new UHR fMRIs and some nanotech to map a person’s brain. One of the problems we’ve found is that the brain is big on error correction, not so much memory redundancy. If we can sort out how the neurons can reorganise themselves, we can reverse it. Alzheimer’s gone in a flash, senility a thing of the past.
Brain uploading? I suppose. We’ve had the capability for years, the problem’s always been getting the mind back in a body. Brain downloading, if you will. The Ethics committees have had epic fights on the issue. The great Chicago food fight of 2019 was particularly invigorating.
Oh that clause? Don’t worry, we have a great safety record here. None of US want to have to go through the re-sleaving process either. Why? While I suppose being young, healthy and physically perfect is something of a plus, being a seventeen year old over-sexualised gothic lolita tends to be a bit of a downer. I do believe the boy’s mother gave him SUCH a spanking after the retrieval team tracked him down. Still, we have Doctor Howser as his lead agent so he’ll become a good citizen in time. Imagine what he’d be able to do properly focused!
Ah yes, this’ll cheer you up. The latest in medical technology, fresh from the field. Our friend down there saved a town on Quest-6 from a Dragon. Quite frankly, it’d take less time to tell you what wasn’t wrong with the poor sod. He’s been in the tank only thirty hours and all his skin is back, as is his left eye. The lungs are coming along nicely, and we expect the limbs to start coming in any hour now. Got it from Ladder-2, I think for the Abydos star drive tech.
Now this… This is brand new. What I’m holding is a portable, functioning psi-shield. Yes, Psi does exist, we’ve never actually said it didn’t. Just implied. Now, all I have to do is twist this here and it’s on.
With the false mind imager I’ve been wearing I imagine it’s giving you quite the headache. Yes, yes the embassy will be informed whilst you are in interrogation. Given it’s illegal for you to enter another’s mind without permission I expect they’ll have quite a few questions of their own. Don’t bother running, General Mizuhara can be rather protective of her husband so she’s lent us some of her Hardsuit cavalry.
If that’s all ladies and gentlemen? I have to get back to the A.I. lab, one of the boys brought back a gynoid and I’m quite certain it’ll try to kill or more likely rape poor Masaki. I keep telling the aura field investigations team they have to look at the trans-overdimensional resonance signature, but do they listen? I’m only their Boss after all.
Excerpt from an interview with Agent Malaclypse Fnord in Interworld Strategic Quarterly (internal Convention zine, 2022):
A: The Draka are a threat, if only because every time we root the bastards out they've caused or are causing all kinds of havoc. So I'm not saying that we should, you know, let them be or anything. But on the whole they're not worse than, say, the Armenen Order or the rest of the Time Nazis. We've run into Draka operations before, and we've actually got a pretty good idea of their abilities and their limitations.
Q: What are those limitations?
A: Well, first of all you've got to remember that the Drakan interworld system can't really transport a lot; I'm no scientist or engineer, so I can't give you details but based on all we know about the Draka they can only send one or two people through to any given world. Second, the Draka are just arrogant enough to think that that's really enough to conquer a world. It isn't, it really really isn't. They can cause damage and maybe if the stars align create quasi-Drakan cults around them but conquest? Not really possible. So the question becomes "Why don't they just send more people through piecemeal?" That's what our soi-distant allies in Infinity and Centrum do when they're beating each other up, isn't it? Well, again arrogance. C-Sec's never had a lot of
live Draka to talk to because everything in their creed seems to have "Death Before" in it, but it seems that
homo drakensis doesn't work or play well with others. I think the main reason they're all such horny little bastards is that's the only way they can maintain a stable population.
Third, and this is the big one... they're actually kind of dim. No joke. Again, working from what data we have we think the Draka's homeline has some sort of... "luck nexus" is what Tina calls it. It's kind of like a huge supernatural reservoir of good luck that the ancestors of the Draka managed to tap into early on in their development and then used it to conquer their world. So all the genetic engineering they've done to themselves, being faster and stronger and longer-lived and all the rest of that was aimed at exploiting this luck reserve that allowed them to be on top and stay that way. Once they start poking out into the wider multiverse... the luck goes away. They still have the physical advantages but the metaphysical one that always let them win no matter the odds is gone. They have to rely on their wits. And let me tell you that without that luck? They aren't much brighter than the average C-Sec. In fact a lot of 'em are probably less so.
Q: What do you propose as a method of dealing with the Draka?
A: Obviously we've got to find their homeline first. But I think if the luck nexus theory holds out that we figure out a way to blow it up, or transfer the luck from the masters to the slaves. Ought to give the Snakes something to think about...
Mr. Fnord
interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Worldline 982 Codename: Tovarish 912December 02, 2021
James ducked behind the busted concrete of a bombed out
building as automatic gunfire peppered his backtrail. “Run,” he said looking at
the pair of locals that had been helping him, the last of a resistance cell
that might, if they were lucky find another cell that would help and hide them.
The boy of the pair, maybe ten years old took off in a sprint for the sewer
cover half a block away, the short barreled pump shotgun slapping against his
back as he ran. The girl was all of sixteen, blonde, and sweet on James he
could tell, she opened her mouth to argue but he stopped her with a finger to
her lips. “Go, I’ll lead them off and lose them away from you. I’m from the
south, we have our ways.” He said with a
crooked smile. She held his hand against her cheek for a moment and then took
the AK-74 carbine in her hands and ran to catch up with her younger brother who
was disappearing down the manhole of the embattled city.
Hefting the M240 machine gun that he had taken from the
locals armory, James waited for the Draka soldiers to stop shooting before
rolling out from behind the wall and hosing the area with bullets. The gun
burped short fairly clean bursts each time James pulled the trigger causing
several of the genetically modified soldiers to do the dance of death before
dropping to the ground. The surviving four of the squad managed to find cover
as James backed away and as the last of them hit the ground and he was sure the
manhole cover was drawn closed he took off running down the street the way the
three of them had originally been running. He did have a way out of this world,
a pick up gate that would take him home through two other variations of earth
before being able to get back to the convention and make his report. The
problem was that he had to lose the invaders first, and they were about as
tenacious as a bull dog at an itch.
James chuckled, he had come into this world with a four
person team, and their purpose had been to recon the area and find out what had
hit the explorer team that had initially investigated this world. He had found
out alright, by his team stumbling right into a draka command post just as a
resistance cell was striking. Caught in the middle of the resulting firefight
his people had been pinned down until the leader of the cell had fought over to
them and pulled them out. Over the course of the next week the resulting
counterstrikes due to the cell’s unsuccessful attack he had lost his entire
team and the cell save those two kids and himself. Now he had half a squad of
Draka on his tail and a timetable to meet the next portal so he could get out
of this world. Why they looked like they belonged in “Quantum Leap” James
didn’t know and he really didn’t care so long as the next portal took him out
of this hell hole.
Quote:As stated above, the Convention is Gernsback-2's equivalent of Infinity Unlimited and/or the Centrum Interworld Service.
Mal, a quick comment before I actually read anything past this point. I think by now we have a Fenspace skerry and we should reference accordingly -- Gernsback-2 is Classic Fenspace, G-3 is The South Will Rise Again, G-4 is Candle in the Dark, G-5 is Fenspace Reboot 1, and G-6 is this world.
Hell, we may want to abandon the Gernsback tag. It was good when Fenspace was another unique superscience world, but now that we have all these parallels, maybe we need a good name to cover them all that doesn't hark back to a timeline completely unlike them.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Fenspace-# (for the basic), Handwavium-# (for the only slightly less basic), Surfer-# (referencing Handwavium),...
I for one favor the designation Convention-#.
Mm. Okay, now that I've finished the thread as it exists so far, I like it all. I'll have to think on how I might work my way into the storyline, but until then I'll certainly enjoy the action.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
![[Image: kszt.png]](http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/9447/kszt.png)