Quote:

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I saw it originally as generating a rather lethal simulacrum that matched the song but was nobody "real", but maybe after the Walk, it'll pull up someone he met...

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As I haven't had the time yet to read all the Fenspace [and where did that name come from?] threads, I decided to make a little meta-thread for some of the ideas that popped into my head when I read the precis.
First off, handwavium basically shot all of humanity pass the event horizon of the Technological Singularity, with the Fens being truly Rapturous Nerds (a la Ken MacLeod).
This means that the second generation will be almost completely unrecognizable to the first generation of Fens. Their children will be weirder and with interests that will have little in common with their forebears. The Fandom of Tomorrow may be something incredibly weird like . . . watching cheese mature in a cave. They'd discuss the best moisture level for the types of cheese, how the various molds fight against each other, which section would taste best at which stage, etc.
There may be entire nations built around the fandom of cheese.
And that's just one example
Secondly:
Here are some ideas for various clades and polities that are relatively small in number but could show that nothing is monolithic in space . . .
except for the Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame, and have secreted themselves in one of Jupiter's moons, possibly Hegemone. They rarely deal with other inhabitents of the Jovian system, i.e. browncoats, but do occaisonally trade information. Their goals have to do with modelling genetic experiments on baseline humans, though rumors abound that they have a bioreactor and have gone beyond simple modelling.
Bekenstein Breakers: Quasi-monastic infotech order that have devoted themselves to achieving informational density beyond that possible within a black hole, i.e the bekenstein bound. They are supported by various ideospace clades and polities, who see the breaking of the bound as the key to true immortality beyond the end of the universe.
Satanists: Contrarian order who believe in God, but really dislike him. Hooked themselves up to life-support, chemically gave themselves MPD, uploaded prayers from all religions, and then started praying to initiate a DoS attack on God 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. (wednesdays are margarita and bowling nights).
Blakes: Anti-Federation terrorists who regularly stage prison escapes (if there are such things in Fenspace) and disrupt trade. Known also for factionalizing, so there are Real Blakes, Continuity Blakes, True Blakes, The Avon Brigade, The Provisional Blakes Army, Blakes 700, etc.
Kuiper Brain: a computronium mass originally made from a middle sized kuiper belt object, now massing about the same as the moon, holds a community of purely ideospace beings running about 100X human cognitive speed. Not much is known about them, as yet.
The "Socialist Swarm": name given by outsiders to ideospace/baryonspace amphibians who travel the solar system and possibly beyond for fun and "mutually benefitial resource merger." When seen in baryonspace, resemble porcelain figures daubed in abstract paintings, while in ideospace they resemble platonic spheres. Travel in coffin-sized vessels that "swarm" together and apart like a cloud, but can also merge into larger "ships."
Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.
New Sun: Ideological movement for remaking the sun into a stellar engine; possible connection to Kuiper Brain.
Eschaton Express: Two Island 3 cylinders retrofitted into near-light starships so that a community of humans would skip "all the boring bits" and go straight to the end of the universe. Rumored to have devised a time machine so that they could come back with the True Cosmological Knowledge. In their wake, grew a powerful legend that sees other groups of humans doing the same.
Possibly more to come.
-murmur

Wow, first post in a looong time. Damn, did grad school and masters really eat up my time.
Anyway, this is the first time I've noticed this new section and I decided to ask how a) one gets into it, and b) the limits of handwavium.
Because it seems to me that if a bunch of sci-fi fans got this magic mystery thing, they'd do something really outrageous as soon as they got into space if they could.
I'm not even talking about DNA-hacks to get functional immortality or increase brain power or anything like that. Handwavium would probably do something like that easily.
I'm talking about something a lot more ambitious, like mass upload to Matrioska brains, re-engineer the universe anthropically, really bootstrap to Kardishev IV.
Or perhaps something less ambitious, like colonizing the beginning of the universe, or going to the end of time itself to see just how it'll end.
Can handwavium create a higgs-field manipulator? increase gravity to offset dark energy? Vacuum metastability event doomsday weapon?
-murmur

As I had briefly returned to Paragon with the character Sisial this autumn, so am I back again. Just got Sisial (finally) up to 20 for a cape.. well.. more a scarf.
Because what self-respecting karate biker goes around without a red scarf?
Formerly @Grey Rider.
Now @Sisial.
Whenever I finally get a character to 50, the Grey Rider nme will become the name of a Squid.- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead

Steppenwolf 'Magic Carpet Ride'
I like to dream yes, yes, right between my sound machine
On a cloud of sound I drift in the night
Any place it goes is right
Goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here
Well, you don't know what we can find
Why don't you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride
You don't know what we can see
Why don't you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound take you away
Last night I held Aladdin's lamp
And so I wished that I could stay
Before the thing could answer me
Well, someone came and took the lamp away
I looked around, a lousy candle's all I found
Well, you don't know what we can find
Why don't you come with me little girl
On a magic carpet ride
Well, you don't know what we can see
Why don't you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free
Close your eyes girl
Look inside girl
Let the sound take you away
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Magic carpet, flight spd =? can carry Doug and up to 5 passengers (3 comfortably) side effects: the clothes of Doug and anyone riding the carpet transform to something from Aladin or Arabian Nights (though they retain any special capabilities)
***************************************
The Romantics 'Talkin in your sleep'
When you close your eyes and go to sleep
And it's down to the sound of a heartbeat
I can hear the things that you're dreaming about
When you open up your heart and the truth comes out
CHORUS:
You tell me that you want me
You tell me that you need me
You tell me that you love me
And I know that I'm right
Cuz I hear it in the night
I hear the secrets that you keep
When you're talking in your sleep
When I hold you in my arms at night
Don't you know you're sleeping in a spotlight
And all your dreams that you keep inside
You're telling me the secrets that you just can't hide
CHORUS
You tell me that you want me
You tell me that you need me
You tell me that you love me
And I know that I'm right
Cuz I hear it in the night
I hear the secrets that you keep
When you're talking in your sleep
When you close your eyes and you fall asleep
Everythng about you is a mystery
CHORUS
You tell me that you want me
You tell me that you need me
You tell me that you love me
And I know that I'm right
Cuz I hear it in the night
I hear the secrets that you keep
When you're talking in your sleep

places target in a hypnotic trance, target must answer all questions truthfully (to the best of their knowledge), target must be in a relaxed state to work (can't be done in combat for example)__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

...the folks who helped me with the Katie Hannon task force this afternoon:
Logan with Lora'lai
Ebony with Numero Catorce
and
RevDark with Bella Fuego.
With their kind help I not only got the Cabalist badge, and the Ten Times The Victor accolade, I also got the Geas of the Kind Ones accolade and the neat power that comes with it.

-- Bob
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Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

I'm searching for a certain Cowboy Bebop AMV. The colors where reduced to red, black, white and grey, the band sounded British and the video was rather serious.What if: Chibi Usa, Veteran Speznas Ninja Commando From Hell(tm)?

Hi all this is Peg,
Bob will be delayed, still shoveling out the layer of ice from our driveway this morning and taking a bit longer than he thought.
Will be showing up ~~ 1:30- 2:00pm hopefully.
Happy Hunting,
Peg
-- Bob
---------
Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

I'm briefly going to be absent from CoH for about a week or so.
Nothing's wrong, I'm just not going to be able to game with you folks as much as I'd like.
''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

(I'm not completely happy with this, but I don't see any way to fix it short of tearing it up and starting over. But I don't think it's so bad
as to warrant that... -Rob)

EDIT, September 2017: Subsequent developments in Fenspace has made this story non-canonical. -Rob.