Another nextgen mini-story, with a pretty radical shift from Rob's. Blame all differences on Superboy punching time. Enjoy and speculate to your heart's desire. --The Mgt.
ETA: Here's the first part, explaining what's going on. Mostly.
ETA 3/22: And here's the next part, where things take a turn.

Me ending up signing up on the forum here was an aftereffect of a couple of e-mails I sent to Bob commenting on how the 'variable geometry' hoverbikes that Doug comments on having had in the past sounded a lot like some MASK toys (and I pointed him to the silliness of the Ninja Storm hoverbike, where the whole wheel assembly spins around like a rotor *under* the bike).
Well, I just spotted a more *current* edition...Bob, hie thee to a Toys R' Us or similar store and find the Motorcycle/Hoverbike from the 'Sigma Six' toy line (it's supposed to be the latest version of GI Joe). The front wheel mounting is an odd fork, which rotates from vertical to horizontal in the 'hover' mode...and the back fork (and wheel) splits in half and flattens out to the sides...
Hmmm. Now that I look at the title again, I wonder what would happen if Doug landed in the middle of Megaforce. Probably help the 'Egg' *design* the Delta Mark 4, if nothing else. :-) Not to mention the 'inverse photosensitve' coloring materials...

Hey, quick question - what communications capabilities does Doug's helmet have, Alternatively, what communications capabilities are going to be built into his bike in DW V, assuming he gets to take it with him when he goes...
Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Logan, Drevinian and I have gone through several exchanges in email over this topic, and here are our decisions. These will be implemented as we encounter people online -- a couple have already happened.
First, we finally hammered out the number of members in each rank we want. For reference, this is:
3 Legends
7 Commanders
12 Myths
18 Tall Tales
35 Rumors
Now, the promotions:
New Myths:
Brightsky (promoted 3/19/07)
Emi Arizona
Jackie Marie Frost
Lincoln Memorial
Morgan Mac Hine
Murphy's Muse
Numero Catorce (promoted 3/17/07)
New Tall Tales:
As a jay bird
Badb
Bowtruckle
Cyberman 8
Passion Cat
Reyshal
Seelepanzer
Sharon Kov
Techno-gentleman
Yukiyo
Congratulations, everyone.
We still have one open slot for a Tall Tale, which we haven't decided on. But everything else seems to be firm, so I just wanted to let folks know. If your name or names is/are on this list, please let one one of us know if we're on at the same time as you, and we'll enact the promotion.

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

I was clicking through random links connected to the last Lordi song and found...
Lordi - Devil Is A Loser
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u...ed&search=
You wanted power and you begged for fame
You wanted everything the easy way
You wanted gain without pain
Now your bill is in the mail
You got stronger but your mind got weak
You made a promise that you couldn't keep
You got it all - you lost more
It's all there in the fee
Via hell incorporated (regeneration)
First you love it then you hate it (you're such a saint)
And now you're never gonna make it (bad situation)
Get on get on down
There's hell to pay 'cause
The Devil is a loser and he's my bitch
For better or for worse and you don't care which
The Devil is a loser and he's my bitch
Runnin' into trouble you skitch
He's my bitch
You wanted richest and a licence to kill
You got poverty then you got ill
You got poor and you lost your will
All your dreams unfulfilled
I get my kicks when you blow your fuse
No-one got killed but that's no excuse
Hands up, I let you know when it's done
I've got the only gun
And there were no refunds
Just failing guarantees
"Confess your sins, son"
Said the preacher on TV
You got yourself some greasepaint
Set of white and black
All you got was laughter and
Gene Simmons on your back
---
This should pretty much obliterate any contract/wish with a devil/demon and give Doug utter control of the devil for the duration. It may only work on male demons though. The last verse may dress them up like a KISS member and drop Gene Simmons on them... so it summons him for like 5-15 seconds.

As there are no real laws, per se, in fenspace, there can't really be any legalization or lack thereof for drugs. Now while it's arguable about the whole "overwhelmingly addictive and destructive" bit about thionite, it must be remembered that addiction is a medical condition that is treatable and curable, particularly if you've got access to super-medical tech.
I imagine that there are many fen who wouldn't mind hacking their own neurophysiology with or without external means.
So I'm proposing that thionite be seen as "bad" for the first few years after the exodus to space but as soon as medical technology is avaiable the whole paraiah-status of "drug users" be lifted.
-murmur

I just noticed the board's still on Standard Time.
(One would think ezBoard could have fixed that problem by now, considering how often Bob's had to manually adjust the board's clock...)

-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

Can we say Gate song?
To the world of Bug's Bunny and Friends.
And the ironic part is that Doug has this one stored in his helmet.

Quote:

---

Oh Mache' Curb the Lights!
This a zit? Deny the knights!
No Morey -- hearse
Ignore nursing apart.
Ween? Oh, Avery part! Pie art!
Oh, Mature! Curb the Lights!
This a zit? We lit the hides!
And owe what hides we lit.
Unwitting Joe, This a zit?

---

Quote:

---

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...

---

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