Prologue: Landing

Miranda Petite hated orbital drops.

That was the plain truth, Miranda Petite hated orbital drops, especially into Eastern Europe, and especially into Georgia. Miranda Petite hated Georgia above all.

There were too many memories, too many bad times, too many friends dead, to ever see Georgia in a good light ever again.

"Two minutes to landing Commander."

Miranda glanced to the communications window in her VR helmet, "Understood Rocky."

She opened a channel to the rest of the team, "All Black Talons, here's the situation. An old friend has gotten into trouble and we've been hired to extract him. Be advised he's being imprisoned by some old enemies, the Ravens."

There was a general mutter of discontent as Miranda nodded, "Yeah, I know. Extreme prejudice people, anyone working for the Ravens isn't someone you can bargain with. Shoot to kill, torture for info, and loot everything they have."

The drop pods containing the Heavy Gears of the Black Talon mercenary group suddenly stopped shaking and Miranda moved the arm of her Dark Cobra, Julian, to grab the release the drop pod's door, "Let's go Talons!"

As one the pod doors blasted off and twelve Heavy Gears dropped into the dark skies above Eastern Europe.

Seconds later, the anti-air guns from their target opened fire.

The BBC's set to announce the 12th Doctor on Sunday.  I have nothing more to say, really, other than I'm intrigued by some of the front runners in the British press -- I heard about Idris Elba (Pacific Rim, Thor) being in the top three just today.  Billie Piper is apparently still trending in the top ten according to oddsmakers, and I think that would be pretty cool.  Personally I favor Patrick Stewart, but what do I know? 
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

First, a casting announcement: Playing the part of Jay Carney today will be Lt. Frank Drebin:



What kind of panic are we talking about here? Actual quote from agency “insider” communications obtained by CNN: “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”

The word of the day is “unprecedented.” Phony scandal no more:

Quote:Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings…
It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career…
Another [insider] says, “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.”…
Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the attack.
A source now tells CNN that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously.
While it is still not known how many of them were CIA, a source tells CNN that 21 Americans were working in the building known as the annex, believed to be run by the agency.

Quote:Also in October we reported the connection between Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who died in the attack, and a reported September shipment of SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles (i.e. MANPADS) and rocket-propelled grenades from Benghazi to Syria through southern Turkey.
That 400-ton shipment — “the largest consignment of weapons” yet for Syrian rebels — was organized by Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was the newly-appointed head of the Tripoli Military Council.
In March 2011 Stevens, the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan rebels, worked directly with Belhadj while he headed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Stevens’ last meeting on Sept. 11 was with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi “to negotiate a weapons transfer in an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists.”
Syrian rebels subsequently began shooting down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets with SA-7s akin to those in Qaddafi’s looted stock.

Belt Alliance: Jacob Neihart
Jacob Neihart was one of those rarities, an older 'Dane who went Up. He'd gotten his start as a rancher in Argentine cattle, owning several thousand acres of land and a large herd of cattle. Financial difficulties - caused by a 'perfect storm' of infection in the herd with water-rights conflicts - forced him to sell off a large portion of the land in order to retain the rest. He was looking for alternative income sources when one of his sons pointed out the new opportunities to be found among spacers.
Even after selling off large portions of his land, Neihart had a significantly large farm. Prices for his crops had never been the best, but now there was access to a large market that had very little ability to supply itself. Jacob and his extended family found it easy to obtain a supply of handwavium and a pair of older semi-trailer trucks. The vehicles responded well to the 'wave treatment and Jacob himself took the wheel for his first shipment of produce and fresh beef, to be delivered to Stellvia for a very good price.
Over the next few years, the Neihart clan kept up the business, moving out into the system from their Earthside ranch. By the height of the Boskone conflict, the clan was deeply intertwined with the affairs of the Belter alliance, having undertaken numerous supply contracts with the independant miners who made up most of that faction. Jacob Neihart himself was becoming more and more influential within the faction, and some were saying he was the perfect man to "really face down that monopolist tyrant, Marsden". Needless to say, this growing fame brought him to Largo's attention...
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

It’s probably because I’ve been on a Transhumanism kick lately (a couple of fics here and there have grabbed my attention, as have a thread or two), but I suspect its gideon020’s Triax thread that’s got me seriously thinking.

How much Transhumanism do you think is good for Fenspace?

I mean, we already have a fair chunk of it hanging around. There’s biomods and cyborgs and at least medical cloning tech.

Neural Interfaces? Yep, we have those. There mostly for the total cyborgs at the moment, but we have neural induction helmets just as good.

Memory augmentation? Yes we do, even if it’s not really around due to it being used for crime. The same goes for Forking.

Uploading…well, sorta. Not in a reliable way at least.

The major transhumanist enablers that we don’t have are workable nanotech and human genetic engineering. Yet.

One thing I have noticed is that we (The Fenspace Collective) are trying to be Genre-savvy about these things. Too much too soon pushes seems to push people towards the Genre Directive; they recoil, and relegate things to MacGuffin-hood. Still, I’d like to think we’re all smart people here. Hopefully we can work something out.

As it currently stands, all the big tech advances are going to come from the Bad Guys. Understandable, given its amazing what you can develop if you don’t have conventional morality to hold you back.

Unless there’s a Cabal of tech developers who HAVE developed all those neat toys, but are cautiously preparing Fen and Dane for their gradual release. Of course, all those carefully thought out timetables can get thrown out the window if the Black Hats put out something…

Comments?

Not for me--it all works fine for me.
Can some people check out this link?
It leads to the Denver GURPS Group Forum, specifically Gold & Appel Inc's Shadowrun conversion.  People at the SJGames board can't get there, so I'm seeing if it's a US only sort of thing.
If you're unable to get there, can you see about going here?  That's the index page for the Forums.

Wikipedia claims that the character of Amelia Peabody Emerson was inspired by the real-life Amelia Edwards.  Consider, however, this excerpt from the essays of Evan S. Connell (1924-2013) regarding one Mary Kingsley, who despite a differing area of interest seems very Peabody-ish:

Quote:So we come upon Mary Kingsley:  naturalist, ethnologist, sailor, scholar, guest of cannibals and champion of lost causes... .
        She was born in 1862 and for thirty years lived in a state of suffocating restriction, tight even by Victorian norms.  Then both of her parents died and all at once her life made no sense; suddenly she had nobody to care for.  Her father had been an anthropologist who traveled quite a bit, but he had never gone to Africa; therefore, in accordance with the Byzantine laws of human behavior, Mary realized that she must go to Africa... . 
        Being unusually bright and observant, she quickly learned about navigation, about stowing cargo and how to manage a crew.  Later, after more experience aboard other boats, she would be ready to argue seamanship with grizzled old mariners:  "I say you can go across Forçados Bar drawing eighteen feet... .  I have taken vessels of 2,000 tons across that Bar and up the Forçados creeks... ."
        ... In order to reassure everybody when she materialized from the bush at some remote factory or trading post on the river she would call out:  "It's only me!"        She liked mangrove swamps.  She would paddle around for hours examining everything, stung by flies and threatened by crocodiles:  "On one occasion a mighty Silurian, as the Daily Telegraph would call him, chose to get his front paws over the stern of my canoe and endeavoued to improve our acquaintance.  I had to retire to the bows to keep the balance upright, and fetch him a clip on the snout with a paddle... ."        ... With mud-caked skirts, scratched and bitten until her face and hands were bloody, she approached a trading station operated by a German; but instead of hurrying toward it she stopped to wash.  After all, one should not appear untidy in front of a strange man.  Even so, the German was appalled by what came marching out of the bush.  He offered her a bath -- an offer she declined because, as she asks rhetorically, how could she be expected to bathe in a house with inadequate shutters?  Men! she laments.  Men can be so trying!        Her book, Travels in West Africa, was publish in 1896, but... .  She omitted some of her most implausible adventures ... such as the time she found herself on a tight little island with a hippopotamus and finally persuaded the monster to leave by poking it with her umbrella... .  And she almost neglected to tell about the leopard which she released from a trap because the animal was beating itself to death against the bars -- and the creature, when it had been freed, stood looking at her in bewilderment until she stamped her foot and shouted, "Go home, you fool!"        And this same woman perceived, when British officialdom could not, that African society was as meticulously structured as European society; and that missionaries were doing more harm than good... .  And being the woman she was, she let it be known what she thought... .
        She was eager to return to Africa.  There were so many swamps to be investigated, so many insects, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and leopards to examine, so many cannibals to whom she had not yet introduced herself.  You can almost see her emerging cheerfully from the bush.  "Hello there!  Hello?  I say, is no one at home?"

So as many of you know, I'm a dilettante hobbyist homebrewer, who makes 10 or 15 gallons of beer a year.  I've recently ordered a couple custom-made wooden crates for my 24 1-liter swingtop bottle, since the original cardboard cartons are no longer up to the task of lugging around 3.5 gallons of beer+several pounds of glass each.  One service this fellow offers is laser-burning a logo on the side of the crates.  Well, I didn't have a logo, but add one family myth and one bad joke to a copy of GIMP, and before you know it, I had this:The family myth?  Well, the actor who played the character above -- Count Orlok in Nosferatu, the very first vampire movie, for those who don't recognize him -- was named Max Schreck.  Same pronunciation as my last name, and family folklore holds that he's a distant uncle or cousin of some sort.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

It's taking me longer than I anticipated, but the outline is 20K long at this point (Steve and other SJG personnel once commented on how detailed my/our outlines were at a convention panel, years ago ).  It is, I estimate, about 90% complete.  I need to finish outlining the six or so pages on 2000-2015, and the chapter on 2015 itself ("The World Today") -- both of which are dependent upon me finally deciding upon most of the broad strokes of the late timeline -- along with some game-mechanical stuff for the Characters page.  I also have to confirm a few bits of data from other books which I've left marked with XXXXXs, and come up with a few new small/fringe organizations for the modern era.
And then I have to write a 5000-word passage from somewhere in the middle of it all.
So far, so good.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

A convoluted assemblage of lenses and lights atop flexible antennae squatted atop Van Loan’s head as he, seated at his esoterica covered workbench, worked at his original Fen-Space task. He was the Senshi Toy-Armourer tasked with maintaining their stock of NARF (No Actual Real Functionality). With the five-power lenses locked over his hazels, and a single probe light hanging above his forehead he looked like an artisan angler fish as he meticulously soldered the filigreed patch  that disguised the battery compartment of the tiara of someone or other by the typically over-the-top name, Solar Heroine Princess Coruscatia.
“Solar powered so long as the triple As hold out.” He quipped,  as he completed the final, Fabergé touch. The goddess of Nerds, Arete, had preserved his privacy just long enough to complete sun-gal’s tacky-tiara touch-up : then in trooped the so nearly fast friends as to be only one step removed from being conjoined : creepy as one was still trying to pry the pants off of the other.
“Hey, Hon, Carmine’s brought her calendar entry.”
Van Loan removed his hat of manifold optics, a delighted smile ludicrously lighting his cyan physiognomy.
“ Our first actual entry?"--Hayayama wasn’t scheduled for her ultra-nude photo shoot until Solar Noon two days hence--"Sugoi! Give it up, Carmine!”
Her jade eyes were lit with a roguish spark unnoticed by the expectant and rather credible Van Loan as she handed him a steel case twenty-two centimeters long by fourteen centimeters wide.
Van Loan released the twin set of clasps. “There’s something familiar about this design, but I just can’t place it.” He swung the casing open ; grinned his ‘oh, shiny!’ grin.
    “A 20.3 centimeter  replica of the Genesis Device! Fantastic collectable! ” Van Loan picked it up ; the look on his face when the tactile sensor enabled the unit’s vibratory feature was  inner-thigh slapping funny.
Carmine, the Carol Marcus of this particular instrument, smirked ; Wandblume spit-took her Mountain Dew into the tank of mock-Reagent being prepped for fluorescing .
“Oh, eight inches.” He turned it over in his hands, a slight frown descending upon his features.
“It only has the one setting?”
Carmine did her best, “KHHHHAAANNN!” : the device leapt into full strobe-lit vapor-venting and, of course, max-tilt trembling. Van Loan did a startled little jig that had both women howling in helpless fits of hilarity. Then he too collapsed in laughter.
“I......never thought...... that I would hear......myself say this but ;  Best! Vibrator! Ever! Carmine, you’ve got yourself a whole month : which one would you like?”
Carmine tried to look serious. “One of the cold, lonely ones.”
Wandblume snorted : “When a girl has to throw an extra log in the fire?”
Carmine tittered : “Another honest expression falls prey to euphemism!”
The giggling-guffaws repossessed the lot of them.
****
‘Twas the second day of ConClave and all through the fortress legions of mech-mice stirred : sometimes even combining into larger mass-mouse mess-managing machines. They scooted and scampered about the floor and scuttled through walls of the convention waging their never-ending war against their nemeses, Clutter & Shambles. The con-goers, around whose feet the mice wended and weaved, had their pet name for the animalized janitorial staff : they dubbed them Howards.
Van Loan was presiding over the panel, The New Madatomy, held in the Luigi Cozzi Chamber.  A  Hipster--he was done up in the very retro-now denim craze : he looked like Farmer in the Dell gone loco-- in the audience addressed the panel members.
“But isn’t Mads not only a pejorative but also the sole bailiwick of loner nutbars and psychotics like Agatha Clay?”
Van Loan meta-rolled his eyes, which is to say he rolled them only in his mind. ‘Ah, that explains what he’s doing here : biding his time until he can unleash his brilliant observations upon the Unenlightened.’
“Up to six months ago your statement would have been...conventionally accurate : Mads were classified as being isolated, bitter excommunicates of their various scientific fields. Since then, however, I have been...cultivating an interlink, a network, a community where, before, none had existed.”
“You mean to form a bund of Mads?”
‘There it is!'’thought Van Loan. ‘Now is it just lone Hispster posturing, or....”
The room grew still as a churchyard as the battle was finally joined.
***
The new pods were deep and black enough that the only things to escape their depths were the voices of their owners, and the odd flash of eyewear.
The chair on the left swiveled with an electric whirr to face the slight ocular twinkling within the gloom of the other chair.
“Bund? Yayoi, isn’t he being a bit abstruse?”
“ Umbra is a Hipster, Mikuru. Besides, it’s a very smart room : the message is clear enough.”
“Yayoi, you really think he’s mustering a power base?”
“Mikuru, of course not : he’s not the type.”
“Yayoi, then why the HUMINT asset?”
“Setting up her rump.”
“Oh, are we being unforgiving?”
“I prefer retributory, dear : it sounds more just.”
“And ass-covering” Mikuru mumbled.
Yayoi’s pod, in the process of turning back towards the display, paused briefly. “You say something, dear?”
“Yes,  I’m sure we’ll catch her ass!” Within her chair, she winced : ‘Oh, that was an awful recoup, girl!’
 “Red Cheeked, dear.” Both chairs went back to watching the unfolding time-lapse  drama of the panel.
***
Van Loan confronted his accuser with the scene-chewing gravitas of a supervillain. “Uncovered my Master Plan, have we?” The first chuckle was so convincingly dark that the panel members on either side of Van Loan looked a tad uncomfortable. The audience gasped ; in the very back, Wandblume face-palmed.
Hipster  cracked a snide smile. “Feel like monologuing?”
The second chuckle wasn’t dark at all : it was patented Van Loan. The panel guests relaxed into their seats ; the audience leant forward in anticipation ; the Hipster, caught by the sudden reversal,  took a step backwards ; Wandblume’s palm cracked a blue eyed gap in between middle  & ring finger.
“How about a good expounding, instead?” Van Loan paused, squared his papers on the podium ; pitched them into a flutter of foolscap. “ There are exactly two things in life that I’m serious about : Shego and fun!”
The crowd sniggered. A wag shouted: “Are those two factors mutually exclusive?”
Wandblume, sashaying to the panel table, momentarily borrowed Van Loan’s thunder as she kissed him, assiduously ; cuffed him,  cursorily. He took the very good & the hardly bad at all with what he thought was charming equanimity : to everyone one else,  his was the the aplomb of a puppy.
She redirected her beau’s microphone flex to respond to the wit : “Haven’t you been listening? Today’s word is Inclusivity!”
The room loved that. Hipster sketched a sardonic bow ; exited, impervious to a gentle gauntlet of gibes.
“Great panel, babe! What was the subject again?” His beam, doting-jaunty-screwball,  did that thing to that part of her brain that found this particular eccentric nerd hot ; and that translated to seriously weak knee syndrome.
She procured a perch of Van Loan lap. “Us, dummkopf!”She smooched him again.
At about the twentieth second into the buss-duration, a series of polite coughs & various other social cues ended the sweet tangential arc. “You’ve got a panel to helm, Liebling.” Shego decoupled from Dr. D ; was about to make her way out to the con-floor when another member of the panel audience, a svelte blonde beauty in a tan Sam Browne belted min-skirt affair, launched one final panel-breaking interrogative bombshell : “ Why aren’t you two spliced yet?
The linebacker with silver discs for eyes sitting next to her had that long-established look of the dutiful but uncomfortable boyfriend. 
 Wandblume considered Van Loan : the audience considered the couple ; Batou considered his shoes ; Starling rephrased the question : “ I’ve sat stakeout on you two...”
At the utterance of ‘stakeout’ the room once again went quiet with the exception of Starling who was far too locked into a verbal-inertial roll to be able to assess her tactical position. Not so, Batou : with a briefly shocked look replaced by resolute determination, he slung his girl over his shoulder and made for the exit. She continued, equally resolute to impart her intimate grasp of the couple’s wedlock potential.
“...long enough to know that you two should have formalized Player Two status six months ago!”
The poleaxed expression on Van Loan’s face vanished two microseconds before the one on Wandblume’s face ; the Crowd, however, looked shocked, stirring towards riled.
Wandblume, always the more socially tuned of the two, brought it all back from the bitchy brink by dramatically P.A.ing  her Man, “Do you promise to forever be crazy about me?”
“I do!” Van Loan looked so radiant he was probably emitting  on the  0.1µm through 5.0µm  wavelengths. “Do you promise to be mad about me forever?”
“I do!”
“There’s got to be someone on this station that can make this stick!” He turned to the audience. “A free lifetime ConClave membership to the Fen who can find us our clerical substitute!”
The room emptied in a rush.
Batou looked mightily relieved.
Starling looked almost as happy as the almost completely married couple.