Eden.

Rain thundered down as Lazerun Seraph sat on the edge of one of the few intact buildings in Eden, making the last few adjustments to her power armour, listening to the combination of rain on her helm and the dull hum as her suit power relays.

As the last status message scrolled over her H.U.D, she smirked and ran to the edge, leaping across to the next building as her suits camo kicked in, reducing her form to nothing more than a flickering after image as she impacting on the other building, her fingers digging into the brickwork she   crawled along the wall. Casting her gaze around, she listened to her radio, chuckling as she heard some chatter from Crey mooks.

 Not really much of a threat, but it always felt good cracking their skulls and it be a good test of her suits upgrades.

Following the signal, she eventually reached what looked like some sort of camp sight, Crey juggernauts patrolling the perimeter while at the centre, bathed in the light from several flood lamps was some sort of metal coffin. She watched as scientists scuttling around it like ants before dropping down and sprinting into the shade for some heavy equipment. Looking over the edge, she moved to the next piece of shade, keeping the coffin in her line of sight as she moved closer. 

Ducking behind a  console, she heard one of the chatting to a bored looking guard. “See, by creating a symbiosis with the lobotomised crystal, we have created what could be the first generation of anti devouring earth troopers! With such things, we could take out the Hamidon! Think of how much we could charge for that!”

She had no idea what the hell the guy was going on about beyond the fact that Crey had got their hands on some innocent and was twisting them into some sort of weapon that they could sell to the highest bidder.

So of course, as a Sabre of Paragon, Laz knew what she had to do.

Moving closer, she hear some noise from the edge of the camp and watched as several Juggernauts entered, dragging a heavily restrained Greater Devourer, the beast thrashing in it's chains as they dragged it towards the coffin.

Watching from the shadows, she saw the top of the coffin open. A young woman dressed in a simple black body suit stumbled out, her face obscured by her white hair, while some sort of metal and crystal device seemed to be bolted onto her back.

The chatty guy in a lab coat stepped forward holding some sort of remote, pressing a button the girl screamed, her body twitching as the ground beneath her pulsed. With another press of the remote, she buckled and screamed again, the mud beneath the devourer exploded upwards as spears of magma lanced it's flesh.

Feeling her stomach turn, she watched as the button was pressed again and again, each time the girl screamed as more magma lashed up to tear into the bound beast. 

This was inhuman.

Stepping out of the shadows, she felt the vazilock device in her chest start to power up as a wave of darkness rolled out from her, draining the vitality of the guards as she felt her body almost hum with stolen power.

It was a dangerous trick, it was all to easy to become lost in the high, but she had something to focus on, to ground her  as she punched the nearest Juggernaut, his chest plate cratering as he fell.

She had to save that girl.

The scientist screamed and pointed the remote at her, hammering the button as if his life depended on it, the poor girl twitching like a puppet on broken strings as she held out a hand, her eyes glowing crimson under her fringe as she slapped the mud in front of her. A wall of magma rolling out to trip Lazruen up, sending her tumbling face first into the mud.

Quickly leaping to her feet, she saw the shock wave wasn't discriminatory, the Crey Juggernauts laying prone, either trapped in place or impaled in the magma. The nutso in the lab coat screaming as he fidgeted with the remote. “You worthless hunk of Junk! What happened to the Friend or Foe system? It must need recalibrating.” 

Rolling to her feet, she stood in front of the scientist, looming over him as she snarled. “Yeah, how about no.” She brought her armoured fist down on his head, knocking him cold and grabbing the remote crushing it in her hand

The poor girl staggered as the remote was destroyed, dropping to her hands and knees before rolling over onto her back.

Splashing though the mud, she dropped to the girls side and checked her vitals, letting out a sigh of relief as she felt a strong pulse. Reaching to her belt she pulled her mediport off and attached it to the girls jump suit before activating it, sending her to the Atlas hospital before trigging a spare teleporter To follow her.

* * *

Altas Park Hospital
Examination room

The clockwork turned to Laz, giving her a slightly irate look as she straighten her dress. “You know, this unit did have a date planed for tonight?” she muttered, Laz noting the usual vocal quirk as Medical Unit Theta walked over and start putting some X-rays up on the light board. “If it wasn't for how much trouble your family gets into, this unit would of probably ignored the call.”

Laz sheepishly smiled. “Sorry Mut, but you are the best medic I know. I mean, how many times have you patched up my old man or Neph?”

The clockwork woman sighed at the use of her nickname and pointed to the X-rays. “Fine, but this unit has 3 bits of news. Good, Bad and what the hell, which would you hear first?”

“Um... the good news first?”

Mut turned and crossed her arms. “She is in surprisingly good shape despite what those idiots at Crey  have done. She looks to be early twenties, possibly of Latino decent or Hispanic.”

“Okay, the bad news?”

Mut taped a X-ray of the woman’s head. “She has been given an implant that is disturbingly similar to what the Preatorian seer's have installed, but Crey have done a sloppy job.” She taped portions around the implant. “It has caused damage to her language centrers, this unit also found traces of what ever drug they use to erase their memories in her system.” Mut shook her head.

Laz shifted slightly, she had seen many Sabers wake with no memory of their past. She wasn't sure what Crey did, but it made her skin crawl. “What’s the last bit of news then?”

“This is.... well.” Mut put up an X-ray and pointed.

As Laz lent in, her jaw dropped slightly. The x-ray was of the girls back, showing that the crystal on her back was just grafted on, it had grown into her, the girls ribs, spine and a portion of her pelvic bone covered in a strange crystalline growth. “What the hell is that crap?”

“As far as this unit can tell, it is a symbiotic crystal. She could not take a sample though, that stuff is as hard as diamonds.”

The Scared woman looked down at the Clockwork. “What the hell was Crey trying to do?”

Mut shrugged. “This unit does not know, but there is the question of what will we do when she wakes up? She can stay here for a bit, but after that? ”

Chewing her lip slightly, Laz got her phone out. “Well, we got some spare rooms at home. I'm just hope dad doesn’t mind...”

Has anyone thought how the Scoobies would react to meeting Eimi? I'm thinking it starts at stunned disbelief.

If Fred and George leave Hogwarts because of Umbridge and tell Peeves to "give her hell from us" on their way out, how do you think Doug will behave in that situation? Remember that the teachers didn't lift a finger to help Umbridge any more than absolutely necessary. They even gave Peeves advice ("It unscrews the other way."). For some reason, I can see Doug handing Peeves a list of harmless, yet obstinate as hell pranks he could pull on Umbridge.

Retrospectroscope - 20/Jul/2012
Start July 2010, Dublin.
It'd been a busy six months.  Arthur was amazed he was still sane.  Assuming he was.  Janet was OK, and Alice had become a not-quite member of the family.
He was now a tens-of millionaire.  The Tax Man had taken a good chunk, of course.  But, after Eire's recent financial problems, Arthur liked to think he was doing his small bit to help.
They'd diversified, a bit, and become a small telecom provider, even though they hadn't got a spectrum license; their competitors were still complaining about that.  Volume was still limited by Alice providing mind phones - she had to wave each one herself, using one of her humanoid bodies.  The base stations were less of a problem.
He'd attended his first Fen convention.  KandorCon.  Amazing.  In many respects he was still a 'Dane, but his friends said there was still time for hope.  He'd taken his aunt along, and Janet, of course.  Alice attended by teleconference; they still hadn't solved her tie to Earth, and she was a lot bigger, these days.
The company was running smoothly.  Kevin Wright was still Managing Director, but he'd let the Sales Director role slip to a new hire; he still kept Personnel Director for himself.  Arthur remained Technical Director, Janet was Head of Engineering, and Alice was Production Director.  Arthur's aunt recommended someone who became Financial Director.
Arthur had changed his name by deed poll - he was now "Arthur Arthurkin".  People accused him of being a bit recursive, but he refused to discuss the matter.  Some were amazed to find his previous name had been "Arthur J. Arthur"; no he would tell them what the 'J' stood for and claimed it was 'Just'.
He'd found time to get his pilots license, and personally flew the team, plus aunt, to Luna, for the con.  They took a pass near some of the finished and still on-going construction works.  Fenspace never ceased to amaze him.  One of Alice's mind phones was wired-in as an emergency pilot, she'd got her license about the same time he did, but they weren't planning on admitting its presence.
Civil rights for AIs was his main reason to attend.  He spoke briefly, himself, but was mainly there to introduce Alice.  She spoke passionately, about being a person with no rights at all, less than a wild animal.  The light-speed delay wasn't too much problem and she was well received.  The mind phones in Arthur and Janet's pockets gave Alice an interesting perspective.
Australia fell into line shortly after KandorCon.  They probably had the most to lose.  AIs were now persons with full rights, but details were still being thrashed out, like competency, and age of majority.  Turing Tests looked likely, but understandably "Voight-Kampff" tests had been voted-down.  Particularly when it was pointed out quite a few Homo Sapiens would fail one.  Organised religion was, predictably, up in arms.
Arthur had attended quite a few con items, and toured the various presentation and dealers rooms.  He headed straight for the second-hand books and media, but suddenly realised he could afford to buy new.  Then, he went back to the second-hand stuff.  He came away with several armfuls.
Just listening to talk in the bars was interesting.  Nearly as good as the technical presentations.  SMOF (Secret Masters?) doing this, First Fen doing that - Stellvia got quite a few mentions, but not, he noticed, O'Neill Station. Once he thought he saw one of the Angels, in the distance, but it was difficult to be sure.  He avoided the more raucous stuff.
They say the retrospectroscope is the only 100% reliable scientific instrument. But, he still felt he should have worked it out.  After they came back from KandorCon he took Bea into the lab, and went over her minutely, component by component.  It was tedious, but the only thing he could think of that they hadn't tested.
All the components matched the parts list he'd used for the ten O'Neill Station AI crew, Nurse Blake, and Janet.  No, he wasn't going to wave-up an AI based on exactly one of those frames, just to test a theory.  Even though it was possible the Hollywood Machine made all the difference.
Then, he double-checked.  There were some PIC micro-controllers used in a number of places that he always programmed himself; Kevin Wright had bought-in pre-programmed ones for production.  On a hunch, he checked his version against downloads extracted from the externally-sourced ones.
All the code and data matched.  But, what was unused space in his, contained text.  Their terms and conditions.  Which included Kevin Wright's:
'Not licensed for off-planet use'.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Collaborative Working - 20/Jul/2012
Mid December 2009, Dublin.
No legs had been broken.  Or other body parts.  They had the two cached robots, from Australia.  And it looked like a good name for the thieves would be 'Boskone'.  They'd disappeared without a trace.
Arthur'd spoken to his science fiction friends, and 'Boskone' was apparently from the "Golden Age", the 'Doc' Smith "Lensman" books.  Space opera bad guys, involved in all sort of criminality, but particularly drugs, and slaving.  It figured that there'd be people who saw handwavium, and asked "How can this make me money, and I don't care who gets hurt".
Alice was delighted to be reunited with them; they were the closest thing she had to family.  She'd decided on the surname 'Melbourne'.  Alice worked with Jenny, to figure-out exactly what'd happened when she was waved.  Jenny remarked she was learning engineering at an amazing rate, faster than she thought she herself'd have done.  Motivation?
Looking back, it seemed almost inevitable.  But, Jenny hadn't seen it coming, either.  Alice had waved up 'Bea' and 'Chaz', three second-hand phones in each. What no one expected was that Alice'd find herself looking out through two new sets of eyes.
She'd deliberately put SIM cards in all the six phones, with their mutual phone numbers on, so they could all easily talk to each other.  Instead, all three brains seemed to be 'running' her, and no amount of shut-downs, SIM card shuffling, and reboots seemed to fix this.
She'd even tried a Faraday cage test - they were all still in contact with each other.  Jenny, returning from a consultancy trip 'up', sighed, and took Alice out to do clothes shopping for her two new bodies.
The thinking speed of an AI seemed to give Alice time to simulate three different persona, but she called two of them 'masks'.  When she relaxed it was clear she was still one person in three bodies.  She seemed to think she'd murdered her sisters, before they'd even been born.
Jenny wasn't happy about Alice's state of mind, so she suggested Arthur involve her in the new factory project.  She seized on this distraction with all six hands, and was soaking up new skills at a remarkable rate.  Jenny remarked it was social skills she herself'd been lacking when waved-up; Alice seemed to have started with these and was acquiring technical ones.
As sometimes seemed to be the case, the answer to the factory issue was 'all of the above'.  New Body Builders were being built for long-term heavy-duty production use, and in the process scaled-up into something it took a crane to move around.  Alice was really pleased to be the AI that made the factory run.  Human staff would be employed, as well, to work with Alice on all parts of the production process, except the actual robot frame building.
Alice'd learned another trick.  Apparently if she made a cable connection to a phone, then waved it up, it would run a distributed fragment of her mind.  This didn't make her any smarter, but it certainly allowed her to split her attention far more ways.  While these 'mind phones' could still make normal calls, her mental field didn't seem to be using RF to exchange thoughts, and worked at least over tens of miles.  Later, they discovered, world-wide.
She'd been on a privacy and ethics course (or Bea had, anyway).  Now she proposed that all factory staff get and carry a waved phone, at work, as part of their terms and conditions.  And could use it for personal calls, too, at reduced call rates.  She'd keep people's private affairs, private.
Arthur was dubious.  Jenny remarked it would massively assist cooperation, safety, and probably help a lot with industrial espionage.  Kevin Wright commented that group minds weren't covered by privacy legislation, though the rest of them thought that a bit disingenuous.  Jenny said she'd been unsure, but she'd run it past Sarah, on her last visit, and she seemed to think it was a good idea.  So it was settled.
Alice had found time to acquire a boyfriend.  Or rather, the 'Chaz' part of her handled this.  A rather shy sociology Masters student, who seemed fascinated by her, on a professional and romantic level.  Kevin Wright suggested she not get 'distracted' while operating heavy machinery.  Which caused some embarrassment, and, Jenny suggested to Arthur, private experimentation.
They'd had a bit of a shock.  Jenny got permission to take Alice 'up' to see Kelly, who was fascinated with the prospect of meeting her.  Alice and Kelly had chatted, on a secured line, quite a bit before the visit.  Everything was OK until they got about 50 miles up.  Alice shut-down.
Jenny regretted not having a better communication system as they continued on their flight plan to O'Neill Station.  On arrival Kelly and Jenny checked Alice out, and could find nothing wrong.  Messages from Dublin revealed Bea and Chaz were OK, as were all the mind phones, but they had suddenly lost Alice.  Jenny didn't, quite, hurry her consultancy work.  But, it was agreed the less urgent parts would be done either from Dublin or on a later trip.
At about 50 miles up on the return trip Alice suddenly revived.  Initially she didn't know what'd happened, but quickly resynchronised with Bea, etc.  Back in Dublin she again checked-out OK.  Experiments showed she was all-right, anywhere on Earth, as long as she didn't go too high.  There was no clear explanation.
"Guess we now know why Fen don't buy our product", remarked Arthur.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

Saw it, declare it good and I'm truly intending to see it again in an IMAX session.....once I make sense of just who's offering it - as I'm only aware of two IMAX screens within a reasonable distance from me. I'll just say those who know the bios of the characters from the comics might be able to spot any twists before the reveal. But I also know that some fic crossovers have now strongly gone AU due to the actions of certain events in this movie.

Still a certain fandom will be rejoicing, even if they've despaired at the choices of costuming.

Well, as some of you do or don't know, I do a bit of 3d Modelling using blender. So I'm sorta grabbing space to show off/illicit comments/etc of my work.

Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

There's an announcement at the top of the forum (that appears to be hidden to regular users) about an this, which links here.

Well, I'm looking at the preview site they have, and my opinion can be summed up as "My eyes! They burn!" or maybe "Shoot it, shoot it now!"

It sort of sounds like this is an *option*, and not something they're forcing on people. I certainly hope so. But it might be worth putting in a word to the effect of "Do not want this forced on us" just in case, yes?

Unless other people here like it. o.O;;;

-Morgan.

For those of you who don't know, there was a mass-shooting at the Century 16 theatre in Aurora, Colorado during the midnight showing of Batman.
Neither myself nor my roommates (Hand of Bobb and Sabrina) were there, though it is directly across the street from where I work.  However, Sabrina's little brother and several of their friends were there.  And one of her brother's friends was a victim.
I have been on the phone with everyone I know starting about 0400 this morning, letting people know that we're all fine.

So, while I'm waiting on something to bake in blender I've been thinking...
A Dangerous Pastime?  I Know!
But that Crazy old coot is Belle's Fath...  Sorry, Shark jump.
RATHER, I've been thinking about starting up a topic just for like My 3D CG stuff, kinda like the one DS has for his City of Artwork, or Mark's, etc.  The difference is that this would be more general creations / looking for feedback / etc.  What forum would this really go best in?  its not like anything directly related to Fenspace, or City Of, or Drunkards walk after all, which is where most of the topics in the past have gone?
Other people's Fanfiction maybe?  granted this sort of thing isnt exactly fan fiction in its strictest sense, but it is user created content...  Some would be animations so maybe the AMV?  or just plain General?
Thoughts?
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children