Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon placed the longest long-distance call in history to-date. It reached from the Oval Office of the White House to its
recipients, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, at Tranquility Base on the Moon.

Congratulations, Humanity. You've taken the first baby steps into a wider universe. Whenever you're ready for the next step, let us know.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Allison rolled over as her cell phone buzzed on her bedside table. She'd left it on out of habit, but the worksite had shut down after running into a
large Clockwork infestation in the far south reinforcement foundation. Allison had suggested trying to coax them out with scrap metal to avoid triggering an
aggressive reaction from the metal scavengers like so many other companies ran into, and the foreman had agreed, but insisted on getting hero backup just in
case. While the worksite normally had no problem with her using her armor to chase off stray villains attacking it, Demolition Sabre was not officially on hire
with Sanderson Construction, Ltd, due to an old, out of date bit of the company's charter that prevented the hiring of super-powered individuals under
their heroic identities in order to avoid having to pay the fees and such the FBSA had used during the 70s before organizations like Hero Corps had changed the
face of the "heroing for hire" in the early 90s. As such, the company needed to hire freelancers separately, and they wouldn't be available until
Tuesday. Allison had expected at least three to four days of off time to do extra patrols, restock the pantry, and generally hope this heat wave broke before
she had to get back to work. Just because she was mostly immune to extremes of heat and cold didn't mean she enjoyed them (she did, after all, sweat like
everyone else), and the normal folks that worked on the site with her were usually much less likely to be unnecessarily crabby when the temperatures were under
85 degrees. She rolled over, booted the covers that were balled up on the end of the bed off entirely, and grumbled at the feeling of the sheets clinging to
her back thanks to the 90 degree night as she sat up and answered her ringing phone. "Hello?"



"Oh, hey, Demo. I didn't wake you up, did I?" a familiar voice said. "Oh…I probably did, didn't I? I'm sorry, I just forgot to
check what time it was and..."

"Dani," Allison said firmly, cutting off the babbling with a slightly better mood than she'd had upon waking, smiling faintly at the brief
silence she knew was accompanied by a blush.



"Sorry. It's just...after you got me out of that mixed up mainframe"... and I found out what really happened to me," Dani hesitated, then
plunged on, "I kinda pulled in for a while. I wasn't entirely sure what I was. It took a lot of time, a lot of talking with some people the Phalanx
hired to help me sort myself out. But afterwards...I wanted to talk to you again."



Allison considered that statement. It certainly was understandable that they'd drifted out of contact. Her contact with the young heroine had started
oddly through the Architect system, testing out a combat simulation salvaged from an Arachnos base. But strange glitches had plagued the system during the test
runs. The dialogue of the simulated enemies had stuttered, as had the various aspects of the interface that were projected directly from the salvaged terminal.
Eventually Dani had managed to break through enough to get out a clear message that they weren't glitches, but that she was very real and trapped inside
the system. Demo had helped her fight the system's own self defense programs and attempts to delete her in the virtual world inside the Arachnos terminal,
and then find the remaining pieces of her personality that had been divided by the machine's attempts to "categorize" Dani's human brain
patterns as they existed inside its recordings. Along the way, the two had begun to talk, however, as much to keep Dani's mind off what would happen if she
failed as anything else. Allison admitted she wasn't the most vocal of people. While there were others that were more terse, she'd never been one to
mince words, but talking to Dani had drawn her into longer speech than she knew some of the Sabres credited her with being capable of. Dani had noticed it too,
especially after her emotional centers had been recovered, and Allison had been surprised -- but pleased -- when the other woman had said that she'd like
to go out for a couple hamburgers once she was out of the computer...which had made the revelation that Dani had lost not a few weeks but fifteen years, and
her own body had been found dead in a river over a decade ago all the more bitter. Dani had thanked her for her help before the technicians and such from
Architect had moved in, called by Demo's report on the situation, and that had been the last she'd heard of Dani, aside from a handful of messages from
Positron reassuring her that Dani was fine but not up to visitors at the time, lest Demo grow suspicious about the lack of contact. And as such things went,
Demo had moved on with her life. Which, nonetheless, didn't make coming into contact with her friend again any less welcome, now that she'd apparently
sorted out some of her issues. She was certainly closer to the cheerful girl that Allison remembered from their time in the sim systems than the withdrawn,
melancholy one that had been the last she'd seen of her.



"Well, here we are, talking," Allison prodded after the silence stretched a bit.



"Ah...yeah....I guess it's kinda funny, but....after pushing to get into touch with you again, I don't know what to say," Dani noted,
sounding vaguely embarassed. "...I know. Why don't you come by one of the Architect facilities? I'd like to see you again, literally that
is."



"I can do that," Allison nodded. "Though...not to put too fine a point on it, but....could it wait a couple hours?"

"Huh?"

"It's 4AM, Dani."



"...oh! Sorry. Yeah, I can find something to occupy myself with until you get here," Dani giggled.



"Thank you," Allison said, smiling. Hearing that giggle was a breath of fresh air...and reassuring to the Sabre that, as hard hit as Dani had been
by her situation, she was recuperating.



"So, I guess I'll see you at eight then?" Dani said, sounding hopeful.

"Yeah...after I get some sleep," Allison said, quirking an eyebrow in amusement.



"Okay, okay!" Dani laughed. "I get the point. I'll let you get your beauty rest. Sweet dreams then."



"See you then, Dani," Allison said, hanging up. And, true to Dani's word, she did have rather pleasant dreams indeed....

***

A little fic idea that spawned from this snippet here into a full blown story idea. More to
come...
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

Yamamoto, at Otakon

So, has he just deep-sixed his career? (If he'll bad-mouth one former employer...)
--
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

The Daily Week: http://dailyweek.com/stories/20090719_kibo/kibo.html]Japanese space module Kibo not set to unleash destruction on unsuspecting Earth

(The Daily Week - The Onion for geeks and fen)
--
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

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

That fic recently recommended in the New Fic thread left me with the yen for more. Anyone have some good recs?

Well, I have to take a week off unpaid before the end of the year anyway, so... why not?

But the train fair is... oy! If I choose Business class for the Toronto-Montreal leg (the Sarnia-Toronto leg only has Economy available), the price jumps to
between $400 and $600 -- I could fly for roughly the same amount. I dunno.... hey, Rob, what's Economy like on ViaRail for ~12hrs for a *big* guy?

With a whole week, I figure I'll have three days or so to bum around Montreal and soak up the local color. Anyone familiar with town who can list some
"don't miss" items? I'm *still* kicking myself for not allowing extra time to hang out around Denver *last* year....

"Debug Error!

Program: Crogram FilesCity of HeroesCohUpdater.exe

HEAP CORRUPTION DETECTED: after Normal block (#61547) at 0x07d83780 CRT detected that the application wrote to memory after end of heap buffer.

Memory allocated at cvncohcoh_sourcelibsutilitieslibutilspiglib.c(601).

(Press Retry to debug the application)"

...

I have no clue what that means, but I suspect it's bad news.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

I took a quick look (called "search") for mentions of this series, and found nothing. I just saw an off mention of the name (the studio that made
this made Shana as well), and proceeded to download the batch torrent for it.

I watched the first, episode, then the second, and then spent all my free time in the last two days screaming through the series.

For something that's just to the left of an Unwanted Harem series, it's pretty awesome.

Here's the best summary of the plot
I've found. (Felt this was better than cut-and-pasting the text).

Here's the TV Tropes page

Mikoto has probably the neatest trick. Her esper power is being able to generate electricity--enough to blackout areas of the city if motivated enough. But
her main attack with this? Turing a coin into a railgun projectile! She even uses "Railgun" as her nickname.

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20090716_18186.mp3]Highlights from an interview with John Cleese, plus a somewhat naughtier story from Thursday's episode of Q. (Should be available for four weeks.)
--
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