... *... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
[All enter the theater.]
MIKE: You OK now, Belldandy?
BELLDANDY: [beaming] Thanks to that infusion of good cinema, I'm ready for anything. I think.
TOM: Hey, how come you didn't invite us to go watch "The Third Man" with you?
MIKE: Well, you and Crow seemed to be having such a good time with your little sketch. I didn't want to ruin the atmosphere.
>        Despite the seemingly short weeks that had been spent on active duty, Lieutenant Kyoko Yatsumi, commander Savannah Group, had found herself
CROW: The newly appointed landlord at a small Tokyo boarding house!
>        slowly accepting that an entire Terran summer, two months, had drifted by. Such shore leaves, on Earth in fact, were rare, the next being scheduled for five years later.
MIKE: Y'know, that's the problem with Earth. You have to book so long in advance.
>        The Horizont
BELLDANDY: Horizont?
>        she flew aboard was archaic, homage to the two Robotech Expeditionary Fleets. Named the Azuza, by its chief mechanic and primary nostalgic otaku,
TOM: [shaking] Stop it. Just stop it right now!
BELLDANDY: Tom, calm down!
TOM: I'm sorry! But I've had it up to HERE with the knowing self-reference!
>        it carried a crew of four and a passenger compliment of seventy as they descended into Earth's atmosphere.
CROW: And burnt to a cinder on re-entry. The end.
TOM: "Apollo 13" this is not.
>        She was wearing civilian clothes, as opposed to standard military onworld off-duty uniforms.
TOM: Hey, I've had this dream...
>        Kyoko's shore leave would last five months, if uninterrupted by
MIKE: -- the plot.
TOM: Oh, I don't think we need to worry about that.
>        the call back to active duty. And with the wide-spreading of capital ships and redeployment and clock-shifting of the fleets,
CROW: Not to mention changing immigration patterns and the rising cost of tungsten --
>        that possibility seemed rather unlikely. Asia came into view first, covered by a thicket blanket of strato-nimbus overcast resulting from the weather pattern reclamation programs of the mid-2060's.
MIKE: Desperately trying to slow the story down, the author resorts to bringing us the day's weather report.
>        She could see the horrid blast marks to imprinted in China and the Mongolian Southern Quadrant. As the Horizont
BELLDANDY: Horizont?
CROW: Grignr?
>        descended below the torrid clouds, she watched New Beijing and Shanghai grace her condescendingly. She wondered if small children, not much unlike herself at that age, would look up and see her, flying.
MIKE: Well, only if she jumps out.
CROW and TOM: [whispering] Jump... jump...
MIKE: That's dark, guys.
>        The South China Sea quickly passed underneath them as they slowed from hypersonic to approach speed for Okinawa.
TOM: Oh, now he's stealing the opening from "Gunbuster."
>        The overcast dimmed and faded out, the morning sun bursting over the coast of the Atalian Islands.
CROW: Aaaahh! Now the sun's gone nova!
>        Once, long ago, that small chain had been raped of one of its sister islands, an island that had been responsible for much of the change Earth had gone through.
TOM: Fantasy Island!
BELLDANDY: No, the Mysterious Island. From Jules Verne.
MIKE: No, no, he must mean Gilligan's Island.
>        The shuttle stopped over Hasake,
TOM: And hung in the sky in exactly the same way bricks don't...
>        a new city placed as the capital of the Ryukyu Footchain Quadrant, just south and west of home island Japan. Smiling brightly to herself, she anticipated the return to civilianity
CROW: Sid Meier's Civilianity.
>        as much as she had long for the life of the military, four years ago.
MIKE: But for young Shannon Faulkner, it was not to be...
>
>* * *
>
>        Okinawa came into view only a few minutes later.
CROW: Meanwhile, in the same scene! Sheesh.
>        Soon, the shuttle had slowed to an appreciable fraction of subsonic speed and finally came to an approach vector along the Ryukyu SpaceBase.
MIKE: You know, I really dig those FunkyCaps. I do.
>        As the monolithic towers of the starbase, attributed to an older Monument City,
ALL: [singing] Monument City, it's a hell of a town, the starbase is up and the monolith's down...
>        passed by, she could easily see the river, torn into the ground a century ago by a Zentraedi's warbeam, that would lead up to her uncle's house.
BELLDANDY: I wonder what the Zentraedi had against her uncle.
TOM: [as old lady] Oh, yes, he was always such a nice man, too.
>        Since Aunt Kazumi died,
CROW: Just didn't feel like putting up with Nabiki and Akane any more, I guess.
>        she had kept in touch with the one-hundred and five year old man. For his age, he was still very vigorous,
MIKE and 'BOTS: We know.
>        almost as if he were sixty again. But that had passed, as had his beloved wife over the ripples of the Kanzwa.
BELLDANDY: [sniff] It's so sad!
TOM: Ye -- uh... you are kidding, right?
>        Her hovertaxi followed the chain of highways across Okinawa's west coast until they reached the suburb.
MIKE: So Okinawa is just one town?
>        The trees here were not indigenous to Okinawa, or even Japan. Imported from what had survived of the Northwest American Quadrant,
CROW: ... after the devastating Punctuation and Capitalization_Riots of 1999...
>        it had been implanted with fern trees and redwoods cloned after Japan declined her separatist position.
TOM: In other words, the author had no reference material for what a real forest on Okinawa might look like.
>        Almost five decades of war had been erased, and nature had rewarded humanity for their persistence in restoring balance.
CROW: [as smarmy announcer] And for Humanity, a lovely matching towel set and a copy of our home game! Aren't they great, folks? Let's give 'em a big hand...
>        Only a few ten million people lived onworld, despite its position as the capital of the Confederation. To be more honest, it was the secondary capital; the primary construct on a neutral world orbiting a nearby star, AGC-1198, would not be completed for another two decades.
BELLDANDY: [despairing] Oh, couldn't he just have said "Earth: Mostly Harmless" and left it at that?
MIKE: Presley H. Cannady only turned to writing fanfics after he was fired from his job at the Encyclopedia Britannica.
>        She'd get a job, at the local ROTC center; probably even a flight instructor.
TOM: Maybe even selling Chevrolets door to door!
>        As she looked to the sky, slowly turning to dawn, she could spot the star that had once been her true home, having travelled seventy-five years from the last point she had last seen it on the celestial dome.
CROW: You mean the sky?
MIKE: Let's not jump to conclusions.
> Five Redhawks forced across the sky.
>CHAPTER XI-
ALL: Yaaah!
>        Three billion years ago and it was still the same.
ALL: [singing] Same as it ever was! Same as it ever was...
>        You can't win a war nobody wants.
TOM: Unfortunately, you can read a fanfic nobody wants.
>        - argument presented by Commander Wetherall in her memoirs,_circa ET 2208 (ASG)
CROW: alt.sex.gerbils?
MIKE: Ix-nay, Crow.
>        I had often sat and talked with Eve, on those rare months she decided to join us.
TOM: [sarcastic] Oh, has the great Eve decided to join us today?
>        She elaborated on many opinions, but not facts.
CROW: She had been watching the Rush Limbaugh show.
>        She was built on emotions, and probably feels more than any of us.
TOM: What? Where are we? Who's talking?
>        For that reason, I knew that song was our best communication tool.
MIKE: I can't help but think that if we'd picked an artist other than Michael Bolton, the aliens wouldn't have proceeded to sterilize the Earth. Oh well, live and learn.
>        - excerpted Yoshiko's Deguchi's A Look Back at Hackensack: the Life of the Fifth Generation Idol Singer heading, Chapter VI, pg 78. Published ET Mar 12, 2198 (ASG)
>
>* * *
>
>        The Targus Nebulae, four lightyears
CROW: One-third the calories of a regular year!
>        from the Rubian Stretch
>        October 4, 2192
MIKE: Dear Diary,
>        THE STARSHIP FARRAGUT WOULD SPEND THE NEXT FIVE MONTHS
CROW: No need to shout! We can hear you!
BELLDANDY: [muttering] Unfortunately.
CROW: What was that?
BELLDANDY: Er, I didn't say anything.
>        docked, being refitted, retrofitted, and stocked for the Fallsburg Task Force. Superdimensional Starforce Orion.
TOM: [sibilantly] Star Force... devils.
>        Of the major points in Robotechnology's past, the "Macross_Epic" was the most remembered.
TOM: Okay, buckle in everyone, exposition's starting again.
ALL: [groan]
>        Already, history lessons had spawned legends of Admiral Gloval and Lisa Hayes, Commander Hunter and Max and Miriya Sterling.
CROW: "Legends of Robotech" stories that were actually good!
>        Somewhere, they existed, either as memories... or they were still alive. One of the great questions about the Severed Galaxy
MIKE and 'BOTS: Ouch.
BELLDANDY: What?
>        was the effects on time. Already, since Listening Post #89's startling discovery,
CROW: [as scientist] Stuffing instead of potatoes? I don't believe it!
>        scientists who had observed the Gamma Quadrant with transluminal and superluminal vehicles had solidified
ALL: Ewww!
>        their beliefs that Tirol was running on a different time continuum.
TOM: [as Groucho Marx] Either this galaxy is running on a different time continuum, or my watch has stopped!
>        It was as if the Galaxy had planted one foot in reality and the other in another dimension.
MIKE: Y'know, once when I was eleven my folks took me to that place where you can stand with one foot in Arizona and the other in New Mexico. It was pretty neat.
CROW: That's great, Mike.
>        If the arms of the Galaxy surrounding the Southern Cross were indeed time-differential from Earth, the real nightmare lay in deciding which side was actually running on real-time.
MIKE: Marooned in Realtime.
TOM: Yeah, it'll be a warm day in space before the Mads ever send that to us.
>        To many, that was a fascinating trivia of science and metaphysics.
CROW: [peevishly] To whom? Name one.
>        To Cadet Sergeant Maria Tomas, Ganymede Defense Academy Point Delta, metaphysics was a waste of bandwidth.
BELLDANDY: [shaking a bit] So he described all that stuff about the Severed Galaxy just so he could tell us it was completely irrelevant?!
>        She was a computer-freak,
TOM: A superfreak! The kind you can't take home to Mother...
>        but even more of a pilot. Points, heralding the title from the famous North American military institution and later base of several VT squadrons during the War of Unification: West Point,
trained hard-core
ALL: Saaayyy...
>        pilots,
ALL: Oh.
>        a training section under the Alpha Armored Corps and the Southern Cross Calvary. Maria Tomas was the only member of the Robotech Defense Force present onboard this ship.
TOM: [falsetto] Okay, I'd better call roll. Well, I'm here... All done!
>        The design of the Horizont had become a popular model in shuttle design that led to SFSS-51300 Cumberant series,
CROW: Cucumber?
MIKE: Cummerbund?
BELLDANDY: [firmly] Cumbrous. Like this story!
>        Palgarant subclass, SDF-13 Capital class. Though the more advanced series, like the Celebrant, were more apt to such conditions as nebulaic navigation, the Cumberant still predominated in light-cruiser deployment capability.
TOM: See, they worked it so one component is made in every congressman's district...
>        The cadet squadron, Blue, was a subsection of the Nightmare Squadron, which ran most of the training sessions on Ganymede Point. The Cumberant carried a wide variety of Alpha's, Beta's, and Valkyrie contingents.
CROW: I can't think of anything to say. I'm numb.
MIKE: This reads like a Tom Clancy novelization of the instructions for filling out a 1040 form.
>        However, the primary mecha these cadets were being trained in_were eclectic.
TOM: Eclectic Avenue!
>        The VAF-4SD nontransformable VT had been the prototype for the Alpha's compact fighter mode.
BELLDANDY: On the outside it's just a mini. But on the inside it's a completely different animal!
>        Currently, most understudents handled these non-mecha fighters. However, the non-Protoculture Robotech mecha Maria
TOM: [Brit accent] To whom we are, by degrees, returning...
>        had received was one of the most strangest produced.
MIKE: Insert grammar flame here.
>        The Veritech /CF system pays homage to the infamous Logan fighter before the departure of the Robotech Expeditionary Fleet. It wasn't until the Pluto Veritech Fleet had been inaugurated for the last resort
TOM: The Pluto-Charon Rotating Restaurant, Hotel and Casino.
BELLDANDY: Huh?
TOM: It's the last resort!
ALL: [groan]
>        incase the Saturn Wing's Neutron S offensive failed, during the Second Invid War, that the V/CF system began mass construction. Now, only two series of these Veritech Gamma Fighters existed, the Tazania and the Tazmanian.
MIKE: Take careful notes, everyone, because this will be on the test.
>        The V/CF-7 Tazmanian had always been the specialty of the Cadet Tomas.
TOM: No, not the Cadet Tomas, a Cadet Tomas -- didn't you hear I come in six packs?
>        Since her enlistment and eventual transfer to Ganymede in the Robotech Defense Force, she had trained hard with Valkyrie like ecletic VT. It was her home and her life, except for...
CROW: Ellipses provided by Cheryl "Double Vision" Davis.
>        "Well, I'll be stationed on Rubia for the next three months at least, and I hear that you'll be off by February, right?"
MIKE: All right! The story's starting at last. Here we go!
>        The magic of interstellar hypercommunications allowed for realtime discussion using Sekiton powered relays,
BELLDANDY: [hopelessly] Oh, no!
CROW: *sigh*
TOM: I bet Presley H. Cannady can't drive a stick-shift, either.
>        obviously controlled by Karbarran communication industries.
ALL: Oh, obviously.
>        Calls were much more inexpensive, especially that she and her fiancee, Ramon Vega, were
CROW: Scheduled to fight Chun Li and Ryu.
>        within the same local group, separated only by four lightyears. Near the Rubian
BELLDANDY: Crossing the Rubian?
MIKE: Er...
>        system, the RSS Divana had taken route, and Cadet Major and senior "Brazil" Vega could
TOM: ... at last hunt down and arrest that annoying Harry Tuttle.
>        finish his last term and start his first assignment onboard that very vessel. It was Maria's hope to be stationed aboard as well, and their marriage would all but solidify that.
> "Where should we meet, Brazil?"
MIKE: [chuckling] Ha, ha! But I kid people with geographically-inspired nicknames.
>        "We were on Earth two months ago, and I haven't been to see my family in a year.
TOM: [falsetto] Oh, it's always you, you, you! What about my needs?
>        "How about New Kazahk?"
> Maria wrinkled her nose, but nodded anyway. "Sounds great," she said semi-heartedly.
MIKE: That's kind of a neat word... "semi-heartedly."
CROW: Hey, check this out, guys. [loudly, to the screen] Presley, tell me about "New Kazahk."
>        New Kazahk was most definitely the last on the tourist attraction of the Confederation-Kellar alliance. A few spaceports, not to far from Centaurus, it had become one of the major crime areas of the alliance.
BELLDANDY: Wow!
TOM: How'd you do that, Crow?
CROW: Ain't tellin'.
>        She had grown up on Mars, and had attended the Ganymede Academy for only two months when she met the roughneck junior that would become her betrothed. "So I'll meet you there.
CROW: [falsetto] I've always wanted to visit a crime-ridden slum!
>        I really need to meet your parents."
TOM: Hmm, I've never heard that euphemism before...
MIKE: Tom!
>        "From what they've seen of you, I think that should be no problem. Gotta go, honey," he kissed his finger, and placed against the vid->screen. Maria did the same.
CROW: This is just like "Space: Above and Beyond," except maybe a little better.
>        The line cut, replaced by the computer-generated symbol of Arnno-Karbarran Sekiton Communications.
TOM: We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company!
>
>* * *
>
>        Earth Orbit, Trojan Lagrange Point Gamma
>        October 5, 2173
CROW: [Brit accent] Captain's log.
>        Space Station New Frontier, the oldest permanent space platform in Terran history, was a landmark in some respects.
TOM: AAARGH! STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!
CROW: [getting mad] Hey, "Captain Exposition..."
MIKE: Ease up, Crow.
>        Having survived three Robotech Wars due to its lack of any military, scientific, or strategical battle, it was one of the few relics that told of a time before the great wars. Yet it still held scars.
MIKE: Cars? Why is there a parking lot way out in --
TOM: Scars, Mike.
MIKE: Oh.
>        The communications facility, owned jointly by Tellenet and Arnno-Karbarran Sekiton Communications had long been the chief headquarters of both industries.
BELLDANDY: [lecturing] See what happens when you use up all your commas in the beginning of the fanfic? You don't have any left for the end.
>        Having been rebuilt to the size the great Space Station Liberty one held, it now included such commodities as artificial gravity...
ALL: Yes?
>        ...
ALL: YES?!
>        and a conference room.
ALL: Oh.
MIKE: That's not much of a payoff.
>        "Three-billion yen, Nikkei present value,"
CROW: All right! I'll give you anything! Just, please, end this story!
>        if anything could be said about a Tellenet employee, they were the greatest hackers alive. Dr. Arbatan Dul was
CROW: Named after this fanfic!
>        Zentraedi and Calopean on his mother's side, and Centauran on his father.
MIKE: It must be hell trying to run Affirmative Action programs in the future.
>        His counterpart, a four-hundred pound Karbarran
ALL: Karrrrrrr-BARRRRRRan.
>        faced a most unlikely customer. Usually, the Karbarran, Ssol, was not present. However, Arbatan's usual attache, a cetaceous mammal named Har'br!ns, was taken ill,
CROW: [Brit accent] You're the cetaceous mammal named Har'br!ns?
TOM: [Chinese accent] Ah, no. He died. He have heart attack and fall out of window onto exploding bomb, where he was killed in shooting accident.
>        and placed in the emergency water-traction section of Earthdock's xenobiological medical wing. In Har'br!ns' place, was Ssol,
CROW: [snootily] Ah, Mr. Loss, you're here at last. Take a seat and a memo, would you?
>        low-ranking and a boisterous members of AK
TOM: It is not a statue of the god Ptrrrrrp! It is the god Ak!
>        Communications Limited. "Including transaction receipts, and unvalued erasing disks."
MIKE: We now join this conversation, already in progress.
>        The disks had already been used. Old 3'5's,
BELLDANDY: Three foot five inch disks?!
TOM: They also get paid in the giant stone coins of the Yap Islanders.
>        they had contained a small one-purpose virus. Every record of the transaction through the Nikkei Galactic Monetary Net had been erased, replaced with legal information backed up with more tainted
cash.
TOM: ... thus defeating the purpose of erasing the tainted transactions.
MIKE: Oh, great, it's just the 23rd-century version of MAKE.MONEY.FAST.
>        Cash retrieved from sources unknown.
MIKE: Y'know, that conspiracy guy in the short said to watch out for the cashless society of the future. I guess he was right after all.
>        The human that stood before him accepted the money, and placed a small box on the desk.
CROW: [evilly] A gift for you, Ambassador... from friends you didn't know you had.
>        It was a bulkier version of the civilian datapad,
TOM: Hey, is that a bulkier version of a civilian datapad or are you just happy to see me?
> but strangely enough, it came equipped with a...
MIKE: [holds Crow's beak closed]
>        "Pocket synthesizer," the human spoke. "You'll have enough ca'poa to supply three-fifths of the Confederation and have plenty left over."
TOM: [peevishly] There's enough ca'poa in this fanfic to supply three-fifths of the Confederation...
CROW: [Brit accent] There's just one problem with this scheme.
MIKE: [same] What's that?
CROW: We're not doing anything illegal!
>* * *
CROW: [pained] Oh, now what?
BELLDANDY: [starting to break down] I don't think I can take another scene...
>--
CROW: Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I sense a .signature coming up!
TOM: Yes! Our long national nightmare is over!
MIKE: But are we at a logical stopping point?
CROW: Who cares?!!
>Gasoculture________________Nemesis of the New York State Freeway
CROW: And we have .signature! Yeah!
BELLDANDY: So we survived the fanfic after all! I guess it wasn't quite as bad as I thought.
MIKE: That's the spirit!
BELLDANDY: But I never would have made it without you three!
MIKE and BOTS: Awwww.
[They all hug. Yes, it is disgustingly cute.]
>Presley H. Cannady | Author of the Robotech
>76725.1246@compuserve.com | New Era Sagas and Ravenworld
[All sit there, stunned.]
MIKE: What? Sagas? There's more than one?!
BELLDANDY: [wailing] Nooooo! [She breaks down in tears.]
CROW: Let's get out of here before the next one starts!
[All exit, hurriedly.]
>________________________________________________________________
>
... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... *... -Logan
-----------------
"Because Science DEMANDS it!!"
-----------------
[All enter the theater.]
MIKE: You OK now, Belldandy?
BELLDANDY: [beaming] Thanks to that infusion of good cinema, I'm ready for anything. I think.
TOM: Hey, how come you didn't invite us to go watch "The Third Man" with you?
MIKE: Well, you and Crow seemed to be having such a good time with your little sketch. I didn't want to ruin the atmosphere.
>        Despite the seemingly short weeks that had been spent on active duty, Lieutenant Kyoko Yatsumi, commander Savannah Group, had found herself
CROW: The newly appointed landlord at a small Tokyo boarding house!
>        slowly accepting that an entire Terran summer, two months, had drifted by. Such shore leaves, on Earth in fact, were rare, the next being scheduled for five years later.
MIKE: Y'know, that's the problem with Earth. You have to book so long in advance.
>        The Horizont
BELLDANDY: Horizont?
>        she flew aboard was archaic, homage to the two Robotech Expeditionary Fleets. Named the Azuza, by its chief mechanic and primary nostalgic otaku,
TOM: [shaking] Stop it. Just stop it right now!
BELLDANDY: Tom, calm down!
TOM: I'm sorry! But I've had it up to HERE with the knowing self-reference!
>        it carried a crew of four and a passenger compliment of seventy as they descended into Earth's atmosphere.
CROW: And burnt to a cinder on re-entry. The end.
TOM: "Apollo 13" this is not.
>        She was wearing civilian clothes, as opposed to standard military onworld off-duty uniforms.
TOM: Hey, I've had this dream...
>        Kyoko's shore leave would last five months, if uninterrupted by
MIKE: -- the plot.
TOM: Oh, I don't think we need to worry about that.
>        the call back to active duty. And with the wide-spreading of capital ships and redeployment and clock-shifting of the fleets,
CROW: Not to mention changing immigration patterns and the rising cost of tungsten --
>        that possibility seemed rather unlikely. Asia came into view first, covered by a thicket blanket of strato-nimbus overcast resulting from the weather pattern reclamation programs of the mid-2060's.
MIKE: Desperately trying to slow the story down, the author resorts to bringing us the day's weather report.
>        She could see the horrid blast marks to imprinted in China and the Mongolian Southern Quadrant. As the Horizont
BELLDANDY: Horizont?
CROW: Grignr?
>        descended below the torrid clouds, she watched New Beijing and Shanghai grace her condescendingly. She wondered if small children, not much unlike herself at that age, would look up and see her, flying.
MIKE: Well, only if she jumps out.
CROW and TOM: [whispering] Jump... jump...
MIKE: That's dark, guys.
>        The South China Sea quickly passed underneath them as they slowed from hypersonic to approach speed for Okinawa.
TOM: Oh, now he's stealing the opening from "Gunbuster."
>        The overcast dimmed and faded out, the morning sun bursting over the coast of the Atalian Islands.
CROW: Aaaahh! Now the sun's gone nova!
>        Once, long ago, that small chain had been raped of one of its sister islands, an island that had been responsible for much of the change Earth had gone through.
TOM: Fantasy Island!
BELLDANDY: No, the Mysterious Island. From Jules Verne.
MIKE: No, no, he must mean Gilligan's Island.
>        The shuttle stopped over Hasake,
TOM: And hung in the sky in exactly the same way bricks don't...
>        a new city placed as the capital of the Ryukyu Footchain Quadrant, just south and west of home island Japan. Smiling brightly to herself, she anticipated the return to civilianity
CROW: Sid Meier's Civilianity.
>        as much as she had long for the life of the military, four years ago.
MIKE: But for young Shannon Faulkner, it was not to be...
>
>* * *
>
>        Okinawa came into view only a few minutes later.
CROW: Meanwhile, in the same scene! Sheesh.
>        Soon, the shuttle had slowed to an appreciable fraction of subsonic speed and finally came to an approach vector along the Ryukyu SpaceBase.
MIKE: You know, I really dig those FunkyCaps. I do.
>        As the monolithic towers of the starbase, attributed to an older Monument City,
ALL: [singing] Monument City, it's a hell of a town, the starbase is up and the monolith's down...
>        passed by, she could easily see the river, torn into the ground a century ago by a Zentraedi's warbeam, that would lead up to her uncle's house.
BELLDANDY: I wonder what the Zentraedi had against her uncle.
TOM: [as old lady] Oh, yes, he was always such a nice man, too.
>        Since Aunt Kazumi died,
CROW: Just didn't feel like putting up with Nabiki and Akane any more, I guess.
>        she had kept in touch with the one-hundred and five year old man. For his age, he was still very vigorous,
MIKE and 'BOTS: We know.
>        almost as if he were sixty again. But that had passed, as had his beloved wife over the ripples of the Kanzwa.
BELLDANDY: [sniff] It's so sad!
TOM: Ye -- uh... you are kidding, right?
>        Her hovertaxi followed the chain of highways across Okinawa's west coast until they reached the suburb.
MIKE: So Okinawa is just one town?
>        The trees here were not indigenous to Okinawa, or even Japan. Imported from what had survived of the Northwest American Quadrant,
CROW: ... after the devastating Punctuation and Capitalization_Riots of 1999...
>        it had been implanted with fern trees and redwoods cloned after Japan declined her separatist position.
TOM: In other words, the author had no reference material for what a real forest on Okinawa might look like.
>        Almost five decades of war had been erased, and nature had rewarded humanity for their persistence in restoring balance.
CROW: [as smarmy announcer] And for Humanity, a lovely matching towel set and a copy of our home game! Aren't they great, folks? Let's give 'em a big hand...
>        Only a few ten million people lived onworld, despite its position as the capital of the Confederation. To be more honest, it was the secondary capital; the primary construct on a neutral world orbiting a nearby star, AGC-1198, would not be completed for another two decades.
BELLDANDY: [despairing] Oh, couldn't he just have said "Earth: Mostly Harmless" and left it at that?
MIKE: Presley H. Cannady only turned to writing fanfics after he was fired from his job at the Encyclopedia Britannica.
>        She'd get a job, at the local ROTC center; probably even a flight instructor.
TOM: Maybe even selling Chevrolets door to door!
>        As she looked to the sky, slowly turning to dawn, she could spot the star that had once been her true home, having travelled seventy-five years from the last point she had last seen it on the celestial dome.
CROW: You mean the sky?
MIKE: Let's not jump to conclusions.
> Five Redhawks forced across the sky.
>CHAPTER XI-
ALL: Yaaah!
>        Three billion years ago and it was still the same.
ALL: [singing] Same as it ever was! Same as it ever was...
>        You can't win a war nobody wants.
TOM: Unfortunately, you can read a fanfic nobody wants.
>        - argument presented by Commander Wetherall in her memoirs,_circa ET 2208 (ASG)
CROW: alt.sex.gerbils?
MIKE: Ix-nay, Crow.
>        I had often sat and talked with Eve, on those rare months she decided to join us.
TOM: [sarcastic] Oh, has the great Eve decided to join us today?
>        She elaborated on many opinions, but not facts.
CROW: She had been watching the Rush Limbaugh show.
>        She was built on emotions, and probably feels more than any of us.
TOM: What? Where are we? Who's talking?
>        For that reason, I knew that song was our best communication tool.
MIKE: I can't help but think that if we'd picked an artist other than Michael Bolton, the aliens wouldn't have proceeded to sterilize the Earth. Oh well, live and learn.
>        - excerpted Yoshiko's Deguchi's A Look Back at Hackensack: the Life of the Fifth Generation Idol Singer heading, Chapter VI, pg 78. Published ET Mar 12, 2198 (ASG)
>
>* * *
>
>        The Targus Nebulae, four lightyears
CROW: One-third the calories of a regular year!
>        from the Rubian Stretch
>        October 4, 2192
MIKE: Dear Diary,
>        THE STARSHIP FARRAGUT WOULD SPEND THE NEXT FIVE MONTHS
CROW: No need to shout! We can hear you!
BELLDANDY: [muttering] Unfortunately.
CROW: What was that?
BELLDANDY: Er, I didn't say anything.
>        docked, being refitted, retrofitted, and stocked for the Fallsburg Task Force. Superdimensional Starforce Orion.
TOM: [sibilantly] Star Force... devils.
>        Of the major points in Robotechnology's past, the "Macross_Epic" was the most remembered.
TOM: Okay, buckle in everyone, exposition's starting again.
ALL: [groan]
>        Already, history lessons had spawned legends of Admiral Gloval and Lisa Hayes, Commander Hunter and Max and Miriya Sterling.
CROW: "Legends of Robotech" stories that were actually good!
>        Somewhere, they existed, either as memories... or they were still alive. One of the great questions about the Severed Galaxy
MIKE and 'BOTS: Ouch.
BELLDANDY: What?
>        was the effects on time. Already, since Listening Post #89's startling discovery,
CROW: [as scientist] Stuffing instead of potatoes? I don't believe it!
>        scientists who had observed the Gamma Quadrant with transluminal and superluminal vehicles had solidified
ALL: Ewww!
>        their beliefs that Tirol was running on a different time continuum.
TOM: [as Groucho Marx] Either this galaxy is running on a different time continuum, or my watch has stopped!
>        It was as if the Galaxy had planted one foot in reality and the other in another dimension.
MIKE: Y'know, once when I was eleven my folks took me to that place where you can stand with one foot in Arizona and the other in New Mexico. It was pretty neat.
CROW: That's great, Mike.
>        If the arms of the Galaxy surrounding the Southern Cross were indeed time-differential from Earth, the real nightmare lay in deciding which side was actually running on real-time.
MIKE: Marooned in Realtime.
TOM: Yeah, it'll be a warm day in space before the Mads ever send that to us.
>        To many, that was a fascinating trivia of science and metaphysics.
CROW: [peevishly] To whom? Name one.
>        To Cadet Sergeant Maria Tomas, Ganymede Defense Academy Point Delta, metaphysics was a waste of bandwidth.
BELLDANDY: [shaking a bit] So he described all that stuff about the Severed Galaxy just so he could tell us it was completely irrelevant?!
>        She was a computer-freak,
TOM: A superfreak! The kind you can't take home to Mother...
>        but even more of a pilot. Points, heralding the title from the famous North American military institution and later base of several VT squadrons during the War of Unification: West Point,
trained hard-core
ALL: Saaayyy...
>        pilots,
ALL: Oh.
>        a training section under the Alpha Armored Corps and the Southern Cross Calvary. Maria Tomas was the only member of the Robotech Defense Force present onboard this ship.
TOM: [falsetto] Okay, I'd better call roll. Well, I'm here... All done!
>        The design of the Horizont had become a popular model in shuttle design that led to SFSS-51300 Cumberant series,
CROW: Cucumber?
MIKE: Cummerbund?
BELLDANDY: [firmly] Cumbrous. Like this story!
>        Palgarant subclass, SDF-13 Capital class. Though the more advanced series, like the Celebrant, were more apt to such conditions as nebulaic navigation, the Cumberant still predominated in light-cruiser deployment capability.
TOM: See, they worked it so one component is made in every congressman's district...
>        The cadet squadron, Blue, was a subsection of the Nightmare Squadron, which ran most of the training sessions on Ganymede Point. The Cumberant carried a wide variety of Alpha's, Beta's, and Valkyrie contingents.
CROW: I can't think of anything to say. I'm numb.
MIKE: This reads like a Tom Clancy novelization of the instructions for filling out a 1040 form.
>        However, the primary mecha these cadets were being trained in_were eclectic.
TOM: Eclectic Avenue!
>        The VAF-4SD nontransformable VT had been the prototype for the Alpha's compact fighter mode.
BELLDANDY: On the outside it's just a mini. But on the inside it's a completely different animal!
>        Currently, most understudents handled these non-mecha fighters. However, the non-Protoculture Robotech mecha Maria
TOM: [Brit accent] To whom we are, by degrees, returning...
>        had received was one of the most strangest produced.
MIKE: Insert grammar flame here.
>        The Veritech /CF system pays homage to the infamous Logan fighter before the departure of the Robotech Expeditionary Fleet. It wasn't until the Pluto Veritech Fleet had been inaugurated for the last resort
TOM: The Pluto-Charon Rotating Restaurant, Hotel and Casino.
BELLDANDY: Huh?
TOM: It's the last resort!
ALL: [groan]
>        incase the Saturn Wing's Neutron S offensive failed, during the Second Invid War, that the V/CF system began mass construction. Now, only two series of these Veritech Gamma Fighters existed, the Tazania and the Tazmanian.
MIKE: Take careful notes, everyone, because this will be on the test.
>        The V/CF-7 Tazmanian had always been the specialty of the Cadet Tomas.
TOM: No, not the Cadet Tomas, a Cadet Tomas -- didn't you hear I come in six packs?
>        Since her enlistment and eventual transfer to Ganymede in the Robotech Defense Force, she had trained hard with Valkyrie like ecletic VT. It was her home and her life, except for...
CROW: Ellipses provided by Cheryl "Double Vision" Davis.
>        "Well, I'll be stationed on Rubia for the next three months at least, and I hear that you'll be off by February, right?"
MIKE: All right! The story's starting at last. Here we go!
>        The magic of interstellar hypercommunications allowed for realtime discussion using Sekiton powered relays,
BELLDANDY: [hopelessly] Oh, no!
CROW: *sigh*
TOM: I bet Presley H. Cannady can't drive a stick-shift, either.
>        obviously controlled by Karbarran communication industries.
ALL: Oh, obviously.
>        Calls were much more inexpensive, especially that she and her fiancee, Ramon Vega, were
CROW: Scheduled to fight Chun Li and Ryu.
>        within the same local group, separated only by four lightyears. Near the Rubian
BELLDANDY: Crossing the Rubian?
MIKE: Er...
>        system, the RSS Divana had taken route, and Cadet Major and senior "Brazil" Vega could
TOM: ... at last hunt down and arrest that annoying Harry Tuttle.
>        finish his last term and start his first assignment onboard that very vessel. It was Maria's hope to be stationed aboard as well, and their marriage would all but solidify that.
> "Where should we meet, Brazil?"
MIKE: [chuckling] Ha, ha! But I kid people with geographically-inspired nicknames.
>        "We were on Earth two months ago, and I haven't been to see my family in a year.
TOM: [falsetto] Oh, it's always you, you, you! What about my needs?
>        "How about New Kazahk?"
> Maria wrinkled her nose, but nodded anyway. "Sounds great," she said semi-heartedly.
MIKE: That's kind of a neat word... "semi-heartedly."
CROW: Hey, check this out, guys. [loudly, to the screen] Presley, tell me about "New Kazahk."
>        New Kazahk was most definitely the last on the tourist attraction of the Confederation-Kellar alliance. A few spaceports, not to far from Centaurus, it had become one of the major crime areas of the alliance.
BELLDANDY: Wow!
TOM: How'd you do that, Crow?
CROW: Ain't tellin'.
>        She had grown up on Mars, and had attended the Ganymede Academy for only two months when she met the roughneck junior that would become her betrothed. "So I'll meet you there.
CROW: [falsetto] I've always wanted to visit a crime-ridden slum!
>        I really need to meet your parents."
TOM: Hmm, I've never heard that euphemism before...
MIKE: Tom!
>        "From what they've seen of you, I think that should be no problem. Gotta go, honey," he kissed his finger, and placed against the vid->screen. Maria did the same.
CROW: This is just like "Space: Above and Beyond," except maybe a little better.
>        The line cut, replaced by the computer-generated symbol of Arnno-Karbarran Sekiton Communications.
TOM: We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company!
>
>* * *
>
>        Earth Orbit, Trojan Lagrange Point Gamma
>        October 5, 2173
CROW: [Brit accent] Captain's log.
>        Space Station New Frontier, the oldest permanent space platform in Terran history, was a landmark in some respects.
TOM: AAARGH! STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!
CROW: [getting mad] Hey, "Captain Exposition..."
MIKE: Ease up, Crow.
>        Having survived three Robotech Wars due to its lack of any military, scientific, or strategical battle, it was one of the few relics that told of a time before the great wars. Yet it still held scars.
MIKE: Cars? Why is there a parking lot way out in --
TOM: Scars, Mike.
MIKE: Oh.
>        The communications facility, owned jointly by Tellenet and Arnno-Karbarran Sekiton Communications had long been the chief headquarters of both industries.
BELLDANDY: [lecturing] See what happens when you use up all your commas in the beginning of the fanfic? You don't have any left for the end.
>        Having been rebuilt to the size the great Space Station Liberty one held, it now included such commodities as artificial gravity...
ALL: Yes?
>        ...
ALL: YES?!
>        and a conference room.
ALL: Oh.
MIKE: That's not much of a payoff.
>        "Three-billion yen, Nikkei present value,"
CROW: All right! I'll give you anything! Just, please, end this story!
>        if anything could be said about a Tellenet employee, they were the greatest hackers alive. Dr. Arbatan Dul was
CROW: Named after this fanfic!
>        Zentraedi and Calopean on his mother's side, and Centauran on his father.
MIKE: It must be hell trying to run Affirmative Action programs in the future.
>        His counterpart, a four-hundred pound Karbarran
ALL: Karrrrrrr-BARRRRRRan.
>        faced a most unlikely customer. Usually, the Karbarran, Ssol, was not present. However, Arbatan's usual attache, a cetaceous mammal named Har'br!ns, was taken ill,
CROW: [Brit accent] You're the cetaceous mammal named Har'br!ns?
TOM: [Chinese accent] Ah, no. He died. He have heart attack and fall out of window onto exploding bomb, where he was killed in shooting accident.
>        and placed in the emergency water-traction section of Earthdock's xenobiological medical wing. In Har'br!ns' place, was Ssol,
CROW: [snootily] Ah, Mr. Loss, you're here at last. Take a seat and a memo, would you?
>        low-ranking and a boisterous members of AK
TOM: It is not a statue of the god Ptrrrrrp! It is the god Ak!
>        Communications Limited. "Including transaction receipts, and unvalued erasing disks."
MIKE: We now join this conversation, already in progress.
>        The disks had already been used. Old 3'5's,
BELLDANDY: Three foot five inch disks?!
TOM: They also get paid in the giant stone coins of the Yap Islanders.
>        they had contained a small one-purpose virus. Every record of the transaction through the Nikkei Galactic Monetary Net had been erased, replaced with legal information backed up with more tainted
cash.
TOM: ... thus defeating the purpose of erasing the tainted transactions.
MIKE: Oh, great, it's just the 23rd-century version of MAKE.MONEY.FAST.
>        Cash retrieved from sources unknown.
MIKE: Y'know, that conspiracy guy in the short said to watch out for the cashless society of the future. I guess he was right after all.
>        The human that stood before him accepted the money, and placed a small box on the desk.
CROW: [evilly] A gift for you, Ambassador... from friends you didn't know you had.
>        It was a bulkier version of the civilian datapad,
TOM: Hey, is that a bulkier version of a civilian datapad or are you just happy to see me?
> but strangely enough, it came equipped with a...
MIKE: [holds Crow's beak closed]
>        "Pocket synthesizer," the human spoke. "You'll have enough ca'poa to supply three-fifths of the Confederation and have plenty left over."
TOM: [peevishly] There's enough ca'poa in this fanfic to supply three-fifths of the Confederation...
CROW: [Brit accent] There's just one problem with this scheme.
MIKE: [same] What's that?
CROW: We're not doing anything illegal!
>* * *
CROW: [pained] Oh, now what?
BELLDANDY: [starting to break down] I don't think I can take another scene...
>--
CROW: Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I sense a .signature coming up!
TOM: Yes! Our long national nightmare is over!
MIKE: But are we at a logical stopping point?
CROW: Who cares?!!
>Gasoculture________________Nemesis of the New York State Freeway
CROW: And we have .signature! Yeah!
BELLDANDY: So we survived the fanfic after all! I guess it wasn't quite as bad as I thought.
MIKE: That's the spirit!
BELLDANDY: But I never would have made it without you three!
MIKE and BOTS: Awwww.
[They all hug. Yes, it is disgustingly cute.]
>Presley H. Cannady | Author of the Robotech
>76725.1246@compuserve.com | New Era Sagas and Ravenworld
[All sit there, stunned.]
MIKE: What? Sagas? There's more than one?!
BELLDANDY: [wailing] Nooooo! [She breaks down in tears.]
CROW: Let's get out of here before the next one starts!
[All exit, hurriedly.]
>________________________________________________________________
>
... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... *... -Logan
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"Because Science DEMANDS it!!"
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