This is the designated thread for posting/reposting Convention stories. I'll start us off with the initial announcement...
We were goofing off around Saturn when the call first came in. Officially we were on the clock; a friend of a friend of a friend who worked for JPL had asked us to take some HD movies of Titan for the enlightenment of the scientific community. This wasn't what we'd signed up to do way back in the beginning, but a job's a job, it paid okay (considering the bitch of a currency conversion rate) and it was as good an excuse as any to spend three weeks out on the edge of the system. We'd canned the Titan footage and were in the process of getting a few candid shots of Cassini just for giggles when the Explain Star's email server chimed.
It was the *ship's* email, not one of our personal accounts, that meant it was something the Nation wanted to discuss. Nation email is always interesting to read; when you've got several hundred ships in the solar system representing twenty different fandoms plus maybe another three dozen independent ships & stations comprising somewhere around a quarter-million people all told, and and there's *one* all-call mailing list that everybody's subscribed to... well. From our position near where the sidewalk ends, it's fucking *hilarious,* I'll tell you that much.
Anyway, I was on pilot duty, so I punched up the old laptop we'd crazy-glued into the Star's control panel and took a look at whatever the Nation wanted to herd us into *this* time. What I got was this:
Date:
From: command@sos.co.jp (SOS Brigade Supreme Headquarters)
To: all-call@nation.fan
Subj: CONVENTION!!!!
Note all fan:
We came empty here the earth of one thing of heart: Because you become the hero. Our hearts it echoes the dream of bravery in our centers, that is our obligations to those dreams fufill! Our 2 weeks of the group hearby call of SOS for splendid conference where that of heart and, at the place of Phobos it should you grasp from today. There we organize because because of the star you become the hero, start!
Everyone who obtains this message is invited. It has your boat and your story, do!
--SOS Brigade Supreme Headquarters!
From the message text, I could tell two things. First, somebody needed to shoot their machine translator before it could harm helpless verbiage again. Second, we were going to have to hit the inner system earlier than I'd previously thought.
Whoever "SOS Brigade Supreme Headquarters" were, they'd called a Convention. Conventions are serious business for Fen; since we moved off Earth, they've become sort of our United Nations. Every so often the movers, shakers and poseurs of the Nation get together, get drunk, get laid, exchange pleasant threats, debate the few issues that can't be handled inside our own little fractions, make a few policy statements like "bow before our might, pathetic Earthlings!" and then go home with hangovers and some interesting blackmail material. So it's not entirely unlike mundane government.
The *point* is, when somebody calls a Convention the major power players in the major fractions (along with free agents like us) *have* to come out, hear what the organizer has to say and be civil to each other for a week or so. We're so scattered through the system that Conventions aren't as regular as they used to be, so they're that much more of an event.
In this case, the SOS Brigade (whoever they were) had called for a Convention and had specifically invited *everybody*. Thankfully they wanted to use Phobos; the Martians were using it as base camp for their terraforming ops, the place had been mostly hollowed out and there was plenty of room for everybody and their rides. What they were calling the Convention *for* on the other hand... the machine translation fucked that up enough that I couldn't quite figure it out. Idly hoping that whoever was speaking at the con had better translators, I fired off a quick reply:
From: explain-star@sandwich.net (Sandwich.Net Dungeon Crawlers, LLC)
To: command@sos.co.jp
Subj: Re: CONVENTION!!!!
We'll be there with bells on. Will also bring booze from the Ringed Planet. -ES
Figuring that should keep them happy, if confuse them a bit, I turned off the email client, opened the navicomp, set up a brachistone for Phobos and turned on the intercom.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said in my best airline-pilot voice. "I'm afraid that our vacation around sunny, tropical Saturn has been cut short. We've been invited to a Convention at Phobos, so if you guys will pack up the cameras and make sure we've got enough booze to last us, we'll be on our way. Launch window in-" I glanced at the nav window "-one hour. Cockpit out."---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
We were goofing off around Saturn when the call first came in. Officially we were on the clock; a friend of a friend of a friend who worked for JPL had asked us to take some HD movies of Titan for the enlightenment of the scientific community. This wasn't what we'd signed up to do way back in the beginning, but a job's a job, it paid okay (considering the bitch of a currency conversion rate) and it was as good an excuse as any to spend three weeks out on the edge of the system. We'd canned the Titan footage and were in the process of getting a few candid shots of Cassini just for giggles when the Explain Star's email server chimed.
It was the *ship's* email, not one of our personal accounts, that meant it was something the Nation wanted to discuss. Nation email is always interesting to read; when you've got several hundred ships in the solar system representing twenty different fandoms plus maybe another three dozen independent ships & stations comprising somewhere around a quarter-million people all told, and and there's *one* all-call mailing list that everybody's subscribed to... well. From our position near where the sidewalk ends, it's fucking *hilarious,* I'll tell you that much.
Anyway, I was on pilot duty, so I punched up the old laptop we'd crazy-glued into the Star's control panel and took a look at whatever the Nation wanted to herd us into *this* time. What I got was this:
Date:
From: command@sos.co.jp (SOS Brigade Supreme Headquarters)
To: all-call@nation.fan
Subj: CONVENTION!!!!
Note all fan:
We came empty here the earth of one thing of heart: Because you become the hero. Our hearts it echoes the dream of bravery in our centers, that is our obligations to those dreams fufill! Our 2 weeks of the group hearby call of SOS for splendid conference where that of heart and, at the place of Phobos it should you grasp from today. There we organize because because of the star you become the hero, start!
Everyone who obtains this message is invited. It has your boat and your story, do!
--SOS Brigade Supreme Headquarters!
From the message text, I could tell two things. First, somebody needed to shoot their machine translator before it could harm helpless verbiage again. Second, we were going to have to hit the inner system earlier than I'd previously thought.
Whoever "SOS Brigade Supreme Headquarters" were, they'd called a Convention. Conventions are serious business for Fen; since we moved off Earth, they've become sort of our United Nations. Every so often the movers, shakers and poseurs of the Nation get together, get drunk, get laid, exchange pleasant threats, debate the few issues that can't be handled inside our own little fractions, make a few policy statements like "bow before our might, pathetic Earthlings!" and then go home with hangovers and some interesting blackmail material. So it's not entirely unlike mundane government.
The *point* is, when somebody calls a Convention the major power players in the major fractions (along with free agents like us) *have* to come out, hear what the organizer has to say and be civil to each other for a week or so. We're so scattered through the system that Conventions aren't as regular as they used to be, so they're that much more of an event.
In this case, the SOS Brigade (whoever they were) had called for a Convention and had specifically invited *everybody*. Thankfully they wanted to use Phobos; the Martians were using it as base camp for their terraforming ops, the place had been mostly hollowed out and there was plenty of room for everybody and their rides. What they were calling the Convention *for* on the other hand... the machine translation fucked that up enough that I couldn't quite figure it out. Idly hoping that whoever was speaking at the con had better translators, I fired off a quick reply:
From: explain-star@sandwich.net (Sandwich.Net Dungeon Crawlers, LLC)
To: command@sos.co.jp
Subj: Re: CONVENTION!!!!
We'll be there with bells on. Will also bring booze from the Ringed Planet. -ES
Figuring that should keep them happy, if confuse them a bit, I turned off the email client, opened the navicomp, set up a brachistone for Phobos and turned on the intercom.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said in my best airline-pilot voice. "I'm afraid that our vacation around sunny, tropical Saturn has been cut short. We've been invited to a Convention at Phobos, so if you guys will pack up the cameras and make sure we've got enough booze to last us, we'll be on our way. Launch window in-" I glanced at the nav window "-one hour. Cockpit out."---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"