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[story][Fenspace Alternates] The South Is Rising, Someone Get A Hammer
 
Ebony Wrote:Mme. Garneau has quite a reputation among the Canadian Blue Blazers. While being knowledgeable in economic theory and market forces, many of her commercial evaluations seem to draw upon factors that have no historical or factual bearing on the market. Oftentimes, she will base economic predictions based upon esoteric data points, including the extended meteorological forecast of the region that a market is centered on, the demographic percentages of populace hair or eye color (for products having nothing to do with personal hygiene or beauty supplies; in such cases, she dismisses this information as "irrelevant"); and even the Body Mass Index of the head of the Treasury or Exchequer department. Observers educated in financial and economic theory observing her can draw no easy ties between these data points and her conclusions on a market, leading them to refer to her as the "Voodoo Economist," and even to go so far as to claim that it is an elaborate smokescreen disguising her less-than-optimum ability as an economist. (The fact that Mme. Garneau is one-quarter Haitian whose great grandmother was a practicing voudoun mambo until her death contribute to these allegations.) Mme. Garneau takes these claims in stride, cheerfully inviting her critics to "Embrasse mon cul en métal brillant!" and lets her record speak for itself.
It occurs to me that I got that quote wrong. It should be "Mordent mon cul en métal brillant!" as Bender Bending Rodriguez does not demand that people kiss his shiny metal ass, but rather to bite it.
  
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
Reply
 
Of course I had come up with an idea for the agricultural attaché while at the office, without access to the thread. (The various social-notworking... er, networking... sites are blocked by the firewall.) Ah, well - let's present both and have a vote.

Entry formatted for the FenWiki. New content is in bold.


''Lieutenant Nyota Nicholls, the ranking local representative of the United Federation of Planets, looked out the window quickly and wondered once again whose bright idea it was to set up the Fen’s consulate in Canada right across the street from the Czech Embassy. Then she shook her head to clear it; this wasn’t the time for idle thoughts. Mr. Keffer wanted to see all the senior staff in his office - a troubleshooter from [[Great Justice] had just arrived.''

The '''Fen Consulate to Canada''' is a typical example of a [[Fenspace Convention] diplomatic posting in a friendly country. It isn’t a full embassy - the Convention doesn’t have the resources to maintain embassies in every nation on [[Earth], or even every large nation - but the Head of Mission is part of the diplomatic community.

This Consulate is located in a decent-size house at 250 Cooper Street, in downtown Ottawa. The location was chosen carefully: It’s downtown (and thus close to the halls of power) but not in the ''expensive'' part of downtown, and the RCMP are already keeping a discreet watch on the area because the Embassy of the Czech Republic to Canada is right across the street.

==Important People at the Consulate==

In order of rank in the Consulate, the senior staff members are:

;Marcus Keffer
:Head of Mission. Like so many of Fenspace’s diplomats, he’s from the [[Interstellar Alliance].
:Mr. Keffer is the sole official Fiver representative to Canada.

;Lt. Nyota Nicholls
Big Grineputy Chief of Mission. Senior [[United Federation of Planets|Trekkie] representative.
:Nyota Nicholls is very obviously an Uhura fan, and she ''rocks'' the TOS minidress. She herself is currently [[biomodification|unmodded] and only really looks like either of the character’s actresses in that she’s an attractive black woman in a TOS minidress. She’s from an upper-middle class family from a suburb of Philadelphia. Her parents are retired SMOFs from before the wave who are at [[Utopia Planitia] because they were about to take the Trek biomod plunge to overcome some medical difficulties.

;Jedi Knight Lou Chadwick
:Military attaché. [[Warsie] representative.

;Tara Gale
:Legal attaché. [[Crystal Millennium|Senshi] representative.
:A tall raven-haired beauty originally from Coventry, Tara Gale still has a noticeable English accent despite having earned her law degree at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She’s in the minority of her faction in that her "grrl-power" fandom is spy-fi, not magical-girl; Ms. Gale wears a catsuit to combat, not a fuku.

;Marie-Louise Garneau
:Commercial attaché; coordinates joint Fen/Canadian economic-development and humanitarian-relief efforts with [http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/home CIDA] and [http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/international/index.aspx DFAIT], respectively. [[Blue Blazer Irregular] #841, otherwise a Generalist.
:Mme. Garneau has quite a reputation among the Canadian Blue Blazers. While being knowledgeable in economic theory and market forces, many of her commercial evaluations seem to draw upon factors that have no historical or factual bearing on the market. Oftentimes, she will base economic predictions based upon esoteric data points, including the extended meteorological forecast of the region that a market is centered on, the demographic percentages of populace hair or eye color (for products having nothing to do with personal hygiene or beauty supplies; in such cases, she dismisses this information as “irrelevant”); and even the Body Mass Index of the head of the Treasury or Exchequer department. Observers educated in financial and economic theory observing her can draw no easy ties between these data points and her conclusions on a market, leading them to refer to her as the “Voodoo Economist,” and even to go so far as to claim that it is an elaborate smokescreen disguising her less-than-optimum ability as an economist. (The fact that Mme. Garneau is one-quarter Haitian whose great-grandmother was a practicing voudoun mambo until her death contribute to these allegations.) Mme. Garneau takes these claims in stride, cheerfully inviting her critics to “Mordent mon cul en métal brillant!” and lets her record speak for itself. Both Marie-Louise Garneau and her daughter Marie-France are fluent in both French and English.

;Aoi Shatsu
:Scientific attaché. Junior Trekkie representative.
:Aoi Shatsu, a scientist within the Daystrom Institute, originally hails from Kyoto. He tries his best not to rock the boat. He could do a lot better, but prefers not to stand out, instead diligently performing his duty. The nail that sticks up, gets hammered is his motto for life. He used to be something of a cocky ass in college ... which changed after breaking his jaw in a bar fight. He holds a degree in metaphysical biology – a field few if any have even heard of – and is generally regarded as a competent researcher. He came to Fenspace at the suggestion of his brother Akai, who had already joined Starfleet’s security division. His most noted research achievement with the Daystrom Institute was entitled “Influences of a subject's consciousness on the effects of biomodification strain handwavium.”


Dueling suggestions here - who gets assigned to the Ottawa consulate?

;Weiliang Yeong
:Agricultural attaché. [[Independent Faction] representative.
:One of the Chinese Fen aboard the now-famous “[[A Rock and a Hard Place|Last Train from Beijing],” Weiliang Yeong quickly settled down to run a farm on [[Ganymede]. The [[Boskone War] changed that - when some of his produce didn’t get to the markets on [[Earth] and in [[Cislunar Space|cislunar], he volunteered to serve for the duration. His lack of combat ability quickly became apparent, so he transferred from Great Justice to the Fenspace Convention's consular service. (As he put it, “I'm in the civil service to free up someone else for military service.”) His hands-on experience with farming made him the closest the consular service had at the time to an agricultural expert, and he was posted to the Canadian consular office as the agricultural attaché. Wei’s English is heavily accented.

;Brooke Derby
:Agricultural attaché. [[Independent Faction] representative.
:Brooke Derby is is particularly interested in rescuing heritage seed strains from transplanted areas. She’s an attractive woman of Celtic origin with something of a reputation for wearing denim in all possible forms. She still has a denim furisode kimono in her closet from an event at the Japanese embassy, artfully bleached to form cloud patterns. (Admittedly, that's VERY FINE, very EXPENSVE denim, but still...) There are a few rumors that Brooke was the recipient of a Senshi emergency biomod during the [[Boskone War], but the Embassy Guard Sammies are close-lipped about it.


end of section that's up for debate

;John R. Ericson
Tongueress attaché. Generalist.
:John R. Ericson is a man so adept at fading into the background that even his friends and co-workers sometimes call him J. Random Hacker. (His first two initials certainly don't help.) He’s a member of the Hacker Underspace.

==Other People at the Consulate==

;Marie-France Garneau
:Unofficial "good luck charm." Generalist.
Big Grinaughter of commercial attaché Marie-Louise Garneau, Marie-France is the youngest person living in the consulate. She attends junior-high school in Ottawa and stays out of politics as much as possible. Marie-France has seen factional rivalries first-hand, and hates them; she’s almost stereotypically Generalist.

;The “Embassy Sammies”
:various guards – identities and quirks to come later, if at all


[[Category:Government]
--
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
Reply
 
I think Ericson needs to get gunned down at some point so we can ask "Who shot JR?"

And I don't care who becomes the agricultural attaché, as long as the other character gets saved for use somewhere else. They're both great.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Reply
 
It's been a day, and nobody seems to have a preference... so this is what I've put in the FenWiki. Changes from the last version are in bold:



'Lieutenant Nyota Nicholls, the ranking local representative of the United Federation of Planets, looked out the window quickly and wondered once again whose bright idea it was to set up the Fen’s consulate in Canada right across the street from the Czech Embassy. Then she shook her head to clear it; this wasn’t the time for idle thoughts. Mr. Keffer wanted to see all the senior staff in his office - a troubleshooter from [[Great Justice] had just arrived.''

The '''Fen Consulate to Canada''' is a typical example of a [[Fenspace Convention] diplomatic posting in a friendly country. It isn’t a full embassy - the Convention doesn’t have the resources to maintain embassies in every nation on [[Earth], or even every large nation - but the Head of Mission is part of the diplomatic community.

This Consulate is located in a decent-size house at 250 Cooper Street, in downtown Ottawa. The location was chosen carefully: It’s downtown (and thus close to the halls of power) but not in the ''expensive'' part of downtown, and the RCMP are already keeping a discreet watch on the area because the Embassy of the Czech Republic to Canada is right across the street.

==Important People at the Consulate==

In order of rank in the Consulate, the senior staff members are:

;Marcus Keffer
:Head of Mission. Like so many of Fenspace’s diplomats, he’s from the [[Interstellar Alliance].
:Mr. Keffer is the sole official Fiver representative to Canada. He’s away from the consulate, in meetings with other diplomats, so often that some of the other senior staff joke that he doesn’t really exist.

;Lt. Nyota Nicholls
Big Grineputy Chief of Mission. Senior [[United Federation of Planets|Trekkie] representative.
:Nyota Nicholls is very obviously an Uhura fan, and she ''rocks'' the TOS minidress. She herself is currently [[biomodification|unmodded] and only really looks like either of the character’s actresses in that she’s an attractive black woman in a TOS minidress. She’s from an upper-middle class family from a suburb of Philadelphia. Her parents are retired SMOFs from before the wave who are at [[Utopia Planitia] because they were about to take the Trek biomod plunge to overcome some medical difficulties.

;Jedi Knight Lou Chadwick
:Military attaché. [[Galactic Republic|Warsie] representative. During the [[Boskone War], Knight Chadwick was awarded the Kalidor Crescent for repeatedly interposing his own X-Wing between a Boskonian battlewagon and a Galactic Republic medevac ship, until the Warsie ship could escape. Given his choice of assignments with the award, he asked for Earth-side service, claiming he missed being able to take off for a weekend and go fishing. Lou was assigned to the consulate in Ottawa and was offered psychological counseling for PTSD, which he’s taken advantage of more often than he’s gone fishing.

;Tara Gale
:Legal attaché. Senior [[Crystal Millennium|Senshi] representative.
:A tall raven-haired beauty originally from Coventry, Tara Gale still has a noticeable English accent despite having earned her law degree at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She’s in the minority of her faction in that her "grrl-power" fandom is spy-fi, not magical-girl; Ms. Gale wears a catsuit to combat, not a fuku.

;Marie-Louise Garneau
:Commercial attaché; coordinates joint Fen/Canadian economic-development and humanitarian-relief efforts with [http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/home CIDA] and [http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/international/index.aspx DFAIT], respectively. [[Blue Blazer Irregular] #841, otherwise a Generalist.
:Mme. Garneau has quite a reputation among the Canadian Blue Blazers. While being knowledgeable in economic theory and market forces, many of her commercial evaluations seem to draw upon factors that have no historical or factual bearing on the market. Oftentimes, she will base economic predictions based upon esoteric data points, including the extended meteorological forecast of the region that a market is centered on, the demographic percentages of populace hair or eye color (for products having nothing to do with personal hygiene or beauty supplies; in such cases, she dismisses this information as “irrelevant”); and even the Body Mass Index of the head of the Treasury or Exchequer department. Observers educated in financial and economic theory observing her can draw no easy ties between these data points and her conclusions on a market, leading them to refer to her as the “Voodoo Economist,” and even to go so far as to claim that it is an elaborate smokescreen disguising her less-than-optimum ability as an economist. (The fact that Mme. Garneau is one-quarter Haitian whose great-grandmother was a practicing voudoun mambo until her death contribute to these allegations.) Mme. Garneau takes these claims in stride, cheerfully inviting her critics to “Mordent mon cul en métal brillant!” and lets her record speak for itself. Both Marie-Louise Garneau and her daughter Marie-France are fluent in both French and English.

;Aoi Shatsu
:Scientific attaché. Junior Trekkie representative.
:Aoi Shatsu, a scientist within the Daystrom Institute, originally hails from Kyoto. He tries his best not to rock the boat. He could do a lot better, but prefers not to stand out, instead diligently performing his duty. The nail that sticks up, gets hammered is his motto for life. He used to be something of a cocky ass in college ... which changed after breaking his jaw in a bar fight. He holds a degree in metaphysical biology – a field few if any have even heard of – and is generally regarded as a competent researcher. He came to Fenspace at the suggestion of his brother Akai, who had already joined Starfleet’s security division. His most noted research achievement with the Daystrom Institute was entitled “Influences of a subject's consciousness on the effects of biomodification strain handwavium.”

;Weiliang Yeong
:Agricultural attaché. [[Independent Faction] representative.
:One of the Chinese Fen aboard the now-famous “[[A Rock and a Hard Place|Last Train from Beijing],” Weiliang Yeong quickly settled down to run a farm on [[Ganymede]. The [[Boskone War] changed that - when some of his produce didn’t get to the markets on [[Earth] and in [[Cislunar Space|cislunar], he volunteered to serve for the duration. His lack of combat ability quickly became apparent, so he transferred from Great Justice to the Fenspace Convention's consular service. (As he put it, “I'm in the civil service to free up someone else for military service.”) His hands-on experience with farming made him the closest the consular service had at the time to an agricultural expert, and he was posted to the Canadian consular office as the agricultural attaché. Wei is particularly interested in rescuing heritage seed strains from transplanted areas. His English is heavily accented.

;John R. Ericson
Tongueress attaché. Generalist.
:John R. Ericson is a man so adept at fading into the background that even his friends and co-workers sometimes call him J. Random Hacker. (His first two initials certainly don't help.) He’s a member of the Hacker Underspace.

;Brooke Derby
:Chief of Security. Junior Senshi representative.
:Brooke Derby is in charge of the “Embassy Sammies”. She’s an attractive woman of Celtic origin with something of a reputation for wearing denim in all possible forms. She still has a denim furisode kimono in her closet from an event at the Japanese embassy, artfully bleached to form cloud patterns. (Admittedly, that's ''very fine,'' very ''expensive'' denim, but still...) There are a few rumors that Brooke was the recipient of a Senshi emergency biomod during the [[Boskone War], but the other Embassy Guard Sammies are close-lipped about this.


;Marie-France Garneau
:Unofficial "good luck charm." Generalist.
Big Grinaughter of commercial attaché Marie-Louise Garneau, Marie-France is the youngest person living in the consulate. She attends junior-high school in Ottawa and stays out of politics as much as possible. Marie-France has seen factional rivalries first-hand, and hates them; she’s almost stereotypically Generalist.

[[Category:Government]
--
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
Reply
 
An acceptable change on Brooke. After all, River Tam [Water Feature First Name, Hat Style Surname Big Grin] is a favorite character of both the Browncoats and the Senshi.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
Reply
 
I just had the image of a woman wearing a denim Senshi fuku, and over it, a brown leather duster. There's nothing keeping a Sammie from being a fan of Firefly/Serenity, though I can understand the reluctance to involve one's self in the politics and drama of two Faction Governments.
Reply
 
Did somebody mention Alien Space Bats?

[Image: 397998main_image_1504_800-600.jpg]

(Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegal ... _1504.html)
--
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
Reply
 
"We were somewhere near Saturn, on the edge of the system, when the drugs started to take hold...."
"Nez, are you going to do this every time someone brings up the bats?"
"We can't stop here. It's Alien Space Bat Country!!!"
"Forget it, Blackstone; she's rolling."
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
Reply
 
Proginoskes Wrote:I just had the image of a woman wearing a denim Senshi fuku, and over it, a brown leather duster. There's nothing keeping a Sammie from being a fan of Firefly/Serenity, though I can understand the reluctance to involve one's self in the politics and drama of two Faction Governments.
She could always be a Rough Rider.  With all the Factions represented there, a little blurring of the lines is bound to happen.
Reply
 
I've just put together a FenWiki navbox for The South Is Rising, Someone Get A Hammer. As we migrate content out of the GoogleDocs and onto the FenWiki, the new pages should be added to the navbox.

(We are going to migrate content out of the GoogleDocs and onto the FenWiki eventually, right?)

--
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
Reply
 
Eventually. These things take time, after all.

EDIT: And while we're on the subject, I'm looking towards a re-edit of the "everybody finds out" sequence. What follows here isn't new material, just material cut up and shifted around a little. Tell me what you think.

SS Ciara, 510 km over Utah
18 November 2016, 23:59:45 UTC

Misha was alone on the bridge of the SS Ciara, doing her best to stay awake. Scratching at and an itchy ear with her claws, she was determined to make a good impression on her first bridge watch. She was responsible for the whole ship now!

Even if they were just in an easy orbit while everyone grabbed a few hours sleep, jogging around the planet on one engine until her sister fixed the failed one.

She looked ahead out the forward windows.

Lightning flashed far below. Not unusual for the US in November. If it wasn’t for that blown engine, she would’ve been underneath all that getting rained on.

And if there’s one thing Misha hated, it was rain.

~***~

“Look, we can't carry that much pressurised,” Garret spoke into the telephone, “We don't have enough space aboard,”

He yawned. It was too damned late for this.

“What about a cabin?” queried the voice. “If you weren't carrying passengers, you could stick some in free cabins?”

“That's not going to be cheap,” Captain Garret warned him. Never mind that on a Seattle trip, they'd probably have been empty going back up anyway.

“I can handle it, so long as you can handle American,”

“We prefer Euro's but sure. Pay us in cash at the dock,”

Payment upfront, as usual, to order fuel.

“No problemo man. Don't think you'll be gettin' in tonight though, there's some weird weather we got down here."

"Don't doubt the Ciara. We'll get in on time," he reassured him.

"I hope so man, I'l...fhsh...ee...you in ...jasshh,” Garret winced as the channel cut out with a static scream in his hear.

“Hello,” he tried.

Nothing but a hiss.

“Jimmy, you there bud?”

Silence

“Hello?” he tried one last time. “Bugger,”

“Come to bed,” Meg said sleepily from behind him. It's passed midnight.

Tempting, “The high-gain's buggered itself again.”

“Well it can wait until tomorrow. You work yourself too much,”

“That's the definition of Captain,” he smiled back at her. “I'll just sort this. It's probably nothing”

He contacted the bridge.

~***~

Milly Jackson had her feet up in the rebuilt server room, yawning as she watched the download come in. Stupid 'danelaw server was only pushing a few megabytes a second. She'd planned to get Sam, Seán and Sed back up and running hours ago, but the Fenspace mirror had crashed, so the only working one with decent speed was somewhere in the US.

She watched the bytes tick by.

Then stop.

Error: The source location on the server could not be read

She swore.

And tried to restart.

Error: Server not found.

She ping'd the local relay. It answered. She pinged the nearest node. It answered. She pinged her favourite Yaoi site. It answered. She pinged the download server.

Nothing.

She pinged Google.fen. It answered. She pinged her old home server back in Detroit. Nothing. She pinged Google.com, specifically trying the Mountain View address. Nothing. Then the orbital relays stopped answering.

“Oh for Cryin' out loud,” It looked like something had failed between orbit and ground. They could get Fensites fine, but nothing from below. They must've lost the base station. “That gosh-darned high-gain's gone down again,” she concluded.

She picked up the intercom, and called the bridge.

~***~

Aisha was busy in the engine room, doing the repair Orla had asked her to handle on number-two engine. One of the advantages of being a c'tarl-c'tarl type catgirl... she had nails that could be used to lever open access panels on the crankcase.

The other advantage, was that she was strong enough to easily lift the head off the cylinder all by herself, then lift the piston out from inside.

Third, she didn't have to worry about being biomodded by the black handwavium inside.

She didn't notice anything amiss.

~***~

Korolev Air Force Base, Luna
19 November 2016, 00:00:02 LST

The dimensional incursion detector on Sora’s workbench warbled, the diagnostic screen filling with information. The warble became a screech, and as Sora hastily reached to cut the power it died with a flash and a puff of smoke.

“GAH!” Sora yelped; the dying act of the detector burning her fingertips. “Itte...”

Mal stuck his head back in the workroom door. “Sora? You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah... just a little singed.”

“What happened?”

“It blew up on me!”

“Isn’t that what Kohran’s inventions usually do?” Mal asked. Sora gave him a dirty look.

“This one shouldn’t have. It’s been tested and we both certified it bug-free. Furthermore-”

What Sora was about to say was cut off by the base alarm system going off at full blast. “Attention all personnel,” GLaDOS’s voice sounded, “VVS data systems are under class one infowar attack. Network lockdown initiated. Central Committee please report to the situation room. All non-essential personnel are to remain at Condition Two status. Repeat, VVS data systems are under class one infowar attack. Network lockdown initiated. Central Committee please report to the situation room.”

Mal and Sora looked at each other, and he slammed down on the nearest intercom button. “GLaDOS, sitrep,” Mal ordered.

“General, your presence is required in the situation room.”

“I got that part. Summary please.”

“At zero-hundred hours VVS datasystems lost major internet connectivity on the terrestrial backbone. I concluded the network was under denial-of-service attack and sounded Condition Two. A full briefing will be available in the situation room.”

“Zero-hundred hours...” Sora looked thoughfully at the broken incursion detector.

“I don’t like what you’re thinking,” Mal said.

“Neither do I. GLaDOS, please grab the raw data from the laptop on my bench and move it into a navigational database accessible from the situation room, thank you.”

“Easier done than said, O Captain. Anything else? Doors opened?”

“Yes, please. Call Stellvia, priority channel. I need to talk to Kohran.”

~***~

SS Ciara
19 November 2016 00:04 UTC

On the bridge, Misha, Aisha's twin sibling by virtue of going through the machine ten minutes after her, was the one on watch... she stared at the comm's panel.

“Captain, Captain,” she said, sounding impossibly giddy thanks to having just downed her daily can of soft drink, “It's not us I swear.” she pushed a few buttons to be doubly sure, “High gain checks out A-Ok! We're sending and receiving, it's got to be a ground problem,”

“Try and find another downlink,” he ordered.

“Already on it,” she beamed, “But it looks like everything down in the litterbox has gone dead. I'm getting more than a lot of chatter on the radio too”

“Calm down will you. What are they saying?”

“Sorry,” she giggled. “Bad time of the day. Most are saying the same as us. They just lost all 'net and radio connections on this side of the planet,”

Outside the window, she could see the United States shrouded in night, a few sparks of light in the shadows marking the cities.

Hmm... it looked different somehow. There was less light on the Eastern side.

“Alright, I'm on my way up,”

She heard someone complain the in background before he hung up. A moment later, the call light lit up again.

“Bridge Misha,” she answered it.

“Misha,” the catgirl recognised Milly's voice. She sounded tired “Did we lose the high-gain again?”

“No no,” she reassured the computer tech, “High gain is working fine.“ she triple checked, “The problem's in the connection, and it's not just us,”

“Right, I'm coming up there. Hang on.”

The catgirl sighed. The first time they let her keep watch, and it wasn't going very well, was it?

~***~

Paul Platowski was in his cabin... legally also his prison cell.

He was woken, not by anything specific... just a dread feeling of unease. It was a feeling he'd learned well enough not to ignore. The last time he'd gotten it, had been right before his ship's engines had failed.

Which got him arrested.

He rolled over in his rack, lifting the blind that covered the porthole.

On the other side, should've been the United States, with the entire East Coast blazing. Instead... while the basic shape looked the same. The basic positions of the lights seemed right. They seemed a hell of a lot dimmer and smaller.

“What the hell?” he said to no-one in particular.

He got himself out of bed. Whatever was going on, was no small thing.

~***~

Main Operations Center, Stellvia Station
November 19, 2016 00:00:05 UTC

The first indication anyone had that anything was wrong was when the DQS alarm went off. The second indication was when the DQS detector exploded.

“What the hell did you do, Ray?!”

“Not my fault, I swear to God it’s not my fault.” The duty officer thumbed the intercom. “Commander Scott and Engineer Li to Ops.”

Kohran was the first to arrive, as the duty tech finished emptying a fire extinguisher on the abused DQS detection console. “Wah!” she cried. “What happened?!”

“Don’t know, ma’am,” the duty officer replied. “The DQS alarm went off and a second later the console blew up. Other than making sure there was no fire, we haven’t touched it.”

“Blew up?” Kohran said, confused. “It’s not supposed to do that. Let me take a look,” she said, scooting under the damaged console, tools in hand.

Noah Scott strode into the operations center, still buttoning his shirt. “Report.”

The duty officer swiveled her display so Noah could see. “Three minutes ago we had a massive DQS event. It was big enough that it fried the sensor.”

“Damn. Where in the station is the incursion?”

“We’re not sure it’s in the station, sir. Best we can determine is that it’s somewhere within two light-seconds of Stellvia. Beyond that...” the duty officer shook her head.

Noah paled. “Two light-seconds...” he said, staring at the screen, “for the incursion to burn out the sensors from that far away it must have been huge. Get Miyuri and Takami up here - I want an analysis of the data the sensor returned just before it burned out. We’ve got to find this thing, people.”

Safety drifted up to Noah’s ear. “Noah-san, VVS Korolev is on priority channel one, they want to speak with Kohran-san.”

Noah sat down and unlocked his private workstation. “I’ll take it here, Safety,” he said. Clicking on the monitor: “Hello, Mal.”

“Sorry Dad, wrong person.”

Noah blinked. “Sora?”

“Do you have any other Red daughters I don’t know about?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I need to talk to Kohran, please.”

“She’s a little busy, and we’re in the middle--”

“Of a huge dimensional incursion event that happened a couple of minutes ago and blew out the DQS sensor.”

“Yours blew up, too?”

“I’m afraid so, Dad.”

“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked.

A muffled voice from behind Sora: (“What’s the holdup?”)

(“It’s Noah; Kohran’s busy,”) Sora replied. Then, to Noah: “Dad, we need your DQS readings, can you squirt it to us? I’m going to see if Kohran’s interferometer idea works and try to triangulate the event location.”

Noah glanced at Safety, who nodded sharply. “Data’s on the way, Sora.” he said.

Sora looked offscreen. “Got it,” she said. “Thanks, Dad. I’m running the results now.” She dropped out of view, leaving Noah face to face with Mal Fnord.

Noah found himself at a bit of a loss. “So, um,” he said, “how are things over there?”

“Hectic,” Mal replied dryly. “You?”

“Much the same.” The briefest of awkward pauses. “Do we know what we’re dealing with here?”

“Not yet.” Mal paused. “We have some really bad suspicions, but we’re running the data before panicking.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Mal paused again, this time for longer. “Just after the incursion detector blew up, GLaDOS saw a huge chunk of the Internet backbone go missing.”

Noah ran the implications of that through his mind. “Oh,” he said faintly, “that’s not good.”

Mal nodded. “No it isn’t, which is why I want confirmation before--”

Sora popped back up into frame, eyes wide and face just as pale as her father’s. “I’ve got a location,” she said shakily. “The event epicenter w-was Earth, longitude 39 degrees, 50 minutes north, latitude 98 degrees, 35 minutes west. The approximate radius of effect was 2100 kilometers.”

Dead silence on both ends of the line.

“Well, fuck.” Mal said it with deep feeling.

“In accordance with the rules set down in the Articles of Convention,” Noah said heavily, “I am calling an emergency SMOFCon and Convention, to be held immediately.”

Mal nodded, eyes grim. “You round up the troops, I’m going to start recon, get some data on what’s going down. Be sure to get everybody, Noah. No stragglers.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody. As Buckaroo might say, right now we’re all on the Global Frequency.”

~***~

“So that's it Captain. The whole lot's just not answering.” Misha finished her explanation.

Garret yawned and looked around

“Somebody took down the earthside receivers,” he concluded, “Which took down phone lines too, because they go through the same circuits,”

At least, he thought they did.

“Must be!” Misha chirruped, painfully cheerful

“What's everyone else saying?”

“The same thing basically. Everyone's going crazy. Major faction sites are starting to overload,”

Great. Just great, thought the Captain.

“Keep trying,” he ordered. “Listen for any signal at all coming up from the ground. Maybe we'll get some news from a major station.”

“Aye Captain,” she smiled.

Which made him smile slightly. “Good work,”

Yawning, he sat down in his customary chair, trying to figure out what was going on. A terrorist attack on the 'danelaw?

Milly burst through the hatch,

“Captain,” she blinked, surprised to see him there.

“It's not us,” Garret explained. “It's affecting all of Fenspace too,”

Milly's face turn the same shade of green as her hair. What could bring down the freakin' internet? Did somebody take out the downlinks? Had Congress pulled the plug on it using some sort of secret top-kill? Why?

She took the pilot's seat, not that she actually could fly the ship.

“Captain, I'm getting something from Earth,” Misha announced, “It's sounds funny though, on AM radio.”

“Put it through,”

"My name is Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the Truth." announced the speakers, before launching into a speech that sounded much like a dub of Adolf Hitler. With an American twang.

“I've heard that name before,” said Milly, calmly. “Where have I heard it?”

“Dunno, it's your head,” Misha giggled.

“Freedom!” cheered the crowd on the radio, “Freedom!” As the speaker promised the final solution the negro menace.

“Great, we picked up Klan FM,” deadpanned Garret.”Shut it off. Try and find something better,”

“AM,” Misha corrected him, “And done,”

The voice of Jake Featherston died abruptly, halfway through the word 'miscegenation'.

A few moments of silence, while the Captain, the catgirl and the computer specialist tried to understand what they'd just heard. Another button on Misha's panel lit up, flashing in time to an electronic chirp.

She pushed it, to be rewarded by a simple text message sent to the entire fandom.

“Captain,” she said, calmly, “Noah Scott of Stellvia just called an emergency convention,”

Silence again. The ship's engines kept running. Garret exhaled a long sigh, remembering what had happened the last time he'd heard the words 'emergency convention'... and what had happened to good friends of his afterwards.

“Alright,” he stood up, adjusting his old jacket, the one he'd had since launch day. “We need everyone awake. Bring the ship to battlestations.”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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Quote:Tell me what you think.
I think it flows better than what's currently in the GoogleDoc. The big, big Ciara piece isn't dominating the scene any more - the spotlight seems to be on everybody equally (even if it is on Ciara more than everyone else, but the appearance is what matters).
--
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
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Proginoskes Wrote:I just had the image of a woman wearing a denim Senshi fuku, and over it, a brown leather duster. There's nothing keeping a Sammie from being a fan of Firefly/Serenity, though I can understand the reluctance to involve one's self in the politics and drama of two Faction Governments.
You forget Brooke's defining personality quirk...

"As a nod to her other fandom (and because Canadian winters are too cold for the standard-issue abbreviated seifuku), she often wears a brown “duster” coat - made from denim rather than the usual leather."
--
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
Reply
 
There's no reason why that Ciara stuff can't be trimmed. I was expecting more reaction shots from other fen and the like when I wrote it. I probably tend to write more than is probably necessary anyway... but it's easier to take from too much, than to add from too little.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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Okay, I've re-edited the sequence and gotten it to a point where I think it's reasonable. I've also cropped a few hundred words out of the Ciara parts (D, I hope you've got the whole thing saved somewhere else.) to help make that flow better. And finally, I've broken up and resequenced the beginning a little, hopefully make that flow a little better. So go check out the doc.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Reply
 
Quote:(D, I hope you've got the whole thing saved somewhere else.)
I have a save (that I still haven't looked at) from the 18th, which I'll put into storage rather than delete after I read it.
--
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
Reply
 
Just a thought about the "rising Saltlake City"... are the Spindizzy fields are always a perfect sphere ? If yes the DEPTH of the field could be a problem for the local geology you would leave behind.
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Good question. Someone who's actually read Blish's stuff should answer that.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:Good question. Someone who's actually read Blish's stuff should answer that.
Maybe multiple smaller field generators overlapping with each other would be a solution... this would allow the depth/height of the field be limited while the transported area is only limited by the number of generators. Of course the generators have to keep "in sync", or the whole thing will break up during flight.
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Feh, we are Fen. Such a simple matter of networking Spindizzies is a trivial matter. In fact, I'm pretty sure we can mark that as a structural integrity issue, and the Wave doesn't mess with that much except to make improvements.
EDIT: Mormons tend to have a very comunal-cooperative nature - some would even say they're downright socialists.  This can only help in ensuring that a group of Spindizzies function properly together.
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*deleted because I mixed up the Mormons and the Amish*
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I'd post this to the sketchpad doc, but google docs isn't working for me currently.
A idea I was kicking around in having some 191'ers get their hands on some wavium. Of course the one that supplied the jar of wave isn't up to any good, but he plans backfire do to the group knowing just enough to realize something isn't right about the info supplied with the jar.
I'm still plotting out how things will go with how the Fen find out and get involved. Probably a test flight the Fen detect and investigate as a possible Draka contact.

Quote:Three friends sat in a old barn around a makeshift table. The young adults regarding a mason jar full of a gray slime. One of them reached out plucked the jar off the table.
Holding it up the a sunbeam leaking through a roof crack. Tim Ray watched the weird metallic patterns swirl in the slime. "So where did it come from Siles? Another one of your mail order items?"
Siles Mayweather looked up from cleaning his glasses with the edge of his shirt. "No, it showed up on my porch one day while I was in town."
The only girl in the group, a Debbie Stonewall set down a stack of typed sheets on the table, "I'd not believe any of the claims made by these papers if it wasn't for the EVENT and the Broadcast." She shook her head, "I'm still weary of it even then."
Siles pointed at the jar in Tim's hand, "Well that was half full when I got it, I 'fed' it one of my pulps like those papers said. It didn't act like any acid I know of, the pulp just seemed to fall apart like it'd been in water too long. The next day the jar was nearly full."
Debbie tilted her head at Siles, "I hope you used gloves for that, anyway the other thing nagging at me is that these papers don't seem complete. Like somethings been removed and skirted around. It claims you can make a rocketship, but I know that you can't go to high up before you pass out from when I was learning to fly a aeroplane." She threw her hands in the air, "So how do you breath when going to the moon? They don't say anything about that at all."
Siles frowned as he put his glasses back on, "Your right, we'd need a enclosed craft." He paused, a light bulb going off in his head as he remembered a navy article he read one time. "That's it, maybe they are like submarines, but how do they refresh their air?"
_______________________________________________________________
Characters
Sabre Fang
Dakota
Warning:
Dihydrogen monoxide
Containment Vessel








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(Thread resurrection ... ... ... success!)

I just spent a few hours copy-editing the GoogleDoc for the story.

I also stuck in a new short scene on November 25. (Not the sort of thing that the folks liberating Dependable would want to use, so there's no need to retcon anything for its possible inclusion there, but it might come in handy for other operations if Mal says okay to it.)
--
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
Reply
 
Rods from God? Useful for taking out tank divisiions if you can get 'em accurate enough over the distance.

I need to rewrite that a little bit anyway to reflect changes in Ford and Jet... make the enemy seem competent (Even if they are completely technically outclassed, they aren't morons), and include Melchizedek. Everything's better with added Mel.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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Something from our timeline that I would be surprised to not see in TL-191:

[Image: JCleyenbonds.jpg]
--
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
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