Heaven is a Place on Earth
by Belinda Carlisle

Quote:Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We'll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
When the night falls down
I wait for you, and you come around
And the world's alive
With the sound of kids on the street outside
When you walk into the room
You pull me close, and we start to move
And we're spinnin' with the stars above
And you lift me up in a wave of love
Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We'll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
When I feel alone
I reach for you, and you bring me home
When I'm lost at sea
I hear your voice, and it carries me
In this world, we're just beginnin'
To understand the miracle of livin'
Baby, I was afraid before
But I'm not afraid anymore
Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We'll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
Heaven
Heaven
Heaven
In this world we're just beginnin'
To understand the miracle of livin'
Baby, I was afraid before
But I'm not afraid anymore
Heaven
Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We'll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth

Here I am wondering it it'd be possible to make a new sister to Titanic. I mean, they were a fairly efficient design for the era on fuel - about 2/3rds of what Mauretania burned but a ship a third larger.

You can't build steam reciprocating engines anymore , so you'd have to go with diesel, but then your boiler rooms can be replaced with other 'modern' machine spaces like auxiliary generators, air conditioning, laundries, waste processing and larger entertainment venues. Those big slow-rolling marine diesels are incredibly efficient of fuel and burn anything black and liquid that'll inject. Centre engine is electric, driven by the main generators.


As a modern ship, you'd have to run plumbing to all the cabins - not just the first class - and the high quantity of interior cabins would not be popular with modern cruisers, but the Three-Class layout gives you public areas of the ship with distinct character - with 'Third' class being more like a buffet and a low cost bar, second class being a casual restaraunt that's comfy but informal , and first-class areas having a fancy dresscode and shit for the nights you want to be glamourous.
You can't panel the interior with timber - hello Morro Castle - but veneers may be possible to at least replicate the effect and the decor of the 1912.

Lifeboats - you can get an exemption (QM2 has it) to the 15 meter maximum limit. You have to have enough for everyone, but that's already possible.

But modern ships are less class-driven - most areas and amenities are available to most passengers. The difference between first, second and third class now being the amount of time you spend in public spaces on the ship. Third class cabins are beds with shitters and showers, with the expectation that you spend most your time in public areas of the ship (Like a car ferry cabin), and first class cabins are spaces where you can spend time privately and - in theory - never actually leave your cabin (Like Grills suites on QM2). Second class are sort of, in between, like Britannia class on the QM2

And maybe, second and third class, some amenities are extra charge - or the fancy restaraunt is an extra cost that needs booking for a night or two.

I mean, maybe people would get a kick on sailing on an imitation of an early 20th century ocean liner. And, fully packed, she'd be more environmentally friendly that an equivelant quantity of flights which might be a big thing in the near futures.

Taxes on aviation may make ocean travel viable once more.

Find a billionaire. Cook up some bullshit. Get 'em to build it.

Sunday, September 18, 2016, 9:50 PM
Arts District, Los Angeles


"Mistress!  The Grand President wantsh to see you, yeah!" the pint-sized demon warned as soon as it flew through the window.

"Senbei, I'm already doing the job she assigned."  Marller thought her demonic friend was such an idiot sometimes.

"No, she wantsh you for another job.  She's getting trés impatient."  Senbei wiggled his body provocatively to emphasize the point.

"Fuck," she muttered.  "Not my fault there was a damned rock concert around the corner."  Impatient Hild meant angry Hild, which meant pain.  Abandoning Hild's tasks meant angry Hild, with similar results.

She looked down at the two men asleep on the floor.  "It's going to take forever if we actually have to talk to these freaks."  The young one was wearing a blue military coat from a century back, and the other grandpa with the multicolored feather hat... yeah, she'd rather talk to Morisato's senpais.

She reached under her cape, pulled a steno pad out of a pocket, and began to scribble furiously.  All she had to do was inform them about the change in scenery and tell them where to go, right?  Easy peasy.

"Full throttle, Mistress!" Senbei urged.

"Yeah I'm hurryin'!  Gotta finish this job... and done."  For a minute, she panicked – what if they couldn't read?  But then she looked at both the men, and saw ink stains on their hands.  Nah, this would definitely work.

Marller threw down the note pad, the pen, and a couple sets of identity papers for the people displaced into this universe.  "Come on, let's scram before they wake up."  Both of them flew out the broken window, and off to the nearest portal to Hell.

Quote:
Fakir, exhausted by his travel across the multiverse, lay asleep, and would not wake until hours after dawn.

Quote:Drosselmeyer walked to the window, and extended his gaze to the western horizon.  There, shining through the night sky with brilliance beyond that of thousands of gas lamps, were the boxy skyscrapers making up the skyline of the City of Angels.

Quote:
Hap drove home from a Hollywood party, his blood alcohol just barely under the legal limit to drive a car.  His agent had made him attend, since it was a big event and lots of directors and producers would be there.  Lots of big roles to be had, if he played it right.  It was briefly fun to meet some other celebs, but tiring to play the part all the time.  He didn't want another part right now.

They call it method acting, when an actor gets so deep into a role that they start to lose themselves.  To truly inhabit a character, all the way down the the subconscious.  But what happens when the actor no longer inhabits the character, but the character inhabits the actor?

The moment they wrapped last week, shooting the very final scene, something happened.  Brit fell from the balcony, but only because she was no longer just Brit.  She was OA, too.  And so she had momentarily forgotten what Brit was doing, causing the actress and showrunner to fall and be rushed to the hospital.

And that was when Hap found out that he was Brit Marling's husband, Jason Isaacs.  Or rather, on jumping to this universe, he found himself inhabiting the body to the man who had played his role for television.

Quote:
But he wasn't just a role, he was a soul.  He was Hunter Aloysius Percy, the man who had gone to medical school, who had become obsessed with near-death experiences.  He was the same person who had found his test subjects, and designed the experiment to bring back knowledge from beyond the pale.  His subjects went to the very brink of death, time after time, and had finally done it.  He had finally done it.

They found a ritual that allowed one of their number, Prairie, to escape her captivity, though she called herself OA by then.  But the ritual, the dance movements stolen from death, could not only send a person across space, but across entire universes.  And proudly, Hap was the one whose experiment discovered it.  He considered himself a new Prometheus.

The experiment had not been for the faint of heart, but great tasks seldom are.  Hap had no compunctions about how he kept his subjects imprisoned in a cave.  He hadn't even killed a single one of them, except of course for the few minutes at a time it took for the subject to collect data.  Smaller minds might call it torture, but such a powerful scientific breakthrough, piercing the veil of death itself, was worth the pain of so few people.

Quote:
Driving alone, he pondered what he really wanted, and spoke to himself, "There has to be a way out of this universe!"  He didn't know it, but he was just one of a multitude of refugees from other dimensions, and he was just as stuck as the rest of them.  But hope springs eternal, and he had a plan.  "I've got to set up another experiment."

He sighed, though.  In the last universe, he had been a psychiatrist, but here he had no easy access to the hidden pasts of others.  He could pretend to be one, but that was an easy way to land in jail; as good of an actor as Hap was now, he was far too meticulous for such a dangerous plan.

It was intriguing, how fast he had taken up the knowledge of the body he inhabited.  He had seen Prairie do it in Nina's body, and had managed to extract more than he ever thought possible from Jason, his host.  He wondered if he was even human any more, or if he was like her.  Maybe by now, she really was OA, and he was simply HAP.  "At least I have her."  If they were two of a kind, it meant that she would always be his, no matter which universe she ran to.

One test subject, though, wasn't enough.  He needed five.  Five who could remember what they learned beyond the mortal realm.

Obviously things are working again now, but is there anything to suggest why I was getting 503 errors (and only here) about ... 4:30 or 5 EDT, I think?

Apparently something at my host needed rebooting, and until that was done everything was 503. I trust no one was inconvenienced too greatly.

Part XXVII.

Thanks for closing out Maxxie's thread, Rob. But I couldn't resist adding a formal "You've Been Banned" thread.

The title being, Retcon - not A Retcon

----

Jet remembered the day she’d fused herself with her hardsuit, and what’d finally sparked her into going ahead with trying the damned thing on.

It all came down to one man who insisted she didn’t need to mix oil in with her car’s petrol, and that she was absolutely going to ruin the car’s engine if she put it in there. Of course, he knew better, and didn’t let her try to educate him on the matter.

Her car needed two-stroke oil in the fuel to lubricate its seals.

And he droned on in depth on what oil, coolant and petrol were for, and warned that her husband would be fairly fucking angry if she wrecked his car on him.

In that moment, her temper boiled and she resolved to put on the damned suit and prove what she could do.

At the same time, she remembered making the story up as something to fill out a character - a moment in time that seemed worthless, but could give the spark life to a new identity - something she’d assumed would be normal for a ‘real’ woman who’d looked like her puppet it did.

A moment that could be equally cliche, but relatable by anyone. Car enthusiasts and women both sympathised immediately.

And then it had become real. Ten years after creating it, Jet could swear blind that it happened. She could smell the petrol tingling in her nostrils. She could hear the peculiar rattle of the fuel pump, sounding like a single stray marble was being whirled around inside it and the gurgle of the straw-coloured petrol pouring down the dark throat of the tank. The fingers of a cool spring breeze made her regret wearing such a short skirt and tights, rather than a decent pair of jeans or trousers. Heeled shoes clicked on the bricks of the garage forecourt and she walked to the shop to pay.

Her reflection stared back at her from the mirror, her hair darker and longer than it had become. A leather jacket clung tight to her torso - while somehow still given a view down at her cleavage for the lucky few who happened to be taller than her. She’d already gotten her wallet out of her pocket…

At that point Ford had told her that a woman who dressed like that would normally be carrying a handbag and purse - it’d be strange to have a wallet like that, or a pocket to put in.

Jet’s mind had patched the hole and it all made sense. She carried a wallet at the time - it went in a pocket. Her hand moved and it was gone.

In the moment, like a dream, it all made sense.The world in her mind worked the way she thought it would, rather than the way it did.

In reality, she’d been forced to learn the differences. Men wouldn’t always notice - women would. A few subtle tells which might only raise an eyebrow in public, could raise hell in hostile company. On their own, they’d become quirks. Together they poked holes in her cover, and made her seem less like the person she’d claimed to be.

The way she’d gotten into her car that day, would’ve given everyone on the garage forecourt a flash of her underwear. Jet hadn’t fully mastered the art until sometime after Mackie’s awakening.

Driving in high heels could be done, but not in a way that could slip beneath her notice.

She found herself home alone again, getting ready for that night, freshly showered with a towel around her waist. Long legs picked their way on tip-toes through a bedroom which looked like the aftermath of a bomber raid on a comic-book and hobby shop - one which’d blown up the nearby Penney’s as collateral damage, mixing old clothes in with half-finished kits, toolboxes and a snarl of power cables which gave life to a collection of old Hi-fi equipment.

The clothes hinted at the truth. They obviously didn’t belong to her.

Her wardrobe had nothing ordinary in it. Nothing for a lazy day or a comfortable evening. Nothing in the underwear drawer that could be called ‘plain jane’, for the days when all she needed was a barrier between her body and her clothes.

Nothing she could’ve actually afforded at the time.

In reality, it’d all been bought to fill out Sylia Stingray’s character as the successful businesswoman, who wasn’t afraid to dress like it. Some of the underwear had obviously been bought for a mission that required her to ‘fill in’ for one of the girls at Candy Apple Red’s. ‘Sylia’ had never needed any nightwear - she’d never truly slept.

It all fit. The garters had to be specially ordered due to the length of her legs - a reminder that her body didn’t exactly need to, and hadn’t be built to confirm to, the usual natural proportions.

The image in the mirror, confirmed as much. Her hands pressed against her chest, sharpening the textures of soft cotton and delicate lace in her mind’s eye. Electric sparks of sensation shivered inside her breasts, filling them out before shooting down her spin. She felt wire under the brassiere tighten as she breathed, rubbing against soft skin.

A scent of antiseptic and steel tinged nostrils, mingled with that lustrous, fruity perfume she always associated with A.C Peters, chased by the sensation that something was missing - a sense of detachment from the moment like she was watching a video from inside somebody else’s body.

The memory thinned out, like looking at a colour image, where one of the three colour channels had been muted right down.

The first time she’d worn that underwear, had been the first day she’d tried her puppet body on. Jet recalled the shock sensations of cold air on bare skin for the first time in years, tempered by the muted sensations of her own armoured body still lingering beneath the surface, acting as a ground.

She remembered how wrong it seemed at the time to see a naked woman mirroring her movements. Her mind’s rejection of the image, had been tempered by the presence of her self beneath it all. A little like wearing a VR headset in a game with a female avatar - she could still feel her true self underneath the image on screen.

It had been nice to be able to touch things again. Ford enjoyed that body.

Her thoughts shifted back to her first time with another woman, lying naked, her whole body shivering, like she’d contacted a live wire. The moment of ecstasy washed everything else out of her mind.

Her thoughts shifted to her first time with another man, with an altogether deeper sort of of pleasure from a figure who’s appearance was lost in shadows. All detail had evaporated beyond the sensation of her body moulding itself to accept what was now moving inside it.

Both were tainted by the same sense of detachment - like only half being there. A large part of herself, hadn’t been in the room on either night.

When she sat down and thought about it, both times had been with Ford, and both on her first night with that body. Once as an introduction, and then as an experiment. It had been Ford’s turn to try the prosthetic on. Or had that been with a Boskone operative, who’d needed to be distracted while Jet herself ransacked his computer?

Ford preferred the puppet - to her it felt more intimate, more genuine, more like both of them were taking part and less like assisted masturbation. Jet hated the sense of not being in the room, preferring her own body - her own self - even if it limited what either of them could do for the other. As much as Jet enjoyed a rotary polisher, there was only so much enjoyment her partner could get out of it

Ultimately, intimacy had become a sacrifice one had to make on behalf of the other. By the time they broke up, it added stress, rather than adding strength.

Jet had begun considering giving up her armour, for Ford’s sake. They broke up, before she could bring herself to talk about it. The chance of waking up slowly and feeling bedsheets again almost made her go for it anyway.

The puppet could never do that. Jet couldn’t remember a single night’s sleep she’d ever had, before she became Jet.

The reflection in the mirror had finished with its makeup. Nothing fancy, nothing aggressive - just enough to make it appear as if she was wearing none at all. Luscious red lipstick completed the look. Elegant, natural, and beautiful. A pair of pear earrings shone on both her ears.

Her blouse had one, singular strong button, that held it across her chest, giving a strong, deep neckline, and a tall, bare stomach. It balanced on the razor’s edge of being obviously high class, while still showing more bare skin thatn most people’s swimsuits.

It’d began as a power move by Sylia Stingray, to stand over and above those who worked in suits. It’d been backported to a weekday game of Pathfinder that happened years before Sylia’s identity was born on paper, where she stood out amongst a group of friends who’d come either in their most casual clothes, or straight from work in a factory jacket.

She didn’t belong. Something different had happened that night.

The party died in a tower, either crushed by falling bells, or dive-bombed by an angry Lamia. Jet thought she had the solution, but the GM insisted it would fail. The Boskone had used the same tactic against her and…

…they didn’t even exist at the time the game actually happened.

Frustration boiled over. She’d asked the players to wait, while she showed them what she’d been working on with the wave in the shed. They’d already suspected something. Some even suspected she’d used to wave on her body - nobody could naturally have a figure like that.

She remembered undressing herself, and the cold Autumn air nipping at her body. She recalled the dry scent of concrete mingling with acrid varnish and vaguely metallic taint of the Wave itself. She could feel the roughness of the floor beneath her bare feet.

The inner liner of the hardsuit had been built from a wetsuit. She recalled rolling it up her body, one leg at a time, and how aggressively tight it was. It crawled inside her body, reminding her of parts she’d long forgotten.

Of course the suit highlighted her bellybutton and nipples. It shouldn’t have been possible, but the rules of fanservice demanded it. A plastic gusset plate saved her embarrassment otherwise, while providing a connection point for any biological concerns.

Jet stood opposite the suit for the last time, aware of her reflection flowing across the polished surface and felt nothing but excitement thrilling in her body. Finally she could try it on.

She felt her feet slide against cold vinyl as her legs disappeared for the last time into the darkness of the suit itself. Armour clamped tight around her thighs and waist. She leant forward against the breastplate, plunging her arms down both sleeves.

One switch activated the suit, pulling her upright and closing it around her body for the final time.

She’d taken a breath, feeling her chest press against the gel lining, and couldn’t recall a time in her life when she’d felt more secure, or more powerful - while still being clearly a woman. She’d made a point to sculpt the armour to highlight that particular fact. Her whole body had begun to tingle with excitement, little currents of electricity sparking across her skin.

It wasn’t until the next morning, long after the party had been impressed by what she’d done with herself, that she realised the suit had permanently fused itself to her body.

Jet remembered explaining this all to A.C. Peters, shortly after Mackie had awakened. A.C had then played back her own voice from ten years previous, explaining how she’d gotten herself drunk, accidentally drank a bottle of the same ‘wave she made the hardsuit out of, blacked out and woke up inside the damn thing.

She recalled her mind’s utter rejection of her own voice - even while her soul knew it to be true. That moment of terror and dissociation passed over her, as she came to realise that she really had done damage to her very self, and it could never be undone.

Secretly Jet preferred the retconned version and wished it to be true. As much as it was wrong, it seemed less stupid - more respectable somehow.

The real mistake was the same. The Wave hadn’t been trained to make a hardsuit. It’d been trained to make a Knight Saber - a subtly different thing. When she, or he, or whomever had come along, they’d provided the final piece of the puzzle the Wave had been longing to finish.

The defining moment of her self had been the same. When asked who and what she was supposed to be, Jet could point to that moment where she first launched herself into orbit and took a selfie with the planet - that singular sensation of freedom and speed and the sense that she literally could go anywhere or do anything.

When Jet became Jet, and once the shock had died down, she’d felt perfectly fine with what she saw in the mirror - figure and face. The glint of light as it played across the curves of her armour - the way it flowed up over her hip in a way that echoed the underwear that should’ve been beneath.

She felt perfectly fine with her appearance, but still preferred to identify as Male. Another memory from her true self, and one that brought a smile to her face. She’d spoken to a counselor at the time, for a few sessions only, and been given a sort of colour map of her identity - a spectrum of her ‘self’ that matched how she felt.

It matched how truly alien that puppet had felt, and how uncomfortable it had been to wear it for more than a few hours at a time. Like wearing underwear a size to small, or a shoe with a small stone in it. Tolerable in the moment, but the longer it went on, the worst it got.

Years later, after Mackie’s awakening, she took the same test. The shape of the graph remained the same, but the tones had shifted. One whole colour channel had been cut cleanly out, with the other shifting themselves to compensate. A little bit of the depth of herself had gone.

Mackie needed a sister. The Wave found one in Jet. She’d remained the same person - just getting there by a different route.

She lost a part of her self, but gained a brother who she’d loved - and was loved by in return. A fair trade, she’d concluded. Life was better with him.

Who she was today, had come about as a sum of all her experience to that point, And who she was today, had recoloured those experiences, to match what the Wave needed her to be. It needed one line on her ID card to change so Mackie could have a sister.

But now he was gone, and she could be a sister to no-one - that one thread hung loose.

As of 8am EDT today:

   

According to AO3's tumblr page:

Quote:A group presenting themselves as a collective of religiously and politically motivated hackers has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack. This group has attacked other sites before, including those of government organizations and large corporations. However, cybersecurity experts do not believe the group is honest about their motivation, so we urge caution in believing any reasoning this group provides for targeting AO3.

Photos here.

I just upgraded Firefox to 115.0.1 on my Win10 box, and now I can't play any media files. I can download them and play them locally just fine, I just can't play them in the browser. Is anybody else having this issue?