Vignettes

[Dartz]

Note --- this actually predates February.

-------

Posted By: Alekseeva@luntheekranoplan.fen
Subj: Well, we got detained in Ukraine.


We triggered some radiation monitors on arrival to Kyiv. Nothing too serious - only fallout from the reactor fire Frigga had that is absorbed in the paint and the heat shield.

We have been instructed to remain here in Pripyat until it can be removed to safe levels. Pulled out of the water by a tractor so everything can be sandblasted back to bare metal.

Does anyone know where we can get handwaved lead paint?


-Lun
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[Dartz]

More a place to float something than anything. It's mostly finished, will be PM'd to the relevant folk when it is - but won't be here until the preceding bits are finished. 

THE BOEING AIRCRAFT COMPANY

Model 747-8F No. 1574.

“ANTARES”

The final delivered aircraft of her type.

  “When we were told it's impossible, we knew it's the right way to be done.”   

[Dartz]

Posted by: daini@Friggarock.fen
To: talk.cybernet.General
Subj: RE: RE: RE: "From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God—"


I think it's like the difference between Gaia and the God model of things. In the God model of things you've this big central brain that's responsible for everything. It knows all, it sees everything, it measures everything and it chooses to respond to those measurements by turning things off or on, or turning things up and down. Everything's running in lockstep and under control. Disturbances are managed by the brain and corrections are programmed in and all the possible states are known beforehand so you know what you're doing to get out of them. It's like, all these station's have their mind's at the centre of them that can see all and know all on the station, and adjusts things consciously to match. It's sort of the Shiva pushing all the buttons at the centre of the world in the Simpsons.

What we're trying to do is kind of like a Gaia thing where - you know how on Earth there's no real God but everything sort of works together anyway - it all self corrects? So you have all these self contained small little systems and they all sort of come together in a way to make one ecosystem that sort of tends towards a stable place and when one of the small systems gets fucked with the other change is ways that cause the systems to self correct. We're trying to do shit like that. So instead of the big brain knowing what the demand is on the system and adjusting everything to match, the system sort of adjusts itself. It's like a load of different things looking after themselves and their own little universe that when put together they just sort of stabilise without anyone having to do anything. All these systems just sort of self-stabilise as one big system around a comfortable point.

Of course - if you have a problem where one or two things break down -the system can tell you - but it can sort of keep going in a degraded mode with a pump stuck at maximum, or a valve failed in a safe position or a broken line. The system is sort-of uncomfortable - but still able to keep going on the same way you can hold your hand there. Everything up and downstream sort of self-compensates.

The brain can be a lot smaller because all it has to do is respond to specific things going wrong that might push the system outside the stabilised point. It's only when things start breaking down or it gets into local overloads that it starts praying to God to intervene, but that makes God's work a little easier, doesn't it?

God can be whoever sat at the desk that day, rather than a Mind built specifically for governing the station.

It's a little bit harder than waking a Mind, sure, but at the same time, you're not creating a whole Person just because it's convenient.

-Anika Daini
----

Sysop, Frigga 77, and connoisseur of confectionery.

[Dartz]

Elno Station.

One of the earliest private colonisation attempts on Mars. Based on the appified tech-world ethos of 'move fast and break stuff, it moved fast and got on the ground before many people got up. It ended almost as quickly, when it's largest financial backer visited, was utterly appalled at the wastage of expensive water on all the plants around the station, and promptly ripped them out of the oxygen reclamation system and ejected them out the airlock.

[Dartz]

Filling in a blank with some extremely thin butter


---


WE knew the city was damaged.

The city had been built to tolerate up to four block being open to atmosphere. The city would drop, the anchor cables would re-tension to trim her level, and she'd settle a kilometre or so lower. We couldn't conceive of anything doing more damage than that.

That trimming was the important bit. It kept the city level - even as ships landed and took-off, or people went to work in the morning, or came home in the evening. Trimming with the cables compensated for that change in load, without having to pump ballast. Being more than a few degrees out of trim was a dangerous condition, because it stressed the entire structure.

Anyway. We had three blocks open to atmosphere. Still within limits. After about eight hours, pressure in the open blocks equalised and the city settled at her new level. We started sounding out for repairs. We'd had a fright but, well, as far as we could tell, the city was holding. We had a few strange things up on some levels - doors that weren't closing or opening properly - getting stuck in their frames and the like - or vent dampers getting stuck. Annoying things, but nothing concerning.

Bellamy told me to put a pressure suit on and go down to check on the anchor points- we were getting some strange readings on the tensioners and were still about a degree out of trim. So I did. Nothing unusual. Told her I'd be back in a few hours, stepped out the airlock and rode an IVA chute down. I'd done it fifty times.


I don't know what happened to them, whether they stayed up at their posts until the end or whether they tried for it when the evacuation alarms sounded. There was fifteen of us in all. None of them got out. That was the last time I saw her, or anyone else on my team.


It takes me an hour to get down, and I don't know what's going on above me.


I'm at the bottom, at the anchor station, and the cable is singing. I'd heard them sing in the breeze, but this was something else, deeper, louder, more tortured. I can feel it through my boots The forces on them must've been immense. They're pulled dead taught, not an iota of slack.


I try to radio it in.

No answer.


The atmosphere must've been blocking transmission. No big deal - it happens. There's a hardline inside a small shelter in the anchor itself. I could use that. The air itself is buzzing with tension, crackling with electricity. It was like being in the same room as a live high voltage cable.


The hair on my arms stood on its end.


Before I can open the hatch, the cable goes dead silent. It sags. It starts to drop, building to a roar like an oncoming train as it accelerates. I get the idea that thousands of tons of steel and carbon are about to drop on the spot where I am standing and I run as fast as venus will let me. It's like running through liquid water.

The ground is vibrating as the cable begins to land, coiling, snaking and lashing around. Fragments of carbon the size of cars spall off and fly in the breeze. One of them, hitting me at speed, would just implode my suit. I wouldn't even know I was hit it'd just be lights out.

After ten minutes of pure terror, it's silent again. There's wreckage and dust all around me. Fragments weighing tons are drifting lazily in the breeze. Torn black fibre waves like hair from broken ends.


Nobody from above thinks to check in.


I try radio.


No answer.


I try again.


No Answer


The anchor survived. There shelter's still there, with food, an atmosphere, an emergency beacon and what should've been a hardline - if the cable hadn't snapped. I remember thinking, I'd have a hell of a story to tell them when I got back up. They'd probably already written me off as dead, but I'd show them.

I hunkered down, set the beacon, and waited.


Three hours later, I heard another bang - without any warning, just a slap on the portholes of the shelter, like a bomb had gone off. It spilled my rations on the floor - I was lucky the windows didn't burst from the shock. Five minutes after that - what felt like an earthquake - rising up from the ground, rather than crushing down from the roof. I honestly thought it was just another cable. It never occurred to me that it could be the city itself.


Such things weren't possible.


I could see nothing out the porthole but boiling cloud, all lit up with that same steady, sulphuric yellow light.


I try to radio again.


No answer.


Every hour, I try my radio. Every hour I get the same answer. Eventually, the battery begins to die and I genuinely wonder if they've forgotten about me. Do they think I'm already dead - mulched, then incinerated, when the cable snapped?


After three days in the shelter I'm beginning to believe it.


I'm rescued from purgatory by the Shelter intercom. A voice, from outside, checking if anyone managed to stay alive inside. Yup, I'm still alive. It's about time.


"Thank the Gods. You're the first survivor we've found."


Maybe there're were more people on the surface? I'd no idea still what happened. The Galaxy had begun to mourn and I still expected to go home to my apartment in Shin-Dotonbori for a hot shower. I still had a report to give on the cable breaking. We had to seal the breaches, pump the atmosphere clean and get the city back up and working again. I'd a new soundtrack album I wanted to listen to. The local bar was having a quiz night tomorrow.


Life had to resume after the break.


I suit back up, and step outside. It's a Cyclops shuttle - a ball-shaped craft with a single viewing port, three ROV garages and a back-porch to carry two people in hardsuits. From the markings, I realise it's come all the way from Crystal Moscow.

Things must really still be difficult up there, I remember thinking.

I step up on the Porch, clip on my safety line, and give the Pilot the customary thumbs-up to launch.

It's rarely clear enough on Venus to see the mountains, but as we take-off I'm astonished to see the black shadow of broken hill in the distance - a jumble of dark jagged rocks and broken ends. I'd been down to that anchor station and half dozen times and never seen it before. The ruins of the cable formed a broken snake, coiling in its direction. It had a stark beauty to it, a hellish, inhospitable desolation.


You're in no doubt you're somewhere in the universe that is utterly hostile to your existance. Every molecule in this space is lethal in a way no other world is. The Moon, the Deep Ocean - there is nothing which compares to the emnitywith which Venus greets its visitors


And we were doing everything we could to change that.


After twenty minutes, I realise we'd been flying for ten minutes too long. I key open the intercom to the pilot.


"We're not heading to the city?"


The silence that answers is my first inkling of the depths of tragedy that had just occured. That moment where he realises that I don't know, and now he has to be the only to tell me.


"The City's gone."


He says it so simple, I don't believe him. "They moved it to orbit?"


"No," he says "Crystal Osaka collapsed three days ago."


Everything starts to make a cruel sense, even as I wish I doesn't. I wonder if I passed out, and it all had to be a nightmare of some sort. The pilot ruins the illusion on me.


"You're the only survivor we've found on the surface."


That was the moment I felt my soul die.


There were twenty-one hundred people in the city when they evacuation alarm sounded. They got eight hundred and twenty off. I was the only one they found on the ground.

[Bob Schroeck]

Wow. Great piece, Dartz.

[Matrix Dragon]

Ouch.

[Dartz]

Remember it was discussed a long time ago. But never any hard figures or chronology or even exactly what happened beyond getting some holes punched in the shell.

This sort of makes sense.

Most who had planes or who would object seem to have left the project anyway.

[robkelk]

And the actual tech was so nebulously described that this could have happened even if they hadn't left the project.

[Dartz]

I have two stories I want to finish - and they've been going since Yuku days.

So it goes.

Then again, I've far too much of a flair for the undramatic

[Dartz]

From: jet@friggarock.fen
Subj: FWD: You may already have qualified.

----

Guess who's Coming to Dinner.

You buy one little airplane.....

>From:Interplanetary.cs@trade.gov
>To: contact@AntaresFreight.fen
>Subj: You may already have qualified.

>Congratulations.

>The Inward Investment your Foreign Enterprise has made in the United States within the last year qualifies you for entry into our trade rewards program. You may already have qualified for significant benefits as a result of your recent investments in Aircraft and Aviation Services sector.

>These benefits may include:
>–Significant reductions in import and export tariffs.
>–Personalized assistance from the office United States Commercial Service who will assist in locating United States corporate Golden Key partners to assist your enterprise in future acquisitions.
>–1 x Annual goodwill visit from a United States Senate delegation.

>Please reply as soon as possible indicating your interest. We look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

>Kind Regards
>The United States Commercial Service Team

-----

[Dartz]

Non Canon (Because now I know where the Canon of Jetfic ends.....) But - just me sort of playing around with some freaky shit because I wanted to try my hand at it. Original idea was a part of the above....


---

"He hit the start button and just ran in before the door closed!" Teela's words ran out her mouth. "I can't stop it."

Kamalla shrank back into the shadows at the back of the room, hiding her mouth. The Americans looked at each other, then at Jet for some sort of inkling of what was to happen.

She stared at the Senator standing in the chamber, looking for a moment like he'd forgotten what he'd just done. The machine thumped, pumps revving up in a high, cold whine. Pressure built. The scent of burnt tabacco filled the air.

The Senator stood, facing them. The expression on Jet's face told him everything he needed to know. He pushed at the door, hoping it would open. The lock refused. He tried again. His eyes widened, looking for a moment like a frog realising the pot he'd leapt into was rapidly coming to the boil.

A dozen metallic nozzles embedded in the back wall of the machine began to spray, dousing him across his back with a thin, milky liquid. The senator recoiled with a yelp, as if he'd been splashed with hot water. The threads of his clothes blackened and thinned.

Bare skin blanched and tightened as if scalded. A grimace twisted across his face, a groan of pain rising through his throat. He bit his lip fighting against the urge to scream. He thought he could bear it. He'd had worse.

A puddle of the hazy fluid formed at his feet, steaming where it burned at his shoes. He hopped in place as the first drops nipped at his feet. It took only a moment more for the agony to become more than he could bear.

"Turn it off!" he shrieked. "For the love of God, turn it off!"

He thumped against the door, drawing thick smears of grease across its surface. The remnants of his clothes sloughed off in shreds, the buckle of his belt clunking into floor at his feet. Bare flesh blistered, split and tore open. Clumps of grey hair slid down his scalp as skin and flesh and fat melted into an oozing pink slime, pooling at his ankles as a human stew.

Dodge stepped forward, reaching for the door.

"If we open that door he's dead," said Jet.

This clearly wasn't a new experience for her.

"If he breaks the door...."

"Unlikely," said Teela, at the machine's control. "I was twice his size."

"For God's sake!" he pleaded, thumping repeatedly on the plexiglass."For God's sake! Get me out!"

He dropped to his knees, submerging himself to his waist in a stock formed from his own flesh and voided bowels. He thrashed against the door of the machine until fingers sheared from hands, and hands sheared from arms. Thick streaks of biomass curtained the plexiglass. The stumps of his arms thrashed one last time against the walls of the chamber before they twisted free under their own weight, bone and muscle separating like well-cooked meat. His body slumped. The remnants of his face pressed into the glass.

Those still watching witnessed a sightless, skinless skull shrieking as it was dragged down into the broth of biomass at the bottom of the tank by the weight of meat beneath it.

His screams finally ended when his intestines burst from the cavity of his body, dragging his viscera into the bubbling mass that surrounded him. It didn't stop him from trying. The broth roiled and bubbled, stewing the remnants into a thick human gruel for another minute, before finally stilling as the last few glimmers of unwanted consciousness left what remained of the Senator's mind.

Silence fell.

"Is he dead?" asked Dodge, tentatively. The commander had gone white. He took a step forward, his shoe splashing into something.

At some point unnoticed, the representative from California had left, leaving behind only a stain on the floor where she'd thrown up.

"Deconstruction complete," said Teela. He hair stood on end. "Pattern....Buffer is coherent."

"Is he dead?"

"No." said Jet.

A single pump started with a pulsing hearbeat, deep inside the machine, draining the broth through the mesh floor. What had been the Senator gurgled through corrugated lines into a set of holding tanks above the machine.

After barely a minute, only a scattering of copper change, a belt-buckle, a pair of glasses and a few plastic credit cards remained.

The machine hosed itself clean.

A metal carriage dropped from the ceiling, riding on a pair of rails built into the walls of the chamber. A head which had once been part of an inkjet printer shuttled back and forth, sweeping across the bones suspended in the machine's cradle. A snake of corrugated feedlines followed it, pulsing to the heartbeat of a pump deep inside the machine.

Spinerrettes knitted raw biomass into new tight sinew, twitching muscle, tingling nerves, pale flesh and tanned hair.

It took five minutes for the machine to finish its cycle.

Where the Senator had once been, a shivering, shorthaired catgirl now stood with its eyes closed, ears and whiskers twitching as its mind dreamed to itself inside its new home

"Is he alive?" Dodge asled

"They'll take him to the sensory room to sleep and wake up," said Jet, taking a slow breath. "We'll know when he wakes up what's left."

Dodge looked at the tabby catgirl still standing at the machine's controls.

"Why in God's name did he get in that machine anyway?"

"Kamalla had been talking to him," said Teela. "He just ran in," she said again

All eyes in the room turned on Kammalla. Kammallas shrank into the corner.

"I told him about how I went into the machine four years ago," she said, her voice crawling from her lips. "I had cancer. It was terminal. It was the only guaranteed cure."

Dodge bit his lip. "I knew he was sick," he said, shaking his head. "Damn."

The newborn catgirl that had been the Senator Cronenberg from Colorado slept, for the time being oblivious to the horrors its birth had inflicted on those who'd born witness to it.

---

"Hey. Huey. You were right. It worked. We've just won a seat in Colorado."

"You mean..."

"Yeah. He even thought it was his idea."