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Okay, this has been bugging me for a while now, and it won't go away...
06-13-2014, 01:26 PM
Sooooo, I've been living in my long-estranged (twenty-four years!!!) home town for the last few years... And the city I was born in has been growing on me like a fungus. (Doesn't help that this is a quintessential Blue City stuck in a Red State.)
Now, San Antonio has one landmark in particular that stands out immediately. One that upon arrival in our city people will have to be blind not to notice it: The Tower of Americas. And it is, with no doubt, the tallest structure in our city. None of the hotels or office buildings come close, though some do try (like the Grand Hyatt and the Marriott Rivercenter). And of course, it features the usual acoutrements of such a tower built for the Worlds Fair back in the day, such as a rotating restaurant and a f-ing huge observation deck.
But lately, for some ineffable reason, I keep looking at it and two words keep popping into my head: Command Post.
Really, it's utterly brilliant. It has a spectacular view of the entire city, the base is made of solid concrete and highly defensible, and I bet if you juice up the drive motors then you can even make clever tactical use of the turntable restaurant.
And now, I hear you guys wondering, "What does that have to do with Fenspace?"
Well, naturally if a mundane such as myself had these thoughts, then what if an irrationally batshit insane Mad had the same thought? Someone that felt that the Fen could use a nice piece of highly defensible unreal estate?
How would he do it without being noticed until it was all too late? I think he would plant a seed. Literally. A seed. Only it doesn't sprout into a plant. Instead it burrow deep underground and utilize the abundant silicates of San Antonio's soil to create a bubble that is one mile in diameter.
Now for the really interesting part: what all would he score with that, using the Tower as the epicenter?
Quite a lot, actually.
First of all, the entirety of Hemisfair Park along with the Grand Hyatt and the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center is a given.He'd also bag the Rivercenter Mall, the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel, and a nice chunk of suburbs. He'd also snag the historic La Villita Arts Village. More pressing, however, would be the added bonus of the Alamodome, Amtrak's Sunset Station, about a mile of superhighway (IH-37/US-281) and about 3/4 of a mile of main-line railroad track.
Fortunately, he would just barely miss the Alamo.
Unfortunately, he'd probably destroy the Menger Hotel. That'll piss off quite a few people on general principal alone.
Of course, the Fen in general would be outraged. Stupid mad scientists giving the rest of the Fen a bad rep, you know. And of course, the locals are gonna be about as pleased as a beehive when a bear comes nosing around. Which is to say, just short of rioting in the streets.
So, the trouble is that once damage on this scale is done, it's pretty damn hard to undo it, even with Handwavium (some would say especially so). For one thing there's gonna be the political backlash - even if the Fen were to do the political equivalent of delivering this guy's head on a platter it's not gonna make the uneasiness or the damage go away. There will, of course, be a demand for monetary reparations. There may also be some that demand that the Fen themselves do what they can to help with the repairs. And with any luck, everything will be better than it was before.
(The upshot of all this is that if the Fen do agree to do all that, then the City of San Antonio no longer has to worry about the budget shortfalls caused by the Alamodome - all budgetary evils being traced back to that has been a political running gag around here ever since they broke ground on it. San Antonio may yet get the street car system it so craves.)
As for the unreal estate itself, well... Whatcha gonna do? For certain, La Villita is gonna have to be carefully and painstakingly returned and restored (probably with one or two rather comical mistakes along the way). Otherwise, everything else... well... let's just face it, it's a nice chunk of real estate. You have three very large hotels, a spacious and scenic shopping mall, a stage theater, a convention center, a sports arena, and some nice suburban homes and apartments that can house all the staffers. Not to mention that the stretch of Highway can be converted into an easy-in-easy-out landing bay for automotive-type space craft. And Sunset Station can be reconfigured as a Galaxy Railways Station, with the parking lot at the Alamodome working double-duty as a rail-freight yard (the mainline runs right alongside it).
So, thoughts? Bear in mind, I fully expect this to not be full of rainbows and butterflies. But then again, Fenspace isn't a dystopia, either.
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blackaeronaut Wrote:Fortunately, he would just barely miss the Alamo.
The Mad in question: "We didn't get everything I wanted? How could we forget the Alamo?!"
blackaeronaut Wrote:Unfortunately, he'd probably destroy the Menger Hotel. That'll piss off quite a few people on general principal alone.
Noah Scott: "No, no, you misunderstand me. When I said that StellviaCorp wouldn't pay to rebuild someone else's hotel, I left open the possibility of rebuilding a Stellvia Hotel. Assuming the current owner of the damaged building wants to sell it to my company, of course."
random member of the San Antonio delegation, under his breath: "Damn Yankee."
NS, grinning: "A Connecticut Yankee, no less."
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EDIT: I'm way too cynical for this....
Yet another Great Handwavium Panic?
On the one hand, it might be awesome - especially if they installed air-conditioning in it. On the other.... a good chunk of a city and its residents endomed.
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Quote:How would he do it without being noticed until it was all too late? I think he would plant a seed. Literally. A seed. Only it doesn't sprout into a plant. Instead it burrow deep underground and utilize the abundant silicates of San Antonio's soil to create a bubble that is one mile in diameter.
Heh. Sounds like he's taking a page out of the Grover's Corners book and improving on it. I like that. Quote:Menger Hotel
http://www.mengerhotel.com]Whoa. Yeah, I can understand that. That would piss off a fair number of folks in Fenspace, too. Quote:So, thoughts?
Leave the city mobile with detachable utility connections, have it move to cooler climes in summer, and bill itself as America's Only Migrating City.
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I'm not familiar with the Menger so I'll leave that one alone and Google it later.
Now, why am I seeing zero-G ball in the arena?
I like to think of myself as an optimist.
This has just created an incredibly bad fear of the wave.
I mean, say all you want about the questionable legality of Unreal Estate in some areas, but it's all been relatively sane. People weren't outright stealing massive chunks of land and property, just stuff that they owned. What you suggest is grand theft terra on a scale I don't think anyone's even imagined. I mean, sure there's probably bigger chunks of Unreal Estate, but those don't normally get stolen. Possibly with people still on them. From right next to a military base. I'll grant you that I have no idea what flies out of Lackland these days, but this Mad's gonna get told to pull the fuck over while choppers get scrambled from wherever they can get.
I mean, Fenspace is optimistic, sure.
We're talking millions of dollars of property. And that's lowballing it.
Wave Detectors, if they weren't popular before, are going to be incredibly popular, with everyone. Even assuming the Fen put everything back, people will remember that someone stole almost a square mile of city from under everyone's noses. And if it happened once, it could happen again.
Setting aside the horrible wave scare you've got set up, I look forward to the Hollywood blockbuster: Attack of New York.
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]t'd almost work if the City of San Antonio themselves had begun the project for whatever reason - with the result being a humerous cock-up of municipal proportions. It's not a Fanboy screwing the city, it's the city doing it to themselves.... which nicely diverts the backlash away from Fenspace and towards the city fathers themselves who might suddenly find themselves facing a minor dillemma....
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Or worse, the Mad is a "carpetbagger" who sold the City Fathers a load of snake-oil.
''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.''
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I kinda like the carpetbagger idea. It'd be the sort of thing to happen here - the city council, looking for a quick and cheap method of improving something - more likely than not adding a city-wide rainwater collection system that would filter and return a portion of the rainwater to the Edwards Aquifer, because water has been something of an issue over the last decade. :p
And then the Mad in question declares the downtown area to be under his control as it lifts off, and announces that he is holding the resident population hostage so he can make a clean getaway to where the 'Danes can't touch him.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depends on how you see it), he's so irrational that he thinks that he would be welcomed with open arms by the other Fen. Minutes later, he's apprehended, and kicking and screaming words to the effect of "But I am one of you!!!" and thus begins the weeks-long effort of getting everyone that doesn't want to stay shuttled back to Earth. (Say what you will of the man, he actually did pretty damn good work - all the water, electric, etc. still work just like they did before the lift-off, so there's no real reason to rush things.)
So, given the positive feedback I'm getting thus far, I'm guessing that this plotbunny has been given the green-light for further development? ^_^
Also, I can say right away that one of the trickiest parts to manage is going to be the Edwards Aquafer itself - Hemisfair Park and the Downtown area sits on the artisan section of the aquifer... that crater is going to turn into a lake within a day or two and also thoroughly deplete the Aquifer. Ouch.
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blackaeronaut Wrote:... Fortunately (or unfortunately, depends on how you see it), he's so irrational that he thinks that he would be welcomed with open arms by the other Fen. Minutes later, he's apprehended, and kicking and screaming words to the effect of "But I am one of you!!!" ... There's a tricky bit: the Mad didn't actually break any of the Convention's laws, but only because he wasn't under Convention jurisdiction at the time. I do believe Texas has laws against kidnapping, grand theft auto (unless nobody was driving in the area at the time), other types of theft, and destruction of private property (the Menger Hotel, at the least) - so they'd probably want the Mad extradited. Rob Donaldson and the rest of the Convention Authority would insist on due process being followed, but wouldn't stand in the way...
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Oh? What of holding people hostage in orbit? I'm pretty sure that after the Boskonian War that the very idea of holding people against their will is abhorrent to the Fen in general (at best, even). And then, of course, is just the sheer moral wrongness of it...
Yeah, he'd get due process... and it would probably look like one of those open-shut disciplinary review panels on Sufficient Velocity.
(It would be funny if Fenspace actually had something like that as an appeals process... All these volunteers that have been elected by the Fen as disciplinary council and meeting together in virtual reality like SEELE... only everyone in Fenspace can watch the proceedings if they like.)
Anyhow... Any more ideas to contribute, anyone? I know that the Roughriders would get involved purely on principal alone... Ben would also volunteer his Roughnecks to work alongside with the Army Corps of Engineers to help with rebuilding.
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Ah, he actually made it into space? That's different - the Space Patrol would have cause to storm the city and arrest him, then.
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There would be one valid argument against extradition to the surface....
Humanitarian reasons.
The individual responsible would likely be stuffed in a place like ADX Florence for a very, very long time with the list of charges and copounding on top of them. With an argument being made by the prosecutor that because of their 'Mad' propensities they would likely be most dangerous and in need of the tightest of controls. Describing it as a 'clean hell' is an understatement.
And that's assuming nobody was killed in the process.
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And this would make us want to protect him why? I mean he's not going to be executed (which with Texas could be an option) so all he's going to do is spend 23 hours a day sitting in a 6 by 8 cell where he can't hurt anyone including himself.
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At the same time, he's not an actively malicious individual. He did not set out with the goal to injure people. And while they might try and pin the big T word on it, there was no intent to terrorise or destroy. Arguably, all he's guilty of is a pretty big lump of property damage, maybe larceny and some form of reckless endagerment.
And there are some who would argue that solitary confinement amounts to a cruel punishment for any human being.
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Part of that "due process" would be a careful reading of the contract the Mad had with the city of San Antonio. If it says he was going to do something like this, the Convention Authority would insist that be taken into account - unless an actual Convention overruled them.
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Urk. Something I should have been more clear about: this guy was in a bad way. His mindset is that the Mundanes are like a lower form of human for not striving for what the Fen strive for. He cares very little for what was damage or who was hurt - he cares only for the end results. In this case, what he wanted would have been a mobile military installation from which to stage assaults and landing operations. Against who? Why, the Mundanes of course. (Yes, he was certainly the tin-foil hat type that we're all better off without.)
If this is too extreme for some people's liking, then I'm amenable to changing it up. I just felt that every once in a while a True Monster ought to show up, and then be struck down in due course.
Although it might be interesting if he could engineer an escape sometime and become a boogeyman in the closet.
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Damn, skippy. I go away for a weekend (Denver Comic Con was awesome btw) and all of a sudden people are trying to steal downtown San Antonio. What gives?
So what's the over-under on somebody deciding to put the several billion dollars worth of real estate back where it belongs? I mean, catching the guy and sending him to Azkaban seems kind of a hollow victory if the city remains stolen...
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M Fnord Wrote:Damn, skippy. I go away for a weekend (Denver Comic Con was awesome btw) and all of a sudden people are trying to steal downtown San Antonio. What gives?
So what's the over-under on somebody deciding to put the several billion dollars worth of real estate back where it belongs? I mean, catching the guy and sending him to Azkaban seems kind of a hollow victory if the city remains stolen... And its unlikely that the US will just let the City out of their eyes and accept that the Convention couldn't do anything.
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That's.... kinda dull actually. It'd be more interesting if it was ambiguous. Someone who just fucked up in a big way rather than Cackles O'Frankenstein. Besides, we already have two/three of them.... Agatha, for a start. Whatever did happen to Quattro anyway?
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Crazy Mad steals the city, Great Justice and anyone else with a desire for daring heroics comes in and stops him. He spends the rest of his life in Azkaban (Depending on when this is set, he could well be one of the first major 'Guests of Honor' outside the Boskonians), on charges ranging from theft of public property, kidnapping, endangerment, and if he's as crazy as BAs post suggested, yeah, that's around the time super-villains can justifiably earn Terrorism charges.
Then you get the fun of trying to get the city back DOWN. Returning it helps show that the Fen aren't all like said Mad, and has a lot of Groundsiders in a position to, for a while, get a closer look at Fenspace then they would have expected. Word of mouth, uploads to twitter, facebook and such, all would make for some interesting PR. With the end result that the paranoid sorts on the ground have more excuses to hate the Fen, but the average folk might just come to accept them a bit better.
Of course, San Antonio will always have 'Wave in it, resulting in some odd happenings in future...
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M Fnord Wrote:So what's the over-under on somebody deciding to put the several billion dollars worth of real estate back where it belongs? I mean, catching the guy and sending him to Azkaban seems kind of a hollow victory if the city remains stolen... Well, I suspect the Blue Blazers know a guy or twelve...
Dartz Wrote:That's.... kinda dull actually. It'd be more interesting if it was ambiguous. Someone who just fucked up in a big way rather than Cackles O'Frankenstein. Besides, we already have two/three of them.... Agatha, for a start. Whatever did happen to Quattro anyway? Doing ten-to-twenty-five in Azkaban, the last time I looked. That doesn't mean she hasn't staged a jailbreak, of course.
I doubt she's changed much, though. As I thinly implied in that side-story where Noah and Shinji talk about Yuu, Agatha isn't big on building androids with the capability of evolving past their initial personalities. They're more fire-and-forget weapons than children to her. That doesn't mean they can't change and grow, just that they'll need a lot of guidance and support that they probably never get because of bad assumptions (Yuu) or deliberate neglect (Quattro).
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Well, the ambiguous idea does have some merit... And could underscore just how insane the guy really is. I mean, really, check this out:
-Trick city council into permitting project to go forth
-Turn Downtown into Unreal Estate
-Hold citizens hostage until stable orbit is achieved
-?????????
-PROFIT!!!
And that'd be how his mentality could be working. He just thinks it'd be something awesome to do, and nevermind any of the consequences (both positive and negative). This will suitably trigger a collective WTF of Biblical proportions from the Danes with the Fen stuck doing epic facepalm combos.
As for replacing the unreal estate....
AH-HA-HA-HAH-HAH-HA-no.
Observe: http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/intro.html
Think about it. A one-half mile deep divot in an artesian aquifer that covers more geographic area area than most States in the USA do. The water pressure on this bad boy is enough that basketball size boulders being blasted twenty feet skywards is expected when a new well is dug. Even with handwavium, the Fen are gonna be hard pressed just to cap that monster off - and that only to keep the aquifer from hemorrhaging.
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Quote:Dartz wrote:
At the same time, he's not an actively malicious individual. He did not set out with the goal to injure people. And while they might try and pin the big T word on it, there was no intent to terrorise or destroy. Arguably, all he's guilty of is a pretty big lump of property damage, maybe larceny and some form of reckless endagerment.
And there are some who would argue that solitary confinement amounts to a cruel punishment for any human being.
And that's before you get into some of our more 'colorful' law enforcement figures. I know of two cases where extraditions have been hindered by the existence and behavior of Maricopa County's Sheriff. One was a kidnapping case, so the feds were able to say, "Look, it's a federal offense, not local, we promise they'll never spend so much as an minute in one of Arpaio's facilities." That got the pair who grabbed the kids sent back. Meanwhile there is a child molester stuck in Ireland because that's not a federal offense and the acts took place in Maricopa County. The Irish Government and courts hold that it would be a human rights violation to send even scum like that guy into Arpaio's hands. And to tell the truth, having watched this Sheriff for the past several years, I'm not entirely unconvinced that they're right.
But I suspect this would be more like the first case. The various Fen authority figures would if they had concerns be more likely to say, "Will you agree that X and Y will not happen? We'd really like to hand him over and that's all that's holding it up. You do agree? Great, where would you like him delivered?"
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Well, look at it this way.... instead of an aquifer, you've got a nice, deep reservoir. Which'll also change the local microclimate to be cooler.
Anyway, I think it's far funnier if it was a minuicpal project gone horribly wrong..... something like either a weatherproof, air-cnditioned dome that taps into the aquifer as a heat-sink for its cooling systems. Something people might actually want or think was a good idea. Add in something like automatic shading into the glass to keep the worst of the sunglare off and you have a dome where it never rains, where there're never any storms, and the entirety of the environment is under the for-profit control of a privately owned corporation operating municipally-funded hardware to sell air and water to dome residents.
Only somebody wired up the generators wrong, so instead of an electricity generator, you now have an accidental spindizzy drive.
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