Proposal for 12/12/2012

[classicdrogn]

That's the end of the Mayan calandar, if you missed that line in the Grand Unified Timeline.
First, the concept, then the supporting details:
In brief, that's when someone finds proof of alien intelligence. It's not first contact, it's not even planetary ruins or a wrecked ship - and no one in the character space is going to know about it for a while, because it's a two-year trip back on a straight line for Sol.
================
December 12, 2012
Unnamed system, approx 1000ly from Sol
(find a registry number that's suitable)
It was three years since the USS Miranda launched - she'd been the result of probably the only wide-spread privately funded space program that would ever exist, a collaboration between several major colleges, the SETI group, and (in a burst of mad brilliance that had pulled in most of the individual donations) the Trekkies. The actual structure of the ship had sort of accreted on the back side of the Large Array radio telescope framework that was her major hardtech "eye" for Serious Astronomy, and most of the internal volume was tankage for the two strains of handwavium that fed the ship's engines and power system, but in that breif period between when Handwavium became relatively public knowledge and when the mundane governments cracked down on it, they'd gotten enough funding in place, and with the enthusiastic design and programming assistance of hundreds of people too attached to their regular lives or unwilling to jump into the black on a wing and a prayer they'd gotten environmental and suplly systems that could actually support a five-year mission.
They'd followed a somewhat irregular course to this point, with regular stops to point the Main Sensor Dish back at Sol to get a look "into the past" in the sky beyond, but this was the furthest out they'd get, it was time to turn back for the long trip home, with only two stars on the way to break up the trip. For now, though, it was time to put the Big Eye to its other use...
The ship flipped gracefully in space, the sensitve radio ears designed to listen to the whispers of the stars now seeking out the sounds of civilization... and for the very first time, there was something to hear. Not the multitudinous cacophony of an inhabited, technological world's communications, just a single signal, a candle in the endless night playing out an endless loop of squawks and chirps, several voices in an approximation of harmony before breaking up into recogniseable cheers, then breif passages of single voices, before repeating. The whole thing took about twenty minutes to cycle.
It was remarkably similar to to recording made for the drone they'd been getting ready to drop off in this system themselves, to mark the furthest extent of human exploration. Sometime in the tenth hour of the ship-wide party following the announcement of the find, the captain wondered if there would be video screens when they physically examined the beacon, as they'd planned to leave running on their own.

=============

The nature of the aliens, how long ago the beacon was left, how long it would take to find them even if the Miranda gambled on their being freindly, willing and able to provide resupply if they blew off returning (because they are at RTB with only a very narrow safety margin) and how anyone else will take it is up to developement, and this is strictly an Idea Box submission - there's lots of story before winter 2014/2015, which is the absolute earliest the Miranda could be back.
And yes, though far from show-accurate, the ship is named that because it's basically a big round platter with a thicker addition on the back and two engines hanging off the bottom. No rollbar, and the upper surface has a small forest of antennas. THere's also a carefully maintained dived between the 'waved systems (drive, enviro, navigation) and the pure hardtech (astronomy, mainly) espescially in the computers - the Science Network has absolutely no wireless access, the wired network is maintained in different access spaces than the 'wavetech data lines, and even the power supply is fed through three stages of hardtech converters and regulators to avoid the possibility of handwave info contamination. Transfer to the 'wavetech system is very rare, because it means burning one of the limited supply of CDRs on the hardtech side - there is no transfer back from 'wavetech to hardtech, ever. Serious Science has no room for waving hands.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Valles]

YES.
Absolutely.
This is perfect.

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Kokuten]

and it's early-gen 'wavetech, so it's not self-sustaining, lightspeed drive is gonna be signifigantly slower..

put it in the file, but don't forget this one, it rocks too hard.
Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[classicdrogn]

Self sustaining - nope, that's why they needed so much tankage. Even though the cola/uncola mutual annihilation of Coke and 7-Up cultured liquid wavium provides pretty close to 80% efficient conversion of mass to energy fuel was still the biggest problem, and they've had to go ice-mining a couple of times to replace lost water and oxygen, and atmosphere skimming once for nitrogen and CO2.
As for top speed, just adjust the distance out so they need two years to come back, at whatever speed they're running.
The thing about sending ships with carefully 'wave-free astronomy equipment out on long trips in order to look back past Sol and "into the past" was what actually led to the whole concept - the ability to get modern astronomy equipment inposition to take pictures of things that are only known from the account of some dude looking up at the desert sky, or a royal astronomer in the Celestial Emperor's court, just has to be making any number of skywatchers drool.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Kokuten]

And it had nothing to do with the black-and-white Tuxedo Shamu ships farming neptune for delicious hydrogens?Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[classicdrogn]

... Tuxedo Shamu? Yerwot?
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Kokuten]

---

and atmosphere skimming once for nitrogen and CO2.

---

They had to imitate one of the 'Tuxedo Shamu' ships scooping the atmosphere of neptune for delicious, delicious hydrogen.
I'll get back to you on that one when I have thinkies to brain with.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Norgarth]

---

Even though the cola/uncola mutual annihilation of Coke and 7-Up cultured liquid wavium provides pretty close to 80% efficient conversion of mass to energy

---

that concept is just beautiful, CD. I'm just glad I wasn't drinking anything when I first read it.__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[classicdrogn]

Well, what else do you expect the Trekkies to power their ships with? Handwavium doesn't like things that go boom, so it's not going to help you make antimatter.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

old scene stripped, replaced below
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

Name: April Margaret Roberts
Occupation: Former Ausralian Air Force jet pilot, retired on disability due to to a motorcycle accident that caused her right arm to be amputated above the elbow. Circa SOScon she's the captain of the United-Earth Star Ship Miranda, just leaving the second-to-last star system the ship will be able to explore before turning back for the two year trip to Sol.
Description: Captain April looks remarkably like an Andorian save for the lack of antennae, after a biomod that (successfully) attempted to give her the regenerative healing ability of a horseshoe crab. Her blood is bright, sky blue, with a copper base rather than iron, requiring some allowances in her diet but nothing major as long as it's planned ahead of time. Just having sashimi wrapped in seaweed fairly often will take care of it, though all too often on the five year trip away from the oceans of Earth she's had to make do with supplement pills. Her skin is also tinted that way instead of pink as a result, and the blood clots essentially immediately if she's cut.
She regrew her missing arm to functional levels in five months, though it was about a year before she fully regained coordination and only now is her simulator performance good enough to risk getting back into a cockpit. She almost always wears at least one insulating layer, usually a wooly cardigan, over the black-and-grey late-Trek-alike Miranda duty uniform due to a reduced ability to maintain body heat, another minor side effect of the biomod. She can also make her eyes bug out, but she could always do that; it's nothing to do with the 'wave per se, just muscle control.
Personality: Generally relaxed and a bit of a joker, April is something of a peacenik for the common image of a military person. She'll look and look hard look hard for any peaceful solution before a violent one. A life-long affinity for science fiction and space exploration also fostered a tolerant attitude - she joined the AAF to get closer to the stars, and at least once a month she'll be spotted wearing a pair of deelie-bopper antennae as a joke on he appearance and the nature of the ship. Her Yorkshire terrier Elizabeth Crumpet ("Bitsy" or "Bits", occasionally "The Yorkshire Terror") is listed as Captain's Assistant, Officer Supernumerary in the ship's log.

SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Kokuten]

Not to bust a bubble, but why not "April Roberts"?Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[classicdrogn]

Sir, you present a temptation too great to resist... Done! You see, I have a cousin who lives in AU, David Roberts - he's a dick, so I avoid thinking about him, but he has a daughter in her 20s. I don't actually remmeber if her name is April, Avril, or possibly Abigail, nor as far as I know is or was she in the Australian Air Force or a motorcycle accident... but she could have been, and it's a connection to tie my two plots together.
I have more musings on this, specifically an RFC on the aliens since that's something that should be a community desicion In My Holy Opinion, but the library is about to close, so I need to pack up and head for a WiFi point with my PDA
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

Thread tie in links:
p202.ezboard.com/fdrunkar...=175.topic
Miranda wave/no wave separation

p202.ezboard.com/fdrunkar...=173.topic
All about aliens
Or possibly the other way around.
- CD
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

Edit: I don't know how the original version got repeated three times, but here it is again with the gender and name switch to reflect later discussion.
If you don't catch the reference, Robert April was the first captain of NCC-1701 Enterprise, who handed her off to Christopher Pike, then James Kirk got her after him. Though little canon exists beyond the name, it can be surmised from it that he was human rather than Andorian, and my version's quirks if not attitudes are loosly based on the character from the Diane Carey (I think...) novel Final Frontier, about the ship's nearly-disastrous first mission, with James' father George Kirk as Chief of Security under a very ivory-towerish Robert April - this one is a little more practical, but the cardigan and the somewhat child-like enthusiasm for really being in space on a real starship remain.
Oh, and since I can't find my old Star Fleet Battles gamebooks to look up what they list the origianl Miranda as, I'm just going to say the registry number as picked by the Trekkies for the project is NCC-1755. The refitted Miranda from ST2: Wrath of Khan, the USS Reliant, was NCC-1864, so that gives a nice gap for what seems to be the workhorse of Starfleet right up to the ST:TNG era to have a long construction list.
Dateline: January 2008


o/" Well we had a lot of luck on Venus/We always had a ball on Mars/We meet with all the groovy people/we like the milky way so far/we'll mess around in borealis/we're space truckin' round the staaaaarrs... o/"

Captain April Roberts, AAF (retired), stared at the advert on her television screen with a sense of fascinated wonder that she hadn't felt since she was a child, at video of people in converted cars zooming around over the planets as they were named in the song.
"The Dream Becomes Real," a scrolling title read, followed by quick flashes of illustrations and photos of that big project the Yanks had chased out of the States with their scare-monger legislation, now being built outside Canberra. The music faded down a bit and a voice over announced "The USS Miranda needs you! Construction tradesmen, technicians, science and medical staff, or donations of material or financial support. For more information contact the Miranda Foundation, or the Astronomy Department of the University of Canberra."
She rubbed at her right bicep as the music came back up, where her arm had ended in a stump less than a year ago, since the accident that had ended her military career in 2005. There wasn't even a scar there now, and the new one had almost finished growing out to match the other.

o/" COME ON! COME ON! COME ON! LET's GO SPACE TRUCKIN'! o/"

Literally blue blood and complexion, stark white hair, and occasional cravings for seafood were little enough to pay for that. Bloody idiot Yanks in Washington all went insane years ago, how could they even think about outlawing this Hand-Wave stuff?

o/" COME ON! COME ON! COME ON! SPACE TRUCKIN'! o/"

The music faded out and her gaze turned inward as the spot ended and one for that horse-piss Fosters tried to pass off as real Australian beer came on in its place. Considering the name of the project, and the fact that the SETI and Star Trek International Fan Club logos had shared screen space just before it ended they'd probably get a kick out of her name and the biomod side effects, though the fact that the scientific and acedemic worlds were also involved would hopefully tone down the worst TV-show fanaticism. Another moment's thought and she was decided.
"There's just no way I can't at least give it a go. Who knows, maybe they'll even have a berth for an old jet jockey," she speculated. "Wotta you think, Bits?" she asked, tickling the small bundle of black and brown fur on her lap.
Hearing her name, the fluffball uncurled into a Yorkshire terrier, who snorted and rolled onto her back.
"Yeah, 'at's what I figured. You think your belly needs a rub, don't you, pet?" Chuckling, the former pilot obliged, only fumbling a bit with still unfamiliar fingers as she fished the portable handset out of the couch cushions to ring up good old U Canberra. She'd actually taken a number of Astro electives when she'd studied there, maybe Professor (still need an Aborigine-type family (tribe?) name) could put in a good word for her.

SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows