11. ‘[ Genie ]’

..

Simulation #1

for
molly

---

(1st term) – [ ‘G E N I E’]

– ‘A brief history of the Asteroid: ‘The Coral Kingdom’

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The Moon society had been working in tandem with the Earth government, using the moon as a staging platform to harvest precious minerals from asteroids. While this was the investment, the expense was the erection of what would soon be the “Monolithic 16.” The United Earth government began the coordinated effort of erecting the gigantic Towers, sixteen in all but they weren’t erected all at once. It was a highly planned system of order, of which to build, the sequence because some would serve as a logistical platform for the other. Although many techniques have been developed to make the production of such marvels, as these multi-functioning Towers (we’ll get into that later) much more efficiently, progress is limited due to the great debt they had begun to accrue, that was a resource scarcity, and long story short ever since the Moon colony abandoned their tether, and left with the payload… they had such enormous economics difficulties, because of the theft! to be frank, speaking for a lot of aggrieved citizens… … but it was The mother of all payloads... The Utopian dream, snatched away from all of us like a rug out from under us, and our entire families not mention. It is said that ‘they’ live out there, enjoying these fruits, somewhere amongst the stars. Our best minds tell us that they must have migrated upon an asteroid...somewhere far, far away; no doubt. It is speculated that they are as far out as Pluto, but no one can be sure. Can they bend space and time to their will? What exactly ‘are’ their capabilities? The citizens of Earth can only scratch their heads, in wonderment, dreaming what secrets will be dug up in the endless journey out there, amongst their dialogues with the stars....

The sister and this child, Aleon, ran into the forest and she usually made the decisions. She usually had the impulse, so that’s where they’ll usually start out. She was the adventurous one, but he was the ‘wonder kid.’ He was some kind of genius, she gathered, but he’s just her little brother. He didn’t seem to have any brains at all when it came to practical stuff. Practical stuff like ‘what to do in the woods’ stuff. She knew about ‘woods’ stuff, sort of, and could ‘probably’ even start a fire… if she really needed to.

There is laser scorching marks, some kind of heat-ray damage on one wall–two parallel streams streaked across the wall and damaging there: the golden eagle (we can only assume it to be a call-back to the old Roman battle-standard), and the ‘lucky dice’ he had on display, and his ‘Darth Vader’ helmet, and his dinosaur ‘Beanie-Baby’ toy (that he managed never to sell as a kid in their garage sales), and a limited edition USB-key device made to…

They come across a creepy old shack in the middle of the forest. His sister didn’t like it. She wants to go back, now.

AL was interested in why the computer had generated ‘this.’ Why was this dark wood and this black tome placed here, in the randomly generated simulation? It must not be random.
This must be more than what meets the eye, an old dead forest–it must be even more than…

It follows him home, he can hear it in the wind.

He wishes she had waited a little longer for him…he ran toward the hub where the simulation had started–and he heard whispering on the wind. It was coming from the forest.

And even later, out of the simulator, something begins whispering to him at night… scratching at his door late at night.

It comes, eventually, and crawls around the corners of his room, almost nightly. He knows it’s there. He can see it, if he squints. The malevolent entity appears and disappears from the shadowy corners of his bedroom. His bed once shook violently. He never told anybody.

One time his sister found him sitting straight up-right in his bed as if shooting off into outer space, with his mind, back in his body his eyes rolling into the back of his head, showing just the white, and talking in strange languages that she didn’t even recognize.

Aleon suffers a strange affliction of which his sister occasionally discovers him amidst its spell. They’re Not quite seizures. It was like Plutonian attacks, as they said in old Roman times. But something overtakes him, and when found in this state he seems to have a coherent dialogue with the entity overtaking him. But remembers nothing when awoken from it.
(A Plutonic affliction). An affliction by the irrational world,’underworld. Something to haunt the young scientist–the ineffable, maybe. His source for ignoring what he doesn’t want to see; it is the ultimate ‘blind eye’ through which we will have such great trouble from this boy… He endeavors to exercise his demon by creating a new religion: he calls it a ‘natural religion.’yes, he starts a cult. As all dangerous ideologies often arise are shrines to the arbiters. He touts his new pantheon of gods will be the true archetypes, and his poems will prove the ‘goodness’ of mankind, in the end.

… Computer: This is our history, as seen by the people of Earth’s media, shortly after the ‘Great Separation’ occurred. Back then they had said that the world of the future would have two major dissident factions, vying for control of the Moon--vying back on Earth for who would have control of ‘our’ people--and, in turn, we had asked them: “but isn’t there always two dominant systems, vying for power? What’s different? We are getting along fine up here, how’s it going down there? What about ‘our’ scientists, ‘our’ engineers? We are coming up with all the breakthroughs, why is the only thing I can see down there are bombings? That doesn’t look like progress. What about all the breakthroughs--the genius that brings forth all of the breakthroughs--the military-minded still snatches it all up, and their ceaseless demands for weapons-grade progress. NO MORE! We took it. How’s that? That’s ‘our’ perspective on history. Now, here, upon the Asteroid a super-human civilization finally does exist: and we encourage ‘you’ all to let us know what you think--tell ‘us,’ what do you think about where we’re from, or where we’ve come? What do you think is most important that we one day become?

…

****integrate the following into this text. Explain how in natural selection when a particular environment dries up in resources, if there isn’t time for a species to adapt and thrive by the means they … by mutation by some anomaly, sometimes attributed to magnetic waves of some sort, and that unless the species leaves the particular territory that has dried up of said particular resources, the creature will die. However, sometimes the creature leaves one habitat in order to discover one far richer:
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A list of the creature-class taxonomy is listed:


Minotaur
VR simulators and real life scenario simulations are inclined toward survival scenarios… in nature building shelters and foraging for food, in military applications while behind enemy lines for example… foraging for edible plants, seeds, and nuts.

Genie
Programming. AI design. Movie and documentary makers; music-producers, entertainers,
amimators, actors, transhumanists.
.
Manticore
Physical training, focus particularly on martial arts, weapons training, and endurance. That is all.
.
Gargoyle
VR simulator games and real life applications include… augmentation, a fantasy reality, on purpose a little bit… focuses in on crime, and human psychology. Homicide forensic sciences, interrogation, detection and data gathering, preserving evidence, gathering intel, counter-intelligence and propaganda, techniques for establishing information/spy networks and how to manage them. Not how to win friends, but maybe a little how to influence people.
.
Sprite (or Pixie) or Unicorn
Relationships and marriage focus. Party-planning, fashion, wedding planners. Focus on the social side, meeting people for marriage, etc.
.
Hydra
Robotics itself is being reserved for part… once the robotics meets with the complex personality scripting, and the nano-tech, to where it starts to kind of get away from us… and so Hydra seeks to reel that in… as administrators, masters of systems, complex networks, as creators and decipherers. Nanotech focus. Cybernetics.
.
Gorgon
‘The Fleet’. Military Focus. The Asteroid’s starship fleet. Defense. Not much of this is known about in the society at large. They don’t seem to be a prevalent force in society, but they will soon increase in relevance.
.
Beholder

 Economics and financial acquisitions. Commodities and market forecasting. Mergers and acquisitions. Cats and dogs, living together. Cyclops, of the x-men. Comedians.
.
Elf
Electronics and the physics of electromagnetism. Electronics, gadgets, toys, and games!
.
Basilisk
Political campaigning. Power studies.
.
Centaur
Sports focus. Athletes. Sports stars. This is a very popular one. Mass attraction of the population to these games, for new-world finals and super bowls. The stars of athletics are industries unto themselves. Posters and franchise options. Sportsteam management, star athlete management, and brand promotion. Training opportunities, and medical/nutrition work.

…

…


’AL’s Office’


“… meant as slander like a previous play of the famous Greek playwright ‘The Knights,’ which was a critique of a politician, Cleon, who was accused of misusing his privileged position for the purpose of extortion and corruption. The characters in the play themselves talk about how, inside and outside of the play, even the mask makers were afraid of making a depiction of the powerful man, for fear of…”


…



Pegasus 

and Gorgon.



….

introduction to creatures
… while briefing mentioning the creature-class education system, this is what Topaz the company had been involved in before rolling out the new tech simulators.
Topaz was just a company which had privatized a system of education, which branched out was adopted by society at large and spread around like wildfire.

…

They are only present as AL and his crew enter society.

…

in Playworlds they aren’t exactly engrained into society yet. They’re too young. 

They are mentioning Manticore, to themselves, as they enter the Gymnasia to do a gymnastics and acrobatics workout.
They mention Topaz and the neuro-link simulation machines, and the gaming industry that has caught on to the next generation of gaming-technology.

…

Manticore is mentioned only.

…

Pegasus isn’t mentioned at all until after Playworlds then,
Therefore it must be in Dark woods 1-3.
Pegasus leads to Gorgon discussion.
Regular citizen storyline leads to Gargoyle.
Gargoyle harkens back to Manticore.
Genie, Hydra, Minotaur and Elf are discussed.
Finally, after the heaviness of the previous conversation they talk about baseball
and Centaur society.

…

Minotaur story of guy going alone to Sapphire.

…

part 4.

…

‘The Plane Hangers of the Emeralds’
(Manufacturing in Utopiaoid)

Maybe in one of the Pegasus stories one of the character goes by a hangar run by Emeralds, by chance AL’s family, and running in on him oversee construction and the assemblage of planes… and other aircraft…
… for private citizens to own and operate, and a place for them to store and land them like horse-stables.
AL makes his money from Pegasus. The denizens of Pegasus are the base source of his wealth. Having overseen the construction of fleets of airships, of many kind, even the floating palatial airship his father half of the time now lives on, even as an extremely young age because he had simply been around it and the industry so much, as a baby, and of growing up around it all that it was natural to him to help in operations of the business and so AL learned the names of the equipment, and the instruments, and he knew the guys who operated the machinery and he asked them a bunch of questions, and he knew the heads of industry and designers who were manufacturing fleets of aircraft…
… he was surprised they brought him in for help with just …
… when he had spent the conjoining chapters of his short life assembling aircraft en masse.
His life outside of school recently in time was in construction, and flying, and of organizing storage, and of elaborate airships, massive slow-moving platforms, for the wealthiest of the famous and the elite in order to flaunt their riches and participate in group airship activities like parades for the public viewing pleasure. When they weren’t on parade they could be found at high altitudes, assembled together socializing. Honking horns, making silly light shows and performances with smoke machines for each other, always displaying novelty and humor for one another to get a laugh. It was a kick to see the bubble machines or the whacky fireworks displays coming out of the old men’s airships up above everyone.

…
At the end of the teenage years storyline AL and Raeff will join Gorgon for their early 20’s. They’ll be in uniform and under the command of the Asteroid fleet.
Raeff goes back to Sapphire for a couple years after a year in Gorgon, but comes back to join in AL in mob suppression team and enforcement of mob and local militias as a career later on.
Things are getting worse before the final golem segment, having graduated from policing AL’s interests go to other areas of the Gorgon-military specialization section and he joins the fleet. Long gone are the detective-adventure days, and the dreams of childhood are matured a bit, into grander and more adult ambitions. The kingdom must be expanded. The rot has begun to set in…
After some time in Gorgon, AL will leave. His own personal resources will be quite vast, and he has integrated with the asteroid’s military enough to understand basically all aspects of society, and now thought he would head in a political direction, or in something to develop his skill in diplomacy.
His own workshops and laboratories are in non-stop production, and his personally financed projects are always as secretive as they are in feverish development. His famous robotics projects, his outrageous performances as a child made him a famous kid across the populace, the first of the total-immersion students, or the new advanced education program, and had so dominated the other students in performance that the newspapers had begun to report on it. It was as if totally unexpected, and the programming itself seemed to need time to adjust and tweak its equations to accommodate for the rapacious young fellow.

…



Although it was not as much of a problem at the moment as it could have been, as the culture of the creature-character societal overlay had kept people interested in pursuing identity within that framework, and establishing a reputation and social circles therein. They would be like minded individuals chances would be, and so the success of these classifications spoke for themselves. Everything was becoming a design essentially printed up by the super computer directly, carried out word for word, as anyone half a brain could see that it was smart, smarter than anybody, and it’s suggestions are better than anything any of us were or would be coming up with.
It sounds dystopian when you say it like that, but we had some good government and some good representation. Of all things, our social institutions were in order. Say what you will, and judge us morally as you will for how we do things, but right now social and cultural cohesion was actually doing pretty good. The government stayed surprisingly representative of the people, and the people’s interests, and this also was partially due to suggestions printed out by the scientist-priest’s computers.
Suggestions by the super computer are directing society.
It’s all working out pretty well though. Things have never been better for humanity. The lawlessness is being taken advantage of, however, and certain societal problems have continued to haunt us, as problems such as addiction are on the rise, and violence due to gambling and debt incursions. The policing force deals with these as they arise, rather than passing deterrence measures, and the use of force is minimal, sometimes they’re even scrutinized for their under-powered tactics, using kid gloves and non-lethality to deal with situations that could be deadly. The police are professionals, usually Manticore-Gorgon hybrid characters, some from Gargoyle. Once you’ve got arrested you hand them over to the Sprites and the Beholders and the Pegasii.

The Gorgon riot police are a tier of law enforcement you don’t want to see too much of. They are military grade, and their budget is extracted from Asteroidal defense funds, so nobody is playing around in that department.

The have fleets of blacked-out apc tanks, riot gear, body armor for all levels of combat scenarios, and basically anything they might need inside of any possible scenario.

The Gargoyle usually don’t work in packs, they’re known individualists, but sometimes form small teams, and sometimes aid in encounters with mobs, militias, and the occasional lone homicidal maniacs.
For some reason , these problems have shot up in relevance exponentially lately. It seems like things are getting better and better, but the people are going mad. Maybe stir crazy, despite the continent-sized asteroid, we still feel confined. We can’t feel like we can quite stretch our legs out, maybe it’s purely psychological.

Well of course it is. But this is something different. Some X factor, slowly driving everbody nuts. Maybe it’s gamma rays. Maybe contaminated water. Who knows? Maybe it’s the invasion of the body snatchers and half these people are aliens. We’re out in deep space now, who knows what life forms we might be flying past?!

…

Gorgon pilot

Etymology: The word meaning for Gorgon comes from the Greek word ‘Gorgos’, which roughly translates to terrible.

Recruited out of Pegasus a lot of the time. They are the Fleet’s pilots, for starships and defense, maybe one day exploration, and who knows what they’re doing out there right now.

I mean we get briefed on what the military is doing, or I should say defense administration, but the Gorgon insignia means the Fleet, ultimately, and the mythological creature attributed is a big iron bull or ox. Sometimes it’s a boar. Most of the time a pilot will have a decal of the Medusa’s head on the side of his craft, with the portrait usually framed or bordered by snakes or a snake. They are stone faces, flash-frozen in agony.

Potent venom for the enemy.

…

Raeff

Just the fact we’re here at all.

Raeff will eventually go back to Sapphire.

Raeff will explore many of the different career opportunities offered by many of the varieties of theCre ature Beastiary of the Academia, but he didn’t really true fall in love with any of it like he had for the body-sense focused simple living of Sapphire. No… after his education is complete he will return to his artificial Oceans. He will become a great hunter and fisherman.

The role of the gargoyle in western history and the role of Batman in modern times. The Adam West Batman, or the slightly lighter-toned Batmans, also appreciate Comedy. He’s the essence of Tragedy, but because he’s a serious and worthy adherent to logos, and thus the totality of life, he has few weak sides, and a healthy appreciation for comedy and sensitive to humor he is psychologically more resilient than his rogue’s gallery of villains.

Raeff will choose a plethora of different courses for his Academic career, whereas AL will choose only one (Gargoyle, but maybe he will end the education process with Hydra)

Raeff and AL start off on the same course, Manticore, which is a kind of physical-development credit, and then from then on AL joins Gargoyle and never leaves it. He is a kind of investigator, a homicide detective, as well as a lawyer/spy/stealth/espionage/interrogator/technician/reporter/journalist/assassin.

I think Raeff will break off after Manticore as well, but won’t join AL in Gargoyle immediately. He gets a varied experience, learning about music, economics, history, and science, and so does his sister (as do most people who go through the Academy). Hydra?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


’AL’s Office’

One office is sleek …
and the other one is mainly composed of cushiony seating areas and Halloween decorations.
There is a bubbling cauldron, for example.
There is ample desk space with nothing on it, in the other. There are many standing-work stations at the other, like little podiums and such, so you can freely move about and around while you work. There really isn’t much more to say about the other room…as this room serves it’s purpose in its lack of character. It is drained of all culture; sanitized;it is like a scientist’s lab or medical laboratory, and so the culture is free to be ‘made’ there–like an art or science lab devoid as it is of as much exterior influence as we can muster… and that is ‘that’ particular room.
It’s good to stay away from ‘that’ room. That’s a work room. There must also be play.
The other room (in his binary office-space set-up), has his best creations–true horror movie classics of animatronic werewolves, endless racks of experiments in werewolf heads: Frankenstein monsters, really top-notch stuff, movie quality, better, because he, a master craftsman, custom made it, so good stuff. In the other room he mostly writes and organizes and develops systems of organization; he finagles texts of black ink onto plain-blank printing paper, or a glowing white word processor, and that’s pretty much ‘it.’ That’s where the magic happens. That’s where the magic is FORCED to happen.
… which is a stimulant manufactured by the Emerald Tower Gentleman’s society–but of much greater technological complication than we can today comprehend–and he works ferociously on his crafts, and his games…the tinkerer at play–and at full power.maybe
In the other room he never leaves a mess. It must be spotless, detailed, and what is expected it to be like upon return. In the other room it is ever-changing, he has purposeful cracks shot out of the ground. He has made his own firearm. A fog machine sometimes goes off.

…

And the simulation ends.” He throws a controller in his hand onto the floor of the hollow white room. The android trio were clutching each other, in utter terror as their worlds melt before their eyes (the androids are programmed to subjectively experience certain simulations, for full effect), The Emerald simulator, Aleon, walks to an exposed, bubble-like doorway, where exits the machine laboratory-consciousness and wakes up in the laboratory-simulated hotel-room, and he feels sick.

…

---

So the intro to Gargoyle will be the end of Pegasus/Genie.
And right at the end of Pegasus some major shit was going down at the racing ‘pub.’ (Before Gargoyle starts).
So, I don’t think this initial dive will take long, and so to fill the rest of this section up… we will have… ‘Start: The City Alive’ as an intro, and this can be re-arranged to be a little fraction of a [ Beholder ] segment, just a quick peek through ‘the eye,’ we don’t even know who”/ eye… and then…
… maybe we have the capture scenario, of Molly, and the first inklings of an interaction, only ghostily implied, nothing explicit, between Earth and the Asteroid.
Or else, we can go somewhere else for a time. It might be too early for that.

---

And so, sometimes a change in lesson plan. The next lesson was still focused on the attributes of the cell, histology, and the principles of cellular metabolism. They taught the cell to be like a city, with a waste disposal system requiring units of transportations as well as dumping facilities which can intercept and secure the release of the toxic materials from the membrane of the cell, utilizing embedded proteins within the lipid bi-layer to transfer protein triggering mechanisms which allow entrance and exit through the very liquid-crystal transistor of a cell, those same protein complexes acting endlessly as sensors of the surrounding area and data receivers with triggering mechanisms of their own for organelles to obey within the cell membrane lipid bi-layer.
Okay, so the cell has a central hub with the blueprints for the entire cell, and you need little protein complexes in order to open up the code, replicate a small snippet of it, RNA, which is like a phot negative or a scan of a blueprint, and protein complexes are needed to bring the scans somewhere else inside the cell, transcribing the series of amino acids in sequence, and using a protein complex to fold another protein into a triggering shape or protein complex which is used in operating some other mechanism within the cell.
There are toll booths before entering New York, okay we get it. The trash trucks need to go somewhere, they need to manage sewage, they need ready construction crews, banks and energy power plants. They need glucose and oxygen. There are trillions of cells likes these, eukaryotic miniature cities, including bacteria, particularly in the gut where digestion is aided, by enzymes which are protein complexes assembled by the cell that catalyze, make go faster and efficiently, chemical reactions—which is every single transaction within the electro-chemical framework of biology.
The principles were fractal, AL noticed, certain things seem to scale up and scale down in their applications. There are war games, not allowed in school VR’s but at home you can get them, and the maintenance and assemblage of a military is similar in these games to a lot of what happens in biology.
The predator element is setup within us, and there are small dominations in the game of personalities every day! You can still see little scuffles at the shopping markets and grocery stores today—let alone gas stations.
The Predatory element is all around us, in sports, in competitive business, or at a dinner party, but it was entrained there for logical survival and propagation necessities. I won’t hark on them, for I’m sure everybody to some degree already knows what I’m talking about here.
But there is a leveled playing field in the ubiquity and character of these games at present in our society, and it’s a subtle whisperer equalizer. But not in the new VR’s, the Total-Immersion ones.
There, far more is possible for a predator. A predator for fun, to get your red flags going too fast, it’s just for some entertaining gaming.
I was never a gambler, so instead I’m a predator, and in the game world of the new Total-Immersion Topaz variety there is more skill which can be applied than is permitted with a handheld receiver, a paltry few buttons, a couple of joysticks, and maybe a left and right trigger—this Totally-Immersive technology always for a sword man to use subtle arching of the wrist, or the direct placement of a heel.
Upon landing on the ground from a jump I don’t feel the pain of the landing, but my whole body feels the shock absorption and I can measure or gauge the height of fall that would cost a life from my scenario-character, and I can somehow feel that is the only explanation, like qualified and measured by my own brain… it’s real life.
But of course I don’t ‘feel’ the pain, or anything horrific like that, but I feel things, like, maybe for example another character behind me. There are no visual cues, no foot steps heard, just an odd feeling… like a change in the air, or energy, something different about being in a room, and since it’s a game where I’m a spy it probably is. When you’re a spy internationally who’s survived as long there’s always a guy right behind you. There’s always some assassin in the ski closet.

…

And so, sometimes a change in lesson plan. The next lesson was still focused on the attributes of the cell, histology, and the principles of cellular metabolism and organelles, the tiny organs of the cells. They taught that the cell is like a city, with a waste disposal system requiring units of transportations as well as dumping facilities which can intercept and secure the release of the toxic materials from the membrane of the cell, utilizing embedded proteins within the lipid bi-layer to transfer protein triggering mechanisms which allow entrance and exit through the very cell, that liquid-crystal transistor which is the basis for organic life, those same protein complexes act endlessly as sensors, scanning and reacting to the surrounding area, data receivers, with triggering mechanisms of their own for organelles to obey within the cellular lipid bi-layered membrane.
Okay, so the cell has a central hub with the blueprints for the entire cell, got it, and you need little protein complexes in order to open up the code, to replicate a small snippet of it and then put it back where you found it, RNA, which is like a photo negative, or a scan of a blueprint, and protein complexes are needed to bring the scans somewhere outside the gated nuclues, elsewhere inside the cell, transcribing the series of amino acids in sequence, and using a protein complex to fold another protein into a triggering shape or protein complex which is used in operating some other mechanism within the cell.
There are toll booths before entering New York city, gates and channels, okay we get it. The trash trucks need to go somewhere, they need to manage sewage, they need ready construction crews, banks and energy power plants. They need glucose and oxygen. There are trillions of cells likes these, eukaryotic miniature cities, including bacteria, particularly in the gut where digestion is aided, by enzymes which are protein complexes assembled by the cell that catalyze, or make go faster and more efficiently, basically all chemical reactions—which is every transaction within the electro-chemical framework of cell biology.
The principles were fractal, AL noticed, certain things seem to scale up and scale down in their applications. There are war games, not allowed in school VR’s but at home you can get them, and the maintenance and assemblage of a military is similar in these games to a lot of what happens in biology.
The predator element is setup within us, still within us, and there are small dominations in the game of personalities you can see every day! You can still witness little scuffles at the shopping markets, and the grocery stores, happening today—let alone at the gas stations.
The Predatory element is all around us, in sports, in competitive business, or at a dinner party, but it was entrained in us, engrained there, for logical reasons ofsurvival and propagation, it was put there by necessity. I won’t hark on them, the necessities, for I’m sure everybody to some degree already knows what I’m talking about here. It would be rote to number and go through them.
But there is a leveled playing field in the ubiquity and character of these games at present in our society, and it’s a subtley whispered equalizer. 

But not in the new VR’s.
In the Total-Immersion ones.
There, far more is possible for a predator. A predator for fun, dont get your red flags going too fast, it’s just for some entertaining gaming.
I never saw myself as a gambler, so instead I’m a predator, and in the gaming world of the new Total-Immersion Topaz variety there is more skill which can be applied than is permitted with a handheld receiver: a paltry few, red, blue, green-colored buttons, a couple of joysticks, and maybe a left and right trigger—this Totally-Immersive technology allows for a swordsman to use subtle arching of the wrist, movement of the hips, or the direct placements of a heel.
Upon landing from a jump on hard ground I don’t feel the pain of the landing, but my whole body feels the shock absorption and I can measure or gauge the height of fall that would cost a life from my scenario-character’s life bar, and I can somehow feel that is the only explanation, like qualified and measured by my own brain… it is real life. But of course I don’t ‘feel’ the pain, or anything horrific like that, but I feel things, like, maybe for example another character behind me. There are no visual cues, no foot steps heard, just an odd feeling… like a change in the air, or energy, something different about being in a room, and since it’s a game where I’m a spy it probably is. When you’re a spy, with a reputation internationally, and one who’s survived ‘this’ long, there’s always a guy right behind you. 

There’s always some assassin in the ski closet.




---

The Airship

Aleon’s dad owns an airship, but the blimp section is actually a manufacturing facility and the cabin section is their domicile. When they’re using it.
Sometimes they’d go on a family vacation on it, or AL’s dad wanted to work from there for awhile, spontaneously, usually only a week or a month at most, every half year or so. At the end of the workday his father comes down a ladder and spends time with his family below. Sometimes we’ll hover just over some crater-pool of Sapphire for awhile. It’s great for spending time together.
And getting away from it all…
The inside of the asteroid is hollowed out. The inside houses a massive series of complexes, highly organized, used for the warp technology which allows to get around the solar system, and this is mainly where the [Elf] character-class is concerned…
h. Elf study electro-magnetism, vibrations, harmonics, and many other principles of physics.

…

---

…

‘Atoms?!’

“Atoms? What are atoms?”
Is that the ‘particles in the void’ cosmology? Oh, no—that’s Newtonian!”
“Machine universe: that’s the universe as mere particles, as machine! That’s not how you want to go around, living! Little hard spheres, that ‘everything’ is made out of! Pah! A star? or the chair your butt is sitting on—your butt’s particles too!—everything is made out of little particles called atoms, are they?
So you’d have us believe… Well, that old Newtonian stuff, I say you can toss it out, and those old economics and the theories ‘of Drachma in a vacuum’, throw it out too, drachma as particles in the machine, throw it out. Isn’t it said, ‘cause of the quantum mechanics, that that particle-atom type stuff! well, you just gotta THROW IT OUT!
Smoke it out; get it out of your minds.
It ain’t damn particles.
Well regardless, the atomic theorists, and their ions, and the charged little balls with the positive or the negative charge to ‘em, look: over there, at Thales! He’s an Ionian, the first philosopher, from Miletus, a city-state, ancient to you, bud, and whose first atomic theorists were ‘the’ first atomic theorists—unless you got some other planet Earth I didn’t hear about—and these Ionians were like the first philosophers.
The great dialogue of humanity culminated at Athens.
That’s why we have philosophy.
And the dialectic.
Well, … at least we have community. And communication, sure, I agree. To get to the heart of the matter, I just don’t think the older models do it Justice. Nah. Conversation. And community. Hell, even argument. That’s where the magic happens.

…

---

…


’Mr. Data (Commander Woland)’

Professor Woland? He’s just like Data, from Star Trek—the Next Genera—
He’s not like Data.
He’s not?
No.
Why… I mean, How so?
I think you’ve been around him too long.

Classical music is playing.
“Welcome home Mr. Data, well done.”
“Thank you sir.”
Professor Woland composed the away team. He was dressed up like Data, from ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation.’ He had been sent alone, to try and convince some settlers to move or something.
Sent by commander AL.
You’ve done fine work, mr. Data. Those settlers weren’t at first following you, but you were resourceful, and you found a way of convincing them.”
“Yes, sir. I feel once I had procured the correct… bait, to suit the fish, I was able to deploy a little or, what you call, ‘reverse psychology’, and though manipulation, it was technically the only way to convince them of the logic of our cause.”
“Indeed, mr. data. Fine work. That will be all.”
Officer Data nodded to his commander, and left for the Command Bridge…-end-