part 16 Basilisk


-Basilisk-  ,  -Dinner with Andrianna- ,  -Frosty’s Tanking Reputation-    ,   -Curare, or brain-poison in the jungle- 

…

Basilisk intro

Revolution coup of the police force (as malevolent policies start moving through the legislators and the law courts). It’s revealed that the Basilisk uprising was lead itself by the police chief.

He was a Basilisk, of course. 

I mean, the police commissioner can be a Gargoyle, also, feasibly, but the reason why it’s always a Basilisk is because the position itself is a political one.

There was mass production of uzis, handheld machine guns, that was ubiquitous and massively unregulated, as being a pro freedom people this was undeniably a bit of a problem, for everyone was producing all sorts of everything, machines and experiments of all kinds—all around, basically everyone to some degree, to the degree which they can ‘afford’ to experiment and play, … and so some masked gangs will produce a spectacle, with automatic uzi rounds going off, and there seems to be two for each of them, one in every single hand, but a few others have some other gimmic, some arm-slow lever operating-trigger with a mini-machine gun mount, or a flame-thrower, or some kind of ice-blanketing shower-spouting innovative weapon the hobbyist had been painstakingly out together; and their outbursts we overall in society didn’t care about that all that much anymore, as most of them are little uzi firing spectacles, but there usually aren’t many people hurt afterward. They didn’t in their territories too, whole neighborhoods and sometimes cities carved out for their internecine conflicts, and video-uploaded spectacle escapades.

Fourth term, Simulation #4

Also paste in Beholder segment

Dex and Shaska intro for now…

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Simulation #4

Fourth term.

“Realism in the 4th dimension”

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“The sturdy gorgons attack with their acidic breath. The Mighty Gorgon has a death stare with a 10% chance per attack of killing 1 creature in a troop outright per 10 Mighty Gorgons.” “

-Heroes of Might and Magic III Wiki

He had been a Gargoyle for so many years, and they had embarked on several mysteries in that time period, but after all that Sherlockean interlude the darkness of life had not stricken through, to the hull of their fascination and curiosity in life. But, after years of training and exciting living, bold, and the edge of things, truly, on some element risking life, but in due course they have accounted for almost everything before engaging in anything, particularly the criminal’s takedown, which were masterpieces in planning, and staging was the effort, monumental, and accounting for so many elements and possibility that the encounters on video made for viral videos, across the Internet… and so, it was an anonymous host, and the guy captured criminals in a Batman suit. Yes, he was going to live out everyone’s fantasy, for real, and you can just shove it, because you know you wanna, and he’s doing it, and he’s wearing the 1989 suit, the first Keaton movie, that suit specifically, and you can fuck right off.

The battle tactics are each sound. The Tim Burton film is great. His battle tactics are sound, and AL had already come across some of this during his training in Manticore, with Raeff, but the first sound battle tactic he uses, in the ‘89 ‘Batman,’ is a whipping kind of battererang, trained endlessly thrown like a discus, and tied to a cord, a very specific fiber for ease of movement and strength obviously, which when the batterang is thrown in order to wrap around the legs or a leg of the enemy, from which you have them, already tied like captured game, confused and petrified to begin with that any of this was happening—was that… Batman?

They probably then went unconscious.

His second battle tactic is to approach the chemical facility from the highest floor first. The warrior waits for his prey to laugh in victory, they are distracted in their temporary reverence in themselves. And so their guard’s down.

Fire the gadget, after descending right in front of them, from your wire harness, you wanna get the bat wings out, for effect, and

you can count on about a micro second of shock, of utter dumbfoundment, and you exploit this guarantee, because there will be a fraction of a moment where these guys won’t know what to do with themselves, you could imagine, and so when the gadget gets fired: rat at one, the people, as you could imagine, who got shot with at it are overwhelmed with fear, a sure target when they’re petrified, and so the gadget fires off mere compressed air—but it has an explosive effect, and fires a wire right at the guy—he’s open mouthed like a fish and you hook the wire wrapped around the guy, it was meant in the first place only for wrapping around, and detaining the guy, but… for added effect… since there’s other people in the room, in the chemical facility, and fear to capitalize on the ‘minds of men’ on… and so, like ‘The Shadow’, he administered a minute of awesome Justice. Pulling the cord—he slings it around some bars dangling the crook from the second floor, as if to tell the police officers below “I’ve bagged ‘my’ first target, boys, are you guys gonna step up to the plate here?”

The man dangling from a wire, seemingly coming out of his neck, but in reality it was safely around his waist, it was the fear effect for the others that was the object of the grandiose stunt… and then the warrior’s secondary battle tactic is to repulse back up, there’s some pre-laid wiring there, I grab the handle and quickly zip-line upward, and away up to the top of the building again, to reset, zoom out, and re-assess my area.

There may already be too many police here to acquire any more targets. Maybe one or two more, and then a semi-theatrical extraction—with high-potency smoke bombs. 💨 

But that doesn’t happen. You’ve got your own ‘Jack Napier’. After zip-lining back to the roof-top area, you encounter. A shoot-out: bullet fire incurs on the police’s investigation and apprehension strategy, and there is, disastrously, a shoot occurring—between the police and the gangsters.

One of the group gets separated. He sees it. He picks up on it immediately, and simply steps aside, into a shadow, a corner right beside the path he’s just about to walk inside of, any second now… 

And that is another down, and there is probably time enough for one more, an appearance, too if he has time for it, to put the fear of the ‘bat’ into the hearts of men, and ‘The Shadows’ knows…

All Rights Reserved. 

But that guy was a nobody, you’re Jack Napier, this guy’s your primary target, the celebrity-criminal, who was running up the stairs at the moment, probably slinking off to try and get away, certainly the guy who would abandon all the men in his employ and save his own skin, when the heat got too much for him. He didn’t see it, but I dangled my cape right over him before he reached the top of the staircase, and the I vanished into the shadows again, observing him.

He wasn’t panicking. He’s too cool for that. He’s a cool kind of guy, but that wouldn’t save him here. There’s no negotiating with the ‘bat.’ The spirit of the ‘bat’ wants you to feel the horror, the terror! of the gravity of what you’ve done, and he wants you to tell all your friends about him.

All the hoodlums, and gun-brandishing thugs, and gangsters across the city. The Revolutionaries and the users of violent force.

The Michael Keaton Batman, from 1989, is stalking his prey, the celebrity-criminal, trying escape from the roof top Exit Access, and this one he will stun by merely running up close to him, silently, and the moment when he turns with his firearm to view me, I will be standing still, calm, cool, the warrior collected—the warrior in his element, and I have just the faintest smile upon my face. 

“Nice outfit.”

He mocks me. 

“See if you can up on that cat-walk,” orders Jim Gordon, “but be careful, be ‘very’ careful.” The officers are as blood hounds, on the scent.

The fiend—he smiles, ignoring my direction, as he has gotten sights on a collaborator of his, within the police unit, a dirty cop, or corrupt officer, and… the viper… smiles as he stands with black-gloved hand about to fire upon his rival from this vantage spot, from his cowering cover of a fraction of a second ago, in triumph as he is in firing distance and can pull one over on one of his collaborators, now cornered, everyone in the world is his enemy, and in one last act of nihilism he will murder this fat, old, lazy slob, and probably right around the corner from his retirement too.

But now, that it’s all probably about to be over, unless the stairs and the Exit plans pans out in the next second, the gamble of it all, the gamblers toss up scenario, I had already doubled back and had been on the rooftops, already on my way out—but the target was too tempting, I had my eyes on him anyways, it was the celebrity-criminal himself, and so I retracted from the cable-wire system, and bolted into another, and I was off on a zip-line set up to go another direction, only before the operation, traversing diagonal into the den of this accursed citizen, who was now going to be kicked in the hand. His handgun flies out of his grasp from the impact. A masterful kick. And that’s basically all it took, one kick, and considering the pre-planning and all the cables and the wiring… it was Just some ropes and hydraulics… and a lot of specs reading beforehand, and fast deployment… and the smoke bombs, which I hadn’t then used yet, in battlefield testing, that would be for my exiting routing: the smoke bombs I had to admixture myself. It was each the size of a gobbstopper, and it quickly produced a think cloud of slow-moving white smoke…. a whole lot of it, surprising for the size, and while I am ascending upwards on the final pulley rope, I didn’t need it here but my grappling hook actually utilized an admixture I developed, another one, which used an industrial-strength clump of adhesive, which was quick-drying once it stuck, and then nearly unbreakable, so evidence of THAT stuff might be suspect to leave behind, and a hydraulic motor system, from my cape spread out behind me I can gauge my zip line’s and my fall speed, and know that everything feels to be working correctly, and then I make my visible exit, visible for cop and gangster alike, I want the papers catching wind of this, they won’t publish it, I know them well enough to know that, all the Gotham Newspapers, but there’ll be rumors of it, I know m, and I’ll know about that moment where I saw, with my own eyes, the police commissioner mouthing, “Oh…my…God” as I look down upon him, the Red Dragon of his nightmares, of everyone’s nightmares, the gargoyle, a mystical being obsessed with Justice, through the mist white smoke… the puffy white clouds, so they barely can get a glimpse of me … as I get away, but they know what was there that night. They wouldn’t tell their own wives it, but they knew what they saw.

It was the Bat. I was preying upon them. The commissioner is good, and I know I can count on him, but a lot of militias have commandeered the force, and the takeover was usually subtle now, and obfuscated, sometimes hostile, but the big time guys weren’t. And I know what you’re thinking, what about all the pulleys and ropes, the wire cables, left behind, to be found by the city upon forensic investigation, well it was all custom-made, made by my hand… and so nothing traceable or significant to detect there.

You have to all face it, I got to be the ‘89 ‘Batman’ one-time.

There’s no getting around it.

If you’re theatrical, understood Jack Napier, you can do anything you wanted, and if you plan around them the police will always be 9 moves behind you guys. 

As long as you’ve got a costume on, apparently, you can interrupt police investigations now, that’s the joke of it. So, the game was over, when the reality stepped in… and a clown-themed vigilante, connected to that night at the chemical factor with the gangsters, shot up and killed a few Gotham citizens, at a press conference being held for the News.

No more playing dress up. Hmm. I liked the Roman body armor style of the ‘89 suit specifically, but I’ve got a replacement in mind…

“Can sOMboDy teLL ME, wHaT kiNd oF wOrLd tHaT wE liVe iN, wHeRe a mAn dResSeD uP liKe a BAT—gets all of my media…”

*(I like the 1989 Batman too, so much I think for it being the last era of the movie-making guy kind of industry, where they had to work some of the action shots around, think of the first scene with the Batmobile, you can tell the Industry had considered to leave way in the script for the action-shooting teams to compose an expensive car chase, street-setting scenario. 

The Industry made use of its movie-making guys to film that little crash scene in front of the ‘Monarch Theater’, moving making guys who were the Industry’s last in super heroes related business, before the computer-graphics guys, and the Marvel era of filming, came in.

Seriously, what kind of a world do we live in… where a guy dressed up like a spider… or an iron… takes all of the media?

This town needs an enema.

…

“… I think you weigh a little more than 108.”

It was because they were living in a time that was the shell, or the dead husk, of a former greatness… Metropolis had now become Gotham. And now the development had just peaked, and now they’ve experienced some unexpected decay, but though some of the Ruby streets that are the husks of their former selves… made in the old days of our more industrial ancestors, who years ago first build these coral-reef marvels of engineering during duress, and extreme scenarios they rose up to meet, for their families, and for respect for society, and t…

But there are more and more ganglands, and more shootings…

“The 200th Anniversary birthday gala gala has now indefinitely been postponed.”

He shot Bob. Anyways, he shot Bob even though it was unfair to, his “number one guy”, Jack Napier shot Bob anyways. “My Balloons?!” Why hadn’t someone told him he had one of those… things. It was a valid intelligence error to expect in his subordinate, but the subordinate seemed fairly competent otherwise, in the spy network a reliable informant, and a right-hand man, even, up until recently, but he shot Bob anyways because he’s the Joker, and that guy is really just the devil.

It’s a take in keeping together a good Spy network. I see it as a tale in the …

…

My spacecraft lies in heaps and ruin, crashed on the steps in front of the Cathedral… it’s monumental and ominous design in stone a stark parallel to my ship’s high-tech battlements… sparks pops and fizz as she comes around to inspect the crash, to find me, see if theres a trace of my remains in the rubble, and she screams as the ship’s control system fries and batteries explode, the flying craft many improvisations, and there are small motors and independent energy stems all around… and there was not trace of me, in the wreckage. I hid, not knowing if my enemy, Jack Napier, was going to find me first, one of his goons, like Bob, or the cops, but nobody showed up outside the stone cathedral to spot me.

I stumbled out, half dead to be honest. Whoa, I almost ran into this church… good thing there was a long stretch of road with nothing on it right in front of the Cathedral.

Moral rigidity, he thought about all the revolutionary alternatives, like the Jacobins, in France, and the blood-flowing madness of the public square guillotine, or the Russian Bolsheviks and machine gunning the entire family in a basement, the Czar’s family, mostly daughters…

Not much good in the long run, the bloody revolution.

The Moral Stance, and the reactions to it, isn’t that the whole story of history?

What is the moral stance?

What is the reaction to it. 

I thought about debating these things while stumbling away from my craft… there was someone there before but they’d gone now… and it seems like he was alone and could exit the craft, or the craft’s wreckage, on the steps of the Cathedral, and now… there’s nothing left to do but to trudge up that old Bell Tower.

The devils dances with your girlfriend, by the Pale Moonlight, dude—wake up! Stop living in a lie. And open your eyes to the fact that while she’s telling him how much she loves t he color purple, you need to get your crash-landed as, stumbling dumb ass, up that Bell Tower! Because Joker asked for only 5–or 10 minutes and he’s got hoodlums already deployed in the Belfrey.

Stumbling, your crashed prized flight vehicle, the one you put all your electronics experiments and designs, and had collaborated with other pilots, in secret, and experts, in perfecting it’s design… now in ruin, on the stairs of the church, a smoldering heap, and I stumbling and as battered as my ship, accidentally knock over some wooden pews on my way over to the stairs, and I just hope there aren’t ninjas I have to fight in a little while…

…

‘Frosty’s Tanking Reputation’

While Frosty is slowly falling into disfavor, his two “younger” friends are quickly becoming top brass. They’ve clearly been rising up the ranks lately, but they like to talk to Frosty like all Strategoi are equal in rank. Frosty liked to joke back that some are more equal than others. His two closest friends are becoming very equal indeed—and becoming more so by the day.

His friends had been invited to parties and other such gatherings within those crucial social circles which are so important to cultivate to get one’s career moving forward—and no doubt impressing all of them by using all of those tips and tricks Frosty had altruistically imparted to them over the years, without requiring so much as a “thank you,” of course, as it was his genuine pleasure to act as a kind of mentor… and of providing all the guidance they would need of the proper means in which to cultivate congeniality—effectively catalyzing their ascent in all manner of ways—again thanklessly… selflessly… it’s just the kind of guy he was… ‘is.’

Although is might appear Frosty was being worked out of the picture, phased out of his duties toward civilization, there was much to be done in the current historical period. The world could benefit from the aged and the experienced.

Limited resources, manufacturing and otherwise, of the re-building total civilization maintain real bottlenecks to our efforts in controlling the endlessly proliferating regimes within South America and Africa. The rainforests have reached all-time peaks of regrowth, and humanity is freer, and more wild, than ever before.

There is a strain on intel as well as military forces. 

There are endless societies and ways of living in the sprawling tropical rainforests; there is a raw force of life and innovation present in the endless green. 

Some places are safer than others, some are more innovative with what they have and others are more reliant on technology—some run on bullets, and gasoline. There are places in the forest powered by intimidation and crass displays of power, and others that…

…

<‘Curare, or Jungle Poisons’>.

Frosty: “You know, all we see from this building are the lights and sounds of the city, but the UE actually exerts little energy on the cities.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean concerning the ‘real’ work we are doing. Do you know where we—financially speaking—are holding our strongest attention?”

“Hmm, well, do you mean like on military spending?”

“Yes, sort of. The UE Tower we work for, Adobe, actually has its main focus upon the New Amazon. The rain forest was almost wiped out. However we were able to put a stop to that, and save these precious chemical compounds. This is how we’ve managed such stunning breakthroughs in wiping out various diseases. Also, we’ve made strides in creating some new ones… You know, we have reversed much of the damage done around the dawn of this millennia? Oh yes, that was Adobe. You see, finally the importance of the alkaloids—err, the chemical compounds found within the diverse plant-life that we’ve uncovered. Not to get too technical but the alkaloid compounds, basically those which have a Nitrogen atom attached to them, have particular effects on human physiology, given to us by our plant allies—and through testing and experimentation we can identify the beneficial ones… and the harmful ones…”

“Wow. That is very interesting, Richard. So you’re saying that these compounds, created in the jungle—“

“Mainly the alkaloids—“

“—yes, the Alkaloids, have some effect on humans?”

     “Oh yes. Since the dawn of medicine we have relied on natural compounds to make our own medicines. Early in the second Millennia there was all this Industry being done at the expense of the rain forest. Today…well it became such a public issue once everything else got so bad…that we were sort of forced to wizen up, quickly. We did this by offering financial incentives for ecologically sound means of harvesting in the Amazon. These incentives came with more minds on research, and more minds on research meant leap after leap in our understanding of organic chemistry.”

     “And that’s why we have so many citizens living in the Amazon, right?”

   “Yes, we have a very large presence in the Amazon. People there live a tribal, primitive life, something apart from the hustle and bustle we have in these cities. Some of it creeps through, but that is unpreventable. They resist technology out there, for the main part, and we encourage it. You see, to provide more jobs out in the rain forest for the locals, we manage a strict flow of the profits back to the country of origin. This creates a demand originating from the source, and not some short-sighted exploitation. In return, Mother Nature has returned to us our Lungs—“

     “Our lungs? What do you mean by that.”

     “Well I mean our lungs—we have an atmosphere. Without the great oxygen output by the rain forest our planet’s atmosphere could have gone dangerously out of whack. It was an endeavor, to save our ability to breathe, that I think was particularly appropriate. It was one of our first acts, after the ‘Great Separation,’ as a species. In fact, this has been the great mission of Adobe Tower since its inception.” A quote flashed on Frosty’s view screen: 

     –“A number of the bigger crocodilians are perversely unable to see the special nature of the human animal, and absent-mindedly eat him from time to time.”– Archie Carr, 1940.

     He decided not to use it in conversation.

“It seems like an abandoned city, but it’s actually still functioning…”

…

It was by no means a Homogeneous populations across the continents. Those that like to play with fire seem to stick to themselves, and although there is of course quite a bit of spillover, the residents of the emerging Earth Empire typically have nothing to worry about. 

The new empire is extremely tactical in its attempts at policing the globe, but if the situation isn’t threatening ‘his’ citizens, Frosty didn’t care what people did out there. His job was simply to keep it ‘out there.’

…

Like Athens has Sparta, there is a far more militarized Tower which has sparked a rivalry between Frost’s government and its former successes, versus an ongoing debate on the use of force, and the strictness of procedures, in dealing with the massive population and regime swarms of the ‘new amazon.’

A Choregos … An Archon … A Strategoi … a Proxinos (ambassador) … Helots (or military Plebeians) … 

Okay, now let’s take a break right there…This will be a series of stories Within the Amazon. This will arc parallel with stories told from the simulated realities that Aleon has experienced on Utopiaoid. Aleon is being shown these experiences, of the Earthling, and is being made to believe it is by Frosty who has, brilliantly, hacked him from Earth. The transmissions come in, after traveling a very long time, but somehow, one of the humans on Earth have become able to access his terminus, and relay video images to him. The videos cryptically glorify this man, who appears to be real, who endures exciting hardships, shamanic voyages of the spirit, literally dying and becoming revived by the use of the improving medicine and engineering. Of course, Frosty is being shown videos as well, unaware of the entities who are communicating with him, also as well… 

So these stories will play in to Frosty’s world in the way that I have mentioned earlier. Frosty will be describing the state of the government’s “new bond” within the Amazon, where they have sterilized the wild out of the jungle. He will speak as if we have mastered our harmony with nature, and will be unwittingly a propaganda machine, as we see the harsh reality of the situation within the Amazon. It is true, however, that much of the efforts to restore the Amazon by the government have gone well, and how vast it has become–much more of the world is covered with lush rainforest due to the technological jumps in terra-forming. Indeed, Aleon could say that the world was getting its shit together, in a certain technologically significant way, but never did he watch these experiences and say that they were advanced enough to be allowed to grow into space, his own privileged dominion. Then, he had witnessed what things he saw the Earthling do.    

In theory, it should not matter that Draggis has cultivated these experiences. It is a perceived rule, a goal line, if you will, where the goal of the game, in some sense, is always to stay alive. Aleon even believes that his mental ability to move his body, to exist in the world and to test his limits is much greater–having never required life amongst the congestive straining, the stress and the agonies that Draggis was perpetually enduring. Aleon finds that he therefore is “healthier,” and therefore more “fully developed.” However, was he really believing this? What was this obsession? He could not ignore, he glorified this Earthling. It was the purest and most impressive sort of performance art that he had ever witnessed. He must return to Earth and meet this man. He is compelled to. Destiny would bring them together. It’s his mistake in realizing why that will bring all of the Utopiaoids back to their parent Mother Earth and Human Government.