Presenting: The Naucine (part 1)

   "Their Council membership is a continuing stain on the Milieu!" howled Wol'arr, his mien indicating moderate anger per com-main's universal emotional context indication.  "The Arr'yoo call upon the noble Naucine to support our petition to censure and revoke Xylanthan membership!" Sincere respect.

   It was, for former ambassador to the Milieu Aperiodic Tesselation, the same drama on a different day.  After three centuries' tenure as the Naucine representative on the Milieu's Coordinating Council, 'Aper' had become quite accustomed to the various cries of outrage, demands, mortal grievances, and false appeals to nobility and enlightenment various exo-species engaged in to achieve their ends.  What had been surprising was that the tedious litany had mysteriously continued, even increased in volume, since his resignation.

  Quite perplexing.

  Fortunately, private life had freed him from the constraints of formality and political language - he was free to speak his mind, and had told Wol'arr, on no less than three separate occasions, that the CHO-main Canidus was an overdramatic lout.  The fourth was fast approaching.

  It was all a game, no less so than the game Seq they had gathered for, and one that Aper could not seem to escape from.  "I'm afraid the naucine position on the subject of Xylanthan membership is unchanged."  Mild regret, ambivalence.  "They are the natural, evolutionary result of a unique conflux of circumstances.  While we find the duplicitous circumstances surrounding their arrangement with the CHO-main Locus of their world, it cannot be ignored that they chose nnot to obliterate their aggressors."  Minor apology.

  He led his hirsute guest towards the game room.  Aper was playing host to officials and liasions for the Arr'yoo, Ixion, and the Forged.  It was only natural that Wol'arr would attempt to canvass for support; indeed it was almost required.  The Arr'yoo were not yet advanced enough to be seriously considered for a council seat without sponsorship; even with sponsorship, it would be an uphill battle.  They had only recently begun terraforming efforts to colonize their system, to make use of the gravitational intra-system transport network they were fortunate enough to have, to overturn an economic system premised on scarcity by mining asteroids for resources.  They were generally considered too technologically undeveloped for sponsorship or mentoring; yet first contact had been made in an effort to stave off Nihil incursions.

  However, Wol'arr's entreaty was doomed to failure from the outset.  The Ixion were too busy as the literal workhorse of the Milieu to take on mentoring a pre-interstellar species or to take on more conflict.  The Forged were still coming to terms with their comparatively recent and sudden ascension into galactic civilization.  The Naucine were generally loathe to interfere at any level, and despite the friendship Aper shared with Wol'arr, the Naucine had been opposed to contact in the absence of any evidence of an impending Nihil experiment.

  "Moreover, they are the sovereign power of their world, by their own means.  Whatever else may be true, this we must respect, or else there is no cause to respect the authority of any species anywhere, let alone that of the Milieu."  This they all knew; it had been the final argument that sealed Xylanthan membership.  There was no justification in opposing the Nihil Cooperative if the Ascendant Milieu did the same, whatever their good intentions may be.

  "Forgive my outburst; it is a frustrating situation," Wol'arr growled.

  "Overdramatic lout."

  Wol'arr laughed heartily as he did every time.  Despite the circumstances, the Arr'yoo had a vivaciousness of spirit that naucine admired and appreciated.  He had also been a quick study at Seq, though predictable at times.  The game room was one of the perks of private life; besides having a private vessel at his disposal, he maintained spacious quarters at the Milieu Core, including a large anti-grav room for Seq, and no shortage of interesting players.

  Seq had surprisingly become a cultural export of the Naucine.  In its original incarnation, Seq was a board game, originally played on an ocean floor or convenient coral reef, and later on moulded sand and dirt.  Bits of bone, shell, teeth, scales, twigs, feathers, and so forth served as pieces, generally representing the creatures they came from.  The game play represented interactions between ecosystems and evolution as animals competed for territory, resources, and survival.  It was a game they did not play to win, but one in which both players strove to achieve elegance and beauty in their play.

  It was a runaway hit on the galactic stage.  Once crews aboard ships had picked up how to play, the game had spread like wildfire.  Among the CHO-main Varietas especially Seq enjoyed wild popularity, leading to public game spaces and portable technology for holographically rendering terrain and pieces.  And then slowly, the game changed.

  In CHO-main hands (paws, grippers, etc.) new pieces were introduced.  Rather than animals, they were various sentients, military and civilian units that interacted.  No longer did gameplay represent ecologies and evolution, but various racial civilizations and their interactions and development.

  The Naucine were honored beyond belief.  For their game of evolution to itself evolve into something greater through contact with others was a purity of form like unto art.  Seq saw renewed interest among the Naucine as new pieces, sets, and stages were available.  At its highest levels, Seq represented differing ideologies engaging in discourse and debate.

  The game space projected a variety of biomes - although his game space was capable of nanot construction, he had employed holographic representations out of respect for the Forged liasion - from verdant forests, complete with simulated wildlife, to unforgiving tundra.

  Aper bowed to his guests who were already seated.  "Welcome friends."  Joy, gratitude.  "I present to you, Wol'arr, representative of the Arr'yoo."  He gestured around the room, first to the quadruped centauroid, "Krellin, officer of the Ix embassy," then to the shiny, ambiguous CHO-main, "Teodore, junior ambassador of the Forged," and finally to another naucine, "Concentric Tangents, my... nephew I suppose."  Greetings were exchanged as the holographic displays to select pieces appeared before each player.  "Conc was hatched several generations after me from the same creche.  We have hopes that he will take up the position of ambassador one day," Aper explained conversationally.  His conversation with Wol'arr had given him inspiration for this round of Seq; his selection was entirely of an identical type.

  "If you have any discretion in the matter Conc," Krellin's bass rumbled, "I suggest joining the explorer's corps.  More interesting sights, fewer repeated complaints."  They all chuckled.

  Teodore's ambiguous frame pulsed amorphously as he moved his arm, making his decisions quickly and decisively.  "Sometimes the complaints are interesting in their own right though," he offered.

  Aper glanced at his nephew with one of his lateral eyes.  Conc had gestured his good natured amusement, but seemed deeply engaged in making his selections, considering units from numerous and varied sets.  "However I may best serve the people," had been his demurred reply as he finished his selection.

The Drop (part 2)

#The Library of Alexandria (CIC) -> *Near Earth Assault Group*
-Drop Zones coordinated.  Commence drops.

Well, that's us, Pancaked thought.  He sent a copy of the message to his flanked escorts - 2 wings of Dragonfly class carrier craft, each one carrying a trine of Antica semi autonomous offensive drones in the cargo-tail - and to the Djinni avatar.  It was a strange sensation to feel the insistent pull of true gravity, not at all like the simulated rule that defined "down".  The real thing was akin to being an ant falling prey to an antlion's trap; inexolarable, inescapable.

As he accelerated downwards in the grip of Earth's gravity, atmospheric friction began to heat his outer armor plating.  He was momentarily tempted to use his Material State Energy field to dissipate the rapidly rising temperature in the surrounding air, but decided against it.  Energy management will be tricky soon enough, he thought.  It wasn't as if he carried biological cargo in any event.

The burning air soon cleared away as Pancake's descent continued; as he inverted his thruster pads, he could detect, at some distance, various batch siblings and other elements of the assault group.  Most had, like him, accelerated and left their escorts behind.  That had been the plan in any event; the Antica could not withstand a high speed drop, nor extreme reentry temperatures.  The Dragonflies would take a slower descent into atmosphere, use their superior speed to close the distance, the release its complement of Antica drones in mid-speed pass shortly after the Pangolin's crash stop.

However, few Pangolins were level with his altitude; the majority were Goliath class constructors.  Shaped roughly like a crab (with two parallel dorsal blisters running front to rear), the "Cthulu Crab" was massive, three times the size of a Pangolin.  Its lateral edges and dorsal blisters held four engines capable of reaching orbit unassisted; they each unfolded into extendable pincer claws when powered flight was no longer needed.  The massive scoop-like claws (and blast furnace engines they shielded) were equally suited to excavation of minerals as tearing down buildings.  They were also well suited to latching onto large capital ships (in simulated trials) and using its centrally mounted ultrasonic pulse laser to bore through armor and mountain alike with ease.  It was, however, only lightly armored: between four massive engines, secondary thrusters, cargo space for storing recovered minerals, weapon systems, swarms of nanite missiles to speed construction and deconstruction of structures, and nano factories there was little space (or load bearing capacity) for armoring.  As such, the Goliaths were nearly all on track to crash-stop in coastal waters, deal with oceanic pipelines and rigs, before proceeding on their eight pylon-like legs to naval bases, nuclear power plants, and population centers.  The non-compressible nature or water and its excellent energy absorption profile made a crash-stop maneuver in open waters much safer; the trade off was that one was generally quite far from the target.

Those Pangolins not performing a full crash-stop like Pancaked, or using their thrusters to actively decelerate for a completely controlled landing, would be performing a "cloud-stop", a nanite cloud assisted crash-stop.  Using their onboard weapon systems, those Pangolins would fire multiple slalvos at their designated landing site, releasing a large cloud of nanites.  Although each individual nano-scale machine had minimal mass for energy absorption, when multiplexed they were highly capable of absorbing and redirecting energy.  The cloud, intricately linked in three dimensional hexagonal structure, would act like a spongy cushion, reducing a falling Pangolin's speed to safe levels (assisted by the Pangolin's own thrusters in reverse) for landing in under 20 meters.  This method was well suited for dropping a Pangolin quickly onto an area with a large amount of surface material designated for deconstruction; the Pangolin's plunge would also serve to disperse a large nanite payload over a wide area surrounding the drop site.

The target area was drawing closer.  As expected, the military base had been ignored by the global missile strikes that had followed the sudden departure of the Ssi-ruhk.  This particular institute housed no ICBMs, no substantially store of fighting machines or supplies.  Although publicly it was listed as a training center for officers and drone warfare, it's actual purpose was to develop technologically advanced weapons and equipment, including "smart" drones capable of operating intelligently in a combat zone without supervision by human operators, designating airstrike targets, performing reconnaissance, and sabotaging high value infrastructure and equipment.  The base consisted of the normal residential and commercial areas to one side, and an airstrip, administrative offices, training field, and hangars to the other.  The base's research and testing facilities were located underground, nominally accessible from a restricted elevator in the main administrative building, leading to a secure underground rail car.  For safety, secondary shafts existed to ensure a flow of oxygen, as well as auxiliary access for maintenance and repairs.  Another, secret, entrance existed linking the residential complexes where command staff resided, and a third in the mall complex security lockers.

The Writing Process

Everyone does it differently.

This is something I knew going in, but hadn't fully grasped upon after starting.  I mean, usually you only deal with the end product; the book reports and essays and such you did in school, those "don't really count."  Because a paper is a paper and a book is a book, right?

I sure hope so, because I am not writing this thing the night before it is due.

It was something that really struck me after looking through some favorite authors' work; in this case, I was looking at the authors of The Tenth Planet, specifically Kathryn Rusch.  I've got the books in paperback, because this was from a time when mp3s were still A Big Deal Gosh Darn It, and while we wrote and read things on the computer screen, the idea of reading (or writing) a book on a computer screen seemed nonsensical.  What are you doing? we'd say.  Print that out.  (If you were my Chinese mother, you'd also make a comment about eyes being more valuable than trees).  The books dealt with... well, I guess I'm still within the statute of limitations for spoilers, so never mind.  But nanotech swarms are a feature of the storyline, so I wanted to brush up on that one again.  I remember liking the first book quite a lot, the second one not as much, and found the third and ending to be rather disappointing.

I know, I pretty much just jinxed myself right there.

Anyway, Rusch also has a number of novellas (which, as everyone knows, are female novels) out.  I was reading her foreword in a sample of a collection of novellas when it really hit me how different the process can be.  She was detailing her experience with a publisher who was hesitant to offer a deal because she had published short story versions previously in sci-fi magazines.  From there, she talked about her process, writing for a living universe, and how stories come together for her; listening to her characters, etc.

Previously, I'd been writing in Dream Weavers and had hit a pretty serious block - I didn't know my main character.  I couldn't decide on a name for him because I didn't know what kind of person he was.  Rather, he was presenting himself in a way that was completely at odds with my idea of him.  Young guys don't really act or talk in a film-noir sort of way.  There's a reason it's Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis in Sin City and not, say, Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher.  Other aspects aside, you can't take them seriously acting in that sort of role because they simply look too young.

I already knew that for my two story concepts... well, that's the thing.  They are concepts.  I don't have some kind of timeline or flow chart or whatever else annotated before hand.  That worried me somewhat, because I had vague ideas of the story I wanted to tell, but no real clue of the players (and thus, their actions and motivations) in those stories.  Normally, I'd get hung up over that, blow it up into an insurmountable problem, and then just sit and sulk and never follow through on it (no really, I have practice).  Among the many things in life I'm trying to come to terms with, trying in spite of perceived obstacles is something I'm trying to become more comfortable with.

So I had stopped (could you tell?) for a while with vague plans to flesh out characters and motivations, and then just sort of smash everything together and see what happened.  Of course, that's not always so simple.  You come into a George RR Martin-esque sort of problem where you aren't necessarily sure how many characters you really need, and it all sort of spirals out of control (it is known).  And you know what? Coming up with names is REALLY GOD DAMN HARD.  I mean, it's hard enough when you have to pick an account name or forum name, or when you have to name your character online AND ALL THE GOOD ONES ARE TAKEN SO SCREW IT or you are playing an RPG and they are like, "hay, naming is hard, so name these four characters and all the other random guys you pick up along the way."

Except for me, it was getting to be like, Name this planet.  And it's solar system.  And it's dominant race.  And make a consistent naming convention for it's people.  And then name the galactic alliance they lead (the Ascendant Milieu and the Nihil (Cooperative), I'm really happy with those two, SO DON'T STEAL OR JUDGE).  Ok, Now do that again for like, the other 8 or 10 alien races you invented.  And then the human characters.  And the PDAI/AIDE (Personal Digital Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous Intelligent Digital Entity) assigned to each one.  And that was just for Digital Entities.

But I think you can see what I mean when I said sometimes problems run away from and grow into giant monsters that I can't seem to deal with.

With Dreamweavers, it's sort of an Alt-Earth scenario, so on the one hand, you have it easy because human names come pre-invented.  They have books of them, I'm told.  Indeed, everyone you know has one; sometimes more than one.  On the other hand, you can't sort of just rub your cat against the keyboard and call the result "Elvish" or whatever.  And picking names can be just as hard - especially last names, because I'm always encountering new ones on facebook, etc.  Like, wow that's a surname? And you don't want to call everyone "Smith."  And you want to pick the right name that sounds right, without being cheesy-obvious.  Like, John Stryker; he's a boxer.  No shit, really?

Anyway, Rusch was talking about how she'd write bits and pieces as they came to her... and they wouldn't necessarily be from/for the same story either.  It was an approach I hadn't fully considered, but which resonated with me.  But I do still need to define/describe my mains, give them names.  Then they can tell me what happens during the parts I don't know.

....I wrote all that, But basically all the important stuff was that one paragraph at the end.  Oh well.

As for the process... I'm always a little weird and particular about writing things.  Even when it came to term papers for law school (and yes, I did actually plan, research, and write a 20 page paper the night before it was due because I'm a moron, and shut up, it was excellent, it got an A-).  For me, I really like the kinesthetics of writing; I like to write by hand, on paper (preferably lined, yellow, legal pads) beforehand.  Usually I will use indentation-note taking style to outline what I want to say, fully writing in the parts I know with certainty.  This has been a habit for a long time; when I was in Japan and did a travelogue blog entry per day, I always wrote it out beforehand on paper, and then copied it onto digital format.  I did that for something like two months, each day, everyday (or equivalent thereof; sometimes It was a day or two before I got the post written and published, but there was an entry for each day is the point).

Right now I've got a little journal with all kinds of notes in it; it's a bit jumbled, because it has two stories worth of notes interspersed amongst each other, and also it's a little waterlogged from rain/Taiwan air.  I may have to transfer into two books, which is as good an excuse as any for my little-book-collecting habit.