Sunday, 28 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Continued at https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=793
Requested by Kiki and by Prarilius Canix. PC writes:
Specifically, a sci-fi RRR. Most of the past ones have been fantasy. I like fantasy a lot, but I think we could use something different.
Date: February 2, 2007
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction, Nonrandom Craziness
Awesome. I think we should plan this out before we go any further. Anyone got a good setting? That’s usually crucial to sci-fi.
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GAPAs don’t count, but here’s a suggestion. To keep things grounded, how about setting the story in our solar system in a future without (or before) interstellar travel? I’ve always been partial to the asteroid belt, myself. Hollow them out, pressurize them, live in them. Mine the rest for metals.
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OK, no interstellar travel, but anywhere within our solar system goes. Possible setting; Earth sends colonists out to planets. Colonies get going. Back on Earth, nuclear war starts. Massive evacuation from neutral countries to colonies. Earth is now uninhabitable, but humanity thrives. A few “Preserved Terran Habitats” are in orbit around a terraformed Mars. These Habitats are basically giant artificial ecosystems with the only remaining native Earth wildlife living in them. Ideas for colonies;
Mars: It has been terraformed to the point of habitability, but most of its climate resembles Siberia. The large cities are mostly at the equator, where the climate is nicer (i.e., like Alaska.)
Asteroid belt: See post 2. Good idea, Robert.
Europa: Moon of Jupiter. Some scientists believe that volcanic activity has melted enough of its ice to create an ocean. There are a few underwater habitats in that ocean.
Those are my only ideas. Venus and Mercury are too hot, Saturn and beyond are too cold (so is Jupiter for that matter, Europa is a bit of a planetary fluke).
Of course, this isn’t final. And even if we use this, we need a conflict still. Any ideas?
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we had a nice one a while back. the guys name begin with M and the girls name begin with L, and she kept getting all of the weapons. anybody remember it?
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I like the Europa idea myself. Maybe they could live in an underwater community.
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4- Nope.
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6- aw, c’mon, they were trying to rescue a load of people by stealing a ship?
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So, the Europa idea seems well liked. Underwater communities it is. Now we need characters and a problem. Just a loose outline, though.
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No, colonize Eris! Funfunfun! Survive w/ no sun!
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I know. There is a colony on each of Jupiter’s major moons. On Io, valuable minerals are mined from its volcanic surface. Europa is where most of the people live. Ganymede has the Preserved Terran Habitats in orbit around it. I have no idea what Callisto could be used for. Suggestions?
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Oooh, sci-fi. Special. *eyes become manga-wide with delight*
What’s happening there? What’s it about? Are the colonized planets united by one central government? What’s it like? As a rough estimate, is the government basically like in 1984 or like in The Puppet Masters or like in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or like in the later I, Robot stories or anarchy or oligarchy or monarchy(constitutuional/no?) or our current US democracy or a working democracy or communism or socialism or what? And who are the main characters? Adults living their lives? Orphaned children in the streets of New New London? Teens saving the world? Other? How many? Male/female? How’s the school system? Is the story funny or drama? It must be gripping and impossible to put down. Are there robots? Nanotech? (I know quite a lot about nanotechnology from lego league) What are common careers? Is it safe/possible to go outside? Are there windows? Do they know about prior life? Is there any resemblance to Orphans in the Sky, I think it was, with the ship’s rules a religion and prior life lost? How many generations away was the nuclear war? Is it easy to go from place to place, like as tourism or is it difficult/impossible to get there or to immigrate? How’s hygeine? Do people often go in spaceships? What makes it sci-fi?
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I like Robert’s idea about mining for metals.
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I like the thing about the colonies and the nuclear war. Perhaps they will have been out-of-contact with each other after the war and after the Earth is uninhabitable… Could the humans evolve different abilities over a long period of time in their new homes? And would rogue, warlike colonies exist?
I guess it would all have to be scientifically possible, though. That’s the thing about science fiction.
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10 is a good idea. Let’s use that. And the main plot should take place on Io, with a girl discovering bones of a humanoid Ioian somewhere. Good?
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11- Wow wow wow. Calm down. It’s an RRR. You figure it out as you go along. As far as I can tell, everyone’s just trying to pin down a location right now.
Robert’s idea was very good. Plausible and well constructed. So is Europa, b/c it’s already been determined it might be suitable for life.
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Oops. Not wow. Whoa.
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I like the asteriod belt idea. It could build to a big fight between the asteroid dwellers and miners, and the Save the Asteroids Federation, who believe the asteroids are a natural wasteland that should remain untouched. Now there’s a minefield.
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I like the idea of using all of jupiter’s major moons.
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I have an idea. Originally, let’s say, there was only a colony orbiting Io, sending ships down for mining, but then the Great War happened and peaceful countries evacuated the Earth. The population boom was enormous, so colonies were set up orbiting Jupiter, but mostly on Europa. Now, a young person discovers a small hideout of native Europans (think giant crabs) and learns that their habitat is being destroyed by the colonists’ electrolysis machines, which turn water into hydrogen (for fuel) and oxygen (for breathing), but also destroy some sort of microorganisms that are at the bottom of the Europan food chain. He/she reports this to the Environmental Supervisor, a kindly old guy, but before he can file a formal complaint with the Jovian Council, he suffers a tragic accident. Then the main character narrowly avoids death. (The person responsible for this is one of the mining supervisors on Io, who wants to keep the population on Europa so that he doesn’t have competition for the minerals.) But that’s just an idea.
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Let’s just get the setting, the character, and then start. Put it to a vote. Moons of Jupiter, or Asteroid Belt?
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They can always start out in one place and travel to the other later.
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Good idea. Where to start, though?
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Ok. A boy and a girl. Live on Ceres. Are curious, so hitch a ride to Io. Land. Start exploring. Find something.
Howzat? I really think we should use that, because the plot hasn’t been completely mapped out and it has lots of room for expansion.
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Io is really not inhabitable. No atmosphere, volcanoes every five feet. But otherwise I like it. It could be Io or any one of the moons of Jupiter. Depends on who writes that part. Let’s begin.
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Ian cautiously ascended the worn steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around. A vagabond like him would have been taken off the streets at once if he’d been seen by the police. But once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely gave him a cursory glance in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed. He was safe here.
Ian walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky casing and vanished between the shelves. Each book was a thick disc coated in green plastic, which projected the text and relevant images onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue-green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.
((Any good?))
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LOTSA GOOD!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian sighed. He had read tons of book about Terra, and even seen electroimages of what Terra would have looked like before the Warming Effect took full hold, and before the heavy metal pollution made the atmosphere completely opaque. He decided to find his favorite Terran tale, Trees: A New True Book. It was one of the few Terran books copied onto modern elebook form. He really didn’t get what trees were, except that they made oxygen, maybe through some primitive electrolysis system, and they were green and brown. All of the pictures in Trees had been eradicated, like all of the original Terran “phetos”, or whatever they called liveimaging back then. So Ian had really no idea what trees looked like, and he tried to imagine them as he automatically turned down the many isles towards “questionable nonfiction”. He was so engrossed in imagining Terra that he didn’t see the girl heading towards him with her eyes on the shelves around them.
Whooomph!
Ian and the girl collided, both falling towards the air-cushioned carboglass floor.
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25- wowza….your a good writer. sounds like a good start.
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OK. A little confusion here, but nothing we can’t straighten out. Were people driven off Terra by global warming or nuclear war? I have an idea. Global warming destroyed so many resources that people would do almost anything to get their next meal- including using the deadliest weapons of all time.
Also; Did you like my idea of calling the nuclear war World War Last? Because after it, there wouldn’t be any piece of the planet worth fighting over.
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I just want to say, Saturn’s moon Titan is supposed to be almost Earth like and there is a new study on it at NASA. Just if you all want to consider that in to the story.
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28- Sounds great.
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The girl was first to recover. She leaped up, grabbed a handful of elebooks from a nearby shelf, and dashed off into the depths of the library. Ian was about to apologize, but he found himself talking to empty air. With a sigh, he turned around and looked at the shelf that the girl had taken the books from.
The entire section was very dry, something about the floor plans of interplanetary ships. Why would a thirteen-year-old girl be interested in that?
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((Whoo! So nice to return to the Museblog w/ a brand new RRR waiting for me.))
“Sorry,” Ian stated rather stupidly, reaching the end of his train of thought, and than was cuaght full on by another roaring, faster moving one. He had to apologize. His mother would have liked it. He remembered back when they had a room. She’s sit in her rocking chair, knitting – so old fashioned, but she didn’t care – and he’d stand in front of her, surveying the shabby walls. “If you ever knock into a girl, or step on your feet, apologize,” she’d say to him. “If they knock into your or step on your feet, do the same.” “That’s their fault, isn’t it?” “Not the point,” she’d snap. “You apologize! Chase after her if you have to!” Now, he pulled his head back into a forward position and scrambled to his feet. It was stupid, but it would be disprespecting his mother’s memory if he didn’t run. And so he did.
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“Er, look, er, sorry,” he stuttered, catching up to the girl.
“Do I really care?” said the girl, who had set down the elebook disk on a carboglass table and turned it on. Ian was shocked. Ceres was an extremely peaceful and conservative planet. Nobody really disaccepted an apology.
“What’s, er, your name?” he said, trying to strike up a conversation with this strange girl.
“It’s Kari, but that’s none of your beeswax.”
“What’s beeswax?”
“Terran word.”
“How do you know Terran?”
“As I said, none of your beeswax.”
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((Never done this before, but I’ll give it a shot))
Ian looked at this girl, this Kari, in astonishment. She was so rude, and yet, so interesting…
“Do you know a lot of Terran?” he asked, apprehensively.
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s none of your beeswax!”
Ian looked at her, dumbfounded. Dejected, he turned away.
“Good-bye.” he said sullenly, and started back towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He heard something slam behind him.
“Wait!” Kari cried out, as she ran up to him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been a little more gracious. I guess I’m just stressed out. I accept your apology.”
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Ian turned around. “Uh, thanks,” he said. “I noticed that you were looking in the section about the architecture of interplanetary ships- are you really interested in that?”
Kari evaded the question. “Why are you here?” she asked. “This is about the time when most kids should be in the education session.”
Ian bristled. “I’m as old as you are,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“Nobody to make me go anywhere else. Mom’s gone.” The way she said gone seemed to imply that it was not just a trip to the supply base. This “gone” could be translated to mean “never coming back.”
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I’ll try this thing too…
It happened all too frequently to the members of Ian’s colony. Once your ship breaks through the atmosphere, gliding softly towards the stars… it’s probably a 50-50 chance for survival. Your fate rests in the hands of the dark galaxy.
As they say, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
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a horrible fate,but better than staying on the remnants of the old planet and dying faster than you can say “nuclear.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ian lamely. There wasn’t a lot to say in a situation like this.
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Kari didn’t reply, and just looked strait ahead. She was good at not showing her feelings. She had to be. In her mind though, she could be screaming of lonlyness and no one would ever know. In Ian’s colony, the mind was the one place that has not yet been invaded by the government, and even that was being threatened.
The mind was the last place of privacy, but many in the government were trying to break even that berrier.
(sorry, a lot of things are most likely to be spelled wrong. ^_^)
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The entire asteroid belt was coming under the banner of the mining barons, and Ceres was the last of the lonely little planetoids that retained some degree of freedom. Kari knew. She’d seen the corruption on Ida, Dactyl, XG1 23… the list went on. Ceres was going to fall. It was inevitable. However, Kari wasn’t planning on being there to see it. She’d heard of the prosperity and civil rights on the Jovian moons. That was why she’d been researching interplanetary trading ships. Particularly the maintenance corridors. And how to access them from the ground. Illegally.
“Listen,” she said to Ian. “You seem like a kid who can keep a secret, and judging from the fact that you aren’t in school- no offense- you don’t have any ties to Ceres. Are you familiar with the old Terran term “stowaway?”
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“no” replied Ian “i am a 100% terran stowaway notliker.”
“but you know what it is right?” asked Kari
“yes, i mean leave me alone! And go save a galaxy your self cuz i am going to get a sandwich!” he said as he stormed off.
(is that out of charector for ian?)
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(40-A bit. I think we’re trying to keep it serious.)
Ian stopped. He half-turned and looked over his shoulder at the girl now using watery to eyes cast a glance at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t like the idea of stowaways…it was a stowaway that killed my parents on their way back to Ceres from a trip to Ida. He killed them, then stole their ship. No one knows what happened to him, but the final transmit from the ship was a recording in which he said that he ‘was off in search of peace’…we’re not sure what that meant, but we never heard from him again. Anyway, that’s why I blew up at you…sorry.”
Kari looked at him thoughtfully. There stories were quite similar, really…only she’d never met her father. He left before she was born.
“It’s alright,” she said, a little cautiously. “I was just asking because, well, I want to get out of here, and if you have nowhere else to go, either, then, well…um…”
“You were planning to stowaway on an interplanetary trading ship?” Ian felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach…hard. Kari was only thirteen, or at least that’s all she looked, and was already planning illegal activities! He began to have doubts about whether or not this girl was any good at all….
“Well, yes, but, look, I don’t plan on killing anybody, and I just want to get away from here! You have no idea what it’s like to have no home to go to at the end of the day, and to have to scrounge for scraps to live on, and…”
“Actually, I do.” Ian interrupted her.
Kari looked flustered. “Oh, well…yes, I suppose you do…” she trailed off.
“I would like to go with you.” Ian said.
“You would?”
“Yes…I, too, want to get out of here…if I can do something other than creep around town like a rat all day, hoping I don’t get caught by the police, and then sleep in a box at night on an empty stomach, I’ll take it. I just wish it wasn’t something so dangerous…”
Kari brightened, a bit. She could tell that this Ian kid had at least a little thirst for adventure in him…maybe they weren’t so different, after all. “Well, it won’t be if we do it right. Here, I’ll show you a few of my plans, and you can tell me what you think of them.”
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(Snapple! *using watery eyes to cast…)
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“All right,” Ian said. “Where do you plan to go? Mars?”
“Heck no!” Kari laughed. “Trying to terraform that planet was a mistake. It’s habitable like Siberia was habitable.” Of course, neither Siberia nor any other part of Terra was now habitable by any stretch of the imagination, but Ian understood the metaphor.
“No,” Kari continued. “We’re heading for the Jovian moons.”
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Kari and Ian quikly boarded the next shuttle to the Jovian moons as quik as they could, for they were now classified as interplanatery outlaws. (planet hopping is illegal you know)
As the massive G-forces pulled them out of the planet’s gravity, one of the engines failed. Not being far enough out into space, the gravitational pull was still around them. They soon plummeted toward the alien earth, while the ship became hotter and hotter due to the air friction. Peices of the ship soon started to fall of and desintigrate. There was nothing Kari and Ian could do, for the pilot had already been killed by the immense pressure and heat inside the separate pilots cabin, and they were strapped into their seats as tight as a 80’s disco dancer (i know, bad analogy). As the surface of the planeted loomed ever closer, Kari gripped Ian’s hand tightly.
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As the heat rose in the cockpit, sweat streamed down their faces. They silently watch the face of the planet grow larger and larger through the small view port in the side of their ship. Ian could see massive waves slamming into the jagged, rocky coastlines of this strange planet.
Several thoughts whirled through his mind- would they be able to breath on this planet? Is inhabited? Oh god…
The craft plunged into the frigid water with a sharp hiss as the ship’s superheated metal was rapidly cooled by the ocean. Ian hastily unbuckled his restraint and looked across to see if Kari was ok. She was fine, and seemed to be struggling with her harness. It finally clicked free, and they thought about their situation. The ship was still sealed, and was not taking on water, but it was being dragged down into the unknown depths of the dark ocean. They couldn’t open the door, for fear of the pressure crushing them. The only thing they could do was wait and hope for a turn of luck.
As the sat, waiting to die, (Pleasant, huh? A bit to corny, maybe) they talked to each other about their lives. Soon, the air began to grow thinner and thinner. They sat in silence now, just looking at each other. Unconsciousness came softly, stealing up and lulling them to sleep. (I would write more, but Ive gotta go… someone rescue them!)
(Heheh this reminds me of Firefly)
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Ian jumped. “What’re you doing?!”
“Getting ready to save our lives, got a problem with it?” Kari sounded fierce. Ian looked at her. Their eyes met. Hers burned with a blazing green fire. His were pools of deep blue fear. She squeezed his hand.
“Look, we’ve made it this far.” she said, “No way we’re giving up now.” He nodded in agreement.
“Alright, take off your seatbelt, and when I say to do so, jump out of the plane, alright?”
“What?!” Ian protested, “We don’t even have inflatachutes!”
“Do you wanna live, or not?” Ian braced himself.
“On 3…1, 2, 3!” They jumped. Ian felt the wind lick his face as they free-fell towards Ceres…was this the end? Was this how he would go? Falling towards the very planet from which he had tried to escape?
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((Oops…it appears that we had a bit of confusion…snapple. Oh, well, I guess it works. I love Firefly!!!!!!!!!!!! I didn’t know anyone else my age watched that! How old are you? Boy/girl?))
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I’ll be Keeper and fix up post 44, which went a bit too fast, no offense BK. I’ll also tie 45 and 46 together.
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((RRR! Wewt!))
Don’t breathe, Kari thought silently toward Ian. We haven’t hit the artifi-sphere yet. You’ll die. She didn’t expect him to understand her, since telepathy bugs were a part of pre-War technology that hadn’t been transported past Terra. That was for the best, too, no doubt about that, but she didn’t want this kid to die. For some reason, it felt good to be able to talk to somebody again, though her instincts, slowly implanted in her, screamed against human contact. Fifty years of boredom in sentient cryogenics could do that to a girl, she supposed.
He seemed to be alive, even if he was going blue in the face, which was (awful) good. It shouldn’t be too long before they reached the artifi-sphere. They’d have to leave soon, because Ceres would have pulled up her bio-signature from the database and would have half the asteroid looking for her in no time. Unless Ian was also a wanted renegade Container (which she doubted), his signature would take longer to find, but if they discovered him with her he’d be executed in the most inhumane way the torture generals could dream up. One of the few advantages to Kari’s Container status was a relative immunity to the law; only if she committed a truly heinous crime (blowing up a planet, killing a President) would she be killed. Otherwise, she’d simply be frozen again until they could extract all her data from her. But harboring her…harboring her was suicide.
She pitied this Ian, though pity was the last thing a Container was supposed to feel. (It was a contaminant, it would taint her data, it would jeopardize everything they’d planted in her head.) No doubt he’d lived the perfectly normal life of an orphan in the asteroid belt. Then she’d swept in, and now he was a wanted criminal. Ah well. Life at large, she supposed, was cruel.
Kari felt a vaguely familiar fizzle on her skin, which her information recognized as the artifi-sphere. “You can breathe now!” she shouted, and wondered how to tell Ian what he’d gotten himself into.
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(I thought they were in the ocean…. and then they’re on a cliff? Or a floating rock in the sky? And now shes…. a Confessor from the Sword of Truth. I’m mildly confused, but whatever…. Fix away, kiki!)
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i say that we stick with the ocean, it came first. (continue from post 45 or 46)
this is geting really good. I am copying all the posts onto a word document, and once we’re done, i’ll post the whole thing. =)
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sorry for the double post, but I ment i’m copying the whole story
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49- i like Kari’s thought
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52- Actually, that’s my job. I’m the Keeper. Sorry. You can do it if you want, but mine’ll be the real copy. I claimed it first, sorry!
Erm, so they’re falling back towards Ceres. Oceans on Ceres? Er, I think a cliff would be more realistic. I’ll do a cliff.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh,” breathed Ian, though Kari couldn’t hear him through the rushing of the air around them.
“So you’re alive?” she yelled.
“Yeah, but I won’t be for long!” yelled Ian back.
“Why?”
“Well, if you hadn’t noticed, we’re falling at extremely fast speeds towards the HARD GROUND,” said Ian sarcastically.
Dang! thought Kari. The impact!
She searched her information. “Come on,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Aha!” From her pocket she pulled a small round globe of what looked like red glass. The ground was getting closer… closer…
“COME ON!!”
Kari squeezed the globe.
“Oof!” A red matress had sprung up out of nowhere and Kari and Ian now rested on it, which was floating down slowly towards the barren ground of Ceres’ rural areas.
“Is that a… Globe?” asked Ian incredulously. Globes were ancient Terran tech that could contain anything useful. “How…?”
Kari stuttered, “Er.. um… well… I’m…”
She’d have to tell him.
“I’m a Container.”
This was too much for Ian after the events of the past four centidays, and he fainted.
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I think we’ve established that Containers are replicant-thingys? Artificial life? Er.. Yeah? Okay. We have to comple some more info on Containers before we write anymore.
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(Im sorry I thought we had gone to another moon (nameley europa) and got too carried away before I realized we werent.
Containers… mabye their like artificial cops or something? Feared but respected? Or like the KGb…. I dunno)
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54, yah, i’m jus doing it for myself, i like to.
Containers…i have an idea.
How about they know everything about the past and what life used to be like on Earth? Like in the book, The Giver. Jonas was that. (in the book)
Containers can hold all the information about life on earth before, and how terrible war was. the other people know about the was, and a little of what life was like, but not much. Containers know what everythink looked like, tasted like, etc. like trees, Ian doesn’t know what they look like, but he knows they exist and the jist of what they’re like. idk, if you want to use something like that.
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Nah, I was thinking designed by wannabe-evil geniuses who want to make a superior race (let’s inject morals of prejudice!) that could take over the Solar System. For a good cause. And Kari didn’t like the creators, let’s call ’em Parents, so she ran away and started to live life as a human. The Parents didn’t care, because, ooh brainflash!, she had “renegade emotions”. GOOD!!
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57- YEAH YEAH!! and the containers from my idea could have the implanted memories from Terra like you said, because the Parents want to make another Earth to be their base!!! and Ian and Kari could have to stop the Parents!!! PC, whaddya think? I love it!
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I think it sounds like a good idea…but I think we should probably have them be something like cyborgs…you know, half-human, half-robot. Eh?
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60- Nah, howbout humans w/ robot implants.
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how about Kari show some of the past earth to Ian? ohh….and how about the Parents are looking for a planet to project the image of the memories from the child.(Kira)
but they need her to do it, so they need to get her!
oh.. how about their be only one set of Parents and they are the “presidents”. or, they control the government?___________I think that government should have some role in this.
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62- Sounds good to me.
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When I originally wrote the Containers, I thought of them as being sort of repositories for the knowledge of Earth, without so much of the peaceful intent that Amanda mentioned. Just throwing that out there.
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Genetically modified humans, in my opinion. Like in Friday, if anyone’s read that, only I’m not sure she had perfect memory, and Kari does. And Kari had human parents, and was raised and treated horribly by the Parents or gov’t or something when her birth parents, both of them scientists who worked for the Parents, died when she was an infant. (think Lyra’s parents for their relationship with each other, think like with Ruby the dragon and her father, enemies, in the end of the first version of the afareet RRR, the one that fell apart, as Kari’s eventual relationship with them) Overactive imagination! Or my latent writing skillz were activated by half-written sci-fi. And I reference so many books in my description of this.
And where are we? The ship got out of control hurtling towards what was Earth, even though Earth is radioactive, IMO, and they were running out of air underwater, and then they were flying above Ceres, and they jumped and fell through the air bubble around it and landed on Kari’s mattress.
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65-Say what? About where we are, I mean, ’cause I never heard anything about them going to Earth.
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Posts 44 and 45 are them getting trapped in the ocean with no air.
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As I’m the Keeper, I fixed it up so they were falling back towards Ceres. I got rid of the ocean. They were just falling in the air. And as of the Containers, I think it should be Kari’s a Container, a repository of knowledge about Earth, because the Parents, which were a radical Earth-group (which meant they wanted Earth back and to get rid of all technology and space travel, Amish, sorta) needed someone with the combined memories of Earth. Kari was, er, let’s say the “final product”, which meant she was the perfect final product. So what the Parents wanted to do was to find a planet to project Kari’s memories on. They were going to bioterrorize Mars, radically terraform it and kill all the current settlers (eek, terrorism), and then project Kari’s info. But two scientists supposedly working for the Parents, (they were really working for the IMGN, a SolarSystemPeaceCorp offspring) they hated the Parents so they stole Kari from them. But they got killed by the guards of the Parent’s lab and Kari was recovered. She was about eight at the time, but in reality she was about eighty, having been cyrogenically frozen for long periods of time. Kari had spent a week with the spies, and she developed a hatred for the Parents once she learned what they were planning to do (aka genocide). So she ran away. Obviously, the Parents were v. mad. They didn’t chase after her, because she has “renegade emotions”, but she knew their secret. After it hadn’t leaked out for some time, they gave up on her.
Containers: they are/were genetically grown and enhanced humans. Like replicants. They have hypersenses and know everything about Terra in its prime. They also have slight mindreading powers, though they aren’t able to perform telepathy. They have superlong lifespans, say 200 years, and are able to summon any common Terran object. Not stuff like high-tech guns or invisibility cloaks, but things like Globes and small laser guns. Containers are very handy, but the Nega-guards (think Blade Runners) are hired by Parents to seek out escaped Containers, and wipe their minds of human experiences. There have actually been a few rounds of escaped Containers, because the Parents are evil, evil people are stupid, you get the point. So Kari’s not exactly on the run, b/c the Parents gave up on her, but she has to stay out of the Nega-guards range of vision.
I think we should use that. It combines everyone’s ideas, and it’s good.
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68- I like the idea, should we continue with the story? I think that someone should re-write the last part to make it flow a bit more into the Falling to Ceres. Also, post 44 is a bit rushed. anyone wanna go into more detail?
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!
ha, i don’t even like valentines day…
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Hey everyone! This story is going well so far! Keep it up! Sorry I haven’t been able to contribute but.. eh. Anyways, keep up the good work!
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70-Thanks, kricket…lol.
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70-haha..ok.yay.
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“A… a Container?” stuttered Ian when he recovered. “What in Solana is that?”
Kari groaned. She hated explaining all this. Fortunately, she’d never had to do it before, and intended never to do it again.
“It all started,” she said, “a few years after World War Last. A sort of fanatical group of people- they call themselves the Parents, since they’re supposed to be the forebears of this “master race”…” She was really giving him the condensed version, but a full explanation would have them there till the sun came up. And on Ceres, that was very bad. The artifisphere offered no protection against ultraviolet light. Anything not in the underground colonies was baked within minutes.
“Anyway, from what I gather, they wanted to create a new Terra somehow. I know, crazy.”
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“a new Terra? why would anyone want to go back to something like that?”
Kari sighed again. did this dolt not know anything? “some people don’t have only bad memories of Terra, you know. some people actually used to enjoy being there…” Kari’s voice drifted off, and her eyes glazed over.
suddenly, Ian blurted out, “how would you know? you’re not old enough to even have any memories of Terra!
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“Did they not teach you about cryogenics in school? I’m eighty-three and a half,” said Kari, pulling back her sleeve to reveal the tattoo every resident of the solar system had, which listed her birthdate, home planet, identification number, and status. It read: January 27, 2104/Mars/08234919, and then the last line of ink was blurred by a black crater with scorch marks that wrapped around her whole elbow.
“So you’re a real renegade, then, if you haven’t got a status,” said Ian. Really that old, too, if her birthday and ID number were to be believed.
“Yep. And let me tell you, putting a lighted firecracker to your skin to get rid of your microchip hurts a lot worse than you’d think.”
She had no microchip? But that meant she shouldn’t be able to function now, since the removal of a microchip instantly destroyed the information in the brain. Every idiot knew that; kids learned it when they were in primary school. Then again, Ian was getting the sense that Kari did a lot of things that shouldn’t be able to be done. Instead of asking her about it, he settled for the question, “What’s a firecracker?”
“Terran,” she responded, deflating the mattress and shoving it back into the Globe.
“Right. So, it’s kind of really dangerous to associate with you?” Ian was beginning to think that following Kari hadn’t been the best idea. Whatever these Containers were, they sounded bad, and Ian wasn’t the sort who liked bad. (Probably, he thought, Kari was.)
“Yep. Which means you’re stuck with me now. They know we’re together, and if they catch us, they’ll freeze and brainwash. You, they’ll destroy just enough cells to keep you within an inch of your life, then put nanobots in you and repair them, then do it again. Again and again and again.” She sounded bitter, as if she’d seen this happen before. She probably had.
So it had been a definite bad idea to get involved with Kari. Was he really going to almost die? The thought scared him, more than the idea of a nice swift execution or a ship crash. Everyone died like that, and he’d long since accepted it as inevitable. But this…he wasn’t sure why it was so terrifying, but he was absolutely certain that he didn’t want it to happen to him.
“What do we do now?” Ian asked, trying to keep his voice stable.
“Leave.” Kari ran her finger over the edge of the burned pockmark in her skin, then replaced the black sleeve of her shirt. “How would you like to see Terra in person?”
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“but we can’t go to Terra!,” Ian exclaimed. “we would die almost inst-
“JUST LISTEN TO ME!” Kari interrupted, rather loudly. She was tired of explaining every little thing to this dim-witted child.”of course we’re not going to land on Terra. As you said, it would be suicide.no, i’m talking about the moon.”
Ian started. “the moon? but there isn’t any habitation there!”
“exactly.”
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“what are you talking about?” Ian said, glancing around. “Terra is almost 2AUs (astronomical unit) away, and we don’t have a ship!”
“Who said we were going to take a ship?” Kari pushed Ian off the matress on to the dusty Cerean crust. She got off the matress her self, and muttered something. The mattress turned back into the Globe.
“Come on,” Kari said, “It’s not far from here, but we have to get their before sunrise.”
With that, Kari started to walk toward the dark side of the dwarf planet, unyielding to all of Ian’s questions.
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i’d like to add to my first line, i didn’t see the other post.
what are you talking about?” Ian said, glancing around. “Terra and the moon are almost 2AUs (astronomical unit) away, and we don’t have a ship!”
=================
sorry!
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As they reached the dark side of Ceres, Ian began to see a large shape looming out of the gloom. It was roughly conical, almost like…
“A ship?” he gasped out loud. “B-but it’s unregistered!”
“Blast,” muttered Kari. “I suppose I can’t blame you. The Solan Republic [that’s the government of the solar system- PC] hasn’t hindered the Parents at all by making people think that lawbreaking is unthinkable. This guy isn’t exactly a friend of mine, but he’s an associate. Takes people off-planet, no questions asked, as long as they have money.”
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“Uh…..And where would you get the money? You can only get it from your assingned class” said Ian.(ok, so the “class” is the government assigns you a socal class at birth, upper class, lower class. theis determinds how much money you get.)
“Again, the governments fault. In Terra, people used to be able to work toward the class or job they wanted……oops. FOrget i said that. I have plenty of money..”
Ian looked at Kari strangley. Why didn’t she want to share her memories?
Kari led the way toward the ship, and hit the hull 12 times. A short, stout man apeared from nowhere.
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“What the tikko-oh, hi, Kari!”
“Glad to see you,” said Kari sarcastically, pushing the man aside and striding up to the wall of the ship and walking straight through. Ian, getting used to very strange things happening often, walked right in after her.
The man was left standing there on the rough Cerean crust with a disgruntled expression on his rather chubby face. “Dem kids…” he muttered, and disappeared.
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“Who was that?” asked Kari. He could accept strange things happening, but he still wanted to know why and who.
“Just a friend of the Parents if you could call it that. The Parents don’t really have friends, not even amongst themselves. They just share a common goal, and stay on together because of that. If they got a planet to be like Earth used to be, I wouldn’t know what would happen. they would try to destroy eachother possiblely, since then finnished what they joined together to do…” Kari gazed into the ship, and you could tell she knew something that she wasn’t telling Ian…
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She snapped out of her reverie as the man appeared beside her.
“Well, if we’re going somewhere, let’s go now,” he said impatiently. “Where to, Kar-kar?”
“Luna, and don’t call me Kar-kar,” she said.
The two followed the man, who Ian now knew to be called Antavo, into the main passenger cabin. The ship was not very large, but the passenger cabin was holographically enhanced to make it look like it was bigger than it really was. Kari selected two seats in the middle of the cabin, and Ian and her sat down. The seats were covered in some exotic fabric that looked very soft and silky, but to the touch it felt like burlap.
“Are we buckled in nice and tight?” called Antavo from the pilot’s cabin.
“Yeah, Antavo, whatever. Let’s just go.”
“Posi!” called Antavo in agreement from the pilot’s cabin, and without another word, they took off.
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After breaking the thin atmostphere, Ian and Kari started to experence the pleasure of weightlessness. Kari had experenced it before, but Ian had not. Any ships he had ever gone on had artifical gravity. He was like a child in a candy shop. He took off his seat belts and went flying around. The driver didn’t pay much attention to hi. He was used to first time passangers. not that he got many. maybe three or so. he never saw them again after their flight.
“Oh get down Ian, your making a fool of your self.” Kari snaped. She was grouchy any time she was with an associate of the Partents. She had to keep her hounor, and Ian wasn’t helping much.
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Hey! This was on my birthday! Cool! 
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WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO WRITE! i’m not going to write this whole thing by myself.
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Ian slowly floated back to his sea,t unused to there not being gravity on the ship. When had there ever not bee gravity in space craft. Not for a long long time, since Terra maybe. Wait… This had to be a Terra craft!! And a really old one at that.
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Hey, I gues you could call me a newbie. I’ve been looking around MuseBlog, checking different threads out. This thread looks cool. Real cool. I think I’ll try
Delete it if you want
—
After all, all recent spacecraft have spun to simulate artificial gravity.
Ian became excited. Why couldn’t this be one of the transpace vehicles that had been built in the pre/Last War era in Terra?
Then suddenly, his meal arrived. He had not excpected it, as he rarely ever ate (usually about once a month). However, it seemed that a computer had sensed he had not eaten in a while and had given him some food.
Ian slowly chewed the 48 carboprotien multivitamin tablets. They had no taste at all. Ian remembered when he had been safe, back at the library on Ceres. There, he had absorbed information about when food had been GROWN, not chemically assembled from raw protons, neutrons, and electrons in particle accelerators. He could not think of what taste would be like, because his mind could not comprehend it.
He often wondered what it would be like in a world where things just seemed to happen, as he had read about Terra, instead of being automated and fully predictable.
—
I know it doesn’t really add much to the plot, but y’know…a book is interesting if it has lots of details.
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Hey, it’s me again. I noticed that no one posted any more story here for several days until Amanda said, “WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO WRITE! I’M NOT GOING TO WRITE THIS WHOLE THING BY MYSELF!” And then boom, within a few hours, 2 people happen to wander here and add stuff. And I wasn’t even coming here because of your recent post!
I got some more ideas. Want me to post em?
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Clarification on post 88: A world where things just “seem to happen”.
What I mean is, plants just sort of grow, RIGHT? It just happens to rain, RIGHT?
That’s all
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Hello? Anybody there?
The story is really good. Don’t stop now!
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After he was done eating his nutritious, but flavorless meal, he settled into his chair to attempt sleep. No luck. Kari poked him in the arm none to gently and told him theat they were just about there. “Where,” Ian asked, “are we going again?”
“We’re headed to Luna you dim-wit. I just told you that. But your just a youngster, you can’t be expected to remember things like i can.” Kari replied haughtily. Ian sat with a puzzled expression on his face. Dim-wit? Youngster? They must have been Terran words. Kari did like to show off.
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Ian realized they had been cruising for quite some time. “How long is it going to take to get to Luna?” he said. Antavo (the captian) heard him speak through his sound transporter (souped-up future radio) and mumbled, ” ’bout sixty Terran rotations,” then added, “this ain’t first class.”
Ian had never been in a vehicle this slow. He wondered what was going on. “Where did this spaceship come from?” he cried to the captain.
“Frem Terra,” said Antavo. “Wherdja think it was frem? Eris?” “From Terra?” Ian was shocked. “How did you get it?”
“You really want ta know?” Antavo questioned. “Whell, ah guess ah’ll just havta take ya there. And get into dem sleepin pods. 60 Terra rotations is a long time.”
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whoops! I didn’t notice they were just about there!
My bad
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Just delete post 93.
Ok, I’m gonna finish this story right here, right now, since this thread has pretty much died, and the story needs to be wrapped up. You can always create a different ending later.
Here goes:
Ian asked the captian, ” is this ship from Terra?”
“Yea” said the captian
“Can you take me to where you got it?”
“Yea”
they fly to the south pole, go through a little hole, to where the Amish-type people are living underground in a recreated environment, just like the old days back when humankind lived on earth, and Ian and Kari and Antavo are convinced that this is a better way to live, so they live there.
THE END
Kinda rushed, but I don’t have much time. Bye
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Re ending
Ian asked the captain, “Is this a Terran ship?”
“Yea,” the captain replied, “but we didn’t get it from there. We got it from the vault at the bottom of the junk pile on Hiwerl.”
Ian ran to the port hole and looked out and Luna looming ever closer.
“We’re going to crash!!!” Ian screamed.
The captain, lost in thought, Didn’t look up in time to see the moonscape nearing him.
The small party hit the crater, and crashed.
(Sorry, i like tragic endings better.)
(you can rewrite it if you want.) (Again.)
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Re ending
They were cruising along when they got abducted by the ruler of the universe. But they escaped, captured him/her, and ruled the universe happily ever after.
(maybe we could have this be a choose your own ending story!)
(you can rewrite it if you want.) (Again.) (Again.)
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Um…abrupt much? RRRs are never very active threads, but we write full-fledged stories on them. With fully fleshed out endings.
When I am done with my history paper I’ll write some more on this one.
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98 – Okay. This thread didn’t seem very active, so I thought I’d better quick post an ending before the story was abandoned forever. Let’s keep going from where we were at post 92.
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Seems like agood idea. I had the same opinion as 99, but i didn’t like his ending. sorry.
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continuing off post 92 –
As they approached the lunar landscape, they headed toward the landing spot at the top of Luna. It was the site of an abandoned colony. It had origionally been built in 2041, but after Terra’s World War Last, the colony had been abandoned as there was no longer a source of vital nutrients and items for life. It was never revived later as there is no atmosphere.
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You might say, “Hey! How did they manage to breathe on Ceres then?” Creating an atmosphere for a planetary object is expensive, so they only wanted to put atmosphere planetary bodies in prime spots, such as the asteroid belt, where there is lots of mining, trading, and technological equipment studies.
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yeah but mayb they r super evolved and can just breathe on ceres bcuz there cool like that
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*PIE*
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*VEGETABLE PIE*
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103 – Post 75 says Kari was born in 2104, and other posts say she has been alive for roughly 85 years. So the set date for our story is approx. 2189. It’s not possible to super-evolve so much in that period of time. Also, in 2189, evolution is out-dated. Scientists can now create humans in big labratories by inserting DNA into eggs submitted by random women then grow them into humans, but on the rare occasions when there’s a shortage of fetus pods, real women develop them. I suppose that it would be possible in the future to get the O2 and the C6H12O6 in the same tablet, or you could re-do the humans so that they don’t need the chemical respiration process, but let’s not worry about that right now. If people in 2189 ever read this, they will laugh their heads off because I can tell my predictions of the future are likely not to come true in only a mere 182 years. So let’s just write the story and edit the Sci-fi part after we have a good ending. And this isn’t InstantMessaging land. Please type like a human being, at least in this thread.
104, 105 – We are trying to write a story here. If you want to randomly post, please go to the random thread and do it there.
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Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo?
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Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo?
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Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo?
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Hi!
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Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
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I mean, hell-OOOOOOoooohhhh!!! Welcome to the thread! Finally, someone’s here. Now…let’s get on with the story.
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ok…hmmmmmmm let me think….what about a story about cheese pie?
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I read up to the random endings, ad now I’m confused….
_____________________________________________
The ship slowly powered down through the atmosphere. It landed roughly between a bunch of random debris that was scattered around the colonies observation dome. Ian was thrown backward with the force of the impact. He crashed against the wall of the ship.
“Stupid Terran technology,’ he muttered.
___________________________________________
I’m not very good at this…
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The driver each handed them a spacesuit, since there was no air on Luna. Ian and Kari each put one on, they were as fexible and thin and clothing.
Kari paid for their ride and the boy and girl headed toward the abandoned colonial landscape. “A real ghost town,” Kari said. She did like to show off her Terran words, thought Ian.
As they went inside, Ian glanced at display cases. He marveled at how bulky the old spacesuits were. Those bags of bricks!
Then, he entered… the library. A huge collection of books on every topic, all from Terra! Ian was in utter awe. He pulled a book off the shelf. It did not instantly feed information into his brain, and it took him a while to figure out just how to read a book. The title said, “To the Moon and back: the first epic journey.” Ian was puzzled. Which moon did the book mean? There were hundreds of moons in the solar system.
He glanced at some other titles:
OUR ENDANGERED PLANET
FASHION PASSION: A PHOTO ESSAY
TECHONOLGY – THE ULTIMATE EVIL
THE COMPLETE BOOK OF ALGEBRA
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? HISTORIANS PONDER WORLD WAR LAST
GENETIC MODIFICATION AND IT’S BENIFITS TO HUMANKIND
DESTINATION: MARS! REMEMBERING 2043
A COMPLETE HISTORY OF SOCCER
MUSE COMES TO AN END – THE WHOLE WORD WEEPS
RELIGION WARS
AN ARCHIVE OF COMIC STRIPS
THUMBDISKS: A PEICE OF THE PAST
HISTORY IN THE B.C. ERA
THEY SAID ALIENS WOULD COME…
THE END OF EARTH: A PREDICTION OF THE FUTURE
Ian was utterly confused. “Kari,” he said, “What’s earth?”
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“What is Earth? What is Earth?! Geez, how dumb are you?” Kari said,”Terra, Earth? Earth, Terra? Same difference! Terra IS Earth!”
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Ian became excited! Books about terra! Books about earth!
He looked through some more titles, then stopped at one that looked interesting: TO TRAVEL IN TIME. He lifted the book off the shelf and began to read.
Time travel had always been dreamed of in the history of humankind. But as humans became more advanced, time travel, it seemed, was not possible. After all, if you went back in time to make sure your grandmother never had any children, what would happen to you?
However, the 20th century dawned a new age of information. Armed with such knowledge as the quantom theory, theory of relativity, and speed of light, and black holes, scientists pondered the predicament. They finally discovered that there is no natural law preventing time travel, though the method for making a time machine under their reckoning would be virtually impossible for anyone to construct. (see Appendix 1, how to build a time machine, cira 2000 .)
But that was only the dawn of time traveling knowledge. With new telescopes (such as the J telescope, which replaced the Hubble Space telescope in 2008) scientists finally cracked the code of tachyons (then called dark matter), the missing matter in the universe that baffled astronomers for half a century. Tachyons were previously invisible to any form of discovery before due to their speed faster than light. As they traveled forward in time, they made no appearance as they literally fizzled out of existance into hyperspace while rocketing forward at a speed of nearly 500,000 miles per second.
With scientist Stephen Hawkin's reckoning that time travel was only possible to be forward, scientists realized this was time travel. The public was in awe as NASA released it's 200-page report on time travel in 2018. The thought of actually building a time machine though, was unthought of, as how would you capture something that doesn't really exist?
Then, shocking new hit the e-papers in 2032, as Dr. Stephen Rosinburg announced he had finished a time machine after years of work shrouded in secrecy. The one and only test of his machine came in the middle of a feild, where he attempted to go to the future. Hundreds of thousands of people watched as his big, bulky mess of equipment seemed to dissapear. Unfortunantly, most of the time machine stayed put, not properly attached to the tachyons. But Dr. Rosinburg's body was among the rubbish that did vanish, and he has not been seen since. His predicted return is August 10, 2187.
“August 10, 2187?” Ian gasped. “But that’s tomorrow!!!”
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“No way!” said Kari, “That’s got to be a spoof.”
Boy did she like to show off! “Huh?””A fake! A phony! Not-real!”
“Aah…”
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[rrgh…now what? I’m running out of ideas…]
“But wait…” said Ian, “If it’s a spoof or whatever you said, then what is it doing in the Moon’s official collection of books and resources?”
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119-I know…
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We need more writers. Two isn’t quite enough for the creativity and brainpower needed. I’ll go alert people on the March Medley thread.
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“What if someone planted the book here, especially for us to find?” Ian asked Kari, “What if those space pirates who were folllowing you, or the government, put it here?” He waited for Kari to reply. And waited. And waited. Finally she spoke. “I don’t know Ian, I just don’t know. Maybe we should wait here until tomorrow to see if the guy shows up.” Kari seemed to ask if this was all right with only her eyes. She glanced at the pilot who nodded his approval.
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“Ship to Kari!” a voice cracled over the radio,”The sensors pick up a activated life-suppot system in sector 8. Out.”
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“Kari?” Ian asked unsurely, “Where’s sector eight? And what’s out there?”
” Oh stop being a goon-head, it’s probably just a Betwer, one of those metallic crab things. They usually are rather seclusive. THey won’t hurt us.” Kari replied, annoyed.
“Then what’s that?” The pilot said looking down the hallway.
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I enjoy portraying Ian as unsure and naive. Is that a correct portrayal or does he actually have some back bone? he is kind of clueless, right?
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124 – Wait, was the pilot already there or did they just notice him?
125 – I’m guessing Ian probably is unsure. His only other noticable trait is that he has a passion for knowledge about Terra and longingly looks at the old days.
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pilot was there the whole time. i think.
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127 – Yea, I see. It never says he left…
—————————–
“What’s what?” said Ian, but when he turned around, the pilot was gone.
“C’mon,” said Kari, “Let’s go to sector 8. These cheap suits will only last us aproximately 34 hours with no air.”
So Ian set off with Kari, unaware at what was waiting for them near sector 8.
—————————–
Do you think we should cut to the climax now, or should we have more buildup? The plot isn’t very solid yet, but we have a lot of story.
Usually authors have a definite plan of the beginning, middle and end before they even really start the serious writing. Do you think we should plan ahead, or keep going the way we’ve done it so far?
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As Ian and Kari approached sector 8, they noticed it was isolated from the other sectors, in the middle of the great Luna desert (which is the biggest of those dark spots you see on the moon at night).
As they walked up toward an open door, it mysteriously vanished to reveal a thick cast-uranicium (atom 138 on the periodic table) door with a message on virtual HTML, saying, “ENTER PASSWORD.” Ian was confused. Kari was annoyed. “Curse them holograms,” she muttered, as she approached the number pad.
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The number pad had the numbers 0 through 9 and 10 spaces in the crystal display. That meant there were roughly 10,000,000,000 possible passwords.
Kari had no idea what the password might be. She had never seen this before. Last time she visited sector 8 on Luna, there had been no password. This is not good , she thought. We need that life support system soon, or else our space suits will run out.”
“The sun’s beginning to set,” said Ian. “We should get inside a sector before the temperatures drop too low and we freeze.”
Both dinged with approching dangers, the two had no idea what trouble lay ahead.
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Uh people? The pilot is on the ship. He never left did he?
_________________________________
Kari stared at the screen. She had tryed almost every combination that popped into her head. Suddenly, with a wild yell she kicked the machine with a beep smoke and hiss. “oops.”
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Uh people? The pilot is on the ship. He never left did he?
_________________________________
Kari stared at the screen. She had tryed almost every combination that popped into her head. Suddenly, with a wild yell she kicked the machine with a beep smoke and hiss. “oops.”
The pilot was worried. Whats taking so long?! The explosion that rocked sector eight didn’t help with his suspitions.
The door had been blown off of the lubricatedsliding tray that held it in place. “Wow.” said Ian as he staggered to his feet. “Hey, Kari? Never do that again.The second door didn’t have a password.
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Suddenly a radio transmission reached the two. “ah gotta go now,” said the captian, “must get offta mars. Buisness, taxi service, ya know? Ahnd don’t make too much noise on Luna. Ah heard all yer ruckus at sector 8. Ah’m hearin there are government spies here to catch people who ain’t s’possed to be wand’rin ’round.”
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Kari entered first, with Ian following. “Now where’s that Betwer,” she muttered, then stopped in shock.
There was a black box floating in the middle of the room, surrounded by streaks of lightning. Or at least there apperared to be. With holographic technology, Ian was beginning to doubt supernatural-looking objects.
THIS IS A TIME PORTAL FROM THE FUTURE boomed a voice. Ian and Kari stared.
IF YOU ARE WONDERING WHY I AM TALKING TO YOU, IT IS BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST AND IT IS MY DUTY TO GIVE YOU THIS MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE OR COSMIC ORDER WILL BLOW APART.
Ian was still shocked. Kari was beginning to get suspicious.
I HAVE SEEN YOU READ THE TIME-TRAVEL BOOK IN THE MOON LIBRARY. YOU KNOW OF THE MAN WHO TRIED TO TRAVEL IN TIME. HE WILL ARRIVE IN MERE HOURS, BUT HE WILL LAND ON TERRA. IF NOBODY RESCUES HIM, HE WILL BE DOOMED TO DIE.
BUT I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE. HE WILL NOT DIE, BECAUSE TWO YOUNG PEOPLE WILL SAVE HIM. IF YOU WILL GIVE ME YOUR IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS, I CAN MAKE SURE THAT IT IS YOU.
Ian rushed to reply. “Okay. I think Kari’s number is 08234919, and mine is…” Kari lunged at his mouth and clamped it shut before he could say more.
The voice continued. QUICKLY! QUICKLY! RED ALERT! ALL COSMIC ORDER WILL FALL APART IF I DO NOT GET YOUR NUMBERS! TELL ME THEM! HURRY! HURRY!
“This is some sort of trick, I’m sure of it!” Kari said furiously. “They’re trying to get our numbers! This is very suspicious. Let’s get out of here!”
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“But Kari,” Ian whined, “Maybe he’ll give us the password. We really could use that password…”
“Ian. Don’t. Move. It’s behind us.” Kari’s voice had suddenly turned cold and commanding, as she realized the Betwer was coming.
“I’m going to slowly turn around. Be still.” Her voice was shaking, but whether from fear or excitment Ian didn’t know. The Betwer was bigger than Ian had imagined, and it’s black body was impressive, at the least.
The black box, meanwhile, had continued talking.
WHAT IS GOING ON? TELL ME YOUR NUMBERS! TELL ME Your...
The voice slowly faded away.
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I can’t figure the code thing out. sorry. “The voice slowly faded away” Is supposed to be normal.
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136 – how to do code.
{code} WORDS YOU WANT IN THE CODE FONT {/code}
except with those angle brackets instead of the {}
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135- Davidudes right! ssseeeeee??!!!!!TA-DA!
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hello Lets see if it works. then someone rite something so we can get back to the story.
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I think it’s Lord Revie’s turn. And anyway, I’m pretty much out of ideas for now.
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140-Well so am I…I have an idea!! WA-HA-HA! Just you wait…
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Okay, while I was reading this I thought maybe it was done, but apparently it’s not.
I don’t have any ideas right now though… Yes I do! No, I don’t, never mind. Darn.
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I think we wrote ourselves into a corner.
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Ha! No you didn’t! I will save the day! Well, Ian will save the day, ’cause he’s so clueless he needs a chance to be a hero.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You wouldn’t happen to have any superhuman powers you’ve been hiding, would you?” hissed Kari into Ian’s ear. It was a joke, really.
“I can use an auto-spear,” volunteered Ian.
Kari looked blank, and Ian felt a tingling rush of smug pleasure at knowing something she didn’t. He opened his mouth to explain, but Kari clamped her hand down over it. It tasted horrible.
“If you don’t have one in your pocket, don’t bother explaining.”
“But,” said Ian, trying to talk through her hand, “but I do have one. I picked it up on the shuttle.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alright, there wasn’t room to explain up there, but an auto-spear is something that was supposed to fight your enemy for you, but something went wrong when they were being made, and unless you can handle one properly, it’ll kill you instead.
Highly impractical.
I’ll leave a description of the fight to someone else.
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Alas! Have you abandoned me? Just when I was getting into my stride, too. I’m not going to finish this book in case someone’s hanging around, but if anyone is, tell me! I will then make an attempt to get us out of the mess we just wrote. I’m bad at battle scenes, but if anyone’s still here, I’ll write it.
Is this Betwer malicious?
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145-yeah…
_______________________
Ian drew along thin metal bar from his pocket. A point extended with a hiss of well lubricated metal. He flicked his fringers over a few buttons and the point began to hum and glow.
"Stop! You are endangering the cosmic balance!" yelped Bewter.
“You know,” said Ian suddenly feeling, well, brave. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
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Nice! Much better than I could have done.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Before Ian could do anything to either the Betwer or the black box, the Betwer stepped forward, and with one crunch of its claws, broke the box into rubble.
The auto-spear went wild. Ian valiantly tried to keep hold of it, but it began to glow so hot that he dropped it on the floor and screamed, “Run!”
They ran. They could here the spear fizzing and popping as it short-circuited ten feet down the hall.
Had he been religious, Ian would have prayed for the Betwer, but religion was one of those things that disappeared after World War Last. So he simply leaned against the wall and breathed deeply.
“What was that?” Kari demanded.
“That was an auto-spear,” said Ian. “They were made to fight your enemies for you, but something went wrong, and now they’ll kill you, if you let them get a chance. The makers didn’t withdraw them, and tons of people were killed.” His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears.
They were silent, and then Kari thought of something, and swore. Ian didn’t blink, not understanding the word. But he sensed something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
“We still don’t have the password.”
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Sorry, I robbed Ian of his chance for glory. Oh well, at least he got to explain something to Kari for a change. Which, when you think of his character, is all the glory he’ll ever see.
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Having looked over this story, I am confused.
146- When you said Betwer, did you mean the box or the crab? The crab is the Betwer, the box is just a talking box. Actually, it reminds me a lot of the jinx box in Jinx on the Divide.
Why exactly do they still need the password? Didn’t the door burst open, or something?
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149-Yeah, I blew up the door. (post 132)
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~~~
“Why do we need the password?” said Ian.
“Because to get to the vault where the life support system is.”
“I think the Bewter knows the password,” said Ian, “but now it’s trying to kill us.”
Kari walked outside sector 8, scanning the sky for anything that could help them.
~~~
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“On second thought,” Ian mused, “is it trying to kill us? We didn’t exactly hang around for an answer.”
“Well, you set that thing on it,” said Kari. “I’d try to kill you if you did that to me.”
Ian didn’t mention that Kari had been perfectly supportive of the auto-spear, even if she hadn’t actually operated it.
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“Look!” cried Kari suddenly. “A ship!”
Ian looked up. “It is!”
It soon became clear that the ship was heading towards them, but as it came closer, they realized that there was no pilot. It spiraled out of control, crashing down towards the rocky surface of Luna.
Kari siezed Ian’s arm and pulled him back into Sector 8.
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The ship fell with a noise like thunder, barely missing the spot where they had been standing mere minutes before.
It was still intact, amazingly, and the number on the hull read: 983157.
Kari gasped.
Ian looked at her, puzzled, but she did not explain, and he did not expect her to.
Instead she rushed towards it and through the door that had sprung open with the impact. Ian followed, every nerve in his body vibrating with wariness. “Shouldn’t we have-” he began, but Kari siezed him from behind, and for the third time, clamped her hand over his mouth.
He struggled, and she let him go with a warning glance. She went into the cockpit and pressed a button that closed the door. She strapped herself into the pilot’s seat.
“Where are we going?” Ian asked, perching on one of the passenger seats with a mistrustful look around the interior of the ship.
“Terra,” answered Kari shortly.
“Terra!” Ian squawked. “But-”
“This ship has radiation suits. It’s made for rescuing people.”
“Hang on.” Ian frowned. “How do you know?”
But Kari didn’t answer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I left a nice cliffhanger for the next writer.
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“We have to rescue that person from that Time Travel book you read at Luna’s library!” said Kari. “He has important information!” She explained.
“That number on the ship was 983157. Each number stands for a letter in the alphabet in code001. (code 001 is A=1, B=2, etc) You get IHCAEG. That’s the special emergency code for Imploring Help! Come At Earth, G because the code is always IHCA and then the celestial body’s number, and G means it’s in the G position from the sun. [A day has passed since Ian read the book about Time Travel.] Let’s go!” And she turned on the engine.
“But I thought you said the book was a hoax!” Ian said as they started to take off. “Not with this kind of coincidence!” replied Kari as they headed toward Earth at 660,000 miles per hour.
~~~
Never expected that to come from your randomly selected number, eh Alice?
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Whoops! I meant to say Terra in the last paragraph.
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Cool! I have to go to dinner, but I’ll post later.
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“But why is it ‘Come at Earth’?” asked Ian. “Why not ‘Come at Terra’?”
“Because when it was made, Terra was called Earth. Obviously.”
“Oh.”
~~~~~
Wow, can you tell I’m out of ideas?
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But as they approached Earth Terra they noticed the illegal alien police waiting at sector G. Kari immediately brought the ship to a halt. “Do you have your passport?” she asked.
“Why do we need it?” asked Ian.
“If we don’t have a passport, we will be arrested for illegal planet hopping!” Kari said urgently.
Ian dug into his compartment.
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He came up with what looked like a tiny green calculator.
“Here it is! But what about you?”
“I have my methods.”
“But your arm…”
“Drat, I forgot about that. Look, you can drive this for a little, right? I’m going to hide.”
“But if they search us they’ll find you!” Ian was too concerned about this to mention that no, he couldn’t drive the ship, even for a few minutes.
“Oh, shut up, will you? Put it on auto-steer if you think driving it will be too hard, and then all you’ll have to do is stop when they come near. If you press the yellow button they won’t board us.”
“Why not?”
“It means illness.”
“Illness? We’re not ill.”
“Quarantine, stupid. The oldest trick in the book.”
“Books?”
Kari, weary of their meaningless conversation, was already gone.
Ian pressed the yellow buton and put the ship on auto-steer, then gripped the handle that stopped the ship and waited.
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Is it only my computer, or is the entire homepage crossed out?
Arg! No ideas! *bangs head on desk* 
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The spaceships retreated in fright. The yellow flag symbolized that the ship had contamination of one of the deadlist viruses known to humankind: the Andromeaneedle. But unfortunantly for Ian and Kari, the Police had radiation suits. As soon as the Police were outfitted they charged back, wearing protection from the virus.
Ian knew Kari was born on Mars, so he figured if they went to Mars, they couldn’t be arrested for planet hopping. He turned around the spaceship and set the speed on MAX.
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There’s only been five smileys on this thread so far.
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“What are you doing?” demanded Kari as soon as it was safe to come out.
“We’re going to Mars. Since you were born there, they can’t arrest us if we’re there… Is that alright?”
“It is not alright! We need to rescue that man!”
“But the alien police have protection from the virus.”
“Well then we can’t land on Mars at all. They won’t let us if we’re in quarantine, and they can stop us if they have protection.” Kari had taken over the steering while she was talking, and they were heading towards Terra once more.
“What are you going to do?” asked Ian with a sense of dread.
“Blow up their ship, of course.”
“But Kari! They might just pop you back into a freezer for a few years, but they won’t do that to me! Like you said, they’ll kill me slowly, again and again and again.” He was close to crying.
“You’ve broken the law so much already that if we’re caught, they’ll do that to you anyway.” Kari’s voice was harsh and cold. “One more crime won’t hurt. In fact, if we don’t do this, you’ll be caught sooner than later.”
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“Ian you have to do this, anyway, you don’t have a choice. We’re goign to Mars whether you like it or not.” Kari’s voice had taken on a commanding quality and Ian figured he’d just go ahead and comply quietly.
Kari lurched the ship towards Mars, a distant star but still visable. The ship, old and dilapidated as it was, went where Kari told it to. The pair were almost to Mars when a voice told them to freeze.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why couldn’t we finish the Betwer scene? i liked the Betwer. and I thought I killed the box. oh well. I truly have no idea what is going on, so I hope what I wrote fits.
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165- They’re not going to Mars! Kari took over and decided to blow up the alien police ship, then headed towards Terra. It was Ian who wanted to go to Mars.
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165- I thought you killled the box too, but wierd end unexplained things started happening, like the box wasn’t dead after all. The Betwer scene was confusing me, somebody thought that the box was the Betwer, and I didn’t want to describe a fight, since I’m bad at it.
So I did the sensible thing and got us out of there.
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165- I can’t really write anything more till I know whether they’re going to Mars or Terra.
Kiki was keeper, but I think she forgot about this, so who shall be Acting Keeper?
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Where is everyone?!
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Right here. I just haven’t gotten around to looking at this thread yet. You seem to be here most often now, so maybe you should be Acting keeper.
All right, let’s decide right now: are they trying to go to Terra or Mars?
I say Terra, but the ships are causing them to run away to Mars, but as soon as they blow up the ships, they will go back to Terra.
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(98)
Are you finished with your history paper yet?
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170- Sounds good.
Who is here?
Davidude.
grnqween2011.
Lord Ragevuire the Shadow Mage.
Me.
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Let’s insert this bit before a voice told them to freeze, alright? We need explanation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Uh, Kari?” asked Ian tentatively.
Kari cast him a Glance. “What?”
“You said we were going to Terra. So why are we going to Mars?”
“Space near Terra is too conspicuous. We have too fight them near Mars. There are so many wars going on around Mars, no one will even think twice about a few more battles.”
“Oh, I see.”
The pair were almost to Mars when a voice told them to freeze.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There, how does that work?
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Could you use another writer? I’m bored, and this RRR seems livelier than the other one.
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174- We can always use another writer! And I’m sure the other one will pick up. We only just began.
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174 – Yes we could definently use another brain of creativity. You could give an interesting twist to the story. 
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So help me out, I don’t want to read the whole thing. Someone give me a synthesis.
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Don’t you mean synopsis?
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Hmmmmmm…
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177- Ummm, oh, this is a long one.
It’s the future. Earth, now called Terra, was destroyed by World War last, a nuclear war, and humans had to colonize other planets and moons. Ian lives on Ceres. He’s an orphan. One day in the library he meets Kari, who’s also an orphan. She, for some reason or another, wants to stow away on a ship. Why? I don’t know. Ian joins her, but they don’t stow away. Instead they board a shuttle, which crashes back to Ceres. Kari tells Ian she’s a Container, which means she has implanted memories of Terra, and she’s on the run from the Parents, who have an insane plan to re-create Earth. She’s been in cryogenics for like seventy years all told. Ian is going to be in big trouble for helping her if he’s caught. She tells him: “You, they’ll destroy just enough cells to keep you within an inch of your life, then put nanobots in you and repair them, then do it again. Again and again and again.” They board a ship to the moon, which is called Luna, and Ian reads a book that says a time-traveling scientist is going to land on earth the next day. Unfortunately, Earth is radioactive. They meet a talking black box that tells them they are going to rescue the scientist. It wants their id numbers. Kari won’t let Ian tell them to it. A giant crab smashes the box. They run away. A ship crashes that has a secret code asking for help. They try to go to Terra. The alien police stop them, they pretend they’re in quarantine- just read the last few posts.
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Grrrr…
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181- What?
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I’m back! Man, I haven’t posted here in ages.
“Attention,” the voice went on. “You are entering the space of one of the Preserved Terran Habitats. Please transmit authorization code or we will be forced to immobilize your ship.”
“Oh no,” Kari muttered. “What are- ”
“The PTHs?” Ian asked. “You were born on Mars! Don’t tell me you don’t-”
“I don’t. I was kidnapped when I was three, and then experimented on in sentient cryonics for eight freaking decades. Just explain.”
“Some environmentalists put together huge spaceships with what was left of Terran wildlife during the Great Evacuation. The Habitats orbit Mars now, and you have to pay to enter them.” Ian had always dreamed of seeing one of the Habitats, but he lived too far away and had never had enough money.
Kari put on speed. The Habitat was visible in the viewscreen, a huge metal globe with massive diamond panels through which a lush jungle could be seen.
“Whoa,” breathed Ian. “Are- are those trees? Oh my gosh! That’s a parrot! I’ve only ever seen those in books!!”
Kari grimly clung to the controls, a plan forming in her mind. The police ship was still on their tail. If she could just steer away at the second that the Habitat fired its magna-beam…
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A bolt of magnetic energy rocketed out from the PTH. Kari did something she hadn’t done in years. She quickly flicked her vision through the electromagnetic spectrum until the projectile appeared as a bright blue glow.
“There’s something to be said for genetic manipulation,” she muttered, as she twisted the joystick violently. The ship shuddered and dropped. The blast shot over the top of its plating, becoming briefly visible as the exhaust ionized, before striking their pursuers head on.
Kari forced the ship into a sharp turn, made sure it was on a trajectory towards Terra, then opened the throttle. They shot forward at speeds only dreamed of during the Terran Era. Only the artificial gravity’s compensation prevented them from being smashed into blobs of jelly.
A job well done, Kari reflected. On to save the scientist. If there really was a scientist traveling through time, and it wasn’t just a trap. She wouldn’t put it past the Parents to reprogram that box and put nano-implants into the Betwer. They would stop at nothing in their mad quest to create Neoterra. What if one of them was waiting at the very place they were supposed to land?
Kari forced the uneasy thoughts out of her mind. If there was any chance that somebody was about to die an agonizing, slow death from radiation poisoning, she was going to rescue that person. She’d been through that during the time that the Parents had tried to find out how their “children” would stand up to neutron bombardment. She wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.
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“What?” asked Ian, somewhat disappointed at not getting a good look at the PTH.
“What what?” Kari quipped.
“What did you say about genetic manipulation?”
“Oh that. I’m a Container, remember.” She tried to say it in an offhand way, so that he wouldn’t question her, but it seemed rather strained instead.
Ian tactfully said nothing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yeah, not a lot of story in that, but oh well.
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Do they know specifically where they’re landing? Did Ian ever drop the book?
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186- He didn’t! Oh my god, he didn’t! No, they don’t know where, but Ian can have another shot at glory, at least.
I think he has developed a habit for picking things up. Auto-spears, books…..
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By the time they reached Terra, it was still half an hour till the predicted time the scientist would land. Ian and Kari looked down at the ravaged planet, marveling at its terrible beauty and mankind’s capacity for destruction.
Great swaths of radioactively charged particles swept through the decimated magnetic field, creating a planet-wide veil of shimmering light. The nuclear bombardment had been so thorough and extreme that the radiation still hadn’t dissipated.
“The Aurora Terrestris,” breathed Ian.
As they plunged into the atmosphere and passed the veil, though, the horrible reality of Terra hit them like a slap in the face. It was utterly barren. The dark, sluggish seas lapped against the shores of sterile wasteland. Great craters were all that remained of cities. If any life still existed, it was bacteria buried under thousands of feet of rock.
“Sanfran Sissko was the name of the city he set out from, ” Kari said. “If my memories are correct, he will land in that crater.” She pointed out a place on the west coast of a roughly triangular continent. “Let’s go.”
As Kari guided the ship in, Ian went into a small chamber to put on a radiation suit. The suit was made of thick, interlocking plates of uranicium, with a small antigravity engine to keep the wearer from collapsing under its weight. Ian felt like he was putting on a medieval suit of armor. He had seen one of those in a book at the Ceres library, something about a round table. He still didn’t see how a round table was connected to primitive warriors, but the pre-WWL documents were fragmentary, if not completely incinerated.
The ship landed, steam hissing out of its hydraulic jets. Kari went into the compartment to put on a suit, while Ian stepped out of the airlock.
No sooner had he done so than a loud whine started up and increased in volume. Ian held his breath. Was this the arrival of the time traveler?
A ship, roughly spherical with matte black plating, dropped out of the sky and zigzagged across the crater with bursts of its landing jets. “Kari!” Ian yelled, his voice distorted by the speaker of his suit, and even more by the irradiated atmosphere. “He’s here.”
Kari stepped out of the airlock, and an expression of horror crossed her features. “The book… the box… they were fakes!” she babbled.
“What do you mean?” Ian gasped, stumbling backward from the sinister ship as quickly as he could. A small hatch opened in the black plating, and a blunt cone nosed out. Kari knew what was coming. She grabbed Ian’s hand and twisted the dial on her suit’s antigravity engine to MAXIMUM. They shot upwards just in time to see a missile strike their ship and reduce it to red-hot slag.
“It was a trap to lure me here,” Kari rasped. “That ship was sent by the Parents.”
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Sorry. I’ll edit my post.
“What was the name of the city he set out from?” Kari muttered, half to herself.
“Sanfran Sissko,” Ian stated proudly.
“How did you know that?” Kari gasped incredulously.
Ian held up the book, which he had carried all the way from Luna. “I can read, you know.”
“Well, if my memories are correct, Sanfran Sissko used to be where that crater is now.” She pointed out a place on the west coast of a roughly triangular continent. “Let’s go.”
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“What are we going to do?” asked Ian with an effort, trying not to think about about a slow and painful death.
Kari’s face was grey beneath her helmet. “There’s nothing we can do. There’s no one to help. We’ve lost our ship. The air in these things will only last a little while, less if we run. We’re trapped.”
Then there was a blinding flash beneath them, and when it faded and there eyes recovered, they could make out a man. An unprotected man. Dr. Stephen Rosinburg.
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“We have to help him!” Ian yelled, turning off his antigravity engine and falling heavily to the ground. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he wasn’t going to stand by and watch this man die.
Kari yelled at him. “No! It’s just a-”
Then Rosinburg disappeared, and a hatch opened in the side of the Parents’ ship. A man stepped out, unprotected, but not seeming to mind, and holding an autospear. He leveled it at Ian. "SURRENDER, RENEGADE," he said, "OR THIS ONE DIES."
“-hologram,” Kari finished lamely.
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Ian woke in a cold blue and white chamber. He couldn’t remember what had happened after the the man had aimed the auto-spear at him, but he wasn’t dead yet, and Kari lay unconscious but alive and unfrozen on the other side of the room, so it couldn’t be all bad.
“Kari!” It was almost silent, but the curved walls of the chamber picked it up and magnified it over and over, so that it echoed as loud as if he’d spoken it.
Kari jerked up and woke. Her eyes weren’t angry, only hopeless and sad.
“What happened?” Ian asked.
“They captured you. I surrendered. They knocked us out, and here we are. Again.” Kari said the last word to herself. She was silently resentful for a few minutes, and Ian was silent too, waiting.
“Again!” she yelled suddenly. “Again! I hate it here!” She kicked the wall again and again, and pounded at it with her fists, but it didn’t give, and she slumped exhausted to the floor.
“Have you any idea how many times I’ve been here, Ian? Six times. Six times! Last time I burned my microchip out and escaped, but they caught me anyway, and now you’re going to die, and I’m going to sit on ice for a decade until the Parents thaw me out for another experiment. I hate it!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yup, I gave ’em up, and now someone’s gotta rescue ’em. Sorry. (Sort of.)
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By “gave ’em up” I meant to the enemy, not that I gave up on the story.
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Suddenly, a section of the wall disappeared. Kari knew that the wall had been made from interlocking nanobots that could disengage at the press of a button, but Ian didn’t, and he was dumbstruck. When Kari saw who stepped through the doorway, though, she was just as dumbstruck as Ian.
"KRI," the man said expressionlessly. He was only a few years older than Ian, and he was unarmed.
“Kerj, you know very well that my name is Kari. You were my friend once. What have the Parents done to you?”
"THEY MADE ME SEE THE ERROR OF MY WAYS," Kerj replied.
“You mean they destroyed half your brain cells and replaced them with nano-implants. Wake up, Kerj.”
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“What were your ways?” asked Ian, feeling reckless and brave now that he knew he was going to die soon.
Kerj looked at him blankly, but said, “I WAS A RENEGADE. LIKE HER.”
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“Kari… Kerj… What’s up with the weird names?” Ian asked. If he was going to die in minutes, he at least wanted some answers.
“We were given three-letter ID codes by the Parents,” Kari said. “I was KRI. He was KRJ. We renegades gave ourselves names that were somewhat like our ID codes.
Kerj spoke. "ENOUGH. KRI, YOUR RENEGADE EMOTIONS SERIOUSLY JEOPARDIZED PROJECT NEOTERRA. YOU AND THIS PATHETIC IMPURE ONE MUST DIE."
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A circular section of the floor abruptly disappeared, and an autospear telescoped up from it. Kerj seized the weapon and stalked towards them, a feral smile on his face.
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Alright. Sorry that last one was hurried, I really had to leave. Also, I don’t know the HTML for the typewriter font, and the HTML thread was closed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Ian,” said Kari nervously, “now would be a good time to show your talent for having useful things again. Like another auto-spear would be nice.”
“What about your ‘genetic manipulation’?” asked Ian.
“We weren’t given weapons, for fear of exactly this sort of thing. And even if I did have superpowers that way, they wouldn’t work against Kerj.”
“Great.” Ian rummaged in his pockets for something, anything, but they were all empty. “Nothing.”
Suddenly it hit Kari. She wasn’t going to be wounded and stuck in a freezer. She was going to be killed. And she didn’t like that thought one bit.
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Kerj thrust ferociously. Kari jumped aside, just in time, but stumbled and fell heavily to the ground. Kerj pulled back the spear for another try, one that would surely succeed.
Then Ian, who had made his way around the room to behind Kerj, grabbed the butt of the autospear and pulled it back. The combatants fought for control as the spear twitched and jerked, almost another opponent. Kari leaped on Kerj’s back in a flying tackle. Already embattled, Kerj fell over. Ian’s fingers scrabbled desperately at the buttons while the spear flailed wildly around the room. Then he got a firm grip and gained control. He pointed the tip at Kerj’s vulnerable neck. “Get us out,” Ian commanded.
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“GET THE SPEAR AWAY,” said Kerj.
Ian lowered the spear catiously.
Kerj raised himself to his feet and tapped a few buttons on a tiny keyboard. The wall opened. Kari and Ian stepped through it.
Kari half-turned and opened her mouth to say something to Kerj, but thought better of it and fled down the corridor, pulling Ian along with her, still clutching the auto-spear.
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At the end of the corridor, Kari stopped. They had entered a massive room with balconies ringing the walls. Hundreds of people, with the same white-blond hair and green eyes ((if Kari has already been described, replace that)) as Kari, were standing on the balconies, tapping control panels, staring at instruments, or just watching the screen in the middle of the room. It rotated slowly, affording a view to everyone of the man it showed.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. “You already know the details of Project Neoterra, but I will reiterate them for those of you who just came out of cryogenics and suffered some memory loss or modification. Using the gravitational engines designed by JAA, we will pull Ceres, Ida, Dactyl and these uninhabited asteroids…” An image of the asteroid belt appeared on the screen, with several dozen objects highlighted in green. “…out of their orbits and crash them on Mars. The resulting body will have a mass approximately equal to Terra…”
Ian gasped. “What do they think they’re doing? Thousands of people will die!”
“Do you think they care?” Kari whispered back. “Shush.”
“…superterraforming will commence,” the voice went on. “First, we will inject massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, setting up a global warming effect. We will then land the plants from the Preserved Terran Habitats, which will photosynthetically convert the new atmosphere into oxygen…”
“We have to get out of here!” Ian hissed.
“Wait,” Kari replied. “We need to find out where the gravitational engines are. I have information that they’re in the Jovian system… ”
“So that’s why you really wanted to stow away!”
“Of course. But I need more specific- Hang on, I think he’s getting to it…”
“… the gravitational engines are being constructed on Io, in the Experimental Mineralogy facility of Gigacorp, where we have allies.”
“I know where that is,” Kari whispered excitedly. “I’ve been on Parents motherships like this one- the hangar for the smaller ships should be down this corridor. Let’s go.”
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They hurried down another corridor, and then another, Ian always conscious of his dark hair and eyes that marked him as an outsider.
They reached the hangar without difficulty, and securing a ship was a cinch. Though Kari was a renegade, her fingerprints unlocked the door nonetheless, and soon they were flying through the black nothingness of space at a rate close to the speed of light.
“That was easy,” remarked Ian confidently, leaning back in his chair.
But Kari was frowning. “Too easy, almost. They didn’t notice you; I got a ship even though my prints shouldn’t do that anymore; Kerj let us through even though he should have just let himself die rather than help us; it’s all so unnatural.”
Ian’s confidence was shattered. He was no longer brave and intrepid, but a naive kid again, and he wished he was back on Ceres, sneaking into the library to look at Terran books, and scrounging for food in the tunnels. Back before he’d met this dangerous girl named Kari.
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Suddenly, Kari whirled around.
“I thought I saw something.” Kari exclaimed, not too loudly though, as they were in secret.
“There it is again!” That time, Ian had seen it too.
A young boy, not yet 14, stood in the shadows next too them. Quietly he’d snuck up on them, but he was spotted.
“Hey!” Ian cried, “You there”
“Shhhhh, not too loud”, Kari whispered, “We’re still hiding.”
“What’s your name boy?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How old are Kari and Ian? 13-14 or 15-16? i wanted to make the boy on the young end of either spectrum, depending on Ian and Kari’s age.
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13-14.
“Jaa,” the kid said, leaning casually against the padded seat next to him.
Funny he’s so young, Kari thought. JAA? He’s one of the J-series Containers. Even I’m only a K. He should be older. How many Containers do the Parents need?
Aloud, she said, “How did you get on this ship?”
“Snuck on. I reprogrammed the door to open under your fingerprints.”
“Wow. You shouldn’t have been able to hack into the system. This is state of the art.”
Jaa smiled. “So am I. The Parents designed me to be the best of the best. But I wasn’t happy, even so.”
He sighed, suddenly looking decades older. “Can I trust you?”
Kari thought for a moment, then rolled up her sleeve, revealing her ID number and blasted transmitter.
Jaa grinned. “So you’re a renegade, too?” He rolled up his own sleeve, revealing a destroyed transmitter, an ID number, and a birthday-
A birthday!!
Kari thought her eyes were playing tricks. She scanned the ID tattoo again. 1/8/ 2037. There was no denying it. This kid had been born before World War Last.
((Note- Jaa was the one who designed the gravitational engines. This will be a key turning point later on.))
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“And who is this?” asked Jaa, nodding at Ian. “He’s not a Container, who is he?”
“Ian,” Kari said. “He’s a civilian that I dragged into this. I’m sorry now.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. Why did you?”
Ian perked up, hoping that he would get some answers, but Kari only sighed.
“I don’t know. I guess I was lonely, which was why I invited him in the first place, and he wanted to leave too. That was before he knew I was a Container.”
Ian felt a flush of guilt. He had said he’d like to come, and he’d been blaming Kari for all his hardships since then.
"Loneliness is-" began Jaa, but stopped himself at the look of horror on Kari’s face.
“Sorry, honestly, I am. It’s an old habit and dies hard. I am sorry!”
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“Hey guys,” Ian said, “Shouldn’t we be getting going?”
“Not now Ian. We’re talking.” Kari said in an exasperated voice.
“Umm, I really think we should go.” Ian looked with a meaningful glance behind him.
“Fine you scumbag, what is it?” Kari and Jaa looked at each other conspiratorially.
“Someone,” Ian said, “Is coming. And i don’t think It’s a good guy.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
GAPAs, can we have a new thread? This one is starting to take a long time to scroll down to the bottom.
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Yeah, I second that.
I haven’t anything exciting to add to this right now, but I’ll think about it.
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207 – Alice? as in, Alice K.?
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WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!! You leave a thread for a few days and wow! a whole new plot develops! Let me think for a while.
Can someone tell me who the parents are? I forgot.
~~~
Jaa looked around. He didn’t see anyone.
“All right,” he said, “What we need to do is to stop this plan from happening. They haven’t bothered to think about all the people who live on Ceres. Do you have any ideas?”
Ian suddenly felt a wave of shock. He lived on Ceres! If the parents had done this….
“Where are we heading anyway?” Kari asked.
“We are heading toward the main control room, with all the blueprints to the plans. I designed some of them, back when I wasn’t against these people.”
“What plans did you design?”
“Well, for one thing, I designed the artificial gravity that they plan to use. I could hack the system and redesign the plans that they have so that the gravity works backward.”
“How does the gravity work?” Ian asked.
“Actually, I’m one of the smartest people here.” said Jaa. “They don’t want to lose me. It works because neutrinos swarm to electromagnetism. If you have a big enough electromagnetic force, the neutrinos are attracted to it. However, I have also found that neucular force repels them. Even the Parent’s most brilliant scientists haven’t figured that one out!” He laughed.
Kari said, “But there are too many parents in the control room! They’d catch you, and us too!”
“We’ll have to work fast,” said Jaa, “because we’re here.”
The chairs stopped. A door appeared in front of them. “input fingerprint” a screen flashed. Jaa stuck his thumb over the laser scanner.
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Sorry if that totally ruins the plot or anything.
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dude.
[Note from Robert: This thread is continued at https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=793 .]
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