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 50/500 (Stalled) 
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Chibi-Czar
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Post 50/500 (Stalled)
9/20/69
I guess I should begin by introducing myself. I am Nod Sebastian Wu-Xiong. Hebrew, English, and Chinese, what a mutt of a name. A bit fitting I guess. I am one of the original colonists of the planet we have come to call Nod. It is the second planet from the primary, a brown dwarf. Thirteen years ago the colony ship landed on the surface and began the automated process of building the initial habitat and support systems for the planet. Twelve years ago today equipment that had long been dormant switched on. Simple prokaryotic cells were produced by spontaneous generation. Engineered viral vectors transmitted DNA stored digitally in the computer's memory banks and generated upon arrival to build various organelles for eukaryotic cells. The cellular components were combined and the resulting stem cells were cloned. The cloned cells were then used to generate Zygotes and support cells that were implanted in artificial wombs. That was my conception; I still have the video of myself as a disassociated group of cells (it's less morbid than it might sound).

Following the 50/500 rule, fifty children were made. If you're not familiar with biology (it's okay, I only know this stuff because it directly relates to me) the 50/500 rule states that for short term survival a species needs fifty members and for long term survival it needs five hundred. For maximum population growth capacity fourty-five of the fifty were engineered female. We were separated into five groups of ten, nine girls and one boy, into the five dormitories. Each group was assigned a surname, the males have hyphenated surnames like mine. We're not quite sure how the mission planners intended breeding to go on. There has been some talking amongst small groups about it. The planners left very detailed instruction on how to go about teaching and learning skills, how to expand our infrastructure, how to go about exploiting resources, but left almost no instructions on inter-personal relationships outside of the information on psychology provided in the memory banks, and of course our Constitution. I'm the male of the fifth group, Wu. That is why my family name is Wu-Xiong. It means "Fifth Male".

Our constitution and a good deal of our society is that of the group that sponsored this particular colony mission, the Extraterrestrial Inhabitants, part of the Transplanetary League. As such, we speak Standard, a language designed by linguists to be an amalgam of American English and Mandarin Chinese, the two most common languages among the spacefaring portion of our species. We have a direct democracy system of government, centered around the principle of Liberty. And our population distribution among the sexes is quite similar as well, though for different reasons.

There is great variety among the genetic ancestry of our group. Probably to add to the stability and viability of our gene pool. I personally am a mix of Eastern Sub-Saharan African and Black American.

I am keeping this journal for posterity's sake. I will do my best to be completely honest in it. My reason for writing this journal is that so often I have found in the history of humanity, during moments of great strife and progress, no one sat down and wrote their thoughts and feelings on the events of their life while the events were going on. What most find truly interesting in history is the personal stories that it consists of. What is most sought after by historians later are the mundane details of everyday existence that fade from memory and are never recorded because their omnipresence in the society gives people the feeling that of course these "little" things will never change.

I have to go now. As luck would have it, one of the anaerobe tanks that supplies the bulk of our Oxygen has a rupture in it. Since one of my secondary skill sets is engineering, I have to go help Afaf and Ngiao patch it before we all start suffering from Oxygen starvation. EoE

9/23/69
I spent the last several days running around like crazy doing emergency repairs. It seems the rupture of the anaerobe tank was just the first symptom of structural stress on that part of the building. The pressure outside is forty-five centibars but the pressure inside is one-point-five bars. During construction, the construction drones missed a flaw that led through a portion of the building. The pressure difference caused stress fractures in the flaw and if Afaf had caught it any later we would have had to deal with explosive decompression. That took two days to complete, working ourselves to the bone and doing eight separate EVAs. I spent much of the next day doing the prep work I should have done earlier for my flight but couldn't as I was keeping all of us alive. I'm running low on sleep but I can rest up during the flight. Right now I'm using the time it takes to fuel up the Strato to write this. It's part of our standard safety procedure to keep all vehicles without fuel when they're not being used, with the exception of emergency craft which are kept half filled. Ninety-nine percent full, time to go. EoE

9/25/69
Apparently the Universe decided this week that I had a pretty little ass. I say this because at every turn it has tried to shove its dick up my rectum. All yesterday I had to battle hurricane force winds as a massive storm swept across the continent. I want you to imagine trying to fly an ultra-light craft through winds that can lift you off your feet. It took twelve hours for me to get above the storm system and another two hours of piloting until I had the plane in the Northern jet stream and was in any position to leave the controls to automatic. I took another thirty minutes talking to everyone back home on satcom to convince them I was alive and well and that I should just continue on with my scheduled mission. The transceiver on the plane couldn't penetrate the storm until I got into the upper atmosphere, above the storm, so they didn't know if I had made it through until I called.

Fighting the storm burned a good amount of fuel. Plus I was blown off course so I'm going to have to waste even more fuel getting to the target area. And Zandra criticized me for taking so much fuel with me. If I hadn't I wouldn't be able to complete this mission and any fuel I used would have been completely wasted.

Everyone of us has at least one primary skill in which we are proficient at a professional level and one or more secondary skills that we can muddle through. I have two primary skills, piloting and cartography. This was no accident. Since I was young, I wanted to fly. Having both piloting and cartography skills as primaries meant I was the logical choice for the initial planetary mapping runs. Though the colony ship deployed twelve satellites that were a combination weather, communication, and global positioning satellites, they were limited in their mapping capability, especially at the resolution we needed for resource scouting. So I took out one of the two stratojets that were supplied from Sol and charted the surface of the planet. Even the barren planet we live on can look beautiful from on high. EoE

10/02/69
These flights are quite monotonous. There doesn't seem anything particularly special about most of the work I do up here. I just realized that this is the sort of thing I wanted to record. So I thought I'd write a day in this life of an aerial cartographer.

I wake up two hours before dawn. At high altitude, dawn comes earlier than on the surface, so I actually wake up seven hours before zenith. In the thin air, streaked with crystals, dawn is the most beautiful thing you'd ever see. I bet it's even better than dawn from orbit. There's too little atmosphere in low orbit to give you the colors that you get up here. I give myself a sponge bath in the tiny water closet that's more closet than water. I eat a light breakfast, a protein bar and nutrient drink. I usually graze lightly throughout the day to keep myself from getting hungry but consuming little. Being in the small jet is very sedentary so I try to keep my calorie count low.

Weather at high alt is very steady. This means I can leave the plane on autopilot for long stretches without worrying. Mostly I just fly in spirals over target areas. Most of my work is cartography. The startojet is outfitted with a powerful sensor suite designed to scan the surface and below, though only certain materials can be detected below the surface at various depths. I then arrange this information into a readable map and transmit the data back home. All this only takes a total of six hours out of the entire day. At least on a good day. If the weather is bad, I have to do a lot of the flying myself which means I have to take time out to chart the scans later.

If the weather is good I spend most of the day reading. The first trip I was studying engineering during my free time. I found that with that much free time on your hands you can learn a subject in only three weeks. I go up for a month at a time. That last week was pretty hard on me and I was glad when it was over. My next time out I had Father prepare a reading list for me so that wouldn't happen. I also learned to meditate and have gotten pretty good at it.

Towards the evening, before I go to sleep, I transmit the data for the day and transmit my flight plan. I usually chat with others during this time. Mostly others from my sept or one of the other boys. That's what we started calling our groups, as none of us are related genetically. Felicie is usually the one who talks to me the most. She worries about me spending so much time alone on these trips. I actually enjoy the solitude. The base isn't very big and with fifty people living there it's hard to find a place to breathe.

Encase you're wondering this is my fifth run so far. EoE

10/12/69
I have come to the conclusion that Locke lived in his own magical world. EoE

10/17/69
I've been reading Mark Twain. He's an interesting man. I just can't figure him out. He seems to have nothing but derision for humanity but constantly keeps hope in the human potential. Maybe he's just a hypocrite. EoE

10/20/69
Damn weather has been acting up again. Haven't had much time for reading. I haven't had much time for anything. The air this high is fairly insubstantial but the winds speeds make what little they blow powerful. The long wings of the stratojet combined with the light weight of the plane means that if I get some good air over the wings I can shut of the engines and just glide. Without the roar of the engines all you hear is the wind howling, the bones of the plane creaking, the breath in your throat, and your heart in your chest. It's a wonderful sound.

I had an interesting talk with Felicie tonight. She was just making the standard small talk she always does. The thing about small talk with Felicie is that, since she's studying psychology, she over analyzes everything you say. I mentioned my musings on the personality of Twain and Felicie responds that my fascination with Twain was a manifestation of my subconscious longing for a father. She went on to say that I spent so much time alone because I was reaching out for love. I told her that she was young, inexperienced and full of shit. She didn't take that too well. She started berating me so I closed the connection. I wonder if she'll talk to me tomorrow. EoE

10/21/69
She didn't call. Yuri did though. We talked for a bit. He said he missed me when I was gone because the girls always got more bold when I did. I told him to just hang on for two more days and I'd be back. EoE

10/24/69
I made good time back but the wind that blew me here also fueled an electrical storm below. I had to circle for a day before I could land. My sept had a party for me when I came back. After about thirty minutes I snuck out when no one was looking to go hang out with the boys. It's not that I didn't like the girl's party, I just feel more comfortable with other guys, you know?

We sat crouched in a corner of the hydroponics bay sipping some tank mead from a black bulb. A bulb is just a ceramic bottle that has a wide, spherical resivior and a narrow neck. A shaped plastic bag lines the bulb and extends up to the mouth, like a baby bottle. You get the liquid out by suction. These are used to hold liquid in micro-g situations. Tank mead is an alcoholic, moonshine beverage that we guys drink. The anaerobe tanks we use for life support are fed a steady stream of human waste and general organic debris. They break it down and give off Oxygen and ethynol. The ethynol is used as a fuel for the drones and other vehicles we use and we breathe the Oxygen. The tanks are modular for quick repairs; each large tank is actually hundreds of small interconnecting boxes. Sunan, whose primary was engineering, figured out how to jury rig a couple of the boxes in different tanks so that the Oxygen they produced would still go to the life systems but they wouldn't accept any material from the waste and recycling systems and they wouldn't pump their ethynol to the fuel tanks. Just add some carb bars to it, some water, wait for a few weeks and then you've got a decent alcoholic beverage.

We passed the little bulb around each other as we engaged in some good old fashioned male bonding. I doubt the conversations we have like this are anything special. Since prehistoric times humans have been fermenting and drinking just about anything that can be fermented. Men, when drinking the fermented beverages in groups, always talk about the same three things: girls, sex, and violence of an assorted nature. The conversation began with the first, moved to the third, and ended with the second.

?Hey, em, you've got to hold off on these trips for a while,? Ikaika said, passing me the bulb.

I laughed and took a sip from the bottle. Tank mead is thirty-two proof so you can't exactly talk right after swallowing some of it.

?Yeah,? seconded Yuri, gesturing for the bulb, ?They're bad enough when they outnumber us nine-to-one but when you go the get all edgy and shit.?

The fire in my throat had died down enough for me to speak. ?Hey, this stuff has got to be done if we're ever going to get out of this sardine can,? I replied, though none of us had actually seen a sardine much less a canned one. ?I'm the only one who's got the skill set to do it.?

?Maybe, but we still get creamed in dee-bee when your not here! Can't win without our five,? Yuri said, slightly slurred. Most everyone enjoyed dodgeball but Yuri held it as nigh holy.

?Do you ever think about anything besides dee-bee,? I asked him.

?Sure, sometimes I think about pussy!?

It was a game we played. Whoever could be the most casually vulgar won respect in the eyes of his peers.

?But he's right, though,? interjected Ikaika. ?You're the best player on our team. We get creamed by Carmella and Felicie whenever you leave.?

?Hell yeah!? exclaimed Yuri. ?They're bad normally, but when you go they get downright sadistic!?

?Not just on the court, either. You rub them the wrong way a little and they'll bite your fucking head off!? Ikaika gestured emphatically as he spoke.

?Naw, you're full of shit!? the alcohol was in my system now and I had a nice buzz going. I leaned back against the wall and relaxed a bit before replying, ?Felicie might have an arm on her but she's a pussy cat!?

Tai Wei, a bit shy and usually the quiet one in our group finally spoke up. ?She misses you when you're gone. She worries about you.?

?She's family,? I replied with a shrug.

?Yeah, right! You know you've been stroking that pussy cat!? Sunan gained several status points for that one. I should have seen it coming.

?I wouldn't mind that kitty clawing my back!? said Yuri with a leer.

?She's cute and all but I'd really like to give Tu a workout she'd never forget!? Ikaika gestured with his crotch to emphasize the regimen he had in mind for her.

?Sebo's a lucky bastard! All those Wu girls got tight little bodies on them!? exclaimed Sunan. There was a general grunting of agreement from the others.

?Hey now, you make it sound like you guys don't get an eyeful of cute girl parts every now and then!? The dorms are small so privacy consists of people just not looking at you. This means that every so often you catch a glimpse of a septmate's bare flesh. ?What about you, Ika? Fatima is a little cutie herself!?

Ikaika just shrugged and shook his head.

Sunan, who was sitting on my immediate right, put his hand on my shoulder. ?Look, Sebo... All the girls are cute and whatnot, we ain't arguing about that. You just got the cream of the crop.?

Instead of making the obvious pun about vaginal fluid I said, ?Well, the pussy's always pinker on the other side!?

That got quite a few laughs from the boys and raised me up higher in the point ranking. I hoped that had shifted the line of discussion to a different topic. No such luck.

?You'd think the Bastards would've at least spread the wealth around!? Yuri punched me playfully in the shoulder and I gave him a quick elbow to the ribs. We refer to the mission planners as either the Bastards, the Controlling Bastards, or the Controlling Bastard Fuckwads. Mostly that's to keep them as human in our minds and not gods.

?Experimentation,? commented Tai Wei cryptically.

?Experimenting with what,? I asked. After all, these were my septmates, the closest thing I had to siblings. It was my duty as a Wu to defend them.

?The septs were put in place by the planners. Now they could only serve one of two functions, breeding groups, or as control and experimental groups,? answered Tai Wei. He continued, ?Since there are no rules on breeding, we have to assume that we were expected to breed freely amongst septs. That only leaves experimental groups.?

?But what types of experiments?? I was feeling uncomfortable with this conversation. It's a little disconcerting discussing the fact that your life and the lives of your loved ones were being manipulated, controlled, and planned by people who were most likely long dead. After all, the war had been going for two years when our ship had been launched.

?I would guess it has to do with genetic experiments. Haven't you guys noticed that Yi favors the hard sciences, Er favors life sciences, and Si is mostly into hands on stuff. I don't know what San is into, I'm too close to determine that.? Tai Wei's full name is Nod Tai Wei San-Xiong.

?What about Wu,? I asked, more than a little hesitant to hear what he thought. Tai Wei had a a reputation for great insight into people. ?I mean, we're all over the place!?

Tai Wei gave me an odd look. When I just shrugged, Tai Wei gave me another look and laughed. ?You guys are obviously a eugenics project. Superior race and all that.?

I laughed. Hard. ?Yes, because me and Morrigan are so obviously similar!? Morrigan is ghostly white redhead with emerald green eyes. I am distinctly not. ?All the septs have varied races in them. So how can you say we are a master race??

Tai Wei gave me that look again and said, ?All the Wu's are physically superior to other septs. Wu's are almost always the best on their dee-bee teams. All Wu's are mentally superior to other septs. While we all range from smart to intelligent, to a number the Wu's are all geniuses. And then there's the fact that all the Wu's are physically more attractive.?

Being uncomfortable with the fact that Tai Wei wasn't wrong, I tried to deflect his comments by saying, ?I'm just pretty compared to you ugly mother fuckers!?

?Come on em, we've all seen girls throw themselves at you,? said Tai Wei, laughing. The others laughed their agreement.

?You ems know I've never even kissed a girl.? I was a little embarrassed about that fact.

?You don't have to kiss them for them to want to kiss you,? Yuri retorted.

?Yeah, well... I've got to get back to the party before they start to miss me.? I didn't really have to go yet, I was just uncomfortable being there at that moment.

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"Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step to true panic."
--Freefall

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-- David J. Liszewski


Last edited by Anony-mouse on Wed Oct 13, 2004 11:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Mon Sep 27, 2004 4:33 pm
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9 girls to 1 boy? jeezes the hentai part of me kinda took hold 80% of the time with that thought while reading this... so i won't have anything constructive to say apart from i'm waiting for the next part to be up :D

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Mon Sep 27, 2004 5:14 pm
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Looks very interesting. Already 20% better than most animes with the same guy-to-girl ratio. ^_^ Keep writing. I'd be happy to throw in an idea or another POV if you need.

Saw a typo when I was reading it, now I can't find it... other than that, awesome!

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Mon Sep 27, 2004 6:19 pm
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Because of cultural reasons, we like to imagine people Adam & Eveing it up in situations like this. Unfortunately, that's not feasable.

My basic idea with this is that colonization of space requires you to deal with relativity, which most extra-solar scifi doesn't. That's because relativity is a bitch. You have to get a ship moving very fast and then you have to slow it down again. The sparse interstellar dust is enough to keep you at around .5C which gives you a gamma of only .866 or so. This means that to get to viable star systems you'd have to keep things alive for decades through a great deal of interstellar radiation. Basically, you can't ship living things.

Without being able to send any adults, all lifeforms must be created once you reach the planet and all consrtuction must be automated for at least the first ten years, possibly longer. The success rate for colonies like this one I've decided are 1% for the first generation, increasing one percentage point until the population reaches five hundred when it then grows to 20% until the population reaches orbit again where it jumps to 40% and then 70% once they move out of orbit and begin mining the star system.

The planet is being run by a group of twelve year olds with no parents or mediating influences outside of the virtual intelligences that raised, which are easy to confuse simply by acting outside of their programing. Imagine if you took a group of seventh graders and dropped them on a deserted island that would kill them if they went outside their compound without protective equipment. Not to mention that, eventually, breeding will have to take place between them. They know all about sex and have grown up with the expectation of breeding but have no practical experience to draw on for constructing relationships. The nearest person they could ask is an eighty-seven year call away, one way, and even then they'd need to construct a neutrino array to do that.

Then there is the children's relationship with their creators. People they have never met and will never meet who have an insane amount of control on their lives. The internal struggle between thinking of them as gods to comfort themselves, or thinking of them as humans, meaning they stand a good chance of being really fucked up by these people. Your average twelve year old isn't truly capable of acepting their own mortality, but these kids have to.

I don't want this story to have a happy ending. I don't want it to even have a truly satisfying ending. I want it to have an ending that does justice to the situation in the story. That probably will require several senseless deaths.

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"Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step to true panic."
--Freefall

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-- David J. Liszewski


Mon Sep 27, 2004 9:34 pm
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i was kinda expecting there be a lot deaths in this... i mean considering the set up it be hard not to kill anyone... and i was kinda wondering how old these kids were(see i ignored the dates) i'd thought they were say like 17 or 18

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Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:57 am
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Eventually, people will die.

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"Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step to true panic."
--Freefall

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-- David J. Liszewski


Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:06 am
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I like it! You've got an interesting culture growing here, populated with some fascinating people. Shame I'm such a WAFF-slut, I have a feeling I'm really going to regret it when you start giving these kids the chop. :D

Query: how did they get educated, and (what passes for) socialized? The process, I mean, not the explanation, by which I mean AI expert systems are the explanation, but how does it work in practice? I'd kinda like to see that, especially since your POV chara already seems to have a handle on the concept of doing what's necessary to survive. (How much of a handle he has on the fact of his personal mortality, I expect we'll see as you go further in the story - you are going to go further, I hope!)

You've also left me wondering about the parent culture - it takes a helluva lot of patience to launch an experiment that you won't see initial data from in - what, about two or three centuries? Politicians don't make plans past the next election. CEOs don't plan past the next shareholders' meeting. These are some awful confident sonsofbitches running that society...

Please, do update. Your fandom awaits with bated breath...

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Tue Sep 28, 2004 10:58 am
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Michael wrote:
Query: how did they get educated, and (what passes for) socialized? The process, I mean, not the explanation, by which I mean AI expert systems are the explanation, but how does it work in practice? I'd kinda like to see that, especially since your POV chara already seems to have a handle on the concept of doing what's necessary to survive. (How much of a handle he has on the fact of his personal mortality, I expect we'll see as you go further in the story - you are going to go further, I hope!)

I'm going to be dealing with that fact shortly. While it will be awhile until you actually run into Father and Mother, there will be a part discussing Sebastian's relationship with them.

Michael wrote:
You've also left me wondering about the parent culture - it takes a helluva lot of patience to launch an experiment that you won't see initial data from in - what, about two or three centuries? Politicians don't make plans past the next election. CEOs don't plan past the next shareholders' meeting. These are some awful confident sonsofbitches running that society...

In about twenty years they will see Sol's nova. This particular colony was launched at the tail end of a mad rush out of the system, led by the Extraterrerstrial Inhabitants and backed by the Transplanetary League, sort of a UN for space. This doesn't affect the plot of the story, and since it's backstory it doesn't really give anything away. The colonists are well aware of the fact that the sun was dying when they were sent, though they don't know that it's already dead. All the colony ships were launched within a sixty year span and the closest one was fourty lightyears from Sol. The ships only travel at .5C so it took over eighty years for the first ship to even reach its destination and it would take fourty years after they built a neutrino laser in orbit that the could even say, "Well, we made it." Transportation of goods is an excersise in futility, so no trade is really possible. There was, and is, no money to be made on these colonies.

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"Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step to true panic."
--Freefall

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-- David J. Liszewski


Tue Sep 28, 2004 11:24 am
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I thought I should post this to help keep down confusion. It's a cast of characters for the story. They are arranged by sept and have their ethnic origin beside their name.

Quote:
1 Yi
2 Er
3 San
4 Si
5 Wu
M Xiong

Men - *
Ikaika - Hawaiian (Yi)
Yuri - Russian (Er)
Tai Wei - Chinese (San)
Sunan - Thai (Si)
Sebastian - African & Black American (Wu)

Yi - *
Fatima - Arabic
Ila - Indian
Isabella - Spanish
Kamaria - African
Azar - Persian
Jaci - Native American
Ai - Japanese
Haukea - Hawaiian
Li Chun - Chinese

Er - *
Samantha - American
Kanya - Thai
Ayo - African
Moema - Native American
Akiko - Japanese
Jaswinder - Indian
Amarante - Greek
Branwen - Welsh
Ingrid - German

San - *
Anna - German
Zandra - Canadian
Chinwendu - African
Morvarid - Persian
Kumiko - Japanese
Anja - Nordic
Asha - Indian
Noelani - Hawaiian
Ju Lan - Chinese

Si - *
Ixchel - Mayan
Afaf - Arabic
Ngiao - Maori
Ayla - Jewish
Nizhoni - Native American
Michi - Japanese
Ananda - Indian
Jia Mei - Chinese
Ping Qiu - Chinese

Wu - *
Carmella - Spanish
Avani - Indian
Tu - Chinese
Felicie - Nordic
Morrigan - Irish
Abena - African
Calfuray - Native American
Anastasia - Russian
Emmanuelle - French

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"Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step to true panic."
--Freefall

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-- David J. Liszewski


Last edited by Anony-mouse on Wed Sep 29, 2004 1:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Tue Sep 28, 2004 12:09 pm
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Post (Continued)
I walked back to my dormitory, leaning aginst to cold wall as I walked. I wasn't drunk, just a little buzzed. I simply enjoyed the feeling of cold, hard ceramic pressing against my warm flesh.

The door to the dormitory was open, as it usually is during the day. No one seemed to notice me as I slipped back in. I leaned back against the wall near the door. The dormitory was arranged with five sets of double bunks circling one half of the room. On the other half was a long table in the middle next to the food dispensers at the far end of the room. Opposite the entrance was another door that led to the sept's bathroom. To the left are five shower stalls, to the right are five toiulet stalls. Of all the rooms in the compound, only the bathrooms have privacy locks on them.

Carmella was the first to notice my return. She walked over and leaned against the wall next to me. ?Went to hang with your ilk?? she asked. It always amazed me that she could phrase things like that but say them without a hint of malice. It probably had to due with her eyes; they were a rather attractive umber.

I nodded my head in response.

?Drinking that hooch Sun makes, huh? You boys are going to go blind drinking that crap.?

I just shrugged and said, ?It wouldn't be male bonding if it weren't stupid and dangerous.?

Emmanuelle had drifted over and stood next to Carmella. ?So what did you ems talk about?

My eyes had been focused on their elbows that were lightly bumping and rubbing each other. It took me a moment to realize I had been asked a question. ?Oh, the usual stuff,? I replied nonchalantly.

?You mean sex and violence?? asked Emmanuelle.

?No.? I said. I didn't technically lie as we also talked about girls.

?Then what did you talk about?? Carmella asked, tagteaming with Emmanuelle.

I knew they wouldn't let up so I decided to throw them a steak to get them off my trail. ?Tai thinks that Wu is an experiment in genetic manipulation to produce superior humans. He says that's why Wu are the smartest, strongest, and most attractive of the colonists.?

They were quiet for a moment before, predictably, Emmanuelle was the first to speak, ?Well, he's not wrong about the attractive part. I mean look at Avani,? she said, gesturing with the small drink can she had in her hand. ?Those cheekbones, those eyes...?

?Not to mention those hips,? finished Carmella.

?And then there's Morrigan,? continued Emmanuelle.

?Oh, yes indeed,? Carmella concured, ?I would just love to see how far down those freckles go.?

?I could spend hours trying to lick them off!? Emmanuelle said. They were always like this, picking at everything with a slight air of cinicism.

?And don't forget Leese,? Carmella said, pointing with her chin at Felicie.

?Mmmm... that lovely little Nordic beauty. Now that one is a package!?

?Indeed,? agreed Carmella. ?That soft hair, gentle curves, such beautiful hands...?

?But it's the eyes that really catch you. I could just dive into those liquid blue pools and drown myself in them...?

?Mmmm, of course you're right. Wouldn't you agree, Sebo??

I rolled my eyes and sighed. ?I maintain the amazing beauty of all you lovely fems,? I dodged.

Felicie, who had been talking with Calfuray and Anastasia, had it pointed out by Calfuray that we were looking at her. Felicie's head snapped around so fast you'd think it would have snapped off. She quickly turned on her hells and marched over to us, fury seeming to boil off of her into the surrounding air.

?You know it's rude to leave a party in your honor!? she said, far too loud for the small room in which we were.

?So I wanted to hang with my friends that I haven't seen for a month, big deal. It's not like I didn't come back.?

?So we're not your friends then??

?That's different. I don't sleep in the same room as them.?

?Oh, and it has nothing to do with you wanting to get drunk, does it??

?I'm not drunk,? I answered, ?Merely pleasantly buzzed.?

?Oh, what a huge difference that makes!?

Normally Felicie isn't like this. I didn't much care for her accusing tone so I decided to humiliate it out of her. ?You know, Elle and Ella here were just talking about how beautiful you were, but you look really unattractive when you're full of righteous indignation.?

First she blushed, then she grew red with anger, and then she stormed out of the room. I thought about following her but decided that was a good way to insure physical harm came to me.

?Uh oh, seems like someone summoned the wrath of the fuzzy bunnies,? said Emmanuelle in a sing-song voice.

That's an obscure refference to an argument made in the TL general conference when a Li Sarah Johanson from qi was running for deffense minister. Several members from rather chauvinist countries had challenged her apptitude on the premise that a woman was not aggressive enough for the position. She replied, ?Of course women are not aggressive enough. As we all know, Hell's fury is a bunch of fuzzy bunnies,? refferencing Shakespear's line, ?Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.? We'd learned about this in our Civic History class and the girls promptly started reffering to feminine anger as the wrath of the fuzzy bunnies. Of course that implied that Felicie had romantic intentions towards me.

?What do you mean by that?? I asked.

The girls looked at each other and smiled. Using the weird ESP-like ability the two had, Carmella was chosen to respond, ?Come on! You mean you haven't noticed??

I frowned at the comment. It was pretty obvious I was missing something that was plainly visible to everyone else.

?It's rather obvious our little Leese has a crush on you,? said Abena, having come up behind me when I wasn't looking.

I half turned to face her saying, ?I doubt that's the case. I'm probably not even her type.?

?Poor, poor Sebo,? Emmanuelle said with a sigh. ?You'd think growing up in this enviroment would give you some understanding of fems.?

?It's not that I don't get females,? I replied while turning to leave, ?I don't get people.?

I wandered around aimlessly for a bit, but you could only wander so far before someon tried to engage you in conversation or asked for your help in something. After dodging through conversations with Anja and Kumiko, I decided to head to the exercise room.

We're supposed to get one hour of strength training and one hour of cadio a day to keep our bodies in shape. Nod only had around seventy-five percent the gravity of Earth, so we need regular stress on our bodies to keep them growing properly.

As I walked into the exercise room I saw Akiko and Asha huddled in a corner, clinging desperatly to each other as they kissed passionately. There aren't many places where you can get away with someone in the complex so I just followed the rules of pseudo-privacy and acted like they weren't there. I straddled the weight machine and entered my workout code. Instead of relying on weight, the machine used springs of various resistance to exercise your muscles. This had kept their weight down during transit.

Even though I was trying not to look, the more primitive parts of my mind made me keep stealing quick glances at the girls in the corner. Under normal circumstances ten percent of a human population will be homosexual, ten percent will be heterosexual, and eighty percent will be bisexual with sexual preferences and accessability determining who they choose as lovers. Those figures were unacceptable for our situation. So the Controlling Bastards had given all the females a genetic predisposition to bisexuality to prevent tensions from the lop-sided breeding structure and all the males had been given a genetic predisposition to heterosexuality to maximize the use of semen, I guess. And my reptillian brain was telling me that it was my duty to my gender to watch two cute girls make out.

I was doing an hour and a half on both strength and cardio to make up for my lack of exercise for the previous month. About eighty minutes into the workout, Akiko and Asha untangled their limbs, stood, glanced at me, and then left giggling. That just stood to remind me of the unfathomable nature of women.

I finished my full body workout and moved to the cardio machine and started in on at a brisk jog. The exercise room consisted of five weight machines along one side and three treadmills and two exercise bikes along the other. Along both walls behind the equipment were mirrors so you could watch your form while you excercised. I stared into my reflection's eyes and zoned out to the sound of my footsteps.

After a while, I'm not sure how long, Azar came in and started using the weight machine directly across from me. I could practically feel her hard gaze burning a hole through me. Azar is, arguably, Felicie's best friend. Felicie doubtlessly told Azar all about the goings on and thus here was Azar to give me the evil eye as a surrogate for her friend. I never my Azar's gaze. I just kept on jogging with my eyes glued to those of my reflection.

I finished my cardio before Azar finished her strength so I left quickly without saying anything to the hostile girl. As I left I heard her mumble something I was unable to make out.

I felt good walking through the halls. In fact I felt better than I had in a while. A little alcohol, a little endorphins, and two girls making out in front of could do wonders for an em's disposition. I gave in a bit and let my mind replay that scene a few times.

I felt warm all over. We had learned the necesity of energy conservation two years ago when our power reserves were so low we had to kill most of the lights and other systems and the complex got bitterly cold as the life support had to be reduced to bare minimums. Since then we'd kept the complex at a steady twenty degrees to keep energy expenditures for heating to a managable level. The only way to feel really warm was either a good workout or a warm shower.

I had decided to prolong my warmth by taking a shower so I headed back to my dorm. Most of the girls had left by then and the only people in there were Tu, Anastasia, and Ixchel. I waved to Ixchel as I crossed the room to the baths. Once inside I stripped down and headed to the closest shower stall. The walls of the stall went floor to ceiling and the door formed a water-proof seal when closed. The walls were soundproofed which, along with the locks on the stalls, gave me the distinct impression they had been designed to have sex in. I got in the stall and turned the water on to my favorite setting.

The showers were on a timer to conserve water and energy so I couldn't really savor the water. It actually takes more energy to wash and dry towels, not to mention water, than it does to just air dry yourself. Having warm jets of air blow over you isn't as fun as you'd think it would be.

Interesting fact: twelve year old boys who are mildy intoxicated and just saw two girls make out can get an instant errection without any warning. Another interesting fact: if you're mildy intoxicated it sometimes takes you an amazingly long time to realize even simple things, like that you share a bathroom with nine females. I'm sure you can see where this is going and beacause the Universe hates me the one to walk in on me was Felicie. She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes open wide. A blush spread across her face and in the blink of an eye, she was gone. EoE

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Last edited by Anony-mouse on Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tue Sep 28, 2004 7:02 pm
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I need feedback! FEEEEDBACK!!

No, seriously... feedback of any sort, no matter how long or short, is always welcome.

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Wed Sep 29, 2004 9:14 pm
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okay

there 12 year olds... are they even old enough to have sexual intentions, sexually aroused and what not?

other then that theres a few typos, but i think this is very well written...

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Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:07 am
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Tenryu wrote:
there 12 year olds... are they even old enough to have sexual intentions, sexually aroused and what not?

Technically you're sexual from birth. Puberty in women starts as young as ten and usually starts around twelve to fourteen. Puberty in men happens around fourteen to sixteen but attraction starts around ten to twelve and they can usually achieve erection by five, though they can't ejaculate until puberty. While I don't remember the exact percentage, a large number of twelve year olds in America have already engaged in oral sex. So, yeah I'd say they're old enough. Now whether their mature enough is another question. After all, children in difficult situations have a habit of maturing faster than their peers.

Tenryu wrote:
other then that theres a few typos, but i think this is very well written...

Yeah... I sorta forgot to send it through the spell check before I posted it. On that note, I love OpenOffice.org. You should go use it.

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Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:32 am
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Open office rocks....

If only they had the ASCII Text support I crave, I'd use it all the time.

(let me know if they have that now...)

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Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:19 am
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The version I use can export as either plain txt or text encoded (yum, line breaks!).

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Thu Sep 30, 2004 9:04 am
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Post (Continued)
10/25/69
I didn't see Felicie again yesterday. She slept over with Azar and I spent the rest of the day mostly in the study working on maps. Still, it was a bit of a feat on Felicie's part.

I spent most of this morning working in the study finishing up work from last night. You know, when I started studying cartography I had no idea how much work it would entail. On Earth, most everything had been mapped to great precision long ago; all cartography was just upkeep of current maps. On a brand spanking new planet, however, everything had to be mapped. Since it's hard to read raw data from scans, particularly for computers which have awful pattern recognition capabilities, I have to go over it and make maps for drones to use in their guidance modules.

The standard schedule for us is five hours work, a hour for lunch, five more hours of work, four hours of free time in which we frequently work, and ten hours of sleep. You know, writing it out like this I realize how much our lives suck. I mean they really, really suck. I'm twelve and I work fourteen hour days. I'm so glad I can drink. EoE

10/26/69
I got drunk for the first time last night. I called the guys and we got together in our usual spot in the hydroponics bay. While we usually don't drink more than once or twice a month, none of them objected to it.

Sunan brought a bulb from his stash and we started passing it around. Somewhere along the way I had brought up the fact that our lives sucked. We actually talked on the subject for awhile, lamenting our situation. When we reached the end of the bottle we just sat there quiet for a moment.

?Fuck, I need another drink,? I said, breaking the silence. No one argued and Sunan went and got the box he keeps the hooch in.

A little more than half way through the third bottle Samantha showed up. Samantha works the hydroponics and is working on soil production for the first greenhouses. She's quite possibly the coolest of all the girls. She's deffinitely not the most popular but she has this air of self-confidence and self-sufficiency that is very cool.

When she spotted us she walked over and stood over us smiling. She has a really great smile, it just sets you at ease. She asked how much we had drunk and I replied we were on the third bottle.

She said, ?I guess I've got some catching up to do,? took the bottle from Ikaika, and downed the last of the bottle in one gulp. Nothing cooler than a woman who can handle liquor.

By time we had gotten through two more bottles, only me, Samantha, and Tai Wei were left. We usually sit around as one or two people drift off to do something else until no one was left. Tai Wei was sitting on my left and Samantha was sitting on my right.

Tai Wei leaned over and whispered in my ear, ?Go easy on the tongue.?

I was lush by this time, so I had no idea what he meant by that. After he had whispered that, Tai Wei got up and said his goodbyes. I watched him walk away shakily like his legs were made of rubber.

Samantha nudged me with her elbow and said, ?Ya know, ah get it,? her voice slightly slurred by alcohol.

For some reason she assumed I understood what she meant by that. ?Get wha?? I asked, my own speech slurred.

?Why ya keep goin' up in tha plane,? she said. She slid closer to me and nudged me again.

?Ah jus' like ta be alone,? I said with a shrug.

?Yeah... Ah gottch yer number,? she said as she pressed herself tight against me. ?It's yer fortress ah solitude,? she whispered into my ear, like it was some sort of secret.

?Huh?? In my defense, I was inebriated and only Samantha was really into mythology stuff.

?Ya know, SOUP-er-man!? she said, putting an odd emphasis on the syllables.

I'm more into philosophy, so of course my response was, ?Nietzsche had a fortress??

She laugh at that. I didn't get what was so funny about it, but I really liked her laugh. It was throaty and just seemed to bubble up out of her.

?Naw! Tha comic, silly,? she said, putting me in a friendly headlock. She relaxed her grip but left her arm over my shoulder. ?Ya know, fightin' crime an' all that.?

I shrugged my shoulders and ?hmm?-ed like I knew what she was talking about. She was warm and her breath was tickling the hairs on my neck.

?It's yer safe place. Where ya can jus' get away frum it all an' be yerself.?

I thought about what she said for a moment. ?Ah guess yer right,? I concluded. ?It's jus' that this place can wear on yer soul, ya know??

?Yer so cute when yer all broodin'!? she said. A blush can across my face. I was thankful she couldn't see it through my skin tone, but my face was definitely warm.

Then without any warning, okay with a lot of warning that I just didn't pick up on, Samantha used the arm she had around my shoulders to pull me into a kiss. My lips were pressed tightly against hers and I suddenly had a mouth full of girl-tongue. Tai Wei's words came to me through my drunken haze and I restrained the urge I had to put my tongue down her throat.

We sat like that for a few minutes until she broke the kiss, panting lightly. She flashed me a grin like the cat who caught the canary as she pulled her arm from around me. Without another word she stood and walked away. I sat in the corner dumbfounded, enjoying the view as she walked away, a bit befuddled.

After she had disappeared into the corridor, I stood. Or at least I attempted to stand. I found out that you can be a lot drunker than you think you are without knowing it. My second attempt was more successful and I managed to stumble back to my dorm. I took a shower-- actually I just stood under the water mostly-- and slumped over in my bed asleep.

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Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:10 pm
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Blasted pre-warp civilizations... this is what happens when your scientists don't get off their asses and develope super-luminal technology. You gotta send kids to a far off planet and start all over from the ground up. The fact that said kids were born through a complex genetic engineering and cloning project ON far away distant planet doesn't help either.

Do they even have a music or movie collection with them? It will be a SHAME if they can't listen to the Kill Bill theme over there... Or the Beach Boys.

I wonder how long it will take a post warp civilization of some kind to notice they're down there....


"Everybody knooooows... A little place like Kokomo... Now if you wanta' go to get away from it all... Go down to Kokomo...
Aruba
Jamaca
Oooo I wanta' take ya'
to Burmuda
Bahama
COME on pretty mama...
Key Largo
Montigo
Baaaaby why don't we go...
I want to take you down to Kokomo...
We'll get there fast, and then we'll take it slow.
THAT'S where we wanta' go...
Way down in Kokomo..."

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Fri Oct 01, 2004 8:58 am
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In this universe I've made, there will never be FTL travel. The best you can hope for is near-C speeds so that the crew doesn't age much during their journey.

Relativity is a bitch but hey, that's life. If you want an interstellar society you've got to face up to that.

What the colonist don't know is that there are two human empires out there among the stars at the same time as them. You see, this particular colony was one of the last ones launched after sixty years of missions and the system that was targeted is one of the furthest from Earth. A handfull of the other colonies have already achieved interstellar capability. The main power in the human sphere are the descendants of a group that managed to get out of Sol not long before the sun went. They had a good sixty years of technological advancement over their closest competition, plus their colony started off with a good three million people, giving them all sorts of advantage in population growth. They also started out in orbit, unlike colony ships that start out on a planet, so they could harvest the resources of their chosen system without a pesky gravity well slowing them down. Not to mention that using recently realized monopole technology, they can plow through the interstellar ether at .999...C instead of the colony ship's .5-.6C, giving them an added time boost. The inhabited worlds are divided among these two groups roughly 70/20, with a good deal of undiscovered or unaligned planets in the mix.

Now this particular colony is 18 lightyears from the nearest inhabited system. The problem is that the nearest system that actually knows a colony ship was sent to that star is 35 lightyears away. Even with powerful space-based radio telescopes, it would be awhile before any radio signals they leak, which are few and so weak most are drowned out by their star, would reach anyone who could help them. This is a very isolated colony. The nearest ship capable of interstellar is 35 lightyears away and is a pure warship, there for deffense of the system. The nearest IS ship that could help them is around fifteen parsecs away, doing support work for the war that's going on between the two superpowers. The largest superpower maintains a fleet of exploritory ships designated to search out systems that were launched by XI and make contact with them. Their system isn't scheduled for a visit for around 100 years. That's plenty of time for everyone on the colony to die horrible deaths, as most do.

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Fri Oct 01, 2004 9:56 am
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No FTL for them? I hope you guys have a way to make 'shortcuts' ... Jump gates... fluxfields... wormholes. Something that makes inter-system travel a little better. Reletivity IS a biznitch. Then again, that's why mankind wants FTL travel. Warp Drives, Hyperdrives, Jump Drives. Gates... Quantum tunnelling.... You know... you could do something with quantum tunnelling. With quantum tunnelling... invariably totally random sub atomic particles suddenly exist in two spots at complete random. Sometimes this spot is nearby... and sometimes this spot could be thousands of lightyears away. Think what could happen if you developed a system that could stimulate a controlled quantum HOP. Or... Q-Jump. With this... you never actually move... or bend space, warp or anything. Your existance simply... Jumps.

Might not work with a ship under its own power... but an external device such as a gate could make it work. Would be useful so ships can move between populated systems... but they still have to move to unpopulated and unexplored systems on their measly sublight drives.

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Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:10 am
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The amount of energy to teleport a photon is reasonable. The amount or energy to teleport an electron is enormous. The amount of energy to teleport an atom is staggering. The amount of energy to teleport a ship would require a support system the size of a planet with a small star to power it. E=MC^2 remember?

When you warp space you also warp time. So if you warp space a lot to travel lightyears, you also warp time to travel years, so the time is actually the same as if you just traveled the distance. The same applies to Einstien-Rosenberg bridges. Just surviving the tidal forces would be impossible, not to mention you'd be stuck there for centuries. If you warp space and then unwarp time so you can do it faster, drives the energy required up exponentially.

Inside the system, it still can take weeks or months in the outer parts of a system. But you can usually move one AU in a day or two. There are also fast shuttles that have terrific acceleration and can make long journeys in a a relatively short period of time. None the less, you have to be patient with space travel.

The only vessels capable of interstellar travel are already huge. You have to be able to carry large amounts of reaction mass for your fussion drives in order to get near light speed. The ships length are measured in kilometers and their weights in megatons. They actually exhert a tidal force on any planet they orbit. Their drives are several times brighter than the sun and can kill anything on half the planet if fired on full while in orbit. Eventually there will be ships with quintescence engines and reationless drives that will let their size shrink down once they no longer need large quantities of reaction mass for their fusion drives. Of course you can still only accelerate so fast without killing the crew.

And yes, they have a rather large library with all sorts of data. Their library contains 53% of all data digitized since 2023, which is a lot, considering. They have all of humanities technological advancements and a lot of its culture and history to boot.

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Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:53 am
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Quantum tunneling as far as I know... is spontanious and has no trigger that needs energy. That's where it gets hairy. How do you trigger and control a spontanious event? That's why an internal working drive on a capital ship like that would be useless. A gigantic gate of some kind has to be constructed. Then a destination gate has to be built as well.

E=MC^2 is true. But remember, scientists have shown that our well kept hold of physics starts to break down when you near their extremes. On the quantum level, things start acting completely OOC. In subject of extreme gravity, space and time start behaving quite odd. Especially when you get black holes involved.

IT is theorized, that as you approach the speed of light, you mass increases, in turn, the energy needed to continue to accellerate ALSO increases. Therefor, as you approach light speed, it requires MORE and MORE energy to accellerate... Warping theory, however, does not say you warp space to move through it. Where you would still have to... MOVE THROUGH space... It says you warp space, and move the space you are in... incidently moving yourself with it. Star Trek, of course, solved the problem of 'how do you warp space?' by creating, or exploiting on... subspace.

The trouble with tidal forces, is that the side nearer the warping or gravity gets a vastly stronger pull than the side not facing it. The result rips things apart. For something of that nature, you need to initiate the force throughout equally. Such as, moving into a box, and then warming that box up to operational.... but that's only a slight matter.

It seems the limitation is energy available.
As it stands, your power systems are insufficient for powering any useful means of FTL travel.

Space IS energy. Currently our definition of energy leaves us rather limited to exploiting that. Once man learns to exploit things other than matter... they'll find there's TONS of energy out there. Gravity is energy, it moves matter, and effects space and time. It's weak, but its EVERYWHERE. The universe itself, is energy acting on energy acting on complex energy (Matter) acting on more energy.

Once you stop looking at just what you can see with your eyes, you realize there's plenty of things to get a hold of... even if space appears empty of all matter.

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Fri Oct 01, 2004 11:21 am
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admiraltigerclaw wrote:
Quantum tunneling as far as I know... is spontanious and has no trigger that needs energy. That's where it gets hairy. How do you trigger and control a spontanious event? That's why an internal working drive on a capital ship like that would be useless. A gigantic gate of some kind has to be constructed. Then a destination gate has to be built as well.

You need to expend energy if you want to induce and/or control it. And like I said, you'd have to have a support system the size of a planet to do it. It would take generations to complete taking resources from tried and true methods.

admiraltigerclaw wrote:
E=MC^2 is true. But remember, scientists have shown that our well kept hold of physics starts to break down when you near their extremes. On the quantum level, things start acting completely OOC. In subject of extreme gravity, space and time start behaving quite odd. Especially when you get black holes involved.

You're not dealing with the quantum level. You're dealing with the macro world. Moving a particle is easy, moving a planetoid sized ship is very hard.

admiraltigerclaw wrote:
IT is theorized, that as you approach the speed of light, you mass increases, in turn, the energy needed to continue to accellerate ALSO increases. Therefor, as you approach light speed, it requires MORE and MORE energy to accellerate... Warping theory, however, does not say you warp space to move through it. Where you would still have to... MOVE THROUGH space... It says you warp space, and move the space you are in... incidently moving yourself with it. Star Trek, of course, solved the problem of 'how do you warp space?' by creating, or exploiting on... subspace.

Three things to remember when dealing with physics:
1) Space IS Time
2) Matter IS Energy
3) Acceleration IS Gravity

The faster you go, the more you warp space-time, the more mass you appear to have. And since when you warp space you warp time, you'd still have to expend just as much energy to go the same distance. If you use a quantum singularity, you then have to shield yourself from tidal forces.

admiraltigerclaw wrote:
The trouble with tidal forces, is that the side nearer the warping or gravity gets a vastly stronger pull than the side not facing it. The result rips things apart. For something of that nature, you need to initiate the force throughout equally. Such as, moving into a box, and then warming that box up to operational.... but that's only a slight matter.

That doesn't work because gravity waves extend out in all directions at the speed of light. You'd need to stop space-time itself, which always requires large sums of energy.

admiraltigerclaw wrote:
It seems the limitation is energy available.
As it stands, your power systems are insufficient for powering any useful means of FTL travel.

That's because it takes an infinite amount of energy to travel faster than the speed of light.

admiraltigerclaw wrote:
Space IS energy. Currently our definition of energy leaves us rather limited to exploiting that. Once man learns to exploit things other than matter... they'll find there's TONS of energy out there. Gravity is energy, it moves matter, and effects space and time. It's weak, but its EVERYWHERE. The universe itself, is energy acting on energy acting on complex energy (Matter) acting on more energy.

What you're talking about is vaccuum energy, or quintessence. This is caused by virtual particles appearing and disappearing inside energy fields. Also, billions of microscopic singularities appear and disappear constantly too.

Gravity is NOT energy. You are mistaken. Gravity is the warping of space-time that may or may not be caused by gravitons.

admiraltigerclaw wrote:
Once you stop looking at just what you can see with your eyes, you realize there's plenty of things to get a hold of... even if space appears empty of all matter.

The problem is translating it into a viable way to move enough people and equipment to be worth it. Now FTL travel is not feasable but instantaneous communication is fairly simple and it's what allows the major human galactic empire to maintain itself and its culture. Plus it gives a distinct tactical advantage in the military arena as in-system communication between forces isn't blocked by stellar events or celestial objects.

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Fri Oct 01, 2004 3:00 pm
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I have to dissagree with you. Gravity is energy... as it is a force. It causes matter to become attracted to itself. Gravity is one of the four great forces that were once the unified Superforce. Since the other forces move around energy in their special forms... I must reinforce that gravity is a form of energy... albiet a form of energy inherent in a spatial warping. If you place two objects in a neutral environment with zero velocity reletive to each other, they will begin to pull on each other until they come together. Since energy and force are interchangable... my thoughts are backed by one of simplest set of rules on physics... Newton's Laws Of Motion.

Since we're dealing with boarderline, and beyond boarderline theoretical physics... we're both entitled to our personal oppinion.

After all, unless one of us has a portable pocket singularity with us... we can't really back ourselves up, can we?

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Fri Oct 01, 2004 11:30 pm
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I'd just like to point out that Science Fiction is...Science Fiction.

Fiction being the major word here.

It's nice to see effort being put into the science, but if the theories were so perfect, we'd already have working ships. :P

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Sat Oct 02, 2004 9:37 am
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Christopher Fiss wrote:
It's nice to see effort being put into the science, but if the theories were so perfect, we'd already have working ships. :P

No we wouldn't. For them simple reason I stated way above: there is no money to be made on colonizing space. If we go into deep space, there has to be money in it. Or military reasons, like we did with the moon.

Like I wrote in an earlier post, I always wanted a SciFi story that had interstellar warfare and colinization that dealt with realativity. So, yeah there's no FTL as that's useless on the scale that these societies need.

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