Beyond Alpha Centauri::::::Discussion Thread 6

[History Guy]

There is one rather unusual explanation that I just thought of Sovereign...the temples are really ancient alien tourist stops...Way back in time an alien bunch was actually making money on the tourist trade, creating a guide for 'sites to see in the universe', etc. But over the millenia the species has died out, etc., and the spots are forgotten (remember the similar spot I described in my own timeline as being found in the Pollux system?). Now that is an odd idea that no one in their right mind would expand upon.

[Sovereign]

Lo! And Behold!

The capitalist and commerce mind of History Guy at work!




Seriously, I hadn't thought of that point of view before. I appreciate your feedback and ideas!

[Mr. President]

Now that is an odd idea that no one in their right mind would expand upon.

It's perfect for me, then.

Maybe the reference point or the "home world" in the Temple's map should be Berrik's system?

[GeneralTacticus]

Just so you guys know, I will be away from my computer for the next week or so. We're having a floor varnished at home and we can't stay because of the fumes.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
Just so you guys know, I will be away from my computer for the next week or so. We're having a floor varnished at home and we can't stay because of the fumes.

Must be some strong stuff.

As it stands for the Spartan involvement in Cadre affairs. They will immediatly move a task force into the system but id like for this to be drug out a little and not just get into an all out war right away. Also What do you think about the Spartans letting the cadre forces fight it out on the planet themselves until there is proof that the Hive is actually fighting on planet. Then most likely Spartan Marines would be sent in force to eliminate the Hive cancer. The Spartan Taskforce would seek to quarenteen the system from all incomming ships. This could lead to some powers condemning the action. Unless of course it is done with the consent of the Official cadre goverment.

[GeneralTacticus]

As it turned out, there has been a mix-up and I am no longer sure when we will be leaving.

As it stands for the Spartan involvement in Cadre affairs. They will immediatly move a task force into the system but id like for this to be drug out a little and not just get into an all out war right away. Also What do you think about the Spartans letting the cadre forces fight it out on the planet themselves until there is proof that the Hive is actually fighting on planet. Then most likely Spartan Marines would be sent in force to eliminate the Hive cancer. The Spartan Taskforce would seek to quarenteen the system from all incomming ships. This could lead to some powers condemning the action. Unless of course it is done with the consent of the Official cadre goverment.

Well you can expect that Menelaus will approve of any Spartan measure to help him win the war. Probably the only faction likely to condemn the action would be Hive for obvious reasons.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Sprayber

This could lead to some powers condemning the action.

Wha...nuh....ah....quaranteeing the Cadre system? Isn't that a little harsh? These false accusations of Hive forces aiding rebellious factions within the Cadre government are ludicrous and unsubstantiated.

I feel a transmission from Yang to Kessel may be coming along soon.....

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
Well you can expect that Menelaus will approve of any Spartan measure to help him win the war. Probably the only faction likely to condemn the action would be Hive for obvious reasons.

The Hive is only looking out for the welfare of others who would succumb to the poison nectar the Spartan Federation pours into the ears of its "allies"!

Things are picking up quite nicely in the BAC universe now....quite nicely.


I hope you're gonna be arright GenTac when you guys finally do have to stay away from the 'net and Apoly for a whole week.....i lasted about 4 days.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by Mr. President
P.S. I hope no-one tried to follow the e-mail link to Commodore Franco.

Mr. President, I saved the BAC thread for offline reading, and fifteen minutes ago I got this in my inbox!

From: master@intel.insider.fdr.gov
To: a.helin@phpoint.net

Subject: Violation #432

Our software has detected data stored within your hard disc, within a file was withheld contact information, some government email addresses. With this message has arrived a virus that will format your hard drive in three hours. Your floppy and CD drivers already have been erased.

Have a nice day.

PS. Anti-virus software won't delete help. *We* made anti-virus software.

Yes, I was fjorxcing^TM tired when I came up with this; it was ten o'clock in the morning for goodness' sake. The time to hit the sheets.

---

The introduction of the Peacekeepers (Good work History, btw) got me thinking. With the increasing conflicts, the PK's will serve a purpose.

The fact is that the Peacekeepers worked pretty much under the UN. And I think that had the UN survived WW3, nowadays the Peacekeepers would be closely bound to old Earth. One could think the Coalition as a descendant of UN, but it's not the UN. It was an extensive alliance which became a single government, and I don't think the UN has ever strived for a single world government, no matter what the conspiracy theorists tell you.

But the truth is that like stated in timelines before, the Peacekeepers are not what the old UN was. United Nations of Earth is history, but the United Nations of Humanity is not.
I wonder what the Charter has to say for UN actually surviving on Earth and regaining contact with the Unity project. This of course has been discussed well enough when the Terrans demanded that the Chironians submit to their control in the ~2500's.

The Chironians have been deemed to exist as entirely different governmential bodies, which is natural human progress and in some situations needed. It could be that without splitting up to factions, internal disagreements, so typical to human beings, might of ripped up the early Chironian colonies apart and set them in disarray, risking the continuation of the Chironian branch of Man. Then again, from a certain point of view that mightn't been such a bad thing after all.

^ random spouting I couldn't bother to post in the story thread

---

Oh, btw, I've got a new technological innovation for purposes of BAC.

From now on, any anti-gravitic needs will be satisfied with a most simple solution; a cat with a slice of buttered bread strapped on it's back. Called the cat-based purr-petual motion machine or the BT-FAGE (Buttered Toast - Feline AntiGravity Engine). I didn't come up with this, read it at Slashdot, but managed to laugh my head off at it.

I'm not an engineer, but could buttering the cat's feet help here?

No, but it can hurt. You, that is, not the cat.

If you butter the cat's feet, the cat-lands-on-feet force and the butter-hits-floor forces will reinforce each other, and most likely the cat will hit the floor feet first with the force of several nuclear weapons, destroying cat, floor, and anything within a radius of a few kilometers. Do Not try this at home.

No, but it can hurt. You, that is, not the cat.

I should point out that what I meant by that is, the attempt to butter the feet will hurt you, not the cat. Obviously if you succeed in doing it, and then separate the buttered-feet cat from the floor by even a microscopic distance, the resulting destruction will hurt you and the cat.

Now that I've put some thought into it, I realize that the terrorists may read the above post and realize the potential for building a weapon. The Buttered Cat Feet Bomb. May God have mercy on us all.

Why not simply butter the bread on both sides? Or is this physically impossible.
Of course, you could also alter cats to have no feet.

No, then the bread starts to act as a one sided material, and will throw itself to the floor without reason and roll around on it trying to get as much butter to floor contract as possible.

This fails both under quantum physics and general relativity.

Under the quantum physics interperetation, since both the cat's feet and the buttered toast are equally likely to land on the floor, the cat- toast enters a superposition where both cat and toast are simultaneously on the floor until it is observed, at which point a radioactive particle decays, and the cat is skinned in a number simultaneous, equally likely, yet distinct ways.

Relativity predicts that the intense attraction to the floor will, in fact, bend space-time in such a way that the floor actually is in contact with both the cat and the toast. If the cat is of the black variety, then it will thus cross its own path, generate a singularity, and vanish in a puff of logic.

The debate continues, as attempts at experimental verification have thus far failed. Dr. Kibble at Princeton's IAS said "Look, have YOU ever tried to hold a cat still and strap some friggin' TOAST to its back?"

Hmm, perhaps the experimental difficulty would be reduced if we neglected the toast, and simply buttered the cat. It would certainly simplify the design.

If the bread is on the cat's back, it will still avoid the carpet if the cat lands on its feet. Surely you need to strap the bread to the cat's feet, with the butter side down.

If you look closer unto his credo, you will see he is stating, that in fact the possibility of the bread hitting the carpet is proportional with the price of the carpet; thus it will also only work over an expensive carpet...

Gravity offers for great jokes, really: They actually had Dr. Yevgeny Podkletnov's working prototype. Unfortunately it shielded against 100% of gravity and was lost when they turned it on outside and it was slung from the Earth at about 25,000 mph. Yes, yes, I know inertia and stuff, but the joke loses it's funniness if you go all scientific*.
This Podkletnov character is the guy who's been chasing a real method of antigrav. IIRC he was working at the Tampereen Teknillinen Korkeakoulu (something like the "Technological University of Tampere") in Finland.

* Though you might not realize it from watching Star Trek, science isn't about rewriting the principles of physics just in time to save everyone from the Life-Force-Sucking Energy Creatures.

Anyways, nothing gets you on the floor rolling in the morning (erm, when you're really, really tired, you know, like normal people are at night) like absurd humour including butter, cats, toast and gravity.
This utter lack of sense and typical thinking has made me theorize on Accident energy, and consequentially, engines powered by this energy.
Like something Douglas Adams had, you know, the Infinite Improbability^TM drive and the Someone Else's Problem^TM system. It's all about taking away undesired elements and placing them elsewhere.

---

And to end this post as unproperly as possible, I'll notify you that last night I dreamt I was an astronaut alone inside a small space capsule, like the Mercury class ones (Friendship of John Glenn comes to mind, IIRC), travelling to, uh, Mercury.

It was quite fascinating; I ate food from tubes and when I went asleep I strapped myself to the wall to prevent from floating around. It was quite vivid. And enjoyable, even though I did feel a bit afraid (you see, I have this strange tendency to speculate and think about doing things that would kill me; jumping off a bridge, taking a knife and sticking it down my throat; standing in front of a train coming right at me; opening the hatch of a space ship and get blown out to the vacuum; that sorta things. Though I do not consider myself suicidal, at least more suicidal then the average Joe or Jane Apolytoner). My claustrophobia and acrophobia, however, were gone.

---

Now I'm going to keep looping Ahead on our Way from the FF V soundtrack; from time marker 1:25 to 2:20, where the excellent part is. I might use an editing program to isolate that part and save myself a lot of trouble.


Pheff. This is as offtopic as it gets, I hope.

Edit: There's a typo here somewhere. I opted to edit this but forgot what I was supposed to edit.

[Mr. President]

Mr. President, I saved the BAC thread for offline reading, and fifteen minutes ago I got this in my inbox!

So you won't be reading this post, then. He's right, anti-virus software won't delete things sent to you by military intelligence. Oh, by the way, he knows your phone number now. Have a nice day.

The introduction of the Peacekeepers (Good work History, btw) got me thinking. With the increasing conflicts, the PK's will serve a purpose.

The fact is that the Peacekeepers worked pretty much under the UN. And I think that had the UN survived WW3, nowadays the Peacekeepers would be closely bound to old Earth. One could think the Coalition as a descendant of UN, but it's not the UN. It was an extensive alliance which became a single government, and I don't think the UN has ever strived for a single world government, no matter what the conspiracy theorists tell you.

But the truth is that like stated in timelines before, the Peacekeepers are not what the old UN was. United Nations of Earth is history, but the United Nations of Humanity is not.
I wonder what the Charter has to say for UN actually surviving on Earth and regaining contact with the Unity project. This of course has been discussed well enough when the Terrans demanded that the Chironians submit to their control in the ~2500's.

The Chironians have been deemed to exist as entirely different governmential bodies, which is natural human progress and in some situations needed. It could be that without splitting up to factions, internal disagreements, so typical to human beings, might of ripped up the early Chironian colonies apart and set them in disarray, risking the continuation of the Chironian branch of Man. Then again, from a certain point of view that mightn't been such a bad thing after all.

I see what you're saying. In fact, I've referred to the PKs as the "United Nations" once or twice in the story to reinforce the idea that they are a country and not an arm of an alliance (not just the "United Nations", but the "United Nations, if you see what I mean).

I'm inclined to think that the United Nations / PKs would have given up the idea that all Chironians are splinter groups, but Earth would feel quite justified in claiming sovereignty over the descendants of the Unity. The counter-argument is that the ill-fated mission to Alpha Centauri was seven hundred years ago, and that they have developed distinct national identities.

From now on, any anti-gravitic needs will be satisfied with a most simple solution; a cat with a slice of buttered bread strapped on it's back. Called the cat-based purr-petual motion machine or the BT-FAGE (Buttered Toast - Feline AntiGravity Engine).

That is frightening for so many reasons.

I have this strange tendency to speculate and think about doing things that would kill me

Sometimes I think it might be fun to jump off a cliff. At least the part where you fly through the air like a cloud, free and unbound, not where you smash into jagged rocks at 75 miles per hour.

In other news . . . I'm writing my longest (by my calculations) post yet. It's into its fourth page now. It was originally going to have both the Temple researchers and Commodore Franco in it, but there are three pages of Franco and none of the Temple so far. I might try and jam it in (if it won't go over the length limit for Apolyton) or else just put it in a new post.

I have also made some new flags. Does this one look good, or does it look like an Australian flag soaked in red dye with a Free Drone logo glued in the corner?

[Mr. President]

I didn't do this one very well, but it's still my favorite at the moment. I made a third, but they wouldn't let me attach it ("Make sure it is no larger than 600x0").

[Mr. President]

Off the topic

You know, I never quite realized just how much recent traffic in this forum has been devoted either to Beyond Alpha Centauri or the Chiron Chronicle. It's quite frightening if you think about it for a minute (try it, you'll see why I'm frightened).

[GeneralTacticus]

I didn't do this one very well, but it's still my favorite at the moment. I made a third, but they wouldn't let me attach it ("Make sure it is no larger than 600x0").

Yep, that on looks pretty good. I've always thought flags look best if they're symmetrical.

[Frankychan]

Anyway, for the Peacekeepers, here's the Hive P.O.V.-

Since the FTL wars ended because of the PK's , Yang was forced to sign a ceasefire with Pravin Lal. Yang feels that if the PK's didn't enter the FTL wars on the University side, he would've gained the tech he wanted.

PK's are almost as bad as the Spartans. Therefore, Yang considers the PK menace as a threat almost as much as the Spartans....but not as bad. If Pravin Lal is still head of the PK's, things should get interesting with the GHE.

As for the Drone logo, anything you create is good enough for me So long as you're happy with it, I'm happy. One recommendation is to modify the existing Drone symbol into a new design. Maybe four links instead of two?

[edited]

[Kassiopeia]

Re: Off the topic

Originally posted by Mr. President
You know, I never quite realized just how much recent traffic in this forum has been devoted either to Beyond Alpha Centauri or the Chiron Chronicle. It's quite frightening if you think about it for a minute (try it, you'll see why I'm frightened).

You're easily frightened.
I don't see anything scary there. The fact is, BAC is currently the centre of activity here. There're lots of people on the project, and as history shows, this thread has been used for offtopic chit chat as well.

Posting this on a new computer btw. (j/k)

[Mr. President]

The King of Spam (forty-two posts in this discussion thread ) returns with a new chapter in the story of the Free Drone Republic. I broke off the part about the Temple, and made it into a new post.

I've made it that Derek's starmap's "home" system is Spira, where the Berrik ruins are located. Is this okay with you, Sovereign? I'll hold it off until I hear from you.

Additionally, since no-one seems to have objected to the Gaians being handed to me, I need to ask: Where do they live? Alynzia's only post in the story mentioned a moon near the Greater Hive Empire, and I seem to remember a place called Artilak from even earlier than that.