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Post by rvm45 on Dec 16, 2020 16:13:04 GMT -6
Chapter Thirteen
28 021
My team of builders really thought that I had lost my mind when I handed them specs for a gigantic thermos sleigh with airtight quarters, a wagon tongue and provisions for a driver to sit on a seat on the front of the vehicle.
Never mind if you think that I’m crazy. Just build it!
I had money for the first time in my life—money to burn! Never mind Despair’s hidden billions.
The Yamikazes were doing a bang-up job of selling ivory, jade and what have you for me. I got a generous commission from each sale.
The .20 Scrambler pistols from Ice turned out to be just a wee bit of a disappointment.
They were marginally larger than the Wildey and the culprit was the cartridge. Even the high-tech wizards of Vance could only shoehorn just so much propulsive power into a firearm cartridge case.
The little bottlenecked cartridges were just a bit too long to fit into a grip, so they rode in a magazine forward of the grip like a Mauser C 96 on a lot of steroids.
Well the grip was far more ergonomic than the Wildey’s grip—or the old Broomhandle’s grip.
In addition, once the need for compactness was knocked unceremoniously in the head, it paved the way for higher capacity magazines.
14-Round magazines were standard and you could buy 20 and 24-round magazines.
The gun was far easier to conceal or open carry than a 12-Gauge Cruiser, Shockwave or folding-stock Mini-14, and it would burn through Class IIIA Spectrashield like it was a thick leather shoe sole.
My Ice factories also made carbine versions of the .20 Scrambler pistol, a simpler carbine design—one that wasn’t trying to be shoehorned into a pistol action—and a sweet, compact bolt action version.
My engineers had moved away from nitrocellulose, in an attempt to gain power—at least in the 1.8-inch overall .20 Scrambler cartridges. I had an alchemist register a patent for the new propellant. Hey, information longs to be free.
There was another Ice city named “Lour.” They were turning me out beaucoup copies of the Smith and Wesson Model 5906—kinda.
What? You cannot fly airplanes in a vacuum. Rocket ships require depressing amounts of maintenance—particularly when there is little need to travel between the cities. Overland convoys were difficult and pointless to the point that many of the cities hadn’t been in contact, except by radio, for centuries.
Even if they were in contact, no one had any chickens, turkeys or even apple seeds to spare to swap with distant cities—particularly in view of the fact that each city had about the same resources.
But I could slip-slide directly to each city—and trade the same monotonous list of things that I’d traded in Vance.
Anyway, my 5906’s were upsized just enough to accommodate the .38 Super. Yes, I know that George Nonte experimented with some S&W 39’s converted to .38 Super, but he couldn’t use full-length cartridges in his converted guns. Mine were built around .38 Super and they headspaced on the cartridge mouth.
Only, I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the 5906 acti0n. Mine had the external appearance of the 5906, but inside they were pure Browning—with frame mounted safety that allowed Cocked and Locked carry and a cam in place of the 1911a1’s barrel link pin.
I supplied the wood, ivory, bone, horn and what have you, to be made into Hogue style grips. Can’t market my pistols with shitty rubber or plastic grips!
There was a small town of a bit less than 2-million—called “Tawn.” That is a small town on Ice.
Parenthetically, 3.5-million seemed the minimum threshold for a city on Ice to grow and prosper. Tawn was probably slowly evolving toward extinction…
Until I stuck my big nose into the situation.
Anyway, Tawn’s factories churned out slightly improved copies of the old H&R Autoejectors for me. Vulgar superstition to the contrary, the old H&R Breaktops weren’t bad guns, considering that materials back then were inferior to those today and the old H&Rs were meant to be economy guns.
Mine were updated with the best steels and a few leaf springs were replaced with the more durable coil springs.
A 5-shot .32 ACP revolver can be surprisingly small and concealable. 5-shot .38 Supers, .40 S&W or 5-shot .45 GAP revolvers are neat.
The ATF was having conniptions. The Yamikaze and some of their compañeros in the Rice Burners and the Dragon’s Tooth motorcycle clubs—along with others—were distributing the black-market guns, magazines and ammunition without formality of ATF approval.
Yeah, the Dragon’s Tooth Motorcycle Club members ride around in heavily modified and souped-up old-model Volkswagen Beetles—but never tell a Dragon’s Tooth member that his Beetle isn’t a motorcycle…
O well, O Hell…
The federal government was fit to be tied. There were maybe 150 000 untraceable ICE brand ghost guns in circulation—but the government knew about Outsiders…
Though they were probably clueless about slip-sliders.
They knew that the biker gangs were in contact with some Outsiders who were manufacturing the guns for them. They didn’t like it, but they were reluctant to jump in with both feet and declare war on the black-market firearm retailers and their Outsider backing—yet.
I’m sure that a backlash was coming…
Meanwhile, a number of my people were busted by various state agencies.
They would have the best liars…er, lawyers that money could buy. They would have unlimited commissary funds inside—and the best “Diplomatic Immunity” from sadistic warders and predatory inmates that money could buy. There would also be a hefty bonus waiting for them when they got out.
IQ drugs?
Yeah, the best IQ enhancer that my Ice chemists came up with would really kick the concentration and learning ability into high gear…
We named it “Advance.”
Like: (Adderall + Lots of Black Coffee) x 5
Eventually, over the course of a couple semesters, you’d become habituated to Advance and it wouldn’t help you nearly as much…
Say like: Adderall x 2
Only, by then, your base intelligence—even without Advance—would have grown by about 37%.
37% was about the maximum rise in base-rate intelligence, no matter how much Advance that you took.
That means that a fellow with an average IQ of 100 would now have an IQ of 137. That isn’t quite genius, but it is a very worthwhile improvement…
Purdue University was my first test market.
The average student at Purdue University today has an SAT of about 1200. That probably equates to an IQ of about 120—conservatively. That gets him up to an IQ of about 160 if you increase it 37%.
That ain’t counting all the fundamentals learned exceptionally well while taking Advance.
I failed out of Purdue University three times—due to inability to grasp calculus. I still had a warm spot for the place—though it has evolved into something far different from when I attended.
I thought that having many more genius mathematicians, scientists, engineers and artists in the world would unambiguously be a good thing.
Besides, there was profit to be made…
My agents—college students my people had recruited—tried to avoid selling Advance to confirmed liberals, socialists and non-representational artists. Past that…
Meanwhile, I had an alchemist patent Advance and send it through the FDA fault tree.
Dudes, The Powers That Be (TPTB) don’t want bumper-crops of geniuses running around on Earth. If progress happens too fast, it is deucedly hard to keep control of the masses.
I doubt that you will ever have free and easy access to over-the-counter Advance, but just word of it being tested made it easier to sell to college students.
I quickly expanded to over three-score universities in Indiana, Kaintuck and Tennessee. Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, North and South Carolina and Louisiana were all on my short list to include soon.
Texas was just so damned big!
I had plenty of drug. It was just hard to find reliable low-level retailers.
By the way, one reason that very few of my people got caught—they all had their intelligence increased to the maximum possible. That was a fringe-benefit of working for me—or being a good customer.
Computer chips?
Ha and Ha! The best computer chips extant had a CPS rate of about 1 TB. My chips had a CPS rate of 13 TB and you could just plug them into your motherboard in place of your old chip, and go.
My hard drives held over 11 TB of data and they worked about 10% faster than conventional hard drives. There were plug-ins and external hard drives.
Go on the dark net and order one with Bit-Coin. A chip or a hard drive will be Fed-Ex’ed to you shortly.
Yeah, Bit-Coin is both Fiat currency and a Ponzi scheme—but it was a good medium of exchange to use in the short-run.
Besides, money now meant very little to me. If Bit-Coin went tits-up without warning and I lost a few million dollars—easy come, easy go…
There was no good way to patent all of the multitude of manufacturing improvements necessary to manufacture my chips and hard drives—at least not without admitting that the methods originated off-world.
I just marketed them directly. I had all sorts of hacker type dudes delighted with a new source of income. It helped promote the dark net—which in essence, is a cyber marketplace outside government control—regardless of all the negative press it got.
Anyone who can reverse engineer my chips and market them, is welcome to. I may have an improved product by then anyway.
Anyway, I think that progress is a good thing. I may set my engineers to study more immersive virtual reality next…
*********** ************* ****************************
Time to buy magic reindeer to pull my thermos sleigh.
Terry and Revna came along just to get out for awhile and to back me up, if need be.
“This dude is mostly frost giant and dwarf, but he has a bit of Human blood on his mother’s side—she was the dwarf, by the way. He doesn’t like to be reminded that he has Human blood in his pedigree,” Despair lectured.
“He’s about 6-foot 3-inches tall and he dresses in leather and furs like some sort of television barbarian. He has long white hair and a long white beard. He has a big pot gut. He sells magic flying reindeer…” Despair continued.
“And if you make any Santa Claus jokes in his presence, one of you will have to die. He gets positively homicidal when you compare him to Santa Claus. By the way, he is far older than the Santa Claus myth…” Despair said.
“So, I should ask him right off, if there is any truth to the rumor of Mrs. Claus making it with Rudolph?” I said.
“Stillwater, for once in your life, refrain from antagonizing people,” Despair begged.
“If he manages to buy any reindeer from Morgan without coming to blows, I will buy you a big-ass pearl necklace,” Terry told Revna.
“His name is ‘Morgan’?” I said.
“That’s one more thing that I forgot to mention. He hates to be called ‘Captain Morgan.’ Don’t make any references to the rum. He feels that they appropriated his name without his permission,” Despair said.
“Is this screaming neurotic a man or a psychotic little girl?” I asked.
“Don’t say that to him. One of his biggest regrets in life, is that he is too big and burly to cross-dress convincingly,” Despair said.
“You mean he’s…” I started.
“No, he has a big harem of Red Oni, Brown Orcs and one Ogress. He just thinks that it would be fun to be a full-time transvestite—if he just had the physique for it…” Despair ran down as she saw me staring at her.
“I knew his mother. She commiserated with me about her disappointing son,” Despair explained.
“Do you know anyone normal?” I asked her.
“I am an immoral being from the Realm of Nightmare. What do you expect!?!” Despair shot back.
“What does this poster-child for anti-cross-species mating like?” I asked.
“Silver. He loves silver. He isn’t into money or gold—though he knows that paper money and gold can be exchanged for more silver, but it is a hassle in his mind. Offer him silver though, and you’ll get a much better return on your investment,” Despair said.
“What is the matter with you, Terry? You look like I made you drink one of my frost giant smoothies,” I said.
“I hate Red Oni!” Terry grumped.
“I won’t ask you to mate with any of them. You probably won’t even have to see them,” I said in exasperation.
“Over the River “And Through the Woods “To Crazy Morgan’s We Go “To Buy Magic Reindeer “To carry my Thermos Sleigh…”
Yippie-Kie-Ay, Friends!!!!!
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 17, 2020 13:15:40 GMT -6
Chapter Fourteen
30 192
The man looked much as Despair had described him. She hadn’t quite captured the rancid grease-stained ambience of the man or the petulant lips and leering eyes. He looked like he was watching some sort of XXX-Rated deviant mental tableau with his mind’s eye.
“Despair, Terry,” he conceded reluctantly with a slight nod of the head.
“You’re Stillwater—the slip-slider who travels to an ice planet,” he said with a contemptuous sniff.
No, I was sure that Despair hadn’t told him. Outsiders just know things.
“Show me a flying reindeer,” I said without any pleasantries.
“Pond and honor! Plums deify!” I said in shock.
I never expected a damned flying reindeer to be so damned big. The creature that came flying out from behind a nearby mountain and approached us at vertiginous velocity massed enough to make three Clydesdales.
Magic flying reindeer are also giant reindeer.
“This is the herd leader. His name is ‘Blinky.’ Tell me how many reindeer that you want to buy. I’ll have Blinky fetch them,” Morgan said.
“I have an 18 000-pound sleigh. How many reindeer will it take to pull it through the air?” I asked.
My sleigh was only a little over 15 000-pounds, but some day it might be heavily loaded.
“Two can pull it. Four will pull it faster with fewer rest stops,” Morgan said indifferently.
He didn’t seem to care if he made a sale or not.
“Give me a half-dozen,” I said.
“Can you afford a half-dozen?” he asked contemptuously.
“How much?” I asked.
“1000-pounds of silver per reindeer,” Morgan said smugly.
“Screw you! Do I look like a pauper? I’ll give you each reindeer’s weight in sliver—and give me an extra reindeer in case one is injured and has to rest,” I said.
I didn’t like this knob-gobbler’s tone.
“Fine! Blinky, summon seven healthy young reindeer,” Morgan said.
Blinky didn’t seem to move, but seven giant flying reindeer appeared, though none were quite as large as Blinky. Four of them were does.
I examined each one in some detail.
Nah, I don’t know anything about reindeer. I worked in a slaughterhouse for five years though. I know both human and comparative anatomy and I’ve killed and dressed out a number of deer.
I also have a powerful spirit sense.
If any of the reindeer were old, sick or lame, I’d pick up on it.
I could feel the deer’s minds—stronger and more subtle than a mundane beast’s mind. They seemed reasonably well-disposed toward me.
While the Ice cities have mastered fusion, all of them originally functioned almost exclusively on geothermal power—and most of them still do.
Parenthetically, by the time the ancestors of the current Ice inhabitants had their planet forced out of orbit around their star, they had the technology to bore down to the magma level—with control—so there was no need to locate near volcanoes and such.
At any rate, magma has all sorts of minerals dissolved in it and Ice has the technology to filter it out.
Silver and gold still have some value on Ice—silver is almost as cheap as aluminum though.
I could have totally foregone importing firearms, IQ enhancers and computer components and gotten rich selling farm animals and food crops for lots of gold and silver and become filthy rich…
Where would be the fun in that?
Coins? The folks in Tawn were more than happy to mint me some coins—silver dollars, half-dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels.
My coins have Jeff Cooper, Elmer Keith, Skeeter Skelton, John Browning, Charles Spurgeon, William Quantrill and Heros Von Borcke stamped on them. I’d have Mel Tappan, but I couldn’t find a photo of him anywhere.
I had the coins all prepared on Ice, in my warehouse in Tawn. I slip-slided to Ice, snagged my travel trailer full of silver coins and slip-slided back—in less than one minute.
It always took more out of me to transport mass to Earth than it did to transport a comparable mass to Ice from Earth. I wouldn’t be able to slip-slide for three or four days until I recuperated.
My transport ability was growing and my rest periods were gradually growing shorter.
“Weigh the reindeer and collect your coins,” I said.
“Deal. I’ll geld the males now,” Morgan said.
“You’ll not geld my reindeer,” I said in a flat tone.
“They’re dangerous if they’re not geld. They will kill you,” Morgan said gruffly.
“They might kill me. That shall be as God and my geas wills. However, you aren’t going to cut my deer,” I said.
If you believe—as I do—that maleness is sacred, then it is the worst imaginable blasphemy to castrate anyone or anything. Any crime that a man may have committed pales into insignificance next to the greater evil that is castration.
It isn’t even permissible to castrate castrators. We—as moral people—are supposed to be better than that.
This greasy 3rd world Santa wasn’t going to castrate my deer. He wasn’t even going to castrate his own deer while I was witness.
“I’m not going to sell you breeding pairs of flying reindeer,” Morgan said.
“You already have knob-gobbler. You said the word:
‘“Deal.’
“Conditions have to be stated before the deal is consummated,” I said.
Morgan produced a great metal Kanabo.
“You aren’t leaving with those reindeer uncut,” Morgan said.
“I beg to differ with you,” I said.
“By the way, is Mrs. Kringle still boffing all the elves and reindeer while you’re spreading Christmas joy? How is your rum company doing? And is it true that you like to dress like the Sugar-Plum Faerie, wings and all? That must be a ghastly sight, with those hairy thighs and thick supra-orbital ridges,” I said to him.
I really like those almost ankle-length sheepskin dusters. It made it possible for me to wear a .20 Scrambler concealed under each arm in a dual shoulder holster rig.
I pointed a .20 Scrambler at Morgan with either hand.
“Do you think that your mundane firearms can injure me!?! I was only stalling until my men got into position. There is a bounty on the frost giant princess and the Blue Oni. You don’t think that I’d let you walk out of here, do you? Her father and her grandfather really want to eat that child,” Morgan gloated.
“Despair, you’re from the Realm of Nightmare. I warn you against interfering in this realm’s affairs,” Morgan said.
Terry lost all restraint at the mention of eating his yet unborn child. He screamed and leapt at Morgan.
I didn’t know that Morgan could increase his size and mass like a frost giant. However, as a half-breed, he only grew to about 20-feet tall…
And in his giant form, he was a hunchback.
His Kanabo was some sort of mystical weapon. It grew along with Morgan.
Morgan hit Terry with a low underhand blow like it come from “The Fool’s Guard.” He knocked Terry the same way that overenthusiastic children knock croquet balls clean out of their yard—or out of the neighborhood in Terry’s case.
I wasn’t too worried about Terry. He was remarkably resilient.
I started firing a line of .20 Scrambler bullets up each of Morgan’s oversized distorted cheeks, seeking the eyes. Even when the bullets hit Morgan’s eyes, they stopped dead and slid to the ground.
In answer to Morgan’s question:
‘Nah, I don’t really think that my .20 Scramblers will injure you. I’m just clownin’ with you, knob-gobbler.’
But I only thought that and didn’t say it. Why explain myself to a dead man!?!
My wooden spirit sword flew through the air.
CRACK!
It met Morgan’s wrought iron Kanabo. That damned thing must have weighed 60-pounds in its expanded version.
The Kanabo was knocked back a good 4-feet, though Morgan managed to hold onto it. My spirit sword flew back about 18-inches.
While Morgan recovered his position, the point of my spirit sword poked out his right eye.
Three Ogre-Morgan hybrids charged me as Morgan screamed in rage.
“Hey, now you can wear an eye-patch like a real pirate, Captain Morgan!” I taunted him.
Three thunderbolts burned the ogre hybrids to ashes.
“I’m allowed to interfere when it concerns my husband. Not that I ever cared much about rules and edicts,” Despair said.
“He isn’t transformed,” Morgan spat as he retreated warily.
“I didn’t say that we had consummated our marriage. I said that we were wed—in a formal ceremony, in a church, no less,” Despair fired back.
My spirit sword took out Morgan’s remaining eye.
Just then, Terry grabbed Morgan from behind. Terry hadn’t gotten any taller, but his muscles had swollen considerably.
I don’t know if his mass had increased, but he looked half again heavier. His fangs, horns and tusks had all grown considerably. Veins the size of good-sized garter snakes writhed across his face and super-muscular arms. A blue glow came from his body.
“You’re going to eat my child, galloping llama!??! You lack the capability!” Terry said.
He forced the giant to the ground with his death-hold on his leg. Terry grabbed Morgan’s head and he shook him like a Bulldog shaking a rag doll. After a few hard shakes, Morgan’s head came loose from his body.
“Uh Terry, I don’t believe that Morgan said that he would eat Revna’s child. He said that he wanted to give it to Revna’s father and grandfather, so they could eat it,” I said.
I picked up Morgan’s Kanabo as I moved toward Terry.
Terry’s eyes had grown to the size of my fists—bigger. The sclerae were brightest crimson. I’d never seen him enraged. I was trying to engage his reasoning mind.
“Here dude! I always wanted to give an Oni a Kanabo,” I said.
{Give an Oni a Kanabo is a proverb in Japan. It means to grant favorable conditions to someone who already has an overwhelming advantage.}
I tossed the oversized cudgel to Terry.
He caught it, and in Terry’s hand it shrank until it was smaller than a Yawara stick and Terry put it into a hidden sleeve pocket.
“Dude, it is like: since you’re a kill-stealer, you eat the nads this time,” I told Terry.
“He was a dead man walking from the time that you blinded him. I think that you should have the advantage—plus, I already got a nice Kanabo out of the deal,” Terry said.
“His balls are already the size of peanuts. They are worthless for anything—unless you covet his ability to boff reindeer and have hybrid offspring,” Despair said.
“You mean…?” I started.
“The magic flying reindeer are all his children or his descendants,” Despair said.
“EE…Ugh! You didn’t tell me,” I said.
“I’ve never been here or met Morgan in person. I didn’t know until I saw him and his reindeer in person,” Despair apologized.
“This is llama-ed up,” I coined a phrase.
“I’m not sure that I want these perverted caribou,” I said.
Just then, Blinky assumed a humanoid form—like a great forest Hart, though he was a humanoid caribou rather than a deer or elk. He dropped to one knee before me.
“Please, accept our allegiance. Father was a tyrant as well as an enthusiastic practitioner of incest. He is my father and grandfather going back for many generations. He castrated most of his sons and kept the others in line with the threat of the gelding knife. None of the reindeer will be sorry he’s gone,” Blinky said.
Ach ja, du bist kaufmann! Plums deify!
“Eat his pineal gland and don his ring. You’ll get a pleasant surprise,” Despair advised.
“The pineal gland ain’t that easy to find and I’m leery of kuru-kuru,” I said.
“He ain’t human. How would he have kuru-kuru?” Despair insisted.
“Mad cow? Mad caribou disease? Zombie deer infestation?” I objected.
Terry crushed the skull and brought me a jewel that looked like a thumb-sized teardrop of finely faceted sapphire.
“You don’t have to eat it if you’re squeamish. Just place it in contact with your glabella,” Despair said.
The jewel was instantly absorbed into my skull.
Morgan wore a ring with a big round sapphire on one finger.
“Put the ring on,” Despair urged.
“EE…The ring is silver,” I said.
“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not a vampire! A silver ring on your hand won’t bother me,” Despair said.
“You may not be a vampire, but you’re a haint,” I said dubiously.
“I suppose that I am. Morgan was a haint too. The ring didn’t bother him,” Despair said.
“Morgan, for all of his weirdness was a physical being. You are more spiritual,” I said.
“For gunny sacks! Put the damned ring on! It won’t hurt you or me!” Despair shouted.
I shrugged and slipped the ring onto my left index finger—why that one, I can’t tell you. The moment was structured that way.
The ring shrunk to fit my finger. It promptly extruded a fine needle and sucked a drop of my blood—but just a drop.
Plums deify!
The ring granted passage to an alpine world of about 2-million square miles. That is about three-times the size of Alaska, bigger than India and about two-thirds the size of Australia or the continental United States…
There were forests, lakes, mountain streams and grasslands. There was little except pine trees, grass, moss and caribou, but the place had potential…
And it was all mine.
Magic reindeer lined up in regimented rows and columns to kneel and do obeisance to their new ruler.
Sorry, but reindeer look ridiculous kneeling on their front legs. Only a few were powerful enough to assume humanoid form like Blinky.
“Dudes, it is like: get up! I respect your allegiance, but I don’t groove on subservience. Just be loyal!” I said.
My voice—or my mental communication—reached each of my vassal flying reindeer instantly.
It is like:
Really man, be for real!
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Post by texican on Dec 18, 2020 15:03:24 GMT -6
RVM, Flying reindeer and a sleigh. Must be your childhood memories of Santa Clause. Texican....
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Post by accountant on Dec 18, 2020 15:42:39 GMT -6
YOU KILLED SANTA!!! YOU BASTARD!!! I love it.
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 19, 2020 18:27:27 GMT -6
Chapter Fifteen
32 525
If you ever watch any of the futurist Isaac Arthur’s videos on “U” Tube, there is a single theme that unites them. It doesn’t matter if he’s envisioning terraforming Mars, mining the asteroids or building great underground cities, they all require massive group effort.
I asked him on his forum once, if he or any of the other forum members saw any role at all for rugged individualism in the future. My question was never approved to be posted.
EE…In retrospect, there was an inherent aura of improbability about some of my favorite SF stories that I read as a boy.
How did a down-on-his-luck spacer end up owning a torch ship, so he could roam the galaxy solo, getting into innumerable improbable scrapes? I mean, even if a spaceship didn’t cost as much as a modern aircraft carrier, it must have cost at least as much as JP Morgan’s proverbial yacht.
By the way, JP Morgan did not say that if you had to ask what a yacht cost, that you couldn’t afford one. He said that if you had to worry about a yacht’s maintenance costs, that you couldn’t afford a yacht.
Ice is much the same.
By the time in their history, when Ice’s scientists discovered a red dwarf star on a collision course with their solar system, they were already more advanced technologically than we are in the 21st century.
They saw the star coming for centuries before it arrived. There was some uncertainty at first.
Obviously, if the red dwarf crashed directly into their star, survival would be completely out of the question. Likewise, if the red dwarf crashed into Ice. Additionally, the massive gravitation perturbations might have caused a planet to smash into Ice.
There might have been potential benefits to staying in orbit around a star—either the original or around the red dwarf—even if the new orbit was well outside the Goldilocks zone. Instead, Ice was thrown out of orbit to become a frozen, wandering rogue planet…
But not without giving mankind centuries to prepare.
I don’t know if any of the survival arks had to fend off human wave attacks by would-be survivors.
That was over 5000-years in Ice’s past and the details are lost in Ice’s distant history. I don’t expect that those who had lived through it were particularly anxious to memorialize their ruthlessness.
Not, I hasten to add, that there is anything wrong with—in the words of Josie Wales: “getting clean mad dog mean,” when that is the key to survival. The nidderlings dislike being reminded of the feral beast that lies within each of us though…
Or not…
Maybe saying that everyone has a feral beast within, gives much of mankind far too much credit.
“The domestic sheep that lives within”?
Well, as I firmly believe:
ORGANIZE + COOPERATE = CRUSH THE INDIVIDUAL
Still, I don’t know any other way to go about survival on Ice.
Each city is a city-state unto itself. The state runs the geo-thermal power stations that provide electricity to the cities. The state is responsible for providing air, potable water and providing sewage service to the residents.
The state is also in charge of excavating the ground for new quarters and farms as well as growing all of the food—and truth be told, doing almost everything else that must be done.
Parenthetically: Even when living on a frozen planet, when living far underground, one of the biggest challenges is dissipating excess heat.
Almost all the cities function on a command economy. However, the state of technology has reached the “post-scarcity” level.
There are no poor on Ice. If it is out there, it is freely available to everyone. Nor does anyone have to work, unless he likes to work. The level of automation is sufficient to support any number of lay-abouts.
There is not any need for hysterical birth control regulations either. If everyone wanted to have 10 to 14 children, it might strain the fabric of society. Very few people choose to have large families though. The ones that do, for whatever idiosyncratic reason, are easier to tolerate than to persecute.
Most people do choose to work though, and the competition for jobs can be fierce.
There were no recreations to speak of on Ice. There was no religion and no great causes. The diet was insufferably bland.
The only thing left to pursue in order to grant interest to life was the quest for status—not for any material gain—just for the sake of the pursuit—the game, as it were.
I guess that it was either that or institute potlatches like the Haida, Kwakiutl and the Chinook people of the Pacific Northwest to add a challenge to life.
Meanwhile, the governments had existed without meaningful challenges for many centuries. They might have control from cradle to grave, but they rarely used their power to gratuitously torment the people.
Yeah, I guess that in many ways, Ice was a sort of Utopia. I’ve never liked the idea of Utopias. So, fortunately for the inhabitants of Ice, I came to stir things up.
Many Libertarian and free market types argue that great big mammoth undertakings—like terraforming Mars—could, in theory, be done by huge multinational corporations.
EE…The problem is, a big multi-national corporation becomes a sort of mini-state. It has to. Otherwise, cooperation isn’t possible on such a large scale.
A multi-national conglomerate large and powerful enough to terraform Mars—or even strip-mine Ceres—has as many, or more, employees than many governments of Earth.
Big organizations have precious little respect for iconoclastic individualism. I can prove this with two words:
“Dress-codes.”
Forcing a man to cut his hair—as the story of Samson amply illustrates—has served as a form of psychological castration way back into Biblical times…
Not that the victim of the male haircut necessarily realizes that he has been psychologically castrated. He may even be an outspoken proponent of male haircuts—part of it driven by subconscious envy towards the whole and unbowed…
But he will be more of a herd animal, a team player and a practitioner of group-think than if he had never been cut. I mean, it is on a continuum. A dude with a buzzcut may be extraordinarily obstinate, but not as obstinate as he would have been, without the psychological gelding.
And neckties are a form of subservience, wearing the symbolic slave collar of the wage slave.
Tawn was formed by a multi-national corporation way back when and yet it had become almost indistinguishable from the government-based city-states of Ice.
Still, in Tawn there were the remnants of the capitalist system. There were farms and clothing factories owned by private individuals.
It kinda beggars the ideals of Laissez Faire Capitalism when anyone who has an idea for a for-profit business can apply for unlimited government grants to jump-start his venture and whatever subsidies that he needs to stay afloat against the state-run monopolies—but a post-scarcity economy ruptures many lines of conventional thought.
I brought new and tasty vegetables to Ice in my first wave of goods. EE…boiled potatoes may not be your idea of heaven, but if you grew up eating little but turnips and tofu, it might float your boat.
Onions, garlics and peppers could spice up many dishes and roasted and salted peanuts or sunflower seeds are almost divine to people on a very limited diet…
Not to mention sugar!
And it would be a generation before Vance bred enough of my first-wave new vegetables for everyone to have as many as they wanted.
That went quadruple for wood artifacts, since the pecan and apple trees would only be harvested for lumber once they had lived out their natural lifespan.
Round II as I said, was the introduction of chickens, pigeons and sparrows.
It takes even longer to raise up large quantities of animals.
Ever read “Pepy’s Journal”? Pepy wrote in the mid 1600’s—about 150-years after Columbus discovered the new world. Yet Pepy alluded to eating turkey on several occasions.
God knows how many turkeys were brought to England. There was a limited number of sailing ships and we mustn’t suppose that the entire cargo capacity of the English merchant marine was dedicated to bringing turkeys to England. Nah, some of those ships were bringing tobacco...
I was bringing in about 7-gross hens and 8-dozen roosters at a time—and I only made a few chicken runs to Vance.
Even with Vance’s advanced animal husbandry, it might take 50 to 60-years for chickens to get common enough that everyone could have “A chicken in the pot every Sunday.”
Ha-Ha! I created scarcity! Who gets the new, delightful things to eat? Well, at first the delicacies went to those highest up the government scrotum-pole.
That eventually led to widespread grousing and discontent. Lotteries and “social-points” systems were instituted.
Did I say that Ice was lacking amusements? A Chess set isn’t very large. A 3-D Raumschach board is a bit voluminous, but it could be collapsed. I also brought a few Hnefatafl sets.
I taught the children how to play Chess, Raumschach and Hnefatafl—and then I gifted them with some cheap wooden sets. I gave away well over two-hundred sets of each in Vance alone.
Yeah, even “cheap” wood was a priceless commodity on Ice. I have no doubt that the boards may go on to become heirlooms.
Ice Chess sets tend to be made with one side being made of brass and the other side being cast in aluminum—after all, metal is abundant on Ice.
I translated a few of Fred Reinfeld’s Chess books and an old Opening Encyclopedia by Larry Fine. Of course, I used descriptive notation. Algebraic notation is on par with the Metric System in my books.
Anyone introducing either algebraic notation or the Metric System to Ice will merit several hearty slaps from me!
Then I introduced Sumo, Judo, Folkstyle Wrestling, Arena Football and Women’s Softball to Ice.
Yeah, they could easily build full-sized football fields and big arenas in Ice, but I find regular football insufferably boring!
I didn’t introduce golf—a sport for the effeminate bourgeoise. I didn’t introduce soccer—another sport taken up by large numbers of the limp-wristed bourgeoise here in America, because they were afraid that playing Football might injure their effeminate little darlings.
I didn’t introduce Basketball either. Here is my dictionary definition of Basketball:
Basketball: A sport for tall skinny kids, who lack the strength, intelligence and toughness to wrestle.
After all these years, I’m still bitter about how much the spectator interest in high school basketball outstripped the interest in high school wrestling when I wrestled!
Pool, Ping-Pong and shooting marbles are all good games for people who live in fairly tight quarters.
I didn’t introduce Poker, Blackjack, Rolette or Craps. I’m not into card games. I’m not into gambling. Anyway, in a post-scarcity economy, putting money on the line is largely without any meaning.
I also introduced my best translations of the King James Bible and most of Spurgeon’s sermons.
EE…While it is one of those axioms that cannot be proven inside the system, I believe that the King James Bible is the best and truest rendition of God’s word ever penned, being superior even to the original “Autograph of Scripture.”
Didn’t the King James Bible give rise to preachers like John Wesley, Bishop Mason, David Wilkerson, Brother Jed and Charles Spurgeon? What nouveau—or old school—version can compare to that?
Yeah, Max Lynch preferred the NASB and Billy Graham made frequent use of the RSV—but These are outliers and both the RSV and the NASB were created with frequent reference to the KJV.
************** **************** ***********************
I was called onto the carpet in Vance.
Mayor Gorge was there, along with General Lank and a dozen city councilmen—or whatever you call them.
“This tobacco that you have imported is injurious to the health!” the mayor accused me.
“EE…Back home, it is a lifestyle choice. You people, have the technology to easily repair any damage the use of tobacco causes, so where is the beef?”
“This grass is even worse, and we don’t like the sort of attitude that it fosters amongst the general populace,” Gorge continued.
“I don’t care for the effects of pot myself. That’s why I don’t use it. However, many folks that I respect—I don’t necessarily agree—but they feel that freedom largely entails legalizing pot and guns. I want people to be free,” I said.
“That is another thing. Your books and writings promote combat pistolcraft and going armed. There is no need to go armed in Vance,” the mayor insisted.
“Going armed and being a skilled pistolero is not a means to an end. It is an end in and of itself. There is no point to even being alive, if one has to live his life unarmed. The unarmed life lacks meaning, purpose and dignity,” I shot back.
“This ‘Bible’ and this religion that you call ‘Christianity’ is very divisive,” General Lank chimed in.
“Indeed, it is. Jesus said:
‘“I come, not to bring peace, but a sword’,” I agreed with the General.
“If it drags your beat that much, why don’t you outlaw tobacco, pot and pistols—not to mention churches?” I asked smugly.
“If we outlawed tobacco and pot, we’d have insurrection on our hands. Too many people enjoy them too much. As for outlawing Christianity—our computer projections predict that banning the religion would actually cause it to grow even faster,” Gorge admitted.
“As for outlawing handguns, your literature provides a method to make that very difficult to implement. The amount of violence hasn’t gone up very much in spite of a significant minority going armed,” Gorge said.
Parenthetically: Gorge’s “Significant minority” was around 13%—and slowly growing.
“If we sent proctors to confiscate the arms, we’d have armed confrontations in our tunnels. We haven’t been at such a loggerhead in centuries,” Gorge said grumpily.
“Dudes, I feel your pain,” I said.
‘And I glory in it—good enough for statist like y’all!’ I added silently.
“I had many more plants, animals and artifacts of culture, art and literature that I wanted to share with you. Still, you cannot forge cold iron. Let’s try this:
“I won’t import any more stuff to Vance—at least until you feel that you are ready, willing and able to endure some more blows to your status quo. I won’t be popping into the city proper either,” I offered.
“However, you still owe me 50 000 .20 Scramblers and about 7-million rounds of .20 Scrambler ammunition. I wouldn’t advise that y’all try to renege on your debt,” I said.
“Bad things have a way of happening to people who try to pimp me over. I try to turn the other cheek, but fate intervenes. You could ask a reindeer seller named ‘Morgan’ about that, but unfortunately, he ain’t around anymore for you to consult,” I said.
“What do you propose?” Gorge said.
“I want all the product that you have on hand. I want the factories and the blueprints. I want any engineers or production people in the arms or the ammunition factory to be free to relocate to another city of my choice, if they are willing to move,” I said.
“Alright,” Gorge said.
“Don’t be too hasty. I want to make an open call for immigrants soon. I want you to stand aside and let anyone who wants to immigrate, leave Vance…”
“And I want 7500-tons of crude oil.”
“How will you move such a large quantity of oil?” Gorge wondered.
“Don’t worry about it. That will be my concern, Of course, I could go on trading with you. I don’t think that your citizens would cotton to you being the cause of me cutting you off…” I threatened.
All of the cities—at least the ones that had survived until the present—were located close to fairly large oil reserves.
No, you don’t burn the oil, unless you’re insanely profligate. You need hydrocarbons for any number of things—including the backbone of each city's plastics industry.
The cities are insanely efficient at recycling. Still, a bit of the hydrocarbons are lost. Also, increasing the population base and creating more crop growing areas necessitate more hydrocarbons.
Sure, you can start with carbon and hydrogen and synthesize your hydrocarbons the old-fashioned way. You could also mine the remains of the frozen biosphere, buried under countless tons of frozen air.
Neither alternative is as economical as pumping oil.
I had decided to throw most of my effort into promoting the well-being of the citizens of Tawn.
Tawn’s oilfields weren’t necessarily less abundant than the other oil fields, but there were some problems with pumping large quantities that Tawn had never fully solved.
The best that I could tell, the oil fields in Alaska pump about 75 000-tons of oil per year. I was only asking for about one-tenth of Alaska’s yearly output.
Vance had been pumping—and largely storing—oil for millennium. They could afford 7500-tons.
With a population of less than 2-million, 7500-tons of petroleum would amount to about 7.5-pounds of crude oil per person, though much of it would go into croplands and infrastructure.
It would prime the pump for bigger things in the future.
And how—pray tell—would I move tons and tons of crude oil, machine tools and tens of thousands of immigrants?
Well, with great fleets of magic flying reindeer, of course. I had about 3800 adult magic flying reindeer. Now that the oppression of Morgan and his gelding knife was removed, I had every confidence that my flying minions would continue to go forth and multiply.
I was about to Launch the “Stillwater Trucking Company—Ice Chapter.”
Just then, General Lank interrupted everyone’s ruminations.
“It would be cheaper simply to execute you,” he said.
These people seemed incapable of seeing Despair.
There were two people in the room who knew why and how General Lank’s head ended up rolling around on the floor while his headless torso spouted blood.
That would be Despair and me,
“I told you that bad things have a way of happening to people who try to pimp me over. We can negotiate. I’m not at all open to threats to my person though,” I said.
“No…I accept your terms. I’ll have your things ready as quickly as possible,” Gorge stuttered and stammered.
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Post by texican on Dec 20, 2020 0:20:49 GMT -6
rvm,
Outstanding chapter. Thank you.
And neckties are a form of subservience, wearing the symbolic slave collar of the wage slave.
I am in full agreement. Haven't worn a tie in decades even though I have multiple nice ties still hanging in the closet.
Basketball: A sport for tall skinny kids, who lack the strength, intelligence and toughness to wrestle.
Complete agreement.
After all these years, I’m still bitter about how much the spectator interest in high school basketball outstripped the interest in high school wrestling when I wrestled!
Yep, life sucks at time.
Most people do not understand real wrestling for they associate wrestling with the WWE and other wrestling entertainment on the boob tube.
“If we sent proctors to confiscate the arms, we’d have armed confrontations in our tunnels. We haven’t been at such a loggerhead in centuries,” Gorge said grumpily.
Coming to America.
“Dudes, I feel your pain,” I said.
The demoncraps will also feel the pain too.
EE…While it is one of those axioms that cannot be proven inside the system, I believe that the King James Bible is the best and truest rendition of God’s word ever penned, being superior even to the original “Autograph of Scripture.”
Agreed.
Merry Christmas.
God bless us, America and President Trump.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 20, 2020 15:33:56 GMT -6
Chapter Sixteen
35 617
“Stillwater, have you thoroughly realized the power of that ring that you wear yet? Actually, you don’t truly wear it, it has become a part of you,” Despair said.
I had been merrily adding plants and animals to my small world. The world was the inside of a hollow sphere like a miniature Pellucidar. It was about 800-miles in diameter and about 2500-miles in circumference.
Nah, I haven’t a clue to how gravity works there—do you?
Anyway, the gravity there is 60% of Earth’s. The air is thicker and has a higher percentage of oxygen—but not to the extent that you’d get the bends popping back and forth.
The air is a bit richer in carbon-dioxide too, enough to spur plant growth a bit without being rich enough to inconvenience vertebrate animals.
In the arctic, there is 3-months of continuous sunshine in summer, balanced by 3-months of total darkness in winter.
Scratch that in the world of Sapphire. The years there are only 9-months long. There is a summer featuring 5-months of continual sunshine—and notwithstanding, it seldom gets much above 85-degrees in summer.
The summer is balanced by a single month of total darkness, where it gets down to about 10-degrees below zero.
Most of the rest of the year is given over to fall. There is no real problem with jumping abruptly into summer, though there are a couple of weeks of spring.
The plants and animals need a warning that winter is coming—hence most of the remaining days of the 9-month year are given over to a long fall during which the hours of daylight get noticeably shorter every day.
Yeah, there are no moon or stars in Sapphire. During those 31-days of winter, or during night in spring and fall, it is pitch black—unless you are a human with artificial illumination or a creature with bioluminescence.
The rain is randomized but quite generous. Nah, I have no idea what drives the weather cycle or where the rain and snow originate from.
I do know where the water drains to. Sapphire is crisscrossed with small swiftly flowing mountain streams and large pristine alpine lakes.
The place, what was forested, was mostly covered in pine trees of various sorts.
I so don’t groove on pine trees.
10-degrees below zero is tolerable by most temperate hardwood forest trees. They could survive the lop-sided seasons and I have no doubt, that after a few centuries of natural selection, they would become optimized to take advantage of the long summers.
Why wait that long? I could have had the geneticists of Ice shuffle the genes of my plants and later the animals that I transported to Sapphire.
Instead, I utilized the services of the same druid that made my anti snail and slug amulets. He gave me a very funny look when I told him that I was terraforming a small pocket universe, but he altered my acorns, pecans, walnuts, sycamore and apple seeds and so on—along with some animals—including some insects—to my specs.
I couldn’t just pop into anywhere in my little world. There were 20-portals—more or less evenly spaced—corresponding to the vertices of a massive dodecahedron that was inscribed on the inside of the sphere.
I had 3800 magic flying reindeer to help me with my gardening chores though. Even the ones that couldn’t yet assume a human form, could still use telekinesis.
Now Despair was yammering about something. I’ll swear, sometimes it seemed as if she wouldn’t give me any peace of mind.
“Of course not. I am from the Realm of Nightmare. When did you see a Night Terror that would leave a man in peace?” Despair said.
She could read my mind.
“To what do you refer,” I asked somewhat wearily.
“You can load Sapphire with as many people—or as much material—as you choose to. Then you can slip-slide to Ice and take it out again,” Despair pointed out.
EE…That hadn’t occurred to me. It wasn’t, but at first glance Despair’s method seemed to be cheating.
“Are you a Night Terror, Despair?” I asked.
“No, actually I am one of the beings created—at least partly—to keep Night Terrors, and similar creatures suppressed. I was jesting with you,” she said.
Just then, Blinky sought an audience with me.
“Master…” Blinky started.
“You’re not a slave and I’m not your master,” I interrupted him.
“Don’t the martial arts students refer to their sensei as ‘Master’? It needn’t be an artifact of slavery,” Blinky argued.
“Alright, I will make you a deal. You can call me ‘Master’ if you can also persuade Despair to call me ‘Master’,” I said.
I didn’t want to be addressed as “Master.” I figured that there was no way that the hardheaded Night Ranger would ever call me “Master.’’
“Master, you should hear what Blinky has come to tell you—and you didn’t specify how many times that I had to call you ‘Master’—did you, Master?”
Hell’s belles and cockleshells.
What do Hell’s belles actually look like? Something like Despair? Nah, probably more like Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Rhianna…
“Master, do you know what ordinary reindeer eat?” Blinky asked.
“So far as I know, mostly moss and lichens. Do they graze on grasses when they are available?’’ I asked.
“Yes, they eat grass as well as lichens. Do you know what magical reindeer eat? We can eat almost anything, including meat. We don’t care for raw meat though, so until we can assume human form to cook it—or unless a senior brother bar be ques it for us—we mostly forbore eating meat,” Blinky rambled.
Magical flying reindeer are all chatterboxes. Even the ones that can’t assume a bipedal form can speak human languages and they will talk you to death.
Fortunately, years of listening to Vicente had immunized me against speed-rap.
“Get to the bleeding point, Blinky!” I said.
“Our favorite food is magical moss and lichens,” Blinky said.
“I’m happy for you,” I said.
“This frozen planet that you take us to, is an ideal place to grow great amounts of magical moss and lichens. With such a rich source of magical moss and lichens, many more of your slaves will grow in power enough to be able to assume a human form, thus increasing the value of your chattel,” Blinky said.
“You are not slaves. You are not chattel!” I said,
“He doesn’t mean it the same way that you would, Master. Remember that they are herd animals,” Despair chimed in.
I wondered how long she would keep up the annoying “Master” bit.
“This magical browse will grow on Ice, in the absence of any warmth or sunlight?” I asked Blinky.
“Yes, they utilize the energy of continuous creation. It is particularly rich on Ice,” Blinky said.
“Master, reindeer are good to eat. You wouldn’t eat any of us or wear our skins the way that Father did, will you?” Blinky asked cautiously.
“Of course not,” I said.
“There are magic flying reindeer. All magic flying reindeer are intelligent. Then there are mere magic reindeer. Magic reindeer are just beasts, but they could live and thrive on the surface of Ice,” Blinky said.
“EE…It is a bit delicate—at least to an outsider. Suppose that humans had domesticated some sort of grazing baboons or chimpanzees to be meat animals…” Blinky said.
“Would you consider that cannibalism, if the humans ate the apes?” Blinky asked.
“No, it would just look a bit funny, until you got used to it. Slaughtering an adult chimpanzee might prove an interesting challenge, though,” I ruminated.
“We raise and exploit magic reindeer much the same way that human could, conceivably, domesticate grazing baboons as meat animals,” Blinky said.
“So, you want to cover the surface of Ice with magic moss and lichens and raise great flocks of magic reindeer that can live in a vacuum at close to absolute zero—to be meat animals. Is that correct?” I asked.
“Yes Master,” Blinky said.
“What do you need from me?” I asked.
“Just your leave to do so. O, one other thing,” Blinky said.
‘There always is “one other thing”,’ I thought to myself.
“Yes?”
“These things go so much better, if we have human herdsmen to partner with. They are better at milking the magic reindeer, making cheese and yogurt from the milk, butchering and roasting them, preserving the skins and doing useful and ornamental things with their antlers,” Blinky rambled.
HMMMmmnnn…?
Humans cannot, as a general rule, survive for long on the surface of Ice. I might be an exception, once I fully assimilated the Night Ranger form—but then again, I was no longer fully human.
My freakish abilities would be no help to any humans wanting to herd magic reindeer on the surface of Ice.
I could have space suits and sleighs built in Tawn. I had forbore mining my own oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere from the planet’s surface, but a hardy race of Ice planet nomads would have to master the knack.
I had no idea how to warm the inside of the thermos dwellings. You couldn’t carry enough propane to last indefinitely on the surface.
“Small thorium reactors. Your friends in Tawn can manufacture them. They will also be enthusiastic purchasers of all the reindeer meat, hides and antlers or antler artifacts that the herders can provide,” Despair added.
“Where would I get herdsmen?” I asked.
“There are some Saami in Lapland that might be interested. Likewise, there are reindeer herders in Mongolia and even Tibet that might be interested,” Despair said.
HMMMmmnnn…?
Some of Vicente and Cassadore’s Apache and Lakota friends and relatives might like to live a life following the herds again—even if the herds are magic reindeer instead of bison. Hell, even some of the indigenous Ice population might like to get out and look around.
“Do it to it,” I commanded.
“How long will it take for the moss and lichens to take hold?” I added as an afterthought.
“No more than 2-years. The plants spread ungodly fast,” Blinky said.
“May I speak to you about something, Master?” Revna said.
She and Terry had witnessed the scene between me and Blinky. I guess that she wanted to jump on the bandwagon and antagonize me with the “Master” bullshit too.
“Frost giant males have the unfortunate proclivity to eat their offspring. You have heard that frost giant women throw themselves at human men. That is one reason. Human men may be on the small side, but they seldom if ever eat their children,” Revna said.
“Besides, frost giant men…”
Revna made the little finger sign for a tiny Johnson.
“So, all this bullshit that they fed Terry was the pot calling the kettle ‘black’?”
“Actually, even before Terry visited the alchemist, he compared quite favorably to frost giant men. Of course, I had no way to know that until that unfortunate lapse of restraint,’ Revna said.
“All this is interesting, in a perverse sort of way, but what is the point?” I said.
“Could you play matchmaker and find about 600 human males willing to marry frost giantesses and move to our home? And could you give us permission to settle in a few of the valleys on Ice, Master?” Revna said.
She was making me a bit nervous. I wasn’t sure how her husband would take to his wife calling another man “Master.”
“Revna is not being facetious, Master. As the Laird and protector of two worlds, you deserve the title ‘Master’,” Terry chimed in.
Both Oni and frost giants are very hierarchical peoples—at least, so it seems.
“Alright, I’m master of all I survey, just like Ozymandias. However, y’all done been my friends. Please continue to call me by my name. That includes you, Blinky,” I said.
“Yes Master! I’m honored to be considered your friend!” Blinky said.
“Can frost giants survive and thrive on the surface of Ice?” I asked.
“Assuredly! Jotunheim is much like Ice,” Revna said.
“Humans cannot survive, much less thrive on Ice’s surface though,” I pointed out.
“With Master’s permission…I mean, with your permission, we will use sun dogs to heat up a few selected valleys,” Revna said.
“Sun dogs?” I asked.
“It’s a matter/antimatter reactor in the shape of a small sphere that becomes a small artificial sun, sufficient to heat a small area. Don’t sweat the details right now. It doesn’t matter, Master,” Despair chimed in.
************** ****************** *********************
I had gathered over 2-dozen of my hacker dudes—the ones who sold my off-world computer components. They came from all over the world and it cost me a lot of money to get all of them to came to one place for a F2F meeting.
“I had to get y’all here in person, because if I told you about this online, you’d think that I had terminal chuunibyou. I want y’all to watch a brief beauty pageant,” I said.
Eight frost giant women walked out in bikinis. They were revealing, but nothing indecent.
Revna was a princess. The absolute smallest size that a frost giant can shrink his or her size down to, seems related to power and bloodline.
8-foot 4-inches was about as small as Revna could shrink. These “commoner” frost giantesses could shrink down to about 7-foot.
“These are frost giantesses. They are looking for human husbands. Talk to them. Touch them—within the broad realm of decency, unless you’ve already decided to propose to her. Convince yourself, beyond any doubt, that they are real,” I said.
“I imagine that there are many computer nerds with above average intelligence, but poor social skills, who can’t get a girl. Some of them might be willing to overlook the size difference and date a frost giantess,” I told them.
“I want you to set up a very good MMORPG involving human males and frost giant women working together to build a magical kingdom on another world. Most, if not all of the girls playing, will be actual frost giantesses and we actually are recruiting men willing to wed a giantess and help build a magical kingdom,” I said.
“What do we have now? About 650 frost giantesses?” I asked Revna.
“Almost 800, and the number keeps growing,” Revna said.
“Do you have any problem, if a few human couples get recruited?” I asked.
“No.”
“Alright, you can let human females register as frost giantesses. Try to filter out GIRLs,” I said.
GIRL = Guy In Real Life
“You women need to filter out the terminal space cadets and the useless. Lazy, I can deal with. I won’t have wife or child-beaters, incestors or terminal chuunibyous in my world,” I said.
One of the hacker dudes who dressed in black from head to foot and called himself “Huginn177.” started showing interest in Revna. I guess that knocked the idea that no human male would be turned on by the frost giantesses, due to their height and bulk, right out the window.
“Her name is ‘Revna.’ She is a princess, soon to be a queen of her own kingdom. She is married to a Blue Oni who would make 5 or 6 of you, Huginn. I’d recommend that you talk to some of the other girls, if you want to hook up with a frost giantess,” I said.
“Are there really such things as frost giants and Oni? Is there really another world?” a dude who went by the handle “Spider996” asked.
“Where do you think all those computer components and games that are making y’all rich come from?” I asked.
“Revna’s husband isn’t here today. I will try to introduce you to my wife, but everyone cannot perceive her. Once y’all have the game up and running, I will take you to one of my secret worlds as a special reward,” I promised.
“Are there any dark-skinned frost giantesses,” a big brawny black guy asked.
Apparently, he liked his women tall and dark…
“I haven’t met many frost giantesses F2F. Revna assures me that there are,” I said.
“Do any of those giantesses like girls?” Peewee asked.
Peewee, despite her name, looked like a professional model—a cover girl.
“Let’s not get into personalities, right now. Despair, will you endeavor to show yourself to these fine young gentlemen and one lady?” I asked.
From their point of view, Despair would have slowly coalesced out of thin air. Actually, she had been there the whole time, but now she was trying hard to be perceived.
“Your wish is my command, Master,” Despair said.
“Alright, quit clowning around!” I said.
“You’re married to a Night Ranger and she calls you ‘Master’?” a hacker dude with the handle Le Bottin said.
Apparently, he was influenced by the French Impressionist Daubigny—and he knew what a Night Ranger was.
A couple of people wanted to touch Despair’s wings, to assure themselves that they were real.
“Obey your master, and let these good people pet your wings,” I told Despair.
Right back at you, with that “Master” bullshit!
************ ************** *******************
“EE…The magic flying reindeer get a huge realm. All kinds of reindeer herders get a huge mystical realm to practice nomadism in. Revna and her frost giant friends get husbands and a kingdom—though they do have to build it themselves,” Despair said.
“So, you feel left out? Tell me, what do you want?” I asked Despair.
“I have 5 cousins—Night Rangers—who haven’t found a husband yet. Can they play on your dating site and visit Ice?” Despair asked.
“It isn’t a dating site. It’s an MMORPG,” I said.
“But you’re using it as a match-making game. Can my cousins play?” Despair asked.
“Sure, why not?”
“Can they visit Ice?” she persisted.
“Can they travel to Ice?”
“Yes, but they need your permission, since it is your world,” Despair said.
“My world? I think that the people in Vance and a host of other cities would beg to differ with you,” I said.
“HMMMmmnnnph!!! They are flies without significance. You could have wiped out that whole council room—or all the proctors in Vance, for that matter—with your telekinesis and your spirit sword. I only took the general’s head, because his arrogance annoyed me,” Despair said.
“Remind me not to annoy you. What will your cousins do on Ice?” I asked.
“Troll around, hoping that some human male will hit on them—like I was doing when you met me,” Despair said.
“Wait a moment. You were deliberately looking for someone to ask you out, when you met me?” I asked.
“Why else would I come to that dreary little diner? The only people who might overlook my appearance and who and what I am, would be the sort of down-and-out who patronize such a place,” Despair said.
“So, if you were hoping to be asked on a date, why were you so cold and hostile?”
“That is just the way that I am. I cannot help it,” Despair said.
“Alright, turn your sisters…er, cousins, loose on the unsuspecting citizens of Ice. Just tell them to be good little girls,” I said.
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 21, 2020 21:03:39 GMT -6
Chapter Seventeen
38 814
O my brothers, this is mainly my personal reminisce, but some of these stories are too good.
They are in third person, and they are based on what one or more primary sources told me at some unspecified, later point in time.
Peter Johannessen, despite the Scandinavian sounding name, was simply a farm boy from rural Kaintuck.
He liked to play football and wrestle. Peter worked hard at football and wrestling, in season and out of season. He lifted weights. He did many miles of roadwork and he even had a small wrestling mat, in a small barn that his father wasn’t using.
Truth be told, Peter’s first love was wrestling, but wrestling scholarships aren’t nearly as numerous and under-the-table remunerative as football scholarships.
Providence had made Peter an uncommonly large man. He was a fraction over 6-foot 5-inches in the fall of his senior year of high school. He was in his second year of college before he attained his final height of 6-foot 8-inches.
He was heavy boned and well-muscled as well, with a bare minimum of fat.
He was recruited by MSU to play football for the Spartans. He hesitated, because he really wanted to wrestle, but a full-ride to a top-rated Big Ten College is hard to turn down.
In his sophomore year, he almost destroyed his right knee early in the first game of the season.
They couldn’t take away his scholarship, just because he was injured and couldn’t play. However, each team only got a fixed number of scholarships under the league rules and it was a zero-sum game.
He was put under quite a bit of pressure to renounce his scholarship, so someone else could have it.
There were other problems. Football players were encouraged to take the bare minimum of credit hours to qualify as a full-time student. At the minimum rate of 12-credit hours per semester, it would take 5 or 6-years to graduate—but a scholarship was only good for 4-years…
Peter wanted to be a mechanical engineer, and he had already largely wasted both semesters of his freshman year and the first semester of his sophomore year by the time he was injured.
Well, the first 3-semesters weren’t completely wasted, but he had taken the bare minimum of credit-hours and the team’s academic counselor had steered him around a couple difficult but necessary classes that he needed for engineering.
He wasn’t completely without resources though. Advance hadn’t made it to Michigan yet, but the football coaches had resources. Feeding their players, a steady diet of Advance cured many academic hassles.
I have read that the practice of recruiting really dim-bulb jocks for big-money college sports is largely a thing of the past—but who knows?
I also read that OJ Simpson had an IQ of 90.
I don’t know how true that is about OJ Simpson—but, I wouldn’t doubt that there are college and NFL players with IQs in the 90s.
Note: I didn’t say “all” or “most,” but there are probably some.
Even if your dude started with an IQ of 90, a year of eating Advance would raise his IQ to about 123—back to the proverbial average level of a Purdue University student.
Peter’s IQ was a rather prosaic 117, but Advance had raised that to about 160—good enough for all practical purposes—especially considering Peter’s hard-working approach to his studies.
Peter’s second great advantage was his family. They were behind him 100%. When all the little perks and under-the-table money stopped coming to him, they made sure that Peter had plenty of spending money.
With an IQ of 160, even the harder mathematics and physics courses weren’t terribly demanding for Peter, so he got into playing computer games in his spare time.
He got in on the ground floor, of a game called “Revna’s World.”
I mean, technically, Terry was the king of the frost giant nation, but he wasn’t as photogenic as the slightly posterized Revna…
Peter was paired with a frost giantess named Rúna. It was possible for players to seek new partners, when they just couldn’t get along—or at least, they felt that they couldn’t play well together. Rúna and Peter hit it off well, from the very beginning.
The players could send private messages back and forth. The men could send photos—though you know what a colossal con that can be…
Can you say “Photoshop” or even “Outright theft of someone else’s image”?
Still, the option to share an outright photo with the “frost giantess” was there. No one, at that point, thought that they were playing with real frost giant women—not unless they were terminal chuunibyou.
But the images of the frost giantesses were always posterized a bit in the game’s PM system. If Peter had taken the time to think about it, he’d have assumed that Rúna also received a posterized image of him.
Their partnership play was competent, but not outstanding. So far as Peter was concerned, the game had become a convenient pretext to talk to Rúna.
Peter told Rúna that he was a near cripple, with only about 30-degrees of flexion in his right leg. The physical therapists told him that with time and diligent stretching, he might get the flexion to 37—maybe even 38-degrees.
Peter still lifted weights, though he couldn’t squat anymore. He did one-legged, leg-presses and one-legged, leg curls to take up some of the slack. Of course, his damaged right leg lagged far behind his uninjured left leg.
Nothing kept him from doing plenty of heavy-duty toe raises. He could still skip rope and he swam and walked to stay fit.
Rúna told Peter less about herself. She came from the far North and her family herded reindeer…
But she also told Peter that she was exceptionally tall and that her skin was quite dark.
Rúna was, in fact, one of the black-skinned frost giantesses that the big brawny black fellow had asked about. The black man’s handle turned out to be “SwiftSaber-337,” by the way.
Rúna wasn’t African though. Her facial features were classical Caucasian—though a bit on the masculine side. Her hair was long, straight and ginger-colored.
Peter figured that she was from Lapland in Scandinavia, or perhaps Canada, Alaska or even Siberia. He pictured her being one of those 6-foot 5-inch, close to 300-pound black Amazons that one saw occasionally—something like Linda Liu, though he had never met Linda Liu.
He also assumed that her red hair was a weave. What Tommy Sotomayor derisively called a “Hair-Hat.”
How her family ended up near the Arctic Circle, herding reindeer, was a fascinating question but she was always a bit evasive on that subject.
Peter had had a girl that he’d met on the Michigan campus, but she’d dropped him like a bad habit, when he was injured. She thought that Peter was her ticket to the good life as an NFL wife someday.
Peter turned out to be a ticket on the wrong train.
He was shy around girls and now, having been burned, he was wary. He liked talking to Rúna though.
“Would you like to meet me in person?” Rúna texted.
“I would love to meet you,” Peter texted back.
“There is a meeting for some of the better players in Western Kaintuck. We aren’t anything like elite players, in the game—but never mind. I have connections. I can arrange a two-way ticket for you to fly to Paducah—that’s where the meeting is,” Rúna texted.
Rúna wasn’t very well versed in Earth geography. As far as she knew East Lansing Michigan was on the other side of the world from Paducah Kaintuck.
“I’m from Dycusburg. That’s only about 45-miles from Paducah. I’ll be home over the summer holiday. I think that I can drive that far without taking a plane,” Peter said.
‘I would walk that far, to meet you,’ Peter thought, but did not text.
“Peter, I haven’t lied to you. I am very tall and very dark. I speak English with a heavy accent,” Rúna.
“You speak ‘American’ with a heavy accent. ‘English’ as spoken by the British and people in their territories, is a sub-standard, backwater dialect of the American Language,” Peter corrected her.
“As for the other stuff—you’re very tall and you’re a black woman So what!?!” Peter texted.
“Peter, I’m a good bit taller than you,” Rúna texted.
“I rather doubt that. I think you’re misunderstanding Imperial Units,” Peter texted back.
“You’ll see,” she said and added an emoji to the text who was shaking his head ruefully.
************* **************** ********************
Meanwhile, Benson was from Ohio.
Benson didn’t take after his father or his mother. All of his family looked like pure-blooded WASPs.
Benson had dark swarthy skin and very black shiny hair that always looked like he had just rubbed a double handful of Brylcreem on it, even when he hadn’t put grease on his hair.
Benson looked like a Mestizo. He sounded like he spoke with a Chinese accent…
Not a genuine Chinese accent, one of those faux Charlie Chan Chinese accents.
It was partly because Benson was very buck-toothed and he always talked in a hurry and sprayed plenty of spit when he spoke.
Benson was a hopeless nerd who actually wore a plastic pen holder in his shirt pocket. He wore high-water britches and he crossed his legs like a woman when he sat.
You could seat Benson in a roomful of people and forbade everyone to speak or to move out of their seat and in 20-minutes everyone would be staring at Benson and hating his guts. He just gave out that sort of vibe.
Everyone assumed that Benson was gay—just on the strength of his feminine way of sitting, his high-pitched, bird-like piping voice and his annoying flighty mannerisms—and the fact that he was an inveterate punster.
In fact, Benson liked girls. It was just exceedingly unlikely that he would ever hook up with one.
Benson was the best American approximation of a hikikomori. He wasn’t afraid to go out into the world. He just found very little reason to ever do so.
He graduated high school and had finished one year of college, before he retreated from the world to concentrate on hacking, watching anime, reading manga and playing computer games.
Truth be told, Benson was a very mediocre hacker and he was far from being a force in any of the virtual worlds that he gamed in. He was pretty much an all-around, hardcore loser.
He was amongst the first few people to sign up to play “Revna’s World.”
For reasons that no one understood, perhaps it was random chance, but Benson was one of the few people who were offered the opportunity to team up with a Night Ranger.
There was a brief description of Night Rangers:
They were large—well over 6-foot. They had large black bat wings and huge zygodactyl feet. Their skin was the color of polished ebony.
Night Rangers were very powerful, inclined toward violence and very grumpy. On the other hand, they needed a human husband—and once bonded, they were loyal and loving for life…
And since so few human men desired them, they almost never turned down a potential suitor. The one inviolable rule about them was: you had to ask them for a date to initiate courtship. They were constitutionally incapable of making the first move.
The system introduced Benson to a Night Ranger named “Melancholy.”
Hell, for all Benson knew, Melancholy was a GIRL.
What the Hell!?! It was just a game and being a Night Ranger’s consort was a very limited class.
“Would you like to go to the tavern for a beer?” Benson’s buckskin tunic wearing avatar asked the towering Melancholy avatar.
Later, Melancholy asked Benson:
“Do you think that you might ever date someone in real life, that you met online?” Melancholy asked.
“I don’t even know what you look like,” Benson said.
“You’ve seen my avatar,” Melancholy replied.
“That isn’t the real you,” Benson said.
“No, I’m much uglier and far scarier in person,” Melancholy said.
“There is ugly and there is UGLY. I am hopeless with women, so I can overlook a lot—though there is a limit to all things. Will you go out with me F2F and let me see what you look like in person?” Benson asked.
“Benson, I really am a Night Ranger,” Melancholy texted.
‘She is not only ugly—by her own admission—but she is also chuunibyou. O well, choosers can’t be beggars—and I’m a beggar!’ Benson thought.
It was about a 6-hour drive from Dayton Ohio to Paducah Kaintuck. Benson was proud enough to refuse to fly the fascist skies, so he was resigned to riding a Trailways to meet Melancholy.
Then his father found out.
Benson’s father was weird. He had been very strict with Benson through the 3rd grade of elementary school. Then he’d seemed to throw up his hands and give up on Benson
Benson was glad that the constant browbeating stopped. On the other hand, it was rather depressing that his father had given up on him.
From then on, his father more or less let Benson do whatever he pleased.
Benson still lived at home and he didn’t live in a dark and damp basement either. He lived in the same spacious room that he’d lived in since his family had moved into the 9-bedroom home, back when Benson was in the 1st grade and he was 7-years old.
“Benson, I hear that you’re going to Paducah to meet a girl that you met online,” Father said.
“Well…Yes…well…er…”
“I’m glad that you’re finally taking an interest in girls. Son, what if this girl turns out to be one of those trans people? It kinda sets off warning lights, that she has to meet a boy online,” Father said.
“I know. She tells me that she’s very ugly. She also claims to be a Night Ranger—not that you’d know what a Night Ranger is. She’s chuunibyou,” Benson said.
“Night Ranger? I’ll tell you what son—why don’t you take my Cadillac to Paducah. If that doesn’t turn a young girl’s head, nothing will,” Father said.
Father was the proud owner of several classic cars, including a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Convertible. There were only 1800 of this particular model produced.
Father rarely drove the Cadillac. He’d never let any of his children so much as pull it out to the end of the driveway. He had never even let his wife drive the car.
“It goes without saying that I want you to drive careful. Nonetheless, shit happens. Don’t put your life in jeopardy to save the car and if you have a wreck, don’t be ashamed to call me—but if you get drunk and wreck my car, I don’t know you,” Father said.
“O I almost forgot what I meant to tell you. If your lady turns out to be a ladyboy, stop and think. Let your conscious be your guide. Sometimes, the choice is between using a non-dairy creamer or drinking your coffee without any cream at all. And if you ever tell any of your brothers or sisters that I told you that, I’ll deny it,” Father said.
************ *************** ************************
I had rented the whole top floor of Linda Liu’s.
First all of the human men came in. There were tables for two set up all around the room, and there were nametags on each table—a human name and a frost giantess or Night Ranger’s name. We were only joined by two Night Rangers that day.
“Hey, you’re ‘The Lame Stone’, aren’t you?” Benson asked.
It was no great feat of prognostication on Benson’s part. Peter’s name was on the name placard on the table.
“I’m ‘The Bensonator’,” Benson said.
“Howdy,” Peter said.
Peter had met nerds and otaku before. They were nothing to make Peter lose his company manners over.
Just then I walked up and stood behind the podium.
“People, believe it or not, I am Laird of both Ice and Sapphire. If I can’t convince you, I’ll introduce you to my wife later. She’s a Night Ranger—yes, like Melancholy and Agony,” I said.
“I’m going to bring out the girls in a moment, but first a word—no one gets a memory wipe. Altering someone’s memory is rape with violence. I don’t even ask that you stay silent about what you’re about to see,” I continued.
“If you want to run around talking about frost giantesses, Night Rangers and alternate-universe ice world planets—by all means, do so. You’ll come off like David Icke ranting about reptilian overlords, but if that’s what you want to do…”
“I won’t even ban you from the game, the forum or from fellowshipping with us in retaliation for spreading the word about us. I simply don’t care,” I said.
“I will absolutely insist on one thing though:
“No one leaves this room until you’ve had a decent conversation with your date. These women have come all the way from Jotunheim to meet you. I don’t care how freaked you are—man up and at least speak to her. If you decide that you cannot hang, that’s fine. Be man enough to tell her so to her face,” I said.
“Now, I want to introduce you to Revna the frost giantess and her husband Terry. Terry is a Blue Oni—for those of you who know what that means,” I said.
“Revna, Terry,” I said.
Ordinarily, the 3rd floor of Linda Liu’s is not in use. Today, it was a staging ground for 30 young frost giantesses and two Night Rangers of indeterminate age, ready to meet their computer dates.
Terry and Revna walked down the stairs into the banquet hall.
Yeah, anyone with any wit whatsoever would be wondering:
‘Damned nation, that is a realistic effect. I wonder how in Hell they can do that at such close-range and make it look so real!?!’
Frost giantesses have very deep voices, by human standards, but they are melodic—not harsh and strident—like Despair’s voice, just for instance.
“I’m going to call each young lady’s name. Do me a favor, when the lady walks into the room, whoever is her partner online, please wave at her to let you know where you are,” Revna said.
Actually, the women had walked through the room several times while it was empty, to firmly implant in their minds where their table was. Asking the men to wave was just to give them something to occupy their minds.
See, Terry and Revna might be some bang-up, holographic, very advanced CG. When the frost giantesses started sitting at the tables, less than 3-feet away, and the doubters could reach out and touch them…
Things would start to get real.
*********** ************** *********************
“I told you that I was taller that you Peter Johannessen!” Rúna said to the amazed Peter.
“Yeah, you did,” Peter replied.
“You really are a Night Ranger?” Benson asked Melancholy.
“You can feel my wings, my pointy teeth or my great owl’s feet,” Melancholy said to Benson.
“You told the truth about one thing:
“You are ungodly ugly!” Benson said.
“I’m so happy to hear you say that—no, really! If you were too scared to say it—or if you tried to flatter me with insincere praise, it would bode ill for our future prospects together,” Melancholy said.
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Post by sniper69 on Dec 21, 2020 22:08:50 GMT -6
rvm45 - thankyou for the latest chapters. I did notice something in the latest chapter I figured I would point out (and no it doesn't take away from the chapter) "He was recruited by MSU to play football for the Wolverines. He hesitated, because he really wanted to wrestle, but a full-ride to a top-rated Big Ten College is hard to turn down." MSU has the Spartans and U of M has the Wolverines. I got a good chuckle thinking of it reversed (especially since I know folks who are fans of one team or another and adamantly hate the other team, lol).
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 21, 2020 23:30:34 GMT -6
rvm45 - thankyou for the latest chapters. I did notice something in the latest chapter I figured I would point out (and no it doesn't take away from the chapter) "He was recruited by MSU to play football for the Wolverines. He hesitated, because he really wanted to wrestle, but a full-ride to a top-rated Big Ten College is hard to turn down." MSU has the Spartans and U of M has the Wolverines. I got a good chuckle thinking of it reversed (especially since I know folks who are fans of one team or another and adamantly hate the other team, lol). Thanks.
I wanted to get away from Indiana and Kentucky a bit AND I wanted more of a football powerhouse than Purdue or University of Indiana…
Purdue and U of I are the only BIG 10 teams that I can name—I think U of I is Big 10.
So, I looked it up online and STILL got it wrong.
I'm almost sure I saw MSU = Wolverine on the Site I went to… SO MAYBE THE MISTAKE ISN'T MINE…MAYBE…
Thanks.
In a world where they spell things "Kaintuck" and "Kalifornia" and where mythical creatures run rampant—maybe in THAT world—MSU has The Wolverines… …..RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 23, 2020 16:33:19 GMT -6
Chapter Eighteen
42 078
“Do you still want to date me, after seeing me in the flesh?” Melancholy asked.
Benson was afraid and he was shocked—and he was embarrassed to talk about such a private affair as dating, in front of so many strangers. Nonetheless, he gathered his courage and answered Melancholy.
“Yes, I do,” he stammered.
Melancholy was a couple inches taller than Despair. Her teeth were longer and more prominent and her nose was bolder and more masculine.
Yeah, she almost managed to make Despair look good by comparison.
She frowned down at the trembling Benson.
“Now that I meet you in person, you’re a bit of a wimp. I’d rather be without a man, than to have a poster-child for Planned Parenthood such as yourself,” Melancholy said.
“Hey, screw you—you ugly-ass bitch,” Benson spat.
Melancholy ground her teeth in anger and took a step toward Benson.
“He’s right, you are as ugly as sin,” Peter said.
His table was next to Benson and Melancholy’s table.
Peter had a bad leg, but he wasn’t one to shy away from physical confrontation. He respected the courage of this little dweeb, and he wasn’t going to stand idly by while he was beaten or killed, even if the alternative was to share his fate.
Melancholy arched her back and bared her teeth at Peter. Rúna stood up to back up Peter.
“I doubt that you can take on the three of us,” Rúna said.
I strode over and gave Melancholy a big slap upside her head.
“It is a house rule at Linda Liu’s:
“One guest cannot eat another guest,” I said.
Er…I guess there is an exception for eating a guests’ eyeballs.
Melancholy glared venomously and growled at me.
“Melancholy, what is wrong with Benson?” I asked.
“He’s a wimp! Look at his hands. They’re as soft and as uncalloused as a young maiden. He must have grown up as an heiress,” Melancholy spat.
“Melancholy, don’t throw this chance away. You will never have another one. Ask Despair, sometimes I have forerunners or ‘knowings’,” I told her.
An Outsider would just know if you’re lying about something like that. Some lies cannot be sold—at least not to haints.
Melancholy sat in a chair and looked deflated.
“It is hopeless then—for both of us. He’s far too weak to survive my kiss. I thought that it would be better if he hated me. Hatred and resentment breed strength,” she said.
“Instead, thanks to your intervention, he will now leave with my pity,” she added.
“Benson, you know about Night Rangers from the game. You’re too weak to survive Melancholy’s kiss. You need to become a warrior first. Are you willing to strengthen your body and your will, in order to have Melancholy?” I asked him.
“I’ve never been good at sports and I’ve always been clumsy,” Benson said hopelessly.
“Do you know what these are?” I asked.
I set a 2-gallon glass jar full of egg-sized floating orbs. Benson had seen them in the game, but the game lacks taste and smell and despite some very advanced hardware and programming, the resolution in “Revna’s World” falls short of the real world.
“Are those Yōkai eyes!?!” Benson asked.
I nodded.
“Real life Yōkai eyes!” Benson said in wonderment.
“Truth be told, I’ve eaten so many of them, that they only give me heartburn without increasing my power at all,” I said.
That was almost true. Truth be told, I still got a marginal power boost from each eye that I ate. Not anywhere near enough to make it worth my while to seek them out. It was barely worth my while to eat them as a precious gift.
Grandpa Liu had given me a jumbo-sized jar of pickled Yōkai eyes and another quart jar full of frost giant balls—already shrunken to peanut size.
I don’t know why he couldn’t have pre-shrunk the first batch of frost giant balls that he gave me.
“You’ll have a call for these soon,” was all that he said.
“EE…Benson, you need to eat one of the eyes, right now, where I can see you do it. Those eyes are valuable. If you don’t have the balls to eat them, I’ll give them to someone willing to use them,” I said.
“Man up! It’s easier than eating boiled eggs. At least Yōkai eyes don’t come out of a hen’s ass…”
“Despair?”
“No, so far as I know, Yōkai don’t get their eyes out of hen’s assholes,” Despair replied.
Benson started when Despair became apparent to him.
“It’s okay. Despair is a Night Ranger. She’s Melancholy’s cousin,” I said.
“Melancholy, you are the one who needs Benson to become strong. You follow him home and train him. There are enough Yōkai Eyes there to easily triple his physical strength. Then the balls ought to increase that another 50-60%. It ought to also give him some sort of low-grade psychic power,” I said.
“That may not be enough to prepare him for your kiss. You’re going to have to take up the slack with plenty of hard physical training,” I said.
“As for you Peter, you have just completed your 4th year at MSU. You need 2, probably 3-semesters before you can graduate. Your scholarship has run out and you’ll have to pay out the wazoo for those last 3-semesters,” I said to him.
“Don’t be surprised. I’ve had all of you carefully investigated. I won’t let just anyone court my frost giantesses,” I told him.
“You need to make up your mind which is more important: earning a diploma and credential power here on Earth or learning engineering that will blow your mind on Ice,” I said.
“Whatever you decide, you need to spend a few weeks on Ice. They have far better surgeons there than anything the Earth has to offer. Let’s see, its July now. You can have full flexion and function back in your right leg by November,” I told him.
“Of course, it will take you another year or more to fully rebuild your strength in that leg,” I said.
************ ************* ********************
Benson drove Melancholy to the motel that he was staying at, so that he could drive home starting early in the morning. He disliked the prospect of driving his father’s precious classic Cadillac at night.
There was no question of Melancholy losing her chastity under the circumstances, and since she was largely invisible to most humans, Benson didn’t even have to pay extra for her to stay with him.
Melancholy intended to pass the night standing like a statue, close to Benson’s bed. Standing motionless overnight was nothing to her. She could stand like that for decades, if there was a reason to.
Benson was afraid to let himself fall asleep. He was afraid that when he woke, that Melancholy would have deserted him or the whole numinous experience would turn out to be some sort of febrile dream.
“Benson, if you placed my solemn word on one pan of a balance and you placed the whole Earth on the other pan, my word would carry more weight. I will still be here when you awaken. Sleep!”
She didn’t understand Benson’s clinging attachment to her. Most Night Ranger courtships were closer to Stillwater and Despair’s—though Stillwater prided himself on his unbridled frankness and he took insulting his Night Ranger fiancé to new heights.
Melancholy was more than a little surprised when she saw Benson’s ride.
She was even more surprised when she saw the mansion and the palatial estates surrounding Benson’s home.
Benson’s father met him in the garage as he parked the car.
“Melancholy!” Father shouted in astonishment.
“Marshal,” Melancholy said with a brief nod of her head.
Benson had no idea what an honor it was, for a Night Ranger to address someone by name.
“I kissed Melancholy’s sister ‘Travail’ once, when I was very young. Travail died in a great war, on a distant world, before we shared our second kiss,” Marshal explained to his astounded son.
“You have done well for yourself, Marshal,” Melancholy said with respect.
“So, you really did go to Paducah to meet a Night Ranger. Son, you have always been…lacking…somehow. If you kiss Melancholy, you will die. Still, I won’t forbid it—if Melancholy is willing to waste her one chance at love,” Marshal said, while glancing at Melancholy.
“There is a prophesy. Benson is my only shot at having a mate,” Melancholy said.
“So be it. Sometimes it is better to die chasing your dreams—like a moth flying into the flame—rather than live out a mediocre three-score-and-ten,” Marshal said sadly.
“I have these,” Benson said.
He proudly showed his father the two jars.
“Yōkai eyes!?! I could have gotten you Yōkai Eyes, if it had only occurred to me. How on Earth did you come up with a jarful of shrunken frost giant testicles!?” Marshal said.
“Stillwater gave them to me,” Benson said.
“Wait, you met Stillwater—Grandpa Liu’s protégé—in Paducah?” Marshal asked.
Meanwhile, at that point I had no clue that Grandpa Liu considered me his protégé. Word wouldn’t trickle down to me until sometime later.
“Stillwater is in possession of a slip-slider’s manual, that he has mastered to the second level. He has become Laird and protector of a rogue ice planet dubbed—counterintuitively enough—'Ice.’ He made Morgan the reindeer-boffer good and he has taken command of the magic flying reindeer and he is now Laird of the Sapphire World,” Melancholy said.
“He’s recruiting human husbands for frost giantesses—and a few Night Rangers. He’s looking for a good source of materials to make a few 10-mile sun dogs. Ice is going to bloom shortly,” Melancholy said.
“Wait a minute! These little peanut-sized things are testicles?!?” Benson said.
He’d heard me call them “balls,” but the import of the phraseology hadn’t struck him.
“Yeah, that’s right. Are you willing to eat testicles to win me?” Melancholy said with a chuckle.
‘Eyes—balls; eyes—balls; six of one—half-a-dozen of another. At least, as Stillwater said, neither comes from a hen’s ass…Testicles come from mighty close to a frost giant’s asshole though…unless their anatomy is radically different than ours,’ Benson thought.
“Wait a moment! Are frost giant’s the size of Revna?” Benson asked.
“Frost giants can shrink their size. Revna is a princess, so she can only shrink down to a little over 8-foot…” Melancholy started to explain.
“You met Revna the princess?” Marshal said in awe.
“Just briefly. I shook her and her husband’s hand,” Benson replied.
“A frost giant can grow to be as tall as that oak tree over yonder, when they’re not repressing their size,” Marshall said.
“Then why are their nads so tiny?” Benson asked.
“They’ve been magically shrunken so you can take them like a capsule. In human form, they’d be the size of bull’s testicles—say a medium-sized Irish potato. In giant form, they’d be the size of watermelons. You wouldn’t fancy eating one,” Melancholy told Benson.
“Son, have you heard of the IQ enhancer known as ‘Advance’?” Marshal asked.
“Yeah, it’s very hard to locate, unless you know the right people. It will raise your IQ about 37%,” Benson replied.
“Here is a years’ worth. 30-weeks should max out the effect, but just to be sure… Your IQ is only 109—so Advance will get you an IQ a wee-mite over 149. It will have to do,” Marshal said.
“I figured that if you’re going to frivol all your time away hacking and playing games, that you should at least be good at it. I don’t know how much an improved IQ will help you survive a Night Ranger’s kiss—but it can’t hurt…” Marshal said.
“Unless you miss your mouth and shove the pill in your eye, that might hurt,” Marshal said while eyeing his maladroit son dubiously.
“Promise me that you won’t kiss Melancholy until you’ve taken all of these pills,” Marshal said.
“When you take the last scheduled Advance tablet, the Cadillac is yours,” Marshal added.
************* **************** *********************
The first couple of weeks of Benson’s training wasn’t bad.
Melancholy set up a 5 x 5 x 5 weight training program:
The five most basic and effective exercises—full-squats, bench press, press behind the neck, bent-over rows and stiff-legged deadlifts—performed for 5-sets of 5-repetitions.
Melancholy added triceps extensions, pull-overs, inclined curls, and leg curls for 2-sets of 8-repetitions each.
Even with long rests between sets, the routine took little over an hour.
Most people used the routine on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The operative concept was that there were no more than 3-sessions per week and there was always at least 48-hours to recover between sets.
Most people weren’t on a steady diet of Yōkai eyes and frost giant testicles. The effect on Benson’s muscular development put even Mister Olympia Competitor sized doses of anabolic steroids and growth hormones to shame.
Melancholy was tempted to have Benson lift twice daily, instead of just once.
She added 5-pounds to Benson’s upper body workout weights—every session! She added 10-pounds to the squat and stiff-legged deadlift.
In two weeks, Benson had added 80-pounds to his 5x5 bench press weight and 160-pounds to his 5x5 squat.
Part of that, was that Benson had been incredibly awkward at first. Both the Advance and the organs he was consuming added to his agility a great deal.
The first few weeks, Benson spent most of his time, apart from lifting—playing computer games—with Melancholy playing beside him. Melancholy seldom left his side.
“From now on, we will only add 2.5-pounds to your upper body weights—and only every other workout. We’ll add 5-pounds to your squat and stiff-legged deadlift,” Melancholy said.
Benson shrugged indifferently. Melancholy loaded his bar for him and timed his breaks. The 5-repetition sets weren’t intended to wring his body out. He was much like a spectator in his own weight training.
He had gotten stronger and somewhat more agile, but he hadn’t improved his physique in proportion to his strength enhancements. It took the muscles a bit longer to swell and it took fat longer to be burned—not that Benson was fat.
“It’s time for you to learn martial arts. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you will spend 4-hours every morning learning Capoeira. You will spend 3-hours studying Taekwondo each afternoon and 2-hours studying Polish Saber every night—6-days per week,” Melancholy said.
“Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday—you will study 4-hours of Brazilian Jujitsu in the morning and 3-hours of Savate in the afternoon,” Melancholy continued.
“Sunday, you will have a 3-hour lesson in Kendo and then we’ll run a marathon together,” Melancholy said.
“I will be training something almost every waking moment!” Benson complained.
“It won’t be forever. We need to maximize the effect of those eyes and balls. Once their effect is exhausted, it will take you far longer to improve,” Melancholy said.
The Advance increased Benson’s ability to learn martial arts 5-fold. Of course, if he lacked the strength or flexibility to execute a spinning back-kick, then he couldn’t do a spinning back-kick.
He started his martial art training with about normal physical capabilities. Yeah, even the weeks of accelerated weight training had only gotten him from “Dismal” to “Average.”
A year after he’d started martial art training, his strength gains had slowed to a crawl—after he’d added another 400-pounds to his 5x5 bench press and 800-pounds to his full squat.
Truth be told, 400-pounds 5x5 for the bench and 800-pounds 5x5 for the full squat were already very impressive poundages. While there were probably strength athletes who could bench 400, 5x5—there probably weren’t any mundane who could squat 800-pounds 5x5—even if you let them cheat and only do parallel squats.
And that wasn’t even adding in Benson’s starting poundages.
He was stronger than any normal human—a human who hadn’t partaken of Outsider training aids.
After about 30-weeks, he lost the 5x increase in learning ability from the Advance. By then though, he had a very firm grounding in several martial arts. And the Advance still gave him a 2x increase in ease of acquiring new skills.
Benson was quite well muscled now. The drugs also seemed to have realigned his crooked teeth. However, his hair still looked like it had been soaked in olive oil.
It was time for the fateful—and potentially fatal—kiss.
“Whatever happens—whether you live or die—I love you and I’m very proud of you,” Marshal told his son.
Melancholy and Benson retired to Benson’s room. To Benson’s mind, a first kiss should be a private thing. Anyway, when he passed out his bed would be a convenient place for Melancholy to lay him down.
************* **************** ***********************
Almost a year before Benson prepared to kiss Melancholy, I went to see Grandpa Liu.
“How can I help you, Stillwater?” Grandpa Liu asked. “Magic reindeer can live and thrive on the surface of a frozen planet. I need to know if here are any other magical animals that can populate a frozen world,” I replied.
“What would you like to have?” Grandpa Liu asked.
“Truthfully? Bactrian camels and bison—and whatever else that you can locate,” I said dubiously.
“And do you think that magic bison and magic camels could thrive on magic moss and lichens?” Grandpa Liu asked in derision.
“You are asking for something incredibly expensive—more than a large gross of griffins,” he said.
{A “Large Gross” is a dozen small gross or 1728.}
I ended up with what amounted to magic “meadow in a can”—magic Kaintuck bluegrass, magic grama grass, magic milkweed, magic elderberry, magic blackberry, magic dandelion—a couple of magic clovers—violet colored and bright yellow…
And a whole magic ecosystem of magical animals that could live where the soil was solid nitrogen…
“How will I pay you, Grandpa Liu?” I asked as I looked at the list of things that he was planning to transfer to me.
“Trouble is coming to the human realms, in this sheath of probabilities,” Grandpa Liu said.
“You can pay me back by becoming stronger—as quickly as possible. We haven’t had a Night Warden since Despair’s father died. Our prospects looked grim without one—but now you are close to becoming a Night Warden—a Night Warden who is also a slip-slider!” Grandpa Liu said.
“What is a Night Warden?” I asked.
“A Night Warden is a Night Ranger’s consort, who has picked up the gauntlet to defend mankind—and mankind will soon need all the defenders that it can get. There is a humongous shit-storm brewing on the horizon,” Grandpa Liu said.
“EE…Grandpa Liu, you do know why you gifted me those eyes and balls a few weeks ago?” I asked.
“I haven’t a clue. I simply had a premonition to gift them to you,” Grandpa Liu said.
“There is a really weak dude who is courting Melancholy. He desperately needs to upgrade his will and his physique to withstand Melancholy’s kiss. I think that his prospects are excellent though. If he survives Melancholy’s first kiss, I will gift him a slip-slider’s manual,” I said.
“Plums deify!” Grandpa Liu expressed.
“O, by the way—can you put me in touch with someone who can sell me the materials to make a few sun dogs without wrecking worlds?” I asked.
“Sun dogs? Why do you need sun dogs?”
“Haven’t you heard about the frost-giant/human hybrid kingdom that I’m establishing on Ice?”
“Hell’s belles and cockleshells and skeletons all in a row!” Grandpa Liu shouted, when I had explained him about “Revna’s World” and recruiting gamers and otaku to marry frost giantesses.
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Post by texican on Dec 23, 2020 18:49:50 GMT -6
rvm,
With all of the enhancing going on, does it enhance everything for Benson probably needs improvement.
Benson will survive the kiss but with what side effects?
Thanks for the chapter.
Merry Christmas to all.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 23, 2020 19:08:11 GMT -6
rvm, With all of the enhancing going on, does it enhance everything for Benson probably needs improvement. Benson will survive the kiss but with what side effects? Thanks for the chapter. Merry Christmas to all. Texican.... EE…
Are you asking if he will get any "Male Enhancement"? Gosh, we've established that Frost giants are under-endowed…
Of course, if he can make it expand to full-frost giant proportions, I shudder to think. I think that we should let that be a matter between Melancholy and Benson.
Benson's father has numb-nuts and his feet aren't mates though. Benson has been a loser all these years—and his father COULD have bought and fed him Yōkai eyes starting in high school or even late elementary school. Maybe he wouldn't have grown up to be such a nerd. Also, Advance has been around for 2 or 3-years already. and he just now bought him a quantity…
And for a disappointing son—MAYBE being exposed to all the neat Outsider bullshit from an early age, might have encouraged Benson to make something of himself.
…..RVM45
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Post by millwright on Dec 24, 2020 16:10:19 GMT -6
I got caught up again.
Keep it coming RVM.
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ahsga
New Member
Posts: 32
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Post by ahsga on Dec 24, 2020 19:27:53 GMT -6
I need a jumbo-sized jar of pickled Yōkai eyes and another quart jar full of frost giant balls.
Second day air is fine - no need for overnight.
Thank you
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 25, 2020 14:18:12 GMT -6
Chapter Nineteen
45 366
A small amount of mass can be converted into a humongous amount of energy. E = MC2 and all that. That is what atom bombs do. They transpose an exceedingly minute pinch of matter into pure energy.
The thing is, even hydrogen bombs and the Sun are incredibly inefficient. Which is a good thing, in a way. Otherwise most everything in the multiverse would be blown apart.
Matter and anti-matter reactions are 100% efficient. If you mixed an ounce of matter with an ounce of anti-matter, you’d get two ounces of pure energy and an enormous explosion.
Anti-mater is exceedingly rare though. Once again, that is a good thing.
You cannot turn matter into anti-matter. They are two fundamentally different things. But what if you could?
You can’t even really turn a positive number into a negative number in Algebra. Sure, you can multiply by negative one, but then you have to multiply the other side of the equation by negative one as well.
Algebra has no relevance to the real world or even has any internal consistency, if you simply cheat.
You can cheat in Chess too. Say that both sides agree to let the black king move like a knight for one move…
Silly, but there is no existential reason that you cannot do it.
You can cheat in Algebra and simply change the sign of a number and cancel out some troubling quantity. It is simple: simply erase the “+” sign and chalk in a “-” sign.
Neither of those things would have any meaning though. They would simply be clowning around.
There are magical means, under some very special circumstances, to do the impossible and turn minute quantities of matter into anti-matter.
You can’t just do it idly, on a momentary whim though.
A 10-mile sun dog is a 10-mile diameter sphere of almost pure silicone dioxide—quartz. There are a very few strategic impurities and it starts with some complicated runes and hex signs inscribed all over the surface.
The sun dog converts just enough of its mass into anti-matter and then mixes it with regular matter, in a very controlled way, to turn the former ball of quartz into a tiny, white-hot glowing ball—a miniature sun, as it were.
Sun dogs cannot be left to sit on the bare ground of course, but there are levitation spells and anchoring spells.
A sun dog won’t heat a whole world—or even a large country. It will heat an enclosed valley the size of Rhode Island quite handily. Of course, the areas further away won’t be quite as toasty warm or as well illuminated as those in closer proximity to the sun dog.
The light from a sun dog is a bit redder and cooler than genuine sunlight, but it makes up for that by burning in the sky 24/7.
A sun dog will last for thousands of years as it gradually consumes itself.
There are 5-mile sun dogs—they can be 6, 7, 8 even 9 miles in diameter. The operative concept is that a 5-mile sun dog, is that it is too small to be a 10-mile sun dog—but 5-miles is the smallest size possible. Smaller that that and it won’t work at all.
5-mile sun dogs are both dimmer and cooler than the 10-mile sun dogs. They come in handy to add warmth and light to far corners of an area not fully touched by the main sun dog.
5-mile sun dogs are bolloxed attempts at a 10-mile sun dog. No one makes them deliberately. It would be a waste of resources—but if you end up with a 5-mile sun dog, there is no reason to let it go to waste.
Now an astute person will ask what happens to the runes and hex lines when the rock turns to magma. The runes and hex lines persist in the subluminous aether.
The subluminous aether has been proven not to exist? That doesn’t limit its power or effectiveness, just because it doesn’t exist.
Also, the sun dog continues to emit the same level of heat and light until the last few years of its existence.
Now, the problem was:
Where can I buy a sphere of rock 10-miles in diameter? Since rock isn’t pure silicone-dioxide, I’d have to start with a good-sized larger chunk, to refine down to the requisite 10-miles.
And no, there aren’t any larger sun dogs. So far as anyone knows, 10 or 11-miles in diameter is the upper limit to the size.
You can’t pick a place anywhere on Earth where you can teleport a 10-mile sphere of rock away, without causing massive earthquakes and tidal waves. Hell, the magma would come spurting out of the gigantic hole and you might very well have an extinction-level event.
Likewise, I wouldn’t even want to take such a large bite out of the Moon or Mars. Venus…maybe. It’s a useless place anyway—but I had no means—or more like my artisans—had no means to stand on the surface of Venus and teleport gigantic spheres of rock away.
Fortunately, I wasn’t the only slip-slider around. A few of the slip-sliders had access to dead lifeless rock worlds as their 2nd or 3rd worlds.
Yeah, you don’t have to spend 22.5 days on your 2nd or subsequent worlds—meaning, if there is no air to breath—or whatever—you simply slip-slide back to Earth—or your 1st world or wherever.
There was a dude in Dayton Ohio who owned a huge Outsider trading company and he had 3 advanced slip-sliders working for him. Grandpa Liu said that this dude could probably set me up with some big balls of quartz.
************* **************** ***************************
I shook the man’s hand.
“Has it been well for you, Marshal?” Despair asked with concern.
“How can it be well? When I sleep, I often go to the Realm of Nightmare, and I can’t even see things that horrify me. All I see is vast emptiness,” Marshal said sadly.
“That emptiness is your nightmare,” Despair consoled him.
“Stillwater, you introduced my son to Melancholy,” Marshal said with measured control.
“You’re Benson’s father? You have numb nuts and your feet aren’t mates. Granted that frost giant balls are very hard to come by, but you could have had that poor boy on a steady diet of Yōkai eyes since early childhood. There is no reason for him to be in his condition,” I said.
“I was courting a Night Ranger named ‘Travail.’ She died. Nonetheless, my mind and body had already had experienced some changes thanks to her kiss. That would include my genes,” Marshal said.
“I have 6-children. Benson has 3 brothers and 2 sisters. They are all very superior, with genius IQs and the physical potential to become Olympic athletes in one of several sports should they chose to. Benson’s puzzling lack of potential and ability paralyzed me with indecision,” Marshal said.
“The ‘Tao Te Ching’ says that great talents ripen late. I’m not sure if your son, Benson has any talent at all. However, I have a small prophecy about him. He will be both a Night Warden and a slip-slider,” I told Marshal.
I might be very fuzzy about what role a Night Warden played in the overall scheme of things. Nonetheless, if the Baraka gave me a forerunner with that term imbedded in it, then that is how things should be…
Not that prophesies and someone’s geas cannot be bolloxed and lost. That’s why the Old Testament says that prophets who prophesy by the power of God are never wrong.
Any score of less than 100% means that you are not a genuine prophet. That is why I don’t hold myself forth as a prophet. My forerunners—presumably—come from the Baraka’s astronomical number-crunching power and its ability to “feel” things coming…
The same way that you can feel a punch or other move coming when you have your hand on the client.
Still, if I told Benson about my prophesy, and he used it as an excuse to loaf in his training, or even if he went into harm’s way too calmly, when he needed a bit of an edge…
Then my prophesy would turn into a self-defeating prophesy.
Now if God prophesied something, he would have the infinite power to goaltend his prophesy and make sure that it didn’t get spoiled or mutated—but I’m not God.
“I want the blueprints and permission to manufacture some of your weapons,” Marshal bargained.
“I don’t want to cut the biker gangs out of the distribution chain. We have an agreement,” I said.
“Never mind Earth. I have 18 worlds that need better arms,” Marshal said.
“You have 3 slip-sliders working for you and you supervise 18 worlds?” I said in a bit of amazement.
It was doubtful that any of Marshal’s slip-sliders qualified as “Lairds” of any of their worlds, but they were probably at the level of being “Stewards,” like Casúr was the Steward of Forest.
“I know that you’re not trying to pry into my affairs. That would be intolerably rude, but I’ll give you a valuable piece of information gratis:
“I have considerably more than 3 slip-sliders in my employ,” Marshal said with a smile.
I walked away with a firm handshake deal. That was all Outsiders needed. Even if—hypothetically—Marshal was an evil, scheming and grasping dude, he wouldn’t dare to try to steal from me.
He was going to supply me with the astronomical number of 17, 10-mile sun dogs and 11, 5-mile sun dogs—none of the smaller ones less than 7-miles in diameter.
In exchange, Marshal got the chemical formula for Advance and blueprints for several of my weapons—I mean, even blueprints for the factories that turned out the guns and the ammunition. In addition, he had bought the exclusive right to manufacture and market those weapons and Advance on his worlds.
He also wanted me to use the incredible cargo moving capability of the Sapphire World to transport some things to a few of his worlds—a half-a-dozen supply runs.
Marshal’s slip-sliders had advanced to the stage that they could piggyback someone to their worlds—like me, for instance. I could carry many tons of cargo with the Sapphire World.
I was a little fuzzy as to exactly where the Sapphire World was…
Was it in the sapphire stone, on the ring on my finger? Was it in the sapphire that I had absorbed into my brain? Were these only keys to my kingdom—doors or portals as it were—while the actual kingdom was elsewhere?
Anyway. I could use the Sapphire World to move ten decades worth of slip-sliding transports in one jump—whether I knew precisely how it worked or not.
“In the near future, I want to buy your plans for that thermos sleigh that you had built. I’d also like to buy about 100 of your magic flying reindeer,” Marshal said.
“Also, word is, on your rogue planet, that you ‘sensed’ the presence of cities. It would be worth a lot to me, if you could travel to one of my slip-slider’s ice worlds and divine if there are any pockets of survivors, as on Ice,” Marshal said.
“EE…About the magic flying reindeer—they’re intelligent and sentient. Morgan treated them like chattel, but I don’t hold with slavery. I’ll let you bargain with some reindeer. I’m sure that an equitable contract with them could be arranged—but they will be employees—not property. They also still owe allegiance to me as their sovereign,” I said.
“Marshal, I have exclusive distribution rights to magic moss and magic lichens. If you seed your ice planets, I’m sure some magic flying reindeer will come to browse. Magic flying reindeer can travel across dimensions after all…” I said.
“Is 5-years the soonest that you can get me any more sun dog sized spheres?” I asked.
“I will do my best to get you 3 more 10-mile sun dog spheres and all of the 5-mile spheres that results from such haste. I will pay an extra sun dog in penalty, for every year that I’m late,” Marshal said.
“Okay, I’ll find at least a few of your hidden cities and once my reindeer have the location of your world, I’ll have them spread out some moss and lichens,” I said.
************ **************** **********************
Meanwhile, I had promised all of my hackers a first-class trip to another world. The Sapphire World was still pretty much a wilderness. There were many cities on Ice, but Tawn was my favorite…
So, we prepared to descend on Tawn like a bunch of heathens on Spring Break.
Also, I hadn’t forgotten about the Neon Goddess who had been raped—even though Despair insists that she isn’t memorialized in the fragment of an old song that I remember.
Peter Johannessen was also coming along, to scope out the scene and to have his knee repaired.
************** ****************** *********************
Peter introduced Rúna to his extended family.
“She’s tall,” was all his mother said.
Grandma took a draw on her pipe and then strained her weak eyes to see Rúna clearly.
“You’re a frost giantess, aren’t you?” Grandma said after a moment of intense staring.
Everyone was a little embarrassed. Grandma was 93-years old and apparently, she was getting senile. There were a couple of nervous titters.
“My grandma, on my mother’s side, was a frost giantess. That would be your great-great-grandma. You’re one-sixteenth frost giant. That may be where you get your size and strength,” Grandma said.
“Grandma, you have lost your bloody marbles! Just shut-up and let people who aren’t senile carry on the conversation,” Steward said.
Steward was Peter’s cousin and he was 16-years old and c***-sure of himself and c***-sure about everyone and everything around him.
Peter had a brief whispered conversation with Rúna.
“Can y’all step outside a moment? There is something that I want to show y’all,” Peter said.
“No, I’m good. I don’t need to see your ride or whatever,” Steward said.
“Steward, I especially want you to see this. You will step outside or I will slap your face into a caricature of your daily countenance,” Peter intimidated his cousin.
Stillwater had said that there was no obligation to be discrete. Skew discretion!
Once they were in the yard, Rúna expanded until she was 32-feet tall.
“So, is Grandma Elliot senile, or are you a pretentious little prick?” Peter asked Steward.
“My grandma could do that,” Grandma chuckled.
“How did you meet a giantess?” another cousin desperately queried Peter.
“I played ‘Revna’s World’ online. I got in on the ground floor. Nowadays, you have to be vetted very carefully and prove your determination before you’ll be partnered with a true frost giantess. Nonetheless, I can give you a code that will get you priority—if you really want to meet someone like Rúna,” Peter said.
“Are you going to move to Jotunheim?” Grandma asked.
“Nah, Jotunheim is no good place for a mortal to be. It isn’t that great a place for frost giantesses either. Rúna and I are going to take part in the construction of a new world,” Peter said.
“Look at the game ‘Revna’s World’ online. The game is a pretty true rendition of what we are planning to do—though the events in the game rush ahead of reality,” Peter said.
By the time that the family reunion broke up a couple of days later, 5 of Peter’s cousins had asked for the code that proved they were his close kinsmen—including the know-it-all, Steward.
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Post by millwright on Dec 25, 2020 15:26:40 GMT -6
How cool..
A little something to chase the Christmas Dinner.
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 26, 2020 8:18:21 GMT -6
Friends,
Who Killed C***-Robin!?!
Pond and Honor!
I have used a few off-colored words in this story. but "Kack" ain't not a bad word in this context. It means a male chicken—a Roster, as it were…
Galloping Llamas and Auto-Censorship!
…..RVM45
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Post by papaof2 on Dec 26, 2020 8:46:40 GMT -6
The "Politically Correct" posting "fixer" software written by a 9 year old hacker who's only looking for letter groups instead of context and probably doesn't understand Latin for graduating with honors (summa cum laude), Dickies brand work clothes or cocking a single action weapon for firing.
There are boards where the above lines post full of ***** or "I'm a potty mouth" which sounds like a 4 year old and both are excellent indicators of an ignorant or lazy (or both) programmer.
Not every piece of "commercial" software is worth the electrons it disturbs in passing...
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Post by texican on Dec 27, 2020 16:35:05 GMT -6
Friends,
Who Killed C***-Robin!?!
Pond and Honor!
I have used a few off-colored words in this story. but "Kack" ain't not a bad word in this context. It means a male chicken—a Roster, as it were…
Galloping Llamas and Auto-Censorship!
…..RVM45
rvm, We win some, we lose some and we tie some, and if you keep count it will take all of your time keeping the tally. Keep on writing and remember: Webster: c*** - noun \ ˈkäk \ Definition of c*** (Entry 1 of 5) 1a: the adult male of the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) : ROOSTER b: the male of birds other than the domestic chicken c: WOODCOCK darchaic : the crowing of a c*** also : COCKCROW e: WEATHERCOCK 2: a device (such as a faucet or valve) for regulating the flow of a liquid the c*** of an automobile radiator 3a: a chief person : LEADER b: a person of spirit and often of a certain swagger or arrogance 4a: the hammer in the lock of a firearm b: the cocked position of the hammer 5 usually vulgar : penis A word is generally only as vulgar as one's mind is vulgar except for teenage boys and young men that have a one way mind that finally smooths out sometime after they are in their mid to late twenties. Hope everyone had a great Christmas. Hope you have a better New Year in 2021 than in 2020, but the odds do not favor such. Remain cognizant, prepared and ready. Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 28, 2020 16:12:03 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty
47 971
“Dudes, it is like time to follow through on one of my promises and transport y’all to Ice—the planet where the real ‘Revna’s World’ is taking place,” I said.
Peter Johannessen was there along with Rúna and he’d requested a space for his younger brother Matthew to come along. Many of my hackers were there: Huginn177 who had tried to hit on Revna; Spider996 who had trouble believing that it was all real; Peewee—who apparently liked women; Le Bottin who was a Daubigny fan and SwiftSaber-337 who liked his women dark.
I had no personal impression of most of the others.
Revna was coming along to liaison with some of the city-fathers of Tawn along with several technicians.
I also had a scut-load of horticultural and animal products along.
This would be my first time “Bombing with Love”—’ceptin’ I was dropping monster quantities of products rather than throwing bombs like a Pacifistic Nihilist.
How many cattle will fit on a semi-trailer? Well, if it is a standard-sized trailer, then 28 to 30 cattle will fit. However, if you put in carefully selected calves, you can get 2.5-to-3-times as many cattle.
I was bringing in hundreds of purebred Holsteins for milk and Herefords for beef. I also threw in a few Black Angus bull calves. Sometimes 1st generation Angus/Hereford hybrids show better gains for beef production.
But if you don’t have the purebred strains to breed back to, eventually your breeding pool gets wanked.
Same with pigs and some breeds of chicken intended to breed big Sunday-sized eating hens.
I brought in turkeys in boxcar lots as well.
You know, the main limiting factor with the cattle, was how many cattle could I cause to disappear off the face of the Earth without drawing unwanted attention to my operation.
I mean, sure I paid for my livestock, but imagine the following dialog with a nosy taxman and one of my suppliers:
Taxman: “Mister Farmer, I understand that you sell replacement breeding stock to cattle operations?”
Farmer: “That be a big 10/4 good buddy.”
Taxman: “You’ve sold close to a million dollars’ worth of calves per year, for the last 7-years…”
Farmer: “And reported my income and paid tax on it—all above-board and legal…”
Taxman: “But who do you sell the calves to!?! We have no record of such a large buyer in our system.”
Farmer: “Don’t not know. A dude comes by regularly, with a big semi-trailer. He pays cash.”
Taxman: “Cash!?! Are you laundering money? Are you—or have you ever been—a member of ‘The Yamikaze Motorcycle Club’?”
My people in Tawn had been steadily expanding their hay and grain fields for a few years, to accommodate the sudden influx of livestock.
Meanwhile, I had a cultural exchange going.
I had over 100 boutiques in Tawn. I was selling apple, cherry, maple and pine bonsai trees, cactus plants, dwarf lemon trees, the plant known as variously as snake plant, Saint George's sword, mother-in-law's tongue—as well as some miniature roses and other potted plants.
House plants had never been a thing in any of the Ice city-states and trees had long since become extinct there.
There were no LEDs on Tawn, their lighting worked on a totally different system. Their farms had big-ass grow lights, but there was nothing suitable for a bedroom or living room.
Never mind. I imported grow-light LEDs and a small transformer so it would work on Tawn’s current—and each plant came with its own grow-light system along with several spare LEDs.
In a short while, Tawn’s engineers had created a far more durable domestic grow-light system, once a need was perceived.
Why?
Life was very limited on Ice. When life is too stark and unembellished, it becomes daemonic.
Relatively few folks would raise plants as a full-time hobby—or avocation. Even so, having a snake plant by the door and a small round cactus on the desk would liven up someone’s life just a wee mite.
Even the Sainted Jeff Cooper could be wrong—very, very occasionally.
Cooper used to sneer at what he dubbed:
“I.I.’s”—"Inconsequential Increments.”
It has long been my conviction, that Inconsequential Increments are multiplicative rather than additive…
AND once you can string 3 or 4 Inconsequential Increments in an equation, they become something consequential.
A couple of green living plants and their pleasant LED lighting system can be one such I.I.
I also sold parakeets, goldfish, turtles and puppies.
Turtles, goldfish and parakeets may be inconsequential to most. A puppy is a consequential presence in anyone’s life.
I sold three breeds at first: A mutant strain of Black Yorkies; Brindle Boston Terriers and Red-and-White Beagle Dogs. The underground warrens were no place for Bullmastiffs and Newfoundlands—at least not at first.
I don’t care too much if people want to eat goldfish, though I’d prefer that they not. I had to educate the people of Tawn and they practically pledged on the life of their firstborn that they would never ever never eat dog, parakeet or even turtles—under any circumstance—before I would sell the pets to them.
My marketing was mainly aimed at children. Of course, the adults had to approve the transaction, but children were flexible enough to accept a dog into their lives.
Later, I would bring some kitty-kitty-kitties and perhaps ferrets.
I sold Jacks, Slinkys, Socko-Paddles, Superballs, Kaleidoscopes, Teleidoscopes, Chinese Checkers Sets, Yo-Yos, Tops and Gyroscopes—along with Wooden Blocks for toddlers.
I don’t get into tops, but I often pass what would otherwise be a dull, tedious moment by shuffling my Slinky or bouncing a bouncy-ball on the floor or glancing through a teleidoscope.
And my Slinky drives Despair to despair—so it isn’t without its utilitarian functions.
Point being, all these things aren’t like necessarily for children.
I sold Lava Lamps, UV lights and strobes along with psychedelic UV posters and small wooden and bronze statuettes.
I brought in beaucoup art supplies like art paper, Prismacolor pencils, crayons, magic markers, graphite pencils, watercolors, gauche, canvas and acrylics—but these people had no real conception of art.
There are some very high-end art reproductions—full-sized and they have even LASER-scanned the surface of the canvases and they 3-D print the texture of the original paintbrush strokes.
I’m not a big purist, but knowledgeable people claim that any reproduction lacks veracity and a certain moral force—especially reductions from full-size.
I rented rooms and hung galleries with full-sized reproductions of Renoir, Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Frank Franzetta, Norman Rockwell and a few other great artists. Each damned reproduction cost me thousands of dollars…
There were also numerous original works by contemporary and as of yet unknown artists.
Art is another thing that can make life less daemonic.
I hired buskers to come to Tawn and walk up and down the halls serenading the people. Yeah, music is unknown on Ice—or it was until recently.
I was extraordinarily careful to keep the eggs of the dread adversary out of Ice, and I also went to some lengths to make sure that not a single fragment of Country “Music” contaminated my world…
Hymns, Blues, Bluegrass, Celtic, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Bollywood Indian Music, Rock, Classical—even marches by John Philip Sousa—but I won’t permit my world to be contaminated by “Kun-Tun-Rhee-Moosick”!
************ ************** ***************************
I teleported to a warehouse that I had arranged in Tawn. Otherwise, it is upsetting to see people materialize out of thin air.
Incidentally, the mathematicians and physicists of Ice are far ahead of Earth’s in many areas.
It seems that Ice is in some sort of high probability nexus to receive interdimensional travelers. The mathematicians had predicted interdimensional visitors within 700-years.
Makes you wonder how many interdimensional travelers had already arrived and frozen into giant slider-sickles…
Still, it blows the mind a little bit to see someone pop up right in front of you.
And anyway, I had to transfer the bulk goods to my warehouse for further distribution. It didn’t all go to the same place, obviously—except, insofar as my warehouse was a one-stop staging area.
This time I had 63 travelers with me. They could tell that they were somewhere different right off. The gravity on Ice is 1.18% of Earths. The air pressure is a wee-might higher and the oxygen percentage is also a mite higher.
You’d barely notice the difference in the air, but there is no good way to simulate higher gravity on Earth except very briefly in an elevator or in a centrifuge—and you can feel a centrifuge’s spin…
The people of Ice in general and Tawn in particular, mainly wore polyester with a bit of a flaxlike fabric and a very small quantity of goatskin leather or rabbit fur trim thrown in.
Up until recently, the clothing was mostly dark blue, brown and gray—though it is easy to make bright-colored polyester.
Yippie-Kie-Ayy!
I brought in cotton and sheep for wool. Someday soon, I’d bring in mulberry and silkworms.
Still, it would take awhile to get a large textile industry established.
Meanwhile, I bought in wholesale lots of bright colored “T” shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants and bandannas bought at Dollar General Store.
What? I wasn’t ripping anyone off. Brightly colored clothing was scarce—ergo, it wasn’t price-gouging to sell 2-dozen “T” shirts for an ounce of gold…
Especially being gold isn’t anywhere near as dear there as it is here.
I mentioned that Tawn was short of organic compounds. Even the worn-out clothing was valuable recycling material that Tawn had lacked before.
Anyway, once I had firmly established the principle the Tawn polyester industry started turning out all sorts of bright flourescent solid colors and psychedelic prints.
O, and I had also turned them on to beads, bangles, conchos, jingle bells and dyed turkey feathers.
Yeah, when you walked down the corridors of Tawn, everyone looked like they were all cosplaying Doctor Who—or maybe imitating Prince—and everyday was Mardi Gras…
It made me proud and brought a tear to my eyes.
Meanwhile, brightly colored and flashing LEDs had caught on big time—along with some discrete reflectors. The halls looked like a college dorm decorated for Christmas—or maybe some sort of 60’s discothèque. Like KC and the Sunshine Band sang:
“That’s the way “Uh-Huh, Uh-Huh! “I Like It!”
I led my wards to one of my businesses. Would you believe it? It was a pizza parlor!
“Let me know what y’all think of the pizza. I’m trying to make as much of it as possible, with local ingredients. Of course, I’m still having to import some of the spices,” I said.
“Does everyone here smoke?” Peewee asked.
“About 80%. These people are vaccinated as infants, against cancer, arteriosclerosis and most other health problems that have been associated with smoking. If all else fails, they can clone you a brand-new set of heart and lungs with your own DNA, give you a transplant and have you better than new within 5-weeks,” I said.
“The average life-expectancy here is over 300-years. Add in that when I first started travelling here, these people were sensory deprived and bored shitless. There was very little reason for them not to smoke,” I said.
“It does give the place a certain ambience,” I said.
Like one of those hazy Klingon ships’ atmosphere on “Star Trek.”
“Why are you selling pizza?” Le Bottin asked.
“These people lived like termites in a mound until I came. They’re welcome to go on living like termites if they want to. The city fathers of Vance and Lour have tried to shut the floodgates and halt the changes—but I think that they’re a bit late,” I said.
“I loathe Admiral Matthew Perry and his ‘free trade’ enforced at gunpoint. However, these dudes enthusiastically entered into trade. When they saw where it was headed and wanted to stop—I ceased and desisted. Only, I’m reasonably sure that their bread was already leavened at that point in time…”
“Anyway, the good people of Tawn lack culture. I’m throwing various things at them and waiting to see what sticks. I sincerely think that I’m offering them a better way to live. No one forces them to adopt things that they don’t like,” I said.
“So how is your pizzeria doing?” Peewee asked.
“EE…I mostly get teens and pre-teens. They play Chess, Raumschach, pool and Ping-Pong and eat pizza. They treat it like a club. The adults find the oregano, mushrooms, garlic and bell peppers a bit much. Kids are more flexible,” I said.
“So, you’re running a club for tweens. Is there much profit in that?” Huginn177 asked.
“Tawn has a post-scarcity economy. There is very little profit—or possible loss—in anything. My imports are a gilt-edged exception. I run the pizza parlor, my art galleries, my pet stores and my curio shops purely for my own satisfaction,” I told Huginn.
“Anyone with a business plan can get an outright grant and unless your business is egregiously unpopular, you can get subsidies to make up any shortfalls,” I said.
“Could I start a business?” Peewee said.”
‘I shudder to think…’
“What kinda business?” I asked.
“I want to open a dance studio.”
“What sort of dancing?” I asked curiously.
“I’m good at the 5 major styles of Ballroom Dancing:
“Foxtrot, Waltz, Rumba, Cha Cha and Swing—but my main focus is Salsa. Dancing is supposed to be a way to find men—but it didn’t work for me. I should have known,” Peewee said.
Peewee was one of those girls named by opposites. She was about 6-foot 2-inches and built like a female discus thrower.
“I thought you liked girls,” I said.
Peewee looked shocked and then comprehension dawned on her.
“He-He! I asked about lesbian frost giantesses, because I am well above average height for a woman and I was afraid that I would be a prime target,” Peewee explained.
Okay…
“I’m also good at Salsa. Maybe we can cooperate,” Spider said.
“How about modern dance?” Le Bottin asked.
“No twerking, no line-dancing and no pole-dancing. Keep the dances no more than PG or very mildly R-rated and we’ll have no problem—unless you try to import Country ‘Music.’ That will get you banned and exiled,” I said.
“I’m a Chess Master. Can I play?” Huginn asked.
“Two things: Number one, don’t even mention Algebraic Notation…” “Second, these people are computer whizzes. I have no doubt that they will analyze many of the lines of play with AI assistance fairly soon. Right now, though, I have made a real effort to keep Chess in its Golden Age—the stage of slashing attacks and great sacrifices and brilliancies…”
“If you could keep the stodgy Ruy Lopez Openings and Queen’s Pawn Openings to a bare minimum…” I said to Huginn.
“Why haven’t you taught these juvenile delinquents to play checkers and dominoes!?!” Swift Saber asked indignantly.
Yeah, I kinda thought that introducing the hackers to Tawn would help shake up the status quo. I just didn’t know exactly how that would work.
Languages?
I’m very prejudiced about learning foreign languages. I sucked at high school German and Spanish, I failed out of Russian in college. I spent several years building a reading comprehension of Gaeilge, because I heard that there was a great renaissance in the language—and lots of great olde tyme literature as well…
Only that turned out to be Gaelic, not Gaeilge—that is to say, the Scottish Language was undergoing a resurgence for awhile—not the Irish Language.
Well, at least being able to read and understand Gaeilge is a big head start on mastering Gaelic…
Then I discovered the Pimsleur language learning systems. As far as I’m concerned, the Pimsleur Language lessons are so superior to anything else, as to make any comparison a waste of time.
The only problem with Pimsleur is they’re fairly expensive and they don’t have it in every language that you might want to learn. The only have a 2-week course in Gaeilge—and nothing in interesting and useful languages like Yoruba and Igbo…but they have obscure languages like French… But if you take many Pimsleur courses, the script for the American half of the dialog stays pretty much the same from language to language.
I speak a dozen languages of Ice with every bit as much fluency as any native speaker—thanks to my vision.
I “Culturally Appropriated” Pimsleur’s script and made several language sets for people going to Ice. My hackers—and others—were as fluent as a 4-month Pimsleur’s course and—some supplementary reading—could make them in “Tawnese” and “Global.”
That is, the language traditionally spoken in Tawn and the common language that almost every person on Ice speaks as an auxiliary language.
Yeah, yeah, misunderstandings and borrow words would be all to the good so far as unstagnating Tawn’s and Ice’s culture.
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Post by texican on Dec 28, 2020 22:25:09 GMT -6
rvm,
Now just how deep does the earthly products penetrate into Ice world? Even advanced societies will discover new things to interest them and sometimes to their detriment, but so goes life.
Thanks for the chapter.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Dec 30, 2020 15:11:48 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty-One
50 803
One of the people that I’d brought to Ice, was a dude named “Lester.” Lester had a master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology with a strong minor in Mathematics. He was working on his PhD—and swimming in debt.
I paid off all of his student debt—and all of his debt, actually—and I offered him a huge amount of money to take a year or two off and come study the peoples and cultures of Ice.
The study of a heretofore unstudied culture, in an unprecedented situation—from Earth’s standpoint—would be a work worthy of a PhD and widespread academic acclaim. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to publish any of his observations and findings—at least not in mainstream circles.
Whatever, when he went back to the university, in exchange for having delayed the advance of his academic career a bit, he’d have all his school fees paid, a house and a new car bought and paid for and a modest monthly annuity to supplement his income the rest of his life—in addition to the large lump-sum in cash.
Lester dove head-first into the libraries—in between walking the corridors and talking to anyone about everything.
The people of Tawn weren’t stupid and they knew that a contingent of Earth peoples were joining them for awhile. Most of the hackers were on an extended vacation—a couple or 3-months, with the exception of those like Peewee and Spider who found a reason to want to stay longer.
I had a number of other people who were set to settle in and stay longer. It didn’t matter. There was no “Earthmen are not welcome” movement—at least not in Tawn.
But anyway, Lester’s clothing, his accent and his pixelated way of asking endless questions about any and everything made him stand out like dude in a bright red shirt at a Hassidim Synagogue.
That didn’t keep him from getting his job done.
While I have a great deal of respect for Anthropology, I have none at all for Sociology, Psychology and other soft “sciences.” As far as I’m concerned, they’re all double-talk and voodoo.
Since there is no mathematics involved, anyone can assert anything that he wants to and it is all a matter of opinion.
No one has managed to get social science on a firm mathematical basis—although statistical surveys are put to all sorts of uses and abuses. There was some excitement when René Thom developed Catastrophe Theory. While good, Catastrophe Theory hasn’t turned out to be the answer to all things.
Then, Chaos Theory rather rigorously proved that some things—many things—were essentially too turbulent and chaotic to ever be effectively calculated.
Lester had a good mind and an IQ of 136. He could have been a scientist, but he liked studying people in an anthropological manner more.
There weren’t any real dual majors in Mathematics and Anthropology—at least not at Lester’s university. That is unless you were aiming for secondary-school certification and you wanted to be able to teach both Socialist Studies and Mathematics.
Lester had a Quixotic and insubstantial dream though, that someday he might create some brilliant equations that clarified some heretofore obscure aspects of human affairs…
Plus, math was his hobby and one of his passions.
So, he took every math class that his schedule allowed and studied other math on his own time.
Now, Lester was on Ice, in the city of Tawn. The mathematicians of Ice had followed a number of trails that humans hadn’t pursued very keenly. There were all sorts of new theorems and methods for Lester to learn…
And Lester had never taken Advance. Despite my best efforts at boosting supply, the scarcity of Advance kept the prices high and as a soft science major—without any real contact to buy the drug from anyway—Lester had resigned himself to doing his studying on his own.
I was laid back and in no real hurry to get Lester’s report. Meanwhile, Lester was eating Advance, studying modern and ancient Ice languages and history, boning up on some heretofore unknown—to Lester—mathematics—and walking the corridors doing his “man on the street” interviews with Tawn residents.
Lester would come off his Advance binge with an IQ of about 186. However, when he was in the 5x stage, he would learn new mental skills about as fast as someone with a hypothetical IQ of about 320—if there was such a thing.
Inspiration, insight and creativity were all kicked into high gear and the need for sleep declined to a little less than 5-hours per night while in the 5x phase of Advance.
************* ***************** ***********************
"The changes and devices that you’ve introduced haven’t penetrated very far into Tawn culture,” Lester told me.
“Transportation costs are very cheap here, but they aren’t non-existent. Consequently, the farms that grow your crops and raise your livestock as well as some of your factories, tend to cluster in one area,” Lester said.
“You tend to locate your businesses within easy walking distance of your staging area, so your art shops, pizza parlors, pet shops and whatever else you have undertaken also fit this pattern,” he continued.
“The people have started to call the area around your staging warehouse the “TT Area”—for “Transfer Terminal.”
“People in TT are heavily touched by your innovations and products. There is a long waiting list of people who wish to move into the TT Area and a few disgruntled malcontents who wish to move out,” Lester said.
“The TT Area is roughly spherical and it encompasses about 20 000 people—give or take. If we round the population of Tawn up to 2-million, that means that 1.98-million people are very lightly impacted by what you do,” Lester continued.
The clothing factories could turn out brightly colored textiles. That was only a matter of deciding to do it. Bright LEDs were catching on in a minor way. Still, without many of the new material benefits, there was less call to celebrate.
Music could be recorded and sold. Music was a big hit. Perhaps characteristically, most of the town was heavily into the Blues.
Beyond that, most people ate potatoes, onion, garlic and bread made from triticale—a wheat-rye hybrid—at least once per week. Roasted and salted peanuts or sunflower seeds were a rare treat and most of them had eaten chicken or turkey at least once…
Given the stolid phlegmatic character of the people of Ice, they weren’t even very worked up in anticipation. They weren’t going to take flame and light until the fire actually touched them.
I looked at Lester’s virtual 3-D representation of Tawn.
I decided to add two extra staging areas spaced widely from the original one. I would add 2-dozen bird-raising and processing plants—chicken, turkey, sparrow and pigeon—and I’d establish 3-farms in the general area of the chicken coops to raise birdseed and some other staple foods like potatoes and tomatoes to feed the people in the area.
Keep in mind, most of the places were large-scale co-ops. As soon as they had seed or breeding stock to spare, they’d start near-by operations. There is always the troubling decision though:
“How many young pigs—for instance—do we raise to eat and how many do we hold back to increase our breeding stock? How much triticale do we grind for bread and how much do we save for seed?”
I was going to establish the farms and the chicken coops as one-offs. I was going to try hard to bring as much material into each of my 2 alternate warehouses, as I had been bringing into the first warehouse before I started using the Sapphire World for transport—well, including my first big Sapphire World shipment.
I could make a round trip to Tawn and back to Earth about every 3-days, if I travelled empty-handed. Of course, all the gear in the Sapphire World did not count as mass that I had to move by the power of slip-sliding.
If I slip-slided with a cargo-van worth of gear, then I had to rest for 8 to 10-days, more if I had piled too many slides too closely together.
I could maintain the hectic pace until I had all of the one-offs completed. Then I could bring boxcar lots of gear into my 3 warehouses without too much strain.
Except, the frost giantesses were getting ready to colonize their valley’s and they needed beaucoup material moved—including several sun dogs…
Have you ever seen the “Freak Power” flag? It shows a clenched fist with a thumb on each side of the fist—it is a mutant fist.
Now imagine that same mutant opening his hand wide-open.
That is the way the complex of valleys that the frost giantesses wanted to colonize resembled.
There were 4 rather long and narrow valleys running parallel—“North” and “South.” There was a rather shrunken oval “palm”—and then 2 shorter, but fatter “thumbs” jutting out to each side.
One thumb pointed “East” and one thumb pointed “West.” They were both rather hooked, as opposed to the long straight valleys.
We positioned three sundogs asymmetrically around the central valley. Almost 60% of the land area was in the palm. It would be even more, if the proportions of an open, 2-thumbed hand were maintained.
The two hooked thumbs positioned their sun dog about two-thirds of the way into the valley. There were two aspects of the sun dogs—the heat and the light they generated.
The “sunlight” was rather wan to begin with and if we weren’t exacting, much of a valley would be shaded. Each hooked thumb had a 5-mile sun dog about one-quarter of the way in—plus some of the first few hundred yards of each thumb valley received some light from the central sun dogs.
One of the palm sun dogs was close to the base of the middle two valleys, so they put their sun dog closer to the rear of their finger valley.
The “index-finger” valley had its sun dog toward the rear as well, with a 5-mile sun dog close to its entrance. The “pinky” valley was rather narrow, but long—extra-long. It used 2 full-sized sun dogs and a 5-mile sun dog.
I watched as the 3, 10-mile sun dogs and the sole 5-mile sun dog that would light the central valley were levitated into place, magically tethered and then ignited.
I was nervous for a few moments, but everything went without a hitch.
“What keeps your air from rising, leaving the warm area and falling as snow outside?” I asked Revna.
"There is—or will be—a sort of force-field around the valleys. It will direct all of the air and most of the heat back into the valleys,” Revna said.
“Stillwater, we have 7-valleys here. We’re going to have over 5000-square miles of habitable land—but only a bit less than 3800-square miles will be prime cropland,” Revna said.
“Now consider: the temperature here will be somewhere between 48 and 50-degrees. The sunlight is weak. How do you think that a nation of frost giants could prosper that way?” Revna said.
“EE…You’re not going to become raiders and buccaneers?” I said.
Revna took me into some tunnels that her people had been industriously boring into the mountainside. Nah, I supplied them with backhoes, cranes, bulldozers etcetera—plus they had recourse to magical means.
The ladies weren’t doing the good old pick and shovel schtick—at least not much.
In addition to all sorts of dormitories or barracks—once the colony was up and running, the quarters would become less Spartan—there were endless mazes of tunnels filled with a variety of huge mushrooms.
Revna led me to a mushroom that was 18-inches tall. The shaft was a good 6-inches in diameter. The head of the mushroom was about a foot in diameter and about 8-inches deep.
Revna grabbed it and gave it a hefty yank, tearing it loose from the soil that it was resting on. The roots were shallow, but they added 5 or 6-inches to the length of the shaft.
“We’ll clean this one and have it for supper. It tastes much like beef—and it is very nutritious,” she said.
“What do these mushrooms feed on?” I asked.
Revna shrugged.
“They gather some raw material from the underlying rock. They love organic wastes. Mainly, they absorb chi from the atmosphere. Stillwater, I need something from you…”
EE…Tawn was somewhat short of organic material. It would have value for them, even if I transported horse and cow manure mixed with straw. So far as that goes, even raw sewage would have value to the city of Tawn.
It was just that cattle, pigs, sheep, various seeds and seedlings—had more value in the long term.
I started to explain to Revna, that if the frost giantesses craved manure, that I’d have to triage them against Tawn.
“No! I’d be very grateful for a few hundred or thousands of tons of manure at some point, but that isn’t what I need from you. The mushrooms grow best where it is very warm and on the humid side,” Revna said.
“Eventually, we will have tunneled down to where the heat of the planet’s core makes everything sweltering—but we’re starting in the mountains here. It may take us a few decades—or centuries—to bore so deep. We cannot use the Ice geothermal methods presently, for the same reason,” Revna said.
“Can you persuade a few technicians to come and set us up some thorium reactors? Anyway, we’re going to have more than 30 000 frost giantesses soon. There is going to be a very real dearth of husbands. Maybe a few of the Ice technicians will fall for a few frost giantesses—and spread the word…”
“30 000!?! Plums deify! I can get you thorium reactors. About that other—people on Ice seem to have very little sense of either adventure or romance. They seem to hook up with whoever is convenient—without a great deal of passion or desire…but hope springs eternal,” I said.
“Stillwater, the civilized human world has renounced polygamy. However, in those Chinese light novels that you love to read, the theme of harems comes up repeatedly. Is it a deep-seated desire of human men to have a harem?” Revna asked.
“EE…I cannot comment. I’m atypical. I dislike harem stories. I didn’t want to have even one wife—and then I met Despair and shit happened. I think—I think that harem stories mainly appeal to horny adolescents and people who still have immature, adolescent personalities,” I said.
“We have many giantesses who are willing to share a husband. Can you sell that to get us more men?” Revna said.
Hell’s belles and cockleshells and skeletons all in a row! It scared me and I’m not afraid of anything—having 4 or 5 wives—all inches over 7-foot tall and weighing well over 350-pounds…
“It is MY TURN tonight, dear husband!”
Yippie-Kie-Ayy!
A man would get worn away like a bar of soap by so many huge women constantly rubbing against him.
“Many—most men who would respond to such an offer…” I said.
“What is the technical term? I want to be professional. O yes. They’re WHACKO!” I said.
“Still, will you try to sift out a few sane ones? Also, if you cannot get my women husbands, can you at least line up sperm donors?” Revna said.
“You do mean like AI?” I said.
“What else?” Revna asked in confusion. Despair said a few words in frost giant language. Note to self: Learn frost giant language…
Anyway, Despair must have said whatever the frost giant equivalent to “one-night-stand” was.
That was a sight—seeing a frost giantess over 8-foot tall and weighing enough to make at least two of me…
And she was turning red, covering her mouth and twittering like a middle-school little Japanese schoolgirl embarrassed by her too revealing cosplay costume. “No…Ha-Ha! No…Ha-Ha! No! No!”
O well, O Hell.
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Post by texican on Dec 30, 2020 22:50:42 GMT -6
rvm,
A harem of frost giantesses. The mental images are definitely "Whacko".
Thanks for the chapter.
Happy New year to all. May 2021 be better than 2020.
God bless us, America and President Trump.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 3, 2021 9:39:51 GMT -6
Friends,
Sometimes my imagination or enthusiasm for a story deserts me.
In this case, I have 3 or 4 chapters all mapped out in my head.
It is just that my toothache has gone back with a VENGEANCE—and try to find a dentist ofver the Holidays—or even over a weekend.
The pain never goes, but the severity varies. There are times that I want to roll in the floor and paw at my head like a damned dog!
I have a nice chapter with about 500-words of being complete—and I wouldn't swear to fimnish it before my fated trip to the dentist…
SORRY!
…..RVM45
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