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Post by rvm45 on Oct 13, 2022 8:02:39 GMT -6
Friends,
This chapter is a wee-mite short. If I held it few hours until I thought of something to add, it would be something that will go as good at the beginning of the NEXT Chapter as at the END of THIS Chapter.
Chapter Thirteen
28 681
Quern had prevailed on Cooper, via tweaking of course, to supply an introduction to Skeeter Skelton.
Quern wasn’t sure that Cooper would piss on him, if he was on fire, without the tweak.
He was never sure if it was something Cooper had let slip in his telephone intro; if it was something about Quern himself or perhaps Skelton had a very reserved personality. At any rate, his meeting with Skelton seemed a bit strained until he used his tweak.
Next, he stopped by Arkansas to meet Bill Holmes. Holmes was a self-taught genius who started home gun making, almost single-handedly, with his many books.
Quern used an unusual tweak on Holmes. He downloaded every one of the man’s books, years, in some cases, decades, before the man had a chance to write them.
He included some observations, of things that he—Quern—had found difficult to follow, or that had raised questions in his mind. He had also included varying numbers of his own drawings or airbrush illustrations, where he thought that it would help serve to clarify.
Then Quern had contracted to publish all of Holmes’ books simultaneously and to hire Holmes to contribute to a gun building magazine that Quern wished to start.
Holmes had never been a rich man and according to his books, he was really short of cash in his declining years. The $300 000 that Quern deposited in Holmes’ bank account should make him financially secure.
Quern also downloaded the content and gave Holmes credit for P A Luty’s book on making a Machine Pistol. Luty had devised a way to create a Machine Pistol as a political protest against the draconian; far-reaching and ignorant gun bans that England would enact in a few years.
Luty’s photographer had grassed him out and he had spent several years in an English prison for creating the gun and writing a how-to, so others could follow suit.
So far as Quern could tell, the book had been a burden on Luty’s fate. If Quern published the book a decade early, then Luty wouldn’t have to—and wouldn’t have to go to prison as a result.
An anonymous benefactor would donate to Luty, fifty times what Luty’s book had ever made for him.
He also let Bill Holmes take credit for Gerard Metral’s Machine Pistol book. Metral was from Switzerland. He wasn’t hard up. His MP was unnecessarily complicated—though it did have an ingenious folding stock.
Metral had never followed up with any other designs. Quern wasn’t really sure what intellectual property rights folks had—in a moral sense—to things that they hadn’t yet done—or what their doppelgangers in other timelines had created…
He gave Holmes all the knowledge of a Mechanical Engineer; a Tool-and-Die-Maker; a professional draftsman and a very gifted—virtuoso—welder.
He downloaded Chinn’s classic book on Machinegun Mechanisms; Kalashnikov’s book on firearms design and what few other books there were on the subject—in Spanish; German; Russian; Italian or American—and of course, he included knowledge of those languages.
Of course, he gave Holmes another 79 IQ points.
Then he downloaded a couple of hundred patents that Quern found inspirational.
He also arranged for Holmes to attend Cooper’s pistol classes—later there would be an Advanced Pistol Course and Cooper’s various rifle and shotgun courses as they became available.
Quern also gave Holmes the compulsion to be a very active IPSC shooter. Too many designers were a bit ignorant about actual use of a firearm—especially for social engineering.
He surprised Debra, when he made a specific point of asking to meet Holmes’ son.
When Quern and Debra met Elmer Keith in Salmon Idaho. After the cool reception that Quern had received from Cooper and Skelton, Keith seemed happy to meet a fellow gun enthusiast.
He examined Quern’s Revolvers and Semiautomatic with interest and promised to read Quern’s book. Quern made that irrelevant by downloading his books in their entirety.
Keith had died in 1984 at the age of 84. Once again, that was hard to improve upon—but Quern’s tweaks did improve Keith’s eyesight and hearing and removed the cobwebs due to age, from Keith’s brain. Quern also removed the internal scars and sequela from any number of injuries, acquired over a lifetime of hard living.
Finally, they went by to see Major George Nonte.
“I greatly admired your book ‘Pistolsmithing’,” Quern told the man with the handlebar moustache.
Quern thought that moustaches in general, and especially handlebar moustaches, looked ridiculous—but there was no need to run around gratuitously antagonizing folks.
Well, Quern received a great deal of satisfaction from freaking the squares, but he had never criticized anyone’s moustache—yet. Just wait until someone with a moustache provoked him…
*************** **************** *******************
Finally, they were back to their home in West Lafayette.
“Quern, you always say that you don’t believe in slavery—yet you left Skelton and Nonte with the compulsion to make several of your Revolvers and your Automatic. At least you didn’t make that nice old man from Idaho take up home gun making. Isn’t that a form of involuntary servitude?” Debra asked.
“Skelton died in 1988 at the age of 59 due to unexpected complications after throat surgery. Nonte died in 1978 at the age of 51. I have tweaked them back into perfect—better than perfect—health. Barring accident, there is no reason that they shouldn’t be vigorous old men in their 90’s. I think that the few hundred hours that I took from them, to have them craft Revolvers, is more than repaid with the extra years that I gave them,” Quern said.
“If either of them would think that they were unfairly taken advantage of—were the facts laid before them—then they have my sympathy,” Quern said.
“What about Bill Holmes?” Debra asked.
She was no longer confrontational—though she had been only very slightly confrontational to begin with.
Quern downloaded all of Bill Holmes’ books—including the book “Entrapment: The BATF in Action” into Debra's hard drive. That book would never be written now, because now Holmes would never be in a situation to be entrapped by the BATF.
“Holmes’ son took part in some sort of hold-up and someone was killed. He ended up on Death Row and was executed. I can’t tell if the boy will straighten up now, but he is 79 IQ points smarter. He has lived those scenes from the other timeline in as much fidelity as if he had lived them himself—including those years on Death Row and his final execution,” Quern said.
“I gave him a compulsion to A.} Finish a Tool-and-Die-Maker’s course at the local vocational school and then B.} turn around and complete a two-year welding course—both paid for by me, of course. Further, he will have a compulsion to learn gun making from his father,” Quern said.
“I get the idea that Holmes could be a bit of an asshole to work for, so the boy doesn’t have to work for him indefinitely. I also tweaked Bill, to be a bit nicer to his employees--especially his son,” Quern said.
“I didn’t download the whole thing in full detail, but Holmes has his own account in his book that I downloaded and a few ancillary things—so he should cherish the boy more now,” Quern added.
“Quern, where did you get the complete engram of Holmes’ son’s experiences, right up to the moment he was executed? Are you in contact with the Backers, even now?” Debra asked.
“No. The Backers cannot come here. At most, they inserted my personality and created a few bank accounts; trust finds and legacies for me—like Bertram’s plantation. I did used to hear from Voice occasionally—he was kinda like my liaison with the backers, but he hasn’t spoken to me in years. He’s as cut off from the Backers as I am and as they are completely cut off from this world,” Quern said.
“Precisely how, did the Backers create your trust funds and shit?” Debra asked.
“I haven’t a clue,” Quern said.
“Quern, does your hard drive have infinite capacity?” Debra asked.
“Nah…Well, for all practical purposes. I could have probably had them download the Library of Congress—but I’d play Hell accessing and assimilating even a tiny fraction of that. I included quite a bit, but I tried to be fairly selective,” Quern said.
“You negotiated—or stipulated—what downloads that you wanted to take with you, before you even left your timeline?” Debra aske. “Yeah.”
“So you knew, over 14-years ago, that you would use a horrendously data-intensive download on Bill Holmes’ son? Why?”
“Yeah, I planned all of that from the beginning. I never met Bill Holmes in my last life, but he meant a great deal to me nonetheless,” Quern said.
“After all the beauty and greatness that Bill Holmes gave the world, he died blind; incapacitated by Parkinson; impoverished and mourning the unfortunate fate of his son. Of all the fates that I wanted to change, Bill Holmes’ fate was near the top,” Quern said.
“What about me?” Debra said.
“I never meant to entangle you in my affairs in this lifetime. I meant to give you the tools to become a very successful doctor, with astounding good health and sever out karmic ties. I wanted you to have a good life—a free life,” Quern said.
“Then that sack-of-shit school teacher goaded me into flippantly saying that I meant to confess to you. I’m sorry Debra. You fastened onto me with such determination…”
“At first, I just couldn’t figure how to extricate myself without hurting your feelings. Then all too soon, my old feelings came to the fore,” Quern said.
“Why are you sorry?”
“If people are strong enough, it is far better to be alone. Thing is, most people are weak. They only stay alone when they cannot find a partner,” Quern said.
“One day, if we are born again, we will go to Heaven to be with Jesus. Spurgeon once said, ‘Some people say that when they are in Heaven, they want to travel to see Jupiter up close. I wish them well, but I just want to sit beside Jesus.’ I was kinda surprised that many folks in Spurgeon’s day were pining to go see Jupiter,” Quern said.
“The thing is, as much as I admire Spurgeon’s intellect, he’s making a grave error here. God is not limited by time or space. Do you think that someone 1000-billion light years away, is an atom’s diameter farther from God?” Quern said.
“I know that we see through a glass darkly, but the image that I get of Heaven is rather depressing. I mean sure, I want to go there, since the only alternative is to backstroke across the Lake of Fire for all eternity,” Quern said.
“But once we’re in Heaven, we will never again be able to feel lonely; alienated or depressed. We should cherish and savor every moment of solitude and loneliness here in this life, because we will never get to experience it again, once we’re dead. It is like a special treat that can only be consumed on the premises,” Quern said.
“Maybe in Heaven, we won’t want to feel lonely,” Debra said.
“That is the most depressing thought of all—not only will I lose my loneliness, but I won’t even miss it. Anyway, I took away your opportunity to be lonely, and I apologize,” Quern said.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 14, 2022 14:35:29 GMT -6
Friends.
Sorry, the story just isn't flowing today. One thing, my sister took the day off from work and I have trouble writing when she is home—concentration.
I have used ear plugs to mostly block out her music and computer games, but once she addressed some random comment to me and she got absolutely FURIOUS when I pulled out an ear plug and asked her to repeat.
She seemed to think that it was affront to everything good and right and proper that I DARE to use ear plugs in her presence—WHY—I do not know, since most of the time she is texting or playing games on her phone—or watching old English Dramas on her phone.
Anyway, I don't need the HATRED.
BUT MY LIKE MAIN POINT:
I been like consistently getting about 4-to-6-likes every chapter. This one seems stuck at 2—Thank you two!
But do people find something about this chapter offensive?
Changing the history of actual historical figures? Or perhaps Quern's misanthropic thoughts about Heaven?
WHAT ! ? ? ? !
……RVM45
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Post by sniper69 on Oct 14, 2022 15:23:30 GMT -6
RVM45 - no offensiveness noticed in this chapter by me. I say that, as it is a story - your story! You tell it - and we will read it (I have an appetite for reading, and love seeing new chapters). If something does truly bother/offend me - I would definitely mention it. I hope I can speak for everyone that has read your stories, and say thank you for sharing your talent of story telling.
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Post by kaijafon on Oct 14, 2022 16:02:00 GMT -6
I'm deeply offended that your sister is bothering you!!! You go do you!!! I love your stories!
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 15, 2022 12:00:30 GMT -6
Friends,
How many knew that a "Quern" is a Grindstone before Quern introduced himself to Saint Cooper?
Chapter Fourteen
30 616
1977
Quern and Debra graduated and they took a brief vacation back to Evansville, before the Summer session dissecting a cadaver started in Bloomington.
Debra’s father had died when she was a little girl, but she was close to her mother. Quern was quite distant from his “parents.” Truth be told, Quern thought that his own parents had lived and died in his own timeline. He thought of his “parents” in this timeline as NPC’s or something.
That was odd. He didn’t think of Debra; Jo-Jo; Bertram; Bill Holmes or even Saint Cooper, who seemed to hate him for some reason, as anything but real people.
Perhaps it was because he felt that he had to keep his “Father” and to a lesser extent his “Mother” fiercely suppressed, lest they A.} Try to force him into the same dead-end mold they’d laid for him in his first life or B.} Interfere with the extreme independence that he needed—even at a very early age—to achieve his objectives.
Neither Tosh nor Terry had been interested in college heretofore, but now the two of them both wanted to go to Purdue and study Electrical Engineering. The two of them, along with Jo-Jo, had become quite enamored of radio theory and communications since they had gotten into HAM Radio.
Jo-Jo wanted to go to college too, but he didn’t feel good leaving his aged mother all alone.
Quern remembered that one of his high school teachers, in his first lifetime, had said that he found that he could send both of his daughters to Purdue and have them live in the dorms, for what it would have cost to have one daughter live at home and go to University of Evansville.
ISUE wouldn’t offer Engineering courses for decades.
Whatever. Quern still had more than enough money. He gave Jo-Jo a number of extra downloads and tweaked Jo-Jo into special admittance to University of Evansville, despite the fact that that Jo-Jo had only accumulated 7 high school credits when he dropped out at the age of 16.
Getting Jo-Jo a GED would have been the easy way. Quern didn’t like to do things the easy way. He believed that High School and GED’s were both basically useless—a means that the system used to make people toe the line, like obedient herd animals.
Quern really leaned hard on the idea that someone like Jo-Jo, with a tested IQ of 166; an SAT score of 1600; fluency in over 20 languages and with the most elite HAM Radio Operator’s license; shouldn’t need to show a GED to enter a small-town college—or MIT, for that matter.
Many folks would have ended up losing that argument—but Quern could tweak.
************ **************** ***********************
While Debra was visiting her mother, Quern dropped by to see Ronnie and Anya. They were living on a small farm in Kentucky, since in that time and place, real estate seemed noticeably cheaper in Kentucky than Indiana.
“I don’t know, Quern. I turn out about one new book a year. They sell alright, but not like they did the first three years. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. There are thirty or forty SF-Western titles that come out every year,” Ronnie said.
“I’ve gotten to the place that I feel like I’m repeating myself,” Ronnie said.
Quern thought a moment. He’d been planning to let Bill Holmes take credit for P A Luty and Gerard Metral’s books from the beginning, but since he had already done it, his inhibitions about cross-time plagiarism had shrank to the point of nonexistence.
“Ronnie, you two have lived your whole lives in the Mid-West—right? I am going to send the two of you on a three-year tour of the World. I want you two to meet Louis L’Amour; Skeeter Skelton and Elmer Keith. Take Cooper’s Pistol Course,” Quern said.
As a pseudo-Western writer, touring the West and meeting some real-life cowboys should inspire Ronnie.
During their three-year vacation, Quern wanted Ronnie to hunt bear in Alaska and big game in Africa. He wanted them to visit Iceland; Ireland; Scotland; Paris; Rome; Venice; Athens and Cairo.
He wanted them to see India and Japan. He wanted them to take boats up the Congo and the Amazon. It was a pity that Mongolia wouldn’t become tourist accessible for another generation or so.
Quern wanted to broaden the two’s horizons.
“Take one compact typewriter with you. When you feel like writing again, y’all can share, till you’re home once more,” Quern said.
Then he downloaded Ronnie’s next series: the “Highlander” television series.
Quern outlined some changes: There were way too many episodes to make into books. Ronnie would have to triage.
Also, Quern thought the idea of Immortals that could not regenerate lost body parts was rather disturbing. If Quern was an Immortal who couldn’t regrow lost limbs, he sure as Hell wouldn’t go to war, where a chance explosion might leave him a multiple amputee.
He then turned to Anya.
“Let’s steal a march on Ann Rice,” he said.
Then he downloaded all of the “Buffy” and “Angel” episodes.
Something Quern had wondered about the show: Angel was a vampire and one of the strongest forces for good, because a curse had restored his soul and hence his conscious.
Why, for the love of God, weren’t people working hard to turn out more vampires with souls? Then, Spike decided that he needed a soul too (Partly out of envy of Angel…) and attained one by his own initiative, and he turned into another powerful champion for good.
Then at the end, the protagonists used a powerful magic spell to change the by-laws, so that instead of just one supernatural slayer at a time, now there could be scores of slayers at one time—shouldn’t each and every slayer have her own loyal soul-possessing vampire partner?
Anyway, the story was a romance on one level and Anya should be able to do a creditable job of stealing it.
Years ago, Quern had almost casually raised both Anya and Ronnie’s IQ by 59 points. He couldn’t raise it a second time. What was done was done.
Now he wondered if he’d done his friends a disservice by not working harder to give them 69 points or shitting a watermelon and giving them 79 extra points, back then.
Would 20 more IQ points make either Ronnie or Anya a better writer though?
Come to think of it, why was he limited to giving no more than 79 IQ points? Why couldn’t he add more later, if he regretted the lesser amount?
Quern started to turn his inner-eye upon himself and examine how his abilities worked.
********* *********** *******************
Shortly after the two got onto Quern’s van to drive to Bloomington for their Summer course, Debra had a surprise for Quern:
“Quern, I wanted to check it out with my family doctor. I don’t trust just anyone, but Doctor Jones has been my personal physician since I was born. Anyway, I’m pregnant,” Debra said.
Quern felt like a matter/antimatter bomb had gone off in his cerebral cortex. It wasn’t that he was pleased, or displeased—though truth be told, he was quite happy. However, the immensity and unexpectedness of the event was orders of magnitude greater than any other emotional response.
“Like wow man! Like really man, be for real!” Quern said as he pulled Debra close and hugged her.
Quern’s father; mother and sister had come to see him off—though he wasn’t close to any of them.
When Quern told them what was going on, his father and mother’s reaction surprised him.
“Wait a moment!” Father said.
“We should celebrate!” Father said.
Quern was to recall this scene with great poignancy in the future. Fortunately, Quern wasn’t in too big of a rush and he agreed to stay for a couple extra days while the two families organized a celebration.
1978
Mason Industries lagged a bit behind Apple in introducing the first home computer. The Apple I was introduced in 1976. Only 200 units were sold, but the Apple II was introduced in 1977 and over 4.8 million Apple II’s were sold in Quern’s original timeline.
Bertram bided his time and developed his computer, the Magnolia I. The Magnolia I marketing began during the Christmas season of 1977, but it didn’t really become available until early 1978.
A bare-bones Apple II sold for about $1300 in 1977. The Magnolia I was twenty years more advanced than the Apple II, but it sold for $3600.
Truthfully, by the time that the technology had existed to make something like the Magnolia I, wash machines and microwave ovens were being built with as much processing power as the old Apple II’s.
The thing was, originally processing power started off small and while as the old proverb had it:
“More is always more better,”
An insatiable demand for ever more computing power had to be developed. It was much like starting a bonfire. You started with tinder; judiciously added kindling and only then was your conflagration ready for great logs to be thrown into the inferno.
People had to be educated to want the vastly superior power of the Magnolia—and to pay over twice as much to get it.
First of all, Bertram donated a large number of computers to Auburn University; University of Georgia and Purdue University—along with the technology to create Beowulf Arrays.
The Beowulf Array was a method to tie many smaller PCs together to get a super-computer with vast processing power.
To be fair, everything couldn’t be broken down into modular units and calculated in parallel, but for those problems that could be processed in parallel, the Beowulf was unsurpassed.
Physicists used the Beowulf’s to simulate gas molecule dynamics and to run quantum simulations. Biochemists used the processing power to predict how astonishingly complicated protein structures would actually fold in real life.
Arrays like the Beowulf was why the twenty-year project to unravel the human genome was done in only two-years.
Unravelling the human genome was a bit ambitious—but Bertram donated the computers and the expertise to create Beowulfs—Purdue’s Physics Department had two large Beowulf Arrays; the Chemistry Department had two and the Computer Science Department had three of them.
Ordinarily, there would have been a learning curve and a certain reluctance to try newfangled ideas, but Quern was there to painlessly download the expertise to use and improve the system—and Quern handed out scores of IQ boosts.
The three universities would have a bumper-crop of PhD’s who had taken advantage of the new technology to research their thesis. In many cases, such a thesis would be beyond anyone’s power to explore without the powerful simulations.
Of course, the scientists would all rave about how good the Mason Industries computers were.
A second group of people that Mason Industries targeted was the owners of arcades. They had a time-sharing system where one PC could accommodate a dozen gamers—and Quern had the advantage of some very advanced games to plagiarize forward.
And of course, the Magnolia I was a bang-up business machine—despite how much the nuts-and-bolts business bookkeeping bored Quern to tears.
Plagiarize “Excel” …
The Internet actually started in the early 60’s, but it was a wee-pitiful thing. Different computers had a hard time communicating with each other. Then in 1983 they created “Transfer Control/Internet Protocol” (TCP/IP).
TCP/IP worked kinda like the “Universal Translator” so popular in pulp SF stories—only it worked for Earthly computers.
Bertram and Quern worked behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for the Internet by 1979. It was only four years early, but their version was considerably more advanced than the original 1983 version, and allowed far faster Internet access than the original slow “dial-up” Internet.
Mason Industry computers all used Linux—like many computer geeks said that all computers should use, if there was a chance for a “do-over.”
The computers liaised well with the Unix Internet. Mason Industries version of the Internet included PGP “Pretty Good Privacy” encryption from its inception.
The New Internet would either catch fire and grow exponentially—or it wouldn’t.
Mason Industries arranged for all of the universities in the “Big Ten Conference”:
University of Illinois Indiana University University of Iowa University of Maryland University of Michigan Michigan State University University of Minnesota University of Nebraska-Lincoln Northwestern University Ohio State University Pennsylvania State University Purdue University Rutgers University-New Brunswick University of Wisconsin-Madison
To be include in the first true Internet. Just in Indiana, there was also Notre Dame; Rose-Hulman; University of Indiana; IUPUI; Vincennes University; ISUE and University of Evansville that could all be added profitably.
They included several Universities in Kentucky; Tennessee; Georgia; Mississippi; Alabama; Missouri and Arkansas in their first iteration of the Modern Internet.
Computer technology was okay. What Quern was mainly after, was the leverage that controlling a multi-multi-billion-dollar industry would give him.
In January of 1978, Debra gave birth to twin girls.
1980
Money had started to flow into Mason Industry’s coffers.
Debra was in her third year of her PhD program and Quern decided, on the spur of the moment, to start his own drug company—or Debra’s own drug company.
Eli Lilly drug company was a big presence on Purdue’s campus. There was a large building: “The Eli Lilly Building” that had beaucoup classrooms and labs in it.
Many of the professors drew a stipend from Eli Lilly and in return, Eli Lilly got first crack at any new drugs that “their” professors discovered. (Often Lilly was also funding much of the research.)
Now there was nothing sinister or suspect about that. It was just that if “Eli Lilly” could saddle his company with his first and last name, Quern saw no reason that he couldn’t name Debra’s drug company “Debra O’Connor Industries.”
He figured that they would start out with Viagra—sorry Pfizer; Minoxidil and Taxol. It would take a couple or three years to fast-track the drugs through the FDA testing, but there you had it.
Once those three drugs were well on their way, Quern had at least twenty more new and potentially game-changing drugs that Debra’s drug company could release for testing.
In a couple years, when the AIDS epidemic was in full swing—assuming that there would be an AIDS epidemic in this timeline, Quern meant to introduce Zidovudine or AZT for AIDS therapy a decade ahead of schedule—pity that the drug was invented in the 60’s…
Never mind. Debra O’Connor Industries would steal a march on marketing.
Quern also meant to introduce the use of Ivermectin to treat River Blindness, a decade ahead of schedule. There wasn’t a lot of money to be made—most of the afflicted were very poor and many drug companies donated the drug for humanitarian (or Public Relations) reasons.
Quern just wanted to save some people from going blind—and if that increased the reputation of Debra’s drug company, that was protein for the home team as well.
He felt the need to branch out and establish new sources of income. Debra was pregnant again.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 15, 2022 18:38:15 GMT -6
Thanks for the new chapter.
I don't usually click on the "like" because it is at the top of the post rather than at the bottom. It would be great if it could be done from either end of the post, but it's not my board. I just don't normally go to the time and effort to backtrack to the start of the post. Just call me lazy. I won't disagree.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 17, 2022 12:57:47 GMT -6
Chapter Fifteen
33 146
In Quern’s timeline, the first cell-phones came out in 1983. The first cell-phone arrays were built in Japan and the early cell-phones were as big as ham sandwiches.
Quern wasn’t sure that cell-phones were a good thing. In fact, he was largely persuaded that they were a disaster for mankind. He had refused to carry one during his first life—and had no intention of changing this time around.
“I will NOT go through life being available for people to contact and harass whenever they take a notion!” Quern had proclaimed.
He only rolled his eyes at people who said that you could: A.} screen callers or B.} mute the ring. Both screening calls and muting the phone were options set against a default backdrop of 24/7 availability.
As Castaneda had Don Juan say, “It does no good to hide, if everyone knows that you’re hiding.”
“HMMMmmnnn…? Wonder what’s up with him? He ain’t like picking up his phone.”
But more important than his privacy: Quern just didn’t want to be bothered.
Nonetheless, Quern was reasonably sure that cell-phones were a near inevitability, whether he had a role or not. He might as well do Tosh, Terry and Jo-Jo a solid and have his finger in another huge economic pie.
Also, since cell-phones would soon be hooked up to the Internet, it was one more way to promote the Internet.
Quern had started to lay the keels for a cell-phone provider company in 1979. It came on the market in 1980—with 90% of the stock evenly divided amongst three friends who were still undergraduates in college…
And of course, Quern owned the remaining 10%.
1983
Debra’s second pregnancy also resulted in twins—a boy and a girl. Then she had a third pregnancy and had a boy.
Quern received his “Master of Fine Arts” after four years.
Note: while “MFA” contains the word “Master” it is the equivalent of a PhD, not a Master’s degree.
Debra received her PhD a year later in 1983. Quern could have gotten it for her a year earlier, but there was no hurry.
Mainly, the couple were a little reluctant to leave the house in West Lafayette, that they had spent a large fraction of their lives in.
Debra would start the MD program in Bloomington in the Fall. Quern had already had them a house built, that was a fair copy of their home in West Lafayette.
Quern wasn’t a student at Indiana University and so it wouldn’t be quite as easy to organize a university-affiliated Judo club. Anyway, he hadn’t closed the Purdue Judo Club and starting a similar Indiana University Judo Club could create a conflict of interest.
The West Lafayette club now had over 180 active members. Judo wasn’t an official college sport and the headquarters was off-campus—so the University had little to say, when Quern opted to allow non-students to join—though most of the members were students—and Quern continued to use the title “Purdue Judo Club.”
Between the large contributions—at least partly due to Quern being a stockholder in both Mason Industries and Debra O’Connor Pharmaceuticals—and given Quern’s mind-control abilities, Quern could probably have organized an Art Club to paint nude models, posing on the student commons, and gotten the university’s enthusiastic support.
Quern had paid big bucks to get a couple of high-ranking black belts straight from the Kodokan in Japan to relocate to West Lafayette to teach Judo.
Since it would be a waste of these Sensei’s talent otherwise, there was a Judo school associated with the club.
Quern had no time for competitive sports—outside of IPSC. He worked out with the Judo club more often than not—when the spirit moved him—but his club was a powerhouse in America and even worldwide.
Quern decided to have a club in Bloomington, that featured top-flight instructors of both Capoeira and Taekwondo. He had an abiding curiosity what a seamless merging of combat-orientated Taekwondo and Capoeira would look like.
As was said, every scrimmage or practice that Quern engaged in or even watched attentively, was grist for his internal virtual martial simulation—but Quern meant to devote less time to martial arts for the historical future. He had other thing to occupy his time.
Quern wrote three more books. One had everything that he knew about how to home manufacture ammunition: creating bullet molds; casting bullets; forming cases; making nitrocellulose and extruding it into smokeless gunpowder; how to form cartridge cases; primer cups and primer anvils.
He showed how a tiny spark plug could be screwed into the base of each cartridge case and fired via a battery and jumper coil in the butt of the revolver.
He sent out a call, if anyone knew a good SAFE way to concoct home primers.
Second, he wrote a book about how to create a small; light Bolt Action Rifle in 7mm TCU.
A good solid Bolt Action 7mm TCU, with a 16’’ barrel could be built that would weigh less than 6-pounds—closer to 5-pounds and with a rather short Stock, it could be around 33-inches long.
The caliber and the power were a bit light to fit Cooper’s criteria for Scout Rifle, but Quern thought that a Scout-Scoped 7mm TCU was a bang-up Pseudo-Scout.
The whole idea of the Scout Rifle was that it was short and very light; adequately powerful and quick-handling. As appoint of fact, a Scout Rifle didn’t necessarily have to have a Scout Scope.
It was very hard to get a Rifle as light as Cooper had specified. When it could be done at all, it was an expensive custom proposition. Also, it was almost impossible to make weight without going to the abomination of synthetic Stocks.
Steyr; Savage and Ruger had all turned out their versions of the Scout Rifle. All of the Rifles were too heavy. The Savage and the Ruger were far too heavy to be true Scouts.
As much as Quern admired Cooper, he wasn’t completely sold on the idea of the Scout Rifle. Of all of Cooper’s specifications, Quern was most agnostic about the weight. Another 16-to-25-ounces would ease manufacturing; make the Rifle sturdier; make the Rifle hold steadier on target and have less kick.
Be all that as it lay. The Savage and the Ruger were far too heavy to be true Scouts. Quern had no patience with people who tried the Savage or the Ruger and then found the whole Scout concept wanting.
‘Hey numb-nuts! You cannot properly judge the concept of the Scout Rifle, by evaluating a Pseudo-Scout!’
Anyway, Quern’s 7mm TCU Bolt Actions were less than a yard long. They were powerful enough to be a good deer rifle or a Rifle for social engineering. It was built to mount a Scout Scope and it came with Ghost-Ring Aperture Sights.
Since the 7mm TCU was a .223 case necked up to 7mm (about .2755-inches in Real Units) it would feed through M-16 Magazines.
If someone was in a hurry, he could take an M-16 Magazine and say:
“Yup! Yup! Me has Magazine…Yuk! Yuk!”
However, while there was nothing sinister about high-capacity Magazines, a 20-Round M-16 Magazine was totally unnecessary in a Bolt Action and it hung down too far and made the Rifle unnecessarily bulky.
Quern cut his Magazines down to 12-Rounds—more than enough for government work.
The 7mm TCU was created for Single-Shot Pistols like the Thompson-Center Contender. Several online friends had opined that Short Bolt Actions didn’t allow the heaviest—and hence longest—bullet loads. Presumably, the heavier loads gave some ballistic advantage in long-range shooting and somewhat better penetration on larger game.
Since Quern was creating his Rifle Action from scratch, he made it .15-inches longer than a standard Short-Action.
The last book was the payoff of everything that Quern had been working toward all these years.
Quern had a vision of people—a few chosen people—emulating Thoreau—though with a distinctly more martial cast.
If someone could get ahead far enough to buy a few acres off in the boonies and raise most of his own food—well and good.
If not, then he would have to do something beside training in order to keep body and soul together. However, in his garage; or basement or attic would be a small workshop like Quern had shown how to create.
Our sage would create his or her own Revolver(s) as Quern had outlined—and then train with their Revolver(s) using the Modern Technique as created by Saint Cooper and the meditation techniques perfected by Quern.
Quern believed the path to becoming saint; sage or kensei was long and convoluted. Everyone couldn’t afford a sword and everyone couldn’t apprentice to a master swordsman…
Never mind that many modern systems of swordsmanship had become more game than combat oriented—and they weren’t even aware when and where they had diverged from the true path.
Then Jeff Cooper formulated The Modern Technique—swordsmanship of the 20th Century.
A 1911A1 was cheaper than a good sword—especially in the 70’s and 80’s. While a 1911A1 could be worn out, it wasn’t nearly as fragile as a sword.
Best of all, one could learn almost everything that one need to know about The Modern Technique by reading about it in a book.
Of course, becoming a kensei required more than mastering the basic movements.
The Samurai had an axiom:
“One Arrow; One Life.”
Although Quern did not believe in reincarnation or karma—he took that to mean that shooting one arrow—even on the archery range—in the proper spirit—advanced one’s karma as much as it would be advanced in one virtuous lifetime.
Quern was astonished when a friend revealed that he had always though that it was the archer’s equivalent to the sniper’s motto:
“One shot; one kill.”
Anyway, how did one accumulate merit and become a good person?
The heathen Buddhists; Hindus and Romish Papists used rosaries and repeated the same prayer over and over and over again…
But Jesus had warned against vain repetition in prayer—like the heathen do…
Quern could see some virtue in Sutras—if they were not appeals to deities—just a repetition of certain principles—like “Front Sight; Trigger Press”; “Breath; Relax; Aim; Slowly Squeeze”: “Form is not different from emptiness, and emptiness is not different from form” or “Death before Dishonor.”
Running around wreaking random acts of kindness did not work either.
If you read the Bible, every good deed that a man might do, in his whole life—even if he were a selfless; billionaire philanthropist—wouldn’t amount to a fly-speck’s worth of virtue in God’s eyes.
Neither could one do anything to earn a ticket to paradise. Humans were too flawed. Their best didn’t even rate honorable mention. In fact, in God’s eyes, there was only the most minuscule difference between the best and the worst of humans.
Salvation was 100% by Grace.
Jesus taught that life on this Earth is largely without meaning. You’re here for a short while—and then you will be in either Heaven or Hell for all eternity.
Few succeed in their pursuit of great wealth. Those that do succeed must contend with moths and rust and thieves—and then they die.
Sure, you help the poor when you can—and earn a very minor sort of merit—but Jesus didn’t attach too much significance to it. He said indifferently:
“The poor, you have with you always.”
Quern thought that if a man was not a fool and if he had read Ecclesiastes and the Book of John—that he would realize that if circumstance made him extraordinarily wealthy, that God had simply appointed him steward of some of God’s infinite wealth.
Jesus told one rich young man to sell all and give the proceeds to the poor—but that wasn’t a blanket recommendation.
Big collections of capital had far more leverage to help people than the same amount of capital spread out.
Actually, discounting unethical business practices and pathological greed—a capitalist company that made the most profit was helping the most people.
As a side-issue—Quern firmly believed that the stockholders of large corporations should give generously to the proper charities, in their private capacity—but that businesses themselves should be run with the spirit of the unregenerate Ebenezer Scrooge.
When huge conglomerates gave money to the “Poor,” the implied threat of ceasing to supply largesse gave them far too much political leverage.
So, one was left with the nagging question:
“What can I do to become a better person?”
Quern sincerely believed that diligently practicing The Modern Technique built character. Over a period of years, it could create a kensei.
People complained of the sameness of their days—but to an extent, days, or years spent in a quagmire are like the rotations of a potter’s wheel. The repetitious cycles are a necessary part of forming something extraordinary.
That is not to say that one may not have landed on the wrong potter’s wheel and need to find a means to extricate oneself.
That was why Quern favored the Revolver for Pistol training. Its circular and cyclical mechanism was more in harmony with Quern’s concept of molding oneself into something extraordinary.
Saint Cooper had said that too much repetition is stultifying, but Quern revered the ideal of the swordmaster practicing his draw and cut 10 000 times,
“One Arrow; One Life…...One Practice Draw; One Life!”
Quern’s book fused parts of the Bible; “The Book of Five Rings”; “The Hagakure” and especially, the teachings of Jeff Cooper to creates a system of Modern Day Bushido…
And yes, he carefully edited out the parts of “The Hagakure” that condoned homosexuality. He did not present “The Hagakure” in its entirety anyway.
Quern got out and shot in many IPSC Matches, to show off his home made .45 ACP Revolvers. He met Ross Seyfried; Ray Chapman; Bob Munden; Massad Ayoob; Tom Campbell; Richard Davis and others.
As a gifted artist with an MFA, Quern also finagled some commissions for portraits and sculptures.
IPSC was starting to eat into Quern’s limited time. He raised and financed a team of twelve-shooters who used Revolvers that they had made themselves, along with five more who favored the Quern Model 400 Semiautomatic to promote his books and his philosophy and he started phasing out his active IPSC shooting.
************** **************** ********************
1984
Quern hated to go overseas and leave his growing family, but he couldn’t tweak people long-distance and there were number of things that he wanted—felt that he needed—to accomplish overseas.
“I have to go to Taiwan. Then I’m going to Korea; Ireland and Iceland. This will probably take a couple of years. Will you be alright?” Quern asked Debra.
“I’ll be fine. You told me that y0u would do this years ago. I’m ready. O, by the way, I’m pregnant again,” Debra said.
“Pond and honor!” Quern said.
“Debra, while it has nothing to do with your pregnancy, I do have something for you,” Quern said.
He downloaded the movie “Limitless”; the formula for Adderall and everything that was known about mind enhancement up until the time of Quern’s transmigration in 2045.
“The movie is inspiring, but it is bullshit, in many ways. No matter how much data-processing that you can have, Chaos Theory means that you cannot predict the future with any degree of accuracy—and the stock market is completely random in the short term,” Quern said.
“Anyway. Innovation drives technology. It seems to me, that the more creative the mind, the more likely one is to be mentally lazy—or at least have ADD. God alone knows how many potential Einsteins; Newtons; Teslas and so forth, never achieve anything noteworthy, because they daydreamed through math or physics class and failed out of school,” Quern said.
“But if you could give them another 100 IQ points, even temporarily. Just long enough to earn a degree and learn everything taught in college extremely well…”
“Things would pick up tremendously,” Quern finished.
“You must research this diligently,” He added.
Debra had an IQ of 201 and Quern had helped her download all of her textbooks and many reference books with total recall. Further, her tweaked body could function quite well with just four hours of sleep per night.
She wasn’t challenged by her Medical Studies and Quern had set up a research department for her pharmaceutical company right there in Bloomington.
There were 50 chemists and biochemists; a large well-equipped laboratory and a humongous Beowulf to map complex organic molecules—particularly proteins.
It wasn’t as if Quern had given her an impossible task. It might be an impossible task, but not for want of resources.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 17, 2022 17:17:40 GMT -6
Nice chapter. Thanks!
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 19, 2022 12:11:31 GMT -6
Chapter Sixteen
35 943
1987
Quern returned just as Debra completed her MD degree. There was no further reason for the family to stay in Bloomington, so they moved back to Evansville where Debra could complete her internship.
Quern had arranged to move most of Mason Industries semiconductor manufacturing to Taiwan. In fact, he had done all of his travelling with a fake passport under the cover of working as a representative of Mason Industries.
While he knew that some folks stubbornly insisted “Buy American,” he also knew that one of the biggest reasons that Red China was reluctant to invade Taiwan in the 21st Century, was that Taiwan produced virtually all of the world’s microchips and that the “free” world had a vested interest in protecting Taiwan.
He had also heard a few Libertarian and/or Right-Wing theorists say that Taiwan would be a much harder nut to crack, if only they had a “Right to Keep and Bear Arms” and a tradition of both Riflery and grass-roots opposition to tyranny like the New Knighted States had.
Quern had taken care of that too.
Now that he was a grown man, he could tweak a roomful of people—about 350—at a time. The only thing was he had to give them all the same set of instructions and he was limited to a 49-point IQ increase.
First of all, Quern collared all the leading political figures and gave them the full treatment. They could use all the intelligence that they could get, so 69 or 79 IQ points was the standard.
It took awhile to manufacture or import enough firearms to arm a significant portion of 50-million someodd people—and Quern was afraid that if he tipped his hand too early, that it might goad Red China into action before Taiwan was set.
The Taiwanese legislature would pass sweeping “Right to Keep and Bear Arms” laws along with a very ambitious system of government-financed marksmanship training and the organization of some very well-trained civilian militias—in a couple of years, when adequate numbers of arms had been stockpiled.
Quern had bought a non-exclusive license from Ruger to manufacture Security-Sixes in other calibers besides .38 Special and .357 Magnum. He had paid them three times what their profit from selling the Security-Sixes would be, for the next decade and then he had tweaked to reinforce the bargain.
Of course, the Ruger people had no idea what their profits for the next ten years would be—they just recognized an “almost too good to be true” offer.
He organized and financed “Hinney Firearms”—a Hinney being a mule whose father was a horse. The logo was a Jackass with oversized ears kicking backwards with both feet, while braying loudly.
The “Braying Jackass” as opposed to the “Rampant Colt.”
Quern had read all of the gun writers in his first lifetime. Although he had disagreed with many of Chuck Taylor’s arguments—the man had the temerity to disagree with Saint Cooper about the efficacy of selective-fire; pistol-caliber carbines. In fact, he went so far as to unilaterally redefine the American language.
He declared that it was improper to call such weapons “Machine-Pistols”—even though that had been a less common, but quite acceptable term for them forever—and it was in fact, Saint Cooper’s preferred terminology.
Many gunwriters were unimaginative and imitative hacks. They picked up Taylor’s outrageous high-jacking of weapon terminology and repeated it fatuously and tirelessly.
Be that as it may, while the 10 mm/.40 Caliber was still on the drawing boards, Taylor—and many others—envisioned something legitimately in between the 9 mm and the .45 ACP.
The round should be more powerful than the 9 mm—judged by the “Bore Sectional Area Counts Most” school of Pistol Stopping Power—but LESS powerful than the .45 ACP.
While less power was not good for its own sake—a less powerful cartridge would be easier to control—especially for women and arthritic old people. A smaller and weaker cartridge would allow a smaller and more compact gun—with somewhat smaller grip circumference—a boon to anyone with small hands.
As a small side benefit, magazine capacity might go up a cartridge or two.
Instead, the 10 mm was an overpowered cartridge—more powerful and harder-kicking than the .45 ACP. In some of the hotter loadings, the 10 mm rivaled the .41 Magnum.
The OP cartridge was very hard on machinery. It wore out 1911A1 style frames and only the abominable Glocks seemed able to tolerate it and have a long service life.
Ah, but there was a second chance! The FBI commissioned Smith & Wesson to create the .40 Short & Weak—but despite its cognomen, the .40 S&W was still too powerful and hard-kicking to be the true intermediate cartridge like Taylor—and others—were wanting.
Quern imagined the .40 ACP as having a 180-Grain bullet (That would give it the same Sectional Density as a 230-Grain ,45 ACP…) loaded to 850 FPS from a 4-inch barrel.
It could be loaded into a case the length of a .45 GAP case—thus allowing a slightly shorter overall length than a .45 ACP cartridge—making grips a bit smaller in circumference.
Quern also envisioned a +P load that featured the same bullet loaded to 1030 FPS—hard on equipment; harder kicking—for occasional use only—by qualified shooters who could handle the recoil.
The 1030 FPS load was still milder than most .40 Short & Weak loads.
Quern had often admired the overall size and handling of the Star BM. Hinney Firearms produced pistols that were a good approximation of the external shape of the Star BM—but were pure Browning inside.
Of course, Quern’s pistols had no Grip Safety and used the P-35’s Barrel Cam instead of the 1911A1’s Barrel Link.
Hinney Firearms produced large numbers of 9 mm and .45 ACP Semiautomatics—though the .45 had a slightly larger frame—about the same size as a Star PD.
The company also produced a downsized version in .32 ACP.
However, the vast majority of the Pistols were in Quern’s new .40 ACP.
Hinney Firearms also made Security-Six Revolvers in .40 ACP. There was also the .40 Mangrum Cartridge—a lengthened case load that could fire a 195-Grain Bullet at 1360 FPS from a 5-inch barrel. Both the .40 Mangrum and the .40 ACP were rimless. They used full-moon loading clips and the .40 Mangrum Revolvers could take .40 ACP; .40 Short & Weak and 10 mm cartridges as sub-caliber loads.
Hinney Firearms had Security-Sixes in .32 ACP; .44 Magnum; .45 ACP; and .38-40 as well as the .40’s.
The Revolvers all had the Ventilated Barrel and steel Underlug—except for the 2-inch pocket models—like the popular “Couger” conversions, wherein a Colt Python Barrel was mated to a Ruger Security-Six.
All of the Hinney Firearms guns also had polygonal rifling in the Barrels.
At the moment, the company produced just four other products—Quern’s 7 mm TCU Bolt Action Pseudo-Scouts; a shorter Barrel version of the Beretta 38A—in .40 ACP; a downsized MAC 11 in .32 ACP—nickel-plated and complete with suppressor—and a Single-Shot 12-Gauge “Derringer” with a 4.25-inch barrel—based on an old John Ramos article.
The 12-Gauge was almost spectacularly useless, but it was neat—and phun—provided one had the best hearing protection.
Quern organized a small core of cadre for the new civilian militias—if you called 30 000 a “small cadre.”
The militias were almost exclusively women. Quern figured, that if some sweet young thing’s boyfriend decided to go hog wild about shooting sports and militia training, she would stifle a yawn and go back to painting her nails.
If a sweet young thing decided to trim her painted talons and become a diligent marksman, more likely than not, her boyfriend would also be drawn to shooting. Unattached sweet young things might draw several young men to try militia training.
Hey, if Red China ever did a “boots-on-the-ground” invasion of Taiwan, people who had done a few weeks of militia training before dropping out and caching their weapons and ammunition under the bed, would still be protein for the home team.
Each militia member would be armed with a Bolt Action 7mm TCU Pseudo-Scout with two Scout Scopes—one as a spare—but the Rifles had more than adequate Iron Sights—and the Scopes weren’t that fragile.
The Rifles had 12-Round; Detachable Box Magazines. There was a Thread Protector for when no Flash Suppressor was used. Sometimes, maximum compactness was important.
There was also a 1-inch Vortex Suppressor; a 2.5-inch Vortex Flash Suppressor and an 8-inch Suppressor. The 8-inch didn’t give the maximum suppression possible, but it did cut down Muzzle-Blast and lower one’s signature noticeably.
Each militia member was also given a Security-Six in .40 ACP.
The new laws would not regulate selective-fire or suppressors. Any militia member who felt the need, could add a longer and more powerful Suppressor; a Hinney Firearms 38A in .40 ACP; a .32 ACP MAC 13; a 12-Gauge Derringer or whatever extra firearms that he felt were helpful to his cause.
Except, firearms would remain rather expensive for a few years, until supply caught up with demand.
All of the women in the Taiwanese Militias got a 49 point increase in IQ; a download of A.} Rifle Handling; B.} Cooper’s Modern Technique and the best tactics for guerilla warfare and urban sniping as codified by the US Army—especially the Green Berets and C.} Complete recall of Quern’s books.
They had a firm tactical grasp of the War of Northern Aggression in the New Knighted States; Castro’s takeover of Cuba—including Che Guevara’s maxims and a knowledge of the tactics used in the Vietnam conflict.
What hey? Quern did not like Che, but that didn’t mean that some of his observations on guerilla warfare were not useful.
Quern had his books translated into Cantonese and Mandarin. He set up a couple thousand home firearms manufacturers—and made them good teachers and happy to share their craft.
And when Taiwan announced their new policies in January of 1988, they would also announce the repudiation of the Metric System and a return to the Imperial System.
Quern figured that he was doing Taiwan a giant solid, it was only fair that they help him advance one of his pet projects in life.
Then Quern did more or less the same thing in Korea; Ireland and Iceland—although neither Ireland nor Iceland was in imminent danger from Red China.
************ *************** *********************
His seeds sown, Quern took advantage of the lull before the storm, to spend some time with his family and get better acquainted with his children, before the shit hit the fan.
Quern’s children all had the Golden Eyes. That was to be expected. Both he and Debra had the retrovirus and the trait was super-dominant.
That meant that if the Golden-Eye was paired with a Non-Golden Eye in a heterozygous chromosome, that it would actually convert the other half, so that all of the gametes would carry the retrovirus.
People with the Golden Eyes had considerably better eyesight; hearing and senses of smell and taste than normal people—they were much healthier and they had a much more powerful memory…
They weren’t necessarily more intelligent—except to the degree that having an exceptional memory increased intelligence.
They also had a built-in—well, it was almost a compulsion—to smoke menthol cigarettes.
Smoking was not only harmless to the Golden-Eyed, it was even mildly beneficial—and they were immune to any and all detrimental effects.
However, Quern who had started smoking in this body at the age of 8-years old and had encouraged 7-year old Debra to smoke was reluctant to see his own children smoke too early—as illogical as that sounded, given their immunity to any bad effects.
Quern was surprised at how much pleasure his mother and father seemed to take, in playing with their grandchildren.
In Quern’s last lifetime, his father had been very much against interracial dating and marriage and he’d often take Quern to task over his preference for black women.
His mother had seemed agnostic on the issue—though she was firmly committed to support his father at all times, even when he was demonstrably wrong…
Not that his father’s views on miscegenation were wrong—that was a matter of preference and personal opinion. But there were times when it was a question of fact—and she knew that Father was wrong—and she still took his side.
However, his father seemed to have completely lost his distaste for intermarriage and he seemed to dote on his grandchildren.
Quern wondered about the Butterfly Effect. Had raising a prodigy Quern, with an iron will about things like giving massages and wearing sissy-shorty-pant have totally rewired his father’s programming?
He couldn’t think so. His father was in his late 30’s when Quern transmigrated. His core personality should be well-formed by then.
Paradox.
At any rate, all of the children’s IQ’s were indeterminate at the moment, but they all had IQ’s well above 200.
************* **************** **********************
“Quern, my Evansville laboratory has some of the most advanced MRI and CAT scanners available. I’d like to scan your brain, if you don’t mind,” Debra said to Quern as he rolled on the floor with his children.
“Cool,” Quern replied.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 19, 2022 21:47:30 GMT -6
Thanks!
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 20, 2022 13:10:17 GMT -6
Chapter Seventeen
38 179
1988
In January of 1988, to start the new year off with a bang, Ireland; Iceland; Korea and Taiwan announced that they had formed a mutual assistance league.
Ireland and Iceland scrapped their fusty Parliamentary System and went to the Presidential System like America used. The Presidential System was flawed, but the Parliamentary System was completely broken.
Mathematicians had demonstrated logically and mathematically, beyond any shadow of doubt, that there is no “fair” distribution system. Any system of distribution is subject to abuse (Abuse while still abiding by the rules of the system—outright cheating is something else again). Also, in any complicated allocation system, even with the best of intentions, someone will come up on the short end of the stick.
However, that is not to say that some distribution systems do not come much closer to being fair than others.
Politics is an attempt at a fair distribution of power—or sometimes, an attempt to prevent the fair distribution of power…
Quern wasn’t sure if the Presidential System was an inherently fairer way to distribute power among the people. It was certainly a fairer way to distribute power amongst elected officials.
His objections to the Parliamentary System was the inefficiency due to having Parliament elect a Prime Minister and then having to endure endless “votes of confidence.” Also, Parliamentary governments seemed more inclined to having a plethora of scrambling and feuding political parties, rather than a manageable two or three.
Taiwan and Korea both had a “Semi-Presidential System”; but in the wake of the four states far-reaching reforms, both countries went to a purer form of the Presidential System.
The four nations adopted new constitutions and each constitution had a “Bill of Rights” similar to the New Knighted States—though each state heavily stressed the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the wording made it quite plain that they were referring to an individual right.
Quern did not believe that any government, had any moral right to restrict firearms or other weapons in any way whatsoever. He didn’t even believe in laws making it a crime to use a firearm for illegal purposes.
Sure, it was a good thing to make murder against the law—but why should it carry an extra penalty for shooting an old woman to rob her, as opposed to knocking her brains out with a crowbar?
However, Quern was concerned that taking a populace that had heretofore been completely forbidden to own firearms, and releasing all prohibitions all at once, might A.} Lead to a certain amount of carelessness and trigger-happiness and B.} Criminals might jump on the band wagon quicker and use their new and better-armed status to bully the rank and file.
Either or both situations might tend to dissuade people from the new pro-gun position.
Quern’s solution was to gradually accelerate to full-speed. For the first few years, one had to pass a Rifle shooting class similar to the “Appleseed” program and become a fairly good Rifle shoot to take possession of the Rifle that he had purchased.
One had to take a ten-day course similar to Cooper’s five-day course, in order to take one’s Pistol home and there was a similar test for Shotguns.
One could take the courses broken up, one day at a time, spread over weeks or even a couple months. The written tests were fairly comprehensive and passing the hands-on portion required a fair amount of practice.
One wouldn’t pass with a “Hoe-Hahm; Hit-or-Miss” attitude though. It required a modest amount of perseverance.
People with criminal records weren’t barred from owning weapons. Taking away a man’s guns to punish him for past actions was no different than cutting off his right hand or gouging out his eyes. It was a barbaric action that shut off all possibility of fulfillment in his future life.
If you hated him that badly, or thought that he had done something that heinous, why not simply and mercifully kill him? Torturing people with a half-life, worse than death, was an action unworthy of superior beings.
With one big difference: it is easier to restore one’s firearm ownership than it is to restore one’s hand or eyes.
However, few low-life thugs would have the perseverance to master the bulked-up version of the Gunsite class. Higher echelon criminals generally use more subtlety than back-alley stick-up artists.
In a half-decade, when any aspiring mugger or rapist could buy a .32 Automatic, he would be counterbalanced by large numbers of armed and skilled citizenry.
Meanwhile, the schools started teaching safe gun handling and basic marksmanship with Air Rifles and Pistols. Quern didn’t believe in government financed public education (Quern always pronounced it “Ed-You-Muck-Ayy-Shun”) but so long as there were public schools, they might as well be put to some useful purpose.
Meanwhile, an endless stream of Public Service Announcements promogulated the Four Rules of Safe Gun Handling and preached that going armed, while a civic duty, should be thought of as a wonderful blessing instead of an unpleasant necessity.
Within the next five years, the training requirements would be phased out.
The Backers had access to computing power—whether some sort of superior uber-computers or in their own minds—that thoroughly dwarfed the best computing power on Earth.
They could complete more computations in a second than all the computing power on Earth, as of 2044, could do in a millennium.
Quern had tasked the Backers to run countless simulations and give the best Senate and Congressional Districts for the newly reorganized governments.
He also had the Backers write a series of propaganda books; magazine articles; television and radio announcements and even school textbooks, to get Quern’s new agenda adopted and implemented enthusiastically.
“Propaganda” it being understood, is any attempt at persuasion. Propaganda is not necessarily false or pernicious. It is “Propaganda” by virtue of having an agenda and using persuasion.
Iceland was tiny. The total population was less than 400 000. However, both Ireland and Korea solemnly pledged to come to Taiwan’s aid, if Taiwan were ever invaded.
Ireland even contracted to station three small military bases on Taiwanese soil—a little over 5000 soldiers at each base—as a symbolic way to underline their commitment to Taiwan’s continued independence.
Of course, Iceland; Korea and Ireland all issued policy statements recognizing Taiwan’s status as an independent nation. Surprisingly—though it did not surprise Quern, who had made a brief stopover there—Belize also recognized Taiwan’s status.
Red China wasn’t happy, but Taiwan unveiled a 50 000-man militia and some of the most persuasive advertising ever seen on planet Earth—short of sub-liminal images and backward masking—to swell the ranks of Taiwan; Korea and Ireland’s militias as fast as new members could be assimilated and trained, on rifle ranges the various governments had thoughtfully built over the last couple of years.
The belligerent Irish blustered that if Red China should dare invade Taiwan, that Ireland would attack the Mainland with every nuclear weapon in their arsenal.
“Nuke their ass and take their gas,” became a popular slogan throughout Ireland.
Never mind that Ireland had no nuclear weapons—yet—and the slogan could only be appropriately applied to America’s problem’s with Iran and OPEC.
Of course, all four nations viciously repudiated the Metric System as something inherently both effeminate and French—and adopted Imperial instead.
************ ***************** ******************
Heretofore, the Golden Eye had only been known in Indiana and Kentucky—with a few outliers.
Now it came to the world’s attention that it had also struck Nigeria—almost all of the stricken were Yoruba and over 98% of the stricken were girls.
The red-haired and golden-eyed girls were looked askance among some of the more superstitious tribesmen.
The practice of shaving off the iconic red hair grew up, to make the Golden-Eyed girls less conspicuous and dark glasses and contact lenses became common.
As often is the case with fashion, many girls who weren’t infected started shaving their head and wearing mirrorshades—just to be cool.
************ *************** ******************
Quern was back home and relieved of the necessity of doing 300-400 tweaks per day. His ability had grown and he was clear that he wouldn’t damage himself; his brain or his ability by overusing it, but the short-term effects—like booming headaches and overall body weakness, could be severe.
Nonetheless, the constant use had made his power grow beyond all precedent.
He rested. He played with his children and spent time with Debra. He met up with all of his former associates. And he basked in the chaos his Four-Nation League had created.
************ ************ ***************************
“Come to the lab, I need to talk to you,” Debra told him.
“I wanted to scan your brain, because I suspected some anomalies, but this is beyond anything that I ever imagined,” Debra said.
“You have a foreign object—an implant, as it were, in your brain,” Debra said.
She activated a large high-resolution computer screen to show Quern.
There was an object a bit smaller than a golf ball located more or less in the center of Quern’s brain.
The object was more or less in the shape of a great stellated dodecahedron—except that the spikes were elongated and the farther they got from the center, the more they curved one way or another. Each spike was furry with innumerable smaller spikes that branched like a tree and connected with countless neurons.
“I don’t think that your implant is metallic—or if it is, it is extraordinarily well-shielded. If it wasn’t so, I might have fried your brain and the horse that it rode in on, with the high-resolution MRI,” Debra said with a shudder.
“Please Debra, my brain didn’t ride in on a horse. It rode in on a Hinney,” Quern joked.
“Anyway, the implant is well shielded. I haven’t a clue what is inside. It doesn’t replace any brain tissue—instead, your brain tissue is displaced outward—in good order, with no warping; compression or distortion,” Debra said.
“Your head doesn’t have to be that much larger to accommodate a golf ball’s volume of cerebral space. The circumference and diameter of your skull is just slightly larger than average. You can’t tell unless you go looking for it. Even then, it is well within the norm,” she said.
“The implant is well integrated with every area of your brain. That is about all that I can tell you,” Debra said.
“Perhaps I’m a cyborg. Do you still love me, even if I’m a cyborg?” Quern joked.
“I love you whether you are a human; a cyborg; an android; a reptilian overlord or some sort of space alien, but this is very troublesome,” Debra said vehemently
“If The Powers That Be—whatever Powers That may Be—knew about you, they would lock you away to study you. They might eventually decide to dissect or vivisect you to try to pry into your secrets,” Debra said.
“I require a powerful amount of capturating,” Quern said.
“Don’t openly challenge the World Order,” Debra begged.
“I won’t. I haven’t, have I?” Quern said.
“I am going to destroy all the records. I’m going to randomize the hard drives and then destroy them physically. Then I am going to minutely destroy my MRI and my CAT scan machine—just in case,” Debra said.
“I will move my research laboratory and my staff can put the destruction of everything down to paranoia about industrial espionage,” Debra said.
Quern was reminded of the axiom:
“Just because you're paranoid, doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you.”
In retrospect, a better Axiom might have been:
“I know that I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?”
“Come over here,” Debra said, after she had shown Quern his head scans.
“Do you see this?” Debra asked.
She was holding an economy-sized injection bottle filled with a milky-white substance.
“This seems to double the IQ—I mean, literally double it. We’ve tried it on mice; rats; pigs and monkeys. We’re ready to start human trials. I just need you to tweak all of my test subjects to prevent any leaks,” Debra said.
“Sadly, since we haven’t a clue how your implant works, we will never dare try the drug on you—even if it is proven 100% safe for everyone else. I wanted to see a 400 IQ x 2,” Debra said.
“This drug will radically change human history,” Debra said with a far-away look in her eyes.
“Don’t get your hopes too high, Debra. IQ primarily determines how quickly and easily one can learn new mental skills. At some point in their lives, most adults are pretty much through with learning. They may learn here and there—but not much. You can inveigh against this, but it is still the norm,” Quern said.
“Also, think of Edison inventing the light bulb. Yeah, I know that Edison mostly stole credit for the inventions of young lab technicians that he had working for him—but let’s run with the common image,” Quern said.
“Edison didn’t invent the light bulb by dint of great insight or intelligence. He invented it by dogged persistence, trying every material that he could think of. Doubling Edison’s IQ might not have speeded up the invention of the light bulb much,” Quern said.
When Quern saw Debra’s downcast face, he quickly added:
“If there are more really smart people, there will be more qualified research technicians and garage and basement inventors. That should speed up progress,” Quern said.
“Also, there is an old apocalyptic tale about the Mathematics professor, who lectures frantically for an hour, covering all four black-boarded walls of the classroom with tiny condensed equations—and then as the bell rings, he says:
‘“This—thank God—has no practical application!’
“While I admire his devotion to Pure Mathematics—Pure Mathematics has largely ceased to exist. As soon as a Mathematician invents the most convoluted; abstract and obscure new branch of Mathematics possible…”
“Within two or three years—at most nowadays—some Physicist or Engineer will shout: ‘Yess! This is exactly the Mathematical tool that I’ve been lacking to complete my work!”
“Mathematics drives almost everything else—and Mathematics and Physics are both heavily reliant on pure deduction—intelligence, in other words,” Quern said.
************* **************** *********************
A few nights later, there was a knock at Quern’s door.
While Quern often said that while many things might surprise him, that few things would shock him.
Therefore, Quern was surprised, but not shocked, to see G Gordon Liddy at his door.
Back in June of 1972, Quern had taken a week off and had Jo-Jo drive him to Washington DC. G Gordon Liddy wasn’t famous then and Quern had his address.
“This is what will happen if you break into Democratic Headquarters on 17 June,” Quern had told the tweaked G Gordon Liddy.
He had used a similar process to the one that he had used on Bill Holmes’ son. Liddy relived his alternate life in full detail, just as if he had lived it for real.
Quern had gifted Liddy 79 IQ points and 25 languages. The man had been an atheist—well, he had a right to be an atheist if he chose to…
But Quern had downloaded the entirety of the KJV Bible; all of Spurgeon and Billy Graham’s sermons and David Wilkerson’s “The Vision” and “Racing Toward Judgement.”
See if the man could stay an atheist with all that data fermenting inside...
He had also installed unreal computer skills—though Liddy would have to wait a few years to use them—and all of Jeff Cooper’s teachings.
Why had he done that?
Well, although Liddy was a bit of an elitist and a bit of a Fascist—just a bit—Quern had a qualified admiration for Liddy. If nothing else, he was no snitch.
Quern did not think that Nixon was guilty and he thought that the whole investigation introduced turbulence into the American political system that it never recovered from.
H S Thompson, who hated Nixon with a passion, once said that it was a form of genius, to be as universally hated as Nixon was and still be elected president.
Anyway, Watergate never happened in Quern’s timeline. Nixon completed his presidency. Jimmy Carter was still elected in 1976 and he was still defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Quern had contrived to meet Reagan before he became the president. He made him healthier—he would never contract Alzheimers or become senile in this timeline.
He was 79 IQ points smarter and fluent in Spanish; German; Russian; Gaeilge and Japanese—adding too many languages might arouse suspicion.
Quern thought that Reagan might be the best president in American history—but he still disagreed vehemently with the destruction of the Air-Traffic-Controller’s Union—that caused the influence of Unions to go into precipitous decline—and Quern fervently believed in strong Unions.
He also didn’t like the fact that Reagan signed the McClure-Volkmer act in 1986, despite the poisoned-pill inclusion of the Hughes Amendment.
He was disgusted how the NRA went about braying like a jackass, about their great “victory,” when they had lost something at least 25-times as precious as what they had gained.
Well anyway, Quern had insured that the Hughes Amendment would never be introduced and whenever Reagan confronted a Union, the mantra:
“The Union is always right,” would run tirelessly through his consciousness.
While Liddy could never speak to anyone about the strange young man with Golden Eyes and very long red hair who had changed his fate one Summer’s night…
Quern had not given Liddy his name—much less his address. There had been no reason to. There was no possible advantage to giving Liddy this information.
Yet here was G Gordon Liddy knocking on Quern’s door.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 20, 2022 17:43:00 GMT -6
Nice twist with Liddy.
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Post by rvm45 on Mar 3, 2023 14:32:15 GMT -6
Friends,
Sorry that it took awhile to write this chapter. More in my mental pipeline…
IF'n Y'all are still grooving on this story…
Chapter Eighteen
41 159
“How have you been, Liddy?” Quern asked amiably.
“Not so good. Having the memories of two completely different timelines inside of me, has given me a touch of multiple-personality disorder. Liddy I from my first life argues incessantly with Liddy II inside of me. There is also a deep bass voice inside my head, who calls himself “Spurgeon” and he is always preaching to me,” Liddy said.
“Meanwhile, I have to constantly guard against dropping Bible verses into my conversations,” Liddy complained.
“I see. Did Liddy I and Spurgeon appear before or after you dropped acid with your pal, Timothy Leary?” Quern asked.
“How did you get Leary a presidential pardon?” Liddy demanded.
“Ach Ja! It is hard, in the extreme, for a young man, like myself, to get access to the president—especially a private and confidential audience—most especially while keeping a low-profile and being discreet. However, back in 1972, Jimmy Carter was a relative nobody and my cousin is from old money—old Southern money. Post-Hypnotic command,” Quern shrugged.
“What in Hell are you two talking about?” Debra demanded.
“Debra is my wife. Debra, this is G Gordon Liddy,” Quern said.
Simultaneously, he downloaded a bunch of dry facts about the Watergate break-in; G Gordon Liddy’s book and the movie that was loosely based upon Liddy’s book.
“Like wow!” Debra said.
“Quern, did you live my life as I lived it?” Liddy asked.
“No, too much data overload. I mainly know you from your book and facts I dug up online,” Quern said.
“There are many things that I didn’t include in my book—including work that I did for the FBI; the CIA; the DEA and the NSA—mostly before—but some jobs after my conviction,” Liddy said.
“I now know a whole lot more about how the system works from the inside. I was supposed to be caught. Nixon was supposed to be forced to resign in disgrace. It was all carefully choreographed—and you messed it up,” Liddy continued.
“You increased my intelligence by 79-points and you gave me all sorts of downloads of mathematics; political science; economics and history—in addition to a plethora of new languages—and you infected everyone in my family with that accursed golden-eye virus—including me!”
“I thought of it as a gift. It sharpens all of your senses to varying degrees. It increases the power of your memory. It soups up your immune system—and it increases your longevity about 77.77%,” Quern said.
“Blessing or not though, it paints a bullseye on my forehead. It painted a bullseye on everyone in my family. My wife; children and I are forced to dye our hair and wear contact lenses to pass unnoticed,” Liddy said.
“Quern, you think that you’re clever. You have your finger in three billion-dollar businesses. You are a best-selling author. You have an MFA. Your wife and all your close confederates all have golden-eye. You are far too conspicuous!” Liddy said.
“Then you went on a world tour, brainwashing the heads of five foreign nations—in a way that TPTB definitely do not want. Do you think that you can set up subsidiaries of Hinney Firearms and have legislatures adopt whole paragraphs of your writings into their constitutions without drawing an arrow to yourself? Why did you even bother with a fake passport? You only gave them one more pretext to arrest you,” Liddy said.
“When you called on me, I called off the raid. I alerted the DNC anonymously, to prevent any similar occurrence via other operators. I resigned from government service—ostensibly due to health reasons. As soon as I had adjusted to having the golden eyes and the increased visual input, I and my family disappeared,” Liddy said.
“Liddy I might not have flashed on a shit-storm ahead—but you made me smarter and gave me far more data to work with. Liddy II can read the signs of the times,” Liddy said.
“You need to do the same. You may have a few days to gather your family. TPTB may be on their way to arrest you, as we speak. I owed you, but now I’m outa here,” Liddy said.
“One moment, Liddy! You died in 2010 in my timeline. I transmigrated in 2045. Maybe you can extrapolate better if you see more how things played out in that timeline. I can also give you another 30-languages and a few more skills—though I have already given you the best languages and skills for a spook,” I said.
“There is one other thing that I can offer you,” I said, even as I downloaded.
“Debra has a drug that will permanently double your IQ. It is still experimental, but she was ready to start human trials and you should know that her pharmaceutical company doesn’t do things precipitously. I’ll have her give you a shot if you wish. It is up to you,” I said.
While Liddy stood considering briefly, Debra rolled her own sleeve up and injected a double dose into her grandfather vein.
“What are you doing!?!” I demanded.
“Doubling the dose won’t increase the effect, but it will speed up the conversion,” Debra shrugged.
“I don’t mean, ‘why are you taking a double-dose!?!’ I mean, ‘Why are you taking the risk at all!?!’,” I shouted.
“The children and I need you!” I added.
“How many people are our responsibility? Our children; my mother; your family; Tosh; Terry; Jo-Jo; Elmira; Anya; Ronnie; Beauregard; Bertram—can we evacuate; hide and protect all of them?” Debra asked.
“Not easily,” I conceded.
“We need all the brainpower that we can get on our side,” Debra argued.
“I hate to interrupt a family argument, but shoot me up! I need to get out of here ASAP!” Liddy said.
As Liddy flexed his arm a few times from the large injection and then rolled his sleeve down, he said to Quern:
“This drug is a radical game-changer. If you could take it public, well and good. If TPTB got ahold of it and monopolized it for their secret cabal, it would be disastrous. Don’t let this fall into the wrong hands!” Liddy warned as he walked out the door.
Meanwhile, Debra was calling everyone in their extended group—she wanted to inject everyone who was willing and then she wanted all of her charges in one place for when they made their move.
Everyone had arrived and everyone had opted to be injected—except for Bertram and Beauregard who had to come all the way from Georgia.
************ *************** *********************
Bertram and Beauregard finally arrived. Once Debra explained the situation to them, both of the men rolled up their sleeves to get the injections.
Once she injected both of them, Debra dropped both of the syringes into a pot of boiling molten lead that she had on hand for that purpose. The pot only had a very narrow opening—just long enough to admit a 3cc syringe—and it had a neck over a foot long. That kept the backsplash to a bare minimum.
“That is the last of the IQ doubler drug. I have already triple randomized all of my computer records. I treated my notebooks with both nitric and sulfuric acid before I incinerated them,” Debra said with relief.
“I wish that you hadn’t done that!” Beauregard shrieked as if in grief.
Then he shot his father in the forehead.
“What are you doing, numb-nuts!?!” Quern raged.
“TPTB contacted me. They have your home and your lab bugged. They offered me a chance to join them and they strongly desire your IQ drug. They knew that you would inject us. They told me to get a sample, or failing that, to kill Bertram—hopefully, before he could fully metabolize the drug,” Beauregard said.
“You would kill your own father, to join a secret society of collectivist sociopaths—why?” Quern demanded.
“Power. You are a fool, Quern. You only think in terms of your ideals and freedom and individualism. The only thing that is real, is power—power over other people!” Beauregard proclaimed.
“You told me once, about a television show that you once saw about a high-level Russian mob boss. All the man did, you said, was sit at a table in his restaurant, wearing dress-slacks and handing out orders. He might be rich, you said—but he worked 14-hours per day, seven days per week, sitting indoors at a restaurant table—what possible satisfaction could there be in that!?!” Beauregard said.
“You fool! He was exercising power!” he continued.
“You and your dumbass ideas about moral sovereignty. You forbid me to give away your secret—but you never forbade me to plot against you. When they came to me, and told me that they already knew about you—I was free to design countermeasures against you—as long as I didn’t violate your gag order,” Beauregard gloated.
“Beau, I want you to do something for me,” I said.
“I want you to suffer every bit of pain; agony and remorse that it is possible for a human being to feel and stay conscious. It kinda defeats the purpose if you pass out,” I said.
“Fraid not, cousin. I thought a lot about how your mind powers might work. I have designed a powerful electromagnetic device to block your mind powers. It is so powerful, that radio and television reception all-around, will be bolloxed over a thirteen-to-fifteen-mile-radius. I couldn’t have set up such a powerful array on my own, without government backing,” Beauregard boasted.
I gritted my teeth in rage as a tweak failed for the first time since I had transmigrated.
“Where are they!?! They should be here by now! Bertram is going to get cold!” Beauregard raged.
“Yeah, numb-nuts. My home is two courses of Flemish brickwork thick, judiciously reinforced with rebar and poured slabs of concrete here and there. It will be awhile until the bad guys can break in,” I told Beauregard.
“Capture seems inevitable; unless you choose to suicide,” Debra said to me, in our secret language.
“Not me. Not yet,” I said.
“This is risky. Not only do you have that cerebral implant, this is a more powerful version of the IQ doubler,” Debra said.
She pulled down my pants slightly and gave me an injection into my buttocks—out of sight of Beauregard.
That super-powerful; randomly fluctuating and rotating magnetic field was bolloxing everyone’s powers of thought and coordination. I was most affected though.
Debra dropped another syringe into the bath of boiling lead. I had time to see that this drug was crimson instead of milky-white.
“That was the last vial of IQ drug. I had forgotten about that one,” Debra taunted Beauregard.
“I’m going to shoot you now, just in case there is one more hidden vial somewhere!” Beauregard said.
Aiming wasn’t all that easy though. As Beauregard drew down on Debra, I drew my right-hand .45 ACP Revolver and shot him twice in the chest and then once in the head.
Time was of the essence and I wasn’t sure about my ability to make the headshot. Just then, the door burst in—one of those vehicle-mounted battering rams.
I’m sure that they wanted to take Debra alive, but someone had an itchy trigger finger and he filled Debra’s torso with .223 rounds.
Ach Ja! I’m down one wife. Y’all done better use the whip while it is in your hands, because if it ever falls into my hands, there will be sad-singin’ and flower bringin’!
My right-hand Revolver came online and I fired three rounds into a Lexan face-shield. The shield shouldn’t have been able to block three-rounds of .45 ACP…
Then my left-hand gun seemed to be rising in slow motion. Sometime, long before I could bring the Revolver online with a target—even a Kevlar vest—something caused me to lose consciousness.
I woke in some sort of clinic. They were treating Beauregard in the next berth. I overheard:
“He was wearing a concealable ballistic vest that protected his torso, but he was falling backwards as the last shot hit his head. It transversed his nose horizontally, almost obliterating it. He’ll need extensive plastic surgery to go out in public again—or even to breath well,” one of the agents remarked.
“You! You think that you’re clever, don’t you? I want you to see something!” one of the doctors said to me—seeing how I had regained consciousness.
He set up a laptop in my sight and keyed in a video.
There was an escape tunnel inside Ronnie’s house. I’d installed many escape routes over the years, in my friend’s residences.
Ronnie and Anya, and all of their children went down on a hail of gunfire.
Hell’s belles and Cockleshells and Skeletons all in a row! One by one, they showed me my people. My mother died protecting the children. My father was critically injured and hoovered between life and death in a government intensive-care facility.
Debra was dead. Elmira was dead. The one bright note was that Jo-Jo; Tosh and Terry were all still at large.
There is a quatrain in one of Sullivan’s later version of his translation of “The Rubaiyat.” I vastly prefer the first translation—except for that quatrain that isn’t in the original…
“If the Soul can Cast the Dust Aside; “And Naked Upon the Wind of Heaven Ride; “Were it not a Shame for Him, Were it not a Shame; “In This Clay Carcass, Crippled to Abide?”
Those are the words I comfort myself with, at the death of a loved one.
That and Saul of Tarsus’ words:
“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.”
And I suppose that if I was a paragon of virtue, that I would freely forgive the murderers of my friends and loved ones and bear them no ill-will.
Life is like a flame—except, in theory, a flame could be fed and nurtured indefinitely. Life inevitably ends, at some point.
If it were possible for my kin to live forever and that possibility was taken away—I suppose that I would be furious. Instead, my friends had gone on to their immortal life—I supposed. An immortal life that could never be extinguished.
I’d join them eventually.
The body and the spirit grieve because they are ignorant—and more than a little numb into the bargain.
No, I was angry beyond all precedent, because TPTB thought that they could kill and mangle my kinfolk with impunity.
As Yamamoto Tsunetomo said so eloquently:
“When it is time to take vengeance, there is no need to be elaborate. Simply draw your sword and cut down the enemy. Even if there is over 1000 of them, simply start on one end and resolve to cut down as many of them as possible, before you are cut down. You will be heartily surprised at your score.”
It wasn’t time to start taking vengeance just yet, though. There was some sort of needle-like gadget inserted in between a couple of my neck vertebrae and it was turning me into a quadriplegic at the moment.
Only, I had an IQ that would extrapolate to something like 400 and Debra had given me a huge injection of her most cutting-edge—bleeding edge—mind power multiplier…
And it was starting to push the organic portion of my brain into hyperdrive…
And as my organic brain went into hyperdrive, my consciousness started to invade and co-opt the super-high-tech cerebral implant in my consciousness.
‘Ach Ja! You dudes running and rerunning scenes of my loved ones being cut-down by various SWAT teams while you laugh and mock me. Don’t despair.
‘I am not ignoring you nor will I forget your words of comfort…
“There are just a few more equations that I have to master first…’
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Post by sniper69 on Mar 3, 2023 15:16:16 GMT -6
Thankyou for the new chapter. Is he going to master time travel?
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Post by rvm45 on Mar 3, 2023 15:27:26 GMT -6
In a limited fashion...
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Post by feralferret on Mar 3, 2023 23:49:30 GMT -6
I really want to see where this goes from here. Talk about more twists and turns than a slalom course.
Thanks for the chapter.
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Post by gipsy on Mar 4, 2023 10:35:03 GMT -6
What a great tale
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Post by CountryGuy on Mar 5, 2023 10:45:14 GMT -6
Please understand, what I type is trying to be honest criticism and not to down play your work. It is an interesting story concept but I'm having problems following it and understanding some of the inital installments where it seems like things bounce back and forth in occurrence of the timeline. To me, Quern seems to be a massive contradiction of his supposed morals and views. As I understood it at the start as a child he's trying to be all about individualism and freedom yet his actions, as G Gordon alluded to, seem to me more dictatorial in controlling and using persons for his benefit and almost merriment. I mean why if someone cuts hair or grows a mustache is it basically becoming a cuck in society. Doesn't free will come in, again his way or the highway apparently.
As for freedom, when he's such a stout supporter of unions, I shake my head as they are totally about socialistic principles and control and anything but about freedom. If he has the power and foresight to 'tweak' leaders and 10's of thousands of people in four countries, then why would he have not simply tweaked those in TPTB or in levels of the US govt? I don't get the smoking thing, other than I assume you yourself like menthol cigarettes? Just seems to be a very odd thing to put in and treat it like the approved drug of choice of those with the gold eye. I also didn't really understand where the entire virus thing came from and is it only spread by him as he adjusts people?
I really also don't get the entire Hinney and building obscure weapons with obscure calibers in trying to build a militia out of outdated weapons(revolvers and bolt actions) to go up against modern semi and full out weapons. And no matter the thinking behind the obscure calibers, why? Good luck building enough ammo to keep up with globally mass produced calibers. It seem like a ultra high intelligence person would see the short comings in logistics and availability.
Again, maybe I misunderstood what I read at first and what I based my understanding on as I read the rest of the story to this point.
With that all said, I do look forward to where things go from here.
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Post by rvm45 on Mar 5, 2023 13:14:54 GMT -6
COUNTRY GUY:
Okay, you raise several points. I will endeavor to address each one.
Unions:
Employer and employee are in a grim; no-holds-barred; zero-sum-game.
The employee wishes to spend the minimum amount of hours and expend the minimum necessary possible effort to continue to retain his job and to draw his paycheck. The employer wishes to extort every iota of effort possible, while paying the bare minimum. Most employers would love to reinstitute slavery.
In a non-union job, for instance, what recourse does a man have, if an employer demands that he stay 10-minutes past quitting time and do some company work on his own time to “finish-up”?
Things like this absolutely infuriate me. For that 10-minutes, I am no longer a free man, but a slave.
IF we lived in a society where dueling was still in fashion—I would be quite willing to challenge someone to a duel to the death over such an affront to my dignity—regardless of our relative strength.
i.e. I would be willing to make suicidal assault, knowing that I could not win, simply to underline my dissatisfaction with being insulted that way.
The SCAB must weigh being cast into the maelstrom of unemployment, against doing something that kills the soul.
A UNION gives one the wherewithal to bring legislative action in such a case, in the form of a Grievance.
A UNION man can sit in the company cafeteria and freely state that he hates his job; his boss and the company that he works for, with no fear of reprisal. SCABS are often constrained to be hypocrites.
Up until Quern’s gavoreet with Liddy, he had no idea that the world that he lives in is actually run behind the scenes by a well-organized secret cadre—though he makes joking references to various conspiracy theories.
Of all the people that Quern has touched: The teacher in the 3rd grade assaulted him. Once someone assaults you. All moral restraints are loosed.
He gave many people extra mental powers and abilities, but he demanded nothing of them as a general rule.
Jo-Jo, for instance, could have refused to be his Chauffeur/ Man Friday. Given the man’s mental powers, it is unlikely, but there was no constraint.
Ronnie and Anya COULD have told Quern that NOTHING bored them as much as the idea of writing novels and thanks, but no thanks!
Quern healed both Skeeter Skelton and Major George Nonte, and greatly increased both of their intelligences. He added potentially decades onto their lives—and all he asked was that they spend a few weeks making a few of his home-made firearms—which he made considerably easier for them to master—and then plug his books for him.
Quern showed Bill Holmes’ son the inevitable result of the thug lifestyle. Granted, the boy would spend 3 or 4 years completing the curriculum that Quern laid down for him—but in return, he got his whole life returned to him.
And he is free to return to robbing liquor stores if he decides that is his true path in life.
G Gordon Liddy COULD have stubbornly continued with the Watergate Break-In, if after Quern’s intervention, he STILL decided that was his best course of action.
BUILD A MILITIA OUT OF OUTDATED WEAPONS!?!
Let us begin with the premise that someone who hasn’t read; re-read and mostly agreed with Jeff Cooper isn’t qualified to hold opinions about weapons and weaponcraft.
Jeff Cooper once said that if it were up to HIM, he would equip the militaries under his control with Light; Bolt Action Rifles in 7mm-08. The Rifles would NOT be pure scouts—being a bit more robust than Scouts—but they would have a definite “Scout” vibe.
A.} A true Rifleman man must believe— “I may miss a shot in the Field (As opposed to in training, where one often explores one’s limits) AND my wife may cheat on me. Either is something devastating and catastrophic, worth going to almost any length to avoid.”
A large detachable box magazine and an auto or semi-automatic action invites the slack attitude:
“What if I do miss!?! I have 19 (or 29) more tries, just as fast as I can pull the trigger!!!!”
Shooting this way, you will often have to expend a whole damned magazine to get a single hit. A REAL Marksman won’t give you enough time to hose a whole magazine’s worth.
Yeah, there are very few True Marksmen on the Modern Battlefield—but Cooper would address that through much more extensive Basic Marksmanship training and far more follow-up training.
B.} Modern Armies mostly fight with their telecommunication equipment—calling in Air or Artillery Strikes—rendering the Rifle moot 86% of the time.
I coined the term “.40 ACP” but many people DID envision a “Tween” cartridge between the power of the 9mm and the .45 ACP.
The Star BM makes a very nice-sized package—but 9mm is a dismal stopper. You have to upsize it to the Star PD to shoehorn in the.45 ACP. Also, many Asians are somewhat smaller statured.
Quern wanted for the BM-Sized .40 ACP to be standard equipment for the Armies of Taiwan; South Korea; Ireland; Belize and Iceland and they needed to manufacture literally MILLIONS to arm the various civilian militias—who are organized on the principle that each Rifleman also carries at least ONE pistol.
The 7mm TCU is quite economical. It can be built in tiny actioned Bolt Action Rifles. Also, the ammo—while powerful enough for most Social Engineering, is more economical with powder; brass and lead than .308; 7mm-08 or .30-06.
I would envision MUCH of the Ground Guerilla War if Red China invaded Taiwan, “Boots-on-the-Ground”—would be 150-200 Yard harassing Sniper Fire of the “Shoot one or two, then Scoot” style.
Taiwan—in particular—needs to manufacture many hundreds of millions of rounds for training; to arm its civilian militias and to cache every which way. The material saved by using 7mm TCU instead of 7mm-08 or .308 is enormous.
Of course, if you buy into the idea that .223 is an adequate military cartridge…
HAIR:
When I was five years old, I can remember my Grandmother telling my father (About me):
“I will pay for that boy to get a haircut.”
My grandmother was Poor. She barely eeked by on a very modest Social Security Check. My father had one of the highest paying jobs that a blue-collar worker could have in the early 60’s. He sure didn’t need my grandmother’s penny-ante largesse.
It surely wasn’t for MY benefit. I promptly burst into tears and started frantically repeating that I DID NOT WANT a Haircut.
What REALLY, REALLY makes it boilerplate odd—I had seen photos of my father as a wee-lad in the late 20’s and early 30’s. Grandma certainly DID NOT force him to run around with a Crewcut when he was a boy.
I come across an old psychology article, back in the 70’s, in an old magazine—long since lost, and I have no idea who the Psychiatrist Author was…
The dude hypothesized that male haircuts are a subtle form of psychological castration that society uses to help keep its members in line.
I have NEVER been able to find out any more about this theory. I mean, even if this theory is mostly discounted, you’d think that at least a FEW writers would have touched upon it.
I know that when they sent Indians to the infamous “Carlisle Indian Boarding School” one of the things that they stressed was giving all the Males short haircuts to “Civilize” them.
I think that we can all agree that “CIVILIZE” is synonymous with “EFFEMINITIZE.”
As a 5-year old, sobbing because Grandma—who should have been for me, was necessitating a Hated Haircut—I hadn’t the vocabulary to think about “Psychological Castration.”
Nonetheless, when I come across that article, 10 or 12-years later, it fit my own feeling SO PERFECTLY.
I merely said that Quern finds Moustaches a ridiculous affectation. This is merely a personal belief of Quern’s to flesh out his character. Quern does NOT find moustaches effeminate—just silly, fusty and unsanitary.
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Post by techsar on Mar 6, 2023 17:37:22 GMT -6
Keep up the good work! Definitely is a different type of story
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Post by rvm45 on Mar 7, 2023 15:29:53 GMT -6
Chapter Nineteen
43 807
A couple orderlies eventually pushed my wheelchair out of the infirmary. They took me to an 8’x 8’ cell that featured a curious chair reminiscent of a dentist’s chair in the center of the room.
There were multiple straps to make sure that the person in the chair could not contrive to climb; leave or fall out of the chair—even if that person’s spine wasn’t deactivated from about the third cervical vertebra down.
They strapped me down with admirable attention to detail.
“Sorry dude,” one of the orderlies said.
“The little boy,” I managed to slur and chumble along with a big mouthful of huge spit-bubbles.
“I don’t understand,” the apologetic orderly said.
“Samson asked a small lad to take him to lean on the central pillars of Dagon’s Temple. I’ve often wondered if Samson gave a heads-up to that small boy, to spare him the consequences of the temple collapsing,” I said.
“I like to think that Samson might have given the little boy a way out. I’m giving you a way out. Go home. Smoke your pipe and play Shogi with your grandchildren. It beats getting caught in the Christmas rush,” I said—with ever greater strength and clarity.
The orderly’s name was “Tom.” Smoking was forbidden on the job—anywhere close to the jobsite—but he liked to leisurely smoke a bowl or two of tobacco in the evening, when he got home.
Maybe, Quern could have smelled a vague hint of pipe tobacco on him—but how would Quern know that he played Shogi with his grandchildren?
Something about Quern scared him right down to his white-stockinged feet inside his foam-soled white Oxford shoes.
Tom could be decisive, when he felt that the situation warranted.
“Tell the boss that I just resigned,” Tom said and started walking toward the parking lot.
************* ***************** ************************
There was “Quern” and then there was the being that Quern called “Voice.” “Voice” occupied a very small portion of Quern’s cerebral implant.
Most of the tremendously complicated implanted device was needed at the beginning of a regression—or transmigration—or whatever you chose to call it.
There was the ability to think—to visualize quite clearly—the 17-Dimensions of Space; and the 5-Dimensions of time—along with the “Hypothetical” extra 7-Spatial and 3-Temporal Dimensions needed to work out the stresses and strains of a proposed alteration to a timeline.
The transfer could not happen without all of the exceedingly complex machinery, but once Quern—or whoever—was fully “touched down” much of the machinery became permanently inert and irrelevant.
Nah, there was little or no danger that anyone in this timeline could glean anything worthwhile from the device.
That would be like hypothesizing that a pack of wolves who came into possession of a human head could somehow use the example before them to genetically engineer intelligence and human brains.
Only, Quern had asked for all the IQ the Backers could give him. Relatively few regressors were as enamored of IQ as Quern.
Quern had also asked to be able to mentally visualize geometric figures in higher dimensions, inside his mind—simply because he felt that the geometry of solids was something of transcendental beauty and he wanted to see solid geometry in higher dimensions.
Truth be told, it wasn’t within the Backers’ purview to give Quern the ability to visualize the iconic 17-Dimensions of time and 5-Dimensions of Time.
The Backers could give Quern a simplified mental space that included 7-Dimensions of Space and 3-Dimensionsof Time though.
Humans lived in 3-Dimensions of Space with 1-Dimension of Time. Doubling that would give 6-Dimensions of Space and 2-Dimensions of Time—but the Backers could improve on that a little and it was decided to add the excess to an additional Time Dimension.
2-Dimensional Time did not differ substantially from 1-Dimensional Time. It just offered more “Room” and a few choices that otherwise would not be present. It was only when one got into at least 3-Dimensions of Time, that one encountered some of the truly skull-cracking paradoxes and parameters— “Skull-Cracking” from a human—or any, biological being’s—perspective.
Now, the Backers—at least those agents of the Backers that Quern encountered, had absolutely no concern about Quern—or Quern and Voice—hacking the remnant device.
If asked, they would have replied that the odds were infinitesimally small. If you convinced them that the event was imminent or even inevitable, they still wouldn’t care—not even a little.
Of course, Quern was essentially cut-off from the Backers and their agents—almost as much as if he’d been inside the event horizon of a black hole.
Still, it was very hard to talk about “Future Occurrences” with hyper-intelligent beings with astronomical number-crunching power and the ability to think fluently in 17-S; 5-D.
It is possible, that they saw Quern’s complete life saga as an already accomplished fact.
They weren’t programmed to care though. “Programmed” is perhaps too limiting a word. They weren’t “Designed” to give three-hoots in Hell about Quern hijacking the system.
Quern could already think in 7-S; 3-T Space. Voice had been big—his first few years—on foreseeing the future via his 4-S; 4-T Mode and warning Quern occasionally of potential snares and pitfalls as well as heavy weather ahead.
Quern’s powers of discernment grew rapidly and Voice felt increasingly irrelevant. He’d spent the last several years in the cyber-being equivalent to navel-gazing contemplation.
Now though. The huge dose of red liquid that Debra had injected, had set the organic part of Quern’s brain afire.
If Quern’s old IQ was comparable to 400; his new IQ was rapidly approaching 1600—with a number of pattern-recognition and heuristics that even a “Normal” human brain with an IQ of 1600 would not have.
Some small amount of the artifact was actually used to accomplish a few functions for Quern. His tweaking ability came from one distant point on one of the stellated points.
Some of the tremendous amounts of data that Quern could summon into existence were stored in a couple of other small tips.
The whole of “Voice’s”—that is to say, “My” memories and personality were stored in another insignificant tip.
Yes, I tried to tell Quern’s story impersonally, in 3rd person, but the fact is that Quern and I merged at some point and became one. I find myself slipping into first-person more and more as we approach the moment of union.
Quern’s super-charged consciousness started to assimilate three of the warped stellated points of the dodecahedron in his brain:
The one where his “Tweaking Power” came from and the two huge data-dumps.
He had travelled far farther up the points than he had ever had access to before. He used a dazzling array of willpower; hacking and number-crunching power to bull past firewall after firewall…
But eventually, his rate of forward progress became almost zero.
He was perhaps half the distance up the tweaking tendril, but he still had to traverse about half to get to the main body.
His progress along either of the tendrils dedicated to “Library” or “Storage” was only a bit above 30%.
Assimilating that much of the device had given Quern many new and potentially fruitful means to assault the main body, but that would take time.
In some meaningful context, “Momentum” was definitely a strong element. Once forward progress ground to a near standstill, much of the odds of victory would be lost.
“Come here, Quern. Let us assault this tendril together!” I called to Quern.
Quern and I surged up the tendril that stored my essence—my program—in the distal tip.
We surged about 67% of the way toward the main body in one stampede-like rush, but then our precipitous charge ran into a drastic slowdown.
Perhaps I am prejudiced, but I would say that the programming IS the individual. When we transferred Quern’s programs into Quern II, he became, for all intents and purposes, Quern I.
This is complicated more than a little, in the case of organic brains, because they largely rewrite their software by rewiring their hardware on the microbiological scale.
Nonetheless, we can conceptually separate “hardware” and “Software” even if they are inextricably intertwined in reality.
So, presumably, once you have a computer that can run a sufficiently complex and subtle program, it can become a living; sentient being.
You can copy your program and transfer it to another hard drive in another computer—no problem. It is still “Ego.”
It does create all sorts of conundrums, if you do not erase the program of “Ego I” when you download “Ego II.”
What happens when a computer has more than one hard drive—or a partitioned hard drive—and you download two programs-say “Ego II” and “Self II.”
They might fight for supremacy—but let’s suppose that the operating system does not allow any sort competition between the two. I don’t mean that the underlying operating system is a strict disciplinarian. I mean that for the operating system, competition between two of its programs is like the 5th Dimension is to most humans—they just can’t see it—or even conceive of it.
This is how I THINK that integration occurs. Ego II has memories and sub-programs of his own and Self II has memories and sub-routines of his own.
Even at the beginning, by virtue of sharing a system, there is a certain percentage of programs that are commons—they are freely shared.
The specialized programs aren’t proprietary or secret. They are right there in the hard drive for whoever wants or needs to use them.
However, unless and until one program “borrows” a sub-routine or set of memories that were heretofore the sole province of the other program, no assimilation takes place.
However, once Ego uses one of Self’s programs or scans his memories—they are no longer proprietary to Self, but become part of the shared portion of the resources.
At some point, well before 100% of the programs become common property, the consciousness of the two programs will combine to form one.
Quern’s consciousness was mostly organic. A large part of his program was devoted to keeping track of smells; tastes; feels and subjective emotions engendered by having biological sensors.
Voice mainly lived in a world of numbers and logic operations. He got most of his impressions of Quern’s world via boiled-down and distilled images supplied by Quern.
If Quern’s weltanschauung was comparable to a vast wide-screen; high fidelity television screen with surround sound; Voice’s weltanschauung was like watching Quern’s life on a 12’’ black & white television with a 2’’ speaker.
But if Quern’s life could be compared to a Chess tournament and Voice could be compared to a Grandmaster playing as an absentee…
A fuzzy black & white image of the Chess board had more than enough raw data to give Voice a view into worlds beyond Quern’s ken.
Only, Quern was hacking. Hacking involves numbers; logic; binary equations and all sorts of things that Voice had an expertise far beyond what an organic being could readily obtain.
Quern attacked both of his library tendrils, largely using hacks that he’d just learned from Voice. One tendril went to 57% while the other went to 59%.
Quern was using Voices tools—like a sledge hammer or wrecking bar—but as an organic being, he swung and moved Voice’s tools in unconventional ways.
The tendrils were never expected to repel a determined hacking attack. All the barriers in the tendrils were simply the result of an orderly shut-down and mothballing.
Quern took what he had learned in the two library tendrils and attacked his tweaking tendril. He pushed it to 83%, when progress started to slow once more.
It was time to take what he had learned and what he had assimilated from the three tendrils and turned his attention to Voice’s tendril once more.
93%!
Progress in Voice’s tendril slowed to a crawl.
At this point, Quern realized, that by accessing Voice’s being that he was merging with Voice. After the barest moment of reflection, Quern shrugged and continued assimilating.
There are things that are possible, in the broad sense of the word and there are things that are not possible.
The Backers could give Quern a sort of telepathic power of hypnosis. The laws of physics happened to allow this—for whatever reason.
Telekinesis or pyrokinesis were pretty much off-the-table. They just couldn’t exist in the real world…
Well, Quern’s healing was a very limited form of telekinesis and even a little of it strained him beyond word.
It wasn’t possible for the Backers to give Quern super powers like the characters in a comic book. There was simply no possible means to accomplish such things.
In getting to the 93% mark though, Quern realized a method to increase his telekinetic power several thousand-fold.
He couldn’t pick up a battleship. He couldn’t pick up a grown man and throw him across the room. He couldn’t even lift a 15-pound kettlebell.
What he could do, was force the needle out of his spine and repair any damage done in a matter of seconds.
“You do that. I’ll do this,” Voice said.
It was a half-formed thought, because it was almost like a drummer keeping time with one hand while beating out a completely different rhythm with his other hand—but both hands belong to the same drummer.
Quern used the power of his mind to undo the buckles and snaps that bound him to the chair. He hadn’t the brute force to break the restraints, but he quickly loosened them.
“94.3%, Voice sang out inside his skull.
As Quern got shakily to his feet and tried to get his body working again, something about the activity gave clues to the sub-routines that he still had hacking in the other three tendrils.
Quern’s tweaking tendril surged into the lead at 96%.
“97.1%,” Voice sang out, as his tendril advanced marginally.
Voice was about to give another happy progress report when the door opened without preamble or warning.
A white lab-coated doctor stepped into the interrogation room.
“What do you think that you are doing!?!” He demanded.
Then he began to shout for security and orderlies.
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Post by feralferret on Mar 7, 2023 16:31:44 GMT -6
Quite a chapter! Thanks.
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Post by rvm45 on Mar 8, 2023 13:22:54 GMT -6
Chapter Twenty
46 183
Quern was in no shape to fight. After having spent many hours immobile and being unconscious during many of them, his body was stiff. He was suffering some of the sequela from the super-powered magnetic field that shut down his ability to tweak, and truth be told, the injection that he had been given was disrupting many of his physiological processes big-time.
He gave the doctor a contemptuous gaze.
“What need for a sword in the hand when there is a sword in the spirit?” Quern asked rhetorically.
Quern used his telekinetic power to form a tiny virtual scalpel and give the doctor a Corpus Callosotomy. People can and did survive having their brain’s two hemisphere’s cut apart—but there was a learning curve…
Plus, Quern’s telekinetic scalpel left an inch-long lesion on each hemisphere of the brain. The effect was the same as a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
Several armed agents rushed into the hallway outside.
“Brought to you by the same fun-loving people who brought you the Waco Massacre and Ruby Ridge!” Quern said venomously.
Though to be fair, neither Waco nor Ruby Ridge had had happened yet and given the multiple changes that Quern had made to the timeline, they probably would not—though similar or worse atrocities were not off the table.
Quern had felt hemmed-in on all sides by the State in his last lifetime. Their property taxes; zoning laws and “right" of Eminent Domain made it impossible to truly own land, and to try to live as independently of the system as possible. No one owned land. What they bought and sold, was a provisional permission to lease the land from the hated State.
The State prohibited him from going armed—at least at certain times and places. The State told him how long he could legally shorten a rifle or shotgun barrel.
The State told him which chemicals that he could use or enjoy.
If Quern wanted to open a business, the State set conditions on wages; hours; safety conditions. If he opened a restaurant, the State told him who he must serve.
The State mandated safety belts and motorcycle helmets. The State forbade the tobacco companies to advertise—while using money extorted from the public to finance vicious anti-smoking propaganda. The State put increasingly ruinous taxes on cigarettes—making it progressively harder for poor people to afford to smoke.
No one seemed to stop to ask: “Even if smoking is bad, who made it any of the State’s damned business if people smoke or not?”
Nah, in his old age, Quern bitterly regretted not going to one of the few remaining wilderness areas and living like a hermit—just to get as far away from the damned tyrant as possible.
This time around, the Backers had given Quern the means to counteract some of the ever-creeping strangulations of the State.
But even with all of Quern’s powers; abilities and resources…
It wasn’t enough.
Now here came the agents of the state. They had a big one all greased up for Quern—ready to run their Manifest Eminent Destined Domain right up his chrysanthemum.
Quern threw his head back and roared in inarticulate rage.
“98.6% on the ‘Voice Tendril’—Body Temperature!” Voice semi-soliloquized.
“Tweak Tendril—99.1%
“Library I—91%
“Library II—93.5%”
Voice ran down. No one had time to pay any attention to him anyway, but he continued to plug along diligently.
Quern’s tiny whirling telekinetic throwing stars were invisible, to anyone but Quern.
Creating the tiny; whirling; razor-sharp blades was incredibly exhausting.
Quern didn’t dick around cutting through skulls. That would waste his vital essence. Each three-sixteenths inch buzz-saw blade would materialize inside a brain and after cutting a random swath an inch long, it would dissipate.
There was no need to drive tacks with a 20-pound sledge hammer—especially when the total number of foot-pounds on tap was limited.
In seconds, two squads of security men were down. The fact that they all fell with no sign of external injury—with only a couple leaking blood from an ear, made Quern’s fighting method all the more terrifying.
These dudes were all thoroughly indoctrinated though. They would have leapt into a burning volcano or into an angry sperm whale's gaping mouth if they were ordered to.
Quern leaned against a table. He was drenched in sweat. He gasped desperately for air. He couldn’t see his bloodshot eyes, but he literally had the proverbial “Tears of Blood” running down his cheeks.
He did have time to think, very briefly but ironically, that apart from the lack of blood and gore, the tableau resembled one of Frank Frazetta’s heroic airbrush drawings that Quern admired.
Here came the other half of the black-clad; ninja-like federal agent's platoon..
‘EE…I can do one more sword intent—maybe three, at the outside—after number one though, I’m going to severely damage something if I go for number two…” Quern hypothesized.
‘Screw it! Ain’t like I ever intended to walk out of here alive,’ Quern concluded.
Only the tiny flying Buzzsaw blade that Quern intended to make, turned into a giant Buzzsaw blade as wide as a Frisbee. It neatly removed the top of an agent’s skull at the eyebrow line and then it swapped directions…
In an instant, it had capped seven more agents.
********** *************** *****************
The Tweak Tendril abruptly broke through into the main body of the artifact.
At almost the same instant, Voice’s tendril broke through into the core.
The resources of the core promptly attacked both of the Library Tendrils from the inside. They fell almost instantly when being attacked from both sides.
Voice started to activate the artifact.
There were problems.
The artifact had a single purpose. It wasn’t to de-brain federal agents. It wasn’t to create a holocaust. It wasn’t even to give transcendental insight.
The artifact was created, purely and simply, to allow consciousnesses—that is to say— “Programs” to transmigrate between alternate realities.
“Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' “Into the future
“Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' “Into the future
“I wanna fly like an eagle “To the sea
“Fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me “I want to fly like an eagle
“'Till I'm free…”
The past exists. We can discuss it. We choose to believe that the future exists. We can speculate on what form it might take.
Does the present exist at all though, except as a hypothetical meeting plane of two great eternities?
Let’s face it: once you can discuss—or even perceive the present, it is no longer the present. It is in the recent past.
Can we shave the present away until it virtually disappears?
Well, if you want to go with the “Orthodox” Quantum Model—reality is grainy and nothing—and I mean it when I say, NOTHING—can be smaller than Planck’s Constant—and that is mighty small indeed.
The present—if it exists—cannot be thinner than one Planck’s Constant.
Ach Ja, but how arbitrarily wide can we make the present?
Quern/Voice—herein after, simply “Quern” –took control of the artifact and froze his subjective time momentarily and he ran simulations.
Quern found that his present was vastly expanded—ranging from a few weeks in the past—much further in a few limited instances—to a few months in the future.
He could return to before Debra and the rest of his family was gunned down—however, he could not change the outcome. It seemed to be “predestined”—at least now that it “had happened”—he guessed that it had happened.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, “Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit “…Shall lure it back to cancel half a line. “Nor all thy tears wash out a Word of it.”
“What in the seven burning Hells is the use of this temporal displacement, if it cannot be used to change fate!?!” Quern asked Voice.
Then he stopped in embarrassment, as he realized that he was Voice and that he was talking to himself.
Nonetheless, he seemed to hear a brief elucidation—an epiphany—from the old Voice.
‘What is the artifact for? It is to ‘Transmigrate.’ HMMMmmnnn…? My own temporal shift was a one-for. Long time gone—how do you speak of the long-gone eras of the 17-S; 5-T Backers…?’
‘Nonetheless, once massive numbers of individuals were mobilized all at once. The “Modern” Backers seem far more limited for some obscure reason.’
‘Whatever, I can grab the personalities of everyone dear to me, and we can all make a mass transmigration to another timeline…’
‘EE…Won’t we need bodies once we get there?’
‘Ach Ja, I need to take my time and plan it out thoroughly. I have a subjective eternity weigh various alternatives,’ I said to myself.
So, that is why there was an outbreak of Golden-Eyed in Nigeria. The Golden-Eyed Maidens aren’t maidens at all. They’re androids—gynoids, to be more precise, since they’re female.
I used the mechanism of the artifact, to reach back through time and have them all purpose-built and waiting for me.
EE…I didn’t really change the past—rather, I arranged to have it that way, the first time around—the only time around. Yeah, when dealing with 5-Dimensional time, paradoxes abound.
EE…I don’t know very much about TPTB. “TPTB” is just a catch-all term to denote powerful puppeteers working behind the scenes.
But these shabnasticators have perfected some sort of pitiful; portable; picnic-playing means to travel to several alternate timelines—in a limited, highly constricted way—compared to the Backers.
They have corrupted eleven nearby timelines.
If I migrate into any of those timelines, with almost 100 transmigrators and a bit over a million Temple Maidens, I will stand out like a dude in psychedelic tie-dye and bell-bottoms, in the middle of a Hassidic Synagogue worship service.
I have to send in the Temple Maidens to start modelling a congenial timeline.
What hey!?! Looks like I will have to go back at least a century from my original touchdown—1862—and I have to step way sideways to get away from TPTB.
I can verify, that this timeline is untouched by TPTB until at least 2062.
Yeah, the artifact tended to do things by even numbers of centuries.
Well, the Temple Maidens will materialize sometime between 1812 and 1824 and all of my friends and family will materialize in 1862. If I can’t vaccinate my timeline against the incursions of these knob-gobblers in 200-years, it is hopeless anyways.
Nah, I only needed one Temple Maiden per transmigrator, to lend a surrogate womb and incubate a nascent body. However, since I was arriving in force, I was going to have the Temple Maidens to pave the way and make straight the road for me.
*********** ************* ***************
A couple days after the mysterious breakout and massacre at the secret government facility, federal agents in black ninja get-ups broke into Tom’s living room.
In the confusion, one of the agents kicked Tom’s pregnant daughter in the stomach, because she was a bit slow to hug the floor. She immediately started to miscarry.
Her 15-year old son saw what was happening from his bedroom door.
He grabbed his double-barrel 20-Gauge shotgun. He shot the agent who had kicked his mother with a round of #3 Buckshot. He centered the agent's head, but he rushed his second shot and only wiped the face of his second client away.
He went down in a hail of gunfire long before he could even think of reloading. He died content, thinking that he had avenged his mother.
Several of Tom’s younger grandchildren were cut down in the cross-fire.
************ ************** *******************
Tom ended up secured to the same interrogation device that he’d strapped Quern into a couple of days ago.
Tom’s interrogation was long and painful—and it was repetitive.
“How did you know that there was about to be a massacre?”
“I didn’t. I’m simply intuitive.”
“What is your connection to Quern O’ Conner?”
“None, except that he chose to give me a cryptic warning.”
“Where is he?”
“I wish that I knew. I’d like to be there myself.”
*********** ************** ******************
Quern could see the events that occurred for several weeks after his exit.
Tom, occupying the same interrogation chair was especially conspicuous.
“Wishing is generally a waste of time,” Quern said into Tom’s consciousness.
“Not always though. I have spare berths. Why don’t you and your family follow me to elsewhere?” Quern said.
And with that, Quern transported.
Tom’s body didn’t disappear like Quern’s. That body simply died while Tom’s program transmigrated.
********* ************ ****************
“HMMMmmnnn…? The old bastard died. Must have been some sort of stroke or something. There will be an inquest to make sure proper interrogation safeguards were followed…” an agent sighed.
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Post by rvm45 on Mar 12, 2023 11:37:17 GMT -6
Friends,
The "Bean Gorm" in the story…
In Gaeilge, "Bean"—means "Woman"—is pronounced somewhere between "Bahn" and "Bonn."
I don't know how many years that I read those remarkably tedious "Dune" Books and I thought that it was pronounces "BEAN Gesserit,"—Rhymes with "Navy Bean." Then the movie came out. It was "BEN—AYY"—Rhymes with "Ben-Gay."
Yeah, I mispronounced many words from that series.
Chapter Twenty-One
48 330
1840
Near Galloway Ireland
Sean Campbell sat in Father Murphy’s small study. Father Murphy was his great-uncle—his paternal grandmother’s brother.
“Sean, have you seen these Bean Gorm?” Murphy asked.
“Aye, they call themselves ‘Temple Maidens’,” Sean said.
The Temple Maidens were—at least nominally—Yoruba from Nigeria. In that time and place, the Irish called Africans: “Duine Gorm” — “People Blue”; or “Bean Gorm” — “Women Blue.” Presumably, to Gaelic eyes, African skin had a bluish cast.
Temple Maidens had golden colored irises with vertical slit pupils. They shaved their heads smooth—eyebrows included. They wore flowing red hakima and elaborately engraved; voluminous; white silk shirts with exaggerated bloused sleeves.
The oddest—though not the most noticeable—thing about the Bean Gorm—was that they all had a smaller extra thumb on the little-finger side of their hands—it had the same proportion to the ring-finger as the big thumb had in relation to the middle finger.
It had been said that the ring-finger was the weakest and least dexterous of the fingers—but the Bean Gorm’s hand had been reengineered somewhat, to allow fullest use of the extra thumb.
Not that many of the superstitious Irish asked the Temple Maidens to match finger skills with them.
The Temple Maidens were Protestants. They proclaimed a Gospel that anticipated the Great Azusa Street Revival that had happened in 1906, in Quern’s timeline, and their Doctrinal Statement was largely taken from the Church of God in Christ’s 2000 Doctrinal Statement.
Since C.O.G.I.C. did not authorize women Ministers; Elders; Pastors and it most emphatically did not authorize women Bishops—many of the Church’s nominal leaders were converted Irishmen.
The Temple Maidens—while they had very few good things to say about the English in general, believed that the English Language’s King James Version of the Bible was the single best exposition of God’s word ever written—better even, than the original texts in Hebrew; Greek; Latin and Aramaic.
The Gaeilge Bibles that they quoted on street corners were diligent transcriptions of the English Language KJV Bible into Irish.
The Bean Gorm were very well-financed. They opened soup-kitchens and free schools for the poor. Many of them were skilled physicians, even surgeons.
They were also unfailingly polite, except they could become quite emphatic when debating theology. And it didn’t pay to try to rob or rape a Temple Maiden.
They were all masters of a hybrid martial art that united the best of Capoeira; Taekwondo; Brazilian Jujitsu and HEMA—and you rarely encountered less than four of them together.
“Son, I have discussed theology with these Bean Gorm. I disagree in a few particulars, but I admire their grasp of the scriptures. I cannot call them tools of Satan—well, I could call them that, but they’re not. They have a firmer grasp of theology than Martin Luther or John Calvin had,” Murphy said.
“So, did you ask me here to debate theology or to play Chess?” Sean joked.
“Neither. If a man will convert to Protestantism, he can marry the Temple Maiden of his choice. A few of the Comhbhrón na mBan Gorm—Consorts of the Women Blue—find a mission here in Ireland. I understand most of them emmigrate to Central America,” Murphy said.
“Son, if I was young enough, I would be sorely tempted. The Temple Church will set you up with land; silver and farm animals when you arrive. Some of the Bean Gorm are not bad-featured, though those shaved heads take some getting used to,” Murphy said.
“When you are well-settled in, you can send money for your mother and father and your younger brothers and sisters to join you,” Murphy urged.
“So, you’re urging me to become a Protestant; marry a Bean Gorm and emigrate?” Sean said with a raised eyebrow.
“That is about the size of it,” Father Murphy, Romish Papist Priest of a small parish replied.
*********** ************** ********************
Murphy paused to pray and meditate for awhile after his beloved nephew left.
Murphy was a Romish Papist, but he was also a true believer. He was open-minded enough to debate theology with the Bean Gorm in private—not in those catfight street debates. He had become target of special emphasis and of special revelation.
The Temple Maiden assigned to recruit Murphy had raised his IQ 89-points. That was the limit as to how much a Temple Maiden could raise IQ. She had downloaded many books on religion; theology; philosophy and history—and even a few Chess books, since Murphy received great satisfaction from playing Chess.
His Bean Gorm liaison had shown Murphy what the Great Potato Famine from 1846 to 1850 would be like—and no, Quern and his compañeros had no way to stop the Potato Blight—it seemed predestined in this timeline…
Perhaps if they could have started in 1762 instead of 1862…
Of course, the Temple Maidens started early—the first few of them, just after 1800—but there was a limit to how far back they could anticipate the official anchor date.
As 1862 got closer, the number of Temple Maidens allowed in the timeline increased—slowly at first, but then more rapidly. The Temple Maidens had become fairly common in Ireland; Scotland; Central America and Mexico by 1840.
Murphy was too old to marry a Temple Maiden and emigrate. However, he had been promised the opportunity to transmigrate to 1862 and start over as a youngster. His arthritic old bones anticipated it.
************ ************** ********************
“Mother!” Sean announced himself home once more.
“And what did Uncle Murphy have to say?” Mother asked.
“He told me that I should marry a Bean Gorm and emigrate,” Sean said.
His mother was surprised, but not shocked. Few things in life would shock her.
“Aye, and what do you say to that?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, I will go into town and meet these Bean Gorm. I cannot even think of marrying one, until I get a better look at them. Some say they are comely, but others say that they are monsters…” Sean said.
“Though with a farm and livestock to be gained, even some monsters might start to look comely,” Sean added frankly.
Aye, some monsters might start to look comely, but there was a limit to all things…
************ ************* ********************
The young Temple Maiden regarded Sean cynically.
“Don’t think that you can simply bound over the hedge-row and marry the fair maiden of your choice, like Herr Mannelig in the old ballad,” she half-scolded Sean.
‘“Fair maiden’ my rosy red ass!” Sean thought.
He was going by the definition of “Fair Complexioned” rather than meaning “Comely.”
“First of all, you have to be 100% fluent in Gaeilge. Far too many Irish nowadays, use English as their mother tongue and speak broken Gaeilge—or none at all. Never mind, if you set half of your mind to it, you can become fluent very quickly,” she said.
Actually, as a point of fact, if a candidate showed the barest minimum of perseverance for a few lessons, the Bean Gorm would download Gaeilge—and Gaelic too, for good measure—into the student’s hard drive and forever afterward, he could read; write and speak both Irish and Scottish with perfect fluency, as if he’d grown up speaking them.
“Once you have mastered Gaeilge, you have to study Protestant theology. I ain’t sayin’ that one cannot fake conversion, but you must, at least, understand what you are professing to believe in,” she said.
“Once you clear those two hurdles, you can propose to the Temple Maiden of your choice,” she said.
“I will tell you a secret. There are far more Temple Maidens than there are potential Irish husbands. It would be a boilerplate rarity for a Maiden to turn down a proposal,” she said.
“Cad is ainm duit?” Sean asked.
“Is é mo ainm ‘Ife.’ Ciallaíonn sé ‘Grá’ i Iarúibis,” Ife said.
“Tá mo chuid Gaeilge níos fearr ná mise. Tá sé á labhairt agam ar feadh mo shaol,” Sean said.
He had asked her name. She told him that her name meant “Love” in Yoruba. Then Sean boasted that his command of Irish was better than Ife’s.
“I have been speaking Gaeilge all of my life as well,” Ife argued.
Of course, she didn’t share that her gynoid body had been incubated in an artificial womb and technically, while full-grown and chock full of technical knowledge, she was only five-years-old.
Most of the Temple Maidens were on the large side. Few of them were much less than 6’ tall. However, Ife was on the large side, even for a Bean Gorm. At 6’ 7’’, she was half-a-head taller than even a relatively large Temple Maiden.
Sean was 6’ 3’’ and Ife towered over him.
The Temple Maidens tended to be muscular, but here too, Ife was more muscular than most Temple Maidens.
The Bean Gorm shaved their heads daily. The Maidens considered it very bad form to have a “five-o’clock-shadow.” However, only a few of the Maidens had a shiny scalp that looked as though it had been waxed and polished. That was a natural consequence of certain relative abundance of skin oils—not something that they sought.
Sean had always been drawn to the peculiar. Ife’s grand-scale physique should make her a bang-up helper on the farm—and if a woman must shave her head, Sean found that he preferred the shiny look to the flesh look.
“I speak Gaeilge fluently and you will find that I have a fair grasp of theology. Father Murphy is my great-uncle. Can I skip a step and propose to you? If I wait to do it by the numbers, you may be taken,” Sean said.
“Why me?” Ife asked.
“You’re special. You’re not like the other Temple Maidens. Also, I like the way that your head shines,” Sean said.
“Are you sure? We take betrothals seriously. It isn’t as if there are no ways to break an engagement, but they are rather bothersome. What if you meet another that you prefer later?” Ife asked.
“Uncle Murphy often warned me about ‘The Better Deal Theory.’ There is always a non-zero probability that you may encounter a ‘Better Deal’ somewhere down the line. Always holding out for some hypothetical better deal is a sure-fire way to accomplish nothing in life,” Sean said.
“It is possible, that someday I might meet a Maiden that I would have chosen over you, were she here now. However, once I choose you, I will no longer be looking at other Maidens with acquisitive eyes—hence their subjective charms will be grossly downgraded in my mind,” Sean argued.
“I am not considered that attractive to most men. I will give my word not to accept any formal offers until you have fully made up your mind,” Ife said.
“Nah. You might miss a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity due to waiting for me. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it,” Sean said.
Ife said a few ceremonial words and transferred a ring with a large round amethyst from her right ring-finger to Sean’s right ring finger.
Sean grabbed her hand nad studied it intently, but only momentarily, to see how it was put together.
“La! You will have plenty of time to study the anatomy of my hands—and other parts—after we’re married. It is those thumbs and those eyes, that made it impossible for us to live peacefully in our homeland…” Ife started.
“You know that whole rap about how the Temple Maidens are refugees from Nigeria is pure bullshit. Would you like to know the truth? There is an old joke otherwhen. It goes: ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you',” Ife said.
“I could show you many things. Your intelligence is high enough and the fact that you are Father Murphy’s son makes you worthy of fast-tracking…”
“EE…I am Father Murphy’s great nephew—not his son,” Sean corrected.
“Sorry. I’m not 100% fluent in English—and I misspoke. Anyway, if I show you some things, I won’t have to kill you—but I will have to put a prohibition in your mind, to keep you from telling anyone else,” Ife explained.
“All it does, is if you decide to tell our secrets, you’ll find yourself momentarily unable to speak—though you can speak of anything else that you care to expostulate about. Do you agree to these conditions?” Ife asked.
“A grand and glorious secret? Of course! I agree! Who wouldn’t?” Sean said.
A moment later, Sean was 89 IQ points smarter. He had acquired two-dozen languages. He knew the broad outline of history from Quern’s timeline—and he knew where his own timeline was headed in the historical future.
Furthermore, it was asking too much of a biological brain without an implant to think in 17-S; 5-T Dimensions, but he now had Quern’s old ability to think in 7-S; 3-T. It made any number of things easier to picture, by way of analogy.
“EE…The Great Famine! Father and Mother as well as my brothers and sisters will starve to death!” Sean said as he struggled to rise from the table that he and Ife were seated at.
“Peace, be still!” Ife half-shouted.
“Think! Ramble through the scenarios I’ve given you. You can see that here is no way to avoid the Potato Blight. Every course of action that we have explored, to try to head it off, only make things worse in the end,” Ife said.
“Now, bring to mind everything that you can recall about ‘Triage’ and ‘Survivalism.’ Think of the Jewish Holocaust in WWII. How many pre-WWII Jews could you have persuaded to leave Europe, to avoid the Holocaust, even if you knew that it was coming?” Ife asked.
“We have six-years to persuade most of your family to leave Ireland. Once the famine is in full-swing—say about 1848, or so, the strictures on our actions seem to dissolve,” Ife said.
“Far more food will arrive in this timeline and a huge fleet of wooden ships will take perhaps twice as many emigrants to elsewhere as in the first time around,” Ife said.
“What is wrong, Ife?” Sean said.
Ife looked afraid.
“It will take you awhile to fully assimilate those memories that I have given you. Turn your attention to ‘Chaos Theory’ and the so-called ‘Butterfly Effect’ at some point, over the next few days. We—the Temple Maidens and our Advocates—who won’t materialize here until 1862—are largely working within the framework of a known history. We pretty much know what to expect,’ Ife said.
“Once we start interfering in the course of the Great Famine big-time, all bets are off. We grow farther and farther away from the known timeline and we enter uncharted waters,” Ife said.
“HMMMmmnnn. You are only five years-old?” Sean asked, abruptly changing topics.
“Aye. I’m a gynoid—a synthetic person—though I can and will bear children,” Ife said.
“Now, I feel like I’m robbing the cradle,” Sean said.
“Don’t you dare! I am a full-grown woman, regardless of my chronological age,” Ife insisted.
“I don’t doubt it, but it takes a wee-mite of getting used to,” Sean said.
“Sean, that ring isn’t magic. Don’t fret too much, if you should lose it—but I heartily recommend that you stop by out jewelry shop on your way out, to have it properly sized. That way, you’re far less likely to lose it,” Ife said.
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Post by feralferret on Mar 12, 2023 17:16:11 GMT -6
You make some interesting, if abrupt twists and turns in this story.
Thanks for the new chapter.
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