Quern Reboots

[feralferret]

I'm speechless! What a chapter!

Thanks.

[texican]

rvm,

Someone / some thing from a different timeline/universe wrecking havoc has to be stopped. No nukes thru the worm hole?

Thanks for the chapter.

Texican....

[rvm45]

Chapter Thirty-Three


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Beauregard piloted the quadcopter towards the incredibly huge daemon death’s-head.

“Geez, that thing gives me the Willies!” Beauregard said while they were still a good 30-miles away.

“Sorry that you came?” Jo-Jo asked absentmindedly as he twisted and twiddled knobs.

“Nah,” was the reply.

“That thing’s radius of attack is about 18-miles. That’s why that it has to nibble away at the canals instead of swallowing them in one fell swoop. I need you to close in to 19 or 20-miles,” Jo-Jo said.

“It is best, if you can circle it. Watch out. It has some capacity to leap suddenly and try to bring you within range. You’ll have to dodge it as long as possible. The longer this goes on, the harder it will become to dodge. It will become faster and its bite will increase—marginally—over time,” Jo-Jo said.

“Jo-Jo, what if we can give Quern his 2-hours—even say, 3-hours, just to make it an even number, could we break off then?” Beauregard asked.

“Ever hear about the man riding a tiger? He didn’t realize that he had a problem until he wanted to get off. Once we break off, we’re goners. We might as well use our lives to buy every last second—just in case someone on our side can make use of those seconds,” Jo-Jo replied.

“Yippie—Kie-Ayy!” Beauregard shouted.

As Jo-Jo made use of the ability granted by the red serum and his artifact to crunch numbers, like numbers were going out of style and were on a close-out sale, a red aura enveloped Jo-Jo; then the cockpit and then the whole quadcopter.

Beauregard only had a small fragment of an artifact tip in his brain—and he had never taken the red serum. The red serum in him, would be like giving Viagra to a woman. There was nothing for the red serum to work on.

However, like all of the hybrids, Beauregard was inherently capable of visualizing 7-S; 3-T space. He had made use of his enhanced power of visualization to make a number of mathematical; electronic and programming innovations.

Caught in the red aura, Beauregard’s artifact fragment started to grow excruciatingly slowly and Beauregard’s sense of time and space expanded.

For the barest moment at a time, Beauregard’s ability to visualize abstract higher dimensional spaces expanded to 8-S—and more rarely, 9-S. Meanwhile, his sense of time randomly expanded briefly to 3.5 or 3.6-T.

The fractional number meant that he could visualize some simple and limited instances of 4-T time—very briefly, even then.

Beauregard was no longer flying with his eyes and sense of balance. He was mentally manipulating a 5-Dimensional sphere through a vividly colored 7-Dimensional landscape that included 3-time axis—and occasionally 4-time axis.

It was like a beautifully rendered 7-dimensional version of “Escapa”—only, Beauregard and Jo-Jo’s life was hanging in the balance every instant.

Beauregard’s mind was in a state out of time and out of space. He was taking his tactics from the estate that is beyond right and wrong. He wasn’t aware that he had exceeded every possible expectation that Jo-Jo had for him and he had danced and avoided the daemon head for 4-hours and 13-minutes, when the quadcopter coughed and started to run out of fuel.

There hadn’t been time to fully top off the fuel tanks before they took off. There had been more than enough fuel for their most optimistic survival projection—and less fuel made for a lighter and more responsive quadcopter.

The death’s head abruptly swallowed the quadcopter and gave Jo-Jo and Beauregard a vicious crunch.


“The Bamboo Fallen;
“Will Rise Again;
“While the Snow that Flattens it,
“Scatters and is Gone.”


*********** ************** ***********************


“Well we barely made the airport for the last plane out
“As we taxied down the runway I could hear the people shout
“They said, ‘Don’t come back here Yankee!’
“But if I ever do
“I’ll bring more money
‘“Cause all she wants to do is dance…”


Quern; Debra and several others boarded a space-shuttle at the spaceport in Limón in what had been Costa Rica in another timeline.

As the acceleration pushed Quern into the couch, he felt a mental connection to Jo-Jo via their artifacts.

Numbers; equations and multi-dimensional geometric figures flowed into Quern’s consciousness. Jo-Jo wanted Quern to have the advantage of the astounding flood of data that he was gleaning—from his electronic instruments; from the hyper-stimulation of his artifact and from his proximity to the extra-dimensional AI daemon.

‘I see that the Backers were full of shit!’ Quern thought.

The Backers believed that they had wrapped up all of the underlying principles of the multiverse in a 17-S; 5-T plenum. It ill-behooved Quern to be dogmatic, but…

His new understanding required at least 19-S; 7-T—maybe more—maybe a lot more.

TPTB were small-time shitepokes. The people—the beings—behind the daemon death’s head probably could not stand against the full might of the Backers—if they ever met, head-to-head.

The fact was though, with all their assumed near-omniscience, the Backers had no clue that there were rival groups of inter-dimensional travelers.

That was because they had limited themselves to their own cloistered parochial 17-S; 5-T plenum and no other group had come across their small enclave—yet…

Quern’s unorthodox sidestep in the timestream had unknowingly taken him outside the Backer’s multiverse.

Also, now Quern knew that the daemon’s masters were able to locate his base of operation, due to the wholesale lots of soil; rock and flotsam that Quern had cast into otherwhen while building his canals.

“What did that mean, when you said:

‘“Release the Kraken’?” Elmira asked.

“The old Golden-Eye Virus was fairly mild—although it was nothing for old people to dick with. I tried to improve it. I only partially succeeded. The disease will rewrite the DNA of the affected. It will give increased intelligence; senses and longevity to any human that contracts it,” Quern said.

“It essentially turns a human being into a hybrid—minus the double-thumbs. All of the affected person’s children will be full-fledged hybrids though,” Quern said.

“The virus is very virulent and very hard to protect against. It has a long gestation period during which it is infectious but there are no outward symptoms…”

“And it has a death rate of about 40%,” Quern said.

“Turning it loose, means the end of humanity, doesn’t it?” Elmira asked.

“Yeah, everyone who survives will be a hybrid. If by some chance, a few escape being infected—their children will be infected eventually—and failing even that, old humans will be very rare and interbreeding with hybrids means hybrid offspring,” Quern said.

“But the question is—how many humans were going to survive the jihad that Hedayati has launched? All the dust and all the calderas eruptions—not to mention radioactive fallout…”

“And the long-term climatic effects from rim-wrecking Central America—there is an ice age imminent—if the air doesn’t become too toxic to even breath. And the lucky few survivors will be slaves of Hedayati,” Quern said.

“Hybrids are stronger; more poison resistant; longer lived; have far higher IQs and better senses. They will have a slightly better chance to survive in the new world. I’ve even included downloads along with the virus, with a lot of technical knowledge and survival skills,” Quern said.

“Won’t the survivors still be under Hedayati’s iron rule?” Elmira asked.

“Not so much. Hedayati’s brainwashing tweak won’t work on a hybrid’s brain. Many who were already committed to Hedayati, may stay loyal—but they will have far more IQ to internally question whether Hedayati truly seems like a god,” Quern explained.

“Hedayati can make future converts by persuasion, but his tweak will no longer be effective. And, people that Hedayati has tweaked have about 25% less chance of surviving the virus—that is only 45% of Hedayati’s tweaked should survive as opposed to about a 60% survival rate for the overall population.” Quern said.

“Besides, I only meant to release the unperfected virus when things had gone to Hell in a handbasket. Have you heard of the ‘Orion’ spaceship? It flies by setting an atom bomb off underneath and then surfing the resulting shockwave,” Quern said.

“It works, but it isn’t nearly as advantageous in space. It is a bit pollutive to the atmosphere. Also, I wanted to keep atomic weapons secret as long as possible…” Quern said.

“However, it is a bang-up way to cheaply launch thousands of tons into space fast—and we’re at the point that a few Orion bombs, more or less, ain’t gonna make a like whole Hell of a lot of difference to the Earth’s ecology,” Quern said.

“We already have the bare minimum to start an extra-terrestrial civilization on the Moon; Mars; O’ Neil colonies and the Asteroids. All those thousands of tons of material—including several nuclear reactors—will supercharge our space colonization. When the Kraken is released, Orion shall rise!”

As he talked with Elmira, Quern felt a sharp pain in his head—and in his inner being as well…

Then the pain stopped and there was only a vast feeling of emptiness.

“I’m sorry Elmira. Jo-Jo and Beauregard just left this world for otherwhen. I don’t think that we’ll ever see them again—a least, not until Judgement Day,” Quern said.


*********** ************** ********************

The death’s head carried on its march toward Managua now that the pesky mayflies with the jamming device were eliminated.

There was a ragged 5-mile wide trench, canal or fissure reaching from the Isthmus Canal to the Managua Canal. The death’s head hogged the Managua Canal into another ragged 150-mile wide fissure. Then the death’s head started excavating a 5-mile trench through Central America on its way to hog out the Panama Canal.

It ate the occasional mountain that got in its path in the same nonchalant manner that it ate dirt and earth on the straightaway.

Once the Panama Canal was hogged out to its satisfaction, it went down the seacoast to Brazil. It could make much better time when flying freely than when it ate everything in its path like Pac-Man.

By this time, the refugees from Nicaragua and other places had made it to one or another of the geosynchronous satellites.

Quern didn’t think that the damned thing could go into near-Earth space—but there were no consolation prizes if he guessed wrong. Key personnel transferred to shuttles designed to transfer people from near-Earth orbit to the Lagrange Points—or to the Moon—and they bravely ran away away.

“No! Don’t tell me!” Quern expostulated.

“What?” Debra said.

“The daemon is moving up the Amazon—widening and deepening it as it goes. It apparently means to largely destroy the Amazon Jungle and plow a 150-mile wide sea channel through South America. Debra, that creature is single-handedly creating an extinction-level event—and I cannot do a single damned thing to obstruct it!” Quern said.

“Calculate just how many extra people that we can accommodate over the next few years. In 5-years, if there aren’t more than twice as many O’ Neil Colonies, then we’re hurtin’ for certain anyway. Lift off as many refugees as possible. Concentrate on areas where there are Temple Maidens and have the Temple Maidens gather together suitable children. We can lift 2.5 or 3 children for the same weight penalty as for one adult,” Quern said.

“Aren’t you going to try to rescue as many of your Temple Maidens as possible?” Debra asked.

“Nah, to begin with, although Temple Maidens are obedient, they aren’t above arguing. They all tend to be big muscular girls. How many instances of a Temple Maiden arguing to take 3 or 4 of her students, instead of her, do I need to slow down the process to a fatal degree?” Quern said.

“Second, the Temple Maiden’s greatest pride is to serve—not necessarily me, but God,” Quern added.

“Third, all of the Temple Maidens will travel with us, to our next destination anyway,” Quern said.

Meanwhile, over 2 centuries of life and the death of her son had seemed to stretch Elmira’s rubber band to the point of snapping. She sat and sang the same old nonsense song over and over and over again.

“Cooma-Lotta; Cooma-Lotta; Cooma-La Vista.
“No No No No Not the Vista!
“Einie-Meanie; Deci-Meanie; OO Wallah-Wallah Meanie!”


After she sang the verses through for about the one-hundredth time, she stopped and stared intently at Quern.

“When I transmigrate this time, will I get a full artifact like my son had?” she asked.

“Possibly. Probably. I don’t know,” Quern said.

“If not the next time, I should get one eventually?”

“I think so,” Quern said.

“When I used to hear that song, I used to wonder what was so terrifying about ‘The Vista,’ that it made people quake in terror and say ‘No! No! No! No!’ When I have my artifact, I will find The Vista—whatever it turns out to be. I will trace that devil’s head back to its source and the hills will run red with blood!” Elmira vowed.

She got out her Meerschaum pipe.

“Does anyone have any hash or grass? I seem to have lost mine in the shuffle,” Elmira said.

[feralferret]

RVM45, thanks for the new chapter.

[rvm45]

Chapter Thirty-Four

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Space might have been the “Final Frontier,” as William Shatner solemnly intoned at the beginning of each original “Star Trek” episode, but it was an extraordinarily boring frontier.

Living in a small space station or base was much like living aboard a submarine. Even living in a large O’ Neil Colony was much like living on a big 20th Century aircraft carrier.

Who wanted to live cheek-by-jowl with a bunch of people? There was no way to go squirrel or rabbit hunting. You couldn’t shoot a .44 Magnum off the back porch, to start the morning off right. You couldn’t even be alone for any length of time…

Yeah sure, you could lock yourself in your quarters—if your situation allowed personal quarters—but it was like being locked in an average-sized bathroom in an average Earthly abode.

There wasn’t much of anywhere left—at least anywhere half-decent—that wasn’t in space anymore.

Once the Panama Canal was all hogged out, the death’s head had slowed down considerably. It proceeded to cut a 150-mile wide channel through South America at the rate of 5-to-8 miles per day. It moved slowly, but there was no way to stop it—or even to slow it down.

Quern had planned ahead. If he ever needed to release the Kraken Virus; he wanted it to spread quickly. His agents released the virus on every continent, except Antarctica, in numerous locations.

Of course, some of his agents were dead or compromised, but for such an important matter, Quern had more than adequate redundancy.

The virus spread, as the death’s head cut a swath through South America.

Once South America was thoroughly rim-wrecked, the death’s head crossed the Pacific Ocean towards Australia.

The death’s head seemed drawn toward areas where Quern had made canals—though Quern certainly hadn’t created the Amazon River.

The death’s head seemed determined to cut a 100-mile wide swath running North and South through Australia, neatly bisecting the continent into two roughly equal halves…

But it halted when its self-appointed task was just over halfway completed and it simply faded out of existence.

The death’s head drew its energy from the souls of the enslaved—and as the virus set many entranced free and as the virus killed other entranced, the amount of energy available to sustain the death’s head fell below its threshold requirements.

It was a pyrrhic victory. Earth was pretty much thoroughly bolloxed.

The near eradication of Central America and the huge channel through South America had greatly altered the Gulf Stream.

Much of Europe was much farther North than most people realized and it was kept habitable—to the degree that it was habitable—largely because the Gulf Stream brought warm water from the tropics and the warm water eventually warmed the air enough to make a difference…

But not so much anymore.

“Nuclear Winter” was largely junk science created by people who wanted the NKS’s only possible response to a “No-Back-Down Ultimatum” to be preemptive surrender.

Quern couldn’t see backing down and living as slaves, even if the alternative was wiping out all life on Earth.

“Screw it! Let us perish together!” was Quern’s motto.

The idea that there were enough Nuclear Weapons to wipe out all life on Earth was a hubris inspired notion, that Doomies were greatly enamored of. However, there had never been enough Nuclear Weapons to 100% wipe out humanity, much less all life on Earth.

Nonetheless, there were things—like calderas eruptions—that had the potential to bring about a new ice age. Yeah, the right amount of volcanic gases spewed into the air all at once, just might wipe out humanity and even much of the life on Earth.

Hedayati’s otherwhen bombs had launched massive amounts of dust into the air—more than a total, Spasm Nuclear War would have created.

Then Quern’s “Rods from God” and his all-out Nuclear Strikes had launched even more dust into the atmosphere—along with fair amounts of radiation…

Then the death’s head had gone on a rampage.

Even hogging out the Tehuantepec Canal—in and of itself—had started a number of Mexican and Central American volcanoes in motion.

By the time that the death’s head had petered out, there were a half-dozen calderas eruptions in full swing—set off by the continual gigantic tremors in the Earth’s mantle.

It wasn’t as if you could cut a 150-mile swath through the Andes Mountains without shaking things up considerably.

Then there was the previous devastation of very large areas due to Hedayati’s scorched-Earth warfare…followed up by Quern’s Kraken Virus…

Yeah, Earth was in a very bad way.

Quern’s agents scavenged everything that they could and launched as much of it into near-Earth orbit as possible. Mining on the Moon and in the Asteroids went into the highest gear possible.

The best way to ensure that mankind survived, seemed to be to increase the number of O’ Neil and Lunar Colonies as quickly as possible. The day might soon be coming when The Earth was no longer even marginally habitable.

Quern wasn’t too badly off. He had both rank and riches and both had certain prerogatives.

Quern’s home had once been a huge spherical hollow in the Lunar Rock, a couple of miles below the Moon’s surface. His engineers had made the cavity air-tight, while filling the huge ball up to the halfway point with soil largely created from finely ground Lunar regolith, with some organic factors added.

The chamber had about 17-square miles of surface. It was indirectly lit by huge grow-lights that actually supplied much more of the photosynthetic wavelengths than natural sunlight.

A little over one-square mile was given over to intensive agriculture—and the other 16+ square-miles were a genetically altered Temperate Hardwood Forest.

It might seem ruinously luxuriant to have 16+ square-miles given over to forest, simply to help keep Quern’s claustrophobia at bay—but Quern was the leader. If his nerves were frayed, the bad decisions that he made, could negatively affect everyone.

And it wasn’t as if none of the forest’s products were put to good use.

The long-term effects of low-gravity on the human body were largely unknown.

People seemed to tolerate the 80% gravity of the early space stations quite well. Some of the O’ Neil Colonies had been experimenting with 70% and even 60% gravity, but the long-term results hadn’t yet come in.

Most people were convinced that long-term colonists on the Moon would need to use centrifuges at least several hours per week, to keep their bodily integrity intact. Mars—no one really knew if Martian Colonists would need to use centrifuges.

However, hybrid bodies had little need for exercise. A hybrid who never so much as took a lick at a snake, would stay at about 96% fitness. Hybrid bodies also had a very strict limit on how much fat they would accrue.

Sure, if there were hybrid Olympics, it would behoove a would-be medalist to exercise and practice diligently. The hybrid body didn’t need exercise to stay strong and fit enough for all practical purposes though.

A hybrid body didn’t need gravity to stay fit either.

Lunar gravity was 18% of Earth’s and in addition, the air in Quern’s bubble was noticeably thick.

If one roughly tripled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, humans—and other vertebrates—would start to have trouble with drowsiness and reduced intelligence.

You could slightly more than double Earth’s CO2 content with no problem—and the extra CO2 would, all else being equal, supercharge plant growth.

CO2 content is measured in parts-per-million though. Doubling it wouldn’t make the air noticeably thicker.

Quern started with the air pressure on the shores of the Dead Sea. He doubled the CO2; he added one PSI of Argon and then he added enough Oxygen to bring the O2 content from about 20% to 30%.

Air pressure had gone from about 14.5 PSI on Earth to almost 20 PSI.

Low gravity + thick atmosphere + high Oxygen content = awesome potential for flight.

Indeed, Quern was able to fly in his small enclave, via the use of strap-on wings—much like Icarus and Daedalus.

Quern ran 7-months of 24-hour-per-day sunlight in the cave, followed by a brief Winter to reset the genetically altered hardwood trees—and to control the insect population.

Even with 17+ square-miles to wander in and the ability to fly, Quern often had to choke down the feeling of being buried alive. It wasn’t solely because he was far under the Lunar ground. Space just made him feel claustrophobic.

Parenthetically, virtually all of the hybrids smoked. It had been a challenge to come up with genetically altered tobacco and the proper cut and density of tobacco to let cigarettes burn properly in an atmosphere of 30% oxygen.

When Quern was a boy, everyone had just assumed that space-farers would smoke—the same as virtually everyone smoked back then. Well it wasn’t that easy to create a ventilation and life-support system that allowed burning cigarettes—much less pipe or cigars—in the limited atmosphere.

Fifty years later, the busy-body state had spoon-fed a couple or three generations full of vicious anti-tobacco propaganda and the idea that people would smoke cigarettes in space became as improbable as the idea that people would be allowed to carry personal weapons in space.

Then Quern, with his strong views, had brought back both personal weapons and cigarettes into space.

It didn’t actually need Quern. Any hybrid was far too wed to his tobacco to give it up without a monumental struggle.

*********** ************* *******************

The methods to terraform Mars or Venus was in the primitive stages even in the 2040’s that Quern had access to in his memories.

Most thought that Mars could be terraformed eventually—if you had 200—500 years to wait. It might be an impossible task to terraform Venus--ever.

There were crack-brained schemes to move Mars closer to the Sun and to move both Venus and Mercury further from the Sun—but unless your technology was godlike, such moving of the orbits would take thousands of years.

Yeah, there were half-vast schemes to create gigantic sunshades for Venus and Mercury to cool them down. Quern didn’t like such schemes.

It was okay to use technology to terraform a planet. Then, presumably, you had a planet where people could live and be free. It didn’t really seem like freedom, if you had to continually pay “Rent” via keeping your sunscreens in operation.

Quern felt that if Earth gave up the ghost, that mankind should have a natural planet or two.

He set his researchers to diligently work out some of the stresses and strains of terraforming.

Hell, Quern—or his successors—might very well get to try to terraform the Earth to make it habitable once more.

Hybrids had about a 200-year life expectancy. Quern’s friends and his key personnel had a 500-600-year lifespan. Quern’s own lifespan was extrapolated to be somewhat over 1000-years…

Even Quern wasn’t likely to be around long enough to see the results of some of the longer-term terraforming projects.

Quern sent his agents to diligently search for other large volcanic Lunar “bubbles.” It seemed though, that he had really lucked out when he found this hollow sphere. It seemed to be asking too much to expect to find a larger space to move into.

They say that time flew when one is having fun. Quern had learned though, that time does pass eventually, even under the most trying circumstances.

Hedayati seemed to have vanished from the Earth. Whoever was behind Hedayati seemed to have lost all interest in Earth once the Kraken Virus contaminated their food supply.

Earth didn’t continue to deteriorate, but neither did it make any great improvements. It just limped along, covered in ice; with an atmosphere that barely missed being toxic. Indeed, going about on the surface without a respirator and closed-environment suit would drastically shorten one’s lifespan.

The few surviving enclaves of humanity on Earth had dug in and created underground cities where crops were grown underground by means of grow-lights.

A few were powered by hydro-electricity or geothermal energy but most used the nuclear reactors that Quern had supplied with a lavish hand. Things were already desperate—letting out the secret of nuclear power was a minor consideration.

Quern tried to aid the surface survivors as much as possible while building space colonies at ever-increasing rates and evacuating as many of the willing to his newly created space colonies as possible.

Eventually, the year 2060 arrived. TPTB might arrive at any time.

Quern was not under the misapprehension that TPTB would take one look at this bolloxed timeline, throw up their hands and go elsewhere.

Nah.

Even if this timeline was of no value, it was a priceless stepping-stone for the timeline-hopping TPTB to go on to their next would-be conquest.

Quern was expecting a battle—but nothing like what ensued.

[feralferret]

RVM45, thanks for the new chapter.
It looks like Quern may be going from the frying pan into the fire when TPTB arrive.