Old Fragment from "The Expanded Earth" Continuum
Apr 30, 2023 0:15:48 GMT -6
texican, NCWEBNUT, and 3 more like this
Post by rvm45 on Apr 30, 2023 0:15:48 GMT -6
Friends,
Someone asked me about a fragment of a Spin-Off Story in the "Expanded Earth" universe.
I had the world envisioned in great detail, but I couldn't think of a meaningful challenge for the protagonist,
Anyway, here it is…such as it is…
********* *******************
Any school child can tell you that Lee surrendered to Grant on 9 April 1865.
Like it says in the Bible: It is appointed unto all, once to die—but then comes the judgement.
Lee surrendered on 9 April 1865 and on 10 April 1865, the Grand Expansion occurred. It happened about 10:30 am Central Time and by all accounts it was so imperceivable that no one so much as slopped any coffee—or whiskey—from their cup.
I reckon everyone knows about the Grand Expansion. Modern Earth has about as much surface area as Jupiter, but it only has about 80% the surface gravity of Old Earth.
People and animals from the past have reappeared—Neanderthals—even in North America where they never existed previously—homo merganser, wooly mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths, as well as chalicotherium, indricotherium, pteranodons, etcetera.
A lot of folks who had lived in North America over the last 400-years also seem to have come back—especially casualties of the War of Northern Aggression—and quite a few Indians.
That’s okay. Even with all the additions, the New Earth is kinda empty.
All of them seem to have been snatched out of time immediately before they actually expired. Yeah, it is appointed ONCE to die.
Magic works now and one of the most blatant examples of magic is the Libraries.
Each state of the New Knighted States, has at least one Library. Most states have more than one.
No one has tried dropping a nuke on a Library—yet—but they appear to be indestructible.
The doors are open and everyone is welcome to go in. The Libraries contain all the books that would have been written if the Grand Expansion had never occurred.
There is a plaque written in Gaeilge in front of every Library. The Powers That Be (TPTB) were afraid that with an almost inexhaustible frontier, that men might neglect their technological advancements.
All the patents and all the technological information from Old Earth’s original timeline is contained within the Library.
There is more. With the time line greatly distorted, authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephan King, Hunter S Thomson, Tolkien, CS Lewis and Andre Norton would never be born—let alone write their novels—but all of their novels—all the novels that would have been written on Old Earth—are in the Library.
The Library started 50-years ahead of real time—meaning in 1865, you could read books and examine patents from 1915. The time advantage gradually decreased to 30-years—where, according to the plaque, it will stay.
You can walk into a Library, pick up any book of literature, art or history and many technological books and walk out of the Library with them. You will get your own very high quality, leather-bound book with archival quality linen paper and gold-leaf titles and edgings, while the Library will clone a copy for the next fellow who wants one.
Some books—especially books with no copyright or books from more than 30-years in the future—cannot be removed from the Library.
You are free to sit and copy the book as long as you choose to. You can even make color reproductions with colored pencil, magic markers, watercolor or whatever. You can trace. What you cannot do, is take cameras or other electronic or automatic copiers into the Library. Try it. If no one steals your gear, it will be waiting for you on the ground just outside the door, when you exit.
There are water fountains and restrooms in the Library and you can carry a reasonable amount of dry food—but once you leave the library—or even that row of shelves—your odds of ever finding that book again are very remote. It has happened, but very rarely.
A few book-loving children are recruited occasionally, to be Librarians. I was offered the opportunity to be a Librarian and I demurred.
Your friends and family can visit, but Librarians cannot leave the Library. Since they are immortal, sooner or later they have no more contact with the outside, once their friends and family age and die. The visits come to an end.
You very seldom encounter a Librarian, unless you call out for them by name. Sometimes though, they appear unbidden and recommend a book or even a set of books for you.
I have no idea what Librarians do with the bulk of their time, since I declined to become one.
************* ************** *************************
My story properly begins in 1973 when I was in my Junior year of high school.
It is traditional to take the elemental aptitude test at the beginning of one’s Junior year. It isn’t mandatory—but people who haven’t been tested cannot apply for a social security card, get a driver’s license, draw unemployment compensation or welfare, enlist in the military or get any sort of civil service job.
My thoughts were:
“So what!?! Who cares!?!”
Grandma was listed as a member of the Shawnee Nation, so that means I’m listed too. I can get a driver’s license through the Nation and for the other—who cared?
Unfortunately, my father cared. I thought taking the test was preferable to hearing him bitch at breakfast, bitch at supper and bitch till bedtime every day from today forward. As it worked out, it would have been far better to listen to him bitch.
I was in my drawing class—such as it was. I believe that my eyes are my most precious possessions. Even if my eyes were ordinary, they would still be my most treasured possessions, but I see beauty—or at least intricacy—where others see only squalor or tedium.
It is my geas—and my special debt to God, for gifting me my two eyes—to take my eyes to many places and let them see many splendid things.
Also, I have a minor geas to try to translate what my eyes—and my spirit—see, into a form that the mundane—some of the mundane—can appreciate.
At any rate, I was in my drawing class, doing a life study of one of the students—when I was summoned to the office.
‘What in the seven burning Hells have I done now!??!’ I asked myself.
The vice-principal was there, along with the wrestling coach, my academic counselor and two dudes in wizard robes—blue and yellow robes.
The blue-robed dude had two golden stripes across each belled sleeve of his pullover wizard’s robe. That meant that he was a Level-2 Wizard. The dude in yellow had no stripes at all. That meant that he was at least a Level-4 Wizard. He had to be Level-4 to lose the last stripe. God knows how they keep track of their rank after losing the last stripe.
In other words—heap big juju!
“What do you think of your test results?” Yellow asked me.
“I don’t think anything about them. I didn’t care enough to go online and check them,” I said.
“Here they are in hard copy,” Blue said.
He slapped a sheath of green-bar computer paper on the table before me.
I have done a bunch of reading in the Library. Old Earth didn’t have the Internet in 1973—but they did have IBM cards and green-bar paper. Kinda odd, I guess, having the two things together.
My results were:
Lightning Attribute—Epic
Fire Attribute—Epic
Wind Attribute—Epic
Earth Attribute—Legend
Ice Attribute—Legend
Water—98th Percentile
Wood—96th Percentile
Metal—83rd Percentile
Strong potential for TTP
You have to understand percentiles. If you are in the 80th Percentile, that means in any random group of people, you will score better than 80 of them—on average.
There is no 100th Percentile. If you are in the 99th Percentile, 99 people in your group of 100 scored worse than you. You are number 100.
Still, if you gather a bunch of people with 99th Percentile scores, it stands to reason that some of them will be stronger than others.
“Legend” means that in a group of 100, 99th Percentile people, that you are in the top 10.
Gather 100 Legend people and if you are in the top 10, you are “Epic.”
Does “Legend” sound more grandiose than “Epic”? I always thought so. The “Epic” classification came along some years after the “Legend” category—to further sort and dominate the government lackeys.
“Okay. Can I go now? I’m missing art class—which has some bearing on my future—unlike this happy horseshit,” I said.
“Watch your mouth,” the vice-principal warned.
“Watch how you speak to your betters,” I countered.
The vice-principal was a big ugly bruiser—maybe 6-foot 2-inches and maybe 285-pounds, but he had a generous spare tire in his middle age. He had a vicious scar covering one side of his face. Word was, that he had been special forces.
Word also was, that he liked to get physical with troublesome students. I could only hope.
“With scores like yours, you can go straight to a government magic atelier, all expenses paid and a generous stipend,” Yellow said.
“Not interested.”
“Why not?” Blue asked incredulously.
“Do your ateliers have wrestling teams? Cause I’m the favorite to win the heavyweight state championship in wrestling this year,” I said.
“Even if you stay in high school, you won’t be wrestling this season,” Coach said.
“He can’t kick me off the wrestling team with no reason. The fact that these two knob-gobblers want to recruit me, is not a valid reason,” I said, while glaring at the vice-principle.
“I will allow a departure from the strictest interpretation of the rules, in this instance. It is for your own good,” the vice-principal said.
“Of all the chickenshit reasons to bend someone over and sodomize them without any lubrication, ‘for your own good’ is the worst—especially if you are sincere!” I shouted.
“I told you to watch your mouth,” the vice-principal said as he made a fist and drew back slightly.
“Swing at me, if you have the balls. I will leave you crippled and then I will have the Nation sue you for assaulting a minor. You won’t even be able to afford diapers or a wheelchair,” I sang to the vice-principal.
No shit, I get sing-songy when I am enraged.
I saw Blue start to cause his fingers to be covered with a slick, viscous blue translucency.
Laughing Turtle always taught us that wizards are far too dangerous to be cut any slack.
“If your spell doesn’t incapacitate me, I will kill you. If it does incapacitate me and I survive, my life will be put on hold until I locate you and kill you,” I told him.
“He is a member of the Nations. Let him go—for now,” Yellow said.
I backed out the door with a short dagger held hidden in an icepick grip in either hand.
There was nothing in my locker worth the risk of hanging around. Those wizards looked like they meant business, though what kind of business eluded me.
I didn’t go home. I drove my pick-up straight to the reservation.
…..RVM45
Someone asked me about a fragment of a Spin-Off Story in the "Expanded Earth" universe.
I had the world envisioned in great detail, but I couldn't think of a meaningful challenge for the protagonist,
Anyway, here it is…such as it is…
********* *******************
Any school child can tell you that Lee surrendered to Grant on 9 April 1865.
Like it says in the Bible: It is appointed unto all, once to die—but then comes the judgement.
Lee surrendered on 9 April 1865 and on 10 April 1865, the Grand Expansion occurred. It happened about 10:30 am Central Time and by all accounts it was so imperceivable that no one so much as slopped any coffee—or whiskey—from their cup.
I reckon everyone knows about the Grand Expansion. Modern Earth has about as much surface area as Jupiter, but it only has about 80% the surface gravity of Old Earth.
People and animals from the past have reappeared—Neanderthals—even in North America where they never existed previously—homo merganser, wooly mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths, as well as chalicotherium, indricotherium, pteranodons, etcetera.
A lot of folks who had lived in North America over the last 400-years also seem to have come back—especially casualties of the War of Northern Aggression—and quite a few Indians.
That’s okay. Even with all the additions, the New Earth is kinda empty.
All of them seem to have been snatched out of time immediately before they actually expired. Yeah, it is appointed ONCE to die.
Magic works now and one of the most blatant examples of magic is the Libraries.
Each state of the New Knighted States, has at least one Library. Most states have more than one.
No one has tried dropping a nuke on a Library—yet—but they appear to be indestructible.
The doors are open and everyone is welcome to go in. The Libraries contain all the books that would have been written if the Grand Expansion had never occurred.
There is a plaque written in Gaeilge in front of every Library. The Powers That Be (TPTB) were afraid that with an almost inexhaustible frontier, that men might neglect their technological advancements.
All the patents and all the technological information from Old Earth’s original timeline is contained within the Library.
There is more. With the time line greatly distorted, authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephan King, Hunter S Thomson, Tolkien, CS Lewis and Andre Norton would never be born—let alone write their novels—but all of their novels—all the novels that would have been written on Old Earth—are in the Library.
The Library started 50-years ahead of real time—meaning in 1865, you could read books and examine patents from 1915. The time advantage gradually decreased to 30-years—where, according to the plaque, it will stay.
You can walk into a Library, pick up any book of literature, art or history and many technological books and walk out of the Library with them. You will get your own very high quality, leather-bound book with archival quality linen paper and gold-leaf titles and edgings, while the Library will clone a copy for the next fellow who wants one.
Some books—especially books with no copyright or books from more than 30-years in the future—cannot be removed from the Library.
You are free to sit and copy the book as long as you choose to. You can even make color reproductions with colored pencil, magic markers, watercolor or whatever. You can trace. What you cannot do, is take cameras or other electronic or automatic copiers into the Library. Try it. If no one steals your gear, it will be waiting for you on the ground just outside the door, when you exit.
There are water fountains and restrooms in the Library and you can carry a reasonable amount of dry food—but once you leave the library—or even that row of shelves—your odds of ever finding that book again are very remote. It has happened, but very rarely.
A few book-loving children are recruited occasionally, to be Librarians. I was offered the opportunity to be a Librarian and I demurred.
Your friends and family can visit, but Librarians cannot leave the Library. Since they are immortal, sooner or later they have no more contact with the outside, once their friends and family age and die. The visits come to an end.
You very seldom encounter a Librarian, unless you call out for them by name. Sometimes though, they appear unbidden and recommend a book or even a set of books for you.
I have no idea what Librarians do with the bulk of their time, since I declined to become one.
************* ************** *************************
My story properly begins in 1973 when I was in my Junior year of high school.
It is traditional to take the elemental aptitude test at the beginning of one’s Junior year. It isn’t mandatory—but people who haven’t been tested cannot apply for a social security card, get a driver’s license, draw unemployment compensation or welfare, enlist in the military or get any sort of civil service job.
My thoughts were:
“So what!?! Who cares!?!”
Grandma was listed as a member of the Shawnee Nation, so that means I’m listed too. I can get a driver’s license through the Nation and for the other—who cared?
Unfortunately, my father cared. I thought taking the test was preferable to hearing him bitch at breakfast, bitch at supper and bitch till bedtime every day from today forward. As it worked out, it would have been far better to listen to him bitch.
I was in my drawing class—such as it was. I believe that my eyes are my most precious possessions. Even if my eyes were ordinary, they would still be my most treasured possessions, but I see beauty—or at least intricacy—where others see only squalor or tedium.
It is my geas—and my special debt to God, for gifting me my two eyes—to take my eyes to many places and let them see many splendid things.
Also, I have a minor geas to try to translate what my eyes—and my spirit—see, into a form that the mundane—some of the mundane—can appreciate.
At any rate, I was in my drawing class, doing a life study of one of the students—when I was summoned to the office.
‘What in the seven burning Hells have I done now!??!’ I asked myself.
The vice-principal was there, along with the wrestling coach, my academic counselor and two dudes in wizard robes—blue and yellow robes.
The blue-robed dude had two golden stripes across each belled sleeve of his pullover wizard’s robe. That meant that he was a Level-2 Wizard. The dude in yellow had no stripes at all. That meant that he was at least a Level-4 Wizard. He had to be Level-4 to lose the last stripe. God knows how they keep track of their rank after losing the last stripe.
In other words—heap big juju!
“What do you think of your test results?” Yellow asked me.
“I don’t think anything about them. I didn’t care enough to go online and check them,” I said.
“Here they are in hard copy,” Blue said.
He slapped a sheath of green-bar computer paper on the table before me.
I have done a bunch of reading in the Library. Old Earth didn’t have the Internet in 1973—but they did have IBM cards and green-bar paper. Kinda odd, I guess, having the two things together.
My results were:
Lightning Attribute—Epic
Fire Attribute—Epic
Wind Attribute—Epic
Earth Attribute—Legend
Ice Attribute—Legend
Water—98th Percentile
Wood—96th Percentile
Metal—83rd Percentile
Strong potential for TTP
You have to understand percentiles. If you are in the 80th Percentile, that means in any random group of people, you will score better than 80 of them—on average.
There is no 100th Percentile. If you are in the 99th Percentile, 99 people in your group of 100 scored worse than you. You are number 100.
Still, if you gather a bunch of people with 99th Percentile scores, it stands to reason that some of them will be stronger than others.
“Legend” means that in a group of 100, 99th Percentile people, that you are in the top 10.
Gather 100 Legend people and if you are in the top 10, you are “Epic.”
Does “Legend” sound more grandiose than “Epic”? I always thought so. The “Epic” classification came along some years after the “Legend” category—to further sort and dominate the government lackeys.
“Okay. Can I go now? I’m missing art class—which has some bearing on my future—unlike this happy horseshit,” I said.
“Watch your mouth,” the vice-principal warned.
“Watch how you speak to your betters,” I countered.
The vice-principal was a big ugly bruiser—maybe 6-foot 2-inches and maybe 285-pounds, but he had a generous spare tire in his middle age. He had a vicious scar covering one side of his face. Word was, that he had been special forces.
Word also was, that he liked to get physical with troublesome students. I could only hope.
“With scores like yours, you can go straight to a government magic atelier, all expenses paid and a generous stipend,” Yellow said.
“Not interested.”
“Why not?” Blue asked incredulously.
“Do your ateliers have wrestling teams? Cause I’m the favorite to win the heavyweight state championship in wrestling this year,” I said.
“Even if you stay in high school, you won’t be wrestling this season,” Coach said.
“He can’t kick me off the wrestling team with no reason. The fact that these two knob-gobblers want to recruit me, is not a valid reason,” I said, while glaring at the vice-principle.
“I will allow a departure from the strictest interpretation of the rules, in this instance. It is for your own good,” the vice-principal said.
“Of all the chickenshit reasons to bend someone over and sodomize them without any lubrication, ‘for your own good’ is the worst—especially if you are sincere!” I shouted.
“I told you to watch your mouth,” the vice-principal said as he made a fist and drew back slightly.
“Swing at me, if you have the balls. I will leave you crippled and then I will have the Nation sue you for assaulting a minor. You won’t even be able to afford diapers or a wheelchair,” I sang to the vice-principal.
No shit, I get sing-songy when I am enraged.
I saw Blue start to cause his fingers to be covered with a slick, viscous blue translucency.
Laughing Turtle always taught us that wizards are far too dangerous to be cut any slack.
“If your spell doesn’t incapacitate me, I will kill you. If it does incapacitate me and I survive, my life will be put on hold until I locate you and kill you,” I told him.
“He is a member of the Nations. Let him go—for now,” Yellow said.
I backed out the door with a short dagger held hidden in an icepick grip in either hand.
There was nothing in my locker worth the risk of hanging around. Those wizards looked like they meant business, though what kind of business eluded me.
I didn’t go home. I drove my pick-up straight to the reservation.
…..RVM45
