Short Fiction: Blue Light Special

BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL: ORIGIN OF BLUEJAY

"Last night the Rockies were devastated by some as yet unidentified event," Roger Mae stood in a decimated wasteland. "What I do know for certain is the Sky over the Rockies was lit by what multiple witnesses describe as an intense blue light right before an explosion and fireball that lit up the sky."
"I am standing in what used to be Farmland." The diminutive reporter struggled to maintain his composure amongst the ashes of a cremated rural paradise surrounded by a wall of once snow covered Rocky Mountains. "Every living thing is gone."
"Karl, the Camera, can you get that?" The Camera turns to catch the sight of Military helicopters landing in a blizzard of Ash. "The Military are just Arriving."
"Though there is absolutely nothing they can do for the thousands of victims who resided in
this place," Soldiers in unfamiliar silver suits deployed from the rear of the helicopter. "or the billions of people around the World expecting answers."
"This is Roger Mae," Roger paned into view as Karl Whyte adjusted the focus of his attention to one of the specialists emerging from the troop transport helicopter. "Reporting for Channel Seven to you from what used to be Jackson's Hole."

"And we're here," Jane dropped her backpack on the ground and looked around at Aisha and back at the view down to Jackson's Hole. "I told you...its Awesome."
"Awesome." Aisha lowered her pack, breathing laboured by more walking than she had done in a week. "We are a mile from that...what ever that building down there is."
"The word you are going for is 'Farm'." Jane raked the ground of rocks creating a clear area devoid of Rocks where the tent could go. "And this is where we are camping for the evening."
"I do appreciate the effort you put into this relationship," Aisha pulled the orange tent from its pack and it exploded into shape catching the breeze like a kite forcing her to drag it to the ground where Jane could help hold it down. "You know that right?"
"I know." Jane pulled her pack straight into the tent ending its prospects of liberation and looked at Aisha. "And...I still reject your reality and substitute my own."
"Dont do that." Aisha watched Jane crawl into the tent. "I'm being serious and you go all Joker on me."
"Just saying," Aisha held her pack in front of the tent expectantly waiting for the voice in the tent to take her pack. "Its important to me you experience the things in life I enjoy."
"I do." Jane pulled the pack inside smiling to herself. "But Relationships are built on conversations."
"Yeah...I get it." Jane confronted Aisha as she entered the tent. "Conversations that could have happened in the nice warm apartment with popcorn and a blanket rather than with tree hugging."
"And rocks." Aisha breathed in the cold air and sealed them in. "And cold."
"Is my little Harlequin cold?" Jane draped a blanket across Aisha's back and hugged her. "Let your Joker warm you up."

It was dark when Jane emerged from the tent. The cold bit at her naked body and burned her lungs. "Jane?" Jackson's hole was lit by man-made light here and there but the mountainside was dark and Aisha's voice carried. "Where are you?
"Shhh..."Jane looked at the Tent. "You will scare away the stars."
"Jane?" Aisha emerged. "What are you doing?"
"Watching." Aisha, cold, barefoot, and naked, wrapped her arms around Jane for warmth and looked skyward. "the Stars."
"Okay," The dark lit sapphire and Aisha felt her heart race with Jane's heart. "Wow what is that?"
"I don't know." The blue light poured on them from above, Jane reaching skyward to shade their sight of it until they were crushed beneath its weight. "I'm Sorry."

"I'm sorry." Jane desperately drew air into her lungs. "Aisha, I'm sorry."
"Aisha?" Jane wanted to pull her self from the weight that pinned her down. Wanted to be back in the arms of Aisha. "Aisha?"
"Anyone?" Jane tried to open her eyes. "Please."
"Please," If only she could see what was going on. "Help."
"Please," Jane could feel warmth that felt like daylight. "Is anyone there?"
"I can't see." Jane wanted to be lying in the sunlight with Aisha. "Aisha. Please Aisha."

"Jane?" Aisha felt hot, her naked body burning with the sensation. "What happened?"
"Jane?" Aisha opened her eyes and saw light and shadows flickering in the edge of her vision. "What was that blue light?"
"Who?" She was being touched. The light and the shadow seemed to be taking turns. The very idea gave rise to panic. "Jane!"
"Jane!" The sensation of a needle pricked her arm and she felt drowsy. The dark attacked her. "Please stop."
"I want..." She didn't have the strength to resist."...go home."

"Aisha?" She could smell Aisha. The sheets and pillow cases. Jane opened her eyes. She was home. "Hello?"
"Aisha?" The crushing weight was gone but it was replaced with pain. Jane struggled to stand. Every part of her wanted to go back to bed. She could manage a crawl across the bedding, discovering the television remote.
"Oh thank God..." The Television flicked on revealing a chaos filled with the footage of a bombing in some Mountainous war zone. Dead Soldiers? Did they have to show their bodies before she recognised the location. "Aisha?"

"And here it is again." The Camera watched as soldiers carried a body toward the helicopter and into the back while other soldiers stood guard while the voice of the surprisingly amazing Roger Mae gave a description of the events they were seeing. "A survivor pulled from the ashes of Jackson Hole."
"And now, the glow of blue light erupts from the helicopter," The Helicopter erupted in blue fire, igniting the air. The explosion tore their world apart as the camera caught a great blue bird rising up from the destruction and the camera zoomed in on some speckle on the footage to reveal a naked woman. "And there she is, our new Female Overlord."
"Are you getting this?" Jane watched the camera follow the blue bird fly through the air back to where the soldiers found her. The Blue bird tore at the ground lifting boulders, one after the next aside until she finds something broken. "And there she pulls something from the rubble before her blue light erupts like a Supernova."
"And now the blue light cooks the camera." The voice of Roger Mae ended and Jane panicked at the very idea that Aisha was that...blue bird. "I watched as the blue bird, screaming, flew away."

"Bluejay," Jane breathed deeply. Aisha must of found her and taken her home. Jane laughed as tears filled her eyes. "She loved Bluejays."

Age of Warp: cards 54-56

 A replacement kobyashi maru, a rogue planet named phet rhok, and a water world named aquarii.

Stellar Cartography: Spotting an Exoplanet

Lets say you have a nifty photograph of another star like Proxima Centauri. You want to see an actual exoplanet. First off you need to get rid of all the brightness of the image.
With some contrast and brightness adjustment, you can reduce low brightness stars sufficiently to catch a peek. In this case we get a huge blue sphere about ten percent smaller than the physical size of the star (had we the capacity to strip back every ounce of light) orbiting at a distance of five Proxima Centauri diameters from Proxima Centauri and further afield a greyish rock (multiple images means it was moving and in one of those odd orbits) perhaps a quarter of the diameter of big blue.
We can develop a complex image of these planets by sampling the pixels, and it provides us with an approximation of what the planets are like visibly.

What distinguishes these bodies from background noise is the way the darkest pixels line up through the lightest pixels pointing at the star.

Are we looking at the Intruder orbit planet swinging in and the orbiting (and apparently massive) Planet P? Proxima B is considered much closer by comparison... certainly not a distance five times the diameter of Proxima.

Star Trek: The End of the Starship Age

As much as I (and you) might love starships, fleets, the idea of engaging in battle with aliens, we cant explore the Universe if we are tied down to the concept of the starship. For Star trek, the limits of the ship, the idea of crews, a quasi-military expeditionary force going boldly into the heavens, on the slow arc of human evolution. The age of the starship is almost done for Star Trek, Science Fiction, and for us.

Almost Done.

A Drone Carry-All Future
We ditch the current concept of manned starfleet vessels, and we separate the naecelles and reactor from the crew pod. suddenly our AI controlled Carry-all can move a 'saucer' filled with crew, a box filled with cargo, or even a Transporter room so we can transport people. For a shuttle pod, maybe the future involves ditching the passenger pod all together. If a force field is good enough then we only need a small naecelle and reactor unit and a force field bubble to get us there. So we have eliminated most of the ship mass by simply going with a shield. The only reason we needed the ship was as habitat in case of environmental issues.

The Holographic Ship
With an entirely holographic ship, we need what? The capacity to create and project the ship around us. So we reduce our ship down to the reactor and AI with holographic projector.  Now the away team are simply picked up and taken to their destination by a warp core with a holographic projector that creates the ship. Considering photons and matter are particle and wave, how about an entangle of strings projecting an entire starship. If its that simple, then its the same whether the carry-all moves a hundred people, or just one.

The End of the Starship Era
If we can be picked up by the idea of a starship, transporting us alone out into the Universe...sustaining us as we go visit the Borg. Humanity. Starfleet. These concepts fail, left behind with the Idea that there needs to be a hierarchy with a Captain making decisions for the rest. the fact is its a Remnant of the same primitive beliefs that hold us back and having captains impose their fears on future generations will only harm us. Humans...one, then more begin going out in groups and smaller and smaller as humanity disapates across the galaxy, exploring increasingly alone. The Starship ends with our freedom from one another. To boldly go and explore and discover.

Alone.

Star Trek: The search for FTL

Searching For FTL By Going Real Fast
As the ship accelerates, our perception of frequencies shift. Light approaching at low frequency is percieved to be a higher frequency light, and we see lower frequency light slide into our visible light spectrum until we have vanished into the Radio frequencies toward almost zero hertz. What is down there at near to zero hertz? Who can say, but we have yet to hit FTL. Acceleration doesnt appear to be the solution to getting to FTL. Certainly we are going places, but we are not reaching light speed. Acceleration carried us into lower frequency light (from the earth observer) and conceivably we expect to reach FTL at zero frequency -the limit for matter and energy in our limited reality.
Somehow we hit zero hertz and find light is a standing wave harmonic for some omega molecule or god particle. Perhaps a harmonic node where all our percieved light goes to zero. We didnt reach FTL, but we dont reach true zero frequency either.
We continued down in earth observer frequency until the frequencies of light that create earth or the ship, or us dont even exist, but lets say we could go faster, further, deeper going into negative earth observer frequency light, taking us even deeper down toward earth observer FTL even though we are now travelling backward through time for light from the perspective of the earth observer, we are still in the bandwidth of frequency for the larger, deeper Universe.

No...no FTL here.

Star trek: You will look smashing in Purple

The new klingons for Startrek Discovery struck me as Narn-ish, their very particular dysentery custard, bald with weird leather armor, and then we get this guy. Purple klingons. Suddenly we are faced with Drazi Purple. from the forehead plate, to the blade ridge in the chin cleft.
For a company beating on fan films for assaulting their copyright, this seems hypocritical. Lets just terminate copyright after the last episode of TOS is broadcast and public domain the cultural property that has since the beginning been contributed to by the fans on a global scale. If it had not, trek would have never been anything other than that nineteen sixties holywood production where one of the show runners raped an actress on the show and was cancelled after a declining third season.

This is why I make my scifi fiction public domain. Because it protects future generations from evil scum looking for a buck, yet lack the ability to create their own. scifi will be best served by public domain growth in the hands of fans.

Now I got over my moment of disgust...

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Dungeon Mastery: Locoweed from the Dread Isle

LOCOWEED

Cost: 1gp per ounce of fresh picked purple leaf (provides two hours of boosted morale through leaf consumption), 10gp per ounce of Poison extract (providing one ounce of extract per destroyed plant rootstock that causes a stupor).

Native Location (Thanegioth Archipelago), Isle of Dread (Long Lake Marsh).

Locoweed, the young purple leaves picked fresh and chewed, will for two hours after consumption greatly increase the Morale of the imbider though it increases agressiveness as a side effect. The plant itself is far more diverse than the consumption of fresh leaves for a morale boost. Dried leaves may be burned in a brazier and the smoke inhaled giving Druids the ability to meditate for spells as though they had yet to do so. The root may be crushed fresh to extract a juice which serves as a poison causing the victim to fall into a stupor and become easily suggestible and manipulated. The root may be soaked in flowing stream water so the poisons are neutralized that the root may be reduced to a paste which will heal when applied to a wound.

NPCs and living monsters consuming the fresh picked leaves gain a +6 Morale Boost for two hours though they become Agressive in Reaction Rolls.

Any Druid inhaling the smoke from burning dried leaves will gain the ability to recover all forgotten spells that day. It is worthless for anyone else to do so.

Anyone drinking an ounce of the extract, even mixed in some other food or drink must save vs poison at -1 or fall into a stupor and become suggestible as though the victim had failed against a charm person spell. The effects of the root extract last twenty four hours. Further application of the extract before the root wears off will cause the victim to experience a toxic build up experienced as a bitter taste. The victim is from this point onward dying. The only cure is a polymorph spell the victim turned into a dinosaur altering their blood in doing so.

Correctly processing the root by soaking it in a flowing stream for twenty four hours ensures that when the root is then reduced to a paste and applied to a wound, the paste heals the victim of 1d6 hitpoints damage as a potion of healing. The paste of a root soaked for less than twenty four hours in a flowing stream will poison the recipient of the paste. No saving throw versus poison.

Druids indulging in the repeated burning and inhaling of the smoke of the leaf within twenty four hours open their minds to the natural world to which they connect. Their minds may regress permanantly to an earlier evolutionary form.

D6        Regression

1-3        No effect this time

4-5        Neanderthal*

6           Dinosaur**

* A Neanderthal can still be a druid, although they will experience some loss of primary abilities in accordance with neanderthals.

** Reduced to little more than a very smart predator, the Druid will attack even friends.