Reflections on the Hypothetical [fanfic] (DISCO INFERNO)

[Boris Norris]

Why isn't Alex's beard growing?

[ed_montague]

Why isn't Alex's beard growing?

Either a) in the future the military does something to your face to prevent excessive hair growth, b) the Loroi have provided him with a razor or similar utensil, or c) Alex just can't grow a beard.

[Fotiadis_110]

actually i do wonder, do Loroi have 'unseemly' body hair that would encourage the invention of first the razor and later the safety razor?

Come to think of it, given their society wouldn't it be considered 'childish' to use a safety razor? (because a TRUE Loroi would not need such a safety measure)

[Michael]

Real man drink vodka! or at least try to.

......no real Russians drink vodka, real englishmen drink cider. not cidre. well maybe a little, but only cos it tastes ok.

actually i do wonder, do Loroi have 'unseemly' body hair that would encourage the invention of first the razor and later the safety razor?

Come to think of it, given their society wouldn't it be considered 'childish' to use a safety razor? (because a TRUE Loroi would not need such a safety measure)

(oh god i can see where this is going, wall-o-text war on why loroi use shavers here we come)

the loroi have no need for shavers, they use mental powers to stop hair growing! this is also how they achieve awesome hair styles. Fact.

[Trantor]

That whole topic got me pretty occupied the last days, and i made good trip throughout the www.
Today there´s no short solution to it all, but one good aspect is that distilled water is not dangerous per se, so from this point (Dieing from thirst comes quicker than starvation) humans have a certain reprieve. And H2O should be everywhere.

We can't necessarily rely on something like a computer model right now, and I don't think we should rely exclusively on computer models in the future even if they seem like they might be good enough. I don't think we'll ever fully abandon the laboratory technician for the programmer.

But it seems that those could help a lot in the future. There are already microchips for analysis and other stuff like gas-phase cromatographs that are transportable.

So, you'll want a much more fleshed-out model of the human proteome detailing all variant forms and interactions (these projects are already underway) and/or such a fleshed-out model of the aliens' proteome (no promises), a full understanding of the chemistry of the food items in question (can be arranged), some lab tests on tissue samples, and some very tentative tests on live test subjects with very thorough monitoring after attaining the aliens' informed consent on the matter.

That´s on the to-do list, and with substantial funding there should be results. Soon.

Real man drink vodka! or at least try to.

Hey, you´re Ontopic by accident!

P.S.: "Vodka" means "little water".

[ed_montague]

P.S.: "Vodka" means "little water".

Huh. I'd read somewhere that every culture that developed hard liquors named it after some variation of "water of life." Is that true?

[junk]

P.S.: "Vodka" means "little water".

Huh. I'd read somewhere that every culture that developed hard liquors named it after some variation of "water of life." Is that true?

It could be possible. Keep in mind that alcohol used to be often safer to drink than water. Or at least dilluted alcohol.

[Absalom]

Yes, something or another about dumping fecal matter into rivers and then drinking the water without sanitizing it...

[Fotiadis_110]

How you know you are bored:

When rather than playing a computer game: you write 1,200 words towards a fanfic writing far more serious than the other ones you read...

Should i separate my own thread or keep all such writings tidily in once place?

Another possibility is that people will hate my own work and try to flame me till i am a part of the surface of the sun... I think i can take that risk.

Attached.
I wonder if we can nestle spoiler tags?

SpoilerShow

Date *CLASSIFIED*218*CLASSIFIED*

Loroi assistance pact impact report:

Foreword:

Human Starship pilots and crew have been successfully integrated into the Loroi supply chain, increasing the number of telepaths capable of piloting and crewing Loroi warships at the front.
By simply modifying the internal ship temperatures by a few degrees, and increasing the size of the bed mats offered to general crew, few additional adjustments were required for facilitation of humans aboard previously Loroi cargo and supply craft.

Possible negative impacts have been noted of Human modification and adjustment of their ships, for instance, many reactors aboard the second line ships are outdated and aging warship reactors, moved into a civilian chassis to make use of the reactor following the decommissioning of the prior warship.

Most Loroi commanders and crew inform us they have no intent of travelling on such ships as tampering with the safety restrictions on such reactors can lead to sudden and catastrophic reactor failure.
All Human Captains and crew have been informed to keep their engines rated to within safety limits, and to not tamper with the reactors on Loroi warships, however it is apparent that Humans do as they always do, fiddling with their ships to extract every ounce of power that they can, if only for the bragging rights.

Furthermore,*REDACTED*

___________________

Date*CLASSIFIED*of*Classified*218*Classified*

System:*Classified*

Ships Blackbox Recording system.


“Captains Log:
For the last 7 days we have been unloading cargo and supplies to the Loroi colony of *CLASSIFIED* with the understanding there was a high risk of a Umiak raid that was supposed to arrive in either this star system or one of the others immediately connected by a jump path to the *CLASSIFIED* system in about a weeks time
Unfortunately as everyone in the system noted, they arrived 3 days ago, and have been picking apart the defending squadron in the system, and those planetary defence craft the Loroi call ‘platforms’ Personally I figure any ship that can accelerate faster than this big cargo crawler must be a warship, but honestly it doesn’t matter that much.
Some of the boys have been working on our ship as well, installing mass driver point defence weapons, apparently they figure that lazers can be mitigated with reflective armour on missiles, which is true… but I haven’t had the heart to tell them those guns have an effective range so short that if they managed to hit one of those warheads, the explosion would probably irradiate half the armour plates on the ship and overload the screens, if not outright tear the ship in half.
But hey, if it keeps the crew occupied and not stirring up trouble a few modification programs on our Crawler are hardly an issue, despite the governmental edicts saying modification is disallowed.
I do have to keep persuading engineering from actually putting into practice any of their engine or reactor modifications they keep suggesting, what good is it if we can push our engines up to 30 G if our inertiatics can only safely dampen 15?
Of course the wiz kid on the ship, Paul recons he can increase that up to 40 with some improved power output, personally I’d rather have a ship that can keep flying me home the next 10 years than mess with the reactors and be unable to guarantee continued operation over the next 12 months, I’ve already heard some of the horror stories about reactor failures.

All of us Humans are peeved we aren’t allowed to get out there and fight the Umiak, I must admit the Loroi make the combat look scarily easy, but given what the reports we have been able to obtain, and the little leaked footage from the combat in defence of this system, having humans yelling at each other on the control deck of a star-ship would be far less elegant and I suspect less efficient than that Loroi telepathy in combat.
Personally, I’d happily squash some bugs, but I don’t plan on sticking my neck out any time soon to be thrown at the guns of those critters.

Half the problem for the defenders in this system is the reinforcements are supposed to arrive here in the next 3 days, and those sods have been here for the last 4, and keep arriving in waves bringing fresh missiles to the fight each time.

To put it bluntly we are in the deep end of the crapper and our instructions are to load up essential goods for the military and get the heck out of here…
Our ship isn’t the largest, newest, best armoured nor fastest, so ultimately we get to leave dockside empty handed, and the only thing we can do to help right now is pray.

In the nest half hour we intend to receive our authorisation to clear off from the dock, head out for the jump zone to our intended destination, once there we will receive instructions on where and what to carry given this system is unsafe for cargo traffic.
This is Captain Rodgers of the Terran Expeditionary Support Theatre Division.
Captains’ log.
End.”


“Every time you make those recordings it make me wonder why they really decided to call it a test division” said Peter the second in command, and navigator.

“It is certainly more creative than most of the political names they come up with, but odds are the Loroi picked it for the obvious implication, or maybe the irony” replied Captain Rodgers “So Simon according to the reports what are the status on the reserve units left defending the system?”

Sidenote: (apparently you can't nestle spoiler tags, otherwise here i would have as a form of footnote built into the text... suggestions?) [FOOTNOTE]
Simon, the pilot/scanner reader and official reader of official logs checked the records, somewhat frustrated that the Lori still expected all Humans to read their reports in their own style of writing, which make translation somewhat more difficult… although admittedly everyone aboard these ships was expected to know how to read and speak trade, as well as read the Loroi written word, not everyone was equal at the translations, Simon was a great pilot, and had plenty of skill at reading the scanner information as well, it was his leseer ability to actually read and translate Loroi writing that landed him the job of reading these official printouts, for the primary reason of helping him improve through practice, and he was far faster than he used to be, but he still would take a few moments to double check he had read it correctly. [/FOOTNOTE]

“According to the guys in charge, the defending garrison has taken almost 80% losses, and while the core units remaining are modern ships piloted by excellent captains, I suspect their defensive actions aren’t going to hold out for long. And almost 60% of the defending platforms have taken significant damage or worse defending this station from their raids, despite all of those stomach bending manoeuvres we endured.”

“Well if we assume they are being optimistic, then things are really bad indeed”
“Actually Captain, based on what I am reading they might be slightly pessimistic but we all know those manoeuvres have cost us time in unloading, and I think we can all agree we ought to get out of this place, which is the second largest target in the system, and probably the easiest to attack given their force isn't large enough to quickly burn the planet, so we would be wise to get out of this system BEFORE they try another attack on this installation."
"Well Pilot, lets just hope we get clearance to depart sooner than later, make sure to have the ship checked, and ready to leave within 10 minutes so we can get out of these docking clamps as quickly as possible, and Peter, you get the job of spreading the word to the rest of the crew."
"I'll inform the crew they will be getting 5 minutes notice of our time to leave."
"Well if we can achieve that much we might be able to leave the base fast enough for that Loroi on shipping control duty to actually be pleased for a change, rather than those snide remarks about Humans being so inefficient and slow"
*Playback ended*

[ed_montague]

Nice.

Do you by any chance partake of the SCP Foundation? Your writing style reminds me of their articles.

[Fotiadis_110]

Never heard of it.
However the 'style' was actually a deliberate choice in this case... I was trying to make a seemingly historic recording type writing for my intro, because doing it from a first person while trying to give enough background info wasn't working out for me

After all if i suddenly start loading humans on Loroi transports people feel a little lost.

I've also written formal reports, so the style isn't entirely alien to me

[ed_montague]

You should check them out. They've got some pretty neat stuff (by which I mean HOLY SPACE JESUS I WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN).

Because of its sci-fi nature, I'm going to shamelessly plug one of their tales: http://www.scp-wiki.net/astronomical

Also, this gives me an idea: start an Outsider fanfiction community. We could even get our own website or have Arioch post it on its own page or something.

[Fotiadis_110]

I see... I found the website and read a couple of the top rated stories.
They were weird enough to be interesting without actually being scary, which is good.
Sleep is good after all ^_^
And basically it's fan fiction related to crazy X-files based material.
Interesting, but not what I was aiming for

I was aiming for the whole internal document of the government, stuff which people at home really don't need to know so they keep as much quiet as possible while still making enough information available to notify individuals of trends and things going on.
This isn't about conspiracy nor concealment from the population, rather about keeping potentially dangerous information secret during wartime, similar to documents I have read some stuff about dating from WW2.

[Hālian]

Protip: (DATA EXPUNGED), (REDACTED), and █, in decreasing order of length of matter classified.

But it is nice

[ed_montague]

Meh, military records, secret conspiracies, what's the difference?

...I mean, I think I might try my hand at more "serious" fanfiction later in the week (i.e. not just "Alex gets smashed while bar crawling with hot space elf amazons from outer space"). Anyone interested?

[Hālian]

I am. Would you be willing to take on a co-author?

[ed_montague]

I just write stuff whenever the fancy strikes me/whenever I have free time/whenever I've got stuff to do but feel like procrastinating. Write whatever you want, I'm not stopping you. If you want to collaborate on something, drop me a line and we'll go from there.

[bunnyboy]

Someone should make umiak fanfic.

[Fotiadis_110]

I insist that I utilise whatever means nessasary to acheive my goals.... i.e. I have no fear whatsoever of using whichever form of censoring as needed to avoid the fact i don't want to name starsystems, nor pick dates because I'll almost certainly get them wrong

SpoilerShow

*Excerpt from the Non-Fiction Novel written by ████████ based on real events*
Names were originally changed in the novel from real counterparts, however these have been changed back in an effort to ensure appropriate internal consistency.
“Clearing starbase in 3, 2, 1 seconds, we are clear and good to go, heading on instructed exit pathway now”
“Thank you Pilot, check the computation for gravitational effects on the jumpzone Navigator, █████ control, this is the freighter ██████ we have all systems functioning, all backup systems are operational and ready for operation, heading back to headquarters for re-deployment away from combat zones as per instructions”
“You have been cleared Captain Rodgers, Please be aware the combat situation in the star system is constantly changing and we cannot update you sufficiently often to ensure your safety, but monitor channel ███ regarding up to date information about the most dangerous paths, and hopefully you can clear the system without being turned to trash.”
“Understood Control, heres to hoping you get out of this unscathed as well, Captain Rodgers out, further communications shall be directed to our Pilot.”

The captain sighed and looked at the Tac layout based on the information currently being transmitted. The umiak knew the local defence fleet was already mostly crippled due to lucky torpedo strikes, and their insistence of separating their forces to force the defence fleet to protect multiple angles and systematically conducting carefully timed assaults to force the defenders to re-inforce different sides of the system rapidly, burning their precious fuel which due to the continued pressure from the attackers, the defending fleet had been almost incapable of re-fueling without baiting a Umiak assault on the various installations in the system, already several mining bases centred in the asteroid fields had been damaged, but not destroyed, forcing Loroi crews to remain in place in an effort to protect the base, while not allowing the Loroi to ignore the defence of the installations either, the crews on the Loroi starships, despite operating in normal wartime shifts were being run ragged by the unending persistence of the Umiak strike forces, 4 days of combat had done nothing productive for the Loroi defence fleet.
It was good that the Loroi defence fleet had managed to account for nearly three times the Umiak ships than the Umiak had taken out themselves, but with the Umiak fleet getting more and more clusters of re-enforcements in the jump zone, and the Loroi having to hold out till their own re-enforcements arrived in 2 days time, about Half the Umiak fleet was destroyed, but their numbers had barely dropped from the size of their initial assault force, while the Loroi were down by almost 40% from their full garrison strength on the main defence fleet, and several of the minor defence fleets had been completely adsorbed in an effort to simply maintain the strength of their forces in the main fleet, Simply put, the defence of the system now lay in the hands of the strike forces of the defence fleet, as their picketing forces had been all but obliterated by the continued strikes from various positions.
The Umiak were using their numbers intelligently, splitting their forces to strike several targets at a time, while utilising the offensive strength of their core fleet to guarantee that the main defensive fleet was occupied keeping them from striking the Loroi’s most valuable assets, the colony and it’s space station, the only viable supply of fuel in the system for the defensive fleet.
The evacuation of civilian transports was in progress, to be completed in the next hour, and so far the Umiak had no forces near enough the path to the jump node strong enough to interfere with the action, and the few available warships in the area were focusing on keeping it that way.

However despite all this supposedly good information made available to the captains, Captain Rodgers was concerned given the current pattern of Umiak forces in the district… he may not have had a degree in combat, but he thought he could see a pattern in their latest movements, one he hoped he was incorrect about.

“Can you ger me a list of the communication codes to all of the the TEST ships currently in operation in this star system? I want to have a little discussion with those crews we were sharing the bar with back on the Station, I fancy having a little discussion… also while you are doing that, can you get Gerry to find Paul and ask him to come meet me in the communications room for a while.”
“Certainly captain” replied Peter, “Will you be gone from the deck for long?”
“It might be a a few minutes, or a couple hours, It’ll depend on what we discuss, once Paul gets here of course I’ll be leaving you in charge for a while, however long it might be.”

*End of Excerpt*

[ed_montague]

I think I've inadvertently kicked off a wave of fanfic. The more, the merrier.

Umiak fanfic...hm. Let me think about that.

I'm currently working on a little tidbit, but a conflicting allegiance to the SCP Foundation and my academic studies have prevented me from doing much.