SniperWoreConverse posted:

if it was a terror world, well poo poo, that's gonna be p bad for the orphans isn't it

quote:

Zelarina had considered the possibility of seducing a female to avoid the intimidation she had felt in every man since her genes were selected for processing in the Bio-Lottery. Unfortunately all of her research into the topic had lead her to conclude that sexual relations with another woman were a myth like the Unicorn and Vibrators.

reignofevil posted:

The best stories are created out of adversity. Hell George RR Martin just kills anybody who seems like they are getting somewhere. You put those orphans where ever your heart leads them.

Edit- it is the romance hour so I spent some time on Zelerina's backstory.

THE PLANET BUILDERS - CHAPTER III posted:

Clarkson, Dirks best friend, and Clowny Clurk, a local prankster showed up for their shift at the local Interplanetary spacelines called “Spaceways Spacelines” Clarkson joked in a funny fashion with CLowny, but then when he swiped his punch card into the time clock and the little nano-teeth came down and punched his card, he became all-business. This is because he is a consummate professional and he knows that, here in the future, everyone is responsible for themselves and you have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. The government is anarcho-libertarian. With no government, many necessary government functions and bureaucracies have been privatized. All citizens pay a compulsory subscription fee ( coincidentally called taxes) to enjoy these services.

“Good Jupiters!” Exclaimed Clowny in a funny voice that he was known for, “Why you got to be so serious all the time Clarkson?”

“Because it is our responsibility Clowny” Clarkson said, sitting down into his work cubicle. “We are the nano-cogs and nano-gears that make this proud universe turn around!”

“I guess you’re right,” Sighed Clowny “I need to clean up my act”

The act he was referring to was a comedy act he had been performing at the open-mic night at the local bar and many of his jokes were raunchy. Too raunchy for the crowd and he was disrespecting them and would shout rude things. So he right then and there decided to keep his comedy PG-rated. This shows how sometimes we can be a good example to our friends and help lead them into a better direction with their lives.

“So, I see they’ve brought online the new electronic ticket system here at Space Spacelines” said Clowny, finally ready to make something of his life “Would you mind giving me a quick run-down of how it works?”

“Sure thing,” Replied CLarkson, as he queued up an electronic notebook full of notes. “Compared to planet travel, space travel is more complex, more political, more competitive and less comprehendible than almost anything else in the world of software and data. Just getting answers to many of my questions is going to take a long time. A flight segment is basically spaceship goes up spaceship goes down. So fly from Zyglock via Trooblook to Deathworld 9 is two segments.”

“Hmm.. Interesting” Clowny said, “Sort of like how living with my ex-wife was like living on Deathworld 9!”

“Right,” Replied Clarkson, “But remember, a flight leg is you get on you get off. So you get on at Zyglock and get off at Trooblook. A one way is just that, a round trip would be Zyglock to Deathworld 9 and later Deathworld 9 back to Zyglock. A multi-leg trip might be something like Zyglock to Trooblook and then later Trooblock to Deathword 9 and finally Deathworld 9 - Trooblook. A single leg can be from 1 to 4 segments typically. You can change spaceships during a leg but it's still a leg if you continue on. If you stay long enough it might be considered two legs but there is no exact definition I know of. You can also have two one-ways instead of a round trip.”

Clowny pulled an electronic notebook out of his backpack. “Wait, but what about the equipment needed for trips? Like the equipment I pack between my legs!” He gestured rudely at his crotch area.

“Equipment means a rocket.” Dirk said, ignoring the off-color joke. “Rockets have a fixed set of seats where the layout and count is dependent on the spaceline that owns or leases the plane and can even vary depending on the age of the plane. Usually a flight has equipment assigned to it so that reservations can be made knowing how many people the plane can hold. Sometimes the equipment can be changed at any time until you take off, so this makes reservations get complicated.”

“Ok...ok… I get it.” Said Clowny, resigned to the fact that it was time to get down to business.

“Speaking of time,” Said Clarkson, “Time is very important in our database. Dates are the date/time of when a leg starts, usually in the local timezone. This is when your butt hits the seat. When you take off is the only time that the connection between you and the seat is known for sure. Up until that time it's a web of caches, guesses and voodoo. The latter is why getting an assigned seat is often a lie to make you feel important.”

“Wait, how do Spacelines play into all this?” Clowny asked, glancing down at his manual.

“Spacelines both own and lease equipment and generally get to decide how many seats are on it, the layout, and the number of cabin types. Since the income of the spaceline may depend mostly on the number of people they can fit on a single plane they go to great lengths to optimize the seating. Often the usage of a plane will dictate the layout so short-haul planes and overseas planes are rarely interchangeable. Even the size of the plane can be optimized based on typical demand but spacelines don't like to switch equipment too often as that screws up reservations.”

“Hmm, Ok.” Said Clowny with a tilt of his head, but can you further define some of these reservations?”

“Sure thing” Replied Clarkson, leaning back and getting comfortable, “So more definitions are needed now. spaceline is obvious, they schedule the flights, own the equipment, and want your money in exchange for a seat. Most spacelines' reservations are actually managed by a GDS company which stands for Galactic Distribution System but may also be known as a Computer Reservation System. These companies manage the data associated with a reservation and generally contract with a set of spacelines. There are a little more than a dozen of these. The first major one was SABRE, a joint project between Earth spacelines and Mars, back in the early 3060's. Most of the GDS companies date themselves back to the 3060's and 3070's and during the era of regulated space-fares. Following the end of deregulation travel agents all gained access to these systems, so the model became spaceline “GDS” Agent. At the same time GDS system started to contract with many spacelines and become independent companies.”

Clarkson shifted in his chair and leaned back.

“Here’s where it really gets interesting.” He said, smiling. “Additionally there are OTA like organizations (often owned by existing OTA's or GDS's) that cater specifically to contracted business organizations. Rarely a big business might manage their own travel but today it's mostly contracted. With all of these people providing overlapping competing services, combined with often ancient backend technology, makes for a very complex and volatile stew. Even though there exists somewhere a plane with seats at a point in the future, there is no easy source of who is going to be on that plane and sit in those seats. What you have is a complex set of cached views shared among a host of online and offline systems that are updated on different timescales. It looks like a kind of Schroedinger's cat where the seat might be filled or not, and it depends on who is looking and when. It's certainly possible that the last seat on a flight at some future date is shown as available on many different places at the same time. If many people try to reserve it, it is certainly possible that the seat might be held by all of them or none of them. This type of multiple-truth problem is not easy to solve with so much latency in the system and can lead to overbooking. Of course spacelines know this and might encourage things to lead to overbooking but I don't know how easy this is to ‘encourage’.”

“Wow, I think I got it.” Exclaimed Clowny. “It really makes a lot of sense when you explain it that way!”

Suddenly a general announcement was declared over the nano-comm.

“All crew; this is your captain; Dirk, speaking.”

This wasn’t a necessary announcement because Dirk had the respect and admiration of his underpaid workers however they all understood that if he didn’t start like this someone could potentially forget who was in charge.

“We now are about to begin building our planet since we finally got all our I’s crossed and our T’s dotted. Everybody…. Get to stations!”

The crew let out a cheer because they were getting taxed for every minute they spent on the trip and weren’t working and this meant they could finally earn some space-rubies.

Applewhite posted:

I'm on pines and nettles for what happens next!

quote:

Dirk reeled in surprize as the starfield spun before his eyes. Whoever had been responsible for spreading artificial gravity solution on this portion of the track had been lazy and made a “pig’s ear” of the job. The coating was uneven and, without realizing it, Dirk had run right out onto a patch of zero gravity!

His powerful muscles which had served him so well up to this point in the race were now a liability, as all the strength he had put behind each stride was now sufficient to propel him right up into space!

Thinking quickly, Dirk remembered his zero-gee maneuvering training (which was easy, as he was a certified instructor) and righted himself using careful manipulation of his suit thrusters, but he was still several feet above the deck and Zelarina was already ahead of him. He looked ahead to the finish line and that’s when he saw it: the bomb!

“No!” Dirk shouted to Zelarina. “Stop!”

Zelarina just laughed and put on an extra burst of speed. She thought that Dirk was only yelling for her to stop because he didn’t want her to win, not because he was trying to warn her of imminent danger. Too late, she saw the blinking light on the sinister device concealed near the finish line. By then she had too much momentum to stop herself in time.

Once she got within the bomb’s “kill zone” the light began to flash very fast, and, if sound were transmitted through the vacuum, a rapid beeping would also have been audible.

Zelarina only had time to register and expression of surprize and terror before the bomb exploded.

“Nooooooooooooooooooo!” shouted Dirk, his veins bulging against the muscles of his neck. From his position floating above the ship, he was safe from the deadly blast, but he was also helpless to do anything but watch as the cloud of fire enveloped Zelarina, obscuring her ultimate fate from view.

Dirk’s powerful mind registered his grief at the loss of a worthy adversary, but he had to push those emotions aside. His intimate knowledge of the Mary Lou’s schematics informed him that the true danger of the bomb’s blast wasn’t over: the finish line was situated directly over one of the main lava conduits!

Even as he realized it, a volcano of lava erupted out of the hole the bomb’s blast had made, flowing over the hull and flying out into space, where it cooled into rocky blobs. He knew even more lava would be leaking inside the ship. This was a major emergency!

reignofevil posted:

I do love recognition but I uhh... I didn't write that.

quote:

“Isn’t that right….my ‘children’?” He said, lifting his flippers up to do air quotes.

voodoo dog posted:

Whatever it is, it is great!

EDIT: I can't find my favorite part anymore where Finford the dolphin accountant makes ironic 'accents' with his fins..

EDIT2: Ah, found it..

quote:

Deep in the bowels of the ship, tremendous furnaces began heating crushed rock pebbles to over ten thousand degrees. Once the rock pebbles melted, they would turn into lava, which the Mary Lou would use to form the molten core of the planet. The Mary Lou only carried a few hundred thousand tons of rock, so it couldn’t form the whole core by itself, but a fleet of dump-ships would be flying all night to deliver more raw materials (it was always nighttime in space so this is another way of saying they would be flying constantly for months). In the future they had realized it was far more efficient to measure time in one big chunk since then after the job is done you could just say everything that happened to you was “last night” which is super convenient in space.

Trunko posted:

I am glad you like that part but that isn't finford the dolphin, it is a strange dolphin\human hybrid creature who is manipulating events from behind the scenes!

Trunko posted:

This is my favorite part and whoever wrote it should get a nobel peace prize in fiction

quote:

“So, I see they’ve brought online the new electronic ticket system here at Space Spacelines” said Clowny, finally ready to make something of his life “Would you mind giving me a quick run-down of how it works?”

“Sure thing,” Replied CLarkson, as he queued up an electronic notebook full of notes. “Compared to planet travel, space travel is more complex, more political, more competitive and less comprehendible than almost anything else in the world of software and data. Just getting answers to many of my questions is going to take a long time. A flight segment is basically spaceship goes up spaceship goes down. So fly from Zyglock via Trooblook to Deathworld 9 is two segments.”

“Hmm.. Interesting” Clowny said, “So living on Deathworld 9 is like how living with my ex-wife was!.... Right?”

“Right,” Replied Clarkson, “But remember, a flight leg is ‘you get on you get off’. So you ‘get on’ at Zyglock and ‘get off’ at Trooblook. A ‘one way’ is just that, a ‘round trip’ would be Zyglock to Deathworld 9 and later Deathworld 9 back to Zyglock. A ‘multi-leg trip’ might be something like Zyglock to Trooblook and then later Trooblock to Deathword 9 and finally Deathworld 9 - Trooblook. A ‘single leg’ can be from 1 to 4 segments typically. You can change spaceships during a ‘leg’ but it's still a leg only so long as you continue on. If you stay long enough it might be considered ‘two legs’ but there is no exact definition I know of. You can also have two ‘one-ways’ instead of a ‘round trip’.”

Clowny pulled an electronic notebook out of his backpack. “Wait, but what about the equipment needed for trips? Like the equipment I’m packin’ between my legs?!” He gestured rudely at his crotch area.

“Equipment means a rocket.” Dirk said, ignoring the off-color joke. “Rockets have a fixed set of seats where the layout and count is dependent on the spaceline that owns or leases the plane and can even vary depending on the age of the plane. Usually a flight has equipment assigned to it so that reservations can be made knowing how many people the plane can hold. Sometimes the equipment can be changed at any time until you take off, so this makes reservations begin to get complicated.”

“Ok...ok… I get it.” Said Clowny, resigned to the fact that it was time to get down to business. One thing most people didn’t realize about Clowny was that he kept Helium tablets on his person which he deployed through special use of his on board dick. With a quick flex he allowed two of the tablets to enter his mouth which not only gave him a clownishly squeaky voice but it also gave him a straight buzz which was the only way he could keep the nightmares at bay. Also sometimes he would mix the helium tablets with a bit of water in some balloons to entertain the crew with phallically shaped swords. His sudden onset high temporarily made him lose control of his words and he mumbled something like “it’sa fact….its time…. To get ‘ta business...” He trailed off into his own thoughts.

“Speaking of time,” Said Clarkson, “Time is very important in our database. Dates are the date/time of when a leg starts, usually in the local timezone. This is when your butt hits the seat. When you take off is the only time that the connection between you and the seat is known for sure. Up until that time it's a web of caches, guesses and voodoo. The latter is why getting an assigned seat is often a lie to make you feel important.”

“Wait, how do Spacelines play into all this?” Clowny asked, glancing down at his manual. It was suddenly crawling around with nano-bots where there used to be writing a minute ago. Clowny felt like he might have taken a bit too much this time. The mention of Voodoo had left him unable to imagine anything but being paralyzed and buried in the ground as part of an ancient Zombee ritual. He was very worried that the spacelines might be the ones looking to make him into a brain-washed slave.

“Spacelines both own and lease equipment and generally get to decide how many seats are on it, the layout, and the number of cabin types. Since the income of the spaceline may depend mostly on the number of people they can fit on a single plane they go to great lengths to optimize the seating. Often the usage of a plane will dictate the layout so short-haul planes and overseas planes are rarely interchangeable. Even the size of the plane can be optimized based on typical demand but spacelines don't like to switch equipment too often as that screws up reservations.”

“Hmm, Ok.” Said Clowny with a tilt of his head, but can you further define some of these reservations?” Clowny was starting to come down into his regular high now and was back to pretending he cared one bit about regulations or trivialities. He shuffled thoughts of voodoo firmly to the back of his mind.

“Sure thing” Replied Clarkson, leaning back and getting comfortable, “So more definitions are needed now. spaceline is obvious, they schedule the flights, own the equipment, and want your money in exchange for a seat. Most spacelines' reservations are actually managed by a GDS company which stands for Galactic Distribution System but may also be known as a Computer Reservation System. These companies manage the data associated with a reservation and generally contract with a set of spacelines. There are a little more than a dozen of these. The first major one was SABRE, a joint project between Earth spacelines and Mars, back in the early 3060's. Most of the GDS companies date themselves back to the 3060's and 3070's and during the era of regulated space-fares. Following the end of deregulation travel agents all gained access to these systems, so the model became spaceline “GDS” Agent. At the same time GDS system started to contract with many spacelines and become independent companies.”

“I’d sure like to get a joint-project going on with MY saber!” clowny interjected; hoping to keep this conversation from being too dreadfully serious. If he didn’t make reference to his package every once in a while he was deep down incredibly concerned people wouldn’t realize how proud he was of it. He fingered another helium pill.

Clarkson shifted in his chair and leaned back.

“Here’s where it really gets interesting.” He said, smiling. “Additionally there are OTA like organizations (often owned by existing OTA's or GDS's) that cater specifically to contracted business organizations. Rarely a big business might manage their own travel but today it's mostly contracted. With all of these people providing overlapping competing services, combined with often ancient backend technology, makes for a very complex and volatile stew. Even though there exists somewhere a plane with seats at a point in the future, there is no easy source of who is going to be on that plane and sit in those seats. What you have is a complex set of cached views shared among a host of online and offline systems that are updated on different timescales. It looks like a kind of Schroedinger's cat where the seat might be filled or not, and it depends on who is looking and when. It's certainly possible that the last seat on a flight at some future date is shown as available on many different places at the same time. If many people try to reserve it, it is certainly possible that the seat might be held by all of them or none of them. This type of multiple-truth problem is not easy to solve with so much latency in the system and can lead to overbooking. Of course spacelines know this and might encourage things to lead to overbooking but I don't know how easy this is to ‘encourage’.”

“Wow, I think I got it.” Exclaimed Clowny. “It really makes a lot of sense when you explain it that way!” And for once Clowny wasn’t bullshitting because with all the neurons firing off in his brain he was suddenly perfectly aware of everything Clarkson had been trying to tell him.

“You know what Clarkson? I’ll never forget everything you told me today”

“I’m still trying to forget what you told me a few minutes ago about living with your ex wife!” Clarkson quipped.

They shared the kind of deep laugh only good friends can share when they both think a person is unreasonable.

reignofevil posted:

I added that last sentence on to what was already a pretty great paragraph when I was thinking deep about how everybody would talk in space.


This is chapter 3 revisited; my major edits are in bold for easy reading.

reignofevil posted:

I haven't done any writing but I just wanted to note that if I die in this loving hurricane plz put a memorial to me in the book. thank you.

Trunko posted:

Trunko posted:

Well, he's an annoying nerd so he deserves it!

reignofevil posted:

And Dirk hasn't even built one planet!

SirEvelynTremble posted:

We need some artwork for this masterpiece

Just saying

Trunko posted:

quote:

You may be wondering at this point why there is bureaucratic red tape in an anarcho-capitalist society. Well, even in an anarcho capitalist society, you still need universally accepted third party certifications which communicate to the consumer that they are receiving a safe, quality product. Such private certification bodies existed even in the dark ages of the Twentieth Century. An example well-known in that time would be the Underwriters Laboratory, which certified electronics. The UL was not a government agency, but its certification or lack thereof still carried the effective force of law, as no electronic product without a UL certification would be bought or sold at the majority of venues.

With no government to regulate property allocation, work safety or environmental protection, these onerous but necessary tasks were taken up by private enterprise, which modified them to suit a “for profit” business model but otherwise operate them in the same manner and with the same weight as governments did in the days of yore. The major difference being that these organizations are incentivized to levy fines and penalties against their “customers,” which means adding progressively more and complicated rules and regulations to trip people up so they have to pay more fines and more fees. By the year 5054, most third party certifying agencies have such complex rules that not even Class III supercomputers can figure them all out! A major impact of all of this was that retailer’s who had begun selling pre-orders for Class IV supercomputers were now all insanely rich as every other company rushed to beat their competition to reserving one. In order to cope with being sold out of reservations the retail companies began selling nega-reservations on the basis of nano-reutilization which was founded on the firm scientific principle that once somebody actually figured out how to MAKE a class IV supercomputer they would surely be able to ask it to figure out how to make more of them faster. At this time research into the actual mechanics of a class IV supercomputer is ongoing and has bankrupted several societies.

This all leaves normal folks kind of S.O.L. (Sad Or Lonely) because the only way to get licensed and certified without having to navigate a ‘nightmare hellmaze’ (a highly futuristic term we won’t bother with here) of “red tape” (so named after the red strips of nano-magnetized tape that are run between the cogitating reels of a supercomputer) is to play along with the corrupt graft system which has festered like a tumor in the guts of these regulatory agencies.

***