Skyline Extended Universe Part Two

I seriously considered pulling some 1984 level shit and going back to Wednesdays post and changing the promised date to today (Saturday) but this one is over twice the size of most of my posts so I don't feel all that bad about being a little late. Here it is.

Lifening crackled through the recelerators, the stink of ozone and sulfur filled the air, and the threads of reality were taught and humming. The brains of three Wise Ones sat on a table, they had obviously been modified but Rhea was unsure as to exactly what purpose they served, copper rods jutted from multiple points on each brain and one had large crystal accumulators grafted to it. She had never felt so conflicted in her life, horror and disgust at what they were about to do, honoured that they had asked her to help keep the massive quantities of energy in check and to help stave off and mend the inevitable rifts in existence that energy created, and amazed at seeing the symptoms of a rift form before the rift itself did. If she was being honest it was mostly disgust, but the Wise Ones had made up their minds and as powerful as she was there was no way she could stop them all, at least not without doing so much more damage to the universe that the point would have been moot. All she could do was be on hand to try and keep things as safe as possible and, when things inevitably fell apart, stitch them together as best she could.

One With Unorthodox Ideas floated into the lab “Are we prepared?” He asked no one in particular. His three underlings all hummed affirmative with the lead assistant replying.

“Yes Great One, we are prepared. As is your... security...”

“Ah, yes, Rhea, so glad you could join us on this momentous occasion.”  He replied as if he hadn't noticed her till that moment.

Rhea was puzzled for a second before she realized that the five of them totaled the entirety of the party that would be present for this ‘momentous occasion’. Cowards, you all know that even if things go as planned the whan rifts could easily kill us all. No wonder they offered me the ‘honour’ of securing the laboratory. No matter, it just means none of those fumbling brain sacks will get in my way as I try to secure any rifts.

“As am I” she replied. Glad might not be the exact word but it is close enough. “I am ready whenever you are.”

“Excellent, as you know what we are about to do here has never before been attempted on a scale such as this, the earlier trials were all performed on the brains of primitives, and lobotomized ones at that. This will be far grander.”

She wasn't sure what upset her more, the eagerness in his voice to perform this abomination, or the fact that the ‘primitives’ he spoke of were members of her race unfortunate enough to not be strong enough to whan. But she said nothing; she had come to terms with the arrogance of the Wise Ones long ago.

Unorthodox Ideas continued “It should take less than a minute to recelerate the constructs, once the lifening has charged them it will be a simple matter of giving them their orders, orders which they will follow without doubt, hesitation, or fear. However during that minute more whan energy will flow through this room than the last hundred years combined, my assistants will channel and shape it, you must deal with the side effects.”

“I understand my role in this,” Rhea replied coolly. “Concern yourself with your own.”

“Very well, then let us begin.” 

And with no further ado the recelerators flared and crackled. The effect was immediate, reality began to bubble, Rhea knew from past experience that most of the bubbles were nothing to be concerned about, they would swell and deflate without any lasting damage, but not all would. Ten seconds in and already there were two swellings ready to pop like particularly nasty zits, instead of oil and pus these would spew forth filth and corruption, anger and pain made solid and given form by raw energy and the shadow of what was being done here. There was no easy way to describe what she did, the closest she had ever come to putting words to it was that she flexed the part of her mind that knew what was real and true, backed it will her will, and pushed. There were far too many, forty seconds in and she had prevented eighteen bubbles from rupturing but one had and would be a full blown rift in moments. As she pinched it closed with a thought she felt three grimlins slip through from whatever hell the tear opened up on and grinned, you don’t spend three hundred years studying rifts and their effects without picking up a few tricks. Being beings of pure energy made the grimlins powerful and dangerous to the untrained, but to her they were barely the mental equivalent of a wasp, actually better, because you couldn't psychically eat a wasp for a boost in whan energy, grimlins you could. The boost they gave her carried her through the next thirty seconds, or fifteen bubbles and two tears, but there were limits to her power and she had already spent three times as much energy as she had on Hosswell, meanwhile the recelerators were still pumping out lifening, causing even more, progressively larger, bubbles to appear.  The three biggest disturbances she had felt so far all started concurrently and even as she reinforced one she felt the other two split open, tentacles and claws immediately springing forth and she knew she would die if she attempted closing them, if the creature that those claws belonged to takes control of the power surging through this lab we are all dead. She braced herself and began grappling with the larger of the two when suddenly she felt a new presence in the whan, it felt like frozen steel covered in slime in her mind and she fought the urge to scream, cry, and vomit simultaneously but that frozen steel will also reached out and snapped both rifts shut effortlessly, even though lifening still crackled throughout the room not a single bubble did more than flex slightly, ten seconds later the recelerators shut down. Rhea, having barely even twitched let alone moved since it all started dropped to one knee, breathing heavily as waves of heat radiated from her now red-hot scales. She looked to her left at the three newly recelerated brains, hovering as they assessed the situation. 

The brain with the accumulators grafted to it turned to her and said in a slow methodical voice made of stone and rusted iron. “We are the Weaver. Thank you for your assistance in our assigned task, Mender.”

It took Rhea a moment to realize that they were talking to her. “Umm, you’re welcome?” she was thoroughly rattled and fighting to not show it. “My name is Rhea.”

The Weaver replied “we care not what you are called, Mender is what you are.” One of the other brains copper rods flared and crackled. “We are needed elsewhere, Mender Rhea.” With that the three of them flickered once and vanished.

She stood up and looked around the fairly intact lab. One With Unorthodox Ideas and his head assistant were both missing; the other two assistants were huddling, as well as a sack of brains can huddle, in a corner of the lab. Well that went about as well as could be hoped. Now as long as the zombie monster brains from hell, programmed by a race of arrogant, self important, cowards, hold up their end we'll all be fine...

The Story (Finally) Begins

31795 ADT (Approx 57,000 BCE)
Planet Belsequs, Outside the Hall of Wisdom.

Rhea Hasthen sat seething in the main corridor outside of the Hall of Wisdom while the Wise Ones decided the fate of the universe. "The matters at hand are too important for the extended deliberations inherent with involving the young ones", their catch all term for every being who wasn't one of them. As a Rackthern that included her, even though she could best most of them in Whan-shu, the battle of wills, and had done more to restitch the bonds than any three of them combined and without burning her mind out either. No, they were the first and so far only to discover how to bend their will across the star sea and bring others with them and for that they ruled this corner of the galaxy, even if it was unraveling at the seams. Rhea took a deep breath to calm herself, as long as they don't release that abomination all will be well.

Inside the Hall of Wisdom.

There were a hundred ornate pedestals encircling the hall, which, made of precious metals, rare gems, and expert stonework was only as opulent as their status deserved. More than twice that number of the enlightened filled it however. They all wanted news of what had transpired on the planet Hosswell and why so few of the response team had returned. One Who Considers Both Sides was the one with that news, terrible as it may be. And it was terrible. "Superior Beings of the Assembly, I have the knowledge that you desire if you would listen". His voice reverberated throughout the hall, seemingly emerging from the center of the ring, as he willed it. A hundred conversations ceased at once and, eyeless though they were, One Who Considers Both Sides could feel the attention of his fellows focus on him. "Brothers, it is far worse than we could have foreseen. Hosswell's Plain of Dreams has been rent asunder and seven of us gave their minds to stem the flow. Clearly the unrestrained shaping of reality by the countless unevolved has weakened the fabric far faster than was considered possible."

Sure of the ten Wise sent all but two of us fled from the horde of terrors made real, but seeing how it ended for the two that stayed I stand by my actions. Even of those of us who fled most still fell. Only that accursed Rackthern managed to not only hold her ground and survive but fix the tear. Whatever twisted art she had used to seal the rift he knew it was only luck on here part she survived. There's simply no way she could have just out performed ten members of the Great Ones. Members of the race who even standing perfectly still sent more ripples dancing through the weaves of reality than whole communities of her simple people. Simple people who's unrestrained distortion of reality threatened its very fabric. He failed to notice the contradictions in his own thoughts as he observed the crowd. There would have only been slightly more panic in the great hall if a tear had opened right then and there.

"Brothers please! We all knew this could happen once the unenlightened gained widespread access to the whan." The fact that the eight lesser races combined didn't use as much every day as the Wise Ones did entertaining themselves let alone for industry and infrastructure didn't cross a single mind of the beings assembled.

"Thankfully we have contingencies, and thanks to the sacrifices of our brothers we can put them in motion. As you all know, a whan created mind cannot bend reality. Being an aspect of someone else's will, it it has no true will of its own. What all but a few of you don't know is that a reanimated mind, while missing both its spark and its personality, has a will.



DUN DUN DUN

Reanimated brains? Tears in reality? What The Hell? Tune in Sunday to find out. Same Bat-Time Same Bat-Channel.

-Captain Maximus

Universe Building

Technically it's still yesterdays tomorrow. Which is always true, except for that magical millisecond in between each day when its yesterday, today, and tomorrow all at the same time. But specifically for the next twenty minutes or so its still the tomorrow of June 24th 2013, which means if I actually manage to post this in the next twenty minutes I will have kept my promise.

Ok, so Universe building is kinda time consuming, contrary to popular belief six days is probably not enough. Even if you have been percolating the story in the back of your mind for ages, getting it all out and on "paper" coherently and even semi-interestingly takes a lot of time. So in preparation for Thursdays update (in which I will finally have some story. I promise) I am posting some of the first pieces of the universe I'm assembling like cheap IKEA furniture.

Galactic Standard Time; Dates in the Galactic Standard Calendar are recorded as either Before the Dawn of Time (BDT) or After the Dawn of Time (ADT). The Dawn of Time officially being the moment the first Wise One contemplated the concept of time and decided to start recording it (they’re wise not modest). The Galactic Standard Day is broken into ten one hundred minute long sections with each galactic minute being slightly longer than one “earth minute” (.16 longer more or less) making a galactic day 19.33 earth hours long. Each galactic second is actually shorter than an earth second since there are one hundred of them in a galactic minute. There are one hundred days in a galactic year. None of this corresponds  to any particular planets night-day cycle or orbit, the Wise Ones just happened to like base ten and proceeded to apply it to pretty much everything. No one is sure why they picked ten either, they have no fingers and two tentacles and when asked, the most coherent response ever received was “It is a good number”. Most species keep two calendars, one set to Galactic Standard and one set to a calendar that actually makes sense for their planet (one Pirate Point to the first person to notice each time I incorrectly translate between Galactic Standard Time and Earth Time, More on Pirate Points later)

The Wise Ones; The (self titled) Wise Ones are basically oversized floating brains. They are encased in a fairly durable leathery shell and look something like a hovering leather beanbag chair with a fairly small mouth and two tentacles (one on either side of the mouth) at the front. They have only one orifice for waste disposal at their other end and it is often joked by the cruder species that if not for the tentacles no one would be able to tell which end is which. They are extremely capable whan manipulators, which is how they prefer to interact with the world at large, either telepathically or through voice projection for communication and telekinetically for locomotion and manipulating objects. They honestly see themselves as the font from which reason, order, and goodness flow into the universe. It is generally agreed upon by the other races that they are meddlesome self-important pricks, but they are far too powerful to cross and basically do as they please.

Whan; Whan (rhymes with swan {possibly just a placeholder name, I don’t totally love it but I’m not going to waste any more time at the moment trying to come up with something better. Maybe it’ll grow on me}) is the name of the energy field that all sentient beings are capable of generating/manipulating through force of will and through which the manipulation of reality is possible. To the uninitiated it would look like magic and in for all useful distinctions it IS magic, but it is based in reality and does follow generally logical and consistent rules. In galactic society the actual definition of sentience is the ability to whan to some degree or another, regardless of how clever or intelligent a race or being may be. No intelligent, self aware species discovered so far has failed to produce at least a few members capable of whaning, with many species displaying universal ability. No purely synthetic intelligence to date has demonstrated the ability to influence whan whatsoever. The excessive use of whan can have negative effects on the fabric of reality.

Whan lock; Whan Locking is the act of using whan to reinforce reality the point of which being to make the use of whan to change or manipulate reality more difficult if not impossible. This can be done subconsciously or deliberately and can be reinforced by others nearby. It only affects a limited area based on the number of wills involved and their willpower.

There we are, the first few tantalizing pieces and with two minutes to spare. Ha!

Turning crap into fertilizer

Some time ago (Nov 2010) I dragged my friends to what looked to be a fairly decent (based on a somewhat vague trailer) alien invasion movie. That movie was Skyline. To call it shitty and walk away would make the most sense but this is the internet dammit, sense can piss off and die along with decorum, basic logic, and common decency (to name just a few). It was a spectacular cluster fuck of nonsensical plot, so-so acting (I don’t really blame the actors for this one, more the terrible plot and horrific directing {based on the end result}), explosions, and special effects. Doing some cursory research on Wikipedia it’s revealed that the vast majority (possibly up to 90-95%) of the movies budget went to special effects, it shows, it certainly didn't go to script writing. The biggest downfall however, is that they explain exactly nothing about what’s going on. Characters scream and struggle and die off one by one (sometimes faster) and nobody figures out anything. By about a third of the way into the movie (definitely no more than halfway) you know everything you’re ever going to know about what’s going on, which is:

1. Aliens are here.
2. They want our brains.
3. They might be magic. At the very least they've got a pretty hardcore case of Clarke’s third going on.
4. You don’t actually care about any of the characters; in fact you’re looking forward to seeing them die.

Upon exiting the theater, because I had picked this turd of a movie, I proceeded to take a fair amount of crap from my friends and on that night I swore to write a bitchin’ "extended universe" (to steal a term from Star Wars) story for Skyline, set in a logically sound (at least movie logically sound) sci-fi reality, such that not only would all the dumb shit in Skyline make sense but it would retroactively make it a decent, if not actually good, movie.

I actually did work most of it out not long after that night but I never really got around to properly typing it all up. So; Roamin', K, Bird, and whoever else was there with us that night (it was three years ago, I know there were a couple more but I would be mostly just guessing) who still achingly needs to understand what was really going in that movie and to all you, uh, millions? Hundreds of thousands? Tens of thousands? Regular thousands?  To all you others online who saw that movie and promptly went “huh?” I present to you

Making Skyline Make Sense

Part 1 - Preface

So why are aliens here harvesting brains? To operate their magical spaceships, bio-mechs, and mechano-squids apparently. But why? Surely there must be an easier way to find a decent CPU than travelling across the vast dark gulf of space and mind raping a planet. And even if there isn't, why do they even need the CPUs for the mechs and the squids and shit in the first place? They successfully rounded up millions if not billions of people using beacons from the safety of their ships. The only thing we saw the squids doing was rounding up a handful of people in a much more ineffective manner than the collector ships. All we saw the mechs doing was be created, so what do they need a few billion high end, home grown, organic supercomputers for?

The answer is pretty obvious when you think about it. War. Not with Earth, Earth is barely a blip on their galactic road map. I know we like to think of ourselves as pretty hot shit but to the aliens fighting a galaxy spanning war we’re just a free lunch, a randomly occurring (or are we?) supply depot that had the aforementioned organic supercomputers just lying around going to waste. So the aliens swooped down, slurped up our brains and reprogrammed the OS to be compatible with War-Bot Mark XXIV-7. The far more interesting story is why the war started in the first place, who/what it’s with, and why going through all the trouble and moral anguish of the aforementioned mind rape and brain theft is worth it compared to just building a half decent AI. Yes I said moral anguish, cause believe it or not, the “evil, mind fucking, brain stealing, aliens” are the good guys, or at least the better than the alternative guys.  And that’s where our story starts.
Tomorrow.

Also sorry about the late update (you don't know this but I was shooting for noon-ish) fun fact; a backup on a flashdrive isn't actually a backup if you don't save a primary somewhere, you just have a primary that's on something that's much easier to loose than a laptop. Thankfully I found it and now also have half a short story already done for the next time I screw up.

 -Captain Maximus