Forgotten Space Program

[Cydonian Monk]

26 minutes ago, Pretorian28715 said:

@Cydonian Monk ok just crammed all this in about 4 days, I must say between you and @Just Jim I have been on the edge of my seat for the last couple of weeks, in an enjoyable way though.

Both of your series' have really brought the game to life, really wish there was a real story based Campaign.

Thank you so very much. Always happy when folks are entertained by what I create. (Also a fan of @Just Jim here. Ditto what he said.)

 

26 minutes ago, Pretorian28715 said:

Oh and.....

MOAR PLEASE, MOAR PLEASE, MOAR PLEASE, MOAR PLEASE, MOAR PLEASE, MOAR PLEASE [ok that's enough]

 Soon (tm).

Soon as in "probably tomorrow sometime" soon. Got sidetracked all week on other things. 

[Pretorian28715]

22 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Oh hey, thank you! I'm a big fan of @Cydonian Monk, and it's an honor to be mentioned alongside him! 

@Just Jim S'ok, I like how you both have built believable characters and situations, so if you ported the story out of KSP in to a real-world SciFi setting they would still work (allowing for a few tweeks of course).

@Cydonian Monk was not too serious, as noted by others, don't rush on my account, quality verses quantity and all that.

 

[Cydonian Monk]

As Is Only Fitting And Proper

The Calcium 3 orbiting high above Vall had done a fantastic job of mapping the icy moon. Its only major flaw is its severe lack of power, limiting which instruments could run continuously and how much data it could transmit. So far only the lower-quality maps had been sent to the Jumble of Parts, but with the Sulphur 5 in close proximity it was possible to recover the full data set and higher resolution maps. It took a few passes for Macfred to download all of it, but in the end they had a good, highly detailed map of the surface. 

There were a few short swaths of land yet to be mapped, details that would be filled in with time, but they had enough data to build their list of landing site candidates. Several good places to choose from, flat areas with both ice and rock. And there were two anomalies to make it more interesting. 

That list of candidates was promptly thrown out the window, thanks to one of those anomalies. 

—-

Agake had spent several hours quietly reviewing the Calcium 3 survey data when her eyes went wide with realization.

"Whoa."

Macfred alone heard her exclamation. The rest of the crew were both taking a quick nap, curled up in seats at opposite ends of the shuttle. He had been working through the last week's worth of radio data, trying to find a signal from home, when Agake broke him from his trance. He looked up to find her looking back at him. 

"What?" 

"You know that one anomaly on the map? The southern one?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, it's interesting. The science gear on the Calcium 3 recorded several high-energy bursts, events that originated on the surface. Or just below it. I did a bit of math and every one of them map back to the same spot. The same place where that anomaly is."

"Curious." He unfastened himself from his seat and drifted over to look at Agake's data. "Are you absolutely certain?"

"Yes. One hundred percent."

"Ok. Sounds like we've got our first landing site." 

He kicked forward, drifting into the S-5's cockpit. "Thomlock?" Their elder astrogator, the famously dead Thomlock, was napping peacefully in the pilot's chair. Macfred patted him on the shoulder, shook him a bit. A grumbling mass of slightly wrinkled kerbal stirred from its rest. 

"I didn't do it! Uhm. Oh, hey kid, what's up?"

"Space. I was wondering if you could run some numbers on a landing site. Pretty far south, might be difficult to get to."

"Sure thing. I'll take a look." He brought the lander's navigation system up from sleep mode. The computer was perhaps a bit more sluggish than Thomlock, and both seemed only half awake. A few moments later and it was online, happily blinking at them. "You got the coords?"

"Yep. Sixty degrees, five minutes south by eighty-three degrees, forty-six minutes east. Give or take."

"Are we giving or are we taking?"

"Taking, hopefully."

"Hmm." Thomlock punched the coordinates into the navigation computer and worked out a few different trajectories. More grumbling. He ditched the first batch of results and ran the numbers again, producing the same basic set of trajectories. "Hmm."

"Yeah?"

"It'll be close. Not much wiggle room."

"Can we make it?"

"Yeah, sure. Maybe, if we hit the landing right. Might need to leave somebody on the surface to make it back to orbit though. Or maybe cut off pieces of the ship and leave them there."

"Or, we could not do something quite that rash and instead use other Sulphur to come get us from a low orbit."

"Well sure, if you want to go all logical on me. I figured this rock would make a nice retirement spot. Fly that other Sulphur down and build myself a little trailer home out in the hills."

"Really."

"Nope. There's another thing, too."

"Something real? Or just more sarcasm?"

"Right. See we're not in an absolutely zero-inclination orbit. Close, well, no, not really. About twenty degrees off retrograde. If we use the most efficient trajectories, you know, those most likely to get us back to space, well, see kid, you won't see. It'll be dark when we land. And not just a normal, happy, regular old night kind of dark either. Dark dark. Really dark. Behind Jool dark."

"Wouldn't have it any other way."

"Yeah, well, that's just you. No easy task to drop a lander on an unknown ice patch in the pitch black, but hey, I think I can handle it. We've got radar. We've got spotlights. And we've got some extra spring in our step. Just say when and I'll set up the burns."

"As soon as makes sense."

"Okay." He flipped a switch and the cockpit flared to life. "Get saddled up."

--

The Sulphur 5 needed an inclination change before it could land. Trigonometry tells us it's always cheaper to change you angle when you're going slower, so the first step was to increase their orbit. Even with an orbital velocity of 540m/s (give or take) it's still more efficient to climb and slow down first. And it's even more efficient if you wait until you're at your absolute periapsis before trying to raise your periapsis.

A sixty degree orbit would place them over the landing zone once per day, all that was required thereafter was a bit of patience. So at apoapsis they spun up the remaining 40 degrees to bring them to their desired orbit. Following that Thomlock circularized, checked the map, and then went back to sleep until the landing was lined up. 

Being a pilot in a kerbal space program is one of those jobs where half of the interesting things occur in the dark. And often, those dimly-lit moments of interest are also exceedingly complex and unbelievably dangerous. "I may not remember every landing," a pilot was once heard to remark, "but I remember all the night ones." Sometimes kerbals aren't given much of a choice though, as with the crew of the Sulphur 5.

So they would land. In the dark.

Thomlock set up three phases for the descent: the de-orbit burn; the initial landing burn; and the final landing burn. The first two were large burns, consuming the bulk of the fuel set aside for the operation. Both of the first two burns also included monopropellant discharges, as had the plane-change maneuver, to buy as much Δv as possible. 

Macfred had the unlucky position of dangling from one of the upside down chairs during the descent. If his straps broke he would fall onto Agake, probably hurting her or himself quite a bit considering the 1.5G the shuttle could produce at full thrust. He could have, no, should have rotated his chair, probably still could in between burns, but there was little point. The surface gravity on Vall wouldn't be a problem. All he had to do was make it to the surface.

He watched the burning cloud of fuel expand away from their exhaust as they slipped towards the surface. Most times it was brighter than the stars, most often it was the only thing visible through the thick glass. When the second burn completed, all he could see was a dim reflection of the inside of the shuttle, a handful of stars, and a soft glow on the empty black plain below. A strange, bluish glow. He was going to mention it to Agake when the glow disappeared. Probably just his imagination.

Thomlock's voice crackled across the shuttle's speakers. "We're directly over the anomaly now, about four hundred meters up. I'm bringing the engines up to make our landing. Hold on to something."

Macfred's stomach twisted slightly as the ship cancelled its lateral movement, pirouetted around, and started into the final descent. At first all he could see outside was the endless black plain and their exhaust cloud. Then, the closer they got, the more the light from the engines lit the scene. Small rocks or lumps of ice stood sentry as the smaller dust and fines were blasted out of the way. A small cloud of vapour spread out as frozen particles melted. The spotlights splashed onto the ice just as the engines roared their final roar.

Thomlock must have slightly misjudged the distance, as the lander came down a bit hard. A short bounce and gut-wrenching slide and they were stopped. The engines cut out, the outside world cast into complete darkness.

"Are we there?" Macfred heard Gletrix ask from the lower cabin. "All I can see is Tylo."

Macfred stared into the darkness, wondering what this nearby anomaly would turn out to be. He didn't remember any of the Forgotten talking about other missions to Vall, and so far they had not found an older craft orbiting the moon. Nor were any transmitting from the surface, no unaccounted for noise in his regular radio sweeps. Near as they could tell Vall was untouched. This seemed rather unlikely to Macfred. There were probably several craft they just hadn't found yet, such as the lander probes on Laythe. Or perhaps they had melted their way into the moon's icy crust, never to be seen again? Only time would tell.

He blinked as the cabin lights came back to full brightness, temporarily blinding everyone in the shuttle. Thomlock's voice boomed through the cabin once more as he slid down the ladder towards the bottom of the shuttle.

"We're here folks. Sorry about the landing, ground rose up a bit there at the last second. It may not be much to look at, but welcome to Vall. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sleep until sunrise."

Landed. In the dark. As is only right and proper.

--

 

[I still haven't finished the screenshots / artwork I need for the next update, which I had hoped would be the end of this update. So until then, cheers. We're almost back to a regular schedule.]

 

--

Navigation: Next Post

Edited May 8, 2017 by Cydonian Monk

[FL-T400]

This is amazing, remind me never to flip coins in space

[LtMcMuffin]

Great stuff this, can't wait for the next one.

[Cydonian Monk]

1 hour ago, LtMcMuffin said:

Great stuff this, can't wait for the next one.

Thanks! And welcome to the forums!

[DragonsForce]

New PC and the spoilers work again, hooray! The thing in the first one certainly is interesting... The possibilitys!

[NISSKEPCSIM]

This... is... AMAZING! The best ksp fanfiction I have ever read, alongside KSK's work.

[LtMcMuffin]

34 minutes ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

This... is... AMAZING! The best ksp fanfiction I have ever read, alongside KSK's work.

Yup this story is the only reason I made a profile. I don't want to miss a single post

[Cydonian Monk]

12 hours ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

This... is... AMAZING! The best ksp fanfiction I have ever read, alongside KSK's work.

11 hours ago, LtMcMuffin said:

Yup this story is the only reason I made a profile. I don't want to miss a single post

Thanks again, to the both of you and everybody else that reads this weird little work.  

 

I was hoping to get the next bit posted middle of this week, but I've been busy (good busy, not the crazy busy like earlier in the year). I've finished most of the screenshots (what few are left are trivial), and I have the basics for the post sketched out, but it still needs to be written, edited, formatted, etc.

An "inside the writer's studio" moment here: 

Spoiler

 

As with most of my posts I don't write the bulk of it until the day I post it. For some, such as what's next, I do tend to sketch things out in advance; that's more story-boarding than writing though. The next entry is the part I mentioned earlier as having been deleted and restarted, mainly because I just wasn't happy with how it turned out. I rewrote it a second time, still wasn't happy with it.

So I went back to it last weekend, staged some new screenshots, and have worked out what I think will work. I'll only know for sure once I've got it penned out. I've been fidgeting with this next post since sometime in February, so it's time to just get it done and move on. (I did save parts of the second attempt at this for use in a much later post.....)

I've also tweaked the structure of what comes next. Which you'll learn in time. (Bonus: it gets me back in the game sooner.)

 

 

I'm going to be in the Austin area this Saturday, so the next post will most likely be late Saturday evening or sometime Sunday. For now I'm off to watch the 7th episode of some strange little fantasy space series that I was less than enthused with when I saw it in the theatres. Maybe it'll be better the second time through. [edit: still kinda meh. Too much noise, too little signal, and R2D2 shouldn't be a macguffin.]

Cheers, and May the 4th be with you happy Cinco de Mayo.

Edited May 5, 2017 by Cydonian Monk
Spoiler boxes work again.

[Cydonian Monk]

Whispers

Macfred had been awake for some time when the sun rose over the mountains of Vall. He spent the night as he usually did, scanning the frequencies for noise. A telltale noise, that of a signal from home. Agake was also awake, having crawled in and out of the shuttle during the night, gathering science for her experiments. By sunrise she had three identical surface samples and seven other readings while Macfred had found nothing but the ever-present static. 

He was starting to think he'd never hear from Kerbin again.

Long shadows stretched across the valley, the sun slowly working its way over the ridge. The distant formations were interesting to look at, ice upheaved by some pressure far under the surface. It was quite likely this small moon had a liquid ocean deep beneath them. Undoubtedly some future expedition would scurry along with a drill, releasing the monsters hidden in the deep. For now those monsters were safe.

A point in the distance lit up, catching Macfred's eye. Its bright glow contrasted with the dark surface. This new point soon stretched downwards, and was joined by another. And another. And another. Shapes formed, long pyramids, tall rectangles. A castle on the ice. Their anomaly rose from the darkness as a sunken city emerges from the waters that had claimed it. And so as sunlight filled the valley, Macfred's mind filled with curiosity. 

He woke the rest of the crew and set about preparing for the day. Agake had completed the immediate science tasks, reducing their list of "must-do" goals to two: plant a flag, and visit the strange alien structures. Thomlock suggested skipping the flag planting, remarking that they'd all forget about it anyway. Doubly so if this ice castle was as impressive up close as it looked from afar. 

They placed the flag anyway. 

With the flag secure in the ice, Macfred checked that they had everything they needed. It would be a long hike across this very cold ice to reach their strange destination. Sure, they could use their jetpacks to dart over, but they were low on monopropellant and EVA fuel, and there was no reason to waste more of it. So hiking it was.

They stopped every 100 meters to check the ground and their surroundings. Agake remarked more than once about the smoothness of the ice. There were no large fissures or other breaks as one would expect from a body with an active ocean. There were also no craters, the surface seemingly as fresh as the day it was created. The dust and fines they slogged through were indicative of geysers, water having sprayed out, formed into ice crystals, and come to rest over the moon's surface. And yet it was so uniform, so pristine. Almost... unnatural. 

So far there had been no signs of the energy readings the Calcium had detected. Not since they landed, and especially not since they set out on their trek. They were more than a kilometer from the lander now, yet still some five hundred meters from the ice castle. They had clearly misjudged its size. Suddenly Thomlock stopped, faced them, and patted the side of his helmet. 

"I'm sorry, kid, I didn't quite hear you."

"Hear what?"

"Didn't you just whisper something?"

The three looked at each other and then back to Thomlock. 

"No? Okay then, never mind the crazy old kerb behind the visor. Let's get back at it."

They started towards the anomaly again, but only made it a few steps before the ground shook. It was a soft rumble, more of a deep sound than a piece of ice moving. All four stopped regardless. Thomlock patted at the side of his helmet again, but didn't turn. Didn't ask. He pulled out a spacewrench and was appeared as though he was going to adjustment his radio pack when the anomaly suddenly sprang to life.

A ball of plasma appeared above each of the spires, the tips of the pyramids glowing with a new light. They each stood motionless, quiet in their internal reflections on this new vision. In all their travels, of all the dead and empty ships and stations they had stumbled upon, this was the first that could not have been built by the hands of kerbals. This was truly and honestly alien.

Macfred cleared his throat, took a sip from his suit's water tube, and keyed his mic.

"Do you think it's safe to get closer?"

Agake shrugged and replied "I guess. I mean, it's just light. The readings aren't even particularly remarkable. Nothing on the scale of what the Calcium recorded."

So on they marched. 

The plasma was throbbing, slowly, its rhythm increasing slightly with each step. Occasionally the ground would shake as a loud hum of energy pulsed through the ice. Thomlock was still behaving oddly, smacking at the side of his helmet from time to time. At first he complained of radio noise, of the energy of the anomaly causing problems. Macfred checked his own equipment but could find nothing wrong. He gave Thomlock's suit a quick look, but again came up empty.

Some time later Thomlock stopped, turned towards them and exclaimed "Ok, you had to have heard that."

Macfred shook his head, he had heard nothing. "I'm still not hearing anything. Are you sure you're alright? Maybe we should head back to the ship and..."

"No way. I'm fine kid, just... just don't worry about me. Let's go. I'm sure it's nothing." 

Macfred could tell from his face he was lying, but there was no reason to press the issue. Thomlock waved at his helmet as though he was chasing away a bug, and then continued on. Except now Thomlock was moving at a much faster pace than the rest. He didn't appear to be running, but Macfred was himself at a jog, and Gletrix and Agake were trailing behind. Then he stopped again and looked rapidly from side to side.

"Bob? Bill? Are you here?"

They all stopped. Thomlock spun around, chasing some invisible ghost in much the same way as a cat chases its tail. He would pause momentarily, fixate on some point near or far, and then repeat the process. Macfred's stomach sank, and he wondered if his friend, if their pilot had succumbed to that illness which had claimed so many of the others. To space madness. They needed to get out of there.

"Ok, folks, that's enough. We're going back to the ship and we'll watch the light show from there. Where it's safe."

He started towards Thomlock and froze, suddenly unable to move. Thomlock was still spinning wildly, pointing, gesticulating, muttering something that only he could hear. The ground was thumping at a strong pace, the rhythm of the anomaly beating like a distant drum. A drum that matched Macfred's heart. He shook himself free of whatever fear had frozen him before and stepped towards his friend again. 

Stop.

It was little more than a whisper. Had he heard it? Or imagined it? Its effect was real enough, his body frozen again. Thomlock turned towards them and stopped, a broad smile on his face. 

"I understand now."

Macfred shook himself free and turned to him. "Maybe you could explain it to us?"

"I can't. Not yet." He smiled at them again. "You probably shouldn't follow me." And at that he turned and walked directly towards the ice castle. Macfred reached towards him as he left. He started to follow, walking in the same direction.

STOP.

It was a familiar voice. Was it real? Absolutely. Not more than a whisper, yet he was certain he had heard it. So, too, had Gletrix and Agake, as all three looked at each other just as the word was spoken. He looked back to the anomaly to see Thomlock's walk had become a run. The plasma was now brighter than ever, hundreds of lightning bolts crackled in the void between the balls of energy and the spires they hovered over. An occasional bolt would stream up from the ice.

No, this was dangerous. He needed to stop his friend. He started again....

Stop!

Yes, it was a real voice speaking real words. An all-so-strangely familiar voice and an all-too-powerful word. A commandment, delivered with silent force from some distant place. His body stopped where it was, his legs frozen still. All he could do was scream at Thomlock. Try to get him to...

"Stop!"

And the truth hit him. It was his own voice he was hearing. Every time. The earlier whispers, the commandment, the scream. How? None of this made sense. Had he been speaking without realizing it? Was the voice Thomlock had heard his own? Was he the one going mad? The pooled energy atop the ice spires arced, each sphere of plasma now connecting to the others in a beam. These dense rivers of energy caused incredible vibrations in the ice, the booming sound now throbbing heavily through his suit.

He waved towards the structures.

"You two are seeing this, right?"

Both replied yes.

So it was real. The light show was real, the anomaly was real. Thomlock was in danger, real danger, and Macfred needed to stop him. Now. He shook his head, came back to his senses again, and broke into a sprint. 

STOP!

Frozen again, muscles locked mid-stride, falling forward onto the ice. His helmet hit first, covering the visor in a thin layer of freshly melted dust. He brushed it off, got back to his feet, yet couldn't bring himself to walk. He wanted to follow, he needed to follow, yet his body wouldn't. His fists clenched and his teeth gritted as he fought against the strange force that was holding him. Stopping him. He growled, spat, wrenched his arms free and screamed into the dark sky.

"STOP!"

It was as though time itself had come unraveled. Macfred, screaming at himself; whispering to himself. He pushed with one foot, driving his body forward. His other foot fell heavy, but he pressed on. One foot at a time. Left. Down. Right. Down. Left. He could make it. He would make it. he must make it. Another foot, and another. His muscles burned with defiance.

Thomlock had now reached the interior of the anomaly. As he came to a stop the outer ring of energy formed into a tight circle, a torus, pulses of energy echoing through it. The lightning grew more intense, streaking from ground and spire to reach the highest sphere. Macfred's radio crackled, his suit buzzed warnings, his lungs burned. And yet he pushed on. One foot at a time. Right. Down. Left. Down.

Thomlock was little more than a tiny dot in the unreachable distance. Macfred watched as this distant speck was lifted gently off the ground, raised aloft by the endless energy. A whisper scratched its way into his mind, a message delivered not by radio.

"Stop. Everything will be ok."

A flash blinded him. The balls of plasma became an endless stream, connecting upwards through the spires and pooling into the spinning torus. A shaft of light shot upwards. The ground buckled, bent, kicked Macfred off the surface just as the energy wave tossed him away. The last thing he saw was the stream of light piercing the endless night sky.

--

He awoke to see Gletrix and Agake standing over him. He blinked, looked from kerbal to kerbal, and asked a simple question.

"Thomlock?"

They shook their heads. No answer. Agake shrugged. 

And so there were three. 

Macfred rolled over and moved gingerly back to his feet. He was sure he'd broken something, either in his suit or in his bones, and didn't want to aggravate it. His suit beeped a warning, his visor flashed a message. He had burned through an hour's worth of oxygen in the few seconds it had taken for Thomlock to run into the beam of light.

The structure, their ice castle, had returned to its dormant state. His radio was also silent once more, his breath the only sound inside his helmet. No trace of the show they had just witnessed, no scars on the surface, no residual light. Nothing. They searched the again and again, yet Thomlock was nowhere to be found. No trace of their old friend; no trace of his remains. Not even so much as a burned, cracked, empty helmet. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing except the cold ice.

--

In the distance a light blinked. 

It was a light in the cockpit of the Sulphur 5. Blink. Blink. And then another. Blink. Blink. Red lights turned green. Green lights turned blue. Blue lights blinked. Blink. Blink. The network around Jool lit up, the connection to Kerbin open once more. Back to home. Messages, stored for years, fired off in bursts towards the distant contact. Notes, updates, mission reports. Videos, pictures, audio. Jool, Laythe, the Edge of Infinity, Vall. Everything. Everything.

One message returned.

The ship, empty, without its crew, could only record this message. It opened its memory, allocated its buffers, and started reading. It had no choice, for it was programmed to respond in this way. It lacked the will to resist, and the desire to do so. It was merely a computer, a messenger, a loyal servant. It never asked questions, it never asked why, it simply did. After several minutes it had recorded the simple message in its entirety. A light blinked, the message light. Blink. Blink. The computer did as it always did, and played the new message for the waiting crew. For its empty vessel.

"Kerbin calling Jumble of Parts. We show you on the network, reading your telemetry five by five. Please respond, same frequency. Message repeats. Kerbin calling Jumble of Parts...."

In the distance a light blinked.

 

--

Navigation: Next Post

Edited May 15, 2017 by Cydonian Monk

[Commander Zoom]

Magnificent.

[cubinator]

HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED

[KAL 9000]

36 minutes ago, cubinator said:

HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED

I want Portal 3, though...

[DragonsForce]

Damn, that was well done! So many questions, so little answers.

But I suspect there will be answers, as always, in time; with time itself... In riddles.

[LtMcMuffin]

Good show, can't wait for the next one

[Angelo Kerman]

Wow, that was great! A little confused about who was abducted, but really cool nonetheless. I wonder what happened to Thomlock...

[Thedrelle]

fantastic!

 

now I'm wondering what will happen next, and where Thomlock went. 

 

I am assuming he wasn't vaporized!

[adsii1970]

Nice... @Angel-125 - I'm thinking it might have been Thomlock.  Macfred was held in some sort of suspension...

Great chapter, cannot wait to see what happens next.

 

 

[Cydonian Monk]

Thank you, all of you. I'll not quote each of you to save my sanity with this mobile editor.

 

3 hours ago, DragonsForce said:

But I suspect there will be answers, as always, in time; with time itself... In riddles.

Answers in time, time not so much in riddles. Time seems to have caught up with itself. At least for the moment.

 

1 hour ago, Angel-125 said:

Wow, that was great! A little confused about who was abducted, but really cool nonetheless.

Hmm. I'll have to reread that bit later. At least it'll become clearer when more gets posted.

 

1 hour ago, Angel-125 said:

I wonder what happened to Thomlock...

 

1 hour ago, Thedrelle said:

now I'm wondering what will happen next, and where Thomlock went. 

Both of these questions will be answered, in time.  

 

1 hour ago, Thedrelle said:

I am assuming he wasn't vaporized!

One should hope not! Though that depends on what happened and where (if anywhere) he went. 

Not saying that was a transporter, but one of the most horrifying things about Star Trek to me are the transporters. Yes, they make perfect copies of the individuals they transport, including the data and information that individual holds, but the person they are "transporting" is vaprorized, dematerialized, killed. The information survives, but it's a new instance - not the same thread of existence / conciousness as it was before.

 

35 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I'm thinking it might have been Thomlock.

Correct.

35 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Macfred was held in some sort of suspension...

Correct enough.

 

5 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

I want Portal 3, though...

For now you'll just have to settle for VallHenge Portal 2.....

[Just Jim]

Catching up a little late....

WOW!!  

The effects, as well as the events, in your last installment were brilliant!!!  

[DragonsForce]

19 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Answers in time, time not so much in riddles. Time seems to have caught up with itself. At least for the moment.

Even better!

[greenTurtle1134]

24 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Not saying that was a transporter, but one of the most horrifying things about Star Trek to me are the transporters. Yes, they make perfect copies of the individuals they transport, including the data and information that individual holds, but the person they are "transporting" is vaprorized, dematerialized, killed. The information survives, but it's a new instance - not the same thread of existence / conciousness as it was before.

FINALLY someone with the exact same existential qualms about the transporter that I have! If it disassembles you and places you together again in another place, did you really move or were you killed and replaced with an exact copy that took over your life? When you step in a transporter, do you appear at the other end or does your consciousness just end and die the moment you are dematerialized? Everyone else can see the same person, but are we all just procuring a perfect doppelganger while killing the original? Can a consciousness be taken out and reinserted once the same atomic pattern has been assembled? Atoms are cycled through our bodies all the time, so it must not be the particular atoms that carry consciousness, but completely different ones?

And then there's the issue of duplication. If your mind is scanned and a copy made, which does the chain of consciousness "jump" to? I suspect the one that was scanned first, as that one will have more memories - I read on Wikipedia that there was an argument that a mind cannot be exactly duplicated, as the neurons will change as the mind is scanned. But then transportation is just equivalent to duplicating a mind then killing the original! Can the consciousness, the informational pattern / potential soul that carries your personality, realize that this body is earmarked for vaporization and jump to an identical one? Or a near identical one? If you allow both copies to live a while then dematerialize one, then can it take over the other body? Probably not, but there must be a brief delay between transportation and dematerialization. What if you are trapped in a body that everyone else assumes can be safely destroyed? You beg everyone not to kill you, but they will just think that the real thing is somewhere else and this is just a question/answer program babbling to them? But are people any more than question/answer programs? Consciousness is just a linked list of question/answer programs, so does it actually mean anything? Is everyone else just an empty shell that can't be self-aware of conscious at all? What could it mean...

At least I'm in good company regarding this.

[Cydonian Monk]

3 hours ago, Just Jim said:

The effects, as well as the events, in your last installment were brilliant!!!  

Thanks! Took a bit longer than I figured for some of those screenshots, and I probably would've spent longer at it except I kept wandering off to edit real photos instead of the screenshots.... Turned out better than the similar effect from two years ago, I think:

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[0111narwhalz]

I, too, was quite impressed with the special effects. The shading, especially.

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Regarding the transporters: I've always doubted the idea of a "consciousness" as a physical object. Instead, it's an emergent characteristic of the organization of the organism. That is, there is no distinction between the physical and the mental.