The Saga of Emiko Station - Complete

[Just Jim]

 

And then Chibi'd be offended.  But Emiko would know this beforehand, so wouldn't do it.

Very true... Emiko would never purposely offend or hurt Chibi in any way, even as a joke.

[Mr. Peabody]

We need an April fool's day to lighten things up...    

[Just Jim]

10 hours ago, The Dunatian said:

We need an April fool's day to lighten things up...    

Well, April is still a long way off... but that would be fun.

However... Halloween is just around the corner! I'm going to try and get the next chapter done by this weekend... I hope. That will give me around 3 weeks until Halloween... should be more than enough time...

I have a fun idea for a Halloween Chapter.... bwaahahahaha

 

 

Edited October 5, 2017 by Just Jim

[Mr. Peabody]

2 hours ago, Just Jim said:

I have a fun idea for a Halloween Chapter.... bwaahahahaha

Funny Halloween prank? 

[Just Jim]

23 minutes ago, The Dunatian said:

Funny Halloween prank? 

A Ghost Story... 

(and not Sanny the Ghost...)

[Thedrelle]

A ghost story as told by Sanny the ghost?

 

I can hear them now. "ya know, this would be a lot scarier if it wasn't being told by our resident ghost."

 

Sanny - "SHUT UP! I AM SCARY!! RAAARR!!"

[Just Jim]

6 minutes ago, Thedrelle said:

Sanny - "SHUT UP! I AM SCARY!! RAAARR!!"

Oh... wow.... too funny!!! I may have to steal borrow this line!  

[Geschosskopf]

11 hours ago, Thedrelle said:

Sanny - "SHUT UP! I AM SCARY!! RAAARR!!"

Never annoy even a weak poltergeist.  You'll never see your keys, wallet, phone, or TV remote again.  Your coffee will always spill into your lap.  You'll never get any sleep due to thumps, bumps, the phone ringing constantly, and the lights switching on and off.  The scary part is, if they can do all these things, they're also capable of burning down your house in several different ways, or blow it up if you have gas appliances.  So keep on good terms with the spirits  

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Never annoy even a weak poltergeist.  You'll never see your keys, wallet, phone, or TV remote again.  Your coffee will always spill into your lap.  You'll never get any sleep due to thumps, bumps, the phone ringing constantly, and the lights switching on and off.  The scary part is, if they can do all these things, they're also capable of burning down your house in several different ways, or blow it up if you have gas appliances.  So keep on good terms with the spirits  

So that’s why my living room fan light keeps turning on all by itself...

Apparently my poltergeist is afraid of the dark? 

Edited October 6, 2017 by CatastrophicFailure

[0111narwhalz]

15 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

So that’s why my living room fan light keeps turning on all by itself...

The light above my garage door turned on for a while a couple of weeks ago.

Now, that's not that weird. The weird part was that it wasn't wired to power.

We figured out that it was a fault in the part of our electrical system I call the kraken, due to the way conduits radiate from it and apparently go to every corner of the house. Luckily, it didn't burn the house down.

[CatastrophicFailure]

29 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

The light above my garage door turned on for a while a couple of weeks ago.

Now, that's not that weird. The weird part was that it wasn't wired to power.

We figured out that it was a fault in the part of our electrical system I call the kraken, due to the way conduits radiate from it and apparently go to every corner of the house. Luckily, it didn't burn the house down.

I can relate. My house was formerly owned by a "master electrician," so some of the wiring is, um... 

[Just Jim]

7 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Never annoy even a weak poltergeist.  You'll never see your keys, wallet, phone, or TV remote again.  Your coffee will always spill into your lap.  You'll never get any sleep due to thumps, bumps, the phone ringing constantly, and the lights switching on and off.  The scary part is, if they can do all these things, they're also capable of burning down your house in several different ways, or blow it up if you have gas appliances.  So keep on good terms with the spirits  

Hehe... with us it's the house next door. We finally got some really good neighbors, and it's been really quiet, so I think the resident poltergeist is finally happy. But man, the neighbors before these... I could write another complete novel on what went on over there, and people would say it's weirder than Emiko!!!

So as far as Sanny herself... Yeah, she can be really dangerous... I can't remember which chapter off-hand, but she nearly poofed Piper and Kerenna and some others when she cut power to a Diamondback cockpit. 

Later Piper confronted her, only to have Sanny reply:

"Oh, boo hoo hoo," Sanny sneered back, "They walked away, didn't they?" 

So yeah, she can be super dangerous if she wants... and not really care what happens.

But right now she's sort of cooperating... and a little confused I think.

@Geschosskopf, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Travelling Circus universe has no real concept of friendship, other than maybe "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"... The enemy being the Circus itself. In the Circus universe it's every Kerb for themselves, and they are just trying to survive as best possible, and not end up around a flagpole...

But now Emiko is actually making an effort to befriend Sanny, and be nice to her... and maybe most confusing... make sure it's safe before sending her home to Ovok???  What??? The more I think about it, the more I have to wonder if this doesn't have Sanny really confused and off-balance, and why Emiko is able to talk her down and get her to behave.... for the time being. But why would anyone be... nice... to her??? Is this real... should Sanny believe her... or is it just some new psychological Circus trick???

Sanny is still very self-centered and selfish... and wants nothing more than to go home... and I think the idea of her trying to grapple with Emiko's concept of friendship would make her much more confused, and unpredictable... and possibly much more dangerous. 

Edited October 6, 2017 by Just Jim

[Geschosskopf]

5 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

 

@Geschosskopf, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Travelling Circus universe has no real concept of friendship, other than maybe "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"... The enemy being the Circus itself. In the Circus universe it's every Kerb for themselves, and they are just trying to survive as best possible, and not end up around a flagpole...

But now Emiko is actually making an effort to befriend Sanny, and be nice to her... and maybe most confusing... make sure it's safe before sending her home to Ovok???  What??? The more I think about it, the more I have to wonder if this doesn't have Sanny really confused and off-balance, and why Emiko is able to talk her down and get her to behave.... for the time being. But why would anyone be... nice... to her??? Is this real... should Sanny believe her... or is it just some new psychological Circus trick???

Sanny is still very self-centered and selfish... and wants nothing more than to go home... and I think the idea of her trying to grapple with Emiko's concept of friendship would make her much more confused, and unpredictable... and possibly much more dangerous. 

Sanny's confused about a lot of things   But yeah, my Kerbals don't have families so lack all the emotional and instinctual baggage that goes with them.  This makes them extremely self-centered.  Still, they will cooperate for a common goal, such as getting paid for some labor-intensive project.  However, if that goal is to paint the town red on a rare night of leisure, then spontaneous small-scale Mardi Gras can break out all over amongst chance acquaintances with whom Kerbals rarely, if ever, attempt to reconnect.

But note that this only applies to the Kerbals we see in the game, such as Sanny.  They're somewhat analogous to the worker caste in an ant nest.  There are many other castes of Kerbals with different roles in both biology and society.  You just never see any of these, however, because they're smart enough to stay deep underground where it's safe   The bottom line is, I made my Kerbals as alien life forms, not human caricatures, so Sanny's got lots of culture shock.

 

[Zhetaan]

6 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

I can relate. My house was formerly owned by a "master electrician," so some of the wiring is, um... 

I installed a ceiling fan in my dining room and found a junction box with two white wires, both of which were hot.  Had I connected it, that fan would have run really well for about five seconds ....

I also cracked open a 3-phase panel serving a machine at work and found all green wires.  The electrician we called (because I refused to touch it after that) looked as though he was about to be sick.  There's nothing quite like low bid ....

Given that Sanny's original story involves her going near-catatonic because of malfunctions relating to long-term cold-sleep, I wonder how many poltergeists are ones we create ourselves--though given how Sanny turned out, that may be a bit too meta.

47 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

But right now she's sort of cooperating... and a little confused I think.

That was true before the crossover, though.  In fact, that was true when she was still alive.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Zhetaan

[Just Jim]

12 minutes ago, Zhetaan said:

That was true before the crossover, though.  In fact, that was true when she was still alive.

I have to go back and double check, but yes, my understanding is Sanny went mad during cryo, not when she died. Before the Sarnus trip there is little info about her, other than a most wanted poster listing her as a super-intelligent virus-coder... which lead to her imprisonment... and unconfirmed hints that she was also tortured.

I don't know how crazy she was because of this... but I would imagine the roots of her madness may extend back before Sarnus and Cryo.

21 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

However, if that goal is to paint the town red on a rare night of leisure, then spontaneous small-scale Mardi Gras can break out all over amongst chance acquaintances with whom Kerbals rarely, if ever, attempt to reconnect.

This makes me think of the Minions... one second they're shooting each other with RPG's... the next they're all singing a drinking song!

 

23 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

The bottom line is, I made my Kerbals as alien life forms, not human caricatures, so Sanny's got lots of culture shock.

This is how I've tried to treat her... Other than looking like the other kerbals, she's totally alien, almost like coming from one of the Trek mirror universes... and a lot of what's happening around her makes no sense to her at all... This will become much more evident in the next couple chapters.

 

[Geschosskopf]

4 hours ago, Just Jim said:

I have to go back and double check, but yes, my understanding is Sanny went mad during cryo, not when she died. Before the Sarnus trip there is little info about her, other than a most wanted poster listing her as a super-intelligent virus-coder... which lead to her imprisonment... and unconfirmed hints that she was also tortured.

I don't know how crazy she was because of this... but I would imagine the roots of her madness may extend back before Sarnus and Cryo.

Sanny was actually the most senior non-orange OPTC astronaut, which is why she was put in charge of SE2.  She made her 1st appearance in Episode 1 (2nd pic), when she was sent to all 9 Minmus biomes in 1 mission.  Then, a couple years later, she went on one of the training trips to Mun to get her 2nd star just prior to departing for Sarnus.  The OPTC did very, very few crewed missions prior to SE2, to avoid wasting time while teching up.

Sanny was one of 8 out of 9 kerbs driven mad in various ways by cryo en route to Sarnus (the process killed the 9th, although it didn't slow him down).

For the record, the Circus doesn't torture astronauts because they have no information of value, at least that they can communicate verbally.  However, the various indoctrination procedures (especially those done during cryosleep, which is what drove them all mad), plus of course the debriefing/dissections, are often considered "torture" by the astronauts.  Otherwise, astronauts are treated no worse than British sailors of the Napoleanic Wars.  Sure, they're usually press-ganged and frequently get "started" (only with a shock collar instead of a rope's end) just like their historical models, but flogging is very, very rare (indoctrination instills discipline).  Plus, they almost always have enough "junk" (a hash of salt meat, ship's biscuit, and rehydrated veggies) to eat, get a ration of 1 gallon of beer and 1 tot of grog per day,. and are often made de facto rulers of entire planets, complete with private jets,. all while being part of the Great Enterprise of Furthering Kerbal Civilization.  This is a huge improvement over their former lives as social parasites.  Thus, the Circus considers itself one of the most progressive and uplifting institutions of Kerbal society.  Many of its astronauts eventually come to accept, even enjoy their lots.

 

4 hours ago, Just Jim said:

This makes me think of the Minions... one second they're shooting each other with RPG's... the next they're all singing a drinking song!

Yup, much like that.  Only with much more rat race and fewer parties.

 

4 hours ago, Just Jim said:

This is how I've tried to treat her... Other than looking like the other kerbals, she's totally alien, almost like coming from one of the Trek mirror universes... and a lot of what's happening around her makes no sense to her at all... This will become much more evident in the next couple chapters.

I think you're doing fine  

I figure any actual torture inflicted on Sanny was the classical sorcerous kind, done by the Krakenfolk.  And this could have made Sanny even more confused about even the facts of her own history  

[Just Jim]

OK... first a regular update. I said at the end of the last chapter the gang is headed from the North Pole down to Ground Zero at the former Baikerbanur space center... This is about 700km distance, and I'm happy to say the drive itself is over!!! That was the really time consuming part.

Now I'm working on the Ground Zero shots. I had to do some serious cheating adjusting to make them look right, and so far I'm really liking how they're coming out.

After that I think I'm sending the gang to one more location (top secret obviously)... not quite so far, and then end the chapter there... so I'm around half done I think.

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Sanny was one of 8 out of 9 kerbs driven mad in various ways by cryo en route to Sarnus (the process killed the 9th, although it didn't slow him down).

Didn't the 9th turn into a weird sort of fertilizer zombie or something like that???

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

For the record, the Circus doesn't torture astronauts because they have no information of value, at least that they can communicate verbally.  However, the various indoctrination procedures (especially those done during cryosleep, which is what drove them all mad), plus of course the debriefing/dissections, are often considered "torture" by the astronauts.

OK, my bad... for some reason I thought she got tortured in prison.... no big deal, I don't think I actually wrote it into the story. 

I'm wondering... I was thinking of adding in cryo tubes at some point... Obviously Emiko and Chibi won't like the idea of sleepy tubes... but I'm wondering how Sanny might react if she saw one again?  

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I figure any actual torture inflicted on Sanny was the classical sorcerous kind, done by the Krakenfolk.  And this could have made Sanny even more confused about even the facts of her own history  

Ahhhh.... this is something I haven't gotten into yet... just how did the Krakens separate Sanny from her Monolith in the first place? I'm thinking it couldn't have been easy... not at all... and would require a really, really powerful Kraken (I suspect @Badie Kraken... )

[Geschosskopf]

42 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Didn't the 9th turn into a weird sort of fertilizer zombie or something like that???

Yup, that was Gergas.  The other zombified kerbs of SE2 were collateral damage from his misfortune.

 

42 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

OK, my bad... for some reason I thought she got tortured in prison.... no big deal, I don't think I actually wrote it into the story. 

In prison, before the Circus bought a consignment of convicts?  Quite possible, even probable if the jailers had suffered personally from her malware .  But not at the hands of the Circus, at least not in the same sense.  Of course, she had gone to all 9 Minmus biomes so her 1st debriefing/dissection was probably rather prolonged.....

 

42 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

I'm wondering... I was thinking of adding in cryo tubes at some point... Obviously Emiko and Chibi won't like the idea of sleepy tubes... but I'm wondering how Sanny might react if she saw one again?  

As she now considers herself Enlightened, and knows why that happened, she'd probably look at it fondly.  And she'd encourage everybody to get frozen for 8 years or so in hopes they'd become Enlightened, too, and thus have positive instead of negative energy  

 

42 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Ahhhh.... this is something I haven't gotten into yet... just how did the Krakens separate Sanny from her Monolith in the first place? I'm thinking it couldn't have been easy... not at all... and would require a really, really powerful Kraken (I suspect @Badie Kraken... )

Well, back in Medieval Earth, the usual way was for a sorcerer, standing within a protective design drawn on the floor, to conjure the desired spirit into a trapping design drawn on the floor a short distance away.  Once the target spirit was trapped, the sorcerer would zap it with spells given by higher spirits to coerce the target spirit to do the sorcerer's will.  Once the sorcerer was certain he'd bound the target spirit, he'd break the designs, so the now-enslaved spirit could do his bidding while the sorcerer went on with other things.

 

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

As she now considers herself Enlightened, and knows why that happened, she'd probably look at it fondly.  And she'd encourage everybody to get frozen for 8 years or so in hopes they'd become Enlightened, too, and thus have positive instead of negative energy  

Oh, that's going to go over well with Emiko... 

I'll have to remember this! 

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, back in Medieval Earth, the usual way was for a sorcerer, standing within a protective design drawn on the floor, to conjure the desired spirit into a trapping design drawn on the floor a short distance away.  Once the target spirit was trapped, the sorcerer would zap it with spells given by higher spirits to coerce the target spirit to do the sorcerer's will.  Once the sorcerer was certain he'd bound the target spirit, he'd break the designs, so the now-enslaved spirit could do his bidding while the sorcerer went on with other things.

I'm familiar with the more traditional method... and also reminded of a passage from Lovecraft's "Case of Charles Dexter Ward"

"I say to you againe, do not call upp Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you; whereby your Powerfullest devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you."

Once you get past the arcane spelling, the advice is sound... don't try to summon something you can't put back down... 

I'll have to keep all of these in mind... But I also have to Kerbalize it, so to speak... like you said earlier @Geschosskopf, these are aliens... so whatever happened between Sanny and the Krakens can't be too traditional and Earth-like... and somehow involves a large, red, apparently evil magic boulder... which is still one of the big unknowns in all this... 

 

Edited October 7, 2017 by Just Jim

[CatastrophicFailure]

46 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

“I say to you againe, do not call upp Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you; whereby your Powerfullest devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you."

So... so many extra letters.. .. *spelling pedantry intensifies*

Maybe that’s why I’ve never read Lovecraft...

[WinkAllKerb'']

go go emiko , )

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, Just Jim said:

I'm familiar with the more traditional method... and also reminded of a passage from Lovecraft's "Case of Charles Dexter Ward"

Yeah, that's a great story.  Even the B-movies that have been made from it have been worth watching.

And of course the actual method used on Sanny would have to be different, I was just enjoying the idea of her trapped and spirit-wracked  

 

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

So... so many extra letters.. .. *spelling pedantry intensifies*

Maybe that’s why I’ve never read Lovecraft...

Lovecraft's prose is all 1920s English except when (usually at the end of each story) he reveals that the narrator is in a padded cell by having him rant long strings of rare adjectives trying to describe what put him there.  But the stories are often about ancient evils well known to the Pilgrim Fathers, and he sometimes quotes snippets of invented 17th Century manuscripts written by them, such as the quote above.

So all in all, not too many extra letters and many ripping yarns.  You should read some, remembering that the quality varies a lot from story to story.

Edited October 7, 2017 by Geschosskopf

[Just Jim]

9 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Yeah, that's a great story.  Even the B-movies that have been made from it have been worth watching.

And of course the actual method used on Sanny would have to be different, I was just enjoying the idea of her trapped and spirit-wracked

It's one of my 2 absolute favorites... the second being "The Thing on the Doorstep"

I think the biggest question concerning Sanny is just what can the Krakens do? And just how powerful are they? So far the only one we really know about is Badie/Bruberry Minion, who now appears to be some sort of super-powerful Siren/Succubus. And during the encounter in the wine-cellar Carlenna Crazy Kraken threatened to have d'Alain/Thompington Minion fry Emiko's brain... So he may have some sort of psychic attack??? Oh, and we know Mary-Sue/Carlenna Kraken herself is supposed to be a really powerful telekinetic, and can play devilish mind-tricks, like causing Nick to miss her at point blank range... though the exact details how that worked are still unclear.... and ringing herself in illusionary flames...

But we don't know if this is all they can do... so there are still a lot of possibilities what may have happened to Sanny.  

10 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

So... so many extra letters.. .. *spelling pedantry intensifies*

Maybe that’s why I’ve never read Lovecraft...

9 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

But the stories are often about ancient evils well known to the Pilgrim Fathers, and he sometimes quotes snippets of invented 17th Century manuscripts written by them, such as the quote above.

Yeah, I should have put in a warning... According to the story, that particular passage was a quote from a letter written in 1770... by a necromancer who may have been over 100 years old at the time... which explains the really archaic writing style.

Sorry 'bout that... 

Edited October 7, 2017 by Just Jim

[Mr. Peabody]

Ghost story? In space no one can hear you scream. 

[The Space Dino]

Okay my brain is in complete circles but continue on with your discussion...