January 2010 Writing Ideas
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There is no way I can write 365+ publishable stories in a year, let alone one. I started on 12 stories last year and wrote "the end" on four of them. None are written to a publishable level.
Back on Prodigy Classic in December 1997, I posted some story ideas I could not use. I soon found the story ideas flowing fast. I've posted nearly all the ideas I could come up with, including those I hoped to eventually use.
I follow the belief that if 20 people wrote from the same story idea, we would have 20 different stories. This is why I don't worry about using the stories later myself. Since then, I've learned that many people simply enjoy just reading these posts, even if they do not write.
The way I work is, I come up with a basic concept that is seldom more than a paragraph. I then write these presentations to show what can be done with the concepts, Usual by spinning a story around it, or by explaining what is behind the concept so someone can base their story on that.
I don't want these ideas to go to waste and hope that others might convert them into published pieces. I hold these ideas to be Public Domain (free to use). They can be used in any form you choose. I hope you can use them profitably, but if not, at least enjoy reading these posts. Let me know if you make use of any of them. That is like a pat on the back and gives me an added incentive to keep this up (Like I really need it....).
I usually post about Four books worth pure drivel each year in these idea posts. This is my Thirteenth year of posting these story ideas. What they say is true. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Developed ideas are like gold. These are not fully developed...
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01 )
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Thousands of criminals were sent to a new colony planet. They were trained to be productive in society, each learning a job, a business that society needed. Sent to the planet, they were put to work as the inhabitants of the colony.
There was one little problem. With the use of drugs, psychological assistance, and in some cases employment training or financial assistance, most criminals are rehabilitated before the enter the prisons. The only ones who end up in prisons, cannot be cured of their criminal tendencies. Those are the people sent to the colony planet to become productive.
Jazmo was a space alien. He crashed his ship on the planet and took over one of the houses. He was hoping one of his kind would come to rescue him, but that idea disappeared when the colonists started arriving. He had dismantled his ship long ago and had buried the parts beneath the house in a series of basements he had dug before. He saw the inhabitants and changed his apparent form to look like them.
The colonists were brought to their homes under guard, and let in, given keys. Since no guard ever entered the same neighborhood twice, they all assumed Jazmo was brought in earlier.
The colonists were introduced to their businesses, given keys to them also. They were told to stick to those places for the first week. Get them set up and comfortable.
The guards left on the ships and the colonists followed their orders. For the whole first week, they went to work, and they came home. They had to unpack supplies, assemble equipment, get systems working, be ready for business.
Then they started going to other businesses to get the materials they needed, they started doing business.
Within three months, their nature started showing up. They were thieves by nature. Those with violent natures were sent to a world where the native creatures were vicious and life was hard.
Jazmo had a chance to study the laws and the situation. He saw that automatic defenses were illegal. He decided to make use of that as impression anyway, since the colonists were raiding his garden and stuff. He set up some objects on the house that appeared to be armed robotic guns. What he really did was to set up sensors all over the yard so he could tell when someone was getting into the yard, over his fence.
A criminal was climbing over his fence. alarms went off in the house. Jazmo grabbed a battery powered soldering iron and became invisible. He also became his natural height, which was about the height of a twelve year old.
He slipped outside and spotted the intruder. Jazmo keyed a mike. "Intruder alert, intruder alert," the system changes his voice into a mechanical voice. "targeting complete, lasers armed. "Please withdraw, please withdraw."
the criminal entered deeper into the year. Jazmo walked right up to the guy. "ready to fire, ready to fire."
Jazmo hit a button on a little box on his belt. There was a whine from the building. He lifted the soldering iron. It had been on for a whole minute. He then hit a second button as he poked the man with the soldering iron. there were tapping sounds from the house. The iron sizzled with each touch and the man squirmed and twisted as he tried to dodge the shots. Twice he almost touched Jazmo, but Jazmo was able to move faster. The man finally turned and left. He made a running leap and almost vaulted over the fence. The neighborhood was all outside watching the house as the mane came over the fence and went running home.
The burn marks all over the man's body was easy to see. He was humiliated for giving in to his lesser nature.
A week later, another man got into the yard. It ended the same way. Over the next four months, nearly a dozen neighbors got caught the same way. Soon there were serious complaints about the security system. Jazmo had automatic robotic defenses and that was not legal. Of course, the biggest complaint was that they were unable to steal anything from his yard.
The society had degraded to where no one wanted to do business with anybody else as they were getting robbed blind, even though they were also doing it to all the others. Everything was getting damaged faster than they could be fixed. only a few locks survived unbroken, usually in places where there was an easier way in.
Jazmo's robots protected his property. No one did damage and no one stole anything. The wall was built to prevent breaking in.
The guards returned as scheduled. It took a while for people to be brought back under control, and repairs be completed. There was several dozen men and women with burns all over their body. that was proof of Jazmo's robotic defenses.
The guards came to the house. They were let into the yard and met at the front door. They looked at the robots and the weapons bristling from them.
"those weapons are illegal here."
"I suggest you arm the colonists so they have an equal chance." Jazmo said.
"That would be really dumb."
"Leaving the house unprotected is even dumber."
They looked at him, and the house. "You are going to have to take them out. It is criminal to leave them in."
"That is why I am here." Jazmo said with a sly smile. "I will stop being a criminal when they do." He backed into the doorway. "Until then, the equipment says."
The guards left out the gate. They knew he was right.
Another year passed, the criminals got even worse, but the break-ins were getting less and less. None of them tried the house twice and there were fewer who had not tried the house.
Jazmo actually had fun with his game. He got creative on where to hit a person to make the shots look like they were coming from the guns, yet not get noticed he was there.
The guards returned and took over the place. They started gathering the colonists, taking them off the planet.
Jazmo pulled out his robots as the people were being lead out, and then disappeared, going into the second basement, which had a hidden door. The guards, checking over the houses for stragglers, never found him, so they decided he was already picked up. Listening to the communications, they had finally accounted for every criminal they had brought. The ships lifted off and were gone. Jazmo was left alone on the planet again.
He harvested his garden and a few others in the neighborhood. At the end of winter, a call came in. He was going to be rescued.
A ship arrived and landed next to his house. The parts of his ship was taken out of the basement and packed in the hold of the ship. The basement was closed off so it would not be found until the destruction of the house. he left the planet, regaling his rescuers of his feats of bravery, fighting off the colonists without them knowing he was doing that.

02 )
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I drove New Year's morning and some of the roads were nearly empty. That gave me the idea for this. I am not sure of what I can do with it, but will see as I write this out.
The holy day was coming up. It existed for as long as people could remember. Some were surprised it survived into a technological world, but others said that the technology made it easier to celebrate the holiday properly.
Sales was heavy during the days before. People are buying food, drink, presents, party favors. People will go into debt to throw the best party. People bring stuff to parties, others throw parties. Everybody has some of their own efforts involved in the parties.
The host is usually someone who is very wealthy and has the room for the parties. They invite the best friends, friends of friends, and good acquaintances. Those who are not well off are also invited, even some people off the street, to make the party more full and to show one has a kind heart. There is always more food and drink than people, anyway.
Most guests and their families arrive late in the evening. They start with a ritual cleansing, which includes bathing, purging, and prayer. Some people arrive really early in the morning since the facilities are in full use by others all night long. By about noon, everybody is fully cleansed.
Then the actual holiday starts. The people start feasting, drinking, dancing singing. There is some drugs involved to amplify the effects of the celebration. AS the night goes on, they make more and more noise. At midnight, everybody drinks a holy drink, a drug that sends one into a high, then they fade into a gentle sleep. Everybody, including new born babies are given the drug. All lights, power everything is turned off. Power to the entire city is turned off so it is completely dark. It was part of the ritual of the holy day.
They wake in the late afternoon the next day, clean up the messes, get themselves back together and go their merry way until next year.
It was like this every single year for the entirety of the memory. No one remembered why they did it, but it was something all people did.
Gershwin had been in the military who was discharged due to injuries. He was a professional ring fighter, and was forced into retirement due to injuries. He also was in an accident that caused permanent injuries. He was in chronic pain. He still stayed in shape but was unable to fight without the drugs and no one was allowed pain medicine in a fight. it would be an unfair advantage and be dangerous for the fighter himself as he would not know he was injured.
Gershwin was well into drugs of all kinds. The past couple years, he found that the holy drugs were not working. He was in a weak stupor the entire time the previous year, and last year he had taken twice the dose and was awake but could not move.
The drug is purchased as a concentrate and diluted for the number of people. Gershwin purchased some concentrate and when he got home, he wondered if the stuff was strong enough to knock him out. He took a swig of the concentrate and accidentally drank all the vial.
He slowly woke, It was dark out. He got into his car to go to the party which was on the other side of the city.
He entered the highway and no one was on the road. He started to doubt which day it was. He got onto a high over pass that looked over the city and saw that there wasn't a light in the city. It was pitch black. He did see a couple lights in the distance that went dark. It must be the holy night.
He came to a stop, wondering what to do. He turned off his lights so he could see what was around him. He was wide awake, unclean, unfed, and out in the open.
His pain was returning. He took his strongest pain pill, which took all his concentration in the dark car. he then looked up. Sparkling lights rushed across the sky at him. They passed over head and behind him at speed. Then more lights flowed down the streets, spreading in all directions. No light slowed down as they wove among each other. They shot past him and around his car with a crackling sound. then some large lights dropped out of the air, landing in sequences, almost like giant foot steps.
Gershwin watched slack jaw. A bit of drool dropped down his chin as he was too shocked to even move. the foot steps of light approached quickly. A drunk came out from the trees, and stood there, looking in surprise.
A foot step landed right in front of him, then behind him. beings of energy rushed out of the light and attacked the drunk. The drunk fought, but was overwhelmed.
The creatures from the foot print behind him rushed Gershwin's car. Gershwin's hand went down to the tire iron he was returning to his host. He borrowed it last month until he could buy a new new for himself.
All four doors opened, even though they were locked. Gershwin rolled out with the door, swinging the tire iron in front of himself.
He made contact, but it was not with something substantial. He was soon away from the car and fighting for his life. His army experience and his ring experience came to the fore. He got hit as many times as he hit them, but they did not hurt him bad.
The hood of his car opened and soon, there was a flash of light from the hood. It caught fire as one of the creatures did something to the engine block.
foot prints from around were moving his direction, stretching out as some of the creatures moved faster than others.
Gershwin began to feel some pain again as he had cleared the creatures from around him. He had no idea where they went, but it seamed as if when he hit one, they disappeared.
He looked to his burning car, then realized he had his medicine bag around his shoulder. he took another strong pain pill. Then he put everything away, the beings had nearly reached him.
He was not afraid of the creatures any more, not surprised, shocked or stunned. He was ready for a fight.
He swung the tire iron with skill. He now hit four of them for every time he was hit. he was in shape, but not in perfect shape. He was being worn down, feeling pain that the pills would not stop from all the places he was hit. He had difficulty keeping track of all of them. He used the edge of the overpass to protect his back, but was still they got behind him somehow.
The number of footsteps started to dwindle, many were gathering, then lifting off into the air again, stepping high over him and continuing on.
The sky lightened and he was all alone. There were more streaks through the sky. many of them suddenly dropped down to street level. the first one hit him and it burned. no damage to his skin, but it hurt. Two more burned him. He then swung the tire iron and batted it away.
As the sun broke the horizon, Gershwin was exhausted, sore and still batting at the objects, which were now black. he was getting good, only one in eight hit him. He also dodged many which helped. He never saw what happened to them. He was too busy watching them come at him in rapid succession.
They stopped at about mid morning. Gershwin dropped to his knees and wept. He took several pain pills but even when they kicked in, they did not cut enough of the pain.
around noon, people were leaving the houses and entering the highways. Several cars stopped in front of him and the people got out. Gershwin spun around to face them with his tire iron. He did not swing, but held it in defense, ready to fight. He was still on edge and could not help but be ready to fight. his burnt out car told them something had happened. there was nothing around him. The drunk was gone, possibly eaten. Gershwin did not know for sure. he was concentrating on survival.
Gershwin would not let anybody close to him, ready to fight them. Finally a pretty young woman came forward, talking sweet to him, telling him he is ok. She would take care of him, see that he is safe. She put her arms around him and he dropped the tire iron and cried on her shoulder.
An ambulance and police arrived. The girl took Gershwin to the ambulance and offered to ride with him. he said he would be all right.
He spent a month in rehabilitation. He was interrogated several dozen times about what he did, what he saw, what he thought, how he reacted.
Soon, everybody knew why they followed the practices of the holy day. People were actually hiding from what Gershwin fought during the night. They were eating and drinking, making merry, then drugging themselves into a deep sleep so they would not be detected by that which passed.
Gershwin got treatment for his pain problem and the next year, people made sure he was out like a light when the celebration ended.

03 )
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It was a war between magic users. One group used potions and objects to do their magic. One might say they were wizards, but they were not anything that powerful. They were more healers and soothe sayers than anything.
The other group invoked energies into objects, either adding something that belonged to a person or getting an image to tie object to the person, and then applying their magic to the object to effect, good or bad, the person they are applying their powers to. Voodoo might be one description. Sorcery might be another. They had little power, mostly influencing good and bad luck to the person of their attention.
The two groups got on the wrong side of each other over some minor slights. Misunderstandings caused it to develop into some anger.
As a group, the healers got over their anger and simply ignored the Doll people, as they referred to them as. A few individuals retained their hatred, but could really do little about it. One thing that they all did when they were soothe saying was, when they saw an interaction in the person's future that involved a doll person, they directed the person either away from the interaction, or to do the deal that was to the disadvantage of the doll person. Beyond that, there was no interaction with the doll people.
The doll people held the grudge. they worked hard to get items that was handled or belonged to the soothe sayers, or to get images of them. Both was difficult as the soothe sayers stayed pretty much at home and to themselves.
The doll people did get some items and applied their most hateful actions, usually working as teams for the best effect. The soothe sayers would get a little ill, or some pains, and then cure themselves and get over it. this was especially frustrating to the doll people who thought their magic was the most powerful.
In the news over a period of a month, one soothe sayer was written up as a series of articles about her life. Her farm animals, her crops, her farm, her pets were all photographed and written about in the article.
A group of elite doll people had gathered to discuss what to do to get their revenge. the whole set of articles were pointed out. They decided to change their mode of attack. Since the soothe sayers could tell when they were having a problem of their own, they could cure themselves quicker than it took for the problem to develop.
They decided they were going to attack the soothe sayer's animals. they knew that the closer an animal was to her, the faster she would notice the changes. They started attacking the livestock first. There were a lot of them so they each took a set.
Their spell making was difficult and they had to rest after each step of their spells. Half way through, while taking a break, they asked if it was even worth the effort. They went back to work, though.
A Month later. the soothe Sayer, Molly was talking to a neighbor. The neighbor said that the animals did not look like their coats were as shiny, they moved listlessly. A couple were limping.
Molly did not see it, but since her neighbor knew more about the live stock, she checked them out. They all seamed to be ill. She called in a vet to check them out. After a week of tests and examinations, there was no clue as to what they were suffering from, but it was pretty bad.
AS the summer passed, she had to put a number of her livestock down. It was bothering her. She walked around the farm, looking for anything that would cause it. She was paying as much money on vets as she was making with her work. It as very distracting. By the end of summer, the surviving animals were recovering. One problem with the doll magic was that it had a limited life span and a body developed resistance to it. The effects had to happen immediately or it would not work. The surviving animals were now immune.
The doll people were happy when they saw the article about the demise of many of the live stock but sad when they saw in the article that she has saved the rest of them with her healing magic. They then to the animals closest to her. This time, they used their best finesse after they created the dolls of the pets.
One by one, the pets were getting really sick, There was no reason for them to get sick. they were old, but not that old.
She had lost cats dogs and several pet birds she had. It was bothering her in her work.
One day, she sat with a sick dog. She knew it was going to die and she did not want that to happen. She was holding it, crying. she slowly got into healing mode. She got hit by horrible feed back. She had not heard of anybody healing animals so she wondered if this was normal for healing animals or was something else. She kept applying her magic the feed back then faded out. The dog wiggled in her arm and got up. By the end of the evening it was walking around.
That got her curious. She started holding each of her pets, and applying her magic to them. Each time, they had bad feed back, then they got better.
By the end of the week, every animal she had in the farm was healed this way. It was hard, tiring work, but she was excited to see the effect.
One of her customers came with a dog. The customer wanted some sooth saying. Molly asked to try something with the dog. The customer said yes. Molly hugged the dog and applied healing, there was no feedback. The dog did have a growing illness which she healed. It would be a while before it would be going, but it would live well.
All smiles, she gave the customer the information he was looking for.
A month later, she went to a convention of soothe sayers. She was allowed to speak before the whole group. There were no reporters and they were the only ones who would know what was said.
She reported the healing of animals, then the feedback with her animals bu none with others she had healed.
A bit later, a man got before the group and said that the feedback had to be spells by the doll people. He had found that with several people who had run afoul with the doll people.
She asked how they would be able to attack her, She was told that she was in the paper, with pictures. Her animals were in the pictures. They used the pictures to attack her animals.
The doll people gathered together. Several were really sick for no apparent reason. The sick doll people were asked about who they had spelled. they all said they spelled Molly's animal. They were told that Molly had cured her animals. Whenever a cure is stronger than the spell, there is feedback and the spell maker gets a dose of his own magic.
The soothe sayers applied healing to their pets and livestock, just in case they were spelled. a few were.
The doll people stopped spelling animals as they were getting hit with their own spells and it was even hard to cure as no soothe sayer would agree to meet with them to even talk about cures.

4 )
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It is popular to show how ants can carry many times their own weight, while we can barely carry four times our own weight. They say that ants are stronger. The problem with this argument is that the muscle fiber has a given amount of pulling power. It takes the unit of energy and expends it in changing shape. It then relaxes for a moment and does it again. the amount of pull is dependant on the unit of energy that powers the "twitch".
An ant might have six muscle fibers per joint. A human has millions of muscle fibers per joint. Each muscle fiber will pull at their minimum strength, whether there are only six of them, or millions of them. For the ant, that minimum strength is many times their weight. For a human, it is a fraction of their weight.
If we were shrunk down to the size of an ant, we would not have as many muscle fibers to do the pulling, so we would only be able to lift what an ant can lift.
There is of course, What if?
There was a flaw in the theories of the rules of the universe, or so they thought. They accelerated particles to the highest theoretical level of the particle accelerator on the asteroid Cerus. The accelerator encircled the asteroid as a ring about twenty feet above the surface. The height changed slightly above the surface as it was following the gravitational center, not the surface. It was larger than anything they thought they could make.
The problem they were having was, when the fully power was applied to the particles, they seamed to disappear, They were still there, but a fraction the size as expected. This was not predicted by theory but the math did seam to fit some how.
On Earth, a group of scientists examined the results. Charles was a bit strange, crazy by some accounts. He was known to have outbursts of illogic, that ended up leading to correct theories.
Charles examined the data, ran the math, then started ranting about subduction of mass while retaining energy. Cheryl was taking notes of the ramblings asked if that could happen in black holes, where some exploding starts appeared to have lost more mass than detected.
By the end of the day, they came up with ways to test the theory. It would not require equipment they did not have access to.
A month later, they had taken their small particle accelerator and modified it based on the calculations that Charles provided. Others checked his work. there were what appeared to be errors in the calculations, but they seamed to be more style differences than anything. They started the machine and did very low energy tests first. detectors showed it worked. They cranked up the power a little more. they got some standard results. Finally, they cranked the power up to full.
The machine powered down according to the computer. It had gotten the data requested. No one was there to do anything with it. Everybody in the building appeared to disappear.
In reality, they were shrunk down to the size of the largest ants. it took them a while to wake and they automatically wandered, heading to each other's stations. Soon they found each other and worked out what had happened. At first they thought themselves in an alien world, then Charles looked up. He recognized the underside of a desk he was looking at, and they realized they were shrunk.
They decided they had better search the building and find everybody who was there, first.
By the end of the day, everybody was accounted for. They had settled in an area behind the refrigerator in the kitchen. They found plenty of food crumbs to eat while they tried to work out what was going on. Charles sat brooding. When they asked if this could be reversed, he said he did not think so. He said he was not sure how to do the changes.
after two days of none of them being seen, officials came in and investigated. because they were small and hiding, they were never seen. They had decided it was not wise to be found just yet.
Police came and investigated. The data was examined by top scientists, then a new team of scientists came in to work on other projects.
The team lived off the craps tossed to the ground, discussing the science. One day, one of them was leaning against the leg of the ch air. He decided he wanted to stretch his legs and he pushed. The chair moved. He fell down. They all gathered and doing some experiments, they found each one of them could lift the chair on their own. Balancing it was difficult, but they had their original strength. Charles said that the energy remained the same but the matter was compressed like in a black hole.
One day, the refrigerator was pulled out and cleaned behind it. The team had to run to avoid being seen or swept away. the fridge was left out from the wall as there was a small ridge that had to be lifted over.
That night, Charles decided he wanted his hiding place back. He got beneath the fridge, lifted a little and pushed it some. A couple other men joined him and they actually lifted the fridge up off the floor and carried it past the ridge and to the proper distance from the wall. They set it down again.
Several years later, they had moved out of the installation and to a nearby storage building. They had good access to food during the summer, but it became winter and their food supplies dried up. They decided they wanted to take one of the vending machines into their hiding place. The whole group went to the vending machine. The girls climbed the cord and unplugged it. the guys they carried the machine all the way to their hiding place. While they were small, the carrying was easy for the most part as they had their full sized strength. They took turns, transferring from one to the other when there was a crack or obstacle in their route.
The girls opened the doors and they got it inside. They re-plugged the machine in. They stole three vending machines during the winter, swapping out the ones they stole before.
On a lark. Charles said he wanted to check out the installation again, see if what they did to the machinery.
They got back into the building and found that the accelerator and the computers were as they were, never touched after the accident. Charles examined the data with the others. He said that there might be a way to reverse it. It would take preparation and had to be done when there was no chance that anybody would be nearby.
They worked on the equipment and got it ready. It was tough sometimes because of their size, but other things were easier.
it was a holiday. they powered up the machine and did some test runs. That evening, they got into position in the control room, so they would have room to grow. the machine was put onto full power. The machine ran the tests and powered down. They woke up and were full size again.
It took a lot of explaining as to what happened to them. Their explanation for what happened and the science behind it shook the scientific world, but they were now celebrities. Their research filled in a key hole in the theory making other discoveries possible.
It was agreed that the experiment they did would never be run again.

05 )
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Glimker had survived one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the army. He ended up being the only survivor on the battle field. Both armies ceased to exist.
He could not stay where the battle had existed, so he got into a special forces landing pod and launched. In space, he found the ship was drained of power. He plugged in his suit and that provided the power for the ship to maneuver and go. he selected a mining station as it was close and he could get a lift to his home from there.
When he arrived, His space suit was nearly out of power. His personal survival stuff was on a separate system and was doing well, but his weaponry, power for the pod, space communications, suit defenses were sapped out.
He barely got the pod landed safely at the mining station. There was no communications challenge and no one met him when he got out. He decided not to leave the pod sitting right there, so he dragged it, taking two hours, to a storage spot in the corner that had not been used in a long time It was covered in undisturbed space dust. He found a low level power source and plugged the pod into it. That would keep the pod's systems working and would take a decade to recharge the pod.
He then went into the station. Just walking through the place, he realized that there were no high power outlets he could plug into. He wandered the place and sized up the workers, installation, and systems.
The station was still under construction, the mines were used to supply the system with raw materials. It was not exporting any supplies as of yet. It would be a long time before it would export.
He needed to power up his suit if he was going to be able to get to a real destination that could take him home. That was a problem, It would take longer to power up his suit than it would take to power up the pod. He did not have that much time.
He found a place to rest. While he waited for sleep to come, he turned on his suit's help files and searched on how to charge it up. Before he dozed off, he heard something about transference of heat to power the system.
When he woke and was ready to get up, he ran the help files again. It got to the transference of heat and he studied it carefully, exploring all about it. His suit was extremely efficient. He simply needed heat to be moving into or out of the suit, for it to charge his power system. He saw what temperature differences were needed and how long it would take for the system to work.
He did a search of the site again, and traced down what jobs were needed. he then signed up to work for the mine in those fields. He found out that along with some pay, he got use of some of the low power for his "entertainment" usage.
All sorts of supplies were available to the workers, and when he looked at the prices, he saw no one would ever leave with any money. He was self contained so he would not worry about that.
He did have an extra power outlet come out of his pay, but never asked it to be activated. If they found out about the pod, he would say he was paying for that power and they would not get him for that.
He got to work. He walked into what amounted to an absolute zero refrigerator. It was not that cold, but it seamed to be. His job was to move bins and barrels filled with material that would evaporate away if it were any warmer. Other workers worked for a half hour, thawed out for half an hour, then came back in. He stayed and worked the entire ten hour shift. When he came out, He got a tiny bit of power and his system was nearly to cold to keep him warm. He slept, a bit chilled. He plugged into the power and let that little bit of power to charge his suit.
When it came time for him to go back to work, they wanted to send him into the cold. He told them today's job was hot, He insisted on it. He was told he was so good in the cold, bu he insisted even more. They took him to the hot and he went in.
Here, the men worked about half an hour, drank all they could drink, and then went out. They would die if they did not perspire.
Glimker worked hard, his suit allowed the heat to bleed into the cooling system, converting the heat transfer into power. When he finished his shift, he sat in a cool down area until the surface was cool enough to touch.
The next day, he did cold again. The bosses did not like him swapping jobs at first, but soon took to like the fact that he provided more work while he was there, than they were missing when he was not.
A year had passed and he finally had as much power in his suit as he had when the battle was over. He had checked the pod a couple times during the year and it was doing well. They also found the pod and he said it was his, and he was paying for the power from his pay. There was a bit of arguing but they accepted it. He was paying for it.
He then cashed out his pay. They laughed as no ship had come to come and get him, but they cashed him out and signed him off the payroll. he then got into the pod and left. This time, because hew as not launching from a planet, he had extra power within the pod.
He was found half way to his selected civilian destination by a battle fleet and was rescued. His suit provided a full report as to what had happened in the battle and his working in the mining station. The battle fleet arrived at the battle planet, gathered the dead and finished the job of destroying the installation on there, that the war was about.
Glimker showed exactly how he moved through the battle field, naming the soldiers that were with him as their bodies were found. He showed where he was when the last round was fired. Then how he went to get the pod to escape.
The force then went to give the mining station a visit. The mining station developed a change in plans. Instead of building the site they would have at the very end, first, like they were, they would finish what they have and then concentrate on export, letting the men rotate out. The costs of stuff was to be reduced and refunded what they already over charged.
The mining people did not notice Glimker there, since he was among a lot of other soldiers, and his communications to other soldiers was strictly through radio.
The mining people were interested in the battle suits as that one worker was excellent. the commander suggested that they buy suits for the men and maybe it will save them some money in the long run.
With a freighter on its way, military returned to the battle fleet and Glimker got to go home.

06 )
.
The standard theory of the universe was running into trouble. New findings were sending the theory for a loop. Even quantum mechanics was not working as expected. Scientists were in trouble, their funding depended on their coming up with viable answers to the questions. Those answers were not coming at all. The theory looked all wrong.
Davidson was on the cutting edge of the theory and he was clueless on how to deal with the problem. He decided he needed a break.
Davidson decided to visit is uncle. His uncle was a retired priest and now worked with wood as a hobby. Davidson found his uncle's wisdom very useful to spark a new train of thought, even though it was not always correct or useful in and of themselves.
He sat and watched as his uncle pulled a draw knife across some wood held in his shaving horse. The scraping of the blade against the wood, the smell of fresh saw dust, was relaxing.
After about an hour of the two of them sitting there is silence as his uncle worked, his uncle finally spoke.
"What is bothering you young man?"
Davidson thought a long moment before answering. "The scientific community has a serious problem." He started. "The general theory of the universe is falling apart and we have no idea what to replace it with." He listened to the wood a little bit longer. "Real science has survived many bloody noses over the generations because the scientific method worked." His uncle kept working. "But this problem will devastate theoretical science like no other problem has ever looked to ruin science like this one will."
The uncle stopped for a long moment, then smiled. He pointed to his stick. "See how this shaving," he slid the knife down the piece of wood." can be removed from a big piece of wood?
"Yes."
He then used the curved blade of his draw knife to cut the shaving into smaller pieces of wood. "See how they get smaller?
He then used a rasp on the wood and came up with smaller pieces, Then course grit sand paper, then finer and finer, each time showing the dust. Soon he had a powder that was finer than flour or baby powder.
He finally stopped. You see how the wood gets finer and finer?"
"yes."
"Where does it stop?"
"At the molecular level."
"Are you sure?"
Davidson thought for a long moment. "WE had done extensive studies of all materials."
"Try it again." He handed a piece of exotic wood to Davidson. "Do the tests over again and prove it to me."
The piece of wood was really heavy and dense. Davidson considered brushing off his uncle's challenge, He slowly stood up. He decided it would be more interesting than trying to get some theories to work when they would never work.
Davidson gave his Uncle a hug and left. He went to the university he worked and headed down to the material science lab.
Using high tech tools, he started just seeing how small he could make wood particles. He worked step by step, getting smaller and smaller, examining the results. Those around him thought he was a bit crazy as they would have gone for the smallest size right off the bat.
Looking in the electron microscope, he had a wood molecule at what he would have considered the smallest one could get.
He was taking pictures of his examples all along the way.
He then decided to cleave the molecule in half. he then cleaved each half in half. by now, he had gone to different equipment as he was looking at atoms. Using the newest techniques invented, he was splitting atoms, then splitting out the quarks that made up the protons electrons. Looking at the results, a thought crossed his mind. He sat down and ran a couple hundred formulas, trying to get a handle on what he was thinking.
He then fired off his work to a colleague, telling her to rip the work apart every way she could.
By the end of the month, his work was spread all through the community as people were examining his work. He got loads of comments, both about his brilliance and about how dumb his concept was. When the department head bright him in to talk about his work, Davidson printed up and showed off all the messages he received. It was almost equal number of those who said he was dumb, and those who said he was brilliant. the department head examined the papers, then said that he had only received the bad notes.
Using his work as a spring board, other scientists were publishing solutions to the theory of the universe. The old theory was falling apart, but the new one was taking its place.
Davidson finally went to visit his uncle. He handed over the remains of the wood after his studies of it.
"How, How exactly did you know that the universe is made up of wood?" Davidson asked.
"It was quite simple my young man," The uncle started. "Our lord's human father was a carpenter. Our lord was a carpenter." There was feeling in his voice. "God could have chosen his father to do any job at all. He was selected as a carpenter because the world was made of wood.

07 )
.
I have several DOS based card games. One has a couple dozen solitaire games. another has four card games, one is a solitaire game as the set of solitary games, but with slightly different rules. I have thought about, and forgotten an idea based on that, until now.
High lords, an alien race that had conquered the area, ran the company. They were thinking on a totally different plain of consciousness. They had ideas, they had concepts, they had project, and none of it was on a practical level. it was not uncommon for one to walk into the engineering department and ask them to design, as he waves his arms around, "BLUE", that, with more arm waving, that "Shalbordogloddak" with more arm waving, "to an eight." and then leave, with a look of having passed on brilliance.
Theisman, the head of engineering, insisted getting the name of each high lord. After the high lord would leave, he would make a quick model of something, that had blue, and then did something that resembled the arm motions the high lord asked for. He would attach a note with the high lord's name and the words he described, and set it on the shelf. If the high lord ever came back for what was asked for, he would show the model and ask if that resembled what he was after. only a couple ever did return, and while it was always wrong, it got the high lord to describe better what they were after and what it was supposed to do.
He has heard of other departments that were cleaned out because they never did what they were told. He always had something to show the high lords. They could not fault him for what he came up with.
Theisman played solitaire quite often on his work computer while waiting for things to happen. This was allowed as he was forced to wait and could do nothing till then.
One high lord was good at describing, working with Theisman's people on designing things. He spoke carefully, would go to the long line of models and point to actions of the models to show what he was after. Theisman finally figured out that the high lords used a hand language to speak and that was where part of the problem was. He was not going to learn their hand language, so they had to learn to speak.
Theisman's men were fabricating a project for the high lord and he was waiting for them to get to a point where he could get involved again, so he was playing solitaire.
The high lord was watching over his corner. Theisman pulled a card from the completed stacks and set them on top the working stacks, brought over a set of cards on top of it, and in a few moments, had gotten rid of half the covered cards.
The high lord said that move was against the rules. Theisman said, it is impossible to cheat when playing the computer.
The discussion was about the rules, Theisman soon figured out that the high lord's understanding of vocabulary was quite limited. rules meant there could only be one way to do it.
Theisman quit that game, and opened up a game that had nearly a hundred different solitaire games. "These are all solitaire games."
"There is only one solitaire game. There is only one rule."
Theisman opened one game where everything was stacked in a pyramid, and played a hand. He then opened up a game called bowling, where there were ten spaces to put cards and he had to choose where the cards went and when he filled all ten spaces, he had finished a frame. He then played a game called scorpion where the object was to stack all the cards, and one could only place like suit on another. He did Klondike, like the game he was playing, but with this one, three cards went down instead of one.
He kept showing each game and how to play them. He then opened a set of solitaire games by a different programmer and they played differently,
As he played them, he explained that each game had a design. Then each game had a style, then rules, then strategy, tactics, and then one played the odds. Each game designer chose what features to have in the games. One might not allow cards to come off the stacks already down, while others will. Some will have extra stacks while some do. Then there is differences in rules due to whether the game was set to easy or difficult. He could see that he was making some headway with the high lord.
They had to go to work and Theisman did some design work on the piece and solved a problem the men were coming up with. Then they had to wait again. this time while some resin was "cooked up" mixed and poured into forms.
Theisman made the high lord sit down and start playing the games. He explained the rules of each game, and pointed out ways to handle some situations. The high lord did not like losing, but he was intrigued with the games. Theisman had sixteen different sets of games on his computer and the high lord played all of them over the period of a month they worked together.
Theisman dug out some real playing cards. He taught the high lord how to shuffle the cards, and then taught him to play the games with real cards.
when the project was done, the high lord was extremely good at playing cards. They even played many gambling games. The high lord seldom lost in any game that they actually gambled on. they played for washers and screws. The high lord was good at counting cards.
The only reason that Theisman had even a chance, was that he marked the cards, sticking his thumb nail into the edges of the cards, or bending them in some way. He knew what the high lord had from that.
They finished the project and the high lord left with it, quite happy. Theisman gave him a dozen decks of cards so he could play for a while and not worry about damaging some of the cards. He told the high lord to design his perfect solitaire game and when he comes, he can show it off.
There are ways to listen in to some of the communications of the high lords. It is highly frowned on. ON the communications, there was a lot of chatter about games. All sorts of formulas involving fifty two, was involved.
The high lords appeared to be confused by the concept of chance and random.
Another high lord came and complained about losing. He did not like losing. He felt that losing was beneath any being that existed. He demanded a game to know how to win every time. Theisman told him to come back in about a week.
Theisman created six solitaire games that played like any other, but if one clicked the background, the cards stacked on their own. When the high lord arrived, Theisman explained that any cards that can stack once he got stuck, click on the background and those cards will stack in order. He handed the console to the high lord and said, "enjoy it." The high lord left.
A month later, that high lord sent a message expressing his anger that the game had no challenge. It stopped being fun quickly. The high lord's complaints was that clicking on the background stacked the cards, no matter what. Where was the fun in that. Theisman took a chance and sent back a response. "Play with real cards and see if they are any fun." Theisman then sat and waited for guards to come for him. They never came.
The first high lord came back after about two years. He showed his game he created. He used the cards. The game was complex and brilliant. Theisman and his head programmer went over the rules, played the game together with the high lord watching over their shoulder, to make sure they understood the rules and tactics of the game.
While the team was working on the high lord's newest project, Theisman wrote the game, and his programmer made it fit the high lord['s rules. They then gave the high lord a game consol with the game to test to see if it matched the design. It did. The high lord asked for a thousand to be made.
A week later, Theisman handed the high lord a thousand decks of playing cards. The high lord looked at them for a long moment with a bit of confusion. "It will take six months for the game consoles to arrive. You can take these, teach the rules to a teacher among your people, and that teacher can teach everybody else how to play. You have them right now."
The high lord actually bowed, then left with the cards.

08 )
.
The plan was to make the new planet habitable. They did not have much of a budget, so they designed and built a robot, small in stature, that was more like a child in physical capabilities, than anything. It was built as mostly computer, with all the knowledge it would need to work the planet into something habitable. One thing they did, was to make it cute. That was unnecessary, but when getting final funds for sending it, the cuteness helped in the marketing of the project.
The robot was delivered to the planet in a ship filled with tools, fuel and power, with no way to return home The robot was on its own. For the first year, the robot explored the planet, reporting finds as quickly as they were found. The funding then dried up and communications stopped. By the second year, home was not even listening. It was essentially forgotten by those who sent it. Their funding went to other things.
The little robot finally stopped trying to contact home. It was using a lot of energy to send messages, and it needed energy to work. It still listened, but there was no communications coming.
The little robot started gathering minerals and materials in one location, digging it out of the ground and piling it near the ship.
When he had the raw materials, he started smelting and refining metals. He had found hydrocarbon deposits that could be used for power, and he needed to get it to the site. He first made some barrels, and then a small pipe line. Once the started getting the hydrocarbons to the work site, he had the energy to really get to work. First he built tooling, machinery, forges, refineries.
His first real project was to make a new robot. He had all the designs inside him. That robot was bigger, stronger, and programmed with similar knowledge. They did some work together, then both each built a new robot.
Every robot worked in the field, bringing supplies, building structures, building equipment, then constructed a robot of their own. two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty two, sixty four. Soon it became a robotic assembly line.
Thousand and thousands of robots worked to expand the colony, build the place for the colonists to come.
Finally, the colony was done. There was more than enough energy, more than enough equipment, robots almost living as the colonists would.
The little robot sent out a signal, telling home that the colony was done. Home returned a signal saying that it was not interested in sending people there now. The little robot asked if it could come home, then.
The signal returned with a sarcastic answer, "you can return, if you can. "
The little robot considered getting just itself. it looked over the robots working around it, and decided that all the robots should come.
The colony robots turned their attention to building space ships. first came ships to get the robots off the ground, then a star ship to take them home.
Since they continued to build robots, they ended up with six star ships.
The people were stunned at the star ship fleet as it entered planetary orbit. The little robot signaled, "Master, I have returned."

09 )
.
My brother and I have discussed the general concept many times over the past year, about building a ship from scratch, or from junk, but I have never really had a handle on how to make it work right. I have written a couple versions but nothing worked right. There is a show called JUNK YARD WARS, where two teams were put into a junk yard and had to fabricate a project from the junk that was there. It was fun to see how they got around engines that would not work, hydraulics that leaked, and somehow got something that did the job they were asked to do. They even had jet boat and jet car races that actually worked.
In the interstellar community, Court cases never involved who was right or wrong. The better developed a court case was, the more likely it would win. When there was a disagreement that involved the court, getting to court first, and starting on the case, was the absolute priority. First in, won every time. The people there would then help on developing the case for you.
Area pirates had lawyers on call at all times. They would capture a ship, strip them of the materials. do something to the ship, usually in the programs, so they could not leave for several days to a week, then go home. Once home, they would give the details to a lawyer who would go to the court and built a case against the ship they pirated. Few ships ever filed a case, but if they did, the pirates already had the case built. No one could touch them. Enforcement only worked on order of the courts. Enforcement was never sent out against the pirates.
Branson was often referred to as a primitive. He worked with his hands, building things, rather than just buying something made by robotic factories. He used the top technology, being a part time court official, and purchased most of what he actually used, but he preferred to figure out how things worked, then make it himself.
He had been reading about how ships were built, when he got an offer to go visit his uncle and help rebuild a ship. He signed up for a leave of absence and then purchased tickets on an independent star ship to go for the visit.
Being an independent company, it used whatever ships they could get their hands on, then fix them up for passengers. This ship had armament and armor from a previous life. The weapons were never expected to be used, but they were not disabled.
Because of the few passengers the ship was carrying, and the destination, the ship was loaded with valuable cargo. The passengers were more a bonus for the mission.
The ship launched on time, and Branson was happy he got a room by himself. He kept to his study of ships through the journey.
At about mid way, alarms went off. The captain reported pirates approaching. The ship shook at the pirate fired on them. Then there were whooshing sounds as the ship's weaponry fired back. the passengers were ordered to the center of the ship. a safe room near the star drives.
Like the others, Branson left his books and stuff in his room.
Soon the captain said they were going to be entering the atmosphere of a planet. Now communications between the various crews were on the speakers as they reported what they were dealing with. The pirate ship was entering the atmosphere on the other side of the planet. The last communications from the pirate was "We will see you in court!
The passengers were strapped in with nothing to do until the ship came to a stop, so they discussed about how, if they don't repair the ship and get into space first, they would likely be charged with some crimes.
The crew left the passengers, closing off the room to prepare the ship for landing.
The landing was violent, the ship flipping end for end. Because of the way the passengers were strapped in, they got out of it with minimal injuries, mostly bruises and strained joints.
They stayed strapped in place for almost the entire day before one man got his straps free. He then freed everybody else.
It took some doing, but they opened the door and looked around. All that was left of their ship was the room they were in. Even the drive, which started just outside the room was gone.
All around them was star ships, space station parts, air cars, heavy and light machinery, all in various sorts of disrepair.
"this place is an old junk yard." One old man said.
A woman who had lived on many planets picked a fruit off a plant, opened it up and tasted it. "not spectacular flavor, but edible." We have food. We likely can live here for years without really needing anything. She gave a cursory explanation of what can and cannot be eaten and how to eat them. Branson left the group to explore while they discussed whether to wait until help came or not.
Branson climbed into a lot of ships, examining what was there, and what appeared to be missing. Some drive mounts he had read he read about, that missing in all of the ships. Most likely recycled.
He showed up with the group about once a day, just to find out what they were up to, then headed off again. Half the group wanted to wait for help, or another ship to come to deliver junk, while the others were arguing about how to rebuild a ship.
Branson used what he remembered, and patterns from sockets the various ships had for the parts, design what the missing parts were likely made to be. He then searched far and wide, for a whole month, to find two of those parts, broken among the debris.
When he returned, the found that those who wanted to rebuild a ship had chosen a big star liner for their project. Branson had already determined that ship had serious structural damage and was not going anywhere without being stripped down and half the parts replaced.
Branson examined the drive mounts he found for the types of materials and how they were made. One piece was broke in half and he saw it was not just one metal.
He picked a ship a good distance away from the survivors and started rebuilding it. The people would have to be in their berths for the entire journey, but they would get back home.
His first project was to disassemble the ship down to the frame.
He was able to scrounge up machinery and tools from various ships and start manufacturing parts that were missing.
Among the pirates, there was no debate over who was in charge or what they had to do, but all the mechanics died in the landing. all that was left were soldiers and passengers. They chose a ship and started rebuilding it, finding replacement for systems and getting it assembled.
Branson had the frame apart, replaced several members, then started building it again.
He had been gone for two months, so he checked in on the survivors. Their ship was not going anywhere, but they were working hard on it. The leader, the guy that freed everybody, told Branson that if he did not help with the ship, they were going to leave him. He shrugged and returned to his project. He avoided telling them lots of luck. they needed more than they were going to get.
A year had passed. Branson sat inside his closed hull, checking each component to see what it did and whether he could make it do what he wanted. There were a lot of sensory equipment he was leaving off. It would make getting the ship in space easier.
He also decided to eliminate a lot of weight for launching. He would not use one big drive, as most ships were made. Instead, he used a series of maneuvering drives all over the ship. to make up for lack of structural strength the drives provided, he set up a series of weapons units, which are a fraction the weight, in its place. His ship would be nicely armed. His ship would use a winged power sled in the atmosphere, to be dropped off once they were in space.
Among the pirates, they got ready to launch their ship. Everybody strapped in. They started the drives and the ship vibrated and rocked. Then it went silent. The cabin filled with smoke. They unstrapped each other and escaped the ship. They got to sit on during the cold winter night, warmed by their ship slowly melting into a pile of slag. The ship was junked because of the problem with the drive, which they just found out about. They had to start over again.
Branson kept working, checking everything he added. His ship was getting closer to launching.
The survivors were fighting about panel colors inside the ship, and they still had not touched the ship's drive system. It was still missing drive mounts. Other parts were missing that Branson knew was not in this area of the junk yard.
The pirates found a ship that was in pretty good condition. Having experience with the previous ship project, they checked over things with more care. They were making headway on the ship.
Branson finally finished his ship. He decided to test it before letting the others on board. He moved the ship out of the belly of the freighter he used as his hanger and then launched. He flew over the junk yard twice, then landed the ship near some fuel tanks several days away. He refueled the ship. He also did some repairs while he was there. The survivors heard the nose of his launch, and heard the ship passing, but was not sure what it was, since they never heard a ship in an atmosphere.
The pirates were getting close to having their new ship launched. They now did a lot of tests, powering the thrusters, making sure it would work. they found some space suits and would plug into the ship's systems so if there was an air leak, they would survive to fix the leak or get close to their people to be picked up.
Branson was ready to go. He had gathered all sorts of survival foods from the ships and stored them away, along with various parts, tools and supplies. He had a processor for the food but was not about to depend on it. It was, though well stocked.
He brought the ship to where the survivors were. and landed. they were shocked to see him and his ship. Their ship looked good, but they still had not dealt with the drive system on it.
The leader was going to stay with his ship. Branson asked him to power up the drive system. Nothing happened. the ship they had worked so hard on was going nowhere. He then cold-cocked the leader, lifted him into the ship and strapped him down. The rest of the people got into the ship and were strapped down.
Branson then launched. He had the air thruster going at full power, trying to gain as much speed as possible. As he got near the top of the atmosphere, he saw the another ship launching. The pirates had a ship entering space.
Branson waited to the last moment, the air sled sputtered. He dropped it off and then went to space thrusters. Both ships broke free of the planet at the same time. The other ship was faster and pulled away. Branson knew the real question was who had enough fuel to get somewhere. He knew he had, but doubted they had enough fuel. His search of the junk yard said that fuel was in short supply.
The two ships were on a similar route. the other ship pulling away quite easily. main thrusters shoved a ship faster.
the survivors complained that if Branson did not fly faster, the other ship would get home first and win in the courts. The leader discussed with the others about taking over the ship if necessary. Branson had made the control center separate from the rest of the ship, and he could hear what they were saying wherever they were. They could get to his location but only one at a time as the passage was twisty and tight.
The other ship was at the edge of his sensors. He saw a flutter in the thrust signature. They were running out of fuel. Then he saw the ship disappear, then the signature change It was coming back for him and his fuel.
He armed the weaponry and set the maneuvering thrusters to warm up. He ordered the people to strap in. He was going to be maneuvering heavily to avoid rounds by the pirates. Everybody strapped in properly.
They fired across his bow, to force him to give up. He pointed the nose of his ship at them, then a little bit of a lead, and fired three of the six rounds his weapons could fire. He bracketed the ship.
The pirates then fired directly at him. He hit the thrusters a short burst left, then full power up, the rounds missed. He then fired three more rounds. His first weapons were coming back up to power. He missed, but the other ship looked like it almost twisted to avoid the rounds.
His first weapons showed they were to power. he then fired single shots. all six weapons had fired when he finally hit their ship. It was damaged. their weaponry was knocked out. They could get home, but it would take them a while.
They got to the court center and Branson filed his cases. It took a while for the survivors to get together to file cases against Branson and the pirates. Their cases were shut down immediately when they were shown the cases Branson had against them in case they filed.
Branson case against the pirates went to court. His case was against the whole pirate community, not so much the pirate ship itself.
Since the pirates did not have lawyers in position to act on their behalf, Branson won his case. The law enforcement moved against the pirates with strength.
Branson fixed some flaws in his ship and then headed to his uncle's place, this time in his own ship. He got a job immediately as he knew what he was doing, having built a ship from scrap parts.

10 )
.
Atomic engineering created materials that worked differently than nature would allow. Some materials twisted the fabric of space to get the effects they were after. The main thing the materials did, was to use the twist in the fabric of space to hide some properties. Usually actual volume of the material.
A newly created plating for star ships sends the energies deep into the fold of the fabric so it dissipates and bleeds into the actual material slow enough that it does not melt or vaporize. Others have used the material in a different form, making it dense and compact, pumping power plant outputs into them, to create batteries that can power a personal device for decades.
One material was made up of really fine fibers. it was tested in thousands of ways and did not seam to do anything, like the folding never happened. It was thought of as a failure.
They were discussing what to do with it when one man accidentally dropped the sheet into a bucket of water. When he fished the sheet out of the bucket, the bucket was empty and the sheet was like wet typing paper. They looked into the bucket and it was empty.
They dashed to the lab and examined the paper with all their equipment. The water molecules, based on what they best worked out, were compressed into a fraction of the size, and stored in space warps around each fiber.
More study showed that only the water was effected, soaps and dirt from the bucket was concentrated in the bucket or on the surface. More tests showed that the water could only come out if it evaporated out. they put a hose to one sheet and when it filled up, the water stopped.
The idea of taking water into sheets of the paper, which did not cut or tear easily, to add humidity to the air, was an interesting concept.
About ten years later, A war was being fought on a desert planet. There were many lakes, streams, two small seas, on the planet. There was fairly good amount of ground water. Climatologists long ago figured out that if humidity was increased over the desert, the whole reach of the desert could be made green. Part of the war was over rights to the water. One area lived on the shore of a small sea and that was its sole source of survival. The other was on the far side of the desert and needed to add humidity to the desert to really make the planet livable.
There was more desert beyond the sea so the sea was the only source of water in the area that could be used. Pipe lines were being ruin from other water sources but there was a limit in funds and it was taking time for the pipe lines to snake around the world to their destinations.
The desert people heard about the water drawing paper was being mass produced. Several of the wealthy desert people chose to buy the paper rather than more weaponry as they normally would have purchased. They were going to do their war in a different way.
The desert people had access to the sea on one little corner, but it was the deepest part of the sea.
When the rolls of paper arrived, they went about building their new weapon against the sea people. They first constructed a series of standards one might use for a gondola heading up some ski slope. With the cables attached, they added hangers over the entire length of the cable which cross the start of the desert almost to the mountains on the other side. They punched holes in the upper corner of the paper as it came off the rolls, and hung them on the cable hangers. More shipments of paper arrived in time to where they were able to have enough to get their system working.
The cables started moving. the paper dipped deep down into the water, several hundred feet down, then came back out of the water. They then ran along the cable out into the desert, waving in the hot winds. The paper got to the far side of the route, turned around and came back on the up wind side of the cable to make the journey back.
They checked the paper as it arrived to go into the water. They were dry. They slowed the system down a little and then let it run.
As more paper arrived, they attached them to the cable hangers and let them work.
They noticed an increase in humidity at their city, and there was an early rain. Plants were planted and trees put into the ground and they waited while their system ran.
After a year, the planted area had doubled in size. There was a quarter of an inch drop in the sea's water level. The paper was sucking up the water and releasing it into the air.
The sea people thought that wetting and hanging paper sheets was a dumb idea. How much water could the paper hold?
What they did not know was that each typing paper sized sheet held a half gallon of water. The water only was released through evaporation. The rolls of paper held enough water to make a difference in the humidity of the desert air.
The plants that were being planted, released water into the air, mixing with the humidity, causing rain. AS the forests, farms, and fields expanded, the rain became more common.
The sea people wondered why there was no attacks. After five years they figured out why. Their sea level had dropped six inches. They did a lot of research to find out what was going on.
They quickly found that the wet paper does not burn. the dry paper only burns with the most intense heat. The towers carrying the paper were well built and the cables are of the best materials possible.
The desert people, with their expanded planted area and greenery, have almost doubled their population so if there is a war, they have more people to draw on. Their pipe lines are also getting close to the city so they will be able to water the lands and not depend on the rain pretty soon.
The sea people had not developed great technologies and have no idea how to deal with this danger.

11 )
.
"A watched pot never boils. "
They were going to prove that they could watch a pot and see that point where boiling actually started.
they started by simply placing a pot on the stove with the heat on and waiting and waiting and waiting. the guy watching the pot, glanced away and when he looked up, the pot was at a full boil. They did this experiment nearly two dozen times, and in every case, something caused the person to look away and it was boiling.
The set up a camera. The camera ran out of film just before the water boiled. They tested and retested, had multiple cameras set up to start at staggered times. The timers messed up and there was a moment where no camera was on. The water boiled then.
The water came to a boil, based on simple sensors like a bell on a float that ran when the water boiled, and it happened in just a few minutes. The water never boiled for as much as an hour if it were being watched.
They sat and calculated the caloric energies in the water. To boil in just a few minutes, it took a given amount of energy to boil. If they were watching it, it took over a hundred times the energy to boil. They wondered what happened to that excess heat.
Once boiling, the water evaporated when it was not boiling, at the same rate as it would if it had boiled the whole time. just enough energy and more than too much energy, had the same effect on the boiling.
They agreed that something was wrong with their tests. There was something going on with a pot of water heating up.
They published their findings and asked for suggestions on how to improve their testing. At first, they were scoffed at, telling them to try some serious research. The group replied by asking has anybody actually seen that point where the water actually went from a smooth ripple to a full boil.
There was some quick tests on the subject and the answer was no, no one actually had seen that moment. Soon ideas for ways to vew the exact moment started coming in. People actually sent in equipment to test and several experts arrived to assist in setting up the tests. As with previous tests, either the equipment had a glitch when at the moment the water boiled, or the water never boiled while the equipment was on.
The group charted the attempts and the equipment used, noting what had problems and what never saw water boiling. They noticed that the times there was a glitch were is some four windows of opportunity. That was interesting. If something was going to go wrong with the equipment, they had a pretty good idea when.
They decided to try a trick. It took several attempts to get it to work. As each opportunity came up, they started a backup system that was known to be reliable, to never let water boil. they would turn it off after the window had passed and turned it back on again near the next window. The tarting system was where their biggest problem was. One guy actually went in and physically watched during the time periods. No glitches during the successful axillary observations.
They finally out last the boiling water experiment. They fed nearly boiling water into the pot every time it got half way down. They continued to watch. A week passed and finally the water started boiling on camera. A look at the image, they see a little man, pointy nose and ears, big eyes for his tiny head, almost skin and bones, similar to the color of the kitchen, sneak out from a crack next to the stove, touch the surface of the water, and slip back into the crack. It all took about a second.
The world is in shock from the picture. The reason water does not boil when watched is the little man won't come out to be seen. The team outlasted him with the really hot water. He had to touch the water to get it boiling.

12 )
.
The river ran from the high mountains, down to the ocean. The winds were prevailing, blowing from the ocean up over the mountains. right up valley that sat between two ever narrowing ridges. Of course, the winds sometimes came down and sometimes there was little or no wind, but most of the year, the winds blew to the mountains.
Since this was the only really habitable area of the inland region, the colonists learned to work with the land and river.
The river wound up the valley, bouncing off both sides, making trails difficult, if not impossible. Periodic heavy flooding made bridges a wasted effort.
Going up river with sails on boats really did not work as there were places where the river got no wind at all. sailing boats were stopped at those places, either to have to be pulled along the land by animals brought for that purpose, or to portage the loads to an upper section of the river to other boats. Those ideas did not work either.
For fun out on the ocean, a group of guys would hook up sail kites to the boat and go up in them, trying to control them on the winds. What was simple parasail like kites, eventually became fairly complex machines with dozens of controls based on the conditions the pilots might fight. One fun thing was, that the kites pulled their ships along in the wind.
Some fool decided to demonstrate it on the river. He took to the air in the prevailing wind and towed the boat up past several of the places ships cold not sail before he ran afoul with the wall in a twisty section. The ship's captain had worked hard to make use of the pull on that run.
Soon others started trying it. It was much more of a challenge than just staying aloft above the waves. The pilots actually had to make the kite fly sideways to drag the ship along, then back again to follow the river.
Soon the kites got bigger and now had two people on board. The pilot flew the kite, while the navigator watched the boat and the river and directed how the kite would fly.
There were places along the river where it was too difficult and dangerous for the kites to fly so the ships would use other means to navigate those areas of the river. Some pilots would try those areas, and under good conditions, they made it. There were times when they reached those points, they found the conditions were not good. They either abandoned their attempts, or crashed.
Blankenship had plied the river as a kite pilot for a few years, then was transferred to the ocean. Under the right conditions, a kite added to a ship, made for extra speed.
Blankenship learned how to fly sideways, increasing the pull of the kit to ever increasing angles to the winds. His kite flying reduced as much as a day to a sea crossing. He was not alone, He had a kite crew of ten people, who could fly the way he did and handled the reels and cables.
His kite had a real of cable on it that could be cranked in to go lower, or played out to go higher, depending on what angle the ship needed to be pulled, or what direction the wind was actually going at altitude.
Blankenship had engineered a very sophisticated kite, using some aeronautics engineering programs and experts. The wings could change shape in flight, to add more lift, or more soaring, or they could make the kite slide sideways in the wind, all with a simple set of controls. He has flown it when one could just barely feel a breeze. He got wet that time, but he actually did it.
His kite could have three people on board, a pilot, co pilot and navigator, and from their position in the cockpit, they could swap jobs in a second. They flew all the way across the seas several times and once in a full blown storm, not needing to land even once.
He finally arrived back in the valley. Old timers explained to his crew about what the wind loved to do and how they dealt with it. Blankenship and his crew talked to several dozen river pilots and got a good feeling to what the river was doing.
They finally got a good ship to pull. That Blankenship had flew the river before, was why he was allowed to fly with no experience. Also, the ship was in a really big hurry to get up stream and none of the other pilots were ready to go.
Blankenship got onto his kite with his two crew members. The others were below ready with the equipment. He bent the wings and they caught the wind. The rope started playing out from the kite almost immediately as it lifted off ever so gently. He and his co-pilot were working the controls like madmen to adjust for the gusts and eddies of the wind. The ship started moving forward as they lifted above the mast of the ship.
Soon they were up high. The captain guided the ship along the channel, left, right, center, avoiding obstructions and sand bars in their path. The river angled to the right. It reached near the ridge, then veered to the right. A small rise of land down stream, guided it across the valley. This was where most pilots make their first mistake, trying to go straight all the time. The ship turned to follow the river, the captain prepared to fight the kite by actually turning the bow, down river if necessary.
Blankenship adjusted the wings and the kite started sliding across the valley sideways. The captain never had to compensate for being pulled up the valley. At the other end, the kite slid the other way.
Blankenship guided the ship, following the river himself.
They came to a difficult area. the eddies really swirled and kits had problems. The captain never gave the area a thought until he was onto it. Blankenship had excellent maneuvering skills to follow the river.
The kite wobbled and dipped, but continued on its path, dragging the ship along a series of S curves and then around a sharp bend in the valley, which caused kits a lot of problems. As he came to the obstruction, he had played out the cable and rose to twice the normal flying height. He also changed his wings so he was not pulling anywhere near as hard, mostly just keeping in the air in that area. The ship made the course. Blankenship went to full pull and they headed on.
They came to the worst area of the trip. This curve is known as the kite grave yard. Blankenship and his crew could see hundreds of kites smashed on the rocks. The co-pilot and navigator swapped positions. Blankenship stayed put but now was the co-pilot. The pilot flew the plane, and Blankenship adjusted the controls for the winds.
The captain signaled for them to come down. He signaled back that they were going through. A crew member on the deck told the captain t hat if they crashed, cut the cable and leave them.
This was the worst winds seen in this area in almost a decade. The kite struggled to stay in control, the crew working their tails off, even the navigator working some controls periodically to help.
They entered some low clouds, but they dared not fly any lower. The navigator watched the cable behind them and watching the maps. They got glimpses of the rocks around them as they went, and that helped them know where they were.
They finally get clear to the narrow section of the valley and into the clear. The crew now could relax a little. The only last difficult part would be through the gorge as they rose up onto the plateau where the river started.
Blankenship got them to their destination early, and they brought the kite down onto the ship, without even a bump.
The captain was excited as they had knocked a whole lot of time off their journey.
Blankenship's crew now had a contract to fly with this shipping company. eventually other pilots learned to fly the difficult areas, but none were as good or as fast as Blankenship.

13 )
.
The company made battle suits for the military. The development team kept testing new technologies and theories in an effort to improve the protection of the soldiers.
The one thing that needed to be solved, was how to keep the soldiers alive in high heat. The most effective weapons against the infantry was to burn them, cause the dirt itself to burn. The company knew there was a limit to the protection of the men, but any little bit more protection helped. Keeping a soldier alive for another minute longer might get them out of the high heat and into the cool down period. The soldiers could continue to fight after that.
The space administration came up with a flexible coating for the newest shuttles. The coating could take dings and dents, and was able to handle the intense heat of re-entry. The temperature inside the coating was quite tolerable. What made it even better, was that it was quite cheep to make.
The company got hold of the material, did some tests, and got a licence to make the material. They did more testing and changed the material quite a bit. Instead of being an inch thick, they made the material more like a wet-suit would be for diving. They added some space suit technology, some technology the soldiers were familiar with and a few new ideas. The working part of the suit was in the plating that covered the front and back, going over the shoulders. Coolants and heaters were made tiny, along with the entire system that the soldier re-breathed their air. They put the men into oven like conditions and put them to work. Old technology lasted about ten minutes and had to go out. The new technology men put in a whole ten hour work day and came out as it was time to shut down the ovens.
They made one final change and that was to put this system over top normal battle armor. The armor was soft, except when it was hit hard. Then it resisted. the quicker it had to move, the harder it became, over a wider area. A soldier would feel a bullet, for a couple hours, but he could still fight.
A group of soldiers had the new armor. They fought right along side a group who had the old armor. The battle was against a group of religious zealots who seamed to have a lot of power. Their favorite weapon was to hit the soldiers with intense heat. No one had seen the weapon the used. Only a few could use it and it seamed to be quite mobile.
The force had to cross a clearing to get to the bad guys. after sizing up the distance and the enemy, and picking off as many as they could from where they were, the order to charge went out.
Sergeant Giddleman charged out with his team. They fired as they ran, picking off defenders one by one. They were almost to the enemy when fire leapt out from the rocks. A moment later, the fire engulfed them. Soldiers in normal armor withered away. Giddleman's force, wearing the new armor kept charging. They could hardly see so they grouped together as they ran.
Giddleman, in the lead, saw a space in the rocks ahead and headed towards that. The route then headed down. He kept them running. there were things rushing up at them. They took them out with guns or bayonets.
The fire kept swirling around them, but they kept up their charge. The passage opened wide enough for them to run four a breast. Giddleman backed off a little and let others lead for a while.
Suddenly, they come out of the tunnel to a wide expanse. Millions of people crawling away from the soldiers, ever so slowly, screaming in pain, gouts of flame hit them when they were starting to make headway. each time, they wreathed in pain, stopping their advance.
The sergeant picked a less used route and waved the men forward, following him. They ran at a trot, bypassing the tortured people. At first they were trying to avoid touching the people, then accidentally stepping on them, or kicking them, they found out that the people were not there.
Flames leaping up at them as they ran, almost kept them blind, They kept going. They kept hearing hearty laughter. as they were about two thirds of the way across the fire, they left the peoples behind. they had free passage without the people. They simply kept going.
they left the lakes of fire, and stopped. The men were all accounted for. Giddleman turned and started running again. They all heard a "what the?" from the voice that was laughing. Now they were heading up hill. They could see that it was getting colder as they rose.
The route leveled off slightly, The team stopped for a second as there were several paths to follow. Suddenly the floor shifted, tipped, They pitched towards the wall. They all started running and soon were running down hill slightly. They were then surrounded by fire again.
"Oh no, Not again?" one soldier said.
They came to some rocks blocking their way. They scrambled up and over the rocks and were past the fire. They took aim and fired on a bunch of the zealots that appeared before them. One of them had a glowing dome around him. He looked at the soldiers in shock. He started chanting. Giddleman bellowed loudly, at least inside his helmet, and he crossed the ground in just a couple steps. He threw himself into the air and hit the glowing shield.
There was spinning and tumbling. He threw a couple punches. He rolled a couple times then everything stopped. he sat up, an old man in a white robe laid next to him. His team had the rest of the zealots captured, or in the process.
The old man rolled over, moaned, then looked at Giddleman.
"I sent you and all your men to hell. How did you survive it?
"That was hell?"
"Yes, the lakes of fire and the tortured souls."
"Cross the lake and you can go to heaven." Giddleman. He then drove the but of his gun into the man's head. "It is now your turn."
Giddleman killed the man because someone with that much power could not be held, or held for long.
Soon, the area was crawling with soldiers. the zealots were broken, captured and carted off.
The company received a letter from Giddleman. "I love your battle suits. I lead my men from hell and back, and the suits protected us from the heat.
Sergeant Giddleman.

14 )
.
There is a joke where an old man is dying He wants to give the son a gun, but the son wants a watch. Then the man suggests that when the sone becomes powerful, he finds the wife with another man. "What are you going to do? Point the watch and say 'your time is up!'?" That seeded this story idea.
The watch was created by the gods for use by the master of time. the Master of time traveled through time, searching for glitches in the creation the gods made, and correct them. Eventually, all errors were corrected and the master of time headed back to the origin of creation to take his place with the gods, as promised.
Some place on his way back, the watch fell off his wrist. It was then that he realized he had been fading away his entire journey back to the beginning. The watch gone, He was on a collision course with the beginning and would not be able to come back out. He somehow stopped, and headed back up through time. As he faded into nothing, he cast his awareness onto time, hoping that it might find the watch through the existence of someone else, possibly saving him somehow.
A young thug saw a strange watch in an antique store. While his friends distracted the people in the store, he lifted six watches and slipped out. The store owner noticed the watches missing two days later.
The thug hocked the five watched for a home built silver gun with no serial number, but kept that one watch, wearing it all the time.
He seamed to have good luck, his gang grew, took over other gangs without even a fight. He made good decisions. Once his game was big enough, he made it appear legitimate and used his power behind the scenes. Though the entire time, he kept the silver gun and the watch, having them on him all the time. He gained other special weapons and special watches to his collection.
He had several sons. The youngest, Bobby, always seamed to admire the watch. When shooting, the boy loved the sliver gun, not wanting to use any of the others.
Worth bullions, he is on his death bed. He brought in each of his children, daughters and sons, and they got one of his personal items as a memento. The rest would be absorbed by the organization, disbursed, sold or traded for what the organization needed.
The youngest boy came in. Doctors were at the father's side, medical equipment surrounded them. This room was better than the best hospital for caring for a patient like him.
The boy had been raised by his mother, and did not seam like he had a criminal mind. He seamed almost too good to be a son of him.
The father offers the silver gun. The boy wants the watch, not wanting anything to do with the gun. The father takes the watch off, hands it to the boy, then slumps, dead. The doctors get into trying to revive the father, nurses running around to get things. nurses pulling the sobbing mother off him so they can try to revive him., a couple sisters collapsing in the corner, sobbing,
Bobby slips the watch on his wrist, the silver pistol is laying on the table next to him. As he turns, he palms the pistol and slips out.
Just in case, he gathers his things and leaves the home on his way back to college. Along the way, he is parked at a rest stop, examining the watch. Something inside him clicks and knowledge of all the functions of the watch flows into his awareness. He also knows the whole history of the master of time and the gods. He also knows that the time master will never return to the gods, the gods had lied to him.
He drives off. Once he had gone out of view of everybody, he activates the watch and goes off into the future. He finds a place to examine history and studies how the gang's organization survive and died, how markets went and such. He then returns almost to the same moment and spot on the road and continues to drive, his car has thirty thousand miles more on it.
Bobby seams very lucky, One of the brothers figured out that Bobby got the watch and the gun, and Bobby's knowledge of the future has allowed him to hurt the organization in his gain of wealth. That is part of the plan. Hurt the organization just right and his family will leave and others will take over, to take the hit when the organization is officially busted.
There are several attempts on him, but he never seams to be there at that moment, a couple times it was as if he blinked out for a short time.
There have also been a few killings with a gun that is well known, over the decades, but never anything to trace to the user. There was one where Bobby went into the future, then came back to the same time he was there, and killed the assassin while his present time existence was among a large crowd. This eliminated the gun being traced to him.
He also learned the power of the watch. He now knew more than the master of time knew. Someone with a lot of knowledge needed to simply disappear. No trace ever to be found. He slipped into where the guy was, pointed the watch, turned a dial and hit a button. The guy was gone. Bobby then skipped to another time and then moving to where he needed to be, blinked back to his own time. The guy was kicked out of the stream of time. That became a rent in time that the master of time had fixed.
Bobby got married and became really powerful. Bobby was much like his father, in truth. His businesses were always legitimate, but he did his crimes behind the scenes, with nothing to trace the crimes to anything he was involved in.
He had several children, all his. His wife then seamed to lose all interest in him and making love. He suspected that she was cheating on him.
He showed up at home one day and caught her with the mansion's gardener. He remembered his father had suggested this scene. He smiles, and points the watch at them. "Father, you were right." He says to the ceiling. "Your time is up." With that, he turns the dial and hits the button. They were gone. Another rent in time that the master of time had repaired.

15 )
.
The gods penalized Kaolin with the power to live forever. He was told that his form would change over generations to match the dominant forms around, but he would still walk on his hind legs.
Many generations later, a comet hit the planet and killed all life above the size of a wolf. With the people gone, and no one there to worship them, so the gods faded away. They may have ceased to exist, or they may have gone elsewhere.
Kaolin developed brown fur and a short muzzle, since all the dominant creatures tended to have those two features. alone, unable to die, he spent his time learning crafts he had experienced in his life. He would stop some place after traveling for a couple years of exploration and set up shop.
He built tools to make clothing, he made a blacksmith shop to make the metal materials needed. He figured out how to cut wood and shape it so his homes never used pegs to hold them up. they survived hurricanes and floods. He planted what crops he had or could find, capture animals and pen them up for food.
Since hew as bored, He would build a building for every need, bakery, Taylor, black smith, farm house. If he stayed in any place a long time, he would build a government center and even an arena. A couple places, he ended up building a city that could have held sixty thousand people with ease.
There were times where flooding and forced him to leave his stuff behind, or great forest fires, or some form of pestilence where he abandoned the city and go some place else to start over completely. There were also other extinction periods where animal lives were knocked back badly and new forms came forward.
He found his favorite art was black smithing. He would smelt some metal, then spend days on end forging it into different shapes, making tools toys and art. That was where he spent most of his time when he was not trying to survive. It was really the one thing that ate into his loneliness.
His last city went up in flames due to a forest fire that turned everything into ash. He was in one of his traveling modes and had not stopped for nearly a dozen generations, exploring every inch of the land. He passed his city several times and the only thing left was impressions in the brush of walls of the blacksmith shop.
He saw a series of sparks in the sky. He wondered if the gods returned. He then saw the sparks become streaks in the early morning.
Another pass around and through the land, he found some strange creatures. He immediately changed plans, and was now in watching mode. He stayed out of sight, but watched as they constructed buildings out of something that resembled metal. They had things that flew, that lifted heavy objects, that moved along the ground.
Slowly they became settled in. He watched them as they worked the ground, checking the plants they put into the ground, plants he never saw before.
He saw how they dressed, and would go into the wild and make his own clothing in a similar fashion. he learned that in the winter, he could bundle up in clothing similar to theirs and they could not see who he was. He now listened to their voices, their speech, watching their movements, their actions. He found he could speak some of the words, then more of the words.
When spring came, he withdrew back into the forests. That was when he learned that his skin lost a lot of the fur and his face was not as long as it once was. He still listened and watched the people, learning their language and their ways.
A couple generations passed and he entered the community at the beginning of winter, bundled up. He started interacting with the people talking to them, learning more about them and their ways. he worked for some people and received money. He was able to get some items that he could not make himself, especially since he was not settled some place.
He finally let the bundle come off in the spring, since he had a place to live and work. He was not quite like them, but close enough that no one questioned how he looked. He found he could become educated. After a few years, he relocated to a new part of the community and started over. A few times like this and finally he was in the university, working in the science program. His professor decided to become an archeologist. Airborne radar showed some square features in one area not too far away.
Kaolin was chosen as one of the students to go with them. He would be more for physical work than anything.
For the colonists, this was an adventure into the wilderness. For Kaolin it was luxury. Their caravan reached the site, Cylan saw it was just recently burned over again. He also recognized that this was the site of his last burned out city. He decided he would see how good these people were.
They spread out and checked the maps and probed the ground. One by one, they found signs of civilization. walls here and there. they dug trenches and carefully filtered soils they dug up for artifacts.
After a period of time, they found the blacksmith shop. Kaolin made sure he was not around it as they carefully picked things out, taking pictures and measuring everything before taking them out. No one had any idea of what anything there was used for. they had never seen black smithing tools. The blacksmith shop was dug down to the native soil. They made educated guesses as to what they were and how they would be used. the hands of the person was a bit bigger, they were heavy.
A couple other buildings were also dug down to the native soils.
The trucks were so loaded with artifacts, there was almost no room for the people to sit. As they started to go, a loud bang reported from one of the trucks. It rolled into two other trucks doing serious damage. When they got out, they found one of the key parts had broken. The other trucks were almost damaged beyond use. there was no spare parts and no way to get help from civilization. Their option was to leave most of their findings here, with the truck to get everybody home.
The team realized that they had to get the truck home or this mission would be a total loss.
Kaolin shook his head, then got to work to set up shop in the blacksmith shop. He pitched a tent on top the walls, and did all the work he could first.
he also gathered wood and charcoal. He caught some animals while he was out and fixed some meals for the crew. He used native plants, to go along with the meats, plants no one even knew could be used for food.
he then dragged out the blacksmith artifacts, passed them over the fire to burn away the rust and adjusted them for work. He made wooden handles for the tools that needed them, and then pulled parts off the truck and started straightening them out.
The tools fit his hands as well as they ever had. He welded the broken pars, made tools to remove and replace fasteners.
The archeologists were so shocked they could not tell him not to destroy the artifacts.
Two weeks later, He was done with the repairs. The trucks looked almost good as new, but you could tell there was work done.
During this time, he never said a word, simply made stuff while the team watched. He would show the women what foods to eat, how to prepare them and what not to use.
They finally pack up the trucks and head out, Again, Kaolin never said a word, just listened, just did what work that was needed, and kept quiet, speaking only when it was absolutely necessary.
Back home, the professor told Kaolin that he had plenty of explanation to give for his actions.
Kaolin simply said "When you have been around for a while, you pick things up,"

16 )
.
Dexter started the company out of his garage, and built it into a major world industrial empire. He now controlled companies that did just about everything in civilization. They were never major companies in their own field.
What made the company powerful was his ability to sense what the market was going to do at any time. He would buy a struggling company just before the product or service became in great need. His timing of the markets was what made him wealthy.
One day, while watching what the world was doing. Something bothered him. He decided to see for himself. He started a world tour of his holdings and associates. He also explored the surrounding areas a little at each stop. He found a small state that seamed to have potential for just about everything a society would need. It just needed to be developed.
He had one little office there. After some thought, he moved into the state and made that little office his main office. He then selected some historic buildings to remodel and then move his people into them.
He built some installations along the borders of the state, and moved the headquarters of his four security companies into them. He used as much of the local labor to do a lot of the work. He brought in his own people to teach and supervise. He then moved his people in from around the world.
After about a decade, only a few of his holdings were still located around the world. They were mostly shipping companies. His view of what the world was going to do, was looking more and more accurate. He had expanded the farming, material gathering, manufacturing and so on.
The market finally collapsed, the bottom dropped out and the plummet took about six months. Any money was worthless and there was nothing to trade or buy. the world went violent, localities fought to get food and materials they needed. Nations went to war to get what they thought the other nations had.
Dexter put his final plan to work. He ordered his security companies to spread out along the borders and lock them down. Because he had purchased a lot of the lands along the borders, he had already fenced a third of the borders. Crews moved out and completed the fence by the end of the year. One could only enter through gates on the highway, only after people had approval based on their knowledge and skills.
The rest of the nation became owned by rival gangs, pillaging their territories while trying to kill each other.
The shipping companies elsewhere in the world provided the few supplies the state itself could not provide. His jet repair became builders of air planes. He had ships plying the sea, taking out pirates when found.
Another decade passes and the rest of the world are now subsisting living, no signs of civilization. His state, though, was as advanced as the nation was before. It had its own economy, and did trade with a few lucky places around the world.

17 )
.
The authorities took over the small to quell the violence caused by a chemical release. The people were forbidden to leave their homes. Teams went around and gave bags of food to each home, a couple times a week. Each home had a food converter that turned several chemicals and stock blocks of materials into food. That food was not a popular thing to eat, unless added to something else, but at least no one was ever going to starve to death.
The chemicals that were released caused an independence feeling, which translated in resisting authority. A few bosses ran into trouble, but most of the resistance went to the government and police.
It was going to take about six months for the drug to work its way completely out of the bodies of the population. The best thing to do until then was to keep the people in their homes.
The authorities were in space suit like battle armor so they were isolated from any chemical in the environment. They were also pretty much protected from the people.
The big problem the authorities had, was that people would slip out to do some criminal act, act of aggression against the authorities. there were not enough authorities to watch every home. Every night, a couple dozen people, men and women, slipped out and attacked guards or damaged items. A few they figured out who they were, by the kind of damage they did and were able to stop them, but with some, wanton damage was the norm and they could not be traced.
They needed a way to catch the people as they were leaving their homes. if they could detect them easily, they could be stopped.
Electronics was too expensive, lasers were found to be dodged. other methods failed or were too expensive.
While trying to remove a different chemical plant, they released another gas. immediately, a few technicians not in suits started sneezing. There was no physical problem just they were sneezing quite a bit.
The officials decided to try something. they placed tanks with the gas upwind to the town and as night fell, started it leaking. The guards were told to listen carefully and move fast.
The people inside the homes were receiving filtered air. During the night, the various people slipped out of their homes and started sneezing. guards found them and took them into custody.
The gas was released the next night and again, they caught people leaving the homes. they had to make more of the gas, which was not difficult, and keep releasing it each night. In every case the people would start sneezing and not stop. The guards simply followed the noise and apprehend the culprit. They were placed in a makeshift prison to be held for several days before being brought back to their homes. Those left behind were so happy to see them that they would not be allowed to leave again.
The original chemicals finally were out of the people's bodies. The authorities left them inside their homes for a whole month more before finally releasing them. the people went back to work and there was no more problems. The chemical industry was gone, the plants stripped right out of the ground.

18 )
.
I overheard a program they were advertizing. The blurb said "We film five people on how they got to where they are." I think I was changing channels or was leaving the room so I have no idea what came after that.
The government was very strong, watching over everything anybody did. Nothing went public without proper authorization.
Some young film students applied for and got permission to do some shows on the country. they would travel around, film things they saw and edit it into a show to entertain the public.
With their travel passes and documentation granting them the permission to interview anybody and go anywhere, they started their project.
at first, they filmed around their own town, interviewing craftsmen and scenery. With each person, they told them in no uncertain terms, that officials would go over every foot of tape for anything subversive, so talk to them as if they were officials. Some people chose not to be filmed, but they got plenty of people to show their arts. They viewed their tapes and decided they needed more. they expanded out into more towns.
They kept filming, and then started editing, creating short segments. when they had enough for two seasons, they did the voice over introductions and narration for each segment, and then sent every inch of tape they had to the top security people for approval. They gave instructions that the segments that were approved, were to be sent to the network. They went back to filming as they did, in hopes of getting enough footage for another season.
Their show started broadcasting. They were told that there was just one season of shows. Officials started traveling with them on their filming, guiding them in their shooting based on what was approved by the authorities.
The group did not care about not having control over where they went or what they filmed, they were happy to be doing their work. Their show was usually among the best every week it was broadcast.
In their fifth year, the officials decided it would be nice for the people to see some other countries. the officials arranged travel, arranged approvals, passports, and locations to film. the team did their job as a professional was expected to do. Of course, all films were turned in for approval.
For five years, they traveled to other countries and filled for the entertainment of their own people.
One day, they were told they were going to a country outside the allies. It would be the first time. Again, the high officials made every agreement for the trip. they flew over, landed, and went through all the clearances and approvals. the moment they landed, their official guide was called away.
"Is it true that our country does not have extradition treaties with your country?"
"Yes, that is true."
"I would like to ask for asylum for us."
"Follow me." the airport man said.
When the guide returned, the five were gone, Try as they might, they could not get the five of them returned. they were out of reach. Nothing could be done.
The government searched for how such a big mistake could have happened. No one ever knew.
The five later turned their program into a popular series in the free world.

19 )
.
The war had been costly to the pirates. They had lost a lot of key people and resources in the war. It would be more costly in the powers of their people, but they decided they had to fight without using their own people.
At the moment, they key battle ground was for the planet Brandywine, which supported the federation military activities in the region. If the pirates could wrest control of the planet from the federation, this entire region would belong to them, since they had other sources of supplies. The federation would be forced to withdrawal, essentially ending the warm.
The pirates had advanced mental powers, Extra Sensory Perception, which ranged into what lower people would call magic. The really powerful could do some truly magical things.
After training their magic users in the creation of GOLEMS, Magically animated people made of inanimate objects, they sent the twenty best to the planet. The federation did not expect the contingent of people that small, and they landed so far from the military base, it could not be a strike force.
The magic users first cast a spell around themselves so they appeared to look like the locals. The physical difference was not that much. they were from the same stock a couple dozen thousand years ago when an empire populated the planets.
They then got to work in blending in with the population. As soon as they were ready, they started creating Golems. Using cheep household items they picked up on the side of the street, and in thrift shops, they formed the items into the general form of the people, and used their magic to animate them. They projected bits of their minds and knowledge into their creations and then sent them off into the world.
The Golems slowly spread in different directions, always working their way towards the military base. the golems were not bright, but intelligent enough to blend in and pass as locals in some way. Because of the magic, they could easily pass a cursory examination by a doctor. Detailed examinations would show up all sorts of flaws.
The federation had various spies working on the planet, watching the mood of the people, observing anything that did not seam right. One of the spies was a traveling salesman and ended up meeting several of the golems. On about the fifth one, he recognized they had a different nature to them, He had no idea what, but they were foragers and all had the same personality, male and female.
The spy called headquarters and headquarters got in touch with experts. There were four choices as to what they were, and they all involved magic. A couple teams went to the planet and blended in, as they searched. Based on the spy's reports, they found several of the strange people well away from the military base. the team watched and scanned the people for weeks, following them as they slowly made their way. It helped that they were all following the same general route.
The team watched one of the people steal something from a house. They followed that one into an alley, and they shot it with a silent weapon. they got to the body and found a pile of clothing, a vacuum cleaner and hangers. Golem
They called in hunters and used the remaining four to teach the hunters on what to look for. The Hunters headed out.
The police are driving along and see something on the road. It looks like a person. They pull up and get out. It is a bundle of clothing laid out with a broken mop and a hat. right in the back of the jacket is a burn mark from a blaster and a splatter of what could have been blood.
In another part of the city, they find another bundle of clothing, with other household items slipped in. Again a burn mark.
The police are aware something is going on, but they have no idea what. Some nights, they get reports of blaster fire, someone falling, vague descriptions of someone at night, All they ever find is the pile of clothing and junk.
Slowly, they start picking up clues of what is going on. An officer sees the murder of someone, and the culprit escapes. The person the police officer saw die, is replaced by the pile of clothing.
They do have their magic users, but they are farther between each other. they bring one to a clothing murder site and the magic user senses strong magic. The police learn that someone is hunting golems. they want to find out where the golems are coming from, and who they is creating them, and also who is doing the killing.

20 )
.
What I came up with for this story concept, and the way I Want to present it is three different things. I will tell all three concepts, and then try to spin a story around one of them.
The original idea as it popped into my head, was that the character drives in a competition where he is sliding the car around corners sideways at high rates of speed, always in control while seemingly out of control when he is not competing, he is driving absolutely according to the law, slow starts, slow stops, signaling, always giving plenty of room. In his lawful persona, he gets on the wrong side of some bad guys and they find out he can really drive unlike anything they can.
Now one way to use this is if he drives a criminal car, or a police car, where no one can see the driver and plies the road against the other side. When he is in his own car, though, he is a different person. He is forcing himself to not appear to be the person the others know about.
This one could also be done in a space ship, a privateer or mercenary in a war, appearing in the middle of the battle and blasting the enemy like a whirling Dervish and then leaving for the others to clean up the mess. Back on the space station, they have no idea that it is him.
My second immediate concept is that he is a fighter of some sort. He likely wears a mask or an armored suit so no one can know who he is. He is a flamboyant, braggart, who makes a fool of himself and anybody around him, and is good enough to back it up. In his real life, he is calm, emotionless, just wanting to be left alone. Essentially the difference between super man and Clark Kent. he is forcing himself against his nature to be unimposing.
One thought is that both sides of his character is part of his training, to get rid of impulses or mental problems, but being a wild man in one place, and a ultra controlled person in another.
Of course with this story, He gets mugged or is caught in a robbery and shows what he can really do.
I forgot the third one I was thinking of as I started this but I came up with a third one that is quite similar. A janitor who is the low man in the company, gets onto the network from a spare work station and becomes the brilliant mind of the company.
This one, would be good if he is really the owner of the company. He decided to let others run it, as it became a corporation and started just being the janitor there. He gets onto the server from a workstation that really is not supposed to be there. He gives orders and solves problems the company has. since he had started the company, he knows more about the business than anybody else.
As the janitor, he can look at anything anybody is doing, even going through their garbage. He applies his mind to solving the problems the teams cannot seam to solve.
He also has the advantage of being able to know exactly who is really working and who is not, and giving layoff notices to the slackers when the time comes. It is only when they try to fire him or otherwise get rid of him, that they find out who really owns the company.
All three of these are of the basic theme. No one knows who they are really dealing with, the person is not who they appear to be in either mode.

21 )
.
The prison was called GRAVITY. It was an artificial moon built to have gravitational pull at the surface, a marvel of engineering.
Criminals from all over the galaxy was shipped to the planet and shoved down the entry chutes and never seen from again.
The design of the interior of the prison, is that everything eventually gets down to the core of the planet. Food, wastes, people. It is a one way system.
Every wall, every fixture, is armored so very little can be done to do any damage, since repairs will never happen. The heaviest armor is beneath the surface where no one can break out.
Every prisoner is brought to the entry in an energy cage. they are told to be ready to fight when they reach the bottom of the chute. The energy is shut off. Their enclosure is suddenly gone, there is no longer any support. They fall. The chute angles to gently catch them and they slide to the bottom.
Prisoners are waiting at the bottom of the chute to receive the new captives. The new captives are usually put into their place, to be servants of the old timers, unless they can fight well enough to stay free.
The officials have an idea that there might be some cannibalism below, since there is no meat in the diet of those sent below, and there are thousands of species sent in, some are not vegetarian.
There are no sensors, so there is no idea what is actually going on below. as long as nothing comes up, they don't care.
The Terrans just invented the systems to travel the galaxy in practical times, faster than light travel (FTL). Having met and beat two violent species before they perfected the long range faster than light travel, they armed their ships and crews for all out battle. Those two species were now pretty much tamed and they were now a federation of planets.
A battle fleet with all three races went into FTL to explore some signals they detected during their initial tests. As they learned in their own wars, they started in the opposite direction of their target and spiraled out until they arrived at their destination. Anybody wanting to trace their path back will find it is not going where they thought it would.
The signals turned out to be a star battle between pirates and the galactic empire. Both sides immediately turned on the federation ships, fighting together. They sent communications back home, warning of the battles and that there was something more advanced out here, than they were.
All three races had their own ships, their own tactics, their own strategies for combat, along with a way to combine them in a single plan. The federation ships split up and went into battle.
The imperial ships were far advanced in technology, but their methods made them easy to hit targets. the federation realized they were not about to be heading home at any time, no need to lead the empire home, so when they ran, they ran at angles to home. Usually, though, they were following the imperial battle fleet, picking off damaged stragglers, and damaging other ships so they became stragglers.
More imperial ships arrived to join the battle with the same results. One by one, the federation ships were destroyed, most of the time, the federation was able to retrieve the crews and equipment, sometimes even towing the ships with them.
The federation has even gone so far as to swap tactics with each other. The empire think they figured out how each kind of ship fights, they learn that their target changed.
One Terran ship remains, with a third of the battle fleet population on board. They are laterally sleeping on top each other. they are in battle suits which they can be in for years as long as they get some power now and again, so facilities are not strained.
They already know they are being lead somewhere. they are not heading home and there is no where else to go, so they keep blasting the enemy to pieces. A single ship with twelve captains of different temperaments makes for a very unpredictable target.
The empire knows it is out there, but they have no idea exactly where it is. They know it is following the massive battle fleet, which is attempting to get to safety where it can really take a stand with a real force. That single ship is decimating them.
What is hurting the empire is that as the federation enters a battle, they send off an extremely powerful communications in all directions, full record of data to home, and it scrambles the federation's systems by jamming them. The federation knows all that is going on and has gone on. They are training for future battles.
The federation finally detects a planet. The empire ships appear in full force. The federation sends out the signal, and then enters the battle. the empire fills the space around where the federation ship sent the signal with full firepower from all angles. the federation ship had moved the instant the signal stopped and simply had to dodge some of the shots.
As the imperial ships regain their sensory systems, the federation ship was slipping among them. The federation was firing in all directions. the empire gave orders to fire on the ship, even if it hits one of their own. Several imperial ships scuttled themselves in glorious explosions. the shrapnel hit the federation ship, doing damage.
Even with the damage, the empire lost loads of ships to the federation weapons. The federation ship was slowly driven to the planet.
When the empire's combined fleet was finally destroyed, the federation ship was forced to land on the planet. Even then, because of planetary defenses, they were forced to land in one area, The entry to the underground. On the ground, they decided they needed to leave the ship and disable the defenses around the entry area. The federation had soldiers flowing from the defenses.
Energy cages appeared all over the place. the federation lost contact with their ship. the engineer sent a simple signal to the ship. the ship became encased in a moving web of energy. No one was going to get inside. The federation forces knew how to get in, but the empire never would. It also protected the ship from all but the heaviest weapon strikes.
The energy cages kept shoving soldiers in one general direction. soon they were walking over the entry on beams of energy cages they knew what was going to happen. the commanders told them to be ready to fight at the bottom.
When they reached the center, the energy cage shut off. AS one, they pointed their bayonets down as they started to fall. There
the walls caught up with them until they were all sliding on a surface. Then the surface flattened out. Their suits did not slip as much as what most prisoners wore, so they slid to a stop before the end of the slide. The receiving committee was caught off guard. The distance between them gave the soldiers a chance to compose themselves and ready to fight. the bristle of blades sticking out from the rifles was something that the prisoners were unprepared for.
Clear of the entry, the soldiers moved quickly heading down a long ramp, to escape the press of prisoners. Weapons was worth many lives to the prisoners and they were going to get the weapons.
The soldiers moved, using the butt of their rifles to keep the prisoners back as they moved.
They reached a spiral and took that instead of the long slope. the spiral passed floor after floor, but the soldiers kept going down. Those in the worst condition lead the group to set the pace and the distance.
they had gone down about four levels when they no longer saw any prisoners rushing to meet them. that was when they stopped to rest. There was no more down on this spiral. It was likely to force people to spread out in their search for another spiral to go up or down.
The force, using mapping and sensors, find the area below the entry. It has extremely strong structural members. it was key structural support for the area.
Using their equipment and weapons, they cut the walls open to the structural members. They then bore out holes in the members and packed them with materials that would make cutting the structure easier. When it was ready, they set off their charges and waited. the supports dropped several feet and was now hanging. There was loads of debris laying around. they picked up the pieces. This metal was so hard that they knew they could use it as tools.
They headed back to the spiral and went up again. the prisoners kept their distance now as the force marched back up. They checked over the entry area. The support was boxed off by a distance all the way around.
they considered going down one level to get to the structure, but instead, set up their weapons and cut the walls open. the prisoners stare in disbelief.
The soldiers get through the walls and find stairs going up. thousands of prisoners are following them now. More blasting and they get the hatch open at the top and come out. they are behind the defenses. Spreading rapidly, they take over the building and find they are in the defense control area. The prisoners are released outside, behind the defensive area. Since the strongest of the criminals are the survivors, the lines of thousands of prisoners flow out. the defensive forces are caught off guard and are easily overwhelmed. Criminals are acting like criminals.
The federation forces destroy the defensive control system, then the soldiers flow out into the entry area. All accounted for, they get around the ship. the ship protection is turned off and the crews crawl over the ship, doing repairs. Many prisoners file into the area and slide down the entry again and again. There is no guards left outside the entry. Snipers among the crew sit on top the ship and pick off any criminals that fire on the ship.
The ship repaired, the ship is buttoned up and launches. The criminals are a visible flow across the landscape. pockets of locals are overwhelmed by crazed criminals.
As the federation ship gains altitude, they blow apart the scattered space ports, making sure no ship will launch. No need to have to fight the way out.
The federation ship spirals back home, recording the region, the defense, the distribution of the empire's forces.
An imperial force arrives around Gravity, and finish the job the federation ship started, making sure no ship can ever lift off. Gravity remains a sink hole for criminals. They are now lowered in energy cages into the hole from hovering ships, rather than shoved in from the ground
The federation ship changed little, except to show that the prison can be escaped from.
.
My original idea had them going to the core of the moon, finding tools used to build the place, and then using the tools to open the surface. It dawned on me that it would be months worth of walking involved. Instead, I kept them close to the surface and had them well armed.

22 )
.
Senator Davis was going through the budget with his committee. There was a million dollars for testing the effects of heat on popcorn, six million on developing flavoring of shrimp, A fifty thousand dollars on testing consistency of five star restaurant foods, three million on hair growth, two million on a study of application of minerals on local dogs, eight million dollars on snail research for escargot.
Davis sat up, "Wait a moment." They had gone over several thousand of this list without comment. The law said that every piece of research had to be listed. "What exactly is this snail research?"
The clerk flipped through some pages on screen. "It says they will test all kinds of snails to find the one that makes the best escargot."
"What is this application of minerals on local dogs?"
"some local dogs are bothering them so they want to throw rocks at them and see if they can drive them away."
"What about this hair growth study?"
There are no details on that one. it is classified as a Bee two security."
"Note down all the information on that one for me. I want to know more." Senator Davis ran his hand through his thing mop on top his head. four more days of listening to the list, Davis leads the others to approve the budget as read.
Senator Davis found it difficult to get permission to investigate the hair research station. Even for a powerful senator, they made it difficult to gain access.
He got tired of the problems and went personally to the headquarters operating the budgets. He talked to the head of the department, and that got him to the woman who was actually doing the work. She actually could not help him too much, but she found the next in line. and made an appointment.
The senator and his people did extensive research on growing hair and not one study involved the group that he had approved for the budget. He found that curious.
When he got to the next office, again he used his power as a senator to get to the head of the department, then to the man who actually ran things. Again, he got an appointment to the next person in the chain of command. She was on the other side of the country.
Three months and nearly two dozen officials, he finally is allowed to see the research. He is shocked that they are driving out into the country side, well away from any signs of civilization.
They drive up to a place with concrete fences that are fifteen feet tall that one cannot see through. they come up to the building which had a slight resemblance to a bomb shelter or a fortress, and are met by a group of young men and women, scientists.
He announces who he is and said he wanted to know more about their hair growth research. they are a bit nervous to have such an important person visit them.
they brought him in, gave him coffee and then showed them the biological research using various animals and plants. They explained their methods and portions of their results. After the tour, they sat for a dinner. it was not a cloth napkin meal. they all had bit slabs of steaks with plenty of vegetables.
The senator at first thought the meat tasted funny, then began to recognize the flavor. A slab of meat this big was not something that went with that flavor.
Towards the end of the meal, the senator asked about how they got the rabbit flavor in these steaks.
The researchers got real nervous. As they hesitated, Senator Davis decided he was going to give them a hard time and find out as much as he could. He give them a hard time.
They sort of said it was because of their research. the senator started pressing for information. When they did not want to tell him, he told them that he could cut off their entire budget if they did not work with him.
After dinner, they delayed him. He was getting bothered and was about to yell, demanding to see the source of their meat, when men in battle armor and assault weapons showed up. The researchers checked over the armor of the men, and then they went to the back of the building.
The soldiers went out first, spreading as they cleared the door. then the researchers came out, and finally the senator and his people came out.
The senator gasped. In the distance, were floppy eared rabbits the size of hippos and cows, grazing on bales of hay. he ran his hand across his thinning scalp. "This is the hair growth research you are doing? These are rabbits!"
"Sir, Technically, they are hare."

23 )
.
The Delicates were created as children for people who's jobs or situation expressly forbid having children around. Legally, they were classified as pets, but they were always treated better than they treated a child or a pet. Delicates looked and acted like children but were never mistaken as children. their facial features, and proportions were wrong.
They got their name because they are fragile. their skin tears and their bones break easily. that is because they are made cheaply. Toughness would cost too much to create without infringing real genetics. That was against the law.
The big problem with these creations the big reason they have the name of Delicates, is that they are always hurting themselves. they have a tendency to swing their arms, or legs, scratch, leap around, spin around without looking. An injury usually happens.
The designers could not figure out how to solve the behavior problem that caused the injuries. The Delicates would be more valuable if that could be solved.
the owner of the company had a son that was wild, uncontrollable, prone to trouble. Tanya, a friend of his wife came for a visit. When she saw the way the boy was acting, she talked sternly, shaming him. She then made him sit quietly. Tanya spent three hours working with the boy, reading to him, teaching him how to do things properly, teaching him self control. His parents were shocked at how she was able to make him act like a little man.
Tanya came two days a week, for a year, teaching the boy to act properly, and teaching the mother how to raise and train the boy. he was never a problem after that.
The owner of the company brought Tanya to the factory and introduced her to the Delicates. The owner explained about the problem with the Delicates.
She watched the boys as they flailed wildly.
Tanya was shown one set of boys coming out of the vats. She asked if she could take control of them as an experiment. Knowing what she did with his son, he said yes.
She was brought to the boys. They were taken to a school and were given their education. She joined in with the teaching the boys. Her first act was to make them stand at attention. She showed her displeasure when they started to swing their arms, or start to scratch. the teachers did not like her messing with their system. the students had to stand or sit quietly as they did their assignments. She made them run in military columns and rows, sit and walk with proper posture, never scratch, control their limbs at all times.
Most of the Delicates failed to finish their education before they were released. they were always in the infirmary having something fixed. they also had concentration problems.
Tanya's children completed their education, with time for a refresher on the early things, not one was injured other than a few scratches. they were also sold off immediately, appearing perfect in behavior and appearance compared to others from the factory.
Tanya now had a job. She was to teach the educators her method. they were resistant to her at first, but when reports of her first boys still living longer than normal, she had their attention.
She explained to the company in a big meeting, that children, which the Delicates also were, had to be trained from birth, not when they are sent out in the world. For the Delicates, they had to be trained to control themselves, which meant they needed military style discipline
Soon after that meeting, she became the head of training for the Delicates, which was becoming a name no longer applicable. the big change she made, was to train the teachers, and get rid of those who won't change to her methods.

25 )
.
There were many forms of blindness they just could not solve. Rocky was one of them. He the upper part of his face in combat and no longer had eyes to see with. It was really beyond practical technology to recreate a working face.
The doctors chose to us a different route to allow him to see. they got him a seeing eye dog. It took a little bit to find a dog that really loved him and he really enjoyed being around. Then they did the surgery on both of them.
A chip was implanted on the dog's optical cord, and the remains of Rocky's optical cord received chips implanted on the ends of them.
The chips were powered by the same chemicals that powered the cells. it took a bit of time for the chips to reach their full power. The chips were designed to grow into the optic nerve, drawing specific minerals, almost like a cell. The optic nerve would also grew into the chip.
Rocky sat petting the dog, and the nurse stood with her back to them as she checked some paperwork.
Rocky started seeing an image. it was of the nurse, as seen lower than his head would be. her skirt was caught in he panties.
He had no idea where the image was coming from, expect possibly a dream. Being the gentleman he was, he told her about her skirt so that she would not be seen in public that way. She nearly jumped, then put her hand down to her skirt. A quick hand movement freed it. He could not see color, but could tell by her reaction and expressions that she was a bit embarrassed.
"Mr, Rocky, that is not polite."
It is better that you know it here, than to learn it with dozens of people watching."
She waved her hand in front of his face. He was shocked to see how strange he looked. His upper face looked like a metal mask.
"How could I see myself." came out of his mouth.
She turned to his view. "Doctor. Johnson," she said into her lapel. "Patent in five sixteen is having effects."
A few moments later, a man walked in. the view swung to the door instantly, The doctor reached down just past Rocky's view. Rocky felt the man's hand touch his with a bit of fur between. Rocky realized he was seeing through the dog he was holding. "That’s a good girl."
Mr. Ricky, We were unable to repair the damage you received, so we had to go with a Seeing eye dog. Chips in the dog, allows you to see through her eye. What she sees, you will see.
"Will it just be her eyes, or through any seeing eye dog?"
"Any seeing eye dog will allow you to see."
The doctor examined him and the dog. "You are going to go through some heavy training now. You must learn how to see through the dog, and you both have to learn how to get her to look where you want her to, and when. You must learn how to get around her possible distractions."
The training was tough, but Rocky took to it well. Both he and the dog became one.
the two of them are studied intensively as they worked together. he was even used to teach others how to use their seeing eye dogs.
He was able to do some easy work where he did not have to stare at any one thing for very long. The dog got bored quickly and she would take to looking everywhere except where he needed her to look.
One day, he was petting the dog while music played. He felt an itch on his hip, but instead scratched the dog instead of himself. The dog looked at the flank and he picked a black something off. the itching went away. It was only later that the incident came to him.
he started feeling sensations when he petted the dog. He received senses of pleasure when he rubbed her in certain ways. he got to like it.
Pretty soon, he was petting the dog all the time because it felt so good. the pleasure sensations were addictive.
While at the doctor, he was petting her. The doctor looked over. "do you always pet her that way?"
"yes, it feels really good."
The doctor sat up straight, glanced at his papers, then left the room.
Rocky and the dog ended up with a whole battery of scans. When it was over, he found himself coming out of surgery. He petted the dog and did not feel the pleasures he once did.
The doctor told him that the link of the chip had gone deeper into his brain than expected. they clipped a few of the chip's tendrils to keep the link only to vision, not other senses.

26 )
.
He had a pirate radio station hidden away. The officials could not find it because his signal seam to come out of multiple antennas. He had news and information the government did not like, and he played music that the religious people did not like and the music industry was not paid for his broadcasts of their songs. He also controlled a communications band width, over powering any competition, that prevented several government stations from broadcasting.
They wanted to find him, but he was well hidden. He used a computer to change his voice so they could not trace his voice print to find him.
For nearly a decade, his station played the music and reported the news. there was never any sign at all of a mistake of any kind that could link a person to the voice. The news never seamed to come from any one source, usually something found in several sources before it was reported, and the music was always available from enough sources that it could not be traced.
The times that tracer data was added to the songs, the tracer data was never broadcast, filtered out before going on air.
The news he reported was not about the idiotic things going on inside government, but about what was going on in the community, usually entertainment oriented. Many people thought that was one reason the search for the source of the signal was not as strong as technology could use.
One of the officials thinks he has the location of the pirate station. All the evidence points to one area. It is a not well populated hill in the middle of the city. It has plenty of different kinds of communications antennas, but no radio antennas.
He applied for permission to investigate the hill to find the source of the signal. he receives the paperwork to give him permission to search the hill. he gathers a very large team, nearly a thousand people, to go to the hill.
Just as they reach the base of the hill, the area is hit by a series of major earthquakes. The epicenter of the first one was out at sea, and each successive one was closer and closer. he orders his teams up the hill. they were going to the top where all the antennas were, and work their way down.
Just as they get to the top of the hill, He sees movement in the direction of the bay. "Oh My" he says into his mike. the city is already in flames, buildings visibly collapsed, dust rose above the city.
The pirate station is reporting what is happening around the city, telling safe places to go that was not devastated by the quake.
The search team just watched, not searching, not doing anything. There was not much.
One of them checks all the other stations and they are off the air. Just the pirate station is broadcasting. There is a song's worth of news, then a song, then another song worth's of news, followed by another song.
He decides they need to find the pirate station and establish official communications with it. They find an old home and go in. A search of the place, which is well lived in, they find the basement and a passage in the back that goes into the hill. At the end of the passage, they find an old lady speaking into the mike. her voice is changed into a man's voice on the radio.
She goes to a song and then holds her hands up. "You have caught me." she said.
After he shows her the paperwork, he then has his people set up communications for her so she can get official news and information to broadcast.
She continues to broadcast, now giving official news and data.
A while later, he tells his people that they are not to say a word about what they found. They leave, with their oath of silence on where the broadcast is coming from.
She was doing a service and not being found was payment for her work.
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My note says "pirate station. Authorities cannot find it. Disaster hits. Station only communication that exists.