Subject: I like the sound of this.
Author:
Posted on: 2016-06-27 19:31:00 UTC
I saw bits of it in the Discord chat last night and kind of skipped over it, but seeing it finished off as a story has really peaked my interest. I may just have to write a piece in it.
From the same train of thought that brought you Plort, here's another PPC Community AU that nobody asked for!
I give you Station Sif-10, AKA the answer to the hours-old question what if the PPC Community was in outer space?
Like many others, a lot of the details went over my head. Additionally, I found Captain Juliette's monologue difficult to process. It made for a rather intimidating start to the story. (I can deal with science fiction only slightly harder than Star "I can safely visit an antimatter universe" Trek (TOS, at least. I'm not sure about the rest since I haven't watched them yet), although I'm working on it). If I write a character, she'll probably work at The Misplaced Comma or something comparatively low-tech like that. . . No, bad Key! Finish your Permission prompt! Or at least your homework!
I like your analogy for the interaction between Internet culture and established media a lot and think it holds a lot of promise for people to do interesting things with, as well as being substantially different from the way Plort analogizes (?) the Internet.
One question: Why Sif-10? I've been rolling the name around in my head off and on for hours and I still don't get the pun.
--Key
It is, on rereading, a pretty dense thing. Not to worry, though! Captain Juliette might be an overgrown engineer, but you're welcome to be as soft as you like - Trekverse hardness is completely fitting, I've just spent ahem-hundred too many hours in Kerbal Space Program to be happy writing anything without reasonably accurate orbital dynamics.
It sounds like you caught the important metaphors of the setting! The galaxy at large is a cultural map of humanity, with fandom happily wedged between media-culture and internet-culture, where it currently resides. Most everything else is either a reference or unimportant - the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator is Marvin the Martian's favorite earth-destroying explosive, the Sphere Politick is where all the real-world political drama happens, the racks of hardware are hyperlinks, moving data between systems (websites) in the Webways. Everything's coated in a crunchy hard-sci-fi chocolatey layer, but being true to the underlying metaphors is far more important than hardness.
As far as names go, it's not exactly a pun, more of a clever reference, carefully encoded. It may take some figuring, but I'm sure you'll see the link. (Or, just toss a self-sealing stem bolt at me hard enough and I'll explain fully.)
'S' is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet, 'I' is the ninth, and 'F' is the sixth- add the final 10 and you get 199610, the Board's index number.
Out of jealousy at your stupid brilliance.
-Key
I saw bits of it in the Discord chat last night and kind of skipped over it, but seeing it finished off as a story has really peaked my interest. I may just have to write a piece in it.
For this AU seems fun, as AUs are wont to be. I shall see if I can come up with anything sufficiently fun.
This is interesting. I'll need to think about this. How hard science this is?
But, this looks great. I'll need to write up a few ideas once I have the time.
I am expecting hardness to be variable with each author- I enjoy hard sci-fi, and I care about things like orbital dynamics and the logistics of artificial gravity, but that doesn't mean you have to! Anything of Trek-level hardness should fit just fine, and clever references are definitely worth more than technical accuracy.
Even if half the conversation with Tomash entered my eyes, filtered through my brain, and left out through my pores, completely untouched.
Say, how's all that nanotechnology, brain-computer interface, and prosthetics stuff going?
Just... asking.
Being not very technologically minded, hard sci-fi is generally a bit over my head (astronomically, as it were), but I like this. I at least got the little jokes about Tomash taking over the station from Juliette, and the interaction between the Webways, Great Fan and Media Corporatocracy. I could see myself writing in this a little more easily than in Plort (also over my head), although I would probably have trouble coming up with names and such.
Also, the AU-self character I was imagining as I read would have been a robotic data-retrieval system (in line with my and my Plort self's archival work), but that of course goes against the "uncommon AI" rule in your author's note. Perhaps L.I.T. could be a rather . . . unintelligent intelligence? Too closely bound by its programming to have much in the way of true choice? After all, it's an AU of me. *badum-tsss*
—doctorlit knows better than to stray from his programming; he likes being an efficient worker!
And I'd say go for it! I did mean "uncommon" rather than "never seen" - an AI avatar for a Boarder would be completely reasonable, it's just the Star Wars level of droids, droids, and more droids that is outside what I'd been picturing. There are certain sentience issues there, and with the trekverse's questionably-sentient starships, that I decided I'd rather avoid having be a societal thing.
Or I could be wrong about the 'verse! I give it to the community, to play with as you all will.
"Capacity"
In an alleyway behind Tomash & Co. floated a round, metallic object. It was composed of two smooth shells, one above, the other underneath. Between the two shells, a series of varying wires, ports and other machinery broke the smooth pattern, occasionally sliding to the left or right, while the main shells remained stationary, relatively speaking.
Affixed to the main shell were a pair of large lenses, shaped like irregular ovals that tapered inwards towards each other, giving the machine a decidedly wall-eyed appearance to any observer with a tendency to anthropomorphize.
The machine turned to face the back wall of Tomash's building, a ticking sound audible from the lenses as it focused on and scanned the metal facade. [Data Storage Banks . . .] It paused. It's ability to read System Management Information had seemed . . . inefficient . . . ever since the Data Storage Banks had passed the 95% mark. A machine with better Diagnostics Analysis Programs might have been able to deduce that, despite the reported empty storage capacity remaining, the vast amount of compiled data was taking up space needed for the system's Processing Power.
The Temporary Orthographic Retrieval unit, however, was not equipped with Diagnostics Analysis Programs of any value worth speaking of. [Data Storage Banks . . . at . . . ninety-seven percent capacity. Continue Data Storage routines.]
The central panel spun around until a certain subset of tools faced the wall. Four tiny tubes extended from the T.O.R. and touched the wall. Their ends lit up and traced a perfect square in the metal, which fell away from the building in a haze of acrid yellow smoke. Behind the panel, a series of ports was revealed.
Spinning its middle panel to another section, the T.O.R. snaked several wires out to meet the various holes. After several seconds of hunting and testing, most of the T.O.R.'s wiring had found a matching home in the back of the electronics panel. A few more seconds for data copy and transfer (But should it have lasted even that long?), and the T.O.R. broke the various connections it had forged.
[Data Storage Banks . . .]
It waited. It waited a full minute before force-cancelling the operation and starting over.
[Data Storage Banks . . .] This time, it was under three quarters of a minute before the number was calculated. [ . . . at two percent capacity.] Now the unit had no reason for concern. It had plenty of storage space in its Data Storage Banks, after all. In fact, it had barely made any progress at all since setting out on this mission! It set right to work, scanning the next buildings for potential sources of data to mine—it would certainly need a lot, if it was going to make use of all that empty space in its hard drives.
—alternate title: "doctorlit Pretends to Know Computer Things"