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You may have seen this before; I posted the first few pages of this a couple years ago, or something like that. I hope to share the finished story soon, but for now:

----

The [replicated] meal shimmered into being, much to Henry’s delight. He jumped up for a better view.

“Cooool! How’s it do that? Is it magic?”

“No, it’s technology. You wouldn’t understand unless you know what molecules are.”

“Oh, I know that!” And to Nume’s surprise, the boy burst into song. “Molecules are made of atoms. / Each one has a special shape. / Molecules are small particles / of all things; they are great! / Fish and rocks and trees / The mountains and the seas / Tables, cars, and cheese / All have mol-u-cleese!”

Nume stared, momentarily at a loss for words. He hadn’t known about atoms and molecules at six. “Did your mother teach you that?”

Henry shook his head. “I learned it in school. We sing lots of songs in school. And Mom sings with me, too,” he added, perhaps wishing not to be seen as disloyal.

“Huh,” said Nume. “The education system sure ain’t what it used to be.”

“We don’t say ain’t; that’s bad grammar,” the child scolded.

“Oh, hush. Sit down and have your dinner before it gets cold.”

[And, a bit later]

“What’s impeccable?”

“Flawless. Perfect. Beyond reproach in every detail.” [Nume] brushed an imaginary wrinkle out of his pale peach shirt. Nobody ironed anymore, but as for him, the soft hiss and smell of steam was one of the rare things that brought him peace. Not that a six-year-old could be expected to understand.

“Nobody’s actually perfect,” Henry said. “Everyone has flaws, and flaws are beautiful,” he recited. “Unless you’re a meanie.”

Nume was silent for a moment. “I honestly never thought about how screwy a PPC education must be. I mean, it can’t be worse than a Catholic education, but—”

“What’s Catholic?”

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. How the h—hezmana can you be expected to understand half the continua we protect without a foundation in World One’s dominant cultures and their history?”

Henry gave him a withering look. “I’m six years old. That’s super boring.”

Nume shook his head. He was an idiot. “Sorry, after all that atoms and molecules stuff, I thought I was talking to some big-shot academic. Tell you what, let’s just get back to Star Trek, okay?”

----

See, this is important! {= )

~Neshomeh

And it may be un-beta'd, but there's nothing in it I'd correct. XD

Especially that last line! I laughed.

Working from this image:



(click through for large version)

I've done my best to plot the town centre locations so far onto the real-world geography:



As seen from the Rue Ella Darcy. Some of the stuff at far left is probably out of place (the photo is a bit fisheyed), but the centre itself is pretty accurate.

For the curious, this is the approximate same view in Google Earth:



I believe GEarth may use 30m topography measurements, so the ridgeline on the right of the photos is just too narrow to be shown, as is the central bulge on which the Appetiser sits.

hS

A thread to discuss religious laws concerning interaction between people of different genders. Specifically Jewish religious law, but anyone can jump in with comparisons to different religions if that's what they know.
To start, a question: How is cross-gender interaction handled depending on age? Is the point when the rules change the Bar or Bat Mitzvah?

There are so many fun things that could happen with a library.
Several Rival libraries. They each stand for a specific genre, or period of time, and have (mostly) light-hearted competition over which Works are the best. Within each genre, librarians might compete in factions over specific works.
Gaming library! Being able to borrow games publicly, to enrich the culture and the canon. A couple of big Tournament Rooms, a few smaller consoles/computers for those who don't have any at home, and lots and lots of games. (Might be a bit too Nerd Paradise-y).

I think there should at least be an Honorary Digory Kirke Lecture Hall of Teaching Logic At These Schools. {= D

~Neshomeh

The thing is, being a good agent—by which I mean one that carefully observes and considers a fic as opposed to one that takes it for granted that Intel's given them a Sue, kills, and scrams—requires a fair bit of knowledge across a range of fields. Being an active reader/viewer/game-player with a grasp of logic and the craft of writing is the minimum. It also helps if you have a good grip of math, biology, physics, psychology and sociology, history and social studies of the culture(s) producing most of the big canons and most of the fanfic, and so forth. At least a high school level, which I suppose is also the minimum we expect the average fic writer to understand, too.

If you want to tackle the really tricky fics, though (the ones where the mechanics are passable but the rest is dubious), you gotta go further. Serious literary criticism, world history, philosophy and religion, the history of your preferred genre, feminist and queer theory very useful, not to mention advanced anatomy especially if you're in Bad Slash, and so on, and so forth.

Jay and Acacia were in college when they started, I think. Architeuthis and Lambda, too, I believe. Possibly Nenya and Rosie? That's just to name a few off the top of my head.

So, while you certainly CAN go straight from secondary education to being an agent full time, but that doesn't mean you should. Not if you want to be famous. {= P

Possibly the—Collège de Nouvelle-Calédonie? (ColCal?) Université de Nouvelle-Calédonie? (Nu U?) Something else with a better nickname?—offers more online/correspondence courses than classroom-based ones, more on an ad hoc continuing education basis than a two-to-four-year one...

The OFUs might cover some of the same things, though. I mean, I can see HFA going for something like Remedial Maths: Just Because It's Not Taught At Hogwarts Doesn't Mean YOU Don't Need To Know It; or OFUM, Special Seminar: Fortnights and Furlongs: If You Don't Add Them Correctly, There Will Be Dungeons and Dragons In Your Near Future.

~Neshomeh, musing.

And you only need two items for this!

1. Taser. Super quick, for the first part of knocking someone out.
2. Injecting needle. Just put air directly into their bloodstream while they're unconscious. What you do with the body afterwards, don't have many ideas for. Happy hunting.

Make it happen, people!

It looks like taro root is one of those crops that grows well in flooded conditions, so our sinkhole is actually perfect. The hillside is probably dedicated to fruit trees, with the sinkhole given over to root crops (and maybe a bit of rice).

I suspect that the mountain areas stay pretty wet even during the dry season, but if not, there's a portal network and a local river to provide for that.

I like the Quarters designation. :)

Yeah, skyscrapers are only in my head because of the MMC map. I may have to insist on one mysteriously floating building, though (not too large); the sort of place that nobody knows what it's for, or even how to get into it, but the lights come on every day...

Underground building... I get the idea, but the people here want to get out of HQ. If they wanted grey tunnels and no windows, they'd just live in an RC.

The Complex is just another (older, discarded) name for the Appetiser [which I really wish I remembered what the joke was in that name, or whether it was just a 'well, they find it funny, so it must be']; it's probably a relatively small building featuring the clock tower and a bunch of blank doors inside, all technically duplicates of 1-Nou-2.

This is fun!

hS

I wonder if the mountains are actually much good for farming, considering nobody really lives up there; almost all the real cities are along the coast with just a couple in the interior. Still, there's clearly plenty of vegetation up there, and no shortage of moisture on the west side in the hot/wet season, so maybe it just takes a little tweaking to get the soil to support food crops. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about, just guessing.

North residential area = American Quarter, south residential area = French Quarter?

Re. sci-fi skyscrapers: I really really don't like the idea anything taller than four storeys in this place. ^_^; However—what if they built down, not up? There's plenty of room under the mountain, it's less conspicuous, and upside-down buildings are cool. Plus, they could use or sell whatever resources they pulled out of the earth in the process of carving the space. (There was a recent thread that discussed a function of the Finance Department being to disguise the PPC's hand in trade deals, IIRC. They DO need accountants with special skills!)

So, you get to keep your Complex, I get to keep my more rustic aesthetic? Notwithstanding a terribly sci-fi clock, an actual fricking spaceship port that looks like a modern-art sculpture garden, and very exotic building/decorative materials here and there throughout, of course!

~Neshomeh

I like the two scale agents* walking the trail to the right.

* Like scale birds, the ubiquitous genus that always appear in fantasy art to give an idea of how big the thing in the picture is.

~Neshomeh

(Link)

Just farmlands. Nothing to see here.

hS

Through a bit of wiggling on Google Earth, I've determined that the picture was actually taken from the Door, and doesn't even see as far as Cemetary Hill. So that hill should be covered in farms.

I did also find a higher-res version of the image, so might be able to pull off a decent photomanip someday.

hS

Because I'm semi-planning (if it fits) to write in a place that keeps them for the purpose of allowing trail-riding, inspired by a place I once visited in the bluffs above La Crosse, Wisconsin. Not a BUNCH of them, because they take a lot of resources to keep (and the ones that live in the Courtyard probably appreciate an excuse to get out sometimes, too), but just a few small and hardy types for the adventurous folk who might want to go sight-seeing farther from home.

So yeah, I reckon the two ideas could be one. {= )

~Neshomeh

I'm sure she could work in a pocket-sized zoo full of small not-that-dangerous critters. ^_^

hS

I uh . . . I had kind of had the idea rattling around in the back of my mind that the DMFF ran a multiversal zoo in New Cal?

>.>

<.>
Yeeeeaaaah, I realize that's kind of self-inserty, considering it's coming from me. But since it looks like space is at more of a premium than I ever realized, and that we're trying to keep it more World One-friendly for disguising purposes, that idea's definitely out.

As for the map, well, I don't really have a head for geographical stuff, but I am impressed with all the work you've put into that map document, Nesh! It looks really cool, and it's going to be majorly useful as a reference going forward!

—doctorlit, going to fill HQ with wild animals now, probably maybe

An artist's impression of the northern Residential District, as seen from the eastern slopes of the 1-Nou-1 hill. Cemetary Hill is mostly hidden behind the door hill; you can see farms down in the valley, and the original, American-style residences behind. (There's more over the hill, of course.)

I have absolutely no idea what the scale is on these photos, but I took a stab at it.

hS

We don't actually know when the city was first founded, do we? Tawaki first mentions it in 2008, but by that time it's already a bustling city. So why was it founded? Here's my theory:

-In 1999, the PPC lost a lot of its sources of supplies due to the Reorganisation. This included not only money, but also food. In an attempt to deal with the deficit, the Board started farming areas outside several Doors to HQ. Although several of these wound up invaded by Orcs, investigated by detectives, or (in one case) blown up with Alderaan, the one in New Caledonia became a staple source of food for HQ. (Probably a combination of taro-root and exotic fruits, such as plantains.)

-In 2001, The Fellowship of the Ring came out. This was the start of a population explosion in HQ: one account (not yet published) suggests the number of agents expanded from ~1000 to ~10,000 in three years. Recruitment from missions begins in earnest, as does the publication of PPC mission logs on secret corners of the World One internet, with teenagers recruited from there. Also also, the OFUs start up, and a fair number of OFU graduates wind up in the PPC. This isn't to say that there was a lack of space in HQ - of course not, it's ridiculously large - but there were certainly more people around.

-At around the same time, the first generation of HQ kids were reaching adolesence (having been born ca. 1990, a little before the Lofty Skies insanity), and being joined by a significant increase in children rescued from badfics. The existing facilities in what was still called the Nursery became severely overstretched. The teachers were also concerned about the lack of outdoors areas for the kids: the Courtyard was (at the time) small and tricky to find, and that first generation had grown up kind of weird from being stuck inside the whole time.

-So the Nursery staff appealed to the Wisteria, the Wisteria went to the Board of Flowers, and around 2003-04, a school was founded on the ridge south of the New Caledonia farms.

-Before too long, houses began to spring up around it, mostly inhabited by agents with families. A lot of these were in the styles of their occupants' homes, which usually means American; this would come to change.

-In 2006, HQ was invaded, and had nowhere to evacuate to. In the aftermath, the Board rushed through a plan to expand the New Cal settlement, creating a 'town centre' area in the sinkhole south of the residential zone. A lot of the early buildings are a bit sci-fi, since they were built with the quickest technology available. The intent was to provide a refuge, archive, and operations centre for the PPC in the event that HQ was attacked again.

-By 2008, the city had taken on a life of its own, acting as an entertainment hub for the PPC. That's probably how it would have remained - were it not for the Macrovirus Epidemic. The epidemic provided the first test of New Cal as a refuge, and introduces a whole load of agents to the joys of outdoor living.

-Over the next couple of years, a new, larger residential area was founded south of the centre. This was built in local styles, since it lay closest to the Muggle regions of New Caledonia, and might be accidentally discovered. Of course they don't want civilians to see it's there - but better they find a French Colonial town than a Star Wars skyscraper, right?

-By ca. 2010, the city had assumed what's currently its final state. No doubt there will be more changes in the future...

(Ironically, this doesn't use the Canon Nursery School - that story takes place sometime in the early '90s, since Ekwy was 15 in 2002. Given the presence of juvenile Suvians in the school, possibly it was an experiment by the Mysterious Somebody at the start of his reign, the first step in what would become the Mary Sue Factories.)

~

Regarding schools: Europe tends towards the '(nursery)-primary-secondary-university' model, yes, and for the sake of not splashing schools all over the city it's probably worth following. The PPC being the PPC, I'd guess that the secondary/high school is halfway Agent Training anyway (Hogwarts has shown that actual education isn't necessary if you live in an isolated society ^_~).

Would there be a uni? By 18, most residents are expected to be working as agents, and not have time to get a degree. The OFUs will serve for that (goes the thought), or they can - ugh - move away.

I think it'll probably show up in the future, but we know the first HQ generation were dumped directly into agenthood, and the '(adopted) baby boom' that started in '02-'04 is a little too recent for the canon kids to be heading to uni. In a couple of years, someone will point out that a juvenile Triceratops can't actually go off to Oxford/Harvard, even if she does want to become an accountant, and the Board will no doubt recognise the need for higher training in some areas.

(But then again, it's probably easier to find a recruit with accounting skills than to teach one yourselves...)

hS

Since there was just a long discussion of this in the chat for some reason, I thought I'd port it over to a thread here.

Points that have been raised include:
- Guns are pretty impractical in space for various reasons, including recoil and heat dissipation
- If you're on a space station instead, you have the problem of breaking the station, which leads to a lot more murder than intended. (This led to Maslab pointing out that air marshals are some of the best handgun marksmen in the world, since they don't want to shoot a hole in the plane.)
- Missiles don't have most of the problems of guns and are good space weaponry
- Lasers can be useful for some things, like (and this is actually being proposed and might work) clearing trash out of orbit
- On space stations that actually exist these days, you do need to deal with the problem that launches have extremely strict weight limits and are very itemized, so guns are out even if you wanted to try that, and you'll want to use something that plausibly needs to be on a space station
- Therefore (even in the sci-fi future), knives are a very good option
- Even plastic ones, which can be sharpened quite well apparently (thanks Maslab, again)
- Strangling someone with some rope-like thing is also a good choice
- A ceramic toothbrush that's also a shiv got proposed at some point to dodge inspection's awkward questions
- There's also various forms of "tragic accident" - holes in spacesuits or such - that someone could probably arrange

I probably missed some important points, but I thought I'd summarize the talk onto here, so people could speculate more about orbital murder because it's a fun topic (apparently).

- Tomash

Just a few things rattling around in my brain:

- Designated market area. A town in a remote place like this needs an open market in a central location where everyone can gather to buy/sell fresh food, trade, gossip, etc. There are probably small grocery stores dotted around, but I don't reckon a giant indoor supermarket of the sort most of us are used to would fit in too well. Also, no, you can't just order whatever you want from Amazon. PPC Postal, maybe, but you know how it is getting parcels through HQ customs, and there's always a chance it will arrive last week, when you were out and didn't expect it because this is exactly why you don't live in Headquarters anymore, dammit. {= P

- A small playhouse and/or movie theater. I'm thinking "and"; two, maybe three fifty-seaters that can convert from stage to screen as needed. It's the PPC, culture and arts and entertainment and forced MSTings are a big deal.

- At least one library. (You know, a normal one.) See above.

- Schools. At least two daycares/nursery schools and at least two elementary schools, one+ of each to each residential district. (hS, I know you just came across the Canon Nursery School story. No one said it's not in New Caledonia... {= D ) At least one high school. Middle school is dumb, roll it into high school; pretty sure this is how it's done in Europe anyway? OTOH, the PPC probably insists on actual grammar school for multiple languages being a thing. Maybe even one college, for those who can't or don't want to attend a regular World One college. OFU study-abroad/spring semesters, anyone? {= D

Anything else that ought to exist but hasn't been written about yet?

~Neshomeh

Here's the link again, just so it's obvious:

PPC City, New Caledonia in My Google Maps form.

~Neshomeh

I'd be happy to start another thread, if you'd like!

Yeah, in his explanatory post (this one), he said "If there's at least one other person present, it's fine with me. Maybe we could work something out with two beta readers?" The Discord channel is public by nature--it has its times when it isn't very busy, but people recap and lurk and it's just generally unusual to have only two people online for very long (while there's sometimes just one person, by the time a second joins, my experience has been that a third isn't far behind. This is usually while the North Americans sleep). It's just really not the same as having a private discussion, because it's available to anyone on the server. A beta, though...that's generally either a private discussion or comments in a doc, so since he's following the rule online as well it makes sense it'd kick in there.

I'm glad the context helped/was interesting (and that it came across the way I intended, too, yeah). I agree that line could be read as ambiguous, especially without the background of experience with that sort of rule--I'd support a request for clarification, though at the end of the day, that's not my decision. It does sound more reasonable, though.

I'm more than happy to keep on talking, but you make a good point. We could start a new thread, or label it firmly as a tangential discussion--"Tangent: Cross-Gender Interaction in Jewish Law" or something, in my case (oh G-d, I feel like I'm titling an essay. Halp. I even have a subtitle: something like "Then and Now," or "Historically and In Today's Variations"). Either way, it can be firmly separated from Neo as a person, unless he wants to join the discussion, in which case he'd be as in control of how personally he wants to discuss it as everyone else would be.

~Z