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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate April 1999 |
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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate April 1999 |
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INSIDE SCOOP |
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SOL EXPOSE: SLARTI'S Ever wondered just where Slarti's came from? Perhaps you're wondering where and what that disembodied voice on Venus is. Or maybe you've been perplexed because you just have no idea how to get out of Kleinbottle Way! Well, welcome to the newest column for Inside Scoop, dedicated to exposing the allusions that our infamous creator, the illustrious Bella (and Hazed sometimes), put into Sol when he constructed Federation DataSpace so long ago. If you hadn't noticed before, Ming's Sol and the Promotion Puzzles are full of allusions to works of literature including H.G. Wells and Lewis Carroll along with some other resources. I'm hoping to give you a little background information that you will hopefully find interesting and make you want to explore Sol all over again. This column is scheduled to come out twice a month, simply because the newsdroids wouldn't work for me unless I gave them two weeks off a month - those greedy metallic - ahh, nevermind - I'll save it for a non-union publication. And they're so snippy about being near beaches... With the introduction out of the way, let's expose something - namely, where Hazed got the name for Slarti's Construction and Design Workshop. Has anyone ever read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams? Yes, I know there's got to be a couple of you out there. Well, without giving away the story, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is a rather funny novel about the adventure of Arthur Dent, the only human left after a catastrophe on Earth. During his adventure, he and his friends run across a planet called Magrathea. On Magrathea, Arthur finds Slartibartfast, a planet designer, known for making award-winning fjords and creating Norway. Look at Slarti's Construction and Design Workshop:
Notice the bolded paragraph - the placement of trees and rivers as well as the chiseling off a coastline (Norway, presumably) and the creation of little fjords for which the droid hopes to win an award - both referring to scenes from the work. For those who haven't been on Fed for a couple of years, the Workbench used to be a separate element from the game. It wasn't until AOL that Slarti's was put in and this allusion used! Read the Line Noise for more info! For the curious, HHG was originally a radio show on BBC Radio before Douglas Adams got his hands on it. Slartibartfast is in both, although the plot differs a little bit. The entire radio series is available from the BBC on a set of 6 CDs. On a personal note, I love "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - it's absolutely hilarious. If you'd love to find out the ultimate question and answer in the universe and read a little bit more about Slartibartfast, feel free to click the following link to look at the book on Amazon.com: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Well, I hope you enjoy this first edition - I know I did. Comments? Questions? Death Threats? Email me at dukeanti@aol.com. By the way, Don't Panic!
SOL
EXPOSE: MIND THE GAP Before I begin, I need to issue a disclaimer. The following article contains information on The Underground. No, I am not talking about the Underground, a Fringe Production. I am speaking of a part of London Transport. Any links and information about the Underground is about the latter and not the former from above. If you want more information on the former Underground, please contact Baron Kaipanther or Baroness Kao in the game. Now that's done... Well, this week we focus on Venus. In particular, Sol 549. Before you even try to port there, you porter-happy Barons and Dukes, let me say that it is teleport-shielded, so don't even try. I, of course, speak of the Venusian shuttle. That lovely little form of transportation that moves you from Cargon City to the West Mines to the Nisrik Mining Corporation to the East Mines and back to Cargon City in a never-ending loop. Whenever you are in one of the shuttle stations (Sol 548, 560, 561, and 590 for the curious), you usually see: "The shuttle has arrived. A disembodied voice says "MIND THE GAP!" or "The shuttle has left..." or maybe even "The shuttle isn't here!" Let us focus on the first line regarding the disembodied voice. It belongs to none other than the Underground, a part of London Transport. The London Transport owns/runs/controls public transportation in London, running both bus and rail services throughout the city. Specifically, the Underground is the subway portion of London Transport, much like the METRO is for the District of Columbia or MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rail Transit Authority) for Atlanta in the USA. The Underground spans over 12 lines (Piccadilly, Victoria, and Jubilee are the most well-known) with an amazing 472.75 kilometers of rail line and over 250 stations. The Underground has over 4000 trains that it uses. Back to the topic at hand, and I do apologize for factualizing you so much - "MIND THE GAP!" erupts over some stations along the Underground when the car doors open. The message is not played at all stations - only at those with curved platforms. Where the platform is straight, the train sits flush with the platform and there are no gaps and therefore no disembodied voice. Where the platform is curved, the ends of the carriages are close to the platform but the middle of each carriage is not, leaving a rather nasty little gap that you can easily stick your foot down into. Most Britons associate the message with Bank on the Central Line in the center of the London financial district. "MIND THE GAP!" is essentially a trademark of the UnderGround. As a matter of fact, in the London Transport Museum, you can purchase t-shirts, mugs, keychains and every other unimaginably useless item there with the Underground logo and MIND THE GAP pasted across it. I should know; I have such a shirt, and I wear it religiously. Unfortunately, the slightly sinister disembodied voice was removed from the stations several years ago, replaced by a more modern, feminine voice. With the opening of new stations on the Jubilee line later this year, London Transport has made four different versions of "MIND THE GAP!" to give the station operators more options. Here are some links for more information on the UnderGround and the history of transportation in London and the surrounding areas: http://www.londontransport.co.uk/ Of ironic interest, the UnderGround strictly prohibits smoking, so you can take your Yak 42's (a subject for another day) and smoke them elsewhere while you "wait". And for some reason that I fail to understand, flash photography is not allowed on London Transport property - don't ask me why. Until next time, walk softly, carry a big stick and remember to "MIND THE GAP!" At this point, I'd like to thank The Demi-Goddess for helping me with my research on this topic - without her help, I might have made a fool of myself! As always, you can email me at DukeAnti@aol.com. Share your thoughts...your dreams... your hopes - which will all be ignored. I am, however, open to suggestions on specific things in Sol that you would like me to put into this column. Where do you want to Fed today?
A
CLOSER LOOK: LIVE AND LET LIVE? It was such an ordinary conversation. One player expressed disdain for another. Someone else asked why, and still other players voiced opinions on both sides. It was very civilized and very polite, and perhaps it was wishful thinking, but I thought I detected relief that people were making "conversation" on the channel. And then it happened. Someone said let's live and let live, and Fed being the politically correct place that it is, one and all hastened to agree. Indeed. Why can't we all just get along? Let's let people lie, as long as it doesn't, as one player said, directly offend me. Let's let them annoy other people, as long, of course, as it doesn't affect me. Our problem is that we all spent too long on AOL, that cesspool of the American psyche, awash in spoiled children. We seem to have adopted the rather adolescent attitude that it isn't cool to care, that we must not get involved, for on AOL as in any other big city, that was all too often a mistake. My newspaper today is covered in places I never heard of, that I would rather not know about. The front-page picture shows a boxcar crammed with people. One child in the arms of his mother has the eyes of my son. But hey, that doesn't offend me directly. Inside in the international news is a photo of a horde, filling the frame of the picture. One woman has stepped slightly forward, and attempts, face lifted to the camera, to reason with the border guards who keep the refugees back at gunpoint. Behind her, in the first row of the crowd, crouches a young woman, her arms restraining a child of maybe three from annoying the men with the guns. Her face is determined, and you can see that if anyone is allowed to enter, she plans to be among them. What else would I do if I were there? But hey, who knows who the bad guy is. It is all so far away, happening to people who speak another language. But, but, something whispers, I don't think it is the little girl who looked out at the camera with the face of my daughter, immortalized as she rode into someplace I don't remember on a cart full of refugee children. The little girl, maybe six, looked angry, as well she might, for she had a thousand-yard stare that should never have been on the face of a child. The caption did not identify her or say what had happened to her mother. But what can I do, I alone at my computer, what does it matter what I think? It is painful to dwell on the agony of strangers, and maybe non-productive, for will I really be the voice that says look... lest we forget? But maybe, maybe I at least have to say it anyway, without fearing that people won't listen, or caring how uncool it is to worry about the new player some Baron is killing just for fun. Right and wrong are sometimes so finely intertwined it is hard to distinguish them, and it is far easier to buy rounds, have sex and ignore others' pain than to worry about what our friends may be doing that doesn't affect us. I do not want to condemn those who do so, for it almost seems what anyone civilized would do, to turn away from pain they don't feel able to help. But this is how murders happen on crowded streets, and how apathy overtakes the places we live.
A
CLOSER LOOK: IGNORING THE ELEPHANT Sometimes I just get tired. This or that argument doesn't seem worth it, or the pithy response doesn't come in time. Or else I make a joke, ask a pointed question, and am told I am bickering, and would I please stop. Hard to say where the line is sometimes between taking it all too seriously and knowing when to pick your fights. I was somewhat shamed to find myself this week in the sort of apathy I have accused others of allowing to run their lives. They aren't going to do anything, I told someone. They know all about it, and if they were going to do something about, they would have done it by now. Never mind who 'they' are, or what 'it' was. I am pointing out that I had resigned myself to it as a sort of continuing unpleasantness. But of course things will never change if we all take that attitude, said he, and he was right. It is easy to ignore or deprioritize that which is not continually brought to one's attention. So I should have said something, and I should have said something before now. And I know that, as someone else's failure to complain about something else has caused me endless annoyance... I merely never sat down and put the thing together. Suppose an elephant were wander into a hotel lobby, and proceed to soil the floor..... Some people would wrinkle their nose and check out. Others would hurry through, make remarks, and resolve to go somewhere else in future, although they might in fact come back on the assumption that the elephant will be gone by then. The person who comes in and asks why in the world this is being allowed to continue may strike the person who then has to clean the floor as a real bitch. The people who have to get the elephant out of the lobby may not be real fond of her either. Does that make it any less a valid question? Does that mean the elephant isn't better off elsewhere than in the hotel lobby? Or that the hotel lobby isn't better off without the elephant and especially without its droppings? I rest my case.
UNDERCOVER
REPORT Never make the mistake of asking your editor a question when she is considering what the heck she is going to put in the news this week. 'Whose covers?' I asked, pointing at the ad in last week's Chronicle for an undercover droid. Next thing I knew I was assigned to decide whose, explain why and find out what they had underneath them. 'Here.' she said, tossing me an email. 'Here's a place to start.' I looked at the mail. 'I have a few newsdroids stashed somewhere under my mattress on Mahiethy,' it said. 'I would be more then happy to volunteer one of them to work for you.' Hmm, I thought. If he keeps newsdroids under his mattress, what does he keep under his covers? If I hadn't already seen the holos, I needn't ask, it developed, although the Thane of Mahiethy confirmed that one could safely assume that it wasn't triple-X in nature. As for how the droids came to be under his mattress, disassembly is apparently a family talent, and well, who needs empowered droids running around asking for raises? Disassembly was also mentioned when I asked if the droid who got to the bottom of the matter wouldn't have a scoop then, as was the monkey wrench and something about readying TL's. I retreated to safer subjects, like the "3/4 keg of bootleg Aurian Ale, a couple dozen S'mores from Camp and three bushels of peaches from Neverland" Shaman also keeps under his mattress. Small trees were mentioned when I asked just how long all of this had been under there. When I wanted to know if that didn't make sleep rather difficult, he declined to answer further questions until I answered a series of fiendish riddles involving Ming and the price of eggs. Others had more conventional bedroom arrangements. 'A firm mattress,' smiled Katspurfor, when asked what he had under his covers, after initially claiming to be "crystal-clear" and to have no covers. Bizcarp claimed to have nothing under her covers but herself and her body pillow but under my knowing smile blushed and conceded that there were, at times, other objects, though she declined to elaborate. 'Just enough to keep warm and not enough to pass out,' said Jakar. Antimatter said he had a blue oyster cult under his covers. 'Navel lint,' said Thor, 'lots and lots of navel lint.' Speedyx thought a moment and said he liked to keep jello, whipped cream and a woman under his covers, while Jonathan just smiled and murmured something about an alibi.
In the beginning there was flicker of energy from somewhere to the left. A pause and then another flicker. A lengthy pause and the flicker became a flash of light. A flash of light followed by another and another with a steady decrease in the intermittent pauses. After a while the strobing became steady and with time it grew constant. They raised their heads and looked around. It was new. They were new. And then it dawned on them that they didn't know who they were. A few of them had met before in different lives but were unable to recognize each other. And then the voices started. Gradually, gently these pioneers were urged onward by the voices. At the beginnings they adjusted to the new with incredible speed. They took on identities and personalities and their powers grew. At each new hurdle another was created to keep them moving onward inexorably onward and upward but to what end? They knew not, but the voices gave them confidence and they stumbled ever forward. Their emotions were strong and one emotion in particular shone splendid against the inky blackness of space. Joy. They had fun. They stumbled and fell only to get back up again laughing and smiling. This was new and new was fun. News spread from outside to in and they were joined by more. The pioneers became the teachers and the teachers replaced the voices to the newly arrived denizens of this life. And with teaching they gained more knowledge and were able to overcome the hurdles with greater speed as the others could be heard hot on their heels. And as each hurdle was cleared, the knowledge spread down and the others raced onwards in pursuit. And this is how the trouble started. In the early days the behavior of the players within the context of the game was self organizing. That is to say that the new players were so busy adapting to the fluxing environment that aside from a few words of help, newbods stumbled along in the footsteps of their predecessors and all was well. It is a well known phenomenon that evolution proceeds more quickly in small, isolated populations than it does in large groups. Organisms adapt to an ever changing environment in order that they might leave more progeny to represent them in the next generation. In the early days of Federation, the environment changed rapidly and the players responded with growing rapidity. The environment is no longer changing as quickly as it once did and a state of equilibrium has been reached. In nature, if an organism has no need to adapt to it's environment then it stays unchanged. This is the beauty of natural selection, it conforms to the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" philosophy. Unfortunately the adaptation of Fed's players is not inextricably linked to the changing environment. The environment may have slowed down, but the evolutionary drive of the players is as strong as ever. So what has happened? The players have adapted to the new, unchanging environment by altering their behavior. Players no longer look down at "poor people" with the contempt they deserve and once got. Yesterday's "poor person" has become today's "valuable resource" and the players are raping this resource as quickly as mankind's natural resources are being plundered in real life. The general tenet these days states that "they may be an adventurer now, but if I give them x groats and promote through to Merchant they can help me fill my deficits". So what's my point? The behavior of Fed's players is no longer self organizing. The majority of players have no history in the game because they were dragged through the ranks by promotion hungry "rich people". So the population has become completely introspective with the poor looking up and the rich looking down both with the same goal of self advancement. The dogs have begun to turn on themselves. I am not preaching but merely observing and I have no suggestions to the current dilemma. I will say only that this road leads nowhere. We need an environment where the poor can continue to look upward and dream and the rich can do likewise. Viva change.
WHAT
ARE YOU LOOKING AT? My comms unit crackled. I banged it against the hull of my ship. It crackled again so I shook it angrily before banging it repeatedly on the hull once more. After a prolonged episode of hull banging and obstinate crackling I finally managed to patch through to the channel I was after. The scary channel. The one that not many of you know about and those that do keep to themselves for fear of mass hysteria. For most of you this channel is thankfully unobtainable due to the artificial intelligence chips fitted to all comms units by the Galactic Administration. When I stepped out of my prolonged period of superstasis recently (I believe ‘double death' is the modern colloquialism) it took me a while to get to grips with the new unit with its plethora of buttons and channel choices and I do apologize to anyone inadvertently caught up in my post-stasis confusion between XT and COM, but I digress. By a bizarre happenstance, my stasis booth had a slight time leak and when I stepped out on Earth I realized that I was still carrying certain items from my previous incarnation's inventory. One of these items was my communicator in all its brick-like splendor, which I promptly threw into a storage locker with the intention of selling for a quick groat at a later date. To cut a long story short, my antique communicator spent its fortuitous resurrection filling a variety of vital roles. In fact, until just recently it was being used as a doorstop on my newly acquired planet, Canidae. I don't know what prompted me but as I sat on the loo staring moochily at the floor the other day, it caught my eye and I picked it up. The loo door promptly slammed shut locking me inside and while I waited for someone to answer my embarrassed intra-duchy pleas for help I began playing with it. Obviously none of the standard channels worked due to the change in frequency as the universe expanded outside Sol. I flicked the channel button anyway and suddenly there it was, a noise. I looked at the LED and realized which channel I had hit. The noise was brief but I definitely heard something. After much bashing and fiddling I got a steady link and listened. Unfortunately I can't tell you too much about this channel for fear of my life. The powers that be would kill me in an instant if I spoke openly on the subject. Basically, there is an alternate reality running parallel to ours. Despite its similar course, however, it seems to be lagging quite a bit behind us and aside from a few brief forays, the inhabitants have not ventured from Sol to any recognizable degree. When I listened in for a while I heard something that puzzled me.
The airwaves were then hot with the sound of twin lasers for the next twenty minutes.
And then the airwaves went silent leaving me pondering the bizarre exchange that I had just heard. Was it a joke? Well, after a week of thorough investigation involving much hull banging (no I'm still not going to make the obvious joke about a recently deceased English puppeteer that only those of us lucky enough to live on the correct side of the Atlantic will get) I can only assume that if this type of behaviour was a joke that it was a rather prolonged one. So how is this different from the usual banter heard nowadays? In the most part it is very congenial and most of you are incredibly friendly and some of you very funny (the jokes are coming thick and fast now). Not too long ago I heard a series of exchanges that made me grit my teeth with frustration and boredom. It was during the steady stream of newly appointed saviors of the universe. The exchanges were so predictable that I was left wondering if the log of the original argument had been photocopied and handed round. Ironically enough it was the sharing of logs that was at the heart of these pathetic arguments but I won't go into that lest I fall asleep. Either that or I get chastised for skipping a page in the script. After I'd heard the full pantomime about a dozen times with different actors I decided to try a little experiment. I suggested on open comms that if they were so upset with each other that they could bang on for half an hour boring everyone rigid, why didn't they just settle it fairly by fighting and then buying each other a drink. I was ignored. I then realized that the only reason that they were engaging in this sort of boring schoolboy sniping is because they were entirely safe. It reminded me of those talk shows where they start swinging wildly at each other safe in the knowledge that the security personnel are paid to make sure they can't actually go through with anything. I've always wondered what would happen if security threw them into the carpark and left them to their own devices. Would they still try to fight? I doubt it. Anyone who has a pet dog will tell you that they are much more aggressive towards other dogs when kept on a leash. Let them off the leash and they usually forego the fighting in favor of an aromatic investigation of each other's Gary Glitter (think rhyming slang). Isn't it about time Fedders were let off the leash? Why not re-instate fighting in Sol? If you can't have an amusing potshot at someone on their way out for the evening what's the universe coming to?
Another story led to this one. The first story concerned the proper behavior of pirates, and was axed by the political correctness committee before it got off the drawing board. But it raised an interesting question, Does one tremble or quiver before a pirate? For that matter, which is better, in general? Magesmiley eyed our newsdroid strangely when asked whether he would rather see his wife tremble or quiver, and demanded to know what it was talking about. 'Do you have a comment of trembles for publication?' asked the droid. ' You are asking Hazed that?' demanded Magesmiley in horror, misreading his screen. 'You doing something private?' asked Bazar, stumbling onto this conversation. 'I am just a spectator,' asserted Magesmiley, possibly with a little more emphasis than strictly necessary. Thor, an expert on hammers, averred that trembling came when the hammer was first produced, while quivering came... later. 'Lol' said Kao, a reknowned expert on quivering, 'It seems to me you tremble in fear and quiver in passion and anticipation.' Tarot, when asked for a definition, said quivering was akin to shaking, shivering, wiggling... Elin, quiet until then, laughed then said she saw a distinction. 'I often quiver, but never tremble,' she said, although she did say she was impressed with Tarot's vocabulary. 'He knows a lot of words that's for sure,' said Kao. 'Hey,' smiled Elin, 'he knows that many words I bet he can put them together.' Tarot wasn't sure. 'You mean ... as in make a sentence?', he asked. Thor laughed. Tarot offered to give Elin a demonstration. Thor grinned and sat back to watch. 'Yeah...' said Elin, 'yanno, like 'runs cool soothing fingers through your hair and lets them meander downwards as a flush creeps over her body.' That kind of sentence.' 'More like.', said Tarot, 'sifts his hands through her silk hair, massaging her scalp as two fingers come to rest on each of her temples, swirling in small circles against the tender flesh, releaving the tension of a long days work.' 'Not bad, said Elin. 'You left out the heat though, lol.' Thor nodded. 'And the quivering, shaking, etc,' he said. Undeterred, Tarot winked and says, 'The heat comes later.' Thor laughed. 'Quick Tarot, very quick' he said. 'That would require a full encounter.', said Tarot.
Thor chuckled. 'You get the idea yeah, though that was a little TOO fast, said Elin. 'Like this....' Tarot got a little defensive maybe. Human males don't like to be told they are fast for some reason. 'Well I'm pressed for time ya know, a guy like me has people to see heats to hint at.', said Tarot. Elin made a small sound and involuntarily moved closer, pressing her body against ours as she brushed her lips against the side of our neck.
The droid wasn't sure and thought it had best seek instruction on this assignment, which appeared to be leading into deep water. And was that perhaps a slight flush creeping up its body?
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