Moe Lane's Blog, page 24

‘Gorilla, You’re A Desperado.’

Gorilla, You’re A Desperado, Warren Zevon

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The… :sigh: The THE SANDMAN Season 2 trailer.

It looks really good. THE SANDMAN Season 2 also looks like it’s following the original story reasonably closely. But… but it’s a messed-up situation, all around.

Also, there’s never going to be an Emperor Norton episode, and that makes me sad all on its own.

06/23/2025 Snippet, THE BOOK. (Unfiltered)

Have some special plans for Patreon stories for the near future, but this can also be worked on.

…

Archival Studies
Voynich Memorial Library
Lewis University
State of Plymouth
2150 AD

I stared at the box. The very battered, rusty, and smeared box. I’d like to say that something that filthy didn’t belong on my desk, but fair’s fair: it wasn’t the nastiest item I’d gotten handed lately. Or, in this case, dropped on my desk by a scowling coworker. That was a surprise, actually. Jessica usually preferred to smirk.

Not this time. “Have fun, Phil,” she told me, or at least in my general direction. Her eyes were focused on the box. “Without me, dammit.”

I raised one eyebrow at the swear word. She wasn’t the foul-mouthed type. “I’ll try, Jessica,” I said, in my most reasonable tones. “What am I going to be having fun doing?”

“Oh, nothing. You’ll just get to archive one of the burn boxes from the old Special Collections.” She gave the box an exquisitely dirty look. “Only it’s not burned.”

Fortunately, I had already put down my coffee. “Unburned?” Now I was staring at the box, a hopeful academic lust struggling to be born. “You’re joking.”

“Either I am, or the label is,” she told me. “The seals check out, the lettering matches, there’s even a disposal ticket still attached. I got to see that, at least. Here, take a look.”

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Today felt like the first real day off of summer for me.

Then again, I adamantly refused to do anything today that required me to go out. It’s currently 95 degrees out there; and it feels like 107, with 49 percent humidity. That’s hot weather, even by American standards. So I took a bunch of naps and hunkered down.

And no cooking. I bought cold cuts for a reason.

‘Gives You Hell.’

Gives You Hell, The All-American Rejects

#commissionearned

Anybody see 28 YEARS LATER yet?

I liked the first one, rolled my eyes at the second. Is the third worth watching? 28 YEARS LATER is about the only movie I might be bothered to go see in theaters this week.

The Codex (Unfiltered).

Wanted to get this down. Not yet finished, though.

…

The Codex

There was an entire procedure for bringing in new alien species to the Amalgamation, ranging from how to weather the initial shock of First Contact to a plan to optimize wholesale technology and knowledge transfers. Humanity has a good general idea how things were supposed to go, and the system sounded ideal. Earth would have been provided immediate assistance to alleviate our most pressing medical and social problems, then put through an apprenticeship on the colony worlds to get our species used to the idea of living elsewhere. In the meantime, we would be given access to the Amalgamation as a whole, under only moderately controlled conditions. 

This whole uplift process would have taken no more than four or five generations, with humanity in control of its own development and choice of goals. It would have worked. It had worked. Unfortunately, most of that plan was obviated by the mass murder of the Galaxy. All that was left was The Process, which is a pseudo-sapient eidolon of the uplift program, and a few initial goodwill gifts for humanity.

The Codex is the most significant of those gifts. It is a comprehensive analysis of human health and medicine that goes far beyond the phrase ‘revolutionary.’ Better yet, it is written and presented in an easily-understood style that lacks the subtle tests and hidden lessons found in other surviving human-centric material. Apparently the Amalgamation had decided that this was information Earth needed as quickly as possible.

Languages of the Codex: Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindu, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swahili. The entries are written in a clear but accessible style. Note: the vocabulary and grammar are consistent with what a well-educated scholar from the Eighteenth Century might use. Also note: the information found inside the Codex argues strongly that the Amalgamation had access to human bodies for its research.

There are three parts to the Codex:

Alpha. This section deals with physical ailments of all sorts, from nutritional needs (including a few not yet discovered by Earth at the time of Zeroth Contact) to the treatment, cure, and repair of genetic conditions. Mere diseases like tooth decay or cancer were eliminated within thirty years of the introduction of the Alpha Codex. Note that it does not offer information into how to regenerate limbs, or produce chimeras. The Codex claims that such treatments require ‘supervision’ at first.Beta. This section concentrates on certain mental conditions, mostly involving either biochemical imbalances or treatment of past psychological trauma. It provides an introductory true science of mind that has allowed psychologists to properly diagnose everything from neurosy to paranoid schizophrenia, and prescribe an effective treatment. Unfortunately, human technology is not as able at providing those treatments as Amalgamation science would be, but doctors can generally come up with field expedients that can get the job done.

Gamma. This is the hardest section for humans to understand, as it appears to be a grab-bag of diagnoses and treatments for what human doctors would have considered unrelated physical and mental ailments. More interestingly, there is a unified theory underlying the Gamma Codex, but it is not completely understandable. It would appear that the Amalgamation was still working on this section when the xenocides occurred. Or possibly humanity isn’t advanced enough to understand the underlying reasoning. Or both.

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Patreon Microfiction: “From ‘Black Ocean, Red Sunrise:’ A Party.”

100WS-From ‘Black Ocean, Red Sunrise_’ A PartyDownload

…Yeah. That Frank Roosevelt. President Smith thought it wise to make a political rival governor of a territory on the other side of the planet, particularly one as well-liked by the Navy. On the other hand: this Frank Roosevelt can walk.

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Back from Novice Tourney.

Actually, I was back several hours ago. I just had to take a nap. Which should tell you quite a bit about how busy Novice Tourney was. And I had the easy job, which was over by noon yesterday. After that, it was just a matter of trying not to melt in the heat. Ninety degrees isn’t the worst weather in the world, but it’s a bit of a trial when there isn’t any wind.

Book of the Week: The Aeronaut’s Windlass (Revisited).

I’m reupping Jim Butcher’s The Aeronaut’s Windlass because I did have some free time this weekend. Running field in the SCA involves being in one place so that people can find you easily. You tell them where their pavilion goes, they put it up, you go back to that one place. It’s one of those jobs that, if you do it right, you vaguely wonder afterward whether you really needed anybody to do it at all.

Anyway. It is a good book.

#commissionearned