Moe Lane's Blog, page 30
June 9, 2025
A Slow Fall Into Madness, Part 2 (Unfiltered)
Keeping on with this, apparently.
…
The Future, Stillborn
The Enrico Fermi’s FTL drive was barely up to the challenge of reaching Alpha Centauri. The ship’s engineers were pessimistic about the drive ability to make it back to Earth, but the consensus was that it wouldn’t matter. Surely the Amalgamation would at least assist them with tools, raw materials, or better theoretical models. Or maybe they’d just give humanity a new ship entirely, as a reward and/or teaching opportunity. It wasn’t an absurd notion, really. What information humanity had gleaned from the Pluto Monolith suggested that there would be an extensive period of cultural and technological uplift before Earth could join the Amalgamation. Giving humans trainer starships was a perfectly sensible training strategy.
Arriving in the charnel desolation of Alpha Centauri thus acted as a double blow. Not only was there no Amalgamation to greet its newest species; there was no Amalgamation to help put the Enrico Fermi back in good enough shape to get back home. The crew would have to do everything themselves, using whatever they could scrounge and adapt.
It took them six months of frantic effort, and the deaths of fifteen percent of the crew from various misadventures and accidents, to be in a position where the Enrico Fermi had an acceptable chance of success. The crew members not directly involved in repairing and refurbishing the ship’s systems fanned out into the half-wrecked space station that was supposed to be their welcoming facility. They were under orders to grab… everything that looked useful, or even half-comprehensible. Many of the crew casualties came from that frantic time of meddling with things humanity could not understand, or from simple mistakes brought on from too much work, not enough sleep, and only barely acceptable air.
But they managed. It helped a good deal that the Enrico Fermi was able to activate the pseudo-sapient uplift facilitator that humanity would later call ‘The Process.’ That gave the crew access to various FTL drive blueprints and schematics. They couldn’t recreate them, but even a basic idea of what the design could look like allowed them to simplify their own ship’s drive.
More importantly, that gave them The Process itself, which undoubtedly saved the expedition. Once activated, The Process was assisting the Enrico Fermi within an hour, providing what codes and protocols it could, offering suggestions and shortcuts that dramatically reduced the refurbishing period. A node of The Process was even integrated with the ship itself, which allowed it to avert disaster at least once on the trip back.
But, beyond a certain level, The Process could not help humanity make sense of the enigmatic devices and materials that had been stuffed in every spare cubic inch of the Enrico Fermi. Some of it, it could not talk about; most of it was far beyond The Process’s own operational limits. Deciphering their mysteries would have to wait upon the savants of Earth.
Patreon!
My mini-review of BALLERINA.
Short version: hey, does the timeline really wor OH BOY, SHE FOUND GRENADES.
Slightly longer version: there is something to be said for letting fight choreographers direct full movies. From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (I refuse to use that clumsy title further) wisely avoids making Eve (the heroine) as strong as a dude. Indeed, they make it clear that the tagline ‘fight like a girl’ in the movie means to take advantage of the tactical environment and use weapons and cheat. Instead, Ballerina makes Eve as invulnerable as a video game character, which is much more sensible in this context and far easier to suspend one’s belief about. She’s not as strong as, say, John McClane, but she’s just as much a kinetic energy sponge.
Also: there were questions about where this fits in the John Wick timeline, but every time I wanted to ask one they flipped to an action sequence. One wonders if this was deliberate. I’m not complaining, mind you. As a happy little action flick Ballerina is good. I approved of it.
#commissionearned
June 8, 2025
‘Sinnerman.’
Sinnerman, Nina Simone
#commissionearned
A Slow Fall Into Madness, Part 1 (Unfiltered)
I felt the urge. Check out my Patreon for the full game world!
Patreon!A Slow Fall Into Madness
Earth, 2046-2076
The departure of the Enrico Fermi in 2045 AD was the most watched event in human history. Possibly a full third of the population watched the feed directly as the prototype starship translated into FTL space, the best minds of Earth onboard. The details from the Pluto Monolith were spotty and incomplete, but the gist came through fairly well. Humanity would be free to join the Galactic Amalgamation, just as soon as they could travel to it under their own power. There would be no conquest, no forced assimilation. There would be plenty of room for Earth to expand, settle, and thrive, on its own terms. Humanity was permitted, it was welcome, it was anticipated.
Everyone knew that it would be years before the Enrico Fermi would return. It was hoped that the Amalgamation would send back word that the ship had made the journey successfully, but who knew? The rules were still opaque, and written in language that was archaic in 1800. As 2046 passed without word, world leaders moved to tamp down expectations. It might take a while to go through the Amalgamation’s checklist, the word went out. The ship will send a message back as soon as they possibly can. If not now, surely next year, or the year after that.
The reappearance of a battered and barely-functional Enrico Fermi in 2047 was thus both expected, and unexpected. Sensors had been trained on the re-emergence space, giving Earth time to prepare for her arrival. Particularly since ship’s captain Kylee Ramirez refused to transmit any electronic messages, insisting instead that she be allowed to speak in person to Earth’s most important leaders.
But there was no way to truly prepare for what Captain Ramirez revealed. She showed them footage of centuries-old shambles, scene after scene of ancient horror on a planet where the air was full of corpse-dust. All the planets were like this, she revealed. Every one they could find. What records that remained made it clear. There was no Galactic Amalgamation. Not anymore. There was just humanity, orphaned in a charnel galaxy.
Worst of all? There was no clue as to why it happened, who did it, and why they did not do it to Earth, too. It was perhaps that last mystery that ended up driving the planet to enduring a brief, but deadly, time of madness.
It just took a little time.
Patreon Microfiction: Bitter-ish Exile.
I’ve always been interested in the idea what would happen if a nomadic people had access to magic/supernatural/whatever. How would that change them? There may be a longer story inside ‘Bitter-ish Exile’…
Patreon!
June 7, 2025
‘Farewell Angelina.’
Farewell Angelina, Joan Baez
#commissionearned
Book of the Week: Tales from the Fermi Resolution, Vol 1.
Why Tales from the Fermi Resolution, Vol 1? Because I actually sold out of it today. First time that’s happened with any of my books at a physical vending space. That’s worth a little bit of a brag, methinks.
#commissionearned
Having slooooow computer times. [UPDATE: Working fine now.]
Don’t know why. Some stuff will be posted tomorrow. Good day today at Savage Fest.
[UPDATE: working fine, now. Anyway, we had a good day at Savage Fest. The rain did hit, but early morning, and cleared up by the time the festival actually started. Had people interested in the books and the game. It was also pleasant to spend some quality time with my wife outdoors.]
BEHOLD! I am at Savage Fest.
It is raining. This is the environmental thing today. Main Street Laurel was fire (exploding propane tanks), Arbutus was earth (the wounds have healed and faded, without scars), and Savage will be water (we’re not quite out of thunderstorm territory yet). Good thing I don’t have another outside event scheduled this year, or I’d be worrying about tornadoes.
BEHOLD! pic.twitter.com/yKGVOfkFXM
— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) June 7, 2025
