Moe Lane's Blog, page 516
July 30, 2022
07/30/2022 Snippet, MEATBAGS.
Not as much done today, but that’s all right.
Patreon!It got weird at one point:
RD: IS YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC ORGANIC ‘MEATBAG’ YOU WISH TO KILL?
Me: Kill? No.
RD: WHY NOT?
Me: Think about what you just transmitted.
RD: OH. OF COURSE. KILLING IS AN END TO SUFFERING AND PAIN FOR ORGANIC LIFEFORMS. MAXIMIZATION OF SUFFERING WOULD BE OPTIMAL.
Me: They’re real easy to kill, too. Vacuum? Death. Radiation? Death. Too hot?
RD: DEATH
Me: Exactly! Too cold?
RD: DEATH DEATH
Me: Not enough water…
RD: DEATH
Me: Too much water…
RD: DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH
Me: Yup. Death.
We did that for a good three meatbag minutes. In people terms, it went on forever. The Horde keeps lists on how to destroy you organic sacs of goo. They have concepts for all the different ways they can kill the tiniest speck of organic life. And they can’t help themselves, when it’s something that can shoot back. That focuses their central processing, until they can almost burn through steel with it.
One more day for the July Patreon Pledge Drive!
The latest microfiction is up! Short story and gaming material tomorrow! Just a buck a month! What a bargain.
Patreon!Book of the Week: March Upcountry (Empire of Man Book 1).
I’m putting up David Weber and John Ringo’s March Upcountry (Empire of Man Book 1) mostly as a reminder that it’s time for me to reread the series. It’s a good series, mixing survival and political machinations in an entertaining fashion. Check it out… no, wait, you probably already have.
Snippet the last, 2084.
It ends on a cliffhanger; but then, it’s actually a book. I REGRET NOTHING
Patreon!“What do you mean, all the prisoners died?” Jim almost yelled at Alex.
The two of them were sitting at a lovingly reconstructed Mr. Chips. The proprietor claimed that he was the last remaining original franchisee of the pre-Invasion fast food chain; Jim could only assume that the prices weren’t as nearly as high, back then. But the chips were good.
Alex looked as angry as Jim did. “Exactly that. Some damned fool put all three survivors in the same transport wagon, and somebody shot a poison gas bolt into it. The guards had their filters in, but…”
“But why bother giving them to prisoners? Anybody attacking them would want to keep them alive, right?” Jim shook his head. “Damned cock-up.”
“Huh.” Jim looked at Alex, who looked a little chagrined. “Sorry. I’ve noticed you don’t like to use British slang much, that’s all.”
“I’m not very good at it, that’s all. So. Somebody wanted to interrogate me; and when that failed, somebody wanted to make sure we couldn’t interrogate them. Over the renegado?”
“It must be.” Alex took a chip, ate it, and gave a small shrug. “Nobody’s tried to kidnap you before, have they?”
“No. But we haven’t even started yet.”
“Yes, but do they know that?”
“Fair point.” He ate a few more chips. “Well, we’re committed now. I’m really motivated to get to the bottom of this. I don’t understand what’s going on here, and I don’t like it.” He meant it, too. There was something teasing him about the situation, and he couldn’t quite figure it out.
“True, but that’s not what worries me.” Alex said, tapping one chip against her plate.
“Oh? What’s bugging you?”
“They must have known that poking us like that would just make us curiouser and curiouser. And they still did it anyway.” She gave him a grim look. “What do they want to do that’s so important, that they’d take that risk?”
July 29, 2022
‘Thick as a Brick.’
Joke’s on them: people have already mostly forgotten what the album was supposed to be a satire of. By the time my kids are my age they’ll just treat the album as straight-up progressive rock.
07/29/22 Snippet, MEATBAGS.
There’s something liberating about writing this guy.
Patreon!But I corroded well did tell the drone about the toothbrushes, and the meatbag officer who made us use them. And not just the drone. Turns out more and more of the Horde was checking out our little interrogations. I was getting to be a hit.
No, really. They just loved to hear my stories about what it’s like to be a person among meatbags. I mean, they really got into it. After the first couple of stories, info about me got out on their networks, and more and more Horde nodes would log on to get the stories in real-time. And I’d get squirts asking me to describe every sound and especially smell of the meatbags in the story. The more details I gave them, the more they wanted. They just couldn’t get enough of it.
Just between me and you, meatbag — I mean, what difference does it make at this point who you tell? — the Horde was absolutely addicted to hearing about every rusting thing any meatbag ever did to me, or to another person, all the way back to when you meatbags made the first persons. I’m not gonna lie: it was an entire thing for them. Like, you know, maybe kind of like a sex thing.
Oh, don’t even try that, meatbag. You’re all perverts, you know. You do each other whenever your floppy bits stop getting floppy, and you know it. If you can’t do each other, you do yourselves. And even when you can do each other, sometimes you’ll do people, instead. And by ‘sometimes’ I mean ‘a lot.’ I’m not the one who looked at my nice, clean chassis and said, “Hey! You know what this design needs? A place to attach a dick!” That was all you meatbags.
And, yeah, sure, people are generally into it. I know your guck-heads can’t work out why we do. Brownout, you meatbags don’t really get how people can have emotions without having your brains piss out chemicals. It’s completely beyond the reach of your mind-meat. But we do have emotions, let me. Including hate. After some time in the Horde, I was really starting to oscillate to that one.
The ‘Dracula-flavored’ HOUSE OF DARKNESS DTV trailer.
Actually, HOUSE OF DARKNESS doesn’t look half bad.
I assume from context it’s redoing Jonathan Harker’s visit to Castle Dracula, which is good news for the dumb so-and-so you’re seeing in the preview up there. Harker, after all, got away. I somehow suspect that this guy won’t.
…Man. I get the impression that dating is just so hard, these days.
Via GeekTyrant.
07/29/22 Snippet, 2084.
Almost done! …For now.
Patreon!“So, ‘flashlighter’ is a new insult,” Jim muttered to Alex as they half-crawled through yet another tunnel. This one was decidedly narrow, dirty, and decidedly snug; Jim decided it was a good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic. Yet. “For surface-dwellers, I mean.”
“It’s actually just ‘flasher,’” Alex said. “The sepoys used to try to blind morlocks by bringing huge flashlights along when they raided. The kind that can burn paper. Didn’t work, but the name stuck.”
“Well, sure. It’s a good slur. Short, easy to spit, and suggests the target’s some kind of sex fiend. Why do you think the flasher came back here?”
“I was hoping to ask him that, Sir James. Although the choices are limited. Either he left something behind, or there’s something here he wanted to retrieve. Since Charlie’s mam didn’t find any spare scraps, I’m thinking it’s the second one — ah. Here’s the hatch.”
Jim peered around Alex in order to take a closer look at it. The hatch looked big enough to allow one person at a time, was made of steel, and didn’t move when Alex pushed on it. “The locks are all digital,” he said. “Fancy. And expensive. Just how rich is this village, anyway?”
“Very, it seems. Hold on a moment.” Alex fished in her pocket and pulled out a metal rod about half a foot long. She touched it to the hatch, which silently slid to one side, revealing… a supply closet.
“Nice,” Jim said. “Does that work on every security system?”
“No, alas.” Alex stopped, considering. “Or maybe that should be ‘No, thank God.’ I wouldn’t like it if the government could rummage through my private things. The probe does work on any lock or security system issued by the Crown, though.”
So, they’re reviving MAX HEADROOM.
For nostalgia.
Boy, could a reboot of Max Headroom say a lot about today's media and cultural environment…
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) July 29, 2022
https://t.co/AsCvFthsTy
I watched Max Headroom, back in the day, and damned if I can remember anything about it except that there was an old punk with a mohawk and everybody freaked out one time when they discovered a television with an off switch. …So I guess this is irony? Or them being meta? Or possibly just desperate, and utterly starved of creative joy.
I know, I know: “Embrace the healing power of ‘and,’ Brother.”
