Moe Lane's Blog, page 868
August 4, 2020
Adventure Seed: CODE RED MANGO.
Blame this.
CASE-RED-MANGO-Google-DocsDownload
CASE RED MANGO
Background: the in vitro fertilization (IVF) industry makes a lot of money (17 billion USD in 2018; potentially 37 billion USD by 2026), and markets its services to a great number of people with money, status, or both. Naturally, the industry is a prime target for a broad range of arcane, occult, esoteric, conspiratological, or simply deranged conspiracies. And not the reasonable sorts of plotters and schemers, either. Whether they’re trying to fast-forward the human or evolutionary process or just trying to clone a new batch of Hitlers, there’s just something about assisted reproduction technology which attracts the alarmingly keen sort of cultist.
Mostly they cancel out each other, honestly. And literally: nine times out of ten, an IVF lab or medical technology company vulnerable to mystic interference will attract two or more competing conspiracies, who will then proceed to fight amongst themselves to have the right to entangle said company in their insidious web. Invariably the mini-conspiracies wreck themselves and their rivals in the process, too; the only time the larger, saner conspiracies step in is when the original innocent company is in danger of being wrecked. Which absolutely means that a mini-conspiracy that can acquire its own IVF facility is generally left be, assuming that the mini-conspiracy isn’t one of the ones that can make a creditable stab at ending the world or something. The Secret Masters aren’t here to judge.
Why is all of this important? Well, several different mini-conspiracies have noticed this forbearance shown by the larger conspiracies, and realized that it would be mutually beneficial for them to combine forces and create a conglomerate. The groups involved don’t have contradictory goals, at least in terms of their mission statements and primary objectives; working together, they could easily muscle into new opportunities to suborn the facilities that they need without significant loss of resources. Truly, it is a wonder why nobody has done this before.
…The answer is, by the way, that somebody has. Often. Conglomeration is one of the traditional ways that a mini-conspiracy can join the ranks of the Secret Masters; whether it’s the best way is hotly debated, but the Illuminati are utilitarian when it comes to results. If this nascent group (which will be called RED MANGO, for convenience) can survive, thrive, and presumably take over the IVF industry, so be it. Let RED MANGO worry about rogue transhumanist gene-ripper cabals and the Esoteric Order of Dagon; if they want the territory so badly, then they can deal with the headaches.
But first RED MANGO will have to prove that they can survive the conglomeration process. That’s where your team comes in. You are going to… test them. It’s not exactly ‘test to destruction,’ but we’re not talking love-taps, either. RED MANGO will need to have the joins on their alliance whacked on pretty hard, because it’ll happen eventually anyway. Besides, there’s nothing more risky for everyone than an industry-wide conspiracy which breaks up at the first sign of trouble.
Resources? Sure. Within reason. Protection from the consequences of your actions? Again, yes. Within reason. And what does ‘within reason’ mean? …Well, I suppose that would be your test. If this was going to be an easy job, a group of interns would be doing it.
There are still some signed copies of FROZEN DREAMS available!
They can be found here in the pre-order store. I had budgeted in some extra copies for conventions, you understand. Only, there are no conventions. So, ten bucks plus shipping and handling gets you your own copy of FROZEN DREAMS! A bargain, I feel.
Alternatively, you can order FROZEN DREAMS on Amazon or Smashwords. It’s all good, man. But the more I sell this month, the more I’ll have to work with when the next project goes online this autumn…
Tweet of the Day, …Dang edition.
Right on the nose.
We're used to hearing only the future predictions that turned out amusingly wrong, but this cartoon from a century ago is one of the best predictions ever made. #Paleofuture https://t.co/1JSdmzKhlE
— Sea Lion Press (@SeaLionPress) August 1, 2020
August 3, 2020
08/03/2020 Snippet, OMBUDSMAN.
I’ve had this story in my head for a while, and today was the day I decided to start writing it. I have some hope that it will be, ah, controversial.
Patreon!People had to call Bad Jack ‘John Steelman’ now. That was because he was respectable now, too: he wore socks with his shoes and changed his clothes every day (with clean ones!) and had a dentist brought in to deal with his teeth. Bad Jack didn’t even fuss when the dentist had to go in with the drill and the numbing goop. Or at least, John Steelman didn’t fuss, either in public and in private. In the back of his head, Bad Jack was pissed and thinking about how a dentist didn’t need good knees to keep working, right?
But that was a loser thought, Bad Jack told himself. The kind of thoughts bandits had, and Bad Jack wasn’t no bandit no longer. He wasn’t even a bandit chief. No, he was a manufacturer now in the Hershey Consortium, and for that you need polish and restraint. At least where people could see.
And, hell, the teeth did feel a lot better. Better enough that he was gonna keep this dentist around for the next time he needed one. Bad Jack didn’t know how to make the dentist stay under the new rules, but he was sure there was a way. That was what rules were always for; making sure that the people on top got what they wanted, and now he was one of the ones on top.
Not at the very top, though. But close enough. Besides; maybe there was a way to get even higher than Bad Jack was now. You just had to wait and see it.
Isaias now a hurricane.
Hurricane Isaias will just miss us here – probably – but a tropical storm at least looks ready to smack through New Jersey and maybe NYC. Assuming that the track is accurate, which is always a crap shoot. If I’m not on tomorrow, assume that the power’s out where I am.
Also: get the hell out of the path of the hurricane, if you live in the Carolinas.
In the Mail: SS-GB.
I picked SS-GB up because – well, this is actually kind of entertaining. A couple of people on Twitter got exceptionally pissy just because I made the perfectly reasonable observation that Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America was such a godawful book and crappy alternate history that I couldn’t finish it, which gets funnier and funnier the more I think of it. I mean, why the hell do they care if somebody thinks a book is awful*? Anyway, I forget how I found out that the BBC actually made a miniseries based off of Len Deighton’s SS-GB (which was an infinitely better alternate history novel**); but I did find out, and I purchased it accordingly. And here it is! Hope it doesn’t suck.
…Well, it was entertaining to me.
Moe Lane
*Unless, of course, they share the same opinion, and kind of resent that somebody’s coming out and saying something that they’d like to. But that would be ascribing motives, and we mustn’t have that.
**I don’t actually know if Deighton is a better writer than Roth generally. I do know that even the suggestion that he is would probably be enough to make certain people gnash their teeth; which is, again, pretty damn funny when you think about it.
SHANG-LI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS resumes production.
In Sydney, Australia. Better late than never, hey? Supposedly this one is going to have the actual Mandarin, instead of the Mandarin from Iron Man 3 (I’m just going to flat-out admit that I liked Iron Man 3, okay*?).
It's not Asia and it's not Hollywood; it is Western Sydney, home to the newest addition of the @Marvel movie franchise. The 7NEWS chopper captured these scenes today as work resumed building the set for the upcoming production, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/pvDbMyRHlb
— 7NEWS Sydney (@7NewsSydney) August 2, 2020
Moe Lane
*Look, I’m not saying it was Arrival. But I wanted what it gave me, and I particularly enjoyed the decade-long pander that was the MCU. I’m not gonna get mad that a popcorn movie came in and did the job it was contracted to do.
08/03/2020 Snippet, MORGAN BAROD AND THE ELDRITCH TOME.
I kind of feel sorry for Morgan Barod, at this moment.
Patreon!The mage didn’t seem to be in too much trouble, yet, but he wasn’t exactly brushing off the critters, either. These particular critters looked like mutated squirrels, puffed up to the size of beagles and tricked out with claws and fangs. Pack hunters, too, thought Morgan. Wonder if they have an alpha? And indeed, they did; there was one that seemed to be directing the attack. It looked like it was about halfway through the process of becoming a grizzled, wily old nemesis of the forest, the kind that would unerringly prey on the weak and unprepared, its scars bearing mute witness to a lifetime of cunning and savagery.
So Morgan attacked it first. He figured that somebody ten years down the line would thank him for that — no, wait, they’ll never know I did ‘em the favor, he thought. Oh, well. It was still a good idea to kill the really nasty buggers before they completely grew up.
Half-grown or not, the pack-squirrel alpha was viciously fast, and Morgan was very quickly happy that he was wearing good boots. And a cup, because the little bastard also could leap. For one horrified moment Morgan was worried that the fangs could actually manage to rip through the chain mail, leather, and stainless steel covering his important bits: but it couldn’t, quite.
And it wouldn’t let go, either. Morgan tried to spin it off, and maybe smack it against the barrier in the middle of the highway, but the pack-squirrel was having nothing of that. And he couldn’t quite get a good stab in. Well, Morgan could get a good stab in, but what if he missed? Eventually he settled for trying to use the edge of his shield to pop the damned thing off, or at least smash it in the head enough times.
