#i will be shipping one of the pod members with the research assistant

[pr-fae]

Yes hi! First of all, I look forward to seeing your art whenever you post, it's always enjoyable, from the colors to the subject matter, five stars.

Secondly, yes to giant merpeople👍 Never enough. And with that, I have a question. Do you think, in a situation like yours (underwater research base, etc) the giant merfolk would curiously tap on the glass and watch the humans, like we do with fish tanks?

JAZKDKKDDKDK THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! 😭😭🫶

It's so funny you ask that because I'm currently working on another illustration that has a big ol sign that says "Do NOT tap the glass, you'll startle the researchers." this is apart of my fantasy/sci-fi world so congrats - there's LORE.

For the most part, alot of the locals leave the base alone. There are a couple researchers who ARE some flavor of merm/are local. Since this base is so far down, it's not always safe for non-merm folks, so the merm/other aquatic based team members mainly handle field work.

However you still get some locals who will stop by to maybe talk to people, see what's going on, be nosy. There is a lot of explanation on how they work, but basically they be smaller for small periods of time and are kinda somewhat amphibous? Story for another time. The non-merms practically live on base so they have separate work and living quarters while they're "On duty." Like Antarctica scientists except under the water and your neighbors are fish people. Who can visit.

This particular Pod enjoys bothering the head researcher because he's basically a family friend and like an uncle. They also like seeing what new PhD student got sadled with their grumpy uncle and like when it's women because women are cute

[angelkitty54]

Sonic Prime AU time! (coz this has been everywhere in the last month or so.) Basically just some ideas I had for shatterverse versions of Sonic and Shadow, set after the end of the series.

New Yoke City: Based on the idea in SA2 where it's kinda implied Sonic was also made on the Ark like Shadow (which is never brought up again). Basically Nine stumbles across a pod that contains the New Yoke version of Sonic (Spirit) and excitedly wakes him up. However he quickly finds that this is not the Sonic he met before; Spirit has never been out of his bio-tank thingy before, he is basically a newborn in a full grown body, with the mentality of a newborn too. Spirit is a wide-eyed innocent child, sweet, kind and trusting, a stark contrast to the world around him and the people in it. Nine is having a hard time adjusting, especially since Spirit's keeps chewing on all his power cables. He is also constantly being accused of having cloned Sonic. Which he totally did not! He found this Sonic fair and square thank you very much!

Meanwhile, having lost their power source, the Chaos Council has lost a lot of ground to the resistance. In searching for new power sources and weapons, they discover Project Umbra (three guess who this is). Umbra leans a little more into his alien side than Shadow does, he is also less of an angsty teen and more of a scared, grieving child lashing out at a world that hurt him. He agrees to work for the council only due to the distant family connection, but he doesn't particularly like them or care about their goals. He just wants to see the world burn. Of course, things change when he finds out his baby brother survives the raid on the Ark. Tho he is not particularly happy about this strange fox hanging around, acting all buddy buddy with Umbra's brother. Ugh, the nerve of that guy!

Boscage Maze: Got inspiration from movies like Nausicaa and Origin: Spirits of the Past. So the instead of the prism, the massive jungle was actually caused by a bio-experiment gone wrong which set off an apocalypse. There are effectively three groups of survivors, those that escaped into space (mainly GUN people), those that survived on the surface (whose descendants became groups like the scavengers) that live more or less in harmony with the jungle, and those that made it into underground shelters and were put into stasis chambers where they have slept for several hundred years. The latter two group are often at odds with each other, one wanting their old world back, the other wanting the jungle to stay as is. Dr Nightshade Robotnik and his assistant, Sunny, are among the stasis group.

In this universe Gerald went down the road of cybernetics as well as genetic engineering when creating his Ultimate Lifeform, Nightshade. Their Maria got to live her life to it's fullest, becoming a scientist like her grandfather. Nightshade also dedicated his life to science, wanting to follow Maria's dreams of making the world a better place, even after she passed away. Sunny benefited from their research, as it's thanks to their work into cybernetics that he is able to walk (and run) again. Upon waking in the post-apocalyptic world, Dr Nightshade has made it his mission to find out what caused the plants to grow out of control and hopefully reverse the effects. Sunny, someone who sees the benefits of both the old and new world, hopes that he can help the good Doctor find balance between the natural and mechanized worlds. Meanwhile GUN is up to something rather suspicious up there in space...

No Place Sea: Yay pirate AU!! Honestly didn't have a lot of ideas beyond just pirates tho... Shadow is Captain Blackheart and is like super duper cursed. He is captain of a ghost ship, whose crew is also super cursed and/or undead. All save a single member, his navigator Tempest (Sonic), who is immune to the effects curses due to him being half siren. Tempest does not speak much as his voice is imbued with the charming power of a siren, which he lacks much control over. He has a knack for reading the winds and currents making him an ideal navigator in treacherous waters. He is both drawn to and fears the water, as something in those dark depths keeps calling to him, eager to drag him down down down into darkness... However he can't bring himself to stay away despite the danger, and luckily whatever is hunting him seems to steer clear of the ghost ship. In exchange for shelter aboard his ship, Tempest is helping Blackheart track down and decode ancient sea charts that will lead them to a great treasure he's been hunting. One said to be able to grant wishes: the chaos emeralds!

[virulentmastermind]

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐄

Alberus (better known as Alby) is a Tenno, a Void-changed survivor of the Zariman Ten Zero incident, and a child soldier that pilots (through an act called Transference) an advanced weapons system known as a Warframe.

Having been adopted by a line of Orokin researchers, the Wesker Family, Alberus was one of the only members of his family on the Zariman as it made its way to establish a colony in the Tau System. Alberus had been sent to set up a research base for his family, while also researching the Tau System's impact on the Infestation. The Infestation is a biotechnology (and plague!) that his family had much experience and knowledge in, as they had been involved in creating the Infestation in the first place throughout their family line. When on the Zariman, he made a deal with a being known as the Man in the Wall, so all children on the ship could be saved. Despite other Tenno being afraid of TMITW, Alby views him as a friend, and often listens to him. Because of this, he takes pride in being known as a Void Demon.

Khora Prime was the first frame he was tasked with using for the Orokin Empire, as his strong willpower denoted immense Transference between them.

Later, when his penchant for viruses and infection came into play, he was matched also with Nidus Prime - and Nidus Prime chose him, in turn, as the Warframe saw a worthy Operator.

During the Orokin Era, Alby was a formidable soldier, often deploying only one of his two frames to fight whatever the Orokin requested. Unaware that he was slowly losing sight of who he was due to being inside of a Reservoir, a Somatic (Deep Sleep) Pod created so the unstable Void powers that each Tenno had could be controlled, Alby forgot he was a Tenno, and started to only see himself as the Warframes he piloted.

He awoke when the Lotus had him remember who he was. Alberus follows the Unairu school, though he also trained in Naramon.

I see a mountain, breaking the sky. The Way of Unairu. We pushed ourselves to Outlast The Enemy, to withstand all aggression without bending.

His moral alignment is Moon. He ingested the Kuva during The War Within.

After finding himself awake, Alby starts investigating the Zariman accident. The more he delves into the mystery surrounding the Infestation and his adoptive family, the more confusing it gets - until he finds from data fragments that he is infected with something called Uroboros, a strain of the Infestation that only he can control. Nidus Prime is just like him, it seems. . .

Now, Alberus roams the System, a Void Demon who finds himself assisting the people of Solaris United.

[bat-in-the-machine]

Tharsis (2016, I told you most of the games I play are older) is basically a single player dice & card game, except everything is managed by your computer instead of with actual dice and cards.

Time for another rambling game rec!

A bizarre transmission, not from any known source, originating from the Tharsis crater on Mars, instigates the first manned mission to Mars. The Iktomi, enroute to the red planet, encounters a micrometeor shower that severely damages the ship. One of the crew is killed, the ship's pantry is destroyed, and the remaining crew have to survive the trip to Mars as systems continually fail.

Each week, new systems failures occur in one of the seven remaining modules of the ship. Your crew each have a certain number of dice, up to five, to resolve the issue by adding values together to meet a specific "repair" target goal. Dice can also be assigned to crew member ablities, which have an immediate effect, ship module abilities, which affect stats that carry over from one turn to the next, or research, which can be spent on randomly drawn projects for an immediate effect ranging from regaining dice to massive repairs to a module or the ship's hull.

After assigning your remaining crew to repair these modules, the week ends and any remaining emergencies have their effects applied (damaging the hull, reducing everyone's dice pool, injuring everyone) unless the effect is to disable the pod itself, which is an ongoing effect until it's repaired.

After damage is assessed, it's time to prepare for the next week.

Your crew is divided on how to prepare for the next week, and you have to choose what plan to follow. Every plan has a positive effect and, depending on the stress level of the crew proposing it, a negative effect that gets applied to the other option. You'll see here that if I pick the first option, I get one food, but those two crewmembers become more stressed. If I pick the second plan, everyone's stress reduces, but ship's hull takes damage.

The things you have to track from turn to turn:

HULL: If the ship's hull reaches zero, everyone gets to experience the joy and wonder of the cosmos close-up! Game over.

ASSIST: You can hold up to three ASSISTs. At the end of every week, you gain one, up to that maximum. Every time you roll a penalized result (Stasis, Damage, or Void) when repairing a module, it removes one ASSIST instead of doing that effect, until you're out of ASSISTs. You don't get to choose which effects get canceled by an assist.

FOOD: At the end of each turn, crew lose a single die from their dice pool, to a minimum of one. A single unit of food can be spent to restore three dice to a single crewmember's pool, to a maximum of three.

MEAT: You start the game with three meat. This meat can be substituted for food, HOWEVER - the meat is sourced from dead crewmembers. Committing cannibalism permanently lowers a crewmember's max HP by one. Crewmembers who have committed cannibalism have their dice permanently bloodstained to represent this. Once you run out of meat, you can choose to sacrifice a crew member in order to get three more meat at the cost of some stress and OH YEAH A DEAD CREWMATE.

HP: Each crewmember has 1-6 HP. Leaving a damaged module costs 1HP. Some damaged modules do HP damage to all crew at the end of the week. Rolling a DAMAGE result on a die does 1HP. If there are two damage dice in a module with the same number, rolling that number does 2HP damage. Found that out the hard way.

DICE: Every crewmember has 1-5 dice to roll to resolve an emergency, use their or a module's effect, or commit to research

STRESS: Every crewmember has a stress level. The more stressed they are, the worse their ideas at the end of the week are, the higher the penalty for not choosing their choice is. Managing stress is important to avoid cumulative penalties as you go.

RESEARCH: You can store up to 6 dice in research. Each must have a different roll on it, so you can allot a 1 to the 1 slot in research but as long as that's there, you can't allot any more 1s. There are three research projects at any time, with costs anywhere from 1 to 6 levels of research. These have immediate effects and can be huge game changers. Selecting one removes X number of dice from the research pool starting from the lowest value up (from left to right, essentially), or you can burn one level of research to reshuffle your choices.

That's it.

Keep the crew alive and the ship intact until they reach Mars and you win the game! In the main story scenario, you have 10 weeks until you reach mars. Other scenarios, under "Missions" have different objectives. At the end, win or lose, you're scored based on what actions you've taken, how many events are left unmanaged, whether or not you've committed cannibalism (and how many times), etc.

The story, parsed out before each week of gameplay in the main story mode, is easy to predict, but it's not the reason I play. I don't play to find out what's on Tharsis, I already know that. I play to find out how badly screwed I can be and whether or not I can come back from it.

oh shit

please please please please please

oh, I am SO screwed now

It's very highly chance-based, but there's a fair amount of strategy to it, as well. Just... don't get attached to the concept of victory.

Really.

just don't

just...

...don't.

*sigh*

welp.

This is fun.

[teenyfish]

Marine Biology Story of the Day #7

Whew, it’s been a little while.  I’ve been out in the field for the last week collecting samples for my current research project--I’m exhausted when we get home, so I haven’t been motivated to write a post. 

Today, we are going to talk about what it’s like to live on a working sailing vessel (Part 1).

So I’ve mentioned before that I was on a research trip that traveled from Hawaii to California doing research on open ocean ecosystems and marine plastics.  It was an undergrad program called Sea Semester.  If you want to learn more about the research we were doing on this trip, you can check out these posts here: https://teenyfish.tumblr.com/post/622213314459615232/marine-biology-story-of-the-day-4 and https://teenyfish.tumblr.com/post/622033107021873152/marine-biology-story-of-the-day

So the really interesting thing about this program is that they do all of their research from tall ships.  Like super modernized pirate tall ships. 

And on top of doing all of the science, we had to sail this damn thing across thousands of miles of ocean.  Yes, we had first mates and a captain that knew what they were doing, but we were the crew. 

And we had our work cut out for us. 

We did a lot of prep “on shore” while we were taking some marine biology courses.  We also took a celestial navigation course, in which we learned to use landmarks and celestial bodies to navigate outside of using a GPS, which is what most modern ships use. 

Above: me learning how to use a sextant on the moon. 

we also had to learn a lot of safety drills, including how to put a “gumby suit” on in only a minute in order to abandon ship--these are designed to retain body heat when submerged, similar to how a wet suit does. Another common drill we did onboard the ship was the man-overboard drill, where we would throw a soccer ball with a flag on it overboard and all 31 crew members on board would have to be pointing at the soccer ball so we would not loose sight of our man.  In anything less than idea conditions, we could loose sight of that soccer ball in like, 5 minutes.  It was important to be quick and efficient with these drills. 

above: me goofing off in a gumby suit.  I’ts harder to get on than you think. 

Life on board the ship was structured with watches, similar to my NOAA shark trip, except there were 5 watches that you rotated through.  We had day watch from 7 am to noon, afternoon watch from noon till 7 pm, evening watch from 7 pm till 11 pm, mid watch from 11 pm to 3 am, and morning watch from 3 am to 7 am.  So my sleep schedule was SCREWED UP because we did not have set schedules AT ALL. 

We were a crew of 8, with one chief scientist, and one mate, and then the 6 of us young dumb kids. 

For each watch, we either served under the mate as crew, or under the chief scientist as assistant scientists.  It would rotate every watch, so we could learn how to do it all.  As a crew member, we were expected to set sails, be at the helm, be at the bow to watch out for floating objects at night so we wouldn’t hit them, and clean the ship (aka swab the decks).  We used 100% nautical language.

Sails are usually set by two people, one hauling up on the halyard and the other letting out the slack.  But occasionally, we would have to set the mains’l (main sail) which is the largest sail on the ship, and it would take like everybody on board. 

Here’s me with the mains’l, so you can get an idea of how big it is. 

So the cool thing about our ship is that we could set all the sails from the deck, so we didn’t have to climb into the crows nest/upper masts to set a sail.  That didn’t stop people from doing it--in fact, even I did it, and I’m pretty afraid of heights.  In order to do so, we had this harnesses that we are all wearing in the pictures--and you clip into the ladder as you go.  Considering sailors in the 1800 did nothing of the sort, I think that was a major upgrade. 

above: crew member out on the edge--i was too chicken for this.

below: a great shot my friend got of the ship from above. 

So actually being at the helm of a 134 ft vessel is not actually as scary as you think it is when you are out in the middle of the ocean with nothing to hit.  It was just a matter of keeping an eye on your heading on the compass, and making sure the ship stays within 5 degrees of your heading.  Your heading will be a degree on a circle, for example, 0 is North, 90 is East, 180 is South, and 270 is West.  The wheel (the helm) itself is sort of heavy, and it connects to a rudder below the boat, which on this one was HUGE, so you do need to put in some muscle when adjusting.  Turning this thing completely around was a challenge, because it involved setting sails, adjusting sails, and involved the entire crew to accomplish--I would get into that a little bit more but that’s a whole ‘nother paragraph so if you want to know the deets, let me know in the comments. 

Above: a cutie on the helm.  

Below: the compass with it’s red glow at night. 

It was a ton of work, and we were exhausted everyday.  But, my favorite watch, and maybe my favorite thing about being on this ship, was mid-watch (11 pm - 3 am).  Was it in the middle of the night? Sure.  Do I have a chronic illness that makes this difficult?  Yes.  But it was the one time of day where everything was quiet, and you could just be on deck and enjoy the stars--and the stars were amazing, like you couldn’t even believe.  You could very clearly see the milky way like you do in professional space photos, and sometimes the water would light up too with bioluminescence, so you’d have stars above, and stars below. 

And, sometimes, if you got morning watch, you’d get a chance to see a sunrise and hang out with a pod of 300+ common dolphins.  

as usual, I have so much more to tell you, but I’ll save it for part 2 next week when we talk about what it was like to be on the science crew! As always, PLEASE feel free to ask me any questions about our trip or our research or any of my other posts.  

[vulpinmusings]

Ski’tar and Friends part 3: The Endless Vermati

The continuing adventures of Ski’tar, Ysoki explosives master.  This time: a near-death experience dungeon-crawling through a spaceship made of skeletons as it falls apart around our ears.

Part one

Part two

Space is deadly cold.  The Drift is arguably colder because it has no natural stars spewing radiation everywhere.  The interior of an Eoxian bone-ship with a damaged necromantic power core is, somehow, even colder.

The Endless Vermati’s exterior construction, all bone spikes, made it unfeasible to try docking with it properly, so we had to just fly as close to it as possible and leap across the void into one of its cargo bays.  Sixer volunteered to make the fateful first leap, and he took a rope with him that Vemir and I could use to haul ourselves across in a more reasonable manner.  I was concerned about how I was going to get my tank-treaded and decidedly not flight-capable Drone across the gap, but Captain Navasi found a second rope that I could use to haul the Drone over once I was on the Vermati.  He also casually mentioned that we happened to be quite close to a Drift Beacon, which did a lot to explain how Captain Arvin was able to communicate with us so easily from real space.

It was immediately clear upon our arrival in the cargo bay that the Endless Vermati was in even worse shape than I’d initially suspected.  Putting aside the numerous intentional fist-sized gaps in the bone lattices that made up the walls, the cargo bay was a wreck, crackling with cold necrotic energy, and contained jack-all in the way of lootables.  I did find a working computer terminal near one of the doors, and despite the strangeness of its Eoxian hardware I had no trouble hacking into it for information.  The computer primarily contained lists that were of little use aside from the crew manifest that informed us that the Vermati had a crew of five.  I managed to gain limited access to the ship’s power grid through the computer, enough to reduce the amount of necrotic energy arcing around everywhere.  I couldn’t shut down everything, and even if could have I wouldn’t have, since I didn’t want to leave any doors sealed or other information sources unavailable.

Leaving the cargo bay, we found ourselves in a hallway that branched in three directions.  With no compelling reason to choose one over the others, Vemir arbitrarily pointed us down the middle path, toward the center of the ship and the bridge.  A short way down we found rows of glowing stations along both walls.  A careful inspection revealed they were auxiliary power stations containing a necromantic power core, small enough to carry.  We discussed Vemir’s bounty job and how vague the request for an Eoxian power core had been, and concluded that taking a small, undamaged one was a significantly better idea than trying to haul the ship’s main – and leaking – core out of the Vermati and onto the Loreseeker.  Vemir tried to pull the core out of one of that stations by brute force, but lost his grip and fell comically.  I, shaking my head, went over, pressed the clearly-marked button for releasing the core for replacement, and tossed the thing to Vemir.  He looked embarrassed, but didn’t say anything as he stood back up.

No sooner was Vemir upright again than a skeletal Eoxian emerged from the freaking wall next to Sixer and attacked him.  As the rest of us fumbled at the surprise, a wave of cold necrotic energy washed over us and invigorated the skeleton.  It clawed at Sixer again and took a significant chunk out of his armor and shredded his chest enough to expose some inner android bits. My Drone and I flanked the skeleton and burned out what few fleshy parts it had with our laspistols, taking it down.

Damaged but still functional, Sixer insisted he could go on with us, so we continued down the hall.  As we neared the end, two more skeletons popped out of the walls.  One grabbed me and the other went after Sixer as another necrotic wave passed through us.  The wave must have scrambled my Drone’s circuits, because it couldn’t land a single shot on the skeleton threatening Sixer despite being right next to it.  Vemir tried to go to Sixer’s assistance, only to find himself being menaced by a third skeleton under the floor.  I put my agile Ysoki moxie to good use in slipping out of my captor’s grip, knifing it in its shriveled stomach, and then jumping back to take it down with a well-aimed pistol shot.  Vemir was backing away from his under-floor assailant while trying to line up a shot through the bone lattice.  Since the skeleton was fixated entirely on Vemir, I had little trouble lining up a shot of my own that pierced the thing from skull to boney toe, downing it in a single shot.  I couldn’t help but give the Kasantha a cocky smirk and a theatrical twirl of my laspistol.

The skeleton assaulting Sixer proved to be as nasty as its predecessor, landing a blow that broke the android’s helmet and tore out a good chunk of his neck.  As Sixer went down, struggling to stay operational, I shot out part of the skeleton’s spine, claiming the kill shot on every foe we’d encountered so far.  Vemir was a bit put-out by being outdone by a simple mechanic like that, but we put ego aside in the name of patching up Sixer.  Using Vemir’s medkit, I managed to get Sixer’s neck mostly put back together and his suit’s environment protections working, and Vemir handed over a couple magic potions that boosted Sixer’s self-repair processes and got the android back in working order.

Captain Navasi commed us for a status report, and I summed up the situation nicely: we’d taken out four-fifths of the crew, nearly lost Sixer, and were on the look-out for the last crew member or something I could hack for information on the Unbounded Wayfarer. Navasi was relieved we hadn’t lost anyone yet and told us to hurry; the ship was deteriorating.

We reached the bridge without incident and found it was in worse shape than the rest of the ship.  There was only one operational station I could use.  Naturally, it had stronger security than the computer in the cargo bay, and I only got past its firewall by the skin of my teeth.  Once I was in, though, finding the info we needed was cake.  I learned that the Endless Vermati had been in poor shape when we found it because they’d run afoul of some pirates, something Vemir took notable interest in.  I also found instructions on the safe handling and transport of Eoxian power cores, which would make Navasi more comfortable about Vemir bringing one back to the Loreseeker. Most importantly, I found what we’d come on board to find: the last known location of the Unbounded Wayfarer.  The Eoxians had spotted it near a planet in the Vast known as Ulmarid.

I immediately commed Navasi to relay the information.  There was at least one Eoxian still on board (I was starting to wonder if the skeletons had just been created from the walls by some necromancy spell) and the place was falling apart so I wanted to be sure the Wayfarer’s location was known in case we couldn’t get away in time.  As we were chatting, a tremor rocked the ship and Navasi told us they’d just detected the Vermati’s main core was exploding.  Still on the computer, I caught wind of someone else logging into the network and trying to lock us in the bridge.  After a little cyber-scuffle I managed to block the lockdown command, and my opponent logged out and, a few seconds later, the computer reported an escape pod had been launched.

By this point, the ship was definitely starting to fall apart, so we booked it.  Sixer, still wobbly from almost dying, stumbled a few times, but between Vemir’s assistance and me correctly deducing exactly how the ship was going to fall apart we managed to get ourselves and Sixer to the cargo bay. Sixer and I worked together to shove my Drone toward the Loreskeer, where Navasi was waiting to catch it, and then we all jumped.

Vemir got us out of the blast radius of the Endless Vermati’s final demise.  It was a fascinating sight, seeing those bones shatter amid bursts of eerie blue light, but I had no regrets about not taking a power core or two for myself.  My perfect boom is not something I’ll accomplish through magic, and if I never feel the touch of necromancy magic in particular again, I’ll be be happy.

As a reward for surviving and obtaining the information we needed, Captain Navasi opened a secret compartment full of what he termed “delicacies,” including candied meat.  We appreciated the thought, and I’ll try anything once, but none of us were particularly enthused by the selection. All we really wanted was a bit of rest and directions of our next move.

We called up Captain Arvin to report.  The planet Ulmarid isn’t well known, which makes a Starfinder Society ship’s presence there not too surprising.  That did mean, however, that we’d need to wait for a bit while Arvin does some research.  In the meantime, we were to return to Absalom Station and presumably find something small to occupy ourselves with there.

[scifigeneration]

50 years old, '2001: A Space Odyssey' still offers insight about the future

by Daniel N. Rockmore

Even 17 years beyond 2001, spacesuits are bulkier than this. Matthew J. Cotter/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Watching a 50th anniversary screening of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I found myself, a mathematician and computer scientist whose research includes work related to artificial intelligence, comparing the story’s vision of the future with the world today.

The movie was made through a collaboration with science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and film director Stanley Kubrick, inspired by Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End” and his lesser-known short story “The Sentinel.” A striking work of speculative fiction, it depicts – in terms sometimes hopeful and other times cautionary – a future of alien contact, interplanetary travel, conscious machines and even the next great evolutionary leap of humankind.

The opening of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’

The most obvious way in which 2018 has fallen short of the vision of “2001” is in space travel. People are not yet routinely visiting space stations, making unremarkable visits to one of several moon bases, nor traveling to other planets. But Kubrick and Clarke hit the bull’s-eye when imagining the possibilities, problems and challenges of the future of artificial intelligence.

What can computers do?

A chief drama of the movie can in many ways be viewed as a battle to the death between human and computer. The artificial intelligence of “2001” is embodied in HAL, the omniscient computational presence, the brain of the Discovery One spaceship – and perhaps the film’s most famous character. HAL marks the pinnacle of computational achievement: a self-aware, seemingly infallible device and a ubiquitous presence in the ship, always listening, always watching.

HAL is not just a technological assistant to the crew, but rather – in the words of the mission commander Dave Bowman – the sixth crew member. The humans interact with HAL by speaking to him, and he replies in a measured male voice, somewhere between stern-yet-indulging parent and well-meaning nurse. HAL is Alexa and Siri – but much better. HAL has complete control of the ship and also, as it turns out, is the only crew member who knows the true goal of the mission.

Ethics in the machine

The tension of the film’s third act revolves around Bowman and his crewmate Frank Poole becoming increasingly aware that HAL is malfunctioning, and HAL’s discovery of these suspicions. Dave and Frank want to pull the plug on a failing computer, while self-aware HAL wants to live. All want to complete the mission.

Man versus machine.

The life-or-death chess match between the humans and HAL offers precursors of some of today’s questions about the prevalence and deployment of artificial intelligence in people’s daily lives.

First and foremost is the question of how much control people should cede to artificially intelligent machines, regardless of how “smart” the systems might be. HAL’s control of Discovery is like a deep-space version of the networked home of the future or the driverless car. Citizens, policymakers, experts and researchers are all still exploring the degree to which automation could – or should – take humans out of the loop. Some of the considerations involve relatively simple questions about the reliability of machines, but other issues are more subtle.

The actions of a computational machine are dictated by decisions encoded by humans in algorithms that control the devices. Algorithms generally have some quantifiable goal, toward which each of its actions should make progress – like winning a game of checkers, chess or Go. Just as an AI system would analyze positions of game pieces on a board, it can also measure efficiency of a warehouse or energy use of a data center.

But what happens when a moral or ethical dilemma arises en route to the goal? For the self-aware HAL, completing the mission – and staying alive – wins out when measured against the lives of the crew. What about a driverless car? Is the mission of a self-driving car, for instance, to get a passenger from one place to another as quickly as possible – or to avoid killing pedestrians? When someone steps in front of an autonomous vehicle, those goals conflict. That might feel like an obvious “choice” to program away, but what if the car needs to “choose” between two different scenarios, each of which would cause a human death?

Under surveillance

In one classic scene, Dave and Frank go into a part of the space station where they think HAL can’t hear them to discuss their doubts about HAL’s functioning and his ability to control the ship and guide the mission. They broach the idea of shutting him down. Little do they know that HAL’s cameras can see them: The computer is reading their lips through the pod window and learns of their plans.

HAL reads lips.

In the modern world, a version of that scene happens all day every day. Most of us are effectively continuously monitored, through our almost-always-on phones or corporate and government surveillance of real-world and online activities. The boundary between private and public has become and continues to be increasingly fuzzy.

The characters’ relationships in the movie made me think a lot about how people and machines might coexist, or even evolve together. Through much of the movie, even the humans talk to each other blandly, without much tone or emotion – as they might talk to a machine, or as a machine might talk to them. HAL’s famous death scene – in which Dave methodically disconnects its logic links – made me wonder whether intelligent machines will ever be afforded something equivalent to human rights.

Clarke believed it quite possible that humans’ time on Earth was but a “brief resting place” and that the maturation and evolution of the species would necessarily take people well beyond this planet. “2001” ends optimistically, vaulting a human through the “Stargate” to mark the rebirth of the race. To do this, in reality, will require people to figure out how to make the best use of the machines and devices that they are building, and to make sure we don’t let those machines control us.

About The Author:

Daniel N. Rockmore is Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Computational Science, and Computer Science at Dartmouth College.

This article is republished from our content partner, The Conversation, under a Creative Commons license.

[the-expanse-rp-blog]

Event:Timely Interruption - Tycho Event

Tycho Station Cargo Bay Three - Join now

It was the strangest collection of people that Morne had ever set eyes on. Eight OPA faction leaders were here. Three in typical spacer jumpsuits, two in well pressed business suits, three looked more like trained killers than negotiators. They were all criminal gang leaders who had turned slightly more legitimate to join the cause.

On the other side of the table was the

martian

delegation. Four armoured marines hovered by the doors. They likely had enough firepower to bring down every member of the OPA stationed on Tycho. Out in space was a Martian missile frigate, likely with nuclear warheads that could turn Tycho Station and the Nauvoo to dust. They hadn't brought a warfleet. Martians were efficient like that. They had brought just enough power to make the statement that needed to be made.

On the far side of the bay was a projected symbol of Tycho Engineering. Some things were easier to show rather than tell. They had images and video of evidence gathered at Thoth Station and down in the holds below some of it to be shown in person.

"I want to thank you all for coming,"

@Morne du Plessis

said, standing up. His accent was a thick mix of belter and afrikaans but he spoke slowly and clearly. He passed a small piece of plastic down to one of the OPA leaders who continued passing it on.

"We have a lot to discuss.

Ceres

is obviously important and we want to discuss our role there. More pressing is the matter of Phoebe station. We know, or have enough information to paint a picture of what happened to your research team. That identity badge is from the deputy lead researcher from

Protogen

on Phoebe. They are currently alive and well two floors below us. Protogen - we believe acting with the UN - have been working to weaponise advanced technology. The situation at

Eros

is because those fookers..."

He was interrupted by a metallic thud that resounded through the entire station.

"One moment..." Morné stepped back from the table. "What was that?" he hissed. There was always a headset wrapped around one of his ears. He always had a terminal either strapped to his left wrist or projecting onto glasses. He never strayed far from technology.

"Something just struck the docking bays. We didn't pick anything up on the sensors. Could have been a stealth torp but it hasn't detonated."

"Give me cameras," Morné replied, waving from his assistant towards the wall behind him. He almost entirely ignore the Martians. Onto the wall was projected a view of the docking bay doors. They had been smashed inwards. The view changed to show cargo containers strewn about the floor. Another view showed several bloody people lying prone on the ground. If the impact hadn't killed them them then the vacuum soon would.

The view switched to a new camera.

​

Morné fell uncharacteristically silent. He took half a step back away from the image and then spoke quickly into his head set loudly enough that everyone could hear.

"Prepare to launch Behemoth. Get civilians to escape pods. Lock down that deck and get security down there." He turned towards the Martian delegation. Much of the blood had left his face. "Any of you... Know what the

fook

that is?"

Outside a thousand drones detached from Tycho Station. A haze of insects swarming around the great barrel of the Nauvoo. The docking tether was kept in place between the station and the ship as an escape route for those on board Tycho.

Information

One Martian vessel is in the system. No others are close enough to mount an immediate rescue (don't bring any of your favourite ships closer if you don't want to risk them going down!)

A stealth torpedo carrying a protosoldier, launched from Io, has struck Tycho Station

The protosoldier is between the delegation and the main docking bays

20 minutes light travel time to Mars

[ditlyuk]

Google Cloud Next 19 - Everything You Need To Know | Highlights & Key Note

So as expected the event was very much a Google styled event with all of the fixtures and fittings looking like Google had just bought everything that was green, blue, red and yellow from IKEAs catalogue but it was really well put together and it was really interesting to walk around, there was never a dull moment.

They had candy tubes which dispensed actual jelly beans and this was used to highlight some of Google clouds USPs. They had a full life-size version of chess which was surprisingly popular. Vibrant display stands to draw you in, a pool of ducks obviously, a full arcade complete with retro-styled ssh terminals to allow you to practice your server commands. They also had a complete ‘Dev Zone’ game which was essentially a step-by-step tutorial of some of Google Clouds services. There was also a Lego board  with lego artist and a feedback board for questions which every company needs, oh and lastly, a cow, because, why not?

Keynote

So onto the serious stuff! Google opened up the event with their main stage key note opened by Alan Coad, the managing director of Google Cloud. Alan basically opened up the day and stated the purpose of the event which was basically to bring all the customers of Google Cloud together to share the new innovations that Google has been working on so that we can collectively build better technology which runs in the cloud and move away from stand alone in-house servers. Which essentially is the essence of cloud technology.

Infrastructure

As the Keynote moved on Alan invited various members of the Google cloud team onto the stage to talk about the new product and capabilities Google was bringing to Cloud. Firstly they mentioned their new N2 and N2D Processors from AMD and Intel which are purpose built processors designed for Virtual Machines. So unlike the processor in your laptop which is dedicated to your laptop these processors are designed to be able to run multiple workloads across multiple virtual machines or servers if you prefer. So they are super powerful and these latest versions included multiple performance improvements which will greatly impact the performance of virtual machines in Google’s Cloud.

Next they introduced, Bring your own IP. So in the past, for any server you spooled up in Google Cloud you would have to assign it a new IP from Google’s inventory, this isn’t great if you’re migrating an existing service and want to keep the same IP. Well now you can bring your IP address into Google Cloud which is much more seamless. 

They also released a handful of other new features such as the acquisition of CloudSimple, a cloud migration software company. Cloud SQL or SQL Server, New enhancements for SAP infrastructure, support or bare metal Oracle workloads and a Network Intelligence Centre for network troubleshooting and testing in real-time.

Data

Next Google moved the keynote to focus on big data, which is one of the buzzwords of the year. Big data is so important at this point in time and the reason behind it is due to Artificial Intelligence. We are fully ware that Artificial Intelligence is coming and it’s going to have a huge impact on technology and our lives but to make AI work you need data, lots of data.So companies right now are harvesting as much data about anything and everything that they possibly can in order to build AI systems for the future. 5 years ago, companies would often delete or cleanse data and keep only what they needed as to store and query it consumed a lot of resource. Now however, is the complete opposite as the value of data is so rich and the cost to store and query it in the cloud has reduced significantly that we are now storing huge amounts of data.

Google knows this and so it flexed it’s cloud data warehousing tool, Big Query, by supporting huge data sets of 100’s of petabytes of data and new data engines other that SQL. On their Keynote Google even quoted that one of their customers ran the largest query they have ever seen which resulted in 100 trillion rows of data, to put that into perspective there’s 7.8 billion people in the world, there’s 1,000 billions in 1 trillion and this query resulted in 100 trillion rows so there are 13 thousand rows of data for every person in that query.

Streaming Data

Google then went on to discuss the processing of live streaming data, so this is data from services such as Netflix and Spotify. This is type of data collection and storage is particularly tricky but it’s important as 30% of data generated will be real-time by 2025 according to the IDC.  For example this type of data could be tracking something such as the number of times songs have been listened to on Spotify. This is a huge task as the data is consistently changing at the rate of millions of entries per second. Spotify is actually a customer of Google Cloud and this is exactly what they use Google Clouds Data tools for. They use Google Clouds Data Flow tool to track the number of times artists songs have been listened to so that they can pay the artists the correct royalties that they are owed, they also use the exact same system to display a personalised yearly roundup for each Spotify user for the artists and songs that they have listened to the most that year. If you’re a Spotify user, you should have received an email with a link on to your personalised lookback already this year.

Lastly one of the biggest announcements for Google’s data tools was ‘Connected Sheets’ this is where you can take data for Big Query, which is a data warehousing tool capable of storing trillions of rows and data and then syncing it to a standard Google Sheet so you can apply filters, graphs, share and analyse the data in a simple and familiar platform. That, to be honest is quite amazing. Try putting over a million rows into Microsoft Excel and watch it crumble under the strain - that is if your PC will even allow you to that in the first place.

AI

So, moving on, we can’t talk about tech an not mention Artificial Intelligence or AI for short. It’s obvious it’s the future and it’s already becoming established in out everyday lives, the ship has sailed with AI and there’s no looking back. Unsurprisingly, Google is playing a large part in this. They firstly present the Contact Centre AI platform which is now readily available for any company to use and it’s even been integrated with 74% of telephony providers across the world. Contact Centre AI is essentially like having Google’s Assistant working in a call centre, it can independently talk to customers, process and relay information with alarming accuracy and it can also replicate human speech stumblings like when we say ‘erm’  when we’re thinking between sentences and also variance in pitch to sound as if you are just talking to a person.

TPU’s

Okay, so one of the biggest talking points at the whole event was Google showcasing the TPU’s. So, let's start from the top. A TPU is a Tensor Processing Unit. Tensor is the type of mathematical algorithm required to run Artificial Intelligence based queries. So a TPU is essentially a computer which has purposefully been built to process tensor algorithms and code and nothing else. Google explained that the reason they have built this is because Moores law has now come to an end. Moores law was a theory which stated that the advancement in processing power doubled every year as we were able to reduced the size of a transistor by half and therefore double the number of transistors on a silicon wafer every 2 years. However, we’ve now reaching the physical limit of transistor size and we currently can not make them any smaller. The only way to increase computing power is by multiplying the number of processors in a device or by optimising that device to carry out a very specific task, very well. And that’s exactly what Google has done with their TPU’s. They’ve engineered a processing unit which is perfectly optimised to cary out AI functions and nothing else. So these are not machines that you could run Windows 10 on for example, they have one job and you pay by the hour to use them for that specific job. Google’s latest TPU board, TPU 3 can process 420 tera flops in a super small footprint.

Google then connects 64 of these TPUs together to create what they call a Pod, which is essentially an incredibly powerful super computer than can process AI functions and incredible speeds. These TPU pods are available to use in Google’s cloud platform now and have been for some time, you can rent the usage of a pod in quarter sections, so you could request the processing power of quarter of a pod (or 16 TPU’s) and run you code on that hardware all from a laptop, connected to the internet anywhere in the world. Google claims that these TPU pods can process AI functions faster than any other cloud AI service.

G Suite

Okay so to those that know me they know that I’m a big lover of Google’s Gsuite. Which is Googles office tools for business and education. Now, I’m going to make a fairly bold statement here which most people won’t agree with but I’m going to go out on a lim and try to predict the future. So here it is, in 5 years - 8 years time, Microsoft Office won’t be a thing. I truly believe that G Suite is dominating the market and those that haven’t moved over yet are being held back significantly. Microsoft is stuck in the past and can’t bring its users up to date with G Suite. Of course, Google agrees as they stated that independent research claims that companies using G Suite save 21 work days per employee due to the efficiencies of G Suite and they also have a reduced risk of a data breach by 95%.

Google released a few update to G Suite which continue to out perform Microsoft’s Office in multiple ways. For example, they have released Smart Compose to Google docs under a Beta. Smart Compose is currently available in Gmail and it’s a helpful feature that auto suggests the next part of your email based on AI learnings of what people tend to write. With this feature now available in Docs, Google will effectively be helping you to write your documents. All powered by Google’s advanced neural networks on their TPUs and delivered to you in a fraction of a second. This is the power of fully cloud based office.

Google also released support for Google Assistant with G Suite, so now business users can use Google Assistant capabilities to write emails, book meetings, dial into calls and more, it’s like every employee who uses G Suite gets a free personal assistant with Google.

Support

Lastly, Google finished the talk with a nice hint towards improving their enterprise level support which is very much needed. Initially I think Google Cloud went with the stance of here’s the tools you need, go and build something and then whatever you build is your responsibility to maintain so we can’t offer support. And to some extent that’s still true, and the end of the day Google can not become a support team for every application and database built on Google cloud but I think it can do more to help businesses and seems to be making moves in the right direction. General support on server configuration and configuration of the cloud tools will be highly appreciated by system admins and developers across the globe so it’s really refreshing to hear them say this.

Okay so that’s my very top-level highlight summary of my day at Google Next’19, there is so much more I could talk about ad I did attend multiple other talks after the keynote which went into more detail about some of the things I have mentioned and more. However, there was so much to take in and so much going on at Next ’19 that it isn’t possible to relay it all back. If you’re interested to learn more about the event and would like to see more detail then I’ll leave a link to the Google Cloud YouTube channel playlist for Next ’19 which has hundreds of videos from the 2 days from talks, to workshops to discussion panels, there really is so much information packed into to 2 short days.

So thanks for watching, if you liked this video then please tap the like button below and leave a comment to let me know what you thought. Also if you haven’t done so already then please subscribe to my channel to see more videos like this, I try to upload a video once a week although I have been a little late recently as this was such a big video to plan and edit. A lot of time and effort does go into these videos and I publish them completely for free so if you could show your support and hit that subscribe button then I would really appreciate it.

Thanks again and I’m looking forward to next time.

https://ditly.uk/google-cloud-next-19-everything-you-need-to-know-highlights-key-note/

[amateurfan227]

Shitlist Reviews - Alien 3 - 1992 - Part 1 of 2

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m Amateur Fan 2.27 and welcome to the Shitlist, where bad movies burn, the last time on the Shitlist, I looked over the sequel to the hit movie Alien from 1986, Aliens... this time I’m looking into the 3rd instalment in the franchise, another reason I decided to dive into it is because of the story behind it, mainly because it’s the beginning of the downfall of the franchise.

This movie in particular is stated to be the perfect end of the franchise as it breaks Ripley’s character from survivor into a hero, mainly because of her relation towards the extra-terrestrial threat that she rightly fears, It’s also how the main factor on her relation towards Wayland-Yutani’s downfall as well as she fears that the Aliens are more unpredictable than ever, especially in an environment where no-one is on her side.

As usual, it’s time to dive into the production history first which is pretty important as well as a fun fact for you Seven fans out there, this is David Fincher’s debut as a director. With the success of Aliens, 20th Century Fox approached Brandywine Productions with further sequels but the company wasn’t invested in the idea of it with Producer David Giler explaining that his partners Walter Hill and Gordon Carroll wanted to take it into new directions to explore more of the mythos.

The trio discussed ideas to explore Weyland-Yutani Corporations fascination with the Xenomorphs as well as using them for biological weapons, as well as taking the idea of Aliens towards a different protagonists story-arc, this story eventually settled with a two-way story-arc featuring the underhanded Weyland-Yutani Corporation facing a militarily aggressive culture of humans who have a different ideology causing them to separate Earth’s society.

Michael Biehn’s Corporal Hicks would star as the main lead leaving Sigourney Weaver’s character to star as a cameo only to return in the fourth instalment of the series, the 20th Century Fox was quite sceptical about the idea but they agreed to finance the development of the story as long as they managed to get Ridley Scott to direct the film.

They also asked that the two movies were shot back to back to lessen the production costs, similar to Richard Donner as he directed both Superman and Superman 2 at the same time during production; Scott was interested on returning to the franchise he refused due to the director’s schedule.

In 1987 Giler and Hill approached Cyberpunk author William Gibson (Neuromancer) to create a script for the movie and he gladly accepted due to into his writing was influenced by Scott’s first movie. Feared of an impending strike from the Writers Guild of America, Gibson was told to deliver a script by December of that year, as well as heavily drawn by Giler and Hill’s treatment the script was of course completed

The following year, Finnish director Renny Harlin (Nightmare on Elm Street 4, previous reviewed) was told by Fox for ideas in the film which had ideas from the first 2 movies such as visiting the Alien homeworld or the Aliens invading Earth. Shortly after a failed screenplay Gibson declined to work with them due to the Producers engagement with the films ideas.

Following his departure, Harlin suggest Eric Red who worked on The Hitcher (1986) and Near Dark (1987), Red worked less than 2 months to finish the draft on February of 1989 leading him to state that it was ‘the one script I completely disown because it was not ‘my script’. It was the rushed product of too many story conferences and interference.’

His approach had a new set of characters and subplots with a new breed of Alien; the story was set around a marine team that would take the survivors who fell to the Aliens to a small USA city in a bio-dome in space. This was rejected by Brandywine which left future sequels to be given up. Writer David Twohy (Riddick series) had the idea on setting the story on a prison planet which held illegal experiments on the aliens for Biological Warfare.

This led Harlin to walk out on the project leading Fox president Joe Roth to bring Ripley back due to Sigourney Weaver’s popularity at the time; Hill and Giler did a first draft attempting to enhance the story on the Fasano script, feeling creatively drained hiring Larry Ferguson as a script doctor. Ferguson wasn’t well received in production especially by Weaver who felt that Ferguson destroyed Ripley’s character.

In short time before filming, Hill and Giler took fill control of the screenplay themselves mixing scripts and Twohy’s idea of the Prison Planet to be the basis of the film, Weaver had a clause written in her contract stating that the final draft should be written by Hill and Giler  to also write Ripley effectively. Fox also interviewed music video director David Fincher to replace the current director which he gladly accepted.

Filming began in January 14, 1991 at Pinewood studios without a finished script as well as $7 million dollars spent on production; majority of the movie was directed at Pinewood while some of the scenes were shot at Northumberland’s Blyth Power Station in the UK, the reason with this if for exterior shots on the planet.

Stan Winston, who was responsible for the creature effects of both Alien and Aliens was not available for the effects but recommended former workers from his studio at Amalgamated Dynamics (Mortal Kombat, Starship Troopers). Before Principal Photography had begun, the practical effects team made numerous models of the Alien as well as corpses of the Sulaco victims.

Small shots were created with the use of CGI such as the cracking alien head one the sprinklers cause thermal shock as well as the shadows cast by the rod puppet alien. Fincher wanted something different when it came to the Alien such as a beast rather than a humanoid which lead to thinner legs and removing the pipes around the spine.

The movie was released in the U.S. of May 22, 1992, debuting at number 2 in the box office just beaten by Lethal Weapon 3 with a mass gross of $23.1 million which rose to a total of$159 million of that year, leading it to be a flop in North America with a total of $55.4 million of its $50 million budget on a week’s basis.

Critical reception was given mixed reviews from critics who were disappointed and compared it negatively to the preceding films of the franchise; Rotten Tomatoes gave it a fully bad rating at 44% which is even worse than the fourth adaptation in the series with Resurrection standing at 54%.

You know it’s gotta be a bad one with this instalment is when the worst of the franchise has beaten it on a critical scale. Well that’s what I’m here for folks, so let’s attempt to dive back into the nightmares and see if there’s something good out of a bad situation.

This... regrettably is Alien 3...

 We start our movie back on the Sulaco as we see the residents from the last movie (Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop are returning to safety from the Xenomorph threat to a more safer home only to be unaware that a Facehugger xenomorph has invaded the ship causing one of the residents to be infected, leading the ships computer to launch an escape pod containing the four of them into space.

The pod crash lands on Fiorina ‘Fury’161, a foundry facility as well as a penal colony, otherwise known as a Prison Planet, inhabited by male inmates who suffer from a genetic mutation which presents brutal antisocial behaviour including rape and murder. Fortunately Ellen is saved however for her colleagues are unfortunately unable to live another moment aside from Bishop who is deactivated due to the damage.

Ripley is taken into the infirmary unit by the Prisoners for examination and recovery as we see another living Facehugger reaches towards a dog during the recovery of the escape pod; there are quite a lot of prisoners in this movie so I’m going to look on IMDB to state the names and actors, I’m only going to place some but not all of them.

The Prison Warden, Harold Andrews (played by Brian Glover) informs the prisoners Dillon (played by Charles S. Dutton), Jonathan Clemens (played by Charles Dance), Assistant Warden Aaron (played by Ralph Brown), Morse (played by Danny Webb), David (played by the late Pete Postlethwaite), Junior (played by Holt McCallany) and Gregor (played by Peter Guinness) about the situation as well as stating that a rescue will be there within a week to remove her from the premises.

Wouldn’t it be a lot more easier to attempt to research the part of the ship that she was ejected from to find out more about her or the crew that followed her to begin with rather than just letting her recover in the Infirmary?

Another question would be reactivating Bishop in the first place to discover what caused the escape pod to land or to gain more information about where they came from or the company that he was made by?

Clemens states that she is unconscious due to the crash but will remain in the Infirmary wing until the rescue team arrives, Clemens returns to see if Ripley is still ok only for her to wake up and request were she is, Clemens also informs her that he is the medical officer at the facility due to it being a working prison.

He also informs Ripley what happened with the escape pod as well as the people who were travelling with her are unfortunately dead from the crash; aside from Ripley’s eagerness to leave, Clemens informs her of the facility that it used to be home of 5000 but reduced to 25 staff members due to accidents in work which is revealed to be a blast furnace as well as a mining facility that collects lead sheets for toxic waste.

They bring the wreckage in leading Ripley to request to see the bodies which is held over to the Morgue of the facility after she notices a burnt hole in Newt’s Cryo-tube. In the meantime another inmate, Murphy sees that his dog, Spike (same dog from earlier on) has strange marks over his head mostly from the Facehugger.

Clemens performs the Autopsy which Ripley cries at which is pretty convincing as Newt was like a daughter to her in the sequel, in belief that the Facehugger may have impregnated her with an Alien embryo. I have to admit it is a good suspenseful scene which relates to her beliefs only to be dismissed due to the fact that Newt was killed via drowning and embryo free.

Clemens and Ripley are interrupted however as Andrews arrives and attempts to sort the situation out along with his assistant Aaron, especially due to the fact that Clemens performed an autopsy without his consent, Clemens thinks of an idea with the help from Ripley to get the bodies cremated in case of an unlicensed virus which Andrews approves.

During the cremation, Spike (the dog) falls extremely ill leading to a new breed of Alien to burst out of its chest only to grow instantly into full size, killing the dog, and by god that look of the new Xenomorph looks completely horrendous; couldn’t they at least try to make it convincing? Ripley however has shaved her hair to mingle with the prisoners only for them to disown her due to the fact that she’s the only woman in the prison.

Clemens informs her about the facts that Dillon will remain leader of the group due to the fact that he is more of a spiritual leader rather than Andrews when it comes to Rescuing Ripley but she discovers that Clemens has a crush on her despite him being a convict. The Alien to make its way through the air shafts and brutally kills Murphy.

Clemens though is denied answers from Ripley’s true search over the bodies leading Clemens to be called away due to the current death of Murphy which brings the attention of Andrews; though Clemens finds something interesting as a vent is clearly burnt off near the scene of the death. Ripley on the other hand manages find the wreckage only to be questioned by Clemens about what happened about the burn.

Ripley informs him that she will tell him the truth as long as he finds something in use to look through a flight recorder which he recommends Bishop, who was tossed in the trash; Clemens then leaves to join the Warden in a discussion that Weyland-Yutani is looking for her and ordered the prison warden to keep her looked after.

Ripley on the other hand finds the wreckage where the prisoners are keeping Bishop only for several Prisoners to intervene by attempting to rape her, though this is stopped when Dillon stops them by hitting all of them with a crowbar; though the Alien on the other hand manages to kill 2 more of the prisoners but turns one of them (Golic) into a complete nervous wreck.

Ripley manages to activate Bishop back in the Infirmary where he (once again played by Lance Henriksen) informs her that Xenomorph Facehuggers were found on the ship before they left the planet, ok I have to admit, despite the look of the new dog-alien, the makeup effects they had for Bishop are surprisingly effective, creepy but effective.

Bishop requests her to take him offline which she complies with, only for them to be interrupted when Golic is found and brought into the Infirmary about what he saw that attacked him, which causes the warden to arrive again to question Ripley over her motives as well as the knowledge of the creature.

This review will continue in the near future as time restraints have caused some slight problems with the current schedule especially at the moment at hand, though aside from a separate review entirely underway this will conclude for next year unfortunately which will be interesting at that.

I hope you guys will understand, as always I’m Amateur Fan 2.27 and I’ll see you guys at the next review, Have a nice summer.

[eligiblebastard]

Walks of Life

The serpentine s'k'tras of the jungle planet J3-7566 (locally known as Jora) arrive into this world silent and shiny, bursting out of egg clutches in droves, slick with mucous, and their scales still soft. The mother s'k'tra may reach a length of fourteen feet, with most of the length provided by a long prehensile tail. However threatening she may be, however, Jora is home to some of the most vicious predators on this side of the universe, and she must abandon her eggs so as not to allow her presence to draw any attention to them. She rejoins her family in the trees, and the nomadic tribe will wait with her for her eggs to hatch.

Without a mother to guard them, egg clutches must be laid in caves and holes in order to hide the young from prying eyes and hungry mouths. An indigenous mammal is subdued and paralyzed by the mothers venom for the offspring, and may have to lie in wait for days until the eggs hatch. Upon hatching, the younglings will instinctively huddle close to the body of the beast for warmth, but also to gather sustenance. As you may be familiar with, many species rely on a liquid diet in their first days, usually provided by the mother as regurgitated food or milk. The s'k'tras, however, drink the blood of their prey upon being born. With still developing arms and prepubescent venom sacks, the young s'k'tra rely on their needle like fangs to puncture the hide of the animal. However, once a wound has been made, all of the young will surround it, and greedily lick up the blood that they can. Their mothers venom causes the heart of the beast to beat at an extremely slow rate, so as to ensure that the young do not overeat and die. While the venom is non poisonous to their own species, it is potent, and there is enough in the bloodstream to keep the beast paralyzed until it dies of blood loss. Once the first feeding is over, the young s'k'tra will emit a high frequency cry, nearly undetectable to most of the fauna that stalks the undergrowth. Upon hearing the cry, the mother will descend with only her mate to retrieve the offspring. While the males of the s'k'tra are much smaller than the females, he is able to serve as a lookout, and if necessary, sacrifice himself so that the mother can ascend into the trees with her children latched onto the hard scales of her back.

At least, that was how it was in the wilds of their own planet. As a space faring race, they have long since abandoned the need for dirt holes and paralyzed beasts, instead opting for large hatcheries where the young are kept warm through heated pods and fed a steady diet of blood supplied through tubes, and provided by genetically modified ‘blood beasts’, designed and bred by the s'k'tras themselves. Their people are well known as mercenaries and pirates, their speed and strength gifted to them through eons of evolution on their death world. On my long journey to learn the ways of life, I had the opportunity to work in one hatchery. The young spend the first few days slithering around each other, and are closely monitored. Hatchlings do not have the extravagant coloration of the adult members of their race, and are instead pale shades of green and brown; camouflage in the wilds, in case one were to become separated from the group. While they were mostly helpless, I still have a few scars from underestimating needle tips of their fangs. Even now, hundreds and hundreds of generations away from their wild ancestors, the instinct to latch onto and suck the blood of a nearby mammal still rules them.

In the wide open plains of planet P4-6595 (oddly enough, this planet is unnamed by its inhabitants) there exists the largest land animals known in the galaxy. Or so we thought at first. Gargantuan masses of green fur and taut muscle, these ‘Grehorums’ (as they are locally known) are not truly animals, but a type of plant, who slowly lumbered around the planet, constantly following the sun. These Grehorums ranged in size depending on their age, from the rolling spores that could crush a small vehicle, to the ancient behemoths that could crush a citadel with a careless movement.

With sparse grass and permafrost, the planet did not serve a very hospitable environment, but these lumbering plants did. Constantly moving to avoid the dark side of the planet, their forests of ‘fur’ (which in reality are leaves) provided the perfect environment for the evolution of an entire ecosystem relying entirely on these vast organisms. From the surface of these massive creatures came the kithrit, an almost entirely airborne race of winged peoples. The adults are covered in glamorous blue feathers, their massive wings easily span 13-14 feet, with small prehensile feet dangling from their diminutive bodies, and nearly flat faces. Flat teeth help in grinding up the plant food provided by the Grehorum.

The young are born featherless, with naught but greenish leather skin. Birthing of these young ones was one of the few activities that the kithrits landed for. The mother would maneuver to the underbelly of the Gerhorum, carefully clinging on to the foliage with her prehensile feet and the vestigial claws on her wingtips. The fledgling kithrits are born with more viable wing tip claws, and use these to grip onto the belly grass of the Grehorum. The mother, unable to fly with her litter of up to four, leaves them to eat the soft leaves of the Grehorum. She will return periodically to check up on them, but otherwise they would have to rely on camouflage in order to avoid being eaten by one of the Grehorum’s many other passengers.

Their space aged descendants are no longer rely on the Grehorum, nor are there any Grehorum left. The kithrit never developed very advanced technology, but they are renowned throughout the galaxy today as some of the fastest thinkers and greatest minds. Their society stretched eons thanks to the timelessness of the Grehorum, and their own ability to evade predators. This long lastingness allowed them to watch their sun die and fade into a white dwarf. Unable to provide enough light, the Grehorum all but died out. It was only because of the efforts of a mixed group of researchers who had been observing their development (or lack thereof) that the kithrits were uplifted.

The original kithrits did not have possessions, but they did bring with them the dormant pods of Grehorum seedlings, each weighing several tons but integral to the kithrit peoples. Today nearly all kithrit devote their lives in search of a world not unlike their own; one with open fields and plenty of sunlight, to wake the sleeping Grehorum. However, as a result of the limited room available on space ships, many kithrit grow up never having flown, and it is not uncommon to see adult kithrit with wings shrivelled from disuse.

It was on one such ship that I had the great pleasure of aiding in a birth. Kithrit pups come into this world with their eyes fused shut, and desperately clinging onto anything that they can get a hold of. It is generally a quick process, and the mother is often able to deliver them by herself. I was present simply to ensure that her brood were born healthy. After cleaning these leathery pups, they are gently coaxed onto a hanging crib of sorts. Lengths of artificially grown vines are hung from the ceiling, which the kithrit pups gladly latch onto with their claws, and begin eating the nourishing vegetation. These pups are generally quiet, and do not require much attention from the mother. They are born into this world blind, but may spend the rest of their days looking for a new home.

However, in all my travels, I have not met a more strange birth than that of a human child. I will admit, I do not know much about them, with them being only one of many species recently embraced into the galactic community. However, I will never forget the absolute insanity of their species. I was much younger then, my body still able to support itself, though it was failing. I was waiting on a small planet, with naught but a colony of humans as neighbors. I had landed my pod not far off, and set up shop there while I waited for my papers to go through, to upload my mind into the collective of my own species and join the elders. I made it known to them that I was a practiced and well known medical professional, and that they could come to me if they needed help. There was a lot of baring of teeth and shaking of ‘hands’ at this; apparently their old ‘doctor’ had passed away a few cycles past, and their requests to their homeworld for a new doctor had been, for all intents and purposes, ignored.

“Oh man, you came in the nick of time! I’m Samuel, and you, my friend, are a sight for sore eyes. Y’see, my sweet Margaret is due to pop any day now, and no one on this rock knows nothin’ about delivering a baby.” a wiry young man bared his teeth at me while he vigorously gripped my appendage with one manipulator, and gesturing towards a severely bloated female close by. It looked as though she were going to burst! She replied to him in a strange tongue, which he translated back to me in Galactic Standard.

“Marge is wondering if you ever delivered a baby b’fore. ‘Course you have though, right?” he inquired, his teeth still bared in what looked like a threat.

“Ahem, ah, yes, yes, I’ve delivered plenty of human babies before. I’ve delivered them to all sorts of places!” I insisted out of fear; his incisors looked sharp, and I was unsure as to the temperament of these ‘humans’. The young man let out a sharp gust of air through his nose, and translated what I said to the rest of the humans that had gathered to greet me; they weren’t able to understand or speak Galactic Standard. All of the humans bared their teeth and began to quickly hyperventilate, though I later learned that this was their own twisted form of laughter.

“Yer’ alright doc’. If you’d like, we can set you up in the old doc’s office. Beatrice is still around; she’s, ah, kinda an assistant to the doctor. A nurse, we call ‘em. She might be able to help you out a bit, but I’m sure that someone like yourself won’t need much help.”

As it turns out, Beatrice knew a lot about childbirth. Using a ‘Galactic Standard’ handbook, she was able to communicate with me the basics of human childbirth over the course of a few days, but made it very clear that I was only to there to help her.

“I didn’t get my medical license so that I could play second fiddle to some xeno quack!” as she put it.

It was in the early hours of one morning that a young man came from the town to my ship, speaking rapidly in his own tongue. I went rigid with fear; if a 152cm pink bipedal came at you in the small hours of the morning speaking in a loud voice, you would have too. He froze for a moment, his face scrunching up in thought, before shouting in Galactic Standard “Baby! Baby born! Baby!” Somehow, through his thick accent and slaughtering of the words, I understood the message. I hurried to follow him out, but before I could mount my hover scooter, he forcefully shoved me into the passenger seat of a large rusty human vehicle. A ‘pick up,’ I believe. Absurd. A vehicle designed to pick people up. Ha!

We arrived at the old medical office, around which a mob of humans seemed to have gathered. I was quickly ushered through the old screen door, forced through the sterilizing airlock and into the operation room. The were four people there, including Beatrice, Samuel and Margaret. An adult female, unknown to me, stood off to the side. Beatrice barked orders at her, while Samuel simply stood by Margaret, looking nervous and holding one of her manipulators in both of his and speaking to her softly in their human tongue.

“Hey doc.” he turned and bared his teeth at me. I quickly went to Beatrices side, ready to aid her. Margaret was looking less bloated than before, but on her face was an expression of extreme pain. She wore an ugly dress, and lay on her back on a table with her legs propped up on a pair of metal stands. Beatrice knelt between her legs, and spoke commands to Margaret. I did not understand what was going on.

I will be honest, I wasn’t much help in the operating room. While I tried to observe and learn as much as I could, as I had before, I spent most of the time in there cringing in horror and looking on at the grizzly scene with shock. At one point, I was roughly shoved aside so that they had more room to work.

To put it shortly, human birthing is akin to torture. Not just to the mother, who was going through extreme pain to bring her child into this world, but the all of the people in the room. Margaret, who had seemed so timid when I first met her, devolved into an angry screaming and cursing demoness. Her face was red with pain, and she almost entirely ignored her mates attempts to soothe her. The screaming nearly deafened my delicate ears, and I still have nightmares about it, but I could not muster the strength to open the airlock by myself, so I remained in that operating room for hours.

The process was slow and grueling, and I was forced to watch the whole thing. “Once the child is born, it is going to be quiet. It will be peaceful.” I kept assuring myself, in order to hold onto my sanity. However, once the human offspring was born, it was a whole new screaming. While the mother had finally ended her screams of anguish, the bloody spawn of hers began screaming all on its own! Beatrice brutally severed something from the kicking and flailing child before handing the screaming bloodspawn to the mother, who cooed and bared her teeth at the baby; possibly to establish her own dominance? Who knows. The other humans surrounded the mother, who was still pink from the strain, and her face still covered in tears.

Meanwhile, I huddled in the corner, also covered in tears. I was praying to the divines to whisk me away from this place when Samuel gestured me over.

“C’mon, doc! It’s okay, come meet the newest member of the colony!” he turned to me, his eyes filled with joy but his teeth bared in what could only have been a threat. He must have been angry with my incompetence, but I rushed over in fear. I was still trapped in the room with them after all.

Margaret held her child, mostly dried off now, but with bits of afterbirth on its skin. Even now, the child still screamed with all the rage and pain of a fallen warrior. Beatrice busied herself with the old medical scanner, checking the vitals of both the mother and infant. Meanwhile, Samuel placed his manipulator on my shoulder, and turned towards me baring his teeth, then turning back and baring his teeth at his screaming hellspawn and mate. Beatrice opened the airlock and invited everyone but Margaret and the child to leave and get some rest, and I left without so much as a goodbye.

I don’t remember much about the trip between that human colony to my ship. I left my hover scooter behind in my hurry to leave. However, I will never forget that terrible scene. I am comforted by the minds of the Elder Collective now, but I can feel them cringe away from me when they encounter that memory. I shudder to imagine what kind of mad god would create such creatures, that would come into this world kicking and screaming in such a manner. What insane evolutionary boiling pot would bring about younglings covered in blood and filled with anger?

I still watch the news. Well, not really ‘watch’. Rather, it is streamed directly into the minds of the Elder Collective, and I am one of the few among us who choose to pay attention. Humans have made a name for themselves, spreading far and wide through the cosmos. They preach peace and love, but in their ignorance assume that this message is reciprocated by their galactic neighbors. I know that some of the more empirical societies see them as easy targets. Even now, several peoples have begun mobilizing invasion forces to take from these soft pink bipeds everything they can, though this news isn’t drawing much attention. ‘It’s nothing new among the stars,’ as they say. But I know the truth. I have seen the madness. In the first moments of life, the most base nature of a species is revealed; whether that is to embrace the life giving Grehorum, or slink through the shadows and feast on the blood of the weak. Unfortunately for their enemies, humans are born into this realm kicking, screaming, and bathed in blood.

[khopeshaeterno-blog]

Part III

The transfer over to Concordia had been uneventful, if anything. The whole launch had been broadcast along the Imperium, a shining symbol of what the cunning of the nation could achieve. After they had boarded the research vessel (with appropriate ceremonies, of course), the foxes fell into their stations. Brutus was fully at home in the medical bay, while Varinia had been mapping the trajectory to a precise arc. Laelia was already making slight adjustments to the engines, and Silvanus had turned on the lights across the vessel. Cato was at the helm, making the minor adjustments to the vessel as it sped towards that marvelously teal planet that the Ancient Regime had named Vestus. He hummed a soft tune, looking out at the onyx beyond, dotted with sparkling  platinum points. 

Silvanus made his way to the chair next to Cato and sighed. “Wow, so, if it’s gonna be this boring, this routine, my fath… Er, the Elites are going to make this a standard flight. Maybe with tours. Think you could do that?”

Cato chuckled and shook his head in bemusement, glancing over at the brilliant ivory square on his co-pilot’s wrist as he shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe if they’ll grant me a bit of wine on the way over, the kind with the bubbles that the Elites drink, I’ll do it. Mix it with something fruit-flavored and we’ll call it a… Planetary Shuffle.”

Silvanus bumped Cato’s forearm in agreement before nodding forward. “I’ll pull some strings, see if we can get them on-board for that.”

The quiet of space created a humbling feeling in all the foxes as they each took a moment to look out the windows, reflecting on their experiences that led them to this point. 

Laelia sighed softly, being the youngest at 19, knowing she got there through her fierce determination and intellect as she fiddled with the silver square at her wrist. She had come from a small family, relatively unknown by history. They had always been simple craft workers, making rather utilitarian wooden furniture and simple iron tools. From a very young age, Laelia had shown her expertise with metal. As she grew bigger, her ability grew more precise, crafting a spectacular timepiece at the age of 7 which caught the eye of a university professor. He had taken her under his tutelage, educating her in engineering and electronics, until she had graduated from the university at the age of 17 with a dual-degree in mechanics and electronics. Her prodigy status resulted in her being selected to help craft the Concordia, and her little touches on the internal designs secured her place as the ship’s mechanic.

Brutus, the oldest among them at 36, tapped on his own silver square to check with his ILA about the date and time, his past as a pioneering battlefield doctor always at the back of his mind. He had been born to a well-known family of warriors, being raised in the way of a soldier by his mother while his father was at war in the Far Lands. When he was 12, an attack from terrorist forces left his mother injured, bleeding out. Brutus couldn’t help, having no training in field medicine, and was broken by his mother passing in front of him. After a few years of being lost between family members, he was drafted and immediately requested a position as a field medic. Being granted the knowledge that could have saved his mother’s life, he served his country well, though over time finding that using a weapon didn’t suit him well. He eventually fell out of favor of the military, rejecting both re-enlistment and the privilege to wear the gold square on his wrist. His estranged father was impressed with Brutus’ simple nature and had put in a good word for his son when the team for the Concordia was being formed. 

Varinia, 31 herself, looked out of the circular port, her finger tracing around her wrist’s golden square as she remembered the five years of service that she had offered in the Imperium Navy. Coming from a coastal village, Varinia had always been enamored with the sea. Her uncle was a fisher, and so Varinia got a lot of time on the sea with him, fishing during the day and learning about navigation at night. The legacy of her village had been passed down to her when she came of age, a knowledge of how to navigate the waves with nothing but the environment around her. A few days after her 23rd birthday, while fishing with her uncle, they were struck by a torpedo from a warring force in the land, prompting Varinia to join with the Navy. She proved her mettle when she was able to navigate a fleet of ships back to their home port after the electronics were sabotaged by an internal traitor. During a test to see if she would make a good ship captain, the design team of the Concordia mission slipped in a few trials regarding navigating with nothing more than the stars and intuition. Varinia was the only participant to get a score over 50% on that section, which resulted in her transfer — with full naval honors — to the team.

Silvanus, at 23, shook his head slightly as he rolled his wrist, decorated in the white square of the Elite class, knowing he was offered this opportunity because of his status as  the son of the Imperator, but trying to convince himself he deserved it. While their society did not believe in right to rulership by ancestry, it was no mistake that Silvanus’ family had led the Imperium for nearly 300 years. They had risen to power long ago, as simple Senators, and rose to the top through back room deals and raw ambition. Indeed, it was the lineage of Silvanus that established that these wrist-bound computers that everyone in their society wore were a guaranteed right, and everyone in society was supplied with them from their third birthday onward. The colors just helped everyone to know, at a glance, where they stood in society. Silvanus shook his head as his thoughts raced, remembering silently that his father had forced the team behind the Concordia to raise the crew from four to five so that a representative of the ruling family could… monitor the activities of the scientists.

Cato, 25, let his golden square push into his palm as he rested his paw on top, chuckling slightly as he remembered how he had been a librarian and a research assistant for nearly a decade before he fell into this position from sheer luck. From a young age, he had been enamored by history and culture, reading everything he possibly could about the past and how others in the world thought. When he turned 12, he was given a position in a cultural research library, and within a few months established himself as a quicker reference than the computers in the building. He had been quick to create his own research project by the time he was 16, and was able to write a fully-fleshed out thesis by the time he was 20 on how culture in space may likely develop too quickly to reliably record unless each starship had a dedicated historian, citing many historical accounts of rapid culture changes with the introduction of advanced technology. His thesis came at an opportune time, as he was given public service honors and hired in to the development team of the Concordia. When the team was formed from Laelia, Brutus, Varinia, and Silvanus, Cato had suggested a few other researchers to become the on-ship historian. However, the group of four responded most positively to Cato’s personality, and he was given the post.

The peace that had fallen on the five was shattered with a sudden jolt and rumble from a force outside of the ship. Warning alarms started to sound, and the lights switched to a dull red as Cato turned on the inter-crew radio.

“Sound off! Everyone alright?”

“Med is alive.”

“Navigation is still plotting.”

“Engineering is ok, but…”

Cato inhaled a bit in anxious anticipation. “But what, Laelia?”

“Well… There’s a hole in the research side of things. Some sort of energy blast… We never detected any other ship in the sector, did we?”

Cato pointed at Silvanus, indicating the escape pods, as if to ask him to prepare them. “Laelia, why would you say that?”

The pause was much, much longer than Cato wanted.

“Well, the blast could only have been caused by directed energy… Some sentient force hit us intentionally with an energy blast, and I don’t think they’re done.”

As if to affirm the engineer’s concerns, another blast rocked the ship as the alarm cut out. The warning system had been blasted out.

Cato slapped the control panel in frustration, looking down at the computer on his wrist and feeling his heart fall. They were only an  hour away from a research orbit with Vestus.

“Okay. Silvanus, are the pods prepped?”

“Affirmative!”

“Perfect. Everyone, go, get in the pods. They take a week to get home, weaker engines and all, but you’ll be cryo’d. It’s safer than staying here.”

The fox maintained the vessel, glancing down at the escape pod panel as he nodded a bit. Brutus shot away first, followed by Varinia, then Laelia, then Silvanus. One pod was left.

  Cato switched on autopilot as he jumped back towards his pod. He got in, secured himself, and ejected from the vessel.

He launched right as a beam cut across the vessel, destroying his engine.

The fox felt his tiny pod tumble as the engine on the craft exploded. The lights inside the pod turned a deep red as the pod spun out of control. Between shots of space and views of the craft he came from exploding, Cato saw four streaks of light rocket away from the craft. He let out a soft sigh of relief, knowing the four would make it home. 

The fox turned his attention to his left wrist, tapping a button and bringing the ILA interface on. He cleared his throat a bit, thinking about what he could ask.

“ILA, how bad is the damage?”

The purple orb on the screen pulsed for a few moments in thought. “The escape pod cannot travel under its own power. The engine has been destroyed. The escape pod cannot transmit an SOS signal. The antenna has been destroyed. The primary solar cell has been destroyed. The secondary solar cell has been destroyed. The battery system is online. Fusion power will keep the cryogenic capabilities running for fifty solar cycles. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Cato grunted in mild frustration. He had never liked the robotic voice of ILA, nor how matter-of-fact it was with bad situations. He kept watching the universe spin outside his window. “ILA, what are the chances of being rescued?”

The pause was a lot longer than he anticipated. He thought ILA had frozen. “ILA, what is my name?”

The assistant chimed immediately. “Cato, commander of the Concordia, civis aurum of Imperium. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Cato sighed softly, then said more forcefully, “ILA. What are the chances that I will be rescued?”

The assistant finally responded. “The chances of rescue are extremely low. If a rescue vessel reached this sector within one-half solar cycle, you will be too far away to be detected. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Cato whimpered gently, looking out at the starry sky with a slight shudder. “ILA, please initiate the cryogenic cycle.”

The temperature of the capsule started to chill.

“O maiorum. Quaeso de hac misericordia luceat stultus cuiusdam a Muliere descendentis. Placere aliquis det generis ut in mundo, in universum, ad me propius ad vitam producat. Erue me de hac magna tristique aeternum ultra finem. Obsecro te maiorem ad spem animum vel animam largire perpetuam pacem. O maiorum…”

The fox’s last sight before the cold darkness was a single point of shining, twinkling, amber starlight.