Six days ago, someone offered a quest on E2 for a comic book script about ‘GammaGirl.’ I only found out about it three days ago and recorded some thoughts yesterday at work. With her name and the demand that she have powers as the only constraints, there are an enormous combination of elements possible even if I keep within superhero tropes. (I idly thought I could make gammagirl a screen name unrelated to anything about her.)

Her name and the quest title, The Great Gamma Ray Comic Book Script Quest, connote gamma ray powers or origin, but that is no certainty. For example, gamma could signify the third letter of the greek alphabet, if she is third in some sense. Beyond that, Wikipedia doesn’t give anything else interesting for gamma. The flashiest scientific use is as the Lorentz Factor in special relativistic equations. These describe time dilation, foreshortening, and subjective mass for objects traveling at high fractions of light’s speed. But while nice, her power has less priority than the setting where she operates.

A hero’s setting exists in the intersection of its particular location, timeframe, and level of influence by the fantastic. As I don’t live in ‘the big city,’ there is little point in aping Metropolis and other uninspired sandboxes. Plus, if she can’t fly, I don’t need skyscrapers. Modern stories are nice but utopian futures with less need of heroes (as though we need superheroes) make exotic locales more justifiable. Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen strives to seal up our past by treating all fiction as documentaries. As of the latest publication, that even includes 1984 and Metropolis (the film).

The intersection with the mundane divine and our history distinguishes X-men from Watchmen. Marvel has legislative reactions to Mutants but it is a decidedly modern phenomenon. Moore’s acolytes admire his deep understanding of the cultural (and subjective psychological) impacts of exemplarhood on our world. Ellis’ Planetary series purports to explain the great similarity between his modern world and our own by involving suppressant conspiratorial factions and self-exile of the greater peoples. Mignola treats the fantastic from a more traditional angle. Nevertheless, one of my favorite scenes came from Conqueror Worm, wherein someone describes the Nazi project to bring back one of the Dragons by launching (ritually deconsecrated) dead bodies into space.

This isn’t meant to instruct as much as do justice to thoughts I abandoned at work. As I have short breaks and lots of distractions otherwise, I had to focus. Better than exploring how many elements are possible and then testing their permutations for ripe material (x-ray vision, Edwardian Era (pre WWI), and ‘civilized’ cultures confront the consequences of killing their supernal members (Joan of Arc) while savage nations have not).

Instead, I set myself the task of reporting the matured stories of intuitive combinations since those already passed through the filter of my interest. I only succeeded in noting two and record them here as well as others. Normally I would abstain from revealing my options but the impending deadline means that you can’t really type it faster than I and I need to write about it any way I can. Strictly speaking, writing on paper is much faster (and I wouldn’t have repeated that introduction for the third time) but I also need to keep my computer on.

Perhaps I’ll write about it at length later, but must beg off due to impending departure. I am legally downloading an ISO image of Visual Studio for the programming classes I am taking. However, I didn’t realize it is 4.4 gigabytes big. Microsoft provided a download manager, but it is still taking forever.

The only story template I finished writing about took a page from “society should cut Lex Luthor a check.” The  author notes that scientist Luthor (not businessman Luthor) invented sleeping rays and synthetic kryptonite but constantly imperiled the great city. It would be saner to coopt him and share a cut of his patented weapons. That makes sense for him as well as the penurious Spiderman. But, what would bureaucrats pay to (Superman’s) Parasite or Matter Eater Lad? Frankly, it suggests a story about qualifying for her super subsidy. But, is it like getting a hunting license? Marvel’s Civil War most recently hashed the trope of holocaust registration/Patriot profiling/ect.

That pessimism bores me. Yes, it makes for an exciting story (maybe) but it isn’t realistic. You’ve gone to the DMV at least once, the employees may act harried or lackadistically, but they aren’t avaricious for control. But Nicholas, the elites are the power trippers, not the furloughed wage slaves. Sure, and I have heard – edited – reports about their behavior to support that. Still, even Congress must follow the mean curve to a large degree. Reportage selection largely falls into this. Whenever I hear someone give blanket statements like, “politicians are liars,” I respond “only the ones you notice.”

I agree with a simplification used to describe three attitudes. The optimist thinks (the future, people, his life) is good and will improve. The pessimist sees a downward trend. The insurance salesman thinks the future will be more of the same with few enough outliers that shhe can afford them.

So if I were to subsidize capes & black hats, it would be with an eye to how we presently qualify for subsidies. This suggests an experience like Kafka’s Trial, but others are possible. If payouts are high enough (and what won’t you pay Bruce Banner?) third parties might get involved to earn a cut for connecting supers with grants. Then it might evolve into an Uberlympics’ sponsorship.

The other story I noted at work takes gamma as the third element. I know of two works that Alan Moore failed to complete: Big Numbers and Twilight of the Superheroes. The latter depicts his projected epilogue to the DC mythos where groups of heroes have created a declining feudal system over America. His version spins the tale of the rebellion following the disappearance of Captain Marvel.

I would link to his proposal, but the site I noted is gone. When geocities’ closure was announced, I regarded it ambivalently. I didn’t have one; no one I knew had one. Hur hur duhr. In retrospect, I should have gone through my link list and saved all the pages hosted there. I seem to have lost a gallery of Garbage Pail Kids cards, the List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés, a big list of varied links, and the novella inspired The Thing. God damn.

I agree with Moore that most powers lend themselves to Defensive political structures. Before I found Graeme Snooks’ interpretation of historical relations, I agreed with James Dale Davidson’s. He and a columnist called Lord Rees-Mogg described a Logic of Violence derived from relations among power-holders. These relations reflect incentives held and projectable via the technology, climate, and lay of the land. Basically, where a group of individuals are better able to rebuff others, they form Defensive political structures like the Feudal relations of Europe. Where a group of individuals holds the power to injure others or their property effectively, they will form Offensive political structures. These are historical empires and modern nations, but also typify the relations of a feudal lord to his local subjects. Sue Storm is generally defensive, whereas Cyclops’ far reaching lasers are offensive. Mind, this paradigm doesn’t describe history with the consistency demanded but is an inspiring series of concepts:

Inequality of Power and the Form of Government

When farming multiplied the incentives to employ violence, it not only created government, it created a new dilemma about how to control government. The occupational specialization necessitated by farming created for the first time, significant gaps in the megapolitical power of individuals. Unlike the primeval hunting society, in which all men were armed with weapons for felling large animals, and were well trained to use them, the majority in most agricultural societies lived behind the plow. The plow is not an effective weapon. Neither is the artist’s brush or the potter’s wheel. The development of metal weapons gave a soldier a major military advantage over an unarmed farmer. As a consquence, power in an ancient grain-farming state like Egypt became highly centralized. Whoever had a preponderance of expensive weaponry could control the irrigation system and thus hold a life and death control over the peasants. Indeed, there was a strong tendency for the system to become more closed and stratified as time passed.

Middle-Class Topography

Why were the greek city-states not as despotic as ancient Egypt? We believe that the answer lies with the differences in megapolitical conditions. It was not so much more compelling to Greek ears than elsewhere. Nor was it because they were the first to think of democracy and equality. As we have seen, democracy and equality really were primitive ideas – because equality of power was a feature of primitive life. The uniqueness of Greece was that local conditions of climate and topography made it easier for Greek citizens to arm themselves and retain real military power. Because of this, more people were able to retain a voice in the political process in a more economically advanced society.

Davidson, James Dale and Rees-Mogg, Lord William. The Great Reckoning: Protect Yourself in the Coming Depression. Simon & Schuster, NY: 1993. (page) 64.

Most empowered individuals then can form Defensive arrangements in an area, but can’t generally unseat one another. (This is why Batman versus Captain America debates can’t reach a conclusion.) Superman-level heroes may demand some tribute from his inferiors but not enough to rule America effectively. Think of all the local law enforcement officers, and the legal courts. He may form a competing IRS, but not a department of agriculture. Human governments are terribly vulnerable and, as noted above, will very likely pay not to have Mount Rushmore dropped in Boston Harbor.

However, a dynasty depends upon stable relations. Charlemagne led Europe to ‘unity’ under the Christian banner. But, not only did his sons decide to divide it into personal realms, they lacked the charisma to compel their subordinates to the same extent that their father did. (That demands qualifiers, but not for the scope of this post.) Gamma girl will then be the granddaughter of Alex the Great, whose child(ren?) will bicker after his death to our heroine’s chagrin. Very probably, I will construct a tragedy. She is foolish and terrifying but happened to be around when America sloughed off a more manageable liability. Or, I could descend into stereotype and have her confront the paucity of her parent’s virtue and agree to aid the rebels. That is so trite I can’t say it without hoping she acts as a double agent to stab at the rival that fronted the rebellion. It’s an option.

The third environ I see avoids the organic fantastic for technological marvel. Several have considered the unemployment of vigilantes in a utopian society. The First World’s wealthy members would save themselves from age and then let the technology trickle down enough that criminals would focus on illegal activities that can’t be stopped by hyperspeed or what have you. Perhaps gamma girl ventures to Ethiopia to set up shop there. That enables either the Man Who would be King or Superman’s Peace on Earth plots. Or, she could stay within Jetsonville and peddle her power, provided it has a useful application. Consider a child who can exclusively see in the gamma spectrum. We would consider her permanently blind, but more aware future people might sense the correlation. She then helps decommission the aging uranium reactors, or hunts down the Libyan nuclear program. That sounds like a mushy story though.

If I had written this in my journal I may have thought of more options since I can write faster and less self-consciously than I type. Nevertheless, with such a tight deadline, there isn’t time for more brainstorming. I will probably choose one of those three to develop and dialog out.

I buy lots of foolish crap. It is a popular habit. Perhaps that is too harsh. I plan to buy foolish crap and sticking to a luxury budget generally saves me from sealing the deal. Plus, waiting for my budget to build up to an appreciable amount allows me to forget about buying stuff in general for long stretches.

However, that means that when I look at my lists of desired stuff, it looks pretty weird in retrospect. For example, I listed surgical paper masks. Those, annoyingly, only come in packs of fifty (for six dollars), so I didn’t buy any. Have I become overly asthmatic? No, but it was winter and sinning cold. I felt it deepest in the dark during the earliest hours I work, on my lips and face. A scarf is the traditional answer, but why go overkill with something that doesn’t fit comfortably in my pocket? Surgical masks satisfy that exact need perfectly. However, Orange County’s winter is almost over and they would sit unused until December or so.

Further, in one month and one week, Daylight Savings Time stomps on our biological clocks yet again. If I recall correctly, this one introduces more light into my morning so the temperature will seem to have risen. I could be wrong though. I remember ‘spring forward, fall back’ but spring isn’t a numerical operation, fool rhymer. In one week, I can give the dubious advice to start adding two minutes to each day so that when everyone else claws at their alarms with government mandated jetlag, you are totally ready. Sure, it requires increasing mental gymnastics but I already keep my watch five minutes ahead of most clocks, so it shouldn’t be too different.

Obviously, I have no intention of tricking myself so badly, but it reminds me of a pet idea to eliminate leap days entirely. Yes, leap days and Daylight Savings aren’t the same but both deal with trying to constantly adjust to the Earth’s varying daylight. Daylight savings supposedly matches our mornings to sunrise better. Leap days account for the accumulation of seconds outside the 24 hours on our watches. There are tons of calendar reforms, tons.

I admire most radical variants but recognize that I could never privately transition to Symmetry454 or the French Revolutionary calendar any more than I could learn Esperanto: for lack of partners. Most diverge from our (revised) Gregorian system to trumpet the import of the week. Presently, despite the boozy celebrations, New Years is just a day. It could be Friday, with a nice hangover Saturday. Or, it could be Tuesday and screw your hangover, the economy isn’t going to recover without hard work. Calender reforms usually have ‘intercalendar’ days. That means they exist, not only outside of every month (to keep them uniform) but aren’t any Day of the week either.

I think the best answer would adopt the same solution for the light itself. The buildup of ‘twenty four’ hours difference over four years is miniscule over any given day, but even that is out of step enough that – every seventy years or so – we need a double leap year. Prior to the invention of atomic clocks and digital clocks in general, rounding up was the best option. Frankly, it was the only option. As I noted, a ‘day’ is ever so slightly more than 24 sixty minute periods. An analog watchmaker would have a terrible time creating some mechanism for pocket and wrist watches that skipped enough second’s hand gear teeth to represent the particular day’s extra tenths of a second.

A digital watch hasn’t that problem. Despite all the Millenialist cowering over Y2K, digital clocks can easily adopt whatever time you like. With a little programming experience under my belt, I know it isn’t quite that easy. Nevertheless, you could have the clock program sense 24:00 and then pause (or not count the quartz crystal’s vibration or whatever). That duration is a const variable that we can update accurately. Has Greenland’s ice sheet melted? (That would shorten days by dispersing the mass and increase Earth’s angular velocity.) We decrease the leap microsecond. Are we importing minerals from the Apollo asteroids? We increase the break.

Of course, as with all communist fantasies, it requires a supermajority of the planet agree to switch to all digital clocks or see the buildup of a chronological differential. It would be annoying to fly to Tokyo and not only change the hour but the minutes too. Error creeps in.

Time zone differences remind me of another youthful daydream: an absolute GPS watch. Time zones are a useful fiction that timepiece would take to its ultimate implication. Imagine a watch that not only adjusted when you travelled across the country, it adjusted as you drove around. Time zones would be divided into 60 smaller slices each (or six at higher latitudes). That way, if you imitate the car commercial where the man drives forward to see the sun set again, the watch would adjust its minutes backwards automatically. Time travel for the proles.

Obviously, both are just nice thought experiments and terribly impractical. The latter makes coordination confusing unless in a future environment where even phone conversations can go through filters that alter the time I say into one that makes sense to my compatriot in San Fransisco.

I take a break from fiduciary exhortion to remind strangers of my morbid Aspect. The weak hearted, stomached, or minded ought to skip this fantasy. The ultimate image is beautiful only in efficiency and I pull no punches. I expressed a theory of execution long ago based on ‘mercy.’ Most executions foul because they concentrate on killing the body to suffocate the brain. Thus, let us attack the brain directly. For a long time, I concluded a grenade to the face would act quickest, in addition to being awesome. Movie executions are always dull affairs: the audience looks at the man strapped down go woozy and die. (Real lethal injection takes ten or so minutes. Let’s watch paint dry, eh?) But, the criminal’s family does deserve a corpse to unsettle them at a proper funeral. Just looking at a closed casket makes it an object by force. Much better to let children come to that conclusion from the waxy discolored skin and mom refusing to glance in. I’ll compromise and offer a method that saves face for us both.

Recall the Egyptian mummification ritual. They didn’t want people to rot, so they drained fluids and removed the bacteria laden offal (organs). I bet you remember the next part. If you don’t, a middle-schooler does. The next step is one of those facts the teachers tell to shock everyone awake and show, “hey, History is cool.” The priests slid a hook up the nasal cavity and dragged out the brain. I do not pretend that would shock the assembled lawyers, bailiffs, and estranged relatives less than vaporizing the whole head. It merely suggests an entry point.

I suggest the state officials apply local anesthetic to the sinuses, and then slide a power saw with a fork on the end up hiser nose. When the shmuck who drew the short straw turns it on, the reciprocating action of the spatula will scrape many parts of the brain at once. This ensures quick death because each sweep crushes memory sectors, motor sectors, and sensate sectors in the space of half a second (depending on motor speed). Five sweeps turns Timothy Macveigh into a man shaped accumulation of muscle and harvestable organs. Without prep, the procedure takes all of ten seconds; half are sliding the prong in and out. With a shorter suspense period and an obvious climax, perhaps the audience may actually achieve catharsis and closure.

Climax presents a social problem that explosive extinction avoids. Since the tool essentially stimulates the neurons (or possibly their connections) whilst being slid in, the convict will experience several types of activation. The prefrontal cortex renders a flash of memory or amnesia. The amydaglia could hemmorage all sorts of hormones that exacerbate massaging the Hippocampus. Shhe may spasm a bit depending upon the dilution of the anesthetic. On the upside, the last moment could be cross-sensory, hearing flavors or feeling the heat of a sound. That seems like good preparation for a great beyond that does not resemble Maya. But a truly novel experience before oblivion would be a nice, pyrrhic gift.

Here I confront the extent of the Kesseler Syndrome. I anticipated and even incorporated it somewhat but not realized its extent. I will only deal with it in a passing manner in the narrative so I ought not worry.
The spaceward community fears as the Silent Spring type environmentalists fear: one day Man will realize he has irreparably polluted his environment and all will descent into a sterile wasteland. In space, astronauts guard against creating space junk. Should a fleck collide with any of our delicate satellites, it could induce a fragmentation cascade that imitates a critical mass of fissile material. The resulting cloud acts as a minefield against orbital infrastructure and transitioning spacecraft. In a word, NASA fears the Kessler Syndrome.

I must have my fictional Earth suffer this harrowing fate. The game Freedom Force avoids this by releasing “chemical X” on a single city from relatively close to the ground. I want to throw the needle in with the haystack. That way, people begin with damage control and find the silver lining altering people’s lives.

I knew and anticipated the cloud of debris blocking access for a time. This way, the governments do not leap into the biggest piece right away and loot ahead of everyone else. I ignored two factors. The Kessler Syndrome lasts decades unless mitigated. (I abstractly thought of our dynamic environment rather than space rules.) The telecommunications network dies beyond land radio range (thirty miles). Whilst I entertained the apocalyptic symbol of weeklong meteor ashes, I do not want actual Mad Max regression. As I read about the cascade, I understood I must occlude this aspect. I tried a rationalization. Maybe it should not matter, the geostationary satellites are mostly out of the way. No, the collision material moves from beyond into the low earth orbit through the geostationary zone. The dilemma is valid. Either I recognize the civilization damaging consequence or I … stop whining.

As I wrote the last sentence I recalled, I need not hold myself to the “normal” standard. I am not performing an exercise in realism. Is Superman a realistic account? How can I expect my “mutagenically powered” heroes to be aesthetically more real? I cannot, do not.

The cloud does not activate the chain reaction. The smallest fragments fly out of the system. The larger pieces interact more with the gravity well and capture in either direction. The ash always represented large pieces. Paint flecks disintegrate without burning up. Some relays sustain damage, a few even fail outright. But, on the whole, our livelihoods are not in mortal danger. The GPS network (the only way to navigate the Panama Canal nowadays) will not falter. I will not tell the post-apocalyptic tale.

The only reason I invoke its inceptive technique is to initiate the outbreak of superhuman ability. As yet, I have no audience to disappoint. This is all inferred anyway. These expositions serve to daily focus and refuel my interest for this project. The actual story remains out of your grasp until I finish the script at the very least.

To flaunt my mediocre poetry cred, I can tell you the title quote came from T S Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” an equally mediocre poem.

The Cambria struck between the Earth and the Moon, I have no idea why I did not want that before. If I did not change it, any gravitational capture at all is terribly improbable. Further, I have to rely on a probe headed out of our backyard which means the United States. I will not bear that. Not out of patriotism, but its reverse. America and Russia have been the primary foci for the past forty years. Fiction and games do the same for the Nazis of world war two. The Japanese (to my knowledge) are always treated as a normal foe; where is their version of Castle Wolfenstein? Within the context of my story, there are more than two space programs. Europe has one, China currently works its way through seventies’ era technology (Oct 2003: first manned mission). The Ansari X Prize seems a shade late for the time frame I currently espouse, Virgin won it one year later. I ignore it though because a private player will operate here. Anyway, saying “the US/Russia ensured doomsday (by breaking the Andromeda plane)” grates on my ears. EU has to eat crow this time.

I keep calling it the Cambria. I do this on the assumption that it has the best memetic staying power. The appellation refers to the (evolutionary) Cambrian explosion (of fossils). This means it will have a double reference: the destruction of the alien vessel and the outbreak of mutagenic powers. Even if no one remembers the original meaning, it has enough of a mental toehold to latch onto both extensions subconsciously. But, why would anyone suggest it in the first place?

The craft poses a heady problem to the news community. For a few hours it was a nameless Fist of God that missed at the last second and blew into a million pieces. Then it clogs our orbits and rains on us for a while. These do not suggest any helpful names beyond appellations from annoyance: ET car wreck. It’s probable place of origin holds sway initially. At least, until they find out it was not a named system. Calling it the “SDSSp J153259.96-003944.1 craft” becomes a burden. The discoverers are the last, immediate inspiration. Amateur astronomers tracked it for the first few instances, so major observatories that came second daren’t ruffle the community by staking a claim. The question is which group deserves (or sounds best) as the name. It turned out the second group to photograph the starship (but first to recognize its motion) called itself the Cambri Clan. The mind virus spread from that nub.

The alien craft is first detected by amateur astronomers. This will always be the case until Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is ready in late 2015. As with all scarce goods, observatory telescope times are heavily contested and arranged months in advance. Astronomers with grants geared toward solving some cosmological mystery dominate the ledger, so the telescopes do not have time to archive the sky. (The LSST will instead exclusively survey the heavens so astronomers can search for changes in the memory.) Amateurs perform this role for the time being and are solely responsible for most of the recent asteroid identifications.

People will not have much time to understand what is happening before the Cambria before it collides. From first smudge to last breath lasts forty hours. I settled on this compromise after fiddling with spotting time against speed. In rough conception, the Cambria travels one third the speed of light and hits a satellite twice the distance of the moon. Any interstellar vessel will need to clear dust from its path but shields or lasers for that task ought not to be ready to burn through a refrigerator sized hunk of metal. The excessive speed confirms the artificial nature of the craft and allows a mere satellite to rupture it in twain.

A third light speed observation lasts thirteen hours, if they first note or photograph it at the distance of Pluto. Light takes five hours for the trip, ignoring relativistic effects. I dialed it down to one-eighth the speed of light. In that case, only twelve percent is wasted as opposed to thirty eight percent of the reaction time. All is moot anyway. The satellite hasn’t reaction mass to move with. I like the idea of an exponentially improving image. The other benefit is the ejecta is not moving at one third the speed of light. This aspect of the story is never directly treated, but if it were, it is a plot hole to drive a semi through.

The story becomes much like those where an asteroid now orbits on a collision course with the Earth. The first photo goes in the file, same as the others. Pluto mostly escapes notice, so a blue shifted and aerodynamic target one fourth its profile (or less) is very hard to spot. Further, no one treats celestial north as a place of great change. They look at the stars and rarely try to confirm the Oort Cloud exists. Still, when it is 10 AU apart (the distance of Saturn from the sun), the light is eighty minutes delayed and five hours of reaction time remain. The astronomers begin to pour over the previous notes to confirm a rapidly approaching object is not an apparatus artifact. A few mention it to their news buddies in Kansas type towns. Berkley connected amateurs begin notifying observatories and pressing for time based on extreme need. At this point, the approaching object looks directly headed toward us.

4 AU from us, same as Jupiter during this time of year, reflected light travels 32 minutes and quickly diminishes. The entire nocturnal community now sends a dire scream to global bureaucrats: 2 hours left. We continually monitor the bullet now. Small relief accompanies the announcement it will strike the Pacific Ocean in Honolulu. Others contest that it will impact the moon instead. Mass is hard to estimate since the blue shift obscures the edges and telescopes see it head on. The few satellites orbiting other bodies haven’t the fuel or recoding time to give us a profile shot.

Half an hour left, the scientists confirm the craft will strike neither the earth nor the moon. The Hubble can not track the movement quickly enough to watch it for more than five minute segments, but identifies its shape. The astronomers now seriously speak of an intelligent alien source. Though cameras are scarce, the Cambria becomes the focus of terabytes of radio requests for communication. Others try the rest of the spectrum. Wonder of wonders, some signal comes back as laser pulses not aimed anywhere in particular (since so many hailed it).

The news outlets have tentative reports on their websites, but mostly couched and about the discovery. All agreed that announcing the possible doomsday would be moot. By the time the papers printed the next day, only half the global population would be alive and none would need to watch CNN to know an asteroid vaporized the Pacific.

Attentions turn toward the few satellites in the area it would pass through, especially a US mars probe. (I want it to be EU but why would they put any beyond the moon?) Good news, NASA can rotate for a million dollar shot. Bad news, the first contact with extraterrestrials involves scuffing their Harley.

Outrageous misfortune, the moon will eclipse the collision. Panicked world leaders beg the US to move the probe. [That feels too obvious; I really, really ought to make it the EU.] It shrugs, no missile could be prepared in time, much less make the journey.

The southern coasts bask in the corona backlighting the waxing moon as momentum vaporizes our accidental handshake with an oncoming armored car.

Opinions people of any disposition regarding the positive effects of mutagen exposure are inextricable from the opinions they formed about the destruction of the Cambria and the subsequent meteor shower. The real problem in creating a distinct opinion lies in the organic process in progressively learning about the entire escapade. I sense fear within myself. Do I keep these wordamentaries general or do I try for an accountant’s description of everything that goes on ever during the entire twenty year period. I look at previous behavior and know that this sort of standard throws me into the center of the Pacific. I can certainly generalize in the beginning and focus into details later. Also if I generate twelve paths to learning about the situation then adopt eight different personas to create a representative sample of opinion, I will have a hyperrealistic basis for all subsequent extrapolations. At that rate, I will start thinking about events five years hence during my birthday.

I listed some types of people that characterize ways of learning: hermits, subsistence farmer, sailor, low to high class rural, low to high class urbanite of developed country, low to high class urbanite of developing country, governmental staff, university citizen, and astronomer. Each represents level of epistemic access rather than only sailors and so on. Obviously, people will straddle several over the period (an urbanite who goes camping for a week becomes a hermit).

The hermit only knows the situation indirectly, when the ash blows through. The vessel’s collision may release light, but not much. The phenomenon obviously indicates a great wrong occurred. The subsequent conclusion depends upon the culture the hermit emigrated from. A bushman (as though they still exist in wildlife preserves) may posit an industrial nation has poisoned the atmosphere or a Krakatoan level eruption. Come to think of it, that can typify no matter the descent. The likely reaction is withdrawal or immigration under an apocalyptic mindset. The expected gravity may vary.

Sailors maintain some connection to the outside world. Here I imagine navy staff, crab fishermen, and some merchant mariners. They reserve the connection for important business or dire notices (approaching storm). Luxury liners, in contrast resemble a developing urban level because passengers demand internet access and thence learn of the facts. I limit the class to developing because the limited number of ports. Passengers may have to fight for access or rely on verbal reports of lucky passengers or the crew. This information thermocline also happens on military vessels between the crew and the officers.

While I initially likened the subsistence farmer to a hermit, the comparison fails when the group sells their small excess or buys supplies from the adjoining town. The quality of the anecdotal or filtered news depends upon the connection of the urban area itself. Likely, the report will be mostly judgments rather than fact (the US battled a UFO and crashed it).

I see this is the wrong order. While I can talk about the level of connection each category has, to talk about the quality of information passed through the network, I must render the message. I generate less stress by producing the likely best assessment first and degrade it from there rather than garble each based on my god perspective of what happened.

Prior to this mixed blessing, the world held a scant few ‘super-powered’ people. Only a handful more is aware of their existence. Concerted efforts usually kill the subjects that try for a Bruce Banner type of imbuement. A rumor still circulates that the USSR succeeded in animating a nuclear Frankenstein’s monster, but no substantive evidence exists. Genetic manipulation remains a subtle influence until our scientists can study the action of the alien mutagen. With the incorporation of unmanned military vehicles, promising programs finally receive the funding that will ensure appreciable results in a few years. The miniaturization that Iron Man requires though, is still twenty years hence. Only one man on the planet has a technology based improvement on the scale Americans would associate with superheroes. However, he has spent the last year acting as a mercenary for African factions. Were he to volunteer for a major country, he knows that government would incarcerate him in perpetuity. I avoid detailing him because I shall incorporate him into the story and prefer your surprise. In all, since we can not create Doctor Manhattan today, the scientists of a largely similar reality a few years ago can not either.

The great majority are restricted to Green Arrow or Punisher methods for accomplishing their aims. The revolutionaries of every country consider themselves righteous means of change. Some gain prominence for the brutality or caution of their methods. The Weathermen of the seventies represent a villainous version of mundanes effecting a force driven change (removing troops from Vietnam in 1972, a year earlier than here). In this fiction, the Boondock Saints was not a movie; two vigilantes really did conduct an assassination campaign against the Boston mafia. One began to operate shortly before the Cambria entered our system, but again I must protect his identity.

The occult offers the only undemocratic means to personal power. Despite this, almost all magicians have been as ineffective and fraudulent as in the real world. Effective magic requires more energy than a single soul can devote. Only years of meditation allows the student to partition his or her soul for exploitation. The act severely diminishes the psyche and has seldom been attempted. Despite this, a few are born every year with latent psychic ability. If two trained telepaths are in sensory deprivation a few feet from each other, they can transmit faint thoughts to one another thirty percent of the time. Psychic potence equates to van der Waals force fielding against normal covalent bonding. Gunpowder and radio remain simpler and cheaper except in extreme cases.

To become an extreme case, a person must possess more than one soul. The folk tales of vampires and witches suggest hostile takeover is viable but none detail a method. Only human souls are available for the experimenter. Ashley Sachar, a Charles Manson biographer, sacrificed her reputation when she claimed that his terrible mesmerism may have arisen from such a technique. Spirits exist askew to Maya, but breaching the divide requires great force. Demonologists point to this as source of the Russian monster: a demon may have crossed into our universe as a fusion explosion weakened the divide.

As now, no one has a strong opinion about how empowered people affect the world. The most powerful man in the world is one of a group of nine known as the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (the American President is rather more constrained).

I have no intention to explain the mutagen or its means of effect. It acts solely as Handwavium. I will temper its effects though. I early decided to really restrict its power bestowal. No one will use this to transmute elements or control the weather. At best, a fire controller can direct the fire’s path around a room and keep it from spreading. Maybe many years of training and adept gene therapy will allow for Liz Sherman level generation and control. The international community will overestimate the impact of these individual changes. Unfortunately, a handgun will still imbue an owner with more power and versatility except in special circumstances. The fire controller can shut off a gasoline engine. You can imagine how often a semi-safe situation like that comes up.

Whilst the effects on humans are most interesting, the flora and fauna soaked up much more. Plants can grow better, become hardier, and survive in harsher conditions and more as consequence. I wonder though if some will be maladaptive changes by the realities of biology. If a flower changes color so bees can not see its distinctive marks any more or if previously edible fruit became poisonous, that plant’s pollen or seed dispersal become severely hampered. In fact, this arena becomes the first to test the viability of progeny. I am somewhat inclined to go the route of the mule: viable mixed progeny that is sterile.

Animals introduce more fun into the equation, and potential suffering. I had never thought so but here I can make King Kong or Godzilla. Granted, they would never reach that size but a ‘monster’ epidemic in Mexico is not out of the question with so many overland exposures. (This balances out its bumper crop of Talents.) Wolves, turtles, birds, lizards, and rodents all live outdoors. I grant that my apocalyptic daydream is again conflating the numerous strike zones into a full country bath, which it will not be.

A great variety of slag falls on the Earth in this period. The danger is much like when the Columbia disintegrated above Texas. No one really wants to be outside with twenty-four hour meteor showers going on. Most material did not survive reentry. Unfortunately, the mass of influx exceeded the easy dispersal capacity of our winds. All countries suffered ashy weather for a time. California readers can recall the discomfort and ubiquity of the ash from the fire of 2003. Larger objects survived, some even remained intact (hull fragments). Dredging will recover some ‘useful’ artifacts, toothbrush and battery analogs. The possibly intact technologies remain in orbit, a double flash fry stint proved too much for desired hand cannons or medical equipment.

Despite the sturm und drang of the ejecta, people ventured outside. They had to do all we did during those fires. The drifts built up but a day’s fall could be as little as a centimeter. I daresay, rare couples even got a thrill from doing it outside in alien soot (coprophiliacs?). But farmers swept family fields, soldiers trained, and students rushed in between classes. In retrospect, Mexican agricultural orientation amongst indigenous people accounted for its high rates of exposure.

Hidden in the haystack of filth, canisters barely survived the descent and often spilled and vaporized a mutagenic suspension. (Let’s ignore that the liquid would scald after the tube warmed at terminal velocity.) Only much later, after the period of orbital recovery, did anyone have samples to study. The physical empowerment of its victims spoke clearly enough for the initial period.

Writing so brief an account feels strange. I could write fifteen pages of all my planned backstory, but I would collapse long before then. I see these posts last the perfect length to come home and type shortly before going to bed, whilst ensuring enough depth that they inspire other areas. (I see apocalyptic movements/cults from these conditions but hadn’t yet realized it.)