Alphas and Iotas WIP

[Justhefax]

Afraid this update doesn’t have a new build to go with it. Sorry. Usual reminder that if you haven’t checked in for awhile the build was last updated in February and is hence a bit newer than the title indicates.

This is a supremely weird time to be writing this sort of story. A supremely weird time all around, I suppose.

I’m focusing at the moment on a few things, finally getting the sims aboard the Labrador to a place I’m happy with, progressing from the Labrador to sections back on the Beagle and on the planet, and providing romantic interactions with the romantic options.

Minor update on that specific front. I’m intending to add a few more casual romantic options outside of Skorupski, Carvajal, Aoki, Zaboul, and Rosenthal/Farid/Alcantara.

Check below for another brief update from your exploration of the Beagle’s interior.

A Dispatch from the Beagle

The usual destination for the group when you stuck together was one of the cryo banks, not really any particular cryo bank just one of them. They weren’t exactly in short supply and they were easy to pick out. With a relative handful of exceptions such as Salvation Park, the areas around the cryo banks represented the only cultivated and maintained land on the whole of the Beagle. The edict had clearly gone out that these places needed to be maintained and free from the ravages of he Beagle’s surprisingly resilient flora, but apparently not that it would be easier to just get rid of the grass entirely and pave the immediate vicinity.

[Justhefax]

Hey, checking in again. Again not a huge amount to report and no new build.

In the process of reworking the whole structure, still only moderately happy with the current flashback heavy Labrador-centric version. The biggest problem I keep having is dealing with Rosenthal/Farid/Alcantara because I like the trio, but treating them interchangeably keeps leading to me thinking of them interchangeably which I don’t like. I also keep being bothered by the fact that Esther Farid’s surname is also a masculine first name.

About our current reality:
One of the things I find myself pondering as humanity continues to find new and exciting flaws within itself is how the Beagle would handle would handle such things. The Beagle society that the characters come from when the Beagle was functioning properly, not the one where humanity has been reduced to 20,000 functionally immortal robots. The short answer is generally waving my hands and saying we’ll have figured it out much of it before 2174 when the Beagle is launched and that the Beagle is meant to be a utopian project to address these things. There is of course a longer answer:

Longer Answer Part One Race and Culture

The Beagle is founded as a very multicultural entity. Marisa Tonde, the ideological godmother of the ship is African, specifically Burkinabe by birth. The original bridge crew featuring Kirk Lankford, Valentina Akinfeev(a) (not sure whether I think Russia will still be doing patronymic naming by 2174), Prince Adeshina, Ayoumi Kumagai, and Leonardo Gamarra are all coming from different cultures. I’m very conscious about trying to include ethnically varied characters even if I generally find myself coming up a bit short on Indian and Korean/Chinese names and I don’t really make a lot of effort to differentiate between names coming from different parts of Africa. There is a really long answer including more history about Mars, the Martian reconquista and the aftermath of the Nova. I won’t subject you to that.

Part of the point of the Beagle’s Command structure in which basically all armed security are beholden to the ship’s overall command and not local authorities, is to keep local authorities from running amok. As the Beagle isn’t beholden to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution both the population at large and local security forces are unarmed or only equipped with non-lethal equipment. My general assumption is that these things significantly decrease the chance for abusive use of force.

Longer Answer Part Two: Health and Reproduction

Healthcare and viral threats:

Here my long answer is a lot closer to being my short answer. Generally speaking within about 2,000 years I’m supposing the ability to analyze any emergent pathogens very quickly and produce vaccines/treatments equally quickly. Now with the Earth largely scrubbed by the Nova and most of the human population either on the ‘artificially natural’ Beagle with a limited biosphere particularly as it pertains to potentially harmful flora/fauna/microbes, humanity’s immune systems generally can be viewed as slightly superior to Quarians in Mass Effect. So we’d get good at immunology fairly quickly.

Reproduction and Sexuality:
This is also largely covered by the we’ll have it figured out by 2174 short answer, but I wanted to explain it a little more. Given the work in the reproductive science I’m of the opinion that in under 200 years humanity will be able to reproduce without natural childbirth. Because of that I sort of assume that everybody on the Beagle has kids if they want children no matter the sexuality of the couple involved. There would still be natural childbirth, but it would be a choice, it would rise and fall in popularity through the ages, but generally speaking only a handful of the 20,000 survivors of the Beagle would ever have been involved in a pregnancy.

And of course a briefish update from the Beagle.

Dispatch from the Beagle

The return of the Labrador and Great Dane found a slightly different Beagle. Better docking facilities setup in orbit around Elysia. Not a great setup, not the one history claimed the Earth had before the Incident or Mars during its heyday. It was good enough. The crews would rotate between the ships, the Beagle would always need hydrogen for the main reactor and therefore it appeared that the ice retrieval trips might continue as long as the new Oort Cloud provided suitable targets, even if you’d no longer be aboard. One of the colleagues from your generation, was signed on aboard the Afghan and fairly excited about it. That assignment as well as your own time on the Labrador was the main topic of conversation at a weekly game of bridge between the four of you.

In the meantime it was back to the old routine. Command continued to bustle, now that things were going on even the usual tedium seemed less tedious. Atmospheric shields were up and functioning, this version wouldn’t really stop any large masses, but it would protect from the deluge of exotic particles produced by supernovae better than the original shield system that saved Mars from the Incident. The old crew from the Labrador were all back on the Beagle, well except for Hamid obviously. It was certainly nice to spend time with them away from the rest of the artificially created four shifts.

Thanks for checking in, once again hope to have something more concrete soon.

[Justhefax]

Hello again,
To get the obvious out of the way, no new build. The bottom of this post will feature some new info about the romanceable characters and an introduction of the more casual romance options. My official excuses are detailed below, new information is below that.

Griping about Creative Process

I’ve noticed I have a thing about making sure I’m set up all the way through a set of choices before I update the build here. Practically what that means is that while I’m forging ahead in other parts of the story getting a little stalled on say the romantic options for Jibril Rosenthal can keep me from updating a section.

To use another example I’m doing romantic introductions for characters and along the way I made a reference to music which led to a choice about what your character’s musical history and left me adding a small attribute bonus. (and discovering a lot of stringed instruments by doing a little bit of research) This in turn led to me kicking myself about not offering another chance to add attribute bonus points in the other sections, which in turn led to me throwing up my hands and saying I’ll just make the choices gated by attributes more flexible.

Mercedes Skorupski: Mercedes is an accomplished writer best known for her book about Sun Tzu written under her own name. After her retirement she also took up fiction writing under the pseudonym Gabrielle Nguyen.

Abraham Carvajal: Abe is the only one of the romanceable characters with a romantic interest from his own time still around in Professor Jasmine Keita. He also happens to be very interested in perfecting teleportation technology.

Penelope Zaboul: Penelope is an ordained minister in the Order of the Holy Infinitum(I like the name though not 100% sure what they believe). She greatly misses the natural diversity of the old Beagle, particularly a fan of marsupials.

Mamadou Aoki: Mamadou is a very maritime person, he’s passionate about restocking the Beagle’s bodies of water and ensuring that Elysia’s seas have a viable ecosystem.

As you may be able to tell from the lack of a Rosenthal/Farid/Alcantara section still struggling with differentiating them.

New casual romantic options:

Sylvia Tsui: Fellow crewmember from the Labrador’s C Shift. Sylvia is another former engineer with a quirky sense of humor who was very entertaining in collaborative fiction sessions aboard the Labrador.

The current three other options were on the Malamute while your character was on the Labrador and you meet going curling with Rosenthal/Farid/Alcantara. They’re part of a string quartet that formed on the Malamute along with the non-romanceable Zweli Henriquez. I also have learned that a string quartet traditionally includes two violins, a viola, and a cello.

Yuri Muthu: The redheaded former professor was athletic in life and still settling into his artificial existence. Plays the cello.

Jagriti Andujar: The blonde former politician has made it a hobby to embrace her humanity despite the artificialness. Or as she puts it the difference between being artificial and robotic. Plays the viola.

Steph van Pelt: The black haired former captain plays the violin and is slightly awed by Rosenthal/Farid/Alcantara and their contribution to the Beagle.

Be back in September or hopefully sooner with new build. And of course here’s a brief dispatch from the Beagle.

A Brief Dispatch from the Beagle

The only culinary game in town was still the cafeteria in Command. Everybody’s memory, well everybody from after the second Martian transit anyway, was that all of the quarters within command had culinary fabricators, but the Doc and the posthumans appeared to have decided it was better for everybody to socialize during biologically unnecessary meals. From just about immediately people had found ways around that. People ate at weird times, there was really no time you could head to the cafeteria without somebody being there, a lot of people left the cafeteria with their food walking, talking, snacking. Couples on dates were painfully obvious by their attire. Most of the time people didn’t put a lot of effort into their artificial appearance.

[Nagisa18]

Holy. OMGOD can I just say that I binged read this at 2:13 am. Writing this. Awesome this wip is officially one of my faves. I look forward to the next update.

But it’d be cool if a save option was included to be honest. I like replaying scenes and seeing all the possible scenarios I can play. Good story. All the love authors

[Justhefax]

First of all, no new build. Hope to have a save system when I update, thought there was just a switch I needed to flip somewhere but might be a little more complicated… or I’ve forgotten where the switch is.

Really meant to get one out, very close to being done with those romantic scenes, but I was just looking at some of the conclusions to the sims and I’m a little farther away from being done with them as I’d like. I suspect some of that is newbie stuff where I’m making things more complex than they need to be. I have a feeling shorter chapters are easier on the authors. As someone that does replay ChoiceScript games that I like and really enjoys seeing the different ways things can be I’m trying to have things that diverge a little more than usual which results in me going ‘Okay almost done’ and then finding little hole in the script that I’ve completely ignored.

Now for a brief discussion of Beagle politics. For perfectly rational reasons I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about it lately.

Beagle Democracy

One of the main principles of the Beagle is a dedication to democracy, but obviously the forms of democracy can vary considerably. One thing that no Beagle state has is an electoral college because firstly the real electoral college is a stupid antidemocratic relic and antidemocratic practices are very limited on the Beagle.

• Consular Democracy: One of the things that appeals to me is modernizing the old Roman model of dual elected leaders. In the universe of the Beagle that’s most evident in the New Martian Republics headed by the leaders of the main polar colonies of North and South Mars.
• Learned Parliamentary Democracy: Another thing that appeals to me is limited elected office to those with postgraduate degrees. Sort of an application of Plato’s idea of government by the learned. If you run into a character, such as Esther Farid or yourself in origin #5, whose title is PhDM, it means they’re essentially a prime minister with a PhD. What subjects the PhD can be in and whether say medical doctors or lawyers count depends on the state in question.
• Direct democracy: Nobody likes direct democracy. On the Beagle it doesn’t feature everybody voting on everything, but features legislative councils to propose bills and often subsets of the populace voting in lieu of the committee process we tend to see in modern democracies. Imagine if instead of passing out of the Senate Judiciary any supreme court appointment had to be ratified by a referendum of the American Bar Association. It’s sort of like that but with way better tech.
• Authoritarian excesses: How the Beagle deals with governments that waver in fidelity to the founding principles varies considerably with time. Since Command has effectively the only armed forces capable of doing anything major some captains viewed part of their role as enforcing governing principles. That stopped when Captain Frandsen deposed PM Grenier.(it’s mentioned a few times) After that Command only intervenes with the consent of other regional powers.

The following dispatch from the Beagle is from a discussion between your character and Mercedes Skorupski following the Labrador’s return from it’s mission. So minor spoilers.

Dispatch from the Beagle

“It’s actually very relaxing.” She said, though not really said so much as mouthed while her tech connected to yours creating the illusion of speech in a vacuum.

“I can understand.” In no time period did command staff spend much time spacewalking and even the nicest spacesuits humanity had ever invented remained spacesuits. Without any biological processes however, you and Mercedes were just strolling around the exterior in your normal clothes with magnetic boots and a harness connecting you to the nearest airlock. “The perks of being artificial, am I right?”

“Undoubtedly. My engineering staff got to enjoy this. I did not know what I was missing.”

“Not this.” You corrected Mercedes. “Spacesuits ruin the experience. This is all new. Something we’ve only ever experienced in this universe.”

“True enough, true enough. You know… I enjoyed my transit. I loved the view of open space, those little points of light add so much character to what is otherwise almost universally nothing. The interior felt so much more artificial after it.”

“But not more artificial than this. Nothing gets more artificial than braving vacuum without a suit and ‘talking’ telepathically.” She mouthed a ha, ha, ha in response and smiled.

“Hm… hm… hm…” Was what came over the comm. “What did that sound like to you?” She asked. “I just realized I don’t really know how to think laughter.”

“I don’t really know how to think what you said back to you. I’ll tell you when we’re done.”

And Nagisa18, thanks so much for the kind words. Made my day. I too binge these things at 2 AM and I wholly endorse this method of consuming CS games.

Be back in November if not sooner.

[Justhefax]

Well, I continue to be bad at updating when I say I’ll update. First the good news.

UPDATED BUILD (now with romances)

You can now play through the first simulation aboard the Labrador, not the world’s most exciting simulation, but you can do things and there are stat checks, it isn’t entirely done or polished, but I’ve gone too darned long without a proper updated build. I do have another sim that’s almost done and can hopefully have the new sim ready or at least as ready as the other one before the new year. The upcoming sim is collaborative and involves the Labrador’s sister ship, the Great Dane.

Update Details

• Added book club intro for the Duckworth trio - Accessible from the early transit origin.
• Added expeditionary group intro for Zaboul - Accessible from mainline transit origin
• Added the first simulation - The Dislocated Cryo Bank (not entirely done).
• Romance section - Mostly discussions with the characters, but it can get physical with three characters. - Sylvia(accessible through golfing with Abe), Jagriti(accessible through the curling option), and Steph(also available through curling), Yuri(also through curling) isn’t quite done yet.

Official Disclaimer: I haven’t tested it as well as I’d like to, but things should work. Mostly. I hope to deal with some of the more unfinished sections shortly.

And now a dispatch from the Beagle. The following dispatch is from exploring the interior of the Beagle with Aoki.

Dispatch from the Beagle

Aoki was particularly distressed by the changes. He had been Premier of the Oceanic Republic of Pacifica. Back in his day the citizens of the Oceanic Republic put a premium on living near and with the sea, keeping alive some of the more nautical cultures of Earth. Some of the docks still stood, built to stand the test of time, of materials made to do the same. Just without a lot of the water.

“We wouldn’t be much of an Oceanic Republic today.” Aoki muttered possibly in your direction, possibly just to himself.

“I doubt it’ll stay that way.”

“Whatever society comes of age down there, who knows if they’ll even want to live in the Beagle. We could very well be in the beginning of our own obsolescence.”

“We’ll still need hydrogen which means we’ll still need water. The seas will come back again.”

“The seas may. The Oceanic Republic, probably not. Elysia will not have our history, unless we decide to handle the naming it will almost certainly not have names like Pacifica. Do you even know where that name comes from?”

“The Western coast of one of the Americas I think was called the Pacific.” Aoki shook his head.

“The Pacific was an ocean, biggest one on old Earth. I’m afraid that’s another memory we’ve lost. You ever wonder just how human our humanity mark two will be?”
That of course would’ve been a choice.

[Justhefax]

Update with actual updated build. I do continue to be bad at updating when I say I will.

UPDATED Build (now with 5 more unfinished sims) - Not as well tested as I’d like but should be functional. Hopefully.

You can now play through the early parts of all 6 Labrador sims. Your character takes on different roles in all 6, starting with captain and ending with tractor beam technician. The initial sim, and sims 2, 3 and 5 are the most complete. It’s been a challenge to deal with these simulations switching around everybody’s roles for each sim and to deal with how useful the science officer is for a sim focused on negotiations.

Brief details of the sims

Initial Sim(role Captain) - Asteroid strikes the Beagle causing unfortunate consequences.
Sim #1(role Helmsman) - Engine failure on the Labrador’s sister ship the Great Dane
Sim #2(role Science officer) - Pugs go on strike
Sim #3(role Comms officer) - AI difficulties
Sim #4(role Chief engineer) - System failures on the Labrador
Sim #5(role Tractor beam tech) - War games with the Dane

So now I’ll check in with a dispatch from the Beagle before going back to checking to confirm that I haven’t horribly broken anything in the new build. This comes from setting up a subsequent section on Elysia once the Beagle is well into the mission, it will be accessible if your character has chosen to learn botany.

A Dispatch from the Beagle

“Chip, out of curiosity who else is on the unexpected flora subcommittee?”

“Teodor Vasquez, Miranda al-Qadir, Isouro Thompson, Brittany Igawa, Shruti Randhaya, and Angel Ahmed Mejia.” Whoa, that was a name you actually recognized. “None of the other presumptive members are currently active.”

“Are you saying I’m the only active member or those six and myself are the only active members?”

“You are the only active member. If the unexpected flora are found to be intelligent Angel Ahmed Mejia will be revived to serve as a first contact specialist. Until then the current ad hoc members are Penelope Zaboul, Louise Park, Madison Udoh, Prince Adeshina, and Ashanti Kumagai-Adeshina. You are the acting chair.” Whoa again. Aside from Zaboul, Park and yourself that remaining trio were actually non-footnotes historically. And you’d be the subject matter expert. On walking trees. Not exactly something you specialized in back when you were learning botany.

You thanked Chip for the information and returned to freaking out.

Will definitely try to be back in March, but will probably get to March and start thinking about how many little things I need to do and get sidetracked, but will definitely try to return with a March update.

[Justhefax]

Update with minor updates to build and reworked opening.

To make a long story short I got distracted writing romantic sections because I think that any romance between characters that long-lived would involve significant discussions of family. As a direct result as part of establishing your characters romantic preferences and history your character can now have kids. Not during the story but back when your character was alive.

Basically I got tired of having to make all of the MC’s descendants be grand-nieces and nephews while everybody else got to have grandchildren. While the kids are mostly a convenient vessel for anecdotes they also have different skills so on occasion when trying to work through a problem with charisma or ingenuity your character gets to think ‘Ah, let’s see how my boy Zephyr or daughter Elyse would handle things.’ It’s not very significant to the story, but I think it helps your character to feel like they lived a full life.

A Brief Discussion on the inclusion of trans kids

I put a fair amount of effort into the question of whether any of your character’s kids would be trans/nonbinary and for a while considered adding a RNG function where say one in fifteen times the one of the kids would be trans/nonbinary, but decided that it wouldn’t add much if it was rare and that it wouldn’t feel right to allow you to determine whether one of the kids was trans because despite anti-trans legislation in parts of the world parents don’t really have any say in the gender identity of their kids. Hm… that was a long sentence.

There are trans/nonbinary characters on the Beagle and an opportunity for your character and other characters to change their genders later in the story, but the section on introducing your kids did not seem like an ideal place to add to the discussion.

I’m also trying to figure out whether changing the gender of one’s functionally immortal robot body would count as transgender or not and I’m not sure if it would within the contemporary understanding of transgender identity. For instance your character can choose to adopt a different gender to the one they initially identify in character creation, but can then go back to the initial gender later in the story and I have no idea whether such a character would remain transgender or not. To be honest I don’t entirely understand some of this stuff myself.

Anyway my apologies for the digression.

Then there was a light tweaking to the opening, since I redid it to get to the Labrador section early the mechanics have been bugging me, so now you get to the Labrador after more of character creation, which to be honest is how it always should have been.

Added an intro sequence for Mamadou while exploring the Beagle’s interior and slightly reworked that sequence for everybody else it’s unlocked for. Accessible through origin #4.

So I’ll check in with another dispatch. Like the last one this also comes from a section on Elysia once the Beagle is well into the mission and is accessible if your character has chosen to learn marine biology.

A Dispatch from the Beagle - It's a bit long, but all dialogue.

“The squids are intelligent.” Repeated what sounded like Watch Commander Wilson Udoh, sounding slightly baffled. “Are you sure squids is the plural of squid?” Sure, even when new and exciting things happen the nice people of the Beagle still couldn’t believe it.

“I told you it was squid.” Alcantara interjected.

“Luckily if they’re intelligent eventually they’ll be able to tell us how to pluralize. We found a colony in a cave, they almost trapped us.” To be fair chances were that even if those squids cut off your exit you’d probably still be fine. Probably.

“Do you need evac?”

“And give Vogelsong the chance to beam us up? No thanks.”

“I did not expect that.” You remarked to Alcantara upon leaving the water.

“That makes two of us.”

“I suppose this is what I get for studying marine biology.”

“Hey guys. Massive congrats on possibly discovering intelligent life on Elysia.” Said Leonardo Gamarra, the Doc’s unofficial second in command among the posthumans.

“Um… thanks Leo.” Always very insistent on being called Leo.

“Wish I had been there to see it. Was there a lot of blinking, some purposeful waving of tentacles, possibly color changes to denote communication?”

“To be honest we were mostly focused on their teamwork.”

“And the ink.” Alcantara added. “Definitely the ink.”

“We can see through the ink,” you remarked, “really it was like they’d never tried to trap functionally immortal robots before.”

I should add that Alcantara is not written into that section, your character is on an expedition led by one of your Labrador colleagues, there’s a RNG involved in deciding who gets to be leader of the expedition.

Thanks for reading, will try to be back around the end of April with significant updates to the simulations. Will likely fail just like last time, but I shall continue to try.

[Justhefax]

So a funny thing happened between the last update and this one. I started on a new choicescript project. Not quite ready to offer that one as a WIP on the forum, but I should have the its first chapter ready and posted on here within the month of June.

Which is all a long way of saying that I do not in fact have a new update for A&I. I will get back to A&I in earnest once I’m done with that first chapter in the new project. I actually write better when I have a couple of projects going at once, so the hope is focusing on whichever topic I’m more inspired by at the moment will actually speed me up.

I do still have a dispatch from the Beagle, also from a section on Elysia, but this one requires your character to have learned meteorology.

A Dispatch from the Beagle/Elysia - Dialogue focused.

“How many tornadoes?” Inquired Watch Commander Kyu-Jin Halifax.

“Enough!” “Some would even say too many.” Alcantara remarked. “You’re not helping!” You shot back at Alcantara.

“I’m not the meteorologist!” Alcantara answered.

“Understanding the weather doesn’t mean I can control the weather.” Bit of a remnant from the Beagle, where because everything was fake the weather actually was controlled by the meteorologists or command, to be honest you were never entirely clear who controlled the weather but someone definitely did. They had to, the weather was artificial after all. This is precisely the sort of thing an actual meteorologist would’ve known.

“Fine. More running, less whining.”

“Are you two going to need the teleporter?” Halifax asked.

“Yes!” Alcantara yelled in an ultimately futile attempt to shout over the wind.

“No! We’re fine. The storms aren’t that close and the base camp is shielded.” You responded, before reiterating for Halifax, “We’ll be fine.” Alcantara reluctantly nodded.

“I’ll get someone up there just in case. What does a tornado look like anyway?” Betraying Beagle roots there, obviously nobody thought to break out tornadoes inside the ship.

“Terrifying!” Alcantara answered.

“Very impressive.” You responded.

“We’re having a talk about this when we get back!” Alcantara shot back.

As ever, thanks for reading. Will, more confident about that this time, be back by the end of June.

[Justhefax]

As ever the whole updating with a new project by the end of June didn’t quite happen. But I’m almost to the point of putting up a WIP tentatively planned by the end of next week hopefully Monday the 9th of August.

What did happen is the Mass Effect Legendary Edition and replaying through the adventures of the good Commander Shepard (how Shepard never gets promoted to Captain Shepard remains beyond me) Sort of ate into time I’d otherwise spend writing.

In other words, no new update to A&I. Playing Mass Effect feels a little different when trying to put together my own sci-fi interactive fiction.

The current word count, albeit a misleading one because of how much of A&I content is split off by era of origin/profession and other assorted choices is as follows: Chapter One 30k, Chapter Two 44k, Chapter Three which because of the structure is interweaved with both chapters one and two 74k. I’m really hoping that chapter size doesn’t continue to increase through planned chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. If I had to start this thing over again I would definitely rethink the size and amount of these chapters.

Now with all of that material it’s time for a dispatch from the Beagle. As I mentioned the Nomads in the A&I it can be safe to assume that more will be said about them. The following dispatch is some of the more.

Dispatch from the Beagle - The Nomads

Books had been written about the Nomads… Namuk. Damn it’s going to take awhile to self-correct for everybody. Culture, history, sense of humor. In the Nomad Era, look the era was defined by people calling them the Nomads, not the Namuk, that one’s okay. In the Nomad era people said you couldn’t fling a dead cat in a bookstore without hitting some study of the Nomads.

Those from the Nomad era who happened to be around had just become very, very popular. AAM was doing a speaking tour. Nadine Dominguez was also popular, particularly with people that wanted to get more accurate information than could typically be obtained from the AAM.

Meetings of book club were flooded with books about the Nomads as everybody struggled to understand a species that humanity had never truly understood in the first place. Nearly every book contained the same disclaimer: Little is known about the Nomads. Little will likely ever be known about them.

Their very age was indeterminate. Nomad calendars themselves were cyclical, they did not keep track of previous cycles, but rather wiped the slate clean when a new one began. Nomad history then was regularly ignored, old calendars were referred to by a single event that defined their eras. For instance their time traveling with the Beagle they said would always be known as ‘The Era with the Beagle’ which was needed to contrast with their time after discovering us when they met the Schnauzer known as ‘Meeting of Minds with Humans’.

To be fair the cyclical calendar thing was a human impulse as well, Pre-Kimura, Post-Kimura, Pre-Transit, then the eras generally defined by their transits, which was certainly true of the people when most of them came from transits. The sort of thing that seemed alien to most people during the Nomad era, but actually made a lot more sense to your group.

Thanks for reading, it’s appreciated.
As ever the plan is to be back by the end of the month or in September with an actual update, but likely back much sooner to announce the new WIP.

[Justhefax]

Firstly, a minimal update, finally got around to enabling saves on the build. I mess around enough with it that when I get around to a substantive update I have no idea how long any newly created saves will stay good for, but what I can say is that you can create saves.(I also haven’t gotten around to checking everything so I might have broken something)

Hello, it’s almost two months since my last non-update so here’s a new non-update.

I posted my new WIP, Ace of Spies, yes as one would obviously expect from an author you previously only knew for philosophically minded science fiction and detailed world building it concerns tennis players moonlighting as part-time spies.

Do take a look if that seems interesting to you or if you’re just curious about what a modern version of I Spy might look like in interactive fiction.

I have gotten back to A&I, but not quite to the point of doing a full update to the build. The next things on the agenda are fixing some holes in the code(there’s that one section where you’re playing welcoming committee and only have one option for how to welcome them. It’s been bothering me for at least a year).

Time for a dispatch from the Beagle, this is from another piece I did about the Beagle in between universes. No real spoilers, but Jazira Schmidt and the Doc are both present in A&I, but this is their meeting.

Dispatch from the Beagle - The Gap

“Hello, ladies, gentlemen. I am Doctor Jazira Schmidt and I bid you welcome to Physics 442 Foundations of Interstellar Travel. You either all are or soon will be physicists which means you probably know the answer to the rhetorical question that I like to use to start this class, which is why the question now has that preface. Why study interstellar travel? Why bother when stars are only the stuff of tales and legend? Why bother when it is painfully clear that none of us will ever get to use the knowledge I will spend the next few months trying to teach you? I think you know why, but I’d like to hear it from one of you.”

“Because someday someone will.”

“Precisely, because someday someone will and if that knowledge is lost before that day that poor someone will be stuck exactly where he is. Because we haven’t had the opportunity to use this knowledge in a million years, but we still teach Physics 442. Because I will not break the chain that has kept this knowledge alive for eons and whether you find yourself teaching or not, I implore you to keep the knowledge alive. Now… let us begin at the beginning with our Prometheus, Doctor Marisa Tonde.” As Doctor Schmidt spoke the name a passable holographic recreation of the Doc appeared onstage alongside her. Unfortunately for the good Doc Schmidt’s lesson plan this particular version of the Doc wasn’t the avatar that had practiced the song and dance. It was the real if virtual version.

“I don’t know if Prometheus is the right term. The theory that described and laid out the math for the transits between dimensions wasn’t laid out by me, but rather a Professor Livan Dihigo, brilliant mind from Cuba. A nation I suspect the vast majority of you have never heard of, who in turn was using very basic fusion reactors created by a team of American scientists operating out of a city called Chicago.” Looking at the confused Schmidt the Doc took a moment to examine what Schmidt’s avatar of the Doc had been discussing with her and rejoined the lesson plan. “In any case Dr. Schmidt is quite right about how vital it is that humanity retains this knowledge, so let’s talk about light.”

“Light is the universal speed limit if you aren’t cheating. We cannot go faster than light in either the prime dimension or n-space, but humanity has always considered speed limits as more like suggestions than actual limitations. It took awhile and Dihigo and myself both won Nobel prizes for our trouble, but we figured out a way to weasel around that speed limit. Doctor Schmidt, let’s break out some equations for these nice people.”

Thanks for reading, it’s appreciated. I’m aiming for an update in a few weeks if not sooner, but I am splitting my focus and really want to update Ace of Spies. More likely I’ll be back in November with an actual updated build for A&I. Cheers.

[Justhefax]

As ever I say a few weeks, and it comes out as over a month. There is a minor update, I don’t really think it merits going back to it, unless you haven’t checked in on A&I in like a year, in which case take a look.

Finished those disparate approaches to introducing the companions with the welcome committee, which has been bugging me for over a year. Unfortunately that’s it.

My work on Ace of Spies has still had most of my attention, it’s been distressing to see the tennis world cross over into geopolitics with the Peng Shuai issue, but also has provided a lot of inspiration for someone writing in that very small niche. As is so often the case with my work the content of planned updates keep expanding to a point where I’m always almost done with a more substantial update than what I want to post.

Time for a dispatch from the Beagle, this directly follows the last dispatch about Professor Schmidt and the Doc’s meeting.

Dispatch from the Beagle - The Gap

Schmidt was very good at her job. She was a rising star in a field that for the most part was just as dead as the stars the Beagle had left behind eons ago. Her mantra was a single word, ‘Someday’ someday we’ll get back, someday stars will shine, someday humanity will become what it once was. The Doc admired that kind of optimism while the universe was taking a sabbatical. She held the students’ attention, even got a laugh or two, not an easy trick to manage in an advanced theoretical physics class.

“So…” Schmidt began, looking through the Doc’s hologram like she was trying to find the intelligence within. “Who are you?”

“I’m Doctor Marisa Tonde.”

“You aren’t my Doctor Tonde, my Doctor Tonde was okay with being called Prometheus.”

“Doctor Schmidt, I am aware that my avatars are personalized per user, but do not mistake that for ownership.”

“Who are you?”

“I already told you.”

“This is Livan’s handiwork isn’t it? He has always been pissed that I ignore Dihigo.”

“Ah the good Professor Chen, very tech savvy for an ancient history prof. Nope, not him.”

“And if Livan did it you’d have told me.”

“Professor, I have not lied to you.”

“It can’t be.” “There you go.” “You can’t be.”

“Why can’t I be?”

“There’s a story that physicists like to tell that every so often, once in hundred, or thousand…”

“Or hundred thousand, or million, a big number of years. I get it.”

“You’re her.” “I already told you that. Twice.” “Every so often as ignorance threatens us, as the equations become less real and more mythical incantations they say that you come back. Not physically, but not as merely an avatar either, you come back and you take some poor professor working in obscurity and you raise him up as the leading edge of a renaissance. But we’re not there yet, we’re not even close, I understand your formulas, I understand the Dihigo principle, and the Nomad instability effect. Why are you here?”

“For something new.”

Plan to be back for a bigger update around Christmas/New Years. Cheers.

[Justhefax]

Minor update concerning the first simulation.
Does late in January count as around New Years? Probably not.

Not much in the way of updating. As I am reminded annually expecting productivity out of myself around the holidays is a little optimistic.

Did some polishing on the first sim. Not a lot, but some. Distracted by Ace of Spies and for the last week or so distracted by the release of Expeditions: Rome. I love me some historically inspired tactical rpg action.

I’d like to discuss briefly one of the interesting ideas I’ve been trying to implement for A&I. Flexibility.

Flexibility Abilities

There’s a flexibility variable and you may have noticed it goes up when you make decisions that increase attributes other than the primary one for your character’s role. Leadership for captain. Charisma for politician. Technical for Engineer. Ingenuity for scientist.

The plan is for flexibility to increase when your character chooses actions that increase attributes other than your primary one and for it to decrease when you increase the primary attribute. This is supposed to show your character understanding the roles of others, so that if you choose a choice that you’d normally fail a stat check for if your character is flexible enough you’ll delegate the execution to others. It overlaps a little with how I’m handling leadership, but with an increased involvement for other characters.

For instance if you try to talk someone into something normally there’s a charisma/leadership check and your character will talk someone into submission. If you’re flexible enough instead you’d have Mercedes Skorupski and/or Mamadou Aoki depending on who’s available do the talking. I wanted to have something like that set up just to enhance the ability to make decisions you wanted to make instead of the ones that the character might be best suited to.

Should include a dispatch from the Beagle just as a matter of principle. This is a section from the Beagle’s time in the Gap between Universes. It was Victoria Brnovic’s introduction and a glimpse into the state of Command at that time in the Beagle’s existence.

Dispatch from the Beagle

Victoria Brnovic did not bore easily, that more than anything else was nearly a requirement for high office in the Beagle’s command structure when the ship’s current mission was to exist. Nothing more, nothing less, the ship’s only goal in the Gap was to survive long enough to see a new universe. It meant the briefings were exercises in obligatory mind-numbing tedium when there was nothing to be briefed on. She stifled a yawn and checked her chrono, fifty-three minutes. She smiled to herself, fifty-three minutes before the first yawn was an accomplishment when most of the staff couldn’t last thirty, but Captain Halifax had beaten her again. Victoria’s main goal in these excruciatingly boring meetings was to yawn last. Halifax was usually able to beat her. To her mind it didn’t really count because Halifax was also usually the one doing all the talking, but it was still what kept her paying attention even when she knew ninety percent of what was going on.

Status updates and Nihilists. That’s it, status updates, confirming that everything was more or less doing everything that it was doing last week and her generation’s security fear, the Nihilists. Every generation had their own special branch of ideological extremists, Islamists, Evangelicals, Communists, Fascists, Democrats, Anarchists, Lookbacks, and of course the Gap’s special brand of crazy, the lovable Nihilists. Every nation on the Beagle from the Armenians to the Zeelanders had their own unique branch with the same exact goals, to destroy the Beagle or return to normal space. There were even a couple countries that had elected Nihilist governments, who, go figure, did basically nothing. They may have gotten power by promising to destroy creation, but in effect once they actually had power they didn’t want to destroy it. The only ones to worry about were the Nihilists without power, which was another way of saying there wasn’t anything to worry about. That was another reason the briefings were so damn boring.

She listened as the leaders droned on… and on… and on. Victoria relaxed and tried to pull out a book of Sudoku to pass the time until they finally recapped the unexceptional activities of the Zeeland Nihilistic Front. Then she would have to wake up, her watch was coming up and while it might as well have been her naptime considering how soporific it usually was she still had to be awake when it started.

[Justhefax]

Minor update: Added a few new sections finishing introducing the main characters. All things I should’ve finished a significant time ago.

The more significant additions are visual. The last few times I played through A&I one of the things that struck me was that I was doing a really poor job delineating transitions between flashbacks to the Beagle and the Labrador, so I broke out the Microsoft Paint and there are now more visual indicators or transitions between the Beagle and Labrador.

Very basic, but they do their job and didn’t require me to do any actual drawing which is always a plus.

Meant to get more done, but working on the actual tennis in Ace of Spies took up much of my Choicescript time the last two months.

I’ll leave you with another dispatch from the Beagle. I did some brief sections of important events in Beagle history explained as they would be from a mother to her daughter. What follows is a brief story of envoys from the Beagle setting foot on Mars for the first time.

Dispatch from the Beagle

Once upon a time a long time ago, when our big empty black ball came back to save a big red rock there was a moment that has been etched indelibly in our collective memories. The first time Ty and Jazzy set foot on their future home. They left with trepidations and half a dozen bodyguards after a misunderstanding filled first encounter with the New Martian Republic and the remnants of their fleet and shared a tense flight down with their Martian pilot.

The eight men and women of the Beagle spent the trip gazing out windows at the alien landscape only just beginning to recover from the supernova partly wondering how Mars survived and partly just being amazed by the world itself. In a lot of ways it looked like the desolate world humanity had always imagined it to be, but they knew that in truth it was an oasis. Mars was the one world Allah had saved from his wrath, the last bastion of the humanity that his children from this big black ball would save.

They talked, about the absurdity of it all, about the insanity, and with the pilot just a little about Mars. Trivial historic things like who got to set the first boot out of the shuttle. Corporal Matsuzaka had the seat closest to the door, reality said the anonymous marine should have that honor, but logic and reason said that it was the kind of an honor that deserved a Beagle Captain or Ambassador, Ty or Jazzy. They argued playfully.

Ty was the Captain, his ship, his call, his boot.

Jazzy was the ambassador, the civilian face, and because of logistical issues the voice of the Beagle’s delegation. She also hinted obliquely that it would be best for their relationship if it was her boot.

They both wanted their boot in history until Matsuzaka spoke up. She said they were remarkable anyway, that they’d be remembered anyway, but she asked that it be her boot, not because her boot was closest to the door, but because remarkable people like them have always stood on the shoulders of faceless masses like her marines. Like the technicians down in engineering, unknown soldiers from the dawn of time, she asked to let her boot have its moment in the sun not for her but for all those masses, that there could be an otherwise forgettable name in the history books to represent them all.

Ty and Jazzy looked at each other and nodded. Because of them we know Corporal Kimiko Matsuzaka’s name and a story to go with her poignant lesson. Our big black mostly empty ball works because of millions of faceless minions doing thankless jobs that will be completely forgotten about a few generations after they’re gone, but we can’t exist without them.

The lesson my dear Phoebe is simple. Don’t take them for granted whether you’re one of them or you wind up running the NSR or even the Beagle itself, remember Matsuzaka, because all normal people are remarkable in their own special ways.

Well it looked brief on my word processor anyway.

Thanks for reading, be back hopefully in less than two months.

[Beezlebub]

I just spent hours going through my own morales and philosophies to figure out how I want to approach this game. This is an incredible piece of writing that encourages a great deal of self reflection.

[Nexus_Knight]

[geldar]

This appears to be this section right here:

*label next
*return
*label higuys

Considering “next” is completely empty, the *return isn’t even indented, and “higuys” doesn’t have a call, I’m assuming this is actually just the author saying hi to the readers while reworking the intro. Of course, I could be completely wrong and it could be an actual error. @Justhefax ?

[Empress_Nightmare]

Oi @Justhefax

Both these choices says two boys and a girl…

[Valixon]

:: nudges and grins :: might want to read again lol sorry couldn’t resist

[LavenderEclipse]

No they don’t? One says 2 boys 1 girl and the other says 2 girls one boy.