War of Realities (Redone and Improved)

[species5478]

Well I know of two people who stopped reading because they find the additions too big. They suggest cutting back by half but disagree. I think you should keep doing what you're doing. Don't mind my inability to keep up. Your craft shouldn't be hindered by anything, or anyone. I think it all comes down to personal taste. My mother will read one-third of a 500 page book in one sitting so your writing would be on pace with her tastes. I however, like reading, and writing in bite sized amounts...even with novels, I'll only read one or two chapters, and then save the rest for later. I think for readers here who like writing and reading posts, bite sized amounts are little easier to swallow.

[Maharg67]

Thank you, Species5478. truth is the size now is what is comfortable with me.

 

As for people who find the posts too big, why don't they simply read part of a post, note where they have been and go back to that spot.

 

I will consider matters anyway.

 

27^th

BRAILEE EWER’S AMAZING BASEMENT AND BEYOND

GAINING RESOURCES AND DISCOVERING WONDERS

 

Part 1

 

Sheriff Karen Schenzy did not spend long in that great big basement, itself not really below the Ewers’ house in Arefu, where it would not have fitted, but in a transdimensional pocket of sorts. Instead she returned up the rampway with some robots pulling special carts full of goodies. There were guns, ammo, tools, other equipment and much else.

 

After she was gone, Charlie Jane closed off the door to ‘above’ and then sealed it off in transdimensional terms though she was not sure how she did this. They were no longer linked to Arefu but this would not be permanent.

 

Charlie Jane, alias Calamity Jane, was only sixteen though she had herself looking older. She walked amongst the vehicles and noted that they ranged across historical periods, as if from a museum. Yet she sensed something linked them that was not so obvious. When it came to her, she was surprised.

 

She turned and looked to where Brailee Ewers was gently but firmly ushering her daughter away from a display of devices definitely meant for adults to use and enjoy. The scholar was with the Sister of Metaphysics and Ken was admiring a range of powerful semiautomatic hunting rifles with multiple purpose scopes.

 

The place was a huge treasure trove of goodies, especially by DC Wastelands standards.

 

Part 2

 

Charlie Jane signalled the others to come to her and, some of them reluctantly, they did so. Brailee was not so composed as before, was obviously nervous now. She looked at the various cars with puzzled displeasure.

 

“Did cars like these belong to you?” She asked Brailee. “There is something about this great big room that you remember.”

 

Brailee sighed. “I was one of the many children of President James Patriot Jackson who seduced or forced or just impregnated so many willing women. They say he had, by Doomsday, literally thousands of children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and so on. As a child I lived in his large mansion in what became DC Maryland. There was a huge basement chamber much like this one that I explored. He had a collection of cars like this one there. There were other big chambers also. Then there were his virtual reality simulations of Serenity City, the Cosmos System, the magical realm of Tamriellus, the post-holocaust realm of Planet Fallout, SinCity which was very wicked, Wilderness Survival Adventure Lands and some others.”

 

Brailee looked very puzzled. “Planet Fallout was very much like the world we live in, complete with robots, mutated monsters, ghouls, super-mutants…” She paused in obvious shock before she continued talking. “But the virtual reality game existed way back before Doomsday did. None of this makes sense. Even this chamber does not make sense. Lots of the stuff here is from the DC Wastelands, or like stuff from the DC, and yet it was not in the big chamber I remembered.”

 

Brailee suddenly switched off back to her fantasy realm. She laughed happily and then beamed a smile at everybody. “Time to make a nice meal for everybody. Some deep fried chicken, baked potatoes and corn on the cob dripping with butter will fill our bellies just fine.”

 

She turned and bustled off back to the kitchen.

 

Part 3

 

It made no sense at all, of course, that was a game existing before Doomsday that described conditions existing over two hundred years after Doomsday. Except that not all the details were the same. Apart from Brailee and Ken, who was looking after her as she cooked a meal in the kitchen area, they had gone into the VR-game area, the special VR-exoframes and VR-chairs lined up against one wall. On other walls were consoles, databank towers, robots deactivated in enclosed bays, emergency lockers and, oddly enough, a wall of medieval gear shown in wooden and armaglass display cases. The random oddities of the great chamber and its antechambers somehow seemed normal there.

 

A 3Dwallscreen showed details of each VR-simulation if one wanted. Not all were games. One was Washington DC of 2020. Another was called Zoo of Time. They brought up the Planet Fallout data and studied it carefully. A map came up showing the DC Wastelands. The known major and minor landmarks were all there but there were previously unknown landmarks, knowledge leading to discoveries yet to be made. It was very important data. There were far more VaultTek Vaults than anybody generally knew, more bunkers and the Union of the Subways was bigger and more built up than outsiders knew. They examined maps of other areas such as Pittsburgh, Point Lookout and others.

 

The Ewers Family was going to stay in that place for now, along with the scholar and the Sister of Metaphysics, but the Wastelands Wanderer had special plans. The Ewers simply wanted to enjoy some peaceful quality of life and the other two wished to continue studying that place and the data in it.

 

Nobody went to Serenity City for across the doors was a big sign warning any that it was very dangerous to go there and despite her previous description of the place, Brailee herself did not seem to keen on entering through those doors.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

28^th

TOMKIE ON THE MEGATON WALL

SENSING DANGER IN A BIZARRE FORM

 

Part 1

 

Tomkie could sense the others at a distance, now, who were special, who were sixteen years old like himself. Twins in LifeVault-0101 and twins in Canterbury Commons but also others. There were also neobabies. Like him they had appeared in the US Wastelands at the age of six. Tomkie was one of a pair of twins once. He was sad for two close to him were lost to him though hopefully not for ever. They were not lost to him in all ways. Then there was another, much older, who had returned from space who was also somehow linked to him, a super-soldier.

 

In the dim dawn conditions he stood high on the battlements of the outer wall of Megaton that was actually inside a bigger, more shallow crater known as the Jagged Crater. A mystery that in its own right. The distant boundaries of the Jagged Crater rose up like a wall, a boundary to outsiders, and Observers could be found moving around its fairly flat ridge like top. These Observers, there was never enough of them to truly do their job properly, observed both inside and outside the Jagged Crater. There were three big gaps and two smaller gaps, plus some cave like ways through the walls. All such ways were supposedly mapped and observed safely.

 

Tomkie looked out to the distance where a cluster of jury-rigged but well made structures showed a fringer settlement, small and struggling. Such dotted inside the Jagged Crater since they had failed to find shelter inside Megaton. Most Megatonfolk ignored them as not important. Some wanted to evict them from the Jagged Crater as a security risk to Megaton. Yet some did what they could to assist. The Harrington Family was one of them.

 

It was his sixteenth birthday and he felt his special abilities grow. Now he tried a new trick that was an extension of an old one. He closed his eyes even as Cutiebird, the big tough looking crow, landed on his shoulder to start sentry duty. Then Tomkie was slipping into mindeye mode and was visioning the settlement.

 

He had sensed something was wrong and now he was vindicated in his senses for there were sick fringers lying on the ground, lying slumped on basic beds, lying even as they had fallen. Men, women, children, animals and even the plants.

 

Then he saw the tiny glistening black-grey things crawling over the bodies, things that radiated the opposite of life, things that seemed to suck at life energies by their very nature or ‘antinature’. He would have been more shocked if he did not have the sense, even the vague memories, of meeting such monstrosities before. Not just them but worse.

 

Could he save the life in that settlement? Would those tiny life stealers spread out, travel, to risk others, even Megaton or even beyond the Jagged Crater?

 

Part 2

 

The broken, uneven floor of the Jagged Crater had a fair few fertile areas with mutated plants and even plantimals along with animals. Hunters, gatherers, scavengers went out to get in turn game, wild plant products and hopefully useful junk. Fringers did much of this and other work, bringing it what they could to sell at the Megaton Gateway Trade Outpost outside and one side of the Megaton Main Gate. They were not ripped off but they were not well paid either. From the same place they gained what resources they could in exchange be it bullets, canned food, pristine water or what ever else.

 

He saw them riding horses along the broad dirt road towards Megaton. He had heard whispers of these Sisters Compassionate and Brother Protectors but they had not been seen before in or even anywhere near Megaton. There were eight of them, all in typical Wastelander travelling gear but only the Brother Protectors, one of whom was a woman, who wore armour and carried autorifles, pulselasers or autoshotguns. There were four spare saddle-horses, two packhorses and four sturdy hairless leather skinned horse like rhorses that carried big pannier packs for their size. The rhorses were bigger than the horses, were the size of draft horses of old, of other realms.

 

With out thinking about it, he focused and reached out to the Sister Compassionate who he sensed had a powerful psychic training, experience and ability. He tried to be soft but felt her wince as he fed her a multiple sensory vision of the settlement and what was happening to the people there.

 

Then he was withdrawing. The dark skinned middle aged woman was rubbing her forehead and frowning but she was not angry. Instead she was worried and concerned as she drew her group to a halt and looked towards the small settlement. The group soon split in two as two Sisters Compassionate and two Brother Protectors went onwards to Megaton and the others set out to the troubled fringer settlement. The spare saddle-horses and pack-rhorses all were driven towards Megaton but the two packhorses were taken to the village.

 

Part 3

 

Tomkie had a headache but it was slipping away even as he made his way along the wall to the nearest guard post and the telephone there. Megaton had its own telephone-intercom network that worked well enough for its needs though it was fairly crude and mostly primitive, using old style wires and not fibre-optics. Tomkie himself had helped improve it as he had so many other facets of Megaton.

 

Very soon he was meeting the Sisters of Megaton and Brother Protectors who rode into the big airlock like area between the outer and inner main power-gates of Megaton. They did not seem surprised or doubting as he told them what he had seen with his mindeye. Instead they asked him for assistance. So it was that Tomkie guided them to meet Sheriff Lucas Simms who quietly chatted to the newcomers about what was happening and what needed to be done about it. Heroica and Puss showed up to sit next to their beloved Tomkie and Cutiebird sat on his right shoulder looking not so cute as his name implied he should.

 

Tomkie had a continuing horrible sense that he had experienced the undead before and far worse than the small glistening black-grey things. He also sensed that the undead things, their origin, their threat, were somehow linked to the very origin and mysteries of Doomsday itself but also with President James Patriot Jackson himself.

 

He introduced the Sisters of Compassion to his family and to other useful to know members of Megaton society. He warned them about Colin Moriarty except it seemed they already knew of that man as they did about others in the community, including Tomkie himself. Yes, they were interested in Tomkie but would not say why.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Blue Morphos]

always a joy to read,thank you for sharing your wonderful creativity with us.

[Maharg67]

Thank you, Blue Morphos!

 

29^th

TOMKIE DREAMSCAPING

WITH TWIN AND NEOBABY PLUS OTHERS

 

Part 1

 

It was dreamscaping, a quasireality between real life and normal dreaming. Tomkie practised martial arts with his beloved twin sister, Tamlie, while the neobaby Tumnie, ran around playing with some neopuppies that were puppies that never grew physically bigger. It was a game of chase the ball so that Tumnie always gets it before he gets huffy or sniffy.

 

Tomkie threw a rapid series of punches so fast that the motion was a slight blur. Tamlie easily avoided them, slipped to one side and sent a jab at him that he barely avoided. She signed at end to the practise bout.

 

Then she frowned softly at him. “What is distracting you today?”

 

He sighed. “I think it is time to undo some time tampering. I want you back alive and well, all of you, from the time of your false deaths. This feels right but we need to speak to GreyMaharg about it and I am not sure how to contact him.”

 

Then the strange little man stepped into the clearing and carefully placed his oversized backpack on the ground as if it was quite light. It sank a little into the ground as if quite heavy. He smiled at them. “I come bearing gifts and good news but also some need for compromise. The moment of time smoothing is close but not quite with us. The DarkZiazin who attacked and killed you, he disrupted proper flow of time and events. I have found him in the city of Austin, in the former US State of Nevada. At least I am moving in on him. The clock is set to time down on the time smoothing. Forty-eight hours from now.”

 

The twins bowed from the waist with respect, hands pressed together. Then Tamlie spoke with obvious relief and curiosity. “Compromise?”

 

The strange little man nodded. “This is our matters will change of past events. Tamlie, you did not die but you became very sick, as did poor little Tumnie but not the neopuppies or others. You travelled with Tomkie across the former USA until you reached the DC Wastelands and met the Harringtons but the Harringtons smuggled you into Megaton. They did this because you have had the amber sickness, a less dangerous and contagious variant of the infamous red disease, but one that still stirs irrational fear in people. Only now is the disease vanishing in you and you are starting to show yourself to the people of Megaton. Indeed you were often hidden from strangers in your long journey. This way smoothing out past history should have less impact because you had little direct influence on many events of the journey.”

 

The twins nodded. Tumnie the plumply muscular baby figure wandered over to smile hopefully up at GreyMaharg, rubbing his tummy with thoughts of lovely, tasty snacks. The living god smiled down at him and lightly dropped a small suckgum lolly into the small hands before giving each neopuppy a small quasimeat snack.

 

Part 2

 

Tomkie sighed. “Well, dad, I hope you stay for a nice picnic.”

 

He nodded. “Of course. I have never really away you, you know that.”

 

So they had a picnic and GreyMaharg gave them some special gifts, all of them, even the neopuppies and others that came to the clearing. The sleepy old tough woman and her companion, the mother dog. Cutiebird the crow, Slithers the snake, Puss the cat and Heroica the dog also came, of course.

 

Then came the shimmering figures of others and neobots, false robots that looked like double sized eyebots with retractable telescoping limbs on front, back, each side, top and bottom. All the limbs were now retracted along with the manipulators other devices at the end of them.

 

Others also came to join Tamlie, Tomkie and Tumnie and their animal companions.

 

From LifeVault-0101 came Aarie, Aaron and Appie.

 

From Canterbury Commons came AshlyJo, MaryJo and BabyJo along with animal companions.

 

From the Patriot Republic on Central Patriot Island came Boris, Ivan and Dina along with animal companions.

 

From VirtualVault-0112 and Tranquillity Town, came Winona and Chaske along with little Nizhoni, all of them having Sioux blood and names. VirtualVaults were real enough but their dwellers were always in special forms of virtual reality, their bodies in specialised VR-capsules or VR-capsulechairs. Winona and Chaske were in the latter.

 

From Raven Rock, as forcefully adopted EagleEnclave children, came Citizena, Citizenori and Citizenbabe. Their pre-Enclave names were Jasmine, Jade and Pebble as given to them… that they could not quite remember.

 

Then came the ‘thirteenth’, the Lone Wanderer, who had never settled down, who often transformed his-her nature, who was often more than one in more than one place. With him-her came companions.

 

She came as a woman this time, tall, sultry, youthful but older appearing than her actual sixteen years of age. She wore combat fatigues, body-armour and other gear of the Security Mercenary Corporation, the SecuMercs. Their mercenaries provided security guards, under cover security agents and other services through out much of the DC Wastelands but they did not contract themselves to organised crime or a fair few others.

 

There also other animal companions, sparkling energy secondaries who had not yet come fully into solid existence, whose time had yet to come but which was fast approaching, and an array of others. Neobots, androids, robots, a deathclaw and much else. Amongst them were humans.

 

Part 3

 

When somebody died, when a positronic brained robot perished, in service to the Thirteen they ended up in the dreamscaping but also in a special place in OrbisSanctuary called OrbisHub because it was at the centre of OrbisSanctuary.

 

For the first time they were all together in dreamscaping and they would never do so again except on a rare occasions for it was dangerous for this to happen. Yet it was important this time as they mingled, as they met each other and the others there, as they had a picnic and talked. Much was resolved but just as many questions were answered, many questions arose that were not answered.

 

They were the children, special offspring of two living-gods and a living-goddess but they were not straight forwardly of the same nature for there were also other genetic inheritances in them. One father was GreyMaharg but the other was the DarkZiazin while the mother, she was known often as the GreeningGoddess.

 

Soon they would start to truly start to carry out their full purpose of being.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Keanumoreira]

Well done my friend, splendid job. :yes:

[Fifoo]

Few... It tooks a long time for me to read your story, sorry for the late feedback. Well, it's really an impressive and incredibly hard work you've done in there. Remains me when I discovered the great LOTR from the Master J.R. Tolkien - a masterpiece with a complete and reinvented world, a richness of details, beyond quality - tooks so much time to read it entirely.

 

Just one minor thing - aesthetically I find the text color a little "harsh" to my taste. Otherwise nothing to say than : :thumbsup:

[Maharg67]

Thank you, Keanumoreira and Fifoo for you positive feedback. Fifoo I will change the colourisation back to normal.

 

!?

HAPPENING EVENTS

TOO MUCH GOING ON

 

AMELIA SKYHEART

Amelia Skyheart continued to scout the DC Wastelands in her stealth scoutplane when she was not resting in the DC Citadel Airbase or at some outpost with a make-shift Short Take Off And Landing capable airstrip. Sometimes she would courier items and even a small enough and light enough person in very light gear.

 

ANTAGONIZER

The strange baby girl was taken by the giant spitter-ants to a great underground complex of caverns, cave tunnels, semi-open human made structures and one big abandoned bunkerplex. But there she was met by something new, strange and in only relatively few numbers, something that worshipped her from the start and who not only controlled the spitter-ants but who had sent them to collect the baby. They had no care for the settlers, indeed they hated all humans, even the ones who had created them.

 

ASHWORTH TWINS (AND APPIE)

There was trouble when the High Overseer killed the young man of an elite fool but what was surprising that many Elite leaders supported the High Overseer rather than attacking him. The father of the dead young man did not openly support or attack the Commoner who was Amata’s father.

The father of the twins reluctantly spoke of his creation of a duplicate clone that had been apparently very successful in being him while he snuck away to explore some forgotten forbidden parts of LifeVault-0101.

The poems from Beatrice asked them to do some work for her ‘clients’ whom she never identified. She wanted the construction of certain very small but intricate, sophisticated bits of computer hardware. The twins would get either creds or something else good in return.

 

DEATHCLAW FAMILY

In Old Olney the deathclaw family operated peacefully enough for such creatures. The parents would take turns hunting for hornlizards, molerats, radrats and other prey in the territory granted to them. The scout handclaw became accepted and sometimes he would visit with food, pristine water or even small, tough toys for the cubs to play with. He played with the cubs and scratched behind the ears of the adults while they thrummed with pleasure.

 

ESCAPEES IN CANTERBURY COMMONS

The twins discussed matters quietly with the leader of the Sisterhood of Compassion Outpost at Canterbury Commons three times. The twins and their companions, including their new one, did work around the outpost and the twins helped in special ways. Even the horse assisted by pulling a cart around the growing outpost either giving rides to children or carrying goods or even wounded or sick folk. Mozi’Kelly went to see his infamous criminal family who rejected the changes in him except for his young sister who was a misfit amongst the Angersons. When Mozi’Kelly left the family home for the last time he took his sister, two hunting dogs, a horse, his belongings, her belongings and some things that he smuggled out. Yet he had given his family all his promised inheritance, the Angersons had a powerful twisted code of honour that they stuck to, along with a big bag of EIDs as coins, notes and cards.

 

FROM SPACE

At Spacestation Freedom, L5, the Spacer Unionate and the Mars Federation continued with diplomatic negotiations while the DC Watcher and Captain Kirk started to work together to find out what was happening in the DC and what was causing the increasingly powerful time-space disturbances.

Ryker and his Away Team had landed on the island of Palmsio in time to rescue it from invaders. They were then able to start negotiations with the locals to form the island into a Mars Federation colony.

But even as this happened out of mid-air came a large group of settlers sent all the way from the Nevada Desert by a strange figure named GreyMaharg. At once the leader of the newcomers, one Rocky Bronco, began trying to take over the island. He was at once crushed in his ambitions but did not take this well.

 

GREYMAHARG #1

Living god or something else? He continued travelling across Nevada, pausing only to deal with a large group of quasiraiders known as the Steel’Biters, to convert them into followers and to continue travelling now with them. Steel’Biters were once part of the infamous Raiders of Steel who were a lost faction, an offshoot, of the Brotherhood of Steel. Now they followed the rule of one known as the Lord of Steel who had other Factions of Steel supporting his insanely brilliant rule. Slowly but steadily he was defeating his enemies, was conquering Austin and was diverting captive resources, including slaves and robots, to his grand program.

 

GREYMAHARG #0 and #2

In OrbisSanctuary he joined briefly with GreyMaharg #0, acting with him as identical twins. OrbisSanctuary was a beautiful world based on the Earth. It was a globe turning inside a vast sphere chamber and even had a copy of the moon orbiting it. Yet most of it was wilderness. It had many other features.

Humans dwelt there along with others brought from the Earth and they dwelt in reasonable harmony with each other and the world but they were confined to a great floating island in the middle of that other Earth’s Atlantic Ocean.

 

IRONSIDE MERCENARIES AND ALLIES

The Ironside Mercenaries kept combating the raiders hammering westward from the DC Islands. Battle was vicious but the Ironsides and their allies did most of the killing while the raider bodies piled up. They were supported by two brigades of Brothers of Steel, a mixture of local militia and by Sisterhood of Steel aircraft.

When the poorly disguised Patriot Guards, from the Patriot Republic, struck they were well trained and equipped but not so experienced as their enemies. Nor were there enough of them to make much of a difference.

 

LUCKY EDDIE, SEARF

EddieJo met the rescued settlers, bringing some of his companions with him while others remained at the relay tower site. The arrival at that site had been no accident. Now he was calling in his other allies, a most powerful and deadly one but one new to the DC Wastelands that had reacted overly strong to the raider attack. His people indicated to him when the Sister of Steel stealth scoutplane came overhead. There was something very familiar about the design of the small, sleek, fast aircraft. Other SEARF began to emerge from the thing hidden quite deep beneath the ground, the thing that had returned him to his home world after two centuries local time had passed.

 

KNIGHT CAPTAIN GALLOWS

Knight Captain Gallows kept scouting the DC Wastelands along with two lesser ranking comrades. He focused on Lamplight Mountain and yet the closer the squad got to the goal, the harder the going went and the more obstacles appeared.

 

ORDERS OF STEEL

The Hellion Five returned three times with equipment, supplies and reinforcements. Then it was based permanently at the DC Citadel. Faster, lighter aircraft acted as couriers between the DC Citadel and Orders of Steel in other places of the former USA.

Field Marshal Rear Admiral, the commander of those who had already been in the DC Citadel, many of whom had been there since Doomsday, seemed reluctant to help the newcomers to explore the depths of the fortress. He and his people tended to keep to their part of the DC Citadel and not want the newcomers to go there. Field Marshal Rear Admiral seemed reluctant to meet with newcomer leaders except for Elder Owyn Lyons.

 

PATHFINDERS OF THE WAY

These talented, experienced and brave Sisters of the Way kept on guiding people through the Weirding Zones of the DC Wastelands.

Elder Mother Sarren’Wa of the Sisterhood of Pathfinders went to talk with Elder Owyn Lyons at the DC Citadel. Yet she also had other strong reasons to go there.

 

PROFESSOR GENIUSSTEIN

The professor continued work on Project was named Project Secretly Nameless Project, or the PSNP. Then he launched a series of special lectures.

 

TOMKIE (MEGABOY)

The fringer settlement was investigated by the newly arriving Sisters of Compassion in the Jagged Crater. At once they quarantined the small jury-rigged settlement and called for assistance of various kinds from Megaton. Reluctantly the assistance was giving and the mayor ranted, raved about the useless waste of resources, his reputation sinking further with every word.

Tomkie felt his powers grow and the emergence of a new, exotic ability.

Then time was smoothed, a past meddling with time was reversed, and with him were now Tamlie and Tumnie, twin sister and neobaby. The Harrington Family now had a new perception of the past, as did a few others, such as Doctor Church and Moira Brown who knew of the secretly hidden girl and neobaby with their odd illness. The carefully altered past did not just feel real, it was real.

 

WASTELANDER WANDERER, CHARLIE JANE (ALIAS CALAMITY JANE)

She staid with the Ewers, the Sister of Metaphysics and the scholar in the strange transdimensional basement chamber for some time despite her plans for departure. For there were more odd discoveries in that place that kept her there, important odd discoveries.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited July 14, 2010 by Maharg67

[Fifoo]

Thanks Maharg67, but it wasn't necessary to put the colours on normal state, just try an other when the chapters are longer. Thus far I must say that your work is a good one and on top of that, very creative.

[gormonk]

verry good, me likeing verry much, a hint to those who cannot read the entire poast in one sitting coppy the txt over to notepad