Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

[LordMelvin]

Damn fickle things, muses.

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The fickleness of muses is why techniques like the old pulp detective standby of 'when you get stuck, have a couple of goons (or just grandfather) rough up the main character and threaten further harm in a clue-and-motivation inducing fashion' work so well.
Or as Chandler is credited with phrasing it, "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." It may not work directly every single time, but it's usually at least a good way to kick your muse into figuring out who is showing up armed and which way they're pointing the gun...

 

[litaispe]

Instant mass-knowledge acquisition and retcon effects common in CYOA stuff is horribly toxic for story telling. It is ultra-hard mode for anything longer than a few thousand words.

My comfort zones, as near as I'm self-aware of them (which ain't 100%) seem to be adventure themed stories focused on small parties, and also PG-13 romance (at least if the reaction to my attempted otome draft snippets in my snippets thread or the MC/Amy Madison romance in my most recent Jumpchain on SB was any indicator). So, how the hell do I combine that with a tech-wank fic?

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Have you watched any of the Stargate tv series? It is 18 seasons of 20-22 episodes a season of basically what you are looking for.

Boiling it down to modern terms;
A small team of explorers use a non-reproducible portal device to explorer strange new worlds, gather allies and exotic resources And then return to mostly safe home to 'end' an adventure, and have downtime while the technological progress meter ticks away.

The portal mechanic provides character agency, as they can choose when to use it and where to go. It also frees the author from needing to consider geography, since each of the set-pieces is distinct.

The safe-zone mechanic is an important, and it gives an area to have guarantied downtime without requiring to explain why one geographical area is magically safe and yet so close to sources of danger. Characters can still bring trouble home, which provides a reason they don't just loot everything and travel light.

The non-reproducible part of the portal device is something of a critical detail as it reduces the need to give clarke-tech to the protagonists or any antagonists.

Stargate wasn't without its fault, but it had a robust mechanic for telling a large set of somewhat disconnected stories that can also support larger story arcs.

 

[drakensis]

Thank you for writing what you have so far and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

 

[Leafy503]

seem to be adventure themed stories focused on small parties, and also PG-13 romance

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Don't forget that said character has to be in the "Good alignment." Writing evil or even morally ambiguous MC's is.. well it's gonna be a rough time.

So, how the hell do I combine that with a tech-wank fic?

... without visiting a major superhero setting, because Marvel and DC invite endless fan arguments and I am not going back to Earth-Bet, that place drives me insane.

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Maybe something that is episodic in nature? Buffy the Vampire Slayer perhaps? That way you can sorta limit how fast the tech is introduced by going by the eventual baddie introductions.

 

[Hidden One]

What I'm doing now is brainstorming the same thing I was doing when I started "Forging Ahead"... figuring out what the fuck else to write to keep my creative juices from getting too flabby while I waited for a specific fic on long-term hiatus to hopefully rise from the dead.

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How about something silly? For example a crossover of two settings you like but were one has a lot less depth and basically would just add minimal plot, locations and characters to your options?
Otherwise... I often come back to attempting to put something together for a tv-series box set or book series that I own and enjoy. Sadly, there is much fail in those attempts for me.

 

[blackshadow111]

... I was going to post something, but this is steadily turning into a Celestial Forge discussion thread and that doesn't seem appropriate.

Which reminds me of what would be nice, ie: a Celestial Forge discussion thread. Does anyone know one? Not BCF, just one for the concept.

 

[ryune]

... I was going to post something, but this is steadily turning into a Celestial Forge discussion thread and that doesn't seem appropriate.

Which reminds me of what would be nice, ie: a Celestial Forge discussion thread. Does anyone know one? Not BCF, just one for the concept.

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Well, there is the Celestial Forge Discord. But on the subject of a CF thread... I am not familiar with one specifically for it.

 

[blackshadow111]

Well, there is the Celestial Forge Discord. But on the subject of a CF thread... I am not familiar with one specifically for it.

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The discord is kinda monofocused on the worst of the CF stories, though. That was why I left it.

 

[Tazered]

cliffc999 just throwing ideas out but how about a mix of ideas and rather than an abduction have an Eminence in Shadow poke poke the Vilani or some other alien races into a hostile posture as a way to see what Sophia would do with her CF. Kind of a Tanya the Evil situation. Alternatively you could go the route of a not-so-accidental jump-9 accident stranding the character and a team in another setting, the future or the past of the current one?

 

[Zerak]

So after I stalled on that I listened to the excellent suggestions that were being made after I pulled the failed chapter 8, and tried to implement them, but when I spent the past couple of days getting zero inspiration on so much as 'designing a regular NPC for Sophia to play off of' (it was going to be her new bodyguard, because she was getting to where a security detail for their new golden goose was a thing)... well, when you can't touch the slightest bit of inspiration for so much as creating a sidekick, that's when you know your muse is giving up.

Fuck it, I really want to make a tech-wank fic actually work sometime given that this is my third failed attempt after "A Ghost of a Chance" and "The Light of the Forge", but I am going to have to figure out how the hell I do that before I actually do that. And given that I am a classic seat-of-the-pants writer (every time I have attempted to create a full story outline before posting the first chapter online, I haven't come up with anything except such fragmentary puree of shit I never tried to post it at all), well, I'm going to need to figure out what kind of story best plays to my strengths instead of trying to write directly into my weaknesses.

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You could try your hand at writing a quest. Be it here or on https://fiction.live you don't even need to make it with a lot of roles or even give the readers that many choices. Just allow readers to decide a few aspects of the story.

Alternatively you can write a new story with zero quest elements on fiction live and the live chat might help your muse. Or write a story where the audience only gets to roll rather than make choices. Up to you what you do.

The discord is kinda monofocused on the worst of the CF stories, though. That was why I left it.

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Also all CF after v1 tend to be be too large and have things that ruin the whole point of being in another setting retuned than a jumpchain. Primarily the aspect of forge that gives you a lot of companions of the one that gives you in world recourses like factories. kind of defeats the point of building yourself up in a single world.

 

[TroyX]

Shame to hear, cliff But if you're stuck, then you're stuck.

Something that's worked for me is to deliberately write shorter stories. Either they cover a shorter span of narrative time, or I gloss over things to get to the end quickly. It might not be as good a story as otherwise, but it gets done.

Regardless, I hope you can find something that works for you. I know your difficulty with stories, particularly tech-wank stories, is frustrating to you, but I'm enjoying your explorations nonetheless.

 

[WaNoMatsuri]

There is also the option of doing something LordRoustabot termed "Trinkets and… Specialities(?)" where you can't buy anything costing more than 200 cp. so it's not as op.

 

[Vrenze]

There is also the option of doing something LordRoustabot termed "Trinkets and… Specialities(?)" where you can't buy anything costing more than 200 cp. so it's not as op.

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Problem there is that a lot of sub 200 choices are broken as fuck because some people couldn't understand scaling while writing jump docs. Or some settings were THAT broken.

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

I'm not going to suggest anything, Cliff. Because that's probably annoying you at this point.

Instead, I'm just going to take my hat off to you this New Years Eve, and thank you for what you have given us. If you want suggestions you can ask, and the infinite amount of monkeys at typewriters that is my Imagination can probably suggest some stupid and pointless ideas.

But, thanks for the ride. And whatever you do next year and in the beyond? I'll have fun reading it.

 

[Vrenze]

So small team of adventurers that allows for tech talk. Three properties jump out to me, one if which has already been mentioned: Stargate, X-Com, and Ghostbusters.

Stargate I think makes for an interesting mechanic to play with, that being the 'Gate itself. It could be used as the method of activating whatever ability you want to play with a la you previous CF MC actively having to meditate to access the CF gift giver. So maybe going through the gate triggers a 1 in X roll every so often to see if they trigger an II charge or connect to the forge or access some gamer/jumpchain menu. The setting already has high INT people like Carter and Rodney so your technobabble won't be too far out and the Ori are a sufficiently deity level threat to have as a late game antagonist to say nothing of what the Ancients would bitch and moan and "totes not interfere" about.

X-com is similar -ish in that it allows for a reasoned escalation of threat. Psi-chambered could be a one off power up/recharge. For example you start with the usual 10 charges of Inspired Inventor but they don't recharge at all until roughly "mid-late game" where the MC undergoes psi testing where they get 10 more, never to recharge again and "psichambers have been tested to be 100% fatal on re-use as far as we can tell, we can't risk you under current circumstances"

Ghostbusters is fun, monster of the week but easily scaled to big threats on arcs. Potential world spanning or just local team of OCs handling local legends and working with the tech.

All three allow for interesting, reasoned individuals to interact with each other.


Oh also Star Trek which until recently has been "reasonable mature people deal with things reasonably unless the other side really doesn't want to in which blow that MF up" the show. It practically codified if not invented the phrase "technobabble". Also let's say you went with an Insert with Inventor. 10 charges, outside spiking into a speciality, using the original(?) Non-worm interpretation of 1 charge being 1 year study/practical use, 7-10 charges would get you to just above baseline Fed education cadet. Granted you'd have to deal with issues like their phobia of "enhanced humans" and either pop into DS9 or VOY to not get immediately S31'd away. Even then VOY would have temptation to drop you on a "suitable world" with Q backed "this is a test of humanity, you cannot maroon this one and in reward I'll smooth/shorten your trip a touch"

Are you familiar with the well done xcom/Stargate cross XSGCOM , Cliff? One of the few well done and considered fusions I've seen.

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

X-Com

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If we're really going to talk ideas that are never going to happen, of a setting that needs to be broken with tech powers?

Cliff, you can ignore this. But I need to get it out of my head.

X-Com/Nu-X-Com Fusion. That is, it's the World and Setting of the Original X-Com Games, but with the Characters and backstories of Nu-X-Com just moved back to the 90s. Because the original X-Com was a meatgrinder from hell due to a few programming oops on the hardness settings. While, if you use Nu-X-Com for characters?

Well, regardless of whether you used it for tech powers or not, say using some other power mechanic to break the sheer, "WE'RE SCREWED!" Chorus in Latin? An X-Com/Nu-X-Com Fusion allows for such a setting.

 

[cliffc999]

There's a lot of settings I don't know well enough to write, and people are naming many of them.

 

[Domino]

Krogan Inspired Inventor mercenary in Mass Effect. Build yourself up a team of space misfits and explore the galaxy in an era before the reaper threat exists.

Or, you could write a human MC and set the story post-reaper war, letting you be instrumental in picking up the pieces of the galaxy and giving you largely a free hand when it comes to world building.

Edit - hell, you can just grab Atlas from Power Creator Xenon, I know you love that variant of Inspired Inventor

 

[Webzayne]

There's just something about these types of fics that don't want to be written, I suppose. Powerwanks will always eclipse the setting, and then it becomes about what's left. CFv2 is too powerful to make a cohesive story with, v3 did come and it cleaned up a bit... But, CF has serious scaling issues and only works with settings that also scale up. You're really only left with a handful of large settings, with Star Wars being the only one I haven't seen a CF tried in I believe. Empire building is nice in theory, but good luck juggling that with the instability something like CF offers, while trying to juggle sociopolitical affairs of foreign intergalactic civilizations(whilst giving the MC and gang enough screen time). One man isn't a mountain and all that. I wouldn't even say it's a failure of your 'muse', there's just little that can be done sufficiently without monumental planning, and even then it's a question of if it'd still be fun to write. A story like this isn't an exercise, I'd say it's a massive commitment that you definitely made a good choice in dropping.


The only option I think to get anything out of these types of wank fics, is to prevent omni-capability(perfect generalist, ultra-capable nonsense), it's when that point is reached that most of these fics die because it's functionally impossible to write. Perhaps a tech specialization that can't be breached and only worked around, the conflict of circumstance would definitely make things more interesting. CYOAs and such forth are all workable, they just shouldn't be overestimated or treated as powerful as they are at face value. The OP protag fics that survive all have a gimmick or downside around to keep things interesting, whether it be a time limit, social incapability, an incompatible setting, etc. But on the other hand, I also can't remember if I've ever read a fic based on a Cyoa meet an actual conclusion that wasn't dropping, hiatus, or that was anywhere near 'satisfactory'. Actually, it's been a long time since I've read anything with a 'good' conclusion, or a conclusion at all. Ah well, whatever, well wishes and all that jazz, happy new year's.

 

[Vrenze]

also can't remember if I've ever read a fic based on a Cyoa meet an actual conclusion that wasn't dropping, hiatus, or that was anywhere near 'satisfactory'. Actually, it's been a long time since I've read anything with a 'good' conclusion, or a conclusion at all. Ah well, whatever, well wishes and all that jazz, happy new year's.

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I cannot for the life of me remember the 2-3 names of the ones I've read that concluded at least semi-decently but atleast one of those was almost purely from various outside perspectives.

Also SW not having been touched is a little weird because some of the stories told about the Great Old Empires like the Rakata Empire almost sound like an amped up, renegade SI's empire that went to shit.

 

[Leafy503]

There's a lot of settings I don't know well enough to write, and people are naming many of them.

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That's to be expect since you don't have a definite list of settings put out that your are comfortable with doing.
Heck, even I'm just going by your Jumpchain chapters. Which include Buffy, Harry Potter, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, Dahak Chronicles, Terminator, Fallout, Etc.

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

Buffy

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You know, if you wanted to go with the classics? Halloween fic where someone dresses up as Tony Stark/Antonia Stark and we get a MCU Tony/Rule 63!MCU Tony.

That way you get tech wank, but not comic level bullshit, while you still have someone doing stuff. I mean, if you limited it to a point in the Early MCU for that Tony/Toni too? Like say Second Iron Man film, and the armour is the Briefcase armour that while cool is rather limited?

Then you can limit it. And depending on whether you want that version of The MCU to have it's own version of Buffy as a TV Program that a sick!Version of whatever Stark is picked who watched Buffy on a Episode Marathon? You can also have an outside point of view.

Say, if you want to be mean, Cordelia as Antonia Stark. While you can add in other tech and other threats from the Halloween Event just not being limited to empowering one person.

 

[kartal]

Some pretty good ideas being thrown out for cliff's next fic, but does anyone know if anyone has done a Dresden/Gamer fic? Cliff does power creep really well and in a way that doesn't ruin my immersion into his fics. I just want to see him do a Harry Dresden that got the gamer ability at a young age, is low-key and (unknown to everyone) one of the absolutely most powerful beings in his reality. A story like that interspersed with a lot of other people's point of view like cliff did with the genius patrol meeting would be a very entertaining read I bet!

 

[Leafy503]

Harry Dresden

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The problem here is that your throwing out fandoms that cliffc999 has a surface understanding in, so doing a whole setting in it would be moot.

 

[JKingSniper]

Sad but understandable.
Hope to see future tech wank fics though once you've prepared

 

[Bananacue123]

This should have the "female protagonist" tag, what a waste of time

 

[Vealie]

For a techwank fic you could try The Glow, the Intelligence ability to get the answer to any question (you might not like the answer or ask the right questions) with the example of a new theory of gravity...

Well it lets you go techwank without hitting the ridiculous setting breaking stuff of Tinker of Fiction, Celestial Forge etc. but you'd need more of an R&D cycle to get from fiat power to propositional knowledge to engineering to manufacturing.

e.g. Star Wars where you can learn the principles underlying the Star Forge, how to design more useful & autonomous droids that wont rebel etc but for whatever reason supcom fabrication techniques, massfab & energy generation methods don't work.

 

[cliffc999]

In 1943, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation set up its Advanced Development Projects office in response to the appearance of the German Me-262 jet fighter plane. Drawing their initial complement from the team of engineers who had already produced the successful P-38 Lightning long-range fighter and the droppable fuel tank, the ADP managed to design and build a workable prototype for the XP-80, the first US jet fighter, in only 143 days. Although the F-80 production model did not see widespread line service until the Korean War, the success of the ADP made it a permanent institution at Lockheed - a highly select and secretive group of hand-picked engineers and scientists, given abundant resources and encouraged to run amok with minimal oversight by the design bureaucracy. They were soon named "The Skunk Works" in a reference taken from the 'Lil' Abner' newspaper comic strip of the time, and over the next several decades successfully designed and built the U-2 and SR-71 high-altitude reconaissance aircraft and the F-117, F-22, and F-35 stealth fighters. Their engineering legend put the term 'skunk works' into general usage for any high-level working group given a high degree of internal autonomy and minimal oversight from the rest of the organization to work on secret projects.

And just like the Americans' Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, the name and legacy of the Skunk Works had also been inherited by the Terran Confederation and was now currently bestowed upon DARPA's top-secret multi-disciplinary R&D facility at Ganymede Base.

Achievement Unlocked: Where The Magic Happens
(Successfully Get Reassigned To The Skunk Works)
Reward: 100 CP

Heartened at the unexpected CP reward, especially since I'd tapped myself out buying the Black Computer, I immediately re-opened the Celestial Forge's interface and picked out an item that I'd already had my eye on but hadn't picked up yet. Now that I had 100 spare CP again and was about to embark on a new phase of my life where it would be most useful, it was time to pick up PhDs (Fantastic Four).

I was admittedly courting a minor existential crisis by taking this, but Genius Patrol or no Genius Patrol I needed to properly arm myself for any upcoming conflicts with the R&D bureaucracy. Like an athletics team, showing potential might get you drafted but you had to actually put up the winning #'s to get paid the big money. And while I wasn't really concerned about my personal wealth, especially given the ultracapacitor tech I'd just sold, I was definitely going to be in some serious competition for research budgets with whatever scientists were already older and more established here and I'd need every edge I could.

And so, I picked up the item that not only promised to add several more PhDs' worth of specialized expertise to my knowledge base but also to make my records and backstory show that I'd always had sufficient academic and professional credentials for any expertise I actually possessed, regardless of source. Which was frightening to think about, in the sense that the Celestial Forge apparently had the power to retroactively edit time and space and my own personal history in order to insert things that had never actually happened, but... as uncomfortable as the thought made me feel, the fact remained that I'd been violating causality as I'd known it ever since I'd first started tapping a mysterious otherworldly force for knowledge and abilities from outside reality. Now I'd just have to more openly confront that that was what I was doing.

In limited doses, at least.

So instead of arriving at the Skunk Works as a precocious young college student with some very promising theoretical math and a noteworthy commercial patent, I arrived as some type of absurd young genius who'd somehow discreetly obtained multiple PhDs in only several years, without that coming to notice until I chose to reveal it. Which had a definite affect on how much support I'd be given in my first project, because if there was one thing that people with high-end academic credentials believed in with all their heart it was that having enough high-end academic credentials was the essential proof of smartness. Which... well, I'd been starting to learn that when you were trying to persuade other people to do something then what you could get them to believe was true was often far more important than what was objectively true.

Admittedly, I was just a wee bit nervous about how Genius Patrol was going to figure this one, but one of the several reasons I'd taken this item was to test just how far the Celestial Forge could go in making these kinds of things happen. If they didn't react like they'd just had their own memories and case studies on me edited, then I'd know more about the extent of the Forge's powers. And if they did react like it? Well, then I'd have to come clean... and while I didn't want to do that at all, if I ended up needing to do so then I'd want to have that happen as early in the process as possible.

"So, Lieutenant. You have how many PhDs?" Rear Admiral Alexis Davenport, commanding officer of the Skunk Works, asked me with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

"After the first one, they were willing to accept complete-at-your-own-pace remote coursework and dissertation-only for most of the others." I deflected. In actuality I'd never attended a graduate school or written a doctoral dissertation in my life, but my latest purchase from the Forge had promised that it would materialize records and backstories as necessary to explain my degrees, and it had certainly delivered.

"I know that the youngest person to obtain a doctoral degree since the 20th century was only 15 years old, but the only other people to obtain as many graduate degrees as you have were perpetual students for decades. You're twenty-one." she said incredulously.

I honestly didn't have an answer for this one that didn't feel awkward, so I just nodded.

"And you have total recall, it says here." she said, glancing back down at her desktop holodisplay. "Between that and all your credentials, it's no wonder that you've been able to cross-reference so many different scientific disciplines."

"I think that's why I've only recently started to pick up speed with my inventing." I said, happy that she'd given me the opportunity to start spinning this in a certain direction. "One of the primary bottlenecks in R&D is that normally, no one person can know or apply everything relevant to a particular problem if some of the necessary pieces of knowledge aren't part of their normal specialty. Only I'm a... general specialist?"

"Is that how you originally got the inspiration for your FTL communication hypothesis?" she asked me.

"Yes ma'am." I said. "If you start from McAndrew's fourth equation and then cross-reference that with-"

She immediately cut off my impending flow of ascended high math nerdery with an upraised palm. "I read the precis." she said. "More importantly, so did several of the other jumpspace physicists around here. But however promising the theory looks, of course it needs testing. How soon can you have a prototype design for us to look at?"

"I worked it out while jumping back from Nusku." I smiled at her, and hauled out my Black Computer, morphed into a portacomp, and beamed the relevant file into her desktop system.

"Hmm." she said, looking at it. "According to your rough estimate, we're looking at enough expense here to almost pay for a Crockett-class' entire jumpdrive."

"The production model will be notably cheaper, once we work out all the quirks." I said. "But yes, the initial prototype is going to be a bit of a project."

"Indeed." she nodded. "Still, the ultracapacitor speaks well of your talent for practical application as well as theory, and you come highly recommended. Spend the rest of today finishing your in-processing, and can you have your presentation ready to show the review board by 1100 tomorrow?"

"Yes ma'am." I agreed, having already written it at the same time I was busy finishing my preliminary schematics.

"Then if we can clear the final hurdle, you'll get your budget and your lab. And then, we'll see what happens."

* * * * *​

"Damn, it's all just flowing together." Dr. Saunders, the Skunk Works' leading jumpspace physicist, said with a commendable attempt at masking his envy.

"Sometimes you just get... fortunate." I temporized, realizing at the last minute that crediting my victory over him to mere luck would only piss him off even further.

When I'd originally gotten the Celestial Forge I'd been like a child with a new toy. Being able to perform at a vastly higher level of ability than I ever had before made me feel powerful, feel important. Even if I was capable of exercising strategic patience if I exerted enough willpower - witness my career track to date - I still was full of eager anticipation at the point when I would start being famous, where everyone would start praising my genius.

And now I was finally starting to reach that point and I realized that I only felt embarrassed. Because it wasn't really my genius at all they were praising, was it?

Case in point, my new lab partner. Dr. Saunders was 37, and had had his career marked and mentored from childhood onwards just as carefully as the Genius Patrol had marked mine. Early graduation from secondary-ed. Early National Honors on his CAT exams, but with actual entry into Public Service held back until he reached age 18. Bachelors' degree completed before he even hit his Public Service draft. Double service credit and early release, just like I'd earned mine. Two PhDs before he was twenty-five, credited with refining the Vilani jump-2 drive for even greater fuel efficiency than they could manage before he was thirty. He'd been assigned to the problem of deep-space jump breakout - finding a way to plot a hyperspace jump that didn't have to terminate in a gravity well, so that a ship with extra fuel tanks could cross the 3-parsec gulf in the stars surrounding Confederation space by doing a double-hop - and had been making noteworthy progress towards that end before I'd come along.

And now a girl slightly over half his age was about to entirely upstage him, and would soon enough render the project he'd spent the last two years working on entire unnecessary... and unlike him, neither her brilliance nor her accumulated knowledge were due to her own efforts. I suppose that the accident of birth that gave him his raw intelligence could be equated to the quirk of fate that granted me access to the Celestial Forge, but all of my alleged genius and insight into jumpspace theory was from my having taken Ragnarok Proofing and PhDs. A few achievements, some spent CP, and voila! I was now being welcomed and feted as the Confederation's most brilliant researcher, but what I actually was was a cosmic stenographer. The Forge was doing it all for me, all I was doing was taking credit for other peoples' work.

I'd always felt mildly scornful when I'd read fiction about heroes who had 'imposter syndrome' - you were getting it done, so did it really matter that your gimmes were coming from the plot instead of from the normal way? The people you helped were still helped, right? The bad guys you beat were still beat?

And now I was seeing the problem from the other side and... well, younger me was still correct about that bit. What really mattered to everyone else was that the work was getting done, not about how or why. But older me was coming to realize that even if your internals didn't necessarily matter to those around you, they always still mattered to you.

"Isn't that the truth." Dr. Saunders replied to me manfully, and I pushed my woolgathering aside and got back to work.

Since I'd made sure that one of my new PhDs would be in jumpspace physics, I had all the information I needed to begin seamlessly integrating Battletech jumpdrive tech into our own native version. The actual nuts and bolts of building a jump-9 ship would still need a lot of ancillary details to be worked out, not least of them being somehow figuring a way to shrink the whole damn setup down into something of a more reasonable size, but my first project was of course the FTL communication method I'd promised that I could build, and given that I already had the full schematics for one the only thing I needed was to take enough lab time - and go through enough of the steps myself where other people could see it - that it would appear to be a process of invention, not just copying things from a set of mental notes.

The Hyper-Pulse Generator, or HPG, was the primary method of interstellar communication in Battletech. It was a variant of K-F drive technology that was used to create an artificial 'jump point' instead of pushing a large mass through an already-existing jump point. Using a giant installation the size of a small radio telescope, it fired an electromagnetic signal into jumpspace where it would omnidirectionally propagate to be picked up by every HPG receiver within range. They were also extremely large and expensive, and required equally large and expensive receivers. A 'short-range portable' HPG was one that weighed only twelve tons and required an entire Battlemech just to move.

So for my first FTL comms demonstration I'd decided to build something simpler, a variant of the "black box" or K-Series FTL comm tech that the Star League had invented almost 50 years before the HPG. Although their transmission bandwidth was much narrower, limiting them to text messages instead of audiovisual, the most advanced models of K-series transmitters had almost twelve hundred light-years of range, exceeding even the Word of Blake "Super-HPG" plot device from one of the later Battletech arcs. The K-Series technology had been abandoned by the Star League in favor of the HPG as soon as the latter was invented, and their capability to interfere with JumpDrives and HPGs had been given as the reason. But as it turned out, that reason was a lie - if properly tuned, the 'Black Box' technology had no such interference at all. Apparently the Star League, or possibly early ComStar, had wanted HPG technology instead because it made centralized control of communications far easier, and had been willing to mislead everyone else to get it.

Or maybe they'd just screwed up. I didn't know for certain, as I was having to reconstruct the motives of the people in the Battletech setting from what fragmentary lore knowledge I did have and their full technical database. It was entirely possible that they'd simply overlooked this in their research, especially given what had happened to systematic research and development upon the collapse of the Star League and the outright cargo cult level of thinking that had surrounded much of their advanced "lostech".

Still, that was the Inner Sphere's problem. My problem was making this damned thing work so I didn't fall flat on my face at the first hurdle, and I was fortunate that I'd bought all my magic PhDs because I doubt I'd have gotten enough people to listen to my theories without them. But math was math, and despite the intense academic nerd fights I'd been forced to struggle through I did manage to convince the powers that be that my 'new theories' about jumpspace interface allowed for beaming an electromagnetic signal from one precisely tuned receiving station to another, so after weeks of building, testing, refining, and building again, and after several laboratory demonstrations that indicated that the thing was working as a communications device, it was time for the first field test to see if I'd actually managed to make an FTL communications device. Because proving that we were going substantially in excess of lightspeed, let alone at the FTL multipliers we'd need to make this substantially faster than just using a jumpship, would require us to be shooting across a distance substantially further than the width of the lab, or for that matter the orbital habitat we were working in.

And so after a few weeks' of work, and some vigorous pretending on my part to have already done most of the pure theory by myself before I'd even gotten here so as to get to the field tests as soon as possible, it came down to the final hurdle. The first of our field-range paired FTL units had been finished, and one of them was sitting in front of me right now while the other one was onboard an interplanetary shuttle currently over two light-minutes away. We'd synchronized two atomic clocks to each other before placing one at each end, and at a preset time the shuttle would simultaneously transmit the same message to us both by FTL pulse transmitter and with its ordinary comm laser. The message would be several paragraphs of text to be typed in by an operator onboard the shuttle only after separating from the station, to be chosen only after the shuttle was already on-station so as to try and preclude any fraud on my part by pre-arranging a message. Obviously the validity of the test would be if both messages - the one being sent by FTL pulse and the one being sent by lightspeed laser - matched exactly, and the one of them arrived more quickly than the other. Equally as obviously, the operator for the test was someone I'd never met and who had been randomly selected from a pool of candidates at the last minute, with all suitable safeguards to prevent prior collusion.

With an incongrously quiet 'ping!', the transmitter signaled reception of the first message.

"Holy shit!" the comm tech manning the panel whispered quietly. "Um, message received, ma'am!"

Rear Admiral Davenport leaned forward to look over his shoulder and start reading it herself. "I [name], do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while I am an employee of Russell, Majors & Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language; that I will drink no intoxicating liquors; that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employer. So help me God." she recited. "Wait, what the heck is this?"

"It's the code of conduct for Pony Express riders in the American Old West." I answered her. "Someone's a history buff, it would seem."

"Apparently so." she agreed, both of us forcing ourselves to breathe steadily as we waited and waited and-

"Second message received!" the comm tech burst out as the panel went 'ping!' again. "Right on the dot, and... it's a match!"

"It's a textual match, but does it hash correctly?" the admiral asked tightly.

"One hundred percent." I said, peeringly closely at my own readouts. "Every bit, byte, and checksum is identical. Both signals are the exact same set of data packets. We did it!" I irrepressibly burst out at the end.

"You did it." she answered me, breathing heavily. "Congratulations, Dr. Nowak. Actual, honest-to-god FTL comms. You just put yourself in the history books right next to McAndrew."

I kept my embarrassment off my face and replied as calmly as possible. "Or I will have, if and when this technology is ever unsealed from 'black' status. Because we can't let the Vilani even suspect this exists."

"No, we can't." she agreed. "But we'll still have to find a way to use it. Still, even though they'll be taking our recommendations into account, that one's for the Strategy Board. We've still got the longer-range tests to do, let alone the first interstellar-range test."

"Yes we do." I said. "And I can already see a couple things in the datalogs that-"

Quest Completed!
A Rising Thunder
Objective: Advance the Terran Confederation's tech level to be superior to Vilani Imperial Standard Technology in at least one militarily significant area before the start of the Fourth Interstellar War
Reward: 1000 CP, Terran Confederation Victory

I reeled as the notification flashed in my mind's eye. I'd finished already? I mean, yes, workable interstellar FTL communication would qualify as both a 'military significant area' of technology and well in advance of Vilani capabilities, and with the proof-of-concept a success Dr. Saunders and the rest of the Skunk Works could finish refining my design into a useable application even if I dropped dead at this very instant, but- already?

"Dr. Nowak?" Admiral Davenport prompted me.

"Sorry, got distracted." I grinned at her weakly. "And yes, we definitely need to press forward with the testing schedule. Given the clarity of the results we just got, I'm thinking we might skip the light-minute test and try for a signal from beyond Pluto orbit..."

* * * * *​

So, now what?

I stood in the wardroom of Clarke Station, one of the several orbiting habitats around Ganymede that the Skunk Works' spaceside facilities were distributed among, and stared out the panaromic window at the stars.

The sheer speed with which I'd completed my main mission from the Celestial Forge had shocked me. Admittedly, it had taken me slightly over three years to get to this point but the fact was that I'd managed to avert Terra's prophesied defeat in the Fourth Interstellar War well before it had even started. Tensions on the border had been steadily worsening, but were not yet at the levels that had prefaced the Third Interstellar War, and while ONI had several indicators of a military buildup going on in the Imperial Rim Province the Imperial government had yet to so much as start enacting trade sanctions again, much less anything more overt.

And yet I didn't feel victorious. On one level that was simply common sense - the fact that we were now apparently on track to win some kind of victory in a Fourth Interstellar War in no way meant that the conflict between the Confederation and the Imperium would be permanently resolved, so obviously I'd still have some kind of work left to do in that regard even if the Forge had yet to give me any new quests to replace the main one I'd just finished.

But on the other hand, right now I had every reason to be optimistic in my outlook. After all, one of the main forces driving the Confederation and the Imperium to keep butting heads was the fact that our expansion into the larger galaxy was unavoidably forced to be in the Imperium's direction, given the limitations of jump-2 drive and the 3+ parsec interstellar gulf surrounding Terran space on all but one side. And that was a limitation I was soon enough going to render obsolete. As soon as I could get a jump-9 drive built, we could expand rimward and trailward away from the Imperium, into areas of space they hadn't even charted yet. And if we could do that-

But, that would be a project for a later day. For right now, I really needed a vacation. I'd been busting my hump flat-out on one project or another with only brief, if any, breaks ever since I'd graduated secondary-ed, and I had over a hundred million sols in the bank from my share of the advance that High Frontier had paid my family for the ultracapacitor patent license and a whole lot of accumulated leave to spend it in. My application for some time off had just been approved, and in a little while I'd catch an interplanetary shuttle back to Terra and-

And then what?

I stared at the stars, sloshing brimfull of thoughts and feelings, and realized that I couldn't think of a single solitary thing I was actually eager to do. The recreations I'd used to enjoy were childishly simple and relatively unentertaining to my newly expanded brain, but right now I felt like I'd throw up if I even looked at a computer terminal or a lab workbench at any point in the next month. And the advice Mr. Stepczinski had given me was still filed in my supernaturally accurate memory along with everything else, so just going out and getting plastered was a non-starter as well. The last thing the Confederation needed was for their one-girl science revolution to develop a drinking problem or something.

You're just tired, I told myself. You've been working too hard for too long, and you need a rest. So go find a tropical beach, lay down on it, and sleep in and vegetate. When you get your energy back, your inspiration will come with it. That's why people take vacations in the first place.

I turned away from the window and headed off towards my compartment to start packing my bags. I'd already checked out with my chain of command, so I didn't have anyone else I needed to stop and talk to before my shuttle left. Time to start my vacation.

* * * * *
​

Slightly under three years ago an eager young girl fresh out of secondary-ed had entered the orbital station of Armstrong Highport, taking her first steps out into a greater universe. And now she was back there again, only now her eager innocence had been replaced by a weary… resignation? I still wasn't sure what I was feeling, only that I wasn't really enjoying it.

"Greetings, Lieutenant Nowak." the computerized voice greeted me. I was standing in front of one of the many secure terminals lined up in the foyer of the personnel office of Armstrong Highport's naval section.

"Checking out on leave." I greeted it. Because of course you didn't start your leave time at your duty station, not when you were stationed in Ganymede orbit. Even at the best velocity possible for a milspec reactionless maneuver drive, the Jupiter-to-Earth run still took over sixty hours.

"I regretfully cannot comply, Lieutenant. There is a required administrative action to complete before your leave request can be finalized." the computer surprised me.

"Oh what now?" I whined, before taking a deep breath. "Query; what action, and by what authority?"

"The required action is to attend a personnel meeting at your earliest convenience in secure conference room R-42, and the originating authority is the Confederation Security Agency."

The CSA? I blinked in alarm. Why the heck did the Federation's chief domestic security and civilian counterintelligence service have a 'hold' out on me? My brain gibbered in a fractional second of alarm before common sense reasserted itself and reminded me that if there were actually an arrest warrant out on me, I would have stepped right off the interplanetary transport into a waiting squad of CSA agents or Military Police. So this must be something else, and while I could overheat my brain trying to guess at what it would be simpler to just go and let them tell me.

"Acknowledged. Tell them I'm on my way." I told the computer, and after a quick check of the compmap to get directions to the conference room I headed off to my meeting.

"Dr. Nowak?" I was greeted by an Oriental woman over fifteen centimeters taller than I was, which put her almost six centimeters over average female height. She was what even my relentlessly heterosexual self immediately noted as an unusually beautiful woman, with striking angular features and the build of a fitness model, and her English was almost perfectly accentless. "Special Agent Mira Song, CSA." she introduced herself with a smile. Before I could even ask she withdrew her credentials from her pocket and showed them to me. I idly noted that according to her badge she was actually a Senior Special Agent, which given that she looked to only be a few years older than I was told me that someone either had one of those faces that kept looking like a twentysomething even into her thirties or that she was fast-tracking just a bit.

This was a conference room, not an interrogation chamber, so I simply took a seat at one corner of the small table and she did likewise. After verifying her ID through the computer terminal on the table, I asked the obvious question. "May I ask what the CSA needs to speak to me about?"

Her brow furrowed slightly. "You weren't informed of my new assignment?" she asked, mildly concerned.

"New assign-?" I momentarily wondered why the heck a CSA agent would need me to be notified of her being assigned anywhere, until my augmented brain cross-referenced the only probable explanation. "Wait, I'm getting a protective detail?"

"Yes, and clearly there was some type of communication error if they didn't already brief you about that before you departed the Skunk Works." She nodded. "I'll get a copy of the briefing packet to you as soon as I can, but to summarize? It's not publicly advertised but there are protocols for the CSA's Protective Mission to cover people who are deemed uniquely valuable to the Federation even if they would not normally fall into one of the categories that we're assigned to."

"Such as high Confederation officials and their families." I acknowledged, as several minor oddities of the past couple of days dropped into place. "So that's why my ride in from Ganymede was on a system defense boat instead of a cargo shuttle. At the time I'd just thought it was the first space-available, but…" I trailed off knowingly.

"You're currently in the second-highest protective category we have." Agent Song acknowledged. "And you'd be in the first-highest except that the logistical requirements of that one would make it publicly obvious that you are one of our protectees now, and drawing any further attention to you than you might already have is the last thing we want to do. So for as long as the threat board remains clear your detail will be only one agent – me – as opposed to surrounding you with squads of people."

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "If there's only one of you then you can't be expected to guard me against any serious attack. You're a deterrence against casual danger only, yes?"

"Correct." She nodded. "But primarily I'm going to be a walking panic-button. While we can't surround you with a squad without telling anyone who looks that you're a high-value target, in the event of any emergency we still want to cut response times to the minimum possible. So I'm your full-time shadow from now on, and I'll be wired up 24/7 with the best secure comms the Confederation can supply… at least until you invent some new ones?" she finished with a disarming chuckle.

"Public transport?" I asked, having already grasped the significance of them not allowing me to do even an interplanetary shuttle run in Terra's home system without making me ride on a heavily armed and armored military starship.

"If the threat board is clear, allowable – making you take an armored airlimo everywhere also draws attention." She said agreeably. "And anything short of surrounding you with full head-of-state level precautions is already a trade-off of security versus logistics, the only question is exactly where the trade-off is. So we're going to start as discreetly as possible and only ramp up when the threat level increases."

"You said 'when', not 'if'." I noted softly.

"Doctor, while we will of course do everything possible to delay the revelation for as long as possible, eventually the Vilani are going to figure out that the Confederation's military R&D has recruited a new game-breaker… and when they finally do, then yes." she acknowledged soberly. "At that point their attempts to kill you will almost certainly be a 'when', not an 'if'."

We let that one just sit on the table for a long silent moment, before I nodded. "Well, if I couldn't take a joke then I shouldn't have gotten drafted." I eventually acknowledged, with a meaningful wave of my hand down at my Navy uniform.

"We all do our part." she acknowledged. "But the good news is, I'm not here to tell you you're not allowed to go on vacation. I'm just here to make sure you get back from it. So let me just cover a couple more of the most essential topics as quickly as I can. First off, while they obviously missed the boat on getting these to you at Ganymede I was also given a copy of your orders for my own information, so I can give them to you." She took out her PDA and plugged in a datacable, and I withdrew my own Black Computer, currently disguised as a PDA of my own, and quickly read through the file she sent.

It was a formal set of written orders from a Vice Admiral Young, and my eyebrows raised in shock as my eidetic memory informed me that he was currently assigned as the Director of Naval Intelligence. According to these orders I was, with the concurrence of the Department of the Navy, officially placed in Protective Category Two-Alpha (Special) underneath the supervision of the CSA with all applicable regulations and restrictions thereto, along with several specific endorsements and clarifications.

"To translate that into plain English, the reason you're being bodyguarded by me instead of, oh, a Marine special operations detail – in addition to the fact that executive protection is what my department specializes in - is precisely so that the military chain of command doesn't get involved here." Agent Song nodded. "I'm not your superior officer and I can't give you orders, except to the extent that my position as a CSA agent would allow me to give orders to a civilian. Likewise, you don't outrank me and can't give me orders, although obviously part of any protective detail assignment is to comply with the reasonable requests of the protectee as much as possible. We're bodyguards, not corrections officers." The corner of her mouth quirked. "Also, the fastest way for bodyguards to have to deal with their protectees trying to escape from them is to act like they're someone that needs to be escaped from, and that's been true since back to when people in my career slot were still armed with shields and spears."

"I'm already guessing that part of the 'reasonable restrictions' is that I have to clear my itinerary with you in advance, so you can do things like alert the local field office that a high-value protectee will be in the area so they can keep a reaction squad ready to go if you call them." I nodded. "Also so that you can veto any particular no-go zones."

"But I'll try to be as accommodating as possible on that one." She reassured me. "As I said, the more I act like a jailer the more you'll just try to get away from me, and I can't do my job effectively unless you want me to do it. That having been said, yes, if you had a burning desire to go hit the beach in, oh, the West African conflict zone, then we'd definitely not be clearing you for that."

"I wasn't even sure where I was going to go." I admitted with an exasperated wave of my hands. "I just knew I was going to go stir-crazy if I didn't get back groundside for a while."

"Not surprising." She surprised me with a nod. "According to your file, you've barely had two weeks of real downtime in three years. Between Peraspera, your carrying an almost double course-load at MIT, and then your Navy deployments-" She waved her hand. "Of course you're feeling a little out of sorts, you've barely had a chance to stop and breathe since you've taken your CATs and your life has undergone multiple paradigm shifts in that time."

"Your degree's in psychology, isn't it?" I gave her a knowing side-eye.

"It is." She acknowledged immediately. "That's actually quite common for law enforcement – no matter what technology does, the biggest part of our job is still the human element."

I politely didn't mention that my new bodyguard wasn't even pretending to not also be my minder, given that she herself was trying to at least pretend to be polite about it. Still, though-

"Ever been off-planet?" I asked her.

"Not yet." she said. "Although I did take a refresher on basic vacc suit and space emergency procedures when I got this assignment."

"Because when I go back to Ganymede – or wherever else the Navy sends me – you'll have to follow me." I admitted. "But the reason I asked is, I haven't been on Terra since they shipped me out to Nusku, and even that was a pretty brief stop. So, what's the current hot vacation spot on the motherworld?"

"That depends. What are you interested in?" she smiled at me.

* * * * *
​

"So, do you think it's everything it's cracked up to be?" Agent Song asked me as she cheerfully waved her non-alcoholic cocktail around at the venue.

It was a sunny afternoon and we were seated outdoors at a café table on the French Riviera, eating the sort of 'If you have to ask, you can't afford it' lunch I'd never have dreamed of seeing in my life several years ago. We'd come here largely on her recommendation, because she'd been stationed here for almost a year – as one of the most prestigious 'rich people' vacation spots on Earth, there was a permanent CSA station kept here to augment the individual protective details of the sorts of high officials who came here. Even if she'd never have been able to afford the prices here without my new multi-millionaire wallet being opened to accommodate us both.

"It's… certainly not my usual experience." I agreed. My new minder and I were both dressed in expensive fashions, newly-bought at the stores here, because the entire point was to look like two young women on vacation as opposed to a Navy officer and her government-issue bodyguard. Although she could have paid for her own outfit – apparently I was considered VIP enough that my bodyguard was authorized a generous expense account – the ultracapacitor royalties made me more than flush enough to just buy them for her. Besides, I was still trying to work out exactly where the boundaries were with my new mandatory companion and I wasn't going to do that without pushing her comfort zone a little. So far my probes hadn't discovered anything except that she was an exceptionally patient woman who was very skilled at keeping a conversation from devolving anywhere unpleasant without making it look like she was pushing you anywhere. I mentally added a few more data points to my mental tally of 'is she my minder, or my handler?' and kept on keeping on.

"I still wish I'd been able to convince you to hit the concert venue instead." she said jokingly.

"Synthpop's not really my thing, thanks." I nodded. "Besides, the idea of standing in the middle of a crowd of screaming people waving a glowstick makes me twitch at the sheer thought of that much sensory overload."

"Are you on the autism spectrum?" she asked me politely. "Because that wasn't in your file."

"Sometimes I've wondered." I admitted honestly. "But no, I doubt it. They gave me the brainscan in primary-ed just to make sure, after my fourth time in the principal's office for 'discplinary incidents'. I just don't like crowds."

"Not going to lie, a protectee whose record shows that she had a consistent problem with getting herself punched in the face is not considered a fun time in the protective detail." She said. "But at least you haven't had any such incidents since Peraspera."

"Oh trust me, I almost threw down a couple times at MIT. College kids are jerks." I let slip, and then cursed that last cocktail I'd had with lunch. "But… are you familiar with Heinlein's saying on the topic of maturity?"

'It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired.' she quoted with a soft laugh.

"Yeah." I nodded. "It just doesn't seem worth the effort nowadays."

"Degree or no, it's bad form to try and diagnose anyone you haven't clinically examined." she nodded soberly. "But while the past week of beach and socialize has definitely relaxed you, you still seem a little stressed."

I ate another spoonful of my dessert in lieu of an answer, while I tried yet again to figure out what was wrong with me.

"If you don't want to talk about it, don't." she nodded. "But if you do, I'm not the judgemental type."

"Sometimes I feel like a fraud." I said softly. "Which is a stupid thing to feel for someone who's… invented the things I've invented." I censored myself in public.

"No it's not." She surprised me with her ready agreement.

"Excuse me?" I looked at her, more than a bit taken aback.

"Sorry, that came out wrong." She apologized. "I'm not saying I think your evaluation of yourself is justified, because you're right, it's not. Just from what you've achieved so far you're one of the most uniquely brilliant people in history, let alone contemporary times. What I am saying is that logical or not, your feelings are still valid. They are emotions you are genuinely dealing with, reactions you're having to the life experience that you've actually lived, and whether logical or not they still have genuine weight that you have to learn how to carry. Or to shed."

"You know, I've been a good girl so far and not actually hacked your personnel record yet, but you are making it really tempting." I retorted.

"If you're asking whether I'm acquainted with the 'advanced aptitude tracking' committee, then yes." She nodded. "But not the way you're thinking. They didn't assign me here, and I don't report to them."

"Then how do you know-?" I snapped my fingers at how stupid I was being. "You were National Honors too, weren't you?"

"Missed it by two." she replied. "But yes, I was one of the very top students in all of Korea in my year, and I was also a champion athlete, and a dancer, and a couple of other things. So I was the sort of high-functioning polymath that got fast-tracked through a carefully-curated Public Service just like you were, only through different categories."

"How'd you end up in the CSA?" I asked her.

"Sometimes I still wonder!" she chuckled. "I originally wanted to be an idol singer, would you believe? My plan was to just get through my mandatory Public Service tour, then straight back to the entertainment industry I'd already been training for as far back as secondary-ed. Except instead of what I applied for I ended up as support staff for a Frontier Constabulary outpost on Nusku, and that's what got me interested in police work. So psych degree in college with early graduation, then the CSA academy, and it was off to the races."

"Have you ever wished you were born in pre-Confederation times?" I risked asking.

"You mean back before we knew we were all under existential threat by an enormously larger alien imperium and had to reorganize all of human society on a permanent war economy?" she agreed. "Yeah. Sometimes." she reluctantly admitted.

"I wish it need not have happened in my time." I quoted Frodo.

"So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." she quoted Gandalf in reply.

"Is it okay if I call you Mira from now on?" I asked slowly.

"Only if I get to call you Sofia." she smiled.

For the first time since Peraspera, I started to feel not quite so alone.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: It lives!

Well, provisionally lives. I still have no story outline for what comes next, I'm still gonna have to wing it, and I'm still struggling to make a viable Celestial Forge fic because I've never gotten one really through the empire-building stage yet, that's where I always choke. But I am at least going to try this one again, because I really did like it. So no guarantees, but we'll see how far I can get this time.

And I did have the one inspiration of 'Hey, you know what Sofia needs? Another character to bounce off of.' And so the Confederation is reacting to their new supergenius by going 'Hey, Dr. Quest, we're assigning you your own Race Bannon because we really don't want you getting mugged to death by some rando in an alleyway', and so Special Agent Song joins the team.

No, she's not based on a certain character from K-Pop Demon Hunters, despite the name. She was very very loosely inspired by, but outside of the first name and a national origin and a love for k-pop (or 'synthpop' as it's called in the 22nd​ century), not much else.

Also, as this is QQ, I need to clarify straight-up – no, they're not going to be shipped. Neither of them even has that orientation. *g*

 

[EJH]

…well, I'll be damned.

Wishing you the best of luck in making this work.

 

[Whamo]

Cliff! I've always enjoyed your stories and here we are again!