🚀 go-pugleaf

From the 'Toronto Stack of Pulped Dead Trees' (December 28th, 1996)

     CRISIS AT CANDU

  (Roger Ethan - On location) Tragedy claimed the lives of twenty-seven
workers, seventy-eight squirrels, sixty-one finches, twenty-nine rabbits
and two dogs (The 'Toronto Stack of Pulped Dead Trees' would like to thank
the Sierra Club for gratefully donating money to remove self from arrears
and promises that this will in no way alter its ability to deliver
impartial and up to the minute news that you want to read while half-asleep
and drinking your sixth cup of coffee) at the Candu reactor today. The
newly christened Powered Terrorist Alliance seized the reactor from its
morning shift and proceeded to hold it, releasing no demands or terms to
the outside world. Survivors claim that the P.T.A. spent several hours at
work on the reactor, attempting to convert it to some new task or another.
No evidence of this tampering remains intact.
   Sadly, superguy response was slow and ultimately too late and the words
"Me? I thought YOU were going to take care of it!" were uttered many, many
times. The Tribe of Behn, first called, had been out-of-country at the time
and Mythos was unavailable for personal reasons. Triumph was finally called
in to deal with the situation, but was itself apparently too late to
prevent the P.T.A. from misstepping and triggering a massive explosion
which laid waste to a good deal of the reactor.
   "If people would just call us first," said Moonsilver, leader of
Triumph, "We might be able to get something accomplished." When countered
with the argument that the team had been engaged in superheroic activities
of their own at the time, Triumph responded. "We were rescuing cats out of
trees! It's humiliating but it's all we have to keep our hands busy these
days because no one calls! You know what it is, don't you? It's not because
we're unpopular - our fan club's membership has almost reached double
digits! - it's that we've never made an on-screen appearance or even a
bloody cameo anywhere! I think that's discrimination and its just wrong."
   But is that the problem? Or are Canada's heroes still reeling from the
dissolution of Task Force Aurora nine months prior? Will they be forced to
return to the casual reactive-over-proactive setup favoured by the heroes
south of the border? Few were prepared to comment upon this eventuality,
though several were kind enough to wrap this reporter's car in wet
toilet-paper after the question was asked.
   When asked to comment upon this disaster so that we could print _some_
comment other than the bit about the cats, the Prime Minister's office
declined comment, claiming that at present they had more pressing matters
about which to worry than some namby-pamby nuclear disaster. This will
probably prove to be an unwise move on the part of the already sagging
Liberal government's popularity which was dealt a dual hammer blow by the
public's decriment of Task Force Aurora and the days of 'Hell(tm) on
Earth'. Though officially politically neutral, this reporter wishes to say
serves you right. The last government would give us quotes whenever we
asked them to and I hope that you burn in that political purgatory where
old statesmen crawl to die like the spineless slugs that they are...
(Continued on A4, see 'Gastropods without Vertebrae')
***
     You have to be a damned fool to invade Earth.
     Invasions suffer from three basic problems. First, the defenders
possess that mysterious and nebulous thing called the 'Home Court
Advantage' which lets them do nifty things like coding up a virus on a
Maxintosh to feed into alien computers that don't even use a TCP protocol;
hiding out in tunnels, trenches and abandoned cities to engage the
attackers in guerrilla warfare in defiance of such things as superior life
sensors, hunter-killer weapons that can't be stopped and are yet routinely
destroyed by inexperienced heroes in foundries; and megadeath weapons that
should really be able to wipe out whole areas of resistance which could
then be paved over and replaced with a mini-mall where the conquering
invaders could enjoy a frozen burrito. Second, invasions tend to breed
'heroes' - also known as blithering idiots with no sense of
self-preservation - who routinely manage to save the Earth with a piece of
string and some sticky tape where twenty divisions of tanks had failed.
Third, and lastly, there's the simple logistics problem: you are trying to
take an entire world's population with whatever troops you can move on your
biggest ships. Even given a softening up period of orbital bombardment,
this still sucks.
     Fortunately for the approaching Invaders, they currently had no plans
to actually invade the planet Earth. Complete and utter sterilisation of
the planet's surface would be more than enough to satisfy their lust for
vengeance and blood.
     You had to be a damned fool to live on the planet Earth when the
Invaders came to raze it.

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               Chris Angelini/Frobozz Magic Productions

                             -and-

                       Mademoiselle Muse Inc

                       -in association with-

           'We Didn't Mean To Colour The Sky Pink, Honest!'
               Industrial Special Effects and Magic

                              -and-

       The Overworked and Underpaid Lisa MacDougall (producer)

                            -present-

                            AURORA #26

                            "To Arms!"

                        'Taito Come Home!'

                               -or-

                 Space Invaders (Part One of Three)

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     Wave after wave of alien ships swooped towards Duke Dunbar, but he
only narrowed eyes and tightened grip on his trigger. Closer... closer...
as they dove and spun past he unleashed round after round of white hot
annihilation at the fools who dared to invade his home. Another shot...
wait, where had that one come from? Before he could react his ship was
tumbling end over end, at the mercy of an alien and its tractor beam. There
was no hope for freedom. None. It was truly Game Over.
     "Duke, are you playing 'Galaxian' on the monitors again?" asked First
Sergeant Graham, slamming a hand onto a bank of overpriced equipment that
had set the government back several million dollars. Being the best and
most expensive equipment on the market, this tap was naturally enough to
cause the entire bank to go off-line, forcing a duo of haggard and
coffee-marinated technicians to scurry for their toolboxes for the fourth
time in one hour.
     "No, SIR!" yelled Duke, with a snappy salute.
     "Good."
     "It's 'Galaga'!"
     The First Sergeant sighed and briefly contemplated whether or not Duke
would look better with neck whole or snapped. Before he could come to a
definite conclusion a shout from across the room caught his attention.
     "Sir, I've got something on the screens!"
     "Well then use a tissue and get it off again!" replied Graham.
     "No, no... I mean I'm picking something up from our Early Distant
Warning Sat Four."
     Graham moved next to the man, looking over his shoulder. "What is it?"
     "Contact with something. Attempting to resolve."
     The busy man set to work, twisting knobs designed to be twisted,
pushing buttons designed to be pushed and running idiot-proof programs
designed for the military. Graham recoiled as an image finally flickered to
life on the screen. "My god, it's... hideous!"
     "Sorry sir, my fault. We're currently picking up 'Oprah'. Here we
go... this is what the satellite is receiving."
     Silence filled the room as the picture sprang to life. Stunned eyes
watched mutely as wave after wave of a vast armada moved into view of the
satellite's overtaxed visual imaging systems.
     "Course is to Earth?" asked Graham, knowing the answer with a sick
certainty.
     "Naturally," replied the operator.
     "Oh hell(tm)..." muttered Duke, watching. All eyes turned to him. "I
hope they don't all try to find parking spots."
***
     Reports fell across desks as quickly as they could be carried. Experts
from all over Canada were called, faxed and modemed. Prominent politicians,
realising that the situation called for strong, decisive leadership,
promptly went to lunch for the remainder of the week.
     When Task Force Aurora was dismantled, the Beanstalk had represented a
major stickling point. As orbit-high skyhooks were notoriously difficult to
bulldoze down without reenacting Gallager's Sledge-O-Matic on something of
a global scale, it was realised that this towering structure had to be
pressed into some good use. Initially an insurance firm had expressed
interest in using it as their headquarters but had pulled out at last
minute when it was realised that 'Sky High Insurance' might be perceived by
the consuming public in a slightly negative light. There was once again
talk of renting or selling the structure to NASA, but ultimately it was
realised that the Beanstalk made a wonderfully capitalistic source of
revenue, trading easy access to space for cold, hard operating capital and
invitations to all of those exclusive 'scientist parties' that the senators
had heard so much about. The latter turned out not to be worth the paper on
which they were printed, but the former was lucrative enough to keep nearly
the whole of the House of Commons in the weekend booze-up parties to which
they had become accustomed.
     One of the perquisites of owning the Beanstalk was that the government
could use its faculties for free whenever needed. It was thus a simple
matter for the military to send out in-system Distant Early Warning buoys
to keep tabs on local space, on the theory that they no longer had the fun
of watching a Cold War on Earth, so why not try to drum up a little fun
above it. Given the number of aliens which made Earth their number one
party spot in the galaxy for wining, dining and enslaving the native
population, these DEWs were some of the busiest little satellites in earth
space, though few official bodies ever needed to act upon the information
which they gathered. Generally Earth's superguy population was more than
capable of turning back a measly Armada o' Death or two before lunch. In
some of the more elite superguy circles, you hadn't really earned your
stripes until you'd defended the planet Earth from the encroaching forces
of darkness trying to sink its iron gauntleted talons into its people.
Earth felt itself fairly secure.
     Which means that it will come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever
that Earth was caught with its pants firmly around its ankles when the
Invader fleet was spotted by Wacky Pseudoscientific Sensors (patent
pending), heading towards the Sol system in Glidspace.
     The size of the fleet was the first thing that marked this invasion as
different from many of those that had come before. There were no
kilometre-long vessels of searing destruction that screamed One Target, No
Waiting. Further, there were no planet-crackers, no posturing self-styled
'tough love' saviours of the galaxy, no intricate schemes to go off, no
vast sentient balls of lint intent upon making the Sun into a nummy snack.
     On the flip side, there were a Hell(tm) of a lot of ships with guns.
Regular 'point at your enemy, pull the trigger and laugh while his armour
ablates' guns, not the kind that would supposedly guarantee total victory
with one shot and had a remarkable tendency to be rewired by a desperate
hero to wipe out the whole invading fleet all at once. This was a very
serious drawback for the nominal defenders of Earth in a cosmic belly laugh
of irony. To compound matters, very few of the superguys able to get into
space to do anything about the invading Invaders were in a position to do
so. Murphy had dealt the cards, and once again she'd shuffled the 'How To
Play Poker' card into the pack.
     Allowing Earth to be taken by aliens was considered by most to be
political suicide for any government. Thus, a flurry of faxes slalomed back
and forth until one answer was reached: large with mushrooms, pepperoni and
black olives with an order of crazy bread on the side.
     A second answer was reached shortly after the last wedge of pizza was
fought over. A call went out to a man who had broken the rules and now paid
the price in the name of defending the innocent. To be perfectly trite, he
was their only hope.
***
     Arthur Doyle, DOYLE to those who knew him only as a computerised
personality and once possessor of more identities than he cared to think
about, ran yet another check of the Beanstalk's systems. There was no real
need for him to have done so; little could have changed in the five seconds
since his last check. But Doyle was a man on parole, or perhaps serving
time would be somewhat more appropriate an expression, and he had his
orders: maintain the Beanstalk, guide the visiting scientists and
busybodies to their destinations, and most importantly run a constant five
second check on every dial, lever and gauge in the gargantuan structure.
This might have seemed like a horrendous punishment for anyone, but Doyle
knew that he had been let off easily. In the time that he had spent as a
computer program, billions of lines of code forming a cohesive personality,
he had mastered the speed of operation which was the birthright of the
machine intelligence and could accomplish a small lifetime's worth of
thought, deed and creativity before five ticks of the second hand could
pass. Though he had yet to learn how to multitask - perhaps his former
existence as a flesh and blood human had given him a fear of dividing the
self, or perhaps he was simply not capable of this feat - he could do the
next best thing. Doyle had constructed for himself subprograms which linked
in with his core personality, each of which contained copies of pieces of
his decision making faculties. These could adequately keep tabs on the
mammoth structure around him while he delved the depths of 'netspace which
was growing more and more to be his world and universe. There he had a
countless number of friends with whom to speak: humans who clumsily
intruded into the realm electric and other machine intelligences.
     It would have been an idyllic existence for him but for one aching
hole in his life which he could not fill. A red-headed genius who shaped
new technology like a sculptor and seemed to dodge around reality like a
magician was what was missing in his life. This was Colleen, his life's
love, who could rarely if ever wrangle a visitor's pass to the Beanstalk
and who now, denied TFA funding, could afford to run the solid-hologram
projector in her home monthly at best. Their life together felt far too
scheduled and very much like a prison itinerary: writing letters and
meeting in text over the 'net and seeing each other in person only when
conditions permitted. Doyle wished desperately that he could give Colleen
more than just this tenuous contact but there seemed to be no end to the
limbo in sight.
     When Doyle's phone rang, he was in the midst of a marathon Chinese
checkers tournament with Max, the former Hero Patrol's MI. Switching to a
module which would auto-play for him - and virtually ensure his fellow
computer entity's victory for the next few dozen games - he quickly
activated his office's solid-hologram projector and resolved a physical
body with which to answer the phone. There was no real need for Doyle to
perform this action in the flesh, for the phone was digital and could
easily have been intercepted by one of his countless satellite modules,
drawing his precious attention to the conversation as it progressed in
baseline-time while he operated far, far above it at a computer's speed.
Why then did he choose to resolve himself? Simply put, because he wanted to
feel a phone in his hands and listen to the sound of his breath crackling
slightly as it hit the speaker grille. He needed no other reason and so he
answered.
     "You have reached the Beanstalk," he said. "How may I process your call?"
     "Is this one Mr Doyle?" asked the no-nonsense voice from the other end
of the connection, in a tone which made Doyle take an almost immediate
dislike to the speaker.
     "What's the current permanent occupancy of the Beanstalk?" asked Doyle
dryly, somehow sure that the owner of this voice had to have the answer
right at his fingertips or a reasonable facsimile.
     "One, of course."
     "Of course. And you did call a private office number, didn't you?"
     "Yes I did."
     "Then please, be my guest. Guess about who you're talking to."
     "Mr Doyle, your attitude is unbecoming of someone in the public
service. I'm calling on behalf of the Prime Minister with new instructions
for you."
     "I beg your pardon, did you say instructions?"
     "Yes, I did. Mr Doyle, there is currently a growing threat the nature
of which I cannot go into over the phone. You will receive a full dossier
on the matter via bonded courier. Your orders are simple: for the duration
of the crisis you will oversee the temporary reactivation of Task Force
Aurora."
     "Why me?"
     "Your position makes you uniquely suited for this, Mr Doyle. As both
artificial intelligence and former if unofficial head of Task Force Aurora
we predict that you can reactivate the force in a matter of days, whereas a
freshly installed person would take upwards two weeks, far in excess of the
time that we currently have."
     Absolutely. Doyle was positive that he didn't like this person now. "I
see, yes I see. When did the courts make a change to my sentence, Mr...?"
     The man on the other end of the connection sputtered for a moment,
focusing upon his requested name as a way to calm his nerves. "Corruthers
and what do you mean, your sentence?"
     "Despite requiring the government's permission to use the Beanstalk as
the location of my sentencing I was still sentenced by the law. Not the
government, Mr Corruthers. Further, they in no way sentenced me to be your
lap dog. I have clearly a defined service to work off and no more."
     "Are you trying to say no, Mr Doyle?" asked the voice, incredulous.
     "Not quite. I'm saying no, conditionally."
     The voice ignored the last word and pressed on, trying to pick up the
cards that had been dropped. "Then produce Nicholas Treis, Mr Doyle. He
might be able to pull this off in the given time frame."
     "Absolutely not. I refuse to put his life in risk until he's fully
recovered from his ordeal."
     "It's been more than a year since that, according to your own
statements. How long could this alleged recovery take? Perhaps that pending
suspected murder charge--"
     "Which was dropped, if you'll remember correctly, when I produced
proof of his continued well-being and the voluntary nature of his exile in
the form of several notes and voice recordings! That aside, Mr Treis was
aged unnaturally prior to his poisoning and that made his recovery
complicated. You won't get any help from Mr Treis until long after this
threat's passed by, Mr Corruthers."
     The line was silent for a moment. "What are your conditions."
     "I have three."
     "I'm listening."
     "Good, because I'm not particularly in a mood to repeat them. First
and foremost, the reactivation of the Aurora organisation will be permanent
rather than temporary."
     "Out of the que--" shouted the voice.
     "I hope you don't intend to interrupt every time that I speak,"
replied Doyle. "Otherwise I might just have to hang up and get back to my
job. Work takes so much out of me, I don't know whether or not I can stand
the distraction of your mewling."
     Corruthers sighed deeply. "Let's have the other two."
     "Thank you. Secondly, the organisation will retain government funding
for both itself and satellite groups that it supports."
     "And the third?" asked the defeated voice.
     Doyle allowed himself a devilish smile before answering. "The third.
Ah yes, you'll enjoy this Corruthers, really I think you will."
     "Get to the point."
     "The point. Of course. My third condition is simply autonomy from the
government."
     "OUT OF THE QUESTION!"
     "You don't have a CHOICE at the moment!" roared back Doyle. "I'm not
going to have this thing pulled down every time your damned political
agenda changes! You have two choices right now, so you'd better listen
closely and choose the one you can live with for longer than until the next
election. First choice, you give me what I ask for and I reform the
organisation to eliminate this threat of yours. Other choice, you balk and
I go back to being a good little inmate, carrying out my sentence while the
world crumbles around your ears."
     "Are you saying that your pride is more important than the Earth's
safety, Mr Doyle?"
     "Are you?" countered Doyle angrily. "How far will you let the Earth
slide before you agree? It's pretty hard to govern a country when there
isn't a country left to govern. Or is there something that you aren't
telling me?"
     There was another pause. Doyle swore that he could almost hear the
sweat drip from Corruthers' brow as he considered his position. Finally he
spoke, quietly and very reluctantly. "The Taskforce nearly forced a vote of
no-confidence, Mr Doyle. Reforming it is already a risky political move but
we can put a positive spin on the action. To make it permanent would be
insane and to give it autonomy? Remove it from full governmental control?
Were we to do that, you could bet that there would be a new party in the
parliament building before the summer, Mr Doyle."
     "You seem to expect me to care."
     "Pardon?"
     "Political infighting and manoeuvring made me break far too many rules
and risk my life with an untested solid-holographic system. It made me hide
myself behind layer upon layer of identity while I was still trying to cope
with the few that I already had. It caused me to be sentenced here, Mr
Corruthers. It allowed more than a dozen disasters by the absence of what
it had destroyed. It BROKE APART MY FAMILY, Mr Corruthers! Your damned
politics did all of this and you still expect me to give a FIG about them!"
     "Mr Doyle..."
     "You're already dead, Corruthers. Either politically or else this
crisis will get you, if it's as bad as it must be for you to be calling me
here. The thing is, if you die politically you still get to go on breathing
afterwards which might be a bit more comfortable for you than the other
kind of death. I don't give a damn one way or another; I live in a network
that was supposed to be able to survive a nuclear war so fear for self
doesn't exactly motivate my choice. Get back to the head man and let me
know what the Hell(tm) he decides. Until then, goodbye. It hasn't been a
pleasure."
     Doyle realised that there was another reason for him to resolve rather
than answer the phone in a virtual state. There was nothing more satisfying
than slamming a phone down onto its hook in anger. With a grin, he derezzed
and returned to the game, winning the next sixteen rounds without even
trying.
***
[Continued In Part Two]