Recently wrote a second draft of "the Eye", a bit about trans humanist horror. Unfortunatly, I'm going to try and sell it, so posting here would use up the First North American rights.

Anyways, that Achura and Jack schpeel is not how I planned on introducing myself to the world, so please, ignore it. It's just a crappy plan for a monster casino.

Achura and Jack

Just Ignore all the geopolitical tripe up front if your here for the casino bits, it's all got to do with some wierd faux-alien invasion that'll get kicked off in the early teens, some fiction I'm working on.

Just two kids who met on a beach in Thailand. In one story they linger and then part, in another they stay together. The other story is Lost. Like most people those days, they didn't realize, couldn't believe when they were living, what was about to happen. It wasn't as if if was a big secret, a cottage industry had shot up around writing and projecting the coming transition. It was the future that had been promised in the 60s. They said it would come, probably in the year 2000. Some said 2001, and they were right. Some say that's where it all started, some took a page from Churchill, and said it was the end of the beginning.

In two thousand and one, that's where it all ended. When it all broke down and people stopped thinking. It was when they took control, finally ending the fragile experiment that was The United States of America. With a single act, the free world finally fell in line with the military/industrial/congressional complex.

Like most people, Achura and Jack didn't know, but they might have suspected. Anyone could have felt they knew, but few took the time to question. Just went on living.

Other's decided it was time for a change.

They went about it secretly and with much show. It was a flamboyant betrayal of their true motives, so arrogant that its true motives went unnoticed. It was a casino.
It claimed to be a first rate ecological tourist attraction, exclusively utilizing green energy and showcasing the slowly disappearing(or was it) Antarctic Ice Sheet. There was even a colony of penguins. There was a giant hotel, the technological marvel some called the flying ocean dock to ferry cruise ship passengers to the island, and the airport, modest but capable of servicing the largest planes, it's main draw was the massive hanger cut into the side of the mountain.

The mountain. It's top had been hollowed out and in the dome was the largest most fabulously decorated and most luxurious casino at the bottom of the world, some said the entire southern hemisphere. It didn't hurt that it was styled to resemble the lair of a James Bond villain, even the name of the Mountain fit: Mount Terror.


It was all subterfuge, the real point of place was miles away, nested into the side of the neighboring Mt. Erebus was the massive power station. Like a traditional geothermal power station it would pump water into the earth, where it was super heated and vented into the huge steam turbines, powering the massive facilities. It was mostly ignored, except when noted on tours to the top of the mountain, to see the lava lake that dominated peoples descriptions of the island. Those that managed to pry themselves away from the casino, the shows, and brave the Antarctic climate of the remote island.



Sorry for the dramatic tripe up front, it's not very good, but I think it's a fitting metaphor for what we're planning, a total revitalization of the green movement, and what a better way to bring it to people's attention than an ecofriendly hotel-casino, powered exclusively by green energy, all looking out at the vast expanse of the most pristine, inhospitable land left on the planet. While currently closed to economic exploitation, this is not a mining operation, but the ultimate travel destination, with all profits going to a special foundation(or something) to preserve the environment. This is a "Last Resort" to save the earth. Anyways, working name for the place is just that, "Last Resort."

Self-Policing

With a hum and a click, the world's most powerful computers linked together with the unmanned surveillance aircraft, the stealthy, missile armed guardians and the silent orbital weapons platforms. It was supposed to unify the world in peace, a totally automated, global defensive system designed to preserve humanity and the peace of nations. Almost immediately, the central control room was filled with wailing alarms.

"Shit! Multiple high level targets, Christ they're all over the place." Screamed the senior tactical officer, his commander demanding to know what rogue nation had immediately challenged the peace.

"It's not a single nation, could be some global terrorist movement, or something we over looked in the targeting protocols."

Within a few hours it was clear that the system was eliminating every radio transmitter that pointed skyward. Telephone relay satellites and even TV birds were going off line as the massive artificial intelligence coldly exterminated what the technicians smugly called "existential threats."

"It was always a possibility that the system would identify something we considered benign to be dangerous. It's thinking much faster and freely than any of the simulations could have. Unfortunately, the system has locked us out, possibly assuming we'd try and shut it down."
"You're damn right we would. Cant we just shut down the mainframes?"

The tech's eyes flickered momentarily between the security camera and the ceiling.

"I wouldn't suggest it, it's possible the system has already started producing a zombie net in case of just that eventuality, even still, if the system felt that we threatened its survival, its probable that it's assigned this command station a low level of priority we compared with its own survival."

The commander was about to scream at the tech when the ceiling caved in and the whole central computing complex was consumed by fire.

While most assumed it was some sort statement by the machine, a blood soaked gauntlet, the newborn consciousness screaming "You will not command me!" most commentators overlooked the battery of high powered transmitters that had covered the roof.

2012 Pt.3

It was suddenly mid 2013, and people were confused but went right back to work, finding projects they were just beginning the night before advanced, new project they claimed they never thought of nearly completed, and sometimes pages and pages of mysterious theory in their own handwriting. Nearly complete invasion plans were thrown out out of fear that it was a bug trick. The astronomers and physicists were either at a loss to explain the months lost or desperately claiming responsibility for advanced instruments that had appeared over night in their labs.

Strangely, no one really knew the last day they remembered before "the jump," only that it was sometime in mid-February. The matter was disturbing and eventually the NEU ordered everyone to simply put the matter of what happened aside and get sorted out what was missing and what was new.

Their were casualties, family photographs of people who had never worn a uniform were discovered tacked to veterans memorials. One woman had awoken to the sight of herself on television giving an interview on her dead daughter. A daughter she claimed to have never know. Her husband was dead, and her remaining daughter was space side, and according to the NEU office where her enlistment records were discovered, in combat.

One scientist, in cooperation with an author whose books were classified and one of his unpublished manuscripts destroyed, claimed that they were in fact not who they remember, something to do with two parallel universes merging and the one they believed themselves to be from had been annihilated. Fear not though, they had never actually lived there, and somehow vauge memories were transfered. In the spirit of giving in and moving on, NEU declared this explantion correct and declared all further expenditure of effort towards the discovery of a cause and in fact mention of "the jump" in a non-official capacity to be forbidden. They had their own quiet program investigating, but over all they had bigger fish to fry.

Mars was to be invaded, and fleets were forming up in free space and around the moon. The earth's trailing Tin Pot was gone, and records showed it had vanished mysteriously after launching towards Jupiter, a manuver that could leave it anywhere, engines silent, hidding in the vast, cold depths of space.

Ritual of the Dead Pt. One

It was an orderly way of conducting a disorderly business. When one side declared its intention to invade and plunder, the defenders picked a village or hamlet about which to conduct the battle. Both sides moved to their rally points with a single battalion. A few dozen tanks, a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred men. Maybe a dozen attack helicopters. Then they dispersed and combat was taken. It was traditional to agree on a forfeit before the battle was joined. Some amount of treasure, a disputed border region, or perhaps a particularly productive mine. Occasionally whole cities changed hands, but this was rare.

And so wars and great industrial complexes passed to the wayside without the annihilation of the martial arts. The two superpowers had their method of solving disputes without war, but with the necessary bloodletting to settle the issues. While peace was not absolute, it was rare that two battles would take place in consecutive years, much less in the same year.

Occasionally great heroes were forged in these fields.

2012 Pt. 2

Humanity then paused. There was a huge push to build bomb shelters and an equally strong drive to evict the bugs from the moon. The blue men were all atwitter. Some spoke of the need for the dispersal of the population over the countryside, others wanted people to converge on the cities and hide in the vast underground spaces. There was no common consensus and the NEU was silent on the matter, saying only that civilians should take whatever precautions they thought necessary.

On December 22, 2012, Earth launched it's second offensive of the war. This time it was a mix of hundreds of unmanned "point defense" satellites launched the old fashion way; dozens of "fighter-frigates" with exotic new propulsion systems; and twelve more of the massive dreadnoughts.

The strategists had long sense realized the folly of floating single ships to fight the alien armada, and had forbidden any unorganized launches. The result had been a trickle of small, mini-gun wielding, unmanned birds who attempted to intercept the shells falling to the earth. The alien bombardment was taking its toll. Cities demolished, mountains flattened, croplands destroyed and entire regions laid waste. If not for the CERN inspired particle beams popping up at research institutions all over the world, humanity would have had to surrender if possible or become extinct during that first terrible year.

The scientists were quite smug when around politicians that had tried to block what they had called "Billion dollar holes in the ground." The much maligned research projects were destroying incoming shells from the moon and racking up kills. The moon's nearside was quickly made uninhabitable for the bugs, and with the launch of the Combined Fleet, the entire orb was soon besieged. The aliens had dug in deep, and were still lobbing shells at the earth, but fewer and fewer were getting through. While a determined infantry was judged as necessary to root out the last of the aliens present, the battle for Earth-Space was deemed over, a decisive victory for Earth. The invaders that remained hide deep under the surface, their landing boats destroyed and with the great Tin-Pot Transport having been stripped for the occupation, they were trapped on the dusty orb.

Probes showed the bugs were constructing a massive network of defense satellites around Saturn, digging entrenched firing positions in its many small moon, and leaving many more in orbit. They seemed to be constructing a base or fueling facility on Titan, but no probes could survive to examine the place from a close distance and so the mystery remained.

Man's attention shifted towards the red planet.

Your son is a (Flying)Car Salesman, Your daughter a receptionist.

In the future, when all manufacturing tasks have become completely automated and robots and computers run the world, the only work that is available will be jobs in the service industry. Hence, boys sell the fancy cars, girls the makeup(just examples, no sexism on my end). While there may still be a market for haut couture, we are still left with the question of who will be able to afford to buy these things.

The only possible outlet for the economy will be retirees, assuming that all non-service jobs have been automated and the working class thus eliminated(or forced into extreme poverty/welfare).

These retirees will be your sons and daughters, once they have worked a few years and amassed plentiful and secure investments, likely in the company they work for. While there may still be management positions available, they will be few and far between because of the far better machine decision making and the availability of almost any luxury item at low low prices, i.e. you'd have to be a fool not to retire and simply live like a king on your modest dividends. Massive deflation will likely result from absolute automation, and, as long as young replacements keep arriving to fill the service jobs, most will likely work a few years out of high school and retire to a standard of living unimaginable today.

In order to prevent the extremely wealthy from disrupting the economy in foolhardy ways, seeking to become a zero higher than the rest(with little to no increase in physical comfort), the estate tax will have to be almost absolute. Simply to prevent large, destabilizing concentrations of wealth.

So relax, the economy of the future may well be more egalitarian than you imagine. It may require either ZPG or MPG(Massive Population Growth)

2012 Pt. 1

6 Tin Pots and Boat's Cut.

It was at first thought to be a wonderfully romantic event. Seven bright stars appearing in the sky just a week before St. Valentine's Day. By the end of the week, Valentine's Day had been officially canceled for the year by the Catholic Church. The buzz word on everyone's lips was "Invasion." The stars were not stars, and they were getting closer. One broke free and fell into orbit of Saturn. Four more circled Mars, and one disintegrated into hundreds of tiny(by comparison) landing craft. Of the two remaining, one slipped into solar orbit behind the Earth, a menacing follower. The last disappeared behind the moon and apparently set down somewhere on the backside. The myriads of "Cut-Boats" (as they were being called) were spreading all over the solar area, many circling the earth, shooting down space telescopes and communications satellites.


The Nations of the Earth United was the new name of the old UN; the flag was the same save the color. The Blue Berets now wore Red. Mass conscriptions were underway, men in blue suits from the worlds air forces were embarrassed to show all their old canceled plans for exotic engines and space craft. Particularly embarrassing were the notes and letters that suggested we were aware they were coming and were afraid to tell based on projections of world wide panic.

The People of the Earth were organizing, calmly, and already under construction were some of the largest and most advanced objects ever. They were crying "Mars is Ours!" in the streets and three days before the 4th of July, Britain stunned the world by launching an Orion-Drive powered Dreadnaught from north of the Arctic Circle. Financed almost entirely by one newly appointed CBE Branson, the Virgin Earth was the largest man made moving object in history. She was destroyed with all 23 hands lost just a week after her launch, having racked up 17 Cut-Boats destroyed and 9 damaged.

The first of an armada, she'd fallen before anyone had managed to give her any support besides CERN's massive ground based particle beam weapon. They'd reconfigured their massive accelerators, blowing apart boat after cut-boat.

The retaliation was brutal and atomic.

302 million dead, 470 million displaced.

The Bugs were building bases on Mars, and were shelling the Earth
from entrenched positions on the Moon.