Paradise

by on September 3, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I spent this Holiday weekend up in Northern Minnesota in the Lake Country. Not as far north as my fictional Jack grew up in, but Ottertail County is one of those places where water is king. There are thousands of lakes and large ponds throughout the area, and Minnesotans and Dakotans flock there every weekend of summer. Winter too, once the lakes freeze and people can drive their trucks out onto them and drill holes through to get some good fishing. But this is summer. And this weekend I got a refresher on the paradise Jack always says he never wanted to leave. I got it drifting in the front of a boat watching sunset on a Northern Minnesota lake. It’s paradise.

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The New Voyager Program

by on September 2, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The AI Council’s first interstellar New Voyager Program probe swarm to reach Alpha Centauri arrived in the system at twenty percent the speed of light. There were no major laser arrays to slow them down, which is why early versions of the probe swarm idea planned on a simple flyby. But the AIs did not want to simply shoot off into the void. They wanted to find and inhabit a new home, and their sails harnessed enough power from the local solar winds to make that possible. Not easy. Not without cost. But possible. They initiated their plan as they passed Proxima Centauri and entered the final phase of their voyage.

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Napoleon Bonaparte the Fourth

by on September 1, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

I grew up hearing the tales of how Napoleon the Eighth saved France from the Islamic Jihad and the Second Great Depression. Then Napoleon the Ninth saved France from economic catastrophe after Contact. And I saw Napoleon the Tenth lead his Frenchmen to War against the Shang. Jean-Claude Louis Christophe Napoleon was a real class act. Imagine my surprise when I learned that all three of them were the same man. The man history now calls Napoleon Bonaparte the Fourth. Yeah. I lived through that little revelation. That was a real mind job.

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Chloe

by on August 31, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Chloe did not sit still and watch as the Fifth French Republic tore itself apart in the twisting grips of French Nationalism and Islamic Statism. She helped the French Resistance, but she knew they weren’t the answer to end France’s troubles. So she also went in search of an answer. She found him in New York City. He was a student of the sciences, mathematics, and economics. He worked in management and private equity enterprises, and had long since made a name for himself pulling both private and public companies out of bankruptcy. He owned real estate on every continent, and commanded a personal fortune that easily ranked him in any top ten list of worldwide richest people. And his last name was Napoleon. He was the recognized heir of the Napoleon family in fact, though he rarely used the name. The problem Chloe had was that he had no intention of returning to France. He was no power hungry Caesar ready to cross the Rubicon and wrest control from the Republic’s faltering hands. He turned her down flat when she asked him to come home, in fact. That was the first hurdle Chloe had to cross in her mission to save France. It would not be her last.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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The New Voyager Program

by on August 30, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The AI Council’s New Voyager Program soon graduated to launching probe swarms into the vast interstellar void on purpose. High powered lasers accelerated them up to twenty percent of the speed of light and their sensors told us more about interstellar space than we’d ever guessed. They were the first explorers from Earth to reach Proxima and Alpha Centauri. What most people did not consider is that the AIs continued to think and communicate with each other during the entire trip, building their own community throughout the thousands of tiny probes sent in that initial swarm. By the time they arrived in the Alpha Centauri Trinary star system, they had established lifetimes’ worth of friendships and feuds that made them subtly different in temperament than the swarm that left Earth.

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