{General} Mad ideas

[Malchus]

Going back a few pages... has fusion-tech been minimized to a point where reactors can be fitted into M1 Abrams tanks?

If they can power a fighter jet's engines, why not? They'd have to be small and light enough not to add any significant mass to a jet engine so that said engine would still fit in said fighter jet. And most of the mass of a jet engine is due to the intake and exhaust systems anyway. I don't see why you couldn't mount them in an Abrams.

Although, I imagine they'd still be horrendously expensive, so most civilian land vehicles will probably be powered by ultra-efficient batteries like those that power the Project Hypotenuse MATHs. With cheap energy due to most cities powered by fusion power plants, one could just recharge said batteries in charging stations or, heck, even from a home outlet.

Smaller military land vehicles will also be powered the same way. Instead of fuel supply trucks providing logistics support, however, maybe they have mobile fusion genetrators to act as recharging stations. As a plus, such vehicles could also provide power for the field commant posts and whatnot.

[Ford Prefect]

Just a point of order here: advanced does not necessarily mean 'expensive'. Harold Quartermass didn't just release fusion technology to the world, he released it to end the dependance upon oil forever and help humanity progress into the future (I mean, it's not like he's profiting of it, as the technology is open source). The smaller your fusion engine is, them ore expensive it will be - the fusion powered Ford GT that appears in the early parts of Black Humour, for example, is relatively more expensive than the fusion reactor in an MBT or the fusion drives used by 6+ gen fighters, which are relatively more expensive than the fusion reactors used in a Grand Canyon class supercarrier.

The technology is not obscenely expensive; if it was, it would completely defeat its purpose. Fusion infrastructures are expensive simply because countries are big, but so long as you have the engineering expertise it is pound for pound a better choice than any other form of energy production. In order for Harold's ideal to work, and I think this is perfectly within his capabilities and character, a fusion powerplant must be an attractive proposition for everyone with the engineering expertise (which is essentially everyone that matters). This isn't just some random tech release: it's the world's greatest genius changing the world.

so most civilian land vehicles will probably be powered by ultra-efficient batteries like those that power the Project Hypotenuse MATHs

This is long established canon; Uther specifically requires that his cars be gasoline guzzling monsters as a reaction to the prevalence of the almighty battery, and Justin Thorn's motorcycle is powered by a super conducting battery which looks like an enormous fuse.

[Invictus]

I think Malchus really meant "advanced" there. While a smaller fusion reactor might indeed be relatively more expensive to build per unit of output, I think it's still an absolute technically challenge to miniaturize Professor Quartermass' original designs. It depends on how Comix! fusion reactors actually work, but I imagine they run pretty hot and require all sorts of containment to be safe and effective. Ultimately, larger reactors will still cost more in materials and manpower to build, and given that the Professor released fusion power with completely replacing the old world energy economy in mind, it can be assumed that designs for powering cars and small homes wasn't his first priority.

[Shroom Man 777]

Mmm... won't the Professor be careful with the technology he gives? Fusion reactor tech would give us basically UNLIMITED POWER, but fusion reactors that can be miniturized to power things like cars or motorcycles can also be used to power things like... towed artillery guns or something.

Fusion reactor tech that, as Vic describes, would be difficult to minimize since it requires being HUEG to alleviate heating issues would solve the world's need for awesome renewable energy without, say, giving humanity another technology to use to blow each other up with.

That would be an interesting conundrum for the Professor. When he comes up with a potentially revolutionizing piece of technology, if he distributes it to the rest of the world, he's gotta consider how less scrupulous people (like Anthony Saint ) are going to exploit it.

[Ford Prefect]

I think Malchus really meant "advanced" there. While a smaller fusion reactor might indeed be relatively more expensive to build per unit of output, I think it's still an absolute technically challenge to miniaturize Professor Quartermass' original designs. It depends on how Comix! fusion reactors actually work, but I imagine they run pretty hot and require all sorts of containment to be safe and effective. Ultimately, larger reactors will still cost more in materials and manpower to build, and given that the Professor released fusion power with completely replacing the old world energy economy in mind, it can be assumed that designs for powering cars and small homes wasn't his first priority.

Almost certainly not, but there are definitely enough clever people around to make it not just possible, but plausible. Given that the initial technological hurdle of getting a net energy gain has been overcome, it is only a matter of time before smaller reactors become available (which they have). I mean, people like Anthony Andrews could definitely do it, and there are a number of considerably brilliant scientists and engineers across the planet.

Mmm... won't the Professor be careful with the technology he gives? Fusion reactor tech would give us basically UNLIMITED POWER, but fusion reactors that can be miniturized to power things like cars or motorcycles can also be used to power things like... towed artillery guns or something.

Oh please. We have already weaponised fusion to its most deadly extent in the real world, and there are very few fusion weapons which are more frightening than the thermonuclear bomb. Fusion powered tanks and fighter planes are unimportant in face of having the ability to end world reliance on oil, which is actually an important move. Saint telling Nadir Hassan about the release of fusion tech is wrapped up in a direct reference to peak oil.

Fusion reactor tech that, as Vic describes, would be difficult to minimize since it requires being HUEG to alleviate heating issues would solve the world's need for awesome renewable energy without, say, giving humanity another technology to use to blow each other up with.

Difficult does not equal impossible. The presence of small enough fusion reactors to use in tanks (and largish pursuit cars) is a direct extension of your mention of SDI making use of cold fusion drives in the Raptor X. This doesn't mean that cars with fusors instead of batteries are available to the general public; both the fusion powered cars I've mentioned - a Zonda which is mentioned in passing in the Justin Thorn article and the car used by the Sweeney in Black Humour - belong to the police, and they're still special vehicles.

Really, the only problem is that it would now be possible to produce pure fusion weapons, probably (which dont' require fissile material). Though they are cleaner.

When he comes up with a potentially revolutionizing piece of technology, if he distributes it to the rest of the world, he's gotta consider how less scrupulous people (like Anthony Saint ) are going to exploit it.

Well, duh.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, the Raptor X is supposed to be a fighter plane equivalent of special weapons, like Giant Robots or something silly and blatantly unreal and stuff like that. Besides, the mention of cold fusion-powerplants and most Raptor X details came from before we fleshed out this much of OZ Comix. It can be subjected to change, downscaling, etc.


EDIT:

If the F-22 was introduced in 2000, and if the Raptor X came... well, whenever... and if the Raptor X really sports bleeding edge technology, including the small-scale fusion engine, then small-scale fusion engine would still be bloody expensive if Raptor Xs and other super-military projects are still the first ones to carry them. That's if the miniaturization is a rather recent development.

OZC tech might go at an accelerated rate, but fusion was still first introduced in the mid-90s. Having it miniaturized to such a point that it can fit in small vehicles would mean really accelerated breakneck development. Just a handful of years from uber-government military tech to commercialized marketable products? That's a bit... fast.


Now that I think about it, how can fusion fit into fighter planes or cars or even houses? I mean, the equipment and stuff needed for it would be immense. If fitting nuclear fission reactors into airplanes and cruise missiles and Project Plutos were troublesome enough...

[Ford Prefect]

Oh for God's sake. I cannot understand you at all sometimes; you think it is blatantly unreasonable for there to exist small scale fusion technology on the same planet where the USSR had a fucking time machine in the Cold War, where the French had a transhuman AI in the 19th century, and where there were heatrays and flying saucers in WWII. Of all the pieces of technological change to get up in arms about, car-sized fusion plants, which are not even remotely implied to be remotely common, are not one of them. I know it's fast for development, but the real world doesn't have dudes with honest to god superintelligence, AIs and magician like scientific geniuses. Are you honestly going to try and tell me that Anthony Andrews can't minaturise a fusion reactor to a couple of cubic meters? He has invented his own forcefield and teleportation technology, after all.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, the time machine is powered by the communism emanating out of Lenin's corpse and it also looks like the Kremlin. And the transhuman AI has 19th century clockwork cyborg Napoleon among its members, and is practically powered by techno-magic. Both of them are also kept relatively hush-hush from the rest of the world, rather than being featured in magazines and catalogs for a price range that nobody can afford.

We can have miniaturized fusion, that's okay. I can live with it.

I'm going to watch some porn. Hrrrumph!



You know how I'm totally irrational about these kinds of things.

[Malchus]

It's not like everyone and their granpa has miniturized fusion reactors, Shroom. Sure, they could have them in houses and cars, but why bother? Cities will have more power than they'll ever need thanks to Larger fusion plants, so all they'll need is to plug into the power grid. Same for the cars since the ultra-efficient batteries should last for a while before recharge, and when they do need to recharge there're outlets and charging stations a plenty. Why buy a more expensive car or house with its own fusion rector when said reactor'll probably eventually need maintencance, and who wants to deal with that headache?

Rich guys, maybe, since they'll have the cash to shell out for the mini-fusion plants and for paying the guys qualified to maintain it when the maintenance period comes. Military facilities and top-of-the-line vehicles, too, since they'd have to operate outside a standard urban power grid eventually, so having self-contained power production systems (whether in the vehicles' engines or as a mobile power pack) would be useful. For most people, though, being hooked up to the local power grid should be more than enough for their housing and vehicular power needs.

[Shroom Man 777]

FINE! YOU PEOPLE WIN!



Yesterday Siege told me how he usually didn't pay the Technotheocracy any attention at all, he said he ignores them most of the time. Except when he wants something amusing and silly.

I think this kind of applies to each of us, since not all of us finds things (like Omnivores or whore-eating cannibalistic sex fiends or something) to be agreeable. But this gave me an idea.

What if the Technotheocracy camouflaged its super-secret facilities in little pocket dimensions. Like that HUEG TTC base in The Coming of the Saint. Pocket dimensions, like how Hogwartz or Privet Lane don't get find out by Muggles. Like that stuff Quartermass uses in his Shetland facilities.

Whereas the Quartermass Experiment undoubtedly has more stringent safety standards in regards to their dimensional tech (they ARE British), the same cannot be said about the Technotheocracy.

See, the Technotheocrats envelop their Cyber Synagogues in a technologically-generated facsimile of the Dreamlands. Now, since it's basically an artificial Dreamlands, of course it's not safe. It is hazardous to your mental health, which explains why the whole lot of them are a bunch of fruit loops. It might not be the Dreamlands they're generating, I think it would be cool if dimension tech carries the unfortunate risk of screwing people's brains up (if safety standards are not employed!).

I think the TTC should have some outposts in the Dreamlands as well.

[Malchus]

I thought that was a given for the Technotheocracy since some of their facilities since they somehow have the infrastructure to build massive flying wings and whatnot but still remain pretty well hidden. Makes sense that some of their bigger ones would incorporate pocket 'verse tech of some sort.

Although, if their pocket universe tech does does somehow turn people crazy, I don't think it'd still be anything like the Dreamlands--not even in facsimile. For one thing, the Dreamlands drives minds that go into it nuts because it's made from the twisted thoughts of sleeping Great Old Ones. Some of these thoughts tend to trickle into any mind that strays within for too long--eventually driving said mind nuts. Unless the Technotheocratic pocket 'verses somehow channel thoughts from twisted dieties, I think it'd have to be something else that drives some of them loopy. For another thing, the Dreamlands time is not in synch with real time. One Dreamlands week = one real world hour.

[Shroom Man 777]

Whatever it is, the Technotheocrats very technology only serves to reinforce their madness.

[Ford Prefect]

To be honest, the Technotheocracy has always struck me as being overtly unusual, yet at the same time I think it's scope as a major religion cannot be discounted. Something I have been considering is just how to portray the Technotheocracy in the redux version of Things Might Get Trippy. I don't do weirdness and craziness for their own sake OZ Comix! (not usually, anyway) and the Acid stories are fairly serious action-thrillers. Faustan's attack of Berlin was pretty ridiculous, in retrospect, and probably the least reasonable part of the old TMGT.

[Invictus]

The going concern seems to be how the Technotheocracy manages to field vast armies of super-tanks and flying fortresses while staying a relatively secret organization or indeed not influencing the world in any significant way. As the TTC is inspired by the Adeptus Mechanicus, maybe they share a same weakness with the Adeptus Mechanicus? Instead of using their demented but formidable technology to create massive and obvious manufacturing bases, what if they spend far too much time oiling sacred pistons, handcrafting mechanical angels and generally being way too adoring of technology to be pragmatic about it? This could leave them with a handful of slavishly elite stuff but otherwise not possessing much else.

Also, Shroom, remember that discussion we had about the TTC's influence over the Russian Sphere and their vampire-hunting antics in deepest Siberia? Maybe the organization is actually not inconspicuous; it is only rather invisible in the western world, where the Goldstein-Quartermass-Andrews technological paradigm hold sway instead of the weird Tesla one which Russia seems to be based on.

[Shroom Man 777]

It shouldn't be too blatantly obvious in Russia, though.

In Eastern Europe, you'd see the TTC being rather dominant - but there'd be a lot of intersect with stuff like evil Russian megacorporations, Kragoresthan, the Church of Steam, Vladimir Putin, and etc.

Perhaps they are less active because they don't want to scratch, and therefore blaspheme, their sanctified gizmos.

[Ford Prefect]

To be honest, I thin we have moved away from it being a 'secret society' and rather it just has elements of it which are secret. I do not see any problem with people having heard of the Technotheocracy much in the same way they've heard of Scientology. However, at the same time it is unlikely that they would have heard of the Odmilitia, much as how few people would have heard of the RCC's modern Inquisition.

[Malchus]

Faustan's attack of Berlin was pretty ridiculous, in retrospect, and probably the least reasonable part of the old TMGT.

Maybe you could still keep the attack as is, maybe to speak of Faustan's huge ego or something. At the same time, you could put the reactions of the rest of the higher ranked Technotheocrats in uproar at his brash squandering of their sanctified war technology. Maybe you could even add another Technothocratic force trying to stop Faustan before things get out of hand.

Maybe the organization is actually not inconspicuous; it is only rather invisible in the western world, where the Goldstein-Quartermass-Andrews technological paradigm hold sway instead of the weird Tesla one which Russia seems to be based on.

Now that Vic mentioned it, I do remember that the Technotheocracy and Putin's Russia did have a working relationship of sorts. Maybe some of their larger facilities are in the emptier parts of Siberia, then? Or perhaps even Russian-sponsored?

[Ford Prefect]

Maybe you could still keep the attack as is, maybe to speak of Faustan's huge ego or something. At the same time, you could put the reactions of the rest of the higher ranked Technotheocrats in uproar at his brash squandering of their sanctified war technology. Maybe you could even add another Technothocratic force trying to stop Faustan before things get out of hand.

I have upscaled Faustan's common sense - he does not assault Berlin using any wings, though he still deploys armour. The presence of Kill-Cleric Yamen is supposed to be a mediating force, both making sure that Faustan takes Sophie alive, and that it doesn't get too out of hand, lest the Technotheocracy actually gets caught up in the business.

[Shroom Man 777]

I thought it was Electrobishop (:D) Holtzman's dickery and epic failure that led to Faustan being deployed as part damage-control and part cleanup crew.

ELECTROBISHOP! Subnuclear Pontifex! Goddamn I love these guys.

[Siege]

Personally, I wouldn't be adverse to wholesale replacing the Eastern Orthodox Church with the Technotheocracy for Comix. The regular churches wouldn't be much different from the ones we see in the world today, but the dogma would focus on, hell I dunno, Clockwork Christ or something, and the higher/deeper you go in the hierarchy, the more high-tech would pop up. Sort of like a Masonic "you gotta be initiated in the holy secrets" type approach: your average street preacher might have a few fancy gadgets, but it's not until you get to the bishop that you hit the really good stuff, the cybernetics and handheld lasers and so on. Since the Vatican in Comix! is far more technologically inclined (at least insofar as I'm inclined) the Great Schism of the 11th century may have had something to do with it.

Anyway, this would (sort of) explain both the prevalence and the secrecy of the Technotheocracy. It'd be perfect insofar as I'm concerned.

[Ford Prefect]

I thought it was Electrobishop (:D) Holtzman's dickery and epic failure that led to Faustan being deployed as part damage-control and part cleanup crew.

While the Electrobishop wanted Technotheocratic assets deployed so they could deploy the modified field-slaves so he could trigger Sophie's Akira Attack, he really wouldn't have asked for flying wings. It's just too overt; Faustan cannot risk exposing Technotheocracy involvement. He is intensely loyal to the Order, and even he is wracked with guilt at the idea of having Sophie in the Egg of Light.

I like Siege's suggestion; it meshes with the ideas that I have had regarding them, and notes them quite coherently.

[Shroom Man 777]

It would be better if the Orthodox Church wasn't outright replaced with the Technotheocracy (that's like replacing Evangelical Christianity with Spaceology or some shit) but...

Perhaps the return of Orthodox Christianity in the post-USSR Eastern Europe could've seen the Technotheocracy, which had been building its power for so long, secretly latch into the resurgent religion to further its purposes.

We already had the concept of Technotheocrats going all Illuminati and subverting corporations, extending their invisible mechadendrites into aspects of society. This would only be a furthering of the process.

Conspiracy! It's kind of like the state-owned Roman Catholic Church in CHINA!

It would be an ongoing procedure, the whole subverting Orthodoxy thing. Well, the Technotheocracy did gain most of its power in the 20th century, and we saw Stalin and the USSR go about almost killing religion.

Maybe in WWII, when Stalin brought back the Orthodox Church to support his war effort, we could see a bunch of Soviet/TTC guys going all Yuri-like and mind-controlling religious masses with technology or something. Well, they wouldn't be TOO blatant, most people won't suspect their local bishop or patriarch to be a psyker operative of the NKVD or some TTC dude.

The Orthodox Church, post-USSR, would be in such a weakened state that it would be perfectly suited to being coopted by the TTC. The same goes with other religions as well!

Likewise with the Russian government and the Russian corporations.



Hrm... yes. The TTC would truly establish its power during the end of the Cold War, just like how Saint came into prevalence when he stole the Saturn VIII from Von Reagan. The Soviet Union at its prime would've been too mighty to co-opt, with men of steel like Stalin, and shoe-bangers like Khrushchev. During WWII, the Technocracy would've allied with Russia in a bid to gain the advantage in the country's damaged state. Offering friendship and allegiance, while in truth they had deceit and betrayal beneath that (TechnoPriest: Today Elektrostal! TOMORROW THE MOTHERLAND!)! But Stalin saw and thwarted their plans - Night of the Thousand Stalins be damned!

Repulsed, the TTC waited until the USSR collapsed - and then it SPRUNG ITS TRAP!

While Mikhail Gorbachev invented democracy and Boris Yeltsin drowned the Motherland in her own vodka, the Technocracy grew and extended its insidious tentacles further into Rodina!

Only one man would be strong enough to fight back - to restore the vision of great men of steel like Lenin and Stalin, to break the bonds of the Techotreachery of the Theocracy.

Yes.


VLADIMIR PUTIN


Soviet Russia, Fuck Yeah!

[Siege]

It would be better if the Orthodox Church wasn't outright replaced with the Technotheocracy (that's like replacing Evangelical Christianity with Spaceology or some shit) but...

Actually it's not. Superficially at least it's not that hard to replace the message of Orthodoxy with the Technotheocracy. All it requires is to make the TTC actually theocratic instead of merely using faux-catholic titles for everything. If we try and move away from the 'lol bishop' schtick and actually add some depth to this organization instead of leaving them as just a kooky bunch whose selling points are high tech and silly plays on catholic jargon, we might actually be able to make them into something interesting and usable, rather than a mere unwieldy plot device.

Perhaps the return of Orthodox Christianity in the post-USSR Eastern Europe could've seen the Technotheocracy, which had been building its power for so long, secretly latch into the resurgent religion to further its purposes.

Christ, the how-manieth 'existing organization gets infiltrated by made-up crazies' plot in Comix! would that be? Can we just for once have an organization out in the open, being more or less what it says on the front door - a techno-religious organization promising salvation through high techology? Why does this have to be the Xth secret order? Why can't they just preach their dogma out in the open? Does it even make the slightest bit of sense to have a secret religion? What's the point of being a religion if your whole organization is secret?

Why can't they just be an odd bunch of cybernetic preachers at first sight, but with a vastly bigger and higher-tech organization lurking behind them?

I like the whole commie craziness as much as the next guy, but this is pushing it. The TTC should not ally with Stalin. If anything the USSR and the TTC should have been at odds with each other the whole time, vying for control over the populace of the Warsaw Pact. No laying low and abiding their time, just hard-core covert war, techno-religion vs. the Power of Communism. We could have state psykers rooting out TTC underground churches, TTC cyborgs raiding KGB prisons, and Stalin and the Patriarch unleashing increasingly more terrible Teslatech onto each other's minions. Which, to my mind, should prove far more interesting than adding another layer of needless complexity to the whole 'rar Stalin' rigamole.

Hell if they're at that much at odds with each other that at least would explain how the USSR managed to fall in the end. Lord knows it is already hard enough to explain how they could ever possibly fail, what with the time machines, communist-empowered heroes, tesla-tech and so on.

Conspiracy! It's kind of like the state-owned Roman Catholic Church in CHINA!

The Patriottic Association is not a conspiracy. Far from it, in fact.

[Shroom Man 777]

Goddamn!


You win.


This time.


On that note, how on Earth are we going to make those group of crazies into a functional religion anywhoo? I mean, man. Just look at them! They're insane.

It'd require Russia, and Eastern Europe, to be totally dystopic or something. Like, maybe due to the result of the Cold War really going hot in OZ Comix - no thanks to Von Reagan.

Or maybe not.

Rather, it'll need even further alterations from reality to make the AdMech a functioning belief system. While I usually gripe and moan suggestively whenever this happens, I can't this time since I find the idea of the TTC being considered as a real religion both preposterous and amusing... and, goddamn it, I'm actually thinking about it.


You know what Ford said about not being into the whole Christianity shtick, how going like DC and Marvel and officiating real-life JudeoChristianity would be LAEM?

Maybe if we did delve into religion, we'd do what you're suggesting.

OZ Comix IS a strange freaky world. If you're suggesting that the Technotheocracy be a major religion, in that it replaces Orthodoxy... then maybe a lot of other religions could get replaced. We have the Church of Steam... we have your version of the Roman Catholic Church. We've got fucking magic, we've got vampire cultists, we've got Lovecraftianists and Cthulthuists.

Hell, we've got Karate Kid Kults trying to learn Ancient Chinese Secrets to turn them into Martial Arts Star Gods (Phaetons) and the Power of ROCK - with Dr. Funkenstein being officially more scientifically factual than Jesus, Mohammad, and Moses combined.


Holy shit!


OZ Comix! will be like some kind of postmodern surreal entertainment nightmare shit, if done right. Just like that novel about the nuclear-armed samurai-sword wielding Mafia pizza delivery boy of the future.

It'll be screwier than anything Invictus can possibly think of.

[Siege]

On that note, how on Earth are we going to make those group of crazies into a functional religion anywhoo? I mean, man. Just look at them! They're insane.

A five-minute attempt nets me this:

"The Technochurch believes in a God who is both three and one (triune). Sentience is the cause or origin of the Godhead, from whom Knowledge is begotten eternally and also from whom the Holy Technology proceeds eternally. This Holy Trinity is three, distinct, divine aspects (hypostases), without overlap or modality among them, who share one divine essence (ousia)—uncreated, immaterial and eternal."

Obviously not entirely what we're looking for yet, but this just goes to show that if that's what we want to do, putting the theo back in theocracy is not difficult at all.

You know what Ford said about not being into the whole Christianity shtick, how going like DC and Marvel and officiating real-life JudeoChristianity would be LAEM?

Frankly I think that's unfair. We've got Buddhist incarnations and all sorts of gods and pseudo-gods milling about, so I don't see what should make the Abrahamic religions a no-go area. I know bashing Christianity is the fashionable thing to do on the web, and I'm not saying we ought to incorporate it wholesale (far from it in fact), but we can work with it, subvert it to our own uses, just like we did with Pai, Zeus, the Gladiators, et al.

I've never really understood this obsession with wholesale blacklisting Christianity. Seriously, not a word from anyone when stereotypical depictions of Zeus or Anubis are thrown around, but when the YHWH-word falls that's suddenly not done? Why on Earth not? Obviously if you're building, say, a fantasy universe where mythology has to be copied word for word you're going to run into problems (I am, of course, referring to the original Atlantis Rising fiasco), but no-one ever said that's what had to happen. Comix is far too tongue-in-cheek for that.

As an example, the Gladiators, Zeus' chosen ones, are mainly concerned with cocking about on flying chariots, displaying their resplendant oiled-up nudery - I hardly see that as a correct representation of ancient Greek heroics. Rather, it's a play on a given theme. The same can be done with any other theme, including Christian mythology.