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The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

Aardvark

Herald
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Everything posted by Aardvark

  1. Psychics. The office of the Australian Psychics Association has a doorbell. If that's not proof that they're all charlatans, then there was a case a few years back where one psychic took another psychic to court and lost. If she was a real psychic, she would've known that would happen if she took the first psychic to court, so wouldn't have wasted her money. Fortune tellers, on the other hand. My great grandmother used to read tea leaves. She forsaw a lifesaving blood transfusion between my grandmother and some random dude. And a few other things. All before my time, though. So I've got no proof. Just a taste for tea.
  2. Tardies? Down here, tard is one of those stupid insults that mean nothing
  3. I sometimes make predictions for no reason. I just blurt out a prediction. Most of the time, it turns out to be right. The rest still have time to come true. I also seem to have shorter-ranged form of precognition. I can see a potentially life-threatening situation moments before it happens. This is immensely useful on the roads of Sydney, where some of the world's worst drivers practise what they do worst. I've managed to save my arse and the arse of several twits who decide that the 10 meters to the pedestrian crossing is just too far, they might as well just run out from behind the bus while wearing dark clothes at three in the morning Although this ability has saved my arse, often times it hasn't saved my car. Like now. I reacted in time to save my skin, but still have a couple grand worth of damage to the front/side of my car because of the stupidest display of bad driving in the history of the last month or so.
  4. I played a game of poker with God, once. Just me, God, Satan and Santa Claus. I don't think it was the real santa, though. Just some dude in a santa suit God was palming aces. Just 'cause he created the universe and everything in it, that's no excuse to cheat poorly Now that I think back, it could've been a dream, because Satan looked too much like a dude in a devil suit to be real
  5. Steal my name or call my parents hippies?
  6. Seen it already This one's goin' round my various circles like some kind of clown car Bastards!
  7. Don't make me thermite your unholy arse back to the stoneage, when holy and unholy were words yet to be crafted by the club-wielding linguists of yore, where man had to fight man-eating tigers, man-eating dinosaurs, man-eating men, man-eating wombats and oversized novelty man-eating birds of prey for their very survival. Needless to say, back in those days, man didn't occupy his rightful place at the centre of the foodweb like the man of today. No, back then, man didn't even have the advantage of Thermonuclear Warheads to defend himself, like we do today. Yes indeed, we've come a long way since those early days, living out of our parent's caves, etching picture stories into walls and then inviting friends around to share in the bounty of the hunt and gaze in awe at our wonderful artworks which would oneday confound and amaze the scientific community, causing them to come up with theory after theory about mankind's true origins, each one more radical than the last
  8. I retired unbeaten after realising that I couldn't really cheat as often as I'd like to get away with, without spoiling the game for the poor bastards who go up against ROCKROCKROCKROCKROCKISOCALLEDROCKBEFOREYOU!!!!! me
  9. I'd post one of mine, but my subconscious' agenda is to deny the rest of the world the pleasure, myself included I considered retribution, but I have no desire to stab myself in the head
  10. And God created Adam in his own image. and all was good. Then God went to Adam and said "My child, I have decided to create a companion for you. She shall be smart, capable of intellectual conversation, yet still more than willing to help you out wherever and whenever you need it. She shall be supportive, kind and faithful. The only problem is she'll cost you an arm and a leg" and Adam thought about this and said unto the Lord, "That's a little steep. What can I get for a rib?" --- And God createed woman with three breasts. And woman said undo the Lord, "What do I need three breasts for? I won't be having any litters. Two should be sufficient." And God said "Ahh, I made you wise and you have shown your wisdom. Very well then". And God removed the third breast and tossed it aside. Then woman said "So God, what do you plan to do with that useless boob?" Then God created Man
  11. "My name is Jack." Those four syllables reverberated around my cerebellum like the sound of a gong in a long hallway. I'd heard them before, spoken by your average technogeeks and the other lifeless inhabitants of the GlobalNet, but never before had the words rung so true. This individual before me, floating disembodied before me was, as he, she, it, I'd never truly know, had said, was Jack. Jack was a myth, a legend, a story from the beginning. A story so old, few believed it's validity. And of the few who did, most were the lifeless technogeeks who inhabited the GlobalWeb, the world wide neural network which linked every machine, every mind, every soul on the planet into one magnificent unreality shaped only by the power of the human brain running on the loosest set of guidelines possible. Every planet had one, but I was one of the fortunate few to reside on Earth, the mother planet, where the prototype, the millennia old Internet, made up the foundations for the GlobalWeb. Other planets' 'Webs ran on strict guidelines, secured and regulated by trans-system corporations, but Earth's was as it always had been. Anarchy. Jack was born a mere handful of decades after the Internet's conception. The unwanted byproduct of the Cerebrus Digitalus Project, the first major attempt at transferring a human consciousness to a machine. The volunteers for this project became collectively known as Jack, for reasons lost in the bits of time. According to history, being the first exposed to the raw digital world blasted the minds of the first, turning the humans they once were into vegetables. According to legend, one taste of digital immortality was more than enough for all but a few to leave their fleshy prisons behind and live forever, jumping from machine to machine. How they perceived the digital world before proper cerebral translation software had been created was beyond the scope and imagination of all at the time and possibly even now, if the project hadn't been buried after the first "Failure". Legally, the corporation responsible had nothing to fear, but the PR from the project once it got out was a nightmare. How it got out was never determined, but Cerebrus Digitalus was common knowledge before the scientists responsible even had a night to think about what had just happened. The official position of the company was that all but three volunteers had lost their lives, due to unforeseen consequences of mind/machine integration. The survivors of the project underwent psychiatric care, but had become so withdrawn by their experiences, all three committed suicide in care. Jack, as it would later be called, was flatly denied, despite various sources claiming that the consciousnesses of the volunteers lived on. Mind/Machine integration was scaled back several notches and it would be another decade before the NeuralWeb, the next stepping stone toward the GlobalWeb, would come into existence. But the minds of the first were all on the internet, combined into one intelligent entity. It was unfathomable how Jack had survived, but it had, surviving everything from global digital warfare to corporate viruses, system upgrades to total revolutions in computing technology. Jack was there the whole time, keeping it's cerebellum down. As the years went by, people forgot about it. Indeed, those few who searched drew complete blanks, as most references to Jack had been erased and the rest discredited. But it's existence and path through human history could be traced. A mysterious breakthrough here, a military stronghold going silent there, Jack was out there, this God born from human and computer. And here I was, a thousand years beyond, face to face with a myth. A ghost story, told to keep children in line while teaching them responsible use of the GlobalWeb. There was no doubt in my mind that this was Jack; indeed the lack of doubt itself was yet more proof to it's first, and only, statement to me. In Jack's domain, even the deepest, most remarkable human was nothing but ones and zeros. There were safeguards against it, but those few who believed in Jack also believed that the safeguards were nothing to an entity that could be anywhere on the GlobalWeb, passing through firewalls and cyberguardians as if they weren't there. More proof for me to deal with. The revised history lesson hadn't come from my mind. As soon as it spoke, I knew the story of Jack. I knew about it's entire existence without flesh, without even the filters put in place to protect the raw human mind from the ravages of cyberspace. And with this sudden wealth of information, one thought floated in my mind. A thought picked up and dragged along, with me tailing behind it. Bouncing from node to node across the whole GlobalNet, my thought rang out. Home terminals and government mainframes alike relayed the thought to their users. "Would you ever return to flesh?" And as suddenly as I'd encountered it, I was back in my own body, disconnected from the GlobalWeb. Terminal Error XX3974073-0 returned - Mental Wetware Error. My safeguards had pulled me from the web before the experience damaged my fragile mind. I clicked a button on the console, bringing up the VDU. Photons trapped in a field of energy, giving me a visual display of the Web. A sound-proofed window into another world. Sometimes it felt good to go back to this. Feel the blood course through my fingers as they tapped out directions and input, instead of my subconscious. One of my regular haunts came up. A site designed exactly like an old bulletin board I clicked new post. Then my hands took over. They typed Jack. They tabbed down several times. They told the story I had just learnt. Then they triggered Immersion. Before I knew it, I was back, inside the GlobalWeb. Jack was there. Although it had no physical features, it's avatar representing a shapeless blob more than anything else, I could tell it was grinning at me. Then, as suddenly as it had shown itself, it was gone.
  12. Amusing story, well amusing to me anyway. While writing this, I went and looked up various cultures gods and such, thought to myself, "Hmm, wonder what those fruity japanese believed in." Do a search, come up with a god named Izanaki. Think "Hmm, good enough, needs more tentacles or something, though." Finish the story, run the spellchecker Misspelled word: Izanaki. Suggestion Izanagi. Go check Izanagi on the internet and find that lo, there are a thousand pages about Izanagi, the god, the myth. Why the hell would they include the proper noun Izanagi in a spellchecker?
  13. Sweet holy hell, where did my hour go? Now that you've made your way to the end, I need you. Yes, You. I want you to pick a probe and write. I don't care if it's a poem, a song or a story, I wanna know what happens to the probe in question. I want you to write about it, where it ends up, what happens. Any questions that you need answered, PM me. If you write and as you're about to post, it turns out that someone else has stolen your probe, either pick another probe and swap all the names or just post yours anyway. Humanity's extinct, what does it care if some of the probes hit warp rifts and split into two identical probes? There is one exception, though. Don't touch Lucifer. Lucifer is either going to be mine, when I get 'round to it, or whoever's probe story/poem/song/book/lymrick/whatever I like the most, assuming, of course, that the author in question will accept the honour of determining the fate of the Prince of Darkness It's up to you whether you participate or not. I'm not assigning anything to anyone, I want you to pick your favourite God and go for it. Oh, also, the ends of Iehova, Hermes, Osiris and Shiva. Anyone who wants to write about them, go for it. When you finish your story, post it here. If any of you do feel the need to write about Lucifer, email me the story, don't post it. And please don't give it to anyone else
  14. All of you must head at once to the assembly room and experience my latest creation. Then an assignment awaits each and every one of you. Failure to complete this assignment will result in the end of life in the universe. And a kick in the nuts for all those who believe that life deserves it. Maybe a pair of nuts to be kicked in for those who don't have nuts
  15. Technology would always be mankind's undoing... also it's saviour. As we advanced toward more and more powerful weapons, we also discovered a way to the stars. A way off our home planet. A way to expand beyond our small little world. But the volatile nature of man meant the race was always on. The race between ascension and annihilation. As we advanced further, tensions grew. Smaller nations were swallowed up, either voluntarily or by force, by the superpowers. Ideals clashed against ideals, beliefs against beliefs, egos against egos, it was only a matter of time. A matter of time before our bright little ball was snuffed out and our race lost to the universe, forever. A select few farsighted individuals saw this. They knew humanity was doomed. They worked in secret on earth, designing the probes, constructing them and eventually deploying them. As a treaty had been signed long ago forbidding further orbital installations, fear of spying and celestial devastation playing on the minds of all world leaders more than anything else, the few had a limited window to deploy the probes. Due to limited resources and technology, they knew that the traditional ideas of colonisation had to be abandoned. They weren't saving humanity. They were saving life, preserving it's place in the universe. Each probe was designed to house one human, no more. One human armed with the SOUP. The SOUP stood for something. Few knew what and any queries were explained away with a simple "Primordial soup" explanation. The SOUP was a database of every single genome of every single lifeform on earth. With the SOUP, each pod could create any creature, plant, fungus or amoeba that had ever been recorded in existence. But the SOUP wasn't intended to recreate Earth. Within the SOUP was the instructions for the creation of primordial soup. The stuff life emerged from. Each SOUP was designed to begin life. That was their primary function. Kickstart life on another planet. It had also been decided that a consciousness was needed to create life elsewhere. It had never been proved or disproved that a conscious effort played a part in Mankind's creation. But the few wouldn't leave the future of Life itself up to fate, chance and destiny. So volunteers were called for from the scientific community. Humans who would give up their bodies, their humanity, and become one with the probes. Each volunteer was stripped of all but the necessary components to keep the brain alive, then wired into the systems of the probes. 22 probes were made, in all. The few would've made more, but volunteers were short, even for such a noble cause, and the world around them was falling apart at the seams rapidly. With the twenty two constructed and the window about to open, the few prepped for launch, then waited. The window was set by the heavens. A planetary alignment. Not a perfect alignment, but enough to slingshot the probes out of the solar system. Once beyond the solar system, each probe had it's own method of propulsion that would take it to it's destination. Each destination, a star system with a high probability of habitable planets. These systems were called Destiny Systems. Each probe was then christened with the name of a deity from mythology. The names were handed out in order of the probability of success in each probe's Destiny System. The most likely was named Iehova, followed by Odin, Zeus, Izanagi, Shiva, Jupiter, Brahma, Osiris, Aries, Izanami, Thor, Aphrodite, Mars, Horus, Hermes, Vishnu, Amateras and Janus. The final three were named Loki, Thanatos and Lucifer. Loki and Thanatos were unlucky enough to draw Destiny Systems which had the lowest probability of finding a habitable planet. Lucifer seemed doomed from the beginning. During the initial entombment of the scientist within, the system malfunctioned. The mind of the scientist was almost lost, but it seemed that through sheer will, he was able to hang on until life support had been fully initialised. Other glitches that seemed to plague the Lucifer probe were errors when running through SOUP diagnostics, glitches that appeared in the StarDrive propulsion units, the experimental drives that would see the probes to their Destiny Systems, and a number of mechanical faults that would take precious man-hours to iron out. Lucifer would've been abandoned totally, if it hadn't been for the situation outside. World War Three had begun. Mankind's last war. Nuclear weapons had been held in reserve by all sides. Conventional weapons had been employed, but the few saw this as only the beginning. With the window open, they decided they had to launch. The construction site had been selected as the most isolated, therefore the least likely to come under threat from warring nations. Antarctica was initially selected, but ruled out for fear that a sudden movement of resources there would attract suspicion. The final location was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. A chain of islands, barely known to the rest of the world, but highly developed due to a technocult that had retreated to the island years before. The cult had quickly fallen in line with the few's views and had agreed. Acquiring resources was as simple as having cargo ships mysteriously disappear, then reappear weeks later, painted over, their crews with suspiciously matching stories. The launch sites were all aquatic, submarine domes which the technocult had initially used to house the orbital probes they were planning on launching to protect themselves from annihilation. Just perfect for the few's colonisation probes. The launch went as expected. Better than expected, as Lucifer's initial boosters fired with only a small hitch. Each dome separated from the seafloor, carrying the probes out of the ocean. Once they'd broken the surface, each probe fired it's escape rockets and launched, taking the hopes of the few with them. The technocult had prepared for this day without realising. They were armed to the teeth, complete with their own airforce and long range, anti-air weapons. These turned out to be invaluable, as three superpowers had aircraft carriers within range of the island chain at the time and all three of them detected an unauthorised launch. A short air battle ensued. Four factions fighting an overwhelming number of bogies. In the confusion, most of the probes escaped. Unfortunately, superpower pilots did manage to shoot down Hermes, Osiris and Shiva. Once they broke through Earth's atmosphere, the probes began their journeys outward. The majority headed for Mars, which would set them on a course toward the galaxy's centre. Two probes, Vishnu and Jupiter headed toward the Moon, intending to head outward to two systems within the same arm as the Solar System. The final one, Loki, went toward the Sun. It's course would have it cut across Venus' orbit, then slingshot around Mercury and off toward the edge of the galaxy. Loki's low probability was from the fact that a stray solar flare could wipe it out in an instant. But it was believed that beyond that, the chances of finding a suitable planet in Loki's Destiny System was quite good. As months went by, the situation on Earth reached a head. The technocult had been wiped out, the result of an extensive naval campaign from the three superpowers. But they'd held their own for some time, finally succumbing after months of intensive fighting. They'd been expecting this all along, though. Their entire island chain had been rigged with Uncontrolled Fusion Reactors. Essentially hydrogen bombs without the need for a uranium jumpstart. When the end came, the last of the refugees had fled by way of submarine, all that remained were three men, the head of the technocult, his chief Iam and the unelected leader of the few. These three men watched silently the reports coming in from the automated internal defence network, as well as the fading signals sent from the probes. These three were still in mourning. As the final external defences had been wiped out and the first troops had landed on the island, they received the last report from Iehova, their greatest hope. The probe had been clipped by a rogue meteor and had been sucked into the gravity well of Jupiter. When the internal networks confirmed that the sound of explosions getting closer was invading troops penetrating further into the compound, the three decided as one to detonate the UFRs. The entire chain of islands went up in a bright ball of energy which took the invading force with it. The superpowers blamed eachother for the catastrophe and it wasn't long before they were turning their missiles on eachother. The refugees from the technocult had made their way to a number of submarine compounds which had been built soon after the cult had been established to survive a nuclear war. From inside these compounds on the sea bed, they watched, listened to and felt the end of the world. Weapons more powerful than anything imaginable today were unleashed. Entire mountains were torn asunder, cities were levelled, plains were turned into oceans. The polar icecaps were wiped out almost instantly, owing to strikes on supposed military installations. The landmasses of Earth were flooded with poisoned water, filled even further by radioactive rain which had begun to fall from a cloudcover which blanketed the entire planet. The weather seemed to turn against humanity, with violent electrical storms and hurricanes wracking the few inhabited patches of land left. The shockwaves from the weapons had caused reactions below the surface. Fault lines tore apart and bled molten magma into the oceans. The Earth's magnetic field itself was wavering and fluctuating wildly. The survivors held on tight and prayed that the planet would hold together. Ironically, the final blow came from the heavens. The once-stable orbit of the Moon had been disrupted by the activities on Earth. The relatively small celestial body began it's spiral inward, slowly at first, but increasing as the magnetic field fluctuations began. On it's first pass, it breached the atmosphere, pulling large chunks of land from the Earth and leaving it bleeding magma into space. When it returned, it crashed into the Earth square on. The actual point of impact, against all odds, was the location of the technocult's submarine refuge. This wouldn't have mattered to them, though. The Moon continued it's path through the Earth, taking on excess bulk from it's encounter. Aeons later, the Moon would form a stable orbit around the sun, with a thicker atmosphere, stolen from it's parent planet. The Earth itself, shattered and destroyed, would drift apart , some of it forming a thin asteroid belt, some of it flying outward, away from the solar system, but most of it being sucked back into the Sun, from whence it came. The seventeen surviving probes continued their journeys outward, toward Destiny.
  16. Where are you getting your information from? After the treaty was signed, the maoris stopped the widescale butchery of paka. And, with the exception of the occasional hangied missionary, left the english alone. Except to buy booze from him. The english, unable to defeat them in war, decided assimilation was the go and encouraged white men to take maori brides. This almost worked, too. Only very recently have the few fullbloods left decided to keep all marriages between fullbloods, in an effort to save their race and thumb their noses at mother england
  17. 18, 'eh? Enjoy the next two years. Your last two as a kid I dunno what you're meant to do with your 20th year. Aside from drink a lot. It's such a pointless year. A one year void seperating adulthood and... that... umm... mental blank, damnit. Teenage years word thing.... stupid gray matter going in my old age...
  18. The poms didn't win for numbers. They managed to talk the maoris into signing a treaty which they never had any intention of honouring. That's why there are land disputes to this day. The maoris want the shiny beads they were promised
  19. To all those who believe themselves not worthy of public nudity, I say just one thing Prove it Yes, it is my goal to see this site with an 18+ warning at the front page
  20. Every time I go to the beach, I burn. I come home red as a freaking sundried lobster. I can lather myself with litres upon litres of sunblock 5000, it doesn't make a single bit of difference, I'll burn regardless And there are some places man was not meant to burn I'll let you figure the rest out yourselves
  21. Damn. I'd have to kill you, then Mine was a cover so I could work on my true goal The power of true Evil Spoken like this EEVE-ull And me and my cronies would raise a toast to it with mcdonalds beverages
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