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Open Source 1

 
 
Deep Trope
21:38 / 21.08.01
Myra hangs suspended, arachnoid, above a sea of sodium. Above her (though it is, from her inverted perspective, beneath her feet) the customs vessel Absent Friends is running black. The glow by which she sees washes upward from the arclights of San Califa, winking by their thousands along roads and overpasses, in schoolyards and junkyards, backyards and swimming pools. She cannot see him, but she knows that Barnes is on the other end of the zipline, patient, massive, shaggy-haired Barnes, who can lift her bodyweight in one hand. Beside him is Cree, needlepoint neurotic in civilian life, sharp and clear tonight, as every night on the job. And in the pilot seat, her Captain. Myra smiles, and returns her attention to the city.

The suit she wears is not neoprene or lycra, but rather a distant relative of both, slick and warm, it assists her movements, insulates her from the frost at ten thousand feet, and will protect her later from flames, projectiles, and even sharps, although the designers are cautious about this last, and the guarantee rates the suit only for second chance in respect of knives. The suit wraps her in calm. On other days it pulls the small hairs on her body, tweaks her concentration and makes her snappy. But not tonight. Tonight, the suit is behaving, and Myra can focus, really focus, on the job.

She closes her eyes, joins her hands, and slips into the trance. And quickly, amazingly quickly, she hears. Myra is listening to San Califa's dreams.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
10:10 / 22.08.01
There's interference tonight, the buzz and crackle of parties and drunken desires slagging up the waves, slicking over it like an oil spill. No bedraggled bird, though, Myra. She dives slick through them, into the wash of dreams.

But these dreams are not those of individuals. They are the shared dreams of the many, a kerass of actors or a phalanx of businesspeople dreaming together, a committee of charity workers down at the Badlands drug centre. They dream of sleep, some of the groupminds. Others - down at the asylum - dream of waking.

But something sparkles black in the waves. It is a big dream, jagged and striated, receding from Myra as fast as she turn in her bodysuit cage, pursuing it through closed eyes. It is a want-dream, a desire, a shared need. Huge and tasting of salt. She only saw this kind of thing once before, over Karahati after the first war there. That time it was a dream of killing.

This time the dream is of dying.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:09 / 15.09.01
Pillaged from my most recent "Remix" to add to the array:

Rem sleep: Forbes lies atop a mountain of living calculating engine, eyes closed beneath his mask. His body is penetrated by data, coral insurgents driving through wetsuit, wetware, tapping into nerves and brain. Gu's experiment requires an ample body, so Forbes has been putting on weight. Like Frankenstein, Gu wants a larger subject for sheer engineering convenience. The pain is low level, but constant, so Forbes is blasted on ludes. He's a spaced out coral/human hybrid, and between rapid calculations he seems to be exploring the fractal set and saving images whose random configurations he finds, for some reason, erotic - at least, as near as anyone can tell. Some of Forbes' experience is private even now.

Sine waves mean migraine, flicker means pleasure: Forbes' emotions are displayed in cathode green, even though the screens are liquid crystal: tradition in science.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
08:47 / 15.02.02
Flyboy, you're up.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:47 / 15.02.02
Argh, it's at home! I'm in this evening, however, so will add it then. (Delete this afterwards, please?)
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:02 / 19.03.09
Does anyone remember whether Deep Trope was one of my funny hats back in the day when that was okay? Because I would have sworn blind that I wrote that first post, and now I find I may not have done. Although, actually, this being an open-source project, I can still do what I was going to do...
 
 
Alex's Grandma
19:29 / 19.03.09
Dude, honestly, nobody cares.

And, seeing as we're here, I am tired of seeing your novel hawked about the London underground like a three dollar hooker, who doesn't give good service.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:00 / 19.03.09
Actually, I don't mean any of that.

Best of British with 'The Goneaway World'.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
01:26 / 20.03.09
Still, in the spirit of this thing;

'Myra, realising that it be not good for ladies to be protag in skiffy repair herself to the facilities. Anyone bothering, she shoot.

Crack mirror? Eventually, she look at self in mirror, and wonder what the point be? And then she remember. Then, she remember. She kill everyone in the room.'

And then go out for a taco, or something.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:43 / 20.03.09
Leaving all that aside - Nick, Deep Trope was, I believe, one of your logins. I mean, it might have been an intentionally shared login, but it usually sounded very much like you.

What the copyright implications of using unascribed text which is in a thread called Open Source (but which has no actual open source license attached to it), I wouldn't want to get into. Fortunately, since the producer of the text was probably you, you'll be unlikely to receive a challenge from yourself about it.

That said, on an academic level it's worth noting that something called "open source" doesn't necessarily mean that it _is_ open source, especially since the licensing implications of the term "open source" are only codified in software (by the Open Source Initiative, although there are a number of non-compliant licenses which fulfill the Perens principles and could be seen as effectively open source), so if I were doing something with a piece of text of uncertain provenance which had no license I'd want to check out with whom the intellectual property rested. In this case, my guess is that the intellectual property rests with you, because Deep Trope probably = Nick using a nom de plume. That's just a guess, though, and I don't think that there is even a moment where you acknowledge openly that Deep Trope = Nick using a nom de plume. If you're concerned, at least a rule-of-thumb provenance could be established by checking whose email address the suit is registered to.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
13:41 / 25.03.09
Whatever. Someone continue the damn story already ... I've done my bit.
 
 
_pin
18:46 / 15.04.09
I'm pretty sure it's Flyboy's turn. Maybe someone should tell him. I'm sure he'll be right over.
 
  
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