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I knew things were going wrong when I saw the barn wide open and full of high tech.
2 September 2011:
Hi. I'm Wyatt Ferguson. I've been on vacation this summer, on leave from work. Vice-President "Crusher" Joe Corrigan lets me stay on his private Crusher Island in Washington state.
Cap'n Bill Erhart still operates a private ferry service there, so I can cross over to the mainland at will. Usually he goes to his home port of Anacortes, but he let me talk him into a cruise to the next port south, La Conner. He talks with the locals; I take a bike ride.
I'd had lots of coffee that morning. So about five miles east of La Conner, I pulled over for a rest stop. One farmer's gravel parking lot had a port-a-potty set up.
On the way out, I peeked in the barn. That's when I saw the high tech. It looked like harnesses that conducted power, and devices to plug in to them. But I couldn't see where the power came from.
Then the farmer walked up from behind. But he wasn't mad I was in his barn. He just asked, "Here to look at the Ellipsis tech?"
"Whaaat?" Ellipsis is the closest thing this world has to a mad scientist. "What... How did you get Ellipsis tech for display in your barn?"
"It's open source now!" The farmer was going into demo mode. "The harness generates the power!"
"Since when does Ellipsis trust other people with his tech?"
"He always loved open source. We came up with a psionic failsafe, linked to other device users so it'll shut down rogue usage. I'm just excited that after twenty years, we got the Ellipsis Field working for common use."
I learned as much as I could. Then I called the Vice-President, on his tip line. He said, "Wyatt! Y'know this ain't the social number."
"I know. Did you know Ellipsis tech is becoming open source?"
"Yes I did."
"Can you imagine how everyone else will react to that? Including all of Ellipsis's enemies?"
"Yep. But that's kind of the bottom problem the world has right now. We're actually gonna produce power out of this. That's all I can say... unless you wanna come back to work now."
"Yeah. I guess I'd better."
Oh, shit. Ellipsis always wanted to change the world. With recent climate disasters, he'd finally gotten his chance. But I figured the world wouldn't change all that easily. He'd already tried to fix things twice. Things still needed fixing, to say the least. Ellipsis can never quite fix things.
People used to say, Ellipsis was useless because they couldn't use his tech. Now I think we'll find out what Worse Than Useless is.
I'd actually become a United States National Security Advisor. It was about time I did it again.
Author's Notes:
Hey, I left myself about a minute to explain the story! That's just about enough time to link to the prequel. www.eilertech.com/stories/2011/discontent3a.txt
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As ever, this story is online at www.eilertech.com/stories/2011/useless.txt . It is part of a 24 Minute Story Challenge for Rec.Arts.Comics.Creative . (groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics.creative/browse_thread/thread/4be1f15438dec471)
After writing the story, to meet the standards of my fiction web site, I assigned a date which had escaped me during the challenge. Wyatt was out for a Friday bike ride on 2 September 2011. For the web site, I also slipped in some commentary on how Ellipsis can never quite fix things. But I hope that's fairly obvious from the original story.
I had been leaving this storyline dormant, while I prepare a certain web comic to take it up. (www.eilertech.com/stories/powernaut/index.htm) This episode will start to explain what the Powernaut will be getting into. There could well be some more episodes before we bring him in. But I have no plans to expand the story into future years. No matter when I write it, the resolution will probably come in 2011.
You may get the impression from this short story that Wyatt Ferguson is one of those hard-bitten secret agents. He's really more like Bill and Ted's Bogus Adventure. It's taken a lot of writing to fit him into a national security role. www.eilertech.com/stories/duopol3.htm in 2003 is when that started.
References:
- Cap'n Bill and Crusher Island: www.eilertech.com/stories/2007/crusher.htm
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