POWERNAUT 2005!

All the links here can be found under http://www.eilertech.com/stories/ .

I thought Spanker 4 had just bottled the Lower 48 United States. (ref: 2005/occulator.htm) But I admit, he comes from where they think of land masses instead of political boundaries. I'm not planning to revise my account, but I'll admit the Powernaut's account is right.

And it's important to point out... That wasn't the whole planet. It was just one continent. People have asked me what's on the other side of North America in that picture. The other side was a slice of the center of Earth. The rest of Earth went into its own bottle while Spanker 4 took this slice, so the molten bits didn't slop out. I think Doom Creatures built that other bottle, because they were determined Earth would face no doom except from them. I was standing inside that other bottle.

I keep talking about Engines in this series, especially the Engine of Permanence. Things which were done with Engines, were permanent. But *scooping out a continent* was done with the power of a Doom Creature - the (slaughtered) Doom Panda of Gravity from Asia. That's how powerful Doom Creatures are. They seem silly, and they walk among humans sometimes (especially the Doom Koala of Speed), but they are Doom incarnate.

All the links here can be found under http://www.eilertech.com/stories/ .

I have until now lived in a world where the United Nations had some balls, err, teeth. Their peacekeeping agency Paxis built a monitoring facility at the far western end of China, where it met both Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asia. This was known as PaxisBase High Asia.

Spanker 4 changed history such that the people who built the High Asia base never existed. But he kept the base, because it's the coolest fortress the Spankers have ever found in Asia.

All the links here can be found under http://www.eilertech.com/stories/ .

I *think* I once contacted the Power behind the Engines. (ref: ../1988/me2.htm) It said, "None will ever know. All must believe." But I got some subtext... "You think it's so easy being God? Try it yourselves!" So I've tried it a few ways, including via the Engines.

It's been supposed that universal power is too much for a human mind to handle. But in my experience, the Engine-Gems of Reality are easily handled. It is as though they *want* to be used. You may never understand them all, but they won't overload your brain any more quickly than a dictionary will. The main problem with using them is, they tend to break things much more easily than they fix them. It's like having the root password to reality. They do have an Undo capability, though - unless the Engine of Permanence is there.

At some level, even Spanker 4 realized the Engines could break things it wasn't his mission to break. That is likely why he barely used them at all, and only against the creatures which were directly opposing him. I know this because... well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

All the links here can be found under http://www.eilertech.com/stories/ .

The Occulator Compuplex turned on and off during the crisis. (ref: 2005/occulator.htm) The sources I saw for it were aliens and Earth former-superhumans. Yet it survived the depowering and imprisonment of those same sources. I'm not sure it was actually around *during* the crisis for Spanker 4 to abuse; it had packed our minds full of useful information, like what Spankers turn into when they're about to be defeated. But in any case, the Occulator came back after, with the power of so many minds it could overwhelm any amount of mind control.

Oh, thank you Lucianus Autonomus. When you recreated the Occulator Compuplex, you buried its power and made it spread! By the time Spanker 4 put North America in a jar, the continent practically *was* the Occulator Compuplex!

As for other powers, and for myself... Anne has the ability to neutralize superhuman powers. I helped her even though I have those powers. People might mistakenly think I'm a hero for doing that. But to me, this is no more drastic than every time I have ever been booted out of a software company as an employee, contactor, or vendor. In both cases, I usually take a nice vacation and then come back in six months. So I'm not selfless; I've just been there, done that.

As for the Powernaut... He surrendered his power too! He knows power; he *is* power. And he knew where the power needed to be. He, I think, is a hero.

All the links here can be found under http://www.eilertech.com/stories/ .

I met Monseigneur Lateran once. He was making a power play for control of a megachurch. (ref: 2004/aleut.htm) We did not play well together, to say the least.

Since then I've done my research on him... He tries to look and dress French, but he is really from Quebec. His bodyguards are Swiss. Indeed, they are former Swiss Guards from the Vatican. The Vatican has excommunicated Lateran, but he still has influence there and considers himself fully Catholic. And Swiss guards should never be underestimated. Switzerland fended off the Nazis with Swiss home guards.

This is not to say that Lateran is an evil Catholic. He's more an opportunist. When I met him, he was attaching himself to vaguely-Protestant megachurches.

Philippe St. Joseph Lateran is no leader. He loves to attach himself to real leaders, and then exercise influence. In the 1990s, his favorite movement *took down Ellipsis*! I (of all people) was actually the one who brought Ellipsis back! (ref: asabove.htm)

Lateran has mind-control powers. I suppose Ellipsis has those powers too, but Lateran's are different. Ellipsis is a master at configuring individual minds, including his own. Lateran, on the other hand, rewrites *mass quantities* of minds. He often finds some resistant minds; he usually has others deal with those. I was one such speedbump in his world, so he's given me special attention.

... anyway, Lateran seemed to be an independent operator when we met him in 2005. That was no improvement upon his normal state.