Startup Escalation 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 .
This Year: Jan Feb Mar Hypernauts Apr May A Sequel Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec .
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Startup Escalation 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 . This Year: Jan Feb Mar Hypernauts Apr May A Sequel Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec . Superhuman World 2008 is a work of fiction. The characters herein and the commentary about them should not be considered "real".Superhuman World 2008Hypernautsor, Fantasy War |
(March) Dream House., or, Reality House the TV Show. (3 Mar) Commentator: N. F. Pachek for the World Journal Monthly. | |
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On an ABC show there's a big office where a guy claims to have a dragon, but it's really just five slugs in a packet. He says they're dragon seeds. He does have a bean mill that people fall into, though. On that show, people live in a warehouse together. There's an aerial course which Ellipsis flies. On next, a George Harrison concert. ... Wait a minute; what's Ellipsis doing here in a silly reality TV show? Well, he does have some experience with bizarre housing arrangements. (See Related Story) And he is the pre-eminent lord of dreams, even silly dreams. He's intrigued at how he now lives where subconscious thoughts come from. So he traces one thought string all the way... and gets trapped. Like he's a dream wizard from a telephone commercial. Fortunately, unlike certain fictional lords of Dream, Ellipsis is part of a committee. So he has backup. Morningstar Julie and the Mighty Tim come break him out. Though they have a good laugh first. Then they come through as a Dream Princess and a Dream Knight, to claim their Dream Wizard. | |
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Response by Erik Katzman, The Hurrier. Now that humanity is mapping the spiritual realms, it would be good for world governments to have oversight. Almost all explorers of the European Age of Exploration were government-sponsored. (The colonisation of the Island of Newfoundland-Canada is the major known exception.) So responsible government has spread throughout the world. The European concepts of liberty eventually led to increased freedom for most if not all people of the colonized lands. The superhuman operative Ellipsis was always known for his opposition to organized government. It is good that he has taken two partners to act as checks and balances upon him. He may yet be part of an beneficial structure over all human knowledge. |
(March) Amazon Game. Commentator: Gillette Harris. | |
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... Yo, this be Gillette Harris. I got personally assigned by my boss Countess San Giacomo to go play games. But first I got sent home for family time. Ma be single now, no boyfriend. But got some money, so took us to Burger King. Sister say she take care of us. Brother talk about heavy metal in the water - South Lansing still got lead pipes. He say, the Man out to poison the brothers... This be back home. Can I go back to work now? (17 Mar) There be a Mistress Norma, Norma McMillan of Body Up. Ever since Panlucida, she run role-playing games for women to train them for powers. Like they be Amazons. Boss say, I might be good to go help. Don't know why. So, I got to decide what kind of Amazon to play. Overall capable, or combat monster? Real job is afterward. Someone got to store results in a database. I been trained to do that. Just got to put the records in the right order, and take out the stuff that don't fit. Kind of like solitaire. (24 Mar) I stood out in the game. That be bad back in South Lansing where I come from. It bad here too. Demons recruit gamers. So I get in trouble... but that be another story. | |
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Response by Erik Katzman, The Hurrier. I am disturbed that women are organizing to support the sorcerous change to the relationship between humankind's genders. Mr. Harris, you are employed by a woman, are you not? Do you sense from her any self-interest in place of species-interest? |
(March) Fantasy War. Commentator: Gillette Harris. | |
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... Yo, this be Gillette Harris again. I got sucked to this place after pretending to be an Amazon. Don't ask how I get sucked in this $#!+. I be in some kind of dream city now. Like in the hobbit movies, only called Latver. But this city do computer programming! It be the ultimate outsourcing. My substitute calculus teacher here too! Mr. Ferguson say, he here just 'cause I be thinking of him. Big deal Captain Mighty be here too. He be a big white jock, but the dream city treat him like Superman, 'cause they missing they White Knight. Captain Mighty love it, 'cause it be way better than real life for him. He die during the nuke attack last year, but he show up again in dreams! Some demon army want to come in and take over the computer jobs. They be a demon army, so they can storm the border wall of the city. But only 20 minutes a day, 'cause they just be demonstrating. I help at the walls. Mr. Ferguson say I be safe and useful if I pump all my powers into defense. Hey, makes as much sense as how I survive the cougar attack. Arrows bounce off me and fire wash by. In between, I ask how many people are in the city. But they don't know. The fantasy citizens don't do census; they just show all their newborns to they Wall of the Higher Power. Finally some kind of dream lords come shut the invasion down, after Captain Mighty chase the demons one day. There be a dream princess, dream knight, and dream wizard. Dream wizard look at Mr. Ferguson funny and say rude $#!+. Dream wizards must hate calculus teachers. Dream people shut the dream city down too. Say if city deal with "realer" world (not "real world"), they got to join that world. Otherwise, all the demons want to play too. So the dream city now live somewhere called Vojvodina. Part of Serbia. Yeah, Serbia need another breakaway province like Kosovo. These people fit right in. Serbians already call Latver city Latverja, which fit right in to Vojvodina. Back home, boss Countess San Giacomo not mad at me for skipping work! She say, surviving is the work her field agents do. And she buy my story. She even give me promotion to Field Agent! After that, normal $#!+ no big !@#$. A man cut through my lock at the gym, try to hold me at knifepoint. I kick down the shiv, chase him and point as he runs. (27 Mar) Now I be a Portland celebrity, for fifteen minutes or so. But still invisible if I wear my hoodie. Taxi cab still ignore me. (28 Mar) | |
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Response by Erik Katzman, The Hurrier. Mr. Harris, your skill as an observer increases, and I congratulate you. You have proved your value to your leader. Despite my difference of opinion with her, she is still to be commended for making your report available to the world. You even show some knowledge of European affairs, which especially impresses me in an American. My analysts yet have no conclusion to what you have observed. All we can say with confidence is, there is some connection between the Panlucida sorcery and the demonic forces which you observed. Beyond that, I can only conjecture:
Perhaps from this list it is now obvious how far this conspiracy may have spread. |
(April) Hypernauts Prelude. Commentator: Hudson Ramo. | |
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I used to have this friend Wyatt, he had me write a web page for him once. Looks like this makes me a "superhuman commentator", like they say nowadays. So someone paid me to write another one. My name's Hudson Ramo. I used to work at DuoPolarity of Boston, but then I took a side job as pilot for Wendie's Wanderers. What the hell, retirement was boring. But then DuoPolarity called me back. They found something to look at in China, and they needed a rocket pilot for it! DuoPolarity's been through some changes since I joined. It used to be me, Ted Clark, his wife Ingrid, and her little sister Karen. Then Ted died. They recruited other people to replace him. Those all left, but then Ted came back! Reality shifts, they say. Ted's 25 years younger now. Ingrid don't mind. Neither does Ted. He knows a good woman when he marries her. Ted wanted to go look at some rock formations in south China near Hong Kong. He said, there were traces of extradimensional radiation near them. Thing is, the China government approved the visit but their city didn't. They were about to bulldoze the place! So, Ted needed a rocket pilot to bypass the locals and go straight there. That's his old friend, me. We brought the whole gang: Ingrid, Karen, and for security, the new contractors Karla and Adu from the Balance. Adu wants trade for his tribe in Ghana, so we're giving him some. (15 Apr) When we got there, Ted whipped out some instruments. This fired up a portal! We spent maybe fifteen minutes probing the thing. Then Ted just had to go through. Same old Ted. And none of us was letting him go alone. When we got to the Happy Land of Dreams, some big naked oiled-down guy was there. Said he was Mighty Hercules, and he'd wrestle our champion right out of there. Yeah, right. If we ever storm Olympus, I doubt it'll be like a gay bar. Adu was ready to take that challenge. So was Karen, she was asking me if I had pliers to crack this guy's big nuts with. But then this little black guy showed up behind Gay Herc and said, "My turn!" Little guy was on a bike. He rode around fast, so Gay Herc couldn't catch him. Then he said, "I know Bip-Jutsu! Bip!" Popped Gay Herc right on the forehead, knocked him down for the count! While we talked about what to do, Gay Herc propped himself and said, "Your Dream Champion has harnessed the power to best me. You've earned the right to proceed." And he pointed. So we went. | |
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Response by Erik Katzman, The Hurrier. It is valuable to get this additional point of view for the event that followed. I plan additional interviews with the DuoPolarity staff. For what it's worth, "Mighty Hercules" resembled an actual wrestler. Ancient Greeks wrestled naked and lubricated, for what advantage these things gave. |
(April) Hypernauts Part 1. Commentator: Gillette Harris. | |
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... Yo, this be Gillette Harris. One day I be chillin' in Oregon, doing paperwork at office where I work. Office. Imagine that. Home in Michigan, most people dream of working at K-Mart and not getting knifed in parking lot. Then, this dream princess burst in the room. I know her from that dream city war thing. She say, "Wyatt! We need you!" I say, "No Wyatt here." "But he dreams here. Wyatt! Come out!"
Then I say in a different voice, "Leave him alone, Julie." But it wasn't me saying! Long story. I make it short. Mr. Ferguson, Wyatt, be my old substitute calculus teacher in South Lansing. His body be in mental institute somewhere 'cause a judge send it there. His mind be with me. My boss hire me 'cause she know this! Dream woman be Julie Wolcott. She and Mr. Ferguson got all this Superhuman World $#!+ going on between them. She want him help out with new Fantasy War. Def time to tell the boss. Boss say, go help the dream princess - but only if she come up with real plan with us. Me and Mr. Ferguson, that be. So I got to stay late at work. But least I get paid for it. And damn I learn a $#!+load about Dreamland. Real late, we get the go from boss. I get to go help break Mr. Ferguson's body out from mental institute in Indiana. We sleep in private jet on way. Dream princess say, she make sure we not attacked in dreams. Breakout damn easy. I just got to show up at mental institute and give them a paper, say I be the guardian and I want him released. And the paper be true! Boss's company pay for his care. Dream princess go off with Mr. Ferguson mind and body. I go back Oregon. Back at work, I got questions for boss. If she hire me just 'cause I got another mind in me, then that mind be gone, what good I be to her now? But she say, I still good. She got a lot invested in me, at first 'cause of Mr. Ferguson, but now I be good on my own.
Mr. Ferguson, you help break me out of Michigan. I owe you for that. (17 Apr) My job be just to go sleep. Mr. Ferguson and Mrs. Wolcott say I'll meet them in dreams tonight. First in the dream I see this naked man who def need a bip upside the head. In the dream I know Bip-Jutsu, so I bip him good. Then I see a bunch of scientists and superheroes. They look like they know where they going, so I go along. | |
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Response by Erik Katzman, The Hurrier. Mr. Harris, if your story is to be believed, you are either a tool or a collaborator. Your own cooperation with the known villain Wyatt Ferguson may be some form of "Stockholm Syndrome", wherein a kidnap victim has sympathy for the kidnappers. Whichever may be, I hope you will regain your senses before tragedy comes for you. |
(April) Hypernauts Part 3. Commentator: Wyatt Ferguson for the World Journal Monthly. | |
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- And Fight a War There! | |
Julie Wolcott had recruited me to liberate the realm of dreams from some sort of demon rebellion. Her husband Ellipsis and her ally the Mighty Tim were being held captive. Only she escaped. She and I then crossed the United States so as to evade authority and find the best way back to the Dreamtime. At one point we'd run afoul of militiamen and media, so I said "Enough". We jumped to Sarnia, Ontario under my own power. I found us a hotel and a free banquet dinner with the militia-scrip we had on hand. They used antique Canadian currency! Our plan was to go back into the Dreamtime - the roundabout way, past the City of Death and from out of the Ultimate Darkness! That way, we'd build up some mystical momentum. Nobody I'd talked with had any better ideas. The next morning, we set off. Inside the Darkness, it let me navigate like once before. And I saw Pam Brown, the Bride of the Ultimate Darkness - with her new partners Bill Jones and Theodore Ketzel, the Best Men of Darkness! They'd all been wounded during a mass supervillain attack last year, but the Darkness took them to be healed by alien melons... Anyway, I'm glad they're better. I explained our mission, and they let us pass. Coming out of Darkness into Death, we saw some of the Dead dissolving themselves into oblivion. That's what some of them want for the afterlife, instead of seeking other people's gods. I've seen it before, but Julie found it disturbing. Oh well, we were moving on anyway. In the City of Death, the Dead avoided us as usual, because we had the stench of oblivion to them. But the Brotherhood of the Recon started chasing us! Oh well, the more the merrier, as long as we kept moving. In the Dreamtime, we found some fellow travellers - alternate versions of us! The Darkness is adjacent to all the universes, and so are Death and Dreams. A single Realm of Death is useful for dealing with the afterlife; a single Realm of Dreams explains why your dreams seem to be for other versions of you. The boundary between Death and Dream is fuzzy, because a good afterlife is any where you can live your dreams.
Two of our alternate selves were a princess and a paladin on a grand quest to defeat some combination of Mordor and Iran. We also found two little kids on bikes with training wheels. Given the choice, I related to the kids the best. Meanwhile, orcs and neighborhood bullies merged with our pursuers. The acting rulers of Dreams were waiting for us. Which is to say, the elf-king Oberon, his daughter Nikki, and his adoptive son The Trickster. I'd met them all. But also there was my backup Gillette Harris, the old fashioned way, by dreaming. He held a banner saying, "Dream Champion, Master of the Hero God". I'd guess he had a dream adventure. There too was most of DuoPolarity of Boston in person, because they'd found some Dreamtime access point in China. They'd brought some other superhumans with them, namely Karla and Adu, a.k.a. Senhora Valkyrie and the Warrior Ashanti from the Balance. The leading mages were there too, like Lucianus Autonomus and Vara Hosea. They'd done mystic ritual to come here, because the world's mages knew something big would happen. Given the hubbub, pretty much all the regular inhabitants of the Dreamtime were there. Which is to say, elves, gods, and demons. But I didn't realize how big this was, until I saw Death in the audience and Ultimate Darkness on the fringe. The mystic beings decided, no more humans working without elves, gods, or demons to keep the peace in the hyper-realms. With them, okay. And there was only one human who'd ever done that well: me. Others had been sampled, but it didn't work out. For instance, when Karla got indwelled by mystic power, it led to the current mess. The mystic beings were about to wipe the memories of all the other human intruders, and rotate them through the Siege Perilous to give them new lives on Earth. But then Ellipsis spoke: "If you violate me or my wife in that manner, I will recover to overthrow you." People started saying, "Yes, he would. And I'd help him!" So Julie, Ellipsis, the Mighty Tim, the DuoPolarity team, the Brotherhood of the Recon, and all those others got sent back to Earth to live normal lives. I'm back too, but you might not recognize me. | |
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Response by Erik Katzman, The Hurrier. Mr. Ferguson, no matter what the mystic beings say, you are not at liberty to roam the Earth. You have been legally sentenced for psychiatric observation. If you are ever judged fit to rejoin society, extradition to Canada awaits you. Until you answer all these charges, you are a fugitive from justice. |
All characters in this fiction and the phrase "Superhuman World 2008" are copyright © 2008 by Eiler Technical Enterprises. The map of the Superhuman World is based on one from Henry Bottomley's map software which is well worth a visit.