Royce's Random Thoughts

1. Meeting Dominique: Completed! Now I'm working on editing, and considering a Kickstarter to pay for interior illustrations.

2. The Exchange Student: On hold while I try to firm up the plot in my head.

3. Someday Never Comes: Ditto.

4. Stealing the Phoenix: Just started. Plotting should be easier, since it's just Craig Thomas' cold war thriller Firefox, except with Gant being replaced by a female Chinese-American red panda.

5. Hydragon vs. Alinadar: Working title (obviously). Outlining. Mel and Rolas's out of favor teenaged daughter is exil--, er, sent to visit her aunts on Greenholme, just as the production team for the long running Hydragon vs. kaiju film series is getting ready to film on the foxen colony. Will their daughter learn personal responsibility and gain redemption? Will Ali's fangirling drive Salli up the wall? Will letting a hundred meter tall robot kaiju prop with a janky remote control system walk through a beach resort have any negative consequences? We'll find out!

So here I was on Preservation Station, in a conference room crowded with too many people (okay six, including myself) with food and drink along a side table that I can’t consume, and several boxes wrapped in brightly colored paper which I was dreading having to open.

They even made me a cake. I don’t know why, they just did. It had “Congratulations, SecUnit” written in large letters on it. Below that in much smaller letters it said, “We know you don’t care, but we do.” I suspect Dr. Gurathin put that in. I don’t know.

It was a double occasion. One, I had finally been officially recognized as a citizen of the Preservation Alliance. Which meant I was, very legally, a person. Which meant if I went around doing my job (ie: murdering anyone threatening someone I was hired to protect) I could be arrested for it instead of broken down for spare parts. Oh, and I also had what passed for Preservation’s government backing me up, which was actually kind of nice. I don’t know, it was complicated.

The other occasion was that I was going to be leaving on a Preservation transport tomorrow to rendezvous with Perihelion, aka ART, and its crew, to help them on a “research project” which was totally about charting a supposedly empty star system, and definitely not about beating certain corporations trying contacting any abandoned corporate colonies there, making sure the colonies had paperwork showing they had always been legally independent, so they couldn’t be taken in and made involuntary employees of whatever corporation found them.

But just in case someone got mad about it, ART and its crew wanted me along. Because the only thing more dangerous than a SecUnit doing its job, was a rogue SecUnit that actually cared about doing its job right.

Anyway, the party was incredibly awkward as everyone made chit chat and tried to be friendly while simultaneously not making eye contact with me. I used the conference room’s cameras to keep track of everyone. Dr. Mensah was there of course, as was Ratthi, Gurathin, Pin-Lee, Arada, and Mensah’s daughter Amena. They all kept glancing at me, then glancing at the boxes, and then back to me, and it was enough that I was considering writing a program to give canned responses when anyone tried to talk to me so I could safely start watching an episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon without being rude. Not that I cared about being rude. Ever.

After three subjective centuries and fifteen actual minutes, Dr. Mensah cleared her throat, and everyone started to quiet down. When the room was quiet, she began, “SecUnit, it goes without saying that we’re glad that you chose to join us here in Preservation. If you hadn’t been there for us, at the right moment in a time of crisis, everyone in this room would be dead, some of us several times over.” Which was true, but everyone knew that. I don’t know why she had to point it out. At least she left out the bits where I screwed up anyway.

“It’s even more impressive given the fact that you were often protecting us without the vital equipment you were designed to use,” Dr. Mensah went on. “With you leaving us shortly to travel with Perihelion, we would like to correct that.” She made a gesture towards the boxes.

I stood there frozen for a moment, until Dr. Gurathin popped in helpfully on the feed to state, You’re supposed to open them, idiot. There were three of them, two about the size of small shipping containers, and the other very large, about the size of a crate I would have been shipped in to one of my old assignments. I started with one of the smallest ones first. It was a box of two dozen surveillance drones, standard issue for any SecUnit. Except on just a visual scan I could see they weren’t standard issue. They were a unit design I’d never seen before. I wondered where Mensah had gotten them. Drones weren’t normally used on Preservation, and previously Dr Mensah has to specially order the ones I’d been using on the station.

The second box was an even bigger surprise. These were combat drones, another two dozen of them. Normally combat drones weren’t used by SecUnits, only by dedicated CombatSecUnits. And if surveillance drones were rare on Preservation, combat drones were unheard of.

“I know these must be a surprise to you,” Dr. Mensah said. “But given the sheer number of violent incidents you have been involved in, I thought it prudent you have to option to have them, if you needed them.”

“Both the surveillance and combat drones are unique designs,” Amena interjected. “They were all manufactured here on Preservation Station and have no corporate patented elements.”

“Most importantly the code controlling them was written by Pin-Lee and myself,” Dr Gurathin added. He sent a packet to me in the feed and I opened it. It was controlling software for both sets of drones, and as he’d said, none of it matched the standard architecture the company had used, or anything else I recognized. “I’m not going to say it will make them hack proof,” he continued, “But anyone trying to wrest control of your drones away from you would have a much more difficult job.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. I was having a serious emotion right now. Amena, Pin-Lee, and Gurathin had gone to a lot of trouble to build these drones for me. I could do my job without drones, but these would make it a lot easier. And knowing they were mine, built especially for me. Well…

This why I hate having emotions. My efficiency rating was dropping into the low 90’s and I wasn’t even being shot at. But the worst was yet to come.

“Open the big one!’ Amena demanded. So, I started pulling the wrapping paper off. I don’t why humans insisted on covering boxes with the stuff. It just opening them more difficult. I pulled the top off and…

Inside was armor. Nice, normal looking armor that any SecUnit would use. It was colored grey, with darker grey at the joints, and the design was again unique. It wasn’t company armor that was for sure. Company armor would be dinged up, scratched, obviously used and probably patched in areas a client wasn’t supposed to see. Company armor was cheap. This… wasn’t… It was brand new, shiny, and didn’t smell of dirt, blood and leaking fluids.

“Again, this is unique,” Ratthi explained. “For one thing, with your body’s modifications, you actually don’t fit standard SecUnit armor any more, or at least it wouldn’t be very comfortable for you. This set is custom fitted for your unique body type. Also it has several features that aren’t standard.”

“The armor is thicker by several millimeters than your old company armor,” Dr. Mensah said. “I’m told it was a tradeoff between maximum protection and running the risk of slowing down your reflexes. It’s most noticeable in the chest and back, and your helmet.”

“Given the number of times you’ve been whacked in the head and forced into an involuntary shutdown, that seemed like a good idea,” Gurathin added. Given it was Gurathin, that was said sarcastically, but I think he really meant it.

“The helmet has an enhanced senor suite to complement your drones,” Ratthi added. “In the back of armor is a small drone hive, which can recharge and repair your drones as needed, and can also be used to manufacture unique, mission specific modules for the combat drones, replacing their weapons with whatever you think you might need.”

“As you can see, there are no logos on it. Not even for Preservation,” Amena said. “We… we thought that would be important to you.” She went on, “It does have a programmable surface on it though. So, if you want to show off Preseration’s logo, or set it to a camouflage pattern, or whatever, you could.”

“It is important to me, yeah,” I said, before I could think better of it and keep my mouth shut. Yeah, I was having a big emotion right now, and I was hating it, even as I fought the urge to strip off my hooded jacket and put the armor on right now.

“Bear in mind this is a prototype,” Ratthi said. “Once you come back from your job with Perihelion I’m sure you’ll have a dozen suggestions for improving it.” He sent me the armor’s full specs on the feed. If I gave them to ART, I’m sure the big research ship could make me a brand-new set from its manufacturing unit. Though ART would probably also snark about how it could have made an even better design if I’d just asked it.

“There is one last thing,” Mensah said. “It would have to wait until your returned from your mission with Perihelion, but I thought it would be another gift you would appreciate.”

“What?” I asked. I hoped that I didn’t sound ungrateful. The drones alone would have been a gift I could never pay them back for. I couldn’t imagine what else they could give me when you included the armor.

“I have been talking with our engineering and medical personnel,” Mensah said. “I know that the company logo is something you hate intensely, to the point of editing it out of your memories. But it is part of you, literally etched into your structure.” She reached out to not quite touch my arm. “We can’t remove the logos in your structure, but we believe it would be possible to cover them. We would add a micro-millimeter layer over your existing structure, to erase the logos, to point they wouldn’t be visible even on a scanner.” Mensah paused then asked tentatively, “Would you like that?”

I… was having an emotion again. The biggest, worst emotion I’d felt since I thought ART had been murdered. Except it wasn’t bad, it was just overwhelming. I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t even think. All I could do was watch as my performance rating freefalled as I stood there like an idiot, everyone staring at me, waiting for me to say something.

Then, one by one, Dr. Mensah, Ratthi, Ping-Lee, Gurathin, Arada, and finally Amena turned away from me to look at the walls, look at the useless food on the table, look at the armor, look at anything besides me.

Because they were my friends, and they knew I hated parties, and they knew I hated being stared at, and they knew especially how I hated having emotions. And that was okay because they understood.

It was still too much. I had to step outside into the hallway. After a few moments my performance level began to rise again, and I was able to ping Mensah and tell her, I’d like that.

Thank you, SecUnit,she replied over the feed. I’ll let everyone know. You don’t have to come back inside if you don’t want to.

I didn’t.

And that was okay. Because she and everyone else understood me.

We return to the show with Edison laid out unconscious in Bryce’s lab, with Grossberg laying out to Bryce that they need to know what Edison found out about the Blipvert incident. Bryce decides to use his new brainscanning technology to copy Edison’s neural network into a computer (don’t worry! He already tested it on his parrot!)

And onto the computer screen appears the one, the only M-M-Max HEADROOM!

“Is something going on with my ratings?” Max asks. “I seem to have an audience of two.”

Bryce quickly figures out that Max isn’t just a static copy of Edison’s memories, the construct is actually learning and reacting to his environment. The bad news is, this means they don’t need Edison  anymore…

Grossberg contacts Breughel and Mahler, everyone’s handy cadaver picker-uppers, to haul Edison to the local body bank for disposal. They’ve already transporting the dead body of Edison’s old Controller, Gorman, but Breughel doesn’t mind. “It’s just a carryout. It’s on the way.”

(I don’t know why, but for an episode that’s built on black comedy to start with, Breughel’s utterly stoned delivery of that line is just the funniest/creepiest thing in the script.)

Breughel’s sang fiord is tested when he tries to get payment for dropping off Edison. Evidentially, even with him being a celebrity, he’s only worth an extra 20 points in credits.

Theora, searching frantically for Edison, finally gets a police report that Edison has been killed. Tracing him to the body bank, she talks to the night porter who’s quite agreeable to sell Theora Edison’s carcass. “You want him alive or dead, honey?” the porter asks.

“He’s alive?!”

Back at the Network 23 boardroom, Grossberg introduces Max to the board as “The first computer generated presenter.” The great news is, Max is charming, funny, and a ratings hit. The bad news, he’s still got Edison’s memories. Including the fact that Grossberg is responsible for the Blipvert program….

(after Max is introduced to the board of executives)

“Exec-exec… Oh, you’re the people who execute audiences!”

Edison wakes up in Theora’s apartment, which is very pink and for reason had a Studebaker parked in the corner. No one knows that she found him alive, so she agrees to guide him back into the building to try and get back the tape with the Blipvert info.

Edison gets in, and spots Max on Bryce’s monitor. After surprising Bryce and getting the low down on Max, Theora realizes they just have to get Max to recall the memory of Edison seeing the Blipvert death tape, and record it on Edison’s camera.

Meanwhile Grossberg is getting ready to hold a press conference to announce Edison’s untimely death to the public. While that’s going on, Murrary informs Ben Cheviot of Theora and Edison’s plan to reveal Blipverts to the world. Ben gives him an answer, and we see that he’s now sitting in the head of the board’s room, in Grossberg’s former position.

“What should I do, Mr. Cheviot?”

“Do what you have to, Murray.”

Grossberg begins his mealy mouthed eulogy praising Edison. Only to be interrupted as Edison barges in, camera giving a live feed to the world.

“This is Edison Carter, very much alive and direct, asking Chairman Grossberg about his knowledge of blipverts, and their dangerous and lethal effects.”

Cue Edison returning triumphantly to the news room to receive a round of applause and a hug from Theora. And Max appearing on screens through the wasteland surrounding the city…

NOTES

The plot mostly follows the original Twenty Minutes Into the Future tv-movie, but there are significant differences.

·         The death of blipvert victim uses the footage from the tv-movie, but cuts away just as his body explodes, while we see bits of him flying everywhere in the original version.

·         Edison escapes on his own from the body bank, and Theora finds him already in her apartment, where they end up making love. Thankfully this was cut from the Blipvert pilot ep, giving them a more professional relationship.

·         Bryce Lynch’s characterization is softened quite a bit. In Twenty Minutes he was an outright sociopathic villain, not giving a damn about the blipvert death. Here, he comes across as, well, a 15 year old kid, more naïve than uncaring about the consequences of his actions.

·         Blank Reg and his wife Dominique are nowhere to be found yet. In the original pilot they came into the possession of the case holding Max’s memory core and held onto it, implying they were the ones broadcasting The Max Headroom Show to the world.

Also in an interesting case of executive meddling, in the original broadcast of “Blipverts” Max has a little monolog as the credits start to roll, including the joke, “How can you tell when a network executive is lying? His lips move!” In subsequent broadcasts, the line was rerecorded to “How can you tell when OUR network executive is lying?” Evidentially someone at ABC wasn’t amused with the broad brush of the first line…

This story originally appeared on my Patreon page. Please consider supporting me there to see stories like this and other writings at least 30 days in advance of the public.

***

“Night” was an abstract concept at best aboard Darktail Station, as it floated in the void near a convenient nexus of hyperspace navigation points. The docks ran non-stop of course, but all of the Six Races generally were most comfortable with a defined cycle of rest and labor. Which is why everyone outside of the docks tended to follow a ten-twenty pattern, ten hours of work, twenty hours of rest, based on an average of the day-night cycles of the Prime homeworlds.

Given the services that Habebti’s Sophistications offered, it tended to work closer to a twenty-ten pattern, with enough shifts that none of Habebti’s boys and girls had to labor more than ten hours at a time. The nature of their work demanded that they be enthusiastic, not weary. As was her habit, Madame Habebti herself made her usual appearance in the early “evening,” after the doors had been open long enough for a nice grouping of customers to gather.

And there were so many customers these days. The shift from pirate outpost to legitimate shipping port had been rather eventful, but Sophistications had weathered it with patience. Not only had the number of customers increased, their attitudes had mellowed considerably compared to the older, rougher crowd.

So Habebti, dressed in her usual flowing white dress and heavy gold and emerald jewelry, accented by a pair of golden rope belts at her waist, had stepped into Sophistications’ public lounge. She was a striking figure, a Wazagan, with that draconic race’s height of nearly two and a half meters, her toned muscles flexing under a skin composed of thousands of tiny blue scales. Her thick curly hair was dyed green, to match her eyes and the emerald earrings she wore.

The boys and girls working the room all stood, even the ones attending to patrons, to give her a respectful bow as she lay herself on the lounge set on a raised dais at the back of the room. Habebti’s kingdom was small, but she was mistress of all she surveyed, and under her eyes it prospered.

Description: A middle-aged, statuesque wazagan female, 8’2” tall, 300 lbs. with dark blue scales, green eyes, and thick curly hair dyed green. Usually wearing flowing white dresses and heavy gold and emerald jewelry.

Background: Mistress Hebebti arrived on Darktail station some thirty years ago, and proceeded to set up Hebebti’s Sophistications, a remarkably elegant, clean, and discreet “personal entertainment” business. Holding court in Sophistication’s marble paneled and flower bedecked greeting chamber, Hebebti provides visitors with physical pleasures of all types. From massages both relaxing and erotic; to the heightening of the senses with food, drink, scent; and yes, pleasures of the flesh, Sophistications has something for all genders and species. Privacy and discretion are guaranteed.

That’s the public face of Sophistcations. Even more private and discreet is its use as a front for Mistress Habebti’s other career as an information broker. She has feelers not only throughout Darktail Station, but in several nearby solar systems, taking disparate threads of data and coming up with a remarkable picture of the political, social and financial landscapes. Even more remarkable is the fact that she does so without using her Sophistications employees as spies, taking notes when their clients are most vulnerable. Everything is on the entertainment side of things is kept clean and separate, the better not to put her “boys and girls” at risk.

Personality: In person, Habebti charming, sophisticated (ahem), and always happy to listen to someone’s troubles. Her habit of lounging draped across a couch tends to minimize her massive height advantage over non-wazagans. When she does stand up and make her presence known, however, people notice.

For someone with such a prominent reputation on Darktail Station, however, Madame Habebti is remarkably reticent about her past. Why she left Wazaga Prime remains a secret she isn’t selling, and there are clients who have offered a high price for it. What is known is that she very rarely leaves the station, or Sophistications, at all, even as rundown as it became in the days prior to House Darktail’s purchase.

Of course, the one remarkable thing about Habebti running a place like Sophistications is her complete disinterest in sex as the mammalian and Gliten species practice it. Which is why her business runs offers a wide variety of pleasures to be found aside from physical. Habebti greatly appreciates pleasure in general, in all of its forms. On occasion, she’ll even provide erotic services to valued clients personally, taking pleasure herself in how much pleasure she is able to provide for them. 

That aside, Habebti takes motherly interest in keeping her employees happy, figuring that the happier her boys and girls are in their line of work, they happier they’ll make Sophistications’ patrons. Which is one reason why they were so rarely harassed back in the days that Darktail Station was a pirate trading post. Pirates who entered Habebti’s establishment to harass or hurt her employees were rapidly removed. Pirates captains who made a fuss about this tended to have quite unexpected, coincidental, and usually fatal encounters with their rival pirates or the Stellar Patrol.

Campaign Use: Habebti is set up to be both a valuable resource for GM’s wanting to give their players hints, and a minor mystery herself. Why did she leave Wazaga Prime? Why doesn’t she ever leave the station? What information could she have possibly had on the likes of Bloody Margo that even that monstrous pirate would leave her alone? Taking a good look at Habebti’s skill list should clue the GM in that the madame’s information gathering skills may have come from professional training. It’s not just coincidence that she’s bought off the wazagan Easy to Read disadvantage… 

Skills-wise, Habebti is a charisma monster. Any PC attempting to charm her is in for an intense, if remarkable polite, battle. She’s unlikely to be persuaded to give anything up for just money. Providing her with equally valuable information in trade for what is being requested will open many doors however.

Attributes: ST 14 [36] (-10% for Size +1), DX 12 [40], IQ 12 [40], HT 13 [30]

Damage: Thrust 1d6, Swing: 2d6

Secondary Attributes: Size +1, HP 14 [0], Will 13 [5]. PER 13 [5], FP 13 [0], Basic Speed: 6 [5]. Basic Move: 7 [5].

Social: Beautiful Appearance [12], Comfortable Wealth [10], Fashion Sense [5], TL 9 [0], Culture: Wazagan [0], Human [1], Kinis [1]. Reputation: Smart Businesswoman (Darktail Station residents, all the time) +3 [5]. 

Languages: Arabic (native) [0], English (accented) [2], Galactic Basic (accented) [2], Kinis (accented) [2], Southern Wazini (native) [4]. 

Advantages: Acute Hearing/2 [4], Acute Vision/2 [4], Charisma/2 [10], Contacts (various, Skill 15) x3 [6], Double Jointed [15], DR 2 (tough skin) -40% [6], Empathy [15], Language Talent [10], Night Vision/2 [2], Peripheral Vision [15], Sharp Claws [5], Sharp Teeth [1], Voice [10].

Perks: Deep Sleeper [1], Penetrating Voice [1].

Disadvantages: Charitable [-15], Code of Honor: Madame (Never cheat or abuse customers or employees, maintain a safe and comfortable working environment) [-5], Dependent Group: Employees (friends, 25% of base, appear 12-) [-10], Extra Sleep/2 [-4], Pacifism (self-defense only) [-15], Phobia: Open Spaces [-10], Slow Riser [-5].

Quirks: Careful [-1], Prays daily [-1], Prefers to lounge, not sit [-1], Won’t speak of her past [-1].

Skills: Acting 14 [4]*, Administration 13 [4], Autohypnosis 12 [2], Carousing 15 [2]*, Connoisseur (tea) 11 [2], Connoisseur (singing) 11 [2], Current Affairs (business) 12 [2], Current Affairs (regional) 13 [4], Diplomacy 14 [8]* **, Erotic Art 18 [4]@, Escape 16 [2]@, Fast Talk 15 [2]* **, Flail/Cat o’ Nine Tails 12 [4], Hypnotism 11 [2], Intelligence Analysis 12 [4], Interrogation 13 [4], Intimidation 15 [2]* #, Knot Tying 14 [4], Leadership 15 [2]** %, Merchant 12 [2], Observation 14 [4], Performance 16 [4]* **, Professional Skill (Madame IQ/A) 14 [8], Savoir Faire (high society) 15 [4]%, Savoir Faire (mafia) 15 [4]%, Sex Appeal 20 [4]* **, Singing 15 [2]**, Streetwise 14 [2]*, Teaching 13 [4], Theology (the Faith) 12 [4], Whip 13 [4], Wrestling 12 [2].

* +1 for Smooth Operator, ** +2 for Voice, @ +5 for Double Jointed, # +1 for Size, % +2 for Charisma.

Point Total: 350