The Continuing Adventures Of Camp Restricted!

[Scolopendra]

Club Team Melta

"You gotta be kiddin' me, man," a long-haired man with a three-day-old length of scraggly beard, droopy eyes, a vaguely greasy overall feeling and an aura of patchouli about him, "Ricco's working for The Man, man! Siddown, dude, we can fire up some absofuckinglutely fantastic shit from Venus I got over at the Quick Stop. Well, not in the Quick Stop, 'cuz that stuff's taxed to the nines by The Man and it's all processed and shit, naw, some individual entrepreneurs just outside the Quick Stop with some all-natural insanity leaf, I'm tellin' you... what the fuck am I talkin' about, man? Siddown and let's fishbowl the place!"

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the members of TEAM MELTA scattered throughout the club room don't appear overly concerned at being raided. It is, quite possibly, a common occurrence. One man bearing a MELTA JACKET, leaning back dangerously in a reclining overstuffed chair modified to become a bar stool with his feet up on said bar, a cigar in one hand, and a magazine of ill repute in the other, doesn't bother to break eye contact with the breast-bearers depicted on the pages of the same. "So, officers, what appears to be the trouble?"

[Cetaganda]

"No, it's really not," Griffith says to Ricco. It's clear from his expression that he's wondering why he didn't bring a face mask, or perhaps some sort full-body biohazard suit. He puts on a pair of gloves, pulls out a sample baggie, and makes his away over the Jacket Dude. Without any particular concern for whether it will make said Dude fall over, he yanks away the magazine and drops it into the baggie. At the same time he casually replies, "I think the technical term for what the 'trouble' is would be something along the lines of 'threat to all of existence' or 'crimes against reality'. With, of course, many or possibly all of you being responsible, much to the non-surprise of everyone else on base."

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

“Nah, nah – it’s not like that, man,” Ricco begins in response, then looks rather sheepish as he glances around at the rest of the crew, Griffith in particular. Definitely time for a different track though, before it all went to hell. “All-natural ins—wait,wait man, don’t be harshin’ the groove like that. Gimme a sec here.”

“See boys, what we’ve got here is some seriously Bad Shit going down, and seems it got started with you folk, no fault, but yeah. All the good times, good weed, good eats – it got all cobbled up somehow what with the mindwank going on, and the magick-y weaves shredding through it all … Yeah. Bad Shit. And we’ve got to make sure ain’t no more Bad Shit happening, so the digs gotta get a serious scrubdown, you grok? Ain’t about The Man – we got the Greater Good on the line here.”

He pauses for dramatic effect, looking around the room at the MELTA crew.

“We’re talkin … the end, man. No more fishbowl’in. No more mind-‘spansion’in. No more leaf, or titties, or booze, or munchies. Seriously. Bad. Shit. So um ... we cool?”

[Scolopendra]

A universe without tits, drugs, or cheese poofs is not one worth living in at all. Still, it takes a few moments for the enormity of the accusation to sink in. "Whoa." Maybe a few minutes more than that. "How'd we ever manage that?"

"Do we have to go to decon again? God, I hate the bleach. I hate it so much."

"What's always bugged me is the xenon lamp. You know how it flashes off the outer layer of your skin? Well, some of the dust tends to get under my foreskin and it tingles like a sonofa--"

"Jesus Christ Harrowing Hell, can you go three sentences without talking about your goddamn dick?"

"I dunno, I'll give it a try--"

"GEN-tlemen," the sergeant says with something between a bark, a cough, a threat to someone's life, and the sweet and gentle pleading of a star-crossed lover.

"Hey, Sergeant?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Do we have to go in those containment bags that you're unfolding?"

*fluff fluff FLOOSH* "Why, yes."

"Can we sack race in them?"

"If you must."

This is why several minutes later there are about a dozen men and women inside of what are essentially very large very thick black plastic trash bags jumping and rolling and giggling down the hallway.

[Reploid Productions]

Arpean Thaumatology Lab - Computer Room

"Fascinating."

Dr. Nekura tries not to roll her eyes at Ymari, wishing to $deity that they could ship the catgirl off somewhere else. "Ymari, you can't honestly makes heads or tails out of any of that."

The neko doesn't look over at Nekura, eyes glued to the screens full of rapidly scrolling numbers and symbols as she cheerfully replies, "Not a bit!"

"Even if she doesn't know what the heck all that means, she's right that it's interesting." Dr. Arstal interjects, aiming a laser pointer at the wall to distract Ymari and lead the spastic catgirl out of the room. With the door quickly shut and Ymari locked out, he swings the red dot back over to the main projector screen, circling a section of the data.

"Admittedly, I work with technology, not your thauma-handwavium." Nekura remarks dryly. "Care to explain?"

"It's simple, really. The simulation I've been working on involves everyone's favorite doom goober under conditions where the local thaumaturgic constants are tweaked." Arstal points to the relevant bits of the on-screen data.

"Tweaked how?"

"Well.... tweaked as in..." Dr. Arstal clears his throat, looking for a moment slightly dodgy. "Say... the kind of thaumaturgic interference generated by a really pissed off Keeper? Or... well, the numbers I'm using are substantially more complicated than that, but we collected a lot of data from that time awhile back when Lady Firefury was out and-"

"You're trying to run a simulation combining the doom goober with that make-believe four-winged freak the Shogun was on about when she was brought here?!"

The "doom goober" being the Shogunate team's favored nickname for the Chartreuse Matter sitting quaintly in a reality-isolation chamber to keep it from accidentally eating the galaxy; and the "make-believe four-winged freak" is Dr. Nekura's favored nickname for the unknown thaumaturgic entity most other groups have dubbed the Guardian, for lack of any useful information.

"You can cry make-believe all you want, but we have documented evidence it exists." Arstal retorts. "Arguments about its religious importance or identity aside, what we do know is that it's an entity of incredible thaumaturgic power that can break reality in weird ways we can hardly decipher. Smashing one reality-breaker with another seems like a decent idea. Especially since the Guardian seems to be able to violate any and all security measures."

"We can argue that thing later. Back to the simulation." Nekura yanks the discussion rather forcibly back on the original topic.

"Well, if this simulation is anywhere close to accurate, if the Chartreuse Matter is ignited when the local constants are normal except for an especially high background thaumaturgic count, the resulting explosion should be a great deal more stable and far from galaxy-eating. I'm not entirely sure what all the results mean yet, but the explosion in such a scenario appears to be self-perpetuating, but contained within a space just a few cubic meters in diameter without expanding. Where it would get the energy to keep the reaction going I'm not sure of, maybe some alterverse or something. But the interesting thing is that if my numbers are right, there's an area within about a kilometer of the blast that should be showing a high thaumaturgic radiation count... numbers are comparable to the situation during the Titan Awakening event." Arstal is practically hopping from one foot to the other now. "I still need to run more simulations on the outcome, but it could possibly create a situation ideal for the manufacture of high-thaumaturgic items and equipment."

Nekura doesn't look too convinced. "High-thauma-whaty-whats?"

Arstal sighs. "Stuff on par with the Keeper blades, for example."

"So you're proposing a simulation where you get a being that may or may not be divine and certainly seems fickle about appearing to pop on by." Nekura summarizes. "To create some sort of funky infinisplosion that may or may not be hazardous to the health of anything nearby, so we can create artificial Keeper blades?"

"It's just a possibility! We could probably get the thaumaturgic constant sufficiently elevated with a couple of the Keepers working together!"

"Oh whatever. Just forward the data to Analton and Weapons-Hrragh and let me at the damn computer to get started on my simulation!"

[Kajal]

Kajali Annex, down the East corridor a bit past Club Team Melta, Third Door on the Left; Camp Restricted, Titan.

The Federated Imperium had a Big Problem(TM). The Federated Imperium had not yet been informed of this, not publicly, but the flurry of activity around certain projects and enigmatic alien artifacts in the Pleiades indicated that Top Men were on the job. This particular phrasing made the rounds in several offices, and the idea that these Top Men were probably in want of at least a few Bossy Bottoms had been promulgated by more than one and less than five members of the group that would normally be tasked with interdepartmental relations with the members of TEAM MELTA.

Alas, for those persons, TEAM MELTA was nowhere to be found, though their offices were nominally still present, if sealed for security purposes. At some point, perhaps they'd be back. Perhaps not. In the meantime, at least no one had to worry about Chartreuse Matter spontaneously manifesting and combusting in a self-powering matter to energy conversion wave. Such was the theory, at least.

Irrelevant though the nomenclature and responses to such was in regards to the persons tasked with solving the Federated Imperium's problem before it became public knowledge, the Big Problem(TM) was, at least, relatively simple to recognize. It had started with a shortcut, a sort of "discount card" that cut the price of entry to Galactic Civilization, but had all sorts of terms and conditions printed on the back in a font small enough that most people would never read it. This particular discount card worked, for lack of a better analogy, in a few separate but related stores, and if revoked or lost, well, the Federated Imperium wouldn't be able to afford to keep shopping.

One such example of this discount card was currently behind the heavy shielding and viewports that separated the Kajali test chamber from the research lab at the Triumvirate's premiere secret research facility, ironically known far and wide as "Camp Restricted". It had been admittedly somewhat disused for the past several years, but otherwise maintained, and aside from the odd instance of a Gen-1 Yut roundel here and there, the equipment and facilities had been updated to keep in line with the current bleeding edge for each member state. Still, it was a strange place when it was mostly empty as it was now. The Kajali team, headed by the recently unretired Dr. Ierenn Lesaan, theoretical physicist and erstwhile weapons magnate, was hoping to change that state of affairs, starting with the problematic discount card that formed the basis of practically the entire Kajali state.

The discount card itself appeared relatively unremarkable while being anything but. This particular sample was a one kilogram sphere of silvery-grey metal belonging to what had been dubbed the "post-transuranic" group of elements, and while technically naturally occuring, it occured in such trace amounts as to render the astronomical cost of synthesizing minute quantities of it per year a strategically worthwhile endeavour. This particular sample was of artificial origin, given the extreme cost of a naturally formed sample of the same qualtiy and size, but as a result the properties of the sample were somewhat muted. Still, it exhibited substantially similar properties to its immediate neighbors on the periodic table, which were variously known as element zero, laconium, or any other number of nomenclatures. If subjected to electric current, it would serve as an effective catalyst and shortcut to "discovering" gravitics.

It was a crutch, and the Federated Imperium would soon be running face-first into the pavement if it didn't stop using it. Dr. Lesaan's team had been tasked with coming up with the first steps to putting that crutch away for good. They had decided to focus on the issues of power generation first, though that field was originally a secondary benefit of the first application in faster-than-light propulsion. The Federated Imperium had become almost totally dependent on what they called a "subspace tap", which was in practice an FTL drive that didn't go anywhere. Instead, it would punch a hole in spacetime and let energy from the subspace realm pour through to be captured and used as they saw fit. Naturally, the power requirements to start such a powerplant were enormous. The next closest power technology available to the Federated Imperium at the time having been "simple" fusion had resulted in the construction of elaborate arrangements of fusion powerplants, supercapacitors, and extensive battery storage systems, all designed to deliver enough power to start the subspace tap in one jolt.

Once started, the conventional powerplants would shift back to serving secondary or tertiary needs, while the tap would slowly be opened and brought up to the desired power level. Trying to open a tap too quickly would collapse the field and cause a hard shutdown, requiring days or weeks of repairs depending on the size of the powerplant, while opening one too slowly would burn through additional fusion fuel for little additional benefit. Given these quirks, it seemed only logical that the largest Kajali spacecraft should be equipped with multiple subspace taps of various sizes, so that the smaller taps could bootstrap the larger, which would then restart the former if needed. Poor, "simple" fusion could only barely keep the lights on; a Kajali ship on fusion power alone was effectively dead in the water.

The glaring downside to this arrangement was the fact that any other polity that could match or exceed the power generation capability of the subspace taps effectively had an "off" switch for any such powerplants if they chose to put that power to use for interdiction. The typical warship would see the smaller taps cut off first, and then the "main", and be left adrift, even though the basic amenities such as lighting and information processing would still be available, for a time.

The second big problem was that while bigger was nominally better, thermodynamics, materials science, and logistics placed hard limits on the upper range of sizes, all thanks to the discount card presented at the checkout. Put simply, the discount didn't apply above a certain price point. In practice, dumping additional current into the elemental catalyst would produce a stronger field up to a certain point. At or after that point however, the catalyst would instead be slagged at best, or ignited. The former was typically considered the best-case scenario if you absolutely had to have a reactor meltdown; the latter was often associated with hull losses. It also was not typically looked upon kindly to incinerate a trillion or more galacs worth of the stuff for any reason.

Dr. Lesaan and his team were going to be busy for a very long time.

[Sunset]

RoS Special Projects Annex, (Echo Puce) Security Wing, Camp R, Titan, Sol System... Republic Date 176.250.676...

"...ah, back in my old stomping grounds!"

"Again, your identity, Sir?" the guard asked, clearly unimpressed with the pasty-skinned man's attempts to blow past the security corridor with false familiarity. He was short, squat - like a Norfolk dumpling - while the other was tall and lanky with piercing blue eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache and its accoutre mon. I'll leave you to figure out which is which.

"Ah, yes - of course," Dr. Fredrick Kraus put down his case and then began to fish through his pockets, pulling out one item after another that would no doubt provoke some conversation between the guards while still not proving useful to a resolution of the situation. "Identity, you say? I seem to have... Meri?"

He turned to the blue-skinned woman behind him, who was holding a very young child with pale blue skin in one arm while another - a boy - held her hand at her side. A trail of matched floral luggage snaked out behind her, the hovering containers spinning and drifting to look at each other sideways through electronic eyes as they waited on their 'master'. At the very end a lone technician - it said so across the back of his jacket - stood as well with the other and perhaps wiser taking a seat on a provided bench.

She shrugged and he turned back to the guard, "I seem to have left my wallet somewhere. Perhaps in one of my other bodies. Pinky swear?" he extended a digit.

The guard examined the switch on his stun baton - capable of delivering both a painful shock and an interesting climax to a variety of sexual encounters - in a meaningful fashion and then gestured with it, "Just... Step up to the scanner. I don't need to see your ID..."

"Don't you mean we don't need to see your ID, and that these aren't the droids you're looking for?"

But Kraus stepped up to the illuminate bar; just in time too, as the guard was now rapidly coming to the conclusion that extended manual uncoiling would be necessary to determine whether or not he was a security risk.

'Kraus, Fredrick Adolf...' the machine read out pleasantly, followed a moment later by, 'Tsathefotho' in the same feminine voice.

The guard looked at him sharply, "That's weird."

"What do you mean? 'Adolf' is a perfectly fine name - a distinguished history. Why, that was my father's middle name, and his father's and... Well, they were all named 'Adolf'. Right back to Great-Great-Great-Great..."

"No, I mean 'why did it say 'Tsathefotho'?" he repeated, his imitation of the computer voice sufficiently close that it was quite possible that it had been him saying 'Tsathefotho' rather than the security scanner.

"Oh. That? He... It..? It is my parasite. Or at least we could never figure out how to get the little fellow out of there," he turned around to point a finger at his own posterior. "Yep - wedged in there good and tight. We tried everything. High fiber diet, low fiber diet, rigorous anal..."

"...it's on the personnel manifest," the sitting technician interrupted, hopefully before the Doctor's implied course of treatment went too far for the minds of the fragile. And so were they all, with each in turn passing under the inquisitive eye of the scanner until they were all standing on this side of an invisible line set by the guard.

"And it says here that you're delivering samples?" he asked, checking the manifest and keeping a close eye on the briefcase shackled to the Doctor's wrist. Of course the fact that he'd set both the briefcase and the hand down to check his pockets might have had something to do with his suspicious demeanor, but there were also the half-dozen warning placards on the side - some of which he didn't recognize and one of which might have been the source of his nose bleed.

Last week. Or was it next week?

"That's right. Laconium, some Krausium, Stoolium, and some other exotics. I have the paperwork right here," he lifted the case, un-catching the latch - it wasn't locked - and reaching inside to pull out a sheaf of paperwork nearly an inch thick. And on actual paper.

He handed it over and immediately the guard stopped him, "This... is for importing exotic animals. Fifty... Hairy-Toothed Geeks?"

"Yes. That's right. Is there anything out of order?"

With an active 'sigh' the guard began to flip through the pages, one by one checking for the specifics and the altogether unnecessary signatures and stamps. Unnecessary as he didn't see anything that looked even something like an exotic pet - whatever a 'geek' was - among the assembled possessions. Finally he reached the last page, "No - it all looks to be in order. Welcome to Camp R, Doctor Kraus, Missus Kraus..."

"Oh, good." Fredrick took the paperwork back, a visible sheen of distress wiped from his forehead with his coat-sleeve to leave a trail of washable marker (Yellow #5) on his coat. "I was worried there for a bit. Guess I can let them out now!"

Setting the briefcase (and his hand) once again on the ground, he used the remaining to unbutton his lab coat before pulling it open. Underneath he was wearing a vest sewn with dozens of small cages, each of which contained a small 'something' that looked like a mixture between a hummingbird and a butterfly with only a small helping of werewolf tossed in for show. Suddenly exposed to the light, this seemed to be their signal to explode into vigorous activity - one by one picking the locks to their cages and kicking the doors open to leap into the air and wing their way to freedom.

"...yep. The elusive Furry Toothed Geek of Kiwukuwi. Bet I can make a fortune selling them to my new friends in the lab..."