We're celebrating Klordny Week, Superboy!

The Aberrant Players Guide says on p.172 that the note was found today, even though the item on the very next page says the man was found the next day. Maybe I should just create a "white wolf editors at work" tag and have done with it.

June 14
[Aberrant] Sato Tanaka, CEO of Genyo Products, is found in his Nagasaki home, a blubbering wreck, with delusions of being one of a pod of whales slaughtered by whalers. A note found beside him gives implicit credit for his condition to Greenwar, warning those who have declared war on Mother Earth" that "[s]he is not defenseless, and those who rape the land, commit genocide on other species and steal from generations yet unborn will pay a dear price for their crimes."

In the one moment when his own personality breaks through the memories imposed by Animus, Tanaka-san grips the arm of Detective Ishido and says "They don't hate us, you know. They feel sorry for us. I don't understand. Why don't they hate us for killing them? Why?"

Neither Ishido nor Officer Okano can answer that. All they can do is keep Tanaka from being a danger to himself before the paramedics arrive — oh, and on Ishido's suggestion, contact Nippontai.

Taking advantage of a gap in the schedule to fit this in. (I meant it to go up on Friday, but it wasn't quite ready.)

June
[Aberrant] Director Ozaki records a conversation with Director Thetis in which she insists that there was no nonlethal way to solve the problem of Slider.

The conversation is in Japanese (though Aberrant: Project Utopia provides an English translation), and she addresses him as "Ozaki-chan" throughout, except for one instance where she calls him "Director Ozaki" (italics hers, probably ironic). She does this either [a] to remind him of their relative positions or [b] because White Wolf understood Japanese honorifics about as well as they understood Texas geography or Nordic ethnography.

Her reasons for encompassing Jennifer's doom basically boil down, in my eyes, to "Because shut up. Anyone who discovers Proteus' existence without my permission can't be trusted." If I'm exaggerating, I can't see how.

I'm reminded of something I was going to mention last month, in re Thetis' desire to manage public perception of novas and apparent wish that she could manage novas back into invisibility. In his Aberrant/Mage: The Ascension mashup "To Tear the Scales from Their Eyes", ezrael made Thetis an agent of the Technocratic Union's NWO.

Despite how distasteful our agendas can be, we cannot allow anyone (no matter how popular or high-placed) to jeopardize the work we do. Despite our personal preferences. The Project is all that is important.

Ozaki wonders if he should consider that a threat. Thetis assures him that he's "too important to the Project — and to me" for her to dispose of him so casually, and I can believe her (though I'm trying to decide whether I actually do). After all, she could have left him to dry when the yakuza and the Ministry of Trade discovered the manipulations by which he'd helped Saisho happen and made Japan's first novas into pop sensations.

Lost in the debate over Slidergate is the matter with which Ozaki opened the conversation; Chiraben has "begun to get sloppy. He's enjoying his work, and he may be growing careless in adherence to the visibility guidelines." At least, the recorded portion of the conversation never gets back to it. As we'll see, though, Ozaki doesn't forget, no matter how much Thetis might like him to.

In OTL, they've been trying to achieve this goal for over 20 years.

February 29
[Aberrant] The Boeing Aerospace Company unveils the first civilian hypersonic jet.

According to the Seattle Times' Jeff Skagen, the 797's top speed is Mach 20, putting any point on Earth just 45 minutes away from any other point.

The Aberrant Players Guide doesn't get any more specific on when this happens than the date range given, but we're getting awfully close to time for the next day-post.

late August
[Aberrant] Due to T2M Europe remaining headquartered in Venice, the governments of Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands unveil a unified Scandinavian nova-team, Det Fælles Nordiske Novateam, informally Nordlysene (the Northern Lights).

Former OpSite designer Nikolaj Lemche is on the team as one of Holland's representatives; the other (at least by 2015 when the APG writes about them) is Holger Centery (ironically named for a legendary Danish folk hero) the Inv/Strength with Leadership tanker charismatic brick known as Danske. The rest of the 2015 Nordlysene lineup is Jennifer "Jernnæve" Svanberg ("Iron Fist"; a body-of-metal brick with magnetic powers), Evette "Lynet" Solonger ("Lightning"; speedster), Freya Oswyn (a light manipulator), and "Jättarna" (real name unknown; able to create an ice harder than steel, and to animate the shapes he makes with that ice).

Thanks, etherlad, for the reassurance that TDiTUH still serves a useful purpose. The plan I'd almost forgotten I had is working just the way I meant it to. ("That's just the way I planned it!" — Wolfgang Amadeus von Fahrvergnugen)

There's a link between the two items for today, but I'm not going to spell it out explicitly. I will say that f you've been reading my posts, at least this calendar year, you can put the pieces together for yourself.

( A tale from the Golden Age. )

( Mysteries of the age. )