We're celebrating Klordny Week, Superboy!

Here is a riddle to guess if you can: what makes a monster and what makes a man?

June 5
[Aberrant] Orzaiz sends an encrypted OpMail <12inch@smokingslut.net> to Synapse <burning-candy@hotnode.com> wondering how the net.Terat managed to lose Saxon. "I fear that we're back to square one regarding Fong....If we can find her and confirm precisely how Saxon discovered her whereabouts, we might be able to nail Delorimier once and for all."

I initially had this as the last item, but Orzaiz fears that if the Apostle can bring Shrapnel (and thus the Primacy) into the Cult of Mal, "we'll have a bloody farce on our hands, at least until Mal returns." (It's that last clause that was the clincher.) He also suggests continued attempts to get in touch with Corbin, though admitting that'd be easier if Geryon and Epoch hadn't attacked the Scotsman. "Oh well. This isn't the first time a revolution has attracted idiots."

In a Navajo Daedalus 3 communique to agent Nyeung, Director Thetis gives him his next assignment — preparing "Ishida and Fashoud" (presumably Proteus novas) to support T2M Asia/Pacific at Sop Moei. Thetis also requests an updated full report on the Æon Council, who have recently done some things that surprised her.

The agents' support for T2MA/P's plant closure is to involve "wetworking among the local government and military in order to make certain that the closedown is permanent." Which, well, Proteus.

Divis Mal arrives at the Pantheon meeting to exhort his fellow Terats to seek their true greatness.

He makes all kinds of metaphorical pronunciamenti about the way they're failing to live up to their potential; they're mostly focused on power, but Teras is about

the enlightenment, of which only Jeremiah Scripture and Raoul Orzaiz appear to have attained any modicum. You are not the equals I have been waiting for. You are baselines with undeserved power and boorish, petty natures. When will you speak to the angels with me? When?! My gods feed me blood and mangoes, and I laugh, I weep, I dance. Your gods feed you Kool-Aid and white bread, and you crawl, you buzz and you quarrel like fractious children.

One of the quotes that helped define Mal, for me and probably a lot of other TU fans, came soon after: "I am a visionary, a warrior and a lover of life, but unlike my father, I do not enjoy the role of teacher." At first, I thought the father he was referring to was max_a_mercer; after I learned Michael's surname, that sentence was one of the reasons I determined that md_donighal's father had been one of Max's teachers at Harvard.

"You are my children," he tells the Pantheon, "but in time you must grow beyond me.... The essence of our future is struggle. We must be ready."

NV and the Primacy are to continue as terrible angels, the fists of the One Race. The Harvesters are charged to be the monsters in the shadows, but cautioned not to "so worship the monster in yourselves that you misplace the seeds of your godhood." Scripture and the Mathematician are to continue in a leadership role, "but know that I am back." The Count is to "[g]et them accustomed to honoring us", and Narcosis to "[m]ake them love the One Race more than they love their own."

Enemies again.

June 3
[Aberrant] The Pantheon (consisting, at this point, of the Apostle, the Apothecary, Bounty, the Confederate [filling in for Epoch], Geryon, ibn'Mahmoud, Leviathan, the Mathematician, Narcosis, Orzaiz, Scripture, Shrapnel, Sin-Eater, Swarm Queen and Synapse) meet in council at a hidden retreat hosted by the Count (they are brought in by Blinker, the only Terat with whom Orzaiz shares the location). Topics of discussion include a review of the various Teragen cliques, what precisely is going on with Project Utopia, and how to use Utopia's newly-revealed weaknesses against it.

Actually, this first day is/was mostly about "catching up with fellow Terats we haven't seen in months and meeting newcomers to the movement," as the count will describe it when he opens discussions tomorrow. Today's discussions have been mostly civil, but with tense undercurrents among the various cliques, according to Leviathan's epilogue to the second of two essays circulating among Terats at mid-year. (The first, by Santiago, covered the movement's history from N-Day to the Null Manifesto; de la Rocha takes it from the Halloween Surprise to the present.)

Synapse logs in and out of the meeting, as he is spending much of his time trying to persuade Saxon to join the Teragen.

I'm not sure where I got this impression; the evidence for it seems to have evaporated from my copy of Aberrant: Teragen, even though I swear I've found it on other readings.

Edit June 4: I've since realized wherein the evidentiary basis consists, and it's not much. (It'll be in tomorrow's posting.) We don't actually get datestamps for either day of Saxon's captivity, so in fact, it may already be over by the time the meeting starts.

( Here's what happens during it, anyway. )

In a communique to Director Thetis (double-encrypted, Navajo Daedalus 3), baseline Proteus agent Ruiz gives an overview of his interactions with two Utopian novas: engineer Dr. Piotr Enrikssen and someone referred to only as Cocharin.

Enrikssen's ever-expanding intellect needs new stimulation, and Ruiz suggests "the new games of chance from Hattori's pet project" as an option. Cocharin's on "a schedule that allows her to use her matter-transmutation abilities on a regular basis without any real quantum-bleeding or signs of stress." She's taking Slidergate in a Proteus-approved way, having "expressed worry as to what the 'rogues' might indeed try." He's working hard on being friendly to her, and "regular non-nova company... seems to break down any self-imposed feelings of 'being different.'"

It's timestamped 3:10 AM, so it's probably happened by now.

April 28
[Aberrant] Boom-Boom Harmon writes to the "OpNet freak" he knows as "Trip" (possibly one of Synapse's aliases), requesting "the goods on Narcosis." Harmon is of the opinion that de la Cruz' desire to get in with the Pantheon is dragging her, and the rest of the Pandaimonion, down (particularly her desire to get between Mal and Scripture and have the Prime Terat's baby).

Synapse has a number of virtual identities in the various cliques of the Teragen — I'm pretty sure Trip, for instance, is one of the Casablancas, Count Orzaiz' network of spies. (Alex' NovaPhiles write-up in Aberrant: Teragen specifically mentions "Code", in the Pandaimonion itself, and "Interrupt", an OpNet propagandist for the nova-supremacist Primacy.)

Besides his political concerns, Boom-Boom also has a more mundane request: ringside seats for an upcoming XWF PPV, possibly Hong Kong Karnage, at which Superbeast is going to have a grudge match with Christine "Terminatrix" Jesensky (a claw-handed, shark-skinned, -eyed and -mouthed seven-footer whose gimmick is that she's a Terat "punishing those novas who would prostitute themselves for the baseline masses").