Someone unwisely asked me about the role playing game on which my epic pulp space opera SUPERLUMINARY is based. Here are my notes below.

The names, the size of the royal family, and certain other details I changed for the novel, but the idea is basically the same.

The dice mechanics are based on Eric Wudcik’s Diceless Amber game: when two characters are in competition of any kind, the relevant statistic or trait is compared, and the higher eventually wins. However, since the players do not know each other’s relative stats or traits, and since someone can break off combat or drop out of conflict at any time, it is up to the moderator to describe the struggle with sufficient drama to make the outcome seem ambiguous at first.

The game was originally designed that each player had to play a space princess, but later I added an optional rule to play a space prince. (But who would want to?) The rules below are not all of my notes on this game, but anyone curious enough to play in the background I invented can use them to get started.

Introduction

Grandfather is odd.

You are the granddaughter of the eccentric supergenius and space scientist who, returning to Earth as the only survivor of a thirteen-year-long expedition to Pluto, and finding the world in ruins from a global atomic biochemical war, used his mysterious discoveries and inventions to heal, and, later, when implored by all the people, to rule the Earth. Whether he was a savior or supervillain is still hotly debated: but all agree that he was odd.

Originally he was named Evripades Zenon Telthexorthopolis, but after he conquered the Earth, he was called Lord Tellus. Your parents, and perhaps you, have inherited his spark of genius.

In two generations under his rule Earth and the solar system were changed beyond recognition. Lord Tellus taught mankind the science of terraforming, and all the planets in the solar system have been re-engineered to support earthlike and nearly-earthlike life. Mankind was also taught the art of pantropy, so humans can be adapted to thrive in these new nearly-earthlike environments.

Lord Tellus ruled wisely and well at first, and then slowly went mad, and was forced off the Chrysanthemum Throne by his children and wives, and a combination of the People and the Pope, the Press, the Noble Houses and the Mercantile Guilds. He departed into space, but did not formally abdicate.

For many years now, the world has been ruled peacefully by a regency council acting in the absent Emperor’s name, with your uncles and aunts acting as Regents. But a new generation is rising to maturity, and the situation is becoming tense, even dangerous.

And certain of your sisters or cousins claim to have seen Grandfather Tellus again, or to have received odd gifts from outer space from his hands, such as web-shooters, or antigravity flight rings, mind-reading rainbow-powered flying unicorn ponies, or to have been implanted with the secrets of some super science unknown on earth.

These gifts include the science of psionics, shape-changing, teleportation, and including the most miraculous secret of all, which all earth science calls impossible: faster than light drive.

Any princess fortunate enough to be given, for her birthday or Christmas, the secret of the Warpspace Technology will control faster than light travel, and the wonders of the galaxy (and perhaps beyond) are opened to her.

1    Character Creation

1.1             Overview

Each character has gifts, disciplines and characteristics, all purchased out of the same pool of one hundred points, or granted without cost as part of the character background.

1. There are three types of gifts: talismans, modifications, imprints.
   1. A talisman is an object, either carried on or hidden inside one’s person. They are psychically linked to their owner, and only you, or perhaps a member of your family, can use it.
   2. A modification is a change to your physical body or nervous system which grants you 1. control over your cellular organization, such as the ability to change shape, 2. Specialized organs and cells that allow a broadcast energy weapon or energy control to operate through you, 3. A modification that augments a characteristic, namely, added strength, added sensory efficiency, or reduced reaction time.
   3. An imprint is the gift of an instinctive, innate, and unrepeatable knowledge of a super-technology recorded somehow into your subconscious mind. It is a tech you can do, but without knowing quite how or what you are doing.These ‘techs’ are indistinguishable from magic: they cannot be analyzed or reproduced. So if, for example, you are imprinted with the warpspace tech, then you can build a faster-than-light drive with your own hands using only a toaster and a screwdriver, but you cannot explain to anyone what you did. You can hand the FTL toaster to victim and let him fly around the galaxy, but once it breaks down, he cannot repair it, and he will perish in the cold loneliness of interstellar space cursing your name. These techs require some sort of mysterious innate knack or psychic power to use. Even the ordinary operation is so complex and so quirky that you must be on hand for these supertech machines to operate safely. You have the spark. Common people (call them muggles, or flatliners, or pecks) simply do not.With the imprint or ‘spark’ of a given tech, you may construct talismans of that tech and attune them psychically to a family member for him to use. If you make the flying FTL toaster for your sister or cousin, it will not break down. Everyone in the family is frustrated and annoyed that this should be the case, but no one yet knows why it is the case.
2. A discipline is a psychological or neural training regime that grants you an ability beyond the human norm. Unlike a gift (see above) disciplines can be taught, albeit with difficulty, or with some surgical modifications to their nervous system, to common people (call them muggles, mooks, chumps, or flatliners, or pecks.)
3. A characteristic describes you character’s mental, physical and spiritual traits. The characteristics are raw stats and the traits are calculated stats. They are the same for all unmodified humans.

1.2             Characteristics

There are nine characteristics and seven traits.

Dexterity—reaction time, quickness, agility. In hand to hand combat, ability to hit or to dodge.

Strength—Overall athletic ability from weightlifting to ballet. In hand to hand combat, degree of damage inflicted.

Constitution—Ability to continue despite wounds, fatigue and pain. In hand to hand combat, degree of damage ignored.

Perception—Spot hidden things, see small clues, follow traces, but also see through bluffs and lies. In mind to mind combat, ability to hit.

Willpower—Overall mental ability from solving math puzzles to writing poems to persuading others by specious rhetoric. In mind to mind combat, degree of damage inflicted. This is a measure of drive rather than intelligence: Genius is mostly sweat.

Sanity—Orientation to reality, ability to function under pressure, resistance to being persuaded by specious rhetoric. In mind to mind combat, degree of damage ignored.

Intuition—Awareness of things unseen, hunches, visions. In soul to soul combat, ability to hit.

Charisma—Leadership ability, personal magnetism, royal aura, mystical glamour and influence. In soul to soul combat, degree of damage inflicted.

Sanctity—Life energy, mental and spiritual stability, cosmic oneness, resistance to mystical glamour and influence. In soul to soul combat, degree of damage ignored.

1.3             Traits

Traits are calculated from characteristics:

Action Rank=Dexterity + Perception + Intuition. In combat, character with the higher action rank declares last and moves first. Perception and Intuition aid the ability to move first because you see first, or grasp first, what to do.

Looks=Strength + Willpower + Charisma. Physical attractiveness and stage presence. The ability to turn heads, look good in a bathing suit or evening dress. Higher strength and willpower defines physical health and overall vitality which adds to attractiveness.

Hits=Constitution + Sanity + Sanctity. Hit points define how much damage you can sustain before being stunned or killed. Higher sanity and sanctity defines your ability to make your wounded and pain-racked body continue to function.

Warfare=Dexterity + Strength + Constitution. Whoever has the highest warfare eventually prevails in hand to hand combat.

Psyche=Perception + Willpower + Sanity. Whoever has the highest psyche eventually prevails in mind to mind combat.

Soul=Intuition + Charisma + Sanctity. Whoever has the most soul eventually prevails in soul to soul combat. Please note that at the beginning of the game no one, not PC nor NPC, has the ability to initiate soul to soul combat.

Speed=Strength + Dexterity + Perception. This is straightline running speed, swimming, or, for winged characters, flight speed. How many MPH you can go.

Every player starts with 6 points in each trait. 4 or 5 is subhuman or crippled. 6 is normal for humans. 7 is record-breaking, but can be achieved by Olympic athletes or brilliant scholars. 8 is beyond human norm, but can be achieved by artificial or biofactured races. 9 is beyond superhuman.

*= can be increased by biotech  (bio-reflexes, bio-sight, bio-strength)

**=can be increased by disciplines (San=Null-A, Charisma=Charismology, Intuition=No-man, Constitution=Cellular Awareness)

***=Willpower can be increased by serving as a cadet or squire, Purity by serving as a neophyte or novice.

1.4             Creation Process

Select a parent. Each princess starts with the discipline of her parent’s house. If you cannot select a parent, the moderator will select one for you.

Note that four and only four of these disciplines have the effect of raising a characteristic by one point: Null-A training raises Sanity, Charismology training raises Charisma, No-man training raises Intuition, Cellular Awareness raises Constitution. [The houses who possess these disciplines are Rook, Aurora, Sunset, Ariel]

Every Princess was given by her Grandfather at age six a rainbow-powered mind-reading flying unicorn pony to ride. (Princes are given armor and weapons made of metal called Lightsteel that grows as their bodies grow.)

Every Princess at age twelve was offered by her Grandfather a choice of biological modification: either to increase her perception to superhuman levels, lower her reflex time, or raise her strength.  (Princes are given all three whether they want them or not.) This has the effect of raising a characteristic by one point: biosight raises Perception, Bioreflex raises Dexterity, biostrength raises Strength.

From age seven to fourteen, every Prince or Princess either serves as a cadet or squire in the armed forces or as a novice or shrine maiden in a religious order either of the Green Catholic Church or in one of the Zen Buddhist Shinto Lamaseries of Tibet. It is merely one of those things Princesses are expected to do. (Princes must be a cadet or squire and cannot be a shrine maiden nor a novice.) Military service raises your Willpower characteristic by one point; pious service raised your Sanctity characteristic by one point.

At age sixteen, Princesses spend roughly one thirty hours a day, eight days a week, thirteen months of that year, being photographed, going to dances, christening spaceships, signing autographs, meeting dignitaries, reciting pre-prepared speeches over the radio, and then being photographed again. Sometimes the photographers photograph Princesses being photographed by photographers. It is merely one of those things Princesses are expected to do. (Princes are spared some of this, because they are not as photogenic as Princesses.)

At some unexpected moment between fourteen and seventeen, Grandfather, either for Christmas or your Birthday, either dressed a Santa Clause or disguised as a housecat, appears, fends off or stuns or kills any photographers or ex-wives or assassins lying in wait for him, cooks a pancake in your servant’s kitchen and whips up a milk shake. He then offers or imposes on you certain gifts.

You have eighty points to spend. 

50 Points: Warpspace Imprint. You can make talismans that perform any one of the seven component arts of Warptech.

45 Points: Pearltech Imprint. You can make talismans that perform any one of the seven component arts of Pearltech.

40 Points: Psitech Imprint. You can make talismans that perform any one of the seven component arts of Psitech.

35 Points: Biotech Imprint

30 Points: Ziptech Imprint

25 Points: Matter Control Technology Imprint

20 Shapechange Modification

15 Energy Distortion Modification: this allows for only one form of energy control or energy kinesis. Includes 1. sonic, 2. Anti-photonic, 3. magnetic, 4. electric, 5. photonic, 6. psychokinetic, 7. or hydrokinetic

15 Exotic Alternate Form: only one biotech shapechange form, but it can be an energy being, insubstantial, radioactive, armored, or blazing fire.

10 Psitech Modification: this allows for only one form of psitech.

5 Psychohistory Imprint

1 Natural Alternate Form: only one biotech shapechange form, as werewolf or were-fish or spacegoing form.

1.5             What Else Can I Buy With Points?

20 Points: a Talisman to perform one of the component arts of Starcore, Necrotech, Soultech, Neurotech. You must have the prerequisite Discipline.

10 Points: a Discipline not of your parental house. You may buy more than one.

5 points: additional Modifications to body, mind, or soul:
You may raise a characteristic less than eight by one point.

1 Point: Continent
You own your own continent. Its contents are as you specify, within the limits of what is possible.

2 Points: Planet
Plenty of room in the solar system for one more. Grandfather says there is abundant material in the Kuiper Belts and Oort Cloud, not to mention solar ejecta, to work with.

+ 2 Points: Psychohistorical Plan.
Your planet has a destiny mapped out for it, thanks to the science of psychohistory.

1 Point: Race.
An entire race of people, all fanatically loyal to you!

+ 1 point Were-men:
Add one more point for an alternate shape for your race.

+ 2 points Polymorphs:
Or add two points for Shapeshifting ability for your race.

+ 4 points Exotic Race:
Or add four points to make for your race salamanders occupying the sun, flats occupying a neutron star, or insubstantial or otherwise invulnerable creatures.

+ 6 points Psychic Power Race:
Add six points to make for your race clairvoyant, or telepathic, able to form a mind link, or able to erect a mind block.

+ 8 points Psychic Power Race:
Or add eight points to make for your race have all the basic psitech powers.

1.6             The Disciplines

The Regents of Tellus each have mastered a peculiar form of mental science or training technique which they teach to their immediate children, and sometimes to servants and retainers in their households, but otherwise guarded jealously. Unlike a gift, anyone can learn a discipline in time.

These are:

1. Dangersense: a set of observational techniques, biofeedback disciplines, Zen meditation, plus mild surgical alterations to the nervous system combined with very rigorous training allows the practitioner to dodge incoming attacks, including blows and sniper-bullets and energy rays moving at lightspeed, even before he could possibly be aware of them. It does not warn of psychic attacks. It does not warn of attacks from completely unknown weapon systems.(Manslayer Reflex, or Cryptoreflex: when used in conjunction with bodily modifications for reflex-time, (called bioreflex) allows the practitioner always to catch enemies off-guard and flat-footed even when they strike first and from ambush. His counterattack always lands first.)
2. No-Man: nonlinear deduction mind-techniques can induce intuitions and visions, recognize patterns in otherwise unrelated information, and can otherwise made deductions based on absent information. A controlled form of “hunch.”(Warptrace: when used in conjunction with warpspace technology, can allow the practitioner to sense the folds and lapses of spacetime instinctively, and follow fugitives through warps or distortions, or trace telepathic energies back to their source.)
3. Truthsense: a close study of the ‘tells’ or subconscious semiotic signs in a person’s body language grants penetrating insight into his motives, and can routinely detect bluffs or deceptive intent. Also useful for seducing members of the opposite sex.(Mind Probe: when used in conjunction with psionic technology, allows for Mind Probe techniques of reading forgotten or hidden thoughts.)
4. Shinanju: the synthesis and sublimation of every martial arts and hand-to-hand fighting technique known to man.(Ki Strike: when used in conjunction with bodily modifications for perception (called biosight) can be used to defeat opponents by striking the air near them, or striking nerves to induce vertigo, nausea, unconsciousness or coma in the victim.)
5. Mentat: practitioners are human computers, able to calculate and manipulate faster than any mechanical system, to store infinite data like a database, and so on. Includes perfect memory and total recall.(Doppleganger or Perfect Impersonation: when used in conjunction with disguise arts of biotechnology, allows for perfect impersonation of anyone whose face one can see. Practitioner can fool DNA scans, bloodtype, brainwaves patterns, retinal eye patterns, fingerprints, and other biometric methods of detection.)
6. Charismology: uses audible mass hypnosis and mass marketing techniques to sway crowds, influence popular opinion; and leadership and management psychology techniques to bind the loyalty of followers to you with unbreakable psychological bonds.(Voice Power: when used in conjunction with psionics, can be used on a single individual, even a stranger, to elicit automatic or uncontrolled reflexes or momentary emotional responses.)
7. Compartmental Subconscious, also called Pseudothink or Mindblock: allows the practitioner to alter his memories and personalities at a conscious level, fooling himself and anyone reading his mind, while maintaining his true thoughts and memories in a subconscious compartment, which is still able to think and act. This art can deceive mind-readers.(Soulchange: When used in conjunction with biotechnology arts of brainchange, this allows the practitioner to turn into a perfect copy of a specific animal, complete with that animal’s skills and trained instincts. When used on a man, only his instinctive skills and trained instructs are copied, not his conscious mind.)
8. Nexxialism: a multi-disciplinary scientific integration technique, which allows a generalist or jack-of-all-trades a means to become an expert in the one science only he needs when he needs it.(Gothic Tuning: when used in conjunction with Matter-Control techniques or Tuning, can allow the practitioner to create complex machinery, weapons, and living organisms on a large scale that otherwise would require time, amplifying machinery, and a team of technicians to create.)
9. Compartmental Consciousness, also called Doublethink: the ability to think, consciously and clearly, on two or more topics with two or more compartments of one’s conscious mind, as easily as a normal man whistles while tying his shoes. Practitioners are ambidextrous at will. This cannot deceive mind-readers, who will read thoughts in both or all compartments.(Multiples: when used on conjunction with biotechnology, allowed the practitioner to maintain his consciousness in two or more brains, connected by neural tissue. Multiple Heads. When used in conjunction with BOTH biotechnology and psionics, allows the practitioner to maintain two or more brains in separate bodies, connected by a telepathic link. Multiple Bodies.)
10. Null-A: the neuro-linguistic science called Non-Aristotelian philosophy, or Null-A prevents or cures insanity or neurosis of any type, whether natural or artificial, and the practitioner cannot be startled or caught flat-footed or driven insane by Cthulhu. Not that that often comes up. Practitioner is immune to Voice Powers, see above.(Dark Energy: when used in conjunction with Contortion technology, allows the practitioner to build a living Contortion matrix inside his nervous system, and to perform metempsychosis and wraith form powers.)
11. Callidetics: the ability to see patterns in apparent chaos; the ability to win games of chance and predict the weather.(Foretelling: when used in conjunction with Psychohistory, allows the practitioner to predict the likely actions of specific individuals.)
12. Cellular Awareness. Allows the practitioner to be consciously aware of subtle biofeedback cues from his autonomic and endocrinal nervous system, and to analyze the specific nature of poisons or cellular damage done him. Speeds healing time tremendously, renders the practitioner practically immune to poison.(Adaptation Instinct: When used in conjunction with Biotechnology, this allows the user automatically to adjust to any environment of any alien planet, atmosphere, hydrosphere, or to vacuum.)
13. Pranetics: the ability to unleash hysterical strength at will. Momentarily doubles and triples muscle power.(Cryptostrength: when used in conjunction with bodily modifications for strength (called biostrength) grants physical prowess like something out of legend.)
14. Autonoetics: the ability to resist being driven unconscious by any means, whether by physical trauma, chemical drugs, or psychic attack. Sections in the brain stem are trained to take over if the cortex is being dominated or influenced. Blocks hypnosis. Can continue to fight unimpaired while asleep, unconscious. The practitioner can keep fighting unimpaired for ten minutes after being legally dead.(Sleepwalker Zone: when used in conjunction with Starcore technology,  allows the user to establish a zone of spacetime where all conscious thoughts are suppressed, except his own, and can be used as a mind control vector.)

1.7        The Super Sciences

1.7.1        The Basic Supersciences

There are seven basic super-sciences Grandfather has been known to imprint on his children or granddaughters. Why he does not merely teach the secrets, or how the imprint process is done, remains a mystery:

1. Warpspace Technology or warptech: flex or fold or lapse timespace to alter the fundamental physical constants, such as the speed of light and the gravitational constant. This allows for 1. faster than light drive; 2. gravity control; 3. inertia control; 4. creating subspace pockets or ‘flatspace’; 5. towing planets; 6.Tesserects or vestpocket universes; 7. Stasus Fields or Timewarps to slow or speed the flow of events (but not time travel). Warpspace zones nullify the foundations of Contortion tech and psi tech, and can be used to prevent teleportation or psychic phenomena. Warpspace tech is the most dangerous imaginable technology, since it can be used to destroy whole solar systems.
2. Contortion Technology or pearltech: teleportation of images, energies, objects, living people, thoughts across interplanetary distances. Contortions also detect energy use in an area, or can dominate and redirect the flows of energies inside mechanical intelligences. The Contortion effect will nullify the foundations of psi tech, to prevent psychic phenomena.Clairvoyance 2. Energy Contortion (includes 1. sonic, 2. Anti-photonic, 3. magnetic, 4. electric, 5. photonic, 6. psychokinetic, 7. Van der Waals forces or hydrokinetic) 3. Teleportation 4. Transportation 5. The ability to detect neural flows or Lifesense. 6. Electrogravitic sensitivity also called Pearlsight 7. The ability to take control of electrical circuits and appliances, hypnotize robots, reprogram computers at a distance.
3. Parapsychology Technology or Psi-tech: allows for 1. mind link, 2. mind speech, 3. telepathy, 4. memory probes; or 5. inflicting or warding off hallucinations, 6. inflicting or warding off narcoleptic coma (called Mindblast and Mindblock), 7. inflicting or warding off somnambulation or remote-possession of the narcotized limb or body.
4. Biotechnology or Bio-tech: can change shape through instant cellular reorganization (normally, you cannot add or subtract mass). Includes the ability to 1. Assume the form of an animal, including its natural senses 2. Assume a formless or amoeboid shape that can stretch limbs or flow through keyholes 3. regenerate wounded tissue, 4. adapt to alien environments, 5. grow a new limb or organs to form a chimerical or imaginary beast, 6. Alter the internal arrangement of organs or sense organs without outward change, including subcutaneous armor, secondary breathing tubes, multiple hearts, etc; or 7. disguise yourself as another person.
5. Zero Initial Point Kinetic Vector Technology or Zip-tech: The ability to transform kinetic to potential energy and back with no intermediate mechanism: force fields, shield belts, levitation fields, tractor-presser beams, reactionless thrusters, repulsor rays, and telekinesis are all ziptech.
6. Matter Control: instantly create and reorganize matter on a molecular and atomic level.
7. Psychohistory: extrapolate the actions of large groups of intelligent beings over the long term.

1.7.2        The Super Supersciences

Grandfather is known to control secret super sciences, which he has rarely or never shared with anyone:

1. Advanced Warpspace or Starcore technology enables 1. the production of energy apparently from the Hubble Expansion of the universe and the transmission of endless, infinite energy across radio waves or other forms of ether vibration. Also allows 2. special application of the Starcore transmission wave is that when tuned to the frequency of human neural activity, the Starcore can induce brainwave patterns in a victim, or a countryside, forcing them into sleep state (alpha waves) dream state (delta waves) alertness (beta waves) or unconsciousness (gamma waves) intuitive awareness (epsilon state) cosmic awareness or prophetic visions (omega wave); The Starcore can transmit dream-images across interstellar distances. REQUIRES NO-MAN DISCIPLINE.
2. Advanced Pearltech or Necrotechnology: 1. Metempsychosis, the ability to die in one body in one place, and wake up in a prepared body stored in a lab elsewhere; 2. Wraith Form, the ability to be out of phase with normal reality, insubstantial therefore immune to conventional weapons, able to walk through walls. REQUIRES NULL-A DISCIPLINE.
3. Advanced Parapsychology Technology or Soultech: affects the subconscious mind and includes 1. Mesmerism or Mind Control; 2. redacting or rewriting surface memories, or Mind Surgery; 3. Reading buried memories or Mind Probe. The mesmerized person cannot be made to do something against his inner nature; the redacted person cannot be made to forget, nor made to believe, something against his inner nature. Persons with a high sanity recover quickly from Mind Surgery; persons with a high Sanctity cannot be Mind Probed. REQUIRES TRUTHSENSE DISCIPLINE.
4. Advanced Biotech, also called Neurological Biotechnology or Neurotech: 1. The ability to create exotic forms, such as energy beings or ghosts able to manipulate the world via psychokinetic fields 2. The ability to create secondary forms, complete with trained instincts, from one’s excess blood cells or ‘bloodbeasts’ Neural changes to sense organs to make them superhumanly  acute (called biosight) 4. Nerve-muscle changes to muscle tissue and nerve firing patterns to augment strength to superhuman levels (called biostrength) 5. Neural changes to decrease reaction time (called bioreflexes) 6. Neural changes to create a compartmental consciousness or secondary brain (called Double Brain) 7. Neural changes to create a compartmental subconscious complete with the instincts and trained reflexes of a target animal or man. REQUIRES MENTAT DISCIPLINE.

1.7.3        The Fringe Supersciences

There are rumors of other and unknown sciences, such as

1. Shrinktech—A combination of biotech and flatspace technology that allows shapechangers to change mass and size (Aurora, Ayesha, Tiana may have this secret, Aspasia definitely does);
2. Speedforce—A combination of ziptech, Starcore, and inertia control technology called linear kinetics that allows men and vehicles to achieve unimaginable velocities safely (Lord Swift has studied this technology, and shared the secret with his son, Martin);
3. Strangetech—A magical ability to animate statues or inanimate objects (Only Kourai of Samarkand, consort of Moonrise, seems to have this power);
4. Jinxtech—Some unknown means to cause ‘the gremlin effect’ where inanimate objects disintegrate and fail in spectacularly malicious and dangerous ways (Only Clytemnestra has this power).
5. Lifetech—The means used by Ariel to create her husband Mälzel the Synthetic Man is unknown. It is possible Lord Mälzel is merely an biofact like any other, and not an intelligent, living, growing robot, as he seems.
6. Deathtech— the means used by Aurora to recreate or resurrect Koschey from the dead is unknown, and may have merely been a sleight of hand, or the use of a duplicate, or metempsychosis.
7. Clingtech—The ability to alter the friction and traction of surfaces, in conjunction with ‘gravity leveler’ warpspace technology, allowed Princess Arachne to cling to sheer surfaces, or to make solid ground into a superslippery frictionless surface. How this was done is unknown.

1.8       The Normal Sciences

1.8.1        The Normal Normal-Sciences

As mentioned above, there are two basic sciences Grandfather released and explained to the world, and anyone with the talent can learn and practice them:

1. Pantropy: can adapt to other worlds and exotic environments, becoming an alien creature when on an alien world.
2. Terraforming: can alter the atmosphere, ocean, temperature and biosphere of an alien planet to make it habitable for human life.

1.8.2        The Super Normal-Sciences

There are specific techniques or applications of these technologies which Grandfather possesses,  but have not shared, even though he shared the basics:

1. Genesis technology, which allows for the reintroduction of extinct species in huge numbers, or to cure ongoing epidemics and pandemics overnight (an offshoot of Pantropy);
2. The Golden Cloud technology that rains honey-dew food upon command over wide areas of countryside (Pantropy);
3. Weather Dominator technology (an offshoot of Terraforming);
4. Seismic Induction Machines to create earthquakes (Terraforming);
5. Tidal Wave Impellers to create rogue waves and tsunamis (Terraforming);
6. Volcanism Technology to raise and lower continents, or produce worldwide volcanism (Terraforming);
7. Robotics, the creation of artificial minds (This is actually a development of Earth science independent of Grandfather; he merely kicked it up to the next level).

2   History Lesson—Part One: Final War

Grandfather was odd.

Evripades Zenon Telthexorthopolis was the chief scientist and only survivor of an ill-fated manned expedition to Pluto, launched just before the outbreak of World War Three, called afterward the Final War.

The United Nations Combined Long-range Expedition vehicle Cerberus was the most powerful space vessel ever constructed, for she ignited one neutron bomb after another in her drive core to build up the huge velocity needed to reach Plutonian orbit.

It required over five years to reach that distant planet; the expedition remained there three years; and over five years to return. When Cerberus returned to Earth, the Final War was over, with no victor.

The neutron bombs had reduced the major cities of North America, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East to ghost cities, empty of any living thing larger than a cockroach, with no residual radiation, but all the empty buildings still standing. The Southern Hemisphere emerged maimed but alive; the Northern Hemisphere, with the exception of China, was not so lucky.

The five cities that were spared were Las Vegas in Nevada, Geneva in Switzerland, Lhasa in Tibet, Athens in Greece, and Vannaheim in California. No one was willing to bomb Disneyland.

A few nations maintained law and order within their borders—but, elsewhere, billions of refugees were either panicking, fleeing from rumors of war and fleeing toward rumors of food, both rumors equally false, or else surrendering to despair and dying amid the ruins.

Whatever it was Evripades Telthexorthopolis and his team had discovered orbiting Pluto is unknown.

But there was no longer a United Nations Organization to which to report his astonishing findings, nor was there any organized police force to investigate why the other thirteen members of the expedition were dead, or why their perfectly-preserved corpses were propped up at their mission stations with their dead eyes still open and their cold hands on the controls.

For that matter, there was no working launch pads to launch a shuttle to reach Earth orbit to dock with the Cerberus, and there were no aircraft carriers to recover a splashdown-capsule. Grandfather came down from orbit or periodically returned to his ship in those early days is a matter of speculation.

What is known is that Lord Tellus (as your Grandfather soon came to be called—no one could pronounce Telthexorthopolis) assumed the leadership of the world. With the world’s only working atomic-powered space vessel acting as an untouchable and unreachable orbital fortress, able to look down and shoot down at any spot on the globe, and possessing the only unspent supply of neutron warheads, the only remaining 09000 Douglas-Marconi supercomputer aboard, the only working orbital radar and radio systems, and only he was in a position to restore civilization under a single unified world-ruler, and promise that war would never happen again.

He radioed down to the surface that he had invented in his cramped onboard laboratory during his ten year isolation, a means to transmit electrical energy to any receiver as easily as one might transmit radio waves, and he sent a description of how to build a receiver set with a spool of copper wire, an iron dowel, a vacuum tube, and a piezoelectric crystal: materials which, even in the shattered condition of the post-apocalypse, any handyman or boy scout could build with a few dollar’s worth of supplies. One single receiver set the size of a walkie-talkie could receive enough energy to power a village; a single receiver the size of a television could power a city. The Cerberus, of course, had been equipped with enough atomic fuel to go to Pluto and return, but no more. How Lord Tellus was able to resupply whole continents with electrical power remains a mystery.

3    History Lesson—Part Two: The Four Regions and Five Queens

When the Cerberus returned from Pluto, only four regions still maintained law and order within their borders.

3.1.1.1   The Manchu Empire of Greater China

First was Greater China. The Final War had ended the Communist Party rule, and brought to power a strongly racist, nationalist, and traditional Confucian form of government. The Mandarins rejected all Marxism as a foreign and barbarian ideology, and blamed the non-Chinese for the Final War, and, indeed, for all the ills of life.

Such was the fervor for tradition, that the surviving remote descendant of the Manchu Dynasty was genetically identified, and a bewildered six-year-old girl found in a remote village orphanage and elevated to being the Empress of the Middle Kingdom.

Under the six-year-old leadership of Manchu Empress Chinese Generals conquered Russia, The Middle East, Continental Europe, North Africa, Indochina, while her Admirals conquered Taiwan, Japan, and the Australian coast. By the time she was twelve, her Admirals had conquered all the undefended islands of the Pacific, including Taiwan and Hawaii, and, before she turned seventeen, the warlords of the Empress conquered California north to Canada and Alaska, and south to Baja California.

She also grew to be a strikingly gorgeous young woman. [Picture Zhang Ximen, the girl from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.]

Her name is Manchu Fa Lo Xue Ee Yi (her name means Northern Sweet Incense of Peaceful Peace), but the popular press dubbed her Empress Peace.

3.1.1.2   The Holy Roman Empire of South America

Second was a an alliance between Argentina, under military dictator named Che Juan Castro Cagliostro, and Brazil, under a revolutionary leader named Evita Juanita Bonita La Cheetah. However, during the Final War, after Rome was destroyed, the Pope and all his court fled to Valparaiso in Chile, which triggered a strong Catholic revival in that country: so much so that when Che and Evita were married, and their two allied nations placed under one administration, the Pope held a ceremony to anoint the leaders with oil as a sacred monarch, a coronation ceremony, and Che and Evita became King Juan I and Queen Juanita I.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the population weary of violence turned toward the stability and storybook glamour of royalty as a solution to halt the unsteadiness of eternal revolution.  The Church also supported the legal claim of the daughter of that marriage to take the leadership by succession, and acclaimed her the crown princess.

In due time, fiery young crown princess at age sixteen had her father, Che, murdered by being trampled to death by his own cavalry officers, imprisoned her mother in a nunnery, married cavalry officer Captain Judas Ganelon el Tradore, drugged her bridegroom on the wedding night and throwing his half-paralyzed body still mewling out the window of the bridal chamber to the man-eating alligators in the moat; and the next day had herself crowned the Most Catholic Serene and Sovereign Princess of the Holy Roman Empire of the South.

It was her habit, before she conquered a nation, to seduce the prince or the most famous popular leader of the area, wed him, and then murder him on the wedding night, usually by having him trampled to death by horses or eaten by man-eating alligators or both. The dictators of Uruguay, Columbia, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iceland were dispatched in this way, and their nations taken into the Holy Roman Empire. None of these marriages, according to the one surviving witness of the wedding night, had been consummated, which allowed, under Canon Law, the marriages to be annulled and the Serene Sovereign Princess to marry again.

How it was that six world leaders could be fooled over and over again by a girl of eighteen, or how she managed to get a troop of horses or a brace of man-eating alligators into the bridal chamber unobserved on multiple occasions, remains a mystery to this day.

The Serene Princess, without war, absorbed the other nations of South America into her sovereignty, and, for some reason no one understands, Iceland.

She also grew to be a strikingly gorgeous young woman. [Picture Katherine Heigl from Roswell—which may explain how six world leaders could be fooled by a girl of eighteen.]

She was christened Magnificinta Ximena Alecto Hecate Isabelle Eva Cagliostro del Austra Sacralregina, but the popular press, because of the bloodbath of murders through which she waded, dubbed her Princess Maleficent.

3.1.1.3   The Celestial British Empire of Tibet, India, Egypt, and, Azania

Third was a South Africa had been flooded by refugees from England, including the Royal family, and which, during the war, had lost its independence, been re-conquered by the British, and placed once again under a constitutional and monarchic form of government, centered in Pretoria. The Prince of Wales married a Zulu tribal princess in order to quell local discontent. The main branch of the family was wiped out in one night of intercontinental bombardment. The surviving Parliament, with their combined stiff British upper lips and Zulu stoicism in an orderly fashion located the only surviving member of the royal clan. She was from the Zulu side of the family, an eleven-year-old waif named Nell Uweweseweyu. During the privations of the war and worldwide total economic collapse, some of the remoter members of this royal family in exile had to find work to live; boys joining the army, and girls becoming housemaids, lady’s maid, and, in one case, a chimneysweep. (Chimneys were back in fashion due to the worldwide collapse of oil and coal industries).

Nell was found as if by magic the morning after the missile attack busily sweeping chimneys and singing ‘chim-cheroo’ and, was crowned later that day after a quick bath, as Princess Gloriana, but the popular press immediately dubbed her Queen-Empress Cinderella, because of her previous life of hardship.

She married the Dalai Lama of Tibet, Kalzang Gyatso and, during a pilgrimage she made to various holy cities of India, persuaded as if by magic the Parliament of India, to forswear independence and return to subjection under the British Empire. When she visited Egypt, as if by magic, the survivors reported that pharaohs and Egyptian gods had visited them in dreams, commanding them likewise to rejoin the shattered Celestial Empire. The Dali Lama later passed away peacefully, and, according to the belief in Tibet, was reincarnated as Cinderella’s eldest son Shiwan Sifu the Most Enlightened of the Enlightened.

Not being a member of the Protestant Church of England, as the English Constitution requires, Shiwan is not in line for the throne of the British Empire. However, under his influence, his mother the Queen appointed a Council of Science chaired by him as Scientist General, to rule her empire on a strictly scientific basis. The Council was also tasked with preserving and recovering as much of the scientific and technical knowledge as possible from the wreckage of the Final War: Both universal education and an independent University system was established throughout the British Empire, making South Africa and Tibet the most technically accomplished people in the world.

The Science Council consists of a Lord Supreme Philosopher, the Royal Astrologer, the Grand Imperial Alchemist, Lord High Witch Doctor,  the Mesmerist General,  the Master of Mechanical Sciences, and the Elder of Cabalists.

Queen Cinderella to this day keeps court in the ghost city of London, amid the splendors of Buckingham Palace, and all around the entire city is utterly empty. The British Empire currently consists of sub-Saharan Africa, Tibet, India, Canada, North America as far as the Mississippi, the Rock of Gibraltar, the Island of Malta, and Antarctica.

She also grew to be a strikingly gorgeous young woman. [Picture Noami Campbell]

3.1.1.4   The Gangland Military Democracy of the Tribal Nations of America

Fourth was the North Americans. They had been hardest hit by the war, and deaths in the millions had returned the continent to wilderness. Only pockets of life remained. The Sioux reservations in the state of Arizona and Colorado, under traditional tribal leadership, had established a rough but serviceable martial law, with the aid of surviving units of the National Guard, the Mafia bosses running Las Vegas, and the commandant of NORAD under Cheyenne Mountain.

The Sioux Chief Powatanagualtlatoc, the Loudly Screaming Hawk, married the Mafia princess Belladonna Capone of the Capone Gang; he then sent his only heir and daughter Pocahontlatocoatyl Capone the Quiet Lioness, to be trained in the boot camp NORAD had established.

So winning were her ways, and such was her brilliance, that Indian Princess Lioness easily became promoted to the rank of Four Star General and Supreme Allied Commander. At the same time, she won election to the office of President of the United States by the College of Electors, which she immediately abolished, and won the appointment to tribal chieftainship by the Sioux Council of Elders, which she immediately abolished.

Next, she used her authority as Commander-in-Chief to appoint herself the sole justice of the Supreme Court, as well as president of the Senate and sole Congressman for the general region of the entire North American Continent, until such time as regular elections could be held. Her appointments were passed without demur by the Senate. The Senatorial Committee on Suffrage examined the voting rolls for all districts, and found them to be defective: the only citizen legally able to cast a vote was one voter from her own home district, named Quiet Lioness of the Sioux Indian Nation. She ran unopposed for all public offices, and won in a landslide, carrying one hundred percent of the vote, there having been only one vote cast. Congress then voted certain emergency powers to the commander-in-chief, and the motion carried by a vote of one to zero; and this grant of emergency powers by found by the Supreme Court to be legal. Then she took a break for lunch. At lunch, Lioness had the Mafia bosses in Las Vegas gunned down like dogs, and declared herself Queen of Crime and Godmother of the Families.

Being modest, as befits the absolute ruler of a military democracy like America, Lioness ordered the College of Electors to elect her President-for-Life, and used the title ‘The First Lady’ rather than accept any formal honors. The First Lady controls an area east of the Rocky Mountains and West of the Mississippi, Mexico, with colonies in Kentucky, Florida and the Carolinas.

Because no one can pronounce Pocahontlatocoatyl to save his life, the popular press, which, in North America, is run by the Mob, dubbed her Lady Lioness.

Lady Lioness also grew to be a strikingly gorgeous young woman. [Think of Disney’s Pocahontas. ]

3.1.1.5   The Realm of the Seven Seas

The final region was created as the reign of Lord Tellus was being established,  as an act of war, and as a symbol of his irresistible power: Lord Tellus raised a huge landmass in the middle of the Atlantic, triggering world-wide volcanic eruptions and earthquakes off the Richter scale, he dubbed it Atlantis, and peopled it with a pantropicly-made or ‘biofactured’ race of intelligent amphibious humans. He created, as overnight, ninety-nine splendid cities of gold and ivory, with walls of brass and orichalchum, set out in a Greek classical pattern.

Into the poverty-stricken world rose a land covered with silver mountains to outshine the legendary wealth of El Dorado, beaches thickly strewn with pearls, narwhale horns the size of redwoods resting amid the tidal lakes, nuggets of gold sleeping in the mountain streams like pigeon’s eggs, to be had for the stooping, amber dripping from the trees like honey from beehives, and other precious and rare minerals thickly laden in every part of the land.

In the Hundredth City of Gold, Chryshecatenopolis, Lord Tellus took his fifth and final wife, the Sea-Queen Ursula of Atlantis, who, when she was young, was a strikingly gorgeous young biofactured woman with long and beautiful green hair.

3.1.1.6   World Unity

Lord Tellus, in the early days, to secure his reign and right to rule, wheedled, pressured, or even forced the Empress Faloxueeyi, the Queen-Empress Cinderella, the Sea Queen Ursula, Lady Lioness and Her Most Catholic and Serene Sovereign Princess Maleficent to marry him.

In gratitude, but not without some political tension and squabbling, the five quadrants of the Earth, The Manchu Empire of Greater China, the Celestial British Empire, the Golden Kingdom of Atlantis, Holy Roman Empire and the Gangland Military Democracy of the Tribal Nations of America were combined into one political union formed the first universal Parliament of Man and placed mankind under the Royal and Imperial Dynasty of the House of Tellus.

This global state was called the Telluric World Empire, or, more formally, the Universal and Ecumenical Holy Telluric Military Democratic Republican Imperial Global Commonwealth of Man.

When the Telluric Empire established permanent space colonies in the time of the Regency, it became known as the Telluric Space Empire.

4    History Lesson—Part Three: The Miracles of Young Tellus

His reign secure, as time passed, Lord Tellus use his super-scientific arts to transform the sandy wastelands of the Sahara, the Gobi, and the Southwestern desert of Nevada and Arizona into fertile and temperate gardens, where species of eatable plants and trees with miraculous medical properties grew in abundance.

He also restored the dodo bird from extinction, and the passenger pigeon he restored in flocks so thick that they darkened the air at noon; and filled the Midwestern plains of America with bison herds so vast that they covered three states. No one on Earth lacked for game or fowl to eat. He developed strains of rice that could grow anywhere, including in sewage or salt water, and grapevines and peach trees that could grow in salt flats, or atop sand dunes or asphalt or through concrete.

Other areas of the world were exposed to a new type of golden-tinged storm cloud that rained small crisp wafers of honey, which were eatable and nutritious. Lord Tellus could merely command these golden clouds to pass over starvation-afflicted regions and rain food on them.

Saved from starvation, disarmed, and supplied with electrical power completely dependent on his one-man monopoly, Grandfather soon restored peace and order to a shattered world.

5    History Lesson—Part Four: The Madness of Old Tellus

Other world-changing acts of Lord Tellus performed as he got older and odder were greeted with less favor, as when he melted the Southern Polar ice-cap, raising worldwide sea levels and causing coastal flooding, in order to create a primordial jungle of non-flowering ferns and cycads called ‘The Savage Land’ which he keeps as his own private hunting preserve, stocked with long-extinct monsters of the Neolithic and Triassic.

Some of the decrees of Lord Tellus as Prince of the World were rather eccentric, such as that Pluto was now to be officially declared a planet, not a dwarf planet; that no one was allowed on pain of death to call anyone no matter his race an ‘African-American’ unless he was an American citizen born in Africa; no one was allowed to use “he or she” or “they” for an indefinite pronoun, but must use “he” in all cases except when the antecedent is or must be female; all men had to wear hats and all women had to wear skirts, with the exception of cowgirls and female catburglars; all the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and every copy of the Koran and the Hadiths of Mohammed were gathered up in all the town squares and burnt except for copies kept for scholarly research in the libraries of the New Vatican in Valparaiso. (This was not as difficult as might seem, since the Muslim population had been decimated in the Final War, and the replacement of oil with broadcast power undermined the influence of the survivors). All copies of Ulysses by James Joyce were also burnt.

Suffrage for women was abolished world-wide, which might have had an upside, because that same year, all voting booths were turned into execution chambers, and every voter, when offering a ballot to elect to the House of Commons, had to solve a quadratic equation, or otherwise he was instantly electrocuted and the body dumped into a chute below the booth and ground up for dogfood, denied a Christian burial. “Get out the vote” efforts lagged.

Bowing to pressure from the widows of mathematically-illiterate voters, Lord Tellus passed the ‘Wright Act’ which allowed voters, instead of stepping into the electrocution booth, to go to the firing range, and shoot at the ballots from twenty paces. Wherever the bullet landed, that candidate got the vote, and misfires or off-target strikes were counted as votes for a local race horse. Districts where the voters did not practice their marksmanship often sent famous horses rather than men to the House of Commons, much to the relief of general public. The horse-led Parliaments were famous for their easing the regulatory burdens on industry, light taxes, and unobtrusive laws. The formal name of the world representative body is the Parliament of Man, but everyone calls it the Parliament of Horses.

Lord Tellus had the name of Australia officially changed on all maps and atlases to ‘Oz’ and he forced all the Australians to wear bells on their hats and call themselves ‘Munchkins’ or ‘Quadlings’ or ‘Winkies’ or ‘Gillikins’ wearing costumes only of certain colors, and painting their houses likewise. He forced the entire population of Oz to learn how to sing and tapdance, including the aged rousted out of old folks’ homes, and cripples from their sickbeds. Tens of thousands of refugees fled the brutality of the Dance Police of Oz for the shores of Antarctica, now a tropical jungle-land.

In science, Lord Tellus changed the name of ‘quarks’ to ‘stratons’ and renamed several radioactive elements of the periodic table after his children.

He forced all history books to be rewritten, so that all references to Rock and Roll music were eliminated, and replaced with an entirely and obsessively detailed history of a Jazz Renaissance, complete with made-up jazz musicians and bandleaders, their personal histories and idiosyncrasies; musicians were hired to write the retroactive songs for this fictitious period of time, and actors and actresses were hired to pretend in their youth to have been fans, lovers, wives or children of these nonexistent Jazz players: “Spins” Waterford and “Dizzy” Gillespie; Harry James Snell and “Big Wolf” McRoy; “Jumpin’ ” Jack Armstrong; “Fats” Waller; and “Little Boy Blues” Boroni.  Rock and Roll music officially never happened, but rumors persist that records, sheetmusic, movie soundtracks and recordings continue to exist for scholarly research in the libraries of the New Vatican in Valparaiso. That same year, Lord Tellus passed an anti-whistling law, to prevent people from whistling Rock and Roll tunes.

The re-inhabited ghost city of Hollywood (which now only made child-pornography movies) rebelled against the Rock and Roll edicts, declared its independence from the Telluric World Empire. The King of Rock, Lord Elvis II, claimed to have a working neutron bomb, and openly defied Lord Tellus, daring him to do his worst. The great spaceship Cerberus appeared in the sky above the city, and a tidal wave rolled in, toppling the city in a brutal catastrophe, leaving thousands dead, or maimed, or dispossessed.

Between his creating new races of mankind, raising lost continents, melting ice caps, creating natural disasters, and making lunatic laws, the world decided Lord Tellus was both bizarre, bizarrely dangerous, and in league with the supernatural monsters from beyond Pluto.

His children, allied with other powers of the Earth, forced him out of office. He disappeared, taking the interplanetary vessel Cerberus with him.

5.1.1.1   Domestic Disunity

Since the laws of the Holy Roman Empire of South America did not allow for polygamy, divorce, remarriage, concubinage, or fornication, the relationship both political and personal was rather stormy between Serene Sovereign Princess Maleficent, her husband, and the other wives, who were at times reduced to the status of secondary wives, or to the status of concubines, or were divorced, or were remarried, and at other times not, depending on the political turmoil of the earth.

It did not help domestic tranquility or political peace when Princess Maleficent would depart without leave from the Imperial World Capital of Ultratechnopolis after one of the other Imperial wives had been attacked by a man-eating alligator or narrowly missed being trampled by a squad of wild horses discovered in the royal bedchambers, and return to Valparaiso, defying Lord Tellus to do his worst: and the next day she would be discovered back atop the imperial throne next to his, in chains, presiding over some formal public event, with the various courtiers ignoring her leg-irons, and the gentleman of the press carefully photographing Princess Maleficent from angles not showing the fact that she was wearing handcuffs. Lord Tellus would usually be in the surgery the next day, having the poisons pumped out of his stomach and bloodstream, or having whatever limb or member was bitten off by an alligator stitched back on.

5.1.1.2   A Digression on Certain Theological Matters

It should be noted in passing that the Pope was eaten by an alligator when he refused to sanctify the polygamous marriage between Empress Maleficent and Lord Tellus.

The College of Cardinals elected Environmental Activist and Eco-friendly Gaia-worshiper Eris Satanella Greenpeace Carson to the See of St. Peter under the name Pope Joan II.

She declared that the Roman Catholic Church hereafter would use nothing but renewable energy resources, and that all Churches would be solar powered. All baptized Christians would be strict ova-lacto vegetarians, which would give them psychic powers. She also ordered the Temple of Solomon to be rebuilt in the ghost city of Jerusalem, with statues to Cthulhu, Zool, the Earth-Dragon Tiamat, and the Ape-God Graag the Abominable to be erected in the Holy of Holies. The Bible was also rewritten to be gender-neutral and homo-sensitive non-heteronormative. This is known as the Green Catholic Bible. Even though allegedly a virgin, Pope Joan II gave birth during Eco-Mass in the ghost city of Rome to a child known only as Damian. His current whereabouts are unknown.

There was a schism, and another College of Cardinals elected an Anti-Pope, Peter II, who condemned polygamy, polytheism, and child sacrifice to the Ape-God Graag the Abominable, as well as annulling the marriage of Maleficent to Lord Tellus.

Peter II survived as surprise attack by a herd of cavalry horses that attempted to trample him in the Papal bathtub, but only in a cryogenic suspended animation capsule. His current location is a closely-guarded secret. Unfortunately for ecologically friendly Green Catholic Church so widely admired by all men of goodwill everywhere, Pope Joan II made the mistake of referring to the solar system as containing only eight planets, while saying that “everyone is free to make up his or her own mind for himself or herself whether Pluto is a planet.” She was killed within the week by the Science Assassin known only as ‘Deathstroke.’

At the moment, the Green Catholic Church has recanted the enlightened innovations of Pope Joan II, and instead upholds the reactionary and benighted and orthodox teachings of Christianity, and allows baptized Christians to burn fossils fuels and eat red meat. The Anti-Pope Peter II is nominally in charge, but until he recovers from his trample wounds, his robot duplicate, Robo-Peter the Cyberpope, constructed by the Disney Corporation, presides at the official functions of His Holiness at Valparaiso.

6    Civics Lesson—Regency and Imperium

The Children of Lord Tellus assumed the mantle of leadership after he was forced into exile. Unwilling to appoint a new World Emperor, the children gathered in the grand undersea spaceport palace stronghold and capital city of Ultratechnopolis at the North Pole and declared themselves regents acting in his name.

Science Council. The mission of the Science Council is to recover technology lost during the Final War, and to controls the various dangerous super-scientific appliances Lord Tellus heedlessly leaves lying around the world. The Science Council leads the Science Legion, which is the interplanetary police and peacekeeping body that investigates science crimes, halts insurrections, and provides disaster relief for natural disasters or events caused by Lord Tellus. Allegedly neutral, Shiwan is considered a member of the Black Faction.

There is one important person (if it is a person) who is not a member of any faction, is the 0900 Douglas-Marconi computer ‘Doug’, originally aboard the Cerberus , who is the chief justice of the World Supreme Court.

7   Astronomy Lesson—The Nine Worlds

By fate or design, the period of history after the disappearance of Grandfather was a golden age of expansion. The science of terraforming and pantropy were studied and researched, and three enormous space elevators, or ‘beanstalks’ each over a thousand miles high, were erected at three places on the equator: at Quito, in Ecuador; the sunken city of Chrysomonople in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Spanish Guinea in Africa; and at Sumatra 93 miles south of Singapore. The Whites, Blues and Yellows had the opportunity to colonize outer space, the Reds had the organization, and the Blacks had the know-how.

The Moon and the Eight Planets were rapidly colonized—of course, everyone secretly knew that Pluto was not really a planet, just a pesky dwarf planet, but a cadre of Science Assassins, still loyal to the missing Lord Tellus, killed anyone who refused to call Pluto a planet.

The Regency appointed Proconsuls, whose powers were even greater over the colony worlds than Lord Tellus’ power had been over earth.

Prince Aladdin of Black is regent is Mercury—the rotation of Mercury was halted; gravity and atmosphere increased to nearly Earthlike conditions. The manlike Mercurials occupy on the narrow band of twilight that rings their tiny globe.

Two biofact species of man, born from volunteers, were created: the Nocturals to occupy the icy darkness of the eternal night; the Diurnals to occupy the eternal day. Popularly, Because of their ghostlike and impalpable bodies of pure energy, ad their ability to command and manipulate energy at will, the Diurnals are known as Witches. Because of their glowing, catlike eyes, and their fur that radiates immense heat like fire, the Nocturnals are called Demons. They can assume the shape of beautiful men and woman, succubae and incubi. There is thought to be a vampire cult called the Lamia among the Demons that preys upon the Twilight Men.

Aladdin took over from Lady Swan, and colonized the Nightside.

Princess Aurora of White is regent of Venus—bombarded with ice asteroids, Venus was cooled to a oceanic world inhabited by dinosaurs. The polar regions, where trees taller than skyscrapers grow, house manlike Venerials, ruled by Archbishops, Abbots and Knightly Orders of Templars.

The boiling equatorial Seas are occupied by a biofactured species called Nicors, or the Serpent-Men.

Princess Aurora took over the Regency of Venus from Prince Heaven, who made a hash of it.

Lord Rook of Red is regent of the Moon. He claims to be the Regent of the entire Inner System—the oceanic core and cavernous crust of the Moon is occupied by a biofactured race of Insect Men called Myrmidons, and man-eating Equines called Centaurs, who live in mutual detestation with the elfin Lunarians forever on the brink of total war.

No manlike race has a permanent foothold here.

Prince Netherworld of Yellow is regent of Mars—crisscrossed with canals, and surrounded by a warm blanket of artificial air produced by Atmosphere Stations liberating oxygen from the soil rust, Mars is a desert planet, inhabited by freight-train-sized eyeless dragonworms.

Manlike Martials occupy radium-powered cities, and sail the skies in their radium-levitated air vessels, and the Mandarins and Sultans govern proud and turbulent tribes of Arabian, Sioux, Pawnee or Corsican descent who ride the blood-colored dunes on dragonworms, or eight-legged horses, giant lizards, or man-eating camels.

Mars is home to several biofactured species: the blood-drinking metamorphic Nichnytsia of Mars who assume the shape of giant brains and stalk the ice caps in their three-legged vehicles, called Ghouls; the Witches of Mars, who are made of impalpable force fields, called Ghosts; the psychic shape-changing Vegetable Men or Green Martians, called Genii; and savage tribes of blue-skinned, spherical, and eight-limbed Androgynes called Giants.

Netherworld ousted Lord Rook from the Regency of Mars after considerable political infighting. Lord Rook in an earlier decade had replaced Aladdin as regent here, who was ousted for reasons not discussed in public.

Asteroid Belt is the province of Lord Swift of Red—Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, and other large asteroids have been hollowed out, lit from within, and spun for gravity to form the Cities in Space. They are occupied by spacegoing trifold-amphibious metamorphs armed with dangerous psychic powers, called Sirens. Their basic shapes are angelic, aquatic, spaceworthy. The Sirens are almost pathologically indifferent to the doings of manlikes, who run bordellos, gambling rings, pirate dens, and covens of black magic unopposed and un-investigated by the Sirens. Male Sirens, called Leviathans, do exist, but they are rarely seen, being gigantic space dragons or sea serpents like the Kragen of Jupiter, and never assuming human form.

Prince Atlas of Blue is regent of Jupiter — The Cloud Cities of Jupiter are run by The Merchant Guild, who ruthlessly oppress the jammed warrens of proles. Materials pumped up from the natural chemical factories of the interior, as petrol, ambergris, helium-3, liquid uranium, gold-pressed-latinum, dilithium, molten unobtainium, thionite and cocaine and the life-expanding geriatric spice mélange, can all be found in one compressed cloud layer of Jupiter or another. The manlike Jovial colonist occupy an oxy-nitrogen layer larger than a hundred earths in which their domed cities float.

There are a biofactured race of winged whales who maintain trade and commerce between the many storm-beset cities. They are all rich as Croesus and Midas put together. Like the Sirens, the Leviathans of Jupiter, called Kragens, are spacegoing and amphibious, and can fly among the moons of Jupiter, all of which have been terraformed. Note that the moon Io is the only spot in the entire solar system where no Imperial power reaches. Neither radio, nor normal means of propulsion, nor any technology operates anywhere near. This moon is said to haunted.

Princess Sunset of Yellow is the regent of Saturn—The unique inertia-defeating metal known as lightsteel (so called because it changes kinetic energy to photons) or Saturn-steel is mined only on this world. Abundant here, the manlike Saturnines carry pistols and laserguns only for hunting and target practice. The only way to defeat an enemy wearing lightsteel is by sword or dagger, albeit specially-made arrows, such as Princess Sunset carries, can also defeat a foe. The human-occupied levels rest on a layer of cloud thick enough to skate or sail across, and the islands of the flying archipelago are connected by midair rivers. Note that the terraforming is incomplete, and the human occupied areas are beset by snows and glaciers. [Saturn contains a stargate from Arcturus]

The rings of Saturn are occupied by shapechanging vampires, called Nichnytsia, created by some enemy of Saturn. The deeper layers are haunted by liquid-methane breathing mermaids called Rusalka. All Saturnines spend a certain number of hours a day, and days a year, merely hunting down these once-human monsters. Some strange mystery lay beneath the cloud-oceans of this immense, unexplored planet.

Sunset replaced Aladdin as regent here, who was ousted for reasons not discussed in public.

Princess Ayesha of Black is the regent of Uranus—The unique axial tilt of Uranus ensures four decades of day followed by four decades of night. The manlike (or, in this case, womanlike) Uranians have brought forth an Amazonian scientific paradise from which all males are excluded. They occupy vast plateaus or table lands of antigravity-laced bedrock connected by causeways overlooking bottomless depths of poisonous cloud.

The biofactured race adapted to Uranus is Rusalka-type beings called Pucks or Pookas who cling to the sides of these vast canyons, and report that nightmarish horrors dwell in the depths, and on the night side. Any city or village nightfall approaches hears the sinister laughter coming from the oncoming gloom. The cities of the dawn are raided by hunting parties in shining armor, who seek to drive the blinking and blind monstrosities and abominations back into the deeper mist. When their structures slowly appear in the dawn light, windowless towers a mile high, or ziggurats horrifying to behold, they are destroyed with directed energy fire called down from stations in the rings of Uranus. There is no record of anyone having created the night land dwellers of Uranus, nor can they be explained by a natural evolution.

Prince Nereus of Blue is Regent of Neptune—The Ten Thousand Archipelagoes of the Floating Islands of Neptune are entirely inhabited with Vikings, pirates, savage cannibals.

Also here are the superscientific psychic mind-linked four-armed four-legged androgyne pacifists called the Overmen or Archangels. The Overmen occupy the only fixed and motionless land on the planet, the Great Polar Islands, and have the power of levitation.

Pluto is under the control of Shiwan Sifu the Most Enlightened of the Enlightened—Cold and distant Pluto is occupied by humanlike Science Eskimos. Hints of whatever mysterious discovery Lord Tellus made are somewhere on this remote, icy orb.

Also here are Lunarian Dark Elves called Niflungar, by formless ever-expanding Amoeba-Men, called Iotuns, and satanic shape-changing psychic Ice-Genii called the Wendigo.

In theory, the Lord Scientist Shiwan is neutral, in practice, he is of the Black Faction. He replaced Aladdin as regent here, who was ousted for reasons not discussed in public.

7.1.1.1   Biofactured Races

These are the races created by Pantropy:

1. The Ghosts, also called Witches or Diurnals, are impalpable energy beings inhabiting Mars and Dayside Mercury. Created by Tiana, Swan, and Aurora working in rare cooperation.
2. The Insect-Men of the Moon are called Myrmidons. Created by Prince Netherworld.
3. The man-eating Equines of the Moon are called Centaurs. Created by Lord Swift while he was drunk.
4. Adapted to low gravity, the Elves of the Moon are called Lunarians, of Pluto are called Niflungar. Created by Moonrise.
5. The Serpent Men of Venus are called Nicors. There is a colony of them in Antarctica, on Earth. They were created by Prince Heaven to be the race of Zen sages and Confucian peace-bringers: instead they have vowed the destruction of mankind.
6. The amphibians of Earth’s oceans are called Mermaids or Blues, Divas or Atlanteans. They were created by Lord Tellus.
7. The shape-changing mesmeric blood-drinking Nichnytsia of Saturn, on Mars are called Ghouls or Brain-Men, on Pluto are called Wendigo. No one knows who created this horrid race.
8. The shape-changing mindreading Green Martians are called Genii; when found on Pluto, called Iotuns. They were created by Lord Rook to fight the Ghouls of Mars.
9. The grotesquely savage Blue Martians called Giants; their supercivilized cousins on Neptune are called Overmen or Archangels. Created by Prince Nereus to annoy Lord Rook.
10. The psychic spacegoing tri-amphibian shapechangers of the asteroid belt called Sirens. Created by Ayesha and Atlas.
11. Males of the Siren race are called Kragens or Leviathans. They are found in the asteroid belt or among the moons and clouds of Jupiter. Created by Atlas and Ayesha.
12. The bathyscaphic Saturnine are called Rusalka; on Uranus called Pucks or Pooka, and on Mercury Nightside called Nocturnals or Demons. They can assume the form of beautiful women. They were created by Aladdin.

Neither Princess Sunset nor Princess Ariel is known to have created a race.

8            Politics Lesson

8.1             The Factions

The Regency presents a united front to the world, but is actually divided into several rival factions:

• The Children of Peace, the Yellow Faction, are Princess Moon and Princess Sun, and their brothers Prince Heaven and Prince Netherworld. They have real names in Chinese, but no one can pronounce them. The Yellow Faction is consistently populist, anti-industry, pro-farmer, and anti-aristocrat, and controls the House of Commons.
• Princess Aurora, daughter of Maleficent, is the sole member of the White Faction. The White Faction is consistently pro-church and pro-Papacy, and controls the clergy.
• The Children of Cinderella, the Black Faction, include Princess Ayesha and Princess Tiana and Prince Aladdin. The Black Faction is consistently in favor of reducing all human life to a strictly rational scientific regime, which they propose to do by abolishing free will, all established human institutions from marriage to written language, and the laws of economics. Basically, the Black Faction represents cross-eyed intellectuals, revolutionary anarchists, and blithering nutbags. They control the Academia and the Media.
• The Children of Lady Lioness, the Red Faction, are Lady Swan, Lord Rook, and Lord Swift. The Red Faction is consistently pro-Military and pro-Aristocracy (which is much the same thing, since military regiments are owned each one by a different family of gangland mafia bosses, and passed from father to son by patrimony). They control the House of Lords and the Supreme Allied Telluric Command at NORAD.
• The Children of the Sea-Queen Ursula, the Blue Faction, are Princess Ariel, Prince Atlas and Prince Nereus the Fearless. The Blue faction is consistently pro-business, anti-tax and anti-regulation, and controls the Mercantile Guilds.

Shiwan Sifu, the Most Enlightened of the Enlightened, is the half-brother through their mother of Ayesha, Tiana and Aladdin. He is not a child of Lord Tellus, but he was appointed the Lord Scientist of the Science Council, which controls and regulates the various dangerous super-scientific appliances and equipment Lord Tellus heedlessly leaves lying around the world. The Science Council leads the Science Legion, which is the interplanetary police and peacekeeping body that investigates science crimes, halts insurrections, and provides disaster relief for natural disasters or events caused by Lord Tellus.

There is one important person (if it is a person) who is not a member of any faction, is the 0900 Douglas-Marconi computer ‘Doug’, originally aboard the Cerberus who is the chief justice of the World Supreme Court. The various arbitrary rules about primogeniture are programmed into the thing, and the machine will not accept any changes to the rules unless the written procedures of the world constitution are followed. The other machine intelligences on the Supreme Court include Ultron, Skynet, Colossus, Computo, and Holly [the computer from Red Dwarf].

8.2             The Estates of Government

The Telluric Space Empire is governed as a federated and feudal constitutional monarchy composed of five regions: The Manchu Empire of Greater China; the Holy Roman Empire of South America; the Celestial British Empire of Tibet, India, Egypt, and, Azania; The Gangland Military Democracy of the Tribal Nations of America; The Realm of Atlantis. The colony worlds are governed under military dictatorship, each by its own Proconsul, who is a Regent of the Senate of Regents.

Supreme Executive power rests, in theory, in the Emperor, but until the legality of his alleged abdication is confirmed, with a Senate composed of his children, the fourteen Regents.

The Judiciary is run by a machine intelligence named Doug. It could be worse: the Speaker of the House of Commons is a quarter-horse named Flying Dutchman.

The Legislative Power rests with a Parliament, also called the Parliament of Horses.

The First Estate is the House of Lords, which consists of the sons of Mafia Gangleaders and Red Indian chieftains, each one of who owns his own regiment of the military or space dreadnought. There is no public standing army, and the regiments are privately funded by the sale of officer’s commissions, or from the family fortunes.

The Second Estate is the House of Commons. Representatives are elected by the body of all the male land-owners able to solve a quadratic equation and shoot worth a damn.

The Clergy forms a Third Estate, and their power rests with the Pope in Valparaiso. In theory, every citizen is required to take an oath of loyalty to the Church before voting or holding public office, and roughly two-thirds of the world perjures themselves on a regular basis. In reality, only the Spanish-speaking population of South America and the North American Mafia-run Aristocracy are loyal to the Church. However, from a legal point of view, canon law controls weddings and funerals, trusts and estates, so that even in Confucian China and Anglican Africa, the local Bishops and Archbishops wield great political power, since they can invalidate the marriages of local aristocrats.

To change primogeniture laws, which concern marriage and estates, would require the consent of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Triplanetary See of Tellus-Luna, Mars, Venus: and, if challenged, Doug the Supreme Computer would have to find the law valid.

The Power of the Press, as a fourth estate, seeks the violent overthrow of the Church, the Parliament, the Aristocracy; and demands suffrage for women, children, felons and intelligent elephants; abortion on demand; abortion when not demanded; euthanasia of unfit and undesirable eaters of bread; no fault divorce; free love; the abolition of marriage; the normalization of homosexual relations; homosexual marriage; marriage to animals, robots, undead, and inanimate objects; all sexual relations to be outlawed and males to be force-metamorphized into females to establish a feminist-lesbian utopia matriarchal dictatorship; civil rights for robots; uplift for animals; vegetarianism; the extermination of the Jews; the extinction of the dinosaurs (again); disestablishment of the Established Church; the abolition of compulsory worship; compulsory worship of Moloch and compulsory submission to Allah, the Compassionate, the Just; the compulsory child sacrifice to the Ape-God Graag; the removal of the idol of the Ape-God Graag, also known as the Abomination of Desolation, from the Holy of Holies in the ghost-city of Jerusalem; the resurrection of a being known only as The Ever Living One from the Land of Shadows; the repeal of the law of cause and effect; pi to be equal to three; all property to be owned in common; and the extraction of sunlight from cucumbers.

About John C Wright

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

September 14, 2016 @ 3:45 pm

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