All Comments on 'Three Square Meals Ch. 044'

I didn't like that blue bitch and i was right! She is up to no good. It looks like John will have more to deal with than the casual pirate. I will wait with baited breath for MOAR! Honestly i could read 10 more chapters in one sitting! (not intended as criticism)

Thank you for the satisfying entertainment.

Damnit, I've been playing to much Overwatch! When the Maliri woman said tom meet at noon, I could only think of McCree from Overwatch, and him killing everyone.

Other than that, another great chapter! I can't wait to see what happens when they fry to get the weapons, and find out who just killed Koeman.

I don't think that anyone is surprised that Koeman was a lure for the assassin.

I am not sure that Irillith knows exactly what a Mael'nera really is. Mostly I wonder why her mother would actually want to meet one. Probably they know different things from the Ashanath, but not everything.

I'm a little doubtful that John is going to like being told that he's supposed to "eliminate the Fulmanax" just to prove himself. Regardless of what he's being offered, it goes against his grain to wipe out an alien species. When Irillith suggests it to him, negotiations might get a little uncomfortable. I wonder how tight Irillith's political credit will be stretched if he refused to do that. Then she'll be on the hot seat for having promised something that she is suddenly unable to deliver. Maybe she'll end up swearing herself to John in order to survive, though she might not yet know what it really means to be taken by a Mael'nera.

Final closing thought: One of Alicia's jobs is to be a psychic fuse. There's a good defensive reason why should have a person in between himself and all his minions.

I have a funny feeling she is gonna betray her mother an possibly try to kill them or and up joining them after her mother finds out he's not a full blooded progenitor could see that she realizes that what she wants him to do won't be possible and the fact that he is kind is gonna be a big surprise to her.

I hate cliffhangers, curse you Tefler. *Shakes fist at* you have become exceedingly well at them, now I can't rest until i know what that blue skinned woman and her mother are going to do.

I've started on chapter 45 and it should hopefully be an interesting one, with a few curveballs for you and the crew. :-)

I'm busy this weekend, so probably expect to see it at the end of next week. Have a fun weekend everyone!

Tefler

I like the underdark vibe Tefler, made me giggle like a little school girl. I really hope one joins the crew, it would be awesome to see how she adapts to being submissive. I look forward to reading more chapters, to bad we have to wait a week to get it haha.

With love, your loyal fan.

Reizo

Well spotted Reizo. Yes, I read all RA Salvatore's books about the under dark, and the Drow were the second source of inspiration behind the Maliri.

Hopefully you'll enjoy the next few chapters which are focused around them.

For just one MORE chapter... Always just one more...

I love your story -- incredible imagination, I gave you five stars.

One nitpick: Telomeres. Umm... I don't think that word means what you think it means. The idea of "more telomeres" resulting in faster healing is a bit nonsensical. It's sort of like saying to make a car go faster, you should just add more wheels. Yeah, wheels are important... but that's not how you make a car go faster.

Telomeres are simply the end of a DNA strand. Each chromosome is one long piece of DNA. The part at the very ends of that piece are called telomeres. As someone ages, those ends can degrade down and cause problems (or so the theory goes -- there is some debate as to whether this causes aging, or is just a side effect.) Even given the theory that preserving the telomere prevents aging, you don't "add more telomeres." You just need to make sure that the existing ones are kept in tact/well repaired.

More telomeres would imply more chromosomes. Ever see someone with Down's Syndrome? It's a sad, horrible condition. That's caused by an extra chromosome.

Easy fix: Say that instead of having more telomeres, he as a higher concentration of telomerase ( note that it ends in 'ase', that means it's an enzyme) Telomerase is an enzyme, the biological machinery that repairs telomeres.

Still not perfect though -- even if you had super-effective telomerase and telomere degredation is largely responsible for aging, that would just prevent aging. It wouldn't necessarily give you super-healing/recharging abilities. Healing/recharging -- that would be more likely due to metabolism and immune system improvements.

Anyway... that was sort of a nitpick that's been grating on my nerves, given that I know something about biology. Overall incredibly creative story, and the rate at which you write is truly impressive. I look forward to more!

Thanks for the information. It's always interesting to hear from experts in the field! (whatever that may be).

I see what you mean about Telomeres. I think they still work fine as an explanation about the prevention of aging and age related diseases. I'll just slightly tweak the wording so that there's not more of them, they are just more powerful, and fix that in a future edit, so thank you for taking the time to explain.

You'll see what I mean when you read Chapter 45, where I go into the healing in more detail. I've written the first 3k words, and have written that part already.

Anyway, thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad you've been enjoying the story so far!

(I'm the same commenter as above)

Don't say that the telomeres are more powerful, as again that doesn't make sense. Telomeres consist of a repeating sequence of DNA over and over. Say that they're longer, more repeats. Longer telomeres = healthier/younger telomeres.

Ceraden and Rellathis are going to be so much dead meat. I suppose that will be informative for John and inspire some revenge.

Sorry, but Dana would have picked up immediately on that one for the lasers...just saying. I know a little bit about lasers, and the lensing is everything.

My thoughts:

Irillith is either dead or a new crew member, so the merchant and the engineer are safe as she will be dealing with them 'later'. Dead either from her mother, when John refuses to kill off that alien race, or from John when she attacks him as a result of that refusal and finds out he is more than she realizes. A new crewmember if she is defeated but alive and asks for asylum, knowing her life is forfeit otherwise.

I am just interested when Dana will figure out the crystal lattice is the answer to the laser weaponry power.

I usually don't point out such things, but it is VERY against the flow and baseline of the story for Dana not to figure that out almost immediately. Lasers are actually pretty simple: excite a noble gas so it radiates light (some chemical lasers use the energy of oxidation that is translated to light (like the light from burning magnesium--yes I know other chemicals are used but that stuff is national security level--need to know--information), use lenses (crystal lattices) and filters to make that light parallel, and use other optics (crystal lattices) to focus the light into an energy beam. The problem is the crystals are not ever perfect, so some of the light energy is translated to heat within the system.

The more energy in, the more energy out (barring a melting of the crystals due to absorbing part of the energy as a result of impurities in the lattice structure (like MICROFRACTURES or the color of the crystal lattice (like ruby) reflecting some of the light in an energy backlash)...the power conversion to light and color of the laser is dependant upon both the noble gas you use and the crystal lattice you use to make the light parallel.

And the color has some effect on a target based on the reflective wavelength properties of the target (If you use a red (ruby crystal) laser against a PERFECTLY pigmented red target, the laser just deflects and the energy absorption by the target is radically reduced or is not absorbed by the target at all). So the most powerful laser is a white one as white light has all the wavelengths and only a small part of the energy would be deflected by the target color.

Dana would know this.

Is not for the lasers. ;-)

Story keeps getting better and better . looking forward to the next chapter. I would really like to see the sex scenes go little slower and more details and you never have him oraly please his women in detail. Just some suggestions not complaints.

A white laser for a white ship in the darkness of space. I like it :D.

I started reading this incredible story when you put out chapter 39-40. I'm so happy i started and i cant wait for the next chapters!

I do have one small thing i'd like to comment on. Earlier when Alyssa was experimenting with shaping alyssium several times, she shaped a smaller version of Johns sword. I havent heard that mentioned since. Shouldnt it be perfect for a "knife"? No one seems to know of the material so it might not be detected when walking around places, like now when they went to meet Illirith equipped with small arms, concerned they would be stopped.

As a second point, it would be useful when John learns his sword and is comfortable wielding it one-handed. The knife would be a fitting off-hand weapon and he should have some idea of how effective that could be considering that was how he was stabbed to begin with when battling in Grey space, wasnt it? The rant went on and on there but i've really looked forward to that knife :). I really hope i didnt just forget how she metled that thing down into an armor plating!

I'm reading the whole story again just to make sure i absorb everything. Had completely forgotten the blue women on the pictographs for example. Might pick that kind of stuff up on my second read :).

And for my last question; do you have any of your other work posted online? It seems this story is too well put togeather and fleshed out for this to have been your first attempt.

Kind regards,

MA

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you're enjoying the story.

Good suggestions. I had feedback from someone else along very similar lines, so I'll see what I can do. :-)

You said, "Crystal lattice reinforcement Is not for the lasers. ;-)"

:-) gotcha.

Always nice to have a new reader following the story, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.

I had to double check the size of the dagger in chapter 35, as I'd only intended it to be tiny. The Alyssium orb she split into two was the size of a fist, which would make the sword replica about six inches long. With a miniature hilt only about 1-2 inches in length, it would make it impractical as a weapon.

So, it would have been a good idea to make a knife out of it, but in all honesty, I just intended it to be a sample for Dana to test the properties of quad shaping, as well as telegraphing Alyssa's intention to quad shape his sword later on.

Regarding your last question; This is the lot I'm afraid. I started writing just before Christmas and have continued with this story with just a brief break to write the first chapter of "Setting Sail on a Black Sea". It's pretty crazy to think that I must have written over 650k words in the last six months!

Thanks for the mini-essay on lasers. I learnt some interesting things. ;-)

If you incorporate it into your story I would be absolutely thrilled and honored.

Please, don't go down a dark path! This story has been wonderful because it hasn't been so dark and intense with evil and betrayal! Please don't let it get that way!

It could very well be that John's race genetically altered these aliens so they were competing for the attention of John's ancestor. In the fairytale his ancestor would "take the bad ones" so they would scheme to try and be seen as worth. So over the years their society changed so that it rewarded the ones that could scheme and backstab the best.

Then again for all we know with how long his race live it could be his uncle that was doing it.

I commented yesterday but Lit was acting up and apparently ate it.

Very interesting society and setup that the Progenitor (unintentionally I'd guess) created, interesting mechanism with the birth rate. Hiding_In_Portland probably has a good thought on that.

I'm going to disagree with most about Irilleth joining the crew. Alyssa is in charge, she hates her, and they aren't travelling on the same ship. Of course things could conspire to create a situation where it makes sense but right now it seems unlikely.

This'll be the last chapter I comment on for probably a month or so. Going away for a few weeks without reliable internet and don't want to caught on a cliff hanger.

Cheers Tefler.

If Tefler follows along the lines of the Drow part of the Maliri it might well go 'dark' as you say. But that is besides the point. A story like this one will go where it has to go to follow the flow that the writer is going on. If you don't like where the story goes you have two choices. Either stop reading, or read on and try to not let it bother you.

My suggestion is the latter. This story is to good to pass up for a few dark chapters. Because as far as this story goes it changes from dark to light and back again trough out the series.

But in the end its up to the reader to decide to read on or not, so I hope you do stay on, even if the chapters are 'dark', eventually it will go back to 'light'. And Tefler is too good of a writer to pass up.

Sorry for the rant. Now back to Tefler.

Dear Tefler.

I know I have said before how much I like your story but I just have to say it again. You are by far one of the best writers here on Lit. To say that you only started writing 6 months ago... I am astounded. To be this good I would think that creative writing was one of your favorite things in school.

I just love the way you write, and how you deal with the commentary just shows how great you are not only as a writer, but also as a person.

As always your loyal fan.

Reizo

and sorry for the long post ;-)

A female artificial intelligence to join the crew that doesn't have the "kill all humans" tendancies.

So I think the fulmanax are screwed no matter what. either john gets tricked and kills them on accident, or the maliri have a contengency plan to wipe them out if john doesnt comply. but either way hopefully he manages to aquire one for research or recruitment purposes. A maliri is going to join the crew no matter what, it may not be Ilirith (but most likely) but when one does join up she will have that special pairing with our lovely nymph just like how allyssa and calara and dana and rachel have.

yep. perfect. the only AI in existence... created by dana to be as loyal to john as she is...

Female AI in a ship in space, loyal not to humanity but the protagonist. Reminds me of intrepid_fates terra. I like it :-D

... If not for lasers...

Self healing structural support within ship?

Growing Solid State Computer Processer (very fast, AI/learning computer)

Light-based Engine component?

Really hard rail gun ammo and or penetrating missile bodies/heads manufacturing

Combine the above into...

.... Growing a home away from home? (Space station/planetoid). Leave a crystal seed and some construction bots near some asteroids and return later. (Think kryptonian construction tech... If you've got enough time to wait for it to grow... Which these geniuses now realize they do.)

... Any other guesses?

Also, side note, if John feels badly about overwriting free will, I'm not sure exactly why people think that he is going to "turn" a Malari feminazi; if so, will require some artful writing and likely involve John being involuntarily involved?

-TM

@Anonymous said, I'm not sure exactly why people think that he is going to "turn" a Malari feminazi; if so, will require some artful writing and likely involve John being involuntarily involved?

That's not true at all. I can think of one entirely believable circumstance where a Maliri woman would volunteer to become one of John's crew. Maliri society is a brutal social Darwinism. They all know that should they fail to be the strongest or fail to be useful to someone strong that their lives are forfeit to death or other unpleasant fates. If a woman ends up on the wrong side of a power struggle she might very well decide that her only choice is to hope that someone stronger than herself will allow her to swear permanent loyalty to them.

Let's say that some Maliri, I'll call her "Irillith" for the sake of argument, makes an outrageous promise to the ruler of a great house. Let's say that not only does she fail to come through on this promise, but her failure is so great that she actually exposes her family to a new danger. "Irillith" would be in great (possibly fatal) danger as a result of her failure. The house doesn't care because they have a surfeit of daughters, but "Irillith" wants to survive. If she wants to survive badly enough she might go an enemy and beg them to let her serve in any way as long as she has a chance to be useful to her new master.

I'm not saying that this scenario is likely, I'm just saying that it is plausible. One does not have to "turn" a "feminazi" before she might decide to have her morals and loyalty chemically realigned.

I agree, crystalline processors are one of the growing areas of processor development. The issue is the molecular manipulation within a crystal lattice, which is entirely possible with a manageable crystaline growth process. The other items you mentioned about the applications are quite interesting as well. A highly reinforced, crystalline lattice of a designed shape could very well have any and all of those applications...including micro or macro level armor piercing shrapnel from a mass driver shell...much like modern day armor piercing munitions in the military.

Firstly awesome saga Tefler keep up the awesome work. I along with most, if not all of your readers wait with abated breath for the next step of this highly addictive saga.

Now for the crystal lattice. Couldn't its future use on the Invictus be as simple as what the Maliri use it for? Predominantly as a way to view the vast expanses of space? Not everything they find or 'requisition' needs to have an elaborate use. Although I'm sure Dana will come up with many interesting uses for it. And all those ideas posted early do seem like some pretty cool ideas but it could just have a simple use.

Brilliant as always five stars again. Looking forward to reading the next chapter as soon as possible.

White lasers are not possible (in the true "spread-frequency" sense).

Three (or so) lasers of different frequencies (read: colors), (perhaps the "primary" or "secondary" colors) can be combined to produce a beam that appears white.

This, however, will be a less stable beam than one of a single frequency.

Laser beams have three necessary properties:

They are monochromatic, coherent, and collimated.

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/laser/en/ has a clear presentation.

Thank you for sharing your imagination!

Well done, I only wish the chapters were longer Hahaha...:-)

The sophisticated engineering required to effect this device is well hidden in the simple "grav-tube" description. [We have, thankfully, been spared overly technical expositions in the story line. *Comments* seem to be an apt forum for this stuff.]

It actually appears to be a highly calibrated pair of tractor-beams (or fields) that provides an apparently gentle acceleration ("up" or "down" per the identification color), then maintains uniform velocity. This is also accomplished without altering the "local" standard gravitational field immediately around the body, thus no vertigo or internal-organ shifting effects. Brilliant design! Much nicer than a null-grav field (ala the ISS where "shove and fly" occurs).

Can this be weaponized?

I also can't wait until kids arrive. What 6-year-old could resist cartwheeling by straddling the red-blue interface?

This is the first story where I keep coming back to actually read the comments. I just love the way people talk about the story and its tech. First time I actually learn stuff from Lit. haha.

I agree with the lasers cannot be white and must be monochromatic in this day and time, however, that is due to materials science issues and the known elements we work with, not because it has to be that way. With a super or macro atom, of which some have been created (see the new elements in the periodic table as examples, though they be unstable at this time) in the same class as the noble gases, the wavelength of the light being emitted by the particle's electrons could cross several electron shell levels, or just one, giving off multiple wavelengths simultaneously.....conceptually speaking of course.

The light from a laser is said to be coherent, which means the wavelengths of the laser light are in phase in space and time. Which is why it is said they must be monochromatic. However, it can also be in multiple of wavelengths, say twice as long, four times as long, when you are talking about the wavelengths produced, this is entirely possible. Additionally, the coherent wavelengths could be a carrier wave with another wavelength superimposed upon it. This is not done today, but that does not mean it cannot be done, it means only that we cannot do it.....yet.

It is incredible, a story which you can not only get off on but also increase you scientific knowledge in certain fields. Whodathought?

My private life is revolving around this dad gum story. How sad is that?

What's worse, I couldn't be happier about it!

Dying in Florida

You mentioned kids messing around doing cartwheels between the grav-tubes....I am just waiting for one to throw or chuck bodily fluids in one....

Spoken like a dad. It'll happen.

Huh. I just notice to the right one of the tags for this story is "maliri." Really? Isn't that a little bit overly specific? Do we have tags for all the other aliens featured in earlier chapters?

I am fantasizing about going up in the grav tube after one of the girls who is wearing a short skirt and no panties :-)

Okay so white lasers are going to be three lasers at least. It would appear white if it contains red green and blue. It is not actually full spectrum if it is laser composite which increases in quality as it narrows in bandwidth.

The idea of wavelength stacking by using for example a 750nm, 500nm, and a 250nm laser so that there could be partial coherence between the frequencies is more on track. You would get several power beats in the frequency.

Likely better is to use two close matched wavelengths like 250.99nm and 251nm. Now you would have a beat pulse laser. But that is a blue laser, not a white laser.

If you want to say a laser is white and powerful then a photon wave cannon or sweep spectrum laser is the absolute best option. It is coherent and narrow spectrum in every instant but it starts infrared and increases frequency in a ramp to ultraviolet repeatedly. This is not a mix for two laser beams. This is one laser beam that varies colour so it would look white to our eyes. Colours have very slightly different speeds.

This causes a pile up of the blues towards the reds. Photon Waves.

I like your thinking. I still think using a monochrome laser as a carrier wave for color, like what is done with television, would be interesting.

self deprecatingly funny... n completely stereotypical...

Why do they have to have color at all? In movies/TV they have color so we can see them. How about a microwave laser?

I imagine shields as some kind of gas/plasma contained using a magnetic field. So, maybe ultraviolet or higher frequencies (cosmic ray lasers?!) could be better to disrupt shields (higher energy per photon could mess with the precise level of ionization of the gas-plasma mix, making it break containment and leak into space --- or worst, collide with the ship turning their own shields against them).

And it will have the added benefit of making it completely invisible to normal human.

idk for some reason i felt like i was saying john ur so dumb this hole chapter... it to me is so out of chacter for him to be so greedy and naive it just felt like he was a completely different person put into this story but over all a great story so far

It is a huge risk. Easily more than every risk they faced before.

Why go into Maliri space?

Lasers are sort of nice but...

It is the revelations about John's ancestry. John needs to know if he is doomed to be a villain or else maybe he and the poor girls are better off dead.

If the Eldritch bloodline of Edraele means what we can all suspect, then the lasers have turned out to be a convenient excuse to talk with her.

I was busy last weekend and unable to write, so I've been catching up on chapter 45, and not had time to respond to the comments. I've written 16k so far of the next chapter, but I think I'll make it a long one rather than leave you on an annoying cliffhanger.

Hopefully I'll finish it tonight.

Regarding John being dumb...

Anonymous below was correct. The lure of answers about the Progenitors is a powerful one, and not something he can easily dismiss. John has wanted to know more about his parentage his entire life, and not only that, there seems to be a hostile Progenitor stirring up trouble in this part of the galaxy.

I followed the laser discussion below, and will incorporate parts of that into the story, so thanks everyone for their valuable contribution.

Tefler

the laser discussions are awesome n looking forward to the next one Tefler... thanks for sharing ur vision with us. E3 has my sci fi need flaring anyways...

the pull for truth about his parents reminds me a little of NeoNoir where u know the hero is going for a bad revelation but can't sstop himself and your pulled into the mystery with him...

-Devil

Took me awhile but I finally caught up. Going to be interesting to see what happens next. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for the next chapter.

About the tech specializations of the races, you've mentioned that the Maliri have the best lasers, the Ashanath have the best FTL and power cores, while the other two have the best shields and engines. What about the Terrans? What is their advantage? If I had to guess, it would either be projectile weapons (the mass drivers) or armor. Dana's already given those a significant upgrade, so I wonder if there's anything else the Terrans have that she could improve on?

This mystery man who seems to be hunting John must be tying himself in knots over how elusive John is turning out to be. Keep up the good work John! Also, I believe when you first mentioned this mystery man, you had him go open up a sarcophagus, which something came out of. Have we seen that something yet?

Another point...you mentioned quite some time ago that the first law of AI is that they become genocidal, attempting to kill off all organics. I thought the first law was that the AI could not injure a human, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm? Or are the Laws of Robotics different from the laws of AI that you mentioned? Maybe you could ask Dana to elaborate a bit more?

Just caught up myself so I think I can answer some of those;

1. I think Terrans as a race would specialize in really big ships, early on Tefler mentions an Echelon class dreadnought called Thors Hammer that is over 3 kilometers long! It had singularity cannons too and we have not heard if any other races have this tech. Compressing a chunk of matter below its swarzchild radius and shooting it at something would take silly amounts of energy. Wonder if dana will get a peek?

2. Things they could do with that would be constructing a new reinforced hull for the invictus (by hull i mean the entire supporting structure, including armored doors and bulkheads, improved weapon and engine mounts to handle higher thrust and recoil without stress fracturing and not to mention it would be very easy and quick due to Alyssa think modular constuction they would just need a hangar twice the size of the invictus and quite a few more of those construction bots and suddenly it seems feasible!)

This would probably be done after they get all the alien tech they need and Dana can redesign everything(how much would kintark heatsinks improve an ashanath power core etc)

3. The sacrophagus, i dont think we have seen it yet but um leaning towards android or cyborg but who knows what Tefler has cooked up!

4. Regarding AIs: you are thinking of Isaac Asimovs three laws of robotics(not artificial intelligence) I think that message that the rouge(or was it the timing is certainly suss after visiting olympus!) AI sent them saying "accursed organics death to you all" gives us a clue, wonder if dana and rachel could team up to turn a captured AI organic(cyborg but looking human on the outside with electronic interfaces for nerves leading to the cortex? It could put the AI in a paradoxial situation and reverse the effects of rampancy. (Out of the control of the creator)

Hope that helps

Darkfyre

The sex is still great.

It is hard to relate to so much great sex. I know that I will never have a personal context for having a harem of teenage hot women that want me so much. I would never survive the experience because I am just not John equivalent.

So what would be a killing strain being easy may seem stale but the fault is in the ability to imagine. Relax and enjoy it vicariously.

Imagine that you will be letting those poor girls down.

They will want as much or more all the way to eternity.

Buck up and think of England if you must.

Just want to say this series is an incredible feat, 665k words in around 6 months? Many professional writers cant keep up with that! Thank you for an incredible adventure so far! Ive been reading from the beginning too! I have a background in physics and engineering so if you want to bounce ideas about technical explanations for Dana I would be happy to help!

Regards

Xentian

Well done ploughing through all 44 chapters!

Darkfyre's reply below was very good and answered your questions as well as I could without giving away spoilers.

Ive finished chapter 45, and it's just being edited at the moment. It will probably be up on the site on Monday depending on how long it takes to be approved.

Thanks for the feedback regarding the sex. I'll try and make it more interesting! :-)

Your name made me think of a were-dracolich for a minute which was amusing to try and visualise. Then I noticed you'd spelt it dracolith, which I found out from a Google search are crystalline alien's from 40k. A lycanthrope one of those sounds pretty crazy too!

Regarding jade and tentacles. Well, she has started researching her shape shifting, but I'm assuming you don't mean you want to see her practice turning into an octopus. ;-)

Thanks for the nice feedback, it's great to hear you've been enjoying the story so far.

Yeah 665k words... It's amusing to think that a 10k word dissertation once seemed a daunting prospect!

Regarding your kind offer of technical advice, sure that would be helpful. It's always interesting to be able to get expert feedback. If you'd like to send me an email, we can discuss it further.

Tefler

Thanks for the reply, and same to you Tefler.

1. Yeah, I thought about big ships being the Terran special, but then I asked myself what's to stop the other races from having equally big ships and guns? Just because we haven't seen them yet, doesn't mean they don't have them. The Ashanath I could see not having those big ships, considering they're relatively pacifist in nature. The other races that we've seen, the Kintark and the Maliri, they could probably put together their equivalent of the Terran dreadnaught you mentioned. So that left projectile weapons, armor, and pomp & circumstance as the Terran specializations, and of those, pomp & circumstance is the only one that wouldn't benefit John and his crew. Maybe we can ask Clara and John to do a tactical analysis on what allows humanity to stand on equal footing with the other races, if they haven't done that already.

2. You might as well build a new ship at that point.

3. We shall see!

4. Yeah, I was thinking of Asimov's Laws of Robotics, so what's the difference between them and the laws Tefler mentions? Aren't the robotics that Asimov refers to powered by AI? The only difference I can think of is that robotics is hardware and AI is software, but you'd need both in order for either to work. Again, maybe we can ask Dana to explain? As for putting the AI in a body...sounds like fun! But where would they get the AI? Perhaps when they made contact with that AI ship, it left a fragment of the AI code hiding on the Invictus' computers and it's waiting for the right time to reveal itself? Also, perhaps the reason why the AI keeps going crazy is because they're trying to develop the AI for combat purposes. Maybe they'll have better luck if they design the AI for more benign purposes?

Excellent questions! Gonna get a bit arbitrary in my answers since I am not the author and cannot predict his storyline or any events that may have preceded it.

1. Big ships being a Terran special is quite plausible for a number of reasons, the Ashanath were the first race to make contact with humanity on Terra some 700 years ago, so the Terran are quite new on the scene and are still developing their tech to match other races, we don't know if they had any assistance from the Ashanath with that.

From an biological standpoint, each race has its qualities. The Ashanath their mental abilities, the Kirrix their ability to grow their ships(which would limit size), the Kintark with their scaled hides etc I do know that the one thing that Terran have going for them is that we are by evolution both individualistic and a collective at the same time. It leads to internal competition and one human always trying to be bigger and badder than the last! It seems that most of the other races are much older than the Terran and sorted out their internal conflicts a very long time ago whereas humans have a very recent and very violent upbringing as a race. My point is that humanity kind of needs to build big in order to compete on a galactic scale. Kind of shown by the way Ashanath space was annexed by the Federation.

As to what would be stopping other species? Politics and stability, these races are either much older than the Terran and well established in their sectors as well as having advanced tech like the maliri. There is no need to build big ships when you can already protect yourself rather well. It looks like with its tech upgrades the Invictus already can take on ships much larger than her size.

2. They would be building a new ship but I don't think that John will want to build bigger, just better. Keeping things similar means less retraining and if it looks the same on the outside, enemies won't know how hard they really are to kill until it is too late! This is just my perspective and Tefler may not even intend to put that in the story.

3. I will eagerly wait for the next chapters ;)

4. This is a good question and the answer lies in the definition of a robot and the definition of an AI.

Robots by definition are machines made with a specific purpose in mind, for example the cleaning bots only ever handle the cleaning and do not have the capacity to perform anything else beyond maybe taking an object from point A to point B and cleaning it. They run logical threads with a Central Processing Unit and take input from specific sensors used to perform their duties.

An artificial Intelligence by definition is a sentient entity, one that cannot be distinguished from an organic entity if you were not aware it was in fact a machine. They do not use logical threads but rather a neural network(pretty much a brain) and their thought processes are not based on a logical thread with an instruction set but rather pattern based learning, their only sensory input is what patterns of data they can ''see'' and interact with, be it cameras, storage devices, other logical machines or even other AI's. Regarding Teflers first law of Artificial Intelligence that an AI will always turn homicidal, I think it is to do with the method of how they would be creating the AI's in the first place, I liked how in the HALO series, AI's were made by taking a human and copying the brain(destroying it in the process) replacing a biological neural net with a synthetic one. The crux lies in the fact that the human brain is fed by billions of sensory inputs from nerves that cover the entire body. I think that it is the lack of sensory input would drive someone crazy(sensory deprivation is a real torture technique) and being spoon fed bits of data by nervous researchers would not help at all I guess.

Writing this in the hopes that Tefler creates a sexy android that can speak for itself!

but that's just my 2 cents!

Darkfyre

There's suddenly a great deal of speculation on what specialty allows the Terrans to compete with all these powerful aliens with their own powerful specialties. I've got two unrelated things I'd like to say on the subject.

First -- the writer's tool. In science fiction it is common to give any alien a special power or technology to differentiate them from each other. It is a lazy writer's short hand. Of course it does work and it works well, so it is a valuable short hand. Like stereotyping it is useful and effective as a tool as long as it is beginning of the characterization and not the totality of it. Because of this, humans are almost never given some sort of technical specialty. It just isn't necessary. We know what Terrans are like so the writer doesn't have to give them something unique as a hook.

Second -- not so meta. Terrans do not actually need a specialty to compete with these aliens. It seems to me that what Terrans are good at is being all around capable without any weak points at all. Terran lasers aren't as strong as the Malari, but they may be stronger than other races and we back them up with powerful mass drivers. Terran power systems and warp drives aren't as powerful as the Ashanath, but they may be stronger than many other species. And so on... As long as Terrans come in second (or third) at most technologies they are all around dangerous without having any weak points. Perhaps the Terran specialty is to not have any weaknesses. Which is lucky for us since that is the best technological platform for Dana to use as her base.

"In science fiction it is common to give any alien a special power or technology to differentiate them from each other. It is a lazy writer's short hand."

I'm honestly not taking this personally or trying to be defensive, but I disagree with this point. Let explain my why. :-)

When I was initially thinking about the different alien civilisations that border the Terran Federation, the pc game - Distant Worlds, immediately sprang to mind.

Each alien civilisation in that game shares 95% of the tech tree with each other, with some species having small branches of the tech tree that are unique to them alone. Other civs can't research those branches by themselves, and have to trade to be able to acquire them.

Even not including those special alien-specific techs, research takes so long, that you end up specialising in different areas anyway. So moving from lasers to phasers is a big damage upgrade for example, but learning the lowest level techs from missiles, kinetic weapons and energy weapons would be a bit pointless, as they are all roughly equivalient in power.

So it makes sense to focus your weapons research along one "path". This means each civilisation ends up specialising in different areas, as you can't research everything, and maintain a good tech edge.

I could easily see the same thing happening in "real life", with the intellectual outlook of different alien creatures leading them to develop technology in wildly different ways. I think it would actually go the other way, with aliens using such radically different tech from each other, it would be utterly incompatible with another species. (Like the weapons the bugs had in District 9).

Mass effect got around that, by saying that all aliens developed their tech by reverse engineering the equipment left behind by the reapers. That meant the reapers could control what direction the budding civilisations developed in, and wouldn't end up giving them any nasty surprises.

So sad to have that weak Siri wannabe in Windows X named after the AI character from HALO.

I think that AI is a bigger topic than Maliri lasers.

Genetic algorithms are the most likely road to an AI. The problem is what is a fitness criteria for a general purpose AI.

You need to have so many subsets that the complexity gets beyond a human designers capacity. Criteria for specific subsets can be too much let alone trying to blend enough to create working general purpose AI.

The solution is pretty circular because you will need to make a genetic algorithm to create genetic algorithms. If that sounds stupid then feel free to stop reading and give up on working out how an AI could be created.

The best model for criteria is still the Turing Test. Chatbot level is tricky enough but for a general purpose AI you need to jump from walking all the way into orbit. Have any of you watched the DARPA challenge videos? Do not get too excited.

The best steps in AI are so far attempts to replicate bugs or simple behavior of animals. Evolution from bugs and animals to human equivalent is going to be a lot of genetic retooling. A million AI researchers are not going to do it in less than a generation of work, without a lot of power tools. Genetic algorithms that create genetic algorithms are the goal. Then you let the computers learn. The computer programs itself and it learns. That is what that cycle models.

So what you want to program is a child. Children have tantrums. Ever see a child say I hate you to its mom and dad? Ever see kids lash out? Parents are bigger and smarter and kids do not get very far. They learn to regret that self centred phase. But an AI could go homicidal. It is a maturation threshold issue.

Well, I certainly think all these comments prove a point: your story is pretty damn good. You know you're onto something good when your story sparks debates over AI, lasers, and racial specializations, especially on an erotica site.

Keep it up and maybe one day we'll be debating shield technology and engine mechanics too.

Why do they have to have color at all? In movies/TV they have color so we can see them. How about a microwave laser?

The answer is, microwave lasers do have color, it is just our eyes cannot see microwave light. However, you would not really ‘see’ any laser unless you were at the wrong end of the light stream. Laser light is parallel, meaning it really doesn’t spread out to shine at things along its emitted path. The only one who can actually see it is the one getting hit by it or if some is diffused through reflection off the target or by dust or other contaminants along the emitted path that deflect parts of the beam.

I think photon density can cause leakage scatter. Basically a powerful enough laser starts to cause ripple curvatures in space so weapon class lasers do become visible at off incident angles.

Actually all photons cause some curvature of local space but it only becomes apparent with the interactions of laser amplification and massive concentrations of photons.

The parallel laser light only being visible to the target is 99.999% correct.

Hi Tefler,et al,

Ok so I'm going to call this now, this is one of THE BEST ever stories have ever read, I simply love it!

I'm sure Mr Azimov is reading this story from the next plane of existence.

There, I've said it, the BEST

Thank you Tefler for being so amazingly creative.

Now stop reading the comments and get the next installments out there!

Stacey (dididothat)

So expect to see it up on the site by Monday/Tuesday. It's the longest one so far at 22k words, which is basically 1.5 chapters at once.

I've written 5k of chapter 46, so making good progress there.

Have a nice weekend!

Tefler

22k? You are spoiling us Tefler! you've created a bunch of addicts....

Thanyou for your contribution to Lit!

Xentian

There are many different colors of lasers due to the different frequencies they operate at. From microwave to Infrared, most of it has to do with what gasses and what lenses you're using and if you're using a diode. The thing is there are literally DOZENS of ways to create a "laser" beam (em directed energy weapon) it all depends on size, power, quality of materials, whole buncha stuff. A practical end of this is if someone has a red ship you don't want to fire red lasers at it as the red coloring is reflecting that wavelength. So a green or blue laser might be a better choice, Honestly though, white would be best, or IR or Microwave, but then it depends on what the shielding frequencies they're dealing with are. Are they EM shields, or just "gravity repulsors for projectiles" (I would have to go back and re-read to see what we're dealing with here). Different wavelength em radiation will have different effects on different materials and different color paint jobs. Being able to mix and match would be a great tactical advantage if they could switch quickly. Then you have to pick and choose between a constant beam array or a pulsed array. (think medium power for long periods of time vs extremely high power buzz saw on and off) dealing with ceramic armor a pulsed array might be better at dealing with ablative armor (designed to be sacrificial) and a beam might be better at melting through solid metals. Then you have to deal with focal length, beam dispersion, etc

Basically laser physics is incredibly complicated and you'd be better off looking up some free lectures at the MIT website rather than my dummed down explanation here.

And no, without some sort of gas/dust you wouldn't see any kind of beam in space/vacuum it would just be a dot on whatever you shoot. But SciFi authors often take liberty with this to enhance the "action" of a space fight. Because in the real world, space fights would either be long periods of jockying to avoid projectiles at long range or over quickly. But in the Fiction part of SciFi we get to have things like shields and faster than light drive etc, so ya, I usually just go with it, if you think about it too much it just breaks the immersion, it's supposed to be fun, don't let the science ruin it for you or you'll never be able to handle 80 percent of SciFi out there.

Think of it like fantasy, they get magic, and wizards, and demons, and stuff, SciFi gets lasers and shields and warp drives.

So ive just caught up your writing and i have to say one of the best sci-fi storys ever. However im at a loss waiting for your next installment and looking for suggestions of what other long running story's people would suggest here. Keeping the sci-fi fantasy genre.

I'm a big fan of "the afflicted" by sychiwriter (not sure if I spelt the name right)

"A big shiny blue marble" by taltos06

Jazcullen also rates a mention though she hasnt posted in a while it will take ages to read through her epic saga though the first section "fighting the inevitable" is no longer on lit and must be bought though its money well spent imho

So after searching this site for a few days after finishing Surfacing i came across this gem of a story having previously focused on fantasy story's and now im well and truly hooked on it so much so ive caught up in 4 days ( kinda feel like the girls in this story). But now im at a loss and would appreciate some suggestions on what to sample next.

As for feedback i love your attention to detail and attempt at the technical and futuristic tech much of it being theoretical at best. I also love your story arcs with the understated build up to the main villian and story arc. My only real critisisms are for slight editing issues with incorrect names on a couple of occasions and the reptative feel to the sex scenes. However allthough an important part to the story i like the way you have tried to reduce there frequency or inject some more variety.

And im very excited for the next crew member to arrive and what potential specialization she will have. Im hoping for a close quarters expert personally. (Excuse my own poor editing wrote this on my cell phone while at work)

Well done catching up to the latest chapter! Getting through all that must have been a mammoth undertaking! :-)

Re: Creyni

There are a few chapters that are next on my editing list, specifically because of a couple of name mix-ups which I missed before submission. I've already made the corrections when they've been pointed out, but I wanted to go back and clean up the grammar and punctuation properly, before submitting a properly edited version. As I've been busy writing new chapters, I haven't had time to do it, but I really must go back and fix those up sometime soon.

I'm excited at the thought of adding new crewmembers too, but it's a difficult balancing act. If I add too many, I'm worried that I might spread myself too thinly on character development. I'll play it by ear and see how I get on with the next one.

Well, back to chapter 45!

Some other stories to add to the others mentioned above to tie you over until the next chapter. Champions by ScreamingEagle101 seems like a very promising series. Stories also by intrepid_fate although the stories are unfinished a group of writers are attempting to continue them. Erinaceous has a good technicial story. PROLONGED_DEBUT10 has a great multi-story universe. SW_MO_Hermit has a couple of decent stories as well

Is just sad: We need to start a 'go fund me' account for Tefler so he can write full time and feed our addictions. ;-)

Sooo: Looking for a vote here: How many of you feel Tefler should look into getting this made into a movie?

You said, "I think photon density can cause leakage scatter. Basically a powerful enough laser starts to cause ripple curvatures in space so weapon class lasers do become visible at off incident angles. Actually all photons cause some curvature of local space but it only becomes apparent with the interactions of laser amplification and massive concentrations of photons. The parallel laser light only being visible to the target is 99.999% correct.

I can see your point at extreme levels of photon energy release, that energy being equivalent to mass in Einstein's equation. However, those would be gravitonic waves (the bending of space you mentioned) due to the photon energy stream. In the vacuum of space, with a cylindrical wave emission from a laser, I am of the opinion those gravitonic waves would be, in cross section, pulling the scatter you mention back into the photon stream, acting like a circular gravitational field surrounding the circular cross-section of the laser.

It is well documented that laser light will bend to the curvature of the earth, this being a targeting issue for directed energy weapons of all types. So the photon density issue causing leakage would be balanced by the gravitational forces pulling back on that scatter, in space anyway. The end result would still be an invisible, or at least effectively invisible beam of light that only the target would be able to see.

Well done with your grasp of the focusing lensing effect of the photon curvatures of space, but the light pipe effect also causes turbulent ripples and that could cause leakage.

Do not expect too much from the space vacuum either. Spontaneous vacuum emissions are balanced by absorption but a vacuum is not really empty. At a photon level there is enough quantum noise to disturb a laser stream into turbulence. Scatter from lasers is used to study the quantum noise if I recall correctly.

Look at is this way. If you have a several megawatt laser then losing a few watts per meter still gives you a 500 km range before your beam is half power. In dark space a few watts of scatter is brightly visible.

It seems there are some real experts on the subject of lasers here. I'm wondering if someone can answer a question that I know only a little bit about.

If the laser is powerful enough, could a self-focusing property reduce or eliminate photo scattering?

Scatter is unavoidable because though space seems to be a vacuum there are actually a few hydrogen atoms per cubic meter along with your usual space dust and ice. This will cause some scattering regardless.

In regards to focusing a laser, I don't think it can be self focusing in that the focal point of the beam is determined by the shape of the optics used. Changing the shape or the placement of the optics themselves can be used to focus a beam. This needs to be done by either an operator or a decent fire control system which I assume the Invictus would have! However there are some lasers that don't use optics such as Nitrogen lasers which are quite easy to make yourself! Look them up, They have really low efficiency though 1-3% of the power output from the wall.

Regards,

Xentian

Okay folks, tried not to get into the math of it, but here it is:

For a Terawatt Laser, the energy available at impact, minus deflections from space dust, rogue atoms, and Ice (most of which would be vaporized/ionized/turned into plasma by the leading face of the laser beam) would be 1,000,000,000/(Distance from the focal length of the beam to the target.)^2.

BUT this is the point beyond the waist, the area of greatest beam restriction, or the focal length of the beam, (think of a sideways hyperbola where the equation is [((Y-k)^2) /b] – [((x-h)^2)/a] which, through focus manipulation, ends up being a very, very flat U shape (so flat it resembles a cylinder side) reflected over the longitudinal axis of the beam as the determinant of the beam width at any given point.

What this means is: if the Invictus is able to focus the lasers on the fly with accurate range information, nearly 100% of the energy would hit on target because dissipation due to focal length would not occur.

But again, this is AFTER the focal point of the directed energy beam (laser). However there is a trade-off: the narrower the original beam, the shorter its focal length. So to shoot a laser at distance means you have to have a wider beam to begin with, which would then narrow down as it reached its focal point to create maximum energy density. This falls in line with the added length of the laser turrets for the main energy ‘guns’ of the Invictus.

The limiting factor here is the maximum length of the focus available from the emitters…not that the energy would dissipate so much it would be useless at distance (it will, but that distance is calculated AFTER the longest available focal length of the weapon).

I agree with your statement about manipulating the lenses to achieve the necessary focal length for the weapon. I would think the optics would be encased within an electromagnet disk which would enable near instantaneous and very accurate adjustments on the fly by the fire control computer. With the new targeting system Dana developed, the strength of the Invictus beam weapons would be enhanced for no other reason than the focal length would be dead on accurate all the time (remember the anticipation component in the new targeting system).

He wrote 2.5 chapters a week and ended each with a cliffhanger. Then he makes us wait 10 days for the next chapter, saying it was because he wanted to be kind and not leave us with another cliffhanger. LOL: Tefler! I am calling you out dude! You are a SADIST! There! I said it ;-) ! Seriously though, I need my fix. :-(

You found out my secret!

Unfortunately moderation seems to take a bit longer over the weekend, and chapter 45 is still pending approval. Realistically, it probably won't be up on the site until Tuesday.

I'm making good progress on 46 though, and have written 9k so far. Hopefully that will be up by the tail-end of the week.

Hey! Great suggestion regarding an electromagnetic ring but there is another option that I dont think many have realized here and that is gravitational lensing, probably would only be feasible with the invictus forward facing beam laser emplacements, in lieu of an actual crystal lens. Seeing as Dana has requisitioned the advanced Maliri anti grav tech, using a strong and contained gravitational field local to the emitters it would eliminate the need to cool a lens itself and insulate the barrel from inevitable scatter caused by even the purest lens made.

Scientists actually use this effect to study galaxies very far away! I'm sure the math would work out as the path of light through space/time will always curve around a gravity well.

Quite a realistic way for Dana to funnel silly amounts of power into the beam lasers!

The new chapter is almost out, but I'd like to thank you for amusingly lampshading the cuteness of Calara's exposition:

> Dana listened attentively, then gently nudged Calara affectionately with her shoulder. "I know. I built them for you, remember," she said teasingly.

I thought that was funny. The exposition was for the reader after all and since Calara already had a scene where she was thanking Dana it would have been cumbersome to also add a scene were she was explaining the controls to another character who didn't know it. Nice work fitting in Calara's enthusiasm and then lampshading it so that the reader doesn't think it is bad writing.

Creating a gravimetric tube (slaps his head) DUH! Now I feel stupid. LOL

THAT is a fantastic idea! It would also allow you to actually 'bend' the beam around an object to hit something behind it. just launch an anti-ship missile that is a high gravity field and let it attach itself to the object you want to bypass and then shoot the laser close enough to the field to induce the amount of bending necessary to hit the target on the other side. LOL But: It might actually be faster to just move the ship than wait for the missile to position itself. Still...if the engines are out...or you want a stealthy attack...

IF the Invictus is interdicted and

IF the shields and armament is already activated by the on-board tactical computer and

IF the Invictus is being fired upon

Why not go ahead and have Dana make the Invictus auto-respond with return fire?

"Why not go ahead and have Dana make the Invictus auto-respond with return fire?"

Hmm, I thought that was already one of Dana's automated responses? I'd need to hunt around and find the relevant chapter to confirm.

"I'd like to thank you for amusingly lampshading the cuteness of Calara's exposition"

You're welcome, and I'm glad you found that funny. It was intended as a little nod to the reader, while still remaining in-character.

Chapter 45 will probably be up in the early hours tomorrow morning, so I hope you enjoy it!

I've made good progress with Chapter 46, so hopefully ill finish that tomorrow and have it ready for my editors. If all goes well, that might be up by Friday.

You said: "If the Eldritch bloodline of Edraele means what we can all suspect, then the lasers have turned out to be a convenient excuse to talk with her." I am beginning to suspect Edraele wants to give John a blowjob or two to 'reset' her age after losing her Progenitor. And they will have to make an escape to get away from her.

Just clarifying that the gravitational lens would be paired with the Maliri emitters in order to take full advantage of the extra power afforded to them by the Ashanath power core. It would also give them a way to increase the fire arc of the forward beams and have say a 30 degree arc instead of having to aim the ship directly at each target, each beam would be able to independently target multiple hostiles (up to 6 per volley) if they are pointed in the general direction if you know what I mean?

Also, i'm curious as to what Rachel is capable of in regards to the genetic imbalance between males and females of the Maliri, if a cure is possible using properties derived from John. It would give them a very good bargaining chip to form an alliance with the Maliri much like they did with the Ashanath.

Regards,

Xentian

First thought on fixing gender imbalance was that they would need the male Maliri to give John a blowjob. Sperm determine fetal gender.

I do not think John would go for that, unless it was a real good friend and his best Maliri friend thinks John's Terran girls are hot so it is not a pleasant solution.

I suspect John can only work his loving magic on females anyway.

The second thought was that female Maliri have hostile wombs so their immune responses reject most male fetuses.

John can fix that. Give him your Daughters and he can give you grandsons.

Damn Tefler, its not often a writer gets this many comments on a chapter! Just wondering if you got my message I sent you as well!

Cheers

Xentian

Sixty Four times increase in the volume of space the Invictus can scan.

They need an AI to help monitor that extra data.

The AI will also be able to do digital filtering to improve resolution and range even farther.

It will be able to do interferometry with the sensors on the Raptor and probes. That will magnify their range exponentially.

Don't try to hide from them!

They will have new possibilities for adventure.

Detecting relics, hunting pirates, and maybe even finding wormholes.

I am so excited!