“We have established the minimum irradiance to cause a sensation and have characterised where thermal injury begins … But the exact operating irradiance which balances a useful military effect with a conservative margin of safety has not been nailed down yet.”

I’m wondering where the margins of safety come into the use of other military gear – rubber bullets, for example, shouldn’t cause permanent harm, but they do.

Opponents have raised concerns that weapons that inflict pain without external evidence can only make it harder to identify signs of abuse. Dread to think what someone might do with one of these in a detention centre!

Would a Troubleshooter have a stream of messages to contend with from friends, associates, contacts, spammers, managers, peers, underlings, blackmailers, blackmailees, strangers, recruiters, entertainment celebrities, administrators, tech support, automated services, The Computer, Troubleshooter handlers and more besides? Could they cope? Would housekeeping – whether manual or automatic – present a risk of deleting something – or everything – of importance? Would a Troubleshooter deal with ninty-nine innane demands for their attention before reaching an overdue imperative from an irrate executive officers, IntSec interrogator or YELLOW Clearance jobsworth?

I fear clever software solutions wouldn’t be enough – indeed, if the Troubleshooters experience mirrors my own, they’ll have a dozen different message handling clients that do almost all they want, but not quite. Will one client make orders from The Computer clear at a cost of complexities in searching for anything else or tracking message threads?

Would you use the C-net Wideband Interaction Trans-protocol or just not bother? Nobody likes a Cwitter!

However, it might be tempting to allow R&D the occasional flash of brilliance, jury-rigging ancient technology and software to restore some level of this location-obsessed madness. Bringing Street View to Alpha Complex might manifest as hovering cambots making kamikaze dashes around fixed corridors, generating a 3-dimensional environmental feed that complicates the lives of an average traitor. How can you make contact with a Secret Society informant when the chosen destination lies at a crossroads monitored by a higher than average number of CompCam hoverbots. When an error in patrol pattern uploads means a technican has set a dozen bots circling the same stretch of corridors at slightly different intervals, how can you make a vital drop without looking incredibly suspicious. On the other hand, Troubleshooters might ponder how they can put the cambot corridor survey to their advantage in framing and screwing over their colleagues…

Latitude could provide an interesting take on Aliens-style motion sensors, allowing you to know the location and movements of almost any citizen – but also allowing them to see where you are. Briefing officers might hack the software to record them as present in the briefing room, despite their staying in bed halfway across the sector, a sub-routine shifting the locator dot every now and again to keep the Troubleshooters guessing before they finally reach an empty room. Records will show the briefing officer was there, while the Troubleshooters face the wrath of IntSec or The Computer because they utterly failed to achieve their objective (due to complete ignorance of whatever they were supposed to be doing!).

Perhaps stealth technology intended to drop Troubleshooters off the network might fail just when they’ve located the Commie Traitors, spoiling the element of surprise and allowing the enemy to make plans for an ambush or a clean getaway. Or, The Computer might send the team in hot pursuit of a rogue group of Troubleshooters across the opposite side of the sector, only for them to discover that the markers on their map are in fact their own – but someone uploaded the sector map upsidedown…

Google grows ever closer, it would seem, to some kind of subliminal Big Brother, mapping our every movement and checking out how well we tend our back gardens under a guise of innocent progress. Seems a shame not to take advantage of the same kind of breakthroughs in Alpha Complex too…

Those eggheads in R&D have come up with an innovative new lightweight armor, intended to provide optimum protection with reduced weight. Yes, Armed Forces are sceptical – so R&D want some willing, energetic and enthusiastic Troubleshooters to trial the new armor, along with some other fine innovations, in a simulated battle situation down in IRQ Sector. Recently the site of a pitched battle against Communist infiltrators from Outdoors, it will provide an ideal environment with genuine battle ravaged features and true combat conditions. Armed Forces recon has confirmed an all-clear status for the Sector… so, lets get out there.

Civil engineer Habib Dagher has come up with an original idea on building materials for the battle zone. A combination of balsa wood, fibre glass, thermoplastic resin and kevlar, Habib believes it provides an ideal lightweight material for constructing shelters in combat environments. The material should stand up to blasts and shrapnel impact, while still allowing easy transportation.

I immediately went off on a tangent after reading this, because I had this image of samurai enter my mind. The traditional armor of the samurai, all interlinked and connected blocks… I could envisage R&D using a material like this to create some perverse re-imagining of samurai armor, based on Old Reckoning pictures or movies. I seem to recall Jim Holloway did much – if not all – of the interior artwork for the old AD&D Oriental Adventures book… I shall have to track it down.

Take the 3rd December 2007 article featuring the DNA syringe, a device that increases the permeability of cells with an electrical charge to allow the injection of drugs, or even DNA. R&D couldn’t resist a gun-based platform for this technical breakthrough – and it would be a matter of but a short space of time for pro-mutant factions to seek it out as a means to spreading the ‘gospel’ of positive genetic difference. Perhaps the Mystics could borrow it afterwards, undermining the local power structure of a sector with sniper-style attacks on key individuals who suddenly find themselves under the influence of powerful hallucinogens.

How about breathable hazard suits that allow your skin to breath freely but can seal against hazards through the application of current, which closes the suits nanopores. Anyone for an entire adventure where you have to wear these suits, but R&D have a problem that the frequency of the controller device disrupts the functionality of the suit – so another team member has the responsibility of activating the current. Oh, and the eggheads have had a few problems modulating the charge in the suit’s capacitor… so sometimes the shock might edge into the realms of the uncomfortable, though at least you’ll be safe from harm!

I’m reasonably certain a handheld food and beverage analyzer would fall into the classification of grey tech within Alpha Complex, where the less you know about the actual composition of your food, the better.

I’ve added a blog feed under Scientist on the righthandside of this site… Good reading, have fun!

Could they work on a device that ensures the Commie traitor is the person the players are least likely to suspect?

So, what could go wrong? Maybe the gum dissolves in water – including sweat – and the damned Dataflex keeps slipping off. Faced with accusations of treason for losing valuable gear, Troubleshooters have to keep back-tracking to find the damned thing… Just avoided a firefight and now have to go back to find your paper-thin PDC!

Maybe Corpore Metal have been fiddling with the device and the gum provides a conductive two-way line into the Troubleshooters nervous system. Maybe the experience starts with uneasy realisation that you remembered sub-clause 345634.22/A of the new HPD&MC New Glorious Hygiene protocol before you actually looked it up… then you can quote the time without checking and know exactly the right way to the briefing room. Before you know it, half the team members have nearly verifiable proof the other half of the team have some kind of weird mutant power that lets them communicate with machines… and they’d get on their PDC to report the treachery if not for the fact they appear to have already logged the call 5 minutes ago and the guy on the Mutant Hotline wants to know why you keep calling him…

How about that Dataflex works perfectly and the gum clings like a dream – then halfway through a stealthy approach to a huddle of conspiring traitors an alarm goes off. The Troubleshooter can’t get the damned thing off his arm or clothes, and the touch-sensitive controls aren’t responding. How about – ‘User input currently offline while unit receives M1n35w33p3r Upgrade from Tech Services WiFi service hub node. Please be patient…’? What do you do? Scrape off your skin? Get your team mates to help out with an emergency amputation? Lightly sear your forearm with your hand flamer? How do you explain the loss of equipment to The Computer, the R&D Gear Futures team… and those gruff looking conspirator types with the fully loaded auto-slugthrowers?

I just installed an advertising widget from Amazon.com that generates a tag cloud of products relevant to the page content. I dropped it into this blog, so I would envisage the occasional PARANOIA product turning up – but, who knows what keywords the widget might latch on to. As a multimedia device, the widgets on a PDC could do something similar – responding to the way the Troubleshooter uses the device and the environmental inputs recorded (sights, sounds and so forth). Take the PDC into a firefight and you can expect to see product placement ads for Gyrostabilizing All-purpose Flux Fortifiers and Laser Barrel Extenders. Grumbling about the lack of food – PLC might send you a coupon for 3 credits off a Hearty-Hearty Brick Loaf or CruncheeTym Yeast Twists. Just returned from a secret meeting with your secret society contact? How about an Acoustic Interferometer or a 2-for-1 offer on TempWipe memory suppression drugs… oops – hang on! You could have sworn you activated the ComDat Secure for Sure PDC cloakware. So, how come…

Suddenly, what seemed like an ideal companion suddenly seems less secure… and what’s with the BotBuster Cone Rifle shells when you’re a member of Corpore Metal? What has your PDC been picking up that would have caused that? It wouldn’t be another member of your team, would it?