The CCCP settlement of Pyramiden, on an archipelago belonging to the Norwegians, provided a utopian lifestyle of work and plenty as an example to the people back home. However, when the Communist might of Russia collapsed, the people steadily abandoned the dream rather than struggle in the face of insurmountable hardship.
I daresay this subsidised paradise in the chilly north could easily form the backdrop for some modern day PARANOIA or perhaps some spin on the The Prisoner, with happy workers leading happy family lives amidst a basically fabricated and unsupportable community. Mandatory sports days, social events and art classes anyone?
Perhaps Pyramiden could be that colony set up on the agreement of The Computer, or one of the High Programmers, as a way to understand the way a small, above-ground community might work – or to comprehend the Communist mindset? Could the Troubleshooters wake to find they have led happy, ordinary lives as honourable and loyal Communists with loving families and generous prospects? Take them through the routine of labour in the mines, followed by swimming, song, and sitting around the fire telling stories to the children – but, over time, introduce clear signs of hardship, of a lack in essential maintenance skills and materials (because the central office back home always sends a replacement) and the remoteness of the colony. Then cut the lifeline completely, pull the plug, and leave them with nothing but static. Invariably, panic will grow, desperation follows when bellies grumble, and The Computer will send in ‘support‘, highly likely to be mistaken by the mind-altered inhabitants of the colony as a Capitalist invasion force… What fun!
[Professor Stone and colleagues at Yale University] have now succeeded in building [an anti-laser].
[The] device focuses two lasers beams of a specific frequency into a specially designed optical cavity made from silicon, which traps the incoming beams of light and forces them to bounce around until all their energy is dissipated.
In a paper published in the journal Science they demonstrated that the anti-laser could adsorb 99.4 per cent of incoming light, for a specific wavelength.
So, we now have a device that can deal with those pesky RED Clearance lasers, but can’t handle a different wavelength. R&D, no doubt, can guarantee that the 0.6% failure to dissipate won’t be a problem. As all loyal citizens know, at least 87.5% of all Commie Traitors can’t shoot straight to begin with…
At the end of last year I attended the Dragonmeet event in Kensington. In previous years, I attend purely as a visitor; but, on this occasion I attended as a guest of Arion Games. I have been writing for Arion for the historical adventure game Maelstrom, so planned to do my bit running an adventure. I have to admit, I went there having never run a game at a convention before. If anyone involved experienced any trauma as a result, I can only apologize. I don’t think it went too badly in the end. I did have a bit of a struggle choosing an adventure to play. There book includes an adventure – but, anyone with even a vague knowledge of Maelstrom will have played and read it. The sort of person willing to play a Maelstrom game may very well have some foreknowledge of the game. Both Graham Bottley, the man behind Arion, and I have written short adventures for Maelstrom, but I didn’t necessarily want to run those either. If I could get someone interested in the game, they’d want to download some material – and knowing those adventures in advance… I don’t know – it just didn’t seem right.
So, instead, I opted for writing something completely new. My making that decision presented a new issue, because I had only a fortnight to write and prepare that adventure. I could write something from scratch or see if I had something lying around the house already. My mind settled on my incomplete Avignon supplement for PARANOIA. I had the skeleton of an adventure written for that. Admittedly, the adventure – and campaign – set events in 1397, and the standard Maelstrom game happens in the middle of the 16th century, but this would be a one-off con adventure, so it didn’t matter.
I wrote several pages of notes, sketched out a bunch of maps, and created characters of a non-combative nature to keep the game entertaining without resorting to a sword to solve everything. The character’s would be pilgrims visiting Avignon seeking forgiveness for their sins. A cardinal would offer then forgiveness if they simply completed a single night of babysitting for the 6 year old son of a high ranking noble. I imagined medieval ‘Home Alone‘.
I knew I wanted to add some intrigue, so taking a PARANOIA leaf out of the book, I created secret missions for everyone and secret equipment, too. To simplify communication of the secret stuff, I wrote everything on stickers and put them on the front of ordinary playing cards. I could give each players a hand of cards that they could reference throughout the game and I could, maybe, reuse later on.
The adventure worked out well. I don’t think anyone zoned out or lost interest. I tried to keep my focus moving around the table and opted for a less serious stance to keep the energy flowing. I didn’t try to simulate accents and claimed the characters had enough grasp of the basics of French not to need to struggle with language. The 6-year old proved to be an irritating pain in the butt. I’m reasonably certain kids in the Medieval times did act this way, though kids of nobles might have done. I’m sure spoilt and demanding translates through the ages. In the end, two characters almost achieved their objective and another did, but suffering serious personal injury in the process – almost losing his right arm to a lucky sword swing. I spent a lot of time screeching as the 6-year old and being a right little shit. I suspect the adventure went well without necessarily promoting the actual nature of the game – though, Maelstrom promotes simplicity of mechanics and I definitely displayed that by hardly touching the dice at all. I also identified a definite gap in the market for a Maelstrom gaming screen.
So, I now face the question – should I take all the work I did for the Avignon supplement and rework it for Maelstrom?
Take some of this CyberClean stuff – cyberclean.tv, scale it up to the size of a medium sized dog and make it artificially intelligent. Then, assign it to both the Equipment and the Hygiene Officer – or just one of them. Or both, but in shifts. The unnatural pooch – nicknamed Clean Sweep after some dog from an Old Reckoning infotainment series – looks like an enormous lump of bright yellow silly putty, with four formless leg-like appendages, but no apparent head or sensory equipment. Indeed, the Sweep seems to swap ends when least expected.
The material has cleaning and anti-bacterial properties such that wrapping it around almost anything lifts off surface dirt immediately, but also gets at those hard to reach bits. It can clean almost any material – from fabric through plastics to metals, as well as a range of organics, like timber, flora or skin. Apply it to a filthy weapon to get it sparkling clean, or remove ground in stains from your uniform. Try it on floors, keyboards, tankbot tracks, dirty Commie mutant traitors and more besides.
Yeah, when you get skin in contact with it, it sometimes pulls out hairs, the greasy content of pores and the occasional ill-protected eyeball or toenail. Occasionally, cleaning a weapon results in a thorough external and internal clean that might possibly include removal of bullet-sized pieces of metallic grit. Possibly, if used on careful signed and identified R&D equipment, it might remove surface paint, labelling and ink – leaving you with a sparkling clean device and a world of opportunity remembering how to use it, or deactivate it. And sometimes, the great yellow lump goes wandering off and tries to make friends with citizens of senior security clearance to your own, cleaning anything and everything for the Good of Alpha Complex. It should respond to it’s handler, if addressed by name, and has a series of security protocols in place to ensure the absolute safety of all citizens, so there’s nothing to worry about. Unless the handler’s dead, or missing – or gets incorrectly reassigned after the original handler suffers a fatal accident.
Yesterday, while in Nottingham, I visited the Nottingham Contemporary gallery to view the current ‘Star City‘ exhibition that celebrates ‘The Future Under Communism’. Good it was, too. And free.
Running until 18 April 2010, the galleries features the work of artists from the former Eastern Bloc. The installations range from ‘Star City’ itself – a 4 channel video presentation of a secret location near Moscow, where you witness the ruined remains of the Russian space race, including the practice modules used to train cosmonauts and the tattered, once luxurious accommodations around the facility – to a plentiful supply of propaganda posters of the era. One poster features smiling children, marching for the great cause clutching rabbits, flags and a basket of yellow chicks, proclaiming “Let’s Be Deserving Sputniks of the Seven-Year Plan.” Others proclaim “The Creative Forces of Communism are Endless!” or that a “Soviet Artificial Planet Runs Around the Sun in Honour of the XXI General Meeting of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1959″ – with supporting images of Russian rockets and heroic cosmonauts.
One wall features various proclamations and declarations around the great future that lies ahead under Communism, with an interesting timeline of developments from the end of the 1960s through to 2100 that singularly failed to deliver beyond 1969 – after which there should have been communication with dolphins, creation of artificial lifeforms, perfect weather control, bases on the Moon and Mars, and generational voyages beyond the Solar System (half of those I’ve listed fell in the timeline prior to now).
Some of the more ‘interesting’ installations include electrical appliances running on a variable current staggered by a morse code rendition of a Fidel Castro speech, a modular cinema – including integral seating arrangement – made out of wood and cardboard tubes, and images influenced by Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris”.
Undoubtedly, the most impressive works for me had an incredible sense of mechanisation in decay. One, an as yet untitled work by Robert Kusmirowski, was a 1:1 scale replica of ‘futuristic’ machinery and control interfaces from facilities long since abandoned, a wall of dark green metal scabbed with rust, with glass-faced dials and great metal switches.
My personal favourite was “Elsewhere” (2008) by Micol Assael, a cabinet of electrical components, the door swung open and the unit leaning forward, sat at the centre of a dark pool of water. Live with electricity, microphones picked up sizzling, crackling and bubbling, as water trickled occasionally from long thin pipes extending from the top of the cabinet. Bizarrely brilliant.
While the whole ‘Star City’ exhibition provides an interesting source of imagery and perceptions for use in PARANOIA, I think “Elsewhere” alone could make for a great encounter. Imagine, the Troubleshooters enter a room to find the middle of the square space dominated by a towering stack of crackling machinery and the recessed floor filled with water. A strong smell of ozone fills the air. Near the stack lies a body, lying on one side in the water, dressed in a full body suit, shining gold in colour. The team have been told to come here, so they believe they have to do something. However, touching the water deliveries a powerful shock… so, what to do? In fact, they’ve been sent to the wrong place and this room contains an artistic installation funded by a slightly ‘touched’ ULTRAVIOLET. The artist is in the suit, but the material protects him from the electricity. A slave to his art, the guy has simply fallen asleep in pose.
“WHAT’S HOLDING UP PROGRESS, CITIZEN?”
“Oh, nothing Friend Computer, just heading into the Briefing Room now…”
SPLASH! CRACKLE! SIZZLE! POP! SPLASH! POP! HISS! BIG SPLASH!
“Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!”
