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sunshine & gasoline

Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Gender
Timecube
I've been thinking about this doing this for a while now, off and on, but never got around to it. Basically this is a world building thread/place to dumb incoherent ramblings and things that I write in relation to a world I've been building in my head for a while now.

There's basically this looseknit story that I've been working on in various capacities for a long time now, that's largely composed of cross-sections of life in a sort of sci-fi future, told from various unrelated perspectives. The more I've written though, the more I've realized that when you write about the future, you're really writing about the present. A lot of ideas are based on things that are happening now, or that I foresee happening in the future or think are likely.

These are some of the most "complete" pieces I have so far.

"They called it the 'tar grounds of the world', the park. People from everywhere, from cities and suburbs... all over, would make trips to s ee it. To visit it
"It, it was huge. As far as the eye could see in many directions. Some people say it wasn't always so big, that it grew over time. I guess that's true, but I don't really remember. Anyways, it was something of a national attraction. Everyone wanted to go visit the tar grounds..." the old man's voice trailed off, his gaze turned to the window near where he sat. Outside the aging streets were deserted, people having already gone home to avoid being stopped or questioned.

"What did people do there?" I asked, "What was the main attraction, so to speak?"

"Well, mostly... mostly it was the 'novelty' that drew people. I mean, it wasn't entirely new, you know" his voice picked up a bit, I could see him recalling more memories than most people would ever have, "but everyone wanted to see this new thing that was supposedly unheard of, totally new.
"Well, that's how it was sold, anyway. It was marketed as this amazing, never before seen thing... Like it was a new ride at a fun park."

"How did people react, generally? Did they like it right away or?"

"The marketing was huge, and everywhere, no one could escape from it!" he laughed nervously, reaching for his coffee mug, "but it was a pretty mixed reception. I suppose it was more that the park divided people so much that in a way that was inclusive, they were so supposedly 'divided' that everyone forgot what it was even about, you know.
"Sometimes my friends and me would go to a bar or a restaurant, all we'd see was the ads, or at least that's how it seemed. One time we saw one in one of the little fake news programs that play all the time... something about it being a great vacation spot." It was hard to tell whether a smile or a grimace was forming on his face, maybe it was both.

"Sounds like it was quite the PR campaign", I said.

"Haha, yeah, it really was. Lots of people went because the advertising made it out to be this great place for the whole family. A real 'bring the kids' type of thing. A lot of people just would hear that and use it as the de facto spot to vacation. Especially after the Grand Canyon closed for uranium mining, a lot more came to the tar grounds."

"I'm aware there were exhibits?"

"There were a few in the beginning, more were added over time. Some dinosaurs stuff, or science stuff like that, some engineering stuff. A couple of ocean exhibits. Most people went for the boat rides. They had some special boats that wouldn't get stuck, and sometimes they'd show these little films on them, on, on the tours. They would always say stuff like, "...these images are artists' depictions of what the oceans looked like millions of years in the past", and of course everyone knew that the depictions were really just photos from maybe a decade or so ago. The park was still an oil spill, after all."

I wrote that with the idea in mind that there's some character in this world that has essentially taken to going around doing vox pop and in-home interviews with the people of the cities he visits. He's loosely based off of Studs Terkel.

I've also written little pieces like this, again from the perspective of this interviewer.

The buildings all seemed to be leering, falling in on themselves ever so slowly, like they were caught in amber. Sagging roofs and a-frame houses gave the impression of a play backdrop. There were little to no signs of life on the streets. Few walked them these days, it was generally considered foolish, like not locking your doors. The newspaper headlines all told of the latest bombing or the latest murder, but the news seemed to claim every night that crime had gone down lately. Few paid attention to either.

People seemed more interested in catching the hourly terror report anyway, with most having the latest update sent to their devices. I never understood the point of that, they rarely went anywhere, and even outside there were broadcasters. Occasionally there would be a little segment about how the price of enriched uranium had fallen, bolstering the economy. Most of the media left was sponsored by Arizona Nuclear, the largest producer of fissile material in the country. AN had subsidaries such as Brighter Futures, which depsite its origin as a power company had recently been repurposed after AN's acquisition to become a chemical company. Mostly known for its production of Kepone after a joint US-German committee dissolved the Stockholm Convention as being anti-competitive.

The inner city consisted mostly of aging, decrepit monoliths, plastered with advertisements for prescription medicines. It was always strange to me, the ads, but I didn't realize the sick irony or the significance until relatively recently.
I had met a man named Victor in the outskirts of the city a few years ago. He owned a building that used to be an old storefront, with a townhome above it. He had turned the store into something of a kitchen with tables and chairs formed out of a combination of personal furniture and whatever could be scavenged from around town. I visited it once, mostly to listen to people talk about the events of the day, and ended up having a conversation with Victor. He was an elderly man, in his 70s, and recalled more history than most around him would ever experience.

Much more recently, I wrote this. I haven't really figured out what perspective it's supposed to be from yet, what the character might be or any of that. But again, it's more world building than anything, I find it hard to write anything that's overtly linear or even follows a consistent theme because there's also so many things I want to write about and perspectives I want to explore. This is again in the context of this sort of dystopian future/world I'm building.

" First Aid


Underneath a stratified colony of dirt the eager ants race towards changing
A stitch there is no thread Those who chose those who accept the world.

Is it respect to accept the world?
Does one verify a condition by the pretext of the critique? There is none the world rejects the idea.

For what do we continue, if the only gain is the certainty that our suffering is prolonged by our own hand.

Is it a comfort to know that the length of the trauma can be controlled... a lack of action of harm prolongs. A shorelined disease a nervous poison

To choose the control, the de facto, is it choice to not choose?

If those with no rights choose to have no life, is it still an act of choice? To reject the world is display the right to no life

The strange idea. to have no life may be to cease to live, but for those without any choices in their lives doesn't the choice of living constitute no life?"

------------

The note was unsigned, stapled to a leering telephone pole. Perhaps that made it more powerful. Or more unsettling.

A warm wind blew out of the east, carrying with it the smell of burning plastic. A smell that had been a constant part of the environment for years now, since as long as I could remember anyway. The authorities everywhere always clammered to say that no specific source could be identified, and that it was just part of some natural process. I think even they knew it was bull****, but so it goes. In reality, the smell was caused by Bryine, the by-product of producing Fenone, a so-called "miracle compound" that was now the bread and butter of every industrial giant left on earth. It was the core component in anything from painkillers to pesticides.

Scientists at Arizona Nuclear often referred to it as "super-carbon", because it seemed to play well in any situation and could be used to make nearly everything, and thus, nearly everything contained it. It supposedly came about as a product of their matter manipulation project, which was launched primarily as a response to the need to dispose of the millions of tons of nuclear waste piled up in dumps and old wharehouses around the country. Especially with the decommissioning of old warheads, things like depleted uranium were accumulating faster than ever, and no one knew what to do with it. So the company decided to open up an advanced research facility in the Mojave, where they could test experimental equipment. Most of which was based on modifications of CERN equipment coupled with next generation matter probing devices. After nearly two decades of work, they created a matter manipulation device that was eventually configured to produce Fenone.

During operation, it changes the subatomic properties of uranium-238. They claim the result is a so-called, "5th state of matter", that is "unseen before in the known universe". In principle, it is a bit like anti-matter, sans destructing on contact with normal matter. Instead, it creates a kind of atomic malleability in whatever substance it's combined with. With the universe of nanomachines, they can re-arrange the nuclei and other atomic and subatomic properties of the interacting matter.

But, as any scientists could guess, such a process does not happen in a vacuum. There is a by-product created during this process: Bryine. It is a kind of pseudo-plasma substance that is gel-like at room temperature, and emits the distinct smell of burning acrylic. The immediate reaction of the engineers was that this was something akin to Beryllium gas, and was poisonous, so full closed-cycle suits were required to handle it in any capacity. It was mostly compacted into titanium containers and buried in the desert outside the compound. But as more and more was produced, they had company chemists analyse its properties, and they quickly claimed that it was non-poisonous and "posed no significant threat" to human health.

As all companies are wont to do, they made a PR statement that their new mystery product is perfectly safe and poses no risk to humans or the environment, and is easily disposed of. The way that they "disposed" of it is to neutralize it, transforming it into something akin to a noble gas. The gas is then piped into a cooling chamber, and through some unrevealed process turned into a sort of foam like substance. If you remember the "space foam" that NASA used to make back when they were around, it's somewhat like that, except more porous. And it smells awful and will give you chemical burns if you touch it.

Bryine's caustic properties were discovered the hard way by some kids down near the beach in Mississipi. The foam started showing up all over it seemed, from lakes and rivers to the gulf, the bayou, streams, the list goes on. Some kids found it on the shore one evening and made the mistake of touching it.

Finally there's this, that I wrote today:

After everything, the city was fundamentally the same. The same dirt, the same weeds... the same minerals in the same rocks. The same carbon interspersed through so many things.

After everything, the universe was still the same, still as cold and unaware as it ever was. Be it in the soon to be reclaimed carbon of decaying animals or the subatomic world of particles, the universe was as it always was.

I have a bunch more stuff that I'll add later, but this is some of the most complete/recent stuff I have.
 
Last edited:

Spiritual Mask Salesman

CHIMer Dragonborn
Staff member
Comm. Coordinator
Site Staff
I've been thinking about this doing this for a while now, off and on, but never got around to it. Basically this is a world building thread/place to dumb incoherent ramblings and things that I write in relation to a world I've been building in my head for a while now.

There's basically this looseknit story that I've been working on in various capacities for a long time now, that's largely composed of cross-sections of life in a sort of sci-fi future, told from various unrelated perspectives. The more I've written though, the more I've realized that when you write about the future, you're really writing about the present. A lot of ideas are based on things that are happening now, or that I foresee happening in the future or think are likely.

These are some of the most "complete" pieces I have so far.

"They called it the 'tar grounds of the world', the park. People from everywhere, from cities and suburbs... all over, would make trips to s ee it. To visit it
"It, it was huge. As far as the eye could see in many directions. Some people say it wasn't always so big, that it grew over time. I guess that's true, but I don't really remember. Anyways, it was something of a national attraction. Everyone wanted to go visit the tar grounds..." the old man's voice trailed off, his gaze turned to the window near where he sat. Outside the aging streets were deserted, people having already gone home to avoid being stopped or questioned.

"What did people do there?" I asked, "What was the main attraction, so to speak?"

"Well, mostly... mostly it was the 'novelty' that drew people. I mean, it wasn't entirely new, you know" his voice picked up a bit, I could see him recalling more memories than most people would ever have, "but everyone wanted to see this new thing that was supposedly unheard of, totally new.
"Well, that's how it was sold, anyway. It was marketed as this amazing, never before seen thing... Like it was a new ride at a fun park."

"How did people react, generally? Did they like it right away or?"

"The marketing was huge, and everywhere, no one could escape from it!" he laughed nervously, reaching for his coffee mug, "but it was a pretty mixed reception. I suppose it was more that the park divided people so much that in a way that was inclusive, they were so supposedly 'divided' that everyone forgot what it was even about, you know.
"Sometimes my friends and me would go to a bar or a restaurant, all we'd see was the ads, or at least that's how it seemed. One time we saw one in one of the little fake news programs that play all the time... something about it being a great vacation spot." It was hard to tell whether a smile or a grimace was forming on his face, maybe it was both.

"Sounds like it was quite the PR campaign", I said.

"Haha, yeah, it really was. Lots of people went because the advertising made it out to be this great place for the whole family. A real 'bring the kids' type of thing. A lot of people just would hear that and use it as the de facto spot to vacation. Especially after the Grand Canyon closed for uranium mining, a lot more came to the tar grounds."

"I'm aware there were exhibits?"

"There were a few in the beginning, more were added over time. Some dinosaurs stuff, or science stuff like that, some engineering stuff. A couple of ocean exhibits. Most people went for the boat rides. They had some special boats that wouldn't get stuck, and sometimes they'd show these little films on them, on, on the tours. They would always say stuff like, "...these images are artists' depictions of what the oceans looked like millions of years in the past", and of course everyone knew that the depictions were really just photos from maybe a decade or so ago. The park was still an oil spill, after all."

I wrote that with the idea in mind that there's some character in this world that has essentially taken to going around doing vox pop and in-home interviews with the people of the cities he visits. He's loosely based off of Studs Terkel.

I've also written little pieces like this, again from the perspective of this interviewer.

The buildings all seemed to be leering, falling in on themselves ever so slowly, like they were caught in amber. Sagging roofs and a-frame houses gave the impression of a play backdrop. There were little to no signs of life on the streets. Few walked them these days, it was generally considered foolish, like not locking your doors. The newspaper headlines all told of the latest bombing or the latest murder, but the news seemed to claim every night that crime had gone down lately. Few paid attention to either.

People seemed more interested in catching the hourly terror report anyway, with most having the latest update sent to their devices. I never understood the point of that, they rarely went anywhere, and even outside there were broadcasters. Occasionally there would be a little segment about how the price of enriched uranium had fallen, bolstering the economy. Most of the media left was sponsored by Arizona Nuclear, the largest producer of fissile material in the country. AN had subsidaries such as Brighter Futures, which depsite its origin as a power company had recently been repurposed after AN's acquisition to become a chemical company. Mostly known for its production of Kepone after a joint US-German committee dissolved the Stockholm Convention as being anti-competitive.

The inner city consisted mostly of aging, decrepit monoliths, plastered with advertisements for prescription medicines. It was always strange to me, the ads, but I didn't realize the sick irony or the significance until relatively recently.
I had met a man named Victor in the outskirts of the city a few years ago. He owned a building that used to be an old storefront, with a townhome above it. He had turned the store into something of a kitchen with tables and chairs formed out of a combination of personal furniture and whatever could be scavenged from around town. I visited it once, mostly to listen to people talk about the events of the day, and ended up having a conversation with Victor. He was an elderly man, in his 70s, and recalled more history than most around him would ever experience.

Much more recently, I wrote this. I haven't really figured out what perspective it's supposed to be from yet, what the character might be or any of that. But again, it's more world building than anything, I find it hard to write anything that's overtly linear or even follows a consistent theme because there's also so many things I want to write about and perspectives I want to explore. This is again in the context of this sort of dystopian future/world I'm building.

" First Aid


Underneath a stratified colony of dirt the eager ants race towards changing
A stitch there is no thread Those who chose those who accept the world.

Is it respect to accept the world?
Does one verify a condition by the pretext of the critique? There is none the world rejects the idea.

For what do we continue, if the only gain is the certainty that our suffering is prolonged by our own hand.

Is it a comfort to know that the length of the trauma can be controlled... a lack of action of harm prolongs. A shorelined disease a nervous poison

To choose the control, the de facto, is it choice to not choose?

If those with no rights choose to have no life, is it still an act of choice? To reject the world is display the right to no life

The strange idea. to have no life may be to cease to live, but for those without any choices in their lives doesn't the choice of living constitute no life?"

------------

The note was unsigned, stapled to a leering telephone pole. Perhaps that made it more powerful. Or more unsettling.

A warm wind blew out of the east, carrying with it the smell of burning plastic. A smell that had been a constant part of the environment for years now, since as long as I could remember anyway. The authorities everywhere always clammered to say that no specific source could be identified, and that it was just part of some natural process. I think even they knew it was bull****, but so it goes. In reality, the smell was caused by Bryine, the by-product of producing Fenone, a so-called "miracle compound" that was now the bread and butter of every industrial giant left on earth. It was the core component in anything from painkillers to pesticides.

Scientists at Arizona Nuclear often referred to it as "super-carbon", because it seemed to play well in any situation and could be used to make nearly everything, and thus, nearly everything contained it. It supposedly came about as a product of their matter manipulation project, which was launched primarily as a response to the need to dispose of the millions of tons of nuclear waste piled up in dumps and old wharehouses around the country. Especially with the decommissioning of old warheads, things like depleted uranium were accumulating faster than ever, and no one knew what to do with it. So the company decided to open up an advanced research facility in the Mojave, where they could test experimental equipment. Most of which was based on modifications of CERN equipment coupled with next generation matter probing devices. After nearly two decades of work, they created a matter manipulation device that was eventually configured to produce Fenone.

During operation, it changes the subatomic properties of uranium-238. They claim the result is a so-called, "5th state of matter", that is "unseen before in the known universe". In principle, it is a bit like anti-matter, sans destructing on contact with normal matter. Instead, it creates a kind of atomic malleability in whatever substance it's combined with. With the universe of nanomachines, they can re-arrange the nuclei and other atomic and subatomic properties of the interacting matter.

But, as any scientists could guess, such a process does not happen in a vacuum. There is a by-product created during this process: Bryine. It is a kind of pseudo-plasma substance that is gel-like at room temperature, and emits the distinct smell of burning acrylic. The immediate reaction of the engineers was that this was something akin to Beryllium gas, and was poisonous, so full closed-cycle suits were required to handle it in any capacity. It was mostly compacted into titanium containers and buried in the desert outside the compound. But as more and more was produced, they had company chemists analyse its properties, and they quickly claimed that it was non-poisonous and "posed no significant threat" to human health.

As all companies are wont to do, they made a PR statement that their new mystery product is perfectly safe and poses no risk to humans or the environment, and is easily disposed of. The way that they "disposed" of it is to neutralize it, transforming it into something akin to a noble gas. The gas is then piped into a cooling chamber, and through some unrevealed process turned into a sort of foam like substance. If you remember the "space foam" that NASA used to make back when they were around, it's somewhat like that, except more porous. And it smells awful and will give you chemical burns if you touch it.

Bryine's caustic properties were discovered the hard way by some kids down near the beach in Mississipi. The foam started showing up all over it seemed, from lakes and rivers to the gulf, the bayou, streams, the list goes on. Some kids found it on the shore one evening and made the mistake of touching it.

Finally there's this, that I wrote today:

After everything, the city was fundamentally the same. The same dirt, the same weeds... the same minerals in the same rocks. The same carbon interspersed through so many things.

After everything, the universe was still the same, still as cold and unaware as it ever was. Be it in the soon to be reclaimed carbon of decaying animals or the subatomic world of particles, the universe was as it always was.

I have a bunch more stuff that I'll add later, but this is some of the most complete/recent stuff I have.

I like the concept Kitsu, I'm looking foward to seeing what you do with it all.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Gender
Timecube
What does it mean to be a finite jive of atoms whose only power is to limit the power of another atomic jive?

The people of this land seem enamored in an opiate dream where two and two are five and reality is shaped by their delirious whims. Their currency can change the atoms of their own demise but can't find a solution to their own decay. Some kind of cosmic irony in which the organic coincidences become the harbinger of the very entropy they live in spite of.
 
Joined
Apr 14, 2021
Gender
Male
We already know how to convert the energy of sunlight into electricity. And it is one of the ways to solve the environmental issue. In order to aid the overall environmental clean-up mission and alleviate the depletion of fossil fuels, rocket manufacturing aims to develop the necessary technology to enable the conversion of non-recyclable plastic waste into high-grade in-demand aerospace fuel to be used for spacecraft such as Skylark Nano, Skyrora XL, etc.
 

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