Category Archives: Stories

December 17, 2023 · 15:40

Christmas comes early

This came to me in a dream. It seems a nice setup for a story, but I am already dealing with 4. How to assassinate a politician is about 90% complete in my mind. Then Kenos Diastima a series in three seasons which is at 40%, Residuam Vitam the mini series is at 30% and Engonos is I have no idea, but it is still ongoing, season one is about 75%, the rest is less clear. What I got now did not fit anywhere and I do not want to start something else at present, so I am making it public domain. Perhaps it will be useful to someone else at present.

The story is in the first person (it is easier for me that way).

And so it begins
It is a late afternoon, I am working in a data centre owned by Heineken. I am not sue what I am, but I am doing my job. Something about cleaning data. We are suddenly attacked and Heineken is subject to ransomware.

3 hours earlier
In the WebCentre of Heineken people are doing their work, they are editing, they are checking and they are aligning on a global scale. One person is doing something else. He is embedding a small code tabulator, alternate 0255, tabulator, alternate 0255, tabulator. A simple code a mere 5 bytes, but that was all that was needed and it was embedded in several places. Someone higher up would clean the data and that was the purpose. 

You see, the hackers were smart but not the brightest. They had a database, but one that mattered. They had a database with disgruntled employees and several worked at Heineken. This was the setting, the honey was a payday of 50 Bitcoin cents. And two applied for that, the hackers knew that the invasion would get them 150 bitcoins in a week, spending one coin was a wise investment setting. 

So here we are, I am at my desk and I see the Ransomware invade, system after system becomes useless. That was what was intended. As the employees with much higher security settings cleaned out the 5 bits, the system saw that as a call to include a small script, a mere 73 bits and it was included in several places and as these systems started to buckle, people with higher security clearance took up the hammer and they infected even more systems. The operation took less than 25 minutes and in that time everything was smitten with Ransomware. All systems and the log files were getting encryption. All these systems and more were now Ransomed and they had no clue who was behind it. 

Now you want to see some clever way out of this, but there is none. As systems buckle governments are forced to put in place draconian laws whilst cleaning what they can and it is with that stupidity the hackers are subject to prisons and executions and as the dust settles, the hackers go deep underground. They are now regarded a global enemy. In the days when there was surplus people never cared, now as governments will buckle they are ready to hold these people (including children too smart for their own good) to account and it was not going to be a nice stage. Just like these ‘Just Stop Oil’ idiots. 6 months was merely the beginning. When the oil starts being reduced even more, the people will start their vigilante justice, as well the IT people against hackers and their supporters. A cleansing unlike any we have ever seen, the agents of chaos will hurt and suffer for a long time to come. A setting no one wanted, a setting we all denied, but we all saw that there was no other direction and that was when we realised that at times we cannot be nice to the monsters, we have no other choice but to put them out of their misery.

A sad day on this day so close to Christmas.

Enjoy today, have a muffin.

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December 4, 2023 · 01:09

Two makes a fourth

Yup, that didn’t make sense did it? You see, two pieces of information hit me at the same time. The first is ‘Johnny Depp advises filmmakers from Saudi Arabia to ‘go against the grain of Hollywood’’ (at https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2023/12/02/johnny-depp-advises-filmmakers-from-saudi-arabia-to-go-against-the-grain-of-hollywood/). It is here where we are given “What I believe, in regard to the opportunities of the Saudi film industry, is to build facilities and go against the grain of everything that Hollywood is putting out,” Johny Depp makes sense. I see it differently, not against Depp, because I agree with him. The Saudi Film industry needs a different path. It is basically what drove me to design ‘How to assassinate a politician’ yet the larger station is not merely a different design, because that story is all but done (two parts are incomplete). You see at this point I am watching season 3 of NCIS: New Orleans and a thought took hold of me. It took me back to when I read Hesiod (a very long time ago) and this reflects on Season 2 of Engonos. There were two parts that required tinkering and now as a red line I saw the option to add a third line. You see, there was a reference to Tartarus that was a larger station, a side that has not been touched (read: does not exist). It reminds me of an old story that relates to the Hellraiser comic books. A salesperson is left off the hook providing he increases his tally of souls 15% annually. The demon lets him off the hook because in the end that salesperson will fail. You see in year one he only needs 1500 souls, but in the subsequent years it will be 2070, 2380, 2737, 3148, 3620. So in 5 years he will need to hand over 301 souls each month. That is 3 times the souls he needed in year one. That setting gave me the idea to take a page from these books and give them a twist. Consider the souls pushed into Tartarus, what would any soul do after one day to avoid the rest of eternity in Tartarus? 

As such Hesiod gave me the idea to take it to a new level. He ones stated “The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it.” So, what happens when we take someone like Major Hamilton and let him face the wrath of a damned soul from Tartarus? That was the setting I started with and now we have a new station in Engonos. When we take the greed driven and set the take against themselves. Not a bad day. One article, one setting and a whole new station opened it doors. Not a bad day at all.

Enjoy your Sunday, it’s Monday here.

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November 28, 2023 · 18:14

Closing season one

That was the setting I was considering. I had been brooding over the end of season one and the story seems fine in my mind, but towards the end of season one we get to the palace of Hades. It stands close to the centre of Tartarus and is home to Lord Hades of Tartarus. The palace is not a mere thing, it is a structure of refinement and absolute power. Heaphestus did most of the design and it shows. Apart from some small cracks it has been standing there for thousands of years. Even the pyramids show decay, a mortal design, not the House of Hades. It stands almost immaculate, almost that is. You see, there is something wrong with the place, but any visitor in Tartarus could easily overlook it. There are micro fractures in the foundations of that house.

It is made from some kind of dolomite, harder than marble, stronger than granite or basalt and has withstood time for thousands of years. When we see that palace, we see hordes being turned back by the damned Myrmidons. These damned troops showed cowardice, perhaps hesitation and perhaps nothing at all. The Myrmidons were all destined for Tartarus to become the personal guards of the House of Hades. Stronger then pretorians, faster then any cheetah and with the precision eye that would make any eagle jealous. These troops never stopped fighting and they are weirdly enough happy. They get the women, the good food and they serve Lord Hades without reservation for all eternity. But when you look with a critical eye you would see that something was missing. The fountains of Tartarus are there, the initial 44 and several more in a larger area. 4 quadrants. It starts with one, then two and then four. These are the foundational 28 and around that place are the other 16. These fountains are there, but empty and like the ancient fountains we now see in Greece and on Crete, these fountains are not working, but that is also the riddle. They were a personal design by Heaphestus and he doesn’t make anything shoddy. It is there that we consider the one failing of Tartarus. You see, from the beginning of time until now massive chunk of 108,000,000,000 souls and bodies have entered Tartarus and none of them were ever allowed to leave. The number is so big that the old gods might never have comprehended that number, but what am I saying?  You see almost 75% of that is merely the last 1200 years. And at some point the fountains stopped working. But the damned souls fear something more. You see Tartarus became grounds for the Mesopotamian Molossus. The fearful cowards who came here feared everything and at some point some of them became Molossus, the dog from the old days they feared the most. They became one and as these dogs fed on the damned they grew. There were two packs in Tartarus, they were on opposite sides of one another and they fed on whatever they could. At some point the two pack leaders grew to such an extent that they would even make the Myrmidon nervous, but the hounds feared the fountains and they were always weary that these fountains would work one day. So as there was enough food in Tartarus they would never approach the House of Hades. 

It is there that I approached the Palace. It was relatively easy to avoid the damned. My ring brought fear into the masses and they went in an all out panic at the sight of my trusty bident Psychofagos. As I approached the gates the Myrmidon opened it, seeing my ring they bend their knee and dropped their heads. I walked in and saw the initial stage, the palace was truly immaculate in many ways. I did notice some micro fractures, but not in the palace that had not seen violence for thousands of years. I saw books, ledgers of some kind and I saw workspaces. It seems that Lord Hades kept clerics. I wondered why my grandfather kept notes and on what. I looked around and saw nothing of note, the servants kept their distance and some of the female servants were massively underdressed, almost naked. On the plus side, they were gorgeous but it was almost 40 degrees in this place, so I did not have any desire for sex at the moment. I sat down and I brooded on what to do next. The palace was well over 400% of the United States Capitol. You could get lost in this place and that was not a good thing, not at present. I decided to go up and up and up. It was there that I saw the statue of Lord Hades, nearly at the top. The statue was around 12 metres or 40 feet high, it was some kind of marble, but not one I had ever seen before. It was some kind of white marble with red veins in the marble. I had never seen it before, but that didn’t mean anything. I was never a mason or stone cutter. I looked around and the chair the statue was on was the same dolomite the building was made of. On the back I saw some kind of cut out grooves, almost like they served a purpose. I followed the lines and they went to the wall and went into the walls. I looked at where the were sunk in and walked around to see a balcony, from the balcony I could see some kind of half disc, like it was meant to capture something. Up the wall on the roof was some kind of statue of what I reckon was a slave girl holding an amphora. The amphora was seemingly empty. I climbed to the roof which took almost an hour and walked to the statue. There the grooves were larger and went into the base of the amphora. I followed the grooves as far as I could and they went into the roof. I saw a balcony nearby, almost 4 metres below. I cautiously climbed down, only to see that the room was empty. Yet where the grooves needed to be, there was some kind of glass. They were cylindrical and the two pipes were going down. From that room there was a staircase and that took me almost to where I started. The pipes were there and went into the wall almost 100 centimetres above the floor. It was behind the statue of a Myrmidon. I followed the marble grates only to end up outside and these grates went directly to the first fountain. 

And that is how far I got looking into some of the specifics towards the end of season one of Engonos. 

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November 25, 2023 · 21:06

How I got there

That is at times the question, even to myself. You see, it all started with something resembling a nightmare. In my dream I was in some kind of mansion. The mansion seems not too original. It is like something from Stephen King, but it is not that source. The mansion was loaded with spirits and all kinds of supernatural things. It was placed by the original inhabitants of the mansion. I was merely trying to stay alive. I went from room to room trying to survive and phrases were caught in my brain. It was at that point that I saw part of the power of that place. I was drawn to the basement (never a good place to run to). There I saw some kind of mini-train, the train was really small, but built to support a complete person. I saw that the train was almost designed in two parts, the upper part and the lower part. The lower parts had gears that were running at full speed. They were driven by some kind of poltergeist. It was contained in some kind of glass/metal bottle, through it were wheel axes. The moment I sat on the train the upper side got pushed onto the lower part and the train started to move. The train was going in one direction, activating switches and ignoring others. It was the poltergeist that was in control and the passenger was along for the ride. After several minutes and after one long corridor I arrived in a room, some storage room but one with a difference. The glass roof gave me the clear indication that I was under a lake, there was a lake next to the mansion, but I never expected to be under it. There were more spirits there, almost like they escaped and in the middle was a dollhouse, much larger than normal and it looked like a replica of the mansion. The dollhouse seemed to be identical and then I noticed the small tags, all saying the same thing ‘In case of emergency’ The room had similar tags, but much larger and I saw a weird stick with a handle, almost like ancient sticks to activate gas lights. Then I saw the light receptacle on the wall, the stick would reach it, I raced to that place and pressed the stick. It was like some kind of press handle connected to some kind of dynamo. The sparks hit the receptacle and sparks flew. A second later all the lights went on, but a really bright white. Almost like there was magnesium in the mix. The spirits vanished immediately. I now had time to look at the dollhouse. I looked at the tags and saw where they were. I had seen the same connections in the mansion, but I never examined them. I saw the cords and I smelled one of them. They smelled a little oil like. I took a chance, grabbed my lighter and set one off. The impact was immense. Over seconds the lights in the dollhouse started to light up in some kind of green, what was equally astonishing was the fact that what happened there happened in the mansion as well. A voodoo dollhouse that is actually working. This was some next level issues in real life.

That was what I saw and it mattered that it gave me the inkling of what could transpire in season 2 of Engonos. I suddenly realised what would scare people to death. It isn’t death itself, it is a realisation and the dream got me there. It fits the stage as the main character is the son of Makaria, the step we get to in season 1 where he ends up in Tartarus could also unlock more. I had part of this in play, but not entirely and now the unlocking opens up a new edge to skate against. Skating against the edge is nothing new, but in this case I never contemplated several settings, mainly because they seem unnatural. It is almost like the adult industry relying on all girls having a case of Elektra complex, no Jennifer Garner required. The setting to use supernatural beings for other means is equally not entirely new, but to use them as some kind of army is not used that often and several sides were shown to me in this (sort of) nightmare. 

In other news, I just saw TechNote (by Homeland Security), the September 2012 version, a year after I created my solution, which has a side they do not seem to have. Now, I do not know all the inn’s and out’s and there is a chance that their 07ED-01-LASR is superior, but is seemingly missing a part. If that is true (currently untested and unverified) then the score is Yours Truly versus DARPA 4 – 0. Some people go through life being immensely happy merely one goal or two goals ahead. As such I feel happy I cleaned their clocks (we all have delusional sides). 

Not the worst case of Saturday in action. 

Enjoy your day.

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November 22, 2023 · 00:27

Tradecraft 301

This is not speculation, it is not presumption, it is a story. The beginning or one side to a story and it just jumped at me. I cannot use it in any of the other stories, as such I put it here. Enjoy and feel free to use this. 

It was early morning. The man was walking on the street. He was merely walking and enjoying the sounds of the city. Yet behind the facade that we all see there was something more, but unless you have been part of it, you will not pick up on it. He was looking to the stores in a mall and he was considering issues that were left open to him. He stopped, he smelled something and it was overwhelming him. On his left was an Italian shop making fresh wood fired oven baked flat bread. The sense of oregano was almost making him faint. He was suddenly so hungry. He saw the small breads, there was a version with Sopressa and parmesan. It was a special 2 for $5 and he bought two. He asked where he could get some coffee so he could sit down and eat them. The cook pointed at an empty table. He nodded and asked for a macchiato. He started to slowly eat the first loaf. A loaf was an exaggeration as the break was hardly more than a mini baguette but the smell and the taste were amazing. Before he had munched down on his first bread the macchiato was delivered. 

He starting to consider how greed has left tradecraft at a massive disadvantage all over the world, especially in London, most metropolitan American cities and Sydney. These franchise settings, setting an unrealistic stage of zero hours and non-manageable forced choices had opened up these places to tradecraft. Places like the IRGC were sending people to acquire these franchises, set 2-4 people as staff, letting them get trained in local customs and solidifying their new identities. And for years each place would gain 100-350 identities and credit card information. A trickle down solution that was not fast, but it was certain. Every shop would gain personal details from whomever paid with a credit card and it was fuelling the data coffers of UANI. And every day that no action was taken more details would flow to Tehran. The setting was almost unmanageable. It was even worse that the holders of these franchise solutions were holding onto their shops with an iron fist and their legal teams were shielding their revenue streams and not shielding the locations where the were. 

He considered that as far as he could tell already 28 shops were in play, three in Sydney, eight in London and the other 18 were set over San Francisco, New York and Chicago. And every 6 months these places would upgrade 36-72 agents to a new level finding new jobs with their old ‘employer’ vouching for it all and no one could tell how long it had been going on for. He was aware of at least 2 years of issues, as such Iran had close to 150 agents all over the globe and the options for chaos were enormous. So how to deal with them?

Detection was the largest problem. Several of them would enter some international student program and could fall under the net swim ming freely in an academic pond of knowledge and that was beside all the local knowledge they were acquiring by merely being silent and misinforming on their enemies through third party sources whenever possible. 

The options for some slaughterfest were also not possible. Before there were enough solutions, the media jumps in label it racism and they would make matters worse. Moreover these players had made connections with local organised crime overpaying for services and these people would be keeping an eye out whilst selling every now and then something with a huge margin, these people were not stupid, they were driven and the people who needed to be aware were not, or they just didn’t care.

Whatever this was it was a mere story. Will it grace your writings? Good luck with it and whilst I am looking at the additional settings for Residuam Vitam and Engonos I see more options for both, the question becomes how can I smooth things over? You see adding cogs tend to create levels of chaos and at some point I need to revisit the entire story and see if the story is smooth enough. Fr what it is worth, I see no point adding levels of tradecraft to either story. Well, Residuam Vitam has some tradecraft, but it was for different reasons and with a different mindset in play. The distinction makes sense when that story is complete and the additional parts are about to evolve, but that is on me and that is my challenge. 

We all evolve and every storyteller knows that if he or she does not evolve. Whatever comes after is merely repetitive and a simple twist on the originalist of the first story. A setting I will desperately avoid, but that is me. 

Enjoy the day.

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November 15, 2023 · 13:23

Considerations

We all have them and in this I am no different. As I was mulling things over, my mind saw the end of season 3 of Kenos Diastima. Things were falling into place and even as I was going in that general direction, my mind set in place the specifics of that setting. As these cogs turn and turn I was seeing the setting that got the story to there, and I have forever in the stage to end that series at season 3, a story with an open ending. Like the famous director Terry Gilliam I love open endings. A stage where the viewer gets to mull over what comes next. It leaves me with a sense of accomplishment. In that same way I also considered additions to the last two episodes of Engonos. On that note, I thought I had put the story here already. However I did not find the image.

My mind saw an additional cog, an additional layer to add to the story to the conclusion of season You see, what if we add a pinch, a setting for more and it is all linked to the fountains of Tartarus. These fountains were the ingenuity of Heaphestus and they are surrounding the palace of 

Hades. As I recall there are 32 of them in three styles. The image you see merely represents (to some degree) one of the styles, but they are important and they aren’t nice and they are also a form of defence for the palace. The inner layer being eternally protected by the damned Myrmidon. They are not nice and they never will be. They are kept in place as they ignored the orders given to them and grandpa was always a stickler for rules. Those who weren’t oath breakers but slide the rules of the ‘game’ off the beat end up in eternal service of Hades and he does not waste. Myrmidons were trained better than any other soldier in that time and they were ‘rewarded’ with eternal protection of the palace. It is all they know and they do not play nice. As such his lair is plenty protected, not that anyone would want to attack it. One does not attack the lair of a god, not even in Tartarus.

So as my mind started to make sense of the developing story I saw that I had already opened the link with Heaphestus, so that part is good, I merely have to add a few tiny bits and that part is clear. As I was going over all that the story I handed out yesterday on a Final Draft project management starts making more sense, becomes more clear and more defined. Locations, people, objects optionally a graphical representation of all the elements. In that stream of data the story is disassembled into elements and as such anything missing or unconnected becomes clear, shows up clearly and that allows for a better story a more robust narration and it all improves the quality of the story. As FX had as a slogan ‘the story is everything’ especially to a story teller. But everyone, including me needs the right tools. With Pages a writer writes the story, but we all get it that for a script Final Draft is the better tool. I reckon that as you have more projects, managing any project becomes the top need. 

So as my mind is tinkering with Onganos and Kenos Diastima I also see that the season 2 midpoint will need work and it all makes sense. Not everything should be in a cliffhanger. I have nothing against them, but at times a mid season conundrum fuels the soul of the watcher, making it a more defined experience. All this and soon there is more on other matters too, but that will be for later today.

Enjoy the upcoming mid-week. 

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September 18, 2023 · 16:56

The notion

This all started a long time ago and my mind revisited this point mere hours ago. I was watching a YouTube on Dubai by Travelalgorithm. I saw a banner stating “The dream starts here” and my mind went somewhere else. You see, what it is not the dream or the nightmare, but the notion? The spark that sets things in motion.

Past tense
In the past (around 35 years ago) I was send a game to test. It was called Virus. It had a bio hazard sticker, it was wrapped like it was dangerous, but it was a game. A game with a difference. You see, someone thought things through. They had the building blocks, but your hard-drive was the template. It would scan your drive and from there it would create levels and a game. And that file could be send to others who would send their file to you and you would have hundreds of hours to play. The setting was pretty ingenious.

Present time
Now we go to today, it could still work, but it could also set a massive larger stage with cloud stages. Now we are going to a much higher challenge (if you have a cloud directory). Then my mind took a twist on the matter and I cannot tell if it is just the story, a related story to other film IP I have, or merely new IP. 

What happens when that solution creates a scan handle for every file? What if it looks for something specific? Now these levels become an entirely new stage in data collecting. And the idea is not new. Phishing operations are set to this level of access. Yet did anyone consider that gaming is also a data collective? I accuses Microsoft of that years ago, but that was a simple operation. What if the operation is not that simple. What if the combination of games create the handles they need to collect stuff? People thinking that they are gamers are so collectively driven to whatever is proclaimed to be cool. Look at some game advertising that claim “only 1% can do this”. How many people will let their ego speak and fall for that trap and that is merely the simplest of traps. What if the upload that some games do is holding a little more? It is not out of the realm of possibilities and I a not that certain how alert Google and Apple are on the subject. This gets to be a lot more dangerous if you consider the old stages that Facebook game creators employed. If you had one game, getting to a certain level would unlock something in another game and soon enough people started to play that game too and more games afterwards. So what happens that two or more games will unlock interactions as well as other interactions? 

You might think this is nuts and it possibly is, but isn’t that how some ideas make for great story IP (read movie IP). At present there is more and more need for new stories and as America hasn’t been getting anything done. Other creators have had the stage all to themselves. There are all kinds of twists in stories. I personally will always love the Usual Suspects (1995) and that is for me. Yet today thee is an abundance of twists and cockles in storytelling that could and should be upgraded. Yet too many use the game as the story (which makes sense), yet too many are avoiding the technology that enabled the game in the first place and Virus was not a usual game. We focus on intelligent auto design of levels making them never the same (Diablo 3) and that is fine. Yet what happens when that engine is corrupted? It is starting to happen and it is happening more and more. What if the design is set to make you ALMOST succeed? Did you figure on that? Did you realise that most match three games seem to be easy the first 15 levels and after that it gets harder soon enough? But they have you, just buy a few ‘special items’ and you are back on track and it works, for the next 10-15 levels at least and suddenly you have spend $5. It isn’t much because that is not the goal. It is the goal of 200,000 people spending that and suddenly the game makers has a cool million. But what if that isn’t all? What if the IP on your laptop is the end goal? Did you consider that danger? That is the notion this story is thinking of. Consider the twist in Ocean’s 8 (2018). I thought it was brilliant and until the end I never saw it coming. As we went in blinker mode for one target, we overlooked the larger picture and combine these two and you have the setting. If you are still in the dark. Consider the military locations and what hardware too many kids get access to on that base (some adults too). There is a larger setting where they are all gullible and the Pentagon has overlooked that setting. Now consider what access the criminal mind gets when they combine two notions to create a third. So is that three notions, or does it suddenly become a total of 6 options? ( I will let you figure that one out).

Still, the idea has merit if you know the direction some are not considering for too long a time.

Enjoy Monday.

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September 17, 2023 · 01:23

Dreamcast, a place

Yup, In succession to part one. I decided to think through the characters. I am not putting it all here (for obvious reasons) yet when you think it through, I set up the larger station in merely a few hours. As such, any Canadian TV channel can pick this up. The reason is simple and two fold. In the first there is a writers strike in the USA. I will not assist any TV station there whilst the strike is going on. The second is that this event plays in Toronto, it seems logical that a Canadian TV stations could have a go at this.

Vasileios
He is the main character, not much is known about him and in the beginning the setting is that he travelled in time. Over the course of the movie we get more and the end has a twist (as one expects). He is driven to solve this event for reasons unknown.

Olivia
She is the liaison officer connected to our main character. She sports a heavy Taurus Raging Hunter 357 Mag 7-Round Revolver. The gun is specific and this has a reason. Her father was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. What she knows that other corrupt officers got him killed and she vowed to kill them with that gun. She is a crack shot, slightly rude mannered on speak and actions. She does genuinely care for justice and people. She cares for victims and she does not stand for bullshit. 

Michel Coulombe
He is a twist. I wanted to get the actual former director of the CSIS involved. This is largely an intelligence gathering operation, as such he would be a great consultant. Also, who is better equiped and trained to play head of the CSIS then the former director of the CSIS? From the beginning when our main character stops the initial terrorist event the CSIS gets involved and the fact that they were unaware that this was about to happen gives Vasileios a foot in the door.

Police Captain
The involved police captain is there to smooth things over and set the larger operation to get things done. I thought of John Larroquette or Patrick Labyorteaux to fill this role. The elected person is there to manage the police forces and to keep tabs on the two main characters.

MAGA
The nice part of these MAGA people is that they tend to be conspiracy theorists and that works for me. It is hard to find a decently believable opponent. The setting of the stage is that MAGA is ‘working’ with(or for) the Canadian Conservative Party. What none of them know is that MAGA is pushed by American Industrials to create enough panic and chaos so that America can push in and make Canada a republic. It adheres to the old golden rule ‘in confusion there is profit’ and with the US running out of space and resources expanding to the north is a simple business decision. I have set that stage in a few stages the conspiracy people, their support system, the conservative players and the conservative party. There needs to be clear separation so that the detection feels real. 

Unknown player
This person is unknown (for now) because I do not have the larger setting here. It is why there were two names for the police captain. The other one becomes the head of CSIS data analyses. I was thinking that they would have a data room with actual Palantir servers crunching the numbers. During the events we learn that data is ‘misplaced’ and this gets us to the corrupt police officers who were filling their pockets wherever they could, as such they are involved and we get to see Olivia being a crack shot. There is no denying that seeing a corrupt police officer executed is more satisfying than some organised crime figure (not by much though).

There might be some additional key people down the road, but I got this all done in under 4 hours (including the time for the first article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/09/13/dreamcraft-the-specifics/) 

Location 1
This is Bloor–Yonge Station. Here we see the initial attack stopped. The detonation (with hydrogen cyanide) is stopped. The event would have killed all the people in the subway station and the tanks were large enough to flow the gas into the street, which would be a first chaos point. With the subways out of commission and a massive cornerstone of Toronto traffic stopped in the heart of the city would create massive amounts of panic. As this is stopped the CSIS enables Vasileios to proceed, but only with Olivia locked at the hip to him. This gets the police in the mix as well and the CSIS data centre will be looking over every byte of data, to see what they missed. 

Location 2
It is a house, and I think it should be in Rockwood village. It allows for a later link to business conferences and Mississauga. The house is the impact of a shootout between parties and our two characters. He is sporting a Cretan knife which he buys in an earlier scene. Olivia was unwilling to hand him a gun. The scene starts with them sneaking into the back and he starts silently and indiscriminately killing the people there. Olivia shoots three and calls for backup. We see the cellar has a bomb factory, the police shows up a minute later. Vasileios grabs a gun from the table and kills the police officers. He states that these cops are corrupt, at that point the police commissioner calls and states that the reinforcements are 10 minutes out. This convinces Olivia this is about more and we see all kinds of evidence that bombs were made. 

Location 3
the CSIS ‘server room’ where the data is crunched, the captain there is starting to find ‘mislabelled’ data and now he knows that there is a larger problem. He gets 3-4 most trusted people in a separate server room and they start crunching the data differently, which is time consuming, but they do not know what is missing. As the story continues we see the crunching of locations and people on every bit of data. 

There is of course more, but two locations are key to the story. Seems weird to give away the plot ahead of schedule. I am still mulling over the option of how to include the conservative party without getting slammed with slander (or whatever claim they will make), for me the larger reason was their ‘worshipping’ of Donald Trump and MAGA. I still need to figure out a setting where Olivia executes the three corrupt officers that killed her father. It needs to read that it could have been a justifiable killing or a mere execution and it could be seen as either way. I personally believe it spices up the story a bit at the end.

 

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September 8, 2023 · 23:07

Ludum Scriptor

There was a moment, a mere hour ago that I saw where streaming could get interesting and that is why I am offering it here to Amazon (Luna) and Tencent technologies (handheld). You see, as a blogger, I know that fields evolve and there is a place where the people never were offered to be, but in all this streaming is opening a new door. 

To give this a swing another thing happened. I rewatched a mini series. I loved it since the first time I saw it decades ago and about 15 years ago I got the DVD and today (after at least 5 years) I watched it again. Now consider that mini series Jack the Ripper the one with Michael Caine and Lewis Collins. The first setting is Whitechapel (and the suburbs surrounding it) the stage is as authentic as possible and the Unreal Engine 5 allows for that. To recreate London around 1888 gives the people a sight towards life there, towards how the dark is a lot less appealing that we know it to be. This is not about Jack the Ripper himself, but it will be about the scenery and about a new option. So every person there will be able to create a blog, a story of a person and as you create a person (a he or a she) and you can set the face around your own image. The person you create (tradesman, uniform or other people) will give you an address in London. So now you have a person. You can now create your blog, and it will be held as stories to that individual. You cannot interact with THAT person, but you can interact as your double. Your character will be around where you are located, it will allow others to interact with your person and learn your blogs. You (your avatar) can seek out others and learn their stories. It is a new way to interact, a new way to spread your stories and as this takes off, we could have Mumbai in Victorian times.  San Francisco (around 1907), New York (around 1927) and that list could grow. It has a two sided story, in the first the people get to see and walk around these places in those times. The second is that this would be a new place to propel your stories, your blog, optionally your vlog and it will be a new medium that could grow. They are all trying to hog off new games, but they need underlying knowledge and these places could grow that knowledge and give the people something to do. Pleasing well over 50 million people is not easy and before they all run around like rats in a wheel. You could consider offering a much larger stage, one that keeps them appeased and allows them to appease others. We see all the small options that were, but now with streaming it is an option to think up an entirely new stage and create even more stages. For a small fee these people could copy what they did in their first location (for example $0.50 a month) they get an additional person in a new city (and that same fee for every other location) that could amount to up to $25 million a month for every additional character. And as the quality of the locations improve, the need to watch these places with their own eyes also increase. A new medium that might (or not) be successful. So how many other ideas have you seen floating around? I got to this in under an hour and there are more locations where people might want to go. Paris 1891 (2 years after the Eiffel tower was build), then there is Tokyo, Los Angeles and a whole range of places where we always wanted to be. And as the places evolve the developer can include their own people (celebrities, historical people) and offer even more stories. Will the market be large enough? I honestly do not know but there are 600 million bloggers and there are plenty who want to stand out, so why are we not doing that? I will let it up to you to decide. I wonder what else I can come up with this weekend.

Enjoy the weekend.

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August 29, 2023 · 11:08

Scripting a new reality

It is an idea that had been floating in my mind for some time. Yet the BBC article brought it to to front line of my (slightly despicable) brain. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-65377361) shows us what is wrong with this world and I decided to play on that. There was the added Sun article (at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23668092/just-stop-oil-recruit-kids-as-young-11/) throwing oil to the fire (pardon the pun). As such I came up with the idea of ‘Vigilante’ partially in light of the old classic The Exterminator (with Robert Ginty). This doesn’t have a script yet (standing firm with actors here), the idea is simple. We see a man clearly with support, but alone standing about 120 metres from a 5G mast. Soon thereafter a ute arrives with 5 people, 2 women, three men. They are unloading all kinds of stuff, clearly wanting to harm the 5G tower. The man takes aim and kills all 5 and walks away, the police will clean up the next day. We see 2 more events, all taking aim at tech terrorists. The second event is a just stop gravity event (pun intended). The man had prepared for over a week, and in the last day when he figured out the where part. In the night he installs the speakers within speakers. And he attaches the vaporisers to the corners of the pillars so that they will be out of sight. The day starts and the people from ‘Just stop Gravity’ sit for a nice meal. As they start to eat they are so content and the man, whilst walking away presses the button. The speakers second set start screaming an inaudible sound damaging their hearing. They never wanted to listen then, they never need to listen again and the vaporisers release skunk scent all over the room, they all reek and as they run outside to hide from the stench, they find out that their hearing is now impaired. 

This gets us the first flashback, a man is crying, his wife (implied) is on the stretcher, critically  injured. There is little hope for her, but they hope that they can get to the hospital in time to save their yet unborn baby. The just stop gravity march stops that and the ambulance is not in time to save the baby. The man screams and his reality shatters. 

We now get back to the current stage and we see that this vigilante has help, people who lost businesses to these protesters and they are helping him. They will never act and they will never be placed in the front lines. He made that promise as he lost everything he cared for, they never need to face that reality. We get one more event with fatalities and now we get the phrase ‘Our lives matter too’ then the next event the police captures him and the court setting is set upon us. The man keeps his word and never reveals his sources. He merely stares at these so called ‘victims’ as they are all about ‘their’ rights and the lawyers are all set to avoid the rights of the vigilante and his lost family. We see the evidence and we are presented ‘the side of the tech terrorists’ and as the case goes on we see that the crucial piece of evidence. One vaporiser with his fingerprint on the inside. Then on day 3 of the court case, the prosecution cannot show the evidence with the fingerprint and the court adjourns for 24 hours as we see the sides all mingled in their private hell. The next day the court resumes and the evidence is not found, as it as the critical part in the case the case is dismissed and as the vigilante is kept in a holding cell in the court (reason not set at the moment, but I am going for an emotional outburst from the vigilante) he is placed in a holding cell for the court case (from day 2 onwards), and after the dismissal he is packing his stuff in the holding cell, the judge approaches him. “You kept your word, my brother lost his son to these terrorists. Our lives matter too” he nods and walks away. End of movie.

All this done in under 4 hours. I am clearly not the worst in this, so feel free to use the idea for whatever studio you work for. Have a nice day.

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