Soil Monoliths

"Pedologists always have a trowel or knife to hand so that they can dig around in the ground, a magnifying glass to observe the fine structure, a flask of hydrochloric acid to determine the carbonate content of the soil, and a book of colour samples to determine the colour content of the soil according to the Munsell scale. Under each colour there is a small hole in the hard, grey card. You can wheedle a small lump of soil into the hole to compare the colour with that of the card. Perhaps the most important measurement is the texture, the grain size composition: how much sand, silt and clay the soil contains. Experience soil surveyors roll a small clump of soil into at sausage and stick it in to their mouths, chew it, ponder it for a while, and then pronounce the verdict: light loam, 15 per cent clay.

And then it starts, as there is always more than one pedologist around the pit at any one time. They take turns to jump in, pick at the wall and taste the soil: 'I think its heavy loam, 20 per cent clay.'. They will disagree about the depth of the humus layer and how the soil originated: has iron leached down from the lead-grey layer into the brown layer beneath it, or is it just humus, or have thin streaks of clay leached into it, and how and when did that happen? There are endless discussions on the basis of qualitative, subjective observations, where the lack of statistical evidence is compensated for by years of experience in hundreds of pits. Bullshit around the pit, that's what we call it.

Then its time to take samples. Brown, double-walled paper bags are filled with soil, at least one for each layer, and its up to the soil laboratory to decide who was right. Sometimes you push aluminium tins into the wall to make a microscopic section and, if its really worth it, you impregnate the whole wall with polyester lacquer, stick a strip of medical gauze to it, pull it off again with the layers of soil stuck to it and put it in a wooden frame to take to the laboratory. The soil museum at Wageningen is full of these soil monoliths."

Salomon Kroonenberg - Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur: Mythology and Geology of the Underworld

Otherpool Session One. Sgt Shocks and Dark Platypus

AP's are usually boring for people who weren't there. This is here as record keeping.

Nathan: Sargent Shocks. Clumsy electrical mutant. Blue Sgt Pepper uniform with silver lightning stripes. Highly intuitive. Probably why he left the army. Real name Josiah Smith, substitute teacher.

David : Gödel. Strong, stupid failed scientist. Swims, fights, claws of occultum. Detects energy with his nose. Wears a hood/mask, ‘alien like’ armour and a cloak. Can’t help but think of him as ‘Dark Platypus’.

 Real name Kurt Kanada. Science reporter for city paper, the ‘Callisto’. Founded by William Roscoe. 

 

Substitute teacher and Science reporter at demonstration of new engine to provide free lighting for Otherpool. Intuitive sub senses danger. Gestures before children to divert explosive energy with powers. Science reporter sees this. Machine emits lightning and sparks. Reporter dives into action. Shuts down machine. Saves everyone. Teacher leaves, Reporter follows.

Teacher bribes kids with money and goes to change in toilet. Thoughtless reporter creeps outside toilet door.

Sgt Shocks (for it is he) blows every light on floor and challenges intruder, wreathed in electrical fire. A brawl begins. Some fighting, both evenly matched. Intuitive sergeant senses something awry. Both heroes. Brawl ends. Police arrive. Sgt levitates Dark Platypus (for it is he) out of building in front of mystified reporters and angry police. Dark Platypus runs for street grating, Sgt blows police radios to stop them calling for help and follows Platypus.

Dark Platypus leads to secret lair beneath Hoskinson Street. Called the ‘Dark Loop’. Successful resource rolls mean failed scientist has functional spectroscope, an AI from the 60’s that runs on magnetic tape, communicates in flashing light and is more intelligent than he is, called ‘Nuth’. (Reason 40). And a giant stuffed Moa, former pet of defeated supervillian.

Sgt Shocks called headmistress Clair Sweeny and explains knocked on head during demonstration enquires if children still alive. She understands and tells him yes.

Kurts editor and boss Ray Stubbs is convinced Dark Platypus up to something, tells Kurt to get ‘the skinny’ on the hero that he, in fact, is. So far so Marvel.

Both agree to return to lab next day.

Professor Rice and Captain Fitz tell them machine malfunctioned as Plasmic Coagulator missing. Could have strange uses. Possible use is opening decayed dimension gate. Captain tells high-intuition character that there are NO CLUES, NONE. Character accepts this and does not look over crime scene. First time in superhero history.

Both hatch different plots to uncover the thief.

Dark Platypus goes to dimension gate docks. Hangs around a bit in broad daylight. Calls computer on landline for help (no mobiles in this reality). Waits by phone. Swims for clues. Told by passing children not to stay around at night as Tokky gang often present. Computer calls back, tells him to check gates for recent repairs. Dark Platypus finds gate ‘Paul’ has such repairs and Plasmic Coagulator shaped hole in machine.

Sgt Shocks burns most remaining Karma shopping for useless trinkets. Attempts to trick vaguely-racist (dm’s fault) generic Asian street gang with his mutant powers. Goes horribly wrong. Blows every light in building. Activates all alarms. Stands wreathed in electrical fire. Gets shot. Escapes by threating woman’s life. Learns a bit more about the gates and that the Islanders ‘have big plans’. Runs to docks.

(Plasmic Converter can activate gate for one-way transport of something from any point in the galaxy. Will then burn out.)

Islanders now know Sgt Shocks civilian face and that he has energy powers that can defeat their guns. All advantages lost.

Dark Platypus uses terrible energy detection powers. Burns karma. Finds van.

Sgt Shocks and Dark Platypus advance on van from above. Leap to attack.

Dark Platypus duels tough thugs whist Sgt Shocks zaps them from back of van.

Three microtanks exit the van at speed. One carries Plasmic Coagulator. They race to the gates on the orders of Craig Charles.

Dark Platypus dives into van and goes after the tanks.

Sgt Shocks falls from van onto heap of enemies. Sees Craig Charles inside the van. Levitates to safety.

Dark Platypus successfully swipes lead microtank into the docks. Plasmic Coagulator disappears under water. Possible death of tank driver.

Exit in media res due to poor timekeeping of DM and minimal running time.

There are so many signs of trouble

The crows stop talking in immigrant hashmarks and speak only vaguealities in BBC English.

Hurled racial epitaphs of the urban ratboys impact, not passers by, but post boxes, telegraph poles. Teen earths noospheric hatefield by assaulting streetlamp screaming “you f*cking polish c*nt!”

The bus drivers sig saur is on top of the change machine behind the glass, not holstered like it should be.

Omnipresent asian Beatles pilgrims flee the scene.

The weekend loan shops silently shutter their doors.

People look up from their phones.

Free government lend-a-bikes auto breaklock to prevent collisions in expected fracas. Numerous falls, skinned knees.

Pigeon flock spirals through the darkening grey on a bed of breaksqueals from invisible gridlocked cars below.

The old man shouting ‘Echo’ behind the news stand silently stows his papers and extends his wheels.

 The rambling conversation of teenage girl groups orbits closer and closer to consensus reality, becomes aware, relevant to immediate circumstances.

The ghosts on the abandoned floors above shops press themselves against the black glass and do not flee your gaze.

Royal badges on post boxes police helmets and stamps briefly flicker with para-reality Stuart coat-of-arms. The Most Catholic Empire never ceases trying to overwhelm our reality and its influence seeps deeper in times of stress.

You can’t remember who the monarch is and do not know the face on coins. (See Above)

Mersey flows the wrong way.

Ferry seen though fog at the wrong time, seems to carry war damage, torn by shells.

Electrical bollards ascend and loudly deny entry to invisible vehicles.

The Yellow Man appears on pedestrian crossings between the green and red.

Revelling students wearing traffic cones walk out of empty club to find themselves in the middle of the day, break down, start crying.

The man with his legs on wrong is playing his pipes again. 

Clouds fill with nacreous, numinous yellow light, rain falls in bright sunlight at 75 degrees, looking like a gate of golden fire.

Squirrels. Evil evil evil evil.

Opposed rainbows, neither giving ground.

Scallies wait neatly at the cross light, preparing to move safely according to the rules.

Thick, grey clouds condense briefly from the tunnel air vents, then disperse.

Pre-recorded sales patter from in-store megaphone starts looping single sentence, compressing inevitably into single terrifying phrase.

Matrix van patrolling extra slow.

 Sugared doughnut sellers find machines producing oddly curved sigil-doughnuts.

Doors to windowed bar seem locked, people inside refuse to look round. No-one leaves or moves.

Light paths on the fruit machines start flashing subconscious warning patterns.

Pigeons riding bow wave of arriving tube train fly straight past you, out of station completely.

My Means of Destroying You All

I’ve had enough of you and of this, now you must be destroyed and I must rule.

How shall I go about this?

1. Seize black hymns in the shadow of a burning church, encode them in a polyphonic bomb and detonate via lightning strike at the tip of a black spire on the day of St James.

2. Politicise ratling codeboys with engram induction techniques hidden in fast-delivery cheesewheels, aim them like a gun at the mirrorcogs of liverpools moneycore, bring it all down in debt.

3.  Meditate in a null-fused stratosphere for nine hundred days of storm, learn the lightning’s song, sing it and bring down an age of electrical tyranny like divine fire.

4. Advertise for an army of the cybernetic poor. Force-implant Clausewitz chips and hand out light armour support and plasma rifles from japan, storm heaven, harrow the sky with descended souls.

5. Raid atom-smashers with expendable crime gangs, assemble pirated strangelets into an anti-laminate gauntlet with higgs-boson knuckleduster. Punch through spacetime and conquer whatever I find.

6. Hijack the HMS Nabokov, sink it onto the trans-Atlantic tunnel, set up as pressure-sealed undersea pirate state, hold both nations to economic ransom whilst launching raids on the Anglian coast.

7. Lens gravity waves through a self-launched mirror-darkly opalescent moon orbiting in Lunasynchronous orbit, hiding the real moon like a domino mask. Tidal chaos, auction moons secret identity to governments/madmen for cash.

8. Use fake OS update to infiltrate X-crypts onto all mobile devices. Phones radiate conspiratrons. All citizens consumed with paranoia, secrecy. Begin reality-pogroms.

9. Put cameras in dogs. Find out what’s going on.

10. Warp space gate to the mythical planet-of-crime, train there with transhuman overbeings dedicated only to deception and theft, return with new skills and launch one-man invisible war on justice, boredom.

11. Built crystallised death-refracting disco-armour, decode Dante’s inferno using 10^th gen computer bees. Eat the honey and swandive into hell. Track down hitler/stalin/Ghengis and pistolwhip the gold locations out of them, return to earth and buy the economy.

12. Scratch together continental electromags. Use to vinyl-scratch earths iron core like an old record. Send mangowaves out in space and back in time to affect the development of nearby civilisations millions of years ago. Await arrival of alien space armada that already hails me as creator-god.

13. Teach monkeys kung-fu. Assassination terror squad.

14. Breed kaiju from hacked whale organs underneath the north pole. Embed secretly in ice. When pole melts due to global fuckery, Kaiju released, battle and destroy with secret cranial doom-chip, use known only to me. Demand payment, girls.

15. Use global dance craze as planet sized ritual so summon primordial antibeing to earth. Ally with the nega-lord re world domination. Secretly inform heroes of weakness. Watch as they take it down. Throne of nega-verse now available. No-one thinks strategically.

16. Battle Hindu pantheon in space. No victory possible, cyclic, inevitable. Might be fun though. Possible global destruction.

17. Seize drone fleet from skies of arab state, fling witlessly at US eastern seaboard. Cackle. Hide. Mint it on the defence contracts over decade of global war/moral decay.

18. Freeze the Hindenberg. Use chronal shock to splinter self into time-ghost. Enact infinite schemes throughout history of man, trace patterns of failure and success to develop possible consuming over-scheme (danger: possible will discover am actually god)

19. Mass-assassination campaign, victims irrelevant.  Secure on-site murder-shaman to catch ghosts of killer rounds as they fly. Collect ghostgun rounds and imbue with predatory life. Have bullet-wraiths re-enter world possessing random guns and bullets, must battle for supremacy casting aside spent wielders like meaty chaff. Final ghost is king of projectile death. Fire directly into night sky to puncture darkness and usher in blazing world of eternal light, poor sleep.

20. Use trans-corporate hyper-sigil from demntia-space to activate the no-bot curse. All automita become existential, French, annoying. Mankind goes to war against own creations. Gives up. What’s the point anyway?

I will do anything to avoid filling it in

No points at all if you can work out where I ripped these off from.

Otherpool Crime Gangs

Tokkys – Low, slumped thugalikes with heavy shoulders, bald heads and drooping arms. Love violence for its own self’s love. Other gangs start riots to pull a heist, they do a crime to start a riot, then roll in it from that point on. Scrap-tech experts. Everything they drive and use is kludged-by-hand from scrap and ruinated technology. Led by Lister from Red Dwarf.

The Hive – All female misandrist pregnancy-and-death cult. Dave Sim’s worst nightmare.  Gaunt girls in their hundreds on cult mind-control starvation diets. Swarm on you fearless of death and rip you to shreds with carbon-reinforced nails, undetectable to cops and not illegal anyway. Hive mother is a perma-pregnant Kathy Burke

The Aul-Fellahs – Spastic and terminal Alzheimer’s-gangsters wearing combat-hospice cyber gear. Staggering stiffly, in their NHS exo-suits. Brains wormed up from dementia and coke abuse. Semi-intelligent cortical upgrades blinking on the sides of their heads. Lemniscate mnemo-loops auto-flag the frontal lobes with who they are and where.It goes wrong sometimes or doesn’t remember stuff right. They can be hacked too. All irredeemably evil with experience of a lifetime of crime and harm. Terminal cases and uncaring of the end. Lead by evil Daniel Day Lewis from ‘My Left Foot’.

LIPA-nauts – Fey, pretentious hyper-beautiful art gang. Swanning around on superfast beautifully decaled silent motorbikes. All live in gated communities you can’t get into, or in Chester (daddy’s house). Like knifing people. Really good dancers. Tend to steal beautiful things and keep them because no-one else appreciates them. Lead by Ziggy Stardust. They are a crying race.

They have a black-clad drug-annihilation division. Homeless on a parasitic perma-couch-surf in other people homes. Don’t let them in.

Islanders – Refugees from.. somewhere. No-one sure where it was or exactly what ethnicity they are. Maybe an oceanic island chain, swamped by global warming. Super-optimistic though. ‘Accepting’ of ‘all’. Drive around in blocky cars. Tight family structure and creepy impenetrable caste system. Some kind of positivist pseudo-religion. Energy weapons and high technology. Futurists. Like hyper friendly Mormons meets the Hmong meets AIM. Lead by … what Mormons do I know? ‘evil’ Vincent Baker.