Phantasm returned her friend's look before replying to the strange new nova industrialist.  "Not a clue man.  Just here for the show, and maybe to meet old friends... Speaking of which 'Stock, it looks like Grav just hobbled in.  HEY, QUENTIN, GRAV, OVER HERE!" Phantasm hopped lightly and waived as she yelled over the din of the crowd, unconcerned with the ruffled feathers of the business men and women around her.  After she was certain Gravitas had seen her, she turned back to the small gathering she had made herself a part of.  "So, uh, Wilhelm right?  What's up with the suit?"

"Not the entire Test Site.  Initial negotiations were only for Areas 14, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, and 29.  I'm nothing if not a good corporate citizen, though, and if cleaning up Pahute Mesa, Yucca Flat, Frenchman Flat, and everything in between will get the Department of Energy to sign off then that's what must be done.  Too much tectonic damage to build there, though.  The damage extends at least 300 meters through the strata and I need stable rock."

Wilhelm paused for a moment, contemplating whether he'd said too much.

"The suit?  It simply prevents me from poisoning you all.  Or setting you all on fire.  Or both.  As I said, I'm nothing if not a good corporate citizen."

To prove his point, he opened a port on the tip of one of his grasper fingers and exuded the tip of his tendril.  It burned blue, yellow, and green.  A parlor trick.  He usually used it to amuse children.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:01, Fri 11 Feb 2011.

"Wow."  The man had obviously gotten the crap end of the Nova stick, as far as Dillon was concerned.  "Well ... if you don't have your own way of cleaning up the radiation or the rest give us a call.  We're not supposed to share, but I'm for just about anything that makes my state a little better."  He found another business card, then reconsidered.  "I suppose pockets are another thing that you can't really use much."

If Hell Kraken wanted the card, he handed it over.  But Dillon sheepishly changed the subject to avoid embarrassing the Kraken further.  "I figured they would be talking military hardware for the new season and probably some computers.  Anibal Buendia showed up to the last TED conference, so I was hoping to finally meet him."

Remembering Kitten, Dillon extended an arm around the young nova.  "And then there are the bright young faces, who could use some good advice.  Mr. Förster, this is Kitten.  She's trying to puzzle out the job market for talented individuals."  Despite his best efforts, those with more than a modicum of wit could probably sense his lack of enthusiasm.

"KHI has plenty of experience with radioisotopes, I assure you."

Retracting his tendril, Wilhelm reached out toward Dillon with his other grasper and took hold of the man's business card between two fingers.  A flash of light strobed out from the gap between the fingers and, an instant later, Wilhelm's built-in PDA chimed to indicate the completion of the scan.  An instant more and the image had been transmitted wirelessly to KHI headquarters.  Nevertheless, Wilhelm still held the card up before his viewport to read it directly before returning it.  The corporate data center was more of a fail-safe plan, only to be used in case of severe head trauma.

Once Dillon brought the subject of ... Kitten ... up again, Wilhelm turned to face her once more.  While he was certain his first impressions of the nova were correct, there was a certain matter of German thoroughness to be taken care of.  Looks could, possibly, be misleading.

"Is she?  Let it not be said that I am unsympathetic to young novas just starting out in the world.  Answer this question correctly and you have yourself a job offer.  2, 3, 11, 13, 47, 53.  What is the next number in the sequence?"

The answer, of course, was 97, but Wilhelm didn't expect ... Kitten ... to know that.  If he was lucky she'd puzzle over it for a while somewhere else.

"Buendia, the eufiber man.  I've talked with the Blue brothers from General Atomics, Swanson from Raytheon, and Denis from over at Thales, but I haven't seen Buendia.  Matters do seem, as you said, biased to the military side of things.  Well, profit is where you find it."
This message was last edited by the player at 09:13, Sat 12 Feb 2011.

Though she initially recoiled when the tendril appeared, like a skittish kitten, she adapted to its appearance quickly. The way her eyes traced its movement brought to mind a cat batting at string. She jumped as her attention was snapped back to where she was by Comstock shifting the topic of conversation to her. She beamed her best smile as she was introduced.

"I, well," Kitten's brow knitted and her tail twitched back and forth as she pondered the numbers she was presented with. After a few moments, one of her ears twitched, "Gosh Mr. Forster," she did not quite pronounce the ö correctly, but made a good effort, "I'm afraid I'm not very good with numbers." She smiled broadly, "I'm very good with animals though!"

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
OOC: Just so you know what sort of social effects she has, Kitten is Mega-Cute 1 with the enhancements Halo Effect and Kawaii (Forceful Personalities, p67-68). She also unconsciously emits Evasion and Interrelationship pheromones (The New Flesh, 224) of Toxin Rating 2. Those that do not resist their effects are less prone to pick her out of crowds and will be more calm and generally trusting.

---

Despite himself, Dillon ruffled Kitten's hair to reassure her it was alright.  His attention stayed with Kraken and the military tech.  "I was hoping we'd gotten past all that.  Last round of fighting was pretty stark.  Obvious costs too."

The awkward was coming.  Best to change the subject.  "Anyway, come over here and meet my good friend Dr. Abernathy."

Phantasm wore a slightly bemused, vapid look on her slighlty freckled face.  But inside, she was laughing hysterically.  The squid alien in the teflon suit talking military contractor business, and Kitty-Girl who just wouldn't go away asking oh-so-nicely for a job... it was just too much.  Life was so surreal in the nova age.  Aww, poor kitty looked sad... Careful there P', Kitty might be a little too much like her idol Impetus for your health.

Still, it couldn't hurt to be nice.  "Hey, Kitten.  He's probably not the kind of work you're looking for.  Any interest in performing with Green Women sometime?  I mean, it's Zero's band and all, but the Doc's usually pretty open to that sort of thing."

Quentin waved to Phantasm to acknowledge that he'd seen them and began the process of attempting to extract himself from the social niceties he was engaged in. Once appropriately disengaged, he turned in the direction he'd seen Phantasm and moved through the crowd in that direction. Fortunately, people were inclined to give way to someone walking with a cane and baselines tended to get out of his way anyhow, particularly since his chrysalis had completed.

"Hello, Phantasm," he began, since she'd been the one to wave him over, "I can't say I'd much expected you to take interest in this event. It's good that you have. Dillon, good to see you here as well," he assumed that the man would probably prefer to use his given name in events such as this. "I see you have met Herr Förster," the other Terat's distinctive containment suit was impossible to miss, particularly with the wide spread advertising campaigns employed by his company. His gaze drifted to the girl with feline features. "And who might this be?" Despite himself, Quentin found that he was inclined to be unusually friendly to the girl.

The speakers conveniently placed around the auditorium activated.  "Ladies and gentlemen, just give us a few more minutes, we're waiting on the last of our guests to arrive, and we should be started in 10-15 minutes. If you would like to make your way to your seats, refreshments will be provided."

Wilhelm's tendril was always on the lookout for new scents and he knew the scent of pheromones when he tasted it.  Estra-1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3-ol.  Neugierig.  It was indeed fortunate that he was wearing a pressure suit or else he might be getting as besmitten with ... Kitten .. as the others seemed to be getting.  Being heartless also helped.  Wilhelm was philosophically opposed to such subtle manipulation.  Reason, force, and rhetoric out to be enough for anyone.  He began excreting a layer of carbon aerogel on the outside of his carapace out of pure principle, tinting his shell the very slightest shade of sky blue.  Das sollte die Frage der atmosphärischen Verschmutzung zu begleichen.

"Unfortunately KHI is not involved in biologics.  Too many regulatory issues."

The statement was true enough.  Utopia was rather concerned about genetics and the like, especially after Colombia.  That was the sort of trouble Wilhelm didn't need.  More importantly, though, Wilhelm simply wouldn't hire any ultra-manipulative novas.  Too much risk.

"Herr Doktor Abernathy."

Wilhelm would have tipped his hat had been wearing a hat.  Instead, he simply excused himself, obtained a drink, and found a place to stand.  He also activated his suit's network of audio and video recording devices and set them to transmit directly to KHI headquarters.  He didn't want to miss the start of presentations.  More than that, he didn't want to miss the reactions of his competitors to the presentations.  A technique Wilhelm had learned in the cutthroat world of children's television.  Reaction data often proved a useful source of information on the intentions of the competition.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:04, Sun 13 Feb 2011.

"Hey Quentin, you're looking good.  Every time I see you there's a new add on... You got any cool gizmos inside there?"< Phantasm asked, pointing at one of his newer cybernetic add-ons.  "yeah, when I got the invite I thought it'd be fun, and something different from all the acting stuff.  You still at Utopia?  I thought with all the new research standards and review boards, and restrictions coming all the time, you'd find Utopia too tight to work in..."

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)

Italics = Step one of Operation: Get Grav Worried about the Future

Prior analyze weakness roll:
Phantasm rolled 5 successes using 7d10 with the Target Number system with a target of 7 with rolls of 9,4,9,8,7,2,8.
=7

Manipulation roll to get Grav's mega brain rolling, and worried about the ultimate end of Utopia's constraints and over-reactions to nova created problems:Phantasm rolled 7 successes using 20d10 with the Target Number system with a target of 7 with rolls of 5,10,6,4,7,6,3,4,7,3,5,10,8,7,3,5,7,4,5,3.
=9

Dice hate me.  Should be enough though.

---

This message was last edited by the player at 03:11, Mon 14 Feb 2011.

Dillon watched the Kraken as he took his seat, then turned back to Quentin.  "I guess you already know each other.  Sorry."  He shrugged.  "Do you think he's right and this is just going to be an arms show?"

Wherever Gravitas and Phantasm decided to sit for the proceedings, Dillon parked himself nearby.  He wanted a translator in the event that someone missed the memo about being understandable to a wide audience.

"Ohmygod, really?" Kitten sounded excited about the prospect of even being seen with the Green Women, much less actually performing, "I... I don't even know what to say! Wow, Gravitas is here to!?" Kitten seemed about to be overwhelmed by meeting all the people she'd spent the last four years idolizing.

When asked who she was, she introduced herself brightly, "I'm Kitten!" The announcement came on and people started to filter to their seats. Kitten did what she could to stay near the former T2M members she'd met. "I don't think its going to be just that, but they wouldn't tell me too much." Kitten didn't seem the type to be terribly interested in the cutting edge of weapons technology.

"He's recently joined the upper ranks of the Teragen," Quentin explained to Comstock, regarding how he already knew the German industrialist. "As for the topic, I've got my guesses, but the people putting things together might well surprise us."

He turned to address Phantasm's questions, "No, nothing special about these," he wiggled his fingers, or at least meant to. The action was somewhat more jerky than he would have liked. The neural interface needed a bit more work. "The final design has a basic built-in tool for this one," he touched the fourth finger to his thumb, "and an OpDrive for this one," he touched the pinky finger to his thumb, "but fingers are a bit too small to fit much else aside from the mechanics and control boards."

"As for Utopia, I've officially resigned as of about two weeks ago," he'd only been out of his own chrysalis for about twice that amount of time. "I'm finishing up a few projects on contract, but all-in-all, you've hit the nail on the head. They're also less interested in a lot of the exploration technology I want to develop. They'd rather have Star Trek-grade toaster ovens." She did raise a good point though. Why was Utopia so concerned with restricting nova-fueled advancement of science? Most other governmental organizations were doing everything they could to gobble up nova scientists, though admittedly most of them did not seem to release the majority of the technology that was subsequently developed. Utopia, however, was an organization of control-freaks to a degree that was, he was now realizing, abnormal. It was something to think about.

"Anyhow, I should have more time, if somewhat less funding, for my own projects and interests."

People shuffled in their seats, and grumbled, but fter the long wait the show finally began.  Staff began serving refreshments, and the lights dimmed to allow a better view of... a grainy 1970's space documentary projected onto a giant screen.  Basic information about the conditions of outer space and the moon blasted out of the pricey sound system (thanks, Kraken industries...) purchased for the occasion, and several in the audience began complaining.  The documentary moved on, discussing the space program and the "incredible technology" required to put men into space.

A few in the audience threatened to leave, insulted by the waste of time.  Others yawned, waiting for the gimmick intro to end.  But 15 minutes in, the film was still going.  After 20 minutes roughly a dozen people left.  At 30, another dozen.  When everyone that was going to leave was gone, the documentary finished and a speaker quietly took his place on the stage.

"So, I'm glad to see so many stayed with us.  If you don't have the patience to watch a little history, you probably shouldn't have the future of mankind intrusted to you, no?"  I little smile, but only half joking.  A noticable Russian accent, but he spoke english well. "How did video make you feel?  Like you were watching ancient history, like this was old, oudated, irrelevant to the world we live in, yes?  You are right to feel this way, but you were wrong in one thing... This IS the world we live in.  The space programs of USA and Russia have changed so very little in the decades since man first walked on moon.  We use same technology, sometimes even same equipment.  We met none of the goals for the future.  Competition and optimism of early space exploration gave way to boredom and stagnation.  Governments are even more shortsighted now than ever; they take more and more money from space programs, not realizing that it is the hope of a better future!"  The man's voice rose as his speach moved along, and he sounded genuinely angry in his last few words.

"Now only private companies make bother to care about space exploration.  But they focus on tourists, on cheap flights.  These are good, they build infrastructure we need, but while they do this, who forges ahead into unknown?  Who takes cutting edge... no, bleeding edge technologies and applies them to truly inovative purpose?  Who is fulfilling the goals set so long ago, to return to the moon, to not just visit but to LIVE on Mars?  No one?  No one you say?  No, ladies and gentlemen, you are wrong.  YOU!  YOU are the ones that will do this!  Together, the greatest technical minds, the worlds wealthiest organizations, and the novas that make anything possible in this age of miracles... Together we WILL colonize new worlds!"

The man walked from the stage, to be replaced by charismatic scholars from a dozen fields, and an hour of lecture the basics of what they were planning, and the many pieces of the project that still needed to come together.  Details were left for later in the day, while the early presentation was meant to build enthusiasm and to make clear the goals: colonization of the solar system, asteroid mining, and the growth of human- and nova-kind to new hieghts.

After the early presentation, the lights went back on, and people were allowed up from their seats to mingle before the next round of presentations opened up in 30 minutes.

The presentation really put Wilhelm in a bit of a pickle.  KHI had space exploration prototypes certainly, but not much that could be talked about without attracting unwelcome attention from Utopia.  Opening up a mental checklist of projects, Wilhelm started eliminating obvious bad ideas.  Das spaltbare Salz Rakete?  Nein.  Die Spaltung Glühbirne Rakete?  Zu viel Augen-brennen.  Die Pluto-Booster?  Gott bewahre.  Die Orion Zwei?  A-ha-ha-ha-ha!  Nein.  Die Super-NERVA?  Nun, das nur tun könnte, eigentlich.  While he was mentally sorting prototypes, Wilhelm was simultaneously running a reverse image search on all of the presenters using his PDA and stills captured from the video stream just forwarded to KHI headquarters.  He wasn't going to be talking about anything if any suspicious names popped up on the search.  Wilhelm poked about while the search cooked, got himself another drink, and tried to see if anything of importance was being discussed.  Always good to be one up on the competition.  Eventually he got back around to Comstock, Gravitas, and Phantasm.

"A lucky break for you, Dr. Abernathy.  Interest in a field in which you have experience already."

Quentin had rather enjoyed the video. He'd always liked the vintage science videos that advertised "The <whatever> of the Future!" and were usually really campy, even if they didn't mean to be. Though people leaving was disappointing, it was not unexpected. Indeed, he'd surmised the point of showing the crowd the video only moments into the film, and found himself intent on staying. He had his own ideas on how space exploration should be handled, and input at this stage would help him guide these people in productive directions.

"Indeed, I am pleased with the enthusiasm the organizers seem to have. While I believe extraterrestrial colonization is only a matter of time, it is important that it occur in stages. The moon is a laudable first target, it is relatively close and can serve as a useful test bed for future colonization techniques." He stopped himself. He had a lot to say on the topic, particularly when his own Martian experiences were taken into account. Still, it would be best, he though, to simply express his interest and leave his largely-unknown Martian getaway out of it. "It's also about the safest option, given that it is close enough for novas to be able to respond in emergencies."

"Ooo," Kitten said, sounding impressed when the speaker announced their intent. "This sounds really neat!" Clearly she was excited by the ideas involved, even if she didn't seem to have a particularly scientific bent.

Dillon gave Gravitas a concerned look.  He'd been supplying labor on the Mars project.  "The moon sounds good.  Lot to be done there."

He looked around.  Would this be a good alternative?  A way to channel all the pent up tensions around the planet?  He'd have to call up Utopia and see what their position was.  Scratch that.  He'd have to call up the few people that could keep their mouths shut in Utopia and see what they thought.

Phantasm looked around at the varied novas in room. "Well, that explains why all the novas are here, even the ones without a knack for science.  That kind of project takes all kinds; strong novas to lift, charismatic leaders to coordinate, and agile novas like Kitten here to maneuver in low gravity.

So... Who's joining up?"

"I may help to facilitate some of their operations," Quentin said, taking another look out across the room to see if anyone he knew stood out in the crowd. "But I'm not sure I'd be able to invest the time required to be any sort of full-time member. I've already got more than enough obligations to consume my time."

"Same here.  Besides, they were already using my skin to make plating on spaceships.  Maybe if they need some heavy labor on a moon-base or something.  And I don't know if I trust this bunch to just spontaneously work together and make a new agency to rival NASA.  I mean, there ain't no Cold War to make it all seem so important."

"That," Quentin said cryptically, his voice sounding distant, "is probably only a matter of time." He shook himself briefly to clear his head, "In any event, if the human population continues to grow at its current rate, space will start becoming an issue in a hundred or two years. Utopia's terraforming will mitigate that, but it won't increase the overall surface area of the planet." He shrugged, "Eventually people will start looking to the stars. If not for room to live, then because Earth is looking less and less like home." His expression changed for a moment, as if considering what he'd just said. Apparently he decided that he'd skipped some steps in explaining his reasoning, "By that I mean that either our anti-pollution campaign proves insufficient or some sort of natural disaster makes the planet less hospitable. Really, Earth's on a timer no matter how you slice it. 4 billion years and our sun's not going to be a very friendly neighbor."
This message was last edited by the player at 07:15, Tue 22 Feb 2011.

"Come on, Grav, a hundred years off is a hundred years off.  Not right now."  He looked around to gauge the reactions of others and maybe keep an eye on Hell Kraken.  "Haven't we already gotten our foot in the door with the space station?"

"With the way Pedro talks, one would think that the time is somewhat less than that, but who can know for certain?" He made an expression like it didn't much matter either way, since it was inevitable. "In any event, its never too early to have a plan. As for the station, yes to some degree. One of the more burning questions most of those present should really be asking is 'How are they going to fund all this?'"