The Myth Plague - new serial/episodic fiction begun

[Moonlit Naiad]

http://forum.midnightaurora.com/viewtopic.php?t=14 <-- story thread
http://forum.midnightaurora.com/viewtopic.php?t=15 <-- comment thread. Comments can be done here, too...

Episode/part 1 posted. Ever wonder how the National Security Agency might report on a transformative event? Well, wonder no longer.

Warning: some strong language (epithets in dialogue).

Intent is a twice-weekly update schedule.

[Musashi]

Very interesting idea! I haven't seen something like this before. I am curious to see more... :3

[Eri Anikemi]

Well, it's an interesting way to do it. I'm... really not sure I 'grok' the idea of the president assuming that 3 of his citizens turning into mythical creatures is a terrorist attack.

I admire the fact that he's willing to go public with this though. I think though that he would require more than 3 cases before he would 'go public'. Of course, if the centaur woman was caught on cell phone camera or better yet, a hand held video camera, then he might not have a choice. Which could work well for the story, having his hand forced like that.

In strictly scientific terms, the Mythos virus must use magic. It can't be any kind of known science. The extra mass in the centaur woman's body simply has to appear from SOMEWHERE in modern science. It can't just 'appear'. Magic however, has no such restriction. Mass can appear, disappear, whatever it likes.

I'm just saying that the positive proof of something that blatantly violates currently known scientific principles is going to cause a LOT of consternation in the scientific community.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Well, don't forget, there are three REPORTED cases...it implies there are many other SUSPECTED cases.

[Moonlit Naiad]

Well, it isn't the president making the assumption. He's going off the intelligence provided. K1 and K2 groups are the ones making the correlation, and only just now, after several months and three confirmed/observed incidents have they tenatively decided on a possible link.

The specifics on "The Myth Plague" (Mythos Virus is someone else's world) will come in due course, and while the "Mermaid" and "Demon" might be able to be quasi-explained as rapid mutations, the mass issue with the centauress /is/ something that science will have a headache about for some time. (btw: consternation is a good word, and I would've used it just now, save you did. That's one of those words, like titilate, that can't be used too often...)

Not every post will have reporting in it though (be a royal pain to generate and keep track of all those DTG/Distro lines ^^;; ), but they'll pop up often enough.

Next update will have a bit more on the centaur.

Thanks for the comments, all ^.^

[Eri Anikemi]

Glad you're thinking about the mass issue. But a real point here is that if the demon has horns and/or a tail, you run into the same problem of mass creation. You can't just 'zap' something like that. There's defiantly a creation of mass going on there.

I do hope the story doesn't go all dark with conspiracy and cover up theories. Our government has proven incapable of covering up a cupcake with frosting, let alone something like this. Historically, it seems that it doesn't matter what they try to cover up. There's always a leak a few years later.

[Moonlit Naiad]

Well, for relatively minor changes/zaps, the 'excess' mass is easily attainable, though the science of the 'relocation' and 'transformation' of it would still be problematic without relying on 'black box' technologies.

For the demon exampe, horns and wings and tails are all relatively minor enough that mass can come from things like a meal in the stomach/bowels, becoming a little trimmer/thinner, or even gaining hollow bones, the way regular avians have. And because the relation between height and weight( or mass) is not linear, the loss of a few inches of height can provide a fair amount of 'freed-up' mass to use for other things. For relatively minor additions of mass, the requisites could be 'harvested' from the surroundings (air, polution in the air, the ground, heck even clothing).

Of course, the matter of zappy is a little more complicated than taking mass from one area and converting it to a different sort of matter. ^^;

Now, something like a centaur would require a lot more mass than one would generlly consider available from the methods mentioned above. (Unless, of course, it was a /significant/ loss of height, making for a cute minature centaur), but if you start tweaking in magic (or sufficiently advanced technology, thank you Mr. Clarke) you could, for instance, take the mass from a more remote location, maybe with a centaur taking an actual horse from somewhere and doing a merge, not a full transform, with the excess matter being converted into energy to help power it). That is, a combination of matter transferance as well as manipulation.

Of course, there's another way to get matter from 'nothing' while still within the confines of current accepted scientific understanding. The old formula E=mc^2 can be rewritten in terms of m, that is, energy can be changed into matter. Granted, it takes a whole lot of energy to create a small bit of matter, but if you ignore the difficulties of harvesting, channeling, and transforming the energy into matter, one can - in essence - appear to create something out of nothing.

The specifics of the mechanism(s) I'm using will have to remain vague for now, but shall be revealed in due course. ^.~

A minor point of interest though, the reported incidents: mermaid, demon, centaur are chronologicly in increasing order of 'difficulty' with consideration to the question of mass/matter (approx two weeks separating each). Could someone be working up to something 'bigger'?

As for the presence or absence of governmental conspiracies or coverups, I have to temporarily fall back to a comment with its origins in the intel community: "I can neither confirm nor deny..." To do otherwise would be spoilers, yanno? ^.~

[Moonlit Naiad]

http://forum.midnightaurora.com/viewtop ... 14&start=2 <-- several hours late, but updated.