RE: [JMC_Blue_Dwarf] **Action** - \"A Holographic out-of-body experience\"

<snip>
Jay looked back to Rufus. The bridge of the ship had now changed to
the Bridge of the Enterprise, and Rufus was busy checking a computer.
"Any idea where the Blue Dwarf is?" Asked Jay.
Rufus shook his head. "No. But there is a Krylon ship coming right at
us."
"Change us into one of their own ships. They might be easily fooled."
Efof bit his holographic fingernails. "Or they might not. Do we have
any weapons?"
Rufus shook his head. "We can project hard-light holograms outside
the ship though."
"Like what?"
<end snip>
This was it. Jay thought. His first command. He glanced down at the rank insignia on his hlographic shoulder. Captain. Captain Jay M. Chrysler.
He'd never really seen himself as a captain to be fair, he'd always preferred to be the one running into the fights or leading squadrons of Space Eagles into battle. He'd never pictured himself as the one giving the orders. Sure, he'd commanded Blue Dwarf in the past, several times in fact - and of course, he'd been the commanding officer of the navigation department for the past few years but it wasn't the same. There'd always been someone else on the ship to report to, someone to justify his decisions to, someone to advise, someone to criticise, and someone to pick up the pieces when it all went horribly wrong.
Right now, here on the Enlightment, the penny-buck stopped here, with him, Captain Jay Chrysler. If he smegged up here, there was noone to blame but himself...
And here he was, commanding an unarmed vessel, and about to face the most relentless enemy he'd ever known.
The Krylon ship stopped. On the Enlightenment's view screen Jay could see the opposing vessel faced them, stern to stern. It did nothing.
A bead of sweat trickled down Jays's forehead back in the AR suite on Mollopod.
"Sir..." Rufus piped up. "What should I do Sir..."
"see what you've got in the external projectors databanks that we can use....but don't do anything til I give the order..I think their scanning us.."
He looked over to the tactical station where a holo-graphic simulation of Mk.10 nodded to confirm Jay's suspicions. Mk.10, obviously, was immune to the Krylons firewall...so didn't need a holographic form to pass through..but then, without one the ship would fly off, leaving him floating in the dead of space, what with not having any solid matter and all...
"They're hailing us...." Rufus said from the back of the bridge..."Patching through to speakers..."
The room was filled with a high-pitched shreiking, similar to the sound a fax machine makes when you phone it by accident, everyone covered their ears - which practically incapacitated Efof who wasn't used to only having two arms, botrh of which he found were now in use.
"TURN IT OFF!!!" Jay yelled!
Rufus obliged, and the room fell silent.
"Smeg..." Jay muttered.. "They're gonna want a reply, trying to make sure we're one of theirs...Ruf, can you translate?"
Rufus shook his head. "It's a data-stream, but it's heavily encypted, it'd take me weeks to translate.."
"great..the first time we need that sodding Janitor for anything useful and he's in another dimension altogether..."
"What do we do Jay..." Mk.10 asked "We delay too long and we're goners..."
Jay turned to face away from Rufus, facing the viewscreen again.
"what we do..." Jay replied "Is UNLEASH HELL!! RUFUS! HIT THEM WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!!!"
Rufus nodded and his fingers danced across his keyboard, the external hard light projectors fired into life and a small toy car materialised just off stern and flew at breackneck speed into the Krylon ships hull where it bounced off unimpressively.
"Anything a little more...spectacular tucked away in that database Mr. Febuggure?"
"Er...yeah...sorry....let me try that again..."
Seconds later a barrage of slightly irate circus clowns made from balsa wood were hurtling toward the Krylon ship.
Jay sank back in the captains chair and lay his head in his hands.
"It's gonna be a long day..." he sighed.
<tag - someone get us out of this mess!>

-----Original Message-----From: JMC_Blue_Dwarf@yahoogroups.com [mailto:JMC_Blue_Dwarf@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of OnionSent: 21 August 2008 23:28To: JMC_Blue_Dwarf@yahoogroups.comSubject: [JMC_Blue_Dwarf] **Action** - "A Holographic out-of-body experience"

The Krylon factory exploded in a plume of flames, members of the Blue Dwarf crew, and various Mollopods, Aerons and Eniram were covered in debris, cogs, and parts of semi-constructed Krylon war-machines.The team spread out to survey the area and make sure no Krylons were left dead on the planet. They discovered a mostly-human cowering in a destroyed escape pod which was smouldering in a crater. The man introduced himself as Lester Seventeen-Dot-Phelps which most people thought was too much of a mouthful so tried never to have to write it down.Justin Pancake was found bouncing around in his shield bubble through molten lava flows. He was cursing so badly and threatening that the team almost left him there, but when he started threatening to kill a puppy for every minute longer they left him bouncing, they threw a net over him and dragged him back to the transport point.--------------------------------Where: Mollopod HomeworldWhen: Several days later"Will this really work?" Asked Efof. "Of course!" Said Jay. "You've used the AR machines plenty of times right? Plus, since when have you been scared of stuff!""I'm not scared!" Efof said quickly and unconvincingly. "But I only use the AR machines for interactive porn, not rescuing starships from megalomaniac robots.""That's a big word for you Efof!"Efof grinned. "Megalomaniac? I looked it up this morning. I've been waiting all day to say it!"Jay nodded at Rufus, who placed an AR headset over Efof's face. Rufus was wearing a long white lab coat, and looked quite the respectable scientist, but Jay still couldn't help thinking how young he was and was worried this might all be a waste of time.----------One hour later---------------Efof, Jay, Rufus, Lester and a few other crewmembers stood on a raised platform above the Mollopod's second largest city. The city was quite picturesque, being built on the coast next to a beautiful purple sea. They didn't see much of this of course as the platform they stood on hovered almost a mile above it.What was the most unusual thing about this ensemble was that everyone had a "H" on their forehead. Any passer-by would assume this gathering of Holograms was the annual "I'm dead but loving it" party (organised on Facebook). But these people weren't dead, their lifeless bodies were laid on medical beds in the Mollopod Science Centre several hundred metres below them.Efof scratched frustratingly at the "H" on his forehead. "Stop it!" Said Rufus."Its itchy!""No it's not. You're scratching a holographic representation of your head, it doesn't itch at all. You can't even feel anything.""It itches! Besides, what's the worse that could happen, could it fall off?""No. It's permanently attached.""Then I can carry on scratching." Efof said. Then suddenly realised something. "I... I just realised what's wrong with my forehead.""Other than the 'H'?""My penis is missing!" He started bawling and crying out for his lost penis.The group had assembled on this levitating platform to behild the birth of a new experimental starship. Several high-ranking Generals in the Space Corps were showing off their new ship, but were momentarily distracted by the sounds of Efof crying about his lost penis.Rufus grabbed the Holographic Ffionian by the shoulders and pulled him to the edge of the platform. He pointed down at a hospital. "Look. You've not lost your penis. Your real body is down there and it has a penis firmly attached to it."Efof stopped sobbing. "Really?""I'm really sorry, but we hadn't discovered Ffionians when we started writing the software."Said another voice. It was Lester Seventeen-Dot-Phelps, who like everyone else, also had a "H" on his forehead."You created the software?" Rufus said. "Well... I worked on it... a bit. I never thought to include a parameter to allow penisses anywher other than the groinal region though, sorry."Efof nodded in understanding.They all turned their attention back to the General who was announcing the new spaceship. .It was a totally holographic spaceship named the "Enlightenment Version 0.22 BETA." It was highly experimental and totally holographic.Rufus walked to the edge of the platform and looked at the ship. It had a backbone of wire-mesh, and a computer processor. The rest was entirely holographic. This meant the ship could take on any shape it wanted. The General presses a remote control and the ship transformed into many different shapes, including a Starbug, large beachball, an imposing-looking space-fighter, a space-squid, a small moon, and the USS Enterprise.The General then went on to announce that the ship could support an unlimited amount of additional holograms, including crewmembers. "What's he saying?" Efof asked. "I can't hear.""He's saying that if a holographic crewmember dies, the 'Enlightenment' can bring them back to life.""Oh" Said Efof. Then without warning he pushed Rufus off the edge of the floating platform.The holographic Rufus screamed, and fell a mile until he hit the ground. Then he materialised next to Efof again. "That was not funny!" He shouted.Efof grinned cheekily.-------------One day later---------------------------------------Jay stood on the bridge of the "SS Enlightenment v 0.22 BETA", which currently looked like the inside of Dr Who's Tardis."You all know that the Blue Dwarf was sent into Krylon space through a portal known as the 'Firewall'." He said to the entire crew. "And that no living human or organic lifeform can pass through the 'Firewall'. Well we've left our human bodies behind, and are now going to pass through the firewall in our current holographic form.""Does this make us invincible from the Krylons?" Efof put his hand up and asked.Jay grinned. "As holograms, we can't die. We'll be brought back by the Enlightenment's computer. But if the Enlightenment is destroyed, then we could all die."Efof gulped and looked around at the other holograms. He'd never felt so invincible but vulnerable at the same time.Four Space Corps cruisers intercepted the Krylon armada just far away from the Firewall to cause enough distraction for the Enlightenment to quickly pass through undetected.As the ship passed into the Krylon dimension, everyone felt the scanning beam pass through the photons of their artificial bodies. It felt odd knowing that this should normally kill them, they were like ghosts watching someone slice a knife through their necks.The Krylon dimension was a mess of orange and red fiery swirls. There were no stars, but in the distance they could see geometric shapes. Cubes, prisms, octahedrons. These must be the Krylon's mechanically-created planets.Jay looked back to Rufus. The bridge of the ship had now changed to the Bridge of the Enterprise, and Rufus was busy checking a computer. "Any idea where the Blue Dwarf is?" Asked Jay. Rufus shook his head. "No. But there is a Krylon ship coming right at us.""Change us into one of their own ships. They might be easily fooled."Efof bit his holographic fingernails. "Or they might not. Do we have any weapons?"Rufus shook his head. "We can project hard-light holograms outside the ship though.""Like what?"<Tag!>I hope this action post stirs some creativity. I haven't planned how we should use this ship, so the first person to post can decide what happens next! Sorry to rush past a few things, like the aftermath of the explosion on the planet, and us meeting Lester Seventeen-Dot-Phelps – I just wanted to get to an exciting story. I'm assuming by this point that Lester hasn't met everyone just yet, so you can still introduce yourselves to him (or his hologram at least!).There are a few characters I haven't included in this post, this is either due to them not currently posting or having told me that they want to pursue their own subplot. I left Andy the cleaner out because I thought it would be unrealistic for him to be included on this mission – but I do want him to turn up in some interesting way. I wanted to make you work your way in in some interesting way though :-PAll other characters that I missed out, just assume you're already on the ship.If you have some interesting ideas for this story, either talk them through with me or just go ahead and post them. This can be as wacky a you want.