"One of the things you people will learn as your postcount rises is that the problem with a martyr's "spiritual victory" is that you can't do a lot with the martyr afterwards."- Tangent's famous opening to his lecture on RESPAWN theory.
"Death is sooooooo permanent." - Emile Mercer
Finale Part 1: Reaction Shot...
"Shaddup, Talix, I'm concentrating!"
while(poll($specAlertStatus)) {
# thunderbirds are GO!
CG quietly reached out into the immense reactor "circuit" miles above and tugged gently on the vast stores of power, quietly telling a specific part of the station's computer that it was time to wake up.
powerstatus("full");
# . . . light up that reactor 'cause we need this to fire /instantly/
The window of activity in a dying body is approximately 33.281 seconds, and don't ask how the Board know this. In reality, it's slightly longer that that, since there may be a few final gasping seconds of life in any violent death, but either way you have to hurry.
foreach $target (@active) {
# do a Spec "mortality ping" on the target
# it's a bit crude, but a full Speculation detection cycle chews up too much time and too many
# resources at present
# XXX: speak to Jose about this
This piece of code is mildly infamous in Board CompOps circles as being the line that once yanked Dave aboard the Funky Horror. Speculation is designed to anticipate as much as report, and thus the systems tied to it are just as...well, EventTrigger-happy.
if(specActiveReport($target)) {
if($rspwn{$target} == 0) {
# do nothing
# Out of luck. Call an undertaker.
powerstatus("bleed");
# gotta keep things within safe levels. Put that extra power somewhere useful
Not today, friend. Relays deep within the Funky Horror stayed silent.
} else {
# bring on the magic fairy dust for that glowing effect...
respawn($target, "now");
# thankyouverymuch! Consider your life saved.
}
Aboard the Funky Horror Jordanis blinked as a chronometer reading "Time to RESPAWN" popped up on Pseudo's screens, and CG leaned back in her seat and smirked.
} } #sleepytime! }
* * *
Green Estate, Grounds & Landing Area
Ahayweh aimlessly wandered in the floodlit potions of the immense shadow of the grounded Minerva's hull. It had been a long few hours since the shooting had stopped...before it had really begun, as TomS had put it, since the Greens had only lost a few people in the initial volley. There'd been cheers and disbelief from both sides, and then Reath had given a huge long speech about the virtues of co-operation (and co-incidentally propped up his ailing political allies in doing so) and pledged Board engineers to the rebuilding effort, and then...
Well, the Board were still here, and probably would be for a good long while, and that meant this slightly lost fanworker was just kicking around while the Dragon inspected the damage. She'd have headed back to the Funky Horror ages ago if she hadn't been a little nervous about survivors, maybe, or something that would have made sense out of Mari's hefty hints that she'd have to stop something nasty from happening.
The chunk blasted out of the east wing's spirelike roof gave the looming building a lopsided look, but scaffolding was already starting to become visible through the holes blown through walls here and there. Not that they'd probably need it, since they had the Board to hand now and, well, construction worked differently for them.
Is it me, or was I really not needed down here today?
"Ahay?"
Ahayweh blinked herself back to reality to see Fletcher hovering nearby with his POST held out towards her.
"Hmm?"
"Spec's flagged this up for you. Marked URGENT."
* * *
Green Family Mansion, North Wing — Northern Drawing-Room
Blue picked her way through the engineers and technicians that seemed to be everywhere, and reflected that her house seemed to have regressed in her mind by about a decade. As a child...and she was an adult now, &^$$, despite her mother and brother!... she'd always upped her mother's threat level slightly in her mind's eye to match the villainesses she saw on TV, and they'd always had loyal henchmen flanking every door with guns at the ready. Now...well, the Board had decided to go for the Iron Fist approach, and that meant genuine armoured troops on all the exits.
She wasn't new to the occasional gunfight in her home. When she was twelve a high-end mob boss had decided to cut in on the Dragon's operations in an old-fashioned machine-gunning manner, and since then there'd been the occasional midnight assassin or hit squad every so often, to say nothing of the ugly operations of her mother's own scientists. They weren't fun to live through, but after a while she'd just started shrugging them off as "stuff that happens". Her own room and general stuff had only really seen concussive damage and the odd shattered ornament, and she'd had escape routes drummed into her since she'd been old enough to understand the concept.
Someone from the Board had been assigned to mind her but she'd been dodging chaperones since she was eight. Blue was never quite sure what to make of the Board, really. Her mother talked about them like an arch-nemesis-packed secret society filled with people she was Not To Talk To, but the people she'd run into had wavered between hardline fanatics and a kind of happy-go-lucky deviousness that put her in mind of her older brother. Okay, there'd been that pair of creepy guys with the crush on her, but she'd skipped away from that and had it straight from the horse's mouth (No, really...MW...) that they'd given up on that.
Her train of thought was interrupted by a roar from outside as the Board shuttle carrying Ahayweh blasted off, and when it came back it was slightly skewed. Horse's mouth...hopefully the stables had made it intact.
She found her mother in the midst of architects' drawings and engineering plans, surrounded by her own wispy remnant of a communications staff and a stack of Boardies. Blue drifted nearer and waited for her mother to end the discussion. A sneak peek at the more accessible plans suggested a few extensions and a lot of rewiring.
"Blue. I see you're safe and sound."
There was concern in there somewhere, but it was drowned somewhat.
"Mum? Is Thad...?"
"Thaddeus has merely been wounded, Blue. NSD, fill her in..."
NightshadeDragon gave his charge a resentful look at being used as a minion so shamelessly, but what the heck...it wasn't every day you got to talk to Blue in person. It was a pretty blatant attempt to keep him off her back for a second, but the itch to actually, you know, talk to Blue...
The Dragon continued her thoughtful tour of the repair efforts. She'd been slightly disgusted at the Board's refusal to burn down the shattered remnants of SKID, but Toxic had been skipping around her own punitive measures, and had practically offered Board equipment and training. Evidently she at least had a toehold in the fleet. The Boardies "on the ground", though....they still seemed...faintly shell-shocked about something?
"Hrm..." She turned back with a half-smile to her daughter, knowing she was still in earshot. "Be careful with them, Blue. Mingle, but think of them as akin to sheepdogs. Only a fool allows a working dog into the house."
The flaring glance of anger this got her from NSD made her laugh.
* * *
High Earth Orbit Somewhere aboard the Funky Horror
After every bold plan there's always the paperwork, and while the Board believe in paperless offices it still means inventorying, damage control, and the like have to be carried out, which was the main reason why Godboy had been roused from his somewhat edgy speculation and was off to see if anything diplomatic might need smoothing over, like thinking up entertaining press releases to explain how you might have seen a huge armada buzz past on it's way to Decerto, but you probably hadn't. No, really.
Talix, or at least one of the Boardieborg, were in theory on their way to handle the amusing process of decontaminating a square acre of grassland saturated with mind-controlling coffee, and it was when Godboy had enough of the 'borg's incessant humming that they finally acknowledged each other's presence on their route.
"....Taa raa bom de-ay, Waldo & Steve died this day..."
"Talix, that's just sick. Please stop."
"And...? Why?"
"Well, it's a bit..." Godboy shrugged. He'd had a reputation for tormenting W&S but hadn't actually advocated them for the high jump. "...ghoulish?"
"No, ghoulish would be if I called in Laundreu and raised them into foul unlife as my eternal bodyslaves."
"Talix, it would be funny if they're weren't dead. As in, y'know, permanently."
"Sucks to be them, doesn't it?"
Godboy bit down hard on a bitterly sarcastic response, and turned away at the next corridor junction.
* * *
Green Family Mansion Entrance Hall
"A question, Nightshade..."
NSD looked up, faintly startled at being addressed directly by his charge. "Yeees?"
"How long were you people going to keep trying to convince me you were normal?"
Oh...nuts. "Aaaah....probably until you met the Director, she's pretty not-normal...buuuut...why?"
"Because I know you did something with Thaddeus." NSD frantically searched the Dragon's thoughtful tone for anything that might be indicative of imminent NSD-death...and actually admitted he couldn't find anything.
"I'm not a complete idiot...and I know he couldn't have survived that." She seemed lost in thought for a second. "...and yet you people assure me he has and I've seen your agents shrug off wounds that would surely have been fatal, so presumably..." She paused. "I thought you might have medics on a par with your weapons." The Dragon brooded for a few seconds, thankful she hadn't had to actually ask for help...because she would have, with Thaddeus dying in front of her. "Should have taken my people's fanciful reports seriously...."
NSD felt a little embarrassed he was present to hear this. Is she going to Angst on me?
"Tell me, am I ever going to get acceptance or will I just be another of the Mighty Board's dependants?"
The Boardie coughed. It was hard for anyone to give a decent approximation of how the Board as a whole could react, but some things you could guess.
"Madam..." Only one person was ever "Ma'm" to Boardies. "...you killed Waldo and Steve. That's going to get you remembered." If they stay dead.... "I'd bet..."
"NightshadeDragon?"
NSD narrowed his eyes as a trio of Fleet troops with Aerilon in the lead swept into the room, inciting anger from the Dragon at the interruption
"Don't Boardies knock?"
"What's this...?"
"Boardies don't NEED to knock. NSD...Take a walk."
"Not until you tell me why you're storming into my jurisdiction with a hit squad..."
Aerilon ignored him totally. "Madam Green...you're needed aboard the Funky Horror."
"Needed?"
"Your presence has been requested...and we're not really talking something you can turn down."
"Your Director?"
"WRONG!"
* * *
Future Nemo Facility, M-Division Laboratories.
There was only one possible reason Silver would have summoned his fellow Boardies to the still-operable sections of the M-Division labs down here, given the news on everyone's POSTs, and FlyingFish's suspicions were vindicated when the bulkhead rumbled open to reveal the mage adjusting the tablecloth on a huge circular smoking-table set with crystal decanters and bottles for wines out of both season and sanity.
"Fish! You're slightly early but it means you get to take your pick on which wines we open first..."
"Ah, heheh, I bet I can guess what this is about..."
"Heh. I was tempted to give the work crews the day off. May still do, tomorrow." Fish cocked an eyebrow at this but then remembered Silver had a Thing about the other side and had regarded W&S as having it coming ever since the Line. "I'd like to say we should salute them as a valiant and cunning enemy with the first toast, but they were about as cunning as a brick to the head....Laun! Heard?" The mage flagged down the entering vampire with a swift firework effect and waved him into a seat. "Have a hair of the dog."
Fish coughed, and began examining labels. "If you don't already know, Laun, we...."
"Yeah, I heard. Well, Woap'll be happy. Can't say I'm sorry to see them go. Assuming they're gone."
Fish chuckled winsomely. "Oh, they're dead. Spec flatlined 'em and went static. Fleet never bothered with failsafes and I didn't see the hand of Mari whisking them out of the blast zone..."
"They've died before..."
"Fanfic, mon ami, fanfic. This is during Mari's active season, in full view of the entire Board. They ain't coming back at the next update."
"I'll believe it when I see heads on pikes..." Silver gave Laundreu a "you would" look. "...and even then I'll do DNA tests on the heads."
"Heh. We're really eroding at His agents, aren't we? First that business with Joe back over the New Year, now this...if it keeps up he'll be offering you your old job back, Laun..."
"Didn't do a lot. He was waltzing around in Vienna within a fortnight."
"Shut up, Silver."
"He's got a point there." Silver ignored the vampire and waved a hand in a weird multidimensional fashion and summoned a chair to fall back into. "I have to admit, I was afraid we'd get a full alert sounded. Those two and Stanny must have been..." The mage made a semi-obscene gesture by bringing his hands together. "You'd have thought he'd have protected his investment. I guess...you have failed me for the last time?"
Laundreu shuddered and Fish winced at the voice.
"You are disturbingly good at that..." The Atlantean poured himself another drink. Even intimated, that voice was like having icy water poured down your spine. "I guess pretty much the entire darn universe ran out of patience with them."
"A rather warped accomplishment..."
"Some people are just stupid that way."
Laundreu stared out at the world through the bottom of his glass. "I'd still like to know if they're actually dead, though. They're...were...a slippery little pair at the best of times."
"We could always ask, if you're desperate."
You could, indeed, pop down and ask the Father of Lies. He might even answer. On the other hand, you could stick your head in a meat grinder too, and get the same long-term effect.
"We could ask Mari?"
"I dunno, does Mari judge the dead?"
"...let's not find out."
* * *
ComicSide, of all places...
Roger had come up with a new game to amuse himself during the long night hours before his chi reached a level where he could sleep. He called it quid custodiet whatever other Latin he could think of, and the looks the Boardies gave him when he found them was worth every minute of ninja skillz needed to find them.
At least, he had been until the Boardie who thought he didn't know he was around and about had been joined, hurriedly, by another Boardie in and among the streetlamps. At least Kenny had been subtle about it.
"Roger, it's 1am."
"Go 'way, Mike." Boardie #1, the guy with the newspaper that afternoon, seemed to be holding a hurried conference with another, younger one with what looked like a wierd halo of small lights.
"Roger, continue your voyeurism all you want, but do it with the light out..."
But that's MY line.... "Mrrrphm...okay." He got up froim his half-crouch, half-sit on the point where the washbasin met the windowsil, and turned to give the hurrying pair one last curious look... then pulled the light cord and settled down to properly giving the evening salutations to his pets, leaving Mike to his own devices.
There was a muffled banging noise from the closet in the bedroom, and Mike's voice filtered through.
"Oh shuddup, Louie. No-one asked you."
* * *
The Funky Horror
Crisis over. As ever, Boardies have to get on with being Boardies....and Luis is no exception as he looks through some of Godboy's suggestions for cover stories. The one about the northern lights migrating south for the summer probably wasn't going to work.
"Luis, you got a minute?"
Wingnut wasn't quite sure what had made him track Luis, of all Boardies, down. It was...well, he wasn't quite sure what it was. Getting something off his chest, probably.
"Yes, yeah, sure..."
"You up on current events?"
"Enough to know why Reatheran's poking everyone to the hangars..." Luis sighed. It wasn't really his remit, but...oh, whatever. He was surrounded by people who wielded 16 different impossible energies before breakfast, and a little jaded after all this time.
"Did anyone tell you I'm the one who pulled the trigger for the first shot?"
Luis recoiled, possibly the worst thing he could have done. Despite his innate distaste at anyone stupid enough to regard their immortal souls as up for sale, he was still pretty quiet as Boardies go. Wingnut lowered his head at the implied rejection and sighed.
"I wanted...look, you're In with this place's Boss, yeah? Can you...find out if I did the right thing?"
"I..I can ask, Wing, but...she'd be more likely to respect a question in person. And...well, they were..." Luis sighed himself. The rest of the Board was wavering between relieved happiness and moral twinges, and he was no exception. He'd been watching the gathering in Bay 5 with a little unease...one of the monitors in his room was showing a view of the bay, and the dim sound of rolling voices could be heard over it's speaker — just on the edge of hearing. "I can't tell you, Wing...
Wing eyed the monitor himself. God, you could hear it from here even with the volume right down....it had rhythm, whatever it was. A kind of beat to it.
"I dunno, seeing them get shot down like that..." Wingnut wavered, then shrugged. You did what you did, he supposed.
"If...it's a help...I don't actually think it's possible for you and your people to do Evil..."
The thought made Wingnut straighten up, and it was clear he believed it, at least. Luis thought that was hopeful, in a way. Of course, Mari hadn't been seen since the news had come in, but that could just be her doing her usual stuff...
And then it clicked, and Luis realised just what they were actually chanting in Bay 5.
A very quiet "eep" escaped his lips.
* * *
Funky Horror Docking Control "tower".
In ages past armies clashed their weapons to indicate solidarity in the face of the foe. It's a very powerful custom, and the Board has plenty of reasons to revive it...
"HAY-zel! HAY-zel! HAY-zel!"
Well, thought himi as the shuttlecraft's thrusters fired and the craft skewed to a halt in one of the massive main hangars, it was kinda gratifying to see a project pay off...albiet in a somewhat scary manner. Okay, it had hardly been personal but he'd been the one sent out with the chocolate orange.
"HAY-zel! HAY-zel!"
Maybe the Oldbie had miscalculated just how unpopular that pair had been...half of Fleet had to be out there in that hangar tossing their caps and banging their proverbial shields. Reatheran smirked next to him with sickening glee, whispering "told you so..." under his breath in an endless repetition, and himi rolled his eyes. Well, as "ranking" olbie, that meant he had to go out and meet her, he supposed.
"HAY-zel! HAY-zel! HAY-zel!"
Well, easy said as done...and by the time he'd arrived the shuttle had landed in a hiss of exhaust jets. No waiting here — the only bays big enough to allow that mob chanting her name were big enough to have pressure forcefields.
"HAY-zel! HAY-zel! HAY-zel!"
They were still at it as he tapped the door control and stepped thr...
"himi! Take it away, boys!"
Oh. So that's why Sandra had wanted Ter and 28 clansmen. He'd wondered. Evidently his fiancé wasn't going to let him face the Dragon without some appreciation of power...the sound of a dwavern "Present arms!" filled the bay, signalling that the crowd could shut up now, and himi found himself staring down a line of gun-weilding formal berserker warriors. Complete with axes, although they were dress axes.
"Sandra, I can't go out into that!"
"Whynot?"
"It..it...actually looks like fun."
Struggling to keep a straight face, and with the lights almost blotted out by the rifle "tunnel", himi stepped out into the bay to bring Destiny to the masses...
Filling the guns with chocolate sauce as he went past, of course.
* * *
ComicSide Unnamed Hospital, 02:09am, March 14th 2003
The Board keep a firm eye on this hospital, given the Cast's tendency to turn up in it. The doctors know them, and are grateful for the generous donations made in return for looking the other way when Boardies turn up. In the end, the Board have to admit that a lot of their goodwill and influence in the comic stem from their resources as much as their insidious power.
Jappus flashed his POST at the receptionist and motioned Ahawyeh down one hallway and into a lift.
"Burns unit."
"How bad is he?"
"Horrendous. He's either taken an Ion Cannon strike or shaken hands with the Bad Guys."
Ahayweh's already pale expression got paler. "But he's alive, right?"
"They hope he'll recover, but I'm hoping we can get you to, y'know, call in whatever favours Mari owes you and get a Board medic down here? That, and we need to know what hit him."
Ahayweh inwardly whimpered at Jappus's assumption that just because the Goddess talked to her meant she actually had any leverage, but then the lift doors ponderously rolled back and the pair quietly slipped into a fairly nondescript room off one of the wards, and Ahayweh found out just how bad it was with Ted.
"Magic" Ted, to the Board, but to the hospital he was a severe burns patient, recovering from huge skin grafts. Recovering markedly well, too — off intensive care as of that morning, but who knew what scars lurked under those bandages?
Ahayweh approached on tiptoe to the bedside, POST muffling the noise, and got a grip. She might not be DC or Mai-Li, but she was darned if she'd leave her friend among the cast like this.
From the door, Jappus blinked as his POST pinged.
"Hey, he's awake..." And...what's that power spike...?
Ahayweh nodded and made sure she looked as friendly and professional as possible as his eyes opened. "Hi Ted...remember me?"
She realised his eyes were almost boring into her.
He's not staring at my chest, is he?
With an absolutely horrible sense of foreboding Ahayweh followed his gaze.
Her Board insignia. A silly little peccadillo, really — something few Boardies carried and generally only then in situations where discretely showing it would get reactions. Wasn't really a badge of office, but as far as Ted was concerned it was every secret society tattoo he'd ever heard of rolled into one...and he'd last seen it looming towards him on the Spirit of Texas's huge nose as it seared at him with it's huge forward batteries.
Ahayweh leapt backwards as he thrust a hand out to grab her, but not backwards enough...and his "powers", whatever they were, meant the arm ignited with purplish flame and it grabbed the front of her coat. In one ear she heard him hiss "...one of them...", and in the other she heard Jappus scream into his POST for an emergency response team, and then that faint whine that meant he'd snapped it into Offensive Mode.
It's not over yet...
Loweko says:
There is now a new, improved version of this update where the RESPAWN code is accurate, thanks to himi's tireless effort in the cause of Getting It Right. Since I had to edit it to make narrative sense, here's the Perl kernel of the do_spec_respawn() function in all it's glory...
# wait until we see some action on the horizon
while(poll($specAlertStatus)) {
# thunderbirds are GO!
powerstatus("full");
# . . . 'cause we need this to fire /instantly/
foreach $target (@active) {
# do a Spec "mortality ping" on the target
# it's a bit crude, but a full Speculation detection cycle chews up too many
# resources at present
# XXX: speak to Jose about this
if(specActiveReport($target)) {
if($rspwn{$target} == 0) {
# do nothing
# out of luck, buddy
powerstatus("bleed");
# gotta keep things within safe levels
} else {
# bring on the magic fairy dust!
respawn($target, "now");
# thankyouverymuch!
}
}
}
# nothing more to see here, folks. Move along!
# Yes, that means you!
powerstatus("bleed");
# XXX: we shouldn't need to throw away power like this! we need to poke
# Shen until he fixes his batteries
powerstatus("default");
# back to normal.
Just in case you're not a Perl fan, ToxicFrog has also coded the respawn call in C++.
while(1) {
//nothing to see here, move along
if(Spec.AlertStatus) {
//saw something!
//don't want to waste time, light up the reactors in advance
Power.SetStatus("Extra");
while(Spec.HasTargetsLeft) {
//grab mort flags from speculation (see READ macro in RSP line 57)
//a little crude, but a full speculation cycle takes too long
READ-RSP(Spec.ActiveReport());
if(RSPWNFlag == false) {
//false alarm. Dial for an undertaker.
//call BleedOff to keep the power in safe limits\
//since we don't want to throttle the reactors back yet
Power.BleedOff();
} else if(RSPWNFlag == true) {
//put that extra power somewhere useful
Power.Allocate("RESPAWN");
//your amulet of lifesaving glows...
respawn(RSPWNTarget, "now");
}
}
//don't need extra power any more
Power.SetStatus("Default");
//vent the excess
//talk to one of the mages about converting it and storing in a mana battery?
Power.BleedOff();
}
//sleeptime until something happens again
}
I am reliably informed they compile. All you need now is a Reality Control Array (Several thousand meters in diameter and massing a good few megatons) and home resurrections can be at your fingertips.
himi replies:
teehee!Actually, that's not the version that compiles - it's missing some subroutine definitions and the like. I've hacked up some code that /does/ run, though . . . . . .
#!/usr/bin/perl
@active = (
"Loweko",
"himi",
"ToxicFrog",
"Flax",
"Tchernobyl",
"Shenalia",
);
%rspwn = (
Loweko => 1,
himi => 1,
ToxicFrog => 1,
Flax => 0,
Shenalia => 0,
Tchernobyl => 1,
);
sub poll {
my $status = <STDIN>;
return $status;
}
sub powerstatus {
my $status = shift;
print "power status: $status\n";
}
sub respawn {
my $target = shift;
my $time = shift;
print "**********************************\n";
print "*** $target respawned /$time/! ***\n";
print "**********************************\n\n";
}
sub specActiveReport {
my $target = shift;
print "target $target is active\n";
return 1;
}
sub respawnTarget {
my $target = shift;
if(($rspwn{$target}) == 1) {
print "$target is a valid respawn target\n";
} else {
print "$target is not a valid respawn target\n";
}
return $rspwn{$target};
}
# wait until we see some action on the horizon
while(poll($specAlertStatus) == 1) {
# thunderbirds are GO!
powerstatus("full");
# . . . 'cause we need this to fire /instantly/
foreach $target (@active) {
# do a Spec "mortality ping" on the target
# it's a bit crude, but a full Speculation detection cycle chews up too many
# resources at present
# XXX: speak to Jose about this
if(specActiveReport($target)) {
if(respawnTarget($target) == 0) {
# do nothing
# out of luck, buddy
powerstatus("bleed");
# gotta keep things within safe levels
} else {
# bring on the magic fairy dust!
respawn($target, "now");
# thankyouverymuch!
}
}
}
# nothing more to see here, folks. Move along!
# Yes, that means you!
powerstatus("bleed");
# XXX: we shouldn't need to throw away power like this! we need to poke
# Shen until he fixes his batteries
powerstatus("default");
# back to normal
}
Change the @active and %rspwn values for added fun!
. . . . not that I'm insane, or anything like that . . . .
Well, not much.
himi
--
I'm not a perl nut! It's just that if there's any organisation that subscribes to TMTOWTDI, it's /got/ to be the Board . . .
TITLE:
AUTHOR: ToxicFrog
DATE: Fri Apr 04, 2003 8:30 am
Jappus asks:
Errrm, you don´t seem to like Flax and Shen, don´t ya? 
And hell, IF the Funky Horror uses a normal programming language it HAS to be LISP. This thing is as weird as the board with all those brackets. Ever tried to manually interpret and translate uncommented LISP-code? Not even Hell can invent a crueler punishment. 
Loweko replies:
Considering Mari's known views on LISP (That it's a favoured tool of the Devil), I can't see her letting the Board use it...
bruceluis adds:
And, of course, @active and %rspwn are not to be defined in the actual code, but their data has to come from a database. And what about the actual implementation of functions such as poll, specActiveReport and respawnTarget... but I understand the code above is only a prototype for illustration purposes.
Just being silly here. Move on. 
Jappus replies:
Nonono, see my last line: "Not even Hell can invent a crueler punishment." You see, it´s THE weapon against him...
AOANLA adds:
You know, its either very scary or very impressive that people actually wrote working code fragments for the Reality Control Array etc.
I'm all for TF's C++ version* (except, shouldn't it really be interrupt driven, rather than using a while loop like that? Which brings up the question of exactly what architecture the FH's computer systems are built on - I always imagined it being some kind of *NIX...)
*for the additional performance benefits over Perl - every microsecond counts when you're trying to catch someone for respawn...
ToxicFrog replies:
If I had enough experience with interrupts to be confident of writing a working RESPAWN system with them, I would have. As it is, I assumed that it would be forked off as an independent process to listen for alerts from Speculation. As for the architecture...well, let's just say that the topic of FHOS has arisen in IRC.
Jappus replies to AOANLA:
A wonderful quote fits perfectly now:
"I always thought that UNIX is made for those people who love to stare at a console-output that looks as if an armadillo just rolled over the keyboard, again and again and again."
And honestly: I agree. Unix isn´t an OS for the FH. The FH isn´t geeky enough, it has style. Perhaps it runs on MacOS or perhaps on Solaris, or even on OS/2... 
/me runs away fast...
ToxicFrog replies to Jappus:
BLASPHEMY! *pulls out the portable lynching kit*
In all seriousness, tho, we have thought not-entirely-unseriously about this. Who knows, we might have a working beta of FHOS at some point...
AOANLA adds:
MacOS X is a *NIX. So is Solaris I believe. 
And... I don't need to comment about OS/2 I think... apart from anything else it's too old now.
TF - fair enough about the process forking.
FHOS you say... hmm. Interesting... I should have realised we'd have written our own operating system - we'd need one to handle all the odd interfaces and things we need to run it on...
Jappus replies to ToxicFrog:
Yes, the massive amount of data produced by the Speculations-Array, the ultimative power-surge that occurs when the BIP is discharged, the circuit warping effects of most Boarrdie-Weirdness, control of Hammerspace, the Warthread Holomatrix, the Command-Dome that connects us to every single media-system of the world, etc. are SOOOOO damn easy to control and maintain by a modern OS...
.
Honestly I´d think that the FH uses an Open-OS system with NAS-technology (network attached storage). Every single section of the Board has its own OS but they all share the same storage by using an NAS-protocol over TCP/IP (naturally with enhanced IP and MAC-address ranges). The compromises needed to control the Spec- and Warthreads at the same time would be simply too generic to allow efficient control of RESPAWN. Therefore I think that the only thing the OSses can and must have in common are the Network-protocols. The rest is user-based since we rewire the hardware all day long (as seen in Speculation Epsilon).
Of course there is still SHODAN who controls all "regular" systems like the lifts, doors, life-support-systems, gravity-generators, high-energy facilities, etc.
Therefore an NAS/OpenOS system seems to be the only way to control the FH.
AOANLA replies:
I assumed SHODAN was less an OS and more a program (presumably consisting of multiple processes, threads etc) running on top of an OS.
But that's just me.
Loweko replies:
Actually if we go back to Magnificent Boardies (back before Bob's epilogue - the one that installed SHODAN and started the whole AI silliness), we find that the Board OS is, in fact, hardwired into almost every computer system on the planet via insidious backdoors (although this was even before insidiousness...) - a cunning piece of reality warping designed to ensure no Boardie is far from a communications device.
A lot of Board devices and conventions introduced in TMB never made it into the full-scale Boardieverse, but it suggests that whatever the Board OS is, it has the mother of all default drivers....
Jappus replies to AOANLA:
No, MacOsX is only like Unix in its shell (and even that is a massively altered Unix), the GUI and most of the important parts, are still made by Apple and are pretty different from Unix. And Solaris is Unix as much as BSD is Linux or Windows XP is NT3.1. The roots are the same but the technology differ very much.
But who said I meant MacOS X .
| Quote: |
| And... I don't need to comment about OS/2 I think... apart from anything else it's too old now. |
But it had STYYYYYYLE!
Just think about the dynamic links, the modern memory allocation, the GUI, etc. *drool*
But well, nobody wanted it so it wasn´t that good in retrospective, but still...