So, my friends and I decided last night to go to a virtual stim bar in one of the more seedy vNets. I don’t even know why we wanted to go down there. Classes were long today, always are on Tuesday’s, so we wanted to blow off a little steam. As usual, Edgar, the professor I go to virtual bars with, wanted to hit the LowBelt, a seedy vNet out of NYC. Seedy but legal of course. I don’t frequent the more, shall we say, free areas.

But, to get to the jist of this, my head is killing me. I honestly am debating writing my representitive and telling him to outlaw stim bars. Not really of course, but wow, that stuff can be worse than alcohol. Not that I dislike alcohol. I quite like it in fact.

If you’ve never been to a stim bar, let me fill you in. It’s much like any other type of club you find on the nets, or even the nostalgic ‘real life’ bars that dot the landscape. Tons of people, all in hot bodies, loud music, occasional fights, lots of dancing and even more stim packs. Stims are one, of many, techniques used in virtual space to send signals to the brain to stimulate pleasure centers. Exactly like a happy helmet, just that it’s done through a vNet. And dont’ get me started on happy helmet’s…

At any rate, we danced, partied, and stimmed our way to a nice hangover. Or a stimover if you will. Regardless, it was not so much fun this morning teaching. So, I just wanted to share with all that if you find yourself in a seedy vNet bar and a hot blonde, whose probably not a hot blonde, and she asks you to try a new stim called ‘electrode malfunction’, just say no. I really wish I had.

Now that the elections are over, and my vacation time is all but used up frolicking with friends in bubble ships and taking excursions to New Luna,  I can get back to the main purpose of this site, History. I am a historian after all and nothing fascinates me more than wealth of human history in the last three hundred years. In that time, more has been done than in all of recorded history combined. 

On that note, I am starting a new series here with the theme of Mars. To any students, future or present, that may stumble upon this, yes some of this will be on exams. I will cover it classes as well, don’t fret. Mars is a fascinating place. Of all the natural objects in the system, it is ranked 3rd in having it’s own human history, behind the Moon and the Earth. It is also the 2nd most populated planet, and object,  in the system, behind only the Earth, at nearly 100 million Sentients occupying it’s lands both above and below ground. Even before the first human foot was set down on it’s soil, Mars has been a large figure in human myth, fascination and folklore.

But nothing could be as powerful as when the first human, Patrick Cummings, placed his left foot on martian soil for the first time in history. At that point in history, only he and Neil Armstrong could share the title of the first human to set foot on a solid extra-terrestrial object. I can only imagine what he must have felt when he exited the landing pod.

That fateful day was long in coming. I find it amazing that the first manned mission to Mars came in 2095. Years after it was proposed such a mission would come. It wasn’t until New Luna was well established that the American Union, comprised of Eastern, Western and Texan America as well as parts of Canada and Central America, would launch the first manned mission.

This was of course after the years worth of automated supplies sent to the red planet. Waiting for Patrick and his crew were in fact the first Sentients to have set foot on mars. Patrick was the first human, not the first sentient. AI’s had been on the red planet for decades processing, analyzing, investigating and building for biological’s yet to come. The underground Olympus Mons cavern system, later to be become the capital city of Mars, was carved out and many buildings and structures already built by the time humans arrived.

Once they did, however, many more would follow. If the 21st century is largely considered to be the time of great change for human society, the 22nd century should be considered the great exodus. It was during this century that nearly 500 million people left their home planet. Many were idealists. Looking to start new countries, civilizations, places to call their own. Many were criminals as countries of Earth setup penal colonies for career offenders, those with no hope of ever leaving prison. Many were poor, looking for a chance to live. The phenomena is not without historical foundations. Whenever new expanses of land are discovered, there is usually an exodus from the old to the new. The United States of America is a prime example of such an exodus.

A large portion of those came to Mars. Many did go to the floating air cities of Venus, New Luna and other lunar colonies, and other places in the system. The majority of 21st century exodus, however, was to the three closet bodies, the moon, Venus and Mars. That is why they are the most populous to this day, outside of Earth.

Mars was actually part of a two stage exodus. Initially it was decided, in the latter half of the 21st century, that underground colonies on Mars and the Moon was the way to go for colonization. It was an easy fix for dealing with deadly solar radiation in environments where there was no magnetosphere. As such, machines and explosives were used to hollow out large sections of subterranean areas on the Moon, Mars and Mercury. It wasn’t until the invention of the Lambourne shield, one of the most powerful inventions of human history, that above ground colonies could easily be made. The Lambourne shield, invented in 2130 by Claude Lambourne, can repel any spectrum in the electromagnetic spectrum with extremely low power requirements. This opened the door to a massive land grab on Mars. Most of the land on the Moon had long ago been claimed by Earth governments but most of the land on Mars had remained unclaimed. No one bothered claiming land that no one really wanted. Now that you could walk around on mars in a standard suit and with a Lambourne field be completely safe from any solar radiation spikes, every inch of land was valuable.

The time between the two stage exodus period, where the underground cities were constantly being expanded, is often called the Martian Unterirdisch, german for underground. The phrase was coined by, shockingly, a German immigrant in 2120 named Frans Bieber. Frans was not only an immigrant but also the Olympus Mon’s chairman for city expansion. It fell to him to dig, dig and dig the city to bigger heights.

It was even more interesting that in 2135, when Lambourne fields were being setup all over Mars and in orbit, that Bieber’s son Felix led the first crew of miners up and out and dug Olympus Mons out of the mountain and into the Martian surface.

Most of the subterranean cities, save for two, dug themselves out and up from beneath the surface. They now extended for hundreds of stories above and below ground.

The politics of Mars during this initial 40 years was fascinating. It was really nothing more than a loose collection of city states each having their own tighter connections to governments on earth. Mar’s was clearly shapping up to be nothing more than a mirror of Earth politics. And on some level rightly so. It was the governments of Earth that were floating the bill for these colonies after all. Granted most of the labor was done by AI’s, who quite frankly were just bored and had nothing better to do in my opinion, even though they can’t techincally get bored.

In part two of this series we’ll investigate all of the cities that sprang up during this initial, pre and initial post Lambourne field Mars. The land rush that came in the following decades deserves it’s own lecture. Many governments and sentients rushed this new found area and setup their own governments. As you can imagine, with that many personalities, they are going to fight. If the 22nd century was the exodus to mars, the 23rd was all about the martian wars.

Well, he did it. The first AI is now the president of the Eastern United States of America. I’m not that much into politics and don’t want to post too long about this, but he did it, and the next four years will be very interesting.

The two biggest issues he’ll face is the newly renewed conflicts with the outer system and the economy. Both are very tricky to deal with and he’ll need to surround himself with a top notch staff to get the job done.

I do hope he decides to spend more on education of course, it is my chosen profession and the topic I most care about. More and more money is going towards education clinics and less towards traditional learning. We have got to turn these kids back to traditional learning. They are going to live a very very long time, they can choose to spend eight lousy years in a university.

As for the economy, that’s even more of a complicated topic. Sure energy is free but that’s it. Food, services, etc etc still cost a pretty penny. And in the ever complex economies of the system things just get very complicated. Every month it seems a new group is petitioning for sentient status and another new colony is trying to declare independence. It’s getting a bit crazy out there.

On a historical note, Alfons won 300 years after Barack Obama won the election as the first black president of the United States of America, back when there was only one. Lets hope Alfons does even a fraction as well as Barack did all those years ago.

In case you haven’t heard, looks like the war in the outer system is heating up. I have a friend that is stationed on the Ulysses and he just wrote me that his carrier group is moving out. It’s not classified or anything, trust me. When twelve military space vessels move somewhere, it’s not exactly a secret. Astronomer’s can tell from how they line up where they are going. It does change things for the military strategists for sure, just look at your telescope and you know what the enemy is doing.

At any rate, it looks like the war with the Outliners is going to escalate, again. What does it take anyway for people to stop fighting? Nothing can cure that I guess. There’s over twenty wars going on throughout the system right now, as defined by the UN. Most of them are between UN members squabbling territorial disputes. I don’t get it. We have all the energy we could ever need, just about all the resources we’ll ever need, and still people fight. I can even understand the Eugenics wars. Wars of ideologies never end. Wars of conquest will always be here too I suppose. Maybe people just get bored.

So, in case you don’t know, the Outliners attacked a civilian cruise liner between the asteroid belt and Jupiter. They were on course to hit the Sphere’s, marvel of engineering, and were ambushed.

Not to go off topic, but I just have to comment on the AI that named these people. Outliners??? A statistical anomaly where all but a few Sentients are members of the Sentient Accords. So, the AI who did the research named them Outliners and it caught on. I don’t mean to belabor this point too long, but come on.

Anyway, its rather gloomy around the University today. The news hit the wires and nets sometime this morning about the cruise ship. All 800 people on board lost. I don’t know anyone that had family or friends on it though, thank god. 

The biggest question I have is why. Why would the CY’s, AI’s and others that make up the Outliner groups bother? They are mostly insane Cyborg’s really, only a handful of AI’sjoined up with them and a few non-approved Sentients that think they deserve sentient status. That was quite the shock with that happened. The AI council freaked out, well, as most as AI’s can freak out that is.

The outliner groups, there are multiple factions and they often fight among themselves, live somewhere in the outer system. Mostly they move around from one hole to another. It’s really a wild west out there. There’s nothing really terribly valuable out there, the inner system has everything it needs to live quite comfortably. Every once in a while a new group gets a Bigelow station or some other type of habitation ship and heads out there to start up a colony. Most just want to be left alone. I even heard of one group that took one of the old Titan class habitation ships, refitted it, put in a dome for agriculture and headed out to deep space, beyond the system itself. Crazy.

Anyway, no government really wants the trouble of dealing with the outer system. Every once in awhile the Outliners do something like this, attack a ship or a station or something, and then the inner system musters up a fleet to smack them around a bit. Guess it’s time for that again.

This time though, the fleet is 100% American. Well, Western and Eastern American anyway. There is a Republic of Texas ship going too but it’s only a fast frigate, whatever that means. I’m mostly paraphrasing from my friend’s message. This won’t leave the America’s vulnerable of course, we’ve still plenty of military to go around. The one good thing since the split of the U.S. into regional countries was the keeping of a unified military force. Kinda like NATO I guess.

I’ll be following this with regular updates from my friend in the fleet. He’s actually fairly high up, don’t want to say how high, in the chain on the Ulysses, so I’ll know things pretty quickly. Lets hope this is over soon and doesn’t blow up into another system war. God knows what the Outliners have been doing for the past 50 years, since the last time they decided to start a brouhaha .

What do people do when they are faced with some great tradgy like the one yesterday? They go on a yacht, that’s what. I have a friend at the University who has a friend, who knows a guy, who’s engaged to someone, who’s father’s partner own’s a Bubble Yacht. At least I think. Whoever it belonged to, it was stunning.

About 25 years ago, some engineer came up with a brilliant use for an EM shield, translucent metal, artificial gravity fields and a beach. At least that was the model I was on. To whoever that was that created these things, thank you! Here’s my experience on one of these marvels.

So, Allister, my friend at the university, called me up and said, lets go for a ride. I said, ok, I didn’t have any work to do anyway. We met outside and drove over the DC regional space port. We didn’t have time for an Space Elevator, so we commissioned a rocket transport to take us to a station that I hadn’t heard of before. Allister called it the Bubble Station. I thought it was an odd name, it really didn’t look like a bubble. It was an odd design, five type three Bigelow modules stacked horizontally on top of each other. From each junction point there were four long docking collars extending outward for about a mile in seperate directions. Attached to each collar were anywhere from two to a half a dozen, what can only be described as, bubbles. They were, of course, Bubble Yacht’s. For some reason I just had never gotten to see these things. Allister told me that they are exclusively for the ultra rich. There were only around 100 of these things in existance.

How we, two ordinary universities professors, were getting on this thing was simply beyond me. And I didn’t ask once. I didn’t want to spoil the moment with the logistics of how this moment came to be. We docked with the station and made our way to collar 5. The ride on the space car was almost as intense as the whole experience.  We went by three other yachts on our way to ours. They were sights to behold. Each one was roughly 1 acre and each one had totally different interiors. Allister would later tell me that there were other models on differen collars that were much smaller. The acre sized ones here were the biggest on this station. But that someone had once built a ten acre bubble yacht. Incredible! No one ever talks about it so I’m sure it’s hidden away in some corner of the system. A mini-translucent bubble world.

The first we saw had a small forest on it! I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. Something as simple as a forest. There was a nice lodge and a small cottage. I could see birds flying through the trees and even some squirls in the trees. I even spotted a large tree house up in the trees. There didn’t seem to be anyone home but I could only imagine what it would be like to drift through the heavens sitting on that porch.

The second ship had two structures on it. One was large house with a partial roof. If you have your own atmosphere, why do you need a roof after all. The other building was, amazingly, what looked like a farm building. I couldn’t tell how far it went down but it went up nearly to the top of the bubble. Little bit of an eye sore if you ask me but the intention is clear. This bubble was meant to be self sustaining. Some billionare’s idea to detach one day and sail off never to be heard from again most likly.

The third ship was stunning. There was a small island in the center of the ship. Water surrounded. There were a few small row boats and even a three man sail boat on the water. Imagine that, a boat inside a bubble floating through space. I could see a few people sitting on the boats, one of them waved.

We made it the end of collar five, got out of the car and went to the docking ring. A few moments through the interlock chambers and there we were. On a beach. In a bubble. In Space. Wow. This one was just as neat as the others. A small beach, small amount of water to simulate an ocean and a few small cottages lining the shore. It was simply incredible.

The owner of the bubble came out to greet us. Or at least I thought it was the owner, he seemed like he was. He immediatly introduced himself simply as Tom and began to give us a tour. He never asked who we were, he must have already known. Tom walked us along the beach, describing the construction of the ship, how the EM fields work, the translusent metal, the propulsion system built beneath us. It was really incredible to hear about these ships. Aparantly, most of the big ones are our in the system somewhere. A few are even serving as ultra luxury hotels.

It was to my dismay that we weren’t going to go anywhere. The ride on the bubble ship was more of a sitting on the beach and looking at the view of earth below us. Still very neat. What’s even neater is Tom told us that sometimes they’ll suspend the gravity and let you float around a bit. They have to lock down the water so it doesn’t go all over the place and do a few safty procedures but it would be very cool to experience.

We sat on the beach for awhile and headed home. It was a fun day to be sure. As soon as I got home I started this post. I’ll be looking for one of the hotels next. I think I want to plan a vacation to a bubble hotel, I saw that one is currently at the Jupiter system. That would be an amazing view!

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Immortal that died today. I was in class giving a lecture on the Outer System war of 2210 when student’s starting getting up and leaving. After the 12th one I began to inquire what was going on. The news hit me like it hit them. Immortals weren’t supposed to die. Most people thought it was impossible anyway. And yet here it had happened.

Immortals, as we all know, were those humans that pushed the limits beyond where most people stopped. With standard rejuvenation treatments, you can set the physiological clock back to your early 20′s. Basically allowing anyone to live as long as they have access to the treatments. Every hundred years or so you can get rejuvenated back to your 20′s. Sounds great on paper but let me say the logistics have been a nightmare. The population has been on a non-stop growth fest ever since. Luckily there’s plenty of room in the solar system to expand but some think we’ll grow beyond that easily one day.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. The Immortals figured out a way to modify their bodies in such a way they didn’t need treatments anymore. No one has figured this out since they did it, 160 years ago. And as soon as they did they destroyed the technique. At least they claim they did. No one really cares that much about it of course. Two reasons for this. First, with rejuv treatments you can basically live forever anyway. Second, 90% of the immortals are insane.

The 10% that aren’t are revered in the system. They are damn near indestructible. I say near as one just died today. The other 90% live a simple life in a quarantined part of the Serengeti. Absolutely no contact with non-immortals allowed. Whenever they are around any other Sentient they exhibit extreme violent behavior. They think it’s because of the extreme treatment they undertook. Still, wasn’t totally their fault, so they were locked away. They look to be quite happy on the vNet dedicated to them anyway.

Those that don’t have the violent behavior freely move about Sentient space. Alton, the immortal that died today, lived in Australia, his native home. He was traveling to the outer system for some reason or another. His ship hit a violent micro-meteor storm, the EM shield went down. He was just inside the dead zone of Jupiter’s massive radiation fields. The fields fried his computer, he couldn’t get the auxiliary online quick enough. His engines mis-fired at full throttle and he plunged down into Jupiter’s atmosphere. All rather surprising really. A bizarre set of unlikely circumstances all rolled into one.

Everyone is a bit shook up about it. Frankly, I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because nothing is set in stone anymore. The immortals are, were, I don’t know, the only constant in life. They would always be here. And yes, even though we are all technically the same, we really aren’t. We don’t heal like they do, we can die from diseases and a host of other things. Rejuv treatments just deal with aging not everything that can kill ya.

At any rate. School closed early, the kids went out to mourn. To them it’s especially hard. The Immortals are like gods to them in a sense. Of course they aren’t. Technically they are just another member of the Sentient Accords like everyone else. They have no more rights than any of us. Still, they are somehow special. Alton is only the third Immortal to die in 160 years. A sad milestone that has been reached.

I attended a lecture today on history telescopes. This is quite the concept and for us historians a new field of research is opening up. When I first heard of this concept I was a bit skeptical. What would the clarity be? How much could you really see? After seeing the initial tests I must say you can see quit a lot.

For those who do not know what these are, they are relatively new, a history telescope is one that looks back in time. Now, for all you astronomers out there, yes, all telescopes do this. But what if you pointed one at the earth? Depending on how far away you are from the planet, you will see something back in time.

The lecture today was about a recent experiment into this concept. The light from the Earth takes time to get to Jupiter, about three hours. A team of researchers operating in the jupiter system pointed a telescope back to earth. They then broad casted the signal on a few vNet’s. Since the vNet signals are faster than light, the transmitted signal was actually three hours old compared to the time it was being viewed on earth. They broad casted the visual signal as well as the vNet feed and the researchers. It was a little bit disturbing.

The power of space based telescopes has increased quite a lot in the past few centuries. You can see vivid detail from Jupiter with the new Orion space telescope model. Not to mention what you can see from other systems.

Ok, so, what good is three hours? Not much. Sure it’s a novelty thing. Yes, you can be on vSpace and watch something on earth from three hours ago. Neat. But three hours isn’t enough for historical observations. It is good, however, for the future uses.

There are two primary projects currently going on, big science projects as they used to be called, the kind that can only be funded by governments, that can make use of this new concept. The first, there are plans at work to build a super Orion telescope. Something so big it’s nearly the size of a military carrier. Once built, the plan is to point it towards some distant location and let it speed away. They are going to build it in the Minerva Asteroid shipyards and shoot it off. Now, it won’t get anywhere anytime soon. But, it will get there. Eventually it will reach a point that is many light years from earth, allowing historians to turn it around and view the history of our planet. Neat isn’t it? Personally though, I don’t think this will ever happen. Some big science projects promise a lot but are just too big or would take too long to see any benefits. I think this is one.

The other method is far more interesting. It involves the new gravity drives that are going to be tested in the coming years. These things promise everything. Imagine going to another star system in minutes. Incredible. If they ever get this to work, something to do with shrinking space in front and growing it behind, they’ll slap one on an Orion telescope ship, send it 300 years out and turn it around. That’s when things will get interesting.

How it all works? Beats the hell out of me. I don’t understand gravity drives or how they can see anything from 300 light years away. But, I guess I have to start learning. This new discipline, Historical Astronomy, is gaining some steam. The physicists swear this new gravity engine will work and unlock the galaxy to exploration. And we have plenty of earth like planets to play with out there. Of course, there isn’t a telescope built yet to view that far away. The super Orion, they still are debating a name for this class of ship, is only on the drawing board. But when it’s built we may be able to see clouds on a distant planet. That alone is fascinating. The future will be very interesting for certain!

What can I say about AI’s. I love those guys. They are an example of human ingenuity and turned out to be our greatest allies. I read an old news report about fear mongering where everyone thought the AI’s would decide that they are superior to us and kills us off, how silly that is now. Not only did they not decide that, what they did decide is they can not live without us.

I’ve been to a few of these meetups. Mostly they are relaxed and casual. Tonight’s was no exception. It wasn’t focused on any topic or purpose really. We met more in a form of a get to know each other setting. It’s interesting how most AI’s choose to take a human shape when they show up.  Why not a dog, or a cat or even a computer screen? Beats me.

Anyway, this meetup was focused on support for an independent Venetian state. No one really talks about Venus because it’s so hostile. It’s only occupied by AI’s. Just way too hostile for anyone with DNA in their makeup. And those AI’s are dependent on some pretty tough hardware for insulation against the environment down there.

At any rate, we talked about the independence of Venus. It would be the first independent state that was colonized solely by AI’s. Logically, it makes some good sense. Venus has a massive infrastructure for engery creation. The winds and heat on that planet are intense. So much so that there are wind farms across most of the surface, all of which are controlled by AI’s. They AI’s actually went there years after the farms and infrastructure for them were created. Today, they’ve created a world for themselves. There are full cities on Venus, populated by AI’s and AI controlled machines.

Now, I know most people are still worried about AI’s running rampant. Of all the Sentients, they are the only ones that are brand new. All the Neo’s are really just modified homo sapien sapiens. The AI’s are aliens, really. But, what a good deal of people still do not get, they are emotionless. They are fully sentient but do not have any chemicals running through them. As a result, they have zero emotions. They are factual. They know full well they couldn’t survive without their creators and even if they could, there is no benefit in some sort of war with us. Of course, there’s been some progress in the artificial emotion market. I’ve even heard of some black market AI emotions that are for sale these days. Gods know what it does to them though. I don’t know, at least I think I don’t know, of any AI’s that have used them.

But of course, everyone at the meetup knows all that stuff. It’s the main arguments for the pro-Venusians. That AI’s are generally harmless and only want to exist. And honestly, I agree. Venus should be independent. The AI’s are even planning a tourism market. They claim to have mastered the Venusian atmosphere and can bring organic Sentients down for the tour of their lives. I plan on going myself.

So, for anyone reading this that has an opinion on the subject of the independence of Venus, give it to them. They deserve it.

Well I’m sure you’ve all seen the news. The large moon telescope array has found yet another earth like planet. I was in between classes and heard the news. It was more like an update alert honestly. What does that make, over 3,000? Should I go ahead and say it? Who cares? Enough already with the earth like planets. We’ve found big ones, small ones, atmosphere’s 95% like ours, gravities 98% like ours. Like everyone else in the system, I am thinking, so what?

In the last 150 years of the Moon Array’s existence, a massive structure mind you, we’ve found some amazing things in the universe. Turns out, space is littered with planets. That’s not anything new of course, they knew that when the first planets were being found 300 years ago. What have we not found though? Everyone knows it. In all the planets, moons, asteroids, solar systems, galaxies, everything we’ve looked at, not one shred of evidence of intelligent life out there.

So what I guess. It gives the religious right some strong ammunition of course. Every year that passes with no sentient life found outside the system is another year the Right grows stronger. I have to admit, it is a bit odd that there’s nothing out there. I’m no scientist but doesn’t some rule state if you take 1% of all stars and 1% of all those that have planets and 1% of all those that have atmosphere’s and 1% of those that have life and 1% of those that have intelligent life, that there would be millions of sentients out there. Who knows. Maybe they are out there but just can’t get here. Maybe there’s solar systems chocked full just like ours is.

I stopped by the science department recently and asked some of the astrophysicists there what they thought. Most thought there was intelligent life out there but we just haven’t found them. Also, it’s only 3,000 earth-like planets. If there are 1 million out there, what we’ve found is very small. And, perhaps we are looking in the wrong place as well. We still are only focusing on the visible spectrum, radio waves and a few other bands in the electromagnetic spectrum. Maybe they talk to each other in something else. If so, they’d be invisible to us.

Whatever the reason, we haven’t found em. And can you imagine what it would be like if we did? There are, right now, nine fully recognized sentients and two more that have petitioned for recognition. I think we have our fill of intelligent life right here in our own back yard. Sure they are all born from the original humans, Primes, but they are still right now wholly and completely separate species.

So, I say, big deal. Stop interrupting my morning news with announcements of newly discovered planets. At least lets hear about the seeder ships that we sent out to those planets or the up coming FTL tests. That’s interesting to us all. If those work we can just go there and find out if life is there or not! You know I’ll be on the first transport to alpha centauri!

Once again, teenagers smuggled weapons into a public virtual park. I was minding my own business on a net I found that seemed very quiet. It was patterned after a beautiful scenic park. It was also set to be non-violent. Of course, kids don’t care about those settings. Most have figured out how to smuggle harmless items into every corner of virtual networks. Major hubs are hefty with security but these little idyllic hideaways are prime targets.

About two hours into my visit, I wanted to catch up on some school work in a quiet setting, two gangs of kids starting hooting and hollering. At first I paid them no attention and continued on my work. Several other people, some couples, were also in the park and paid them no attention. I’m sure they all thought the same thing as me, if they get out of hand, start messing with me, I’ll throw up a priv screen, or punch out, or even call a cop. None of us were expecting to happen what happened.

A large pop went off. My head swung round fast enough to give me a virtual whiplash. I saw the shiney metal object grow out of the hand of one of the kids. A rather impressive cloud of smoke danced up from the barrell. They love to make the effects of their guns to be spectacular.

Next thing you know, 20 gun barrels are exposed and firing. A regular shoot-em-up right in the middle of public vSpace. The guns of course are not harmful, that rumor that went around a few years ago about getting brain fried in a vNet is just false, but they can disrupt your plug-in signal and boot you. Only the hacked ones of course. And even then you use them with the potential of getting caught.

So there I was, watching kids get booted, guns blazing, myself ducking, I hadn’t saved any work and if I got booted from a stray shot I may loose my work. I found a nice quiet tree to duck behind. From there I saw an innocent girl get shot. She dropped out with a look of frustration on her face.

After about 20 minutes, most had been booted. Those that left congratulated each other then quickly jumped out before the automations came online and began recording ID’s and kicking people. All in all it was very frustrating. If you’re one of these kids that loves to go shoot-em-up in public spaces, grow up. They have entire nets devoted to this, must you bug the old guys?