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'Memory Lapse'


Session 1.18: Caladbolg and back to Caliburn


Session 1.17   Index   Session 1.19


Just before we leave Caliburn, we have second thoughts about sending our blackmail letter to SuSAG while we are away - we might return to a system swarming with security, for one thing - so we cancel its release for now. However, it is still waiting in the system at the moment...

And so into jumpspace.


And a week later, we emerge from Jumpspace three hundred thousand miles from Caladbolg, under the yellow-green light of Fergus, the main star of the Caladbolg system, and head in. Because there is no gas giant in this system, we will have to refuel from the ocean on Caladbolg instead.

There is quite a lot of traffic in the Caladbolg system, mostly trading ships as far as we can see, though there are some military vessels, and ships associated with the X-boat station. There is a 'Kantrex'-class (Tessalon-type) here, the 'Kenalog', which is in orbit around Caladbolg itself.

As we head in towards the planet, we are hailed by Caladbolg Traffic Control. They ask us what our intentions are, and we tell them that we would like to refuel in the ocean then land at New Ulster, the capital of the Republic of Erin (the Caladbolgian nation with the lower law level). We are not interested in any of the orbital stations. They give us a course down to the ocean, then to New Ulster's spaceport. This we follow.

We land in the ocean without incident. The sea is quite rough, with tall, slow-moving waves due to the low gravity here. This is a bit much for the inertial compensators, so we submerge to avoid them. The 'Fantasy' can submerge a little way, though not too far (a few tens of metres at most). And we begin to refuel.

This takes a few hours. Fish investigate us, so we put the chameleon hull into 'Fish' screensaver mode...


Once we have refuelled, we take off again and follow the second part of our course. New Ulster traffic control guides us in towards the city. The ship's hull is in it default advertising mode.

New Ulster proves to be a city of streamlined cylindrical towers with helical stabilising fins wrapped around them. Between the towers the city is landscaped; there are roads and walkways, but some effort seems to have been spent on making them as pleasant as possible. It is situated on a natural harbour, at a river mouth. The harbour seems to cater for cargo submarines. There are a large number of wind turbines situated off shore. On one side of the river is farmland, on the other a jungle formed of tall, thin trees with large leaves. Six large creatures like spindly brontosaurs are walking through the farmland. To one side of the city, which, with a population of thirty million people, stretches far off into the distance, is the New Ulster spaceport. Part of the spaceport seems devoted to military vessels, and a larger part to shipbuilding.

We are guided to a landing pad. As soon as we are down, spaceport workers emerge to hook us up to ground power (which seems to include hundreds of free TV channels, telephone, email, and internet connectivity), and also to tie down the ship. Given the low gravity and dense atmosphere here, it is entirely possible for weather to flip over ships unless precautions are taken. The port workers are very dark-skinned and wear a uniform of shorts, t-shirts and caps.

With the ship tied down, a docking arm extends from the terminal building and latches on to the ship.

We wait, and before long we receive the visit from customs which we were expecting. They are wearing a leaf-green uniform of shorts, short-sleeved shirts and baseball caps. Not very intimidating, all in all.

When they ask, we tell them, truthfully, that we have come here from Caliburn. They seem to think there is no contraband problem there, so relax a bit. From what they say, it seems that they do have a contraband problem here due Caladbolg's location right on the very edge of the Imperium.

They conscientiously search the ship, but of course do not find anything. They do tell us about the weapons limitations here, and, in passing, that it is possible to hunt the dinosaura if one wishes. Apparently some (mad) people here hunts rocs - some kind of large flying dinosaura - from hang gliders...

The customs officers take our docking and refuelling fee of 100 Cr, and in return give us electronic identity cards, which also act as keys to and from the spaceport. Then they wish us well here, salute, and leave.


With them gone, Ak goes onto the internet to set up advertising for Fantasy Escort Services, as there may be work for us here. He checks what licences and so we need to have, and discover that, unlike in Caliburn, no trading licences are required here. Good.

He also uses the internet to send our message to Lawless and Lynch, the Rhylanor lawyers who are keeping our data pack for us. This is an update of the data package with everything we have found out since we left, and a message to put back its release for another six months. We also change the condition of release slightly, so that we can only postpone the release of the data for an extra six months (one year in total), after which we have to physically go to Rhylanor to stop it being released and change the conditions. All of the data is encrypted using a key which Lawless and Lynch have. X-boat messages cost 15 Cr per jump; at nine jumps to Rhylanor, that comes to 135 Cr. This we pay.

That done, we use the internet to check for psychiatric facilities on Caladbolg where we could place Szechuan for treatment. The only major facility of this kind in New Ulster is the New Ulster Psychiatric Institute, in the city. We phone them, and when we get through explain the situation. We tell them that Szechuan is mad, and that we want him diagnosed, and to get advice on treatment, and how to have him committed. When they ask, we tell them we can bring him along right away.

We go and find Szechuan, who is in engineering. We tell him that he has been put up for promotion to a more responsible position, but that as part of this he needs to have an independent person perform a psychometric assessment on him. He seems quite pleased at the possibility of promotion - he has apparently been wanting a position with more responsibility and a larger team. He collects his 'team' (that is, his toolkit), and Scarlett and Ozymandias lead him off the ship.


The terminal is very nice, clean and air-conditioned. We wonder why this, the first world we have been on for a long time where it is possible to walk around outside without protection, feels the need for it. There are some security guards, but security is, overall, not very heavy.

They head for the underground metro that will take them into the city. Due to the weather underground trains are the main form of public transport of Caladbolg.

A train quickly arrives, and off they go. The tube is fast, clean, bright and generally nice. They wonder why the hell we chose to retire to Caliburn rather than to a nice place like this, and conclude that we were really very sad. However, we aren't sad now.

After a couple of changes, they arrive at the New Ulster Psychiatric Institute, which has its own tube station. The Institute is apparently the entire skyscraper above us.

We go in, and a receptionist directs us to Dr Nutcatcher on the 30th floor. He loans us a small PDA, which gives us directions, and off we go.

The Institute is clean, with pleasant piped music, lots of fish tanks, and a general calming sort of atmosphere. We take an elevator up to the 30th floor, and quickly arrive at the office of Dr Nutcatcher.

We explain the situation to him. He says he'll assess Szechuan and contact us via the PDA once he's done.

We ask where we can wait, and he directs us to the restaurant on the 25th floor. We leave and go there. The restaurant proves to be a large part of the 25th floor, with excellent views out over the city, and, it turns out, excellent food too. This they enjoy while they wait.


Back on the ship, Ak receives an electronic receipt from the X-Boat service, confirming its reception and guaranteeing that it will be sent on the next X-boat out.

Then he looks for escort service opportunities. This would seem to be a good place for them - on the edge of the Imperium, and with the Sword Worlds close by too - so he looks for example missions. He finds two that could be possibilities:

This looks quite promising, for in the future.

For now, Ak looks at the possibility of carrying small and valuable cargoes, perhaps in parallel with our escort work. Caladbolg certainly produces software and art-forms, which would fit into that category. And luxury items would certainly be possible too.

Ak concludes that operating as an escort service is do-able, and that in fact a good living can be had from it, before we find our true purpose. Whatever that may be...


Ozymandias and Scarlett loiter in the restaurant of the New Ulster Psychiatric Institute for two hours, enjoying it all, before the PDA rings. It is summoning them back to Dr Nutcatcher's office.

They go back up to the 30th floor. Szechuan is not in Dr Nutcatcher's office when they go in; he tells them Szechuan is waiting in a next-door room, and that in his medical opinion Szechuan is most certainly in need of psychiatric help.

Ozymandias tells him that Szechuan was never a member of the Scout Service. He was the engineer of a small starship, and before that he was a teacher. He basically gives the doctor a version of what we know of Szechuan's real life, edited to avoid its more outlandish aspects, but basically true. He tells Dr Nutcatcher that Szechuan basically constructed a fictitious life for himself.

We have no legal guardianship of Szechuan, but he has no family either, and as Szechuan's Captain he feels responsible for him, over and above the problems of having a delusional madman as your ships engineer. But we do want Szechuan healthy, and back on our ship as part of the crew.

Dr Nutcatcher tells us that Szechuan is seriously disturbed, but he can be treated. However, this will cost. A year's treatment, including board and lodging, will cost us 20000 Cr. We pay this without any problems.

We ask about visiting Szechuan, and Dr Nutcatcher tells us that this is entirely possible, as long as it is compatible with Szechuan's treatment. Szechuan has only had a preliminary assessment so far, so the first thing to do will be an in-depth psychiatric examination.

With that sorted out, Ozymandias and Scarlett concoct a story to tell Szechuan to have him stay here quietly. They settle on telling him that Szechuan is to go on 'an extended leave of absence as part of a special duty to help the doctors here with some behavioural research relating to the long-term psychological effects of space flight; he will receive training as part of this'. Well, it might work.

With the story decided, they all go into the next room. As they come in, Szechuan looks up guiltily from where he seem to have been talking to his toolkit. Ozymandias explains the 'special duty'.

"You and your team are ideal for this," Scarlett tells him.

He is told that it is research for the Scout Service, and it is implied, though never stated, that it is all rather secret.

Szechuan agrees to go along with the plan. Phew.

We say our goodbyes to him, and leave the Institute, dropping off the PDA they loaned us at reception on the way out.


With our duty to Szechuan done for now, Scarlett and Ozymandias wander the streets and shops of New Ulster, which are well-stocked with goods of all kinds. It is hot and humid outside the buildings, but not too unpleasant. They buy lots of fresh food and other supplies for delivery to the ship. They are planning to trade such things to Caliburn.

In the end, they buy 12000 Cr worth of spices, fresh fruit, and some fresh flowers too (given how horribly expensive real flowers were in Caliburn). We will adjust the climate in the cargo hold to keep all of the fresh things fresh for the trip back. However, it will take a few days for everything to be delivered. Everyone bemoans their hardship in having to stay on Caladbolg for longer...

And so we wait for our cargo to be delivered.

As we do so we peruse the local cultural high points. There are plenty of restaurants, theatres, museums and sporting events in New Ulster (well, it is a city of thirty million people). Scarlett and Ozymandias look into going dinosaura hunting for an afternoon.


The weather is nice on the day we arrive, but by the time we are done, it is getting on for evening, so all we can go is go to restaurants and cultural events.

The next day and the day after, the city is rocked by a violent storm, and we get to see the benefits of having our ship tied down as it rages overhead. We simply wander the city, using the tube and the subways connecting the towers together to get around without having to go outside. The rain does not fall quickly, but there is a lot of it, and the wind is very strong.

Ak spends some of the time while the weather is bad setting up a 'Fantasy Escort Services' web site to advertise our services here. This includes a mailbox to allow people to leave messages for us while we are away.

The fourth day on Caladbolg days bright, clear and calm, however, so we decide it is time to get properly into tourism mode.


Ak has been wanting to go base jumping since before we reached Rhylanor, and he decides that today is, at last, the day to do it. He takes his parachute and goes off to the tallest building in New Ulster - the 50 stories tall Republic of Erin Assembly Building, from which the government runs the nation of Eric. It costs him 10 Cr to get into the building, but after that no-one stops him as he makes his way to the roof.

There is a huge view from up there, limited only by the rather close horizon on Caladbolg. He picks a far-off landing spot, in a park, and then jumps off the building. He free-falls for as long as he can, then pulls his rip-cord and floats off through the sunny air...

There is not much air traffic over or in the city, and he has no problems drifting gently down to his chosen landing spot. The low gravity and relatively dense atmosphere here make it very good for parachuting.

He re-packs his parachute then goes off and jumps from another building. Then he does it again, this time trying to land atop another building on the way down, but the air currents are a little more complex than he expected, and he is unable to manage it. He still lands safely though.

By this point the afternoon is largely over...


Meanwhile, Ozymandias and Scarlett have gone hunting Dinosaura, at a licensed hunting park outside the city (it is not legal to just shoot dinosaura everywhere). The traditional hunting weapon here is a bolt-action rifle, and the sporting part of the hunting is considered to lie in getting as close as possible to ones prey before shooting it. The dinosaura are edible, and are considered game meat rather than normal everyday food.

They fly to the park in the ship's air-raft, and bring along a couple of the ship's holo-cameras.

They check in to the park at the Visitor's Centre, and pay their hunting fee of 1000 Cr each. The park is largely savannah-like, with clumps of trees dotted on lush grassland. We drift over the park in the air-raft, looking for dinosaura. Before long, Ozymandias spots a group of a dozen or so of the thin brontosaur-like creatures, grazing on the grassland. He also spots a pair of creatures like very thin five metre tall velociraptors clearly hunting them from the edge of a nearby clump of trees.

They land the air-raft some way off and stealthily make their way closer. Scarlett seems much better at moving quietly than Ozymandias, so she goes ahead, and he covers her.

As they get close, the 'velociraptors' race out of the trees towards the 'brontosaurs', which quickly see them and start to race off surprisingly quickly for such large creatures. However, one of the 'brontosaurs' stumbles, and the 'velociraptors' are on it, slash it with their large claws, and it goes down. They begin to eat.

Scarlett and Ozymandias decide that the feasting 'velociraptors' will be too easy to hunt, and so not enough of a challenge. They decide to go after the spooked 'brontosaurs' in the air-raft instead.

After running for a few kilometres, in long swooping strides, the 'brontosaurs' stop, and nervously start feeding again.

Ozymandias and Scarlett land the air-raft and begin sneaking up. After a while, the 'brontosaurs' spot them and sidle nervously off. They wait until the 'brontosaurs' calm down, and sidle closer. By this means, they accustom the 'brontosaurs' to their presence and are able to get close up to them.

Then they leap up, shouting and shooting at their selected 'brontosaur'. They both hit their target.

The other 'brontosaurs' run off again, but the injured one comes for them instead. They split up, so it can only get one of them, and fire again and again as it gets closer (with Scarlett having rather more success in this than Ozymandias), until it falls over just before it would have got to Scarlett. Phew.

They pose with the large corpse, and many photographs are taken. Then, using information from their guidebook, they begin to select the best meat to take away. They also consider taking its head as a trophy, then decide that it is too large and too herbivorous for that to really work, so they leave it. They keep off the circling scavengers while as much meat as they can carry is removed from the corpse, at which point they return to the air-raft and leave for the Visitor's Centre.

At the Visitor's Centre, they clean up, having got rather bloody while butchering their 'brontosaur'. Then they go to the restaurant there, and have the chef cook them each a large 'brontosaur' steak to their exact specification. It is amazingly good. While they eat, the rest of the meat is properly bagged for future use.

And with that done, they return to the ship...


Unfortunately, the next day our cargo is delivered to the ship, so it is time to leave. No-one is too keen to go. Scarlett declares that she loves it here, and wants to retire here. And who can really blame her?

We look on the internet into how we might become citizens of the Republic of Eric here. It certainly looks like it would be possible, if not quite as easy as it was at, for example, Inthe. On Caladbolg they do seem to be rather more discriminating about who they allow to become citizens.

We seriously consider holding off on the blackmailing of SuSAG to instead have a nice life here. Then we conclude that is not the way to go, and begin to discuss what to do...


It is at this point that the ship's doorbell rings.

We answer it. Outside is a tough-looking woman in her forties, dressed in the uniform of the Trans-Inperium Police Authority. She introduces herself as Inspector Shmurla Murshtiy of the TIPA, and asks if she can come in.

We let her in. When she has sat down, she tells us that our presence here has been noted due to a report sent from Rhylanor, then asks us what we are doing at the moment, and what our plans are for the future.

We tell her our cover story, the things we appear to have been doing - touting for escort service work, prospecting and so forth, our plans for the future, and that things seem to be coming together.

She asks us about SuSAG, to which we act dumb. She explains that one of us was investigating SuSAG on Rhylanor. We blame Bingbong, then tell her that he is gone, and is now working for SuSAG at Gorre.

Inspector Murshtiy thanks us for our time, gives us her card, and leaves.

We all relax slightly as she goes out of the door.


Ak wonders whether we need to steal the computer backups from the genetic engineering labs at Gorre Town.

We think perhaps not. We decide that there are two things we need to do once we return to Caliburn:

If we can find out this last, then that will tell us whether we need more information yet, or whether we can go with the blackmail plan right away. The plan remains the same at the moment though - threaten to release the information we have discovered to the authorities and/or the press unless SuSAG compensate their victims and ensure that any new test subjects given their informed consent.

And we will have to ask Bingbong whether he wants to be pulled out, and if so whether he wants to bring Amanda with him.

Ozymandias wonders whether we could steal some of the virus. Perhaps that is our purpose - to steal the virus and sell it to SuSAG's competitors at vast profit. We wouldn't end up as heroes in that case, but we would end up as very rich people who tooled over a megacorporation, and who could look after SuSAG's victims on our own. Or perhaps we could arrange that with whoever we sold the virus to, as part of the agreement.

Or perhaps we could inform on SuSAG too - steal the virus and the information and set the TIPA on SuSAG.

But before we do anything else we really need to return to Caliburn and talk to Bingbong.

So, with the permission of New Ulster traffic control, we leave the New Ulster spaceport and head out into space. It does not take us long to reach 100 diameters from Caladbolg, at which point we go into jumpspace, heading for the asteroid settlement of Ricasso in the Caliburn belt. This is a little harder than normal without someone in engineering to assist, but not too much so.


In jumpspace, we decide that the ten 'bombs' Szechuan made by fiddling with the shells for the ships cannon are just too dangerous to have around. So, for safety reasons, we very carefully throw them out of the airlock and into jumpspace where, we hope, they will never be seen again.

As we fly through jumpspace, Scarlett and Ozymandias spar. Scarlett wins most of the time.

Ozymandias cooks. He is better at this.

At one point he asks Scarlett whether she in menstruating. She is.


And after eight days in Jumpspace, we come out of jumpspace close to Ricasso. The dim red sunlight of Notavalon, Caliburn's sun, makes the whole place strike us as very dark and dingy after the bright sunlight of Caladbolg.

Like Tip, Ricasso is a large irregular rock floating in space, with a city tunnelled into it. It seems to have rather better port facilities than Tip, with some mooring facilities and lights rather than a crater with an airlock in its centre. We fly down and land, mooring ourselves to the surface.

With that done, we put on our vacc suits and enter Ricasso. As at Tip a security guard checks us over at the airlock then lets us in. Again, as at Tip the tunnels are well-lit, look reasonably well-kept, and are quite warm.

The first thing we do upon entering Ricasso is find an internet cafe and access the internet, looking to sell our cargo. It takes a few hours of work, but in the end we manage to sell everything, from the luxury goods to the fresh fruit to the fresh flowers, for 20000 Cr, a considerable profit over our buying price of 12000 Cr.

We also check the progress of our application for a licence to trade in Caliburn as Fantasy Escort Services. Unfortunately, we have still not been granted permission to trade here. Damn.

We return to the ship, and over the next couple of hours the buyers of our various good arrive and take their purchases away.


With the cargo hold now empty, we return to Ricasso. Ak returns to the internet, and we look for information on the Elderly Employee Care Facility here, beginning with their public web pages.

As far as we can tell from the public pages, the Elderly Employee Care Facility is a large old-peoples home, attached to the Ricasso Hospital, and devoted to 'looking after those who have given so much to Lunion Fluid Management over the years'.

However, it does not give us what we want - the names of people who have 'volunteered' for SuSAG's medical experiments. We would like a list of names of people who live or have lived in the Elderly Employee Care Facility. Unfortunately, this is not available on the public web pages.

With some work, Ak manages to gain access via a back door into the system, and before long we have a list of names of 'guests' at the Elderly Employee Care Facility, plus dates of admission (and death, where relevant), drug regimes and so on in the form of a database.

We look through the list for our former selves.

We are not there. Strange. We look for other names we know to have been there. None of them are their either.

Ak checks the database in more detail. After a while he realises that, although an attempt has been made to hide this fact, the entire database was newly created within the last three weeks. That is, at about the time the last group of old people left here for Gorre. Based on this, we suspect that they are creating a new database each time people drop out of the system. This looks more than a little suspicious, and could easily be construed as evidence of a cover-up. However, there are also no records regarding consent here, so it is hard to tell for sure.

But we add the information to our data pack any, for safety's sake.

It would appear that having copies of the deleted databases would be useful, but where might we find them? Perhaps the Ricasso Hospital has backups.

Scarlett points out that the Hospital is not a highly secure facility, so it might be easier to find out more there.

In response, Ozymandias says that now that we have done our trading we no longer have any excuse to be here. And in that case, how useful would the records here be? Would it be worthwhile talking to other old people at the Elderly Employee Care Facility to find those who knew the people who vanished? Or to the Elderly Employee Care Facility staff? Unless the staff here are rotated around the system, as they seem to be at Tip, of course.

Ak hacks back into the system and looks at the staff records. It seems that the Elderly Employee Care Facility staff do rotate to other facilities around the system, but more slowly than the psychiatric staff at Tip. There would seem to be fewer Elderly Employee Care Facilities than psychiatric units. Also, the rotation is piecemeal, so should still be people here with the information we need. The only question is how to get them to talk...

We discuss this, and decide that what we need to find out is what SuSAG are saying to the old people they are using in their experiments.

Ozymandias wonders if the evidence of their covering their tracks is enough.

Scarlett points out that it is strange that the incriminating records are gone at this end, but are not gone at the Gorre Town end.

Ozymandias wonders why they are covering their tracks. Is it for legal or commercial reasons. After all, if they are close to cracking the problems with the anagathic virus, they are sitting on a gold mine here. However, he suspects that the former is the more likely possibility...

Ak states that this is a silly thing to blow our cover over.

Scarlett agrees.

Ak continues by saying that we probably have enough information to blow this thing wide open already.

Ozymandias suddenly worries about how we know that we were at Ricasso at all - perhaps this data is legitimate and we are wrong.

The others point out that the data we have placing us here came from the Imperial Census, and can thus be considered legitimate. Phew.

We decide that we are done on Ricasso for now, so it is time to return to Gorre. Given their relative positions, this will take a week through real space, or a single jump. We decide on the former, undock from Ricasso, and head for Gorre to 'continue prospecting'.


As we fly through space, Scarlett and Ozymandias spar again. Again Scarlett wins.

We also send a message ahead to the newsgroups at Gorre telling the people there - prospectors particularly - that we have maps made using high-tech sensors to sell, along with a number of 'stage 1' mining claims (that is, one found using sensors, but not confirmed by actually digging at the site).

Lastly, we look at the overall situation in the Caliburn system, to see if there is anything out of place compared to when we were here before. Everything appears to be normal.

There does not seem to be an auction house, on- or off-line, in the Caliburn system, so while we fly Ak spends a few days setting up an on-line auction system for our maps and claims, which could later be expanded to include other things if necessary.

And after a week we arrive at the gas giant Clarent, around which Gorre orbits. We refuel in Clarent's atmosphere, then head out again to Gorre.


We land at Gorre town.

In addition to the usual SDB, there is another ship parked on the landing pad here, a 'Plavix' class (Dolobid-type) vessel whose transponder identifies it as the 'Fragmin'. A huge data-link cable comes out of the Fragmin, and through a port into the Gorre Town dome.

After a while, we are inspected by customs, who find nothing and take our landing fee.

With the formalities over, we phone the Dinnergong residence.

Bingbong answers the call.

Ozymandias tells him of our trading successes at Ricasso, then asks whether we can invite the Dinnergongs to the ship for dinner again - we have all the making of a major feast imported from Caladbolg.

Bingbong says he will have to check with Amanda, and rings off.

Shortly afterwards, he contacts us again via the secure communicator.

He moans about our having been away roughly a month when we said we would only be gone two weeks, then says he has some important news. Bingbong tells us that the Fragmin is a 'backup ship'. It has been here about two weeks, having come here from Camberiet, the other inhabited moon of Clarent, and is apparently taking copies of all of the backups of all of the corporate computer systems in the Caliburn system, including those of the laboratory complexes, and will be shipping them off somewhere else when it is done. He says that he has talked about it with other people here, and such things do happen every now and again, usually taking about two weeks, so the Fragmin will presumably be leaving soon.

This sound quite promising. We discuss the downloading process, and conclude that, given the amount of data involved (roughly a million terabytes just for the genetic engineering laboratories) is will be a very slow process.

Ak points out that the backups in the Fragmin are probably secured, and rigged to be destroyed if they come into danger. After all, they are only backups of backups.

Ozymandias wonders if we could copy the backups and us that as a cover for the theft of things such as the anagathic virus from the labs. However, he also points out that we should make no precipitous decisions here...

Bingbong rings off to check with Amanda about dinner.

And we wait...


Session 1.17   Index   Session 1.19

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