The Zenobia Files - C.I.A Altera

Time for an out of character rant...

I'm sitting here on my laptop again, the big PC died, for the second time in three weeks, same symptons as the last time, it was the power supply all along. So, being on disability benefit in the UK means im gonna struggle basically building a new PC from scratch, second hand motherboard, power supply and CPU from ebay, older tech than the stiff i had already in it, im taking a step down the ladder in the PC generation list, first time in years i've had to do it. Ultimatley i wont get all the parts until next week sometime so im gonna be off of Second Life for a good 5 or 6 days.

When in times of need you always look to your real life friends or relatives for assistance. God knows, in this town ive fixed dozens of PC's for free over the past year, not asking for anything in return, they leave happy, thats all that matters to me. The last time the PC died on me 3 weeks ago i turned to these same folks in real life and got no offer of assistance at all. Infact it was one of the staff of the Doctor Who Experience who helped me out by going out of his way to drive from his town over to here which is about a 20 minute drive, thats the board that got me up and running for the past three weeks, until the powersupply fried that board as well.

So, once again, i find myself sitting infront of my 7 year old toshiba laptop, barely able to look at webspages with flash embedded in it, let along get inworld. I'm probably gonna be overdrawn in the bank account since im disability benefit, having to pay for the station in second life (which i did last week) and then have the cost of a motherboard, cpu and powersupply....well...no doubt i'll end up with a bank charge for getting overdrawn.

The same relations and friends i helped in the past, i turned to them again for help for spare parts (which i know they have) only to be given the usual line of "ohhhh I need that for something im doing in the future...let me know when you get your new PC!" same old story, same old line. Being "nice" doesnt get ya anywhere in this world, things are gonna be changing the next time one of those freeloaders come to my door with a dead PC (which i know they will) and expect me to do a full format and reinstall and rebed of their CPU for free....sorry...NOT gonna happen this time, pay up or get the hell off my doorstep ya freeloading leeching gnat...

The trouble with me is spare time. It's the reason i spend a lot of time in Second Life. Second Life allows my brain to switch off and go into cruise mode, i dont need to think, well...only when cooking dinner i suppose. Someone like me who's had a string of health problems in the past, heart problems, cancer and now "gut rot" as my dear old dad calls it (ulcers, lots of them) spends a lot of time in the house. Cant work, government and the doctors think i'm "unfit" to work, can't go out, don't have the money, so i sit and rez the time away in Second Life. When not in Second Life and not having some game ot web project to occupy my mind, i start to think...and with me, thinking is a very dangerous thing.

Last time i "thought" i predicted the fall of Perpetual Entertainment, the company who was originally responsible for the MMO Star Trek: Online. Nine months later...Perpetual Entertainment went bankrupt. Last time i "thought" I worked out the death of the Star Trek gaming PC industory, which is where most of my time used to be spent. 4 months ago, the last PC games maker for the Star Trek franchise, Bethesda Softworks...pulled out of the franchise...signifying an end to a 20 year old gaming franchise. When i have nothing to do, i start thinking...and for the past 9 or so hours, i've had nothing to do.

My thoughts turned to Second Life.

No, i didnt predict the bankruptcy of Linden Labs, although if ya ask me the way they are wrecking SL they deserve to go bankrupt. My thoughts turned not to Second Life as a whole, but the particular section of SL i spend most of my time in or around. The Doctor Who community as a whole.

I went into Second Life for one reason, and one reason alone...to escape from the world of Star Trek gaming. The site i run, and have ran for the past 10 years is still going stong even with my prolonged bouts of absence, however it too, just like the franchise it covers, will more than likley die within the next 5 to 6 months. When i got to thinking of the Doctor Who community at large i seen the same signs of my own real life starting to appear. The freeloading mentality, and even worse, the out and out "we'll cut your throat and whine and complain if you do anything about it" mentality. If you look closley at the Who community in SL you will see it all around you.

Of the staff in the Doctor Who Experience, which totals about 30 odd, its a handfull who are doing all the work in the background. DWE got hammered by false accusations of the region being "anti furry" in the beginning of this year, the furries who used to hang out at the sim now (SURPRISE SURPRISE) hang out at the who sim where one of the "KATRINA IS ANTI FURRY!" liars hang out. DWE done nothing to counter the arguement, we were nice, or to be more precise Ezy told us to be nice. DWE along with a lot of help from Terry and Oolon managed to get the podshock guys and doctor who online to start entering Second Life after the collapse of The Land Of Who. Yeah, it was a great all around success, but again, some people out there started shouting at the rooftops "what about us"? Your doing this ALL FOR YOUSELVES!!! *insert butt hurt face here*".

Again...we were nice about the folks complaining, and to appease some of them we even done tours to other who sims. Now to make it absolutley clear, the folks who bitched about the first round of podshock meetings wasnt regulars in the who sims, they just complain for the sake of complaining.

Ontop of all this is the loss of traffic by what is now legal means of gaining traffic to get your sim to the top of the list. Traffic bots are illegal, but MODELLING bots aint. and one sim is using four of them, parked infront of resell vendors on a search enabled parcel to get into the 10k region of traffic. All the while DWE is bringing more and more new people into the Second Life Doctor Who community, only to have them vanish from the Katrina sim and head over to bot cheating sims cause and i quote from one person "the traffic says its busier"...but it isnt...its nowhere near as busy as DWE.

DWE now has the freeloader mentality, the new folks who are showing up come in, strip the freebie shop bare and then leave to go to other who sims cause they look busier. All the while the staff of DWE and the owners are struggling under the pressure of sim costs. Even though mall sales and rentals at the millenium centre hasnt budged from its usual monthly average the fact is the big spanders, who were the furries, all left due to a lie spread by several people who managed to get all the furry community into another who sim. The folks DWE is left with is newbies, always newbies, who come in from the advertising on the DWO site or the Podshock podcasts, they then go into search and see a bot using sim (but they dont know they are using bots) with double the traffic DWE has. They go there, see that sim is empty as well (the bots are in the sky, they dont know that though) and then they either leave SL altogether, or spend less time, and more importantly less money in SL.

I look around the other sci-fi based communities in Second Life and i dont see half of the problems we have plagueing them. Sure, there is drama, drama is everywhere. The difference between those sims and the Who community and more importantly the DWE sim is that its a small community. Problems are covered up, not spoken about in "timelord" circles or looked at and quietly forgotten about. It's like that dark cloud you see on the horizon. Ya think it wont mean rain, you put your washing out, 30 minutes later that dark cloud is covering the sky and soaking your washing with torrential rain. The Who community in Second Life is a good community, but the problems are creeping in. One of them being the way the sims are ran. I find myself spending more and more time in the steamlands of Second Life, i came to Second Life to escape Star Trek, now im using the steamlands to escape Dr Who community problems IN Second Life. This simply cant go on.

The steamlands have taught me one thing. If a sim is well managed and maintained and drama is smothered when it starts...eventually things start to work out. Thats the lesson the who community needs to put into practise with regards to the main whovian regions in SL. Frown upon the use of bots to inflate traffic. Frown, mute and abuse report people running around spreading all out lies and harrasment about other who sims. Encourage the new folks who are lost in the Who community regions to stick around and more importantly show them what the who community has built and what we can do, rather than try and drag them into your club to dance in the same spot for hours on end cause it helps your traffic.

When i get back on next week, "being nice" is getting thrown out the window.

So much for learning valuable lessons from the last encounter with the Daleks.

The last main high council meeting was as i said before kind of chaotic, full of talk. That's all this High Council seem able to do, talk. They are miniature Nero's, sitting back watching their empire burn cause lets face it folks that's whats going to happen eventually.

The "dead" president, now lord president, regenerated into a male, which is...unusual...and resumed his place on the high council as president. The emergency meeting was rather more organised this time around, possibly because there was a lot less people at it, mostly due to the meeting being at short notice i assume.

While the other houses do nothing but talk about how they are going to deter the Dalek threat, i decided to take matters into my own hands and prepare the station...for WAR.

The New Zenobia Eye

The new eye room is tree times more powerfull than the original. I jettisoned the old eye into the void and replaced it with a star which was on the brink of going supernova, i acquired this new eye from...a source. The nanosecond the new star was planed into the barrier it went nova, and the barrier contained the explosion, constantly mirroring the blast back into the dying star in a loop and therefore syphoning off power at a controlled rate.

Altera II - Upgraded

The entire Altera console and the top level room it occupies has been overhauled with an Artron laced shell, the main console has been moved away from the time column due to massive temporal fluxes on the inner base of the now 20metre high time rotors. This upgraded Altera II console is 90% more stable than the old one and draws less than half of the power of the original, therefore stabilizing the new eye much more.

Domes open...


Domes closed...

The top domes have always been a weak spot in the station, with the new security system the dome outer shells now close, on ALL four of the domes, practically sealing off the entire station from the outside world and sealing off the inhabitants inside from anything nasty outside.

These updates, along with the near completion of the stations APC Matrix means that Zenobia is now in the same condition it was in when the C.I.A was running the place all those centuries ago. It makes this station the single most heavily armed and defended gallifreyan construction in this flat old world.

With Time Force 10 now an officially recognised part of New Gallifrey it means that some of the heat has been taken off my shoulders. TF10 can do the intel work, which will now give me and House Cerulean more time to work on something else...the N-Form theory. This house was responsible for creating those part machine part organic beasts, there has GOT to be some of them in this dimension, they were after all seeded in ALL dimensions. If there isn't an N-Form creature out there then it means the last line of defence is with the stations ability to withstand a full frontal Dalek attack, and i now believe it can.

The High Council was all talk about "investigating the Dalek threat" and "we cannot let the same thing happen here" and "we must learn from our mistakes" but all the while House Dromeian sits around building and rebuilding their Crystal Base, Patrexes and Arcalians sit and debate, and talk and debate and talk while totally blind to the happenings outside, House Prydonian...well, they ARE timeforce 10 and so far the only house which seems to be doing something. As for House Sclendes, a dead house with a barley seen leader.

As for the question of the C.I.A, it was basically ignored by the High Council. If the High Council will not act on reactivating the C.I.A, then i will do it myself. With Zenobia and Fullarton House in Clockhaven, i believe that a viable Celestial Intervention Agency can be in full operation before the next official High Council meeting. Also, due to some comments from other house members wishing to see the Dalek technology inside Zenobia Station destroyed, i have decided to install free form scanners in the old derelict Dalek lab, which will scan any traveller who walks around inside it, i will now know who is poking around down there.

Lessons are never learned...there will come a day when the Daleks start attacking the individual houses. While the rest of them are without a viable base they will flock to the sorely under protected Panoptican...while myself and the rest of House Cerulean will be securely and safely locked inside Zenobia Station or Fullarton House, or the other 2 outposts which House Cerulean has recently acquired which the High Council need not know about.

The war is coming...its only a matter of time...

The meeting which took place of the High Council was...well...a disaster.

It seems that the former Lady President, Sen Pixie, decided to take it upon herself to activate that huge hulking contraption below the panoptican, the Eye of Harmony. No one knew that she was going to do it until it was far too late.

The eye is activated, but at the cost of the presidents life.

The ensuing chaos of the High Council meeting was further made more chaotic by my own means to shake off some of the dust that has crept into the Council, i gave them the full blown account of EVERYTHING the Dalek's are up to, this time there was no holding back info. Coupled with the appearance of a being known as "The Jinn" and with the tragic death of the president the meeting went on for 2 and a half hours.

The Lord Chancellor, Mr Oolon Sputnik, had no idea that since the president is apparently dead, that he would be the one taking control of this interim council, and make no mistake, this IS an interim council. With the death of the president elections must be held, to find a new president and possibly find a new chancellor and castellan.

I also forced the hand of Time Force 10, it was about time they were finally brough out into the open. Mr Cornelius Fanshaw, sitting at the meeting as a member of the Prydonian house is also a member of TF 10. When Mr Sputnik brought up the question of TF10 i just came out in the open and announced that he should ask Mr Fanshaw...since hes in the dang organization...TF 10 spying on the high council, i dont bloody well think so!

So, TF 10 are out in the open, the entire extent of the Dalek Empire is out in the open, the Chancellor is probably having a nervous breakdown and to top it all off with the activation of the eye which is now running at full poer ALL consoles and exterior shells needed an overhaul, even the station's.

However...the president...yes...the "late" president...

People were quick to assume she was dead...

...i dont think she is. The president MUST have known the risks. She made no provisions for her NOT returning at all, no mention to Mr Sputnik what to do to run the council, no mention to Solis that the SASTAP and solis home would vanish.

...shes out there...somewhere...

So, it seems the High Council is going to be in session once more within the next couple of weeks.

I've been so busy with the new holiday home and getting to know the New Babbage residents I had completely forgot about the pomp and circumstance of a High Council meeting.

No doubt all the other houses will turn to me to give them juicy information on more locations that THIS HOUSE risked it's neck to get, and they will all blunder in with their "normal" TARDIS exteriors, its a wonder none of the idiots have been...ohhhh what do those Daleks say again...ahhhhh yes... "exterminated".

If the Celestial Intervention Agency was around none of these blundering tourist hoppers would have been allowed anywhere near that new Dalek base and the fact that the Dalek Empire leaders are allowing these little jaunts into their new base is quite frankly scary, get their confidence and then shoot 'em?

So, while the other 4 houses have been trating the base like a holiday camp House Cerulean has been risking it's neck more and more as each week went on. We now have....borrowed the blue prints of those 2 ships that i seen in the void sphere dry dock. As i write this entry log the technology of those two ships is being stripped out and put to use in the station. Whats left of the two dalek ships will be put into storage away from the station at another location the other houses will not know about, and if they request the location of the void sphere yards they will get a blank stare from me, anyway, the Daleks have probably moved it by now.

Some of the Dalek tech will be packed into a dimensional rezzer and presented to the High Council as a little slideshow during the meeting...should scare them enough to stay away from the place while my house gets some serious work done...i might even bring that Kaled mutant stored in the breach room along for a surprise, nah, better not, might give the chancellor a nervous breakdown, he is getting on a bit thesedays.

Fullarton House in the continent of New Babbage is now deemed property of Zenobia Station, while still being my holiday home as well. It is where I will be partakng in some experiments that the high council need not know about since the station is open to visitors 24 hours a day 7 days a week all year round, having some rather...questionable...experiments going on right under the visitors noses isn't a good idea.

With most of the station now complete and the main console (altera) down for the count as the main eye was being reconfigured i decided to push the auxilliary console to its limits. The old aux station's chameleon systems can chage consoles at a whim, the latest one to show up in the database had an old world elegant look to it...

...actually, several holes, large holes at that.

The refit of the outershell wasnt really a refit, it was more of a full overhaul. The remnants of the lost shada station which i managed to recover was hauled into the stations derelict lower level and the consoles were powered down, i let the station do the rest of the work. The design hasnt really changed much, old lift shafts were removed, a new workstation was added...but the the gaps that i never noticed before started showing up...

The heating tubes that line the entire station walls always ran at just over 10% of the capacity of the auxilliary power generators in the breach room and i never understood why until now..

The old outer shell coloring was so dark that these gaping holes were never noticed on a close up inspection but with the lighter more "classical" gallifreyan colouring of the shada station now transplaneted on the altera station the gaps could be noticed from hundreds of metres away. The entire outer shell of the 3 cylinders had to be reconfigured...but i think youll all agree it was worth it in the end...

The reconfigured outer hull of Zenobia Altera, with the revamped garden and new workshop cylinders...