A few friendly notes:

1. The Directive: Thank you for all of the lovely listening devices. You would be surprised just what sort of market value they garner in certain places.

2. Project Utopia: Don't blame Sapper; he's new, he's young, and he's not as quick on the draw as me. That said, please enjoy the festive gift-wrapping I left him in for you, complete with breathing holes and red ribbon.

3. Party Who Shall Remain Nameless: The bomb in the Singapore apartment was a really, really bad idea. Try something like that again, and I might just decide to let it blow up and take the surrounding monkeys with it, rather than deactivate the silly thing.

Hugs and Kisses,
Timeslip

Good goddamn thing this place is fucking full to the gills with Directive operatives, Project Team leaders, and shadowy assassins, because otherwise that would have sounded like pathetic, ego-masturbatory grandstanding.

Oh, wait. Shit.

We have Utopians on this board, Machina. We have a number of assassins - shadowy and otherwise - here, as well. And all things considered, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that the Directive has an eye on this place, too.

That said, it could be worse; you could have clones.

Fucksake. Okay, let's pretend that I live in your paranoid delusion where people are eagerly monitoring your every fucking keystroke in rapt anticipation of you giving your various enemies a chance to strike. I've got a good imagination.

Given that admittedly batshit fucking loco presumption, what you've done here is given your many and varied (imaginary) enemies a beat on you. You logged into an Op terminal somewhere. You can be marked at a place and time. If the Directive or anybody had surveillance on you, they know you got wise, because their surveillance isn't up, anymore. If anyone's looking to kill you, they've got a new lead to investigate.

I hope the satisfaction of mocking your enemies was worth the pathetic grandstanding it took, Inky.

Hey, isn't that furry nerd who could level Tokyo your old man or something? Why not just have him go deal with this problem? Or is he too busy partying at the Phoenix Room and assembling Gundam models?

What? They might find where I've been? The hell, you say...

*sigh*

Machina, if you really, truly believed that I was not already quite aware of the fact that the locations from which I make each and every post can be and likely are duly logged and checked by various parties... well, I suppose that seeing anything clearly beyond the brilliant glare of your narcissism is probably something of a task for you.

Huh?

Daaaaaaaang.

So... When did you turn into Jager?

...

Not that there's anything wrong with being like Jager. God forbid you should pick a lesser humanitarian. But...

Daaaaaaaang.

This is new.

And if the people your brain fantasizes were after you actually were, you wouldn't be doing a lot of OpNet posting. They would have made you and tagged you already.

You know, for someone who moralized and played petulant over having killed another member of "The One Race", you certainly seem to take a lot of joy in mocking the people who would seek to redress that self-confessedly grievous wrong. You are about as fucking vacuous as the empty space that comprises your body would suggest.

Oh, please. The people whose noses I tweaked do not seek to "redress that self-confessedly grievous wrong". Some seek old-fashioned revenge, preferably via my death. Others are only too happy to use the Excavator incident as casus belli to deal with me for my mere existence as a Terat and/or my relationship with Long. It is possible that some small handful want to see justice done - and perhaps one or two of those would even be willing to recognize that I acted in self-defense, were the fascists at Utopia to permit a real and valid trial by my peers in the One Race - but they are thoroughly outnumbered by those who will only be appeased by blood.

That said, if my life from here on is fated to be filled with threat of torches and pitchforks (as it has been for the past several months), I am going to do my level best to enjoy the cheery glow.

While I'm on the metaphor, Machina, don't you have some experiment in your dungeon laboratory that is waiting for you to cackle and throw a switch, rather than continuing to inflict your dubious charms on this forum?

Timeslip, do you think anyone form this site had anything to do with this action? Are you seeking advice in how to deal with such actions that have not happened? Are you just venting?

Muse, not everyone who reads this site posts on it as well.

I am one in particular that verifies that fact. By Example.

I deliberately decided to wait a bit before responding to this. Post not in anger and all that.

RE: the fascists at Utopia…
I’ve seen the tears on the faces of the friends of the man you killed. You aren’t the wounded party here. T2M is functionally the equiv of the police.

RE: “Acted in self-defense”
How odd. I’d heard you had a number of less than lethal abilities, including some flavor of teleportation.

RE: “…to permit a real and valid trial by my peers in the One Race…”
This is a joke, right? I thought the Teragen (mostly) didn’t believe in any law save that of might?

How would you describe the baseline equivalent of what you did? Something along the lines of, ‘We were robbing a liquor store and had to shoot at the cops before they could shoot at us?’

Just because I'm against Timey the Time Bitch, it doesn't mean I'm for you, Jackass. Hey, you hear something, Green Giant? Yeah, that's the hyperbole police come to take you away.

I'm not a Terat, haven't been, never will be. But to say they only believe in the rule of might is wrong on so many levels that I'm frankly surprised it came out of somebody who paints himself as such a fucking intellectual nerd. You should know better. So here's what I want you to do: take your giant brush, and take your straw dolls, and then you're going to take them both, turn them sideways, and shove them straight up your fat, green ass.

Dr. Green,

1. T2M is not the police. T2M is the brute squad for what amounts to a global corporation dedicated to control over the One Race.

2. Some things take time - yes, even for me. Some do not. When faced in imminent destruction by Excavator with not quite a half-second in which to act, my options became very, very limited.

3. You have absolutely no conception of what the Teragen does and does not believe. By and large, we would be thrilled to have a functioning society of the One Race - including laws to which we can hold each other accountable.

4. For the "baseline equivalent" you requested, try, 'We were trying to protect a disturbed person from herself and others, found ourselves ambushed by the Gestapo, and defended ourselves.'

No, they do. They just don't realize it because they also have this "when the world is perfect and a society of novas magically forms then laws can be made but until then..." thing.

Except of course you're never going to get that society until you have law. Team Tomorrow is at present the closest thing we have to a nova law enforcement body. I see NO effort in any way, shape, or form by any branch of the Teragen to improve or replace them. Nor does the issue appear to be limited to T2M. At some point we have to wonder if their problem is with Law itself?

So, thought experiment.

Question: What happens if any segment of the Teragen agrees to law, *any* law?

Answer: Civil War.

In previous conversations I've been unable to find any act so vile that they (if "they" can be used here) would be willing to condemn fellow Terats and act on that. If novadom passed a law against eating babies (which was the example on the table until I gave up) the Teragen would have serious internal problems. So… no law but that of the jungle.

I understand why you think what you do about us, David. There have been terrible actions taken under the Teragen banner these past ten years. But those actions do not define us.

First, you must understand that there are some - in fact, I would go so far as to say many - that call themselves Terats who are looking only for an excuse. They are not true followers of the vision, but paint themselves as such so that they can raid and kill and then, at the end of the day, say that such is the spirit of Teras. As with any movement, ours has attracted those who would use our name as an excuse for their own acts, no matter how wrong.

Second, you must also understand that Team Tomorrow is not a nova law enforcement body, but a body to enforce foreign law on novas. The day to day work of Project Utopia is to oppose the creation of a society of our peers, by denying that we even are anything other than "humans with special gifts".

Third, we are young. The One Race is less than two decades old; do you really expect that a functioning, stable, healthy society can form in such a short span of time? We are still, as a race, coming to terms with ourselves, learning what it means to be as we are. At the least, give us time. Better yet, come sit at our fire and share your own visions; regardless of the current political climate, we are all one race and we should work together toward whatever will be our society, our laws, our civilization.

Wakhan Thánka níci un, David.

Timeslip, Ptesan-Wi, may I ask why you are bothering to speak to the green brick wall?

I can't speak for Timeslip, but I'm talking to him because there's a reasoning nova mind inside of "the green brick wall", and I'd like to reach it. It's what I do, Hugin.

First let's get down to the idea of that to the outsider..Your first statement is this. I do not agree with the actions of that fellow.There for that fellow is not part of my team. Also because that fellow's actions reflect poorly on my team, he is just a fake, using my teams name to his own means. My claim that he is not part of my team should be clearly enough proof for me or anyone else that my team is still good. Your team, is set up on the idea that no one knows the path any one nova should take to find their true self, besides that one nova. Seeing as you do not know what path I have to take, you cannot tell me if my actions are right or wrong. But this is a long debate that I really do not think you are ready for.

You act like a human with special gifts and nothing else...Guess what you get treated like one. Time-slip claimed to only have a shot amount of time to react.Isn't she the only who brags about the ability to changemanipulate time? So I wonder why does she feel the need to talk in such human terms of time. Witch leads me my last point.

We are young? Only less than two decades you say? That may be true of objective time.I can tell you that I have been a nova for many years longer than that subjectively. Time is a mutable force that changes based on many factors. If you claim to have power of it and not understand that then well, I say you have no power. The act and actions of timeslip in this case prove that either she is weak in abilities or in mind.

I see you've adopted a new name, Signy. Very representative: a hollow shell containing a progression of smaller and smaller hollow shells. All show, no substance. You chose well.

Oh, and you pull the only trick you seem to know slipping. You have seen power slip from your hands.You see time slip form you hands.You do not understand it, so you let it slip. Still enough with name calling.

I have to ask you this. What that half a second objective,or subjective time? Yes there are more types of time, but those are the simplest forms of them.

I know better than to tie myself to temporal objectivity, Hollow Shell... though apparently you don't know enough about me to realize that the question was moot.

You can go back to whatever it is you do now; had I wanted your opinion, I would have given it to you.

Again, such clearly supra-human thought were clearly used to come with that witty statement. I bow down to your Nova-Turing transcendence test proof. You clearly are post-human!

Thank you too.Thank you, and vise versa, for the same reason.

Their actions certainly don’t need to define you. With your decentralized authority system, those actions would only define you if you let them. The next issue is whether or not you let them define you. The Teragen is big on individual action and also on individual responsibility. More on that later.
Boiled down this strongly implies you don’t agree with them. Good so far.
One of the open secrets of the law is that it can be stupid. Tampa’s Mayor Rupert’s law was certainly stupid. I seriously doubt any member of T2M enjoyed enforcing them or agreed to them. I think everyone there knew it was a bad law. Similarly, simply because T2M tried to protect Piper didn’t make them COMA members.

The solution to bad laws is too shine a light on them and either get rid of them or make them into good laws. Laws and Civil society exist so every time someone has a disagreement we don’t have to have people killing people (that would be ‘might makes right’ again). Simply tearing down the structure of society and expecting it to lead to a better society strikes me as incredibly naive. Violence begets violence.
In what way?

As far an I can tell, the “day to day work” of Utopia mostly deals with avoiding wars, researching drugs, getting rid of pollution, making engineering advances, etc. More controversial is the tech police, but that also doesn’t seem to fit your ‘opposition to a nova society’. T2M exists to deal with actions like nova murderers and the like, which *also* doesn’t seem to fit the description of “the creation of a nova society”. Notice that Count “O” has been very critical of T2M and Utopia for years without him disappearing, because what he does is talk, and talk is a good thing.

Nor have I see Utopia interfering in the few attempts that have been made things that might lead to a nova society. There are a number of nova organizations out there which might take us steps forward. The D-League’s exploration of space, that Mental Group Gestalt’s exploration of the mind, Ironskin’s bar. Actually Andy’s bar is an interesting example since it was founded by a baseline.

As for denying us being other “humans with special gifts”, so what? The Teragen is supposed to be a group of free thinkers. Faced with a different point of view, the response is what? Violence? Shock and dismay that anyone could dispute things?
OK, thought experiment time. Assume for the moment that I join up. Like what you implied you believe, I would believe that some so called Terats are ”…looking only for an excuse [and] …not true followers of the vision, but paint themselves as such so that they can raid and kill…”

And now we have a problem. Because Teras is also big on individual action and responsibility, and I certainly wouldn’t want to let those bozos define me and my movement. So I’d act to stop them. If I found out that someone was running around committing those acts of raiding and killing, or for that matter if I found someone whose taint was making him eat babies alive, I’d *do* something about it. But I’m also only one guy, and any time I engage in combat I run the risk of leveling cities, so the obvious thing to do is bring in a group of novas who would act to stop this sort of thing. Perhaps even some kind of nova law enforcement agency, and the closest thing we have to that is T2M.

Like I said, thought experiment time. And now it’s time for the results. What do you think the reaction of the rest of the Teragen would be? Would they slap me on the back and tell me “Well done! That person didn’t understand Teras and he was blackening our name!”? Or do you think they’d murder my family? Or do you think they’d do something else?

What would your reaction be if I did that?

.......

I go away and play goddess for isolated tribals and the next thing I know, Signy's a bigger idiot than before.

I'm afraid. Very afraid.

As far as Team Tomorrow, here's my take on them:

I won't exactly call them the Police, nor would I call them the SS. There are certainly members the exemplify both ends of that spectrum however.

If anything, the best analogy to T2M is a corporate security force, loyal to their corporation's vision of the future. While this is not in and of itself sinister, the simple fact of the matter is that Utopia, though it deals with Novas, has at its core baseline interests at heart.

With that in mind, one must at the very least question their impartiality. If the One Race voted as a whole to make T2M the police force of our society, that would be all well and good. Until then I for one can only consider them biased.

You are correct in that one of the greatest obstacles for the Teragen movement is effectively the balance between individual and societal responsibility. Unfortunately, you are also correct in that for every Terat such as Timeslip, Ptesan-Wi, or myself, there are probably 6 to 10 "wannabes" who just use our philosophy as an excuse to cause chaos.

I wish I had a simple way to resolve that dichotomy, but alas I doubt a simple solution exists.

Doctor Smith? I remember that show

Leliel wouldn't the idea of having a body of people who can agree on who is real a terat and who is not? I mean, if you only say that they are "wannabes" after the fact of their "bad" actions. What does that say? It sounds to me a lot like the "Lone Wolf" way of the world. I do not agree or disagree with your movement as whole because you do not seem to have a movement.

I am a Terat. I formerly was a member of Team Tomorrow. That gives me a unique perspective on things.

Contrary to popular belief, the former are not all terrorists, and the latter are not all fascists. There still Tomorrowites I would trust with my life, and Terats I absolutely despise.

Unfortunately, a middle way is looking very hard to find with all the mud-slinging going on between the sides.

Forgive me for butting in, but Im new to these forums.

As Novas we seem to be a distressingly post-modern group. For some, this expresses itself as unselfconsious narccicism which appears to lead to a decided lack of empathy for baselines and even other Novas. Timeslip, your Teragen presents an interesting philosophy, but even some terats can agree that its public expression has often been immature and reactionary. Utopia is nothing more then baseline elite interests extended through willing Nova agents. They may clean up the enviornment but they refuse to address the capitalist status quo which opresses the mass of the baseline population and enslaves a majority of Novas.

Now, I myself dabble in a few pie in the sky ideologies but when the rubber meets the road we must ask ourselves what it is we are trying to accomplish here. Im still trying to figure that out myself. I will spend the meantime attempting to ease frictions in baseline/human interaction. Events are moving too fast and we all need some breathing room without the threat of screaming quantum doom or a Utopian police state breathing down our necks.

Terats, whether they want it or not, and for all their individualist rhetoric, dance to Divis Mal's tune, whether because they're blind with idolatry, it serves their rebellious or supremacist agendas, because they want the table scraps of his power or simply because they're stuck following a philosophy that he created for his own ends.

Of course, they're still better than Utopia, which is a baseline attempt to regulate and control novas through all means necessary beneath a save-the-world hippie facade.

And HyperFocus, "capitalist status quo"? What are you, a multimillionaire nova communist?

Crimson: I suppose I could go about my mission to peacefully shift world governements away from their blatantly destructive and exploitative agenda wearing sackcloth and ashes. But something tells me my calls wouldnt get returned very quickly were that the case.

*Link: SEC Filing for Focus Consulting, 4th Quarter of 2016*

Full health and dental benifits. Above average pay. Profit sharing. Generous leave policy. All this for everyone, even the janitors. Hell, I invited SEIU to represent my workers the day I launched the firm. Yes, I am a multimillonaire nova commie. And I do it damm well.

Dont hate the player. Hate the game.

Heh. What can I say? Respect. Although it's beyond me why you'd go to so much effort for the humans, at least you've got the balls to put money where your mouth is.