[Sticks]

Notes on Episode 15

Hover Tanks
I have previously described hover cars, so perhaps with this last chapter I ought to describe the concept of the hover tank. This was a concept lifted straight from the previously mentioned Role Play Game Traveller, the main Sci-Fi competitor in the 1980’s to Dungeons and Dragons.

The vehicle in question in Traveller was the G-Carrier, and the Armoured Fighting Vehicle variant, supposedly using antigravity units in the game traveller, which as mentioned before do not exist and according to our understanding of physics can not exist.

Of course like a number of other things, the Hover Tanks were brought in during the 1993 rewrite.

Dipping the winch
During the pick up from the North Sea, the hover tank dips the winch cable directly into the sea. I took this procedure from helicopter air sea rescue procedures. Helicopters and presumably hover tanks generate static electricity, when dropping a line to someone, they always dip it into the sea first, to discharge any static electricity build up, and avoid people in the water or any water craft from getting a quite sizeable electric shock

Burning fuel?
a small patch of burning fuel marked where helicopter had gone down
This may be an error – The helicopter was fuelled by hydrogen, which is a gas at the temperatures the North Sea is at and anyway if I remember my chemistry hydrogen burns with a colourless flame

One could argue that burning fuel could be from the exploding munitions but I doubt it. I was probably thinking about screen play when I wrote this

University Campus – Which one?
When this was first written in 1988, the Robert Gordon Institute of Technology was not technically speaking a university. It was the Scottish equivalent of a polytechnic. Polytechnics were more concerned with practical subjects than theoretical subject, like universities can even though they awarded recognised degrees.

In the 1990’s the then government came up with a plan to allow the polytechnics and some other colleges to convert to being universities, which is why there are none around today. Robert Gordon’s Institute of Technology became Robert Gordon’s University, so the instruction to go to the university campus, given to the pilot of the hover-tank in hindsight looks ambiguous. What I was thinking about when I wrote this was Aberdeen University, which is far older than RGIT / RGU.

WAIS Agent and Micro trackers
As mentioned before, the character of Barney, who picked the Lone Stranger up off the road earlier on got a bigger part than in the 1988 original. Here it seems he is a Western Alliance Intelligence Service agent, who had planted a micro-tracker on the Lone Stranger.

This concept predates GPS trackers by a few years, but I suspect we still have a way to go on miniaturisation to get to this level.

The Tavistocks executed in 1988 but not in 1993
The female of this married couple was based on a teenager I knew at church back in the 1980’s. In the 1988 original, this character and her husband were actually executed, (there was no Colonel Samuel Travers to surreptitiously countermand all orders of execution), and in the final episode of the 1988 version the Lone Stranger attends their funeral. For some reason, I do not recall this was a plot twist I added in 1993, to tie in with the Colonel’s own agenda.

Larry Rider – the third man
This was yet another character added in the 1993 rewrite to augment the main plot. He represents the unacceptable face of corporate capitalism at its worse coupled with eugenics.

The Colonel’s daughter
In the 1993 rewrite, I had to give a reason why the Colonel would actually care about stamping out the new form of white slavery, (The capturing of women and forcing them into the sex trade), so I came up with the sub plot that he wanted revenge on these low lives for the murder of his daughter. Note the actual killers were never caught. If the main villains were on the side of the white slavers, and his personal loss meant he was against them, it would make sense for the colonel to side with their enemies. This is the old Arab saying, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”

His determination to make this personal is highlighted, when he declares, he wants to apprehend the third person in the conspiracy.

Virtually Naked
In my review of this, I spotted another error from 1993, hence the green word. Cherry does have one item of clothing, a g-string.

Microsoft’s strange sense of humour
So far I have not commented on this, but in Microsoft Word, when you right click red wavy lines, (Spelling errors) or green wavy lines (Grammatical errors) you get helpful suggestions

In the part where the colonel reveals that Larry Rider’s code name was mother goose, and the supervisor finally speaks up and says that Larry is lying; a green wavy line appeared under the word lying. I right clicked and the suggestion was “laying.” Go back and read that bit and make the substitution, it is one of those bizarrely funny moments of unintended humour

Thermo Nuclear device – Ace in the hole
Again, not in the 1988 version, added in 1993. However this did tap into a fear that still haunts the west.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991 there was concern that a large number of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands. Many of those who guarded them were going unpaid, so the temptation to sell them to the highest bidder in the chaos was a real threat, and possibly still is to this day.

Cherry and Susan’s treatment by the Colonel
The colonel now he has dealt with the final conspirator then turns his attention to one of the victims of the conspirator, Cherry Turner, the sixteen year old orphan made to work in the café, wearing only a g-string in very cold conditions courtesy of the air conditioning system. He gives her a coat to wear and arranges for her to get clothing. Later she is sent off with Susan, another employee aged 19, a runaway, to a new and better life.

If you thought that bit ended up, finger down the throat and overly saccharine, especially the letter from Susan bit, well so did I, but for some reason, even though Cherry was a fictional character, I felt I had to make it up to her for how she was treated in my novel. The letter bit was to emphasis more of how things were turning around for her. I was never satisfied with that and I thought it went over the top as well.

Or maybe the colonel was trying to make up for not being there for his daughter who was Cherry’s age when she was murdered.

Eugenics
The main reason for the bombing in the past and everything comes down to eugenics, defined as:

a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.

This was exactly the dream of one Adolph Hitler. It had two parts, exterminate that which you consider inferior and breed from the good stock. Many children were born to Aryan fathers, the mothers had no choice, and they were forced to breed under that regime. After the war, many of those children were discriminated against for something that was never their fault.

Weapons Inspection
Why would the Russians be wanting to check RGIT in the first place, which triggered the bombing in the first place? Well in the later part of the cold war, when there was various disarmament treaties, representatives from either side could inspect the other side to make sure there was no cheating going on. This ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Denying all Knowledge
I had a throwaway line of the US president at the time of the bombing denying all knowledge. This was an allusion to the doctrine of “Plausible deniability” where the top guy is never informed so he can say he knew nothing. It was also a back reference to the 1980’s scandal of the Iran – Contra Scandal where weapons were sold to the Iranians and the proceeds channelled to the contra rebels in Nicaragua, who were trying to overthrow a left wing government. (This was highly illegal and a number of people were convicted and sent to prison) Ronald Regan was president at the time, and claimed to know absolutely nothing of this. This was most likely true. Ronald Regan eventually died on 06 June 2004 after suffering for years with Alzheimer’s disease.

First Footing
This is to do with a custom in Scotland concerning New Years Eve

Killing of the Lone Stranger and how the other stories panned out
It may seem odd that the main character is killed off at the end of the adventure in such a meaningless thing as a road accident.

But wait, all was not as it seemed, and you see a hint of how things panned out at the end with the reference to the accident victim taken back to Luna Cit.

So how could I continue with the Lone Stranger franchise when the Lone Stranger had been killed, well here is how I did it. When next term, in January 1989 commenced, I did the second story line, Karate Sticks.

As I do not have any intention of doing to the later story lines I did what I did to the first in 1993, I suppose I better summarise these as best I can and in brief.

In Karate Sticks, the Patricia character was working in London where she meets a nephew of the Lone Stranger, a 13 year old. My brother married a Chinese woman in real life, but they had three daughters and no son. My brother’s marriage has now ended.

In the second season, they find themselves encountering a mysterious metal man who is out to destroy the supercomputer that runs the western alliance. He seems to be a baddy at first but turns out to be some agent from Luna Cit, a moon base that became an independent state. He was also the developer of the supercomputer.

They then find out that the supercomputer has become psychotic and wishes to rule humanity, and has to be defeated, but at the cost of the life of the metal man. Even then things are not that straight forward, because this metal man was actually on the same coach as the Lone Stranger, and just after the crash, because of radiation he had suffered and the broken chronon accelerator, he was able to absorb the Lone Strangers essence. As the metal man lies dying, he passes that on to the Patricia character. (Shades of Star Trek 2 and Star Trek 3) OK a direct rip off of those films

Season three was Resurrection of the Sticks. The persona of the Lone Stranger in the Patricia character sent her insane and we open with her in an institution. She is then broken out by agents of the Luna Cit secret intelligence service, who also double up as asteroid miners. There is a bit where the new soviets try and capture Luna Cit. The Lone Stranger’s essence is finally extracted and placed into a cloned body.

At this time, in 1989, people were saying I fancied the person who the Patricia character was based upon, so in the final real, Patricia is killed by a sniper.

Then I finished my degree course with an ordinary degree. Under the Scottish system then, you did three years and if you passed the course you got just an ordinary degree. If you did extra well, you got invited back to do honours.

I didn’t

I did however get to do a post graduate course that would last for just two terms, meaning I would leave at the end of March 1989. In one sense I did get a last laugh, because in 1989 on 01 April, the community charge, nicknamed the poll tax was introduced in Scotland one year ahead of it’s introduction. It was a way of paying for local services, a bit like the council tax is today, however everybody paid the same regardless of income. Those who were doing honours were stung by this; I as I had left Scotland before 01 April, escaped it.

Anyhue, I was only able to do two further Lone Stranger story lines

The Lone Stranger rides out, which had the details of the adventure the Sabaticals and Steve Gryson took part in told in flash back, before the main part of that adventure, which was to do with revenge.

The last story line was The Sticks Rides Home, which I feel was a bit of a disappointment after reading through it after all these years. This one involved time travel again.

Between the original and the rewrite
Then I left RGIT and went back home to Bury in Lancashire, where I lived at the time.

I then did an MSc Course in Quality Engineering at Newcastle University in 1990 before working for a year at the MOD. After that I spent some time in Aberdeen before going back to my parent’s home, now in East Riding of Yorkshire, before trying Teacher Training back in Aberdeen at the Hilton College of Education in 1992

Sometime between 1992 and 1993 I was able to get hold of on floppy disc a load of my files I had generated, and converted them from straight text files to TopCopy Plus, an obsolete word processing file I ran on an equally obsolete Amstrad PPC 512D.

The 1993 rewrite
In 1993, after crashing out of teacher training and returned to my parent’s home in East Riding of Yorkshire. From there, I tried to rewrite my first story line, changing the names of the characters. I thought if I could get this done as a novel, maybe I could earn money as it and realise a childhood dream of being a science fiction author.

I also tried to write the role play game which was set in the “Near future” where there had been a global financial meltdown etc.

I was not happy with it; remember my finger down throat comment?

Life after the Lone Stranger
I managed to get onto a course back up in Newcastle in 1993 at Newcastle College, went up, found that course had been cancelled and was put on another course, this one in electronics. My tutor from my first stint in Newcastle in 1990 managed to get me onto the MSc Electronics course at Newcastle University which I achieved in 1994 to add to my earlier MSc

After training course after training course in 1997 I secured another job. Got my first desktop, a Packard Bell in 1999. Made redundant in 2000.

In 2001 I got another job, (I am still with that employer to this day) By now Big Brother 2 was in play, and in the days before TIBB I typed away on the defunct Channel Four Reach forum, where I was the subject of a series of personal attacks and also a suspected malicious set of phone calls. Out of that was born another franchise, one I would try and return to in 2002 and then leave for five years until last year when the Interactive Fan Fiction section was created.

This is my current franchise, The Mystical Realms. By now the Lone Stranger series was long forgotten

How this story was brought back
Now it is a fact that the old three and a half inch discs are obsolete in favour of DVD’s, laptops, blackberries and USB memory sticks. My desktop is dying and it is the only machine I have which will bridge between the two offline storage technologies. And Low and behold, I rediscovered my original and rewritten Lone Stranger season one saga, plus the others.

During my time on Lundy Island, when I was not able to do much, I spent time, using a copy of that obsolete programme to reconvert the files from the 1993 rewrite, back to Ascii files and then on in to Word files, so I can bring them to publishable standard in the TIBB interactive Fan Fiction section.

And it is my season one, which I have shared with you from this archive. The reason for giving you the 1993 version is because the 1988 version used people’s real names. That was fine for the Honeywell in 1988 and 1989, but not for today, with the internet of the twenty first century.

Why have I done this? Why did I bother?

Well, I wondered how my style has changed or improved since then compared to the Mystical Realms franchise. The big difference I can see is research. In 1988 and 1993, it was patchy

Here in the twenty first century, we have the internet and Wikipedia, and you will notice, on my Mystical Realms stories I will put in hyper links to background research and articles with background information. I would hope this makes me better as an author

The other issue, is that the Lone Stranger was set in the future, and in the 1988 versions and the 1989 one I actually used future dates like 2003 or 2005. Sci-Fi has an inherent weakness, we eventually arrive at those dates. Remember George Orwell’s 1984 and Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 A Space Odyssy?

So now I throw this open to you lot. Some have said my Mystical Realms was confusing.

How do these franchises compare?

Were my stories better then or better now

What are your thoughts?