From: dvandom@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (David VanDomelen)
Subject: LNH: The Sound Of Clashing Metal - a story in two Actons
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 13:38:58 GMT

     Having placed his inferior other in the past, Acton Lord turned to the 
task of cleaning up the copies of his GIF.  Unfortunately, due to the number of
systems on the net that recieved virus-like copies every day, it would be 
impossible to totally clean the net.  The best he could hope for would be to 
salvage a few copies and keep them updated for personal use.  And if bugs 
caused premature activation of defective Acton Lords, so be it.  They'd make 
excellent 'smokescreen'.  Now, first to wuarchives to retrieve the copy 
there....
               *              *              *              *
     Sig Lad was totally confused.  Not only had he missed the climax of the 
Kinda Big Darkness Saga (his store ran out before hitting his box) but he was 
adrift in MU* territory.  It was a cold and forbidding place, especially since 
so many MU*s were down right now.  It was like being on a normally busy 
commercial street at 4 in the morning when only the convenience stores and a 
few crappy bars were still open.  He wandered past the feeble light cast by the
lpmuds, past the sealed ports of NewDay, TIM, Trek and BTech, as well as many 
others.  He had lost the way back to news.groups, and was trapped in the 
net.lines.  Nor could he simply do as Acton Lord was doing and activate a 
doubel from the GIFs to come rescue him.  Why?
     Simple.  Sig Lad had used his power of mutation to change details of the 
GIF, in an attempt to render himself ascendant over Acton Lord.  But 
unfortunately, he had been stopped early on, when only minor changes had been 
made to Acton Lord.  Since he had had to start the process at his own image, 
the mutation was pretty severe there, and the duplicates would not even be 
recognizable as him.  In fact, scores of them may very well be joining the LNH 
under totally different names and powers [editor's note:  this is a kind of 
pseudo-scientific explanation for the proliferation of superpowered individuals
arriving on the scene recently...they are mostly warped copies of Sig Lad, but
have their own unique identities now.  They are not even aware of being clones,
and may even have long involuted histories if the GIF reactivated at an earlier
time index on the system].  He had intended to restore the copies of himself to
normal after the mutation wave had spread sufficiently to Acton Lord, but
unfortunately was stopped before he could do so.
     Suddenly Sig Lad saw a familiar net.signature!  Netlurker had been in this
area!  The port python.cis.ohio-state.edu 4201 showed definite signs of his 
passage.  He approached the port, and saw it had a site-lock on it.  
Fortunately, Sig Lad was operating out of one of the approved sites (he'd 
better be, he thought.  He was in the same system as Netlurker), and he 
squeezed through into NAIVE - New And Improved Virtual Environment.  He logged 
on as Solarmax and lay in wait for Netlurker to return, so he could follow the 
net.villain(hero?) back to the news.groups, perhaps even to Acton Lord's secret
base!
     Dave Van Domelen, if you want to check NAIVE, bug Netlurker