From: cmeadows@nyx.cs.du.edu (Chris Meadows)
Subject: Robotech Collaboration Story -- Please Submit!
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Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 22:24:10 GMT

 
This story was originally written to be part of a collaboratory
effort, for an author-coordinator I contacted over the Usenet.
Since he never responded to it, I can only assume he didn't want
it; therefore, I sent it out over the Robotech List Server hoping
to start a collaboration of my own there.  To my immense disap-
pointment, nobody answered.
 
Therefore, I'm going to send it out over rec.games.frp,
rec.games.frp.archives, and rec.arts.anime and ask for submissions
from anybody there.  Please EMAIL your replies to me, rather than
posting them to Usenet, for there may be more than one submission
e-mailed to me at the same time and I would thus have to decide
which one I liked better and use it, or somehow combine the two,
and then send it out.  The address to send submissions to is
CHM173S@SMSVMA.BITNET or CHM173S@VMA.SMSU.EDU.  Or just reply via
e-mail to this post; it'll reach me.
 
What I'm asking for is for someone to write what happens next in
the story.  I'm not asking for 20K of stuff; just 80-200 lines or
so.  When I receive it, I'll correct grammar and punctuation and
send it out over rec.arts.anime, rec.games.frp, and rec.games.frp.
archives, as well as the Robotech List Server.  In the case of two
or more submissions to the story at once, I may just use one, or
combine some of them, and may use ideas from submissions I don't
use in my own segments.  Please don't get upset if I plagiarize
your idea or "mess up" your segment to make it fit in with another.
As many of the rec.arts.anime readers would agree, "it's the Macek
Way."
 
The story is set in the Palladium RPG continuum, where an Ikazuchi
misfolds into a Ninjas and Superspies-type universe that is much the
same as our world of today, save for a few secret organizations (that
I intend to introduce later) that are moving things behind the scenes.
I'm not trying for complete realism (though an F-15 commander chided
me for misportrayal of the F-15 squadron in the story and so I've
changed it slightly); just a good storyline.  Any discontinuities
in technology can be explained the same way these things usually
are--it's just a story, we can have as high a technology as we want.
;)  Anyway, here it is...enjoy, and PLEASE reply!!!
 
 
 
                    ROBOTECH: THE MISFOLD
 
                     By (hopefully) Many
 
 
     The mighty engines of the starship began to come on-line.
On the bridge, the astrotechs bent over their consoles, typing
in the necessary equations to bring the ship safely through the
non-space referred to loosely as "hyperspace" (though it was
actually neither "hyper" nor "space") to its destination.  The
Captain of the ship paced nervously in his cabin.
     Captain Kranz didn't like spacefolding.  It just wasn't
_natural_, to bend and twist the fabric of spacetime the way the
Ikazuchi's engines did. He'd heard all the scientific
explanations--the layman's description of how the engines worked.
"The principle is simple," Dr. Emil Lang, Robotechnology's
premier scientist had said in the briefing so many years before.
"Envision the fabric of the space-time continuum as a rug."  Lang
had chuckled at the idea.  "And envision the ship as a needle.
Now, make the rug four feet wide.
     "Now they say that the shortest distance between two points
is a straight line.  That would make the shortest distance
between two point on the opposite edges of the rug four feet,
right?  WRONG."  Lang shook his head.  "No, the shortest distance
between those two points is actually only a couple of inches. If
you FOLD THE RUG."
     Knowing what the engines did did not mean Kranz had to LIKE
it.  He shuddered every time they went through a fold jump, and
usually spent the entire duration in his quarters.  Let his
second-in-command watch over the fold process.
     Kranz shifted his mind to another topic.  ANYTHING was
better than thinking of the upcoming fold jump.
     Kranz's starship, the S.S. ROOSEVELT, was one of the
Ikazuchi-class star carriers.  It carried a large complement of
the Veritech fighters which were the Robotech Expeditionary Force
(REF)'s primary assault vehicle.  These jet fighters were the
most versatile vehicles ever created, for at the touch of a
lever, they could reconfigure into fully humanoid robot
configurations, all of thirty feet tall.
     For the last three years, the ROOSEVELT had been assigned
menial patrol duties out near the galactic rim.  There were some
fears that the Invid, a war-like race of protoplasmic aliens, had
been occupying some planets out that way, and the ROOSEVELT's
Veritech mecha had been needed to free the worlds.
     The ROOSEVELT had done admirably in this task, and six
worlds owed their new-found freedom to the valiant men and
machines of this Robotech ship.  But now it was time to go home.
They had received emergency orders directing them to fold their
ship directly to Earth, to join up with the so-called Mars
Division that was returning to Earthspace.  The Invid had taken
over the mother planet, and the REF was not going to let them
keep it!
 
     On the bridge of the ROOSEVELT, things went as usual.  But
there was a small error in one of the calculations one of the
techs entered into the astro- navigation computer.  Instead of
entering, "3C/G790.000002-AGxX," he entered
"3C/G80-.000002-AGxX."  A small error, but a costly one.
 
     It was several hours later.  The fold coordinates had been
checked and rechecked, but by some incredible mischance, the
error in the calculations had gone undetected.  Now it was time
to go.
     "Full power to the fold engines," Commander Frederick
Carter, the ship's first officer, ordered.
     "We have full power, sir," a helmsman said.  "All guages
show green."
     "Lock in fold coordinates for Earthspace," Carter ordered.
     The helmsman entered a command on his alphanumeric keyboard
and read the resulting message on his CRT.  "Coordinates locked,
sir.  All preliminary signals are 'go.'"
     "Start the countdown."
     "Yessir.  Fold minus fifteen seconds.  Fold minus ten.  Fold
minus five, four, three, two, one.  Initiating fold sequence."
     As the engines' vibrations changed, Carter instructed,
"Check status. Stand by to go to manual override in case of a
misfold."  -Not that it would help any-, Carter thought.
     "Roger, sir.  All systems are go!" the helmsman replied over
the rising engine vibrations.  The noise got louder and louder
until it was all but im- possible to hear, and then there was no
noise, just the dancing chromatic afterimages always associated
with a spacefold.
     Seconds or an infinity later, the ship emerged from
spacefold.  And it was noticed.
 
     "NORAD command, this is Sparrow Squadron.  We have a visual
confirmation on that bogey you sighted.  And you are NOT going to
believe this."
     "Sparrow Leader, this is NORAD command.  Please switch on
your on-board cameras and give us a visual description."
     "Roger, NORAD.  Cameras on."  The F-15 pilot reached over to
his left and snapped a toggle switch.  The gun cameras on his
plane came on, and a small monitor on his HDD (Heads-Down
Display) flickered to life.
     "Well, NORAD," the pilot continued, "it's about 4,000 feet
long, as close as I can make it, and shaped pretty much like a
brick.  Color scheme of black and red, and there's lettering on
the side.  I...K...A...Z...U...C...H...I.  'Ikazuchi.'  Sounds
Japanese.  Wouldn't put it past the Japs to build a spaceship
like this and not tell us about it..."
     "Sparrow Leader, give us descriptions, not value
judgements," the NORAD radio operator said caustically.
     "Roger, NORAD.  There's more lettering...seems to spell out
S.S. ROOSEVELT."
     "Sparrow Leader, give us a reading on its position."
     "Laser rangefinder indicates it's approximately 130,000 feet
away from my present position, and the flight computer indicates
that would put it at approximately 250,000 feet of altitude.  It
appears to be maintaining its position."
     "All right, Sparrow Leader, return to base."
     "Roger, NORAD."  The F-15 fighter banked left, followed by
the three other fighters in the squadron, and headed for home.
 
     "Sir, we're reading radar contacts," one of the astrotechs
said. "And they're not Invid.  In fact, I'm reading no Invid
anywhere.  And I'm picking up civilian radio and video
transmissions."
     "Get me a visual fix on those radar contacts," Commander
Carter ordered. "Put it on the main viewscreen."
     "Yessir," the tech said, manipulating his controls.  The
picture on the main viewscreen zoomed in to focus on four
aircraft.  The view was a little shaky because of the extreme
magnification, but the planes were easily identifiable.  "Those
are F-15s!" Carter gasped.  "Those haven't been used for 40
years, since the Global Civil War!"
     Then the tech piped the civilian broadcasts through the
speakers.  "It's Monday, September 21, 1992.  This is ABC
News..."
     "Shut that off," Carter ordered.  "What's going on here?"
     Another astrotech spoke up.  "Sir, according to my
instruments, we've jumped back in time to the year 1992 A.D."
     Carter's first thought was, -It's a good thing Captain Kranz
isn't on the bridge.  He'd _freak_.-  His next thought was
concerning an old vid he'd seen when he was just a boy--"Star
Trek: Tomorrow is Yesterday," or something like that.  "Warm up
the engines," he commanded.  "Prepare to execute a refold to
take us out of here.  We can't risk messing up history."
     The fold technician said, "Sir, we can't.  It was obviously
an error in our fold calculations which sent us here, and to fold
again before we can track it down could be disastrous.  In
addition, it would completely obliterate any chance of our
finding the original error, and thus any chance of our getting
home."
     "Sir?"  It was one of the younger, enlisted-rating techs who
operated the pinpoint barrier system as part of her duties, and
monitoring radio transmissions as another part.  Her name was
Janie Reeds, and she was a Corporal.  "If this is 1992, how come
the world isn't involved in the Global Civil War?  I've been
getting nothing but civilian transmissions for the last ten
minutes, and there's no talk of any major wars going on at all."
She paused, listened to her earpiece for a second.  "Though there
is some fighting in someplace named Boznia-Hertzogovena, it
doesn't seem to be on the scale of what the fighting should have
been at this time period."
     "That's a good question, Janie," Frederick Carter said.  He
turned to his left.  "Major Eddings, do you have an answer for
us?"
     Major Jonathan Eddings was the ROOSEVELT's science officer.
He currently had the outputs of half a dozen sensor and receiver
banks up on his screens and was examining them all.  "From what I
have been able to ascertain," he replied, never looking up from
his screens, "we appear to have misfolded not only
chronologically, but into another space-time continuum as well."
He reached out, keyed some commands into his keyboard.  "I'll
have more data for you in a couple of hours."  He hit the Enter
key a few times, then keyed in a change on one of the
touch-sensitive monitors at his station.
     Carter made up his mind.  "Very well, hold our current
position.  We'll monitor broadcasts for a few hours, then send a
scouting party to find out what's going on.  Have a VF-1S prepped
for the mission--we'll use our oldest fighters until we can be
sure of what's going on down there.  They should be more than a
match for anything the current technology can throw at them.
I'll be in my quarters."  He got up from the command chair,
turned to go.  "Oh, and you might as well notify Captain Kranz of
what's happened."
     He left the bridge, leaving the crew wondering what they
were going to do next.
 
 
 

--
---Chris Meadows  CHM173S@SMSVMA or CMEADOWS@NYX.CS.DU.EDU
        "Wish in one hand and do something else in the other, then 
          squeeze them both and see which one comes true."
                    ---Corwin, NINE PRINCES IN AMBER by Roger Zelazny