Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
This is a thread for you to post all of your fanfic about me!
Okay, it's not actually. It's really just an excuse for me to go ahead and post the draft of the first chapter of the story I'm working on for the current Musuem of Legion Arts exhibit, while I work on the rest of it, so I can plan on posting the whole thing in the actual thread once it's finished.
But I'm hoping that I'll eventually post some other stuff as well!
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
I.
Brainiac Five of the Legion of Super-Heroes sat on a bench in Weisinger Park, his head filled with the poetry of ancient civilizations. It was 5:30 a.m., Metropolis time, here on planet Earth. On Aarok, it was 6:00 p.m., at least in their capital city, and the people there would just be sitting down to dinner. In Japarth City, on the planet Gorlon, they would be in the middle of their three month long night-cycle, not that it would make that much difference to the inhabitants of Japarth City, most of whom dwelt underground. It was about four in the afternoon in Dox City, the capital of Brainiac Five’s home planet of Colu.
Brainy knew all of this because he sat in front of a clock that told the time on other worlds. This clock was the symbol of one of Brainy’s most important achievements. At the age of fourteen he had revolutionized thirtieth century physics, working out a solution to the problem of how to calculate distant simultaneity, a problem that had vexed scientists on various inhabited worlds for millennia. For example, Albert Einstein, the great Earth scientist of nearly a thousand years before, had argued that the concept of two distant events being simultaneous was physically meaningless. Similar views were propounded by Vorth’Hillenviggel of Arbro and Properto of Fandua.
Physics is a funny thing, Brainy had often thought. Considered by some the surest guide to the nature of reality, most of the great civilizations throughout the galaxy were nonetheless perfectly willing to subscribe to several incompatible physical theories at once, as long as the applications of those theories bore technological fruit. The people of Earth had nearly destroyed themselves several times over with powerful weapons that had their roots in the physical theories of Einstein, theories which told them, among other things, that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. In another star system, Thanagarians built space ships that could do just what the scientists of Earth held to be impossible. When the two civilizations met, they exchanged technology which each held to be impossible according to their best theories. Like the ancient Roman civilization of Earth, who promoted the worship of many gods so long as each god’s cult was tolerant of all others, by the thirtieth century the people of the United Planets had grown accustomed to accepting rival physical views.
The thought of the Romans reminded him of the half-finished translation into Interlac of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations that he’d meant to work on the previous night. But his current interests were in civilizations far more ancient than the Romans. He and the other Legionnaires were currently studying galactic history with Professor Byl’kyth, one of the greatest authorities on the Ekron-Llorn war, waged at a period of galactic history when even his own green-skinned ancestors on planet Colu, considered the most advanced civilization of the U.P., had yet to develop the use of language.
Brainy was fascinated by the old tales of this war, by the elaborate mythology embodied in the epic poetry of the Ekron, but most of all what interested him was the description of an artifact of power wielded by the Ekron. Most believed that the stories regarding this artifact were at best exaggerations, and that it would’ve been impossible for such a thing to actually have existed. Professor Byl’kyth was convinced that the artifact of power was not merely a myth, but had really existed and was used by the Ekron to achieve their miraculous victory over the Llorn, just as the old poems described. Professor Byl’kyth’s enthusiasm for his research was infectious, and Brainy had caught the bug. And so, he decided, he would prove Professor Byl’kyth right. He would build an Emerald Eye of Ekron.
[ March 02, 2007, 11:07 PM: Message edited by: Eryk Davis Ester ]
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
This is great EDE, Brsainy is currently my favourite Legionnaire so I'm very happy to read stories about him, and the idea of him building an emerald Eye is a terrifying! Who would control who?
More, more, more!
-------------------- "Tempus Fugitive" the final part of the Adventures of Dream Boy series, set in the Three-Boot Universe. Read it only in the Bits o' Legionnaire Business Forum.
From: here, more often than not | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Whoa Eryk! This is pretty awesome! I'm fascinated in where you're going with this.
I like how you're writing Brainy and his interest in ancient civilizations. I really like your use of science and physics...I think I want you to be the next Legion writer. In one post you've caught my attention!
The Ekron-Llorn War (did you create that concept--its pretty awesome) suddenly feels like the 30th Century's version of the Trojan War.
As usual, your ideas on science (time, space, etc.) blow my mind. Love it.
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
II.
Perelandra was the largest and most populous of the cloud cities of Venus, a remnant of the early days of colonization, before the planet’s surface was terraformed into the incredibly complex eco-system that existed by the Legion’s time. Roughly half the sentient population of the planet still made their home in the clouds, while those who dwelt down below mostly lived in mountainous regions, avoiding the thick, swampy jungles that had come to cover much of the world’s land area. Most the planet’s wildlife was imported from Earth, with a selection of species from planets in nearby star-systems such as Rann, Thanagar, and the Vegan worlds. Many of these species, such as the Sumatran, a kind of large cat, were long since extinct on Earth, but had come to flourish in the new environment of Venus, and were, for all practical purposes, now considered distinctively Venusian fauna. There were some species, such as the fierce Gyrak, an animal that seemed like a strange cross between a cat and an elephant, that nobody really knew where they came from originally, but seemed to have sprung up on the planet through some kind of spontaneous generation about two hundred years before.
Brainy was speculating about the origins of the gyrak as he flew along the outskirts of the city of Perelandra. His thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of his flight ring.
“Brainiac Five, here. Go ahead,” he said into his ring.
“Brainy, head to the South Quadrant. I think I may have found something.”
Brainy’s thoughts returned to the mission he was on. The Legion had come to Venus to track down members of the Kranyak gang, who had their hands in everything from illegal narcotics to the trafficking of sentients as slaves. By the time Brainy had reached the South Quadrant, the fun had already started. He could see from the distance the brilliant glow of Sun Boy as he counter-acted the freeze-rays of the Kranyak gang. As he drew nearer, he could see Bouncing Boy plunging into the midst of the gang members on the ground, dodging their fire as he moved in quickly to take them down. Lightning Lad was disabling several airborne members of the gang, whose jetpacks were no match for the Legion flight rings as far as maneuverability. Brainy hoped he’d get there in time to try out his latest toy.
Out of the corner of his eye, Brainy spied two men dressed in the characteristic purple and black outfits of the Kranyak gang setting up some sort of weapon on the ground. He quickly realized that their plan was to target Sun Boy from a distance. He strongly suspected that the entire conflict that his colleagues now found themselves in might be a diversion to allow for this attempt on his friend’s life. The Kranyak gang had an old grudge against Sun Boy, and it certainly wouldn’t be out of the scope of their usual method of operating to have set something like this up for the sole purpose of settling that grudge. “Well, at least I get the chance to see if these things work,” Brainy thought, unleashing the two small spheres from his utility belt.
The tiny spheres, about the size of a human eyeball, were Brainy’s first attempt at building something using the principles that he believed underlay the technology of the Ekron. He’d managed to uncover what seemed to be an elaborate code in the epic poem detailing the defeat of the Llorn, a code which contained instructions for the building of an Emerald Eye. The specifications contained in the poem were incomplete, however, probably because the poem had changed over the years from its original version through various copies and translations, and he’d had to make a number of guesses to fill in the gaps. The two great challenges in building Emerald Eyes were figuring out how to access the mysterious energy source which was supposed to power them, and figuring out how to bring them to the semi-sentient state that would give them the ability to act independently of the commands of the user. Brainy wasn’t completely sure he’d figured out how to do either, and so it wasn’t a complete surprise when the mini-eyes he’d sent basically did little other than fly in circles around the two gang members that he’d sent them to take care of.
Fortunately, the sight of flying eyeballs was enough to freak the two criminals out long enough that Brainy himself could reach them and take them down with some old fashion Coluan martial arts. He quickly recovered one of the eyeballs, but, as he tried to catch the other, another of Kranyak’s men lunged towards him with a laser-knife. As Brainy dodged the weapon, the eyeball flew into the mouth of the criminal, who started choking on it. In attempting to dislodge the object from his throat, the criminal accidentally triggered the button on his outfit which activated his jetpack, sending him flying out of control over the walls of Perelandra and crashing into the jungle below. Amazingly, the crook managed to survive the crash, and, to his delight, the impact actually dislodged the eyeball-shaped device from his throat, allowing him to spit it out. He picked up the now motionless device and looked at it, with both curiosity and relief. His relief was short-lived, however, as he looked up to see the paws of a very hungry looking gyrak swooping down on him to end his life.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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