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scribblestatic · 1 year

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Using Black Doom's DNA, Gerald begins makings the prototypes to Shadow. However, once again, he's presented with s problem the first few trials.

The results fail to create a sense of self.

Unlike the Biolizard, which became violent, the first iterations could barely move. He'd been trying to facilitate the creation of an artificial Seed memory, but it wasn't working despite his expert programing and the superior genes of an alien being. It just wasn't working like it should.

And he was sure something was happening in the wayside. His comrades were starting to seem suspicious to him, and G.U.N. seemed to be trying to put a leash on his efforts. But this was all to save his granddaughter. There wasn't much he wouldn't give to do it. In fact, there wasn't anything he wouldn't give.

Sonar, locked in a single room in the lab, looked at the doctor as he entered. She was happy to see him. He didn't come around as often anymore, usually delegating her tests to the other doctors. But he was here now, and taking her out of the room.

She tried to talk to him. She'd become rather chatty because no one really said anything to her anymore. Left so lonely, she would talk to herself often, then chat at the doctors even when they never responded. Now, with Gerald there, she wanted very much to speak with him, just like they would in the old days.

He never responded, but she kept talking anyway.

They walked to a surgical room, and she was introduced to a tube. It wasn't that big, but it was big enough for her to fit inside of it. The tube was connected to various computers by wires and circuits.

Once she was in the bottom, her wrists and ankles locked in cuffs, and a device was placed on her head. Gerald closed the tube, and it began to fill up with water. All the while, Sonar kept trying to talk to him. Kept trying to get a response from anyone. They all gave her the silent treatment.

It wasn't until she was underwater and no one could hear her voice aside from the echos of her voice. She was beginning to sound worried.

Eventually, once everything was prepared, it was time to start the process. A change of memories.

Usually, he would cut off a few leaves or a branch, artificially add some back on sometimes. This time though, it was to take something much more integral to her ability to Be.

Gerald hesitated. He watched as she looked over to him in the tube, trying to speak to him. Eager to. His little pet project.

But, if this worked, she could be so much more. She'd be contributing so much more. Yes, his heart clenched...but it would be worth it in the end.

He pressed the button, and the device on her head activated, glowing with the power of chaos drives. Her eyes began to fill with a white light, slowly, like she was going under anesthesia. She kept trying to say something to him, to the point she was knocking against the glass.

But eventually, she went fully still, hanging in the water, her eyes completely white and glowing.

Gerard commenced, reaching into Sonar's memory. Her ability to remember. And he reached the Seed, the core of her ability to make a personality and a heart.

And he cut it out of her, leaving branches, a trunk, leaves, and roots, all without anything to latch onto. Sonar became an empty vessel of no one's memory.

Gerard took that Seed and transferred it into something akin to a freeze code, something to keep it still so it wouldn't try to grow or die on its own. He placed the same freeze code in the place the Seed had once been in Sonar's mind, ensuring she couldn't, somehow, by some miracle, regrow it. Who knew what kind of Sense of Self she'd develop after what he'd done to her?

With the operation finished, he shut off the device and took the hard disk with the Seed on it. The glow in Sonar's eyes faded, leaving her hanging there, eyes wide, pupils and irises black and dead where the they had once been a pale turquoise green. The thing that made Sonar what she was had left her.

Gerald looked at her and sighed. He didn't want it to have to come to this...but he needed the Ultimate Lifeform. That wasn't what she was, and he couldn't make her into what he needed.

So Gerald left her there, taking the Seed. And she hung in stasis for several years.

Meanwhile, the Seed transplant into the current project was a resounding success. The new project quickly developed a sense of self, a new personality, a new heart. Gerald played with it a little so the personality would fit something similar to Maria, but he found he didn't need to do much. That...quite hurt his heart, realizing exactly how much like Maria Sonar had been. But it was for the best.

And post operation, with a few tweaks and a growth period, Project Shadow's current rendition was complete.

An alien-hedgehog hybrid with amber-red eyes and a kind heart.

He named him Shadow.

#static writes #sonar au #sonic content #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #gerald robotnik #maria robotnik #sonic au #so yeah #shadow is literally a shadow of someone else

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christinaepilzauthor-blog · 6 years

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Oh, the places you'll go! A History of Tourism

By Jude Knight The privileged English tourists of the late nineteenth century reached further than ever before, but they were not the first to travel for education and entertainment. Tourism is probably as old as civilisation; it is certainly as old as writing. As soon as social structures produces a class with money to spare and time on their hands, the rich have travelled as a leisure activity, and some places and times have opened the opportunities to those merely comfortably placed. Tourism's ancient roots Privileged groups of Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Chinese, and Harappans went up into the mountains for the summer, or up the river to see the newest edifice (my goodness, Cheops, take a look at the size of that pyramid), or to a famous temple to gawk at the statues and paintings, and leave an offering for the local God.

Letters of request from one king to another, requesting passage for a traveller, began at least in Babylon, and were applied intermittently from that time, eventually becoming passports. Romans set up their own summer beach resorts, which became so crowded with the hoi polloi that the really rich took over private islands, where they could relax in peace. And with Roman roads stretching to the edges of Empire, possible destinations were limited only by the travellers' pocket, imagination, and sense of adventure. Pilgrimage for fun and (spiritual) profit In medieval times, tourism took another guise. Scholars and journeymen travelled for education (and undoubtedly took in a little entertainment along the way. Pilgrims travelled for the education of their souls, and we have Chaucer's word for it that some of them found it very entertaining. A wealthy English pilgrim might choose to visit Rome or the Holy Land, but even the comfortably circumstanced could find an abbey or a holy well that boasted the relic of a saint.

The Grand Tour From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, young English noblemen took the Grand Tour, an educational journey between being recognised as a man and being expected to behave like one. Their sisters' travel was usually much more curtailed, but they might enjoy a journey from England to Paris to attend court, refresh their wardrobes, and acquire a little foreign polish at French entertainments. In seventeenth century France, Louis XIV required travellers to have a letter of request or passe port (literally, to pass through a port) and a visa given by his own government. Soon most of Europe had followed suit, and the age of queueing at the border had begun. Tourism takes off War closed much of the Continent at the end of the eighteenth century, but Napoleon's final defeat opened it again. The English flooded out across Europe, in a tourist boom that gathered pace and continued until the First World War. From England alone, the volume of travel grew from 10,000 in 1814 to 250,000 in 1860, to one million in 1911. So great was the temporary migration of pleasure seekers that the passport system was abandoned in the mid-1860s, and not reinstituted until 1914 (as a temporary measure, but they kept it after the war). By the middle of the nineteenth century, steam engines had opened the world, near and far, facilitated by entrepreneurs like the original Thomas Cook. If you were middle class, you could go near, so the super-rich needed to go far.

The rich go far, far, away And New Zealand was as far as you could get: a one-way trip for working people, but a six month pleasure cruise for tourists. By the 1880s, the British Medical Journal was endorsing sea voyages as a cure for whatever ailed you, and steamships made travel easier, safer, and more certain. Travel agencies in England would extoll the sights, and travel guides in New Zealand would take you to see them. Most people would manage to fit in the hot lakes of Rotorua, the cold lakes of Queenstown, and the glacier landscapes of the Southern Alps. In the words of one English traveller, James Froude:

"We could stand on the brim and gaze as through an opening in the earth into an azure infinity beyond. Down and down, and fainter and softer as they receded, the white crystals projected from the rocky walls over the abyss, till they seemed to dissolve not into darkness but into light. The hue of the water was something which I had never seen, and shall never again see on this side of eternity. Not violet…turquoise…sapphire. Comparison could only soil such inimitable purity. The only colour I ever saw in sky or on earth in the least resembling the aspect of the extraordinary pool was the flame of burning sulphur."

Volcanic theme parks have one disadvantage The town of Rotorua was built by the government in the early 1880s, to accommodate tourists (mostly English and German) coming to see the hot pools and the world-famed Pink and White Terraces, hillsides with cascading silica sheets grown over millenia from limestone deposits in the ever-seeping thermal water.

Up to thirty tourists a day arrived to stay at one of the four Ohinemutu hotels (Ohinemutu was the Ngati Whakaue town next to which Rotorua had been built), having travelled overland from Auckland or Tauranga. Another four hour trip would take them to the Maori village of Te Wairoa, and from there they would be taken by canoe to the terraces. Until the night of the volcanic eruption that is the background for my novella Forged in Fire in this year's Bluestocking Belles' anthology. On 10 June, 1886, Mt Tarawera erupted, utterly destroying the terraces and burying nine villages, including Te Wairoa. The descriptions given by my fictional English tourists are drawn directly from those of witnesses who survived that terrible night. Thermal activity is only fun until someone gets hurt. Sources: Gyr, Ueli. The history of tourism: Structures on the Path to Modernity. Retrieved from http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/europe-on-the-road/the-history-of-tourism/ueli-gyr-the-history-of-tourism The Rosbifs arrive. A review of The Smell of the Continent: The British Discover Europe, by Richard Mullen and James Munson. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/13940943 History of Passports, from http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/games/teachers-corner/history-passports.asp Various articles about tourism in New Zealand, from https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/maori-tourism/, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/tourism, and https://teara.govt.nz/ Quote from James Froud, https://teara.govt.nz/en/visitors-opinions-about-new-zealand/page-2 Images: Women travelling: Assyrian women travelling by ox cart Lydgatepilgrims: Pilgrims on the road, attributed to Gerard Hornbout. C. 1516 to 1523 Steamer: The P&O Paddle Steamer William Facwett Pink and White Terraces: The beautiful Pink and White Terraces, painted by JC Hoyte in the 1870s

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Jude Knight's writing goal is to transport readers to another time, another place, where they can enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, delight in a happy ending, and return from their virtual holiday refreshed and ready for anything. She writes historical novels, novellas, and short stories, mostly set in the early 19th Century. She writes strong determined heroines, heroes who can appreciate a clever capable woman, villains you'll love to loathe, and all with a leavening of humour. Website and blog: http://judeknightauthor.com/ Buy links for Never Too Late Amazon: US: amzn.to/2y6oBg7 AU: http://amzn.to/2fycyAx BR: http://amzn.to/2wjyWkm CA: http://amzn.to/2yFvxxS DE: http://amzn.to/2xA0Udb ES: http://amzn.to/2yFIgk4 FR: http://amzn.to/2yF7gbg IN: http://amzn.to/2fzQkhv IT: http://amzn.to/2xzPPbW JP: http://amzn.to/2xK5yqS MX: http://amzn.to/2xJTlCK NL: http://amzn.to/2hvRYkV UK: http://amzn.to/2fyBesx iBooks: http://apple.co/2yY4gXC Kobo: http://bit.ly/2fK7vJR Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2xDMQkb Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/2y0DPjd

Hat Tip To: English Historical Fiction Authors

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