opnet [OpNet] Making Novas

[Danny Newman]

Does anyone have the power to make me erupt?

[ronin]

Yes, but not me. And not anyone who would feel inclined to cause you to.

[Danny Newman]

Why would they not feel inclined? I might have something to offer them.

[Machina]

Be happy with what you've got and shut your hole, you race-traitoring turd.

[Danny Newman]

Screw you, you cold computing bitch! I am not a traitor to anyone. Is it so wrong to want to be something more? Oh are you saying that you didn't ever think of being a nova before you erupted?

[Machina]

Sure I thought about it. I turned it over in my mind plenty, thinking about how fucking horrible it would be. And then it happened anyway. Pissed me off something fierce, alright.

[Stigmata]

He wouldn't be a race traitor if he actually was able to erupt now would he?

[Machina]

Point. I simply find it inconceivable that anyone would want what we have, and since I don't get to bash pinhead baselines nearly enough, I thought to myself "Why the fuck not?"

The fact remains that he's presently still a baseline or latent nova, the difference between the two being irrelevant. He's still a baseline for all intents and purposes, and deserves the label. Fuck him.

[Charr]

Quote:

Originally posted by Danny Newman:
Does anyone have the power to make me erupt?

Yes.

Now let's hear you talk about how bad you want it monkey boy.

[Neil Preston]

Danny, have you been tested for the latency? There are those who can help you, but they keep quiet for obvious reasons.

[Charr]

Hey, I ain't keeping quiet! I just want to hear the monkey beg for it before I toss him a peanut.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

There are a few cult leaders or medical doctors around who claim it, but are very relucant to do so on film or in front of witnesses. You can assume these are con men, including all the novas who claim it and charge for it.

Supposedly there is a nova (cult leader) in the far East (IndoAsia) who has "created" a handful of nova followers, but we are deep enough into rumor and ego pumping that this is unlikely (and this is another guy who doesn't show up on film alot).

People tend to erupt in the general presense of quantum, including and especially that generated by novas. So basically just being around any nova raises your chances. Other things that help are stress in general, it doesn't have to be life threatening.

There is a test to see if you are a latent or not, it's time consuming and expensive and if you want more information you should surf over to Utopia's website.

[Stephanie 'Holocaust' Hu Zhan]

If you've got a node, Danny, the Kingmaker Clinic says they can make you erupt. Utopia doesn't offer a service like that because they say it's dangerous (they're right ), but if you really got to, you could try a couple of different ways. Juri made herself erupt.

Best of luck, but be careful!

[Liam Stewart: TAG]

I'm starting to suspect this isn't healthy for Danny.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

It depends.

How old are you Danny, and what's your physical condition?

[Danny Newman]

I am 28 years old and in fairly good shape, if not a bit hungry. I have been travelling like the beatnicks of the last century. It keeps me fit. After I left the project I just did not see the point in letting them find me. So I just kept walking, it has been two years now. hey if I do erupt are all you assholes and specieists going to all the sudden give me the secret handshake and let me in the club or is it still going to be the way it is?

[DigiGeist]

Dan, my boy.

First off, are you latent? Although I don't know if finding such a thing out is possible.

Second, if you are, why rush it? Enjoy your last few weeks, months, or years as a normal human in the shallow end.

You'll get to play in the deep end with ous big kids soon enough.

And there's no secret handshake, but you get this BOSS decoder ring!

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Great, all these quantum accidents trying to tell someone not to worry about erupting, or to take the path of least resistance.

Danny, don't listen to them. As far as I know, most if not all of them just walked into nodedom like a drunk stumbling into a lightpole. Check this and this to see how they treated me when I asked a similar question.

[Liam Stewart: TAG]

I wasn't in either of those groups, thank you very much. I do have a question for you (and I think it fits into the thread well enough Veil).

What is this whole "quantum accident" vibe? You had a latent node so okay you were right but you were guessing. Even better you not only had a latent node but picked the right circumstances to poke it with into activity even if you were guessing again. More than a little luck involved but it worked out so okay.

What makes you that much different from the other (10k? 14K?) novas out there?

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

I'm different because I tried (and succeeded) to claim my potential. It didn't just happen out of the blue when I accidently dropped a can of tomato soup on my foot. Which are you? Did you try, or did you just get tagged by fate one day?

[Liam Stewart: TAG]

Not completely sure how to answer that. No, I didn't do something believing (hoping) it would be enough to force my latent node to become active. I didn't know for a fact I had a latent node. I can't say I truly believed I was ever going to erupt so I must be a nova.

I did have a need and wanted something that by all rights should have been impossible. If you had asked me two minutes before it happened I would have told you it was impossible but I wanted it anyway. It was possible though and here I am.

Which of your groups do I belong to?

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

DigiGeist:
First off, are you latent? Although I don't know if finding such a thing out is possible.

It's possible. It takes a fair amount of money, and time, and most people get pissed at the results, but it can be done.

Mostly there isn't much point in testing unless you are either covered with both money and envy, or you have relatives who have erupted.

For all that, most people don't want to know the results. They wouldn't mind being told they are a pre-nova, but the results normally tell them the opposite.

Even if the test were cheap and easy, more people would sign up for these "it should make you erupt" things than would ever find out if they should bother.

[Liam Stewart: TAG]

Even if you knew you were a latent how much good would it really do you. From what I understand the knowledge of the genetic factors just isn't there yet. We don't know why some latents erupt in a situation when another latent is horribly injured.

Juri could have been right about everything and still have died!

[Ian 'Very Bad' Blakely]

Quote:

Originally posted by Juri 'Salamander' McClendon:
I'm different because I tried (and succeeded) to claim my potential. It didn't just happen out of the blue when I accidently dropped a can of tomato soup on my foot. Which are you? Did you try, or did you just get tagged by fate one day?

Some of us choose not to either tell the tale of our eruption or focus on that one moment in time. I'm more interested in the now and the future. The past is dust. The now is glory. The future is immortality.

[Liam Stewart: TAG]

I want to understand Juri's point of view.

One man's future glory is another man's dusty past and visa versa.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Ian 'Very Bad' Blakely:
Some of us choose not to either tell the tale of our eruption or focus on that one moment in time. I'm more interested in the now and the future. The past is dust. The now is glory. The future is immortality.

Well put.

Lots of big names in the nova community had eruptions that weren't very news worthy. But that doesn't matter a whole lot a few months later.

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Quote:

Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:

Quote:

Ian 'Very Bad' Blakely:
Some of us choose not to either tell the tale of our eruption or focus on that one moment in time. I'm more interested in the now and the future. The past is dust. The now is glory. The future is immortality.

Well put.

Lots of big names in the nova community had eruptions that weren't very news worthy. But that doesn't matter a whole lot a few months later.

I don't think so. I think it makes all the difference in the world. You see, it's a mindset. The quantum accident doesn't expect to be a nova, isn't expecting eruption, and is just going about their day to day life like normal.

This is what no-one wants to talk about, Tag.

Me, and those like me, prepared for this, fought for it, and risked everything to get it. And if you don't think that's going to make a difference a few months down the road you're outta your mind.

We are the very probable future. Me and those like me. Those who know of our latency and with the knowledge do what we can to get it. We go through rites of passage, hardening ourselves if our first attempts fail, becoming stronger and nervier as we go until our wills are downright terrifying with determination to succeed. We represent inner-strength and power of a non-quantum nature that few of you can ever understand much less hope to possess.

We're called suicidal, or people say we have a death wish. Bullshit. What we have is the nerve to risk absolutely everything for the biggest possible reward. How many great quotes are about people seizing the day, or making life happen instead of waiting for it to happen? A hell of a lot, and when someone actually goes out and does that, the tables get turned and we get berated for taking the chance.

Everyone here is so big on touting science. Well, as history well knows, as science gets better, things get smaller and less expensive. Latency testing will become cheaper and more accessible. More latents will know what they are, and they will be doing whatever they can to seize their potential.

What do you think nova parents of a nova child are going to, just wait and let eruption happen maybe twenty or thirty years down the line? Coddle them close to the nest until that magic day when someone accidently trips and falls and the magic kicks in?

Hell no. Like a bird, they will push the young one out of the nest and force it to fly. Does that sound cruel to any of you? I'm sure it does, and it sounds especially cruel to all you people who keep saying things like "enjoy your last few weeks of unerupted life."

See, it all comes down to perspective. Whether or not you knew you were supposed to be a nova or not. That's a key difference between the self-erupted and the quantum accident.

Novas who never see themselves as baselines, just a caterpillar before the cocoon. That scares all of you normal people who keep trying to say "oh, we're not gods, we're just normal people." There's a quote in the halls of the University of Alabama Huntsville, one of those things they switch out every week that have advertisements and inspirational stories and stuff. I don't remember who said it, but it basically is "to become a butterfly, one must want to fly so badly that they'd be willing to give up being a caterpillar." That's us. We want to fly. The rest of you were just caterpillars happy to be caterpillars, and some of you still wish you were caterpillars even if you don't bash us over the head with it like Machina.

By the way, before anyone starts quoting how many people die trying to erupt, I want to point out that there are no hard statistics for how many of those deaths were actually latent novas. They don't do the latency testing on a corpse and as most people can't afford the test anyway, probability would say that the majority, if not all, of those people were nothing more than baselines without any latency.

Oh, I know someone here is going to give me a sob story about someone they knew that was latent and knew it and tried to erupt and died or got seriously hurt, but I'm still betting on being right about this. Mighty convenient how someone out there just happens to know (or know of) someone that was the exact exception to the rule to bring up in an online debate, isn't it?

And hell yeah, I'm blowing this out of proportion, because I have to. No one here even wanted to touch on it. I'm saying what everyone else doesn't want to say, doesn't want to admit, and sure as all doesn't want to accept.

[Fenrir]

Distre Danny! I say, "Go for it!!" You have nothing to lose but your life!!

I have made myself a god, and am much better for it! Good sport from daggry to dusk!!

Fortune favors the bold, as they say! Do it!!

[Preston]

Three things, Ms. McClendon:

1 - this assumes that life not as a nova isn't worth living. Death would be preferable to a baseline existance.

2 - No amount of 'training' or preperation would have prepared me for my form of expression. I can explain the 'science' behind my gifts, but I can't explain how it feels.

3 - I needed no training to learn to handle my expressions. It was instinctual. Once I became a nova, I understood.

As for the rest ...

You are at best the probably future for a tiny fraction of the population. In your world view, now the vast majority of the population has no hope and no reason to continue existing.

Ms. McClendon, now you are just another nova. Congrats, but what have you done lately? Or, are you going to be reliving your high school success for the rest of your life?

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Heya Preston.

I never prepared myself for erupted life. As I've stated repeatedly for everyone, I hadn't a clue what that was going to be like. I couldn't anticipate my quantum expression working the way it does, or being aware of the burning like I am. Hell, no. I don't really think any of us can.

What I did prepare for was my eruption. What I readied and steeled myself for was that. And you're right, after eruption, I understood.

What have I done lately? You people are so fucking pushy, you know? I haven't been a nova for half a year yet and I've already got people saying I should be saving lives or being productive.

For all your fucking talk about how novas can live normally within society, you people don't seem to want me to go to college and get a degree like normal people.

For the rest of the what Preston was talking about, you'll kindly note my big ass rant was talking about latent novas, not baselines.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Juri 'Salamander' McClendon: I don't think so. I think it makes all the difference in the world.

But the few who have delibrately erupted don't seem to stand out from the rest. You look at the big names in every field (Pax, Totentanz, Hothead, etc), and they are all accidentals.

If anything the delibrates seem to be less powerful (although I suspect that is because they are mostly less experienced, the test hasn't been around all that long).

Having said that, I think going the delibrate path gives you much more control over what you wish for from the Quantum Genii. That is no small thing.

[Neil Preston]

Juri, do you think there should be a difference between novas who erupt as a result of violence, and ones who erupt by non-violent means?

[Liam Stewart: TAG]

Thanks for the info.