Starship Wanderer

Here they are:

The lamp posts are holograms.

The big sphere; with the small white, yellow, and blue spheres, is the Boss Computer.

The other two like to toss those spheres around when they aren’t being talked to.

They do try to help, but sometimes they have to ask Boss computer for help. sometimes they have to ask the human help desk people to assist with things that they don’t know.

Mostly nice, but don’t make fun of them. They don’t like that.

This blog is about an idea I had many years ago to sit down and draw a massive starship capable of travelling the galaxy at sub-light speeds. I soon realized that just me drawing it by hand would take several lifetimes. This was in 1970.

So I put it to one side. Those paper and pencil drawings are lost.

I found Profantasy’s mapping software and started drawing my old AD&d first edition campaign and putting it up on a web site. This would have been about 1999.

After a year or so of that, I found a few pages in a box depicting this star ship.

I saw that Profantasy had an add-on that could assist me in drawing deckplans and entire starships.

I purchased the software and made a few drawings.

Work took up much of my time, and I spent most of my spare time working on my AD&D first edition website.

When Cosmographer Pro was updated to work with Campaign Cartographer 3, I downloaded it, and converted this site to a blog.

As I have time I’ll update the drawings here, and hopefully before years’ end, have more maps done than are presently here.

copyright by me.

[ background music: distant voices on the interstellar radio
voices without words. voices expressing feelings of joy, sadness,
happiness, resolution, danger… and it went something like…]

Sitting up late one night,
years ago it was,
on my first interstellar voyage.

Listening to one of the off channels,
on my cabin radio hookup.

And then I heard them,
distant voices in the night,
singing, no words could I hear,
happiness, joy, sadness,
exultation.

Warning of danger, resoluteness,
then they cut out,
we went into FTL drive.

I didn’t mention those voices.

But I did hear of someone,
who talked about them,
was told he was wrong,
no such channel on the cabin radios.

I tuned in again,
the next night,
the dial didn’t reach that number anymore,
skipped it,
and the ones around it,
oh well.

Later, on my seventh voyage,
I heard them again,
I had read of a warning,
calling them Sirens of The Galaxy.

Odd, I thought,
I hadn’t felt compelled,
to visit them,
just idle curiosity to hear them,
once more.

Soothing they were,
nothing compelling me to listen,
anymore.

I heard them not,
for many a long year,
then I heard them once again,
on a radio band,
outside the typical settings,
they sang a song of happiness,
joy, sadness, battle,
and I heard them,
Nevermore.

Years later,
I received a note,
“Sinbad,” it read,
“those voices are for another,
your voyages have taken another path.”

“Hello Sir, How may I help you today ?”

“Uhm, we want refund on ticket. Taking too long to get there.”

“Sir, are you aware this is a generation ship ? It wil ltake centuries to get there ?”

“What is century ?”

(Boss computer !)

{What ?}

(Do they have Universal Translater ?)

{Yes, but they lack certain concepts. They are cave people from millenia ago.}

(Thanks !)

“Sir, how many numbers do you know ?”

“Uhm, 1, 2, many.”

“Sir, it will take many days of counting many many times before we get there.”

“Still want refund.”

“Sir, If we refund your ticket, you get tossed off this starship. You won’t survive. No land and no air out there…”

“What is air ?”

“Sir, without air you die, fade away, cease to exist.”

“Not sound like fun…”

“Sir, no it isn’t fun. Have you thought of working for Amuement Park Services ?”

“Yeah, they think we zoo exhibit.”

“Sir, you know you could be part of an Adventure ? Pretend you are in a costume ?”

“What we do ?”

“You get money to buy clothes and other things. And you get things to do.”

“Not want to be hurt or hurt others.”

“Sir, that can be arranged, set up that way.”

“Okay, we thnik about it. We no want refund.”

“Sir, we are happy to help.”

I have been a computer user and tech, for over 20 years.

Bad documentation makes you look bad, and frustrates your customers. Even if what you write is free, if it is unreadable, or leaves things out, you upset the people who visit your site.

Please improve your documentation on your web sites.

Do I think my posts about this will cause an improvement ?

No.