HNMNBM Book One

The sun is out. It has been raining for seven straight days, welcome to Seattle. OK Bondi, (Guy was keeping Rhea's dog while she attended a jewelry buyers show in Las Vegas), let's go for a walk. Bondi was stoked, fetched his lead and stood by the door. Patient while Guy fumbled with the nose noose. Out the door. The inner Bondi wanted to leap and prance, but 2.5 yr old GSDs don't do that, aristocrats of dogdem, comes with a price. After a long rainy spell, when the sun comes out everyone that can, gets out, the neighborhood was filled with the sounds of leaf blowers, chain saws, children chirping. The neighbor on the corner was out, garage door open, working on some task. Nice day, Guy called out. Say, that is a good looking dog, the neighbor returned, the rain is coming back tomorrow. Yup, "Whan the sunne shinth make hay." Aye John Heywood, the neighbor called out to Guy and Bondi's vanishing aspect. Walking was good, a chance to clear his mind, or...

Looking back, it was his hair cutter. She forgot, maybe never followed the rule, never talk about HNMNBie and mentioned Adrian. For what ever reason her shop in Bellvue was selected for surveillance.  Adrian came in to get his mane trimmed, paid with cash, but for whatever reason, was followed home using satellite tracking. It is hard to imagine why any judge would have signed a search warrant, but the US was a long way into decline at this point. It was the classic zero dark thirty, get them while they are asleep and brain foggy "drive up and surprise". However, the street Adrian lived on was somewhat remote. The house on the corner was HNMNBie, traffic sensors went of 0438, 5 vehicles = 1 anomaly. Police band proximity alerted next. Adrian's EAai fired up the RV, two Blockade Busters and a couple Navigators, and launched two UAVs, (Adrian and XXX usually slept in his RV, made it easier to keep the house ready for drop ins). Adrian, heard the RV initializing, all s...

Themes: Intelligence, life will find a way, ai, AI,  goals , human, canine, rat Ecology, carbon, plastic Natural disasters Violence, political polarization Debt Crow, the 5th animal Up and Out, owe my soul to the company store Disposable people, haves, midway haves, have nots Cybersecurity, privacy, what will you pay for security esp physical security Cryptocurrency, blue circle Business card, all have special properties Plot points: Traveler moves into leadership of Blue Circle, (High Table), remains allied with HNMNBies, essentially becomes a monk king The wisdom of the "Circle" part of Blue Circle becomes evident Traveler still doesn't believe in violence, but in the last chapters Wonk's security forces save his bacon. WTM tacticals and BlendIt camos make all the difference. Gloria is lost covering his escape, the events cause him much reflection In book one Guy was torn a bit between the philosophies of Wonk, (it's all business) and Traveler,...

The plague is from the Middle Ages right? Well, it existed in the 1400s, yes. We have solid archeological evidence that the bacterium, yersinia pestis, that causes plague has existed in Europe for about 5,000 years. And it still exists today and not just in Madagascar, in fact, they do a reasonable job of keeping it under control all things considered. So is it some kind of super pest? Not really, it is actually fairly easy to control with antibiotics, of course with any beastie that has been around that long, the fear is that it will mutate to a resistant variety.  It is already able to spread essentially as a type of pneumonia, coughing, sneezing, that makes it hard to contain. Will that impact the work on the depository? Dr. Jean-Joseph Frah smiled, you don't pay me enough to tell you the future, but probably not. The depository is for all intents and purposes, a mine. The government in Madagascar understands mines, gives out permits for mines, even knows there will be...

Long before all the kinks were worked out of the fencing production, Adrian had a team of engineers working on a carbon fiber all wheel drive EV.  The idea was to build a base model and stick with it. No frills, off road focused, the kind of vehicle needed in the inhabs. Strictly speaking it wasn't street legal, no air bags for one thing. But they sold as farm use only, ranch vehicles on private land. Demand grew, there was no emissions, the price was reasonable and bit by bit, location by location the Western states found a way to allow the vehicles, not on the Interstates or any such thing, but certainly on state roads. Then one day Carbonado's office in XXX had a visit request from MaineDOT. They had heard about the X/C and were interested in purchasing some for official use. They also signaled they would be supportive of a dealer in the state. At the weekly staff meeting the topic came up. Adrian puzzled over the two parts of the visit and the related request. "C...

An artist similar to Chihuly starts using 2nd generation Carbon subs to find dead spacecraft. The radioactive ones are stored behind massive lead glass. They sell as art for gazillions. Someone tries to monetize as cypto currency. The most remote location on Earth has many names: It's called Point Nemo (Latin for "no one") and the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. Most precisely, its exact coordinates are 48 degrees 52.6 minutes south latitude and 123 degrees 23.6 minutes west longitude. The spot is about 1,450 nautical miles from any spot of land — and the perfect place to dump dead or dying spacecraft, which is why its home to what NASA calls its "spacecraft cemetery." "It's in the Pacific Ocean and is pretty much the farthest place from any human civilization you can find," NASA said. Bill Ailor, an aerospace engineer and atmospheric reentry specialist, put it another way: "It's a great place you can put things down without hitt...

Many historians point to the second decade of the 21st century as the tipping point for the general decline of higher education. Institutions of learning were often viewed with suspicion. Graduates, lacking useful skills, could not find employment. A sizable minority matriculated with student loans that simply could not be repaid. Schools that had counted on the loyalty of alumni found it was largely missing. And of course with the great debt shakeout there was little government money to be had by anyone, for anything. Some of the most well known of the techno-wealthy genre had either dropped out of college, or never bothered to attend. However, the large, successful, companies they formed needed educated employees. As colleges began to fail, succumbing to insolvency, inability to maintain accreditation, or just lack of interest, these billionaires slowly and carefully began to invest in education. Sometimes it was a school of their own, often based on a new learning concept; many of...