Chapter 1

This story should begin with elephants, or with a large airship, or perhaps with some mention of what year it is, but this story doesn't begin the way it should, because first I have to explain something. I have to tell you about Bellicose Tate.

Which, now that I think of it, is perhaps how the story should start after all - no, no that's not right. Bellicose is a horrible way to start anything. She's sharp and snappy and generally unpleseant to be around. She always smells like garlic - or onions, I can never really tell - nor can I tell if she cares.

I think she does care, actually. I think Bellicose just wants attention, and she doesn't care what breed. Vile little creature.

Snarky, ill-mannered, dirty, oniony-

It is really a shame that she is the reason all this started.

I could make an argument to the contrary, Heaven knows other people have tried, but the truth is that-

Oh, yes! Yes! That is how the story should start, with freedom!

How fitting!

I have free will, or it seems to me that I have free will, and it probably seems to you that you have free will too, that no destiny compells you to a path you have not chosen ---

(Frederick goes on for a long time here - the text is in Appendix A - but I'll just cut to the chase: free will is hard to define, and there are a bunch of smart people who don't think it's real because most of the definitions don't make sense, but Frederick thinks he's got a definition that does make sense...)

---namely that thing is free which can change its own response to the universe beyond itself, and that conscious thing which can change itself in such a way, we may say possesses free will!

And, so in this way the many ignitions of those events which I set out here to compile are mere automata, doing their work, bit by bit, unthinking, blind and fate-bound, and all of their cyclopean earth-moving powers were unbound and translated by the freedom of a teenage girl. This is the story of freedom. This is the story of Bellicose Tate.

Pregaming 5: Quotes

Bola

• Games are little religions, they tell you what to care about, they give you goals, they change your behavior. Religions are big games.
• All stories are fiction.

Giles

• It doesn't matter. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter to me.
• There are lots of people in your head, only a few of them care about making sense.
• The emperor's court doesn't always get along.

Emile

• Technology is Biology.
• There was no biotech revolution. Just a bunch of engineers stealing ideas from a very old evolutionary algorithm - we've been calling it life.
• A business is no more a person than a person is a cell. They are animals made of men, and they act like it.
• Look, your little monkey brain just has to get over this: for a million years it's been optimizing for a tiny skull and a big ass social life. For a hundred thousand generations the most important thing in their world was love and hate and belonging. Your brain defaults to stupid social relationships not because they're accurate, but because your brain's a tiny little weak thing and only so many rules fit inside, but the world's not like that. Your computer doesn't hate you. It breaks because it breaks, get over it.

Nell

• A government is just a business with a local monopoly on violence. 
• They're like restaurants, come for the violence, stay for the ambiance.

King Smith

• They never learned the first lesson of the real world - you only own what cannot be taken from you. Our only true possessions are our actions.
• Indecision is a vice.
• Weakness is faith in what you wish were true.
• Everything is optional; even survival isn't mandatory.
• All cultures are equal, unless killing babies is a bad thing.
• There only two options in life: you belong to it, or it belongs to you. There is no third option, no middle ground.
• Daring is the greatest virtue.
• There are monsters and there are failures and it is possible that you are both.
• Nature doesn't care how many of us want something to be true.
• The greatest sin is weakness.
• There is no "should". A thing is or it is not. "Should" is a desire you pretend to share with nature, and nature desires nothing.

Pregaming 4: Ecology

There are rumors of a population of feral humans living in the Ozarks. Mustangs, bison, wolves, puma, and bears range coast to coast, as well as introduced populations of pythons and monkeys in Florida, lions in Texas, tigers in Pennsylvania, Texas Longhorns and Camels in the Southwest. California Condor have expanded their populations with the resurgence of the megafauna.

Something very strange is going on with the crows.

A single herd of Indian elephants has been introduced to the southeast, and observing this herd is one of the major objectives of the Five-Man-Band.

North America isn't used for agriculture because the Sahara has been converted into a collection of colossal farms for genetically engineered crops, easily out competing other farms in the world market.

Recurrent themes include the ecology of fear, dynamic disequilibrium, the tautology of evolution, the red queen, sources and sinks, the selfish-gene-fallacy, and evolution as a way to understand life.

Pregaming 3: Urbanism

Early in the 21st century most humans urbanized, and as a result became far less fecund. Populations worldwide contracted.

Advances in certain technologies - specifically those relating to construction - allowed people to move from city to city, or rural areas to urban ones, more easily, as a home now cost considerably less than a vehicle did in the 20th century. This allowed not just nuclear families, but entire social groups, to easily move from city to city even if only a small percentage had gainful employment.

Pregaming 2: Economics

The Five-Man-Band is doing large scale ecological survey of North America's interior, but the economic situation is complicated so everyone has multiple sources of income; transporting goods and people - for example - or creating infotainment/nature-porn for consumption by the urbanites who fantasize about the interior, but don't want to leave the comfort and excitement of the cities, or gathering data for Blizzard so they can improve the simulated ecology models and animal models for their games.

Pregaming 1: Tropes

Five-Man-Band (inverted) on a Cool Airship doing field ecology over a rewilded North America, after mass urbanization caused population decline and most of the interior of continents - with the exception of the Sahara - is reserved as wilderness. It is possible that a technological singularity has already occurred, but it's not widely distributed.

November is for Novels

2000 words a day for 30 days may be over-ambitious, but I'm nothing if not that.