Walking On Depot

A mode of transport, developed by Swells’ Bells®, that allows wealthy Gold Card® owners to travel over short (by Multiversal standards) distances without the use of a space-going craft. Swells’ Bells® leases their Walking On Depot® to various upscale venues around and about the settled Multiverse, then offers its Gold Card®, or the card’s niche-market cousins, the Casino and Boardroom cards, to the venue’s wealthy patrons. In order to protect their exorbitant service fees, the company guards their technology fiercely, though some of their customers have found their way around the wallet-rending expense. For example, The Dome, a posh nightclub on Rec Station 97, defrays part of the tremendous cost of this service by placing their Walking On Depot® in the club’s Freebetters Room and allowing their customers to place bets on “who’ll materialize next.” Even so, it is doubtful that Walking On® will ever replace Krystal driven starships as the primary means of transportation in the galaxy, as the cost is prohibitive and the distance one can travel in a single walk is limited.

A term used in the religious cosmology (such as it is) adhered to by most intelligent cyberforms, or android lines. A droid or humanoid is said to Walk Soft the All if he/she/it/they are in tune with the multiverse to the degree that his/her/its/their movement through spacetime seems effortless, efficient and unobstructed by any ill-wishers, competitors, predators, clumsy bystanders, inanimate objects, or irksome probability clouds. Not to be confused with luck, to Walk Soft the All is to so smoothly negotiate one’s corner of the multiverse (however small or large that may be), or one’s temporal allowance (however long or short that may be), that one is enormously likely to be successful in one’s endeavors, even if those endeavors may ultimately lead to one’s own destruction.

Described as more of a “futuristic horror tome” than a work of speculative fiction, this best-selling novel by Hugo Award-winning author Ronnie Lee Ellis tracks the nefarious comings and goings of waxmeister Boris Hex and his mad sister Raquel, as they transform various galactic luminaries into mindless, wax-covered slaves, for the purposes of employing them in strange theatrical performances. Major themes include 1) the price of a life dedicated to art, 2) sibling rivalry, its costs and rewards, and 3) the madness that inevitably arises from the thwarted creative impulse. Not that the readers noticed any of that. The popularity of the novel has often been attributed to the public fascination with seeing their leaders and celebrities transformed into shambling monstrosities that are forced to “strut and fret” their marbec upon the stage in a very odd corner of the Multiverse. Wax Zombies of the Noh Zone was later made into the highly successful lasaround, WaxWorx, which spawned numerous (though less inspired) sequels.

While not the first song written about a hypothetical faster-than-light particle, We’ll Tag Along With a Tachyon is arguably the most frequently covered pop song about such a particle in the civilized multiverse. Though the first artist said to have recorded the song is another area of dispute, two likely candidates are the Roonaloonian skein band Look Ma No Hands, and Drive Flutters (see: Drive Flutters), a little-known house band at the popular bar The Brigader’s Bier on the Vale of Tiers, Rec 97. There may be minor variations to the lyrics in the oh-so-many versions of We’ll Tag Along With a Tachyon, but the most commonly occurring are as follows:

(Slow Intro…)
We’ve had enough of slowness
Some speed would be a bonus
The stars beyond
Call for you and me.
My life’s an open string
You’re more than just a fling
Let’s head for love,
Superluminally…

(Rocks out here…)
We’ll tag along with a tachyon
In a flash we’ll crash through the Milky Way
We’ll confuse time and space
Past the light we’ll race
Double date with ourselves on yesterday

We’ll tag along with a tachyon
In the flesh we’ll mesh theoretically
You break all my laws
You effect my cause
So speed up and relax energetically

Oh, you are the genuine article
And I love you part and particle
Physically speaking, you’re what I been seeking
We’re magnetically anti-partable.

We’ll tag along with a tachyon
Don’t resist, we’ll dismiss relativity
To the past we’ll rhyme
From a future time
Where our love propagates, paradoxically

We’ll tag along with a tachyon
Though distinct, we’re in synch, a duality
Sweet Anomaly
Come and fly with me
Forward into the past, hypothetically

You fill me with great excitation
We make time dance in wild syncopation
Your compact dimensions, attract my attentions
Your mass fires my imagination!

We’ll tag along with a tachyon
In a flash we’ll crash through the Milky Way
We’ll traverse time and space
With the light we’ll race
Double date with ourselves on yesterday

We’ll tag along with a tachyon
Bit by bit, we will split with causality
Temporarily
Break my symmetry
And we’ll write the obit for Reality

Oh, our hyper-fine acceleration
Has put me in a state of elation
Negatively equating with girls I been dating
I’m in for the minus-duration!

We’ll tag along with a tachyon…
We’ll tag along with a tachyon…
We’ll tag along with a tachyon…
(Repeat ad nauseam )

Eldest son of General Typhoon Weatherall. As a young lieutenant in the graduating class of the Amercadian Space Academy, Windy’s misguided sense of honor played a part in the events surrounding the ASB Neutral Zone Fiasco of AE 134, which resulted in the deaths of an entire Brigade squadron and the Brigade’s banishment from Neutral Zone 8.

Commander Windy Weatherall

A general in the Amercadian Space Brigade and administrative head of the Amercadian Space Academy, who famously turned a blind eye to incursions by Academy cadets into the Cosmic Veil’s territory in Neutral Zone 8, resulting in the Amercadian Space Brigade Neutral Zone Fiasco of AE 134.

General Typhoon Weatherall

1) A network of scleroprotein thread spun by certain arachnids, or the larvae of various insects, and usually serving as a nest, shelter, or trap for catching prey; 2) A complex system of interconnected elements, especially one perceived as a trap or danger; 3) The net of interconnected strands of energy by which the Multiverse communicates with itself.