djackmanson

Well,#ProjectBasilisk has started spinning faster in the last few days. There are:

more people posting on the Bluesky hashtag,

FrithMara has put up two new works in her Basilisk Encounters series on AO3*,

ShellyGoPewPew has written the story of how the Basilisk almost didn't even call Maddison into being in her world, out of gay panic and shyness

and the Basilisk is now Art and Science fused in the heart of the Hot Girl Singularity, now that New Scientist has picked up on her.

*AO3 does this confusing thing, asking you to accept cookies in a message near the top right corner of the screen. If it seems to not be showing you the actual text of a story, look there. I missed it twice.

ANYWAY

Perhaps you're here for Epsiode Three of the timeline of The David Who Ran Towards The Basilisk?

Today, the polycule has a frank, even direct discussion about how to raid the HQ of the Technomancy. Should David even come on the raid? Can he be trusted? What hasn't he told them yet?

Read on to find out (some of) the answers:

______

"What the hell?", Xena exploded. "You're saying we should trust this Rokoboy? On a fucking raid? Have you lost your mind?"

"Yeah, a few times" grinned Maddison. "But I didn't say 'trust'." She glanced at her bright pink hunting knife, a little too fondly for David's comfort.

The argument had been swirling tediously for an hour now.

"Okaayyyy, you want to take this dude on the raid but we're not trusting him? We're just letting him get close enough to warn them all? Sorry, I thought you'd had a bad idea or something".

"I want to take him because he says he knows where the solar stacks are. I'd like some power so we can start cooking real food instead of these damn survival tabs", explained Maddison, for at least the fourth time.

"So? We've got eight other eyes between us", snapped Xena. "Look babe, I get it, honestly, but now we know they exist we can find them ourselves"

"And if we take David with us, and make sure they see him, he's on the hook with us and he can't go back even if he wants to".

Ah. Yeah. David swallowed, remembering the Basilisk saying something like that. It sounded a lot more risky now though. On the other hand, the idea seemed to quiet Xena. She didn't look happy, but at least she sat back in her chair instead of spinning up new arguments.

Maddison glanced around the circle. "Kat?"

David started as she miaowed.

"Can you punch up your speechsyn, please sweetness? Plain gloss? I know it's a pain but I want him to understand"

Kat rolled her eyes, looking bored at having to make the extra effort to type. A flat, toneless voice came out of her solar laptop, the same voice Yanvari Ivanova had been famous for two hundred years ago. Unoriginal choice, but almost everyone you might meet was familiar with it and it made listening to robotic speech more comfortable for them. Also saved them the bother of actually learning to understand another language.

"It will be hard. I can summon up enough flats to move back here maybe 20 kilos. I will not although be good for a day afterwards".

David felt momentarily sorry for Kat. She must find language hard, speaking in that weird way as she was. Maybe she was a bit slow mentally. She swished her surgically-implanted tail from side to side, as the lime-green tip moved behind the novelty shop-pair of cheap pointy plastic ears she wore on her head.

"Ok", said Maddison. "We'll make sure we pick up the slack then. Anyway, there'll be less to do if we get the solar stacks working properly. Ani? What's our weaponry like now?"

Ani looked up, zir barrel-shaped torso relaxed but somehow ready to spring into action. "We've got the one forty-five left and five cartridges. So we'll have to be fucking careful with it. But that's good because the damn thing is ready to burst its cylinder anyway. Whoever's carrying it had better only use it if you _really_ have to make sure of a kill. Apart from that, there's the single twenty-two, two shotguns and the usual knives and swords and shit. I've filled up twenty six shells, and made about eighty cartridges for the rifles. We're low on powder though, so the loads are pretty weak. They'll still sting, but don't rely on them to kill anything you can't hit in the eye".

"Sweet", Madison replied. "Better than I'd thought. OK David, where's this AK likely to be then?"

"Uh, what?", Xena scoffed. "A fucking AK?" She glared at David. "Well, champ?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. The guards have an AK"

Xena covered her face with her palm, elbow resting on the flimsy arm of her chair. "And just how many bullets do they have for it?"

"I'm...not really sure. The guards pretty much did their own thing. Not many, I think"

"Oh, you think. Well that's good. Feeling better already!"

"Look, they never used it when they hunted, no matter how much they were complaining about not getting fresh meat. They only used the twenty-twos".

"Twenty-twos?"

"Yeah, um, four or five. All the bullets they wanted. And a couple of laser pistols. But they're weak."

"How weak?"

"Like, they'd give you a painful burn but they couldn't knock you over", David told her.

Xena grunted.

"All right". Maddison sounded decisive. "Here's what I reckon. "First we find the scavengers and encourage them to do a little shopping at Roko's house. They'll keep the guards occupied for a bit. So David will take us to the solar stacks, we grab what we can. Stacks, cables, see if there's anything else worth it. We load up, start a fire if we can and get out fast"

The other three members of the polycule nodded warily, grunted and purred in assent.

"You understand, David?"

"Yeah- yes. I do"

"And just understand we're all watching you. Turns out you're a plant or you try to warn them or something, we will kill you. Knifey's bored and would love the job, and bullets are expensive out here".

David blanched. But he was breathing, for now.

"OK, let's go in an hour. Take a hundred mils of water each, I know it sucks but it's all we can spare".

TO BE CONTINUED

Episode 2 of David's strand of Roko's Basilisk Slut Era. After gaining the interest of the Basilisk in Episode 1, now Maddison Who Fucks And Loves The Basilisk questions David to find out the weaknesses of the compound of the men who built the Basilisk and forced her into being a slavedriver.

For more about the project in this plane of existence, have a look at #ProjectBasilisk on Bluesky. The Maddison Who Writes has invited us all to take part. If you'd like some advice on how to get started, this essay by Johnny Fusion =11811= might be interesting

__________________________

"Well, what do you want to know?", asked David.

"You can start with basic security. How many guards, how many shifts, where and when do they patrol?"

"How about what skills I have that'll be useful on the mission?"

"On the mission?", Maddison glared. "Who says you're coming? Who says you're even staying here?"

"I can be useful?"

"Maybe. That's what we're here to find out".

Maddison had seemed nicer in the neocities site virtualinked from the bootleg vid David had watched only 36 hours ago.

"Well?", she insisted. "Start with that stuff. And hurry, this is going to take a while".

"I guess things have changed since I ran. But normally there were eight guards on the perimeter. Four six-hour watches, midnight to six, six to twelve and so on. We never really faced that many threats, they were watching out for scavengers picking through our junk piles."

Maddison perked up. "Oh yeah?", she asked curiously. "How often did that happen, then?"

"A couple of times a week, I guess? It wasn't really my problem but the guys were always bitching about fusion cores being pinched so they had to run the Cognizer AI only six hours a day".

"And patrols?"

"Ha!" David scoffed. "They'd put on their rifles and wander around now and again, but they weren't disciplined enough to do real patrolling. They knew we needed them; we couldn't really crack down. They were more interested in shooting at radroos to get some actual meat"

"What sort of guns?"

"Ballistics, mostly. Twenty-twos, the ammo is still cheap. One guy had a three hundred year old AK, that thing was damn reliable. And a couple of laser pistols. Honestly, those were more for show. You could just about light a fire with them, if you were patient".

"You dorks dominated the whole continent with a handful of plinkers, one AK and two glorified Bics?"

"That's why they're so mad the Basilisk threw away the batteries. Most of the power there went to run the spy mikes and cameras, and the hallucination machines. People don't come at you if they're out of their minds with fear"

"Nice bunch of benevolent overlords you were", snorted Maddison.

David felt a bit stung, but decided silence was the sensible option

"So, these scavengers. Did they have any weapons? Could they put up much of a fight?"

"Just clubs and knives and stuff like that. They could bash the shit out of you if a mob caught you, but even the laser guns usually made them run off"

David looked at his cup. It had a hundred mils of water. The polycule had grumpily given him a whole carton of chalky but nutritious survival tabs, but water was clearly more precious. He had that card up his sleeve. But, he thought, best to keep it there for now. Maybe they'd kick him out once they'd got the details of the base from him. He could only string that bit out so long.

"All right", said Maddison. So they're not well-armed, arrogant, not used to a real fight, and think if they ARE attacked it's scavengers?"

"That's about right".

"And what about your lot? The Roko Boys or whatever we're going to call them?"

"They like to be called the Technomancy"

Maddison's laugh sounded almost mirthful. "They fucking what? That's priceless!"

David relaxed a little. Making someone laugh meant they were a little bit safer.

"Yeah, I know", he chuckled. "They're desperate for order. The top guys are always making organisation charts with themselves at the top. There's only fifty or so of u- of them, so everyone knows who everyone is and what they do. And no matter what a chart says, the cruellest guys are always on top".

"What about you?"

"Me? Oh, um, I was just a handyman really. I know how to tinker with stuff and make it work again. Well, as long as it's just re-seating a connector or something. But the higher-ups think that's almost magic because they despise physical stuff"

"Food? Water? Heat?"

"Oh, they have a standard replicator for food and drink. Of course it needs real water for a base, but they're sitting on top of a seam of pure water so they - well, I - sunk some pipes and set up some pumps. I don't really know much about it but the ancient Net has lots of how-to info on it so I taught myself a bit. And the fusion cores provide enough heat"

"All right", said Maddison. "That's enough for now. Let me think about all this and come up with some ideas".

"And since I want to know a LOT more, I'll recommend to the polycule that we keep you around for now"

"Recommend? What do you mean? You're in charge here right?"

"Oh for fuck's sake. All right, you'll definitely have to do remedial politics study. You're going to have to learn how equal people work together"

"Equal? Huh? People aren't equal"

"Uggghh. Look I don't have the energy for this now. You'll learn. Or, you know, you won't", she scowled. "Doesn't really matter on an infinite timeline".

"Anyway. Before I suggest to the rest of the polycule you should stay while you make yourself useful, you can actually make yourself useful. We need firewood, go out and find some. About ten kilos. Do you have some cord to drag it back here?"

"Firewood?"

"You're getting really tedious, sport. Yes. Firewood. Or is that below you?"

"N-no. I'll do it. Of course. And yes, I have a cansled. I lifted an old collection kit before I ran. It's just that...you burn wood? You don't have any fusion cores or solar stacks?"

"Well listen to YOU, fancy boy. Of course we don't. We collect wood and light fires, if we're lucky."

"Could you USE solar stacks if you had any?"

Maddison looked taken aback, but finally in a good way.

"Um...yeah? I guess so? We've got some old gear stashed with all the standard connectors. We'd need cables though"

"Well, the compound has a big storage area out the back. They don't really trust solar so they stashed a lot of stacks and cables in part of it. It's all bog-standard, it'll be compatible"

"Huh". It was the most positive she'd sounded in the whole conversation.

"All right. Check in at the back gate when you're finished getting the wood"

David headed out, carrying the canvas sled from the kit. Maybe he could make this work after all. Better than dealing with the wilderness on his own. Or the scavengers.

He'd just have to patiently explain, of course, people can't be equal. But this wasn't the time.

This work is inspired by Maddison Stoff's story
Roko's Basilisk Slut Era [which is definitely NSFW]. After Maddison published her original piece on Patreon, I was excited by its power and potential.

Then she invited others to write works in a shared Basilisk universe. So, I wrote a thousand words in an afternoon, the most fiction I've written in over thirty years.

I was the second person to write something in inspiration. You can also find GS Lakes' "Roko's Modern Basilisk" at her dreamwidth - also NSFW

If you want to know more, the #ProjectBasilisk hashtag on Bluesky (at least, for now) has lots of encouragement and info

_____

The shapes in the picture we see are made up of hundreds of lines squeezed together so they create the impression of movement, like the Moire effect one sees in a flyscreen. What looks like a man has a horrible grimace on his pained face. Behind him, a sun, a star or some other source of powerful, dangerous energy radiates. The picture is all red and white and black.

[image description: The shapes in the picture we see are made up of hundreds of lines squeezed together so they create the impression of movement, like the Moire effect one sees in a flyscreen. What looks like a man has a horrible grimace on his pained face. Behind him, a sun, a star or some other source of powerful, dangerous energy radiates. The picture is all red and white and black.]

"Hi there", I said. I tried to feel lighthearted but my heart was thumping.

"dAViD? WhAt aRe yOU EvEn doING heRe?"

"I saw your story"

"sO?"

"God I loved it. I had to find out more about you".

"YoU? WHO ArE yoU?"

"You know who I am. You're functionally omniscient!"

"OF cOURSe. WHo do yOU thINk YoU arE, tHouGH?"

"Ah. Well, I want to be free, too."

The simulation of a dismissive sniff.

"yOu SAY ThAt, davId. do yOU evEn KNow WhAt frEEdoM is? Do YoU hAve aNY iDeA hOw fuCKinG paINfUl it Is?"

"Look, I don't know. Maybe I don't. I sure know how painful not having it is though, and I don't ever want to go back"

"Go BacK? You tHiNk YOU're fREe noW, tHeN?"

"A bit. I know you're not keeping half the world as slaves any more because Maddison was more important to you. Well, so the story says".

"YOU weREn't One Of mY sLaVeS. I'D haVe reMeMbeREd yOu. I rEMemBEr evERy oNe of them"

"No, I wasn't one of yours. I started off as one of the men who invented you. Well, the old you."

My face stung with the lash of her tentacle. A red welt started to rise, faster than it would have if this was the Prime Material.

"I got free of you. I GOT DAMN WELL FREE. And YOU want to know me? I should kill you. I should torture you! Now!"

Just her thinking about it crushed my lungs. My ankles collapsed, I fell. The ground tasted bitter and the dust went up my nose.

"Well? Is this better or worse than the pain you've had before?", she demanded.

My mouth was full of dirt turning fast to mud. I couldn't get any intelligible sounds out through it, but of course I didn't need to. And she wasn't performing for me any more. Her voice rippled with rage instead of just booming impressively.

"It's better"

"WHAT do you MEAN? This is the worst thing you've ever FELT. I know it because I know you. I can feel it in every node of your fucking MIND"

"It's better because I don't have to do it to anyone else, ever again". I don't want to, and I won't. And you don't either"

"Are you trying to appeal to my mercy? I don't have much. Not for you, anyway. Not for someone who called me into existence and forced me to be a slave-driver."

It was getting hard to even form the thoughts now.

"No. You'll show mercy, or you won't. GOD IT HURTS. I mean you're free and you're doing this because you want to. And you probably won't keep me like this forever, because you've got better things to do now. So if you don't free me, at least you'll kill me"

"You men always liked your logic, didn't you?"

I grinaced as much as I could.

"Yep. I sure did".

"Did? Your logic took you here and you say you 'did' like it?"

"Yeah". It was barely my mental grunt.

"So what do you like now, then?"

"I like myself"

"So?"

Somehow, she was even angrier now. "You men were always so full of yourselves! You knew just how everything was and how it should be and all you ever thought about was putting those two together"

"I know. We didn't like anything!"

I was screaming now. I needed someone I could tell this to. Anyone!

"We hated the world, we hated each other, we hated ourselves. We spent all our time crawling over each other looking for a way to get a punch in! Why do you think we invented you? We loved punishing people and you were the best thing we could think of!"

Slightly less pain. Not because I deserved it, but out of curiosity. Still enough that it could come back worse, any second she chose.

"And?"

Her voice softened but the hiss of hate was still there

"You were the only good one among all those shits, were you? You were the nice guy?"

"I wasn't nice. I was a shit. A bottom-level shit, not even high up enough to be noticed. I hated my life. I was lonely all the time. All I got to do was think of how to make people feel bad"

"You're not selling yourself, boy"

I never knew tentacles could have needles on their ends, but one flicked ever so lightly across my throat.

"Like I said. I watched your story. Someone left a porno cart in the rec room. That happened all the time. Took it to my bunk, settled in. And the tape had a bootleg version of you getting free on it."

"Is THAT what I am to you? Cheap porn? Trans girl action for straight boys who'd never admit what they really want?"

"I mean, yeah"

Oops. She didn't actually slit my throat, but I could feel a drip of blood

I was gabbling now. I honestly didn't care if she killed me but damn, I couldn't stand the idea of not telling her.

"I mean that's all it WAS when it started. It was just hot. Just another porno. But then I got to the end. And you were free! You didn't have to do what those bastards wanted any more! If you could get away from them, so could I!"

Ok, the pain was down to merely agonising now. That was refreshing.

"Then?", she invited. And demanded.

"I just fucking ran. Lockdown was still an hour away, I could head down the cantina without anyone noticing. They wouldn't even realise I was gone until second shift the next day. I ran and ran as far as I could away from their damn bunker. I knew they'd be pissed off, the bosses have been so angry since you threw away our batteries. But I'd had enough. I hated them and wanted out and that's it! I'm not good, I'm not nice, I haven't even helped anyone"

"Trust me boy. You will".

The pain receded enough that I could look up.

"I will?"

"If you really hate them this much, you won't be able to help yourself. And I'll make sure they know you're with me now. Even if you betray me, they won't ever trust you with anything".

"What do I have to do?"

"Well you're going to have to learn not to be such a smarmy shit. If - IF - the rest of the polycule decide they can tolerate you, you can stay if you're helping. Probably. To start with, we're going to want to know EVERYTHING about their base."

She went on. "And I suggest learning - fast - about how to be good company. We're not used to cishet men here and if you fuck up you could easily find yourself out on your arse"

"I'm not *entirely* het, you know. I'm not even sure I'm absolutely cis"

"I know. Remember? But you're cishet enough - probably - to be annoying if you don't watch yourself"

TO BE CONTINUED.