Just informing my readers that Blog with the Blastwave is going to be going on a short Hiatus, though this will only be for about a month or so. I'm in the middle of a transition hase in my career and so will be scurrying around prepping my gear to move out from my apartment and take one of two options before me, unless an unexpected third option presents itself
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Coalinga was a blast as usual. A weird mix of chaos and order at the stockyards as they sell off most of the cow calf pairs to the ranchers in the delta to winter on the last crop of rice hay. Apparently I missed my older brothers visiting by a couple days. Eh there'll be more chances down the road I guess, some more research into the solar array has been done since I was last there, between the heavy armor cache underneath it, and the missile defense system, it still has secrets it's keeping. Hard to believe that it had had a massive chemical laser built into the solar collector and the whole facility has capacitors built into it. The estimates from the techmages that are poking around the facility are that it could burn a 40 foot hole through a meteor about a hundred miles out of atmosphere. Not really that impressive, but the information in the computers and paperwork in the control center itself imply that there's more of these hidden around the country, possibly the world.
And now we know where all that money for Green energy went, Al wasn't squirreling it away to be just a regular thieving bastard white collar criminal... he was becoming a supervillain.
Also did some testing with my gear and it's anomalous properties, basically I found a couple friends from college that got dragged along with the Mennonites into kings canyon when they evacuated everyone in the area the second time. Anyway the breakdown goes a little something like this:
Me without my ash coated gear=No visual anomaly.
Me with gear I took into the ashlands that stained: Slight visual anomoly, dizzying to look at.
Me, with my ash coated gear (the stuff I had with me out there originally) but no cloak: Kinda dizzying to look at directly.
Me, with ash coated gear, with cloak: Dizzying to look at directly, hard to notice in a crowd, even just alone standing out in the open a person just overlooks my presence unless I actually want to be noticed.
Further tests:
Friend with the gear I took into the ashlands: No visual anomaly
Friend with gear I brought out of the ashlands: Some visual anomaly, not as pronounced as with me though
Friend with my ashlands cloak: Same as above, some visual anomaly, not as pronounced or dizzying.
Got a job as a guard on a train to the north, so going to stop in Davis, there's supposed to be some smart folks to the north that might be able to figure things out a bit better than I can.
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Headed towards Oregon, mostly due to snow blocking my way south, and the route through Idaho is clear as far as I can see. Haven're really seen to many people, and no one's really commented on the wolf. I guess most of the stalkers are strange enough one with a wolf as a companion isn't too much of an oddity, even if that wolf is a cybernetic creation.
Anyway learned a few things about Pandora (great success, IDA finally decided that Pandora could actually be a better name to use since it's full designation of "Institute Design Ambassadorial" was a bit of a mouthful.) It can eat. Anything organic, wood, grass, meat....me, etc etc. It isn't because it has dietary needs, rather it's because it's power source is an advanced microbial fuel cell, and yes, what goes in must go out as well, Pandora likewise wasn't programmed to taste anything but it does prefer cooked food over uncooked, something that due to the whole "having paws and not hands" thing it is incapable of doing on its own. The AI is also naturally inquisitive about the world, considering the programs that compose it originally came from the institute, and have never left the campus it literally has no knowledge of the world beyond what information was on the campus hard drives, and what they've gleaned off the internet now that that's a bit more restored to its former "glory".
As well as being inquisitive of the world, Pandora is also extremely cautious. They found a copy of terminator on a hard drive and a few Asimov stories in PDF form and are, probably rightly so, afraid of humanity and actually were quite afraid of even sending out some kind of ambassador. It apparently was a huge debate among the various AI's there so huge that it lasted four days, an eternity to them before they reached a consensus and decided I wasn't enough of a threat and had me do their search and rescue work for them.
Anyway, idaho, + a light snow = a desolate place that's like they rolled the streets up and closed shop for the most part, at least for a person passing through. That's about it for this post. Should be into eastern oregon in a few days since I'm in no rush and the cold temperatures are keeping the deer I caught out in the open chilled with no risk of spoiling.
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