This is my ongoing scifi / fantasy / crime fiction serial. New chapter every week.
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: The fighting is over. Across the triverse, citizens and governments attempt to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the battle against the rogue AI and the opening of new portals…
[TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS]
29 October 1980.
Morning edition.
Price £1.50
THE TRIVERSE TIMES
LONDON CAN TAKE IT
Rebuilding continues apace
The streets of London may be battered, but they are not broken. As has been the case many times throughout our country’s proud history, we shown our true character.
There was nothing but determination on the faces of the brave construction workers on the south bank this week, tasked with clearing the wreckage of the Joint Council tower, the portal station and the hulks of two crashed megaships from Max-Earth.
“It’s an unusual one, for sure,” said Max Goodson, foreman overseeing the site. “But we’ll get the job done. It’s what we do.”
Debate still rages over the future of the south bank and the timeline for re-opening portal transport. The economic impact is set to be especially catastrophic in the next year.
Read the full story on p4
TRI-WORLDS CUP TO RESUME IN 1981
Much-needed, or to soon?
On hiatus for half a decade, the Tri-Worlds Cup will return next year, as announced today by the oversight committee.
While a boon for athletics fans, questions are already being asked as to whether this is an attempt by the embattled Joint Council to sports-wash its reputation.
Read our opinion on p24
UNEXPLAINED SIGHTINGS IN BRUGLIA
Portal transit ‘still not safe’
Witnesses have reported seeing a ‘cluster of nerve endings’ near the ruins of Fountain University. Other first-hand statements describe a ‘walking creature made only of muscle,’, comparing it to a scientific anatomical model. These statements have been confirmed by a source within the Bruglian transitional government.
Could this be the result of a faulty portal transit? Foreign Office advice is to avoid travel to Palinor until further notice, especially given the recent fighting and unrest.
What next for the long-suffering citizens of Bruglia?
Find out on p15.
CLASSIFIED
Book your airship and see the world!
The skies are open once again – where are you going to fly to first?
CALL 542-551-665-766
References
I previously did a bonus chapter with the front page of The Triverse Times back in November 2023.
Meanwhile.
When I started writing Tales from the Triverse in 2021 I’d intended to do ‘bonus’ chapters in-between each main story. That never quite happened, chiefly due to time constraints. Bonus chapters tended to require less writing but be more complicated to produce — hence they’ve been a rare occurrence. I wanted to do one more before the end, hence sneaking this one in.
Something I’m looking forward to post-Triverse is having more time and (primarily) brain space to read.. I’m never not reading, but it can be a challenge when my own book is front and centre in my brain. As such, I’m embarking on fixing two weird gaps in my reading, namely: The Hobbit and The Princess Bride, neither of which I read when I was a child. Icing on the cake is that I’m reading them with my son, which is always fun and a privilege.
Cory Doctorow had a good (long) piece in The Guardian this week. It made me consider again my position around genAI, and why we see such polarised views:
I mentioned in my foundational novels post that Kim Stanley Robinson has always been a major influence on my writing. Coincidentally, an interview with him popped up over on The Weekly Anthropocene:
It’s a great interview!
Right, a few notes about today’s bonus chapter:
Author notes
Shades of Dr Manhattan in that article to the bottom-right. Apologies, as ever, to Alan Moore. I wonder what could be going on with those strange sightings?
The clean-up operation in London won’t be simple. What do you do with the hulks of two megaships? Hollow them out and turn them into boutique hotels, perhaps? Build a museum around them? Make them a sombre memorial to the conflict, symbols of the threat and the salvation? Maybe just haul them off through the Max-Earth portal to be used for parts. Which does raise the question of whether a megaship can be reactivated, or re-used for a new mind. I think I’m going to head-canon it that once the unique quantum channels have been ‘used’ they cannot be re-activated after a total shutdown.
And given that it’s my story, I suppose I’m allowed to head-canon that one.
Another reason for doing this chapter is that it affords me some extra space in which to work on next week’s final chapter. For the first time in several years, I’m ahead of schedule. Imagine that!
As for the newspaper itself, I went for a simple approach. A Canva template, significantly modified and expanded, with the addition of a crumpled paper background texture. I then exported the flat image and brought it into Affinity where I applied a little bit of liquify to create the impression of the text being warped along the folds and lines of the paper texture. With the release last year of the free version of Affinity, it’s remarkable the tools now available to everyone.1
OK. See you next week, for the final chapter of Tales from the Triverse.
Which isn’t to say that the product might not be enshittified in the future, but let’s enjoy it in the moment, at least.
Well, I was specifics gonna call out the good text displacement. Manual liquify, eh? I'd have tried using the paper texture as a displacement map first. Faster. But yours looks excellent.
Hmmm, what do you do with megaship hulks? On the headcanon, well, it's your story, so yours is "definitive." I can see the materials being salvageable and reusable, but the data -- the engrams, experience, and personality of the prior ship -- that's gone. Probably Better and Just Enough are dead and anything left of them are whatever subsets were downloaded into drone bodies. Assuming Justin survived they carry some of Just Enough's personality and memories, but just a tiny fraction. Enough for some continuity.
But I LIKE Just Enough/Justin, so I look for a "best case" scenario with them.
All that's left of Probably Better is floating out in deep space with Could Kill and I doubt PB programmed those drones with anything beyond the attack orders. PB is REALLY gone. Good riddance.
So... Is it Kaenamor or Yana trying to reconstruct themself? We'll never know unless the author intends on doing a side story or a surprise final viewpoint.
Here's a custom tool to convert Substack posts into a newssheet format. I've also added a news snippet generator tool in the comments. https://substack.com/@rawandferal/note/c-193639751?r=wtpo