All Comments on 'Three Square Meals Ch. 114'
by Tefler
- 36 Comments
Can’t wait to reread and delve deeper!
Thanks Tefler!!
How was Calara and the others able to talk telepathically to each other during the portal fight? Did you decide to leave it as implied that Alyssa was doing her usual business of passing on thoughts to the others?
Since Faye has footage of the meeting how about she splices it together into a nice holo pic for a present?
As the chapters have come out, I find myself resenting the sex scenes, because they take up paragraphs that could have been story and plot development. As it is, now I just skim those scenes, only stopping for dialogue, to make sure I don't miss some comment that isn't just dirty talk.
Don't get me wrong, I like when John breaks in a new recruit, or any number of other romps, but at this point, Tefler, you've got your work cut out keeping these scenes fresh and original. I don't envy you.
On to my favorite pastime...speculation on future events, especially new tech.
The more Tefler keeps mentioning the Trankaran Star Forges, the more convinced I am that they are somehow related to the Soul Forge (not sure if I'm remembering the right name for that), if they aren't in fact Soul Forges.
I can't wait for the Invictus to get to Trankara and have the crew go on a tour of the forges so Dana can recognize them, then channel the Progenitor specs for the Soul Forge, like she has done for other Progenitor tech before.
Who but Tefler knows, but maybe the Star Forge is a base model forge, and with some Dana special modifications, she could turn one into a Soul Forge...
Here's hoping. It's about time for another Invictus overhaul, or even my fondest hope, time to build the Invictus Rex, the white version of a Progenitor flagship. The only component they don't have is the wormhole generator specs, and any other weapons, like the Quantum Annihilator Nexus dug up on the moon to use against earth.
Until next chapter...
As always, a great read, and I enjoyed this one enormously.
But, and I hesitate to say it, I was left with a slight feeling of 'same-old', which was disappointing. They are running around and doing lots of good things, but the plot doesn't seem to be advancing at much more than snail's pace.
Thank you for the read though, and I look forward to the next one.
Thank you for another brilliant chapter. I love how you zig when I expect a zag. I now has to get on Amazon to buy e-book 4. I hope we can get another chapter this month, but I will just have to reread this series from the start again. Thanks for sharing your great talent with us all.
Another great chapter. I'm curious what's going to happen with Tom and Mason. I like these little character tangents and look forward to them almost as much as the main plot line. Way to go Jade on the promotion too.
LOL! Just joking around Tefler, well sort of anyway. I am looking forward to the next chapter but I know it is weeks away.
litreader9696, I agree about skimming over the sex scenes, I do it too. In my case being over 60 I know how it is done so sex scenes are not a big deal for me. In some cases they can add to the story but in others they can take away from it. TSM is not to bad and the base story is excellent so I do not mind at all.
I’m reposting a question I posted on chapter 113 right before 114 came out, so I bet no one read it. Here it is:
Unless I missed something, no one has speculated about who are the Lahlenori?
Deep Lord asshole Athgiloi calls Shanryl of the Lahlenori, who is a female wearing an opaque helmet (sounds familiar) who has taken refuge in the Brimorian Enclave (which we know abuts Maliri space). Who is she? Who are they? What mission is he sending them on?
My wild guess is they're part of the Maliri black marketeers who fled the crackdown on cybernetic parts. The Enshunu are the only other armor wearing race that comes to mind. (At some point those Enshunu slave trading bastards need to be dealt with)
On chapter 114, I wish John could have saved his ruse using astral projection to exhaust his guide for his final showdown with his alter ego, but while they were in Karron, it was time to help Alyssa. (By the way, how is there gravity in Karron? Karron doesn’t seem big enough to have substantial natural gravity, and when the power went out, wouldn’t artificial gravity go out too?)
Ironically, it seems like Alyssa unintentionally took a page from Larn’kelnar’s book on weakening an opponent, in this case, by turning the Kirrix against themselves instead of against another race. I wonder if the ‘shroud’ on the Kirrix was created to ‘weaponize’ the Kirrix against the surrounding species.
Thanks again Tefler!!
Holy granma's titties! How did we miss that?! Yeah? I am curious now. As for the Alyssa thing i think it was unnecessary and way to risky for a payoff that really isnt that much of a big deal. I understood the need for Sakura but for the rest its just pointless and risky pandering. I've complained before about what i view as John's poor priorities and oft-times poor decision making process which has only become worse of late because of mollycoddling and overprotectiveness over the girls and Alyssa's immaturity enabling him. They might need someone to die for them to get a much needed wake up call. Tbh, I hope the Kirrix scenario might help with that.
Teller,
I found your story a little over a month ago and I’ve been trying my darndest to not read the entire series in ONE sitting, because it is the greatest story I’ve ever found. I’ve finally caught up and I’d like to say a couple things. The fact that I can feel exactly what each character’s personality is, is amazing considering how in depth each character is explained. The vastly complicated, action packed, sex filled universe you’ve created has blown my expectations away. The ONLY thing I’ve ever had a complaint about was John discussing his feelings with Lynette, and his intentions for the future. I completely understand him wanting her to have a life instead of throwing it away to be with him, but it just seemed too odd to me that Alyssa would bond with her, as she did with all the other Lionesses, just to want to hear her fucking Charles instead of John. It was bizarre that John basically said that she should go sleep with Charles, his best friend, for a few decades and then he’ll take her later. Considering how protective he is of his girls, it was just odd to me that he would want that, even though I know Lynette hasn’t slept with him yet. The only other complaint is him refusing to impregnate or bring on too many women to his harem of girls, when the Maliri culture has evolved over thousands of years to not have a man constantly in the picture! John should be bonding with and impregnating as many girls as he can to increase his power and build a greater connection network, where I can see little to no downsides. Once again these are my only concerns, but the story is still way beyond a 5 rating and you’ve done an amazing job so far, so keep it up Telfer! Papa bless.
How much do you take from the comments?
Some of them are really impressive in how deep they look into the story. Some of the questions are extremely insightful too. So how much has this affected you making changes to your story?
Has there been any instances where someone spotted a plot point that made you have to rewrite or abandoned something that you wanted to include?
Some chapters seem like filler pieces or just don’t seem to move the story very far. Have you ever just waited to see comments to get the creative juices flowing again?
What are your inspirations for writing?
Where did the original idea for this story start?
And the Actors Studio Questions:
1. What is your favorite word?
2. What is your least favorite word?
3. What turns you on?
4. What turns you off?
5. What sound or noise do you love?
6. What sound or noise do you hate?
7. What is your favorite curse word?
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
9. What profession would you not like to do?
10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Thank you for the hard work you have done and I hope you continue to do.
I'd like to comment on the impression that some chapters do not seem to put the story forward and appear like fillers. I had the same impression sometimes, but it did not last. If those chapters would be part of the usual 400 pages story, I would agree and recomment to shorten them. But not in TSM. One of the characteristics of TSM is that the author takes the luxury to really care for the various story lines. This makes the book way longer than others, but it also makes it a joy to read. In retrospect I would not like to miss those chapters which are not bringing the main story line forward but are necessary and usefull to support the detail in the side lines. I doubt that all those characters would appear so real if Tefler would cut down on the amount of detail here. A character is defined by the small things, not by the main story line.
So I hope that Tefler will continue to hold up the detail level in this masterfully written story.
As usual, up to your usual high standard Tef. I just wanted to reiterate that so many personnel have come into this story expecting...hell I don't know...something else. Then they start drooling at your wonderful epic. Hell, I've gone back and started reading from chapter 1 to the preset 3 times now...still am surprised at how much I forgot or didn't catch the first time through. Thanks again Tef, You the Man...True dat...
If there is one thing about Tefler, he has stayed consistent with his naming practices. So looking at the subtle clues: Shanryl (...the twins call themselves Rill and Shan) of the Lahlenori. (Replace the first L with an M... Mahlenori; and the "eno" with an "i"...Mahliri).
Also, the "eno" can be rearranged to give "one" or "neo".
It's that or a thrall race.
Wow, so you actually thought of physically going in through the portal into the astral plane? That's pretty cool - just think: when the astral monsters came out into reality they seemed to be immune from most physical weapons - photon lasers and so on - so I wonder, if you physically went into their plane, would you be immune to them?
But, as you were warned, how would you get back out if the portal closed and you were trapped there? It seems that to create a portal to allow material transfer, someone in the physical world needs to astral-project into the astral plane and somehow combine with someone who lives there, in order to create it, as John did (involuntarily) with the Leviathan. Is there anyone else, less dangerous, in the astral plane who might be able to do this? Yes, Athena! So, you need to learn to astral-project like Alyssa, Edraele and John can, then, with Athena's help, you should be able to make a portal at will. If that's not possible for you, suggest it to Alyssa or John - maybe they can do it themselves. The reason for pushing this? Well, as distances in the astral plane are meaningless, you could go in one portal, and come out from another anywhere - instant teleportation! Dana wouldn't need to worry about squeezing out the wormhole drive tech, you'd be able to go instantly from anywhere to anywhere else through astral portals!
On another matter entirely, I'm a bit concerned for you, Sakura. You seem to be becoming a bit cold, like your kryokinesis attribute. John has made you very powerful, an instrument of justice, NOT vengeance - the two should be quite distinct. Particularly for someone with your powers, justice should be tempered by mercy. If you forget this, then Mikaboshi will ultimately have won: you will become Shinatobe, feared and dreaded by all.
I sincerely hope that doesn't happen. Learn to love, and rejoice in good things, as your parents, and John, want for you. I look forward to hearing how you come to terms with this, and improve you psychic powers, in the coming chapters.
AL
Dear Hillcountrycowboy, Whitewhalehunter & Wolverine006,
Yes - "Shanryl of the Lahelenori" sounds very Elvish - whoops, I mean Maliri. So, very probably, a splinter group of 'dark' Maliri - who knows what mischief they may cause!
The only other humanoid race we currently know of that hide their true appearance are the Enshunu. They seem to use a very different naming style. I suspect they also are a thrall (or ex-thrall) race. Probably not Larn'kelnar's - as he and his ship's thralls seem to have come recently from a different sector of the galaxy - so maybe Ranagon's? Would explain why they seem to especially hate the Maliri. I wonder if, behind their masks and cloaks, they have yellow skin and red hair?
Time, and ensuing chapters, will, no doubt, tell.
AL
I've been thinking the "Star Forge" might actually be the Soul Forge but the Trankarans don't know the Progenitor was chucking Thralls in with each batch of metal for the "Soul Component"!
Perfect, exciting, awesome and thrilling as usual, waiting for ch.115
I submitted chapter 115 for moderation this morning. Hopefully it'll be up by the weekend!
Tefler
That is just the game here: "When will the next chapter appear here?" and it comes with a lot of whining in often funny ways of expression. Tefler has just announced thet the first part of 117 will be available soon on Patreon, but he will publish the chapters here in due time.
He also announced on Patreon that there will be printed versions of book 3 and 4 soon...
I hope that they will appear soon... because I am addicted to this story but I have a few stories to follow here as well. I am thankful that I have more than one addiction...
Ok guys, here is a hint. Lahelenor is a city referenced in Chapter 82 page 1. Go back and read that chapter and you should be able to figure out who and what Shanryl is.
This is my new favorite story on here. I read it all in one sitting, then read Tefler's other two stories (Can't wait for the next chapter of Setting Sail on a Black Sea), and then immediately reread it all again. Please keep up the great work. If you enjoyed this series I highly recommend the works of BurntRedstone and writerannabelle who, in my opinion, are equally talented.
By my rough estimates, and making the following assumptions
Zelig is a 62 kg adult male human
The 900m ship was thrown at 10 m/s,
and was roughly 9x9x3=243 times the mass of the ISS
And was accelerated to this speed over 1 second
This gives Zelig a launch speed of (roughly) .05 times the speed of light
This DOES let John throw him arbitrarily far in vaccuum, in theory at least.
In atmosphere, however, Zelig disintegrates inside 2 m (assuming my math checks out)
I'm glad you amused yourself with your maths but what exactly are you calculating and why? How far John can throw Admiral Zelig? Are you referring to this section of the story, "...*Sounds good... John doesn't trust the Brimorians as far as he can throw the sneaky bastards,* Alyssa muttered..."? It's actually the Brimorians that John doesn't trust and Alyssa and Lynette end up bantering about him being able to throw someone quite far, but they never mention Admiral Zelig.
A fission nuclear reactor could melt down if low on coolant, but explode? Only if you brought in a bomb. And I would expect with an extra 5 or 6 centuries of tech progress that even an old fission reactor on a mining asteroid should be safer still. Makes for a nice bit a terror in the story, but not realistic even in the 21st century. TTFN
Maybe Karron's and Tasmaris Prime's fission reactor's had some recycled spacecraft power cores rigged up in parallel with the older system to handle increased power demands and there were maintenance mistakes at Tasmaris Prime,.. after all Calara gets ships power cores to explode all the time. That certainly makes a lot more sense than a nuclear fission reactor going boom on it's own. ;-) TTFN
The following is reasonably real-world accurate while also trying to be consistent with 27th century technology as revealed by the story so far. Apologies for any inconsistencies.
A practical fusion reactor used for power generation is a blob of high temperature/high pressure plasma trapped in a magnetic containment bubble. If the magnetic bubble ever fail for any reason, the plasma more than hot enough to immediately dissolve the containment structure. It's the magnetic fields that keep the plasma contained, as the metal and ceramic components cannot withstand temperatures and densities far hotter than any welding torch or bomb. In the real world, we're not yet using fusion reactors to produce power; instead, they're interesting because they're one of the only ways of conducting lab research into the conditions found within a star.
Once the magnetic bubble fails, the plasma will try to do the same thing the air in a ruptured balloon does: spread out and achieve pressure equalization. Given that the tenperature and pressure is similar to what you'd find in a hydrogen bomb explosion not long after ignition, the practical result of a fusion containment breach would be very similar. True, there would be less primary radiation contamination than a straight fission reaction, but high-energy particle bombardment would induce intense secondary radiation in nearby debris, shortly before the plasma explosion turned it to dust and blasted it all over the region.
Such a containment failure can be caused by anything that interferes with the magnetic bubble's integrity, such as wobbles or power failures in the regulators managing the magnets, or the cooling systems needed to keep the magnets and power lines stable and non-melty.
A fission reactor is a different beast, with different failure modes. It's overall much simpler, but requires regular teardown and rebuilding due to neutron embrittlement, and the equipment becomes radioactive as an unavoidable side effect of merely being in operation. One upside is that, for a well-designed fission reactor, most failures at most release a few grams of radioactive xenon, or some slightly-contaminated water (which cannot remain meaningfully radioactive for very long). Most such incidents are of such low statistical hazard as to be meaningless in terms of risk. Note that a badly-designed reactor can represent a dramatically higher risk, and one that is both poorly designed AND being operated unsafely can turn into, well, Chernobyl.
Safely operating a fission reactor is much simpler than operating a fusion reactor, but maintaining a fusion reactor is much simpler than maintaining a fission reactor. In a colony, it's harder to find people competent to maintain a reactor, while it's not too hard to find appliance operators to turn knobs and keep dials in safe zones.
Military/naval reactors have different trade-offs, and thus aren't all that similar to stationary infrastructure designs.
Under normal conditions, a fusion reactor failure would only cause long-term problems because of the destruction of infrastructe and physical vaporization/cratering. It would take much less than 10 years for any remaining radiation hazard be meaningless. Whether a colony in the hinterland could afford to make good the damage is a different story, of course.
On the other hand, a mild Chernobyl-style failure of a fission plant could result in non-trivial radiation hazards remaining in effect across hundreds of square miles for a few decades. A worse meltdown could leave an area of tens of square miles uninhabitable for a few hundred years. This is another reason that main colony-wide power plants would generally be based on fusion rather than fission. Small-scale utility fission reactors (tens of kilowatts, sufficient to power a couple of blocks of housing) can be made much more safe and much less maintenance prone, but they're not sufficient to power a whole colony.
Alrighty then, Helene's 4th time receiving a load of psychic cum, and Tef states it takes her 6 hours to absorb it. And with other Lionesses such as Dana or Calara, they can absorb a full load (4 20oz pints) in under 4 hours. Now we have the girls getting their topping up at approximately 1-hour prior to arriving at their next colony world that has had a Kirrix (Bug) problem. So just how long can a 1/2 pint or so of psychic juice last in one of the Lionesses' toned and sexy tum-tums? It must be more than two hours, or they just wasted over half their top off. (4 pints last around 2 to 4 hours, and 1/2 pint lasts over 2 hours also?) ... I need Space Magic expert to 'splain it to me... ;-) TTFN
Strangely enough, I was routing for the astral plane monster to put John out of his misery.
Alrighty then some more, ... The gang speculates that the power plant reactor in Karron was set to shut itself down if some routine maintenance was not performed on time, this to possibly prevent an explosion, like the one on Tasmaris Prime. My question is this: WHAT changes to Fission technology occur in the next 7 1/2 centuries (in Tef's universe) that could allow a Fission power plant to explode, ... a fission power rod might melt down, but that is completely different. -- I speculate that 'extra' power was provided from recycled T-Fed Power cores, and that was what exploded on Tasmaris Prime. Tef sure has them explode on various ships often enough. Whew! Thanks for letting me get that off my chest, ... ;-) TTFN
Tacyon rifles and bullets with destruction runes. Now they are slaying Astral monsters by the truck load. Way to go Sparks
An after the Astral battle debrief, ... a bit more Tom Walker stuff (mildly interesting), ... lots of Lion and lioness sex, ... a few little updates like Lynette wearing one of Charles shirts, .... and Admiral Zelig's fleet returning colonists to their home worlds, and the suicide rate was reduced, .... the trip to Alyssa and Dana's Karron was filled with some surprises, and only 3 survivors, ... Faye is more and more helpful to the Invictus crew and their guests, .... this story is growing deeper and wider, ... ;-) TTFN