Cedar’s notes: at the very beginning of the madness, when Lockdown Fever started to set in, there was an online convention. Our very own Lawdog, aided and abetted by Old NFO, became the con security detail. What follows are some of the more, ah, memorable messages and memos they had to issue for the multi-dimensional convention of geeks from around the galaxy and even further. While compiling this for posterity, I’ve also illustrated some of them, with the assistance of my loyal AI, Midge.
Message from Con Security (Lawdog): Please stay off the mezzanine for a bit. The alpacas and the sheep raided the armory of the 501st, and are currently reenacting ‘Romeo and Juliet’ up there.
Jonna Hayden and Rita Smith, please stop providing ‘Period Correct’ costumes — it’s not helping.
Jim Aepilot, please drop by Con Security regarding someone switching out the 501st replica blasters for the real thing.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): The situation in the “Ethics and Cloning” panel has been resolved. As soon as Housekeeping cleans up, it will reconvene.
We’d like to recognize Kevin the Intern for his brilliant, yet unorthodox tactic of “Shrieking Incoherently and Throwing Baby Shoggoths”. Took care of things rather quickly.
On an unrelated note: there is a variable number of baby shoggoths loose on the Gallery. If you see one, try to trap it under an overturned trash bin, and call Kevin the Intern.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): whoever is setting off the fire alarm, please stop. Apparently it sounds just like a dragon’s mating call.
Fluffy has humped two TARDIS’ and an elevator. So far.
In an unrelated announcement, if you require elevator-related counseling, stop by room 269.
Thank you.
Memo from Con Security (Old NFO, hereafter JL for his first initials. (Cedar: why should this be any less confusing?)): The live fire demonstration for USS New Jersey and Bun-Bun will be conducted at 1600 today. However, it will NOT be on our range. The US Navy has graciously allowed us to use the OPAREA off San Diego. You can take Portal 3 for the close up viewing of target engagement (waiver required), or Portal 6 for viewing of the units firing. Due to the EPA requirements, no thermonuclear rounds will be fired, however HE rounds are allowed. A derelict Dodecahedron will be the towed target.
Message from Con Security (JL): The military pass in review will take place at 1800 in the main parking lot. All units are requested to be in place NLT 1745. UNLOADED weapons are permitted. Lineup will be Manticore, Romulans, 4HU and their aliens, Ewoks?, Marines, Klingons, Army, Rebels, Navy, 501st, and the various air units last since none of them know how to march and they will probably get lost since they won’t have their navaids…
The reviewing stand will be set up in front of the main entrance, so please access the building via other doors. Waving of flags is permitted, waving ‘other’ things is not…
Message from Con Security (LD): whoever is trying to summon Cthulu, he’s currently a panelist on the “Apocalypse: What To Expect” panel, and you’re interrupting him.
He’ll be signing autographs afterwards, be patient.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): Whoever opened “Harga’s House of Ribs” in the food court, the Health Department would like to have a word with you about the “All You Can Gobble For A Dollar Special”.
Apparently the Burnt Brown Crunchy Bits(tm) don’t qualify as a food group in any of the realities currently intersecting the hotel.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): everyone who reported a Vogon in the Karaoke Room, that was Will Shatner.
We gave him to the llama and sent them both to the pool on the 3rd floor, so the Singalong is safe once more.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): Whomever placed the thirty orders from Acme supply for delivery to the hotel, please report to the security office. We’d like to have a little chat with you.
Message from Con Security (LD): No, you cannot borrow the purple octopus for room parties. No, you can’t “rent” him, either.
Kevin the Intern, on the other hand, that’s negotiable.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): the shoggoth in the red velour sash is part of Security. Please don’t zorch! him.
The other shoggoth isn’t. Zorch! away. Please try not to hit Kevin the Intern when you open fire.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): Welcome to Monday. All panels scheduled in A124 have been moved to D201 until further notice. Maintenance is working on repairs now.
Note 1- The My Army is Better Than Yours panel is cancelled PERMANENTLY! The Romulans, 501st, Rebels, and the Klingons couldn’t agree on who would sit where at the table.
Note 2- Would the Marine NCOIC please report to Con Security. We need to have a ‘chat’ about your definition of ‘securing the room’… Bring a Form 7, you’re being charged for the damages incurred.
Message from Con Security (LD): Please stop zorching, zapping, fwooshing, and/or feeding the Dolores Umbridge cosplayers to Fluffy.
The ashes are getting into the chili in the ConSuite.
If you happen to spot the real Dolores, on the other hand, ConSec didn’t see a thing.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): We’d like to thank the 501st Legion for their assist in the Alpaca Incident, however, the only thing that fusillade hit was Kevin the Intern.
Y’all got him in the butt. Two floors above the fray and on the other side of the hotel. In a hot tub with two cat-girls and the wrong shoggoth.
Please report to Jim Curtis for a blaster refresher course.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD):: no matter how much he begs, please don’t give tequila to the llama. We just spent 20 minutes talking him out of the ConSuite.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): The Social Distancing Panel has been moved from Ballroom A to the Mojave Desert. Portals one, three, and five will take you there. Swag includes: 1 pkg toilet paper, I case water, 1 bottle hand sanitizer, and 1 cattle prod (42″) provided by the Texas Contingent…
Message from Con Security (LD): The 5:00 Laser Tag contest on the Mezzanine between the 501st Legion and the Star Trek Red Shirts has been cancelled.
Also, any physicists attending the Con, please respond to the Category 3 Paradox Storm on the Mezzanine.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): the 3:00 panel “Animal Husbandry For Amateurs” has been canceled.
In a completely unrelated topic, if anyone sees a wombat in rubber pants wandering around, please contact Con Security.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): Whomever translocated the pink elephant and unicorn to A 143 please remove them. That is the Eldritch Horror panel and the moderator is NOT happy. The Alternate Reality is What you Make It panel is in A 134.
Message from Con Security (JL): If you see a brindle Longhorn, please notify Con Security. We seem to have ‘misplaced’ our BBQ donor. And the 70 inch horns are already taken. Cthulhu wants them for a ‘headdress’ of some type… OBTW, the longhorn responds to the name Brisket…
Message from Con Security (JL): Contrary to rumors, the restaurants and coffee bar have NOT run out of coffee, nor will they… There is also an adequate supply of various ‘other’ libations available… Beware of the fruity purple drink at the roof bar though… Also, the bars on the other side of portal 1 are NOT sanctioned by the Con, you’re on your own over there. 4HU and others can be contracted on recovery missions if required to ‘recover’ your SOs.
Message from Con Security (LD): Has anyone seen Kevin the Intern? He mistook the purple octopus (with lipstick kisses) for his bagpipes, and was last seen sprinting naked down the East stairwell, screaming about the walls melting.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): The hot tub in the swimming pool area is NOT to be used to boil lobsters. Stop it…
If you need a big pot, contact housekeeping. Boiling/cooking ‘things’ may be accomplished back to the left of the loading dock. Look for the Texans BBQing the entire steer, they can point you in the right direction.
Note 1- Whomever ordered the ten bushels of corn on the cob and five pounds of potatoes, please report to the front desk to take your delivery.
Message from Con Security (JL): If anyone in the tower sees Mary Shelly, please tell her shade to report to ballroom A for the Ghost of Honor panel. Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs are already there and we have a 2 hour limit on the translocation.
Message from Con Security (LD): Panels on Non-Euclidean Space should only be held in the pre-designated areas. Fluffy is inside-out and perturbed about it.
Housekeeping, please check Ballroom A. Wear nomex and bring shovels, please.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): The flight demonstration teams will perform at 1600 over the south parking lot as soon as the stray star cruiser moves to Lot D… Star cruiser parking is lot D… However, the Blues will be using a slightly different diamond due to social distancing…
Update- The Red Arrows and Snowbirds will also be participating!
Message from Con Security (LD): Does anyone have eyes on Kevin the Intern? A basket full of baby shoggoths was just dropped off at the Security Desk with a note addressed to him.
I’d really like to have a talk with that boy.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (LD): if anyone sees a medium-sized octopus, generally purple, and covered in lipstick kisses, stick him in quarantine, with a quickness.
But don’t, you know, touch him. We know where he’s been.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): Would whatever is cosplaying Santa Claus please report to the main lobby. Your partridge is about to get zorched by the Ewoks. They have claimed all the trees in the main lobby and are NOT happy with your partridge being in their trees.
Message from Con Security (JL): Famine would appreciate it if whomever ‘borrowed’ his scales would please return them. Oh, and also stop feeding Blackie cookies. He’s SUPPOSED to be thin. Also, Death would like to ‘talk’ to the little blonde lady that taught Greenie the four-beat running-walk. He’s complaining about his rear end hurting now.
Message from Con Security (LD): If you brought penguins to the Con, please come get them at the Con Office. They keep trying to convert the floor buffers into gun turrets, and Housekeeping is running out of buffers.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): If you see a red fire breathing horse, please notify us. War seems to have lost his steed. Answers to the name Snookums…
Message from Con Security (LD): If you brought pink flamingos to the Con, they’re currently trying to get into the Jurassic Park panel, and Security is running out of ammo.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): Pestilence is requesting that y’all stop feeding Fluffy. He’s getting too fat to fly. And War requests that parents stop letting kids ride Snookums, he won’t breathe fire on the kids and he ‘needs’ to vent out of one end or the other.
Message from Con Security (JL): The Monster Mashup was not supposed to be literal… Would whomever from 4HU left your CASPERS unlocked please report to Security. We’d like to ‘chat’ with you. Also Room A 666 will be off limits UFN. Whatever the yellowish slime is, is melting the flooring.
Message from Con Security (JL): Would the cosplayers playing Little Bo Peep and Little Red Riding Hood please report to A 102. The sheep have the wolf cornered in the maintenance closet in the back of the room and we need to get them out of there for the next panel.
Message from Con Security (JL): Would the cosplayer doing Tron please come to the freight elevator. Your motorcycle has trapped itself and keeps hitting the walls, exploding, and reincarnating.
Message from Con Security (LD): The olive-drab blob is not a shoggoth; that’s Sergeant Schlock.
Housekeeping would be happy if y’all’d quit trying to bag him up.
Thank you.
Message from Con Security (JL): The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse panel has been moved to the garden at 1600. Please stay UPWIND of the horses. Fluffy is ‘still’ having issues…
Message from Con Security (JL): Would whom/whatever brought the pink/purple/green poofy ‘thing’ report to A 154. It currently has a German Shepard with a monocle, Red Riding Hood’s wolf, and Mary’s little lamb cornered. The Ewoks are jabbering something about zorching it and recipes…
LOVE it!
Dang! Now have to make sure I get my tickets to the next one
Reading this I realized that you reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Harlan Ellison. Wrote “I have no mouth and I must scream” and “Repent said the Ticktockman” that I’ve still have in my library. He would go to a bookstore and sit in the window and invite anyone to pose a thought and he would write them a short story. Off the wall fertile minds.
Harlan wrote what was undisputedly the best ever Original Star Trek tv episode; he said so himself, so it must be true.
He also curated (dunno the proper term) an anthology written by his students in his writing class wherein the theme was Christmas, dark, foreboding Christmas. A reviewer said it would leave you asking Santa for a bag of rusty razor blades and cyanide. I thunk it were great. Anyone know the title?
That made my day!
LOL, yeah, we did have some fun with that, before we got kicked to the curb…
Oh? What happened? Too much Wrongfun?
In my defense, the llama had ID and was over 21 in both human and llama years.
Sniff… sure, sure…
I hope Kevin gets a promotion.
Howling with laughter. And may I say that it rather reminds me of the ending of “Number of the Beast”. I have my issues with Heinlein, but never with his storytelling!
Dude, this is perfect fertile ground for another Raconteur Press anthology based on said or another interdimensional ‘con.’
Yeah, you’d have to potentially clean out the copyrighted materials and references, but otherwise…
Has anyone found Kevin?
Now, that’s how cons should be!
Haven’t made it to one in many a year; there’s a local one imminent, but the current household situation doesn’t allow even that level of gallivanting about. Maybe next year….
Sounds like a good time was had by most, lol
Speaking of sci-fi:
At one point in the novel I, Jedi, cop turned Jedi ace Corran Horn muses that “Life itself [is] hard enough without monosynaptic sociopaths preying on folks.”
He also gives a speech to Luke Skywalker about times he [Horn] had faced temptations of the Dark Side as a cop before he even knew he was Force-sensitive.
Just one example: Answering a domestic disturbance call, he’d found a wife battered badly enough to need hospitalization, two traumatized toddlers, and the drug-addicted husband sacked out, indifferent. He had wanted so badly “to give that animal the rudest awakening he’s ever had” and to “beat him so badly he’d look like a rancor’s chew toy.” But he knew that such brutality would be morally wrong, to say nothing of making the situation worse (and possibly traumatizing the kids even more).
‘Puzzled expression’ 4HU? I’ve obviously missed something somewhere.
4HU = Four Horsemen Universe. Shared world from Chris Kennedy Publishing.
Thank you sir.
Four Horseman Universe……Chris Kennedy’s neighborhood.
Damn, that was good stuff. . . where do I sign on for the next one?
DAMN IT! I warned you about those penguins! Little buggers can’t be trusted any further than one can throw them…. .:)
Only two of them in the image – good. Dreamworks can go pound beach shingle.
I’m thinking like Beans – a little cleanup for some obvious copyright bits, and the generics would make a great book.
It is a durn good thing that the coffee mug was DOWN, for that narrative. Oh my stars and gravity strings, that was hilarious!
Pro tip: the ones to engage on recognition are the alpacommados. They look cute, but alpaca spit and a Mark XVI 30mm Gauss cannon (yes, the frangible antimatter needles are in production) are the most dangerous mobile weapons out there. And remember – they’ll blast you while they’re walking on the ceiling, walls, balconies, elevator shafts …
Gotta say, I love the idea of cons having a Ghost of Honor.
Many years ago I stumbled across a standard paperback sized collection of fannish cartoons. Most were unmemorable, but the collection included 2 (or 3?) ‘con reports’ by not-yet-famous Phil Foglio. This whimsy of yours reminded me of one panel in particular; the Con doors are opening, and a hoard of fen are charging. Caption; “Hi diddle diddle a tribble and a pair of rubber ears. The fans are screaming down the hall, to tear the stars to pieces small, to keep as souvenirs’. Small figure in the bottom corner of the panel; wearing Con Security badge, holding pistol to his head, and exclaiming “Abandon Con!”
The book is Startoons edited by Joan Winston. Used copies are still available, but you CAN’T HAVE MINE!
I am most decidedly NOT a sci-fi fan. Never could get into it. Not sure how that fits with my immensely enjoying the Malta series and wishing for more. However, I found myself laughing out loud as I read these. Hell, they’re funny even when one doesn’t know the basis of the characters in the play!
Sad that Binky did not make an appearance though Snookums was a suitable stand in.
I’ve always love SF conventions for the sheer amount of weirdness that goes on. One of my favorite memories was attending an Archon in St Louis where the con shared the Chase Park Plaza (of Wrestling At The Chase fame.) with a Baptist youth revival.
I’m worried about Kevin.