The Princess Anrianna looked at Rex with shock at his suggestion.

Rex had an impertinent smile on his lips and his eyes sparkled.

“Of course we dare! I know how it ends.”

The pair had escaped the Sultan’s planet in the fastest ship they could steal from his extensive collection. They rocket back to base with all the power they could draw from the engines. Rex had been uneasy. They were fast approaching the time of his most recent memory and they didn’t know what might happen to Rex when his time came full circle.

On approaching the base, Rex had sent his security code ahead to initiate landing protocols and was baffled when they were rejected. He wondered for a second if this was what it felt like to not exist.

Before he could worry further, his comm-board lit up and he heard his own voice through the ship.

“Unidentified ship, this is a private communications channel. Please identify yourself.”

Rex was gob-smacked, and a glance at the Princess told him she was gob-smacked too.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, shock overcoming tact.

“I mustn’t be,” he replied, shock overcoming eloquence.

They conferred, ignoring the insistent summons of the comm. It was decided that The Professor must have discovered the secret behind the anomaly and reversed the paradox. It helped that as the comm chimed and bleeped and past Rex left increasingly desperate pleas for a response, Rex remembered being on the other end.

“I thought it might be you,” he said to Anrianna, “When I returned from… wherever I was… The Professor and I couldn’t piece together where you were. Our hail to me today became the seed of my worry for you.”

“But it turns out I’m safe with you after all.”

The memories of the next three months started to make sense and he realised they had some time to kill between now and the next anomaly. He remembered he had missed the Princess terribly, but also remembered how much more he’d loved her when he’d found her safe in the past.

He loved her.

“Let’s blow this joint and see the universe. Just you and me. Neither of us are due back for three months.”

Anrianna looked at Rex. Her look said she thought he was mad.

It also said she loved him back.

Space Flight 558, Chapter 1: Addendum is a post from: The Geekorium

Rex awoke to brilliant darkness.

It was as if he had woken up after a night at a tavern with The Professor. The world still spun an lurched around him, although the cold steel floor underneath him was perfectly still.

It was as if he were floating in the depths of space yet in the centre of a sun. Coldness, warmth, life and death covered him, wrapped him like a cloak and he gasped for breath and found he had no use for it.

He remembered nothing, felt as though he might recall something and tried to understand it.

He remembered death, felt as though it might be familiar and tried to understand it.

He remembered meeting himself, excitement welling up within as they prepared to go after Mondex. His future self had said Mondex was after him, but that was all he could remember.

He remembered running with himself, fighting for his life with Mondex. He and his future self had split up, but when he found Mondex he had been alone.

What had happened?

He’d been shot!

Why couldn’t he remember?

That son of a bitch!

And where in space was he?

Now where was he?

A voice spoke to him, comfortingly familiar.

A voice spoke to him, oddly familiar.

“Rex!” exclaimed The Professor, “where in blazes have you been? And why in space are you naked?!”

You have cheated death. This is where your soul resides when you are not visiting the mortal plain.

“Stop shouting man!” pleaded Rex, holding his head in his hands as he sat up. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“I have to go back! I need me! I mean, future me needs me! And the Princess!”

“I see you’ve been hit too,” said his old friend, “I’ve just come from what’s left of my lab, and I can’t remember much beyond the night you left for the Shebat game three months ago.”

You are quite correct, although not for the reasons you think. This is not the last time we will meet, but you are not to know of this. It is not your time.

“Three months!” Rex felt himself go cold and warm and felt his mind on the edge of madness.

Before he could respond, Rex felt himself dragged from within the cold/warm cloak and felt his mind give way to madness and terror.

“Who did this to us?”

Rex awoke to a stunning headache.

Space Flight 558, Chapter 1: The Return is a post from: The Geekorium

The Professor was amused and amazed.

“So where is our Rex?” he asked.

“Well, you can’t tell the Princess or Jones, but he’s dead. Blasted away by Mondex.”

The news struck The Professor like a bullet to the chest. He stumbled and grasped for the stool behind him. Sitting down he tried a few times to speak, and finally said, “but that’s impossible! You would cease to be! The paradox here could destabilize the universe.”

Rex rested a hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

“That’s why I’m here. I’ve already started forgetting what happened the first time ’round, and I’m afraid if I return to the future, my death might catch up to me. If I stay here, maybe I can make myself useful, and at least save the Princess.”

“What happens to Anrianna?” The Professor could see the future unraveling before his eyes.

“I don’t know. Maybe my memory of that has been erased too, but now I can prevent it. Before I left for my Sheebat game you spotted an anomaly. That was Mondex, travelling back from the future to kill me in the past. In the future we were waiting for it because I left a message for myself about what Mondex was planning. I came through the vortex after him, but I don’t know what happened differently this time and he succeeded.”

“Rex I… don’t know what to say. I’m glad you’re alive for now. Maybe it will give me time to find a way to change what happened. At least I might figure out how to keep you alive. I’ll begin studying the anomaly at once.”

Rex dropped Mondex’s time-belt on The Professor’s work bench.

“Maybe this will help.”

Space Flight 556: News of Death is a post from: The Geekorium

The Professor was concerned.

When he’d first spied the spacetime anomaly, he knew it was the same one he’d seen six months ago from the other side. Reluctantly, he’d let Rex go, knowing he’d been waiting for this day and itching to get going.

When he first noticed the spacetime anomaly, he had no way of knowing what danger it could bring from the other side. Happily, he let Rex go, knowing Rex had been waiting for this day and itching to get going.

He was also curious himself. His memories got hazy after their first encounter with the anomaly, probably something to do with the effect of the tachions or some-such, and there were a lot of questions he couldn’t answer when Rex had come back.

He was curious about the anomaly, but any threat it posed was yet to be seen. But when Rex failed to check in after the Sheebat game, it raised a lot of questions.

Questions like, where had the Princess gone? Who had brought Rex back? Why had his lab exploded?

Questions like, where had Rex gone? How would he find him again? What was causing the spacetime anomaly to move?

So he’d let Rex go, knowing that if he didn’t, Rex’s past would be at the mercy of Mondex.

He wished he hadn’t let Rex go, but knew he would have gone anyway. The Ortrix was too grand a prize to pass up.

Sitting in his back-up lab, he was analysing data taken from the anomaly when Rex strode in with Anrianna by his side. He didn’t look like he’d been battling one of his greatest foes. In fact he looked… rested.

Maybe the anomaly would provide the answers. He’d just begun to analyse the latest data when Rex strode in with Anrianna by his side. He looked worn out, like he often did after battling a challenging foe.

And the Princess! How wonderful it was to see she was safe!

And the Princess, she looked puzzled, like something was bothering her, but she want sure what.

“Where have you been my girl?!” he cried as he embraced her.

“Where have you been my boy!?” he exclaimed as he took Rex’s hand.

She giggled and squeezed him back, “I’ve… been around.”

Rex smiled lazily, “I’ve been around.”

The glance she and Rex exchanged, and the unsubtle cheeky smiles they both failed to hide told The Professor it would be better not to ask too many questions.

The Princess turned her puzzled gaze on Rex, then back The Professor, who gave her a wry smile. They both knew it would be better not to ask too many questions.

But here they both were, happy and healthy and all was right with the world.

But Rex was back, tired but alive, and all was right with the world.

Obviously Mondex had posed no problem.

Obviously Grubner had posed no problem.

Space Flight 558, Chapter 3: The Future is a post from: The Geekorium

When Rex and his younger self had confronted Mondex outside the casino, they had expected a fight. Instead, Mondex had tapped his belt and plunged into the time vortex that opened up behind him.

Past and future Rex had jumped in after him and were headed who-knows-where without a plan.
They grinned at each other.

“Nothing like a night of improvisation,” they both said together, and barked a laugh in unison.

“Get ready,” said future Rex, who’d taken point on their fall through time.

The shiny, inky walls of the vortex sworled away into nothing in front of them and both Rexes barrel rolled into ready crouches, guns drawn, sweeping the area for threats.

It was dark.

A glowing blue pane of glass barely illuminated two dark figures against the opposite wall. The heroes swung their guns on their surprise assailants.

A dolphin swam through the aquarium water behind them and their eyes adjusted to the dim light. A frightened elderly couple clutched each other and waited for the identical madmen to move.

“Evening folks,” they both said as they holstered their guns.

“You see another chap come through a blinding flash of light?” asked future Rex.

The couple pointed down a corridor.

“Thank you both,” said past Rex as they headed for the exit.

Space Flight 555, Chapter 2: Den of Danger is a post from: The Geekorium

I’m tracking a spacetime anomaly.

“I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“I’ve seen something like this before…”

The Professor was excited, lit up like he usually was when exploring something unknown.

The Professor was agitated, like he usually got when he knew something was about to end badly.

Rex laughed at his old friend’s enthusiasm, “sounds like both of us have plans for the evening!”

Rex scowled at the view on his old friend’s screen, “Sounds like I need to cancel my plans for the evening.”

He turned and winked at the Princess, who rolled her eyes and turned her head. Rex could still make out the hint of a smile crinkle the corners of her eyes though and he smiled back, even though she wasn’t looking.

He turned to say something to the Princess and remembered again that she was gone. He still had no idea what had become of her, and The Professor hadn’t seen her either since that fateful night six months ago.

Rex switched off the holo-emersion field and gathered his Coral Specials and his credit chip. Heading out of the hotel, he hailed a hovercab. He handed the driver an address on a card and swiped his credit chip.

Rex gathered his Coral Specials and the special device The Professor had pushed into his palm. He listened while the Professor explained how it worked and what he would need to do.

“I need to go here,” he said.

“Where do I need to go?” he asked.

Space Flight 555, Chapter 0: The Past is a post from: The Geekorium

Lars Rasmussen on Google Wave via CNET UK.

Told you so

Lars Rasmussen talks to CNET UK is a post from: The Geekorium

It’s Old

Why it’s bad:

Email was invented 40 years ago to deal with a very different set of communication problems. The web didn’t exist, and email was a simple way to get text from one place to another. Think black screens with green writing and geeks talking to geeks across America. Now we have Twitter, Facebook, and whole new ways to communicate, but our basic building block is email. Everything useful eventually finds an implementation in email, but it’s ill-suited for the task. Sure it’s universal, but just sending images was an afterthought!

How Google Wave can help:

It’s built on the latest proven internet technologies. It’s built from the ground up to handle rich media of all different types but still retains some of the things that worked for email in the beginning, like addresses using the @ symbol to send messages to the right place.

It’s Slow

Why it’s bad:

When you send a message to someone, you hope they’ll get it before you need a response, so savvy users know to pick up the phone if they need an answer quickly. In some cases you might have IM available, but what if you need to send a document? You’d check that they’re on in IM then switch to email when they respond. How convoluted is that? Or worse, you call them and ask if you can send them a document. Not very efficient is it?

How Wave can help:

Wave tells you when a user in your contacts is online. You can “ping” them to ask if they can chat, then send them the document all from the one interface. Then you can get feedback in real-time!

It’s Racist

Why it’s bad:

Email was built on ASCII - a set of characters based on english letters and a few symbols. It took years for email to learn how to use international character sets, and even now if your email service is set up badly you can have trouble sending messages in anything other than plain English.

How Wave can help:

Because it’s being built right now, Wave is multi-lingual. The interface hasn’t been translated as such, but there’s nothing stopping users using characters in their native language. Not only that, but Wave can actually translate one language to another on the fly with the help of a bot and Google’s translation service!

It’s Wasteful

Why it’s bad:

Email creates a message and sends a copy to the recipient. Then they reply, and the sender replies back and so on and so forth until there are multiple copies of the message, often with earlier messages still attached taking up space and using resources. When Aunt Helga sends her holiday snaps to everyone in her address book, every photo gets stored on every mail server that receives it, accumulating gigabytes of data all around the world in mail servers.

How Wave can help:

The Federation protocol requires the originator to “host” the message for the rest of the recipients. So when Aunt Helga sends a Wave full of pictures, the message is accessed right from her own provider, so it’s only stored once. This multiplies a bit when other Wave providers are involved, but not as much as the potential email has for wasting space.

It’s Difficult to Follow

Why it’s bad:

Imagine our mythical Aunt Helga again if you will. She’s planning a trip to France with her daughter Julia, so they email their ideas back and forth about the sites they might see when they get there and who they might sponge off. After about 10 emails, Helga wants to make a list of all these places, but has to wade back through them all to find each mention of a place-name. How inefficient! Tragically she misses a couple because she doesn’t recognise the names. Then Julia asks if she can bring her friend Tracy and they have to start all over again to make sure they cover the places Tracy wants to visit too! Not to mention the new conversations they must start with their French relatives to ask for a place to stay and to find the best sights to see while they are there.

How Wave can help:

Helga starts a wave and adds Julia. When Julia asks where they’ll go, they begin a blip right there to brainstorm ideas, while they discuss other aspects of the trip further down the wave. When Julia realises she wants Tracy to come she adds her directly, and Tracy can see exactly what they’ve come up with so far, and can even play back the wave to follow the discussion. She can also edit the “places to see” blip to add her own ideas. Finally, once Helga has contacted the French relatives separately to ask them nicely if the three can stay with them, she adds them to the ongoing wave to give suggestions and ideas right there in that same blip!

It’s Full of Spam

Why it’s bad:

Do I need to answer this? The problem with email is that anyone with your address can send you something. Of course, this has allowed email to grow into the juggernaut it is, because it’s just so damn easy to send information to people. However it means that anyone with your address can send you any old rubbish, and (at least before today’s exceptional spam filtering) it will pop up right in your inbox with all your legitimate mail.

How Wave can help:

Google Wave also has a spam and abuse problem at the moment. However I believe there are a number of ways Wave could begin to tackle spam, which warranted another post.

It’s Insecure

Why it’s bad:

As touched on in the Spam section above, email is trivial to spoof. Anyone can send email as anyone else. Some email providers offer some protection against this, but like almost every modern feature of email this was an added afterthought, and can not be presumed of every email client and system. Additionally, you might log in securely (using an https:// address) to your email, but unless you go out of your way to enable it your mail is generally not sent and stored securely. Email providers do what they can to secure it, but insecurity is built in!

How Wave can help:

We’ve already seen that waves are tied to the originating Wave providers, preventing spoofing. As an intrinsic part of this security, all wave communication is encrypted from end to end, meaning someone watching the data being sent between wave clients will not see anything useful.

It’s Limiting

Why it’s bad:

With the technology of the internet getting faster, smarter and more secure, people are finding new and unique ways to use it. It’s common to have two, three or more places where we must go to check for news and messages. Numerous attempts have been made to unify these streams of data into one super-inbox, but none have really caught on.
Email is still the dominant form of messaging, and most new services end up providing some sort of email gateway to their service. For instance, Facebook users can now reply to messages and posts via their email, and third parties let you follow and reply to Twitter users through your email. These solutions are usually tacked on as an afterthought. Email was not intended for many of the roles we shoehorn it into.

How Wave can help:

Wave is being built from the ground up to be customisable and extensible. The Wave API allows for the creation of Robots and Gadgets that each have a defined role in customising a user’s wave experience. Robots can be used to change the behaviour of waves (by importing Twitter notifications for instance). Gadgets can enhance the interface to add tools and options not available before (a voting gadget or similar). I can imagine eventually plugging in the sites and notifications I want using my choice of Bots and Gadgets. Such options are only limited by the imagination of developers.

Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/lovati/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Why Email Needs Replacing (or Why Wave Matters) is a post from: The Geekorium

1. First up, Wave will ensure messages are signed and verified from the source. Currently email can be forged and made to look like a legitimate email coming from a trusted source. The Wave Protocol specifically addresses this, making it impossible for anyone to “spoof” another address without access to that user’s account.
2. Email currently makes it very easy to send millions of messages with little to no cost involved for the sender — they send and delete and don’t need to save copies of them, and the recipient is forced to deal with the accumulated data. The Wave Protocol however, requires the sender to host the wave and keep a copy for future reference. Spammers will no doubt find ways to send and then remove their waves, but if a host no longer hosts the wave, that could be a reliable indication that the sender was a spammer.
3. Finally, the few times the developers have been asked about spam they’ve mentioned a possible white-list system. White-listing involves choosing who can send you messages and blocking everyone else. People worry that this will stop legitimate communication, say from long lost friends, getting through. But already built into the interface is a “Requests” link that Wave says are “Waves for users not in your contacts list”. This could allow anyone to contact you, but you’d know at a glance that they weren’t from people you knew and trusted, and could more easily add them to your contacts, or mark them as spam.

I believe a combination of these three factors will go some way to addressing the spam problem. By tying everyone to a Wave server it’s not as economical to spam using waves. By not allowing completely anonymous communication, reported spammers can be more easily shut down, and by white-listing users we can identify potential spam at a snap. The Wave team will hopefully come up with even more solutions to implement and I’ll be interested to see how it develops.

How Wave Could Tackle the Spam Problem is a post from: The Geekorium

This is exciting. More detail up soon.

A quote from Novell: Demonstrating Inter-company Collaboration is a post from: The Geekorium