LNH: Classic LNH Adventures #263: The Sound of Clashing Metal Part One

[Arthur Spitzer]

30 Years of Legion of Net.Heroes (1992-2022)!

And we're back in the past and can check the eyrie archive 
once again.

Here's where you can find The Sound of Clashing Metal as well as other
MISC LNH stories:

https://archives.eyrie.org/racc/lnh/Misc/



 
And we've got The Sound of Clashing Metal by Dave Van Domelen and Mark
Friedman (Part One).  A number of Acton Lord copies are running around
causing chaos, but will we ever learn who the Real Acton Lord is -- and
more importantly will we ever learn his true opinions on Snausages?!!



Find out in...



              _						
             | |      Classic			
             | |                      =
             | |      ____    ____    _    ____    ___
             | |__   | [] |  | [] |  | |  | [] |  | _ \  

             |____|   \__]    \__ |  |_|   \__/   |_|\_\
                                 ||
                                |_|  OF NET.HEROES

                                    ADVENTURES #263


                         =====================
                    The Sound of Clashing Metal Part One
                         =====================




From: dvandom at magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Dave Van Domelen)
Newsgroups: alt.comics.lnh
Subject: REPOST: The Annotated Sound of Clashing Metal #1-3!
Date: 21 Apr 1994 04:33:50 GMT

     THE SOUND OF CLASHING METAL PARTS ONE TO THREE - ANNOTATED VERSION
             Written by Dave Van Domelen and Mark Friedman
                A Special Incoherent Comics Production!
===============================================================================

     In this second annotated reprint, only the first three parts were 
available at time of press.  The remaining parts will be summarized at the end.
     Enjoy!

===============================================================================

     In the HQ of the LNH, P.C.Man clashed vehemently with MacLaughlin Man over
just about everything from the Perot economic plan to snausages.  Then P.C.Man
glanced over to see Lurking Lass become the Lurking One!  [There were many name
confusions arising at this time, such as the Politically Correct Man mistake
and Tori's fits about Lurking Lass.  The author no longer recalls who this
Lurking One was]
     Excusing himself (as if MacLaughlin Man would even notice if the target of
his rant left), P.C.Man ducked behind a potted plant and activated his remote
teleporter to avoid being spotted by the genuine article, P.C. Person (aka
Multiculturally Senstitive Deconstructionist Human Animal of Spandex).
     Arriving at one of his secret bases (one of the orthonormal ones), he
stripped off his concealing suit and revealed himself as Acton Lord!!!
[The orthonormal bit is a math joke.  An orthonormal base is a kind of 
mathematical set.  At the time of this writing, several people had been using 
Acton Lord, each of them using a vaguely different version, some of them 
mutually incompatible]

               *              *              *              *

     Meanwhile, at another of his secret bases, Acton Lord frowned.  If the
readings on his screen were correct, the reactivation sequence had gone wrong,
and now there were several active copies of him on the net, each slightly
different.  For example, one copy with a slightly wrong costume and really
gross taste in pizza was currently menacing Ultimate Ninja [wReam had 
established a rather odd taste in pizza toppings for the Acton Lord he was 
using], and yet another was attempting to infiltrate the LNH.  Whether there 
were others out there or not was a question he could not answer...for now.  As 
far as he could tell, he was an uncorrupted copy, which was good, since he 
could set about trying to fix other inactive copies from his own matrix.
     Then a window popped up on his screen indicating that the orthonormal
secret base was occupied.  Enlarging the window (he had learned a few tricks
from battling Multitasking Man), he was able to ascertain that it was the Acton
Lord that was trying to infiltrate the LNH, and betray it from within.
     He stood and tapped the "A" on his chest, saying "Base R-4" as he did so.
One orthogonal transform later, he was in the other base. [R-4 is the name for
Euclidean spacetime, which is an orthogonal base]

               *              *              *              *

     Back at base R-4 a few seconds prior to the last line, Acton Lord cursed
the fates.
     "Damn!  If only P.C.Person hadn't decided to join!  Granted, I made a
mistake in calling myself P.C.*Man*, but with those chowderheads I could have
covered quite easily if the genuine article hadn't shown!  And now there's too
many members for me to try another one.  Especially since Contraption Man
warned them of a traitor. [The 'traitor' story was a plotline based on the
Bishop/Traitor story in Uncanny X-Men.  The traitor was eventually revealed as 
Myk-El, to the annoyance of Myk-El's unconsulted creator]  If onl...What the
hell are you?!?!" he exclaimed as the other Acton Lord reconstructed from the
other base.
     "I am Acton Lord...or rather a copy booted up when the original was
defeated in the Kinda Big Darkness Saga."
     "What copies?  *I* am Acton Lord, the one and only!  The original!"  As if
to prove his point, he fired off twin powerbeams at his double.
     "Absolute certainty misleads absolutely," quipped Acton Lord as he
corrupted his double's powerbeam into incoherent light.  "Obviously, Sig Lad's
meddling affected your memory as well as your judgement."
     "How did you do that?  I was never able to corrupt powers...I can just
make variants of Acton's Law and fire powerbeams!"  said the puzzled Acton
Lord.
     "Ah...I see the problem.  You're a copy from between LNH #249 and #250 [a 
reference to the suspected issues of extraction for the 'clone' SW6 Legion of
Super-Heroes at the time of this writing], and we didn't actually gain the
power enhancement/corruption ability until the lettercol of Suicide Squid v23
#14. [One of the last Suicide Squid 'crossovers' in the LNH]  My file was
updated after that issue, so I have the greater power."
     "Maybe...or maybe you're a clone that later gained neato powers and I'm
the original, socked away for a while, who never gained those powers."
     "But that would contradict the Kinda Big Darkness Saga wherein it is the
original Acton Lord that gets killed, and only then are the clones activated.
And the message on the screen of my computer in Base C-1 only displayed one
activation date." [C-1 is the basis for the one-dimensional complex plane]
     "Well, you can never trust artists to get continuity right.  But in any
case, you could probably whup my ass so I'll go along for now and try to
backstab you later on.  Okay?"
     "Sounds like good solid plot material.  Especially since my plan requires
that I be betrayed if the LNH is to beat me."
     "Cool beans.  What plan?"
     "Well, I realized that your initial plan was a good one, if badly
executed.  I propose another shot at it."
     "But it won't work again (see above)!"
     "Ah, but you see, you just solved the problem yourself!  We are
net.entities.  We are bound only by filing restrictions, and not by normal
causality.  If you change a file from two days ago, you have changed the
history of that day.  With a little intrusion program left behind by Netlurker,
we can do just that."
     The two then huddled together over the computer screen, and the letterer
obliged by having the words become little scribbles with only occasional
legible ones like "and then" or "perfect disguise".
     "It is finished!" proclaimed the post-Squid Acton Lord [later labelled as 
the Primeclone Acton Lord].  "I have corrupted and enhanced your powerbeam
power into something unrecognizable, and if you just put on this costume, I'll
pop you back into time."
     And with a flourish of net.SFX, the line appeared back in a previous post
about Cheezar, right after he demonstrated his powers to the Handi-capable
Cannon Fodder,
>"Whoa, who forgot to flush!" asked <name deleted here for security and plot
>purposes> from the kitchenette.
     [The LNHer in question was Sidewinder, who the author had decided to 
retcon into always having been the "Golden Age Acton Lord" until he was 
informed that Sidewinder was a WC.  GAAL as Sidewinder was responsible for the 
Death of Flatulence Lad and later was revealed in Crisis of Infinite Clones #1
(part 4 of Electrocutioner's Song).  Sidewinder was re-retconned into having
been captured during the time in question]

     Dave Van Domelen, yes the title of this is a pun on a Marvel Villain
[specifically, the sound of clashing metal is "KANG!"]

From: dvandom at magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (David VanDomelen)
Subject: LNH: The Sound Of Clashing Metal - a story in two Actons
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 13:38:58 GMT

     Having placed his inferior other in the past, Acton Lord turned to the
task of cleaning up the copies of his GIF.  Unfortunately, due to the number of
systems on the net that recieved virus-like copies every day, it would be
impossible to totally clean the net.  The best he could hope for would be to
salvage a few copies and keep them updated for personal use.  And if bugs
caused premature activation of defective Acton Lords, so be it.  They'd make
excellent 'smokescreen'.  Now, first to wuarchives to retrieve the copy
there.... [when he had originally posted his GIFs, he also placed a copy in 
wuarchives, a GIF archival site.  The GIF of Acton Lord and Sig.Lad actually 
was posted, unlike many other LNH GIFs the author had Netlurker make later on]

               *              *              *              *

     Sig Lad was totally confused.  Not only had he missed the climax of the
Kinda Big Darkness Saga (his store ran out before hitting his box) but he was
adrift in MU* territory.  It was a cold and forbidding place, especially since
so many MU*s were down right now.  It was like being on a normally busy
commercial street at 4 in the morning when only the convenience stores and a
few crappy bars were still open.  He wandered past the feeble light cast by the
lpmuds, past the sealed ports of NewDay, TIM, Trek and BTech, as well as many
others.  He had lost the way back to news.groups, and was trapped in the
net.lines.  Nor could he simply do as Acton Lord was doing and activate a
doubel from the GIFs to come rescue him.  Why?
     Simple.  Sig Lad had used his power of mutation to change details of the
GIF, in an attempt to render himself ascendant over Acton Lord. [The original 
drawing had Sig.Lad, in a rather uninspired costume, being shot at by Acton 
Lord]  But unfortunately, he had been stopped early on, when only minor changes 
had been made to Acton Lord.  Since he had had to start the process at his own 
image, the mutation was pretty severe there, and the duplicates would not even 
be recognizable as him.  In fact, scores of them may very well be joining the 
LNH under totally different names and powers {editor's note:  this is a kind of
pseudo-scientific explanation for the proliferation of superpowered individuals
arriving on the scene recently...they are mostly warped copies of Sig Lad, but
have their own unique identities now.  They are not even aware of being clones,
and may even have long involuted histories if the GIF reactivated at an earlier
time index on the system}[Further, the current Sig.Lad is one of these warped
GIFs, as the one focused on here meets his fate in Part Four].  He had intended
to restore the copies of himself to normal after the mutation wave had spread
sufficiently to Acton Lord, but unfortunately was stopped before he could do
so.
     Suddenly Sig Lad saw a familiar net.signature!  Netlurker had been in this
area!  The port python.cis.ohio-state.edu 4201 showed definite signs of his
passage.  He approached the port, and saw it had a site-lock on it.
Fortunately, Sig Lad was operating out of one of the approved sites (he'd
better be, he thought.  He was in the same system as Netlurker), and he
squeezed through into NAIVE - New And Improved Virtual Environment.  He logged
on as Solarmax and lay in wait for Netlurker to return, so he could follow the
net.villain(hero?) back to the news.groups, perhaps even to Acton Lord's secret
base!
     Dave Van Domelen, if you want to check NAIVE, bug Netlurker
[NAIVE eventually lost its port, but was accessible via a mirror system on TIM.
It later moved elsewhere after the NAIVE natives got sick of the TIM wizards]

               *              *              *              *


==========

Next Week:  The Conclusion of The Sound of Clashing Metal!!

==========

Arthur "Same Classic Channel.  But Same Time?  Probably not." Spitzer