All Comments on 'Three Square Meals Ch. 106'

Contact John Lewis on Patreon and we can talk there to walk you through it and also get you on Discord...I am the site mod on Discord under PLRus.

Thanks for the help, won't be able to try till some time later today. Just going to bed here. 12:45 am e.s.t.

Dear Tefler,

After chapter 102 you commented there will be 2 chapters per month. Instead of 1 20 page chapter we simpletons request 2 9/10 pagers or more better 4 of 5 pagers. Waiting and delaying is a good tactics to keep pressure on readers which some of your friends says writers prerogative but that is balderdash.

Also in that way you will need less time for re-edit and the original flavor will retain.

Please carry ahead as 104 to 106 are some are really hall of fame, but please increase frequency for our simple readers. We are not intellectuals.

Njoy

Sinuhe.

I started rereading again and it struck me that it had to due with the phsycic attributes of the "metal". Then when I read about the echos in the Legacy it answered my question. Y'all have a great grasp of the concepts and it is wonderful to see that I haven't missed too many of the nuances. It also helps to go back and read again to see how we got here. Such a great story Tefler is giving us.

I know it might seem simple , but Terra is more specific to the planet , Earth is also dirt/soil etc . , less confusing I think .

And on page 5, after she pushes John into the lagoon, Betrixa refers to herself as “Betrixa” instead of “this one.” Her first step to becoming an independent individual?

It is so wonderful to have another TSM addict on board!

May I suggest you appreciate what you have? That is a difficult thing with an addiction, I know. LOL

What you may not realize is Tefler is churning out all he can as fast as he can. Tefler also has a very efficient system for reviews.

And he takes such criticizm to heart. Please be supportive rather than critical...it really is in your best interests. ;-)

Did 107 get submitted on the 12th like Tef said he was going to shoot for? If so, since it's typically 3 days from submission to post, does that mean we get 107 tonight?

As for this chapter, I really enjoyed the interlude of the date with Faye and getting to see a little deeper into what makes her tick. With the Invictus now repaired and heading to the border worlds, along with all the juicy new tech that jumped into Dana's head, I'm really curious to see what direction the story goes in 107. Obviously there's some bugs that need squished, but what new metamorphosis will the ship undergo with the new tech? Karron was mentioned as one of the worlds the kirrix hit in chapter 100, if the crew heads there what new discoveries will they make about Dana and Alyssa's past? Is Faye actively running the cleaning bots, or are they just becoming more independent and developing their own personality as she optimizes their programming? How will captain Fernadez react to the newly promoted captain Fernadez? I can't wait to find out! Keep up the good work Tef!

107 is not awaiting moderation.

I assume he is still editing it.

I will post when it is awaiting moderation.

Dear Tef,

I can not wait for more in this gripping story. I hope you love writing it as much as I have enjoyed reading it.

Kind Regards,

Another Avid Reader.

So it will be at least a month now in total before we get the new chapter in stead of the normal 2 weeks. I understand you had family coming to visit and that things sometimes do happen, I just hope it's not going to be the norm now to have to wait a month for new chapters cause it'll cause us to loose the thread of the story.

Tefler please don't drop us here on LIT.

TK

107 will be here when it gets here. to paraphrase an old ad line: no wine before it's time.

When 107 is posted, I'll be as happy to read it as anyone. In the meantime, life goes on.

Those things that Dana identified: oh boy oh boy oh boy!

I think that the 'showdown' between John and Larn'kelnar is going to be quite different than many might assume. Ol' Larny ain't been paying attention to what has actually been going on. His ignoring John's 'thralls' and ASSuming that everything is John's doing is gonna bring his ass up short: he is totally misunderestimating John.

John's forays on the Astral Plane are also in the uncharted waters area as far as projenitor conduct goes. His taking out of a sub-plane monstrosity lord just isn't done. The big blob HMFIC has to be wondering some about what John's victory might portend.

I can't help but think that John's Astral forays will only assist him when it comes time to square off with Ol' Larny. And Alyssa is more right than she knows: John won't be alone in the fight.

Totally f'n awesome! to quote Dana.

stonegray

Imagine if John and the Gals pulled Larnie into the Alyssa/Athena's Astral Plane pocket. Her(their) rules there.

Or, imagine if John opened up the Astral Plane inside of Larnie's ship.

I used to work in a mom n pop computer shop, the worst customers that complained the most were the ones you did a favor for and decided to do some extra bit of work for free. That being said, keep up the fantastic work.

I never knew we could do that.

Is still a very dangerous ground for John and the girls. They really don’t know the rules of it. Look at how John was pulled into the one subplane. He finally beat those monsters only to learn that there is another entity that set it up. One that made him small and insignificant compared to it. Larn has had everyone eons to explore his abilities and learn of the various aspects of the astral plane. I don’t know what Tefler has in store for what those astral creatures can or can’t do, but trying to pull Late n into the astral plane, even into Alyssa’s subplane, is a dangerously risky idea. If it can offer some degree of privacy from their progen creators (unlikely), it might be a place to have other progen’s meet up to form alliances. But my thinking is that John will incorporate the grays into whatever he comes up with for the astral plane. While the grays may not be strong compared to a proven in psychic powers, they are many. After all, one ant bite is an annoying thing, but thousands of ants biting can kill you.

I was so hoping that chapter 107 would have been available today for my birthday. Ah well, so looking forward to a belated birthday gift!!!

I became a patron on 8/11 and just want everyone to know that we all wait for the next chapter. The biggest difference is Tefler will post sections of each chapter for his patrons to read and comment on but once he has the completed chapter edited he post it on patreon as the final version. I like to read the final version myself, also on patreon it seems we are only 1 chapter ahead of here so everyone just chill a little and give Tefler respect and patience or do like I did and become a patron. Just remember we all wait for the next one. Thanks Tefler.

any word on 107

I've been focused on finished off chapter 108 and wrapped that up last night. I'll submit chapter 107 today, so you should expect to see that by probably around Wednesday depending on literotica's moderation delays. :-)

Tefler

thank you Tefler for the update on chapter 107. Congratulations on your continued success on TSM Universe. We are happy to note that you are on the cusp of $4000 per chapter on patreon and your 3 ebooks are well received in amazon. we wish you all the very best on your efforts for chapter 109 and ebook4 and a well deserved break. Keep it up.

Pradz

Tefler, you have made my stressful medico life awesome.

I love your work!!!

Omg...

Only days to wait.....thanks telfer....I'm a happy reader

This is really scary stuff. If found to be viable (it has already been recreated by three countries) it will have more significant economic and geopolitical ramifications than the mechanization of production back in the mid 20th century.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/

So where does warp drive come into all of this? The NASA engineers also reported on the forums that they'd fired lasers into the EM Drive's resonance chamber and that some of the laser beams had travelled faster than the speed of light, at around 300,000 kilometres per second... suggesting that the EM Drive may have produced a warp bubble like the kind that allows travel faster than the speed of light in Star Trek. "After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China - at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions - the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry," the NASASpaceflight authors conclude.

So to recap, we are within a decade of some serious Quantum computer capability (IBM already has small ones) and within a decade of EM drive space ships and we may have discovered warp bubbles in the process that will allow for FTL space flight.

It is also anticipated that Quantum Computers will be able to figure out the mathematics (and therefore the Physics) of Quantum Space/particles and we are talking Interstellar travel within the lifetime of my Grandchildren and unlimited energy within my children's lifetimes. This is really scary stuff.

Also, we may have disproved Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Newton's Laws of motion in the process...which throws modern Physics into a cocked hat to say the least.

LOL...all of a sudden all my posts are being reviewed....did someone get upset that I disagreed with them? Tisk tisk. BTW: the article under current review is rather interesting to the Physicists here who love saying FTL is not possible...Suffice to say, NASA may disagree.

Tefler posted 108 on patreon..., not much longer on 107 here. Glad to see you break 4000. You earned it good sir.

@PLR

The article you cited is over 3 years old. Everyone would already know about this if any actually promising results existed. Further experiments caused the Chinese to retract their results as experimental error. Others have done experiments that indicate there probably is nothing to find. The warp drive aspect has been completely abandoned. The forums of the site you linked have a thread on this with experimenters on there trying to get a conclusive answer, but at this point it seems that answer will be no.

Hi all

Has 107 been submitted yet? Been refreshing for it since Sunday but still doesn't says it is in moderation. Was hoping to read it before work tomorrow as the work Wi-Fi won't load this site lol

Being moderated now!

Talking about space drives I seem to remember nasa launching a deep space probe that used an ion drive? Perhaps some of the other sci fi brain trust might recollect the probe I mentioned, knowledge is only a parsec from someone realising a connection somewhere, like Dana, which makes Three Square Meals so believable, enjoy. Keep up the great work Teffler .

Chapter 107 is now awaiting moderation. It should be approved in about 15 hours.

It is currently 1:45 PM CST.

NASA is currently debunking all the counter arguments....including the most recent criticism that the Lorentz forces of the Earth and EM fields of the cables was the trust they were measuring.

NASA found that the thrust efficiency increased up to 50 watts and then began to decrease up to 100 watts. This is a counter indicator to EM field interference as the thrust efficiency should correlate positively to increased EM field interference....which didn't occur.

No, NASA is currently not doing anything related to the emDrive. Again, that is a 3 year old article.

The most recent results related to the emDrive are from Tajmar in Germany. While he only has preliminary results so far they indicate no thrust to a reasonably low level and demonstrate how easy it is to have errors even when shielding from magnetic fields is employed.

Re: ion drives: There are several forms of solar electric propulsion that have been tested and used for various things including commercial spacecraft. You are probably thinking of the Dawn mission which was the first use of ion propulsion on a NASA exploration mission. This technology is not even vaguely related to FTL though.

107 has arrived!

Delicious............

Mine pc was 10 pgs?

Thank you for introducing "ward" as an alternative to "thrall". Long overdue, but it does fit in quite nicely here to speed John's increasing embracement (not a word, I know) of the "good guy version" of his Progenitor-ity.

Not to get into the veggie vegan debate. But if I were an autograph with no need to kill any living life to survive, and I actually thought of life as being something worth safeguarding and protecting, I wouldn't be biased against non-sentient life.

You either are okay with killing and eating everything or nothing or else you're a hypocrite. A vegetarian robot who thinks killing plants and germs is okay but is against animal life is dumb, it stinks of logical dissonance produced due to human limitations , humans can't live off of pure sunlight and em radiation so we try to weasel our way out by forging our selves of plant murder but in reality there is no gradient. All murder is equal, sentience and pain are false reasons people made up to sleep better at night.

Heterotrophs murder for existing, the vegan debate spread primarily due to jain philosophy from the Indian subcontinent into the west via Hinduism is based on the false premise that plants are inanimate like rocks. The ancient Jains also did not know about germs and thought it best to bathe in boiled water to avoid bugs from drowning in your water bucket as the heat would ward them away.

We now know that plants are as alive as us and animals so it's funny to see a fate trying to reason like a human vegetarian by saying that killing plants is morally acceptable since they can't complain but animals feel pain via a neural system.

This sounds a lot like the reason the bugs were okay with killing the humans in their 1st wave in the Ender Games sery, the bugs reasoned that humans were dumb a animals lacking sentience since humans didn't have a psychic hive mind and didn't communicate pain and emotion through it the way the bugs did.

All life reacts to its environment regardless of a neural network or a spine. All life strives to live longer and avoid death to the best of its ability, all life wants to spread and give rise to a new generation. Plants are as deserving of respect and life as those who eat them.

There is no reason for alien life to neatly fit into plant and animal categories ( doesn't happen on earth either I.e. fungi ) and not all animal life is sentient ( sea anemones and jellyfish are as sentient as most land flora ) and not all plants are autotrophs, some plants hunt animals and others are parasites that feed off of other life forms both plant and animal.

Most plants are self sufficient but all animals kill and consume other life forms.

That would only be relevant if you ate the whole plant e.g carrot or lettuce. A potato, tomato or any fruit could be eaten without killing the plant. Fruit are specifically designed to be eaten and allow the animal or human to then spread the seeds far and wide from the original plant.

But by that logic, you must agree that situations where plants are killed during harvesting is barbaric murder, and that's okay to dismember animals to eat the flesh as long as the animal is not completely killed.

So, I'm a newer fan as I just found this story this year, 2020. I don't know if my comments would be relevant or read at this point, but here goes nothing. In Ch. 105 John does battle in the Astral Plane and gets pulled into Alyssa's pocket plane and is told by Athena:

[["I'm going to draw your subconscious to me every night, then watch over you while you sleep. You won't get much rest with me glowing like a firefly..."

"So no more nightmares," John marvelled, placing his hands on her slender waist. "You girls are incredible..."

"Alyssa will look after you during the day, then I take over at night," she said softly, her lips brushing against his. "Only pleasant dreams from now on..."]]

Hence, my confusion when the girls were still worrying about the "next battle" in the astral plain and John isn't correcting it or talking about having a safe haven going forward. (Isn't that what was stated when Athena says "Only pleasant dreams from now on..." ?)

There’s two different ways John and Alyssa have gone to the astral plane. One is by dreaming after recruiting a girl. In this case when John falls asleep his mind briefly touches the astral plane where the monster can find and attack him. This is what Athena’s pocket plane protects from.

The second method is actively delving into the deep astral. John did this to create personas of Sakura’s parents, And tried to bring back Rachel’s mom. Because John is actively searching the astral plans, he needs to go beyond Athena’s pocket plane.

Hope that made sense.

Both Lynnette and John should be highly ashamed of committing holographic fraud on the Admiralty by covering up her young actress/model good looks with that 'old' face so she could be appointed to that high office. And Charles should be both shocked and deeply disappointed that two people he trusts would stoop to pulling off a sleazy caper like this,.. booo! Telepathic contact with the Lion would be quite handy, but a twenty-something Fleet Admiral just would not be trusted (right or wrong).

@Tefler - I admit I have not dredged all the comments. You may have answered this before, but I would ask, if you don't mind, to know what you're looking for in terms of comments. I think you must know you have quite an audience and following. Just wondering what helps you the most.

First Faye now Jade.

All this singing has my imagination going ....

Is Tefler planning an audio version?

Lynnette (T-fed Admiral) would never have agreed to a third (nor 2nd) dose of John's fountain of youth spunk, and Charles, when he finds out, would be completely disappointed with two people he trusts for pulling a scam like this! It might be good for the story, but it is NOT at all realistic, it's way too big a stretch to have Lynette agree to this,.. John's psychic pheromones must be to blame,.. shame on the Progenitor ascendant! ;-) TTFN

There is an amazing story and science fiction universe hidden under layers and layers of boring repetitive lovey dovey bullshit. I skipped 90% of this chapter

Small typo:

"Really? I thought your two would be past that by now."

- Kal'adayn

Are you going to take me for a ride? Rachel asks. Sakura patted her on the thigh. "You bet!" She glanced at Dana and continued, "What do you think of the bike? Can you make any improvements?"

Dana's mind whirred as she stared intently at the highly refined electric engine. The possibilities for improvement seemed endless and she started to catalogue them all. Rip out the old power core, add in a Progenitor variant, strip out the old anti-grav cyclics and upgrade to Maliri ones, the heat extractors could be replaced by a modification of the enhanced Kintark heatsinks... the list went on and on. She began drafting schematics in her mind for those incredibly advanced components, until finally the finishing touch... an inertia dampener built through the chassis to let the rider handle the incredible increase in power.

"Yeah, I should be able to improve it a little," she said with a nonchalant shrug. When Sakura's face dropped in disappointment at the redhead's low-key response, Dana broke into a grin. "By 'a little', I actually mean a metric fuckton! How about 1600% more power?"

Sakura cheered in delight. "I knew it! You're the best!" They could name those Dana built bikes: the SPARKS - 900, and John gets the larger model the SPARKS - 1000 ;-) TTFN

I have two comments to make. The first is regarding the very last paragraphs of this chapter.

It reminded me of this song”If” which has the first two lines being: “ If a picture paints a thousand words

Then why can't I paint you?”

It seems that Dana goes several steps farther when she sees a progenitor picture, the memories, and everything around them including schematics etc. seem to flood into her head! What a wonderful amazing way you have found two bring the Invictus slowly but surely to the level of the evil progenitor! I salute you in your ability to bring different sections of this epic story together that may have been passed over for several chapters and resurfaced in amazing ways. Brilliant on your part!

My second comment is not to you but to all of those that hide behind using anonymous instead of their names, especially when the comments are not of any form of constructive criticism which could be appreciated but just as a form of being cowards when they want to say something bad of their own personal opinion with no redeeming qualities and are too much of cowards to at least have the pride to openly stating it with their names backing it up! This is not an issue of if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything, but rather if you have nothing constructive to say and only want to bash the author with your own pathetic views that have no bearing on the story or can be of no help, either be willing to put your name behind it and not cower behind the use of the anonymous tag, or shut the hell up! I am tired of seeing this chapter after chapter by a few who is voices have no business wasting our times reading their comments.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled epic story.

Sincerely,

Daniel

Sad to see them go but they will be back.

Delightful instalment and now Dana's got 4 more military items to manufacture after she's worked her magic to improve them.

Techno goodies: "Null-Inertia Gyroscope... Zero-Point Regulator... Solid-Phase Shield Matrix... and... a Tachyon Lance!" ... boy oh boy, just in time to swat some bugs, ... sure is good that Dana now has twice as many fabricators as before, she's gonna need 'em, ... ;-) TTFN

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"By 'a little', I actually mean a metric fuckton! How about 1600% more power?"

Dana rocks!!

ranec1

we've been involved in countless battles over the last few months

My man, it’s a good thing this progenitor’s got all the girls to math for him cause he can’t count to twenty

... and now they can build a s**t load of the Tachyon Lances, ... the prior reference to them was just Tef getting a little ahead of himself, ... I just love that Dana has so many tech goodies locked away in her head, that just need a slight nudge to bring into the light, ... that's really another superpower at this point, ... great story, interesting plot developments. and Charles is lucky that Rachel gave him that check-up, looks like he is going to really need it soon, between Lina and Lynette, ... oh boy! .... ;-) ttfn

Fresh from Dana's amazing mind, some more new techno schematics: "Null-Inertia Gyroscope... Zero-Point Regulator... Solid-Phase Shield Matrix... and a Tachyon Lance!" ... boy oh boy, just in time to swat some bugs, ... And with all she has to make / build, it sure is good that Dana now has twice as many fabricators as before, she's really going to need them, ... ;-) TTFN

The super-sexy Grand Engineering Overlord, Dana, is amazing, ... do you think, like with the hover-bikes, that she can boost some of the Progenitor tech by an awesome 1600%, ... maybe like a Progenitor power core, or a Progenitor shield projector. She'll certainly come up with some great stuff, ... now Jade is a great assistant, but if the crew had an psychic Ashanath engineer or two (females only, sorry Rathus) that could follow the GEO's schematics and ideas, while Dana worked on the next thing on her 'honey-do list', ,,, then she could really pound out the updated goodies, ... and those Grey engineers, after they get their two weeks of enhancement from John, they will be much more awesome Psychics too, ... they might be able to do the armor repairs themselves, ... or they could at least add the protective runes anyway, ... ;-) ttfn

Alright, they (and I really mean Dana) already have the Progenitor Schematics for the Quantum Flux Cannon, and now she receives the schematics for Tachyon Lances as well, ... Dang, the Invictus is going to be an extremely potent beast soon, .... and Solid Phase Shields, as in Hard Shields, .... and that means that no missles nor drop ships are getting through, ... oh wow! John is going to wear the poor girl out, .... but she is indispensable, ... ;-) ttfn

Having recently pointed out the erasure of ethicities and neurodivergence, this chapter followed up with disappointing patriarchal attitudes of female body expectations.

Devereaux could have ended up a striking, distinguished, good-looking, middle aged woman, but instead was turned into a bimbo with a nose job - and was somehow happy she was now virtually unrecognisable? It doesn't even make sense given she is essentially the leader of humanity (The TF is a military dictatorship), placing her in a perilous position of being outed at any moment.

This chapter, I mostly skimmed, the highlight being Faye's vegetarianism. It raises something that has bothered me all through 100+ chapters - human society is depicted as just as meat-eating, patriarchal, classist, racist, heteronormative, ableist, rapaciously capitalist and individualistic as it is right now. It's like culture froze for 800 years. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate choice, but it's remarkably unimaginative given how good the rest of the world building is?

In response to Shaggy, I think it's a bit naive and idealistic to expect human society to change over the course of 800 years when human nature has more or less remained the same over the course of human history. There's always been tribalist, classist, etc. tendencies and I don't expect that to change even if people really want it to. Heck, I think there being a Terran Federation is a stretch, but I imagine it helps to simplify the storytelling. All said, I really am enjoying this story and am glad I stuck around after the first few chapters. Tef's writing has improved immensely, and you've done a great job at giving life to these characters. I also appreciate that you add downtimes so readers can take breathers between the action and learn more about the characters.

I'm not talking about human nature, but culture and society. 800 years ago, the English language did not exist in a form recognisable now, feudalism was the norm, the Renaissance and the scientific revolution was centuries away,

The weirdly dystopian individualism of Western, especially North American, capitalist society is very different to how people lived in the middle ages. It's also not sustainable. Star Trek imagines a utopian future, whereas e.g. Warhammer 40k imagines a hellish one, a complete retreat from the Enlightenment. This is just the status quo with spaceships (even the guns are the same), minus any sign of democracy...or e.g. people of African heritage.

As I say, this may be intentional, but we're light on historical lore to explain why that is. Meanwhile the aliens have much more fleshed out systems of government and culture.

Since writing the previous comment, I read on, and things picked up, but it's still a strangely undercooked part of an otherwise developed lore.