Thursday, May 8, 2025

The Butterfly Dragon: Night Boat - Episode 8 - Economy Of Sin Part 2 (Started May 8, 2025)

  


Wanna live your own Night Boat Adventure for free in massive battles?

Play World Of Warships [On Steam] [On Epic]


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Play Sea Power [On Steam]


Prefer to play beneath the waves, single or multiplayer in a dystopian sci-fi evironment?

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Chapters

  1. From Photons To Names
  2. Distant Theatre

Support Charity


Please support education and information access where you can in addition to these charities:


Sick Kids Foundation - Check out the Sick Kids Raffle!
Help research that provides cures and support treatment for sick children. 


Creating a world of possibility for kids and youth with disabilities.


The Cancer Research Institute
The Princess Margaret Foundation
Cancer Research organizations that combine the expertise of many different research firms and Universities to find innovative treatments and cures for Cancer.


David Suzuki Foundation
Through evidence-based research, education and policy analysis, we work to conserve and protect the natural environment, and help create a sustainable Canada. We regularly collaborate with non-profit and community organizations, all levels of government, businesses and individuals.


Donate directly to FireAid today to help us start rebuilding our community. Direct donations will be distributed under the advisement of the Annenberg Foundation and will be distributed for short-term relief efforts and long-term initiatives to prevent future fire disasters throughout Southern California.


United Nations Fund
United Way Worldwide
Two organizations whose contribution of expertise, human and financial resources and volunteer efforts provide humanitarian solutions to real world problems the entire world over. These charities operate worldwide. The United Nations Fund supports the various programs part of the United Nations' global mandate, as much a foundation as it is a roof around the world.


World Veterans Federation
The World Veterans Federation is a humanitarian organisation, a charity and a peace activist movement. The WVF maintains its consultative status with the United Nations since 1951 and was conferred the title of “Peace Messenger” in 1987.


I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war."

Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize 1950


The Reeve Foundation provides programs for research, uniting Scientists and Specialists from many different fields to find treatments for spinal cord injury translating them into therapies and support programs.


For over 60 years, Heart & Stroke has been dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. Our work has saved thousands of lives and improved the lives of millions of others.


The ALS Society Of BC
ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to combat this disease and help those with it to survive.


Muscular Dystrophy Canada
Muscular Dystrophy Canada’s mission is to enhance the lives of those affected by neuromuscular disorders by continually working to provide ongoing support and resources while relentlessly searching for a cure through well-funded research.


Humane Society International
The Humane Society protects the health, lives and rights of animals the world over, ensuring that they too have a voice in this world. We are interdependent upon the complex web of life this entire planet over for our mutual survival. This is a world wide charity.


The Global Foodbanking Network
Ensuring that people the world over have enough food day to day in order to survive and lead healthy lives. In this challenging day and age services like this are becoming more and more essential. This is a world wide charity.


The Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado! 

In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.


Wikipedia
The model for what may become the Encyclopedia Galactica, a complete reference and record of history, events and knowledge of humanity and its journey beyond. It is the encyclopedia of all that we know, what we surmise that we've known and will learn in the future. Yes, Wikipedia is a charitable organization of great importance. If you enjoy what I am doing here then please take the time to donate to Wikipedia. Surprisingly only 1% of Wikipedia's users donate yet the site serves pages to millions every day.


Humble Bundle
A video gaming storefront benefiting a vast variety of different Charities in the United States and United Kingdom (hopefully soon to be expanded to include other areas of the world?). By software their software bundles and choose which Charity your money benefits and how much of your money benefits that Charity. See? Gamers can do their part too.


Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative disease currently affecting an estimated 2.3 million world wide. By donating you are contributing to effective research in finding a cure and tipping the scales of MS research to change lives forever.


If you're a resident of Ontario then please consider supporting Building Better Schools.


Other Ways To Help Using Your Computer

Donate your idle computer time to science! Join the World Community Grid by clicking on one of the links below and follow the instructions for how to participate:



Thank you for your support

Shhhh! Digital Media

Brian Joseph Johns




Warning: this material is intended for a mature audience. Reader discretion is advised.

Support Charity


Please support education and information access where you can in addition to these charities:


Sick Kids Foundation - Check out the Sick Kids Raffle!
Help research that provides cures and support treatment for sick children. 


Creating a world of possibility for kids and youth with disabilities.


The Cancer Research Institute
The Princess Margaret Foundation
Cancer Research organizations that combine the expertise of many different research firms and Universities to find innovative treatments and cures for Cancer.


David Suzuki Foundation
Through evidence-based research, education and policy analysis, we work to conserve and protect the natural environment, and help create a sustainable Canada. We regularly collaborate with non-profit and community organizations, all levels of government, businesses and individuals.


Donate directly to FireAid today to help us start rebuilding our community. Direct donations will be distributed under the advisement of the Annenberg Foundation and will be distributed for short-term relief efforts and long-term initiatives to prevent future fire disasters throughout Southern California.


United Nations Fund
United Way Worldwide
Two organizations whose contribution of expertise, human and financial resources and volunteer efforts provide humanitarian solutions to real world problems the entire world over. These charities operate worldwide. The United Nations Fund supports the various programs part of the United Nations' global mandate, as much a foundation as it is a roof around the world.


World Veterans Federation
The World Veterans Federation is a humanitarian organisation, a charity and a peace activist movement. The WVF maintains its consultative status with the United Nations since 1951 and was conferred the title of “Peace Messenger” in 1987.


I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war."

Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize 1950


The Reeve Foundation provides programs for research, uniting Scientists and Specialists from many different fields to find treatments for spinal cord injury translating them into therapies and support programs.


For over 60 years, Heart & Stroke has been dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. Our work has saved thousands of lives and improved the lives of millions of others.


The ALS Society Of BC
ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to combat this disease and help those with it to survive.


Muscular Dystrophy Canada
Muscular Dystrophy Canada’s mission is to enhance the lives of those affected by neuromuscular disorders by continually working to provide ongoing support and resources while relentlessly searching for a cure through well-funded research.


Humane Society International
The Humane Society protects the health, lives and rights of animals the world over, ensuring that they too have a voice in this world. We are interdependent upon the complex web of life this entire planet over for our mutual survival. This is a world wide charity.


The Global Foodbanking Network
Ensuring that people the world over have enough food day to day in order to survive and lead healthy lives. In this challenging day and age services like this are becoming more and more essential. This is a world wide charity.


The Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado! 

In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.


Wikipedia
The model for what may become the Encyclopedia Galactica, a complete reference and record of history, events and knowledge of humanity and its journey beyond. It is the encyclopedia of all that we know, what we surmise that we've known and will learn in the future. Yes, Wikipedia is a charitable organization of great importance. If you enjoy what I am doing here then please take the time to donate to Wikipedia. Surprisingly only 1% of Wikipedia's users donate yet the site serves pages to millions every day.


Humble Bundle
A video gaming storefront benefiting a vast variety of different Charities in the United States and United Kingdom (hopefully soon to be expanded to include other areas of the world?). By software their software bundles and choose which Charity your money benefits and how much of your money benefits that Charity. See? Gamers can do their part too.


Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative disease currently affecting an estimated 2.3 million world wide. By donating you are contributing to effective research in finding a cure and tipping the scales of MS research to change lives forever.


If you're a resident of Ontario then please consider supporting Building Better Schools.


Other Ways To Help Using Your Computer

Donate your idle computer time to science! Join the World Community Grid by clicking on one of the links below and follow the instructions for how to participate:



Thank you for your support

Shhhh! Digital Media

Brian Joseph Johns


Notes: This episode continues the storyline started in Economy Of Sin Part 1, in which the most elusive, enigmatic and perhaps, adversarial industrialist tells his own story. There's not really much else to say, though given current world dynamics, this story which makes up one of the three episodic elements of The Butterfly Dragon has suddenly become very relevant. 

Of all the stories I write, this one is the most taxing upon my energy and levels of stress, hence why I seldom write new episodes, though you'll quickly see that this episode coincides with the most recent events of We Who Stand On Guard (Episode 10) and Two Butterflies (Episode 14). I hope you enjoy it.

Brian Joseph Johns


Warning: this material is intended for a mature audience. Reader discretion is advised.


The Butterfly Dragon: Night Boat - Episode 8 - Economy Of Sin Part 2



From Photons To Names


Cora Hau Basin, South of East China Sea
Seawolf Attack Class Submarine, USN


A hundred a fifty million kilometers away across the chaotic surface of a nearby star we all know very well, the plasma churned in rhythm with the intense magnetic fields that fought against the gravity and pressure emanating from deep beneath its surface.


A stream of particles escaped from this swirling plasma field, having taken nearly ten thousand years to reach the surface from the inner depth of the fiery furnace fueled by atomic fusion. The highly compressed hydrogen was fused together, giving it an extra electron hence advancing it one step forward on the periodic table to become the heavier element of helium.


During this process, and as a result of cacaphony arising from the electrons (both the original existing one and the newly added sibling) that orbited the nucleus of these newly produced elements in the star, a wave-like pulse of photons were created by perterbations in the orbits of said electrons. These photons began their journey from just above the center of the star to the surface. A star we know as Earth's host, Sol.


After that ten thousand years of travel, taking an entirely chaotic path to the surface not dissimilar to the path a ballbearing might take during a game of pinball (though certainly much shorter in time), these minute wave-like particles flew out from the surface at the speed of light in every direction.


One of those directions and the one that concerns us for the purposes of this story, was directly towards the southern tip of the East China Sea. The hundred and fifty million kilometer journey for these particles took exactly eight minutes and twenty-three point nine eight seconds before they arrived at the Van Allen belt, passing through Earth's protective magnetic field, which ironically was not unlike the stealth field shielding a certain Gearing Class Destroyer Refit from radar and the anti-stealth suites of other naval vessels operating in the region, but we'll get to that.


In a wave-like state, many of these photons were scattered upon arriving at the stratosphere, from where the statistical probability of interacting with other charged particles grew logarithmically, creating a glowing haze at the boundary point between the Earth's atmosphere and the dark and cold space surrounding it.


More of these photons continued their journey closer to the surface, some interacting with the most abundant of molecules on the planet and diffusing in a wave-like pattern to produce fields that scattered to become minute rainbows, though none large enough for the unaided eye to see any details there within.


Those that escaped the mist floating above Earth's surface in the form of clouds, continued onward until they arrived at the surface of the Pacific Ocean, where thanks to a phenomenon known as polarization, roughly three quarters of them instead of passing through the surface invisibly, bounced off of it instead as a result of the bubbles created by the wake of something massive moving along its surface, scattering them enough so that they intersected the sensors of another vessel that hunted the sea beneath the waters nearby, leaving a tell-tale shadow outlining something that was invisibly hidden on the surface.


This data was received by the anti-stealth sensor suite of a Seawolf Attack Class Submarine, a recently fit array of antennae lining the upper bow of the vessel, which quietly shadowed the invisible ship on the surface above.


This information arrived at the data center and was quickly fed into the analysis suite, where a Dynamic Large Language Model AI began filtering it for patterns based upon mathematics arrived at nearly a hundred years earlier by engineer Claude Shannon.


The hardware upon which this software was running, was capable of dividing time into minutely sliced intervals of a hundred trillion per second, giving the newly developed Quantum/Classical processors within the data center a seemingly limitless number of steps to work with. Before the billionth of the first second had passed, the Quantum algorithm had arrived at a match, and confirmed the presence of a metal hull.


The following million time slices were used by the processors to determine the materials that made up the vessel's structure, and from there another million were used to determine its sympathetic frequency of resonance given its displacement.


That information was then used to drive a simple algorithm based upon Fast Fourier Tranform and phase cancellation to yield a seemingly chaotic vibration that was embedded in the vibration caused by the vessel's engines.


The processors then used another ten million time slices to phase cancel the engine's vibration, leaving only the remaining signal. Three more passes were made, each using roughly twenty million time slices, to phase cancel acoustics arising from other miscellaneous machinery that populated the vessel, whom by this time had been identified by the Seawolf's IFF systems (Identity Friend of Foe) as the Many Faced Maiden, a rogue Gearing Class Destroyer Refit that had been sold privately to assets currently operated by the Company.


The processors then continued with this newly acquired piece of data and began analysis of the remaining multi-channel signal. Within another five billion time slices, it had extrapolated the conversations of sixty-seven of the crew members on board the ship and from there, with another three hundred billion time slices, it had identified fifty-nine of them.


One of the LED alarms began flashing and the nearby Analyst/Technician that had been monitoring the suite took notice, turning her attention to the log.


"What the...?" she cupped her hand over her mouth as she read the screen, which blinked a list of all the personnel it had identified on the rogue vessel.


It was two names in particular that had caught her attention, both of which were near the bottom of the list, though no matter where they'd been, she'd have spotted them in an instant for both of those names had been found all over the news weeks earlier, for they were the two most wanted men in the world:

...

Dino Terrill (Conversation 92% 00:00:36s)

George Steadman (Snoring 99.6% 02:53:12s) 

Diego Burrillo (Eating 23% 00:04:29s Converation 69% 00:00:12s)

Fernando Eduardez (Incoherent Mumbling 54% 00:00:47s)

Alomera Constanza Zekestes (Recitation Textos I: Nicolás Gómez Dávila 98.3% 00:23:19s)



Distant Theatre


First Officer Gallen lifted the lid on a tiny desk in the corner of his cabin, revealing a sink and faucet. He then opened a cabinet in the wall and retrieved his wash and shaving kit from within, first rinsing his face in preparation for his razor. When he'd finished shaving, he wiped himself dry with a towel and stowed his kit, closing the lid on the sink after which he left through the door of his cabin.


His first trip down the main lane brought him to the infirmary, where Captain Spiers lay, his head wrapped in a bandage and a nasogastric tube running into one of his nostrils. Both of his eyes were bruised, the skin around them now swollen and blue. Nearby the ship's Doctor sat at his desk, hunched over and fast asleep.


"Doc? Got a minute?" Gallen shook the man's shoulder gently, rousing him from his sleep.


He quickly stood and saluted acting Captain Gallen.


"First Officer...? I mean... Acting Captain Gallen, what can I do for you?" the Doctor looked at him quizzically.


"What's the status of Captain Spiers? Are we going have him today?" asked Gallen.


"That's a negative. He's in here for at least another three days, and another day for observation. He suffered a severe concussion impacting the frontal lobe and the central suclus, not to mention there's the issue of cerebral edema, which if left unchecked could lead to a coma indefinitely, if not, until we can get him to a naval medical facility," the Doctor responded.


Gallen seemed disappointed by his answer, but held his tongue nonetheless. He then turned, heading for the door.


"The moment there's a change in his condition, especially if he's conscious, contact the bridge immediately. Oh, and thanks for getting him patched up so quickly. I'll have the triage nurse relieve you for four hours. Get some rest," Captain Gallen advised the Doctor, then stepping out into the main lane once again and in the direction of the bridge.


When he arrived, the acting First Officer saluted him.


"Captain Gallen. Comms received an intel package and new orders earlier this morning, not to mention Lieutenant Leeds requests your presence in the data center," the First Officer told him.


"Any change in the status of our target?" asked Gallen.


"No Sir. Still in a vector in the direction of Cora Hau at a speed of thirty knots overnight, though as predicted, they dropped to fifteen knots about twenty minutes ago, with the sunrise," the First Officer informed him.


"Give them a berth of half the length of their vessel and put us just off their starboard stern. What about the PRC boat?" asked Gallen.


"It stuck with them all night, though it kept its lateral distance from us, remaining port side until sunrise, at which point it fell back to their port stern. They've been holding ever since," the First Officer informed Captain Gallen.


"You've got the bridge," Gallen turned and picked up his intel package and orders from comms, and then for the third time that morning stepped into the main lane and towards the data center.


He stopped in at his office, unlocking the tablet to check their new orders:


USN FLEET COMMAND
ATTN: COMMAND STAFF SW03069
THEATRE: EAST CHINA SEA
STATUS: EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

ORDERS

CLOSE ALL PENDING OPERATIONS CORA HAU REGION

PROCEED TO BUSAN USN FOR RESUPPLY

ACQUIRE NBC PROTECTION AND COUNTERMEASURES

ACQUIRE ORDNANCE PACKAGE ROSCOE 9ER


PATROL ROUTE: MIDDLE EAST, RED SEA

DEFCON: 5

STOP


"Someone dropped the big one..." Gallen said aloud, though like a tree falling in the forest, nobody was around to hear him.


He stepped up to the ship's intercom, picking up the handset from the wall and speaking into it.


"This Captain Gallen requesting my senior officers to meet me at the data center ASAP," he spoke into the handset, then replacing it on the wall. 


He then pressed his index finger against the screen of the tablet in his office, signing the orders which would let fleet command know they'd been read but yet to be acknowledged.


He then made his way to the data center.


...


Lieutenant Miller turned to face Captain Gallen as he entered the data center. She stood at attention and saluted him.


"As you were, Lieutenant. Can you give us a SITREP on our SKUNK?" requested Captain Gallen as his Chief Officer and First Officer followed behind him.


"About ten minutes ago, INGRID completed identification of fifty-nine of the crew members on the vessel, Sir. It seems that two of the crew are the two most wanted," Lieutenant Miller reported to Captain Gallen.


"What do you mean by most wanted? Say again?" Captain Gallen pressed her.


"Sir. George Steadman and Alomera Constanza Zekestes are both on board the Many Faced Maiden," the Lieutenant reported.


"Both of them? What, are they working together?" asked the Chief Officer.


"No Sir. The crew seems to have mutinied, and the vessel is split in two. About halfway between the bow and the stern. Steadman has the bridge, while Zekestes has engineering. The crew are about half and half," Lieutenant Miller reported.


"Any sign of our Company man?" the First Officer asked her.


"No Sir. INGRID did manage to extrapolate a number of conversations, four of which contain pertinent intel related to their destination," Lieutenant Miller told them.


"Let's have a listen, Lieutenant," Captain Gallen ordered her.


Miller immediately turned and used a console to initiate playback of three conversations which the AI package had managed to extract from the hull's vibration signal.


"...he's asleep. Two guards outside of his cabin. Both with SMiGs, flashbangs, and M36s on their webbing..." a voice spoke quietly, possibly addressing another crew member through a headset.


"...what about the hard drives? Any sign of them...?" another voice spoke, the tone much different, as if it were in another location in the ship, perhaps in a closed space.


"...the data center is closed up tight. No way in. No way out..." the first voice responded.


"It seems that the bridge crew were trying to get into the data center to retrieve something valuable Sir," Lieutenant Miller explained to them.


"What? Money? Crypto Wallets?" asked the First Officer.


"Maybe. We don't know yet... Then, there's this..." Lieutenant Miller continued, typing another command into the console.


"...I can't... he's right there. Not here. Not like this. Wait until we get to Cora Hau. When he's gone, you can have me all that you want..." this time the voice was that of a seductive woman.


"So? Sounds like a bit of life drama. A bit sad really, but life nonetheless," the Chief Officer said to them.


"I compared the voice to another female voice from a recording we obtained the previous night and found them to be a match. She's Steadman's girlfriend..." Lieutent Miller reported to them.


"Compress, encrypt and package this. When we send the drone up later, we'll relay this back to fleet command. Dismissed Lieutenant," Captain Gallen told his intelligence officer.


"I still have another hour on duty, Sir?" Lieutenant Miller insisted.


"I said dismissed Lieutenant. We need the room and for you to leave. Looks like you get an extra hour," Captain Gallen said to her.


She got up from her station and headed for the door, closing the hatch behind her after leaving.


"Captain Spiers is still unconscious with a serious concussion and looking a coma square in the face, gentlemen. We just received an intel package and new orders," Captain Gallen took a tablet from the charging bay and pressed his finger against it.


"Yesterday afternoon, close to 1500 Tel Aviv time, a tactical nuclear warhead with a yield of fifty to eighty kilotonnes was detonated above the Red Sea. There are few casualties thankfully, with most of the damage incurred as a result of EMP. As you can see here, we've been assigned new orders. We'll be leaving for Busan, where we'll hit the USN port and collect full NBC hardware and countermeasures. We'll also be loading up ordnance specialized for that theatre in the form of tactical and strategic nukes. I suspect our presence in the theatre is mostly part of a deterence strategy. I know that you would like to see our objectives here successfully completed as much as I would, but our new orders take priority. We'll be leaving for Busan within the hour, but I didn't want to leave without speaking to you about an option we have at our disposal that might give us the chance to complete this mission without requiring our presence here," Captain Gallen explained to them.


"You're talking deploying our SF team?" confirmed the First Officer.


"One squad. Two men. We drop them ahead of the SKUNK, on the starboard with enough kit to get on the SKUNK silently, and infiltrate the crew. Seeing as Captain Spiers isn't with us, I can't authorize without your signatures. Gentlemen?" asked Captain Gallen.


The Chief Officer looked to the First Officer, and then back to the Captain.


"Sir, you realize that they'll only have one shot at this. If they can't get aboard..." the Chief Officer advised them.


"That's why this is a three man decision," the Captain assured them.


"That PRC boat is going to get suspicious when we get into position for such a drop. What are our options?" asked the Chief Officer.


"They've been clinging to the portside and dropping to the stern in a regular pattern for the last two days. They'll be moving back up to the portside within the hour. We'll make our move to the starboard bow in sync, and deploy our SEALs from there. The SKUNK's hull and their stealth field should keep them covered up," the First Officer advised.


"Then its decided. Lets sign on our orders, and get that plan into action," Captain Gallen passed the tablet to them each in turn.


Each of them signed with their biometric data, and left the Seawolf's data center shortly thereafter to prepare for the deployment of their resident SEALs.


To be continued...

Credits and attribution:

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Special thanks to Bandcamp

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

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