Hellfire 2

Hellfire Preface 1

Ink, Letracopy and gouache on illustration board.

Because the quality of the art in the Hellfire Projegt varied so drastically I kept going back to try to fix it up. I added a preface and postscript that introduced new story elements, and added some new graphics.

Hellfire Preface 2

Ink on paper.

Hellfire Preface 3

Colour pencil on photocopy paper.

Hellfire Preface 4

Gouache and pencil on paper.

One of the financial backers of the Hellfire project was a cosmetics company called Claut Tallmack Industries (CTI) who released a Hellfire scent. As the spaceship was being constructed according to completed plans, Alej Malchevan was spending most of this time focused on an advertising campaign around the Hellfire scent. He scripted and produced a series of bizarre commercials. He claimed that their purpose was to channel popular consciousness. To form a connection with the "spirit" of the project. Because the sense of smell is one of the most powerful queues to memory, the scent itself would serve as a sensory trigger and anchor. Beyond that, he would not elaborate. By the time the last commercial aired the problems with the project could no longer be concealed, and shortly after, Malchevan disappeared.

Hellfire Preface 5

Ink and gouache on illustration board.

Jester the puppeteer travels from town to town along Highway One, putting on shows and causing trouble. In the show, Lenny is a fifteen centimetre tall wooden horse called Sam with political aspirations. In Sam's head is a robot brain (Lenny) originally destined for a robot dinosaur, which now lay idle in the frozen fields. Jester moves into a hotel room for the night in a small town called Intersection 119.

Hellfire Preface 6

Ink and gouache on illustration board.

Lenny's friends Malcolm and Molly beat him with sticks. Malcolm pulls off Lenny's head and throws it into a bucket of hot water as his body wheels in a circle. Throwing in the stick after it. Some pundits speculated that Lenny's head represented the Hellfire reactor, floating unconnected within its chamber.

Hellfire Preface 7

Ink and gouache on illustration board.

Mister Smithsonian, the hotel proprietor, appeared at the top of the stairs and complained about the water flowing from under the door to Jester's room. Jester lay at the base of the stairs, claimed he had fallen and could not move.

Hellfire Preface 8

Ink and gouache on illustration board.

The water originated from the overflowing bath tub.

Hellfire Preface 9

Pencil, ink and gouache on illustration board.

Solza Claut, the ageing and infirm founder of CTI lay near to death. He was possibly suffering from dementia. To the dismay of his board and advisors he had become a kind of disciple of Malchevan (who appears to the right in the above image).

Hellfire Postscript

Ink on illustration board.

Apparently, one of the last things Malchevan did before disappearing was pay a visit to Solza Claut. Malchevan typically wore a small silver cube on a chain around his neck. The cube had a wildly inaccurate map of the world etched onto it. He removed the necklace and placed it into Solza's hand.

Hellfire Two - 1

Gouache on illustration board.

There was no Hellfire Projegt 2, but some preproduction ideas were sketched out. It was to take place in the period between the shockwave of the Hellfire explosion reaching Tranquility Base, and the point where Simon was found by rescuers. Within the sphere of the expanding shockwave was a diluting sea of SI (senility-infantality) energy.

Hellfire Two - 2

Ink and gouache on illustration board.

It traces the changes wrought on the technician Simon by the SI energy.

Hellfire Two - 3

Ink and gouache on illustration board.

Hellfire Two - 4

Pencil and gouache on illustration board.

Simon struggled to maintain his human form. (I think Barney did some work on this figure in the top part of the image.)

Hellfire Two - 5

Pencil and gouache on illustration board.

With limited success.

Hellfire Two - 6

Ink and gouache on illustration board.

Hellfire Two - 7

Gouache on illustration board.

There is a sublevel of Tranquility Base, a large chamber with atmosphere and a lake.

Hellfire Two - 8

Pencil and gouache on illustration board.

As the base above is rocked by the impact of the shockwave, debris falls into the chamber below.

Hellfire Two - 9

Pencil on photocopy paper.

Hellfire Two - 10

Ballpoint pen on ruled paper

(insert drawn during the Newanda period).

Hellfire Two - 11

Pencil on photocopy paper

(insert drawn during the Newanda period).

Hellfire Two - 12

Pencil and gouache on illustration board.

Hellfire Two - 13

Pencil and gouache on illustration board.

Hellfire Two - 14

Pencil and gouache on illustration board.

Resulting in depressurisation of the chamber.

Hellfire Two - 15

Ballpoint pen on ruled paper

(insert drawn during the Newanda period).

The goal of the survivors was to reach the surface.

Hellfire Two - 16

Gouache on paper.

Where they encountered Simon, now called Opperman. The "senility-infantality" field idea is that human beings emerge from this field, and return to it at the end of life, and therefore that this field is primary reality, where the beginning and end meet. The strangeness of infants and the senile are expressions of this field. Malchevan claimed that: "We are born with senility and accumulate more as we age."

Hellfire Two - 17

Pencil on A4 photocopy paper.

Hellfire Two - 18

Ballpoint pen on ruled paper

(drawn during the Newanda period).

And so we draw to the close of the uneventuated Hellfire Two.

The Hunt

Pencil on photocopy paper.

Girl

Pencil on paper.

Hellfire 2 - 19

Ink on paper.

CTI Truck

Pencil on photocopy paper.

A Claut Tallmack Industries (CTI) truck design for Hellfire 2.

Moon Buggy

Pencil on photocopy paper.

A moon buggy design for Hellfire 2.

Andrea

Pencil on photocopy paper.

I also had in mind to update the design of the Hellfire spaceship, but this design (from the post Newanda period) became the Andrea (see Andrea 1 on New Stuff).

Fantasy THAW

Acrylic on illustration board.

Overlaid with a sheet of clear acetate with

lettering painted on by hand in acrylic.

Around the time I was tinkering with Hellfire 2 (pre Morgan period) I did this painting and considered it as a cover for a comic called "Thaw" (a play on the word "Thor"). The painting was originally called "Poison" (later "Dummy"), and shows a nanobot emerging from the tip of a hypodermic needle into the bloodstream. Its nanoskirt unfurling as it does.

Copes 1

Ball-point pen on ruled paper.

Another of Alej's projects was related to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Olympos University allowed him to use one of its sub-basements that had been used to manufacture microcircuits and other IT related hardware and tools. The technology was now superseded so they let him do what he wanted with it. He also scrounged together a bunch of computers, which wasn't difficult since the technology was always getting superseded. It was just laying around. Alej didn't care that it wasn't the latest. He arranged the computers he had into a ring to network them. He also connected them to the robotic manufacturing technology so that the computers were able to build computers, as well as manufacturing the tools for building computers. He then gave the network the task to: "build a better computer". Then he sealed the lab and forgot about it for several years.

Copes 1a

Pencil and gouache on illustration board

(with some contributions I think from Barney).

Copes 2

Ball-point pen on ruled paper.

When he eventually returned and unlocked the lab he found the ring of computers had integrated themselves into a single device and grown quite large. He sealed the lab again and didn't return for several more years. The university was accustomed to research projects that lasted decades.

Copes 2a

Pencil and gouache on illustration board.

Copes 3

Ball-point pen on ruled paper.

The next time he unsealed the lab he found a translucent, luminous donut-shaped mirage hovering a few centimetres above the floor. He could put his hand through it, feeling nothing. He could walk through it or sit in it, with no apparent effect. He spent a few days trying to find a way to interface with it, without success.

Copes 3a

Pencil on illustration board.

Copes 4

Ball-point pen on ruled paper.

Then one morning he found it had shrunk to a single tiny point of light.

Copes 5

Ball-point pen on ruled paper.

As he sat there, points of light began to multiply.

Copes 6

Ball-point pen on ruled paper.

Alej ran from the lab. As he rode up in the elevator Olympos was shaken by a mild tremor. When he reached the surface there was activity in the ocean some distance off the coast. The water churned and then a kind of island rose up out of it, growing into a kind of hill or abstract sculpture, reaching several storeys high and projecting out appendages. It seemed to be composed of an assortment of materials. Then it stopped growing and started to decay, collapsing back into the ocean and disappearing. About this same time, in the vicinity of the Moon, attempts were being made to shut down the Hellfire reactor. The design of the Hellfire reactor was in fact based on information he obtained by studying earlier iterations of the donut shaped computer, before he became unable to access or interact with it.

A few weeks later reports started to be heard of what seemed to be collective hallucinations, except that they had a physical presence. Before long the reports were world wide.

Copes 7

Pencil on photocopy paper.

It took a long time to discover what became known as "copes" (from "Cornucopia"). They were a Plank-scale technology. They used zero point energy to manufacture or manipulate matter. So that they could manifest anything anywhere there were copes, and there were now trillions of copes per cubic centimetre of space world wide. In the air, water and soil. They became known collectively as the "copeosphere". The intent of the copes, if they had any, was unknown. There was no predicting it from Alej's vaguely defined instructions. Cope infected transports took them to the rest of the solar system. It was assumed that they floated and multiplied in space. Instead of asking "the intent" of the copes, it soon began to appear that there were strains of copes developing in different locations that manifested different behaviour. They were mutating like a virus. In some regions they seemed to be dormant, in others dangerous, in others benign.

The River

Pencil on photocopy paper.

Malchevan appeared again years later, floating down river out of the jungle in a wooden canoe, laying naked in a few inches of dirty water. His body hair infested with insects. A bulging diary/notebook under his lower back. And a stick pushed through both facial cheeks.

Some sections of Alej's diary have been transcribed and published. It appears to document the period from childhood to just before the commencement of the Hellfire Projegt.

My friend the monster and me. I know what you don't. You'll die but I won't. When I grow up I'll rule in heaven. Signed: Doctor Alej Mohan Malchevan, age eleven. The carnival will be soon. Having a happy happy. This is your afternoon, with a skull full of jelly. And we shall play together, breaking our toys as we go. From the back, and ever, forever, with before and not.

(From the first page of Alej's diary.)

Finally fighting with a broken back, trying to nail himself to the ceiling. Zig zagging on a straight track. His punishment for my revealing. Face fallen in weathered hands.

We were expected to brake before the corner. We weren't supposed to progress beyond the kind of pre-fortuitous stage we then celebrated. The atomsphere has elements that can retain illicit thoughts. They were already given. They were already beyond reasonable conversation, celebrating all the more. The hut is gathering dirt. Too long gathering dirt. Today I begin sweeping the east wing where the dirt is cleverer. I'm sending a note to my brother, warning him. Then I'll begin, or not. Either way it is much too late. All the animals are gone. All the people are receiving letters. All the doors are open. Lenny is in the yellow-green field and the east wing is waiting.

____________________________

Table (a)(11:00 1/9/40)
Cable insomnia - (continued) Have been standing all morning, results indefinite. Have discovered another three tables. Am coding and standing last Thursday through to last Midnight and filing associated inquiries.
Complete....

Table (a)(9:35 2/9/40)
Cable insomnia - (continued) One of yesterday's tables has germinated, so have incinerated the other two. Coding of Thursday to Sunday still incomplete, but have abandoned. Feeling good.
Complete....

Table (a)(23:15 2/9/40)
Cable insomnia - (continued) Something interesting.
100 Case - Haskin (wood and leather) usually used for opening.
111 - - optimistic
112 - - dead
113 --- dis
114/120 - - stable ... (the rattles degraded at room temperature but without reducing the conductivity of the shells).
Alternatives:
a/ Environmental stress absorbing precipitate.
b/ Drift through inversion layer for senile verbalisation (verbalisation: ordered, coherent flow of less than target source) sterilizing probability.
c/ Typing error (perhaps in 112).
d/ 112 is conclusion and not deviation.
e/ None of the above.
Assuming (c) then possible reaction quotient could be as high as 3339/02. I.e., sufficient! Rats have affirmed. Shall proceed with reactor.
121 - - optimistic.
Complete....

(From the last pages of Alej's diary.)

Waste House

Photocopy of a ball point pen drawing in a notebook.

The waste houses were an element of the Hellfire project. Positioned at various locations around the world. This one is built on an isolated mountain top.

Mud

Black ink and colour pencil with some gouache on paper.

Eventually, copes spread to many worlds. On this particular world they converted the entire surface to a kind of metallic mud, throwing up abstract sculptures. Each of the few remaining cities floated in an electromagnetic envelope to protect them from infection by the insidious copes. Eventually they gave up and abandoned the planet altogether to the inscrutable copes. This image probably from between the Morgan and Newanda periods.

Robot Gods 1

Pencil on photocopy paper.

Cope infused robots evolve to become spiritual. This robot hovers in a laboratory among an agitated group of scientists in white lab coats. Soon it will float away into the sky.

Robot Gods 2

Colour pencil on photocopy paper.

The robots built a super-robot in low orbit.

Robot Gods 3

Pencil on photocopy paper.

Another robot design.

Robot Gods 4

Black ink and colour pencil on A4 photocopy paper.

A later variation on the robot god floating in the sky idea. This time set on an alien world. It hovers over the rooves of the town.

Boundary

Photocopy of ball-point pen drawing in a notebook,

coloured in with colour pencil.
(pre Morgan period)

He had to stop it from touching the sides, or something bad would happen.

Garage

Black ink and colour pencil on paper.

Floating

Pencil on photocopy paper.

(pre Morgan period)

Incinerator

Pencil on paper.

He was a scientist. The purpose of the suit was to amplify his chi. It was only after he got into it and it powered up that he realised it was effectively an incinerator. But he hadn't built in an abort sequence, and couldn't open the suit again until the power up had completed.