Paul Gadzikowski
scarfman@iglou.com

Original Dailies

Previously

New original Dailies may be set anytime in this history. Rerun Dailies are cycled in chronological order. May include spoilers for some Dailies.

Previously in original Dailies:

In 1976 when I was sixteen I started drawing a cartoon every day. For many years the Dailies were for, and about, myself and my friends; hence the term "original" Dailies. The Dailies have also over the years depicted meetings between us and the characters in my fanfiction: the time-travelers, the superhero, the rebels against the evil galactic empire, the army surgeons, all the starship crews, and others. In the 70s this was primarily through the agency of a phenomenon we called "fiction plane doors", interdimensional portals appearing to us at Omaha Central High School which we took for a random natural phenomenon. In the 80s Infinity Labs discovered that the fiction-plane doors weren't natural but involved with the time-traveler hero; then in one of our multidimensional adventures the entire string of events was unhappened - we only know it used to have happened because the time-travelers tells us. Well, we also know it used to have happened because in the 90s we discovered that the unhappening left behind shadows of the high school fiction-plane door travelers, in events in the fictional universes, even though fiction-plane door events have been erased from our universe. (Also in the 90s, I decided to excise from original Dailies all others' intellectual property in case of future publication offers, and replaced the fanfiction characters with thinly-veiled parodies of themselves. They don't mind, mostly.) I've also invented some characters over the years.

I've only been involved with Infinity Labs since 1981 but my wife Leah was with them at the start. Newton Dexter founded the Labs in Chicago in 1976 by enlisting Leah's Chicago science fiction club into his efforts to create a secret space exploration program. Newton and I both lived in Willard Hall at Northwestern University our freshman year (the only year either of us spent there; but he, in his genius, graduated) but I didn't learn of Infinity Labs till my involvement in Chicago science fiction fandom. By then the Labs already had bases on all the solar planets and was planning its first interstellar mission: my former Willard roommate Demo and I were the first Earthmen to go to Alpha Centauri. Among Newton's further discoveries and creations in the 80s: He discovered the science of "palortics" which is partly metaphysical in nature. He invented the Labs' Interdimensional Interface Generator which we use to travel to other places, times, and universes. He discovered the Philosophers' Club comprised of Earth's history's geniuses, whose only membership requirement is the intelligence to deduce when and where it first convenes, and get there. By means of the I.I.G. he discovered, in an alternate universe operating on the principles of magic rather than of science, Infinity Coven. And he built the robotic lab assistant Monica, whom he accidentally or subconsciously designed to be his own perfect mate, and married.

In the mid 80s when the Labs was exposed to the public, it was by the machinations of the evil palortic genius Professor Jamesmorey. Newton and Jamesmorey left our time but the US federal government shut us down, giving out that the whole thing had been a hoax. However, the Labs had always been an open secret in world science fiction fandom. Some fans including former Infinity members, as well as others discovering the palortic principles independently including an English lord and a Harlem streetgang, began exploring spacetime despite what happened to the original Labs.

In the early 90s Newton returned and coerced the US federal government into assisting him in regulating the world's secret space programs to help them keep secret. At this time I became the Labs' first employee. But our relationship with the federal government deteriotated a few years later when the head of the agency we dealt with changed. Infinity Labs went underground again, no longer headquartered on US soil. At that time Newton set the policy of talking up Infinity Labs on the internet as urban mythology to gradually acclimate the world at large to the idea, against the day when the world is ready to know. Infinity Labs continues to serve new Earth secret space programs including, in occasional cases, with their departure from Earth entirely with our colonization program (this is what we did with the shadows of fiction-plane door travelers). These days "Infinity Labs member" means an organization and "Infinity Labs associate" means a person belonging to such an organizaton.

Akili Tembo was in my high school class, and was Newton Dexter's roommate at Willard Hall. As with the fiction-plane doors, we somehow thought nothing of an exchange student from Kenya who was an elephant who talks, wears clothes and walks upright. Infinity Labs learned of the Moreau Project from Akili in the late 80s while he was first trumpet with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Ned Allen's roommate. That was about ten years before the project began raising its second generation in childcare centers across the world instead of on its compound in Kenya like the first generation had been, and its existence became common knowledge. The first Moreau Childcare Center in Chicago was housed in the Infinity Labs headquarters building because, in reestablishing the Labs as an umbrella regulatory organization for all the space programs it had spawned, Newton had enlisted Akili as an advisor (Newton being too smart to be unaware how poor his people skills are). When the first Chicago MCC was destroyed by anti-Moreau extremists, Newton gave the land to the Project and moved Labs HQ to the base in Louisville where I lived then (this was before our final falling out with the federal government). Akili is now leader of a five-piece all-Moreau-"child" Dixieland band.

Most people believe Ned Allen (star of the PBS kids' show Godzilla's Neighborhood, and the Everglades Animal in the WWE) is a child of the Moreau Project but he isn't. When I was invited to leave Northwestern, Demo got new unofficial roommates: aliens named Aihok and Effex, a covert survey team from the interplanetary Confedration of this region of space, sent to evaluate Earthpeople more closely than by our radio and television transmissions. Through Demo and me Aihok and Effex became known to Infinity Labs. When Demo and I landed on Alpha Centauri in 1981, the Confederation decided their survey team needed expansion; with Fay, a member of Effex's species whom Effex disliked less for her unwanted romantic advances than because no one else ever steals Daily punchlines from him. The last of the extensions of their survey mission ran out in 1982. However shortly afterwards they saved Earth from interdimensional invasion, for which technical violation of Confederation nonintervention policy they were punished/rewarded with exile to Earth. In order to support themselves during their exile they took an Earth alligator, augmented him to humanoid form and intelligence, named him Ned Allen, and hired him an agent. If you've ever seen Ned on Leno or Letterman, you know the Moreau Project do much better work than Aihok and Effex, who aren't specialists in the area and were compelled to use the cheap kit. Effex and Fay have married and have two children, Gaggy and Ribbons.

Of course all this became public knowledge in May 2004 when a Infinity Labs associate crash-landed his ship into the UN Plaza.

Leah and her former meditation instructor in Chicago tell me that she's a very powerful psychic and that our adventures on the astral plane are just as interesting and important as our adventures on the physical planes, but I rarely remember what I dream.

Most of my family have been involved with Infinity Labs directly or indirectly. My father went to the moon for the Jesuits in 1949 while he was one. My mother and my brother have both been Infinity Labs associates through their sf fandom interests since the 90s. My sister the childcare professional has worked for MCCs in two cities and is an honorary associate of the Labs member organization the Celestially Responsive Anthropomorphs of the Moreau Project (or C.R.A.M.P.). My stepchildren are part-time Labs employees under me, and hang out with Effex's kids. And my wife Leah - as noted before - has been with Infinity Labs from the very beginning.

Previously in fanfiction Dailies
Previously in King Arthur in Time and Space

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