CPAC

By Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@oder.nada.kth.se) (27 May 1994)

The Central Prime Alignment Council (CPAC) is an amalgam dedicated to the large scale streamlining of the ley-lines and nodes of the Earth, and the distribution of quintessence and Tass among the conventions. Needless to say CPAC is very powerful, and while the Symposium may be the highest authority over the policy, the Council has authority over the implementation of the policy.

CPAC has members from all the conventions. The different conventions are responsible for different aspects of the work of the council. The New World Order is responsible for security and administrative matters. The Syndicate is naturally interested in all aspects of the flow of Quintessence, and integrate it into their Market. They are especially responsible for using the Masses to manipulate ley-lines and nodes on a global scale. Iteration X is involved in technical matters. The Void Engineers are responsible for the upkeep of the Barrier and theoretical aspects of Primal Engineering. The Progenitors are not very involved in CPAC, but have representatives and advisors on the board.

CPAC seeks to realign the ley-lines which criss-cross the Earth into a neat and efficient pattern. So far it have succeeded quite well in some areas. Its decisions are implemented by the different programs it has started among the conventions, often in close collaboration with convention-specific programs and other councils.

The Infra-Structure Realignment Program (ISRP) is one of the earliest and most successful programs of CPAC. By building railways, highways and other types of infra-structure between cities, the ley-lines of the rural areas are realigned to point into the cities. This makes the urban reality stronger and lessens the impact of the chaotic rural and natural areas outside. Since we have better control over the cities and can tap the nodes inside easily, the ISR program also gives us enormous amounts of Quintessence. It's not uncommon for the Conventions to place their regional headquarters beside highways or in the city core where all the controlled quintessence collect. A spin-off effect is that the cold iron in the railways effectively trap the fey, isolating them into controlled areas. This program has naturally been tied closely to the Asphalt Barons.

Another spin-off program, the Large Scale Prime Balancing Program (LSPB) attempts to use the network of artificial ley-lines to neutralise fluctuations in the primal fields. This is useful to avoid the irritating seasonal changes in mood and reality which appear in some areas, and make sure static reality is stable and reliable.

A related program is the Global Prime Integrity Watch (GPIW) program, which monitors the flow of Prime in the network the Technocracy has created (and in large natural ley-lines). It keeps track of fluctuations, and try to pinpoint their sources. Its closely tied to the Global Integrity Security Council, which keeps track of the Barrier and other supernatural dangers to static reality.

The International Long Range Realignment Program (ILRRP) is an extension of the ISRP. It deals with large capacity primal conduits like transcontinental highways, large waterways and other long range structures like pipelines. It is also responsible for integration of different projects across borders and different conventions.

The Interstellar Quintessence Interception Program (IQIP) is testing ways of extracting the Quintessence flows from interstellar sources like Cygnus-X1, M87 and the centre of the galaxy. This is done by the Void Engineers. Currently it uses small modifications of existing radio-telescopes to extract the Quintessence while they are observing the target objects. The results so far have been promising, and IQIP plan to use the Hubble Telescope to test out the new system on a large scale.

The Prime Technology Research Program (PTRP) is developing new and efficient methods of detecting quintessence, ley-lines and nodes, methods of safely manipulating them and ways to neutralise them. It is heavily sponsored by Iteration X and the Void Engineers.

The Oceans have long been a stumbling block for the CPAC. These vast areas have practically no supervision, and in the lack of large populations of indoctrinated sleepers both the gauntlet and reality is weak here. Disturbances of reality is much more common here than on land, and although the main traffic pass through "safe" areas, certain places like the Bermuda Triangle are very unstable. The ley-lines in the seas are also much more inaccessible and hard to control, since they are less tied to humanity. On the continental shelves we have gained some control through their off shore drillings for oil (thanks to the Geophysical sub-convention), but the deep sea remains uncontrollable.

The Global Oceanic Realignment Program (GOR) seeks to solve these problems. It promotes serious oceanographic research, and tries to apply its results. One of its earliest successes was the transatlantic cables, which at least created some safe ley-lines. One method the mainly Iteration X sponsored program is to use its more advanced robots to build realignment foci on the deep ocean floor. Since there are no sleepers nearby, the program can use much more convenient methods to build these foci (which mostly are camouflaged as large basalt formations).

One problem of the early GOR-program was the whales. They found that the more intelligent whales were not only highly intelligent (albeit rather alien) but also often awakened and generally objected to their research. As a response the Syndicate was ordered to increase hunting, and today the most dangerous cetaceans are nearly extinct. Those who remain are kept under strict observation. The smaller dolphins turned out to be much more humanoid, and Iteration X has experimented with cyber-modifications and other methods to turn them into an efficient workforce. However, several tribes of dolphins are objecting to this so the Progenitors are going to wipe them out with some custom diseases.

Another problem is the almost total lack of Barrier in the deep ocean. Since practically no humans have ever been there, the Barrier is very weak, and passage to the Outside is frighteningly simple. A sub-program of GOR, the General Oceanic Preventative Initiative (GOPI), tries to amend this by spreading Barrier-increasing chemicals on a large scale. This is camouflaged as oil-spills, waste dumping and pollution. Some ecological damage is a small price to pay for security against the forces from the Outside.

As seen, CPAC is one of the most active and efficient councils under the Symposium, and an important tool for the