An Afterward from the archivist:

    To some extent, these Intrepid Group stories that I've collected could be
seen as one huge meta-story, sort of like all the episodes of Star Trek when
placed together, or like the Star Wars films, or Heinlein's future history.
The stories are all inter-related with each other.  They were a continuing
series.  Each story led directly to the next.  The first Villain story led
to the second Villain story, which left loose ends which were taken up in
"Disappearances Can be Deceiving," which then led directly to...  and so on,
and so on, all the way up to this story.
    I, for one, always strove to avoid any contradictions.  If one came along
in a story, I tried my darndest to explain it away in the story, so it wasn't
a contradiction after all.
    I also tried to anticipate potential problems before they happened.  For
instance, if someone invented a machine for a story, I would extrapolate
what other functions or abilities it might have, and determine if they might
conflict with an established story-fact.  ("If they have teleporters, then,
darnitall, why do they still ride horses everywhere?!?!?")  If so, I'd reason
those functions or abilities out of existence, or, at least, invent a way for
the story-fact to exist despite them.  ("Hmmmm... what if there's something
in nature that greatly curtails the range of a teleport beam...?")
    Normally, this was done in a way that didn't really call attention to
itself, I simply dropped in bits of explanation within the story prose from
time to time, or expanded upon certain plots to tie in with previous stories
in some subtle way.  It wasn't anything really major.  It never interfered
with the other writers, at least, I don't think it did.
    In fact, sometimes it lead to interesting plots on its own, or suggested
some interesting new background material.  ("Hey, you know that natural
interference field that limits teleport range?  Tap this energy as a power
source!")

    That said, let me now focus on the most recent stories.

    After the completion of "Chessmen of the Apocolypse," which, to some
extent, had us tripping over each other's back-story, we decided to meet
face to face for a discussion of the story-universe.  Captain R/C and
Redstar had drawn up designs for their ships, for instance, and I wanted
to show them designs I had come up with for other things.  Each user had
developed an assumed past for himself, and details about his fictional
life.  Redstar had his android and car, I had my research-and-development
company, and my oversized house with its computer.  There was sometimes
confusion between us as to exactly what the others had in mind about these
things.
    Redstar and Captain R/C had sat down and hashed out all sorts of
pseudo-technical details about R/C's fighter and Red's car, and the
occasional tidbits they dropped on the BBS sounded intriguing.
    So anyway, we decided to meet at my house and compare notes, and also
discuss possible future stories.  I figured that we could pool our ideas and
build on each other's background material.
    But, when we came together for the meeting, the others forgot to bring
their diagrams and background material.  While this had been the original
idea behind the meeting, in the delay between planning the meeting and
having the meeting, the idea we'd be comparing notes had simply slipped our
minds.
    At this point, it was too late to correct the oversight.
    Another thing we'd discussed doing at the meeting, though, involved the
ending of "Chessmen..."  Redstar had missed the beginning of that story, and
therefore misunderstood certain key details.  For one thing, he got certain
of the heroes and villains mixed up, and so the ending he wrote didn't quite
work right.  We were going to discuss perhaps rewriting his ending, bringing
it more in line with the beginning of the story.  The details of this mixup
in continuity appear in the Afterward comments for that story.
    Well, the idea of rewriting the ending went nowhere, too.  Redstar and
Captain R/C basically looked over the material, and Redstar decided
against rewriting anything.  I didn't entirely agree, but since I had no
idea how to correct it either, I simply dropped the matter.
    So instead we got sidetracked.  We sat around and talked about other
things, and, ironically, played a little Battle Chess.  Oh, and had a look
at Redstar's start of a brand new story, since he had just posted it to the
Hex before he came out to the meeting.
    It was, of course, this story, "Time and Time Again," and went on to
become the single most complex BBS story ever undertaken.
    Though we didn't know it at the time, this was also to be the last
completed CommHex story.
    The complexity of this story was far from intentional, it simply took
off on its own.  At first, I didn't realise how complex it had become, and
because *I* could follow it, it never occured to me that the other main
participants couldn't.  When I DID become aware that they couldn't follow
it, it was too late to do anything about it.  I mean, it couldn't be undone.
    The first sign it was too complex was that there was less participation
in the story, but I didn't notice.  Actually, I did notice, but thought it
was unrelated to the story:  I had seen many times when users had stopped
participating in these stories, but it was mostly because they'd disappeared
from the BBS, or for other external reasons, so I didn't think anything of
it at the time.
    When I did become aware of it, I tried to get them to participate again,
but it didn't work out.  I tried to second-guess them, figure out why they
weren't able to participate, and adjust things accordingly.  I tried
summarising the story-so-far inside the actual story, explaining in a
nutshell how it *might* all fit together, figuring that they could build on
that, or that they could look at it and fit it all together their *own* way.
I tried chopping away side plots that weren't vital, and other things.  But
all this served only to muddy things even more.
    Thing is, as complex as this thing had gotten, I felt it was vital for
us all to be on a common wavelength, to be going in the same direction like
a school of fish, or a group of aircraft flying in formation.  Any *other*
story could have gone ahead business as usual, but this one would only have
fallen apart:  The more complex the story, the more likely it was we'd
royally contradict each other or get the plots all tangled up.
    I knew it had gotten too late to treat this like any other improvise-
the-plots-as-we-go-along type story, yet they still wanted to behave like
it was one.
    But I got into a real tar-baby situation, a meta-discussion about all
this on another sub-board on the BBS.  I have to say that I thoroughly
botched the situation.  I tried to get them to see how vital it was to have
a common goal in writing this thing, a common direction, but it got personal,
and I got backed into a corner, and it all went downhill fast.
    After awhile, I realised that I wasn't going to get them to participate
as much as was needed, and that they'd NEVER understand the plots... and I
said to myself, "Oh, to heck with it!" and put ALL of the discontinued plots
back in.
    Actually, I was pretty surprised, and pleased, with the way that ALL of
the plots, including the throw-away stuff that I'd tossed in just for yucks,
came together in the end.  ALL of them!  They knitted together seamlessly.
    It was an eerie feeling.

    Of course, with the way each story led up to the next, it pretty much
meant that they'd be around for years to come, or at least that's what I
expected.  I mean, if things had gone on as before, we'd still be writing
these things today.  Now, since I saw them as a permenant fixture, perhaps
to become old classics someday, that is why I went through them all with a
fine-toothed comb to correct things like spelling, tense, and so on.  It
also meant making minor changes here and there.

    One of those changes involved the name of the aliens in this story.  They
started out being called the Fenechrone, because there had been a throw-away
line about a race called the Fenechrone in another story.  Since I liked
revisiting themes and threads from previous stories, I re-introduced the
Fenechrone in this story.  In the other story, they'd remained off stage,
so we never saw what they looked like until this story.
    But then I found out that the Fenechrone were an existing race from a
major-classic science fiction novel series, and were radically different
from the ones in this story.  E. E. "Doc" Smith's Fenachrone (note the
slightly different spelling) were large ape-like creatures, and mental
giants, the Intrepid Group universe Fenechrone were squid-like critters.
Now, it really bothered me having a race with the same name as ones in a
major classic.  I was sure it would cause the two to be confused with each
other, or maybe cause other troubles.  There was even a remote possibility
it could get us in legal trouble.  (Well, VERY VERY remote...)  In the very
least, it could be very distracting in later years.  So I decided to change
the name.  They became the Xoonakrone, a name I carefully crafted to be sort
of phonetically similar, and to be the same number of characters in length
so that it would fit in the same space in each line when I performed a
search-and-replace, and not push some of the lines beyond 80 columns.
    It might not have bothered anyone else, but as major a race as they were,
I felt I had to do this.  Actually, had I been aware before that they were
from a novel, I wouldn't have put them in to begin with, I'd have invented
a new name from scratch at the beginning, so I felt justified in replacing
the name.

    Another thing I did was to give the head-alien a name, and fix a few
other little things I'd missed originally.  I also added in the throw-away
line about the "Llocaar disaster," and one or two other lines to foreshadow
it.  This bit was put in because, one day, it suddenly occured to me that I
hadn't thought out a REASON for alias James Mentira to be seeking revenge,
and it bothered me.  As it appeared originally, he wanted to kill me
basically because he wanted to kill me!  :-)

    Looking back over the stories "Chessmen of the Apocolypse" and "Time and
Time Again," I find myself looking anew at all the details Redstar and Cappy
had come up with for themselves.  Redstar's android, Jennifer1, computer,
Einstein, and his supercar, the Redmobile, I find intriguing.  It's the sort
of thing I'd been doing for years with my computer, Joshua, and that huge
house of mine.  They'd started out the details in "Chessmen..." and then
fine tuned them, and continued it in "Time..." while adding more information
on the car.  I find myself wishing there had been more stories, longing to
know what would have come next.  I feel a great sense of loss.  They had
only just defined things, and were poised for a whole new set of stories.
    But, Captain R/C and Redstar moved away not long after this.  They went
off to college.  They had left a forwarding address, inviting us to keep in
touch, but I waited too long and lost contact with them.
    If it is at all possible, I WANT to get with them again someday and
continue these things.  Maybe through the internet....

    CommHex went down a few months after Redstar and Captain R/C left.  The
sysop couldn't afford to keep it online anymore, what with a new baby and
all.  In fact, it would have gone down much earlier, but the users, on their
own, decided they'd help pay the phone bill each month because they didn't
want to lose the Hex.  It was entirely their idea, not the sysop's.  Not that
the bill was all that much.  The sysop then devised the Fund-O-Meter, where
you could look up online a list of the funds donated each month, shown with
each month's phone bill subtracted.  The sysop, as I recall, said that if the
phone bill went uncovered by the donations for more than two months, he was
going to take the BBS down.
    The Fund-O-Meter was kept going for maybe a coupla years... but when
Redstar and Cappy left, it meant I was about the only one left who regularly
contributed to the 'Meter... and I became, about then, financially strapped,
so....

    Temporal Vortex BBS (or TLVX for short) was the sister board to CommHex.
It used to run the same software as the Hex, in fact.  Actually, this is the
BBS where the story which first introduced the Fenechrone/Xoonakrone appeared.
It was a story that was started on the Hex, while "Chessmen..." was still in
progress, and got moved to the Vortex.  That story, about a space rescue on a
planet covered with many wrecked spacecraft, was finished just before "Time
and Time Again."
    Unfortunately, due to a mixup with some files, that story has been lost.
I HAVE been trying to find someone with a copy of the files, and have a lead
on a possible source, but as of this writing, I haven't gotten any of the
missing text.

    There was one last story which Captain R/C and Redstar participated in,
and it also appeared on TLVX.  It was a story taking place after "Time..."
and also dealt with time travel, a little.  It is tied up with a second tale
which is still being written.  When that story is completed, or possibly
even a sequel to that story, they will be archived together.
    Unfortunately, Temporal Vortex never had the number of callers that
CommHex had, and now virtually everyone that calls does so only to read the
Usenet newsgroups, which have been added in the last two or three years.
I've not been able to get much participation in the remaining story.
    Aaaaargh!!

                                        --Nomad of Norad, January 1994