Wyrick Balnor - Revision history

CourseDirector at 22:27, 31 May 2024

2024-05-31T22:27:08Z

CourseDirector at 19:51, 31 May 2024

2024-05-31T19:51:20Z

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 ''"It took six months to get my friends found and relocated. Cost me every credit I'd saved but I did it. We'd grown apart, there had been some letters, but we hadn't really kept in touch. Still, I felt like I owed it to them to get them someplace better. The site they had been sent to wasn't as bad as all that, but you get three guys with post-graduate degrees and tell them they have to grow their own food, and, you know, they weren't happy.''
-''"Since I'd helped them get special dispensation, all four of them had to live with me in my one-bedroom apartment at first. Still, everyone was happier. Like I said, people will do a lot for flush toilets. My ex-girlfriend thanked me for helping her get relocated, but we didn't really renew our relationship. Things were really tough for her, back home she was being supported by her parents, here she really couldn't find a job that paid well enough to support herself. Unlike the rest of us, she wasn't exactly educated... she ended up marrying some guy and having a few kids, she wasn't all that happy, but who really can be after you're whole planet gets destroyed? My story has a happy ending, most don't.''
+''"Since I'd helped them get special dispensation, all five of us had to live with me in my studio apartment at first. It wasn't even called an apartment; a "bachelor economy accommodation" according to the documentation. Maybe 400 square feet, probably less, tiny kitchen, fold-down bed. Still, everyone was happier. Like I said, people will do a lot for flush toilets. My girlfriend didn't take me back. She had a really rough time of it, farming did not suite her. She'd aged horribly ad developed a nasty drinking problem.
 ''"I took my engineer friend to work with me. He's a VP now, but back then he took a pretty menial job. He didn't mind, work was work, and his background meant he could move up pretty fast. I started off as a shift supervisor, so it was kinda fun getting to order him around. My astronomer friend didn't have much trouble finding a job. While there isn't exactly work for astronomers, he still knew enough about astro-physics to get a good job in station operations, helping plot orbits and such.''

CourseDirector at 19:01, 31 May 2024

2024-05-31T19:01:54Z

Show changes

Siddharth1: /* Life Story */

2024-04-10T04:55:04Z

Life Story

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:55, 10 April 2024
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	Interviewer: ''"Oh, I'll bet that went well."''		Interviewer: ''"Oh, I'll bet that went well."''

	Wyrick(laughs): ''"Ha, kind of a practical joke, actually. What they gave us was a broken engine from a Harpy. Don't get me wrong, we'd never even imagined an ionic-vacuum drive that could do 70PSL, but yeah, it didn't take us real long to figure out it wasn't a faster-than-light drive. You know what I always feel bad about, all these years later?"''		Wyrick (laughs): ''"Ha, kind of a practical joke, actually. What they gave us was a broken engine from a Harpy. Don't get me wrong, we'd never even imagined an ionic-vacuum drive that could do 70PSL, but yeah, it didn't take us real long to figure out it wasn't a faster-than-light drive. You know what I always feel bad about, all these years later?"''

	Interviewer: ''"I'm sure it couldn't have been anything too bad."''		Interviewer: ''"I'm sure it couldn't have been anything too bad."''
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	Wyrick: ''"No. Um. He was a fitter. Took engines out, put new ones in. Basically an assistant to the guys who actually fix Harpy engines. And to me his job sounded so low-grade. And then he said "I'm gonna explain it to you like you're five" and walked me and my team through every phase of how a Harpy engine worked. And I felt so mad at this guy for being so much smarter than me."''		Wyrick: ''"No. Um. He was a fitter. Took engines out, put new ones in. Basically an assistant to the guys who actually fix Harpy engines. And to me his job sounded so low-grade. And then he said "I'm gonna explain it to you like you're five" and walked me and my team through every phase of how a Harpy engine worked. And I felt so mad at this guy for being so much smarter than me."''

	''"Of course I'm a really non-confrontational guy--at least I was--so I don't think George ever even knew I was mad at him. He died, and I've felt kind of bad ever since because I looked down on him for being a glorified auto-mechanic. We did become friends, of a sort. I think he just liked to rib me. The guy directing my team wanted to file a formal complaint because George had 'tricked' us, George blew him off. He liked to come to the staff cafeteria and eat lunch with me and my friends. I think the funniest incident I can recall... so as I said, George wasn't really a genius, we could talk circles around him when it came to physics or math. Then one day my friend starts getting into particle physics, and George bends HIM over the barrel. Over-turns basically everything he thought, in just a few sentences. And then laughs and says "I remember that one because I missed it on the mechanics' qualifier". Yeah. A test he FAILED taught him more about this one thing than my genius best friend had figured out in a lifetime of research. George liked me because he said I was a good sport about everything, really I'm just a push-over. We found out from George the whole thing with the engine was under orders from Admiral Welker. Apparently teams all over my planet were being handed random pieces of trash from the fleet, told they were FTL drives, and asked to reverse-engineer them. Any team that figured out what they actually had got to move on to actual technology. George wanted me put in charge of a project--a real project--to try and reverse-engineer a beam cannon and see if we could reproduce them for defensive purposes.''		''"Of course I'm a really non-confrontational guy--at least I was--so I don't think George ever even knew I was mad at him. He died, and I've felt kind of bad ever since because I looked down on him for being a glorified auto-mechanic. We did become friends, of a sort. I think he just liked to rib me. The guy directing my team wanted to file a formal complaint because George had 'tricked' us, George blew him off. He liked to come to the staff cafeteria and eat lunch with me and my friends. I think the funniest incident I can recall... so as I said, George wasn't really a genius, we could talk circles around him when it came to physics or math. Then one day my friend starts getting into particle physics, and George bends HIM over the barrel. Over-turns basically everything he thought, in just a few sentences. And then laughs and says, "I remember that one because I missed it on the mechanics' qualifier". Yeah. A test he FAILED taught him more about this one thing than my genius best friend had figured out in a lifetime of research. George liked me because he said I was a good sport about everything, really I'm just a push-over. We found out from George the whole thing with the engine was under orders from Admiral Welker. Apparently teams all over my planet were being handed random pieces of trash from the fleet, told they were FTL drives, and asked to reverse-engineer them. Any team that figured out what they actually had got to move on to actual technology. George wanted me put in charge of a project--a real project--to try and reverse-engineer a beam cannon and see if we could reproduce them for defensive purposes.''

	''"We never got that far. I got on pretty well with old George for a couple of months. He even came and hung out at my apartment a few times. He got to know me well enough he felt like he could be honest. He said no matter what any of us did, my planet couldn't hope to hold back the Kamians even with the full support of the Blade. I asked him why they didn't just bring in more troops, all he said was... 'that hasn't worked yet'."		''"We never got that far. I got on pretty well with old George for a couple of months. He even came and hung out at my apartment a few times. He got to know me well enough he felt like he could be honest. He said no matter what any of us did, my planet couldn't hope to hold back the Kamians even with the full support of the Blade. I asked him why they didn't just bring in more troops, all he said was... 'that hasn't worked yet'."

Siddharth1: /* Life Story */

2024-04-10T04:52:55Z

Life Story

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:52, 10 April 2024
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	''"Well, all that changed when our radio telescopes started picking up strong radio signals. Strong, close signals. My friend was a--you don't really have a word for it, here; we used to call someone who studies stars through a telescope an 'astronomer'--well my astronomer friend got his hands on the raw radio telescope data and we all had a crack at going over it. See, observatories all over the world picked up signals from deep space, from a solar system maybe 100 light years away that we hadn't received signals from before; and mathematical analysis indicated an extremely high probability they were artificial in nature. I know it's crazy we didn't think of this sooner, but the one guy in our group who didn't have a doctorate suggested we play the damn things over our speakers. Well we did, and that made up all our minds. I think again people were figuring this out all over the world, but when you cleaned up the Doppler shifts and played the signals it was definitely voices.''		''"Well, all that changed when our radio telescopes started picking up strong radio signals. Strong, close signals. My friend was a--you don't really have a word for it, here; we used to call someone who studies stars through a telescope an 'astronomer'--well my astronomer friend got his hands on the raw radio telescope data and we all had a crack at going over it. See, observatories all over the world picked up signals from deep space, from a solar system maybe 100 light years away that we hadn't received signals from before; and mathematical analysis indicated an extremely high probability they were artificial in nature. I know it's crazy we didn't think of this sooner, but the one guy in our group who didn't have a doctorate suggested we play the damn things over our speakers. Well we did, and that made up all our minds. I think again people were figuring this out all over the world, but when you cleaned up the Doppler shifts and played the signals it was definitely voices.''

	''"~~Its~~ really funny, now, thinking back over those experiences. It sounded like a foreign language, completely alien, but they were speaking [[Common]]. Just with so many acronyms and abbreviations it sounded like aliens. The whole thing felt very big. Here we had proof we weren't alone in the universe.''		''"It's really funny, now, thinking back over those experiences. It sounded like a foreign language, completely alien, but they were speaking [[Common]]. Just with so many acronyms and abbreviations it sounded like aliens. The whole thing felt very big. Here we had proof we weren't alone in the universe.''

	''"That happened a few weeks before the first attack came.''		''"That happened a few weeks before the first attack came.''

Siddharth1: /* Life Story */

2024-04-10T04:51:54Z

Life Story

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:51, 10 April 2024
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	Interviewer: ''"Well that sounds just cryptic enough to be interesting, why don't you tell us about it?"''		Interviewer: ''"Well that sounds just cryptic enough to be interesting, why don't you tell us about it?"''

	Wyrick: ''"Sure, sure. Well, where to begin? I guess I shouldn't bother with place names, you won't have heard of them. Yes, I was born outside of the known worlds--not much, but still. I had what you would recognize as a fairly conventional childhood. I got picked on a lot in school and my mom was pretty abusive. Let's not get too far into that. I ~~attented~~ a fairly prestigious university on my 'home planet', received a doctorate, and did work on high-energy lasers. That's probably all fairly standard given my current line of work. I think what's important here is to know that for the first decades of my life, growing up, getting an education, and working for several fields, I thought there was only one universe, and humans only lived on one planet, and that was my planet. I'm not particularly naïve; everyone else on my planet, about six and a half billion people, thought roughly the same thing.''		Wyrick: ''"Sure, sure. Well, where to begin? I guess I shouldn't bother with place names, you won't have heard of them. Yes, I was born outside of the [[known worlds]]--not much, but still. I had what you would recognize as a fairly conventional childhood. I got picked on a lot in school and my mom was pretty abusive. Let's not get too far into that. I attended a fairly prestigious university on my 'home planet', received a doctorate, and did work on high-energy lasers. That's probably all fairly standard given my current line of work. I think what's important here is to know that for the first decades of my life, growing up, getting an education, and working for several fields, I thought there was only one universe, and humans only lived on one planet, and that was my planet. I'm not particularly naïve; everyone else on my planet, about six and a half billion people, thought roughly the same thing.''

	''"I'm not suggesting there wasn't debate, but that's all we had. Arguments. At the time I shared an apartment with a theoretical physicist, and my two best friends were also in the scenes, so, you know, we had some discussions. People all over my planet did, we had large-scale scientific searches but with our technology limited to speed-of-light communications, we didn't really stand a chance. Nobody could prove anything. To me, I'm a scientist, I believe Absolute Certainty is a big thing, so I never decided one way or the other. My friends all more or less believed in 'aliens', but I digress.''		''"I'm not suggesting there wasn't debate, but that's all we had. Arguments. At the time I shared an apartment with a theoretical physicist, and my two best friends were also in the scenes, so, you know, we had some discussions. People all over my planet did, we had large-scale scientific searches but with our technology limited to speed-of-light communications, we didn't really stand a chance. Nobody could prove anything. To me, I'm a scientist, I believe Absolute Certainty is a big thing, so I never decided one way or the other. My friends all more or less believed in 'aliens', but I digress.''

Siddharth1 at 04:51, 10 April 2024

2024-04-10T04:51:20Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:51, 10 April 2024
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	Interviewer: ''"What was it like where you grew up?"''		Interviewer: ''"What was it like where you grew up?"''

	Wyrick:(laughs) ''"What is it like anywhere?"''		Wyrick: (laughs) ''"What is it like anywhere?"''

	Interviewer: ''"Were you born on Langara?"''		Interviewer: ''"Were you born on Langara?"''

Siddharth1: /* Life Story */

2024-04-05T03:17:23Z

Life Story

← Older revision		Revision as of 03:17, 5 April 2024
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	Wyrick: ''"Our radio signals were a hundred years old. We had no idea there would be hostility.''		Wyrick: ''"Our radio signals were a hundred years old. We had no idea there would be hostility.''

	''"It was our ships that arrived first--Crimson Blade ships, I mean. They weren't 'ours' back then, they were 'yours', but I'll get into that later. My astronomer buddy called me to the observatory as soon as the first ships arrived in the outer solar system, we detected the signals from when they dropped out of FTL. Absolutely mind-boggling for the time, we had no clue what we were looking at. Just this huge flash of energy--the jump point interface--and then all of sudden here's dozens of ten-mile-long space ships. You have to understand, my people's idea of 'space travel' was going to our own moon a couple times three decades before I was born, and then trying to make visits to low-orbit look cool. And here you guys come along in these humongous things.''		''"It was our ships that arrived first--[[Crimson Blade]] ships, I mean. They weren't 'ours' back then, they were 'yours', but I'll get into that later. My astronomer buddy called me to the observatory as soon as the first ships arrived in the outer solar system, we detected the signals from when they dropped out of FTL. Absolutely mind-boggling for the time, we had no clue what we were looking at. Just this huge flash of energy--the jump point interface--and then all of sudden here's dozens of ten-mile-long space ships. You have to understand, my people's idea of 'space travel' was going to our own moon a couple times three decades before I was born, and then trying to make visits to low-orbit look cool. And here you guys come along in these humongous things.''

	''"I remember the first planet-falls just not knowing what to think. Here come these ships, I know they were Harpies doing long-range recon now, but then it was like, wow, flying saucer--okay flying dart-shaped thing--yeah. And then the drop-ships over-flew us with the loud speakers and... I don't know how else to describe it. Your whole life you think aliens aren't a thing, and suddenly a spaceship from another world is hovering over you blaring '''your language''' at you through loud speakers. Telling us to stay in our homes, to get to shelter, so surreal at the time. I lived in a fifth-floor walk-up and I went to the roof. I guess I figured if this was a real invasion, hiding behind my couch wasn't going to help. God, I miss that couch...''		''"I remember the first planet-falls just not knowing what to think. Here come these ships, I know they were Harpies doing long-range recon now, but then it was like, wow, flying saucer--okay flying dart-shaped thing--yeah. And then the drop-ships over-flew us with the loud speakers and... I don't know how else to describe it. Your whole life you think aliens aren't a thing, and suddenly a spaceship from another world is hovering over you blaring '''your language''' at you through loud speakers. Telling us to stay in our homes, to get to shelter, so surreal at the time. I lived in a fifth-floor walk-up and I went to the roof. I guess I figured if this was a real invasion, hiding behind my couch wasn't going to help. God, I miss that couch...''

	''"Well the Bladers got there about nine hours before the ~~Kamians~~. The city where I lived wasn't hit. They didn't even get my country's capitol. They hit the city where, sixty years ago, we directed flight operations for our moon landings, but I think that was just coincidence. The fight was was pure chaos. The Kamians couldn't get close enough to bombard the surface with energy weapons, so they sent in bombers. The Crimson Blade fought them off. It was terrifying, Harpies going toe to toe with Kamian drones in our stratosphere, full on mega-ton nukes going off. For days we couldn't even look at the sky, tens of thousands of my people went blind.''		''"Well the Bladers got there about nine hours before the [[Kami]]ans. The city where I lived wasn't hit. They didn't even get my country's capitol. They hit the city where, sixty years ago, we directed flight operations for our moon landings, but I think that was just coincidence. The fight was was pure chaos. The Kamians couldn't get close enough to bombard the surface with energy weapons, so they sent in bombers. The Crimson Blade fought them off. It was terrifying, Harpies going toe to toe with Kamian drones in our stratosphere, full on mega-ton nukes going off. For days we couldn't even look at the sky, tens of thousands of my people went blind.''

	''"And then the calm after the battle. I remember my president announcing it. Then he brought on 'the alien'... feels so funny, now. It was Admiral Welker, you remember him? Big surly guy. Picture him in a shock suit, taking off the helmet. Could barely comprehend it at the time, never thought ten years later I'd be playing cards and drinking with the man. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We were told in a nutshell that there was a war going on past our solar system, that our planet was now on the front lines, and that starting immediately the entire planet was going to mobilize into a total-war economy. The kind of massive changes you never expect to see.		''"And then the calm after the battle. I remember my president announcing it. Then he brought on 'the alien'... feels so funny, now. It was Admiral Welker, you remember him? Big surly guy. Picture him in a shock suit, taking off the helmet. Could barely comprehend it at the time, never thought ten years later I'd be playing cards and drinking with the man. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We were told in a nutshell that there was a war going on past our solar system, that our planet was now on the front lines, and that starting immediately the entire planet was going to mobilize into a total-war economy. The kind of massive changes you never expect to see.

Siddharth1: /* Life Story */

2024-04-05T03:16:41Z

Life Story

← Older revision		Revision as of 03:16, 5 April 2024
Line 24:		Line 24:
	''"I'm not suggesting there wasn't debate, but that's all we had. Arguments. At the time I shared an apartment with a theoretical physicist, and my two best friends were also in the scenes, so, you know, we had some discussions. People all over my planet did, we had large-scale scientific searches but with our technology limited to speed-of-light communications, we didn't really stand a chance. Nobody could prove anything. To me, I'm a scientist, I believe Absolute Certainty is a big thing, so I never decided one way or the other. My friends all more or less believed in 'aliens', but I digress.''		''"I'm not suggesting there wasn't debate, but that's all we had. Arguments. At the time I shared an apartment with a theoretical physicist, and my two best friends were also in the scenes, so, you know, we had some discussions. People all over my planet did, we had large-scale scientific searches but with our technology limited to speed-of-light communications, we didn't really stand a chance. Nobody could prove anything. To me, I'm a scientist, I believe Absolute Certainty is a big thing, so I never decided one way or the other. My friends all more or less believed in 'aliens', but I digress.''

	''"Well, all that changed when our radio telescopes started picking up strong radio signals. Strong, close signals. My friend was a--you don't really have a word for it, here; we used to call someone who studies stars through a telescope an 'astronomer'--well my astronomer friend got his hands on the raw radio telescope data and we all had a crack at going over it. See, observatories all over the world picked up signals from deep space, from a solar system maybe 100 light years away that we hadn't received signals from before; and mathematical analysis indicated an extremely high probability they were artificial in nature. I know ~~its~~ crazy we didn't think of this sooner, but the one guy in our group who didn't have a doctorate suggested we play the damn things over our speakers. Well we did, and that made up all our minds. I think again people were figuring this out all over the world, but when you cleaned up the Doppler shifts and played the signals it was definitely voices.''		''"Well, all that changed when our radio telescopes started picking up strong radio signals. Strong, close signals. My friend was a--you don't really have a word for it, here; we used to call someone who studies stars through a telescope an 'astronomer'--well my astronomer friend got his hands on the raw radio telescope data and we all had a crack at going over it. See, observatories all over the world picked up signals from deep space, from a solar system maybe 100 light years away that we hadn't received signals from before; and mathematical analysis indicated an extremely high probability they were artificial in nature. I know it's crazy we didn't think of this sooner, but the one guy in our group who didn't have a doctorate suggested we play the damn things over our speakers. Well we did, and that made up all our minds. I think again people were figuring this out all over the world, but when you cleaned up the Doppler shifts and played the signals it was definitely voices.''

	''"Its really funny, now, thinking back over those experiences. It sounded like a foreign language, completely alien, but they were speaking [[Common]]. Just with so many acronyms and abbreviations it sounded like aliens. The whole thing felt very big. Here we had proof we weren't alone in the universe.''		''"Its really funny, now, thinking back over those experiences. It sounded like a foreign language, completely alien, but they were speaking [[Common]]. Just with so many acronyms and abbreviations it sounded like aliens. The whole thing felt very big. Here we had proof we weren't alone in the universe.''
Line 38:		Line 38:
	''"I remember the first planet-falls just not knowing what to think. Here come these ships, I know they were Harpies doing long-range recon now, but then it was like, wow, flying saucer--okay flying dart-shaped thing--yeah. And then the drop-ships over-flew us with the loud speakers and... I don't know how else to describe it. Your whole life you think aliens aren't a thing, and suddenly a spaceship from another world is hovering over you blaring '''your language''' at you through loud speakers. Telling us to stay in our homes, to get to shelter, so surreal at the time. I lived in a fifth-floor walk-up and I went to the roof. I guess I figured if this was a real invasion, hiding behind my couch wasn't going to help. God, I miss that couch...''		''"I remember the first planet-falls just not knowing what to think. Here come these ships, I know they were Harpies doing long-range recon now, but then it was like, wow, flying saucer--okay flying dart-shaped thing--yeah. And then the drop-ships over-flew us with the loud speakers and... I don't know how else to describe it. Your whole life you think aliens aren't a thing, and suddenly a spaceship from another world is hovering over you blaring '''your language''' at you through loud speakers. Telling us to stay in our homes, to get to shelter, so surreal at the time. I lived in a fifth-floor walk-up and I went to the roof. I guess I figured if this was a real invasion, hiding behind my couch wasn't going to help. God, I miss that couch...''

	''"Well the Bladers got there about nine hours before the Kamians. The city where I lived wasn't hit. They didn't even get my country's capitol. They hit the city where, sixty years ago, we directed flight operations for our moon landings, but I think that was just coincidence. The fight was was pure chaos. The Kamians couldn't get close enough to bombard the surface with energy weapons, so they sent in bombers. The Crimson Blade fought them off. It was terrifying, ~~harpies~~ going toe to toe with Kamian drones in our stratosphere, full on mega-ton nukes going off. For days we couldn't even look at the sky, tens of thousands of my people went blind.''		''"Well the Bladers got there about nine hours before the Kamians. The city where I lived wasn't hit. They didn't even get my country's capitol. They hit the city where, sixty years ago, we directed flight operations for our moon landings, but I think that was just coincidence. The fight was was pure chaos. The Kamians couldn't get close enough to bombard the surface with energy weapons, so they sent in bombers. The Crimson Blade fought them off. It was terrifying, Harpies going toe to toe with Kamian drones in our stratosphere, full on mega-ton nukes going off. For days we couldn't even look at the sky, tens of thousands of my people went blind.''

	''"And then the calm after the battle. I remember my president announcing it. Then he brought on 'the alien'... feels so funny, now. It was Admiral Welker, you remember him? Big surly guy. Picture him in a shock suit, taking off the helmet. Could barely comprehend it at the time, never thought ten years later I'd be playing cards and drinking with the man. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We were told in a nutshell that there was a war going on past our solar system, that our planet was now on the front lines, and that starting immediately the entire planet was going to mobilize into a total-war economy. The kind of massive changes you never expect to see.		''"And then the calm after the battle. I remember my president announcing it. Then he brought on 'the alien'... feels so funny, now. It was Admiral Welker, you remember him? Big surly guy. Picture him in a shock suit, taking off the helmet. Could barely comprehend it at the time, never thought ten years later I'd be playing cards and drinking with the man. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We were told in a nutshell that there was a war going on past our solar system, that our planet was now on the front lines, and that starting immediately the entire planet was going to mobilize into a total-war economy. The kind of massive changes you never expect to see.

Siddharth1: /* Later Life */

2024-04-03T01:18:23Z

Later Life

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:18, 3 April 2024
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	His last major project for IFA was a drastic overhaul of turret operations, based entirely on improvements suggested by active-duty soldiers. While such a task should normally have fallen to the Crimson Blade, Wyrick's re-design was quickly accepted and became the new standard.		His last major project for IFA was a drastic overhaul of turret operations, based entirely on improvements suggested by active-duty soldiers. While such a task should normally have fallen to the Crimson Blade, Wyrick's re-design was quickly accepted and became the new standard.

	He also worked to organize shooting competitions. This began in the refitting facilities near his principle factories, but he organized them wherever he went. Each crew was given full control of the turret for ~~it's~~ "shot", and the games were organized very much like terrestrial marksmanship events. Except in space. With giant cannons. Gun crews always competed as a whole, with no one individual given special recognition, and the events were judged by range, impact force, and "artistry", with crews firing on both moving and stationary targets. The completions spread like wildfire and very quickly became an official part of [[Crimson Blade]] training routines. In light of the moral boost brought on by these competitions, the [[Blind Consul]] gave special dispensation for Wyrick to receive one of the highest military honors, despite no longer being a member of the Crimson Blade.		He also worked to organize shooting competitions. This began in the refitting facilities near his principle factories, but he organized them wherever he went. Each crew was given full control of the turret for its "shot", and the games were organized very much like terrestrial marksmanship events. Except in space. With giant cannons. Gun crews always competed as a whole, with no one individual given special recognition, and the events were judged by range, impact force, and "artistry", with crews firing on both moving and stationary targets. The completions spread like wildfire and very quickly became an official part of [[Crimson Blade]] training routines. In light of the moral boost brought on by these competitions, the [[Blind Consul]] gave special dispensation for Wyrick to receive one of the highest military honors, despite no longer being a member of the Crimson Blade.

	Wyrick retired at the age of eighty-seven, having never married. In his memoirs, he wrote that he felt he could not "connect" with the women he crossed paths with, and that his work for IFA had simply taken up too much of his life. He did opine about "The one that got away", his girlfriend from his home world who left him in the early years after he was discharged from the military.		Wyrick retired at the age of eighty-seven, having never married. In his memoirs, he wrote that he felt he could not "connect" with the women he crossed paths with, and that his work for IFA had simply taken up too much of his life. He did opine about "The one that got away", his girlfriend from his home world who left him in the early years after he was discharged from the military.