From Disaster Comes Good by D.A.Sanford - HTML preview

Signs

I am looking at the inventory list. Things are disappearing. Theft is nonexistent on this world because everything is available to everyone. If you need something you can get it. That is why we found it hard to believe when our people start to report theft. It is not of normal things. It is of the tech things that come from the cooperation between the goblins and those researchers of that world. The inventory list is proof. Tech items are the ones to vanish.

Because this may most likely be intruders on this world, they somehow got past the invincible barriers of the goblin fleet. This has to be reported. We notified Serezz and Decca. Serezz has told us that they have noticed the same.

He tells us of reports from other worlds they protect that similar items have just disappeared. They tell us that no ships have entered even the most outer reaches of this system or others. The fear is that the non-magic doors are being used. If that was true, none of the freed worlds are safe.

To this end, the inventor of those doors has a program and have sent it to all of the freed world’s guardians. They were told that this is only the first step. Once the origin world is located, there will be extra protection given the freed goblin worlds. This is a guarantee by the inventor.

One thing that he has not made public is that they have detected the signature of electronic doors opening. They have detected openings on this world and feel that this is where they have shifted their operations to. He was just waiting for the fleet upgrade plans to be sent to his replicator.

They figure out that there has to be infiltrators using the cloaking device that was created by the inventor Steve Wright, CEO of Invent Unlimited Corporation. Steve felt that just this problem would rear its ugly head and prepared countermeasures. A single tower is erected, for communication purposes. When it was completed that day, Sarezz sends the signal that renders anyone using the cloaking device to be immediately exposed and rendered unconscious until the signal is cut off.

The monitor that Sarezz has on his ship shows the location of those cloaking devices. There are four in the same location. Going to that location they find that a family of recent settlers are in fact a combination of humans and orcs. All adults but some were posing as children. They had an artificial door mechanism.

The goblin crew took them into custody but knew that the door would be opened soon.

There were stolen items that were ready for transport. The door was opened and a stun device was thrown through to the other side by the goblins. They go through and to their dismay, all indications point to the inventor’s world.

A rival corporation found a world that had no compunction about selling those restricted items if the price was right. That is how they had gotten their hands on the door and cloaking devices. They stole those devices from their own world and others and were setting up a black market to the universe.

Steve and his wife, Shela, were called to the location. It is a building that was owned by that rival. He was taken aback. With his records, he found out the world that owned the door used had purchased multiple of each. It was the world that, after selling them, they reported that they were defective. They insisted that replacements be shipped but balked on returning the defective units.

With a tap of a mouse on that world’s account, all devices owned by them self destructed in a most violent way. That was a signal to all other worlds that this misuse of Invent Unlimited Corp devices was not to be tolerated.

That world had been sent back into pre electronic times. The goblin fleet would monitor them for the foreseeable future. They were quarantined. On Steve’s world, that rival corporation has been closed down by their own government’s special unit. It seems that some of the things they stole were also very secret items that were used by the government.

Steve sent out a message to the races that could only use the non-magic version of the door and cloaking devices. “Don’t think of selling any of our items or you will experience the same destruction. Before you try, you would have to destroy all devices that have our patented components in them. Be safe don’t even try.”

That corporation was ceded to Invent Unlimited Corp for the dismantling. They found elaborate records of transactions including worlds and the serial numbers of the stolen devices.

They tried to duplicate them but the internal components were such that they could not be duplicated without purchasing them directly from Steve’s corporation. That is why they were stealing those items.

Some of the employees of that corporation’s department seemed to vanish from all records. Don’t eat the dog food is all that we can say.

After all that, the thefts ceased to be a problem but throughout all the goblin protected worlds, the first thing a freed person was required to do was to pass through a screening booth that emitted the cloaking device cancellation signal.

A concealed software update for all doors and cloaking devices was that if they were opened to any of the goblin protected worlds, a signal was on those worlds that would close in the process of the first person to go through. Instant death for that one but the door would explode and destroy the building it was in.

This would trigger an alarm at Steves workshop. That world would be given a day to give him an explanation as to why he should not do the same thing he did to the other world. That happened once and now there are two worlds that are pre-electronic.

They have found that others tried to use them but the punishment finally stopped even that. Our world was able to return to its normal peaceful self.

We now are taking part in defense of our world but also some have joined the goblin fleet. Mostly the felids. The strange thing is that now there are couples forming between the felids and mouse folk on our world. It will be interesting to see just what their children will be like bigger. Mouse like but with the fangs, claws and cunning.

This is getting very interesting.