|
sheep-dodger posted:I think that can be achieved by tying publication of FESTER records to either 1) the decommissioning of the program or 2) the accession of every recognised human government to either membership or association status in the COMINTERP. Once either of those happens the anonymised data gets made public (surely FESTER also produced data that would be valuable to academic study) and citizens get the ability to request their personal data, if such exists. I imagine the second bit'll more or less fall under the Ministry of Public Statistics proposal I made above, they'll get the unenviable task to chair a committee where experts of every stripe as well as representatives from every polity who wants to gets their say in what info we're storing on every individual citizen, and also who can access this and how. Sure, at lot of it will be the various ministries saying what information they need (health, work, education etc) with the committee deciding how it's stored and accessed but I fully expect SPECTRE will have to send a representative and the committee will have a heated debate on their recommendation but the way we've been playing the CI I figure they'll implement some sort of 'all surveillance information stored will be made available to the subject automatically after X years' clause.
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 08:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 07:16 |
|
|
Antilles posted:
Typically this would fall under the purview of a government agency, rather than a ministry (perhaps a subagency of the economic planning agency, as the Soviet Union did for a while with Gosplan and the Central Statistical Directorate), which gives it a little bit of independence from the political vagaries of the day. Plus I don't really see a reason to limit it to population statistics; agricultural statistics, economic statistics, and more are all useful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 10:04
|
|
|
That aside, seems like we're also in need of a space naval command structure and administration.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 13:50
|
|
|
quote:Earth Guard Command Bill
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 16:30
|
|
|
TDS posted:
Seconded
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2022 20:02
|
|
|
sheep-dodger posted:Amendment 1) Added an amendment to my proposal to include conditions for the publication of FESTER data as well as a FOIA right
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2022 00:47
|
|
|
e-dt posted:Typically this would fall under the purview of a government agency, rather than a ministry (perhaps a subagency of the economic planning agency, as the Soviet Union did for a while with Gosplan and the Central Statistical Directorate), which gives it a little bit of independence from the political vagaries of the day. Plus I don't really see a reason to limit it to population statistics; agricultural statistics, economic statistics, and more are all useful. Oh I agree, once up and running MOPS won't be responsible for the majority of our data collection nor the actual day-to-day maintenance of our data stores, but these are details we need set in stone before we actually start doing things like a CI-wide census or designing a common id so we might as well take the opportunity to sit down and hash these things out while we're spinning up these ministries. Maybe 'chair' isn't the right word to use here when pretty much every other CI ministry and agency will be involved in the process, but since MOPS will be severely hindered in doing its job until these policies are hammered out we might as well get it done now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2022 10:26
|
|
|
Question: how is the Ministry of Agriculture's set-up going and what is our current outlook in terms of food security?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2022 15:52
|
|
|
Proposal for the Bureau of Socialist Sciences The Bureau shall expand on the CI's previous mandate to handle TNE research to handle coordination, publication, and support of all CI scientific efforts. This shall include the construction and support of scientific infrastructure (particle accelerators, satellite arrays, etc) that are beyond the resources of existing CI member state research organizations. Should the Ministry Omnibus pass, the Bureau shall fall under the authority of the Ministry of Education. If it does not, then the Bureau shall coordinate its efforts with the organizations responsible for education and scientific efforts within their member states and universities therein. Nuclear Weapon Anti-Proliferation and Control Act An Authority on Nuclear Fissile Materials shall be stood up for the purpose of cataloguing and tracking all materials on the earth capable of being refined into weapons or that have already been refined into weapons. Upon completion of the anti-missile railgun array, the Authority shall seek to, and CI members must aide it in, the decommissioning and removal of all said weapons and the safe storage of their materials in the most secure circumstances possible. The Authority shall vigilantly monitor all civilian applications of nuclear energy, and the production of materials to produce that energy, to ensure that it is strictly kept for that purpose and not misappropriated for the creation of new weapons. The PLAN Plan The PLAN shall be organized towards the missions of supporting PLA ground operations, anti-piracy, and search and rescue on the open sea. To that end, the PLAN shall accept any and all viable vessels, or vessels that may be restored to viability with reasonable effort, from CI members that said members wish to donate and organize them into fleet commands for the world's oceans. Should no ship be available to cover a needed mission, the PLAN is to petition the committee in charge of the PLA for purchase of ships.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 00:39
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:Proposal for the Bureau of Socialist Sciences Tar Heel Confederation seconds all proposals.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 00:50
|
|
|
Could we, now or eventually, have the ability to survey and locate all TN materials that are not mineable deposits? The Hawaiian recovery of a wrecked alien ship should be a little more shocking to us; unless they hit upon it through dumb luck, they already knew where to look. Why shouldn't we? Obviously, there's noise from the civilian uses of TN materials, but we can probably safely eliminate most populated areas. For that matter, being able to locate unexpected TN signatures in places where there should not be any has pretty clear intelligence gathering benefits. I would propose legislation suggesting this, but it's not clear if this actually works, or if Aurora just burped something up that had to be explained away. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Feb 23, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 01:23
|
|
|
The DRMN would like to propose Project Dorothy Recent advances in computing and sensor technology opens up new frontiers in studying the cosmos. Especially the living cosmos, full of inhabitants and history of which we know vanishingly little. To that end, I propose the launching of a satellite carrying a cutting-edge radio telescope, a successor to the Project OZMA of old, to listen for artificial radio transmissions coming from the depths of space and possibly decrypt anything we find, expanding our understanding of interstellar civilization [TOP SECRET FOR SECURITY COUNCIL EYES ONLY] The above is the public cover story. The actual purpose of Project Dorothy is to use that ELINT module tech we researched and have yet to implement in a craft. We will be pointing it down at the Earth, scouring for GLADIO transmissions and encrypted communications and churning through that mass of data to produce actionable information. FESTER has done a good job of sussing out cells hiding off the grid via anomalous IR and EM signatures, but it must be supplemented to find any deep-cover operatives hiding within normal society. The Joint Chiefs are still at large, and we're no closer to finding them. Yes, this raises horrible concerns about invading the privacy of Comintern citizens, but the concept should at least be put forward as an option to consider should we wish to go down a morally dubious road.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 02:40
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:The DRMN would like to propose Project Dorothy Seconded
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 03:24
|
|
|
Proletarization of Debt act All personal debt shall have a maximum length of ten years, excepting mortgages. All other debts shall have a maximum length of thirty years. When a person dies all their debt is annulled and cannot be inherited or passed on. All interest collecting debt shall have their interest rates limited to non usurious amounts. No debts shall be immune to bankruptcy, and when an organization goes bankrupt then the workers shall have both right of first payment and right of first purchase. If a debtee sells the debt then the debtor has right of first purchase, and must be at the same cost that it was being sold to a third party. TDS posted:Amendment to the Universal Bill of Rights
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 04:58
|
|
|
Communist Zombie posted:Proletarization of Debt act Seconded, though California would prefer personal debt capped at seven years.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 05:07
|
|
|
Communist Zombie posted:Proletarization of Debt act Yes, hello, NKVD?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 05:15
|
|
|
Members of the Congress. I don't know how many of you have been to space but I have. It's a cold, unforgiving space, anathema to human life; yet, we live and thrive in the vacuum, on Luna and soon on Venus and Mars. But like all human endevours new situations require new tools. Without further intro Im proposing the Light Armor Neomaterial Chassis Engineering and Research Bill aka LANCER Bill for the purpose of developing and improving personal and piloted mech suits for low g operations, with the goal of enhancing logistic, mantenainance and emergency operations and, it has to be said, potential combat operations. the NOMAD Collective on its own and with Japanese engineers are already developing prototypes for work in VENUSPLAN, Luna and asteroid mining, with this we aim to improve on this designs as well generating standards, quality controls and even compatibility and modularity in global mech suit design  Note: This is a fluff bill for mechs in the LP unless Mr. Bates decides for it to have some mechanical effect
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 06:04
|
|
|
Pacho posted:Members of the Congress. I don't know how many of you have been to space but I have. It's a cold, unforgiving space, anathema to human life; yet, we live and thrive in the vacuum, on Luna and soon on Venus and Mars. But like all human endevours new situations require new tools. Without further intro Im proposing the Light Armor Neomaterial Chassis Engineering and Research Bill aka LANCER Bill for the purpose of developing and improving personal and piloted mech suits for low g operations, with the goal of enhancing logistic, mantenainance and emergency operations and, it has to be said, potential combat operations. the NOMAD Collective on its own and with Japanese engineers are already developing prototypes for work in VENUSPLAN, Luna and asteroid mining, with this we aim to improve on this designs as well generating standards, quality controls and even compatibility and modularity in global mech suit design Seconded
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 06:06
|
|
|
Formation of the Cominterp Safety Commission This bill shall form a commission to harmonise the safety regulations throughout the Communist Interplanetary. The Cominterp Safety Commission shall be a convocation of the various national bodies for health and safety of the Cominterp that advises national bodies (e.g. producing advisory regulations, evaluating the efficacy and safety of medicines and producing recommendations for whether it should be approved by national bodies). Various subagencies would deal with food safety, medicine safety, workplace safety, product safety, etc. Formation of the Interplanetary Working Group on Standardisation This bill shall form a body to create and make freely available standards used for joint Cominterp projects. It shall work closely with existing national standardisation bodies and the ISO. The current project on standardising the Universal Character Set and its encoding, authorised by the Computer Character Encoding Act, shall fall under the jurisdiction of the Working Group.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 06:31
|
|
|
e-dt posted:Formation of the Cominterp Safety Commission Seconded
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2022 07:04
|
|
|
Volmarias posted:Could we, now or eventually, have the ability to survey and locate all TN materials that are not mineable deposits? Quite possible with ground-based geosurvey equipment technology, which you do not yet have but is available to research. Even with the most powerful orbital sensors, planets are huge, some deposits are very small, and there's all sorts of noise and interference that can prevent the space-based sensors from picking up literally everything. NewMars posted:Question: how is the Ministry of Agriculture's set-up going and what is our current outlook in terms of food security? Most of the Ministry's work in the first year has been fact-finding, data collection, and collating all of the information collected. The outlook thus far is good, with food production, logistical capacity, and distribution all having improved substantially since the end of the War. That having been said, the Ministry's data points to a potentially worrying trend in the medium to long term - while production is growing at a rapid rate from the immediate post-nuclear minimum, global consumption of food and agricultural goods is increasing faster than production is, as the global population rebounds, average daily caloric intake per person increases, and more and more people gain access to more varied and nutritionally complete diets. While this is absolutely not a bad thing, it may develop into an issue warranting concern at some point in the next decade. In addition, the Moon's enormous population explosion has completely obliterated all efforts at developing food self-sufficiency in the Lunar Socialist Republic, with the quadrupling of the nation's population far outstripping its meager and largely-experimental agricultural production; the majority of food consumed on the Moon at present time is imported. Deliberations are closed (later than they were supposed to be, I got distracted by work) and voting is now open! You may vote here: https://forms.gle/9fdRxtA9QMo2pDyv8 Feel free to discuss your votes in the thread, or in the LP's official Discord, which can be found here: https://discord.gg/C3AezZ8k Voting will remain open until approximately 11:59 on Saturday March 5, give or take a bit. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Mar 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2022 09:48
|
|
|
Hmm, that looming food issue. Securing the american breadbasket is a shorter-term fix, but I think we'll have to invest in other methods to make sure we don't end up with malthusian problems. And not just on earth! For the interests of both earth and space, next time voting's up, I am thinking of creating a task force between it and the ministry of environment to look into things like agroforestry, permaculture, urban cultivation and similar to start looking for solutions that will also be applicable to space colonies and terraforming efforts.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2022 10:10
|
|
|
Aye, we'll need a way to have colonies be self sustaining sooner or later after all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2022 10:32
|
|
|
Advancing sustainable food production is one part, yes, but eventually any unconstrained population growth will outstrip resources. Next summit I should really propose an initiative of improved sex education and abundant access to birth control to hopefully blunt any further population explosions
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2022 16:30
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:Advancing sustainable food production is one part, yes, but eventually any unconstrained population growth will outstrip resources. Next summit I should really propose an initiative of improved sex education and abundant access to birth control to hopefully blunt any further population explosions Agreed, a baby boom is likely unavailable but we should be able to mitigate it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2022 21:41
|
|
|
Comrades, a baby boom is not something to be avoided. While it’s imperative for the women of the world have the means and knowledge to control their reproductive health, the reality is that free from the yoke of capitalist exploitation and forced scarcity and with our new systems of social care, many may choose to have larger families. To see this as problem to ascribe to a pre-TNE mindset, and risk hobbling our long term plans to adorn the star with human flourishing. Realistically, Earth must run a population and food surplus. We must adopt a comprehensive plan to expand the areas under cultivation, invest in infrastructure to connect under utilized breadbaskets to the global food supply and strengthen the resilience and sustainability of current production. In particular, we need to invest in a comprehensive modernization of African agriculture - due to imperialist underdevelopment of the continent, there is immense potential there.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2022 00:01
|
|
|
To be clear, ooc, this is a flavor thing, not an actual Aurora concern? I didn't think Aurora modeled food. Or is this a "we currently still need infrastructure due to fallout" thing
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2022 20:56
|
|
|
Volmarias posted:To be clear, ooc, this is a flavor thing, not an actual Aurora concern? I didn't think Aurora modeled food. Or is this a "we currently still need infrastructure due to fallout" thing Flavour thing, yes.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2022 23:45
|
|
|
I just finished binge reading this whole thing, and wow. A good alternate history teaches you a lot about real history, and this one succeeds by a mile. Thanks for all your hard work, Mister Bates.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2022 17:54
|
|
|
A-115, Ministry Megapack Omnibus, passes, and the Ministries of Labor, Education, and Population Statistics will be spun up. NM-116, Regional Forum Creation Act, passes, and regional forums emulating the North American Forum will be established. A-117, A Proposal for Increased Oceanographic Research, passes, and we will scour the depths of the Earth's oceans, which to this day remain largely unknown and unexplored. NM-118, Antarctic Reconnaissance and Research Proposal, passes, and Antarctica will be explored as well - both the frozen wilderness, and the numerous unaffiliated human settlements which still remain there. TDS-119, Amendment to the Universal Bill of Rights, passes, and all forms of forced or coerced labor are banned in the Comintern, including as punishment for commission of a crime. SD-120, The Lancing a FESTERing Boil Act, fails. TDS-121, Earth Guard Command Bill, passes, and a command and control infrastructure for the Comintern's space defense forces will be established and staffed. P-122, Proposal for the Bureau of Socialist Sciences, passes, and the Bureau will be established, under the oversight and authority of the new Ministry of Education. P-123, Nuclear Weapon Anti-Proliferation and Control Act, passes, and the Comintern will begin the long process of nuclear disarmament. P-124, The PLAN Plan, passes, and the Comintern will develop an ocean-going navy of its own, independent from any member-state military. A-125, Project DOROTHY, passes, and REDACTED CZ-126, Proletarization of Debt act, passes, and a series of strict limits are placed on personal debt, including a maximum time limit of thirty years, after which any debt held by an individual expires. P-127, Light Armor Neomaterial Chassis Engineering and Research Bill aka LANCER Bil, passes, and time and resources will be put into developing powered exoskeletons and piloted mechanized suits for extraplanetary operations. E-128, Formation of the Cominterp Safety Commission, passes, and a centralized body for regulating consumer product safety, workplace safety, and the like will be established. E-129, Formation of the Interplanetary Working Group on Standardisation, passes, and the Working Group will begin operations. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The one-way glass was installed in the test chamber at the request of the subjects, who said that being able to see people observing them would throw off the 'vibe'. The Director of MOSA, Commander James Randi of the Psychonaut Corps, and a few other officials sit on the other side of the glass, looking into the clean white room, in an old prefab building on Ascension Island. Four subjects are inside. Two of the volunteers are frozen inside a bank of Vasilyev cryopreservation tubes., the other two are sleeping in separate cubicles. "We've emulated the arrangement the Hawaiian scientist encountered on Mars as best we can in these conditions," one of the Psychonauts in the observation room says. "Atmospheric conditions in the Face, temperature, humidity, everything we could recreate here. It's an imperfect simulation, of course, but it's the best we could do." They have been attempting to replicate the Martian dream, so far without any success. The big names are observing this particular chamber because of something the team discovered quite by accident. This particular chamber is located quite close to the nearby building containing a testing chamber belonging to the Joint Committee on Artificial Gravity, where they have been working on gradar designs. They happened to be firing off small-scale tests while this team was conducting a hallucinogen-enhanced sleep study a few weeks ago, and the team noticed minute fluctuations in the subjects' brainwave patterns that turned out to coincide exactly with the pulses of JCAG's prototype. Those subjects, and none of the others in the other chambers. A new study was quickly commissioned, with new subjects. "So, just so I am clear," the Director speaks, "this particular group is on hallucinogens, yes? The subjects...what is the English phrase? 'Trip balls', yes?" She switches to English for those two words, before returning to her native Russian. "And while they are - 'tripping balls' - they...react to fluctuations in Trans-Newtonian fluidspace? In ways you can detect and replicate?" The researcher she's addressing looks exasperated. "Look, Director, it's a bit more complicated than just giving them LSD. This whole project was your idea in the first place, please give us some credit. But...yes, the volunteers are, as you put it, 'tripping balls'." Randi silently buries his head in his hands. "And what exactly are you attempting to do?" asks another official, who even knows exactly who in this dim room. "We're attempting to send a message. We have a small, low-powered 'gradar' device provided to us by JCAG, set up to broadcast a simple repeating pattern - 'HELLO WORLD' in Morse code. Our hope is that, since it is causing very small, but detectable effects on the subjects' brains, that they will perceive it in the dream-state somehow. How they will perceive it, or indeed if they will, is unclear. In other chambers elsewhere on the island, we also have groups who are being subjected to the emitter without the...chemical enhancements, a group that received the drugs but not the emitter-" "-there were a lot of volunteers for that one," Commander Randi interjects. "-and a group that is being subjected to neither. We will be rousing them shortly, and we thought you might like to be present." On the other side of the one-way glass, attendants begin to wake the subjects. Moment of truth.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 07:25
|
|
|
Mister Bates posted:SD-120, The Lancing a FESTERing Boil Act, fails. The Foreign Ministry of Haiti publicly sends the following statement to the People's Congress regarding their latest votes. quote:The government of Haiti protests in the strongest terms possible the failure of the Lancing Bill. (...) Through anti-GLADIO efforts it has been shown that TNEs have given us unprecedented surveillance abilities, far more powerful and accurate than was previously thought possible. With such power must come the strictest safeguards concerning not just their misuse but their usage as well. (...) With the final defeat of Capitalism past us and the People and Workers victorious there is no just reason to continue with pervasive and secretive spying of our own people.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 08:04
|
|
|
Yeah I'm not a million percent enthused about that myself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 08:14
|
|
|
Only a fraction of the former US forces stationed in japan have been found, and none of their leadership. Proclaiming the final defeat of capitalism in this circumstance is ridiculous. Even though GLADIO has been quiet we have no indication that the network has been destroyed entirely. atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Apr 2, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 08:40
|
|
|
Capitalism is alive and well. Even without counting gladio, Japan, India, Brazil and Nigeria are all attempting to take the place of the former capitalist powers and those are merely the ones with the best shot at it. Most likely, the final collapse of capitalism will still be a generational task.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 12:20
|
|
|
Jesus, DOROTHY passed? I was just playing Devil's advocate there, showing our options. I was expecting to get raked over the coals for even suggesting it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 16:20
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:Jesus, DOROTHY passed? I was just playing Devil's advocate there, showing our options. I was expecting to get raked over the coals for even suggesting it. You have learned a valuable lesson then: Do not put up a proposal for what you don't support.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 17:12
|
|
|
People tend to default to "yes" on the cool ideas in an imaginary internet game with your internet friends, it's a trend that like 95% of what gets proposed passes in this game. So I'm not shocked, also as others have said the capitalists are hardly defeated they're just the underdogs for once. We've traded positions compared to where we were 50 years ago but it's probably going to take 50 more to actually win the class war for good, and that's an optimistic timeline tbh.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 22:31
|
|
|
I'm not saying we should stay on war footing that long, but tbh I'm not comfortable calling the war won until capitalism is no longer in living memory.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2022 22:37
|
|
|
Mister Bates posted:SD-120, The Lancing a FESTERing Boil Act, fails. This is disappointing if unsurprising, especially because there was zero opposition or critique in-thread. If people want participation from posters that aren't on discord then they should actually voice objections in-thread so they can be adressed here.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2022 02:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 07:16 |
|
|
The sleeping subjects blearily rise as the technicians decant the frozen subjects. Evaluation begins. The cryopreserved test subjects are still extremely high, and initial evaluations are of little value. Hours later, it will be determined that they have no memory of anything between being frozen and waking up, which is typical for cryopreserved patients. Hey, it was worth a try. The subjects who slept, on the other hand, produce more interesting results. They report vivid dreams, the specifics of which are mostly irrelevant here, but for one thing - the pattern. Both of their dreams featured a recurring pattern as a major motif, showing up again and again, in sound, in sight, as a deeply-felt thing in the chest like a second heartbeat. Four tally marks on a wall. Four balls on the edge of a cliff. Four quick pulses in the music. Pencil and paper are produced, and they write out what they remember. Dot-dot-dot-dot. Space. Dot. Space. Dot-dash-dot-dot. H E L L O W O R L D __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGsswXop_IM January 1, 1985  It's been just over two weeks since session was called to order early. Life has continued. The Israeli factions have agreed to a provisional ceasefire, and mediation is underway.  A team of academicians from XCOM, whose credentials are ironclad although you don't recall ever hearing of any of them before, submit a design for the new Dorothy-class SETI vessel. Unfortunately, the sophisticated scientific instrument package, and the rudimentary skeleton of a spacecraft built around it, is sufficiently large that it must be assembled in orbit. Construction will begin once the Krusenstern is completed. The components for the instrument package will be fabricated on Earth before final assembly in orbit. January 5, 1985  An additional Proton-B, the last on order, is completed. Counting the original stations, which lack propulsion, there are now ten FESTER spacecraft in service, five each of the Proton and Electron. Two each are stationed in orbit of Luna, Mars, and Venus; the remaining four keep watch over Earth. January 9, 1985 The work of implementing the year's legislative agenda begins in earnest. The Ministries of Labor, Education, and Population Statistics are formally established, temporary offices are found for them, and staff sought. A Bureau of Socialist Sciences is inaugurated. Safety and standardization working groups are formed. On Ascension Island, a few old rooms in the main headquarters building, currently being used for storage, are cleared out and hastily furnished, with the largest one supplied with spare or old mission control hardware, another converted into a conference room, others converted to office space. This will, for now, be the headquarters of Earth's armed space defense forces, the nerve center of Earth Guard Command. Fleet Officer Third Rank PurpleXVI, whose political credentials are unassailable, and who has gained fame from surviving the nuclear strike on Interkosmos Station during the abortive reactionary uprising, is placed in command of this new agency, and the three ships of the 1st Patrol Squadron are transferred to them. All over the world, eager, budget-cutting vultures begin circling around the Comintern member states' navies, thousands of bureaucrats already considering which extraneous ships to offload onto the newly-established PLAN. January 16, 1985 As the first phase of the Proposal for Increased Oceanographic Research, the survey ships Skarbnik and Karzelek, currently idle, begin the slow process of scanning the Earth's oceans in detail. Going over them all at the highest possible resolution will probably take weeks; oceans are big. The crews, extremely bored and restless, attack the new problem they've been given with zeal. January 20, 1985  SPECTRE conducts extensive remote interviews with the XCOM caretaker team at Cydonia, focusing in particular on the unusual activity they've observed in the last year. The caretakers are uneasy. Almost all of the ruins remain unexplored, and both their own sensors, and the FESTER packages in orbit, are full of noise from active infrared and EM sources in the ruins, most of them presumably automated systems of some kind. If someone - or something - were alive here, it would be very difficult to detect, and they have an entire city's worth of ruins to hide in. There is, however, one piece of good news. The team are reasonably confident - not perfectly confident, they stress, but reasonably confident - that, if they had to right now, they could decant the occupants of the Face cryochambers and probably bring them out alive. They're working with the team on Earth to bring 'reasonably confident' up to 'perfectly confident', and hope to get there soon. While rescuing the human captives is a given, this does raise the question of what to do with the alien occupants. SPECTRE makes note of this, and passes it on to their liaison with the People's Congress, who will have the authority there. Such things are above their pay grade. February 1, 1985 The results of a study by the Psychonaut Corps on human perception of disruptions to Trans-Newtonian fluidspace while under the influence of hallucinogens are submitted to Corps command, who quietly distribute them to academic institutions around the world. The most shocking thing about the results is that they exist. Humans can, apparently, actually perceive TN space in some way, through some as-yet-unclear mechanism. Scientists all over the planet immediately set about trying to replicate the results. February 10, 1985  The Lunar Socialist Republic's unprecedented population explosion continues. The fledgling state is now larger in population than a good few dozen of the Comintern's Earth-based member polities, and new arrivals and new construction have made even the rush of the initial settlement look modest by comparison. It shouldn't work. It should be chaos. It should be a humanitarian disaster. It isn't. Across the grey surface of the Moon, the armies of production march. The regolith is packed down into roads. Tracks are laid, and trains follow them within days. Teams of surveyors roam the still largely unexplored surface, ranging further and further away from Lunagrad city with each passing day. Lava-tube caves are sealed and pressurized. Small craters are roofed over entirely. Prefabricated structures are scattered across the Lunar surface like so much confetti. We build. February 10 will go down in history as the first night that Lunagrad city was clearly visible with the naked eye from Earth, as a small, faint dot of light on the dark half of the waning moon. February 19, 1985   The deep space exploration vessel CSV Krusenstern, the most advanced spacecraft ever built by human hands, clears her slipway and enters Earth orbit under her own power. The radiator panels, emergency-power solar panels, and half-dozen different antennae, dishes, and booms that cover the ship - for communication, high-bandwidth data transmission, as well as for the sensors themselves - are all retractable behind protective coverings to ensure they are not damaged during the ship's years-long interplanetary voyage, giving the ship clean, sleek lines that are broken only by the rotating crew-quarters section, located amidships. Forward, the massive geosurvey sensor array, all of the computer hardware required to run it and all the other sensor packages, the laboratories, and the command deck. Aft, the ship's stores and the engineering section, itself a marvel. Featuring a small workshop, and stocked with enough spares to repair every component on the ship twice over and enough refined sorium fuel to burn the engines continuously for over two years, it has everything necessary to ensure her mission will succeed, no matter what crises they face in the dark expanse of the Kuiper Belt. The ship's commander has not yet been selected; competition for the prestigious post is fierce. The most likely candidates are Ship Commander Grizzwold, currently commanding the CSV Karzelek, and Junior Officer First Rank LostCosmonaut, currently commanding the CSV Skarbnik. Both have commanded these ships on interplanetary missions before, both have conducted surveys of uncharted systems, and both have served with distinction. Grizzwold has the notable distinction of having initially discovered both the Mars and Titan ruins. While MOSA administration deliberates on crew and captain selection, the skeleton crew from the shipyard test the ship systems, again and again, putting her through her paces. She has a long journey ahead of her. Everything needs to be perfect. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Apr 11, 2022 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2022 08:25
|
|