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What sorts of supplies would we even leave out for them?
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Dec 1, 2022 03:13
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Antilles posted:What sorts of supplies would we even leave out for them? Manuals on how to organize labor.
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Dec 1, 2022 03:16
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Gwyneth Palpate posted:Manuals on how to organize labor. Well they're already communists if they've been able to coordinate well enough to reach the stars. I was thinking "water" honestly. It's a pretty universal symbol, and very necessary for life. Maybe some TNE thermal blankets? I don't want to leave anything that could be considered military or threatening, or which could be used against us. Just something that says "we're not hostile, and we can help if you want to come in out of the cold" to them. If we haven't yet, we should probably try to figure out some kind of universal first contract translation tablet to give to species so that we can perform some bare minimum level of communication. Symbols for common TNEs and other useful elements with samples next to each, the decimal number system and some core logic concepts, symbols for human and a glyph of a human along with a symbol for "me" and a mirror, etc. Someone get Sagan on the horn!
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Dec 1, 2022 04:07
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If we wish to convey that we want to communicate peacefully, we need to present them with something that indicates that in an entirely unambiguous way without having to rely on shared symbolism. My suggestion? A radio, ideally primitive enough in design that its function is obvious at a glance, with all its parts clearly visible so they don't think that this box full of electronic components with a button on it is some sort of poorly disguised booby-trapped bomb. Leave that near the Cydonia site near the location our scout seems to frequent on their observation missions, see if they get the message that we know they're there and wish to estblish a dialogue.
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Dec 1, 2022 04:43
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With the Minervans, it'd be nice to know how desperate they are for TNEs, and for what purposes. It sounds like they particularly need sorium. Is that just so they aren't planet-bound any more, or are they slowly freezing to death without some? If the latter, how much could we get to them? Enough to stabilize them? It'd presumably be a long while before we have the transport capacity to make them spacefaring again, regardless.
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Dec 1, 2022 07:04
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idhrendur posted:With the Minervans, it'd be nice to know how desperate they are for TNEs, and for what purposes. It sounds like they particularly need sorium. Is that just so they aren't planet-bound any more, or are they slowly freezing to death without some? If the latter, how much could we get to them? Enough to stabilize them? It'd presumably be a long while before we have the transport capacity to make them spacefaring again, regardless. I'm guessing they want to try to go home? Or, at the least, not trapped on the frozen hell planet.
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Dec 1, 2022 20:04
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The Minervans must have known there was a primitive civilization in the system, right? If nothing else, our cities would have been visible at night. Brilliant luck for them that we were able to bootstrap our way into TNE space within just a few decades.
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Dec 1, 2022 20:43
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Freudian posted:The Minervans must have known there was a primitive civilization in the system, right? If nothing else, our cities would have been visible at night. Brilliant luck for them that we were able to bootstrap our way into TNE space within just a few decades. I mean, they might not have been aware of our cities and their lights. Not exactly easy to see without being close or without having high powered telescopes, both of which are situational.
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Dec 1, 2022 20:48
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Kitfox88 posted:I mean, they might not have been aware of our cities and their lights. Not exactly easy to see without being close or without having high powered telescopes, both of which are situational. The Martians certainly knew about us, even if we aren't observable from Minerva the Squiddies may have heard of us from the Greys gossiping with their subjects. That said, they might be a bit shocked how quickly we got TNEs if they don't know about the Roswell ship.
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Dec 1, 2022 20:53
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So, uh, how bout them socialisms?
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Jan 8, 2023 00:07
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This is such a great LP! I've binged it the last few days and I am eager to both see where it goes and participate. Many thoughts and ideas!
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Jan 26, 2023 10:09
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Participation is welcome at basically any time -- Bates has a pretty intensive job which is why updates are not always frequent, but it's not like that should limit everyone. Whenever the creative impulse strikes, 
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Feb 7, 2023 21:11
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The Commune of France - An Introduction The Commune of France can be understood as being something of a ‘flux state’. The chaotic nature of its birth, the ideology of many of its constituent parts, and the intense attitudes that have emerged as a reaction to the trials of the Great Revolutionary War have all contributed to a political atmosphere that is both highly fast-paced and constantly shifting. The one dominant tendency that can be said to be in eternal prominence in France is that of forward-thinking - That no matter where we stand, there is still work to be done, and progress is still to be made for the cause of the old canard - Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite! Oddly, despite the widely internationalist leaning of the body politic in France, it is an internationalism deeply distrustful of the military as a separate organized body, unaccountable to the civilian bodies of government. The usage of nuclear weapons on French soil by the United States military in an autonomous action, as well as the bloody repressions of the De Gaulle government, have left something of a scar on the French political psyche. After the conclusion of, and to some extent, during the Great Revolutionary War, the French have set out on the grand project of creating a truly accountable military body from the ground up, accountable not only to the central government in Paris, but answerable to the local unions and councils by which much of France is governed. This will be discussed further later. The influence of these unions and councils, which do not represent all forms of government within regional parts of France, and is merely used as a catch-all term, cannot be understated. For a significant period of time, they essentially ran the country outside of Paris, more as a tightly affiliated confederation than a singular unified entity, until the central government had recovered enough to begin slowly and carefully reasserting its influence. This process is noted by how voluntary, light-handed, and slow-moving it is - Likely as a response to the fact that the people of France would not react well to any sudden attempts to strip power from the councils or to recentralize power. The French System (Or: The Wonders of Parisian Socialism) The French system can be understood to be held up by three pillars, through which the state, such as it can be understood to exist, exerts its influence and performs its vital functions. The first pillar is the councils and unions, who handle local and regional concerns. Their structure varies wildly, as do their assumed responsibilities - Some have even attempted ‘limited anarchism’, functioning solely as a method of dispute arbitration between citizens, though the central government has often had to step into such ‘free zones’ to sternly remind such institutions of their duties to enforce both federal and Comintern standards. The second pillar of the French system is the central government - Based out of Paris, it consists of a Congress built of representatives sent or elected from the various systems of the councils (weighted by population), and the attendant bureaucracy thereof. This handles the enacting of legislation, foreign affairs, French duties within the Comintern/Cominterp, and other such duties typically expected of a federal system. Outside of those normal duties, however, there are a few key differences. First, there is no singular figurehead at any level - At best, there exist a panel of facilitators who are elected from within the Congress. Secondly, rather than Ministries, Departments, or other typical arbiters of executive function, the French Congress appoints ‘Committees’ of members, which handle the proposal and review of legislature related to their mandate, as well as handling issues deemed too minor for a full-Congress discussion, subject to judicial oversight, of course. The third pillar of the French system is the judicial system, of which the military exists as something of a subset. The court system is governed by a mixture of elected, appointed, professional (licensed and approved through the Congress), and civic representatives (from the police and/or military, depending on the court), drawn to form panels in mixtures dependent on what exact level of the courts your case is being heard on. In almost every one of these courts, bar the Appeals court and People’s Tribunal, the elected judges form the majority, to ensure that the justice system is accountable to the will of the people. Civil Tribunal: Hears low-level criminal and civil cases. Manages the Civil Service. The People’s Tribunal: Hears felony cases and major civil cases. Trials are merely facilitated by judges and are left to the judgment of a jury. Administrative Tribunal: Handles civic complaints about the law and legislative review. They are also given jurisdiction over ‘internal court affairs’, which mostly means determining whether or not a civil case is worthy of being a People’s Tribunal case or not, and handling the swearing-in of various court officials who don’t require Congressional approval. Appeals Tribunal: Handles appeals for criminal or civil cases in the event of a mistrial or equivalent. Has the right to reject cases for insufficient grounds. Martial Tribunal: Handles mandatory review of all military and gendarmerie actions, review of officers commissioned by the Congress, complaints about abuse of power by the armed forces and gendarmerie, and has veto power on declarations of war/foreign intervention by the Congress.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:59
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The Police and Military in France The necessity of the police was heavily questioned by many idealists and left-wing thinkers in the aftermath of the revolution, accentuated by their usage as a tool of De Gaulle, but the needs of the State to fight the reactionaries during and after the GRW took precedence - A fear validated by future events, such as Gladio’s strike. However, a complete restructuring under socialist principles was viewed as essential and necessary, to break down the inherently reactionary structure of the institution - And this attitude of reform extended to the military. With the already existing militia structure heavily outsourced to the councils, fears were raised of a lack of a capable unified military - An ad-hoc system patchworked with the defections of parts of the French military sufficed in the Civil War, but it cannot suffice in the modern world. Fears of corruption and abuse were also raised in outsourcing policing to the councils, and so the problems became intertwined. This eventually coalesced in the ‘World Policing’ theory of military and policing structure. The World Policing model suggests that the age of peer conflict has ended, and that the military must undergo a fundamental reordering to the modern age’s needs of intervention in foreign nations - Under the same principles as an ideal socialist policing force. The purpose of the military as a force, therefore, is to aid in maintaining the domestic stability of the state, uphold the stability of allies abroad, enforce stability on occupied territory without unnecessary force, and act in accordance with socialist ideals and with accountability to the utmost standard to the civilian population. Military intervention by France will never again be the grinding industrial warfare of WW1, WW2, and the GRW, where millions of soldiers will lay down their lives against each other - Instead, it will be limited and primarily centered around aiding socialist revolutions and pushing back against reactionary insurgencies. The large body of the French military is, therefore, inactive reservists, who engage in scheduled regular training. Enlistment occurs with a 4-year term of service and is organized on a per-Council basis, subject to oversight and adherence to federal requirements on the matter. There are no restrictions on re-enlistment, and serving at least one term is heavily encouraged and incentivized by the government, as a way to promote civic duty and responsibility. The active-duty military, therefore, takes the role of gendarmerie forces, who, when not actively serving as interventions against violent situations and armed reactionaries, typically split their time between training for theoretical foreign deployment and training various local reservist groups. They are commanded by appointed officers, who are approved by both the Congress and the Martial Tribunal. Gendarmerie enlisted men are permitted to serve for two years, and are restricted from immediate re-enlistment in the gendarmerie for a period of two years - A restriction which has seen many of the gendarmerie immediately filter into the Comintern People’s Army after the end of their service. Some argue this is against the spirit of the restriction, while others argue it is a fulfillment of the ‘policing model’ and its goals, given the general state and usage of the CPA. Gendarmerie officers, on the other hand, to prevent a lack of experienced command, are allowed to re-enlist with merely a review by the Martial Tribunal at the end of their two-year period of service. Any gendarmerie actions within the borders of France are subject to review by the Martial Tribunal, and any misconduct found is punished harshly, to prevent even a sliver of seeming continuation between the gendarmerie of now and the gendarmerie of the old regime. Now, the gendarmerie forces do not take the role of police in every instance - Such would contradict the goal of the ‘World Policing’ structure to reform it along socialist lines. Instead, the role of most low-level police work, such as traffic monitoring, complaint response, and other mundane municipal duties, has been handed over to the Civil Service, a service that consists of social workers, legal aides, probation officers, and manifold other useful professions recruited from local populations. The Civil Service has the stated purpose of keeping social order and maintaining the safety of the population without the use of forceful coercion, the latter being fulfilled by being mandatorily unarmed during the course of their duties. This has not always gone well, and there are memorial walls within various Civil Service Headquarters for service workers who have been killed in the line of duty, but with the general support of local councils, the ability to call on the gendarmerie for significantly dangerous situations (if subject to lengthy Martial Tribunal review afterward), and the authority of the Civil Tribunal behind them, it functions decently enough.
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Feb 9, 2023 23:00
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The “Flux State” and Parisian Socialism (Or: Political Tendencies in Action on the Local Level) While the general state of France’s federal system, and attendant mid-level bureaucracy and judicial system, is widely considered to be stable, the true ‘flux’ of France comes from the constantly shifting local politics and organizations which control such. Borne from the GRW, these local associations, councils, and unions, exert influence over regional areas, which can range from a single village to an entire city. These are incredibly varied, and observers have often remarked that one could find any variant of socialism being practiced in a French town if one looks hard enough. However, despite this, several political tendencies have emerged as ‘dominant’ ideas, holding sway over multiple towns or major cities, and having enough representation in the Congress to present a semi-united front. The most obvious of these are syndicalists - But the variety thereof keeps them from presenting a truly united front. Many trade unions have splintered post-GRW from their once country-spanning, falling into regional associations or forming integral ties with key centers of their industry. This is not to say that union power has decreased - If anything, the political machines of the unions are stronger than ever, merely integrated further into the overall churn of local politics now that the revolution has occurred. The average syndicalist in France is largely focused on the local level, aiming to expand syndicalism through methods of integration into the power structures of France, and the expansion of union power on the local level to further locales. Legislatively, syndicalists aim to carve out spots in the mid-level bureaucracy currently held primarily by the judiciary for the unions, and the creation of a ‘Labor Tribunal’ for the handling of worker’s matters has been a common rallying cry, though opposition by existing judiciary elements and other tendencies within the Congress has prevented its formation. However, one cannot mention the syndicalists of France without mentioning their heterodoxies. ‘International Syndicalists’, harkening back to the IWW, declare the necessity for trade unions to be integrated into ‘One Big Union’, which crosses international borders and disdains the old bourgeoise divisions between production as a method of creating inter-proletariat conflict. ‘Localist Syndicalists’ push for almost the opposite - The success of the revolution, they argue, has caused the need for all-encompassing unions to disintegrate. Instead, they must be focused on the political needs of their local working population within the new, socialist system, not on creating higher-level positions for union functionaries and carving the existing power structures into stone. The average syndicalist citizen falls somewhere between some of these positions, not fitting exactly into any of them, as is often the case, and organizationally, the divisions are much the same. Some unions have chosen to devolve themselves (officially or not) and focus on local affairs almost entirely, others have chosen to merge in an attempt to create ‘one big union’ (of which there are several who have declared themselves as such), and quite a few more have split over the matter - And more besides who decided to simply keep going as they were, reasoning that there was no reason to change what was working. Then, there are the Council Communists - A variety consisting of Luxemburgists, democratic left communists, autonomists, and other forms of libertarian socialists. Widely considered to be the second most dominant tendency in France, they are often the ‘left-wing’ of the Congress, pushing against centralization and power being removed from the councils that exist. On the local level, they are happy to point to their existing institutions as being examples of council communism functioning and believe that the future of France and the Comintern as a whole is a full transition to council communism, with a natural decline of the unions as a political structure as democratic participation increases, organization of the anarchists, and the slow transition of existing vanguardist parties towards democratic reforms. Recent events in China and Russia have seemed quite promising to this theory, even if the ascendance of technocratic tendencies has somewhat dampened enthusiasm. To round out the three largest tendencies is Maoism - Or, rather, Mao-inspired thought, in a particularly French sense. While post-WW2 saw drastic reductions in the peasantry as a class within France, Mao’s ideas saw growth in the French intellectual and student class, especially in the leadup to the revolution. Significant student groups participating in the leadup to May ‘68 were followers of Mao, and this continued to have an impact during the revolution. Proponents of direct democracy and the principle of the ‘Investigation’, which demanded interaction with the working class on an empathetic level, these ‘non-hierarchical Maoists’ have surged to significant popularity within the judiciary and mid-level bureaucracy due to their emphasis on speaking to the disparate classes within society and organize towards proletarian democracy on that, rather than trying to dictate to them or simply allowing them to self-organize. Many of these investigative groups form the cores of activist movements and cross-council political reform tendencies, rather than seizing power for themselves. However, they are also notable for their extreme militancy - The power of ‘revolutionary violence’ has been vindicated in the aftermath of the GRW, and they form a significant subset of nearly all militias and the gendarmerie, which, while providing a counterweight to certain political ambitions, casts a slightly unsettling shadow on the council communists and syndicalists. On a somewhat smaller scale, one then has the ‘Reformer’ or ‘Moderate’ tendencies, consisting of remnants of revolutionary social democrats, market socialists, and various other forms of moderate socialism. Often disparaged as ‘conservative’, these factions are on the decline nation-wide, having largely been the result of GRW-era moderate groups declaring for the revolution or winding up in control of areas during the revolution. As the nation settles into socialism and moved on from the need to compromise in the pursuit of socialism, their power has been waning, and their power base has largely begun to filter into the syndicalists. Equally small, but on the rise rather than the decline, are the ‘Anarchist’ tendencies - As disunified as one might imagine them to be, they are uniquely suited for the shifting political atmosphere of the French state. It is rare to see a city council or local council without some form of anarchist on it, even if they do not describe themselves as such, pushing for further decentralization and/or dissolving of responsibilities to the people, or acting as a voice for ‘small government’. However, it is equally rare to see them in Congress, as they tend to disdain ‘federal electoralism’, and outright anarchist control of areas is rare, as Congress tends to take stern glances towards any territory which attempts to outright dissolve its methods of oversight on the people. Regardless, they are not unappealing to some as a localist tendency, often pushing for popular policies against the bureaucratization of the French state as it slowly shifts towards centralization once more. Of course, there are then the Left Opposition - Less a coherent tendency and more a convenient grouping for observers of scattered groups of Leninists, Trotskyists, and left communists of a less democratic variety, their most common defining trait is being ‘in opposition’ to currently in-power local groups. However, a few of these groups have managed to take power, if moderated by the watchful eye of the decidedly not onboard Congress, and begun implementing and pushing for their programs of ‘Permanent Revolution’ and ‘Democratic Centralism’ both on a local level and in Congress. However, the most notable impact of these factions on the national level is for serving as impetus to push more conservative localities towards internationalism and pursuing more comprehensive initiatives to prevent themselves from being outflanked on the left. Now, while all of these political tendencies coexist in uncomfortable proximity to each other, that does not a ‘flux state’ make. Rather, what makes French politics so unstable and experimental is that the federal government makes purposeful allowances for the shifting of entire local systems, on the basis of whatever group manages to seize public support. Unpopular syndicalist councils have wound up collapsing into recall and seeing the election of council communists, or vice versa, who wind up completely restructuring the entire locality, and so on for all sorts of political tendencies. Groups who reject electoralism have also managed to pull off ‘soft coups’ of localities by virtue of subverting the organs of state and bringing a successful case that the current local government was no longer providing the services obligated of them, but that they were, instead, and seizing power through that method to institute anarchist or vanguardist policies - Though if this was not accompanied by popular support, they typically fell apart rather quickly. This is aided by the existence throughout the system of recall elections for most positions on the federal level, allowing for congressfolk and judges to be replaced in order to represent changes in the system of their locality.
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Feb 9, 2023 23:00
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Sorry, are you suggesting that what we would call the NCO corps are regularly without institutional knowledge due to not being allowed to immediately renew? This feels like a recipe for disaster, since AIUI sargeants and such are what actually make militaries work, the officers are just the designated direction pointers.
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Feb 10, 2023 05:27
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Volmarias posted:Sorry, are you suggesting that what we would call the NCO corps are regularly without institutional knowledge due to not being allowed to immediately renew? This feels like a recipe for disaster, since AIUI sargeants and such are what actually make militaries work, the officers are just the designated direction pointers. The goal of the French when they designed this system was to redesign the military from the ground up to fit the needs of what they thought the post-GRW world needed, and what they definitely didn't need was a military designed to fight a peer power, as I elaborated on. If France is ever in an existential war, the Genderarmrie will be turned into, essentially, NCO cadres/the NCOs for the reservist groups, where they already function as trainers - But that's about the only real concession made to the idea of 'peer/existential conflict' (besides the militia system, but that's a whole other can of worms.) The duty of the Gendarmerie in non-existential conflicts/peacetime is to be a politically reliable and loyal force, that is explicitly not distanced from civilian life in order to best serve their goal...which, as hinted above, isn't to win battles/wars on their own recognizance, or even participate in them beyond acting as trainers, support, and whatnot. Maybe the most elite battalions would be chosen to serve on the frontlines, but that's definitely not what the average intent is. French military doctrine is predicated on the assumption that "France is never, ever, ever-ever-ever fighting a war alone. EVER." Even on the home front, against situations like Gladio, they're operating with the full institutional support of the French State and its attendant bureaucracies/services, including the Civil Service and reservist militias. They are not here to be fighting a peer power, they are here to be an effective occupying/training force and tool to maintain stability, to keep hammering that in - And so institutional competence was deemed less of a priority during the 'total rebuild' than ensuring the political needs of the French State from the military, such as "will never ever turn on us" and "will not become 'detached from the people's will'", were fulfilled. However - The French State has also recognized that this can be an issue, and has made some steps towards trying to fix it. Kinda. As mentioned, officers are not subject to re-enlistment restrictions - And I should clarify, the Commune has shifted what is considered 'Commissioned' down a bit, I'm just not really willing to spend a few hundred words and several hours of research on determining the exact rank of every single battalion in the fictional military. Suffice to say, remember: Organized as gendarmerie, not as military, and also the general methods of 'filtering' into the officer corps that we might consider have largely gone out of favor with the Revolution. Military academies still exist, mind you, but there's definitely been some severe shakeups in how that's handled and run. If someone is commanding multiple squads of the gendarmerie (god please don't ask me to go into the exact numbers, because the gendarmerie uses different numbers but the same terminology as the military for the same sort of thing), then typically they're 'commissioned' by the technical definition, which in this case means 'appointed by the Congress', even though they're often drawn from veteran gendarmeries regardless and functionally serve the same purpose as one might consider an upper-level NCO to fill. Now, you may be asking - Does this mean that Congress spends a not insignificant amount of time handling the re-appointment of officers who should just be able to be promoted from within the ranks? Doesn't this mean that the Martial Tribunal's time is inordinately taken up by the review of re-enlisting these officers? Isn't this really inefficient and somewhat counter-productive, regardless of all the reasons established in this explanation? The answer to all of these questions is yes! The intentional crippling of certain elements of the centralized state with what is busywork and mandatory reshuffling was a bonus to many actors of France's political system during the rebuilding of the military, not a minus. After all, it's not like France is going to be needing to fight a peer power alone in the modern era, or that the Comintern is somehow going to get bogged down into World War 4/be forced to engage in an existential war with space aliens for some reason! TL;DR: Yes, it's bad, and intentionally so, but not as bad as it would be if taken from the view of a 'not completely reconstructed' military force. I hope this explanation makes sense as for what I'm going for.
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Feb 10, 2023 11:30
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A Report from the Cydonia Expedition on 'Ship B' The presumed-Minervan spacecraft designated as ‘Ship B’ has an outer hull composed of duranium-aluminum alloy armor with a thin outer layer of badly-faded matte white paint, and is divided into three distinct sections. Aft is what the team has designated the ‘Engineering Section’. This section consists mostly of an ‘Orion’-type nuclear pulse engine, with pusher plate, shock absorbers, propellant tanks, and propellant launch system. The engine assembly makes extensive use of TNEs and is presumably designed to use sorium-based explosive pellets, like our own drives. The design is clearly more advanced than our own, and propulsion engineers on Earth are already poring over the data collected for potential applications. The Engineering Section also includes a conventional sorium-fired rocket engine, presumably to allow safe operation in atmosphere. The design is simple and is not substantially different from human TN rocket engines. The fuel tanks for both engines are completely empty. In addition to propulsion and fuel, the Engineering Section is the central hub for the ship’s electrical power grid. From the wiring layout, the power seems to have been generated by a device in the engineering section, a cylindrical object referred to as the ‘reactor’ for lack of any better name. The team has not attempted to disassemble, gain access to, or otherwise investigate this reactor, for fear of potentially releasing radioactive or toxic contents, or blowing up the entire ship. A bank of batteries or capacitors is also present for power storage, as well as a power distribution room where the electricity is divided into different circuits for different areas of the ship, each protected by a circuit breaker. The circuit breakers are all open. Amidships is the ‘Truss’. The Truss is mostly a structural member supporting the Engineering Section and connecting it to the Crew Section, with a pressurized shaft for crew access and high-voltage cables for electrical power. It also mounts multiple antennae and similar instruments, presumably for sensors and communications. Forward is the ‘Crew Section’. The Crew Section is divided into six modules. Of these, one, the largest, appears to have been a command and control or ‘bridge’ module, with small exterior windows protected by shutters and multiple presumed computer workstations. Two seem to be living quarters modules, one is an almost entirely empty cylinder that was probably used for storage, one is probably additional engineering and utility spaces including what is probably a mainframe computer or central server, and one, which the team has dubbed the Aquarium, warrants further detail. The entire spacecraft seems to be designed to be filled with water instead of air during normal operation, but the Aquarium in particular seems to have been used as a sort of aquatic arboretum. Although the room is now almost completely empty, traces of a sandy substrate, and organic compounds that may be dead plant matter, have been found on the bare floors, artificial sculpted rocks can be found on the floors and walls to give the space a naturalistic feel, and colored lights illuminate the space. The forward utility module also includes what is presumably the control unit for the ship’s sole armament, an array of six small, retractable turret-mounted coilguns mounted throughout the ship. They seem to be very low-powered weapons and are probably intended for point defense rather than as offensive weapons. --- This ship does not give the impression of having been abandoned in a hurry, or of a struggle. The only significant artifacts found on board have been built into the ship – furniture, electronics, and the like. It is otherwise clean and empty, as though it were swept and nearly everything on it deliberately removed. The contents may be in some of the hundreds of storage containers scattered about the Face, most of which remain unopened, or they may be anywhere else. This does not mean there is nothing of archaeological interest to be found aboard, however. From the size, shape, and configuration of buttons and switches we have been able to infer the appendages used to manipulate them (probably tentacles rather than fingers), for example, while from the size and height of doorways and rooms we can infer the size of the inhabitants (likely a bit larger than the average human, although not massively so). We have determined that the creators could and did work both TNEs and conventional metals, that they could and did weld and sinter metal, and that they could work composites. We learned that they made use of threaded bolts and nuts as fasteners and that they also make use of washers as separators, along with many other immediately recognizable components and engineering solutions. While aesthetically alien, a circuit breaker is still recognizably a circuit breaker, a light switch a light switch, a locking mechanism on a door still a lock. One could probably make an entire academic career out of studying just that, analyzing the design and construction of the ship to try to determine how the builders think, how they approach problem-solving. There is also writing and visual art to be found. In addition to the single horizontal line of text printed on the exterior of the ship, there is extensive writing on the walls, floors, and ceiling inside, in the same script. While most of it appears to be labels and signage, clearly printed by a machine, there are also six ‘graffiti’ inscriptions – two in the engineering section, one in the forward utility space, and three in living quarters rooms – which seem to have been scratched into the metal walls and are much less regular, though still in the same angular, blocky script as all of the other inscriptions. One of these, Graffito #1 in the engineering section, includes a scratched drawing that looks to be a crude, stylized depiction of a ‘Minervan’ individual. --- Perhaps the most important written artifacts we have found are actually the computers. We have not attempted to power on the computers themselves, although attempting to do so is a planned experiment. However, the controls for the devices – which include a trackball-like device that presumably serves a similar function to a mouse – also include keyboards. These keyboards have symbols on them in the same script found everywhere else on the ship. We now have an alphabet. Attempts at deciphering the script remain ongoing. --- Although the ship is not significantly more advanced than what humans can currently build, it is most definitely more advanced, and there is a wealth of technology to be gleaned from this design. It is likely that Ship A, the presumed Roswell vessel, will be even more valuable in this regard. In particular, the Joint Committee on Artificial Gravity is very interested in the lattice of filaments built into the floor of every deck of Ship B, as well as how the ship seems to have been built with a distinct ‘down’. With the archaeological survey of the ship complete, the team is now dismantling it, to be transported to Earth for further study. --- The team have put forth the following observations: - This spacecraft was probably intended primarily to carry passengers, anywhere from 200 to over a thousand depending on exactly how much space they were allocated. - It is both long-ranged and fast, with large fuel tanks and an outsized propulsion system for its overall size, easily outrunning any comparable design we can build and likely also outranging nearly everything in our fleet. - It has what are probably passive thermal and EM sensors, and point-defense weapons. - It has a layer of protective armor. - The ship shows no signs of battle damage or crash damage, but does show signs of heavy wear from age or intensive use, including corrosion and pitting of metal components, cracks and wear in composite and other nonmetallic components, faded or chipped paint, and scratches on display panels. - The ship is probably intended to be filled with water, but was completely drained and bone-dry. - The ship is defueled, powered down, almost devoid of artifacts, and generally gives the impression of having been deliberately vacated. - Its exact function remains unclear - it may have been a VIP transport or diplomatic transport, some sort of military auxiliary vessel, or something else. - Signage in and around the Face itself includes the same script as found on this ship, as well as at least three other scripts. - No Minervan corpses have been found, yet, and there are no Minervans in the cryostorage facility beneath the Face. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Feb 12, 2023 |
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Feb 12, 2023 09:44
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Interesting that its technology and propulsion systems are so... comprehensible. Like an Orion drive is more advanced than anything we've built so far, but it's not a terribly exotic design concept, the theory behind it has been understood for decades. It's fast and pretty long-range, but it's not, you know, an interstellar craft. I suppose it could get up to speed and just coast for centuries until it reached its destination and decelerated, but 1) TNE hulls don't have momentum, it would have to be propelled the whole way, and I doubt this thing has THAT kind of range, and 2) it doesn't seem like it could accommodate a crew of hundreds for centuries and we haven't seen any cryotubes onboard. Unless the Minervans can naturally hibernate, but if they can they haven't said. So if it didn't make the trip here itself, how the hell did the thing get to the Solar system? Was it built here? If so, where's the shipyards? Or is that the debris fields we've seen out by Jupiter? If it was brought here from somewhere else, how? Insterstellar carriers? Some unknown FTL device? Something the Minervans don't have access to? It would certainly explain why they're stranded here, other than just lack of Sorium.
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Feb 12, 2023 15:08
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Comrades, comrades, wait a moment. These are an aquatic species. The only habitable planet in the solar system is Earth. Earth is primarily covered in water. What if... They're actually the earthlings, and we're really the aliens here? Makes you think. 
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Feb 12, 2023 17:01
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Volmarias posted:Comrades, comrades, wait a moment. ...what about all the monkeys and caveman skeletons we're clearly related to? I'm not saying it's impossible the Minervans are originally earthlings (though I highly doubt it), but humans definitely are, or at least our squirrel-like proto-primate ancestors have been here long enough on truly geologic timescales that we might as well be.
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Feb 12, 2023 17:59
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The real question is: does this mean that the minervans don't have FTL?
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Feb 12, 2023 18:01
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It could be a rider on some FTL capable craft, especially if the FTL system is heavy and bulky, only pushing it as much as necessary and letting something lighter do the actual job would be a reasonable idea.
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Feb 12, 2023 18:08
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If we have complete set of characters for the Minervan language, then we could start asking them to translate words we've already established with each other in their script (and provide the equivalent in English or Russian or Esperanto or whatever).
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Feb 12, 2023 19:02
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interstellar FTL could also be via 'wormholes' and managed by stationary facilities or traversed by dedicated craft. If such were in the kuiper belt our surveys so far would not have located structures or debris associated with that sort of activity
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Feb 12, 2023 19:03
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FTL could also require dedicated ships but otherwise transit regular space. If these are expensive, it probably wouldn't make sense to leave any just laying around, no matter who made them.
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Feb 12, 2023 19:24
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Also, how do you know the octopii in Earth's oceans aren't just keeping quiet for their own reasons?
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Feb 12, 2023 19:25
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Volmarias posted:FTL could also require dedicated ships but otherwise transit regular space. If these are expensive, it probably wouldn't make sense to leave any just laying around, no matter who made them. Interstellar logistics, at least according to our current models are ... interesting. Dedicated FTL-carriers are a conceivable solution, when the drive itself is bulky. Wormholes, either natural or artificial, are another solution we can't rule out yet. Communications are a whole different beast. Carrier operations will require FTL-communications, whereas lightspeed-communications can possibly be squeezed through a wormhole. The psychonaut-corps stubled on some tantalizing hints that FTL-communications might be possible. Maybe we should dedicate more ressources into this direction, the current state of our operations are less than satisfactory, when we have to accept lightspeed-lag in our communications.
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Feb 12, 2023 20:07
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we need to invest in underwater sciences ASPA
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Feb 12, 2023 20:53
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Oh how nice, we can build a combination embassy and aquarium, fun for the whole family.
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Feb 12, 2023 22:18
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COMINTERPLAN INTERPLANETARY PEOPLE'S ARMY GROUND FORCES ALLIES BRIEFING: END OF THE LINE TO BE PRESENTED TO ALL PARTICIPATING VOLUNTEER FORCES YOUR AMERICAN FRIENDS While on this operation, you will likely be under the command of an officer of one of your North American comrades. You may be familiar with some of these states and their history, but others may be less familiar to you. You are to treat them as though they are your own officers or commanders; obey their orders and trust their judgment, for this is their land and they will know it the best. As an assistance, a brief primer on certain major participating states is hereby included. If you find yourself in a state or under the command of a comrade whose country is not included, by all means, ask them about it. Knowing who your comrades are and what they are like is essential! CALIFORNIA PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC Once the most populous and prosperous state of the United States of America, California suffered under the dictate of the reactionary governor Ronald Reagan for years before its people could finally take no more of his bigotry or being made complicit in the wars of the United States bourgeoisie. The Californian people and military rose up in revolt shortly before the overall collapse of the United States, taking their destiny from the collapsing regime. Since then, the Californians have proven that they do not need to exploit, oppress, or dictate to reach greatness, and they have stood at the forefront of both the world revolution and the Comintern’s journey into space. Today California is one of the Comintern’s greatest nations, rich and prosperous with great military strength and cultural influence. California has been a major supporter of the Socialist Aid Program and has contributed greatly to the benefit and elevation of nations around the world. Californians are well-known as a friendly people and truly dedicated to the concept that a socialist world means a better world, aspiring to bring the richness of their lives to all their fellow workers and comrades worldwide. Californian society has preserved and embodied many of the truly positive qualities of the old United States, while doing away with the capitalist rot that dragged them into the mud. You may find the cutting edge of socialist thought and culture in its great cities, along with a dizzying amount of information and perspective. California itself possesses some of the most gorgeous natural beauty and splendor in the world, from the gigantic “redwood” sequoia forests, to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, to the famous surfing beaches at San Onofre, Huntington, and the Trestles. CASCADIAN WORKERS’ COLLECTIVE Following the collapse of the Canadian government, the Second Californian Revolution, and the severing of the transcontinental railroad lines, the governments of the Pacific Northwest were cut off from all outside support and disintegrated into infighting and regional squabbles. With no other choices, the people of the region known as Cascadia rose up to take their lives into their own hands, led by the socialists and anarchists of the great Pacific cities. Faced with an utterly popular revolution and stripped of all support, the old governments were forced to acquiesce, and the people organized themselves into councils and councils of councils, forming a multilayered collective of workers. Set among the rich forests and rainy hills of the Pacific Northwest, the Cascadian Workers’ Collective is a peaceful nation which has forsworn war all but entirely. Protected by the mighty Cascades Mountains and with only friendly California to the south, the Cascadians have turned their whole being to building a brighter, kinder, and more prosperous future, turning a region which the capitalists thought of only as an extractive backwater into one of the most inventive and brilliant members of the Comintern. Though their government often takes a great deal of time to react and make decisions, the Cascadians are secure in the knowledge that they can have input and control over their lives in a way that they never could before. Cascadia is a land of incredible natural beauty, such as the thousand islands of Vancouver Bay, the snow-capped Mt. Hood, and the endless, rain-quenched forests of the Pacific Northwests. Though pacifistic, they are not a nation entirely without teeth, and also not one without enemies — to the east of the Cascadian coast sits “Free Cascadia”, a collection of die-hard independent livers and reactionary enclaves. The Cascadians have been dealing with them for years, with surprising success, in trying to nonviolently bring them back into society, in a way that likely only they can. NATION OF LAKOTAH The indigenous peoples of North America, the American Indians, suffered centuries of oppression and brutality at the hands of the United States. However, their identities stayed strong and their will to self-determination never waned. Lakotah was formed from some of the most determined of these nations in the north of the Great Plains, who rallied around the American Indian Movement in the final years of the United States to try and demand their promised rights. When this failed, and the United States failed, they were left with no choice but to take up arms and win them for themselves. Fighting reaction within and racism without, the Lakotah would struggle for decades until an agreement with the Comintern and their longtime neighbor Minnesota tipped the balance against the hated Guardians of the Oglala Nation, or GOON Squad, and returned control to their traditional chiefs. The Lakotah today control a broad and tough land in the northern Great Plains, not unlike the steppes of the Soviet Union, where the seasons are brutal and the people are close-knit. Blending traditional Plains Indian systems with Minnesotan-style cooperativism and the identity-independence thought of Ho Chi Minh, the Lakotah are a cautious but determined people, who would sooner die than be dictated to by racism and capital again. The lands of the Lakotah are vast, empty, and often harsh, with short summers and brutal winters that sweep across the seas of grassland steppe, the pine-draped hills, and the awe-inspiring wastes of the Badlands. The Lakotah consider their homeland sacred, nowhere more so than the Black Hills that the United States once stole from them for gold mining, and have taken care to protect and restore it from the ravages of capitalism, reintroducing the wolves that its ranchers eradicated and painstakingly regrowing the once seemingly endless herds of buffalo. The land also hides one of the greatest threats in human history – studded beneath the Plains are hundreds of nuclear missile silos of the former United States, each once capable of killing entire cities, now merely concrete holes in the ground. DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF MINNESOTA If asked which two states would have survived the collapse of the USA virtually intact in 1968, few Americans would likely have put Minnesota on the list. Yet the North Star State has survived, thanks to a healthy dose of luck and the unity of its people. A number of factors combined to give the state durability in the face of the national disintegration – the presence of the intact and fully outfitted 47th “Viking” Infantry Division, the politics of Minnesota’s newly elected Governor Anderson, the powerful rural and union elements of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, an overall dislike and disconnect from the Agnew government, and a particular strain of American patriotism. As a result, while remaining “loyal” after the Joint Chiefs’ martial law order, when President Agnew declared civil elections suspended late in October 1972, Minnesota responded that the President had violated all that the United States stood for, and that it would go its own way. The DRMN has been essential to the survival of socialism in the Midwest, using the 47th Infantry Division (now the 1st Minnesota) to guarantee its fellow states in Detroit, Chicago, and Thunder Bay, and its natural resources to keep its citizens in a respectable standard of living. Having nationalized its corporations and distributing more and more power to regional cooperatives while maintaining its democratic structure, the DRMN has provided a model of “Olsonian cooperativism” that helps guarantee the prosperity of its strong rural populations and has inspired several countries looking to transition away from rotten capitalist models. Minnesota itself is a rugged land of thousands of lakes, deep pine forests, sprawling plains farms, and rolling glacial hills. Its farms, forests, mines, and waterways are the backbone of Minnesota’s wealth, and are a source of immense pride for its people. The weather and the land are not dissimilar to Moscow, and like the Soviets, the Minnesotans are a tough, hospitable people who are accustomed to enduring hardship with a sigh and a smile, tempered by intense winters and summers and given to forging close community bonds. FREE CITY OF CHICAGO Chicago was the vanguard of the final collapse of the United States. Highly racially segregated and governed by rotten, uncaring machine politics, the third-largest city of the United States had long felt neglected and abandoned by its own country. This feeling sharpened after the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention riots, and worsened along with the U.S. situation internationally. When the Joint Chiefs attempted to declare martial law, it was the last straw for Chicago; as soon as news of the announcement reached the city, riots broke out, and the government was thrown out by the multiethnic “Rainbow Coalition”, which declared Chicago to be “a city free from all oppressors and fat cats, who would squeeze its people to pulp and wring them dry for their own benefit”. This bold declaration might have ended in blood, but it caught the Comintern’s attention, and a rapid deployment of Italian and Soviet troops helped safeguard the newly independent city from reactionary backlash, and plant a red seed of freedom deep in the American interior. The “Free City” today covers the area known as “Chicagoland”, both the great city itself and many of its surrounding environs, from the vast industrial centers of Gary and Joliet, to the farmlands of DeKalb and LaSalle. Though still struggling with the deep-cut scars of generations of institutional racism and economic prejudice, Chicago’s ruling Rainbow Coalition has worked tirelessly to try and recraft the city into a truly equitable state, where equality, prosperity, and power can be things all of its people share. Sitting at the top of the great Lake Michigan and at a crossroads of transportation all across the interior, Chicago is an economic and intellectual powerhouse, a lynchpin to the rest of the Comintern in the area and communities from the Appalachians to the Rockies. The people of Chicago are wry and personable, extremely proud of their city and their nation, and driven to defend it ferociously in conversation or combat. The city’s long history of immigration has given it a dramatic blend of cultures, and the city’s museums and public institutions are famous across the world. Being next to the almost unimaginably vast Lake Michigan means that Chicago’s weather is less predictable but also typically less harsh than elsewhere in the Midwest; as they say, if you do not like the weather, wait for an hour and it will change. The countryside beyond the city proper boasts of a strong rural culture amid the rolling hills and endless fields of upper Illinois, and the people there are no less proud of their towns and villages than Chicagoans are of their city. DETROIT COMMUNE The brainchild of labor legend Walter Reuther, the Detroit Commune is one of the great forges of the Comintern’s new world, a symbol of the power of nonviolent action and industrial might. After the death of his friend Dr. King, the far-sighted Reuther negotiated a new deal with the nervous auto bosses of Detroit – a contingency to avoid riots and oppression in a post-US world. When Reuther died in 1970, it might have been consigned to history and forgotten – but the collapse he dreaded continued coming true, and when the Allegheny Martial Law declaration happened, the industries and unions of Detroit declared they would stand together for Detroit’s workers and people, founding the Detroit Commune. The most purely anarcho-syndicalist state in America today, the Commune is defined by its industry and the power of work. Company, country, and union have merged to become all but indistinguishable, and when paired with Comintern investment and the rise of the TNE industrial world, combined to turn Detroit into the powerhouse of a new age, on par with the Ruhrplex of Germany and the Iron Corridor of the Soviet Union. Detroit’s foundries, plants, and factories have stamped, forged, molded, and built countless units of Socialist Aid housing, COMRAIL rolling stock, water pipe, and electrical infrastructure. Yet the Commune doesn’t just make a better world, but also defends it – if you look closely at your new AK-74, or on the builder’s plate of your Blue Gemini artillery, you might find the ubiquitous stamp known the world over – “Made in Detroit.” When in Detroit you will find yourself in one of the most modern cities in the world – much of the city has been dramatically rebuilt since the rise of TNE construction, with gleaming new buildings to mark Detroit’s second golden age towering amid the stone-clad icons of the first. Detroit’s people are known to be practical, clear-thinking sorts with a deep sense of pride in their industry and society, a ferocious love of individual rights and social equality, and a deep care for the natural environment. Much of Michigan remains independent of Detroit, but beyond the city itself, the incredible waterscape of the Great Lakes and the rolling glacial countryside of the Peninsula and Windsorside parallel the ever-working factories and mills of the city and its environs. FIVE NATIONS OF MANHATTAN The Five Nations of Manhattan sit proudly on the east coast of America, centered around one of the world’s greatest cities. In the old United States, New York City was one of its largest and mightiest metropoles, but suffered immensely under the jackboot of capital and division. The power of Wall Street dominated and dictated life to the City, stifling its community identities and shackling its vast population with choking rent and bitter competition, enforced by the bloody fist of the New York Police Department. Following the Allegheny Riots and the collapse of the central United States, the people of New York grew exhausted with this oppression, and demanded change in THEIR city. When the elite refused, they rose up as one on July 4th and threw them out, rallying around myriad local banners to stand firm as the federal government raged against them on land and sea. With the five boroughs of the City at its heart, New York became the Five Nations, one banner of countless individuals living free, and so it remains to this day. While once referring to its five boroughs, the Five Nations today consist of the City, the Downstate (which is above the City, confusingly), Long Island, Jerseyside, and the Oblong. Keeping a city of eight million people alive and functional in the face of the collapse of the United States has been one of the greatest achievements of the Comintern and of the people of the Five Nations, and they are rightly proud of it. Indeed, the Five Nations are famously proud – proud of their City, of their accomplishments, their strong local systems, their tight-knit communities, their adaptability, their myriad cultures. Getting into an argument over this wealth of pride is to be avoided at all costs; if you have the chance to be there, it is best to simply appreciate it. Balancing the City against the rest of the country is a difficult tightrope to walk, but necessary – neither can live without the other. The Five Nations represent the difficulty of modern society – and the benefits it reaps. They are also, however, humble enough to recognize that without the aid of the Comintern, even their best efforts might have been in vain in the face of superstorms and shortages, and you will find no more devoted members of the alliance than the Five Nations of Manhattan. New York City is considered by its inhabitants to be the Greatest City in the World, and it is a difficult point to argue when there. A lifetime can be spent in NYC – its universities are world-famous, its industries immense, its museums legendary, its cultural weight so enormous that it has shaped the world to it. Every culture in the world is said to walk its streets, and set the menus at its famous restaurants. Do not expect to see everything – the waiting lists for New York’s most famous venues are months or years long, as there are simply too many who wish to see them. However, there will always be something to do. The environs beyond the city replace overwhelming urban beauty with quieter rural and natural splendor – the farmlands of the Oblong and Jerseyside, the forested uplands of the Downstate Triangle, and the long, cool beaches of Long Island that once hosted capitalist elite seeking peace and relaxation. The Five Nations’ excellent train and subway system, designed to ensure that its population can move across its vast urban landscape comfortably and efficiently, means that wherever you may be in the Five Nations, everywhere else is easily within reach. PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF APPALACHIA It is a saying in the hills that “Appalachia was a colony, not a state”. The United States treated the high hills and valleys of the Appalachian Mountains and the people who lived there not as equal members of society, but as an extractive lower class, fit only to mine and lumber their rich hills for the benefit of elites elsewhere while they choked on coal dust and died in ignorance. The people of Appalachia fought bitterly against this fate for decades, facing the full United States Army at Blair Mountain in 1920, and when the nation collapsed in 1971 they seized their chance. Led by the United Mine Workers’ union and the Black Liberation Army militia, the people of Appalachia fought a bitter, bloodthirsty war with the United States, which turned to nuclear and chemical warfare to try and take the land itself with it. For decades, Appalachia struggled in wary isolation, but have now emerged to join in the call for true American liberation. The PDRA is a young, cautious country, having just weathered the death of their founder, Tony Boyle, and now are eager to spread their doctrine of liberation to those around who have long sought to starve or crush them. Its land, Appalachia, is rich but deeply wounded, with nuclear scars on its forested hillsides and American chemical weapons sunk into its deep aquifers and springs. You are advised when there to consult both the locals and your own officers to make sure of what places are safe to go, and what food and water is safe to consume. The Comintern has dedicated itself to healing Appalachia, but this process has only just begun. The Appalachian people themselves are fiercely dedicated communists, drawing inspiration from great figures such as Mao Zedong and Malcom X, along with the work and thought of their founder Tony Boyle, and have developed a hardy, intense society in the face of the many threats and hardships that face them. Appalachians are known to be dedicated and self-sacrificing, and extremely eager to prove their ability and worth to their comrades. You are exhorted to treat them with respect and discipline, and to share your own stories of the world. TAR HEEL CONFEDERATION The lands of the Carolinas were deeply scarred by the death throes of the United States. The USA stationed much of its military in its “South”, and the old bigotry that tainted its fabric was at its most intense in the region. As a result, the Great War left deep scars along the area, with many bases vanishing in nuclear fire – both from Soviet attacks, and from the Americans denying their own citizens of arsenals and facilities. North and South Carolina faced a vast belt of strikes that ravaged their cities and cut them in half. The seaward Carolinans came together in a community for survival that came to be known as the Outer Banks Republic, while the interior remained fractured into local polities. When Comintern efforts at nuclear cleanup finally allowed the two to unify, they formed what is known today as the Tar Heel Confederation. Though larger in land area than the entire island of Ireland, the Tar Heel Confederation is sparsely populated and still very much a land in recovery. Consisting of most of the former US states of North and South Carolina, the Confederation is – as its name suggests – a loose polity of local powers and communities working together in a common cause, that being the recovery and reconstruction of their lands. Much of the humid, subtropical lands of the THC still bear the blast scars of war, and the population – the fifth-largest in the United States if counted together before the war – is greatly diminished, with most of the large cities still largely in ruins. However, considerable investment and effort both from the larger Comintern and from their neighbors in New Afrika has helped the rebuilding immensely, and the new capital at Wilmington is virtually unrecognizable, a modern city cast in gleaming TNEs. Tar Heelers have a respected reputation for measured, considerate thought. The difficulty of their survival trended away from intense political thinking in favor of raw, necessary pragmatism and practicality, and these traits remain dominant today. Do not mistake Tar Heelers for liberals or being soft in thought, as some do – as soldiers know, when every move and action is a matter of life or death, rash action can be suicidal. The careful work of the THC has stabilized a badly wounded land and people, and been crucial to undoing decades if not centuries of cultural poisoning and bigotry inflicted on the proletariat of the region. As a result, while not considered intense socialists, the Tar Heelers are extremely dedicated to their ideals and the cause of the Comintern, contributing much from their own limited resources to the cause, especially in the People’s Navy. Survival in harsh conditions breeds hospitality, as well, and if you treat them with respect, the “Southern hospitality” of the Tar Heel Confederation is known across the world. PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRIKA The oldest “post-American” state, New Afrika began to form even before the United States had truly died. In the wake of the King assassination and ongoing oppression, the black population of the American South came to see that rights would not be given to them, and must be taken instead. What began as civil unrest turned to riots, then guerilla warfare. By the time America began to lose its overseas war with the Comintern, its own South was already a patchwork of black states engaged in a years-long bitter fight for survival. After further unrest would push the United States over the edge, these states would unify to declare a Republic of New Afrika, to guarantee that they would never again suffer under the yoke of racism and bigotry. New Afrika is the largest Comintern state east of the Rocky Mountains by size and population, sprawling seven hundred miles wide across the former American South and counting over fifteen million people within its borders. While not all of its population is black, a vast percentage are, and all are unified by a ferocious disgust with the bigotry of the former US and a desire to ensure that every child in New Afrika can grow up in FAIRNESS – a fair share, an equal voice, and a life without fear. Beyond that, however, almost everything else is for debate. New Afrikans are well-renowned as a ferocious people; everything they do, they do entirely and zealously, from politics to culture to industry to religion. Religion and New Afrika are inseparable, and faith is a key tenet of their life – though exactly which faith is as contentious among them as anything else. You are exhorted to remember the importance of religion to the Afrikans and treat their faith with respect – they have had great need for faith in their history, and it has served them well. New Afrika itself is subtropical and hilly in large part, with broad, sweeping lowlands by the coasts; its summers are long and steaming hot, while its winters bring intense rains and storms. Though Atlanta can be considered the peer of many of the world’s great cities, much of the country remains rural and sleepy, covered in farmlands and plantations, including the tea which is so ubiquitous to the Southern lifestyle. As it is also the home of Coca-Cola, you may be assured that however hot it is during your time in New Afrika, you will never go thirsty. If you do not betray or impose on their hospitality, you will find no greater hosts than the New Afrikans in the world. NATION OF SEQUOYAH A young, intense nation, Sequoyah has a history that far outlasts its bloody birth as a state. The “Five Tribes” of Oklahoma were driven from the American South by the United States government centuries ago, and ever since were subjected to some of the worst mistreatment it could conjure as a truly forgotten people – in truth, not five but over a hundred different peoples forced onto ever smaller chunks of land. Lead dust was left to poison the air, oil runoff to contaminate the water, and some of the most virulent prejudice imaginable was sown into the minds of the region. The result was an unthinkable existence spiked with events such as the anti-black Tulsa Pogrom of 1921. Such a powderkeg can only resolve by exploding, and when the US began to collapse, it did so, bloodily. Sequoyah was born in violence as, led by the Comanche and Cherokee, race wars and brutal local violence erupted in the teeth of attacks by the Joint Chiefs in their nearby strongholds in Kansas and Arkansas, and attempts by white supremacists to enact their hideous racist agenda. Only the arrival of Cuban veteran libertadores managed to finally tip the tide in favor of the tribes, and the Comintern has been heavily involved in untangling centuries of blood oaths and vendettas ever since. Sequoyah has spent the decades following its liberation as a stalwart Comintern member, and an island of popular power between the mercurial Republic of Texas and the bigot strongholds of the Joint Chiefs. Sequoyah as a nation covers the majority of the former U.S. state of Oklahoma, with small sections of Texas, Kansas, and Arkansas. While often thought of as endless flat prairie, Sequoyah is anything but, with broad mesas rising up over its river valleys and thick forests coating its eastern hills. One of the most multicultural nations on the continent, Sequoyah is also one of the Comintern’s most aggressive pursuers of justice and equality, a heavy contributor to the Bureau of Indigenous Affairs and a stalwart supporter of Cuban-style international liberationism. Sequoyah is on the front lines of the end of the United States, and should you be stationed there, you are exhorted to treat its people with the utmost respect – they have earned it, and they have much to teach. NAVAJO NATION The Navajo Nation is one of a few that can claim to not be “post-American” states – it existed before the United States, and now exists after as well. The Navajo people have lived on their land for centuries, and retained their unity and identity in the face of the American conquest of the region and attempts to impose their government and values onto them. When the United States collapsed, the Navajo were more prepared than any to simply step into a new society modeled after the old, with its matriarchal clans selecting a ruling Council and Chief. Restoring old ways is not traveling back in time, however, and the reality of the modern world brought the Navajo into coalition with surrounding tribes also freed from their “reservations” – the Hopi, Apache, Zuni, Pueblo, and Ute – and in the face of bitter racism and unrest in the region, to alliance with California and entry into the family of world socialism. Today the Navajo Nation is a nation in flux, adjusting to a larger role in a much larger world, and it is renowned for cautious, considered action. While they depend on their relationship with the Comintern, they have plenty of reason to be wary of outsiders making dramatic changes to their lands. The Americans treated the environment in their region with outrageous abandon, using much of their West as nuclear testing sites and extensively mining uranium on Navajo land without protecting or even informing the people of the threat of radiation; as such, the Navajo are extremely concerned with the global environment and the restoration of the land and ecosystem from the ravages of capitalist industrialism. The Navajo military is small but features a battle-hardened core with experience from multiple World Wars; in defense of their sharp, rugged landscape, they are almost peerless. The Navajo Nation spans a broad swathe of the former American Southwest, having taken effective control of the entire historical Navajo homeland of Dinetah along with neighboring reservations and areas thrown into chaos by the American collapse, including the cities of Flagstaff, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque. The landscape in the region is stunning, featuring sheer mesas and deep-cut canyons carved into the high-altitude deserts, but also harsh in climate, with scarce rain and sharp temperature extremes. The Navajo (and Hopi, Ute, Apache, Zuni, and Pueblo) people are likely to be cautious of outsiders; do not be offended at this if you are stationed there, but patient and considerate. They have been burned before; prove that you will respect them, and they will respect you in kind.
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Feb 25, 2023 10:43
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Originally published in Science Magazine, September 1986 issue Drifting: The Story of NOMAD’s Great Undersea Exile and the Fight to Save the Ships Author credit: Edwin Montrose When you first see it, it looms up out of the darkness like a ridge, so large it seems like a natural feature. It’s only when you get closer that you can see it for what it truly is – the ragged and torn edges on the forward face, the odd metal protrusions, the scattered debris all around. “It’s very eerie,” Dr. Robert Ballard says, peering out the tiny forward porthole of the Deep Sea Vehicle Alvin. “You can see the damage, and imagine the incredible, terrific forces that caused it, but only in your mind. It’s deadly quiet down here.” “Down here” is miles off the coast of Guadalcanal, an island in the independent Solomons, and some four thousand feet below the ocean. The Empire State Building and Moscow State University could be stacked atop each other at this spot and still not come close to the surface. Here, upside-down, lies the wreck of Kirishima, a Japanese battleship sunk in World War II, and one of nearly forty wrecks that litter the floor of a stretch of ocean so heavily fought over that the sailors named it “Ironbottom Sound”, a name it carries today. “You don’t usually see shipwrecks upside-down, even when the ships rolled over when they sank. Which she did, or so the Japanese said,” Ballard offers, tapping a Polaroid taped up by the porthole. It shows Kirishima when she was afloat, a byzantine, stepped mass of steel bristling with guns. “What we think is that her big pagoda superstructure acted as a keel, dragging through the water and keeping her ‘stable’ in that upside-down position until she hit the seafloor. But given the state she’s in, that’s a guess at best.” The Alvin continues its glide along the side of the wreck, its video and photo cameras taking in every detail they can spot of the dead 35,000-ton titan. Its tiny duranium cockpit barely has room for myself and Dr. Ballard to both fit, and we are both fixated on its three small portholes. Nobody has laid eyes on this ship in forty years. Now its final location is known. Finding these locations was once Dr. Ballard’s job. As the United States Navy collapsed alongside its country in the 1970s, Dr. Ballard was left stranded, having been assigned as the liaison to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, in what would quickly become known as the Commonwealth of New England. Though born in Kansas hundreds of miles from any coast, he fell in love with the sea and stayed with Woods Hole as it struggled to find its footing without the backing of the Navy’s bottomless budget, cut off from the bulk of the world by the geopolitics of the Comintern. The lab’s rarity was its saving grace. The deep ocean is one of the least-explored places on Earth, and by many metrics is a far more hostile environment than outer space. Spaceships are built to deal with an absence of pressure, or basically, one atmosphere of difference. At a mere four thousand feet down, however, the water above is putting nearly 120 atmospheres worth of pressure on Alvin – and the deepest known parts of Earth go almost nine times farther down. “It’s one of the great engineering challenges of our time – maybe still the greatest,” Dr. Ballard offers earlier, in a stateroom on the NMV Atlantis, Alvin’s support ship, floating on the surface above the Kirishima’s wreck. “I get blowback on that from my colleagues on the VENUSPLAN project, for sure, but I think we can make a pretty solid case. Making a submarine of any size that can go that deep and do anything down there – even look around – is still a challenge, even with TNE materials.” He smiles. “It’s great.” The skill to do that is, thus, valuable, and with the Scripps Institute in California prioritizing its own country’s work, Woods Hole was chartered in 1975 by the Kingdom of Hawaii, which agreed to subsidize the development of undersea vessels as part of its plans for independence. The Kingdom still finances Ballard today, as can be seen out the porthole on Atlantis, where less than a mile away, the vast bulk of the Glomar Explorer rides at anchor. Dr. Ballard’s work on underwater exploration was thus akin to a man with one black eye in the kingdom of the blind – slow, stumbling, and prone to a lot of misses and wasted time, but invaluable. With Hawaiian funding and, of all places, Minnesotan manufacturing, they could improve on Alvin’s pre-GRW design and investigate possible mineral deposits, undersea life, and Dr. Ballard’s personal fascination – shipwrecks. Then, of course, a bright light was shone into the dark kingdom, and its names were Skarbnik and Karzalek. While the great geosurveying spacecraft of the Comintern were and are truly impressive feats of engineering, their powerful sensors swept the ocean floor as a show of capability – and found, in the span of a few months, hundreds of shipwrecks that had eluded centuries worth of hard work by explorers, including Dr. Ballard’s crown jewel, the ocean liner Titanic. “It was shocking, yeah. Some of my colleagues still haven’t recovered from it.” Ballard shakes his head. “To a lot of them it was taking a bunch of the mystery and discovery out of the ocean floor, giving a detailed map to what was basically a blank slate before that.” He smiles. “But, myself, I just saw it as giving me a great big to-do list. I’ve seen Karzalek scans, and they’re certainly impressive when you consider that they're made from low-Earth orbit. But the detail is only a little better than old-school sonar mapping. So they found where the ships are… but not what they’re like.” Ballard and Woods Hole made this into their personal ambition following the Comintern Science Bureau’s initial location data release to the oceanographic community. Alvin was the first vehicle to dive on the Titanic, taking haunting photography of one of history’s most decadent disasters, and Ballard was part of the first crew down. In the years that have followed, Woods Hole has made expeditions to more than forty different shipwrecks across the world, with their marathon tour of Ironbottom Sound being this year’s main target. It is also their first after their dark, quiet world was once more invaded by problems surrounding it. Dr. Ballard and Woods Hole’s patronage by the Comintern-friendly Kingdom of Hawaii did not escape the notice of the New England government, which at first put up with it as it had no other options to keep its prestige piece alive. However, New England’s new governments care more about ideology than science, and starting in January, began serious attempts to “rein in” the “rogue” institution, with political witch hunts and even serious threats to basically the entire faculty staff. In response, WHOI appealed to its benefactor for aid, and got it. One day in March, the Glomar Explorer slipped quietly into Buzzards Bay on a routine port call, its vast holds oddly empty. When it left, accompanied by the research ships Atlantis and Knorr, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute sailed with it, its historic building in the small village standing as empty and quiet as the shipwreck that drifts outside Alvin’s portholes now. The Government of New England has denounced the entire institution as “traitors” – WHOI, meanwhile, insists that it has simply relocated. Lacking land facilities and already a mobile force, however, WHOI opted after some consideration to apply for membership not with the Kingdom of Hawaii, but with a Comintern member in good standing – the NOMAD Collective. Based on the idea that NOMAD would be better able to directly support its operations and with the eventual (if reluctant) approval of the Hawaiians, WHOI was accepted as a member group and today continues its quest to chart the world’s oceans and shipwrecks -- though still mostly with Hawaiian funding and Hawaiian mission designs. While only one member on the Institute’s operating council, Dr. Ballard’s skill and minor celebrity has made him something of the face of this mission, and thus a face of NOMAD. This quest is, in fact, why Dr. Ballard and Atlantis are off Guadalcanal at all – and why Glomar Explorer is with them. As a Comintern member, NOMAD has a role and stake in the great international organization’s Ministry of Ecology – and part of that ecology lies under the surface. Shipwrecks like the Kirishima went down loaded with toxic and dangerous substances – unexploded munitions, asbestos fireproofing, lead paint, and of course, thousands and thousands of tons of fuel oil. Partly due to being sunk by being shot full of holes and partly thanks to the ravages of time, these wrecks around the world – along with those added by the Great Revolutionary War – are starting to leak their deadly cargoes into the ocean at large, and put both uncharted and uncountable ecosystems at risk, as well as the communities that depend upon them. As such, while a lower priority than the land radiation cleanup, thanks to suddenly knowing where these wrecks are, the Ministry of Ecology now strives to cut off these toxins at the source, in what is known (with typical Comintern bureaucrat irony) as Project Roundup. As Alvin glides along the wreck of the Kirishima, the Glomar Explorer lowers its far larger cousin, Roger, into the depths. Built to take full advantage of TNE technology as opposed to Alvin’s pre-GRW design, Roger is “only” the size of four combined Alvins, but still capable of far more complex operations at the same crushing depths. Once Alvin identifies what pockets of oil may remain in the wrecked battleship, Roger will approach and – delicately, delicately – pierce the compartments to pump out the contaminants, to be replaced with seawater. Doctor Ballard treats this operation with the utmost respect. Everyone involved does, for it is a fraught idea. Almost every shipwreck is a grave, and the warships in particular often form the last resting place for hundreds of their crew. Kirishima took over 200 Japanese sailors with her to the bottom, and back on the surface, a Japanese Navy captain on liaison is fixed to the screens showing the feed from Alvin, watchful for any signs of trouble. Disturbing these sites at all is a very difficult proposition, risking affront to generations of blue-water sailors, and all of the Project Roundup crew take it very seriously. They also risk damaging the shipwrecks – depending on their age, wrecks may have spent decades in the corrosive seawater, and even with the most modern close-scanning technology, exactly how and where their structures may remain strong is almost impossible to tell from the outside. The wrong move could collapse a wreck partially or completely – and in the case of warships like Kirishima, this can be a deadly mistake. Kirishima is only half a ship, hundreds of feet of its forward section gone with only a ragged edge remaining. When it sank and hit the bottom, the hundreds of tons of ammunition in its forward magazines exploded like the volcano that gave it its name, erasing the forward half of the ship. But Kirishima had guns all around, and the aft magazines are still there – and would also still be full of now forty-year-old explosives. Them going off would not only destroy the rest of the wreck, but crush anything in the water near it like a soda can hit with a firehose – such as the Alvin and Roger. As such, only the oil is marked for removal, since being lighter than water, it will surge outward with any leak. Kirishima’s steel hull can contain the rest, until the ocean melts it away. This steel hull, however, is both a blessing and a curse. Kirishima, and all her World War II colleagues, were built of steel made before the first atomic bombs exploded. Those bombs, and the thousands that have been detonated since, spread background radiation throughout the Earth’s atmosphere, contaminating it thoroughly – along with anything that uses oxygen to be made, such as steel. This is a problem for anything made that uses steel but needs to be free of radioactive interference, such as Geiger counters, which detect radiation, or medical equipment, which uses it. This makes “pre-Trinity steel” very, very valuable, as barring production on another planet or the complete purging of radiation from the atmosphere – a goal even the Ministry of Ecology thinks is beyond its power – making any more low-background steel is a very difficult process. Far simpler to just take it from sources where it was made before the bombs, and then preserved out of the atmosphere – of which shipwrecks are the biggest candidate. This clashes with the status of many such shipwrecks as graves or historic sites, however, to be preserved for future use and understanding. Capitalism, however, does not care. Though the Skarbnik-Karzalek location data was only released to the scientific community, at some point across the world, it leaked, and word spread to the wrong sort of people. Since the discoveries, subsequent sweeps have found numerous shipwrecks in shallow waters seeming to shrink or change shape – or in some cases, even disappear entirely. Dr. Ballard knows exactly what that means, as does every oceanographer on the planet – the wrecks, despite their sacred or historical status, are being secretly salvaged until nothing remains, their grave-robbed steel and artifacts sold on the market for its high value. Dr. Ballard considers this an affront. His team very famously refused to take any artifacts from the wreck of the Titanic, save for lumps of coal from its scattered debris field. “It’s not some mysterious treasure that dropped out of the sky to be plundered – it’s also a mass grave for fifteen hundred people,” he tells me, his face tightening. “Taking anything would be as good as digging up someone’s grave to pull rings off their fingers. It’s an unthinkable insult.” Part of the Project Roundup mission, thus, is to monitor and put a presence on the shipwrecks at biggest risk, to try and prevent them from being stripped off the sea floor in blasted chunks. Thus it is not only the environmental damage that makes it a race against time. Dr. Ballard sees it as a duty – a sign of man’s ability to engineer, and to think beyond raw self-interest. It is a position that has endeared him to his new home-in-exile among NOMAD, and with him, all of Woods Hole OI. However, there is no such risk with Kirishima. She lies far too deep to be casually visited, let alone salvaged, and the government of the Solomon Islands has declared her and all of Ironbottom Sound to be an historic site, protected for all time. Alvin will document her, so that her true fate can be better determined, and history can better understand how she wound up as an upside-down half-wreck. Roger will drain her tanks, so that she can no longer threaten any fish or fisherman with a drifting cloud of poison. And then she will be left, deep beneath the sea, to her final repose, and that of the 200 men who sleep with her. But for Robert Ballard and Project Roundup, it will be just one more mark off the to-do list. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 8, 2023 03:32
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Redeye Flight posted:
Amazing. I love it
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Mar 8, 2023 04:19
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That was amazing.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:14
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Excellent work.
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Mar 8, 2023 07:32
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You're a good writer, redeye.
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Mar 8, 2023 07:35
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hm, an aquatic spaceship, an ocean explorer...nah probably just a coincidence. :v
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Mar 8, 2023 07:39
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DIE NEUE WELT SUNDAY EDITION 5 OCTOBER 1986 NETSIDE EDITION [neuewelt.com.de] = = = = INTERNATIONAL/MILITARY = = = = FUROR OVER THE NEW BAADER-CLASS CORVETTE PROPOSAL >Abstract Split in Volksraat over proposal to name corvette class after controversial Three Pointed War guerrilla leaders Andreas Baader, Gudrun Esslin, and Michael Baumann following assassination of the three by Gladio during the Interkosmos Incident. Surviving New Spartacist Faction leaders Ulrike Meinhof, Dieter Kunzelmann weigh in. = = = = THE NEW STG-85 FINALLY MAKES ITS DEBUT >Abstract Heckler & Koch Arbeitergenossenschaft Rüstungsmanufaktur demonstrated a working production model of the new StG-85 battle rifle at the Finabel 1986 Joint Exercises at Aviano, beginning on October 1. The new rifle is the first standard battle rifle in the world to integrate significant TNE elements into its core construction, making it much stronger and lighter than previous weapons; the revival of the “sturmgewehr” moniker, while somewhat controversial, reflects the paradigm shift the new weapon represents. Full-scale production is expected to commence next year; initial production is rumored to already be making its way to select German military units. = = = = SMS GOEBEN FINALLY EMERGES FROM RESTORATION; PLANS NORTH CAROLINA ENTERS DRYDOCK AT KIEL >Expand After over a decade of hard work, the battlecruiser Goeben has sailed under her own power out of drydock at Kiel, restored to operational order. Built by the German Empire prior to the First World War, Goeben was transferred to the Ottoman Empire early in that war and spent fifty years in commission with Turkey as their flagship, Yavuz. Towards the conclusion of the Great Revolutionary War, Turkey approached the newly reunified Germany with an offer to sell the now decrepit and decommissioned Goeben back to Germany for a token price; while initially rejected, the Shipworker's Union and the Volksmarine interceded and arranged for the purchase. “It will be strange to see her go,” said Bruno Schmidt, the HDWMK yard manager who oversaw the Goeben's restoration to her 1914 configuration. “She's been part of our life for almost as long as the People's Republic has. But it is far more gratifying to see her back to her true self – a testament to German industry past and present, for the future to see.” Goeben has been recommissioned and given the ceremonial position of Flagship of the German Navy, though like the Constitution and Victory, she will not return to actual battle. Goeben is planned to tour the German coast for the next two months before entering long-term station at Hamburg as a museum ship and educational institution on the history of the German navy and merchant marine. Nor is the work finished for Herr Schmidt and the HDWMK crew. As soon as Goeben had cleared her berth, Comintern tugs maneuvered the old ex-American battleship North Carolina, flagship of the Planetary Liberation Army Navy, into drydock for a long-overdue refit. Lacking any facilities capable of servicing her, the WW2 veteran has spent nearly a decade in service without a proper overhaul and is expected to be in for considerable work. Herr Schmidt, however, was unwilling to commit to a timetable. “Who can say? She is the flagship, after all. She may need to be called away beforehand, or she may be here for years. I'm no admiral.” = = = = REPORTS FROM APPALACHIA, UPDATE #7 >Abstract Latest entry in the ongoing feature from correspondent Benno Uhlmann, embedded with the 1st Mountain Division in Appalachia. Last month, the 1st Mountain arrived in Appalachia and set up camp, now revealed to be at Shepherd Air Base in the northeast of the country. This month, the 1st Mountain begins basic training and interservice exchange with the Appalachian People's Liberation Army, and also truly begin to engage with the local population, the first mass of outsiders some have ever seen. = = = = NAMES AND NAMES AGAIN IN THE COMINTERN CONGRESS >Byline Representative Fletcher Expected to Respond to Student Union Pressure, Propose Return to “Comintern” Moniker At Next Congress; Internationalist Faction Files Protest Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Apr 18, 2023 |
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Apr 18, 2023 22:05
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June 1, 2483 Institute of Social Sciences, University of Venus Department of Early Revolutionary History The view from the conference room window was nice, at least. The prevailing Venusian architectural style for the last century or so had been heavily inspired by the early aerostat-habitats of twentieth century settlement, a ‘Neo-Revolutionary’ aesthetic movement that favored broad, low, flat structures and simple, uncomplicated designs. Most of the northern quarter of the university complex was built in this style, and so the glittering spires of the new Social Sciences ‘stat, designed in the latest Martian style, towered over the neighboring modules. The great curved window in the chamber allowed a visitor to take in the view of nearly the entire university complex, about a third of the city of Aphrodite permanently moored to the west side, and three or four smaller towns temporarily docked on the east side. The nearest one, a hexagonal honeycomb structure moored to the Athletics Complex, had a large, handpainted sign, clearly legible even from here, mounted on one side, identifying itself as ‘CITY OF THESEUS’ in three different languages and ‘replacement part city’ in standard simplified pictograms. Academician Bates recalled that the city proudly identified itself as ‘the Oldest City on Venus’, boasting that it was the only original twentieth-century ‘stat left on the planet, although they would always acknowledge with a wink that, of course, every single individual part of the city has been replaced at least four times. A ‘GO MINOTAURS!’ banner had been added beneath the usual sign. Nobody expected much out of them this series, but then again, nobody had expected them to make the playoffs either, least of all them. Tonight’s game would probably be pretty good, and if they managed to pull off the upset the parties would be even better. Not that she would be seeing either. There was a lot of work to catch up on. That is what this meeting was supposed to be about. ‘Meeting’ is maybe a misnomer. ‘Interrogation’ or perhaps ‘rear end-reaming’ would be more appropriate. “So where the gently caress have you been?” the Dean’s translation system intoned, a split second after the burbles and bioluminescence of his actual speech. His tank was positioned at the head of the table. “I was taking a sabbatical,” she replied, trying not to sound defensive. The flashes in response were quick, angry. “A sabbatical? You apply for a sabbatical. A sabbatical is approved. You disappeared for four loving months. People thought you were dead.” Tentacles splayed out in a frustrated and inquisitive gesture. “And now you’re just back. We are all very curious to hear your explanation.” “I...well…” The academician’s eyes flashed over to the MOSA liaison, sitting serene and composed in full dress uniform a few seats over. Help me out here buddy. There was a brief moment of panic that they were going to leave her out to dry. “The good doctor was working for us,” the liaison cut in, dispelling that fear. “Matters of interplanetary security.” Documents are slid across the table. “All of the necessary paperwork is there – conscription notice, service record, discharge papers, the works.” The Dean deflated both literally and figuratively as his tank’s manipulators thumbed through the documents. Using physical paper documentation was unusual these days, and an actual government agency doing it meant only one thing. SPECTRE rather liked pageantry, and of course they made sure to slap their logo on the folder and on every page of the archaic paperwork. Conversation was more subdued after that. She didn’t have tenure yet, but she had been called up for service under established rules and regulations; they had to give the historian her job back. The Dean was not happy with the arrangement, of course, but he would make it work. On one condition – that she resume work immediately. Her research was far behind schedule, deadlines were fast approaching, oh, and while she was at it, they had a summer freshman-level class with no one else to teach it. The historian didn’t mind at all. It would be grueling trying to make up for four months of lost time, but it felt like coming home. ----------------------------- October 28, 1986 In Ho Chi Minh City, the great arcology continues to rise into the sky. The lower levels are already in use even as the upper levels are being constructed. Activity is constant, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Paperwork is filed; steel and aluminum and duranium are shaped, formed, welded, bolted. Meetings are held; wire is pulled. Data is collated; flooring is laid. It will be impressive, awe-inspiring, when it is finished. It is even more so when it is not. In Zimbabwe, the plows and seed-drills and tractors and all the other gleaming implements of modern agricultural production are being maintained, fine-tuned, cleaned, made ready. The traditional start of the summer growing season is in only a few days, and there are billions of mouths to feed. In Appalachia, a class of raw recruits don the uniforms of the Interplanetary People’s Army for the first time. The previous class shipped out only a few hours ago, and when this group leaves in a few weeks, another will immediately fill their places. On the Moon, in the silence of near-vacuum, workers swarm over the regolith, digging and filling, preparing ground, laying pipe and conduit and cabling, pouring foundations, raising structures. Inside the habitats people work and play and sleep, talk and laugh and fight and dream. In the skies above, shuttles cycle back and forth between orbit and the surface, some of them heading down laden with cargo or passengers, some heading up empty. On Mars, a science team at the Barsoom station tests using solar heating to smelt metal, as part of a series of studies on in-situ resource utilization that might prove valuable for future colonization efforts. Archaeologists at the Face continue to dismantle the ‘Minervan’ (probably) ship, carefully removing wall panels, flooring, meticulously cataloguing everything they find beneath. In the Kuiper Belt, so far away from everything else humanity has built that even the ‘pale blue dot’ is invisible to the naked eye, a team that has now been out here for quite a long time is deep in conversation with new and strange friends. It is a day much like many before it. The worlds keep turning. WE ARE BACK. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jun 2, 2023 |
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Jun 2, 2023 01:59
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 18:30 |
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Hell yeah we're back baby.
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Jun 2, 2023 02:07
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