As the three walked into the house Alex spoke.
“Something happened on Earth and you had to cut the visit short?”
“Yes.” Evelyn replied.
“What happened?” Asked Alex.
“I committed a sin.” Said Evelyn.
“Sin is a mystical concept and is therefore invalid.”
Evelyn thought for a moment. He then replied.
“I didn’t live up to the rational ethical standard.”
“What did you do wrong?” Asked Alex.
Evelyn answered.
“If there was one thing I should’ve recalled from the memories I received from you, it’s that I should never give an evil man a break.”
“You did?” Asked Alex.
“Yes, I did.” Said Evelyn. “And because I did an innocent girl was murdered right before my eyes.”
Both Alex and Diana stopped in the hall.
Alex spoke.
“Should we sit down?”
“Yes.” Said Evelyn.
Alex led Evelyn and Diana into a sitting room. The large picture window of the room overlooked a small lake on the Charon family estate.
When all three were seated Alex spoke.
“Now, what happened?”
Evelyn paused before answering.
“I went down to Minneapolis, just to see what the place was like now.”
“Is the Uptown Theater still there?” Alex asked.
“Yes,” said Evelyn, “and they’re still running The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“Really?” Said Alex.
“Yes, only once a year now, in the holographic format.”
Diana asked a question.
“What’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”
Alex answered.
“It’s a deconstruction of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein as written by a follower of Herbert Marcuse.”
“Now I’m more confused.” Said Diana.
“Which was the entire point of the film.” Said Evelyn.
Alex nodded, Evelyn continued.
“But that wasn’t the fundamental problem.” He said. “The Chairman of the Grande-Sinjoro Corporation made several requests for a meeting with me in person in at their headquarters in the city of Chicago. I gave a negative reply to the first message and ignored the subsequent notes.”
“He didn’t understand your response?” Said Alex.
“No.” Evelyn replied. “He didn’t. ‘No,’ is such a simple concept. And he wasn’t the only one. The concierge at the New Millennium Hotel couldn’t believe that I wanted nothing to do with that piece of garbage and offered to set up the meeting anyway. So I changed hotels.”
Alex and Diana remained silent.
“I come back to the second hotel after a short tour of Nordeast Minneapolis, and there’s the piece of garbage, appearing in the center of the suite as if he was the senior senator from New York, he was acting as if he owned the place.” Said Evelyn. “He had a male flunky with him and a gift.”
“A gift?” Said Alex.
“He likely thought of her as such.” Evelyn replied. “A female sex slave, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, she appeared to be about ten years in age, and was completely naked except the white slave bands.”
“White bands means she was unused.” Said Diana.
“What a nice euphemism.” Said Alex with a slight note of sarcasm. “So what did he want?”
“He wanted to market their product on Freya and in the Ursa Major Confederation.” Said Evelyn. “He wanted to use our family’s influence to lift the capital ban on slavery. And he brought along the girl to the meeting as a bribe.”
“You said no, of course.”
“I wasn’t polite about it.” Said Evelyn. “I used some old school barracks language in front of the girl.”
Evelyn wanted to stop. He didn’t want to remember.
He sat silently until Diana spoke.”
“Evelyn?”
“I said no.”
“That wasn’t all, was it?” Said Alex.
Evelyn hadn’t simply said no. He thought that he was being clever in his response. It didn’t work.
“No, that wasn’t all.” Evelyn replied. “I told him, ‘I won’t lift a finger to help you politically. But I will do you one favor. I’ll take this little girl back to Freya, where she’ll be adopted by a real family and grow up as a real person, and then when it’s time for you to join the choir infernal you’ll have one less sin to atone for.’”
Evelyn closed his eyes and silently wrapped himself around Diana. He didn’t want to let her go. Ever.
Alex spoke.
“He killed her.”
Evelyn opened his eyes and stared as if he were seeing into a void.
“Yes, he killed her. Right there. It was as if he was simply pressing the off switch for her.”
The monomolecular threads swiftly cut through the neck, wrists, and ankles. Every part of the girl simply dropped to the floor. Blood sprayed everywhere.
“I didn’t say anything.” Said Evelyn. “I simply drew my weapon and shot them through the heads. As if they were simply animals.”
Evelyn paused, and then spoke again.
“I knelt and looked at her face. I could see the light fading from her eyes.”
“I seen death.” Said Alex.
“I know.” Evelyn replied. “I remember every one. You never saw this one, and you don’t want to see this one.”
In Chicago as far as anyone standing outside could perceive it was simply an ordinary block shaped office building in the center of the newly reconstructed city. It appeared as if the architect was barely competent to design such a structure. In fact the designer had gone out of his way to make the structure, clad in black tinted glass, indistinctive when compared to other buildings in the city so it wouldn’t attract unwanted attention.
The ground limousine entered the restricted section of the underground garage. An actual living and breathing security officer in a normal business suit stood and waited as the white haired passenger completed a retina scan. Only then was the man allowed to enter the restricted section of the building.
The man rode the private elevator to the top floor of the building. There he was met by another security officer.
The white haired man introduced himself.
“Mister Wolfe to see The Committee.”
The security officer looked through an actual printed book of holographic color photographs to identify Wolfe.
“You may enter, sir.” Said the officer.
Wolfe said nothing more to the officer as he entered the restricted suite.
Past the entrance of the suite was a corridor. On the far side of the corridor was another familiar set of doors. Standing before the doors was a tall brown haired woman in an expensively tailored all white business suit. She was one of the rare people in this age to still wear eyeglasses.
She spoke to Wolfe.
“The Committee requires that you sit in the chair under the spotlight.”
Wolfe took a step forward. The woman blocked him with the right hand.
She spoke again.
“The Committee requires that you acknowledge their instructions.”
The elder Wolfe resented being treated as if he were still a mere schoolboy.
He replied.
“I will sit in the chair as instructed.”
The woman replied.
“Thank you Mister Wolfe, you may enter now.”
The woman opened the door. Wolfe walked in.
The walls of the chamber were covered with black curtains. Before the head of the room and the right and left sides were the elevated tables behind which The Committee would sit in judgement of the elder Wolfe.
Before the bench was a single and simple chair under a spotlight.
The elder Wolfe sat down.
It was then the men and woman who made up The Committee filed into the chamber. Each member of The Committee was as old or older than the elder Wolfe. Each member wore a black robe over a black shirt and a black skullcap.
When all the members were seated the chairwoman spoke to Wolfe.
“You will stand up.”
Wolfe stood up.
The chairwoman asked a question.
“Do you understand why you have been summoned?”
“Yes, Madam Chairman.” Wolfe replied.
“Do you know the truth?”
“Yes.” Said Wolfe. “‘There is no god but God and the Elder Gabriel is His voice.’”
“Please be seated.” Said the chairwoman.
The elder Wolfe sat down.
The chairwoman spoke.
“Brian Francis Wolfe, do you understand why you have been summoned before the committee?”
“No.” He replied.
The chairwoman shook her head and then responded.
“Your son, Edward, was arrested, tried, and executed for the crime of enslavement in the Ursa Major Confederation.”
“My son was murdered by a false state to enforce a false law.”
The chairwoman spoke again.
“By placing himself outside the boundary of the true state your son placed himself outside the protection of the true law.”
“They had no right to murder my son!”
The chairwoman shook her head and spoke again.
“You are fully aware of the fact that there is no right and no wrong, there is only power over others. You should have passed this awareness on to your son.”
“I know now.” Said Wolfe.
Wolfe sat silently.
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Saturday, July 10, 2021
Incarnations, Part Two
Wednesday, July 07, 2021
H. Beam Piper On Neo-Barbarians
H. Beam Piper on neo-barbarism excerpted from his novel SPACE VIKING
(Copyright 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.) Space Viking is now available from
Cosmos Books.
“Yes, for one thing, we don’t have the Neobarbarians,” somebody said. “And if they ever came out here, we’d blow them to Em-See-Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they did, too; it would stop us squabbling among ourselves.”
Harkaman looked at him in surprise. “Just who do think the Neobarbarians are, anyhow?” he asked. “Some race of invading nomads, Atilla’s Huns in spaceships?”
“Well, isn’t that who they are?’ Gorram asked.
“Nifflheim, no! There aren’t a dozen and a half planets in the Old federation that still have hyperdrive, and they’re all civilized. ... These are homemade barbarians. Workers and peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth and then found they’d smashed the means of production and killed of the all the technical brains. Survivors on planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of political leader on local-dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following self-anointed prophets.”
[...]
“You’ve seen decivilized planets. How does it happen?”
“I know how it’s happened on a good many: War. Destruction of cities and industries. Survivors among ruins, too busy keeping their own bodies alive to try to keep civilization alive. Then they lose all knowledge of how to be civilized.”
“That’s catastrophic decivilization. There is also decivilization by erosion, and while it’s going on, nobody notices it. Everybody is proud of their civilization, their wealth and culture. But trade is falling off; fewer ships come in each year. So there is boastful talk about planetary self-sufficiency; who needs off-planet trade anyhow? Everybody seems to have money, but the government is always broke. Deficit spending–and always more vital social services for which the government has to spend money. The most vital one, of course, is buying votes to keep the government in power. And it gets harder for the government to get anything done.
“The soldiers are sloppier at drill, and their uniforms and weapons aren’t taken care of. The non-coms are insolent. And more and more parts of the city are dangerous at night, and then even in daytime. And it’s been years since a new building went up, and the old ones aren’t being repaired anymore.”
[...]
“Our grandchildren, if any will probably be raiding Murduk.”
“You think it’ll be like that?”
“Don’t you? You were there you saw what was happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they understand of it–luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
Trask nodded.
“And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he’s the Leader.” He poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handicraft-industry level. “I don’t understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler on the way home. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He’s using all Hitler’s tricks. But Hitler come to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn’t fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce.”
“It wasn’t the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that’s ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.”
“Yes, for one thing, we don’t have the Neobarbarians,” somebody said. “And if they ever came out here, we’d blow them to Em-See-Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they did, too; it would stop us squabbling among ourselves.”
Harkaman looked at him in surprise. “Just who do think the Neobarbarians are, anyhow?” he asked. “Some race of invading nomads, Atilla’s Huns in spaceships?”
“Well, isn’t that who they are?’ Gorram asked.
“Nifflheim, no! There aren’t a dozen and a half planets in the Old federation that still have hyperdrive, and they’re all civilized. ... These are homemade barbarians. Workers and peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth and then found they’d smashed the means of production and killed of the all the technical brains. Survivors on planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of political leader on local-dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following self-anointed prophets.”
[...]
“You’ve seen decivilized planets. How does it happen?”
“I know how it’s happened on a good many: War. Destruction of cities and industries. Survivors among ruins, too busy keeping their own bodies alive to try to keep civilization alive. Then they lose all knowledge of how to be civilized.”
“That’s catastrophic decivilization. There is also decivilization by erosion, and while it’s going on, nobody notices it. Everybody is proud of their civilization, their wealth and culture. But trade is falling off; fewer ships come in each year. So there is boastful talk about planetary self-sufficiency; who needs off-planet trade anyhow? Everybody seems to have money, but the government is always broke. Deficit spending–and always more vital social services for which the government has to spend money. The most vital one, of course, is buying votes to keep the government in power. And it gets harder for the government to get anything done.
“The soldiers are sloppier at drill, and their uniforms and weapons aren’t taken care of. The non-coms are insolent. And more and more parts of the city are dangerous at night, and then even in daytime. And it’s been years since a new building went up, and the old ones aren’t being repaired anymore.”
[...]
“Our grandchildren, if any will probably be raiding Murduk.”
“You think it’ll be like that?”
“Don’t you? You were there you saw what was happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they understand of it–luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
Trask nodded.
“And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he’s the Leader.” He poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handicraft-industry level. “I don’t understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler on the way home. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He’s using all Hitler’s tricks. But Hitler come to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn’t fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce.”
“It wasn’t the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that’s ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.”
Wednesday, February 05, 2020
Something Else I Wrote
It was March in Minneapolis and it was cold and wet. There wasn't a proper rain, only a drizzle from a low cloud ceiling. From where I worked the cash register of a parking lot one could not see the upper floors of the Wells Fargo and IDS towers. Or for that matter, the top of the skeleton of the aborted Starfire tower.
I was off duty at sixteen hundred (my employer, a security company, used military time). It had been in the Chinese sense an interesting day. We raised the half hourly rate for the second time in a month. Not unexpected given government economic policy and I was still receiving curses and dumbfounded stares from the customers. One woman called me a Consentist son of a bitch. I thanked her for the compliment.
Although it was damp I walked outdoors. On the skyways, the enclosed bridges between buildings, some people would ignore the convenient informational signs. They would see my security uniform and assume I knew all the answers to their stupid questions: "Where's the elevator? Where's (a building demolished five years ago?) Are you toxic? And have you been saved?"
I crossed the plaza of the old Federal Reserve Bank and started walking south on the mall. A street person probably male demanded change for bus fare. He/she/it cursed the Universe and me for not giving him/her/it an unearned existence.
Beyond Seventh Street, under the Skyway to Nowhere, was a clump of people being haranged. I looked at the boarded up skyway for new graffiti. Yes there was some. On the bridge between the
IDS tower and the terminally incomplete Starfire tower, someone had painted: "BEWARE OF FALLING DRAGONS".
I hadn't the faintest idea of what it meant.
I didn't stop as I passed the crowd. The man standing of on a home built platform was describing the evils of material existence. If he really believed what he uttering, he could have jumped off any of the convenient bridges in Minneapolis, or off the incomplete Starfire building. The fence around the abandoned work site wasn't really secure. The City Council was tiffed about that particular mess, but they only had themselves to blame.
I was halfway between Ninth and Tenth streets when somewhere behind me a bomb went off.
My first action was to jump into the convenient alley. I leaned against the north wall and counted off ten seconds. No other explosions or gunfire. I looked out. The antimaterialist speaker and his audience were gone,. I saw rising smoke, broken glass, and lumps of what looked like well dressed hamburger.
I ran back to the mess. Some cops had already arrived at the scene. I could read their faces. The older ones, survivors of The Revolution showed no emotion. On the younger cops it was: "At
last someone who isn't a ghoul! Someone with first aid training! Can you do this sucking chest wound?"
Of course I could.
A Channel Four newsclown with his camera crew appeared. Many corespondents from that station are hired by the networks and one even got himself shot by a cop down in Guyana. The clown recorded his segment and left.
He'll probably get a Koppel Award for it.
After those who could be saved were evacuated, I gave a statement to the police. I described everything I saw and heard including the speakers platform at what was now the center of the
blast area.
The cops gave me a lift to my flat. I lived in a small apartment two blocks off of Lake of the Isles. I locked the door and took a long, hot shower. I have never really felt clean after messes like today's. Of course this time it wasn't a grunt hunt.
I opened a Diet Coke (the real thing was too sweet for me), switched on the anti-surveillance system, and booted up the PC. When I was finished, I placed the report on the day's incident with the data I had gathered on the local politicians.
And once again I had the thought that I should have stayed home and helped Dad on his hemp farm outside of Rockstone, Guyana.
I was off duty at sixteen hundred (my employer, a security company, used military time). It had been in the Chinese sense an interesting day. We raised the half hourly rate for the second time in a month. Not unexpected given government economic policy and I was still receiving curses and dumbfounded stares from the customers. One woman called me a Consentist son of a bitch. I thanked her for the compliment.
Although it was damp I walked outdoors. On the skyways, the enclosed bridges between buildings, some people would ignore the convenient informational signs. They would see my security uniform and assume I knew all the answers to their stupid questions: "Where's the elevator? Where's (a building demolished five years ago?) Are you toxic? And have you been saved?"
I crossed the plaza of the old Federal Reserve Bank and started walking south on the mall. A street person probably male demanded change for bus fare. He/she/it cursed the Universe and me for not giving him/her/it an unearned existence.
Beyond Seventh Street, under the Skyway to Nowhere, was a clump of people being haranged. I looked at the boarded up skyway for new graffiti. Yes there was some. On the bridge between the
IDS tower and the terminally incomplete Starfire tower, someone had painted: "BEWARE OF FALLING DRAGONS".
I hadn't the faintest idea of what it meant.
I didn't stop as I passed the crowd. The man standing of on a home built platform was describing the evils of material existence. If he really believed what he uttering, he could have jumped off any of the convenient bridges in Minneapolis, or off the incomplete Starfire building. The fence around the abandoned work site wasn't really secure. The City Council was tiffed about that particular mess, but they only had themselves to blame.
I was halfway between Ninth and Tenth streets when somewhere behind me a bomb went off.
My first action was to jump into the convenient alley. I leaned against the north wall and counted off ten seconds. No other explosions or gunfire. I looked out. The antimaterialist speaker and his audience were gone,. I saw rising smoke, broken glass, and lumps of what looked like well dressed hamburger.
I ran back to the mess. Some cops had already arrived at the scene. I could read their faces. The older ones, survivors of The Revolution showed no emotion. On the younger cops it was: "At
last someone who isn't a ghoul! Someone with first aid training! Can you do this sucking chest wound?"
Of course I could.
A Channel Four newsclown with his camera crew appeared. Many corespondents from that station are hired by the networks and one even got himself shot by a cop down in Guyana. The clown recorded his segment and left.
He'll probably get a Koppel Award for it.
After those who could be saved were evacuated, I gave a statement to the police. I described everything I saw and heard including the speakers platform at what was now the center of the
blast area.
The cops gave me a lift to my flat. I lived in a small apartment two blocks off of Lake of the Isles. I locked the door and took a long, hot shower. I have never really felt clean after messes like today's. Of course this time it wasn't a grunt hunt.
I opened a Diet Coke (the real thing was too sweet for me), switched on the anti-surveillance system, and booted up the PC. When I was finished, I placed the report on the day's incident with the data I had gathered on the local politicians.
And once again I had the thought that I should have stayed home and helped Dad on his hemp farm outside of Rockstone, Guyana.
Monday, March 18, 2019
A Speech From An Unpublished Novel
The speech is from the tenth chapter of Reset.
“If there’s a common myth I want to bury it’s the notion that Fascism is a right ring doctrine. So what’s a Fascist? Check your own beliefs, do you want power over another person? If the answer is no, you will never be a Fascist or any other brand of totalitarian. When someone wants power over another person, they’re a Fascist or other brand of totalitarian. As that idiot Mussolini said, everything must be within the state, and nothing outside of it. And criticism of the State was a crime under the doctrine of Fascism. This is why the Fascist or totalitarian State always fails. In reality someone who believes they’re infallible will always fail. According to Josef Stalin his definition of Fascists included Leon Trotsky, a lifelong Marxist with being the founder and original commander of the Soviet Army, and like himself a henchman of Vladimir Lenin. Any who opposed Comrade Stalin, or his version of Communism, was by his definition a Fascist. The actual purpose of the Berlin Wall was to prevent the communist slaves from escaping but the East German Communist official name of the wall is the ‘Anti-fascist Protective Barrier.’”
“If there’s a common myth I want to bury it’s the notion that Fascism is a right ring doctrine. So what’s a Fascist? Check your own beliefs, do you want power over another person? If the answer is no, you will never be a Fascist or any other brand of totalitarian. When someone wants power over another person, they’re a Fascist or other brand of totalitarian. As that idiot Mussolini said, everything must be within the state, and nothing outside of it. And criticism of the State was a crime under the doctrine of Fascism. This is why the Fascist or totalitarian State always fails. In reality someone who believes they’re infallible will always fail. According to Josef Stalin his definition of Fascists included Leon Trotsky, a lifelong Marxist with being the founder and original commander of the Soviet Army, and like himself a henchman of Vladimir Lenin. Any who opposed Comrade Stalin, or his version of Communism, was by his definition a Fascist. The actual purpose of the Berlin Wall was to prevent the communist slaves from escaping but the East German Communist official name of the wall is the ‘Anti-fascist Protective Barrier.’”
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Sunday, November 15, 2015
The Future, ETC
Meanwhile at the New York Times...
"A Paris attacker may have entered Europe along the migrant trail, raising security concerns."
No shi...no kidding.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Another Story
For a time I was writing a space opera based on the Classic Traveller role playing game system. I also incorporated the philosophy of Objectivism.
I have just posted the existing text on an alternative history site.
An Incomplete Space Opera.
I have just posted the existing text on an alternative history site.
An Incomplete Space Opera.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Step Back, Part 16
In the Nevada desert Harry Barnes was watching the sunset with a new companion.
Barnes had just earned his Doctorate in Philosophy when Ayn Rand asked him to go to Nevada to represent the Objectivists at the Uptimer’s base. As the job prospects for philosophers who actually treated reality as being real were appallingly slim at best he took the job.
And it was here in the cluster of the temporary structures that served as offices and housing that he met someone.
Jane March was the Deputy Engineer for the FTL Drive System installed aboard the Eagle. She had flown with the Eagle on her two successful missions to Proxima Centauri and Barnard’s Star. There was no expectation of a problem on the mission to Sol.
When it was discovered that the FTL drive had deposited the Eagle in what was clearly the past she personally performed the diagnostic examination of the system. When no fault could be found in the FTL Drive she called for the complete disconnection of the system from the energy and control systems of the ship.
With the FTL Drive effectively converted into an inert mass within the hull of the Eagle the Deputy Engineer clearly needed a new assignment. As someone had to take charge of the construction of the surface base in the Nevada desert Lieutenant Jane March was the clear and natural choice.
On the ground there was a celebration of the success of the last operation. The Rangers and the few fortunate young women and other civilians who were allowed into the base were holding a dance. Harry would be attending the event as Jane’s guest.
Both were formally dressed, Harry in a white suit with a bow tie and Jane in her Dress Blues, as they stepped into the newly constructed hangar that served as the venue for the event.
There wasn’t a band playing for the event. But there was an improvised sound system that played music that would not be recorded yet on this timeline. The current musical number was appropriate for a slow dance. Jane recognized the artist as Sade and the lyrics were in the form of a question.
Is it a crime, Is it a crime?
That I still love you?
And I want you to love me too?
Lieutenant March looked around and found the commander of the Rangers.
“There he is.” She said to Harry. “Let’s go over there.”
“Okay.”
To any downtime observer Nathan Benson had the appearance of the captain of a high school football team in his dress uniform. But once one was in range of his voice it was clear that this was an old man in a young body. The cluster of people that surrounded him included a Colonel from the Marine Corps. As the couple came within earshot they could hear the marine ask a question.
“Normally an infantry unit embarked on a ship are designated Marines, why did your people go with the term Ranger?”
“Well sir, The Rangers are the regular component of the armed forces in our system. And our first deployment was to suppress the natives on the planet Eden.”
The Colonel’s wife spoke up.
“Eden?”
“Yes ma'am,” said Benson, “the planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A. The first ship to arrive was the Mayflower. They set down their colony on the secondary continent because the main land mass was overrun by some very large and nasty carnivores.”
“What were they like?” She asked.
“Well the main one was called Fuherersaurus by us, it could eat a Tyrannosaurus Rex for lunch. Unfortunately the second continent had stone age natives, Reptantis Sapiens Eden, who saw omnivores like us as something to eat.”
“How could they do that?” The Colonel asked.
“Ideology sir,” Benson replied, “we discovered it during a download.”
“A download?” The Marine asked.
“Yes sir, it’s a procedure where full cybernetic contact is made with the subject’s neural network, and the contents of the brain are recorded and processed for information.”
“I don’t understand.” Said the Marine Colonel.
“I don’t blame you.” Lieutenant March cut into the discussion. “The process of downloading originally developed as part of our recorporation technology and was adapted as an alternative to vocal interrogation.”
“Anyway,” Benson spoke up, “the last starship from Earth was about to arrive at Eden and the entire Ranger Battalion, minus the cadre, was deployed to the planet for this. As it turned out the natives were about to attack our base on Eden in roughly division strength. And it was decided to grab a leader for download.”
Lieutenant March already knew the story but remained silent.
Benson continued to speak.
“Anyway on Eden I came to the attention of the Old Man, Number Four at the time, and he reassigned me as his aide.”
The Marine made a clearly sour face on hearing this.
“I don’t blame you sir,” said Benson, “this was my first combat deployment and I suddenly got assigned to a rear echelon spot. But the thing is that the Old Man likes to lead from the front, so I got to go with him on a snatch and grab mission for one of the native leaders. Once we had his back at the base we had a conversation before the download process was begun.”
“How could you speak to them?” Another woman asked.
“Well ma’am, we used a translation program on the base’s mainframe computer.”
“I don’t understand.” She said.
Lieutenant March cut in to answer.
“Our computers are very powerful. For example the portable laptop computer that we are using to rum the music sound system here has many times the memory and computing power of every locally made system on the planet Earth.”
Benson spoke up again.
“So anyway, we have the native leader strapped to the table and the techs aren’t quite ready yet so we asked some questions.”
"Such as?” Said Harry.
“Well, such questions as, why if they have molars do they not eat plants.”
“So why not?” Harry asked.
“It was a religious doctrine. The next thing the Old Man does is to take a pliers from his toolkit and pull out one of the molars and shows it to the native, in his face.”
“I take it that the native didn’t take it well?” Said the Marine.
“No sir, he didn’t.”
“So what happened to the natives?” Harry asked.
Benson replied.
“We torched the main group from orbit, just like we just did with North Vietnam.”
“But there’s another group.” Said Jane March.
“Oh yes,” Benson replied, “another group broke off from the main body, built some dugout canoes and crossed the strait between the two continents and set up their own villages with farmland.”
“They’ve gone back to being omnivores?” Harry asked.
“Yes,” said Benson, “and as they’re evolving we decided to leave them alone.”
It was on Thursday morning in the basement of the French Embassy in Tel Aviv Lieutenant Joseph Beaujeu of the French Navy--presently covered as an attache and working as an intelligence officer--read the take from the latest dead drop from a source he had picked up.
The message was trouble--very deep trouble.
One of his sources within the Government of Israel was present for a secret briefing. The content of the briefing was about the future of the State of Israel. That in December of 2012 the French Navy would launch a nuclear strike on Israel. As a result one faction of Americans, who were in the midst of an internal civil war, would move to protect and evacuate the survivors of the nuclear strike on Israel. This was shocking but what fully floored Lieutenant Beaujeu was that this faction of Americans also controlled the nuclear weapons and would carry out the retaliation for the destruction of Israel. France would be pounded with chemical and nuclear weapons into effectively nothing and as a result would have no further independent existence as a nation.
The Lieutenant proceeded to write his report for transfer in the diplomatic pouch to Paris.
There was nothing else he could do.
Barnes had just earned his Doctorate in Philosophy when Ayn Rand asked him to go to Nevada to represent the Objectivists at the Uptimer’s base. As the job prospects for philosophers who actually treated reality as being real were appallingly slim at best he took the job.
And it was here in the cluster of the temporary structures that served as offices and housing that he met someone.
Jane March was the Deputy Engineer for the FTL Drive System installed aboard the Eagle. She had flown with the Eagle on her two successful missions to Proxima Centauri and Barnard’s Star. There was no expectation of a problem on the mission to Sol.
When it was discovered that the FTL drive had deposited the Eagle in what was clearly the past she personally performed the diagnostic examination of the system. When no fault could be found in the FTL Drive she called for the complete disconnection of the system from the energy and control systems of the ship.
With the FTL Drive effectively converted into an inert mass within the hull of the Eagle the Deputy Engineer clearly needed a new assignment. As someone had to take charge of the construction of the surface base in the Nevada desert Lieutenant Jane March was the clear and natural choice.
On the ground there was a celebration of the success of the last operation. The Rangers and the few fortunate young women and other civilians who were allowed into the base were holding a dance. Harry would be attending the event as Jane’s guest.
Both were formally dressed, Harry in a white suit with a bow tie and Jane in her Dress Blues, as they stepped into the newly constructed hangar that served as the venue for the event.
There wasn’t a band playing for the event. But there was an improvised sound system that played music that would not be recorded yet on this timeline. The current musical number was appropriate for a slow dance. Jane recognized the artist as Sade and the lyrics were in the form of a question.
Is it a crime, Is it a crime?
That I still love you?
And I want you to love me too?
Lieutenant March looked around and found the commander of the Rangers.
“There he is.” She said to Harry. “Let’s go over there.”
“Okay.”
To any downtime observer Nathan Benson had the appearance of the captain of a high school football team in his dress uniform. But once one was in range of his voice it was clear that this was an old man in a young body. The cluster of people that surrounded him included a Colonel from the Marine Corps. As the couple came within earshot they could hear the marine ask a question.
“Normally an infantry unit embarked on a ship are designated Marines, why did your people go with the term Ranger?”
“Well sir, The Rangers are the regular component of the armed forces in our system. And our first deployment was to suppress the natives on the planet Eden.”
The Colonel’s wife spoke up.
“Eden?”
“Yes ma'am,” said Benson, “the planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A. The first ship to arrive was the Mayflower. They set down their colony on the secondary continent because the main land mass was overrun by some very large and nasty carnivores.”
“What were they like?” She asked.
“Well the main one was called Fuherersaurus by us, it could eat a Tyrannosaurus Rex for lunch. Unfortunately the second continent had stone age natives, Reptantis Sapiens Eden, who saw omnivores like us as something to eat.”
“How could they do that?” The Colonel asked.
“Ideology sir,” Benson replied, “we discovered it during a download.”
“A download?” The Marine asked.
“Yes sir, it’s a procedure where full cybernetic contact is made with the subject’s neural network, and the contents of the brain are recorded and processed for information.”
“I don’t understand.” Said the Marine Colonel.
“I don’t blame you.” Lieutenant March cut into the discussion. “The process of downloading originally developed as part of our recorporation technology and was adapted as an alternative to vocal interrogation.”
“Anyway,” Benson spoke up, “the last starship from Earth was about to arrive at Eden and the entire Ranger Battalion, minus the cadre, was deployed to the planet for this. As it turned out the natives were about to attack our base on Eden in roughly division strength. And it was decided to grab a leader for download.”
Lieutenant March already knew the story but remained silent.
Benson continued to speak.
“Anyway on Eden I came to the attention of the Old Man, Number Four at the time, and he reassigned me as his aide.”
The Marine made a clearly sour face on hearing this.
“I don’t blame you sir,” said Benson, “this was my first combat deployment and I suddenly got assigned to a rear echelon spot. But the thing is that the Old Man likes to lead from the front, so I got to go with him on a snatch and grab mission for one of the native leaders. Once we had his back at the base we had a conversation before the download process was begun.”
“How could you speak to them?” Another woman asked.
“Well ma’am, we used a translation program on the base’s mainframe computer.”
“I don’t understand.” She said.
Lieutenant March cut in to answer.
“Our computers are very powerful. For example the portable laptop computer that we are using to rum the music sound system here has many times the memory and computing power of every locally made system on the planet Earth.”
Benson spoke up again.
“So anyway, we have the native leader strapped to the table and the techs aren’t quite ready yet so we asked some questions.”
"Such as?” Said Harry.
“Well, such questions as, why if they have molars do they not eat plants.”
“So why not?” Harry asked.
“It was a religious doctrine. The next thing the Old Man does is to take a pliers from his toolkit and pull out one of the molars and shows it to the native, in his face.”
“I take it that the native didn’t take it well?” Said the Marine.
“No sir, he didn’t.”
“So what happened to the natives?” Harry asked.
Benson replied.
“We torched the main group from orbit, just like we just did with North Vietnam.”
“But there’s another group.” Said Jane March.
“Oh yes,” Benson replied, “another group broke off from the main body, built some dugout canoes and crossed the strait between the two continents and set up their own villages with farmland.”
“They’ve gone back to being omnivores?” Harry asked.
“Yes,” said Benson, “and as they’re evolving we decided to leave them alone.”
It was on Thursday morning in the basement of the French Embassy in Tel Aviv Lieutenant Joseph Beaujeu of the French Navy--presently covered as an attache and working as an intelligence officer--read the take from the latest dead drop from a source he had picked up.
The message was trouble--very deep trouble.
One of his sources within the Government of Israel was present for a secret briefing. The content of the briefing was about the future of the State of Israel. That in December of 2012 the French Navy would launch a nuclear strike on Israel. As a result one faction of Americans, who were in the midst of an internal civil war, would move to protect and evacuate the survivors of the nuclear strike on Israel. This was shocking but what fully floored Lieutenant Beaujeu was that this faction of Americans also controlled the nuclear weapons and would carry out the retaliation for the destruction of Israel. France would be pounded with chemical and nuclear weapons into effectively nothing and as a result would have no further independent existence as a nation.
The Lieutenant proceeded to write his report for transfer in the diplomatic pouch to Paris.
There was nothing else he could do.
Thursday, September 04, 2014
Step Back, Part 7
The ship’s intercom spoke.
“Visitors boarding!”
The airlock opened. Two civilians, a man and a woman, carefully stepped aboard the Eagle with their grip shoes upon the deck. The man had a mustache and fringe of gray hair. The woman was a redhead who was going gray. She was also dressed for free fall in a pants suit.
Captain Dennis Sterling extended his hand and spoke to the couple.
“Lieutenant Heinlein, Mrs. Heinlein, it is an honor to have you aboard.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Robert Heinlein replied as he shook the captain’s hand. “It is an honor to be here.”
“Thank you, sir!” Sterling replied. “If you will follow us, please.”
The airlock deck was oriented vertically with respect to the ship. To reach the command deck they would traverse with their grip shoes to one of the vertical passageways. Here they would change their orientation to horizontal with the respect to the ship and walk up to the command deck.
Once the guests were strapped into the guest seats on the command deck Robert Heinlein asked a question.
“So Captain, what is the objective for tonight?”
Captain Sterling replied.
“Sir, this operation tonight is an intervention in the Nigerian Civil War. In this we are supporting the Biafran Secessionists against the Nigerian federal government.
“Why?” Asked Virginia Heinlein.
“Well Ma’am, that’s a good question. The Biafrans are a Christian people who do most of the work and basically sit on the oil fields. The outside powers are backing the Muslim majority because hey are lazy and corrupt and thus useable to them. We are supporting the Biafrans as they are clearly in the right and it screws over the Soviets and their Eurosocialist buddies.”
Sterling made the term “buddies” sound as if it had a sexual connotation.
“Yes.” Heinlein replied.
Captain Sterling then pressed down on the intercom button and spoke.
“All hands, this is the Captain, clear for action!”
It was after sunset on the ground at the military section of the Nairobi International Airport. The East German ground crew was moving away from a Mig-15 fighter with Nigerian Air Force markings as the cockpit hatch closed. In the aircraft the pilot then spoke to the airport ground control.
“Nairobi Ground, this is Genocide, request clearance to taxi.”
He did not notice the new star in the sky almost overhead. The starship Eagle had been moved forward in the synchronous orbit to a position over Nigeria.
On the command deck the chief fire control officer spoke up.
“Captain, Genocide is on the air.”
Virginia Heinlein spoke up.
“Genocide?”
“Yes, ma'am.” Captain Sterling replied. “That's the call sign of a Mig-15 pilot, he was believed to have been an East German national and apparently he specialized in killing relief flights, mostly food aid from charities along with the occasional gun runner. No one had ever identified the bastard on the original timeline.”
Captain Sterling then spoke to the chief of fire control.
“Do you have a lock on him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Burn him.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Genocide’s Mig-15 had reached the end of the runway. He again spoke to the local ground controller.
“Nairobi Ground, this is Genocide, request clearance to take off.”
He never heard the reply. In that instant there was a blinding flash of light. The laser beam that hit him had the instant appearance of a razor straight bolt of lightning. It vanished just as quickly. In his cockpit the pilot had been instantly turned to a pile of carbon. The powerplant, a direct copy of a Rolls Royce jet engine gifted to the Soviet state by an earlier British Labour Party government, exploded shredding the airframe. And finally the jet fuel was converted into a bright orange flaming mushroom cloud over the runway.
“Got him!” Said the fire control chief.
“Very good,” said Captain Sterling, “proceed with the primary operation.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
In the clear African skies laser beams would briefly flash into existence and incinerate military targets on the ground. Other aircraft, tanks, and trucks were obliterated. Followed by barracks, headquarters, warehouses and other government buildings.
Ant then finally it was time to deal with the Nigerian troops in the field.
“Captain, the Rangers report they are ready to drop.”
“Proceed.” He replied.
Robert Heinlein spoke up.
“So, this is the interesting part?”
“Yes sir, it should be.” Sterling replied. “Just as you wrote it in Starship Troopers.”
Three Ranger platoons would be dropped along the front line between the Nigerian Army and the Biafran Insurgents. From The drop zones they would sweep north to the engage the enemy.
The dry mass of a ranger suit was a bit over 500 kilograms. With the operator, fuel and ammunition it to came close to a full ton. Against a normal late Twentieth Century infantry unit a Ranger was unstoppable. Against Third World savages like the Nigerian Army the effect was very close to a shriek hunt on the planet Eden.
Some of the so-called soldiers of the Nigerian federal forces would in fact survive this night’s slaughter. In doing so they would drop their weapons and in some cases strip off their uniforms and flee northwards to safety.
On Monday at about Noon in the Oval Office President Nixon was seriously wishing that he was somewhere else. The front page of the New York Times screamed with the headline: NIGERIAN GENOCIDE!
The fact that it was the Christian Biafrans who were facing extermination at the hands of the Muslim majority was both known to the editors of the Times and completely irrelevant. For the Times it was another opportunity to stick it to the Nixon administration and to decent people everywhere.
In the United Nations General Assembly delegates were taking turns to denounce the Uptimers and the United States for having given them sanctuary on Earth.
And if that wasn’t enough there was another headache. There was live television coverage of a delegation of Biafrans at the Uptimer base in Nevada.
“What the Hell are they doing now?” The President asked.
An aide answered.
“Sir the Uptimers are apparently extending official recognition the Republic of Biafra.”
“How the Hell did they get in to Nevada?”
“Apparently the Uptimers flew the delegation into the base directly. sir.”
The television coverage showed that Commander Boatman was still in a wheelchair for the ceremony. Everyone smiled as hands were shook.
“Can that bastard do that?” The President asked.
“Apparently according to our agreement with them, yes.”
Fuck me, thought President Nixon.
“Visitors boarding!”
The airlock opened. Two civilians, a man and a woman, carefully stepped aboard the Eagle with their grip shoes upon the deck. The man had a mustache and fringe of gray hair. The woman was a redhead who was going gray. She was also dressed for free fall in a pants suit.
Captain Dennis Sterling extended his hand and spoke to the couple.
“Lieutenant Heinlein, Mrs. Heinlein, it is an honor to have you aboard.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Robert Heinlein replied as he shook the captain’s hand. “It is an honor to be here.”
“Thank you, sir!” Sterling replied. “If you will follow us, please.”
The airlock deck was oriented vertically with respect to the ship. To reach the command deck they would traverse with their grip shoes to one of the vertical passageways. Here they would change their orientation to horizontal with the respect to the ship and walk up to the command deck.
Once the guests were strapped into the guest seats on the command deck Robert Heinlein asked a question.
“So Captain, what is the objective for tonight?”
Captain Sterling replied.
“Sir, this operation tonight is an intervention in the Nigerian Civil War. In this we are supporting the Biafran Secessionists against the Nigerian federal government.
“Why?” Asked Virginia Heinlein.
“Well Ma’am, that’s a good question. The Biafrans are a Christian people who do most of the work and basically sit on the oil fields. The outside powers are backing the Muslim majority because hey are lazy and corrupt and thus useable to them. We are supporting the Biafrans as they are clearly in the right and it screws over the Soviets and their Eurosocialist buddies.”
Sterling made the term “buddies” sound as if it had a sexual connotation.
“Yes.” Heinlein replied.
Captain Sterling then pressed down on the intercom button and spoke.
“All hands, this is the Captain, clear for action!”
It was after sunset on the ground at the military section of the Nairobi International Airport. The East German ground crew was moving away from a Mig-15 fighter with Nigerian Air Force markings as the cockpit hatch closed. In the aircraft the pilot then spoke to the airport ground control.
“Nairobi Ground, this is Genocide, request clearance to taxi.”
He did not notice the new star in the sky almost overhead. The starship Eagle had been moved forward in the synchronous orbit to a position over Nigeria.
On the command deck the chief fire control officer spoke up.
“Captain, Genocide is on the air.”
Virginia Heinlein spoke up.
“Genocide?”
“Yes, ma'am.” Captain Sterling replied. “That's the call sign of a Mig-15 pilot, he was believed to have been an East German national and apparently he specialized in killing relief flights, mostly food aid from charities along with the occasional gun runner. No one had ever identified the bastard on the original timeline.”
Captain Sterling then spoke to the chief of fire control.
“Do you have a lock on him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Burn him.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Genocide’s Mig-15 had reached the end of the runway. He again spoke to the local ground controller.
“Nairobi Ground, this is Genocide, request clearance to take off.”
He never heard the reply. In that instant there was a blinding flash of light. The laser beam that hit him had the instant appearance of a razor straight bolt of lightning. It vanished just as quickly. In his cockpit the pilot had been instantly turned to a pile of carbon. The powerplant, a direct copy of a Rolls Royce jet engine gifted to the Soviet state by an earlier British Labour Party government, exploded shredding the airframe. And finally the jet fuel was converted into a bright orange flaming mushroom cloud over the runway.
“Got him!” Said the fire control chief.
“Very good,” said Captain Sterling, “proceed with the primary operation.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
In the clear African skies laser beams would briefly flash into existence and incinerate military targets on the ground. Other aircraft, tanks, and trucks were obliterated. Followed by barracks, headquarters, warehouses and other government buildings.
Ant then finally it was time to deal with the Nigerian troops in the field.
“Captain, the Rangers report they are ready to drop.”
“Proceed.” He replied.
Robert Heinlein spoke up.
“So, this is the interesting part?”
“Yes sir, it should be.” Sterling replied. “Just as you wrote it in Starship Troopers.”
Three Ranger platoons would be dropped along the front line between the Nigerian Army and the Biafran Insurgents. From The drop zones they would sweep north to the engage the enemy.
The dry mass of a ranger suit was a bit over 500 kilograms. With the operator, fuel and ammunition it to came close to a full ton. Against a normal late Twentieth Century infantry unit a Ranger was unstoppable. Against Third World savages like the Nigerian Army the effect was very close to a shriek hunt on the planet Eden.
Some of the so-called soldiers of the Nigerian federal forces would in fact survive this night’s slaughter. In doing so they would drop their weapons and in some cases strip off their uniforms and flee northwards to safety.
On Monday at about Noon in the Oval Office President Nixon was seriously wishing that he was somewhere else. The front page of the New York Times screamed with the headline: NIGERIAN GENOCIDE!
The fact that it was the Christian Biafrans who were facing extermination at the hands of the Muslim majority was both known to the editors of the Times and completely irrelevant. For the Times it was another opportunity to stick it to the Nixon administration and to decent people everywhere.
In the United Nations General Assembly delegates were taking turns to denounce the Uptimers and the United States for having given them sanctuary on Earth.
And if that wasn’t enough there was another headache. There was live television coverage of a delegation of Biafrans at the Uptimer base in Nevada.
“What the Hell are they doing now?” The President asked.
An aide answered.
“Sir the Uptimers are apparently extending official recognition the Republic of Biafra.”
“How the Hell did they get in to Nevada?”
“Apparently the Uptimers flew the delegation into the base directly. sir.”
The television coverage showed that Commander Boatman was still in a wheelchair for the ceremony. Everyone smiled as hands were shook.
“Can that bastard do that?” The President asked.
“Apparently according to our agreement with them, yes.”
Fuck me, thought President Nixon.
Wednesday, September 03, 2014
Step Back, Part 6
John Cross was traveling under a false identity. The flight on a British airliner from Heathrow to JFK on Long Island was perfectly boring. And while he did perform his usual chat up of a stewardess in the First Class section he would not have time for any extracurricular sexual activity on this mission.
To an external observer he was an example of an increasingly rare phenomena, the aging and well off British financier traveling on business. Unfortunately with the Labour Party in power in the United Kingdom this facade was becoming less credible by the day.
Cross had his travel documents ready when he stepped up to the young woman at the customs station. There was a cursory examination the documents and his luggage.
The young woman smiled.
“Welcome to the United States, Mister Rose.”
He smiled in return.
“Thank you.”
From JFK Airport he took a cab to a Hilton Hotel in Manhattan. Once he was in his room he made a phone call to a local number.
“This is Jack Rose, I’ve arrived.”
A woman’s voice responded.
“Thank you Mister Rose.”
Roughly an hour later there was a knock on the door of the hotel room. He answered it.
It was an old friend in the intelligence service, Richard Drake.
“Jack, it’s damned good to see again, even under the circumstances! So they pulled you out of retirement for this?”
He had met Drake when he was a newly commissioned subaltern in Korea. Drake was now covered as the British press attache in New York.
He replied.
“Dicky, you know a training slot is not retirement.”
“It may as well be.” Drake responded. “I brought your stuff.”
Drake carried a large suitcase into the room. When Cross closed the door the case was opened.
“Here you go,” said Drake, “An M1911A1 pistol with shoulder rig, daylight and infrared cameras, and some American silver coins and paper currency.”
Drake then pulled a set of keys from his coat pocket.
“And your car, a new Ford Mustang with a large bore engine and four speed manual gearbox. God only knows why you’re getting all this American...stuff.”
“You should know why, Dicky.” Cross replied. “It fits in here in the States and I can resupply locally. This isn’t one of those silly James Bond movies.”
To actual intelligence officers the James Bond series, both the literary works by Ian Fleming and the movies based on them, were a series of bad jokes.
In part this was because working intelligence officers didn’t get laid as often as the fictional Secret Agent 007.
Drake spoke again.
“Awful mess in Minneapolis, what?”
“Yes,” Cross replied, “But it’s not our problem. The PM wants to knew why these people are not talking to us.”
“It’s very obvious,” Drake replied, “all he has to do is look in a mirror.”
It was no secret that the Uptimers were averse to socialism.
“What the PM wants is a politically acceptable answer.”
“Well what can I say to that?” Said Drake. “Good luck.”
Across Manhattan the scene was repeated three times with one French and two Soviet intelligence officers who were also operating without legal cover. The Frenchman would drive a Chevrolet Camaro to Nevada while the Soviets were issued Chrysler products for their mission. In each case for the Soviets it was a standard four door Plymouth sedan.
Later in the evening aboard the SS Apollo, the flagship of the Sea Organization of the Church of Scientology--L. Ron Hubbard--the founder of church was opening a large manila envelope that was addressed to him.
The contents of the envelope were pages containing text and photographs. Hubbard then read the cover letter.
As a practitioner of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism I would not normally care about any aspect of Scientology or Dianetics. However, as a result of our accidental journey backwards in time we have information that does concern you and the COS. After your death on the original timeline in 1986 a young man, David Miscavige, had in a fashion contrary to your instructions taken control of the COS. As the head of COS Miscavige had practiced Black Dianetics and brought the church to the edge of extinction. Normally I would not be concerned about this but his actions would ultimately result in the inflicting of needless suffering on members of the Sea Org and at least one senseless and preventable death. As an Objectivist I cannot in good conscience allow this to happen without an intervention. I fully recommend that Miscavige be permanently disconnected from the COS. As to the question of if process R2-45 should be carried out on him I will leave this to you.
Evelyn Boatman, Mission Commander of Starship Eagle
PS: RAH says hi.
Scientology process R2-45 was the termination of a life with a M1911A1 pistol. Hubbard himself had personally described it as, “an enormously effective process for exteriorization but its use is frowned upon by this society at this time.”
Some people in the audience had found this statement humorous.
Hubbard now sat back in his chair and examined the primary contents of the package.
In Nevada right after the sunset Evelyn Boatman sat in a wheelchair outside of his hospital room. He was pondering the events that were now in motion and wishing he had a couple of double cheese burgers from White Castle.
To an external observer he was an example of an increasingly rare phenomena, the aging and well off British financier traveling on business. Unfortunately with the Labour Party in power in the United Kingdom this facade was becoming less credible by the day.
Cross had his travel documents ready when he stepped up to the young woman at the customs station. There was a cursory examination the documents and his luggage.
The young woman smiled.
“Welcome to the United States, Mister Rose.”
He smiled in return.
“Thank you.”
From JFK Airport he took a cab to a Hilton Hotel in Manhattan. Once he was in his room he made a phone call to a local number.
“This is Jack Rose, I’ve arrived.”
A woman’s voice responded.
“Thank you Mister Rose.”
Roughly an hour later there was a knock on the door of the hotel room. He answered it.
It was an old friend in the intelligence service, Richard Drake.
“Jack, it’s damned good to see again, even under the circumstances! So they pulled you out of retirement for this?”
He had met Drake when he was a newly commissioned subaltern in Korea. Drake was now covered as the British press attache in New York.
He replied.
“Dicky, you know a training slot is not retirement.”
“It may as well be.” Drake responded. “I brought your stuff.”
Drake carried a large suitcase into the room. When Cross closed the door the case was opened.
“Here you go,” said Drake, “An M1911A1 pistol with shoulder rig, daylight and infrared cameras, and some American silver coins and paper currency.”
Drake then pulled a set of keys from his coat pocket.
“And your car, a new Ford Mustang with a large bore engine and four speed manual gearbox. God only knows why you’re getting all this American...stuff.”
“You should know why, Dicky.” Cross replied. “It fits in here in the States and I can resupply locally. This isn’t one of those silly James Bond movies.”
To actual intelligence officers the James Bond series, both the literary works by Ian Fleming and the movies based on them, were a series of bad jokes.
In part this was because working intelligence officers didn’t get laid as often as the fictional Secret Agent 007.
Drake spoke again.
“Awful mess in Minneapolis, what?”
“Yes,” Cross replied, “But it’s not our problem. The PM wants to knew why these people are not talking to us.”
“It’s very obvious,” Drake replied, “all he has to do is look in a mirror.”
It was no secret that the Uptimers were averse to socialism.
“What the PM wants is a politically acceptable answer.”
“Well what can I say to that?” Said Drake. “Good luck.”
Across Manhattan the scene was repeated three times with one French and two Soviet intelligence officers who were also operating without legal cover. The Frenchman would drive a Chevrolet Camaro to Nevada while the Soviets were issued Chrysler products for their mission. In each case for the Soviets it was a standard four door Plymouth sedan.
Later in the evening aboard the SS Apollo, the flagship of the Sea Organization of the Church of Scientology--L. Ron Hubbard--the founder of church was opening a large manila envelope that was addressed to him.
The contents of the envelope were pages containing text and photographs. Hubbard then read the cover letter.
As a practitioner of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism I would not normally care about any aspect of Scientology or Dianetics. However, as a result of our accidental journey backwards in time we have information that does concern you and the COS. After your death on the original timeline in 1986 a young man, David Miscavige, had in a fashion contrary to your instructions taken control of the COS. As the head of COS Miscavige had practiced Black Dianetics and brought the church to the edge of extinction. Normally I would not be concerned about this but his actions would ultimately result in the inflicting of needless suffering on members of the Sea Org and at least one senseless and preventable death. As an Objectivist I cannot in good conscience allow this to happen without an intervention. I fully recommend that Miscavige be permanently disconnected from the COS. As to the question of if process R2-45 should be carried out on him I will leave this to you.
Evelyn Boatman, Mission Commander of Starship Eagle
PS: RAH says hi.
Scientology process R2-45 was the termination of a life with a M1911A1 pistol. Hubbard himself had personally described it as, “an enormously effective process for exteriorization but its use is frowned upon by this society at this time.”
Some people in the audience had found this statement humorous.
Hubbard now sat back in his chair and examined the primary contents of the package.
In Nevada right after the sunset Evelyn Boatman sat in a wheelchair outside of his hospital room. He was pondering the events that were now in motion and wishing he had a couple of double cheese burgers from White Castle.
Monday, September 01, 2014
STEP BACK, Part 5
It was at this time that the Defense Minister, Marshall of the Soviet Union Andrei Grechko, spoke up.
“Comrades, seven years ago the Americans conducted a nuclear weapon test in outer space over the Pacific Ocean. The electromagnetic pulse given off by the weapon killed roughly one third of the satellites in orbit at the time. I now believe that we can do the same to the starship.”
“You can hit it and destroy it?” Asked the Industry Minister.
“No.” Grechko replied. “We only need to place a nuclear weapon in close proximity to the vessel. The electromagnetic pulse will render its command and control systems inert.”
“How do you plan to do this?” Brezhnev said.
“The Proton rocket can launch a six ton payload to that altitude. And we should be able to assemble a weapon within that mass using existing components.”
Brezhnev looked around the room before speaking again.
“Are there any objections?”
Gorbachev did think of an objection. What if the Star People had intercepted the weapon or it otherwise failed? What would stop them from retaliating in kind?
But given his present situation he decided to remain silent.
Seeing that there were no objections Brezhnev spoke again.
“Comrade Grechko, you will proceed with this operation.”
He then looked down to Gorbachev.
“Comrade Gorbachev, you will go directly to the United States and directly speak to the leader of the Star People. Make him an offer that he will accept to come over to the Soviet side.”
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary.” Gorbachev replied.
How the Hell was he supposed to do that? He thought.
On Saturday evening in a mass meeting was being held, William Grant stood before the multitude assembled within the Minneapolis Auditorium. Deliberated seated in the front rows of the audience were the widows and orphaned children of the Minneapolis police officers killed by the Uptimers.
He looked upon the assembled multitude and spoke.
“My friends, I normally come to you to bring the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that is not my mission for this evening. On the Thursday of this week a great crime was committed. Police officers of this great city were brutally and systemically hunted down and murdered. Why?”
Grant paused and looked out again at the assembled audience.
“These men were murdered for simply doing their duty to this great community. Those who committed these murders claimed to have traveled backwards in time, an act that is a simply violation of God's law. They also claim that there is no God and that he did not send his son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to teach us the truth and to ultimately die for our sins. In speaking these falsehoods they deceived themselves and now are attempting to deceive us. But we will not be deceived, we will hold to God's truth, and we will ultimately prevail.”
In a three story building on the corner of Ninth Street and LaSalle Avenue in downtown Minneapolis a meeting was being held in the news department of WCCO Television. The station was an affiliate of the CBS Television Network but on this evening they were, even on a very short notice, broadcasting the William Grant Crusade. And as with the normal broadcasts of the Crusade program the station was videotaping the normal network programming for broadcast at a later time.
“Can you believe this shit?” Someone said in the back of the room.
The CBS Network in New York had originally declined to broadcast the Uptimer version of the events, including the video of the initial encounter between Boatman and the local cops. But when WTCN, an independent station, had broadcast the encounter on their news program and WCCO had to quickly follow suit.
As a result it was also a damned good thing that the 101 st Airborne Division was now policing the city instead of the MPD.
On the monitor of the broadcast Grant continued to speak.
“So who are these depraved beings who murder good men at will and with apparent impunity? These beings are clearly the servants of Satan...”
Roger Allen, the head of the News department switched off the monitor.
“This has to be a breach of our contract with the network.” He said.
Dave Moore, who normally read the local evening news during the week spoke up.
“So what do we do?”
“Damned if I know, Dave.” Roger replied. “I will be damned if I know. What the Hell was Boatman doing here in the first place?”
A reporter spoke up.
“Apparently he was here to speak with several technology firms about adopting their technology.”
“So what was he doing at the White Castle?” Dave asked.
“According to one manager for a local firm I spoke to Boatman apparently fell in love with the sliders when he went to college in California.”
“They have White Castles in California?” Dave asked again.
“Apparently in Twenty-one-twenty Anno Domini they will.”
Dave nodded.
Roger spoke again.
“Apparently the network dropped the ball on this one, and we should have done a better job covering this story ourselves. From now on we will report the facts on this story regardless of whose toes we end up stepping on. Is that clear?”
Everyone in the room spoke or nodded in agreement.
“Now let’s get to work.”
In the family home outside of Dallas, Texas, Judith Grant sat in the living room with her family and watched her father on his broadcast from Minneapolis.
“So who are these depraved beings who murder good men at will and with apparent impunity? These beings are clearly the servants of Satan, sent here to deceive us and turn us from the path of righteousness.”
Without permission Judith had seen the independent television news coverage of the initial incident between the leader of the Uptimers and the Minneapolis Police. And the police in this incident were clearly not acting in the proper manner.
Why would her father lie about this? She privately thought to herself.
She continued to sit and watch the broadcast.
At the Uptimer base in Nevada Evelyn Boatman sat up in his hospital bed and also watched the broadcast. Normally he would have preferred to read a transcript. Those who claimed to have knowledge were very annoying to those in actual possession of same. And man on the screen strongly reminded Boatman of an evangelist on the original timeline who claimed that passage of destructive effects of Niven 69 were God’s punishment of humanity for their collective sins.
What a moron. He had thought at the time.
He had another thought. If Grant continued to be a problem he would have to dealt with. Just as the aboriginal natives of the planet Eden were.
“Comrades, seven years ago the Americans conducted a nuclear weapon test in outer space over the Pacific Ocean. The electromagnetic pulse given off by the weapon killed roughly one third of the satellites in orbit at the time. I now believe that we can do the same to the starship.”
“You can hit it and destroy it?” Asked the Industry Minister.
“No.” Grechko replied. “We only need to place a nuclear weapon in close proximity to the vessel. The electromagnetic pulse will render its command and control systems inert.”
“How do you plan to do this?” Brezhnev said.
“The Proton rocket can launch a six ton payload to that altitude. And we should be able to assemble a weapon within that mass using existing components.”
Brezhnev looked around the room before speaking again.
“Are there any objections?”
Gorbachev did think of an objection. What if the Star People had intercepted the weapon or it otherwise failed? What would stop them from retaliating in kind?
But given his present situation he decided to remain silent.
Seeing that there were no objections Brezhnev spoke again.
“Comrade Grechko, you will proceed with this operation.”
He then looked down to Gorbachev.
“Comrade Gorbachev, you will go directly to the United States and directly speak to the leader of the Star People. Make him an offer that he will accept to come over to the Soviet side.”
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary.” Gorbachev replied.
How the Hell was he supposed to do that? He thought.
On Saturday evening in a mass meeting was being held, William Grant stood before the multitude assembled within the Minneapolis Auditorium. Deliberated seated in the front rows of the audience were the widows and orphaned children of the Minneapolis police officers killed by the Uptimers.
He looked upon the assembled multitude and spoke.
“My friends, I normally come to you to bring the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that is not my mission for this evening. On the Thursday of this week a great crime was committed. Police officers of this great city were brutally and systemically hunted down and murdered. Why?”
Grant paused and looked out again at the assembled audience.
“These men were murdered for simply doing their duty to this great community. Those who committed these murders claimed to have traveled backwards in time, an act that is a simply violation of God's law. They also claim that there is no God and that he did not send his son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to teach us the truth and to ultimately die for our sins. In speaking these falsehoods they deceived themselves and now are attempting to deceive us. But we will not be deceived, we will hold to God's truth, and we will ultimately prevail.”
In a three story building on the corner of Ninth Street and LaSalle Avenue in downtown Minneapolis a meeting was being held in the news department of WCCO Television. The station was an affiliate of the CBS Television Network but on this evening they were, even on a very short notice, broadcasting the William Grant Crusade. And as with the normal broadcasts of the Crusade program the station was videotaping the normal network programming for broadcast at a later time.
“Can you believe this shit?” Someone said in the back of the room.
The CBS Network in New York had originally declined to broadcast the Uptimer version of the events, including the video of the initial encounter between Boatman and the local cops. But when WTCN, an independent station, had broadcast the encounter on their news program and WCCO had to quickly follow suit.
As a result it was also a damned good thing that the 101 st Airborne Division was now policing the city instead of the MPD.
On the monitor of the broadcast Grant continued to speak.
“So who are these depraved beings who murder good men at will and with apparent impunity? These beings are clearly the servants of Satan...”
Roger Allen, the head of the News department switched off the monitor.
“This has to be a breach of our contract with the network.” He said.
Dave Moore, who normally read the local evening news during the week spoke up.
“So what do we do?”
“Damned if I know, Dave.” Roger replied. “I will be damned if I know. What the Hell was Boatman doing here in the first place?”
A reporter spoke up.
“Apparently he was here to speak with several technology firms about adopting their technology.”
“So what was he doing at the White Castle?” Dave asked.
“According to one manager for a local firm I spoke to Boatman apparently fell in love with the sliders when he went to college in California.”
“They have White Castles in California?” Dave asked again.
“Apparently in Twenty-one-twenty Anno Domini they will.”
Dave nodded.
Roger spoke again.
“Apparently the network dropped the ball on this one, and we should have done a better job covering this story ourselves. From now on we will report the facts on this story regardless of whose toes we end up stepping on. Is that clear?”
Everyone in the room spoke or nodded in agreement.
“Now let’s get to work.”
In the family home outside of Dallas, Texas, Judith Grant sat in the living room with her family and watched her father on his broadcast from Minneapolis.
“So who are these depraved beings who murder good men at will and with apparent impunity? These beings are clearly the servants of Satan, sent here to deceive us and turn us from the path of righteousness.”
Without permission Judith had seen the independent television news coverage of the initial incident between the leader of the Uptimers and the Minneapolis Police. And the police in this incident were clearly not acting in the proper manner.
Why would her father lie about this? She privately thought to herself.
She continued to sit and watch the broadcast.
At the Uptimer base in Nevada Evelyn Boatman sat up in his hospital bed and also watched the broadcast. Normally he would have preferred to read a transcript. Those who claimed to have knowledge were very annoying to those in actual possession of same. And man on the screen strongly reminded Boatman of an evangelist on the original timeline who claimed that passage of destructive effects of Niven 69 were God’s punishment of humanity for their collective sins.
What a moron. He had thought at the time.
He had another thought. If Grant continued to be a problem he would have to dealt with. Just as the aboriginal natives of the planet Eden were.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Step Back Part Four
Saturday September 20, 1969
At a rare Saturday morning meeting of the Soviet Politburo a film was shown. It was a 16 millimeter film produced by the U.S. Government of an interview with Mission Commander Evelyn Boatman. The intended audience were the heads of allied governments along with diplomatic and miliary leaders with top secret clearance.
The KGB had stolen a copy.
For this showing the live accurate and translation of the Standard English dialog was provided by two field grade KGB officers reading from a prepared script.
The officer reading for Boatman was in fact the second man selected for the task. The first had visibly flinched upon reading through the script for the first time and ultimately would refuse the assignment.
“There is simply no way around it, the fact is that Soviet Communism is based on a purely false concept of human life and is thus doomed to failure.”
The members of the Politburo sat silently as the historic image of the red banner of the Soviet Union being lowered from the Kremlin for the last time was projected on the screen.
Boatman had spoken again.
“Although the Soviet state had been quietly dismantled in the original timeline we cannot be certain of that this will occur in the current timeline.”
When the film ended and the lights came up the Minister for Agriculture spoke.
“How could this child be in command of the Star People?”
Star People was the term adopted by the Soviets for the crew of the starship Eagle.
Yuri Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB, responded.
“Comrade Minister, The Star People claim to be able to medically reproduce a fully functional mind in a new body. As a result Boatman himself claims to over two centuries old.”
The Minister for Industry spoke up.
“Don’t they know that Communism is the greatest and final form of social organization? How could they not know this? How could they be so blind?”
Andropov answered.
“The Star People are claiming that they have a capitalist society under a minimum state. And they are also claiming that their political doctrine is based on the works of Ayn Rand.”
The minister’s eyes widened and he shouted out his response.
“Rosenbaum--that lying cunt? She knows nothing!”
The Industry Minister had used Rand’s given surname. Andropov again replied.
“Boatman and several other Star People have met with Rand and her inner circle in New York. And they are now actively promoting her philosophy of Objectivism within the United States.”
“Why do they bother with her?” Said the Industry Minister. “That cunt was discredited when the affair with her head disciple was exposed!”
It was at this time that Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, spoke up.
“Comrades, let us stick to main topic, what can we do about this potential future?”
Most of the members silently sat up and nodded. Brezhnev then spoke again.
“Mikhail Gorbachev, step forward.”
Gorbachev had been brought directly from his apartment in Moscow with only a brief amount of time to dress himself. As a result his appearance before the Politburo was shoddy and unshaven. He then was seated to the side of the room as the film was shown to the committee.
As a result he now saw himself as a dead man standing.
Brezhnev spoke.
“So Gorbachev, what do you have to say for yourself?”
As he saw himself as effectively dead there was no point in attempting to deceive anyone. He answered honestly.
“What can I say comrades?”
The Minister for Agriculture spoke in return.
“What can you say? What can you say? What kind of policies are Openness and Restructuring?”
Gorbachev looked directly at the Agriculture Minister before replying.
“Comrade minister, you speak of events that have not happened, nor as a result of the appearance of the Star People will they ever happen.”
“Explain.” Said Brezhnev.
“The appearance of the Star People has already altered the chain of events. What they have told the Americans about the future has altered how they will act in the future. And changes in how the Americans act will result in changes in how the Soviet Union will respond. The future described by Boatman is already dead.”
“Nonsense.” The Minister of Industry replied. “Boatman and his people are lying!”
The Minister of Science spoke up.
“I must strongly disagree. The Star People have brought back data on astronomy that they have shared with the Americans, who in turn have shared it with astronomers worldwide including ours. This includes data on the dead star designated Niven Sixty-Nine. Several of our radio telescopes have now confirmed the existence of the dead star.”
Everyone in the room stared at the minister. Brezhnev spoke up.
“What does that mean?”
“In the late Twenty Second century this object will pass through the inner solar system and will radically alter the orbits of the planets, including the Earth.”
Another minister spoke up up.
“Will it hit anything?”
“That’s unknown.”
Andropov then spoke.
“According to the little information we have the intended mission of the Eagle was to assess the damage done by the object and to rescue any survivors found in the Solar System. The Eagle was originally constructed as a ship that traveled below the speed of light. When a faster than light drive was developed it was installed in the ship and successfully flown on two missions to nearby stars before the mission to Earth was attempted. Their passage backwards in time was not expected.”
Another minister spoke up.
“So what do we do now?”
No one had an answer.
At a rare Saturday morning meeting of the Soviet Politburo a film was shown. It was a 16 millimeter film produced by the U.S. Government of an interview with Mission Commander Evelyn Boatman. The intended audience were the heads of allied governments along with diplomatic and miliary leaders with top secret clearance.
The KGB had stolen a copy.
For this showing the live accurate and translation of the Standard English dialog was provided by two field grade KGB officers reading from a prepared script.
The officer reading for Boatman was in fact the second man selected for the task. The first had visibly flinched upon reading through the script for the first time and ultimately would refuse the assignment.
“There is simply no way around it, the fact is that Soviet Communism is based on a purely false concept of human life and is thus doomed to failure.”
The members of the Politburo sat silently as the historic image of the red banner of the Soviet Union being lowered from the Kremlin for the last time was projected on the screen.
Boatman had spoken again.
“Although the Soviet state had been quietly dismantled in the original timeline we cannot be certain of that this will occur in the current timeline.”
When the film ended and the lights came up the Minister for Agriculture spoke.
“How could this child be in command of the Star People?”
Star People was the term adopted by the Soviets for the crew of the starship Eagle.
Yuri Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB, responded.
“Comrade Minister, The Star People claim to be able to medically reproduce a fully functional mind in a new body. As a result Boatman himself claims to over two centuries old.”
The Minister for Industry spoke up.
“Don’t they know that Communism is the greatest and final form of social organization? How could they not know this? How could they be so blind?”
Andropov answered.
“The Star People are claiming that they have a capitalist society under a minimum state. And they are also claiming that their political doctrine is based on the works of Ayn Rand.”
The minister’s eyes widened and he shouted out his response.
“Rosenbaum--that lying cunt? She knows nothing!”
The Industry Minister had used Rand’s given surname. Andropov again replied.
“Boatman and several other Star People have met with Rand and her inner circle in New York. And they are now actively promoting her philosophy of Objectivism within the United States.”
“Why do they bother with her?” Said the Industry Minister. “That cunt was discredited when the affair with her head disciple was exposed!”
It was at this time that Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, spoke up.
“Comrades, let us stick to main topic, what can we do about this potential future?”
Most of the members silently sat up and nodded. Brezhnev then spoke again.
“Mikhail Gorbachev, step forward.”
Gorbachev had been brought directly from his apartment in Moscow with only a brief amount of time to dress himself. As a result his appearance before the Politburo was shoddy and unshaven. He then was seated to the side of the room as the film was shown to the committee.
As a result he now saw himself as a dead man standing.
Brezhnev spoke.
“So Gorbachev, what do you have to say for yourself?”
As he saw himself as effectively dead there was no point in attempting to deceive anyone. He answered honestly.
“What can I say comrades?”
The Minister for Agriculture spoke in return.
“What can you say? What can you say? What kind of policies are Openness and Restructuring?”
Gorbachev looked directly at the Agriculture Minister before replying.
“Comrade minister, you speak of events that have not happened, nor as a result of the appearance of the Star People will they ever happen.”
“Explain.” Said Brezhnev.
“The appearance of the Star People has already altered the chain of events. What they have told the Americans about the future has altered how they will act in the future. And changes in how the Americans act will result in changes in how the Soviet Union will respond. The future described by Boatman is already dead.”
“Nonsense.” The Minister of Industry replied. “Boatman and his people are lying!”
The Minister of Science spoke up.
“I must strongly disagree. The Star People have brought back data on astronomy that they have shared with the Americans, who in turn have shared it with astronomers worldwide including ours. This includes data on the dead star designated Niven Sixty-Nine. Several of our radio telescopes have now confirmed the existence of the dead star.”
Everyone in the room stared at the minister. Brezhnev spoke up.
“What does that mean?”
“In the late Twenty Second century this object will pass through the inner solar system and will radically alter the orbits of the planets, including the Earth.”
Another minister spoke up up.
“Will it hit anything?”
“That’s unknown.”
Andropov then spoke.
“According to the little information we have the intended mission of the Eagle was to assess the damage done by the object and to rescue any survivors found in the Solar System. The Eagle was originally constructed as a ship that traveled below the speed of light. When a faster than light drive was developed it was installed in the ship and successfully flown on two missions to nearby stars before the mission to Earth was attempted. Their passage backwards in time was not expected.”
Another minister spoke up.
“So what do we do now?”
No one had an answer.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Step Back, Part Three
It was Friday afternoon in Washington.
At his desk John Edgar Hoover was immersed in thought. The people from the future had brought back disturbing information about how far his agency would descend into the darkness before the Federal Government would be overthrown in the event known as The Reformation. Of particular interest was the incident recorded in their history as the Waco Massacre. Although another agency initiated the incident it would be the bureau that would carry out what uptime historians called the greatest act of mass murder in American history.
So how can it be stopped?
The answer to the question may lie with a man identified by the Uptimers as a future occupant of the office of president, William Jefferson Clinton. His name as well has wife’s was on the list of those person who would bring about the collapse of the republic and provoke The Reformation. The question of what to do with these people had been discussed with Hoover and President Nixon by Commander Boatman.
“One could carry out a dirty war, essentially a discrete campaign of assassination, but it would ultimately be revealed to public view and thus bring about a negative political blowback.”
“It would be wrong.” Nixon replied.
“No Mister President,” said Boatman, “it would not be wrong, to terminate a Red or even a mere traitor is a necessary homicide. But by the present cultural standards it would be impractical. This is something that will have to changed in the long run.”
Hoover had then asked a question.
“So what would you suggest that we do with these people?”
Boatman had nodded before he replied.
“Something that could be described as a clean war is in order. Place these people under surveillance and arrest them when they do something that can prosecuted as a crime. You should do this to destroy their future political credibility.”
Hoover sat back in his chair and thought. In the historic context the original ATF operation against the Branch Davidian residence was unnecessary. As a licensed firearms dealer was living on site a pair of ATF agents in a government issue sedan could have visited the residence for an inspection. And if actually taking David Koresh into custody was necessary he could have been placed under arrest while on his morning exercise run.
No, the ATF action, originally dubbed Operation Showtime, was an irrational publicity stunt that had clearly gone wrong. The ATF agents were the actual criminals in this situation and should at the very least been taken into custody.
The initial action was bad, the response of the Bureau was worse.
In the history taught to the Uptimers the Waco Massacre was described as a act of Soviet style state terror intended to punish the Branch Davidians for the act of self defense and to intimidate otherwise patriotic citizens into submission to the Clinton Regime. In response the people who carried out The Reformation would make a clear effort to locate and execute the surviving members of the so-called Hostage Rescue Team of the Bureau.
It was possible that the historical view of the Uptimers was distorted. But by how much?
Clinton had clearly demonstrated that he was unfit to be president. So how could he be blocked from entering the office?
He was identified in the historic record as a sexual predator. And had been fellated at least once in the Oval Office. Those men, including the President, who had been cleared to read the full history brought back by the Uptimers had been shocked to have read this.
It appeared that like Teddy Kennedy, Clinton was willing to sexually use women who worked for him. Could this personal fault could be used to stop him?
It was at this that point Director Hoover decided to place Bill Clinton under long term surveillance by the Bureau.
In downtown Minneapolis a chartered cross country bus pulled up to the entrance of the Auditorium and Convention Center. The door opened and the first to step out was a tall middle aged man, the Reverend William Grant.
From across the street he could see a squad of armed paratroopers looking on in curiosity. President Nixon had deployed the alert brigade of the 101th Airborne Division to Minneapolis to keep order in the wake of the massacre of a significant fraction of the municipal police force.
“Praise The Lord,” he said, “we are here.”
As with many people his curiosity had been piqued with the announcement of the discovery of an inbound starship seen in the southern constellation of Centaurus. He was slightly amused at the Soviet announcement that they had made radio contact with the alien communist expedition. He was not at all surprised that the Soviets had lied when actual radio contact with the incoming vessel had been made.
What was shocking was that the starship was flown by humans who had accidentally come from the future. What he found appalling was that every member of the ship’s company was an atheist and that not one of them would ever speak with him.
They had absolutely denied The Lord Jesus Christ.
But what truly appalled him was that the people from the starship Eagle had been led by a child. He had watched at the office of his evangelical ministry the lived televison coverage of the initial meeting of the starmen and President Nixon at Edwards Air Force Base. The landing craft had been roughly the size of an old DC-3 and vertically landed in a horizontal configuration. The first of the star travelers to step out from the craft was a teenage boy in a shipboard jumpsuit.
President Nixon was speechless. He would later say that he didn’t expect to meet with such an obviously young man.
Apparently the boy had expected this.
“Mister President,” he said, “we have a medical procedure that recreates the effect of reincarnation. I’m presently on my sixth incarnation, sir.”
Certainly this was lie. This absolutely had to be a lie.
The more Reverend Grant had learned of the people who claimed to be from the future the more he was convinced that all they spoke were lies.
They were clearly the creation and instruments of Satan.
There was no possible other explanation for their presence.
What was worse was that his 14 year old daughter Judith was in the office and watching the live broadcast. She appeared to have been enthralled by the boy who walked as a man.
“Child!” Reverend Grant had shouted. “That is a servant of the devil! Leave this room! Now!”
He had done everything he could to protect his children from the presently depraved culture of America. And it had appeared to him that this was not enough.
But now that he was in Minneapolis he would meet with the families of the police officers murdered by the servants of Satan. And he could hold a massive worship service here at the Minneapolis Auditorium.
He would do everything he could to stop these tools of Satan.
At his desk John Edgar Hoover was immersed in thought. The people from the future had brought back disturbing information about how far his agency would descend into the darkness before the Federal Government would be overthrown in the event known as The Reformation. Of particular interest was the incident recorded in their history as the Waco Massacre. Although another agency initiated the incident it would be the bureau that would carry out what uptime historians called the greatest act of mass murder in American history.
So how can it be stopped?
The answer to the question may lie with a man identified by the Uptimers as a future occupant of the office of president, William Jefferson Clinton. His name as well has wife’s was on the list of those person who would bring about the collapse of the republic and provoke The Reformation. The question of what to do with these people had been discussed with Hoover and President Nixon by Commander Boatman.
“One could carry out a dirty war, essentially a discrete campaign of assassination, but it would ultimately be revealed to public view and thus bring about a negative political blowback.”
“It would be wrong.” Nixon replied.
“No Mister President,” said Boatman, “it would not be wrong, to terminate a Red or even a mere traitor is a necessary homicide. But by the present cultural standards it would be impractical. This is something that will have to changed in the long run.”
Hoover had then asked a question.
“So what would you suggest that we do with these people?”
Boatman had nodded before he replied.
“Something that could be described as a clean war is in order. Place these people under surveillance and arrest them when they do something that can prosecuted as a crime. You should do this to destroy their future political credibility.”
Hoover sat back in his chair and thought. In the historic context the original ATF operation against the Branch Davidian residence was unnecessary. As a licensed firearms dealer was living on site a pair of ATF agents in a government issue sedan could have visited the residence for an inspection. And if actually taking David Koresh into custody was necessary he could have been placed under arrest while on his morning exercise run.
No, the ATF action, originally dubbed Operation Showtime, was an irrational publicity stunt that had clearly gone wrong. The ATF agents were the actual criminals in this situation and should at the very least been taken into custody.
The initial action was bad, the response of the Bureau was worse.
In the history taught to the Uptimers the Waco Massacre was described as a act of Soviet style state terror intended to punish the Branch Davidians for the act of self defense and to intimidate otherwise patriotic citizens into submission to the Clinton Regime. In response the people who carried out The Reformation would make a clear effort to locate and execute the surviving members of the so-called Hostage Rescue Team of the Bureau.
It was possible that the historical view of the Uptimers was distorted. But by how much?
Clinton had clearly demonstrated that he was unfit to be president. So how could he be blocked from entering the office?
He was identified in the historic record as a sexual predator. And had been fellated at least once in the Oval Office. Those men, including the President, who had been cleared to read the full history brought back by the Uptimers had been shocked to have read this.
It appeared that like Teddy Kennedy, Clinton was willing to sexually use women who worked for him. Could this personal fault could be used to stop him?
It was at this that point Director Hoover decided to place Bill Clinton under long term surveillance by the Bureau.
In downtown Minneapolis a chartered cross country bus pulled up to the entrance of the Auditorium and Convention Center. The door opened and the first to step out was a tall middle aged man, the Reverend William Grant.
From across the street he could see a squad of armed paratroopers looking on in curiosity. President Nixon had deployed the alert brigade of the 101th Airborne Division to Minneapolis to keep order in the wake of the massacre of a significant fraction of the municipal police force.
“Praise The Lord,” he said, “we are here.”
As with many people his curiosity had been piqued with the announcement of the discovery of an inbound starship seen in the southern constellation of Centaurus. He was slightly amused at the Soviet announcement that they had made radio contact with the alien communist expedition. He was not at all surprised that the Soviets had lied when actual radio contact with the incoming vessel had been made.
What was shocking was that the starship was flown by humans who had accidentally come from the future. What he found appalling was that every member of the ship’s company was an atheist and that not one of them would ever speak with him.
They had absolutely denied The Lord Jesus Christ.
But what truly appalled him was that the people from the starship Eagle had been led by a child. He had watched at the office of his evangelical ministry the lived televison coverage of the initial meeting of the starmen and President Nixon at Edwards Air Force Base. The landing craft had been roughly the size of an old DC-3 and vertically landed in a horizontal configuration. The first of the star travelers to step out from the craft was a teenage boy in a shipboard jumpsuit.
President Nixon was speechless. He would later say that he didn’t expect to meet with such an obviously young man.
Apparently the boy had expected this.
“Mister President,” he said, “we have a medical procedure that recreates the effect of reincarnation. I’m presently on my sixth incarnation, sir.”
Certainly this was lie. This absolutely had to be a lie.
The more Reverend Grant had learned of the people who claimed to be from the future the more he was convinced that all they spoke were lies.
They were clearly the creation and instruments of Satan.
There was no possible other explanation for their presence.
What was worse was that his 14 year old daughter Judith was in the office and watching the live broadcast. She appeared to have been enthralled by the boy who walked as a man.
“Child!” Reverend Grant had shouted. “That is a servant of the devil! Leave this room! Now!”
He had done everything he could to protect his children from the presently depraved culture of America. And it had appeared to him that this was not enough.
But now that he was in Minneapolis he would meet with the families of the police officers murdered by the servants of Satan. And he could hold a massive worship service here at the Minneapolis Auditorium.
He would do everything he could to stop these tools of Satan.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Second Episode
September 19, 1969
Evelyn Boatman slowly awakened.
He was laying in a hospital bed under full terrestrial gravity. He could feel an oxygen tube in place on his nose. When he opened his eyes he saw a familiar figure standing beside the bed. A woman in scrubs and a white lab coat and holding a clipboard. The ship’s surgeon and his adopted daughter Alice.
“Hi Dad.” She said.
“What happened?” He replied. “Where am I?”
“We’re at our ground base. You seriously stirred up a nest of shrieks dirtside.”
The current ground base for the Eagle mission was at the U.S. Government’s Secret Area 51 in New Mexico.
He nodded, then replied.
“In the Terran context it should be hornets.”
“Whatever.” She replied. “What was the last thing you remember?”
He thought for a moment before answering.
“We had found temporary sanctuary at the local FBI office. The squad lander had set down in front of the Federal Building on Third Avenue and the Ranger squad was deployed in a circle. John and I had almost made it to the lander when something hit me in the back.”
Alice nodded and replied.
“It was a thirty caliber rifle fired by a police marksman. He apparently thought that the Federal order to not shoot you didn’t apply to him. The Rangers responded and killed every Minneapolis cop in sight. The dirtside press are now calling the incident the Minneapolis Massacre.”
“Morons.” He said.
“The cops or the press?” She replied.
“Both.”
Alice nodded.
He had another question.
“So how’s John?”
“He’s unharmed and back with his family in Huntsville.” She said. “Everyone at NASA Huntsville is seriously angry about the incident. And apparently Werner was actually cursing in Deutsche, something about the SS not being that stupid.”
Boatman could only nod. Doctor Von Braun’s personal history was something that not discussed.
Alice spoke again.
“So what happened to you? Well the bullet missed the heart but the right lung did collapse and we had to reinflate it. I want to keep you in bed until I’m certain it remains inflated. Do you understand?”
He looked up at Alice, she had her serious doctor look on her face.
“Yes ma’am.” He replied.
In Washington President Richard Milhous Nixon was not looking forward to the coming meeting. The Minneapolis Massacre had become a political nightmare for the administration. Although the Uptimers were fully cooperating with the FBI and fully presenting their case to the press the various news outlets were not presenting all of the facts. There appeared to be a concerted effort on the press to place the full blame for the incident on the Uptimers and the federal agencies that supported them.
The meeting would be held in the cabinet room in the West Wing. Along with the president would be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler of the United States Army, and the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. The Uptimers would be represented by executive officer of the Eagle, Lieutenant Commander Michelle Keller. Commander Keller had brought a one of the spare laptop computers from the Eagle with her for the meeting.
The other side would be represented by Senators Hubert Humphrey and Edward Kennedy.
An aide poked his head into the cabinet room and spoke.
“Mister President, the senators are here.”
“Send them in.”
“Yes sir.”
The three men stood up while Commander Keller remained seated.
As in the current norm the men shook hands then Senator Humphrey turned towards Commander Keller and put forth his hand with the expectation of a handshake. The Commander only responded with a cold stare.
President Nixon had read the full history of the United States up to the historical event the Uptimers called The Reformation. Given what he read he had expected the Uptimers to have a full hatred of the Democratic Party. What he found truly disturbing was their cold and clinical contempt for the Democrats instead of the emotional state of hatred.
Humphrey spoke.
“Do you understand courtesy?”
Commander Keller coldly responded.
“Where we come from the proper response to the presence of a Democrat is one round in the head in the old Soviet style.”
Both senators were shocked, their eyes widened.
Commander Keller pointed to the chairs as a command motion to sit.
The temperature in the cabinet room seemed to have dropped as the senators silently sat down.
Nixon had also read of the efforts of the political successors of the Democrats to prevent the construction of the sublight starships that would carry humans from the path of the oncoming neutron star that was expected to destroy Human Civilization in the Solar System.
As one of the Germans at Huntsville who also read the report had put it--those fools could have given Nietzsche several pointers on the philosophy of Nihilism.
Even so the clinical contempt of the Uptimers remained disturbing to the president.
President Nixon spoke.
“The subject of the discussion is the incident in Minneapolis yesterday.”
“Yes,” said Humphrey, “when will those murderers be brought to justice?”
Commander Keller calmly responded.
“Mister Humphrey, your police in Minneapolis chose to behave as predatory animals and were identified and dealt with as such. Justice has already been properly served.”
Humphrey face turned red as he raised his voice in response.
“THAT IS A LIE!”
Commander Keller said nothing in response. Instead she opened the laptop computer and positioned it so everyone at the table could see the screen and entered the command to play the audio-video file recorded by the lapel camera worn by Evelyn Boatman. Only after the file had completely played did she respond.
“As you can see the two officers in the initial incident failed to comply with the operational standards of a proper civil constabulary. Under the circumstances Mission Commander Boatman had no choice but to defend himself with deadly force.”
Both Director Hoover and General Wheeler nodded in agreement.
General Wheeler spoke up.
“Your cops were also ordered to stand down. Instead one of them shot Commander Boatman and the squad responded to that action in accordance to proper infantry doctrine.”
All of the television network news programs had shown newsreel footage of the Ranger squad, in their powered armor suits, engaging the Minneapolis Police on the ground. But the networks had consistently not shown the rifle shot that struck Boatman.
Humphrey spoke again.
“The Minneapolis police were slaughtered like animals! They didn’t know what they were up against!”
Director Hoover shook his head and replied.
“Senator, all the police departments in the Twin Cities area were notified of Commander Boatman’s visit to the area. The Saint Paul police informed their officers on duty of this. The Minneapolis police did not. So whose fault is this?”
Humphrey was struck silent, Kennedy now spoke up.
“So when will these monsters be disarmed?”
Commander Keller replied with a level voice.
“The citizens are the sovereign authority, those who seek to disarm them are traitors to the nation and should be put to death.”
Kennedy’s face turned red and he shouted in response.
“SHUT UP!”
President Nixon now interjected himself.
“Commander, I believe the senator is referring to your nuclear weapons.”
The planners of the Eagle expedition had no idea if anyone was still alive in the Solar System or how they would respond to a mission from Alpha Centauri. It was assumed that a hostile response was possible and that the expedition should be prepared for it. The Eagle at present carried more nuclear warheads than were in the arsenals of the United Kingdom, France, China, and Israel. Only the United States and Soviet Union outnumbered them in nuclear bombs and warheads.
“It simply won’t happen, sir.” She replied. “And Eagle is presently parked in geosynchronous orbit at about the longitude of Omaha, Nebraska. Our onboard laser batteries are presently providing coverage against a possible Soviet ballistic missile attack on the United States. If a hostile government were to come to power in the United States we would have withdraw our block against Soviet actions.”
What she left unsaid was that if a hostile president were elected it would be a very good idea to not be in Washington on Inauguration Day.
“You are the criminals!” Kennedy shouted.
Commander Keller slightly smiled, looked straight at Kennedy, and then she calmly spoke.
“Speaking of actual criminals, how is Mary Jo?”
Kennedy’s eyes widened. He shouted in response.
“HOW DARE YOU!”
Commander Keller’s eyes lit up as she spoke in response.
“Teddy, a proper government holds it’s elected officers to the highest reasonable standards, and the act of leaving a helpless young woman to slowly suffocate to death is something we treat as a capital crime.”
Well yes, the young woman in question was a Democrat, but a valid law must be applied to everyone without exception.
Kennedy quickly stood up and left the cabinet room.
President Nixon then spoke.
“Senator Humphrey, it appears that this meeting is over.”
Evelyn Boatman slowly awakened.
He was laying in a hospital bed under full terrestrial gravity. He could feel an oxygen tube in place on his nose. When he opened his eyes he saw a familiar figure standing beside the bed. A woman in scrubs and a white lab coat and holding a clipboard. The ship’s surgeon and his adopted daughter Alice.
“Hi Dad.” She said.
“What happened?” He replied. “Where am I?”
“We’re at our ground base. You seriously stirred up a nest of shrieks dirtside.”
The current ground base for the Eagle mission was at the U.S. Government’s Secret Area 51 in New Mexico.
He nodded, then replied.
“In the Terran context it should be hornets.”
“Whatever.” She replied. “What was the last thing you remember?”
He thought for a moment before answering.
“We had found temporary sanctuary at the local FBI office. The squad lander had set down in front of the Federal Building on Third Avenue and the Ranger squad was deployed in a circle. John and I had almost made it to the lander when something hit me in the back.”
Alice nodded and replied.
“It was a thirty caliber rifle fired by a police marksman. He apparently thought that the Federal order to not shoot you didn’t apply to him. The Rangers responded and killed every Minneapolis cop in sight. The dirtside press are now calling the incident the Minneapolis Massacre.”
“Morons.” He said.
“The cops or the press?” She replied.
“Both.”
Alice nodded.
He had another question.
“So how’s John?”
“He’s unharmed and back with his family in Huntsville.” She said. “Everyone at NASA Huntsville is seriously angry about the incident. And apparently Werner was actually cursing in Deutsche, something about the SS not being that stupid.”
Boatman could only nod. Doctor Von Braun’s personal history was something that not discussed.
Alice spoke again.
“So what happened to you? Well the bullet missed the heart but the right lung did collapse and we had to reinflate it. I want to keep you in bed until I’m certain it remains inflated. Do you understand?”
He looked up at Alice, she had her serious doctor look on her face.
“Yes ma’am.” He replied.
In Washington President Richard Milhous Nixon was not looking forward to the coming meeting. The Minneapolis Massacre had become a political nightmare for the administration. Although the Uptimers were fully cooperating with the FBI and fully presenting their case to the press the various news outlets were not presenting all of the facts. There appeared to be a concerted effort on the press to place the full blame for the incident on the Uptimers and the federal agencies that supported them.
The meeting would be held in the cabinet room in the West Wing. Along with the president would be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler of the United States Army, and the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. The Uptimers would be represented by executive officer of the Eagle, Lieutenant Commander Michelle Keller. Commander Keller had brought a one of the spare laptop computers from the Eagle with her for the meeting.
The other side would be represented by Senators Hubert Humphrey and Edward Kennedy.
An aide poked his head into the cabinet room and spoke.
“Mister President, the senators are here.”
“Send them in.”
“Yes sir.”
The three men stood up while Commander Keller remained seated.
As in the current norm the men shook hands then Senator Humphrey turned towards Commander Keller and put forth his hand with the expectation of a handshake. The Commander only responded with a cold stare.
President Nixon had read the full history of the United States up to the historical event the Uptimers called The Reformation. Given what he read he had expected the Uptimers to have a full hatred of the Democratic Party. What he found truly disturbing was their cold and clinical contempt for the Democrats instead of the emotional state of hatred.
Humphrey spoke.
“Do you understand courtesy?”
Commander Keller coldly responded.
“Where we come from the proper response to the presence of a Democrat is one round in the head in the old Soviet style.”
Both senators were shocked, their eyes widened.
Commander Keller pointed to the chairs as a command motion to sit.
The temperature in the cabinet room seemed to have dropped as the senators silently sat down.
Nixon had also read of the efforts of the political successors of the Democrats to prevent the construction of the sublight starships that would carry humans from the path of the oncoming neutron star that was expected to destroy Human Civilization in the Solar System.
As one of the Germans at Huntsville who also read the report had put it--those fools could have given Nietzsche several pointers on the philosophy of Nihilism.
Even so the clinical contempt of the Uptimers remained disturbing to the president.
President Nixon spoke.
“The subject of the discussion is the incident in Minneapolis yesterday.”
“Yes,” said Humphrey, “when will those murderers be brought to justice?”
Commander Keller calmly responded.
“Mister Humphrey, your police in Minneapolis chose to behave as predatory animals and were identified and dealt with as such. Justice has already been properly served.”
Humphrey face turned red as he raised his voice in response.
“THAT IS A LIE!”
Commander Keller said nothing in response. Instead she opened the laptop computer and positioned it so everyone at the table could see the screen and entered the command to play the audio-video file recorded by the lapel camera worn by Evelyn Boatman. Only after the file had completely played did she respond.
“As you can see the two officers in the initial incident failed to comply with the operational standards of a proper civil constabulary. Under the circumstances Mission Commander Boatman had no choice but to defend himself with deadly force.”
Both Director Hoover and General Wheeler nodded in agreement.
General Wheeler spoke up.
“Your cops were also ordered to stand down. Instead one of them shot Commander Boatman and the squad responded to that action in accordance to proper infantry doctrine.”
All of the television network news programs had shown newsreel footage of the Ranger squad, in their powered armor suits, engaging the Minneapolis Police on the ground. But the networks had consistently not shown the rifle shot that struck Boatman.
Humphrey spoke again.
“The Minneapolis police were slaughtered like animals! They didn’t know what they were up against!”
Director Hoover shook his head and replied.
“Senator, all the police departments in the Twin Cities area were notified of Commander Boatman’s visit to the area. The Saint Paul police informed their officers on duty of this. The Minneapolis police did not. So whose fault is this?”
Humphrey was struck silent, Kennedy now spoke up.
“So when will these monsters be disarmed?”
Commander Keller replied with a level voice.
“The citizens are the sovereign authority, those who seek to disarm them are traitors to the nation and should be put to death.”
Kennedy’s face turned red and he shouted in response.
“SHUT UP!”
President Nixon now interjected himself.
“Commander, I believe the senator is referring to your nuclear weapons.”
The planners of the Eagle expedition had no idea if anyone was still alive in the Solar System or how they would respond to a mission from Alpha Centauri. It was assumed that a hostile response was possible and that the expedition should be prepared for it. The Eagle at present carried more nuclear warheads than were in the arsenals of the United Kingdom, France, China, and Israel. Only the United States and Soviet Union outnumbered them in nuclear bombs and warheads.
“It simply won’t happen, sir.” She replied. “And Eagle is presently parked in geosynchronous orbit at about the longitude of Omaha, Nebraska. Our onboard laser batteries are presently providing coverage against a possible Soviet ballistic missile attack on the United States. If a hostile government were to come to power in the United States we would have withdraw our block against Soviet actions.”
What she left unsaid was that if a hostile president were elected it would be a very good idea to not be in Washington on Inauguration Day.
“You are the criminals!” Kennedy shouted.
Commander Keller slightly smiled, looked straight at Kennedy, and then she calmly spoke.
“Speaking of actual criminals, how is Mary Jo?”
Kennedy’s eyes widened. He shouted in response.
“HOW DARE YOU!”
Commander Keller’s eyes lit up as she spoke in response.
“Teddy, a proper government holds it’s elected officers to the highest reasonable standards, and the act of leaving a helpless young woman to slowly suffocate to death is something we treat as a capital crime.”
Well yes, the young woman in question was a Democrat, but a valid law must be applied to everyone without exception.
Kennedy quickly stood up and left the cabinet room.
President Nixon then spoke.
“Senator Humphrey, it appears that this meeting is over.”
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
This is related to my current literary project
On Thursday September 18, 1969, it was time for lunch.
There was a White Castle restaurant on the corner of 4th street and Central Avenue in Minneapolis. It was built at the north end of the parking lot of a strip mall and was one of the prefabricated units in while porcelain and stainless steel that were still in operation on this day. Roughly half an hour after the local noon two men stepped inside. The first was in his early sixties and wore an off the rack grey suit. The second appeared to no older than 14 years old. He wore a custom tailored navy blue suit in the Nehru pattern. The suit jacket was worn loose and unbuttoned with a round silver and glass pin at about the position of the left lapel.
In New York he had been criticized for apparent Third-world style of his choice of attire by a certain little old lady from Leningrad.
“Miss Rand,” he responded with a clearly adult tone of voice, “In spaceflight a necktie is a useless mass and it floats up into the face in free-fall conditions, and I will die before I put on a bow tie.”
The apparently young man also had a short haircut that was more comfortable than fashionable and carried himself as if he were far older.
The apparently younger man spoke to his older companion.
“Do you want anything, John?”
The older man replied with a trace of an educated German accent.
“No sir, go ahead.”
The young man stepped up to the counter and spoke.
“I’ll have four cheeseburgers with catsup and no pickle, fries and a coke please.”
“Yes sir.” The clerk replied.
In the memory of the apparently younger man it had been nearly two centuries since he came to Earth and discovered the White Castle hamburger. He had been born in the primary habitat of Ganymede and had come to Earth for his college education. After the synthetic food he grew up with even the basic slider was a joy to consume.
Even though it was theoretically impossible he and his companions had traveled backwards in time. No one on the crew and science staff aboard the Eagle had any idea how it happened. But now that Evelyn Boatman and his crew were back in 1969 they would have to live with it.
As they waited for the order to come up two Minneapolis Police officers wearing their standard uniform hats entered the restaurant. To John they reminded him of the Secret State Police of the Reich, what was commonly known in his native Germany as the Gestapo. To Boatman they brought forth memories of the stone age sentient reptilian natives of Eden, one of the two habitable planets of the Alpha Centauri system. Vermin who were nearly exterminated by the second wave of Human colonists.
Boatman consciously suppressed the urge to bring out the pistol concealed under his suit jacket.
The senior of the two cops spotted Boatman and spoke.
“Hey kid, why aren’t you in school?”
Boatman turned and calmly replied to the first cop with a clearly adult tone of voice.
“I am not a student.”
John felt it was time for him to speak up to the uniformed thugs.
“Gentlemen, we’re with NASA.”
The second cop turned towards John and growled.
“Shut up!”
The first cop didn’t understand what he saw. What he had identified as the mere teenage boy standing before him should have descended into a visible state of fear. Instead the boy had calmly assumed the position of adult authority.
And even though the boy had a military grade haircut he was still dressed in what the cop had identified as a hippy suit. That made the boy someone he could beat to a pulp without an adverse consequence.
The cop stepped forward and reached to grab the boy with his right hand. He only got off two words before there was a response.
“Listen punk...”
As the cop’s right hand touched the left side on his suit jacket Boatman brought his own right hand down on top of that of the cop. With his left hand he seized the cop’s elbow, spun right with the entire force of his body and pushed forward on the elbow. He could hear the elbow snap. Then with the right hand open he struck the cop with the palm up to the chin of the cop. Boatman could hear the neck of the cop snap.
Boatman then reached back under his jacket drew his pistol and aimed it at the head of the second cop.
The second cop didn’t recognize the weapon as a currently manufactured handgun. He sneered with full rage.
“Use a real gun, punk!”
Boatman pulled the trigger. There was no report of a gunpowder weapon. Only a crack of a projectile moving at slightly above the speed of sound combined with the impact of the projectile upon the head of the thug.
The weapon was manufactured on Zion, the second world colonized in the Alpha Centauri system. It used magnetic force to propel a bullet made of a 2 centimeter core of depleted uranium wrapped in a centimeter sheath of mild steel at slightly above the speed of sound.
The second cop dropped to the floor.
Evelyn Boatman looked up at his companion and spoke.
“Well, that was rude.”
Doctor Johannes Linden reverted to the language of his homeland.
“Ja.”
Boatman then looked over to the manager and staff of the White Castle.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said, “I guess we’ll have to skip lunch.”
He then turned back to his companion and spoke.
“Let’s go.”
As then walked back to the rented car Boatman spoke again.
“If I recall correctly there is a Federal building on Third Avenue in downtown, there should be a FBI office there.”
When Central Avenue crossed the Mississippi River it became Third Avenue South. They should find sanctuary from the local cops at the FBI office.
As John pulled the car out of the shopping center’s parking lot Boatman reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a device. He needed to make a call.
There was a White Castle restaurant on the corner of 4th street and Central Avenue in Minneapolis. It was built at the north end of the parking lot of a strip mall and was one of the prefabricated units in while porcelain and stainless steel that were still in operation on this day. Roughly half an hour after the local noon two men stepped inside. The first was in his early sixties and wore an off the rack grey suit. The second appeared to no older than 14 years old. He wore a custom tailored navy blue suit in the Nehru pattern. The suit jacket was worn loose and unbuttoned with a round silver and glass pin at about the position of the left lapel.
In New York he had been criticized for apparent Third-world style of his choice of attire by a certain little old lady from Leningrad.
“Miss Rand,” he responded with a clearly adult tone of voice, “In spaceflight a necktie is a useless mass and it floats up into the face in free-fall conditions, and I will die before I put on a bow tie.”
The apparently young man also had a short haircut that was more comfortable than fashionable and carried himself as if he were far older.
The apparently younger man spoke to his older companion.
“Do you want anything, John?”
The older man replied with a trace of an educated German accent.
“No sir, go ahead.”
The young man stepped up to the counter and spoke.
“I’ll have four cheeseburgers with catsup and no pickle, fries and a coke please.”
“Yes sir.” The clerk replied.
In the memory of the apparently younger man it had been nearly two centuries since he came to Earth and discovered the White Castle hamburger. He had been born in the primary habitat of Ganymede and had come to Earth for his college education. After the synthetic food he grew up with even the basic slider was a joy to consume.
Even though it was theoretically impossible he and his companions had traveled backwards in time. No one on the crew and science staff aboard the Eagle had any idea how it happened. But now that Evelyn Boatman and his crew were back in 1969 they would have to live with it.
As they waited for the order to come up two Minneapolis Police officers wearing their standard uniform hats entered the restaurant. To John they reminded him of the Secret State Police of the Reich, what was commonly known in his native Germany as the Gestapo. To Boatman they brought forth memories of the stone age sentient reptilian natives of Eden, one of the two habitable planets of the Alpha Centauri system. Vermin who were nearly exterminated by the second wave of Human colonists.
Boatman consciously suppressed the urge to bring out the pistol concealed under his suit jacket.
The senior of the two cops spotted Boatman and spoke.
“Hey kid, why aren’t you in school?”
Boatman turned and calmly replied to the first cop with a clearly adult tone of voice.
“I am not a student.”
John felt it was time for him to speak up to the uniformed thugs.
“Gentlemen, we’re with NASA.”
The second cop turned towards John and growled.
“Shut up!”
The first cop didn’t understand what he saw. What he had identified as the mere teenage boy standing before him should have descended into a visible state of fear. Instead the boy had calmly assumed the position of adult authority.
And even though the boy had a military grade haircut he was still dressed in what the cop had identified as a hippy suit. That made the boy someone he could beat to a pulp without an adverse consequence.
The cop stepped forward and reached to grab the boy with his right hand. He only got off two words before there was a response.
“Listen punk...”
As the cop’s right hand touched the left side on his suit jacket Boatman brought his own right hand down on top of that of the cop. With his left hand he seized the cop’s elbow, spun right with the entire force of his body and pushed forward on the elbow. He could hear the elbow snap. Then with the right hand open he struck the cop with the palm up to the chin of the cop. Boatman could hear the neck of the cop snap.
Boatman then reached back under his jacket drew his pistol and aimed it at the head of the second cop.
The second cop didn’t recognize the weapon as a currently manufactured handgun. He sneered with full rage.
“Use a real gun, punk!”
Boatman pulled the trigger. There was no report of a gunpowder weapon. Only a crack of a projectile moving at slightly above the speed of sound combined with the impact of the projectile upon the head of the thug.
The weapon was manufactured on Zion, the second world colonized in the Alpha Centauri system. It used magnetic force to propel a bullet made of a 2 centimeter core of depleted uranium wrapped in a centimeter sheath of mild steel at slightly above the speed of sound.
The second cop dropped to the floor.
Evelyn Boatman looked up at his companion and spoke.
“Well, that was rude.”
Doctor Johannes Linden reverted to the language of his homeland.
“Ja.”
Boatman then looked over to the manager and staff of the White Castle.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said, “I guess we’ll have to skip lunch.”
He then turned back to his companion and spoke.
“Let’s go.”
As then walked back to the rented car Boatman spoke again.
“If I recall correctly there is a Federal building on Third Avenue in downtown, there should be a FBI office there.”
When Central Avenue crossed the Mississippi River it became Third Avenue South. They should find sanctuary from the local cops at the FBI office.
As John pulled the car out of the shopping center’s parking lot Boatman reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a device. He needed to make a call.
Saturday, August 09, 2014
Bummer
The Illusion Theater in Minneapolis is putting on a stage production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There was one more show scheduled for Sunday night when I found out about it.
Unfortunately the online ordering system won't accept my credit card information.
Bummer
Sunday, August 03, 2014
H. Beam Piper On Savages
H. Beam Piper on neo-barbarism excerpted from his novel SPACE VIKING (Copyright 1963, by Ace Books, Inc.)
“Yes, for one thing, we don’t have the Neobarbarians,” somebody said. “And if they ever came out here, we’d blow them to Em-See-Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they did, too; it would stop us squabbling among ourselves.”
Harkaman looked at him in surprise. “Just who do think the Neobarbarians are, anyhow?” he asked. “Some race of invading nomads, Atilla’s Huns in spaceships?”
“Well, isn’t that who they are?’ Gorram asked.
“Nifflheim, no! There aren’t a dozen and a half planets in the Old federation that still have hyperdrive, and they’re all civilized. ... These are homemade barbarians. Workers and peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth and then found they’d smashed the means of production and killed of the all the technical brains. Survivors on planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of political leader on local-dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following self-anointed prophets.”
[...]
“You’ve seen decivilized planets. How does it happen?”
“I know how it’s happened on a good many: War. Destruction of cities and industries. Survivors among ruins, too busy keeping their own bodies alive to try to keep civilization alive. Then they lose all knowledge of how to be civilized.”
“That’s catastrophic decivilization. There is also decivilization by erosion, and while it’s going on, nobody notices it. Everybody is proud of their civilization, their wealth and culture. But trade is falling off; fewer ships come in each year. So there is boastful talk about planetary self-sufficiency; who needs off-planet trade anyhow? Everybody seems to have money, but the government is always broke. Deficit spending–and always more vital social services for which the government has to spend money. The most vital one, of course, is buying votes to keep the government in power. And it gets harder for the government to get anything done.
“The soldiers are sloppier at drill, and their uniforms and weapons aren’t taken care of. The non-coms are insolent. And more and more parts of the city are dangerous at night, and then even in daytime. And it’s been years since a new building went up, and the old ones aren’t being repaired anymore.”
[...]
“Our grandchildren, if any will probably be raiding Murduk.”
“You think it’ll be like that?”
“Don’t you? You were there you saw what was happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they understand of it–luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
Trask nodded.
“And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he’s the Leader.” He poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handicraft-industry level. “I don’t understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler on the way home. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He’s using all Hitler’s tricks. But Hitler come to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn’t fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce.”
“It wasn’t the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that’s ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.”
“Yes, for one thing, we don’t have the Neobarbarians,” somebody said. “And if they ever came out here, we’d blow them to Em-See-Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they did, too; it would stop us squabbling among ourselves.”
Harkaman looked at him in surprise. “Just who do think the Neobarbarians are, anyhow?” he asked. “Some race of invading nomads, Atilla’s Huns in spaceships?”
“Well, isn’t that who they are?’ Gorram asked.
“Nifflheim, no! There aren’t a dozen and a half planets in the Old federation that still have hyperdrive, and they’re all civilized. ... These are homemade barbarians. Workers and peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth and then found they’d smashed the means of production and killed of the all the technical brains. Survivors on planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of political leader on local-dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following self-anointed prophets.”
[...]
“You’ve seen decivilized planets. How does it happen?”
“I know how it’s happened on a good many: War. Destruction of cities and industries. Survivors among ruins, too busy keeping their own bodies alive to try to keep civilization alive. Then they lose all knowledge of how to be civilized.”
“That’s catastrophic decivilization. There is also decivilization by erosion, and while it’s going on, nobody notices it. Everybody is proud of their civilization, their wealth and culture. But trade is falling off; fewer ships come in each year. So there is boastful talk about planetary self-sufficiency; who needs off-planet trade anyhow? Everybody seems to have money, but the government is always broke. Deficit spending–and always more vital social services for which the government has to spend money. The most vital one, of course, is buying votes to keep the government in power. And it gets harder for the government to get anything done.
“The soldiers are sloppier at drill, and their uniforms and weapons aren’t taken care of. The non-coms are insolent. And more and more parts of the city are dangerous at night, and then even in daytime. And it’s been years since a new building went up, and the old ones aren’t being repaired anymore.”
[...]
“Our grandchildren, if any will probably be raiding Murduk.”
“You think it’ll be like that?”
“Don’t you? You were there you saw what was happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they’re uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they understand of it–luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
Trask nodded.
“And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he’s the Leader.” He poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handicraft-industry level. “I don’t understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler on the way home. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He’s using all Hitler’s tricks. But Hitler come to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn’t fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce.”
“It wasn’t the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that’s ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.”
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
A Work In Progress
In response to some blathering by a socialist posted an excerpt from the novel I'm writing on the Traveller Mailing List:
“Kim. I’m sorry to have to say this, but there was a clear reason we built a system back on Zion for recreating the experience of being sent to Auschwitz. I know it’s an awful thing to do to children in school but the lesson has to be taught. Those who carried out The Holocaust, and the other atrocities of the Century of Death, were completely normal people who were taught to believe what they were told by the state and to obey orders without question. We simply can’t let that happen again.”
In addition I said:
"But what can I say? A socialist is a socialist."
The response from the socialist was:
"And then there's child abuse."
And there was another sneer from another socialist. Of course I should have remembered the fact that one cannot argue with a socialist. They are vermin that can only be hunted down and killed.
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
The Other Novel
Here's the first chapter of the FTL novel:
Negation, she thought.
A decision can be easy or it could be difficult.
The thunderstorm that crashed upon the capital city was a thing of beauty. The flash of lightning illuminated the streets and the buildings beyond the window with an electric blue glow. With the light reflected from her face back upon the inside surface she could see the winkles beneath her eyes and the streaks of gray in her dark hair.
She gave thought to window before her.
It was both invisible and itself a thing of beauty. It separated and protected her from the outside environment and allowed her to see it in all its glory. She could watch the passage of the storm from the safety of her office because of the applied thought of a man.
Those who destroyed the works of men could not conceive of a pane of glass. Nor could they be taught how to make one and integrate it into a structure. The thoughts of rational men were nothing to them. And the works of men that resulted from the trains of rational thought were seen only as abominations that were to be smashed into dust.
They did not see the truth and they did not want to see the truth.
Reality is real.
Her parents had taught her this before she learned to read.
Understand this and you can understand everything.
But there were those alive who did not want to know. They actively sought ignorance They sought only to negate knowledge and the products of applied knowledge.
And now another of those men had stepped on to her world with the intent of negation. Of murdering the people and smashing their works to nothing. There was nothing that he would be gained from such acts. It would be the sacrifice of actual things to nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Under the existing laws of her nation the subject of her present thought could simply be arrested and processed. With the ultimate result being his death.
But that would not solve the larger problem. The subject was employed by a group of men back on Earth. The employers will simply hire another man to attack the worlds under her care. And the next time she may not be able to stop them.
The woman had witnessed too much of the horror of negation over the course of her life. She had seen her parents taken from her simply because they were the only sane people on an insane world. See had seen her husband murdered simply because he was her husband.
Would it ever end? How does one deal with such people?
The phone on her desk rang. She turned and quickly lifted the receiver to speak.
“Yes?”
A man’s voice at the far end replied.
“We’re ready to proceed, ma’am.”
“Do so.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A trade off then. Let the immediate subject live and use him to discover his employers.
And then eliminate them.
Across the city the subject of the conversation in question was sleeping naked in a hotel bed. But not for long. This would be a hostile encounter. He had not expected the police on any world, whom he normally thought of as no better than clowns, to break into his hotel room in full tactical mode. They should not have known of his origin or mission.
The arrest had been absolutely hostile. At no point was he allowed to speak, nor was he spoken to. He was gagged immediately by the black suited police strike team. He was not given any cover for the weather. He was dragged through the cold winter rain to the police assault team transport vehicle in the condition he normally slept in. On this night in the city of Landfall on the planet Freya he was completely naked.
Upon arrival at their headquarters he was deposited in a holding cell.
Except for the light panels, the steel door, and buttons that controlled the sink and toilet, all the features of the entire holding cell were made of concrete.
This was not a standard jail cell for a common criminal. The cops here on Freya had taken his presence on their planet seriously.
Very seriously.
Why? He thought.
He was certain he would soon know why.
The door of the holding cell opened outwards. A long stun stick was immediately thrust into the cell and upon his chest.
He was shocked into a state of complete inaction.
As he lay stunned on the floor the black suited cops entered the cell in mass. They cuffed him behind the back and inserted a rod between his arms and his back. The cops then lifted him by the rod and dragged him down a bleak and completely undecorated bureaucratic corridor. The cops who carried him were escorted by four more officers paired fore and aft.
Not one of them said a word to him.
He was dragged down the corridor and around a corner to the right. At the end of the second corridor he was carried into an interrogation room. There was a stainless steel table and two chairs. He was secured to one of the chairs by the ankles and wrists.
It was five minutes by his estimate before the door to the room opened again.
A woman stepped into the room and sat down at the table opposite of him.
The subject of the arrest took the time to visually examine the woman. She appeared to be a bit over fifty standard years of age with light stands of gray hair appearing in the neatly cut body of short black hair. The woman also had blue eyes. She was dressed as a civilian with a white office blouse and blue slacks. The woman wore a photo identification badge and carried an immaculate military service grade semiautomatic pistol in the custom black leather holster under her left shoulder.
I’m supposed to be frightened by this old broad? He thought. That was foolish of her, very foolish.
The man then took a close look at the I.D. badge. It was issued by the Central Security Agency of the Ursa Major Confederation. Below the photograph on the badge was the logo of the agency. This was in the form of a flag with a white “X” over a black field. He did not know that the symbol was technically called the Cross of Saint Andrew. He saw it as being identical to cross on the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. He saw it as their admission of being evil.
The name on her photo badge was Judith Stern and showed her rank as Director of the agency.
NO! He thought.
No! No! No! No!
The woman sitting opposite of him at the table was the true daughter of darkness. She was the absolute incarnation of evil herself.
Judith Stern was personally responsible for the murder of millions of people on his home world. No one, not a priest, nor a child, was exempt from her absolute depravity.
And he has not in the custody of any police agency. The Freyan CSA was every mercenary soldier’s worst nightmare. No mercenary soldier operating separately from an organized unit was safe from death by their Pest Control teams. And ultimately backing the CSA field teams were the planetary landing forces of the Ursa Major Confederation Army and Marine Corps.
Worlds in close proximity to Freya were effectively off limits to mercenary operations. And in the custody of the Freyan CSA he was already dead.
She looked up at him and spoke. Her voice was of solid authority, it was firm and without apparent emotion.
“Welcome to The Aquarium.”
She then asked him a question.
“Who are you?”
He did not answer.
There was a slight twitch on her right eyebrow.
She calmly repeated the question.
“Who are you?”
There was no point in screaming. He tried to reply clearly in a level voice.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Without a word she looked down and opened the folder on the table before her.
Printed documents? He thought. How primitive of them.
She removed a set of reading glasses from a pocket of her blouse and used them to read from the printed file.
“Your name is Michael Gratton. You were born in the City of New Boston on the planet Kennedy in the Alpha Centauri B system. You are the second son of the late Prime Minister Thomas Gratton. After the rescue and reprisal mission to that world your mother brought you as an infant to her family home in the city of Boston in the State of Massachusetts on Earth. You attended the Boston Latin School and the Federation Military Academy at West Point. As a junior officer you were wounded in action in a minor dust-up against a band of feral Muslims and subsequently received a knee joint replacement. You spent the remainder of your time in the army in staff positions and as an instructor at the academy. You were medically retired from the Federation Army with the rank of Major and emigrated to Xenophon in the Epsilon Indi system. You are now a minor stockholder in, and company grade officer of the Military Assistance Corporation based on Xenophon.”
Gratton stared at Director Stern silently. She had used the Freyan term for their crimes against his home world and the crimes they committed against his people. One of the many people of that world murdered by the Freyans was his own father.
Gratton continued to stare at her until he was able to speak without apparent emotion.
“You are wrong!” He replied. “My name is John Fletcher and I am a civilian.”
The planetary clown farce on Freya should not discovered this information on him along with the fact that he was traveling on a false set of identity documents. With the CSA he was clearly in the hands of a very competent intelligence agency of an absolutelyy evil nation.
Michael Gratton clearly saw that he was now in deep trouble.
Judith Stern stared straight at him without a visible flinch.
“Major Gratton, or whatever your current rank in the MAC-X Corporation is, you are traveling on a false set of documents, which is a felony. And you are also a known mercenary, which in the Ursa Major Confederation is a capital offense.”
Gratton looked up at her and replied calmly.
“My name is John Fletcher and I am a witness for our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Judith Stern did not budge or blink.
“No Major Gratton. You are a veteran officer of the Federation Army, which is a yellow flag for this agency. You are traveling on false identity documents, which is a red flag. And you are a member of a commercial organization whose sole purpose is to violate the rights of individuals and of sovereign nations, which is absolutely the black flag for us. Please explain to us why we should not air out your head?”
Gratton blinked.
He raised his voice to reply.
“There is nothing you can threaten me with!”
Stern responded in a calm voice.
“Of course not, there never is.”
What The Fuck did that mean?
Stern saw that Gratton was mystified. It was at this time she made her statement.
“Major Gratton, you and your backers seek to negate us -- to remove us from existence. We need to discover who your backers are and kill them. In order to do this we are sending you back to Earth. You will be kept under surveillance and through this we will find the people who trying to destroy us and we will kill all of them.”
Gratton now stared at her. He then closed his eyes and shook his head.
So far I had not broken from my cover story, I can still use it. He thought.
It will work.
“My name is John Fletcher.” He cried out. “I am a witness for Our Lord Jesus Christ on this Godless world. Your people have turned from Our Lord at your eternal peril. Don’t you understand that?”
Judith Stern stared straight through him as if she were a shipboard laser burning through a starship hull. She then replied to him.
“Major Gratton, Reality is Real.”
With that final reply she closed the folder on the table and stood up. She spoke up to the staff members listening remotely.
“I’m finished.”
An officer opened the door for her from outside. As she departed more officers suddenly entered the interrogation room and hit him with the stun staff again. With full effect to full unconsciousness.
When Michael Gratton awoke he was back on Earth. The first thing he would hear was the voice of a different woman on the planet Earth.
Negation, she thought.
A decision can be easy or it could be difficult.
The thunderstorm that crashed upon the capital city was a thing of beauty. The flash of lightning illuminated the streets and the buildings beyond the window with an electric blue glow. With the light reflected from her face back upon the inside surface she could see the winkles beneath her eyes and the streaks of gray in her dark hair.
She gave thought to window before her.
It was both invisible and itself a thing of beauty. It separated and protected her from the outside environment and allowed her to see it in all its glory. She could watch the passage of the storm from the safety of her office because of the applied thought of a man.
Those who destroyed the works of men could not conceive of a pane of glass. Nor could they be taught how to make one and integrate it into a structure. The thoughts of rational men were nothing to them. And the works of men that resulted from the trains of rational thought were seen only as abominations that were to be smashed into dust.
They did not see the truth and they did not want to see the truth.
Reality is real.
Her parents had taught her this before she learned to read.
Understand this and you can understand everything.
But there were those alive who did not want to know. They actively sought ignorance They sought only to negate knowledge and the products of applied knowledge.
And now another of those men had stepped on to her world with the intent of negation. Of murdering the people and smashing their works to nothing. There was nothing that he would be gained from such acts. It would be the sacrifice of actual things to nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Under the existing laws of her nation the subject of her present thought could simply be arrested and processed. With the ultimate result being his death.
But that would not solve the larger problem. The subject was employed by a group of men back on Earth. The employers will simply hire another man to attack the worlds under her care. And the next time she may not be able to stop them.
The woman had witnessed too much of the horror of negation over the course of her life. She had seen her parents taken from her simply because they were the only sane people on an insane world. See had seen her husband murdered simply because he was her husband.
Would it ever end? How does one deal with such people?
The phone on her desk rang. She turned and quickly lifted the receiver to speak.
“Yes?”
A man’s voice at the far end replied.
“We’re ready to proceed, ma’am.”
“Do so.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A trade off then. Let the immediate subject live and use him to discover his employers.
And then eliminate them.
Across the city the subject of the conversation in question was sleeping naked in a hotel bed. But not for long. This would be a hostile encounter. He had not expected the police on any world, whom he normally thought of as no better than clowns, to break into his hotel room in full tactical mode. They should not have known of his origin or mission.
The arrest had been absolutely hostile. At no point was he allowed to speak, nor was he spoken to. He was gagged immediately by the black suited police strike team. He was not given any cover for the weather. He was dragged through the cold winter rain to the police assault team transport vehicle in the condition he normally slept in. On this night in the city of Landfall on the planet Freya he was completely naked.
Upon arrival at their headquarters he was deposited in a holding cell.
Except for the light panels, the steel door, and buttons that controlled the sink and toilet, all the features of the entire holding cell were made of concrete.
This was not a standard jail cell for a common criminal. The cops here on Freya had taken his presence on their planet seriously.
Very seriously.
Why? He thought.
He was certain he would soon know why.
The door of the holding cell opened outwards. A long stun stick was immediately thrust into the cell and upon his chest.
He was shocked into a state of complete inaction.
As he lay stunned on the floor the black suited cops entered the cell in mass. They cuffed him behind the back and inserted a rod between his arms and his back. The cops then lifted him by the rod and dragged him down a bleak and completely undecorated bureaucratic corridor. The cops who carried him were escorted by four more officers paired fore and aft.
Not one of them said a word to him.
He was dragged down the corridor and around a corner to the right. At the end of the second corridor he was carried into an interrogation room. There was a stainless steel table and two chairs. He was secured to one of the chairs by the ankles and wrists.
It was five minutes by his estimate before the door to the room opened again.
A woman stepped into the room and sat down at the table opposite of him.
The subject of the arrest took the time to visually examine the woman. She appeared to be a bit over fifty standard years of age with light stands of gray hair appearing in the neatly cut body of short black hair. The woman also had blue eyes. She was dressed as a civilian with a white office blouse and blue slacks. The woman wore a photo identification badge and carried an immaculate military service grade semiautomatic pistol in the custom black leather holster under her left shoulder.
I’m supposed to be frightened by this old broad? He thought. That was foolish of her, very foolish.
The man then took a close look at the I.D. badge. It was issued by the Central Security Agency of the Ursa Major Confederation. Below the photograph on the badge was the logo of the agency. This was in the form of a flag with a white “X” over a black field. He did not know that the symbol was technically called the Cross of Saint Andrew. He saw it as being identical to cross on the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. He saw it as their admission of being evil.
The name on her photo badge was Judith Stern and showed her rank as Director of the agency.
NO! He thought.
No! No! No! No!
The woman sitting opposite of him at the table was the true daughter of darkness. She was the absolute incarnation of evil herself.
Judith Stern was personally responsible for the murder of millions of people on his home world. No one, not a priest, nor a child, was exempt from her absolute depravity.
And he has not in the custody of any police agency. The Freyan CSA was every mercenary soldier’s worst nightmare. No mercenary soldier operating separately from an organized unit was safe from death by their Pest Control teams. And ultimately backing the CSA field teams were the planetary landing forces of the Ursa Major Confederation Army and Marine Corps.
Worlds in close proximity to Freya were effectively off limits to mercenary operations. And in the custody of the Freyan CSA he was already dead.
She looked up at him and spoke. Her voice was of solid authority, it was firm and without apparent emotion.
“Welcome to The Aquarium.”
She then asked him a question.
“Who are you?”
He did not answer.
There was a slight twitch on her right eyebrow.
She calmly repeated the question.
“Who are you?”
There was no point in screaming. He tried to reply clearly in a level voice.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Without a word she looked down and opened the folder on the table before her.
Printed documents? He thought. How primitive of them.
She removed a set of reading glasses from a pocket of her blouse and used them to read from the printed file.
“Your name is Michael Gratton. You were born in the City of New Boston on the planet Kennedy in the Alpha Centauri B system. You are the second son of the late Prime Minister Thomas Gratton. After the rescue and reprisal mission to that world your mother brought you as an infant to her family home in the city of Boston in the State of Massachusetts on Earth. You attended the Boston Latin School and the Federation Military Academy at West Point. As a junior officer you were wounded in action in a minor dust-up against a band of feral Muslims and subsequently received a knee joint replacement. You spent the remainder of your time in the army in staff positions and as an instructor at the academy. You were medically retired from the Federation Army with the rank of Major and emigrated to Xenophon in the Epsilon Indi system. You are now a minor stockholder in, and company grade officer of the Military Assistance Corporation based on Xenophon.”
Gratton stared at Director Stern silently. She had used the Freyan term for their crimes against his home world and the crimes they committed against his people. One of the many people of that world murdered by the Freyans was his own father.
Gratton continued to stare at her until he was able to speak without apparent emotion.
“You are wrong!” He replied. “My name is John Fletcher and I am a civilian.”
The planetary clown farce on Freya should not discovered this information on him along with the fact that he was traveling on a false set of identity documents. With the CSA he was clearly in the hands of a very competent intelligence agency of an absolutelyy evil nation.
Michael Gratton clearly saw that he was now in deep trouble.
Judith Stern stared straight at him without a visible flinch.
“Major Gratton, or whatever your current rank in the MAC-X Corporation is, you are traveling on a false set of documents, which is a felony. And you are also a known mercenary, which in the Ursa Major Confederation is a capital offense.”
Gratton looked up at her and replied calmly.
“My name is John Fletcher and I am a witness for our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Judith Stern did not budge or blink.
“No Major Gratton. You are a veteran officer of the Federation Army, which is a yellow flag for this agency. You are traveling on false identity documents, which is a red flag. And you are a member of a commercial organization whose sole purpose is to violate the rights of individuals and of sovereign nations, which is absolutely the black flag for us. Please explain to us why we should not air out your head?”
Gratton blinked.
He raised his voice to reply.
“There is nothing you can threaten me with!”
Stern responded in a calm voice.
“Of course not, there never is.”
What The Fuck did that mean?
Stern saw that Gratton was mystified. It was at this time she made her statement.
“Major Gratton, you and your backers seek to negate us -- to remove us from existence. We need to discover who your backers are and kill them. In order to do this we are sending you back to Earth. You will be kept under surveillance and through this we will find the people who trying to destroy us and we will kill all of them.”
Gratton now stared at her. He then closed his eyes and shook his head.
So far I had not broken from my cover story, I can still use it. He thought.
It will work.
“My name is John Fletcher.” He cried out. “I am a witness for Our Lord Jesus Christ on this Godless world. Your people have turned from Our Lord at your eternal peril. Don’t you understand that?”
Judith Stern stared straight through him as if she were a shipboard laser burning through a starship hull. She then replied to him.
“Major Gratton, Reality is Real.”
With that final reply she closed the folder on the table and stood up. She spoke up to the staff members listening remotely.
“I’m finished.”
An officer opened the door for her from outside. As she departed more officers suddenly entered the interrogation room and hit him with the stun staff again. With full effect to full unconsciousness.
When Michael Gratton awoke he was back on Earth. The first thing he would hear was the voice of a different woman on the planet Earth.
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