NationStates Jolt Archive

Your television screen flickers. Once…twice…and then it goes black. You stare at it, unsure as to what is wrong. You may hit it. You may curse it. You may simply gaze at the black screen, annoyed. From the darkness, a face emerges, and then a neck, and then the upper part of a torso. The man on screen is desolate, depressed, with a slight stubble of a beard and bags under his eyes. The man’s hair is messy, unwashed, and his teeth are stained, but noticeable straight. This is not what you were previously watching.

“Hello,” the man says, his voice low, quiet. He sighs, closing his eyes to gather his thoughts. “I’m afraid I haven’t much time.”

The man steps away from the screen, and after a few seconds, the room he is in comes into focus. There is cardboard on the floor, a hole in the floor on the other end of the closet-sized room, and three visible concrete walls with no door.

“My name is not important,” the man says, coming back into view. “Neither is where I am from. What is important is that I’m not from here, and that in less than twenty-four hours, I am going to die.”

The man takes some time to let his words sink in. He stares at the screen with honest eyes, trying to portray to whoever is watching that what he says is no lie.

“My crime, you ask?” the man continues. “I’m afraid I’m as clueless as you are. I was, after all, accused, tried, and convicted within minutes. Where am I? The Orion Sector. Steel Butterfly. The Orion Empire. It goes by many names…but I digress…” he swallows hard. “I’m projecting this through a hijacked intergalactic comm link. The device I use is my own, bought on my own accord and not found during their search of me. The bandwith is too small for the Empire to detect. Being that as it is…I will most likely be dead before any of you receive this.”

The man closed his eyes tightly, biting down hard on his bottom lip, trying to fight back tears.

“But that doesn’t matter!” the man exclaimed, his voice desperate, high-pitched. “My death is but insignificant as it now stands, but soon…soon I hope it will matter. The prison system in the Empire…it goes unregulated…unchecked…and it’s about time that stops. The Emperor does what he wants, when he wants, and why he wants to do it, fully aware that none of you want a war with the Empire, and that economic sanctions mean little. But there are other…”

The screen flickers again. The device he uses is losing signal. Your governments are gaining control of your broadcasts.

“There are other ways to influence a nation than force or money…” he said. “I…I beg you…” the screen flashes. The man is no longer seen. “…find a way…”

[OOC: Let me make this clear. I do not want a war and I do not want meaningless economic sanctions. What I want is for someone, or a group of people, to come up with something creative to do about this. The man on the screen was not an Imperial citizen. He was foreign. No you cannot claim him. However, imagine if he was your citizen. The Imperial judicial and prison system goes largely unchecked, with judges, governors, and the Emperor himself imposing their will on whoever they wish. My problem? Perhaps…but what if you were like that man? A traveler…a tourist…imprisoned and executed for no reason. Will your governments simply ignore the telecast? Out of fear? Out of apathy? Or will they heed the man’s advice and find something non-military, non-economic to do about it?]

Nadjiba Abd-al-Haqq sighs as she unwraps her arm from around her husband, Rashid, and reaches for the remote. The entire Abd-al-Haqq nuclear unit--mother, father, and daughter--are snuggled up together on a well-worn but comfortable couch watching the screens. Ghaniyah, the daughter, suggested that because everyone was worn out from the Mandatory Spontaneous Fun Time Vacation (an unfortunate event spawned by Nadjiba's rather busy job as International Relations Advisor), maybe some passive entertainment was in order instead of games or puzzles or other such interactive things.

"These dramas just keep getting worse and worse," Nadjiba says, glancing over the controls. Yes, there are headware screen-changers available. She really didn't see the point of becoming a housemind, as it were. "The same old memes over and over since Ibn Rustah and before."

"Definitely before," Rashid replies with a yawn covering his bearded (but trimmed, he wasn't that old-fashioned) face, "but the screen dramas must be a dying art. Look at the production values... I don't think they can even afford a decent mind to do the animation."

"Is the background a curtain?" Ghaniyah asks. She doesn't move from her current position in the crook of her mother's shoulder, head resting on the soft upper-chest meat between breast and shoulder. It probably bears mentioning about now that the Abd-al-Haqqs are relatively conservative in Scolopendran culture and thus do actually have a habit of generally wearing clothing, even when it isn't exactly necessary. "We do that for school plays."

"Way back when all screen shows were like that," Nadjiba says, "back when your father and I clubbed dinosaurs on Earth-That-Was while having running shootouts with Blackbeard, Billy the Kid, Rama and Al Mahdi."

"I thought Al Mahdi had a tank," the daughter replies with a smirk. Her parents' artificial history tended to change with each spelling.

"Only when he fought Montgomery and Ivan Grozny at El Alamein."

"And Rommel?"

"Oh, I think there's a documentary on him on channel three-fifty... uhm... four?" Rashid perks up. "Apparently some GMC hobbyists put together authentic period tanks and everything for it. Something of a docudrama. R-Jeffery B200C3 plays Rommel in a specialized avatar and everything. Live action fare done better than... this." He frowns.

"Yes, well, it's been going downhill for years, dear," Nadjiba consoles him.

"It used to be tolerable, once," he says sullenly.

"Almost," Ghaniyah quips. "Anyway, I'd love to see a real ancient tank up close, and you guys haven't anachronized Rommel nearly enough. Let's change the channel, please, Mother?"

"Okay, Ghan." Nadjiba pushes a button.

*blip*
"Join the Scolopendran AeroSpace Directorate! Serve on an Arthropleura-class battlecruiser! Feel the power of c-asymptotic strategic missiles!" the screen announcer blares. Scene, a bridge crew looking decidedly confused and somewhat angrily glancing over at the male officer sitting at the console marked 'WEAP.'

"Captain, the star is gone. Very much gone," says the female sensors officer.

"Dammit, Bill," the captain says angrily towards the weapons officer, "I told you not to play with those."

"Sorry, sir," the weapons officer says sheepishly, "my hand slipped..."

"Fine, fine." The captain spans his brows between thumb and forefinger, shading his brows as he rests his elbow on the armrest of his chair. "I'll just go tell engineering we need to fab up ANOTHER haich-dee-em."

"I'm sorry," Bill murmurs.

"JOIN THE DIRECTORATE TODAY!" the invisible announcer yells. "SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP!"

"Mom, are those ads for real or are they parodies?"

"Nowadays, dear, I just can't tell."

[OOC: Heh...I was expecting a lot of these type of responses haha.]

Unfortunately for the man, his broadcast didn't quite reach to interrupt any of the various transmissions going back and forth within the Austar Union-television and other means of communication remained as they were, and citizens would probably never know of his circumstances. A shame to his cause, really. Deep underground however, HEATHER worked overtime as she received literally millions upon millions of yottabytes worth of information poured in from all different sources, all of it being looked over by her seemingly limitless amount of processes and then filed into either 'Useless' or 'Informative' directories respectively. Anything labled useless was deleted, and anything labeled informative was then watched over a second or third time until how informative the piece of information was determined, and then stored under one of trillions upon trillions of filenames where it could be recalled at a later date if need be.

One in particular, labeled

JDFYD7EJFYE6ENR7RN46DU4H35WJ4R84TEH4764JD73T3NF84E634HR74H38D634G378RE64H487R43H478FH463YDU784GH346R H4834Y64EH378RH463HR84H3T4JR84H346TEHFIU4HR564H485JH487.info

was forwarded onto the lower level offices of the Unione Bureau of Intelligence , where it could be watched by a recruit by the name of Mark Applecross. As he per his job description, he clicked to watch it and sunk into his chair as the video feed began almost instantly. The face of a man appeared, and then began to explain his plight to the world regarding an 'oppressive Emperor' and an 'unreglated penal system', et cetera. Mark took a bite of his doughnut before turning to Amanda, a girl-recruit seated at the desk to the northwest of his position-aka, to his rear left.

"Hey Amanda," called Mark throwing her a small office ball. "What do we know of Steel Butterfly?"

She caught it and smiled, "We know enough there is to know. Not terribly active on the world stage, except recently. They were one of a member of the Seraphim Order, which you might know of through our dealings with them on Mercury, although some time ago."

Mark chuckled. "Fair enough, anything actually important?"

"Nope, not really," Amanda threw the ball back.

Turning back to his computer, Mark grinned from the corner of his mouth and clicked 'Discard', where it would be returned into the databanks to be stored for the rest of 'eternity', supposedly. It wasn't long before he was listening to or watching the next of his lower-level alerts.

"'Ey, Enforcer," says a weasely wirey man in a cheap charcoal pin-stripe suit made of only the finest materials and cheap huge Italian sunglasses that cost more than the gross national product of most small third-world nations, "does this guy here on the telly got an account with us?"

The Enforcer, a puppy-kicking brute of a man who seems to be misanthropy personified, shakes his head. Despite looking like he just had a run-in with an abatoir and an unfortunately dull look about the jaw, his eyes glimmer with shrewd and perhaps highly amoral intelligence. "How'd I know, boss? We don' keep pict'res on file or nuffin, we jus' hand out passports and do bizness."

"Just wonderin' if you ever seen him before," the weasel-man says as he kicks up his fine leather shoes onto his beautiful mohagany desk and lights up a thousand-dollar cigar with a naptha lighter made from the skull of a baby harp seal. "If we had his number, we could clear it out and put it into the slush, y'know."

"Heh. I like slush. I'll go run it by The Bookie."

"You do that, 'Forcer. Good man."

[OOC: Let me make this clear. I do not want a war. My technology has become far too wanky through strictly doing character-oriented RP’s for so many RL years. My military would either annihilate your’s, or the war wouldn’t happen in the first place, since parameters could never be established. I also do not want worthless economic sanctions. The Empire doesn’t care if you won’t trade with it. When you control a whole sector of space, you tend to be quite self-sufficient. I also don’t want Emperor David Bivens to get nice little telegrams from your leaders or ambassadors saying how “angry” they are or whatnot. He won’t even read them.
http://shadowdane.shackspace.com/cats_files/ceiling.jpg

This is probably why you were expecting a lot of such responses... now, from good old Mystery Science Theatre 3000, it's every robot's favorite new game: bear and sea squid! Nothing to do with each other!

[OOC:There are problems now with setting RP parameters? I don't want a war, and I don't want meaningless economic sanctions. Hardly me "masterbating."]

... My technology has become far too wanky through strictly doing character-oriented RP’s for so many RL years. My military would either annihilate your’s ... The Empire doesn’t care if you won’t trade with it. When you control a whole sector of space, you tend to be quite self-sufficient

It may or may not have been directed at that, rather than the fact that you wanted to set certain restrictions themselves.

*shrugs*

Masturbating. With a 'u.' It's in the white text caption of the picture posted above.

[OOC: Oh for christ's sake...I give up...]

It may or may not have been directed at that, rather than the fact that you wanted to set certain restrictions themselves.

*shrugs*

Eh...merely trying to give IC reasons OOCly for my statements. Perhaps it did come off a bit ridiculous.

The Substrates, Vorlon Prime

Ulmorh watched. Of course, the term watched was immensely simple and misleading. He watched and searched and scrutinised and predicted and guessed and ruminated and cross-referenced and contrasted and measured within the lattice of computer-substrate that extended for thousands of miles around him, deep under the original, long surpassed, crust of Vorlon prime. Data was his very being, he lived to consume it, found his ecstasy and climax in making new connections in the immense data store that was the Vorlon Empire.

And in this ocean of knowledge and wisdom, he felt he had identified something that needed to be acted upon. He reached out from the infinite reflections of his own mind and those akin to him, most of the Vorlon Race, in fact, existed in the same fashion.

He reached out into the Music, and Sang.

▒▒▒▒

Ha’rus, Vorlon Space

Lord Kourai Dasc watched the roiling clouds of the toxic atmosphere the Vorlons favoured when outside of their shells through the transparent surface of the dome that had grown over the city of Vaharta. Once the world had been a verdant hidden paradise, a reward and solace within the veiled borders of the Empire for those who had served the Vorlon loyally, died for the Vorlons, purging the broken future with weapons donated by the Vorlons for the purpose, expended their race in doing so. But the world had suffered greatly in the last war, when the boot was on the other foot.

Now there were too few of its people left to maintain genetic viability. They could not breed without extensive aid, and though they were immortal – another gift of the Vorlons – as Kourai himself was. Or rather, they never aged. They still died. The population, clones now, from a few lines, stood at only ten thousand on the whole world.

And so, now that the Vorlons were active again, it was returning to its state as a Vorlon world, ‘fresh’ for whatever capacity the Vorlons chose to employ it in.

The buildings of the cities of the world of Ha’rus eventually met with the transparent wall that so insensitively displayed their implacable, creeping doom, and dissolved, soil and fragments turning… Vorlon. Every year, it moved another few yards into the paradise that had once been Ha’rus, eating up the space that belonged to the Ru Ha’rus species.

“Your thoughts?” an echoing voice accompanied by the half-heard sounds of deeper meaning and exotic sounds. Lord Dasc turned, his elaborate crest waving a little as he did so.

He was never certain if he was expected to bow in the presence of the Vorlons; he knew much of them, but they did not speak on trivia like formality – they held their own rituals, and observed alien protocols. But one typically never knew what was ritual and what was not.

“The Centauri Empire in Microcosm.”

The Vorlon – Alkesh, he assumed, from the suit, but there were only so many designs with little personalisation, nodded its long head.

“Can you do anything for them?” he asked, looking at several of the nearby Ru Ha’rus, proud looking hairless aliens with pale skins who bore themselves as Lords but seemed passionless, aimless.

“Everything,” the Vorlon said.

“Why don’t you, then?”

“They are a dying race. They are alone. We will let them pass,” the Vorlon said it without evident emotion, as it always spoke; the only clue to its thoughts was the urgency with which it spoke.

Kourai shook his head, “What do you want?”

The single eye of Alkesh’s suit shrank to a pinpoint, and the voice was now, for the first time Kourai had ever heard what seemed to be a wrathful Vorlon. “Never ask that question!” he snarled, the musical overtones of its voice discordant.

“Okay! Right! What would you ask of me?”

“Better,” the Vorlon said, “We have a task, it needs you, and another.”

“I volunteer!” a voice cried. The Vorlon turned, and Kourai looked past the bulky, robed, environment suit. It was one of the Ru Ha’rus, a fairly young one, it seemed. Kourai expected the application to be dismissed instantly, but it wasn’t.

“Follow…” the Vorlon said.

▒▒▒▒

Alkesh’s Transport, Departing for Steel Butterfly

This was something of a first for Kourai. He’d made many journeys for his masters, but never aboard a Vorlon transport and conscious. There were no windows, or displays. Simply an empty, white walled space, partitioned with stained glass – or so it seemed – that extended from floor to ceiling.

The Vorlon turned, “You will need to be changed…”