NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: This was inspired by a semi-OOC conversation with the Menelmacari player, and will be edited if s/he objects.

IC:
White House, Liberty City, Meeting of the Join Cabinet

The government of Allanea has a very small amount of functions – at least those that matter. As such, the cabinet meeting of the government only involves five people – Alexander Kazansky, Colonel H. Morrison, Victoria Sheshet, Quark Raam, and Leon Canal – the President and the Secretaries of Defense, State,Treasury and Justice correspondigly (Colonel Morrison doubled up as Vice President). Today's meeting also included Martha Cammings, one of Kazansky's wives, a beautiful Novanian expat with long red hair, thick glasses and steel dental braces – done so that they actually made her look even more cute.

She was in fact sitting in Kazansky's lap as the Secretary of Defense spoke.

“...and therefoer I believe a full on military invasion of Amestria is in order. I suggest we start it with a pre-emptive napalm strike on the urban centers, and then order tactical bombings to eliminate public transport and central transportation hubs, to proceed with a massed tank assault to the heart of the nation.”

Kazansky shook his head. “No. No invasions right now. We've stretched out far enough, and really I want the military buildup to complete before we stomp on anymore crapholes. By the way, how is the Giant Robotic Tux program going on, Henry?”

Morrison stumbled. “Umm, Mr. President...”

At this precise point, Victoria Sheshet raised her pen. “Mr. President... perhaps I should get to the whiteboard...”

There had always been a large whiteboard in place in the White House, used exactly for such meeting. And of course...

“No. I'm the one who gets to write on the whiteboard. If I get incapacuted, Henry here gets to write, then Quark, then Leon. You, Viccy, don't. You're not... mature enough. But what was your idea?”

“Perhaps we should press to spread our values in a more... diplomatic manner.”

The phone rang, and Alexander's wife got it first.

“It's a call from Vinyatirion, darling.” - she kissed Kazansky on the cheek - “Executive Priority.”

Kazansky got the phone.

“Good day, Your Honor. Why? You have a problem you need solved? And we figure in how? Rejistania?”

He shifted slighltly.

“No. War crimes may be our stock in trade, but at this moment I am forced to rescind this request.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“How about we try and do it peacefully instead? Introduce our values, and such?”

He smiled. “You know. Teach them the benefits of civilized consumerism. Would this work, your Honor? Oh, great. Give my regards to Miriel.”

Kazansky put the phone down, and turned to the whiteboard, writing one word.

REJISTANIA

“Ladies and gentlemen, as you just heard, this was a call from Menelmacar. They wanted us to... deal with Rejistania, through a sort of... very limited, civilized intervention. And while, as I specified, Allanea has no problem with invading Rejistania and killing everybody alive down to cockroaches - much less doing what our friend specified, which was far less bloody - currently we're going to try a peaceful approach.”

Sheshet paled. “Wait, Mr. President... you refused a request from Menelmacar?”

“See, Viccy, this is why you can't have the whiteboard. Anyway. About the Rejistani culture... anybody has an idea?”

There was silence. Alexander Kazansky added one more word on the whiteboard.

SEMNETIHAQ

“Someone call the bloody lusers in Rejistania and ask them if they will allow the good ship into port – say in Naomi Kali – for repairs. To quote the late Mr. Demented, I have a vision.”

The rejistanian "spire" is the building, which contains most of the ministries. It would be not really impressive in any modest city, but this is Sike kali, we are talking about - and here, the spire and the even higher "obelisk" (the headquarters of the ASR) have a glamorous aura in a backwater city. Jema~l Halantil works here as secretary of a minister, who is about to lose his position after the elections in 'tani seleke'. She is typing a text in Hito as the phone rings. The caller-id indicated the number was from abroad. "Hejida, lentine'het eskolokii ve ores'het kemjin, il'visko'han Jema~l Halantil." Blaring music of what apparently is some boyband is the reply. Among this a voice, nearly drowned in the music. Jema~l Halantil could not understand this voice, su she decided to ask quietly what he said. quiet enough that the music would make it impossible to understand her. She had success, someone shouted something about "horrible third-world connections" and lowered the volume. The voice introduced itself as Jude Upchurch and asked wether it would be possible to subcontract rejistanis to do some maintenance work on a ship in Naomi. Halantil'he checked the computer and laughed: "Naomi~l kalesa is landlocked in nanti likhat." Then she is reminded of the way foreigners are unable to pronounce the tilded combinations correctly, and realization dawns. "Ah, you mean: Na~ovi kali". She is a nanti likhat citizen and therefore has an uncommon pronunciation but even the revlan pronunciation was far nearer that the correct one (which reminds of Now-we) than the foreigner. She asked some information but this was not really a matter of ecology or consumer protection so she refers them to the port administration in Na~ovi kali.

The person, Jude Upchurch reached there, was a male seleken. This meant this person spoke very quickly and with eerie pronunciation and some uncommon terms. Upchurch had to ask twice before understanding the seleken. Eventually, he did understand so much that the rejistani did remind him of some of the more uncommon laws existing in the Rejis but assured it would be legal and there could be enough ressources (the ship would block areas of the port) in the not-so-near future.

“Well?” - said the Secretary of Defense, looking down at Jude Upchurch. “Have you gotten it done?”

“Umm, no, Sir. They said they had problems with reaching an efficient solution.”

“What do you mean, they've had problems? How much did you offer to pay them?”

“You mean, Sir?”

“It's Rejistania we're talking about, Jude. When they mean “efficient”, they mean corruption and bribery. The poor Rejistani clerk was just hinting you should bribe him.”

“Wow. I sidn't know, Sir...”

“You couldn't, Jude. But I do know. I want you to go back there, and bribe. Use the operation budget as you will, but make sure the Sementihaq does her maintenance this year in the Rejistani harbor. Understood?”

Jude nodded.

“Dismissed.”

Several days later, Jude and his accomplices began planning their second try. This time, their plan involved immense amounts of money and almost as immense an amount of Rejistanian state employees as recipients.

For some reason, the Allanean government really wanted that ship in that harbor.

Allaneans are much worse clients than fellow rejistanis or most other nations. Others accept the resposibility and at least try to make things appear justified. The allaneans however lacked all kinds of sensitivity. The only reason why they did not get busted due to their sheer insulting behavior was that they payed better as others. When the Rejistanis hinted in this direction, the hints were blatantly misunderstood as dissatisfaction with the amount. However for the allaneans, it at least payed off: The Semnetihaq was allowed to park offshore near the Na~ovi kali port.

The USS Semnetihaq is part of the superdreadnaught class – as such, it is at the pinnacle of global naval design. Ranging over 1,800 meters in length, it is six times the length of even the longest Rejistani freighters, and slightly faster then they are.

Unlike some Allanean battleships, painted in bright, gaudy colors, the USS Semnetihaq is instead painted in the usual battleship grey. Several thousand sailors lived and worked inside the immense craft, and it packed enough firepower to eliminate the population of a medium-sized nation without even using it's nuclear arsenal. Work was in progress to retrofit it with Khan missile launchers or similar devices – but in the meanwhile, the Allaneans needed to do the annual maintenance first.

While the ship has recently been refitted in the Questarian docks, it still needed maintenance – or was is that the Allaneans merely needed an excuse to dock it in Rejistanian waters?

Whatever was the case, someone or other had called the Rejistanian navy and asked it to arrange an escort of honor for the Semnetihaq. Again, Rejistani officials – and the crews of the ships involved – would be renumerated

The Lady Sirithil stepped into her office one afternoon... to find the very playful young Culdalot - Serendis' niece - hurriedly turning off the comm.

"What are you doing, child?" Siri frowned, fixing the girl with her crimson gaze.

"I didn't do anything, Lady! I just called Allanea, is all." She shoved her hands in her pockets, and gazed down, apparently suddenly finding her shoes very interesting.

Siri looked at the comm, then at Culda, then back at the comm again. "....what did you say to them? How did you even get the comm to work?"

"I told them to bomb Rejistania," Culda mumbled quietly. "And Uncle Asirnoth showed me. Don't worry, I told them to be discreet!"

Siri just... blinked, running this through in her head. "Bomb Reji--" She blinked again, pondering implications. "And what did they SAY?"

"Said no," Culda said. "Went into something about giving them a decent culture. All capitalist and stuff. Like us."

Siri nodded a bit. "I suppose no harm done, then. Run along, dear. And don't touch my comm again, or I'll be decidedly more unhappy."

Culda looked relieved, and wasted no time in nodding enthusiastically. "Yes, m'lady. Never again!" She scampered off, probably to find Zoe or someone else to play with.

The Jesejil-class ship Sdaram* was selected to belong to the escort. Even though the Allaneans would not get the reference in the name - as they are normally rather uninformed, it felt better to be not too obedient and to show what the general thought of the Allaneans is. This is the reason why the ship is called after the most communist of all rejistanian mythical heroes. The Rejistanis did not really mind why they were doing this journey, it was just another job and they did not plan to let themselves be hindered from playing it cool. The radio blasted somewhere and the sound of a popular song delighted those who like it (and annoyed the others). The translation was something like this:

The blue sea / takes all doubts / takes all struggle / away... / we will be / together / in this place / The blue sea...

When they saw the ship, they did come out to watch it, and their comments were a mixture of fascination, sheer failure to understand the reason behind it and disgust. Adil Hejaril commented on how they should have just burned the military budget or gave it to the Red Cross, since apparently they did no no better than creating this. this made the rejistanis laugh.

* Sdaram from the family of Elit was the strongest, most valiant and most technically adept of the fighters of the tribe of Vejda. When the People from the South attacked, the Vejda however were vastly outnumbered. Sdaram prayed to the Gods to bring victory and offered his life and his simu. Since he was of good behavior and flawless character the gods did listen to him and on the day of the battle, lightning struck Sdaram and from then on, the other soldiers were equally skilled and strong as Sdaram used to be and they were able to defend their homeland.

“Jesus Christ, would you look at that!” - said one of the sailors aboard the USS Semnetihaq as the Rejistanian ship approached. “It's... my god, it's so fucking small!”

From where the Allaneans were looking, the Jesejil was at least several decades behind modern naval doctrine. Even before the advent of the Hood and the first-generation superdreadnoughts, four-hundred meter long ship already began to prowl the seas – and the Jejesil was less then 270 meters, far shorter then the Semnetihaq itself was wide. 'Jesus H. Christ, dude,” - repeated the soldier, and began to laugh histerically.

As the Allanean ship passed by the Sdaram, the order was given.

“All crew to battlestations! All crew to battlestations! Clear the deck! I repeat, clear the deck, this is not a drill!”

Within seconds, the deck of the 1,919 meter long battleship was clean of humans, and another order was heard.

“Full power to loudspeakers!”

The immense loudspeakers came alive. They were so powerful that several seagulls that were flying low above the ship dropped to the deck in shock Loudy – obscenely loudly – they played the Rejistanian anthem as they approached the Sdaram.

After the music ended, the Allanean captain – hidden as he was safely from the ultraloud noise – smiled to one of his officers, and said. “Do me a favor, Matthias. Tell the Questarian Liaison the captain would like to invite him for tea and crumpets on the main deck."

"Oh kansa..." even though the Sdaram was in quite a distance, the music was loud. The karelans of the crew said some protective mantras. They all were shocked, some covered their ears and opened their mouths. When it ended, captain Hedas Syku had the calmness to say a few words into the radio. His seleken wasn't good - no foreigner can speak good seleken - but the coast understood him. "Sihamalatene, is this you? - call the police... you heard it? - Yeah, very loud here - Of course! We will sue their pants off their asses! My crew might have a hearing damage, which remains. - Great! And ask Tala to bring a cup of Huma from the snackman after the duty! - Great, over and out!"

In the meanwhile, the USS Semnetihaq procceded to harbor at full speed, pebble bed nuclear reactors working their best to push the Semnetihaq to twenty nine and a half knots towards the Rejistanian harbor.

In th meanwhile, a helicopter was sent to the Rejistanian authorities, carrying an old computer (yet still in working condition) with a limited 5-GB harddrive and an early version LiberTux operating system, carrying the relevant documentation that the Rejistanis would need to maintain the ship, in a lossy .pdf with only half a megabyte dedicated for each page of text.

And the tea and crumpets were excellent.

In the meanwhile, the crew of the Semnetihaq radioed the Rejistani side and asked for some tugboats to move the ship into precise position.

"A computer, this is supposed to be?"

"Apparently... some kind of Unix..."

"Okay, Unix, I can work with..."

"Great, I am still used to adva!"

"Wait? This keyboard has only Latin characters? How on earth using that, one can code?"

"One can Mikre* the code. Or use a language as C, which works with the the Latin alphabet."

"Right... "

Eventually Taren managed to make the system do at least partially what he wanted to: instead of transferring the text in a converted version, Taren simulated a print process, piped the output to a file, ten installed 12 libs, then installed a converter and then converted the Post-script file to LMSM. The Isesi then sent the LMSMs on Itera-tape to those who would need them.

In another location, the towboats were valiantly trying to move the Semnetihaq. Tanara'ny were ordered to help - and after a while with little to none result it was decided the the current posision was just right, seeing it was not blocking anything important. "Jilih'veka!" or "hakim'veka" as rejistanis would say.


*OOC: Mikre means "migrate" and is a program to change texts in rejistanian languages to different character sets. Programming languages are always mikre-able, which means i=i+1 becomes something, which is translated as "set i to i plus 1"
LMSM: is a kind of metafile which works on different rejistani unices and some international computers.

Liaison Officer Lieutenant Burnsbury had been assigned to the Semnetihaq since its launch, and he had become more than accustomed to the various oddities of the captain. One of these being drinking tea and eating crumpets on the weather deck. It usually signified something, so when Burnsbury was disturbed reading his book, he marked the page and took it along, enjoying the maritime breeze as the little golfcart took him the three hundred metres that spanned from the first part ofthe superstructure to the bow.

The buggy screeched to a halt where the Captain was sitting, and Burnsbury lifted himself out. Tipping his officers hat to the Captain, Burnsbury greeted him.

'I say, Howard old chap-'

'I've told you a million times, call me Howie.'

Burnsbury ignored him.

'-These Rejiwhatis. Probably don't have a bloody boat afloat with more than a six pounder, I'd say. These foreign types, no respect for their militaries, what. As my old father used to tell me; whoever rules the seas, rules trade, and rules the world.'

Burnsbury took a seat and a sip of his tea.

'Jolly good book, isn't it?' He flipped up the front of his book to the Allanean Captain.

Animal Farm.

“Oh yes,” nodded the Allanean. “I’m hopping the Rejistanis aren’t quite that commie, don’t you know.

In the meanwhile, an Allanean car dealer sends a message to the Rejistanis through some ‘special channels’ (that is, ‘efficient channels’). The idea is simple. Many people in Allanea crave Kasahela tanks, and the dealer wants to make a big order. Namely, a ‘preliminary order’ for a greater amount of Kasahela tanks then the Divensi Rejistaniha had.

Ajir Hekura was a person, you could imagine in a bank denying you the loan you need for your house. He surely was not the person, you could imagine as top manager of a company like nenekishim JSK, however after the end of the Karelan government he was the most logical choice: They did no longer need a person, who had crazy visions and The Next Big Thing(tm). what they need was a person, who had the experience and cruelty to make the necessary changes. Before he worked for Nenekishim, he worked for the state as "corporate gravedigger", meaning that after the insolvency, he was appointed to save what could be saved and take care of the rest (he was maybe the only person who was 'fired because of economic success').

When he saw this letter, he reacted as you would assume. He was exposed to false hope for decaying companies so often that he pretty much was immune to all hope. His first reactions were to check the integrity and origin of the letter. The headers of the mail were not that conclusive. It easier to find a proxy in Allanea than to find a soccer stadium in KaMaRi kali. However the sender did sign the message and so Ajir Hekura could check the keyservers for the sender. The fifth one eventually had the public key, he imported it and the mail program stalled. After 3 minutes, the program had success and verified the integrity and the sender of the message. Just then, he started taking the message seriously.

The Rejistani wanted to confirm the delivery for the next periods*, but then he realized something: In Rejistania, numbers, even in latin alphabet are never written out. The tradition of not using a writing system which has a zero has influenced the rejistanis and is influencing them. If you see someone, who writes 2k438 instead of 2,438 you can bet high sums that he is a rejistani. The point of this is: a comma in writing means a separator in an enumeration, which he understood as separator between different months. However there were no spaces behind the commas - and in other nations the comma is used to make the reading of the high numbers more easy. He called Vijaj Tadis, who forwarded the mail to him. Vijaj understood the numbers exactly like that: like one big number instead as monthly values. The rejistanis wondered a bit about how (in the divine name) this could be valid. Then Ajir Hekura wrote a very polite mail, in which he first emphasized the importance of trade between different nations and that the borders to free trade more often than not are 'in the heads of people': the different cultures, the different ways to express simple things. Then posed the questions about the length of the periods if the number was expressed as that or whether this was one number.

*OOC: I assumed that the number is not a rounded one, but a rather exact one, so my little misunderstanding can work.

In harbor

"Well, it doesn't really seem like they can really tow the Semnetihaq in place , can they now?" – smiled the Captain. "Give me a boat."

There was some delay, but eventually, a large boat was lowered from the side of the USS Semnetihaq. It was not a regular lifeboat, but much bigger – the size of a full-blown tourist-carrying hydrofoil, painted white, with two dark-blue stripes along it's sides. It was armed rather moderately – in other words, it was horrendously overgunned from a Rejistani standpoint – and two powerful assault loudspeakers protruded dangerously from it's hull.

It was this boat that the Captain of the superdreadnaught used to enter the Rejistani harbor. The loud music was not playing anymore, since there was no need. Instead, the boat circled the larger ship dramatically, and then made way towards the dock.

In Allanea

"I don't understand. You mean, they thought we got the number wrong because their petty brains can't stomach the idea of somebody ordering that much tanks?"

"Well, they didn't say so outright, but that's the vibe I get."

"Ugh." – George F. Frays was wearing an ornate suit, somewhat remininscent of the one worn by the protagonist in the Naruto anime. Possibly it was because today he decided to dress up like a Naruto character. It didn't suit him much – Frays was sixty-five years old – but it wasn't like anybody cared.

"Just, ugh. Now, look, Robert. Be a darling and actually call the Rejistanians, or email them, or whatever."

"Yes, Sir." – Robert passed his hands on his leather jacket, the metallic buttons on it glittering on every side in the dazzling light of the halogen lamps. – "What would you like me to tell them, in particular?"

"I want you to be polite, but firm." – the Foreign Relations Executive lit an immense cigar. "Namely, I want you to insist that there has not been a mistake. We do, in fact, require thirty five thousand of those things that, due to some horrible tragic error they call tanks. You understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Good. Now go do that."

A golden rule for rejistani business life is never to react surprised, scared or indicate ones real capacities. The latter might be a bit irrational, but for many people it would indicate failure of the management to lack the capacity for an order. He checked his SI-X and tried different options how production could be rescheduled (It is said that Branch and Bounds is a rejistanian invention, this means that there are some high-quality solvers available for Ajir's high-performance PC), he asked Oyki'het'ny tesha* about temporarily contracting workers, then he explained when the Allaneans could expect the delivery. He knew the allanean inability to understand those things which are written between the lines, so he made sure, that he formulated in a way allowing him some 'creative scheduling' (which of course is strikingly similar to 'creative accounting').

Vense Ikaru came to the police because he was sick of difficult jobs. No really, for him policework appeared simple: patrolling the streets, ticketing wrongly parked cars, ticketing jaywalkers and etjukama'ny. Plus the occasional traffic controls to catch drunk drivers. He however did not exactly become popular in the police and sooner or later had the honorfull title of Official Asshole of the department, ie: he had to do the jobs no one else wanted. Well, at least this is a better job than in the slaughterhouse, where he worked before. And now these Allaneans... it does not sound impossible. Even though they are normally better armed than an entire Asene Divensi Subsection, they are in their weird ideologies and have the smell of predictability. Vense waited for them to come on land, as did the port authorities. It was clear what was expected from him.

OOC: I'm a luser! I missed the post!

IC:

And so, the Allanean captain and his rather too-fast landing craft set up to land.