NationStates Jolt Archive

Persepolis, Parthia, Offices of the Interior Ministry Health Department

Shah Khosru spoke to the ministers of the Health Department of the Interior Ministry. The government did not fund healthcare for citizens, nor did it partake in many health related functions. This was a free market country, and the health ministry mainly existed for the procurement of suitable individuals for testing purposes from Parthian colonies.

Today, however, they would find a new function, one more powerful than they had ever held. Shah Khosru thought in the long term, and he realized a debilitating trend. Evolution had broken, across the world, people who shouldn’t breed had many children, those who deserved to have many for the betterment of mankind had too few. Something would be done; it had to be done, if only to arrest any similar trend in Parthia.

Mankind had conquered the power of the atom, it had learned to fly, now, in Parthia, man would conquer evolution, half through underhanded means, and half above the table. The Persian people, the magnificent people of Parthia, would create a new man, the overman, the man who would rule the world of the future when humanity had continued to fall from his heights under a weight of genetic mediocrity and overfertility of the inferior.

As the Shah outlined his plans, the ministers listened intently, he spoke simply, tersely, yet his eyes showed a sparkle behind the cigarette smoke as the Shah’s words exited his mouth, their sound gospel for his hand picked ministers and CEOs of major healthcare companies.

“We will begin full scale eugenics operations in the Shahdom, not entirely above the table, of course, but we will initiate a program to purge from the genes all that is feeble, weak, timid, and inferior. The first step will be our program aimed at the unborn and newborns. Hospitals, will, in addition to offering genetic screening, offer abortions for the unborn infants which show signs of genetic problems, such as mental retardation or other deformities. If the families do not accept such a procedure, the government will step in to offer a sum of money for the termination of pregnancy.”

The Shah paused, “This, however, is not the only thing which must be done. In addition, we will legalize the euthanization of deformed infants in the three weeks after birth, and will also offer cash to parents who agree to have the procedure done. All children born with mental retardation, hydrocephaly, tay sachs, or any other untreatable condition are authorized to be terminated accordingly.”

The Shah paused again while a servant poured a cup of cardamom tea into his porcelain and silver cup, sipping it gently while the Parthians around him waited for his words to begin filling the room again.

“We must also target those intending to breed. Marriage licenses should only be provided to those who agree to undertake screening for genetic defects. If any are found, their partner should be informed. Though, this is not the end, we must also consider those currently alive with severe conditions which preclude their ability to participate as working members of society. I speak, of course, about the feebleminded who are incapable of holding even the simplest job. The first concrete step which must be taken is the termination of the institutionalized.”

The Shah smiled, “Currently, roughly 15,000 subjects, afflicted with severe mental retardation or some kind of mental illness which forces their institutionalization, are being held in the Persepolis Center for the Deformed, outside the city. The owner has decided, for a cash sum, that he will make these individuals available for the first tests of our Euthanasia Pilot Program.”

“Our objective here is to terminate without causing undue pain and suffering, while these people are a drain upon our society, they aren’t responsible for any real crimes and thus must be dealt with pleasantly and mercifully. My scientific advisors recommend disposing of them by groups of 150-200 using nitrogen asphyxiation. The deformed ones should also be separated from the feeble minded, as we can sell the organs of the feeble minded ones on the open market.”

With the nods from every other member of the board in the conference room signifying agreement, the finalization was made, Parthia would introduce a comprehensive eugenics program, with the pilot program beginning in 72 hours.

Official PNN News Announcement

A stunningly new piece of progressive legislation has left the Desk of the Shah this afternoon, legalizing the euthanasia of infants born with untreatable conditions. Asked for justification from citizens, the Health Ministry has responded it was of necessity, stating succinctly:

The feed cut to an announcement from Interior Minister Piruz Savadkouhi

"The simple truth is Parthia does not possess a social welfare system. We cannot force families to accept their deformed children which will be a financial burden for the rest of their life, nor can we sit back and watch these children be abandoned in dumpsters as occasionally occurred before the passage of this law. We believe ultimately, that this new piece of legislation is more merciful.”

Social liberals in Parthia applauded this piece of progressive legislation, claiming it provides much in the way of family rights, while Capitalist organizations also supported the legislation, given that it relieves pressure to create social welfare infrastructure to care for, what CEO of the Imperial Oil Company, Sassan Pakravan referred to as “mistakes of nature which pressure certain feeble and weak hearted people to accept Communism.”

Religious groups were divided, but not overly so. Some organizations desire more controls to ensure the law is directed only against truly incurable and chronic defectives. Others claim it makes the world better by relieving the world of the creations of Ahriman. Either way, support is evident amongst all Parthian citizens, making this, once again, a stunning new piece of legislation the citizens of our Shahdom may unite behind and further evidence that the Shah is the wisest leader on Earth.

Many groups, especially social progressives, now ask the rest of the world to follow in Parthia’s suit and to spare many families the burden of dealing with these financial drains and to restore personal choice to parents on whether or not they should keep their defective children.

Operation Mercy Outline- Secret Letter from Health Minister Rostam Tabrizi to Shah Khosru III

Parthia must be purged of that which is botched and that which is weak. We must provide the defective mercy, and do so by removing them from existence. We must create a better tomorrow by removing that which can bring it down. We must advance ourselves forward by purging our society of the parasites, the feeble minded, the destructive!

With this in mind, we must concentrate on ensuring the pilot program using nitrogen asphyxiation succeeds in destroying the defectives. Should it, as predicted function well, the euthanasia program will continue, with centers to deal with the defective set up in Persepolis, Tabriz, Esfahan, Tehran, and every other city of our Shahdom. Ideally, these should be placed within government buildings or hidden, if all else fails, they can be claimed as a SAVAK annex.

The first order of dealing with these individuals is to clean institutions of them, removing all patients and transporting them to centers where they will be dealt with accordingly, starting with the centers and institutions located in the major cities of the Shahdom, before also drawing in those individuals in smaller institutions outside of the urban areas of the Shahdom.

Estimations on Phase I, that is, the removal of the institutionalized, show the centers must be prepared to deal with 1.3-1.8 million subjects. Liquidation should begin with those in the institutions for the criminally insane and criminally deficient, following the pilot program.

Following the near completion of the first phase of operations, the second must begin. The vagrants and other assorted individuals who dwell on the streets of major cities are eyesores and severely damage the property value of neighborhoods. They are also a safety threat to our law abiding citizens.

These vagrants are undoubtedly members of the botched and weak, and therefore, must be removed. They too will be collected together and brought to our mercy centers in Phase II, where we will liquidate all 2.7-3.5 million of them, thus freeing our country of a large reservoir of dangerous mental defectives.

With the liquidation of the institutionalized and vagrants completed, the Shahdom will end the mass liquidation phase and move on to the next phase of our eugenics operations, which will concentrate on removing individual defectives not in institutions or on the streets. This phase will be elaborated upon with the completion of the liquidation of our easily accessible defectives.

OOC: Open? Closed? Tech Level?

OOC: Open? Closed? Tech Level?

Open MT. You're more than welcome to poke around and find out what's really going on if you want.

Semi-Open MT. You're more than welcome to poke around and find out what's really going on if you want.

OOC: I have an organistation who live for this kind of stuff - morally grey territory.

IC:

The PNN news broadcast was just finishing, when the TV was turned off aprubtly. A man, sat behind his desk, placed the remote down, and turned to the two men who had been watching it with him

"Well" he said to them "What do you make of it? Major?"

The older of the two thought a moment, choosing his words carefully

"I think" he began "I think you want us to go and investigate, sir"

"Correct Major" the man said to him "You and Buckler go do some poking around. I'll have a contact set you up some accomodation. In the meantime, you need to catch a commercial flight, so leave all your gear at Avalon One"

Buckler and Blake saluted him, before leaving the room and heading down to the equipment room to change out of their Sentinel Armour and into civvie clothing.

Shahanshah Ardeshir XI International Airport

Persepolis and Shiraz, together the largest metropolitain area of the Shahdom stretched from the northwest to the southwest over a span of 240 km, bounded between two mountain chains of the Zagros in the Southern part of Parthia, the rugged and mountainous province of Fars.

Shah Ardeshir International recieved millions of visitors a year, serving the massive 120 million person metropolitain area which acted as Parthia's commercial and economic hub, with the concentration of Parthian Banks, finance firms, and funds of various types calling Persepolis their home, making the north of the city, the financial district a hub of massive skyscrapers, both commercial and residential. The entire city, in fact, served as a monument of capitalism left untouched, high rises covering the entire valley floor, the only gaps in the skyline being the old town, the historical center of Persepolis inhabited since the 7th century, and now turned into a major tourist attraction, and the slums around the airport, though even there, further from the approach path of the planes, large tenements housed tens of thousands of people, though smaller, poorly built shanties made up the majority of the dwellings, mostly inhabited by Parthia's oppressed and despised Arab and Hazara minorities. All effort was made to cut this slum off from the rest of the city and restrict the movement of the inhabitants, with highways passing directly over, stopping only at the airport, before continuing on to Shiraz, with absolutely no exits given to the slum dwellers.

The airport itself was modern, made by clearing over a million slum dwellers and putting the sprawling complex over their homes. And here, serving the center of finance and government of the Shahdom, would be the best place for a foreigner seeking minimum attention to enter, amongst the crowds of tourists coming to see the sights of the old town and enjoy the luxuries of the central city and the palaces of the Shah. Or, amongst the millions of buisnessmen who came here to make nothing more than money.

Persepolis was simply Persepolis, large, ancient, rich, and yet, also horribly divided by wealth and ethnicity. The rich lived lavishly in palaces and penthouses, middle class lived comfortably in homes and condominiums, the poor died of diseases long wiped out in other first-world countries in their slums.

Asmolach II, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bardar had seen the PNN feed.
"Barbarians", he murmured, "no social healthcare system, they've probably never been at war".
He asked a couple of medical advicors what they thought, and they all agreed the technology was interresting and tempting.
"Get ready a plane for me", he ordered, "I want to investigate this and it would be interresting to visit a foreign nation".
A few minutes later a plane had been prepared for his visit.

Persepolis Palace, Parthia

It had been too long, too long since Parthia had played a role on the international stage. In 2007, the Shah had been left drained, his great energy which had led Parthia’s anti-Communist policies fading, and it was then that his doctors had told him the news...

Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma

Parthian science, beautifully unburdened with rules of human testing had done all it could to find a cure. Thousands perished, dying in agony so the Shah would live, their cries in the Parthian biological agents testing center echoing through those halls as the Shah teetered towards the brink. Yet their agonies, the suffering of the thousands of Arab test subjects had not been in vain.

Stem cells, the cure which would save the Shah, applied to the disease, harvested from forcibly terminated Arab pregnancies, would rebuild his lymph nodes. The Shah would survive; he would lead the future of Parthia for years longer.

But something had changed within him, once the happy and carefree leader caring for nothing but pleasure and anti-Communism had seen the light, he had felt the mercy, he had seen the Truth! For too long he had ignored the will of the divine Lord! Ohrmazd and his prophet Zarathustra, the ones who ultimately, had chosen for him to live another day, were telling him that his time was of yet not finished, he had more to do, more to accomplish.

He had come to a realization, he was no mere mortal, no mere dictator, nor was he evil as the weak and perfidious nations told the Parthian foreign ministry, he was the celestial seed of the divine, his actions guided by the truth, his will the will of Ohrmazd himself! The Shah had seen the world overtaken by the lie as he recovered. Impurity and evil, forms of the dark will of Ahriman contained in the lies of democracy, the evils of communism, and the false gods of environmentalism! Forces of the lie, forces of evil, forces which the Shah knew to be evil because he saw it as such, and his perspective was the perspective of the lord of the world! Ohrmazd himself spoke to him, dominated him, controlled him…

He was infallible, yet he had to make his country the same way, he must show them the true mercy of the divine Lord! He must make them feel His light. Parthia must stand as a shining bastion of the Truth, of the Mercy of Ohrmazd, of His magnificent light!

He sought now to purify the world of the creatures of Ahriman, for that is mercy to them. To destroy them is to purify them, and to purify them is to bring them to the light of Ohrmazd, the greatest mercy possible, but they must be purified, and he would purify them.

Parthia would soon be pure, it would soon be true, it would be a nation which felt the Mercy of Ohrmazd, the Light of Ohrmazd, the Beauty of Ohrmazd, and the Will of Ohrmazd. Those who stood in the way of the purification stood for the lie, they stood for Ahriman. They had to be purified, they had to be shown the light, and he would do it when the time came, first though, Parthia must purify itself, as the Lord of Heaven had purified him and made him his agent on Earth, so too would he purify his nation, so it could work as the agent of Ohrmazd for the entire world.

Asmolach II looked through the Secret Police files on the Parthian nation while he sat on plane to Persepolis. He saw the current shah had been categorized as a religous zealot, close to mad. The Prime Minister knew he had to be careful among such people, as the Patriarch of the Church of Bardar he had to deal with quite a few of them in the clergy. He also remembered the madness of Imre Nagvar, the crazy religous revolutionary who had tried to take over the government in Bardar. He was happy the Parthians rejected Marxism though, meaning they followed some kind of decensy. Well, the shah was someone he had to deal with, wether he liked it or not. This technology could be good for Bardar, if it was used in the right way.

Persepolis Palace, Parthia

The Shah sat in his personal chambers, reclined upon a chaise lounge, soft and pleasant to his back, looking towards the cieling, watching the light scatter through the crystal chandelier. Next to him, on a mahogany table inlaid with ivory, a golden cup holding deeply aromatic cardamom tea and a gilded bowl holding fresh dates waited for him, brought in by a servant who had tried not to disturb the Shah's repose, thinking him to be napping.

Far from it, he rested on the lounge deep in thought, his mind racing back to his lessons on theology from his youth, still fresh to him now, even after sixty one years upon this Earth.

"Our world exists as a battle between truth and lies, good and evil, light and darkness. Created from time, the Wise Lord, Ohrmazd created this world, free of evil, the most perfect of all possible existences, yet Ahriman, the other side, the other being, the one who makes darkness, cast his shadow upon it, adding his foul creation to the planet.

Ohrmazd, in the Avestan tounge, Ahura Mazda, challenged Angra Maniyu, in our modern Persian, Ahriman, to battle, with the mutual creation a battlefield between that which the two creators had made. Yet, Ahura Mazda knew he would be victorious, he, after all, is the omnipotent one, Ahriman's nature has blinded him to the nature of truth.

Ohrmazd sent to us, the Persian people, the prophet Zarathustra, who showed us the truth, who brought us to follow the way Ohrmazd had intended. We were chosen to make his will known to the world."

The old tutor's voice faded away, the Shah knew what had to happen. He had not realized his role, he was not merely a Shah, not merely the appointee of Ohrmazd, he was the agent of his will on Earth, he would banish that which was impure, he would destroy all that Ahriman had made, all of his creatures, thus, bringing victory.

The souls of many men were corrupted, possessed by the spirit of Ahriman, those who were defective were evidence of his work, those who could not succeed were evidence of his work. They had to be purged, out of mercy, for should they not be purged by the Shah or the Parthian nation which he would purify, then they would be given the worst fate in the hereafter, banished to darkness and pain, yet, if the Shah purified them, they would be sent to the lord of Truth. It was mercy, for a bit of suffering ensured their reward hereafter.

These defectives, poor creatures showing the hand of Ahriman, they had to be purified, for their own good, lest they join him in his darkness. What the Shah did was not out of contempt or disgust, he did this because he was merciful, he would show that which had no mercy the greatest mercy of all time. He would ensure their passage to bliss in the hereafter.

As the Shah's thought patterns ended, the word came, the pilot program of nitrogen asphyxiation was completed, with the defectives of the largest Persepolis Asylum for them emptied. They had gone painlessly, mercifully, pleasantly, and their souls would be shown the same mercy by the only being the Shah thought was greater than himself.

He had purified them, sent them forth pure, and he would now continue. Those who had committed sins or showed the touch of the Lie would be purged, for their own good.

As the plane landed on Persepolis airport Asmolach II wondered how he would be welcomed. It was his first official state visit abroad, and since Bardar rarely bothered to meddle in foreign affairs, there wouldn't be many more. The Prime Minister had an escort of 12 Secret Police Officer, 2 Political Advicors, 3 Secretaries, 1 Medical Doctor and 2 Geneticists. But to be honest, he was more interested in what kind of person the shah was, than the actual technology he was after.