NationStates Jolt Archive

To the High Offices of Fatatatutti,
Disregarding the ideological idea of your leader, we see your nation as a potential great ally to Ulanpataar. We invite a representative of your nation to come to the Pataari HIVE to discuss current events to the Pataari Council of Trade Masters. However, due to events that just have perspired Trade Masters 1, 9, 86 cannot attend along with our great general Rokhmasaal, with his military advisors to take his place. In addition many minor trade masters cannot attend for various minor reasons,
The Pataari High Council of Trade Masters

To: Government of UlanPataar
From: Government of Fatatatutti

In the past, we have expressed concerns about the safety of Fatatatutian representatives in your nation. That is one reason why we are reluctant to send a permanent ambassador. Therefore, in response to your invtation, we would like to send Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina, a retired General in the Fatatatutian defense forces, to assess the situation in your nation and to hold talks with your representatives. Please be assured that General Castro-Stalina in no way poses a threat to your own security.

If this meets with your approval, the General is prepared to depart immediately.

((Casto-Stalina? I c wat u did thar.))
To the High Offices of Fatatatutti,
We accept on your offer, and you may send the woman (?) over immediately. Your concerns are unnecessary ones, to be honest, but we will talk over such worries with your general. Arrive at dock 16 or airstrip 1 in Iyaroak. We await the General's presence, and we are preparing for his stay. If there are any special requests of any sort will will be happy to fulfil them. We assure you that the general will love his stay.
The Pataari High Council of Trade Masters

Marie-Louise flipped through the pages of the briefing book on UlanPataar. In black and white, every nation looked much the same, she decided. She'd have to wait until she was on the ground to really get a feel for the place.

The C-130's engines were a comforting and familiar sound. There were a few other passengers. The ones who were asleep were probably soldiers, she reasoned. Soldiers can sleep anywhere. A couple of bureaucratic types glanced at her occasionally, as if they recognized her and weren't sure whether to look down on her or look up to her. The rest of the hold was taken up by two large oblong shapes under tarps - armoured cars or crates of beans, she didn't care which.

For once, at least, she'd be walking off the plane instead of jumping. She settled back, folded her arms and closed her eyes. It was a long way to UlanPataar and she might as well get her beauty sleep.

A Car was readied to escort the General to the Pataari HIVE, and due to the fact that summer had just ended night rolled over most of Ulanpataar, even though the clocks read as '16:42'. A chilly, but mostly calm breeze rolled into the city from the southwest.

The Trade Masters sat in a well lit room discussing the matters of the shooting of Trade Master 9 and Trade Master 86's incident as they awaited the General.
"What could have been done to prevent Trade Master 9's death?" said trade master 32.
"Catch the murderous bugger that killed him earlier and haul him off to Borod Ketul." Said Trade Master 14 shrugging
"That can not be the best solution, there should have been tighter security surrounding him. No, best yet would be make sure the person did not have a rifle in the first place. But due to the most recent generations it is impossible to know every who has a rifle, we must start a search and seizure campaign on rifles." Said Trade Master 3
Many Trade Masters spoke at once, either agreeing or stating their opinion. In a minute Trade Master's 3 opinion was unanimous.

Marie-Louise stepped down from the C-130 and slung her knapsack over her shoulder. The sun was surprisingly bright after the dark hold of the plane and the air was chilly.

Her blonde hair was neatly braided. She was wearing her red beret and comouflage fatigues, with no insignia except her name embroidered over her right pocket and her parachute badge over her left. At home, she would have shown up at a cabinet meeting in T-shirt and shorts but here she wanted to look a little more professional. At just over one and a half meters tall, she wasn't concerned about looking too threatening.

"Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina," she introduced herself to the first person she saw, "from Fatatatutti. I come in peace."

The first person she spoke to blinked and motioned over to another person who heard and understood what she had said. The second person had his face veil slightly unravel as he nodded and motioned to a opened car door and walked over to load any luggage. The car was a jeep with canvas covering. The driver started the car and two guards climbed into the back armed with AK-113s.

Once the General walked inside the jeep the driver started driving off to the HIVE. The diver drove like he was being chased almost, but there was nothing on the streets anyway.

Once the door was opened both the guards climbed out and the general was greeted to a extravagant and large building with a excess of Pataari Flags on the entrance, it was the Pataari HIVE. Two large 5 meter tall wooden doors creeped open showing the insides of the HIVE. An usher showed the general to the meeting room.

Marie-Louise gazed up at the high ceilings, trying not to look too much like a tourist. She wondered what a 'HIVE' was - so far, she didn't like the sound of it.

There had been nothing in the briefing book about etiquette. Was she insulting them by keeping her beret on indoors? Would she be insulting them if she sat down first?

She decided to follow the Fatatatutian principle that the guest is always right. She pulled out a heavy chair in the center of one side of the long table and sat down.

She was guided to a brightly lit room that was small in comparison to the main room with a large map of the Serbian Soviet Union punctuated with red and green dots to the side, in front a bank of chairs where a mass of Veiled Trade Masters sat. To the opposite side more trade masters sat and to her front sat a group of military advisors. And in the center there was three luxurious looking chairs. A tall veiled figure stood and motioned to the closest chair as he sat in one of the center chairs. The second he started speaking common a interpreter started talking in the back ground.
"I am Pataari Trade Master 2, and I welcome you to Iyaroak and the Pataari HIVE. After these talks you will be shown to your room."
The Trade Master then summoned a military advisor and Trade Master 3 to sit in the empty 2 seats in front of the General's seat.

"My name is Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina," she said. "You can call me 'Marie-Louise', if you like, or 'General'. I'm not on active duty with the Fatatatutian forces. Our law forbids any Fatatatutian soldier from setting foot on foreign soil, so I had to resign my commission when I was asked to command the Crozet Peace Force. I want to make it clear that I don't speak officially for the Fatatatutian government but I will try to convey my understanding of their policies as best I can."

She glanced around the room at the guards. "You don't really need armed guards," she said, smiling slightly. "I won't hurt you."

"They keep outside of the HIVE, you would understand if you were here during the wars. The HIVE is perfectly safe, the men you have seen only constitute a small sliver of what is protecting this building. Not only that weapons are widely proliferated, a huge number of the population know how to use rifles well due to the wars of past generations. Just the other day a man shot Trade Master 9 who was just walking the the store about 2 hundred and fifty meters away, the bugger hit his lung and to this very minute the trade master is in the very throws of death. We have enemies, General, and we contain them in the best working method we have found. Even among the HIVE we have eccentrics, like Trade Master 86 who suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, that and he was under great stress and did heroin with the possibility of other things we have declared illicit. There are guesses that there will be more advisors, or even Trade Masters put in a similar situation despite our greatest efforts. We only stand today from our attempts to survive, to let Ulanpataar prosper, and all the methods you demonise are the way we survive from such adversity." said Trade Master 3, crossing his legs. The other Trade Masters nodded in agreement.

"Maybe the methods you use are the cause of the adversity rather than the solution." Marie-Louise tapped a pencil on the table, not deliberately trying to be annoying but aware that she probably was. "Violence begets violence. If you shoot a man, his son grows up to hate you and one day he shoots you. Then your son grows up to hate him and the cycle goes on and on.

"In Fatatatutti, we have a lot of people trained to use weapons too, millions of them." She stopped herself from giving the full number. "But we never use our weapons on each other. We're one big, happy family. We only fight against invaders, never against family.

"I suggest that you will never truly prosper until you learn peace."

"I partially agree with you, but our current state was born in a pool of roaring fire, if we had not laid out our rule right then Ulanpataar would be a horrible place to live in. We have continued to lay down our will. Most of these children that have there fathers, or even mothers, consumed into this violence don't even know that it was their father that was killed. But there is always the group that is not 'most of these children', and they might continue the violence. But I am certain as time wears on the group of dissidents will shrink, either due to Essence or being to happy because they are prospering from the 'Dribble-Down effect'. And even if those fail they will be weeded out in time. These are violent times, but in the coming years the violence will become more and more rare." Said Trade Master 3

"That's the reason Fatatatutti doesn't want an embassy in your nation." Marie-Louise found herself doodling on the table with her pencil. She surreptitiously erased the drawing with her thumb. "Your attitude is that violence is inevitable. In that kind of atmosphere, it's almost inevitable too that the Fatatatutian ambassador would be a target of violence.

"In Fatatatutti, we don't shoot dissidents, we put them in Parliament. And we don't wait for prosperity to 'dribble down'. We practically force prosperity on everybody.

"Almost every state was born in fire. But we don't stay newborns forever. We have to grow up and take responsibility for our own destinies. We can't go on forever lashing out at whatever we don't like. We have to find a better way, a more mature way.

"That's why Fatatatutti sent a soldier for these talks. Nobody wants peace more than a soldier. Do you have any real soldiers in your nation? Or are you just a bunch of thugs?"

Trade Master 3 leaned over, allowing the interpreter to hear only fragments of what he said "Well guess what would happen if we did not quell any protest, or get rid of any violent dissident? The HIVE would not be in power, and ZaKomnia would not give our nation it's support. We would be in utter shambles, and you find us a violent nation. But without our intervention we would still be living in the continuation of past wars, hell, Pоdsobyakh Ulanpataaru would probably still stand. We limit the violence, but we are not able to end it now. I acknowledge this fact, and if I did not I would be naive. The people are too used to fighting and defending their land, and now random bits of violence pop out of the cracks as they fail to adjust into a more peaceful society. "

Marie-Louise looked the Trade Master in the eye. "If the HIVE wasn't in power, somebody else would be. You're as much as admitting that you use violence only to stay in power, not for the good of the nation.

"You might not be able to end all of the violence but you can certainly end your part of it.

"Maybe your HIVE should work up the courage to lose the fight. Do what's right instead of doing whatever you have to to win."

She narrowed her eyes slightly. "You know, you're making yourselves look worse, not better, by insisting that you have no choice. As it stands right now, I would have to tell my government that UlanPataar is much too unstable and dangerous for Fatatatutti to have diplomatic relations with or to trade with."

She dropped the pencil on the table. It made a loud enough sound that she realized it had gotten very quiet in the room. "Am I wasting my time here?" she asked.

"We suppress violent dissidents to stay in power, to allow Ulanpataar to prosper. You speak to arrogantly, you better make sure you don't trip down a flight of stairs as you skip across your oh-so-peaceful nation. You kn--" Then suddenly Trade Master 3 was interrupted by the military advisor.
"So, in your opinion, the best way to rid a 'unstable and dangerous' nation of strife is to utterly forsake it? Sure, if you think along such lines you probably are wasting your time. You wish to skip around and declare some acts along the lines of 'barbaric'? Yes, then you'd be wasting time, you've already done it. For making your nation sound so perfect and ideal, avoiding relations with a nation that do several acts for it's own security that you do not agree with it does not make you seem so perfect. To be blunt, I guess the street leper that resorts to selling heroin to support it's family is not deserving of anybody's coin, after all he did resort to selling heroin, even if was out of desperation."

Marie-Louise glanced down at the table before turning to the new antagonist. "In Fatatatutti, lepers don't beg in the street. We treat them in hospitals. And their families are taken care of by the community. Nobody 'has' to sell heroin to survive.

"I don't think I've told you that my nation is 'perfect' or 'ideal'. You must be getting that subconsciously. Feeling guilty, maybe, because you know I'm right.

"In my opinion, the best way to rid an 'unstable and dangerous' nation of strife is to change the government.

"Our current Prime Minister has been in office eight separate times. He's not afraid to lose an election. He's lost more than he's won. And he isn't afraid to give up power when he loses. He doesn't pretend that the nation will go to hell in a handbasket without him. In Fatatatutti, polititians see power as a responsibility, not a privilege.

"By all means, come to Fatatatutti and see for yourselves if it's 'perfect' or 'ideal'."

She tossed the pencil down and it rolled across the table toward the Trade Master. "I was under the impression that I was here to find out if it's safe to send an ambassador. All you've said to me is that you intend to continue the violence indefinitely. Clearly, this visit was a waste of time. I have no choice but to tell my government that this is no place for a Fatatatutian representative."

She looked the Trade Master in the eye again. "My plane is waiting." She stood up.

Marie-Louise stepped out onto the street. Now, which way is the airport? she asked herself.

A little Mitsubishi 500 came around the corner and stopped in front of her. The pretty, red-headed driver leaned toward her and flung open the door. "Taxi, ma'am?"

Marie-Louise got in. "Don't call me 'ma'am', Sam."

Samantha Smith laughed.

"What did you do to your hair?"

"I just let it go back to my natural colour." Sam said. "I dyed it brown so I'd blend into the background, but it never seems to work anyway." Sam pulled away from the curb. "Fasten your seatbelt. These things have a tendency to turn upside-down."

The car turned another corner and disappeared into the night.

To: Government of UlanPataar
From: Government of Fatatatutti

We thank you for receiving our representative. It is regretable that the talks were not more productive.

It is clear that the present situation is deteriorating and that your nation is even more unstable than we feared. Therefore, it is impossible to consider any diplomatic or trade relations with your nation at this time. We will be happy to provide humanitarian aid as needed and to accept any Pataari refugees.

We thank you also for not hindering the departure of our representative.