Eighteen
The Conference Center
The Constitution was taking shape. Mike Crider was well pleased with how the document looked.
Two houses of legislators, the House of Selectmen, allocated according to a planet’s population, and the Senate, with two Senators from each world. A High Court would interpret the laws passed by the Legislature, and the President’s office would be responsible for enforcing those laws, as well as managing the security of the Confederacy as a whole.
Each world would support the Confederate government by a levy of a percentage of the Gross Planetary Product, and from that GPP tax would come funds for the Navy, the Confederate government – Mike was not surprised to see that the initial government base would be right here on Tarbos, since it was more or less centrally located – and the various functions that the Confederacy would fulfill in arbitrating interplanetary trade.
And best of all, Mike noted, was that the Constitution strictly limited the Confederacy’s authority in planetary affairs – the free worlds were limited to freely elected, representative governments and to respect and abide by the Bill of Basic Rights, but other than that the Confederate government was barred from planetary affairs.
“Looks familiar, doesn’t it?” Hector Gutierrez sat down next to Mike. Small knots of delegates and staff were seated here and there in the main Conference Hall, reading the final draft of the Constitution and making notes before the initial vote.
“Yeah, looks real familiar,” Mike replied. “It’s a lot like America’s Constitution, but a bit tougher on Federal – I mean, Confederate interference in the state’s affairs.”
“Right. That’s on purpose, and it will make ratification easier. The free worlds won’t accept this if there’s too much chance of the Confederacy getting too overbearing – we went through that in the States once, you know – and this pretty much precludes that. The President has the authority to intercede if a world fails to allow free elections or protect the individual rights that we’ve defined, but other than that, his responsibilities are to the Confederation alone.”
“And each planet, to be part of this, will have to ratify by a simple majority of the electorate?”
“Two-thirds,” Gutierrez corrected him. “And any new worlds opened up will have to vote to ratify or not when their population reaches half a million. If they don’t ratify, of course, they aren’t entitled to trade protection or Naval support in the event of attack.”
“So, it’s a pretty sure bet all thirteen worlds will ratify?”
“Eleven will. Corinthia, who knows? Their ‘king’ isn’t going to be happy about putting it to a vote. Oddly enough, I’d expect Earth to be the other possible holdout.”
Mike looked at the Vice President, his eyes wide. “Earth?”
“Earth. There’s a lot of fuss in the US over how much we’ve spent on planetary defense, and since the United Nations collapsed, , there’s really been no global international alliance or governing body to speak of. I don’t know how Earth is going to manage a vote on ratification.”
“I guess I never thought about that.”
“Well, I sent Tony – that’s the President – a hyperphone message. Maybe he’ll be able to work something out.”
Mike considered that for a moment. “You know, my son asked me something back on Forest once. There’s an issue of citizenship – I’m an American citizen, but what about the kids born on the settled worlds? Junior asked if he’s a citizen, and to tell the truth, I didn’t know what to answer. And, after this, he’ll be a citizen of Forest – and so will I, for that matter. I’ll cast my vote for ratification on Forest, and so will Junior. Will we have dual citizenship?”
“Another problem to work out, Mike. I hadn’t thought of that one, either.”
“And, Heck, to be perfectly honest, it may be something that comes up in your family, too. You’ve seen those kids of ours together, right?”
The Vice President nodded. “Yeah. Sandy and I were talking about it yesterday.”
The Stardust Lounge
Late afternoon, and Mike Crider Junior had spirited a giggling Maria Gutierrez away from the Conference Center for an early dinner.
“I’m glad you could get away early,” Maria confided. The young people say in a booth side by side, their discarded plates pushed across the table.
“I’m not really doing all that much,” Mike answered. “Just taking notes and helping my Dad keep his paperwork organized.”
“Why did he bring you, then?”
“He mostly just wanted the company, I guess.” He frowned. “Dad doesn’t make friends too easy. He’s lived on Forest for twenty-three years, and you know I bet we don’t get ten people a year out to the place to visit? I remember when I was a little kid old Colonel Davies used to come out for some hunting once in a while, and just before we left Dad had a visit from some of his old scouts from the Invasion, but that’s about it.”
“You’re not like that, Mike.” Maria squeezed Mike’s hand in hers. He put his arm around her and squeezed.
“No, I’m not like Dad in that respect. I like being around people more than he does. Mom’s afraid that once Dad gets older, it will be impossible to get him off the place at all – he only goes to town two or three times a year now.”
“Your home sounds beautiful, though, Mike. The pictures you showed me sure are.”
The young hunter/pioneer caressed Maria’s satiny shoulder with his callused hand briefly. He turned toward her, his face very serious now. “I’d like you to see it, Maria. In fact, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I’d like you to see our family place, I’d like to show you Outskirts – it’s a really pretty little town now. I’d sure like you to come to Forest.”
“I don’t know, Mike.” Maria smiled, ever so slightly. “Passage fare from Earth would be awfully expensive.”
“I was kind of thinking of another arrangement.”
“What arrangement?” Maria knew perfectly well what arrangement the young hunter had in mind, but she was woman enough to want him to say it.
“I was thinking of you coming back to Forest with Dad and me. If you and I were to…”
“To what?”
“To get married. That’s what I’m trying to say. If you’ll have me, that is.” Inwardly, Mike Junior cursed his awkwardness.
Maria smiled broadly, pleased that her prediction was correct. She kissed him once, quickly. “Yes, Mike, I’ll certainly have you. And I can’t wait to see your home. I know I’ll love Forest.”
Earth
President Gomez had anticipated the ratification issue.
The old United Nations building in New York still existed, but only as a shell. Since the Third World War, the UN had been all but disbanded, only a handful of Third World countries still meeting in a smaller headquarters in Belgium to debate resolutions that most of the world ignored. The old New York City building still existed, was still maintained at the expense of the United States’ National Park Service, largely as a historical site. But now the President of the United States, Anthony Ignacio Gomez, had just become the first U.S. President to visit that building in several decades. Leaving the UN building with the Secretary of State by his side and the usual trail of Secret Service agents, the President was cautiously optimistic.
“The old building is still in pretty good shape,” Secretary Stetson opined. “But as to whether anyone will show up to a forum at the UN after all this time is another story.”
“It’s the first thing that might actually be appropriate for the UN to talk over in almost a hundred years,” President Gomez reminded her, “and all they have to do is go back to their respective countries and convince their legislative bodies to come up with a mechanism for a plebiscite. Remember, Claudia, there’s no Constitutional provision right here in America for what we’re going to try to do. Each State will have to have elections using their own system, and we’ll combine the totals to the global count.”
“You’re that confident that the meeting on Tarbos will come up with a Constitution to ratify?”
“I am.” Gomez looked up at the sky as he walked. “I read a lot of history when Heck and I decided to run for national office. I think it’s inevitable. And, based on Earth’s own history and the usual political bent of businessmen, I’m guessing it’s going to be a fairly libertarian government, and that implies that it will have to be ratified by each planet. Earth’s the only one that’s carved up into separate nations, even though it’s been dominated by one nation since before the Third World War.” The famed circle of flags outside the old UN building was still maintained, like the rest of the site, by the National Park Service. A lot of the flags had changed since the UN had been founded following the Second World War: most of them, in fact. One had not. Gomez pointed at one flagpole where a familiar red, white and blue flag was flying – still flying – after three World Wars and the best efforts of generations of dictators and terrorists, still flying. “And the world will still listen to the United States. They’ll complain, they’ll kick and fuss, they’ll whine and bitch, but in the end, they’ll listen, because they know this has to happen. This is going to work. We’re going to get that building back in shape, we’re going to assemble ambassadors from every nation we can get to attend, and we’re going to knock Earth’s collective heads together. We’ll have our plebiscite.”
The Cachalot, Tarbos orbit
“Well, I’ll be damned. It works.”
The scanner readout was fuzzy; mostly just a rough indication of a course track, but it was there nonetheless, drawn in green on the Cachalot’s navigation readout. Captain Benton was impressed, in spite of herself.
“There, Captain, is your Grugell ship, running cloaked.”
Captain Benton examined the readout closely. “This is just an estimate – the error here could be a kilometer or so either way.”
“That will firm up as the system gathers data. The program algorithm will gather data on the individual track; once you’ve got the data, you should be able to pick this ship up anytime, given a few minutes scanning. You’ll have a good enough fix in a few hours.”
“Good enough to do what? Nobody’s been able to tell me that, yet.”
Frad Gilpin made a sour face. “I’m just the techie, Captain. That’s a question for the bosses.”
“Well, he’s above and behind us, we can tell that now,” First Officer Furst pointed out. “That doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.”
“And I bet there’s no way we can out-maneuver him – not with this big hog.”
“How about if we dropped the cargo disk, and went after him with just the drive section?”
“Go after him for what?” Benton demanded. “The only thing we could do is ram him. You want to ram him with the drive section? The only way I’d want to try ramming him would be to clip him is with the edge of the cargo disk, and I’m not too crazy about that. At least we’re mostly empty right now, and there’s no crew in the disk, but we’re still looking at shock damage, bulkheads sprung, all sorts of trouble.”
“So, what are we going to do?”
“I’m going to talk to Pritchard, that’s what I’m going to do.” Jan Benton pulled herself across the zero-gee Bridge towards the Signals station. “Get me the Director’s Office.”
An alley in Mountain View’s warehouse district
“Well?”
“It is a Grugell infiltration pod,” Clomonastik said.
Colonel Perkins rapped on the opened, empty shell. “What’s it made of?”
Clomonastik rattled out a series of high-pitched, squeaking syllables. “I don’t know the English term,” he smiled. “I imagine your engineers can determine the composition, yes?”
“Well, they’ll sure try,” Perkins agreed. “So this thing tells us we’ve got a Grugell agent here on the surface, then?”
Clomonastik scrutinized the Colonel’s face closely. “Why, yes, obviously. I should think he would be a senior Lieutenant, probably well trained in infiltration tactics, probably fluent in English, and no doubt well-armed and well equipped.” Colonel Perkins tapped the pod casually with the toe of his boot. Rather too casual about all this, Clomonastik thought. Rather too casual altogether.
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
Clomonastik should cater the wedding.
Full color? Nice choice of font? Plenty of whitespace?
It has HUUUUGE tracts of …. comic sans!
I’m thinking fully illuminated, with those oversized elaborate first letters of each paragraph.
As long as it doesn’t become a canticle for Leibowitz, I suppose.
Written on roc vellum.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5718355-marjorie-taylor-greene-trump-maga-lie/
Well crap. Wasn’t supposed to be a reply.
The time to bring this up, Marge, was before you outed yourself as a flaming nutcase.
When was she *not* a flaming nutcase?
1) When have politicians not catered to wealthy donors? Wealth easily translates to political pressure / power. Duh.
2) Kind of lose me when you then devolve into a “Trump is fighting wars for Israel and Gaza is nothing but innocents!” Yeah, folks can disagree on nuance… but that phrasing sounds like MTG is sniffing the Zerohedge commenter Koolaid more than a little. She friends with Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson and made trips to Qatar recently or something?
Is OMB v2.0 doing everything I want? Hell no. Did I expect him to? Also hell no. Is it nice to at least not have an open border with extra payments / rent provided on top? Hell yes… so take the good with the bad on this one is my motto for these years.
Greetings from North Nowhere Vermont where the morning temperature was -14.7F. The NWS had predicted a low of -4F. I decided not to try starting my Honda Pioneer 700 side-by-side in such cold so I’m enjoying an unplanned day off. The sun is shining, for the first time in two months, the PV array is bubbling over with volts and ohms, my cabin’s car stereo is playing Vivaldi, the AT&T cellular signal is stronger than usual so my wireless Internet hotspot is working well, the cabin is 70F inside, and I’ve got a pint of Dragon’s Milk stout. Life is good.
This is the first “traditional” Winter Vermont has had in three years and people have disinterred their snowmobiles from garages and are out having fun going stupefyingly fast on the trail network. It’s nice to see again.
*waves*
Hello Richard!
Sounds excellent.
It’s all flip flops and sun here in North Texas right now. A totally different world.
The last two weeks have been trying and it’s predicted the next two weeks won’t be any better:
https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/polar-vortex-to-keep-frigid-pattern-locked-over-eastern-us-through-much-of-february/1858892
A cord of firewood will be delivered tomorrow. That should get me through the rest of the Winter. At this point even seasonable temperatures would seem like heaven.
I was to the south of you this weekend, in Warren, and it was a balmy -9 yesterday morning.
VT is not for the weak.
And yet they elected Bernie Sanders. Or Barney Sandler as my wife calls him.
According to the morning thread, that was all due to his sexual techniques. (shudder)
Bernie has been riding on his reputation for years. He used to actually represent Vermont in the Federal Government and really bring home the bacon, which was easy because by Federal Standards it was a pittance. Also his office used to be very responsive to things like “The VA is stonewalling me on my disability rating.” He used to have solid support throughout the entire state. He still has support enough to be reelected but some Vermonters outside of Burlington are beginning to wonder why since he spends most of his time on Federal campaigns and progressive issues that rural Vermonters find repugnant. I bet he doesn’t run for reelection again because, although he’d win, the ratio would be a repudiation.
The era of Big Snowmobile is over here, unless they are still in the back of the garage and covered with old sleeping bags after the kids left home. ATVs, passe’, if you don’t have a side by side how are you going to look good at the local bar? We do have enough snow, a few folks are still behind the power curve
and running in the ditches and on the lakes with their ski-doos though.
Quadbikes are still used around here to get around in the woods for Winter logging. Most of them are now equipped with tracks instead of tires. The Border Patrol has tracked quadbikes for patrolling the woods but as far as I can tell they’re seldom used. If I was a Border Patrol agent I’d be out in one all the time.
Track upgrades for quadbikes and side-by-sides can be difficult because the axles aren’t designed for them. I’ve had friends break their vehicles with them.
UTVs are too expensive.
You can buy to built Suzuki Samurai for less money and drive it on the highway.
According to these comments I’m not sure I’d want to drive a Suzuki Samurai on the road:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuzukiSamurai/comments/1i5iffk/how_good_are_suzuki_samurais_as_an_only_car/
For sale:
https://classics.autotrader.com/classic-cars-for-sale/suzuki-samurai-for-sale
Didn’t Click and Click refer to it as the Suzuki Kamikaze? With a novelty horn that played “Roll Over Beethoven”?
Speaking of scifi, I watched the first episode of The Pantheon yesterday. it has potential.
Is this the one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(TV_series)
It looks interesting.
It was all right.
Our internet was down most of the day – the cable modem died. Had to fetch and install a new one and all is good now. Durinmg the outage I chaged the input on the TV to OTA and found an METV channel that had old Popeye cartoons on. Before the Popeye cartoon started a trigger warning was displayed warning viewers of outdated ethinic stereotypes, violence and non-consensual romantic situations. LOL, I’ve never seen that disclaimer before.
File a complaint about their offensive warning before shows.
I have a younger[1] friend who was astounded when he discovered the existence of over-the-air television. He couldn’t believe outfits would just broadcast entertainment for free without an account/monitoring/data collection. And, as you said, it works when the Internet is down!
Footnotes:
[1] Almost everyone is younger than me these days.
Is your OTA mostly from Montreal, or Burlington?… I remember having to watch the Flintstones in Quebecois (not french). as it was the only thing we could receive in northern VT.
My friend gets OTA TV from Burlington. My family has a cottage on Lake Champlain which gets OTA from Burlington, Plattsburgh, and Montreal. Decades ago staying up to watch late-night Montreal soft core porn was one of the cottage attractions.
Monteal soft-core? The Femmes must have really mimed the petite mort.
Warning: You are about to be seriously entertained because this presentation contains:
– Outdated ethinic stereotypes
– Violence
– Non-consensual romantic situations
I swear this was originally a reply to CatchTheCarp and was after UCS’ comment with the same indentation.
Earlier today I was waiting in line to get paperwork cleared from Family Services, Two older dudes were chatting it up and they were sick of this shit. They were joking about movies that couldn’t be made today and mentioned Blazing Saddles. One of ’em asked why and the other replied:
“Too many retards and retarded-s!” As we were in a very, multi-cultural land of government benefits, I thought they’d go ‘too far’ and bring up all the n-to the -n-wordy n-words. “Ya couldn’t make that today!” They were wise enough to not drop the ‘nigger bomb,’ but I was awaiting its release. Kinda a shame, frankly. I’dda given them a solid. So it goes.
So how did the interview go this morning? Everyone is hoping to hear good news from you and KK this week.
It didn’t go poorly, but there were a bunch of applicants. (90) Add in at least a few had transcription exp of some kind, plus their background check red tape could take several weeks, apparently, and I am not overwhelmed with confidence.
Possibly for the best, as I *really* don’t belong around a bunch of cops. (I’d be fine, but I’d have some moral, inner sarcasm bursting within me.)
However, I handled it fairly well, and I may have impressed them to some extent. I type that, and I hear Elaine Benes looking at Jerry and asking “Is it *possible* I’m not as attractive as I think I am?” w regard to my ‘impress ’em in person’ skills. With her… Uh. Nope. You’ve earned it. Me? Uh. I’m most likely not as impressive as I like to imagine I am.
VT is not for the weak.
There is a reason those old farmsteads in Vermont and New Hampshire have the barns attached to the houses.
Now I’m picturing Shang Tsung saying to save your maple syrup for the weak!… I swear my brain is just an odd pattern matching engine dredging up slightly relevant pop culture refs at this point…
The weak do not deserve Maple Syrup. Only those with the strength, foresight, and planning ability to get to Honey Harvest deserve Maple Syrup.
warning viewers of outdated ethinic stereotypes, violence and non-consensual romantic situations.
Bluto, the prototypical sex pest.
I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for some pussy today.
I want one.
The gun or the accessory?
Yes.
Walther used to make hunting rifles. Real ones, made of wood and steel!
I know, I own one. https://www.gunbroker.com/item/1148419342
Spiffy.
Considering the aesthetic of the RS-3, I wonder if Walther might be testing the waters for a WA-2000 re-release?
@Putrid : Her. I’ll take the whole bundle. She can cock my hammer all day.
She’s got a Game of Thrones vibe goin’ on, but well-armed. We shall conquer so much together. (We start with the pillows.)