Nineteen
A warehouse on the edge of Mountain View
His “contact” was tall, narrowly built and weird, and how he had learned English was anyone’s guess. But learn it he had.
“I’ve been in contact with my superiors. We’re not at all pleased with your progress. Having your man captured so stupidly…”
“I understand – that was a setback. But…”
“But nothing,” the tall figure snapped. “It’s already been taken care of. There will be no setback – my superiors will not tolerate it. Do you appreciate what I’m telling you? My superiors – will – not – tolerate – it.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“An orbital bombardment is not out of the question. We do possess the capability to reduce this planet to a smoking ruin, you know.” They had nothing like that sort of firepower, but this human didn’t need to know that. They had enough to destroy a good part of the city, and that would certainly do.
“There won’t be any more problems, at least not if you keep your wits about you. They’ve found your infiltration pod, you know – you did a piss-poor job of hiding it. But I can cover that up, make sure they get sent off on a wild-goose chase somehow.”
“A what? Wild goose? What purpose would that serve?”
“Never mind. I’m going to make sure nobody finds out what’s going on – all right?”
“Very well. And this Grugell renegade that you say is among them?”
“I’ll find a way for you to get him back, just like I said I would.”
“Good. He has much to answer for. The Emperor Himself has requested that Clomonastik III be brought before him, before he is disintegrated.”
They split up and left the area by different routes than they’d used to come in. The tall, skinny figure of the Grugell officer disappeared into a patch of woods, and the human went the other direction, pausing for a moment under a streetlight, where the white glow briefly revealed the form of Colonel George Perkins, Tarbos’ Head of Security.
The Conference Center, next morning
“I make the votes for the GPP tax fifteen aye, one nay. The motion is carried. Article IV will levy a twelve percent tax on the Gross Planetary Product of each member world.” Not too surprisingly, Corinthia’s King Harold had been the lone dissenter.
“We’re within days of wrapping this thing up, Mike,” Hector Gomez said in a low voice.
“Bill of Basic Rights passed yesterday, Articles I through IV this morning, five more to go, and we’ve got a Constitution,” Mike agreed.
Best of all, the soon-to-be Confederacy had a flag now. The first Confederate flag hung now above the speaker’s platform at the front of the main Conference Center.
The dark blue banner held thirteen four-pointed stars, twelve in a rough oval with one in the center. A light blue field at the upper left held a stylized representation of the Galaxy in white, with the single spiral arm containing all the settled worlds in red.
“How long do you suppose it will take to ratify?” Mike wondered.
“A year, maybe a year and a half. Who knows? Hyperphones are only about twenty percent faster than a ship, and every world will have to set up a system for an election.”
“Well, that solves a question my son asked me once.” Mike told the Vice President about the citizenship question Mike Junior had asked back on Forest.
“Well, as I understand it, your kids are American citizens, just as the kids of two citizens born in, say Europe are still citizens. They’ll be citizens of Forest, now, though – I suppose they can claim dual citizenship. But in a couple generations, Mike, this is all going to be moot.”
“We’re changing everything, aren’t we? We’re setting the pattern for interstellar politics for generations to come.”
“Good thing we know what we’re doing, eh?” Gomez smiled, slapped Mike on the back.
OWME Engineering Design & Development
Another one of Frad Gilpin’s gadgets was flashing and blinking away in his personal workspace. Gilpin sat watching the device’s main panel like an expectant father timing his wife’s contractions.
Twenty-eight slim antennae had been set up around the perimeter of Mountain View. Those antennae now cast the faintest, barely detectable web of a force field over the city. Feedback from any energy source penetrating the field would be reflected on the panel that Gilpin sat watching.
Every so often a sparkle would race across the panel’s main display, and Gilpin would check it against the receipted traffic from Tarbos Main Signals station. Signals aimed at Tarbos Main Signals, he ignored. He was waiting for a beamed message that was being sent somewhere else.
He sat up suddenly, coughing a spray of sandwich crumbs. A signal had crossed the field, a tight-beam signal of some sort, aimed nowhere near the planet’s Signals station. A handset was at his elbow; he grabbed it, punched in five digits.
Near the edge of town
Fifteen armed Security guards moved into the small copse of trees quietly. A special unit, they answered directly to Bob Pritchard; no one else knew their whereabouts.
The squad leader held a small hand-scanner. He held up one hand for the group to stop. A heat source showed on the scan, no more than ten meters to his front.
Senior Lieutenant Akillistrak XI didn’t expect to evade capture forever, and his orders were that to happen were clear. But he hadn’t expected to be found in his field shelter, a narrow, branch-lined pit covered with a film of opaque polymer. Hunched at one side of the pit, grimly re-reading the decoded message he’d received shortly before, he was taken completely by surprise.
The humans had slipped silently up to the edge of the shelter, led by the squad leader’s scan. The polymer cover was visible at one edge, where the electronic image-enhanced camouflage had shorted out. An OWME Security troop took hold of the polymer and flipped it back, revealing the startled, upturned face of the Grugell officer. Akillistrak had time only to let out a startled squawk before the squad leader clubbed him unconscious with a rock-hard fist.
“Call the Director. Tell him we’ve got our bad guy.”
Detention A
Consciousness returned slowly. Akillistrak opened his eyes at last, wincing at the pain of a mild concussion. He looked up – some sort of cage, with bare walls, a metal-barred window and the shimmering gleam of a force field at the one entrance.
Two figures stood in that entrance. One was a human, short as they all were, gray-haired. Akillistrak had received images of the primary human commanders on Tarbos; this was the planetary leader, Robert Pritchard. Beside him…
“Lieutenant, do you always recline in the presence of a superior?” The tall figure was a Grugell Group Commander. Akillistrak didn’t recognize him, but his reactions were inbred by generations of militarized culture.
Akillistrak snapped to his feet. “Please accept my apology, Group Commander.”
“Accepted, for the moment. Tell me, with what authority did your Commander send you down to this planet?”
“Group Commander, I assume – well, he acted with the authority of the Emperor, sir, as all Commanders do.”
“I see. And did you see the order dispatch? Did you verify your orders, in accordance with Standing Order Ten?”
A stricken look from the Lieutenant in the cell was all the clue Clomonastik needed to proceed. “I see. You did not. And so now you are an accomplice to a serious violation of orders, and so are answerable to the Imperium directly. What have you to say for yourself, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing, Group Commander. Group Commander, Standing Order Ten likewise requires me to confirm your identity, does it not?” The Lieutenant looked suddenly suspicious.
“Indeed it does.” Clomonastik volunteered nothing.
Akillistrak’s initial disorientation, the result of his sudden and violent capture, was fading away now. “Group Commander, I do not think it necessary to ask. You are Clomonastik III, failed Occupation Commander, traitor and renegade.”
“I am Clomonastik III, Lieutenant.” Clomonastik was unperturbed by the Lieutenant’s announcement. “You knew I was on this planet, obviously from the traitor in our own estate.”
Akillistrak sat back down on the narrow bench in the detention cell, his jaw set.
“I should remind you, Lieutenant, that you find yourself now in similar straits as myself. You have failed in your mission, have you not? And what do you suppose awaits you, should we turn you over to your Commander?”
The Grugell Lieutenant remained silent, but a look of doubt swept across his narrow face for the briefest of moments – enough for Clomonastik.
“You do know, Lieutenant. You’ll be disintegrated for your failure.”
Akillistrak looked up briefly before turning his gaze on the polysteel floor.
“As I would have been disintegrated, Lieutenant. A harsh punishment, is it not, for a failure in the face of a capable – and honorable – foe, yes?”
“It is known to all…”
“Yes, and officers in the Imperial Navy are not encouraged to question the Imperium’s policies, is it not so? No matter how harsh – no matter how counter-productive?”
“Counter-productive, Group Commander?”
“Indeed. You know it to be true, Lieutenant. Too many good officers have been wasted, through no fault of their own. Failure even in the face of insurmountable odds is dealt with in the same way – disintegration, and the reversion of the officer’s Estate to the Emperor. The incentive is not to succeed at all costs, but rather to avoid risks.” Clomonastik waved at Bob Pritchard, who stood behind him, trying in vain to follow the conversation. “These humans have learned better.”
Akillistrak looked up again, his face a study in confusion.
“Now, if you would see another sunrise, you will tell me what you know. You will tell me of your purpose here, and why Commander Kadastrattik XII is orbiting this planet in a cloaked ship without orders. You are already dead to the Empire. Your only hope for life is here, as was mine after my defeat in the Occupation.”
“Group Commander, the Commander has orders – I mean to say, he claimed to have orders, from the Imperium, to make contact with an agent here on Tarbos, to sabotage this convention by any means necessary, and to prevent the formation of a human interplanetary alliance.”
Clomonastik nodded, inwardly pleased that he’d guessed correctly. “And who is your contact on this planet?” The Grugell Lieutenant told him.
Bob Pritchard, while he was unable to follow the high-pitched, chittering Grugell language, had no problem understanding the words “Colonel Perkins” even when spoken in a heavily inflected Grugell accent. He was turning away in rage when he felt Clomonastik grab his arm.
“Director Pritchard, what will you do?”
“I’m going to order Colonel Perkins arrested, for starters,” he began, stopping when Clomonastik held up one hand. The tall Grugell pulled Pritchard out of the cell bay.
In Detention A’s lobby, out of earshot of the cells, Clomonastik finally spoke. “It’s safe to assume that our infiltrator speaks English, Director.”
“What? How?”
“I’d imagine the Imperium has had cloaked ships monitoring your message traffic for several years now.”
“Oh.”
“In any case, Director, might I suggest you let your good Colonel remain a free man a while longer? He may be of more use to us free and active. As long as Kadastrattik XII thinks he still has an agent on the planet, he may overlook the death of his officer.”
“But he’s not dead,” Pritchard protested.
“He no doubt has orders to be killed or to kill himself in the event of imminent capture, Director. He is dead to the Empire. We were very fortunate that your men were able to take him by surprise.”
“So, his boss will assume he’s dead,” Pritchard said, “And he’ll do what? Send another officer down?” “He may. I suggest you prepare for that possibility. Now, Director, if you’ll excuse me, I think I should continue my conversation with the young Lieutenant.”
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
So yea at the risk of getting attacked for going off topic yet again…I personally consider this a pretty major revelation.
In the Epstein files there’s a memo announcing Epstein’s death from then US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman. It was dated August 9th, 2019. That’s a full day before he supposedly off’ed himself.
I cannot and will not believe that this was just released by accident, either or that they wouldn’t have been able to hide that. So you have this document predicting a future event that many people are already skeptical happened the way we are told (obviously).
There’s a ton of documents the government wrote on Epstein that will never see the light of day. I have argued that this entire thing is looking more like a rather elaborate psyop to me. I think I may have had the motives wrong. We’ll see what if anything comes from this. Given the Kafkaesque shit our elites try to pass off as true to us, it wouldn’t surprise me if they try to downplay it.
It’s also in the document dump that right before his final arrest, Epstein received a large order of sulfuric acid. So he obviously got word he was going down, and he had…ahem…something to hide.
Just making lead acid batteries for my green energy power system, nothing to see here.
Wait until the documents come out that there were Grugell on Epstein Island.
That would be a revelation.
What do you think the Area 51 stuff is about?
I love clowns who downplay any and all “conspiracies” even when any number of them have been proven true over the years.
Which JFK conspiracy is the true one?
The one about him being a horndog?
How large, and where was it delivered?
Reportedly 55 gallon drums and to his personal island.
Sorry that’s 6 55 gallon drums.
2018 Wire Transfer for six 55 gallon drums of sulfuric acid.
2013 e-mail on Little St. John’s RO water plant.
There are more documents which come up after a search on “sulfuric acid”. I only went through a handful.
Yeah, RO system maintenance was where my thoughts initially went.
Don’t get me wrong, sulfuric destroys a lot of stuff, but mostly fire works just as well and faster. Of course, if you want to be really thorough, you could go with fire, take the remnants and put them in barrels of sulfuric, then drop them in the ocean (which I am assuming is easily accessed from the island.)
Hope it wasn’t shipped in metal containers…
Just treatment additives for the chiller in one of our buildings looks like a hazmat bingo game.
My thoughts exactly. If you want to dispose of large numbers of bodies, 330 gallons of Sulfuric acid isn’t gonna make a big dent, nor is it cost-effective compared to concrete blocks, steel chain, and the Milwaukee Deep.
But who knows? Maybe Epstein read crime novels.
NA & ES getting us on a whole, fresh new set of lists…
Jeez, it’s like none of you have ever needed to dispose of a dead hooker before…
What’s a large number of bodies? Each one of those drums would theoretically be enough to decompose of at least one human body.
More to the point, if the order was benign and used for water treatment or anything else regular, then I doubt it would have raised eyebrows in the first place. So someone thought it was out of the ordinary.
Also, you are sitting here pretending to know how much sulfuric acid would be needed to break down a human body, but the quantity strikes me as being far too large for Epstein’s estate to use to treat water.
I know in my corporate career I’ve never put the wrong date on any correspondence.
Yes, but you’re not perfect and sinless like Brochettaward.
That was my thought, as well.
*Wrong day of the week and date.
I’m skeptical at this point that the deep state would release any damning documents. Just like the JFK files. If they’re there, the document custodians know right they are and won’t just accidentally give them up.
It could also have been a typo.
The memo also says that it happened on a Friday. August 10th was a Saturday. Hell of a coincidental error/set of typos.
And then we have new video that reportedly contradicts the video logs and shows an unidentified “orange figure” making his way towards the cell. Maybe Trump did the deed himself.
The only thing I’ll agree with the people trying to dismiss this on is that it wasn’t some accidental leak. It was deliberate that this document is here.
If Epstein did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.
Something something cats and laser pointers…
thanks for the story Animal
I’m assuming the various traitors are politically opposed to the confederation, and that whatever they’re being paid is enough that they won’t have to work after being public failures at the security business.
Nonsense! Obviously the traitors have all eaten at Clomonastik’s restaurant, and have fallen deeply in love with Grugell cuisine.
The moon is a hoax.
You’re thinking of birds. Birds aren’t real.
The Moon is not a hoax. It’s the navel where the Earth’s Umbilical cord was attached to the firmament.
Why is it made of cheese then?
The firmament is type of cow.
An intergalactic space cow.
Thus the cheese.
Assume a spherical cow
No! I want a dodecahedral cow!
The tide is fictional.
I thought the tide was high.
You gonna listen to some blonde chick?
The Grugell enraptured the blonde chick.
NASA killed Nicole and OJ!
The moon is a cuck, not a harsh mistress.
Rather funny that today I was reading about a modern take on this traditional Japanese tale about the moon.
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
What is the deal with virtual J-Pop artists?
It was a means for a single person to create an entire pop song. Instrument samples and synths let you do everything but vocals.
Japanese has so fewer sounds than English that it made making artificial singing voices far easier. Coupled with the tech culture and robot focuses it doesn’t surprise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocaloid
NHK World had a program yesterday about virtual artists who write their own songs [sic], complete with crowds waving glow sticks at animated holograms on stage, and the show host interviewing the animated figures. The whole thing creeped me right out.
Somebody is going to turn one of these virtual artists into a waifu pillow — if that hasn’t been done already.
https://dakimakura.store/en/products/hatsune-miku-dakimakura/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku
She was the first voice to get big exposure and who I always think of first. Proper given her name.
Sensei:
I think of Idoru when thinking about virtual actors/musicians.
Same here, Neph – the hardcover is sitting on a shelf about 4 feet to my right and I glanced at it when I read TedSs’ comment.
Neph, I’ve read some Gibson, but not that one.
Do you recommend it?
Sensei:
I probably haven’t read it in 20+ years. From memory it was a decent book, not great.
IIRC, that’s the one where the “main plot” isn’t the point of the book, it’s all about figuring out the backstory.
I haven’t read it in 20+ years. At the time, I thought it was the worst of that trilogy, now, it might be the best.
The Mark Kelly Case Is Bigger Than It Seems
The second sentence of the second paragraph. Nice to know The Atlantic starts obfuscating right from the get go. It was just a simple disagreement.
Its never a big deal when Democrats do it.
It’s really not fair to hide The Atlantic behind the Internet archive…
It rather depends on the disagreement, doesn’t it?
What to order for lunch? No.
Whether to order all the chips for our avionics from China? Yeah, I could see that.
Back to Animal’s story:
Excellent escalation, and yes the colonel would be a good double-cross if he can be kept under control.
“They had nothing like that sort of firepower, but this human didn’t need to know that. They had enough to destroy a good part of the city, and that would certainly do.”
Solid strategy. Bomb folk and scare the shit out of ’em. Especially, were I am alien or a conquistador with massively advanced tech, that’s how I’d play it, with small, but still impressive demonstrations of what I *could* do.
“Now, you wouldn’t want to see me *vengeful,* would you? Good. Chop-fuckin’-chop, then.”
I went to go clean the windows on my suv.
The bottle of cleaner in there was an ice cube.
“Change”
Canada has quietly shifted into a new phase of EV focused industrial policy, not by announcing a dramatic ban or a sweeping mandate, but by changing the arithmetic that governs the automotive market. The federal government has moved away from explicit EV sales quotas and toward steadily tightening fleet average emissions standards, paired with open credit trading and a deliberate trade policy choice that allows large volumes of low cost electric vehicles to enter the country. Taken together, these moves create a system where outcomes are driven by math rather than slogans, and where capital flows predictably toward whoever can deliver the lowest emissions at scale.
The core change is the tightening of fleet average greenhouse gas emissions standards starting in the late 2020s. Instead of requiring that a fixed percentage of vehicles sold be electric, the policy sets a blended emissions target across everything a manufacturer or importer sells in a given model year
How is that different from what has been happening? They will be opening their market to Chinese EVs, apparently.
Math driven outcomes in a rigged market are still bullshit you hoser.
But it’s math driven! Don’t you even Science(tm), bro?
The strategic implication is straightforward. Canada has created a system where legacy automakers can pay for compliance in the short term, including paying EV only manufacturers like BYD, but only while they rebuild their product mix. The longer they delay, the more money flows outward and the higher the eventual adjustment cost becomes. There is no stable equilibrium where a truck heavy fleet can indefinitely buy its way out. The arithmetic closes that door.
Bring back dogsleds.
I am honestly surprised that dogsled tours and/or horse-drawn sleigh tours aren’t a thing up here.
What takes the mandate’s place is a market mechanism that is harder to argue with in public. Fleet-average emissions standards and tradable credits frame the transition as an outcome to be achieved rather than a behaviour to be enforced. Automakers are not told what vehicles to sell. They are told the emissions result they must meet, with flexibility in how they get there. Opponents are left arguing against emissions accounting and market pricing rather than against an explicit quota.
Totally different.
And when GM and Ford close their plants and abandon the Canadian market, you can say bad things about them.
Do battery fires count towards emission limits?
You don’t need to ban something that you can regulate out of existence.
Remind me again, where does that electricity come from? Magic?
I just cut 3 acres with a Troy-bilt push mower for the tight spaces and. a Husqvarna 54″ riding mower for the open spaces. I was running gas motors for just over an hour. I used about one quart of gasoline.
If you use that same quart of gasoline to generate electricity you would not have enough power to edge the front sidewalk.
Electric motors are very good for some applications but for other applications (vehicles) all the waving of magic wands in the world wont make them worth a damned. EV: bad idea.
What forcing mechanism do they use to make the customers buy the products that they don’t want?
Yeah, it’s a not too clever reframing of a tired argument. They’ll all meet their mandates above and beyond when they flee the country or go out of business so enjoy your Chinese made shitboxes you assholes.
What forcing mechanism do they use to make the customers buy the products that they don’t want?
Price, of course. That truck you want hasn’t been banned. You just can’t afford it.
Worse, it won’t even be offered for sale.
Artificially increase the prices of ICEs while artificially decreasing the price of EVs.
Wow, everyone’s “choosing” to buy EVs. No shit…