(this is actually prelude stuff for an rp that is ongoing on a virtual world setup, but I thought i'd share this)
Beginnings
Citizen Ioan Spir, Commander Eastern Coalition Advanced Tactical Engineering Squadron
Having been beneficial to these hearings and the War Crimes Tribunal, and having voluntarily surrendered rather than flee to the Warlord States, he has been offered settlement on the Moon. He will be required identity reassignment and sterilization. Terms of his sentence have been reduced to exile from Planet Earth.
Minutes of the United Earth Peace and Reconciliation Hearings
Columbo, Sri Lanka, March 1, 2069
His room, if one could call it that, was a white capsule with enough room for one to sleep in, and to sit up, if the occupant stooped their shoulders. It had a screen for network data access and entertainment. It had a shelf for a few possessions. It had a flat screen view of the moon outside that could be flipped to beautiful views of non-ravaged areas of Earth, pretending to be a window. He always left it on the beautiful desolation of Luna, even in 14 days of lunar night, when the land was pitch dark and only the stars could be seen.
Apart from the fake window, it was not that far different from accommodations through most of his life. This part of Luna Colony had just started to adopt artificial gravity panels, to the consternation of the long termers who had allowed their muscles to atrophy. The long stair cases between levels designed for that strange lunar stride were being rebuilt, but adaptation was difficult.
Spir did not have to adapt. Seven years on the moon had not affected him physically in the least. His body had been designed to resist muscular-skeletal atrophy. It was an adaptation that would have once been a necessity if the Moon and Mars were to have been colonized. Now that genetic augmentation, like the rest of him, was mostly a technological cul de sac. Unlike the other long-timers, he welcomed the return to gravity, the natural effort.
Emails flashed up, another neighbor asking him to join a petition for Colony Council to lower the gravity back in the old areas of the station. And some desperate parent wrote, believing augment blood could cure leukemia. He ignored the first. He directed the latter to the Vulcan Medical Exchange. They had a real cure.
Generally, he laid low. He did his job at Life Support, kept his interactions with others to a minimum. He’d been attacked physically before. Always angry pugilist miners with past grievances, bottled rotgut enabling historical justifications. He even let them get a hit or two in before throwing them with augmented strength down the corridor. The last one had been the sixth to be allowed a few punches on Spir. The local equivalent of police did not care. One day soon it might not be mere punches. If there would be a seventh, then they would bring knives or a something worse. That day would not come.
Spir kept the law except in one respect. Hidden under his mattress, like a prisoner’s shank, he’d built a small, crude, effective little plasma pistol, and left it unregistered. He’d completed it the night before. Crude, heavy, and undetectable until used or taken past the scanners. It had enough power in its supercap for a single shot. And that’s all it would take, really.
Poison was one way to go, but he had to face the reality that it might not work, and he hated incomplete jobs. Simply stepping out the airlock and opening his suit disturbed him for reasons that might seem silly to others. Space: the void, was a beauty to him, the final frontier. The natural world was marred by death, a never-ending cycle of violence. It should never be spread to a new home, even acts of self-violence. He could not cut his wrists and expect to die before his body healed itself. There were penalties for being new, for being better.
So he held the plasma pistol to his temple. He felt the emitter nozzle on his skin. There was no note to write. No confessions to make. E-Con was not going to have veteran’s associations or glorious parades around the squares of towns that no longer existed. He could not remember what the fighting had been for or what it had ever meant. There was something new in the air, there was hope, but he was not part of it. And it was time to go, and go without any fuss.
His finger squeezed the trigger. All that happened was a silly “BOING!” noise from some old cartoon emanating from within the weapon’s modified innards, followed by the voice of a Tanzanian accented man saying “Cease Fire. That will be enough of that Spir. Meet me in Hangar 27 store room. Leave the heater.”
“Sit down. There.” the man said. He was dark brown, lanky, wearing a flight suit at least twenty years old. He looked like an old Lunarian, himself, but Spir had never seen him. He was perched on a fuel barrel, sitting on it like a chair. He pointed to another towards Spir. He spoke with authority and Spir found himself in inadvertently following orders.
“Making a weapon might get you in a bit of trouble, comrade Jon” the other said, then laughed, “Of course, they can only punish you by taking away the privileges you never use anyway. Are you tired of punishing yourself? You could have let the governments do that better, you know. By the way, I’m Abe Guduza.. yes THAT Guduza.”
Spir looked at the man, without recognizing him. That seemed to irk Guduza. “Good Ooza” he repeated, “I don’t know you.”
This Guduza shrugged it off, “Well, that’s.” he paused, “that's no good. You should watch movies. Crack open the wiki.Read it. It does not matter. I know YOU. Are you tired of fixing air vents on this station? CO2 scrubbers? They’re going to replace you with a robot at this rate, you know.”
Spir sat a little straighter, “Employment on the colony is guaranteed. Look, whoever you are, you broke into my apartment, you messed with my work. Fine. Report me. I will just build another. “
Guduza looked seriously at him for a moment, “I would rather you built me something else. Something besides a brain-fryer. Well, maybe not build it. Maybe instead help me keep it running.” He flashed an honest-to-God piece of paper at him, a hint of some ringed ship with markings and numbers.
“She’s supposed to be a passenger liner for high speed travel between Earth and Jupiter.” Guduza said, “But I think we might be able to do better. What do you think?”
Spir said nothing. This did not feel official. It felt like something that should be official but was not, and that meant something was not quite right.
“You were required to change your name but you basically threw your middle finger at the tribunal and renamed yourself the same damned thing,” Guduza said, “This I liked, I must admit. But then I wondered why you did that. Your name doesn’t mean shit. It was randomly assigned when they pulled your ugly augmented fetus out of a rented womb.”
Spir kept his calm. He felt oddly serene. He ought to be dead. “Does your name mean shit?” he asked this strange fellow.
“No idea!” Guduza answered quickly, laughing, “I should have made up some bullshit for you about my ancestors, maybe thrown in some lions and warriors. But then you don’t care about origins any more than I do. Fuck origins. We want outside of THIS.” he pointed at the gray aluminum bulkheads all around them.
Guduza continued, “Like you, I decide who I am, always. I want that for everyone. I am no sap. I want that because it is necessary. We have a duty. Let me explain something, Spir, I am not here to guilt you. The war is over. We did what we did. Maybe we go to Hell when we die, maybe it is just lights-out, forever. I do not know. I am concerned about what will happen now. The world is far from saved just because those space-elves landed on Montana. And you know that. But we can build from it. We’re going to save our species from itself, by giving it a new journey, and this is how we start that trek.”
Spir looked at the drawing again, and then another piece of paper was shown. Paper was not cheap. It was for things you did not want on official records. It was for intense letters between lovers, contracts for things that no law would uphold, for pages of history that would never be searchable because the past hurt too much to too many. But this paper intrigued him.
United Earth Space Probe Agency: APPLICATION FOR OFFICIAL SERVICE
He took it. Guduza nodded, and said, “We’ll talk about your uniform size. And somewhere along the way, I need to describe to you a project you might like.”
Beginnings
Citizen Ioan Spir, Commander Eastern Coalition Advanced Tactical Engineering Squadron
Having been beneficial to these hearings and the War Crimes Tribunal, and having voluntarily surrendered rather than flee to the Warlord States, he has been offered settlement on the Moon. He will be required identity reassignment and sterilization. Terms of his sentence have been reduced to exile from Planet Earth.
Minutes of the United Earth Peace and Reconciliation Hearings
Columbo, Sri Lanka, March 1, 2069
His room, if one could call it that, was a white capsule with enough room for one to sleep in, and to sit up, if the occupant stooped their shoulders. It had a screen for network data access and entertainment. It had a shelf for a few possessions. It had a flat screen view of the moon outside that could be flipped to beautiful views of non-ravaged areas of Earth, pretending to be a window. He always left it on the beautiful desolation of Luna, even in 14 days of lunar night, when the land was pitch dark and only the stars could be seen.
Apart from the fake window, it was not that far different from accommodations through most of his life. This part of Luna Colony had just started to adopt artificial gravity panels, to the consternation of the long termers who had allowed their muscles to atrophy. The long stair cases between levels designed for that strange lunar stride were being rebuilt, but adaptation was difficult.
Spir did not have to adapt. Seven years on the moon had not affected him physically in the least. His body had been designed to resist muscular-skeletal atrophy. It was an adaptation that would have once been a necessity if the Moon and Mars were to have been colonized. Now that genetic augmentation, like the rest of him, was mostly a technological cul de sac. Unlike the other long-timers, he welcomed the return to gravity, the natural effort.
Emails flashed up, another neighbor asking him to join a petition for Colony Council to lower the gravity back in the old areas of the station. And some desperate parent wrote, believing augment blood could cure leukemia. He ignored the first. He directed the latter to the Vulcan Medical Exchange. They had a real cure.
Generally, he laid low. He did his job at Life Support, kept his interactions with others to a minimum. He’d been attacked physically before. Always angry pugilist miners with past grievances, bottled rotgut enabling historical justifications. He even let them get a hit or two in before throwing them with augmented strength down the corridor. The last one had been the sixth to be allowed a few punches on Spir. The local equivalent of police did not care. One day soon it might not be mere punches. If there would be a seventh, then they would bring knives or a something worse. That day would not come.
Spir kept the law except in one respect. Hidden under his mattress, like a prisoner’s shank, he’d built a small, crude, effective little plasma pistol, and left it unregistered. He’d completed it the night before. Crude, heavy, and undetectable until used or taken past the scanners. It had enough power in its supercap for a single shot. And that’s all it would take, really.
Poison was one way to go, but he had to face the reality that it might not work, and he hated incomplete jobs. Simply stepping out the airlock and opening his suit disturbed him for reasons that might seem silly to others. Space: the void, was a beauty to him, the final frontier. The natural world was marred by death, a never-ending cycle of violence. It should never be spread to a new home, even acts of self-violence. He could not cut his wrists and expect to die before his body healed itself. There were penalties for being new, for being better.
So he held the plasma pistol to his temple. He felt the emitter nozzle on his skin. There was no note to write. No confessions to make. E-Con was not going to have veteran’s associations or glorious parades around the squares of towns that no longer existed. He could not remember what the fighting had been for or what it had ever meant. There was something new in the air, there was hope, but he was not part of it. And it was time to go, and go without any fuss.
His finger squeezed the trigger. All that happened was a silly “BOING!” noise from some old cartoon emanating from within the weapon’s modified innards, followed by the voice of a Tanzanian accented man saying “Cease Fire. That will be enough of that Spir. Meet me in Hangar 27 store room. Leave the heater.”
“Sit down. There.” the man said. He was dark brown, lanky, wearing a flight suit at least twenty years old. He looked like an old Lunarian, himself, but Spir had never seen him. He was perched on a fuel barrel, sitting on it like a chair. He pointed to another towards Spir. He spoke with authority and Spir found himself in inadvertently following orders.
“Making a weapon might get you in a bit of trouble, comrade Jon” the other said, then laughed, “Of course, they can only punish you by taking away the privileges you never use anyway. Are you tired of punishing yourself? You could have let the governments do that better, you know. By the way, I’m Abe Guduza.. yes THAT Guduza.”
Spir looked at the man, without recognizing him. That seemed to irk Guduza. “Good Ooza” he repeated, “I don’t know you.”
This Guduza shrugged it off, “Well, that’s.” he paused, “that's no good. You should watch movies. Crack open the wiki.Read it. It does not matter. I know YOU. Are you tired of fixing air vents on this station? CO2 scrubbers? They’re going to replace you with a robot at this rate, you know.”
Spir sat a little straighter, “Employment on the colony is guaranteed. Look, whoever you are, you broke into my apartment, you messed with my work. Fine. Report me. I will just build another. “
Guduza looked seriously at him for a moment, “I would rather you built me something else. Something besides a brain-fryer. Well, maybe not build it. Maybe instead help me keep it running.” He flashed an honest-to-God piece of paper at him, a hint of some ringed ship with markings and numbers.
“She’s supposed to be a passenger liner for high speed travel between Earth and Jupiter.” Guduza said, “But I think we might be able to do better. What do you think?”
Spir said nothing. This did not feel official. It felt like something that should be official but was not, and that meant something was not quite right.
“You were required to change your name but you basically threw your middle finger at the tribunal and renamed yourself the same damned thing,” Guduza said, “This I liked, I must admit. But then I wondered why you did that. Your name doesn’t mean shit. It was randomly assigned when they pulled your ugly augmented fetus out of a rented womb.”
Spir kept his calm. He felt oddly serene. He ought to be dead. “Does your name mean shit?” he asked this strange fellow.
“No idea!” Guduza answered quickly, laughing, “I should have made up some bullshit for you about my ancestors, maybe thrown in some lions and warriors. But then you don’t care about origins any more than I do. Fuck origins. We want outside of THIS.” he pointed at the gray aluminum bulkheads all around them.
Guduza continued, “Like you, I decide who I am, always. I want that for everyone. I am no sap. I want that because it is necessary. We have a duty. Let me explain something, Spir, I am not here to guilt you. The war is over. We did what we did. Maybe we go to Hell when we die, maybe it is just lights-out, forever. I do not know. I am concerned about what will happen now. The world is far from saved just because those space-elves landed on Montana. And you know that. But we can build from it. We’re going to save our species from itself, by giving it a new journey, and this is how we start that trek.”
Spir looked at the drawing again, and then another piece of paper was shown. Paper was not cheap. It was for things you did not want on official records. It was for intense letters between lovers, contracts for things that no law would uphold, for pages of history that would never be searchable because the past hurt too much to too many. But this paper intrigued him.
United Earth Space Probe Agency: APPLICATION FOR OFFICIAL SERVICE
He took it. Guduza nodded, and said, “We’ll talk about your uniform size. And somewhere along the way, I need to describe to you a project you might like.”
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