Violet's Tales of Whoa!

mossfoot

mossfoot
For those of you who are enjoying the story so far, I should point out my author's website is back up and running!

http://www.noahchinnbooks.com/

I've currently got 3 books in print (and ebook, even an audio book!) and some short story collections on Amazon. My fourth novel will be coming out in the near future!

Check out what I've got on offer and spread the word to your fellow book lovers :)
 

mossfoot

mossfoot
The More The Merrier​

The prospector's intel was solid - a pristine metallic ring located on the inner ring of a small gas giant. He must have claimed it before, because it had his name stamped on it on my nav computer. Probably why he wasn't shy about giving it up.

Once the hobo had something to eat and had a shave, I let him into the rest of the ship... though I kept Trouble in my cabin and kept the door locked.

He said his name was Ryan, but I can tell when someone fake names me the first time I use the name back on them. I didn't mind. This guy had his secrets and I had made sure I was the only one on board with a weapon. Didn't need him trying to hijack me to ruin my day.

I spent a while in the ring, long enough to load up with the most valuable metals, and headed back towards the bubble. I figured that would get me my last three percent.

I stopped off at the nearest industrial world, made a few million in metals and exploration data and....

99%

I grit my teeth. Goddammit! Without even thinking I went back to the T-6 and blasted off, heading to parts unknown... well, partially unknown. Unknown to me anyway.
Ryan came out of the shower room drying his hair. "We're leaving now?"

"You're still here?"

"You didn't give me a chance to get off!"

"I've been here an hour!"

"I wanted a shower first!"

"You could have showered on the station!"

"They charge you a credit for that! Besides, it was a Fed station. I'm... I'm not very welcome there."

"Oh for the love of..." I wasn't bothering going back. I had to scratch this itch once and for all. "Get dressed before your junk starts doing the zero-gee hula. I'll drop you off the next time I land."

"Yeah, sure, whatever. You want me to make some mac and cheese for dinner?"

"Alright."

Geeze did THAT sound domestic.

* * * * *​

Ivan had sent me an email. He knew how close I was to reaching Elite in exploration and perhaps anticipated this moment.

The email simply read "In Case Of 99%, Break Glass" and I'm pretty sure he didn't mean my canopy.

The email was just a system name. Not far, only 400LY away. So I went, dragging Ryan the prospecting hobo with me.

I scanned systems along the way, of course. Every little bit helps. But just outside of one gas giant's orbit I came across another wreckage signal. Dropping in, I came across not one, but five escape pods.

Now I was faced with a quandry. Like Ryan, if they weren't already being rescued, then it was probably because they didn't want to be found by official channels. Maybe they had their own S&R that would come for them later. We weren't that far outside the bubble after all.

The other problem was, why they were so eager to stay off the radar. They could very well be pirates. If I picked them up, they would outnumber me by quite a bit.

It didn't take me long to scoop them all up. I decided not to worry, I had safety protocols in place, namely the big red button on my control panel. I turned on the intercom.

"Welcome aboard Mossfoot Spaceways. Your pilot today is Violet Lonsdale. Now that the cargo bay has pressurized, please remain in the cargo area for the remainder of your journey. The cabin and cockpit are for first class passengers only. Any attempt to sneak into first class will result in the immediate expulsion of you and your fellow passengers. The emergency exit is located the same way you came in and only takes one button to open up, so bear that in mind. An in flight meal will be provided, and I understand today you have your choice of mac and cheese or cheese and mac. Thank you for flying Mossfoot Spaceways."

I clicked off the intercom and hailed Ryan to make enough food for seven.
 

mossfoot

mossfoot
The Last Flight of Viaticus Rex II​

Ivan's coordinates were easy enough to follow, but I didn't know exactly what I'd find there. Just that it would be worth a lot.

When I dropped out of Hyperspace and checked the system map, I quickly saw why.

"My God... it's full of stars."

I couldn't resist saying that. I think every Bowman has at some point.

Even Ryan, who annoyingly had taken to hanging out in the cockpit even though he wasn't properly strapped in anywhere, was impressed. Three black holes, fourteen stars, gas giants, and a half dozen worlds that looked ripe for mining.

Ivan wasn't kidding, this system just might help put me over the top, especially combined with all the other finds I had along the way. Sure, none of them were going to be new claims, they'd all been discovered before, but Universal Cartographics is always willing to pay for updated information and fresh surface scans. A snapshot of a system is only so useful, having information over time provides a better picture of what a system is like.

The black holes here weren't impressive like Sagittarius A* had been, just little ones that made the background stars flip over like acrobats. Still, they were worth a pretty penny. I'd always wondered why, though. Not because they were rare. Water Giant worlds, for example, were far rarer, but not worth much at all. Not because they were a navigational hazard, they were easy to avoid--supercruise easily negates the effects its pull. I suspect it has to do with scientific research. Neutron stars are worth almost as much, and they're just shy of a black hole in terms of their nature (though a bit more dangerous due to heat output). I can only assume the effect of gravity on space time are of great interest right now, and certain people are willing to pay a premium price for fresh data.

Once the scan was complete it was time to head back, but something had been bothering me for a while. I wasn't going to take this ship out again in all likelihood. It had become something of a personal mission for me. A challenge, but I was much more at home in The Troubadour docked back in Tellus.

But this had been Mossfoot's home for the longest time. It was the ship he became Ranger M in. That point in history was a mixed bag for him, but it was still defining in a way. It was the first ship we'd bought together, after I woken up in his head. And I realized that in all that time, since he'd been defrosted and I'd come back on the scene, he had never once returned home. Lave.

I never got a chance to ask him why. Word was Lave was far from safe these days, filled with hotheads looking for a fight and pirates trying to claim it as their own. Officially the situation was well in hand and Lave was safe and tourist friendly, unofficially you took your chances going there.

But I wondered if he avoided it because he didn't want to be reminded of his old life anymore. The Navy brat with a rich daddy who'd been, let's face it, a complete jerk. He'd never gotten a chance to reconcile with his father before the end, even though MF had indirectly saved his bacon and made him a hero.

Before we left Lave that last time, before I died, he'd taken me to see his dad's place...albeit from a safe distance. We were on a hill overlooking the city. I wonder if even then he was thinking that was the last time he'd be coming here? I don't know.

I knew where I had to go.

*****​

It turned out the people I'd rescued on route were more than happy with my destination. As I suspected they were of the less law-abiding sort of people, and knew all the right things to say to curious ships passing by to make sure I landed at Lave Station safely. Their people paid well to see members of their crew safely returned.

Ryan got off as well, no doubt planning on going back to whatever hidden secret he'd found out there once he could get a new ship.

Me? I took a shuttle down to the surface while my cartography data uploaded.

I hardly recognized it. Lave used to be a dictatorship, but that had changed a long time ago, and aside from a few preserved historical buildings, everything was different. Everything had been torn down and replaced. Including the house Moss grew up in.

The hill was still there, though not the tree we'd hung out under. This was where I'd told him I was going to die, and what I wanted to do before that. A pointless little gesture based off a movie I loved.

But Moss had lost everything, his old life. We were doing all right for ourselves, but it was freelancers flying around in tin cans and parking at larger tin cans. We had money but couldn't settle down, there was always someone still looking out for us.

Part of him missed having a home, and realized how little he had deserved the one he once had. But he was able to accept that. What he couldn't accept was the idea of me not being around for company. That had led to a visit to Brother Mathias.

Damn... I never asked for any of this. I had been okay with dying. I figured it was my time. But I could tell how hard Moss would have it trying to get along without me. And I figured even if Mathias's proposal was crazy, even if it didn't work, it might at least give Moss some hope.

So I agreed, and look where it got me. Look where it got him.

I got up and left, taking the next shuttle back to Lave Station. This place had too many ghosts, and I was one of them.

My cartography data had uploaded, and there waiting for me in my message box was a congratulatory letter from the Pilots Federation. I was now officially considered Elite among their ranks in exploration. I now had a permit to visit the Shinrarta Dezra system, where the Pilot's Federation was based out of on Founders World.

Apparently the rank came with a hat as well, which had been delivered to the ship by one of the maintenance crew and left on my chair. I picked it up and left the cockpit.

Leaving Viaticus Rex II, I took a last stroll around her. Her green paint was worn and pockmarked, looking like she really had been all over this quadrant of the galaxy. I had the dockers add the Elite logo to the hull, but asked them to make it look just as worn as the rest of the ship. It seemed more fitting than adding a fresh coat.

One of the dockers came up to me to tell me the hull integrity had been fixed and she was ready to fly.

"No. I want to put her into deep storage. Take good care of her. There's a lot of history there."

The docker nodded. "Any idea when you're going to come back for her?"

I put on my Elite hat and gave my wandering boat a final look. "When I need her."

I left. I would catch a ride on a hauler or some other ship heading to Tellus and pick up the Troubadour there. But for now my mind was still on the T-6, and what it represented. I wasn't just leaving the ship behind, or Lave. I was also leaving behind the one thing that I hadn't been able to come to terms with.

Despite the hope Ivan had given me, my further investigation into the Order that Brother Mathias had belonged to had still come up empty. Maybe they had wiped out their records, only to get wiped out themselves afterwards. Yet another dead end, and the last one. It was time to stop living in the past. Time to accept what had happened and move on.

"Goodbye, Mossfoot."

Elite3.jpg
 

mossfoot

mossfoot
Shinrarta Dezra​

The Hauler dropped me off at Telus and I took the Troubadour out of cold storage. Some moron had given her a fresh coat of paint. Sheesh.

Don't ask me why, but there's something inherently pleasing to me about having a posh Imperial Clipper and having the paint job worn down. Feels like taking a rich yuppie and forcing them to live in the wilderness with only a survival knife for a week. Builds character. The Clipper is a great ship, but she looks even better with her hair down and tumbled, if you know what I mean. Find that naughty side to the buttoned up prim and proper librarian and...

...damn I haven't been on a date in ages, have I?

Well, the Troubadour still looked good even with a fresh coat of dark olive paint. Just the kind of style I wanted to arrive at Founders World in. I'd never been there before. Fact was, when I was alive I didn't even know it existed. Much like Sol, it had drifted off into legend until the Old Worlds opened up to the rest of the galaxy again. Long story, and one full of contradicting historical evidence--best not to think about it too hard.

Anyway, I fueled her up, set a course, adjusted my baseball cap, and left.

I wondered what I was going to find there. What kind of secrets did Jameson Memorial station have? Was there a secret handshake? Did I need to pass a secret initiation? Did I get to secretly put out hits on people I didn't like? Were there cookies?

I didn't encounter any trouble in Shinrarta Dezra. It was like any other system... kind of disappointing. Part of me had expected fireworks or our secret Thargoid overlords to show up and dance the can-can. Some kind of revelation. Something big.

Same thing happened at Jameson Memorial orbiting Founders World. Just a station. Ships and parts were cheaper here, I noticed, a Pilot's Federation perk, but that was about it.

I sighed. I made sure Trouble was in her cabin before I left--the last thing you want is a ferret having free reign of a ship twice the size of a jumbo jet when you weren't around. With my luck she'd have taken a nap inside the main thrusters while they cooled. I was sure at least the spacer bar here would be full of interesting people with tales to tell.

Nada. Maybe they were in a different bar on the opposite side of the station. All I had here was a single drunk nursing a shot like it was his last. He looked like fun.

I sighed again and left. I'm not sure what I was hoping to find here. I suppose I felt the thought of leaving Mosfoot behind was supposed to bring some kind of karmic reward to make me feel better. Instead it was the same old same old.

How anticlimatic.

I guess I could have gone to the planet's surface, checked out the sights, learned about the history of the Pilot's Federation. I heard they had a derelict Thargoid ship as a tourist attraction at their main spaceport. Never seen one of those intact before. I decided against it. If there is one true thing about the universe it's this-- if you want meaningful things to happen, you just can't wait for them to happen to you. You have to make them happen.

Back at the hanger I noticed my ship was surrounded by more technicians than usual. Only, it turned out they weren't technicians.

Technicians don't carry guns. Or point them at pilots.

There was one among them who stood out. He vaguely reminded me of Simon from CQC, in that he affected an ethereal elf-like quality to him. Long blond hair, flowing robe, looked like a solid sneeze would knock him on his ass.

"Might I ask if I have the honor of speaking to Mr. Mossfoot, or Miss Violet?" he asked.

My jaw clenched. So much for the hope that these guys had the wrong hanger bay.

When I didn't answer, he simply smiled. "No matter. We'll have plenty of time to be better acquainted soon enough. You are coming with me."

My eyes narrowed. "What for?"

"There's the little matter of what's going on inside your brain. It seems you are connected to a project we have proprietary ownership of, from over a hundred years ago. From a group you may know as the Order? We are very eager to get to the bottom of it all."

I threw my hands up. "Finally! What took you guys so long?"
 

mossfoot

mossfoot
Let Me Pick Your Brain​

Okay, so the goons with guns should have been my first clue that this joker wasn't going to be won over by my charm and diplomacy. I've talked my way out of a number of hairy situations, and into just as many.

In this case it didn't matter either way. The guy already had it in his mind where he wanted me, and it wasn't sitting across from him at a Starbucks sipping a mocha latte and shooting the breeze.

(Geeze, of all the franchises to survive a thousand years...)

He didn't even have the courtesy to say something cheezy like, "Sieze her!" He just pointed, and the guards, guns aimed straight at me, moved to surround me in a wide circle, while two of them moved in to no doubt secure my arms.

But he'd still made a rookie mistake. He'd made it perfectly clear that he wanted me alive. I was in no way under the same obligation.

The moment one guard was behind me ready to restrain my arms, I knew he had to put his gun away to do so. Once one hand was on mine, I knew where the other would have to be. With a twist and spin I had him chicken winged in front of me. The other hand already had his gun, and I was ready to use this meat shield to cover me while I fought my way out of the hanger. It's not like they could fire back.

Turned out I was the one who made the rookie mistake. None of them were carrying live ammo.

One Butch and Sundance freeze frame later and I was one the ground with about fifty tranks in my back, watching the pretty colors before I passed out.

Next thing I knew I was strapped down to a table, hooked up to a bunch of medical devices in a featureless room. Not even a poster on the wall of a kitten hanging onto a tree branch saying "Hang In There." I was pretty sure I was still on Jameson Memorial, but that was only because of the gravity.

See, it didn't have to be like this. If he had just asked nicely, I'd have been more than happy to play along. I wanted answers too, and this guy looked like he might be able to give them or figure them out. But that possibility never registered with him. I was property in his eyes, and the restraints were to ensure that said property wouldn't go wandering off. And he certainly wasn't interested in sharing his findings with me.

The douchebag in question never gave his name, but a guard once called him Simmentor. If I had my galactic politics straight, that meant he was part of the Utopian movement, one of the higher ups. Okay, so what did the Utopians want with little ol' me? I had some theories, but they didn't really make sense. The Utopians were all about cutting edge technology and anything I had in me was over a hundred and fifty years old.

Clearly it was my brain they were interested in, since most of the devices they had were plugged into my head. What little I could see in the way of monitors showed they were watching Mossfoot's brain activity as well as the neural net wrapped around it hitching a ride.

Ordinarily this would be the part of a story where you'd have the villain explain their evil schemes, monologing, boasting, lines like "No, Miss Violet, I expect you to die," all that good stuff. Didn't happen. They weren't even asking me any questions. I tried engaging the doctors and the Simmentor, but they ignored me. I figured if I tried too hard to be annoying and force their hand they'd just sedate me, and I didn't want that. But still, they didn't have to be such jerks about it.

What really should have been worrying me was what that meant down the road. If they weren't talking to me, it was because they didn't want to humanize me, and that meant laser beams and skull caps popping off to get at the gooey center at some point.

Great. Just great.
 
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mossfoot

mossfoot
Enter The Janitor​

Obviously, since I'm dictating this, that did not happen.

I wish I could give a more detailed account of how it happened, but I can't. First there was all kinds of activity and hustle and bustle going on in the room. Then there was an odd high pitched noise, like a severe case of tinnitus, and I passed out. When I came too, there was a face looming over me holding a flashing device over my pried open eyes.

"Are you awake?" he asked, helping me up. I realized I wasn't strapped down any more. Then I realized that there were a whole lot of prone bodies on the ground, including the Simmentor.

I'm a quick study, so I knew that this was some kind of rescue. My rescuer was bald, dressed as a janitor, but whatever he'd been flashing in my eyes hadn't been for sanitizing toilets. Well, I hope not anyway.

"I'm awake. I assume questions come later."

The man nodded. "Yes. Let's move. I'll take you to your ship. We'll talk once we're safe."

I was able to figure out a lot in this short exchange. If the Simmentor's team were at all competent, and they certainly appeared to be, they would not have kept my ship in a regular docking bay, but put it into long term storage. If this guy had already made arrangements to have the ship put back on the main pad, ready for lift off, then he'd planned this escape to the last detail.

Also, it was telling that he was escaping with me on my own ship. If he had come on his own ship he'd be leaving it behind, so odds were he hadn't come on his own ship. So assuming he didn't already live here, which was unlikely, he'd traveled here as a passenger with the intent of escaping with me.

I looked down at the bodies as I grabbed my clothes. They'd stripped me down to boxers and a T-shirt, and I wasn't going out like that. Nobody seemed to be dead. My guess was they were all unconscious and without the janitor's special flashy device would stay that way for a long time.

"Hang on," I said. I went to the Simmentor and mounted his body on top of one of the female doctors in a very compromising way. Maybe I'd get lucky and he'd get his with a reprimand for workplace harassment over it.

I looked around the rooms. "Cameras?"

"Taken care of. We have a clear path to the hanger. Hurry."

"Just one second..." Not able to leave well enough alone, I stuffed the Simmentor's hand down the pants of one of the guards as well.

The bald man sighed. "We don't have time for... oh screw it." He tapped his wristpad and a virtual camera took a picture of the scene. "I'll see to it he gets a copy. Happy?"

"Ecstatic. Let's go."

We hurried down the corridors, the janitor leading the way. "I figure we'll have a ten minute head start by the time we launch. More than enough time to clear this region of space."

"Are they going to track us?"

"They'll try."

"So, not to sound ungrateful, but I'd like to know why you're helping me at some point. Did I get your cat out of a tree or something?"

"Not now. Cameras are off but that doesn't mean something here might not record what we're saying."

It was a fair point, and a good sign that this guy didn't want to take any chances. I noticed two more unconscious bodies along the path we were taking, and another two by the doors leading to the hanger. They seemed like ordinary station staff, not Utopians.

Inside the bay was the Troubadour, surrounded by a half dozen unconscious technicians and dockers. Baldy went out of his way to move those who were laying too close to the landing struts or vertical thrusters.

"Get her prepped. I'll be inside in a second. Do not leave without me."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Baldy."

Something about all this reminded me of how Mossfoot and I escaped from his father's capital ship. His XO had been running a cell of a secret wetwork operation right under his nose, and had planned on disposing both of us once they had what they wanted. Fortunately Moss had known someone on board who was even more burrowed in than they were, albeit it in an entirely self-serving way, and helped orchestrate our escape.

Baldy got in and closed the cargo hatch. "You're all clear. Launch."

"Way ahead of you," I said. The pad was already rotating by the time he joined me on the cockpit.

Suddenly a warning flashed on my HUD: "100,000 Bounty for Murder"

"The hell?"

Baldy shook his head. "Someone must have woken up early. It'll disappear once someone verifies it's in error. In the meantime, they want you shot down and hope you survive getting ejected."

"Like hell," I said, "hold on to your butt." The Troubadour boosted out of the mailslot before the station or anyone else could scan us. After that it didn't take long to make a few random jumps and lose any possible tails.

Now it felt like time to get some answers.
 

mossfoot

mossfoot
Brother Sparks​

Baldy took his time dishing out the answers. First he wanted access to my shipboard computer. Given that I probably owed my life to him, I wasn't about to start getting paranoid about his motives.

Still, I looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing anyway.

His fingers were lightning fast. Every time I tried to ask what he was doing he'd shush me and say "Not yet." He accessed my ship's registry, hacked it, and changed my ship ident completely. I wish I had a camera recording how he did that because that was the sort of thing you expected a team of pirate hackers to take a week to do off in the Anarchy systems, and he did it in half an hour.

"There. That should keep them off your trail for a while."

"Would be nice to know who 'them' are...or you for that matter."

"I suspect telling you my name is Brother Sparks might be...illuminating." He waited for a reaction that didn't come. "That's monk humour."

Though I didn't get the joke, I did see what he was getting at. "You're part of the Order?"

Sparks nodded. "Such as it is. Things have changed since your time. But then, you already know that."

"So those guys treating me like a lab rat were...?"

"Not of the Order. They work for Simguru Pranav Antal of the Utopian movement. The one running that operation was technically my superior. His capturing of you has made it clear that I've underestimated him. I just hope it wasn't fatally."

"For us, I assume?"

"And the Order. After the Old Worlds rejoined the greater galactic community, we continued our work as best we could. But the nature of galactic politics, with the Federation and Empire both vying for our knowledge, as well as other ambitious factions, we decided it was better of we disappeared. As you discovered."

"Wait, you knew I was looking for you?"

Brother Sparks nodded. "Only recently, anyone searching for our history tends to raise certain flags and activate certain alarms. I suspect it might be how the Simmentor found you. But before that I was looking for you, tracking your movements, looking for a discrete opportunity for us to meet. Sadly, that did not go as planned."

"Guess not. So, look, forgive me for being blunt. I love a good revealing exposition as much as the next cinephile, but I kind of need you to get to the point."

Sparks turned in his chair. "I'm guessing I can't delay with the 'All in good time,' tactic?"

"Not unless you want a thousand variations on 'Can you tell me now?' over the next few hours."

"The short version is this--our Order, as you know, is dedicated to preserving life. We do so in a variety of ways. Genetic engineering, bionic implants, cybernetics, nanotechnology, like what was used in Project Cliche to repair and restore your friend's body."

"Project Cliche?"

"The team had originally wanted to call it Project Lazarus, but..."

"Ah. Got it."

"And in our ambitions to achieve the dreams of transhumanism, we also designed bio-organic implants such as yourself."

"Yeah, but I've got to be a hundred years obsolete in that regard."

"Far from it. Project Transporter had dozens of candidates, but only one success. You."

"Okay, so I'm unique, but why does that make the Utopians so eager to take an ice cream scoop to my brain?"

Brother Sparks snorted. "Sorry... I don't get a chance to crack many jokes where I was stationed. It's refreshing to hear sarcasm on this level. The reason they want you is the reason I don't want them to have you. Antal's Utopian vision has many merits, but he's far from saintly in the eyes of the Order. At first our focus was to help their more worthy goals, but as of late we've spent more time trying to hinder them, unseen, on their less noble pursuits."

"Well, that was a heck of a hindering you did back on the station," I said. "We might have been better off if you made that hindering a bit more permanent, though."

Sparks sighed. "We abhor violence and refuse to use it, but we recognize it is part of the natural order of things. If we didn't we certainly wouldn't spend so much time saving pilots that are hell bent on blowing each other up all the time. But we also believe that personal free will is part of the natural order of things as well. Antal, or at least many of those who champion his vision, do not."

"Still not following you."

"Project Cliche was simply advanced means to preserve and revive a pilot's body. Many of those techniques have been incorporated by the galaxy at large. Project Transporter, however, was an attempt to save a pilot's mind, for when even the body couldn't be recovered. But the means to do so is something that could be exploited in terrible ways. You've already experienced one of them."

I thought about it. "Mossfoot's dead because of me?"

Sparks shook his head. "Don't look at it that way, and don't blame yourself. Of course, Mr Mossfoot's case was an exception. Transporter was never meant to be used on a brain-functional human, but rather applied to a brain dead one. It was tested on brain-dead bodies at first, but it was hoped to be the last hurdle in making cloning a viable alternative for human life extension."

"Immortality," I said, half to myself.

"After a fashion. But it failed. Revived patients eventually degraded and went vegetative or homicidal. Project Transporter was scrapped shortly after you and Mossfoot disappeared."

"So these Utopians want to know why I work so we can all get our own personal Konami cheat code?"

"Perhaps that would be their line officially, if it ever became public. But I'm afraid far more sinister ideas are at play. Transporter didn't just allow for the transferring of memories and consciousness, it allows for their manipulation as well."

I felt a chill at the way he said that. "I think I see where this is going."

"Only in part. Yes, the technology could apply to their already effective reeducation techniques, but consider this. Imagine a population implanted with your technology, intended a backup. Personalities stored online and updated regularly so that even if the body was vaporized the last version could be uploaded to a new body, once it had grown."

"Right..."

"Now imagine that implant had a second personality attached to it. One suited to a ruling factions needs. Perhaps copies of various approved ideal subjects, perhaps something wholly artificial. And at the flip of a switch, so to speak..."

"They go all Violet."

"Precisely. The primary personality is destroyed or suppressed and the dormant personality takes over."

"Free will becomes a luxury, not a right."

"I fear it would be much worse than that. There are those within the Utopian movement who wouldn't see its use as something to only apply to dissidents, but to everyone, all at once, for the greater good. The final stage of their perfect vision, where all are one."

"Ugh. I'm getting shades of Emperor Palpatine here."

Brother Sparks frowned. "Sorry?"

"Never mind. Old Star Wars joke. Order 66 and all that. Palpatine is Antal in this case."

"Actually, whether Antal himself would approve, I have no idea. But I do know that those who are striving towards this goal would have no problem converting him as well, if it came to that."

"So, long story short, you don't want my brain falling into the wrong hands." Now there was a mental image I could have done without. Even heard a 'sploot' in my head as it slapped onto the Simmentor's hands...

"Yes."

"So how do you plan to do that? A pragmatic person would just kill me, but killing isn't your thing."

"Correct."

"And believe me, I'm grateful. I'd rather avoid that option."

"As would we. You have much to teach us that would be beneficial to the preservation of life, if properly understood."

My eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure you should have access to it either. Let me be clear about something right now. As much as I'd like to stick around, I overcame my fear of death a hundred and fifty years ago. As far as I'm concerned, I'm already dead. I have no qualms about setting sticking my head in the main drive and turning on the afterburners if it keeps this Pandora's box out of everyone's hands. Yours included."

Brother Sparks seemed to assess me, as if determining if I was serious or all talk. He nodded. I think he decided it was the former.

"Now, about hiding out. You can't exactly give me plastic surgery. Believe me, we tried. It goes right back to fire burn victim chic. Facial recognition is going to spot us somewhere eventually."

"I believe I have a solution to that, but first I need you to set course for Sol."

"Sol? Why?"

"Because your survival, and that of my Order, depends on certain information being deleted or otherwise corrupted. Our Order is already in the process of destroying everything we have on Polevnic and evacuating, but Antal's people aren't the only ones interested in you. Your case is being tracked by the Geneva Medical Research Laboratory on Earth. And once they learn that the Utopians have made their move, it won't be long before the Federation make theirs."
 
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Futuristic Kung Fu

Futuristic Kung Fu
Mr. Mossfoot. I regret to inform you that this is pure awesomeness. Also the monk joke is really old... 1000s of years old by 3301. And great references. And great everything. Being a supporter of Utopia, I find some of those ideas oddly tempting. Maybe because of my avatar? (Long story)
 
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Adept Geraden

Adept Geraden
Futuristic Kung Fu said:
Mr. Mossfoot. I regret to inform you that this is pure awesomeness. Also the monk joke is really old... 1000s of years old by 3301. And great references. And great everything. Being a supporter of Utopia, I find some of those ideas oddly tempting. Maybe because of my avatar? (Long story)
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I'll second that motion.
 
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