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The insight that a game like Alpha Centauri has into the truth of politics is surprising.

There are seven factions. The Greens, the Despots, the Fundamentalists, the Humanitarians, the Survivalists, the Capitalists, and the Scientists. Each has a distinct vision of the new world, and each follows greatly different policies, domestically and abroad. They all have glaring weaknesses and shining strengths. And yet, when it comes down to it, the sucess of each state is defined by the skill of their leadership. The Capitalists are rarely much of a splash on the world stage, but their cities are grand and rich. The Despots are a pain in everyone's arse, but they require force to maintain their way of life.

I did much thought. They all could suceed, at their own goals. The question was, what goals did I value? And how would I, as a real leader in that situation, react? What faction would I join?

I chose the Survivalists. In effect, the Militarists. Not oppressive, but often aggressive. First, I said, was stability and power. Then was the foundation laid for everything else we persued.

I became the most powerful leader on the Planet, because I managed my faction more skillfully. The Humanitarians unconditionally surrendered after I seized U.N. Headquarters with my commando units. The Greens did similarly when I captured or destroyed half the cities in their territory. The Scientists ended up killing off the Capitalists, and the Fundamentalists and the Despots went for eachother's throats.

Out of all of it, I called a Planetary Council meeting, easily got the U.N. Charter repealed, then elected myself Planetary Governor (I made the Greens and Humanitarians vote for me).

Would it surprise you that we had an extremely efficent economy, our government was a pillar of democracy, and we carefully weighed all of our actions on the environment? These decisions were all made in the persuit of our core values. Strength and Power. We chose Democracy and Green economics to compliment our persuit of stength and power. In the process, we became grudgingly acceptable leaders to both the Greens and the Humanitarians. When the Scientist faction tried to vote me out of power as governor, both factions defended me, and simply I abstained the entire compliment of council votes I had. I didn't need to oppose the movement -- through strength, and by proving that I concurred with the values of my conquered, I had enough friends that I didn't need to flaunt my own power.

And that is true power. We were militarists, but our economy, our human rights, our environment, all were great. Why? Because we had a good leader, and all those measures were appropriate for our goal of power.

And that's why I picked them. Because true strength and power encompases all aspects of our nation, down to the allies we held (and our measures to ensure that they remained loyal after their surrender).

The Caretakers were interesting to play, but I was left feeling unsatisfied. It was nice having such quick ability to capture mind worms, and the blood feud with the Usurpers was also entertaining, as they were the first faction I ran into. Pouring my forces against them and beating them back was satisfying, and the moment that I crushed them finally was the time that I felt most in the role that I was cast to -- I was the Progenetor race, the Caretakers. And we had destroyed the Usurpers. The fact that they escaped in a pod to recolonize elsewhere on the planet, a second chance, deflated the moment. The epic victory wasn't very epic when they came back to life. On the other side of the planet. Behind a bunch of humans.

Besides the first feud, I never really felt alien. I just felt like a dork. Especially when all the humans were treating me the same way they would anyone else, even mocking my alien nature. When I'd make a treaty with the humans, the game would lecture me on trade and commerce. Can't trade with the aliens, only humans give you trade bonuses. I didn't feel like an alien, the game wasn't treating me like one.

The treatment of the story didn't do much for me either. I had no sense of direction. Kill the Usurpers, but after that, then what? Build? To what end? The ends given in the story weren't built into the game. I had no ends to persue, just another hunt for the Usurpers, because my victory was hollow.

The real shaking defeat to the playstyle was the lack of satisfying diplomacy. I couldn't talk with the Usurpers. I couldn't participate in the UN-style human planetary government. I couldn't make real treaties with the humans collectively. It didn't feel important, I just felt like a mutated human who couldn't talk right. The fact that I was building the human genome project and researching secrets of the human brain, just like any other human, only made this worse.

While playing as a Progenetor was unsatisfying, there are also aspects of diplomacy that I found wanting even with the humans. The computer players were just so aggressive. If they didn't like your government picks, they tried to kill you. Never mind that war might be more damaging than whatever influence you're having.

I liked the planetary government in Alpha Centauri. Elect a governor, run measures by. But what if one of the faction members got out of hand? Could you enact trade sanctions against them? No, but it would have been handy, and it would have helped in the war.

Putting thought to it, and the methods through which war was conducted, I have to conclude that there's room for a new genre of empire-building strategy gaming, based not on Civilization's model, but based on models of modern war games, adapted to a more versatile gameplay. I'm convinced that most, if not all modern strategy games do a horrible job of modeling diplomacy. They're generations behind the times, and unfortunately, all games are like this. They go for simple diplomacy. It doesn't need to be hard and complex.

Master of Orion III aimed for a level of macromanagement suitable to define a new genre of strategy games. But they flaked, partially because they were working with a conflicting pre-established base of expectations (the MOO series), and partially because they fell victim to "Publisher Juggling".

Games can't reproduce reality, but they can imitate it. There's still room for more and better imitation at the top, and we're not at all cinched by technical limitations. The lack of having fulfilled this next barrier is due to a lack of creativity, leadership, and funding directed towards pushing the next envelope.

Civilization defined the genre as "creating history". That's beautiful, but it's not what I envision. Simulating leading an empire is different from simulating history. Civilization is about history. Warcraft and Age of Empires are about resource management and tactics. None of them are about leading an empire.

Sparta Prime was the last holdout those who inhabited it knew of, for a faction on the edge of extinction. It was truly extinction, and not simply conquest – the cruel atrocities committed by Chairman Yang’s “Human Hive” stretched from Nerve Stapling their defeated and subjecting them to mind control, down to the method by which they dismantled the Sparta Empire. Many felt that the religious fanatics under Sister Miriam would hold out against the Human Hive when it came to war between them, and while they were allied in name, and frequently assisted each other in good faith, all knew their military alliance, only from convenience, would not last. When Miriam’s faction sneak attacked the Human Hive, the Hive navy swept over the Sea of God, and within a few years Miriam was all but powerless. The factions under Zacharov and Deidre, both peace-loving peoples, were Yang’s pawns after their unconditional surrenders, and Deidre’s pacifist forces were the ones that finally captured Miriam herself.

Sparta was strong, and its Navy was not to be trifled with. But back in the days when Miriam and Yang were allied, they pushed through legislation in the Planetary Council repealing all legitimacy for war crimes repartitions, effectively legalizing the most horrific practices and weapons. They did not utilize this greatly at first – rumors held that Miriam had attempted to use Nerve Gas to hold off Yang’s ground troops in the final war – but that would change.

The war between Sparta and the Hive was not one with many naval battles, as they had expected. It was not a sweeping defeat, as the war between Miriam’s Believers and the Hive had been. It was a massacre. All knew and stood clear of the Hive’s Planetbuster missile capacity, but had faith in the decisions of the world to unite against any who used it. Chairman Yang used the repeal of the war crimes legislation to justify the full use of their arsenal upon the Sparta Empire.

The continent was reduced to a series of islands, and of the few lowland cities that were left, the Hive constantly melted the polar ice caps, the sea swallowing up miles upon miles of land. The cities that constructed pressure domes so as to survive underwater were fallen upon by the Hive’s enormous Navy.

And as far as they knew, only Sparta Prime remained. It was the capitol of the former empire, but was small in size. The Hive had made large and populous cities their main target, and disregarded the capitol. Somehow, they had survived. And they continued to do so.

The sea always rose. Every year, it grew higher and higher. Sparta Prime was over a mile above sea level, and yet at the rate the sea rose, it was likely that Yang’s Navy would be able to fall upon them in but a few decades. Already they pulled towards shore, and bombarded the city from afar, with devastating weapons harnessing technology that was lost in Sparta. Their only defenses were a few pieces of artillery, some militia, a number of anti-aircraft guns, perimeter sensors, and their single Needlejet bomber. The Needlejet was the only thing that truly threatened the Hive, for it could fly out great distances beyond their city without refueling, and excelled at attacking passing Hive ships, even military warships.

Gone are the old days when people needed to know everything about living a well-balanced and happy life. Now it is increasingly common and affordable to hire professional Life Managers to take care of your life. Health, jobs, home, relationship advice, every question, every concern, the Life Managers will assist with. Your finances, major purchases, career decisions, all are in the hands of professionals. Life, for you, is not a matter of choice. It is a matter of having the best quality of life, contributing the most to society, and fulfilling your role as a part of the quest for greater good.

Advances in biology have made genetic engeneering cheaper, safer, and more comprehensive than ever before. A new tide of genetically engineered children have begun to appear in schools around the world's most advanced countries. Though highly controvertial, these Gene Children are stonger, smarter, healthier, and more beautiful than their ancestors.

The internet has become instantaneous worldwide, a perfect network supercomputer. Search and research databases such as the World Library give access to millions of books at standard fees, while Colleges and Universities stockpile vast free electronic libraries of books. Wireless technology and the spread of small computers has led to billions of people in developed countries such as China, Europe, America, Russia, and Japan being networked together in all waking hours of their lives.

Dark and foggy, the ship sat in a vacant cove. The moon was slim. The man was out on the deck -- how they let him get on the deck is a mere contrivance, it was their problem. He looked beaten and worn down. They gave him his food, but he could taste that it was poisoned. He saved it as long as possible, then ate it. If he didn't, they would kill him directly. He snuck to the edge of the ship, they could probably see him soon, but so far so good... he had to make a run for it, and there was no way they wouldn't hear the splash. He moved, and one of the brutes shouted and hurled a large metal pipe. He was just able to twist his body in time to catch it as the weight and inertia threw him backwards onto the railing, and he allowed it to carry him over and down, tumbling into the water as a spray of machine gun fire filled his shadow. He let himself sink with the pipe, and urinated -- the head on the ship strapped on infrared goggles and stared down the sights of an AK-74 into the water, only to see the warm spray of blood and a figure fading deep into the cold water with the weight of the pipe. Why was the pipe still attached? Did it drive that deep into him? There was a lot of blood. The head lined up the shot and dumped bullets straight down into the water, possibly to ensure the death of the escapee. He did not know the man had already left his line of sight, releasing the pipe once under the cover of depth, and swimming under the idle ship to the other side. At the head's orders, several people rained bullets off the side of the ship, but it would do no good. The gunfire masked the sound of the man surfacing on the other side of the ship, breathing deeply, and diving under again. They would look everywhere, with the spotlight, in all directions, but the fog would prevent them from finding him. The shore was not far, he had seen it in daylight. Once safely on land and as soon as he felt reasonable, he made himself sick to rid himself of as much of the poison he had ingested as possible. They would come to think the poison surely killed him, if the depth and the pipe and the bullets and the cold did not. They would be wrong. He lived.

Lukas and Trevon were lively brothers, both highly excitable and inquisitive. The clan knew they were different from the rest of them, that they were somehow more, and there was a curious impression that Abram favored them as well, though no one could explain why if asked about it directly. So while Stephen was surprised to have them ask about the beginning (none of the other children had any interest in history, let alone two of them), he was not too shocked by it. Stephen told them to come meet him at the memory stone later. He didn't specify a time, because in this world they lived in, there was no way to measure the passage of time. The land was always bright, and the sky was always covered in stars. They slept and ate and played as they pleased.

It was all the vibrant pair could do to keep from going up onto the bluff where the memory stone lay and just wait there, eating carrots and chasing insects around, until Stephen decided to arrive. When neither could keep the other's patience any longer, they proceeded together up the 'elevator' (that's what Abram called it) and onto the bluff. Stephen was already waiting, sitting with his back against one of the trees and looking out over the small plains below, and the towering trees networked with bridges and huts (they must be of Abram's doing, as the clan had never made anything), beyond which the top of the outside of their turn was visible before sharply vanishing into the sky.

"Maybe Stephan tell Lukas James?" Lukas jumped into a crouch next to Stephen and flashed him a charming grin that didn't hide any of his enthusiasm. Stephen laughed and stood up, walking over to the memory stone. It was a tall box of hard stone, with the top half carved into the perfect likeness of two clan members frolicking together. It was vague enough, and at the same time beautiful enough, to have been any of them.

"Lukas come push stone," Stephen urged. "Trevon come push stone." He placed a hand on the cool side of the memory stone and waited as the two moved up next to him and did the same. "Push stone," he repeated, and they pressed inward. A slab of the memory stone slid inward, and moved aside smoothly, exposing a set of stairs leading downward. "Lukas come. Trevon come."

They followed him down the steps into a room they had never been to under the bluff, one cut off from the rest of the rooms that Abram had for them. The stairs opened into a large room, where an enormous piece of machinery, the size of the learning machine, dominated everything. They had never seen anything like it.

"Look machine," Stephen insisted, as he quickly walked over to the center of it, and reached up to a dull green button, almost out of his reach, and pressed it in firmly. "Wait." Two bright lights flooded over a pair of blank panels, and the green button brightened. Stephen climbed up one side of the machine, and grabbed something hanging out one side, leaning precariously out from his perch to reach a second large, dull button, that he depressed with slight difficulty. "Look James." Stephen jumped down as rapidly changing pictures flashed across the screens briefly, and turned as they coalesced to form a picture of the deepest room in the bluff that the clan could go to.

Explaining the story to the children would be nearly impossible, Stephen realized, with only what little language they had. But as he looked back toward the children, already intently focused on the machine and its pictures and screens, he saw Abram quietly watching from a corner of the room. If he failed, if he needed the words, Abram would help. Gathering his courage, Stephen turned back to the screens again and focused on the image above. Yes, how to begin...

One who lives forever does not have to be impatient.

It seems that all great stories are about simple people who grow and discover they are great. If they have some fantastic aspect of their birth, it does not make them so alien that the reader cannot relate. Archetypally, I may be one of those simple characters who are surrounded with great people and learn and grow into my role. But in the context of the world this story is set into, I am a fantastic character, one grown from the flights of fancy by daydreamers and artists. I don't mean that they are my true source, so to speak, but that you would know people of my form only through those methods.

In my own context, I am not so fantastic. In my world, greatness by your standards is commonplace. I for one, am immortal. Not only ageless but truly immortal -- disease and injury can afflict me only until my life is threatened. Truly incredible ways of destroying people such as myself have been devised throughout history, but none has ever been successful. This quest to kill immortals is one of the plot arcs of this story.

Generations and history have passed, and I have seen more than my fair share of humanity, and many have even revered me. I have been regarded as a god, an angel, a benefactor, and a friend. But a god I have never been, and I will not make that claim -- nor am I an angel, and I have never met one either. The lord over this world is a being that is protected by mystery even against people such as myself. We call him the Judge. He created this world, and created us. At our birth, we were to be the rulers of mankind. Everlasting, always garnering wisdom and knowledge, with memory of generations of mistakes by humanity, so that we could lead the ascent of humanity to become what you might consider gods in their own right. Whether the failure of this plan was an aspect of the Judge's intentions, or an error in the Judge's designs, it is fact: Today the world is ruled by moral men, and we are wraith-like shadows of our former glory.

In history I had great powers, you might call them magic, to go with immortality. I came from the eastern continents, and traveled to the west. The first people I met in the Americas, at that time undiscovered by the speakers of this language, named me Dancer of Worlds. I have kept that name throughout the rest of history, and through many languages. These people knew me as my glorious self, when I had the magic of my birth, but since I have been stripped of those powers by morals. Do not forget that humanity was intended to become like gods -- their powers are not to be underestimated. Those who have discovered ways of tapping their potential have done things that before could only be imagined. Many in humanity have sought be become more than themselves. This search for human immortality in its own right is another of the plot arcs of this story.

My powers were stripped by an organization that has fought through generations to establish humanity as the supreme power of the world. They seek to destroy immortals and grant their powers to their own race, and even to deny -- and when that became impossible, destroy -- the Judge. I will call this organization the Illuminati. That is not their real name, but it will work very well, and I intend to keep to that name throughout this book. My knowledge of them was limited at the time of this story's beginning, and so I will tell you more about them simply through the narration of my experiences.

This book is not a call to action. I submit this for your entertainment and enjoyment. If you see fit to believe its contents, then you may pass your own judgment. I will not ask for your help, and nor will I accept it. The royalties of the price that you paid for this book, if you even did, will be all that I will take.

I do not believe in fate. Neither should you.

DANCER OF WORLDS

Over the weekend Alene was vacationing at the beach with Grandma Joyce. It was just Norm and I, and Norm invited a bunch of friends over for a LAN party in the basement last night. There were seven guests, plus Norm, and I also participated. We played America's Army and Carball, and rumor has it I played well. I don't remember. John thanked me for killing him so often... apparently I was the harbinger of death when I played against him on America's Army. I do recall playing well at that game, come to think of it... and in Carball, I probably had more "kills" than anyone else, and had several points. We played mostly the good maps that worked well with few players. SF CSAR, Bridge Crossing, SF Pipeline... In Bridge Crossing I was the defense Automatic Rifleman, so it was fairly trivial to set up in the tower and make their lives difficult. SF CSAR, well... it's a map I'm familiar with, with good gear, and I was the last man alive with three people on the opponent team talking aloud to communicate, so it wasn't too hard to flank them and bring a couple of them with me. Four of us had played AA before, and three were new. The four of us with experience pretty much schooled the other three... mind you, we did have balanced teams, but when you put people who are learning how to switch their fire mode on their rifles side by side with people with hundreds of games of experience, on a private server that doesn't even check to see if you're a real AA player who has been through training, it's clear who is pulling all the weight. Carball is an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod that puts you in cars, and has you put the ball in the scoring zone downfield. It's all sports, plus a few weapons that you can pick up, and a hell of a lot of fun. Ramming a ball with a car to control it is really difficult, so it's a skill game, and good players will learn it's easily best to back off while others are fighting over the ball, just as they are expected to in a real sport. Think soccer with cars, and you're pretty close.

Awhile back I bought the computer game "Evil Genius" by Relic. I love their game ideas -- nothing they've ever announced has failed to pique my interest. The first was Republic, about gaining power in a former Soviet Republic. It was a strategy game, with many ways to approach it, and sounded great. The reviews were not so hot, and many people on forums concurred with them. Evil Genius was their second game; play the villain in an old 60s spy thriller, and take over the world from the security of your secret base, while fighting off the forces of justice, committing acts of infamy, and gloating over captured superagents (like "Jet Chan") sent to rid the world of your menace once and for all. After all, the evil genius has it pretty sweet -- tons of minions at his command, fear and respect, plus lots of opportunities to laugh menacingly. Play your cards right and you might even get the privilege of having John Steele, the British Spy in a slick suit, land on your island. Mr. Steele won't waste time smooth-talking the ladies, but let him into your secret underground lair and his other legendary capacities become evident. What better way to stop him but with a couple of shots from a rocket launcher wielded by an insane rogue Russian general working for you? If that doesn't cut it, how about the ronin who slew everyone at his Dojo after they said he lacked inner harmony, and owes you a lifedebt? Sure, Mr. Bo... er, Mr. Steele will be more than a mach for such petty villains, but bring in a pack of twelve crack martial artists to help and don't let up a moment, and you'll bring him down. Lock him up in a tough cell and gloat over him (keep a bunch of meaty muscle nearby just in case he breaks out), then strap him to a giant laser of indeterminate purpose and watch with maniacal laughter as he gets some corrective treatment for his overactive... erm, we'll just leave that to our evil imaginations, now won't we? So tell me: Who hasn't wanted to be an evil genius, and do all of that? Really, it's quite overwhelming... almost too much for a genius mind to handle!

It's a good game... and I bought it expecting to be disappointed, so I was pleased to be satisfied. I prefer a slightly darker simulation, and would rather have the AI behave more intelligently in general, and bring in some of the political simulation aspects of Republic to enhance the global immersion factor of taking over the world. But I understand that it was a light game, and its focus was on base building. While there is an active modding community, they are brutally crippled by the lack of a mission structure to the game, and the fact that the game uses expensive custom liscenced technology for its 3D models, with no work-around, making new models and animations essentially impossible. New characters, objects, and skins are possible only with pre-existing geometry and animations. New maps can be painstakingly drawn, tile by tile in the game engine, but have no known practical means of application, and the concept is not exceptionally intriguing anyway, as the most important "terrain" aspects of the evil base is how the player designs their underground lair.

This lair is very fun to design, however. It would have been better if there were more flexibility in design decisions. The second island provides a wonderful constraint in the form of a central volcano crater that you must build around, but the main limitation is the shape of the mountain. This is a good limitation; the problem is that the design possibilities with your tiles are limited. Perhaps I am too much a child of an architect. I really want to make living and working buildings, not just slap together a few tiles and have it work. I design with aesthetics in mind as well as functionality, and what true evil genius wouldn't? Some of the more enlightened ideas that I found were ones such as placing the armory near a choke point between the convergence of two unsuspicious bases into the "hot" base inside, so that at a flick of a switch, not only does the alarm send minions rushing to arm themselves, but they arm themselves and are already at the most likely point of defense. When I tried to adapt this to my needs by building a recess into a wall where I placed gun racks, I realized that "armories", like all rooms, had to be two tiles wide at least. This "recess" needed to be as wide as the hallway itself! I ended up making the entire hallway a three tile wide armory to evade this. But I also want bathrooms, which aren't in the game, and actual interior design. Pathetically obsessive micromanagement, perhaps, but the game does not impress me! More Sims, more Republic, perhaps a dash of business strategy games... and the Acts of Infamy, away missions of sorts, should be much more interesting and interactive. They originally designed Acts of Infamy more this way -- apparently it wasn't very fun, or there was some other reason they cut it. Regardless, it's disappointing. To allow players who don't like aspects of this to avoid them, let them use effective pre-planned bases, subordinate AI management. What happened to the indispensable Number 2 from the demo? oh; she was dispensed with and replaced with a couple of Maximillian's bodyguards with the same model.

But I realize that whenever I read other such pipe dream rants, I always roll my eyes -- most players who do so are merely dreamers who search for reality without its implications. I remember a survey Sierra gave us once, and paid us a free game for our trouble for it. They asked, among other things, for a value comparison between two games, both outrageously awesomely described pipe dreams in different genres. It was obvious they would never make those games -- they were merely trying to sense the "perfect ideals" that were most valuable to strive for.

What would my perfect game be? I don't have a perfect game. My perfect game would be a collection of excellent games. Turn based and real time strategy, roleplaying, building, business, politics, war, sports, life sim, dating, shooters... there are lots of games that are fun in their own right. America's Army was more fun for me than Carball... both were very fun, however.

I often want to create games. I want to show the world how it's done... but solo people with no artistic or coding capabilities are virtually powerless in the gaming world. It's not that I couldn't create a breathtaking game -- I could. But I would need art, and I would need code, and I'm not confident that I could provide either. I once started a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, and wrote for over a hundred pages. It was written over the time span of years, possibly started before I was teenager. You can imagine how the quality must have varied in the writing, and it certainly did. Perhaps if the story I was working had a compelling plot, rather than a hashed space opera between an Empire and a Rebellion. My twist was that the Empire was good, and the Rebellion was evil -- and that your best friend is an Imperial Spy, and you are both Rebel Soldiers. Sound interesting? Well, it was, in a limited fashion... I'm not sure I realized this at the time, but the best friend part was by far the most important aspect of the plot. Novix... perhaps I should recycle that character in a similar role, but in a better setting.

Under my laptop are two hardcover books I use to prop up the ends and create a significant cooling airflow under the hottest parts of the computer. This is the best place for my computer, sitting here in my room with these books -- it's better than a desk, because it's better cooled. The book on the left is called "20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them)" and the book on the right is called "How to Tell a Story: The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tales". 20 Master Plots is probably the best of the two... the second is far too general and at the same time technical. 20 Master Plots is straightforward -- there are certain stories that are repeated time and again. You can boil them down to any number, from one to hundreds, but we settled on these 20 as the right resolution. This is how they work, this is what happens, this is what makes them more exciting or less exciting in practice. Go have fun. An example would be the book's discussion of the general plot surrounding "rivalry". The irresistible force meets the immovable wall. Two equally matched powers are pitted in a series of challenges. These challenges play to their strengths and weaknesses, and expose their differences. In some, one wins, in others, the other. Don't make it obvious; the strong character could win a battle of strength to the clever character because the clever outsmarted the strong one in their own contest. Let the pendulum swing back and forth -- let the reader wonder who will win. Victories and defeats. Further, it is an examination of human nature. What is the motivation of the protagonist? What fuels their determination to win? The antagonist will be equally driven to defeat the protagonist, else there is no rivalry -- so what fuels that character? It's all quite simple and straightforward... but it's written down good, hard, clean advice. And it's a great source of ideas. Within that dramatic framework, you can think of all kinds of good stories, and recall many throughout history as retellings of that one story of rivalry.

Always keep your gun unloaded until it's ready to be used. Use only the correct ammunition for your gun. I pushed a brass clip down into magazine until the internal latch gripped it. Each clip contained six rounds. I brought three clips.

Always keep your gun pointed in a safe direction. Placing one hand just past the magazine and the other on the grip, I lifted the rifle from my lap and knelt by the window.

The legendary M91/38 Carcano. Lee Harvey Oswald used it to kill John Kennedy. The first of its new type was made in 1938 as the M38, but they re-chambered it for smaller 6.5mm ammunition in 1940. Mine was one of the first made of that re-chambered M38, and it was stamped from the "R E TERNI" factory in Italy. The sights came fixed for 200 yards, with no replacement parts. Kennedy was shot at 85 yards.

I was once a girl you would like. A little bit overweight, cynical, an artist. I drew pictures of my friends in a cartoonist style. My report cards looked like a tribute to the 70s band ABBA, with some occasional middle C notes. I was going to go to college, and then it... all fell apart. I didn't care anymore. I can't explain it.

Most Americans believe there was a conspiracy. Some even believe Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only gunman. Two days after he was arrested he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby with a Colt Cobra .38 Special revolver. Hollywood says the perfect assassin is never caught, and lives to kill again, but I disagree... I think the perfect assassin dies after the fact, and takes the secrets of the killing to the grave. I have that revolver.

Understand what I'm saying?

My life had no meaning. I dropped out. I worked construction, and the dicks didn't think I could handle the work. I went to jail for assault, and my friends abandoned me. I learned that life is cheap, an existence for the purpose of feeling pain. Our joy is the betrayal of that purpose.

Fuck you all. I'm going to show you what this world is for.

Know how to use your gun safely. I pressed the butt against my shoulder and released the grip, still holding just past the magazine, and pushed the bolt forward and locked it.

Stop telling me I'm wrong. You're all telling me I'm wrong.

Always keep your finger off of the trigger until you're ready to fire. The first round was lifted up into the chamber. I held the grip and slid my index finger inside the trigger guard. It touched the trigger.

Shut. The Fuck. Up.

I looked down the sights and lined up quickly with the top of a man's head, and fired. I started in surprise from the intense recoil of the short-barreled rifle, and the muzzle flash as the antique military round escaped the barrel was huge. Bits of brick wall over his head exploded. Sights fixed for 200 yards. Aim low. My hand flew up an inch and a half and I cycled the bolt, sending the spent casing flying in a wobbling arc out the right side of the rifle. I retook the grip and aimed as the man cowered and ran.

Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots in less than six seconds. Maybe less than five seconds. I can beat that.

I pulled the trigger, and the rifle recoiled into my shoulder again with an impressive flash. He staggered and fell as my hand was already working the bolt. Got that...

I didn't believe it at the time, but my hand shook and the rifle slid from my hands and collapsed against the ground with a heavy thud. Nobody hired me. There was no cause. This man was nobody. I was killing him.

I could barely work my legs as I moved to crawl away, remembering the .38 revolver I planned to kill myself with afterwards, but unable to even begin to will myself to move toward it. The world pitched around me like the deck of a boat, and I fell face first, as heavily as the rifle onto the carpeted floor of my apartment. I always imagined that people would start screaming whenever gunshots were heard... even the man outside was silent.

I am a bad person.

It took me minutes, but I managed to move to the handgun. The phone rang as my hand slid over the revolver's grip, and I stopped and answered. It was the pigs.

They wanted to know if I was okay.

Gentle hands held my arm and the doctor pricked the syringe into my arm.

"This is still just under the skin, it won't hurt much."

Pressure and burning as he injected the solution, and then I felt the cool cotton as he removed the syringe and threw it into a biohazard container. The seventh shot on my forearm today. The locations burned.

"You'll have two days while it takes effect before we can begin. You will begin to lose use of your arm within about twelve hours. How do you feel?"

I looked over at my arm and gingerly held it out and turned it over. The shot locations were growing red. "In some pain," I said. "It's a little bit euphoric."

"I haven't heard it described like that before. Would you like to lay down?"

"Yeah."

Have you ever seen wood be cut apart? Did you feel excruciating pain as it happened? I never have. I don't have extreme physical empathy for the pain of trees. Cutting into bark for me is just like it is for you. That lack of feeling is what my arm felt like. It was a dead log on my shoulder.

The doctors stood around me like one of those operating room TV shows. I always imagined that there would be less people in the room, but I guess it was realistic. I was laying down and saw scars in the air where the lights were. I don't know if I could close my eyes. The masked blue faces were still standing over me.

"I love you." It's a painful feeling to know that you could hurt the person you love in your expression of it. It's more painful to know you already have.

The air split under me and wrapped around me, screaming through my ears. I couldn't remember anything. To my right a face. I was being pulled up.

I have a tape. I just don't remember the connection.

Maybe I should write a story about skydiving.

When I was young, Earth was free.

We had no warning before the dropships appeared. Hundreds of spacecraft rained through the skies, and soldiers wielding weapons more powerful than our own poured out on every continent. They were human, but we didn't know how, or where they came from. They declared that they were liberating Earth to join the Galactica Council. We fought until every last soldier on Earth was dead, deserted, or surrendered. Over four hundred million people died in the fighting and nuclear-chemical holocaust. With all of our strength broken, they destroyed our governments, and what few troops of their invading force survived dictated our lives. We were their subjects, but we were not loyal. For over ten years we waged a guerrilla war against the occupiers. Their support fleet had left, and the skies were empty. Only the survivors of the war were here to oppress us. And when they were all dead or deserted, we would be free once again.

Their numbers and strength weakened, and we kept them from brainwashing our children. On the fourteenth year of the occupation, the sixteenth since the invasion began, we rose up and crushed the remaining invaders in open war. The world celebrated its freedom that day. Within a month, a second fleet fell from the sky. This time we could not put up a great fight; our soldiers were rebels and revolutionaries, not steeled militaries. We had no nuclear or chemical weapons. There was no holocaust from the war this time, and it was swift and brutal. Almost one month of freedom, after 14 years of war and resistance, then it was gone. The occupiers were many times more numerous than the first wave, because our armies were able to slaughter nearly three-fifths of the first invasion before we fell. Without the weapons and training of the old world militaries, our soldiers fell like sheared wheat. We were defeated when the public consciousness surrendered to them.

They taught you their ways and history, and now you children accept for granted their superiority. It rends my heart to know that we have been in contact with the Galactica Council, and we are being considered for full Statehood within the Empire. You think I am just too old and scarred by war to see the full picture, but I hate them because I remember what we were like before they came.

There was once a vitality in our people. Now what are we? The meek have inherited the earth.

There is no job mare dangerous than heavy digging in the salciant crystal mines. The crystals are deadly and unstable, and if our digging blasts were to strike some of them, the explosion would kill any of the crew nearby, and probably trigger secondary explosions down the line and bring the entire mine down around us. This raw, brutal weapons resource is invaluable to the government, and they draft people into work in the mines for six month shifts. The fatality rate varies widely with the job they end up doing - the sensitive work close to the crystals is the safest, because they don't start that until the heavy digging equipment is out, and they always take great care. It's the preliminary heavy digging, the blasting through the rock to get there that's the real risk, because if you blast through the wrong section of rock, it's all over. We use sonic waves hooked to brilliant computers and sensors that read the air as we move through the mines to try and make sure we know exactly what we're getting into, and usually it works. But sometimes we have to make a judgment call. It's like a giant, deadly game of minesweeper down here. A six here, a one here, a five, a two. We can kind of triangulate a lot of the deposits, but sometimes it's not clear what the configuration is beyond, and any attempt to push through could kill all our men down here and destroy the mine. We'd bring in the sensitive teams to excavate, but they take so long to work through large amounts of rock that the bureaucrats refuse to let us call them in until our job is done and we've located and mapped out all we're here for. They call us in when they find big concentrations. But the more crystals, the harder it is to interpret the feedback from our instruments.

You hear about other teams being wiped out because they didn't know what the formation was, they had to take a gamble because HQ never listens to excuses, and they ended up bringing the whole mine down. The government doesn't deny that it happens, but they always blame the team leaders for error. And the rumors come out more often than the news stories.

I've never had to guess, sometimes the computers don't know what it is, but human eyes can read more. I've worked over these draft kids for more than ten years in the mines, and they treat me like I'm God down here. People want to be in my team, because my team never dies. Because they say I can see into the rocks even before we use the instruments. Because we can sit for hours at an impasse, and then it will hit me, the way forward, and in a flurry of activity we'll blast and crush our way through huge amounts of territory that were considered extremely risky before, and we'll come out unharmed. More than one team leader has told me that they were inspired to do this job because of me. And more than one of them has since died in the mines.

My reputation for immortality within the mines is what made me the man for the job, when they found the "mother lode" of salciant crystals. Naturally I abhored the idea of sending any of our teams in after this so-called "mother lode" of crystals, because anything so termed would be so alluvial that the danger of losing the team and the mine was immense. But they called me in, and didn't even take extra precautions. The bureaucrats saw only my perfect record, and a supply of weapons materials that made their eyes water with greed. Together these things blinded them from any protest by the workers.

When we got down there, I had the entire area surrounded by a cleared work area, so that we could attack the project from every direction. We worked inwards at a crawl. The risk was huge, the concentrations were high, and we were locked out on most walls. Some places the concentration was so high that we weren't confused about what lay ahead, we knew - a virtual sheet of crystals between ten and twenty feet in that meant the way was completely impassible. If we had been given a sensitive mining team or two, we could have systematically cleared the entire mine without that much trouble, but there were so many crystals that were having trouble getting to the inner ones. We could find corridors of pure rock, but the concentrations of crystals around the corridor would be so high that we couldn't tell whether it was bending left or right ahead, and didn't dare risk trying one. I said that before now, I'd never had to guess. I didn't for a long time as we worked. Our pace was dreadful, and the desk jockeys were barely able to keep from staring daggers when I gave them my progress reports, but the men in the mines said I was working miracles. It would have been gratifying if it weren't for the pressure from above to work faster. We went through a whole six month shift without getting more than 200 feet deep in most places. And believe me, I can usually clear two dozen times that much in a shift. The pressure to keep driving our machines deeper become more intense o the second shift, as they began making threats, to hold our team in there beyond their draft period until we met ridiculous quotas. The boys in the mine started begging me to use my gut instincts, and take small risks. We were completely deadlocked when we started digging where there might be danger. I figure this is what happens when all the teams vaporize, they get too much pressure, they take risks, and then one of them doesn't work out for them and the mine goes. We were still crawling, but it felt like a fevered pace to us, as we kept moving even though we knew we weren't ready.

We eventually did hit the crystals with the blasts.

I don't know if I'm dead or not, but it's been strange ever since. I hear bells, hasty bells, always driving and never resting for more than a brief tense moment. I can hear the ocean, the birds - seagulls, sometimes I even hear children playing on the beach. When I dream... which is always... it's an eternal mine. We're working through mines, always on and on, and I'll clear one after another for the sensitive teams to come in, but I'll keep coming back to tell them only to be handed another assignment. It's not that far off from what my life was like, but I feel stripped, skinned of what makes - what made it worth it. To be honest, I don't even remember what that was anymore. It's always rocks, more and more rocks.

Sometimes I have nightmares among my always dreams. I dream about the mine exploding, the walls erupting and the ceiling crashing down, our installed supports buckling as the earth shifts over them. Fire licks the equipment down the shaft as the ceiling falls in and obscures my view, I choke on dust as rocks crash down and rip across by head and back, snapping my hard hat back and sending me to the ground, crushing me under an impossible weight. Everything seems harder and harder to see, and then it's over.

But above all, it comes back to the sea. I don't think this is heaven, and I don't think it's hell. Whether I'm dead or not, I don't know. But I can't wake up from my dreams. I still hope that someday I'll wake up, crippled, in a shack by the sea, somehow saved. But I think that's an illusion. I don't know why I dream of the sea - I don't know if I'll ever know. It makes me sad, that and the bells, they make me sad, and I'm crying without tears as I start to plan our mining patterns on another blank slate.

Vlad doubled over and clutched his stomach as the baton slid down his side and away. His ears angled back as he heard two sets of footsteps on the pavement just feet behind him, and the release of two switchblades.

"Now, rich fox," a human male's voice rumbled to his right. "You get to choose the game we play."

The baton struck the back of his head, albiet less forcefully than the first blow, and shooting pain ran down his neck and side. He panted desperately with his mouth agape as he tried to think, but all of his thoughts were dominated by a concoction of fear, pain, and adrenaline as he shook and fell down onto the cement and curled into the fetal position on his side.

"Don't hurt me," was all he could whimper.

"On the wall!" one of the men growled, and four hands seized him, one gripping the fur on his neck painfully, and forced him face first against the brick wall on one side of the dark alley. He turned his head and hit the bricks with the side of his muzzle, scraping and pulling through his fur.

"Take his stuff."

Vlad felt his wallet being pulled from the back pocket of his slacks, and one of the switchblades pressed against the side of his neck. He could see three men behind him, one with the baton, two with knives.

"Are you afraid to die, little foxie?" another of the men taunted from behind him. "Sniff sniff, you smell your own fear, don't you?"

"Hah, just a tourist, huh? You won't be needing this anymore."

Vlad watched from the corner of his eye as one of them extracted his train ticket out the city and ripped it into four pieces, then stuffed them into his mouth and began chewing loudly.

"And all this cash, you should know better than this. No plastic for rich foxes either. Got any pictures in here, wife, kids? Anyone that will miss you if your meaty corpse hits the pavement right here?"

He didn't know whether to shout for help, tell them the truth, or lie and say there were people who would miss him. So he said nothing.

"Looks like you're free to die, fox fart." The man held his switchblade to the side and tossed the emptied wallet to the side, then slowly approached.

"I--" Vlad choked in fear as the knife at his neck pressed closer, and he could feel it cutting through the fur towards his skin. "I make a very good servant."

"Did you hear that, Dave? The foxie is pleading for his life!" All three of the men forced laughs, and the man with the baton swung it and slammed it into Vlad's back.

"Nobody said you could talk." The man holding the switchblade at his neck spat on him.

"Now, I'm going to let you give me one good reason to not gut you right here." The man who approached was standing an uncomfortable foot away from him with the point of the knife near the center of Vlad's back. Vlad made a mental note as to just how ugly humans look with black hair as he felt the man's breath on his whiskers.

"Because I'll do anything you ask me to," he said. "Anything."

"Hmm," the man tilted his head and pressed the point a little harder. "Yeah, I think that will do. Let him back up."

The knife moved away from his neck, and the three men spread out around him. Vlad softly fell to his knees facing the wall, still with his back to them and his head twisted around toward them. "What do you want me to do?" he whispered.

"You know what I really want you to do?" the man said back in a stage whisper. "Die!"

Vlad lunged to his side and stumbled onto his feet as the men closed in again, and he slammed his shoulder into the man with the baton. The man's arms closed around his chest, dropping the baton but holding the fox in place, as the other men moved in with their knives. Vlad struggled and was able to stagger around so that the man holding him was forced to turn his back toward the other men, then bit hard on the human's protruding stomach. The man screamed as the vulpine fangs clamped down, and he released the fox, allowing Vlad to turn on his feet and run as fast as he could down the alley. It was dark, but there were street lamps lighting up the sidewalk ahead, and the fox was able to scramble out as the men chased behind. He ran into the street without looking back and got to the other sidewalk, then continued to sprint down the street. He could hear two sets of footsteps behind him and the distant sound of the man he'd bitten repeating "fuck" over and over again in the alley. But both men behind him had switchblades.

They were running along a street one down from where he'd entered the alley, following a cry for help from one of the men who later assaulted him. He wanted to get back in that direction, because he knew how to get to the train station, and that was the only place he knew was safe. They were in an industrial neighborhood that was largely abandoned, and he didn't know where he could find people to protect himself.

"Go, I'll get the car!" one of them yelled, and one of the followers broke off.

"Fox dies..." growled the other one, as Vlad made a point to angle in the opposite direction from where the one that broke off was headed. He panted as he made it down two blocks, then cut into a side street.

"Help! Anyone! Police! Murder!" Vlad broke away when he reached the end of the block and contined in his original direction as he heard a car approaching from behind. His best chance to escape would be to make sure the car didn't find him, and lose the follower on foot. He cut into an alley, only to realize after getting ten paces in that it was dead end into a sheer wall. He staggered short, out of breath, and looked behind as the pursuer on foot closed off his only escape.

"You have a knife..." Vlad said, trying to put a menacing tone in and suppress his fear. "But I have twenty!" He held his claws out visibly and charged at his pursuer. The man froze up and then turned to run, but Vlad vaulted at him and pierced both front sets of claws into his attacker's back and shoulders, then released and ran by as the man thrashed about and tried to strike him with the blade.

The moment of fighting passed quickly, and the man started to chase after him again, slightly slower than before, and screamed out at his parter in the car. The sound of the motor began to close in, and Vlad was unable to run fast enough. The car turned onto the street with him, about a block behind, and started to accelerate.

Vlad turned again, and was by this time completely lost. With no place obvious to escape to, he ran behind a light pole and then turned around and screamed harshly at the car, showing his claws. The car turned widely and slowly around the pole, forcing Vlad to turn around it too, using the metal spire as his shield.

His pursuer on foot turned the corner too, hobbling despite not being injured in the legs. The man in the car rolled the window down.

"Get him!"

"I can't!" The man on foot yelled back, keeping his distance. "He'll tear me to ribbons!"

"Fucking coward!"

The car turned toward the light pole and accelerated quickly, but its aim was slightly to the side. When it got twenty feet away, it stopped speeding and the brakes locked up, sending the car screeching in to smash into the building next to Vlad. The air bag went off, and in the blur of adrenaline, Vlad could see only two things: the man was in reach, and essentially helpless.

Vlad's claws smashed through the window. The main inside, panicking after the crash, screamed in terror and began thrashing to get away. For Vlad's part, he had never felt so much pain in his life. He withdrew his bloodied hand and began to run. His face was tightened into a grimace of pain and aggressiveness, and when he turned his head to see if the one on foot was still chasing, his eyes found the man cowering by the wall, making no effort to pursue.

It wasn't until the fox was nearly ten blocks away, and he was forced to stumble to a walk as he labored to catch his ragged breath, that he realized he had no cash, no ID, no credit cards, no ticket to Fall River, no cell phone, no checks, no arrangements for anywhere to stay, and no idea where he was or how to get to the train station from here. He had survived with his life, but a numb terror gripped him as he realized that he wouldn't make the train out of here - and from what he'd seen of this city so far, it was the last place he wanted to be stuck in.

We were ambushed by a Great Malboro.

Unless we have someone with first strike in the front row, we're probably about to be wiped out in three turns. This is the one battle that they say to always have first strike, just in case for: an ambush by a Great Malboro. First move, he'll use a breath attack to apply nearly every status ailment in existance to the entire front line. They'll be blind and mute, poisoned, flailing their weapons wildly at one another and even impaling themselves on their own arms.

But Auron has first strike. I could switch to Kimahri and use the flee special command. I decide to try to fight.

That means I need to win this battle in one move.

Auron has a full overdrive bar. I go into the overdrive menu, and choose shooting star. Big damage, and a chance to knock the enemy out of the battle completely. But can a Great Malboro be instantly killed by shooting star? Some enemies can't. I've never tried it on a Great Malboro. It may simply deliver damage. I don't know how many hit points it has, I don't know if the damage will be enough. But I have to try, or we die within three turns. Everything rides on Auron. Everything must end before the first turn begins.

We were ambushed by a Great Malboro.

Light surrounds Auron as he braces, and shouts urgently:

"Pray, now!"

As he rushes forward, we pray.

( --propa

Dick Cheney: "opportunists" "saddest" "subjected" "pernicious" "dishonest" "reprehensible" "this city (Washington DC)" "cynical" "politicians" "play for political advantage" "falsehoods" "[losing their] memory" "people in uniform" "[no] backbone" "rewrite history"

George Bush: "playing politics" "irresponsible" "politics" "serious business" "winning [the] war"

Harry Reid: "playing politics" "lashing out" "focus on the job at hand"

John Kerry: "politics" "fear" "if they really ____ they would ____" "strategy" "success" "[not] even beginning" "smear" "unaccomplished" "leadership" "soldiers' sacrifice"

Dick Durbin: "American people" "truth" "national security" "vital" "misuse" "distorted" "deceptions" "refused" "deserve" "we want to know" "strategy" "our troops" "the American people want"

ganda-- )

Four forward jets fired, out of the six that were supposed to. The engineers back home in Navada tried their best, but no matter how they tried, only a 90% chance of any given jet firing at any given time. They figured that so long as five of them fired on time, the craft would be able to manage. But four would be dangerous. Probably subject the mission to failure. Certainly create suspicion among the aliens.

Frederick attempted to re-fire the jets, but the stuttering pattern from his repeated attempts to clear the fuel tubes only served to worsen his deceleration. At the last minute, he threw his still-awkward arms up over his face, the wings of the craft smashing into the midway plates that opened up to receive him. A twittering alien voice sputtered something desperately in his headset, and he felt gravity lurch into existence, pulling him down into his seat as the craft twisted on its axis and then smashed in a deafening cacophony of twisted metal. Frederick himself was restrained in his seat by the American-made flight harness, but he was thrown into its grip with such force that he was sure the straps nearly killed him.

At a tentative rest, the cockpit of the craft was pressed up against the metal wall on the far side of the alien landing platform, and the plastic barrier encasing him was crushed, with large plates broken out. He fumbled with the harness, managing to use his long fingers to open it, and then painfully climbed out of the top of the ruined craft. He heard voices all around him, alien voices, a chorus of different sounds, as if all of them were different species. A few clumsy steps down the wing of his craft, and he stumbled onto the ground, holding his chest for a throbbing pain that cut through him where the straps of his flight harness were. He looked around in a daze, seeing uniforms, but under them, far more types of alien species than intelligence predicted. They expected one, his type, the kind they'd made him into, but he saw in this platform a zoo of them. He made out the twittering language they expected, expressed in a range of forms, but unmistakably one language. Like some multicultural pleasure ship, he thought, as several of the uglier aliens moved toward him. They reached him as his legs gave out -- the alien form they constructed his body into was reverse-jointed, so he was essentially stuck walking on his toes -- and he collapsed onto the ground.

They made sounds, an ugly guttural twittering from one of them, and he wondered if they were addressing him. Better to let them think he couldn't respond, than think he didn't know how... he swallowed, but his mouth was dry. Even the feel of his mouth and throat, inside, felt foreign. It made him sick. Before he could think further, Frederick blacked out.

--

In all likelihood, the mission was already a failure. There was no way he could continue as directed, clandestine, hidden away from their eyes, learning everything he could before stealing away and returning to earth. His time as a sneak never began, and he was already in the custody of the enemy. They would know that he was not the crew they sent down in the craft he flew back up. They would know he knew nothing about them. They would know he didn't even know the language. But would they know he wasn't really one of them? Would they know he was a human, reconstructed into this form? Would they check?

He was reclined in the fetal position, his back cupped against a kind of cushioned chair, but his arms and legs curled up gently, restrained by soft braces. Some kind of medical facility, probably, but beyond that he didn't know. It was a labor to open his eyes, and look out in the bleached white, remarkably mundane surroundings he was in. It was a hospital. Absolutely a hospital. And in his line of sight, a woman under thirty was setting up a tray of food for a man, a human, in a hospital bed. She looked over at Frederick and smiled genially, patting the hand of the man she was with, and then coming over to Frederick, pulling a curtain shut between him and the man she was with.

Frederick turned his head quickly to see that he was indeed still in the alien form, with rusty hair matted across sculpted arms as he lay (sat?) in his fetal suspension, facing her. She was in a perfectly normal white gown, with a red cross on her sleeve. A military hospital?

"Frederick?" she said sweetly.

"Yeah," he choked out. His voice was terrible in this form, a strained, painful labor to work out the english words. The twittering of the alien language was a more manageable set of sounds, but he was oblivious to its proper use.

"You'll be alright. You broke a few ribs coming in, that's all. They'll mend." Her voice was soothing. It reminded him of his second girlfriend as a senior in high school.

"Where ahk-- alk-- *am* I?" He coughed.

"You're in the alien spaceship. You made it!" She seemed excited by the idea. And very silly. Annoyingly so.

"That, there are humans here?"

"Of course! Did you expect plants?" Like that, her voice sobered.

"All aliens," he replied simply.

"We are, to you. To us, we're humans."

"That's stupid. Humans applies only to us, our people, the people from that planet. Everybody else is aliens." Arguing with an alien who looked like a human, while in the fetal position, particularly like this where his butt was facing her, was rather humiliating.

"No, you're just being racist." She shook her head and tsked.

"Your English sucks. And so does your representation of what a Human is like. In fact, this whole hospital getup sucks. Get out of my head."

"If you don't mind, we have a few questions for you. Are you an ambassador?"

"I do mind, now fuck off. I don't like it when aliens fuck around with my head! You aren't humans, I know you aren't, and making me hallucinate this is not making me amiable!" He barked and hissed between his teeth, sounds that were very fearsome compared to what a human could make, at least by his reckoning.

The hospital around him vanished, and he was left in a dark room, still held in the fetal position as he was before, but without the surroundings beyond that. In the woman's place, an alien's dark outline was visible. Some kind of bulky form, but details were not forthcoming in this dark. When it spoke, it had a human voice, but a kind of muddy cross-racial and oddly accent-less voice of indeterminate gender.

"Please accept my apologies. I am the Xenopsychologist on this spaceship. Our normal attempts to make contact with new races -- excuse me, new aliens -- are to get into their head and avoid alarming them by creating settings as comfortable and in line with expectations as possible. I personally sifted through some of your thoughts and created the setting and characters you just experienced, with the intent to inform you of your situation in a less shocking manner. I meant no harm nor offense. And use of your language is an art, not a science, and I will try to avoid the perspective of calling humans-- calling aliens humans. It is an art in translation, and such games of the mind are never perfect. Forgive me if the concepts come across poorly in translation."

"Consider yourself forgiven, oh diplomat, oh nice and apologetic one." Frederick couldn't help smiling.

"May I ask you questions?"

"Fine, but I come from a culture where questions asked doesn't mean they have to be answered."

"Are you an ambassador?"

"Uh, actually, no."

"Were you sent to hurt us?"

"No."

"Were you sent to make contact with us?"

"No."

"Please tell me, why are you here?"

"No."

"I see. What happened to the team we sent down to make contact?"

"Was this a Xenopsychologist team?"

"Yes, certainly."

"Fine. They were killed by an anti-aircraft missile. The craft you sent moved too fast, and it was mistaken for some kind of weapon. We shot it down, and when we found the wreckage, they were dead. We fixed the craft and sent me up."

"And you are here to make contact?" The genderless, raceless voice had no reaction. It was not monotone, but still purely devoid of emotion.

"I already told you, no."

"Why does your physiology match the?"

"What?"

"Your physiology is not typical of earth, it resembles the team we sent down."

"We didn't want to scare you."

"How considerate. You have disturbed us, however. How did you come of this body?"

"Made it. Modern technology. Isn't it grand? Shot down your craft too."

"Does it make you proud that you killed our ambassadors?"

"Hey, it was a mistake. I said that. It's not like we were expecting you."

"You still seem proud of it."

"Don't try to scare me. You may be able to fly through the stars, but one missile and your ambassadors are dead? Don't threaten us."

"Am I using bad words?" The emotional state of the alien was unreadable through the voice.

"Are you going to play this game all day? Dance around? I've answered your questions, you answer mine."

"I don't understand you."

"What are you doing in our space? Why did you come to Earth?"

"We are explorers. We found you and chose to invite you to join us."

"Invite us to join you. What does that mean? Speak if you want more answers from me."

"The aliens, we are all one group. Any others threaten our security. We were to invite you to join us so that you would be secure with us."

"What, like some kind of united galactic government?"

"We don't span such an enormous space as the galaxy. There are probably other large entities outside of where we know, but we find mostly small groups of aliens who will join us."

"And you force those who refuse, I am guessing."

"Yes. A brief conflict is better than risk a larger war later. But it rarely comes to that. It won't here."

"Why not? Humans hate subjugation."

"It's nothing like that. It's an invitation to a greater life. You will like it, I promise. We will talk to your leaders. But we need your help."

"I said why not, you haven't answered me. If you want any kind of cooperation or assistance from me, you'll answer my questions!"

"Because our technology is so powerful compared to yours that any battle would be over before it even started. Your humans will see that, and will agree."

"Gunboat diplomacy, forced annexation, sounds like you've got a problem. You don't know what humans are like."

"What are they like?"

"The longer it takes for you to find out, the faster you will die."

--

V107
First Contact

[reclassified "Earth"]

Contact denied being sent to make contact, denied being ambassador, denied intent to harm, and refused to give the reason it was sent. It was xenophobic and uncooperative, suggesting that conflict will be needed because "Earth" will resist assimilation.

It died shortly after communication was terminated. Autopsy indicates nerve agent exposure. Suicide assumed.

For further contact with "Earth", extreme caution and armed protection recommended.