Commonwealth of Man

[Staehr]

Is this guy a spy for someone? He did once serve the UNE...

Also, is this a space casino?

Mr. Teal is a new guy. The old guy was Jack Bensley, who was briefed by Mr. Indigo and later became the Chosen One. But that was 50 years ago and he's an old man now, if he's still alive.

And yes, basically it is. It's Chor's Compass. Neutral ground, and a great place for fresh spies to go on their first mission.

 

[Staehr]

I've made significant edits to all chapters up until and including 8, they should be much more enjoyable now.

 

[HistoryDude]

It seems as if the CoM is becoming more religious. Are they Materialist or Spiritualist in ethos?

 

[Staehr]

It seems as if the CoM is becoming more religious. Are they Materialist or Spiritualist in ethos?

Neither, I imagine there are outliers, but that most people don't care. That's an interesting take, anything in particular that gave you this idea?

Their largest factions in-game remain Militarist and Xenophobe, and I try to reflect that in the writing by not dragging them too far towards other proclivities. But there is also a sizable population that are leaning towards Egalitarian (and they are NOT happy with our policies), which I take as subtle influence from the UNE, and the Chosen One's followers.

The closest thing they have to a religion would be the corpus of literature they brought from Earth, and all the action movies you can think of. Most of that would have been destroyed in the First Uprising, or at least forgotten about. Earth to them was somewhat like Atlantis to us, until the Chosen One actually passed their test (no doubt horrendous) and was determined to be from there, and not an impostor.

 

[HistoryDude]

Neither, I imagine there are outliers, but that most people don't care. That's an interesting take, anything in particular that gave you this idea?

Their largest factions in-game remain Militarist and Xenophobe, and I try to reflect that in the writing by not dragging them too far towards other proclivities. But there is also a sizable population that are leaning towards Egalitarian (and they are NOT happy with our policies), which I take as subtle influence from the UNE, and the Chosen One's followers.

The closest thing they have to a religion would be the corpus of literature they brought from Earth, and all the action movies you can think of. Most of that would have been destroyed in the First Uprising, or at least forgotten about. Earth to them was somewhat like Atlantis to us, until the Chosen One actually passed their test (no doubt horrendous) and was determined to be from there, and not an impostor.

Yes. It was the searching of religious ruins and the reference of the Chosen One.

 

[Staehr]

Year 2374, Sentry Array Command
Adar system
Democratic Lagin’Chuuz Accord

“Think it’ll work? Or is it just gonna blow half our capacitors again, because we had to finish three weeks ahead of schedule?”

Glurblug sighed. Plurbinquarg was such a pain to be around, though none could argue with his results. Always planning for the worst was a good trait for an expert in quantum field manipulation to have.

But Glurblug was the Head of Research. That required political finesse, which meant calculated optimism. Mouthing even the slightest chance of failure in a room full of Commonwealth admirals was a great way to ask for budget cuts.

“Well, I can’t rule it out,” he muttered back. "At least if the explosion takes out the whole station I won’t have to listen to your doomsaying anymore. That would be something."

“Quit your gurgling, you two!” one of the officers barked. "The Custodian is here. Show some respect!”

And there she was, showing up as a bright, blue ray of light on the holoscreen that covered the far wall. Moving too fast for the tachyon sensors to get a lock-on, the “Bruce Lee“ had exited the hyper-relay and was now bending the universe like Beckham. Even at relativistic speeds, the journey from the relay to the Sentry Array took several days. The Bruce could do it in minutes, without the G-force reducing its crew to hydrogen atoms. No one understood how.

When the Head of Zarqlan was discovered, the Lavis Pilgrims had materialized out of nowhere and declared their undying loyalty. It had put the entire Commonwealth on high alert, since the dig site was three jumps from Unity and they sure as hell hadn’t knocked. But the diplomats of the Chosen clan had brokered a peace, and the brass had relented quickly once they realized they now had a flagship that took a creamy dump on the laws of physics every time it moved.

Not that there was much left in the galaxy to fight except the Lavis themselves, but, in Imperatrix Armageddon’s own words, "the seats were damn comfy”.

That title no longer conveyed the full extent of her power. The Imperatrix was now the Galactic Custodian, and plans for a galaxy-spanning Empire were in the talks. With the term limits indefinitely postponed, the Commonwealth of Man had finally extinguished the last pretenses of galactic democracy.

The Council had been abolished, and nothing that went on in the Community mattered anymore. The UNE had strongly objected and recalled their embassy on Unity, but their time had come and gone. Their citizens hardly left their planets and cared little for politics, whereas the Commonwealth had spent their vast influence on building outposts in every quadrant. All that remained was to relocate the Galactic Market, and the manifest destiny of Man would be a reality.

Glurblug didn’t care. He was on the winning team, and his division would receive plenty of funding once the new subspace Gateways passed initial trials. With the combined processing power of the Commonwealth's Meshuggah Science Nexus and the one the Lagin’Chuuz had built for themselves, it had been a small matter to restore functionality to this ancient Sentry Array.

Once they had familiarized themselves with the arcane systems, they had realized just how powerful the thing was. Any tactical or scientific data they could dream of was now at their fingertips. The Array could count the hairs of a citizen on the opposite side of the galaxy, and at closer range it could zoom down on the subatomic level and trace the individual quarks. It was a good time to be a scientist.

All the more disconcerting was the fact that the Array clearly showed a cluster of connected star systems just a handful of jumps away, where all other sensors showed nothing but cold, dead space. The massive energy spikes suggested they were heavily populated, but whenever they tried to zoom in further than sector-level, the Array simply would not let them.

They had tried sending probes there, but their signals had stopped once they got a certain distance from the hyperlane. That was the point where science gave up and the military took over, and that was why the ruler of the galaxy was now entering the room, to hushed silence and obsequious bowing.

“Oh, quit your ass-licking, all of you! Just show me those damned ghost systems, and let’s see who thinks they can hide from the long dick of the law.”

Glurblug sighed contentedly. Never change, humans. “Good evening, Custodian. As per requested, we’ve pooled our efforts and have seeded a codebreaking AI that we’re quite confident can defeat the Array’s security measures. This should allow us to home in on the ghost sector.” He stepped on Plurbinquarg’s tentacle and continued with a bow. "We’re ready to begin at your signal.”

The Custodian nodded. “Pull the trigger.” Glurblug nodded to the technicians, who figuratively did so.

Deep inside the Array, an entire wing full of machinery began receiving power, transmitted by microwave from a planet-sized power plant that drew on the plasma of the system’s class-G star. Quintillions of neural network nodes went through aeons of evolution, learning and growing, until they were let loose on the Array’s security protocols. The scientists could only watch and monitor the temperature, and the admiralty was largely unaware of the digital armwrestling that went on beneath their feet.

Until the lights briefly flickered, and the words “Access Granted” appeared on-screen. Then the view changed.

*zzzt* “Boundary here, this is sergeant Clax, station Navarro. Why isn’t your video feed working?”

On the screen in front of them, a member of an alien species was sitting in a command center similar to this one, only smaller. Through the large window in the back, they could make out a horizon dotted by flying megacities and nanite-sculpted, impossibly beautiful geological formations. The alien seemed to be largely cybernetic, and wore a combat armor helmet that concealed its face.

And it had spoken to them in perfect Commonwealth English.

 

[Staehr]

Year 2374, Sentry Array Command
Adar system
Democratic Lagin’Chuuz Accord

The Galactic Custodian cleared her throat. “It’s working just fine. I can see your ugly mug in full HD. Or are you sitting backwards? Cause I can’t tell.“

“Who the hell is this?”

“This? This is the motherfucking Custodian of the Galaxy, that’s who this is. And you’re going to tell me how you’ve infiltrated our Sentry Array, or I'll have you reassembled as a vibrator and fired into a Space Amoeba's rectum."

The cyborg laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “The Custodian, huh? Sure you’re not the Empress herself? The long lost Queen of Atlantis?”

“Oh, we’re getting there, in due time. Gotta establish the Empire first. And you will answer my question, toaster.”

He laughed again. “Ain’t that a blast from the past! Well, pardon me for not blowing sunshine up your ass, sweetie, but I don’t think you’ll be royalty for much longer. Heads tend to roll when you piss off your superiors. Maybe they just let you off with a few days in the can. But I doubt it.”

“I accept your pardon. And I no longer insist upon genuflection, a simple bow to kiss my ring will suffice."

“Oh, hyuk hyuk, hardy har har. I’m running a trace on you right now, sunshine, cause I’m just dying to have a chat with your C.O. We’ll see how funny you talk with Internal Affairs all over your ass. You’ll be doing cattle runs to the other dimensions until the end of time. Hey, wait a second...”

“What? Got an instruction you couldn’t parse, tinhead?”

“This can’t be right. I’ve got you somewhere in linear time. But we haven't had any sleeper agents in… centuries. You LEFT the timewarp so you could crank call us?! What in the everloving Core do you think you’re getting yourself into, soldier!? You’re in so much shit, your eyes are brown! Let me see... dark energy pulses should find you, just takes a while for them to come back… have to admit, this is a sophisticated prank if I ever saw one…”

“Take your time. Geneticists told me I’m gonna live well into my 120ies."

“Heh, is that so. It must suck, having a lifespan. Aha! Gotcha! You’re on the Tango Relay in timeline X34-B... and it’s got ants crawling all over it, looks like...” He chortled, in a surprisingly human fashion.

“And they’re using *impulse thrusters*. And a good old-fashioned zero-point reactor, gotta love it. Wait, that’s YOU?! Oh I can't believe this! This day just keeps getting better! Oh, this is precious. Beautiful. Encore, encore." He made a mock gesture of wiping away a tear.

"So you little meat monkeys found one of our relays, and gathered enough brain cells between all of you to break our encryption. Well! You just sit tight and I’ll dispatch a strike team to help you celebrate, including fireworks. Shouldn’t take long, just gotta wake the eggheads out of cryo, restart the singularity gens. If you’re lucky, you’ll even get to see one of our battlecruisers."

“Oh, goodie,” the Custodian replied. “I’d hate to think I got mine polished yesterday for no reason. Love me a good dogfight."

“Yeah. Goodbye. Next news on you will be when I read the after-action report. Lemme just scan your fleets, so they know who to vaporize first... Hold up. That is an actual battlecruiser. Not one of ours, though, or it’d show up in green. Just who did you guys rob? “Lavis Watchers, Zarqlan-class”, okay, running tha… ah, WORK, you piece of shit. Typical, nothing works round here anymore."

"Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

"Real wisecracker, huh? You know what, this is above my pay grade. I’m kicking this up to Core, it's their problem now. Sending... There! And I attached a Titan requisition, just because I like you so much. Once they get a timelock on you, you’re gonna rue the day the Geranium landed! The Commonwealth of Clank is here to stay!”

And the screen went dark. The room was in an uproar. Orders were shouted, and the Custodian demanded full attention be given to restoring the Matter Decompressor at all costs. Soon only the scientists remained, along with a skeleton crew.

Glurblug stood in front of the console, frowning. Singularity gens? Timewarp? He tapped Plurbinquarg lightly on the shoulder.

“You know those anomalous Betharian reactor readings you told me about last week, the one where you said it looked like they compressed time in a local area?”

Plurbinquarg was in shock, but only nodded. “I’ll shut them down. Bury the findings. Never happened.”

“We do not mess with time,” Glurblug affirmed.

“Do NOT mess with time.”

“Or brain uploads.”

“No siree. Organics only.”

“Heels before wheels.”

“Molluscs, not machines."

“Hey! I said QUIT your GURGLING!” the officer barked again.

 

[HistoryDude]

Well, the victory of the Commonwealth is almost complete...

Still, that stuff with parallel universes/dimensions might prove problematic.

 

[Macavity116]

The Galactic Custodian cleared her throat. “It’s working just fine. I can see your ugly mug in full HD. Or are you sitting backwards? Cause I can’t tell.“

“Who the hell is this?”

“This? This is the motherfucking Custodian of the Galaxy, that’s who this is. And you’re going to tell me how you’ve infiltrated our Sentry Array, or I'll have you reassembled as a vibrator and fired into a Space Amoeba's rectum."

For some reason, I read all of the Custodian's dialogue in the voice of Avasarala from The Expanse.


"Where are you going with this, ma'am?"

"Wherever I goddamn like!"

 

[Eludio]

"GOOD PEOPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH! WE HAVE A WINNER! ALL HAIL JANE CLEMENCE, THE CANDIDATE FROM DIESELTOWN! VICTOR FROM DIESELTOWN, APPROACH NOW THE BASIN OF THE CONQUERORS AND ASSUME THE RULER'S MANTLE. YOU’VE EARNED IT!”

By Azura, by Azura, by Azura! It’s the Imperator of the Commonwealth! I can’t believe it’s you! Standing here! Next to me!