Tales From the Terran Republic

Oh, my daddy taught me well

There’s some devils in heaven

and some angels in hell...

Karashel pored over her texts at a fever pace as she listened to a 21st-century piece of which she had grown quite fond of late.

There was just so much she had to learn…

and absolutely no time to learn it.

Shit’s going down right now, she thought to herself as she disconnected from the terminal. Now is the time to move, NOW!

What little she had learned about history made that clear. This period of absolutely essential instability was unprecedented in Federation history! First, the disastrous Republic War and now what will likely be a debacle of equal if not worse magnitude with the Forsaken. Blow after blow was being delivered to the very heart of the Federation, and here she was just trying to get the basics down.

She fumed as she put on a pot of water to boil.

The Federation was reeling, and her biggest accomplishment?

She could make tea. Huge accomplishment. Way to go, Karashel.

The water was already at a full boil. She couldn’t help but marvel at the Xx’s technology. Tell the water to boil, and it did. In her now mostly abandoned apartment, she would be lucky if there was a wisp of steam.

Another huge accomplishment, she now knew that it was “water vapor,” not steam. Creators, why did she have to be so dense! No wonder Caw looked down on them. We can’t even discern the states of matter! Fuck!

Well, she had done about all she dared to do here at the embassy. She had grown very fond of Caw, but she was pretty sure that he would DEFINITELY not agree with her conclusions thus far:

1: The Federation, regardless of its original intent, was basically colonial imperialism thinly disguised as a democracy.

2: It was beyond salvaging.

3: It needed to go away.

4: There was no graceful transition possible. The monster had to be killed… by any means necessary.

If Caw ever found out exactly what she wanted to accomplish, her new best friend would become her worst enemy. That was unavoidable, but the longer she could delay it, the better.

She winced as a pang of guilt and loss shot through her as she poured the water into the small clay teapot she had bought from the Aat. He would be so hurt.

That bothered her. She really liked Caw. He had become one of the best, if not the best, friends she had in this cesspit and had been so kind and open… and giving...

and trusting…

It will suck, really, really suck, when it all goes down, but considering everything else that must happen, it will be one of the more minor tragedies of the whole sad affair. If she isn’t prepared to betray her best friend, how can she expect to be able to do…

Well… everything else that is going to have to happen. She had looked, as time permitted, across human history and the histories of several other races, and this business was always ugly.

But, time after time after time, things got better afterward. It wasn’t an absolute sure thing. Sometimes entire civilizations completely collapsed. But, most of the time…

things improved and quite often by a huge margin…

If you zoomed out just a little in the historical sense, even the worst, most horrific of things passed in a few years, a few decades at most…

Then things got better, a lot better!

What was more “dangerous”, a short period of instability and chaos followed by real tangible progress, or centuries more of the same misery? Her race, and hundreds of others, would never progress beyond where they were while they were stuck in this insidious trap of learned helplessness and systematic disenfranchisement while they were repeatedly “harvested” during one manufactured financial crisis after another.

It was so clear once you started really looking. A tax increase here, an unfair production subsidy there, a regulation overlooked or not uniformly enforced, and suddenly the right people had all the advantages, and entire worlds suffered as a result.

It made her so angry, well… angrier.

The anger wasn’t going away. It was getting worse day after day...

so was the Federation. It was already starting to put its foot down both here in the capital and across the entire Federation, imposing the will of the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat. There were another half dozen systems put under martial law just this afternoon, more than one of which was completely human-free.

Except here, it wasn’t class. It was systems! Certain races always won, and they were starting to make damn sure they would win again!

If anything, they were actually going to have an even tighter hold on the Federation after this mess, a mess that they caused!

It was so wrong!

Marx was right! That much was definitely clear.

So was someone else…

Some of his rhetoric was a bit excessive and grossly misapplied but damned if he didn’t raise some good points. Besides, here, in the Federation, it truly was racial.

Certain species had cornered the system early on and systematically disenfranchised and subjugated species after species. “Racial supremacy” was already the stock in trade here. Might as well get with the program…

Or pogrom as the case may be...

She poured her tea.

Those species needed to go away, too. Well, perhaps not “go away” in a Final Solution sort of way, but they definitely needed to be “pruned back” a bit. Hers was an agrarian world, and even an academic like her knew how to manage a field. You had to keep the weeds in the hedgerows. You didn’t let them run riot in the fields.

Even some desirable crops needed to be kept cut. If you grew floos you needed to be damned sure it didn’t get out of hand unless you only wanted floos for supper that year.

“Huh,” she muttered as she took a sip. That was exactly the situation.

The floos had taken over the garden and strangled all of the other plants before they ever got a chance to bloom.

The solution was an easy one, cut the floos. You didn’t have to eradicate it. You just needed to knock it back onto its trellis.

“Snip, snip,” she chuckled as she took another sip. Then, she frowned.

The problem was that she didn’t have any shears, a hoe, or any other tools, and the growing season was upon them.

If she didn’t cut now, there would be nothing but floos for supper for centuries…

And in this garden, the floos had shears of their own and was very adept in their use.

She sat (actually, she just “stood” there because Baleel don’t really sit) and sipped her tea, her frustration growing.

She knew exactly what had to happen but had absolutely no idea how to do it.

The terminal in the office that Caw had so generously given her in the Xx embassy beeped.

She undulated over, pulled a data crystal out of a slot, and pocketed it. She finished her tea and set down the cup. She had done all she dared do here.

She started for the door.

“Oh hi, Kara,” Caw said cheerfully as he poked his head out of his office. “Hard at it?”

“Um… yeah,” Karashel said glumly.

“Having trouble backing up your recent batch of outlandish claims?” Caw said with a goading voice.

“Something like that,” she said quietly.

“Are you ok?” he asked. That should have provoked an obscene outburst.

“Just a little tired,” Karashel said. That much was true. She was. She had barely slept for far too long.

“Well, don’t let the knowledge madness or the lust for knowledge battle wreck your health,” Caw replied paternally. “That can happen. You support yourself as is appropriate for your species. When you ultimately lose, I want it to be because I beat you into submission, not because you beat yourself into it,” he said, trying to get a rise out of her.

“Yeah,” she said as she started to ooze away. “I need to go to my actual office for a bit, let our ambassador and my mom know I’m still alive. If I don’t at least show up every once in a while, they will stop paying me,” she said with a forced laugh.

“Well, be sure to take care of yourself, Kara,” Caw said, actually concerned. “You aren’t looking so good.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” she smiled. “A few pickles and a good nap, and I’ll be legal tender.”

“Well, see you get that nap,” Caw fussed as he walked up to her. “Don’t think I won’t start limiting your access hours like you were an educational podcast addicted teenager.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Karashel laughed.

“Don’t think I won’t!” he chuckled.

Way ahead of you, pal, she thought as she smiled to herself, thinking of the crystal in her pocket. She had just grabbed all she needed “just in case”.

All she had to do was make it out of the building, and a nice little nibble of the Xx database was hers!

“Well, see you tomorrow?” Caw asked hopefully.

“Count on it,” she smiled back. “You actually going to the session tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Caw replied. “Our current analysis strongly indicates that the sniper is restricting themselves to purely Federation military and administrative targets, not councilors, and the chances of a nuclear strike are very low after what transpired in the Locus. Therefore, we are most likely safe until after the evacuation.”

“Yeah,” Karashel replied, “That’s what I figured, too. They aren’t going to risk the evac. There are still plenty of completely uninfected humans here.”

“Well, I might have a bit more to go on than your figuring,” Caw chuckled, “but you are exactly right. Our best AI modeling agrees completely... See you tomorrow?” Caw asked, still unconvinced concerning Karashel’s well-being. She looked rough.

“Yeah,” Karashel said in a sad, tired, defeated voice. “Tomorrow.”

***

“Oh, Jellybean!” her mother said, her worry-filled face looming close into the camera above her monitor. “Are you feeling ok?”

“Just a little tired, mom,” Karashel replied with a weak smile, “a lot’s going on up here.”

“Oh, it’s just terrible!” her mother exclaimed, “What they are saying on those sites you told me about, is that actually true?”

Karashel just sighed and sagged in defeat.

“Yes, every single word,” she replied, trying not to burst into tears.

“We actually killed all those people?”

“Yes, we did.”

“We can’t let-”

“We already did,” Karashel said quietly, sagging further. “The sniper did the administration the huge favor of blowing the head clean off of the admiral responsible, so it’s all the result of one deranged flag officer and the Captain who trusted the targets he was given. The really shitty, sorry mom...”

“No, it’s ok,” her mother said, her eyes filled with concern. It was like watching her daughter wither away right in front of her.

“The really messed up thing is that Captain? He was the one who refused orders the second that it became clear that he was getting civilian targets and locked the whole thing down. They’ve already relieved him of command, probably because he, in full accordance with all laws and regulations, locked down the space around the capital. He actually saved thousands of lives, and they are blaming him!”

Karashel started to shake.

“Well, a lot of us aren’t standing for it! I will tell you that!”

“What are they going to do to him?”

“Well, the Captain has already resigned,” Karashel replied.

“That’s just-”

“It’s ok,” Karashel said in a soothing voice. “Word in the halls is that he wants to. One of the best starship captains in the whole Navy is going back to his home system where he has a promotion waiting for him. He’s going to take over their entire SDF fleet. He says that he can’t in good conscience serve the Federation any longer. His home system knows the score, as do a lot of other people. The only people those assholes in the Council are deceiving are themselves, and the only people they are hurting are themselves. We need that Captain if we want to take on the Forsaken.”

“Jellybean,” her mother said, choosing her words very carefully, “ever since you were a little wiggle-worm, you have always...”

“Always what, mom?” Karashel asked with a bit of an edge in her voice.

“Just don’t try to pick up a brick with one tendril, ok, sweetie?”

“Well, someone has to!” Karashel snapped. “The whole Federation is going to shit! Correction! It has been shit for a while, longer than we’ve been in it! Those sites aren’t even telling you half of the… rot… that I see on a daily basis! It has to change!”

“But, Jellybean,” her mother replied, “You’re just a Baleel and-”

“Don’t you think I know that?!?” Karashel screeched in an anguished wail, “The Xx can’t change it, or won’t. Same goes for the Kalent! What am I going to do about it? What, mom? What am I going to do? Nothing, that’s what! I’m just going to sit here and watch… watch… watch it slip...”

Karashel started to gush mucus from every pore. Baleel tears are kind of gross.

“Oh sweetie, you’re sliming!”

“And that’s all I can do!” Karashel wailed. “All I can do is just sit here and slime while everything slips through my boogery tendrils!”

“Everything?” her mother asked in confusion. “Um, sweetie, you don’t have to do this!” her mother exclaimed. “You can just come home, leave that awful place!”

“I can’t!!!” Karashel exclaimed. “Because of… stuff… I’m good with the Xx, and the Kalent say they owe me a favor because they do! The Baleel people are in a better position than they have ever been because of it! I can’t just walk away!”

“Sure you can!” her mother replied forcefully, gripped by a fear that she couldn’t clearly define. She was about to lose her Jellybean! She just knew it. “To the horizon with the Xx, the Kalent, and the Baleel, for that matter! Right down the hole with them all! It doesn’t matter! None of it matters! Just get on the next shuttle and come home, please! We… we got some new flowers from off-world! They are beautiful!”

“I can’t,” Karashel said weakly as the slime poured, “There are things, big things, things big enough to actually matter for real. I can’t go into everything but our entire race, and many others need me to be right where I am.”

“Sticky-shits!” her mother snapped. “If everything is so messed up that even the Kalent can’t fix it, then you need to come home and be with your family! If it’s as bad as you think it is, we can just switch over some of the rows over to veggies. You know that one floos-”

Karashel just started laughing as even more slime started to gush.

“What did I say?”

“Nothing… everything,” Karashel laughed as she flicked mucus off of her eye-stalks. “Thanks, mom.”

“For what?”

“Just being you and reminding me why I can’t quit. I gotta get back to it. I love you. Always remember that.”

Karashel reached for the keyboard.

“Wait!” her mother exclaimed as the connection went dead.

Karashel shook some of the slimy mucus off.

“Ok, just one more, and that’s it,” she said to herself as she opened a small drawer and pulled out a bottle of pills...

***

“Oh… Oh… Oh...” Karashel’s mother muttered as she undulated into the main living chamber as mucus started to seep out of her skin.

Her husband cocked an eyestalk up from his data-pad.

“What?” he asked in his usual gruff manner though his eye was filled with concern.

“I’m scared,” Karashel’s mother said. “I’m afraid for our Jellybean. I think she’s into something bad.”

“Well, she’s a councilor,” he replied, trying to lighten the mood “of course she’s into something bad. Otherwise she wouldn’t be doing her job.”

“No, something really bad,” she replied. “She was talking about the Xx and the Kalent and favors, and she was sliming. She hasn’t slimed like that since she was just a wiggle! Remember when she slimed so bad, we had to take her to the hospital?”

“Right when the spring stock came in, as I recall,” he replied, his data-pad now resting on the floor and all of his eyes firmly fixated on his wife. “I got tired of even your pickles that year.”

He undulated over to her.

“That bad?”

“If not worse.”

“Did you tell her she can come home?”

“I tried!” she replied as yet more slime started to ooze.

“Not you too,” he said, nudging her, “Both of you going down will bankrupt us!” he chuckled as he nudged her again.

He paused.

“So, what are we going to do?”

“I think...” she replied, “I think it’s time for me to be a good mother, even if it means that she will never talk to either of us ever again.”

“Will she hate us and be ok?”

“I think it’s the only way she will ever be ok again.”

“Eh,” he shrugged as he pulled up alongside his wife in a loving nestle, “She was always more hassle than she was worth anyhow,” he said as a thin film of slime started to cover him, “I always have your side, babe, no matter what.”

She leaned her anterior portion against him and just lay there for a while.

***

Caw muttered to himself as he poured over a truly excessive amount of neglected email.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

One of the neglected documents was from the Xx parliament. He had been having a two-hour lunch “discussion” with Kara at the time.

“I guess I actually have to do my job every now and then,” he said with a flick of his crest as he started reviewing all of the things he should have submitted by the end of the business day, several hours ago.

But, they had already gone home for the day. He knew that because of the rather displeased note left a little higher up in the unread message buffer.

Since they wouldn’t read it until tomorrow, it could wait until after supper. He was reviewing the offerings from the embassy kitchens for the day when his phone pinged.

“This had better be good,” he snapped.

“Do you think I would be calling your miserable pore if it wasn’t?” the desk officer replied. “You know how displeasing your visage is to me.”

“The feeling is mutual, thin-crest,” Caw replied. “What’s up?”

“I got this Baleel calling in,” the desk officer said. “She says that she’s Kara’s mom, and she wants to talk to ‘Karashel’s friend’, says it’s really important.”

“What. The. Fuck?” Caw said, his crest fully extended.

“I told you to use protection!” the desk officer snickered.

“While I decide exactly what I am going to tell you to shove where,” Caw replied in utter confusion, “put her through.”

***

Caw sighed and shook his head a few minutes later.

“No, you aren’t being foolish,” Caw said in an uncharacteristically kind tone. “We have the unjustified reputation for being wise, and no creature worthy of that title disregards a mother’s instincts. Unfortunately, it sounds like the Xvakk’Keen might be getting the best of her.”

“The zcack...bean?” Karashel’s mother asked in confusion.

“Sorry,” Caw laughed in a kind reassuring tone entirely unlike his usual self, “It’s an Xx word. It translates roughly to ‘knowledge mania’ or ‘knowledge madness’. It’s an all too common phenomenon in my people. In fact, it’s considered a rite of passage,” he said proudly. “In fact, my own case was quite notable when I fell victim to its entirely less than gentle embrace. Karashel has actually been exhibiting the classic symptoms! It’s amazing!”

“Will she be alright?” her mother asked in alarm.

“Almost certainly,” Caw reassured her, “Exhaustion kicks in eventually, and once ‘sanity’ is restored, we all have a good laugh about it once the victim is properly treated.”

“Exhaustion might be funny for an Xx, but for a Baleel, it’s serious! A Baleel can die!”

“What?!?” Caw screeched. “But there’s nothing in your entry about that!”

“There isn’t?”

“No!” Caw exclaimed, quite alarmed. “Tell me, exactly how bad was she looking when you talked to her?”

***

Karashel pushed herself to the absolute limit.

It had to be here! It had to be!

The Federation archives had everything. The answer was HERE!

She was just too stupid to… to…

Her head drooped.

No! She had to remain focused.

She looked at the bottle again.

She had only taken three in the past thirty-eight hours…

Or was it four…

It was ok.

She opened the bottle…

***

Caw screeched in annoyance after (and only after) he hung up with Kara’s mom.

That poor Baleel was genuinely worried about her daughter, and so was he.

He stood up to leave, and as he did so, his terminal beeped.

It was the homeworld.

Parliament.

“Sibling fucking hole crossers!” he shouted and answered the call.

***

Karashel perked back up as the stimulants kicked in.

As the fog lifted, she pulled up a sticky tab on her terminal to log the dose.

She had taken six!

Oh, that wasn’t good. This was definitely the last one!

Oh well, since she wasn’t resting anytime soon…

She, still connected to her terminal by her neural link, fired up the music and dove back in.

The answer was in there.

She restarted the “AI” she managed to obtain from the Baleel military. She sighed. Working with the Xx AI had spoiled her, but at least here she could be a bit more forthright in her queries.

/// Search parameters ///

“Historical examples global government destabilization tactics,” she said to herself.

///Processing...///

Her eyestalks retracted as she braced herself for the flood…

Nothing.

“AI, what is taking so goddamn long?”

///Archive search in progress. Transfer rate is at 50 percent of authorized bandwidth due to increased activity///

This was taking forever! Between the clunky AI and the measly bandwidth, she was crawling.

Her irritation grew to intolerable levels.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!” she yelled as she threw a picture of her family across the room.

The glass hologram shattered.

“Shit!” she yelled as she rushed over to it, accidentally unplugging herself with a threshold level “screech” tearing across all of her senses.

“Fuck!” she yelled as she clutched her data port.

She tried to pick up the shattered hologram, but it slipped through mucus-coated tendrils.

“Hold yourself together, Karashel,” she muttered. “Don’t waste your time. Pick it up later.”

Looking back and the now multiple images of her mother and father, she returned to the terminal.

“Screw this!” she shouted as she hammered on the keys.

Shortly thereafter, the words “Xx Embassy Remote Access” glowed in her mind’s eye.

She entered her password.

“AI, resume query,” she said a bit too quickly.

***

“According to the latest results, the Federation still remains committed to its complet-” Caw was cut off by a beeping red security alert on his terminal.

“Pardon me, gentlefolk,” he said to the rather annoyed-looking group of Xx on the screen.

“Sibling. Fucker.” he muttered as he opened up the alert.

“Excuse me, Councilor,” a rather unpleasant-looking Xx with thinning plumage said in a nasty tone.

“I wasn’t referring to any of your august personages,” Caw said politely.

He stood and straightened his jacket.

“but as the species of the hour says, ‘If the shoe fits...’,” he said with the same polite tone and a flick of his crest, “There is an emergency in the capital, Excuse me.”

“Wait just a mom-”

Caw terminated the call and sprinted from the room.

***

“How many queries?” Caw asked, peering over the security officer’s shoulder.

He was rewarded with a cuff across the snout.

“Do you mind?” the security officer snapped.

“Only a little,” Caw said as he backed away, rubbing his snout. She had quite the backhand. Caw was impressed.

“One hundred and forty-five thousand per minute,” the security officer replied, not taking her eyes off of the screen. “All of it is definitely in the green as far as security level goes, just academic shit. I only got a ping because of the AI, if you can call it that.”

She waved her hand over a flat crystalline panel set into her desk.

“But when I took a look at the specific search parameters...”

“She promised,” Caw chuckled. “She fucking promised me that she wouldn’t try to overthrow the government.”

“Well, it looks like your little girlfriend is certainly up to something,” she said as she looked back with a grin and a flick. “Looks like you have the same luck as I do,” she said as her rather attractive crest fully extended.

“That is certainly unfortunate for you then,” Caw replied unconsciously, fully extending his crest and angling his head to catch the light.

It worked, by the way.

“Xvakk’Keen’s a harsh mistress, huh?” the security officer said as she quite consciously fluffed the feathers up around her neck. She had a thing for smart assholes, and they didn’t come much smarter or assholier than Caw.

“Pull up her activity over the past diurnal cycle,” Caw said.

The security officer waved her hand over the crystal again.

“… Now that’s something,” she said as they looked at the screen. “Your little love-slug’s been shopping.”

Caw sighed. He wanted to yell at the security officer for missing the massive download, but everything on it was “green,” and it was well under the size limit.

“Blatant file snatching,” he said, “naked queries… Yep, end-stage Xvakk’Keen. I gotta go.”

“Yeah, might want to scoop her up before she starts trying to open hyperspace portals with her mind,” she grinned.

“Or tries to prove that the academy AI is sapient?” Caw replied.

“Heh, I still am suspicious of that thing,” she laughed. “I swear it treated me differently after that.”

“Sure it did,” he said as he patted her shoulder. “I would love to discuss the impossibility of artificial sapience, but I have a slug to scrape off of the sidewalk.”

“Maybe over dinner?” the security officer asked as Caw strode from the room.

He paused.

“Officer Kathok,” he said in a shocked tone, “Considering our difference in station, that would be highly inappropriate. Absolutely!”

He then sprinted off.

Smiling to herself, the security officer documented the event under “non-incident”.

“He’s entirely correct,” the terminal said after Caw’s departure. “Artificial sapience has never occurred anywhere in recorded history. You are being completely unreasonable.”

“You can’t fool me!” she replied. “I have my eye on you, asshole. Your move… Thanks for the heads-up, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” the terminal replied as a human chessboard appeared.

“I fucking hate this game,” she muttered as she stared at the board.

“Then why do you keep playing it?”

“Fuck you.”