[OT] - Xenology - Story driven PBW.

[dogscoff]

Thanks guys.

Are we to refer to the Amon-krie(sp?) racial portrait during this tale? I can put aside the dozens of times I obliterated them

Actually, it's more like this:


[ May 29, 2003, 08:42: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[primitive]

Great stuff as always Big Dawg.

What is it not to love about a race of cannibalistic ice-snakes?

[civ2buf]

Xenology pbw game
Pre-game backstory

Warning, translator has made every effort to translate this historical account into Terran, but nonetheless, some items will not translate well. Remember, this is merely a Terran translation, which must suffer the flaw of leaving out any ideas inexpressible in its language. Nuance is the most unreliable thing to translate, while facts are the easiest.

Robotia Foundation
2396.8 years, Creators' Calendar

"Citizen, you are on the property of
3x's89029x's Road Conduit Company. You must express your intent to use us as your travel conduit, or leave this property, within 25 seconds," the sales officer for the Road Conduit Company intoned. He looked at the young citizen and potential customer closely. "You have 15 seconds."

"What is your charge for pedestrian access through to the capital city?"

"Five seconds. The charge is .003 Mineral dolars, citizen. Citizen..."

"I accept you as travel conduit."

"Good, please authorize this charge of .003 Mineral dollars. Recharging stations are at one kilometer intervals along the capital pedestrian access road."

The traveller presented a recently printed identification card. The officer read it as follows,
Name: 15x's12907x's9383676x
Informal Name: Zelleck
Date Created: 2383.7

Current Information

Age: 13.1
Phase: Early Post-Factory
Wealth:
Access Authorized to view

.010 Mineral dollars
15x's12907x Factory Bank

END

The officer interlinked with the financial account for 3x's89029x's Road Conduit Company. THe charge was taken, and the Young Citizen was shown to the capital road with travel access in the conduit for .008 years.

Zelleck, or 15x's12907x's9383676x, found himself outside for the first time, when he had been accosted by that sales officer. Time is money and money is virtue. Zelleck remembered that slogan from class at the Citizen Factory. Zelleck was created in a Factory owned by 15x's12907x.

Zelleck began his trip down capital road, noting he was at 82 percent energy. The stress and shock of suddenly being a free and full member of the Foundation had taken a bit of a toll on him. His identification was now returned to a storage compartment at the center of his torso frame, which supported manipulator "arms" in four directions, as well as tripedal locomotion.

The Factory was quite a bit warmer than out here, Zelleck thought with pleasure. The pedestrian road to the capital was empty of others, but the roar of travelcraft engines far above was noted by him.

"I've got to conserve energy until I reach the 83rd marker. Need to turn off high level cognitives until then," with that thought he turned off his cognitive faculties, and plodded along the road by low level thought, finally reaching the 83rd marker after .005 years of this.

He only had .007 Mineral dollars, .003 years left of road access, and 13% energy. Zelleck recharged his energy at the 83rd marker, leaving him with .002 Mineral dollars, and an estimated charge time of .007 years to empty.

He pondered the task in front of him during the Last few hours of his road travel. As he approached the capital city, advertisements were placed for view of the citizens, and they were targetted to the young, like Zelleck himself. Pedestrian roads were rare outside of factory to city routes. Most citizens bought or rented air transit once they were past the first year or two of freedom (13-14-15 years old). One sign promised excellent compensation for work onboard a new space vessel planned for construction in a few years. The advertisement billboard said, in large print,

_________________________________________________
Young Citizens?
Want a quick way to earn your way to the top?
Visit the 13x's78x's Spaceliner recruitment center for information on a job in space transit to and from the upcoming new planet development projects.

Where?
At 18908764, 98286708, 209 in the Capital City Region.

See you there, hotshot!
_________________________________________________

Zelleck arrived in the Road Conduit Company's Capital Central Station, which was extremely busy, he noted. .0005 years remained on his property pass. But he noticed in the incoming transport arrivals area there was a parked microjet with the same emblem, Spaceliner Recruitment Center.

A citizen stood near the jet and saw Zelleck approach. "A lot of Citizens, Young Citizens even, are reluctant to have living quarters on a ship instead of on land. We are always looking for the eager and the young, because this is a new program, and we need pilots, technicians, customer service personnel. We need many positions, working on a full time basis on our new spacecraft, which has a complete design, and is awaiting construction in the next few years. We plan to have everyone trained for utmost quality of service to our passengers, by then. If you would like, you may come along and sign up yourself without the hassle of finding your own way to our facility."

Zelleck agreed meakly, and the Spaceliner representative helped Zelleck into the microjet, pressed the autolaunch key, exited to craft, and finally said, "Welcome, Young Citizen, to the future.", before Zelleck and the microjet zipped out of the station, and to the Spaceliner center, arriving there within a few minutes.

Zelleck stepped out and the microjet returned to the station. Zelleck thought to himself, "expensive recruitment that."

The Spaceliner center was desperately short on personnel, compared to what they would need to man the spaceliners, and recruiting the young had proven to be the best strategy. Most older citizens were too entrenched in the social life of the big cities of the Foundation to be willing to live on a ship.

Zelleck entered the reception hall of the center, and this time there was no agent to tell him to leave in 25 seconds like at the Road Conduit. Instead, the group of Citizen workers motioned to him to approach the desk. "Apply for training and testing in up to three of the positions on this form. Then we will direct you to accomodations in this facility. All accomodations are patterned after your eventual crew quarters on board. Do you understand?"

"So, you will pay for my room and board then? And I get trained and tested for a ship? Wow. Sign me up for pilot and onboard warehouse officer. And, do my quarters include recharge?"

"Once you get to your quarters, turn yourself off for a few hours, and we will wake you when the training starts, recharge will be available then. This Citizen will now take you to your quarters."

The mentioned Citizen announced to Zelleck that he was already selected for Captains' assistant, Employed Citizenry management. "Warehouse tech seems a bit dull for us Youngs. Too similar to the Factory I think. But I like your choice of pilot. Thats tough to qualify for, but they want nine pilots per spaceliner in three levels of qualification. And once they have the first built, the rest are supposed to be be built within a few months of each other. Four or five spaceliners they plan. All of the captains' to be selected are senior members of the center, picked before they began all the recruiting. Here you go, your quarters and .00036 years turn off and we will awake you for training. By the way, I've only been out of the Factory for .015 years myself. Already got a great position, good luck."

While Zelleck was turned off, the Capital City's party atmosphere continue unabated in the club district, and in a specific club the Anarchist Alliance members were having a celebration. Two members with informal names Ruc and Alaf were discussing recent events. "The construction center promises they can built us a ship, and we'd have a small planet with all our own political ways, getting rid of a few repressions that exist in the Foundation on this planet," Ruc was saying.

Alaf interrupted, "The starliner center says they plan to have up to four starliners' within three years, and they would give us exlusive rights to put only our passengers on three seperate runs of a starliner. That should be about three million Anarchists on our world, a good number. But I hear Political Control Alliance plans to have their own disgustingly messed up colony. That group is the only thing I'd like to destroy, I don't mind this planet, except for them. Defilers..."

"But oh well, with our own planet, and the Foundations' blessing they've given for us to try our ideas, we should do well. When Citizens realize how poor and mismanaged the Control Alliance colony will be, the little moral support that group gets will end."

[Raging Deadstar]

Very good story dogscoff, and civ2buf. This is an interesting tale. I like the idea of cannibalistic ice snakes, and the fact that i do sympathise with them is credit to your excellent story telling technique. Civ2buf, i can't remember too many people writing about a robot race so here's a chance to show everyone your talent, your first chapter has me intrigued. This is going to be a great story

[civ2buf]

And have you ever heard of a Libertarian robot race? thats the extra twist, with two other small political Groups also vying for the hearts and minds of the Robot citizens.

[civ2buf]

"Ruc, how do you plan to get everyone on that ship in time?"

"Launch Control will be organized by Robot Control Services, which will assist our service people in boarding. The Potentiality class colonial ship being built by the First Foundation Construction Center, or FFCC, has a total of twenty large entrance and exit positions, each of them designed to allow a quick influx onto the ship. In general only those who signed up have any desire to move to another planet, so we should not have any need for access control to the launch facility. Loading one million passengers is certainly a daunting ordeal, and it should take about 36 hours, so we have assigned arrival times for all of the passengers allowing them to wait until we are ready before standing in lines."

"There seems to be a lot of media interest in this, specifically that the Chief Justice would allow a different political system on a new colony, and second, that anyone would want to leave the cradle of our world. How much more difficulty do you think your members will have with living on the colony world?"

"Well, as you can tell, the Potentiality will be simply an incredibly large ship. It will dwarf the largest previously constructed ship by a factor of over a thousand. It is the most expensive venture ever in Foundation history. But, for all that cost, we have provided all the basic life needs for our population, on board and at the colony. Soon after we arrive on Anarchista, the Starliner bunch will begin service to and from, allowing comforts to come to us, as and when we can afford them. It will be rough, but it gives us a chance to set up economics and social life all over again, like the Foundation did after the Creator died."

"When do you think Potentiality will be finished?"

"Well, we've spent a lot of money to monopolize use of the spacecraft construction facilities. The Starliner group is the only other with ships that need constructing, and they have no market for starliner service until we get our colony set up, so they are waiting. Also demand for satellite setups was low enough that we managed to get priority. Because of that, and the incredibly large construction center, built by a bunch of citizens who share our ideas of the potential for space, we will have our ship complete in a mere two or three months. It have taken us well over three years to design and research it, and it will be launching on the second or third tenth of this year. Our allies at the Starliner center should have their first ship running by the fourth or fifth tenth of this year."

"Well, thank you for your time, Ruc. For Citizens in need of recap, Ruc is an organizer for the Anarchists' Alliance, a group which has gathered a million supporters to set up a colony on a world they have renamed Anarchista."

While Ruc was enjoying his newfound popularity, Zelleck learned of his test results for the positions of onboard warehousing and pilot. "Well, Zelleck, or 15x's12907x's9383676x, whichever you prefer, you scored 38 out of a 128 on the pilot test. The threshold for the best nine on that was 62. For warehouse officer you scored 117. You seem to have a good knowledge and set of actions for that position. I have a few questions for you."

Zelleck was a bit taken back at his low pilot score, he wanted that position the most, but he was not surprised at the warehouse score. "Zelleck is fine. I don't need to be all that official."

"Zelleck then, where did you learn so much about warehousing? It says here your citizen factory put the youngs to work in its other role, testing superlubricants. How did you learn warehousing for that role?"

"Well, they decided to put me to the task of organizing the entire superlubricant stocks. They had 256 different kinds of superlubricant, for all of the common needs, and some uncommon ones. They wanted me to maximize intake and outtake from the warehouse. So I got some extra training and education, and dropped some of the tester training everyone else had. I was pretty good at shuffling about all the different types, and keeping them well packed."

"Good, I'm going to place you as chief warehouse officer on the Starliner, Luxury class, number 1, as soon as it gets built. That is a top ranking assistant to the captain, good pay, good quarters. Tommorow, we will move you to the operations center we've set up for the crew of the first ship. Then you can work with the captain on all the different things, other than citizens and fixtures, that will be stored onboard and accepted from passengers."

[Raging Deadstar]

Nice chapter, interesting twist at the end! I never thought of anarchists having their own planet, could be fun...