>>3710768
>>3711044

You haven't been to Effincold since the place was established, having left its operation to Ryan Andrews. The place is, you have to admit, bustling; a small town has been built around the processing plant, to take advantage of its waste heat, and despite the low price of silver and cobalt the operation is financially solvent. One thing that worries you a little is that the people here are clearly loyal to Andrews rather than you, even though they are technically on your payroll.

Dr. Robertson has set up his experiment a little further north; you're both at the observation platform, waiting for the wind to shift, just in case.

"This is a uranium hydride bomb. Unlike every other design, this relies on slow rather than fast neutrons..." Dr. Robertson briefly explains the physics to you, in sufficient details that you muse that if you weren't a high ranking government yourself, you'd probably get a visit from the FBI if you were to write them down.

Eventually, the wind shifts. There's no big red button to push; this is a test, so a timer is activated automatically once the telemetry systems all report that they are recording.

You put on a lead-lined jacket and thick goggles, just in case.

https://twitter.com/BreakingNLive/status/1159551101370322945

>>3737334

The explosion is... whelming. You know that if this had been a fully functional nuke, the observation platform you're standing on would have been reduced to ashes, as you would have. As it is, it looked like a large conventional bomb went off, save for the characteristic shockwave. Your personal electronics go numb for a few dozen seconds, then manage to reconnect.

This, then, is the result of years of squirreling away nuclear fuel and providing Dr. Robertson with approximately three times more funding than his above-the-table research has received. You aren't impressed.

Dr. Robertson, on the other hand, is triumphant. "We have initiation! We'll calculate the yield in a few minutes, but.... That was what nuclear targeteers call a fizzle, an incomplete reaction. I estimate point fifteen, maybe point two kilotons, comparable with the old Upshot-Knothole tests."

"How is this a good thing?"

"It's a great thing. It means that whatever caused fast-neutron collisions to no longer go supercritical - and I am expecting to have some answers soon in that respect - isn't affecting slow neutrons. This gives us an upper boundary to, well, physics going topsy-turvy on us. Everything below that should remain relatively unaffected, and this test gives us an idea of what can be done with things above that."

"For example?"

"Particle accelerators that can fit in a backpack or a jeep. Restarting the nuclear power industry. And... well, actual nukes, if you still want to go in that direction."

He explains that a multistage device with a hydride bomb at its core would be able to realize the sort of yield that "traditional" thermonuclear weapons were capable of - possibly even more, if anything, due to the supercriticality event happening over milliseconds rather than microseconds - at the price of much heavier construction. Sticking nukes on top of missiles, or slung under bombers, is probably a thing of the past at this point, however nuclear mines and possibly tank-mounted bombs are possible.

"... There's also the safety factor to consider. Uranium, unlike plutonium, is remarkably non-toxic aside from its radioactivity... I wouldn't say put it in your morning coffee, of course, but occasional exposure should be relatively safe if proper precautions are taken. But we're talking lead-lined jackets, not NBC suits."

You look at Dr. Robertson's eyes, seeing a fire in them that wasn't there before. This is the man who had claimed to be happy to leave the genie back in the bottle where it had crawled into.

# Encourage him to dream big, even if it's risky - now is the time.

# Remind him of his professsional and ethical obligations as a scientist. We need sane science, not mad science, now more than ever.

Your people had sent out a warning that a large explosion - chemical, of course - would be set in an uninhabited area, to perform mineralogical survey and, while at it, to test the new cheap accelerometers for early earthquake warning.

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>>3699859
>>3699876

You direct Aki to give a gentle poke to the Burroughs MCP system that Carpatescu has. While she dives right into it, her support team contacts Burroughs and asks for details on the original implementation from the sixties and seventies. You're surprised to learn that a number of financial institutions are still using old big iron like that; if anything, there's been a surge of hiring for COBOL and FORTRAN programmers lately, as the old guard retires. Due to the extensive testing that the decades-old software has undergone, it's considered more reliable to build clusters to emulate the old mainframes and run said software than to reimplement everything from scratch; banks like predictability, and having three known bugs with known workarounds is considered less harmful than having one new one.

As far as Aki can tell, Carpatescu's MCP used to belong to Jonathan Stonagal's financial conglomerate, and has been in continuous operation - on the original hardware - for close to forty years now, having come online Sept 11, 1961. As far as she can tell, it has received a number of ad-hoc modifications, including a fast analog recursive differentiator built by the short-lived company ENCOM in the early eighties.

Unfortunately, her attempt to log in directly is detected and deflected, although it cannot be traced back to you. Carpatescu has largely dismantled Stonagal's organization after his former mentor committed suicide, so it's trivial to discover that this "Mr. Dillinger" is long gone, as are most of the MCP's sysadmins aside from maintenance staff.

>>3699859
>>3699876
>>3699922

Moira deploys your security teams all over Egypt; some will ensure that families and skilled workers can move to Cairo, some will run interference with the Peacekeepers directly under Rebohoth's control.

Gideon Raveshaw is the commander in charge of the forces under Rebohoth's responsibility; you don't know much about the man yet, but he seems to have done a decent job replacing Hassan, for most intents and purposes - at least off the field, since he is known for leading from the rear. He's exploiting the confusion between Rebohoth's personal guard and the Peacekeeper corps in order to openly raid fleeing Egyptians under color of law; your local contacts tell you that the situation in South Africa is heating up again, largely because over there this ruse hasn't been as successful due to many locals having cell phones with cameras and being able to at least document the most egregious abuses.

When facing Raveshaw's forces, Moira is directed to

# bait and bleed: you have a security force, not an army. Making them scared to sleep with both eyes closed will be sufficient, for now.

# Take them on: your soldiers are better trained and better armed. Time to start shifting the balance of power.

# Focus on defending the refugees.

Since the Garibaldi has been configured for strike operations, she only manages to do 1 or 2 trips between Libya and Sicily.

>Defend the refugees. We don't need any more bloodshed than absolutely necessary.

(Argh, something ate my post)

>>3737433
(What quest are you running?)

Your forces are happy to play the good guy. Raveshaw ends up frustrated: you leverage the Garibaldi's sensors to intercept his comms, and can work out evacuation orders. You suffer very light casualties, which are easily replaced thanks to your decision to set up a pension plan for your security forces. Your tracking teams note that Rebohoth is mad: he's decreed that no computers or cell phones are to be used in his palace at Khartoum.

Unfortunately your focus on saving lives means that you fall a little short on asset recovery, so you

# Abort construction in Australia.
# Abort construction in Russia.
# Take the budget hit next month; Carpatescu may notice.


In Britain and India, construction has proceeded apace; Foreman Domai has been silent, although you hear he's trying to unionize Bangalore coders, and Terry April's efforts in tandem with your own mean that the damage in England has been completely repaired.

Your work teams report some friction between Commissioner Lal and Chairman Yang at the eastern Indian border, but the arrival of your work teams to construct additional pylons is welcomed without reserves.

>>3737433

As you get ready to go to New Babylon, Carla brings you the preparedness report. She's got droplets of marinara sauce over her normally impeccable uniform, and explains that she just came from the basement where the server room is, and that it's "some internet thing about spaghetti" and apparently a hydraulic press.

"I've cross-correlated our preparedness report with the seismic tests we've done up north. The great news is that we're in fine shape when it comes to handling things like earthquakes and floods - not just our own pylons and nodes, but a significant chunk of urban infrastructure won't be vulnerable to secondary damage like fires or prolonged blackouts. Of course, if a fissure decides to open up and eat a train, not much can be done, but should that happen at least the power grid is now smart enough to isolate that section of rails so as to not short the rest of it. And so on."

You figure that Carla wouldn't show up disheveled (you're used to being around construction workers, sysadmins, and mercenaries, so what counts as disheveled for her would count as damn near impeccable for most of your crew) if she just had good news for you, so you encourage her to come out with it.

"Well... I was looking at the timeline. I think that a global earthquake is nonsense, it's just not how plate tectonics work, but the other stuff... it looks like a prediction of an asteroid falling to Earth, or more than one. I was thinking, most of our satellites have cameras. Is there any way to aim them up rather than down?"

You say you'll think about it. The microsats' cameras would not do much good, but if you were to launch one of the larger systems in intermediate orbit that your people have been designing, installing something with better resolution and giving it its own CPU for autofocusing shouldn't be too difficult. Like everything else, though, it's extra work; Carpatescu's mandate is pretty tough as it is.

>>3737337
>encourage him to dream big
>abort construction in Russia.

>>3737546
Time to put up a big boy sattalite

>>3737471
(Oops, meant to remove that from my comment. Running Phoenix Cape Quest.)

>Abort construction in Australia. Start looking for ways to make extra cash for the asteroid cam, X-Risk is no laughing matter.

#Focus on Defending Refugees
#Encourage him to dream big
#Abort construction in Russia

(Glad you're back Geist)

I've been doing more brainstorming on our 'theological efforts' and had yet another idea, although this one is more focused on mental defense.

What if we consider the possibility of Zen meditation and mindfulness exercises as a supplement to our nomenclature. We could have our staff try to figure out how to mentally block outside influences (i.e. Carpatescu's hypno-wizardry) or at the very least have some sort of bulwark if things go south.

>>3737817
(Not sure if you were talking to me or the other guy. I'm not Geist though.)

>>3737817
Would be interesting if that works. Qe could put a team on that.

>>3737766
Really just sell more nomenclatures is how we make more dosh.
>>3737471
Have the team not making network dye to funding sell nomencLturea instead so we make the +1 funds

>>3737869
Talking to the GM. Still getting used to the tag thing here... ;P

>>3737893
We should be in the neighborhood, seeing as were visiting Japan.

>>3737337

# Remind him of his professsional and ethical obligations as a scientist. We need sane science, not mad science, now more than ever.
# bait and bleed: you have a security force, not an army. Making them scared to sleep with both eyes closed will be sufficient, for now.
# Take the budget hit next month; Carpatescu may notice.
Explain we are making all recent and newer infrastructure disaster proof from earthquakes and flooding, and so forth.

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>>3737817
Traditionally, people looking for that sort of guidance would go to the Far East; these days you are dismayed to find that even in Japan there are plenty of scammers and McDojos. Nevertheless, you make contact with someone reputable. The main issue, as always, would be to test anything you learn: the only person in your organization who gets to talk to the big boss regularly is, well, you

Carla notes that Aki has a decent chance of being immune to Carpatescu's mind-whammy, just out of how topsy turvy her brain is, but notes in her usual pleasantly professional demeanor that if you expose Aki to the Potentate on purpose, she's going to quit and take as many of your staff along as she can

You now have the option to use one of your monthly actions to train in meditation, although it will be a few months before you find any effects, if there are any to be found.

>>3737817
>>3737762

You take the opportunity - the normally sedate Dr. Robertson is now excited about the possibilities.

"Doctor, I am with you about not wanting to restart the nuclear rat race, but does this new understanding of physics do anything for us, since we now know what it does against us?"

"Well, yes. We can, presumably, rebuild nuclear reactors so that they will generate again, quite safely, although you're looking at a sixty percent loss of capacity. On the other hand, it'd take years.... assuming the public would agree to be rational about it, which, well, is more your bailiwick than mine."

Better drag him away from that line of thinking; you want him to make promises he'll have to at least try to keep.

"Could you nuclearize a ship?"

"Oh, easily. There's enough deuterium in salt water to keep the uranium hydride reaction going for years. You wouldn't need nearly as much shielding as you do on a nuclear submarine, either.... actually..."

"Less shielding means cheaper and smaller reactors, right?"

"Well, that's offset by the fact that you'd need more reactor volume per unit of energy, so... sorta. You could do some interesting things, though."

"Like what, Ghostbusters backpacks?"

Dr. Robertson shakes his head. "I'm a scientist, Foreman, not a propmaker. Let's be serious here." But he's nodding vigorously as he says it.

"Nuclear powered construction vehicles can be built safely. Now there's this rather persistent employee of yours who has been sending spider-tank designs to one of my engineering students, and a system powered by a nuclear reactor might-"

"Anyway." Didn't you toss that guy out of a window?

"Oh, I'm not saying it's particularly practical, but for things the size of cranes or quarry trucks, or even large earthmovers, it's now within the realm of possibility. Unless physics decides to go back to what we used to call normal, of course. In which case, well, I was worried that we would see spontaneous initiations... now, after this test, I no longer am. The new reactors would simply become inert - we'd have wasted a lot of money, but no lives."

>>3738455
>>3737893
>>3737762
>>3737766

Getting a basic design for a "big boy" satellite happens for free; you have enough technically qualified space nuts on staff that a project proposal paper, based on Salyut/Almaz station cores and using Proton rockets, is brought to your desk within days. The actual implementation will have to be paid for, of course.

A large satellite will cost 4 aerospace parts to launch, and carry 4 components. Since it will be established in a modified Molniya orbit, It will be able to cover an entire region. One problem is that you will have to launch from Baikonur, since that's where the heavy hardware already is: the Garibaldi can be reconfigured to launch a microsatellite swarm into orbit, but we're talking about flight articles large enough to have a crew compartment here. Fortunately, Zakharov seems to be in good relations with you. The mini-stations can be fitted with repeater antennas, doing roughly the same job as a microsat swarm, and cameras, which can be pointed at the ground or at the sky. The paper shows a highly modular design, indicating that new component types would be fairly straightforward to design and integrate. You think that having giant composite mirrors to light up the night in an area, or tungsten rods to rain fire upon your enemies, or dedicated EMP jammers is a little impractical. You are also pretty sure that the ion cannon design was ripped straight out of Command & Conquer and was left in the paper as a gag.

>>3738455

Dr. Robertson is clearly proud of what he has accomplished. You listen to him patiently as he extols the possibility of a safe atomic power future that looks a lot like what he must've envisioned as a student in the 1950s and 1960s, and gently tease him about putting fins and chrome on the nuclear earthmovers he's describing.

Inevitably, a few of his students get involved in the conversation, and before long you're hearing about backpack mounted particle accelerators, teleforce beams, and industrial lasers that fit in a briefcase. You've successfully gotten this research team to loosen up a little.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4oMaxo3jlc

Dr. Robertson's written report, coming a few days later, is a model of professionalism of course, although the list of engineering application sounds just as broad as his excited impromptu lecture. Notably, he says that since he and his team are committed to pacifism, he is going to publish about reactor designs but not about nuclear mines. You figure that barring surprise events such as brainwashing or conversion, you've earned his loyalty in addition to having bought his services; it should still be possible to talk him into building a bomb, if it comes down to deflecting an asteroid or dealing with a similar existential threat. As for publishing,

# Okay.
# Veto.
# Publish in full.

>>3738617
# Okay.
But delay it for a month or two.
What we need to do is set up a company that works with nuclear materials and building, so we can start making and patenting the building of these reactors. They can acquire the necessary material without too many eyebrows raised.

We can also further fund research and add to our budget.
Also we need to have a demo reactor built.

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>>3738455
>>3737817
>>3737762

Unfortunately there's no time to pivot your team to make and market more Nomenklators, so you decide to postpone installation in Russia. Since you had made no announcements or promises, the Russian people don't even know that they are missing out on anything; your rollout in Australia and Indonesia happens without difficulties, the wide open spaces with no right-of-way restrictions and ample availability of solar power making the deployment easy, for once.

You do end up with a few unfinished pylons -- they're missing the solar apron --, which are earmarked for use locally in case of an emergency, since they can be run off diesel generators for a few days.

Either way, it's time to go to New Babylon. You check that Moira's people made it back safely aboard the Garibaldi before booking a flight to Iraq; she notes that if you're going to keep using CATS security as a private military company, you should probably pick a name and a flag for the outfit, as much as the "Tiger Mafia" thing worked out well it's not the sort of name that brings to mind reliability when looking for customers.

You're pretty sure that her proposed flag design sends the wrong message, though.

The first thing you find is that the monorail from Baghdad airport to New Babylon has been completed, so you dismiss the official limo, and take it. The second thing you find is that Carpatescu has a sense of humor, since one of the LCD screens in the conveyance is playing that one Simpsons episode on loop. The monorail cars look nothing like those in the cartoon, of course, but they do have solar panels on them.

New Babylon is fast replacing New York and London as the hub of global finance; on the ride to the Burj Carpathia -- apparently the Potentate has moved to his just-to-impress office after all --- you see more suits and ties than kandooras. The giant skyscraper itself is a little more ornate, the austere Modernist stylings inside having allowed in a little bit of gold trim and carpaeting to conform to the local style.

Ahead of you in the meeting schedule is Dr. Neal Damosa, an expert in the area of tele-education. You wait in the lavishly appointed anteroom, and listen in a little - Carpatescu wants to take advantage of the Rapture gap to reform elementary schools by introducing a worldwide standardized civics curriculum, to be beamed to schools via satellite, and wants to test the technology with some existing high schools. Dr. Damosa is excited by the promise of funding; you groan internally, both because this sounds like more work for you and because tele-education when there's an overabundance of teachers is clearly a terrible idea.

>>3738653

That's a good idea! You'll have to pick a site for it, though. You'll also have to decide who will nominally head it. Dr. Robertson is an option, since he is an internationally recognized expert. He doesn't mind a short delay: right now he's at least half a year ahead of everyone else.

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>>3738668

Carpatescu's secretary - not Mrs. Durham, you note - welcomes you in as you watch a very happy Damosa leave.

The big boss seems to be in good spirits; you glance around the office and find that it too is less austere, there are now more awards and medals on the walls and the carpeting has been redone.

"So, Foreman. I've got to admit that i was hoping for faster progress on the electronic payment system. While you build the consumer infrastructure, I've had my own men take steps to ensure that centralized control becomes available as soon as said infrastructure is ready -- in addition to making tax evasion impossible, this will make sure that my administration has enough data on each global citizen to plan for their future needs. Whatever the Remnant crazies say, we are in for the long haul. To which I wish to ask you: is your slow progress for this quarter an indication that you have a long term strategy, or are you just slacking off?"

This sounds like a tongue lashing, but his tone is benign and his body language is relaxed. Mixed signals again.

# My people have worked hard for two years. I must have misunderstood you about how fast you wanted this done. I'm sorry.

# After the attacks, we've wanted to make sure anything new we put in place won't fall to reactionary sabotage. That takes longer.

# You know how exponential growth works - it starts slow, then snowballs. I'm doing the same thing.

# You hired me to do a job, and I'm doing it better than anyone would have. On that note: There are plenty of teachers and not enough children - why clog our bandwidth with telepresence schooling when we can use it for e-commerce instead?

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>>3738668
Robertson will be head scientist and chief researcher.

Best hire a proper CEO or President to run the actual company

As for our PMC....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoalS27eNhw

>>3738694
I feel like bringing up all these points in the options are valid.

>>3738694
# After the attacks, we've wanted to make sure anything new we put in place won't fall to reactionary sabotage. That takes longer.
Better safe than sorry, and better than having to build it twice.
+
# You know how exponential growth works - it starts slow, then snowballs. I'm doing the same thing.
+
# You hired me to do a job, and I'm doing it better than anyone would have. On that note: There are plenty of teachers and not enough children - why clog our bandwidth with telepresence schooling when we can use it for e-commerce instead?
It would bring in more tax revenue.

Also. Carpatescu took our best programmer.

>>3738762

(Good point, you can work this in, if you feel it's safe to be snarky.)

>>3738765
Do you want a write in? I think I can work it in without really being snarky.

>>3738774

(Sure, go for it)

...Would it be a bad idea to track down and interview Mrs. Durham on the side?

Because it occurs to me that as far as understanding Carpatescu's psyche, we're still very much on the outside looking in.

>>3738694

In light of the recent terror attacks, I've Instructed my staff to build redundancies and safeguards against sabotage and natural disasters. What is better than building someone quick or well than not having to build it twice? This of course takes more time.

But you know how these things work in its infancy, slow growth followed by exponential growth.

Now, Sir, I understand you hired me to do a job, and I'm certainly doing it better than anyone would have in my position, but I can only rush the crews so much before the work becomes sloppy. Then it becomes a compromise between quality and quantity, and recent events have seen some of my top talent leave our teams.
That said, I've come across a few concerns to note. We have an abundance of teachers and not enough children. While this is great for children receiving more individual time from teachers to learn and for them to be taught, this will clog our bandwidth from telepresence schooling when it can be used to generate extra tax revenue form e-commerce.

>>3738825
We can just monitor her phone and email, and eaves drop on her, or we can just do a fake gossip and fashion or woman's magazine and send a agent to fluff her up.

>>3738828
Support

>>3738836
It's probably gonna have to be a face-to-face interview, and explicitly about her boss. Chances are she won't just casually chat about...if I can word this right...things she didn't know she picked up about him.

>>3738765
Also I'd like to stroke our bosses ego, ask if we can get our picture taken with him in his office, by the window overlooking the city. Have it signed by both of us with his signature ontop of ours in the bottom corner.

>>3738836
>>3738852

You're already tracking her: it's known that she is pregnant, and you have every reason to think the baby is Carpatescu's. She's in good health. They have not yet made an official announcement, and apparently aren't planning to.

What you aren't sure about is how Carpatescu found the time, being as he works any time he's not sleeping and sleeps 2 to 4 hours a day....

You can definitely talk to her in person; she stays out of the spotlight, but you're important enough that she's unlikely to say no. Since you can know where she is with some precision (within a few city blocks) as long as she's carrying a phone, arranging an "acccidental" meeting isn't even particularly hard, requiring a minimum of manpower (C1).

A thing to do before flying back from New Babylon maybe....

Carpatescu listens to you, frowning. Then crosses his fingers in front of his face.

"Well, now, Foreman. I must've touched a nerve last time we spoke, when I called you a nerd!"

He laughs, managing to inject some genuine mirth into it. "Despite what some press - which I could censor, but do not - tries to imply about me, I am no dictator, and have little use for sycophants. Those have their place, don't get me wrong - but not in my Peacekeepers or my engineering corps."

After a button press, a glass of water moves up on a piston from the black desk, and he takes a sip. "I understand your concern, and would too prefer that you do the job well once than poorly twice. I'm sure you will do what is necessary to motivate your teams. As for schooling... I'm thinking long term. The Event robbed the Earth of children, but as much as it was a tragedy, it also presents an opportunity. The teachers of the world have, for the first time in history, been able to catch their breath. I intend to make sure they never run short of it again. Your bandwidth concerns are noted; Dr. Damosa has been tasked with generating prerecorded material, which can be transferred offline, if need be - we're talking elementary schools here, it can afford to be a couple of days stale."

"As I ask you to trust me with steering us all into the new millennium, I in turn respect that I should trust you with making decisions within your sphere. Your budget is unchanged for the next trimester: keep up the good work, and I'm sure any doubts I might have will be dispelled soon."

His expression changes, and he leans forward. Back to the creepy monotone; he looks at you unblinkingly.

"I would like to tell you what you are going to never do again. Eavesdrop on me. Not by your ears, not by machine. You exist to serve me. Damosa exists to serve me. I exist to serve-" and his face changes expression quickly, almost like a glitch "-mankind. Now get out of my office before we forget that we need you."

# Thank the Potentate for his time, and leave.

# Leave without a word.

You can be in New Babylon for a day or so without it impacting your schedule; are you going to try to talk to Mrs. Durham?

#y

#n

>>3738890

(Derp, I just committed the next post - this is a good idea, is it OK if I put it as an option for the next meeting?)

>>3738891
# Leave without a word.

Did he derp for a moment?

Was he gonna say satan?

>>3738891
#n
Does he suspect we are spying on him?

Also won't she mention this to our boss that we visited him? Won't this go directly counter to what he just said to us?

>>3738892
Sure.

>>3738902

Carpatescu did, for all practical purposes, derp for a moment. Fortunately, the noise canceling system by now works quite well.

Whether it's some of the hypnotic effect bypassing the filter or just you being understandably creeped out, the fact remains that one way or the other you can't wait to leave the office and, ideally, the building; the hair on the back of your head is standing on end.

>>3738902

Harriet Durham is fairly likely to mention it if you were to accidentally bump into her on purpose, yes, but she's not in Carpatescu's office; you know she's in New Babylon, but won't know exactly where until you ask your people. Even then, unless she's using the map app on her phone or you want to risk turning her phone's GPS on without her touching it, you will only know approximately.

>>3738910
I'm still going to say no, we can talk to Santiago for that or maybe some other people we can befriend that have been affected.

Or we can visit Ben and test out his powers on us or some Guinean pigs and stuff.

>>"I would like to tell you what you are going to never do again. Eavesdrop on me. Not by your ears, not by machine. You exist to serve me. Damosa exists to serve me. I exist to serve-" and his face changes expression quickly, almost like a glitch "-mankind. Now get out of my office before we forget that we need you."

Sonofabitch.

Either Carpatescu got wind that we eavesdropped on his chat with the Pontifex, or he's gotten paranoid about how much (and what) we've been amassing.

Either way working inside the system just got a lot more dangerous.

#Leave without a word.

#n.

>>3738949
Think Damosa dropped a dine on our activities somehow?

That stuff isn't even in place yet.... and they are two separate systems and industries.

Maybe Santiago or Dimmsdale sqeaked or has leaks?

Was it Rebootha? I mean we never really used any of our info on him outside of the battlefield so he can't suspects anything beyond us intercepting battlefield comms which is fairly well know ability of enemy armies.

We should put a tracker on Rebooths new guy.

>>3738960
Any of them. We haven't done a damn thing to compartmentalize CATS or establish counterintelligence. Any informants, anywhere, would at least have access to know everything.

>>3738949
>>3738922

You get out at a brisk walking pace, and only stop feeling a sort of primal fear after you're out of the giant skyscraper. Just to be safe, you get on the first plane back to the States.

One consolation is that it's pretty obvious that Carpatescu doesn't know about your earbuds, or he'd have told you to take them off, or worse....


>>3738960

You don't know much about Gideon Raveshaw other than, unlike Hassan, he prefers to lead from the rear. A cursory search by your tracking team reveals that originally, Raveshaw was a mercenary strategist in Africa, selling his intelligence gathering services to the highest bidder. Eventually he was recruited by Rebohoth to lead his espionage and sabotage branch in Tunisia. Looks like this guy may be a little wiser to your tricks, but that in turn may make him more vulnerable to direct methods.

>>3738731

By now you have a system in place to set up dummy companies, so that's not an issue. Moira doesn't dislike Blackwatch as a name; it sounds a decent mixture of scary and professional.

When you get back, Andrews tells you that he's identified a couple of places where an automated factory can be set up. India and China are out of the question: the people there would actively resist automation, and Domai is sure to get in his way, and yours. Your best bets currently would be Russia and Japan - the population in these territories is relatively scarce, so automation would be welcome. Both cultures are fairly well primed to a cybernetics-based approach to production.

>>3738967

That's true. One advantage of this approach is that it has created a remarkably cohesive corporate culture; people work with you because they like to. Another advantage is that it has allowed cross-pollination between your various research and engineering programs.

Your IT security and SIGINT is top notch - but don't let that make you feel overconfident: as it stands, one well-placed mole working with traditional methods could do a pretty good job ruining your day. Fortunately, so far you've only pissed off someone who was stupid enough to "only" send an assassin.


# End month.

# Wait, gotta go over some things.

>>3738967
Well no one ever wants to let us... as if guided by an all powerful all knowing, omnipresent hand....

>>3738971
# End month.
Can't remember anything else, so don't remember anything we may be forgetting.

>don't let that make you feel overconfident
I feel jilted.

Gonna post this here so its easier for folks to catch up.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=left%20beyond

>>3738971
>>3738985
Oh shit, we were suppose to visit Rosenwig weren't we? Did we do that? I don't recall.

>>3738971
>That's true. One advantage of this approach is that it has created a remarkably cohesive corporate culture; people work with you because they like to. Another advantage is that it has allowed cross-pollination between your various research and engineering programs.
>Your IT security and SIGINT is top notch - but don't let that make you feel overconfident: as it stands, one well-placed mole working with traditional methods could do a pretty good job ruining your day. Fortunately, so far you've only pissed off someone who was stupid enough to "only" send an assassin.

Hmmm.

Tradeoffs, tradeoffs...but we should definitely see about getting Blackwatch together as a public company and divesting ourselves of our black ops and military units, and soon. That'll help to compartmentalize between military and CATS ops at least.

>>3738974
You can say we're been stupid, mate. I for one wouldn't judge you for that.

And...no, I don't believe we have.

>>3739001
To clarify, what I meant was public as in publicly traded and self contained(meaning, among other things, an entirely separate support team and chain of command, with only the CEO answering to us--discretely!)

>>3738987

You had it on the agenda as a "If I have time" item; the man is currently in Tel Aviv, and you can definitely swing by as you head back to the Americas.

Happily, Carpatescu simply told you to get out of his office.

# Might as well visit.

# No need.

>>3739001

(Yep, it's always tradeoffs).

>>3739004

Spinning off part of your activities gives you plausible deniability for their actions, however, whoever you put in charge is going to occasionally override you on tactical decisions. However, they will never override you on strategic decisions: they know which way their bread is buttered.

On that note, a couple of Dr. Robertson's underlings have teamed up with a few of your researchers to check whether physics has changed enough to allow for a promising venue for nearly free, clean energy. This line of inquiry was closed after the cat got bored and wandered off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yW5cyXXRc

>>3739007
I thought we used one of our personal actions to see the man....

If we didn't then put it off for next month, since us turning around and getting off back at our bosses work city may be suspicious and may raise eyebrows. If we can do it discreetly or do so without anyone noticing then sure....

That cat is dead, and Schrodinger was not involved.

>>3739004
>>3739007
We can do a board members and stockholders type of control, with hiring and firing options or something.

>whoever you put in charge is going to occasionally override you on tactical decisions.
That's fine so long as they are on the field and we are not.

>>3739015

(You did schedule it: it's been a few days IRL so I am asking if people want a refund, and do something else with it, or if it's OK to proceed!)

>>3739017

That's sensible. A good thing about being a global cabinet level officer (if a low ranking one) is that you don't have to worry about hiring lawyers for this sort of thing, it's done for you in the background as part of regular business management. If CATS wishes to contract out for their security services, there is no legal requirement for you to take bids, you can simply give the job to a PMC that you happen to trust.

>>3739022
Hmm, So can we spend that action to go see the drone guy?

>>3739007
>>3739015

# Hold off for now.

>>Spinning off part of your activities gives you plausible deniability for their actions, however, whoever you put in charge is going to occasionally override you on tactical decisions. However, they will never override you on strategic decisions: they know which way their bread is buttered.

I can certainly live with that.

>>3739017

I'd be careful about owning board members or stocks...too easy to leave a paper trail back to us.

Better to keep in the CEO's good graces, deal squarely, and leave them to their own devices. So long as jobs get done we shouldn't care too much about how.

>>3739022
Unless we can boot the extra action over to next turn we ought to use it now.

>>3739024

Yes, you can go talk to Patrick Zevo instead.

>>3739026
We could use frontmen as puppets, or put actors in place who won't complain about getting good paychecks for being our yes men and also have clauses for their dismissal if they displease us, by releasing blackmail or sackable offenses such as drug use or video of them doing something like soliciting prostitutes.

>>3739031
Sure lets do that. He can be our robotics guy.

>>3739036
>>3739026

Will you meet with Rosenzweig, Patrick Zevo, or neither? (Sorry I am not sure what y'all want to do here!)

* Chain Rosenzweig is a non-practicing Jew who invented the Eden fertilizer. Lately, he has been reconnecting with his religious roots after talking with Tsion Ben-Judah, although not in the way that the theologian-turned-preacher might have hoped. He mentioned being willing to meet about Eden Fertilizer catalyst shortages.

* Patrick Zevo is the sole extant heir of Zevo Toys, a company that tried to sell the US Army and Air Force on inexpensive drone swarms to complement or even replace air-to-ground capabilties. After the Event, his brother Leslie committed suicide, as did many who initially believed there would be no more children. Since Patrick never wanted to be an entrepreneur, he is interested in liquidating his remaining assets.

* Taking a couple of days off opens up a chance for something interesting happening in your own backyard.

>>3739049
Patrick Zevo. He may drop dead. I made that mistake when I let the prince die in Wolf Among us.

Unless we can visit Chain without anyone noticing...
We can send someone to meet him later via agent, or send him an email to meet us in America on a all expenses paid visit untraceable to us.

>>3739049
>* Taking a couple of days off opens up a chance for something interesting happening in your own backyard.

Is that a third option to just sit around and do nothing?

>>3739060

People will notice in the sense that your comings and goings aren't secret, in the sense that if a journalist were to call the airline and confirm that you went on a Chicago-Baghdad-Tel Aviv-Chicago trip, they'd confirm it (if you want secrecy, you'll have to land somewhere in Italy, then have one of the Garibaldi's aircraft pick you up, and then switch planes on the carrier since the Antonovs should just about be able to cover that part of the Mediterranean), but you consulting with Rosenzweig is not something that would raise any alerts; the man is in the odd position of being a scientist who is famous among the general public, so people visiting him to confer an award or try to get his help to raise awareness for a cause isn't particularly unusual.

>>3739063

Yes. That may result in HQ shenanigans. (I've written up a few in the past when, for one reason or another, the Foreman didn't use an action).

>>3739071
Didn't know/remember about that mechanic even existed.

Would leaving two unused actions have a compunding or greater effect?

What about our other Named heros? Would they get fun or interesting events?

What if we and another hero had unused actions, or use and two other hero's had unused actions? Would there be a double or triangle effect?

Hmm.. You know what, lets YOLO this and leave the last action unused. Its fairly organic since we left Tel Aviv in a hurry.

>>3739049
>>3739060
I'll change to this then

* Taking a couple of days off opens up a chance for something interesting happening in your own backyard.

Take the day off. This is my last change on this option

File: bot-tan-real.jpg (202 KB, 768x1024)

202 KB JPG

Rolled 16 (1d100)

>>3739080

When not called upon, your agents tend to do their own thing. In general, Dr. Robertson will continue his work at the neutrino observatory (this has actually resulted in measurable advancement of your nuclear program once), Andrews will operate the Effincold base and expand his own influence, Moira has been known to get in a few fights but you have yet to bail her out of jail, and Aki effectively lives in your basement, and is to blame for the occasional sighting of a number of cellphone-on-tracks mini bots that infest your air ducts (They aren't reliable enough for spying yet, but at least you can be sure that nobody is deploying them against you).

(I have written a few such interactions in the past, if you note. They rarely have much in the way of a mechanical effect, but they're fun to write. In the older quest, it was stuff like Kat opening a restaurant, which did then become a minor plot point).

>>3739080
>>3739026

I'd rather talk to the Zevo guy. Having drones plus automatic factories equals possibility to go full AdMech.

Alternatively talk to Chaim since it's what we had scheduled. In-universe, don't want to flake on someone after scheduling an appointment, and gaming wise, if Tsion is already at work converting him he's going to become hostile soon, so we might want to jump on it.

>>3739090

That's great but I think it means we'd need high rolls for that stuff to have an effect. And those tend to not happen.

>>3739060

If we got various supernatural disasters coming, it means a lot of rocks fall everyone dies.

>>3739049
>meet with rosenzweig. We need to get to him before the embargo. We dont need a global famine right now.

>>3739386
>>3739360
>>3739026
>>3739027

Tel Aviv these days is a remarkably prosperous city. The New Babylon architectural envy is evident in all the new construction, but unlike the manufactured global capital, this city has a rich and organic history and, at least to you, doesn't have that uncanny valley Disneyland vibe.

Dr. Rosenzweig is a liberal Jew, having grown up after Israel's establishment but before the intifada; everything considered, he's part of a slowly shrinking demographic, much like mainline Protestants back in North America. Your file on him does indicate that he sporadically attends an Ecumenical Council approved synagogue.

You find the man in what looks like a historian's study in his magnificently appointed but relatively small townhouse; his lab facilities are at TAKA, and home is where he follows up on his side projects, from a history of internal Cold War politics in ex-Soviet republics to, by the look of things, an interest in metallurgy, given that he greets you wearing an old fashioned blacksmith's apron and his kitchen has been taken over by small crucibles and similar implements of old-timey steel manufacturing. He welcomes you in and apologizes for the heat.

"Oh, it's just a hobby of mine, really. I've been trying to recreate Damascus steel - it's all the rage on the internets lately, don't you know? I co-wrote a paper showing that modern Bessemer steel is actually superior for making blades, but alas, haven't really gotten much in the way of attention for this particular bit of research.... I put the whole thing on the Datalinks, but some kid from California undid my edit."

He offers you a nice, worn, very comfortable seat as he gets behind his desk. "Say, it wouldn't be possible to just ensure that experts have more of a voice online, would it? Get the uneducated to stop being so loud and pushy?"

You explain that the internet's infrastructure treats censorship as damage and routes around it, and recommend that he make it clear that the Datalinks article edits came from him -- it turns out he'd uploaded anonymously. "Oh, but having a reputation for botany ought to not influence my credentials in metallurgy, surely. I'm a poor amateur at best..."

Dr. Rosenzweig isn't particularly wise in the ways of the world, but he does come across as earnest.

# Ask him about Terry Pratchett's sword, since he's interested in the topic.

# Go straight to the point: the Eden fertilizer supply chain is still too centralized, even though it shouldn't be.

# Go straight to the point: you have reason to suspect that the Eden fertilizer will cause a dustbowl in a few years.

>>3739424
>lets be plesent and start with terry pratchetts sword and ask if they would like to see it as well.

>>3739447

"Oh, I would love to!" Turns out Rosenzweig is familiar with the author, and has the Bromeliad trilogy - as a trio of small, torn paperbacks made in a kibbutz some time in the 1980s - somewhere in his bookshelves, which cover a good half of the walls of his townhouse.

After learning how the sword was made, he launches on an explanation about meteoric iron in history that you find yourself listening along to; the man would make for an excellent lecturer, more so than Dr. Robertson's more brusque approach. That in itself is odd; you've been around researchers quite a bit in the last few years, and they're generally very future-oriented. Rosenzweig by comparison is almost grandfatherly; you have trouble imagining him make such a fundamental breakthrough as the Eden fertilizer, especially working essentially alone, as he did. It sounds more like something out of a Victorian scientific romance than of the realities of modern scientific research - although there are definitely examples to the contrary, Barry Marshall for example.

# Mention this. People respect his achievement, as they should, but he must have been accused of not paying his dues academically, surely?

# When he goes on a tangent about the nuclear physics of iron and carbon, tell him about some of the older nuclear research which, you reckon, will have made it into the academic press by now anyway. Specifically, about the changes in carbon radioactivity.

# Go straight to the point: the Eden fertilizer supply chain is still too centralized, and you're worried about future shortages.

# Go straight to the point: you have reason to suspect that the Eden fertilizer will cause a dustbowl in a few years, and are worried about loss of diversity as other cultures fell by the wayside.

>>3739474
>Take about the older nuclear research. And the changes in carbon radiactivity. Mention we work with Robertson often and are intrigued about these changes. Ask what he thinks caused this sudden change in how radioactivity works.

>>3739479

You share some of Dr. Robertson's research about the changes in nuclear physics brought about by the Event; Chaim notes that, oddly, he's been meaning to read up on it -- he even has the papers downloaded or printed, see -- but never gets around it. "It's not too strange. Nobody likes to spend time thinking about death."

Chaim's expression changes - losing his jovial smile, he looks like he's aged ten years in five seconds.

"You have no idea how much I hate miracles," he says, and didn't say anything else, just stares at the ceiling like he could see the stars through the roof and the midday sky.

"Miracles?"

"Non-repeatable phenomena," he continues. "Some stuff only happens once, ever. How do you build up a model for that? What would you do, Foreman, if you encountered a communication method that was truly unique, different from all the others, different from all the models you had seen?" He sighs, an old, ragged sound.

You say that you'd evaluate it, and deploy it, if necessary. "Ah, yes. I'm talking to a manager, not to a scientist. Actually, you know? You don't come across as the manager type to me. You take risks. You remind me of the bright young men who get the next big idea and move to California, and come back with two kids and a Gentile woman and a lot of broken dreams. I've had the privilege of mentoring a few, for what little it mattered"

"Uhm, you're a world renowned scientist" you interject "one of the smartest people alive, and you've done more for the world than most." Maybe he's just fishing for compliments.

"I am a genius," Chaim says. "Not a very smart person. I'm a... mostly smart person. Slipping a little, in my old age. But I am a genius. I am a miracle-worker, a maker of wonders, or so the world says. And why wouldn't it?"

Chaim starts doing a little bit of math on an old-fashioned blackboard as he looks at Robertson's paper on carbon-14 decay. He's clearly not forgotten that you are there, but he seems to have gone into full old man rant mode - about how his family believed in the Renaissance ideal, and made sure he got a comprehensive education. "These days they'd probably diagnose me with Asperger's and put me in a happy home, or something. As if there was less truth in Maimonides, or Rembrandt, than in steam tables." Looking around, you note that the man clearly admires Leonardo; you suspect that one of his sketches, framed under heavy glass and hanging from a wall alongside a number of honorary degrees, might be an original.

>>3739518

"When you create a wonder, there's always a theory behind it, a system. You've been thinking about systems, I think. When we're young and the possibilities swirl around us like a storm, we try to find a philosophy that explains what we can do, but they're all vacuous nonsense. That's the big horrible joke: there is no accommodating genius, no explaining it. Genius is a non-repeating phenomenon. A miracle, every time. None of those scholars at the College with their slide rules and tables of logs and test tubes were scientists. They were just playing with the trappings of science, like some kid waving around a toy gun and scaring the rest of the playground. We got results, but that's all we had: results. There was no system. Look!"

You can read advanced math, but when it's typed, or on a MathCAD spreadsheet; Chaim's chicken scrawl looks more like some strange angular alchemy than equations, at least at a glance.

"Your director of systems research is right. Combine this alteration of physics with the simple fact that we've been burning so much coal now that the fools in the suburbs kicked out nuclear power from every backyard, it's become near impossible to do radiometric dating anymore! I was going to show this to Tsion next week, and...."

"Tsion Ben-Judah?"

"Yes, yes. He was my student for a little bit, can you believe that? Declared a minor in natural sciences as an undergrad. Good man, full of passion. Heart definitely in the right place. Brain, I'm not so sure anymore - you'd think he fell in love when overseas, the way he got himself Americanized! Lately he's been trying to talk me into reading up on Young Earth Creationism, so for scholarship's sake, I was going to set him straight about the world - he's welcome to change his beliefs, don't get me wrong, I consider Christianity a tradition of Judaism that got a little out of hand anyway, but the Torah tells us how to touch heaven, not how the heavens go, if you don't mind me mangling Galileo - but it turns out, as I were to go out with a Geiger counter, I can't!"

# Mention Dr. Robertson's research on supernovas, which shows that the radioactive anomaly is a local phenomenon.

# Steer the conversation back to the sword - in his long winded exposition, Chaim mentioned playing with meteoric iron himself. Would it do anything interesting, hypothetically?

# Move on to the Eden fertilizer scarcity; this is fascinating, but not very useful.

# Move on to the Eden fertilizer long term effects; this is fascinating, but not very useful.

# Wait, does he mean to say that his big discovery was a fluke?

>>3739524
>lets try and push him to talk more about miricles and how his genius is part of that eill porbably get him to talk about the eden fertalizer.
>mention researxh on supernovas which shows that the radioactive anomaly is a local phenomenon. I think this will push torwards miricles

>>3739676

Dr. Rosenzweig is nothing but thorough; he said he was going to read Dr. Robertson's work, so you figure he's already printed out the SN1987A paper, and it's somewhere in the stack... yes, there it is. You hand it over. He skims it, taking maybe a minute to do it, and occasionally making a note on the blackboard.

"Strange to see a scientist believing in miracles" you interject.

"Oh, I'm a naturalist by training - I'm more inclined to accept that outliers exist than to fit everything into a model." That sort of contradicts what he just said, though. "I only wish it would made sense, is all. When a scientist writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am a student of the cosmos, not just a scientist. It's why I try to make time for art and history, as much as I understand how fortunate I am to be out of the academic rat race. Let me quote Darwin at you: my theology is a simple muddle. I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I see no evidence of beneficent design in the details."

"Are you saying that God may be malevolent?"

"I'm saying that if God has a will, it would be as unknowable to us as an artist's interest in the pursuit of completeness in simplicity, would be to a sabertooth tiger who is constantly a couple of meals away from starvation at best."

He finds the page he was looking for, erases the whitebaord, and resumes scrawling at it. You let him.

"At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, I think that this story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. Only - like me - they would have no system, only results. By the way, none of this is for publication, right?"

You allow yourself to smile; Chaim hasn't been happy with being a public figure, preferring to do research like a gentleman scientist, or to lose himself in minutiae of history or philosophy. "No, of course not, Doctor. I'm just trying to avoid turning into one of those single-track specialists who know everything about nothing."

The botanist turns towards you and regales you with a paternal smile; you get the idea that it's the point he was trying to make to you, if indeed there was any.

>>3739756

He points at one paragraph on Robertson's paper. "There, see." It prefaces itself with being highly speculative in nature, and notes that the only alternative to the changes in nuclear physics being a local and rare anomaly, possibly brought about by a supersaturation of yet undetectable particles such as Higgs bosons or dark matter, would be to accept geocentrism. "Dr. Robertson is right to want to look for other anomalies - I hope he gets to, but I understand his telescope was taken away? - but he really should allow himself to make that step."

"Come Doctor, don't tell me you are a geocentrist."

"Of course I am!" He smiles. "Not in the scientific sense, obviously, and not in the Biblical-literalist sense that some folks have been trotting out lately. But consider: when it comes to our sense of art, our sense of history, even our sense of right and wrong, we are all geocentrists. If an alien race were to contact us, and we were to consider them gods - the go-to dodge of so many positivists on the internets, if they would only understand what positivism actually is - would we understand their art, their culture, their taste? Of couse not; they would have spanned the cosmos to come to us. They might see invading us as a way to uplift us, the way you'd deny a feral dog his freedom by turning him into a pet, and incidentally tripling his average lifespan as a result. They may even do so for the sake of art, the way the ancients used blood to make some pigments. Do you know why purple is the color of kings? Because it was hard to get! Spiny dye-murex. Cute little sea snail. Thousands of them had to be found, their shells cracked, the snail removed. Mountains of empty shells have been found at the ancient sites of Sidon and Tyre! They were left to soak, then a tiny gland was removed and the juice extracted and put in a basin, which was placed in the sunlight. There a remarkable transformation took place. In the sunlight the juice turned white, then yellow-green, then green, then violet, then a red which turned darker and darker. The process had to be stopped at exactly the right time to obtain the desired color, which could range from a bright crimson to a dark purple, the color of dried blood. Then either wool, linen or silk would be dyed. The hue varied between crimson and violet, but it was always rich, bright and lasting... To a cosmic civilization, we just might be the snails, Foreman. Then, would our duty to the cosmos not be to shine vibrantly?"

"That's... a bit nihilistic of you, Dr. Rosenzweig."

He chuckles in that peculiar grandfatherly way. "Excellent! Now I know what to talk about next time dear Tsion comes calling. You'll forgive me having used you as a guinea pig for my argument, Foreman, I hope - and if I may bribe you to do so, please accept this."

Rosenzweig puts away the astronomy paper and hands you a very unassuming USB drive. "Miracles. As many of them as I could document."

# Thank you.

# Do you have more time?

>>3739784

See if he's got more time. We're getting useful data here.

>>3739524
> # Wait, does he mean to say that his big discovery was a fluke?

>>3739784
>>3739875
Support

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, I just happened to be interested in that, a while ago. I do that. So, I've documented every miracle, of every faith, that I managed to come across. Who knows; maybe what to us, humans, what look like non-repeating phenomena would show patterns to a nonhuman mind. Potentate Carpatescu tells me that the day when we will have artificial intellects is not too far out."

"I don't think it'll happen in our lifetimes, but it will happen, at some point."

"Oh, nonsense. You're young. You'll see things I can only dream of! But now I have to ask you to go; I'm experimenting with slow cooling and would like to keep a close eye. Besides, Tsion really wanted to talk to me later this evening, and he said it'd have to be one on one. I would love to visit, and see Sir Pratchett's sword, incidentally!"

"I think we can arrange that. But, do you have more time?"

"A few minutes, if you don't mind me working while we talk..."

And just like that, you move over to the kitchen, where the botanist starts adjusting old fashioned Bunsen burners heating up crucibles; they're hooked up to the gas stove, but the hookup itself seems to have been done professionally.

"Of course not, Dr. Rosenzweig. I've got to ask, though" you say, almost as an afterthought, while he's distracted "were you saying earlier that your invention of the Eden fertilizer was a fluke?"

You half expect to be thrown out, and for a moment, worry about being assaulted with a crucible full of molten steel. The answer, however surprises you about as much as that would. "Oh, yes, yes. From a certain point of view. I won't deny that it was very much a moment of inspiration - quite a bit of trial and error, with not nearly as much as I would like when it comes to theoretical underpinnings. My work since then has been focused on working out the kinks, you see. That's why the production process is still a little temperamental. This is why I caution people away from working so haphazardly: I don't feel I deserve half the praise I get, and to be frank, I feel like so sophomoric entering the lab at TAU, every time! Everyone's just so deferential, I constantly worry that I am making basic mistakes and nobody's calling me on it. Enough with that, I say! Here I am, trying to make sense of non-repeating phenomena... At least, I supposed, it worked out well for many stomachs across the planet. Speaking of which, my neighbor, wonderful lady from Yemen you see, brought me some Kubaneh bread, could you get it out of the oven for me before you leave?"

Well, you got that recorded, for what it'll be worth: the Eden fertilizer, much like WD-40, was developed thanks in part to a stroke of luck, which makes industrial replication difficult. The flatbread looks like it's been reheated a little too much; it's dry and the corners are burnt. You exchange emails, and leave the man to his experimenting.


# End month.

# Wait.

>>3739360
>>3739361
Well I figure if we want hidden special events, now would be the time for them because we know in the coming months we will probably never take time off again. Which sucks for the qm making all those hidden scenes to never play out.

Plus it was just a trail to see if it would be worth doing again in the future, which seems evidently not.

# End month.

File: Global_Community_Map_turn28.png (130 KB, 1600x937)

130 KB PNG

Hello, Foreman! You are planning CATS' operations for the month.

Rules: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules.html
Datalinks: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Datalinks.html
Tentative timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BlMOSEOxSihj1gdagq7yxCjONaRBgcdlRxnc68uWf0A

You can deploy yourself on TWO actions for a small bonus to all rolls Your Nomenklator system can be issued to ONE team per turn, for a small bonus to all rolls

Dr Robertson can be deployed on ONE action for a large bonus to R&D rolls or a small bonus to any non-covert rolls

Ryan Andrews can be deployed on ONE action for a large bonus to construction rolls or a small bonus to any non-covert rolls

Moira McSingh can be deployed on ONE action per turn, for a medium bonus to covert rolls or a small bonus to all rolls; She can give basic combat capability to a work crew

Aki Lattinen can be deployed on TWO actions per turn, for a medium bonus to R&D or construction rolls; She will hack into things if bored

Performing an action outside of your home territory will also require the availability of (complexity) fleet assets, OR renting them at the cost of 1/asset

C0 (Free):

Move the Garibaldi (Mediterranean, Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific)
Track someone (max 3)

Buy equipment on the open market:
Power generation 1
Small arms 1
Network equipment 2
Fleet assets 2
Aerospace part 3
Supplies (food, fuel etc) 0.5

C0 (Agent):

Survey a territory for opportunity using an agent Not surveyed: Northern Europe, Western Europe, China, India, Greenland, Japan, Indochina, Pacific Islands, Afghanistan, Madagascar, Sahara, Central Africa, Israel, Middle East, Western Russia
Construct a CellSol pylon (Needs 1 network part)
Undergo combat training (Max 1 per month)

Tail someone
Meet with someone

Buy equipment on the black market:
Small arms 1
Squad weapons 2
Stimulants 1

C1:

Reconfigure the Garibaldi (generic, cargo, hospital, strike, orbital)

Tail some1

Survey a territory for opportunity using a team

Hire out a covert operations team for a situational reward

Construct network equipment

Procure network equipment and construct a CellSol pylon

Make and sell consumer-grade Nomenklators (Net gain 1BN)

C2:

Do research (1~3)

Construct an aerospace part

Construct a logistics hub (cap 1 fleet requirement for that territory; can deploy covert teams there with no notice; costs 1 power; stores supplies)

Study the USB drive

C3:

Recruit a work team

Schedule a satellite launch, which will happen at the end of NEXT month Requires an aerospace part

Do research (4~6)

Start DEW research

C4:

Recruit a covert team

Do research (7~9)

Construct a network node (unifies cell and net; costs 1 power, 1 network)

C5:

Rush a satellite launch, which will happen at the end of this month Requires 1 aerospace part

Construct a base and a network node at the same time (2 power, 1 network)

Do research (10)

What are your orders?

Foreman
Survey USA for Zevos and an CIA/FBI guy.

4 Covert teams with Moira doing jobs.

2 work teams construct network equipment

1 work crew with Aki Study USB

1 work crew with Aki does research in Ai

3 work teams Recruit a covert team

3 work teams with Dr. Roberts work on big satellites.

4 work team Construct a (secret military) base and a network node at the same time with Andrews....
In West Virgina!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqcMbkFR6jk

Wait no. Cancel Dr. Roberts and RD on Sats. We need to go build the aborted project in Russia.

>>3740262
>>3740307

(I need to pass out for a bit, will return when I'm awake again. hope it's still interesting!)

>>3740323
Where can I send you coffee?!
Alright see you in a bit, don't let the Formication bite!
Seriously I think I have something but I can't find any proof!

>>3740186
My vote is

> 8 teams make factories in japan and russia.

>3 teams launch a large sattalite with ryan on it. Make sure to have the telescope to point up as carla suggested

>3 team with aki to research AI

> Have robertson draw up a nuclear generator we could set up and test soon for lots of power we dont need to pay for.

>have moira and 4 teams work on jobs if a nuclear option is available take it

>factory make netowkr parts deploy in north east russia

> tell ryan to start on extracting uranium from our mine.


>have aki look over the list of miricles if anyone is gonna pice it together its her.

>us practice meditation

>us see if we can purchase eden fertalizer directly for stockpiling.


>>3740262
Why only one team research AI? Its a 4 complexity with aki its gonna be like a 30% chance


Also giest shouldnt we be at AI 8 and nuke 7 on the map after last turn?

>>3740403
Ah, got that mixed up when switching around researching the USB

Also there are two research options in the c3 and c4 sections.

>>3740262
>>3740186
Just a few quick fixes.

Foreman
Survey USA for Zevos and an CIA/FBI guy.

4 Covert teams with Moira doing jobs.

2 work teams construct network equipment

1 work crew with Aki Study USB

3 work crew with Aki does research in Ai

3 work teams make network equipment, place two in Russia, east and west. One in China or Japan (same region)

5 work team Construct a (secret military) base and a network node at the same time with Andrews in W.V.

Also we lost a favor with our boss.

>>3740421
Not sure what you mean by two research option in the c3 and c4?

>>3740429
I disagree with making a military base why bother? We really only need the ahip for that. Logistics bases are far more helpful and we already have one in the us. What benefits would a miltity base give us?

Also shouldnt we be making that sattalite to look for a metorite hitting us like carla suggested?

Do you agree that we should fully rollout the network once we are at max logistics AI?

>>3740186
Under Complexity 3 and 4 there are research options
>Do research (4~6)
>Do research (7~9)

I think we have more than to do than we can really do, and we should hire more people to help us do them.

Also, I'd like to build our factories closer to home so we don't have to worry about logistics and shipping.

One of the first things that tend to break down in global conflict are safe and affordable shipping lanes.

Its for us to safely hole up and and stockpile our supplies, and provide very strong and reliable infrastructure than can't be easily taken out.

>>3740538
Ok. Yeah logistics should be at 8 so its the complexity 4 which is what i was syaing erlier. Unless you mean somthing else?


Well we have no other locations to build factories right now the two places i chise are the only places. We can semd ryan to find mpre but hoenstly more factories the better.

True thats why we have bought our own shipping which is our fleet supply.

We really arent really in a position to hole up. But i agree we have more to do then we can but we dont have the budget for more people as well we are near our limit of people. Factories work around both.

>>3740708
We can build them in Canada or Mexico, that commie union foreman is still likely limited to America.

We won't be holing up, we would have a bolt hole to move our North American HQ to.

>>3740802

There is also the Caribbean (Cuba, etc.)

>>3740488

It would also be good to have eyes to the sky, considering that 'asteroids' are a common occurrence in Revelations, with Wormwood being the most obvious threat.

>>3740708
>>3740835
I think we need to finish research on the Large sat.modules

>>3740802
>>3740835

I dont see where you are getting those as options. Giest has said we can't build whereever we want
>>3738971
This post says russia and japan are our options.


Also thats why im launching a large sattalite for the eye in the sky
>>3740864
I agree but after AI Na Nuclear.

>>3740947
They aren't the only place we can go, just places we can set up with less trouble.

Only India and China are off the list.

As in we need to reach 10/10 for big satellites before we can launch any decent one with large space telescopes and have good receivers and transmitters for connection.

>>3741002
Were does it state we need 10/10 to do that

>>3741041
No where specifically, but where are we going to get a decent space telescope to look at the sky in the 90's that can fit in a small cabin in a communications satellite stealthily?

>>3741261
fair. i just assumed that we could if geist didn't say otherwise. How about if we cant we switch the three launching the satellite to researching satellite.

>>3741490
Hmm, that's not necessarily wrong, Just it never seems to be quite the case.

Thought it may be more likely now that I've re-read some of the older posts.

In thread 6 for large satellites
>However, you're confident that nobody will catch on: your plan works well for the usual suspects in the aerospace pork farms who were starting to get a little lean after a decade of no Cold War to sell missile designs with, it works well for the GSA because it gives something to do, and most importantly, it works well for you because there's quite a bit of room in the "substation" design for you to install covert secondary channels, celestial telescopes that just so happen to be able to focus on Earth and let you count the hair on someone's head, potentially even bunker busters

Thread 7 with micro satellites
>Having an eye in the sky (your satellites have too low a resolution to show much other than a few smudgy pixels indicating the presence of vehicles on the desert road) lets you know that the intent of the raid is depredation, not destruction; there are a number of trucks and a couple of technicals hiding behind the dunes.

It could just be that micro satellites are to small to put any decent camera in, and that where I thought we didn't have the tech yet, but for the medium and larger ones it may be possible simple because micro sats are about the size of a coffee mug and part of having good range and site is having a decently sized lens and optics, which the larger "soviet style module" will be capable of.

I'd give up building the base for now if we could spend one or two personal actions recruiting some spooks or speak to the drone guy Zevos.

>>3741524

how about we do:

> 4 teams make factories in Russia.
> 3 team make network node place in north south america
> 1 team make network parts place in china
>3 teams launch a large satellite with Ryan on it. Make sure to have the telescope to point up as Carla suggested
>3 team with Aki to research AI
> Have Robertson draw up a nuclear generator we could set up and test soon for lots of power we dont need to pay for.
>have Moira and 4 teams work on jobs if a nuclear option is available take it
>factory make network parts deploy in north east Russia
> tell Ryan to start on extracting uranium from our mine.
>have Aki look over the list of miracles if anyone is gonna pice it together its her.
>us practice meditation
>us talk to Zevos

>>3741568
I'd rather we put the factories in one of the America's.

I believe the main issue is automation somewhat, which would not be a problem. I'm fairly certain I can talk the foreman guy down.

I'd like to set up our factories in St. Louis next to the Mississippi river. Ideal strategic location.

Also we should place a network node in Russia since we canceled on them last time.

>3 teams launch a large satellite with Ryan on it
For some reason I thought you wanted to send Ryan up to space. Would be funny to see how he reacts if he was drunk on the job and found himself up in space the next time he woke up.

Ryan can only do one thing at a time I think, so either mine or launch rockets.

I'd like to Speak to Zevo and Hire a Agent this turn, after that we can mediate and train next month hall we want.

If I'm not mistaken, Ben Tysion can do the mind voice control thing right? We can test it on him rather than our boss. The stakes would be much lower.

Is there a tutorial for this quest? I don't want to read thousands of posts to get up to speed but I'd like to know what's going on.

>>3741656
I mean if we can put it in america surem but as far as i iniw we cannot as we were blocked from putting it anywhere but south america before amd we were only told we could put it in those two places. Ruasia dosnt even know that amd as well we were just installing a network part to the exsidting node in russia wich we are doing this turn anyways.

Would be funny to see ryan in space.

Well what kind of agent should we hire then? I dont know what else we could use.

I dont think ben tyson can yet unless thats how hes converting people.

>>3741675
>When you get back, Andrews tells you that he's identified a couple of places where an automated factory can be set up. India and China are out of the question: the people there would actively resist automation, and Domai is sure to get in his way, and yours. Your best bets currently would be Russia and Japan - the population in these territories is relatively scarce, so automation would be welcome. Both cultures are fairly well primed to a cybernetics-based approach to production.

China and India are no goes.
America seems like it be a coinflip, with everywhere else being iffy or questionable except for Russia and Japan, which are probably more certain. Both require decent shipping. I'd like to put it next to our base in Russia but that area has poor infrastructure and no warm water ports except for Sevastopol.

We are making factories for ear gear wear correct? Well maybe we can set up two in Russia for the market touching Asia, middle east and Europe. Then set up two more in America. I want to use the inland waterways.

Now While I would perfer Japan, Russia may be safer since Japan and China have the same Ruler so that may cause problems? But setting up in Russia brings other problems such as poor infrastructure.

I suppose we can set one up in the European part of Russia and cater to a mostly European market.

>>3741675
Looking for one that can do Counter-Intelligence and Operational Security. So more of a FBI type I suppose, with some mole hunting abilities. We may have to get a Fed and a Glow spook to cover all our bases so two guys at most.

>>3741659
Your going to have a hard time with this quest then. I've reread it twice and I still make mistakes.

Rules: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules.html
Datalinks: http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Datalinks.html
Tentative timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BlMOSEOxSihj1gdagq7yxCjONaRBgcdlRxnc68uWf0A

>>3741699
Geist was pretty against factory anywhere before so im not sure it would change now. Unless he specifies otherwise im pretty sure we can only do russia amd japan because thats how it eas before this turn. Im fine with doing in russia near our logisits base. The factoires just produce 1 value of any good we assign them to. They will be good for network parts aerospace parts nomencaltures and so on.

Ill change personal actions to visit russia as i dont think we ha e yet and look for a counter intellegence type and talk to zevos.

>>3741659
Its kinda hard to get being thrown in.but if you look at the map we have money and work teams. We assign work teams tasks of a complicity. The compexity determines how many work teams it neeeds to have a 100% chance of success every work team working costs 1 money. I would read like the first thread to get an idea of it.

>>3741727
Actually, It should be fine to set up all 4 factories in eastern Russia.

We can always build more factories I suppose.

>>3741727
Geist said
>One is a good start. To be allowed to do all this without being fingered for diverting effort from your duty as a Global Community public servant, you'd have to be on very friendly terms with a subpotentate. Allying with one will do that; subduing one, or replacing them with a puppet ruler, will also do that.

I think we should build maybe one or two in Russia. Unless we can figure out a better way to hide them. It actually may be better to build them in Siberia since there would be very little "oversight" there.

I seem to keep thinking he said at one point " one factory per region is okay" before it may draw to much attention or something?

>>3741659
If you read the report at the start of the thread, you'll get a general gist of things. I'm still figuring out things myself, particularly allocating resources.

>>3741699
I wonder if the Kuril Islands belong to 'East Asia' or 'Russia' in this Universe. They've been disputed by Japan and Russia so depending on who has ownership... it could be a good spot.

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>>3741761
>Kuril Islands

>>3741737
So i dug it up and the text is

"You've already set up a factory in Santiago's territory - she wants to see what it does before allowing more, especially since to a layman Synco and the MCP don't look very different."

So its the potentate that prevents us from having more then one or any factory at all.

QM turned into a bear and went into hibernation.

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Rolled 38, 78, 21, 75, 25 = 237 (5d100)

>>3740403
(You're right about the research, of course)

>>3741659

I wrote the rules down as best as I could. http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.Quest2Rules.html

Basically, you have to decide what to do month by month. There may or may not be an ultimate time limit / finite number of turns. You allocate personnel (including yourself), teams of mooks, and money/resources in order to complete your assigned objectives while setting aside assets to complete your own.

Are you familiar with the game Evil Genius?

>>3742033

Corazon Santiago is a bit skeptical of both the MCP and your system, although she's willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because, well, you haven't tried to brainwash her. She's worried about humans becoming slaves to machines.

In Japan, the existing culture is already fairly pro-automation (especially since the Event, which exacerbated their "depopulation bomb" problem), while in Russia, you're betting that Subpotentate Zakharov will welcome the investment.

>>3741761
>>3741764

The global government under Carpatescu seems to have caused this sort of land dispute to simmer down a little... but only a little. It might be possible to maneuver Zakharov and Yang into declaring the islands extraterritorial, in which case they would default to Carpatescu's control - which would let you take them over de facto. As of right now, the Kuril Islands are effectively under Chairman Yang's control, simply because Zakharov hasn't really bothered asserting a claim.

Sending a security team to stir trouble might be a good idea, if you have a plan.

>>3741699

Your automated factory system, currently named can produce a variety of things, including consumer-grade (non-stealth) Nomenklators. You've also used it to construct additional pylons.

>>3740262
>>3740403

(Yeah, having China and Japan be the same region is stupid. I blame the source material, which is fairly clueless about non-American cultures... Just assume that this is taking place in Stereotype World, which if you read the books, isn't far from the truth).

Let me combine your plans as much as possible (this will be processed):

> 4 teams make Synco factory in Russia.
> 3 team with aki to research AI
> 0 Aki to look over the list of miracles if anyone is gonna pice it together its her.
> 3 teams launch a large satellite with ryan on it
> x have moira and 4 teams work on jobs, with a preference to taking nuclear-decommissioning work
> 0 Have Robertson draw up a nuclear generator we could set up and test soon for lots of power we dont need to pay for.
> 0 factory make network parts deploy in east russia
> 0 tell ryan to start on extracting uranium from our mine.

This leaves 4 teams to be allocated.

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Rolled 66, 88, 3, 8 = 165 (4d100)

>>3744598

>>3741524

Larger satellites have room for larger cameras, yes. You've done wonders to encourage the spread of some technologies (such as phones with cameras, data, and keyboards) but the average phone camera is still around one megapixel or less.

Your security forces see themselves as "the good guys", given how they have been deployed so far: while they likely will accept one or two unsavory assignments, you can imagine that they may refuse shooting unarmed people or similar orders. On the other hand, their morale is stellar, and they have as much espirit de corps as an old first-world nation's army would have. They see themselves as the shields of freedom of information, rather than as a mercenary company.

You realize that you may someday need an operative who can handle unsavory work; Moira is a former IRA agent, and therefore not above using terrorist tactics, but she's very much an idealist. She'll demolish a school tomorrow if you tell her to, but only after triple checking that nobody's in it.


When it comes to designing large satellites, you find that you're in a good spot. There's a fair amount of space nuts in your engineering corps, happily enough. Without you asking, they bring a proposal for a Salyut/Almaz derived large satellite to be deployed in Molniya orbits that cover a large swath of an entire region. The system would allow one or two occupants to inhabit the satellite for a few days at a time, for maintenance or upgrading. An advantage of this system is that due to its high mass and orbital parameters, very little stationkeeping would be necessary, with the onboard hypergolic fuel being sufficient to handle pretty much any emergency save for a direct impact. Since the mini-stations have two docking ports, it becomes possible to connect them together. Incidentally, the Mir space station is still up there; the current acting head of the Global Space Agency, Xavier Maclachlan, has been extremely indecisive about whether the program should be terminated or not.

Cost to launch: 3~5 aerospace parts
Cannot be rushed (preparing a Proton rocket takes time)
Must be launched from Baikonur
Components: 3~5. Types:

Repeater - Adds (1) to satellite coverage in that region, in any territory. For example, you could launch a above New Babylon, with 3 repeaters, and instantly bring up coverage to 5.
Camera array - Allows for close surveillance on a territory, OR early warning for asteroid strikes. Santiago is likely to object to one deployed over her territory.
Hydrazine tank - Allows for moving the satellite to a different orbit. One shot.

Future plans include data vaults, orbital network nodes that cannot be damaged, deployable mirror arrays to light up an area at night to help rescue efforts after a natural disaster, and the like. Out-there ideas include "the Ion Cannon from Command and Conquer", electromagnetic pulse emitters, guided tungsten rods, something called a gap generator, and the like.

>>3744604
Is there any benefit to have more then one camera array?

> lets launch it over new Babylon with 3 repeaters 1 camera array and a hydrazine tank as we have the parts for it.


>>3744598
for the last 4 teams I vote
> 3 teams researching cellular solar
> 1 team make network parts place in china.

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>>3744598

Subpotentate Zakharov seems a little miffed that you are sending a third of your workforce to his territory without going along. Your workers report that the man seems to have gone a little funny; he's been deploying his own upgrade of the Nomenklator within his administration, with a homegrown add-on 3D video module that looks like a pair of stereovision movie glasses (and mostly gets in the way, as far as your guys can tell) and his latest treatise on the philosophy of science, "For I Have Tasted the Fruit", which is otherwise selling pretty well, tends to harken back to Lysenkoism and other scientism nonsense, at least according to Dr. Robertson, who's actually read it. He figures that a man can be a good scientist or a good statesman, but should not try to mix the two.

Nevertheless, your men find working in Russia extremely easy; Zakharov sends an ornate letter - on some sort of flat LCD, for some reason - letting you know that he would greatly appreciate closer cooperation, and chiding you for not having captained your "expedition" to his territory. "Science was invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation - nevertheless, here is yours", the note ends cryptically. On the other hand, it came with excellent Volga caviar.

The new Synco system is put in place quickly; some of the systems are still using 1973-era code and design, and integrate surprisingly well with the old Soviet teletypewriter network whose landlines are still in place in many structures. Older workers are used to this sort of top-down dirigist approach, but distrust it, since it led to low productivity back before 1991. Your workers assure them that having an algorithm in charge of day to day management is a lot more fair than having a commissar, and your reputation for getting things done quickly and well assuages at least some of the skepticism.

(What was the alternative name for Synco by the way? Some Celtic Goddess? I can't find it. Please do feel free to rename it, if you like!).

The arrival of prefab Cellular-Solar pylons from Chile do the rest; they're done well, the local manufacturers are given access to the bills of materials to see that they were done cheap, and while government-contract money isn't the best around there, it's quite decent and most importantly shows up on time every time.

Zakharov insists in having a Synco "bridge" installed in his office in Akademgorodok, going as far as fishing out old Kosmicheskaya Militsiya props and using them as part of the furniture. Your work teams come home with video rips of the Soviet-era Star Trek ripoff, and before long there are MST3K-style riffs of it circulating on the net.

The installation went excellently; you will be able to use the Russian factory to help with aerospace parts, as well.

>>3744636

Adding cameras to the array does have a benefit, but there are diminishing returns, especially for surveillance.

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>>3744598

As always with Aki, you tell her what you would like done, and make sure that she doesn't hurt herself (Carla is still recovering from when she got stuck in one of the vents; by the time help showed up, she had worked out a "perfectly safe" way to cut her own legs off so she could disentangle herself). Aki is technically on work-release from prison, but she's stopped wanting to leave the building around the time you worked out a reasonable intersection between foods she likes and foods that are healthy for her. She's long since cannibalized her ankle bracelet into some contraption or another anyway.

The bad news is that her team doesn't get very far with improving your logistics AI; while their monthly reports indicates that they have been hard at work integrating the various disparate components of it, which your technical background lets you know that it's something that needed done at some point lest the system grow unmanageable, actual performance is unchanged. Even so, it has been doing an excellent job managing your fleet assets without incurring additional costs. While there was no large qualitative improvement, your control over the electronic market grows a little.

The good news is that analyzing Chaim Rosenzweig's list of miracles has produced some results; the team has modified one of the neural networks used in your logistics system to cross-correlate Chaim's list (which turned out to be just that, a list, indicating date and time of supposed miracle, faith of provenience, and likelihood of authenticity) with medical and news databases.

Of note, the meta-analysis shows that up until a little before the Event, prayer had no effect on long term health. However, things changed markedly at that point; you find that Remnant prayers are, to put it bluntly, effective, to a degree. Interestingly, the effect predates the Event by 6 to 9 months. The next logical step would be to perform experiments, which would be remarkably tricky - there's really no way to tell when and where a miracle would occur, of course - if it wasn't for the fact that Chaim's list ends with every documented instances of the "two witnesses" erupting fire from their mouths or apparently causing heart attacks. Aki opines that the latter can be mitigated by preemptive installation of a ventricular-assist device and DBS system: a volunteer could go heckle the Two Witnesses, be killed by them, be revived, and the process could be repeated multiple times to obtain first-hand information. She volunteers, obviously. Carla tells you that encouraging her to stick wires in her own brain would be a very bad idea, not so much because it's unsafe - this particular operation can be done safely - but because it sets a bad precedent.

# Approve it.

# Do it to someone else.

# Do it to yourself.

# Let's not and say we did, okay?

>>3744680
Do it to someone else. everyone draws straws and whoever wins "looses" gets a ice-cream Sunday and a bonus check after the deed is done.

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>>3744598

The final part of the Russian operation is handled by Andrews, who has a lot of good things to say about the dynamism of younger Russians who grew up post-Communism. He mentions one George Fomitchev, who tried to sell him designs for a solid-state laser cutter which had in fact been developed as a spinoff of your own work with ground-to-satellite optical links. It's an obvious ripoff, but Ryan Andrews declares himself impressed by the fact that Russians have left behind the collectivist mentality. The laser itself works - well enough to make a hole in plastic, at any rate - for a few minutes until the diode avalanche cascades, just as basic circuit theory predicted since Mr. Fomitchev stripped off the thermoregulation in order to decrease manufacturing costs.

You make a note to avoid "Endurance Lasers" should you ever need directed-energy systems. Other than this small bit of disappointment, the retrofit work for one of the old Almaz/Salyut test article goes well, and a Proton rocket is readied for launch at the end of next month. Subpotentate Zakharov, of course, takes the opportunity to throw shade at the Global Space Agency, which is mostly staffed with ESA and JAXA engineers under a former NASA administrator.

* Choose how many aerospace components to use.
* Choose what they will be used for. Further research will unlock more modules. You get a small hab, basic solar power, and two docking ports for free.
* Choose the region above which the large satellite will be launched.

>>3744598

Dr. Robertson has, in fact, directed his students to come up with a small reactor or RTG design that makes use of the changes in nuclear physics. He says he has a prototype, but he is reluctant to show you it.

# Please, let's see it.

# If it's ready for production, I don't care what it looks like.

>>3744690

Support ONLY if we are included in the straw draw. It sounds like the MEC, or the revive system for M Byson in Street Fighter. This is a chance to get an extra life!

Alternatively, let Aki have it as long as a proper doctor does the operation.

Or we just say we'll take the risk ourselves, praise the Omnissiah.

>>3744721

Lets see it. What, it looks like a Mr Fusion?

>>3744636
>>3744680

Support for the satellite. 3 repeater, 1 camera, 1 tank.

>>3744721
>Why are you reluctant to show me? if there is something wrong with it you can take more time.
>>3744725
Of course we are in the draw its unsportsmanlike like to not be.

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>>3744737

Eventually you talk Dr. Robertson into showing you a picture. "Because it looks like a friggin' movie prop, that's why!"

You note that this is possibly a good thing when it comes to marketing, but the good doctor is still embarassed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_radioisotope_generator

"The disadvantage of this system is that, unlike a traditional RTG, it has moving parts, so it will eventually require maintenance. The advantage is that the number of moving parts is in the single digits - and it produces about four times as much power as a RTG. This thing will run for years on pretty much any form of nuclear fuel that we can reprocess. Now, it's still not nearly as powerful as a nuclear reactor. You wouldn't build a power plant by stringing together two hundred diesel generators of the type you see at construction sites, diesel generators don't scale up that well. This has the same problem, unsurprisingly - not to mention that after the Event, very few people would buy these things, everyone's more terrified of nuclear power now than when it was, well, actually more of a threat."

# Show it to Carpatescu, if there is anyone who can talk people into anything, it's him. Even if he takes the credit. This will let us sell the things, and in time it will do for power generation what Eden did for agriculture.

# Let's make them for internal use. You get the credit, and once people are less irrational about this, in a few years, it'll translate into a sizeable royalty check.

>>3744757
I want to be able to sell them but im not sure Carpatescu will let us or be happy about nuclear. what do you other anons think?
im voting for
> lets make them for internal use.

>>3744771

We're going to fight Carpatescu eventually, let's not give him nukes. As much as it would be cool to have a Jetsons style utopia when TurboJesus comes back, we don't have the time.

> lets make them for internal use.

>>3744757

I was today years old when I learned that the arc reactor is a real thing apparently

>>3744771
Yeah, I'm not sure Carpatescu (or rather SATAN) will approve of our Nuclear shenanigans. This is the same genius who thinks cavalry charges and bronze ages tactics are a viable military strategy - at least judging from the books this setting is inspired from.

>>3744646
I think we were discussing something like Bochica, the metal-working deity worshiped by the Musica people of Colombia?

Rolled 9 (1d13)

>>3744737
FFAAMRRSCXXXX

>>3744636
>>3744725

The large satellite design takes relatively little time: much like everything else you've been doing, losing a little bit of efficiency for the sake of modularity has paid off in speeding up deployment time greatly. The satellite will hold a large amount of repeaters - essentially, the guts of three of your microsat swarms, set to pop out of the repurposed space station module and then sit out on semirigid tethers - and a telescope camera.

# Let Carpatescu know that he has an eye in the sky over his own backyard, and ensure that he has the codes to control it.

# Say nothing, letting you spy on your boss, but risking that he might catch on.

# Announce that New Babylon now has an early warning system against meteor impacts, and lock the lenses to look outward.

>>3744802

(Thanks, couldn't find the name! I kept thinking Boudicca for some reason)

>>3744811
> Announce that New Babylon now has an early warning system against meteor impacts, and lock the lenses to look outward.

#Say Nothing.

Knowing Carpatescu, he'll do something stupid when we'll need such tools for upcoming Fun Times. Perhaps the Left Behind Devil is kind of clueless when it comes to the space age, still operating on a system of rotating spheres where the Earth is the center of the cosmos.

Also, I'm paranoid that letting the world know about our new toy will make it subject to Narrative shenanigans. In some scenarios based on Revelations, the Two Witnesses directly caused a number of the Trumpet judgments to occur. Either way, they're sort of YHWH's mouthpiece (and eyes and ears); we probably shouldn't broadcast we have such a powerful tool.

>>3744838
>>3744835

I'll second say nothing. If he asks, we tell, if not, not.

>>3744835
>>3744838
>>3744886

The launch is scheduled for next month; you let it go unannounced, figuring that the people of the United Carpathian States will appreciate the extremely cheap satellite internet, and not ask questions.

>>3744811

Looks like Moira drew the short straw. Right now, however, she's deployed; you'll have to wait before you ask her if she wants a secondary heart.

Your security forces are currently deployed in (Pick four: an asterisk indicates that they are in the Garibaldi's range, which gives them a boost).

# wrapping up the Egyptian job; nearly everyone who could move to Cairo has... nearly. Reward: 1BN *

# Using the Garibaldi to take Lybian refugees to Sicily. Reward: 1BN, but Od Gustav might object. 1BN *

# Assisting Fulcire in tracking down Mainyu Mazda, OR assisting Mazda in evading detection. 1BN

# Transporting nuclear fuel to New Babylon for safekeeping from Nice, France. 1BN, chance to grab fuel *

# Intervening in the Central African mess, which has flared up again: Hutus and Tutsi tribes are being prodded by someone to resume their war. 2BN to help either group subdue the other, 1BN to try and negotiate a ceasefire

# April and Rebohoth are feuding by proxy, using fishermen, over Gilbraltar. Keep the peace (1BN) or intervene in favor of one or the other (1 fleet asset) *

# A pirate radio on Rose Island in the Adriatic sea has required protection from the Peacekeepers wanting to shut it down. (1 fleet asset) *

# Speaking of pirates, the drastic reduction in the world's air forces has resulted in a strange situation: cruise ships going from Venice to Greece are being harassed by air pirates using old flying boats, demanding that passengers leave behind their valuables on a rubber dinghy lest the ship be strafed. Provide escort (1BN guaranteed) or end the threat (2BN). *

# Related to the above, Risto Shipping is offering the same bounty to look after a particular cargo ship - they won't say why, though. *

>>3744999
>wrapping up the Egyptian job
>Transporting nuclear fuel
> end the threat of air pirates use 2 teams for this

>>3744598
>>3744636
I'm good with this.

Just wanted us to recruit some people.

>>3744604
>Global Space Agency, Xavier Maclachlan, has been extremely indecisive about whether the program should be terminated or not.

Ask him if we can turn it into a communications maintenance and control hub if he does.

What was the alternative name for Synco by the way?
Dunno but I'd like to call it Siri or Cortana. Probably the former and then develop a one named the latter.

# Approve it.
Scream SCIENCE! and have Dr. Robertson and Aki work on it and watch the fun!

>>3744721
# Please, let's see it.

>>3744757
Ask him if he wants to take some more time to redesign it to look more "cool".

Dunno if we should or not, mostly worried he will steal our head scientists than anything else.

>>3744778
But his thing is so far from a nuke, it would be dubious of him to even somehow turn it into one?

>>3744802
We should gather up all the spider tank designs we can find and send the guy who keeps spamming all our work emails with the stuff and crazy note ramblings to our boss. Let him plague Carpatescu!

>>3745090
Carpastu is one of the people who pushed the anti nuke narrative. Hes also the anti christ so anything thats not in the *plan* im sure he would be dubious of.

>>3744811
# Say nothing, letting you spy on your boss, but risking that he might catch on.
How exactly would he catch on? Just claim we never spied on him our anywhere near New Baby.

>>3744886
Just say its pointed towards space and this violates no safety or privacy issues.

# Transporting nuclear fuel to New Babylon for safekeeping from Nice, France. 1BN, chance to grab fuel *


# Assisting Fulcire in tracking down Mainyu Mazda, OR assisting Mazda in evading detection. 1BN

# April and Rebohoth are feuding by proxy, using fishermen, over Gilbraltar. Keep the peace (1BN) or intervene in favor of one or the other (1 fleet asset) *
April

# Related to the above, Risto Shipping is offering the same bounty to look after a particular cargo ship - they won't say why, though. *

>>3745095
Well I think hes more pragmatic in this sense for the political capital and desire to taking credit.

And the design is not really possible to turn into a nuke, they could however re-discover the new physics and try to make a bomb like we did.

>>3745100
How about next meeting withhim we broach the topic but not make it evident we did anything just that we looked into it alittle to gauage his reaction

>>3745121
I'm fine with not telling him at all.

Partly want to do it to gain favor, but we lost favor with him apparently, Not entirely sure why? Maybe I had a bad write in.

>>3745099
There is the possibility of moles in our operation.

>>3745130
he didnt like that we brought up schooling and that we were listening in. He wants the schooling done a specific way for anti christ reasons and us talking about other options also annoyed him. next time lets not make it obvious we are spying.

>>3745132
Not possible, we total are immune to that. Nope! Try again.

>>3745144
>he didnt like that we brought up schooling and that we were listening in.
Wait wut? I totally missed that.

>>3745149
>"I would like to tell you what you are going to never do again. Eavesdrop on me. Not by your ears, not by machine. You exist to serve me. Damosa exists to serve me. I exist to serve-" and his face changes expression quickly, almost like a glitch "-mankind. Now get out of my office before we forget that we need you."


He was talking to another official about schooling we walk in and say that way of schooling is bad. no shit he thought we were listening in.

>>3745149
We're immune to the possibility that someone inside our organization is sending him information?

It's quite plausible we have someone on the inside who could be keeping tabs with the guy handling the expensive IT equipment. It could even be someone low tier, like a custodian or secretary, who has access to resources and an easy way to bypass our security; Insider Threat.

Its like Hunt for Red October where the cook was a KGB agent or the like.

>>3745156
Still not possible.

Its like we could have done something about it but it never came up so it will never be a problem because god wills it.

>>3745153
Oh shoot! I sped read through that didn't think about the implications.

....

How exactly is it not possible?

It's quite probable. In fact, its Carpathia's modus operandi for compromising the Remnant in the books.

>>3745199
If it was remotely possible, then why haven't we ever tried to do anything about it? Its not like we ignored it and did other things until it became a problem right?

That's just silly.

>>3745208
This is why i voted for the canera to only look up. Sow e are above board on visible projects

Alright I've returned from the void and I love what has happened in my absence. I'd offer you a toast but all I have is shit beer. Give me a minute to comment and catch up.

>>3744598
>She's worried about humans becoming slaves to machines.
Might be a good idea to point out to her that with automated production systems, less urban populations need to exist since factories require only a small population of specialists and maintenance personnel. Meaning that more people can be her idealised "independent" sorts. Plus it's not like the centralisation and automation of the economy is something she can avoid, it's us or Carpatescu and lord knows, she can stop us far easier than she can stop him.

>>3744604
>Since the mini-stations have two docking ports, it becomes possible to connect them together.
Hm, certainly something we could take advantage of.

>Incidentally, the Mir space station is still up there; the current acting head of the Global Space Agency, Xavier Maclachlan, has been extremely indecisive about whether the program should be terminated or not.
I still say we should look into infiltrating this organisation and appropriating some of it's resources for our own uses. Imagine if we could offload some of our orbital shit to these guys...that'd be a massive saving and if nothing else would secure our control over space. Still, we've got higher priorities.

>Repeater - Adds (1) to satellite coverage in that region, in any territory. For example, you could launch a above New Babylon, with 3 repeaters, and instantly bring up coverage to 5.
I presume we can re-aim repeaters to focus on different territories in a region? That might be useful for certain...black ops missions where our enemies having cellphones or any internet connections would be bad. If we can disable the ground network (blaming it on hackers or something) and use the orbital stuff for our guys-on-the-ground's needs.

>orbital network nodes that cannot be damaged
That'd be good for africa and would certainly be useful if we ever go open-war against anyone, literally or figuratively, since it keeps our assets out of reach.

>something called a gap generator
Do you mean a spark gap generator, the thing that (to some degree) jams all radio communications?

>>3744646
>Subpotentate Zakharov
Oh god, he's been made into a apple fruit. He's obsessed with looking futuristic but not in actual functionality or efficiency. Well at least it'll make him easy to manipulate.

>(What was the alternative name for Synco by the way? Some Celtic Goddess? I can't find it. Please do feel free to rename it, if you like!).
Like >>3744802 said.

>>3744680
# Do it to yourself.
# Do it to someone else.
# Approve it.

Assuming the cost is negligible / recoverable by our healthcare plan, anyone who is willing can now opt into the "struck-by-god" protection plan.

>>3744636
I support this plan for the satellite, it covers all our bases and worst comes to worst we can detach the fuel tank later and replace it with something else.

>>3744757
>it produces about four times as much power as a RTG
Damn that's a decent amount of power for something that is essentially a shelf-stable source for years (with proper maintenance).

# Let's make them for internal use. You get the credit, and once people are less irrational about this, in a few years, it'll translate into a sizeable royalty check.

I'd imagine making these too common would get more people to notice the changes in how nuclear physics works. Which kinda works against us for some shit.

>>3744811
# Say nothing, letting you spy on your boss, but risking that he might catch on.

Don't tell him dick about shit, worst comes to worst when he asks we just tell him we were asked to put it on by our disaster relief specialists (who would back us up).

>>3744999
# wrapping up the Egyptian job; nearly everyone who could move to Cairo has... nearly. Reward: 1BN *

# Using the Garibaldi to take Lybian refugees to Sicily. Reward: 1BN, but Od Gustav might object. 1BN *

# Transporting nuclear fuel to New Babylon for safekeeping from Nice, France. 1BN, chance to grab fuel *

# April and Rebohoth are feuding by proxy, using fishermen, over Gilbraltar. Keep the peace (1BN) or intervene in favor of one or the other (1 fleet asset) *

I'm thinking we side with April, drop the fleet asset as payment and instead see if we can get her permission / support to construct a factory in her region. Failing that being a possibility or even needed to build a factory there, I'd support:

# Speaking of pirates, the drastic reduction in the world's air forces has resulted in a strange situation: cruise ships going from Venice to Greece are being harassed by air pirates using old flying boats, demanding that passengers leave behind their valuables on a rubber dinghy lest the ship be strafed. Provide escort (1BN guaranteed) or end the threat (2BN). *

Fact is we've got the aircraft to do it (we did get round to buying guns for the antonovs right?) so it should be reasonably safe.

>>3745149
>>3745177
Mate OP has told us multiple times that it is entirely possible that if we hire anyone new that they'll be a plant and that the only thing we've got going for us is that we've a good culture in our offices and teams where people who've been here awhile can be trusted. That and generally our encryption and shit is good.

You know what we lack? Op-sec and division of labour: our engineers talk to our scientists talk to our soldiers talk to our logistics talk to our salesmen talk to us talk to our heroes. Everyone knows anything they reasonably ask about and no one is being purposefully kept in the dark.

>>3745208
>That's just silly.
It's at this point, in my slight drunkeness and extremely tired mind, I can't tell if you are actually joking or serious anymore.

Rolled 43 (1d100)

>>3745090

You attempt to schedule a meeting with MacLachlan; he doesn't seem to want to talk to you unless Carpatescu is present, since "there are obvious conflicts of interest in play here".

# Petition Carpatescu for a joint meeting, to happen on the regular schedule.

# Let the new large satellites speak for themselves.

>>3745031
>>3745055

The first iteration of the CellSol pylons is as good as it's going to get; by now, an engineer and two workers can install one on a utility pole in minutes, allowing them to be distributed around the countryside in batches.

Spread-spectrum transceiving technology has finally reached the point where it's commercially viable; you tell your engineers to include it in new designs, estimating that it will give you significantly more bandwidth. You figure that said bandwidth should go to

# improved mesh networking, to make CS pylons significantly more disaster-resistant

# general use, for a one-time bonus in connectivity speed for data applications

# digital voice compression, for a one-time bonus in connectivity speed for voice applications

>>3745031
>>3745099


>>3745130

Enmity or friendship will revert towards baseline, eventually. Gratitude doesn't last long with professional politicians.... Also why you've only gotten one assassination attempt from Rebohoth so far, rather than a stream of them (Note that you're back up from zero to one star with him). There's also that he was somewhat annoyed at being eavesdropped on, as >>3745144 points out. Your alliance with Corazon Santiago, and the fact that you've caused a lot of investment to happen in her territory (and removed a post-hypnotic trigger from her head!) ensures that relations with her will remain high unless you clash.

>>3745156

Your SIGINT is unparalleled, but you don't really have much to stop a traditional mole. Putting a bit of research time into defense will help.

>>3745729

You've noticed a bit of histrionics from Zakharov, but in lesser measure from other subpotentates, yes - including Santiago. In her case, you were kind enough to snap her out of it, and she's been smart enough to not let Carpatescu in on that, at least so far.

>>3740262

You make contact with Patrick Zevo, who is willing to meet at the end of the month. Cursory tracking confirms that he is suffering from clinical depression after the death of his siblings Leslie and Alsatia right after the Event, and has not really recovered. He used to be an Army Ranger, but failed the psychological part of the Peacekeeper entrance exam.

>>3744999

(Doing the Nice covert op since everyone agreed on it, what wll you do for the other 3?)

>>3747479
# improved mesh networking, to make CS pylons significantly more disaster-resistant

Improving the network isn't as important as making it disaster resistant. Fact is we can always add more nodes and pylons but we can't as easily sustain it through a major disaster. Plus this also should help it route around attempts to control the network / the flow of information which will help in the war for the cyber economy.

File: joelle with laser.jpg (3.26 MB, 4032x3024)

3.26 MB JPG

Rolled 2 (1d100)

>>3747479


>>3745729

Installing a ventricular-assist device and pacemaker will take someone out of commission for a month. Since it's a precaution rather than something that they need to live, it can remain dormant and won't need to be charged up until it's put to use, but that person is still going to need immunosuppressants as long as the implant is present. On the other hand, it makes them noticeably harder to kill if shot center-of-mass, and immune to heart attacks. Installing the system will cost 2BN to contract with a hospital to set up the facilities, and then 1BN per individual, or 3BN per security team (due to economies of scale).

You all drew straws, and Moira got the short one. Aki keeps volunteering and Carla keeps telling her that she should take unnecessary major surgery seriously.


>>3747479

Ferrying nuclear fuel from Nice to New Babylon is fairly routine for the Garibaldi; she has no bulk cargo capability in the current configuration, but all that's required is room for a few barrels and an armed guard posted for the job.

# Complete the job as normal.

# Skim some nuclear fuel off the top (+0.25)

# Stage a fake pirate attack and lose! (-1BN, +1 fuel)

>>3745781

Your factories can now produce Stirling radiothermal generators. They effectively replace other power systems for most of your purposes, and require no refueling for the foreseeable future (five years or so). It took exactly 2 days for people to start calling them "arc reactors" and 4 for someone to build a DVD burner laser diode into a Nintendo light gun and run it off a SRTG. Deploying SRTGs instead of diesel generators in your existing installations is going to cost you 3BN and 1.25 units of nuclear fuel in total, but will greatly improve disaster preparedness.

You also have the option to nuclearize the Garibaldi, for the same expense. While SRTGs are not going to be able to replace her gas turbines, they can be installed in the engine room replacing one of them, making sure that the ship requires no fuel to operate while stationary. This will drop her top speed somewhat, but it's not as if an aircraft carrier is supposed to move quickly anyway.

>>3740403

Restarting uranium extraction from Effincold is met by some resistance, and Ryan Andrews asks you to move the "goon squad" from making sure nobody interferes with Dr. Robertson to providing security and enforcement for the nuclear mine.

# Okay.

# Hand off one of your security teams instead.

# It will not be necessary; worker morale is high anyway.

# Address the workers' concern in full: hand off 1BN of budget per month to go towards extended care for the workers, a pension fund, and using automation as much as possible.

Yield is expected to be 3 units of nuclear fuel per year (0.25 per month), with 1 unit defined as "the minimum necessary for a uranium hydride bomb, plus a little bit extra to ensure initiation". You may be able to improve yield if you were to get a hold of a bucket-wheel excavator.

>>3747479
> improved mesh networking, to make CS pylons significantly more disaster-resistant

im still voting for >>3745031

>>3747514
> skim some nuclear fuel
> Address the workers' concern in full: hand off 1BN of budget per month to go towards extended care for the workers, a pension fund, and using automation as much as possible.

>>3747514
>ventricular-assist device and pacemaker
True, we should really get the bio-research program set up. That might help reduce some of the immune-suppressant needs and if nothing else would make the surgery safer. Good to know it'd also make us harder to kill.

# Skim some nuclear fuel off the top (+0.25)

This is the same as a months production from our mine and takes us closer to nuclearising our entire system.

>DVD burner laser diode into a Nintendo light gun and run it off a SRTG
Good to see our energy weapons research proceeds at full speed.

>3BN and 1.25 units of nuclear fuel in total, but will greatly improve disaster preparedness
Excellent.

>making sure that the ship requires no fuel to operate while stationary
Certainly sounds like an interesting idea but I honestly see little benefit given we've never had issues with it's operational endurance.

# Address the workers' concern in full: hand off 1BN of budget per month to go towards extended care for the workers, a pension fund, and using automation as much as possible.

To be fair, automation is ideal since it minimises the risk of a mole.

>>3747479
Just finished reading up and absolutely loving it, great job OP. Speaking of Jobs, what is yours/what did you study to built satellite add-ons and robot fish? I'm currently studying a technical subject and would love to do that kind of work. Your technical knowledge is pretty apparent all throughout the quest and makes it just this much more immersive.
Also, you have mentioned Ayn Rand/atlas shrugged a couple of times (kind of mad I wasn't there to call Dimmer out on quoting the bad guy to support his point, dumb of him to quote Ayn Rand in favor of government interference at all), what's your take on it?
While I think her world view and philosophies are overly simplistic, pretty self absorb and her interest in kinky sex is a bit to obvious at times, I still found it a captivating read and pretty thought-provoking. If you would run a quest based on it, as you mentioned before, I'd absolutely be down for it. It sets up a very strange post apocalyptic setting with a very intense and unique feel. The players could control a small group of people that have quit society around the time Rearden disappeared and have now set up camp in Oregon/ are starting their little capitalistic commune.
Thanks so much for running and now for my votes:
>Let the new large satellites speak for themselves.
>improved mesh networking, to make CS pylons significantly more disaster-resistant
Since we are headed for a major disaster that seems like the best option.
>Skim some nuclear fuel off the top (+0.25)
Getting one moth worth of mining output for free is a pretty sweet deal.
>Address the workers' concern in full: hand off 1BN of budget per month to go towards extended care for the workers, a pension fund, and using automation as much as possible.
This should be the best way to prevent information leaks.

#Improved Mesh Networking

This is the Apocaylpse after all...

#Skim some nuclear fuel off the top

#Address the worker's concern (Also >>3747582 makes an excellent point on automation reducing risk of insider threat.)

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Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>3747582
>>3747550
>>3747656

Ryan Andrews shows just how weasely he can be; to the workers he paints the budget increase, pension fund, and additional automation effort as concessions he won arguing against you, then has the gall to send an email bragging about it to Mr. Domai. At least, he's smart enough to not mention uranium; as far as most anyone knows, Effincold is a silver and cobalt mine.

You intercept Domai's answer and are impressed by just how much vitriol the stereotypically polite and formal Indian English idiom is capable of. On the other hand, it's possible that you might be able to play them against each other...

Mr. Andrews does mention that he has a lead on a bucket-wheel excavator, essentially a half-size version of the Bagger 288, but since it's in Germany, getting it to Northern Ontario would be a major project in itself. The advantage is, of course, that with it ten men can do twice the work of forty using regular earthmovers.

>>3747582

You haven't yet started a directed energy weapons program, although you may do so at any time.


>>3747632

--- OOC START ---

I'm an electrical and computer engineer in my mid thirties and moved to the US under a NIW visa. If you want to get into robotics, my suggestion would be EE or mechatronics, for a college major.

I've read most of Ayn Rand's stuff because I did have an Objectivist phase way in the distant dialup past. Rand, much like LaHaye/Jenkins, suffered very much from having such a devoted fanbase that nobody dared to be an editor to their work. I think that Atlas Shrugged would make for a good mix between cowboy and post-apoc setting, in that there's no one big disaster but rather a series of small ones. I've written a worldbook for that at http://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/IronLegion.IronLegion.html

--- OOC END ---

>>3747632
>>3747550
>>3747490
>>3747656

You figure that the extra bandwidth should be saved for a rainy day; should CelSol pylons that are normally connected to the data grid find themselves separated from it, they will use it in order to automatically find their nearest neighbor and attempt to reconnect to the net at large. Between this and relay satellites, you are quite confident that people who have started depending on the internet's availability for daily life (You mildly regret not buying Pets.com stock, since they're doing swimmingly and even have started an app-based dog-walking service) will be able to keep finding it dependable, rather than a luxury. Since cellular net speeds are still lagging behind dialup, you've noticed that there has been a mini-boom of minimalistic Web pages modeled after the Datalinks look. People with older, black and white cell phone screens probably appreciate it.

>>3747677
>Ryan Andrews shows just how weasely he can be; to the workers he paints the budget increase, pension fund, and additional automation effort as concessions he won arguing against you, then has the gall to send an email bragging about it to Mr. Domai. At least, he's smart enough to not mention uranium; as far as most anyone knows, Effincold is a silver and cobalt mine.
Christ he's a prick ain't he.

>You intercept Domai's answer and are impressed by just how much vitriol the stereotypically polite and formal Indian English idiom is capable of. On the other hand, it's possible that you might be able to play them against each other...
We should get him and put him in charge of the auto-factories. That should lead to good productivity and higher approval from the workers.

>You haven't yet started a directed energy weapons program, although you may do so at any time.
I know, I was trying to be funny.

>>3747677

(To any newcomers: Bad rolls like this are pretty common.)

"Boss? We got a problem". Moira's accent is usually a welcome sound in your ear, but not now. "Derf - that's Fred Ritter - got caught with a hand in the cookie jar."

The nuclear fuel being brought to New Babylon for disposal came with an engineer and two guards, as is standard operating procedure for this sort of thing; so far you've gotten away with diverting a bit of the stuff by counting on the fact that they would want to share guard duty shifts, and acting when one of your men was standing watch. Unfortunately, not this time: one of the guards went off duty a little early, after "bargaining" with a replacement, to tour the aircraft carrier - the guy was former French Navy, and had an interest in the ship's structure, which would have worked fine for your purposes - but came back early.

"Anyway, we're on red alert, Derf's in the brig because I really couldn't figure out what else to do to avoid giving the game away, and the site engineer is hopping mad because he can't phone home since Cap'n Steele put the comms on lockdown, just to be safe."

# Sacrifice Mr. Ritter by generating evidence that he might have been a nationalist or Remnant symphatiser, or a would-be lone wolf terrorist, and have him executed after a drumhead trial.

# Have the two guards and the site engineer suffer a deadly accident while underway. It's entirely your call whether they'll be sleeping with the fishes for real, or staying in the Garibaldi's brig in their underwear until you work out what to do with them while some random fisherman finds their uniforms.

# Lock up Mr. Ritter, but do not hand him over to the New Babylon authorities upon arrival. This is likely to invite an audit.

Since the seals on the nuclear fuel drum have obviously been tampered with, as there was a brief scuffle, it will not be possible to skim anything off the top as the stuff will be weighed with a precision scale on arrival. At least you should still get paid...

>>3747709

Mr. Andrews is a prick, but at least he's a honest one; he's always said that he's in this for himself. His long-term plan is to lobby for CATS' privatization, at which point he will be in an excellent position to succeed you, for most intents and purposes. He's smart enough to understand that none of this is going to happen for the next ten years or so, though, since Carpatescu seems to be fairly dirigist when it comes to handling things like public utilities.

>>3747717
Well shit, we've got 3 choices: kill 1 of our own; kill 3 innocents; risk an audit being the end of us. I think we all know that the audit ain't a realistic option, at least until we clear house a bit for some of our more "out there" work. Yet I don't feel comfortable killing three civilians just to save one of our own just as much as I don't feel comfortable about killing him.

I'll support whichever other anons choose but I ain't making the call.

>Mr. Andrews is a prick, but at least he's a honest one; he's always said that he's in this for himself
Aye but my only issue is him lying like that. I don't mind more or less anything else he's done but you don't lie to our god damn workers like that.

>>3747717
>Have the two guards and the site engineer suffer a deadly accident while underway. It's entirely your call whether they'll be sleeping with the fishes for real, or staying in the Garibaldi's brig in their underwear until you work out what to do with them while some random fisherman finds their uniforms.
Fabricate evidence against them, we own the internet, and so we can easily prove all their nationalist connections. They have tempered with the nuclear fuel and tried to escape to one of the by-boats when they were found out. Our security tried to stop them and a firefight ensued in which they all were killed, it was inevitable as they refused to surrender and fought to the death. Their bodies fell overboard/out of the by-boat they were already in (they are in the brig in underwear), you can't just turn a ship like ours to look for bodies, so we didn't get the corpses.
They were found out as they were trying to erase evidence of tempering, the fuel was stolen before we loaded it (we steal it now, when we have to "kill" 3 innocent we might as well get fuel). That's my evidence erasing and getting fuel plan, tying up loose ends.
Get them and the fuel we stole of the ship before arriving.
We get fuel, they live, everyone wins.

>>3747717
>>3747753
ill support this

>>3747753
>We get fuel, they live, everyone wins.
I'll give it my support. If nothing else because it makes sense.

>>3747753
Get them and the fuel of with a by-boat, claim it was the one they tried to escape on and it drifted away after they were killed. Once we have transferred the hot-stuff, it can drift ashore with some blood in it.

Also, I realize stealing the fuel will cause suspicion but suspicion that is not directed towards us and three dead nationalist will cause a shitstorm regardless. Let's hope everyone involved will try to put it under a rug.

Rolled 68 (1d100)

>>3747771
>>3747753
>>3747783
>>3747805


"I don't know, Boss. We'll have to stage a firefight... Heh, actually that sounds like fun. AVAST YE SCURVY DOGS!"

Time to shitpost on some forums and Geocities guestbooks and the like, messing with timestamps so it looks like a pattern over time, to make it look like the attackers were

# nationalist holdouts

# Christian Remnants

# just plain nutcases. When in doubt, blame videogames!

and, to increase the chances of success,

# just get it done quickly.

# pull a work crew out of rotation to play hacker and ensure that there are no discrepancies with said shitposts in case someone goes looking (you currently have 4 unassigned; this would leave you 3)


Moira has two men she trusts blackjack the engineer and guards, stages a firefight, and actually gets one of the Garibaldi's dinghies sunk; today the fact that most cell phone cameras are low resolution works in your favor, and so you have video of the shooting, shooting back (courtesy of an alarm clock, a piece of string, and a blow-up doll belonging to one of the sailors), and sinking in glorious 144p.

# Dump one of the containers in the Mediterranean, in case someone checks for contamination - the radiation level is a lot less than what it should be, but that if anything makes this even more important.

# Deliver what you can and note that one of the drums had opened (steal the fuel).

# Deliver what you can (don't steal the fuel, dump a little bit of it in).

# Take the opportunity to dump the empty drums in the sea, and steal all the fuel (+1.0). As per the terms of your contract, you can show that you tried to stop the attackers - if they believe it - but the insurance company will take it right out of your budget, to the tune of 3BN.

>>3747815
# just plain nutcases. When in doubt, blame videogames!

Maybe imply they were looking to sell it to the Black market or something? That or they were believers in the idea that the Event was the rapture and thought exposing themselves to it might enable them to be rapture'd too.

# pull a work crew out of rotation to play hacker and ensure that there are no discrepancies with said shitposts in case someone goes looking (you currently have 4 unassigned; this would leave you 3)

Make it as convincing as possible, we've got to sell this.

# Deliver what you can and note that one of the drums had opened (steal the fuel).

We've went to all this risk for some god damn fuel, I'd like to think we'll bother to steal it in the end.

>>3747815
>nationalist holdouts
The big boogie man makes an organized effort to get nuke fuel believable, I also don't want to start shit with the Christians.
>pull a work crew
Unless this fucks up some other anons plans?
>Deliver what you can and note that one of the drums had been opened
Those evil nationalists must have already gotten some of it, must have sunk with their boat..... (should not be as bad as stealing all of it)

Anyone got plans what we do with them in the long run? Maybe dump them on Santiago as she is already taking care of our would be assassin (would tip her of to our nuclear plans)

>>3747815
>nationalist holdouts its the most realistic.
>pull a work crew out of rotation
> set the last 3 work crews on researching cellular solar.
> Deliver what you can and note that one of the drums had opened (steal the fuel).

>>3747834
>Anyone got plans what we do with them in the long run?
Well we could probably explain that they are now dead to the world and that everyone thinks they were terrorists. So we're the only thing keeping them alive. Then I suggest sending them to a nice little farm somewhere in the mountains of Peru or Bolivia.

>>3747844
>set the last 3 work crews on researching cellular solar.
We should probably invest some research into regular espionage defenses to prevent moles. We are squarely in "getting liquidated" territory with a lot of our activities if the wrong people learn of them, we need to run a tight ship.

>>3747883
Yeah but our current objective is to set up cellylar solar to 2 globally. Id like to assist that. We can divert the AI researchers to defense once that is done.

>>3747844
>>3747834
>>3747830

Nationalist holdouts haven't been in the news lately - they've largely been rounded up - but they are known for attempted nuclear attacks, and defeated revolutionists turning terrorist is something everyone with a cursory knowledge of history can understand.

At the end of the day, the Garibaldi makes it to Beirut port; the story has hit the news about a day before the ship arrives. To your good fortune, one of the execs of the company responsible for dismantling the reactor admits that their background checks was thorough but did not include online presence. CATS gets a little bit of blame for making anonymity online easy to attain, but it's nothing your PR people can't handle; however, you can expect this sort of operation to be more difficult from now on.

Moira flies back to HQ by private plane; she's made sure that the prisoners were brought in anonymously and were treated reasonably well. Thing is, you (and some of your people - you did pick the ones you can trust for certain) know that they didn't do anything wrong. For now, you put them in your warehouse, one shipping container each for a cell, and make sure they are well fed and get all the TV channels they want (no internet, obviously). They are competent people, or they wouldn't have been given the job of guarding nuclear fuel in the first place! Eventually, they'll run away...

# Tell them that the whole matter up as some sort of big hush-hush global security sting operation, offer them plastic surgery, new IDs, a boatload of money, and a plane ticket to anywhere in the world as long as they don't go back to Europe. This will cost 4BN total.

# Sorry guys. The needs of the many outweigh the end of the few. Euthanasia, and your families will be compensated. (1BN total).

# Aki, did you say you wanted someone to experiment on? We brought you a gift from France!

# Blam, blam, blam. As Stalin supposedly said, no man, no problem. You can do the deed yourself, or ask Moira to do it; nobody else would (save for perhaps Aki, but giving her a gun would be a bad idea) - your security guys trusted you enough to arrange a "Desaparición", but their ethical standards are too high to consider killing innocent unarmed people.

# Let them in on your plan; they may be the types to understand that saving the world is worth a new name and a new face. (1BN total, and three new hires, but can you trust them?).

# (I will accept a write in, and calculate a cost).

You've recovered the fuel (+0.25), but the payment for the operation is stuck in limbo due to the insurance company having started litigation with the LLC that formally owns the Garibaldi and hires her crew.

(What will the other 3 security teams do?)

>>3747883

(Defense R&D will cover this. It is currently at 2/10)

Once you deal with this little crisis, you've secured an interview with Patrick Zevo at the Zevo Toys factory site. You've also found a non-woo-y meditation teacher.

#Nationalist Holdouts
What about Islamic extremists? With Jerusalem now in the hands of Israel and given certain parallels between both Christianity and Islam's view of the End Times, it could be plausible that there are some cells eager to wage war against "Al-Masih ad-Dajjal".

>>3747939

That's a good point!

Strangely enough, most Muslims have joined the Ecumenical Council; a few Muslim Brotherhood types had joined the Egyptian insurrection, but they were in the minority.

There is a current of Muslims, primarily Shi'ite, who have been practicing a withdrawal from the global economy in opposition to Carpathian globalism.

One interesting thing is that the teaching of Sai Baba have experienced a resurgence of sorts, to the point that there are now official Zensunni representatives at the Council.

(Given that the latter half of the Left Behind books were written right after 9/11, there's a surprising dearth of vitriol against Islam in them. The authors are more concerned with invectives against Catholics and secularists for some reason. Think late-nineties Chick tracts).

(What is said meditation teacher's background?)

#Let them in on enough of the plan and promptly reassign them to Antarctica or whatever passes for that in this organization until they pass strenuous background checks.

Of course they can always refuse and wind up getting sent to the cornfield I.E. the middle of some Third World wasteland with no IDs, no money, no shoes, and no way to tattle to the folks upstairs that the IT has gone rogue...

Too harsh?

>>3747965

> stranding them in the middle of africa
> where they can be picked up by Rebohoth

Uhm, let's not and say we did?

>>3747931
Really tempted to give aki them to experment on. Fuck it. I vote for that.

>>3747965
Seems reasonable. I mean I was genuinely considering the Aki option but we'd reasonably need to have set up a proper blacksite for that.

I wasn't thinking Africa so much as the Gobi desert, the Amazon basin, or some shrinking sandbar in the Pacific....

Hmmm.... On second thought give the non-cooperative ones to Aki.

>>3747965
This, recruit them and keep them on ice (maybe our nuke fuel mine?), we aren't doing anything evil, and they are intelligent enough to understand that, maybe have Robertson talk to them. Keep them in the dark about who knows what, who ordered what and who has actually fucked them. This way they won't know who to rat out and who to run to. Eventually give them perceived freedom, should one try to rat us out, we block the attempt and give him to Aki for experiments.

>>3748006

Can we keep to the "we aren't doing anything evil" a little longer? We're a people, not an AI.

>>3748013
Agreed. I still say sending them to a nice farm in the hills of Peru is a good plan.

>>3748050
Fine not be evil send em to a farm

South America works.

>>3747479

# Let the new large satellites speak for themselves.
# improved mesh networking, to make CS pylons significantly more disaster-resistant
# Skim some nuclear fuel off the top (+0.25)

# Hand off one of your security teams instead.
# Address the workers' concern in full: hand off 1BN of budget per month to go towards extended care for the workers, a pension fund, and using automation as much as possible.

The Goon squad has seen enough.

Man I'm really late to the party.

>>3747931
# wrapping up the Egyptian job; nearly everyone who could move to Cairo has... nearly. Reward: 1BN *
# April and Rebohoth are feuding by proxy, using fishermen, over Gilbraltar. Keep the peace (1BN) or intervene in favor of one or the other (1 fleet asset) *
# Related to the above, Risto Shipping is offering the same bounty to look after a particular cargo ship - they won't say why, though. *

# (I will accept a write in, and calculate a cost).
Give em plastic surgery and new ID.
Put the new hearts in them and have them experience miracles.

Interview them to get to know them better.

Then pass on final judgment.
2BN? 3BN maybe for us to make some really good holding facilities on a blacksite somewhere on 24/7 watch.

>>3747931
>What will the other 3 security teams do?

> Intervening in the Central African mess, which has flared up again: Hutus and Tutsi tribes are being prodded by someone to resume their war. 2BN to help either group subdue the other, 1BN to try and negotiate a ceasefire
Weakening our African friends position, collecting evidence of his incompetence

> A pirate radio on Rose Island in the Adriatic sea has required protection from the Peacekeepers wanting to shut it down. (1 fleet asset) *
Easy job and one that we are perfect for, might lead to unexpected rewards?

> Speaking of pirates, the drastic reduction in the world's air forces has resulted in a strange situation: cruise ships going from Venice to Greece are being harassed by air pirates using old flying boats, demanding that passengers leave behind their valuables on a rubber dinghy lest the ship be strafed. Provide escort (1BN guaranteed) or end the threat (2BN).
We good guys and 2BN is tempting

>>3748185
Support

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Rolled 67, 15, 81, 2, 1, 3 = 169 (6d100)

>>3748062
>>3748052
>>3748050
>>3748013

You figure that if these people have to suffer for the truth, they might as well get all of it.

You tell them that your job is to keep the Internet going come the Apocalypse, and since you're giving it fifty-fifty that the Apocalypse is in its initial stages, you're taking no chances.

"So you're not building a bomb yourself?"

# Show them the Robertson papers; since one of them is a nuclear engineer, he'll understand them and explain it to the other two.

# Show them a SRTG prototype.

# Both.

# "I am, actually. We may need to blow up God or the Devil with it."

They ask what their options are. One of the soldiers just wants to go back to her family; the other lost his wife in the Event, and seems more persuadable when it comes to saving the world. The techie on the other hand seems interested in that nuclear engineering isn't a dead profession.

>>3748143

Plastic surgery, a new ID and hush money will cost 4BN total.

You have a logistics base in Siberia that would make for a pretty good black site, if it came to that - it used to be a Sharashka (research gulag) during the bad old days.

>>3748185
>>3748241

(These things aren't happening at the same time, so no quick decision is necessary)

You figure that the best way to cover your tracks is getting into a fight with these "air pirates"; if you manage to defeat them in the days following the nuclear fiasco, they will be blamed by association. By the look of it, they're using old WW2-or-thereabouts flying boats; a tiny bit of sleuthing finds that, save for a few people who lost some family jewelry, the cruise-goers actually loved the experience.

Having the Garibaldi physically around the cruise ship would prevent any attacks; you on the other hand want to find the pirates' cove. The solution is to mount floats on one of the Antonovs and tie it behind the cruise ship. The cruise company goes a little overboard, picking a Belle Epoque theme for their next Venice-Athens trip across the Adriatic and managing to avoid making Fascist references.

However, it's 1999, not 1929. A couple of the ladies on the cruise have been given jewelry boxes with GPS trackers.

#Show them the Robertson papers. It's the most relevant to his interests and we don't want to reveal all our interests in case one of them speaks.

The woman is a liability. If possible, I would arrange for her family to move to Peru or Argentina. The alternative is 'disappearing'.

The soldier can be assigned to our logistic base in Siberia until we determine he can be trusted and find a niche in our organization.

The scientist we should likewise evaluate. If he proves trustworthy.... the more the merrier.

>>3748250
>Show them the Robertson papers; since one of them is a nuclear engineer, he'll understand them and explain it to the other two.
Show, don't tell. Two of them are good, now for the family man... Can we disappear his family, (they were evil nationalists too and now have gone into hiding) so that he can have the ones he loves around, assuring his permanent loyalty.

Moira could engineer a fake fire while a Covert OPs spirits the family into hiding.

>>3748293
*woman *she *her

>>3748250

(What are even these rolls?)

WIth all these things going on between Italy, Albania and Libya, the Adriatic sea is getting a bit too much attention. Your men on Rose Island - a cute idea, if anything, a depleted shallow water oil rig that was being slowly turned into a proper island by the simple means of dumping barges full of sand around the underwater gantry, and building a radio station and a casino on the superstructure - were expecting to have to repel Carabinieri, or perhaps rival seasteaders wanting to make a claim.

What they did not expect was the full might of the Peacekeeper air force, which is considerably smaller than most of the old world's military air arms, but can definitely make mince meat of anything like rebuilt 1920s seaplanes or Antonov 2's. You don't know how Od Gustav talked Carpatescu into letting him deploy it, but you figure that it might have been a combination of Rose Island claiming sovereignity and an excess of shenanigans in this part of the world.

Fortunately for you, your airplanes and IFVs were busy elsewhere; unfortunately, Rose Island is bombed to oblivion without even being given a chance to evacuate. The former oil rig is blown to bits by air-to-surface missiles.

Possibly the worst part is that the Garibaldi's radio picked everything up; the pilots were treating this as a rare opportunity for live-weapons testing. Reviewing the recordings that Capt. Steele sent you, they speak fast and coldly, with the sort of manic calm that heavily hints at amphetamine usage. Capt. Steele decides to send one of the Antonovs to the wreck to look for survivors.

300 people on that crate, including one of your security team. Of your people, one survivor, a former Coast Guard SCPO who happened to have combat diving experience and was thus assigned to lurk within the underwater part of the structure in case any frogmen showed up. Eventually, you recover the combat diver, who is all too happy to be debriefed. The diagnosis is burst eardrums - recoverable, although not completely - and plain old shell shock.

"They just... came. Right mid morning. No notice, nothing. Full afterburner. The Garibaldi heard them on the radio, I think that they tried to relay back to us, but there was no time, people were told to get indoors, I guess we were worried about strafing, not - not missiles! And then they just - They did it. They really did it. You blew it up! You blew it all up! You maniacs! Damn you! God damn you all to Hell!"

You leave behind a sobbing wreck. A few days later, you learn that a few of the survivors tried to sue the Global Community government. They are asked to file a formal complaint at a particular courthouse in Bulgaria, given first-class airfare there, and are not heard from again.

(Sorry, natural 1 after a 18....)

>>3748185
No the pirate radio does none of that but hurt dissents that we should be supporting.

Taking out the pirates means less escort jobs for us.

>>3748354
Man that is brutal.

We real;y need to pick up some nationalists. Organize a prison break and have them loot aircraft bone yards to get a better air force.

>>3748250
# Show them the Robertson papers; since one of them is a nuclear engineer, he'll understand them and explain it to the other two.

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>>3748354


Elsewhere, the news aren't good either; the people you sent to Africa were starting to make some headway, until Raveshaw ambushed them. They barely managed to get out, with a few casualties and one IFV sufficiently damaged that it will have to be rebuilt. Raveshaw came prepared, at the head of a force consisting of both Peacekeepers and Rebohoth's guard. You suspect a mole, until you review the footage from your satellites and the camera phones that your crew left behind -- after driving off you and anyone who could reach wheels or escape into the brush, the Peacekeepers were directed to chase the stragglers while Rebohoth's personal guard began indiscriminately killing civilians from both tribes.

Debriefing indicates that Raveshaw's men have constructed 2 or 3 dedicated flame tanks for the specific purpose of scorching the Earth.

Thanks in part to the fiasco in the now defunct Rose Island, the caper against the pirates fails; udnderstandably scared, they don't show up. To salvage their image, the CFO of the cruise ship company asks the Antonov pilot to do a few flybys of the cruise ship anyway, for the look of the thing... and has to buy you a new Antonov from Poland when a modern warplane shows up and takes the floatplane out, again without warning.

You lose the pilot; fortunately, it's a resignation and not a death. The fighter pilot, having trained to go against comparable aircraft, misjudged the biplane's slow speed and tight turning circle. The Sidewinder missile impacts the AN-2's upper left wing before arming, and tumbles on, exploding harmlessly between the plane and the ship; the biplane crash-lands on three wings and the pilot swims to safety before the military jet turns around and sinks it by strafing it with its autocannon.

You also lose the weapons that had been mounted on the Antonov, of course.

In less than a week, your security force have gotten a reminder that they cannot go toe to toe with a modern military. Fortunately there's only one of those left on Earth.

Moira reports that morale is through the floor: there have been some resignations, and you've flat out lost one of your squads. Some of your men want revenge for their friends. Some want better guns . Some warn you that they did not sign up to go against a whole army. Some are appalled at the change of tack in Peacekeeper behavior. In this mood you go see Patrick Zevo.

The icing on the cake is a brief GNN interview in which Bruno Folgore mentions that "lawless elements at sea and in the air in Southern Europe have been dealt with decisively by our brave Peacekeepers. We do not abide terrorists, we do not abide fanatics, we do not abide any threat to the peace and tranquility of the Mediterranean or any other stretch of land or sea under Global Community authority. Ave Carpatescu!"

The potentate himself follows up by playing good cop, indicating that any family member of the deceased, including the guilty, may apply for redress.

by

>>3748250
>Rolled 67, 15, 81, 2, 1, 3 = 169 (6d100)

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

>>3748354

Put video of these atrocities up and have it show on every search that's even mildly related. And show it to our captives, too. We may be the bad guys but this is the alternatives.

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>>3748408
>>3748293
>>3748288

"Judge for yourselves."

The engineer knows Robertson by reputation, of course; he quickly skims the paper, goes over a few sections in more detail, and tells the two guards that yes, there's something in this.

The guard that wanted to go home, well, still wants to go home; you'll have to deal with that. The other is willing to give this the benefit of the doubt. He understands the point of operational security, and claims to be willing to do duty in Effincold and not contact anyone.

>>3748456

You can, of course, decide how to shape the internet's response to these peacekeeping actions; broadcast media isn't really within your ability to control, other than to cut satellite feeds or "encourage" Captain Midnight copycats to alter it.

Rebohoth, as far as you can tell, is quite convinced that being shown to be a monster strenghtens his rule rather than weakening it; he's always ruled by terror. Carpatescu seems happy to play good cop, with the bad cop role being available to one of the many people who want it.

>>3748442

The Zevo Toys factory has been closed down in an orderly manner, not bankrupted; sweep the floors, cart away a U-Haul worth of dust, reconnect the power, and it could start hiring again in a week. Patrick Zevo, himself, is not in good shape, physically or mentally.

"I can't even eat. The food keeps touching. I like military plates, I'm a military man, I want a military meal. I want my string beans to be quarantined! I like a little fortress around my mashed potatoes so the meatloaf doesn't invade my mashed potatoes and cause mixing in my plate! I HATE IT when food touches! I'm a military man, you understand that? And don't let your food touch either, please?"

That's the sort of conversation you are having, eating microwaveable meals in a corner of the otherwise-deserted factory cafeteria. Looks like the man has been using it for his personal food stockpile; canned food, MREs, water. Notably, no guns. "Leslie hated guns..."

# Listen to his sob story. After the Event, almost everybody has one; the only reason why you didn't is that your family was all generally agnostic and weren't seeing anyone.

# I need drones, Mr. Zevo. You need purpose. We can help each other.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

Rev 13:4

Ah..... But war is a complicated thing. Yes the Beast that is Carpatescu may dominate the skies and the sea, but we control a new frontier that neither it nor its master seems to fully comprehend.... Cyberspace.

>>3748530

# Listen to his sob story. After the Event, almost everybody has one; the only reason why you didn't is that your family was all generally agnostic and weren't seeing anyone.
# I need drones, Mr. Zevo. You need purpose. We can help each other.

Doesn't hurt to listen to a guy who's secluded himself for a bit.

Then offer him purpose.

>>3748544
and possible space itself!

>>3748530
#Listen to his sob story. He can't be any worse than Aki

>>3748550
INDEED~!

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>>3748551
They would go perfectly together making little robot monsters.

We have to keep them far apart lest Small Soldiers become based on us!

It wasn't a movie, it was just security cam footage of the little robots that got loose!

>>3748551
>>3748547

You expect to hear a broken story by a broken man; what you get is a remarkably precise report.

Kenneth Zevo, died in 1991. His desire was that instead of his son Leslie succeeding him, it would be his brother, Leland, who was a lieutenant general in the US Army. Even Leland was unsure of this, pointing out how Leslie has been apprenticed at the toy factory most of his life. Kenneth agrees Leslie loved toys and his work, but his childlike demeanor would not help him to be a successful business leader. Leland reluctantly takes control of the factory. Leland's first thought is to simply allow Leslie and his sister, Alsatia, continue to design new toys and effectively run the factory. From Patrick, Leland gets the idea of building war toys in the factory, even though Leslie points out Zevo Toys has never made war toys due to Kenneth's dislike of war in general.

Leland offers to drop the idea of Zevo Toys making war toys, but asks Leslie if he can partition off a small amount of the factory to develop toys of his own. Leland uses the space to develop miniature war machines that can be controlled remotely, aspiring to sell these to the military. When Leslie sees children being led into one of Leland's secure areas, he finds a way to sneak into the space. Inside, he discovers Leland training the children to operate the miniature war machines with arcade-like interfaces so the children would not be aware they are actually operating real war equipment. Leslie flees before he is discovered, barely escaping the "Sea Swine" amphibious drone guarding an exit; he is aware that Leland has seen his actions through spy toys monitoring the area, and prepares to stop the drone army.

Leslie, and friends, including Patrick who feels that his father may have lost a few marbles, go to the factory to fight against Leland, using regular toys' movement and sound to confuse the autonomous drones. Leslie manages to get to Leland, and turns off the mainframe which coordinates the drones; Leland is hospitalized, and Leslie takes over the toy factory. Patrick, having been assigned as liaison for this operation despite the obvious conflict of interest, is reassigned soon after.

Unfortunately, Kenneth's prediction comes to pass: Leslie is an excellent toymaker but a poor manager, and with the advent of more realistic videogames - Patrick tells you about the genuine wonder he felt after seeing Doom for the first time, about a year after this mess - the factory goes through financial troubles. The Event seals the deal; the market for toys has suddenly dried up with the disappearance of the world's children. Leslie and his fiancee Gwyn had been trying for a child for years; the fetus, now on its 7th month, disappeared from Gwyn's body.

"She died of systemic shock and a broken heart; he died with her, he walked the earth for maybe another month, but it doesn't count. And here I am. They also serve who only stand and wait."

Ask Mr. Zevo if he would like to build for our team. The event might have emptied the world of children for now, but that doesn't mean the spirit of fun and whimsy should disappear with them.

(Now I'm curious if Robin Williams is alive in this timeline... ;) )

>>3748686

Everyone lost someone in the Event, one way or the other. The human race, collectively, had to square its shoulder and soldier on. This particular soldier served with as much distinction as he could in a peacetime Army, according to his record, and was give a honorable discharge shortly after the Event's aftermath required his deployment on a still-classified mission in Panama.

"You've seen what's going on in the world, Mr. Zevo."

"Yes, I have. What can I even do about it? There is no Army anymore - there is no America anymore! That all-hat no-cattle good-for-nothing Dimmsdale asked me to enlist, can you believe that? I'd start off at E-8, train people in camo, that's my specialty..." He gestures at your phone. He doesn't have one. "For what? Setting fire to straw huts with women and children inside? I can't tell who the good guys are anymore. And I can't fight the bad guys by myself. I'm only one man. The Punisher's a comic book, Mr. Foreman. You know what I'd want to do? Teach. There's plenty of older teens who grew up with no younger brothers or sisters to look after, that's just not natural, it isn't. The Boy Scouts have gone to pieces, and it'll be a few more years before there can be cub scouts again. I'd do something like that, wilderness training, for, you know, older teens, twenty somethings that can't find honest work. That I know would help people. It won't being Leslie and Gwyn back, but... Oh god, I wish they could see that people are having kids again. I should-"

>>3748711

# Well, sell me your factory, and you can set that up if it's what you want.

# I'm sorry for your loss, but I'm here because I am interested in your drone tech. Can you make more for us?

# You can take up your cousin's legacy; the world will need toymakers again, in just a couple years.

>>3748717

(I was going to not dwell on that, honestly. I can't imagine someone like him reacting well to the effective death of every kid in the world. I didn't mean for this bit of the quest to turn all dark, but... well, it happened).

An idea occurs to me.

In exchange for providing his drone technology to our cause, we can work with him to set up a program where Mr. Zevo can train older teens and young adults how to pilot the drones as a sort of mock war games. Something in the vein of FIRST Robotics, Cyber-Patriot, or Drone Races.

It's great PR for our organization and gets us drones and it gives Mr. Zevo purpose and a means to help children.

(Also sorry about that....)

>>3748754

that's literally what his dad wanted to do. I know that it's what we want the tech for ultimately, but we'll have to use a different angle with this guy.

From my understanding is Dad was trying to trick kids into using the drones as weapons.

What I'm proposing is using the drones as a teaching tool to raise interest in robotics and aviation. Similar to how FIRST robotics has children building droids to solve puzzles.

No subterfuge, but it could be a means to find new talent in the coming years.

>Leland
that guy.

Looks like you guys want option 3?

We could hire this guy as a training instructor for our men.

>>3748841
Essentially yes.

Ideally, I like the idea of introducing drones to the population, similar to how Misrayim had the robot fights and the Maker Spaces to promote science.

What I'm trying to propose is having Mr. Zevo start a drone subculture among teens and young adults to promote interest in aviation and robotics.

This would have the following deliverables:

1) Increase the pool of potential science recruits among young adults. We need soldiers but we also need engineers, IT professionals, and other techies to build SCIENCE

2) It gives Mr. Zevo (and ourselves) an opportunity to help the communities impacted by the Event and WWIII.

3) It secures a means of producing drones

>>3748896
Sure, But i still want this guy training our men, maybe even support a new boy scouts of America.

If we can set up a community and do old skool type corporations with jobs being careers and setting them up for life, we'd have a very loyal workforce.

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Rolled 12 (1d100)

>>3748754
>>3748841

"Here's my proposal, Mr. Zevo. You reopen the factory - not sign it over to us, reopen it - and we help you get the business back on its feet.

You quickly find a relevant picture on your phone - to your mild annoyance, it's off the phone of that female guard in your custody; it shows her youngest cousin with friends. "I don't blame you if you retreated from the world after what you've seen. Many did. But we, as a species, are moving on. Once it became obvious that people could have children again, well, they got busy. Look here." You point at one of the faces. "Cindy Jospin is one of the first children conceived in France after the Event. She is healthy, smart, and probably excessively pampered, growing up without an older brother or sister or cousin who's not past the Event gap of thirteen years. Society is, because it's what we do, likely to cater to her every whim in her formative years, because children are rare, and this will make sure that she grows up getting exactly the wrong message about the world and how to do well in it."

You explain Carpatescu's plan for a unified world school curriculum beamed in classrooms via satellite, and add that you are not in favor and have put up a few token technical obstacles against it. "Carpatescu respects free enterprise; would you like to help offer an alternative that isn't run by religious fanatics?"

Patrick asks you for some statistics; thanks to the Nomenklator, you give them without braking eye contact. "There are 20 million kids in the world now, Mr. Zevo. What you do about it is up to you."

>>3749716

"What can I even do about it? I'm... I'm obsolete! I'm a soldier, and there's no more countries, and... just look at what happened with the Peaceekeepers. If that's what it means to wear a uniform no, I don't want any of it. My family were toymakers, and we were struggling even then, now kids are just going to want high tech stuff and they can just get it in Japan..."

You let him drift off before replying.

# You said it yourself: few kids means lots of money per kid. If there's ever been a time to resurrect high quality, semi-artisanal manufacturing, it's now. Maybe countries are on the way out, but Made in America can still be a thing.

# You know, I happen to know a PMC who could use a man like you, if you can get your ass in gear again. They have a great record of being the good guys. We can help you set up a trust for the factory.

# High tech stuff like first person view remote controlled aircraft that you've had the tech for for years? They don't have to have guns on them. You want to teach, great! Let's make sure that the new generation has the tools to learn.

>>3749727
# You said it yourself: few kids means lots of money per kid. If there's ever been a time to resurrect high quality, semi-artisanal manufacturing, it's now. Maybe countries are on the way out, but Made in America can still be a thing.

# You know, I happen to know a PMC who could use a man like you, if you can get your ass in gear again. They have a great record of being the good guys. We can help you set up a trust for the factory.
Give him both offers. Let him choose, but sort of push for the former, but let him have a comfortable fallback as the latter.

>>3749716
> Cindy Jospin

She's important later in the books. Must protecc.

Rolled 41 (1d100)

>>3749733
>>3749734

Mr. Zevo thinks about it for a little bit. "You make a good point. I can at least try to reopen the factory. As for what I'll do with my own life... I'm not sure."

You mention your PMC, which, of course, isn't yours, on paper. He seems unconvinced. "Mercenaries. How can anyone trust them?"

"Do you trust the Peacekeepers more?"

"Not from what I've seen online lately, no. Mind you, a global defense initiative is a good idea. It's just... Iit could have been implemented a lot better. Then again - I guess it's good that people know what's going on now. I've seen a couple of things that I never want to speak about, and we WERE the good guys, by and large. The world's really gone topsy turvy, hasn't it... Heh. I guess the banks are still at the top of the heap. I'll have to get a loan, and-"

"You don't need a bank. I guess the world's gone THAT topsy turvy."

# Offer a loan on very generous terms (no interest) to reopen the factory. You figure that it will be easier to do business with him once he's out of his funk.

# He can get starting capital by selling you the old drone designs. Better do it before Dimmsdale or Carpatescu confiscate them and use them for who knows what.

# He can get starting capital by becoming your covert-ops instructor, with the added benefit that it will give him a reason to get some muscles back on his bones.

>>3749754
# He can get starting capital by selling you the old drone designs. Better do it before Dimmsdale or Carpatescu confiscate them and use them for who knows what.
Seed money
# He can get starting capital by becoming your covert-ops instructor, with the added benefit that it will give him a reason to get some muscles back on his bones.
More money to cover any shortfalls. But mostly this would be good for you to get out again.

He can just give over most of the stuff and have the company ran by us or some people we select and he can retire wealthy by still owning it.

Rolled 17 (1d100)

>>3749759

(I respect your wish to go middle of the road, but choosing more than one option lowers efficiency considerably, like in the previous quest)

"You've got a point about the robotics stuff. I think I should just get rid of it. I'm sure with how computers got faster and cheaper since then, someone'll reinvent it soon enough, but I don't want blood on my hands. Now - I've actually seen what happened in central Africa, and I admire your friend wanting to play peacekeeper when the Peacekeepers aren't. But they bit off more than they could chew - you can't go after a whole army head on with some security guys, it's as stupid as ordering a cavalry charge on a tank division. No, what they need to do is learn how to be invisible. Insurgency methods - counterinsurgency, too. If it's ten against fifty, you want to tire them out, steal their gas at night, that sort of thing. I think I'm going to hit the gym for a few weeks and then give your friend a call, who did you say it was?"

# Moira.

# A former private investigator.

# A former soldier.

# A former debt collector.

You intend to tell Patrick's future contact to project the sort of persona that Mr. Zevo may be likely to get along, of course, without outright lying. Right now your forces are demoralized, but you can tell the contact t play that up and earnestly ask for help.

As far as Mr. Zevo destroying the drone designs, you figure

# you gave it a good try. It's probably for the best.

# you can make him a good offer.

# you're going to take Patrick's own advice and just hack them out of the factory mainframe before the hard drives are destroyed - all you need to do is find a way to get it powered on and stay on for a hour or so.

# You don't have anyone qualified to play Spy vs Spy against this guy and break in to steal the designs, but staging a robbery is possible, albeit unlikely to work.