by Don Cook
Overcome with grief, Khraa/Astra fell to her knees, and cried for a few minutes, until, realizing the American people had to know, she stopped crying.
Khraa/Astra embedded her anti-hacking sub-program into the podcast and uploaded it.
[NOTE: Aside from in-character quotations by various characters, the character of “Stanton” will be normally referred to from this point forward, for the sake of reader clarity, as “Mephistula/Stanton.” — DEC.]
PENTHOUSE SUITE 44-P4,
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA USA,
9:07 PM CENTRAL TIME
“I CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAID IN THAT INTERVIEW!” shouted Jefferson at Mephistula/Stanton, as both waved their arms and paced furiously about the living room in a spat over the international fallout from Mephistula/Stanton’s damaging viral interview with Khraa/Astra hours earlier. “You’ve just blown the damn election!”
“That Downey, she’s a damn major trickster!” Mephistula/Stanton said. “I’ve got to find a way to pull the fat out of the fire, fast!”
Eggers, who was on speaker-phone, said, “If I might suggest something —”
“What?!” Mephistula/Stanton snapped.
“Might I suggest laying low for a while?” Eggers said. “And revise your campaign strategy by laying off Downey, shoring up your image, and blaming your rant on the heat of the moment and the stress of the campaign?”
“Well…” Mephistula/Stanton said. “It might not be that bad an idea. New tactic: Lay low, revise, and shift the blame on stress. I’ll call my campaign team in the morning and keep the media guessing overtime. Thanks, Austin. Bye.”
Mephistula/Stanton ended the call, then walked to and collapsed onto the sofa as if she weighed as much as a fully-loaded supertanker, and moaned like a dying bull.
“Whoa…” Mephistula/Stanton sighed with a heavy groan and began to doze off sans feminine graciousness. She said, in between heavy yawns, “I gotta figure out how to stop being mine own executioner. For some reason, I just cannot for the life of me… think… straight…”
Mephistula/Stanton fell asleep, and, for a woman, snored up an infernal storm, as Jefferson snickered at his wife, then shuffled back to the condo’s guestroom to turn in.
And as Mephistula/Stanton snored and slept, Earth was two weeks away from the orbital position that would allow for the direct transmission of Khraa/Astra’s neutrino distress-beacon to be instantaneously received by Amkerian authorities…
Bureaucratic bungling, even among elected officials, has been the bane of yours truly and every other person since the beginning of civilization itself. And political tensions? They only fuel such incompetency.
But a long and protracted political firestorm over whether to rescue me or not?! That takes the Prize of Prizes for stupidity borne of fear...
Dr. Khraa-Veh ven-Bonhoeffer
Admiral, Platinum-Class, AMKEXPRA (Ret’d)
My Cosmos-Spanning Memoirs
DEEP SPACE, LIGHT-EONS FROM EARTH
06 JUNE (EARTH-TIME)
The vast blackness of intergalactic space is no place for a flesh-and-blood mortal, unless he or she is inside a ship built for practical, speedy star travel — or within a sleeper-starship in one form of suspended animation or another.
But for Seeker 1, the first in a series of deep space probes jointly operated by Amkeria’s AMKEXPRA (Amkerian Exploration and Research Agency) and KERC of Kannatika, intergalactic space was its element. Its age could be seen from the micro-meteor wear-and-tear it had sustained for its 75-year journey out in deepest space. It was also dated by its side-by-side display of both the Amkerian “Stars and Rays” flag (with its triad of stars within a blue rectangle at the top and red and white vertical rays on its lower half), and the old Kannatikan “Red Standard” flag (with its Union Jack-like Tarsonic Union Star-on-navy-blue-background in the left third, and the Kannatikan Coat-of-Arms shield at right on a red background.)
A few years after the launch-deployment of Seeker 1, the Red Standard was discontinued as Kannatika’s flag in favor of the iconic red-and-white Tri-Leaf Flag, with its stylized pointed shamrock-like leaf of the Sap-Tree, a symbol of national Kannatikan pride, centered within an elongated hexagon framed by red on either side. This change of flags was brought about in spite of the new flag’s politicized design and the hostile politics surrounding its selection, which led to it being labeled as “the Liberalist rag.”
The conical, minivan-sized antenna-bedecked Seeker 1’s joint Amkerian-Kannatikan operators got more than their monies’ worth from the Seeker space probe series. Although each probe had an expected operational lifespan of two standard-decades, their surprising durability and the ease of neutrino transmission-delivered systems upgrades gave the Seeker probes extended leases on life several times over. In fact, a popular saying was coined in the Known Universe that described something old yet reliable and durable as “forever non-obsolete as a Seeker.”
To Khraa/Astra, Seeker 1 was a part of her early preschool childhood, a symbol of Kannatikan techno-prowess and a morale booster for Kannatikans like Khraa/Astra who loved space exploration. Even as a little girl who was just a newborn shortly after its launch-and-deployment, little Khraa/Astra was happily aware of all the infectious media and cultural excitement surrounding the first major intergalactic space effort undertaken by Kannatikans in partnership with Amkeria.
A plethora of discoveries were made with Seeker 1’s help, many of them by Khraa/Astra and her late husband Isokk Elheem. Rubiaar IV itself, long considered a myth, was rediscovered by the Elheems through astronomical observations and mathematical equations undertaken by Isokk with the aid of Seeker 1’s astronomical detectors and microscopic scrutinizing of various lost world legends by Khraa/Astra.
But with the electoral defeat of ex-Minister-In-Chief Steeph-Hargan at the hands of his demagogue-opponent Pot-Trudierre, and the election of the anti-totalitarian Amkerian President Konnall-Trombart after the end of his universalist-predecessor Kuraq-Baromba’s allotted final term, tensions escalated quickly between Vaxerthony (the Amkerian Capital) and Oktaavaeon. Trombart, a multi-industrial magnate, affirmingly saw Kannatika as a good place for doing business, while Trudierre, like his communist-like former Minister-In-Chief father Pietreaux-Trudierre, utterly hated Amkeria, thus setting the stage for a major showdown between the two opposing headstrong leaders. And even though the elder Trudierre saw the Seeker program’s immense scientific and PR value, the younger Trudierre did not, and shortly after taking office, abruptly ended Kannatikan support for a program that helped Kannatika, by long-distance proxy, to explore the heavens and boost Kannatikan prestige constructively.
Yet regardless of the transient nature of Kannatikan-Amkerian relations, Seeker 1 still probed the heavens in its preprogrammed quest for knowledge about the Universe.
Suddenly, Seeker 1 received an unusually complex, heavily-coded neutrino-signal. Although it could not decipher the transmission, it could and did determine its point of origin, which was an incalculable number of light-eons away — and that it was a distress-beacon packed with a treasure-world of data the probe’s systems could handle.
As per its programming, Seeker 1 instantly relayed the transmission to —
MONITORING CENTER, ROOM ALPH-6,
AMKEXPRA LONG-RANGE PROBE RECEPTOR STATION
MAKMORDLEY ASTEROID, UNITED STAR-SYSTEMS OF AMKERIA
SAME MOMENT
“Wake up!” shouted bald, rotund Ensign Dr. Pell-Marr to his sleepy crew-cut raven-haired shift-deputy Level-5 Petty Officer Bel-Ko.
Ko groaned and yawned his way out of his nap.
“Uhh, yeah, Pelly?” said Ko, still semi-asleep.
“If the Officer-of-the-Shift catches either of us napping, we’d be sent off to a stockade-planet for sure, so wake your gluties up!”
“You know,” Ko said, now mostly awake, “life’s been deader than a grave-house since Trudierre pulled KERC out of the Seeker Program. Those Kannatikans, they kinda livened things up wh
enever things got bores-world.”
“I hear you, Ko” Marr said. “They used to come up with some of the funniest stories and jokes to help pass the time. Politics! It makes damn monsters of us all!”
“Tell me about it!”
“You know whom I miss most? The Elheems. Whenever they popped down here onto Makmordley, Isokk and Khraa used to bring Shurrah, Svettie, and little Aleeta. They were kick-gluties scientists and really good, fun people.”
“And Khraa’s younger brother Yesh-Veh. He was a star-freighter-full of laughs!”
“Yeah” Marr said in lament. “They were really good beings. Really good —”
A loud distress-signal klaxon sounded.
“Distress-signal!” Marr shouted.
“I’m on it!” Ko said, as he donned his headset and observed his video monitor. “Attempting to pinpoint origin-point. All I’m getting is this blue-with-white-text slate, cloaking a heavily coded signal. Put up on main screen?”
“Main-screen it!”
“Right, Pelly!”
Ko transferred the signal onto the primary large wall-screen. The white-text-on-blue-slate read:
WHICH REALM WAS THE VICTOR IN THE NORTH AMKERIC BORDER WAR OF 1742?
(ALPH) KANNATIKA
(BETT) AMKERIA
(GAMM) NEITHER — IT ENDED IN A STALEMATE
(DELT) ALTERNATE ANSWER (PLEASE VOCALIZE IN DETAIL)
“This has gotta be a joke!” Ko said in disbelief.
“I don’t think so” Marr said. “And I know of only one person who would have created that kind of heavily coded protocol. You know whom I mean?”
“Khraa-Veh ven-Elheem? But she’s dead!”
“Presumed dead, Ko. I think it is her.”
“But how in Perditia could she…”
Ko thought about it for a while before he said, “Yeah, I get it. Both she and Mephistula must have survived — and she’s in trouble! No wonder she sent it coded!”
“And if she had, we’d better answer the question, for her sake. Now, Ko, how would she have answered the question?”
“She would have gone for ‘Delt.’ Khraavie always maintained that officially, because of the Treaty of Gendelborq, it was a stalemate. But that the treaty itself was ratified by both sides after we won the Battle of Naulinstron, thus giving Amkeria what she called ‘practical victory.’ Yes, that’s how Khraavie would have answered it, alright.”
“What in Perdy’s goin’ on here?!” bellowed Commander Ramm-Brext, the station’s aging, ever-irascible commanding officer, as he yawned and stomped into the monitoring room. “Yeesh! The way you two blabber on so loud, it’s a wonder you two don’t raise all the dead across all of spacetime!”
“Sorry, skipper,” Marr apologized, “we were figuring out about how to respond to the signal that just came in on intergalactic. We scanned it, and it checked as being a distress-beacon.”
“Then go answer the thing, damnit!” snarled Brext.
“But skipper,” Ko said, “we also saw that it had a prerequisite-code question programmed into it.”
Ko pointed up to the main monitor as he said, “And it’s right up there on the big screen. It’s set up so that if you gave the wrong answer, all the systems would be wrecked beyond repair. And you wouldn’t want us to risk everything on the base for that, would you?”
Brext rubbed his chin as he passed, thinking seriously about Marr and Ko’s cautious approach to the message, and then reached a decision.
“Send it to the Five-Forts,” Brext said, referring to Amkeria’s version of the Pentagon. “And secure-code it! Use Priority Platinum-
Alph-One-Alph!”
“That serious-heavy?” Marr said.
“Yes, Pelly,” Brext said, “that serious-heavy. Now get to it!”
“Yes, sir!” Marr and Ko said simultaneously as they saluted Brext before —
STRATEGIC MONITORING CENTER
COMBINED SERVICES MONITORING COMMAND (COMSMOCOM), THE FIVE-FORTS,
VAXERTHONY, KOLBIKA SECTOR, UNITED STAR-SYSTEMS OF AMKERIA
30 EARTH-MINUTES LATER
“Heads up!” shouted bald, Patton-like Level-1 Admiral Vill-Greeze, Chief of Operations at COMSMOCOM to his subordinates in the cavernous Strategic Monitoring Center, once he had received the Priority Platinum-Alph-One-Alph message from Commander Brext at Makmordley Asteroid Station.
“We have received a distress-beacon that while it is from an Allied source, it is rigged with an activate-or-comp-ware destruct protocol. The signal begins with a question-slate about who won the Border War of 1742. From my own experience, there is only one being clever and daring send that kind of a distress-beacon — and even then, only if she was extreme danger.
“Yes, she! I have every educated reason to believe that this odd yet clever distress-call was sent by none other than our beloved colleague, a friend to many of you, and someone we’ve all admired — none other than Captain Khraa-Veh ven-Elheem.”
The room erupted into a chorus of loud cheers, as Greeze waved his arms to appeal for quiet from his operatives. Everyone quieted down.
“Yes, monitors,” Greeze addressed his subordinates, “only a person as wise, intelligent and cunning as Captain Veh could have sent it. Yes, while we are at legal-technical war with Kannatika, Veh herself is friendly to us Amkerians, and has often defended us when her fellow Kannatikans were against us. I am now sending the question-slate the message begins with to the Big Board.”
Greeze sent the blue-slate-with-white-lettering signal to the “Big Board”, a situation monitor that was the size of a large movie theater screen. Everyone had a hard time wrapping his or her mind around the question on the slate.
“Now I know we’ve been taught that our nation won the Border War of 1742, a fact commonly accepted by most historians across the Known Universe. However, since the days of the elder Trudierre’s stint as Minister-In-Chief, the Kannatikans have been sorely misled by their governments, their educators, their state-run media, and their private-media cohorts, to believe that Kannatika and not our side won that war.”
An angry chorus of boos erupted, which prompted Greeze to again wave his arms to appeal for quiet from his operatives. Everyone quieted down again, but with angry grumbling very evident.
“QUIET!” Greeze said, appealing for calm, “That having been said, it was Khraa-Veh ven-Elheem, a well-educated Kannatikan woman, who gave the well-thought-out educated response that while the war ended in a stalemate with the Treaty of Gendelborq, she has maintained, in the face of opposing Kannatikan popular opinion, that, by virtue of the Battle of Naulinstron, Amkeria was the practical victor-realm, and that any Kannatikan claim to victory is, in her own words, purely dark, evil, Lucifraeonic propaganda-fantastic folly!”
The room erupted into another chorus of loud, even more boisterous cheers, as Greeze once again waved his arms to appeal for quiet from his operatives. Everyone quieted down more respectfully.
“Now, I take full responsibility for my next course of action. But first, I am ordering a total com-security lock-down of the entire Five-Forts complex effective now!”
All operatives carried out their pan-complex com-lockdown protocol duties.
“Five-Forts at full com-lockdown, sir!” reported Level-1 Lieutenant Ley-Kreen, Greeze’s tall, bald second-in-command, as he saluted Greeze upon full com-lockdown.
“Very good. Now, I shall answer the question. Master-comp?”
“Yes, sir?” spoke the Five-Forts’ Master Computer, who sounded like a militaristic version of 2001: a space odyssey’s HAL 9000.
“Regarding distress-signal received by Makmordley Station via Seeker 1. Do you acknowledge said signal?”
“Said signal acknowledged” Master-Comp spoke.
“I wish to answer its question-slate with Option Delt,” Greeze spoke, “and to elaborate that while the Treaty of Gendelborq officially ended the war in a stalemate, the outcome of the Battle of Naulinstron made Amkeria the practical victor-realm.”
A tense dead silence that spanned a few minutes’ worth of time, save for the room’s cyber-machinery, flooded the Strategic Monitoring Center, with everyone of god-fearing faith praying silently that the response given by Greeze was acceptable. Hearts beat faster and faster with fear at first, then with wartime terror.
The beep of acknowledgement finally sounded with the question-slate on the Big Board replaced by a second blue slate with the white-lettered words that were also spoken by Master-Comp, “Response is correct.”
Once again, the room erupted into an even more boisterous round of relieved cheering, as Greeze once again waved his arms to appeal for quiet from his operatives. While everyone quieted down, the image of Khraa/Astra wearing the spacesuit she wore during the battle in Rubiaar IV’s skies replaced the acknowledgement-slate.
“This is Captain Khraa-Veh ven-Elheem,” Khraa/Astra’s voice echoed through the vast chamber as her image graced the Big Board, “deputy-commander of the Kannatikan Exploration and Research Commission’s Rubiaar IV Expedition. For the sake of security, the proto-Rubiaar IV language manual I had developed with my late Expedition Commander-husband Commodore Isokk-Elheem and six other Expedition co-members will now download into your receiver’s computer system. The proto-tongue is a coding conduit for unscrambling the signal on full download.”
Khraa/Astra’s prerecording was replaced onscreen by a bar-gauge on a blue background that showed the progress of the downloading of the proto-language, with green coloring slowly filling in the bar slowly from left-to-right. Once the bar’s space was filled completely with green, and its number ratio read “100/100”, a second similar slate with a similar bar illustrated the progress of activation and unscrambling. Once that bar was fully green and its numbers also read “100/100”, the screen flashed to black.
Khraa/Astra’s spacesuited image re-faded quickly onto the Big Board, as she began, her voice echoing again throughout the chamber, “Greetings. This is Captain Khraa-Veh ven-Elheem, deputy-commander of the Kannatikan Exploration and Research Commission’s Rubiaar IV Expedition. The preceding measures of downloading and activation of the constructed language of proto-Rubiaarian were necessary to cloak this distress-signal for reasons of the utmost importance, which I shall now divulge to you.
