The Human Condition - Ch 100: The Coming Of Dusk

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“All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!” - T. E. Lawrence

~

Setting down his omnipad and giving a ragged smile, Cor’nol N’taaris plopped himself down into a seat aboard the last of his shuttles to leave the spaceport, the one that would take him back to his mansion and the well-earned personal comforts contained therein. Stifling a sigh and quickly recomposing himself as his new personal guard followed him onto the shuttle, he ran through his inventory list one last time. 

Personnel, check. Rifles, check. Armour, check. Not quite marine-grade, but good enough to stop the puny guns they had on this planet. Exos, check. APCs, check. Gunships, check. He had offloaded and sent away all the people and equipment to their respective bases, leaving nothing behind. Even B’unta had gone to one of the nearby bases to begin setting up.

Although she was going to be the one actually in charge of his new and improved Pennsylvania Militia, she had designated a more presentable woman to be the acting Militia Chief. Looking just as professional in a suit as the day she had accompanied him to the E’salu United Credit offices, B’unta’s trusted lieutenant Pera joined Cor’nol and his guard squad on the gunship.

“So, I’ve heard you’ve already got a lame-fowl Militia Chief, among other silly pretenses?” she asked him, sitting down across from him. “How long are you gonna keep up this turox-shit?”

“Pilots, we’ve got everyone, let’s get going back to the manor,” Cor’nol raised his voice to give orders to the shuttle’s crew before replying:

“Exactly as long as it takes you gals to get set up and ready to go in each and every one of your new bases, and not a minute longer.”

“Excellent. B’unta is looking forward to smashing this planet’s puny women’s faces in.”

“I’m going to be designating her and the rest of your new arrivals as a ‘quick reaction force’ for now, so you’ll be deploying to combat the very worst and most disruptive human insurgents. The rest of the militia can handle the day-to-day shit.”

“Even the slimy human officers who took advantage of that blonde bitch’s leniency to join up?”

“Hey, if they can wave a gun around threateningly and perform traffic stops, there’s no reason not to keep them around. Under proper supervision, of course,” Cor’nol said. “And by supervision, I don’t mean women staring at their asses all day.”

“If you say so,” Pera replied.

After that, she thankfully fell silent. Reflecting on the day, Cor’nol considered it a success in spite of the delays and disorganization that had run rampant in his studious secretary’s absence. Although he had eventually been able to bring everything back under control and get all of his shit off the tarmac and heading out to the bases, he still resolved to avoid sending away both of his hardest working organizational staff at the same time on such an important day as this. 

Sure, the pair of them deserved their time off, and he enjoyed watching Te’dol struggle to delusionally pretend that he wasn’t interested in the woman, but he just knew that things would have gone a lot smoother if he had been here to help. Speaking of it, we wondered just how fruitful their little date had been. Did Te’dol finally start making moves? Had they held hands? Had they found a nice little romantic bench in some park and shared a kiss? Heh. That seemed highly unlikely, given his secretary’s disposition and given that the city would obviously be swarming with humans who would make privacy impossible.

Maybe he was getting a little too invested in this little pet romance. He needed to focus on his job as governor of this land, now more than ever. He also had his own politically-oriented romances to carry out with Ru’dara Dorina and Ji’sala Quo’sa. Yes, he was already on a first name basis with them, what of it? They had been wonderfully cooperative the other night, both politically and… personally. He looked forward to working with them (and potentially others) in the future.

Perhaps if he could bring in another one or two powerful families into alliance, they would even be able to challenge Esteemed Lady Lannoris for the continental governess-ship. Of course, as the ever dutiful husband, he would then be ready to mediate amongst his wives in order to determine who would succeed her…. and who would be the most willing to listen to him.

Such plans were still a long way away, but they were a pleasant goal to strive for, and they gave him the motivation to continue, no matter who might attempt to stand in his way!

~~~~~~

“Hey Lil,” Phillip announced himself, knocking on Lil’ae’s door.

It only took a few seconds for it to swing open and for him to be pulled both into the room and into a tight hug by his large and soft (albeit frighteningly strong) girlfriend.

“At least let me get inside first, jeez,” Phillip said, his voice muffled by Lil’ae’s breasts. “And that is not a fucking innuendo,” he added after realizing what he had just said.

“I know,” Lil’ae replied cheerfully, shutting the door behind him. “But you really should think a bit more before you speak. If you keep saying stuff like that, I might confuse you with Al and ask you to unload cargo in my docks... wait, that sounds even worse! Please don’t think that I’m asking Al anything unfaithful like that! And I also don’t want to make you uncomfortable! I’m sorry!” she squealed, blushing as blue as a popsicle. His girlfriend was just too cute when she was nervous.

“Aw, you I know you don’t mean any harm,” Phillip said, going on tip-toes and reaching up to tousle her hair. “So don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I know better than anyone just how easy it is to twist something perfectly wholesome into a euphemism. I hang around Al, after all.”

“Heh. That man would shock half the galaxy into silence, talking like that,” Lil’ae said.

“Well, they’ll just need to get used to it, because there are men on Earth who are far worse,” Phillip said. “Now, how was your day?”

“Good. I’m annoyed that I couldn’t make lunch with you and Ralph, but I’ve already used up a lot of leave time recently, and if you can believe it, a shipment arrived too soon!”

“Holy shit.” Phillip feigned disbelief because he thought it would be funny.

“I know, right? Anyways, turns out that was a problem too because we didn’t have a place to put it yet, so now we have a crate full of industrial grease blocking one of the aisles.”

“Sounds like someone must’ve greased the right palms to get it there so quickly,” Phillip joked.

“Wouldn’t greasy hands make it harder to move stuff around?” Lil’ae asked, tilting her head in confusion.

“Euphemism for corruption. You could say that money is used as lubrication to speed up a stuck bureaucracy.”

“Oh. Interesting symbolism. When I think of grease, I think of women who work for a living,” Lil’ae said. “Like mechanics and engineers.”

“Well, on Earth most of the grease monkeys are men,” Phillip said. “Or at least, most of the human grease monkeys.”

“I thought calling someone a monkey was a big insult to humans?” Lil’ae asked. “You know, sub-sapient animal and all.”

“Naw, in this case it’s more a term of endearment. I may not be a grease monkey, but I sure am a code monkey,” Phillip said, pointing to his chest proudly with his thumb.

“So, then… was Hara a grease monkey because she worked on the APCs?” Lil’ae asked. “And am I a forklift monkey?”

“Well, you guys–er, gals–aren’t descended from great apes, are you? So you can’t be monkeys.”

“Mmmm. That is a problem,” Lil’ae said. “But a silly one, so perhaps I shouldn’t worry about it.”

“You certainly shouldn’t lose sleep over it,” Phillip said. “Besides, I already have a name I can use for you, Silly-Lil’ae.”

“What? Oh no, I don’t have one for you yet,” Lil’ae said. “Philly-willy?”

“No. Absolutely not,” Phillip said, trying not to laugh. “Philly is short for Philadelphia, and Willy is slang for a penis. I may have one, but that’s not a good basis for a nickname.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know,” Lil’ae said. “Uh… can I call you my code monkey?”

“I mean, some people at work call me that, and I’m guessing you want something special, right?” Phillip asked. “What about Partner-in-crime?”

“Your… online activities would not be a good thing to advertise,” Lil’ae said. “What about something involving your last name?”

“I think it’d be better to let it come naturally and not try to force it,” Phillip said. ‘And speaking of my illicit activities, I should check in on our little disguised friend.”

Saying that, he dropped to the floor and reached his hand under the couch to pull out the omnipad he had wired into the base network the other day.

“You think you’ve gotten anything useful on there yet?”

“Oh, I’ve already gotten useful stuff from it. The question is just how much useful information can be gleaned from it.”

“Gleaned?”

“Acquired, but only in the context of knowledge or information,” Phillip said. “Not quite like ‘learning,’ but… I don’t know, it’s hard to describe the difference in context and tone.”

“Why does English have so many fucking random words?” Lil’ae complained as he pulled out his laptop and plugged the hijacked omnipad into it.

“Perks of being an unholy amalgamation of several other languages,” Phillip said. “I can’t wait to see what words we steal from Vatikre in the long-term.”

“You think that will happen?” Lil’ae asked.

“It already is,” Phillip said. “I’ve heard people use [boy-basher] in the middle of English conversations before.”

“Oh goddess, not that one,” Lil’ae said. “That’s a horrible thing to need a new word for.”

“It is what it is,” Phillip said, opening a terminal line to the omnipad. “Oh, what have we here?”

“What is it?” Lil’ae asked. “Did you find something interesting?”

“Well, that depends. I think my snooper programs have found addresses and credentials which may allow me to start getting into the WAN, i.e. the connected networks of multiple military bases in the region.”

“So you’re not restricted to messing with just this base?” Lil’ae asked.

“Well, I can ask computers and servers on other bases to do things for me, yes,” Phillip said. “But only things normal users can ask them to do. I don’t have admin access to them like I sort of have here.”

“So you need to steal someone’s password or something to gain control over them?” Lil’ae asked. 

“That would be one way of doing it. The other way would be hoping for poor network isolation to leave an unsecured path open. While that may have worked once, I’m not going to hope that your entire division or whatever’s IT department is as bad as the people on this base. Although… it does seem like they did actually turn auto-trunking off once they were finished installing the new switches, so maybe they’re not as brain-dead as I called them back then,” Phillip explained.

“Huh. So, we’re out of luck?”

“No. It’s just that we haven’t gotten absurdly lucky again. This next bit will require significantly more work.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Lil’ae asked. “I mean, I can’t just ask the signal company folks for their passwords, but maybe I can do something?”

“Are other people allowed into the IT room? Do they bother to use typed passwords, or do they tend to authenticate with their fingerprints or something else? Do they ever leave their omnipads lying around?”

“I don’t really know the answers to any of those questions,” Lil’ae said sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Then you can start by finding them out,” Phillip said. “Are you friends with anyone in the signal corps? Are any of your squadmates friends with signal people?”

“Not really. I guess I’ll try to get closer to them then?”

“Don’t do anything risky,” Phillip said. “We’re taking this slow and steady, got it?”

“Got it,” Lil’ae said, nodding her head.

“I’ll also look into trying to break any of their encryption, because if I can, that would be another way to get our hands on credentials.”

“Ok, cool. But will it really be possible? I mean, Imperial encryption has to keep stuff secret from the entire Alliance and the entire Consortium, and you’re just some guy with a laptop. How do you expect to break our encryption?”

“I think I might have several advantages,” Phillip said. “Firstly, it doesn’t actually appear that the Imperium was too far ahead of humanity when it comes to the technical aspects of computer security. You guys seem to like to rely more on airgapped systems, time delays, and redundancy to keep yourselves safe from hacks. 

Secondly, I have you, and more importantly, your omnipad. Your military-grade omnipad which has already been loaded with some of the Imperium’s military-grade encryption software. If I have a copy of the encryption algorithms to dissect and the ability to send known data through the scrambler, I might have a pretty good chance at cracking it fully or at least partially.”

“I see,” Lil’ae said. “So me giving you my pad was a good thing?”

“A very good thing,” Phillip said. “Actually, as a further consideration, do you have access to any documentation on Imperial encryption?”

“Like, the signal officer’s manual?” Lil’ae asked. “I have access to copies of a variety of specialized officer’s manuals, both Marine and Navy. They’re for professional development, if I wanted to try and add another specialization to my resume.”

“Send me copies of all of those you can get your hands on,” Phillip said. “I don’t care if they’re relevant to IT at all, they’d all be useful to certain people.”

“To know your enemy, right,” Lil’ae said, almost facepalming. “I should have thought about those before!”

“Don’t beat yourself up about not remembering them,” Phillip said. “I bet many people don’t even know they exist in the first place.”

“True. But… I should go through and see if I have access to any other potentially useful files.”

“Good idea,” Phillip said. “And once we’re done, do you want to play Exo-born again? It’s been a while.”

“Oh yeah, absolutely,” Lil’ae said. “Although it is sad that none of your friends’ schedules seem to line up.”

“One of the greatest tragedies of adulthood,” Phillip said.

~~~~~~

Te’dol was practically dead on his feet as he tramped the last few steps back up to the estate’s front service door, where Rodah pulled out a key and unlocked it, holding the door open from him to go through first.

While he had definitely enjoyed their day out together, he had also been walking around all day, and his stamina was certainly not up to human standards. Of course, neither was Rodah’s, and Te’dol could tell she was definitely favoring her left foot, despite her feminine attempts to hide it.

After Independence Hall, they had spent most of the afternoon at the “Historical Document Museum,” learning about the strange and needlessly complex governmental systems that the humans had had to struggle through prior to the Imperium’s arrival. Not just one council but two? And Lords and Ladies of Justice who could strike down laws as they saw fit? Madness.

Of course, Rodah had been more charitable in her assessment of the humans’ peculiarities, noting that the complexity mainly seemed to be in the service of ensuring that no one in government didn’t have rules applied to them and enforced by someone. Sure, that was true, if that was what you wanted. But how much effectiveness were you sacrificing in the process? If the old councils were anywhere near as argumentative and unpredictable as the current one, how would you ever get anything done?

Random rules just for the sake of rules weren’t a sensible way to run an administration, and he was glad that the Empress and the reforms she was leading didn’t have to deal with any of that kind of turox-shit. If the high nobility had the ability to strike down her laws or those of her predecessors, he as a man would probably not have the ability to own his own property, or to walk the streets without an escort!

Still, the debate with Rodah had been friendly, and he had enjoyed the chance to engage as equals. Spending most of his time around his master meant that he often had to hold his tongue or nod in agreement without offering criticism. To be fair, his master was generally understanding and receptive to suggestions, but his place was his place, and Lord N’taaris wasn’t paying him to do his job for him.

After wearing themselves out mentally discussing the intricacies of good governance, they had gone to a couple of less politically involved historical museums, including a small one on the human version of the Imperial Courier Service, an old physical printing office, “the oldest alley in America,” and a museum on one eccentric named ‘Benjamin Franklin.’ However, even there they didn’t escape politics, because Franklin had been heavily involved in the American Revolution and the anti-noble revolt therein. 

“Hey,” Rodah said, as they came to the junction that separated the male staff quarters from the female staff quarters. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight to you too. I had fun today,” Te’dol said.

“Me too,” Rodah said. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you,” Te’dol said, shuffling back to his room.

Unable to resist at least checking on work before going to bed, he saw that his master had been able to handle the unpacking, albeit with some difficulties. It had taken much more of the day than Te’dol had projected, and it looked like his master had made several small mistakes about where certain pieces of equipment were supposed to go. He decided that his master was probably already frustrated by the delays, and put in a couple quiet requests to have the relevant equipment sorted out in the next day or two.

That problem dealt with, he decided to actually turn in for the night. Some men swore by their beauty sleep. Maybe he should try it, at least on his day off.

~

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