Or possibly because “those people in startown are openly calling us a bunch of soot-encrusted yokels”.
1 Like
As a side note to my former comment on this, how long would we say it would take before some Imperial diplomat practices the Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud Kata by cordially agreeing with the One China Policy and turning ostentatiously to the Taiwanese delegate?
I give it a month.
1 Like
Just watching the blood pressure explode out of PRC officials makes me happy (I’ve had to work with the Mainland PRC government and watching them all explode a’la Scanners would make me break out the popcorn).
Thatcher allegedly suggested to do that with the return of Hong Kong, but Deng threatened nuclear war, so it never happend. 
2 Likes
This is where the captain of the diplomatic cruiser in geostationary orbit over the Equator activates rainbow hedgehog mode and broadcasts, to borrow an Earth-ism, “I gotchu fam”.
2 Likes
In a time in which the dumber parts of the Internet are getting very excised about who you may or may not find yourself sharing a bathroom or changing room with, it seems only appropriate to point out that Our Cousins stopped at “sharing” and are muttering something about “hillbilly hell”.
2 Likes
Definitely a mood there. Using public bathrooms can be a shitty experience.
“We handle it, by NOT handling it.” - Every Imperial on every Earth talk-show, sometime, somewhere.
1 Like
“That’s a stupid question. This is the question you should be asking.”
- likewise
1 Like
“Okay, how bad is it this time?”
“Three fingers, but no ice.”
“Damn it. What happened?”
“Sapient dar-bandal in Central Park New York got arrested for assault and homicide. That wasn’t the problem. The problem wasn’t that the guy he assaulted was in the middle of a kidnapping and had a rap sheet longer than my leg for all sorts of assault, including sexual. The problem was that the kiddy popper got bit…rather intimately and the dar-bandal…tore. On camera. Video was uploaded to YouTube before the cops got there.”
“Oh. Ouch…”
“Yea. Bled to death before the paramedics could get him to the ER, parents-once the kid wasn’t screaming anymore-were thankful and weren’t going to press charges. Cops were pretty much ‘get this guy his weight in the really good dog biscuits and beer’ and made it clear that they didn’t think it was a crime. The problem is the DA, he’s running for office this year and he’s on a whole ‘keep the out-of-town crowd from telling us what to do’ tear and he’s wanting to press charges for homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent…”
“Assault with intent?”
“Dragged him about twenty yards before parts finally separated.”
“Okay, set up a call in an hour. I’ll need the briefing paperwork, and if we have to do a discrete diplomatic status thing with a thirty-second temporary visa revocation, let’s get that into place.”
“File’s already here. And the whiskey.”
1 Like
…plus minus 3 business days each for the revoke and the invoke?
1 Like
Back-dated, even. Dubious legality, but the guy in charge of this whole process is someone that could be trusted to handle this kind of thing properly.
Scale it up a bit, guys. What about the time that local organized crime tried to cut themselves in for a piece of an Imperial company’s action, and it resulted in a running multi-way wuxia battle between ExSec, corporate security, PRC intelligence, the triads, the yakuza, and the jo-pok through the streets of Kuala Lumpur?
1 Like
…there are people who would have “no shit, I was there” stories that they could drink on until the entropic heat death of the universe. With video, no less!
(Actually, what was embarrassing was the way that one yakuza kyodai managed with a long-staff to spank three ExSec team members before they tazed and cuffed him. Guy did get job offers from a dozen different Imperial companies literally on the spot, so that’s something.
(And, the less said about the triad leader’s “girlfriend” and how she was a much more accurate shot than him, the better.)
Michael Mann is already talking about doing the movie adaptation.
1 Like
Here’s another fun scenario for you:
People want to buy some marvelous pharmaceutical. Cure for cancer, miraculous brain-polisher, whatever.
Then whoever’s trying to get it through approval notices the details. See, there, they don’t really go for animal testing. After in vitro, you go to paid volunteers. Or…
…in this case, it’s gone through asshole testing. Which is to say, tested on people who have volunteered for the “chains and pyres” death penalty program that gives you a chance to earn your honor back by dying usefully for the Empire.
Ethical conniptions much?
Or, even more fun, it’s one that needs extensive adaptation to the local - and to human - biology, and could we kindly find some volunteers with the exact right kind of - or to have - late-stage metastatic cancer? Or failing that… some assholes?
1 Like
Question mark, just for curiosity-would this also include a new reinstating if the test fails somehow?
If so, and you make it clear what the consequences are, it’s on a medical ethics borderline but it’s possible. Hell, this is the character origin story of Luke Cage.
“I’ve tried explaining to our resident space elf how Christmas works. I eventually gave up and we spent the entire night watching classic Christmas movies, and we frosted a whole lot of cookies for today.”
“Is that why you have those bruises…”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
"Look, I get the whole winter solstice festival thing. Everyone has one of those. Nice big feast for the unconquered sun and because you can expect to live through the winter. Makes perfect sense. Gift-giving and merriment with kith and kin, cool, we have lots of those and people who don’t should probably have more. That’s fine.
“But explain to me again why you theme this celebration after the god-figure you celebrate nailing to a stick three-four months down the line?”
1 Like
"In recent news, the US Department of State has lodged a formal protest against Galactic Arbitrations, ICC, for ‘unsanctioned commercial exploitation of the heavens’, in light of multiple reports of sky-writing observed during overhead passes of the diplomatic cruiser IS Alkahest of Bureaucracy.
According to the Secretary of State, ‘The Department of State appreciates Galactic Arbitrations, ICC’s efforts in promoting Sol-Empire relations during the present holiday season, and I will go on record saying that seeing the season’s greetings in the night sky provides a much needed morale boost in these trying times. We do not however condone GA ICC’s subsequent actions in opening up an anonymous online service allowing anyone with an Internet connection to emblazon their own, often less-than-tasteful messages across any patch of atmosphere under their embassy spacecraft’s orbital groundtrack, for a fee.’
Attempts to reach out to Galactic Arbitrations’ in-system spokesperson yielded only a recurring sky-ad quoting the Harbinger-class operations manual, with emphasis on the manufacturer’s recommendation for conducting a regular low-power test of the cruiser’s point-defense systems. The sky-ad also included a notice informing users of the service to expect interruptions while Galactic Arbitrations shifted the service host off-planet."
1 Like
If it’s late stage of a fatal condition, or one “that causes severe suffering”, then the main barrier is a [bleep] tonne of paperwork. Firstly to convince the authorities that the Empire’s superior in vitro testing is functionally equivalent to our animal testing, so you’re really just skipping to the Stage 1 or 2 trial step. I suspect that batch will only have to be done once. And then of course all the “testing this on a human before having done a proper Stage 3 trial” paperwork, which is per-patient and per-project.
Luckily, we have systems and templates for that! It happens a lot more than people anticipate. I think some people would be alarmed if they knew just how many paediatric cancer drugs were refined with live-testing on children, and how terrible it would be to stop that. Because those types of cancers tend to be fast and brutal and lots of people are willing to take the risk; if the drug works the kid survives, and if it fails the kid dies two months sooner but it’s probably still a slightly less horrible death.
It’s probably the closest we get to their Martyrs to Science.
2 Likes