The Republic of Texas

by on January 19, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Abilene-class cruisers began their lives as pre-gravtech spacecraft, but the Texas Rangers gave the Abilene-class gravtech frigates a new lease on life in the decades leading up to The War and beyond. They are small by modern standards, though generations of improving technologies have both opened up new spaces and then filled them back in as new missions were introduced. The original Abilene carried 150 crew and scientists into the distant void, but the Rangers are no navy to recruit such crews, and so their Abilenes are crewed entirely by cybernetic intelligences. Command for the starship officially rests with the senior Ranger on board, but the cybernetic crews maintain, repair, and run them with minimal outside input. Some are assigned to a common starship pool where any Ranger can take them out on missions. A single Ranger has commanded others for years or decades as they travel from colony to colony in their long mission to protect the common peace.

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Please Don’t Do Anything Stupid

by on January 18, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

TLDR version – Stay home. Be peaceful. Don’t provide them the visual of angry Trump supporters protesting the swearing in of Biden. Just stay home, watch a nice movie with your family, and enjoy your day like any other. Please don’t do anything stupid this week.

Full version.

Washington DC is locked down like East Berlin this week, with 10,000 (scratch that) 20,000 (scratch that) 25,000 soldiers deployed in it at the time I’m writing this post. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more by Monday. We’ve got fences and walls and concrete barriers and all kinds of similar crazy going up right now. And of course there is all the silencing of moderates and conservatives on the social media platforms. Beyond that, I’m seeing all kinds of crazy ads exhorting Trump supporters to come out and protest all of this. Ads that do not look like the kind of ads I normally see from Trump supporters. Some of them have odd phrases or color pallets that are not common to the Trump side of the spectrum. But I study history, and I recognize some of those common elements.

Now some people may call me paranoid. They may even be right. But I was taught to distrust the government, and to distrust the media, and basically to distrust everybody who demands that I do what they tell me to do. So when I see phrases and color pallets that I recognize comes from people like that, I get profoundly distrustful of the entire situation. There are too many things going on right now when it comes to this week for me to be at all comfortable. In a nutshell, I’m getting bad vibes, and I have never regretted listening to those bad vibes.

So what I say to all of you, if you support Trump, listen to Trump. He told you to be peaceful. He told you not to promote violence. He told you to go home.

I reiterate that suggestion. If you attend any protests this week having to do with the swearing in of Biden, do not listen to any loud voices telling you to attack anything. Walk away if you hear anything like that. Don’t let the media see you near those bad actors. Better yet, don’t go to the protests. Go to work as usual if you are in a State where the governor hasn’t put you in lockdown. Go home and enjoy a good movie with your family. Watch the swearing in if you want to. But don’t go to the Capitol and protest.

I pray to God my bad vibes are wrong, that everything goes peacefully this week. But if something bad happens, don’t be there. Don’t take your spouse, don’t take your children, don’t take your idiot cousin Earl who might listen to a loud voice telling him to go someplace and do something stupid. Stay home.

Let Washington DC go through whatever pomp and circumstance they want to go through, behind their East Berlin walls, their tens of thousands of soldiers, and their battalions of main stream media reporters ready to tell the story of violent Trump insurrectionists trying to overthrow Democracy.

You stay home and watch everything they do. Or watch a movie. Your choice.

All I really want for you, for any of you, is for you to be safe in your home, your possessions, and your freedom to do or not do whatever you want. Please be careful to preserve that this week. Don’t do anything stupid.

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The Republic of Texas

by on January 17, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Texas Rangers have used a variety of spacecraft over the centuries, often obsolete designs retired by the Texas Navy. That is how they acquired their first Abilene-class frigates and F-2 Star Furies in the decades before The War came upon us all. Both were Pre-Contact designs upgraded with gravtech after the Peloran gave it to us, and both had continued to serve the Navy for decades. But the Rangers found them after their eventual retirement and chose to acquire all the examples that they could. The Rangers have used those two designs ever since, and they have even contracted new production runs from the original manufacturers to expand their fleet. Wherever you see an Abilene or Star Fury now, you can expect to see a Texas Ranger in short order. They do not tend to keep the peace from the shadows after all.

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The Republic of Texas

by on January 16, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Texas Rangers are the premier Republic of Texas peacekeepers, trained to keep the peace as their first objective. Their light brown uniforms appear similar to various law enforcement uniforms used over the centuries, but are manufactured out of weapons-grade armorweave to protect their wearer. The white gloves and cowboy hat are similarly designed to emphasize a non-confrontational role while actually being built around hard armored cores. The blue strips and plates appear decorative, but are actually heavy armor that can expand to enshroud the Ranger from armored boots to hat in seconds. Artificial muscles woven throughout the uniform give the Rangers increased strength and speed, and nanoswarm sensors allow them to see and hear clearly from great distances. The Rangers try not to start fights, but they are fully capable of finishing them if someone else chooses to do so.

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How the Future Flies

by on January 15, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Just one more author note before I get back into describing the awesomesauce that is the Republic of Texas. You know it is awesome because it almost lives up to their own image of themselves. And everybody else hates them for that. 😉

What I want to say is that most of the posts I write, I do so between two and four days before they go live. Sometimes I get into a groove and punch out a week or two of updates at once. Sometimes I’m running behind and don’t write it until the night of. But since I work overnights, it is easy to punch out a few hundred characters of fluff for that. Usually though, I’m working on posts two to four days out from the moment I’m writing. Once done, I push it up to the automation, get to work on my next stuff, and the posts go live when the time comes.

One thing has been really mind blowing in the last little while. I write up a projection of something bad that happens in Jack of Harts thirty years from now, and something eerily similar to it starts happening a day or two later, just before the post goes live. Look guys. I know history repeats itself, but I’d really prefer it if we find a few different ways of repeating ourselves here.

We’ve gotten nearly 250 years out of the Declaration of Independence, a good solid trend of improving the conditions of life in our country, and dragging other countries along with us. The average person today lives better than kings did 200 years ago. We have indoor plumbing and antibiotics and roads we can drive from sea to shining sea in a few days. We can feed and fuel the world into a new and better age of mankind.

We are literally growing new organs using our own stem cells right now. Imagine being able to replace our old organs with those when they start wearing out. That’s just ONE medical advance that could change the world. One thing we are working on right now that could radically change the health of millions or billions of people if we spread it out enough.

It would be really nice if we could do what our parents and grand parents did and build a better world for the next generation.

Let’s make the future fly.

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