Jack

by on January 20, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

There were certain basic courses I had to finish before I could graduate from High School, but they weren’t the challenge some make them out to be. Reading, writing, and rhetoric is pretty easy to master. Math and science can be a bit harder if you’re going into the more advanced forms, but we only needed the basic levels to graduate. Music and sports were the ones I loved the most. It was on history that the schools really concentrated though. It was their job to teach us how we got to where we were, how we built the worlds we all lived in. They taught us why the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address were important. Why the words “I have a dream,” “Tear down this wall,” and “Build the wall” all affected how we grew up. How the race and debt riots changed everything. Why the First Great Depression hobbled unbridled Capitalism, and the Second Great Depression starved Socialism. They taught us what it meant to be American, so we could go to college and learn the skills we needed for our chosen profession. I passed the basics with ease, but was always more interested in studying the intricacies of girls than anything else. Unless the two came together. Then, I assure you, I could focus on the relevant subjects with remarkable success.

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Lucas Cats

by on January 19, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The jaguar-derived cats of San Lucas were in the middle of a long-term rebellion against their panther-derived overlords when they made Contact with us. Both the Uaithni and the Gangani wanted our aid in ending the war, by helping them defeat the others of course, but the local colonists kept their aid limited to humanitarian relief. And to stopping atrocities. The cats on both sides quickly realized that we had no stomach for watching either side killing entire villages, or burning major cities. And now that they knew what to look for, the colonists could find the cat towns. The various Uaithni rebellions quickly began to moderate their tactics, officially ending their support of suicide bombings against civilian targets. And the Gangani responded by limiting their own punitive raids against suspected Uaithni towns thought to harbor rebels. Which further reduced rebellious sentiments in the Uaithni communities, and improved the quality of life for everyone involved.

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San Lucas

by on January 18, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

We discovered the cats who lived on San Lucas’ eastern continent not long after the natives of the western continent made Contact with us. We studied the cats of Hankou to find that they were in a decades-long civil and religious war for supremacy under the grumbling of the central volcano. Then Mount Inferno blew its top in an explosion that sent ash far into the upper atmosphere. Continuing eruptions covered the entire world in darkness for months, causing an ecological crisis even on the other side of the world where most humans lived. It was the single greatest planetary ecological disaster witnessed in all the worlds of humanity until The War came upon us all. We dispatched relief fleets through Asgard with food, air purifiers, power satellites and other necessities to keep the colonists alive. It was the largest Pre-War movement of supplies and people, with ships coming from every single human nation. It would be too much to say that the disaster united humanity in common bonds of friendship. But there was a time when a Chinese food transport could park next to an American warship protecting Russian troop transports whose soldiers were operating under South American commanders while giving aid to starving colonists.

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Jack

by on January 17, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

I grew up before The War came upon us all. Well, there are many who would say I still haven’t grown up, but you know what I mean. I spent twelve years in the public school system, where we could study whatever we wanted, as long as we did the basics. We had AI tutors for every conceivable subject from ancient history to multidimensional math. But the real job of those twelve years was teaching us how to learn. Teaching us how to spend time with other people. How to get along with the children our own age who would become the adults we would spend the rest of our lives with. The human school monitors were pretty much there to make certain we attended to our studies, hug us when we banged a knee as we were young, or stop fights when we were older. The primary job of the schools I went to was to make all of us into functional adults. There are many who question whether or not they succeeded in my case.

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Goodbye President Lincoln

by on January 16, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

We celebrated the birthdays of President Lincoln and President Washington when I was young. Each had their own day, and I remember the celebrations of what they did. One created our country. One saved the Union and freed the slaves. It was a time to study and remember the tyranny our nation was born in, and the courage it took to stand against the most powerful nation on Earth. And it was a time to remember the war that took more American lives than any other, that pitted brother against brother, and resulted in the end of Slavery in America. We would read Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation in those days. Then Reverend Martin Luther King was granted a Federal Holiday, and the Lincoln Birthday celebrations just went away. Washington’s Birthday became President’s Day, and the idea of celebrating the President who freed the slaves disappeared under the appeal of showing the actual footage of Martin Luther King having a dream of equality. He was a great man, and he deserves recognition, but I will always associate the celebration of his birthday as the year we stopped celebrating Lincoln’s Birthday. And that is a great shame. Goodbye President Lincoln.

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