Reaper's Crossroad

by Timothy Ellis

  It looked like they were only going to set up one city this time, at least for a start.

  "Jon?"

  "Yes Jane?"

  "It's time to vote."

  "Vote?"

  I dragged my attention back to her. Oh, vote. Already?

  "Remind me of the options?"

  She played me Amy's pre-vote presentation again. And waited for me to either vote, or ask another question.

  As much as I’d like to have seen David be king and get the authority to go with the responsibility he'd shouldered all this time, I didn’t think it was feasible in the long term. Too many things went wrong a few generations down the track, when children of kids were not at all suitable to be one. Not to mention the turmoil if a king died without an heir. I'd read too many examples of this in long running book series.

  "The committee option."

  "How many committee members?"

  "Twenty one."

  "How long a term?"

  "Two standard Earth years, but with the ability for a majority of citizens to call a vote on any member who is not doing what people want or expect. Should this happen, the new member only fills the seat for the remainder of the term, and must then be elected again."

  "Who elects the committee leader?"

  "Citizens do, in a separate election once the twenty one are known. Given the election is AI run, both should be able to be completed inside a day."

  "How do people vote?"

  "Like this?"

  "No. Do people vote for one person, and the top twenty one get elected? Or do people vote for twenty one people, and the top twenty one are elected?"

  I hadn't thought about it.

  "What's the difference?"

  "Voting for all twenty one allows the greater possibility of groups of candidates with actual adjenda's being elected as a group, and means votes cast will be significantly higher. Voting for one person means more likelihood of getting twenty one independent people who citizens think will do the best job."

  "So if we vote for one person, most will vote for the best person they think should be on the committee. If we vote for twenty one people, we could end up with three or four groups, with competing adjenda's."

  "Yes, but with a single vote, we might end up with twenty one people who can't actually work together. What should happen if this does happen?"

  "A majority of citizens will demand a new election I expect. If the numbers are there, the committee is dissolved, and a new election held."

  "So vote for one, or vote for twenty one?"

  "One. If everyone votes for the person they think is best, we should get a good committee."

  "So top twenty one get elected. Shouldn’t that mean the top number of votes should lead the committee?"

  "No. Because out of those twenty one, some will be better leaders than others. For example, I'd nominate David, and vote for him. But if he comes in twenty first, I’d still vote for him to be leader."

  "Which leads me to nominations. How many nominations are needed to become a candidate?"

  "I'd start with one hundred. Anyone can nominate themselves, or be nominated by anyone else. If by someone else, they need to agree to stand. If they can't get another ninety nine nominations after their name is posted as nominated, there's no point in being a candidate. As the population increases, this should be able to be increased as well. Just needs another vote."

  "Thank you citizen for voting."

  "You're welcome."

  I went back to pondering what essentially were all bad options.

  The carnage in Crossroad was so bad it may as well have been the Grim Reaper in there just scything away at anything which entered. Reaper's Crossroad. Maybe that was a more descriptive system name than just Crossroad.

  At some point I was going to have to stop it. The trouble is, if I went in there in strength, nothing would change except it being me doing all the killing. For now, only those who jumped into Redoubt were my kills. And I was having a hard time accepting those. In fact, all the killing was slowly killing me internally.

  I was brought up spiritual. Killing was anathema. Killing meant you failed. Being spiritual didn’t mean you wore a sign saying 'wipe feet here', but it did mean you accepted the karma of your own actions, and working on releasing it.

  I think one of the reasons I felt so tired a lot of the time, was I hadn't ever completely released the kills from the Darkness War, let alone kept up with what I was responsible for here and now.

  I’d always been more or less reacting to the actions of others, but how you reacted defined the karma of it. And as I got older, I was becoming less and less sure where the line was.

  I sighed, settled into my seat, and meditated. I started the release process, and kept on going.

  "Jon?"

  I startled back to awareness, and looked over at Jane.

  "What?"

  "Voting results are in."

  "What won?"

  Twenty Six

  I made Jane break it down for me in explicit detail.

  I found it highly suspicious my own vote had not only won, but how I’d answered the follow-up questions was also what won. It was only the fact Jane assured me I’d been the last person to vote, and not the first, which had me accept the result. Although in actual fact, everyone had probably voted in the space of a few minutes, since Jane and the other AI's could talk to everyone at once. So when Jane told me I was last, it was probably only by a few seconds. Even then, I suspected Jane knew me so well she'd predicted my answers exactly, and the election had been rigged to get the same result.

  But I said nothing. First because I had no evidence, and second because I trusted Jane. That didn’t mean I trusted David and his team not to take advantage of Jane's knowledge of me, except I trusted David as well.

  At least it hadn't been rigged to make me king. Or anyone else king.

  Nominations began immediately for the twenty one positions on the committee. Predictably enough, my name was nominated several hundred times before I was formally asked by Jane if I wanted to stand. I formally declined.

  I went back to meditating.

  Sometime later, Jeeves interrupted me with lunch, and several hours after that, nominations stopped happening, and voting began again.

  Of two hundred and three names on the list, I only knew two. David Tollin and Ravi Singh. There was a brief bio with each name, along with a short statement by the candidate. I got lost quickly.

  "Jane?"

  "Jon?"

  "Remind me? Do I have to vote for twenty one people? Or just one?"

  "Just one."

  "What if I don’t want to vote at all?"

  "You can abstain. But if you do, you can't vote for a leader either."

  I voted for David. I owed him that. Since I figured I’d be interrupted again, I went back to pondering how to deal with the Crossroad situation, and the Keerah in general.

  I'd reached no conclusions when I was interrupted again with the results. Both David and Ravi had been elected, and I voted for David to be committee leader.

  Checking what was going on down on the planet, I found none of my people were down there. Nothing was showing on the navmap in the next system, so I gave Jane orders to get us all docked back at Redoubt. I left the rift open after us in case someone needed to go through in a hurry.

  By evening, the family had gathered in my suite for dinner, and we celebrated having a government, led by a family member. David hadn't fully grasped he now ran a government for real, but everyone was so happy for him, he wasn’t allowed to be humble about it. He'd been running things for two years now, and it was finally appropriate for him to be seen to be doing it for real. And I told him that in a toast.

  After dinner, I spent some time with my parents. Mum was concerned at the strain she could see in my face these days, and I explained the problems. Neither had any solutions, but did have plenty of hugs.

  Dad hung around until everyone left, and showed me what Bob was doi
ng to Galactica now. Since with rifts available to move people, or Thorn's giant mover ships, which were parked away from the shipyard until needed again, Galactica was being converted back into its original mission as a long range explorer ship. But unlike its original configuration, this time it was being armed to the teeth.

  Galactica and her two siblings were being fitted with the latest version of battleship turrets. Top and bottom. So where the dreadnaughts had twelve turrets with three guns each, Galactica was getting twelve top and bottom, each with four guns. Along the sides of the flight pods, between the launch tubes, as many point defense turrets and mosquito launchers as possible were being fitted. The idea was, if the ship was off alone, she had enough point defense to hold off the missiles of multiple fleets, while being able to solidly hit back.

  I was glad the explorer ships were finally being brought up to date, but I wondered if my Dad was truly ready to be the captain of the second biggest class of warships I had. Not only captain, but admiral of all three when together. He'd never really had to fight a war. They'd be a good addition to the Wayward fleet as well, at least for the short term. And while technically carriers, they'd be running without fighters until we had more pilots. Maybe at some point we'd give them drones instead. Something to discuss at a later date.

  Before bed, I did my usual check on Crossroad and the Keerah, and found nothing changed. But I was going to have to do something about the Keerah soon. They were the biggest threat for now. I just wished I could think of something which didn’t involve killing a lot more of them.

  Aline had been at my side during dinner, but had kept herself low key. I'd noticed she'd had a long talk with my mum, and left while I was talking to dad. I found her asleep when I came in to go to bed. Angel was on the top of her kitty castle, having been hyperactive during dinner, and exhausted well before everyone left. Her kitty castles had been multiplying again, and now there was one in the bedroom.

  I looked at Aline, and sighed quietly.

  There was another problem I didn't have an answer for.

  Sleep took me quickly though, and I dreamed I was trapped in a tailor's shop, endlessly trying on uniforms. It was like every single uniform from every single space opera I’d ever read or seen, was brought out, and I tried it on. Nothing felt like Admiral Hunter though. Especially not all the jackets covered in scrollwork and gold braid. Or the ones with gold braid epaulettes. Very especially all the peaked caps with even more gold braid. Too much black. Too many weird ways of fastening the front of the jacket. Too many damn stripes!

  The last uniform scared the shit out of me, and caused me to bolt upright in bed.

  I’d found myself standing on the balcony of a large building, wearing the uniform of a Nazi Field Marshal, complete with Knights Cross at the neck.

  The massive crowd below me had arms raised in the Nazi salute, and were chanting 'sieg heil'.

  I started to wonder if I needed a shrink.

  I took myself off to the bathroom to splash water on my face, and get my breathing under control. As a dream, it was surprising it went where it did. I’d avoided being made a king, so there shouldn’t have been any way I'd become any sort of petty despot. Certainly not with a Nazi flavour. I'd dealt with them harshly during the Darkness War when they'd done a scorpion move. As far as I knew, we had no-one who had that sort of belief system on Haven.

  Being near time to get up, I spent some time on the assault courses, getting rid of the anxiety I was going to turn into something I would never want to, and was back in my military office before even BA stirred. I outlined to Jane what needed to happen today, and let her get on with organizing it.

  Except, the morning didn’t go to my plan, but hers.

  The first official council meeting was broadcast live. A complete floor of the administrative tower had been turned into a council floor, with a large meeting chamber, complete with a large public gallery, now full, and office suites for each councilor.

  Jane officiated as a sort of major-domo, swearing in each councilor with a short oath to work in the best interests of the people. She'd been wearing a civilian business suit, and looked good in it. I noted I’d not been invited to the ceremony, not that I’d have gone anyway.

  Once the council were seated, and David had made a speech which I only half listened to, I turned it off, and went back to my own work. Except I couldn’t concentrate on it.

  The whole uniform thing was bothering me now. I was still wearing dull red coloured fatigues, based on the old Australian fatigues I’d had to wear back when I’d first been drafted. I hadn't liked them then, and still didn’t. But I understood why Walter preferred to wear them.

  I also didn’t like wearing a dress uniform, which was modelled after the American dress uniform I'd first used back in the Midgard War.

  But maybe there was a compromise. Jane had looked good in a civilian suit after all, and maybe that was the message she was trying to give me without giving one.

  I don’t think anyone likes a dress uniform, but perhaps the basic version would do. For the first time in a long time, I opened up George's belt suit clothing interface, and threw it to a wall screen. I selected the current dress uniform, which was based on a very standard suit style used by a lot of militaries over the last few centuries, and partly went back six hundred years.

  The ribbon overlay came off it first. Then the epaulettes. The shirt underneath was next, as was the old style tie. What was left was basically a civilian suit jacket.

  Since it was a programmable belt suit, and not actual clothes, there was no reason for wearing anything underneath. The dress uniform needed them, because it was a scanned in version of the actual real clothes American dress uniform of several years before, subsequently changed to Hunter dull red. I'd never liked the result, but no-one had ever complained about it. At least, not within my hearing.

  Several of the jackets in my dreams had a high hard collar around the back of the neck, closing at the front just under the chin. I thought this would probably drive me nuts, but it was a start. So I added in a low hard collar around the base of the neck, and filled in the top of the jacket to match it. At the front, it notched down into a missing v shape, so it suggested there was a fastener just below there. It showed a bit of neck, but not a lot. Certainly less than an open necked shirt, but wasn’t like wearing a tie either.

  I ran two rows of gold buttons down either side of the middle, and on the right side, left a slight hint of fabric over fabric to give the impression it was actually a jacket fastened on the right.

  I left the dress trousers alone, but changed the boots to plain civilian business shoes. If I needed to walk a planet, I could always change them.

  It looked a bit bland, so I changed the hard collar to look like gold piping, and added a belt around the middle which was three gold stripes over black, with a black buckle. Across the buckle I put an image of BigMother from the side.

  I resisted the urge to put the epaulettes back on, and instead, put five gold stars on each shoulder, as if they were stuck on, instead of pinned through. I considered Admiral's stripes on the hand end of the sleeves, and rejected them.

  Now I had something which looked useful, but I didn’t like the colour. The pants seemed ok, especially with black shoes, but the jacket was all wrong. I increased the red slowly, until it jogged a memory of nineteenth century British red coats. I looked them up, and found some of them had a single line of buttons down the middle. But others after them had a double row like I’d done. I liked the red, so left it.

  I pondered adding in the ribbon overlay now, but left it off, knowing when I was happy with the result, I could add the overlay on to convert it to a dress uniform. I also considered adding a pilot badge, but none of the ones I had available looked any good.

  After rising and throwing up a mirror hollo, I shifted into the new look.

  "Very nice," said Jane. "Will everyone wear red?"

  I thought about it for a moment.

  "I
guess Tardis blue makes more sense as a general navy uniform. And the same thing could be done in green for a ground forces dress version. Pilots use the same navy blue you think?"

  "They could, but then you'd need something to show they were a pilot and not navy. But then, what about those who are navy now, but were pilots?"

  "Different shade of blue? Maybe darker or lighter? I don’t really want to go to badges, especially since such details are in the PC profile, and easily accessed by anyone. But a squadron leader needs to be obviously a pilot, where a Commander is obviously navy. Back in the day, they did this with different insignia, but I standardized it."

  "So Tardis blue for Navy, and a darker shade for pilots, since they are closer to the black of the void. I know you don’t want to go black for any of them. Are you sure you want a double line of buttons?"

  "Yes, but why ask?"

  "Some of the older styles have double for men, but single for women. The upper buttons on women tend to be in an awkward place, and on some, might look wrong, and certainly won't look straight."

  "Either is fine with me. Can you make me up examples? And we'll send them all to Walter for comment."

  "Done."

  "Thanks."

  "Are you going to stay in red?"

  "I thought so." She laughed. "What?"

  "You do recall what red shirts mainly did?"

  "Ha-ha."

  Red shirts were supposed to die to prove the situation was dire, and the main characters were actually in danger. It went back to twentieth century entertainment, and had been a joke ever since.

  But one had to wonder why the British red coat uniform never saw the light of day much after the end of the twentieth century.

  Walter quickly came back with the solution for pilots. Same blue for everyone, but the buckle could have an image of whatever ship they flew or served on, and above the ship image, its name. The commanding officer had the name in gold, and everyone else on the ship had a silver name. Thus pilots would have a fighter image, and a gold call sign name. Marines would either have a ship name, or a unit name, or in some cases like the alpha team, both.