Senate Ethical Genetics Hearing Transcript - January 21, 2431
Senator Perez: “To summarize my opening remarks, I believe this hearing will find that LockGe
The company acted beyond the scope of their authorization and violated ethical, religious and moral issues under their contracts with the U.S. Armed Forces. My time is up, I give you the right to speak,"
WARREN Thank you, Senator. Today, we invited LockGe
CEO and President Jeremy Whelan, who agreed to speak before us about LockGe
testify to his work on behalf of the Armed Forces and, dare I say it, on behalf of the American people. Mr. Whelan, I trust you have a prepared statement?"
Mr. Whelan: "Thank you, Warren, and thank you, the members of this committee, for taking the time to speak with me today. I hope that, through today's testimony, I can demonstrate that General Locke is working in the best interests of the Army and the Marine Corps , in the best interest of taxpayers and citizens of this great country. LockGe
State-of-the-art genetic modification programs provide the Armed Forces with strategic and tactical advantages on the modern battlefield and help protect U.S. interests and American lives around the world. Volunteers who participate in our programs become faster, stronger, and more capable. "
Senator Herring: "Then LockGe
What about the deaths of the dozens of volunteers who were tried to cover up? Or the survivors of failed experiments who will live out the rest of their lives as cripples?"
gavel bangs
Warren: "Senator, I must warn you, this seat is not yours. You will have an opportunity to ask questions. I'm sorry, Mr. Whelan, if you can continue."
Mr Whelan: "Yes, there have been some unfortunate incidents resulting in injuries and fatalities. LockGe
Take immediate steps to modify and improve our policies and procedures and work to ensure this type of incident becomes a thing of the past. These include large payments to affected families -"
Senator Perez: "Hush money."
Mr. Whelan: "A fair legal and public solution, and a significant charitable donation to a worthy medical cause for unfortunate people with genetic diseases. But back to my point, LockGe
whose work makes America safer and will continue to work on behalf of Americans well into the future. We are patriots, Senators, and we see our work in genetics as the future of a nascent America, ready to reclaim its place as the world's unrivaled superpower. "
My outpost began to darken as the first ships began to appear at the Mobius Gate. During this period, mining operations were cordoned off and transmissions stopped, transport drones landed and stayed in place, and non-essential exterior construction also stopped. I want to minimize the collateral damage to my actions. About half of my outposts were also darkened, but for more important strategic reasons.
"Ah, you closed all the doors. I wanted to tell you the truth, but you can't listen to the verdict. What justice is there when the blindfold bleeds?"
ah. I wanted to ignore Gerry's message, really, really. He's in a small probe, far away from the action, and will approach Earth's orbit in another four weeks. Even if he hits the Earth, he can't do much. Most of it will burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere, and the remaining parts are more likely to hit the high seas.
The first ship to pass through the Mobius Gate is being bombarded by my endless coilgun fire. This ship is different from the tree-like structure that Fael sent us. It is more like a rectangle with some blocky things on it, which have obviously been weapons bays all along. After her armor withstood the heavy fire for a few minutes, I discovered traces of gas from shells penetrating the hull. After thirty minutes of bombardment, it drifted aimlessly, its course changing under the weight of the onslaught.
After the first group of people arrived, there was another pause. I suspect it's a forward scout hoping to slip into the system, ready to live stream telemetry when the rest of the fleet arrives. The boat pulled out at a decent speed, but not fast enough.
I was beginning to wonder if this was a false alarm, when the real arrival began. A huge warship appeared, twice the size of my Viper. It looked all armor, a giant sphere of metal, mass, and engines. Immediately behind it, three more appeared. They ignored the hyper-velocity shells that kept flying towards them and formed a formation nearly half a kilometer square. It stopped a lot of my gunfire. I could see countless pits on their armored faces, some glowing hotly from the kinetic energy of impact. I had hoped for a better return on my artillery investment.
But the two warships just pushed forward and rushed directly into the line of fire. As they did so, four more identical armored ships appeared. They formed a line behind the existing armored ships. Then the floodgates opened.
Hundreds of ships began pouring into the system, some moving toward the armored ship, others away, all trying to stay in the clear corridor created by the armored ship. Some stumbled out of the safe zone, their efforts riddled with coil gun fire and destroyed or damaged within minutes. I'm not the first opponent of the Orion Arms Trading Company to bombard the Mobius Gate with fire. I hate smart enemies.
I may not have been the first, but I suspect I may have been the longest bombarded. The armored ships in the first row looked to be in poor condition. They stopped advancing and instead moved sideways in a largely coordinated fashion that expanded the width of the safety zone to a full kilometer. Unfortunately for me, this gave the ships they were protecting a clear path to start flooding the system outside of my barrage. The first batch of armored ships were shattered under the endless fire, and several ships that tried to escape from behind them were also blown to pieces. The exit lane was blocked.
I noticed a few more armored ships lining up behind the second row, but at least the steady stream of ships coming in through the gate seemed to be slowing down. Not counting the ships I had destroyed, I counted a total of 1,577 battleships, each one at least as big as my Viper-class battleship. I have 12.
The second row of armored ships moved over and reopened the hole for my coilgun fire. The condition of this group of armored ships was not as bad as the first group, leaving a passage long enough for the remaining ships to escape. Even so, the armored ship remained in place.
Finally two ships appeared, both larger than any other that had passed so far. They all rush forward, slipping out of the safe zone and into the system, but here their paths diverge. Just as the entire fleet began to form and move toward origin, the last two ships moved in different directions.
The first left the battlefield in a vertical route, but was stationed several hundred kilometers away from the Mobius Gate. The ship has no obvious weapons and is a rectangular sphere that resembles an egg if you stretch it a little longer. It immediately started radioing me in an alien language I couldn't understand. After a few minutes, the broadcast changed to another language. It kept looping through a language I didn’t understand. Finally, it started broadcasting in Swahili. Why they chose this language, out of all the languages on earth, I can't even begin to guess.
"This is an observer vessel for the Regional Planning and Zoning Commission. Orion Arms Trading Company has formally made a claim of ownership and is exercising this claim. If you wish to dispute this claim, please send Form 13-11 at this frequency. If you Unable to repel Orion Arms Trading Corporation's star system security forces, your dispute will be automatically rejected. To Obse
ve
Boat u
Any action taken by latable will also result in your dispute being denied. "
The broadcast then switched to Croatian. I divided my attention, leaving one to observe the incoming fleet while I worked on the observation boat. The enemy fleet is accelerating, but early calculations indicate a possible arrival time of 10 to 13 days. The last enemy ship headed in the other direction. Its course is clear. It's heading toward Earth, possibly to finish what they started 12 years ago when the asteroid hit Earth.
Before this, this wouldn't be a problem. But there are humans out there, and I would rather keep them alive. If you let the remaining humans be killed by alien spacecraft, it will be difficult to save humanity. The enemy ships are fast, but my battleship is faster. Unfortunately, the Möbius Gate is now between Origin and Earth, and it's going to be a tight race to see who gets there first. I couldn't find an ideal orbit to get my ships there first, but I could at least get them there quickly. I warned Sakura. I don't want to waste a new seed ship, but it's worth it if crashing becomes the last scenario. Sakura could use a few transport drones to leave her irreplaceable genetic profile in orbit.
"Nicholas, are you ignoring me?" This is too cruel, especially when I left you such a good gift! Gerry whispered.
"We have another problem," Sakura said. "In addition to the incoming spacecraft, we also discovered more humans."
"What? Where?" I said to Sakura.
"I found a big refuge in China. They... communicated to some extent. Most of the time, they asked for immediate help. And, I found, well, I guess you could call it a refuge .It's in Newfoundland, and there are a few hundred Canadians there. They're making demands, too."
"Isn't this a refuge? What do they want?"
"Well, no. Looks like an old mine. They wanted to know if we had any beer."
I laughed to myself. "Okay, calm down the Chinese and do what you can to help them stabilize their homes. Has the general written back to us?"
I heard Sakura's grimace coming over the radio. "Not yet. They accepted replacement parts and a new stove, but they have to take it completely apart first. They'll be lucky if they can get the stove fixed in time. Best hope their luck holds out for a few more days."
"Why would they—forget it." Paranoid. They were worried that we were trying to sneak something into their shelter. I shrugged. I have bigger concerns.
Meanwhile, I was observing the enemy fleet's movements and talking to Sakura as I began to engage Gerry and the observer ship.
"Gerry, I thought we were done. You killed a good friend of mine," I said.
"I know! His soul was so delicious I had to save a bite for it. It was broken like water and smelled... well... nice. You want to hear what he was like when I cut his brains out?" How did you scream? It’s so beautiful.”
I felt my anger rising. I haven't been this angry since Gerry attacked me and this crazy NI knows exactly how to piss me off. I wanted to vent and make sure he died miserably.
"What are you playing, Gerry?" You have no resources and will eventually run out of fuel. Orbital mechanics are ruthless. I'll catch up with you. I said, trying to control my anger while prodding him further. I'm not sure what I said mattered. I think the madman just wanted someone to talk to.
"I figured it out. Profits are not prophets. Prophets drive profits. It's too bad, really, that he lied because I had such high expectations."
Gerry's mania was clearly getting worse. Some of the strange words inserted into his ramblings sounded robotic, like a signal less than a second long. Was he trying to warn me about himself? Or was he warning me about someone else?
"Too bad you're too crazy to understand the mess you've made," I said. "But really, you left no impact. You cost us Agrippa, but we're stronger than we were before. I'm stronger than I was before."
"Ah, but you still didn't see my gift. On top of that, it wasn't even the gift I was sending! Master file, folder named LGN-372291"
I immediately found the folder and marked it as dangerous. My security subroutine started analyzing, and I closed the connection to Gerry and the focus line. I have more important things to do.
While Gerry and I were talking, I radioed a message to the Untranslatable Observation Vessel. It doesn't seem to matter what language the Observer reports in, since there is no similar name in human languages. It doesn't matter. It’s bureaucratic red tape.
"Untranslatable, I am Nikolai, leader of the Origin. I would like to dispute the claim made by the Orion Arms Trading Company. Please send the necessary forms and I will fill them out and send them back."
"Fine, I'll send it, but... it's spoken in Bulgarian. Apparently they were broadcasting on that station when I called them. It doesn't matter to me. It must be some kind of computer translation , but the voice sounded very human, except that it said the name of the ship. The Orion Arms Trading Company must have collected much more data than their brief visit revealed. The voice sent me a message as it spoke Simple message, followed by a more complex message. I forwarded it to Zia and instructed him to explain it so that it was understandable.
"The first transmission is a basic communications protocol that tells us how to read the second one. The second one is a 73-page table," Zia said a few microseconds later.
Very easy. I filled out the form and sent it back.
The message continued: "...but you have until the end of the war to submit it, and oh, you've sent it back. Well, done."
After a few minutes of silence, the alien broadcasted to me again. "Are you...Homo sapiens?" the voice asked.
"No, I'm Agent Nikolai," I answered.
"Man-made, I suppose?" the other replied. "Unusual, but not unheard of. You made a mistake on the form."
"how could it be this?"
"You list Homo sapiens as the master of this system, but you list 'Origin' as the Security Defense Force and the commander as 'Nikola 1.01'. I don't see any Homo sapiens spacecraft under 'Local System Officers' .”
"They didn't," I said. "All the ships here belong to me."
"I see," the voice said doubtfully. It sounded like he was trying to take advantage of me, but I didn't understand the rules in the first place. "These aircraft, do they use gravity to maneuver?"
"Yes," I said.
"Ah, good! The aliens are much happier. "To become the owner of a star system, you must have a gravity-controlled spacecraft. So, you Homo sapiens are not qualified, but you are. I would just change the "System Owner" to your species name and resubmit. If you have Homo sapiens living in your system, you can list them as 'conquered indigenous populations', 'symbiotic partners', 'variant subspecies' or 'protected species'. "
I really don't like this alien and the whole system. Did they create rules specifically so that non-space races could legally be trampled? It certainly seems so.
"Okay, then, I guess you can list my species as Homo sapiens. Please change Homo sapiens to "Protected Species." Any other questions about the form?"
"No, it looks like everything is in order. Good luck in your fight!"
"Thank you for your help." I lied. "Can you pass along all the laws, rules and regulations that apply to this area of space?"
"Okay...wait a minute...ok, this is going to be a big transmission." A huge signal came over and I passed it directly to Zia.
"Zia, we need a space lawyer. Start a new NI-12 and have them analyze the laws and see if there's anything to our advantage."
"Got it," she said.
Seconds later, a new signal from the Zia Research Laboratory contacted me. A male voice said: "Nicola, ask them for Form 209-B, 'Application to Protect Endangered Species.' By the way, I'm Wilfred, your new attorney. Thank you for having me online."
The transmission continued "...you need a moment to review. We cannot provide legal advice."
"Done." I telegraphed. "Please send Form 209-B."
After a long silence, he said: "I didn't even know there was such a provision. Well, well, here's the form, but the form won't be processed until the current dispute is over. Before the endangered status can be determined, it has to be done Verification. If it is determined that the species was endangered before the conflict occurred, you can apply for compensation from the offending party.”
Great, we get resources we don't need in return for the extinction of the species we're trying to protect. Red tape seems to be pervasive. I've had enough of them. I sent the completed form and closed the link.
It was a very busy ten minutes.
