exsilium | ten; video + poll

ten; video + poll

[ Roslyn is behind the camera again, face stern, Vennett & Lowell seated just behind her. She’s looking as calm and professional as she can, though traces of exhaustion are seeping through regardless of her best efforts. ]

I’m going to make this as brief as possible. We do not have laws governing the actions undertaken recently by people currently in custody. While hopefully there will shortly be a fuller code of conduct, we cannot apply it retroactively. I do not have the resources to keep anyone locked up indefinitely, nor can I provide a fair trial, and it would be morally suspect to do either in the current environment.

I believe there is a solution to this, one that several others agree with, including Lowell Orwin and Vennett here with me, both of whom were held hostage by these people and have a fair amount of insight into their mindset. However, given that you will all have to live with it as well, I’m going to bring this solution to general consensus.

Under this arrangement, as a first part all current prisoners will be released into the custody of someone who will agree to monitor their actions and ensure that they are not able to plan anything further. These parole officers will either be volunteers from the general population or police officers if necessary, and all will be very carefully vetted. If it is necessary we will ask them to submit to a brief telepathic scan.

The second part of this arrangement would be undertaking a set amount of missions under the supervision of Orwin and Vennett with the goal of putting forth effort into our return to Earth. I am assured that they will be doing real work that will benefit us all.

This is the solution that I and others hope will work best for everyone involved, as well as free up resources to continue working towards getting off of this base and setting up an actual system of leadership.

While Jesse Pinkman was not a member of this, as he has given back all powers taken he would be released under the same conditions.

This is being presented to you all as, essentially, a poll. That is the first option. The second option is ‘other’, and if that is your answer I must insist you provide a fully thought through and careful plan that does not simply consist of ‘strand them somewhere’ or ‘airlock them’. Should enough support be shown for a provided 'other' plan over parole, it will be considered as an option.

Thank you all for your time. I hope this will be resolved very shortly.

[ And cut. ]

Poll #14659 solving the jail problem

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40

View Respondents

Pick a solution:

View Answers

Parole as outlined above
36 (90.0%)

Other (must provide clear plan below)
4 (10.0%)

[ ooc: this is an ic poll of the population! you may vote once with each character you have in game. roslyn and others are available for question answering and so forth. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OK. So we can return to my original point. SUGGEST SOMETHING ELSE.

stop. stop playing heroes. stop pretending that there's nothing wrong with fucking around in the past. stop pretending that committing invisible genocide to make a 'better' world is any fucking better than the UE. stop pretending anybody is in charge of any of this shitshow but us and that if there's a hell, every single one of us aren't going. fuck, as much as i'd hate every goddamn minute, herd everyone into a vr room and keep em there until some kind of rules get shat out. because laws and government are just people making rules up, right? pretty sure i read that somewhere. and it's pretty damn obvious that nobody here does anything until somebody holds them hostage in a way they can't ignore.

You know what happens when a snake loses its skin? One of two things: if it's grown another underneath, it's fine. If it hasn't, it dies in a bloody pile. "Don't do something" is not a suggestion. Say what you think we should do or sit down.

bullshit. not doing anything is as much of a decision as doing something. inaction isn't not making a choice. and seriously, did you only read half of what i wrote?

You still offered zero suggestions. Your suggestion was still "Someone else can come up with an idea."

[Still, she fights with her temper enough to amend:]

Look. The rest of us who were involved in this whole saga were a load of dicks. Okay? The whole load of us. Small kept her integrity. You want to shit on someone, pick someone else. Take it elsewhere.

no. my suggestion was that you turn your strongarming off me and use it on all the adults around here who haven't even looked at what the hell is going on. people have done jack shit for weeks no matter how much shit got stirred all over the network. if it was physically possible for me to fuck off out of everything about exsilium and the initiative and united earth i'd be gone. yesterday. weeks ago. before they put werewolves on the goddamn moon and left us all to the tender mercies of surprise zombies. you don't want my suggestions, because i'd send us all home. so ask people who want to play hero. you see the pothole, i see the pothole, make them see the fucking pothole.

Do you know what happens when we're sent home?

i was told we forget everything. and yeah, i've read the reports that the UE comes after us next. but let's say we have to rewrite this world a few hundred times to make the UE unhappen. maybe a thousand. maybe more. maybe every time there's a mission it rewrites the world a little. and every time, we erase people. every time, we kill people. that all going to balance out for you? i'm not sure it does for me, especially when most people here don't even know what they're doing.

It's more than that. The Initiative sent one guy home. The UE followed him through the portal and burned his home to the ground. Razed it. Killed everyone. You're clearly a good guy. A hell of a lot better than I am. Because the thing is that I have one brother back home exactly your age, and another four years younger, and I have a mom, and I have a dad, and I look out for them. I was pulled into this war and I can't get out of it without getting my family killed, and that pisses me the fuck off. But I'm going to get home. And if I have to do what has to be done for that to happen, then so be it.

Edited 2013-12-06 15:22 (UTC)

[there's a few minutes between her reply and his. he needs to digest that.]

is there one goddamn thing in this place that doesn't come without a clause nobody talks about? that's a rhetorical question. i'm just tired of all this death. i've been tired of death since before the initiative kidnapped me to do some more death. and i'm tired of people pretending that there's no death and that we're righteous and good and whatever other biblical terms let them sleep at night. maybe this is necessary. it sure as fuck isn't good, or clean. and it makes me sick that some people care more about the 'threat' of a 'mutiny' that achieved exactly jack than they do about the fact that we let people nuke a city, and then we erased it, and people are calling that good. i'm done with this. you win. i'm sitting down and shutting up and everyone can do whatever they want.

[And a pause of her own.]

Yeah. Look, I've been a total asshole to you throughout this whole conversation. I'm sorry about that. I don't really have an excuse, just the reason that this has been a tough few weeks for me. And I didn't mean what I said. I just get fed up at people jumping on Small, and jumping on her from both directions, and you just had the misfortune of being person number eighty-five. You clearly care, and that's inherently something of value. I mean, hell, I even agree with you.

you wanna know a secret? i can feel what they did to that planet down there. the whole universe has a frequency, and i feel it in my gut. all the time. you have to fuck everything hard and long and purposeful to end up with that down there. hundreds of years of brutal fucking and everyone took a turn. that's what they want us to erase. that and billions of lives, probably. that's already started. and the people who are supposed to finish it can't decide to do anything about a couple of idiots who walked themselves into jail. yeah, i care. and don't think i don't see the flippant assholes who think i should be dismembered for saying a stupid situation is stupid. that's who's representing the 'right thing'. but apology accepted. it's been a shitty couple of weeks.

Hold up, who said things about dismembering?

attachment.

Well, no wonder I overlooked it. I think reading that shit actually caused me physical pain. That sort of threat is bullshit, and nothing like that would ever, ever fly. That right there is a psycho, not someone representative of any reasonable thought. You want him to be talked to?

yeah it took me a minute and i know it's bullshit. i've had a real lynch mob after me before, he's just an asshole. but we disagreed in public, and the next thing that happened was a threat. the mutineers disagreed and now they need bodyguards.

You think these are bodyguards?

bodyguards, babysitters. both of the above.

[You're brighter than most seventeen-year-olds, Peter.]

Well, I think step one to toning down the general atmosphere of "clench-jawed crazy" is probably getting off the moon. The claustrophobia has gotten to people, I suspect.

[in fairness, he bought a clue from ros. this is not the type of kid who assumes the law is there to help anyone like him or that the public is doing anything but waiting for a reason to tear into somebody who isn't like them.]

probably. no room to back down or back out, and nobody's got anything better to do than put their nose in everyone else's business.

Yeah. I know the mutineers pretty well now, and I'm pretty certain that the mutiny never would have happened if we weren't up here with nothing to do but get angrier and angrier. And the bullshit blowback, with people screaming for blood, wouldn't have happened if people didn't feel so helpless and trapped.

hope not. it was pretty fucking stupid. bet most people will forget once we hit earth again that it's just a bigger cage.

Ever been anywhere that wasn't a cage in one way or another?

never felt trapped anywhere ever until this past year. when we wanted to go, we went. scenery got boring? something new over the next hill. door started closing? we got the fuck out.

Well, that's just enviable. Anyway. The point is just that (with the occasional exception of a few rich assholes ) we're stuck in bad situations no matter where we are, no matter what point of our lives we're at. We just have to make the best of it. Here, on the moon, we made the worst of it. But there'll be a chance to make that up.

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