💾 Archived View for cosmic.voyage › Liberty%20Eagle › Interaction-101a.txt captured on 2022-07-16 at 15:49:20.
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From: Sal Balade To: Our Adoring Fans Date: 0065-W10-5 18:32 Subject: FanMail (Sal): Re: The Dung Heap We Left This ship, the Liberty Eagle, was commissioned and fully paid for by a little backward government on a planet we used to call home. I really hope the <REDACTED> government on <REDACTED> has been overthrown by now. To be very clear, we're a forced immigration vessel fully composed of the poor and indigent. The government cut their water rations and only gave them access to specially produced foodstuffs that utilized the simple sugar in the tardigrade. This meant that humans could be dried out and kept in dry storage. Need a place to house the homeless? The <REDACTED> government used warehouses without temperature control. They were also always without power during peak power usage periods. You can't do that with cold storage. It means our settler population to energy consuption rate is radically different to a lot of ships out here. Well, I guess they're potential settlers right now. The public was sold a 60% survval rate for those who dried on the streets. According to our gear-to-settler cargo, though, I'm guessing someone was thinking closer to a 30% survival rate. Our ship is equipped with the medbay nanobots, and the research indicates they help. The security precautions on them cause them to self-distruct pretty easily, though, so we'll see if any survive to the planet. I can't comment on whether they've helped reduce the mortality of the crew so far. That's a different matter, though. We are not the only vessel of this type. We were most definitely not the first. They've been storing folks for decades. The legal system is complex, and if you are targetted by the police, they can find a crime you've committed. They don't have to make the charges up, because the laws are written so that most people have already committed the crimes. It's just a matter of making it official. Most crimes are considered "minor" and this allows the voting population to feel safe by how few major crimes occur. All minor crimes result a "slap on the wrist," a 0.3% fine, and you're back out the door, only needing to inform your boss and landlord of your crime. Of course, most jobs and leases have clauses allowing termination for criminal behavior. This also means there are a lot of little check-boxes asking if you've been convicted of any crime. Nobody is legally required to give a criminal either housing or a job, and generally nobody does either one. After all, the government makes sure that everyone has access to plenty of food, so there's no need to take pity those that choose to be criminals. This results in people drying out in the streets, then being swept up and stored in warehouses. This worked well, until 40 years before launch when activists started asking for people to be revived. Those that dried on the streets had no right to be revived, but we used to actually have jails and low security prisons. Those were cleared out when Chlorizo was still in office. She dried them all out and moved them to storage facilities. There was a huge tax refund that year due to the savings and her popularity was at a peak, though it was later that year that her administration fell apart. We had been told that dry-storage jail time mapped to live-storage jail time at a 90% penalty due to the lack of aging. A person with a one-year sentance in live-jail would be gone 10 years in dry-jail, but reappear having not aged a day. This was supposed to prevent recidivism as it separates them from any bad-influence by years. The idea was easily sold to the public. The problem was the government never revived anyone. It didn't take long before folks were saying the technology was flawed and that the rate of revival for those drying in the streets was a lot less than they advertised. We knew it mostly worked in controlled environments. My sister and I wanted data to expose the issue. We'd each suffered our own tragedies and only really had each other. The cause helped keep us focused and prevented us from dwelling on our past. Once we were inside and found out what was going on, we knew the only way to be safe from the <REDACTED> administration was to let folks know from out here. What neither my sister nor I fully appreciated at the time was that from the <REDACTED> administration's perspective, it never mattered if we reached our destination. They didn't want to colonize other planets, they just wanted folks to die somewhere else. We will be lucky if any of the ships from <REDACTED> ever successfully complete their mission. We were just one of the five shift missions, quick compared to some, and within the first two shifts our ship was almost lost. I've been working my butt off to try to share this with folks. I know Molly couldn't get it done during her shift. That's a whole other mess, though. The message is out now. I hope you see this on the surface, sis. I miss you. So there you go, <REDACTED>. President <REDACTED> and his party was in power when we left. President <REDACTED> and their party were in power when they started designing the ships, and the discredited President Chlorizo and her party were in power when they started the Homeless Storage Sugar program. It isn't a one-party issue. It isn't a one President issue, as all three parties have had multiple terms in office since Chlorizo started things up 60 years before launch. Maybe if things were caught during President Chlorizo's term charges could have been filed. Every one of the <REDACTED> major political parties are implicated. At this point the government just needs overthrown. Not "brought up on charges." They've already fixed the laws and nothing they did was "illegal." The entire government needs overthrown. Preferably executed. -- Your pal, Sal -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= If the QEC audience has any other questions for Sal or another member of the crew, please let us know! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=