by Max Barry

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Novo Wagondia wrote:Came home from work to find out I've earned... 14 new banners!

I'm particularly proud of 'cave-ripened'. I have known for years that Wagain cheeses are the very finest in the EOAverse, so I'm glad the WA have now recognised this for themselves.

I got 12! For arms dealing, developing my IT industry, and for the written word. All of which are fitting, given our many weapons companies (like Ryan, for instance), and our technological and cultural sophistications.

The Orson Empire wrote:Turner's Second Death

KMC News is now reporting that Turner has been killed a second time, and that the Federal Curia has been secured by forces loyal to the Akenehi regime.

The man responsible for Turner's death has been identified as Federico Batista, a former employee of the Office for Paranormal Research (now known as the Office of Control) who is currently a businessman and investor in Wagondia. Batista caught Turner completely by surprise inside the First Commissar's office and incinerated him; all that remains of the former Emperor is a pile of ash. Hundreds of additional Federal Army troops have been relocated to Ravenwood, and emergency responders have attempted to enter the damaged Cybusian Embassy.

First Commissar Māia Akenehi was rescued from her imprisonment by Batista, and is currently recovering in a Ravenwood hospital under heavy guard. Control Director Madison Cenga is also recovering at Site 01 in Tasmania. Apparently, she had been brainwashed by Turner after a failed assassination attempt utilizing a "command code" to hijack her brain's neurochemistry. More information about this command code is expected to be released in subsequent KMC reports.

The Federal Security Bureau has arrested numerous scientists working at a research laboratory in Orson, who are accused of illegally utilizing government resources to clone Turner. Among them is Dr. Anika Aretā, leader of the cloning project.

The Federal government has decided not to save OMI, and will permit Malian agents to completely destroy the organization. Plans are already being made to totally rebuild OMI from scratch, with no traces of Aturorist influence.

Batista has apologized for the damage to the Cybusian Embassy in a public statement, but has otherwise refused all other interviews, simply stating that he intervened to help out an old friend.

Cybus1
A Keta Pharmaceuticals research team working on the ever-elusive topic of treatments for the Drakul Virus have come up with a theory needing experimental evidence of "Psiono-Genetic Encryption" where Psionic energy is introduced to genetic material giving properties that allow it to shift form rapidly without corrupting any important data like would occur with common mutation and which can "piggy-back" off the Psychic energy production of hosts the material is introduced into to continue iterating it's encryption and to replicate the Psychic energy-imbued genetic material allowing propagation as well as allowing influence over the psychic environment within the host by attacking the psyche from the inside as a possible explanation for Command codes.

The team proposes that comparison between Cybusian Orsonian Blacklight and Earth Orsonian Blacklight with Psychic sensors might lead to the first experimental evidence for the theory and would allow for the first Psiono-Genetic Decryption to eliminate 'command codes' from the Earth Orsonian Genome and would give valuable insights for conducting similar Decryption on Drakul Venom which may not quite lead to a vaccine or 'cure' given how many strains exist but would be likely to lead to more effective treatments in delaying the progression of a Drakul Virus infection and together with extreme procedures like brain extraction and full-body replication using particle manipulators might allow some to survive depending on if their brain isn't yet infected when receiving treatment.

Alexis Trenton, General of the Corsahn Space Marines, sat at the holographic computer system in her private quarters. Ever since the Reunification War and the subsequent conflicts that happened after the fall of the Na Military Duumvirate, she had no real use for the power Johnathan had given her. As well, meditation bored her out of her skull, and she'd much rather consume mindless content on CorsaNet than do anything remotely close to just sitting there doing absolutely nothing. She knew that in a few minutes, she'd get bored of that, too, and find something else to do, namely in the form of lifting weights in the onboard gym.

In a few minutes, that's where she would be.

As she lifted irons in an amplified gravity chamber, her thoughts went toward the war and her actions during it. Some time during the war, she made transfers from one ship to another until she landed with two distinct figures - Johnathan Corsahnim, who gave her some strange power that amplified her combat abilities on top of her MAU modifications; and Phoenix Squadron, whose captain was, for all intents and purposes, the most hardcore Space Marine captain she'd ever met.

After she met Captain Swart, she ended up staying with that particular squad for the rest of the war. The covert operations, her newfound powers that made her feel like a goddess, the death and destruction that seemed so incredibly addicting, she couldn't get enough! Just when things were getting exciting, exactly when she did the things she signed up for when she joined the Space Marines a hundred years ago, she found her purpose: that purpose was chaos, and causing as much of it as possible.

And then the war ended.

When the war ended, she felt hollow. She had power and strength and even durability beyond comprehension, far more than any Evolved or even Evol'cor. She knew that firsthand in the dozens of melee encounters that she had with the Evol'cor that the Na Military Duumvirate had on their payroll. She fought and killed groups of them in seconds, and with each death, she gained more and more power until eventually just a flick to the forehead had enough force to create a mess of biomass. The real treat was the souls she absorbed - and she found out pretty quickly that she could suck the spiritual essence out of an Evolved when one was in a regenerative state with a little soulsearching, both literally and figuratively. With anything else, you simply caught the soul in a net of darkness before it went into the cosmos, going who knows where.

Alexis couldn't drink enough souls. Even now, she was parched, thirsting for more souls, for more power - something John himself warned her to try and control, or she would end up consuming herself.

But all of that was over. She felt a distinct lack of purpose, a depression that this gravity room - set to a hundred and fifty times Earth's gravity - couldn't quite fix.

Perhaps one day, she'd suck either soul away.

---

Delta Seven arrived at the artificial moon orbiting above Johnna, the Capital Planet of the Corsahn Union. It remained that way even after countless conflicts, even the recent separation and Reunification War.

He couldn't help but feel responsible for that particular war. He was a tool that caused untold chaos and countless deaths, murdering millions both directly and indirectly to achieve the nonsensical aims of the Library in one of the darkest eras in Corsahn History.

The worst part is that he enjoyed it. After losing his first love during the beginning stages his reawakening - something that seemed to happen every 1000 years, losing every memory in place of creating new ones every millennium as Sentinel explained - he was in a state of rage for years that nothing could satisfy. He could have burned the entire galaxy if he wanted to, given enough time, but the thought of two people stopped him in that pursuit entirely.

Those people happened to be his AI, Lilith, who seemed more a sister to him than an algorithmic set of ones and zeros; and Vlad, who was Jacqueline's little brother.

He remembered Jacqueline like it was yesterday. The woman had found his unconscious body in a wreckage site not too far from the long-forgotten ruins of what was formerly Jacksonopolis, a city that preferred old-style living sans the amphibious vehicles the community created out of the space shuttles they landed in, which could go extremely fast on land. It was on one of these vehicles that he woke up, meeting her and Vlad for the first time.

He couldn't understand her language at first, but Lilith deciphered it pretty quickly and put it in a way that Delta Seven could understand.

Jacqueline, who preferred to be called Jackie, inherited a fishing business from her parents after they died in the Democratic Revolution that deposed Johnathan Corsahnim. They fought for the side of freedom. These days, it seemed John respected the Democratic process despite losing power, and thus ended up respecting what Jackie and Vlad's parents died for. Perhaps it was true that the Mesmer is what caused his tyrannical period, though Delta Seven had at one point been conditioned to believe otherwise by powers who wished John dead-

Delta Seven shook his head. His thoughts were a mess today. What mattered was the here and now - he wasn't concerned anymore about Ilyth'la and her schemes. He didn't care to expand on his theories either - the only thing that mattered was that she used him as a tool of destruction just like the Library did.

He had every right to hate her for that. Had every right to hate everyone who participated in those experiments in the Mangana realm.

Yet he didn't. That was all irrelevant to him. These past few decades calmed Delta Seven considerably. He had no real desire for revenge - he didn't even thirst for violence in the way that he used to. Since the Ocearan Agency took him in, he learned a lot about himself. He learned to control and conquer his heart and mind, and it was through that that he knew he was ready to face the music.

Despite everything he did and the circumstances behind it, he was still responsible for the deaths of untold millions. Meeting John was likely to have him arrested, and if that happened, Delta Seven wouldn't really have the will to escape. Delta Seven had to pay for his crimes somehow, had to be held accountable for the things he'd done, things that still haunt him to this day.

When he exited the ship, Powersuit equipped to his body for easier recognition, he saw Johnathan at the door leading to the hangar with two guardsmen dressed in power armor decorated purple, with capes of black. They held their oversized rifles in a shoulder-resting position, walking along Jonathan Corsahnim himself. John wore a formal military suit decorated with a gradient half-red to half-blue bisecting vertically, and he wore a cape as well. The cape itself was black, and in the center was the Capetonian Rose - the alien plant native to the planet Johnna that had orange petals.

"Welcome back, Delta Seven," Jonathan said with a smile, his short crew-cut grey hair and clean-shaven face giving way to youthful, unwrinkled skin. He lost the pigments in his hair, yet despite that, he had so much youth left in him - it was almost like looking at an early twenty-something who dyed his hair such a color. It was quite jarring to Delta Seven, but it wasn't unnerving. After all, he's seen stranger. "You requested a meeting. How's my old acquaintance doing this fine evening?"

"Better than when you last saw me," Delta Seven admitted, his voice modulating through the suit. His voice was naturally baritone, but the suit made him sound more intimidating than he intended to be. Despite that, John gave a chuckle, a mirthful smile crossing his lips.

"Indeed," John replied. "Tell me, what was so urgent you needed to call me away from the oh-so-important task of peacetime operations?"

"You mean, keeping you away from doing absolutely nothing."

"Ha! That's a good one," John said, his face giving way to Delta Seven's humorous statement. "Seriously now, what is it?"

---

Johnathan sat in the private room, sipping on hot tea with the unsuited Delta Seven - Samuel, as he preferred. He was a golden-skinned individual with black hair, though his eyes were the oddity of his form - one eye had a white iris and pupil with black sclera, while his other had a black pupil and iris with white sclera. This made him unique to John.

"So you're saying we need to prepare for war once more?" Johnathan asked. "All because we used temporal distortion technology to defeat Orsonian-built war machines?"

Samuel nodded. "Yes. It seems that whatever this 'Oblivion' is, it feeds off of the tears of the fabric of space-time."

"Do you think Ilyth'la and the Orsonians knew of this?"

"Doubtful," Samuel said, his expression one of surety. "If they did, this either wouldn't have been an issue, or it would have happened far sooner."

John stroked his chin as he looked into the honey-looking liquid in his hands. He saw his reflection, and in that reflection he saw his past self - the soul which reunited to his current body to give him Godlike powers. He could teleport anywhere in the galaxy that he wanted to with just the snap of a finger. It was how he caused so much trouble in the Reunification Conflicts after all, playing sides against one another in the trickiest of ways. It often amused him how foolish the successor states' leaders were - with the sole exception of the United Kingdoms of the Wild Finger, who didn't pose a threat after the 'Mure Liberation' plot he cooked up since the beginning.

He became a bit of a prankster during the war as well. He didn't need to be directly involved in many of the battles he partook in - it was like his enemies destroyed themselves with how he used his powers. Commander Swart's operations, with the help of Alexis Trenton - who he considered a disciple of sorts - almost guaranteed victory in all of the battles of the war with the Duumvirate. It was essentially a landslide victory on the military front.

He knew he could win office as well, but that didn't interest him one bit. He was content with being the guardian of the Corsahn Arm, a title he took very seriously in the past decade. The Mesmerized John was still a part of him, begging for more and more power, more and more souls, yet the true John - the John before and after the hypnotization process of Mesmerization which turned him from a wise leader into a tyrant - was in control.

He felt as if these were two different people. The evil version of him just didn't seem real, yet the memories of all of his atrocities - including the anatomical consumption of his wife and child when he'd been an Evolved, which haunted him greatly - were real enough. He was still confused at these memories, yet he accepted them for what they were. He accepted that he still needed to atone for his atrocities, regardless of how lucid he was.

Perhaps helping Delta Seven - er, Samuel - would be another step in the right direction.

"Very well," John continued. "Now that you've explained this to me, I think I know exactly what we need to do."

"You've already devised a war strategy?" Samuel asked in disbelief.

"Of course not. I don't know what all this Sentinel or the Chronosians are capable of, but I do know that a lot of the coming damage of the war can be averted. You said you've been in the Galactic Center, and I know you can get in there again."

John grabbed a small glass touchscreen pad and gave it to Samuel. Samuel scrolled through it, finding several ex-Librarian personnel files, high ranking Corsahn military officials, and his former lover, Alexis Trenton.

"What's this?"

"Your options," Johnathan remarked. "You need a team for what is essentially a suicide mission. Despite your ability to cause a lot of chaos for the Library, I've got a gut feeling this is an entirely different playing field - and Sentinel knows your game. However, I think that despite him being the Galactic Guardian, as you said he was, I still think there's a way to bypass his all-seeing eyes. That's where Alexis comes in."

"She's a necessity?" Samuel asked, apprehension in his voice.

"Absolutely. I'd go myself, but I'm the only one person the entire military respects - I need to be here to rally the troops if you fail."

"Understood," Samuel said.

"That being said, I know you have a past with her. I don't know what it's about, and I won't ask - that's your business. I know it won't jeopardize the mission, however - she won't let it - but it's clear there's something you two need to work out."

John also had the ability to see into the future just a little bit, and he used that to great effect.

"I'm sure you two will get along eventually," John said in an almost prophetic tone.

What he left out was that one of them was sure to die.

Oceara wrote:Cybus1
A Keta Pharmaceuticals research team working on the ever-elusive topic of treatments for the Drakul Virus have come up with a theory needing experimental evidence of "Psiono-Genetic Encryption" where Psionic energy is introduced to genetic material giving properties that allow it to shift form rapidly without corrupting any important data like would occur with common mutation and which can "piggy-back" off the Psychic energy production of hosts the material is introduced into to continue iterating it's encryption and to replicate the Psychic energy-imbued genetic material allowing propagation as well as allowing influence over the psychic environment within the host by attacking the psyche from the inside as a possible explanation for Command codes...

Control Director Madison Cenga and the Strategic Blacklight Institute have both agreed to participate. Although still wary of working alongside Malians, the experience of being brainwashed by Turner has left Cenga deeply troubled, and she wants to solve this issue as soon as possible.

Year: 2018

Elenā Kiri sat before UCP Representative Mary Dara, both in complete silence as Dara filled out paperwork on her computer. Dara had not spoken a single word for several minutes after Kiri's arrival, but Kiri nevertheless remained stoic. This was undoubtedly some sort of test, and her career was already at a dead end- she couldn't afford any more mistakes.

Finally, Dara briefly glanced at Kiri, seemingly annoyed at her presence. "Elenā Kiri, correct? Former head of the Abu Dhabi consulate?"

Kiri nodded yes in response.

"I suppose you already know why they've sent you to me?"

Kiri nodded once more. Her dream of being a foreign ambassador was assuredly dead- those goons in the Foreign Ministry made sure of that. Now she was doomed to work at the UCP, the punishment detail.

"Whatever rumors you have heard about me, forget it. I run a tight ship here, and there is no room for error. We are responsible for interacting with not just one nation, but all of them. Now I must ask the obvious: are you a committed Aturorist?"

"Of course, Representative. How could I not be?" Kiri replied with an expression of shock.

"Well, from what I've been informed about you, your commitment to the party line is dubious. It seems you spent all your time in Abu Dhabi constantly complaining about lack of funds, lack of staff, lack of this and that. You've undermined the Foreign Ministry's strategic goals on multiple occasions. You are, by definition, not a team player."

"I was simply fighting to ensure my staff had the necessary resources-"

"I don't want to hear your excuses, Kiri. Here is what you must understand: our mission is temporary. Aturorists do not desire peace with humanity, but the time for conflict is not yet upon us. We must appease the international community until we are strong enough to crush them outright. Until that day arrives, we shal serve the Emperor without question or hesitation. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Representative."

"Excellent. Now, commence your work as my secretary while you are still useful. My staff will show you the ropes."

Kiri rose from her chair to leave Dara's office. Her expression remained stoic, but her soul was utterly crushed. This would be her future: menial labor as a paper-pusher, and Dara's personal servant. Her life was truly over.

The Orson Empire wrote:Control Director Madison Cenga and the Strategic Blacklight Institute have both agreed to participate. Although still wary of working alongside Malians, the experience of being brainwashed by Turner has left Cenga deeply troubled, and she wants to solve this issue as soon as possible.

Cybus1
The Ministerial Council for Public Health has offered a lifetime waiver for taxes on business done in West Africa (although not immunity to fines for any violations of regulations) for any Off-world Orsonians that participate in providing samples of their Blacklight to the research program.

Hope is they can simultaneously stimulate off world trade and get samples for research.

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