Re: Petty Squabble [ROUND 1] [Fort Ayers, New Atlantis]
08-20-2011, 05:24 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
Dial tone.
Beeeeep.
Beeeeeeep.
Beeeeeeeeeeclick
“H'lo?”
“Um, hi. Hello. Miss. Is Mr. Roussoin Carver in?”
“Yeah,” said Miss, in a tone that sounded like she had her feet up on her desk. “This is Jane McClain, his assistant. Can I take a message?”
Rutherford B. Wimbledon, Executive Obfuscation Officer, lowered his phone and covered the receiver. “It's his assistant,” he hissed to the man next to him.
“What are you telling me for?” Dr. Leon Folstrom demanded under his breath. “Just tell him what you have to. Make something up.”
“Her,” corrected Wimbledon.
“Just say something!”
He raised the receiver to his ear. “We, uh, it's for a movie, Ms. McClain. It's a movie deal. For Mr. Carver. You should let us talk to him.”
“Uh-huh.” Jane nodded apprehensively and nearly dropped the phone tucked between her cheek and her shoulder in the process. “Well, what's the movie about?”
“Um.”
Beat.
“It's a secret. Because it's still in production,” he quickly added. “We... can't have just anyone knowing.”
“I'm supposed to believe that you're writing a movie directed by Roussoin Carver that no one is supposed to know about? Not even his secretary? What am I supposed to tell people if someone else calls and offers him a contract? 'He's off filming a secret movie, don't tell your friends'?”
“It'd be illegal for me to tell you,” Wimbledon blurted out. “About the movie. If you could please let me talk to -”
“Oh, yeah? And who's gonna know if you told me? I'd find out anyway.”
“We, uh...”
“What did you say your company was called?” Jane asked.
“Tell me, Ms. McClain, what's Mr. Carver's cell phone provider?”
She wrinkled her nose. “...Horizon Wireless. Why? Are you supposed to be selling us phone service now?”
“Because we just hacked them and found his cell number. Thanks for your time, Ms. McClain.”
“Wait!” she stammered, quickly sitting up. “You can't just- ”
“Oh, and we charged your data plan for the hacking.”
Dial tone.
Beeeeep.
Beeeeeeep.
Jane swore into the receiver and slammed down the phone.
---
Chester B. Arthur, newly-appointed chairman of the newly-created Committee for Mistakes and Poor Planning (CMAPP) cleared his throat nervously. The rest of COFCA sat around their obsidian table, bathed half in shadows.
"Well, we-" he began, only to be immediately interrupted by an LCD screen behind him powering on, silhouetting him against an enormous red line graph captioned 'Fig. 8: A line going down.'
Chester looked over his shoulder at it for a long moment. He swallowed and turned back to the round table. The line graph provided just enough light to show him that everyone was glaring at him. He shuffled the pages of his speech in front of him.
"We've been receiving some complaints," he tried again, "that our PR campaign for Envoy hasn't been going as well as we expected it to."
"Envoy's been ferrying around an RV for almost ten minutes," interrupted Margaret Doyle, Executive Assistant Executive. "We don't look good right now. People are going to take us for granted!"
"Well yes, but our engineers are working on an exit strategy that should get Envoy out in as few as sixteen more minutes-"
"Envoy isn't saving anyone," a smallish woman with a man's face chimed in. "He nearly got the Broderburgs killed!"
"Y-Yes, well, technically it was the supersoldier who did that, and we only realigned Envoy into its current paradigm because we were trying to-"
"You mean you realigned Envoy into its current paradigm," Nikolai Lutetian, CEO of Ennel Mining interjected.
"That's, uh, that's right, sir," Chester sighed. "But if we can just synergize our ways of thinking instead of-"
"I have a better idea," announced Megasenator Whittenberg as he stood up from his chair. He leaned forwards and planted his hands on the obsidian table. "Chester, you're fired."
An enormous counter labeled "FIRE SCAPEGOAT?" appeared on the center of the table and on more than half of the screens dotting the room, and a set of options appeared on the screens at each person's seat. The tally of "yes" votes skyrocketed so quickly that he barely had time to register that there wasn't actually a tally of "no" votes.
He stared down at the table. "MOTION PASSED" blinked back at him in plain white block capitals before he could finish saying 'benchmark.'
"But I-" he stammered.
"Nope. Out. Go."
He sighed. "Yes sir, Mr. Senator."
"That's Megasenator," he corrected brusquely. The rest of COFCA scowled in silence as Chester stood, gathered up his briefcase and started towards the door. COFCA was just a bunch of loud, immature little children in business suits, anyway. They didn't need him, and he didn't need them. To hell with first contact. To hell with rogue demigods. To hell with paradigm shifts and to hell with Env-
"Sir!" Cooper Wilding, internal operations technician, called from a makeshift desk covered in mismatched computer components. "We've found a perfect new candidate for COFCA!"
Chester stopped halfway through punching in the 7-digit combination for the exit to listen, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.
"Well?" Megasenator Whittenberg began, only to be cut off by Eva Nguyen, Actual Diplomat, who stood up and conveniently blocked Whittenberg's line of sight.
"Well?" asked Eva Nguyen.
"He's an astrophysicist - the best in his field. Made a breakthrough in understanding black hole physics. Holds several Master's degrees and a Ph.D in communications. Our database says he's just been recently laid off, and he's between jobs right now. We can easily manage double his last salary."
"Sounds wonderful," Eva admitted. Even as she was speaking, the "HIRE ASTROPHYSICIST?" counter already had several dozen votes on it. "What's his name?"
"Dr. Chester B. Arthur, man. Erm, ma'am."
"We'll need someone to get him introduced to the COFCA," she continued, reading off a napkin she had produced from somewhere. Chester's Raspberry smartphone chirped, indicating that he'd received an email.
"One step ahead of you, man."
---
Envoy powered down its primary rockets and leveled off over Fort Ayers. Down below, several mechs were rampaging through the stronghold of solid concrete and bedrock like lawnmowers through butter. But up here in the sky, three contestants (totaling eight people and change) were being lazily carried along by a fourth contestant (totaling somewhere in the range of a hundred people) whose work seemed awfully unappreciated right about now. Envoy had saved these people, and the only thanks COFCA got was having their extremely expensive toy reduced to an extremely expensive ferry. That wasn't COFCA's fault. All they did was find an incident and step in to rescue someone.
Why, it just wasn't right!
It was only just that COFCA should get a second chance at rescuing everyone, and almost 90% of them voted unanimously that they should handle the situation proactively, take initiative and make themselves another opportunity if they wanted things to go better (and raise brand awareness).
This was no time to sit around and do nothing.
It was time for them to be heroes.
Ashley, John and the Broderburgs all perked up as all of the walkie talkies, Alison's cell phone and the RV's radio crackled to life, broadcasting the radio channel that COFCA had hacked into.
“This is COFCA! Bad news, everyone – our temporal transitional field is causing a double – no, a triple causality loop in the inverted flux array, and our last tachyonic sweep, uh, picked up a quantum waveform disturbance in Envoy's asynchronous polarity field! Um, if our translational matrix doesn't perfectly account for the resulting entropic time-dilation, we could – OH NO, LOOK OUT!” someone on the other end cried as Envoy casually tossed the RV into the middle of Fort Ayers. There was a noise that sounded distinctly like a phone clattering to the floor, and the line went dead.
The inside of the RV was all yelling and screaming as it plummeted towards certain death. Envoy slapped its hands over its mouth for good measure and surged towards the RV at just under 88 mph.
A mech accidentally slapped it out of the air, and Envoy heroically crashed through the wall and skidded to a halt a few feet from where Parsley was standing.
Dial tone.
Beeeeep.
Beeeeeeep.
Beeeeeeeeeeclick
“H'lo?”
“Um, hi. Hello. Miss. Is Mr. Roussoin Carver in?”
“Yeah,” said Miss, in a tone that sounded like she had her feet up on her desk. “This is Jane McClain, his assistant. Can I take a message?”
Rutherford B. Wimbledon, Executive Obfuscation Officer, lowered his phone and covered the receiver. “It's his assistant,” he hissed to the man next to him.
“What are you telling me for?” Dr. Leon Folstrom demanded under his breath. “Just tell him what you have to. Make something up.”
“Her,” corrected Wimbledon.
“Just say something!”
He raised the receiver to his ear. “We, uh, it's for a movie, Ms. McClain. It's a movie deal. For Mr. Carver. You should let us talk to him.”
“Uh-huh.” Jane nodded apprehensively and nearly dropped the phone tucked between her cheek and her shoulder in the process. “Well, what's the movie about?”
“Um.”
Beat.
“It's a secret. Because it's still in production,” he quickly added. “We... can't have just anyone knowing.”
“I'm supposed to believe that you're writing a movie directed by Roussoin Carver that no one is supposed to know about? Not even his secretary? What am I supposed to tell people if someone else calls and offers him a contract? 'He's off filming a secret movie, don't tell your friends'?”
“It'd be illegal for me to tell you,” Wimbledon blurted out. “About the movie. If you could please let me talk to -”
“Oh, yeah? And who's gonna know if you told me? I'd find out anyway.”
“We, uh...”
“What did you say your company was called?” Jane asked.
“Tell me, Ms. McClain, what's Mr. Carver's cell phone provider?”
She wrinkled her nose. “...Horizon Wireless. Why? Are you supposed to be selling us phone service now?”
“Because we just hacked them and found his cell number. Thanks for your time, Ms. McClain.”
“Wait!” she stammered, quickly sitting up. “You can't just- ”
“Oh, and we charged your data plan for the hacking.”
Dial tone.
Beeeeep.
Beeeeeeep.
Jane swore into the receiver and slammed down the phone.
---
Chester B. Arthur, newly-appointed chairman of the newly-created Committee for Mistakes and Poor Planning (CMAPP) cleared his throat nervously. The rest of COFCA sat around their obsidian table, bathed half in shadows.
"Well, we-" he began, only to be immediately interrupted by an LCD screen behind him powering on, silhouetting him against an enormous red line graph captioned 'Fig. 8: A line going down.'
Chester looked over his shoulder at it for a long moment. He swallowed and turned back to the round table. The line graph provided just enough light to show him that everyone was glaring at him. He shuffled the pages of his speech in front of him.
"We've been receiving some complaints," he tried again, "that our PR campaign for Envoy hasn't been going as well as we expected it to."
"Envoy's been ferrying around an RV for almost ten minutes," interrupted Margaret Doyle, Executive Assistant Executive. "We don't look good right now. People are going to take us for granted!"
"Well yes, but our engineers are working on an exit strategy that should get Envoy out in as few as sixteen more minutes-"
"Envoy isn't saving anyone," a smallish woman with a man's face chimed in. "He nearly got the Broderburgs killed!"
"Y-Yes, well, technically it was the supersoldier who did that, and we only realigned Envoy into its current paradigm because we were trying to-"
"You mean you realigned Envoy into its current paradigm," Nikolai Lutetian, CEO of Ennel Mining interjected.
"That's, uh, that's right, sir," Chester sighed. "But if we can just synergize our ways of thinking instead of-"
"I have a better idea," announced Megasenator Whittenberg as he stood up from his chair. He leaned forwards and planted his hands on the obsidian table. "Chester, you're fired."
An enormous counter labeled "FIRE SCAPEGOAT?" appeared on the center of the table and on more than half of the screens dotting the room, and a set of options appeared on the screens at each person's seat. The tally of "yes" votes skyrocketed so quickly that he barely had time to register that there wasn't actually a tally of "no" votes.
He stared down at the table. "MOTION PASSED" blinked back at him in plain white block capitals before he could finish saying 'benchmark.'
"But I-" he stammered.
"Nope. Out. Go."
He sighed. "Yes sir, Mr. Senator."
"That's Megasenator," he corrected brusquely. The rest of COFCA scowled in silence as Chester stood, gathered up his briefcase and started towards the door. COFCA was just a bunch of loud, immature little children in business suits, anyway. They didn't need him, and he didn't need them. To hell with first contact. To hell with rogue demigods. To hell with paradigm shifts and to hell with Env-
"Sir!" Cooper Wilding, internal operations technician, called from a makeshift desk covered in mismatched computer components. "We've found a perfect new candidate for COFCA!"
Chester stopped halfway through punching in the 7-digit combination for the exit to listen, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.
"Well?" Megasenator Whittenberg began, only to be cut off by Eva Nguyen, Actual Diplomat, who stood up and conveniently blocked Whittenberg's line of sight.
"Well?" asked Eva Nguyen.
"He's an astrophysicist - the best in his field. Made a breakthrough in understanding black hole physics. Holds several Master's degrees and a Ph.D in communications. Our database says he's just been recently laid off, and he's between jobs right now. We can easily manage double his last salary."
"Sounds wonderful," Eva admitted. Even as she was speaking, the "HIRE ASTROPHYSICIST?" counter already had several dozen votes on it. "What's his name?"
"Dr. Chester B. Arthur, man. Erm, ma'am."
"We'll need someone to get him introduced to the COFCA," she continued, reading off a napkin she had produced from somewhere. Chester's Raspberry smartphone chirped, indicating that he'd received an email.
"One step ahead of you, man."
---
Envoy powered down its primary rockets and leveled off over Fort Ayers. Down below, several mechs were rampaging through the stronghold of solid concrete and bedrock like lawnmowers through butter. But up here in the sky, three contestants (totaling eight people and change) were being lazily carried along by a fourth contestant (totaling somewhere in the range of a hundred people) whose work seemed awfully unappreciated right about now. Envoy had saved these people, and the only thanks COFCA got was having their extremely expensive toy reduced to an extremely expensive ferry. That wasn't COFCA's fault. All they did was find an incident and step in to rescue someone.
Why, it just wasn't right!
It was only just that COFCA should get a second chance at rescuing everyone, and almost 90% of them voted unanimously that they should handle the situation proactively, take initiative and make themselves another opportunity if they wanted things to go better (and raise brand awareness).
This was no time to sit around and do nothing.
It was time for them to be heroes.
Ashley, John and the Broderburgs all perked up as all of the walkie talkies, Alison's cell phone and the RV's radio crackled to life, broadcasting the radio channel that COFCA had hacked into.
“This is COFCA! Bad news, everyone – our temporal transitional field is causing a double – no, a triple causality loop in the inverted flux array, and our last tachyonic sweep, uh, picked up a quantum waveform disturbance in Envoy's asynchronous polarity field! Um, if our translational matrix doesn't perfectly account for the resulting entropic time-dilation, we could – OH NO, LOOK OUT!” someone on the other end cried as Envoy casually tossed the RV into the middle of Fort Ayers. There was a noise that sounded distinctly like a phone clattering to the floor, and the line went dead.
The inside of the RV was all yelling and screaming as it plummeted towards certain death. Envoy slapped its hands over its mouth for good measure and surged towards the RV at just under 88 mph.
A mech accidentally slapped it out of the air, and Envoy heroically crashed through the wall and skidded to a halt a few feet from where Parsley was standing.