- Location
- America
It always said Andrews AFB, you lie.
Another One Into the Frying Pan (PA/multicross SI)
- Thread starter Ramble
- Start date
fourteen
- Location
- America
Air traffic control at Andrews AFB is quite nice and the person at the radio is extremely helpful, though I mostly leave landing to Galm 1. Discretely, I have my escorts turn back and head for Africa for refueling and also so that they can prepare for transfer to something else I have in mind that I totally didn't just come up with this minute. Once the plane slows and finally comes to a stop, I beam Galm 1 back to the escorts so he can hitch a ride back to base.
I take over the controls and maneuver the plane to taxi next to a waiting motorcade which includes, to my surprise, a black stretch limo. Awesome. That's my cue. Time for me to make an impression, but just in case, I fabricate a belt with holster as well as a hastily crafted M1911 replica, or as close as I can get to it.
Hopefully peoples' attention will now be drawn to my gun rather than my chest. I swear I could probably hide a gun in these things.
Hold on.
Oh, yes I can. It's a 22 lr 5 shot palm pistol, but it fits and nobody can locate it.
The plane comes to a full and complete halt and I use the door handle to open the door. Unfortunately, there's no movable stairs, but that's alright, because I have my own way down. A rod swings out from the top of the door and drops a rope down all the way to the ground. That's my ticket down.
I pull on a single black cotton/nylon glove and rapel down the rope one handed in front of the audience gathered to greet me.
Said audience consists of five guys in shiney suits, three older guys and two with sunglasses and distinctly sub machinegun shaped bulges sticking out of their sides. Not exactly subtle there. There's also about four dudes in camo and holding assault rifles. To top that off, there's the armored vehicles accompanying the limo and the machinegunners are tracking me as I approach.
To be honest, I didn't really prepare for this so I'm completely in the dark. Luckily, I don't have to introduce myself. Evidently the guy in front of me has been briefed on who I am.
"Commander Ramble." He greets me. "My name is Alfred Morgan. I'm the president of the United States of America, or what's left of it at any rate." He gestures to his left. "This is General Mitchell of the air force" he gestures right "and General Carter of the army. We thought it would be best if we gave you a proper welcome."
He holds out his hand.
"I'd like to welcome to the United States."
I grasp his hand and give it a good firm shake. By his body language, he apparently approves of it so I'm probably doing something right.
"Mister President, please just call me Ramble. It's my pleasure to be here."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Greetings go about as well as I can and I feel like even though I basically hold all the cards, President Morgan is simply more than capable of out talking me, but I tried my best to keep up and it seemed like he was more interested in getting to the point. I'm apparently allowed into the presidential limousine and I'm taken to the white house for talks.
"So" The president starts off. "Let's get to the point. What do you want to do here?" he asks from the couch across from me. Another person pours us both a glass of cold water. In a world where water has essentially dried up, clean cold water is a luxury.
I accept my glass.
"If I'm going to be honest mister president, this country is really similar to a place I once called home."
"And what happened to it?"
"It's gone to me now, unfortunately."
President Morgan's mouth clicks shut.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Please don't be, I've gotten over it for a while. In any case, I'd like to make this country my home now. It's why I want citizenship, something to remember my old home by."
The president lifts his eyebrow and scrutinizes me.
"And also I want to try fixing the world up some. This entire planet feels too sad, and I'd like to change that. If you'd allow me, I'd like to start here, in the US. I can give you new technology, and maybe rediscover what this world lost after the water wars and the nuclear war that followed. I can give you wind power technology, solar technology, and geothermal to reduce or eliminate the usage of limited gasoline supply. I also have battery technology to store the energy produced and use it in vehicles and other stuff. And manufacturing, I can help rebuild manufacturing of advanced technology as well as infrastructure. I don't know what else to say."
He keeps scrutinizing me a bit more, until he relaxes and speaks.
"You show your emotions too easily." He smiles. "I can tell you aren't trying to trick me at least. Your sales pitch is too earnest and you're too expressive."
. . .
"Mister President. I'm not very good at this."
"I could tell."
I take over the controls and maneuver the plane to taxi next to a waiting motorcade which includes, to my surprise, a black stretch limo. Awesome. That's my cue. Time for me to make an impression, but just in case, I fabricate a belt with holster as well as a hastily crafted M1911 replica, or as close as I can get to it.
Hopefully peoples' attention will now be drawn to my gun rather than my chest. I swear I could probably hide a gun in these things.
Hold on.
Oh, yes I can. It's a 22 lr 5 shot palm pistol, but it fits and nobody can locate it.
The plane comes to a full and complete halt and I use the door handle to open the door. Unfortunately, there's no movable stairs, but that's alright, because I have my own way down. A rod swings out from the top of the door and drops a rope down all the way to the ground. That's my ticket down.
I pull on a single black cotton/nylon glove and rapel down the rope one handed in front of the audience gathered to greet me.
Said audience consists of five guys in shiney suits, three older guys and two with sunglasses and distinctly sub machinegun shaped bulges sticking out of their sides. Not exactly subtle there. There's also about four dudes in camo and holding assault rifles. To top that off, there's the armored vehicles accompanying the limo and the machinegunners are tracking me as I approach.
To be honest, I didn't really prepare for this so I'm completely in the dark. Luckily, I don't have to introduce myself. Evidently the guy in front of me has been briefed on who I am.
"Commander Ramble." He greets me. "My name is Alfred Morgan. I'm the president of the United States of America, or what's left of it at any rate." He gestures to his left. "This is General Mitchell of the air force" he gestures right "and General Carter of the army. We thought it would be best if we gave you a proper welcome."
He holds out his hand.
"I'd like to welcome to the United States."
I grasp his hand and give it a good firm shake. By his body language, he apparently approves of it so I'm probably doing something right.
"Mister President, please just call me Ramble. It's my pleasure to be here."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Greetings go about as well as I can and I feel like even though I basically hold all the cards, President Morgan is simply more than capable of out talking me, but I tried my best to keep up and it seemed like he was more interested in getting to the point. I'm apparently allowed into the presidential limousine and I'm taken to the white house for talks.
"So" The president starts off. "Let's get to the point. What do you want to do here?" he asks from the couch across from me. Another person pours us both a glass of cold water. In a world where water has essentially dried up, clean cold water is a luxury.
I accept my glass.
"If I'm going to be honest mister president, this country is really similar to a place I once called home."
"And what happened to it?"
"It's gone to me now, unfortunately."
President Morgan's mouth clicks shut.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Please don't be, I've gotten over it for a while. In any case, I'd like to make this country my home now. It's why I want citizenship, something to remember my old home by."
The president lifts his eyebrow and scrutinizes me.
"And also I want to try fixing the world up some. This entire planet feels too sad, and I'd like to change that. If you'd allow me, I'd like to start here, in the US. I can give you new technology, and maybe rediscover what this world lost after the water wars and the nuclear war that followed. I can give you wind power technology, solar technology, and geothermal to reduce or eliminate the usage of limited gasoline supply. I also have battery technology to store the energy produced and use it in vehicles and other stuff. And manufacturing, I can help rebuild manufacturing of advanced technology as well as infrastructure. I don't know what else to say."
He keeps scrutinizing me a bit more, until he relaxes and speaks.
"You show your emotions too easily." He smiles. "I can tell you aren't trying to trick me at least. Your sales pitch is too earnest and you're too expressive."
. . .
"Mister President. I'm not very good at this."
"I could tell."
Honestly, that only really considers if she wanted something actually substantial from the negotiations. While US citizenship is substantial, it is also immaterial. Compared to what she offers it is a pittance but then, it isn't like she actually needs anything from them. She could live like a king if she really wanted to all modern day luxuries and more. And she could do that without involving anyone else even tangentially. The fact of the matter is, she wants to help for the simple pleasure of knowing she helped. That has a tendency to majorly change how you negotiate.
fifteen
- Location
- America
My meeting with the president could probably have gone better, but I think I learned quite a bit from it.
One thing I learned is that I'm not exactly very good at diplomacy. Once I had everything I wanted to do laid out, essentially benefiting the United States in every way, the president essentially expedited my citizenship and I passed the exam quite easily.
I've basically given the airforce engineers free reign to look over my plane as much as they like and I get essentially free room and board at one of the nicer hotels in the area until everything it done. With that in mind, I collapse into my hotel bed and holy shit that's soft, well, compared to what I've been sleeping on anyway.
I have my nanites scan the bed and I am now able to reproduce it.
While I relax, I take to designing my biggest unit yet. At the moment, I've just been building vehicles and calling them boats, but I also thought of another thing that I can build, but I don't really have anything that can both be big and reasonably fast. I could make them if I used progenitor technology, but I don't want to do that as it would just be cheating at this point. There is however, something that I can build that can lift and transport things while also being reasonably fast with the ability to linger around a place.
Zeppelins.
By the time I'm done, I've designed a behemoth, 500 meters long and filled with helium, capable of carrying an insane amount of cargo including small VTOL aircraft. Propulsion is provided by eight massive turbofan engines mounted on swiveling pylons, providing excellent control and stationkeeping ability as well as propelling it great distances.
I need to design new aircraft to go with it akin to the XCom's skyranger, but otherwise it's a fine design. I even call the new transfer craft Skyrangers and make them look like the actual thing, though with the inside optimised to carry cargo at subsonic speed a short distance with a few passengers.
Over all, the new Zeppelin is huge, capable of lifting several thousand tons, and well armed with armaments including two 127mm cannons dual mounted in two underhanging ball turrets. There's a phased array radar, two single arm missile launchers, and about 4 35 millimeter autocannons. Even factoring fuel, there's still enough capacity to carry a crew, provisions, and a huge store of hardware and cargo including onboard fabrication to make anything else that I might have forgotten. Overall, I have a pretty nice airborne floating base, and it only takes a little bit to build, less than an hour actually, and that's pretty good. It's not like I really need to worry about resources anyway. I haven't been keeping track of exactly how many mass and energy storage buildings my sub-routines have been building but it's a lot, so I really don't have to worry about my economy even if most of my economy is devoted to producing water.
Apparently the oceans have a lot of water. Who knew.
I also design a much smaller unarmed purely cargo carrying blimp of about 250 meters long, solar powered, maneuvered by several large electrical fans and capable of carrying around about 20 tons or so of cargo including a transfer vehicle that is essentially a skyranger with about half of the fuselage cut out to make room for various shipping containers just to make things easier.
Well, the plan is proceeding to pace anyway so I can't really complain. For now, I need to decide on what I want to do with myself, how I want to go about leaving a mark on this world once I pull up most of my machines and infrastructure and head for my next new great adventure.
So I think long and hard.
. . .
Eh. I'll sleep on it.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've got it!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I find myself in front of President Morgan in the oval office while he does paperwork and some of his cabinet stands to the side.
"So what you're saying . . ." He starts off. "That you want to start a company and with my blessing, reestablish the United States Postal Service as a semi-independent, government owned corporation?"
"Yeah, that's about the long and short of it" I say. One of the things I had noticed was that in post apocalyptia, even in one of the most intact states, mail had largely been of secondary value. While it was being delivered by private mom and pop companies, the USPS had fallen apart due to lack of spending, revenue, and basically a bunch of people too busy getting incinerated, irradiated, or under martial law to send mail.
I myself had decided that the best way to leave my mark on the world in the most american and best way possible would be to expand american influence, using the United States Postal System.
As the premier mail provider and sometimes only mail provider in the world who would deliver to remote near lawless areas, I would essentially be able to do the most good while providing my country with the best PR possible.
"Mister president." The Secretary of Defense speaks up. "I think it might be a decent idea to try it out." He turns to me. "Your plane there. It's a Boeing 747 right?"
I perked up at that. "Yes it is, a derivative at least."
"Then it'll carry at least 100 tons, assuming your own stuff doesn't weigh too much."
"How do you know sir?"
"I used to work at Boeing before the war. I built them."
One thing I learned is that I'm not exactly very good at diplomacy. Once I had everything I wanted to do laid out, essentially benefiting the United States in every way, the president essentially expedited my citizenship and I passed the exam quite easily.
I've basically given the airforce engineers free reign to look over my plane as much as they like and I get essentially free room and board at one of the nicer hotels in the area until everything it done. With that in mind, I collapse into my hotel bed and holy shit that's soft, well, compared to what I've been sleeping on anyway.
I have my nanites scan the bed and I am now able to reproduce it.
While I relax, I take to designing my biggest unit yet. At the moment, I've just been building vehicles and calling them boats, but I also thought of another thing that I can build, but I don't really have anything that can both be big and reasonably fast. I could make them if I used progenitor technology, but I don't want to do that as it would just be cheating at this point. There is however, something that I can build that can lift and transport things while also being reasonably fast with the ability to linger around a place.
Zeppelins.
By the time I'm done, I've designed a behemoth, 500 meters long and filled with helium, capable of carrying an insane amount of cargo including small VTOL aircraft. Propulsion is provided by eight massive turbofan engines mounted on swiveling pylons, providing excellent control and stationkeeping ability as well as propelling it great distances.
I need to design new aircraft to go with it akin to the XCom's skyranger, but otherwise it's a fine design. I even call the new transfer craft Skyrangers and make them look like the actual thing, though with the inside optimised to carry cargo at subsonic speed a short distance with a few passengers.
Over all, the new Zeppelin is huge, capable of lifting several thousand tons, and well armed with armaments including two 127mm cannons dual mounted in two underhanging ball turrets. There's a phased array radar, two single arm missile launchers, and about 4 35 millimeter autocannons. Even factoring fuel, there's still enough capacity to carry a crew, provisions, and a huge store of hardware and cargo including onboard fabrication to make anything else that I might have forgotten. Overall, I have a pretty nice airborne floating base, and it only takes a little bit to build, less than an hour actually, and that's pretty good. It's not like I really need to worry about resources anyway. I haven't been keeping track of exactly how many mass and energy storage buildings my sub-routines have been building but it's a lot, so I really don't have to worry about my economy even if most of my economy is devoted to producing water.
Apparently the oceans have a lot of water. Who knew.
I also design a much smaller unarmed purely cargo carrying blimp of about 250 meters long, solar powered, maneuvered by several large electrical fans and capable of carrying around about 20 tons or so of cargo including a transfer vehicle that is essentially a skyranger with about half of the fuselage cut out to make room for various shipping containers just to make things easier.
Well, the plan is proceeding to pace anyway so I can't really complain. For now, I need to decide on what I want to do with myself, how I want to go about leaving a mark on this world once I pull up most of my machines and infrastructure and head for my next new great adventure.
So I think long and hard.
. . .
Eh. I'll sleep on it.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've got it!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I find myself in front of President Morgan in the oval office while he does paperwork and some of his cabinet stands to the side.
"So what you're saying . . ." He starts off. "That you want to start a company and with my blessing, reestablish the United States Postal Service as a semi-independent, government owned corporation?"
"Yeah, that's about the long and short of it" I say. One of the things I had noticed was that in post apocalyptia, even in one of the most intact states, mail had largely been of secondary value. While it was being delivered by private mom and pop companies, the USPS had fallen apart due to lack of spending, revenue, and basically a bunch of people too busy getting incinerated, irradiated, or under martial law to send mail.
I myself had decided that the best way to leave my mark on the world in the most american and best way possible would be to expand american influence, using the United States Postal System.
As the premier mail provider and sometimes only mail provider in the world who would deliver to remote near lawless areas, I would essentially be able to do the most good while providing my country with the best PR possible.
"Mister president." The Secretary of Defense speaks up. "I think it might be a decent idea to try it out." He turns to me. "Your plane there. It's a Boeing 747 right?"
I perked up at that. "Yes it is, a derivative at least."
"Then it'll carry at least 100 tons, assuming your own stuff doesn't weigh too much."
"How do you know sir?"
"I used to work at Boeing before the war. I built them."
TikiTau
Commander Pangolinski
- Location
- Texas
Neither Acid Rain Nor Glowing Snow Nor Crazed Wasteland Cannibal Motor Gangs Shall Deter The Killbot Mailmen From Their Appointed Rounds.
(Do Not Ask About: Rocks, Cannibals With Sticks, Any Sort of Flying Dragon Machine, Mrs. Cake, Large Mutants With Teeth, Any Kind Of Dog With Orange Eyebrows, Rains Of Spaniels, Fog, Mrs. Cake.)
(Do Not Ask About: Rocks, Cannibals With Sticks, Any Sort of Flying Dragon Machine, Mrs. Cake, Large Mutants With Teeth, Any Kind Of Dog With Orange Eyebrows, Rains Of Spaniels, Fog, Mrs. Cake.)
Last edited:
- Location
- Singapore
Lol, great discworld reference.
TikiTau
Commander Pangolinski
- Location
- Texas
Wanna take this one, ol' buddy?
<Anghammarad> Very Well. Ahem. Do Not Ask.
- Location
- America
Lies! Slander and lies I say!
- Location
- America
Noooo! But I don't want men!
. . .
Well, at least I can start mooching drinks off the less creepy people.
sixteen
- Location
- America
So eventually, I settle myself into my now routine job. The paperwork to establish a corporation is quickly finished up, though it did raise some eyebrows when I reflexively marked that I was male. I quickly began stumbling over myself to explain but apparently, when people are just trying to get through the misery of living in a world with even precious little fresh water, people tend to care rather less about things like transgenderism and stuff. You get the job done or you get tossed out on your ass.
In any case, my first job was to use my 747 to transport about 60 tons of time sensitive supplies over to the newly rebuilt Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. They were attempting to reclaim the old silos and launch pads but had essentially been held up by pockets of radiation and there were suits needed to gain access. They had some, but those were all up north trying to clean up the bombed out shell of San Fran, so president Morgan had my plane loaded up with the suits, cleanup equipment, and other supplies like food and spare parts and sent me on my way after filling up the tanks.
The commander there had sent off the message via telegram and had expected a couple of trucks to arrive in a week or two, but imagine his surprise when he got a jumbo jet painted in USPS colors with the emblem on the tail asking for permission to land at the newly re-paved air strip. They had apparently done it to keep people busy, but now that was paying dividends.
The look on the guy's face when I emerged and tried to get him to sign off on the delivery was priceless. I did get the signature by the way, that was an interesting experience.
I stripped out most of the luxuries in my jet to accommodate more cargo and did some tinkering with the engines to squeeze a bit more fuel efficiency out of them. I also had five airships constructed and fly over so I can commission them in the USA. The first two that came over are the now USPS Sky Fire and the USPS Sky Envoy from the now named Sky Fire class of 500 meter armed zeppelins. The other three are USPS Transporter, USPS Mover and USPS Procurer of the new Transporter class of 250 meter zeppelins.
Over two months, I screened and hired new employees to take command of the airships, though the cargo transfer vehicles are still being operated remotely due to the prospective pilots still going through training. Additionally, I was even allowed authorization to operate additional planes, though they would still need to submit to the air force. In my spare time, I would keep directing the operations of my other bases.
There is now a full constellation of fully functional satellites, all launched from my very own own space center in africa. Oh, there's also a space station too, just for shits and giggles. It's basically constructed from modules for various things like living and science and power generations and storage and life support and other stuff like the International Space Station. Unfortunately, it's not really going to see any use, but I've left the data in the Post Office HQ database for time being.
Oh, yeah, I have a headquarters. It's a three story building that I renovated with computers flown in from my africa base. The pentagon took some and their people are going over them to make sure it's safe for installation, but my own operations are now in full swing. Actual cargo is still almost exclusively military and government but I do have employees driving ground vehicles around to deliver letters and civilian correspondence. Fortunately, I have my letter sorting and scanning process fully automated just in case to prevent malicious use of the system, and so far there have been no incidents.
Hive base is finally up and operational. While I've switched manufacturing over to my main Africa base, I've been using Hive base as my little science lab, mostly testing genetics for fruit and vegetables to sink my teeth into the whole genetic engineering thing before I decide to start getting real with animals and eventually humans. I've been modifying the cells in the vegetables for rapid growth and I've been looking into ways to stop their rapid growth at set points.
So far, my experiments have been promising, though it still needs work. The specimens that are inadequate for human consumption are simply incinerated while those that are safe for consumption are thrown over the walls with a catapult for the small community that has taken shelter under the walls of Hive Base. It's actually kinda interesting. At set intervals, I set off a warning siren and they steer clear of a predesignated landing area where I fling things like the edible rejected vegetables and jerry cans of water.
Social engineering is fun. Who knew?
There are also large tanks of water at Hive Base as well, growing algae that clumps together and is fit for consumption for both humans and for any other remediation that may be necessary including radiation removal because leaving massive pockets of radiation around the planet when I leave would just be ungenerous of me.
The pipelines connecting Hive Base to Africa are complete and the main waystation in Mogadishu, what with the new abundance of fresh water, has seen a renaissance of sorts. Previously, the local strongmen there had attempted to attack the waystation and seize the thing for themselves, but parking a currently yet to be commissioned Sky Fire class airship blasting away with the 5 inch gun had put a stop to that, and under the watchful eye of the lingering giant, the populace settled down and mostly let the way station be built.
It wasn't without some benefit though, since I built several communal fresh water fountains that they could draw water from. At first they were hesitant, but after learning everything was relatively harmless, they had begun slaking their thirst and even taking water for their own use.
There were those attempting to start vegetable plots using seeds, dirt, and water which was fine by me, and there were even some people trying out making things look pretty again, or at least as pretty as they can make things in a barren wasteland. They've even settled down and the older men who still retain their writing skill have begun recording things on whatever is at hand now that every day is not a constant battle for survival.
On what little water there is, I have begun the capture and genetic sequencing of the various fish species. After thorough categorization, it is my hope that I will be able to also genetically modify various fish to better suit factory farming to sustain populations. Thus far, I find myself fortunate that I have found various species of Tuna and salmon in the remains of the atlantic, though I find various other species in the remnants of the pacific.
Anyway, enough reminiscing. It appears that the president has a new job for me, and an urgent one, this time from the state department. Sounds like it could be interesting.
[timeskip]
When the world fell, Japan had found itself out of its depth. Cut off from valuable supplies and starved of valuable oil and other raw resources, the Japanese had fallen into a period of anarchy as civil order broke down. Many died, but a core of the SDF that had centered around the Imperial Guard, the last of the USFJ, and the Emperor had managed to keep martial law and order in the largest cities, the efforts of which were helped by continuous supplies from the United States. By the time supplies stopped coming and satellite communications with the United States had been cut off for whatever reason, Japan had been relatively unified again. With complete authority, the Emperor had ordered that the Japanese people prepare for the long haul.
Emperor Akihito sat in the Imperial Palace. The place had seen better days. In the earlier days, most of the furniture had been auctioned off to raise money, but with Japan relatively stable, things just kept on going on. A few isolated oil wells in the senkaku region pumped the much needed precious material to provide power to keep some industry running, which was why there was lights and a fan on in the throne room as his retainers attended to him.
Suddenly, a ruckus started breaking out and a servant came in, genuflecting before the emperor and trailed by the commander of the USFJ who had retained a degree of independence even when they had eventually "gone native" as they had said.
"You majesty!" The servant said. "Our long range radar stations have spotted a massive object on the horizon."
Well that was not good.
"What do you know of this object. Is it a threat?"
"I know not, your majesty, but it is huge, possibly half a kilometer long and it is coming our way."
When the object was right overhead, Akihito was on the tarmac at one of the ASDF bases, looking up at a huge zeppelin floating overhead, painted with the American flag at the front and back and just generally having a red, white, and blue color scheme. On the side in english letters read "USPS Sky Fire"
A small object suddenly detached and headed down, stopping on the tarmac in front of the party and the waiting squad of soldiers. They expected a lot of things, but what they did not expect was a huge breasted woman in a blue uniform with a blue cap and a letterbag trundling down the ramp of the aircraft and pulling along a trolley loaded with brown cardboard boxes, each with blue and white stickers plastered everywhere and a small number of stamps in one of the corners.
The woman pulled up to a stop in front of the waiting "greeting party" and attempted to reach for her letterbag. Immediately guns were raised and the woman put her hands up in the universal gesture for 'look, I do not have a big murderous weapon with which to hurt people' and after a short while, she slowly reached for her letterbag and pulled out a clipboard and a ballpoint pen.
"United States Postal Service with a package to whoever is leading Japan I guess. It just says Japan on my delivery order. I need somebody to sign off on this?"
In any case, my first job was to use my 747 to transport about 60 tons of time sensitive supplies over to the newly rebuilt Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. They were attempting to reclaim the old silos and launch pads but had essentially been held up by pockets of radiation and there were suits needed to gain access. They had some, but those were all up north trying to clean up the bombed out shell of San Fran, so president Morgan had my plane loaded up with the suits, cleanup equipment, and other supplies like food and spare parts and sent me on my way after filling up the tanks.
The commander there had sent off the message via telegram and had expected a couple of trucks to arrive in a week or two, but imagine his surprise when he got a jumbo jet painted in USPS colors with the emblem on the tail asking for permission to land at the newly re-paved air strip. They had apparently done it to keep people busy, but now that was paying dividends.
The look on the guy's face when I emerged and tried to get him to sign off on the delivery was priceless. I did get the signature by the way, that was an interesting experience.
I stripped out most of the luxuries in my jet to accommodate more cargo and did some tinkering with the engines to squeeze a bit more fuel efficiency out of them. I also had five airships constructed and fly over so I can commission them in the USA. The first two that came over are the now USPS Sky Fire and the USPS Sky Envoy from the now named Sky Fire class of 500 meter armed zeppelins. The other three are USPS Transporter, USPS Mover and USPS Procurer of the new Transporter class of 250 meter zeppelins.
Over two months, I screened and hired new employees to take command of the airships, though the cargo transfer vehicles are still being operated remotely due to the prospective pilots still going through training. Additionally, I was even allowed authorization to operate additional planes, though they would still need to submit to the air force. In my spare time, I would keep directing the operations of my other bases.
There is now a full constellation of fully functional satellites, all launched from my very own own space center in africa. Oh, there's also a space station too, just for shits and giggles. It's basically constructed from modules for various things like living and science and power generations and storage and life support and other stuff like the International Space Station. Unfortunately, it's not really going to see any use, but I've left the data in the Post Office HQ database for time being.
Oh, yeah, I have a headquarters. It's a three story building that I renovated with computers flown in from my africa base. The pentagon took some and their people are going over them to make sure it's safe for installation, but my own operations are now in full swing. Actual cargo is still almost exclusively military and government but I do have employees driving ground vehicles around to deliver letters and civilian correspondence. Fortunately, I have my letter sorting and scanning process fully automated just in case to prevent malicious use of the system, and so far there have been no incidents.
Hive base is finally up and operational. While I've switched manufacturing over to my main Africa base, I've been using Hive base as my little science lab, mostly testing genetics for fruit and vegetables to sink my teeth into the whole genetic engineering thing before I decide to start getting real with animals and eventually humans. I've been modifying the cells in the vegetables for rapid growth and I've been looking into ways to stop their rapid growth at set points.
So far, my experiments have been promising, though it still needs work. The specimens that are inadequate for human consumption are simply incinerated while those that are safe for consumption are thrown over the walls with a catapult for the small community that has taken shelter under the walls of Hive Base. It's actually kinda interesting. At set intervals, I set off a warning siren and they steer clear of a predesignated landing area where I fling things like the edible rejected vegetables and jerry cans of water.
Social engineering is fun. Who knew?
There are also large tanks of water at Hive Base as well, growing algae that clumps together and is fit for consumption for both humans and for any other remediation that may be necessary including radiation removal because leaving massive pockets of radiation around the planet when I leave would just be ungenerous of me.
The pipelines connecting Hive Base to Africa are complete and the main waystation in Mogadishu, what with the new abundance of fresh water, has seen a renaissance of sorts. Previously, the local strongmen there had attempted to attack the waystation and seize the thing for themselves, but parking a currently yet to be commissioned Sky Fire class airship blasting away with the 5 inch gun had put a stop to that, and under the watchful eye of the lingering giant, the populace settled down and mostly let the way station be built.
It wasn't without some benefit though, since I built several communal fresh water fountains that they could draw water from. At first they were hesitant, but after learning everything was relatively harmless, they had begun slaking their thirst and even taking water for their own use.
There were those attempting to start vegetable plots using seeds, dirt, and water which was fine by me, and there were even some people trying out making things look pretty again, or at least as pretty as they can make things in a barren wasteland. They've even settled down and the older men who still retain their writing skill have begun recording things on whatever is at hand now that every day is not a constant battle for survival.
On what little water there is, I have begun the capture and genetic sequencing of the various fish species. After thorough categorization, it is my hope that I will be able to also genetically modify various fish to better suit factory farming to sustain populations. Thus far, I find myself fortunate that I have found various species of Tuna and salmon in the remains of the atlantic, though I find various other species in the remnants of the pacific.
Anyway, enough reminiscing. It appears that the president has a new job for me, and an urgent one, this time from the state department. Sounds like it could be interesting.
[timeskip]
When the world fell, Japan had found itself out of its depth. Cut off from valuable supplies and starved of valuable oil and other raw resources, the Japanese had fallen into a period of anarchy as civil order broke down. Many died, but a core of the SDF that had centered around the Imperial Guard, the last of the USFJ, and the Emperor had managed to keep martial law and order in the largest cities, the efforts of which were helped by continuous supplies from the United States. By the time supplies stopped coming and satellite communications with the United States had been cut off for whatever reason, Japan had been relatively unified again. With complete authority, the Emperor had ordered that the Japanese people prepare for the long haul.
Emperor Akihito sat in the Imperial Palace. The place had seen better days. In the earlier days, most of the furniture had been auctioned off to raise money, but with Japan relatively stable, things just kept on going on. A few isolated oil wells in the senkaku region pumped the much needed precious material to provide power to keep some industry running, which was why there was lights and a fan on in the throne room as his retainers attended to him.
Suddenly, a ruckus started breaking out and a servant came in, genuflecting before the emperor and trailed by the commander of the USFJ who had retained a degree of independence even when they had eventually "gone native" as they had said.
"You majesty!" The servant said. "Our long range radar stations have spotted a massive object on the horizon."
Well that was not good.
"What do you know of this object. Is it a threat?"
"I know not, your majesty, but it is huge, possibly half a kilometer long and it is coming our way."
When the object was right overhead, Akihito was on the tarmac at one of the ASDF bases, looking up at a huge zeppelin floating overhead, painted with the American flag at the front and back and just generally having a red, white, and blue color scheme. On the side in english letters read "USPS Sky Fire"
A small object suddenly detached and headed down, stopping on the tarmac in front of the party and the waiting squad of soldiers. They expected a lot of things, but what they did not expect was a huge breasted woman in a blue uniform with a blue cap and a letterbag trundling down the ramp of the aircraft and pulling along a trolley loaded with brown cardboard boxes, each with blue and white stickers plastered everywhere and a small number of stamps in one of the corners.
The woman pulled up to a stop in front of the waiting "greeting party" and attempted to reach for her letterbag. Immediately guns were raised and the woman put her hands up in the universal gesture for 'look, I do not have a big murderous weapon with which to hurt people' and after a short while, she slowly reached for her letterbag and pulled out a clipboard and a ballpoint pen.
"United States Postal Service with a package to whoever is leading Japan I guess. It just says Japan on my delivery order. I need somebody to sign off on this?"
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- Location
- America
Bleh, I meant to put Akihito bit that slipped in somehow.
Most of it is landing on sand, and it's mostly lettuce, carrots, apples, the occasional avocado, whatever wouldn't wind up being too messy to pick up out of the sand.
Whatever the situation, I hardly doubt I could make it any worse than it already is.
There's a thought.
- Location
- Fawnland
Man this is a really peaceful PA si. I like it just having fun with your new doom bot owers and helping people.
- Location
- Somewhere on the flat earth
He got all the water from the ocean didn't he?
- Location
- Arizona
Sooo, uh, anyone know why Ramble got suspended? 0_0
Edit: so, apparently, Ramble made a post that apparently violated some discussion rule/etiquette thing, and got their points over 100.
So, we won't see a post for a while, but Ramble says they're planning on building a backlog of stuff, which I assume is for this story. Cool.
Edit: so, apparently, Ramble made a post that apparently violated some discussion rule/etiquette thing, and got their points over 100.
So, we won't see a post for a while, but Ramble says they're planning on building a backlog of stuff, which I assume is for this story. Cool.
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seventeen
- Location
- America
It's been about two months since I made diplomatic contact between the nations and things have been going swiftly. For instance, I've managed to train up people up to operate the cargo transfer vehicles and I've been using my transporter class zeppelins to get from one coast to another fairly quickly and as such, they've been delivering letter mail while my plane fleet which consists of about three 747s fitted specifically for cargo, and six 737s fitted for limited passenger transport and cargo.
I've hired enough employees to have at least a local branch in every major city in the United States, and I also have a branch in Japan, Korea, China, and Europe. The Cargo Transfer Vehicles have also been pretty effective on their own. It is expedient to pave a helicopter pad and simply use those to deliver mail to remote areas themselves.
Of course, I also delivered two 747 modified hulls to the air force for conversion into the mobile command centers and white house that would be Air Force One. They just cleared inspection.
In any case, things are just a little bit boring. Not much for me to do.
I've also had my nanomachines infiltrate the other nations as well, and now I have lots of designs for lovely things.
The hive base aquaculture facility has moved from plant trials to animal trials, mostly with disasterous results. Accelerated growth tests on fish have not gone so well, though fortunately, the corpses are still safe to eat and after filleting, are completely indistinguishable from regular fish. I've been flinging fish wrapped in plastic to the small but growing population gathering at the base of the walls. They are quite happy to be having some meat in their diets and with a constant supply falling from the sky, the elders among them who remember the times before civilization fell have started experimenting with ways of preparing them like grilling or cutting into sashimi and other stuff like mixing it into their vegetables. I've also been growing things like corn which I dry and fling over the walls, and rice which I dry, put in a bag, and fling over the walls.
With food and water becoming something available to everybody and even having some left over, the little community of about a hundred have already started becoming an actual community with caretakers, powder cooks, regular cooks, scribes, and blackfingers using the metal from the Jerry cans I fling over to make various things ranging from housing panels to guns. They even have a security force which came in handy when a group of Roadkill decided to attack and were promptly beaten to death.
In any case, I'm expecting to start growing trees soon. There's that.
The factions have already made contact with my little community, Gutgash, Jeet, Pink Eye, and Deep Friah. It's only a matter of time until Scrotus's legion gets wind of it though, so I've had my aircraft hangars build a few Mi-24 gunships, loaded and armed for bear to protect my little community should it become necessary.
In other news, I went up to the former site of lake Victoria and built a water generator there. Already the lake is filling up and I expect that it will soon start overflowing and spilling down where the former Nile used to be, feeding the mediterranean.
Ah, what is this?
Somebody just came to HQ and is telling my front desk something.
Oh.
I frantically sift through the records of sorted mail and find the discrepancy. Some cheeky shit is using my system to commit mail fraud. Well, that's not gonna happen any longer, not on my watch. Immediately I despatch messengers to deliver warnings to anybody who has received mail from the flagged sender what they're gonna get into. I also look through the mail that has already been sorted and remove the mail to and from the violating address so I can build a case.
Since I took over essentially one of the functions of the US government, President Morgan felt it prudent to allow me the law enforcement powers afforded to the postmaster general in the constitution, and while my postal inspection service is mostly small, I have been training them continuously for any inevitability. It seems that I'll get to use them now.
After I take a while to build the case, I send it off to the Justice department to get a search warrant.
A few days later and I think I've pretty much made a point. Five officers in full body armor and carrying assault rifles lead the jackass from his house and bundle him into the back of a police SUV with tinted windows that I provided and outfitted with the latest gear. I think the minigun turret on the IFV the squad arrived in may have been overkill though, don't remember why I thought of adding miniguns to the equipment loadout, but it sure frightened the perp when it started spinning up. The guy had a gun too. Kinda interesting.
Footnote. Moving on.
The Global situation is improving with the nations now talking to each other and though they're not exactly using me for all their shipping, they are getting around to getting their own postal services up and running again, though I'm still far more efficient. News of the mail fraudster and my immediate response got out and people have been coming to the USPS post offices more. It's kinda nice.
My requests to start door to door delivery in other countries is still processing, but I'm pretty sure that it'll go through.
For now, I can sit back and relax.
I've hired enough employees to have at least a local branch in every major city in the United States, and I also have a branch in Japan, Korea, China, and Europe. The Cargo Transfer Vehicles have also been pretty effective on their own. It is expedient to pave a helicopter pad and simply use those to deliver mail to remote areas themselves.
Of course, I also delivered two 747 modified hulls to the air force for conversion into the mobile command centers and white house that would be Air Force One. They just cleared inspection.
In any case, things are just a little bit boring. Not much for me to do.
I've also had my nanomachines infiltrate the other nations as well, and now I have lots of designs for lovely things.
The hive base aquaculture facility has moved from plant trials to animal trials, mostly with disasterous results. Accelerated growth tests on fish have not gone so well, though fortunately, the corpses are still safe to eat and after filleting, are completely indistinguishable from regular fish. I've been flinging fish wrapped in plastic to the small but growing population gathering at the base of the walls. They are quite happy to be having some meat in their diets and with a constant supply falling from the sky, the elders among them who remember the times before civilization fell have started experimenting with ways of preparing them like grilling or cutting into sashimi and other stuff like mixing it into their vegetables. I've also been growing things like corn which I dry and fling over the walls, and rice which I dry, put in a bag, and fling over the walls.
With food and water becoming something available to everybody and even having some left over, the little community of about a hundred have already started becoming an actual community with caretakers, powder cooks, regular cooks, scribes, and blackfingers using the metal from the Jerry cans I fling over to make various things ranging from housing panels to guns. They even have a security force which came in handy when a group of Roadkill decided to attack and were promptly beaten to death.
In any case, I'm expecting to start growing trees soon. There's that.
The factions have already made contact with my little community, Gutgash, Jeet, Pink Eye, and Deep Friah. It's only a matter of time until Scrotus's legion gets wind of it though, so I've had my aircraft hangars build a few Mi-24 gunships, loaded and armed for bear to protect my little community should it become necessary.
In other news, I went up to the former site of lake Victoria and built a water generator there. Already the lake is filling up and I expect that it will soon start overflowing and spilling down where the former Nile used to be, feeding the mediterranean.
Ah, what is this?
Somebody just came to HQ and is telling my front desk something.
Oh.
I frantically sift through the records of sorted mail and find the discrepancy. Some cheeky shit is using my system to commit mail fraud. Well, that's not gonna happen any longer, not on my watch. Immediately I despatch messengers to deliver warnings to anybody who has received mail from the flagged sender what they're gonna get into. I also look through the mail that has already been sorted and remove the mail to and from the violating address so I can build a case.
Since I took over essentially one of the functions of the US government, President Morgan felt it prudent to allow me the law enforcement powers afforded to the postmaster general in the constitution, and while my postal inspection service is mostly small, I have been training them continuously for any inevitability. It seems that I'll get to use them now.
After I take a while to build the case, I send it off to the Justice department to get a search warrant.
A few days later and I think I've pretty much made a point. Five officers in full body armor and carrying assault rifles lead the jackass from his house and bundle him into the back of a police SUV with tinted windows that I provided and outfitted with the latest gear. I think the minigun turret on the IFV the squad arrived in may have been overkill though, don't remember why I thought of adding miniguns to the equipment loadout, but it sure frightened the perp when it started spinning up. The guy had a gun too. Kinda interesting.
Footnote. Moving on.
The Global situation is improving with the nations now talking to each other and though they're not exactly using me for all their shipping, they are getting around to getting their own postal services up and running again, though I'm still far more efficient. News of the mail fraudster and my immediate response got out and people have been coming to the USPS post offices more. It's kinda nice.
My requests to start door to door delivery in other countries is still processing, but I'm pretty sure that it'll go through.
For now, I can sit back and relax.
- Location
- Fawnland
Ramble the mail commander. I love when these SIs do weird things.
I enjoy a good few Commander stories, but the easy fights are the least interesting parts, to be sure.
- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
Very nice story, very unusual for a Commander fic (sure, it's technically escalation, but it's the good kind of escalation).
I really want to see more stuff like that (not necessarily in this particular fic, but here too).
Incidentally, how much time it's been in-story?
I really want to see more stuff like that (not necessarily in this particular fic, but here too).
Incidentally, how much time it's been in-story?
- Location
- America
About two and a half months-ish or something.
I've always been a fan of the more mundane services. The postal service, the coast guard, the department of treasury, department of energy, department of transportation, and other things. They don't get much thinking about. When you think about power, you think ARMY and AIRFORCE and NAVY and NUKES. You never really think about things like the postal service getting mail from one place to another, the coast guard puttering about in rickety boats enforcing the law and saving lives, the department of treasury making sure that there's money to pay people with, the department of energy keeping the lights on or the department of transportation keeping the roads paved.
- Location
- Midwest
Have you thought about starting a bank? Create a functional paper currency, with a fractional reserve banking system, powered by AI analytics to bring the joys of securitization and low-cost debt to the primitives.
Could also expand into commodity trading / insurance for farming.
Or, just go straight infrastructure / private equity fund. You have functionally unlimited capital. Build an energy distribution network, but let local entrepreneurs under your regs set up last mile hookups.
Could also expand into commodity trading / insurance for farming.
Or, just go straight infrastructure / private equity fund. You have functionally unlimited capital. Build an energy distribution network, but let local entrepreneurs under your regs set up last mile hookups.
Decim
On again, off again lurker.
- Location
- St. Louis, MO
Indeed, a lot of people forgot that logistics are the critical piece that allows for our modern standards of living.
I've always liked the Napoleon quote, "An army marches on it's stomach." To me it says, "If you don't do your logistics work, you get fucked up as your army falls apart around you."