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argyle-s · 4 years ago

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Hello,

My name is Molly Bragg. I’m a bi trans gender author who has writing for almost three decades. I’m passionate about creating the kind of content I enjoy, which means stories that center around queer women, I’ve recently completed a original queer genre romance novel and I’m looking for help covering the cost of having it professionally edited.

To give you a preview of what you would be supporting, here’s Chapter 1:

***

Beth watched the buildings pass as the air cab carried her over Los Angeles taking in the changes the last ten years had wrought on the city. Most of the low-income areas had been bulldozed, and those areas were now filled with alien arcologies. Massive buildings that stretched kilometers into the sky, each one a city unto itself, and in their shadows, the skyscrapers that had once been incredible achievements of human architecture and engineering. The buildings which had been hubs of human industry and centers of financial empires were now reduced to little more than playhouses for the backwards primitives who had the misfortune to be born natives of the Galactic Hegemony’s latest colony world. If they’d had another century or two things might have been different. Humanity had been advancing quickly. They wouldn’t have been on par with the technology of the Hegemony by any stretch, but they might have been able to dictate better terms. The Gatekeepers hadn’t cared. The gate had drifted into a stable orbit in the outer system, and the Gatekeepers had announced that, like it or not, the Sol system was being added to their vast network of space fold gates. The first ships from the Hegemony had arrived just a month later, and ever since, Earth had been on the road to becoming the galactic equivalent of a banana republic. So far, her job and her savings had let her avoid the worst of what was happening, but unemployment was at a record high as alien automation systems replaced human labor in almost every sector. The company she worked for had shifted gears from research and development to reverse engineering alien tech and had seen a short windfall in profits, but that was starting to vanish as the inevitable inflation drove prices up and the people they had been selling reverse engineered tech could no longer afford it. Beth wasn’t really that worried for herself. She’d been poor before, and however much she might hate the idea she could survive being poor again. What brought her to LA today was Sam. Sam was getting close to graduation, and she had acceptance letters from every college that could afford postage. A 4.0 unweighted GPA, high SAT scores, and a couple of impressive summer internships meant that schools were falling all over themselves to offer her full rides. Ten years ago, that would have all but ensured her a bright future. These days a PhD from Harvard, Yale, or MIT wasn’t worth the cost of paper to print the degree. People still made noise about human exceptionalism and about taking humanity’s place in the larger galactic community, but Beth had spent a lot of time over the last decade studying the history of colonization on Earth, and it never once ended well for the people being colonized.Regardless of what happened to the colonized peoples as a whole, there were always individual exceptions... people who avoided the fate of their brethren. It was her determination to ensure her daughter’s future that brought her to LA today. While billionaires had started buying their kids spots in alien schools the moment they were allowed out of the Sol System, Beth didn’t have that option. She was well off enough that she and Sam weren’t feeling the effects of the colonization yet, but nowhere near rich enough to buy a ticket off-world for Sam, much less pay for an off-world education. Instead, she’d spent years looking into other options. So far, none of her work had paid off, but she hadn’t given up hope. She was headed to a meeting with a broker who helped place kids into programs that offered grants, scholarships and all expenses paid exchange programs. She was going to find a way to offer her daughter a better future than most of Earth’s children could look forward to. No matter what it took. *** “Ms. Murray, it’s so nice to meet you,” the man said as he held out his hand. Beth took it and gave it a quick shake while trying her best not to let on that he reminded her of a used car salesman. She needed his help, and it wouldn’t do to offend him. “Nice to meet you too, Mr. Cooper.” “Please, call me Owen,” he said. “Right this way.” He led her out of the small, brightly decorated waiting room and into a small, neat office. He gestured to a chair in front of his desk as he walked around behind it and took his seat. “So, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page here Ms. Murray. You are looking for an opportunity for your daughter to continue her education off-world, is that correct?” “Yes,” Beth said. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we’re both looking for the same outcome. Now, I’ve gone through Samantha’s records. Academically, she’s in great shape, and the extra-curriculars are good too. I’ve been able to find at least twenty different programs that will accept her.” “That’s great,” Beth said, though she didn’t believe it. She’d heard the exact same thing from more than a dozen other brokers, and she suspected she wasn’t going to hear anything new. “What are the terms?” “It varies from program to program. All of them require a period of indenture, but some are as low as eight years.” Beth tried to hide her disappointment. She wanted to give her daughter a better future, not sell her into virtual slavery for almost a decade. “Owen, I’m looking for a program without any period of indenture. I know they exist, but you’re the fifteenth broker I’ve talked to and none of them have offered even an application to an indenture free program.” “They do exist, but Ms. Murray, you must understand. There are a lot of people who want their children to receive an off-world education, and slots which don’t require a period of indentured service are in especially high demand.” “I understand that, but I haven’t gotten high demand, I’ve gotten completely unavailable. I’d like to know why no one will even consider letting her apply.” Owen looked at her for almost a minute, not saying anything, before he finally leaned back in his chair and let out a weary sigh. “Honestly, Ms. Murray?” “Please.” “Those slots go to the kids of billionaires, presidents, CEO’s, ambassadors, kings and other high level government types. Each year, a handful will go to some poor kids from the ghetto so that they can parade them around as part of a puff piece about how generous the aliens are, but that’s just window dressing. The truth is, your daughter is neither rich enough, nor poor enough to ever get one of those slots.” Beth had to bite her tongue to keep from swearing. She wasn’t surprised at all, but she was angry and frustrated. She’d half suspected something like that was going on, but hearing it spelled out so clearly was still enough to make her blood boil. “Isn’t there anything, any way that I can get her off-world without selling her into slavery?” “Ms. Murray, Indentured Service is hardly slavery.” “It’s close enough.” Owen stared at her for a moment, and then shook his head. “What?” “It’s nothing.” “It’s something,” she said. “Please.” He sighed. “It’s not something I would normally offer to someone of your background.” “What does that mean?” “It means that some aliens have cultural practices that people of Western European descent find unpalatable, while those from other cultures would find those practices perfectly normal.” “I’m not sure I follow.” “Ms. Murray, you are aware that, much to the surprise of every biologist on the planet, there are a number of species with whom humanity shares a degree of reproductive compatibility?” “I am,” she said. “Well, there is a species called the Sionnach. They’re native to a planet called Talamh in the Grian system, and they bear a rather striking resemblance to humans. There are differences of course, but the basic morphology is the same. The reason I bring this up is that about eighty years ago, Talamh suffered an environmental catastrophe that wiped out nearly ninety-five percent of their population in the span of a few weeks. Because of their reproductive practices prior to the incident, the Sionnach found themselves facing a sort of genetic bottleneck, and they decided that the best way to alleviate this was to seek an outside infusion of genetic material.” “They’re looking for breeding stock,” Beth said. “Yes.” “You can’t be serious.” “And this is why I don’t offer this option to white people,” Owen said. “Ms. Murray, I’m not suggesting you sell your daughter off as some kind of brood mare. The Sionnach take selection of their mates very, very seriously. They gather applications from a number of candidates, and the Sionnach in question reviews them, and selects the ones they like. Then, their family reviews their choices, and select a candidate. The candidate is then brought to the house of their prospective spouse, and they spend a period of time together. Roughly five hours. During that time they talk, get to know each other, and decide if they want to proceed. If both parties agree, they enter a five year engagement. During those five years, the candidate is treated as a member of the house. They are given a stipend, they’re educated, they’re housed, fed, provided with medical care, and they undergo medical procedures which allow them to survive on Talamh without special equipment.” “What sort of medical procedures?” “Talamh is a high gravity world with a higher-than-normal concentration of heavy metals in the environment. Your daughter would need procedures to be able to stand up to the local gravity, and to be able to filter out metals she would not normally be able to purge from her system. She would also undergo a type of gene therapy which would make her more resistant to radiation and give her the ability to see parts of the infrared spectrum and hear sounds normally outside of the range of human hearing.” “That sounds dangerous.” “The Sionnach are one of the founding species of the Hegemony. Their technology is thousands of years more advanced than ours, and they’ve been doing these procedures since before humans built their first cities.” Beth shook her head. “An arranged marriage… I don’t know.” “If I’m honest, it’s a long shot. You would have to take your daughter for a screening. She’d have to pass the screening for any sort of genetic issues that would eliminate her, then she would have to be selected by one of the Sionnach. If that happens, you and your family would have to travel to Talamh at the expense of the Sionnach house that selected her, and your daughter would have to get through the initial interview. But if she does, she would get the education you want for her.” “And what happens at the end of the five years if she decides she doesn’t want to marry the person who selected her.” “Then she’s free to walk away. She’d be given a small amount of money, and passage to anywhere within the Hegemony, but she’d be free to do what she wants.” “No indenture? No repayment of expenses?” Beth asked. “No,” Owen said. “But again, it’s a long shot, and I take my normal fee just to put you through the application process, whether she gets selected or not.” “How many humans get selected?” Beth asked. “She’d be the first,” Owen said. “What’s your fee?” Beth asked. “Five hundred Hegemony credits.” Beth winced. Given current exchange rates, that was almost ten thousand dollars. “How quickly would we know?” Beth asked. Owen turned and woke up his computer. She watched as he pulled up a page and scrolled through before clicking on a link. “There’s only one family looking right now. Applications are due by the end of next week. You’d know in a month, tops.” Beth thought about it for a moment. It was a longshot, and she wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea, but it was better than an indenture, so she reached for her credit card. *** Sam looked up from her homework at the sound of a light knock on her bedroom door. The door was wide open, and her mother was standing there looking at her. Sam couldn’t quite place the expression on her face but given the appointment she had earlier, Sam didn’t have any doubt about what it meant. “No luck, huh?” she asked, trying not to let the relief she felt creep into her voice. She knew an off-world education would open a lot of doors for her and give her opportunities that she wouldn’t have otherwise, and she really did want to go off-world, travel in space and see other planets someday, but the idea of living on another planet for four or more years was both frightening and overwhelming. “Not much,” her mom said. “He did have one program you could apply for that doesn’t include an indenture period. I emailed you the link to the application. I need you to fill it out today, because I made an appointment for tomorrow for you to go for the physical and psych scan that’s required.” “Tomorrow? Mom, tomorrow’s Jenny’s birthday party.” “I know, sweetie, and I’m sorry. I know you were looking forward to the party, but you might have to miss it. I’ve already got us portal tokens, and tomorrow is the only day we can go before the deadline without you missing school. I made the appointment for as early as I could, so you should get home in time to go.” Sam wanted to argue, but she already knew it was useless. She hadn’t missed a day of school since halfway through the eighth grade, and she knew her mom wasn’t going to let her start less than a month before graduation. She also knew her mom wasn’t going to let her pass up a chance at an off-world scholarship just to go to a birthday party. Even if the birthday girl was her best friend who she’d been crushing on since Kindergarten. Of course, her mom didn’t exactly know that last part because she hadn’t told her she liked girls. She’d considered telling her a few times, but she’d always changed her mind at the last minute, because if her mom knew she liked girls, she might decide that Jenny was a distraction that Sam didn’t need in her life and that wasn’t a battle she wanted to fight. “Fine,” she said, reaching for her laptop. “I’ll do the application now.” “Thank you. And Sam, I love you.” “I love you too, mom,” she said. Her mom left and Sam opened up the email link, which took her to a form that asked her for an invite code. She checked the email and sure enough, there was a code for her. She copied it and pasted it into the form, and when she did, it took her to the next page, and a lot of the information was prepopulated, including her latest ID card photo, name and age, along with her school transcripts and medical records. The stuff that was left for her to fill out read more like a dating profile than a college application. The first section was hobbies and interests and activities. She thought about it for a minute and decided to just be honest instead of going through all the BS she usually did for the college apps. She put down soccer, swimming, surfing, electronics, robotics, reading, martial arts, camping and motocross. She attached pictures of herself in her soccer uniform, along with a couple of video clips from some of the team’s games, then she added a few videos of her swim meets, and a couple of pictures and some videos of her surfing. She pulled up her YouTube folder and attached a few build videos for some of her robotics projects, along with the parts lists, schematics, models for the 3D printed parts, and the source code for the micro-controllers she’d written. She added a picture of her holding two trophies from a local Karate tournament where she’d placed second in sparring, and third in bo staff, and added a few videos of her matches. She also added a few pictures from her camping trips and a picture of her sitting on a dirt bike, along with a video Jenny had taken of her running one of the beginner courses, then pulled up her ebook library and dumped the list of all her books, listed her favorite movies and attached all her playlists from her music library. The next section was a little weird. It asked about what sort of foods she liked, so she gave a list. Then is asked whether she enjoyed various activities. Most of them were fairly common things. Theater, music, art. A couple she had to check the cultural database link. She was surprised and excited when she found out that whoever was sponsoring this program apparently considered dragon racing important enough to put on the questionnaire. All in all, she spent about two hours filling out the application, and once she was done, she hit submit, and then pulled out her cell phone and opened up her text messages with Jenny. Sam: ‘Bad news. I might miss your party.’ Jenny: ‘What?!!!’ Sam: ‘Mom’s dragging me to New York in the morning for a physical and a psych scan for a scholarship.’ Jenny: ‘She’s still on that off-world college kick?’ Sam: ‘Yeah.’ Jenny: ‘Girl, you don’t want to go to college with ET’s’ Sam: ‘I’ve got to get accepted before I have to worry about it.’ Jenny: ‘Come by my place when you’re done. Even if you miss the party, I want to see you.’ Sam: ‘Will do. See you tomorrow.’ Jenny; ‘Night.’ Sam sat down her phone and looked at her homework. She’d wanted to finish before dinner, but there was no way that was happening now. She grabbed it anyway and went back to work, trying to get as much done as possible before her mom called her downstairs.

***

End Chapter 1

***

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Vikings Season 6: Where in the (New) World are Ubbe and Floki?

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This article contains spoilers for Vikings season 6.

Vikings bowed out on a beautiful scene that evoked both the quiet victory of love and friendship over savage human nature, and the endless, rolling seas of the uncharted future. Floki and Ubbe sat together on a far-flung New World beach – as westward as any two Vikings had ever travelled – reflecting on their lives and lots. They basked in the warmth of each other as much in the glow of the sun, and then watched in enraptured silence as the sun slowly set in the… east? But… they sailed west and disembarked at the shore. So… how can they… And the sun doesn’t set in the east… Wait a minute.

Where exactly in the name of Valhalla were those guys?

Out with the Old, In with the New

In seeking to answer the question of where exactly in North America our titular Vikings ended up, it’s necessary to look at the evidence of where in the New World their real-world historical counterparts tried – and ultimately failed – to gain a foothold.

By the time Norsemen first glimpsed the shores of North America they had already established semi-permanent colonies on both Iceland and Greenland, which wasn’t the case when Ubbe made the same journey, or Floki before him. In the show, Iceland was still a fledgling quasi-camp, while Greenland had only just been discovered. It’s clear, then, that creator Michael Hirst is staking a claim to Floki and Ubbe having been the first ‘Vikings’ ever to have set foot on the continent.

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While it’s implausible that other Vikings unknown to the historical record may have reached America without leaving trail or trace, it’s certainly not impossible. This is largely due to the scarcity and unreliability of much of the available evidence. The bulk of what we know about that place and time comes from the Icelandic and Greenland Sagas, and the Saga of Erik the Red, all of which were written at least two centuries after the events they describe. Furthermore, all of them contain, swimming among the truth, embellishments, flights of fancy and flat-out fake news.

That’s worth bearing in mind as we meet some of the real-life Vikings who blazed that westward trail.

Finding Greeland

In the show, the pattern of westward discovery begins with a beleaguered Floki surrendering himself to the winds of fate and discovering Iceland. He believes he’s found Asgard, and hurries back to Norway to gather up settlers. Despite much bloodshed, and the apparent death of Floki in the bowels of a crumbling volcano, the colony takes root. A traveller by the name of Othere arrives in Iceland and tells tales of a lush and verdant land to the west, which excites the imaginations of Kjetil Flatnose, Ubbe and Torvi, who set off to find it.

They find Greenland instead, a barren, inhospitable land that promises little but bleakness and death. Indeed, a dispute over territory and food culminates in a massacre atop and around the remains of a beached whale – precipitated and presided over by the psychotic Kjetil – prompting Ubbe, Torvi and Othere to gather up their survivors, rush to their boats and flee westward once more.

In the middle of the uncharted ocean, holding out little hope of survival, the remaining Vikings are overjoyed finally to discover the lands of which Othere spoke. There they find Skraelings (Skraelings was the less than complimentary Norse name for foreigners, meaning something like ‘savages’ – and, miraculously, Floki. Relations with the Skraelings are warm, and even survive an act of unsanctioned violence that at first threatens to place the Vikings and Skraelings at each other’s throats. All is well.

The story of how Greenland and North America were discovered by real-life Scandinavians is also characterised by accident, destiny and criminal behaviour, but takes many different turns.

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We begin in Norway, with a man named Thorvald Asvaldsson. Thorvald was banished to Iceland for the crime of manslaughter (making Iceland very much the sub-zero Australia of its day). Thorvald took his family with him, including his soon-to-be-famous son, Erik Thorvaldsson – more famously known as Erik the Red – of whom sagas would one day be written. Though Erik would help colonize Greenland, he would not be the one to discover it.

That honor goes to Gunnbjörn Ulfsson, who discovered Greenland entirely by accident when his boat was blown off course on the journey from Norway to Iceland. Years later, Erik decided to take heed of Ulfsson’s account and investigate this mysterious land to the west. It was not only his intrepid nature that propelled this journey, but also necessity, as Erik had proved the old adage about the apple never falling far from the tree by getting himself banished from Iceland. Criminal history not-with-standing, the colony Erik founded in Greenland would prevail for five hundred years. He chose the island’s rather misleading name in a bid to entice more settlers to its desolate shores, figuring correctly that IcyWasteland wouldn’t have had quite the same draw.

Erik’s peripatetic ambitions rested there, but were passed on to his sons, especially Leif Eriksson, whose adventurous spirit would lead the Vikings to North America. Again… by accident.

But not Leif’s accident. In a move that presaged the great need for all Scandinavian vessels to be fitted with SatNavs, a man named Bjarni Herjolfsson took a wrong turn on a voyage from Norway to Iceland, and was the first European to glimpse the North American coastline. Leif would remember this.

The Final Westward Journey of the Vikings

The son of Erik the Red lived through a time of great upheaval in Norse society. The network of earldoms had largely vanished, leaving monarchy in its place (the show establishes a lot of this in its fifth and sixth seasons). Christianity had almost completely replaced paganism (again, this ideological battle runs through the spine of the show), to the point where even the King of Norway was a Christian. Leif converted to Christianity while visiting Norway, and was thereafter tasked by the King with spreading the word of God westwards to Iceland and Greenland.

Nobody knows if he set sail to Herjolfsson’s promised land full of missionary zeal, or whether he was simply following the family tradition of exploration. Whatever the motivation, Leif and his brother, Thorvald, set off into the great unknown with a modest fleet and a motley crew of Vikings.

They charted three distinct lands: Helluland, meaning land of flat stones, believed to be modern day Baffin Island; Markland, meaning land of forests, believed to be the southern part of modern Labrador; and, Vinland, meaning land of wine (though this meaning has been argued among scholars). Nobody knows exactly where Vinland is on the modern map. All we know for sure is that the Vikings went there, and it was reputedly a land of salmon, berries, and wine – much as it appeared on the show, in fact.

It was also a land of Skraelings. Thorvald’s first encounter with them went rather less well than it did for Ubbe. Thorvald captured and killed a number of the native peoples, earning him in return a fatal arrow to his armpit.

So Where Was Vinland?

In the 1960s Helge Marcus Ingstad and his archaeologist wife Anne Stine Ingstad chartered a boat and tried to retrace the steps of those early Viking explorers, searching for evidence of settlements or colonies, using the sagas, and a crude, ancient map (the Skálholt Map), as their guide. They finally struck it lucky on Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, where they discovered, at L’Anse aux Meadows, the first and to date only evidence of a Viking settlement in the New World. Cast-iron confirmation came when excavation of the site revealed identical tools to those that had been used by the Vikings in Iceland. Could Newfoundland, then, be the mythical Vinland; Ubbe’s land of plenty?

Not likely. Even adjusting for climate variation over the past millennium, Newfoundland has never been blessed with the soil or weather conditions to support the growing of grapes. Wild grapes are to be found far south-west of Newfoundland: in Chaleur Bay, New Brunswick and, further south, in modern-day New England. Scholars think it more likely that the settlement at Newfoundland was more of a bustling way station, or a distribution hub for New World timber being sent back to Greenland.

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The ‘Skraelings’ described in the sagas, and as depicted in the show, were a good match for the Beothuk people, who were natives of Newfoundland. However, it is more likely that Ubbe and his Vikings met the Mi’kmaq, a similarly daubed yet ceaselessly peripatetic tribe whose large territory incorporated Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, among many others.

It’s worth hazarding a guess, then, that the Vinland beach Ubbe and Floki sat upon in the closing moments of the show’s finale was somewhere on the south-west coast of Nova Scotia. It’s likely they watched the sun set on the western horizon, with the coast of Maine hidden somewhere far beyond it. The flora, fauna and local tribes all match this location, too.

The real history of the Vikings’ westward journey adds a rather more somber note to that final scene. Unless Ubbe and Floki exist in some parallel universe, other Vikings will walk where they’ve walked yet find no trace of their existence, nor will any word reach Norway and Iceland of the places Ubbe and Floki found or the people they met. Which means that their dreams of peace and hope will end with death at the hands of the Skraelings, or else in the mighty embrace of the ocean as they try to return home with tales of the New World in the West. But that hope still existed, and for one blessed moment they savoured it.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Perhaps Vinland isn’t a place, but a state of mind.

The post Vikings Season 6: Where in the (New) World are Ubbe and Floki? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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welcometothepenumbra · 6 years ago

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JUNO STEEL AND THE STOLEN CITY (PART ONE)

SOUND: RAIN. TRAIN ARRIVES, CREAKS TO A STOP. DOOR CLANKS OPEN.

CONDUCTOR: Ah, good evening, Traveler. And welcome… to The Penumbra. Take your seat, please, take your seat.

MUSIC: STARTS.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS SHUT.

The junction lies just ahead, Traveler. If you’ll allow me just a moment.

SOUND: TRAIN WHISTLE.

(CHUCKLES) Well, next stop? Hyperion City.

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING.

A month is a very long time to stake out, but Detective Steel is nothing if not dedicated to his job. And so he sits on a rooftop, day after day, watching the Museum of Colonized History, waiting to see the gangster who is supposed to pay for a killing here, and absolutely nothing has happened.

Until today. Suddenly, the month of quiet has given way, and threats old and new are jumping out of every shadow. But when the metaphorical and literal Martian rain are both 90% acid, Detective Steel had better find cover, and quickly.

SOUND: TRAIN BRAKES. DOOR CLANKS OPEN, RAIN.

Our next stop: Juno Steel and the Stolen City.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

MUSIC: STARTS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): If you get up early enough and you catch it in just the right light, Hyperion City can be sorta beautiful. The billboards backlit by the early morning light, the dew-spackled trashcans, the sunrise shadows cast by highscrapers and floating mansions… it’s really somethin’. And every time I see it I wish I was dead.

My name’s Juno Steel. I’m a private eye, and I usually don’t see any side of the city that comes earlier than noon, but, lately I’ve been changing things up. Seeing a lot of sunrises. Drinking a lot of coffee. Saying no to old habits like sleep and… no, pretty much just sleep.

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

RAMSES O’FLAHERTY (FROM COMMS): Juno. Status report.

JUNO: Oh, hey Ramses, it’s… been a big three hours since four AM, got some real exciting stuff to catch you up on.

RAMSES: Glad to hear it. You’ve only been staking out for, what? A month? (CHUCKLES)

JUNO (NARRATOR): I’d been following a lead for weeks on someone who was trying to sabotage Ramses O’Flaherty. And it all pointed here: the Museum of Colonized History, so far on the outskirts of Hyperion City that the building’s roof had to be rounded just to fit on the inside of the Dome. Even here, the buildings were jammed tight enough together you didn’t have room to breathe – and it was at this museum, under the cover of all that sprawl, where I’d supposedly catch a one-eared woman doing some shady business. Which you’d think would be pretty exciting. It sounds exciting, doesn’t it? But what it actually translates to is sitting on a rooftop from early morning to late night, watching a museum all day, every day, until you get so bored you wonder how hard you’d have to pull to take your toes off.

MUSIC: ENDS.

RAMSES: Are you listening? Do I need to get you a cybernetic ear to go along with that eye? I asked if you’d seen any sign of Yasmin Swift’s employer yet.

JUNO: Nope. But my foot fell asleep and I’m bored out of my goddamn mind. That’s the status report. Now entertain me before I take the ‘stir’ out of ‘stir crazy.’

RAMSES: Entertain you? Well, I suppose I’m already the city’s clown. Why not be Juno Steel’s, too?

JUNO: Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.

RAMSES: Not that bad. Would you like me to read this headline to you? Molly Chung, Uptown Bulletin: “Opinion: Ramses O’Flaherty’s Campaign Is As Old And Stale As He Is.”

JUNO: That’s just one—

RAMSES: Hyperion Chronicle: “Study: Pilot Pereyra’s Increased Funding to HCPD Doubles Prison Population, Halves Crime Rate.” That study is just so incredibly inaccurate, by the way. The Beacon: “Treasurer Insists O’Flaherty’s Budget Won’t Balance, Quote, ‘No Matter What Math Says.’” Elysium Times—

JUNO: Okay, okay, so it’s pretty bad. (SIGHS) Explains how Pilot won so many damn elections, anyway. Takes a lot of skill to smear your opponent without getting your hands dirty.

RAMSES: Oh, their strategy is a lot more impressive than that. Everyone knows Pilot’s a crook – but they’ve changed the conversation so that’s a plus. If we’re going to live in a city full of cutthroats, the reasoning goes, we should at least have a cutthroat on our side, too. That’s been their platform for years: the world doesn’t play fair, so why should we?

JUNO: Well, at least nobody’s tried to kill you lately.

RAMSES: Always be grateful for the little things, yes. I wouldn’t rest on those laurels just yet, though – whoever this is, if they’re after my campaign and not just me, their biggest strike will come at the eleventh hour. They still have four days before the election.

JUNO: Guess that means I don’t get to leave this goddamn roof, then. Which is fine, but I guess I just didn’t know doing good would look so much like doing nothing.

RAMSES: Juno…

Nevermind. Your physicals say your knife wound is healing. Are you, ehm… making progress in your physical therapy? They must have given you stretches, or something like that?

JUNO: Yeah, well… doesn’t mean I do ‘em.

RAMSES: You should. It’s not like you have anything better to do up there. You could at least make use of the care I pay for. I have to protect my investment.

JUNO: Yeah, I read about that. The cyber-eye is hooked up to my nervous system, so if my brain function stops, it stops. That’s a lot of creds down the drain.

RAMSES: I didn’t mean the Theia.

We’ve been working together for some time now, Juno. I truly hope that– by which I mean, I hope you don’t think that I merely think of you as… uh, well…

JUNO: Wait, Ramses – hold that thought.

RAMSES: Oh, thank God.

JUNO: I see someone.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Down in the alley by the museum… the woman with one ear! The Piranha.

JUNO (NARRATOR): She’d gotten away from me once, and I wasn’t gonna forget that. The Piranha, who’d nearly killed Maia King. The Piranha, who was all sharp teeth and a need to bite. If she was behind this, I thought, that would explain the methods used to go after Ramses so far. Roasting roller-coasters and killer criminal consultants seemed like the right kind of over-the-top from the mind that brought you the cat-bomb.

It took everything I had in me not to go down and get her right then. But sometimes you need bait. And sometimes that means leaving a piranha on the line in hopes you’ll catch a whale.

RAMSES: Well? What’s she doing?

JUNO: Just waiting around, it looks like, but… why?

SOUND: CAR DRIVES UP.

Hang on, a car just pulled up. Someone’s leaning out, it’s…

Uh… uh, Ramses?

RAMSES: Juno.

JUNO: You’re not gonna believe this.

RAMSES: You and your buildups. This had better be worth it.

JUNO: It’s Mayor Pereyra.

SOUND: DISTANT CAR DOOR CLOSES, FOOTSTEPS.

Mayor Pilot Pereyra is doing back-alley business with a killer, and I caught them red-handed.

RAMSES: Well. That was worth it.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Pilot Pereyra, Mayor of Hyperion City for four years running, was famous for their stiletto heels. They had a new pair in a new hideous color every week, and Pilot made killings off of ‘em. Both in the literal sense – just ask Sal Barone, found floating in Mars’s orbit with two of Pilot’s heels jammed into his throat – and in the financial sense – like how for a year after, every crime boss in Hyperion paid Pilot hand over fist for a pair like the one that killed Barone. Because Pilot Pereyra didn’t just organize crime: as mayor, they defined it. And if this was the whale the Piranha was gonna bring in… hell, maybe her getting away had been a good thing after all.

RAMSES: You’ve undergone the modifications to the Theia’s Rec Mode, haven’t you?

JUNO: ‘Course I have. I skipped physical therapy last week to do it. Theia, Rec Mode.

THEIA: Rec mode. Activated. Two hours of video storage. Remaining.

JUNO: That’s more like it!

THEIA: Error: Wireless uplink not found. Cannot transmit footage—

JUNO: What kind of low-rent eye did you get me, O’Flaherty?

THEIA: —Please connect to a physical uplink.

RAMSES: One day you’ll think of the Theia like your first car, Juno: all these quirks will just be part of its character. You’ll connect to a physical uplink later.

JUNO: And where the hell does that go?

THEIA: Caution: you don’t want to know.

JUNO: Fine, fine! Just zoom in, already.

THEIA: Zooming in.

SOUND: MECHANICAL WHIR.

JUNO: Damn it, they’re not even looking at each other. It’s like a junior high dance down there. If I could just hear what they’re saying…

THEIA: Suggestion: would you like me to activate. Lip reading protocol?

JUNO: Uhhh… s-sure… if you got a minute.

THEIA: Lip reading protocol. Activated.

SOUND: FUTURISTIC TECH-Y NOISES.

Compiling approximations of voices based on throat movement, infrared analysis, and audio recordings on public record.

SOUND: DING.

Application complete. You’re welcome.

SOUND: BEEP.

PILOT PEREYRA: Interested is definitely one word for it. It’s not every day that an employee tries to become a business partner. So. How much is it going to cost for that information to become my personal property?

PIRANHA: Oh, info’s been free for years, Mayor Pereyra. Information proliferates, see? Doubles, triples, and that don’t cost a dime. So the price ain’t on the info: that’s a gift. The price is on me applying that info for you, and that, well, that’s gonna cost a little more than you got on hand, I’m thinking.

PEREYRA: You’d be surprised how much I can get how quickly.

PIRANHA: (CHUCKLES) This is worth more. Used right, this little legend could be worth more than the whole damn city. And it could fit just right into your next big move. I just want to get in on the ground floor, see? Nothing wrong with that.

PEREYRA: (LAUGHING) Oh, buddy, I think you’re a little confused about what’s going on here.

JUNO: Whoa. Ramses, Mayor Pereyra just pulled a gun on her I– I think. It’s just a bulge in their coat, but… how long has that been there?

Uh-oh.

PEREYRA: What is it now?

JUNO: Theia, zoom in.

SOUND: MECHANICAL WHIR.

Big guy, brown jacket, standing under a lamppost. I think he might be watching me.

RAMSES: Of course. It makes sense that Pilot would have someone covering them.

JUNO: Well, they’ll have to wait. I still don’t have what I need.

RAMSES: Juno…

JUNO: Theia, lip reading again.

SOUND: BEEP.

PEREYRA: The payment’s a gift. Either you’re stepping away from this, or I’m pushing you off. Up to you, really.

PIRANHA: Oh, scary Mayor Pereyra, please don’t. (LAUGHS) I know you like to make inconvenient people disappear. That’s why I’ve made myself as convenient as possible. A luxury you can’t live without, see? Like air conditioning. Or those grocery carts that push themselves. (LAUGHS)

PEREYRA: Just remember who works for who, okay? I’ve got the entire HCPD in my pocket, and that means, I know how often little administrative mistakes happen. Real stupid things, like, uh, putting someone in solitary and losing their papers. Shuffling someone into the life-sentence pile when you meant to put them in the parking-ticket pile. Little stuff.

PIRANHA: I get it. Play nice or get off the court. Easy enough.

So what’s the plan? When do we do the job?

PEREYRA: Preparations are all set. You’ll be in there. Midnight.

JUNO: Midnight tonight?! …Ramses, they’re going to hit the Museum of Colonized history tonight!

…Ramses?

SOUND: COMMS BEEP.

THEIA: Caution: your comms has been. Disconnected.

JUNO: What?!

THEIA: Transmission interference detected.

JUNO: You’ve gotta be—

…kidding me.

JUNO (NARRATOR): There was another person on the roof with me. They were over by the fire escape I’d used to climb up here hours ago. For a second all I could do was wonder how the hell they’d gotten up from the street so fast… until I realized it wasn’t the same person I saw down there. Brown coat, sure, but where the other was broad-shouldered and looked like somebody I might want to buy me a drink or two, this one was thinner, flightier, and more nervous. They were making a big point of not looking at me, scraping something off one shoe with the other, checking their watch, looking at the dome flickering overhead, trying to look… casual? I think? There was a bulge in their coat that might’ve been a comms jammer. Or a gun. Or a whole lot of other unpleasant things.

THEIA: Target is fifty feet away. Recommended course of action: blaster fire.

JUNO: You got real chatty after that update.

THEIA: Target. Approaching.

JUNO: I’m not gonna shoot ‘em, alright? Just keep translating what Pereyra’s saying. They’re getting to the good part and then I can get out of here.

SOUND: BEEP.

PEREYRA: All security in there’s got a panic button for instant lockdown, but, so long as you don’t get seen, there’s nothing wrong with a late-night visit to the museum.

So you’ve got the codex, huh? How many square miles does that thing cover?

PIRANHA: The whole city. (CHUCKLES) That’s a lot of information, Pilot. If we get it.

PEREYRA: When we get it. You have to visualize. You have to believe.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I couldn’t help it – hearing those footsteps, feeling my heart race: I glanced over my shoulder.

THEIA: Target is fifteen feet away.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The distance was bad – but it wasn’t the distance that made my blood run cold. It was what I saw on their chest as they pulled their lapel back.

THEIA: Firearm detected.

JUNO (NARRATOR): No, wasn’t that either. It was the thing right underneath the gun: a badge, with the letters HCPD shining on it.

And that was bad. Because to the dirty cops in the HCPD – so, most of ‘em – Pilot Pereyra was their ringleader. If I threatened Pilot, the cops wouldn’t bother with a trial. They’d pretty much go straight to the chair. Not the electric one, just one they’d shoot me in.

The cop had stopped pretending not to see me now. They pulled the gun.

VOICE: Freeze!

THEIA: Calculating distance to next rooftop.

VOICE: If you’re waiting for backup, you’re not gonna get it. I have this area checked. You’re alone.

JUNO: Nope, not waiting for backup.

THEIA: Next rooftop is within. Jumping distance.

JUNO: Just stalling on this next part, ‘cause I’m gonna hate it. Bye!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

VOICE: Hey! Get back here! I said freeze!

THEIA: For optimal timing, jump in three… two… one…

JUNO: (SCREAMS)

SOUND: THUD.

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was a beautiful flight. It was a beautiful landing. And, just to finish the set: the cop made a beautiful shot.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

JUNO: (GRUNTS)

VOICE: (DISTANT, FADING) Crazy idiot, jumping that far – don’t move! Not that you can! Oh, what a day, what a day, get a call from my landlord, now this…

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

SOUND: SLAP.

VOICE: Wake up.

I said wake up.

SOUND: SLAP. DISTANT MUSIC.

JUNO: Wow, this alarm is annoying. You mind hitting snooze for me?

SOUND: SLAP.

Ow! Ow, okay, I’m up.

VOICE: About time. And if you want to stay awake, you’ll tell me what you know.

JUNO: I… don’t want to stay awake – that’s kind of what I just said.

VOICE: What? Don’t question my threats!

SOUND: SLAP.

JUNO: Wow, you got a lot of slaps in you, huh? This pretty much your whole playbook for interrogations, or can I expect some surprises?

VOICE: You want surprises, huh? Hm, I’ll get you some surprises…

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): I wanted them off me for a second so I could get my bearings. I was tied to a chair in a room with concrete walls, cold, damp air, tools hanging from hooks across from me. My first thought was medieval torture chamber. My correct thought, a few seconds later, was suburban basement.

When the cop was on their way back, I got a look at the name on their uniform. “L-T L-O-O,” it said. Lieutenant Loo. Never heard of ‘em.

SOUND: DISTANT, MUFFLED VOICES.

VOICE (LOO): So, now that I’m prepared… do I have to send a laser through your head, or are you going to tell me what I want to hear?

JUNO: You’re a natural-born leader and that eyeshadow looks great on you.

LOO: What?

JUNO: Do you all wear coats like that? Yours looks a little nicer than your buddy’s on the street, but I—

LOO: Coats? My buddy on the str– what are you talking about?

JUNO: If you don’t know? Nothin’.

LOO: But—

JUNO: So what were you doing on that roof, anyway? Funny place to take a walk.

LOO: I was gonna ask you the same thing.

JUNO: Not very original of you.

LOO: It was my plan first!

You’re the one tied to the chair! Why am I answering the questions?

JUNO: I don’t know. Why are you?

LOO: Low self-esteem and a natural tendency to follow orders– oh, damn it! (GROANS) Look. I know you were watching Mayor Pereyra. What did you see?

JUNO: No idea what you’re talking about.

SOUND: SLAP.

Ow! Slaps? Again? You’re holding a gun!

LOO: Shut up! Tell me what you saw!

SOUND: SLAP.

JUNO: Ow, quit it!

LOO: Not til you tell me what you…

That looks like a cybernetic eye. You didn’t record anything, did you?

JUNO (NARRATOR): The hardest part of any interrogation is the balancing of information: figuring out how much the other person knows, how much they want to know, how much you know, how much you can make them think you know, and, most importantly, how little you can make them think you know.

LOO: So? Did you?

JUNO: Yeah, what’s it to you? Since when has recording people without their permission been a crime?

LOO: Send me the footage. Now.

JUNO: Rather not.

LOO: Send me that footage, or I pull the trigger.

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

JUNO: Not gonna help you any. Eye’s worked into my brain – that’s how it does all these weird things like make me shoot faster and speed up my reflexes and give me this one dream over and over again where I’m falling into a giant birthday cake that has my mother’s voice. You kill me, and all the data on it gets scrambled.

LOO: Just send me the footage, then.

JUNO: Love to, once we get to the station. Why didn’t you bring me to the station, anyway? I mean, this is a nice basement, but still. How’re the kids?

LOO: The what?

JUNO: You’ve got half a dozen sand-sleds up against the wall over there. I can tell at least three of your kids are little because one, those mittens are tiny and adorable, and two, all the left ones are missing.

LOO: Those aren’t… I-I’m not…

JUNO: Taking your dirty cop business into your home, huh? Pilot Pereyra covers your boots in mud and you track it all inside?

LOO: Mayor Pereyra? But I wasn’t—

JUNO: The hell are your kids gonna think of you, Loo? Embarrassing. A train wreck.

LOO: Oh! This isn’t my house!

SOUND: DISTANT, MUFFLED CRYING.

Damn it, now look what you made me do!

JUNO: You’re a cop who breaks into people’s basements for interrogations? What’s wrong with you?

SOUND: DISTANT DOOR OPENS. CRYING GETS LOUDER.

CAPTAIN KHAN: (DISTANT) Loo! What the hell is goin’ on down there?

LOO: (YELPS) Captain Khan! I-I-I-I didn’t mean—

SOUND: DOOR SLAMS SHUT. STOMPING FOOTSTEPS.

JUNO: Captain… Khan?

KHAN: You done questioning him yet? You show up at my apartment with someone in a damn duffel bag and then you wake the baby?!

Oh, no. No, no– d-agh, God damn it, it’s you!

JUNO (NARRATOR): Omar Khan was a good guy – and that’s why he’s one of the only cops in Hyperion City that I never wanted to deal with. The other ones you could punch all you wanted and never feel bad about it, but Khan… was clean. And that meant I had to play nice, or else…

Nothing, okay? I’d just feel bad. I liked Khan. He was a good cop. He became the Captain of my old precinct after I left and he’d really turned the place around, or… so I heard. And that meant the world was a better place with him in it. Or whatever. Ugh.

Also probably worth saying that Khan didn’t feel the same way about me.

KHAN: Loo, you moron! You didn’t tell me the Nosy Nanette you brought in was Juno goddamn Steel!

LOO: Am I supposed to know who this is?

KHAN: Oh, right. You’re new.

JUNO: Come on, Loo. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that the first thing you’re supposed to do at a new job is catch up on the old gossip?

KHAN: We can’t trust a goddamn word Steel here says! Didn’t anyone tell you about the Hijikata case?

LOO: The… what? Please?

KHAN: You got spaghetti in those ears, Loo? Don’t they teach you curiosity in diaper-school anymore? Captain Hijikata! Of the one-five-one, our goddamn precinct! It was the case of the damn decade and this walking pile of nitroglycerin decided to—

JUNO: We really don’t need to get into the details, thanks.

KHAN: We can’t trust him. Especially when it comes to taking down someone reeeally big. Steel’s a glory-pig. Honor-hound. Wh-whatever. Anyway, why’s he here? You said this had something to do with our op?

JUNO: ‘Course it does, Captain. I’m gonna help you take down somebody really big.

KHAN: What?!

LOO: Uh… he’s telling the truth, Captain Khan. He— (GULPS) …saw the meeting.

KHAN: And where the hell were you?!

LOO: Seeing him… seeing the meeting.

Traffic was really bad and I got a call I had to take I’m sorry.

KHAN: God damn it! After months we finally get someone on the inside with Pereyra just to get the details on this meeting and you missed it because you were on the comms?! How the hell are we gonna pin them now? You got another sting ready to go, Loo? Do you? In the next four goddamn days?!

JUNO: So that’s what all this is? A sting to catch Pilot?

KHAN: Of course it is! The hell do you think we are, some kinda sneaky-sneak on-the-take-takers? No way. We’re— (COUGHING) We’re the good cops.

JUNO: …There are… only two of you.

KHAN: ‘Course there aren’t only two of us, blockhead! There are– I don’t know, four or five, at least.

LOO: Captain, there are more than five—

KHAN: Well, I’ve never counted, alright? Maybe you don’t give two ding-dongs about doing the right thing, Steel, but some of us are busy trying to make the world a little better! We’ve been tailing Pereyra for months, and I’m not gonna let you get in my way.

JUNO: Not planning on it, Captain.

KHAN: Oh. That’s– nice.

(CLEARS THROAT) So, uh… did you see what they were talking about?

JUNO: Yeah.

KHAN: You wanna tell us?

JUNO: Nah.

KHAN: I knew it! You weasel! You skink! You… momonga!

JUNO: Don’t know what’s got you so upset, Khan. I wasn’t lying. I’m not gonna stand in your way – I’m just not gonna say anything unless I get to come along for the ride.

KHAN: What?!

LOO: There might be one way around it, Captain. He said he recorded it all. On his… eye.

KHAN: On his…!

…on his eye. Hmmmm.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Hey, look at that. You didn’t have that last time I saw you. Where’d you get it, Steel?

JUNO: Left my real eye under my pillow and the eyeball fairy dropped it off.

KHAN: Doing something illegal is my guess. For one of your usual business partners. Valles Vicky, Clark the Shark, Cecil Kanagawa… something that’d leave a trail, I’ll bet.

JUNO: You’re close enough that your mustache is leaving a trail into my mouth, Khan. Back off.

KHAN: (GROWLS)

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

Lieutenant!

LOO: Yes, sir!

KHAN: I want as much data as you can get on everyone Steel’s talked to for the past three weeks. Pull from Security Office databanks, private camera feeds, everything. How long’d that take you?

LOO: About two days, sir.

KHAN: Meanwhile I want you to get Goren to look into that eye: make, model, most importantly, how to pull the data out of the damn thing. Tell her she has a day and a half.

LOO: Yes, sir!

KHAN: Ha-ha! You hear that, Steel? We got you this time. Either you tell us what you saw, or in two days, we’ll know.

JUNO: Y’know, Khan, I got to hand it to you: that’s pretty impressive. Two days is fast.

KHAN: You bet your booper it is.

JUNO: But not fast enough to make it in time for Pereyra’s heist tonight.

KHAN: …What’d he just say?

LOO: I think he said… that Mayor Pereyra’s gang is going to do a heist tonight.

JUNO: At midnight, specifically.

LOO: At midnight, specifically.

KHAN: Yeah, yeah, I heard him.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Poor Khan looked like a balloon with all the air let out. Or, maybe just a balloon that was depressed. And that meant I was playing the interrogation game right. I’d given them just enough info to make them think I knew more – to make them want to work with me. And sure, I didn’t actually know more; but so long as they didn’t ask for anything else, that never had to be a problem.

KHAN: No, no no, wait, you know what – I don’t buy it. You could’ve just made that up. Might not know a damn thing, could’ve just made up some heist tonight to get us going. No. I think we’re gonna wait the two days. But thanks for the intel.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Well, so much for “not a problem.”

But interrogation’s like a high-stakes card game, and that means there are two ways to win. Either you actually get a good hand… or you bluff. Last card game I played like this, I wasn’t the one bluffing.

Wasn’t alone, either.

But no matter what I wanted, I was alone now. So I played my last card… and I bluffed.

JUNO: It’s in the Museum. Pilot told their gang to hit the Museum of Colonized History at midnight tonight and I know what they’re gonna steal.

LOO: Huh?!

KHAN: Huh. That’s… specific.

And if it’s supposedly tonight, it’s not like we’d have to wait long to find out if he’s lying.

LOO: But the Museum of Colonized History is huge, Captain! If it’s just the two of us, how can we be sure we’re going to check the right part? While we’re in the North Wing, the mayor’s gang could be robbing the South Wing.

JUNO: Captain, look. I know you’ve got a million reasons not to trust me on this. I know my reputation’s not exactly sparkling, and one time I tried to steal classified evidence off your desk, and later that same day I handcuffed you to a car, which was very funny, but also very wrong, probably.

KHAN: Steel—!

JUNO: And I know you probably have a million good reasons to take Pilot down and I might only have one but it’s a pretty damn good one, so I just. Need. To be there. Tonight. …Okay?

KHAN: (GROWLS)

LOO: Captain. This close to the election, this might be our last chance. If we could just get one person from Mayor Pereyra’s gang to talk—

KHAN: Alright, alright, fine. I’ll babysit the P.I. You happy?

JUNO: I’m happy.

KHAN: But listen up, Steel. When I’ve got the scent of something big, you’d better not get in my way. You try it, I’ll show you just how scary Omar Khan can get. Got me?

SOUND: DISTANT DOOR OPENS.

VOICE: Omar! We just got another one of those letters from the landlord! Do you want me to open it, or—

KHAN: Damn it, Noor, I told you I’m doing business down here!

VOICE (NOOR): Oh, do you have some friends over? Did you ask them if they want some pasta?

KHAN: I said we’re busy!

NOOR: Omar! What kind of a host are you! You drag them into the basement, let them make all this noise, wake the baby—

KHAN: ALRIGHT, FINE!

Do either of you want pasta?

(SIMULTANEOUSLY) LOO: No thank you. JUNO: I’m good.

KHAN: They don’t want pasta!

NOOR: What?

KHAN: I SAID THEY DON’T WANT PASTA!

Are you sure?

JUNO: Yeah, thanks, I’m all set—

LOO: Actually, I am a little hungry.

KHAN: Nevermind, I’ll come up and get two bowls in a minute, Noor! Thank you! I love you very much and I’m glad we’re working on our communication!

(PANTING) Ah– alright. So, like I said: all business, Steel. You’d better get used to that. First, farfalle; then, you and I take a little trip to the museum.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

JUNO (NARRATOR): In P.I. work, a real big lie is like a summer rainstorm: it comes on suddenly, it’s really hard to get out from under, and it’ll burn just all your skin off if you don’t get dry quick. Summer’s pretty rough on Mars.

I’d told a whopper of a lie back in Khan’s basement, and I’d gotten soaked before we ever made it to the museum. All it took was nine words, said while Loo was driving us:

KHAN: So where in the museum are they gonna hit?

JUNO: I, uh, told you, Khan, if I say that, you’ve got no reason to bring me.

KHAN: Yeah, whatever, keep your secrets if you want, I don’t care. But the Lieutenant at least needs to know which door to drop us off at.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The Museum of Colonized History is huge: blocks and blocks of dome prototypes and early terraforming pods and the mummified remains of the first space-colonists. If I picked a door at random, we’d miss the heist entirely, and there went my lead.

So what did I know? Not much. The Piranha shared some intel with Pilot, but it wasn’t enough on its own; there was something in here with information on it, and Pilot wouldn’t know how to read it without the Piranha.

One of the last things I’d picked up before Loo zapped me was a word: “codex.” A codex that covers the entire city. I had no idea what that meant, not yet, except for one thing: there was one wing of the Museum dedicated to things that covered the entire city.

KHAN: So? You’d better have something, Steel.

JUNO: The Hall of Maps. West entrance should get us there. Come on, Loo, you better speed this thing up; we don’t want to be late again.

LOO: I know, I know.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Loo dropped us off at the Hall of Maps at 11:30. We crawled through the window and crept past walls covered with old paper and flickering diodes, images of a thousand sprawling Marses measured and cut-up and categorized. There were maps from throughout the ages: before the telescope, before the terraforming pod, before the transgalactic travel engine.

It was beautiful, or whatever. But there was one thing that stuck out to me most of all:

JUNO: God, this place stinks.

KHAN: You get a free pass to the wonders of human progress and all you can think about is the smell?

JUNO: Yeah, basically. I hate that musty old hard drive stink. Just mold and motherboard-termites.

KHAN: It’s history, damn it! These are the maps that invented space colonization, Steel! You wouldn’t be here without ‘em!

JUNO: So that’s a con. Got any pros?

KHAN: (GROWLS) It’s not worth talking to a punk about the unpunkable. You couldn’t see the value of these maps if they reached out and tickled your whiskers.

JUNO: Anyway, why do you care? Aren’t you from Earth?

KHAN: (GROWLS)

JUNO: If you want history, Earth’s got thousands of years on literally anywhere else – you don’t have to travel thirty-four million miles to find history. People leave a mess everywhere they go.

KHAN: Sometimes a place means more than just itself. It’s an idea, or a promise, or… something. And even if that promise doesn’t get kept, it means you can go there and expect them to keep it. Demand they keep it. You know what I mean?

JUNO: I… huh, I-I do, actually, but, what promise—

KHAN: It’s like with my Little Mom. Made this curried lasagna every Tuesday for Big Mom. You do that long enough, it’s like a promise, right? Gotta keep a promise, or it goes bad. We’re all just like egg-noodles in the lasagna, skim milk in the sauce. Never should’ve thrown out that recipe.

JUNO: And hey, just like that, I lost you.

Found someone else, though. Hide!

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

VOICE 1: (DISTANT) Hallway B is clear. Moving on target.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

KHAN: You get a good look at ‘em?

JUNO: It’s pitch black in here, Khan, of course I didn’t get a good look at ‘em.

THEIA: May I suggest. Night-vision mode.

JUNO: …Yet. Did not get a good look yet. Will in a second. Come on, follow them.

SOUND: SOFT ELECTRIC HUM.

THEIA: Night-vision mode. Activated.

JUNO: Looks like they’re armed, and… it’s hard to make anything else out from this far away.

KHAN: Gun sounds like a good reason to stay far away to me.

JUNO: Unless they’re one of the gang’s lookouts – then we can’t risk losing ‘em.

KHAN: Muh, alright. Then I guess we’ll just stay far away from close up.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

JUNO: Wait, they stopped!

VOICE 1: Reporting in. Just heard a noise outside the First Light Room. I’m gonna go check it out.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

JUNO: Damn it, damn it, damn it!

KHAN: Don’t get your petticoat in a twist just yet, Steel.

SOUND: DOOR OPENS.

Looks like our burglar oughta burgle some better ears. He’s walking away from us.

JUNO: He’s headed into that exhibit. Follow him.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP. RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

VOICE 1: Didn’t find anything. Returning to group.

SOUND: WALKIE-TALKIE BEEP.

JUNO: You hear that? He’s going back!

KHAN: So?

JUNO: So we have to pick ‘em off one by one, don’t we? Learn what we can from each one, and then—

KHAN: Hang on. Something’s not right here.

What the hell are they trying to steal, exactly?

JUNO: I told you, I’m not gonna—

KHAN: —because you needed to come along, you said. Well, now you’re along. It sounds like we’re in the room they’re robbing.

JUNO: And while you’re wasting time, he’s gonna get away!

KHAN: So tell me, Steel. What are they stealing?

JUNO (NARRATOR): Sitting there in the dark, with Khan’s hand on my shoulder, all I could think about was that this was our moment and we were letting it pass us by. Because at the tail end of every failure case, there’s always one moment you can look back at and say to yourself, “I should have taken the shot.” A single mistake. A moment that you can beat yourself up about for years. Thinking about how if you’d just done it, if you’d just jumped when the time came to jump, it all would’ve worked out in the end.

Staring at that shadow in the doorway, I knew one thing: I wasn’t going to let this be that moment.

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

KHAN: Steel, what– what the hell are you doing, Steel? Get back here!

JUNO (NARRATOR): “I’m not gonna look back at this and wish I’d done something,” I thought.

And I was right. Later I’d look back and wish I hadn’t done anything.

JUNO: Hmf!

VOICE 1: Oof!

SOUND: HEAVY THUD. RUSTLING.

JUNO: Alright, buddy, you’re gonna tell me what your gang is after, and you’re gonna tell me now.

KHAN: Steel, he’s reaching for something!

JUNO (NARRATOR): So I panicked.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

VOICE 1: (GRUNTS)

KHAN: …A gun? Where the hell did you get a—

When did you take my gun?!

SOUND: ALARM.

God damn it, what now?

PIRANHA: (DISTANT) Ugh, the alarm! Unless you want a laser through each of your thick skulls, you’re gonna find who hit that god damn alarm, see!

JUNO: Come on, we have to hide. We’ll let the Piranha clean up her own mess.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

PIRANHA: Well? You see anybody?

PEREYRA: Hey there, no reason to get all excited. Looks like our party crasher just crashed.

KHAN: That voice… is that Mayor Pereyra?

JUNO (NARRATOR): It was. The Piranha. Two goons. And Pilot Pereyra.

What the hell were they doing here? Why the hell would a crime boss on Pilot’s level show up to their own heist?

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense.

KHAN: Oh, no. No way, no how.

JUNO: What?

KHAN: That fancy eye of yours make you soft in the cerebellum? Look at that gangster’s face! She doesn’t recognize that poor sucker you just knocked out!

PIRANHA: Well, well. Just who the hell are you?

PEREYRA: Looks like a museum security guard. And it sounds like he flipped quite the alarm.

PIRANHA: Damn it, I thought you said you knew the patrol schedule!

PEREYRA: Hey, Pilot Pereyra makes the trains run on time, but I never promised to make the guards do the same.

PIRANHA: (GROWLS) Alright. If that’s how you wanna play it… plan B. We’ll have to blow our escape plan, but—

PEREYRA: Leave the escape to me. Now. Show us how it’s done.

PIRANHA: Fine. Hey, you. What’s your name?

VOICE 2: His name’s Mike. He doesn’t talk.

PIRANHA: Good for him. Hold this comms, Mike. We’re gonna take a home movie.

JUNO (NARRATOR): The Piranha stepped closer to the guard I’d stunned.

And she pointed her gun right at his head.

SOUND: GUN COCKING.

The Piranha’s flashlight caught his badge and I saw his name and… I’d never unsee it again: Barton Pollock. Barton. Sounded like my brother’s name, if you thought it fast enough, if your mind was spinning around it. Bart to his friends, or Barty? Kids, husband, wife, friends?

I felt so sick that when Pilot stepped forward, hand up, I even let myself get hopeful for a second.

PEREYRA: Hey, hey now… let’s not rush in without thinking, alright?

PIRANHA: You said solve it my way, so I’m solving it my way, see? You have a problem?

PEREYRA: I do, actually.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Maybe they’ve got a soul after all, I thought. Maybe this city isn’t as bad off as I thought it was.

PEREYRA: Your blaster’s on stun. Better set it to kill – you can tell the difference on video.

JUNO (NARRATOR): That thought didn’t last long.

PIRANHA: Thanks, Mx. Mayor. Start rolling, Mikey.

SOUND: ELECTRONIC BEEP.

Dear Museum of Colonized History Security Force, HCPD nightowls, late-night comms scanners and all other busybodies: we know right about now all you got blasted with a hell of an alarm from this exhibit, and we know you’d probably like to do something about it.

Well. Me and my associates invite you to consider a different option, see: we got about a half-dozen hostages here we was hoping to trade for clean getaway, but if any of you flash so much as a siren? Well. We might just have to do something to those good citizens. Something… like… this.

SOUND: BLASTER SHOT.

JUNO: No way. No way, no way, no way…

KHAN: (GRUNTS)

PIRANHA: Your move, coppers. (CACKLES) We’ll call again in fifteen minutes. Cut the feed, Mikey.

SOUND: BEEP.

How’s that for style?

PILOT: Not bad. Just… make sure I don’t end up in frame.

PIRANHA: I’m a professional, ain’t I? Now let’s go check on the hostages – and our map.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

JUNO: I can’t believe… I can’t believe she killed him. While he was out cold. Khan, what do we do?

Captain?

KHAN: Never should’ve listened to you. Damn it, god damn it, I knew I should’ve waited. I knew it!

JUNO: What…?

KHAN: You don’t know a thing about this heist, do you? You didn’t know the guard. You didn’t know Pereyra was gonna be here. You knew a little, sure, enough to dupe me. But this was all just another Juno Steel lie, wasn’t it?

JUNO: The heist was tonight. So what if I didn’t know everything? You were gonna sit back and just let it happen.

KHAN: You think that guard’s kids care which of us was right?

I can’t even blame you. I’m the one who listened. I’m the one you took the gun from. Damn it, I should’ve waited. Damn it!

JUNO: Khan?

KHAN: Just shut up and give me my gun.

JUNO: …Okay.

KHAN: We rushed in, that’s the problem. And now we’re… here.

(CLEARS THROAT) But it’s not gonna happen again, Steel.

MUSIC: STARTS.

You hear me? From here, we do it the way we always shoulda: slow. And nobody dies anymore, you hear me?

JUNO: Slow? But Captain—

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Khan grabbed me by the coat and pulled me so close I could smell the pasta on his breath – and see his eyes twitching, wild. Scared.

KHAN: We do this by the book. And the book says nobody. Dies.

JUNO (NARRATOR): Khan was in the kind of mood right then that you don’t argue with, so I didn’t. Didn’t tell him what I thought: that I had no idea what book he was talking about, but any book that tells you nobody’s gonna die is lying. Because you can romanticize the past all you want; put it in a nice case with a tasteful little plaque next to it, but the fact is, that the book of time is written in blood. Elections, colonization, policework… you don’t get the fancy statues and the pretty maps without dropping a few bodies along the way. Which isn’t to say those people deserved to die, or that their killers deserved to live. Just, that history is only written by those who live long enough to write it.

Barton Pollock didn’t deserve to die.

Yasmin Swift didn’t deserve to die.

I can’t even swallow the idea that the Proctor deserved to die, not while there was a way around it. But the fact was that they were dead and I was alive, and that had been the price to get to this moment… for now.

I was sure it would cost more before we were done. It always did. The best I could hope to do was make sure the right person footed the bill… even if that meant paying up myself.

MUSIC: ENDS.

***

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING, MUSIC.

CONDUCTOR: If you’ve enjoyed this tale, please consider donating to The Penumbra on Patreon. Our artists work tirelessly to bring you these stories, and if you have the means, we hope you will support our efforts. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast. If you support us on Patreon at the $10 level or higher, you’ll receive access to commentary tracks like this one, from actors Kate Jones, Avi Meehan, and Joshua Ilon, and co-creator Sophie Kaner:

SOUND: TRAIN STOPS, DOOR SLIDES OPEN, RAIN.

SOPHIE: …Well I also think that, I’m sure, Joshua and Kate can, um, relate to… playing themselves. (LAUGHS)

KATE: What?

JOSHUA: I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about.

AVI: Oh, can I say one more thing?

SOPHIE: Yeah!

AVI: Can I say one more thing? Can—

SOPHIE: Say two! Say three!

AVI: I think, another thing that was really exciting was, um I’m a non-binary hume [is this a word?], and getting the opportunity to play a non-binary character was sooo gosh-dang exciting for me, just because it’s sort of like, ‘alright, you’re small, you look kind of– you, you’re just a girl!’ And I’m like…

SOUND: DOOR SLIDES SHUT.

CONDUCTOR: You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories further and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

We would like to give special thanks to all who support us on Patreon, but especially to Francie Liana, Charlie Spiegel, Minchowski, Lynné Herman, Jaimie Gunter, and the Princess and the Scrivener for their incredibly generous contributions per episode. Thank you.

This tale, Juno Steel and the Stolen City, was told by the following people: Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel, Elliot Sicard as Captain Omar Khan, Avi Meehan as Lieutenant Loo, Simon Moody as Mayor Pilot Pereyra, Sophie Kaner as the Piranha, Matthew Zahnzinger as Ramses O’Flaherty, and Kate Jones as Noor Khan.

On staff at The Penumbra: Kevin Vibert is our lead writer and recording engineer. Sophie Kaner is our director and sound designer. Grahame Turner is our script editor. Noah Simes is our production manager. Alice Chung is our designer and financial manager. Original music by Ryan Vibert. Promotional art by Mikaela Buckley.

The Penumbra is created and produced by Sophie Kaner and Kevin Vibert.

I’m afraid this is the end of the line for today, dear Traveler. We hope you will ride with The Penumbra again soon.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

#juno steel

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earlyandoftenpodcast · 7 years ago

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(Pictured: the territorial changes of Carolina, later split into two colonies. The Albemarle region, where North Carolina was founded, is circled in red.)

We move down south for the creation of North Carolina, the first of the post-Restoration colonies, peopled by hardy outcasts from Virginia. When a dispute over taxation meshes with a constitutional crisis in the young colony, the result is rebellion. Or is it?

>>>Direct audio link<<<

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Transcript and Sources:

Hello, and welcome to Early and Often: The History of Elections in America. Episode 14: Culpeper’s Rebellion.

Last time, we wrapped up the first few decades of New England’s history, and I’m afraid I have to issue a small correction. Last episode, I said that in some towns in Massachusetts married women had on average more than 9 children each. That was correct, but what wasn’t correct was when I said that that meant over half of women therefore had more than 9 children. That would’ve been true if 9 had been the median, but it wasn’t the median it was the mean. So that was incorrect. Thanks to tumblr user Deusvulture for catching that.

Today, I’m going to begin a new set of episodes, this time about the Restoration colonies, which were created in the years after the English Civil War. That includes the Middle Colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, which were formed out of the Dutch colony of New Netherland after its capture by the English. And it also includes North and South Carolina, which were founded together as a single colony. That’ll be the topic for the next two episodes.

Well, this episode will focus on North Carolina and the next one will focus on South Carolina. From the start, the two were governed separately, even though they were technically part of the same colony. They wouldn’t be formally divided until the 1700s, but I’m just going to call them North and South Carolina, for convenience’s sake.

So. We begin in 1660. With Charles securely on his throne, England was finally escaping the uncertainty of the last two decades. Policy makers had space to look to the future and to look abroad. We’ve already seen how they accepted the Chesapeake colonies and New England back into the fold.

They also took care to strengthen the mercantile system, in order to more tightly bind the colonies to England. Beginning in 1651 under Cromwell, but especially in the 1660s under Charles II, Parliament passed a series of so-called Navigation Acts. The Navigation Acts said that England’s various colonies were only permitted to trade with England itself, and not with anyone else, for instance with the Dutch in New Netherland. And shipping had to be done on English vessels. Another act in the 1670s put a tariff on the export of tobacco. Needless to say, these policies were very unpopular in the colonies, since they were paying more in order to benefit others.

But England didn’t just want to tighten control over its current possessions. Expansion was a goal as well. The King owed a lot of money and a lot of favors, and new land in the New World would be a good way to pay down his debts without actually spending much money. Certainly they coveted New Netherland, which separated their current colonies. But they also wanted to press south from the Chesapeake, into what is now North and South Carolina. The failed colony of Roanoke had been located in North Carolina, but the region was still mostly uncolonized by Europeans.

A group of eight wealthy and well-connected men had approached Charles with a plan to colonize Carolina. One of these men was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the First Earl of Shaftesbury. The Earl of Shaftesbury had in his employ a young John Locke -- the same Locke who would go on to become one of the most important philosophers of the modern world. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Locke doesn’t really enter our story until next episode.

More importantly for today’s story, another one of these investors was our old friend William Berkeley, recently restored to his post as Governor of Virginia and currently in England on business. His older brother John, a close friend of the King, was another of the investors.

These eight men together managed to convince a somewhat reluctant King to give them an extremely generous charter for lands which stretched from Virginia almost down to Spanish Florida. Thus in 1663 they became the Lords Proprietor of Carolina, and they ruled their new province under the same legal terms as Lord Baltimore ruled Maryland. That is, nearly absolutely in principle.

However, the new proprietors of Carolina had no desire to emulate the Baltimores’ active management of their colony. Instead, they wished to operate more as real estate owners. They had the right to all this land, so why not just sit back and let others pay them for it? Let others take on the risks of colonization. Well, there were a few independent expeditions sent to Carolina, but they were slow in coming and the settlements they built didn’t last long anyway. So for a while, there wasn’t too much activity going on.

There was only one real center of population, and that was in North Carolina. These settlers lived along the Albemarle Sound, which was an estuary about 80 miles south of Jamestown. Basically it was the next big body of water if you moved down the coast. They had been there since the 1650s, so before the colony of Carolina was actually created. The settlers of the Albemarle were mostly former servants who had come down from Virginia in search of land, plus some Quakers.

I’ve mentioned before the importance of good harbors in the development of colonial America. Well, the harbors in North Carolina were terrible. The Albemarle Sound was too shallow, and its constantly shifting sandbars were a serious danger to shipping. So the region languished economically. Goods had to be shipped to Virginia before they could be exported to England, raising costs. And you could hardly even get to Virginia by land, since the two areas were separated by the so-called Great Dismal Swamp, which lived up to its name.

So there was plenty of land in North Carolina, yes, but there wasn’t much you could do with it, at least not profitably. Thus there were few migrants. The population was perhaps a thousand in 1660. And those who did come were often outcasts from Virginia. Runaway servants, debtors, etc. The region therefore developed a reputation for unruliness. A later governor of Virginia said that North Carolina “alwayes was and is the sinke of America, the Refuge of our Renagadoes”.

The region was all backcountry, basically. Isolated farms in a big swamp. George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, went there on a missionary expedition, and his journals describe a rough people living in very rough terrain. He mentioned one woman who would “carry a gunn in the woods and kill deer, [and] turkeys . . . shoot [down] wild cattle, catch and tye hoggs, [and] knock down beeves [slaughter cattle] with an ax.’’ Apparently, she could ‘‘perform the most manfull Exercises as well as most men in those parts.’’ So not quite the aristocratic gentility of Virginia’s First Families.

But although the region was poor, it was more egalitarian than the other southern colonies. Three quarters of North Carolinians owned land, a huge contrast to Virginia at this point. Naturally, there were few servants and slaves. And relations with the Indians were actually pretty good, perhaps thanks to the fact that unlike elsewhere, there wasn’t a huge ongoing influx of new settlers.

Probably North Carolina wasn’t too different from the outskirts of Virginia, the parts furthest away from the big plantations. But in Virginia those outskirts didn’t have power, while North Carolina was nothing but those outskirts. So the happenstance of how the border was drawn wound up making a big difference in the development of an independent political culture.

When William Berkeley returned to Virginia, he was tasked by the other proprietors with the administration of North Carolina, because he was so much closer. He was in charge of laying out the basic structure of government, as well as appointing a governor. Unsurprisingly, he kept very close to the familiar Virginian model of doing things. Governor, Councilors, an Assembly with powers of taxation. All that good stuff. The man he chose to be governor, John Drummond, had, interestingly enough, started out as an indentured servant. He had even tried to escape once, only to be caught and publicly whipped in punishment. But he had risen through the ranks after attaining his freedom, serving in various government posts.

The new Governor Drummond went south, to the Albemarle. There may have been some rudimentary government before he arrived, but it wouldn’t have been much.

We don’t have many records of his time in office, but he may have been a bit of a populist, as befits a former indentured servant. According to Noeleen McIlvenna, “folklore holds that he invited every man in the region to the first meeting of the Albemarle Assembly in February 1665, a gathering held under an oak tree on a knoll overlooking Hall’s Creek in Pasquotank.” And later on, the Assembly, which was unicameral, would just meet in member’s homes, since there was no capitol building. And courts were sometimes simply held in taverns as well.

You won’t be surprised to hear that North Carolina had a quite different political culture than in the Chesapeake, despite their common origins. There were no big planters to appease, so the laws reflected the interests of smaller freeholders. For instance, a law was passed limiting the size of plantations to no more than 660 acres, to prevent the formation of large estates like in Virginia. Another law was passed protecting debtors, who were after all common in the province. Laws ultimately had to be approved by the proprietors, but in general the Assembly did its own thing with little outside interference.

However, the greater availability of land and the greater political openness weren’t enough to overcome the Albemarle’s considerable economic disadvantages and the colony showed no signs of growth, dashing the hopes of the Lords Proprietor. And after a few years Drummond and Berkeley had a falling out. Berkeley removed him from office and Drummond returned to Virginia.

Berkeley’s next choice for governor, Samuel Stephens, had actually been born in Virginia in the early 1620s, but he had even worse luck. He died suddenly in 1670 and his wife quickly remarried to Governor Berkeley. Berkeley was losing his interest in Carolina, so instead of appointing a third governor he just let the Assembly there nominate an acting governor instead.

The proprietors other than Berkeley were also losing their interest in the Albemarle.

I’ll discuss this more next episode, but it was around this time that the proprietors decided to take a more active role in the colonization of South Carolina. Their hopes that others would do the hard work for them hadn’t panned out, and so they decided to fund a new settlement on their own. The south was starting to seem more promising than the north.

They also wrote, with the help of John Locke, a new, very elaborate constitution for Carolina. This constitution technically applied to the Albemarle, but in practice it never went into effect there. (It also never really went into effect in the south, but I’ll talk about that next time.) The whole thing was basically suspended indefinitely, since it was far too complex to be workable in such a small society. So without a formal constitution in place, North Carolina’s government was authorized instead by various sets of instructions sent over by the Lords Proprietor. But those instructions left a lot of gaps, since they were dealing with specific issues here and there rather than laying out broad principles of government. So basically they were constitutionally winging it.

But here’s how things worked in general, at least at the start.

There was a governor at the top, of course. In principle he would be chosen by the proprietors, but in the event of a vacancy the Council could appoint an acting governor, which happened often enough.

Below the governor was the Council. Some of the Councilors were appointed by the governor, while others were appointed by the elected Assemblymen, which gave the people a somewhat larger share in the higher levels of government than elsewhere in the South at the time. Like in the early days of Virginia, the Councilmen were necessarily fairly close to the people of the colony, and not in a social class of their own.

Below the council were the elected delegates to the Assembly. North Carolina was divided into four regions, each of which could elect four representatives to the Assembly. A few other minor posts like constable were elected as well, although there were no local governments yet, since there was no need.

All freemen could vote, not just those who owned land. And it’s unclear whether voting was by ballot or not.

So, overall, not too complicated, though perhaps more complicated than you’d expect for such a small colony. There were serious weaknesses, though. Most especially, the procedures for selecting new governors were seriously confused. These sorts of ambiguities helped turn a rivalry between two factions into a small, bloodless rebellion, which broke out at almost exactly the same time as both Bacon’s Rebellion and King Philip’s War.

The narrative of Culpeper’s Rebellion is rather confused. The two main accounts I’ve seen differ substantially, but I’ll try to synthesize everything as best I can. Just know that the sources are a bit thin and that they require some guesswork to turn into a narrative.

I mentioned that the English government was starting to to more strongly enforce the mercantile system. The colonies could now trade only with England, and only on English ships, plus they had to pay more in taxes. There were even new taxes on trade between the colonies themselves.

North Carolina was particularly hard hit, since its tobacco had to be sent up to Virginia before it was exported to Europe. Naturally, smuggling soon took off, often thanks to the help of New England merchants. Even members of the Council in North Carolina were happy to participate in smuggling. But in general, the colonists were concerned, and not just about the Navigation Acts. They were worried about taxes. They were worried that the Lords Proprietor would take a more active hand in governing the region. They were worried about falling back under the domination of Virginia. Basically, they were worried.

But for a few years nothing much came of those worries. Smuggling had allowed them to avoid the costs of the Navigation Acts, and in any case no one had cared enough about North Carolina to bother enforcing the new rules. No one had really asked them to collect customs and so the government just hadn’t.

But finally, word came down to the acting governor, John Jenkins, that the Albemarle had to shape up and start enforcing the law. So Jenkins appointed some men to collect the revenue, including one guy with the excellent name Valentine Bird. But neither Bird nor anyone else actually bothered to do their job and no money was raised. That maintained their popularity with the common folk, at least.

It seems like North Carolina was dividing into two factions. On the one side, you had most of the colonists in what might be called the anti-proprietary faction, which was opposed to the interests of the proprietors and opposed to the enforcement of the Navigation Acts. That included men like Governor Jenkins, as well as John Culpeper himself, after whom the rebellion would be named, although he wasn’t the main leader or anything.

Culpeper was a surveyor from Barbados who had settled in South Carolina in 1670. He was a member of the Assembly there, but he soon became disenchanted with the leadership in Charleston. After he helped lead a failed protest against the governor, he was stripped of all his land. So he headed north to the Albemarle and settled there instead. He continued his anti-authority streak by becoming one of the leaders of the anti-proprietary faction.

On the other hand, you had a smaller number of men in the proprietary faction. They were led by a man named Thomas Eastchurch. The proprietary faction supported the collection of customs and the rights of the Lords Proprietor. I don’t think that the proprietary faction loved the proprietors or anything. For instance, another leader of the faction, Thomas Miller, an Irish apothecary, called them “turned fooles or sotts.” It’s just that the proprietary faction saw more benefit in sticking with the current arrangement. (Plus both men had personal grievances against a large number of their fellow colonists, which may have led them naturally into opposition. It’s easy to look back at the struggles of the past and assume they were all about ideology, but personal quarrels could matter just as much, especially in such a small colony.)

In any case, in 1674 Jenkins’s term as acting governor expired and he stepped down. The Proprietors, busy with other affairs, neglected to name a replacement. Elections were held and Eastchurch, who became Speaker of the Assembly, took it upon himself to begin acting as governor, although he didn’t actually become the acting governor, which would have required approval from the Council, I believe.

So even though Eastchurch’s authority was dubious already, he went well beyond just attending to routine administration. Not only did he begin enforcing the Navigation Acts and collecting customs, he also had the former governor Jenkins arrested on no particular charges.

Naturally, this outraged the colonists, who began plotting among themselves about what to do. Pretty soon they broke former governor Jenkins out of jail. The colonists then elected him “Generalissime”. He took command of the little rebellion and together they took back control of the government from Eastchurch, who fled to England to complain.

Okay, but let’s take a step back. I called this a rebellion, but were they actually rebelling against the proprietary government? After all, Eastchurch appeared to be seriously overstepping his authority. Now, the legal situation here is complicated but I’ll try to explain it as best I can.

As far as I can tell, the actual legal situation was this: there was no actual legal situation. North Carolina was still technically under the authority of John Locke’s Fundamental Constitutions, but those had been indefinitely suspended in practice. And as we’ve already seen, the proprietors had been lax in doing things like “making sure to appoint a governor” or “formally authorizing the Assembly”. As a result, the existence of any government at all in the Albemarle was of dubious legitimacy. Things went okay for a few years, since both the colonists and the proprietors were content to just keep things going the way they were, but when that amity broke down, the constitutional problems suddenly became acute.

Eastchurch had claimed the powers of the governor, but that was arbitrary. Even the Assembly that had made him Speaker had been elected under technically improper circumstances. Of course Jenkins and his faction didn’t have any real authority either. No one did, as best I can tell. They did claim popular support, which was true, although Carolina was no democracy. I guess if they’d wanted to, they could’ve claimed to be operating under a social contract in the absence of higher authority, like the Mayflower colonists, but that would’ve just moved the dispute to the realm of philosophy.

But even if the anti-proprietary faction lacked real authority, it certainly had real power. After taking back the Albemarle they then accused Eastchurch’s associate Miller of treason and blasphemy, for some anti-monarchical things he had said. Culpeper took him up to Virginia to stand trial, I guess since Berkeley was a proprietor, but this was right as Bacon’s Rebellion was breaking out. Governor Berkeley quickly acquitted Miller, who also left for England to join Eastchurch.

By the way, John Drummond, the first governor of North Carolina was still in Virginia at the time. He became one of Bacon’s biggest supporters, and after the rebellion was suppressed he then became one of the 24 men old Governor Berkeley had executed. It was a very up and down career I suppose.

Anyway, while in England, Eastchurch and Miller met with the Lords Proprietor of Carolina and convinced them that they were in the right and that the anti-proprietary faction was in the wrong, which was probably not too difficult. The proprietors officially made Eastchurch governor and sent him back to Carolina.

But while he and Miller were sailing back, they stopped at the island of Nevis [NEE-vis] in the Caribbean. There, Eastchurch quickly met and married a widow with a “considerable fortune”. Eastchurch suddenly found that he had better things to do than try to run a dirt poor, marginal colony where most people hated his guts and so he deputized Miller to go and govern North Carolina in his stead, although this was an illegal appointment, since the Council had to approve acting governors when the real governor was absent. So again, North Carolina lacked proper authority.

But when Miller arrived in the Albemarle he nevertheless summoned the current Assembly to notify them that he was now acting governor, and then he dismissed the Assembly and refused to recall them. He began running things on his own, appointing his friends to various offices and fining people for violations of the Navigation Acts. He had his opponents convicted on various charges without proper trials. And when he called for new elections to the Assembly, he used those convictions to disqualify his enemies from holding office, as well as making other alterations to electoral procedures which had no basis in law.

So when the elections were held, the colonists ignored Miller’s changes and just elected anti-proprietary men anyway. However, Miller only counted those votes that had been cast according to his new rules, and so he declared his faction to be the victors regardless.

In response to these outrages, the settlers once again began meeting in secret to figure out how to get rid of Miller, this time partly under the leadership of John Culpeper. The rebels soon captured Miller yet again, along with his top officials. They then issued a manifesto, called the “Remonstrance from the inhabitants of the Pasquotank area concerning their grievances against Thomas Miller”, signed by 30 men. Their very first complaint was that Miller had “denied a free election of an Assembly”. The rest of the brief complaint was about taxation and abuses of office of course, but it’s notable that elections made the list.

The counties of the Albemarle then elected a new Assembly under the old rules. The anti-proprietary faction, of course, won handily. A few hotheads wanted to declare the Fundamental Constitutions overthrown, but cooler heads prevailed. They did prepare to try Miller for treason and blasphemy again, but as this was all happening word came that Eastchurch had just arrived in Virginia and was preparing to assert his authority as governor. Unlike Miller, Eastchurch had a much stronger claim to legitimate authority.

The Carolinians nevertheless prepared to raise a militia against any invading force, but then Eastchurch promptly got sick and died. And in any case Berkeley’s replacement as governor was none too keen on sending troops through the Great Dismal Swamp.

But with that threat out of the way, yet another one cropped up. One of Miller’s men escaped custody to Virginia and then to England, where he too appeared before the proprietors. He tried to paint the rebellion as an uprising of the lower classes against lawful government, which might pose a threat to English control of its other colonies. But this time the anti-proprietary faction sent representatives as well. They plead their case and pledged loyalty to the proprietors.

The proprietors just wanted this to go away. They didn’t want to waste time on an unprofitable part of their colony any more than they had to. One of the old proprietors had sold his share in Carolina to another man, Seth Sothel [SO-thul]. This new proprietor agreed to go to the Albemarle and serve as governor, which seemed to the Lords Proprietor like a neat way to resolve the issue, but while en route to North Carolina, Sothel was kidnapped by Turkish pirates and taken to Algeria. (Really. Pirates abducted the governor of North Carolina. But he’ll be back in a later episode, by the way.)

So instead of Sothel, the proprietors instead named as governor John Harvey, a longtime resident of the Albemarle who had remained neutral in the crisis. North Carolina finally, after several years, had a governor with uncontested authority who was actually physically present in the colony. They also sent instructions formally authorizing the government.

That should have resolved things, but then Miller escaped from prison, where he had been stuck for two years after he had been convicted on those treason and blasphemy charges. He too went to England, but instead of going to the Lords Proprietor he went to the Privy Council, the King’s top advisors. This was a serious escalation, and the Privy Council took the matter seriously. Well, they didn’t care about who ran North Carolina so much as about that lost customs revenue. It wasn’t much money really, but the Crown didn’t want to let them get away with it nevertheless. They delegated the matter to the Committee of Trade and Foreign Plantations to investigate.

As it happened, John Culpeper, who had been appointed as North Carolina’s new customs officer, was in England at the time and he was arrested. He was the only North Carolinian at hand and so at his trials he sort of represented the rebellion as a whole. Because he was the only major figure to be charged with anything, the rebellion came to be named after him, but he wasn’t the equivalent of Bacon or anything. There was no single leader. But it was still Culpeper who stood trial, first for the missing money and then for treason.

You’d think that the proprietors would have sided with Miller and the proprietary faction, but actually they didn’t. Men like Miller were an annoyance who made them look bad. They had supported him and Eastchurch before but they had nothing to show for it. Mostly they just wanted peace and quiet and to make money. The proprietary faction, through its unpopular misrule, had disrupted that. The proprietors preferred to work with men who could actually get support within the colony, so long as they paid their taxes.

So the Lords Proprietor actually sided with the colonists’ right to rebellion, surprisingly enough, though not with their failure to collect customs revenue. The proprietors said that Miller had not been properly in charge, and so rebellion against him wasn’t actually treasonous. If Eastchurch had ever made it back, then rebelling against him might have been treasonous, but he didn’t, and so the power vacuum had remained. This might have actually been the case, though it’s difficult to work through all the legalities, but it’s still a surprise. After all, the anti-proprietary faction was clearly the one acting in contradiction to the will of the proprietors, even if they weren’t technically rebelling.

But according to McIlvenna, it was easier for the proprietors to side with the victorious rebels, so that’s what they did. North Carolina mostly mattered to them insofar as it affected their control over South Carolina, where the money was being made. Apparently keeping the Albemarle quiet was deemed wiser than trying to teach them a lesson.

Anyway, at the trials the proprietors openly supported Culpeper and opposed Miller. In fact, during Culpeper’s treason trial, apparently Lord Shaftesbury “unexpectedly appeared at the Tryall as a witness for the Defendant.” Thus, Culpeper was acquitted and no one was actually punished. As for the customs revenue, some compromise was worked out.

That was essentially the end of the matter, although Miller pressed the issue further, accusing even the Lords Proprietor of colluding with the rebels. Needless to say, his charges went nowhere.

So what was the end result of Culpeper’s Rebellion? What, if anything, had been accomplished?

Well, I’d say that the outcome was fairly ambiguous. The colonists had more or less forced a change in leadership, yes, but in terms of policy the victory seems much more minor. They were, after all, still enmeshed within the overall mercantile system of England, and sooner or later the taxman would prove unavoidable. Nothing about North Carolina’s fundamental situation had changed. That being said, a certain degree of restlessness in the colony was perhaps useful, since it showed that the North Carolinians weren’t just pushovers. Their interests had to be taken into consideration, otherwise they could cause considerable annoyance.

Culpeper’s Rebellion reminds me in particular of the Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey in Virginia back in the 1630s. In both cases there was an ambiguous legal situation with two sides both claiming to be the proper government. In both cases a widely hated governor was ousted in a quick armed coup by the men of the region. That little uprising helped the Virginians win back their Assembly, but it wasn’t a revolution or anything.

When you compare the Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey and Culpeper’s Rebellion to Bacon’s Rebellion, though, you can see why the bloodthirstiness of William Berkeley was rather shocking to contemporaries. Obviously minor rebellions weren’t that uncommon. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they were an accepted part of government or anything, but they were clearly a somewhat regular occurance. The colonists, since they had only a limited say in government, would therefore have to go outside the law to get their grievances taken seriously. And officials, aware that the “rebels” weren’t generally looking to overturn the whole social order, would therefore be relatively merciful when handing out punishments, if only to appease the rest of the colony. The law was important, yes, but it was only one ingredient in the successful running of a colony. Which side of Culpeper’s Rebellion had been legally in the right was in fact a somewhat secondary question.

Obviously this sort of thing could get out of hand, as it did in Maryland sometimes, and in Bacon’s Rebellion. Left unchecked, a rebellion can become a revolution, after all. But excessive harshness could kill a colony’s prospects just as surely. So minor rebellions were an occasional part of life in the colonies, a threat to the existing order, but not an existential threat.

Next episode, we’ll continue the story of the Carolinas, jumping down south to the new settlement of Charleston. Plus a look at the life of the English philosopher John Locke, and his impact on the American colonies. So join me next time on Early and Often: The History of Elections in America.

If you like the podcast, please rate it on iTunes. You can also keep track of Early and Often on Twitter, at earlyoftenpod, or read transcripts of every episode at the blog, at earlyandoftenpodcast.wordpress.com. Thanks for listening.

Sources:

The Colonial Period of American History Volume II by Charles M. Andrews

The Colonial Period of American History Volume III by Charles M. Andrews

John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government by David Armitage

"The Sinke of America": Society in the Albemarle Borderlands of North Carolina, 1663—1729 by Jonathan Edward Barth

Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia by Warren M. Billings

History of Elections in the American Colonies by Cortlandt F. Bishop

The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century 1607-1689 by Wesley Frank Craven

Declaration of Independence

Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689-1776 by Robert J. Dinkin

Thomas Hobbes by Stewart Duncan

The English Sugar Islands and the Founding of South Carolina by Richard S. Dunn

Locke, Natural Law, and New World Slavery by James Farr

The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina

Hybrid Constitutions: Challenging Legacies of Law, Privilege, and Culture in Colonial America by Vicki Hsueh

A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660–1713 by Noeleen McIlvenna

Algernon Sidney: A father of the Declaration of Independence by David Kopel

Legal Aspects of Culpeper’s Rebellion by Mattie Erma E. Parker

Upheaval in Albemarle: The Story of Culpeper's Rebellion 1675-1689 by Hugh F. Rankin

Remonstrance from the inhabitants of the Pasquotank area concerning their grievances against Thomas Miller

Hobbes's Moral and Political Philosophy by Sharon A. Lloyd and Susanne Sreedhar

In Charleston, Coming to Terms With the Past by Ron Stodghill

Locke's Political Philosophy by Alex Tuckness

The Influence of John Locke's Works by William Uzgalis

John Locke by William Uzgalis

Colonial South Carolina: A History by by Robert M. Weir

American Nations by Colin Woodard

28 notes · View notes

rona-1776-art · 7 years ago

Text

Rock-a-Bye-Baby

Summary:

On a patrol for the planet of Ospion Keith and Lance heard the cries in the woods of a forest. In a hollowed out tree they find an abandoned Galra baby. The two now have to figure out how to take care of an alien baby of the enemy race all with a disapproving Allura and Galra attacks.

This had been sitting in my AO3 for so long so I decided to post it here too! It’s domestic Klance with Galra Keith coming on later in the story! Enjoy!

(1) __ (2) __ (3) __ (4) __ (5 epilogue)

Chapter 1 - The Abandoned Child

The ground crunched underneath Keith and Lance’s feet as they patrolled their assigned area. The sound was very reminiscent of the crunching leaf’s back on earth but they both put that to the back of their head focusing on their mission. The planet they were on, which was named Ospion, had once been a colonized Galra residence before the natives decided to rebel and take back their planet. They won much to the surprise of some, but they had put out a distress call nonetheless to make sure it was completely safe. And so, Voltron had answered the call and all five paladins were securing large sections of where Galra settlements had been, making sure no one was still there.

“Ugh, how much more do we have to patrol?” Lance asked Keith who looked just as bored as he did at the moment.

“We’re not even half way done yet.” Keith answered looking at the radar they brought with them to help keep track of where they had been. They two men sighed annoyed. They had long put away their bayards too tired carrying them after so long.

“I probably wouldn’t mind this so much if the Ospions helped us, ya know? I mean yeah, they did just fight off the Galra but to inspect the whole planet? Five people can’t do that by themselves.” Lance kicked at stray rock in his path watching as it hit a tree down the pathway.

“Well we don’t exactly have a choice in the matter. We already asked them to help and they denied. We’ll just have to deal with it.” Keith answered, however, he was just as miffed. He didn’t want to patrol a whole planet for a race that was gone and was currently wreaking havoc in other parts in the universe.

Lance grumbled slouching as he walked which was slowing their already sluggish pace down even more. They were sure that the others were just as annoyed with the mission as they were. They knew that Pidge was the most annoyed out of them all. They had used the Galra tracker that was installed on the ship and reported to the natives that they were safe, but they didn’t want to trust any “strange foreign technology”. So, they were forced to suit up and track by foot while Allura and Coran tried to settle an alliance with the natives.

The two kept walking and entered a strange looking forest section. The ground and trees had changed shape and color, but it wasn’t the change of scenery that caught their attention, it was the sound of crying. Loud and desperate cries. Worried it might be one of the planet’s people they raced through the forest towards the sound. It lead to a clearing in the forest and they were able to track it to a single tree on the edge of the clearing.

“That sounds like a baby. Who would leave a baby out in the forest like this?” Lance asked as he and Keith walked over to the tree where the sound was coming from and noticed it had been hastily hollowed out. Inside was a baby wrapped up in blanket crying out.

Lance bent down and picked it up worried it might be hurt. It didn’t stop crying but he pulled back the blanket to take a closer look at it. They were both surprised to see the distinct features of the Galra. It had fluffy ears although they were drooped downward, the bright yellow eyes, and the unmistakable purple coloring that all Galra possessed.

“It’s a Galra baby. What’s it doing out here?” Lance asked. The baby was still crying but it was a bit quieter now that it was being held instead of laying down in a tree.

“Well the people here did throw a rebellion. Maybe the parents put it here hoping to come back for it later when it was safe. I’m just surprised it’s survived this long. It’s been a few days since we got their call and got here.”

“Yeah me too. We can’t leave it here though. It’ll die. As much as I hate the Galra I don’t like the thought of a leaving a baby out here alone.” Lance was now trying to sooth the baby by lightly bouncing it in his arms.

“Lance, we can’t take it back with us if that’s what you’re thinking. No one on the ship knows how to take care of a baby let alone a Galra baby. Besides what would Allura say when you brought it back on the castle? She resented me for a long time for being Galra, I’m pretty sure she won’t let you keep their baby.” He crossed his arms looking down at the purple alien. It was jarring to see a baby of the one race that they had been trying to stop. While they had been fighting horrendous beats this baby was so small and gentle. It was the opposite of what he was used to seeing out of this race.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s a baby Keith! Maybe she’ll understand if we just explain it. We should tell the others though and head back. Patrolling this area can wait.” Holding the baby with one arm while his other hand had tapped a button on his helmet, getting hold of the other paladins. “Hey guys, you there?”

“Lance, hey are you alright? What’s that crying I here?” It was Shiro.

“We’re fine, Shiro. The crying is actually what we wanted to talk to you about. Keith and I found this abandoned Galra baby while we were patrolling. We wanted to bring it back to the castle.”

“A Galra baby?!” Now it was Pidge. “Lance, you do realize that Allura isn’t going to allow you to keep it right? Besides do you know the first thing about taking care of a baby?”

“I can’t just leave it to die, Pidge! Besides its not dangerous. It’s not like it’s going to call Zarkon and give him our position to attack us. And for your information, yes, I do. My family is huge I know a thing or two about babies.”

A sigh was heard and Lance knew it was Shiro. “What does Keith think about it. I mean you both found it, it should be your guy’s decision.”

Keith adjusted his footing staring at the baby who had finally calmed down to sniffles. “I’m just nervous about bringing it on board. We don’t have the resources and it I’m afraid it would hinder us.” The baby turned its head towards Keith, its yellow eyes staring into his purple ones and he felt a strong pull towards it. A powerful sense of protection surged through him at that moment. “But, at the same time I don’t really want to leave it to die either so… let’s bring it with us.”

Lance smiled at him and heard Shiro agree to let them take it and how it was their responsibilities. But instead all Keith could concentrate on was how his chest filled with warmth at Lance’s smile. He shook his head and coughed trying to rid of the feeling.

“Okay we’re on our way back then! See you guys back at the castle!” Lance turned off the comms and turned in the direction they had come from ready to get back to the comfort of the ship. Keith followed right beside him still staring at the baby who hadn’t taken their eyes off him. It wasn’t unnerving that it was looking at him, what was unnerving was the strong need to hold it. He wanted to take the baby out of Lance’s arm and hold it himself. But he didn’t know how to hold a baby! Besides Lance was much better with kids than he was.

Keith finally looked away from it which made it whine. They outstretched their tiny hands towards him making little grabbing sounds trying to get Keith’s attention again. It startled both paladins who looked down at the baby. Tears were starting to form again and neither of them wanted to hear it crying again.

“You want to hold them? It seems like it wants you.” Lance suggested.

“I don’t know the first thing about holding a baby! Besides why would it want me?” As he said those words though the pull was getting stronger and he found himself moving closer to the baby.

“You just hold them. Cradle them in your arms, like that. You’ve had practice doing that before, right?” As Lance laid the baby in the other’s arms he walked away and Keith’s head snapped up.

Wait a minute. He remembered the moment! He was about to say something when Lance interrupted.

“Come on, Mullet Head, I’d rather get there sooner than later!”

Keith sighed and jogged carefully to meet up with him while the warm feeling seeped back into his chest at the sound of contempt baby in his arms.

XXX

When Keith and Lance arrived, it didn’t take long for the others to return. Allura was able to convince the Ospion king to let them rest and continue their search tomorrow. It was a relief for them to hear they got to rest, but the two boys were worried about the princess’ reaction to what they found. Even though it was their decision to bring it back to the castle, it was Allura who had the final say. It was her ship after all so it was only fair. Which was why their fears were high at her decision.

So, when they were able to change out of their suits and back into their regular clothes they were trying to think of the best way to go about it. Should they stall it by dragging it out or just go straight in and let her know right away?

“Ugh, she is not going to take this well.” Keith said. He was still holding the baby as it refused to leave his arms for more than a second.

“I won’t let her leave it here to die. That’s cruel even if it is a Galra child.” Lance argued. They were both standing outside the door to the dining area and everybody was waiting on them to enter so they could all eat.

“I know, but we don’t have a choice if she says no. It’s her ship so it’s her final say.” Even at Keith’s own words it hurt to hear. He was still wary about the child, but the strong pull towards it was dulling out his other skeptical side of bringing a Galra baby on board. He didn’t even notice his arms were wound more securely around the baby until it grabbed his shirt bringing his attention down to it.

“So what? We’re supposed to just throw it back out of the castle and let it starve to death? Or let one of the planets people see it and kill it?” Lance was getting agitated, he obviously wanted to keep the baby safe from harm. He stared Keith down, his eyes daring him to argue against him.

Keith sighed. “I’m not saying that, I’m just letting you know what Allura might tell you.” Looking down at the child still it eyes were trained on him, yellow staring into purple. Keith tensed up making a decision. “Let’s just go in. We’ll deal with Allura if she tries to say anything.” Bringing his gaze back up to Lance he saw that the other approved, now it was a matter of actually doing it.

Lance was the first to enter and Allura smiled, “Ah there you two are I was starting to get worri—“ Her words stopped as soon as Keith came in holding the child. Her gaze hardened as she looked at the child and then towards Keith. “What is the meaning of this? Why is there a Galra on my ship?” The air around the room had instantly become tense. All paladins and Coran looked worryingly at Allura and Keith. It was clear what she was thinking in that moment.

Keith stood strong as ever his gaze never wavering from its hard scowl. It was clear he was intent on speaking his piece before she did.

“It’s a Galra baby Lance and I found while patrolling the planet. It was inside a hallowed out tree clearing trying to be protected from any danger. We brought it here not wanting it die.”

“It doesn’t matter where you found it, I don’t want it on my ship.” She said, her voice almost strained and obviously not happy with the situation.

“Why not? It’s not going to cause any harm.”

“Yeah! It’s just a baby, Allura. It’s not going to hurt us. It’s harmless.” Lance was now standing next to Keith trying to persuade her. The rest of the room was silent almost afraid of saying anything to upset them.

Allura’s gaze only hardened. Even with the recent help of their Blade of Marmora allies, Allura was still skeptical of the Galra, and it was clear that a baby was no exception to her.

“I don’t care if it’s a baby, I don’t want any Galra on my ship!” She was standing her back straight and her words firm. Keith contained a wince at her words. Even after Allura’s apologies after finding out he was Galra there was still a little strain on a few things. He thought that she didn’t realize her words in that moment but it still hurt.

The baby rustled in his hold obviously uncomfortable with the high tension. The sounds of distress were obvious but Keith was reluctant to look away from Allura’s challenging stare. Luckily it was Shiro who noticed this and decided to step in.

“Princess,” Shiro stood from his seat, “if I may. The baby is their responsibility. I suggest that if they are able to take care of it and it doesn’t cause a problem they should be able to keep it, if not then they do what you say and it won’t stay on the ship.”

Neither of them liked the option fully, but it was better than bickering and it was the most logical. So they both settled on it. Keith and Lance both took to their seats with their food and sat down. As they ate and fed the baby it was still a very tense and awkward dinner. Keith sighed knowing that the future was not going to be easy for them.

XXX

They ended up feeding the baby two big bowls of food goo and they were now sleeping peacefully. Keith himself was feeling tired himself with how long of a day it was. First patrolling such large parts of a planet, finding a child, and then an awkward dinner with the team, he was definitely feeling the effects of sleep take over.

Lance was with him in the common area, with him now holding the child. Keith’s arms had gotten tired holding them for so long so after their eyes closed and was asleep, Lance had taken over so Keith could have a break. Which was a good thing too, because his eyes had started dropping from tiredness and he didn’t want to accidentally drop the baby. Keith still didn’t understand what had come over him being so protective. Yes, of course he didn’t want a child to die even a Galra one, but it didn’t explain his sudden strong need to protect. He was never good with kids back on earth and never had the same reaction with them as he did with this one. So, he didn’t understand the sudden change of that. However, he was still far too tired to care to figure it out and left that headache for the morning.

“So what are we going to name ‘em?” Lance’s voice had interrupted his small brief period of silence.

“What? Name who?” His eyes were still closed hoping to gain a little sleep soon.

“Who else? The baby obviously. We can’t just call them the ‘baby’ or ‘it’, they have to have a name!” Even with him being energetic he still managed to keep his voice down as not to disturb the child in question nestled in his arms.

“Uh… well I don’t know. What names did you have in mind?” He cracked an eye open at his point looking over at Lance.

“Well a few actually however I don’t know if they’re a boy, girl, or if Galra even have genders.” He was looking at Keith almost asking for an answer. At this Keith realized he wasn’t going to get any sleep so he sat up with both eyes open.

“How should I know? Besides I’m not changing any diapers to find out.” He crossed his arms his face twisted in disgust at the thought of touching a dirty diaper.

Lance scoffed sounding offended. “Ugh, rude, Keith. This is a team effort now which means you’re on diaper duty too.” He ignored the disgusted sound of protest and expression. “Well, until we find out, I think I’m going to call them Veronica. It’s my little sisters name and I think it fits perfectly.” He smiled down at, now named, Veronica and made sure she was still nestled safely in his arms.

When Keith looked at the two of them something inside his chest made him feel warm. The sight of Lance holding Veronica in his arm with a small smile warmed his chest and he couldn’t help but think that he liked the look. The look of Lance as he held their ch—

Keith shook his head before that thought finished his cheeks red and hot. Unfortunately, Lance noticed him and asked him what was wrong, which Keith replied with “nothing”.

“Dude, you’re red and he were just shaking your head like something was wrong. What’s up?”

“I said it was nothing.” He frowned with his usual scowl and that seemed to end the conversation as Lance sighed and got up from the couch.

“Whatever. I’m going to bed. I’m tired and I really want to get some sleep before Veronica wakes up in a few hours crying.” With that he left Keith alone in the room with a red face and a confused mind.

It took him a few minutes to collect himself and stand up from the couch. Just like Lance he was very tired and in need of some serious sleep. He already knew that the morning was going to be difficult. When he reached his room, he kicked off his boots and barley managed to change for sleep before he landed face first into his bed. He sighed into the bed, the long rough day making the bed feel so much softer and comfortable than normal. He was easily swept into sleep as his eyes closed and let his body fully relax.

XXX

The morning had gone by quickly, but quietly as everyone but Lance arrived and ate their morning meal. It had been tense still between Keith and Allura over the Galra incident which they had taken to only interacting for Voltron purposes. It was well in the afternoon that Lance had shown up. Normally they would have woken him up much earlier but after the events last night they had let him sleep in. They all knew that he had gotten up a few times during the night to take care of the new addition to the castle. When Lance entered the common area, where the paladins were relaxing, he still looked tired and most likely skipped out on his morning face routine. He held a squirming Veronica in his arms who seemed well rested but uncomfortable.

“Well, someone doesn’t look happy.” Shiro was looking at the squirming child with a sympathetic expression.

“She’s been like this ever since she woke up last night. I don’t know what the problem is.” Lance readjusted his hold as Veronica had disrupted it with her constant moving around.

“She looks uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the sudden change of environment?” Keith said as he was relaxed back against the couch. At the sound of his voice, however, Veronica had stopped her squirming for only a second only to start kicking and making irritated sounds. Lance in shock had to quickly readjust at the sudden change of action.

“Woah! What the heck?!” Lance was now holding her up with her chest against his for a more stable hold. It didn’t seem to help any as she turned around her small hands reaching out towards Keith.

“Looks like she wants you again.”

“What, why me?” He was stiff as Lance walked over to him fully ready to hand her over.

“I don’t know but if it gets her to calm down I’m all for giving her to you.” He placed her in Keith arms when he reached him and Veronica finally calmed down. Her face was scrunched up slightly but looked a lot calmer than a few seconds ago. She was no longer squirming or kicking and her hand had clutched onto a part of his shirt tightly. It was clear she was not leaving his arms anytime soon.

Keith was still slightly stiff but the same feeling from yesterday of holding her was back and he actually felt a sense of relief as well. It was also nice to see Lance relax against the couch, and Keith felt a little guilty. He felt he should have taken Veronica last night, but then again, he wouldn’t have known what to do when she had woken up.

“Why does she keep wanting me to hold her? It was like this yesterday, I don’t know anything about babies or kids. I don’t want to do something wrong.” His hold was stiff but Veronica didn’t seem to care. She had become more lax in his arms and her face was no longer scrunched up, however, she still had a vice grip on his shirt.

“It’s possible that she feels more comfortable around you because of your genes. I mean you are part Galra she may recognize that and feel safer with someone like her.” Shiro said. He was the first to know about his Galra heritage and the first to accept him. He was still careful about his words around Keith surrounding the subject even after multiple times telling him it was okay. Still he appreciated the gesture.

“I guess. I’m just not sure how to take care of a Galra baby. I mean they’re much different from earth babies as far as I can tell. I don’t know what they need.”

“Well why not ask Allura and Coran? I’m sure they’d be able to look some stuff up for you guys on their computer and get the right information.”

Keith cringed at the option. He was still on edge around her as was obvious by the tense morning. He could ask Coran but he was siding with the princess which made talking to him awkward as well. He was more understanding but it was still tense with him too.

“Alright I guess I’ll go.” He stood up already bracing himself for the awkward encounter. “Hey Lance, do you want to come w---“ He stopped mid-sentence when he saw Lance passed out on the couch. His chest was a slow and steady rise and fall, his lashes rested gently on his cheeks, and Keith felt his cheeks warm and his heart race. ‘Okay time to leave!’

He quickly left the room already knowing what would happen or what would have been said if he stayed. His heart finally dropped down to a normal pace as he reached the control room where Allura and Coran spent most of their time making sure everything was in order. He was still against seeing them this soon but he needed to know how to take care of Veronica correctly, so he braced himself and walked in. The automatic doors closed behind him and it caught the attention of both the Alteans in the room. Allura narrowed her eyes upon seeing both Keith and the baby and quickly turned her head away. Coran must have noticed she wouldn’t say anything and stepped in for her.

“Ah Keith, what can we do for you today?” He put on a brave face much like Keith had.

“Well, I was hoping you guys might had some information on how to take care of Veronica here. Human babies are a lot different from Galra ones I’m guessing so I don’t really know the process of taking care of one.” Before Coran could speak Allura lifted her head from what she was working on to look at Keith.

“Wait, Veronica. Who’s that?”

“It’s what we named the baby.” Keith looked down at said child who looked up at him. Allura made a sound that she heard him but was now no longer interested. The air became tense again and Veronica squirmed and cried out softly making Keith quickly rock her the best he could to make her feel better. Coran thankfully started talking again to clear the air.

“We do have some information on the ship about Galra and their home and lifestyle so there should be childcare there. It is 10,000 years old so I’m not sure how accurate some of the information is. However, I don’t think anything has changed too much in that aspect hopefully!” He smiled making Keith feel a little better than before. “Come on over up here and I’ll get the information for you.” Keith walked past Allura who was back to her previous task and stood next to Coran as he looked up information that Keith couldn’t read and started to scroll through getting the necessary information.

During this Veronica looked up and set her eyes on his mustache. She giggled and reached up only managed to hit it lightly with her hand, however it was enough to grab his attention. With new vigor, she reached up higher and managed to grab it which pulled Coran away completely from his task with a pained yelp. Keith moved in a way so the grab wasn’t hurting the other and managed to uncurl her fingers from his mustache.

“Ah sorry about that Coran.” Veronica was happily giggling pleased that managed to achieve her task.

“No, it’s alright. I’m sure she was just curious is all. She is quite cute though.” He smiled getting back to his task quickly finishing it up. “Here it is.” He picked up a tablet and handed it to Keith. “I transferred all the data you may find necessary and translated for you to read it your language.”

“Thanks Coran. This will help tremendously.” Keith smiled gratefully.

“Of course, anything you need I’ll be here to help.”

The paladin smiled and thanked him once again before leaving and started reading the new information on the tablet. Of course, it was a little hard because Veronica’s eyes were glued to the glowing screen and reached her tiny hands toward it wanting to play with it. He held out of her way but it was hard to hold her and the tablet at once.

“You’re going to keep being a nuisance, aren’t you?” He asked rhetorically. He had made it all the way back to the commons area before she finally, but reluctantly, stopped reaching towards the tablet. It was evident by her sniffles that she wasn’t happy, but he paid them no mind.

As he sat down on the couch he noticed that he had sat down next to Lance who was still asleep. He was a little more slumped over than when he left with his neck bent at an awkward angle. Keith knew from experience that it would be sore when he woke up, so he sat down Veronica on the couch and gently tried to move him to a more comfortable position. He heard a snicker and looked up to see Pidge glancing at them over her computer.

“Having fun taking care of your boyfriend, Keith?” Keith blushed at her comment and glared.

“He’s not my boyfriend.” He tried to sound confident but it faltered. Pidge raised her brow at him skeptically.

“You have baby with him, you both named it together, and now you’re gently moving him around as he sleeps.” Keith grumbled at her comment clearly trying to pay her no mind. The blush was evident on his face which made her snicker more.

“Alright, Pidge, don’t tease him.” Shiro said, even though he had a bit of a smile as well.

In the meantime, Veronica had crawled over the small space onto Lance’s chest and just laid there. She seemed content there. However, the moment was ruined when a loud blaring sound came through the speakers. Lance shot up immediately waking him from his sleep. Since Keith was leaned over Lance they ended up bumping heads when he sat up causing them both to groan in pain.

“Paladins!” Allura’s voice came through the speakers. “The Galra are here and are trying to attack to the ship! Get to your lions now!”

While the other three paladins in the room got up and ran to the hangers. Keith and Lance took a nervous look at Veronica who was now upset by the sudden loud noise. They knew they had the same thought of ‘what are we gonna do with her?’

#Klance #Voltron #Voltron legendary defender #keith voltron #lance voltron #domestic Klance #Galra Keith #Voltron OC

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hemminicky · 8 years ago

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I'd pay good money for a software like this. I've been thinking about my own story for years but when I try to write it just doesn't sound as good on actual paper lol. What's your story about? What are your OCs?

Oh dude, the struggle is real. In your head these scenes are so epic and the dialogue is amazing and then written down it’s like “sometimes things are bad but sometimes they can be good”. Also it takes time to actually sit down and write and idk if it’s lazyness or anxiety that makes me procrastinate actually writing the most.

So it’s gonna be a fantasy series (I think my minimum would be 4 books, might be more) and there are kinda two stories in the series that develop at the same time. You got the “main” story which is about Rena who finds her whole village burned down but then realizes that her siblings & all the other kids in the village were kidnapped, so she goes on this quest to find them again and is joined by the other chars throughout the journey (shoutout to the strangers-becoming-family trope lmao). And like, they find out that her village wasn’t the only instance of this phenomenon over the last decades.

Now on the other hand you have a more political story. So you have the natives and the settlers (gotta give them names at some point) and the country is a peninsula, so the settlers were at first people who fled war and were seaking refuge somewhere else, so they settled in the north (where the land is connected) and the natives were fine with that cause they were living in like smaller clans with the south being more densly populated, so they weren’t bothered by the new arrivals. Now fast forward a few hundred years, the settlers have kinda colonized most of the country, their original country has declared the new land to be part of their kingdom, native culture has been opressed and the natives aren’t always treated the best. So when the King annexed the country into the Kingdom he put some guy as the regent, which kinda dethroned the family who had been reigning over the new country since the first settlement, so they’ve been lowkey pissed for a few decades. So you’ve got this subplot of them wanting to take over the position again and call for indipendence of the country but by independence they really mean a country for themselves which implies no native cultures for them. Which, you know, the natives wouldn’t very much appreciate. So you got these three fractions all having their own plans for the country and there’s gonna be intrigue and shit in the story.

Also underlying all of this is the fact that gods are real, they’ve just been sleeping but they might wake up soon and shit’s gonna hit the fan.

Ok this has gotten pretty long, but I’ve got this post that kinda describes the main OCs, but I’ve got 3 more I could talk about if anyone is interested in those too.

#there's still so much worldbuilding I have to work on but this is like the basics #there's also pirates and other cultures and magic in it #audrey rambles #my book #Anonymous

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laughingblue12 · 7 years ago

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Canto 22 – Flying by Pinwheel

The Conference Room onboard the corsair flagship was spacious. It was one of the largest in Tron’s fleet. The most famous corsairs in the Imperial Rim Worlds were gathering there for a meeting.

“I missed you, Uncle Goofy,” said a cherub-faced little boy to Trav Dalgoda.

“I missed you too, Artran. I wouldn’t have left, but two of my very best friends from Questor needed my help.”

“The Aero Brothers?” asked Artran, eyes opening wide like brown blooms in a sunny field.

“Yes,” Trav nodded. “And your father got rather mad at me too.”

“He’s always like that. He always forgives me, though.”

Trav nodded at the boy. Artran was no more than seven years old. He was a very open-faced, trusting little man. It was difficult to believe his parents were two of the most infamous space pirates in known space.

The sour-faced pirate known as the King of Killers came into the room and sat down opposite Trav. He was a thin, bitter man with no sense of humor. Trav liked him anyway.

“How’s the pirate business, King, old Jester?”

“Shut up, Goofy, or I’ll rip your head off and stuff it in your… er…” He looked at Artran, “mouth.”

“That’s not very nice, Mr. Killer,” muttered Artran softly.

“Oh, I know, boy. I don’t mean it. It’s just that this clown and thief has caused us too much trouble.”

“I apologize, King. I had to help my friends, didn’t I?”

“I respect Ged Aero,” shot back the King. “If you’da said that he needed the artifact, I’da voted to give it to him. You don’t just steal stuff from Tron. Where’s your sense of honor?”

“I’m not sure I ever had one. If I did, I probably sold it and forgot about it.”

“The Aero Brothers are colonizing a planet?” King asked for conformation.

“No. It already had a really cool civilization on it when we found it. They are merely taking ownership.”

Just then, Elvis the Cruel walked into the room, his guitar slung over his back. He walked with a swagger and wore a dirty white muscle shirt. He was combing his greasy black pompadour with a practically toothless comb. Beside him walked the gorgeous lady pirate called Sheherazade. She wore a Princess Leia-style bronze slave bikini, though no one remembered why the heck such clothing was called that. It had something to do with a former emperor’s favorite comic book or something. Her skin, and she was showing practically all of it, was a deep ebony color. She sat down next to Artran and motioned Elvis to sit beside her.

“Thank you, thank you very much,” said Elvis.

“So, Trav,” said the sultry Sheherazade, “How did you get Tron to let you live?”

“Oh, Sheherry-baby, you know I’m Tron’s best buddy. The old Jester could never kill me.”

The beautiful lady laughed with a charm made more elegant by her tawdry companions. She seemed a regal Egyptian goddess. The King of Killers watched her longingly.

Elvis took out a cigarette butt and lit it, letting it hang on the slack part of his lower lip.

Pirates from other corsair fleets began to arrive. Razor Conn of the Black Hawk fleet showed up wearing a white cowboy hat and sunglasses with his second in command, the mysterious oriental, Shad Blackstone, by his side. The Degenerate, one-eyed Captain of the Corsair Frigate Palace of Foul Odors showed up in his crusty Lancer Battle Suit. The dwarf that traveled with him was named Stinky because of his unique ability to produce overpowering flatulence on cue. Several other Lancer Corsair captains were also there. Fez Amin of the dreaded Monopoly Brigade was there. His bald, tattooed head was skull-like and menacing. Arkin Cloudstalker was there with seven of his beautiful Lady Knights, captains of the White Sword Corsairs.

Tron came in with both his beautiful wife Maggie the Knife and Dana Cole. They both sat with him at the head of the conference table.

Tron held up a hand for silence and attention. All eyes fixed on the man with the scar. He had a commanding presence above and beyond the many forceful personalities gathered on the ship.

“You’ve heard the word circulated already,” began Tron. “News travels fast among the Corsair Brotherhood of Gentlemen Adventurers.” Everyone laughed at the high-tone name for the scum of the universe. “I have come here to declare war. We have been double-crossed by the smuggler prince and planetary duke of the planet White Palm. Count Nefaria tried to take us all out by acquiring ancient artifacts of incredible power. The Pinwheel Corsairs intend to take him on in his own system and take him out. I am not asking you to help me, though help is welcome. I am asking you to refuse any call for help he might make.”

“And what happens if we decide we like Count Nefaria more than we like you?” growled Fez Amin.

Elvis stood up and glared across the table at Amin. “Then we bust you up like a bunch of Louisiana hound dawgs!”

Fez Amin laughed. “What does that mean?”

Tron stared at the Monopoly Brigade’s tattooed leader. “Are you taking me on?”

“Naw,” said Fez Amin. “I’m just asking what if? Goober there gave me a funny enough answer to satisfy my need to laugh.”

There was a lot of nervous laughter. Everyone feared Fez Amin. He was dangerously insane and full of bloodlust. They feared Tron and his ace pilots as well. Few openly laughed at the eccentric behavior of a pilot like Elvis the Cruel. The possible consequences of such disrespect made everyone with a sane brain nervous.

“You tell me now,” said Tron to the group, “Who has a contract with Count Nefaria?”

No one raised a hand.

“Who is against my plan?”

Again, no hands went up.

“We hear you met a group of Corsairs called the Wraiths,” said Razor Conn. “You know much about them?”

“No,” said Tron. “But we beat them hard.”

“Let me give you this to help your cause,” said Conn, tossing a computer log core onto the table. “That is proof that the Wraith Corsairs work for both Nefaria and Syn Corporation.”

Everyone gasped but Tron and Maggie.

“Robots?” asked Tron.

“That’s my guess,” said Conn, smiling beneath his mirrored sunglasses and white cowboy hat. “It cost me forty fighters and one Black Hawk Frigate to get that bit of evidence. I’m not gonna help you kill Nefaria, but I mean to bet on you and the Pinwheels to succeed.”

“I thank you for that,” said Tron with a gracious nod.

Arkin Cloudstalker spoke up then. “We hear you helped Ged Aero escape the Imperium in return for your so-called Crown of Stars ancient artifact. And we hear Ged now owns a planet.”

“I won’t deny it,” said Tron.

“What part does that Crown play in all of this?” asked Cloudstalker. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

“You know the Crown has the power of the Ancients,” said Tron. “If we knew how to use it, we would tell you what we plan, but we need to research it more.”

“So, if we throw in with you, does that mean we are also supporting Ged Aero?” Cloudstalker’s face was grim as he got to the crucial question.

“I haven’t negotiated with the Aero Brothers yet. You can see I have their friend Trav Dalgoda as a member of my team already,” said Tron, indicating Goofy who was playing with Artran and oblivious to all around him. “I think it’s safe to say we respect Ged Aero and intend to throw our support behind him as he opens new systems in unknown space.”

“Well,” said Cloudstalker, “I believe Ged Aero is the one man who can solve our problems with the Imperium. I believe only true integrity can undo the Gordian Knots of Galtorr. I’m adding the White Swords to the Pinwheel Corsairs in this attack on Nefaria. I say one less nasty old spider in the Galtorr Imperium is a good thing!”

Most of the corsairs applauded Cloudstalker. Fez Amin growled.

“Ged Aero is a Werewolf!” shouted Amin’s tattooed second in command.

“Your foolishness is good for business!” mocked Fez Amin. He jabbed a large polished knife intao the conference table. “If you kill or capture Nefaria, Admiral Brona Tang will be hunting you down like the dogs you are. The Imperial Navy hasn’t paid any attention to you before now. That will change. I’ll be the only corsair still operating with a reasonably valid Letter of Marque. I’ll be laughing at your cold, dead corpses floating in endless space!”

Fez Amin and the Monopoly Brigade stormed out of the conference as if in anger. Tron frowned. It was more likely a tactical retreat. Amin was now part of the enemy.

Trav reached across the table to retrieve the fancy toad-sticker. “Sorry about the table, Maggie,” he said sweetly to Artran’s fierce mother. “I’ll just keep this cool knife.”

Aeroquest… Canto22 Canto 22 – Flying by Pinwheel The Conference Room onboard the corsair flagship was spacious. It was one of the largest in Tron’s fleet.

#Aeroquest #novel

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jascookex-blog · 8 years ago

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Colonial Government

Colonial Government in the Thirteen Colonies

My Introduction

Government by definition is “the governing body of a nation, or community.” Although that is a very good description to grasp the idea fully we must know what governing means at its core. To govern would mean to “conduct the policy, actions, and affairs of (a state, organization, or people). Politics described simply by my old Political scientist professor is “who gets what, when, and how.”(Poulard) This description is my personal favorite when it comes to understanding what happened here in The United States of America. One must grip the importance of this simple concept to fully understand why the colonists weren’t the biggest fan of their King 3000 miles across the Atlantic.

The New World was a place where your wildest dreams could come true. To the powerful leaders of the European nations, The New World was an opportunity to pump up their reputation as a leader of their people, to be a knowledgeable presider of their nation. It was a chance to become the European super power, to improve the quality of life among the civilians of one’s nation, and the possibilities for new raw resource, new found wealth, power, the possibility for new found knowledges, and new technologies to bring back to the motherland.

The first European nation to step foot amongst the New World for exploitation was Spain, the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus was sent to sail for India in 1492. The Spanish Monarchs King Ferdinand, and Queen Isabel had rejected Cristopher’s hearings in 1491 to venture in search of a new trade route; However when Christopher had threatened to speak to the King of France about his expedition, King Ferdinand had changed his mind about commissioning Christopher Columbus. So on April 17th, 1492 the two Spanish monarchs signed a formal agreement with Columbus granting the explorer ten percent of all profits made from the voyage. The Monarchs were thinking rationally, they had just lost a lot of resources conquering the Moorish Kingdom of Grenada. Christopher Columbus was in charge of three Spanish ships, The Santa Maria, The Pinta, and the Nina. This expedition is vital to know because it is the first step in European settlement, and colonization of the Americas.

On Christopher Columbus’s second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493 he had established the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas, he named the settlement Isabella. After finding a lot of gold the Spanish over ran the island of Hispaniola, and spread to Puerto Rico in 1508, to Jamaica in 1509, and to Cuba in 1511. When Columbus originally landed in Cuba he had thought he had arrived in China. Half way through the 1500’s many natives of Central, and South America had died off from war, enslavement, or disease. By the year 1550 The Spanish had domination over the West Indies, and Central America. They were the wealthiest nation in the world due to the discovery of the new found wealth, however it wouldn’t be long until the rest of Europe wanted to tip the scales in their favor.

The year was 1585, and Spain was still the most powerful country in the world. The country was an empire, ruling territories all over the world, the country also had incomparable amounts of wealth from the new world, which other countries did not have access too yet. King Philip the 2nd was preparing the largest fleet ever to be built in the history of the world, for one of the most historic showdowns in all of history. King Philip intended on capturing England with his infamous Spanish armada. May 1588, A fleet of 130 Spanish ships filled with invaders were to be pushed upon the coast of England, he had hoped that his troops would over run the English. When the Spanish ships had reached the English Channel the weather had turned for the worst, and most of the men in the Spanish ships did not make it back home. Spanish ships stood no chance against the weather and the new English ships that were defending the Island.

The Queen was victorious, against all odds her and her people had defeated the most powerful navy in the world. The defeat of the Spanish Armada had crippled the Spanish economy causing mass crisis throughout the nation. King Philip the second had spent 10 million ducats on the Armada which had its consequences on the countries poor. In 1596 the crown of Spain had declared bankruptcy. This is so important to know, because now the English could colonize the New World.

The English Colonization of North America

The year is now 1606 and England is relatively poor compared to their neighboring nations. The virgin Queen Elizabeth the 1st had passed away in 1603, and the crown of England was passed by vote of Cecil, and council to the King of Scotland, King James the 1st who had already been King for 35 years. On April 10th, 1606 King James issued the first Virginia charter which made The Virginia Company. The Charter was proprietary, and gave land grants to two competing English investment companies to invest in the new world. It was called the joint-stock company ventures, this made it possible to fund these expensive voyages to Virginia. The joint-stock company would sell stocks to investors to raise money for the venture into Virginia. The investors knew that the investment had little risk as far as their lives were concerned, they knew the startup costs would be huge, and the investor’s biggest risk of loss would have been if the colonies failed.

As far as the King was concerned The Virginia Charter was an attempt to stop Spanish expansion in The Americas, while acquiring wealth for the motherland Britain. The Virginia Charter had potential to give the British their first Empire colony in North America. The crossings of the Atlantic were dangerous, and many of the colonists heading to the New World were desperate for new wealth, new lives, or as servants whom would work for 3 to 7 years in return for land. The colonists heading to Virginia knew they could die at sea, and everything could be lost, but they still went. The leaders in most cases were the second or third sons of noble families in search of their own land.

The Plymouth Company wanted the lands in the north of the area, and The London Company wanted the lands south of the area (The companies were named after the cities the investors based in the area). The first attempt to colonize Virginia by The Plymouth Company was a disaster, and the English ship “The Richard” was captured by the Spanish in August 1607. The Plymouth Company also had a second venture with two ships “The Gift of God”, and “The Mary and John”, these ships brought 45 colonists and created the Popham colony in Maine. After the leader of the colony had found out he had inherited some money in London, he left the colony, taking all 45 of the colonists with him.

The London Company succeeded in creating the first permanent English settlement in North America. In December 1606 three English ships brought 104 colonists to Virginia to assemble Jamestown. The town was founded on May 24th, 1607, the town was in a strategic location. It was on a peninsula giving it easy access to vessels, it also gave access inland through the James River. At first the colonists struggled due to the harsh conditions in the new world. Geographically they were faced with swampy land that harbored malaria, and dysentery. The colonists were unfamiliar to the resources that nature had provided for them, and were often faced with hostility when it came to the Natives. Many Colonists were gentleman and were not used to doing hard labor, some didn’t want to help. The English were struggling to stay alive, they had finally birthed a colony, and established their foothold in North America, but would the colony succeed?

Colonial Government

Humans or as I prefer, Homo Sapiens are animals in nature, and just like animals in the wild, the Jamestown colonists were struggling to survive. A period of time during this struggle is referred to as “the starving times”, when colonists had become so desperate they had to eat their dead peers. After nine months in Jamestown there were only 38 colonists alive out of the original 105. In January 1608, 100 more Englishman arrive to Jamestown with supplies. John Smith is elected president of the Jamestown governing council, and implies the policy that everyone must work. In many respects John Smith saved the Jamestown colony from failure, and by making a policy he governed the colonists.

In 1619 Britain had acquired 13 colonies in the last decade. They were called The New England colonies, Colonies were governed by the King and parliament in England. All of the policies and laws imposed over the colonists came from the English government across the Atlantic. Even though the state was governed by the King, the colonists were given certain rights to ensure their cooperation, and loyalty to the King. One of these rights gave the Virginian males the right to be appointed by vote of Virginian landowners to be in the Virginian House of Burgesses. To qualify you must be a male, and also own land. The House would meet up once a year to improve the state of Virginia, and quality of life for its residents.

The House of Burgesses along with the British appointed governor of the state could decide how the colonists would be taxed. The House of Burgesses was a stepping stone towards democratic government in the Colonies, however their power was not sovereign. The King needed more money to pay for the French Indian war, his idea, tax the colonists. Although the House of Burgesses did not agree, they were powerless when the English made the tax a law. The House of Burgesses attempted to persuade colonists into not paying the Kings taxes, but were dissolved as a group entirely by the English appointed Virginia Governor.

The New England Confederation was formed in 1643, uniting the Massachusetts Bay colony, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. Representatives from the colonies met in Boston and wrote a Constitution binding the Colonies as “The United Colonies of New England,” they did this to improve mutual safety and welfare of the Colonies. The Representatives coordinated defenses in case of attacks, and often debated where boundaries started and ended. After Massachusetts declined a war with the Dutch, the Confederation would slowly decline until it is dissolved in 1684 when the King went back on his Massachusetts charter.

Other Legislatures were formed over the colonies, and all of them were democratic. The people could vote in who they wanted to represent them, but their powers were limited. The Legislature could not go against English law, their bills had to be passed by the Kings governors, and then passed by the King himself after approved by both The Legislature, and Governor. The only Colonies except to the bills going to the King were the self-governing Charter Colonies of Connecticut, Maryland, and Rhode Island.

The thirst for sovereign governing of their own Colonies, had started to manipulate the destiny of New England. Another Union was created in Albany, New York. The congress was called The Albany Congress, and occurred between June 19 to July 11 in 1754. The congress wanted a unification of seven colonies- Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. The motivation of the unification was for security, and defense from the French in North America. Although the delegates were picked by the colonists, the British were still watching every political decision being made by the colonists. When the Albany Plan of Union was given to the King for approval, he denied the plan due to the power it took from him.

The English were completely in control of the government implemented in the colonies, and different laws were implemented in different places. Royal Colonies were ruled directly by the King. The governments were appointed by him, and the policies often exploited the colonists for the Kings gain. The Proprietary Colonies were self-interest colonies who owned their own institutions of government, however their governors would report everything political back to the King. The last was a Charter Colony, these were granted during the joint-stock company and were created when the King James had issued the charters in 1607 .Even though some governments were self-governing, and The Colonies were still ruled by the King and British Parliament.

After the French and Indian War in 1754 the King implemented a higher tax on the colonies to pay for the war. The colonies were restricted by the King, they had no free trade and fell victim to a one sided mercantile system. Next came the Stamp act congress of 1765 which occurred in New York City in 1765, it lasted from October 7th to October 25th. Representatives from nine out of thirteen colonies got together in an attempt to protest against new British taxation, specifically the stamp act. The stamp act taxed colonists on ;newspapers, legal documents, commercial documents, liquor licenses, calendars, almanacs, certificates, diplomas, contracts, wills, bills of sale, and licenses of all sorts.

The Stamp act affected every colonist, it taxed domestic goods, and made it more expensive to succeed. The tax was direct from the King, with no approval from the colonists. The stamp act was reinforced with penalties, violators were often tried without a jury present. The assembly wrote the “Declaration of rights and grievances of the colonists.” A document that stated that the colonists should be treated as equals to the citizens of Britain, that only local governments could tax the Colonies, that they would not pay taxes they had not consented to, and last but not least , to have a jury present during trial. When the “Declaration of rights and grievances of the colonists” were read by parliament, and the King, they were swiftly rejected. A year later in 1766 Parliament took away the Stamp act.

Only a year later in 1767 the British had passed The Townshend acts. The Townshend acts taxed paint, lead, tea, glass, and paper. This infuriated many of the colonists because the King had taxed them directly again without consent. George Washington wrote a consultation named “The Virginia Resolves.” The consultation expresses Washington’s view that colonies could only be taxed by their own appointed legislature. By 1769 every colony except for New Hampshire was boycotting British goods.

The Intolerable acts infuriate the colonies, and end up pushing them to their breaking point. In my next Making history one can only imagine the legendary tale that is to come.

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