K-057: Live Session Summary Part 7, Gateway, Toran City, The Government Building
A little while later Commissioner Justine finds Oliver in his office.
She says she would like Oliver to sit down with the tech he has been working with and possibly Argyle as well and talk through the message tunnelling protocol he revealed in the meeting with Argyle, whereby one can sneak messages through the Dominion’s communications network without anyone knowing. To Oliver’s complete lack of surprise, the Electorate are very interested in that.
Once he has finished helping them, Commissioner Justine tells Oliver a little about herself. She says that she is the ‘renegade’ of her family, being the one involved in government work. All the rest of her family are involved in her family’s corporation, where they do things such as trying to terraform a world to make it more liveable. They have invested in technologies where they are trying to deal with the fact that on most of the Electorate worlds there is no biosphere. So they are looking at ways of improving terraforming, ways of researching ecosystems, ways of improving liveability conditions. She says even though she doesn’t necessarily get on particularly well with her family, she is willing to introduce Oliver to someone in the corporation whereby they could make use of Oliver’s talents, if he were interested in trying to better people’s lives here in the Electorate – and be remunerated for his efforts.
“Sure, I can at least meet them.”
“I will set it up then. Also, if you’re really interested in what we do here, we can talk about me sponsoring you to take franchise, and become an Elector.”
“I think I would like to have that conversation.”
“Good, later then, I’ll set up a meeting and see how it goes.”
Oliver spends a long time ‘assisting’ the Electorate Government people. As it is clear his time working this way might be drawing to a close, he asks the Commissioner, “Does the Electorate ever plan to actually go to war with the Dominion or are you just trying to measure your odds in case it happens?”
Commissioner Justine responds, “We know we could never win a war with the Dominion. When we did the original breakout of the Separatist Fleet all that time ago, we caught the Dominion Navy unawares, with what were mostly civilian ships going up against navy ships, except for a few defectors. We were well-planned and we were lucky and we took an Overlord’s scalp for our efforts, but, we could never win a war against the Dominion now. It’s a recurring miracle that they haven’t reintegrated us back into Dominion rule, and we live with that constantly. If they ever wanted to storm in here and take the place over again, they could. So technological edges like these can be invaluable for our security.”
“So what if they come ask me about me?”
“Well, the easiest thing would be to tell them that we never heard of you and if they press further, we can pretend you snuck in, like you did. Unless you’d like us to rub you in their faces for some reason.”
“No.”
“Good. I’d rather not. It’s not in our interest to let anyone know you’re here. What are the chances they’ll send someone looking for you?”
“Low, I hope. ideally they’ll assume that I got found out and have been imprisoned or killed, I guess.”
“The big worry for them would be that they know what you know and that you’ve decided to work with us. That does put you in some danger potentially. Do they know you have the Notebook?”
Just a little lie, “No. I told them I was here to get it from Argyle.”
“So, we can assume if they don’t hear from you, they’ll send someone else looking for you and/or Argyle?”
“Possibly.”
“Well, probably best if we pretend we’ve never heard of you. Might be good for you to leave Gateway when we’re finished here.”
“Yep. Change my name.”
“We can help you with that, get you separated,” she leans on the word, “from the Dominion, a whole new identity, a whole new Elector, a whole new life.”
Oliver smiles.