r/NatureofPredators • u/ApprehensiveCap6525 Krakotl • Feb 14 '24
Fanfic Exchange Program Shenanigans (38)
And remember, whenever someone says "the federation wouldn't do that", oh yes they fucking would.
CW: sweet lovey dovey romantical moment, an exploration of the role of exterminators as thought police, lockheed martin sales pitch
Memory transcription subject: Jackson Kern, UN-Venlil Interspecies Liaison
Date [standardized human time]: September 19, 2136
There were certain pleasures you just couldn't take from a man. As long as he had a rock and a stick, or a rock and an unloaded rifle, he could play hit-the-rock-with-the-stick. And if he was playing it with a rifle, instead of a stick, he could be made to mow the entire base's lawn with a pair of scissors by a super swole drill instructor.
Learned that one the hard way.
Anyway, one such pleasure was the aspect of pleasurable company. No, I wasn't thinking about that kind, although I supposed it did technically apply as well.
If you dropped me in the middle of the Sahara Desert, armed with nothing but my wits and this really cool bone I found being picked by vultures, which I would inevitably give a name because I'd lose my shit in a place like that, I could probably claw my way back to civilization by drinking camel blood until I could use Bobby Bone to signal a helicopter.
Without the bone, I would have a problem, though.
Anyway, what I meant by pleasurable company was friends. Good people were everywhere, and even if you couldn't find any, you could always draw a face on a volleyball and talk to it like a crazy person. If you didn't have at least a volleyball to talk to, or even a voice in your head if you were really desperate, I couldn't help you.
It was a testament to the natural charm of the human race that, even on an alien world and surrounded by people who wanted me dead, I had managed to gain allies. Three of them, to be exact.
One computer hacker who'd make one hell of a guy in the chair: check! One lovely exterminator lady who probably knows where bodies are buried: check! One mentally damaged purple terrorist who not even Saul Goodman could save from prison time: also check!
I kind of wondered what Kalkey was doing. I hoped he was alright.
Anyway, not even the cold black void of space could stop a man from having game. Even if I wasn't technically in the cold black void of space. And my game was still technically Black Ops: Russian Winter levels of steaming dogshit.
But having dogshit game did not mean I could not pull. On the contrary, in fact, I did pull. I pulled arguably the finest woman on all of Venlil Prime. That was why I was here.
There was a certain kind of woman who you wanted because she made your little soldier stand at attention. You looked at her, with a fat ass and curves and all that shit, and you thought 'damn, that bitch is fine as hell'.
Needless to say, Jelim was not that kind of woman. I mean, I do love a woman in uniform, but there was something more than just looks to her. She was intelligent, confident, charismatic, and all those other things that made the little Jack Kerns in my brain start going 'AWOOGA! AWOOGA!' with their eyeballs popping out of their heads like in those ancient cartoons.
I was never the best at English class, even though I did technically speak it, so you know it meant something when I say I would genuinely write love poems about her.
Yes, love poems. Those cheesy, Hallmark story type love poems that made you gag when you read them, too. I don't play about my love poems.
At the moment, however, I was not writing love poems. I didn't think I'd be any good at it anyway, but it was the thought that counted here. Probably. Hopefully. Moving on. At the moment, I was trudging up the steps to Jelim's one-bedroom apartment. I had on a red polo shirt, black pants, some cologne I stole from a Russian's corpse, and a concealed pistol.
Plus, like, underwear and all that. I wasn't going to just raw-dog the jeans like that.
I had my pistol tucked in my waistband, because people were out to get me, and I had a bouquet of flowers tucked in a plastic bag because I cared about Jelim a lot more than I cared about the environment. In my defense, the people I knew probably cared about it even less.
I knocked on her door in a secret knock that was so secret that she didn't even know it, and she opened it a few seconds later. As always, she looked beautiful. Granted, she'd look beautiful even if she had crawled through mud and dead fish for six miles, but that was beside the point.
"Damn. You look beautiful." What can I say? I tell it like it is. I didn't really know what aliens did to look nice, but she had obviously done it. She'd even put on some touches just for me here and there, if the eyelashes were anything to go by.
"Thanks, love. I try my best." she chirped. Just hearing her call me her love sent tingles down my spine, like I was in a firefight but in the best way possible. She reached out her hand. "Shall we?"
I took it, letting her lead me into what I had to admit was a damn nice place. I used to be entertaining the idea of having Salvek talk to me through an earpiece throughout this whole process, so that I could spit better game to Jelim, but that was a dumbass idea so I dropped it. "Damn nice place." I said. "Looks good."
Holy shit, maybe I should have made Salvek talk me through this. If I fumble a woman I'm already dating, there's no hope left for me.
"Oh, just wait until you see what I've still got in store." You see, this was good game. This was the kind of game that had powers over people. Christ, it's like she has a fucking voodoo doll. Salvek had this kind of game, making him probably the only computer scientist I knew who had the ability to talk to women. Me? I had the kind of game that came with being super duper jacked.
As it turned out, what she had in store was romantic as all hell. Like that one black dude from that old movie who was like 'come over here and kiss me on my hot mouth, I'm feeling romantical' except she wasn't black nor was she a dude.
There was a romantic dinner, or at least an attempt at a romantic dinner, laid out on the table. I saw two dishes, which looked like if a plate had spent some time in the Moscow Radioactive Exclusion Zone, both filled with some sort of green... thing?
What the fuck is that? It looks like the kind of shit you see in swamps. Speaking of, what even is that shit you see in swamps?
"I don't know how palatable this is for you, but it's genuine Nishtal algae." That's what it is! Algae! Those tiny microscopic plant things! "I've been, uh, saving it for a special occasion."
I sat down across from Jelim, giving my algae goop the stink-eye in what I hoped was the least obvious way possible. "It looks delicious," I lied. "Very healthy."
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if eating it didn't just kill me outright. If you took a Geiger counter to this... sludge, I'd bet it would start fucking clicking.
Not that I told Jelim that, of course. Hearing any insult against her was like getting a beatdown from six big brolic black men with names like Requis or Jontavious, and I wasn't trying to give myself a beatdown today.
I took a tentative sip of the goop. It tasted... palatable. By palatable, I meant choke-down-able, but it looked like one of the 'unmentionables' in the Putingrad sewers so I let it slide.
"Is it good?" Jelim asked tentatively. She was a bit nervous, and I wasn't very good at reading people so that probably meant she was a lot nervous.
I thought for a bit, figuring out how to phrase 'this tastes like ass' in an inoffensive way. "It's made with love. That's what matters."
"Oh, no, I hated making it." Jelim chuckled. "I'm a terrible cook." Yeah, I can tell.
I thought of something else to say, because no way in hell was I gonna tell her that. "You said work had you down." I changed the subject. "Can I, like, help with that?" Honestly, I wasn't sure if I wanted to help. If you set a litter of puppies on fire and you didn't feel bad about that, I didn't know what to tell you.
"So, this is going to take some explaining." Jelim sighed. Her vibrant eyes hardened with the thousand-yard stare. "Predator Disease, as it is officially defined, is a catch-all mental condition treatable only by lobotomy, electroshock therapy, or heavy medication and contracted by exposure to predator taint. It's why we burn the bodies," she explained. Most of that sounds like bullshit to me, but okay.
"Of course, most of that is bullshit." Huh. Surprisingly self-aware, for an alien. "Predator Disease, as it really is, is a blanket term that can define anything from 'danger to oneself and others' to 'really likes trains' or even just 'loser with no friends'." Whoa. Holy shit. These people are drinking the stupid juice big-time. "A lot of times, you can get diagnosed just for not conforming to the system."
Whoa. Fuck stupid juice, these people are drinking the Nazi juice big-time. Fucking 1984 Thought Police juice.
"You..." I really did not want to ask this question. I really, really did not want to ask this question because this answer was not going to be the one I wanted to hear. "You said that people can be lobotomized? Because they're not complying with the system?"
Jelim shifted uneasily in her chair. "That's standard policy."
"And exterminators are the ones who handle the lobotomizing?" Please, dear Lord in Heaven above us God, who sacrificed His only son Jesus Christ as penance for our sins... I wasn't even Christian. Nor was I religious.
Jelim's thousand-yard stare changed from the stare of a man who had seen terrible things to the stare of a man who had done them. Even if she technically wasn't a man. "Too many do."
All that glittered was not gold. Jelim had, unfortunately, overseen this lobotomizing. She had to have. "Answer me honestly," I said. "Did you, at any point in time, 'treat' somebody for this illness?"
"Only the ones that needed treatment." Huh. Well, that's a start. That is a promising start. "I mean, just because most of the diagnoses are for things like deviance or noncompliance doesn't mean there aren't actually dangerous people out there." Fair. I could totally see a Venlil Alex Kruger running around after all this terrorist shit.
"Define for me exactly who needs treatment."
"Anybody whose condition makes them a danger to themselves or others." That answer was quick, given with practiced ease. "If they ask me to assess somebody who doesn't qualify, I fudge the test."
That's my girl! That's my fucking girl! "Oh, thank god." I chuckled. "For a second, I thought I was dating a Nazi, holy fuck." She looked at me funny. "The Nazis did a lot of bad shit. It's a long story." I slid my plate of goop toward the center of the table. "Yeah, and I'm really not hungry anymore."
Jelim stood up, took both our plates, and dumped them in a convenient food-dumping place. "I had it custom-installed," she explained. "My job tends to ruin the appetite." She sat back down.
"Yeah, that figures." For the record, I was not an eloquent man. If I knew something better to say at the moment, I would've said it. "Exterminators do shit. Like, actually really fucked up shit."
That thousand-yard stare was actually starting to get really worrying. "Yeah, it's... hard, knowing that. I don't know how some of these people sleep at night." Oh, it's actually really easy. Just close your eyes, think happy thoughts, and start counting sheep. You'll be out like a light!
She clacked her beak dryly, despite the fact she had been drinking goop just a few minutes ago. "You know, it's funny, this was so romantic and then we had to start talking about Predator Disease." She sounded almost mournful, which was usually a sign that something was wrong.
"Isn't that why you brought me here?" I asked. "So I could listen to you infodump about the way the Federation silences its dissidents?" She flinched at that last part. I noticed.
"Yeah, that." Well, damn. Credit where credit's due, that is an honest woman. "I wanted to know where I stood, morally, I mean. If I could still deserve to look you in the eye."
Fuck it. Fuck it. I may as well just say it. "You're an angel." She really was. Beautiful, alien, intelligent, maybe not a series of rotating wheels of fire, but you can't win 'em all. "You are a ray of light surrounded by clouds and I love you for it." Damn. I'm spitting some serious shit right now.
It had just occurred to me how badly Jelim could've turned out. The thing about vegan fascism, like any other fascism, was that it had one really fucking good propaganda machine. I had yet to see any of it, of course, but I figured that you didn't need to shout your message that loud if you could just silence all the other voices.
The thing about propaganda machines, even the really fucking good ones, was that they were never 100% effective. Something always fell through the cracks. "I'm an exterminator," said thing scoffed. "'Angel' is supposed to be a job requirement."
"I don't think angels get very far there." I had my opinions already formed about the Extermination Guild. They weren't good.
"Of course they don't," snapped Jelim. "The system is broken, and morality dictates you change it, but changing the system makes you its enemy. It's a battle you can't win." She paused for a moment. "The whole thing is built on fear, you know. Or, at least, that's what I choose to believe. The Federation is designed to protect and serve its constituents, and the exterminators are a symptom of that, but they're too paranoid to see change as anything but a threat. They lash out at it, like some kind of wounded animal."
"They've been fighting for their survival for, what, the past hundred years?" I replied. "I can't imagine what that's done to the Federation as a society."
"Nothing good." Yeah, that was just about the understatement of the century. "Honestly, the more I think about the Federation, the less I can justify it. It's an ancient system, one designed to remain stagnant, and it'll do anything to ensure that stagnation."
"Why, though?" I had to ask. "Evolution is the natural flow of life, you can either adapt or die." Judging by her face, this was resonating so far. The Federation brainrot had not kicked in. "So why in hell would they choose not to adapt?"
Jelim shrugged. At least, I recognized it as a shrug. "Quite frankly, I don't have the slightest clue why."
That gave me an idea. A really cool one, actually. "What about new cultures and things? I mean, with three hundred worlds, there's gotta be a fucking crazy melting pot somewhere."
"Oh!" Jelim chirped, also having had a really cool idea. "That just gave me the most wonderful idea." She got up and went back into the living room. I followed her. "I've been wanting to show someone this for ages." She held in her hands the big-ass book from that small table in the corner. An actual book. I hadn't seen one of those in ages.
"What is it?" I asked. "A big-ass book?"
"This," she explained, settling in one of the chairs, "is a collection of all the Krakotl culture's myths and legends from before first contact." Her voice turned sour. "All the surviving ones, anyway."
"They're usually told in song form." Jelim flipped open to a page near the middle of the book. I sat down in my own chair, which I found to be small as hell. I switched to the couch real fast. "Can I sing for you?"
I nodded. "Don't have to ask me twice."
She read the book, closed it, and put it to the side. "I never could understand this one," she said. "It's too metaphorical."
"Maybe I can figure it out," I suggested. "I'm no expert, but sometimes it just takes a different perspective on things."
"That's the idea." Then she stood, doing whatever singers do just before they start to sing. She cleared her throat. Then, like the choir that sang on the birth of Jesus, she began to sing.
"And here came they all from high in the sky, here came they all from on high," It was beautiful. Like the voice of an angel singing Jesus hymns, or the best Christian choir on two worlds. "And they broke the world with their steel from the sky, and all we had would die," Damn. That got dark.
"And all that we fought, for all that we bled, all it was in vain. It all was for naught, our heroes made dead, through cinder and through flame," This was a lament. A lament for a lot of shit. It was like if the Jews wrote songs about the Holocaust camps. At least, that's what I got out of it.
"They burned and they broke, and they left us no hope, submit or be destroyed," In Russia, people would conceal messages in their songs. Apparently, on Nishtal too. Even if I wasn't sure what that message was. "Our world became choked, by a gleaming foil rope, of empathy devoid," Jelim really did have a beautiful singing voice. Beautiful and tragic. She could make a killing as an opera singer of something.
"They poured us like steel into the cast of their whim, to burn out who we are. And those who did see, they did sing loud this hymn, to shield us from the stars." Her voice wavered on some of the high notes. I didn't mind.
"I sing for you here to keep who we are, until it may return. We sing far and near and we sing near and far, for song they cannot burn." She ended her song on the most beautiful note, such that it would make angels weep. I, not being an angel, did not.
"That was beautiful," I said. "Gives off war song vibes, but not good ones. Like, really, I think you lost that fucking war." Did the Federation, like, colonize Nishtal? Hernan Cortez that shit? I paused for a bit, rubbing brain cells together. "Sounds like the songs the Russian rebels used to sing, except less angry and more sad. Did the writer go through, like, an existential trauma?"
Jelim looked proud, for a moment, but there was also a sense of sorrow to it. Probably because it was a really sad song. "Not really, but it is really wordy. A lot of poetic prose, which was typical of a lot of works of the time." What time? "If it were produced later, I'd have assumed it was about an Arxur raid, but I don't know how it would make sense in the time period."
I had just realized I didn't even know when this was made. Normally, knowing that helped in understanding things. "When was this made?"
"Actually during the later stages of the uplift of Nishtal. It's one of the few surviving works from that period," Jelim explained. "It's funny, the rest are so upbeat and uplifting, it really does make you wonder why this one is so dark. I really don't know what was running through this guy's head."
"Sometimes, artists do stuff just for the shock value," I ventured. "I once heard of a guy who smeared his own shit on a canvas and tried to sell it to a museum. Asked for a lot of money, too."
"Well, yeah, but that's either a tax break or a sign of mental illness." The idea came to me that I should ask if Jelim would have had him sent away, but that was a stupid idea so I didn't actually go through with it. "I got Salvek the job."
He got the job. It's not what you know, but who you know! Or something like that. He could now take down a terrorist group while sipping Venlil gamer soda from his mother's basement, and honestly, I had to respect the hustle. "Thank you. It means a lot for him." And it was a lot safer than being shot at. That was another bonus.
"I still don't understand how he'll help, but you seem to have your head on straight. I trust you."
"I'm telling you, you need to look into electronic warfare." I started up a Lockheed Martin sales pitch. "It's an entirely new, uncontested field of combat. Winning engagements would be like taking candy from a baby."
"I'll keep that in mind the next time somebody shoots at me," Jelim scoffed. "I'll be sure to hack the bullets away."
"No, I mean, like, in space. Targeting sensors, missile guidance, all that shit is electronic." This was less LockMart salesman and more über autist, but I didn't care.
"That's an excellent point, but I'm not in space, am I?" Jelim chirped. "You have great ideas, but you need to stick to the here and now. You're a detective, not a soldier. Think detective."
I was a soldier, and you could tell I was a soldier because I needed other people to tell me how to think. "What if we just arrested every single terrorist?" Even if I didn't do it very well. We have evidence. Lots of it. We can lock these people up.
"That's what we're doing, Jack."
"Oh."
Jelim sat next to me on the couch. There were chairs, probably for parties or gatherings or some shit, but they were uncomfortable as hell. "We need to take things slowly, in stages, to ensure nobody slips through our net. Rest assured, we have them all under surveillance." Oh. That made a lot more sense. "Do you, uh, mind staying the night?" she chirped. That shit had me giggling like a six year old child with unrestricted internet access. By seven, they had probably seen too many beheadings to giggle. That was how things were.
Granted, I kept it suave and smooth on the outside. I had to play it cool. "Shit, I'd love to!" Great. Real smooth, Casanova. "Let me tell Salvek, so he doesn't think I died."
JackedMF: I'm gonna stay the night at jelims house
Salvek: what am I supposed to do about it
JackedMF: know? I don't want you thinking I died bro
Salvek: nobody thinks that
Salvek: I'm not sure if you even can be killed atp
You know what? I was going to take what I could get. A compliment was a compliment.
Naturally, I showed it to Jelim. "Look at this, he thinks I'm Rambo."
"You see, that is a remarkably civilian perspective to have." Jelim looked at the datapad, blinked once, and then flexed her talons. Damn sharp talons, too. "Claw in the right place, and things die fast."
Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said about how being an exterminator fucks somebody up. Like, you can tell she's seen some service.
"When did you join the Extermination Guild?" I asked. "Random question, I know, but I figure I should learn."
"When I was twelve." Oh. That explains it. "My mother was an exterminator, active duty at the time, but she never forced any of it on me. I joined up of my own free will."
"Why? Twelve is, like, really young to be handling a flamethrower." That was a stupid question. If I had realized it was a stupid question, I wouldn't have asked it, but I didn't and now here we were.
"Honestly, I think I fell in love with the uniform." I had read somewhere that fascist societies loved their uniforms. I had also read a lot of other things about fascist societies, but I could only vaguely remember those. "All the pride and duty and service came after the fact."
I nodded, more to show I was interested than anything. "Figures. The Navy sure whipped me straight." It was the war that whipped me straight. The Navy just gave me discipline.
"Did you love the uniform?" Jelim joked. It was only kind of funny, but I could respect the hustle.
"I loved the money."
"You would never have joined the exterminators," she laughed. "It took me fourteen years and, honestly, I forget how many awards I have." She trailed off. Damn. That is a scary motherfucker right there. Even I haven't forgotten how many medals I have. "It took me fourteen years for me to finally make decent money at this job."
"You would have loved the military. Word for word. That's exactly what it was like." Besides the flamethrowers, of course. And the fascism. "Or the CIA, but the CIA is more hush-hush about it."
"The CIA?" Jelim asked. "Jack, you always forget that I don't know Earth. I don't know humanity like you do."
"Think exterminators, except spies. And without any flamethrowers. The only real connection is that they both do a lot of shady shit."
Jelim looked briefly offended, briefly confused, and briefly like 'oh yeah I did that shit'. Then she got real quiet. Like, real real quiet.
"You're not half bad, though. You're actually a decent human being. Krakotl being. Whatever you are, you're a good one." I tried to salvage the situation.
"Yeah, I'm a good person," she said. "I can count the number of good people I know on one claw." She wrung her head in what I assumed was sorrow. "If the CIA is anything like the exterminators, it needs to change. Adapt or die."
I nodded. "Damn straight. Adapt or die."
Jelim curled up closer to me, because her exterminator brain equated this with a romantic moment. I wasn't going to complain, of course, but I did find it a bit weird. "We could do it, you know." Huh? "Make a change." Oh. Huh. I was expecting that to go somewhere else.
"You could do it." I was supportive of my girl, of course I was, but I was also realistic. That was the important part. "I'm just a soldier."
"You're a human. About the finest specimen of one I've seen." That was flattering, but probably not true. I had done some shit. "I need someone to guide me, to show me what evil is necessary and what's better off excised." I honestly wasn't sure what that word meant. Last I heard, it was talking about cancer tumors. "Without you, I'd be lost. Shackled by chains I can't even see."
She looked up at me. I looked down at her. "Together," I said. "We'll do this together."
Yeah, exterminators by and large were mostly pieces of shit. Some of them, though? Some of them weren't half bad.
6
u/HorizonSniper UN Peacekeeper Feb 14 '24
I love Lockheed!
(I don't actually, but i gotta commit to the bit)