The Sixteenth Trial

[advisories]

Who: trialgoers
When: Day 37, afternoon
Where: The Hermit's Tent

[With the usual jostle of the train, the Hermit’s tent appears in the clearing. His deep, cheerful voice rings out:]

That last Trial was a bit of a mess, wasn’t it? Well, rest assured our dear Vampire friend is very sorry about it.

Of course that doesn’t make you feel better, but how about a mood booster? “Come hither”, and let’s think positive!

[Upon entering the tent, you’ll find yourself on a round, black-tiled platform at the bottom of a clear glass elevator. Look outside and you'll spot the other two groups in their own elevators, facing you on the other walls of a triangular pit. You can't reach or hear them at the moment, but they look safe enough.

In your own elevator, you’ll find a podium with a speaker and a push-to-talk microphone. Taped next to them is a laminated paper containing the rules, titled:

Raise Eachother Up

Time for some cheer and positivity!]

Comments

[awakenerd]

...Huh. So they became independent but stayed a country?

[schrodingerscockroach]

They got Independence from a bunch of European countries.

After stealing land from the natives and acting like it was brand new. Because white colonizers were just all pretty major assholes. It's a whole thing about racial power struggles.

[awakenerd]

[???]

So basically a nation did some shady conquest and then the colonies went independent after all that to make a new nation that was pretty big a thousand years ago?

[schrodingerscockroach]

Basically. There's some stuff about religion and some kind of massive tea party, I think?

[awakenerd]

[??????]

A... Tea party?

Is that religious for Ancient United Statesians?

[schrodingerscockroach]

No, but that might be religious for the British? They were a big colonizer.

[awakenerd]

Huh.

[Clearly he should see if there are history books on this to be bought because he's a nerd.]

So you're named after the independent--colonies or states? Or is it the same?

[schrodingerscockroach]

States. United States of America was the whole country.

The Director had a southern accent. So it was probably because it was where he was from and also it was forty-nin codenames right there.

[awakenerd]

Makes sense to use an easy theme that doesn't necessarily mean anything about each agent.

[schrodingerscockroach]

Yeah. Not unless they were born there.

....

You know, it occurs to me it's a very real possibility I wasn't born on Earth. [And boy is THAT a thing to think about.]

[awakenerd]

.....? Where... Else would you be born?

[schrodingerscockroach]

.....that planet in my memory?

That wasn't Earth.

That was a whole other planet. Colonized planets are a thing.

[awakenerd]

Whoa.

[Whoa that's a lot to think about buddy.]

That's... Wow. So why is Earth a big deal then? I know Eliza is from there but if you're not...

[schrodingerscockroach]

Earth is the home planet. Where humans are from. It's where the UNSC and UEG are stationed, the major military and governmental power.

[awakenerd]

[??]

Huh. I've only heard of Earth at all from people here. Must take a lot to govern across planets.

[schrodingerscockroach]

I think it's a collaborative effort between all the nations on Earth and the outer colonies.

[awakenerd]

Your civilization must be incredibly advanced.

[schrodingerscockroach]

Well, you saw the spaceships. And power armor.

And me. [Human experiment and all.]

[awakenerd]

Yeah?

[The space ships don't look all that different from high tech air ships and like, power armor and human experiments... Are thing for sure.]

That's pretty different to governing across planets though.

[schrodingerscockroach]

....oh, right, your technology is all kinds of disjointed.

The biggest thing is communication and travel.

Once we were able to utilize slipstream travel, we had ships that could travel faster then light. It made traveling the galaxy very doable, as well as getting messages around, though that's still a bit stilted in places.

[awakenerd]

That sounds really incredible, to me. But it's just normal for you, huh? That's very cool.

[schrodingerscockroach]

[He nods.] We've been colonizing planets for a while now. Usually 'cause there's a resource we need on it, or it's a prime location for travel, but once we start on it, we expand out to make actual societies there.

[awakenerd]

So are most planets just... Easy for people to live on? I thought they wouldn't be because of, I don't know, something to do with physics.

[schrodingerscockroach]

Oh no. Most planets humans would die pretty quickly.

But you've seen the night sky. Each star is at least a sun, if not multiples, and each sun has a bunch of planets around it. And the stars you see in the night sky are a small fraction of how many their are.

With those kind of numbers, just having one planet out of ten thousand habitable still provides a lot of planets to work with. And that's just planets we can naturally survive on, let alone the ones we're willing to make dome cities on or try to terraform.

And there are....some planets that have been terraformed. [He pauses, thinking on it a few moments.] Planets with ancient alien technology that have also been made habitable. Which ups our numbers.

[awakenerd]

That's really incredible. Do you meet a lot of aliens then? Is there like, an alien alliance with humanity?