From: Monitor Hakal Peressin, Stratarchy of Indirection and Subtlety
To: All Personnel, Vontok II Communications Central
Subject: Contingency Ganth
Gentlesophs,
We’ve got probability ‘casts from Core Command that suggest that we may be withdrawing from this world soon, either as part of a withdrawal to something close to status quo ante bellum, or else because the Vonnies are going to have to do something to keep morale up after the destruction of Social Harmony. As such, we need to prepare for that situation: Contingency Ganth.
As always, we’re going to leverage the hell out of this, so keep the details downright fuligin, read me?
Two primary considerations:
This is an obvious opportunity for a retromeme bomb. So, Section Chiefs, get working on two plans. First, the revised evacuation plan for the communications central, for publication. Second, the dark plan for how you’ll stab and scramble said revised evacuation plan to justify dumping the public data cores, preferably leaving them online, valid whether we’re being “chased” off the world or abandoning it in good order. You’ll be getting the exact budgets for how many other assets you can sacrifice to make this happen in due course, but for now, assume they’ll be generous.
Librarians: Special briefing at Wineful+16 with some of the chaps from INI. We’ve got two sets of viruses, designed to do remote mapping and tracing of the Republic extranet and stargate links, to embed in the public cores pre-bugout. One set’s not very far above equiv-tech, the other closer to our level of sophistication. When you’re burying them remember that, this time we’re doing the Echiran switch, not the shadow feint. We need the Republic to be so busy patting itself on the back for finding all the bees in the honeypot that it takes the data as a wonderful intelligence coup and pays no attention to the buried memeomachy slipping right past them.
Get to it, people.
Mon. Halak
“So, the latest fad going around the extranet are people ‘apologizing’ for calling us social evolutionists now that they’ve come to see how the self-declared evolutionist Iltine chosen race are so very much worse.
“What a bunch of chumps. Of course we’re social evolutionists. We’re the hardest, coldest, crankiest social evolutionists around. We’re evolving our society all the time: that’s how we got to be a free, polycentric, emergent-cooperative, progress-loving society, that’s what a free, polycentric, emergent-cooperative, progress-loving society is for, and if you want to talk strictly survival of the fittest, that’s how this free, polycentric, emergent-cooperative, progress-loving society is delivering a hot, fab-fresh cup of pain to the local centralizing hierarchists and the local strife-and-cull fetishists at the same time.”
– Idril Cordaviris, slinky-logger for the What Fools These Ephemerals Be memeweave
From: Commodore Kirial Iliastren, Imperial Naval Intelligence
To: SCPO Gilan Coramon, Imperial Naval Intelligence (Special Task Group Vontok-37)
Senior Chief,
Your team’s scheduled to meet with the Indirection & Subtlety Librarians at Wineful+16. Monitor Peressin agreed to our three-layer virus proposal for Contingency Ganth, but we agreed that the lowest layer was strictly need-to-know, and that they didn’t, so keep discussion to the first two layers only in the meeting. Other than that, proceed as planned.
Cdre. Iliastren
I had to look up stratarchy! Still not sure I understand what was going on in the first part – and I always get the feeling that my imagination is filling in things that may or may not be right, haha
Lily
Heh. I think I coined my sense of stratarchy myself, actually…
Hey, then your meaning might be different than what Google offered! What do you mean by stratarchy?
“the thing a stratarch runs”, more or less.
…okay, that’s unhelpful. 🙂 More usefully, the bits of the Empire’s military service that don’t have traditional names – “the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Legions, etc.” are run by stratarchs (“army-rulers”), and so are called…
(On a similar note, various of the bureaucratic departments are run by logarchs (“word-rulers”), and end up being called logarchies.)
Got it, stratarch and logarch! Thanks 🙂