The History of The West Pacific

[Manson]

By Biteland and Chainik. Found here on Great Britain and Ireland's old forums, this is a transcript of a previous IRC conversation.

[01/04/06-01/05/06 - #The_West_Pacific IRC #esper.net]

Faeyas enters the room in the middle of an ongoing conversation.

“We got a few enthusiastic n00bs in the past few days. Thank the Lord.” Chainik spoke.

“Heh, indeed,” Dalimbar responds “we need a few of those to come by s13, heh.”

“No! You can’t have them, they're ours!” Chainik replies, appearing concerned.

Dalimbar laughs, “Bah, we'll get them from somewhere else. Heh.”

Deciding to remain, Faeyas adds, “I hope our enthusiastic n00bs stick
through CC3,” conversationally.

“Hope so.” Chainik agrees, “I sent a long rambling t-gram to some 5k wonder, who posted on the TWP HQ, begging him/her to go to s8.”

Curious, Faeyas asks “5k wonder? How so?”

“5 mil pop.” Chainik explains.

“Ah,” Dalimbar exclaims.

“Wait,” Chainik amends, “‘K’ isn’t a ‘mil’, is it? d'oh!”

“Nope,” Dali notes, “Heh.”

So Chainik asks, “What is a mill?”

Faeyas decides to interject, “I meant more, what made them so wonderful?”

“Just mil if ye want.” Dalimbar suggests at the same time.

“The 'wonder'” Chainik explains to Faeyas, “was more in sarcasm than in earnest... this person posted a "hi, I just joined, make me the delegate." message on the regional HQ. So I said hi.” Dalimbar laughs at this. “Don’t laugh! We all did that.”

Pointedly, Dalimbar replies, “I never did that in a feeder!” and continues to laugh. “Yet...” He adds, suggesting.

“I did as a new jack,” Chainik confesses.

“I never did that” Faeyas adds in a counter.

“I moved to the ASE before I could do that I guess,” Dalimbar explains. “Ah well.”

“I moved to SI first,” Faeyas agrees.

“I was born in TWP...” Chainik begins, “I tried to get the current delegate (commercial affairs) to vote a certain way on a UN prop. He refused.” Dalimbar was sympathetic from his audible ‘aww’. “So I posted a loooong diatribe on the HQ.” Chainik continued, “and someone with the same pop (25mil) as me t-gramed me to say he agreed with me, and that someone's name was.....” He looked about between Faeyas, Dalimbar and the room. “Can anyone guess?” Dalimbar looks at Chain blankly. “You should,” Chainik points out, “I’ve told this story a zillion times.” He pauses. “It was Norion.”

“I’ve not heard it.” Faeyas commented, Dalimbar too, had never heard the story “Norion?” She asks dumbfounded.

“Oh dear,” Dalimbar comments.

“The one and only,” Chainik adds knowingly. “A week later we (he) had the delegacy.”

“Those were fun times,” Biteland interjects, joining the conversation. Dalimbar chuckles at this.

“I missed all that.” Faeyas mildly points out.

“Damn me for missing that.” Dalimbar agrees.

“Me and him, led a revolution.” Chainik continues, “I, unlike some
people, never forgot the power of the massed n00b. I learned from that, no one gives a crap about n00bs but they have the same endorsement power as anyone else, and properly led they could and did topple the biggest most powerful coalition in the game at the time, ACC. Of which controlled nearly all the feeders at the time.”

“Though that was before electronic updates,” Biteland adds.

“True,” Chainik Agrees. “Nevertheless, two know-nothing n00bs
destroyed a coalition and toppled a delegate in a week. Norion,” He mused, “was a delegate with 50mil pop. Not too many know that. It’s a feat that shall never be repeated. This is before he wigged out, of course,” Chainik adds for understanding, “I wasn’t around for that.”

“With all the defender security, no random n00b is going to get much of a chance to do that again.” Faeyas comments, bringing matters back to the present.

“True,” Chainik agrees as Dalimbar waves everyone a good night, and leaves. “No one was expecting it,” Chainik recalls, “Like no one expected Francos Spain too actually (gasp! shudder!) banject anyone who exceeded the endorsement cap.”

“Chain, I've heard back-story,” Dilber contends, joining the conversation himself, “There was more to it then that.” He explains chuckling. “In particular, there’s Kurds.”

“Oh, Kurds, now there was a story all in its self.” Biteland adds.

“Yeah... I never did get the entire story on that,” Chainik Admits.

“Dilber story time!” Faeyas exclaims, cheerful at the aspect of a story.

“Heh, maybe later,” He pulls back, “I'm watching Dilbert, and I’m not in the best of moods.”

“Awe.” Faeyas mutters, defeated.

“MVS, a NPO spy? Or, just a scapegoat to the rule of Norion?” Biteland asks, preparing to tell the story himself. “Once upon a time in a digital land far far away lived the people of Kurdastan. While slightly aggravated and easily offend able were the most part friendly. That was until one day when the leader of the West Pacific sent the people of Kurdastan to spy on the NPO. Some say they forgot their allegiance to the WP, some say they were just undercover. The truth will never be known. Meanwhile another nation was rising up in the WP. The MVS' were somewhat familiar but no one could put a finger on what it was. Towards the end of Norion's Reign he lost his mind and started to eject large waves of people from the region of the West Pacific.”

“‘Banject’,” Chainik offered the term.

“During this time it was reveled that the people of MVS, which had become the vice-delegate, was really Kurdastan in disguise.” Biteland continues.

“How was that ever discovered by the way? I always wondered.” Chainik asked.

“This revelation came when a drunkard citizen once dropped cover for one moment in front of a Lainer-ite and a Citizen from TAO.” Bite explained.

“Ah,” Chainik muttered, understanding.

“This occurred during the great election when Norion, MVS, and Berhampore were up for election for the region.” Biteland continued on. “Once this secret was revealed, it spread through out the Nationstates world. The fledgling ADN could not see a NPO sympathizer take the seat of power in the WP, and with their and others help, Berhampore was made Delegate. Berhampore promptly booted Kurdastan and Harkinnen out on their asses.”

“What did Hark have to do with it?” Chainik wondered.

“Noroin was soon to follow when he tried to retake the throne.” Bite continued, but upon hearing Chainik’s question, promptly answered, “Nobody really liked him, and he was a NPO supporter, so he was removed.”

“Oh.” Chainik uttered, understanding.

“Thus the 2nd constitution of the West Pacific was called for and Lanier at its lead.” Biteland continued on, “This new Constitution would lead the once war torn region to have its golden age, the end.” Biteland concluded.

“Good story.” Chainik remarked.

“That’s probably not everything, but it’s all I can remember at the moment.” Biteland admitted.

“Let me finish this blog post I’m in the middle of, and I’ll tell the story of the first constitution.” Chainik remarked.

“Another good story,” Biteland approved.

“Yay!” Faeyas exclaimed at the prospect of another tale, “Story time!”

“Almost done,” Chainik pointed out, then after a bit of time he decided, “Okay I’m ready. Is everyone here?” He looked about, “Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?”

“Yes!” Faeyas answered, there.

“Okay, the story of the first Concom,” He began. “The region was humming along fine. It was a benevolent dictatorship; Norion basically did what he wanted, and he wanted to do what we wanted him to do.”

“I n d e e d.” Biteland agreed.

Chainik gasps, but then pauses, considering, “Oh, yeah, Neenee isn’t around.”

“But I was.” Bite responded.

“No,” Chainik corrected, “I mean, you said the I-word. The Word, which adds nothing to the conversation, may never be said.” He further explained. “Anyway,” Chainik said, continuing “Let it be said right now, Norion may have been a dictator, but before he made a move, he consulted with pretty much every active member. First, he would ask advice of several people who were knowledgeable on the subject, i.e. defense, diplomacy, whatever; And sometimes he would put it as an open question on the offsite forum, and he always set up a poll on how he should vote on the UN prop, and always dutifully followed the results.

“But one day, a n00b joined the forum, and started asking uncomfortable questions, repeatedly. That n00bs name was Freedom and Pride.” Chainik took a pause before continuing. “He couldn’t spell but what he lacked in spell-check he made up for in persistence in constantly saying the same things over and over. But for all that he was and is actually a real good guy once you get to know him.” Chainik made sure to note. “His utter and complete lack of social skills, unfortunately, means few people ever really get to know him. Even for me it was an effort to get past the pomposity and sheer jack-ass-ery. Now, he also was playing some kind of star wars MMOPORG at the time, or possibly a star wars RP forum, I was never really sure, and he and some of his friends made up a set of rules for how the guild should govern itself. I believe he was thrown out of that guild eventually, but I’m not entirely sure.

“So, he decided that the TWP should have a constitution and a government.” Chainik explains as Faeyas chuckles, “Of course, instead of PM-ing or t-graming Norion about this idea, he decided to accuse of Norion of being a dictator on the forum, and every single thread thereafter posted to the forum that had something to do with NS had a reply by F&P saying something like: ‘I bet that wouldn’t happen if we had a constitution’ or ‘things would be great if we had a constitution’ or ‘its really shameful we don’t have a constitution’. This went on for like a month.”

Biteland laughs, “Good times.”

“Now as you know a month in NS time is a LOT.” Chainik begins to explain, and Faeyas and Bite both agree on the point. “Norion tried to ignore him, on the excellent grounds that a constitution would be a lot of work and if we wanted to work we would have gotten jobs instead of plying with our computers all night. But, as anyone who has ever tried to ignore F&P will tell you, it can’t be done. He’s un-ignore-able. So eventually Norion threw his hands up in the air and said ‘you want a damn constitution? Okay wise guy, you write it!’ Therefore,” Chainik spoke in a very knowing voice, “when F&P claimed recently to be ‘the founder of democracy in the west pacific’ he was being completely and totally accurate, as well as being an annoying jackass.

“So, Norion put up a thing on the forum saying ‘nominate people for the constitution writing committee! and the nominees were voted on, and three were appointed. Then Norion, not having been born yesterday, added people he could trust to the committee, like me. He asked me personally to make sure the power of the delegate wasn’t compromised, and to keep an eye on F&P, which I did. The committee was me, Bitey, Kurds, F&P, Berhampore, Ladyrebels, and... some others. possibly Zeta? Bite, help me out.”

“Um.” Biteland spoke, thinking, “Sinopia I think.”

“Ah”, Chainik spoke, remembering, “I think that’s about it.”

“And Goss,” Biteland added, “but I'm not sure.”

“No,” Chainik disagreed, still thinking, “I don’t think he was there. If he
had been, a severe catastrophic reaction would have occurred in the subspace structure of the internet, causing the destruction of the entire universe.” He spoke, as if knowing so, “Trust me on this, Goss and F&P on the same committee? Anyway,” Chainik returned to the story, “We had to get crack-a-lack-in. We had an incredibly short deadline.” He paused, “I cant remember who imposed it…”

“Norion.” Biteland reminded him.

“Ah, right, now I remember. Less time meant less chance of his position being usurped. I think he gave us an impossible deadline so we would fail and he would have to regrettably throw out the entire constitution idea. Only a theory.” Chainik quickly defended. “You have to understand what else was going on in NS at the time.” He began to explain, “Francos Spain had just consolidated his grip on the pacific. Up till that time, when someone conquered a region like he did, either from within or without, they would allow the apparatchiks of the previous regime to retain some measure of dignity by keeping them on in the power structure. Francos Spain,” He countered, “started out by purging everyone connected to the old regime, ruthless, but not shocking. Then he purged everyone who had ever shown or expressed support for the old regime, and then he purged everyone who wouldn’t swear fealty to him personally. That’s when people started getting worked up.”

“Yeah,” Faeyas agreed, “That’s a little…strong.”

“The Great Pacific Purge was a mighty sight to see.” Biteland mused.

“Then,” Chainik continued, “He began ban-jecting anyone who exceeded the endorsement cap, except only he knew what the endorsement cap actually was, and he changed it constantly. Basically he banjected anyone he didn’t like. He was a ruthless dictator who ruled with an iron fist. Norion told me, and others I’m sure, that he was really afraid that, if Francos' supporters would take over even one more feeder, it would destroy the game. Now, the real reason why Francos inspired so much raw hatred was no one had ever thought of it. Banject people who might be a threat to you? Genius! Why didn’t I think about that!” Faeyas blinked at that comment, having problems understanding how no one came up with that concept until just then. “You see,” Chainik began to clarify the point, “Even today, there is almost nothing stopping a delegate from doing the same thing.”

“As anyone who has been delegate knows.” Biteland pointed out.

“Right,” Chainik agreed. “Sure, you’d have to get a large coalition of defenders on your side, but it could still be done.”
Deciding to speak up Faeyas innocently asked “Were defenders made for this reason?”

“That’s why they’re called defenders,” Chainik answered affirming, “They were originally people who defended any given region from Francos Spain. That’s where the name comes from.” Chainik continued on that point asking, “Guess why they call them ‘invaders’? That’s why ‘invader’ is an NS insult. Even though I bet half of the people who accuse others of being invaders ever heard of Francos Spain. Anyway, getting back to the concom. There was a feeling among the committee members, even me Norion’s spy and political control officer, that we were conceptual defenders, and that we were setting in stone a document that would be signed by all nations in the region, almost a thousand by then even with our huge defender army off doing ops in other regions; a document that would repudiate Francos Spain; a document that would show the world, where he rules by fiat we are a federation of free nations. It’s right there in the preamble.” Chainik points out, “I can’t quote it but it went something like: because we are concerned with the events in the pacific, and because we want to show that we are committed to the principals of freedom, and because we don’t ever want a dictator to come rule over our region, we set forth a document detailing the rights of the member-nations and the restrictions we place on the government.

“So, that was settled, written up in formal, fancy-sounding language by me, and voted on pretty quickly.” Chainik sums up, and then continues on, “Now we had to figure out how to create a functional government. How would we pick a leader? How would we pick representatives? Unicameral or bicameral? Term limits? Bill of rights? Legal code? Judicial procedure?”

“It wasn't a great document by the least,” Bite admits, “But it was a good start.”

“We spent a LOT of time talking about RL governments, and how they worked,” Chainik added, “and what happened when they didn’t, and what mistakes they made in the past and how to avoid them. We decided we wanted a bicameral (two-house) legislature, but we couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So we let it aside for a moment.”

“I can remember F&P basically ripping off the USA constitution and just changing the names.” Biteland recalled.

Chainik laughed at this, “Yeah, that didn’t quite work, although it was a good idea. Now, at the time there were close to 40 active posters on the forum.” Chainik stopped and thought for a second, “Wait, back-up. The second thing we did was formalize Norion’s habit of asking people's advice. We decided that people would be in charge of certain tasks; we called them ministers. We had the MiniCom in charge of regional communications and so on. I really pushed hard for a MiniN00b, a minister of newcomer affairs, someone who would t-gram the 5mil wonders and say, ‘this is how you endorse people, this is how you vote on UN props’, etc. But that wasn't to be. It wasn’t, mostly because it was a lot of thankless work. The work has been, in an informal sort of way, picked up by Looming Doom, when he has time, and I try to t-gram the 5mil kids when I notice one posting something stupid on the HQ.”

“I tried to do a lot of it when I was the communications minister.” Biteland added.

“You did, I remember, but we should have had a dedicated person or persons whose job it was to do that. Oh well. So, that’s why we have ministers, now known as councilors. The thing is, at the time we had close to 40 actives on the forum, and we, the committee members, said to each other, ‘it is only right and proper that we, the smartest most dedicated people in the entire region, should run the entire government.’”

“As we should,” Biteland agreed.

“But,” Chainik countered, “We said, what if there are n00bs that want to join? The bigger the government is, the more people will have an invested interest in defending it, because they know if the region is invaded any former government officials will get the boot. So, they’ll fight for the government. So, we want a group of government officials drawn from as broad a pool as possible. But,” He cautioned, “How can we tell who is really interested in the region? So we set a limit. Fifty endorsements, a certain amount of average posts per month on the forum, and you’re in. That was the council, and then we made a house that was open to pretty much anyone willing to join. The only restriction was a pop minimum of... I think 50mil. Bite?”

“I think it was 100 from memory,” Biteland answers, “But I'm not sure.”

“Something small,” Chainik finalizes, “like three weeks or a month. Except there was one thing. The way the parliamentary procedure was written, the council, i.e. the forum regulars, had most of the power, and the "other" house had almost none. We aren’t about to hand over power to a bunch of people we don’t know, after all.” He spoke in defense, “If we like them enough to let them into the council, we would endorse them and let them in.” Chainik took a beat, “Now, we had a rough structure, a pyramid: Norion on top; under him, the ministers; under them, the council; under that, the "other" house; under them, the serfs, peons, and slaves.” Faeyas laughed at the crude, yet perfectly placed statement about the nations that never join the forums.

“Don't forget the pawns.” Biteland reminds Chainik.

Continuing on instead, Chainik stated, “We couldn’t figure out what to call the ‘other’ house. I think Berhampore came up with the ‘Grand Assembly’.”

“Which means ‘Large general gathering’,” Faeyas noted.

“I cant remember why we thought it was a good idea to bar the judges from residing in the region...” Chainik spoke, jumping topics, “I think I had some vague idea of not allowing the justices to be swayed by "bribery" i.e. endorsement swaps.”

“No,” Biteland corrected on the previous point, “it was the House of 'Something’. MVS ran it.”

“Was it?” Chainik questioned thoughtfully, I’m getting old, and I’m tired.

“House of absolute, or something,” Biteland continued to muse.

“It’s almost 400 AM here.” Chainik remarked, “Oh, right, the house absolute,” Chainik remembers, “Should have called it the house of absolute,” He remarked. “So, basically, the constitution was designed from the beginning to do three things: 1) keep Norion in power and not allow anything to threaten that, 2) give the forum regulars something to do and allow them to bandy about important sounding titles, 3) dupe the hoi polloi into thinking that they had important jobs vital to the running of the region and allowing them to bandy about slightly less impressive titles. So, I say that the first constitution worked perfectly, exactly as planned. Then Lanier had to go and fuck everything up by attempting "democracy" and "due process", which is a lot harder, but that comes a lot later in the story.” On a thought Chainik notes, “This story should be saved and published- its part of Westpac history. F&P wants us to write a history of the region- well here it is, warts and all. I’m not sugar coating anything, not even my own sins.

“Anyway we had the basic structure agreed upon. You’d think it would be easy to finish up, right? Well, both Berhampore and F&P are stubborn as constipated donkeys. They insisted on a line by line review before submitting the thing. Meanwhile I was writing up the whole thing in flowery official sounding language. What we would do is we would do it section by section: what should the ministries be? What should they be called? What should they do? Did they need to be un-members? Thus the invention of the postzila. Take the MiniInfo; someone would write a three page, in Word, which is what we used, polemic. Are you familiar with the practice of ‘fisking’?” Chainik asked.

“No,” Faeyas responded, honest.

“’Fisking’ is a blogging term for dissecting a post literally line by line, commenting on each and every aspect of each and every comment. The term hadn’t been invented yet, but that’s what we did. It got to the point where you had to hit page down 4 times till you got to the end of a single post, and we did that for every single piece of the constitution. Mostly it was Berhampore and F&P sniping at each other criticizing each other just for the sake of being pieholes, with me adding plenty of crap myself. I was focusing on the concepts, but for those two it was personal, resulting in bad blood to this day.

“So, when we had exhausted a particular piece, we would present at least 2 versions of a concept, often just Berhampore and F&P’s, and then vote. Then I’d write it up the official version. F&P was hurt personally when some concepts and ideas he came up with were rejected, for example, a loyalty oath. He wanted each councilor, each minister, each member of the "other" house, and each citizen of the west pacific to swear loyalty to the west pacific. Not a bad idea, in itself, of course. I thought it was unnecessary but I really didn’t care one way or the other. Berhampore fought like F&P had suggested we sign a document in blood in Satan’s name. We ended up not putting it in.

“Another stupid thing was pronoun choice. See, I ended up the unofficial official scribe, and when I referred to a minister in the final draft, I wrote ‘he or she’. F&P didn’t think we should bow to political correctness, and argued that using "he" in all cases was correct English. Which is true, but stupid, and because F&P wanted it one way, Berhampore dug his heels in on ‘he or she’. Someone, I can’t remember who, suggested ‘s/he’, but I pointed out that it looked retarded. So I ended up changing everything and using the passive voice, i.e. the minister this, the minister that, the nation this, the nation that.

“But the biggest damn fight was over the conclusion. F&P, in his defense, spent a lot of time crafting it. He tried to write it himself, and did a damn good job, but he ended it ‘this, the (blank) day of (blank), in the year of Our Lord, 2003’. I pointed out that it may have been the year of his Lord but it was not the year of mine, and would he mind changing it? He refused. I told him I would refuse to sign it, and, mirable dictu, Berhampore tried to make peace and help us reach a compromise, but we just weren’t in a compromising mood. I wanted it removed. I was respectful.... at least, I started out respectful. I’m a person of faith myself, and I write "bisiyata dishmaya" on all my personal papers in RL, but I didn’t put it on the constitution. Now, this went right up to the deadline. I mean, we were arguing about it right up to midnight EST. In the end, we left it off, declared whatever we had ‘good enough’, and threw a party.

“We were going to create a legal code, but there was simply no time. Now, meantime in Real Life my brother was getting married. I was working up t six hours a night on the damn constitution, working full time at my crappy job, and helping my brother. I had to do some minor construction on his new apartment, helped him paint, helped him pack, helped my sister in law to be to pack, move them both etc. Not only that, but my brother is younger than I am. In our community, you get married as early as possible, and it is very embarrassing if a younger sibling marries first. Legally he was supposed to ask my permission to get married, although he never did, little bastard.

“So I was seriously stressed. I was sleeping about five hours a night, running myself ragged, I would have been frazzled without the stupid constitution, and with the lengthy postzillas, and the constant arguing, and the constant compromise. About a week after we submitted the constitution, I left NS. I didn’t mean to leave. It wasn’t a decision that I made. I just didn’t log in for a few days. Then I didn’t log in for a few more days. Before I knew it, it was almost year later, about 10 moths or so to be exact. I had just started a blog, and was desperate to see the hit counter go up. So I thought, how do I get a group of people connected to the internet to come click on my site and read my crap? Then I remembered, wait, I already know a group of people on the internet! And some of them like me! So I logged back on to NS, and got involved.

“That is NOT the end of the story. So, I got back in, and there were serious changes. For one thing, there was a new constitution. Well, not really new, because it was built on the old constitution, but not very well, and there in lies the story. I asked around. It turned out that my old friend Norion had apparently gone mad with power and had started banjecting totally innocent people at random. I’ve always felt that there had to be more to the story than that and I regret not being around at the time. There has to have been a reason for Norion’s behavior, people don’t just snap and go over to the dark side overnight.

“So, that was the biggest shock. Francos Spain was gone too. Not just gone but people barely remembered him. Can you imagine what that was like for me? Imagine a resident of Moscow living there in the 1950's magically transported to Miami Beach in 2005. ‘What do you mean, you never heard of Stalin?’ Some guy named ‘Lanier’ was the elder statesman, the eminence grise, the wise elder who guided the West Pacific with a kind yet firm hand, but refused, Cincinatus-like, to don the crown himself. One of the 5mil wonders, some pink-loving girl named Minineenee, was the delegate somehow. Biyah, an ACC supporter from the old-old days, was working hard for the region. Dilber, not a 5mil wonder, but a minor player was now high up. But the biggest problem was the new constitution. Not that I realized it was the biggest problem at the time. I thought that the biggest problem was that I was getting sued.

“When we decided the constitution was done, we voted to seal the records. Why? Two reasons: first, we didn’t want everyone to see what petty minded bickering morons we really were, but second, and more importantly, we didn’t want anyone to know what kind of evil scheming Machiavellian psychopaths we were. You see, we were a bit frank in our deliberations. We openly acknowledged that we wanted to keep all the power to ourselves while giving the n00bs the impression that they had power too and that it was a democratically run system. We discussed various ways of pulling this off before we settled on the bicameral legislature system.”

“Of which is the kink we recently found.” Faeyas notes.

“Ah, you see? But we are getting waaaaay ahead of the story.” Chainik points out.

“Sorry,” Faeyas apologizes, then prompts Chainik with “Continue.”

“So, someone, I can’t remember who, maybe Bitey can help me with this if he’s still paying attention, sued the government to open the deliberations leading up to the creation of the first constitution. I think it was Nadnerb but I’m not sure.” Chainik admitted, “Bitey? You still there? No? okay. Anyway, whoever it was wanted that sub forum which had been passworded opened to the public. I’d like to find out why. Fae, your homework is to find out who it was and the REAL reason why he or she wanted it opened.

Faeyas nods at this, accepting the assignment, “Yes, sir.”

“Anyway,” Chainik continued, “we concom1 members freaked. We wanted it sealed and sealed forever. The plaintiff's argument boiled down to, basically, the entire forum is government property, the foundation of democratic governance is transparency, we should be allowed to see the deliberations. At the time Zeta was the AG with Jiredy as his deputy. Jiredy was one week from leaving NS for good due to RL issues, and frankly zeta was waaay over his head. So he and I exchanged a bazillion t-grams on the subject, I basically built the case, argued the case, and summarized the case for him, well, with him. We lost, as you know, but it was a close run thing, and Zeta was impressed with my legal eagle skillz. So he appointed me deputy.

“Now, I (we) did win a temporary injunction on opening the forum, pending a decision, and all the legal wrangling forced me to really study the second constitution. I have to admit, it was a good piece of work.

Faeyas muses “I wonder why I never saw the first concom notes then.”

“Oh, they ruled they could be opened but you had to show probable cause to have to want to see them, and, as a compromise, zeta suggested that someone summarize the deliberations and write a history of the writing of the constitution and he argued that a former committee member should be the one to write that history. Zeta saw to it that F&P was assigned to write that history.” Chainik bursts out in evil laughter.

“But you will write it in the end,” Faeyas pointed out.

“And F&P procrastinated till everyone forgot, as we knew he would.” Chainik agreed, and Faeyas laughed. “He talks the talk but he sometimes has trouble walking the walk. He tends to bite off more than he could chew.

“So we get, back to the story?” Faeyas suggests.

“I could have written it but I did not want it written, which is why we gave it to F&P. Now, of course, circumstances have changed, and we are about 3 quarters done with the story. Anyway, as I said, I got to know the constitution pretty well, as the deputy AG and later as AG. Now, the second constitution, whatever anyone may say, was not new. It was a logical progression from the first constitution, that’s all, evolutionary, not revolutionary. I will never understand why TAO and Lanier never figured out the secret behind the first one, and if they ever would have figured it out they never would have used it to build the second one.

“Now, as a result of a stupid comment I made in the heat of the moment to Nadnerb, he sued the entire government. This is a bit later. Do you remember this? I was the Deputy AG, and he was a Commranger.”

“No,” Faeyas commented trying to remember.

“He was accused by TAO of spamming the board, as a puppet, and was banjected. So he came into the forum foaming at the mouth, yelling and screaming and threatening to sue everyone and anyone. I PM-ed him with a bit of legal advice that amounted to: ‘chill. Explain that you were a commranger and what looked like spam was an official spam-clearing op, and they'll unban you. It was a puppet without un status anyway, so what’s the big deal?’ He decided that I was not speaking as Chainik Hocker, the player, but as Deputy Attorney General Chainik Hocker, and that the PM amounted to official coercion from a government official warning him to quash a legal complaint seeking the redress of a legitimate grievance- in effect that I was depriving him of his civil rights. Hoo Boy. So not only did he sue the government, the delegate, the attorney generals office, the attorney general, and the commrangers, he also sued me personally.

“So, I looked things up in the constitution and noticed a few things: 1) there was no provision in the con allowing citizens to sue for the redress of grievances- that the Court had no authority to try the case, 2) even if they did, there was no rule anywhere in the con saying that the delegate cant just banject people at random, 3) there was no rule or procedure saying that citizens could sue government ministries, 4) even if there was the Court had no authority to assign any punishment, fine, or ruling. The only thing the court was allowed to do was to decide the constitutionality of laws passed by the two houses and to banject people. It had no power to un-banject them, 5) had the court in fact ruled that a government official, me, TAO, or both, had acted improperly, it had no power to do anything about it. It couldn’t recall that official. It could just about recommend to the houses or the delegate to suspend the official. But those are only minor problems. The biggest problem is no one really knows what the hell the G.A. does for a living. It has no power. It passes no laws. It can pass resolutions and that’s it. The council is only a little better. It can propose laws and throw out laws, or make amendments.

“And I think I was the idiot who pointed out the power difference between Resolutions and Bills at one point or another in public very innocently with a debate project.” Faeyas mused mildly.

“Shhhhhhh.... we don’t want that secret to get out just yet.” Chainik silenced her.

Faeyas just laughs.

“Now, here’s the thing, the system worked for nearly 2 years, which is
like 200 years in NS time. But there is a problem with our entire governmental structure: The thing is it only works as long as everyone pretends it works. As soon as someone realizes that the only people with power are the delegate, some of the Secretaries, i.e. the AG, the SecIntel, and the SecDef, and a majority of the councilors, then if those people want to seize power and declare the constitution null and void and lock down the forum, they can- LEGALLY. I hate to point this out but the Core was entirely legal. Technically legal, trust me, I was the AG.”

“But I knew that.” Faeyas points out, having read the constitution herself.

“Yes,” Chainik muses, “But the entire system depends on you pretending you don’t know that. Are you familiar with the term cognitive dissonance?

“Vaguely,” Faeyas decides.

“Roughly it boils down to,” Chainik explains, “‘the ability to keep two opposing concepts in your mind at the same time without exploding, and act as though they were both true."

“Isn't that insanity?” Faeyas wonders.

“You’d think so.” Chainik agreed.

“Apparently not,” Faeyas decided, “Politicians do it all the time.”

Chainik laughs. “So, that’s the end of the story. The constitution was meant as a legal fig leaf for benevolent despotism. It’s dead and I’m surprised it lasted this long. Anyway, I’m sorry it took me two hours to tell you this story, but it was long and involved.”

“No worries,” Faeyas assures him, “I’m glad to have it.”

The End.