USS Enterprise NCC 701 E
Fleet Captain Lee Plainwalker listened to his officers interact with their Federation counterparts aboard the Enterprise for dinner. He paid particular attention to how Lieutenant Windham handled himself. Windham was a political time bomb waiting to go off. Plainwalker had already had a long discussion with Admiral Storm over his being placed aboard the Thunderbird . It was not often that an Imperial Prince served aboard a ship. It wasn't that the Imperial Princes usually chose another service, for not serving meant the loss of their status as a Noble, but instead there were just so few of them. When they did however, their commanding officers usually ended up under the proverbial microscope from Imperial Command.
Fortunately for Lee, the Lieutenant had a pretty good head on his shoulders, was well qualified for his position as historian and anthropologist, and was well-liked by his peers. The fact that his bond pride was yet to be closed was of some concern to several people in the Empire. Usually by the time a young man of his background had reached their early twenties, they'd closed their bonds and were well on their way to building a family. So far, the man seemed uninterested in finding the final partners and settling down. Of course, Lee understood that when that happened, he would either lose the Lieutenant or gain several other officers.
Much had changed among his people since he had left Earth with his Uncles Seth and Dustin those long years ago. They'd forged a new society out of the raw materials of the stars. Just like a flower knew the direction of the rising sun, Lee knew in his bones that what they had forged was right for them. He knew that the most important law of the Empire came from the first in the Statement of Responsibilities and Rights of Citizens was the right to be left alone, and the responsibility to leave others alone.
Lee let his attention drift across the room to where the young lieutenant was having a rather interesting conversation with Ensign T'Lear and Commander Greenbough about one of his favorite authors. Of course Hale's work was considered one of the seminal pieces of literature that had guided his people in establishing their culture. Hale had picked up the mantle of the civilization that Griffin had described in the nineteen forties and made them popular again by the late nineteen nineties. Many of those concepts were adopted to fit Enhancer civilization, and had been seminal in making it acceptable. Lee secretly suspected that it was Hale's and of course Griffin's work in describing what was then known as alternate lifestyles that eventually led to even Earth accepting the concept of same-sex spouses and group marriages- something that had been highly controversial. His work was even more groundbreaking than E.E. "Doc" Smith's Children of the Lens in its suggestions on how enhancer culture would eventually develop and function; and Lee knew that some of "Doc's'" work was so controversial that he could only hint at them in the nineteen sixties.
That left of course the inevitable question: Was Hale a prophet, or an architect. Lee had met the man, and considering his position in the Empire, he felt that he was a little bit of both. He'd set out an idea of what society should be like and then worked hard to make it that way. Of course since he had the backing of the Shan, the families that would eventually found the protectorate worlds, and the Imperial Grand Council, then there was no wonder he'd had so much effect on civilization. Hale had put it simply: Love should not be defined by those not involved, and made the idea stick. He had opened a whole new language to his people and it had been embraced with the same enthusiasm that they approached everything else.
Commander Greenbough was asking Lieutenant Windham, "If there are no limits on competition, how is it that you keep your society from being conquered and dominated by the strongest of your population?"
Windham smiled and replied, "Our laws put a very strict limit on what a person can do to another. You can argue, you can cajole, and you can implore until you are blue in the face, but you cannot step over the line of a person's right to be left alone. No law in our Empire exists that doesn't preserve life, liberty, or property."
"Doesn't that sort contradict the concept of an Empire?" Greenbough asked.
Windham shook his head, "Not at all, Commander. We're an Empire in that we have an Emperor who has control of the executive branch of government. The Emperor is advised by the Grand Imperial Council and the Imperial Council. The Emperor controls the Imperial Aeronavy and Ground Forces, as well as directing the government and foreign affairs. The Imperial Courts control the judiciary, and the police. The Imperial Senate is made up of three houses, the House of Nobles, the House of Citizens, and the House of Subjects. They make laws, the Judiciary interprets and enforces them and the Emperor handles the military and foreign affairs."
"Who has the most power then?" Lieutenant Commander La Forge asked.
Lieutenant Windham blushed and sighed, "Eventually, the Emperor has the most power. However, that comes mostly from the respect and love that the people have for the throne."
"How long has your current Emperor ruled?" the being known as Guinan asked. She was a dark-skinned humanoid who was obviously not of Terran origins.
Again the Lieutenant blushed. Lee understood that the young man was not comfortable discussing his family. But if he was going to be on a diplomatic mission, he had better get used to discussing the government very openly. "There is no current Emperor as you think of it," he said. "When we refer to the Emperor, we refer to the thirteen members of the Imperial Grand Council acting in one accord. They have all held their positions since the Founding, almost two hundred years ago. Each has a specific area of influence, but when they are all forced to act as one, the Empire sits up and takes notice. That is when the Emperor speaks, and few people are willing to argue with them."
"Are they afraid of them?" Guinan asked.
"Windham shook his head and replied, "Not like you think. It is more of a matter of respect- of being afraid of disappointing them. They led our people in battle against the United Nations back on Earth. They forged the alliances and technologies that eventually allowed them to leave for the stars. They watched over and protected our first colonies as we slowly expanded out into space. The Bureaucracy grew out a need to carry out their wishes."
"What about what the people want?" Lieutenant Commander La Forge asked.
"That's reflected in their selections for the House of Citizens and House of Subjects. It actually carries a great deal of weight in the Imperial Senate, and on more than one occasion has resulted in policies that have over-ridden the Imperial Council. They are the ones who developed the procedures for the advancement of ships' minds in the Empire."
"Ships' minds?" Dr. Crusher asked.
"Our ships are considered sentient beings, Dr. Crusher. There is a process for them to earn advancements through service to the Empire," Lee broke into the conversation. "The Thunderbird has been in service for almost fifty years. Her present ship's mind has served for twenty-two of those years, second only to the Midgarth's Warder. They have a rather large sum of credits and other incentives built up for their use when they retire."
"How does a ship retire?" Captain Picard asked.
"The ship doesn't, Captain," Lee told him. "The ship's mind however, can. When it does, it is removed from the ship and a new one replaces it. Years of service, combat pay, and other awards earned it extra enhancements to the body that is grown for it." He smiled, "So you see, Captain Picard, genetic enhancements really are a way of life for our people."
Lee watched as the concept he was discussing slowly sank into the Federation personnel. He knew that this was going to be one of the two main sticking points for relations between his people and those they'd left behind on Earth. The Federation feared the concept of genetic enhancements giving individuals advantages over others so they outlawed them. The Empire embraced them as a way of raising all boats and bettering the people as a whole.
Of course the concept of equality of individuals verses equality of rights was also at the heart of the other area of dispute: economics. The Federation prevented its citizens from achieving great amounts of economic wealth, and again the Empire embraced it.
"I'm afraid your people and mine have some very different outlooks on life. We have had experiences with sentient ships' computers and none of it has been pleasant. Before they started appending letters of the alphabet to ship's named Enterprise, there was an incident that almost destroyed one of her predecessors because a sentient computer ran amok. We don't put ships in charge of people, Captain, " Picard said.
Lee smiled and shook his head, "Neither do we. Our ship's mind and its computers are two different things. The ship's mind is a biological brain that is tied into the main processing unit of the ship. It maintains communications to both the subspace communications network as well as the Imperial Psionic Network called the Mindsong. It is organic and living, and when it retires, it gets a new body with the genetic enhancements it has earned. There are thousands of young and old men and women who've spent decades being a ship's mind living in the empire. That kind of service is highly rewarded, not the least of which is that they are granted citizenship the moment they are installed in the ship."
"You do tend to do things differently, that's for sure," Picard said.
Commander Greenbough nodded and asked, "I take it your Empire is very much like that described by Heinlein?"
Windham smiled, "Commander Greenbough, several of the founding ideas of our Empire were developed by Noah Hale, and Dannon Griffin, two science-fiction writers of the twentieth century. Our primary outpost in neutral space is called the Babylon Station, a fictional space station from that same era, and we have intergalactic starship race every four years called the Kessel Run. We are a literate people, and we recognize good ideas when we see them. We owe our concept of earning citizenship to Heinland; we owe our social structures of marriage and child-rearing to the Shan culture and to Marshak, Culbreath, Griffin, and Hale. What do you think?"
"I've never heard of a civilization that was modeled on fiction. Of course, I know that fiction, and in many cases the very genre of science-fiction, has influenced civilization as a whole. Dr. Asimov's three laws of robotics have been used in the higher intelligent computers and robots," Lieutenant Commander La Forge replied.
"There has never been a people like us, Lieutenant Commander La Forge. We are descended from the rulers of ancient Atlantis, from the first sentient race on Earth, and from the Children of Lilith. Many of us are naturally immortal, and others extremely long lived. We have created families in ways that few humans could ever experience. When we are capable of bearing children, then we do so, and with a great deal of zeal. When we can't, then we go to the Shan and create them in the lab. This caused a great deal of distrust of us from the baseline humans back on Earth. We were attacked out of fear and jealousy of our power. We were attacked because of the nature of some of our enhancements called for alternative lifestyles, and that threatened many baseline's comfort zones when it it came to the definition of marriage," Lee told the Lieutenant Commander
"We fought back, my mother died in that war when I was only eight. I watched her killed in that fight, it was on international television. I'll never forget that image as long as I live- the image of her being blasted into her component atoms by a UN soldier using stolen Atlantean technology will always be with me. When my uncles took me in and began what was needed to leave the planet, I was all in. I spent six years at boarding school learning what it means to be an enhancer, and then entered a career in the burgeoning American Space Command. By the time we were ready to leave, I was able and ready to lend a hand."
"You will find that Earth has grown up a great deal, Captain," Picard told him. "Many of those issues were put to rest by the middle of the twenty-first century."
"Only after Colonel Green managed to kill seveal hundred million of you," Lieutenant Windham replied. "We know Earth histoy rather well. Some very important Imperial families left much-loved sons and daughters on Earth to help you survive. I believe that the most prominent of those was probably Colin Stryker, who became the first President of a United Earth."
"President Stryker was one of you?" Picard asked. "I remember reading about his exploits when I was a young boy. His final "negotiations" with Colonel Green were rather inspired."
Dr. Seizemore grinned and replied, "It had the virtue of having never been tried."
"That was true. Green was the one accustomed to attacking people in the middle of negotiations, and didn't expect Stryker to pre-emptively take him out, personally. But of course in doing so, Stryker was able to break the back Green's eco-terrorist movement," Lieutenant Windham said.
"Your knowledge of our history is rather impressive, Lieutenant," Captain Picard said.
"I AM after all an historian, Captain Picard. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't know my subject matter," Lieutenant Windham told him. He was of course right. What he wasn't telling Picard was that as an Imperial Prince, he also received one of the finest eduations in the Empire. Since it was expected that he would be involved with first contact with Earth, he'd recently received a refresher course on Leight.
Recognizing the enthusiasm of youth, Picard smiled at the young officer and agreed, "And that is as it should be. I'm sure your Captain is quite pleased with your performance." Lee noticed Plainwalker's pupils dilate to tiny vertical slits for just a moment. He trusted however, that Windham's diplomatic training as a member of the Imperial Court would keep him from saying anything insulting.
Instead the young man turned back to Commander Greenbough and his voice became rather pleasant, "So tell me, Commander Greenbough, what kind things do you enjoy doing for entertainment?" The boy was about as subtle as a bear in a china shop.
Commander Greenbough, however seemed to be about as dense as one as well. He smiled at the younger officer and said, "I like to be out of doors. I do a lot of camping, hunting, and fishing. My family used to own some property in the mountains of Northwest Alabama and I still like to go there and fish on Wolf Creek."
How could the man be that dense?! Wolf Creek Academy was where I went to school learning what it meant to be an enhancer. Was the man totally in denial? Before Lee could contemplate that question however, he felt Lieutenant Commander Tyde's mind gently brushed his own. A very tightly controlled telepathic message came to him. //Captain, are you aware that the plant in the corner of the room is a Founder?//