The Cerberus Files: Addenda, the Systems Alliance and Humanity
AN: Just some flavor.
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BEGIN TRANSMISSION: PEL
Why in fuck am I being dragged into this bullshit? I told you after the batarian shit, no more reports!
Trelly and Mincing Minsta having a spat?
This is what you want me to look at?
No, really, why in the actual fuck do you need feedback from me on this?
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BEGIN TRANSMISSION: ILLUSIVEMAN-1
Pel,
Because I pay you to do so, and the alternative is spending the next four weeks with Kai Leng on a deep penetration of the AIS to see what traces of information they still have on us. One can't be too careful, after all.
I'll be waiting for your report.
- The Illusive Man
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BEGIN TRANSMISSION: PEL
Man, fuck you. Fine. Whatever.
I thought I was done writing goddamned reports, but I'll look over this shit...skip to the military part, give a fuck about history and motherfucking economics...
Ohhh. I see the problem. Minsta reacts like he's a goddamned BuShips planner. Skim, skim...ha. Yeah, are you sure this guy was Illusive and not Shadow? He's got that creepy 'oh humanity makes me wet my panties' vibe the Tin Man did.
I guess I can glance over the business shit.
Huh. Well no shit we're dependent on the blues. In other unexpected news, water still wet, and scientists say the sun is still on fucking fire. Stupid motherfucker, we were damn near dead after the spikes kicked our shit in. Humanity was like my relatives after the FCW, all 'let me hold some money, my brother. I'll get you back, promise!' Ain't seen any of those motherfuckers since.
Minsta is pissed the asari are buying up every goddamned thing, because we didn't reinvent the wheel when it came to economics. Well, fucking duh. Newsflash, asshole, we got spike-headed alien monsters, motherfucking little green men and fuck-all defenses, a planet full of the shit you usually find behind the fridge, and we're broke as a joke. Economic theory is the last thing we're going to think about.
….and Trelly can't see that humans plus someone else doing all the heavy lifting equals lazy fat ass humans who don't bother taking care of business. Damn, bossman, she's usually smarter than this. You making her hit her head while you bone her or something? Look, I get her point, I guess – the blues have a longer term plan than just bankrupting us. So what?
I know all about fucking welfare. Anyone who stays on it long enough stops trying to get off. That's probably want they want, but she doesn't see why it pisses most people off? That's a sign she still don't understand us apes very well.
Alright, Bossman, this is funny enough I'll chime in, but only on the shit that I can actually speak to. Me trying to talk about the fucking economy would be about as good as Minsta describing how to operate a cyclical assault cannon.
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History Shit
Minsta sure is a depressing motherfucker, you ever notice that? Why don't we every hire anyone happy to work in the Dog? I mean, sometimes he's funny, but it's not a good funny, it's a 'check out this clueless asshole' funny.
I'm guessing the point of this whole thing is to educate Trelly. That makes sense. I ain't stupid enough to think you keep her around just to fuck her, you've got one of those twisted, twenty-thousand moving parts plans in your damned head and she's part of it. Teaching her about humanity and having her actually grok the shit is two different things, though.
You, Oleg, Randall, Tyrone and I lived through this shit in the worst goddamned way, and so did Kai Leng. Miranda is too perfect to give a shit, and the techs and money dudes were probably just being born when the FCW blew up. Brooks...who the fuck gives a shit about Brooks anyway. So this clearly ain't for us to read (unless you want to see Kai Leng laughing. You don't. It's creepy as all fuck, like some shit out of the Shining.)
If you want Trelly to get us, she's going to have to see more than the shit the doc puts out.
Why do you keep him around anyway? Because he sounds like a fucker from BuShips, or because you get a thrill around ordering dangerous or brilliant people around? With the exception of me and Kai (who are just killers) , you don't hang out with anyone who isn't some superfreaky smart or multi-talented bastard.
Oh well. Doesn't matter why you keep the fucker 's read history.
Or not.
Skim past all this shit...huh. Okay, this shit about the Message is creepy. Didn't know that. Makes sense now why the SA is all comfy with having the blues all up in our shit. What in the shit are black leaves?
Skimming... Alright. Look. The history is what it is. Humans blew each other up, blah blah, Ardiente, blah blah, Manswell, blah blah, Guard of Assholes, blah blah blah.
Trelly is going to get a jack-shit vibe from this because it makes us sound like goddamned vorcha, bossman. Sure it's more accurate than Commissar bullshit they feed kids in schools today, full of fuck-ass prayer and songs about the goddamned Manswells. It's still the last two percent of history, and the worst of the last two percent. Anyone reading this shit is going to want to either stab a fucking turian or cack themselves out of depression.
For what you want – Trelly to be able to understand the SA and why it acts in Massive Dick To All Living Things mode a bit better – the shit that went down before the Days of Iron don't mean a thang. You could have replaced that with little Red Riding Hood and it would have made the same amount of sense. The ugly real truth is we don't know WHY shit went to hell in a handbasket. Maybe people were stupider back then. Maybe living in a world where you could, you know, walk around without a full enviro suit pissed them off. Maybe the fucking trees drove them crazy.
Who fucking cares? Minsta's history don't cover the fucking African riots, or the Chinese uprising. It doesn't explain why the fuck a quarter of the globe is underwater. Where's the shit about the Brides of Christ, and those crazy fuckers who took off from the Zurich Holdfast in shitty ships headed for Alpha Centauri?
I'm sure history is important. Trelly and Minsta both live on that shit. But this reads like a justification for the Manswells acting like paranoid dicks, not a way to explain that humans suffered a lot and two generations were raised in complete shit.
I was lucky. Pops was a mechanic for the Andersons, who were a house of the third working for Grissom. That's how I ended up with David and Kai Leng guarding Kahlee in the first place. Why is there no history about that? About how badass crazy the terrorists were, how the fucking first Commissars looked like some Terminator shit and would burn your entire goddamned city down for trying a peaceful protest? This is just incomplete, bossman.
No, I'm not fucking going to add to it. It's bad enough I had to write up shit about turian dicks and how the ever-shitting krogan 'military' worked, I'm not going to try and write up the history of humans.
Cultural Shit
Is he dense?
How can he be upset all the goddamned nations are gone when half of them are still around? America is still the biggest shit in the entire goddamned universe if you ask them. England is still fucking around with rugby, tea, crumpets and Benny Hill, France is still full of arrogant bastards and hot girls...
Whatever, man. Who the flying fuck cares that Tuvalu, Bhutan and Cote d'Ivorie are gone? So are four and a half billion people. The fact that some nations are gone is because they fucking all died of Ebola, HEV-II, and the wheeze. They weren't shit before things went to hell because the rich and powerful ran everything, and that would not have changed in today's society either.
He just likes to bitch, I think.
Really? He's going to attack the Church? Didn't we do enough of that when we blew away the Pope? He sounds like a closet RBMU to me, and those people ain't stable.
'Collapse of traditional ethics and values'. Oh god...
[Record cessation, duration twenty six seconds. Sounds recorded conform to : laughter, snickering. Recording resumes.]
Is this really for Trellani, or are you just taking the piss out of this guy for a good laugh? Fuck me, Bossman, I take it all back – reading this shit is the most fun you can have with clothes on. This crazy fucker is actually sounds surprised society has gone to hell.
Newsflash, Doc. Life sucks for people near rock-bottom. Marriage is for people who can plan their future. Most people don't. Crime is all people can do to make ends meet sometime. The arcologies are shitty places for poor people to raise families. Most people ain't comfy class four fops with two summer homes.
He wants me to kill Patau? I kinda like Patau. Fucker is saying it like it is.
Look, if parents ain't gonna take time out of their fucking skyball practice, dinner parties, haptic art critiques, dildo polishing or whatever else the fuck they're doing to actually raise their children right, the schools ain't gonna do it for them. The best way to keep them from the streets is let the stupid little bastards see up close what it looks like. The weak ones will get scared and run back home to mommy. The strong ones will get stronger.
He is right about the Red Sox. I can't believe they lost to the goddamned Tigers. What next, they gonna get beaten by Little Leaguers on Arcturus, too? When was the last time the Sox were in the World Series? 2018? 2019?
Shit, I can't even remember.
Lifestyle Shit
Holy shit Minsta must have been bored when he was writing this...
Okay. And?
Government Shit
Blah blah. Jesus fuck, this is worse than reading the SAOB.
Ooh, the Commies. Heh, Mickey Rourke. Did you know that Rourke was descended from some shitty actor from back in the day who had the same name? I remember in boot-camp, they used to make us learn about this kind of hero-worshiping bullshit.
I'm surprised Minsta didn't go into more detail about those bastards. Then again, they probably ain't healthy to research.
Military Shit
And here is where he loses it entirely. The history stuff … eh. It's interesting, and the old Marines were definitely pretty badass, but I still think Marines vs. Heer would have resulted in the Germans waxing that ass. I mean, fuck, how many times did they try to take over the goddamned world?
Just flicking through my omni says Bismark in the late 1800's, Kaiser Wilhelm in WWI, Hitler in WW2, Prime Minster Buverdunkeln in the early 2040's, Manswell finally doing it in the 2070's. Germans are badass. Top admirals and generals in the SA? Von Khar, Von Grath, and Ahern, all Germans.
Skim past his goddamned ranting about the 'lessons of the FCW'...ha. We already learned that one. Spikes are bastards, and do not fuck with the asari.
Military structure. Here, he has some good points.
Bossman, you did some hard fighting on Shanxi. You and Oleg did, at any rate. By the time we got there to relieve you guys, you all looked like hammered shit. You weren't lucky enough to get the fuck off Shanxi before the spikes glassed half of it, and so I guess you saw the worst sort of shit the turians could pull. You of all people understand why we can't afford a half-ass army. Spikes don't play.
So you'll understand when, after reading this shit, I want to throw the padd across the room.
This is ninety percent of why I joined the fucking Dog. We have an army of fucking farm boys in shitty armor, propped up by those zombies in the fucking Legions, spread so thin nine grandmothers with push brooms could take out some of our defenses. Soldiers that aren't trained to do shit but sit there and die, lead by some shit-for-brains asswipe who couldn't lead starving wolves to fresh fucking meat, and NCO's whose only reliability was that you could count on them being the first ones out of the fucking line of fire.
His casualty rates only take into account combat deaths, if he's getting his shit from BuPers. Add 10% for armor failures, equipment fuckups, and not having enough goddamned medigel. Add another five or six on top of that for the boys and girls we send home with no fucking arms. Or legs.
Or fucking faces.
You need to break it down to Trelly what it really means.
That if you have ten friends, you'll lose 3 of them in two years, and have none in seven years. She's tossing it off as irrelevant because the asari casualty rates are almost nil. Shit, most of the blues are on fucking Watson, which is a goddamned fortress. Of course casualty rates are low. Stick those bitches in the fucking RRU and see how quick they skyrocket.
Economic Shit
I pretty much said all I have to say in the first part of this . Economy and business shit ain't my thing. I need enough cash for guns, girls, and grub, and a place to crash, and I'm good. I only understand half of whatever he's piss-moaning on about anyway.
Trellani's reaction
The one thing she said I don't like is that humans don't expect to change. She's not getting it.
It should be up to humanity on whether or not to change, and how to change, and WHAT to change. Not anyone else.
If she can't get that the Dog is all about letting us decide what we'll do instead of being told, she's missing the forest for the trees.
A lot of her other stuff is on point, mostly, although the questions as the end are less though provoking and more … eh, shit she is curious about.
My two cents
You want five ways to improve this?
First: Get Minsta laid, and get the man a fucking drink. He has entire old-style telephone pole up his ass about the blues, when it's clearly the fucking salarians we should be scared to shit of.
Second: Talk about biases and either admit 'em or get rid of 'em. Look, some of this shit coming out of his mouth is … off. You know it, and I know it, but she don't. Unless you want her to operate with the SA with the kind of fucked up slant that Minsta is pushing, he needs to be a bit more objective.
Third: Put some shit in here about how we're god-stomping the shit out of the Batarian Hegemony. We didn't really cover it too much in the racial work up we did on them.
Fourth: Go into what exactly is causing the SA to be over-extended – the goddamned wildcat colonists. Probably should also look at why the corporations are running rampant out in places like Noveria and Echo.
Fifth: Something like 'these are the big threats' and how to neutralize each one. You know, like the salarians breeding up goddamned supersoldier armies, and whatever the shit is going on at Khar'Shan?
Also, stop sending me fucking reports to write up.