Ultimatum Poll: Final Word

[Velox]

Vote here for your favorite Ultimatum story; entries have been randomized. Please MAKE SURE YOU READ ALL ENTRIES BEFORE VOTING.Voting begins now and will end on June 9th at 11:59 PM EST. Entries that do well will move on to the Ultimatum Final Poll, which will be posted at the conclusion of the 12th round preliminary poll.

• [*]Catch 22 I can’t do this. This time, it truly seems that there is no alternative. Countless times, I had escaped tight situations, always choosing the third option when provided two choices. Now, I have no hidden alternatives, no escape from certain doom. Today is the last day to dawn on one Earth colony. It’s up to me to decide which. If I press the button, a planet, ridden with countless terrestrial immigrants, will be destroyed. If I refuse, my own colony will meet the same fate. If I tell anyone about this, we are all doomed. I received the the transmission from Earth via Quantum Communication at 1713 hours. The New Terrestrial Government, founded by the three Corporations, needed their people to remain on Earth, they couldn’t lose them to the colonies. I was assured that everybody would believe it to be an accident, an impact from an enormous asteroid, that brought about such a catastrophe. Why somebody would do this, how somebody could be given so much power, is beyond me. Is the economy more important than the people? Is that really their reason, their justification, for destroying an entire planet? Find the third option. There is almost always a third option. Almost always. I look around the small room they had put me in; there, surrounded by buttons and switches, is the Button. They had offered me a generous share in the Market if I pushed the button, I would be one of the richest people in the Galaxy; I know some people who would take that opportunity, no matter the consequences. I’m not one of them, and I can’t decide whether that’s good or bad. It would certainly spare me this dilemma, but I don’t want to imagine myself with so much power, so many riches, at the expense of billions of lives. Other than the small panel of buttons, a telephone, and a door, the room is bare. I can’t escape: that would mean the destruction of my home world. I can’t press the button: that would be the end of so many lives. I wasn’t told what the other buttons do, but I can’t risk pressing them. There is too much at stake. “Why can’t you do this yourselves?” I don't expect an answer. Then the telephone rings. I have never used a telephone. It rings again, I don’t know how to. I pick it up on the third ring, putting the curved part to my ear, as I have seen people do in 2D photographs. I hear a voice, edged with the slight inconsistency of an artificial tone, on the other end. “We cannot be held responsible, should anybody realize the truth.” I hang up the phone. Why would it be an artificial tone? There must be something that I’m missing, some little bit of information, that would make this all make sense. I think of all those countless conspiracies that I had seen on the Entanglement before it was was censored; perhaps they were not so far off after all. I remember one, which claimed that the Government designed an Artificial Intelligence to manage the economy, but had lost control over the AI, which gained control over the military, among other sectors. Of course. Perhaps there is a third option after all... I pick up the phone and press numbers at random. To my astonishment, the call connects. I speak. “Would you mind asking the Government what their military has been up to?” I walk out of the room. There is nothing more to do. If this fails, we were all doomed anyways. ------ [*]The Force of Will “Finish that writing!” “I’m trying. I can’t think of any ideas! Well, I can think of ideas, but all of them are horrible. Just horrible. I’m ashamed that I even thought of them!” “The contest ends today. Finish it!” “That seems pretty harsh. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t finish it.” “Well, then you’ve missed out on one more chance for fame and fortune.” “Fame and fortune are trivial anyway.” “Finish it! That’s final!” “Okay, fine, I’m finishing it.” “You’re writing down what I said. That’s a cheap cop-out.” “What you said is indeed an ultimatum. It works.” “Ultimatums aren’t that short. They’re letters.” “Read the dictionary. It’s a final set of terms or a demand, that, when not complied with, will lead to a severance of relations or use of force.” “Knock it off, Professor. I want a story about an ultimatum, not some pointless definition.” “Very well.”

* * *

When my father was still alive, I was sent off to a boarding school. “Those beds be made picture-perfect, or it’s off to the office for you!” No one wanted to face the chief administrator of the school in his office. He used to be a wrestler back in his prime, the kind who actually won state championships. So we complied, in a way. “Whatever you do, don’t touch that closet door!” The Administrator’s snarky grin was there to back that up. “Violators will be sent home – and not allowed to complete the remainder of that year’s coursework. You all know what that means.” Now, you have to understand, I was an inquisitive young man, and so I immediately set about the task of figuring out was behind the door. Without the Administrator knowing, of course. Our rooms were locked at night, so my first challenge lie in procuring a lock pick of sorts. I did this by inventing an excuse involving a pair of pants that needed mending. This was also the trip I used to seize a flashlight, an essential component of my plan. As for getting the coin I needed for these essential purchases, I sent a letter to my gullible younger sibling with a threat of improbable proportions that adequately fit his young imagination, and was rewarded with the contents of his entire life savings. I have since repaid him, with a considerable sum added for his trouble, but that is another matter entirely. After the difficult task of getting the items within was completed, I had the grim satisfaction of slipping out past my slumbering bunkmates. For your reference, lock picking is quite a noisy operation and incompatible with the silence needed to sneak out of a room at night, especially for one as inexperienced as I was. Needless to say, at various stages of the operation I had to make various creative excuses as to the matter of me standing in front of a door and fiddling with it in a most unusual manner. Fortunately, my bunkmates were weary from exertions mental and physical. It was a simple matter of traversing the path to the forbidden door, opening it, and viewing the area beyond, an area with glossy spider webs that reflected the glimmer of my inquiring light. Further investigation revealed the trappings of a root cellar, nothing that seemed to be of importance. It seemed that the Administration’s prime concern was of young men taking culinary advantage of the school’s food supply, the reason for their ultimatum.

* * *

“So that’s my story about an ultimatum. Now you have to write yours, and that’s final! ------[*]Interstellar Law Warning: Access denied. Error Codes: 324a — insufficient security clearance. 324b — restricted / sensitive area. Jasper smiled. Through his HUD’s insistent flashing and the vibrations of the spaceship underneath him, he focused on the coding scrolling down his screen. He stopped the scrolling and entered a new line of code to send a bug back to the server. If the trick worked, the server would have to establish a connection with Jasper’s laptop to track its location — thus providing an opening for another virus to exploit. Warning: You are attempting to access a restricted area without proper credentials. Hacking is punishable by Interstellar Law and may warrant from twenty years in prison to vacuum ejection depending on the severity of the offense. As if Interstellar Law had been written for the people in mind. The people were all stuck in stasis, awaiting the day they would be awakened to traverse a virgin world. Jasper had never believed colonization was in the Colonization Board of Chairmen’s minds; it was secondary to being able to run a fleet of seven spaceships into God knows where, doing Devil knows what, partially connected with the ever-dropping morale back on Earth and the requirement within man’s instincts to go farther than is necessary or logical. In short, they did it for the heck of it. And they were going to mess things up for everyone unless Jasper managed to reveal the Board of Chairmen’s lack of organization. Hence the hacking. The connection hadn’t yet been made. Connected as Jasper’s spacesuit was, by pipe to the spaceship’s air system, it could not be remotely shut off, and so someone would have to locate and pacify him if he continued his digital assault. He inserted a block of code into his computer’s connection request, one that would attempt to access the server’s highest-security files and, in the process, plant a bug that would scan the server for a backdoor entrance that would be hinted at in the server’s response as the server checked the computer’s credentials. A twitch of his eyebrow — the request was sent. The inter-starship network operated at peak proficiency, and so the server responded within the second. The expected warning message filled Jasper’s HUD: Final Warning! The Colonization project does not condone hacking or otherwise tampering with the system. Further attempts to enter a high-security database without proper privileges and against Interstellar Law will result in immediate retaliation. The final warning was forgotten: A smaller display opened on Jasper’s HUD, reading, Backdoor entrance found: 108A-947-Y. Bingo. With careful mental prodding, Jasper’s spacesuit computer opened a special server request packaging program that could generate fake credentials. He entered the backdoor entrance code via copy-paste and resent the request. Jasper let the server chew on it and spit it back at him. Again, a warning appeared. You have attempted to break into restricted digital space. Punishment will be given. Your computer is being tracked— He swore. The server must have connected to his computer to determine his base credentials, which meant his server request packaging had amounted to naught. Tongue trapped between his teeth, he attempted to access his computer’s base credentials— Time was not on Jasper’s side. His HUD was abruptly wiped of all visuals to be filled by a blinking white message: Do Not Resist. In the same second, a ring of lights was activated, indicating the airlock door had opened. Three figures floated out; their blank faceplates focused on Jasper. He lifted his hands into the air, letting his air cord drag him alongside the spaceship. ------ [*]Antagonists The colonel walked slowly out of his dark green tent, fastening up the dull buttons of his overcoat as the chill that permeated the air of this cold winter morning swept through his body. They were in the middle of a valley, with a network of trenches extending out in a spider's web of patterns. Men of all creeds hunkered down next to their weapons, trying to keep themselves warm by various methods. They had long since run out of coffee and food was now running desperately low. The men that were out there were getting down to their basic instincts of survival and fight, running off of the steam of their own last reserves combined with the awakening and driving force of their adrenaline. He looked on his men and allowed himself the brief pleasure of a smile. He had commanded these men for nearly the entire war. He had witnessed them in their greatest moments, and he had been there with them when they had lost so many of their comrades. Now was not one of their greatest moments. The enemy had pushed, although they thought the war would be over quickly. Their line had been stretched too thin for the winter since no one expected such a surge from the other side when they and their people had been even more miserable than the poor state that his men were in now. They had been cut off; they had been surrounded. Supplies, when they reached them, were dropped from high in the air, and the enemy had surrounded them on all sides. His men had fought hard and brave, as he expected that they would. However, it's hard to fight without ammunition, and more than one time they found themselves ready to fight hand-to-hand, though it hadn't come to that yet. If they didn't get a new supply of ammo, andsoon, then that might have to happen. Today, though, something was different. The shooting, which had been so constant for so long, had finally halted. If this was a brief reprieve or a tactic by the enemy, no one could say, but the poses of the men in the trenches was one of relief. After all, they didn't know when they might get to rest again, if they ever got to at all. Slowly, a lone soldier approached their lines, carrying in one hand a pole with a white flag, and in the other, a small envelope. He placed it at the edge of one of the trenches before hastily returning to the relative safety of his own line. The envelope was delivered with alacrity to the colonel, who swiftly tore it open and read its contents, which had obviously been translated somewhat badly. In short, it demanded complete surrender, pointing out what had been on his mind for so long: they were completely surrounded and were in imminent danger of being completely annihilated. The colonel walked back into his tent, shaking off the snow that had gathered on his shoulders. He placed the letter down on the table, smoothing its crinkled face out as best he could. Taking his pen, he wrote a great big singular word across the bottom of the letter: NUTS. His men were weary, veterans of many battles before, but they sure as heck weren't going to back down now. Going back over the word a few more times to make it even clearer and bolder, he sealed it up, handing it off to a private for deliverance to the enemy's lines. Suddenly, a strange thought struck him: It'd be funny to see their faces when they read this. ------ [*]Let The Will Be Done She was dying. She had known this for several months. The cancer was spreading throughout her body like the plague. Yet, surprisingly, she had not written her will yet. But it was time for her to face the truth. She was unable to stop it. She slid off of her bed and tidied it up. After all, it may be the last time she would lay in it. She looked out of the highest window of the Castle Weller, then sat down at her writing desk. She started writing... -- Grace Delamere-Weller Castle Weller 1 Long Road Brighton England The Last Will and Testament of Grace Delamere-Weller I, Grace Delamere-Weller, certify that I am of sound mental health and contractual capacity. I also confirm that I am not under duress or undue influence to write this will. Furthermore, I hereby revoke all other wills and codicils I may have previously executed. I appoint my son, Lucas James Weller, as the executor of this will. I empower the executor to pay all of my funeral, debts, taxes, and other expenses. I authorize the executor to sell my home and belongings, except for the following: -My cocobolo writing desk is to go to my son, Jacob Wilhelm Weller -My bed is to go to my daughter, Natalie Mikaela Weller -My custom bloodwood bicycle is to go to my grandson, Lance Thomas Weller My assets shall be divided as follows: -My loving son Lucas is to receive twenty percent (20%) should he survive me. -My loving son- -- Her writing was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by two men entering. One man was wearing a white lab coat and a suit underneath, while the other had a suit on and a black briefcase in his left hand. “Jay, William,” she said, addressing each man respectively. “You are just in time to witness my will. “Madam,” said the Doctor, Jay. “I am in no condition to-” “Silence, Doctor Livingstone. There must be two witnesses to the will. Continue, mistress,” Said Mr. Starr. “Stay in here. Please,” Grace started. -- -My loving son Jacob is to receive twenty percent (20%) should he survive me. -My loving daughter Natalie is to receive twenty percent (20%) should she survive me. -My loving grandson Lance is to receive twenty percent (20%) should he survive me. -The remaining twenty percent (20%) shall go to my cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters, if they have not received money, including the alternative beneficiaries, in equal shares, per stirpes. If there are any other assets remaining in my estate including but not limited to real property, personal property, causes of action or any other assets, of whatsoever nature and wheresoever situate, I give, bequeath and devise such residue to my cousin, Regno Daniel Weller. My executor shall be paid and/or reimbursed for any and all expenses. The pay shall be a reasonable fee such as is ordinarily charged in the community for services of similar complexity and nature. -- “Come, madam,” said William, “And let the will be done.” The two men escorted her back to her bed where she fell asleep never to wake again. ------

Edited June 7, 2012 by Velox

[Excelsior]

I voted for 4.-Excelsior

[Ballom Nom Nom]

Went with number three here.~B~

[Sumiki]

Number four, my own. Five was very moving, however.

[Nuile the Paracosmic Tulpa]

This was a tough choice. I was mainly torn between #1 and #2, but they were all very good entries. My choice, however, was #2.

From the desk of Nuile: Lunatic Wordsmith

[Legolover-361]

I self-voted.

[fishers64]

Self-voted.

[Velox]

Polling period over; poll closed.