Burton you are counted among the allies of the Tool Wielders.
tosses 5LP in the hubcap and passes it to Burton
Should you decide to contribute to the Tool Givers ministry…
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Yeah I’ll match yer 5, soon as the accounting has been accounted for.
5 days ago, Tijuana, MexiCorp…
I can see clearly in pitch black darkness
A million meetings of strangers at midnight
I heard their confessions and admitted my guilt
So I traveled to Tijuana and I drank Tequila
Soon everything was forgotten and faded into fog
Midnight found me back up to my old Modus operandi
All over again my affliction had effected my reality
My transmission shifted overdrive as the old Ford jerked forward
The RPMs ran into the red and the radiator started steaming
On and on I drove until the sun came up at the border
The TCB start’s to crackle…
…in the rear view mirror the Cartel was in hot pursuit…
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Momo’s seen it all… twice. Her memory just needs a little WD-40 on occasion. She probably knows what this lucky leather thing is… hmm could they be driving gloves? I’m sure she’ll figure out what this is after a hot toddy and a nap.
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Let’s divvy up the Mission 2 spoils!
As I understand matters, the five .50 cal and and two lucky leather items need to shared amongst the thirteen of us on Mission Two:
2Aa Desmond Baltar, Major Talley Rand, Jack “knife” ,Bubba Zanetti, Sven Larsson,
2Ab Nervous, Momo
2B Honey Malone ,Channing Hunter, Wizard
2C Jack Burton, Long Haul Raul, Bertie Gomez
I see four possible plans:
Plan 1. Maximize firepower
Plan 2. Succour the weak
Plan 3. Auction off the goodies
Plan 4. Random assignment.
Plan 1
Since we work together, I think the best plan is that that each of us push one of our stats to 100. Notice that my Lotus already has 80 MV. Under Plan 1, the five guns go to the five raid participants that have the highest FP:
Nervous (70 FP) Channing (56) Momo (53) Wizard (52) and Jack “Junior” (50)
Plan 2
we can try to make each of us survivable, in which case those weapons go to our weakest. I don’t like that because it moves the firepower to the vehicles less able to take punishment. Under Plan 2, the guns go to
Honey Malone (31) the Major (31) Baltar(34) the Swedish Chef (37) and Jack “knife” (43)
Plan 3
The fairest plan is to auction off the goodies, with folks not getting goodies splitting the auction proceeds. However, I am pessimistic this can be done quickly and efficiently.
Plan 4
The easiest plan is to ask Jane to roll some dice and randomly assign the goodies
What ever we decide, we should agree that whoever doesn’t get the guns gets… something. Each gun would probably cost something like 4-8 LP if bought from Stretch, while the gloves would be 1-2 LP…
So, whaddya think?
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Your numbers may be a little out of date…
This is the most up to date one I have but even that is out of date since we went on mission 3.
I’m not sure those that found the leather items (they’re… not gloves) were planning on freely sharing, though they’re free to do what they want with them. They took quite a… beating… to earn those, and the guns the rest of us just grabbed as we went.
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I thought you were a communist?
I also note that although you apparently have sky-high engineering, you let Channing and Wizard do the heavy lifting in the elevators.
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Well I do believe in… private… property.
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I’ve always subscribed to Marx (not Richard, this time).
Property is Theft. Therefore, Theft is Property - everything I take is mine.
An attitude that richly rewarded my forebears. How d’you think I got to be a Baronet?
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De’Ath, principled lordling that he is, knows which side of his bread is buttered. Why d’you think he chose Mission 3? For the flattering lighting and fist-pumping soundtrack? No, he knew he’d keep what he won, with no obligation or social pressure (spoken or otherwise) to redistribute the wealth. Inequality brought us all to this bloody pass, ladies and germs, and it’s here to stay. The winners breathe, the losers fertilize.
De’Ath didn’t arrive at the overpass in time to claim any rewards for lane demolition, and do you hear him squawkin’? No, you do not. He took what he won, fair and square.
I tellya Jane, this socialist utopia you’re tryin’ to breed is doomed. We’ve been lucky so far, and now that we’re feeling flush with resources you might think we can spread them around freely to whomever among us has the most attractive and civilized scent, but before this trip’s done I fear we’re gonna start getting a bit more dog-eat-dog. I’ve run this road before, and it demands top efficiency and ruthless fat-pruning.
Getting us all to Edwards alive and shiny and rich with plates and sparkling with technological upgrades is neither the priority nor a remote possibility.
Getting this Ark there, with enough of us alive to crew it and get it off this dying world, is the only priority. Don’t let any of us lose sight of that.
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Spoken like someone who has dealt with this situation successfully before. You guys pay attention to Bubba. His eyes are on the prize. I don’t know much about his past (he’s one of Cougar’s contacts, not mine), but I would have hated to be on the wrong side of this man’s focus.
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You presume a lot, Blazer. You don’t know my motives. Don’t use me as your poster boy.
As for Bubba, we only know what he’s told us. We don’t know his history, or his loyalties.
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Actually, that wasn’t Marx, it was the French Anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. But we all get your meaning.
Out here, anyone with any property probably stole it, so it’s truer now then when some whiny bourgeois Frenchman wrote during the July Monarchy.
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You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.
A dead Johnny Foreigner. It matters not what the chaps name was.
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Nor yours. Nor Clank’s, nor Raul’s, nor anyone’s. You guys know what Cougar and I have told you. I can swear on a stack of Bibles (if there still were any) that all we’ve told you is true, but I know full well that you have no particular reason to believe me. I’m willing to cover your ass and line your pockets with fairly uncomfortable and ill-fitting license plates (unflattering as well, in the tight pants you seem to favor) since you came when Cougar called and you’ve done exactly what we’ve needed you to do in the service of the goal we have for this Ark.
Let’s just slide that razor out of Occam’s sheath and cut to the meat of the matter: what in hell other use would we have for eighteen million pounds of payload that, as far as anyone has been able to tell for the last decade since the bombs turned out the lights, has precisely one employable use: to take four dozen people to another planet? Would we use it to power a windmill? Would we use it to make a bomb to wipe out that tiny shitstain fraction of the population that Chelsea somehow managed to miss? Would we sell it to someone else? Maybe North Korea’s still in the market? Oh wait… if any of them are still alive they’ve grown gills; they don’t call it the Hermit Crab Kingdom for nothing.
You guys can mutter among yourselves about our mysterious motivations if it helps you sleep at night. Personally, I don’t care why you’re here, as long as you help rather than hinder our progress to Edwards.
That said, De’Ath, I’m not here to exploit you all. Already you have done stout service for my family and me, whether that was your intent or just a by-product. Either way, I’m indebted to you and everyone here in a way mere LPs can’t pay back.
If there arises, somewhere between here and Edwards AFB, an occasion when you could use my help about some matter, I will do what I can.
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What a day. At this point I’m not sure if I need to stencil 5 raiders on my side or if I should stencil landmines. Are they my kills? Are they fate’s?
All the same, I think we all might want to think heavily upon the UAW’s recent treatise posted to their, ah, garage door. And keep in mind that some Fleetwood character is going to want to have a chat with the three of those gents. Of course, as far as I’m concerned he’ll have a chat with me beforehand. I’m like the receptionist I suppose…
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Riddle me this, Blazer. Just say by some miracle we do this and we pull your giant phallic symbol all the way to Edwards. What then? Who here knows how to launch and navigate a spaceship? Will we have to fuel that trip on our own filth too? Most of us can’t even fucking read - how on Earth will we manage this? And what about Mars? What fresh hell is waiting for us there?
Christ, I’m so sick of this. I’ve been living like a fucking troglodyte for ten years. Drive, fight, crap, sleep, rinse and repeat.
Where’s my goddamn wine gone?
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I understand your world-weariness, and all I can do is ask that you keep these points in the forefront of your mind as your toils and griefs of the last decade boil down to these final few days on Cougar’s Last Commute:
One: Our vessel, the final precious Ark that will deliver the remnants of our species to Mars, whether to befoul it as we did our original home or to bloom upon it in a glory that corrects the mistakes of generations past, that ship we now bear with utmost care and dignity to her point of departure… that ship was built by and for two billionaires with virtually unlimited capital, a fetish for black gimp-hoods with pointy ears and shiny red armor, and a complete inability to wind their own watches, else they’d be on Mars already, laughing at us through their interplanetary batscopes. They knew to the second when the EMP would hit, yet couldn’t get it together enough to get out of its way. This ship was built to their specification, and overseen by loyal lieutenants who would sooner throw themselves into a Dumpster full of rusty red-hot razor blades than risk their bosses’ potential embarrassment when faced when an overly-complicated instrument panel. We’ll find a big fat red button labeled clearly “Press Here To Go To MARS” in friendly, non-threatening Comic Sans type. And the rest of the trip will take care of itself. You can hold onto a yoke, if it’ll make you feel more in charge. Wayne and Stark certainly would; their machismo would demand it.
Two: You, on the other hand, are a much better representative of the human spirit, one who actually deserves to survive the death of your homeworld. Consider: after a planetwide famine, a zombie apocalypse, a nuclear war, and ten years of scraping a living from the dregs at the bottom of a gas can, there still exist two dozen humans who have not only demonstrated a willingness to work together, to protect each other, to make sacrifices in the interest of helping each other, but who have also shown a love for the greatnesses the cultures of humanity achieved during its long lifetime.
After all you’ve been through, you still drive one of the most beautiful automobiles ever wrought by human hands, you still speak with utmost civility to your inferiors, and when you ask what has become of your wine, not a hair is out of place. And you’re not the only one I’m referring to here, De’Ath. Micky, Honey, Momo, all of you have been through this hell with your humanity in all its gloriously cracked forms intact.
Someone who has carried the torch of Culture so far without wavering in this shitheap of a world for the last decade… is exactly whom we need to place on Mars.
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What a…moving…speech. Three Cheers!
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