LF Friends, Will Travel

Innovation is Impartial - Chapter 13

Date: 77 PST (Post Stasis Time)

Dr Xavius was annoyed. There were a great deal many things she could be annoyed about: the interruption to her work, the continual cultural downfall of her people, the lack of proper moving living meals provided by the facilities at Research Location Nine. But as Xavius sat in her lab, she stewed with a silent annoyance about one topic in particular, related to all the others in so much as it was the cause of all her other struggles: The stupidity of Terrans.

They were an enigma of a species, willing to both break the rules of what was thought to be possible, yet limiting themselves in every way. Doing the impossible and then choosing to do nothing all because of their desperate adherence to 'empathy'. It was like watching a pristine sports car be used for nothing more than an occasional weekly shop, a desecration of something that could be so beautiful and wondrous, if given the space to truly roam.

Even more annoyingly, it was stopping her work.

The entire facility was on lock down, Xavius in particular having her project put on hold, with clear instructions not to continue her work. Somehow, someone had leaked what had been happening at Research Facility Nine, in particular what she was working on had been explained in great detail to the Terran news, and the public reaction had been... wild.

Mixed condemnation of her actions had arisen from the Terran public as a whole, for a variety of reasons. Some against the whole idea, others aghast at the concept of the person who had saved humanity from the God Plague, had then turned around and used the same virus as a weapon. Many of the scientists here had refused to work in the same facility where such war crimes were taking place, their moral imperative taking a stand against the allure of unlimited research and resources.

Not that everyone was against what Xavius was doing. Many saw the Estorians as enough of a threat to justify such actions. Other Terran Alliance members in particular were very confused about what exactly the big deal was: The Terrans were at war, in war you created weapons to kill the other side. There was even a common sentiment that the enemy had given up their right to standard warfare by taking and abusing slaves.

Ironically, for as fraught and complicated that topic was, it wasn't even the biggest issue. No, the big one that brought forth universal condemnation, the one everyone was talking about, was Spencer's treatment.

Spot was a hero to the Terrans and Alliance as a whole, his death having sparked the entire war in the first place. To knowingly bring them back, to guilt the uplift into helping, and to not even provide them with the necessary therapies to deal with said mental backlash...

For what? To speed up research on the universal medigel project? So bureaucrats somewhere could hide what they'd done to the poor uplift? Even alliance species considered such actions to be poor form, and the Terran public was apoplectic at such a thing being done to the cute Labrador. A betrayal of man's best friend.

Questions were being asked, leaders and members of the government were having to acknowledge and accept a program they wanted to pretend didn't exist; even the other researchers were furious at the deception going on under their noses. This was all very inconvenient for Xavius, who just wanted to continue their work in peace and quiet.

Inconvenience that her research had stopped, now that those outside the facility were demanding answers. Inconvenience as stupid people asked stupid questions about what she was doing, and who had authorized what and exactly how much God Plague she'd been playing with. Inconvenience that her research had stopped as they tried to find the source of the leak.

That was another stupid thing the Terrans were spending time on: To Xavius it was mightily obvious who had leaked the information to the public: That strange stupid Terran, Johnathan. He'd broken into her lab, called her research immoral, then suddenly it got leaked to the Terran press? Xavius was a genius and possibly the smartest person in this part of the galaxy, but even the dumbest member of her species could have worked that out.