Interstellar Politics

Chapter 1: Volcanoes are just like Politics

The meeting was unexpected. DANU, the Artificial Intelligence in charge of the Tuatha bureaucracy, made plans for the whole Tuatha species months in advance. She could normally make seamless alterations in minutes. So when Captain Nuada was messaged that his schedule had been wiped he was shocked. A software error of such magnitude had not been heard of for millennia. Nuada hadn't thought of an alternative. So, when he received a second message eight minutes later stating that he was scheduled an online meeting forty five minutes away the small amount of worry turned into annoyance. Any other person would have been much more apprehensive for such an improbable event, but Nuada was secretly glad for a break from his current boredom.

Nuada was a Captain for the Intergalactic Standard Government's Discovery department. It meant that normally Nuada would be patrolling or surveying areas with interesting topography or monitoring species that had yet to leave their home world. Since he was very young in comparison to the normal age of Tuatha to reach a position such as his, he was currently working "on call" for the government Tuatha de Danu. As his species had been a member of the Standard Intergalactic Government for a respectable .97 million years they had no real use for a ship in the Discovery Department. Most of the workers in the Discovery Department agreed that these types of assignments were practically a "paid vacation" because most species' governments had very little for the Discovery department to do.

Nuada could understand why he got put on call more than any other type of assignment, although he did not like the reasoning. The brass believed that since he was only thirty years old, he shouldn't be put through the more stressful aspects of his position. After all, thirty years for a species with a three thousand year life expectancy was like comparing a bush to a giant sequoia tree.

Nuada would always try his best to not get put on call, by pointing out studies stating that the Tuathan species matured within twenty years and how it was only choice preventing younger members of his species from reaching high positioned occupations, but he would always be told that the Discovery Department had no shortage of people. They could easily wait for younger members to get a couple more decades to their age before they sent them out to the more dangerous assignments. Then they would offer him conciliation gifts of some interesting information to look over, but that never lasted long. Which lead back to the main reason why he hated the being put on call.

Nuada hated being bored. He tried to fill his entire day with something to do, and he preferred if it was interesting. Nuada had entered the Discovery Department to be rid of his monotonous life. He got what he wanted, mostly. Access to some of the most advanced scientific data in the Universe and a job that let him do something with his life. But that didn't help him when he was months into a three year long assignment with so little to look forward to do. He had blitzed through all of his entertainment, and had grown tired of researching theoretical physics. The Tuatha de Danu only needed him to attend long seminars to help with the home grown surveying work, while the Discovery Department left him to his own devices besides progress reports and the rare annual mandatory job training.

The Discovery Department's captains normally spent little time involved themselves with the interworking of their individual governments, so the second message was unusual. Nuada was gladdened by the fact that he didn't have to participate in this month's week long survey seminar, an event that only would contribute to the monotony that currently made up his life. At any other time Nuada would have felt worried what had agitated his species government, but due to spending months doing nothing he let his elation at doing something new overshadow his worry. If he wasn't having to spend the twenty five minute wait in his dull, boring, barely used room because the meeting was still being set up, Nuada might have thought of the implications of such an uncharacteristic move by his government. But the wait had caused his initial elation and interest to sour back into his original annoyance.