A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09
“I am personally offended that these two old geezers are back on the fleet's full-time dime, digging up everything that has been done wrong over their whole lifetime that they couldn't prevent while funding isn't going into rewarding those that get things done right and keep he story of humanity's triumphs at the forefront.”
This was Governor Tark Moffin on the record about Admiral Benjamin Banneker-Jackson and Commodore Wilhelm Allemande's working group catching up on things that had been overlooked in the past sixty years that could lead to desperate danger for humanity as it moved settled across the galaxy.
Gov. Moffin was miffed because he was not going to be able to be granted his 20th planet to transitionally govern on time. He had forgotten something about his 19th planet, and was reminded after the interview.
But not by Cdre. Allemande, although he desperately wanted to.
“Let me at him – about to run his tired behind to Gorteyan 5 with that settlement team with more panache and hubris than any commander since Capt. Edward Smith decided to break a speed record getting to the bottom of the sea to party with Davy Jones on the Titanic – with 15 million lives at stake instead of 1,500 – let me at him!”
“At ease, Commodore,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said. “First of all, he's whining, but we're winning, and second, remember where he is giving the interview from, and the words of Napoleon Bonaparte about interruption.”
Cdre. Allemande stopped short, and then broke out laughing.
“That man is standing flatfoot on Cygni 5 where he is just about to lose his appointment! 'Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake!'”
Indeed not. Gov. Moffin's appointment on Cygni 5, and his entire career, was down to its last twenty minutes, and being counted out in hover cycles of the immense blue insect hovering in the upper-left corner of the background.
Five decades earlier, this immense and sentient wasp-like creature was known to inhabit Cygni 5's underground, but was of no danger to humanity as long as the ecological balance of the planet was maintained. The person who led the team that put together the science of the plan was then Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Banneker.
What was less known about was the time that one of the Bluehorn Wasp High Queens had spent with him, explaining her species and their needs, and understanding who humanity was through interacting with him. That is her picture above, and she is remembered in the midst of her final achievement; she was past the age of egg-laying and so was sacrificing the last year of her life in the effort of bridging the gap. She made a tremendous impression on the young lieutenant commander, and he made a tremendous influence on her and her family.
Here is the key fact. We know that wasps and ants and termite queens on Earth, at their size, can produce thousands and millions of offspring in their lifetimes.
The Bluehorn Wasp queen who met with my uncle was comparable in size to him. She was 359 years old when she passed away, and was one of only seven such High Queens on the planet. She, alone, had laid more than two trillion eggs in her lifetime, accounting for more than one in every fifteen Bluehorn Wasps on the planet.
There were around 30 trillion Bluehorn Wasps on Cygni 5 at that time. The number had risen by the time of Gov. Moffin's appointment to 53 trillion. They and humanity were both living well in Cygni 5, and in peace, and the wasps all knew what human had put in the work with them to make this happen.
So, Tark Moffin had done the interview outside in the front yard of the governor's residence, not even noticing the moment in which a hummingbird-sized Bluehorn Wasp worker had stopped, hovering in midair in curiosity, and then quickly buzzed off to let her people know with the conversation was.
A Bluehorn Wasp swarm of about ten thousand workers came back and picked up the governor to carry him off to see the present High Queens and get him up to date on a few things...
“Swarmed that man when he was talking about his future plans for the planet and just snatched him up – just no respect!” my aunt, Capt. Almira Banneker-Jackson, said as she ran the video back for the umpteenth time and fell out laughing yet again.
“He forgot he's not actually the governor of the planet; he's just the governor of the vastly outnumbered human guests, and so has to now go bow to the queens,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said. “Sometimes we get reminded, while we are concerned about what others are doing, that we need to be properly concerned about our own situation.”
“Admiral,” Cdre. Allemande said, “thank you for not allowing me to beam down there on that man and therefore interfere with him getting an education without parallel!”
The High Queens didn't even mention my uncle's name. They just had documented every place in which under Gov. Moffin's administration humanity was deviating from the plan Adm. Banneker-Jackson had prepared, and let it be known that either Gov. Moffin was going to resign and make room for a governor who was going to honor the agreement, or they were going to run humanity off the planet.
Tark Moffin quietly resigned and retired entirely from the public eye rather than to have to explain what had happened to him. The Bluehorn Wasps had dropped him right back off at his residence, and he had packed and gotten out of there after leaving a copy of what the High Queens were demanding for his successor.
“And no one has yet felt the need for Gov. Moffin, in his old geezer years, to be put back on the job for anything!” Aunt Almira said about that yesterday as she found that old video and ran it back for the umpteenth of the umpteenth times. She and Cdre. Allemande are still falling out laughing, every single time.
“Well, Khadijah,” my uncle said to me, “laughter keeps us ancient geezers young.”
Author's Note: Governor Tark Moffin is a gentle send-up of Star Wars' cruel and insufferably arrogant Moff Tarkin, who while planning to blow up the Rebellion with the Death Star finds himself looking triumphant just before the Death Star gets blown up with him in it! As Adm. Banneker-Jackson says, sometimes a man does really need to be properly concerned with his own situation! It is a life lesson to note!
@jesuslnrs -- per your request, here is the soundtrack for this one -- predictable, but still fitting!
How brilliant, my dear! It's better than I thought! Thank you so much for this. We're definitely family in music ❤️
Absolutely!
It is shaped like a beetle, and a very beautiful one at that.
Kind of ... the way it tapered off at the end more suggested a wasp, but I can see what you are saying, too
@deeanndmathews, I failed to pay out 0.030 HIVE and 0.004 HBD to reward 1 comments in this discussion thread.
My wallet is running low on Hive or HBD. I will try again later.