The Bombings on Pras

My thoughts this week are with the victims of Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay and their families. Justice cannot arrive too soon. — Franklin Bitter

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The Bombings on Pras, Video Excerpt: Yabank City, Pras, correspondents report. There are multiple reports from all over Pras of explosions in public places. Although no one has yet taken responsibility, a pattern is emerging. All are in prominent cities claimed by Nama separatists, and all are in public marketplaces. That these attacks are connected to the separatist movement remains speculative. When asked to comment, Executor Sheds...

Video Excerpt, Veronica Talis: ...That’s why The Red Heart is asking for donations of blood, other nutrient fluids, or whatever you can give, to assist the victims of these attacks. With your help...

Partial Transcript_ Emergency meeting of the Amerian Security Council

Attendees:

• Executor Jay Brookside Sheds
• Alexander Krishnan, Security advisor
• Daewood Butt, Governor of Shein
• Weijun He, Governor of Gala
• (remaining list excerpted)

Sheds: I’d like to thank all of you for coming on such short notice. I think the heinous nature of the attacks on Pras require quick and considered action. This is not just an attack on Pras, or even an attack on Humanity, but an attack on life everywhere.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these brutal crimes. I’ve reached out to President Roland and told him that I stand with him and I stand ready to assist him. I’ve told him that as it is for me, so it is for all of Ameria.

I hope all of you have had a chance to read the security assessment by our intelligence service. The continually updating assessment is available via the room’s data feed.

Now, I’d like to remind everyone that recordings of this meeting will be declassified, per law, seventy-five standard years from now.

He: Dammit! I should’ve gotten my hair cut.

Butt: Yeah. I could have downloaded a nicer pattern for my morphsuit. Are we releasing stills of this to the public? Maybe we could postpone until we’re all groomed for posterity.

Sheds: This is hardly the time to worry about politics.

Krishnan: I think you both should be more worried about what you’ve said than about how you look.

Butt: I think you’re right, Alex. Madam Executor, can we start this again so that none of it need come out in seventy-five years.

Sheds: If we start again, I have to release what we’ve done so far immediately.

Butt: Oh, duh!

He: I’m always prepared to vote ‘yes’ on anything. I want the constituents of whatever office I hold seventy-five years hence to know that they can count on me no matter how ridiculously out of date my clothing looks in the dawning years of the next century.

Sheds: (Sigh) Are there any questions about the security assessment?

Butt: Madam Executor, the facts as laid out in the assessment seem straightforward enough. What I don’t understand is why the residents of Pras didn’t fight back.

Sheds: How, exactly, would they do that?”

Butt: It seems obvious to me that if someone shoots at me, I’m going to shoot back.

He: Hear hear!

Sheds: No one shot at the Prasen. The attackers detonated bombs.

Butt: I’m speaking loosely here. Metaphorically, if you will. To put it more concretely, did no one see bad guys walking into public squares carrying explosives?”

Sheds: They were hidden in food carts. Thousands of food carts are wheeled into public spaces on Pras every day.

Butt: Did the cart owners not notice the extra weight? I think I’d notice if someone were hiding in my food cart.

He: You have a food cart?

Butt: Hypothetically.

He: Of course.

Sheds: (Sigh) The bombers didn’t hide in the carts. They hid their bombs in carts, then abandoned them in public squares.

Butt: Yet nobody noticed bombers pushing carts. You know, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a bomb...is a good guy with a bomb.

Sheds: Wouldn’t the good guy’s bomb kill the same people as the bad guy’s bomb?

Butt: Still.

Sheds: (Sigh)

Butt: I have another question. It doesn’t look as though President Roland has ordered citizens to stop eating in public. You know. For their own safety.

Sheds: So what’s the question?

Butt: Is Roland going to order citizens to stop eating in public.

Sheds: I don’t know.

Butt: But you spoke to him. You didn’t think to hold his feet to the fire, to encourage him to do the responsible thing for his people?

Sheds: Frankly, Governor, I was more concerned with aid drops and investigative assistance.

Butt: With all due respect, Madam Executor, I think your priorities are backwards. Might I add—and I say this at the risk of rearing the ugly roaring head of politics, but only because I respect you both as a colleague and as the Commander-in-Chief—that this is why you will likely lose the next election.

Sheds: I'll be termed out by the next election.

Butt: Still.

(Loud sighs from unknown participants)

He: Can we please get to the point of this meeting? We know there are Prasen on Ameria. Are we going to discuss if there will be similar attacks on Ameria?

Krishnan: When.

Butt: Well, right now. Isn’t that why Jay called this meeting?

Krishnan: I know that, Daewood. I’m saying the question of whether there are Prasen attacks on Ameria isn’t one of if. It’s one of when.

He: Quite sensibly put, Alex.

Butt: Which is why I have asked my allies in the Amerian Assembly to introduce a bill requiring the deportation of all aliens from Ameria, starting and ending with the Nesk.

(More unidentifiable sighs)

Sheds: You know it’s not all aliens, right? It's Prasen and specifically Nama Prasen.

Butt: Still.

Sheds: Still, what?

Butt: The separatists are non-conformists. That’s the takeaway here. This proves how dangerous non-conformists can be.

Sheds: So one subgroup of Prasen turned violent and you want to respond by deporting 2.3 billion aliens from Ameria?

Butt: That’s right.

Sheds: And if they don’t want to go?

Butt: You just have to show them who’s boss.