fandomhigh | Interstellar Relations, Monday, 6th Period

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interstellar relations

Interstellar Relations, Monday, 6th Period

She wore her favorite suit to class today, and was standing at the front of the classroom as the students entered. Her arms were folded across her chest, one elbow propped upward, a cup of coffee held not unlike the torch on the Statue of Liberty. Well, except not that high -- maybe about shoulder-level. She waited for class to begin with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

"If you'll come in and take your seats from last time," Roslin said, gesturing with her coffee cup, "we'll get started."

The bell rang to signify the beginning of class, and she continued. "Last week we did budget submissions and got to know the fellow inmates in our cells." Her lips twisted into a lopsided grin. "Today, we get down to business. Your scenario is this: To this point, the United States, nor the Kingdom of Manticore have never heard of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Yet, after the last Cylon war ended badly, ships full of refugees have shown up in the solar systems nearby. You now have a first contact situation on your hands -- compounded by the fact that these Colonists have no other place to go."

It wasn't the best scenario she could come up with, she reasoned, but it was at least a timely one, and one very pertinent to her time on Earth. Now let's hope neither one shoots first and asks questions later...

"As I mentioned last week, I'll be circulating, filling in for those roles we can't cast. I'll also be giving you little bits of information. They may or may not be true. It's up to you to figure that out -- pry it out of your adversaries, if necessary -- and decide whether or not to act on it." She glanced at her watch. "You have one hour starting... now."

Laura then began to make her rounds through the classroom. She also began wishing she'd ordered the venti instead of the grande.

[A few OCD threads ~~coming~~ up. There will be a place holder for a later action for everyone to react to. ETA: Posted in the right place now.

~~ETA2: Please wait for the OOC thread. LJ seems to be giving issues, so it might be a bit.~~]

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"Could always keep them in one place for safety precautions," he said. "Until we know for sure."

Teddy frowned and jumped into the discussion. "Like an internment camp?"

Ray shook his head. "Like an interrogation room. Just to talk to them. Not make them camp out or something."

"You want to interrogate hundreds of refugees?" Teddy asked. "Do we think they're here to invade or something?"

"Do we really know?" He leaned back in his chair, considering. "They could be here to be farmers or to take over. Some of them should, at least, be questioned before we let them go into the public."

Parker was still writing, but she pointed to Ray with her free hand. "What he said. But we'll need careful oversight. Not another Guantanamo Bay."

"Maybe they'll have some organization," Ray said. "Maybe they'll have a leader."

"In which case, hopefully they have those answers ready for us. If we can believe them. Refugees and war survivors can have reason to be desperate."

Ray nodded. "We shouldn't appear scared of them, though. We act like giant chickens and the publics gonna freak out even more."

Parker snickered suddenly. "Can we say, 'Of course there are aliens, we've known that since high school. Where have you been?'"

"Sure," Ray said. "You get to deal with the outcry that we've been keeping secrets, though."

"And then we get to waste time on Congressional hearings, no, thank you." Parker made a face. "You've got a point though. Act as if we had a plan, even though we didn't expect it, and maybe the public can stay calm long enough to get the facts. I assume there is a plan, somewhere in the military manuals, that doesn't include 'shoot on sight.'"

Parker considered that, tapping a pen against her desk. Too hard to know if they'd show up in the same reality as the Stargate program, in which case, it would be less of a difficulty. "True. We could isolate them off-planet, furnish them with supplies, maybe get the kids off the ships first, then continue negotiations. If they've got interstellar transport, we'd have to make sure we got access to that. Prototypes, specs." She started making a list. "And evaluate the defensive position before we commit to anything else."

"Cost a lot of money," Ray pointed out. "Tax money, most likely."

"We can hit up the U.N. and other Big Three nations for funds later, in return for some of the technology. We can't bogart the science forever, it'll leak out anyway." She shook her head. "Security's going to be *such* a bitch. Can you imagine how the public's going to react? You and Congress are going to have to deal with that fallout."

Ray shrugged. "Public's gonna react how they're gonna react. No use in trying to control or prevent that. That'll just make it worse or make the reactions more extreme."

"Play up the human refugee angle, pursued by robots, and maybe we won't have a ton of CNN commentators and pulpits denouncing them as the devil." Parker made face. "Hmm. Do we have any idea how many refugees we're talking about? If it's less than ten thousand or so, we could probably get them settled on Earth and then release the news before having to ask for extra funds. We could hit up Department of Homeland Security for emergency disbursement for that small a group."

"No idea on the number of people," Ray muttered. "We keep them locked away for too long, people will start thinking they're alien or carrying some movie type virus that wipes us all out. We'll need money, a plan to put them up, and a way to find out how they got there and if they brought any of their buddies along."

"I see new Senate sub-committees forming before my very eyes," Parker said dryly. "Okay. FEMA and Homeland for the cash. Put them up-- where? Table that until we have numbers, I guess." She grimaced at Ray. "Point three is the bitch."

"Military on high alert?" Ray suggested. "Patrol space and the skies?"

"I don't see a way around it. Better safe than sorry. After we have more intell, we can guess whether the Cylons are on their way too, stand down if it looks like they're not. Hope like hell China and Russia are prepared to assist. This is a world-size job, not a task for just for one country."

"People are gonna flip any which way we go," Ray said, resigned. "Fact of life. People flip when it snows, people will freak when we get some alien like visitors. We just gotta deal."

"Will we be protecting the refugees from people who 'freak out'?" Teddy asked. "Because I'm sure there will be groups who violently oppose us letting them live here."

Parker tapped her pen again. "We might have to, at least at the beginning. More expenditures. But then we end up back at the internment camp question. If we split them up around the globe, we split our abilities to protect them. Keep them isolated in one place, and it looks like we're keeping them prisoner, makes it impossible to integrate them." She started drawing a timeline. "Maybe help them self-police? A partnership?"

"Helping them self-police sounds like a good idea, but I think that full protection on our part would be best to begin with," Teddy suggested.

Interstellar Relations, Monday, 6th Period

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