05/17/18 – Others From Earth



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2018-05-17-spacetrawler2

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“Dunno. Universe awfully big place.”
I love you, Bikkie.

15 Comments

  1. War Pig

    I wonder if the Grounder is just a puppet as in Wizard of Oz. Really he’s about as threatening as the Prince inside the old jeweler’s head in Men In Black who was killed by the giant cockroach, a little fellow. Has anyone actually SEEN the Grounder in person?

  2. Leinglo

    I get a feeling that if Bikki ever finds out that Anesu and Devyat basically cheated Bikki out of his big fair fight, he is not going to be happy about it. At all.

  3. Peter Rogan

    How in Creation has the Gounder managed to acquire so much power? You can rule by fear only if people believe there’s a good side to you to appeal to. Otherwise, even if the arrangement is mutually advantageous, people are going to naturally band together against you — and while such arrangements are clumsy and prone to exposing their hand too often, enough of them together and somebody will deliver the surprise package even if they weren’t the ones who made it. Someday.

    Al Capone failed to pay his taxes. Abraham Lincoln wanted a night off as the Civil War wound down. Mussolini thought he was being rescued again. Julius Caesar went to the Senate to plead Egypt’s lost cause. And Napoleon demonstrated that exile anywhere in Europe could not prevent his return. If you’re hated enough, people will leap at every little mistake and make you pay for it three times over. Unless you’re Stalin, and systematically destroyed every vestige of ability or competence around you, until the whole structure teetered and then fell after your death. Neither Stalin nor the Gounder seem to care about their legacy. I admit it’s hard to stop the paranoid murderers once they get money and power, but geeze! How’d they get there in the first place?

    How is Bikkie to accomplish what needs to be done if he’s hired into the Gounder organization? Confusion is a sure stumbling block, however big or fast your foot.

    1. Coyoty

      The Gounder gained so much power by using the devastating weapon he’s named after on his enemies and victims. He told people, “Nice city. Shame if anything happened to it.” There was a lot of shame. He’s the supervillain who wins.

  4. Night-Gaunt49

    The Grounder has a rather simple psychology. If he doesn’t like it it dies. If he likes it it lives. He can be convinced a mystery still might be useful like Bikkie. I don’t know how Bikkie won either. But I am filing it away under Chekhov.

    This meeting did get me to laugh, which is excellent! Wonderfully well written too.

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