Four

from

First Constitutional Congress of

the Cloudships of the Outer System

April 2, 3013 (e-standard)

a transcript

C. Mencken: This meeting will come to order! Order, ladies and gentlemen! No spitting, scratching, or biting allowed on the virtuality floor. We have antechambers for that.

C. Tolstoy: Mr. Chairman, I move that we immediately adjourn. Some of us have matters of more importance to attend to, and matters of a less foolhardy nature.

C. Mencken: Is there a second?

Chamber: Second!

C. Mencken: All in favor?

Chamber Right: Aye!

C. Mencken: All opposed?

Chamber Left: Nay!

C. Mencken: The nays have it. Committee reports. Special Committee on Responses to Inner-System Aggression.

C. Lebedev: Mr. Chairman, report out Resolution 1.1, and ask for an immediate vote on debate and movement into Special Legislative Session under the Chamber Rule B11, Constitutional Amendments and Dissolution to Form a New Government.

C. Mencken: Very well, sir. I hope you know what we’re doing.

Chamber Right: Objection!

C. Mencken: Cloudship Lebedev is within the rules. Objection must be overruled.

C. Tolstoy: Exception!

C. Mencken: Noted. But we are not in a court of law, Cloudship Tolstoy, and I am not a judge. Boy, am I not a judge. Let us continue. Committee Chairman, proceed.

C. Lebedev: Resolution 1.1: Actions toward the creation of a systemwide government for the human race, taking special note of an entity’s right to join or to decline and including all interested parties in the inner system. Section One, preamble. Plurality is the natural state of human beings. Taking into consideration the laws of rationality and the long history of our species, we, the people, do hereby demand and establish a united republican democracy for our solar system and all outlying human settlements and ships in space. This democracy shall be called the Solarian Republic, and all bodies and entities hereafter delineated shall belong under its provenance. Within the Solarian Republic, all thinking entities shall be free. Freedom is the fundamental tenet from which all laws and actions of this government shall be derived, and to which they are answerable. No thinking entity shall serve another without that thinking entity’s assent under conditions of complete freedom of choice. Implicit in this is the basic truth to which we accede as a species: All thinking entities are peoples.

C. Grieg: Mr. Chairman, point of order!

C. Mencken: What is your point of order, Cloudship Grieg?

C. Grieg: Mr. Chairman, I move we debate this resolution in sections, beginning with this unfortunate and misguided preamble.

C. Lebedev: I’m not even finished with that, you sour old meteor eater—

C. Mencken: Order! I’ll have order. Now, Cloudship Grieg, you know very well that you are not making a point of order when you move—

Chamber Right: Let us vote it!

Chamber Left: Let him finish reading it, for Christ’s sake!

C. Mencken: Shall we then take the debate in sections?

C. Cezanne: Whose side are you on?

C. Austen: If we discuss the preamble, are we not really speaking of the entire document? Let’s get on with this. I second the motion!

C. Mencken: There is no motion.

C. Austen: Then I make it.

C. Mencken: Make what?

C. Austen: I move that Lebedev read his preamble, and then we debate and vote on it, as a preamble.

C. Mencken: Good Lord. All right. All in favor of the motion by Cloudship Austen?

Chamber Left: There is no second!

Chamber Right: Second!

C. Mencken: All in favor?

Chamber: Aye!

C. Mencken: Opposed?

Chamber: Nay!

C. Mencken: Did I hear that right? Mostly ayes?

Chamber Reporter: Yes, sir.

C. Mencken: The ayes have it. Finish your preamble, Cloudship Lebedev, and we we’ll have a debate thereafter.

C. Lebedev: Very well. Should I start over?

C. Mencken: No, go on. We heard you before.