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tessiete · 4 years

Note

If you still take prompts: Rumors of the Duchess of Mandalore (bc patriarchal bs and misogynistic beliefs about female leaders) potentially getting married reaches Coruscant and Obi-Wan copes as well as can be expected. Cue sad boi sadness with maybe fluff at the end? Or go full angst I’m ok with either

I AM! I am still taking prompts, and I know this took a while to get around to because I’m also sloooooow at filling them. But here we are, dear anon. I hope you enjoy this little snippet! <3

THE GRAVITATIONAL DEFLECTION OF LIGHT

There is some silly, selfish part of him that he never outgrew, and like a weed in his gut it twists and writhes when he hears that the Duchess Kryze is to marry.

And suddenly, he finds himself thinking of her more often, and more frequently during situations where his attention would best be put to use elsewhere. In council, he is forced to ask Master Windu to repeat a question he’d failed to hear, his mind being drawn by the gleam of light off the Senate dome on the horizon. During a sparring match, he takes a hit he’d never have missed except that Anakin threatens to deliver him a close shave at the end of his saber, and he’s struck dumb by the memory of her hand upon his cheek. There are peace lilies in a vase in the Archives, and pure beskar changes hands in a deal he’s meant to disrupt at a Separatist camp, but by far the most egregious lapse comes in the midst of relief efforts in a small village on Taskeed. He is caught, for a moment, by the sight of a woman with blonde hair and a young boy on her hip turning away from him. His focus slips. A blaze of light flashes more quickly than he can see, and by the time he hears the retort of a blaster rifle he is already on the ground.

The clones close ranks around him. Cody kneels, calling in a medevac even as Obi-Wan tries to rise.

“No, sir, stay down,” he says, laying one hand against his shoulder. Obi-Wan winces at the contact. His muscles strain at the effort, the nerves at the site of his injury ruptured and ragged.

“Cody,” he chokes out. “There’s a hostile.”

His second is a merciful man and makes no comment on the idiocy of that statement. Instead, he bites open a pain tab, and shoves it between Obi-Wan’s teeth. Then, so rapidly he has no time to protest, he removes his belt, and tears apart the fabric at Obi-Wan’s waist, sprinkling sulfa powder over the gory wound, and pressing a bacta patch down to cover it.

There is no more blaster fire to mark their passage back to the ship, but the wound is too serious to treat on board The Negotiator. He is sent back to Coruscant as a consequence of his foolishness.

There, he is dipped in bacta, where he doesn’t dream, and he spends the next week of his convalescence thinking of her.

It had never been this bad during their first separation. The months following her ascension to the duchy had been painful, that he cannot deny, and he spent hours in his room lonely, and self-pitying, but he had been a child then and he can forgive himself now of the folly of youthful indiscretions. There followed more than a decade between them and he had gone days, weeks - upon the outbreak of war even months - without thinking of her at all.

But with one touch of her hand, he’s fallen again, his resolve crumbling into dust as though his indifference to her were only a veneer grown thin and brittle with being stretched over so much time.

The Duchess of Mandalore is to marry.

Why should that matter to him? They are friends. Hardly that, and nothing more. And it was he who had defined those terms. So why should he be restless, and anxious, and fretted up like some craftsman’s handiwork at the thought of it? It is silly. It is demeaning - to her, and to him.

And yet...he wants to know.

Who is she to marry? And when? How did they meet? Is he a Mandalorian, like her? Or did she meet him here? Did they meet at the Senate while he walked in the Temple only a few klicks away? Have they much in common? Do his political aims match hers? Does he long for peace like she does? Will he stand by her side in upholding it? Would he die for it? Would he die for her? Does she love him?

She must, he thinks. She must love him. She would not choose him, otherwise.

And that, perhaps, is the cruelest thought of all.

He is confined to medbay with nothing to occupy his time but his holopad, his dispatch reports, and her when he sees a news story flash on his screen.

At Last! The Lily is Plucked

He cannot help himself as he reads about a chance meeting, a whirlwind romance, and plenty of private assignations held at various hotels and restaurants across Capital City. There are holos, too, and reels. He sees her leaving the Bal Silvestre on the arm of Corellian senator, Garm Bel Iblis.

Senator Bel Iblis is older than her, and seems a bit unkempt, his long hair pulled half back in a simple style. Obi-Wan knows of him by reputation, and heard him called a rake. His politics brand him a maverick, and a rogue, and he has been known, once or twice, to engage in backdoor negotiations in order to ensure a vote swings one way or another in his favour. Beside him, while he stands smug in his dark brocade, she shines. She is spotless. Luminous. They are not well matched.

He scours the net for more, and because he is looking, he finds it. There are many articles - hundreds. Some map out timelines of their courtship (they met years ago, apparently, at some gala held while Obi-Wan was still helping Anakin with Basic), some tell the history of their previous romantic entanglements (he was engaged to a woman now dead. She was once rumoured to be promised to a Vizsla. Obi-Wan’s name is not mentioned). Some merely provide pictures of their exploits, and comment on their mutual friends, making conjecture after conjecture about how their romance came to be, and what must happen next now that the flame has been rekindled. It is torturous. And tedious. And soon, Obi-Wan loses track of the details that appear in one article, and again in every other.

But one thing remains clear to him: Satine Kryze is going to be married. She has forever slipped his reach.

A reach, he pathetically reminds himself, he never intended to extend. All this self-flagellation is for naught. He is being ridiculous.

So he thumbs off his pad, turns out the lights, and tries to sleep with the image of Satine, smiling and resplendent flickering in his mind. The next morning, feeling no better for the little rest he managed to steal, he deletes the history of his pad, and determines to feel absolutely nothing at all about Satine Kryze.

Then Padme comes to the Council and requests a padawan be sent to Mandalore’s aid.

It is Ahsoka who goes. Of course it is. He takes small solace in the fact that it had not been he who suggested her, but since she was assigned, he feels well within his rights to enquire about the Duchess upon her return.

“She seemed fine,” Ahsoka tells him. He has invited her for tea following her report to the Council, hoping he might, in his hospitality, coax a few more personal details from his grand-padawan. “I mean, there was a moment where Almec - that’s the Prime Minister, or rather was - anyway, there was a moment where he had her in a shock collar, but like I said, the cadets and I managed to sort it out.”

“Right,” he concedes. “As you said.”

A moment passes between them. Obi-Wan sips his tea, struggling to swallow as the fist around his throat grows tighter and tighter. Ahsoka, blissful in the aftermath of a successful solo mission, grabs another biscuit and a strip of perami gammon.

“And tell me,” he ventures. “What of her - her consort? Any word of him? Where was he during this mess?”

“Her consort?”

“Her husband.”

Ahsoka scrunches her nose, and cocks a brow at Obi-Wan’s wild inquiry.

“She had a nephew,” she says. “But no one ever said anything about a consort.”

“Ah,” he says. “Perhaps he was occupied elsewhere.”

“Maybe,” she agrees, amicable and amenable to letting the whole thing slide. He only hopes she won’t think it significant enough to mention to Anakin later. His curiosity won’t be as easily sated with tea and deflection.

He is not a lucky man.

Anakin comes blazing into his room with an ambitious stride, and a grin that speaks of imminent mischief.

“Heard you were asking Ahsoka about the Duchess’ consort,” he says, throwing his cloak over the back of a chair and dropping to lounge across Obi-Wan’s low couch.

“I was asking about her mission,” he corrects. He turns his back to set some water to boil, knowing that such an entrance by his padawan indicates a visit of extended duration. “And the key players, therein. Purely professional.”

“Purely.” Anakin smirks.

The subject is dropped when Anakin is diverted by the service being laid before him, and the inclusion of several of his favourite confections.

“Noorian memba tarts!” he cries. “Where did you even find these?”

“An old recipe,” Obi-Wan says. “But I remember you enjoyed them when we dined on Belasco and thought I’d try my hand at it.”

It is not a bad effort either, judging by Anakin’s display of enthusiasm. He eats the first with some degree of etiquette, but the fourth, fifth, and sixth are gone with no display of decency or shame whatsoever.

Obi-Wan sips his tea. He is thinking of Tahl while Anakin is thinking of the sweetness on his tongue, and making excuses for his absence the previous night.

“I’m sorry, Obi-Wan, but I was unavoidably delayed after the Senate recessed for the evening. I had to - to assist a delegate with a personal matter.”

Obi-Wan says nothing, but remembers how Qui-Gon, too, used to invent reasons to disappear unchecked. He invents nothing. He only cleaves to his duty, while time and fate conspire to keep him absent anyway.

Anakin must hear something in his silence, because his expression loses the tension of equivocation, and he falls to studying Obi-Wan’s face.

“I was only teasing, master,” he says. “Before. I didn’t think to ask Ahsoka anything about the Duchess. She spent most of her time with the nephew, but he seemed a bright kid. Close to Satine. I can ask her to ask him if he knows anything -”

“Absolutely not,” says Obi-Wan. The words are soft, but definite. He rises swiftly to clear the detritus of their meal. “Thank you, Anakin, but Duchess Kryze is only a friend. I merely inquired out of a desire to assure myself that the report issued to the Council lacked nothing in the thoroughness of its presentation. I should hate to think that such a personal association might be overlooked as an avenue for effecting harm.”

“Oh.”

“But I thank you in any case. Ahsoka’s report was well done, and you should be very proud of your padawan,” he says. “As I am of you.”

He turns to Anakin then, smiling and benign. His padawan meets his look with a vaguely skeptical one of his own, before patting him on the shoulder, and shrugging back into his cloak.

“Alright, master,” he says. “I’ll let her know how thorough she was.”

“Goodbye, Anakin.”

“Goodbye,” his friend replies. Then, just as he crosses the threshold of the door and moves into the open hall, he looks back. “Oh,” he says. “There’s a quick supply run being made to Mandalore for relief in light of Ahsoka’s investigation. Scheduled for tomorrow, but unfortunately, I’m needed back at the Senate. I meant to ask - you wouldn’t mind making the trip for me, would you? You don’t even need to get off the ship.”

---

There is nothing he can say to Anakin, so of course, as contrived and embarrassing as the whole thing is, he goes. And he does get off the ship.

Satine is there to meet him.

“Master Kenobi,” she says, extending her hand. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

He drops a brief, and reverential kiss then lets her go.

“Cleaning up after my padawan and his padawan, it seems,” he says. “Apparently, a master’s work is never over. Congratulations on your recent engagement, Duchess. I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

The look which passes over Satine’s face is one he cannot decipher. He thinks she looks in equal parts shocked that he has heard, disgusted by his presumption in speaking of it, embarrassed by his boldness, and wearied by his presence. But she doesn’t deny it, so he makes his excuses to leave.

“Excuse me, Duchess,” he says. “But this was only meant to be a very brief visit, and I should prepare for departure.”

“Can you not stay for midmeal?” she asks, and he hesitates upon the precipice of her invitation. “Surely you don’t mean to tease me with a visit as brief as this? And surely your men would enjoy some rest and repast before you go?”

The troopers at his back shift, and he can feel their eagerness undulate in the Force. It would be cruel to deny them for the preservation of his own fragmented dignity, so he relents.

“Of course, your grace,” he says. “We would be most honoured.”

“Captain,” she says to the Protector at her right. “Have these men fed and watered immediately. The kitchens and my staff are at their disposal.”

He clicks his heels, and disappears, while she steps forward, and wraps her arm around Obi-Wan’s as though completely uncaring of any beau or consort or husband who might see.

“You, my dear master,” she murmurs slyly by his ear. “Are to be attended elsewhere, at my discretion.”

He does nothing to resist as she pulls him along.

Soon, they are at the Palace. Soon, they are sat at a small table in her private quarters, drinking Mandalorian kava, and eating freshly baked land’shun. Soon, they are alone.

She sets her drink aside, and dusts her hands on a fine silk napkin before broaching the subject trapped between them.

“Now, what is this about my nuptials?” she asks. Her blue eyes are steady upon his own, and he feels his palms slick with sweat. She is radiant. She is regal. There is no holo or reel or word that could do justice to the beauty of this woman in the flesh, and he feels that insidious root of jealousy writhe with agony.

“Satine -” he begins.

“No, no,” she protests, seeming to anticipate his deflection before he has begun. “I should like to hear why you think I ought to accept your congratulations, and why you felt you ought to offer them personally, in particular. Mandalore seems a rather dull trip for a High General to make.”

“I came in Anakin’s stead, actually,” he replies pertly. Another sip of kava lends some sophistication to this claim.

“Of course,” she says, but she does not look away. He can feel her gaze upon him. He can feel her glittering in the Force. She is laughing.

And he cannot bear it.

“Forgive me, your grace,” he says, rising to his feet. He sets the cup upon a saucer where it clatters inelegantly against the pot of sucre next to it, overturning the dish and sending the crystals spilling across the table. “Forgive me,” he says again.

She lunges forward to right the pot, and still his hand beneath her own. For a moment, he doesn’t breathe. Then, he pulls away.

“I read about it on the net,” he says. “I saw the holos, and the reels. I only wanted to see you one last time, to see...I wanted to see that you were happy. That’s all.”

“Oh, Ben,” she says, his name like a sigh upon the breeze.

“It is nothing,” he says. “A foolishness all my own. I am sorry if I have troubled you, and I offer you my sincerest congratulations.”

He bows, though when he raises his head, his eyes do not rise with it, so he does not see the look of sorrow upon her face. Still, he imagines it as pity, and moves to make his escape. She is faster than he is.

“No,” she says, standing between him and the door. “I will not accept your congratulations, and I will not accept your departure on such callous terms as these.”

“Duchess -”

“Ben,” she counters, leaning on the name. “I am not engaged. I am not married. And I do not intend to be, no matter how devoted to the idea of it you are.”

“I - devoted?” he asks, his voice rising to the height of his indignation. “I am devoted to no such thing. I have only - only been reconciled to it for weeks, thinking only of you and your happiness.”

“And your own misery, too, I’d wager.”

He chokes on his denial because he knows it is too big a lie to fit through his lips, and stares at her in dismay. She is smiling. Force, he thinks. She is incandescent. Like she has swallowed a star, and he can’t look away. He would that he could be consumed by her too, and finally, he gives in.

“Yes,” he says in an admission of guilt so great it brings relief. “I was miserable. I am, I think, an infinitely miserable person.”

“You are,” she agrees. “But I am not getting married, I am not engaged, and I am only as in love as I ever have been. And if you are foolish enough to forget that, then you are deserving of every misery you heap on yourself.”

“Have pity,” he begs.

“None,” she says.

“Have mercy,” he pleads.

“For you?” she says. “Always.”

They fall together like gravity and sunlight, and for a moment, whole galaxies bend to their will.

#my fic #prompt fill #obi-wan kenobi #satine kryze #obitine #garm's here #and anakin #and ahsoka #i mashed everyone in #star wars #fic #gffa

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kellanswritingblog · 4 years

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Let Me Remember

During their stay at Mikaele Salesa's safehouse, Martin proposes to Jon with a ring he's been carrying with him for their trek through the apocalypse. But as they leave the oasis behind and Jon forgets their entire stay, he forgets Martin's proposal as well.

Inspired by this piece by @misplaced-my-notes and a conversation with @shorter-than-her-tbr-pile <3

You can read the whole thing below, but I’ll also be adding an AO3 link in the reblogs!

(Spoilers for Episodes 180 and 181)

Martin glanced over his old clothes. Mikaele had provided them clean outfits, food, showers, and comfortable rest, even if he didn’t yet offer up the cost of such amenities.

For now, Martin didn’t want to think on it. Instead, he rummaged into the pocket of his dirty, bloodstained jeans, and pulled out a velvet box. The ring inside still shimmered despite everything its carrier had been through.

It seemed like years ago that Martin had bought it from the small shop in the town nearest to the safehouse, nestled in the Highlands. When he came home, beaming, unable to stop smiling, he was sure Jon would figure something was up, even without any Beholding powers, given that the excitement radiating off of Martin was so tangible.

He didn’t plan much in terms of a proposal, just making one of the few mortal meals that Jon still enjoyed, then sitting on the couch after dinner and asking him if he would marry him. Even though Jon had risked everything for him over and over again, Martin couldn’t help but fear that the answer might not be the one he hoped for. All the same, he wanted Jon to know how much he loved him and that he wanted to spend every minute with him, whether as husbands, boyfriends, partners, or friends.

But when the world changed, so did Martin’s plans. And when he packed up bags for the moment Jon was ready to leave, to set things right, he glanced at the ring’s hiding place and tucked it into his pocket.

Once they fixed the world, then he could ask. After the apocalypse was averted, they would have all the time they could ever want, right?

The apocalypse was still going, however, and Martin had no idea what came next. Neither did Jon, bizarrely, and that did nothing to assuage Martin’s fears.

However, as he held the ring box in his hands and stared at the sparkling metal, Martin realized he knew what he at least wanted to come next.

“You alright there?” Jon asked as he reentered the room, hair still wet from a recent shower.

“Um, yes. I am. I…” Martin took a deep breath, then closed the box and held it out of view as he spun to face Jon. “This probably isn’t the best time, but… it’s not like time has really existed while we were outside of here, so…”

“Martin?” Jon stepped toward him, worry creasing his features.

“Jon, I… will you marry me?”

Martin was so mesmerized by the frozen surprise on Jon’s face that he almost forgot to get down on one knee and take out the ring. After he did so, the shock in Jon’s expression didn’t change, but instead his eyes glanced between Martin and the ring in equal measure.

“I know it’s not like marriage really means so much anymore, with the world ending and what not. But… I love you, Jon. I’ve waited ages to ask you, and I don’t know if there’s going to be a better chance than this, so…”

Jon stumbled over his words a few times, then wiped away a tear, and settled on a simple answer: “Yes. Yes, of course.”

They were both smiling now, grinning from ear to ear, and crying gleeful tears that washed away the sorrow that so often adorned their eyes. Martin stood again, then took Jon’s hand into his own and slid the ring onto his finger, before raising his knuckles to his lips and kissing them slowly.

After falling into an embrace for an unknowable amount of time, shuddering with tears for an occasion they never thought they'd be lucky enough to experience, safe in the arms of their lover, Jon pulled away just a bit to look at the silver band.

He chuckled. “Where did you find this?”

“I didn’t just find it on some Buried bloke and take it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Martin cried, and Jon looked away sheepishly, but said nothing. “I got it before all of this.” He gestured around them, to the maelstrom of terror outside the walls. “I had a whole little plan, nothing special, but… and then…”

“I see.”

“Every time we entered a new domain and you went off to do a statement and I waited… I would take out the ring and just look at it,” Martin continued. “I told myself each time that there was no guarantee of safety, not even for you, and that I might as well ask you while I still had the chance. But then you came back, and I put the ring in my pocket and insisted there would be another, better time. And now… I don’t think there’s going to be any better time than this. I hoped that if – when – we fix things, then I could propose, but I don’t want to wait that long.”

Jon smiled up at Martin, fresh tears glimmering in his eyes.

“I love you, Martin. I love you so much. And I can’t wait to be your husband. The state of things being as they are, maybe such titles don’t matter, but it matters to me. And… I’m grateful. I love you.”

They fell into another embrace, and Martin teased, “Who knew this is what it would take to get you talking about your feelings.”

“Are you complaining?” Jon asked with a wry smile.

“Not at all.”

“Good. Because I want to say it again: I love you.”

“I love you too. God, I… Yeah. I love you.”

With a giggle, Jon commented, “I suppose we should go find out what Annabelle and Mikaele have planned for us?”

Martin sighed, but he still couldn’t stop smiling. “I suppose so.” He paused. “Wait; wasn’t Salesa a captain of a ship? Doesn’t that mean he can perform marriages?”

“Talk about a quick engagement,” Jon joked. “I’m not sure it applies if his ship is destroyed, though.”

“Can we still ask?”

Jon leaned up and brushed his lips against Martin’s, grinning as he did so. “Of course, my love.”

Hand in hand, the fiancés headed out of the room, ready to face whatever came next, so long as they were together.

Martin wanted to stay longer in Mikaele’s oasis from the apocalypse. Of course he wanted to stay longer. Who wouldn’t?

It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten about their quest or set aside the knowledge that he and Jon were the only ones that could set this whole thing right for the sake of a warm bed, as tempting as that might have been. But Martin craved to rest for a few more days – actual, real days – and enjoy some simple meals, to relish in mortality and humanity, to be at peace for a few moments with Jon at his side.

But he couldn’t deny that Jon was getting worse. He zoned out in every conversation and practically seemed to doze off at times. When Martin shook him and he didn’t immediately awake, Martin knew that Jon had to leave there. Martin had complained at first, and a bit of him still wished the situation was otherwise, but, for Jon’s safety, he would lead the way out the door.

Whatever Jon’s connection to the Beholding meant for him in a potential future that wasn’t inhabited by the fears, that didn’t have the Eye staring down from the sky and drinking in all the terror… they could deal with that later.

For now, Martin and Jon left Mikaele’s house behind and headed back into the wasteland.

Jon immediately began to perk up the farther they got from the Eye’s blindspot. Martin, meanwhile, didn’t feel any such dramatic change in mood or health, but he could feel the fear soak back into him, as if the air itself was tainted with it.

As they walked and Jon’s sight returned to him, telling him the right directions, Martin filled him in on their time with Mikaele as he was unable to remember it. Hopefully, Jon couldn’t see how Martin’s hands shook as he thought of how heavily Jon relied on the Beholding; and how heavily it relied on him.

The tale of their quick vacation soon came to a close, but then Jon stopped in his tracks.

“What is it?”

Jon raised his left hand to examine it.

“Since when have I been wearing a ring?”

It felt like Martin was kicked in the chest and he couldn’t help but let out a shuddering exhale as he realized that Jon remembered nothing of his proposal either.

“I… I guess part of me hoped you would remember that,” Martin admitted quietly, then stepped back towards Jon and took his hand in his own. It’s not like it was Jon’s fault that his memory failed him, so he took a deep breath and explained, “I, well, I proposed to you while we were there.”

“You did what?”

Martin chuckled at the shock on Jon’s face, the same expression that he’d worn when Martin pulled out the ring the first time.

“It seemed like the best chance we would have, given the state of the world. We’d gotten cleaned up and were about to head down to talk to Mikaele and then I found the ring box in my dirty clothes and…” He shrugged, hoping he’d said enough that Jon could remember for himself.

Instead, Jon looked down at their clasped hands and said nothing for a long moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to remember, but…”

“It’s okay. This just means I get to propose to you again,” Martin replied with a comforting smile, but Jon still stared at their hands, tears forming on the surface of his eyes.

“No, I… I should be able to remember this. I want to remember everything about you.” He met Martin’s gaze as the first tears began to fall. “And that I could forget something so important…”

“You sure you want to remember everything about me?” Martin teased, wiping away Jon’s tears and gently caressing his face. “Even when I ran around the Archives in my pants? Or when I accidentally put ramen in the microwave for thirty minutes instead of three and didn’t notice until it was actively on fire?”

Jon chuckled despite himself and pressed his cheek into Martin’s hand. “Yes, even those bits. Every part of you.”

“Well, I can do my best to help jog your memory,” he suggested. “I’ll tell you what happened, and maybe you’ll remember something? But first-”

Martin knelt down in the muck, holding Jon’s bedecked hand, and looked up at the light radiating off of him.

“Jonathan Sims, will you marry me?”

Beaming, Jon cried, “Yes, Martin, yes, of course. I love you.”

“I love you too. And I will say that however many times I have to so that you remember.”

“Now, that I could never forget.”

Martin rose to his feet, then lifted Jon’s hand to his lips and gave a quick kiss to the ring finger, then another, slower kiss to his palm.

Before either of them could say anything more, the echoing sound of applause came from one of the tombs in the near distance, and Jon and Martin glanced at each other with confused smiles on their faces.

“Seems the individuals trapped here are alright with our nuptials,” Jon remarked.

“First they interrupt our jokes, now our proposal; this is just getting out of hand,” Martin joked, and Jon let out a laugh. After a few more moments, Martin sighed. “I suppose we should be going? Got to save the world and all that, so that I can properly marry you.”

“Yes. But first…” Jon wrapped his arms around Martin’s shoulders and kissed him, passing so many memories and hopeful futures between their lips. “Now we can go.”

“Works for me,” Martin replied, beaming, just before the same applauding tomb-goer offered up an enthusiastic cheer. “Besides, the audience participation is a little much for me.”

Jon laced his fingers through Martin’s and began to lead the way to their next destination. As they walked, he asked, “So, tell me about this ring, and how you proposed the first time. Tell me again, and again, so that there’s no way I’ll forget.”

Martin relayed the story of how he purchased the ring in the village during their brief stay in Scotland, how he held onto it each time Jon gave a statement, and how he haphazardly asked Jon to marry him as they’d gotten cleaned up in the relative safety of that oasis.

But as Martin spoke, he realized that, despite the horrors around them, his oasis was wherever Jon was. And as long as he was with him, the fears could only do him so much harm.

#the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #tma spoilers #tma5 #tma 180 #tma 181 #memory loss cw #Sky showed me art of them wearing wedding bands #and I lost my mind lol #tma

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serpenttailedangel · 4 years

Text

The Kathy Post

Important disclaimer: I am not a Michael/Fisk shipper. I do think their relationship, as it were, is the biggest draw of Knight and Rogue, but I never read that relationship as romantic, created fan content about them being romantic, lamented it wasn’t romantic, etc. The following has nothing to do with salt over a sunken ship.

Anyway, this post is one I was nervous about making because... well, as of the last two books, Kathy is the most prominent female character by far in the series, so I didn’t want to look like I was bashing her over that or shipping stuff. But I still wanted to say something because almost everything wrong with the last book and a half is directly related to her. I’ll be fair and say that part of it is Fisk’s behavior, but it’s still Fisk’s behavior regarding Kathy.

I’m not going to call her a Mary Sue because she very distinctly is not one. She’s too ineffectual for that, and the story has the decency to still let Michael and Fisk be center stage. (It helps that they narrate.) She does, however, display one of the cardinal sins that make Mary Sues unlikable, which is that the narrative distorts around her to try and make her look better.

For example: Neither Michael nor Fisk meet 2020 standards of feminism, but they’re very progressive relative to the setting. Neither expects women to only be housewives and Fisk even states that he prefers women who show agency and are able to support themselves. Neither thinks of women as a whole as silly or dainty, although Fisk does think Rosamund specifically is a ninny--as does Kathy. Both are respectful of women’s intelligence. Fisk compliments both Dayless and Ceciel in particular as being incredibly smart, and is even noted by Michael to sound respectful of Dayless for her wits. Both have also dealt with multiple female villains by the time book five starts. In book five, both repeatedly imply they don’t believe the criminal could be a woman despite, y’know, Michael having very intimate experiences with women engaging in shady experiment dealings (Ceciel) and being party to murder (Callista). There’s no reason they should overlook female suspects once, much less neglect to consider them repeatedly. Yet there is a repeated banter in which Michael and Fisk imply they’re only looking into male suspects, only for Kathy to interrupt with the pointer that the suspect could be female. (And of course, the reveal is that there were not only two culprits of two separate but tangentially related crimes, but both were female.) At the point that they get the evidence, the two do immediately suspect the correct women, but up until that point, they’re repeatedly cast as thinking women not cunning or ambitious enough to be behind the crime for no reason other than to let Kathy highlight that they are and show more awareness that the suspects are potential suspects.

(Edit: Also the bit where they call the idea of a team not having a leader an absurd idea only a woman could have while simultaneously acknowledging that outside of pursing Jack, that’s how they had operated for years.)

There’s also a moment early in book six where Fisk is impressed that Kathy would camp out in the wilderness with her brothers growing up. Why? I mean, really. Why? Rosamund camps with minimal amenities with Michael and Fisk for a prolonged stretch of time in book three, and Fisk and Kathy are both on record thinking Rosamund is a ninny. Fisk even calls her too spoiled for such a feat prior to watching her do it. Kathy is also repeatedly cast as more practical and only putting up with the finer pursuits of a noblewoman to the extent that she absolutely has to. Fisk, by this point, should know better. It’s out of character and meant to make Kathy seem more like one of the guys/not like other girls when she’s meeting the standard Rosamund set.

(I like Rosamund, by the way. Her and Nettie’s Ma were my favorite women in the series, and Lianna was great too. Rosamund is just an easy example here because Fisk and Kathy rate her poorly.)

Although the case that really got me was the Flintruckers. All throughout book six, Kathy is mad that Fisk won’t let her endanger herself more. When Mama Flintrucker saves the Flintrucker daughter by breaking into the place she’s being held and threatening her captors openly, Fisk is amazed and Kathy uses it as more evidence that he should trust her and not hold her back for being a woman. The problems with this are as follows:

Fisk himself would not have used this method. Michael might be all about it, but Fisk always chooses stealthier and more cautious options when able. It would be entirely in character for him to assume anyone, male or female, would chose the safer, stealthier route when rescuing someone.

Kathy is not Mama Flintrucker. Someone else’s abilities have no bearing on her own.

Kathy has, in fact, been totally ineffectual in every combat sequence she’s been involved in.

Kathy’s major contributions to the chase for Meg are A) to keep Fisk on the chase while Michael isn’t there to insist they do the noble thing, and B) to help provide a distraction once before Michael, Fisk, and Rupert do the actual fighting. She’s not useful in the situations she’s mad that Fisk tries to keep her out of, yet the narrative paints Fisk as wrong for trying to keep her out of them and out of harm’s way. I wouldn’t mind a message about giving her agency as much if she were useful in these situations, or if she also learned a lesson about her own limitations and found some other way to make herself useful, but she’s useless yet also in the right for wanting to be part of situations where she’s useless. It’s annoying.

But that’s all secondary to the fact that the moment Fisk realizes he’s fallen for her, he stops giving a shit about basically everything else. His self-preservation and caution that were major elements of his character and made him a foil to Michael? Out the window. He will now linger in burning buildings, run headlong into fights, and take stupid risks by himself after previously agreeing to tackle them as a group in the name of pleasing Kathy, keeping Kathy safe, or getting money to ask for Kathy’s hand. His dueling motives that drive him in book six are “please Kathy” and “get a reward that lets me propose to Kathy.” This in and of itself is obnoxious, but it’s made worse by how dismissive Fisk becomes of Michael. Michael ceases to be his best friend who restored his trust in others and becomes “Kathy’s brother” who he worries about insofar as how things happening to Michael affect his relationship with Kathy. That was 300% unnecessary.

And the worst part is, Ms. Bell can write romance without it eclipsing characters. Tobin and Makenna have pretty blatant romantic feelings in her Goblin Wood trilogy, yet are able to focus on other things and think about other people who matter to them. Like, hell, Michael could still focus on other things while obsessing over Rosamund. He had a character arc over learning not to let his feelings for her affect how he viewed things, and he still let himself be affected less by his feelings for Rosamund than Fisk was by Kathy. Just because Kathy actually reciprocated doesn’t mean Fisk can make her the sole subject of relevance in the universe.

I’m not going to say Kathy shouldn’t have been added to the story. I do think that her and Fisk got along well enough that settling down with her was a good resolution to Fisk’s character arc. I’m just going to say that the handling of basically everything to do with her dragged the story down.

#l'ange avec un queue d'un serpent #knight and rogue

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marketing-expert24 · 4 years

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What are the challenges e-commerce companies face?

1) An absence of online identity verification

By: www.developermosarrof.com

When a visitor goes to an e-commerce website and signs up, the portal is unaware of the customer, bar the information they entered. Whether the customer information is genuine or not remains questionable. Cash-On-Delivery (COD) purchases using an invalid or fake phone numbers or addresses can lead to huge revenue losses.

So how can this be solved?

By taking the proper steps to verify the customer’s information.

First of all, look out for signs of suspicious activity. This could take the form of particularly high value or large orders, Identify fake phone numbers and email addresses, check whether zip codes match with the state/city. Send a verification link when a customer signs up, via text message or email, to validate the customer is genuine. With COD purchases, an automated call could even dial out to the customer, asking them to validate the delivery address.

2) Delivering an omnichannel customer experience

In today's world, customers can reach out through any number of touch-points. They may visit your website, contact your agent, leave a message on your social media page, shop from your store or contact you through a live chat or a messaging platform.

According to ecomdash, “Any business that isn’t moving toward an omnichannel retailing strategy will likely be left behind by its online savvy competitors.”

So how can this be addressed?

Make sure to equip your team with the right technology.

Up to date, visual engagement tools enable your organization to serve customers across all touchpoints, channels, and journeys.

Identify the key channels.

Find out which channels are most important to your customers. Customer support staff should contact customers via their preferred channels, phone, email, live chat, video call, online help centers or in-app messaging. Integrate and optimize those channels, adding personalized messages and offering one-to-one interaction with live chat or video calling.

Maintain the context.

Direct the conversations based on a user’s previous response. Keep a track of customer conversations using parameters like user profile. This way, you can always respond contextually, irrespective of the channels they used.

Looking for ways to engage your customers and offer consistent support across digital channels? Request a demo to see how Acquire's platform can help you.

3) Competitor Analysis

“You can’t look at the competition and say you’re going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you’re going to do it differently.” – Steve Jobs

In a competitive environment, others will offer the same products and services as you. Unless you have a strategy to differentiates yourself, it is difficult to survive.

So how can this be mitigated against?

Conduct thorough research into competitors.

Place emphasis on developing a strategy enabling you to shine brighter than your competitors. Use social media platforms and blogs for promoting products. Invest in promotional offers to help create more web presence and therefore more customers.

“Businesses with customer loyalty programs, on average, are 88% more profitable than those who do not.”

Carry out research, find which products are more in demand. Remove outdated items. Customer services that go above and beyond provide a route to staying ahead of your competitors.

4) Stuck in at the old-school way of approach to selling

The reason many e-commerce companies find online selling so difficult is that they are, ironically, stuck in the past. Most of them lack the necessary insight into customer behavior and buying patterns, data which can help them thrive in the current e-commerce environment.

So how can this data be leveraged?

Offer products in prominent marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, etc.

These e-commerce sites already have an existing network of buyers so pitching and branding your product becomes relatively easy.

Segment visitors. -

Visitor segmentation allows e-commerce companies to identify and communicate with visitors based on their customer journey, past conversations, geographical location, browsing behavior, referral page, and much more.

In turn, e-commerce companies can anticipate customer needs, offering them a personalized service, such as ( free delivery or promo codes ), creating a more efficient stream of conversions.

5) Shopping cart abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is a huge issue. Even e-commerce giants are not immune to this problem.

For instance, when brick and mortar heavyweight Nordstrom started an e-commerce portal, they witnessed big losses from abandoned carts. The tedious and bug-filled checkout process was causing customers to flee in their droves.

Nordstrom had to come up with a new checkout design, turning it into a two-step process.

So how can this be addressed?

Consider redesigning your shopping cart, making sure there are no bugs or an unnecessarily long and frustrating form filling process.

live chat solutions reduce shopping cart abandonment instances. Combining this with features such as visitor segmentation, it is possible to proactively reach out to customers during key stages of their journey, providing the opportunity to engage with customers who would otherwise drop out without purchasing. Visual tools can help address customer queries during the checkout process.

6) Maintaining customer loyalty

Even with the best-designed website out there, without customer trust and loyalty, the business is bound to struggle.

Creating new customers and then maintaining them requires a massive effort. One of the reasons e-commerce companies in particular face a challenge in building customer trust and loyalty is the seller and buyer don’t know each other. Nor can they see each other. Thus, the customer is robbed of the senses they would normally rely on in face to face transactions. This can only be made up for through time and effort. Across multiple transactions, eventually, the company can build this trust and loyalty.

So how can this be harnessed?

“Customer service is what you and your organization provide. Customer loyalty is the result of the service.” – Shep Hyken

You must make sure the customer is satisfied with the whole process, from ordering online to shipping. Plenty of online retailers may be selling the same product, so you must identify competitive advantage and nurture your customer service accordingly.

Increase trust with visitors by:

Displaying your address, phone number, pictures of staff, customer testimonials, and credibility badges on your website.

Add a live chat option to the website.

Create blogs, they help build trust. Make customer service a priority over profit. Remember, it’s easier to maintain an existing customer than to find a new one.

Create loyalty programs. The points can’t be transferred to other companies, so the customer will have to purchase from you.

7) The headache of product return and refund

A survey by comScore and UPS, showed 63% of American consumers check the return policy before making a purchase and 48% would shop more with retailers offering hassle-free returns. e-consumers are clearly conscious of return and refund policies.

When a product is returned, whether due to a dissatisfied customer or damaged product, the business suffers a heavy loss in shipment and reputation. Logistic and shipping costs have always been problematic to e-commerce sellers delivering their product for free.

How can this be taken into account?

Return and refund are also part of great customer service, .

It would be a big mistake to forget that. The best thing you can do is build a strong returns policy. Consider the following when designing it:

Be transparent. Never hide your policy.

Use plain English, understandable to everyone. Not all your customers will be clued up with the terminology.

Try avoiding phrases like, “you must” ‘’and “you are required”, which may seem harsh and put off potential customers.

Outline what they can expect from you. Provide different options for payments and shipping.

Educate staff about your return policy, so they can assist customers effectively.

Be prepared to face the cost of your mistakes. If the product is shipped wrong, take extra effort to keep the customer happy.

8) The struggle of competing on price and shipping

Online merchants frequently compete on price. Plenty of sellers list the same products on their sites, but the prices may be different. They are vying to increase their market share by selling the product.

Price competition particularly affects small e-commerce businesses, as mid-sized and large competitors can often offer products for less. Combine this with free shipping, and smaller companies simply can’t afford to compete on price.

Online sellers like Amazon and Walmart generally have shipping amenities distributed across the country. Their warehouses allow orders to be shipped from the closest facility. Approximately 60% of orders come from the same area as the customer. As they are shipped from nearby warehouses, the cost of distribution decreases and the order arrives in a day or two.

Ultimately every online shopper expects free and fast shipping. And all that at a low price.

how can this be combatted?

To survive in a competitive market, e-commerce companies need to distribute their inventory to fulfillment warehouses, become extremely resourceful shippers, or find some unique products to minimize this problem. Ultimately every online shopper expects free and fast shipping at the lowest price.

9) Competing against retailers and manufacturers

Many online stores bulk buy products wholesale from manufacturers or distributors, selling them with retail online. This is the basic business model for online stores.

Unfortunately, due in part to e-commerce's low barrier to entry, product manufacturers and retailers start selling directly to consumers.

The same company that sells your products may also be your competitor. For example, ABC Garments sells to not just your online marketplace, but also directly to consumers on its website. Even some of the manufacturers create distributors, making the scenario worse.

So how can this be solved?

Stopping manufacturers selling products directly to customers may not be possible, but there are a few tactics to minimize the problem.

Give priority to manufacturers less likely to sell directly to customers.

Offer the product at a lower price or with additional benefits to increase sales.

Restrict the manufacturer from selling the product directly to customers by setting this out in the contract. It will be not possible for every manufacturer, but you can work with smaller manufacturers.

10) A problem of data security

Security issues can lead to nightmare scenarios. Fraudsters post spam and attack the web host server, infecting the websites with viruses. They can potentially gain access to confidential data about your customer’s phone numbers, card details, etc.

So how can this situation be avoided?

Manage your own servers.

Do not use common FTP to transfer files, as they are “Overall the web is sloppy, but an online store can’t afford to be.” -Paul Graham, YC

If the consumer wants anything, they will first start searching on the internet when a consumer wants something, their first port of call is the internet. Although eCommerce E-commerce transactions have increased grown at a crazy pace at an incredible rate since its birth, the competition to place your product on the top and to make a steady sale has also increased and so has the competition to make the best use of it.

The last word:

Surviving in the E-commerce competition, which is no less than is war. Surviving it requires outstanding strategies. If you don't want to struggle, then give extra place efforts on you into every aspect of the business. You must be prepared for challenges and strive for growth at every stage of your business., and ultimately, this will provide you with the best possible chance it will have a better chance to bloom flourish.

If any developer copies files in an open Wi-Fi network, passwords and other confidential data can be stolen. By constantly updating the shopping cart, you can minimize the risk of stolen data. Most content management systems store their data in the database. Developers should take backups at regular intervals retrieving the data if stolen.

And remember…

The e-commerce industry is at war. Surviving it requires outstanding strategies to solve the common ecommerce problems. Place effort into every aspect of the business. Be prepared for challenges and strive for growth at every stage of your business. Ultimately, this will provide you with the best possible chance to flouris.

#business #ecommerce #dropshiping #shopify

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shahramkabiri · 3 years

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The value of Web Development Organizations in Today's Community

Advise Write-up Write-up Remarks Printing ArticleShare this post on Facebook1Share this post on Twitter1Share this post on Linkedin2Share this post on Delicious1Share this post on Digg2Share this post on Reddit2Share this post on Pinterest2Expert Article writer Tapu Goswami

With all the expansion of intricacies nowadays the main concerns and want of Database Error have likewise transformed. They have got moved their concentrate from items for essentials to items of luxuries. The influence of globalization is responsible for for the organization of several big and small businesses to generate their most recent technology that you should get some information about on the web professional services on the net. It is because of these elements that the whole process of website development has become popular. Internet sites are grown and styled for that website and world wide web apps, website hosts and social network professional services. Website design organizations are performing an excellent enterprise by putting together their internet sites exactly where these are supplying all information linked to their product or service hence permitting men and women to obtain them on the web.

These days website visitors are incredibly stylish and also hunt for internet sites which can be very easily navigable. They have got virtually no patience stage and they are reluctant to get internet sites which do not very easily give them the help they really want. For that reason, developing a excellent site for organization is not always easy. These days enterprise properties continue to keep populating the net community, for that reason an excellent website designer should objective at getting and trying to keep the user's focus.

The functions of great website development organizations are:

Physical appearance, this is the web site has to be creatively desirable, specialist and nicely finished.

Features, that is certainly every single part of the web page need to job swiftly and appropriately.

User friendliness, that is certainly, it needs to be very easy to get around, studied and fully understood.

Search engine optimisation this is the inclusion of a lot of articles in Web-page coding file format, JavaScript or appearance driven things for much easier the navigation.

Visual creations in particular images and banners and ads, organizing and email address specialists, social media incorporation while using the use marketing gear and article content relief on account that minus the input of suitable contents website development is not complete, the purpose of online world specialists is often to design and style that will create blogs inside of the most cost efficient ways to engage potential clients within the specific on-line creation and innovation approaches like specialty and web log style. This way these are servicing a path for the shipping and delivery of on the web professional services around the world.

Also, they are supplying professional services like online business or electronic digital trade exactly where folks are positioning requests and acquiring product or service on the web with out coming to the regional place and so preserving vigour and time. Also, these are having the goods at far lower benefit compared to authentic market price. The site advancement organizations retain the services of a small group of educated site designers who make an effort to have the e-trade internet sites a lot more getting through attractive label facial lines and offer amenities for producing on the web repayments, offering a long lasting impact in the consumers and so let them check out the web site time and again.

Several of the gifted website creative designers intent at to developing their own organization, but many intervals they comprehend that they are not well prepared to ensure that you take their business enterprise to altitudes and so ensure that a balanced enlargement. A number of the problems experienced through the web development organizations are:

To begin with is concluding the countless new company routine. They devote lots of time to find out new business, succeeding the organization and shipping and delivery of ultimate tasks. This can lead to bit open area for regular, foreseeable profits as whole target for the world-wide-web designers shift to ramping along the work earlier changing to new business routine.

Second of all making sure continuous encourages and maintaining deals. They encounter the danger of developing continuous set cost can handle, rates for significantly less job compared to they are in reality supposed to execute.

Thirdly raising time put in correcting difficulties. Purchasers frequently deal with worries of an world-wide-web websites using the cyberspace creators to fix them, in case the programmers have a look at their web sites it looks nice of their point. Time put in discovering a difficulty signifies a postpone in dealing with the situation by itself.

For some people, internet sites are a handful of superbly created multi-colored web pages with photos, video tutorials and some info, so despite the disadvantages experienced the site advancement organizations, they have got brilliant upcoming leads as many alterations in the net design and style strategies has triggered the standardization of website offering the net advancement a wider that means overall.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Last Watch is the Night’s Watch on the Edge of Space

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In George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, the men of the Night’s Watch are known for “taking the black,” describing the night-dark garb they don when they pledge the remainder of their lifetimes to being posted on the Wall at the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. Night gathers, and now my watch begins, is the start of their vow upon taking the black. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post.

Like the Night’s Watch, the Sentinels in J.S. Dewes’ The Last Watch take to the black—that is, they venture out to the very edges of space on essentially a one-way trip for what is a lifetime mission. Described as “The Expanse meets Game of Thrones,” Dewes’ debut shares a kindred spirit with ASOIAF, despite being set among the stars, in its focus on the former war heroes and criminals alike stationed at the Divide, the edge of the known universe, searching for any sign of their long-gone alien enemies. Despite their vast physical distance from the Core of the System Collective Legion, their duty is so integral to the Legion’s continued existence that even children know, through nursery rhymes, what are the stakes: Sentinel, Sentinel at the black, do not blink or turn your back / You must stand ready to stem the tide, lest Viators come to cross the Divide.

For all its thematic comparisons to a particular fantasy faction, The Last Watch occupies a science fiction subgenre that has long compelled readers: stories of everyday survival and occasional heroism set at the fringes of the known universe. Despite these series establishing in their worldbuilding the core of humanity’s (often prosperous) settlement in space, the heart of their stories take place on the outer edges, in which ordinary people, lacking the amenities and securities of their civilization’s core, must scrabble for survival. Consider The Expanse, in which Earth and Mars are warring superpowers but the dramatic thrust of the story occurs in Belter space, on a distant station, and aboard an unassuming ship called the Canterbury.

Hundreds of lightyears from the Legion’s Core, retired battleship Argus sits at the Divide, its loyal and unceasing position. For five years, former war hero Adequin Rake has overseen a crew with rather spotty service records, from soldiers who washed out of Legion command to petty criminals whose unusual skills are utilized in this unorthodox setting. Despite the ersatz military rankings keeping them in line, they resemble less The Expanse’s Martian Marines and have more in common with the scrappy Belters: self-sufficient and resourceful because more often than not they don’t get their requested upgrades from the Core; so far from the powers that be as to be nearly forgotten; and—most vitally—changed by their proximity to the time dilation that ripples along the Divide.

So, what makes these fringe space stories so compelling?

For one, it’s the allure of the frontier tale: adventures set at the known limits of the world, with protagonists who seek to engage the unknown for the potential of incredible discovery. The quintessential frontier in Western literature is the American West: romanticized as a wide-open land of opportunity for the settlers self-sufficient enough to explore it, and justified by the notion of manifest destiny. However, these themes have become so pervasive that the metaphorical frontier can easily be applied to science fiction and fantasy.

To wit: the Argus has its own chain of command that allows each new recruit, regardless of their background before stepping aboard, to work their way up through the system from entry-level oculus to highly-trusted optio. That system also makes room for Savants, hyper-intelligent human/Viator hybrids that embody the best of the enigmatic other species and provide much-needed insight into an alien culture. That said, the crew’s onboarding process is less of an idealistic oath and more a bunch of Legion legalese, plus a set of Viator-inspired Imprint tattoos to keep them humble: If anyone gets out of line, all Rake has to do is press a button, and they’re swiftly disciplined on a skin-deep level. However, the system does not explain why Rake, a hero of the last human/Viator war years prior, traded in her status as a Titan to command such a ragtag crew—nor why royal misfit and general shit-stirrer Cavalon Mercer shows up as her most unorthodox recruit yet.

Yet for all that the frontier setting presents a blank slate, it also challenges its protagonists to match the environment in its spareness. “In the emptiness of the frontier, we find characters reduced to their most basic selves,” Only Killers and Thieves author Paul Howarth writes for The Guardian, “the comforts and trappings of the modern world stripped away to leave them with startlingly elemental choices: death or survival; morality or corruption; love or hate.”

The military structure aboard the Argus actively supports such black-and-white thinking: loyalty or mutiny; honor or treason; survival or death. It also traps Rake and her crew in a toxic environment, as Dewes explains in a recent interview with The Mary Sue: “Though the Sentinels’ mistreatment is something that’s been simmering in the back of Adequin’s mind for years, her stagnancy at this far-flung post has stifled any potential progress in realizing it. She can’t see past the walls of her ship and across the 100 million light-year expanse back to reality and civilization, so she has no perspective through which to see how bad it is.”

Cavalon’s arrival explodes those binaries, as he provides some vital context for just how corrupt the Core has become—not to mention embodying another potential aspect of this subgenre’s appeal: the desire to engage with the problematic truths of manifest destiny, especially as it has translated to space exploration stories. The romanticism of the frontier myth often occludes the ugly truths of such expansionist storytelling, namely the theft and resettlement of lands already occupied by Native Americans, and the brutal genocide of these First Nations peoples. While it isn’t the central conflict, The Last Watch does contrast humanity’s antagonistic relationship with the Viators with the cultural exchange—technology, hybrids, and clones—that nevertheless occurs between these supposedly disparate civilizations. At the edge of space, there is no room for entitlement or ego.

And perhaps that’s the purest appeal of edge-of-space stories: the notion of one person facing down the infinite.

Martin was inspired to create ASOIAF’s Wall, and the Night’s Watch upon it, by visiting Hadrian’s Wall in the 1980s. Standing atop the historical site, he told John Hodgman in a 2011 interview, he tried to put himself in the mindset of a first-century Roman soldier staring out beyond the wall: “at the end of the known world staring at these distant hills and wondering what lived there and what might come out of it.” It’s easy to see how that inspired the core of the Night’s Watch oath, the sacrifice of individuality that each man makes on Westeros’ Wall: I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.

It’s a role that every watcher shares, yet there is a vast divide between the quotidian duty of serving yet another uneventful shift and the portentous moment of being the first set of eyes to behold something or someone otherworldly. In a blink, a man goes from cog in the machine to a vital piece of history.

The Last Watch subverts this thinking in two key ways. Instead of encroaching White Walkers, the Sentinels are meant to hold the Divide against the inhuman Viators, despite the fact that their advanced enemies haven’t posed a threat for centuries, excepting the recent decade-long Resurgence War that (as the war epics go) wiped out their remaining numbers. In the absence of returning Viators, the Sentinels stationed aboard the Argus instead grapple with the unique conundrum of confronting themselves. That is, ripples in time dilation from riding along the Divide that project their döppelgangers from a few moments in the future. These glimpses are usually inconsequential glitches that create self-fulfilling prophecies, but as the ripples become more frequent, they hint at branching paths, and signal one indisputable change in the universe as they know it: the Divide is collapsing.

What these edge-of-civilization stories share with frontier adventures is the escapist feeling that there is still world left to be discovered, that humanity has not mapped out its limits. Dewes clearly marks that limit, and then turns it on its watchers, with the otherworldly chasing them back to civilization. Only when the universe begins collapsing can Titans and princes be truly stripped down to their base selves: survivors… or simply ceasing to exist.

The Last Watch is available April 20 from Tor Books, and is available for pre-order now. Check out the full synopsis below…

The Expanse meets Game of Thrones in J. S. Dewes’s fast-paced, sci-fi adventure The Last Watch, where a handful of soldiers stand between humanity and annihilation.

The Divide.

It’s the edge of the universe.

Now it’s collapsing—and taking everyone and everything with it.

The only ones who can stop it are the Sentinels—the recruits, exiles, and court-martialed dregs of the military.

At the Divide, Adequin Rake commands the Argus. She has no resources, no comms—nothing, except for the soldiers that no one wanted. Her ace in the hole could be Cavalon Mercer—genius, asshole, and exiled prince who nuked his grandfather’s genetic facility for “reasons.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

She knows they’re humanity’s last chance.

The post The Last Watch is the Night’s Watch on the Edge of Space appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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ramrodd · 4 years

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Newt Gingrich, the Son of Man and the Rape of Congress.

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COMMENTARY:

It turns out, your corespondent was correct; Donald J; Trump has emerged as the Anti-Christ, constitutionally. He's actually not the Anti-Christ, but the more like King Saul: he is jealous of the actual contituntional Philosper-King, We, the People. He along with the Movement Conservatives who consider themselve the original Reananaucs, have been led astray by Newt Gingrich since he bagan his agenda to become Speaker of the House.Gringrich has been running an Trotsky-inspired political scam on America based on the formula for creating a domestic, internal insurgence leading to polarization, tribal confrontation, violent revolution and regime change by political coup.

As I recall, your correspondent referred to Daniel 3, Daniel 6 and Daniel 9. Daniel 7:12 is, or course, the Son of Man and the numerological triangulation of this guy's prophecy revolves around Obama when it started and Trump. The GOP has been engaged in a domestic insurgency since William F. Buckley, Jr, published his Sharon Statement and established Movement Conservatives like Rick WIlson, Nicole Wallace, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham through his farm system for engaging and developing people with the same crypto-Nazi cogintive organization as Mike Pompeo, Mick Malverny and Tom Cotton and give them a lucrative career advancing a Newty's program of insurgency as useful idiots.

Now, we have had an election where that prophecy is being played out in real time on Twitter until the Rape of Congress by Trump's followers, who are almost entirely useful idiots who add mass to the demonstration, but at the tip of that lynch mob, the Proud Boys,/white supremacists/ Q-ANON conspiracy to inspire a race war, Virtually all of them are Pro-Life.

Pro-Life is the Anti-Christ.

Now, the people around Obama/Biden were engaged in the Democratic Socialsm of Jefferson Deomocracy as reformed by the 13th Amendment. The numerology of the 13th Amendment, is the same numerology as the Son of God in Daniel 7:13, That is, Jesus is very often attached to the number 13 in some way as either the finger of God, Himself (which Jesus most certainly was) or it was the finger of God, Itself. It is just a consitent figure of speack in the entire narrative of the Bible, from "In the Beginning" to Amen in Revelation. Numerology is a signpost installed by God from the very first and over the centuries. In that regard, it is perfectly inerrant.

And I couldn't explaing this to you in this manner if the Arabs hadn't invented the numerological symbot for "nothing" Zero/0. Zero doesn't exist, numerologically, in the narrative of the Bible (or anywhere in the Judeo-Christian literature, codified and uncodified, as a concept, until the Romans showed up. Everbody used alphabets that had originated out of number after Melchezidek came along. He was part of the guild associated with the Magi of Matthew. This guild apparently spread out across the Mediterrean and planted some seeds of wisdom gleaned from the systematic application of process theology to the universe as it unfolds out infront of us. The big change they made was to introduce 9 base numerology to replace the 8 base numerology of the Egyptian priests, which had produced the social economic structues based on building pyramids as important scientific observations of the firmament. Intellectually, 8 base numerology is a cul-de-sac and becomes decadent. It's a closed system economics, zero-sum/engineering/gold-based banking that was preventing the globalization of the capitalism the Roman empire brought to the world. I mean, there was stuff that began to occur at that moment, when the seed of 9 base numerology began to grow in Abraham's imagination, to Bretton Woods. This is the thing about Elizabeth Warren: she is hooked into that righteous banking model.

But it really became jet propelled when Islam inventing Zero/0 as a useful symbol of accounting. And the only thing that has prevented this rigtheous banking system to take mankind to Space is everything connected with William F. Buckley's Sharon Statement of 1960 but creating the Tsusamie of the Rape of Congress on 7 January 2021.

Remember Daniel, Chapter 7, where the Finger of God designates the Son of God. 7 very often is used as a lightening rod where the lightening from the Finger of God will enter into history as a Sign. So, Daniel 7:13 is the place where the Finger of God sets the process in motion to produce The Cross and Daniel 7:13 the Finger of God has touch America with divine intent and produce the Rape of Congress that can be traced from 1960 through Speaker Gingrich to Steve Bannon to 7 January 2021, God created a lightening rod to expose the working of Satan in the American body politic and that agency is Newt Gingrich. Trump just happened to be his marionnette.

Trump didn't become a crime boss until he won the election with intellectual property his Moscow partners in the 2013 Miss Universe Contest stole from the DNC and Clinton campaign by committing treason with a transnational crime consortium.. They've had him by the balls the whole time and Putin has nothing to do with it.

Now, the only question in my mind was how much coordination went on between Gingrich, Bannon and this transnation criminal consortius which is currently has America under seige with a Nory based cyber-attach trying to look like it's coming out of the Kremlin. This is the reason for the structural polarization Newty's political strategy creates, to overthrow Congress and the federal government. I mean, if you've read Atlas Shrugged, she describes exactly what Newt Gingrich has been doing since he got into politics: Newty is the answer to "Who is John Galt".

Virutally all Libertarians have been useful idiots for this insurgency since they began attending YAF meetings and the C-PAC convention annually. It's like Comic-Con or a Trekkie or AmWay convention only focused on reinforcing the Virtue of Selfishness, Public Choice economics and narcissism the new righteousness. The basic Pro-Life Evangelical community family values.

All the Pro-Life Evangelical warriors who participated in the Rape of Congress pretty well define the right-wing useful idiot, while the people who Trump launched down Pennsylvania Avenue as a shot below the warterline of The Constitutional Ship of State, the basic cannon foder led by peoole being financed by the transnationa criminal constortium with Euro-dollar black mone being laundered through PayPal and Patreon.

How can you tell the difference between the cash flows of the Koch brothers to the Prouc Boy insurgency and Vory drug money?

You can't. That is one of the functions of Citizens United: it's all green. It goes into Meta Chruchs like First Presbyterian and, from my perspective, shouldn't be stopped. The fact is, we need to repartriate these black eurodollars to repair the damage done by the pandemic and whatever damage the Trump administration has done to the US Economy, which scares me in connection with the connection between John Galt and the potential collapse of American finances that was avoided in 2008.

And your coorespondent intuited the Finger of God in contemporary American politics by a using a narrative 2500 years old employing the numerology of the Bible. My biggest complaint about Christian apologetics is that it is just another version of the Marxist dialectic historic deconstruction that became the dominant paradigm in the 60s cultural wars (and continuing). History is a forensic science, like the practice of law, and in, Christian apologetics, history is superior to narrative/literature as a social construct. And, as a literature major, that pisses me off. Before history could congeal to abstract reconstruction, narrative IS. In the Beignning was the Word and history emerged from one of the ribs of the Word by way of narrative.

And before the Word was in the mind of God, Number IS. I Am that I Am: number the stars if you can.

And, again, Islam provides an essential validation of number in the mind of The One (as is presented in Revelation 4.2) in Sura 74:30 "And above it is 19" employing symbols I can employ to explain how number works as a figure of speach and a jewel in the fabric of Scripture. All that tapestry is lost in historical reconstruction because it doesn't seem to be evidence that can be defended in a court of law or a PhD defense.

But there it is. You have been praying all your life of a sign from God and now you have one: the Rape of Congress on 7 January 2021, as I write this 7 days and a wake-up from a constitutionally processed peaceful Change of Command.

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against-a-dark-background · 4 years

Text

BUTTER

Chapter One

Butter picked at his teeth as he shifted his eyes from customer to customer. His jacket was draped on the seat beside him and as he flicked the toothpick, tiny spots of grease bloomed into the fabric. He didn't care, as he felt it made the jacket look more authentic. It was a part of him. Eileen narrowed her eyes and bit the corners of the piece of toast she was holding.

"Why Butter?" she asked, between chews.

"Why not Butter," he replied, casting his eyes to the pool of grease that was gathering underneath his bacon. "I mean, I may as well ask, ‘why Eileen?’ So, what do you mean by that?”

She swallowed her toast and pointed the remaining piece at Butter.

"Don't be obtuse; you know exactly what I meant."

“So, I shall reply with ‘why not?’ …You're the one being obtuse." Eileen sighed and finished her toast in silence. She turned her head to look out the window. The blue vehicle was back.

“We must leave.”

"I'm not finished, I haven't even started on my bacon. You know the animal fats on this planet are so tasty, not like the stuff you find on the habitats.…"

"It's the blue car, Butter. Take the stupid bacon with you."

Butter stood and picked up his jacket, and as he shuffled out of the booth, he took three rashers of the bacon and casually stuffed them into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"I'm sure that'll come in handy soon," he mumbled, taking another rasher from his plate.

"Don't you have enough already? We have to leave!" Eileen grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

"It's my now piece… I’ll keep the others for later. You never know when you might need a rasher of bacon, yeah?" He followed her out of the café, hands in the outer pockets of his jacket, fishing around in a ritual fashion, checking the contents, and making sure he'd left nothing behind. The occupants of the blue car must not have seen Eileen and Butter leaving - the blue car didn’t move. Eileen flicked the key fob and the doors unlocked with a soft clunk. Butter headed for the driver's door:

"I'm driving, wrong side. Go on, hurry up. It looks like they didn't see us leave," Eileen barked.

"I want to drive Eileen, get in the other side.”

"Not while your hands are covered in bacon grease you're not. Come on! We'll both be dead because you're arguing about who gets to drive, I have the fucking key in my hand, so get in the passenger seat, for fuck's sake!"

Butter sighed dejectedly and mumbled as he hurried to the passenger side of the car.

"I've got a key too. I could’ve wiped my hands on my jacket, no problem. You mustn't like the way I drive…”

“That’s about right but it’s a moot point, isn’t it? I’m already here. Put your seatbelt on and get comfortable.” Eileen checked the rear-view screen.

So far, the occupants of the blue car hadn’t made a move, and the vehicle’s glass was too dark to see through, but she felt it in her cortex implants. She knew they had particle beam weapons — she didn’t fancy a smoking hole in her head. She floored the accelerator, the traction control systems made the car buck and jerk. This annoyed Eileen, she would’ve loved to have seen nothing but a cloud of dust behind them as they left the car park. It wasn’t to be. She just hoped they’d been quick enough to evade notice. They hadn't.

After about ten minutes, during which Butter checked the contents of his pockets several times and reassured himself that he had everything he needed —sometimes, he forgot things. In better circumstances, he would’ve gone back to the café and finished his breakfast properly. Butter didn’t like leaving perfectly decent food behind. Such a waste, he thought. He waved a rasher at Eileen.

"As to your question, do you really want to know? I mean, you must ask a better question. If you say, ‘why such and such,’ I’m going to reply with ‘why not,’ so be more specific”.

“I don’t care enough to continue asking, I’m busy now.”

“Huh,” huffed Butter. “The car is doing the driving; all you’re doing is looking out the windows and steering as if it matters. It doesn’t. The car knows where we are going, so why pretend you’re even driving? I think you’re only doing it because you think it may annoy me.”

“Well, fuck, you got me. It gives me something to focus on, so I don’t have to watch you shove bacon down your throat.”

“It’s more of a gentle push, rather than a shove — and there’s the chewing after the push, Eileen. Don’t be mean."

She scratched behind her left ear.

“Look, I am not being paid to be your friend, Butter, I’m being paid to get you to the No Hardship Here! Habitat, preferably alive and unharmed; the latter part is optional, I believe. They can fix you in a med pod if you get hurt.”

“Not if I get vaporised, they can’t.”

“We can always grow you a new one, in whatever disgusting shape you choose — if the Bureau ever sends you on another mission, after this clusterfuck!” She replied and Butter’s eyes snapped open.

"I hope it doesn’t come to that. Death is very boring, you know.”

“Boring.” Eileen chuckled to herself and turned her gaze back to the road. “Typical…”

She glanced in the rear-view screen and was surprised to see a blinding flash of light. The blue car had disappeared — a cloud of vapour took its place. Their vehicle slowed to a crawl and stopped.

“What the fuck was that?” she asked, grabbing Butter by the sleeve of his jacket. Butter turned to look.

“Oh my. They seem to be gone. Hmm,” he said.

“Hmm what? What just happened? This ball of dirt doesn’t have weapons capable of what we just saw. The car just disappeared. The only thing I know can do that is a plasma discharge weapon.”

“I doubt it,” said Butter. “There was no explosion."

Mission was too broad a term for Butter’s reasons to be where he was. The terms of his engagement were to observe and report. Butter had not been impressed with this stipulation and the only reason Eileen was here to extract him was because he’d ignored orders and stayed years past his agreed time limit. His original brief had been to gather intelligence about the indigenous life forms on this small blue planet, collect as much genetic data from as wide a range of species as possible and leave without making a fuss. The problem was, Butter specialised in making a fuss, especially where The Intervention Bureau was concerned. He detested their rules, their methods, their general demeanour toward undeveloped worlds, and their subsequent annexing of these worlds because these worlds didn’t usually have a choice. It was either join or be cordoned off from the rest of the galaxy — forever labelled as ‘uncooperative,’ and doomed to the belief that they were alone in the cosmos. However, if the Galactic Hegemony chanced upon an advanced civilisation, it meant one or two things — war, which the Hegemony were all too eager to wage if it meant the annexation of an advanced civilisation. The other method, more insidious, would be to send as many undercover Intervention Bureau agents as was possible without detection onto the target world to manipulate the target culture. They then would be more amenable to membership as a client state of the Galactic Hegemony.

Besides, Butter had grown quite fond of Earth. The humans here were exciting and unaffected, unlike the myriad citizens of the Hegemony, whose affectations and behaviours grated on him. He always jumped at the chance to go on observation missions, even if they led to the absorption of the many civilisations on the candidate planets after the missions ended. The string of failed annexations because of Butter’s actions meant he didn’t often get the chance to do these kinds of jobs anymore.

"It's sort of complicated.” Butter looked away.

Eileen let go of Butter’s sleeve and sighed. “Mission’s a wash, ship’s an hour or so out. It would appear we’ve a little time for stories."

Butter kept staring out the window. Perhaps if he waited long enough, she would get bored and start the car again. Eileen shook her head. He didn’t know where to begin. He inspected his nails. The blue car had simply vanished, which could only mean one thing. Fisma was here.

Out beyond Neptune, lurked the Sentient Entity, warship, and habitat, the Galactic Hegemony Vehicle Collateral Damage. The Collateral Damage was an enormous object — an oblate ellipsoid, one hundred kilometres end to end with the appearance of matte-black granite. It had no viewports or windows, although those inside the ship could choose their outward view — but it had no obvious weaponry. The ship did indeed have weapons, including pulse-antimatter cannons, infinitely variable EM spectra emitters - from VHF to gamma. The ship could use those emitters in a broad sweep — to detect or jam transmissions, but it could also narrow those EM spectra down to a laser point and slice a moon into pieces. It had thermonuclear charges, which the ship could place inside an enemy’s vehicle using a matter transfer device. It was not to be trifled with, as it was more than capable of giving either a bloody nose, or completely vaporising an opponent. The opponent could range from the smallest automaton to enemy vehicles, moons, and other large celestial bodies.

On board the ship resided roughly 22,000 (Collateral Damage had not recently taken a census,) beings from various places in the Hegemony who lived there, more or less permanently. In times of war, residents could elect to be dropped off at the nearest moon, planet, or Habitat, or they could elect to stay with the ship and face potential destruction. Most citizens of the Hegemony maintained regular consciousness uploads, so if their current body were to die, they could easily replace their body with whatever was the fashion at the time, or they could remain in the uploaded state if they were tired of organic life.

Collateral Damage’s current mission brief was to oversee the extraction and repatriation of one of The Intervention Bureau’s most eccentric and recalcitrant agents, Butter. Eileen had travelled to Earth in a shuttle craft to pick up the wayward agent and Collateral Damage was monitoring her progress as best it could this far out from the target planet. The ship had to remain undetected and this made communications with Eileen haphazard at best. It would simply not do if the ship were to be photographed by any of the various spacecraft Earth had sent out into its own solar system. The ship was trying to re-establish lightpulse communications with Eileen’s shuttle when a proximity warning announced that a small craft was exiting faster-than-light from dark space, on a trajectory that would take it to Earth. Collateral Damage was intrigued — the vessel bore a Galactic Hegemony hull signature. The massive ship lay in wait, ready with a traction field to pull in the shuttle.

“Squawk ident; GHV - Warship Collateral Damage — H’oth’aa, request identification and statement of mission,” said Collateral Damage.

“Squawk ident; GHV - Shuttle Brain Case. Classified Intervention Bureau Mission. Request clearance,” replied a voice.

“Brain Case? You’ve been scanned. You have no organics on board. You are aware of regulations pertaining to automatons? Where is your organic?”

“Let’s not do this now. You have an agent on Earth, am I right?” The voice didn’t wait for a response. “I have intercepted non-Hegemony signals from Earth. So, uh, technically…this is a rescue mission. You can’t go yourself, so just let me go. It’ll be explained on the way back.”

“Go then, Brain Case! I will set a traction field on you on your way out of this system. I have reported this,” said Collateral Damage.

“Report away, you hunk of crap. I’m off,” said the voice, as the shuttle pulled away along its original trajectory.

It was just after eleven on a Tuesday that the automaton, Ar Jael Fisma allowed itself to be seen. This was not only a huge breach of protocol, but also grounds for dismissal if ever the Bureau were to find out, which was likely if Fisma’s data upload were intercepted before the automaton could be debriefed by its local handler. In this case, the automaton felt no fear of reprisal, nor of any responsibility for that matter. He was just like that — some in the Bureau had questioned Fisma’s fitness for this mission with good reason — the automaton’s careless attitude and loyalty to this particular handler had thrown it into disrepute long ago. As for the child, he stood, awestruck, as the row of hedges that his tennis ball had just passed through now appeared to take on a definite shape that was entirely uncharacteristic of any hedges, trees, or bushes he had so far seen in his short life. As the fluorescent yellow ball crashed through dense branches, it bounced off a small patch of nothing. The child narrowed its eyes.

“Nice throw, kid!” squawked Fisma. “Watch it!”

The air in front of the bushes took on the appearance of a heat haze rising off a road in summer, then pushed its way through leaves and branches, which parted as the automaton made more of an effort to conceal itself. The boy, now unconcerned with his tennis ball, suspiciously stared at the gap in the hedge. Fisma was concerned. Its appearance had not been entirely accidental.

“Fuck, I knew it” it thought. Double fuck. I’ve been made.”

The heat haze, a definite rectangular shape, hanging in the air, centimetres above the ground, now took off at high speed. Fisma had to find its local handler. It scanned the EM bands in detail, looking for the tell-tale return signal of a transponder. After heading in a zig-zag pattern, Fisma began to pick up the ping from a shuttle that was preparing itself for launch. If Fisma was correct, its handler would not be able to launch in time before the shuttle was found and destroyed. It had little time to waste. Fisma increased its speed to the maximum possible — unfortunately, this led to its camouflage field intermittently failing. If one were watching, one would be able to see a greyish briefcase-sized object - stuttering on and off like a bad television signal — whipping through the air, just centimetres above the ground. Fisma rounded a bend and came across two cars engaged in a high-speed chase. Not knowing who was in what car, Fisma easily overtook the blue car that was following and caught up with the silver car in front. It scanned the occupants with an ident field and was astonished at the results. They were Galactic Hegemony citizens, and not only that, but also Intervention Bureau agents. Fisma was ecstatic — it had found its handler. It had no idea who the other agent was, and that was sure to be a pain in the arse once explanations were in order.

Now Fisma dropped back to the following blue car. Using an emplacement field, Fisma dropped a microscopic speck into the middle of the blue car. Fisma slowed dramatically and detonated the speck. There was a bright flash of light, and the silver car simply disappeared into a cloud of vapour. As Fisma scooted up to the blue vehicle, the occupants stepped out.

“Fisma! You found me,” said Butter. “I knew you would.”

Butter and Fisma were happily chatting, as if their lives had not just been in peril, and Eileen was not impressed. She glowered at the pair.

“First of all, why was the automaton not here with you? Secondly, let’s go”

“Quite agreed,” said Butter. “We should get going, Fisma. That was well done back there, by the way. What was that you used?”

“An antimatter drop,” said Fisma. “Very effective but it doesn’t leave much evidence for us to sift through. I’d like to know who that was. I believe I was made earlier too.”

“That’s no good. I can’t think of whom or what would have it in for us on this little planet,” said Butter.

“If you two have finished!” shouted Eileen, motioning for them to get into the car.

They took off at speed, heading for the shuttle, which was hidden in a valley close to where they were. Butter and Fisma were chatting happily, much to Eileen’s chagrin.

“How did you get here, Fisma?” she asked.

“I took a shuttle from the Central Habitat,” it said.

“Well? What are you going to do about it? You can’t leave it here to be discovered. Send it to our ship, it’s....”

“The Collateral Damage?” Fisma cut Eileen off.

Its enveloping fields changed from a dull grey to a deep green as it sent an auto-launch sequence to the shuttle Brain Case.

“There, it’s done. The Brain Case will dock with Collateral Damage before us.”

They rounded a corner, and the car took a left onto a dirt road. Several kilometres later, the car stopped as they came upon a group of disused farm buildings. Eileen pulled a silver fob from her pocket and pressed a button. A shuttle the GHV - Silent Night, shimmered as its camouflage field winked out. Eileen waited patiently as Butter and Fisma entered the Silent Night and made themselves comfortable. Eileen sat at the pilot’s station. She confirmed the launch cycle and hit launch. It would be less than an hour before they reached the Collateral Damage. She sighed and relaxed back into her seat.

“So, what happens now?” asked Butter.

“Well…both of you are in trouble. A lot of trouble.” She smiled and closed her eyes, leaning back into her seat.

Butter glanced at Fisma, whose field envelope changed to a sarcastic orange. Butter smiled and took a piece of bacon from his pocket.

#Space Opera #Science Fiction #Butter #quasarcustard #automaton #Sentient Space-Ships #The Intervention Bureau #The Galactic Hegemony #Collateral Damage #Ar Jael Fisma #Bacon #GHV-Warship Collateral Damage - H'oth'aa #GHV-Shuttle Brain Case #GHV-Shuttle Silent Night #Eileen #Charles' Fictional Memoirs & Sci-Fi & Pop Culture

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stillrecruitingrp · 7 years

Photo

The D.A. has recruited Nicky to the character of Padma Patil with a faceclaim of Naomi Scott. Sorry Padma, we didn’t see you standing there behind Parvati. Speak up next time, won’t you?

OOC Details

Name: Nicky

Age: 30+

Pronouns: she/her

Activity Level: medium; I should be able to post multiple replies three to four times a week, with an at least cursory online presence more often than that. Sometimes I get bogged down with other projects or deadlines, but I will always try to alert via the ooc when that is/will happen so my interaction partners aren’t left wondering where I’ve gone!

Acknowledgement: I acknowledge the potentially triggering themes and look forward to the uncertainty and excitement of the roulette.

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General IC Details

Name: Padma Patil; very occasionally called “Pads” (pronounced pahds or pods) by close friends or by people exasperated with her

Age: seventeen, Seventh Year student

Ships: I have no preconceived thoughts about ships for this character but in general the possibility of exploring hetero ships holds less interest for me than queer ones.

Gender/Pronouns: female-presenting lesbian who uses she/her pronouns (see “explorations” below for more details)

Face Claim: Naomi Scott (backup choice if unavailable: Alia Bhatt)

Desired Changes: no changes requested, but please note that I am more than happy to discuss changing any and all backstory elements presented here in order to better mesh with a prospective Parvati player’s ideas!

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BIO Questions

This game is Canon Divergent after the beginning of Deathly Hallows. This means, if a character is not at Hogwarts in canon, that can be altered (maybe Fleur goes to collect her husband’s little sister and ends up unable to leave the rest of the children there? Perhaps Harry comes back earlier…but why, and how? All of these things can be addressed and should be in your application!) Feel free to be creative!

Biography:

Please write at least two paragraphs describing your character’s background. While many characters have a lot of canon details, there are equally as many who do not. To check if your character has “set” information in this game please see the CHARACTER PAGE.

A child of wealth and privilege, Padma’s youth was easy and comfortable despite the occasional moments of culture clash between her parents (her mother’s family has had roots in Scotland and England since before there was a Scotland or England, while her father’s family only moved from India three generations ago when Padma’s father was still a baby). It was also a sheltered life, the outside world and its troubles being kept at a safe distance behind tall hedges and carefully-curated playdates with children of suitable upbringing. Reyansh and Adelaide Patil were protective (some might say, overprotective) parents who wanted to keep their precious little girls safe not only from danger, but from unhappiness as well.

Unfortunately for their parents’ plans -- but perhaps fortunately for the character and development of the twins -- they were curious girls who soon developed a knack for eavesdropping on the sort of serious adult conversations they were not supposed to be privy to. Thus when they entered Hogwarts at the tender ages of eleven, they were not as shocked as they might have been to discover that there were a wider variety of people and unpleasantness in the world than their parents would have liked them exposed to -- although the cossetted twins were still by no means jaded.

What was truly shocking was the separation that followed their arrival: Padma and Parvati had never so much as spent the night in different rooms before, but the Sorting Hat placed the one in Ravenclaw and the other in Gryfindor. This was horrifying and destabilizing for poor Padma. As a child she had always been content to follow Parvati, letting her sister take the lead so she could hang back and assess the data garnered by her brash interactions with the world from a safe distance before choosing her own course of action -- whether that be to follow Parvati’s lead, or run to mummy or bapu to fix whatever had broken (usually Parvati). She had never planned on how she would deal with a world without her sister to trail and consequently grew rather timid at first, sticking to her sister’s side as much as she could outside of class. She did make friends in Ravenclaw, but none of comparable closeness as Parvati’s new best friend and fellow Gryffindor, Lavender Brown (whom Padma spent a few years being incurably jealous of), and she was often quick to ditch those new friends to dog Parvati’s heels instead.

Some of her fellow Ravenclaws scorned her for her apparent fixation on fashion and gossip over more traditional academic pursuits, but curiosity takes many forms -- and Padma was a smart girl as well as a pretty one, and enjoyed learning magic. She simply also enjoyed giggling over the latest articles in Witch Weekly with Parvati and Lavender. When her sister suggested that they join an illicit student groups to practice for their DADA O.W.L.s, Padma was quick to go along with her both for the academic opportunity and for the chance to socialize more with Parvati and her friends. For once, she didn’t stop to think through the possible consequences -- but even if she had, how could she have predicted all this?

School Year So Far:

Please provide at least one paragraph describing your character’s experiences so far this year. If your character stays at Hogwarts over winter break, you can focus on that as well as if they left (why or why not) during the holidays. If your character should not be at Hogwarts, this is the space to develop how and why they came to be here. Note! Your character doesn’t have to start out at the school; if you’d be interested in having your character’s return be an event please make note of it here.

Reyansh and Adelaide Patil did not want to let their daughters go back to Hogwarts, but after the Ministry’s new policies went into affect they didn’t have a choice. They thought about leaving, maybe fleeing to Reyansh’s distant cousins in India -- but the risk of running seemed worse than the danger of staying. Besides, they knew their daughters were good girls who wouldn’t get up to any trouble; they would be all right for one more year.

Unfortunately for Reyansh and Adelaide, neither of the twins were very keen on behaving this year. It was Parvati who returned them to the ranks of the D.A. of course -- she was the one who shared a common room with Neville and Ginny, after all -- but Padma was quick to second her sister’s commitment for the both of them when the news was shared with her. She was less keen on some of the more bold (some might say, foolhardy) activities that the D.A. engaged in; speaking-up in class to politely argue with a teacher (even a very bad teacher, who accepted dissent with even less grace than had Professor Snape) was one thing but painting slogans on the walls and trying to sabotage parts of the school was something else. What if they were caught? What if they weren’t? It wasn’t until the Carrows moved from theory to practical lessons on the Unforgivables that Padma was willing to accept that they were a lot worse than merely bad teachers -- they were monsters.

That was what finally pushed her over the edge into enthusiastic, albeit still nervous, support of the D.A. and shored her participation up into more than lip service. She hasn’t managed to summon the courage (the stupidity?) to do anything alone yet...but as long as she has company to cling to, Padma is willing to put her neck on the line. To sneak around the school after hours and paint slogans, to mess with lesson plans, to booby-trap classrooms and offices, to eavesdrop, to pass contraband and secrets... The fact that her neck being pure means she has less to risk than many of the others is both comfort and goad: Padma never asked for special treatment...but does it make her a terrible person if she finds comfort in that little slice of comparative safety?

(I would like to make it clear that I am happily amenable to changing anything in here in order to find a compromise with the headcanons or background of any player wishing to join as Parvati Patil! I love collaborative character building!)

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OOC Questions

Writing Sample

Padma’s wand wobbled in her hand as badly as if she were still a clumsy, nervous first year fumbling with an unfamiliar bit of wood rather than the natural extension of her arm that the smooth haft of ash had grown to be over the last seven years. Of course, she had never felt so sick or afraid as a first year -- not even on her first night alone up in Ravenclaw Tower, although that had come close. But not even her first separation from Parvati compared to being instructed to cast the Cruciatus Curse on another person.

She glanced sideways at Professor Carrow, wondering if she could get away with begging off the lesson -- but then she looked at the rest of the class, and knew with devastating certainty that being excused would be the worst thing of all. Too many of her fellow Ravenclaws already resented her for her status as a pure-blood and the indulgence that afforded her. She couldn’t let them see her take such blatant advantage of her blood-status; they would never believe that she wasn’t a blood-supremacist herself, if she did that...

But that meant she had to cast the curse.

Padma swallowed, adjusted her grip on her wand (a useless effort; it felt alien in her hands no matter how she fiddled her fingers), and tried to look at Michael without meeting his eyes. It was hard; he seemed to be going out of his way to glare at her, or maybe that was just her imagination under stress...did he think she was enjoying this? He hadn’t hesitated for very long before he’d cast the curse on Terry during his turn, and they were much closer friends than she was with him...was he angry because he didn’t think she’d be able to do it, and he’d be Crucio’ed by Professor Carrow instead? The whole class knew that would hurt worse than being cursed by a novice, it was why they knew they had to hurt one another instead, to spare their classmates from even more pain...

Was he just resentful of the fact that as a pure-blood, she was less likely to be chosen to suffer the curse than any of the half-bloods in their class, like Michael or his friends? That wasn’t her fault, though! She hadn’t asked for the Carrows to take it easy on her, any more than Morag or Stephen did...but of course they weren’t in the D.A., so perhaps Michael didn’t take it so much to heart that they weren’t suffering as badly as the rest...

“Crucio,” Padma snapped, letting her annoyance surge out of the end of her wand. Michael yelped, cowering away from her, and Padma was horrified by what she had just done -- by what she had had no choice but to do. Beside her, Professor Carrow was nodding and smiling, and Padma felt sick.

At the same time, a distant part of her brain merely thought calmly, Interesting. Most spellwork was vulnerable to strong emotions, easily marred by the distraction that an unsteady mind would cause if not properly channeled; the Cruciatus Curse, on the other hand, seemed to be strengthened by emotion -- just as Professor Carrow had told them. Padma wondered why that was, wondered if the Unforgivables were perhaps part of a whole separate, unique branch of magic -- something as distinct as Transfiguration or Charms -- that had never been properly catalogued or explored, an entire subset that relied on heated emotion rather than eschewing it. The idea of anyone studying such magicks was repellent--

But, yes, also interesting. She couldn’t deny that; couldn’t deny that while mostly she wanted nothing more than to turn and run, to shove her wand deep in her pocket and never look at it again, to find somewhere private to vomit or shake or both...there was a part of her, a tiny but unmistakable part of her, that wanted to cast the curse again to see how different it would be if she was in a different mood. A part of her that wanted to study the Cruciatus Curse, to discover how it worked. A part of her that was curious.

A part of her that made her sick...but that wouldn’t be ignored.

When Padma returned to her seat, she put her head down on her desk and cried.

Exploration

Please provide four things you’d like to explore. This could be a character changing sides, darker themes, or basic fiction tropes.

Blood-Purity: Padma didn’t grow up with a lot of direct blood-prejudice in her life, but she did grow up in a culture that told her she was better than other people because of her bloodline. (She couldn’t help but internalize some of that, even if in her case it manifests more as “oh wow, that was a really good spell, especially for a Muggle-born!” than it does as “ugh get away from me, filthy Mudblood!”) Given the current political and social climate, it would be easy for someone like her to bury her head in the same and pretend she doesn’t see what’s happening to other people, pretend she doesn’t notice how wrong it is -- but despite her appearance as a spoiled pure-blood princess, Padma isn’t doing that. She’s fighting back. However...that doesn’t mean she doesn’t sometimes thing about how much easier things would be if she stopped fighting so hard for other people. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t sometimes wonder if those same people resent her over the fact that she doesn’t risk consequences as severe as the ones they face; doesn’t mean she doesn’t sometimes resent that, because how dare they? She didn’t ask for this privilege, didn’t ask to be protected by the so-called “purity” of her blood; how dare they blame her for that? Shouldn’t they be grateful instead, that she’s putting her neck on the line for their sakes? It’s an ugly train of thought and she’ll be ashamed every time it crosses her mind, but that doesn’t mean it won’t show up sometimes. I want to explore the nuances of blood-supremacy from the angle of a “good” pure-blood -- someone who’s fighting against Voldemort, and who didn’t have to turn her back on her family to do it (her parents her to stay out of the fight because they’re afraid she’ll get hurt, not because they’d burn her off some family tapestry if she gets too cozy with “the mud”), but who comes from the same world as so many of his most lauded followers. I also want to explore the opposite side of that coin: what kind of prejudices do the Muggles have that wix like Padma don’t? (We know from word-of-god canon and implied book-canon that racism and homophobia aren’t major issues in the wizarding world, although how that actually works is a little wobbly...but I think it does mean that at least on a superficial level, the wizarding world is a lot more color-blind and accepting of diverse sexualities -- and possibly genders, too -- than are the Muggles, especially in the 1990s. I intend to play Padma’s family like that at any rate, however other players choose to go with theirs.) How would someone like Padma react to finding out that several of her friends come from families who think it’s a sin for someone like her to kiss another girl -- or a white boy, for that matter? She won’t take it well, that’s for sure...but could it be enough to push her away from the D.A.? Enough to make her briefly betray one of her fellows out of hurt feelings or anger, even if she regrets it after; even if she never meant to hurt the D.A. as a whole, but just to take one ugly bigot down a notch? It doesn’t seem likely that it would be enough to push her far enough to inspire her to join the other side...but to make her sit out the fight? Possibly...or possibly it could lead to a schism within the D.A., with the pure-bloods and more traditionally magical children like Padma still committed to the fight against Voldemort but on their own terms...and the D.A. is far too small and fragile to survive a division like that for long.

Curiosity: Padma is a Ravenclaw. That makes her inherently curious, and while her curiosity has always been turned more toward gossip and fashion and giggling with Parvati and Lavender, she’s curious about other things too -- like weird, old, forbidden magicks. (Who wouldn’t be curious about things like that?) Magicks that Hogwarts students never learn...but that the Durmstrang students who were here a few years ago talked about, when begged and flattered and bribed. Magicks that the Carrows now have them learning, even practicing on one another. Padma is the good girl that her parents always wanted her to be; she hates the very idea of the Unforgivable Curses, hates the fact that they are forced to use one another for practice; hates the fact that they are even being made to cast them at all. But she can’t help but be curious, too; can’t help but be interested in what they’re learning. It isn’t a type of magic that she ever thought she would have either the opportunity nor the motivation to study, and frankly she’d still rather refuse the chance...but since she doesn’t have that choice, she might as well make the most of it, right? That isn’t an attitude that is going to endear her to many of the other members of the D.A.; maybe isn’t even an attitude that her own sister would be able to face without horror. It isn’t a very Gryffindor way of looking at things...but Padma isn’t a Gryffindor. She’s not her sister, even if sometimes she’s wished she could be. She’s a Ravenclaw. And she likes to learn. But oh, the lessons the Carrows offer this year...are they the kind of lessons that anyone can draw anything positive from? Or is all use of Dark MagIc by its very nature corruptive and evil? Maybe it’s possible to use the ugly lessons they’re learning for good, for the good of the D.A. and of Hogwarts at large; wouldn’t that be a good use of what they’re so unwillingly being taught? But even if that pragmatic attitude has merit, can Padma get anyone else in the D.A. to agree -- and if she does, what’s the price she (or they) might have to pay?

Friends on Both Sides: growing up in the upper echelons of pure-blood society didn’t just mean that Padma had a comfortable, indulgent childhood; it also meant that she had friends from that society long before she came to Hogwarts. Maybe they weren’t close friends (she has a twin sister, so she didn’t need to make close friends with anyone else, back then, before the Sorting separated them) but she knew them, played with them, laughed with them. People like Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Neville Longbottom, Draco Malfoy...she knew them, before they all came to school and went their separate ways. (Padma couldn’t even being to count how many dolls’ tea parties she shared with Pansy Parkinson, once upon a time, even if she wanted to.) And now those people are her enemy? Just because they don’t agree on who deserves to have magic, on who deserves to be in charge of the world? It’s hard for Padma, because unlike so many members of the D.A. who only ever saw the bad sides of the people they’re fighting against now, Padma’s known them from birth. Sure, some of them she’s disliked from birth...but the rest of them are just people. They aren’t (weren’t) monsters, they were friends...and fighting friends hurts. It isn’t exactly like having divided loyalties -- but it is very, very close to being that. And if approached by one of her old friends, what would Padma do? Would she cut them off, turn her back? Or would she listen? Would she care? I’d like to explore the difficult situation that Padma’s social position and childhood history put her in. It’s not something that many of her fellow D.A. members would understand or sympathize with, but it’s got to be hard for her to look at a person she knows as a childhood pal and think “that is my enemy.” From Harry’s perspective, which the books are narrated from, they all fall pretty neatly into their slots as “bad people he never liked to begin with” but that isn’t how someone like Padma is going to feel about it; she’s going to see them as people she’s known all her life, as friends and parents of friends. As people who might have come to her birthday parties, or who would wave and smile at her in Diagon Alley, or who shared jokes over homework in the library. Maybe she doesn’t have any close friends among the “enemy camp” (and maybe she does) but they aren’t strangers, and they aren’t villains. They’re people -- and that means no matter what she does, she’s going to feel guilty because she’s hurting people she knows. Maybe even people she likes, but definitely people she knows. Maybe that will make her more lenient, more trusting, more inclined toward mercy; maybe it will be the opposite, with Padma being especially firm in her commitment to Dumbledore’s Army because she doesn’t want to be called-out for sympathizing with the enemy. Either way it isn’t going to be neat, isn’t going to be cut-and-dried for her. And that’s fascinating to me. She could wind up being torn in two if someone playing one of her old friends seeks her out (either genuinely or through ulterior motives) and tries to play on her sympathies, on their old connection; she could use those connections to insinuate herself in their confidences and play spy for the D.A.; she could use what she knows about them to hurt them by helping plan strategy to take advantage of weaknesses the others aren’t familiar with; she could sabotage D.A. plans to avoid hurting people she still likes too much to turn her back on completely; she could take them at their word and inadvertently court disaster for her friends; etc!

Gender Twins: if a prospective Parvati player is interested in exploring the twins’ gender identities I would be delighted to jump on board with that, whether that involves making one or both of them trans or nonbinary (maybe they’re “identical” twins because the one is regularly Polyjuicing the other in order to get a body she feels comfortable in? Maybe one of them is really a boy who was assigned female at birth, and he hesitates to “come out” because he doesn’t want to risk growing apart from his sister? Maybe they’re both trans, and the label of “prettiest girls in school” is something they worked hard for -- or something these nonbinary twins resent? etc). I thus hesitate to specify Padma’s gender identity in too much detail yet beyond the basic label of “female presenting” because I want to leave that open for possible later shared exploration with my fellow player. (If no Parvati player materializes in the opening weeks of the game, I may still end up exploring these themes on my own...but I’d rather do it in concert with an in-play Parvati than with a made-up NPC one, of course!)

#recruitaccept #padma patil

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go-redgirl · 4 years

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Remarks by President Trump During a Roundtable on Transition to Greatness: Restoring, Rebuilding, and Renewing | Dallas, TX whitehouse.gov ^ | June 12, 2020 | President Donald J Trump and others

Gateway Church Dallas Campus Dallas, Texas

3:43 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT: Nice place. Wow. I’ve been hearing about this one. Great job. (Laughter.) Great job. Thank you very much for being here. It’s an honor. And very important time in our country. A lot of things are happening. And I think when it all ends up, it’s going to end up very good for everybody.

It’s an honor to be at Gateway Church with the Attorney General — our great Attorney General, William Barr. Thank you. (Applause.) And my friend, Ben Carson, who’s done a fantastic job at HUD. Secretary. (Applause.) And a young star, Jerome Adams, General. Where is Jerome? Jerome? (Applause.) Along with a lot of my friends out in the audience. In fact, a lot of the great political leaders from Texas, I see. Some great, great friends.

And I want to thank you all for being here: faith leaders; members of law enforcement, so important. We want law and order. We have to have a lot of good things, but we have to have law and order. (Applause.)

Got to have some strength. You have to have strength. You have to do what you have to do. And you look at a Seattle — we just came in; we just see over the screen, and we’ve been hearing about it. Bill and I were talking about it: the law and order. Look at what happened in Seattle: They took over a city. A city. A big city — Seattle. Took a chunk of it — a big chunk. Can’t happen. That couldn’t happen here, I don’t think, in the state of Texas, could it? (Laughter.) I don’t think so. (Applause.) I don’t think so.

So I want to thank Pastors Robert Morris and Steve Dulin. They’re great people. (Applause.) Great people with a great reputation. I have to say that. Great reputation. And Gateway Church — the team has been incredible in hosting us.

And I’d now like to ask Pastor Morris and Bishop Jackson to lead us in prayer. Thank you.

PASTOR MORRIS: Thank you.

Lord, we need you. We need you at this time in our country. And I thank you for our President. I thank you, Lord, for our leaders. I thank you, thank you, thank you.

I know in the Bible that, when something was emphasized, it was repeated: “holy, holy, holy.” Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord, that we are about to bring tremendous progress to a problem that’s been here for a long time. And I thank you for this administration. And, Lord, we pray your blessings and your guidance today on this meeting, in Jesus name.

BISHOP JACKSON: Father, we thank you so much for what you’re doing today. You have revealed so many things that are untoward, even evil. But we ask, according to Isaiah 50, verse 4, that you would give us the tongue of the learned that we should know how to speak to the heart of this nation.

Give us a word in season to Him that’s weary, and waken us morning by morning, God, that we would hear and speak. We have a great, courageous President who’s a problem solver. And let him speak as your mouthpiece and act as your instrument. And we thank you for this time. Amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Bishop. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank you, Bishop, and thank you very much, Pastor. That’s great. And we’re going to be discussing some pretty important things today, I think. It’s all important, but the timing of this is very appropriate. This was set up, actually, a long time ago, but the timing is very appropriate.

We are here to listen to community and faith leaders — going to be hearing from a lot of the good ones; some of the great ones, but a lot of the good ones — and to present our vision of advancing the cause of justice and freedom.

From day one, I’ve been fighting for the forgotten men and women of America, and I think we’ve been doing a great job of it. We’ve been doing a lot in many other ways, but it gets lost a little bit sometimes. Bishop, you know that. It gets lost. We’ve done so much. And a lot of the things that we’ve done that we’re very proud of gets lost. Like, we got criminal justice reform passed, and they’ve been trying to do it for many years — (applause) — and they haven’t been able to do get it passed.

We secured permanent and record-setting funding for HBCUs. That’s historically black colleges and universities. (Applause.) It’s all done.

We created tens of thousands of jobs with Opportunity Zones. Tim Scott. And we had a great senator from South Carolina that many of you know. He came with an idea, and I thought it was a great idea, and we got it done. A lot of people said that could never happen, but nobody thought it would be successful like it is. Tens of thousands of jobs and investment in communities where that money wouldn’t go.

And we achieved the lowest black unemployment in the history of our country, prior to the plague coming in from China. (Applause.) And we’ll get it back again soon. It’ll happen soon. That’ll happen very soon.

In recent days, there have been vigorous discussion about how to ensure fairness, equality, and justice for all of our people. Unfortunately, there are some trying to stoke division and to push an extreme agenda, which we won’t go for, that will produce only more poverty, more crime, more suffering. This includes radical efforts to defund, dismantle, and disband the police. They want to get rid of the police forces. They actually want to get rid of it. And that’s what they do, and that’s where they go. And you know that, because at the top position, there’s not going to be much leadership; there’s not much leadership left.

Instead, we have to go the opposite way. We must invest more energy and resources in police training and recruiting and community engagement. We have to respect our police. We have to take care of our police. They’re protecting us. And if they’re allowed to do their job, they’ll do a great job. And you always have a bad apple, no matter where you go. You have bad apples. And there are not too many of them. And I can tell you there are not too many of them in the police department. We all know a lot of members of the police.

I was listening today; a friend of mine was on. A very important person said some of the best people he’s ever met are policemen, law enforcement people. And they’re taking care of people that, in many cases, they never even met before, and at great danger, at great risk. They get shot for no reason whatsoever, other than they’re wearing blue. They get knifed. You saw that the other night. It was a horrible thing.

But there is no opportunity without safety. In Chicago, 48 people were shot, and 18 people were killed in one day. Sunday, May 31st. Think of that. Forty-eight people shot; eighteen people killed. You don’t hear about it too much.

Every child should be able to grow up in a safe community, free from violence and fear. They’ve taken a lot of the police protection away in Chicago, and they have great, great police in Chicago. I know Chicago very well, but they’re not allowed to do what they can do better than anybody. They could do the job very easily.

Americans are good and virtuous people. We have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear. But we’ll make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racists or bigots. We have to get everybody together. We have to be on the same — the same path, I think, Pastor. If we don’t do that, we have — we have problems. And we’ll do that. We’ll do it. I think we’re going to do it very easily. It’ll go quickly and it’ll go — it’ll go very easily.

We have so many different elements of strength in this country. We have such potential in this country. We have the greatest potential. We have the greatest country in the world. But we get off subject. We start thinking about things that don’t matter or don’t matter much. And the important things, we don’t even discuss. But we’re here to discuss some very important things.

Today, politicians make false charges, and they’re trying to distract from their own failed records. They have some very bad records. And these are usually the ones that cause the problems or can’t solve the problems. These are the same politicians who shipped our jobs away and took tremendous advantage of all Americans. But African American middle class — so much of that wealth and that money and those jobs went to China and other countries. And they get trapped. They get trapped. They get trapped in a government morass. They get trapped in bad government schools.

So I’m going to be announcing four steps to build safety and opportunity and dignity:

First, we’re aggressively pursuing economic development in minority communities. We’re doing it very powerfully. We’ve done it with Opportunity Zones, but we’re going to go above that. At the heart of this effort is increasing access to capital for small businesses, and that’s with minority owners in black communities. And we’re going to get it done, and it should have been done a long time ago. It’s been very difficult — very, very difficult for some people. It’s been unfairly difficult.

Second, we are confronting the healthcare disparities, including addressing chronic conditions and investing substantial sums in minority-serving medical institutions. We have medical institutions in some areas of our country that are a disgrace. I was going to say “not up to standard.” They’re much worse than “not up to standard.” They’re a disgrace. We’ll take care of it.

Third, we’re working to finalize an executive order that will encourage police departments nationwide to meet the most current professional standards for the use of force, including tactics for de-escalation.

Also, we’ll encourage pilot programs that allow social workers to join certain law enforcement officers so that they work together.

We’ll take care of our police. We’ll take — we’re not defunding police. If anything, we’re going the other route: We’re going to make sure that our police are well trained — perfectly trained, they have the best equipment. (Applause.)

Some of the things that we have heard — because I know a lot of the people in the audience, and they’re professionals at what they do, and they’re successful people, and we’re hearing things that are not even thinkable. I didn’t even hear — I’ve never even heard of this before last week. It was like — it started about a week ago, where I heard they want to close up all police forces. That’s what their attack on a very liberal governor in the state of Washington is: “We want the police force closed.”

It’s not like they want to, sort of, bring a little money into something else; they want it actually closed. I’m thinking, “What happens late at night when you make that call to 911 and there’s nobody there?” What do you have — what do you do? (Applause.) Whether you’re white, black, or anybody else, I mean, what do you do? You’re dialing, and there’s somebody breaking into a house, and it happens to be a violent person. There are violent people around, Pastor. Even you will admit that, right?

PASTOR MORRIS: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: We want to think the best — (laughter) — but you have some very violent people. And when they’re breaking into your house at 12 o’clock in the evening, and you’re sitting there, and you don’t have a police force, they’re actually think- — they’re actually talking about not having a police force. Well, that’s not happening with us. We’re going to have stronger police forces because that’s what you need.

In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell. And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It just — everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene, but, to me, it was — after you watch policemen running out of a police precinct.

And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything. It wasn’t really their fault. But they were running down the street. They weren’t allowed to do what they’re trained to do. And they took over the precinct. They burned it — essentially burned it down. I’m pretty good at construction. I want to tell you: That was almost what we call a complete renovation, if you’re lucky. (Laughter.)

And it was a very sad thing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that.

But we are very proud of the fact that I called — I said, “I’m sorry. We have to have them go in.” And they went in, and it was like a knife cutting butter — right through. Boom. I’ll never forget. You saw the scene: on that road, wherever it may be, in the city — Minneapolis. They were lined up. Boom — they just walked straight. And, yes, there was some tear gas and probably some other things, and the crowd dispersed, and they went through it. By the end of that evening — and it was a short evening — everything was fine and you didn’t hear too much about that location having problems anymore; they went to other locations.

And the same thing would happen. As an example, Seattle would be so easy to solve. It would be so easy to solve. We have a governor here of a great state; it’s called Texas. He would solve it very easily — (applause) — as would — as would other of your — as would other of your political leaders, including your lieutenant governor. They would solve it very easily.

It’s — a lot of it is common sense. I don’t even think it’s courage. I think it’s probably more courageous the other way, because I wouldn’t want to be doing it the other way. It’s very unsafe.

So I just want to tell you that we’re working on a lot of different elements having to do with law, order, safety, comfort, control. But we want safety. We want compassion. We want everything.

What happened two weeks ago was a disgrace when you see that. What happened on numerous occasions over the last two weeks — people were killed. A number of people were killed and it was very, very terrible and very, very unfair. A number of them were police officers. And it was a very unfair situation. We don’t want to see that.

And with strength, you wouldn’t even have that. They wouldn’t be in a position to do the kind of damage that they’ve done. They’ve destroyed people. They’ve destroyed businesses. They’ve destroyed African-American-owned small businesses that, hopefully, they’re going to come back. We’re providing funding for a lot of small businesses, and hopefully we’ll be able to get everybody online and get funding to be able to open up their stores and their small businesses again.

But we’re working to finalize an executive order that will encourage police departments nationwide to meet the most current professional standards of force. And that means force, but force with compassion. But if you’re going to have to really do a job — if somebody is really bad, you’re going to have to do it with real strength, real power.

And I said — and people said, “Oh, I don’t know if we like that expression.” I said, “We have to dominate the streets.” You can’t let that happen, what happened in New York City — the damage they’ve done. You have to dominate the streets. (Applause.)

And I was criticized for that statement. I made the statements, “We have to dominate the street.” And they said, “Oh that’s such a terrible thing.” Well, guess what? You know who dominated the streets? People that you don’t want to dominate the streets, and look at the damage they did.

So I’ll stick with that, and I think most of the people in this room — maybe every person in this room — will stick with that. And we’re doing it with compassion, if you think about it. We’re dominating the street with compassion, because we’re saving lives and we’re saving businesses. We’re saving families from being wiped out after working hard for 20 and 30 years. I saw the one woman: She worked 35 years building a store, and in one night, in was totally wiped out. It’s terrible.

And, fourth, we’re renewing our call on Congress to finally enact school choice now. School choice is a big deal — (applause) — because access to education is the civil rights issue of our time. And I’ve heard that for the last, I would say, year. But it really is; it’s the civil rights issue of our time. When you can have children go to a school where their parents want them to go. And it creates competition. And other schools fight harder because, all of a sudden, they say, “Wow. We’re losing it. We have to fight hard.” It gets better in so many different ways.

But there are groups of people against that. You have unions against it. You have others against it. And they’re not against it for the right reasons. They’re against it for a lot of the wrong reasons. And we’re going to get that straightened out. Now, we’ve done a lot of it. We’ve had tremendous success with choice.

We had choice in a lot of ways. We also have choice in the military. You know, before I came here, the vets would wait on line, Pastor. They’d be waiting — you — it wouldn’t be acceptable to you. I know it wouldn’t be acceptable to the Bishop. I know it’s not going to be acceptable to you. They’d wait for four or five weeks to get on line — a vet — where they were sick. They were feeling badly, and they’d get on line, and they’d say, “There’s a six-day wait, sir.” “There’s a two-week wait.” “There’s a one-month wait.” And you’d have people on line that weren’t very ill, and they’d be terminally ill before they got to see a doctor, and they’d die.

And for years and years, they’ve been trying to get Veterans Choice. That means if you can’t get to a doctor reasonably quickly, you go outside, you go to a local doctor around where you live, and the government pays the bill. And, by the way, it sounds expensive; it’s very cheap, by comparison. It’s actually much better. Now, most importantly, we take care of our vets. By far, most importantly. (Applause.)

But it’s one of those many cases where it’s actually less costly and better. Sometimes you’ll see a building — it costs less money than another building that costs more, because the one that built the one that cost more, this one looks better. The one that’s cheaper, it looks better. They say, “How much more did you spend for that building?” Actually, we spent less. You can do that. It’s called: “You have to know what you’re doing” — (laughter) — if you know what you’re doing. That’s only good for the real estate people in here, of which there are plenty, by the way.

So I just want to thank everybody. This is a tremendous place. This is a great city. This is a great, great city and with tremendous people and tremendous pride. And I say the same for the state of Texas. You know, your governor came to me, and he said — when you had your bad hurricane two years ago, I gave so much money to Texas. More — he kept coming: “More.” (Laughter.) “How about here? How about…”

So, finally, you know, though, we took good care of Texas. Is that right?

PASTOR MORRIS: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: We took such good care of Texas. They were looking for the next hurricane. They said, “When’s the next hurricane?” (Laughter and applause.) But they had a big one. And they say you had the largest water dump ever. It just didn’t stop. It came in, and you thought it was gone, and then it went back out and it reloaded, right? And it happened three times.

And your governor came, and he wanted to build a barrier so that water would hit the barrier, it wouldn’t come into certain parts of Texas. He called me, he said, “Sir, I just have one more request.” This is after we gave $28 billion. So, $28 billion. I mean, we watch the pennies, but when it comes to Texas, we don’t watch them too closely, okay? (Laughter and applause.)

And he said — Governor Abbott — he said, “Just one more request, and it’s a very small one, sir. We have a way of building a wall. It goes up and down. It moves with the tides.” I said, “That sounds expensive to me.” “It moves with the tides, and it’s not a lot of money. Could I ask you to do me one small favor and approve it?” I said, “How much is it?” “Sir, it’s only $10 billion.” (Laughter.) And I said, “Start working on it.” Right? I said, “Start working on it,” because we can do things to get rid of those.

You have some — you get hit pretty hard here. They get hit pretty hard here, don’t they? Were you affected very much when you had — during the hurricanes itself?

PASTOR MORRIS: We had a lot of people who were displaced that came to this area.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. Well, we took good care of everybody.

PASTOR MORRIS: Yes, you did.

THE PRESIDENT: So, I just want to say this is one of my favorite places. I know we’re doing very well here.

During the last process, they kept saying that Texas was too close to call. And friends of mine in Texas would say, “It’s not too close to call. You’re going to win in a landslide.” And I said, “Well, they keep saying…” — (applause). They had — one man got on television, actually, and he said, “I don’t know where you come from, but I don’t think this is too close to call. I think he’s going to win by a lot.” We won by a lot. It was eight o’clock and the polls were closed. And they said, “Donald Trump has won the state of Texas.” (Applause.) And he said it simultaneously. So —

And we’re doing good here again, but, you know, one of the things, I have to say — because this is big oil territory — I think we’ve done a fantastic job with bringing back the oil in a rapid fashion. That looked pretty bad. That’d look pretty bad. (Applause.)

You had a case — you had a couple of hours where if you bought a barrel of oil, you bought it for $37 — as if they gave you $37. Okay? There’s never been a thing like that ever. And now I see that it’s getting close to $40 a barrel and you’re back in business, and we got it done fast and we got Russia together with Saudi Arabia, and they cut production. And they got it back fast, and we’re very, very proud of it.

The supply changed rapidly with COVID-19, or whatever you want to call it. I had never heard so many names. You have about 30 names you can call this thing. (Laughter.) All I — I call it “the plague from China.” (Laughter.) “The plague.” (Laughter and applause.) And it’s not good. And it’s not good. And it’s — it could have been stopped. It could have been stopped in China, but they decided not to do that. And we’ll have to figure that one out, won’t we?

So I just want to thank everybody very much for being here. This is a very spectacular place. And I want to introduce Attorney General Barr and Secretary Carson to say a few words, along with the Surgeon General, who has been a real young star in the administration. And, please, if I could, Bill? Take over, please. Thank you very much.

ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR: Thank you, Mr. President. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for convening this discussion. And I’d like to thank the many impressive leaders — civic leaders, religious leaders, and colleagues from law enforcement — who are here.

That ghastly spectacle in Minneapolis was really jarring to the whole nation, and it forced us to confront and think about, reflect on longstanding issues in our nation. Those issues obviously relate to the relationship between law enforcement and the African American community.

But just to step back a little and take a broader view initially, I’ve been thinking about how do we achieve the full American Dream for all communities. African American communities, all communities. And one of the reasons I’m proud to serve in this administration is because I think the President is moving forward on the critical elements necessary to provide and ensure that opportunity.

First and foremost, economic growth. Without growth, there is no opportunity. Second — (applause) — second, education. I think Condi Rice said a few years ago it’s the civil rights issue of our time. Because without a good education, they are not allowing our young people to seize their opportunities and pursue their dreams. (Applause.)

And as the President mentioned, it’s only by empowering parents and giving them the power to choose the education for their children that we’re ever going to be able to obtain that.

Third, I think, is moral discipline. And our young people, they have to have the discipline to seize the opportunity, to make momentary sacrifices for later gain. And traditionally, that has come — and people can find it, perhaps, from many sources — but traditionally that has come from religion, which our founders believed was the foundation of our republic. And — (applause) — and we — we have to stop policies that undermine religion or relegate religion out of the public square. (Applause.)

But now I get to my job, which is safety. Without safety you cannot have progress. You can’t have a life — a decent life in a community. And, you know, this was struck home to me 30 years ago when I visited Trenton when I was Attorney General last time, and I went to a small barber shop in an African American neighborhood. And there were people there in their 60s and 70s, and they said, “Mr. Barr, we’re in our golden years, and we are living behind bars. Look down the street. All the bars are on our windows, and the criminals run free on the street.”

Now, we’ve made a lot of progress since then; the crime rate has been cut in half. And a big part of that has been improvement in policing, and the progress we’ve made in policing, and, yes, the progress that police have made — police departments have made in building relationships with the community.

I think law enforcement has understood for a long time that there is distrust in the African American community toward the law enforcement system. And when you reflect on our history, you could understand why: Because for most of our history, just up until the last 60 years, the institutions in this country — the laws and the institutions were explicitly discriminatory. There was not equal protection of the law, by law. And it’s only been since Jim Crow that our laws have been changed to provide for equal justice.

And what we’ve had, really, since — and so the Civil Rights effort, up until that time, was to tear down institutions. But I don’t think now is the time to be tearing down our institutions, because we’ve been on a march for the last 50 years of reforming our institutions, and we don’t need to tear them down. We have to be mature about this, and when we see problems, we have to redouble our efforts to reform our institutions and make sure they’re in sync with our values.

And I don’t think anyone who’s honest would deny that we’ve made a lot of progress in policing over the last 50 years. And, in fact, you know, one of the things about this episode in Minneapolis was how fast both the state and federal law enforcement responded to — to dealing with — with that action.

So I think that, while we saw something very bad, it has helped perhaps galvanize the will of the country to bring good out of that. And we can’t let that incident obscure the fact that progress has been made; that policemen are, by and large, by overwhelming majority, good, decent people who care about their community and put their lives on the line for us, their neighbors. (Applause.) And we can’t lose sight of the fact and can’t let this event obscure the fact that the — the real oppression and danger to our communities comes more from violent crime and lawlessness than it does from the police. (Applause)

Now, we’ve never — we’ve never had — we’ve never had a President who is more committed to reforming law enforcement. And he’s done that with the FIRST STEP Act and with the first police commission since Lyndon Johnson. And I’m very optimistic about, you know, what we’re going to be able to do — given his leadership, but also given the leadership of our police forces, which around the country increasingly have become better and better led.

And the — I think the police profession is itself committed to addressing the issues that we saw in Minneapolis and completing the process of professionalizing policing in this country.

And, as the President said, we’re working on a number of things through the commission that he set up and also through an executive order to propel that process even faster by looking at how we can encourage the adoption of guidelines about the use of force that are acceptable, both to the community and to the — and to the police profession, but also to encourage certification of police forces, and also through such activities as increasing grants to encourage the use of co-responders.

More and more, our police are being asked to deal with problems that — that, you know, hasn’t previously been the problem of law enforcement. They have to deal with homeless people. They have to deal with a lot of mental health issues. They have to deal with, you know, drug addiction, the drug addicts, and so forth. And providing some additional support to the police in these areas is going to be important.

So let me just say that the Department of Justice is committed to support the President’s efforts here, do all we can to bring good out of this bad incident.

Thank you. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Bill. Thank you.

Surgeon General, please go ahead. Do you want to go?

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: Secretary Carson is going to go.

THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead. Why don’t you go, and then Ben will go? Is that okay?

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: All right.

THE PRESIDENT: Good. Go ahead.

SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: Well, thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate it. (Applause.) Thank you, everyone, for coming today. Thank you to the panelists.

I just want to start off by saying that many people across the country and across the great state of Texas are hurting right now due to the tragedy that occurred to George Floyd. And I just want to extend my condolences to the Floyd family and to the entire Texas community, because I know that you all live together, you work together, you play together, and you hurt together here in Texas. And so, I want you to know that I feel that for you. (Applause.)

The President asked me to give you a quick update on America’s COVID-19 response. Thanks to cooperation with state and local partners, we’re making progress against the virus — we are — and towards a safe reopening.

Through strong public and private partnerships, America has now done more than 20 million tests. And that number is a big number. It’s not just about the number; it’s also about how many of those tests are coming back positive. We have a positive rate under 6 percent nationally. And from a public health perspective, if we’re under 10 percent positive, we’re doing a good job.

So there’s a lot of challenges out there, but I want you all to know that we are moving in the right direction. The data shows that we are moving in the right direction as a nation.

And this has happened, in part, thanks to opening of over 500 community-based testing sites through the work of private sector partners and the United States Public Health Service, which I helped lead with Admiral Giroir. Seventy percent of those sites are in CDC-designated vulnerable areas. That means that we’re taking the testing to those who need it the most, to those who are most at risk. We also have testing at 92 percent of America’s community health centers, which predominantly serve low-income areas and communities of color.

We’ve helped equip our frontline workers, our healthcare heroes, with 94 million N95 respirators, 149 million surgical masks, and more than a billion gloves. And a large proportion of those supplies, at the President and the Secretary’s direction, are going to nursing homes.

And I just want to — I see the governor over there. I want to give you all a shout-out. Texas has led the way in nursing home testing. A hundred percent of their nursing homes have been tested. They’re leading the way in testing people in corrections facilities. Over 95 percent of people in corrections facilities have been tested. And that is something you all should be tremendously proud of. (Applause.)

And these efforts have allowed states to proceed with a safe reopening, while we work with states to monitor the incoming data. We know we’re going to have clusters, but while we respond to spikes, and we adjust policies as needed.

But I want you to know that safe reopening is crucial for other areas in health too. We need Americans to be able to return to cancer screenings. My wife just finished cancer treatment. If she’d had to wait six months to get her cancer screened, she might not be here today. We need people to get their surgeries. We need people to get their vaccinations. 4.2 million children are behind on vaccinations now because of the COVID closures. We know every 1 percent increase in unemployment equates to a 1.3 percent increase in suicides. 1.3 percent increase in suicides.

So we want to reopen safely. We also have to remember that being shut down has health consequences beyond COVID. We know that being out of school is bad for your health. We need to get our kids back in school safely. (Laughter and applause.) I have a 15-, a 14-, and a 10-year-old. And so, can you tell I’ve been saying that a lot? (Laughter.)

But we know that COVID-19 has a tragically disproportionate burden on communities of color: Black Americans hospitalized at 4.5 times higher rates than whites; hospitalization rates 3.5 times higher for Hispanics than whites and five times higher for American Indians and Alaskan Natives.

The fact is this virus is exploiting and exacerbating preexisting health disparities. And these disparate outcomes and opportunities for health are, in part, the anger, the frustration, and the fear that we’re seeing manifest in protests around the country.

And that’s why it’s important for people to know that, beyond talking about the problem, at the President’s direction, at Secretary Azar’s direction, HHS and the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, or WHORC, are focusing resources on minority communities.

HHS recently allocated $15 billion to Medicaid providers and $10 billion to safety net hospitals, both groups of providers that disproportionately serve Americans of color. And I spent the last 10 years working at a safety net hospital –Eskenazi Hospital in Indianapolis. I can tell you those are the places that are doing the work. Those are the places that, at President’s direction, we’re focusing our resources towards.

We’re working with a consortium — with the consortium of black medical schools to fund and scale local efforts in communities that, again, reach communities of color. CDC now requires all testing data reported by states include information on race, ethnicity, and zip code so we can continue to further refine and focus our strategy on the hardest-hit communities.

CMS is deregulating telemedicine to make ongoing care for many medical conditions safe, accessible, and convenient for the patients and for healthcare professionals. Again, we can’t afford to let people continue to go without their care. And the administration’s emphasis on public-private partnerships is allowing us to progress towards a vaccine and treatments at a record pace as a part of Operation Warp Speed.

I want to add that SAMHSA has just funded three community behavioral health clinics right here in Texas with the CARES Act funding. Some of your congressional representatives are here. I want to say thank you to you all for passing that and to the President for signing it to address COVID-19 and behavioral health needs. These facilities integrate mental health, substance abuse treatment, and physical healthcare in one setting, and provide 24/7 crisis intervention services.

Another notable Mental Health Awareness Training grant is in Austin, where funds are used to train community health officials, including law enforcement. And we have many of them in the crowd today on recognizing signs and symptoms of mental illness and mental health crises, and how to help an individual who’s struggling. That’s all part of — of reform. That’s all part of reform in the positive direction, giving our frontline workers the tools and the training they need to be able to take care of these difficult situations.

As Mayor Sylvester Turner said at George Floyd’s funeral, we must encourage business leaders to invest in our underserved communities. And that’s what the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council is all about. I have a upcoming Surgeon General’s report on community health and economic prosperity, which aims to mobilize businesses to invest deeply and over time in the health of their communities.

Finally, to focus on chronic conditions that disproportionately impact black and brown people and may worsen because of COVID, Secretary Azar has instructed my office to accelerate the release of two calls to action: the first on maternal health — addressing the fact that women of color suffer more complications and a much higher risk of dying around childbirth. Black women are four to five times more likely to die around childbirth than white women. Native American women are more likely to die around childbirth than white women. And that’s after you control for income, after you control for education, after you control for every known factor that we — that we have.

My second call to action is on hypertension control for all Americans. Hypertension is common, it’s costly, and it’s treatable. And yet, control rates are low and stalled, especially in communities of color.

So I just want to close by saying that, as we reopen, the basic public health recommendations we’ve emphasized remain important. We flattened the curve, but that doesn’t mean that COVID has gone away, that it’s any less contagious, that it’s any less deadly to vulnerable communities.

So if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan. Nolan Ryan filmed a PSA at the governor’s direction. And he said, number one, wash your hands. Wash them more than you’ve ever watched them before in your life.

Number two, follow your local and state guidelines around social distancing. This virus likes to spread person to person. So the more we can keep distance between people, especially people we don’t know, the harder it is for this virus to transmit.

And number three — this isn’t me speaking; this is Nolan Ryan, Hall of Fame pitcher here. (Laughter.) When you’re in a public place where it’s difficult to keep a distance, like the grocery or pharmacy, the CDC recommends wearing a face covering to protect your neighbors in the event that you have COVID and you don’t know it. Up to 50 percent of people who have COVID are asymptomatic.

So thanks to the hard work of so many healthcare and public health professionals and the commitment of the American people, I want to reiterate, because you don’t hear this enough, that we are making huge progress in the fight against COVID-19. And as a member of the task force, I can tell you that we frequently talk about the great work Texas has been doing up until this point to keep the people of Texas safe, to keep the most vulnerable members of their community safe. And with every American’s help, with your help, Texas, we’ll keep making progress. We’re going to beat this virus.

And thank you for the opportunity, Mr. President. Thank you, Texas. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Surgeon General. Thank you. (Applause.)

Ben Carson? Please, Ben.

SECRETARY CARSON: Okay. Well, thank you, Mr. President, for your leadership and your courage. I don’t know of anybody who could stand up to all the criticism you get every day, 24 –(applause) —

THE PRESIDENT: Do we have a choice? Thank you.

SECRETARY CARSON: You know, our nation is continuing a path of renewal and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. But since the beginning, the President has talked about being a champion for the forgotten men and women of this nation. And that’s exactly where we’ve been concentrating. And it’s been an honor to serve in an administration with that goal. And I’m excited to see America beginning to bounce back.

The infrastructure — the economic infrastructure of our country is very strong, secondary to the abolition of multitudinous regulations and targeted tax cuts. It’s still there. That foundation is there, and we will be able to get back on that track pretty quickly.

But to help speed this rebound, the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council was formed to really help the long-forgotten communities achieve economic opportunity. And it has been refocused, at your direction, to help America’s hardest-hit communities achieve economic recovery, overcome health disparities, and thrive through educational and workforce advancement.

Now, to stimulate economic development and entrepreneurship, the council has worked to set aside additional payment protection funding for our nation’s low-income minority communities and provided technical support to help these communities to access this funding. They have stated that, during the first round, the money wasn’t getting to them. We are addressing that, and I want to thank all the different agencies. Virtually every governmental agency has contributed significantly to refocusing and addressing these problems.

The groundbreaking initiative known as Opportunity Zones, which encourages long-term investment in the forgotten communities, will also be expanded to include more of the underserved areas.

Another major initiative — improving health and public safety — comes with several administrative and legislative proposals. For example, we believe both telemedicine and increased use of mobile care can be major catalysts in our mission to overcome health disparities in underserved communities.

Those are things that can actually be done very rapidly to bring healthcare to people who’ve previously been neglected. And to further this effort, we’re also committed to reforming the infrastructure of our public health data system, addressing chronic conditions in at-risk populations, and working to address food insecurity in underserved communities. That means healthy foods at reasonable prices that are accessible.

But one of the things that I just mentioned — the data collection — we have 50 states and we have territories, and Washington, D.C., and we have all of those many different healthcare collection systems. And we are working to homogenize all of that. And we’ll make it much easier for us to identify quickly health issues and to be able to address them very quickly.

Other legislative proposals, such as advancing national broadband access and investment in minority-serving medical institutions, will also play a major role in improving the wellbeing of these forgotten communities. Making sure that we have broadband access will give access to remote learning.

We will have the possibility of taking the very best biology teacher, and instead of putting them in front of 30 students, putting them in front of a million students, so that those students who have been neglected during all this time and relegated to places where they’re not getting an appropriate education will be able to access those things.

But to guarantee the fruits of these efforts and that they’re long lasting, we understand the need to go for it with a long-term view through our focus on education and workforce development. Education and workforce development is what leads to real independence for people.

And the council supports empowering disadvantaged students with dual-enrollment opportunities, the creation of new short-term education and career pathways, and increased access to capital for our nation’s HBCUs.

School choice measures, presidential scholarships, and Second Chance Pell grants to reintegrate formerly incarcerated individuals are initiatives that will prove valuable investments in our country’s human capital. And we must remember these innovative new approaches in education and workforce development are nothing less than an investment in our future.

We only have 330 million people in this country. Sounds like a lot of people, but compared to China, it’s a quarter of what they have; India, it’s a quarter of what they have. And we have to compete with them in the future. So we need to develop all of our people.

And, you know, education, in particular, played a big role in my development. I was not a particularly good student — and that’s putting it mildly. Everybody thought I was stupid, except my mother. (Laughter.) She was always saying, “Benjamin, you can bring home much better grades than this.” But I would agree that I could, but I didn’t.

But interestingly enough, you know, my mother studied the homes of the — that she cleaned as a domestic. She came from nothing — my mother. Twenty-four, children, got married when she was 13, dire poverty, discovered her husband was a bigamist. But she was still smart enough to study those people who had these beautiful homes. And she figured that the reason they did so well is because they were well educated and they read a lot, and they didn’t watch a lot of TV.

So she came home and imposed that on me and my brother. (Laughter.) And we were not happy campers, let me tell you. If it were today’s world, we would have called social services and they’d taken her away. (Laughter.)

But — but what a difference it made, you know, starting to focus on education, starting to read books, to read about people from lots of different backgrounds — entrepreneurs and scientists and explorers and surgeons. And I begin to recognize that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It’s not somebody else. And nobody can stop you once you decide that that is the case. (Applause.)

And that’s why, with the council, there is so much emphasis on education, because it doesn’t matter where you came from — you get a good education and you write your own ticket. And we must reject those people who are trying to prevent school choice, who are trying to prevent the presidential scholarships, all the things that are there to empower people. And you will see a lot of that coming out of this administration.

And, you know, these investments and innovation give me a tremendous amount of hope for the future of this nation. Mr. President, under your leadership, I’m confident that the American people will emerge stronger from this pandemic and more determined than ever. And we, the people, will recognize, despite all the forces to the contrary, that we are not each other’s enemies. And — (applause) —

THE PRESIDENT: That’s great. Thank you, Ben. Boy, that was pretty good. Standing O for Ben. (Laughter.) He’s used to that. He’s used to it. Great job, Ben. He’s done a fantastic job at HUD, I have to tell you that.

How about Scott? We’ll go quick, Scott, so we get — we’ll get something, but Scott Turner is — (applause) — he’s a star. He’s a young star. Go ahead, Scott.

MR. TURNER: Well, thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for your leadership and giving me the opportunity to shepherd the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. And — (applause) — so, thank you.

And it’s also been a great joy to work on a daily basis with Doctor and Secretary Ben Carson. And so, Dr. Carson, thank you for your leadership and your trust and confidence in me.

I just want to deliver some good news, along with Dr. Carson and everyone on the panel. You know, oftentimes, you don’t hear about the work of Opportunity Zones, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that the President signed into law in 2017 created the Opportunity Zone initiative. And the President created the Opportunity Zone Council. And that council was made up to take 18 agencies — 15 federal and 3 state and regional partners — and move in a singular motion to direct resources into our most distressed, vulnerable, forgotten communities.

And with this — (applause) — and that is — it’s a tremendous time. And so our agencies on the council direct these resources. And we found 270 action items to go directly into distressed communities to help the vulnerable people of America. And we’ve built tremendous coalitions, partnerships on the ground. We’ve been to over 60 cities. I’ve been to every one of them over the last year to visit people on the ground — education leaders, faith leaders, community leaders, business leaders, elected officials, Democrat and Republican.

See, the thing about poverty, it doesn’t care what party you are. The thing about revitalization, it doesn’t care what party you are. We’re coming together as a people for the good of the community.

And, oftentimes, you may not hear about this, but we sit and convene in such as this, with all of these stakeholders at one table to have the hard conversations: What is the pain of the community? Why is the community distressed? And what can we do together — both black and white, Democrat and Republican — and come together for the good of this community, for long-term sustainability, for generational impact?

And because of that, because of these partnerships, because of this collaboration together — and many people, all at this table, have been working together to bring about generational impacts, so long after we’re gone and history tells the story.

The Opportunity Zones is more than just a program. It’s more than just a concept. It is a mission that is to outlast all of us.

And I tell you that as you’re here — because a lot of times, people see a government program assistant check the box. This is not a government program; this is built from the grassroots, from the bottom up, to affect the people in America. (Applause.)

And lastly, Mr. President, I will say tens of billions of dollars have been invested inside of Opportunity Zones, public-private partnerships: Erie, Pennsylvania; St. Louis, Missouri; West Dallas, right here in my great home state of Texas; and other across the nation. Much money coming into our distressed communities.

And I say all that to say: Even though you don’t hear about it often, we have put our hand to the plow and our feet to the ground. And all of these things were done prior to COVID. But I want you to know that right now and post-COVID, that our spirit remains the same, that our heart is set, our face is set like flint, our mission is not done. But we’re going to need all of you to pray for us, to walk with us, to convene with us, to invest, to teach.

And so, Mr. President, thank you. Dr. Carson, thank you. And to all of my colleagues at the table, thank you for your support. It’s been a great honor. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. That’s great. Thank you, Scott. (Applause.) Thank you, Scott. Great.

You want to go? Want to say something? Please, Pastor. Please.

PASTOR MORRIS: Well, thank you, Mr. President. I just was thinking about that, 30 years ago, I was serving as associate pastor at a small church. And I asked Bishop Harry Jackson to come and teach us on race relations, to teach us what we didn’t know, because we don’t know what we don’t know. And now, 30 years later, Bishop Harry and I are sitting on each side of the President of the United States. (Applause.)

He was concerned about healing a problem that we’ve had in our nation for a long time, but not just addressing one part of the problem, but housing — we have the Secretary of Housing, Education, Justice here. Attorney General Barr, thank you for being here. Thank you, our great governor, Governor Abbott. And I believe that we’re going to work together, and we’re going to see freedom and justice for all in America.

Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. (Applause.) Thank you very much. Great job you do here too. Great job.

Jack, go ahead. Please.

MR. BREWER: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Pastor Morris, for offering your church. I think, right now, like any other time in our nation’s history, we need God. (Applause.) I’m praying to the Holy Spirit to put words on my mouth right now. And I want our nation to hear me: We need the fear of God. (Applause.)

Mr. President, you’re the only Republican I’ve ever voted for. (Applause.) And I don’t just say that to make you feel good. Honestly, I — that’s not my goal, man. I’m saying that because you stood up for the Word of God. And as believers, as the church, we have to pray for our President and have his back. When you raised that Bible up after those folks burnt that church — we are in a spiritual warfare. (Applause.)

We cannot fight this battle with flesh and blood. We cannot fight this battle with politics. You cannot politicize oppression.

I grew up right down the street. I looked at skinheads in the eye at 13 years old. My black father went to a KKK rally to protect me. I know what racism is. So when I hear words get thrown out about white supremacy, it eats me up, because these men aren’t white supremists [sic]. That’s not what they look like. I’m telling black kids across America right now — we always hear we don’t have black leaders: Look at this table. (Applause.) We are not as divided as our politics suggests. We are not as divided as our politics suggests.

But I’ll tell you what: This President — when I walk into my prisons, I’m blessed. I teach, in prisons across our nation, men who are broken — the most broken men in our country. Our Bible teaches us to serve those in prison. Our Bible teaches us to serve the poor. And when I walk into my class and I say, “Guys, raise your hand if you’ve gotten your sentence reduced from the FIRST STEP Act,” and every single one of them raised their hand. (Applause.) That’s because of you, Mr. President, and that’s because of policy.

But you’re brave enough to go against what everyone else has said about you. Now I’m calling on you to do more. We have a real issue in our country. And the root of it — let’s not get our eye off the enemy — the root of it is fatherlessness. (Applause.) Our kids don’t fathers.

Attorney — AG Barr, you said it earlier; you talked about pulling God out. Do we talk about education? Well, 71 percent of those kids that drop out of high school don’t have a father in the house.

We talk about criminal justice reform. You’re five times more likely to go to prison or have a run-in with the police department if you don’t have a father in the house.

We talk about healthcare. You’re four times more likely to live in poverty if you don’t have a father in the house, which means you’re going to be sicker.

We don’t have to keep looking for the problem when we see it. Now it’s time for Americans of all color — I’m calling on my white brothers and sisters; I’m calling on my Spanish brothers and sisters: Get out of your bubbles. Go into the communities that are underserved, and let’s do what Jesus told us to do. (Applause.)

We can bridge this gap of fatherlessness. All we got to do is go out of our bubbles, go bridge the gap with these kids, teach them what you teach your kids. We all have rooms in our homes for a couple — couple of boys that come in and play with our sons and daughters. Let’s bridge the gap through love and through being what we all know we are. And that’s one America. God bless America.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Anybody like to speak? Please. (Laughter.) Anybody? Who goes after that? (Laughter.)

MR. DOUGLAS: Mr. President, I’d like to speak. My name is Will Douglas. I’m the owner — (applause) — thank you. I’m the owner of Crimson Care Pharmacy Group here in Dallas, Texas, and I’m also a Republican nominee for state representative here in Texas. (Applause.)

First of all, I just want to thank your administration, as well as Congress, for getting the PPP loans, speaking on behalf of my pharmacies, as well as a dozen or so other pharmacies here in the state of Texas that benefited from those. Because of the PPP loans, I was able to not have to let any of my employees go. And, in fact, I was able to hire additional employees, because our business model had changed overnight. No longer could customers come into our store; they were having to go through the drive-through, which created a whole litany of other — of other issues. So — so, for that, thank you.

The reason why — or the reason why I’m running for office is because, to me, capitalism is the most important thing. Capitalism has created this bastion of free market enterprise that we have here in Texas, with Dallas being the crown jewel. And I’m afraid that we’re going to lose that system that lifts people out of poverty.

I was on a call with — with leaders in the black community here in Dallas the other day, and one of them said something to me that that has stuck out — or that did stuck out, and I can’t let it go. And that’s that — I think he said it was an African proverb, but that a child that is not embraced by the village will burn that village down just to feel its warmth.

As Republicans, we have to find ways to make capitalism embrace the people that it’s left behind. Because if we don’t, the next time, it won’t just be villages and businesses that are being burned down, it will be the system that has lifted so many people out of poverty. (Applause.)

MR. SMITH: So, Mr. President, I’ll be — I’ll be short. I just was going to say that — thank you so much for your leadership. And I think the infrastructure that you’ve presented today is going to help a lot of people. It’s going to touch businesses like William. It’s going to keep community safe with the partnership of these law enforcement officials and the partnership with these ministers that we have and advocates, like Jon Ponder and Jack Brewer.

And so, over the next couple of weeks, I think the American people look forward to seeing the wealth of executive orders that you’re going to issue on justice, and on economic empowerment, as well as legislative asks that we’re going to make to the Hill.

But we all need your help — every locality, every group or organization — because it’s really about bringing this all together — together. That’s the secret ingredient. And it has to start at the local level. It starts at the local level because you are closer to the people. (Applause.) And we want to create that infrastructure and give you the tools to help you do what you do best, and that’s help people prosper.

So thanks again, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Ja’Ron. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you, Ja’Ron.

MR. FRAZIER: Mr. President, I’d like to say thank you for putting this together, putting this together in our state of Texas, and right here in Dallas.

A lot has happened in the last week. I’m one of your officers here in Dallas. I’m also one of your commissioners on your law enforcement administration with the Attorney General Barr. I can’t thank you — (applause).

I also have to say thank you to our great governor and our leadership that’s sitting right there. Without them, we don’t make this state — we don’t make this state great. (Applause.)

We’ve had some challenges because of what’s happened with COVID. But I want to give you an update of what we’ve done on the commission so far, where we’ve had nine full hearings throughout this entire time. That’s 35 panels, 125 witnesses, 190 written statements that are from individuals and interest groups. Our civil rights and community engagement organizations that we’ve asked to attend have no-showed. And those are the ones who can make the biggest difference when you’re putting together any type of reform, because they need to be the voice to come tell us what we need.

Law enforcement today is not what it was yesterday. In my 25 years, we’ve watched it propel to where our training is what we need the most. And with this bill, you’re going to see — or with this commission, you’re going to see so many reforms come out of it. It could not have come at a better time.

We can’t take back what happened in Minnesota. Not one officer that saw that — or federal officer that saw that — said that was the right thing that happened. That was — that was — it was — it was malice, and none of us — we condemn it. If I could have trade places with Mr. Floyd, I would, because I would die for everyone in this room, because that’s our job. And — (applause) — if I could trade places with any one of those officers who were there, I would have done that too, because I wouldn’t have let that happen.

And I have to say this to the citizens that we serve and the citizens that are listening: We see you, we hear you, we are with you, and we’re going to make this better. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

MR. PONDER: Mr. President, I just want to thank you for your leadership, echoed in the sentiments of some of my colleagues up here today. Thank you for your stance on criminal justice reform. Thank you for not forgetting about the forgotten people. Thank you for your commitment and your support to the men and women of law enforcement in this country. And it is so, so very important.

My name is Jon Ponder. I’m the CEO of a ministry called Hope for Prisoners. And what Hope for Prisoners does is we work with men, women, and young adults that are exiting different arenas of our judicial system to provide the supportive services to help them to be able to successfully reintegrate back into their home, back into the workplace, and ultimately back into the community.

And, Mr. President, thank you for coming out and attending the graduation ceremony for those 31 men and women who were released from prison. I cannot tell you the wind that was beneath their wings because you came and spoke life into them. And they’re on a whole new (inaudible) of life right now because of that. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Great job. Great job. That’s good. Great job.

MR. PONDER: One of the huge components — this is why I’m so supportive of your stance on law enforcement, because one of the key components to this reentry mechanism that we built up is our partnership with the police.

Our local sheriff at Las Vegas, Nevada, has given us close to 100 volunteer police officers that are mentoring and training men and women coming home from the prison system. And, sir, never before in the history of reentry, nowhere on this planet, to this magnitude, have the men and women from law enforcement come alongside formerly incarcerated folks and helped them to successfully reintegrate back into the community.

That is just further evidence that we serve a gigantic God that wants to bridge the gaps. (Applause.) And in that, that is why that is so important — because what God wants to do, the Bible calls it the “repairer of the breach.”

See, in communities across our country, there is such a disconnect between law enforcement and people from this segmented population. But when we’re able to come up with very creative ways to bring folks together — because, if you think about it, all across the country, in that disconnect, people do not trust police. Do you know why? Because they’re not in relationship with them. And in what relationship could you ever have trust, unless there’s life rubbing up against life in the spirit of complete transparency, that we have more in common than we have differences. And out of that transparency, build the relationship. And out of that relationship, it gets established trust.

It is something that Second Chance employers have absolutely fallen in love with. When you can tell — you know, tell the employer that the person that’s coming, that just came home from prison, that the mentor is a captain of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — that begins to just open doors. So I thank you for that.

Looking so very forward to, you know, the direction that we’re going. And on behalf of the men and women who are incarcerated, right now, in our prison system across the country, thank you for creating that atmosphere for them on the inside. But I know that you have dug the trenches to create an atmosphere for them once they get released. So I thank you for that.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jon. Very nice. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Very nice. Great job you’re doing, Jon. Great job.

Please.

DR. ARMSTRONG: Thank you, Mr. President, for putting this together today. I’ve learned so much from these men and women on this stage. I really appreciate that. Thank you for — you know, my name is Dr. Robin Armstrong, and I’ve — I’m a physician, and I’ve had an opportunity to treat many, many patients with the plague from China. And it’s been — (laughter) — and — with the COVID-19. And so we’ve had a lot of opportunity.

Thank you so much for breaking down some of the regulatory barriers in the FDA to allow us to use medications like hydroxychloroquine — (applause) — and to use medications like remdesivir and plasma infusions and all of those medications that are coming online now. Thank you so much for that.

You know, it’s been — I had the opportunity to — we had a nursing home in South Texas that had an outbreak of COVID-19. And we saw a lot of nursing facilities around the country that were having horrible outcomes and many deaths. And what we decided to do was commit to this facility and use a medication that you are familiar with, hydroxychloroquine. And we saw tremendous outcomes. (Applause.)

And it was — with the help of — with the help of some of our elected officials, our lieutenant governor, and a state senator, we were able to get access to those medications. But one of the more frustrating things I’ve seen has been the resistance of some of the regulatory agencies to be more open to using that.

I believe that — I certainly know that COVID-19 has significantly adversely affected the African American community. And I really believe that had there been more of an openness by the regulatory agencies, certainly by our medical boards all around the country to use medications like hydroxychloroquine, I believe more lives could have been saved.

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

DR. ARMSTRONG: And so I really — I want to thank you for bringing that issue to the forefront because I believe that it — it did give us more access to medications.

And so — and so, it was helpful for us. I believe it saved lives. I believe we could have saved more lives. But I just want to thank you for the work that’s been done.

You know, regulations — and you’ve really broke down a lot of barriers and regulations. And in the business community, certainly I would appreciate your — what you’ve done on attempting to repeal Obamacare and all the efforts you’ve made towards that. That’s certainly going to improve access to care.

And so, I just want to thank you for all you’ve done, but we need to do a lot of work going forward to make sure that we minister to those who are most vulnerable. And so we really appreciate that.

Thank you for all of the work that Secretary Carson has done and Secretary Azar has done and our Surgeon General here has done. Thank you for allowing them to have the freedom to be able to innovate and do things and look at the data and make decisions. And so we really appreciate that. And thank you so much.

And physicians are very supportive of you. We’re really supportive of everything you’ve done to help bring this very inexpensive treatment to the forefront. And so thank you very much. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Doctor. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Please.

CHIEF DOOLEY: Mr. President, thank you for this opportunity. I’m humbled to be here. I’m Chief Dooley, Glenn Heights Department. My experience is based on serving in a large department and a small department. And I can tell you that there is some phenomenal police work being done out here across the board — across the board.

But there’s also some inconsistencies in our procedures, our policies, our hiring practices, our termination practices, our disciplinary practices. And I strongly support the need for standardization based on best practices for all police departments in our country. (Applause.)

I thank the President for his foresight, for making these things come to happen. I know they’re coming, and we need it. We are a country of very good departments, but we need to be a country of great departments. And this message today is about the transition to greatness. We have an opportunity in this country to transform the future of law enforcement.

But we need to make sure that we have a relentless pursuit of dedication to public service at all times and at all levels, specifically national consistence policy on use of force — every chief would be in support of that; mandatory participation on a national use for database — use of force database — yes, it needs to happen; development of natural — national statements for discipline and termination of police officers — that needs to happen; development of a public — a police officer decertification database — yes, we need to be able to get those bad apples out of our industry so what happened will never happen again. (Applause.)

We need to enhance the police leadership and culture, and it starts at the top. We have some great leaders in this country, but we can always be better. We can always continuously improve. We need to implement improved recruitment, hiring, and promotion practices that are dedicated to having officers that are relentless- — relentlessly pursuing the service of not the community, but our community. It’s about — no, not dividing us, but uniting us and understand that we come from the community.

We need to enhance the ability for police agencies to implement effective discipline. We need to make sure that we have policies that establish a framework for a community policemen engagement that fully embraces that police officers serve, protect, and connect everyone in our community so that we all can become better.

We need training. This is not the time to defund police departments. (Applause.) When an organization or a business is struggling to be better, now is not the time to take away those resources. You provide them, and you hold them accountable, and you set expectations, and you — and you manage them so they can be better. That’s what you do. We need more training. We need more specific training that’s dedicated to service of those that — everyone we enact with on a daily basis: those that are homeless, those that suffer from mental illness, those that suf- — that need food. Okay, we need the training to be able to connect those people we interact with with those that can provide those services. That’s what we need in this country.

I want to end with just these few thoughts. I have a very simple saying to my officers — that we serve, protect, and connect, and together is better. And as I look around this room, I know that together we will become better, and we will take this country to great levels under the leadership of Donald Trump. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Thank you, very much. (Applause.) Thank you very much. That was beautiful.

So it’s time to say goodbye, but we’ll be back. We’ll be back. And I just want to thank — Bishop, you’ve been my friend for a long time, and I appreciate everything you’ve done and everything you’ve said.

BISHOP JACKSON: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: A great unifying source of strength and everything else, and I appreciate it very much.

BISHOP JACKSON: Thank you. Can I add one last thing before you leave?

THE PRESIDENT: Please. Please.

BISHOP JACKSON: I’m tired of people blaming the current administration and others in our generation. These problems began many years ago. (Applause.) And what has been exciting to me is it was the church that began the abolitionist movement.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

BISHOP JACKSON: It was the church and whites and blacks working together that started the NAACP. It didn’t have a black leader at the beginning of time. It was the church that led through in the Civil Rights movement. So I want to offer you my support in these listening sessions, in that the church needs to come together. I believe we can unify better than any group.

And what we’re looking for you to do is to give structural guidance, which you’re working on, and you’ve — you’ve already brought forth some amazing things. But I want to affirm that Democrats can’t kneel down and wear Kente cloth and stop black pain. Republicans can’t take some one-time act and stop black — black pain. But I believe we’ve got a man here who’s courageous enough to begin something that’s tough, and that we’re going to, this time, heal.

And so, I weep over this. I pray for you, as you know.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. I know.

BISHOP JACKSON: And we believe that we’re going to get it right.

I got to say one last thing. Being a — I lost my late wife a couple years ago. I found out, in dealing with her, that sometimes you just got to listen, feel her pain. If you try to fix it too early, you’re going to make a mistake. Your listening sessions are wise because it’s going to give that cathartic process a chance.

So I don’t want to take up too much time, sir, but I wanted to say that. The people here, I challenge you Christians — black, white, Asian: Let’s come together, and let’s provide a safety net, and then we’ll work with business, and then we’ll work along with the administration. But don’t push them out here up front, and say, “Fix it now. Fix it now. Fix it now. Fix it now,” because it’s never worked that way. Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Harry. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Pastor. Fantastic job you do. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

END

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