2001-08-12 - 11:52 p.m.

Planetarion: Sitting In The Commander's Chair

Thanks to the demands of her new job, poor Lily has to get up at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. I'm usually a sleep-til-noon sort of guy but recently I've been asking her to wake me up when she leaves for work, which is usually about 6:30 a.m.

However, this morning she woke me up with some surprising news.

"I've been talking with Warlock and Wicca," she said, "and I think that you are going to be Galactic Commander by the end of the day."

Warlock and Wicca are a husband and wife team from Holland and they both have a planet in our galaxy. They considered themselves good friends of Sharon's, but had become increasingly dismayed by the irrational and vindictive way she was behaving. I'd been getting the feeling that Sharon's refusal to take down the ugly galaxy picture might be the last straw for them.

So I dragged myself out of bed and got on to IRC. Wicca and Warlock were both online - it was 6 a.m. in Frown Town but it was 11 a.m. in Amsterdam.

Once I got talking to the two of them, I discovered that they were upset about more than just the disturbing galaxy picture.

This Planetarion round is coming to an end, and most players have already made arrangements for where they are going to be next round. I already have a galaxy all picked out - and all of my supporters are going with me. This is going to leave Sharon with essentially a gutted galaxy since the lot of us represent 6 of her top 7 players.

Well, Wicca was tired of all the in-fighting so she was going to form her own galaxy as well and stock it with her friends. Nothing wrong with that.

However, when Sharon found out about it, she went crazy. She and Wicca had a terrible fight in the IRC channel and Sharon said many mean, personal things to Wicca. Poor Wicca is a very sensitive person, and she was deeply shocked that Sharon could turn on her like that.

Actually, I saw this one coming from a long way off. Sharon just cannot tolerate another woman having any kind of authority. She had fought with the other two women in the galaxy (Lily being one of them) and I was wondering when she would start on Wicca.

Wicca and her husband Warlock stated their intention to cast their votes for me instead of Sharon.

For the better part of the last two weeks the vote had stood deadlocked at Sharon 15, Uberhamster 10. With Wicca and Warlock on my side, the vote would then stand at 13-12. Since the Galactic Commander needs a simple majority of 13, I would still be one vote short, right? Not exactly.

There was another longtime player in the galaxy named Wolfman. He'd been with the galaxy since the beginning and had been an officer for most of the last three rounds. He'd been friends with Sharon a long time, but he, too, was dismayed at the way she had been acting. He had told me that if I could get two more votes, he would be the swing vote that carried me over the top. If I couldn't get those last two votes, he didn’t see the point in switching his vote because the round was almost over anyway.

Wicca and Warlock changed their votes, and then I got in touch with Wolfman. In typical fashion he pulled a little prank. He changed his vote to himself. This caused both Sharon and I to have only twelve votes. Immediately the officers disappeared from our galaxy screen. Since the GC appoints the officers, when there is no GC, there are no officers.

However, Wolfman soon relented and cast his vote for me.

Finally, after all this time, I was the Galactic Commander. It wasn't a position that I had really sought, but in many ways I felt that Sharon had been forcing my hand every step along the way.

However, I couldn't relish my new power; I had to get busy. The first thing I did was re-appoint all the officers. Even though I had been leading an insurrection against her, Sharon had still left me as Minister of Communication. Since I was now GC I appointed my friend Cocky as MoC. Until a few days ago he had been Minister of War, but Sharon had peevishly removed him from the post after another one of their squabbles. All the other ministers I left the same, even the new Minister of War, Postal Pete, who wasn't voting for me.

The next order of business was changing that damn ugly galaxy picture. I'd thought for a while about what I wanted up there, but I didn't have a large library of images to choose from. However, I was cheered by the fact that almost nothing could be worse than what we already had.

I've always loved the Aliester Crowley Tarot deck, so I decided to choose and image from that. I’d wanted to have car #19, the Sun, the card of victory, but I couldn't find an image for it. So I settled for card #21 instead - The Universe. An appropriate choice for a space game, I felt.

When Sharon and Johnny discovered that she had been ousted as GC, they were very angry. Thankfully they mainly expressed their anger by storming out of the chat room instead of yelling insults at everyone.

I felt a pang, though. I knew Sharon would be very hurt by losing the leadership of "her" galaxy, but she practically brought this on herself by systematically alienating people who supposedly were her friends.

In the evening some of Sharon's less-toxic supporters began complaining about the new galaxy picture. It's too boring, they said. Then Johnny and Terror joined the adolescent chorus. Terror began mock-weeping, saying that we'd taken away his "girlfriend." Well, Terror can be funny occasionally.

I was able to appease the restless natives by changing the galaxy pic yet again. This time the image was from the cover of a porn DVD - of all things! It was spaced-themed, too, so everyone seemed to like that. Half-naked woman have charms to soothe the savage PA player.

The question is: what do I do now? Historically, there is a pattern where successful revolutionaries consolidate their power in a reign of blood. Should I attack and destroy Sharon, Johnny and Terror?

It sure is tempting since they've all been such a pain, but I think that moderation is a better path to follow. My grip on the reigns of power (such as they are!) is tenuous at best.

I was looking at the vote tally tonight and it was 14-11 in my favor. A two vote margin of victory is definitely better than one, but where did that extra vote come from? The extra vote was from Postal Pete who has steadfastly refused to change his vote ever since the beginning, even though we belonged to related alliances. Why did he change sides now? I think the explanation is simple: he just likes being on the winning side.