December 23rd, 2020 CE
Office of the Prime Minister
Government Center One
2 Palace Square, Nuvrenon, Tavaris
“Akrona’s tits, I knew I should have gotten a PrimPhone!” The Tavari Prime Minister threw her Cluster-produced phone and threw it across her office right at the wall. It dented the wall when it struck - in fact, the phone was stuck in the wall, like some sort of Fusonese throwing star.
“I mean, Ademar fucking Uktavas, what the hell is this?” Without her phone in her hand anymore, Žarís Nevran Alandar was free to pinch the bridge of her nose, which she did at great risk of causing a nosebleed. “We’ve been planning this for years and they just… put it on Pigeon?”
“Yes, ma’am,” was all Nama Oren Kantoreš, the Minister of Defense, could say.
“Well… then that’s it, I guess. Secret’s out.” She slammed both of her hands on her hips. “Oh, hell, the Akronists are gonna know about it now and we’re gonna have to deal with that whole deal.” Žarís angrily sighed. “Well… I don’t even know what to say or do at this point. How’s… how’s the Rodokan settlement doing?” One single, sardonic laugh escaped the Prime Minister’s mouth before she shut it again; a thin, angry line.
“Lõunasadam is up and running, actually,” said the Minister of Defense in a brighter tone. We’ve got 500 people there now, and we project 50% growth by the end of next year.”
Another bitter laugh. “Well, that’s great. That’s just great. I knew we should have paid more attention to what the Aponivians were doing down there. You all called me paranoid, how could Aponivians ever be doing anything malicious? And look at it. It wasn’t even real Aponivians down there, it was Cluster. And… and… Serenitech?” Žarís laughed again. She had to laugh, because if she didn’t, she would burst a vessel in her brain with rage and die. “I mean, shit! Hey, hey, let’s leak the Meagharian chocolate thing. Or, or, how we sold weapons to multiple sides in Arkia. And then we sent our soldiers there. Fuck it. Nothing matters anymore.”
“Ma’am, are you… okay?” The Minister of Defense didn’t know how to make her voice sound, because she had never expressed empathy before.
“I just can’t believe we could be so stupid. How all of us, this whole operation, could be so stupid. How could this happen? How could we let this happen?”
“It was bound to happen. It was bound to. How could we keep such a basic fact as the shape of the planet a secret from people in this day and age, when they all have GPS and gyroscopes in their pockets. And we can’t put the Raonite back in the bag, now can we? So we just have to move on.” The Minister of Defense’s voice changed pitch and tone several times as she tried to convey the right emotion, whatever it was.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. But I’m just so pissed. And I tell you, that defense treaty is not getting renewed, I will tell you that.” Žarís walked back to her desk and sat down. Her phone was still jutting out of the wall directly across from her. “Well, okay. We need to get the communications team in here now, because we’re going to have to explain things to people. They need to know that plans are in place but that no one is hopping on a rocket and going there tomorrow. And…” The Prime Minister sighed. “Get in touch with IT Procurement… I’m going to need a new cell phone.”
“I’ll tell them PrimPhone, ma’am,” the Minister of Defense said with a professional nod. She turned and left the room, along with her retinue of staff. After they were outside the Prime Minister’s office, the Minister of Defense said in a low voice to her staff, “You know, I hear she had a hell of a serve in volleyball.”
In Stunning Announcement, Major Tech Companies Reveal International Conspiracy to Cover Up Shape of Planet
WENDAKE, Aponivia-- In what can only be described as an urth-shattering moment of history, during a product keynote presentation today, the global technology company Cluster, based in Aponivia and parent of Goggle and Pigeon, announced and then provided evidence that the planet Urth is not a globe at all. It is a cylinder. Everything you have ever been taught about the world is a lie.
If you need to take a moment to process, that’s fine. Everyone does.
The reports have since been confirmed by recalcitrant but sparsely-detailed statements from various world governments. “The Tavari government is aware and has been aware that the planetary topology as presented in the Cluster statement is correct,” was the terse statement released today from the office of Prime Minister Žarís Nevran Alandar. Among other countries to have issued confirmations include Axdel, Great Morstaybishlia, Tretrid, and even the Government of Vakarastan-in-Exile.
According to an unnamed senior source in the Office of the Prime Minister, former Prime Minister Šano Šonai Tuvria even resigned due to his staunch disagreement with the secrecy surrounding the information. “This really is a world order,” said the source, whose identity is withheld because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “Every country that’s been to space knows about this, and they have this whole agreement of strict secrecy. Cluster blew it out of the water.”
As described by Cluster, the world is a “cylinder of infinite length,” meaning that it has neither an upper end nor a lower end. The sun and the moon do, in fact, orbit the Urth, and not the other way around as we all have been taught as the truth for centuries. And there are other suns and moons too, orbiting around other “sections” of this infinite cylinder. The governments of the world were aware of them too, Cluster said, and had already discovered and named the sections to our immediate north and south: Rotantica and Sempiternica.
There are even settlements on Rotantica, which is separated from our world by walls of ice that are hundreds of kilometers high and thousands of kilometers thick. Our world has a name, too: Aequatorica. And Cluster has announced that it will help people get from Aequatorica to Rotantica and perhaps someday, even beyond.
“It is time that the truth is revealed,” said Maximilian Quinn, the CEO of Cluster. “Our governments have kept this from us, all while they have been able to make secret plans about plans for these new worlds where they benefit, not all of us. So today, Cluster, and our friends at Serenitech, are democratizing the process.”
According to Cluster, travel to Rotantica is only possible by the use of spacecraft, since it is not possible to travel either through or atop the walls of ice between the sections. The ice is believed to be caused by gaps in the coverage of the various small suns that orbit Urth, and they are “guarded” by vicious animals that “cannot be neutralized,” according to Cluster. The name they used for these animals? “Giants.”
And in case you thought things couldn’t get any more strange, Cluster had more announcements to make about Rotantica. Primarily, that it is home to animals that are very similar to dinosaurs, in the flesh and blood. Some of them are dangerous, Cluster warned, especially in the seas, but they have already established a region of the world that is reasonably protected from predatory or dangerous animals.
It is impossible to even try to predict how the world is going to respond to this. Nothing like this has ever occurred in history, unless there are other massive global conspiracies yet uncovered. It is likely, though, that this subject is going to be in the news for a long, long time.