Difference between revisions of "Fen Consulate to Canada"

Latest revision as of 18:47, 25 April 2011

Lieutenant Nyota Nicholls, the ranking local representative of the United Federation of Planets, looked out the window quickly and wondered once again whose bright idea it was to set up the Fen’s consulate in Canada right across the street from the Czech Embassy. Then she shook her head to clear it; this wasn’t the time for idle thoughts. Mr. Keffer wanted to see all the senior staff in his office - a troubleshooter from Great Justice had just arrived.

The Fen Consulate to Canada is a typical example of a Fenspace Convention diplomatic posting in a friendly country. It isn’t a full embassy,^[1] but the Head of Mission is part of the diplomatic community.

The Fen Consulate to Canada

Important People at the Consulate

In order of rank in the Consulate, the senior staff members are:

Marcus Keffer

Head of Mission. Like so many of Fenspace’s diplomats, he’s from the Interstellar Alliance.

Mr. Keffer is the sole official Fiver representative to Canada. He’s away from the consulate, in meetings with other diplomats, so often that some of the other senior staff joke that he doesn’t really exist.

Lt. Nyota Nicholls

Deputy Chief of Mission. Senior Trekkie representative. Nyota Nicholls is very obviously an Uhura fan, and she rocks the TOS minidress. She herself is currently unmodded and only really looks like either of the character’s actresses in that she’s an attractive black woman in a TOS minidress. She’s from an upper-middle class family from a suburb of Philadelphia. Her parents are retired SMOFs from before the wave who are at Utopia Planitia because they were about to take the Trek biomod plunge to overcome some medical difficulties.

Jedi Knight Lou Chadwick

Military attaché. Warsie representative. During the Boskone War, Knight Chadwick was awarded the Kalidor Crescent for repeatedly interposing his own X-Wing between a Boskonian battlewagon and a Galactic Republic medevac ship, until the Warsie ship could escape. Given his choice of assignments with the award, he asked for Earth-side service, claiming he missed being able to take off for a weekend and go fishing. Lou was assigned to the consulate in Ottawa and was offered psychological counseling for PTSD, which he’s taken advantage of more often than he’s gone fishing.

Tara Gale

Legal attaché. Senior Senshi representative. A tall raven-haired beauty originally from Coventry, Tara Gale still has a noticeable English accent despite having earned her law degree at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She’s in the minority of her faction in that her "grrl-power" fandom is spy-fi, not magical-girl; Ms. Gale wears a catsuit to combat, not a fuku.

Marie-Louise Garneau

Commercial attaché; coordinates joint Fen/Canadian economic-development and humanitarian-relief efforts with CIDA and DFAIT, respectively. Blue Blazer Irregular #841, otherwise a Generalist. Mme. Garneau has quite a reputation among the Canadian Blue Blazers. While being knowledgeable in economic theory and market forces, many of her commercial evaluations seem to draw upon factors that have no historical or factual bearing on the market. Oftentimes, she will base economic predictions based upon esoteric data points, including the extended meteorological forecast of the region that a market is centered on, the demographic percentages of populace hair or eye color (for products having nothing to do with personal hygiene or beauty supplies; in such cases, she dismisses this information as “irrelevant”); and even the Body Mass Index of the head of the Treasury or Exchequer department. Observers educated in financial and economic theory observing her can draw no easy ties between these data points and her conclusions on a market, leading them to refer to her as the “Voodoo Economist,” and even to go so far as to claim that it is an elaborate smokescreen disguising her less-than-optimum ability as an economist. (The fact that Mme. Garneau is one-quarter Haitian whose great-grandmother was a practicing voudoun mambo until her death contribute to these allegations.) Mme. Garneau takes these claims in stride, cheerfully inviting her critics to « Mordez mon brillant cul métallique ! »^[2] and lets her record speak for itself. Both Marie-Louise Garneau and her daughter Marie-France are fluent in both French and English.

Aoi Shatsu

Scientific attaché. Junior Trekkie representative. Aoi Shatsu, a scientist within the Daystrom Institute, originally hails from Kyoto. He could do a lot better, but prefers not to stand out, instead diligently performing his duty while trying his best not to rock the boat. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered” is his motto for life. He used to be something of a cocky ass in college ... which changed after breaking his jaw in a bar fight. He holds a degree in metaphysical biology – a field few if any have even heard of – and is generally regarded as a competent researcher. He came to Fenspace at the suggestion of his brother Akai, who had already joined Starfleet’s security division. His most noted research achievement with the Daystrom Institute was entitled “Influences of a subject's consciousness on the effects of biomodification strain handwavium.”

Weiliang Yeong

Agricultural attaché. Independent Faction representative. One of the Chinese Fen aboard the now-famous “Last Train from Beijing,” Weiliang Yeong quickly settled down to run a farm on Ganymede. The Boskone War changed that - when some of his produce didn’t get to the markets on Earth and in cislunar, he volunteered to serve for the duration. His lack of combat ability quickly became apparent, so he transferred from Great Justice to the Fenspace Convention's consular service. (As he put it, “I'm in the civil service to free up someone else for military service.”) His hands-on experience with farming made him the closest the consular service had at the time to an agricultural expert, and he was posted to the Canadian consular office as the agricultural attaché. Wei is particularly interested in rescuing heritage seed strains from transplanted areas. His English is heavily accented.

John R. Ericson

Press attaché. Generalist. John R. Ericson is a man so adept at fading into the background that even his friends and co-workers sometimes call him J. Random Hacker. (His first two initials certainly don't help.) He’s a member of the Hacker Underspace.

Brooke Derby

Chief of Security. Junior Senshi representative. Brooke Derby is in charge of the “Embassy Sammies”. She’s an attractive woman of Celtic origin with something of a reputation for wearing denim in all possible forms.^[3] She still has a denim furisode kimono in her closet from an event at the Japanese embassy, artfully bleached to form cloud patterns. (Admittedly, that's very fine, very expensive denim, but still...) There are a few rumors that Brooke was the recipient of a Senshi emergency biomod during the Boskone War, but the other Embassy Guard Sammies are close-lipped about this. As a nod to her other fandom (and because Canadian winters are too cold for the standard-issue abbreviated seifuku), she often wears a brown “duster” coat - made from denim rather than the usual leather.

Marie-France Garneau

Unofficial "good luck charm." Daughter of commercial attaché Marie-Louise Garneau, Marie-France is the youngest person living in the consulate. She attends junior-high school in Ottawa and stays out of politics as much as possible. Marie-France has seen factional rivalries first-hand, and hates them; she’s almost stereotypically Generalist.

Notes

1. ↑ The Convention doesn’t have the resources to maintain embassies in every nation on Earth, or even every large nation
2. ↑ This has lead to much online speculation that Mme. Garneau is an AI.
3. ↑ Although Brooke isn't stupid about it - she usually starts with the European Space Agency's ESquad denim and handwaves that for even better protection.