[Start]
Hey <PlayerName>.
# Hey Mirfak. You're Sovereign, right? {Sovereign}

[Sovereign]
Is it the hair?

# Can I ask you something? {Hub}
# I get it. {Hub}
# I don't get it. {DontGetIt}

[DontGetIt]
Sovereign have a white hair thing going on these days, dunno if you noticed.

# But you have no hair. {NoHair}
# Can I ask you something? {Hub}

[NoHair]
That's the joke. Welcome to the joke. It's bad here now.
# Can I ask you something? {Hub}

[Hub]
Of course.

# Is Sovereign a company or a government? {Company}
# Are Sovereign evil? {Evil}
# Did you join, or were you kinda born into it? {Join}
# What are Sovereign doing here? {DoingHere}
# Sovereign seem to kill a lot. {Kill}

[DoingHere]
Same as everyone. They're after the acid.
=It makes the best batteries in the galaxy, and Sovereign love to have the best thing in the galaxy.

# (Something else) {Hub}

[Join]
I signed up, it's all on me (laughs). There's a difference between living on a Sovereign world and actually working for the company - no-one gets in for free.

# Yeah, I heard they're selective. {Brutal}

[Brutal]
Yep. That's the slogan, right? "If you're good at what you do, you know who we are. If you're the best, you already work here."

# And were you? The best? {TheBest}
# What did you do for them? {Job}

[TheBest]
I'm pretty good.

# (Back) {Brutal}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[Job]
Encryption. I was a mathematician, figuring out new ways to make comms secure. I made secrets more secret.

# Tell me a secret. {Secret}
# (Back) {Brutal}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[Company]
It's a company. For-profit, legally incorporated on every civilised world.
=I get why you're asking, though - they're big, right?
=Most governments get one planet, Sovereign has 35. First company to rank in the galaxy's biggest militaries.
=It's not a government, but it sure makes governments nervous.

# (Something else) {Hub}

[Evil]
(Laughs) Sovereign are... amoral. They make decisions based on profit, and they're brutally efficient.
=They've done a lot of good, toppled a lot of nasty regimes - most of the worlds they operate were in a real bad place before.
=But that's just coincidence. They did it because it adds up, and they do a lot of bad things when they add up too.

# Who runs it, though? {WhoRuns}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[WhoRuns]
Alright, we're getting into my conspiracy theories here, so you've gotta stop me when this gets too dumb for you.

# Nothing is too dumb for me. {Conspiracy}
# This is already too dumb for me. {Hub}
# Go on. {Conspiracy}

[Conspiracy]
OK, so who runs Sovereign? Officially, the board of directors.
=But they have to do what the stakeholders want, or they'll be voted off and replaced.
=That's not a theory, that happens all the time.
=So they have literally no autonomy. They just execute the will of the stakeholders, no matter what.
=So the stakeholders run Sovereign, right?

# Right. {Right}
# I sense this is setting me up for a 'wrong'. {Wrong}
# This is already too dumb for me. {Hub}

[Right]
Wrong. Well, partially.

# (Continue) {Stakeholders}
# I saw that coming but didn't want to break your flow. {Stakeholders}

[Wrong]
Right.

# (Continue) {Stakeholders}
# I'm so good at this.{Stakeholders}

[Stakeholders]
Because the people who buy stock in a company only really care about that stock growing.
=There are millions of them, with a million different ideologies and agendas, but when it comes to how the majority votes it's one hundred percent predictable: maximise profit.

# (Continue) {HumanWill}
# This doesn't seem dumb but it also doesn't seem like much of a conspiracy. {HumanWill}
# This is dumb. {Hub}

[HumanWill]
The point is, that's not really a human will. There are lots of human wills involved, but in aggregate they act like a machine, or an unthinking force.
=It's just profit, for its own sake, zero other considerations. And that's what effectively runs Sovereign.
=No one person, not even a group of people, but a cold, unthinking force that emerges from their collective behaviour and the structure they operate in.

# (Continue) {Scary}
# This wasn't too dumb for me before but it is too dumb for me now. {Hub}

[Scary]
And what's scary about that is- I mean that's just scary.
=But what's scariER is, that means the company doesn't have to act in a way that benefits ANYONE involved in it.
=A director has to order an invasion because she'll be voted out if she doesn't.
=Her subordinate has to put people he cares about in harms way to get it done.
=Those people have to do terrible things.
=And no-one, no human, wants this to happen. The structure wants it to happen, and the humans have to obey. No-one can afford to lose their job.
=They're enslaved by a construct they created, an artificial intelligence that runs on the meat of a trillion human minds.

# Do you have a drinks menu? {Drinks}
# This still isn't dumb enough for me, keep going. {AI}
# This wasn't too dumb for me before but it is too dumb for me now. {Hub}

[AI]
In fact if you think about it, it's almost the opposite of an AI.
=With an AI, a human provides the goal and the computer is the intelligence that tries to solve for that.
=With Sovereign, the structure has decided the goal and it's using humans as the intelligence to solve for it.
=It's all the danger of a rogue AI with none of the limitations: humans are brilliant and adaptable minds that can't be foiled by the ways you can outwit a machine.
=And it's taking over the galaxy.

# Well, that's ruined my day. {Hub}
# Well, that was a... theory. {Hub}
# What can we do about it? {WhatCan}

[WhatCan]
I became a bartender.

# Really though. {ReallyHelp}

[ReallyHelp]
Honestly, this is right here is helping. The resistance.
=It'll be a disaster if Sovereign takes Castor's Rest, and they win any straight fleet fight here.
=Single, rogue infiltrators getting inside their ships and screwing with them, they're not used to that.
=No shortage of parties who'll pay you to screw with Sovereign, so keep screwing with Sovereign.

# (Something else) {Hub}

[Drinks]
(Laughs)

# (Something else) {Hub}

[Kill]
Yep. Oh boy do they kill a lot. Ask me why I left.

# Why did you leave? {Leave}
# No, I don't think I will. {Hub}

[Leave]
They tried to have me killed.

# Why? {WhyKilled}
# How did you survive? {Survive}
# Leave anyone behind? {Miss}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[Survive]
Oh, I ran. (Laughs) No cool fight. A friend saw the order come down, she told me, I just bolted.
=I've seen these people work, it happens FAST.
=To date I don't know how close the cleaner was, I just jumped in my pod and never looked back.

# (Back) {Leave}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[Miss]
Sure. Lotta friends. Mostly my folks, still working on getting them out.
=But there aren't a lot of great places to go. I'm here in the Rest because it's as far from Sovereign as I could get, but it ain't exactly stable.
=And hey look, they're here too now.

# (Back) {Leave}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[WhyKilled]
They thought I was leaking secrets. I wasn't, but they don't need much to issue a kill order.
=NOW I am, now I'm leaking that shit to anyone.

# Why did they even suspect? {Suspect}
# Tell me a secret. {Secret}
# (Back) {Leave}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[Suspect]
You work in encryption, you send things encrypted. If you're good at it, they can't crack it. To them that's suspicious.
=I was like: you literally pay me to do this. And they were like- well they didn't say anything, they just sent someone to kill me.
# (Back) {Leave}
# (Something else) {Hub}

[Secret]
PainBurgers are vegan. No real meat in em anymore.
# (Something else) {Hub}

