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by Unplannedland. . 41 reads.

The Lone Bugler Issue #1 - The History of RON



Welcome

WELCOME to Issue 1 of The Lone Bugler, a new paper that has been launched to provide the residents of The South Pacific with fresh, uncensored investigative journalism covering a wide range of topics.

The History of RON - an exclusive report

FOLLOWING the publication of an article in the Southern Onion about the supression of RON’s victory in a recent election, The Lone Bugler has decided to do some research into the history of RON, as little is known about this elusive figure. Something that is not widely known is that RON is in fact a robot, and this fact was recently broken to the public by a friend of The Lone Bugler on the South Pacific’s RMB.

This fact was discovered when one of our reporters was doing some digging in TSP's archives*, and to their surprise they came across a reel of tape in the corner covered in dust marked “RON”, with no date marked on the outside.

The Lone Bugler team has since watched and analysed the tape and we have digitally backed it up and Linkuploaded it to the internet for your viewing pleasure. We have concluded that due to the music in the background and the text at the end, it is clear that this is an edited copy, and the original has probably been lost or destroyed.

Due to the fact that no date is marked on the tape, it is difficult to tell the age of this footage, but we estimate that it originates from the mid-20th century. This was when RON was first being tested (he was created as an election-counting robot**), and it seems that the creators opted to include the then-widely-available tree-destroying circuit, connected to a large laser beam emitter in RON’s dome. It seems likely that RON’s tree-destroying circuit was soon disconnected in order to prevent accidental damage to RON’s surroundings and nearby people.

As well as being an election-counting robot, RON was also created with the purpose of being a mascot for the “Re-Open Nominations” option in TSP’s ubiquitous elections (hence his name), and the archives even contain newspaper reports from the time which describe RON physically appearing at campaign meetings and election counts. However, after only a few years, RON ceased to appear in public, all media mentions of RON ceased, and the “Re-Open Nominations” option stayed on election polls without a mascot to promote it.

Having further analysed archived media reports and newspaper excerpts from the time, the Lone Bugler team has concluded that a number of vague excuses and cover-ups and a joint TSP government and media campaign to push RON out of the public eye by focusing all media output exclusively on the upcoming 1961 TSP Christmas Ball ensured that RON’s origin was swiftly forgotten by the public, with subsequent generations believing that RON was a simple poll option and nothing more.

From the day of RON’s sudden and forced departure from the public sphere all the way up to the present day, RON’s whereabouts have been largely unknown, although there have been rumours that RON is being kept in a cupboard on the upper floor of a TSP government building. One of The Lone Bugler’s inside sources re-stated this rumour to us a few weeks ago, and one of our brave reporters decided to venture out and see if they could discover RON’s location for themselves. We will not go into detail about the process by which they went about doing this in order to protect our tactics, but our reporter managed to sneak past a room in the upper floor of the Fudgetopia Government Centre in which they claim to have seen RON in a cupboard with the door open. Unfortunately, they only managed to sneak one quick shot for fear of being caught by TSP security services. Our reporter saw RON being attended to by a TSP employee (it seems that despite TSP government’s seemingly uncaring attitude towards RON, they still conduct maintenance checks and that RON is at least sometimes allowed out of his cupboard). Our reporter also claims to have heard RON complaining of stiffness in his legs to the government employee.


A photograph of RON as taken by our reporter.

Whilst robot rights advocates will be shocked by these discoveries, we are not aware of the degree of RON’s sentience and whether or not RON is capable of feeling emotions, so we feel it is too early to make a judgement on that ground. However, we believe these discoveries clearly show the level of secrecy and opaqueness in TSP’s governement and the degree to which they are willing to deceive their citizens. Whatever your opinions on RON and TSP in general, it is clear that today a great secret has been unravelled.

*The archives are located in the basement of a TSP government building and are not normally accessible to the public. Luckily, someone left the door open and we were able to get in.

**According to documents found in the archives, back in this part of the 20th century, elections had to be independently counted by each region, as NationStates had extremely primitive poll capabilities (the technology was mainly based on punch cards and carrier pigeons), so it was up to each government to display the results of each poll on the regional page. RON was created to count up the results and automatically beam them to the NS back-end computers, to be displayed once the poll had concluded.

Stay tuned for further issues of The Lone Bugler, and remember to always stay vigilant.

Unplannedland

Edited:

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