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[Fluff]I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
07-29-2015, 04:43 AM
Posted by: OldManTom
In: /r/IAMA
My name is Tom Rutley. I dare say that name rings a bell if you've been following the news feeds from up here, which is part of the reason I'm doing this AMA and all of the reason I'm posting from an undisclosed location somewhere in deep space. Anyway, a bit of biographical information.
I'm one of the older First Fen, born in 1970 in Leicestershire, England. Before going Up I flew Chinook transport helicopters for the RAF, serving in the Balkans, Iraq and finally Afghanistan before being badly injured when my aircraft was shot down. While aimlessly drifting along trying to figure out what to do with myself, I found some handwavium in a barn full of junk left to me by my late godfather and decided to build myself a spaceship. I went Up in 2008, and became a freelance trader and charter pilot
When the Boskone War came, I was attached to a Great Justice Taskforce called "Bravo Four-One" and did basically the same thing I'd been doing in the RAF, but in space. Apparently I was good at it, because they commissioned me as a Troubleshooter. I've mostly worked as a liaison with Earthside law-enforcement since, particularly with the UK's Extraordinary Events Agency. And then I got assigned to investigate some unlicensed 'wavetech in a pizzeria in New Jersey, and the rest is current affairs.
Ask me anything, within reason.
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Posted by: ValkyriesRide2012
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
So, now that all the duck-shaped horses are done with, what's your best 'No Shit, there I was Story'?
Anyone who's been involved with GJ for as long as us always has a sheaf of good ones.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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Posted by: OldManTom
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
Other than the routine rogue 'wavetech report that turned into a huge kidnapping and child exploitation manhunt, you mean? Definitely got to be the Hitler Clone Incident.
A couple of months before the Fazbear's Pizza investigation, the German federal police served a search warrant on the headquarters of a far-right organisation in response to an anonymous phone call from someone claiming to be held captive there. They turned out to be extremely well-armed, probably from Boskone sources, and eventually GSG-9 had to be called in to storm the building with a couple of armoured vehicles. That much you likely heard about in the papers, of course, but what you didn't hear about was who that anonymous captive turned out to be.
He was a bioroid clone of Adolf Hitler. And yes, he'd made the call. Apparently the last thing he remembered before going online was being in the trenches in 1918 when his sector got hit by mustard gas, and they'd given him an extremely detailed briefing on the Third Reich. These guys weren't your standard Holocaust denier school of far-right nutjob; oh, no, they thought the Holocaust was Nazi Germany's finest accomplishment! To the surprise of everyone, especially his fan club, Bioroid Hitler thought this was the biggest load of insane horseshit he'd ever heard and refused to believe he would ever sign off on it. They'd resorted to locking him in the basement while they tried to figure out what they did wrong, but he found an old phone they'd forgotten about down there and managed to get in touch with the police.
Now, so far as I'm aware this is the first time we've had a Pinocchio Syndrome case with an actual historical figure, and the Germans were still trying to work out what the hell to do with him when word got back to the local consulate. GJ's standing offer to confiscate and 'dispose of' any unlicensed 'wavetech no questions asked saved the day once again, both for the German police and for the poor sod who'd called them; I don't think anyone wanted to think to hard about the ramifications of this scenario, legal, existential or otherwise.
I picked him up from a nearby airfield and flew straight to L5 for probably the strangest emergency admission Space Patrol's witness protection team have ever had to perform. I was his primary point of contact for the first few days, and we got to know one another pretty well. We talked about a lot of things; about was fought in stupid ways for stupid reasons, about how easy it is to fall into wrongdoing when you're dealt a bad hand and looking for someone to blame, about how nobody is born evil.
He's still in Fenspace somewhere, with a new identity and much better taste in facial hair. Doing alright for himself, in fact, and we still exchange the odd email.
So, yeah. I met Hitler before he was famous, and he was an ordinary bloke.
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Posted By: CharlieCat477
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
And who's the craziest mofo you ever ran into in the war? On our side, that is, not the friggin' black hats.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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Posted by: OldManTom
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
You realise of course that you're asking this of a guy who went Up with a coilgun made from a 4.5-inch naval artillery piece bolted to his ship, right?
But since you ask, I think for me the winner has to be the two volunteers recently discharged from the Royal Scots Guards, who decided they ought to make an effort to show up with more than a few changes of clothes and the very occasional rusty AK smuggled home as a souvenir to bring to the war effort and somehow managed to show up in a Jackal. No, I don't know how they got it out of the motor pool either and yes, we did return it to the MoD. The Dutch Uzis, US Army M-16s and assorted other buckshee hardware they'd "borrowed" over the years and dug out for us we kept, however.
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Posted by: TomCatgirl {VERIFIED Purple Heart-Purple Flair}
In: RE: Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
Everyone's got one: what's your best Catgirl-Machine-Catgirl story? Mine's Public Record. *points to flair*
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
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Posted by: OldManTom
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
Actually, I seem to be about the only one who doesn't have one, or at least not for standard catgirls. The most I ever saw of the inside of a Boskone ship or outpost was the hangar bay after I'd blown the airlock open with the main gun, and it was usually the follow-up team who shipped the liberated captives out.
Though it does seem that there's at least one variant of the Catgirling Machine out there that's configured for bioroids. I have one hell of a story involving them, over and above the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza incident, but that story must wait until the lawsuit from Sony Music is sorted out. Suffice it to say that that's one con the family and I won't be invited back to in a hurry!
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Posted by: TomboyOrion
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
Like me, you spend a lot of time Earthside compared to most Fen. I've been meaning to ask, what's your favourite 'wait, what?' story involving Earther misconceptions of Fen?
Just to be clear, I'm asking for the stories you laughed at then and now, not the ones where you wanted to punch an idiot or let Barb do anything she wanted to them.
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Posted by: OldManTom
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
"He can't be Fen? He likes rambling!" was the one that made me laugh hardest. (Rambling being a slightly outdated British colloquialism for hiking.) I mean, maybe I should have been offended at the stereotyping, but the bloke saying it sounded so much like a certain character from London's Burning when he found out a colleague of his was gay -"How can he be gay? He likes football!" being the exact quote- that I couldn't help but fall about laughing.
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Posted by: TomboyOrion
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
Hehe. Wandering all over the place because 'I wanted to see what's over there' is kinda our thing.
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Posted by: r.donaldson
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
You're getting to be pretty famous in your own right, at least in certain circles. How does your family handle that?
--
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"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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Posted by: OldManTom
In: RE: I am Boskone War Veteran, Great Justice Troubleshooter and Adoptive Dad Tom Rutley. AMA
Oh, now there's a question! Mum and Dad are often bewildered but very proud of me. My brother... Well, he gave me a right earful about being mistaken for me in a Brubek's the other day, but I don't think he's too jealous; he gets paid more than I do and hasn't been shot at since he swore off married women.
(And if the chap who bought "me" several pints is reading this, if I see Dave first I'll be happy to give him a right slap upside the head on your behalf.)
As for my three boys, they all cope amazingly well but I think they find it kind of trying. Mikey put it best, I think; "If I have to be famous, I want to be famous for being me, not for being Tom Rutley's son."
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