Difference between revisions of "Defending Elysium"
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|cover=DefendingElysium.jpg
|released=Holiday 2009
|word-count=14,616
|annotation=annotation
|setting = [[
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'''''Defending Elysium''''' is a non-[[cosmere]] short story written by [[Brandon Sanderson]] published on his [[bws: defending-elysium|website]].{{bws ref|
== Background ==
Back at the hotel, Jason convinces Coln to take Denise to Jupiter Fourteen, handing Coln his PC pin so officials at the office won't give him trouble, but only if Jason will tell him if the PC have FTL drives and are keeping them back from humankind or not. As they are about to leave Denise becomes unresponsive and Jason realizes a faint whiff of gas in the room. All three are rendered unconscious.
Having his Cytonic Sense disabled, his link to the outside world severed, Jason is trapped both physically and figuratively. Without his Sense the darkness swallows him whole, sending him into a blind panic as he is unable to answer the voice interrogating him from above.
Coln is similarly imprisoned, but unlike Jason he can see the confines of his "prison" for the storage closet it is, with Denise sat beside him. Suddenly, Jason's intercom crackles in his ear and Jason tells Coln to cut the power. Somehow. Not sure if he can trust Jason, Coln does as he's asked anyway, finding a power jack on the wall.
Using FTL, Jason transports Coln, Denise, and himself to the PC headquarters on Earth, revealing the PC do infact possess FTL technology, and that they were keeping it from humanity until they were ready. The machine Coln originally thought was the FTL drive is in fact a coffee machine. The real FTL drive is the man - dressed up as a security guard - seated beside it. His mind is the link for millions of FTL transmissions. Lanna rushes into the room and is introduced as Jason's wife.
Jason is contacted by the Varvax Sonn who explains how the Varvax compel their subjects into submission, including other alien races they have subjugated, as they will with humanity, all in the progress of peace.
In the last moments of Defending Elysium, Jason sits back and tells Lanna to prepare a press release: tell humanity that the Phone Company has finally developed faster-than-light travel, and that it will be released to the public. His last words are a hope for the illusion he'd believed in for so long.
== Organizations ==
;[[Phone Company]]: The PC were the first to make contact with an alien
:They are completely autonomous to the constraints and laws of humanity following the Tenasi incident that only they were capable of mollifying. As such they deem humanity not ready for the perils of space and have been secretly withholding FTL travel technology from them.
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