Watch the Skies: A World in Shambles

What follows is an in-character retelling of the President of Brazil’s perspective from Dallas Megagames’ Watch the Skies game on 12/3/22.

I’m writing from our secret bunker in the Serra do Mar mountains; we’re far enough away from the riots and chaos…I think.

To the proud people of Brazil, know that your government tried. We tried to get our people away from this world before the fall. We tried to find Utopia. Unfortunately, we fell short. Let me show you how it went wrong.

Turn 1: 2025

The visitors made themselves known in 2025. They began to visit our planet in greater numbers. Brazilian leadership was in agreement that we needed to understand their intent before taking any action. If they were here peacefully, we wanted them to know that we were trustworthy. As such, we took a strict position of non-violence against the aliens; going so far as admonishing the French when they shot a UFO out of the sky over Brazil. Luckily, our Chief of Defense, Jacob, dispatched members of our Secret Service to locate the crash site and salvage our first piece of alien technology. The tech was sent straight to the scientific community.

We were focused on establishing Brazil’s position as a Scientific power. Our country’s brightest might, Jeremy, had an ingenious plan to build a tesseract. I was interested in increasing Brazil’s contributions to the Artemis Project and he said that the tesseract could bypass the need to launch things into space at all. As such, I gave him our full support.

President of Brazil (Greg) and President of the United States (Cameron) shake after signing a Non-Aggression treaty. (Photo Courtesy GNN Newsfeed)

Meanwhile, in the United Nations, our Foreign Minister Harrison was beginning to see the difficulties of this body. He told us of a famine in Uganda and the absolute gridlock that happened in the chambers.
Brazil entered in beneficial trade and science agreements with France and Japan, which was unjustly labeled the ‘Axis of Technology and Power.’ This unfortunate name sent ripples of worry and doubt across the world. No one wants to be a part of an ‘axis’…. Additionally, we signed non-aggression treaties with India and the United States.

Finally, we beamed a message into space with the hopes of making first contact with the aliens. We asked them to come to Brazil. We somehow received a message back saying that they tried but were shot down. Damn the French…

Turn 2: 2026

We set about trying to find a way to talk freely with the aliens. It seemed like the most important thing to do. Russia was incredibly aggressive towards not only the aliens but also any non-Asian country.

We learned that the aliens had also sent communications to India and possibly China. My Chief of Defense then walked up to me to tell me that we could communicate freely with the aliens now. It felt like a trap. We sent another message, asking them why they were here and what they wanted.

Meanwhile, an organization known as ‘Humanity First’ had appeared and was apparently being bankrolled by a tech billionaire and wanted to help the planet. No one trusted them.
Things in the UN weren’t going great. The US was taking a hard line to keep the status quo and our representative was trying to push for Brazil to be a voice for all of South America, since no South American countries have a permanent seat on the Security Council. No one would listen though.

I collaborate with the US, Japan, India and France to try and set up a summit to discuss how to handle engagement with our visitors. The five countries were in agreement that we needed guidelines but we needed all the leaders involved.

Turn 3: 2027

The Aliens respond to our message.

We receive a communication back from aliens. They are here in peace and want to talk to the world leaders in Antarctica. I scramble to get world leaders together for a meeting but getting everyone aligned was near impossible. I sign a new trade and science agreement with India, as they’ve been incredibly aligned with our goals from the start.

Japan works to get an XComm agreement signed; Brazil, USA and France sign up immediately. The United Kingdom refuses for some reason, I didn’t quite catch why.

Harrison gets us incredibly close to getting a permanent spot on the UN Security Council before an avalanche of crises are dropped on their collective lap.

Our Chief of Security rushes over to tell me that a Russian SIF shot down a UFO over Brazil. I beeline to the Russian Prime Minister to admonish him for his actions. We learn just how anti-alien Russia is. Their stance was that any contact with the aliens would be seen as aggression towards the world and China had fallen in line with them. In shock, I leave the conversation. If aliens have the technology to come this far, our might is nothing. How can we be this aggressive without having any real contact with them? I don’t understand.

Unfortunately, Ox News broke the news of the aliens and global panic spiked. It wasn’t looking great.

We received a note from the aliens to come to the UN at the start of the next year. Here’s hoping to a good 2028.

Turn 4: 2028

It was not a good 2028. The Brazilian delegation arrives at the United Nations, eager to get the alien contact conversation started. The conversation never took off as the Russians assassinate the US President (I tried to prevent it with a Special Action card but found out too late). The US responded by assassinating the Russian UN rep so that sanctions could be levied at the Russians. War was declared between the US, Russia and China (who had a mutual defense treaty with Russia). I scrambled to get leadership of the three countries in the same room. Luckily, the new US President wasn’t out for blood and just wanted peace. Russia extorted money from everyone to get peace but, it felt like it was worth it in the moment. Peace happened thanks to Brazil.

Unfortunately, I don’t know much else of what happened this turn. I was scrambling to find a way to bring the world back to peace. It took a lot of time. Unlucky for Brazil, the press didn’t report on my peace talks since they collaborated to not report on the wars. I think it was around this time our Scientist won the Nobel Prize for perfect sock? I don’t know.

Turn 5: 2029

The Brazilian Coffee industry was booming. Photo Courtesy Ox News.

With our economy in shambles, I made a point to get a one-on-one with Ox News so they would broadcast a piece on Brazil’s booming coffee industry. I’m not happy to say that I bribed the reporter to ensure the story made it in but our economy needed the help.

Meanwhile, aliens visit the UN and happily answer questions from the delegates and world leaders in attendance. For some reason, China doesn’t trust anything they say despite the aliens having never been aggressive. Russia doesn’t speak.

Chief Scientist Jeremy, in partnership with India’s scientific delegation, completes what I thought was an impossible project. The tesseract is active. We can bend space. Our Foreign Minister and Chief Scientist go and begin direct talks with the aliens.

Turn 6-7: 2030-2031

Too much happened in these years for me to take any notes, but I will do what I can to recall the information.

Using the tesseract, Brazil attempts to assist China with getting rid of their nukes. We wanted to be able to show what would happen if someone resisted denuclearization. One of our spies broke into their compound and transported a nuke to Zimbabwe, where I believed the aliens were waiting to dismantle the warhead and turn it into an incredible power source….Unfortunately, there was a massive misunderstanding and the nuke was captured by Zimbabwean rebels and used to destroy the US Navy. Sorry…

I go to see why the aliens didn’t get the nuke first only to find out they were in a meeting with the Chinese Head of State trying to get them to willingly hand over the nukes….Oops. I reveal that we were the ones to take the nuke, not the aliens, and we teleported it away. We get understandably dragged over the coals by the aliens.

The Japanese Prime Minister was in the room and looked at me with a confused look in his eyes and said “Now, I think I understand why everyone wants to kill you in these games.” We had entered into a science sharing agreement with them and hadn’t told them about the tesseract…I didn’t think it was going to work and was about to tell them about it when the world went sideways…Oops again.

While we were meeting with the aliens, the UK held the world’s scientists and the UN hostage with nukes. They tried to detonate the one with the scientists but the Japanese scientists sacrificed himself to save everyone else.

While we were trying to push denuclearization, world leaders around the world were buying and building new ones. It was pure chaos. The news reports that the French captured an alien but it turned out to be a human wearing an advanced holographic suit? It must be those crazies with Humanity First.

As the world entered 2031, the US and Russia went to DefCon 1. In the name of Brazil, I transported myself to the alien base to beg them to take the Brazilian people away. Allow us to leave this planet! We have the technology! Help us! …. I found out that the aliens…weren’t, in fact, aliens. They were humans…normal people. They couldn’t get us to another planet… They were attempting to get us ready for the actual aliens to come and incorporate us into galactic society. I was in shock. The rest of the year was a bit of a blur.

I know that our Foreign Minister got a bunch of signatures to formalize the XComm organization into a denuclearized government….The US surrendered almost all of their nukes to the aliens in an effort to show trust.

After seeing this, I returned to Brazil to wait out the end. Russia launched nukes, the UK gave GNN Reporter ‘Ace Diamond’ a nuke which he detonated at the alien base, the world descended into panic. The terror track had maxed out.

The world wide order had failed and it was all of our faults.

I’m sorry we couldn’t do more.

-

This run of Watch the Skies was something else! From the outset, Brazil was focused on diplomacy and science. One of our tenants was diplomacy before military action. We tried to be amiable with all countries, which lead to many countries massively distrusting us. The phrase ‘suspiciously nice’ was thrown around A LOT. I think part of that was me having a reputation from previous games (I’m a pretty good traitor) but we played a pretty honest game. Should we have told Japan about the tesseract project? Yeah, probably, but I didn’t know if we were going to be able to finish it. Should we have told France we made contact with the aliens? Yeah, probably, but I didn’t want to share information before I had confirmation it was real. Should we have verified the whole ‘stealing a nuke’ thing with the aliens? Most definitely.

In the end, I think Brazil was able to accomplish most of its goals (outside of …you know…humanity surviving). We were taken seriously as a world power, we were researching alien tech and won a Nobel Prize, we didn’t let any other country have reign over South America. If only we could have prevented the all our panic and terror that gripped the world….Maybe next time.

I love the Head of State role in Watch the Skies. Being in the middle of a thousand different negotiations is a blast. While I’ll never understand the motivations of some teams, there were some really great moments in this game.

I’m incredibly proud of what my team accomplished. Our Chief Scientist was a first time Megagamer and absolutely crushed his role. Once he left the UN, our Foreign Minister was in the middle of all the alien negotiations. Our Chief of Defense was incredible in pulling double duty with him also being our Chief of Intelligence.

Vai, Brasil.