by Blair Wylie
Then the attending guards carefully re-packed their bundles and left the room. They closed the door they used, and re-sealed it from the outside.
The prime minister decided to sit down on the only bench in the room. Then the air flow dramatically increased. The prime minister remembered that over a half-hour period, the air in the room would be completely displaced at least twenty times with filtered, irradiated and chemically disinfected air.
Finally, the air flow subsided, and the door to a small, attached airlock automatically opened. The prime minister entered the airlock and closed the door behind itself. It then closed its eyes as fierce ultraviolet lights were turned on. It held on to handles on the walls while a very strong blast of circulating air bounced it around the tiny chamber. This battering went on for about five minutes or so.
Finally, the fierce air blast subsided, and the surrounding UV lamps were turned off. The prime minister opened its eyes and watched as the door to the Royal Chamber automatically opened.
The prime minister was now sweating profusely inside its germ suit. The suit itself made movement very difficult, and it greatly restricted peripheral vision.
The prime minister stepped very carefully through the open door. Two attending Warrior guards in full germ suits then stepped forward and assisted the prime minister as it lurched towards the King and Queen, who were sitting sedately on their thrones at the far end of the large hall.
When the prime minister finally reached the foot of the dais upon which the King and Queen were seated, it flipped on the microphone inside its helmet, and waited to be addressed.
After all of the indignities it had just been subjected to, incredibly and inconsiderately, the King and Queen made the prime minister wait while they continued a quiet and private chat with each other. This absurd scene went on for ten minutes or so. The prime minister noted with disgust that the Royal banter was trivial, and that the regal pair laughed with glee at stupid, silly, private jokes.
Finally, the Queen looked up at the ceiling and said, “You were summoned, Prime Minister, because we are slightly curious as to what has actually been going on out there in our world for say, the last one hundred days or so.
“We sometimes watch the domestic news reports of course, but they are so boring, and we know your government spins the worthless information presented to suit your own, selfish, political agenda.
“So, illuminate us now, with the truth! Begin!”
The prime minister deliberately waited a full minute before replying. When he could see the King and Queen were suitably angered by the obvious show of impertinence, it said calmly, “With the deepest respect, I take issue with your harsh criticism, my Queen. I always deliver the truth to you, and to the King. That is a matter of record. I know that everything said in this Chamber is recorded for posterity. And I have full access to all of those records.”
The prime minister’s voice was being projected over a loud speaker in the Chamber. The confining helmet over its head made its chirps sound muffled, and there was a slight time lag. The lag was annoying, but the prime minister decided it could be managed well enough with a little discipline on its part.
The King suddenly looked angered, but before he could reply, the prime minister added, “But you have ordered me, just now, Your Majesties, to tell you the truth, so of course, I will comply.
“The truth is, that after about three years of sometimes frustrating, and always intense struggle, we may finally be getting on top of the horrible epidemic that has been killing us in great numbers.
“The latest suite of vaccines are proving to be effective. And by escalating our rather ruthless quarantine program, disease outbreaks are quickly and effectively being confined so infected groups can die out on their own. Every corpse is being completely cremated, of course.
“But we have lost a staggering three-quarters of our Worker population through disease! That means our current global population is only about eleven-million Masters.
“For some reason, the Warriors have been especially hard-hit. They now number only about twelve-thousand in total.
“The Royal families, of course, have been effectively isolated from the epidemic, as you well know. But that is because they are venerated and privileged, and no expense has been denied them to install and maintain elaborate protection systems, like the ones we have installed for you in the Royal Antechamber.
“Our economy, and our defence capability, have obviously been devastated. We are just now starting to re-build, and to re-populate. It will take generations to fully recover, of course.
“We are decades away from resuming work on our first exploration, generation space vessel.
“And we no longer have the means to properly defend ourselves from attack from space. We may be able to start building a battlecruiser in five years or so. If so, it will not be ready for deployment for at least ten years after construction starts.
“We strongly suspect, but so far have been unable to prove, that the infections that have been afflicting us were artificially produced, by a foe, somewhere off of this planet. They seem to be remarkably tailored to affect us, but not other animals, like the native animals on this planet. Furthermore, those stupid beasts seem to be unwitting hosts for the spread of the infecting microbes.
“Worse still, these no doubt alien microbes mutate very quickly. This makes their ultimate and complete eradication very unlikely.
“The historical timeline suggests the appearance of these microbes must be linked somehow to the return of the Warrior Flagship battlecruiser, but we do not yet know how exactly.
“The Flagship completely disintegrated when it blew up in our atmosphere. No microbe could have survived that catastrophic, intense-heat event.
“However, we believe we have found the wreckage of one or possibly two single-Warrior scout aircraft, or more correctly ‘spacecraft’, in isolated locations. There are no colonial records of the loss of these scout craft, so they may have originated from the returning battlecruiser.
“But if so, we do not know how they managed to remain undetected when they entered our atmosphere, and then possibly flew around for a while in controlled airspace. Of course, we may have been rather distracted at the time.
“But there is nothing in the wreckage of these scout craft that indicate they could have been carrying biological weapons of some sort. And no Warrior bodily remains have been found with any of the wreckage, or near any of the wreckage, which in itself is puzzling. That line of investigation is continuing, but likely will lead us nowhere.
“Now, Your Majesties, this suit is extremely uncomfortable. Will that be enough of the truth for today?”
The King and Queen then covered their mouths with their right hands, and whispered to each other for a few more minutes. Then, while fixedly staring at the King, the Queen dismissed the prime minister with a callous flip of her left hand.
Then the two Warriors guards helped the prime minister back across the entire expanse of the Royal Chamber and into the air lock.
The prime minister did not even attempt to bow in the traditional manner during its long, tedious exit from the Royal Chamber. It knew it could blame the bulky germ suit for restricting its movements.
And it was frankly completely fed up with Royal protocol.
38
Speaker Two, who was also the highly stressed and greatly over-worked Minister of Health and Nutrition, called for an ad hoc Cabinet meeting right after the prime minister and Speaker One had passed away. Speakers Three, Four and Five were far too sick to attend, and in fact, were near death.
But Speaker Six, the bored, largely ignored and under-worked Minister of Galactic Expansion, showed up right on time for the meeting.
Speaker Two started the meeting with the usual formality. It stared at the tiny red dot in the middle of the table in the darkened Cabinet Chamber, and said quietly, “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Speaker Six, and for respecting the starting time that I requeste
d.
“By default, I am today’s Chair Master. I will not claim to be the prime minister. But we can talk about that later. That point might be moot anyway, considering our horrible and quickly deteriorating state of affairs.
“We are no longer even trying to keep up with rapid disease mutations through the research, development and manufacture of new vaccines.
“Three years ago, we naively thought we had achieved some sort of a steady-state stasis with our biological defence program. But then, the highly variable suite of infections seem to have become even more aggressive. We concluded that wildly new types of mutations were somehow appearing in our natural environment.
“Then two independent studies suggested that the original two strains of pathogens had somehow suddenly reappeared in our ecosystem!
“These two strains were, or rather are, especially nasty, using crude terminology. They mutate rapidly and unpredictably, and their mutated forms travel down entirely new and unpredictable pathways.
“One of our top scientists postulated that the two strains were, or perhaps are, being continuously replenished by comet or meteor debris. This scientist even claimed to have found some physical evidence to support this possibly unnatural phenomenon. The scientist alleged it had found, in widely dispersed wilderness areas, some small, spherical, metallic nodules with a protein-rich, probably microbial-infused centre.
“A few other scientists began to agree with this alarming new and unproven theory. But then they all died from a form of the infectious disease with millions of other Masters.
“But even if this greatly disturbing theory can be proven to be correct, there is frankly nothing we can do about it now!
“It does lead one to wonder, however, if we have been deliberately attacked with biological weapons, say by our arch-enemies of antiquity. I am referring, of course, to the alien race that we call the Cowards.
“But again, and frustratingly, we are no longer in a position to defend ourselves from such an attack, or to seek retribution.
“In summary, Speaker Six. I believe we are well past the point of recovery. My blunt assessment is that our colony has failed completely.
“Now, do you agree with this assessment?”
Speaker Two then turned to look directly at Speaker Six, and Speaker Six turned to look directly back at Speaker Two.
Speaker Six was obviously shaken by the information it had just received. It was trembling, and it looked highly stressed. It grabbed the edge of the circular table to steady itself. Then it said in wavering chirps, “Yes, and I am greatly sorry to say, that I fully agree with your assessment, Speaker Two.
“We are clearly all doomed!”
Speaker Two simply nodded in response. Then after a long moment of struggle with inner turmoil, it suddenly appeared to relax a bit, perhaps in resignation. It said quietly, “Right, that’s it then, Speaker Six. This means, of course, that the remaining members of the Cabinet, specifically you and I, have but one task remaining.
“We must send out a high-powered, radial, electromagnetic broadcast, in all standard frequencies, and along all exploration mission vectors, to tell other Masters, wherever they are, of our humiliating failure to successfully colonize this planet.
“Now, before we terminate our final Cabinet meeting, please help me formulate the message we will send…”
39
The King and Queen of the Master colony had summoned the prime minister to the Royal Chamber, but for the first time in the history of their colony, the prime minister had failed to respond.
In fact, suddenly no one was responding to a Royal summons.
There were no longer any servants to call upon to bring them their rich food and drink, or to dress them in their fine clean clothes, or to bring them fresh, plush towels, or even to clean the many exotically-furnished rooms in the vast Royal Palace.
There was no running water in the palace. The toilets were full of their disgusting bodily waste, and the toilets would no longer flush.
And there was no electrical power, and no one to replace all of the emergency candles that had burned down to stubs. And it was almost as cold inside the palace as they imagined it must be outside in the open air.
Of course, they had never actually been outside of the palace during their entire lifetimes. But they had been told that the external environment could be harsh at times, and highly variable.
The King looked at his wife with compassion, and grave concern. Her eyes were closed, and she was shivering uncontrollably. She was emaciated, so her health problems might stem from starvation, and not from one of the horrible infectious wasting diseases that they had heard was killing commoners in great numbers.
Still, did it really matter at this point?
The King then realized he was feeling very hungry and very weak too.
After a long, agonizing, pensive moment, he finally accepted that their decline in health would accelerate until it ended with their rather horrible deaths.
So, he gently shook his wife awake, and softly chirped, “Open your mouth, my dear. I have a morsel of exquisite food for you, fresh from our chef!”
The Queen slowly opened her mouth in a semi-conscious state. The King placed the little pill on her tongue, and said tenderly, “Now, swallow that down quickly, my dear, so it can do you some good!”
The King watched as the Queen obeyed his suggestion. Then her eyes closed again, and she became very still. Her mouth opened slightly, and she made a little gurgling sound. And then her breathing completely stopped.
Then the King placed a similar pill in his own mouth, and quickly swallowed it down. He was unconscious in only a few moments, and his heart stopped shortly after that.
40
Eons ago, they had originated on an Earth-like planet.
Their system of counting time had always centred upon the archaic year, or the full cycle of orbital transit of their home planet around their home star.
They knew that distant star still existed. But they could never forget that their home planet had been completely destroyed by their arch rivals in the galaxy, the evil and selfish Masters.
Their clan had creatively fashioned a moon to suit their needs. It had a rocky, warmish core, with a thick outer layer of frozen, solid, low-molecular weight organic and inorganic compounds that included water. They lived far below the ice-rock interface.
But they still had many means to monitor activity in regions of special interest to them within the galaxy.
The two Elders surfaced together, and then swam over to a secluded part of the subterranean pool of warm, mineralized water.
They were quadruped amphibians, and they were naked. With a bit of imagination, they sort of resembled Earth’s sea iguanas, minus a tail. In fact, the members of their clan called themselves something like ‘The Sea Divers’ or ‘The Pool Divers’.
Over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, their feet and hands had enlarged and flattened, and webs had grown between what once had been bony digits. Their skin was shiny and translucent, and was tinted with a swirling mixture of the many possible shades of blue and green. They had both lungs and gills, and they had a pair of forward-looking, rather large, membrane-covered, green-flecked eyes that could no longer blink.
They could speak under water when they wanted to, but it required more effort to speak properly, and to hear properly. And of course, sound travelled further under water, and the two Elders did not want anyone else to overhear this particular conversation.
Their language was both melodic and rhythmic. If a human being could hear them speaking, that person might think they were singing or chanting to each other. Of course, their words or lyrics would be unintelligible to any human being.
In any situation, the First Elder always had the honour of speaking first. When the pair were comfortably floating with their faces close together, the female First Elder whispered, or quietly chanted, something like, “Greetings, Second Elder. I understand you have something
important to share with me. This is not really an opportune time, but I also understand that you think it is very important. So, please proceed.”
“First Elder, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you on such short notice,” said the other Elder very quietly, who was also female. “We have just intercepted an electromagnetic transmission. It heartens me greatly. We will keep it secret, of course, but I thought you at least should immediately know about it, too.
“It was broadcast radially. It was sent in the language of the Masters, using an ancient code that we easily recognized. Let me quote the translation for you now:
“Colony two-four-eight has completely failed. Our condition was nominal until infecting microbes appeared in our ecosystem. The microbes may have originated from comet or meteor debris, but that is uncertain. Or, these microbes may have been carried back in a returning Warrior battlecruiser that visited the ruins of a suspected nearby Coward base. So, the Cowards may have done this to us, intentionally. But that is probably a moot point. Be advised that this planet is now completely toxic to Masters. Our vaccines only worked temporarily because the invading microbes mutated significantly and very rapidly. The native animals on this planet are hosts for the disease, or rather diseases. But the offending microbes do not appear to affect those simple creatures with their vastly different genetic make-up. So, we believe this place is now a threat to the survival of our species. Annihilation of the entire planet is therefore recommended, if you have the technology.”
“Now, what do you think of that message, First Elder?”
The First Elder silently pondered the startling new information for the equivalent of about five long minutes. Then she quietly said, or sort of sang, “Second Elder, Master Colony Two-Four-Eight is, or more likely was, about eighty light years away from us. I think this message means that our covert allies have successfully used our technology, and closely followed our guidance, to completely destroy a relatively nearby Master colony.