A Grimm Færie Tale of The Future?

Despite having lost the entire imperial family to inbred infertility millennia ago, for many tens of thousands of years the Frant Empire had been well regulated and organised. All of its peoples had been well fed and subject to a fair and responsibly democratic judicial system. There was no injustice, no hunger and no inequality that prevented any from achieving as highly as they were capable of, or wished to proceed, and yet all was not well, and all knew it. What exactly was wrong or missing none had any idea, but all knew something was. Most significantly all had been bothered for generations that there was something amiss with their existence, and all recognised that it was becoming worse. The wrongness was now almost palpable and headed to whatever bitter end the future held for all of them on a viciously acceleratingly steep downward spiral. And yet not a single citizen had any clue as to the nature of their malaise. It was actually very simple. Their culture had become set in stone so far back they were unaware of it. Every day they lived their past. Their present was purely seen in terms of their past, and as a result nothing new had been thought, nor created for millennia. The effect of that was they had no future, for the past could only meet the challenges presented by the past. Sooner or later the future would present challenges they would be unable to rise up to meet and they would die. They would join the rest of their dead, unchanging past and truly become a part of the past they had lived in.

Distances beyond conception away a very different world existed, and on it an insignificant serf referred to as SOM18, (Saw Operator Male 18) by his social superiors, which meant everyone who was not a serf perhaps ten thousand folk on the planet, and Somi by other serfs probably several hundreds of millions of folk.

Somi lived in the far north and was a pallet cutter who cut pallets no longer worth recycling or repairing that his employers could sell for fire wood at extortionate prices to the masses who had virtually no money. The price was set so that the masses either paid it and went hungry or they froze to death as a result of the viciously cold climate they barely survived. Rebellion was not possible.

Along with a few hundred thousand others at various sites scattered across the planet, Somi worked for IRF, International Recyclers Federated, and, like a good employee had been conditioned to, he took his pills with his evening meal of mealy porridge and was dreamlessly asleep within minutes so as to be ready to put in yet another exhaustingly hard day’s work for his employers. He’d never had any education and his earliest memories were of going to work with his father using the same saw he used now. Both his parents had been euthanised years before after they had suffered from work related injuries that would have been too costly to treat. Somi knew when he could no longer fulfil his duties he would be euthanised. His unguarded saw had bitten him thrice over the years, but not badly enough for him to have been euthanised. The last time had cost him a finger, but since he had carried on working nothing had been said by his supervisor and he’d been allowed to live.

Somi had never been allocated a mate and unlike most male serfs in that situation that had never bothered him, he thought it should have done, but it didn’t. Somi was intelligent and imaginative. Most of his peers were neither, and sad to say whilst never happy they were rarely unhappy. They just accepted their miserable lives as they were. Somi had always assumed that it was having intelligence and imagination in the stead of a mate that made his lack of a mate acceptable to himself.

Recently Somi had started to dream when he was awake which he knew was dangerous working with his unforgiving saw, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. His dreams were of a different Somi living joyfully in a different society, an unimaginable society, yet he did imagine it. He imagined every aspect of that culture in incredible detail, buildings of beauty, arts, crafts, law, education and thousands of other facets too most of which he had no idea as to what they were and even less as to what they signified. Too, he dreamt of food and of having enough sleep and energy to enjoy life, though he’d no idea what he’d do. In those dreams Somi tried hard to discover what it was that was so different about himself and harder yet to see his image in a mirror, but all he managed to see were the images of pretty young women with loving husbands and clusters of children. When he came to the conclusion that something powerful was preventing him from seeing himself he lost heart and tried to stop dreaming. Yet the dreams kept coming, especially the dreams of the young women and their families. It was in despair that he realised sooner or later they would distract him from his work and would cost him a hand and that would be his end.

When the folk from the stars arrived in the late evening they had taken total control of the entire planet before the sun had risen and immediately set about the process of liberating all the enslaved masses, for such a culture was anathema to themselves. The Star Folk by ensuring that the serfs were all adequately fed, clothed, housed and most of all safe from the degrading life and work the masters had enforced upon them the master classes were, in own their opinion, reduced to penury. Most of what had been the upper classes self euthanised, for without the servile classes to cater to their every need and to pander to their every whim they had no idea how to survive. Not a one of them had any idea how food was raised or grown, harvested, processed, prepared and cooked.

The Star Folk knew they were probably committed to guiding the population for centuries, for unchecked the masters would take over again and all would revert as soon as they left which was something their consciences could not allow. They had to maintain a presence till the previously passive serfs could run the planet for themselves along equitable lines.

The Star Folk made it clear they sought all and any of the indigenous folk capable of leading their folk on a path of enlightenment and members of the previous master classes were not eligible. They said they would offer as much help as required for as long as necessary, but even those who had had the minimal abilities required of and allowed to squad leaders would require their hands holding every step of the way.

Unknown to the indigenous the Star Folk were also seeking aid from the mind of power and enlightenment they had so recently been made aware of, from so many parsecs away even the appropriately educated indigenous master class had no conception of the distance, for their multipliers only went as far as Quetta, ten to the power of thirty, [10^30].(1) It had become immediately apparent to them that such a mind could not be in the possession of a member of the masters, for that would have resulted in a far more benign and empathic society. They knew they would be seeking amongst the serfs, not as huge a task as it may perhaps have appeared to be, for though erratic as regards when the mind manifested itself its sheer power enabled them to pinpoint its location relatively easily.

It was Somi the gentle dreamer the Star Folk were seeking and desperately hoping to take back home as their empress.

They were the ones who knew Somi was truly she, which was why in her dreams she saw the young women with their families, for those were the projections of her real self onto her deepest desires. In a sense the visualisation of all the other aspects of the society she envisaged which were of such value to the Star Folk were merely the backdrop, the scenery to support her visualisations of her desired real self. It were the Star Folk who enabled her to truly see herself whilst awake without having to risk her hands on that viciously dangerous saw that over the centuries had literally been the death of every person who had operated it since it had been manufactured. It were they whose medical abilities had enabled her to regenerate transformed into her new pretty self, complete with all her fingers. It were they who needed her dreams, originality and vision of how their culture could become to provide the salvation their stagnant millennia old culture was in such desperate need of. It were they who considered that saving her people from their oppressors was a totally insignificant price to pay in return for a future. It would, however, be over a year before Somi would be able to understand why she was so special to them, so till then they kept their peace.

Over the first year of the Franters, as the indigenous folk had learnt was how the Star Folk referred to themselves, Somi had become the confident young woman that she should have been born to grow up as, but she felt empty, hollow, no more than a shell of who and what she knew she should be. Despite that, when her folk had misgivings concerning what was expected of them and insecurities concerning their abilities to meet those expectations it was Somi who calmed their fears and enabled them to at least try. With the help of the Franters they did move in the right direction. It was not a fast process, and there were setbacks, many setbacks, but it was progressive and they became more confident with time. When they finally accepted that they were not going to be left on their own to deal with their past masters progress became faster.

Some of the old rulers tried to band together to force their ex slaves to serve them, but the first few object lessons made them too fearful. Dangling from the top of a thirty foot high street lamp with one’s guts reaching to the ground was a fearful thing to experience. The Franters disapproved of such summary justice, but they did understand and were not there to judge, so they helped the population to establish a justice system with due process. It was insisted upon by the ex serfs that self euthanasia was always to be an option for their ex rulers at any time and many took that way out rather than be humiliated by judgements delivered by persons they despised and who had every reason to hate them. A few of the population, most of who had been used as sex slaves and had been subjected to the most vile of perversions imaginable, took the law into their own hands. Many had been irrevocably damaged and had missing body parts due to the acts that their tormentors had considered to be entertainment. They considered it to be a poor day when they had not managed to track down and slowly extract the life out of a dozen of their old rulers. Eventually that ceased for there were no more butchers to track. The rulers were no more, for unable to feed themselves, those who had not self euthanised, nor been exterminated had died of starvation.

The enthusiasts who no longer had any to hunt and torture to death gradually returned to society once they became aware there would be no retribution and they too would be rejuvenated and regenerated, though little could be done to undo the horrors in their minds caused by their past sufferings. Most chose new names, names that had nothing to do with their old designations, names that allowed them to feel they were now human beings and not abused, domesticated animals allowed to live till they were no longer of use or they became too injured for it to be cost effective and convenient to heal. Somi considered doing so too, but decided her name would and should be a constant reminder to her of what humans could degenerate too and, unlike some of her peers, she had no intention of becoming what her old masters had become, for she reasoned even the most monstrous of the old masters must have been descended from once decent human beings, even if it be millennia ago.

It had been a surprise to those of the indigenous folk able to think in such terms that the Franters who were in charge were not the marines who had enforced the termination of the previous social structure and subsequently maintained order, but the civilian medical teams of which there were twice as many members as there were marines. The doctors made the decisions and the marines ensured those decisions were enacted. When the Franter high command, which was headed by Dr Yevvan, a kindly old woman with years of psychological experience dealing with post traumatic stress matters, and not Admiral Leggat who commanded the Franter space armada that had taken over the planet, had finally explained all to Somi, she was not unwilling to leave the place that had meant nothing but misery to her for her entire life, but said she had not so much conditions as wishes so as to feel comfortable living such a different life.

The Star Folk would never have forced her to accompany them and would have agreed to anything she had barely hinted at a wish for never mind demanded, even had that been several galaxies. They were astonished that all she wished was the opportunity to seek a man who would love her and give her the children she longed for. She wanted to be a mother with a family and a life like the millions of women she had envisaged in her dreams. There were already tens of thousands of Franter men in the fleet who’d become enamoured of her after their first glimpse of her on the newscasts and there were millions more back home. She’d become the most desired woman in the Franter empire due to her astonishing abilities, and all knew her choice of man would become the co-founder of the empire’s new dynasty, the ultimate grandfather of her descendants. She was assured that, if she chose, long before she reached the Frant Empire’s home territory she probably would have had all her requirements met and possibly have borne two if not three children before reaching her new home. However, she was advised to wait till she reached home, for then she would have a far wider choice from men of the most influential families who would be desperate for an introduction to her.

Somi equated influential families with the master class she and her peers had suffered under for so long, so she was not attracted to the idea of meeting such so they could become even more influential as a result of being her husband. It didn’t sound much like love to her. With her personal staff she’d done a tour of inspection of the entire fleet as an entertainment for herself and the troops on the five year voyage back home. It was on a relatively small intra fleet supply vessel that she’d met Iyuron a young medic who’d been treating some of the crew for radiation burns they’d acquired doing repairs to a localised shielding failure of the vessel’s main drive. Indeed what she’d been told was correct, she’d become a bride in a month and had borne three children and had a fourth on the way before her triumphal landing at the capital planet of the newly named Somi Empire.

This is a færie tale, so this is the point at which it is normal to expect them all to live happily ever after, but I don’t yet know, so perhaps it’s best to let the reader decide.

1. Quetta, ten to the power of thirty = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000. (10^30).