The Tralgressian Republic (Flash Fiction February, Day 2)

I joined today's flash fiction writing prompt. This is a 1,000 word story with the prompt "That’s where we keep all the criminals and political prisoners. We sleep easier knowing they have their own."

A plasma bolt zipped by Thrane’s right ear and scorched his comrade’s chest plate. Bodies dropped on either side of the fault in the battleground. Along that fault, the Tralgressian Space Navy worked to construct an energy barrier separating the Tralgressian territories from encroachment by the ousted Lagrangian Libertines—a sect of the Tralgressian Republic who had been removed to a neighboring planet centuries ago.

The heartbeat of the battle slowed for Thrane as he wondered about the other side of the fault. He wondered why he’d never seen beyond the fault. He wondered why the border existed at all if the Libertines were on another planet, the bright one shimmering in the night sky above.

The Langrangian Libertines had declared war on Tralgressian nearly three standard orbital cycles ago, declaring the forced separation of their people from the Tralgressian Republic an apartheid state. Unfortunately for the Libertines, the Tralgressian Republic had banned words like “apartheid” and “segregation” from the national vocabulary, so Thrane and his six billion compatriots within the Tralgressian borders were not aware of the true reason for the war. Thrane and his compatriots were, instead, fed information through a tube like a patient receiving food in the hospital. As far as Thrane knew, the Libertines were unhappy on their war-riddled home planet and sought to take the Republic from its hardworking and upright citizens.

The battle’s pulse quickened once more as Thrane watched an erstwhile cadet bite down on plasma. Thrane ran from the battlefield when he saw a Libertine orbital ship drop a small, paper-sized rectangle down to the fault. As he ran, more fell until it snowed paper-sized rectangles and a battlefield formerly painted in crimson hues of death and gore shifted to the sterile, reflective tones of snow and purity, until settling at last on a light pink. Soldiers on both sides of the fault opened fire on the paper-sized rectangles. The combatants were, for a moment, allies in the war on paper.

Thrane was not concerned about why the Libertine army would help shoot down the Libertine paper-sized rectangles because he was inundated with the rectangles. All his life, Thrane was told to fear small, paper-sized rectangles because the power they contained could destroy nations, cripple economies, and unveil vast abuses. The Republic had even toyed with cutting efforts at teaching reading and writing, the effects of which yielded Thrane’s current inability to decipher the strange lines and shapes on the paper-sized papers.

But after struggling through a sea of white rectangles, he realized that the rectangles were not merely paper-sized—they were paper! With letters and colors and symbols and images! Sayings! Words! Thrane realized, the paper-sized paper was not harmful in the slightest! As he reached the shelter, he kicked at the papers, ripping and tearing, spitting and biting, doing any physical trashing of the weapons he could imagine.

The paper-sized paper did not explode.

It did not ignite, fire, cut, thrash, or smoke.

It did what all papers with lines and symbols written on them does: it conveyed an idea. It transported thoughts from the brain of one to the brain of another across vast distances and impossibly long periods of time.

And it destroyed a nation.

Thrane rushed to his compatriots inside the shelter seeking one who could decipher the paper-sized paper’s many lines and shapes. He found, instead, an enemy combatant. A seemingly Libertine woman called Dreia reading one of the papers, a look of horror coming over her face.

Dreia thought Thrane was a Libertine. Thrane thought Dreia was a Libertine.

They told one another as much.

Confused, Dreia decided to read the paper aloud. The reading of recorded ideas is an ancient tradition, and possibly the most dangerous of all weapons to a hegemony, an institution like the Republic. The reading of recorded thought set free voices previously restrained by the inconvenience of death. From beyond the grave, in the eternal light of recorded thought, came these words:

---

There is only one planet.

The planet contains multitudes.

Some on the planet are good.

Some are bad.

Some help people.

Some steal and cheat.

A few divide others for power.

And most are divided by fear.

Despite it all, the people are still people.

The planet is still a planet.

Borders are conjured outside nature.

Republics form only in the mind.

We ask you as people, for people, to cast aside what you think of us.

Look past what you’re told.

We come in peace and do not fire; we only leave paper.

The war you fight is a war of division.

We kill each other because we’re told that our dangerous neighbor is you.

But we are not invading.

We live here too.

We ask only for your help.

---

While Thrane struggled to make sense of the list of facts, an urgent message came through every datapad on every person’s wrist on the whole planet. The message said: “Dear citizens, please stay away from the paper-sized weapons. They contain a poisonous substance known as propaganda. It may invade your mind and destroy your sense of self, sense of community, and sense of nation.”

Thrane certainly felt his mind was invaded by a poisonous substance. But he was not afraid. He felt betrayed and violated as he realized all at once the lifetime of lies he’d been told. Dreia pointed up to the bright light in the night sky where the Republic’s citizens were told the Libertine planet sat in orbit. The shelter shook as an explosion took the power offline.

The light in the sky fizzled and went out.

The planet no longer existed.

Or it never did.

The Libertines crossed over the fault and into Tralgressian territory. They were joined by Thrane and Dreia and six billion of their compatriots. Two planets became one when the Libertine leader accepted the first of the Tralgressian refugees, announcing that there would be room for everybody.