Travesty (SolarSide Book 1)

by Austin Aragon

  The Revolutionary Ideals are as follows.

  Unity as one people and one state.

  Defense of social morals, as outlined by the Doctrine.

  And third, to always continue the fight against the ever encroaching evils of discontent and dissidence.

  The pledge is also to uphold the principles of the Doctrine and Constitution.

  And last but not least, it’s a pledge to maintain the four great securities cherished by all Americans.

  Security to livelihood.

  Security to peace.

  Security from want.

  Security from fear.

  These make up the basic ideals of the State. God bless America and the Party.”

  The Rep issues we can sit back down, and turns to Mr. Martin, “The class is all yours. I can’t wait to hear what your students have to show as completion of quarter annual education.”

  Mr. Martin’s beckons me forward once again.

  I touch the digital screen at the front of my desk to turn it on, and double tap a folder titled Peter, where I drag my presentation from it over to a drop box icon labeled MidTerms. My presentation with sources and supportive facts appears on the slide down screen behind Mr. Martin while I walk up to the front desk.

  Alright, it’s time to show them what you got Peter, there’s a Rep to impress after all. I stand before the class, my feet in the same place as the Rep. “My presentation will be about supporting the Council locked debate of further dismantling our post war weapon stockpiles. Now, the main opposition to passing this legislation in the United Nations Supreme Assembly is the standstill in the Security Council. Why is there a standstill? Because our own Federal government is afraid to disarm in disbelief that China will do so also. However, this is an unguided belief halting our ability to create a safer, less weaponized future.

  “Russia, who started the transition from the War on Terror to the global Terrible War by invading Ukraine and Estonia, was also the first to disarm its tremendous stockpile after the war ended, despite the whole world believing the contrary. And looked what happened, peace. There was no other great crisis as they demilitarized. That’s because we have international transparency never seen till after the war ended. We have all of this to thank to our Global Founding Fathers who rose up and overthrew the Traditionalists, and their Revolutionary party who finally brought real tranquility and peace for us all.

  “We have broken away from the ill-conceived belief in radical personal privacy or supreme state sovereignty. The effects of international polarization in our markets and governments have only brought us equality and stability in the past decades. Having a tremendous post war stockpile of weapons as a developed mature UN participating member is obsolete, and worse, an unnecessary threat to global peace and a reflection of our cultural paranoia at the new Universal Citizen Legislation proposed last year. It also shows our lack of faith in our worldwide neighbors. Also, remember the Peace Protocol legislation, where countries are encouraged to cut their military spending by fifty percent every year. But further, our resources have recently gone into nation building and to international aid programs to fight poverty and diseases. We are only creating a deficit by stockpiling, maintaining, and hiring more personnel to defend and operate our weapons and bases. Manpower and money that would better service the programs I mentioned beforehand, because they actually aid humanity.

  “We are no longer living in the age of War on Terror, but in the twenty second century. The time for continual maintained peace is now. We should not be afraid or worry about if another country will honor their part of the agreement, because we live under a revamped, powerful and successful United Nations’ system of global governance that has the power and authority to punish those that wish to create crises—unlike the old UN’s failures before the Terrible War which caused it. We have moved past the age of archaic international relations. We are in a golden era of mutual progress and universal state representation. Disarmament is the path to further peace.”

  “Well said, Peter,” says Mr. Martin as the class politely applauds.

  “Unity, Defense, Revolution. Remember the Cause brothers.” I open my eyes to a Party Rep making his round through our row. I let go of the XM I am still holding tightly, and place my callused hand from basic training back into my lap. I used to advocate for the disbarment of post war stockpiles. Now I am a vessel for them. Carrying them around and raining destruction on the enemies of humanity.

  I used to be a pacifist. But some things are bigger than you. If my country needs me to fight, I suppose I will.

  IV

  I remember the day when all of Earth froze as the news reports came in about the Herculean invasion force in the Dolus system.

  My phone is broadcasting a disaster signal. I roll out of my bed to look at the time: 6:30 AM—what could it be, another tsunami in the south? Or maybe the influenza is back?

  “Shut the fuck—” starts Isaac from underneath his blankets.

  “It’s not my alarm.”

  “What is it then?”

  “This is not a drill. Emergency podcast now beginning…This is your President speaking…”

  “Turn on the TV!” says Isaac, his head flying off his pillow.

  “Alright, hold on.” I switch to a news channel and turn my phone down.

  The President continues, “You may have heard news about our first encounter with nonhuman alien species on Gemina in the Dolus system. These reports are not false. The aliens have eradicated the planet and are moving on to attack Nova Terra…”

  I rub my eyes to wipe away the sleep still on them so I can better focus on the TV.

  “This is a joke,” mutters Isaac.

  “This is a real news station, and that’s the President.”

  We switch to multiple channels to confirm this as Isaac looks online. I pause my search on one channel as the newswoman reports what has happened in the Dolus system so far. “Aliens, an extraterrestrial race appearing as intelligent as us have just laid waste to the planet Gemina. Military intelligence officers in the region report that the aliens used laser weaponry and missiles to break apart the planet’s surface, causing the center molten core to explode out into a global volcanic flare-up all over the planet. Already, United Nations members are blaming the Peace Protocols legislation from forcing them to be unable to install a PDF system on Gemina due to the required spending cuts…” As she reports the news, a red box on the bottom left of the screen continues rising with numbers. The numbers are indicating the amount of people killed or missing.

  “These aliens are being given the name Herculean. Scientist and astrologists have discovered that their entry point into the Dolus system suggests they came from the directional angel of the Hercules constellation. They are now moving onto Nova Terra, capital planet of Dolus, which exports over thirty percent of our metals, critical to Earth trade for solar power, if prices are to remain low, and shortages to be avoided…”

  “Can you really believe this shit?” says Isaac. We are confused to put it mildly. Nothing like this has ever happened. I mean, we live in an era of international peace, we’re the Golden Generation, free from violence. Ignorant about the horrors of the Terrible War our forefathers went a century ago. Yet now, here we are experiencing our own generational shock. Throughout the day, we sit glued to the TV and our laptops as we try to digest all of the news, so that we can try to make sense of it all.

  Our phones ring. It is a National State of Address. The request is that all citizens vote yes or no on a pending subject: being our opinion if the US should agree to intervene in the Herculean war in the upcoming United Nations Supreme Assembly meeting.

  I stare at the two options on the app of my phone. One green for yes, the other red for no. “I already said no,” says Isaac, “but it doesn’t even matter. It’s just an opinion poll. They will still do whatever they want.”

  Despite that, I can’t figure it out. They will know what I vot
e. I am a pacifist, but this whole day the Party spoke of the humanitarian necessity to aid our neighbors in the Dolus system. That it is part of Party Ideals and Doctrine to help humans under oppression, that not doing so was to forsake our forefathers and fellow humans. Is it worse to hold onto one ideal and indirectly break others, or directly break one to follow the others?

  I pretend to pick one and close the app, placing the phone back into my pocket. “Yeah, these votes are stupid.”

  “This is Isaac, you know what to do,” says his phone’s voicemail. I pocket my phone and leave my mustang in the parking lot. There aren’t many cars here. Strange, since it’s not the weekend yet, did I miss an important event?

  As I walk down the hallways I discover that many of the college dorms are being evacuated with crying students and their belongings. I enter my room to see Isaac’s items stuffed into a duffel bag on his bed. The TV is blaring in the background about the Herculeans attacking the Dolus system, and the United Nations Supreme Assembly debating if Earth should intervene. On my bulletin board lies a pinned envelope from the US Selective Service.

  I feel heavy. I sit down on my bed. I try to stare at the thick white envelope hovering a meter away from me. I rub my hands across my thighs. I close my eyes, then open them really fast to glance at the bulletin board. It’s still there. “Go away.” I look down again. No way, are they really calling a draft? I stand up. My hands tremble as I grab the envelope. I am in college, surely I’m exempt. This is a big fucking mistake! I drop the envelope and quickly rip open my painkiller bottle and take a handful of them. I go to pick up the envelope from the ground but pause—my foot is closer to it than my hand. I could just kick it under the bed. Forget it ever came. The white envelope stares at me, uninterested. I finish bending over and grab it then tear open the top of it, fumbling with the letter as I unfold along the crease to read.

  ON ANTICIPATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL,

  RESOLUTION 746,

  TO BE SIGNED APIRL 09, 2112 BY ALL MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL

  AND SUPREME CONGRESS,

  WITH THE DECLARED ABSTENTION OF CHINA,

  ALL SELECTIVE SERVICE MALES ARE NOW CALLED FIRST FOR

  THE USA NATIONAL DRAFT,

  YEARS OF BIRTH, 2092 TO 2094

  ARE THE FIRST SLECTIVE SERVICE MALES

  DRAWN FOR INITIAL WAVE OF DRAFT,

  REPORT TO THE NEAREST FEDERAL RECURITMENT CENTER IMMEDIATELY

  I pin the letter against the bulletin. I don’t want to fight! I am in college, this is my life. Right here. I don’t even believe in violence as an acceptable answer. Never have my pacifistic morals ever conflicted with what the Party decreed—I thought we were synonymous. But now they do…but now they also need me. They need me to fight, to aid our brothers under massacre. What should I possibly do? Forsake myself or my country?

  I lie on the bed with my hands ripping at my hair for a while.

  Disobeying the state would bring punishment, disobeying myself would only bring resentment. But resentment, I could at least hopefully change into acceptance. Acceptance that sometimes, the sword is stronger than the pen, that these aliens have shown they can’t be negotiated with—they instigated the violence. That it is either us or them. And I mean, they aren’t human, so they couldn’t possibly rationalize like humans do, to realize that war is wrong, otherwise they would have never started one, so the only option left was for us to fight back. Finally, the Party, with its knowledge and power, surely knows better than me. They surely went through this same thought process as I, and came to this logical conclusion. I don’t need to rationalize it all and have this headache, because they already have for me.

  Late into the night I hear banging and stumbling—Isaac. He slumps into his bed. “You too?” I say, glancing at his stuffed bags.

  “It’s over Peter,” he slurs. He’s drunk. “We’re fucking doomed. Fuck this place!” He jumps up and goes to the door, but instead falls over from the dizziness of being wasted. He crawls to the base of his bed and cries.

  I have already shared my tears about it, and Isaac’s disposition was not encouraging my moral decision I came to earlier. I sit beside him and try to get him to drink some water.

  He spends the next few hours puking into a bowl.

  After finishing his spell, he rests easy against my shoulder. “Peter, I don’t want to die,” he repeats weakly as he falls asleep.

  The next morning, I pack everything I have after a phone call to my parents and younger brother Creon. I am to become a warrior of the USA. All my future plans, to finish my education, are indefinitely postponed. When I come back though, I will have finished participating in a great cause. And with this mandatory service, I could even now apply to be an officer in the Party Representation Core, like I flirted with as an earlier career option. But even so, it’s a weak reassurance to the fear still inside of my chest.

  I walk down my usual hallway for the last time, through my favorite area of the university with all my belongings stuffed into bags around my shoulders. A familiar voice calls me from an office; it is Mr. Martin. I enter his room to see him behind a desk packed with papers.

  “Oh God, my dear boy, I heard the news. Only students in post graduate learning were exempt from the draft. I tried very hard to find any loopholes to keep you here. But the only one that would have worked has become obsolete as of the UN Supreme Congress’ decision to fight the Herculeans last night.”

  It’s official. I refused to watch the news in hopes it wouldn’t happen. I lower my head so he doesn’t see me trying to hide the tears. I look back up after a moment. “What was it?”

  “To participate on the new Interstellar Abroad program—”

  I cut him off early, “Well it looks like I am still heading to Nova Terra anyway.”

  “The bitter irony of this terrible situation,” says Mr. Martin. “To think, I could have sent you as a student or educator,” he stops to see that I am repressing with all my strength to not bawl before him. How can he not see that his wishful words only push deeper this dagger that is already in my heart? That I am trying so hard to be a strong and a good citizen. “Right,” he finishes solemnly.

  I have nothing left to say, but as I start to leave he begs me to come back to his desk. “What is it Mr. Martin?”

  “I have something, a quote, from a man long dead. This quote was before the Terrible War. And even though it is my duty to inform you that we live in a better society than ever before in all of humanity’s history, I implore you to open your mind much bigger than before.” He leans into my ear whispering quickly, “There is a reality about our society, our government that few see or succeed to pierce through, which is the veil covering the authority of the Party that controls us. This authority, that can at any moment take your life such as it has right now, and cast it into something you were never destined to be, a soldier in a war. This authority is, and I hope you will never tell anyone what I am about to say, but this authority is wrong, it is corrupt, and it has no right to send young men to die for its power scheming agendas.”

  Power scheming? I would hardly call aiding fellow humans scheming. I just don’t want to die. God, I don’t want to die.

  “I see confusion on your face,” he says. He produces a key from his chest pocket and unlocks a cabinet in his desk, from which he displays a paper and quote to me.

  It Is Still an Illusion

  Imagine being born into a dream: a mass illusion transformed over thousands of years by billions of people into what today you call reality. The billions of people subdivided into territories they called countries, into belief systems they called religions, and into groups they called races.

  Countries subdivided into states, provinces, and cities, which then subdivided into neighborhoods that subdivided into buildings or single-family homes. Religions divided into conservative and liberal sects, which then grew into more conservative and liberal branches. Races divided themselves by
all of the above, including color, tone, ethnic makeup, and financial status.

  Each group then teaches and defends that its way is the way and its truth is the truth, and each group creates its own reality out of what it believes. Each group then tries to sell you on its current forms and laws, telling you that this is what is ‘right’. Each teaches you that the closer you are to following its form, the happier, more successful, and peaceful you will be. And somewhere deep within, you know that it is your right to be happy and to be at peace. So you buy into it, and regardless of how little sense the illusion makes, you keep participating, for if you stop, you will be judged as an outcast, a troublemaker, a bum.

  You are taught that if you stop participating in the group’s way of life, your hopes for happiness, success, and peace will also end. The group tells you that if you go against the norm, you will not find happiness, peace, or success. So you buy into the illusion the group offers, believing that there is no other way. You carefully weave and contour the illusion into one you can live with for now. But my friend, regardless of how you choose to weave, contour, and experience the illusion, it is still an illusion.

  -James Blanchard Cisneros

  I never expected my favorite Professor to hold papers and opinions that were illegal of Party values, but yet it spoke directly from a truth I felt resonate intrinsically within side of me. The conceivable idea that my life is just a resource of the state to send off to war unnerved and angered me, but at the same time my sense of patriotism, my nationalism, encouraged that I should go willingly.

  After all, I owe my security and opportunity to education to the state. In fact, I owe everything to the state. And again, I also feel that guilt rise too, the guilt that I am acting selfish, only out of my own interests, than what the state is clearly acting out of the interests of millions. Yet, oh yet! I still feel deceived, even used, that I could be collected and shipped out so easily, to a war in an entire different star system. I assumed it was my own personal morals that I am breaking ultimately in going. But now, I don’t know anymore. And beyond this, what insight or revelation did it really bring that mattered to me? I am still to join the military, and I am still to leave and fight.