Hope everyone had a Happy New Year! I’m starting this year with a story that’s a little hard to classify within the genres of normal sci fi. One of the cool things about this project is I don’t have to do that classification if it’s not convenient! So this is a vaguely historical fantasy story that’s intended to be pretty “literary” in I guess the sense I was taught in the only writing class I took in college—hopefully that doesn’t mean pretentious and overwrought! :)
There Must Be Empire
“There is no empire without cruelty,” said the Emperor, as he stared down from the grand balcony at the troops passing by on the plaza below. “And there must be empire.”
“Is there not an empire of kindness?” The young prince’s squeaky voice was a stark contrast to his father’s rumble. “If the people love you enough—“
“The people love cruelty,” his father cut him off. “This is not to be celebrated, but it is to be reckoned with. There is not one of them who will say it, but they do, for when cruelty is done and not to them, they feel safe in comparison. And everyone lives in comparison. Even Emperors.”
“What does that mean? To live in comparison?” Below them the line of men stretched in both directions off the plaza’s stones. Every uniformed foot would cross that space this day, while the Emperor stood and watched and received the salutes, but only the smallest portion could cross at any one moment. Thus the line of uniformed men snaked down ancient steps of stone, and away in both directions, out into the city and then beyond the walls, farther than even the Prince’s young eyes could see.
“To live in comparison is to be human. To see what another has, or does, or is, and wish to possess, or act, or be the same. To measure one’s life by the others that one can copy, and those one cannot. Thus cruelty. For those spared are united, and uplifted, and filled with love.”
“I don’t want to be cruel,” said the Prince.
“Nor do I,” said the Emperor.
The Prince noticed that the stones of the plaza below them had become smeared with blood. The thousand thousand feet that crossed bore many wounded, and still others who still dripped in the blood of enemies, and the blood dripped from their wounds and off their uniforms, and left savage testament on those ancient stones to a battle that the boy could scarcely imagine.
“But,” said the Emperor, “I learned to be cruel. As will you. There must be empire.”
“But why?” The boy’s plaintive whine brought a sharp look from his father that shut him up. There was nothing the Emperor punished more harshly than complaints.
“That which must be does not answer to you, or me, or anyone. You must trust me on this matter. No one knows the limits of power more than an Emperor. There is no why, no more than I can explain why you will fall instead of fly if you leap off this tower. It is the way of things.”
Below, the blood of the passing soldiers seeped between the stones, embedding itself forever into the ground of the plaza. The Emperor had decreed that the blood would not be washed off, that only the rain itself, when it came, would amend what this gruesome parade had sloughed in its passing.
“That is why I have ordered this presentation, as my father did after his wars. It is not to honor these men, though they will feel honored. It is so that they may see themselves reflected in each other, and that the next generation, and the next, and the next will find themselves inexorably drawn into this great parade, desiring to be the same. What we call honor is only the fulfillment of that desire, and it is that wanting that is the sinew of all power, including ours.”
“Then why cruelty? Why can they not copy each other in goodness? Why can they not all receive the same beneficence from us?” This time the young Prince’s voice was steady, questioning and not whining, and it drew from the Emperor a half-smile with the answer.
“We might do kindness for many reasons. There is no point to cruelty but this uniting, and thus it cannot be mistaken for anything else. We do not fight wars to expand our empire, but to strengthen it with the cruelty done therein. If we conquered all the world and there were no more wars to fight, and no more cruelty to inflict in them, our empire would very quickly cease to exist, and somewhere inside its former borders, empire would begin anew.”
The blood pooled so thick that the footsteps of the soldiers began to ring differently, as rank after rank crossed the plaza and went past the grand balcony. Early in the day their boots had thudded hard on the stone, single thudding sounds issuing from hundred of boot heels at once as they marched in formation. Now, the thuds were tinged by the schlicking of boot-soles in and out of blood spots of varying thickness and viscosity, and the precise timing of the footfalls was marred slightly by some boots getting momentarily stuck or slipping a fraction on the ghoulish mire.
“But father, has this never caused you to ask why? I know, you told me not to question that which must be, but have you not ever questioned it? If all that sustains this is cruelty, then why should empire exist?”
“It should not. It must,” came the Emperor’s reply, as if he’d been anticipating the question, which he had. “It will. And I have asked why. Of course. For my father was a moral Emperor, and so I wished to copy him, as even Emperors live in comparison. And so I questioned, and he answered me just as I have answered you.”
Schlick. Stomp. Schlick. Stomp. Schlick. Stomp. The endless alternation of those sounds drifted up to them from the plaza below. Row after row of faces, all just the same from this distance. The Prince could see them, but could not pick them apart from one another. The moment he tried to bring one face into sharp focus, that soldier’s row was already past his vantage and exiting the plaza down the far steps.
The Emperor turned to his son and spoke, lower, more confessionally.
“One day I will be gone, and you will be Emperor. And you will know the terror of life without empire, for an Emperor has none. There will be no one who can inflict cruelty yet spare you. There will only be you. You will have a solution to every problem, and this will be the most horrifying reality you could ever imagine. You will seek and strive to live in comparison, you will read about your grandfather and his grandfather, you will beseech every god you conquer to show you his power, that you might beg his mercy. And for your sins, none will. You will beg it, and you will be denied.”
The Prince started to ask another question, but then stopped. He already knew the answer.
“But there must be empire,” he said.
His father smiled fully now, as fully as he ever did. Then he made a motion with his hand. Two of his guards led two prisoners out. They wore the uniform of the Emperor’s enemies, their hands were bound, and they were blindfolded.
The prisoners were led right to the edge of the balcony, and positioned directly in front of the Emperor and the Prince.
The Emperor stepped forward and, as casually as a man might reach for his fork at dinner, he shoved the prisoner forward, over the ornate balustrade and off the balcony, spinning thirty paces to the stones of the plaza. He screamed as he fell, cut off by a ghastly whump of impact and the krrrt of shattering bone.
The Prince’s heart began to pound. He had seen dead men, even executions, but never so close, and never committed by his father. He stepped forward and looked down at the broken form on the pavement below. The man was not yet dead, still twitching and moaning his last breaths, as endless ranks of boots stomped past his head in presentation to their Emperor.
The boy stepped back. The second prisoner was right by his side, just there at arm’s length. The balustrade was not even to the prisoner’s hip. A simple shove would send him tumbling over, unable to catch himself. The Prince had stood on the grand balcony many times and admired the artistic carving on the balustrade, but never before thought of it as an instrument of death.
The fallen prisoner was dead down on the stones of the plaza. Blood leaked from his nose and ears and mouth. It all ran down to the tip of his nose, which was the closest part of his face to the stones, and then dripped off, joining with the blood of the passing soldiers. There was no telling whose was whose. The dead man was part of them, now. His death embraced and enfolded them, unifying them under the banner of Empire.
On the balcony, the Prince stared at the Emperor. The Emperor did not so much as nod. He did not need to. The Prince understood what must happen. Something from the broken corpse down on the plaza stones came up to him as well, enfolding him despite his revulsion. It was only later that he realized that the revulsion was the key. Only that which shocked in cruelty could sweep up in unity all the disparate parts of a mind. All else was brutality and no more.
He could not imagine himself committing the act until it began. The prince was a quiet boy, peaceful. He knew that in time he would be Emperor and have to make difficult decisions that cost lives, but he knew it in the way of books and stories. Now, faced with the reality, he for a moment recoiled. He rejected the idea of inevitable empire. He swore that he would be different. But then.
Then he felt the call of it. The wanting. His father had done this thing, and he wished to be the same. He did not relish the doing; he wanted to *have done* it, to know and remember, to *be* on that side of the reality of this shared deed.
And he knew in that moment that his father was right. If he, a sensitive child raised in privilege, felt this urge and desired to obey it, then it was a thing in nature, universal and eternal. The Prince had not invented Empire and he would not destroy it. He would only become it or be consumed by it.
And There Must Be Empire.
He stepped forward, directly behind the prisoner. He could feel his father’s smile in his back. He planted his feet and shoved, with both hands and all his strength, directly into the prisoner’s buttocks, which were at the Prince’s chest height. The man shouted and tried to drop to his knees and stay on the safe side of the balustrade, but he had been so close at the moment of the shove that there was no chance to prevent what came after.
Inside, the Prince recoiled. He felt a distance between himself and his body, as if the jarring act of it had thrown him back out of himself. The world slowed. His eyes stayed fixed on the prisoner. He saw the man trying to pinwheel his arms, but unable to because they were tied. The Prince could see the mouth screaming, but all sound had dropped away. There was only the terrible moment when the man impacted, head first.
Blood exploded out of him. Running thick onto the stones, splashing the nearest soldiers, mixing with the fallen blood from the wounded, obscuring the stones themselves in a wash of sticky red. The boot-soles of the soldiers disappeared into it. The schlicking and stomping was cacophonous now, discordant. It seemed more human than the metronome stomping of earlier in the day. The blood had done its work. The soldiers took something with them as they exited the plaza. There was Empire.
The Prince stepped back from the balustrade. His father embraced him. He had never felt so safe, so enclosed in love. They were not just the same, they were one. He felt the soldiers in his heart. They were all one. He had become Empire.
END
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If given enough time, anything can be justified.
I began reading this in my living room, on my computer...when I finished the story, I realized my mind had been transported into this story and my living room had slipped away.