On War
#077699
This is the seventh story in the Elovian Fable series. Click here to read the Elovian Fables from the beginning.

Jordaen died today.
The motherfucker.
Waman Shackaery tapped his ring to hear the audio of one of the fifteen hundred global new channels that were playing what was possibly the biggest news that he had ever heard.
We regret to inform you that beloved public leader and industrialist Mr Freizer Jordaen has been assassinated today. Mr Jordaen was at the time of his death the richest man in the world for twenty-eight consecutive years. His body was found at his home and personal office on the third moon. The accused goes by the half-name Zaq and belongs to the planet Marqua. If you want to see the detailed story, you would have received it on our app on your mobile devices right now. For now, let’s go to the commercials.
“All I’m saying is when three people enter an egalitarian room, they are removed of their physical powers in the outside world and come at an equal footing.” Harwen was almost shouting as she sped down the hallway looking for the room where the emergency meeting was being held.
“I know what you mean, and yet that becomes idealistic. Politics cannot run with idealism.” The man running behind her tried to bounce his words off of her. Her speed amused and frightened him at the same time. She paused and turned around with a sudden motion.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why?”
“Well…” He fumbled.
“That’s how it works. You may take a decision inside an egalitarian room but the implications are outside. And whoever has the power outside wins.”
Harwen looked at him as if whatever he said right now didn’t make any goddamn sense. She opened her mouth to reply, but then thought better of it, turned and regained her pace.
“Alliance is not our aim today. This is crisis time. We’re going for the big fish, Tanyan.” She said a second later, “Don’t ever forget that a man won’t mind you entering and taking the pile of money from his house if there is a knife sticking out from his belly.”
“Ah, I see, the delegate of the Southern Marqua is also here. Nice of you to join us fifteen minutes late, Ms Brim.” A cold unpleasant voice rang across the room as soon as the door to the Emergency meeting room slid open and Harwen entered along with her secretary Tanyan. She turned to the direction from where the sound came.
“Nice of you to come to my aid in this time of crisis, Ms Gelipi. I’d recommend you turn any of the fifteen hundred news channels to see that Marquans are getting beaten up in the streets regardless of whether they come from the North or the South.” She replied and sat down without expecting an answer. Gelipi, the delegate of Northern Marqua, didn’t reply.
“Okay, that’s enough. Calm down. Let’s start with the briefing.” The big bulky guy sitting in the middle of the room grunted with an expressionless face. As soon as he said that, the chatter in the room died and the screens lit up with the projections containing the information of the Freizer Jordaen’s death. Harwen had never been inside this room, but she has been inside a simulation during her crisis negotiation trainings. It was not a coincidence that the big bulky man who was leading the discussion was exactly the same as her training, who she could still hear droning on and on about what had occurred. Even in the simulation, she found the room suffocatingly small. The physical space, however, felt smaller. On one screen around the room, the footage of Jordaen’s death played on a loop. Bunch of other screens contained classified information including the information about the killer. The screens on her right contained images of around fifty more world leaders each representing a different faction, all of them facing the big bulky guy.
And Waman Shackaery was a big deal. No one had ever seen him smile, but to be frank, as a global authority and decision maker with almost dictatorial powers, his job didn’t present him with a lot of opportunities to smile. Just being in the same room as him gave Harwen shivers. The screens on her front, back and left still displayed the same information about the death of Jordaen.
The piece of shit Freizer Jordaen.
The stacks of buildings on top of each other went on both sides of the narrow streets. They were colorless, though. If one would stand on the street and raise his glance to look at the highest point of any of the stacks, he would be able to spot it easily, but it wouldn’t bring him any happiness. The half-naked bodies of the manual laborers peeked through some of these buildings, still working past the seventeen-hour long daytime, well into their twentieth hour. But no one would stand in the street and look at them. That job was for the robots that specialized in overseeing.
Someday, during one of the many identical hours, one of the many identical laborers would sigh and lament at his destiny that even a lifeless being was capable of having a better life than him. And all other faces would rise up, look at the one who sighed, and nod in agreement.
They were brainwashed into believing that they were helping the richest man in the world getting in better health so he could make even better decisions for the world and help even more people. That went away quickly when their sweat-drops fell fifteen stories and didn’t even make a sound on the damp surface. Every once in a while they’d get a notification that their bank balance had increased by so and so number. But what would they even spend on. And who even knew if it was correct. For all they knew, it was just an imaginary number.
So, Zaq got pissed and he hissed and got hold of the long scissors that lay next to his large workstation. He ran for miles holding those scissors and jammed it into every lifeless thing that he saw and when he realized that Jordaen was on the moon for some personal work, he went to his home, broke down the security bell, cut down the lock in the door, chomped down the greeting-signs placed on the five-kilometer long lawn, and only stopped running when his long scissors had successfully made a long hole in Jordaen’s lean body. And both of them stood there transfixed for millions of years and then Jordaen fell.
Those identical faces? They screamed and cheered.
“…And since the accused belonged to the planet Marqua, the only way we can come out of this is for Marqua to punish the accused publicly.”
“Marqua will not do any such thing.” Harwen blurted out, “Apologies for interrupting, Mr Shackaery, but I find your lack of pace extremely inconsiderate of everyone’s time. There are riots going on in the streets. We cannot delay the discussion.”
“You were the one who made the entire congress wait for fifteen minutes.” Gelipi said.
“Well, then what do you suggest we do, Ms Brim? If Marqua is not ready to take the blame, we will not be able to maintain the image of Mr Jordaen… And we will not be able to stop the riots.” Shackaery replied looking at Harwen.
“Mr Shackaery, I will be straightforward with you. If Marqua comes out and takes the blame here, it implies that the anger that Marquans felt for Jordaen was not justified and it makes the riots all the more legit.” Harwen spoke.
“I am sorry, you do not feel that the reaction that the accused gave was outrageous? He was emotional and didn’t think about the implications. You do have the luxury to do so, and doing so is something that I’d suggest. The anger that Marquans feel for Mr Jordaen is not justified.”
“How can you say that? Look at an average person from the richest parts of Marqua and compare it with some of the poorest parts of Fedora. I have never seen this level of disparity in my life. Jordaen was responsible for so many more horrible things.”
The room collectively groaned as Harwen finished her statement.
“Ms Brim, I know that you feel that Mr Jordaen was the only person responsible for the broken infrastructure and economic conditions of Marqua, but it has been proven a lot of times that that is not the case. Marqua’s poverty is not on one man. It is systemic and the fault lies in…”
“What about his widespread Iron Extraction missions that were deemed illegal by this very council? He had found loopholes in every single law that you were able to write, Mr Shackaery. Now, why is that? He has done that and made a pile of money. Did you know that Freizer Jordaen owned as much wealth as the gross domestic product of entire Marqua and Iranium City combined?”
“Excuse me, Ms Brim,” The man sitting right in front of Harwen with round glasses and a balding head spoke as soon as he heard Iranium City. “We are all aware of how much wealth Mr Jordaen had. And that is not the point of discussion here. As you said yourself, there are riots in the streets as we speak. Marquans, your own people, are being hunted and lynched like animals. And if we do not contain this Marqua will also start a resistance. We need to contain all of this and we need Marqua to come out and say that they are going to punish the accused. You need to put all of you resources…”
Harwen stared at the bald guy, Rackloux, who was the delegate of the nation of Iranium City on the planet Fedora. She raised her hand and he stopped talking. Harwen tapped on her table, entered the password and started reading aloud one of the files.
“Zaq was taken illegally from Marqua and transported to the third moon of the planet Bombay. He was put under excruciating pain in order to squeeze iron out of his body. It had a severe negative impact on his physical and mental health. Mr Jordaen never delivered on the promise of freeing him once the work ended and Zaq’s family never received the amount that was written in confidence by Mr Jordaen. All the increased numbers were inflated since Mr Jordaen owned the bank.”
“If you read a little further, it also says that Zaq said that the planet told him to kill Jordaen. The person was mentally unstable! I don’t know why we are making a huge deal out of this one person when we should be thinking about Mr Jordaen. He had such immense resources that it will take his team of twelve economists thirteen hours to come up with the legal distribution of his property. Can we please move to voting, Mr Shackery? I vote that Marqua needs to apologize in public and control the situation on their planet. We will press down the riots in our nations.” Rackloux replied, excited.
On the deceptively flat grounds of the Vulcra region of the planet Fedora, if someone stands and sees only the obvious, it seems apparent that there is no curvature of the planet. People stand out in the streets, some in the homes to see some action, some get involved blood-deep in the action. Their hands drenched with the inferior and poor blood of the Marquans. Marquans who dared to kill Freizer Jordaen!
They wouldn’t have stopped, though. It went on, till the last Marquan standing had blood clots on his face with mosquitoes sucking the whatever life left in his oppressed blood. Marquans looked at each other with pity in their eyes. Bravely defending themselves, or begging on their knees to ask forgiveness for a crime that they had not even committed. Overnight, their existence renounced from a meaningful and peaceful small community of workers to revolutionaries and anti-globalists. And anti-Jordaenians.
And those who were hiding were snitched on by their machines. They were designed by Jordaen, after all. Marquans sat waiting patiently as the riots progressed towards them. Found them out from the streets and corners, garbage dumps, sewage corners, broken toilet doors, picked them up and threw them off the roofs.
How does the death of one man does this?
Don’t ever forget that a man won’t mind you entering and taking the pile of money from his house if there is a knife sticking out from his belly.
A room can only be egalitarian when there is only one person there. When there are more people, they come wearing their context like face masks and badges on their uniforms. Their clothes reek of power hierarchy and their walk is specifically designed to convey their status. Their voices, their looks, their eyes, their tone, their gestures, their apologies add up to create a power hierarchy. Equal distribution of power is unstable and does not exist in reality.
When the odds are stacked against you before you enter the room, Tanyan thought looking at Harwen sitting in front of him arguing about the most influential dead person with the most influential person that is alive, even the act of rebellion would give you a better advantage. Was that why she was doing what she was doing? To gain some stand? Some advantage?
What was the point of lowering Jordaen’s image when ultimately it would have been boiled down to how economically powerful he had been and how much instability would there be after his death. Marqua would have to do the reparations and the oppressed people would get even more oppressed. Was that why she is doing this? Was she finding out an opportunity to push Marquans out of the oppression?
That will require a lot of power to gain. And even with confrontation, Harwen would not be able to gain that. She needed to look for an ally. But the problem with that was, given that she had already started the confrontation, it would be difficult for her to get an ally.
Then what exactly was her game?
“What exactly is your point, Ms Brim? What are you trying to prove with your details of the Iron Extraction missions and claims of oppression by Jordaen on the Marquans? Are you trying to justify the actions of the accused?” Shackaery asked once things were slightly calmed down.
Harwen was drawing circles on the floor with her toe. Tanyan knew this to be an indicator of her nervousness. But when he looked at her face, he saw resolve. For a moment, he got scared as a wave a terrible silence passed through the room.
“My point”, Harwen replied looking Shackaery directly in the eye, “Is this.”
A split second later, Harwen got up from her chair, crossed the table and walked towards Shackaery’s seat. As she did that, the guards standing behind him got alarmed and pointed their guns at her. She calmly moved forward and rammed a sharp object right in his arm. Shackaery snatched his hand back impulsively, which also pulled the object with it. And as the room and the fifty other rooms present on the flat screens saw, dangling from his hand was an injection.
“This is outrageous, Mr Brim. Get the hell out of this room! I remove you from your position of the delegate of South Marqua.”
“Believe me, I have no intention of staying.” Harwen replied and pulled the injection back. She put a droplet of Shackaery’s blood on a device that she was carrying with her. And as she put the device on the table, one of the screens in the room displayed the output of the device.
Harwen raised her hand and pointed at the screen.
“We can see the screen, Ms Brim. What are you trying to show us?” Rackloux asked.
“The Iron percentage.” she said as everyone in the room lurched forward to see, “It is within the range of healthy. And yet, it is impossible for Mr Shackaery to have that given that he was an active participant in the Iron War. Even more surprising, the growth of iron percentage in his body has been two hundred percent over the last two years. That, I present, is the proof of the fact Jordaen did squeeze Iron out of the body of poor healthy Marquans and distributed it among rich people who were affected by the Iron War. Oh, and Mr Shackaery was an active recipient of this iron as well.”
Tanyan felt his eyes grow wide. What do we make of it? What does anyone make of it? He thought as he sat stunned in the room, which contained, doubtlessly, all the other people who were equally stunned. When he did overcome his shock, a big grin came on his face. He tried to hide it as he saw the reactions of the other world leader.
The greatest way to destroy any power structure lies in destroying people’s belief that that power structure exists. As he sat there, he saw the foundation of their beliefs crumbling down in front of him and from those broken pieces, now their vulnerability was visible.
“Marqua will not apologize.” Harwen said as all the eyes were on her, “Marqua will never apologize for the centuries of cruelty and oppression and poverty that we’ve witnessed, while men like Shackaery and Jordaen have robbed us of everything that we had to give. We cannot tolerate this level of exploitation, we cannot tolerate this level of belittlement of our lives. Marqua will not apologize and I swear we will be retaliating furiously.”
“Mr Brim,” Rackloux said looking at her in horror, “Are you formally declaring a war against the other planets?”
“You will lose, Ms Brim.” Another voice echoed in the room. Tanyan saw that it belonged to Freezmun, the delegate of Rowan region of the planet Monther, “You neither have the technological sophistication nor the economic resources to go to war against the three big planets.”
“Yes,” Gelipi spoke, her tone was grim and subservient, “Ms Brim, Marqua cannot afford to go to the war.”
“Marqua cannot.” Freezmun replied looking at everyone, “And that’s why Monther will support Marqua in its fight for equality.”
“This is preposterous!” Shackaery shouted, “As a formal delegate of Bombay and the convener of the current council, I reject this proposition. There will be no alliances here and Marqua will not go to war.”
“You’re late, Shackaery.” Harwen said as she looked a screen. “Marqua has already declared a war.”
On the screens, Tanyan saw the hideous form that the riots had taken. Fifteen different regions on Bombay, twelve on Monther, eighteen on Fedora, almost all the occupied moons had people killing each other. It was difficult to say who was fighting against who, but they were fighting nonetheless. Almost all the rich factory owners in Marqua had already been killed and the retaliation was extreme. The Marquan military was preparing a fleet of planes that would reach the closest planet Fedora within two days. Once it did, there would be no stopping the war.
She knew it! Harwen knew this. But she also knew that Marquan rebellion will be easily pushed back by other three giant planets. But now they had an ally. And Tanyan stood up as everyone scrambled frantically out of the room to contain the situations in their regions. Before going out and waiting for Harwen, he threw a final look at her and saw her shaking hands with the three delegates from the planet Monther.
“How can the death of one man start a war?” He had asked her later when they were on their way back.
“Isn’t it the only thing that ever has?”
I hope you enjoyed reading that. Here is the eighth story in the series:

