Politics 2

No national secret here: I don’t like the man.

Would never invite him to my daughter’s 15° birthday if I could about to make that invitation without inconvenience. Ho, I could avoid to make that invitation, of course! But, really. In the end of day he is my wife’s favourite brother. The only uncle who is not a stranger for our daughter.

Besides, I cannot even convince myself that he is a bad person. Not really! The man is just boring.

You know he will sit there, looking miserable. Someone will make the mistake of give him and opening. Then he will go on, on, and on, about how unfair “that” is. The way people threat him.

“I am legally just an element of connection between our Arcane Govern and the mundane institutions they rule. By explicit legal disposition I cannot make any decision by myself. People do not understand that! They are mean to me, bla,bla, bla, this and that, because of ignorance. They explode my home trying to kill me, as if everything bad that happens in this country was my fault!!! So, my bosses **** me to move, against my will, to a top-level suite in the most expensive hotel in our country! Poor me!! Oh, how unfair my life is…!”

Again, I am not even saying the guy is wrong.

Not three days ago someone do exploded his apartment by mistake. The mistake being that he wasn’t inside.

As far as our legal system goes, he is saying the truth.

Or close enough.

I am sure he has some latitude in terms of order of priority. He can organize the agenda, to some degree. Push some items more emphatically, others less so. Yeah, that’s a matter of tone and pace.

He is not legally allowed to change the substance of any public policy. Still, that’s something he accepted, when he accepted that job. No one **** him to say “yes”.

Man knew he would be the visible face of our State, and Nation. That is what his position means.

Things are pretty awful for a lot of people, in daily basis.

Humans enduring misery. Living worse lives than what they used to take for granted just 20 years ago. Subhumans being pushed away from their miserable neighbourhoods to even worse conditions. To make room for those decadent human families. All that while our nation grows in power and influence in planetary scale.

We are a richer nation, with a larger population of miserable citizens, living in objectively worse conditions, every year.

I am not saying the attempt of **** was fair.

All I am saying is that you must not deny the obvious. We all know where the motivation for actions like that came from!

No one is naïve enough to imagine the guy who plan an **** attempt using cyborg implants bomb in a pterodactyl as weapon is living on the streets. Or in any sort of serious economical difficulty. That’s a expensive weapon of choice, I am aware of that.

Still, the problem with our govern of mages is that our actual rules and legislators have no name and no face.

Only face people know belongs to my brother-in-law.

We have more mages than any other nation, in percentual, but that’s still a very small percentage of our total population. And the only people who know who our govern is are the mages. Cabals decide our future in the Astral Plane. Beyond our reach. We don’t even know how many senators our country has, if there is one chamber or two in the Legislative. Or which rules are supposed to be followed to make or change our laws.

I am lawyer, I don’t have access to information like that. There is very little I can do without consult a mage adviser.

When you accept to be the public face of all that, you cannot pretend you don’t know why many people treat you with hostility.

He grew up in this nation. He has to know that! Even if he had not, one would suspect that judges, senators and chiefs of govern who choose to remain anonymous are likely not just doing that because they are shy. Or humble.

A pterodactyl with a bomb implanted in his body tried by a surgeon specialist in cyborg-tech tried to kill him.

Those uplifted subhumans live like mindless animals in this city. Mixing themselves with normal pterodactyls, despite being as intelligent as you and me. Our govern does nothing to improve their condition from absolute misery to mere **** poverty. To open a actual chance of participation in society for this people would be hard and expensive, I admit. Just take them from misery to basic dignity would be easy.

They know that! That is easy enough to figure out from common sense and public knowledge.

If I was one of those reptile fellows, I could sign this suicide contract myself. Gladly. If that meant a better life for my children.

Of course, I will not bring up that during conversation at this party. Or even say that to Selene. She loves this brother.

If you allow me a digression, is interesting how we deal with family stuff. We the humans, I mean. Here, on Planet Gerunda.

I do like History, and everybody is supposed to know the basic. Every “Alexandrine Human”, I mean. Educational programs for subhumans are not quite as demanding, or ambitious, I have to mention.

In Solar System, since the first half of Baby Steps Age, is normal for couples to have dozens of children every year. In external wombs. According to my History Classes about everybody keeps the names and contacts of all those children, but the parents take no responsibility for any one of them. The babies are born in the hand of some public or private organization. Raised by AIs and professional specialists in raise people.

On the other hand, every century those same couples will choose a few children to raise themselves. Sometimes the mother even follows the traditional method of gestation in uterus. Biological process, like most mothers do on Gerunda. Due to limitation is resource, and, “issues” with the unique laws of physics in our stellar system.

Mind you, people outside Lira System nowadays (if they still exist, and their society has not changed since The Fall) take for granted that they will live 300 years. And until almost the end of Baby Steps Age everybody used to have biological immortality.

So, in a 300 years life those people will take about 30 years to raise some children. Perhaps 2, 3, even 6 children, in every one of those 3 decades.

They stop whatever professional duties they have, take vacancies, to dedicate themselves to be parents. They keep those children home, educate them themselves (with vast help from AIs, I am sure). For strong and long lasting bonds with them. Those children expend time with their siblings while growing up. Mostly those siblings that grew up home as well, I presume.

While vast majority of humanity in Sun System grows up in institutions. Not in families. Most never know their parents in person. Or make contact and show up for a visit once in life, if they are curious.

Of course, our ancestors entered Seeding Ships. The situation in those ships was very different.

The travel between Sun System and Lira took 1.000 years. Starting in year 300 of Expansion. That was, by far, the longest travel humans had ever made. And we do not know if they made any other trip after our ancestor get isolated here in Lira.

Since human longevity is limited by Alexandrine Law in 300 years, those 1.000 years are more than 3 times the maximum duration of human life.

Obviously. Inside space in Seeding Ships is scarcer than it is in star systems. That fleet, called “Mystery Fleet” was the **** case of that. Because this was a unique prize, the sharpest minds of humanity wanted to be in those ships more than anything else. They didn’t left the usual space for population grow. So, obviously, Seeding Fleets must limit birthrates, something star systems don’t do. Those ships where our ancestors travelled needed to limit birthrates even more draconianly.

Social dynamic inside those ships was very different than what it was, presumably still is, in Sun System. First generation had signed for that, knowing what they were accepting, but people change their minds sometimes. New generation had to live with the consummate situation.

There was trillions of Seeding Ships, not two of them diluted their internal tensions exactly in the same way. All found ways to deal with it. Some governs **** their hand more in strict laws, and generous distribution of **** penalty, to have more space and less need to limit reproductive rights of families. Some opted for the opposite. With billions of individuals inside each vessel, only the Fairy Kings and Queens know which strategies worked better, and what was the cost of each decision.

Families survived those 1.000 years.

Then came the fall.

Life on Gerunda is still harsh. Most people don’t reach 90, few survive past 160. Practically no one goes beyond 200. We lack the resources to go back to civilized Sun System standards in regards to making and raising children. Even if, for most part, our people do not lack the desire to do that.

Reestablish Sun System standards was the plan our ancestors had in mind when they reached their “Mystery System”. Least, that was the plan for most of them. The attractive power of “civilization” is considerable, and that is civilization as we know it.

Heliopolis Age lasted 75 years, and was a time when daily survival was a challenge too hard and uncertain for anyone have time to remember their ideals about civilization. To say nothing about rethink those ideals. The Tripartite Accord changed things drastically, for the better, objectively speaking. And enough time have passed since that time for our existence on Gerunda earn the status of reality in the minds of our ancestors, and that status became our way of see things.

Most families have between 6 and 12 children per couple, nowadays. Parents do raise every child they have, not just the chosen ones. In this nation, at least, they have no one to do the job for them. No decades of vacancy either. So, woman will dedicate their lives mainly to motherhood, while men focus in provide for their family. Generally speaking.

Parents do love and care for some children more than for others. People do have their preferences. Just the degree of disparity between the children is less **** here than it was in Sun.

My own siblings are strangers to me. My wife do not have much relationship with her brothers and sisters either. Except for one sister, and this obnoxious public servant. Who carries depressive mood where he goes.

All that historical digression was to help me digest his imminent presence in my home.

I must remember myself that I believe having an uncle around, one she likes and who likes her, is important for my daughter. Must remember myself that I do believe family is important, and raise children is worth the minor discomforts. Our way to do things may not be the bright orthodoxy of civilization, but is our civilization, and our way.

Perhaps we are closer to what used to be the human way back in those barbaric days before Baby Steps Age. Ancient Babilon, Egypt, Greece and China, Rome, Medieval Japan, Medieval Europe, World War 2, Cold War, etc. When the means at disposal of humanity where so primitive that the entire human population in existence was less numerous than the number of people living in this city. Or the number of vampires living in this planet.

By the end of Pre Baby Steps, when all humans born had been conceived and expected to die in the same planet, human families in most nations had a configuration similar to the configuration of regular human families here in our nation. Broadly speaking. They had more in common with us that with the generation that came right after them, when Baby Steps took fly for good.

We are, for all practical purposes, isolated in this one planet. We know Fenrir and Litmus are up there somewhere, in this same system, but we can barely communicate with them for a few hours every decade. Despite the fact that we dedicate a lot efforts to try, 24/7 of legal days and weeks. We cannot even have satellites in orbit beyond the limits of our atmosphere, due to the shadows destroying them. Because to them they “smell” like intelligent live. And they are hungry, craving for devour it.

Which means us.

Despite them, we are still here. Still building families. Still raising our children. What means that, I still must swallow that fellow nagging about his unfair tribulations.

Putting things under that light, the shadows are not entirely bad.

Those eaten by one don’t need to endure that sort of thing.

Nah! Now I am the one nagging.