And time passes because that’s all it can really do. Moment after moment, some inconsequential, others monumental. In this one particular moment, Uh’ smiles because everything is working. The math of the moment, perfect. His math. And oh how he loves to be right. A terrorist group with no ties to Soya has been doing work in her name. Enough so that when the general assembly decided to arrest her on treason charges they did so after asking politely. And offered her this trial so that at the end of it she can legally take over the government.

Asinine, maybe, but government works when you work it.

The one question poised to the anonymous jury: is Soya acting as Grotto’s ruler or not. She isn’t supposed to. Simply a member of the elder class and all. She could have distanced herself from it. Almost did, but why have dreams, if, at the moment of fulfilling them, you run away.

Whispers carry in the titerarium, so no one dares make one. The slightest rustle of paper or clothing is audible. An Upu attempts to stifle a sneeze and fails, managing to create a disturbance as those around her turn to stare. One threatens by pointing a black claw. The air feels heavy as Soya stands in the center of the vast space on a round white platform with a diameter of forty-paces, Soya stands on one side, a holo-image of the people’s defender on the other. The air smells hallowed. Like incense or prayers offered up to the gods of old were in the air. The seating slopes up sharply, the effect is like a hundred-thousand faces sitting on top of one another, gradually growing smaller and smaller until disappearing into the bright stage lights far above. The stage is built above mechanics hidden from view by a black curtain. In ancient times, it lowered down into the crypts built below the university. The final resting spot of much of Grotto’s esteemed past. When the time comes it will lower her to whatever waits below, most likely preparations to be crowned and returned to the cheers of her people. He shakes away the alternative, if guilty, she would descend, never be seen again. Uh’ can’t help but note how fragile Soya looks in the white light drenching her. She leans on a cane identical to his and dressed in the same flowing black silks designed especially for this glimpse. Soya stretches the silence, and the loud hush threatens. Milking it, because she is best when making theatre out of her thoughts and opinions. Only Uh’ knows she is also trying futilely to catch her breath.

The stage stands in the middle of the huge space meant to display sports, usually, fruit-keeping, 12, Naht-do usually, against 12, and the winners were the team that walked out with the kuppa-fruit nut. Matches could be brutal and deaths happen often. Today the only death planned for is if Soya loses. The penalty for insurrection planned or otherwise.

But there is no chance of that.

They are here because just by uttering the savior of Grotto’s name, the old argument brews. The argument that asks why not just crown her empress and get it over with it. The magic of ever-improving technology keeps the inhospitable environment of the planet’s dense atmosphere of poisonous gases at bay and has allowed this species to reach far into their own solar system. They are powerful. Smart. Murderously cruel creatures that thought whatever befell their eye belonged to them.

They call their floating bubbles, cities. There are hundreds of cities on Grotto, all connected by ancient tunnels. The most populated city is this one, Mtaj where the University of Yee is situated. Sixteen million Upu, and their two hundred thousand Naht-do servants live in Mtaj. Under its bubble, life is crowded but boasts every luxury a society could offer.

But it’s a society that comes with a price. One that stains. One that will end unless spatial-folding can be attained. Uh’ tries to push his work from his mind. He has had a breakthrough and thinks he knows how to make the tech work. It’ll be a double celebration tonight when he unveils his plans.

He can’t believe how things have matured for them and looks around in awe. Sure, she has always been famous, but to see it displayed like this was incredible. The place was drenched with respect and awe. The trial couldn’t be going any better. The case against Soya Yee garnered so much attention a typical courtroom setting couldn’t be used. Billions demanded to watch, and a live audience has gathered around their devices, system-wide, every glimpse. The largest audience Grotto could boost. The Upu fill every seat and free millimeter to watch. Even the aisles are packed. Some inch out onto the rafters of the vast domed ceiling to get a better look. The ceiling was built so long ago the technology keeping it from crashing down shouldn't still work, but it does. Thank the creator.

Uh’ is not an anthropologist but being Upu used to fly, and those dangling from up high are foolish for defying gravity and will die if they fall, he wishes they wouldn’t. Upus long ago lost that ability as they crawled out of the caves deep beneath the planet’s surface, fraction by fraction. They fought the poisonous atmosphere above that did not care one bit about their struggle for life. They used the subterranean Kuppa-fruit trees to move beyond the caverns and eventually out among the stars. The trees were all artificial now and the only true Kuppa-fruit nuts were relics held in museums.

Soya Yee is on trial, but not for murdering the Naht-do, as maybe an honorable society might do, no, for being so popular the people are demanding she be crowned Empress. Acts of violence done are being carried out in her name.

Then Uh’ realizes his love still struggles to breathe as the judge has reached the limits of his patience, “Soya please, these distractions are uncalled for. Stick to your closing argument and enough of the theatrics. You are being accused of insurrection,” as if he could redirect her through his amplification device, voice booming in the giant hall.

Immediately the crowd turns on him and boos. The noise is deafening. The giant face of the judge crushes into fear as he tries to demand silence, but his actual words can’t be heard now over the roar. From homes everywhere, the judge is jeered. The small contingent that agree with him are hushed into silence, most out of fear. Fights break out between Soya supporters and those brave enough to say anything in favor of a guilty verdict.

But only because she parlays her greatness and bows her head and apologizes for, “wasting the court’s time.” The crowd settles and hopes things hurry to their conclusion. If she is guilty of anything it is being too loved. And she’s guilty all right. The masses love Soya and they will not tolerate their hero treated rudely.

The assembled guard, facing the crowd, each look ready to lay down their weapons and run and join the opposition. Uh’ notes, and they have chosen to keep their affirmatizers holstered and are going for the more traditional explosive propelled projectiles. Lethal, yet the Upu and Naht-do in the crowd look ready to join the afterlife if anything befalls their beloved Soya.

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“Grotto was fine with my ending the war,” Soya’s voice finally cuts through the silence. When her words clear the sound system the crowd cheers in response. Her voice, soft and old, reaches through the noise with some kind of powerful inner strength. She pauses and fixes Rantira with cold eyes. The Naht-do knows what to do. He’s been standing silent next to Uh’ then pivots on his clawed Naht-do feet, knees buckling to heed her. Then that dry cough Rantira’s drought promised to fix. She fixes her wing membrane over the fit and leaves little droplets of blood on the white silk covering. Uh’ decides then, she looks ill. Maybe the effort of defending the people’s love for her was having an effect. Maybe whatever Rantira was feeding her wasn’t working. He’d ask him to explain again what it was when he returned from bringing her a fresh cup.

Then she clutches at her chest and seems to sway off balance. Uh’ is moved to help. She is his owner, his reason for being. So he goes to her.

But she stops him with a subtle gesture before he can settle a second foot.

She mouths, I’ll be fine. And though he knows it’s a lie he backs off. She won’t be, somethings wrong. He settles back into waiting because that’s all he can do. It could be expected with age, but she, as a public figure, has air to clean if she is to rule them all. A fresh start, she called it. People need to trust me to keep them alive, it sometimes took pageantry like this. Remember Uh’ it’s about legacy. It’s about making it a sin to ever deviate from our plan. To reduce and protect. Despite what she has actually done with her life, that is all that truly mattered to her now. Uh’ can give her spatial-folding and make her dreams of saving the Upu, forever real. He doubts it would matter much compared to what happens here. Life or death, spatial folding is just the icing or the revenge.

Uh’ pushes away the reverse, the evil he could make with his numbers. No, he won’t need to.

Picking a place out in the auditorium to set her hard resolute eyes, she turns. Her back, hunched with kyphosis, forces her to struggle to look up and see her audience, but she does, brow scrunched in denial of the pain. Uh’ can sense her racing thoughts. Her frenzy to get it all out. She has much to say because that is her nature. She thinks in novels and demands every word be heard and understood. It has caused great and terrible things, this insistence, but this has always been the case with her. And any person destined to shape their people. Too much to say and think and do.

“Reduce and protect,” her words echo as the crowd waits for more. But she rests and finds her seat and seems to melt into it with exhaustion.

Even the judge seems willing to get things over now, like maybe they have gone too far and says, “it’s time for the prosecution’s final arguments.”

Soon after this, unless Soya opts to speak again, it will be time for the panel of secret jurists to condemn or give the entirety of the Upu effort to Soya. Big decision, one Uh’ is happy not to be a part of.

The Grotto prosecutor goes, his face replacing the judges on the screen both in remote locations so as to keep them safe as they did the Elder’s business for them.

Basically, the government Upu, in his expensive law robe, says, “Soya might be a danger to Grotto. Maybe her name commands more respect than any seat of power in the entirety of history on Grotto ever should. And she might need stopping, but the Naht-do were sacrificed to save the entirety of the living solar system. The Upu race owes Soya Yee a debt for the rest of its history. I do not favor one side over the other. I am solely for the Upu.” He stops and fixes Soya with a stern eye, before continuing, “Long live Empress Yee. The Defense rests, your honor.”

The screen switches back to the face of the judge.

Nobody acts shocked but most cheer. Now the assembled court gets to rule on truth and the good of all. Maybe even the surviving Naht-do.

“And if there is nothing else…”

Soya raises her hand slightly and the judge sighs, bowing his head to show she has the floor. Uh’ wonders, does he know his name is on a list of Upu whose opinion has caused the Soya Yee movement great harm and after her coronation decisions will be made. Because it is, Uh’ placed it there this morning with Soya’s blessing.

Soya stands to speak one last time and shuffles to the center of the platform. She pauses there out of breath, or maybe unsure how to continue. Not likely, but maybe. The proceedings are being broadcast globally, billions watch the wheezing words, wet and thick with phlegm, of the person considered the greatest Upu alive, “I will miss… likely forever.” The quiet is thunderous beneath the high arching ceiling of the titerarium after. Then hushed questions, that boil down to, huh?

The enormous building is situated on the University of Yee campus. The one-hundred-thousand Upu present hold their breath hoping for an answer. Soya is known for her eloquence and after she is done speaking many look forward to hanging a crown on her head to wear the remainder of her glimpses whether that be one, or countless.

After a long while, still struggling to catch her breath, she manages, “Reduce and protect” again.

Uh’ knows she means the ideal. The state of balance in which all efforts support the society. She is not on trial for that belief turned Upu religion, however. Grotto society moved to implement that decades ago.

“No more waste, we rebuild society by erasing exclusivity. Not with soft hands, but with a hard club. We eliminate waste as we did in the great war between the planets. We destroy that which would dilute our core values. Like we do in the mines. We reduce waste and make the most out of the crumbs of ore we are able to still find.” Her words, spoken even before erasing all life on Naht-do, but still so powerfully resonate in everything that the Upu did.

Today, Uh’ can tell she has decided to finish and stands stoic, chin thrust up to say, “the Upu’s should seek more than just the stars. I wish…

Her voice trails off.

“I wish we had never fought a war with our neighbors, our cousins. I wish we recognized how vast the universe was, too vast to be selfish, too vast. I do, at the end of what many consider a great life, want so much to have been different.” Then she loses her balance, vestigial wings fluttering as if they could right her bulk, but they can’t and she totters. The sorrow is sudden and hard as his eyes erupt in tears. She loses her grip on the cane. It clatters to the polished red quartz floor with a reverberating boom. Soya opens her mouth as if to answer the sound but stops, tongue-wagging as if trying to force itself down her own throat. Her eyes bulge. She stiffens then falls and hits the floor with the sickening sound of a fur-wrapped skull bouncing off polished stone.

There is some blubbering at first, then after several fractions of a second, she doesn’t move.

After moments, a single being sobs, then billions of beings eww in solitary sadness and unity.

Is she dead? Uh’ mind hurts at the thought. A cold rush of fear courses through him, but as he goes to her, a voice from high up in the stands screams, "Reduce and protect! For all Naht-do!”

Then an explosion.

It is loud and violent and all Uh’ remembers is finding himself at Soya’s still body. Laying over her, to protect it.

But before any dawning realization sets in, the stage lowers Uh’ to the next and final chapter of his life.