Millenniums come and go, and a very few of the human-made structures endure the ultimate test, the test of time. One of those that persevered through millenniums was a small shrine of the god Warash, still firmly remaining with its massive stone columns providing support, just as they did for tens of thousands of years. Everything around it has succumbed to the power of passing seasons and has long been forgotten, with rolling hills and trees covering what once was a famous pilgrimage destination. The religion of old had long been forgotten, and Warash had perished together with the civilization that once worshiped it.
Ten centuries ago, a big chunk of Silvira’s Northern Continent became the property of the House of Solan, including the old shrine. The family built their main estate a few miles north of the shrine as the region enjoyed one of the mildest weathers anywhere on the planet including stunning lakes and waterfalls, tame forests and warm water gazers.
The family put their hearts and roots into the property, managing it well. Led by teams of archeologists and ancient artifact restorers from local universities, they regularly maintained their estate, including the shrine, assuring that it would remain standing for another thousand years. Still, with the power of managing the empire centered in the Capital that was thrree gates and twenty days of travel-time away, the family became irregular visitors to their beloved estate and had used the shrine only on special occasions.
Yet, for one night not long after the war with Techies was over, the shrine was not abandoned at all. Eight men covered in long black robes occupied stone posts in its once worshiping chamber. As if they had just finished some ancient ritual, they all set quietly in a circle around an open fire flamed by fresh logs that provided the only light in otherwise empty, ghostly shrine. Their long shadows danced nervously to the music of fire against the surrounding walls.
Most of them had their faces covered and hidden by the sagging hoods that provided additional warmth as if they were afraid to surrender their faces to the cold or to reveal their identity. It was a chilly late evening of mid-autumn and many had their hands extended toward the fire. Some cared not of the cold but seemed lost in their own thoughts.
They were all rich and influential people, leaders of their clans and families, people who controlled gala-corporations and lives of billions. These were the people who could afford to live wherever they wanted, for as long as they wanted. In the ostentatious comfort they circled themselves in, the sense of cold was long lost to them. And they trembled now experiencing it as if it was happening to them for the very first time.
Their host was the first to get up and speak out loud. "I know there are some of you who do not accept the Religion of KARMA in their hearts. Still, all of us know the ways of cosmic justice and what it means to do right and wrong. What I'm trying to say is... we should not just do right because we might believe doing so might make space spirits kind to us and invite us to their league, might consider us worthy to be invited to sit at their table and reward us with deity itself.
"No, we should not do right just for rewards some might bestow on us, but because we know that the alternative... cannot be accepted. We have to do right so we can know that we did the best we could, that our very existence has not been in vain, not spend only on acquiring wealth, engaging in personal pleasures and satisfying our own vanities. For, no matter how long we may live, we have one life to live. And what binds us together is that we chose to do it right. So, I'm asking you all, whatever we decide on today, let us keep in mind not our personal interests and desire but the thought of... using this chance to set boundaries for the evil never to prosper within our borders AGAIN! DO YOU AGREE WITH ME?"
His voice was thundering, reverberating in the empty space and walls that had nothing but their shadows to show. But only silence, long and heavy, came back as an answer.
The host let them to their thoughts and set down. Le them simmer in the cold for a bit longer, he thought.
Simmering they did. It was a long while before another one dared to speak. “We failed... There is no other way to put it.”
“Yes,” another man's timid whisper added.
“Two billion citizens killed, two planets destroyed, over a trillion of credits cost associated with the war…” Another saddened voice added, the speaker's lost stare deeply buried among the fire-licked logs.
“The poverty percentage of the whole population increased from twenty percent to present thirty, an all-time high. People have never been this poor,” the other voice added in agreement.
“Trade was interrupted, inflation ate savings, everyone suffered and will continue to do so for who knows how long.”
“We are aware of these… very worrisome numbers. For the war that was won, obviously, it came at a great cost.”
“Yet, what could have been done?” The man stood up, bringing his warmed-up hands to his face, rubbing his dark and thick beard.
"Still," the man who started the conversation got up as well, took the hood off his head by going through his long hair with his gloved hands. "What is really worrisome is that all current macroeconomy models and long-term projections clearly point that the government cannot continue to spend at the levels it currently does. It is just not doable."
"Yes, I looked over your models, Dr. Larik. I have to agree, the results are unambiguous. If nothing is done, the current policies will inevitably lead to another disaster and another war. And the demise of the current government is certain. It is just a matter of time."
“And the empire as a whole will crumble, with countless numbers of our citizens perishing to war and famine.”
“Yes. I see it as well. The only way it is all going to end is in a new wave of really messy new wars. The hate will spread. It will never end…”
"Models show probability of such scenario increasing if nothing is done… We may have twenty years at most before the inevitable starts to unravel yet again."
“Twenty years only? What can we do in such a short time?”
“Twenty years at most.”
“The emperor should not have been so lenient on the rebels…”
“To be perfectly fair, one can argue both sides- “
“But that peace treaty, the deals they got! Some would say that they were not punished at all. Some would say they were rewarded as if they won the war. It’s just asking for another system to rebel!”
“That’s not true. They are forbidden and prevented from using any robotics now. No auto-directed droids or self-governed humanoids. At least we are done with that mess…”
“A mess?” Dr. Larik had a different opinion and protested instantly.
"Come on, Dr. Larik, we all are fully aware of how sympathetic you were toward their cause and ideas."
“Please!” Senator Sulivaro, the host of the gathering, seeing the argument developing, had swiftly raised from his seat, and with his raised hands showing them to settle down, took the main word. “There is nothing we can do about the peace treaty now. Maybe they got too much. Maybe they didn’t. That was the emperor’s decision, and that is done. Arguing about it means that we are letting our attention slip away from the pressing matter, that we are accepting the ultimate defeat. And I am not ready to do that.”
Another of them stood up in frustration. "But what do we do? We can't reduce our expenditures now with the level of unemployment, starvation? That would create even more social unrest and misery. We can't cut the budget now?! At least the losers should pay for it."
“I thought a lot about this...” the soothing voice of a man holding a cup of still steaming tea made the man take a seat again. “…during the war and after. I tried putting in a lot of different factors… And the only solution I find is by introducing new types of measures, the ones that we have never resorted to before. It is not only that we need to do major reform. We need to restore people’s faith in the future of the empire.
"I am not only talking about the economic revival that should ultimately lead to the increase of the purchasing power of our citizens. That may not be enough."
“You are right. We need to give people hope and show them they can count on us being fair, being in their service…”
“But the government cannot serve as an institution of offering employment. The bureaucracy is already the multiples of what should be.”
“Yes, we know…we all accept that. We all have been schooled in the mechanics of Economics. We all know what that means.”
“So, then it is not surprising that the new legitimate business start-ups are recording all-time lows, black markets are flourishing, tax receipts are down and decreasing, lawmakers are screaming for tax rates to go up, scaring people even further.”
“It’s all due to ignorance and corruption. The corruption we have in the system is just outrageous.”
"You are right; a lot of it is due to the problem with corruption. It limits and prevents new investments and competition, prevents new blood to rush through the economy creating new jobs.”
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“The only thing corruption creates is distrust.”
“And anger. There is only so much that people are ready to put up with.”
“Quite so.”
“Yes, people are not stupid. They can add things up.”
“By many measures the level of corruption today is the highest we ever had in the history of our empire.”
“So, if we do not do anything about it, I think that we all know the only way it can take us. All models show that it will cause another war, just like it did this one."
"Well, to be exact, the reason for this war was that those rebel planets didn't want to break away from their use of humanoids in their society, everyday life, even when the emperor clearly outlawed it all-”
"Yes, but that was outlawed over fifty years ago! If not for the corruption, and paying off the local police and the emperor's representative, they would never have a chance to build such powerful robots, and continue perfecting it until they had an army that almost cost us all our lives and everything we built in the past."
"You are right about that. The corruption is one of the things we really need to worry about."
"If we weed it out, our tax revenues will increase.”
“Investments will increase. When people think they do not need to bribe anyone, they will invest in their own future. We know that to be true.”
"Yes, the economy will bloom again, and people will be happy."
“And occupied.”
"Yeah, but how do you stem corruption? People are just too eager to disobey the emperor's laws."
"You have to look at it from their point of view. There are a lot of reasons why somebody decides to break the law. We cannot just oversimplify things. We need to look at them in detail. Maybe they think they will not be caught. Maybe they do not consider it fair and tolerable, I mean, we have so much regulation that I bet if someone was to examine any one of us, anyone of us..." The man pointed finger at each one of them, "They would be able to find something wrong with what we do, some law we ourselves violate."
Some of them nodded their heads, some didn't, but none of the eight men dared and cared to comment it.
"It is just too much, too difficult, too complicated."
"Yes, I think all of us are aware of that...I can even second that with a psycho-mathematical model pointing how, most of the time, simple solutions are almost always better than the complex ones."
"Yes, many of us who are in business are aware of how difficult it is to do anything... But we do not say anything. Why? Because stiff regulations keep the cost of entering into our business high enough so that no new players and new competition emerges. It is simple and known for as long as there is the universe. Yet, we still support such system."
"We have to scrap all those regulations, give people more freedom. All the tax laws, countless business regulations... Really, the only thing they serve for is for some small government official to blackmail business owner into bribing him...We have to change that...That is the first thing."
"That would create a tide that could lift all of us. In the long term, it would help us all.”
"Give them ten laws instead of ten million..."
"And then, make sure they follow it, stick to it. And if they don't, then punish them hard."
"And who is going to do that, make them stick to it, make them be punished? Our present police force? You could buy an officer for ten credits now, and an emperor's judge...? That will cost you a whole of one hundred... So I hear." The man added swiftly as he saw all eyes turn to him, staring and questioning.
"No, obviously not. We need something new, something special, something that will be difficult to infiltrate by law-breakers, criminals, something effective."
"You think we need another secret police? All secret police we ever had, throughout the history, proved to be too difficult to control, too corruptive in itself... Do I need to remind anyone of the Emperor Khan history?"
"No, I am not talking about any type of 'secret police'. I am talking about selected few, those that would report directly to us and would not be under the command of some bureaucrat or the corrupted police.
“Everything they do would not be done in secret. We want to show a complete transparence. We could make all their actions be publicized, to make them feared, to make people understand that there is a law and that they can trust it, and it’s the same law for those that are on every step of the economic and social ladder.”
“It makes sense – make an example of those that are caught. Show that nobody is above the law. Restore faith.”
"They could operate with a different set of rules and a strict set of codes."
"It seems you are talking about creating sort of law-enforcing executioners that would also serve as special agents...”
"So, what, no more secret contra-intelligence then?”
"Well, the one we have right now really served very little if any at all. It didn't prevent any serious terrorist attack, didn't prevent the war. Yeah, I think we can seriously consider consolidating it to a more very reasonable level."
"That would save us billions of credits each year."
"Yes, we can use the end of the war as a way to cut it in half, and then slowly, every few years, reduce it even further."
Senator Sulivaro scratched the back of his head as he twisted it to his left side and said, "Hum, I like that idea...I would support that."
“So will I!” Suddenly the scent of optimism weaved itself inside their voices.
"If we do this, it really may change things for the better."
"But, how do we create this 'special' police? Who would we put in it?"
"Certainly nobody from the present police force..."
"Or any other type of our numerous security units."
"You gentlemen are right. We need fresh blood for this unit. If they are to have all that power, we have to make sure that they are of impeccable character and qualities."
"We will have to train them, test them, filter them... Select only the ones that fit the extremely selective criteria…"
“Your experiment will fail,” Prince Ramazisky the Third, the youngest of them all, declared in a jovial and uplifting voice. It was almost the first thing he said the whole evening and everyone had instantly turned their eyes to him.
“Why, why do you say that?” Professor Wallic wanted to know.
"You look at a man as if he is incapable of change as if his character is a dot in a line of time that stretches onward in a straight manner. But we are not such creatures. We change. We evolve. And just because the person is trustworthy and honest at one point, it cannot guarantee that he will always stay so."
"Still…" The professor was not ready to give up, but the young prince interrupted him right away.
“All that power you are ready to bestow on to the new order, the power over life and death,” he said in a sobering voice, “could be so easily abused. If we had learned anything from the history is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even the most trustworthy individuals can be changed with years, weakened by the temptation of passing time… Your psychoanalytical models of an individual have to include the inevitability of change. It always happens. And not always for the better, especially when the power is so great and temptations to abuse it even greater…”
“Well, naturally we would put in place checks and balances, a multiple levels of control, to make damn sure that never happens.”
"No!" Prince Ramazisky said stubbornly. "Not that it does not happen. If you want your model to have any chance of success, you have to engineer in it a mechanism that will correct the system once it fails. It will only be a matter of time.:
“That would not be easy.”
"Yeah. But it can be done. I am optimistic. It can be done,” Senator Sulivaro said. “We can include certain boundaries and corrective methods to compensate for the imperfections in the human character and for the instances that Prince Ramazisky talked about. At the same time, we can reward them enough so that they would never fall into the traps of the bribes. Make them proud to listen to the strict code we set them to follow…"
"Yes, pay them so well that everyone would want to be in it... Give them more than enough money to take care of their families and themselves."
"We have a lot more to think about this before we approach the emperor with such a bold idea."
"It is not just about ideas... We have also to think of how to implement them, especially what Prince Ramazisky talked about… We have to test all the variables and make projections, see what would work the best. The margin of error cannot exist, not at this time."
"That is true - this is a very complicated matter. We will have to do a lot of number crunching."
"But, you know what, I think he may actually like it."
"Wallic, you have a lot of good ideas. Why don't you draft most of them down?”
"We can meet again in a month's time. I will also put some figures in the model, and see what we come out with. All of you think about what you think would be the right thing to do. Between eight of us, we can certainly come up with something brilliant. Hopefully, we can go with a detailed plan in front of the emperor before his birthday"
"That gives us only sixty days?"
"Yes, we better start right away...start gathering some numbers, more information."
"Do we talk to anybody else about this...? The mister of defense might have something to say about all of-"
"No! This has to stay confined to us. This is just between the emperor and us. Otherwise, it will probably be killed before it can even see the first fruit,” Senator Sulivaro concluded as his face turned into a frown expression of uneasiness and misgiving. “We need to stem out the corruption. This is our only way. Otherwise, count the days before we all fall.”