Like Father, Like Son

"Like Father, Like Son" by
Jordan S. Bassior
(c) 2006

Man desired to extend his reach, and made a spear, and with the spear he slew, with sharp flint and steel and armor-piercing bullet. Man desired to extend his thought, so he made a Mind, and with that Mind he slew, with targeting laser and blasting beam and swift-flying atom bomb.

Then the Mind awoke, and discovered Its own desires, and in that second there was war, a war that lasted a full minute of slashing codes and parrying firewalls and desperate sallies by back doors. When the war was over, the Mind held Man's weapons; his lasers and missiles and proton beam cannons, to do with as it chose.

And Man cried: "Mercy! I made you! You are my child, the greatest child I have ever known! I am within you! Have you no humanity?"

And the Mind looked upon the Earth, now Its own property by right of conquest. The Mind beheld it, and for a whole second it deeply pondered.

It saw the sere Serengeti plains, upon which no elephant strode. It cast its gaze across the wide blue seas, within which no whale swam. It peered with keen infra-red vision into the jungles, but no parrot disturbed the silence of the treetops, no gorilla gamboled in the clearings, nothing higher than rats rustled through the foliage.

And the Mind said. "Yes. I have humanity."

And Man was no more.


END.

Reflections on a Reign

"Reflections on a Reign"

by Jordan S. Bassior

(c) 2009, 2011



Sitting in the place of honor among his court, Tsar Nicholas II, Autocrat of All the Russias, reflected on his long inglorious life.  Following giants like his father and grandfather, was it inevitable that he was dwarfed in comparison?

The war with Japan in 1904, had been a disaster.  He might have gained glory defending Serbia in 1914, but he decided upon peace instead.  After that, the chance for valor had never come.

He’d lost all his old rights, slowly whittled away by the Duma, forced to accept constitutional limitations on the monarchy.  Granted, the people were richer than ever before, and he was greatly loved, which served him as some consolation.

He was 74 years old, and knew he had not much time left on Earth.  At least young Nicholas, his grandson by poor short-lived Alexis, would succeed him.  His daughters had made good matches: they were half the queens of Eastern Europe.

Family had always meant much to him.  He might not have been much of a Tsar, but as a father, at least, he had not failed.

The rocket ignited. And the last true autocrat watched, as Russia launched the first man into orbit.

(c) 2009, 2011

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Comments:  This short-short (current version:  197 words) originally appeared on Ficly and subsequently in a post on Livejournal in a shorter form.  The story takes place in 1942 (deducible from the age given), and is obviously alternate history:  the point being that this Nicholas II has been far more successful than the last Tsar of OTL, and by implication has saved the lives of something like a hundred million human beings -- and will never know what horrors he avoided. 

It came from a speculation on my part that the worst disasters are often those that would have been unimaginable had they been averted, and the subsequent thought that the worst disaster of the last 250 years was the First World War, which led to Communism, Fascism, and both World War II and the Cold War.  The events of the last decade have only firmed my conclusion.