Thanks in advance. If you (for some reason) want to be an actual editor of this story, please PM me with your intent. I am always in need of more people's input here.Preface: Important Information to the Comprehension of this Paper
Isn’t it remarkable how few books in the English language begin with the Greek words for hello? Certainly, there must be a few Greek books that do, but they don’t count. This of course is going to be no exception to the general rule of English language books being in English.
This possibly interesting novel is a tribute to the inhabitants of a planet called Arimea. This is a tale of mice and men. Well, a tale of men anyways. And, for equality’s sake, a tale of women also. And of several of whose gender I am uncertain of . These men, women, and its live out their lives on the aforementioned planet of Arimea.
This planet is located somewhere in all of space and time, and it is not Earth. Unfortunately, our top scientists could not work out its location any more precisely, as the coordinates they had received from the planet were recorded in completely random characters from the Swahili alphabet. This was, of course, easy to understand to all Arimeans, but causes quite a few problems to anyone somewhat normal.
Arimea is home to four major nations and several smaller offspring nations. These nations have a basic understanding of ‘I don’t like you and you don’t like me, so let’s kill each other’. These four nations, I will now describe in brief here:
The Fascist Junta of Boltz is an anarchocapitalist society. This means that the CEO of the largest company in the nation is the President, and vice versa. This makes Boltz rather like a communism, in that they have state-run businesses. This is incorrect, and as such, The Fascist Junta of Boltz has sworn to destroy communism so there can be nothing to liken them to.
The name, The Fascist Junta of Boltz, is derived from the overt control that the leaders have over their population. Boltz itself is incorrectly derived from the archaic Boltz term for ‘One who is almighty’. The actual term is Btol, and would, in the native tongue of the country, have been pronounced China. This obvious perversion of a classical language was easily possible because the only person alive who could speak the language was an 80 year old man who also happened to be in a coma.
Boltz armed forces are split into five parts. The Boltz Imperial Army (BIA) takes care of the majority of land incursions. They have to follow a strict code of honor as set forth in the Boltz Constitution. The Boltz Imperial Navy (BIN) is the largest and most up to date navy in the world and, thanks to a typo in the final draft of the constitution, does not have to follow ANY code of honor. This is naturally the most popular of the armed forces. The Boltz Imperial Air Force (BIAF), in stark contrast to the BIN, consists of four un-flyable, broken down helicopters, and a converted passenger airplane (The conversion process removed the words ‘Passenger Airplane’ and replaced them with the words ‘Military Airplane’). The Boltz Imperial Space Forces (BISF) is the newest branch of the Boltz armed forces, and is meant to target the increasing threat of extra-Arimean military involvement. Finally, the Boltz Imperial Special Forces (BISforces) is an ancient military tradition, older than even the BIA, consisting of several secret agents and their outrageously expensive gadgets. When the BISF was first formed, major confusion was caused, as BISforces was known as BISF at the time. This problem caused a fair amount of special agents to be sent into space without space suits and a number of bulky suited, brightly dressed spacemen to be sent on high profile, clandestine missions. As such, a name had to be changed, and as seemed logical, the older and more familiar organization changed its name.
Aside from military, Boltz exhibits one more extraordinary talent; politics. In the Fascist Junta, politics is made so deliberately complex that less than 0.00000231% of the country’s 3.5 billion citizens understand it. This may seem like a large number considering the population’s vast size, but one must consider that because of the tight relations between common business practice and politics in an anarchocapitalism, the percentage of the population that deals in politics is 73.342%.
In many ways, their society is not unlike our own.
The second nation to declare itself to the lands of Arimea is the highly democratic and much loathed Independent Republic of Telosia. This country is so sickeningly democratic that it holds a vote on every decision made by anybody of any importance. This includes who should be president, what bills should be passed, and what color socks the First Lady should wear. This naturally upset two classes of people: the voting booth operators, who worked virtually non-stop, and the leaders of rival nations, for the friendliest of them appear to be totalitarian fascist dictatorships by comparison. Because of this, Telosia is the most despised place on earth.
Telosia’s army is small, but secure in its knowledge that they are the best because their leaders say it all the time. It is, in fact, a defensive army only, acting as a heavy-duty border patrol. The reason the most despised nation with the smallest army Arimea has ever seen is not yet vanquished is two-fold; first, the peace loving nation is home to the largest nuclear arsenal that could ever be devised. Secondly, they are insanely lucky. Entire armies marching to Telosia have been struck down by superflu in minutes. Proud fleets of ultra-battleships sailing for Telosia have had their weapon’s caches simultaneously and spontaneously explode in brilliant yellow fire.
Most scientists today postulate that during the next century, a meteor large enough to wipe an entire country from the face of Arimea will strike home. From this point, there are two trains of thought on the subject. There are those who believe that there is damning evidence that such a meteor would hit and destroy Telosia. These points are as follows: One; the law of averages must make it so. Two; God couldn’t possibly exist if it doesn’t hit Telosia. The other party believes, far more rationally, that such a thing simply could not happen to the damned lucky Telosians.
These experts believe that, should such an object strike Telosia, the colossal object would collide with a serene, flower covered hill in the scenic Telosian countryside and bounce off, breaking into four pieces. This would only damage the single flower that it somehow hit and disturb the gentle summer breeze for a moment. Three of the four pieces, however, would then come back down on the other three super-powers’ capitols, wiping them off of the map, and that the fourth one would strike the one unusable acre of Telosia, uncovering a valuable resource of the power source, Helium-3.
The Sod are, and always have been a militaristic people. This is true to such an extent that their first invention was not the wheel; it was the assault rifle.
Incidentally, even the name Sod is peculiar; only one man on the face of the planet is allowed to know the meaning of the name at a time. As such, the name, which otherwise would be an acronym, has come to be known as the actual name of the place. Also on the subject of nomenclature, the capitol of Sod is Usele (yoo-seel), which is in fact a massive city. This one city holds 62% of the country’s population, and 48% of the land. Over many millennia of international xenophobia, general ignorance, and lack of interest in getting the facts straight, all of the citizens of Sod are believed to also be citizens of Usele. Because of this misunderstanding, the population of Sod are known as Useless Sods. This would frustrate them, if they could be bothered to investigate this oversight.
As could be expected of such a warmongering nation, the longest stint of peace this country has ever enjoyed was 9.43 seconds. That was simply because the president-elect of Sod did not understand what the peace negotiator for the Fascist Junta of Boltz had said about his childhood pet turtles, Mike and Sam. This is okay, since the Sod have been far too busy designing weapons of mass destruction to learn the coordinates of their enemies’ lands.
Last, but not least, the Astro Federation looms over Arimea. 10,000 miles over Arimea to be exact.
The Astro Federation (AF) is the fourth and final Arimean superpower, yet it owns not a single inch of Arimean soil. So advanced are these people, that they founded and maintained their empire on the cold, dead Arimean moon, The.
According to the holy scriptures of AF, they herald from a distant planet, remembered only as Florida. In the beginning, so says the holy writs, the lord Nasa sent the chosen ones, known as the children of Gagarin, from a good but tainted ‘Florida’. The deity of fortune, Houston, helped guide these fortunate ‘cosmonauts’ to their new home, where they would use their superior intellect to reign confusion previously unheard of.
The AF are a highly religious people, and take their beliefs very seriously. There are three major sects in AF religious orders: ‘Christism’, ‘Jewology’, and ‘Islamianism’. Christism is by far the most common belief, but the differences between the three are only superficial. Back on Florida, religious wars between the three had continued almost ceaselessly, but with the exodus to The, they decided to stop their petty squabbling and focus on the greater threat: the new religions. Thanks to this xenophobia, the AF is renowned for its bottled up, almost polite discord with the other nations of Arimea.
The AF usually tends to serve as the deus ex machina in most surface conflicts, providing assistance to whatever country has the greatest chance of eliminating its heretical neighbor. They don’t really care who they kill: one less blasphemer is one less blaphemer.
Also on this planet, are three small sub-nations. These are somewhat weaker, formerly autocratic regimes that were conquered by another superpower, and rather than hand over the country, the leaders at the time capitulated to their military superiors. In essence, they are puppet states, with little or no self governing capacity.
Setvia is a formerly proud empire. Its leader’s lineage could be traced back a whole several years to a bloody coup. Its leader before that had seized power only months earlier, when the leader before him, who had taken over when the country capitulated, was assassinated.
Despite the odd militant revolution and the hideously limiting fact that it is a puppet of the Fascist Junta of Boltz, this communist nation and founding patron of the Arimean Communist League is almost painfully arrogant. Despite being a slave state to a superior power, Setvia has a burgeoning nuclear arms project, a large army of underpaid, under-equipped soldiers, and vast amounts of cheap and ineffectively produced tanks and jet aircraft. This is, of course hidden to everyone. Except Telosia. And Sod. And Boltz. And the AF. And everyone except that comatose Boltzian we mentioned earlier. Other nations have often questioned why their superiors allow this, and, being so infinitely wise, Boltz officials stated quite coolly that “There has been no infringement of the rules set down on the peace treaty with Setvia”, and that “all is as it should be”, and “everyone should just relax and take down their border defenses with Setvia”.
Upon seeing how happy the people of Setvia were made by their conquest, Telosia had to have its own ‘pet’ country. This country, conquered by the indestructible forces of democracy, is called Endorce.
Endorce was once a small, eternally neutral and somewhat inoffensive democracy. Upon being conquered, its people decided pacifism had done nothing to save them, and started its own nuclear weapons program, and, just to test its master, became a totalitarian communist state.
With its being communist and such, its trade based economy has suffered astronomically, with 1 BIP (Boltz Imperial Pound) being equal to 9.7 trillion ED (Endorce Dollars) on a good day. This is not quite as pathetic as Setvia’s economy. Setvia’s entire buying power is equal 2.57 BIP.
Last and most certainly least, there are the Fian Islands. This is another puppet of the Fascist Junta of Boltz, and is its least proud achievement. This small nation is spread out over an archipelago south-southeast of Boltz’ Main Island.
It is an insane collection of native islanders, famed for being technologically deficient. These natives still believe in sun gods and the like, and the most advanced technology they have is the square, a predecessor to the wheel.
The one positive thing about this relationship is the extreme malleability such a simple society has. They have no military use whatsoever, but are fantastic scapegoats and can be told to believe any ideology their masters tell them to .
It is also somewhat positive that they are a monarchy; they can negotiate with Telosia and Sod with more ease than the highly secretive and often sinister Boltz. Many wars have been avoided thanks to the combination of malleability and friendliness that the Fians exude, and none could be happier about it than the Fians themselves- after all, they were told that they enjoyed it.
On this crazy planet in this crazy universe, many men, women, and its live out their lives and deaths . Many are boring and pointless like yours. Many are filled with tragedy like your friend’s . But, there are a few- those like that friend of a friend’s - that are filled with good fortune and excitement. Those who you would never really meet, but constantly envy.
What follows are the collected tales of these few freaks of nature whose lives are not flops. These are the memoirs from a place that isn’t here…
NOTE: This was just copied and pasted from a MS Word document, so there may be some formatting issues. Oh well.
