Waste

(Short fiction)

“Do you know who I am?” the God-Emperor asked mildly, from the old beanbag cushion in the corner of my bedroom.

I nodded, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. There weren’t any guards, there hadn’t been any sign, I hadn’t even known there was someone else in the house, I’d just walked in, already throwing my bookbag as I pushed open the door, I’d almost thrown it at the God-Emperor—

“Do you know why I’m here?”

I shook my head.

“What if I were to say something like, ‘well, of course we don’t actually tell you when the test is, or what it looks like. That would ruin its ability to be a good test.’”

I could feel the sweat trickling down the back of my neck. I had no idea what test the God-Emperor was talking about, had never heard of any such thing—

Well, you wouldn’t.

I didn’t quite know where the thought had come from, but I followed it, pulled on it like it was a rope and I was dangling off of a cliff.

“You’re here to test me?” I managed to croak out.

“Quick,” the God-Emperor said, “but one step shy.”

There was an expectant silence.

One step…

I swallowed, feeling like my throat was full of velcro. “You…already tested me?” I ventured.

The God-Emperor nodded, and said nothing.

I thought.

“Are you here to—to take me away?” I asked.

“In a sense,” said the God-Emperor.

That…

…did not sound good.

I fought through my fear, through the surge of adrenaline that had lit my blood on fire.

“Are you here to kill me?” I asked, my jaw trembling.

“Almost certainly,” said the God-Emperor, a note of regret creeping into the words.

Almost…

“What can I do?” I asked.

The God-Emperor gave a sad little shrug, still sitting on the beanbag in the corner, head against the wall, looking up at me as I stood, still frozen in the doorway. “Convince me.”

“Convince you what?”

“That you aren’t going to kill me.”

It was such a shocking sentence that it was almost like being physically punched. For a moment, my vision whited out, and the room spun.

Me?

Kill the God-Emperor!?

“I’m—”

—twelve, I had been planning to say, but I choked the words off, because they were stupid, because obviously the God-Emperor already knew that.

Think!

The God-Emperor was testing people. Was testing children, apparently, since I was a child and I had been tested. And it was a secret, because I’d never heard of it, not even a whisper…

“Am I a mage?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think of, the only thing that even made sense, although it wasn’t like I’d ever heard of a mage trying to kill the God-Emperor, mages mostly did things for the God-Emperor—

“You are something,” the God-Emperor said. “Something that means…well, look. Most great endeavors are accomplished by many, many people working together. Those things sometimes start because of a single person, and they sometimes end because of a single person, but in general they are chaotic and unpredictable and have lots of strange inertia. Industries. Religions. Tides of social change. These are not things that even I am bold enough to assume that I fully control.”

The God-Emperor paused, once again seeming expectant, and I nodded, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Fortunately, it worked.

“But there are some great endeavors that truly are individual,” the God-Emperor continued. “Acts of singular genius, or singular power—or singular persuasiveness, when an individual captures the hearts and minds of others so thoroughly that they work that individual’s will without friction or confusion. There are people who are, in and of themselves, so extraordinary that they can choose, by themselves, to change the world, and enjoy some amount of success.”

“Like you,” I said.

“Like me,” acknowledged the God-Emperor, nodding from my reading nook. “And like you.”

The three words seemed to fall between us, like an object cast onto a table. I picked them up, slowly, carefully.

Like me.

The God-Emperor thought that I was—that I was powerful enough, or smart enough, or—or charismatic enough, maybe—to someday pose a threat to—

To what?

Not to the God-Emperor directly, surely. And there hadn’t been a rebellion in four generations.

Why not?

Because life in the Empire was good—was actually good, not like the old reels of dictatorships and dystopias, starving children and workworn elders, the stamp of boots and the queasy feeling of fear. There was no violence to speak of, and no censorship. Everyone had plenty to eat, everyone lived where they liked, everyone worked at what they found fulfilling, science and industry and art and sport. I knew this because I’d seen it. I’d lived it. I’d traveled to eight different states over the years, driving across thousands of miles of the Empire’s territory for field trips, vacations, family reunions. I’d seen enough to know that even if there were dark corners somewhere, awful places I’d never seen, there couldn’t be many of them.

…or at least, that’s what I’d thought until thirty seconds ago.

I tried to think harder.

“If you kill me, or—or take me, my parents would get upset, but—but you know that, so—so you’d have to take them, too, but then their families—their colleagues—”

I broke off, squeezing my eyes shut, shutting out the image of the God-Emperor sitting on the beanbag chair in my bedroom, what, what—

Like a sleepover.

“You—you send a message,” I said softly, the words falling into place like bricks in a wall. “A fake one. You tell their colleagues there’s a family emergency, and they won’t be coming into the office for a while. And you tell their family there’s some work thing. And then you slowly taper off contact. And if there’s somebody poking around, you send a message in text, provoking a fight. And eventually nobody notices that nobody’s heard from them in a while, or—or you fake an accident. Something believable. Or you do that today, and skip the other steps.”

I opened my eyes. The God-Emperor nodded, seeming to take the sudden shift in topic in stride.

“Is the Empire…bad?” I asked, feeling my cheeks burning. It felt like a silly question, a childish question, but still I wanted to know.

The God-Emperor’s head shook. “It is as good as I can make it. Genuinely. With people as happy and healthy and free as I can arrange, which for most of them is quite happy, quite healthy, quite free. This—”

The God-Emperor gestured at the space between us.

“—is rare. It is a conversation I have to have perhaps twenty or thirty times a year. Some years even less.”

I closed my eyes again. Thirty times a year, times one hundred and six years since the God-Emperor took power—

Three thousand conversations like this. Three thousand people like me, in an empire of eight hundred million.

Unless the God-Emperor was lying.

But even if the God-Emperor was lying…

If the God-Emperor did this every day, in person like this—if the God-Emperor did absolutely nothing else—

The God-Emperor had been in my room for minutes already. Ten, at least. And it seemed like the conversation wasn’t in a rush.

Thirty minutes per conversation, eighteen hours per day, that’s thirty-six conversations per day, times…times three hundred and sixty-five days times one hundred and six years…

I couldn’t quite hold the numbers.

Thirty times four hundred times one hundred is a twelve and five zeroes…

One million two hundred thousand. Maybe five million, if you rounded up for parents and siblings.

Across a century. A century in which there had probably been close to two billion citizens living out their lives, within the Empire’s borders.

A century in which nobody had noticed, because it wasn’t happening often enough to draw suspicion.

What if there’s more than one God-Emperor? Clones, or—or robots, or some kind of hive-mind?

What—and those clones are disappearing people left and right and you just never noticed? Nobody ever noticed?

There was a ceiling on how bad this could possibly be, given everything I knew of the world, and it was actually pretty low.

“Why do you think I’m going to kill you?” I said, struggling to force my mind back onto its tracks.

“I don’t think you’re going to, necessarily,” said the God-Emperor. “I’m simply concerned by the fact that you can.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“I think you can, though,” said the God-Emperor. “Which is rather the point. And it’s not like this very conversation is making that possibility less likely.”

I felt a stab of something like indignation. “Then why are you doing it?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you just leave me alone?”

The God-Emperor’s head shook again. “If I left you alone, probably nothing bad would happen. Probably you would just go on to some remarkable life of fame and fortune, a credit to your parents and your state. But if I left a hundred of you alone, one or two of you would not be so content. Ask me how I know.”

I swallowed. “How do you know?”

“Because I was not so content. Because before me was Elibrion, and Elibrion and I had a conversation much like this, and at the end of it I walked away, and forty years later, I was god-emperor and Elibrion was dead.”

The blood in my veins chilled to ice.

“Please don’t kill me,” I whispered.

“I’d like to not kill you,” said the God-Emperor. “But I’m going to need more than that.”

“I don’t even know how I might kill you,” I said. “I don’t even want to kill you. I like the Empire.”

“Still?” asked the God-Emperor. “Even after these past few minutes?”

I swallowed again. Given what I had seen of my fellow citizens—given what I knew of other lands, of the violent past—

Propaganda?

I cast the thought aside. If it was propaganda, I wasn’t going to be able to sort out the truth now, on the spot. And my history lessons—my civics lessons—they didn’t have the feel of propaganda. I’d been taught about propaganda—wild patriotism, dehumanizing criticism of the Other, creating a pervasive sense of threat that justified ever-increasing exercises of power—

A clever propagandizer might teach the children of the Empire the wrong things about propaganda, so they wouldn’t know any better.

But that was crazy. That way lay madness. And I had seen my family, my classmates, the people on the streets and in the shops and on the networks. They were content. Happy. I didn’t know anyone who lived in fear or want.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

The God-Emperor fixed me with a level gaze. “In the ancient days, soldiers would go to their deaths by the thousands, to defend the peace and prosperity of the empire. They died willingly, knowingly, sacrificing themselves on behalf of their families, their friends, their communities. If I told you that your death was necessary, to maintain the life you see around you, would you accept your fate?”

No.

“If I actually believed it was necessary,” I said slowly. “But I can’t know that. I’m a child. All I know is that you showed up in my bedroom and said that—that I would—”

I broke off, started over. “If I really believed that me dying would save the Empire,” I said, “then I probably would. But that doesn’t mean that I believe it just because you say so.”

“You accuse your god-emperor of lying?” said the God-Emperor, mildly.

My jaw froze shut.

“Relax,” said the God-Emperor. “I jest. I do try to be honest, but I’m not infallible, and indeed I do sometimes lie. I’m not lying today, but as you say—you can’t actually know that.”

The God-Emperor stretched. “So. If we embark upon a course of study—two years, perhaps, or maybe three—and at the end of it, you are convinced that your death will serve the peace of the Empire, and your continued life disrupt it—does that satisfy?”

How will I know that you aren’t—

“How would I know that you weren’t—weren’t brainwashing me?” I asked. “Tricking me, manipulating me?”

“What if you undertook this study on your own?”

“You’re the god-emperor. How could I trust you weren’t manipulating everything?”

“What if you went abroad for your study?”

I frowned. Something about the way the God-Emperor was talking, the way the conversation felt like it was being guided—

“Did you try this already?”

The God-Emperor nodded. “Three years later, I asked if they had reached their answer, and they begged for more time. It was a year after that when my agents notified me of their plans, the war machine they were slowly and quietly building with the intent of bringing it against the Empire. I put a stop to it, of course. But even with the most careful, surgical intervention, it required the deaths of thirty-two citizens and four hundred and fifty-eight foreigners. Which, as you no doubt are aware, is many more than the one it would have taken, had I been less sentimental. I would weep for the lost, but the tears would cloud my vision.”

I could feel the sweat beginning to drip again, feel my heart pounding inside of my chest. “What about,” I began, not knowing how the sentence would end. “What about if—I mean—if you kill me now—I mean, if you don’t kill me now—if the only way that I get to live is if I’m loyal to you, then—then—I’d rather be alive and loyal than just dead—”

“I would rather that, too,” said the God-Emperor. “I quite dearly wish it, in fact. It doesn’t matter how many millions of lives are saved by the murder of a few dozen children—the murder of a few dozen children nonetheless weighs quite heavily on one’s soul.” The god-Emperor paused, and looked at me searchingly. “I do not ask you for sympathy, of course. But I think there is a tendency in people to assume that anything a person does, they must on some level want, for its own sake. And it eases my mind if you at least understand that your death would be about averting the deaths of thousands of other children just like yourself.”

“According to you,” I could not help but say, as some other part of my mind chided me for the insane temerity.

The God-Emperor shrugged. “Alas, I have only my own judgment to trust.”

“What if you take me with you?” I asked. “What if you teach me, train me?”

“A moment ago you seemed skeptical. Wasn’t there something about me brainwashing you?”

“It’s better than being dead!”

“I agree. But ten years hence, we still have the same problem, and you will be ten years more dangerous.”

“Is there anything I can say to convince you?” I said, feeling embarrassed at how close my voice was to wailing.

“I feel sure that there must be,” said the God-Emperor. “But even if I knew what it was, you can hopefully see how I might not think it wise to just tell you. I am here talking to you, though. You aren’t dead yet. There’s at least that much proof of my sincerity.”

“What if you give me a month?” I pleaded. “I can’t get more dangerous in a month.”

“No,” agreed the God-Emperor. “But you can come up with a great many convincing arguments, and I am not so confident in my own judgment that I believe I can only be convinced by good arguments. The last child I gave a month to earned a year, and at the end of that year earned two more years, and almost three thousand died when I finally overcame my own fondness and attachment and acknowledged what I had known, deep down, all along, and pulled the weeds up roots and all.”

“Then why are you even here?” I demanded, my voice growing wilder. “Why are you even talking to me at all?”

“Because it seems a very safe and simple rule,” replied the God-Emperor, “that if one is to murder children who are destined to grow up to be dark lords, one should at least have the courage to look them in the eye. Insulating myself from it, hiring the sorts of people who would do it for me—”

The God-Emperor broke off, head shaking sadly. “I cannot guarantee that I will never slide down into darkness, myself. I cannot promise that my stewardship will remain good. But I know ways to make it worse, and I am humble enough to avoid them. I give you this chance to convince me, as some dozens of your peers have convinced me before, and always to my shame and sorrow—but still it seems the lesser evil.”

“Will you at least tell me what it is about me that scares you?” I begged.

The God-Emperor’s head shook again. “Tried it.”

“Can’t you try it again?”

“Tried that, too.”

“Prison.”

“Tried it.”

“Exile.”

“Tried it. Also, I don’t begrudge you a brainstorm, but it might help you take the problem seriously if you were to keep in mind that I’ve been at this for rather a while.”

“Oaths?” I asked. “Truth serums?”

“Tried both. I even tried unashamed brainwashing, mind-bending spells, chemical alteration. They worked in something like nine out of ten cases, and the tenth was bad. That one actually made it out into the public eye, though of course the citizens of the empire never knew the full story. And again there were deaths that could have been prevented, had I been more decisive from the start.”

The God-Emperor fixed me with a sad, heavy gaze. “Any further ideas?”

“A public oath,” I said.

“The citizens would wonder. They would be confused. There is no sensible story that we could tell them, we two.”

“Bribery,” I said, my desperation rising. “Shower me and my family with wealth, with opportunities. Keep us so happy we have no reason to turn against you.”

“Those of your caliber inevitably come to wonder why they should be satisfied with what I give them, and not instead control the flow themselves.”

“Because the alternative is death!”

“You’d think that would be compelling,” said the God-Emperor. “But sad experience shows otherwise.”

“Hostages.”

“Tried it. Also, it seems somewhat cruel. Your parents, your siblings—they will grieve, they will mourn, but they will be happy again someday, and still free. As hostages, even lavishly treated, they would languish.”

Something settled over me, and as it did so, I could see the God-Emperor’s face shift in response.

“We are at the end, then?”

I didn’t nod, didn’t shake my head. I couldn’t bring myself to do either. I needed more time—

“You will have a couple of days,” said the God-Emperor. “Two at the least, four at the most. I should warn you—it would be unwise to try to tell anyone, to warn anyone, to even hint at anyone. If you speak a stray word—if you try to leave a note, or send a message—”

The God-Emperor broke off, gave another sad shrug. “I give you a few days because it seems only fair to let you set your affairs in order, as much as you can. To hug your parents, tell them that you love them. Kiss a friend, go on one last adventure. But the…spell, that I have cast, for lack of a better word, will not let you give away the secret of this conversation. You will fall dead in an instant, of causes that will seem genuinely natural, and whose precursors will be found in your medical records, tragically overlooked but obvious in hindsight. And if you somehow manage to be clever enough to get a message through anyway, you will only be consigning them to the same fate. Four times now, I have seen a child doom their dearest, and I advise you not follow in their footsteps. Once, they doomed a dozen strangers, perhaps thinking it would hurt less. I took that child’s friends and family, too, so that I could truly and honestly say to all others that it makes no positive difference.”

Slowly, the God-Emperor stood, looking unnaturally natural, pushing up from the floor no differently from any other person. I cast about, frantic, the fingers of my thoughts scraping at every nook and cranny of my mind, searching desperately for a way out.

Slowly, the air behind the God-Emperor began to shimmer, the silvery gleam of a portal phasing into being. “If you do think of something,” the God-Emperor said, “speak it quietly, alone, in this room. I will hear. But I recommend not dwelling on it very much. You will regret the waste, in the final hour, which I say to you even knowing that you most likely cannot stop yourself.”

The God-Emperor turned, put one foot through the portal, paused.

Turned back.

“I do not ask you to care. But for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

And then the God-Emperor was gone.

---

---