The original story was told in nineteen tweets. You can see those tweets storified here. This is my attempt at a longerform – it’s still gonna be a short story after all, just not as short as a tweet – version, with better names and whatnot.
EIA
Morragan quietly left the sleeping chamber just after the moons rose. The latest defeat suffered by his party in Parliament weighed heavy on his mind. Already, there were whispers that his faction was a spent force, a remnant of a long discredited age of expansionism when the People spun out starships with mechanical relentlessness and colonized strange new worlds with reckless joy. He would have to step down soon, and in his place, the Parliament would install Sirram.
Sirram! Sirram and her army of accountants! Sirram and her policy of shrinking the reach of the People to a few planets. Out on the balcony of the sleeping chamber, Morragan realized that he had been gripping the rail with white-knuckled intensity.
“Morragan.” The voice behind him sounded disappointed. He turned around and looked into the all-black eyes of Brother Sleep. “You cannot be out here now, Morragan. You need to sleep.”
Meekly, the Prime Minister of the largest and most powerful country in the world turned away from the railing and went back into the comforting darkness of the sleeping chamber. Behind him, the moons of Eia rose ever higher into the night sky.
EARTH
“Brother? You’re going live in three minutes.” The floor director had been standing by the doorway for several minutes, uncertain if he should go in. In the end, he decided to just knock quietly and give the warning in a low voice. In the far end of the room, sitting in the read leather recliner no one else was allowed to sit on, Brother Jun Sedara gave no sign of hearing anything.
His fingers steepled and meeting between his knotted eyebrows, Sedara seemed lost in thought. The floor director slowly backed away and gently pulled the door shut after him.
When he heard the click of the door, Sedara exhaled a deep sigh. “Here we go again.”
For quite a while now, putting on these weekly extravaganzas had begun to take a toll on the evangelist. The fact that he’d been doing it for the last 20 years didn’t help. Back then, the Word of God was his bread and wine; his faith sustained him even in the face of the strongest arguments for the nonexistence of God. But lately, he’d found himself wondering.
His spiritual adviser told him that he was suffering a crisis of faith, brought about by the death of his daughter. He nodded and agreed. But when he was alone, all he could think of was how he had done everything to save his daughter. He had plundered the church’s coffers to get her treatments; he had stormed the gates of heaven with prayer rallies up and down the length of the country; he had wept, cajoled, and bargained with God for the life of his daughter. And just when the doctors said she was about to turn the corner, her heart gave out.
Exhausted, they said. Nothing we could do. And Jun Sedara agreed. There was nothing any human agency could have done. It was all up to God, and God said no.
And now, he was about to go out into the packed stadium where he would have to relive the agony of losing his daughter once again. “For the delectation of the masses.” He gave a start, surprised that he had said that out loud. He shrugged. What did it matter if he expressed doubt in God. He had already begun to doubt he even existed.
EIA
The archivist shot to her feet when she realized who it was that stood before her. “Prime Minister!”
“Not anymore, Brother Archivist,” Morragan replied with a soft voice. “Today, I am just a humble researcher.”
The archivist didn’t know what to say. She felt the irony in his words, but banter with such distinguished personages was a little beyond the abilities of a clerk from a backwater colony like Colba VI. She couldn’t even begin to understand what Morragan was doing on Colba IV.
“I am writing a book – a history of the People,” he said. He chuckled to himself when he saw the archivist’s jaw drop. He had always had a knack for guessing what people were thinking. Some believed it was some sort of telepathic ability and he did everything he could to foster that rumor. It always helped to keep his political enemies off balance.
Regaining her composure, T’cha – the archivist – quickly set Morragan up in one of the alcoves and explained how things worked. Prime Ministers, after all, couldn’t possibly be updated with the nuts and bolts of modern research conducted on the planetary archive. After twenty minutes, with Morragan all set-up, the archivist quietly left the alcove, her presence already forgotten.
Back at her station, T’cha wondered about Morragan. On a whim, she called up the telemonitor. As the screens being read by the Prime Minister popped up on her console, the archivist felt a shiver run down her spine. Technically, she was well within her rights. The Homeworld Defense Act gave archivists the authority to monitor research activities conducted within any of the archive nodes on Colba IV, but that was to protect the Homeworld and the People from internal threats. Surely, she thought, the Prime Minister could hardly be considered a threat. Still, a quick look probably wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Her eyes quickly scanned the pages and she was immediately struck with awe at the volume of information Morragan was processing all at once. She was a trained researcher and she could barely keep up as he followed one link to another and another and another, finally ending up with a topic she never would have connected with the first one.
Her quick look turned into hours as she found herself absorbed by the directions that Morragan’s research was taking. So when his deep voice boomed from the alcove, she started like a spooked paitu.
“Brother Archivist!” Morragan had called out. “May I stay through the night? My research is at a critical stage.”
“Of course, Prime Minister,” she answered without thinking twice. Researchers staying overnight were not uncommon. Especially when they felt they were onto something.
To be continued…