The idea of the Galactic Parliament, not to mention it’s associated vast bureaucratic apparatus, would be absolutely absurd if it was not already an ancient and enduring institution. The galactic diameter was greater than 100,000 light-years, meaning even light speed communication methods took one hundred millennia to travel the galaxy’s wingspan. Half a million species of intelligent life across millions of worlds each with billions of inhabitants were governed by The Parliament. What’s more, there was no faster than light travel, for the laws of physics were strict in their regulation.
The laws of biology were more lenient, however. A large proportion of the galaxy’s intelligent species were able to achieve biological immortality. This allowed for a communications infrastructure to be constructed which, while glacially slow, allowed for information to be disseminated across the galaxy within a lifespan.
With the large distance between these so called “immortonations”, it is natural to ask why a structure was established to govern them. After all, if two groups of people cannot communicate without extreme effort, why bother attempting to impose a common set of laws on both?
The answer lay in trade. There were certain highly useful trace compounds which were impossible for life to fabricate because they were formed in black hole accretion disks, neutron stars, or other extreme environments. These resources were not scattered uniformly throughout the galaxy, however, and existed in localized veins. Since these compounds were used in many advanced technologies, their exchange was desirable.
Galactic governance thus evolved out of thousands of trade agreements, trade regulatory organs, technological sharing initiatives, and common currency deals. As cooperation intensified however, so did competition and interstellar war was born. Defense pacts and arms sales were therefore woven into the fabric of the emerging Galactic System. As species communicated — even at the slow rate afforded by physics — ideology, culture, and language mingled. Eventually people even began migrating across the void to other immortonations, driven by commerce, war, or exploration. The result was that the galaxy, while colossal beyond comprehension, began to shrink.
Friction between democratic and authoritarian immortonations eventually escalated into a billion year period of violence, known simply as “The Struggle”. The Struggle was a brutal, all encompassing total war in which almost a quadrillion lives were lost. The conflict was eventually won by the Democratic Front.
In the latter stage of the war, a Galactic Constitution was drafted and signed by the members of the Democratic Front. It established a democratic Galactic Commonwealth — led by the directly elected Galactic Parliament — and reorganized local governance. The independent immortonations became provinces under the new Galactic Commonwealth. In addition to codifying the structure of the government, The Galactic Constitution included a section outlining the inalienable rights and liberties of sapient beings. It also provided for the creation of an enormous Army of the Galaxy and outlawed locally controlled militaries.
Because of the huge lag in communications between worlds, a system of closed party-list proportional representation was used to elect members of The Galactic Parliament. Political parties located on the capital planet Zaast created huge lists of people in the order which they would like them seated in parliament. The lists were then communicated to all the inhabited planets in the galaxy where local branches of the Galactic Commonwealth would hold an election and individuals would vote for the parties. Once the results of these elections were transmitted back to Zaast, seats would be proportionally allocated by party. Term lengths were one million years, and if an elected parliamentarian died part way through their term, they were replaced by the next person on their party’s list. Parties could also reorganize their list at any time, meaning that during a term, party leaders could promote or demote members from office at will.
This system, while effective at allowing democracy to take place at a galactic scale, had the consequence of power being highly centralized in a political class ruling from Zaast. Only those who lived on Zaast could effectively become parliamentarians, and the parties controlled who was in office at any time. The ruling party could even demote the prime minister and promote someone else to their place without a vote, because the office was not legally held by individuals; it was held by the party itself.
The struggle for power between the parties was a cutthroat affair. Alliances and coalitions shifted constantly due to political maneuvering and backstabbing. Competition for power was just as fierce within the political parties, as positions on the parties’ lists were fought over. The maxim of Zaast was “trust no one”.
Darker still, assassinations were a normal part of political life on Zaast. Indeed, despite being the richest and most powerful class in the galaxy, the life expectancy of the parliamentarians was fairly low on average due to the murders.
The one check on the powers of the Zaast based parties was the Jury of Tribunes. Every one thousand years, one thousand tribunes were selected at random from the entire immortal population of the galaxy (using a pseudorandom number generator called R-19, which had had it’s seed synced with all the planets of The Commonwealth). These tribunes were legally compelled to serve and had to make the long journey to Zaast to do so. Being selected through sortition, the tribunes were diverse in species, religion, language, culture, profession, and class but were joined together in their common duty to the galaxy.
The Jury of Tribunes had extensive powers. The jury could propose legislation to be voted on by the parliament and veto and legislation which the parliament produced. In addition, the jury was able to prosecute and try members of parliament: an important role due to the parliamentarians’ immunity to prosecution in the courts.
The tribunes were sacrosanct and violence against them was punishable by death. This hardly stopped the parliamentarians, however, who, as a rule, hated the tribunes. The tribunes lived in constant fear of persecution from the parliamentarians and their cronies. Cowed in this way, the tribunes were unable to effectively perform their constitutional duty to curb the parties’ power.
The Army, which was usually close with the parliamentarians, would not protect the tribunes, nor would the Zaast Public Order Service (the local police force). The tribunes had to look out for each other on the cruel planet which they found themselves on.
Ayr was a shepherd on the agricultural world of Ostlot IV. She lived a simple life with her husband and children moving an indigenous variety of livestock from pasture to pasture. She was content with her lot, worked hard, and loved her family. The animals were calm and easy to work with and the weather was temperate all year long. She only had one thing in her life to complain about: the annual trip to the local city: Qual. The family would bring the livestock to Qual yearly to sell some of them to local vendors and buy what they needed to survive for the year. Ayr loathed coming to Qual. The city was claustrophobic to her and, accustomed to a lifestyle of freedom in the wild, she took poorly to the city’s rules and customs. More than anything else she detested the local branch of the Army of the Galaxy, who would demand a huge sum of “protection money” on top of the taxes which were already due. This type of racketeering was just how things were done. The Army was strong, the people were weak, and there was no oversight.
So once again she found herself paying the protection money at the local army office. This time, however, upon tuning to leave she was stopped by the soldier taking the money. “You should really stay in the city for a month until the jury selection happens.” The young soldier said. “Means we won’t have to track you down if you get picked.” This caused some snickers from other soldiers. “No, I’m serious!” the soldier protested. “Just because someone from Ostlot hasn’t been selected in forever doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen!” “I’ll take my chances,” Ayr said and left to find Elic, her husband, who was with the children in the bazaar.
When she reached the bazaar and found Elic and the children, she looked at them from afar for just a moment before joining them. She saw her husband tenderly caring for scrape their youngest had just gotten from a little fall and had a sudden feeling like she was seeing them like that for the last time. She joined them and said to Elic “I think we should stay in the city for a month longer.” Surprised Elic looked up and asked “Why? You hate the city.” She paused for a few seconds. “Yes but Jury selection is in a month and you never know if one of us might be picked.” she replied. Elic smiled, he knew better than to question his wife when she had a feeling about something, and he knew better than to question his wife’s gut. “Ok, we’ll stay until Jury selection,” he said.
One month later she was chosen. The army came to the inn the family was staying in, took her to the spaceport, and put her on a ship to Zaast.
She somehow knew that it would be her. She didn’t know how, she didn’t believe in gods or fate or luck or the supernatural. But somehow she had known.
Now she was leaving everything behind. Her husband, her children, her home, her life, even her place in time (for she would be put into cryosleep for the duration of the journey).
But she wasn’t alone. Strangely enough, after the long drought, not one but two representatives from Oslot IV were chosen to be tribunes. The launch craft from Qual spaceport met up with the interstellar transport ship, and Mareen, the other green tribune, was waiting for her there.
As soon as the airlock opened. Mareen appeared with her hand extended and a smile on her face. “Name’s Mareen, nice to meet you!” she said with a twinkle in her eye. Ayre shook her hand. “Likewise, I’m Ayre!” Ayre replied, happy to see such a friendly face. The two immediately got on well. Mareen, Ayre learned, was a farmer before being chosen. Ayre also learned that Mareen shared some of her more rebellious sensibilities. When no guards were around Mareen said “I mean it’s bullshit! They take a big fat cut of my profits on top of what I’m already paying in taxes! I’m going to give the parliament an earload when we get to Zaask. There’s no way they should let the Army rob us blind like they do.”
After talking with Marreen about all manner of things for about three days, the cryopods were ready and it was time to go into suspended animation. “See you on the other side!” Mareen said as they were lowered into the pods. This was it. This was the end of Ayres old life. She would wake to an uncertain dawn on a dangerous planet. She steeled herself and felt the cold and the artificial sleep come.
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