Genocia *Prologue*

Prologue

The Emperor lifted his head and stared at the ruins of Genocia. He watched as a boy, no more than the age of seven (dressed in the dull yellow that was the uniform of the Mensia) staggered in search for his mother. A single tear fell upon the spotless floor below the great leader. He had watched as the ships flew in and devoured his once beautiful city in a barrage of falling bombs and piercing heat rays. He had failed his people, he had failed the Mensia. He pulled away as the boy on the screen suddenly realised that he was long overdue for death and collapsed.
“That’s enough” He spoke into the air, and the picture began to move upwards until it was showing the sky, then turned right and projected a birds eye view onto the screen. The Emperor could not bear to look upon the destruction and busied himself among the papers piled high on his steel, white hoverdesk. The city of Genocia was indeed now only a graveyard. The camera which transmitted its images through to the Emperor’s screen had no thoughts but the rudimental basis of its programming, but if it could think beyond the capacity to transmit, it might very well have been thinking of what a disaster the war had been. Although it is also quite possible, that being a machine it would not care to bother about such ‘human affairs’ and might well have been desiring an oil change. It continued to fly, not towards Humsan Palace, where the Emperor usually spent his ruling days, but towards the recently painted ship in the sky, where his highness had taken refuge when news of the attack became official. The ship had a vast reddish-grey hull and to the Mensia had quickly become known as ‘The Great Sunburnt Whale’. It had taken a team of one thousand Mensia to paint the ship, and not one of them had thought to question the use of such a colour. The ship was primarily an escape resource for the patrons of Humsan Palace but was also a mighty war ship. The Camera passed through one of the specially shaped holes in the ships side and flew towards the bowl, where it would be given its desired wish (if it indeed had one) of an oil change. There were no men who worked the ship, only the robots that the ever coming future had delivered by the way of some of the smartest men on Delit 5. The men who taught the community of Genocia the art of Robot Technology had disappeared as quickly as they had first appeared. Some found this remotely suspicious and even dedicated a half hour discussion group every Wednesday to consider the matter, but not too many cared which suited the administration of Humsan Palace just fine. They were a government after all and all governments need their secrets, even ones that go as deep as the men from Delit 5. The ship was big enough to accommodate over three quarters the population of Genocia but did not, in fact not even half of the rooms on the ship were occupied. It is best not to dwell on the contradiction between the Emperors single tear of sorrow and the space of accommodation upon the enormous ship. If you even so much as try to begin to understand the complexities of the Emperor, your mind would collapse in on itself and your whole head would deflate with a spectacular ‘Whoosh’, well at least he liked to think this was so. He was not a cruel man, he was not without pity but he was a ruler and rulers had to do what all the rulers did before them…rule, over their land, over their people and over themselves. All Emperors make mistakes and some mistakes are bigger than others but none quite so big as to wipe out almost the entire population of a city in one day. This particular Emperor, at this particular time, made the worst decision ever made in the history of Genocia, so bad that there was no longer any more ‘history of Genocia’ to be made.