SpacePlanet Tonkim

     No, I haven’t misspelled SpacePlanet. That’s the way it should be spelled. Some planets spell each word separately. But most of them spell it like this. A SpacePlanet is a planet that roams around the universe. Most planets rotate around themselves and their sun. But there are a few that roam the universe. We here on Earth call them rogue or runaway planets. Almost everyone else calls them SpacePlanets. Tonkim is one of those planets.

—SpaceFaction

SpacePlanet Tonkim

     Dimcea paces around her large almost open office. She stops when she gets to the floor to ceiling clear wall overlooking the huge city outside it. With her hands clasped behind her back, Dimcea looks down at Leadership. All she can see are the tops of the residences and buildings below her. Dimcea sighs. “Why do I keep doing this. Every time I look at my city it reminds me of all the mistakes, I have made in the last eighteen years.”

     “You are the only one who can stop you from doing that.” Dimcea turns to face her Second Leader, Kallic, as he walks through the entrance into that room. Kallic passes his palm over a squared oblong light that suddenly goes out.

     Kallic looks at the clear wall as it becomes solid like the other five walls in that room. Dimcea glances over her shoulder. Then she walks over to her floating wood looking tabletop. She sits in a hovering legless chair behind it. Kallic walks toward Dimcea. But he stops on the other side of her.

     “Have you had a chance to look over my statement I’m going to be giving in less than an hour?” Dimcea asks.

     “I have.” Kallic takes some papers out of the inside of his clothing. His hand disappears for a few seconds. When it returns, he has the papers. “Your yearly statement to Tonkim looks very good to me. I still don’t think you should bring up the force field, though. Is there anything I can say or do to make you change your mind about doing that?” Kallic gives the papers to Dimcea.

     Dimcea reaches out to take them. “No, there isn’t. “She starts looking through them. After she finishes looking at them Dimcea puts them on her tabletop. Then Dimcea gets up and walks through Kallic as she heads for the small metal circle in the center of that room. He stops just before reaching that circle.

     Kallic steps just past the tabletop. He shimmers as Dimcea walks through him. “I have told you to stop doing that.”

     “That’s one of the reasons why I do it. Besides, you got in my way.” Dimcea steps onto the metal circle.

     “I didn’t get in your way.” Kallic turns toward Dimcea. “You just like doing it.”

     Dimcea smiles. “Yes, I do. Of course, I couldn’t do that if you would come in here the normal way through my entrance.”

     Kallic sighs. “You know that we can’t do that. You’re the only one who can, and you can’t because of the danger of death involved with it.”

     “Sometimes I hate being The Leader of Tonkim.” Dimcea turns toward the wall that used to be a clear one.

     “I know that’s not what you mean by hate. But it still fits about you. Almost everyone here hates you. Most of them want to see you dead. They are very happy that your second ten years has almost ended.”

     Dimcea glances over at Kallic. “I know how most of them feel about me. They think I’m the worst Leader in our history of Leaders. That’s what part of my yearly statement I’m going to be giving to everyone in a few minutes.”

     “Speaking of my statement, it’s time that I give it.” Dimcea stiffens. Her arms tightly against her sides and her fist clenched. She closes her eyes.

     Kallic turns and picks up a small flat square box off the tabletop. He points it at the top of the metal circle and pushes the big red button that almost covers the top of it. A red glow begins at Dimcea’s feet and quickly goes up to her head. Then it returns to the metal circle and disappears into it, taking Dimcea with it.

#

     A few seconds later Dimcea reappears on a large wooden platform in front of ten rows of occupied chairs with monitors on top of bodies with heads on them. Above those monitor bodies, float twenty monitor heads per row too. Only these heads don’t have bodies under them.

     Dimcea starts her reappearance in the center of that platform opposite of how she left her leadership residence. She starts with her feet and goes up to the top of her head in a body fitting red glow. When the glow returns to the platform Dimcea is standing in front of four hundred other Tonkims.

     Looking behind her, Dimcea sees Kallic sitting in a legless floating chair. Dimcea only glances at the male and female Tonkim sitting on both sides of Kallic. She sees that each is holding two hand weapons in their laps. All three have a goldish glow around them. Dimcea smiles as she turns her head toward the rows of Tonkims. That smile fades by the time she faces them.

     Tapping her throat, Dimcea clears it. Her clearing echoes throughout that room. The mumbling coming from the monitor heads stops as they face Dimcea. “First, I want to welcome our data representatives.”

     Dimcea looks up at the monitor only heads. “Second, I would like to welcome our community representatives.”

     “Welcome everyone to my yearly statement. The first thing I want to say is that I’m sorry I’m interrupting your nighttime entertainment. I know how everyone feels about that.”

     “Just over fifty thousand years ago we almost destroyed ourselves by an accident. Not only did we have to move underground to survive, but because of it, we became a SpacePlanet. We have been traveling around the universe ever since then.”

     Dimcea sighed. “Yes, I know I have started my yearly statement almost every year since I became your Leader. But this year it’s really important that I have included it.”

     “For the first thirteen years of my leadership, you all liked me. You thought I was one of the best Leaders we have had on Tonkim.”

     “True, I have made a lot of mistakes over the years. Some of them have been very serious. But most haven’t.”

     Dimcea starts pacing. But keeps her head facing the ones in front of her. “Who here can say they have never made a mistake in their lives?”

     Several bodies sitting in floating legless chairs stand up. Each one only a few inches from the monitor heads above them. even more monitor heads rise above the other ones. Dimcea smiles. “Very funny.”

     “The first thirteen years of my leadership have been great. But for the last five years, I have been talking about us returning to the surface of Tonkim and living like we should be doing. We are surface Tonkims, not underground Tonkims.”

     “I know that most of you feel the same way that I do about this. But there are a lot of you that don’t.”

     Dimcea stops pacing and looks up at the monitor heads who are all back to their normal rows too. “Especially, you Community Representatives.”

     “The first three years we talked about it. But your Community Representatives didn’t want to even consider putting a force field around our planet.”

     “I know that those of you who feel the same way as I do about us living on the surface again have talked to your representatives. You have even threatened them with not letting them be your representatives. But it hasn’t worked. They are still against my force field.”

     Dimcea glances back at Kallic. He shrugs sadly. She starts looking at the Tonkims in front of her again. “For the last couple of years, I have tried everything I could think of to get them to change their minds. I even stopped Leadership a few times. But that hasn’t worked either.”

     “That’s when you really started hating me. The last five years have been bad. But the last two years have been even worse. I’m getting a few hundred thousand death warnings a day. Even more than that during my stoppage times.”

     “I have been thinking about this for a long time. True, I don’t want to do one of what I have decided to do. But your Community Representatives have given me no choice.”

     Dimcea sighs. “I like being your Leader. So, I have decided to be it for at least another ten years. I’m going to pass the Rule that I can do that for as long as I want. And your Community Representative will approve it.”

     “That approval will come within the next couple of years. It will probably a Rule long before that when I start my second decision. The one that you’re not going to like.”

     “My second decision starts tomorrow. Since the work stoppage didn’t work. I’m going to do just the opposite. All workers who work here in Leadership, as well as the other communities on Tonkim, will continue to work. But they will do it without getting credits for it. You will work too. No pretending to do it and no not doing it for whatever reason you might come up with.”

     Chaos began. Not only the Data Representatives, but the Community Representative start shouting and asking questions. “Of course, I will still be receiving my credits. But no one else will until I am your Leader for as long as I want to be, and I get my force field.”

#

     The image of Kallic walks through the closed entrance to Dimcea’s leadership residence. He walks over toward the tabletop as Dimcea reappears in the transport circle. She walks over and takes a seat behind her tabletop. “The Data Representatives sure did have a lot of questions after I finished my yearly statement, didn’t they?”

     “They had a lot before the end of it too.” Kallic takes a seat opposite Dimcea.

     “Despite how it was received, I think my yearly statement went very well this year. What do you think Kallic?”

     Kallic gets up out of his chair. “You think that they wanted you dead before now was bad. It’s even worse now. If you are lucky you won’t be dead within the hour.”

     Dimcea smiled. “I’m not worried about that. There is no way anyone can get in here to kill me.”

     “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Kallic reaches in and pulls a hand weapon out of his clothing. He points it at Dimcea. A single laser cylinder comes out of that weapon.

     Kallic walks around the tabletop and pushes the already slumping body of Dimcea out of her chair. He sits in it. Looking down at Dimcea, Kallic smiles. “I tried to warn you what would happen if you gave that yearly statement. But you are so stubborn you still did it anyway.”

     “Your force field probably will still be created. Most of us, if not all, will be living on the surface of Tonkim again. But you aren’t going to one of them.”

     Straightening up, Kallic picks up a small flat square box with a big blue button on top of it. Kallic pushes that button. He looks at the wall to the side of him as it changes to a large monitor with two hundred smaller monitors on it. “I’m Tonkim’s First Leader now.”

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