Fanfic: Verdict [Tomorrow People (1973)]
Mar. 30th, 2012 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argentum_lsTitle: Verdict
Summary: John has been charged by the peaceful Sorson-Thargon Alliance for Crimes Against Sentience.
Word Count: 900
Warning: Genocide
John paced in his cell, his steps heavy against the metal alloy floor. Every surface of the ship trembled with a fine vibration from the engines, rumbling up through his body to make him feel a faint nausea that bordered on motion sickness. He glared at his guard through the force field that secured his prison. The alien’s serpentine body was coiled around itself, the creature’s disproportionally-large-by-Earth-standard’s head rested on its folded clawed heads as it glared with unconcealed contempt back.
[You are not the innocent here,] it said, its voice cold in John’s mind.
[I did what was necessary,] John replied. He knew they couldn’t understand that. The Sorson-Thargon Galactic Alliance were known for their excessively passive views, their weakness when it came to making the tough decisions. How they had come to be the political power of the galaxy was beyond him. How they had defeated the far stronger Galactic Federation despite a refusal to engage in war was even more a mystery. Their rule was a blight, an accident of history that brought shame on every sentient species in the Alliance, and more on those under the Alliance's metaphorical-thumb.
[Your actions were criminal, beyond heinous,] the alien replied. It opened its mouth, exposing two rows of sharp teeth and flicked its forked tongue out. A wave of empathic repulsion from the creature swept over John.
John scowled and turned away, aiming a kick at the wall. He halted his foot before it hit, and stomped his frustration down instead. His cell was empty save for him, not even a bed or a place to sit. There’d been no food or drink offered since he’d arrived. There were no bathroom facilities. If he injured himself, he knew there would be no medical attention. This holding pen was temporary while the rest of the Alliance’s high council was assembled pending John’s trial.
Trial.
He snorted out a laugh at the absurdity of the word. The Alliance did not plan to hear him out. Their verdict was already decided, as his guard had made clear.
But the Alliance was the ones who had betrayed him, had betrayed Earth with their silence. John had appealed to them when the first wave of homo thanatos appeared among the populace, and heard nothing back. No matter how often that parasitic branch of evolution was beaten down, it kept springing back up. John couldn’t stomach the scourge that they were, barely human creatures that lived by draining the life force from any homo sapiens they touched.
When the Alliance rejected his appeal, he’d enacted the only solution left. Though homo superior, of which John was a member, were prevented by their neurological makeup from killing directly, John put his enhanced intellect to work and developed a virus—one specifically tailored to destroy any being with the thanatos mutations. He’d also made a cure, which he’d put aside for his own purposes.
The virus had been successful. He’d saved the planet. In the space of a week, he’d cleansed humanity of a mutation that could be dealt with no other way. He viewed it as a pruning, a necessary measure to allow the strong to thrive.
All the Alliance saw when they finally deigned to arrive was a human population that had been cut more than in half.
The force field shimmered with the specialized energy that prevented him from teleporting but still let him use his telepathy. This was another of their torments, the constant reminder of his helplessness to act while he was made to suffer the judgement of his jailors.
[I had no choice,] John thought, carefully padding his surface memories with the shock he had felt as his friends one-by-one grew feverish and weak, and then collapsed, their brains eaten away. The guard couldn’t be allowed to sense how John had reveled in all that energy sweeping into his body, strengthening him, transforming him. That consequence of his virus would stay buried as his secret until the time came when he could enact his overthrow of the Alliance.
He put a hand to his stomach, feeling the rumble from the engines twisting his insides and fooling them into thinking he was hungry. He would never feel hungry again.
The guard’s pupils sharpened into long slits and it rose suddenly to its feet at a noise that John couldn't hear. Its attention never left John, nor did its revulsion cease. A door in the far wall slid open and two aliens that reminded John of bipedal lobsters entered. They clutched guns in their claws, and a different wave of nausea informed John that the guns were loaded with barlium, the rare radioactive mineral that stripped homo superior of their powers altogether. So, that was to be the threat.
The guard hissed something, and the lobsters chittered back.
John bowed his head and walled off his mind as an escape plan began to formulate. He would go with the Sorsons only because he had no choice. But, the fools had made a mistake in sending a non-telepathic species to collect him. Once out of his cell and clear of the guard—well, the Alliance planned to execute him for Crimes against Sentience? He would show them how futile that verdict would be. His efforts had put the Universe in his grasp. All he had to do was close his fist.
END
Fulfills AU Bingo Extra "Straight Line" with squares #5, 10, 15, 20, and 25: Prison, Dragons, Space Station/Ships, "Mirror Universe," and Vampires.
NOTES: The concept of homo thanatos was borrowed from the Big Finish audio dramas and was adapted to fit the use here.
Summary: John has been charged by the peaceful Sorson-Thargon Alliance for Crimes Against Sentience.
Word Count: 900
Warning: Genocide
John paced in his cell, his steps heavy against the metal alloy floor. Every surface of the ship trembled with a fine vibration from the engines, rumbling up through his body to make him feel a faint nausea that bordered on motion sickness. He glared at his guard through the force field that secured his prison. The alien’s serpentine body was coiled around itself, the creature’s disproportionally-large-by-Earth-standard’s head rested on its folded clawed heads as it glared with unconcealed contempt back.
[You are not the innocent here,] it said, its voice cold in John’s mind.
[I did what was necessary,] John replied. He knew they couldn’t understand that. The Sorson-Thargon Galactic Alliance were known for their excessively passive views, their weakness when it came to making the tough decisions. How they had come to be the political power of the galaxy was beyond him. How they had defeated the far stronger Galactic Federation despite a refusal to engage in war was even more a mystery. Their rule was a blight, an accident of history that brought shame on every sentient species in the Alliance, and more on those under the Alliance's metaphorical-thumb.
[Your actions were criminal, beyond heinous,] the alien replied. It opened its mouth, exposing two rows of sharp teeth and flicked its forked tongue out. A wave of empathic repulsion from the creature swept over John.
John scowled and turned away, aiming a kick at the wall. He halted his foot before it hit, and stomped his frustration down instead. His cell was empty save for him, not even a bed or a place to sit. There’d been no food or drink offered since he’d arrived. There were no bathroom facilities. If he injured himself, he knew there would be no medical attention. This holding pen was temporary while the rest of the Alliance’s high council was assembled pending John’s trial.
Trial.
He snorted out a laugh at the absurdity of the word. The Alliance did not plan to hear him out. Their verdict was already decided, as his guard had made clear.
But the Alliance was the ones who had betrayed him, had betrayed Earth with their silence. John had appealed to them when the first wave of homo thanatos appeared among the populace, and heard nothing back. No matter how often that parasitic branch of evolution was beaten down, it kept springing back up. John couldn’t stomach the scourge that they were, barely human creatures that lived by draining the life force from any homo sapiens they touched.
When the Alliance rejected his appeal, he’d enacted the only solution left. Though homo superior, of which John was a member, were prevented by their neurological makeup from killing directly, John put his enhanced intellect to work and developed a virus—one specifically tailored to destroy any being with the thanatos mutations. He’d also made a cure, which he’d put aside for his own purposes.
The virus had been successful. He’d saved the planet. In the space of a week, he’d cleansed humanity of a mutation that could be dealt with no other way. He viewed it as a pruning, a necessary measure to allow the strong to thrive.
All the Alliance saw when they finally deigned to arrive was a human population that had been cut more than in half.
The force field shimmered with the specialized energy that prevented him from teleporting but still let him use his telepathy. This was another of their torments, the constant reminder of his helplessness to act while he was made to suffer the judgement of his jailors.
[I had no choice,] John thought, carefully padding his surface memories with the shock he had felt as his friends one-by-one grew feverish and weak, and then collapsed, their brains eaten away. The guard couldn’t be allowed to sense how John had reveled in all that energy sweeping into his body, strengthening him, transforming him. That consequence of his virus would stay buried as his secret until the time came when he could enact his overthrow of the Alliance.
He put a hand to his stomach, feeling the rumble from the engines twisting his insides and fooling them into thinking he was hungry. He would never feel hungry again.
The guard’s pupils sharpened into long slits and it rose suddenly to its feet at a noise that John couldn't hear. Its attention never left John, nor did its revulsion cease. A door in the far wall slid open and two aliens that reminded John of bipedal lobsters entered. They clutched guns in their claws, and a different wave of nausea informed John that the guns were loaded with barlium, the rare radioactive mineral that stripped homo superior of their powers altogether. So, that was to be the threat.
The guard hissed something, and the lobsters chittered back.
John bowed his head and walled off his mind as an escape plan began to formulate. He would go with the Sorsons only because he had no choice. But, the fools had made a mistake in sending a non-telepathic species to collect him. Once out of his cell and clear of the guard—well, the Alliance planned to execute him for Crimes against Sentience? He would show them how futile that verdict would be. His efforts had put the Universe in his grasp. All he had to do was close his fist.
END
Fulfills AU Bingo Extra "Straight Line" with squares #5, 10, 15, 20, and 25: Prison, Dragons, Space Station/Ships, "Mirror Universe," and Vampires.
NOTES: The concept of homo thanatos was borrowed from the Big Finish audio dramas and was adapted to fit the use here.
