| | FICTION: JUVENILEWORKS |
| BAROON — Part 1 BY J. ROBINSON WHEELER | Introduction | Part 2 |
Some say that the only absolutetruth in the Universe is that there is no absolute truth in the Universe.This is essentially true, of course, but there is an exception to everyrule. At one point or another,absolutely every intellegent culture goes through a particularly arrogantperiod where they believe themselves to be at the center of the Universe.Everything revolves around them. Eventually, most cultures grow out of thisand understand their insignificant place in the galactic scheme of things. There is an exception tothis rule, of course, as the only rule that there seems not to be an exceptionto is "There is an exception to every rule," except itself, which,contradicting itself, means that that it is true, QED. One civilization has developedthat, from the very beginnings of its astronomical insight, understood thatthey are on one planet out of hundreds of billions, and that, by all accounts,the Universe must be infinite, and being so, it is silly to assume thatit has a "center", and therefore they are just living in an insignificantlittle spot in an outer wing somewhere. In fact, they refused to acceptthe fact that they, or anyone else, resided at the center of everything. Ironically enough, the peculiarorbit it has around its peculiar star formation has kept it at the centerof the Universe since its formation. This is largely because the Universe,though huge, is expanding, and thus has outer limits, and thus, is not infinite,and thus, has got to have a center somewhere, and they're it. This little planet is referredto by its inhabitants as "Baroon", and though a thorough examinationof the stellar evidence around them would point to the fact that they wereit, so to speak, none of the scientists bothered. Unfortunately for them, everyoneelse did pinpoint them, and a couple of outlandishly arrogantcultures from opposite ends of neighboring galaxies, both still sore losersover the whole "I'm at the center of the Universe" bit were ontheir way to tell the Baroonian people just what they thought about thewhole idea. But of course, they wouldnot arrive for some time.
Meanwhile, on Baroon, theplanet's population bustled around on their daily chores as usual. One interestinggeographical feature about Baroon was that, on a wide scale, the major landmasses were divided into smaller sections, as on other worlds, but the inhabitantsof each, for the most part, were all of the same occupation. All of thefishermen of the planet lived on a small continent surrounded by water.All of the merchants had their own area. All of the farmers, businessmen,and military types existed on their own. Bureaucracy was in the handsof the business, political, and military types. These states were the smallestof all, and geographically opposite each other on the planet. In fact, ifthe other 98% of the population decided they didn't like being told whatto do, that would have been that. But, mostly, life went on day by day,and having one businessman or political candidate come round now and thento talk at them wasn't so bad. The population on Baroonwas not always so evenly divided. It had gone and continued to go througha cycle: An equally mixed population decides it prefers to be with otherswho know what they're talking about, and becomes sectional. Later, a merchantor two decides they should go where nobody else is to get away from thecompetition and have an open line on the market, so they move into a shoemakingstate or lawyer country. Suddenly, everyone gets wind of this idea and spreadsout, and the rest decide vacations to other cities are the big thing, andthe whole population becomes a big melting pot for a generation or so, andthen the cycle repeats. There were a few historianswho kept track of this, but as there were only enough historians on theentire planet to share one household, not an entire country, and since nobodyvisited their house, the bulk of the population either didn't remember,didn't know, or could care less. They did what they did each day, and thatwas that. And of course, at night,they stared up at their wondrously pretty moon, blue, green, and shininglike a gem. Though each portion of the world population had such a coarseand unique dialect as to make communication with each other nearly impossible,they all essentially spoke the same language. The name for the moon, "Diala",was the same world-wide, as well as the word for a particular type of blue-greenjewel, "dialen". Some say the jewel prompted the naming of themoon, and some argue the reverse. Others either don't make the connectionor don't care. Those whose job it was tostudy the heavens had noticed that, compared to ancient drawings and observations,their moon had a growing number of gray patches and streaks marring itssurface. At first, they thought that they were always there and just hadn'tbeen noticed, but it became increasingly more evident that no, there weren'tas many streaks before, but it was not at all clear what their existencemeant. Continuing the traditionof stubborn disbelief of the obvious, the scientists and astronomers ofBaroon collectively came up with every theory to describe the phenomenon,some of them quite imaginitive, except, of course, that it was the workingsof a civilization that had once lived or was living on their moon. "Moons are large chunksof rock that are either captured by planets' orbit or formed from the samemass at time of creation," says one leading expert. "Nothing liveson large chunks of rock." "But...isn't Baroonmostly rock, core and surface-wise?" asks a wiser man. "Die, heretic!"come the cries of the committee.
Needless to say, they wereall very surprised a few weeks later when a group of humanoid beings fromDiala landed in a sparkling white spacecraft, drove around in a 3-wheeledbuggy for a while, planted a flag in someone's driveway, took a few snapshotsof the farming population, and left.
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