CRON: Episode 1 (a serialised short story)

Emperor Cron, ruler of one of the Nine Worlds of FAMBER, has sought refuge and exile on a backwards planet in a distant galaxy.

Persuading the natives to administer to his every need has been surprisingly easy.

– – – – –

The neighbour’s dog was off its leash.

It was fairly unexpected.

Experience maps told of a greater period of time before such an occurrence should have been probability-significant enough to actually come to pass.
Cron had done the figures whilst watching the mother pouring his breakfast one morning early in the transition.
He flicked an ear. Was it not enough that the father was late leaving this morning? he thought. Now Kemp would be late.

He stopped halfway to the lounge, no skid on the medium wood flooring. From here the long length of the sofa looked like a white foamy overhang on a block of flats. He felt and listened to the world…
The dog was still digging a hole next door, though it lived opposite. There was traffic of a sort at one end of the lane; perhaps two vehicles. The son had returned to bed without using the sink.

He continued on his way and skipped up on the sofa, smack onto sheet newspaper, messing up the landing.
It had been left by the father in his rush, after falling asleep whilst having a ‘quick peek’ at it. An unseemly panic had gripped him when Cron had awoken him. The man complained, weekly so far, about how much pressure he was under at work. Cron thought he made too much of it. Likelihoods suggested that his employers continuing reckless use of credit to buy back their own stock necessitated a need to keep everyone involved locked into the insane cycle of greed and short-termism. They couldn’t afford to let him go.

Cron shifted to an area near the opposite arm, settled down to wait. The view to a corner of the garden nearest the road was splendid, as always. A ten degree shift of the head brought full sight of the Goeridda abode across the street.

A rumble of wooden thunder clattered and smashed its way from the heavens. The daughter navigating the stairs. Cron sighed and braced himself. Predictably, she bounced off the back of the couch on her way to the kitchen. She yelled to the mother that she was off, and received mumbled disinterest in reply. The front door slammed.

Cron started making bets on Kemp’s arrival time, and from there running scenarios of the likeliest routes he’d take to get here with the dog loose.

He thought idly about inadvertent and unexpected hiccups along all routes that yet rated as minorly-significant probabilities. All to distract him from the time he was wasting while Kemp was held up.
That was what this framework (body) did for him; seemingly perfectly designed to run the multitudes of processing tasks necessary to look after everything.

It did not process large carnivores in a confined area very well though.

But there had been few other options.

Leaving the 9 worlds had been a desperate time. For everyone.

Their conquerors had sent a swift-virus to do the work. Not an unheard of tactic, but still one rarely used. The requirements necessitating planetary invasion were usually resources, both material and labourial.
Viruses, however, left no slaves to make.

Sudden barking, followed by a short shrill shriek, made his left ear twitch violently. The dog had found the daughter on her way past. The daughter had pulled her eyes from her visual communicator.
Cron thought about smiling.
There was no point though. The dog had proven not to be stupid enough to chase humans. Considering the reckless attitude it showed to 3 ton vehicles, Cron decided a fine line was being trod.

The daughter now disseminating the occurrence via her visual communicator achieved minor-significance probability.

He also ran a check on a further possibility in the background, while he viewed painful memory logs.

He humphed again.

Evacuating an entire people required necessity to succeed. What kind of people would build such a procedure whilst necessity was still paltry probability?
The kind who had ruled the 9 worlds.

Prosperity was their destiny. Not…

Cron wondered again if all the deposed felt similar. Felt the wrongness of things, the disbelief, the sense that reality had been betrayed. Was it an inevitable component of exile? Should he be grateful for the chance to contemplate it at all?

He felt the laundry room door hum the precursor to a creak. The background possibility had achieved fruition: the daughter’s interaction with the dog had given Kemp an opening.

A moment later he felt feet push off wooden floor, a minimum static air-hang and a precisely soft landing on point-paired forefeet at the far end of the settee.
Kemp at least was graceful. Adapted perfectly to his Abyssinian cat body.

Not ruined by a damned newspaper either.

The brown head went low.

“Good morning, Overlord.”

Emperor Cron turned bright blue eyes on him. Probabilities whirled.

“Not yet,” he decided.

They had moved to crouching upright by the full-length glass doors, gazing out at the road and the red-bricked estate on the other side.
“Are you expecting ill news, Magister?” asked Kemp.
Cron twitched left whisker 3 in inquiry. Kemp deliberately drew his pupils to the Goeridda compound.
“You always like to be here facing him when things aren’t going well.”
“Do I?” asked Cron. Monitoring himself would be a waste of processing space so he had no experience logs to consult.
“Yes, my liege. I believe it reminds you of what to continue fighting for.”
Cron flicked an ear as he stared.
“You believe I need hate to lubricate my motivation engine?”
Kemp was ducking his head in supplication.
“Majister… To be in exile would tax any spirit. To be so and yet be King may be too much. Especially in a framework designed to avoid, not shoulder, responsibility.”
Cron twitched both ears.
“Yet this framework is utterly suited to calculating the scenarios allowing us to exist at all.” He swivelled his gaze ten degrees further away from Kemp. Ordinarily, that minor slight would convey that the matter should not be raised again. Yet he would be no prudent ruler without researching all fears. So there would be this last time.
“Besides, we all seem to manage,” he commented.
“Managing,” repeated Kemp.
Cron turned back a degree.
“What do you suggest we do, Aldous?” he asked. “You know not to come to me without solutions. Is there a panacea to this? Requiring only permission to execute.”
Kemp bowed his head and spoke at Cron’s paws.
“I fear you already know, Overlord.”
Cron gazed at the lower left window of the mock tudor mansion across the road. That was where Xorot liked to sit.
“I have probabilities stretching in front of me,” he said. “Up to and including your suicide for not being of more help.”
“Know that such an action has been considered, Overlord." Kemp gasped. “It was found wanting in delivering satisfaction.”
“So what then?” asked Cron.

“Ally with whom?” asked after making sure he had not misheard.
“Any of the distal or proximal worlds that scan appropriately,” suggested Kemp, retiring into a sphinx-like recline. Cron remained in a back-legged perch with knees bundled against elbows, upright and gazing. His tail flicked once to indicate a deep thought logic cascade.

When he could feel his claws again he turned towards Kemp; blue eyes beaming down.

A long-time servant, Kemp waited, immobile. Cron admired his calm; not all would be so in his presence. Rulers, though of their people, were not as them.

He twitched a whisker. Kemp looked up expectantly.
“We are of the 9,” he began. “Among us there has always been 2 things; peace, and competition. Despite our exuberance, competition for prosperity has never threatened that peace. Competition for survival may yet do so.”
He let his eyes drift up above Kemp’s head to stare away down the living room. There, a small reproduction of an artwork called ‘The Thinker’, went as ignored as all the other ‘beautiful’ things the family had filled this house with. Now he spoke of what those who did not rule could not hope to comprehend.
“But we are of QBaeryL,” he continued. “A Greater World. We can not let logic dictate all. To ally now would show weakness. That we are struggling to adapt to the new circumstance. To request an alliance would imply vulnerability. We cannot give our brothers of the 9 such extra temptation when they struggle with so much right now.”
He turned away, back across the road, ignoring Kemp’s disappointment. The decision was made.
For a moment just then, he thought he saw, in that lower left window, the face of a snow-white Norwegian Forest cat.
Grinning at him.

---

Next Week Episode 2!

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