Choices

Choices
by Lindsay Brambles
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From CHRONICLES OF THE EARTH EMPIRE series.
CHOICES by Lindsay Brambles
Introduction:
Although the events of the following story take place after the novel In
Darkness Bound and the novella Zero-Option, this story was actually
written before either. At the time I was slowly constructing my "Earth
Empire" universe; and though In Darkness Bound ( ISBN:
1-4241-6560-1) was very much on my mind at the time, the idea for
this story was committed to paper first. Or perhaps it would be more
appropriate to say "disk."
As with Zero-Option, I wrote this on a Commodore 64 using Paperclip
II. The Commodore was the first "real" computer I owned; and all
things considered, it was a marvelous little machine. Before that I had
cranked out stories on a Smith-Corona Electronic typewriter (including
one humongous novel, which for some reason I still hold onto despite
the fact that it's an unpublishable monstrosity).
I can't honestly recall the motivations that led to the writing of Choices.
Sometimes ideas come spring from events you read in the newspaper or
see on TV. Often it'll be some little thing that will then trigger an

avalanche of thought and speculation. I do know that a great many of
my ideas are fleshed out while bicycling. On my regular two or three
hour rides I do some of my best thinking, working out the kinks in a
story or novel while wandering the country roads around Ottawa.
I have yet another short novel of the Earth Empire (somewhat longer
than Zero-Option) that I hope to put on the Internet at a later date. That
one takes place during the height of the war, sometime after
Zero-Option but well before Choices.
For now, however, I offer you the following short story. Just under
twenty thousand words, I hope you'll find it a quick and stimulating
read.
Happy reading!
Lindsay H.F. Brambles, Ottawa, 2007

1.
Whenever I see the panai, I am reminded of Kieara. Reminded of how
she changed a world. Or worlds--hers and mine. I close my eyes and
see her face, and above the chanting of the crowd, I hear her voice. A
soft exhalation of words. Calm. Measured and reasoned. Not at all
consumed with the impassioned zeal that one might have expected of
someone rebelling against a centuries old way of life. A sharp contrast
to the shrill and often violent denunciations of those who believed in all
that she did not.
Before Kieara I'd never seen a panai--though, as with all offworlders
new to Tradur, I had heard the rumors long before I'd arrived. Had
heard them, and of course had quickly dismissed them as nothing more
than xenophobia. And yet now, because of Kieara, those rumors have
become a dreaded reality. I see the evidence of them before me, day
after day, hour by hour. They haunt me, appearing before me as one
long and seemingly endless chain of enraged humanity moving up the
wide avenue like a deranged army, swaying to a music only they can

hear as they wave their fists in the air and shout defiance at the guarded
buildings of the offworlder embassies. Often, from the windows of the
Federation's mission, I have stood and watched as they pause and
gather outside the gates, pressing against one another in a suffocating
mass, remaining thus just long enough to hurl their vitriol and fling
their ineffectual stones against the energy shields that protect the
building during each long hour of Tradur's thirty hour days. It has
become a ritual for them. Almost as much as the panai has always been.
And for those of us within the embassy, it has become as constant as
the rising and the setting of the sun.
I wait and watch in discomfort, knowing that I'm at least partially to
blame for this. Because of my relationship with Kieara I've made us all
prisoners in these walls until the ship comes to take us away. I think of
how things might have been if Kieara hadn't sought me out those many
months ago, of how different this moment would be if the first real
choice she'd made in her life hadn't been to choose me. Perhaps there'd
be no chanting crowds thirsting for the blood of offworlders; and we'd
have all remained blissfully ignorant of the true horror she dared reveal
to us.

2.
Like all stories, this one has a beginning. But it starts at the end of
another story--or perhaps at the end of many. Its beginnings are rooted