Short fiction.
Separate but equal. By Jason O’Mahony Suddenly, the entire planet is separated by impenetrable barriers. Where they come from, nobody knows. But suddenly, different religions, races, countries, sometimes even genders are now separated. It’s what many people want. It isn’t what they expected, though. They appeared simultaneously across the world, blue curtains of light that seemed to hang from the sky and penetrate the ground. Such was the immediacy of their arrival that thousands of trains, ships, aircraft and indeed people accidently passed through them before ever realising what they had done. Within hours, quick examinations by state authorities in HazMat suits and every scientific measuring device possible determined that they were harmless in themselves, leading to huge speculation by both governments and the media as to their source and purpose. After a week of analysis by national governments, it became apparent that they were de facto borders, clearly delineating different geographical areas. The criteria upon which the barriers were set many mixed socio-economic, geographical, ethnic and religious grounds. In the United States, borders emerged between politically conservative and political liberal areas. In Europe, a barrier divided the wealthy north and the poorer Mediterranean states. In the United Kingdom, a border surrendered the areas of the London populated by the very wealthy. In Israel, a border encompassed the pre-1967 borders of the state, an act which lead to the phenomenon being branded anti-Semitic by some members of the Knesset. Across the planet, with closer study, a pattern began to emerge. The Blue Light, as it was deemed, seemed to separate whichever cultural, ethnic, political, social or tribal group felt strongest about another group. Then the UN announced that scientists had discovered something about the borders. They were solidifying, very slowly becoming harder to pass through. We have seven days, the scientists said. Seven days to locate where you wish to locate to. After those seven days, the barriers shall be impassable to all but air and water. Across the planet, millions of people decided not to risk it, rushing home from abroad to be with their families. In Europe and the United States, both with porous southern borders, left wing conspiracy theorists speculated online that it was a cunning plan by racists in the government to trick immigrants into returning to their homelands. Right wing conspiracy theorists speculated that it was a plan by liberals in the government to panic would-be immigrants into flooding the borders. Fox News wasn’t sure what it was, but it was sure that it was President Obama’s fault. Under huge media pressure, global military resources were utilised to transport citizens back to their home countries.
Short fiction. Many very wealthy residential areas found themselves surrounded by the phenomenon, leading to quandaries for their owners. Should they flee their properties? What if they were to be trapped in the areas, with little ability to sustain themselves, with food and public services outside the barriers? Many decided to stock up on food and wait it out. Huge amounts of money were spent installing solar panels and wind turbines and water filters. In Saudi Arabia, a curious barrier emerged. It snaked through the country, making little sense, until a women’s rights NGO realised the logic. Barriered areas included all of the nation’s female health facilities, but specifically excluded various religious, military, detention and sports facilities. Mecca remained in the Men’s Area. Fundamentalists, becoming aware of this development, immediately issued instructions for the women of Saudi Arabia to be herded to Mecca, inside the “male zone” for their “safe-keeping”. Large numbers of women, taking the barriers as a sign from Allah, resisted the cane-wielding thugs of the Committee for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue, attacking them in the streets as the last hours of the deadline ran down. Then, to the second, the barriers solidified. They didn’t look any different, but were like smooth glass to touch. Everything from drill bits to high explosive to flame throwers were used without effect. North Korea, which was completely surrounded, denounced the barriers as a CIA trick and detonated a nuclear weapon against the southern side of the barrier. To the shocked silence of South Koreans, the barrier not only survived the blast, but prevented the fallout from leaving the North Korean area, dooming the people of North Korea to a radiation poisoned death. Two days after the explosion, a waddling naked Kim Jong Un was chased from his residence by furious soldiers who caught him and beat him to death in front of hundreds of silent North Koreans. The United States fired a test rocket which entered Earth orbit but then exploded just as it reached the US border. Communications were still possible between countries, but little else. The weather seemed unaffected by the barriers, but cross border pipelines and electrical supplies were affected. Oil, water and gas pipelines burst at the barriers, whereas natural rivers flowed unimpeded. The United States essentially broke into two, with the old liberal states of the northeast and west coast being cut off from the rural conservative states of the south and mid-west. In the months that followed, and after numerous failed national and international attempts to lower the barriers, life within the barriers began to adapt, and authorities began to recognise the challenges. In the northern and western US, the federal government began a massive state programme to utilise the small amount of agricultural land available to it to grow food. Food rationing was introduced after much protest, and every home had to make use of what soil it had to grow food. The other issue was power supply. With no oil coming in, and only limited electricity generation possible from nuclear power, power rationing became necessary, as private car use was banned and public transport enhanced. Solar and wind power, which seemed unaffected by the barrier, began to be rapidly expanded, with many homes installing either or in many cases both. There was resistance, of course, in some cases with arms, especially in Vermont, Maine and
Short fiction. New Hampshire, but the reality was there. Within six months, the northern US was a de facto socialist state in economic terms. With no cheap consumer imports from abroad, shelves in stores begin to go bare. It doesn’t take long for local manufacturers to begin to increase production, where raw materials are available, but everybody noticed how everything cost so much more. The days of the disposable product were over. In the south and mid-west, it proved impossible to impose a strong government solution, with many law enforcement officers refusing to impose socialist solutions, and most conservative state governors refusing to consider them anyway. The oil shortage wasn’t as bad, given Texas’ ability to drill and refine its own, and the large farmland provided substantial food supply. However, the failure of the state governments to regulate food and oil production led to sharp rises in prices as the companies took advantage of the fact that the barrier kept out competition. In the cities, large numbers of low income groups began to protest at the sharp increase in the cost of living. Given that large numbers of the protestors were Hispanic, right wing elements of the local militias, when they finished celebrating the fact that the barrier had sealed the US/Mexico border, immediately moved to put down this “insurrection”. Hundreds were killed in the fighting, as Hispanic street gangs responded to the militia. Although a majority of the protestors were actually poor white families, it suited the conservative leaders of the southern states to play the race card, declaring the suspension of the Bill of Rights in this “unique situation” and rounding up thousands of suspected “terrorists”, who all seemed to be either Hispanic or known liberal activists. Large camps were established in rural Texas. The fact that large numbers of illegal immigrants had returned to Mexico in the days before the barrier sealed began to have an economic effect, especially as larger numbers of labourers were required to help with the increased production and harvesting of food. Non-migrant labour demanded higher pay and respect for their labour rights, and this was causing enough problems and threatening to interfere with the region’s food supply that a meeting of Southern governors, acting as a de facto regional government, decided that in the unique situation it could be justified to use the thousands of detained protestors as “Mandatory Labour”. As they were prisoners, one of the state attorneys general suggested, they were effectively the states’ property and so the companies could hire them from the various states. Protests against the scheme, primarily again by Hispanic groups, allowed the states to add to the numbers available. Confederate flags started to appear with increasing regularity over state buildings. In northern Europe, state control of food and energy was easily imposed, indeed demanded by the populace in some states. The massive interruption to power supplies caused the German government to immediately reverse its decision to close the country’s nuclear power plants. Ironically, Europe’s Common Agriculture Policy, which had produced massive amounts of wasted food prior to the barriers now came into its own, generating the food needed to make up for the loss of imports. In France and Hungary right wing groups used the barrier as an opportunity to start murdering immigrants. The French police responded more swiftly than the Hungarians, who in some cases helped the neo-nazis before ordinary Hungarians themselves intervened and order was restored. In southern Europe, the Greek and Italian governments collapsed within weeks. A military coup occurred in Athens, and resulted in open street fighting between the army, communists and neo-
Short fiction. nazis. In Italy, the regional governments attempted to maintain order as parliament engaged in fistfights. Silvio Berlusconi announced that if he was made prime minister, he had a “secret plan” to get rid of the barriers. Catalunya and the Basque Country initially celebrated their sudden independence from Spain. Two months in, the energy shortage was biting, and the end of tourism had sent the regional economies into a tailspin, resulting in both regions declaring martial law. The rest of Spain was only marginally better. In Saudi Arabia, crowds of religious fundamentalists looked on in furious anger as the women in Liberated Arabia, as it declared itself, quickly moved against the small number of Religious Police who had been caught on the wrong side of the barrier, beating them with their own clubs and killing some until the others surrendered to female rule. In the male zone, homosexuality, which had been quietly tolerated by many, became much more widespread, until a civil war broke out between religious fundamentalists and those who wanted to be openly gay. The UK wasn’t sure how to respond to the sudden loss of both EU membership and Scotland. Overnight immigration was ended. There was much celebration in certain political circles as “national sovereignty” was restored. Then the problems started. The food and energy shortage hit quickly, as did the fact that the City of London, such a huge source of revenue for the country was now dead, unable to trade in a world without globalisation. Left wing protestors delighted in the end of free trade, but then started to complain at the rising prices. The government was forced to start printing money to maintain the welfare state, which fed into a now closed economy and started to cause inflation to rocket. In London, a large section of the central city occupied by the very wealthy was enclosed by the barrier. Every day Londoners crammed along the barrier to watch the very rich fight each other for the rapidly depleting resources within the relatively small area, as food and energy rapidly ran out from generators. Arab and Russian thugs initially fought to protect wealthy employers from other wealthy attackers, but soon realised that they too were fighting for resources, and turned on them. The country looked on as a football owning Russian oligarch was murdered on the King’s Road by his own bodyguards. Ireland, now isolated without any means of long-term power generation, ironically had the food but not the electricity to harvest or process it on a large scale. It dealt with the situation in the traditional Irish manner, descending into an orgy of violence and finger pointing. In Northern Ireland the province was crisscrossed with barriers separating Catholic and Protestant areas, allowing mobs to safely confront each other, before they all starved to death. Even at the point of starvation, sectarian groups on both sides insisted upon flying more flags than those visible through the barrier in other areas. The flags at least proved useful in denoting the political feelings of the corpses. The Russian Government quickly realised exactly what the effect of the barrier will be, in that the Russian economy was funded almost entirely by energy export receipts. Within weeks, the
Short fiction. Kremlin installed a regime of terror comparable to Stalin, and central control of the economy. Millions died from the brutal winter or even more brutal camps. The Chinese economy collapsed, with Maoist state control of everything re-established. This triggered a reaction from the middle class, supported by elements of the army, and the cities descend into civil war. A deranged general orders a nuclear attack on Taiwan to “Unite the Chinese!” but the missiles explode within the borders. In Hong Kong, sealed from the rest of China, an attempt by party officials to impose hardline rule results in them being being lynched by mobs. In Israel and Palestine, the hardline settlers who refused to retreat into Israel put up massive resistance before being slaughtered by extremist Palestinians. Within Israel, now desperately short of food and fuel, Arab Israelis are stripped of their rights and moved to camps for “their own safety”. As months turn to years, hundreds of millions die, and minorities are at best moved to ghettos and at worst butchered. A civil war in Europe results in the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims by right wing death squads. In the southern states of the US, Muslims and homosexuals are added to the “Mandatory Labour” list. Across the planet, another phenomenon occurs, where environmental emissions in a barriered area are unable to escape. In the southern states of the US, where both atheism and environmentalism have been made criminal offences, thick smog begins to build up from large scale oil and coal usage. Public officials remain afraid to raise the issue, with one governor calling it God’s punishment for not rounding up the homosexuals faster. He is re-elected in a landslide. In orbit, a spacecraft from the United Galactic Federation stands watch, its crew doing whatever the equivalent of scratching their head is to ten-tentacled mammals with a single giant eye. The commander reviews the data again, and is perplexed. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he says in a language that sounds like a dead walrus being raidly inflated and deflated with a powerful air hose. His science officer shrugs a tentacle. “I mean, this is what they wanted. They have spent thousands of solar orbits killing each other, and trying to separate each other for all those odd reasons they come up with, from which superstitious imaginary entity one worships to how much pigment is present in their epidermis. Now we do it, and they’re dying even faster. Are we sure we did the calculations right?” The science officer looks at his circular pad. “Oh, wait, I didn’t carry the Fnarr, hang on…oh, that gives a different answer. Oh dear.” “Oh for crying out loud. Alright, just turn the segregator beams off.” “I’m sorry, Supreme Commander.”
Short fiction. “Look, this is what we carry out exercises for, to iron out these problems, so we don’t make mistakes on any of the planets that actually have proper life on them. What am I always saying?” “Always show your rough work in the margin.” “Always show you’re rough work in the margin. That way you won’t forget to carry the Fnarr. Right, let’s go home.” “Sir, can I ask you a question? Is there an actual correct answer to the Earth conundrum?” “Nope. We just bring you here to show you that somethings just can’t be fixed. Power up the warp drive.” The End.
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