Laying some law-foundation, a story for #ThimblefulThursday

This is set in a new setting, one I tripped and created while sitting in training a few weeks back.

The setting is called “Colonize Earth” and revolves around a test colony set up on a remote portion of earth but treated as a space colony, dis-attached from the laws of the world. This is the first piece that’s actually made it to Dreamwidth.

“We need laws.” Tendor West paced in his tiny office, more a transmission room than a place of state. The Colonial Authority had chosen him to be Leader of their test-colony, and he was taking the responsibility seriously, perhaps too much so.

“We have laws,” Ona Boisen pointed out. She might not be Leader, but she headed a Team of 100 people, by the same Authority-choice that had gotten West his position. “The Colonial Authority set them down.”

“This thing?” West picked up the print-out and flopped it down. “It’s barely a page long. It doesn’t cover anything.”

“Moral laws, for one,” Dia Alton suggested. The Alton team was already seeming a bit strange, and they’d only been locked in their Test Colony here for a week. “We want to make sure nobody is doing anything improper. Especially teenagers.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Are you insane?” Boisen glared at Alton, who glared right back. “We have to succeed as a colony here, which means keeping our population growing within the constraints of the mission. Teenagers who signed up know that. And teenagers who signed up did so with full expectation that they would be treated as citizens of this colony.”

“You’re the insane one, if you think treating teenagers as anything other than deranged hoodlums is a good idea,” Alton sneered.

Yuri Tagna cleared his throat. “Neither of these things are the point. The point is that the Authority gave us a set of regulations, as Team Leader Boisen pointed out, and that they gave us the ability to alter them, as Leader West pointed out.”

“And alter them we should.” The fifth Team Leader finally spoke up. Gretel Hanson was a quiet woman, chief among their botanists as well as head of a team. “But my suggestion is thus: We begin with the laws as they are. They cover the very basic laws.”

“Barely,” West sneered. “There’s not a thing in there about things like drug use ——”

“And why should there be?” Boisen countered. “Why should we tell people what they can do in their free time? As for their working time — well, there’s the line in there about ‘under the rules the supervisors set,’ isn’t there?”

“Also,” Hanson continued, as if she hadn’t been interrupted, “one would have to find a way to grow or synthesize the drugs. I would say to begin with the law as it is. It covers far more than it looks like, with all those codicils.”

“And moral laws?” Alton cut in. “We have nothing to cover morals.”

“And nor should we!” Boisen countered.

“…and as cases come up that require adjustment, we begin the books of precedent for each law. That way, we are not prematurely creating laws.”

Hansen smiled at the group, pleased at her suggestion. Tagna shifted uncomfortably.

“Go with what we have for now…?”

“And move on as needed. After all, we have other issues to discuss in this meeting.” She looked around the group. “As secretary, I say: all those in agreement with my plan?”

In the end, it was 3:2 for Hanson’s Cross-that-bridge-when-we-get-there legislative plan, as it came to be known. West would never forgive her, of course, but the true consequences would take far longer to surface.


This is written to June 2nd’s Thimbleful Thursday prompt

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