Lieutenant al-Kwaritzmi’s personal log, supplemental: I have had to take a short break and return to the Redding for reasons and now I’m back on Rellite. We are finishing the repairs of the stasis chamber. Everything is normal.

Iskander, Sornia and Z’Xak had worked well and the stasis chamber was perfect. Every system had been looked at, every moving part had been lubricated, every protocol revised; that which was critically obsolete had been replaced and that which was charmingly antique had been made secure. Iskander didn’t think he’d ever become such an expert at biocryogenic systems, yet here he was.

It was almost time for the Starfleet crew to leave. They started packing their devices.

Then, hell broke loose. The so-called Countess, Frulenk, made her appearance in the Chamber Room, looking as composed and dignified as a tornado. She was so red in her face that her flaps looked swollen.

Behind her was Kojik, looking distraught and meek, and a couple of attaches and lackeys, looking stern.

Frulenk pointed at Sornia.

“YOU!” she screamed.

Iskander expected her to ignore him. They had of course been discovered the day beforehand, returning from the night club, and the so-called Countess was furious that they had disobeyed her orders.

“I followed the orders of your future King” had told her Iskander, quite smugly. “Certainly, in your eyes, he outranks you. Why should your orders be more important than your wishes?”

She had lost all patience and screamed that on the morrow they’d pack and leave, never to be seen again. And, in fact, now in the Chamber Room, they were packing and leaving, and it wasn’t their fault that they had been seen one last time.

“Yes, madam?” answered Sornia, calm. She hadn’t been part of the escapade, but Anmol had told her most details, to her great amusement.

“The stasis unit is ready, isn’t it?”

“Ready for what, madam?”

Frulenk pointed at Kojik. “I want you to put this miserable IMBECILE inside the machine and freeze him back!”

“But — auntie –” tried to say Kojik, miserable.

“I’M NOT YOUR AUNT, YOU BRAINLESS TRILOBITE!” screamed Frulenk. “You absolute waste of calories! I can’t believe that we are related. I can’t believe that I believed those morons of your instructors when, in their writings, they called you a genius.”

“I don’t want to get in there” whined Kojik.

“NOBODY CARES, YOU METAPHYSICAL WORM! I have met philosophical zombies who have more verve than you. ‘I don’t want to get in there’. Pathetic.”

The Starfleet personnell looked at each other, with the exception of Z’Xak, who being almost entirely non-social probably wasn’t understanding anything of the scene, and looked quite unaffected.

Frulenk looked again at Sornia. “Can you freeze him? Is the machine in order? Can it be operated?”

Sornia picked her words carefully. “The machine is fully functional and, as such, could in theory be successfully operated.”

Frulenk snarled. “Then do it. You cursed Starfleet lot — take this IDIOT and put him back where he belongs.”

Nurse Anmol Ghoshal clered his throat. “The machine is functional, but that doesn’t mean that we can operate it.”

“Are you as idiotic as my idiot uncle, human?”

“A similar operation can’t be performed without the consent of the person” said dryly Anmol Ghoshal. “It would be immoral to freeze Kojik seeing that he doesn’t want to.”

Frulenk seemed ready to kill. “Do you think that royalty cares for your peon ethics? My worm uncle is getting in there. And if you don’t do it, I’ll do it myself the minute you have left.”

Sornia seemed slightly alarmed. “You do not have the medical or technical training.”

Frulenk seemed entertained. “So what? If you are afraid that I could give him brain damage, I assure there’s no need to have any fear. And what otherwise? He might die if I press the wrong button?”

“That would make you a murderer.”

“Spare me your girlscout morale. If you are concerned for his health, then you’d better stay and see that he’s frozen according to protocol. Either help or leave.”

The doors flew open and, with great pomp and self-importance, Scronk entered. Iskander had almost forgotten him: the politician, head of the party that wanted to reintroduce a monarchic system. Sleek, mellifluous and dressed as impersonally as the first time Iskander had seen him, Scronk looked positively reptilian in this moment.

“My lady!” he cried. “What is the meaning of this?”

“We’re putting my uncle to sleep, Scronk” said Frulenk.

“Why?” asked the politician, approaching the old lady.

“Because he is a MORON!”

The politician seemed to consider that. “And?”

“What do you mean? He can’t be King. He is a moron. How could you not know?”

Mellifluous, Scronk smiled. “But my lady, I’ve known he’s an idiot since the first time I spoke with him. Of course he’s a moron.”

“So you agree he can’t be King.”

Scronk shook his head. “My lady, my lady, why not? Why do you think that I’m the leader of the monarchist party of Rellite? For my political power to slip from my grasp when I achieve my goals? My lady, I thought we were similar in this. A King has councillors — the weaker the first, the more powerful the seconds. You could reign alongside me, my lady, while our good Kojik just enjoys his life in perfect stupidity, never to challenge us.”

Frulenk reddened even more. “You blaspheme, Scronk!”

Scronk smiled again, this time less surely. “My lady — think about it. Kojik is perfect for our political goals, for us achieving power. He’s the final product of the idea of monarchy, the embodiment of its essence: a genetic lottery that through inbreeding and blue-blooding can produce the most perfect deficients and cretins. The game of politics can thus be distilled into its purest form: a group of maximum ten people, endlessly debating in sublime arguments under the gaze of a moron figurehead. King Kojik, as he is now and here, would open a golden age of debate and politics, blessed and supreme.”

Frulenk spoke with a deep tone, almost whispering. “You will leave this room NOW, Scronk, and never talk to me again. I will be your worst political enemy and I will destroy you. You are cursed by the Kings and you will burn in hell. I spit on your soul. Leave now.”

“Any chance to debate you to change your mind, my lady?”

“I WILL have you shot.”

Scronk, finally looking defeated, left.

Drunk on this rhetoric victory, Frulenk turned to Kojik, who had been retreating towards the darkness, somehow hoping of being forgotten. “Now to you, noble uncle. You will climb into the stasis chamber now with these nice Starfleet people to make sure you are frozen correctly, or we’ll wait that they leave and I’ll do it myself.”

Kojik whined. “Anything but that, I beg you.”

Frulenk snarled. “I had wished you to be anything but an idiot, so we’re joined in disappointment. Take your positions, Starfleets, because I think that my noble idiot will surely relent soon. He doesn’t have the cerebral power to resist anyways.”

They did not move.

“I’d rather die than sleep again in there” said Kojik.

“DO NOT TEMPT ME WITH BLASPHEMY” screamed Frulenk. “I am learning so much about myself right now.”

Iskander sighed and, deciding that this was enough, made a sign with his hand. That was the convened signal for Sornia and Anmol.

He looked gravely at Frulenk. “You realize that we’re going to include all of this in our official statements and make a formal complaint against you.”

Frulenk scoffed. “Do your worst. I relish the chance of having a good debate in front of a judge. Rid me of the idiot and I’ll be happy to pay that price.”

“I don’t want to –“

Iskander looked at Anmol. “Nurse, please?”

Anmol nodded, gravely, and walked to Kojik. He knelt next to him. “Kojik, will you do something for me?”

“What?”

“I need you to go in the stasis chamber.”

Kojik shook his head. “I don’t want to sleep.”

Anmol nodded. “I know. But think of it as an escape, Kojik. In the moment that you enter the stasis unit, Frulenk will disappear forever from your life. You’ll escape her just like you already escaped your father. You’ll be free of her. Don’t you want that?”

Kojik timidly nodded.

Anmol smiled. “I ask this of you as a friend. Trust me.”

“As a friend?”

“As your friend, Kojik.”

Kojik breathed several times, and finally conceded. “Okay. For you.”

The old lady, Frulenk, seemed impressed. “I didn’t expect you to even convince him, Starfleet.”

Anmol looked at her with animosity. “You just threatened his life in several ways. If this is how we save him, then we’ll do it.”

The preparations for activating the stasis chamber proceeded silently, in a funereal atmosphere. Even Frulenk, now sobered from the success of her verbal sparring, seemed depressed: she was probably realizing how most of her life had been dedicated to the re-establishment of monarchy, just to discover that in conjuring a genius she had just awoken a perfect idiot. Iskander, who by now thoroughly disliked her, hoped that she’d remember this moment for every single other minute of her life.

Then he thought that hanging around people who believed in a monarchy made him vengeful and spiteful, which he didn’t like in himself. He didn’t like disliking people. That wasn’t who he was: he was morose and sad. He made a note of discussing that with Sakar, the Redding‘s counsellor.

At the given moment, Kojik stepped up, climbed into the chamber, and the lid descended on him with puffs of liquid nitrogen smoke and sounds of hydraulic pumps.

The operation went on for almost one hour, and at the end Frulenk approached the stasis chamber and looked at the vital signs inside. The monitors of the stasis unit displayed stable signs, dimmed and sleeping: the signal of a cryosleeping body.

“Monarchy is perfect, but people are flawed. Maybe this is for the better” she said finally, raucous, defeated. “Maybe monarchy should just be this: a remote dream, sleeping but alive, to be dreamt of but not achieved. Kojik will sleep forever, and until the end of eternity the Tellarites who dream of Kings will be able to come here, in pilgrimage, to keep their dream alive.”

Without saying anything more, she turned on her heels and left.

Saying little, the Starfleet crew soon left as well. The lights in the Chamber Room went off and the stasis unit, gilded and golden, was swallowed by darkness.