Author: Andrea

Some background: I meet with a writers’ critique group every Friday, where we read our WIPs to each other and get instant feedback. I’m going to read this to the group this Friday. Of course, by commenting on the piece, they become part of the story.

The Constitutional Convention

A Meta Story about the Republic of Kentaurus

By Andrea Monticue

It was a cold, gray, rainy April morning in Monmouth, Oregon, and my Invicta Dive Watch indicated that it was still five minutes before the meeting started. I had the meeting invitation in my daypack, but I knew it by heart: Organizational Meeting. Noon. Public Library. Topic: What the hell, sistah? Bring your laptop. Other participants: Your literary creations.

This was not the first time my “literary creations” had forced a meeting of the minds on me. Usually, they didn’t bother with an invitation to a meeting – they just showed up at my office, helping themselves to my coffee, carrying a handwritten list of grievances. This always annoyed me, considering the advanced technology I’ve bequeathed to them. They have starships that travel at many multiples of the speed of light, for crying out loud! Can’t they invest in one measly iPad?

I walked into the library meeting room expecting to see the usual suspects and I was surprised to see some additional faces. 

Bear stood near the door dressed in his medical corpsman uniform. He presented himself standing at a full seven feet tall, his tongue lolling over his wolfish teeth and his tail wagging to indicate pleasure at seeing me, greeted me at the door, and handed me a complimentary pair of smartglasses. 

“Thank you, Bear! You’re always so thoughtful.” I was pleased that it was the better iGlasses from Apple and not the minimalist Google Viewer. Bear wasn’t able to reproduce human vocalizations, so he needed the translating ability of the smartglasses to participate. Everyone in the room was wearing them. This was good because, with the exception of Sharon Manders, the former UC Santa Cruz anthropology professor sitting at the podium on a stool, I was the only one there who spoke 21st-century English.

I set my daypack down on the nearest chair and donned the smartglasses while Sharon talked. “Thank you for showing up on time, Andrea.”

I gave her the finger then looked around the room. Teagan Wough with their unreadable mien, and Etta Place, dressed in a cowboy hat, tee shirt and jeans, were sitting to one side. Xoanna Campoverde, the Minister of the Navy on Kentaurus, and Elrydien Daerîsiell, the Elf who did Campoverde’s dirty, often extrajudicial work, sat next to each other opposite from Teagan and Etta. They both had their arms crossed in silent defiance.

The biggest surprise was Senator Robert Schoonover from the Annermani Province of Kentaurus, currently chairing the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee.  Despite his position, he wore casual slacks and a plaid vest over a simple cotton shirt. 

“Bob,” I said, giving him a nod. “Always good to see you.” I greeted the rest with a glance and gritted teeth.

“Hey, boss,” he reflected and smiled. It’s always nice to have one’s fictional characters acknowledge who’s in charge, though I wondered if Bob was just being ingratiating. 

The room was designed for business meetings with tables and hard chairs, an acoustic drop ceiling, and large windows facing the parking lot. Rain battered against the glass, causing a distraction.

Refusing to take a seat, I looked Sharon in the eyes and said, “Okay. What’s the deal? What are you pissed about now? You called this meeting, I’m sure.”

“Don’t get your dander up, Writer,” she said, raising a placating hand. “We actually think you’re doing a bang-up job on your current projects. We just feel that something is lacking.”

“Lacking?” I raised my voice louder than I intended to. “Lacking? Do you understand how many nights I lie sleepless in bed, thinking about the details of your universe?”

“C’mon, boss, that’s not fair,” Bob interjected. He was wearing that smiling politician’s face, designed to deescalate tensions among his constituents. “We’re not saying that world-building is easy or that you’re giving less than your all. Just hear us out, okay?”

“Yes, madam universe creator,” Xoanna said. Did she have the world’s sexiest accent or what? It made her sarcasm easier to swallow. “We merely want to point out a foundational lapse.”

“If I may,” Teagan interrupted. “Let me give you a scenario: The first paragraph of your first book mentions a ship traveling in space. This ship cannot just pop into existence without people to build it. And people infer a society with its attendant laws. But what are these laws?”

“I, uh, I’ve been creating them as necessary,” I offered.

“Yes, but is that fair?” Teagan said. “Especially since a solid hunk of the story takes place in a government setting.”

“Exactly,” Bob said. “How am I supposed to be a senator when I don’t know how the role is defined? What authority does my committee have? How was I elected, and who elected me?”

“The citizens, of course!” I said, feeling like I was pointing out the obvious.

“But what’s a citizen?” Xoanna asked. “Shouldn’t this be defined somewhere? And is it a direct vote, or do they choose their electors?”

I admitted internally that they had a point. “You’re asking me how the government is run. What its constitution is. That’s like asking me how the FTL engines work. I have no clue!”

“I’d like to point out that that isn’t entirely true,” Elrydien spoke for the first time. Everybody turned to look at her. “You have an education in physics, and you like to stay current on physics research. You’ve made an effort to incorporate this into the story without getting bogged down in details.”

“Yeah, that’s a good cure for insomnia,” I said.

“But look at the work you’ve done behind the scenes,” she continued. “You have literally pages of spreadsheets detailing stellar distances and how long it takes to travel between them. You’ve written detailed specifications on different models of starship engines. Your readers never see this stuff.”

“Almost sounds obsessive to me,” Bob said, smiling. If he was trying to disarm my defensiveness, he wasn’t doing the best job.

“You need a constitution,” Xoanna said. 

I thought about all the work that goes into writing a modern constitution and nearly collapsed in imaginary exhaustion.

“Nobody has to see it,” Bob said. “But it will keep our interactions consistent, and you won’t have annoyed readers sending you emails, saying, ‘In your first book, you said that the Kentauran parliament is unicameral and consisted of representatives, but in the second book, you introduce Bob as a Senator.’”

“Good point,” Sharon said.

Shit. And Bob didn’t know the half of it.

“Is that what this is all about? Okay, you’re a representative.”

“That’s not the point!” Bob objected.

“Okay, I’ll retcon the parliament as bicameral.”

Bob blew air from puffed cheeks in frustration. “Look, I don’t care. You just need to be consistent, or fans will eat you up.”

“And you can work on it when you have to take a break from your WIPs,” Etta jumped in, referring to Works in Progress. “It’s not like there’s a f’king hurry. The only lives on the line are the ones in your overactive imagination.” I could tell she was actively trying to curb her sailor’s mouth.

“If I may,” Teagan interrupted. “I don’t know anybody who’s written a constitution for a space-faring society before. Although, it wouldn’t surprise me if David Weber has. You can take all those musty, centuries-old Earth constitutions and give them a post-modern twist. What other nascent nations have had to worry about multiple species, genetic manipulations, robots, and interstellar treaties?”

“I’m not a lawyer,” I said defensively. “And I’m not a politician, or a philosopher, or any of those things one needs to be to write a constitution.”

“You’re also not a starship captain,” Etta offered. “You’re also not a spy, or a sailor, or a combat aviator, or a quantum electrician, or a diplomat, or a roboticist, or an information specialist, or an anthropologist, or a —“

“Etta, enough,” Bear calmly interrupted with his synthesized voice that sounded like Laurence Fishburne. 

“Oh, you get the idea. You’re none of these things that you write about.”

“It’s not just that,” I said apologetically. “You can’t write a constitution with just one voice. You need a chorus. It requires a meeting of the finest minds of that society. Otherwise, you risk expressing only a single ideology.”

“We can contribute,” Sharon offered.

“All of you,” I said, indicating the entire group with a gesture, “are me.” 

“I do hope you don’t believe that you and I share ideals of what a government is supposed to do,” Xoanna said, sitting up straight, ready for a fight, looking as if she’d just been insulted. 

“You can always take it to that critique group that meets on Fridays,” Bear said. “They certainly have a variety of opinions, more or less valid.”

I cringed. I could already hear the group’s questions and objections.