The Queen's Courtesan

Our story so far:
http://asher813.typepad.com/fiction/

Dess can't believe what the message on her communicator is saying. She shows it to Joli, who can't believe it either.

"The Palace? You're going to the Imperial Palace?"

Dess just shakes her head. "It's gotta be a mistake." She knew her new job was with the Government, but she's been expecting to be sent to some minor office of the Astronomy Ministry. Not the Imperial Palace.

She reads the message on the screen again. In a couple of hours' time - this very night - she's to report to the Imperial Palace for an urgent meeting with Queen Kathris. Dess grabs her hairbrush and starts brushing furiously in front of the big mirror in the hotel room.

"So," Joli manages, "d'ya still think Kathris is scary?"

Dess thinks the whole thing is scary. "I wish you could go with me."

Joli giggles nervously. "And meet Kathris? Wouldn't that go over well!" There's an awkward silence for a moment, and Joli adds, "Dess, do you think she suspects?" Her voice sounds distant and fearful now.

Dess shrugs. "How would I know? I've never been to the Palace before. I'll keep my eyes and ears open, though, in case she says anything. Have you heard from ... from her?"

"No. Amira hasn't contacted me. I mean, she must be pretty busy, with all the stuff that's going on." Joli gazes out the hotel window at the city lights.

"Well, maybe she'll call you in for some 'special assignment', right? I mean, officially you're an adviser to Queen Amira, so she can call you in any time. You're one of the Queen's courtiers."

"Sometimes I feel more like the Queen's courtesan. I love her, Dess. And I know she has feelings for me. But I still feel like I'm being used. Like I'm a pawn in some big game. And it's horrible." She turns away from the window.

"Dess."

Dess meets Joli's gaze, which is suddenly intense. "Yeah?"

"Be careful."

"Listen, Joli, if me taking this job would create, you know, problems for you, I won't - "

"No, that's not what I mean. This is a great opportunity for you and I don't want you to miss it. But what I'm saying is, be careful of getting mixed up in Palace politics. Listen, most people - most intelligent life forms, everywhere in the universe - are basically good. But some of 'em are mean, and some of 'em are just evil. You remember the disaster at Fao Colony 12?"

"Yeah, it happened when we were still in school, didn't it? A power station on the colony had a runaway thermonuclear event, and it destroyed almost the whole colony. The Gilkesh homeworld sent a rescue party to help the survivors."

Joli nods. "That's true, and the rescue party saved hundreds of Fao lives, and they did good." She pauses. "But some of 'em did bad. What they didn't tell us in school ... was that some of the rescuers went through the wreckage looking for souvenirs."

Joli swallows hard before going on. "They found nurseries full of unhatched eggs, with Fao babies still inside. Had 'em bronzed."

The trip to the Imperial Palace seems to take an eternity.

Holocaust? What holocaust?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ali16dec16,0,2351518.story?coll=la-home-commentary

ONE DAY IN 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got a visit from my half-sister. She and I were both immigrants from Somalia and had both applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted it; she was denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to study. My half-sister couldn't.

In order for me to be admitted to the university I wanted to attend, I needed to pass three courses: a language course, a civics course and a history course. It was in the preparatory history course that I, for the first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and my half-sister was 21.

In those days, the daily news was filled with the Rwandan genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. On the day that my half-sister visited me, my head was reeling from what happened to 6 million Jews in Germany, Holland, France and Eastern Europe.

I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from each other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to camps, they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.

I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil ...

Fiction update, etc.

If you're one of the two or three people following my story The Queen's Courtesan / Space Lesbians, I've got about four or five episodes in the works now and they should be posted soon.  The story is now at about 14,000 words, which is much longer than anything I've attempted before.

The story itself is meant as entertainment, not "art", and keeping that in mind has made it a lot easier to write.  In fact, aside from the (negligible) literary value of the story itself, the project has gotten me in the habit of writing, which is something that hadn't happened before.  What I'm saying is, it was a great way to get past perfectionism and other self-defeating habits, and build momentum, confidence, and proficiency.  So if I do get ambitious in the future and aspire to writing something a little more serious, I'll be in a much better position to do it.

Meanwhile ... just in case you're wondering what language the characters are speaking, I've created a Gilkesh language home page.  Currently posted are PDFs of the 600-word core vocabulary;  in the future I'll add sections on the grammar. 

So if you were looking for conclusive proof that I have way too much time on my hands, there you are.