Challenge #04535-L151: Blown Back

The first hundred times didn't work out so good, but this time it will. -- Anon Guest

If at first you don't succeed... the saying goes. Sometimes, try, try, and try again, is not the ideal solution. It's that kind of philosophy that results in history's echoes.

Again and again, those who rise to power seek to create their ideal society by forcing the populace to adhere to rigid rules or face harsh punishment. Again and again, the populace rebels and the powerful end up paying for their hubris with their lives.

Again and again, another leader rises from the throng, determined to make a new and better future. They can succeed, for a time. But sooner or later, another has grand ideas that would work if everyone just behaved.

Case in point, Terran Colony 3458. The name of the planet is debatable at best, as its disparate polities know it by different names. Its surface is littered with monuments to past glories.

Trunkless legs of stone in vast deserts. Disembodied hands holding the torch of enlightenment on shorelines. Stern visages in the middle of wrecked and desolate cityscapes, the remaining architecture falling to rubble around them. Reliefs sunken in oceans and monuments overgrown with coral or forests.

Legends say that they came from the stars in vessels of steel and talking silicon. They came with one idea to make a perfect world, and split over how to do it.

There used to be weapons that split the clouds, and that's why there's circular lakes that glow in the dark. There used to be weapons that shook the ground, and that's why some mountains are ripped in half, or why there's plains of solid granite.

Many of the polities there blame their opposition for the really big injuries to the planet's surface. Of course they did that with the weapons of the agents. That's why we are fighting them to this day.

There used to be gleaming cities filled with millions. They did things to destroy them, or we would be living there to this day. There used to be prosperity and plenty, until they did something to ruin that.

This time, we will win, and defeat them.

This time, they swear, they will recover their glorious past, and make the shining cities again.

Terran Colony 3458 has lost the secrets of metallurgy. They're throwing spears and shooting arrows at each other, now. All certain that this time... they'll get it right.

Meanwhile, we observe them from afar, and wish they would.

[Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash]

If you like my stories, please Check out my blog and Follow me. Or share them with your friends! Or visit my hub site to see what else I'm up to.

Send me a prompt [24 remaining prompts!]

Support me on Patreon / Buy me a Ko-fi

Check out the other stuff I'm selling