2947-01-01 - Tales from the Inbox: Caesar Paulius

A tall man in a purple robe swept through the agora of Cesarea Paulis as if immune to the chaos and bustle of the town, and it seemed that the crowd was only too happy to act as if he was. Performers, tourists, and local shoppers alike shied out of his way, and hundreds of eyes followed him and his small retinue. The man paid none of the onlookers any mind; his head was bowed as if in deep thought as he spoke quietly with a chubby, white-haired assistant.

“Who’s he?” Maxine whispered to the vendor whose inventory of bangles she had just been browsing.

“That is his lordship Augustus.” The man replied reverently. “Our emperor and protector.”

“You Paulians and your pageantry.” Maxine rolled her eyes. Paulius, with its heavily Latin population and architecture, was a wealthy world, its inhabitants grown rich on the sale of valuable crops which could grow nowhere else in human space. That it turned this wealth to re-creating the appearance of an ancient Earth culture was a choice Maxine couldn’t fault – to agricultural wealth, it had added the money of hundreds of thousands of tourists, and grown all the wealthier for its efforts. Respecting the model, however, was not the same thing as humoring the theme-park atmosphere the locals offered to their visitors.

“It is no pageant.” The shopkeeper insisted. “Augustus is the emperor of all human civilization.”

“The Hegemon and the Confederated parliament surely have something to say about that.”

“He issued a writ dissolving both governments five T-years ago, miss.”

The baffling reply stunned Maxine into several seconds of silence. She had left Hegemony space only two months before, and the Hegemon was still very much in power there. The Confederated government was still in charge of its space, including Paulius itself. Not knowing what else to say to the shopkeeper, she left his cart and, dodging a street acrobat, followed the tall man in purple. She knew he was not a ruler, but she wanted to find out if he was an actor or merely a madman the locals cruelly humored.

The so-called emperor stopped in front of a cart covered in decorative hand-crafted pottery, and a trio of tourists in off-world smart-fabric sheepishly got out of his way as he strode forward. “My good man, it fills me with sorrow to see you rely for your livelihood on such barbarians.” He intoned dramatically, and Maxine concluded that he was indeed an actor. “Your wares seem good and wholesome; surely some true Romans would be only too happy to buy them.”

“Y-yes, your grace, thank you.” The shopkeeper stammered as Augustus swept away as quickly as he had come. To Maxine’s astonishment, dozens of robed locals swarmed the cart, where none had been before, and within a minute, every item on the cart had been purchased. None of the wares had cost more than six denarii – local credit-coins which were permanently stamped to ten credits each – but it seemed that they were only too happy to jump at the emperor’s whims and purchase tourist-souvenirs they had no use for, as if he were truly a ruler.

Scowling, Maxine continued to follow Emperor Augustus through the market, watching citizen after citizen – and even some of the tourists – treat him like a real emperor. It was, she concluded, some sort of collective joke, on which nobody had bothered to fill her in when she arrived.

Without warning, Augustus whirled in place and pointed to Maxine. “The barbarian girl there. Bring her here.” Instantly, two of the local constables – their body armor polished with a tinted metallic substance to look like bronze – seized her by the arms and dragged her forward.

“Let go of me! I’m a citizen of the Hegemony! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Despite her shouting and the risk of an interplanetary incident, the constables didn’t release their grip, and nobody in the crowd moved to come to her aid.

“Be still.” Augustus ordered. The crowd surrounding the altercation grew quiet, and Maxine, despite her defiance, found herself suddenly unwilling to continue to shout when she saw the solemn, hard look in his eyes. “Why do you haunt my steps?”

“I…” Maxine shook her head, trying to clear her head from the spell of false authority that surrounded the man. “I was curious what you’re doing. You’re not the emperor.” 

Though the crowd muttered angrily, the purple-robed man seemed only amused. “An interesting claim.” Augustus gestured broadly. “Present the rightful heir to the throne of the empire of my namesake, and if his claims are stronger than mine, I will abdicate in his favor.”

Maxine gritted her teeth and said nothing as the crowd jeered. She wondered how many recording devices were capturing the moment of her humiliation at the hands of a glorified jester.

“Now, now.” Augustus calmed the crowd with a wave of his hand. “She may be wrong, but we expect that of barbarians. Release her.”

The two constables vanished and the crowd began to disperse as Augustus turned to continue on his way. Maxine, trembling, slunk back towards her hotel, wondering how quickly she could change her travel plans and depart the mad planet.

Paulius is unique among worlds in Confederated space for its dedication to an illusion of antiquity, though its colonial history dates back a bare 240 years. Its architecture and culture, patterned off a particular Earthly Italian culture which existed 3,000 years ago, is deservedly a magnet for tourists, and the planet's location on the primary route from Hegemony space to the Confederated Core Worlds ensures a steady stream of travelers through its spaceport. Both Ashton and myself have on separate occasions visited Paulius, and I personally find its faux old-world grandeur to be quite endearing.

Though in my visit I saw nothing of the so-called Emperor, I have recently received several reports related to this strange person. Most of the submissions are accounts of him from a distance, not worth publishing in this space, but Maxine's report of a brief personal encounter with him - in which he is reportedly lucid and commanding - is a very interesting data point. As she feared, I was able to locate an audiovisual recording of the incident with a quick datasphere query, to verify the important details of her story.

Despite the population's apparently eager support of his position, the presence of an emperor is not recognized in the Paulian governmental constitution, last updated in 2914. I can find no evidence that his decrees bear the force of law, suggesting that he is, if not an actor, at least a part of the facade of vanished empire which the planet affects. Augustus may be similar to that of a famously tragic historical figure from another period of pre-Space-Age history, the so-called "Emperor" Maximilian I of the city of San Fransisco.

I would be interested in any other reports of encounters with this person. His claim to empire when confronted by Maxine M. was cleverly ambiguous to be sure. If the citizens of that world wish to elect an emperor and dissolve their senate, they are of course free to do so (though that emperor's toothless decree to dissolve the Confederated government would certainly cause tension between his representatives and those of other worlds in Yaxkin City).