Volume XIV, Issue VIII
Josiah
By Bob Kirchman
Copyright © 2018, The Kirchman Studio, all rights reserved
Chapter 8: Déjà Vu All Over Again
That ship never came. For decades the little band struggled on. Josiah struggled to lead them. A small core of APOLLONIUS devotees were always perturbed that the collective mindset originally prescribed was not adhered to. They were led by Mark and Sergey, who had barely made it through Elizabeth Zimmerman’s vetting process. Though the group as a whole dispensed rapidly with addressing each other by number, Mark and Sergey resisted that change to the bitter end. Finally it was only them referring to each other by number anyway. Then they gave it up.
The problem was that the two of them brooded together privately and stirred up some dissention publicly. Sergey would often interrupt Josiah with the statement, “that’s not by the book.” He was committed to restoring the purity of the original colony mission as he saw it. Josiah’s leadership was necessary now but in the long run it would have to go.
The two doctors gravitated to this mindset. They arrived at the colony both expecting and when their babies came they attached themselves to some men of the APOLLONIUS faction. APOLLONIUS was not the only person on Earth pushing for colonization, they reasoned. Others would follow and they would be the charter village of the new order when the latecomers arrived. Josiah had inventoried the remaining stores and they were actually not in any immediate danger of depleting resources. The doctors, for their part, did not strongly resist the change to home education. They considered their children the rightful heirs of APOLLONIUS and intended to raise them as such. Combined education might indeed get in the way of that.
Then there was the Allison/Josiah faction. They held rule of the colony by necessity and because of Josiah’s giftedness in that area. Even their enemies acknowledged this. The loss of APOLLONIUS had left most of the colonists quite rudderless if the truth be known. Steeped in the Progressive thought that had been overshadowed by a rebirth of Faith in the North Country, they were quite capable of creating institutions but clueless as to the deeper stirring of human nature that seemed to make them run so wretchedly.
The new colony was to have no prisons, but it became clear over the years that the folly that necessitated them was still present in humankind. Though they had cast off all of the antiquated beliefs and institutions, they were surprised at the dark shadows that had followed them across the solar system. Josiah dealt with the raft of petty crimes within the community with an application of something very much resembling the old ‘Golden Rule.’ When thievery was discovered, restitution was expected. Abusive and violent situations were not so easy. Initially mandatory separation of the aggressive parties seemed to work, but then there was the murder.
(to be continued)
