Microstory 627: A Day of No Business

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The concept of a holiday set aside to observe the Sacred Savior’s rest after his journeys has been considered for the better part of the last few centuries. It’s been through a few different iterations, with the most recent being known as a Day of No Business. The idea is to halt all business transactions for the duration of a standard twenty-hour day. Every time it has been proposed, it has been shut down by all major faction leaders, and their constituents. Only a few minor and irrelevant cultures in the galaxy make use of this practice to any degree. One of the biggest problems with the realization of these taikon, is that many of them are difficult to achieve in a galaxy full of nonbelievers. The reason the holiday observance has never been accepted before is because our religion, though the most dominant, is not the only one here. Too many people reject the Book of Light’s teachings, making it nearly impossible to get everyone on board with something as far-reaching as this. It’s even difficult for devout Lightseers to accept the possibility of spending one day with no transactions. The economy is the source of this galaxy’s power. Without it, we might as well become dirty communists, just like our enemies. There is just no telling what kind of impact a break from labor, even for one day, would have on civilization. According to the taikon, however, this would have to happen...whether people wanted it or not. Yet, scholars have always been baffled as to how it could ever happen. Even now that it has, scientists are unsure exactly what allowed the holiday to work this year, but Lightseers are grateful. On the anniversary of Sotiren Zahir’s return to Earth—when he revealed to his followers that he had found our home galaxy—the first annual Day of No Business came to pass. But it was not what anyone had expected. An unseen force—as of now, being referred to as The Freus—not only prevented people from working, but from doing anything. For a full twenty hours, every single person in the entire galaxy of Fostea was frozen in place, unable to do anything more than blink, as if frozen in ice. Since no one was able to move at the time, no reliable research has been done on the matter, so no one knows that the Freus is, where it came from, or whether invoking the Day of No Business was its intention. The pangalactic suspended animation phenomenon seemed to have no ill effects on anyone, leaving everyone to rejoice in the fulfillment of yet another taikon.