Microstory 719: Force of Love

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The votes are in. For having misled an entire galaxy of loyal denizens, and a host of faithful followers, Former Sacred Savior, Sotiren Zahir, and his cohort, Eido Ivanka, were overwhelmingly voted to be put to death. It took about a week of votes, revotes, and control votes, but the results have all come to the same conclusion: Fosteans are ubiquitously outraged by the deceit that has run for the last several centuries. Zahir’s crimes are apparent, now that analysts have had time to review the data found of the Ring of Culture, but they are nothing compared to what Ivanka has done. After an in-depth investigation, we have learned that she has been alive this entire time. She has been traveling the planets, covertly maintaining loyalty to Lightseed through various psychologically manipulative means. She is particularly adept at gleaning people’s weaknesses, and exploiting them to use against her targets, ensuring no significant threat to the reign of Zahir got off the ground. Ivanka bolstered the reputations of candidates on many worlds, sometimes fabricating their histories, and lording her leverage over them to preserve her own power. She even colluded with our enemies, striking deals that only acted to support the sham regime. She is truly the face of evil, and deserves no less than a painful plex radiation death. Fortunately for the both of them, this is not going to happen. After the last vote was counted, the third and final Force of Virtue spontaneously appeared all over the galaxy, reaching every breathing human simultaneously. Immediately, people requested recalls for their votes, hoping to prevent the deaths of their newly discovered insidious aggressors. We call it the Force of Love, and since it affected everyone all at once, there was no one around to argue this decision. And so Profane Antagonist, Sotiren Zahir, and High Perversion, Ivanka will live out their lives, however short they may be without the luxury of life extension technologies. They have not been forgiven, but we have been reminded of the power of love, and its capacity to abstain from violence, even in the face of such terrible malice at the hands of those we once trusted.