This story is by Michael Konigsberg and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
“Owen will be missed. I wish that I could change what led us here, but I cannot. He and our peace have been stolen from us!”
Axel’s deep voice boomed through the crowd. His tall patrician form shown on thousands of floating screens. He is handsome and masculine without the scars that gave Owen a more brutal visage. Axel’s face contorts in a mixture of grief and rage, before a deep shaking breath steadies him.
“As our first Protector of Humanity I will save us!”
The Song of Humanity’s great room housed art, instruments, and games anchored to the wall or floating around static micro gravity orbs. She had a storied history of brokering the first interstellar peace treaty. The children of Deimos swam for the first time in her sphere pool. The Song had a fearsome array of weapons that had never fired. She was Axel’s flagship and a redoubt for peace.
Axel was at the piano, playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, reminiscing.
Me and Owen had gone to elementary school at the Lunar Academy. The school was brown brick with Ivy and replanted redwood trees, all beneath starry black space.
Sitting in the cafeteria I unwrapped a true delicacy: Earth Chocolate. The school bully, whose name is lost to my swirling memory, hit it out of my hand whilst chuckling mirthlessly.
From across the room Owen screamed “don’t mess with my brother!” before running promptly up to the bigger bully and kicking him squarely in his little testicles.
Amidst the chaos following, with the teachers swarming around the writhing bully, Owen turned to me and whispered, “You okay?”
Owen had always been the protector even though I didn’t often need protection. Being Identical twins, we were both broad of chest and will, fiercely independent, but different in personality and focus.
We had loved our father dearly, and he died before we went to high school at the Naval Academy on the SS Future.
It had been expected; it had been a tragedy. He lay in his study, a room smelling of mahogany and leather-bound books. He gestured and a servant brought a case containing an ancient roman coin.
Our father looked at us before saying, “You are both of me, two sides of this coin. One soul, two hearts.”
He interpreted the Latin, reading “love conquers all” while looking at me, and “if you want peace, prepare for war” while looking at Owen. “You’ll need both sides, and each other.”
He coughed weakly as alarms started sounding. “If you two can’t decide, flip this coin, and remember my love for you and your brotherhood.” Insistent medical alerts wailed. We were ushered out as physicians surged forward.
We could hear our father, the great general, behind us shouting “Woe is me! I think I’m turning into a god!” He died shortly after.
I felt for the coins reassuring presence in my pocket and started playing Beethoven’s Bundeslied.
The coin served us well in our youth. We loved to compete, and games ranged from five-dimensional chess to push-up competitions.
We created our own games, like Space Pac Man. The leader would take the pouch and while traveling down the corridor push out globs of liquid. The follower would attempt to grab each orb saying “Waka Waka Waka” just like the retro video game. Once a sip was missed, the leader would lunge for it while singing the song of Pac Man’s demise and become the follower. Like all games, we’d flip our coin for who started first.
After high school, I headed to diplomat school and Owen enlisted in special forces. It was the first time we would live apart.
I pushed the coin into the palm of his hand. “Use this when you’re unsure, and remember you are not alone.” He looked sad but never cried. I bawled.
I played Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, absentmindedly starting with the Thunderstorm.
At first, we remained close, sending messages daily. Then weekly, then monthly, then each semester. Owen admitted that his use of the coin followed a similar pattern. We were both set to graduate when the Unification Wars started, forcing us to serve United Earth’s effort to bring all nations under a single banner.
The battles were hard, bloody, and a proving ground for Owen. After, the diplomats would come with collars smelling of perfume and potential promises. I found the negotiations exhilarating, I did well.
Owen and I found ourselves together again, many years later, after his legion’s victory in Europe. We were at a Venetian bridge, watching the gondola’s, trying to reconnect.
Owen turned to me suddenly, extending his hand with the palm up. The coin rested there: “Take it. I never choose anymore; our enemies do so for me.” I saw the sad steel in his eyes. I took it.
I sighed and began playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
Years before the unification war a small asteroid crashed into Nevada’s Badger Mountain mine. The military found a wealth of new materials, revolutionizing most sciences, and catapulting Humanity further into our space age.
Decades later Owen headed the Black Fleet, and I had just risen to lead the Senate. We had become estranged, so when Owen reached out asking me to join him at the decommissioned Badger Mountain mine, it was peculiar.
Upon arriving Owen greeted me with a single nod. “Your first legislations have been to reduce the fleet.”
I turned to him, confused and defensive. “Hello dear brother, good to see you. Why bring that up? Why are we here?”
Owen’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the Speaker now, and I have to tell you something I don’t want to.”
He started walking deeper into the facility.
Instead of mining tunnels we walked past military checkmarks until we finally arrived at the largest cavern I had ever seen.
In the center wasn’t the famous mined-out asteroid, but a ship. It was in near perfect condition, three miles long, and looked like a sleek obsidian black bullet.
I whistled, “A prototype?”
Owen didn’t look at me. “It’s not ours.”
The ‘asteroid’ was an alien ship! “We’re not alone! There is intelligent life out there! What… happened to the crew?”
Owen was stone faced. “They disembarked unarmed and the military cleansed them. They took several for dissection and began studying the ship.”
“We… killed them? In cold blood?!”
Owen’s mask cracked and fury seeped out. “Do you see this ship? What would have happened if they reported back?”
“Well, we’ll never know! Why isn’t this public?”
Owen shook his head “We weren’t ready for it…we’re still not. We needed to unify. Now, we need to defend against this grey menace.”
My eyebrows shot up. “They could have annihilated us from orbit and instead came down to us in peace! This must be why you’re pushing back on demilitarization, what started unification! It’s been so many years since this happened, Owen. Have they even come back?”
Owen sneered, “No, but what do you think those greys are going to do when they realize what happened here? They’d slaughter us. We need to create a fleet that would allow us to strike first…”
I was incredulous. “STRIKE FIRST? We don’t even know anything about these ‘greys’, which is incredibly xenophobic, who came here in peace and now we’re going straight to war? What… what have you become?”
Owen’s stone face reappeared. “We’re done here. Leave, and don’t speak of this to anyone. I cannot protect you if this gets out and the senate cannot save you.”
That was the end of our civility.
I legislated to turn our ever-burgeoning military industrial complex towards terraforming, exploration, and the search for intelligent life. They passed.
Owen’s response was to take the Black Fleet to the Martian orbital shipyard, ostensibly for refitting. He privately threatened civil war.
So here I was, headed to broach peace. I pulled out our coin and flipped it. Warning claxons started to ring, and The Song’s automated defenses fired.
Axel’s voice reached new heights of fervor. “This new enemy has killed my brother, and if we do not fight, the Grey’s will take everything from us! We will achieve total victory or face total destruction! For Humanity! For Owen!”
The crowd’s voice surged to support the deaths of those they did not know.
With his speech finished, Axel walked to the casket, asking for a moment of privacy. The floating news cameras retreated as he took a burned black coin from his pocket, placing it on the polished wood casket. He whispered, “I had to protect everyone. Forgive me, you gave me no other choice. We are all lonelier without you.”
The Black Fleet gathered overhead, shadows engulfing the crowd as the fleet began to block out the sun.
Whispering even quieter, so low that he himself could barely hear it, “We go to war now. I’ll see you in the next life, Axel.”
Owen stepped back to the stage and watched as the casket carrying Axel, and the truth, was buried forever.
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