All of Ours

Hundreds of thousands of stars are crammed together in that one spot, each seemingly fighting for elbow room among its brethren. At the center of the clot, the stars are packed so closely together that you can't find any black sky between them. It's like an active beehive made up of glittering stars, their twinkling mimicking buzzing motion.
-- Phillip Plait, Ph.D. from "Under Alien Skies" (2023)

At first I didn't pay too much attention to star clusters. One star, two stars, a heap of stars. What's the difference? The sexy objects in the night sky were obviously the galaxies. Galaxies and transients like comets.

Then I read Phil Plait's chapter on globular star clusters in his book, "Under Alien Skies."

Those stars don't just happen to be there, all at the same spot in the galaxy, there by accident. They aren't some quirk of viewpoint; that is, they are not located at vastly different distances and simply lined up from our point of view. No, these are communities in the grandest sense.

"So how about M15?" said Max.

"Max! You're back! Where the heck have you been!?"

"Oh, here and there," he replied. "So, M15?"

Dissembling definitely wasn't a Max-like character trait. He seemed off from his usual enthusiasm, and almost a little care worn. But I couldn't put my finger on it and decided not to press the issue.

"M15 it is"

M15 is a globular star cluster, first discovered by Italian astronomer Jean-Dominique Maraldi on September 7, 1746. He was searching for comets. Natch. Eighteen years later French comet hunter Charles Messier entered the cluster as number 15 on his list of deep sky objects, objects that were not comets and could therefore be safely ignored by his fellow comet hunters. M15 resides in the constellation Pegasus, some 33,600 light years from Earth.

"Globulars," as they are known by their closest friends, are some of the oldest structures found in the galaxy. Roughly 150 globular clusters are estimated to reside in the Milky Way and M15 is one of the oldest, thought to have formed from condensing gas clouds roughly 12 billion years ago. There are more than 100,000 stars in M15 and they have found stable orbits at all inclinations forming a globular ball, generating Plait's metaphorical "beehive." That longevity and stability is astonishing. It far surpasses the sexier galaxies and comets that command all the attention of the main stream press. It is almost as if the stars in the cluster have been looking out for each other, arranging for gravitational support, providing a place of belonging. A safe place for "all of ours."

She approached the lectern, yet again, in order to intimidate the cosmic press corp with bullshit. Yet again. Ablain Xoemi was the High Prefect of the Department of Solar Originalism (DSO), an unelected position of authority, unaccountably in charge of the largest state police force in the galaxy: the Interstellar Celestial Enforcement (ICE) agency. She had been confirmed to her position by a vote of the Senate, the "Yea" votes garnering a surprise 7 members of the opposition party, including Kaner, representing Commonwealth Virgo, and both Senators from the shire of Neu Hamp. Afterwards they mumbled a lot. Perhaps it was important to "go along to get along." The favor would be repaid in future pork. Wouldn't it?

The qualifications that would normally back up a nomination to DSO weren't particularly clear at the time, and it is now assumed that she rose largely on the basis of her "lunar maria" appearance, fake hair accoutrements, and her propensity to brag about shooting her pet dog dead because its behavior annoyed her. And it deserved to be dead in any case.

The lectern was emblazoned with the slogan, "One of Ours, All of Yours."

The definitive origin of that slogan has been debated, but it was an unambiguous threat and everyone recognized it as such. "Cross me," Xoemi implied, "and I will wreak devastating indiscriminate retribution against every one of you. Good boy."

She began:

Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here.

An individual approached ... officers with a nine millimeter semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, and agent fired defensive shots. Medics were on the scene immediately and attempted to deliver medical aid to the subject, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect also had two magazines with ammunition in them that held dozens of rounds. He also had no ID. This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.

Max was circulating through provincial capitals everywhere in the galaxy, and all the procurement and information technology departments, selling them on the efficiencies of a brand new Pegasus AI LMM RoboBot. It could write regime rules in a fraction of the time it would take the current resident personnel, he told them; cheaper, too, because you could fire the current resident personnel. He had already succeeded with the General Council of the Department of Space Traffic, Gregius Zerxan. In fact, Zerxan told a meeting of the office directors:

We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ. We want good enough. We’re flooding the zone.”

"That's the spirit," thought Max. He had been working for months training the "brand new Pegasus AI LLM RoboBot" on text from fiction classics. Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty, George Orwell's 1984. He'd thrown in every episode of The Twilight Zone and Dr. Who he could get his hands on. At the last minute he'd thrown in Muskian's Grokipedia, a ChatBot mangled on its own slop scraped and regurgitated in perverse spew to flatter the Muskian itself.

He knew they were addicted to this machine dystopia. Just the previous spring they used a ChatBot to write tax code that imposed huge tariffs on the world of Ogmanian penjins, beautiful creatures that swim and eat fish but rarely, as in never, pay taxes or tariffs.

"What could possibly go wrong!" thought Max. "Hopefully, everything."

He returned as soon as he heard, but it was too late. Alex was dead. Murdered by the state. By the goons of ICE. Just as they had murdered Renée before him. And 32 others before them.

Max mourned. The city mourned. The star cluster mourned.

When ICE thugs began pushing and using tear gas on a women near Alex's street corner, he stepped in to protect her. ICE surrounded him and brought him to the ground. He did have a gun. ICE found it holstered and they disarmed him.
Then they shot him.
Ten shots in all.
Ten.
In five seconds.

Xoemi thought that was odd. It had only taken a couple of shots to kill her dog. Oh well, off to the lectern. Yet again. To make up lies about the incident and smear the victim. Sorry, I mean the terrorist.

"It's beautiful," said Max.

We were looking at the image of M15 we captured overnight. You can see it in the banner image at the top of this post.

"Twelve billion years. Twelve billion, Max. Simply amazing."

"It takes a village. A cluster," he said. "A community working together to help and find a place for each other."

Do that, and the stars will shine forever.

For all of ours.