“You want to go home?” Xev asked, knowing that many of the people that came to Debris were outcasts on their home world. Their natural reaction was to long to return back to wherever they came from, but after some time settling in they’d find that they no longer cared. Their lives in this new world was much more comfortable or fulfilling than what they would expect on the planet they were from. If it wasn't that, it was the opposite. They arrived on Debris and they would hope and long for a return to where they came, but hope can only carry you so far. Eventually, they broke. They’d poor all of their efforts into trying to get back, but after being hit with setback after setback and a relentless world of new things to deal with while not having the things they had grown accustomed to having to fall back on it became too much to keep moving forward and so, they gave up. Jason seemed like he was going to be the former of the two stereotypical outcomes. He had done much better for himself than anyone she’d seen in her three hundred years of being on Debris. She had explored much of the world, but for all her travels, she was on foot for most of it and she had a limit to how much she could see so what she had seen was still only a small percentage of the whole. She didn’t know precisely what Earth was like, but she knew that it was similar to Rucai, but that didn’t mean that Jason had a good life there that could compare to what his life was like now.

“How could you even wonder that? Of course I want to get back to Earth. It’s been… interesting here, but Earth is my home. Maybe it wasn’t ideal… and maybe I didn’t have the best life. It is still better than here where we have to fight for everything while someone watches you struggle to not die. I have no intentions of living the rest of my life as entertainment for some unethical alien.” he was calm at first, but as his mind raced ahead of his words he grew angry at the situation. Want kind of civilization could justify traveling across the cosmos collecting sentient beings from their worlds and putting them in this zoo to act as some sort of show for them. It was like a reality show, but non-consensual and on a massive scale. A civilization that would do this should be stopped, but he would be happy to just get away and get back to Earth, to be free.

Xev smiled, “That is good. Then I’ll tell you… I told you before that fighting in the arena can get you access to more powerful weapons. That’s true. It also gives access to new areas. Most never travel far enough to notice, but until you get to tier 2 you’re limited to traveling around a small region. I knew where the barrier is so you never encountered it while we traveled.”

“What does that matter? It’s not like they’re going to give us weapons that we can use to destroy them. Even if they did, they’d know long in advance. Remember, they’re watching everything we do.”

“My guess. The barriers are there to allow individuals to grow strong, taking over the area they’re in and then let the areas fight between each other. The stronger people are the better the show they put on.”

“That makes sense…” he said nodding along with what Xev was saying.

“The higher tier you get, the more freedom and power they give you. Even if the weapons they give us can’t hurt them, we get more knowledge about them and their world,” she said.

“If they’re anything like us, there are probably some risk takers. They’d like the risk of giving their prisoners weapons that could be used against them.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. That’s why I need you to get to tier 3. When you get there, you’ll understand, but you need to concentrate on getting there. Everything else, if you want to get back to Earth, has to be set aside.”

“I agree that I need to get there, and as fast as I can, but I can’t just ignore everything else. These people trust me to lead and help them.”

“You will be by freeing them.”

“You don’t know that we can do that. What if we can’t. Then what? I can make their lives better now while I get stronger. There’s no need to decide on one or the other. This isn’t a binary decision that has to be all one way.”

“And if it is?” Xev asked as she leaned forward and stared directly into his eyes as if she were trying to change his mind telepathically.

“I’ll figure that out when it comes down to it. Until then I won’t ignore the suffering of others so that I can maybe one day return to Earth or free them from being animals in a zoo,” Jason asserted with conviction. He wouldn’t abandon his friends. That principle had brought him this far and he had no doubt that it would serve him well in the future. Even if it didn’t he couldn’t abandon his beliefs in his actions, even if it were to be to free them from this prison, however beautiful it may be.

Xev stood and brusquely walking out the door, leaving Jason with parting words, “You may regret that decision one day.”

Jason followed after her to the door, shutting it as she left. He slumped against the door and sighed, “I hope not.”

The following days Jason sat down with the council to hammer out a solid constitution. It mostly resembled the United States’ constitution with changes here and there to accommodate the situation of Debris and alien cultures blending into one and merged the amendments into the main body of the text, making explicit in modern English that had become vague over the centuries. Being that there wasn’t much to figure out it didn’t take long to write down and agree with. The difficult part was that there were several languages that were used within this new nation. The quick solution was just to write out multiple versions, each one written in one of the other languages. Of course, things wouldn’t be that easy. It is true that these other cultures had their own languages, but they never had a written language and their VUIs used the J`nk language, but they mostly understood the writing as a runic system rather than as full written system of their languages. Even if this wasn’t a problem many of the concepts were completely foreign and couldn’t be translated because there was no word for it in their language. Eventually, it was agreed that the constitution would be written in English and everyone would be taught it. Even if they weren’t going to use it to speak, they would use it for a universal written language, much like Chinese script where there is one script, but it is spoken in many different ways based on the language of that particular speaker.

The next thing he turned his attention to is the legal code. Now that they had the restraints of the governors he now needed to put in place a series of basic laws. While he didn’t know much about law himself, he knew that among those that were were abandoned to Debris were a sizable number of lawyers. They were the first group of people he called together to help with coming up with the new statutes of the city, but like with setting up everything else, he knew that he needed to the input of the aliens species to make it fair. To this end, he sought out information about who made, decided, and enforced them in those other cultures. When he got enough information, he brought them all together to work out the legal system. He knew it would take time to work out so he left them with the newly penned constitution and what he expected. They were to come up with statutes that were needed and sensible. Things that they had learned in their years of arguing law that could be universally applied, but weren’t obvious to most. They were to construct not just the statutes, but also the procedures and processes and when they had finished they were to present what they had come up with to himself and the council to look over. He trusted the members of the council, not so much the lawyers that were sent away like trash, but he had to make do with what they had to work with.

Months passed and the lawyers argued while Jason and his friends became even more the leader of the community. They took part in just about every element of the thriving city, even though they might not have had the proper knowledge or age to command such respect. The Tik`rs regularly held festivals to keep the mood of the city festive while Rina learned how to better use the healing ARMS and taught what she learned to others to make sure that if something like the Crita invasion happened again there would be others to help her. The engineers saw her efforts and built a hospital to house the sick. Many didn’t understand why they’d build such a building, but they were becoming used to Humans doing things that they didn’t quite understand. It usually worked out for the best, so even though they thought the materials could be used elsewhere more effectively, they went along with it. Frisxea probably wasn’t the best run it, but she was technically a princess and fairly good at running and organizing everything that needed to be done. Rina held absolute power over Frisxea, but two worked as equals to ensure the smooth operation of the hospital.

Dork, Frisxea’s partner, along with Xev and Jason organized soldiers to train to prepare for battle. Each of the soldiers were enthusiastic to improve themselves. They had become soldiers, not for great love of the job, but because it was expected of them. Their ancestors were soldiers and so were they. They felt pride to protect the people, but the reality was that they weren’t heavily trained. Their families taught them how to fight and that’s about it. Into the service they went with trust that they could handle whatever came their way. The Crita invasion proved otherwise. They were unprepared, but they wouldn’t make that error again. Moreover, during the invasion, it was several groups using different tactics which resulted in more people than necessary dying. Now that each of the cultures were learning to break out of their cultural restrictions each fields became efficient, but none more than the soldiers and now that they were coming together to form a real military many new strategies began to be proposed to raise their ability to attack and respond to attacks.

The lawyers finally presented their recommendations to the council. They went through it, line by line, making sure that every law was fair and that the system that was proposed just. It took days for them to go through everything and in the end, everything checked out. It seemed that none of them had attempted to take advantage of the situation to set themselves up as superior to the others or it was spotted and dealt with before it got to them. Jason was pleased. It seemed that this new nation was on its way to becoming a beautiful new republic that would insure peace and freedom for ages to come. There was just one last thing to do before this civilization was truly born. Something that he had been avoiding for almost 2 years now. It needed a name. He hadn’t come up with one in all that time, but it didn’t feel right to not have one now that they had firmly established themselves as they had.