Tiraon (Unfinished)

Sir Edmund of Westchester mounted his horse and prepared to face his opponent.

The boisterous crowd continued to yell and taunt the riders on the field. Sir Edmund flipped his visor down and blocked out the sounds. All that was in his field of vision was the metal-clad body and horse of Sir William of York.

A few shouts reached his ears, but he willed himself not to listen, instead turning his attention to the white flag that the starter held.

An expectant pause followed, then the flag dropped. Sir Edmund kicked his horse in the side, urging it forward. He maneuvered his lance down, aiming squarely for Sir William. He braced himself for the inevitable impact, one way or the other...

William's lance was knocked out of the way as Edmund ran his lance into the other knight. Splinters of wood flew everywhere, and William tumbled off his horse.

Edmund raised the blunt of his lance high into the air, taking in the roar of the crowd, and the sense of triumph.

"What a great match that was!" The announcer's voice boomed over the latest Z-109 Ultra Hi-Fi Projector Speakers. "Edmund of Westchester unhorses William of York. Folks, Eddie there's got some real talent. I haven't seen a lancer as good as him since at the beginning of the sport, way back in 2309. And he's using the top-line lances today! Yes indeed, when you want to be a champion jouster, you need only the best lances. And the place to go for lances is right here in the city of New Earth, at Douglas's New-Old Lances on Northeastern Avenue. For the highest quality lances of today, go New-Old!"

Medics moved to assist William off the field, and Edmund guided his horse back into his tent.

"Edmund, baby, darling!" Aimee, Edmund's manager, came into the tent. "Superb. Brilliant. You've got it made now. Tomorrow you'll face Darnrak of Wales." Aimee's face twisted into a scowl. "Not even a proper Knight, that one. And his parents should have known better than to name him that! Darnrak, huh. That's a Martian name. Not Tiraonian at all. Especially not Ancient European."

"Thanks for your support Aimee," Edmund said, ignoring her commnets about Darnrak. He just smiled and extended a cut and bruised hand to her.

"Gah! My champion is hurt! Where are those goddamn medics when you need them!" Aimee moved out of the tent, and Edmund managed to chuckle. Whatever Aimee wants, Aimee gets, he thought to himself.

He plopped in front of the 3-D television screen and turned it on. He surfed through the channels until he found the one he was looking for. GSN, the Galactic Sports Network. He waited patiently until the announcer started his next report with, "And in the game of Old Jousting, on the planet Tiraon, Sir Edmund of Westchester has defeated Sir William of York. Sir Edmund has advanced to the next round in the fifty-third annual Tournament of England. He will face Darnrak of Wales on the morrow." The announcer's face split into a grin. "Boy, don't you love the Tiraonians? What odd people! They live their lives half in the past! And I don't mean back when humans had just begun to enter the stars. I'm talking times when people believed planets were flat!" The announcer laughed. "I mean, come on, flat planets? Even kids know that by the laws of physics, planets can't be anything but round!"

Edmund switched the channel rapidly. Tiraon was always the butt of the galaxy's jokes. The inhabitants were called everything from odd to completely insane.

So what if they preferred to model parts of their lifestyle around people who had lived centuries before, and whose customs had died out long before Tiraon was even discovered? So what if Tiraon was the only planet in the galxy that didn't use fliers and teleportation to move? It was better this way, the old fashioned way. Other planets had chosen to make their lifestyle that of the
twenty-first century, but that wasn't good enough for the people who settled Tiraon.

Edmund smiled as he remembered his Basic History of Tiraon course.

"Now, who can tell me why Tiraon was settled?" the teacher asked.

One of Edmund's classmates raised his hand. "'Cause they were sick and tired of modern life!"

The class snickered. The teacher just smiled. "That's true, Alexander," she said, "but that's not the whole reason. You see, they were loath to give up certain modern conveniences. They also didn't want to be cut off from the rest of the galaxy. So they decided to make a mixed society. And it worked wonders. Some of you are the fifteenth generation of natural born Tiraonian citizens."

"How did some things become ancient, and some modern?" a girl asked.

"Time worked the original kinks out of the Tiraonian system," their teacher replied.
"Time gifted our ancestors with the solutions to the problems they faced. Be proud of your Tiraonian heritage. There is no other planet in the known galaxy that comes anywhere close to what we are."