They’d simply had enough and it wasn’t really fair after all. Everyone telling them, “no, please don’t do that,” and, “recall your armies, you’re intent is threatening.” At least, and they applauded and laughed about this one merrily over a gorged barrel of mead, at least politics was a game of self-puppeteering.

They’d played that game like they’d been semi-professional as embryos. Considering all their fathers and mothers were also members of their same political party – the Divided Person’s Party – it was signed into their blood in some ways, and in other ways in was bestowed upon them by God, which was their preferred interpretation.

The Divided Person’s Party consisted of ten-thousand members and growing; it was the recognized land-managers of the largest territory on the planet Muta, which was the smallest planet in Galactic Center 9A. Government was the common word for such a profession in Muta’s galaxy, the profession of dealing with the problems caused by people thousands of years ago being careless and untidy with their drawing of borders. But to the Divided Person’s Party the word had the undertone of democracy and democracy was like a hacking stubborn phloem out the throat.

Cyberhackers, speak-easies, and notes passed under tables and chairs, all these methods had been involved to guide the nosy media away from the silly idea that this would be a war. It wouldn’t be good for the world and, most importantly, it wouldn’t be good for the Divided Person’s Party. War was so uncouth, it spoke of people that were still primal, in the days where a man looked another man in the eye before he pulled his insides outside – in the days where they talked only of ‘men’ doing these things. Surely, women can pull the insides out of other men and other women too?

War then, the word and the baggage of gore that came with it, would be shelved. No, this was an extra special military operation, or ESMO, which they only called it when the mead was passed around. The soldiers, the ones lugging around the artillery, would be the scalpels, the curettes, and pairs of elegant mayo scissors, the Divided Person’s Party would be the Dr. Klom, blue surgical mask, gown like a white traffic cone, and latex hands, feet, and hat to boot. ESMOs demanded surgical precision.

Dr. Klom was the best living surgeon in Sursia, which was the country that housed the Divided Person’s Party. It had borders that were a complete mess. Unfortunately, the cartographer had an epileptic fit when he got halfway through Sursia and the map found its way into the printer’s hands while the cartographer recovered in a nearby hospital.

In the bed right next to the unfortunate cartographer was a young Mr. Klom, who at the age of six had yet to earn his surgeons degree and used the prefix ‘Mr’. He’d lost an eye while climbing a tree, but as he grew he discovered that this disability had endowed him with a perceptual focus unmatched by any other surgeon before him. He quite literally performed a four-hour gastric bypass surgery in the flick of a wrist. The nurse next to him had timed it with a stopwatch. Three seconds.

Tucked right next to Sursia was Narkuine, it was the second smallest territory on the continent. The land-managers who ran Narkuine called themselves Liberation Lambs, and they referred to their profession as governmenting. They shared an epileptic border with Sursia.

In the summer months, Sursians travel to Narkuine to try out their hot baths, which are one-of-a-kind, the result of a geological phenomena where a large prehistoric creature the size of a city imploded while exploring underground, the hot trapped gas oozing into the ponds and lakes. Someday it will stop oozing, but scientists reckon there is, at a minimum, four-thousand years of ooze still left. Emeralds are the reason for Narkuinians to visit Sursia. They have large cliffs, taller than cities, and embezzled with ninety-percent density of raw uncut emerald which from this all manners of body decoration are crafted. The locals refer to these geological anomalies as Glowing Green Giants.

Unconventionally, the Sursians were now visiting the Narkuinians in the winter, Narkuinians is an unforgiving place to visit in the winter. These were extra special visitors who had been told they had an extra special operation to perform. They were told that, instead of bringing cologne, sun cream, and a boarding pass, they should bring semi-automatic rifles, bulletproof armour, and fighter jets.

“Why?” asked Ortuk, who was a council member for the Liberal Lambs. A conference call between the Liberal Lambs and a representative of the Divided Person’s Party was underway, right at the same moment that five-thousand Sursians were crossing the border of Narkuine for their winter holiday.

“Our people,” the Divided Person’s Party’s representative began, “are in trouble. As you have been so uncooperative in returning them to their rightful home, we will be doing the due diligence of extracting them ourselves.” The representative went by the name of Mikael, and he emphasized the ‘ae’ with a guttural sound whenever anyone inquired who he was.

Seventy-eight was the number of years that Muta had orbited its sun since Mikael had left his political embryonic stage, which was about eighty-three in Earth years. A herd of interns were cycled on a quarterly basis, all put in charge of making young again the sagging complexion that was Mikael’s visage. Video filters that shined the skin, more delicate digital corrections for posters, and coordinated efforts of makeup and ADB plastics to rebuild the whole thing from the first principles, these were all the angles the interns used to make a thirty-year Mikael the image for the public eye.

“This is an invasion – the UL will not restrain themselves in retaliating to such aggression.” Ortuk replied.

“The United Lands is an apparition, a gust on an evening stroll that chills you and nothing more. We don’t fear the UL.” said Mikael behind a screen that was filtering his face to emphasize a jawline as sharp as diamond. His cheeks had the rosy complexion of an innocent child picking daisies in a sunlit prairie.

----

“Mikael, please reconsider your attack. We are modern nations, we should discuss these things at large tables with large flags, eating from large dinner plates, and be taking choreographed photos of us smiling and shaking hands but agreeing to nothing.” said an upset Ortuk.

Ortuk was upset in a ferocious manner, he wasn’t afraid to engage the enemy. He himself had the vision of taking up arms and licking bullets at the Sursians on the front line. But he was also a character of contemporary order and principle, disgust was his label for leaders that violated the standard practises of being a leader in the modern era.

“At this very moment, I have already given my army the signal to attack. We will be –“

“At this very moment,” interrupted Ortuk, “I have received over fifty-thousand likes on a Twotter posts condemning your actions of violence.”

“I expect,” continued Ortuk, “you command your soldiers to lay down their arms or fear the true consequences of your decision.”

The visage of Mikael wasn’t visibly trembling, nor was the real Mikael behind the digital curation.

“You think me a fool Ortuk?” Mikael chuckled, revealing teeth a dentist would swoon over, “You think I would not have foreseen such threats. I am not a monkey who woke up a decided to push the button that said ‘Start War’, no, I have been mulling over this for years my friend. Do you not think I was not acutely aware of the sharp increase in your number of Twotter followers over the last year? After the tactful selfie of you bungie jumping while singing the national anthem? Bravo,” Mikael began a slow clap, “Bravo. Yes, you have invested your national resources wisely into your social media presence – but. But, let’s look a little closer here shall we?”

Ortuk confidence was briefly possessed with concern, alarm bells were ringing in his head. He’d been so careful to build the national social media presence to the global superpower that it now was. Had he missed something? Overlooked a flaw? Surely not.

Mikael had introduced a second screen into the video shot of himself. It was his mobile phone. Ortuk and the entire Liberal Lambs council sat in dreadful anticipation like the phone on Mikael’s hands contained the launch codes his nukes.

“Let’s have a look here,” and Mikael scrolled through his apps and selected an icon with a bird on it. “Oh oops, no, that’s the nuclear launch codes,” Mikael selected a second app that had the image of two rockets, one passing horizontally, the other passing vertically, to form a ‘T.’ He continued through the app to Ortuk’s profile page.

“Now here we are. Ah yes, impressive, almost one-hundred thousand followers and growing. Quite the influencer! Quite the influencer.” Mikael was idly scrolling through the various Twots that Ortuk, along with his fleet of a hundred-fold social media analysts, had carefully curated to achieve such a central powerhub that was his Twotter account.

“Oh,” adopting a childlike innocence in his voice, “what’s this?”

“What have you…,“ Ortuk still couldn’t see what Mikael was getting at, but it smelt not good, rancid in fact.

Mikael started listing names off, “ ‘User0120242’, ‘Happy8664’, ‘Jumpy111192’, ‘User122344’ “ and so forth. “Are these?” Mikael asked himself, “Oh it would appear so. We have a serious case of mistaken identity here. An unfortunate infestation of snythetic twotters. Bots? All of them?” Mikael was now scrolling through the list of Ortuk’s followers, smearing the screen with a thumb driven by blind, manic laughter.

“No, it can’t be,” Ortuk turned to the other representatives of the Liberal Lambs that were around him at the table. “It can’t be?” His eyes had lost their proud defiance, he was a lamb faced with the prospect of social status slaughter, desperately seeking refuge in the eyes of the other lambs around him.

“But the president,” Ortuk blurted out, “the president of the United States – they retwotted my twot! God damn you, you’re pulling a farce. The president and her eighteen-million followers, verified account – “

“Ah yes, the president, Ms. America, the verified viral internet vulture. Pontificator of posts in the pentillions, why,” Ortuk looked down and fiddled his thumbs on his screen for a bit, “would you look at that?”

Ortuk adjusted to what Mikael was getting him to look at. It was the president of the United State’s twotter profile, red-white-and-blue flag waving in front of a steel-enforced White House as the banner photo. Below, ‘18M’ sat, the ‘M’ bulging in a stocky stance as if embodying the power that came with such a crucial ASCII character.

But in the top right corner, at first he thought it was his eyes playing tricks on him but it was there for certain, was a bright blue button. On this button were two words, two words that cut Ortuk through the heart like he was a ball of deep fried butter.

The button read, “Log Out.”