Ideals in Hypocrisy

A haze. People, my friends, near me, talking, sitting around the kitchen table. I couldn't hear what they were saying, they were much too far away, because I was on a distant planet far in the future with Julius and the puppets. The empty pages of the notebook in front of me were what had pulled me there, demanding my attention, begging me to fill them with words and continue the story. 

"I'm absolutely 'shocked' you'd say something like that to me!' Dee exclaimed.

"Please stop with your electricity puns and focus on doing homework." Yu replied.

"'Watt' are you gonna do about it?"

"Do you want me to explain resistance or not?"
Sea snickered.

 "C'mon, my last one was hilariously bad," Dee said, "and therefore hilariously funny! Right Zet?"

With those words, Dee brought me back to earth.

"Oh, yeah, of course." I said.

"You should focus on studying too," Yu said, "if I remember correctly, you did not perform the best on your last test."

"I guess you're right," I replied, "it's just… I want to write, but I also wanna study, so I end up doing neither. It's really quite frustrating."

"Actually, about your writing," Dee said, "I was bored during Science today, so I finally read the chapters you gave me a while ago, and I can't believe you killed every character you named after one of us! I thought you put us in 'cause we're the cool underdogs who'll fight the system, but in the end, all of our characters died! How do you even continue the story from there?!"

"It's a tragedy, Dee," I replied, "and for a tragedy to work the main character must make some big mistake, like thinking it's okay to hurt the puppets because he thinks they don't have a soul, and then be punished for it in the end, so that the audience can learn from their mistakes. Since they are the cause of Julius' downfall, they are actually some of the most important characters."

"But- but-," Sea interjected, "don't you feel bad for Julius, then? He doesn't know any better, r-right?

"He should've at least considered the possibility that the puppets were sentient. I mean, wouldn't you?"

"I don't want to say that he was a good person or anything, but…"

"But what?"

"Your story already has so much pain and death… isn't it cruel of you to inflict even more?"

"Of course not, Dee," I answered, "fictional characters can't 'feel' anything. They're just words on a page, they don't have feelings, and they don't have a soul."

-

Like water through a river, people flowed through the street, banners held above their heads with various statements written upon them.

"We demand transparency!" One read.

"What happened to unit 48?" Was written on another.

Julius, his hair gray and his face wrinkled, viewed this crowd through a monitor in a dark room, a young man clad in a military uniform standing besides him.

"I'm getting reports from our troops, sir," the man said, "a number of protestors are moving towards the archive."

"Thank you for the report, Theo," Julius answered, his focus on the screen rather than his retainer, "keep them away for now, I need a moment to think about our next move."

"I am not Theocritus, sir." 

"Oh, yes, of course." Julius said, still not paying attention.

The source of this unrest could be found several years earlier. A minor news-agency had launched an investigation into a file, that file, that by law should've been declassified at that point but wasn't. That wouldn't have gained as much attention as it did, had Julius not so carelessly attempted to have them silenced. Not long after, more details began to surface. A unit of puppets had been brought to Julius's house just before the file was archived, but never returned to the coliseum. All who had been present at the gathering of puppets, except for Julius and his family, died or vanished over the next few years under mysterious circumstances.

Trust in Julius had plummeted, and riots against his rule had broken out all across the planet. 
A creaking sound caught Julius's attention. He turned around in his chair to see Augustus, now a man in his thirties, standing in the doorframe, a dark figure against the light emitting from the hallway. 

"They… they made another attempt on Clodia's life, dad,' he said, 'one of the guards just suddenly turned a rifle against her. It's a wonder she's still alive. If her reflexes were a little bit slower, it wouldn't have been 'just' a shoulder-wound. Please, I know I've asked before, but please just make that file public! End this! We're on the brink of civil war! You're destroying the peaceful world our ancestors built! At least… at least tell me what's in the file! You can trust me! I beg you!"

"No!" Julius answered, "when my time comes and you become emperor, you may do as you wish, but as long as I hold that power you will not question my decisions!"

Augustus's face was furious, but he said nothing. He turned around and slammed the door behind him.

"Theo- I mean Aloi, instruct all your troops to focus on keeping the protestors away from the archive," Julius said, "I'm going there to do what I should've done all that time ago: destroy that notebook."

"A notebook, sir?" Aloisius asked.

"Oh, of course, you wouldn't know," Julius answered, "not that it matters anymore, it's gonna be gone soon anyways."

Julius stood up from his chair and motioned for Aloisius to act. In response, he activated his communication device and began communicating orders to various groups while pointing in the direction of the transportation-cube docks, signaling to Julius that it was okay to move. Julius followed his subordinate's suggestion and made his way to said room. There, three heavily armored guards stood waiting for him. Julius stepped into the first available cube, followed by the three individuals, one of which had a small device upon which she entered the route the cube would take. For a few moments, the cube remained motionless, when the people within the cube felt a sudden jolt followed by the cube accelerating to an incomparable speed almost instantly, much too fast for Julius to fully comprehend the sheer amount of protesters they were floating past, until they came to a standstill just as sudden as their acceleration.

They left the vehicle and stood in front of an enormous building styled after a roman temple. It was heavily guarded, with a number of protestors in the process of being arrested around it. Shielded by a moving wall of bodyguards, Julius entered the building, then down a flight of stairs and through a steel door locked by a numeric code, until he finally reached a large vault hatch: the archive where all documents that were too sensitive to risk being hacked were stored physically.

"Wait outside!" Julius barked at his guards.

"Yes sir!" They simultaneously replied.

Julius went in. Most of the room was filled with cabinets full of files, though some items of great historical importance, specifically the few roman artifacts that remained after the great war, were hanging from the walls.

Julius began browsing the cabinets for file SA-48. After a few minutes of searching, he found itz took it out, and glared at the notebook. Was this really what he'd been so afraid of over these past decades? Inside were just… words. Words that knew him well, sure, and had shown him a future he couldn't accept, but why had he been so scared of destroying, or even just reading the book? He had free will, right? So no matter what the book said, it couldn't hold an unchangeable fate. And he was certainly more real than the words on those pages, so destroying the notebook wouldn't, couldn't harm reality, correct?

Julius stared blankly at the bundle of paper in his hands, hypnotized, entrenched in thought, when he heard a strange clicking sound, followed by the creaking of the vault door opening. Surprised, he glanced over in the door's direction and saw Augustus stepping through the entrance.

"Why- why are you here?" Julius asked, "how did you get past the guards?"

"I told them I had to speak with you and that it was urgent," Augustus answered, his voice cold, clearly trying to suppress all emotion, "which is not a lie, it truly is urgent. If I let you continue like this, civil war will soon erupt. When I was younger, I promised that I would never let this world we've built fall into war, and I intend to uphold that promise. Father, you have lost the people's trust. No matter what you do, it will be a source of conflict. I've made up my mind…"

Tears began to streak down his face.

"...I'll have to kill you!"

"Kill me? Are you serious? Do you even know how to fight?"

Augustus nodded.

"I've seen the puppets fight plenty of times," he said, "so I think I get the broad idea. Not to mention, you're physically much weaker than I am."

Julius put back the book, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then opened his eyes again and spoke: 

"I… understand. You must do what is required for the peace of our world. Take my place and regain the favor of the people, just please make my death quick."

Except that's not how the story goes. You're the protagonist of a tragedy, Julius. You don't get to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, no, you're just words on a page, your destiny has already been written down. Let's roll back the last thing you said, then start anew.
Julius's eyes glanced towards the wall. An ancient gladius hung there. He wouldn't be killed, not even by his son. He ran over and grabbed the weapon. When Augustus saw his father take up the weapon, the confidence drained from his face, yet his stance remained combative.

Julius lunged at Augustus.