SHORT STORY
2009 HONORABLE MENTION

Peace
Sean Markle
17 years old, Alaska

“WE WANT PEACE!!!!!” yelled the angry protestors.  This large group of protestors was yelling at the Senatorial House of their capital in the small country of Senoma.  The war that Senoma was engaged in was a highly controversial war, resulting in the many  people at the Senatorial House today protesting it.  A poster on one of the walls of this building read, “December 3, 2035 A senate hearing will take place at 6 pm at the Senatorial House.”  Tonight was that night and the hearing was about to start in a few minutes.  As people were let into the building, a man came out and declared that there were no more seats left and that nobody else would get in.

Inside, the people were noisily chatting while they were waiting for the hearing to start.  The room was a long room with a very high roof.  The crowd of citizens were in the back three quarters of the room.  In the front were the senator’s seats.  All of this was on a sloped floor facing down toward the front where the speaker would be delivering his message.

Backstage, Alex Sanders, the speaker and leader of a peace activist group was waiting for the president of the Senate to start the session.  Finally the Senator Wells started the session and introduced Alex Sanders onto the stage for the hearing.  All was silent as the man of the hour started his speech.

“People of the Senate of the sovereign state of Senoma, today I have come to you to address problems of this war that has caused such great controversy in our country.  On July 23 of this year, a citizen of our neighboring country, Kenpa, assassinated Alexander Remignton, the former president of our country.  When Bill Wright was sworn in to take his place, he declared war on Kenpa without any communication to Kenpa about the assassination.  After our forces showed up on the border, Kenpa’s president communicated that whoever assassinated president Remington was not endorsed of associated with its country.  But it was too late, the war started anyways and we have been battling since.”

He went on, ‘It has been confirmed since November 30 that Kenpa wants to have a ceasefire and mend relations with our country.  Today, I have come to you to ask that you vote to agree to this ceasefire.  If you do not, problems will continue to come to our country and it will cost lives.  It would turn out like World War I, which happened under the same circumstances more than 100 years ago.  But I hope you won’t let that happen, this war is pointless.  It is not Kenpa who murdered our president, it was a man that did this.  He was punished for it too and you want to start a war.  This will only cause more death and not solve anything.  So please vote yes for the Kenpa ceasefire.”

The speech brought peace.  Anyone can change our world.