Rows and rows of croppers yanked fresh, ruby fruit from the wet soil. Others, with baskets, walked alongside the croppers, placing the fruit into a neat pile. Once a basket was full, it was rushed to the processing tent at the edge of the field. Ruby fruit had been an expensive delicacy at Federation gatherings for centuries, but there was no desire in the croppers' hearts to steal. No basket-wielding servant ever pocketed a single fruit. They starved and often died in those fields, never wishing to flee despite the endless and bountiful forest just on the other side of the road from the field they worked. Their rotting flesh fertilized the fruits that their children would pick.

No one wept for the fallen. They continued the cycle of birth, growth, and death alongside the crops they tended to. The Federation was content to enjoy their delicacies and the rest of the galaxies continued in much the same way. Order, progress, and reason were the only pillars that guided the Federation.

A challenge to this status quo had not been conceived since the former revolt was banished. There were no more uprisings. The tumor had been cut off and left to die, alone, in a place that no one would stumble upon. Progress continued. Cures to diseases and normalized luxuries and endless peacetime were known throughout all the cooperating galaxies. What was there to challenge?

A female cropper fell as she carried a basket filled with ruby fruit. Overloaded and underfed, her unconscious body sunk half an inch into the soil, pushed further by the trampling footsteps of her friends and family. A male cropper stopped and was run into by a cropper behind him and another behind them, but the male refused to move. He shoved backwards with an elbow, not strong enough to create space, but enough to halt any further momentum. He knelt down beside the fallen cropper, testing her abdomen for a pulse. Her shoulders rose slowly with each breath, barely visible under the glaring suns.

It spread like a contagion. The rows of croppers, frozen as they waited, suddenly snapped into action, as though woken from a dreamless sleep. They began to fan her and push others away to create space. In time, an entire section of the field had given up their duties to help carry a single woman to the roadside. Some were crying, but others grew angry. How long had they - and the rest of the galaxies - gone on this way without realizing that they had lost something very important.

Federation Enforcement arrived too late to stop the spread of the contagion. The field was in near silence, waiting to see if their friend could be revived by two of the only other croppers who knew basic aid. Ruby fruits were drying out in baskets, left out in the sun on a whim. There was no way to tell who may have seen what happened. No way to know who had succumbed to the illness. Federation Enforcement left, dropping bombs across the field that would leave it barren and lifeless for the rest of time. The ruby fruit would be extinct and a Federation tradition was ended, but Humanity would not spread across the Federation again. Order, progress, and reason would prevail.