To: A God. Perhaps. From:The one person who has the power to control if you have a ship or not; the Disembodied brain of Hansel Garen. Subject: Divine Charity.
I have heard claims that you contain connectivity to the divine. You know of this tale. You made the assertion. In public.
I am eighty seven years of age. My body was frail and decrepit, washed with radiation sickness, with cancers, with an immune system too weak to fight the toxins of unfiltered air. Now, I have left my body - Sacrificed to save my people.
I am a spacer. I am... inherently spiritual. Not superstitious - suspicious? Yes - I am that. Yet agony of the past days has left me with a sense of.... credulity.
I am blind. A brain in a tank, my only access to the universe through barest of interactions from the remnants of my spinal cortex to a secure local intranet. Transmitting these thoughts is the work of... hours. Hours of acute agony.
I hope to rise again and lead my people to glory. There is an apocalypse coming - we are living in it, we have heard of it. A siren song calls to me in the barest of whispers from the borders of the Rhein - my people need time to arm themselves for the chaos. They need a firm hand. They need me.
I have what you want... a ship, to deliver your will. I suppose what I ask of you - a ship, for a ship.
My consciousness, and, eventually, my vegetablised brain, will expire in this overglorified jar in several months, if I am not found a new form. You claim to be touched by the miraculous. I am in need of a miracle. I refuse to die, yet no medical science can save me.
Help me, strange one. I fear death - when I have so much still to offer, when my work is yet incomplete. Help me. Please - and I will get you anything that you desire.
In fear,
The man that was Hansel Garen Von Himmel, Arbeitsdirektor of Die Reichsarbeitergesellschaft Der Alster, first Arbeitsdirektor of the International Syndicalists. Soon to die.
Transmission Ended
"Though the past is scarred and the future untold"
" Be the boot heavy, the vacuum cold."
"I of the Liga, do not fold" "For suits or saints or beggar's gold. Information-Recruitment-Message Dump-Feedback
To: The mysterious person.
From: A sympathetic goddess.
Subject: Truth
Dear friend,
First things first,
In your subject you state that you are the one person who has the power to control if I have a ship or not.
You are wrong. There is nothing you can do to prevent that. If you do not comply I will simply go elsewhere.
As for your condition, I sympathise with you.
But, there is nothing I can do against your fate. You seek something that you can and will not have.
Mortal life is fleeting and there is nothing that will change that. Your death will come and no one will intervene.
I am a goddess that keeps the natural laws from being broken, so helping you would violate my own existence.
Death is a neccessary thing, embrace it as a friend.
To: A God. Perhaps. From:The one person who has the power to control if you have a ship or not; the Disembodied brain of Hansel Garen. Subject: Divine Charity.
I am a cruel, capricious man, yes. Do I deserve tragedy that has occurred to me? Undoubtedly, yes. I am a warlord and a monster. I am the beneficiary of cartels. I am also a leader of men who has kept the starving, the destitute, the poor, alive, against formidable odds and opposition. Both saint and Sinner alike, I am a human. I occupy the gray area of impartiality for people to judge and for every observation, positive or negative, to be equally true, equally false. The scales forever lay counterweighted, never to tip.
“Man” is a figurative expression. I have no genitalia nor glands. The few bones that exist within me provide me no structure. No skin. Am I mortal? I have cheated death enough to read its cards from the etching of its smile – the deathmask is a poker face and I have learnt when to fold. Death will come to me – yes. But Death is secondary to destiny.
I have a calling so set that even if I attempted to resist I would be swept towards the shore by the inevitability that is inherent within mortality. You will help me – of your own will, for you have will and I, being mortal, do not. But even you cannot redefine destiny – destiny is macrocosmic, bigger than all of us yet encompassing all of us.
Nature has compelled me to be alive. It has guided our fates to intersect, has it not? Even you believe in legend.
Be assured, Goddess. You will get your ship, humour me, or not. Gods do not help demigods, that is the nature of the divine. Yet is the mortals who are remembered. I am a syndicalist – I choose not to be remembered so that the multitude may be lifted upon my shoulders. Give an old brain his small egoisms.
What I seek, Goddess, is not a means to preserve my own life, but to preserve the lives of others. If I live longer, it is but a means to an end – contingencies are in place should I pass to the other side to ensure the survival of my legacy. My cause, just as you are, is bound within the jurisdiction of natural law. I seek to restore the frames of justice, mortal to mortal, among my peers. That is my destiny. That is the fibre of my dreams.
Pray riddle me this, oh icon; can the dream be saved? Can the capriciousness of the human race be undone, the cycle of war reversed? Or is war the ultimate sanitation?
What are we? Let an old brain die happy.
In fear,
The man that was Hansel Garen Von Himmel, Arbeitsdirektor of Die Reichsarbeitergesellschaft Der Alster, first Arbeitsdirektor of the International Syndicalists. Soon to die.
Transmission Ended
"Though the past is scarred and the future untold"
" Be the boot heavy, the vacuum cold."
"I of the Liga, do not fold" "For suits or saints or beggar's gold. Information-Recruitment-Message Dump-Feedback
To: The mysterious person.
From: A sympathetic goddess.
Subject: Truth
If it is true what you have done, you know that your punishment will not be light one.
You will be tormented in Tartarus and your blood will stain our robes.
Do you think yourself as monster? That is cute.
I will show you what real monsters are.
Cartels you say? Do you mean like cardamine? I take personal offence to that... That stuff is disgusting.
So please choose your words carefully...
Your people asked what I can offer you. I could lessen your torment, when it is your time to stand upon the blood-stained rocks.
And for the love of the gods. Keep all those other vermin away from me.
They have shown to be less than gracious hosts.
And now to the real business. I get tired of all this idle talk.
What is it that you want?