Below is an excerpt from the twenty-secondth installation of Gerang Judicial Dossiers.
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Interrogation Log: Subject - [Designation: AOB.12]
Date: 800 A.B Location: [Redacted] Interrogators: [former senator] Agent Fowler (AF), [former M.S.S.P Embassador] Im’Lis (IL) Subject: [AOB.12]
[Start of transmission]
AF: We will skip the list your list of prior transgressions.
AOB.12: You’re sparing me the guilt, senator?
IL: In the grander scale of things, we see no point in covering them. What you people did four months ago subverted all that we’ve built after our arrival.
AOB.12: I’m flattered.
AF: Don’t be.
AOB.12: I’m assuming you want to know why we did what we did? Face to face?
AF: Correct.
AOB.12: But we’ve already told you everything.
AF: Why did you do it?
AOB.12: Call it a cry for help.
AF: You call the demise of millions a “cry of help”?
AOB.12: I call keeping the life of billions “help”. The ones who remain, and the ones who will be.
IL: How do you explain this, then?
AOB.12: We are the buglers. We are the first lights that shine through your windowsill, the guiding hands of humanity.
IL: Words. I want something more than these pointless metaphors.
AOB.12: Someone once told me that words are a means of getting from one place to another. Talking to you is getting us nowhere.
AF: You said you are humanity’s guiding hand. Explain.
AOB.12: We are. I alone am nothing. Without him, we are worthless. One can’t experience something with explanation. One experiences them through experience. Though, you won’t live that long to see the meaning of my…ah…words.
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AF: Experience? Is this what he wanted us to experience? Suffering? Our loved ones, reduced to ash?
AOB.12: …have you been vaccinated before, senator?
AF: Get to the point.
AOB.12: Pain, death, suffering…they are the insertion of the needle. You feel the prick, and that’s it. It hurts, yes, and you might be frail for a few days after. But remember, in exchange for the pain, you are receiving a booster shot. An immunity to further suffering. That was what we did. And he made sure humanity survived, didn’t he? We gave humanity a non-lethal needle prod. He knew the Coalition has set up these bunkers all across the Sorissian Wastelands and the deserts of Heaven Continent. In time, our species shall prosper once more.
IL: You speak like humanity has already regressed before this. Before you. Before him.
AOB.12: Not regressed; stagnated. And it has already stagnated for decades, long before…heh, long before his advent.
AF: How? Sure, there may be inequalities and minor wealth disparities, but society was coming along just fine.
AOB.12: Is it? Why, then, were there riots? Why did your people flock to our side when we showed them what could’ve been? Why did they support him, a ‘terrorist’, an ‘insurgent’, a—what was that phrase again—an enemy of the nation, over you? Over the stability you promised? Why did they embrace change, when their very nature riled against it?
IL: A false dream. He spoke of lies.
AOB.12: That he promised us respect?
IL: Look what his promise has led to!
AOB.12: I can’t. All I’m seeing is this dark room, this table, and two denialists.
AF: Enough. If social reform is really what you’re aiming for, why did you go to such extents as to eradicate an entire continent?
AOB.12: Are you going to put this in future history book?
IL: Stick to the question.
AOB.12: …you’ve mistaken our motives. We don’t want social reform. We want a complete reimagining of every single familiarity.
AF: And how would society look like, in yo-in his reimagining?
AOB.12: Humble. When the time comes, the Jugang will reemerge from their underground bastions and guide humanity on the path that god has set for them.
IL: He’s out of his mind.
AOB.12: It takes nothing less than a maniac to accept change.
AF: What do you gain out of this…this madness?
AOB.12: As an individual, nothing. As part of our species, everything. Frame us the antagonists of your story, we don’t care. In time, your descendants shall see the beauty of our work. Of his…legacy.
AF: To hell with your legacy. Here’s what’ll happen. The ones left—the ones who’re not clinically insane—will rebuild. We’ll rebuild the walls you’ve torn down, the ports you bombed, the cities you ravaged and all the wretchedness of your work. We’ll make it so that this, this, this subhuman demonstration of self-expression you created would never see the light of day.
AOB.12: See? You’re already getting it.
AF: That’s it, we’re done here.
[End of transmission]
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