Below is a short excerpt from the twenty-second installation of Gerang Judicial Dossiers: Volume XVI.
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Interrogation Log: Subject - [Designation: AOB.12]
Date: 801 A.B Location: [Redacted] Interrogators: [former senator] Agent Fowler (AF), [Former Sentry Captain] Hubert Miriadim (HM) Subject: [AOB.12]
[Start of transmission]
AOB.12: Well, if it isn’t the senator himself. How long has it been? Where’s your friend?
AF: He’s dead.
AOB.12: Oh…my condolences.
AF: He was the only MSSP member who stood by my side during my hearing. I’m assuming his death was also part of your plan?
HM: Fowler.
AOB.12: Again, I offer my condolences. Believe it or not, I am a good empath.
AF: Oh, yeah? Why are you still here, then? Why aren’t you mourning? Mourning the millions…no, tens of millions of lives lost because of you?
AOB.12: Because I remember each other them vividly. I remember their names, share their memories, and speak their tongues. As long as I live, they live.
AF: Sounds like a meek attempt to escape your execution.
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AOB.12: I don’t suppose you came here to chat.
HM: Correct. We have come to question you about the motives of your followers: why they joined you and partook in the Blackout Incident.
AOB.12: So that’s the name you guys decided to give it. I like it.
HM: Answer the question. What did you preach?
AOB.12: I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. Change.
AF: And they just went along with it? Change?
AOB.12: [redacted] of [redacted] found me after he found his son, beaten and buried alive by their own people over a piece of lard. [redacted] came to me after her mother died in hospital, her family unable to pay for a “precedence spot” for surgery. [redacted] joined me following his forced resignation by his employer after loosing a limb for them in a landfall. [redacted] joined me after her release from prison, on the charges of assault when she tried to defend herself from the advances of her superior. [redacted] found me after loosing all her family members to a rampaging titan that the Anvurian government intentionally released to spike up their property-protection service prices. I can go on and on and on for days, but you get the gist. They came to me, desperate, hopeless, angry, with a sense that you have failed them…which you did.
HM: The Gerang Coalition offers humanitarian support to all those in need!
AOB.12: Not to the farmers who gets their taxes raised every quarter. Not to the retired soldiers who bled in your wars. Not to the street sweepers, the garbage collectors, the sewage plumbers and everyone else you saw but forgot existed. Answer truthfully: how much time did you spend, drinking leisurely with the flowered folks of upper society whilst talking about war and poverty and suffering? Bear those words in mind as you try to recreate society.
AF: You’ve given enough advice already.
AOB.12: I only give what you lack.
HM: And what do we lack?
AOB.12: Empathy.
AF: Who are you, exactly? Over the course of the past year we spent more than half of our resources trying to uncover your identity.
AOB.12: A wasted effort, as I’ve told you already. I am god’s guiding hand.
HM: There is no god who smiles upon the likes of you.
[end of transmission]