COMMUNICATION VIA LUNAR RELAY TO AKA MIEMBE

Habari Aka,

Look at this, here is a piece of the fruit of today's work. You will surely recognize most of it:

ATTACHMENT: "DATA FRAGMENT 0178-3059: from electronic media, minimal decay; excerpted"

[...] and if they destroy our buildings and property and reduce them to rubble, if they torture and kill and maim everyone you love, it still rests with us to be more than human, and more than our past. If they were to take your very lives, it still rests with you to be more than revenge, more than hate, more than war has been. You must not wish the same upon them as they give you. You must wish that they will live to one day belong beside you among freer minds and freedom of action, to know the life that you enjoy and now defend.

In the days to come you will be tempted toward fear, and hatred, and vengeance. Watch for this time, and do not give in to it. There is nothing to hate, but the hatred and fear and vengeance that waits to destroy us, out there. There is nothing to fear, but giving in to it. There is no vengeance you need, except the work that will follow this war to heal wounds, rebuild, and change the minds of those who now cry out for your blood, out there in the Old World, the world of the past that would doom the future.

I see the fear and uncertainty in your eyes - for now we turn to face a new challenge. And something new is unfamiliar, which is uncertain. And the challenge is war. And war is frightening. And we are unproven at defending ourselves in war; our brave experiment is untested. But reassure yourselves, take heart and believe even now in what has already proven itself to you. In everything else we have tried to do alone or in cooperation, we have been more successful, and proven the wisdom of the way we live. We have all become stronger. Have no fear that in this conflict, we will somehow be powerless because we have not subjugated ourselves to statehoods devoted to war. Our freedom, our personal independence, our unshackled way of life make us stronger and more successful in all things, and we will show them how we can fight.

For this freedom, we fight. To defend our lives, we fight. To defend everything we have built, we fight.

But we must fight without hatred for our opponent. We must remember that they are men and women and children like us. Their casualties are like our casualties, their suffering is like our suffering. We do not win by harming them. Our victory comes only when the death and pain of this war ends and the healing begins.

The moment we can, we will lay down our arms and extend an open hand. I know we have learned enough of the wisdom of moving beyond the petty old ways to be willing to give it. I feel sure we have tasted enough of the fullness which wants to offer mercy and an open hand wherever it can be accepted. Though not now, not to the cruel fist now offered to us. Now, we must fight with all the power we can muster.

We fight under the flag of Prometheus' fire, our one flag, a flag not of nation but of the light of life, a symbol not just for us but for all people, even those against whom we are now forced to raise arms. Rally around this symbol, it stands for the life within us all. But do not forget it is only cloth, and if it is burned and desecrated it means nothing. Your lives mean something, no matter the fate of these flags. I would sooner burn them all myself than have us forget that we are not a nation, and our pride does not depend on symbols. Our pride depends on ourselves. In this war, we will not forget who we are. We will not give that up for anything. If we yield it, we will have lost.

We have done everything else as a Promethean society, a society of individuals seeking to live their own lives, and live them to the fullest. We have met every other challenge, done everything that was impossible. Now the Old World has nothing left to hold us back with, but destruction. Now the other Prometheans and I lead a war not just of ideas, but of weapons, and let us all fight once again as a Promethean society. Let us fight it no differently than we always live, except now with even greater vigor and watchfulness. This will be the greatest test of the Promethean dream. We will succeed. And we will show them mankind can overcome war as it has always been. We will prove that strength lives within all here, and that the flags and slogans and marching songs of other nations are empty lies that lead to death and suffering, not strength, not life. We will keep the light, the flame of life burning here for all those who would come, even those who fight us now. And the flame will never be extinguished.

No doubt by now, you have recognized this as very like the historied Exhortation of Defenders, legendarily delivered in a crowded square in the South Pacific Promethean society to an extemporary gathering on the occasion of impending invasion, at the start of the conflict often called The Open-Handed War.

There was much excitement here today, when this speech was discovered. We have the first whole copy of the speech, which since it was spoken has as you know become famous, and this apparently precedential copy is not the same as the traditional version, as you see.

An example which has interested the team here, one minor textual difference which I would nonetheless call historically significant, is that the Promethean Standard, "the flag that burns itself and can never be burned" had apparently not yet been invented at the time of this speech, contrary to contemporary versions. This version of the speech clearly refers to an actual cloth flag depicting "Prometheus' fire," a banner or pennant of uncertain design and possibly a non-uniform or informal one. It is not yet the visually impressive and deliciously anti-symbolic unquenchable, spouting torch on a pole known in popular grand mythic depiction as the Standard waved and borne when the speech was delivered.

Aka, you will find this amusing, maybe. I theorized that the popular adoption of the Promethean credo "never under one banner" could have inspired the invention of the actual Promethean Standard, later; fire never appears quite the same way twice. I illustrated my point by igniting my arm. A simple superficial reshape, overflow of gases and electric ignition to me (and fire is very soothingly beautiful I feel), but a tremendous flash and a shock to them, they explained. "Humans are flammable," Albert Moreau told me, "and thus have an instinctive fear of fire."

But as for my theory, as I will admit tomorrow, "never under one banner" would also be satisfied by informal, various depictions of the same essential symbol, even if the symbol did originally appear on cloth flags. Or, it might have begun as a purely lingual saying without a material referent.

Two colleagues have suggested the idea that the battle flags for the war had to be cloth for the sake of secrecy, which is likely true, but also that this was an exception to a general rule of using actual flame. I think their better judgment is being colored by an affinity for romantic imagery, or else a preference for the convention of accepted history. Even I appreciate that Gadrave de Sant's depiction would not be the same without the light thrown by actual torches on the faces of the crowd, and the contrast between the sweeping arcs of fire held in their hands and the dark sky.

History was rewritten today, in a sense. Which has more importance, the speech as it was given or the speech as it is remembered? I do not know. I believe this original version to be the more lovely one, because it is far less florid and less advertently prosodic.

I find very affecting the plight of the people who heard this speech, how they might have felt before, how they might have felt afterward. Some of those who stood and listened would have been soldiers. Many more would be made combatants by the assaults upon any inhabitant of those free islands, whether Promethean soldier, unarmed adherent, avowed pacifist, armed neutral, and even those openly sympathetic to the invaders, as though all were identical and all lives worth little. We know that in the nadir of their resistance, explosive and incendiary bombs both crude and ingeniously fearsome beat down upon that same city from the air. Many of those who listened on that night would later be wounded, or killed. Many more would at least know another person struck down. Nearly all the audience would be traumatized by the coming struggle. I perceive that the other researchers forget all this, in their own satisfaction at making their mark with this discovery. I suppose it is not possible to put oneself, as they used to say, "in another man's shoes." (Which means, to occupy his mindset and situation.) But it might make them better students of others' lives if they tried.

Kwa heri,
ADITI