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============= = Chapter 6 = =============
Stephanie and Rayan returned from the city, back to the communal
homestead.
"Was it eventful?" Palm-Frond seemed again to be reclining.
"The city wasn't the eventful part!" Stephanie sat down. Rayan
remained standing.
"You saw the Extraction Facility then, I suppose." Lutrin said.
"Yes. It was horrific. We have slavery and misery on Earth, but
nothing like what I saw in that place."
Stephanie went pale at the thought of perhaps being trapped in one
herself.
"Don't worry, Stephanie." Lutrin placed her hand on Stephanie's
shoulder. "Those machines cannot operate on humans. Don't take this as
a slight, but humans do not possess the extra-dimensional apperceptive
power to have extracted for our people's benefit."
"I guessed as much." Stephanie opined. "Still I feel so sorry for the
racism that seems to be carried out in order to keep the lights on--as
it were."
"Yes. The Jousen are a terribly oppressed people. As are the
Gremanese. All for the benefit of the Nelen ruling class."
"If you don't mind me asking--who are all these cultures? Who are the
Nelen, the Jousen, and the ... Gremano?"
"They are the different races of people of whom our civilisation is
composed." Rayan finally d
"Yes." Lutrin said. "I am glad Goh is still sleeping, we can have
something of another serious conversation. You see, Stephanie, when
our people--the Malasrionese--only existed in the third dimension, we
possessed distinctions not just between classes, but also culture
too. We lived on a planet orbiting a star, as well, and it was the
Nelen who industrialised first--much like Earth's Europeans and the
English. The people of the West, in the deserts, the Jousen, were
colonised through Imperialism first, and by the time Malasrion
achieved extra-dimensional space travel, and then existence, the
Gremanese had almost been colonised too. The Gremano existed to the
south, and they were forced to carry out the heavy industrial
production of the Nelen through forced use of Sealed Patron
Extraction.
"I see--so these chambers are quite an ancient technology for you. You
did not use computers and digital technology, then?"
"No. The Malasrionese achieved modernity not through analytical or
empirical science, byt through the philosophical science of
normativity, and the study of concepts. Humans share quite a bit of
culture and civilisation with us in this way--it's what enables us to
be able to see and talk with each other. If humans were only
interested in the dispassion of the natural sciences, I dare say that
humans and Malasrionese would not be able to interact. We would be
passing through each other, and our interactions would not be
tangible, our physical existences would be incompatible."
"How do you mean?"
"Well take for instance the physical forces that your natural sciences
have uncovered. Humans cannot see them, but they can identify atoms
and protons and electrons with extremely advanced calculations and
through the mediation of machines. Humans have walked down the path of
analytical and not what we call normative conceptual
articulation. Whereas humans place great emphasis on, say, the
dictionary, and encyclopaedic factual knowledge, the Malasrionese were
quite different. The Malasrionese all shared a scientific culture--at
least to the same extent as humans currently share natural
science--but we operated out of the 'Thesaurus'. Our dominant sciences
were political and social--and humans have a great love for these
studies too. But, humans diverged a little from encyclopedias of
social studies, and in many significant ways, have always loved the
analytical, and not the culture and social learnings. It was startling
for us to learn of Aristotle, for instance, and of his love for both
the political science as well as natural sciences. To us Malasrionese,
it is very curious to us as to why someone would want to study both
the empirical and the moral--it is highly ambitious. It seems to
humans that they are not satisfied with just social liberation, but
also investigation of what they sometimes call the "Given"--what which
seems to exist "anyway", things which persist whether sentient
creatures like it or not!"
"It is a mystical tradition in its own right." Goh stared off into the
distance.
"You do have your moment of wisdom, then!" Palm-Frond turned towards
the often loud, sweaty man in mild surprise. It seemed the man had
awoken.
"Humans weren't always obsessed with the naturalistic sciences." Goh
continued. "I suppose the domination of nature entailed in Baconian
scientific philosophy was what interested humanity's ruling class,
what they decided they were going to lust over."
"That's certainly one part of it" Rayan answered. "Capitalism
certainly desires and obsesses over dominion over nature."
Palm-Frond turned to Stephanie while the two men continued talking,
off in their own world of book-learning about humans. Goh continued
reclining, and had now started resting his head on an extended hand.
"How was the city?"
"There wasn't much to speak of," Stephanie replied.
"Yes the marketplace and the real estate agents are all a glossy
facade."
"I was a little disappointed. I was expecting something as horrifying
as the Extraction Centre, or perhaps something even more futuristic."
"Well, landlords are the same everywhere. They want restaurants and
cafes and will gentrify everything until they get the visual image of
themselves that they want."
"Wow--so in some ways Malasrion is identical to Earth."
"Oh, it's an almost direct copy from Earth. There is a lot of
fetishism over Earth by our ruling classes. Mall shopping and
consumerism is very 'in vogue' with the wealthy at the moment."
"I'm ... horrified by the influence we might be having on the colony."
"Yes. This is most likely why Rayan despairs so deeply so often about
our mission to move back into higher dimensions and not continuing to
persist here."
Lutrin interrupted everyone: "Comrades. The revolution on Earth has
been successful."
The two conversations stopped abruptly. Rayan spoke first. "You're
right. My goodness. All of Western Australia is moving on from
capitalism and the State."
Goh: "How much apperceptive energy has been generated? How much do we
have to work with now?"
Lutrin: "I'd show a little respect for the tremendous gift we have
been given. But--to answer your question, we have enough. We will be
able to reach the deepest echelons of the State, here."
"Perhaps Stephanie will need to be informed a little more here about
what is going on." Palm-Frond smiled pleasantly at the Earthling.
"Much of the Malasrionese political system resembles a political
State, as on Earth. Our State here, however, is a little different to
those found on Earth. You might say it has a triparte
structure--First, what we revolutionists call the 'Crown': the
Executive, then, the Legislature, and finally, a massive Bureaucracy.
"There are also three main factions of authoritarians who control the
state, and, currently, they are at a dead-lock: they each control one
respective organ of the giant festering sore.
"There exists the Zealts of Negativity, The Body Politic, and,
finally, The Pact.
"The Zealots are your run of the mill neoliberals you would recognise
as an American Democratic Party President. The Body Politic take after
the Fascistic racists of Western Politic. You might be beginning to
see a pattern emerging from this I am telling you. Each of the
factions of the ruling class here have looked to the most brutal tiers
of the capitalist Earth Imperialists and decided to emulate factions
of their politics. They, in a phrase, carry out their business in
roleplay.
"The last major faction that control the State are simply known as
'The Pact'. It is anti-capitalist in words only. These revisionists of
Earth history take after the authoritarian Eastern Bloc of the Cold
War. They speak of mutual communion of the Malasrionese people with
themselves, but, it is all a pretence. They are a dangerous lot, and
inspire much muddled-headedness into the labouring masses of the
colony. When we organise among the workers of the Extraction Zones,
they combat our attempts to encourage revolutionary unionism.
"They control the legislature of the State. They are like an
Australian Labor Party that has been overrun with Stalinists. Much of
the army here is sympathetic to the fascist cult, the Body Politic,
and the racist elements that have bled into The Pact.
"The Crown jewel of the State, the Executive, rests with on person, of
the neoliberals, a man who has taken the pseudonym 'Scanlon'. It is a
great desire of all the factions to control more than one of the
organs of the State, and enable their take-over of the colony, in its
last daying throes of life, so that they be the rulers of this sinking
ship, this enormous stockpile of trinkets and toys, when they
themselves too die.
"So the fascists are in control of the bureaucracy. That would entail
the police and the prisons. Seems a little fitting, doesn't it.
"They are virtually in charge of the police and the armed forced
here. We are in a dreadful state here in Malasrion. For your
information, the heads of the other two factions are E. Lysenko of The
Pact, and Donald Bright of the Body Politic.
"Lysenko would appeal to you as the classic bigoted Stalinist. They
are the archetypical Red fascist. They will stop at nothing to silence
dissent and erase challenges from history. It is absolutely
mortifying.
"Donald Bright? A classic American Republican Party state governor. He
is quite advanced in age now. Perhaps he will be replaced by one of
his sub-commandants sometime. He is charge of the enormous stocks of
weapons of mass destruction, and has been embezzling the life force we
extract from the workers for millenia now. Quite a rotund man. I
suppose you'd find him quite happy and content these days, his faction
have been doing the best lately. He is a Nelen chauvinist of the
ancient Malasrionese lore. Back when we possessed our own planet in
our biological form, Malasrion was divided into three nations, the
Nelen, the Jousen, and the Gremano. I don't need to tell you at whom
the racism and xenophobia of the Nelen were directed towards. We left
the third dimension, and our planet of Malasrion when the Gremano and
the Jousen turned on the Nelen and demolished their oppressive yoke.
"But the Nelen, and by extension, the fascists, the neoliberlas, and
to a somewhat lesser extent The Pact are all Nelen. Virtually all
Nelen. The Nelen, whenever they manage to get back on top, move us
all into an extractive, capitalistic vampire-like society.
"Anyway. the revolution that you were able to trigger in Western
Australia with Rayan--or Drago, as you used to call him--has generated
a lot of morale for the labouring masses, it has lifted their mood,
and has awarded us finally with the gift of a rising tide of sentiment
and volition.
"The flourishing of the human spirit and the advance of the political
consciousness of the Perth masses allow us to parasite a little off
the festival of the oppressed on Earth. If the revolution spreads
across the continent, we will have an even greater amount of political
energy to persist within the bounds of the political arena of the
state of our distorted and corrupted interdimensional society."
"So you have some sort of access to this place now?"
"We were locked out before." Goh spoke. "No-one would take us
seriously until we were able to demonstrate the power of libertarian
communist ideals on Earth. This has bolstered our position and has
tipped the blanace of forces in our favour. Those workers you met at
the factory? They have joined our cause. Even the workers of the
command console operations."
"Do you take that to be quite a few people?"
"There are fewer than ten thousand Malasrionese left, Stephanie." Goh
looked unusually grim for such a usually jolly personality.
"As few as five hundred people who appear to you here in the
Malasrionese colony will be enough to band together and abolish the
state. That is how large our state armed forces are in the very
least. Perhaps less are needed depending on wehther we are bale to
commandeer or expropriate some serious weaponry," Goh gave a wry
smile.
"You and your adventurism," Lutrin cautioned.
Goh continued, "Anyway the transit to the political arena requires
doses of transcendental apperceptive energy. We have enough doses to
achieve our task now. There is a well known secret alliance between
the Zealots and the Body Politic. This is how we have sunk so low and
suffered so dearly. We have reason to believe they are vying to
consolidate their grip on destroying our civilisation. The drive is
being led by the fascists. Their increased relative strength lately
have been forcing concessions from the neoliberals, in whose sole
personality is represented, as you were just told, the Executive of
our state, the feeble and self-effacing Scanlon.
"We have enough doses to allow us to move through the three layers of
the halls of of the state. The first layer will be the legislature,
where the political battles about to unfold will take place.
"The unrest of the people is hastening the pace of events. If these
authoritarians are to put down the revolution we wish to carry out,
they know they are going to have to act quickly.
"And, bear in mind, our task in this revolution is primarily a
destructive one. The Jousen and the Gremano have not forgotten their
communal and peaceful ways. Much of the organising after the
revolution will be taken up by them. I wish there had been more time
to issue forward with more prefigurative politics and prior
revolutionary organisation. But, all we are going to attempt to do
when we dose on the apperceptive essence is to remain the last faction
standing after the bloodbath that is about the pursue. As Rosa
Luxemburg put it, we have to choose between either socialism or
barbarism.
"Come." Lutrin said. "This first transit is the lightest and is most
certainly a test of our ability to hold our own. Stephanie, you will
be joining Rayan to the first layer of the state."
Goh's eyes twinkled. "Besides, we will be releasing your transit to
Malasrion, so we will be having something of a celebration after you
return. So you get two incredible transits!"
Rayan turned to Stephanie. "Forgive me for doing so, Stephanie -- but
the journey we will be going on will be unpleasant, and your journey
here, the hours that it took, was, for the lack of a better turn of
phrase, simply interstellar to behold. Your mind took a little tumble
at the end, but our passage from Perth to Malasrion will be the
perfect experiential medicine for the turgid mess that will be the
legislature journey."
"I mean--I have no conception of what you're talking about--but I
trust you, Drago. We have been old friends for a very long time, and
you have certainly done me no harm in any of that time," Stephanie
answered.
"Still, it fills us with a little shame to withold something so
personal and spectacular from a person." Palm-Front said with an air
of great seriousness.
"Well--let it me put it like this, comrade," Stephanie smiled. "There
is no debt between us."
- EOF -