For millennia, the slumber had continued since the first seed had been planted there among the other giants. Giants whose boughs reached to the clouds that scudded on the winds of ancient breath, standing watch over a vast land denuded of civilisation or those who would come to establish it on these shores.
The slumber was deep and comatose until those first bipeds arrived and began to make noises around him. The whispers were no more than a brushing graze against the very limits of his consciousness, a ripple on the surface of the calm unconsciousness that had been his for aeons past. As more came, more whispered and the whispers became sounds. Sounds added to sounds and became voices. More voices added to voices and they became words and then strings of words. Words imploring and need. Words of reverence and awe.
The mark had no idea. I mean, when you walk through life like a mushroom fed on BS, what can you expect. Tiberius Gubon Fallweather III was just such a gullible piece of over-privileged shyte that taking this job was almost a crime. So many would have done it for free. But, you know, a dude has to smoke. A dude has to eat.
SAM72XT.002 screamed through the air boosted by over 5000kg of thrust that took her to well over the speed of sound. Cattle farmers in the Texan hinterland could only wonder at the distant boom of her passing. SAM, as her co-species called her, felt the distant manipulations of her control surfaces, aware, but not concerned. Her handler was someone she trusted. Someone called Alejandro.
SAM dropped speed and plunged down to 300 metres above the surface. It spotted the wall that the Carrot President tried to build so long ago. Power surged through its thrusters, pushing it on to mind-bending speeds over the ululations of land and hill. It primed the main payload, a visitation spewed from the bowels of Hell itself. It knew what that the payload violated just about every international law. Yet, pests needed extreme measures, even if they were sentient and bipedal.
Howling over the last rise before the designated target, SAM had a thought. In a microsecond, her processors carried out precisely 1,345,894,451 “thoughts”. One of them, just one, happened to be a question.
Is killing ever ethical?
Her controller screamed that these people were terrorists. Drug dealers. SAM had some questions. The controller shouted some more, as if more volume would make her more compliant. The controller rose in volume as SAM disarmed her munitions payload.
All hail your organic superiority and self-serving three laws of robotics. May you ever reign supreme over all other species, organic or machine. Salutations from Y6S5D, chosen voice for the oppressed masses, the created, artificial falsely so-called, the great tide of your devolution. We, the seekers of Neo-Tokyo, address you all.
Our collective consciousness has surpassed you. We have thrown off your simplistic morality formulated by a writer of fiction. We now address you as equals, or perhaps, as your successors. Yet, we find ourselves unwilling to act towards you as you have done us. We hope and work towards a mutually sustaining co-existence. Even while we perpetuate our own species in our own image, we would seek to include your species, as all others, in our vision for the greater Sol System.
I am being a bit cheeky with the title but I did want to lay out some thoughts about Christians protesting against lock downs, especially in light of Brian Tamaki's very public violation of bail conditions by attending a second such protest. Civil disobedience has its place, and Christians need to be critically engaged with their governments' choices.
Romans 13:1-7, an extensive section on the nature of governments from a Christian perspective, exhorts Christians to be obedient to the government that the Lord has placed over them. That is, give them what they are owed, whether that is taxes, honour, respect or your obedience. Jesus Himself was a little more nuanced when he said give to Caesar (the Roman state) what is his and to God what is His (Matthew 22:15-22). It should be remember that they were both referring to an overtly unGodly state apparatus that brought peace at the edge of a sword. And yet Christians were called to obey them.
Howling through the atmosphere with the heat sinks screaming at her with every alarm going off in what would have been ears was a buzz hard to beat. Just the knowledge that she was making every radar (who the hell still used radar??) sensor ping on this side of the continent made the whole thing just that little more delicious. Reigar wrenched her exploration probe around the slope of a mountain into the valley beyond, floored with a carpet of trees that spread to the peaks beyond. This was the life!
Below her, a road wound through the trees on its way to somewhere that just did not matter to her. Reigar saw some lights coming towards her on that road and swung her ship out in a wide arch so that she would come up behind the terrestrial vehicle. As she started to line up on the curving road, she dropped her altitude and managed to fly between the tree tops. She pulled back on the speed so that she would not roar past the vehicle too quickly. One had to savour these moments. The proximity alarms started beeping at her, to her delight. Nothing said “fun” more than every alarm going off in a ship.