Personal Journal: Theresa Mwangi: Translated by Ibrahim Wassume
08/21/2175
The vice president came to me and made a very strange request of me today. We have had the shell of Gennady Semyonov in captive for the past week, and he has been restrained to prevent him from injuring himself or others. Well, today, Yong An-Hong came to me and asked for an opportunity to speak with him in private. He was vague with his reasons, a I have noticed he often is, fearing that too many words from him would betray him. This is the eternal curse of politics, as I have often found myself, for I had a great role in my late husband's political life. He said only that he wished to see the demon for himself, for like the bird that smells the cat, he has not himself encountered the Zaha-Katchem for what they are, only by their sound, their smell, their shadow upon the wall. I cautioned him that Gennady Alexandrovich may not provide the clearest insight, but I allowed the visit. Perhaps he may have more luck in interrogating my former friend and ally than our people have.
Official Transcript: Security Camera Footage: Kinshasa Security Center: 08/22/2175
[Begin playback at 1030 local time]
[Gennady Semyonov is restrained in a straightjacket and seated at a table. He rocks back and forth and mumbles incoherently. The door opens and a guard escorts Yong An-Hong into the room. Semyonov looks up at him silently as he enters. Yong stands and stares]
SEMYONOV: I wondered if I would see you.
YONG: You speak English?
SEMYONOV: As do you. (gestures to a chair opposite) Please, do have a seat, Mr. Vice President.
[Yong watches him for a long moment. Then he obliges]
YONG: I have heard you have not spoken to anybody since you came here.
SEMYONOV: I was waiting for you to come! And don't be surprised; of course we always knew you were here. You didn't escape our notice.
YONG: Whom do you speak of? Your allies within the Russian dissidence movement, I presume?
SEMYONOV: I think you know whom it is I speak of.
YONG: The Zaha-Katchem then? Are you in contact with them now?
SEMYONOV: In contact? I am Zaha-Katchem. Gennady Semyonov is no more. I am what remains.
YONG: Then you are like a snake that has fitted itself in the skin of another snake?
SEMYONOV: Maybe. Maybe there is no skin. Maybe there is no snake. Maybe all is one endless string of energy and consciousness, the abnegation of skins or snakes.
YONG: The Zaha-Katchem often speak this way. It is what they claim to be the bridging of minds and other things that they claim beyond human comprehension. It is a hard thing to believe, and an irony that they can say such things while leaning upon the crutch of their significant technological power.
SEMYONOV: You doubt that we can do as we say we can?
YONG: Humans have experimented with what you might call telepathy since the twenty-first century. Devices were created that could command objects with brainwaves as early as the 2000's.
SEMYONOV: And you think that we employ similar devices?
YONG: The technology has not been fully developed on Earth since the creation of the Interlink; it was considered unnecessary, although there are those who still experiment with it.
SEMYONOV: These African primitives and their Grushan keepers have scanned me. They have traced my neurons and searched my brain for machines. What have they found?
YONG: Nothing to my knowledge. However, your warship vanishes like a phantom upon your command; it may not be impossible for nanites or implants designed by your people to do the same. Or if not, it may be that your people may carry implants on your selves that project your brain waves into another in the same way that a radio sends light waves. In any case, I am reluctant to write off the capabilities of something we cannot observe.
SEMYONOV: Ah, yes. It frustrates you that you cannot dissect a Zaha-Katchem doesn't it?
YONG: It would provide us with greater insight into your people. For example, it might explain why or how the bodies of fallen Zaha-Katchem shift and become entirely different animals upon their death.
SEMYONOV: So you believe the stories of those two American brats?
YONG: I have no reason not to believe them.
SEMYONOV: Then you should at least have the evidence of your own reason. How does a creature shift its very biology upon death?
YONG: You are the ones who would have us believe that the shell of the body is subject to the whims of the mind. Perhaps you have chosen to appear human-like to impress my people. If this is so, then you must forgive my curiosity. What are you really, when you are not dressed up for our benefit?
SEMYONOV: We are as you have seen us. We are the future of your people. We are the time that comes after. We are the potential of all species, the hidden latent gene that awakes one day and creates sentience after millions of years, and then achieves more than greatness. We are the great project of the universe, the final thought that completes the sonnet, the beginning and the end of existence.
YONG: You sound like many in the history of my world who have committed the greatest atrocities.
SEMYONOV: Atrocities, you say? Atrocities? Like the murder of thousands of those whom you now call innocents? The curtailment of freedoms of all in the name of a greater few? The wealth of the few and the downtrodden many underneath? Are these the atrocities of which you speak?
YONG: In general, yes. In specific, the Holocaust of the Jews under the German National Socialist Party; the political prisons of Kim Jong-Un and his predecessors, the mass bombings of cities in the Second Korean War...
SEMYONOV: And why do you call these atrocities, my unapologetically egalitarian friend? I'll tell you. It's because a few have commanded the destiny of many, which you yourself were once responsible for promoting in your government. What if they had chosen to go, though? What if the gulags and concentration camps and flattened cities had been filled with volunteers? Or what if those gulags and concentration camps and cities had been filled with guilty men and women, creates guilty of further atrocities? Would you then call these acts atrocious?
YONG: What volunteer would walk into such a place?
SEMYONOV: My dear Vice President, we are speaking in mere hypotheticals. What if many people decided, of their own free will, to suffer and die horribly, or what you perceive as horribly? What would you say to them? Could you tell them to walk away and continue with a life that, for whatever reason, they have thrown away?
YONG: This scenario is irrelevant. It has no more bearing upon my accusation than the state of hunger a jellyfish possesses.
SEMYONOV: It goes to the very heart of what we are speaking of. Go on; answer it.
[Pause]
YONG: As a statesman and as a leader, I could not force my will upon these people.
SEMYONOV: Then you would allow them to condemn themselves to death?
YONG: If it were clear that it was their desire.
SEMYONOV: Ah! Then you believe that it is the will of people that matters more than existence itself? That the mind may in times cast off the hoax of the flesh and walk as free, unaltered will amongst... wherever it so chooses?
YONG: That is not what I have answered.
SEMYONOV: Oh, but I think that it is. Because you see, I offered you the choice between life, as you view it, and will. And you selected will over life. An atrocity is less atrocious if all parties will it to transpire. But the key is will. They key is the mind. The key is that intangible something that allows you and I and even the Grushan to form the world around us in our image and that separates us from the mean material animals around us. Would you not say so?
YONG: Perhaps.
SEMYONOV: Perhaps? It is in every decision that you have made. How else could you justify placing a mind-altering device in the spine of nearly every human on Earth? Why did you use taxes to convince your people to adopt them rather than simply gathering them in cages and fitting them with Interlinks like so many cattle?
YONG: Possibly.
SEMYONOV: Absolutely. And why create a government? Why build institutions and laws? Why raise taxes and set minimum wages? Why if not to guide your people in choosing what you wish them to? Why if not to guide their will until it coincides with your own? For we know that you are the one that the people have chosen for power; are you not the right man to guide their choices? Isn't that your job as a politician, Mr. Vice President?
YONG: I will grant you that as a politician, I often feel as a gardener might, who plants trees and guides them in their growth, pruning off the dead branches, watering it, and keeping it growing smooth. I have often called the people a Japanese bonsai tree in this vein.
SEMYONOV: Then, you have already proven my point. You see, Mr. Vice President, if the will matters more than life itself, then there is a problem. Sometimes wills will overlap and collide; two men want a precious stone or a bobble of some worth which both cannot possess. The life serves the will. Both cannot have what they want. The bobble cannot be split between them. So what must they do? What would you have them do?
YONG: In such a case, the law would allow them to work out their difference. They would go to court and make their claim to the item known before the law, and the law would decide to whom the item would go.
SEMYONOV: They would appeal to another will, then?
YONG: I would suppose though. The alternative would be to try to destroy one another. Then, one person loses both life and will, and that life would not be worth that item.
SEMYONOV: And one must forfeit his will for the will of the other and the will of the state?
YONG: In the terms that you have outlined, yes.
SEMYONOV: Then the will of the one whom the state chooses is the will that prevails. This is what I say to your accusation, your baseless claim of Zaha-Katchem atrocity. We do not wish to destroy anyone. We wish to preserve the good of all, the will of all, and we do so by the means that we deem necessary. So when we attack a Grushan colony, and eradicate its inhabitants, understand that when the war began, and when the ship which we sent to your planet that was stolen was sent there, then we had to choose between the will of the Grushan Federation and the will of the Terran Hegemony. For the Grushan in possession of one of our ships would destroy you in coming years without our help. And who knows when my people will die, or choose to leave. Rest assured; this is the fastest and surest way to ensure the future of our people, of your people, and even the Grushan, for the Senate will soon announce its surrender. And as the strongest people now alive in the galaxy, and since our will is the strongest, it is our solemn duty to create this peace, this choice between opposing wills, as best that we can.
YONG: And now you return to arrogance.
SEMYONOV: Need I repeat my long and laborious conclusion?
YONG: No. I will do so for you. According to your words, it is permissible for the state to execute willing victims. Therefore, it is permissible for the state to execute unwilling victims. And because the Zaha-Katchem have power and high culture, it is permissible for it to act as the state. Therefore, it is permissible for the Zaha-Katchem to execute unwilling victims. Therefore, the massacre at Yvar was not an atrocity. This, I believe, is your philosophy.
SEMYONOV: Then you have not understood.
YONG: No, I believe I understood just fine. For there is another philosophy, one that lurks in the darkness behind your words like a leopard in the dead of night. A philosophy of the self. You tell me that your people value the freedom of will, even in abnegation of life. You say that the only solution when wills contradict each other is to seek a stronger will or to become the stronger will yourself. You would say that it is morally right to manipulate the wills of others if you yourself have the power and the will to do so. You exalt the will above all other forms of reality. Is this not to exalt your will above the walls of reality?
SEMYONOV: It is more than that. It is the basis for our reality.
YONG: Your reality? Does your reality not possess the same air that mine does? Do we not both eat and drink? When we create a gravity well, do you not fall into it same as me?
SEMYONOV: And what of yourself? Do you not commit the same atrocities in the name of will?
YONG: No. Though I said otherwise before, I do not believe in the will before all things. I believe in life before freedom. What use is freedom without life? I believe in preserving life and peace. And though you may rightly criticize my past actions, I have since seen why they are wrong. For life cannot be lived and appreciated while I have dimmed the will with the Interlink. But neither is it truly lived and appreciated while life itself is undermined and made subject to the will. This is true neither for you, nor for me, nor for the nations and worlds that I was elected to represent.
SEMYONOV: It seems that we have overestimated you as an individual.
YONG: A fault I would not expect from psychics.
[Pause]
SEMYONOV: Well. This is a disappointment.
YONG: Perhaps. Very enlightening though.
SEMYONOV: This human will be terminated.
YONG: Before this occurs, I wish to ask a question. What happened to the President? Why does his corpse sit undisturbed in the office of the President in Beijing while you are here, your heart beating, and his has stopped?
SEMYONOV: Perhaps one day you will know.
[Semyonov suddenly flops over like an unattended puppet. Yong steps up from his chair as paramedics rush in and attempt to save Semyonov's life. Yong leaves the room]
[End Playback]
The Thoughts of Yong An-Hong: Translated by Alexandra Yuan: Copyright 2205, Centauri University Press: Hanson Harbor, Nova
08/23/2175
For me, the war has taken upon itself a new shape. Yesterday, when I spoke to Gennady Semyonov, or whatever thing had taken the place of Gennady Semyonov, I began to view this war in a new light. For the first time, I believe the war to be as ideological as it is material and technological. For the Zaha-Katchem have embraced the madness that I once saw in the face and voice of Yan An-Sing before I knew him to be dead. It is the same madness that has driven the history of this world since its inception, and we now face it in one of the most fully realized forms it has ever taken in the history of Human and Grushan worlds.
I wish another had been born in my place to face the peril of the Zaha-Katchem and the danger that they place upon our world. But now, in this place and time, I feel that I have been called upon to respond to its influence. I only hope that the dissident and military leaders can trust me, and that I am indeed up to the task.
I hope I may be forgiven for the things I have done in the name of peace and life.