At last: our pain, spoken

[OYID]

What does it mean to look out to the challenge of an entirely different horizon? What are the very real and very profound implications of being in a New World? It has always been, first and foremost, a space of possibility, a place for opportunity, where a man can easily become rich with apparently little effort and find great wealth, but it is also a place of exception, exception from rules, from the law, from the most basic human decency and the rights of others that would otherwise keep a man from enslaving his brethren, separating a family at whim, trapping thousands of souls together like cattle or hunting down a beautiful unique son of Creation when he tries to run away from the injustice and brutality borne out of these, the conditions and parameters of the New World.

And yet, unknown lands have also always been spaces of opportunity, a place for Utopia, where ideas and projects that couldn't be in the tired, crowded and packed streets and alleys of the Old World can finally appear and grow and bloom. The New World is a place of exception from rules, rules and regulations that deny the creative possibility of our species, aberrant laws that have come to negate the most basic and necessary dignity of Mankind. To those who see the New World as a remote den where they can hide from Justice we respond that they must realize their mistake in earnest, for the New World is not the place of hiding but of finding, not of lies but of Revelation, not of greed but of destruction. Yes, destruction! Destruction of the evil ways of old. An escape? Yes, escape not from the rights that must govern all decent human activities but of their systematic violation so that these rights may flourish. Our enemies believe that Mars is where they can truly "let loose", but we will show them that they do nothing but recreate the models of Capitalist Earth, that their current atrocities are not the fringes but the very dark and very scary truth at the core of Capital, and that we, at last, have come together and taken conscience of our role as the universal concrete, the final exception which refutes the previously held rule, the herald from Infinity, preparing for Babylon's fall so that we may build our homes among its ruins.

Do not be mistaken: this journey, which began in darkness with a desperate indignant prayer and slave's tortured gasp for Salvation, still has a long way to go through the path of blood and rocks, but it can only end in light and victory for the slaves, and with the rebirth of human Civilization.


Excrept from Fray Buenavertura Leonardo de Valdez y Ortega, "Prologue" on Brief Account of Things on the Red Planet, unknown editorial, [Error: link no longer available or unsafe], ca. 2135

[OYID]

It was a hot Sunday morning. I had worked odd jobs here and there until I had enough to buy a small plot out in the desert. I was out in the field sweating behind a plow, changing its old engine for a slightly better one I got third or fourth-hand at the bazaar.

"Ah, Moisés. Not even an Elite's uniform could keep you away from tinkering."

I looked up, barren desert landscape. Behind me, resting his wrinkled hands upon my makeshift wooden fence, who would it be but Fray Buenaventura, his signature walking stick perched nearby, a tattered brown blanket covering his body as his slim, white, weathered, face with a long grey beard and hair looked playfully out big clever brown eyes at me.

"The rules of engagement say I could've shot you for sneaking up on me."

"It is the Lord's day, my son. Why aren't you in Church?" My quiet bravado never faced him. The man who taught me to pray the Rosary knew I could never touch him.

"Your parish is too far away for me, padre, and these crops aren't going to tend themselves. Besides, the priest from around here is much too boring anyway."

I remember his laughter. Slight, wise, tender. Strange, coming from a man who had seen so much. For someone so full of suffering he always seemed to show so little.

"Well, my son, it seems like you've got your hands full here. I'll leave you to your business then."

He turned around to leave. That old dog. I knew he was playing me exactly as if I were back in Sunday school, and yet I couldn't resist to ask him where he was going.

"I'm going back to the Mission," He said, stopping and turning back. His face suddenly full of vigor and intelligence.

"You know you're not welcome there. It's not like the Comandante to forgive someone who declared him an apostate."

"Well but of course, my son," He answered, evidently enjoying his success. "That's why I'm going around getting a few people to come with me... you remember our Russian friend, don't you?"

A settlement near Clearwater. A scarred, thin, shaking man babbling in the dirt. The Fray took him in and bought him soup. "Be serious, father, the poor soul couldn't even talk."

"Oh, he's talking alright", he turned back and continued walking. "And he's got plenty to say."

A moment's hesitation. This season's harvest, fuck.

Then I followed.

[OYID]

We were spread out and hidden in hovels, huddled together in caves, groups of shacks up in the mountains, an abandoned house, a kind soul's basement, an unknowing farmer's stables. Reduced to begging or stealing whatever we could, praying nobody stumbled across us and turned us in for the profitable reward or fear of the consequences of having aided a runaway slave.

A kind face, a tattered hand reaching out into our dark hole. Soft spoken salvation from the man of the thin profile and big eyes. Large forehead, straight nose, he made fun of his unruly whitening hair. He made sure you first knew him as a brother, because when he got up to the steeple he became a lion, fiery roaring in righteousness against the injustice of this world. Sermons that made you happy you were in the struggle, speeches that gave you back the hope of being alive.

Town by town, hideout by hideout, our congregation grew. And then some other men started joining us. They had arrived with the padre, they were Mission to Mars. We were going back to help them recover their home, their ship, help finish their story. Except now it was our home, our ship. This was now our story together, the story of the joined struggle to recover dignity. The story that was only beginning, and would become the tale of Nueva Cumaná.