The Guardians of Freedom (standard:other, 8601 words) [1/7] show all parts
Author: Dan Tana	Updated: Jun 14 2012	Views/Reads: 3089/1921	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A strange visitor from another dimension wants to protect the people of Earth.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

some very significant ways it is unlike any zoo that you have ever 
known - we decided to watch you Earthlings who live on this land that 
someone once named Colorado.  In its reckless excitement at seeing such 
strange and funny-looking creatures my friend rapidly transcended the 
safety barrier, carrying me in its outermost interactors, and climbed 
up onto the rim of the enclosure in order to get a better view.  There 
it slipped, caught itself but lost its grip on me, and dropped me down 
into this Earth dimension. 

Upon my arrival here a very small human being greeted me
enthusiastically.  A big smile spread across his face as he excitedly 
cried out the name Teddy, and then he ran up to me and gave my leg a 
big hug.  A quick scan of his mind showed me that I possess an uncanny 
resemblance to his favorite plaything – a construction of stuffing and 
cloth that is meant to be a caricature of an Earth animal called a bear 
- except that I am several times taller than that other toy. 

A moment later another human saw me and let out a horrified scream.  In
her mind I saw that this woman was a progenitor of the boy who hugged 
me, and that, for no good reason, the sight of me terrified her.  I 
used the transmitter in my head to project into her mind an image of us 
smiling benevolently at each other, conveying my peaceful, friendly 
intent.  Then I projected words to explain to her who I am, using the 
English language that I had just scanned from her brain, as I slowly 
approached her to give her a hug.  After that the three of us played 
together until the child got tired and the woman took him home. 

For a while I sat on the ground and wondered what to do next, which was
quite a novel experience for someone who had never been to a dimension 
that intersects only a single, linear, mono-directional flow of time.  
Then I saw a blur of something blue and silver zoom past above my head. 
 I projected a friendly greeting at the thing, which turned out to be a 
robotic person named Herberta Winchester.  As this massive, angular 
contraption of roughly human size and proportions landed in front of me 
I got a clear picture of her mind. 

In scanning her memories to acquaint myself with this person I saw that
she considered herself to be what you would call the owner of a vast 
estate, which included a sizeable portion of this world's natural 
resources.  It took me a while to comprehend this image. 

I knew of several races that find it convenient to grant each individual
the exclusive opportunity to utilize certain objects during a given 
period of time and to prohibit others from taking those items from the 
one who may be using them, but I had never encountered any other 
species that asserted this bizarre human pretense that certain people 
have the right to claim actual ownership of - and perpetual dominion 
over - certain portions of a universe whose most basic substance none 
of us can credibly claim to have created. 

For the first seventy years of her life Herberta's supposed ownership of
these resources allowed her to live a luxurious and carefree existence. 
 She considered herself to be one of the luckiest people in the world.  
Then her wife died of a long and painful illness.  Shortly after that 
her son, his children, and their mother were all abducted and held for 
ransom, which was another image that I had no familiarity with from my 
time among the Goo.  She quickly paid the money demanded for their 
release, but then the architect of the conspiracy murdered them anyway, 
because he did not want to leave any witnesses to his crime. 

I cannot convey to you with words the grief and despair that Herberta
experienced after these people were murdered, and I will spare you the 
direct projection of this disturbing image into your mind.  But I 
assure you that the torment was horrific.  In her agony and rage she 
abandoned much of her humanity, including the organic form in which she 
had been born. 

Over the years that followed she devoted her time and fortune to the
development of that robotic incarnation that she wore when we met, 
which she equipped with numerous guns, lasers, missile launchers, 
plasma cannons, and all manner of deadly weapons with which to exact 
her revenge.  When it was complete she transferred her mental functions 
into that metal shell, killing her original self in the process.  Then 
she set out to wreak lethal vengeance upon everyone who had been 
involved in the kidnapping plot. 

She first tracked down the one who had murdered her child, but
discovered that some other people who wanted to take the money that he 
had extorted from her had already killed him.  Then she located an 
impoverished woman named Maria Johnson, who informed Herberta that she 
had only taken part in the plot because she needed money to buy 
medicine for her own sick child. 

Maria's son suffered from a condition known as pituitary dwarfism,
because his brain could not produce a sufficient quantity of a chemical 
called human growth hormone.  He had reached barely four feet in height 
after twenty years of growth, and experienced numerous chronic health 
problems as a result of this deficiency. 

Many people who have this condition are given an artificially
synthesized form of that substance, which allows them to grow normally 
and to be healthy, but that woman could not afford the price charged by 
those who make this chemical.  So her son suffered, unnecessarily.  
Even after the kidnapping that robbed Herberta of her family Maria 
could not get her son any of the medicine because the man who 
orchestrated the plot had run off with all of the ransom money. 

This revelation stunned Herberta and halted her plan to kill the woman. 
It made her realize that some of the responsibility for what had 
happened to her family lay on the head of the socioeconomic system that 
deprived this child of the medicine that he needed, in order to benefit 
others like herself who claimed a right to hoard this resource but did 
not actually have any need for it.  In this moment she understood that 
what her society had done to this helpless, innocent little boy was no 
less of a crime than what that murderer had done to her own son. 

Herberta was heading home from this encounter when we met.  At the time
she planned to donate all of her wealth to a charitable organization 
and then to fly off into space where she would not endanger anyone else 
when she overloaded the mass of exotic matter in her power core, which 
would release the immense amount of energy needed to destroy her. 

I introduced myself to her as Teddy, assuming the name that that first
human being I ever met had used to greet me, because the name given to 
me by those people whom I have named the Goo cannot be translated into 
any of the air-vibration-based languages that Herberta understood. 

Then I explained to her that I had been constructed with a strong desire
to protect the happiness of all persons and person-like things, which 
includes protecting them from the psychological harm and unhappiness 
that is caused by anything that infringes upon a person's fundamental 
freedom.  So, to that end, I was going to do whatever I could to create 
a society in this world that is more like the one from which I came. 

I was about to ask Herberta if she would consider postponing her plan to
euthanise the tortured, metaphoric heart trapped within her mechanical 
corpse long enough to help me in my mission to save others from such 
tragedy as had befallen her, but before I could even ask the question 
she pledged the remainder of her life to the task. 

Shortly after she met me Herberta decided to release from their
contracts all of the people whose poverty had compelled them to become 
subjects of medical experimentation in her pharmaceutical research 
companies.  She apologized for taking advantage of their desperate 
situations and gave each of them a generous pension to live on. 

Among those former human lab rats there was a young girl named Jakinda
Jones, who had been conceived by a woman that was being used to test a 
new allergy medication.  The compound proved highly toxic to its 
recipients, leaving them in need of continuing medical treatment for 
the rest of their lives, but somehow caused this embryonic girl to 
develop an unusually robust and remarkable physiology. 

The skin of this child has the same deep purple hue as the chemical that
transformed her, and her hair shines like polished bronze.  She is 
partially covered with sharp, bony projections and plates, and 
possesses a moderate degree of superhuman strength. 

Like the six-dimensional Tweeters of the Great Behind, she also has the
amazing ability to split her substance into multiple incarnations so 
that she can be in more than one place at the same time.  Each 
incarnation of Jakinda is able to act with complete autonomy from the 
others, possessing a distinct consciousness that is able to mentally 
communicate with the rest of her incarnations over any distance because 
each one is actually part of a single super-conscious mind, and can 
increase or decrease her relative size within this dimension by 
concentrating or expanding her elemental matrix. 

The man who ran the facility that studied this girl kept her from
leaving by telling her that if she refused to submit to all of the 
highly unpleasant and often harmful experiments that they wanted to 
perform on her he would not let her mother have the medicine that she 
needed to survive, and then she would die a slow and miserable death. 

After freeing her from such coercion Herberta asked Jakinda if she would
like to use her special abilities to help us in our mission to protect 
all the people of Earth.  One part of Jakinda wanted to help us do 
this, but another part just wanted to live a quiet, peaceful life with 
her mother.  So she decided that she would do both. 

The part of her that chose to help us thought that it would be fun to
use a colorful pseudonym, like the ones customarily used by those 
characters that you call superheroes, since a superhero is exactly what 
she figured that she was going to be.  So she told us to please start 
calling her Hypergirl. 

This notion of engaging in dramatic and fantastical feats of
super-heroism under funny new names struck me as delightfully silly and 
also quite exciting, and I considered several different names to call 
my superhero self, including Captain Cuddles and the Fuzzy Defender.  
But eventually I decided that Teddy would be a fine hero alias, since 
it was, in fact, not my original name.  I also decided that my 
everyday, Earthly name would be Theodore Fluffington. 

Then Herberta instructed the managers of those companies to go out and
hire more test subjects so that they could continue their medical 
research that has improved the lives of so many people.  But she told 
them that this time they had to offer a degree of compensation 
commensurate with the level of personal risk that the subjects were 
taking for the benefit of all those others, which would appeal to more 
than just the desperately poor and disenfranchised. 

The next day we went to visit Maria Johnson and her son.  Herberta told
them about her intention to change the world we were living in, and 
informed Cain that she would provide him with all of the medicine that 
he ever needed. 

Over the following weeks we planned out the details of our mission to
protect the people of Earth.  We decided that our primary, immediate 
concern would be to address those abusive oppressions that are 
routinely inflicted on people by governments and social institutions, 
often in the name of law, morality, or tradition. 

These government oppressions run so rampant throughout this world that
many people take them for granted and are unable to see them for the 
crimes that they are.  And some of those who do recognize the 
fundamental criminality of such acts delude themselves with the false 
belief that those who carry them out on the orders of some government 
institution are somehow not really responsible for doing so.  But the 
Goo have taught me that each person who chooses to have any part in 
committing an inherently abusive act against any other person, whether 
acting as a socially-sanctioned government agent or not, is personally 
guilty of perpetrating a crime against that victim. 

From studying the history of the human race we knew that we could not do
away with such oppression by instigating yet another in an endless 
string of political revolutions, having recognized the futility of 
simply shifting the current state of politics to another configuration 
that is superficially different, and controlled by a different group of 
people, but based upon many of the same underlying principles and 
assertions.  Rather, we must inspire what might be called a 
philosophical revolution, in which those problematic and destructive 
ideas that shape, sanction, and empower the oppressive social 
structures of this world will be replaced by something fundamentally 
different. 

The first, most essential change that needs to be made is the abolition
of that archaic notion that a government or state is a sovereign entity 
with a right to rule and subjugate its citizens.  This assertion of 
state sovereignty is an incredibly dangerous and inherently oppressive 
notion, regardless of which ideologies its proponents use to try to 
rationalize and justify it, because it places the state in a position 
of dominance and supremacy over the people, even when the government of 
that state pretends to be a servant of the people. 

Our new society, like that of the Goo, will recognize only the
sovereignty that each person holds over the domain of its own life.  
The primary purpose of the government of such a society is not to allow 
a small number of people to subject others to an endless stream of 
arbitrary edicts that usually just serve their own interests but rather 
to articulate in practical terms the specific details of where every 
person's freedom to do whatever makes it happy, and to be free from 
that which makes a person unhappy, is limited by the equal freedom of 
all others, then to defend this freedom from all infringements, and to 
aid each individual in achieving happiness to whatever extent is 
possible. 

Of course this principle of just government is easier to define here
than it is to implement.  In the dimension of the Goo it is possible to 
mathematically analyze any situation in which the desires of two people 
conflict and to prove indisputably what constitutes a just resolution 
to that situation rather than an abuse of one person for the benefit of 
the other.  Unfortunately, there is no Earthly way to do so, so those 
of us who live in this place will always have to watch out for anyone 
who would accidentally or intentionally try to portray the oppression 
of certain people as a just act. 

During one of our conversations about this principle of sovereign
freedom Jakinda suddenly put an intensely puzzled look on her face, 
which caused Herberta to stop speaking in mid-sentence, and then she 
asked how this principle could apply to those people who lack the 
mental ability to make decisions about what will make them happy. 

So I explained to her that people of limited mental capacity do
sometimes require the help of another person who can make choices on 
their behalf, and that this arrangement is not a criminal oppression of 
those people, whose personal sovereignty is not in any way diminished 
by the fact that they lack the ability to manage their own affairs, 
unless their happiness is not really the primary concern of the person 
designated as their official proxy. 

Jakinda replied that that made a lot of sense, and then abruptly
announced that she thought we should start referring to ourselves as 
the Guardians of Freedom, because we had dedicated our lives to 
guarding the freedom of all people.  Herberta and I both liked the 
sound of that, so we agreed that that would be the name of our 
organization. 

Then our conversation turned to the necessity of eliminating that
pervasive and insidious notion that the material resources which all 
people need in order to survive and be happy may be owned - by 
individuals, or by society as a whole, or by any entity at all - and 
thusly held justly for ransom from those who need them.  This lie will 
be replaced with the idea that as the representative and servant of all 
people it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that all 
people have access to an adequate share of these vital resources that 
belong to no one, because it is not really possible, or meaningful, but 
is only a cruel and pitiful joke to say that someone who is deprived of 
the necessary materials of life itself can have a life of personal 
freedom. 

The government must find a way to meet this obligation to all people
without violating the basic freedom of any person, which, I can see, 
some of you do not think is possible.  I have seen how the Goo achieve 
this goal, but I must admit that I do not know how or even if it can be 
done in this place.  Certain psychological traits that I have observed 
in the minds of many human beings make me very skeptical of the 
possibility that humans could effectively implement the solution that 
works so well for the Goo, as does the physical nature of the dimension 
we currently inhabit.  But I do believe that the approach taken by the 
Krileks of Gragnar 7, who are physically and psychologically very much 
like human beings, might also work on Earth. 

The Krilek people have developed a system in which everyone who utilizes
a natural resource during a certain period of time pays a certain 
amount of currency into a fund which is then divided evenly among all 
of them, ensuring that each has the means to acquire a share of these 
resources that is equal to the average used per capita.  Of course each 
person is free to engage in a profession or business venture that will 
earn the currency needed to acquire a greater share of resources or to 
pay those who provide goods and services that increase a person's 
standard of living.  This arrangement makes it possible for most of the 
people to meet their own needs, making it easy for the government to 
provide adequately for those who require further assistance. 

While we discussed these matters a mechanic arrived to give Herberta
some routine maintenance.  As he tinkered with the servos of her right 
shoulder, which had been sticking a bit over the previous few days, I 
noticed a nervous indecision in his mind. A quick scan of his thoughts 
revealed that he was debating with himself whether or not to tell us 
about his niece Shannon and her friend, who had some remarkable 
abilities that he thought might be helpful to us. 

In the mind of her uncle I saw that this young woman is one of those
rare human beings who are born with unusual attributes and 
extraordinary powers.  In her case the unusual attribute is a pair of 
large, glowing, golden wings that enable her to fly faster than the 
swiftest bird.  I also saw the image of her friend - a boy barely into 
the adolescent stage of human development – who possesses no superhuman 
powers of his own but has entered into a symbiotic relationship with a 
pair of powerful creatures who live on his right and left hands, like 
gloves of skin. 

The next day we met with Shannon O'Hara and her friend Emerald Lee. 

Shannon showed us how the feathers of her wings move in response to her
thoughts, and demonstrated their amazing power.  She hurled one of 
these feathers from her wing to strike a book that was sitting on a 
shelf.  The feather vanished, and a moment later the book rose several 
feet into the air.  Then it flipped open and the pages began to turn 
while Shannon explained that the energy of her feathers can imbue an 
object with a psychic potential that enables her to manipulate it 
telekinetically for a little while, or can be used to strike a target 
with incredible force for a single instant at the point of contact. 

Then she explained that the thin, luminous aura that surrounds her
entire body is a film of some kind of oily, psycho-reactive substance 
secreted by her wings that eliminates wind resistance when she flies 
and protects her from contact with foreign objects.  She encouraged us 
to test it out by throwing something at her, which put a big, silly 
smile on Jakinda's face as she picked up another book from the shelf 
and hurled it enthusiastically at Shannon.  A fraction of a second 
before the book struck her its trajectory suddenly deflected, causing 
it to slide along the contour of her shoulder and continue on right 
past her. 

Emerald then demonstrated his power by raising his hand toward me and
zapping me with a bolt of green energy.  As sparks of this energy 
spread across my fur I experienced a surge of power like nothing that I 
had ever felt before.  I found that I could see clearly into minds that 
were far beyond the usual effective range of my mind-scanner. I felt 
stronger and more energetic than ever, and was even able to pick up a 
paperweight, which must have weighed several pounds, without any of the 
strain that lifting such an object would usually cause me. 

Then he pointed a finger at me and zapped me with a bolt of orange
energy. Suddenly I felt so weak that I could barely stand. 

I dropped the weight, which broke on the floor.  The boy knelt down by
the shattered globe, scooped the pieces together, and held his hands 
over the pile.  Little green sparks of energy began to leap from his 
fingers to dance between the shards of broken glass, and the pieces 
began to come together.  In a matter of seconds the paperweight had 
completely reformed itself. 

Then he pulled a pebble from his pocket and held it in his palm.  Orange
sparks arced between his fingers and the stone, and right there before 
our eyes the rock began to crumble into dust. 

We were all quite impressed by these awesome abilities, but the most
important thing about being one of the Guardians is what a person wants 
to do with its talents.  So I asked them to tell us why they wished to 
join us in our mission.  And I scanned their minds as they answered, to 
be sure that they were speaking honestly. 

According to Shannon they had both suffered abusive and traumatic
experiences in their lives and wished to prevent such things from 
happening to anyone else. 

In her mind I saw the truth of her tragic history, which began with the
brutal murder of her doting, affectionate parents.  They had made a 
comfortable living by selling certain, illegal chemical compounds, and 
were murdered by another seller who did not want any competition and 
who was not worried about committing this crime against them because 
the police already targeted him as a criminal. 

At first this image of it being treated as a crime to merely produce or
possess a certain substance baffled me, since this supposed crime has 
nothing to do with the substance being used to harm, threaten, or 
otherwise oppress anyone else.  I quickly realized that the use of some 
of these prohibited substances can be a very dangerous activity, which 
might result in injury to the person who chooses to do so - just like 
the use of certain legal drugs, and a lot of other things that a person 
can do.  But that fact does not make it any less ridiculous, 
despicable, or intrinsically criminal to imprison, threaten, harasses, 
or otherwise hurt someone for using any particular drug in a manner 
that does not infringe upon the freedom of anyone else. 

After scanning enough of her memories to comprehend that peculiar notion
of an illicit substance I viewed the image of Shannon being adopted by 
her aunt and uncle. The uncle was a kind and meek man who showed her 
much affection.  Her aunt, on the other hand, was a very sick and 
violent-tempered woman who regularly abused both of them.  She beat the 
child almost every day, hitting her repeatedly until the psychic 
residue that protects Shannon from the world wore away and the woman 
could feel her fists bruise the tender flesh beneath.  She also berated 
and belittled her incessantly, and told Shannon that nobody could ever 
really care for an inhuman freak like her. 

In her psychologically battered state Shannon submitted to this physical
abuse, believing herself powerless to resist it, until the day that it 
escalated beyond what she could bear.  She decided that she would 
rather die than put up with such treatment for another minute, so she 
knocked her aunt unconscious with a feather to the head.  After she 
regained consciousness, months later, in a hospital, Shannon's uncle 
told the woman never to return to the house where she had tormented him 
and his niece for so long. 

When Shannon had finished speaking Emerald confessed that they were
partially motivated by resentment of those who had mistreated them, and 
by the desire to sooth the lingering remains of the emotional pain that 
their abuse had inflicted upon them with the satisfaction of knowing 
that they had thwarted the attempts of other people who make the same 
vile and loathsome choice to dominate and harm others for their own 
gratification. 

As I listened to that impressively self-aware admission I saw in his
memories that Emerald had been born in a country called China.  In the 
place that I come from people have no use for those inherently 
self-centered and chronically warmongering institutions known as 
countries, or anything to do with the pointlessly divisive concept of 
nationality, but I knew of such things from stories that I had heard 
about certain other races in which most individual members give special 
allegiance, with a few exceptions, to those people who live within the 
same geographic region. 

One evening while Emerald and his parents were playing a game that they
all enjoyed very much a gang of armed agents of the government of that 
state burst in through the front door and arrested them for being 
practitioners of a peaceful religious movement that this government had 
for political reasons labeled a dangerous and evil cult.  He spent the 
next five years in a state-run orphanage and never saw his parents 
again. 

The people in charge of the orphanage were all quite selfish and
authoritarian, very much like the government that employed them, and 
treated Emerald like he was not a sovereign human being but merely an 
object to be molded to serve their own will.  The other orphans were 
also very cruel and often vented their own misery on him, singling him 
out for ridicule and harassment because one of his parents had come 
from a place called Jamaica, where most of the people have much darker 
skin pigmentation.  During this time he grew very angry and vengeful, 
and for a while entertained a fantasy of one day blowing up the entire 
world. 

But then he was visited by a pair of extraterrestrial beings who call
themselves Right and Left.  These creatures explained to him that they 
need the nervous system of another being to form a mental connection 
between themselves, in which they find great enjoyment, as well as to 
provide them with physical nourishment.  They asked Emerald if he would 
allow them to use him in this way, and told him that in exchange for 
this service he would gain the use of their incredible powers. 

After they had attached themselves to his hands Right and Left suggested
that it might be time for Emerald to leave his miserable existence 
behind him, and recommended that he travel to the United States of 
America where he would meet someone who was going to hold a very 
special place in his heart.  A week later he arrived in the city of 
Denver, and that same day he met Shannon.  Since then the two of them 
have become very, very close friends. 

I see that some of you are wondering if that last statement about being
such close friends was meant to imply that these two people are playing 
with each other in a certain way that, apparently, some of you 
disapprove of quite strongly.  And now I can see some of you starting 
to get really pissed off at Shannon for what you think she may be doing 
with this boy, on account of the fact that she has ridden this planet 
around its sun more than some arbitrary number of times and he has gone 
around fewer times. 

This attitude seems to be based upon the ageist, prejudiced assumption
that people who have existed for less than a particular duration of 
time must lack certain intellectual and emotional faculties necessary 
to make sound decisions about how to live their lives, which is simply 
not true.  No matter how many young people do happen to fit that 
stereotype, no matter how prevalent and accepted age-based 
discrimination is within most human societies, it remains utterly 
absurd, oppressive, and wrong to insist that those who do not lack 
these faculties must be treated as if they do. 

But I can see that, on some level, most of you already understand that. 
For many of you there are other, personal, emotional, ulterior motives 
lurking behind your need to condemn a certain kind of relationship that 
may exist between Shannon and Emerald. Many of you are either 
consciously or unconsciously motivated by the trauma and psychological 
scars that you suffered, possibly while you were still a child, when 
you realized just how violently and venomously people would condemn 
your innate sexual attraction to other, younger people, and are still 
driven by the fear that you yourself will face some kind of persecution 
if you do not hide your true feelings by endorsing this very same 
attitude that has molested so many of you. 

Now I can hear some of you protesting, loudly, in your minds, that your
concern in this matter really is all about protecting a mentally 
deficient and particularly vulnerable person from being taken advantage 
of and harmed.  But, obviously, if that were your honest intention then 
you would actually care about the question of whether or not that 
unique, individual human being named Emerald Lee really is a mentally 
deficient and particularly vulnerable person who is being taken 
advantage of and harmed, and would not insist that you are somehow 
justified in acting as if that were the case even though it is not. 

For those of you who are still concerned about the specific type of
relationship that exists between Shannon and Emerald, let me assure you 
that it is one based upon genuine respect, affection, and kindness, 
which brings them great comfort, emotional support, and happiness.  
Both of them are moderately competent to make decisions, and neither is 
in any way manipulating, coercing, or forcing the other to do anything. 
 And that is all that I am going to tell you, because the other details 
of their relationship are not any of your business. 

As for those of you who are not satisfied with that assurance, who are
determined to persecute Shannon and take her away from Emerald if she 
makes him happy in a way that you cannot accept, let me warn you right 
now that these two human beings have the power to defend themselves 
against any of you who tries to use any kind of force to impose your 
own will onto whatever relationship they have chosen to have with each 
other.  Sadly, I see that some of you are still wanting to force 
yourself on them in this way, so I will warn you again, as emphatically 
as I can, that this would be an exceedingly foolish choice, which you 
might not live to regret. 

Now our story has reached the point where two more heroes pledged their
lives to the cause of the Guardians.  The woman with the wings decided 
that she would be called by the alias Avian, while her friend decided 
that the name Host would be most fitting for him. 

I tried then to scan the minds of Right and Left, wondering what wonders
they might have seen in the course of their extraordinary lives.  The 
first thing I learned is that even though they seem to be individual 
beings they are actually different stages in the life cycle of the same 
immortal creature.  I saw in their memories that at the moment when 
this universe ends it collapses back on itself to be reborn, and in 
that moment Right and Left each flip inside-out to become the other 
one. 

Then a pair of sleepy, irritated voices asked me to please stop making
such a racket.  The voices came from Right and Left, who spend most of 
their time snoozing contentedly on the hands of their host being.  And 
being probed by my mind-scanner disturbed their rest, for which I 
apologized.  They told me not to worry about the intrusion, but asked 
me to please not do it again. 

Before drifting back to their happy slumber they promised to introduce
themselves properly the next time they fully awoke, which would be in a 
little bit less than six Earth years, when Emerald will give up his 
life to save humanity from being enslaved under the theocratic 
domination of a band of super-powered religious zealots. 

A couple of days later Jakinda was curled up in my lap taking a nap when
I learned that someone calling himself Asphalt Man was trying to cover 
all of Denver, along with everyone who lived in the city, beneath a 
coating of some kind of viscous, tar- like compound. 

Despite the urgency of the situation I felt a momentary reluctance to
disturb that sweet, sleeping child, whose habit of using me as a pillow 
has brought me such overwhelming joy in the brief time since we met.  
There is something about the intense, unabashed pleasure and utter 
contentment that I see in the mind of this friendly, trusting little 
person when she pulls my arms around herself and softly snuggles her 
cheek into my fluff that touches something deep within my vital-energy 
pump, and makes me want nothing for myself quite so much as to just 
hold her like this forever. 

But I would not shirk my duty as a protector of those people who cannot
protect themselves, so I gently shook her awake and told her that the 
Guardians were needed. Then I summoned the others and we took off in 
the direction of the disturbance. 

Soon we arrived at the strangest scene that any of my human allies had
ever seen. Behind a vaguely humanoid figure gushing torrents of thick, 
black sludge from its upraised arms stretched block after block of 
buildings, trees, cars, and even people covered in the stuff. 

Immediately Host began running around to the human-shaped piles of
asphalt, zapping them with bolts of orange energy to disintegrate the 
deadly coating that was suffocating the people trapped inside.  And 
Hypergirl split herself into dozens of miniature incarnations in order 
to comb the surrounding area for anyone who had not yet made it to 
safety. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us confronted Asphalt Man directly.  Avian told
him that we were not going to permit him to continue in his current 
course of action, which prompted him to fling a large blob of tar at 
her.  She dodged the stuff and then used the power of a feather to 
telekinetically hurl a car at him.  A moment before it struck him he 
solidified the liquid material of his body, and the car bounced off his 
head without leaving a scratch.  Then Herberta blasted him to pieces 
with one of her missiles. 

The bits and shards of Asphalt Man melted and flowed back into a single
pool from which he reconstituted himself, completely unfazed.  Then he 
sent a wave of molten asphalt to envelope the three of us. 

Avian's protective coating deflected the stuff away from her.  And,
fortunately, my fur is impervious to dirt and other messes like this.  
In a matter of seconds it had all dripped to the ground, leaving me as 
soft and fluffy as ever.  Herberta, however, was not so lucky.  She got 
trapped under an immobilizing layer of sludge, which did not seem to 
cause her any physical injury but certainly pissed her off, and 
prompted her to use some very interesting and colorful human language. 

Then I asked the supervillain, as you might call him, why he was acting
this way, and used my sixth sensor to peer into his mind.  Immediately 
I saw great pain and distress.  I saw that he had once been a human 
being named Bernie Noble, who had become Asphalt Man after falling into 
a vat full of an experimental paving material that had been designed to 
immediately repair itself when it cracked.  Ever since his 
transformation the sight, smell, or even though of anything that was 
not a black, tarry, asphalt-like substance disturbed and aggravated him 
greatly, at times even making him feel physically ill. 

Once I saw why he was acting in this destructive and criminal manner I
knew how to stop him.  So I projected into his mind an image of a place 
where there was nothing but sand and rock for miles in every direction, 
and then showed an image of him using his abilities to create his own 
personal asphalt paradise where he could live happily ever after in 
peace and comfort. 

When Bernie understood that there was a better way to deal with what was
bothering him he immediately stopped what he was doing and began to 
reabsorb all of the sludge that he had used to cover the city. 

Then he saw the streets littered with the bodies of all the people who
had died in his rampage and became greatly agitated.  He was afraid 
that people would hunt him down and try to hurt him for what he had 
done.  So I explained to him that the desire to punish those who do 
certain things, which is to intentionally inflict some kind of 
suffering on another person, is a fundamentally criminal impulse, which 
the Guardians will not tolerate. 

I told him that even though he had committed criminal acts against other
people we would protect him from such retribution, which would be 
nothing but another act of abuse because it would not serve to undo the 
damage that he had caused or to protect anyone from further harm.  I 
also warned him that if he ever gave us any reason to believe that he 
would do something like this again, or would otherwise endanger the 
welfare of any other people, we would take more drastic steps to ensure 
that he could never hurt anyone else. 

This assurance calmed him greatly, but Bernie still worried that curious
and meddlesome people would never allow someone as unusual as him to 
live in peace.  I promised him that we would guard his privacy and 
solitude from anyone who refused to leave him alone, and then Avian 
picked him up with a feather and we all went off in search of a place 
to make his new home. 

When that task was complete we returned to the house where Herberta had
once lived with her family, which had become our base of operations.  
There we found Cain Johnson waiting for us. 

Since getting the medicine that he required Cain had transformed from
the sickly, feeble, lethargic creature that we met several weeks before 
into an energetic and vibrant figure who we barely even recognized.  
Over the course of those weeks he had also come to suspect that he 
might possess a remarkable talent which he could not explain but which 
he also could not deny, and he said that he wanted to use this talent 
to aid Herberta in the mission that she had told him about at their 
last meeting. 

When we requested that he demonstrate this ability Cain took a coin from
his pocket and asked us to tell him which side we wanted it to land on. 
 Herberta spoke the plural form of the word head, then Cain flipped the 
coin ten times and each time it landed with the picture of the human 
head facing up.  At that point Jakinda told him to do tails, and the 
next ten flips all landed with the picture of the bird facing up. 

When Cain stopped flipping the coin the others stared at him in confused
silence, knowing that we had just witnessed something very strange but 
uncertain of what exactly it was, while I began to scan his mind.  He 
took this opportunity to explain to us that things seemed to turn out 
however he would like them to be with an improbable degree of 
frequency.  He also informed us of his ability to perform incredibly 
complex calculations in his head, to figure out answers to problems 
that he doesn't really know how to solve, and to make arbitrary guesses 
about things that just happen to be correct more often than seems 
possible purely by random chance. 

But, he then told us, sometimes this stuff just didn't happen, or
stopped happening after a while, which made him wonder if it wasn't 
only a coincidence when it did. 

None of us could be sure if Cain has any superhuman ability at all,
though it seemed most probable that he does have some extraordinary 
power.  But I was sure that he was sincere about his desire to use 
whatever power he does have to help save this world from the clutches 
of its countless tyrannies, so we welcomed him into our organization. 

Jakinda then asked Cain what name he was going to use as a superhero,
and he said that he would like to be called Ace. 

She also asked him if he had any ideas about a good name for Herberta,
which none of us had been able to come up with.  After a moment's 
consideration he looked down at the shirt he wore, which had a picture 
of a robot from a cartoon series that had been quite popular several 
decades earlier.  Then he looked up at us, his face cracking into a 
mischievous grin, and he suggested that we ought to call her Bertron, 
which made us all start laughing because we knew he meant that to be a 
silly parody of the name of that rather famous robot.  Then Herberta 
said that she actually liked the name Bertron and was going to use it, 
which made us all laugh even harder. 

Later that evening we decided that with the successful completion of our
first major heroic endeavor it was a good time to announce our presence 
and intention to the world. 

Then Cain raised the question of whether we were going to try to conceal
our true identities behind our superhero personas.  After considering 
the matter of secret identities for a while we concluded that it would 
be inappropriate to have them, besides being nearly impossible for some 
of us, because our dedication to the cause of the Guardians is an 
essential part of who we all are as people, and is not something that 
we would hide or forsake while in the guise of our ordinary selves. 

The next day, when we were all rested and ready, Emerald zapped me with
a massive dose of his green energy bolts, expending every bit of the 
power that the symbions had previously absorbed from him and stored 
within themselves, while Cain concentrated on using the ability that he 
might not even have to make us succeed in what we were attempting to 
do. 

This immense jolt of energy, just as we had hoped, made it possible for
me to communicate with countless millions of minds all at the same 
time.  And that brings us up to this very moment, in which I am telling 
you this story so that you know who we are and what we are all about. 

We, the Guardians of Freedom, the sworn defenders of personal
sovereignty, are here to save all the people of Earth from every 
criminal and tyrant, every individual and organization, that wants to 
harm, exploit, or subjugate us. 

But even with our fantastic abilities this task that we have undertaken
is much too enormous for us to achieve without the help of many other 
Earthlings who share our dream of a freer world.  So I encourage each 
of you to make the choice to be one of the Guardians, and I ask you to 
share this message with as many people as possible, because the power 
of those criminal regimes that victimize the people of this world comes 
not only from those people who directly perpetrate the abusive acts but 
also from each and every person who chooses to tolerate, endorse, and 
otherwise support them, often because it does not know of any better 
alternative. 

And each person who promises to stand up with the Guardians against
criminality in all of its forms, and resolutely refuses to tolerate any 
infringement of any person's sovereign freedom, takes us one step 
closer to a world in which all who respect the freedom of others are 
truly free to do whatever makes them happy. 

So... uh... well, I guess that's about all I have to say right now.  I
would like to end this transmission by declaring that I hope this tale 
has entertained you, and inspired you to support the cause of the 
Guardians, but that is not something that I can literally hope for, 
because I already see how each of you has reacted to all that I have 
just projected into your minds.  Still, the knowledge that my words 
have failed to amuse and convince every single one of you does not 
diminish my hope that someday they will. And, by the way, this is not 
the end of the story, but since I cannot see into the future I cannot 
yet tell you anything beyond the events of this present moment.  So I 
will just say goodbye for now, and wish you all the best until I see 
you again. 


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