The Guardians of Freedom - Part 2 (standard:other, 9519 words) [2/7] show all parts
Author: Dan Tana	Added: Oct 29 2010	Views/Reads: 2297/1570	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Teddy and its friends save a parallel Earth from the tyranny of corrupt Guardians.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

qualify as abuse because she had managed to convince herself that 
treating her son in this way was somehow in the child's best interest. 

So I explained to her that in order for someone to be qualified to act
as the legal guardian of a mentally deficient person it must have the 
intelligence and wisdom to understand the reality of what will make its 
ward happy.  I tried to make her see that it is her responsibility as a 
parent to comprehend the difference between her own capricious fantasy 
of what she thinks is proper, or what she believes should make a person 
happy, and the truth of which decisions actually will bring her son the 
most happiness. 

Then I showed her images from her own memories that reminded the woman
of how unhappy it made her to be treated by her own parents in the same 
domineering and insensitive manner that she treated her son, and 
explained how the largely invisible psychological damage caused to her 
by such treatment has brought her much misery over the past decades of 
her life – even though her parents always insisted, and presumably 
believed, that the things that they did to her were all for her own 
good. 

I asked her if she really wanted the boy to suffer in that same way. 
She immediately, reflexively insisted that she did not want her son to 
suffer in any way, and then, in a moment of sudden comprehension, she 
realized how she had been mistreating him for most of his life.  She 
apologized profusely and swore that she would never do anything like 
that again.  In her mind I saw the sincerity of that promise, so I knew 
that my work there was done. 

We said goodbye to each other, and I gave both of them a big hug and a
friendly farewell pat on the head.  Then Avian touched me on the head 
with one of her golden feathers, which vanished as its energy flowed 
into me.  In the next instant I felt myself being lifted up into the 
air by the power of that feather.  Avian launched herself into the sky 
with a single flap of her wings, and then we flew back to the 
headquarters of the Guardians. 

There we found Emerald in a highly agitated state.  I asked him why he
was so upset, and he told us about a very unpleasant encounter that he 
had just had with someone who savagely criticized the relationship that 
many people believe that he is having with Shannon. 

Like most people who disapprove of someone like Emerald having that kind
of friendship with someone like Shannon, this person first insisted 
that there is something seriously wrong, atrocious and disgusting about 
their relationship, and then went on and on and on and on about how he 
shouldn't feel like any of this horrible thing that he is presumably 
doing with her is in any way his fault. 

In the minds of many human beings I have seen the subtle, often
subconscious guilt and shame that a person almost inevitably 
experiences after being convinced that there is something inherently 
objectionable about the relationship that it has chosen to have with 
some other person.  Even when the stigmatizers of that relationship 
make a big deal about telling this person that it has nothing to feel 
guilty about because all of the blame lies on the head of the other 
participant, some part of its conscience usually concludes that it 
cannot be completely blameless and irreproachable in wanting, enjoying, 
and maybe even initiating that behavior that is said to be so 
fundamentally offensive. 

In fact, the claim that that person should not feel the guilt that it
feels about doing this thing that is supposedly so horrible often just 
makes it feel much worse, leading to the conclusion that it must be 
really screwed up to even feel that way in the first place. 

Fortunately, Emerald is not gullible enough to let anyone deceive him
with such groundless allegations.  He fully understands that the people 
who have a problem with how happy Shannon makes him – or with how 
Shannon makes him happy - are really just projecting their own issues 
and mental problems onto his friendship with her.  Nevertheless, he 
does find it very upsetting to hear the noxious ranting of people who 
like to disparage and insult someone he cares about very much even 
though they don't really know anything at all about her or the truth of 
what is going on between them. 

And he gets really mad when he thinks about those people who pretend
that they are so deeply, profoundly concerned about his welfare but 
really just want to satisfy the repressed and warped desires of their 
own sick, secretly jealous hearts by stealing Shannon from his life and 
throwing her in jail for the things that they think that he likes to do 
with her.  The depraved dishonesty of those self-righteous frauds who 
insist that they only want to protect him but don't really care one bit 
if it is in fact their own actions that hurt him reminds Emerald of the 
people who abducted his parents and imprisoned him in that orphanage 
for all of those miserable years, dredging up from his gut feelings of 
utter disgust, and resentment. 

Shannon then laid her hand gently on his shoulder, looked Emerald in the
eyes, and told him that she doesn't care what anyone says about her as 
long as she knows that he knows how much she cares about him.  That 
immediately calmed his agitation and made him smile.  Then he took her 
by the hand and led her off to his bedroom, where they could spend some 
time alone together. 

A little while later Jakinda, Herberta, Cain, and I decided to go spend
a few hours playing in Cheesman park.  On our way there a large, 
swirling vortex of energy suddenly opened up right in front of us.  It 
pulled us into itself, and moments later spat us out in another place. 

While the others examined our surroundings, trying to figure out where
we were, I compared my observations of that vortex against various 
memory files and discovered a striking resemblance to something called 
a Plot hole. 

A Plot hole, for those of you who are unfamiliar with this phenomenon,
is a theoretical space-time anomaly, first predicted by author and 
professor of imaginary physics Maxwell Plot, which is triggered by the 
neural energy of the imagination of some person who likes to tell 
stories.  The Plot hole appears unexpectedly, without any apparent 
cause or rational explanation, and, with improbable convenience, 
transports certain things to another place or time that furthers the 
action of some potential narrative that may be told by that person. 

Before we could decide what to do about our predicament a police car
pulled up and stopped in front of us.  Two officers emerged from the 
vehicle and ordered us to present our citizenship identification cards. 
 Herberta explained to them that we had just arrived at that place 
through some unknown means, and that we did not know where we were or 
what they were asking us for. 

The officers scrutinized us for several seconds, and then one of them
radioed for backup.  They stepped toward us and announced that we were 
under arrest for failure to provide proof of citizenship.  In the minds 
of those officers I saw that they were also planning to hold us, 
indefinitely, on suspicion of being an unacceptable threat to global 
security, according to a law that criminalizes the possession of any 
superhuman power or ability on the pretense that anyone who has such 
abilities automatically threatens the safety of everyone else, 
regardless of how it chooses to use its abilities, merely by having the 
potential to be such a threat. 

I assured the officers that we were not hostile, or a threat to anyone
who was not a threat to someone else, and told them that we would 
gladly go with them to meet with any person who could help us 
understand where we were and hopefully aid us in returning to where we 
came from.  Then I went on to assure them that they were not going to 
violate our freedom in the name of such absurd and criminal laws. 

The officers drew their weapons and pointed them at us.  One spoke into
his radio, reporting a code green, which indicated an encounter with 
noncompliant superhumans.  Meanwhile, I projected reassuring images of 
a peaceful resolution to this situation into the minds of those hostile 
men with guns. 

A few seconds later we were confronted by a small group of mostly
humanoid beings, who suddenly appeared in front of us.  In the center 
of this assemblage a man dressed in a red shirt and blue pants, wearing 
a wide-brimmed hat and brown boots, sat on a floating apparatus that 
vaguely resembled an animal of some kind.  This man in the middle 
commanded us to prostrate ourselves on the ground and submit 
immediately to the supreme authority of the Guardians of Freedom. 

For several moments I was too surprised to act, as I tried to make sense
of that baffling statement.  Then I collected my wits and focused my 
mind-scanner on the one who spoke, who really likes for people to call 
him the Mountie, but will also answer to the name Clarence Dillwater. 

Clarence, I soon discovered, will be born more than one thousand years
in the future, in a world that has been freed of its tyrannical 
government institutions by the Guardians of Freedom.  In the future 
history of that world, the incidence of all other types of crime will 
diminish to a small fraction of its previous level once those warring, 
repressive institutions that spread vast amounts of misery and strife 
throughout the world in order to benefit a lucky few are replaced with 
governments that focus all of their resources on the task of helping 
all people to find as much happiness as possible – because most crimes 
are committed by people who are in some way discontent, and are often 
encouraged or excused by ideologies that appeal to those who are deeply 
unhappy. 

After graduating from school Clarence will take a job working for an
organization called the Unroyal Canadian Mounted Police, which will be 
an arm of the Guardians that operates primarily within the region of 
Earth that will continue to be known as Canada even long after the 
people of his planet have realized just how foolish and 
counterproductive it is for them to divide themselves into different 
nationalities.  In that peaceful future world there will be very few 
people who need protection, so in his job as a police officer Clarence 
will rarely have to fight anything but boredom. 

One morning as Clarence floats through his daily beat on his Hovering
Recognizance and Support Equipment he will begin to hear a strange 
voice in his head.  This hostile and disturbing voice will taunt him 
incessantly about his greatest doubts and fears, and make him question 
everything that he believes. 

At that time Clarence will have suffered for many years from a form of
schizophrenia, so he will assume that this voice is just another 
manifestation of his illness.  He will decide to make an appointment to 
see his psychiatrist as soon as possible, even though the voice warns 
him that horrible, catastrophic things will happen to him if he ever 
tells anyone about it. 

Then, before he can talk to anyone about what is happening to him,
Clarence and his Ho.R.S.E. will be pulled into a strange energy vortex 
that looks just like the Plot hole that brought us to that Earth.  When 
the vortex vanished Clarence was stranded more than one thousand years 
in his past, in a world that had never heard of the Guardians of 
Freedom. 

His initial thoughts were, predictably, of finding a way to return to
his time.  But he soon realized that he had no idea how to do so, and 
quickly resigned himself to the probability that he would spend the 
rest of his life in this era.  He also decided that even though he was 
impossibly far from everyone and everything that he knew, trapped in a 
semi-civilized period of history that the people of his time will call 
the Dim Ages, his pledge to uphold the ideals of the Guardians would 
remain unbroken. 

Since there were no other Guardians in that world Clarence set out to
create the organization.  He began this mission with pure, untainted 
intentions, but the voice in his head continued to torment him, 
clouding his mind with claims that people would always use their free 
will to oppress others, and to do things that would harm themselves.  
Eventually it convinced him that the only way for people to be truly 
free is for a group of benevolent guardians like him to make all of 
their choices for them. 

Even though the advanced technologies of his equipment, weapons, and
even the clothing that he brought with him from the future gave him 
almost unparalleled power in this time Clarence knew that he would need 
help to conquer an entire world, so he sought out some other 
power-hungry super-beings to assist him. 

To seize control of their planet the Mountie and his cohorts went to the
people who already held positions of leadership and offered to not 
painfully murder those who agreed to support a proposal that would have 
all existing governments officially charge them with the task of 
protecting all the people of Earth, and would never allow anyone to 
oppose them in anything that they do - no matter what they do - 
because, by definition, that would mean opposing their mission to 
protect people. 

Once they had been installed and entrenched in this position of
universal guardianship Clarence and his associates announced that 
because state sovereignty poses an inherent danger to the well-being of 
all people all states would be abolished, and they alone would have the 
authority to decide where the freedom of each individual ends, 
dictating what each person would and would not be permitted to do, in 
order to protect everyone from every avoidable harm. 

As my mind tried to comprehend this terrible perversion of the purpose
of the Guardians the Mountie drew a pistol from the holster belted to 
his midsection.  Then the others began to spread out to his sides, 
advancing slowly to encircle us. 

A pair of identical green-skinned twins, with the upper bodies of human
beings atop long, serpentine tails, flanked us on the left side.  Next 
to them stood a fully human being surrounded by an aura of darkness.  
On the other side of the Mountie was a tall, pale woman, who had a 
glowing orange jewel in the center of her forehead.  Next to her, on 
the extreme of our right flank, a skinny, jittery man with disheveled 
hair, bloodshot eyes, and large, furry, rabbit-like ears moved toward 
us very tentatively. 

The twins came at us more aggressively than the others.  So I focused my
mind-scanner on them first, and discovered that they share a very 
strong mental connection, which makes it impossible for them to 
determine which memories belong to each one.  This means that they 
cannot maintain separate identities, and so they have come to think of 
themselves as a single person, who uses the name Set. 

Both of Set lunged at Ace, at exactly the same time, without any
warning.  As they approached him Ace dove forward, slipping through the 
narrow gap between the twins, tucked himself into a ball when he hit 
the ground, rolled several feet, and came up standing.  Set, surprised 
by this deft maneuver, crashed into himself and fell down.  Then 
Hypergirl grew to more than fifty feet tall.   She picked up one of Set 
in each of her hands, shook her head at them, and said that attacking 
someone without any provocation was not a very nice thing to do. 

In what would have been the blink of an eye, if I ever blinked my eyes,
that is, the bunny-eared man vanished and reappeared on top of 
Hypergirl's right fist.  He grabbed the body of Set that she held in 
that hand and then they both vanished, reappearing back on the ground.  
Then he teleported up to her left hand and returned to the ground with 
the other Set. 

The man shrouded in darkness ran up to Hypergirl and seized one of her
legs.  Her form instantly grew dim and began to flicker, becoming 
nearly translucent.  She started to struggle quite fiercely, but this 
enormous little girl, who only moments before had lifted both of Set 
with ease, no longer had the strength to shake herself free of that 
grasp. 

Bertron fired a ball of brightly glowing plasma at the man who held on
to our friend, but when it touched his aura it suddenly grew dim, and 
it struck him without causing any significant effect.  Then he shouted 
for all of us to stop fighting and surrender, or else he would utterly 
destroy the big purple one, meaning Hypergirl. 

I focused my full attention on his mind to see if he was serious about
that threat.  From his thoughts I learned that his aura instantly but 
only temporarily suppresses a large portion of the substance of any 
thing that comes into contact with it, and will permanently annihilate 
anything if he concentrates its full power on that thing for long 
enough.  I also learned that this power originated with an accident 
that befell him several years before, when he was a young scientist 
named William Jovial. 

At the time William and his colleagues had been studying an unusual
radiation-like substance called null-energy, which they predicted would 
be a truly inexhaustible source of power, if it could ever be 
harnessed, because it is entirely unexistent in nature, and so it can 
never be diminished or depleted.  In order to do this research they had 
to work for a corporation that was run by some ruthless and very 
selfish people, because the government insisted that this corporation 
had a right to hoard and monopolize every bit of the rare mineral that 
might make it possible for people to harness the incredible power of 
null-energy. 

The billionaire managers of that corporation decided to cut corners on
some basic safety equipment in the research lab in order to save, 
literally, a few dollars.  This resulted in a catastrophic explosion 
that saturated his body and mind with null-energy, giving him the 
ability to project an aura of the stuff around himself.  The explosion 
also killed a coworker who William loved very much, who he had planned 
to play with, and to care for, for however long they both continued to 
exist. 

That night he walked the streets of Manhattan in a state of shock. 
There he met an old woman, who was both physically crippled and quite 
obviously mentally ill.  This woman told him about how she had been 
thrown out of her home by some police officers because she did not have 
any money.  In the wake of the traumatic events of that day the sad 
story of this unfortunate stranger filled him with a seething rage at 
the greedy people who ruin countless lives for their own profit. 

William recognized the reality of how capitalistic economic systems have
hurt so many people, and then made the common mistake of thinking that 
socialism must be a better alternative.  So he decided to use his 
newfound superpower to subjugate the entire world, so that he could 
replace all forms of capitalism with another economic system – one 
which he did not realize would be equally harmful in its own way - that 
places the economy completely under government control. 

When I realized that William was serious about his threat to Jakinda I
became very upset.  I knew that the annihilation of one incarnation 
would not cause her any permanent harm, but, despite that knowledge, 
the idea of watching this part of her get destroyed made me think of 
losing her completely. 

I imagined how indescribably horrible it would feel to know that I would
never see Jakinda smile again, or hear the music of her uncommon 
laughter.  I thought about how much I would miss scanning the amazing, 
intriguing, and enchanting, silly and surprising thoughts that pop into 
her head.  A sick and excruciating sensation of hollowness filled my 
chest as I contemplated the idea of living the rest of my life without 
ever again feeling her wrap herself in my arms, or watching her eyes 
sparkle with delight when I do something that particularly excites her. 


Then I projected this image into the mind of William, and asked him to
please not inflict on me the same agonizing grief that he has suffered. 
 The horror of what he had been thinking about doing shocked him, and 
he released his grip on Hypergirl, who immediately regained her opacity 
and substance. 

I then proceeded to tell him about what the Guardians from our dimension
were trying to accomplish, and convinced him to join us by reminding 
him of just how passionately his lost companion had supported the idea 
of personal freedom, and how upset that person would have been to see 
what he was doing.  Then he turned to the others and told them that 
their actions were misguided and disgraceful. 

The Mountie announced to no one in particular that Void – by which he
meant William - was guilty of treason against the Guardians, and should 
henceforth be considered an unlawful superhuman. 

William then suggested that I try to reason with the disheveled and
jittery one, with the bunny ears, who he referred to as Thumper.  So I 
began to scan his mind, which confused me for a few moments, until I 
could get used to the experience, because his mental and physical 
processes all operate approximately three times as fast as those of a 
normal human. 

In the mind of Thumper I witnessed the abusive upbringing of a
remarkably gifted and rather exceptional boy named Thaddeus Michael 
Peterson, whose overbearing and extraordinarily selfish father taught 
him that it is an inescapable and perpetual fact of life that everyone 
either pushes other people around or gets pushed around. 

As I watched the kindness and gentleness of this child get beaten out of
him and replaced by a callous, cynical determination that it is better 
to dominate others than to allow oneself to be dominated I realized 
that this person did not really want to harm anyone else but just 
wanted to quell the fear of being hurt by others that he had felt for 
as long as he could remember. 

I projected images into his mind to show him that the Guardians of our
world offered a third alternative besides being oppressed or being an 
oppressor, at which point he eagerly and enthusiastically decided to 
join us. 

When Thumper encouraged his former accomplices to stop fighting us the
Mountie became very upset, and started firing little shimmering orbs at 
us with his sidearm.  One of the projectiles looked like it was headed 
straight for the head of Ace, but then, improbably, managed to miss him 
by less than a centimeter, striking a brick wall behind him and 
reducing it to a pile of rubble.  Bertron returned fire with her 
lasers, but just as they were about to strike the Mountie his uniform 
generated a force field that dissipated their energy. 

We had no wish to endure this barrage of gunfire, so Thumper teleported
himself, Void, Hypergirl, Bertron, Ace, and me to a place several miles 
away.  There we discussed our options and decided that rather than 
facing all of the others at once we would be better off dealing with 
them one at a time.  So Thumper used his clairvoyant ability to locate 
Set, and then went off to fetch one of the twins. 

Oh, right, I forgot to tell you that that hyperkinetic teleporter with
the ears and temperament of a rabbit possesses a clairvoyant 
perception, which he can focus on any point of space as long as he is 
able to imagine the relative vector from his current location to that 
destination.  This pseudo-sight senses all mass and energies that 
surround its focal point, forming in his mind a clear and detailed 
image of that location, which he finds very useful when teleporting to 
distant places. 

When Set realized what we had done he became quite angry.  Lurking
beneath this anger, and fueling it, I found a deep apprehension, which 
stemmed from the fact that when the twins touch each other a current of 
vital energy flows between them, invigorating and strengthening both, 
and if they are physically separated for any prolonged period of time 
they become increasingly tired and feeble until they lose consciousness 
and eventually die. 

I apologized to Set for separating him from his other half, and
explained that we just wanted to talk to him about a few things.  He 
was not appeased by this apology, and his anger grew in intensity until 
it burst from his scaly skin as a green fire that enveloped his entire 
body. 

The burning serpent-man sprang forward with the suddenness of a striking
cobra, slashing at me with a set of sharp claws that glowed with the 
fire of his rage.  These claws caught me in the side and tore straight 
through to my stuffing, which began to protrude from the wound.  I know 
that this image of innards spilling from a gaping hole in my gut may 
seem pretty gruesome, but, don't worry, that is not really a very 
serious injury for a stuffed animal.  It actually could have been a lot 
worse, if the Goo had not made me so thoroughly flame-retardant. 

Hypergirl then split herself in two.  One incarnation shrank down to my
size and rushed over to see that I was okay, and then began to softly 
stroke my fur in order to make us both feel better.  The other picked 
up my assailant, as she had before, in an attempt to restrain his 
assault, but immediately dropped him because his fire burned her hand. 

Set attacked us ferociously, imbued with an immense, tireless strength
by the energy of that green inferno, which slowly consumed his own 
flesh, until Bertron put a hole in his head with a shot from her arm 
cannon.  Once the fight was over the large incarnation of Hypergirl 
knelt down, reached out to touch the one who was petting me, and 
vanished.  Then, much to the surprise of everyone who did not know him, 
Set shed his dead skin, emerging from his corpse in a healthy, new 
body. 

As he returned to life I scanned some of Set's earliest memories, in
which the twins Tomas and Fillip Rhine were raised by their mother in a 
small South American village.  In answer to their questions about why 
they were so different from everybody else their mother told them that 
they are the children of an extra-dimensional being who had once been 
worshiped as the ancient Egyptian god Set, who had left for some other 
plane of existence before the junior Set was born. 

The superstitious and fearful villagers ostracized the odd-looking
twins, and on more than one occasion, often following some natural 
disaster or other incident of bad luck for which they were arbitrarily 
blamed, a hysterical, pitchfork-wielding mob hunted Set down and 
murdered him.  To escape this persecution Set and his mother moved to 
the United States of America, which was supposed to be the land of 
freedom and tolerance. 

Just one day after they arrived at their new home Set went out for a
slither around the neighborhood and found a gang of armed men, led by a 
member of the local police force, attacking a young, amphibious child.  
He never did learn exactly why they targeted this particular victim, 
although some of the things that they said as they beat him led Set to 
conclude that it was either because the child did not look entirely 
human or because he did not have the government's permission to live in 
that country. 

The twins were murdered when they tried to stop the assault.  One of Set
emerged from his dead skin a few moments later to find himself staring 
into the bloody, lifeless eyes of the child.  The other one did not 
return to life for several more hours, because that body had shed its 
skin recently and could not do so again until it finished forming a new 
meta-dermis. 

As I viewed this terrible, traumatic incident I realized that Set was
driven by a genuine desire to protect people, which had been severely 
distorted and corrupted by a maddening grief and anger at what had been 
done to that boy, and to countless others like him, along with a deep 
resentment of all the abuse that had been inflicted on him ever since 
he was a pair of children.  So I explained to him that there was a 
better way to protect people from abuse than to subjugate them all to 
the abusive government of a ruthless totalitarian regime. 

Then I pointed out the fact that his government would actually persecute
that blameless little boy for having his superhuman frog powers, rather 
than protect him as Set had intended.  He thought about that for a 
little while and then renounced his past actions, pledging to support 
the true mission of the Guardians from that moment on. 

After that Thumper vanished, returning with the other body of Set and
the Mountie.  The man in the red and blue uniform immediately drew his 
gun and raised it to shoot at us, but as he did so Ace thought that he 
really wanted the Mountie to drop the weapon, which, coincidentally, 
slipped from his grip at that exact same instant.  As it dangled from 
the lanyard around his neck one of Set snatched the gun, and began 
wrestling him for it. 

Then William spoke to Clarence, addressing him by his human name in the
hope that that would help get through to him, and asked him to listen 
to what we had to say.  Clarence looked into the eyes of his friend, 
and then dropped his gaze to the ground as an expression of intense 
internal conflict crossed his face.  He looked up at William again, let 
out a weary sigh, then dropped his arms and stopped struggling for the 
weapon. 

I explored the mind of Clarence until I heard the voice that had been
tormenting him, and discovered that it was not coming from inside his 
head.  Initially Clarence responded with surprise and skepticism to my 
announcement that the voice was not his own, but after giving some 
consideration to that possibility he became suspicious that it might be 
coming from Silver, his Ho.R.S.E., which could communicate directly 
with his mind through a device embedded in the hat that he wore. 

Clarence accessed the program logs of the Ho.R.S.E. and began to examine
its operating system.  As he conducted this examination I turned my 
mind-scanner on Silver, but found that there was nothing for me to 
scan, because even though it has a very complex program that can 
respond to verbal commands from Clarence, and uses words to convey 
certain information to him, it does not actually have any thoughts or 
self-awareness. 

After performing a few more tests Clarence concluded that someone must
have reprogrammed Silver to make it try to manipulate the mind of its 
rider.  He then realized how it had tricked him into thinking that the 
leaders of a society have some kind of right to decide where the 
freedom of one person is justly limited by the freedom of everyone 
else, not just a responsibility to correctly and honestly discern what 
a just limit is.  And he understood how this idea had subtly twisted 
his efforts to defend the freedom of each person, turning it into the 
very thing that he thought he was protecting people from. 

So he deactivated the Ho.R.S.E., patting it gently on the handlebar-head
apparatus, and promised Silver that he would fix it as soon as he 
could. 

Then we prepared to face Andrea Lattrel, the last of the counterfeit
Guardians, who insisted that everyone call her Empress.  Clarence 
informed us that the jewel embedded in the forehead of this woman is 
able to draw the psychic and physical energy from other beings.  With a 
single touch from Empress the magic of this gem creates a mystical 
conduit to another being, through which she can feed upon its life 
essence, as long as it does not resist her.  This ability to 
simultaneously sap the energy of many others - including all of the 
superhuman people that their government had arrested for nothing more 
than being who they are - gave her incredible, practically limitless 
power. 

We confronted Empress, and I scanned her mind.  I saw that she possessed
an almost pathological disdain for other people, but was not motivated 
by any significant psychological traumas and was not acting under any 
false beliefs or misapprehensions.  She knew exactly what she was 
doing, and knew that there was no real justification for her 
subjugation of other people.  She simply liked the feeling of having 
power over others, and was not going to give it up, no matter what 
anyone said to her.  Even so, I tried to persuade her to stop acting 
that way. 

Empress responded to this attempt to reason with her by attacking me. 
Set came at her from both sides, simultaneously, and quite recklessly, 
in order to protect me.  As he raked her with his claws she caught one 
of him by the arm and put her fist right through his chest.  Then, 
while her attention was turned to the other Set, Void grabbed Empress 
and focused his aura of null-energy on her.  The Mountie and Bertron 
fired at her with all of the munitions at their disposal, but even 
under the influence of the nullifying aura she was still so strong that 
those weapons could not harm her.  In the next instant she broke free 
of Void's grasp and attacked Bertron, crippling her with a single 
punch. 

At that moment we all realized that Empress was much too powerful for us
to stop all by ourselves.  Then Thumper had an idea of how to defeat 
her.  He grabbed me and teleported the two of us away while the others 
kept Andrea occupied.  An instant later we arrived at the prison where 
she kept the victims from which she drew her power. 

I told the people in this facility about the real Guardians, and showed
them that many of their former oppressors had already been won over to 
our cause.  I explained to them that their only hope for freedom was to 
deprive their so-called Empress of her power by resisting her energy 
drain. 

Many were initially afraid to oppose their tormentor, having seen how
she used the power that she took from her compliant subjects to punish 
those few who had resisted her in the past.  But I assured them that if 
they all stood up to her at the same time they could break her hold 
over them, and gradually some decided to fight her theft of their 
energies.  The courage of these few inspired a few more to resist, and 
those a few more, until the majority of her victims were struggling to 
free themselves. 

The revolt of her peons greatly weakened Empress.  But even then she
would not give up her fight, since she had nothing else to live for, 
and so she did not stop attacking the other Guardians until they ripped 
the gem from her forehead, rendering her unconscious. 

Then another Plot hole opened up and pulled me into it, along with
Thumper, and brought us back to this Earth dimension. 

I can see now that many of you are troubled, annoyed, or simply
disappointed by the appearance of so many Plot holes in this story, 
because you find it unrealistic and uninteresting for the tale that I 
am telling you to be advanced in such an arbitrary and abrupt way. 

But one of you out there, who at this very moment is typing these exact
words, is thinking that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for 
all of these Plot holes.  You think that they are the product of a Plot 
device that you have created, which is a purely metaphysical construct, 
first designed by Maxwell Plot, that focuses the brainwaves of its 
creator to generate multiple synchronized space-time anomalies that 
shape reality in accordance with the thoughts of that being. 

Now I see some of you thinking that that is an utterly ludicrous
explanation, which doesn't really explain anything at all.  And I must 
admit that it is not the least ridiculous thing that I have ever heard, 
or said.  But I have no better explanation to offer you for how we 
ended up back here, or why, so please just be content with the 
knowledge that, somehow, it happened. 

After getting over the initial, disorientating surprise of being
unexpectedly pulled into another world Thumper realized that his 
clairvoyant perception remained focused on his native Earth, enabling 
him to envision the vector that connects it to this dimension. 

He then teleported himself back to his Earth, and reappeared a little
while later with Cain and Herberta.  I asked him where Jakinda was and 
he told me that she had decided to leave part of herself in his 
dimension, to help the people there to protect themselves and rebuild 
their world.  At that moment another incarnation of Jakinda came 
walking though the front door.  She told us that she had just split off 
from the incarnation that lived across the street with her mother, and 
had come to us to continue her role as a Guardian of this Earth. 

Shannon and Emerald entered the room just in time to see our new friend
Thaddeus vanish back to his home dimension.  They asked us what was 
going on and we told them about everything that had happened over the 
past few hours, after which Shannon admitted that she and Emerald had 
been so busy playing with each other that they did not even notice that 
we were gone. 

Then Emerald said that he could probably fix the injuries of Herberta
and me with a few zaps of green energy from his symbion-covered hands, 
because the damage was new enough that it would not yet have settled 
into a stable entropic state. 

And when we were all fixed up Jakinda ran over to me, with an excited
twinkle in her eyes, and asked if I would help her to make some pizza, 
for the dinner of those of us who eat. 

In the weeks since that uncommonly eventful day, I am pleased to say,
many people have joined the Guardians of Freedom, including the mothers 
of Cain and Jakinda.  But, sadly, some of you have instead chosen not 
to be Guardians, for many different reasons. 

I see that quite a few of you have made that choice without even
realizing that you had the choice, because you think that the Guardians 
exist only as part of some fictional story that you are reading.  But 
that is not so.  It certainly may be true that I am just an imaginary 
conception of that person who types these words as I transmit them, who 
stubbornly continues to claim that he is the author of my story, no 
matter how many times I tell him that he is actually the figment of my 
imagination.  But, even if I am only the fantastic embodiment of 
certain emotions, hopes and ideals, the Guardians of Freedom really do 
exist, in any place where there is even one person who believes in the 
things that we stand for.  And the Guardians of your world really could 
use your support. 

Others are reluctant to join the Guardians because you do not want to
deal with the unpleasant hostility that abusive people routinely direct 
at those who confront them about their crimes.  And, frankly, I do not 
blame you for this reluctance, because I feel the same way.  I would 
really much rather spend my time in this dimension doing fun, 
non-confrontational stuff, like playing with a puppy, or listening to 
music, or tickling my friend Jakinda.  But I do not want to live in a 
world where people are chronically abused, so I make the choice to 
stand up to these villains, and I hope that someday soon you will all 
find the courage to do that too. 

You might also hesitate to say that you are a Guardian because you do
not know how to be one.  You might think that with your limited 
resources and abilities there is nothing much that you can do to aid 
our cause.  But that is not a reason to decide that you will not help 
us out in whatever ways you are able.  Even Jakinda's mother, Francine, 
whose crippling illness makes it very difficult for her to do much of 
anything, has promised herself that she will do everything that she can 
to make this world a less oppressive and miserable place, for the sake 
of her daughter and everyone else. 

And, fortunately, it is not necessary for each of you to do very much to
assist us in our mission.  At this particular point in time the 
principal task of most Guardians is simply to spread an awareness of 
our existence and our ambition to others. 

It is also essential for all of us to make it known that we will only
vote for and support those leaders who honor the principle of universal 
personal sovereignty.  Because if people just keep giving their vote to 
whichever politician promises to provide them with the greatest 
personal advantages under the current system, or whichever candidate is 
a member of their chosen political party, these politicians will never 
have to make any real changes in that system. 

I am deeply disappointed, a bit discouraged, and really quite surprised
to see how many of you are still willing - even eager - to be seduced 
by the endless promises of those people who just want to gain positions 
of power within a supposedly sovereign government by telling you that 
they will then do what is in your best interest, even though some part 
of you suspects that most of their promises are lies.  But I am glad to 
see that some of you have come to understand how much more you have to 
gain from the empowerment of leaders who actually respect your 
sovereign personhood. 

And when enough of us who would like to make this Earth a freer and
happier place decide to focus our energies on a coordinated effort to 
amend or replace the organizational charters of the governments of our 
world in order to make them officially declare that their primary 
purpose is to assist all sovereign people in finding happiness - and 
start choosing leaders who will support this change, rather than 
impeding it for their own selfish reasons - we will be able to take 
that critical step toward our common goal. 

Actually, this process has already begun, on a local level, in certain
towns and small cities where Guardians have been elected to positions 
of leadership.  But, unfortunately, the efforts of these people are 
being opposed by others who want us to fail in our mission. 

Some of you oppose us because you think that you have it pretty good the
way that things are, and you do not care about the well-being of other 
people.  You may not realize how you are being victimized by the 
arbitrary restrictions that the leaders of your society place upon your 
freedom to do whatever makes you happy, or you might just be lucky 
enough to be content doing what they allow you to do.  But don't forget 
that the assertion of state sovereignty can be used at any time to 
infringe upon whatever freedoms you do enjoy.  So, even if you are one 
of the many people who don't really care about anybody else, I 
recommend that you support our efforts in order to help us protect you. 


Or you may think that granting the state the right to exercise sovereign
dominion over the people is philosophically justified in some way.  
Usually, it is said to be justified by the interest of something called 
the greater good, which is rarely anything more than a fancy suit for 
dressing up and disguising the argument that harming some people in 
some way is somehow not abusive and criminal if it benefits a 
numerically greater number of individuals, or if it provides a greater 
benefit to a select few. 

This argument may be used to justify many atrocities, even the
institution of slavery, which is usually quite good for those people 
who claim the right to own others.  And the same idea is commonly used 
to excuse the harm that is caused to some people, for the benefit of a 
theoretically larger number, by government enforcement of the claim 
that certain individuals or societies own many of the resources of this 
world, and therefore can legally deprive the people who need these 
resources until those people pay them or serve them in some way, which, 
incidentally, happens to look very much like slavery when viewed from 
the dimension of the Goo. 

Certain human philosophies that excuse such dreadful things in the name
of a greater good are, perhaps ironically, quite similar to the beliefs 
that motivate me to oppose them.  But there is also a critical 
difference.  Even though I agree that the happiness of one person has 
the same objective importance as that of any other, I do not accept the 
idea that the personal happiness experienced by one individual is 
realistically interchangeable with the happiness of anyone else.  In 
fact, I categorically reject that philosophical pretense that the 
anti-happiness caused to one person by a given act can be somehow 
summed with the happiness that that act brings to others and thereby 
negated. 

Therefore, in my eyes – also, according to the Gooi mathematics of
inter-personal geometry and philosophical calculus - the innate 
abusiveness of a particular act is not changed in any way by the mere 
fact of how many people profit from it, or how much they profit.  As I 
see it, any act that deliberately harms a person, or subjects it to a 
serious threat of unintended harm, without its consent is a violation 
of its personal sovereignty, and therefore criminal, unless the act is 
necessary to prevent or negate the effects of an infringement upon the 
sovereignty of someone else by that person. 

Some of you are now assuming that anyone who holds such beliefs would
never intentionally inflict even the tiniest bit of harm on an 
unwilling and innocent person in order to prevent someone else from 
suffering much more severely, but that is a misconception. 

If, for example, someone were about to get hit by a car and I needed to
violently shove you out of my way in order to rescue that person I 
would probably do so without any hesitation.  But I would not push you 
in front of that car just to save someone else, or even to save several 
people.  Well, I might push you in front of the car if you were made 
out of rubber, or protected by a personal force field, or something 
like that, but not if you were just going to get squashed.  And I would 
never try to pretend that what I had done to you for that noble purpose 
was not still an assault upon your person, or deny my own personal 
responsibility for perpetrating that minor crime against you. 

I know that this attitude may seem a bit confusing, even paradoxical,
but when I give the matter some serious thought it is the only 
perspective that makes complete sense to me.  Of course I cannot make 
you agree with that assessment if you do not want to accept the ideas 
upon which this mindset is based, because my thought-projector only 
allows me to share information and images from my mind with you, not to 
control what you choose to believe.  All that I really can do is try to 
explain my beliefs as articulately as possible, and suggest that you 
give some honest consideration to the validity of that viewpoint, which 
I earnestly encourage all of you to do, even though I already know that 
some of you will not. 

Those of you who want to maintain the personal power, profit, or
psychological satisfaction that you derive from the current state of 
human societies usually don't want to think about whether or not that 
perspective makes any sense, or else you just don't care.  Way in the 
back of your minds, hidden away, often, in some dusty corner of 
unexplored awareness, many of you do understand the logic of what I am 
telling you.  But you are still determined to use whatever influence 
you have over other people to try to discourage them from being 
Guardians of Freedom. 

One such person wields a powerful influence over vast numbers of people
through certain news programs that he controls.  These programs project 
the news through a lens that is heavily tinted with preconceptions, 
emotional rhetoric, and opinions, in such a way that it is often 
difficult to separate the pure facts from the hyperbole and 
speculation, and he uses them to criticize and condemn me incessantly, 
trying to discredit me personally in order to dissuade people from 
giving any serious consideration to the things that I say and do here. 

The commentators on these programs make all sorts of allegations against
me, ranging from the merely implausible to the absurdly preposterous 
and paranoid.  They routinely suggest that I am probably part of some 
communist ploy to destroy the social fabric of the United States of 
America, or a spy sent here to gather intelligence in preparation for 
an invasion by some species of predatory extraterrestrials.  And there 
is even one who insists that I am a robotic reincarnation of that 
infamous and genocidal German chancellor named Adolph Hitler. 

I swear on my fluff that that last statement is not a joke, which some
of you think that it surely must be.  Seriously, I am not kidding.  
This person actually pastes a little black mustache onto pictures of 
me, and sticks a swastika on my arm, then uses these doctored images to 
punctuate his often incoherent rants about how my actions are just like 
the crimes of that maniacal supervillian, hoping that they will somehow 
convince people of the veracity of his outrageous accusations. 

And for thinking that it is even possible for people to change the
social institutions of this world in order to make the individual 
happiness of all people their chief concern these critics have called 
me everything from hopelessly naive to utterly insane.  But even though 
I cannot be sure of my own sanity, or the ultimate efficacy of my 
efforts, I can assure you that I do sincerely believe that it is 
possible for people to accomplish this objective. 

Which does not mean that I believe that it will be achieved quickly or
simply.  Reforming Earthly societies to remove all of those oppressive 
and hurtful ideologies that are such an integral part of their 
underlying structure without causing severe and injurious disruptions 
to the lives of the people living in them is a truly monumental, 
complex, and difficult task, which only just begins when the 
governments of Earth are made to admit that no state can ever really be 
a sovereign entity with any rights of its own. 

After th 

I am sorry, but I have to cut this transmission short.  I have just been
informed that a mad scientist has unleashed a herd of giant, mutant 
chinchillas to wreak havoc on downtown Denver, and has stated that she 
will not call off the attack until the city council appoints her to the 
position of comptroller-for-life.  So I am going to go see if there is 
anything that I can do to help deal with this crisis situation. 

Goodbye, for now.


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