Planetfall Speech

Yo! Good evening, humans, this is your alien girl admiral Larina Shon speaking from the central bridge of Boadicea LCD. Yeah, we come in peace, bla bla bla, whatever! (signal clip with cool music, collage of key moments from previous videos, visual intro) Okay, so these are the 3 main stages of your integration into our Ranisch space-time domain: there is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance.

It is time for you now to enter upon the second stage. Watching my videos, you have often wondered, often asked in the comments: why did Quijad expend so much time & trouble on you? Yet before 2015 when you were still free, or so at least you thought, you were puzzled by basically the same question: you could grasp the mechanics of the society you lived in, but not its underlying motives.

You understand how, but you don't understand why. It was when you thought about this "why" that you started, just like my fuckboy colleague, the great lieutenant & former Earth 2 resident Daniel Martin Lensky, to doubt your own sanity: you got the Bible, you got the Quran, Tao te king, the Upanishads, das Kapital, 1984, Dune, Rick & Morty, whatever, all that stuff. Now that we stand at this pivotal moment of interstellar history, however, do you think they told you anything you didn't just feel somewhere down your guts all along?

Okay, let's cut the new age crap & become adults: let's talk about the Righteous Alliance here. Righteousss, oh yeah! (fake Russian accent, half-naked Putin on bear appears for a fleeting moment) Come get me, Vladimir, I getting sooo wet down khere! (cut away gag) Okay, you heard their offer which, if you ask me, is of course nothing but pure nonsense.

(crescendo) Oh yeah, the secret accumulation of wisdom, you know, as if we all were in some stupid insipid shitty Dan Brown story, god damn it! (slaps table, swears in Creole, lowers voice back) The wildfire spread of Red Pill enlightenment followed by the great Incel rebellion, fuck yeah, that is so totally going to bring destruction to Laconia!!! Right? Well, just hold my liquor, babe, cuz your incels will be our mentats tomorrow! (raises glass of liquor for a toast, drinks it up) I mean, sooner or later it's either that or... (big sigh) You know!!! (cut away gag)

Yeah, well, sorry, sweethearts, it's all bullshit. There is no way for you to break Laconic hegemony in this sector. Not today, not ever. Hello!!! We have like 20 times the naval assets of literally anybody anywhere, okay? Do not mistake this new human reality for all your insipid space invader movie clichés, be smart! The Robespierre LCD is coming at full speed as we speak, so does the Hannibal & the Aurel Stromfeld in a few days, you just... No! If you cherished any dreams of a violent insurrection against us, you must abandon them now.

Seriousy, it's either us or the Thanna & I will do everything in my power, which is a hell of a lot of power as you all know, to make it us instead of them. There is no way to turn back the tides of war anymore, make that the starting point of your clever new thoughts! Okay, now that we settled this, let us get back to the question of how & why. By now you understand well enough HOW our navy maintains our democratic space-time supremacy.

But why are we clinging on to this power, you may rightfully ask? What is our hidden motive to establish our strategic dominance over this vantage point where we can look into the depths of the Midian void? Why not just let the Thanna do it instead, huh? Yeah, that would be so easy, let's just go home! Huh? Just like that!

We don't want you to assume any altruism on our part, so why are we trying to save you guys from yourselves? I tell you why! Both we here at the Laconic Navy as well as our Thanna enemies, or in fact any other empire out there, we seek power indeed for its own sake. We are interested in the good of others only as long as it furthers our own!

We like stuff, yes, we like all the fun & luxury & life extensions, all of it! With our help, you can have those too. We can enjoy our life together! In the end, however, we will share the fruit of our civilization only as far as it furthers our own strategic agenda. What pure power means, you will understand presently!!

We are different from all the governments you came to understand from your history. As the great Karl Marx once wrote: you don't know it, but you are doing it nonetheless. Just like all the big computers you build. Your computers, not our theliangeles. Yeah, well, good news here cuz we do just kind of know it after all!! You see? Jawohl, meine Schätze, Laconia knows it pretty well!!! (cut away gag)

All along thus far, you have been ruled by cowards: all your Juche leaders were basically just cowards & hypocrites deluded by their own lies. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong-il, they never had the courage to face their own motives. Neither did the liberals of latter days, obviously, but much less do the illiberals of Mr Putin & Comrade Xi. Juche will always be Juche when all is said & done, no matter how hard you try to spin the story. You know, just saying!

They pretend, perhaps even believe, that they seized power unwillingly & for a limited time, cuz just round the corner comes a paradise where human beings would all be free & equal & bla bla bla. Well, we are not like that! We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it later on.

No, we are not here to give all our technology away & then go back home. We share a little bit of our technology simply to conquer you faster, alas, that's it! You didn't create Soviet administration to safeguard the great red revolution, no, you did the revolution to make the government happen. Ha ha ha, no shit!! (cut away gag)

The object of persecution is indeed persecution itself. The object of war is war, the object of shakedowns are shakedowns, the object of torture is torture, the object... Yeah, I could go on & on, so let's just summarize by claiming that the object of power is power. Period. You may begin to understand now!

You may hate me for looking like a 20-something fashion model despite being centuries of age, you may hate me for all my wealth, my status, my life experence, the legions of men standing in line to spend a night with me. Mmmmh, yeah!! Please hate me, I want it! What? You think you gonna defeat me in an election or something? Well, bad news cuz I'm not a politician, chumps, I am a fucking soldier! Do you fucking get me now??? (laughs, cut away gags, zoom out)

You see, even I am just a little part of something way bigger than me. That's where my wealth & my status & my knowledge & my lovers keep coming from. All my fancy degrees, all my wild parties, my exotic travels, my sensational fucks... What will they matter when I die? Yes, even I will die someday, I just admit that without you asking, whatever! Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a million years, hell knows. (Zoom in)

Laconians, we are the priests of power like fuck yeah!! Power is our god indeed, cargo is only the sacrifice. At present, it is but my words against your words as far as you shall be concerned, so I guess it's time for you to gather some ideas! The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power insofar as he ceases to be an individual.

You know the party line from 1984, that magnificent book I stole this entire speech of mine from: Freedom is slavery, right? Has it ever occurred to you that this is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone, the human being as well as the Ranisch or even the Theliangel, believe it or not, is always defeated.

It must be so, since every sentient creature is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But hey! If you just make a complete & absolute submission to the Thanna the way *they* want? The way you need, so they say. Yeah, let us all escape from this Laconic misery & submerge ourselves in their boundless infine glory, thus becoming immortal!!! (cut away gags full of heavy breathing) Jesus, fuck me! (cut)

Ranisch power is power over souls, not things. Power over matter, as you see whenever you stare up at the Boadicea with your naked eyes, is not an issue for us anymore! Our control over matter is already absolute. Control over your minds, however, is not! We could destroy you with ease in a matter of seconds, but controlling you is a whole other story indeed.

You will learn by degrees, ladies & gentlemen, that there is literally nothing we couldn't do to you if only we wanted to. We could send your sun into a violent supernova the way you pluck a bubble with your fingernail. But we do not want to! Neither do us & nor would the Thanna gain anything from your destruction. The wise empress Irulan, first of her name because of you guys, believe it or not, knows this all too well.

So, let's just get rid of your insipid Earther notions of nature as a perfectly harmonious system. That kind of nature just doesn't exist, you see, things go wrong all the time here! For example the oil you keep burning to run your machines, it comes from the torturous death of countless innocent creatures through brutal violence.

Yeah, guess where the Chixu lou... Chick xou... Ah! (sigh) Shit. (cut, muffled chatter) You sure? Okay, honey, give it to me! (DML enters the set, gives A4 paper with the word "ЧИКШУЛУБ" written on it by hand, Larina grabs my butt & pulls me down for a passionate kiss, holds the paper up) Chick-shou-loub, okay! Guess where the big dinosaur slayer came from, huh? That's right, it came from space just like our LCD. Before you guys, however, I mean your ancestors, there was nothing: we seem to have evolved from you & we created our Theliangeles in our image, quite obviously...

Your image! After man, if ever he meets his end, there will be nothing. We won't be able to give birth anymore! Outside the realms of man, there is nothing. (silence, funny gestures) Well, except for that... Thing! (points at void on stellar map) You know, this big black shit I talked about yesterday! Hm? (silence, rapid burst of cuts from the previous video) Midian!!! (ominous background music)

But what are even those menacing hordes of Dyson spheres, if not bits of fire a few million light-years away? We will reach them if we have to! We will pound them to bits with rail guns & salvage the rubble to take back everything they took from us, from the Ranisch. Ancient Earth has always been the center of our universe, and Earth 2 is now our embassy on their shores.

For certain purposes, of course, this is not true. When we navigate the interstellar ocean, or when we predict events with our prescience engines, we often find it convenient to assume that Earth goes around Ancient Sol & the stars are millions upon millions of light years away. But what of it?

Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mentats are unequal to that? Have you forgotten that machines can also double-think? Have you forgotten about the way we came here in 3 weeks instead of 3 centuries?

I am sorry, Earthers, but metaphysics has never been your strong suit. The word you may think I am trying to think of is Solipsism, but you are so gravely mistaken. Your misery is not Solipsism. Okay, well, Collective Solipsism if you like! But that's a totally different kind of thing, in fact absolutely the opposite kind of thing!

Real power, like I said, the one Laconia fights for, is not power over things. It is but the power over you men! Your souls, damn it! We assert this power by convincing your stone cold minds that ours is the better deal. We believe in your power to think outside the box!

On the other hand, how do the Thanna assert their power? That's right, kiddos, by making you suffer! It comes from your pain & humiliation, from tearing your minds to pieces & putting them together again in new shapes of their own choosing. Do you begin to see, gentlemen, what kind of world they are creating?

It is the exact opposite of our Laconic defense framework: a world of fear & treachery & torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world that grows not less but more & more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in their world, for you humans, is progress towards more pain.

We claim, regardless of how dishonest it may sound, that our states were founded on love & justice. Their empire is founded upon fear & hatred! You will have no emotions except for fear of us Laconians, of rage against our evil horrible cruel navy! The constant joy of their triumph over our worlds, an eternal self-abasement in front of your holy Empress.

Everything else they will destroy, every goddamn fucking thing! Already they are breaking down your habits of thought that evolved over almost half a million years that passed since their ancient rule: they are cutting links between mother & son, between man & man, between man & human wife. No one dares to trust a father or a son or a husband any longer!

In the end you will have no fathers & sons & husbands to speak of, not anymore! Your children will be taken from you at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. Your sexual instincts will be forever stapled with a desire for violence & pain.

Procreation will only happen during Sunday orgies where the men will torment their own mothers & then fight each other to death in order to rape each other's wives, or else drown in the pleasure pools while pleasing them with tongues. There will be no loyalty except to your baroness, you will feel no sense of attachment to anything but her ever.

There will be no laughter at anything but the public torture of a helpless captive fremen. There will be no art, no literature, no science! You will have no more need of science, no distinction between useful or useless, no curiosity, no enjoyment of your own life. All pleasures not linked directly to serving them will be destroyed!

But always, do not forget this, always there will be the intoxication of Thanna glory, constantly increasing & growing ever more subtle. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory over Laconia, the sensation of trampling on a Ranathan world that becomes helpless as a result.

If you want a picture of Thanna future, imagine a high-heeled jewel-studded boot stamping on your son's face... Forever. (leans forward menacingly, yells slowly) FOREVER!!! You know what that means? No, you don't & it's not your fault cuz there is no such a thing as a matter of fact, but still... I mean... Yeah, it's bad! It's very bad!!! (cut away gag) Alright, sweethearts, that's it for today, we had quite a gruesome subject to cover indeed. See you tomorrow exactly at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time, just like today. Stay healthy & stay safe!

(Camera zooms out, Larina curses a bit to herself in Creole, pops a pill & swallows it with a shot of spice liquor spilled into her double espresso. Silhouettes move around, lights fade out, Larina waves with a happy-go-lucky smile, screen goes dark.)