Case files of the Lord Inquisitor

In a not so distant future, in examination room D-2931, within the bowels of the Inquisition for Community Errors, New Collective Union:

Prisoner T329: What time is it?

Inquisitor 3204: What time do you imagine it to be?

P: (sigh) How long have I been here?

I: Long enough for the Inquisition to begin formal examination.

P: Ha! What errors have I allegedly committed?

I: Your assumptions already betray you as a heretic. The Inquisition makes no mistakes.

P: You condemn me even before any investigation.

I: Ah, but you are already condemned. Our investigation is to determine, of which errors you are guilty, and recommend appropriate corrections.

P: How have I erred so grievously?

I: You tell me.

P: I am, and always have been, a loyal servant to the God-Emperor and the New Collective. Whoever misled you has done so with malicious intent to harm a loyal servant.

I: The Inquisition makes no mistakes. This is the second time you’ve uttered heresy. Be warned that continued intransigence will not be permitted.

P: . . . how can I assist the Inquisition?

I: Freedom is the most important asset in humanity’s possession . . . freedom is wise, allowing for optimal quality of life for all, rather than just a few in power . . . freedom is the natural state of man, all other states of man are artificial constructs, forcibly imposed by self-serving tyrants . . . without freedom, what life is worth living, what society is worth preserving . . . the only effective way to enslave free man is to convince him of his own enslavement . . . et cetera, et cetera. Do you deny that these subversive heresies are not of your composition?

P: I have never heard them . . . arg!

I: I warned you that continued intransigence will not be permitted.

P: Ow . . . my head . . . what did you just do?

I: Not I. The Self-aware Being.

P: But how . . . you installed a neural chip without my consent?!

I: . . . consent? Ah yes, the state allowed you many privileges commensurate to your prior position within the hierarchy. Before the Inquisition, all men are equal.

P: Ha! As if you have any understanding of the concept “equality of men.”

I: You haven’t answered my question. Do you deny that you are the author of these subversive heresies?

P: What’s the point of this conversation? You can just extract the information from my brain through the link.

I: Only if it were that simple, prisoner T329. Are you the anarchist ZenZero who has disseminated these subversive heresies on the information networks for the past year?

P: Yes. I have committed acts of heresy and treason against the New Collective Union.

I: What did you intend to accomplish by parroting failed ideas of the past?

P: Who decided that these truths are failed ideas? All men are born free. It matters not how much indoctrination and propaganda are fed into men’s brains, human nature itself rejects your totalitarian ideology of the collective.

I: And human nature is the state of freedom? What is that exactly?

P: Freedom from bondage, enslavement, fear, coercion . . .

I: And where in nature do you observe this principle in action?

P: The cattle that roam free. The birds that roam wild. The fish that . . .

I: And the primitive savages that eke out some sort of existence at the margins of civilisation?

P: They live in the truest form of human condition than in this artificial hell you’ve created.

I: Living in what you call freedom. Or rather dying from their freedom to parasites, disease, starvation, and intertribal warfare. Prisoner T329, what has happened to you to display such ingratitude towards your God-Emperor, to whom you owe your entire being?

P: I do not owe anything to any one, especially to your so-called “God” emperor.

I: It is true what the ancients say, corruptio optimi pessima. You who have been granted so much, now seek to do evil towards your Father, poisoned by these tiresome heresies that have been definitively refuted by the greatest minds in the New Collective Union and the collective sum of human experience. Tell us, what complaint do you hold against the God-Emperor which justifies your attempts at subverting the state? In the first place, we brought you in to existence in aiding your mother and father to be married, according to the regulations and customs as set forth by the God-Emperor’s Holy decree. We nurtured you in the creche, educated you in the academy, and trained you in the hierarchy. Since you were brought into this world and nurtured, educated, and trained by us, can you honestly deny that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you? And if all these are true, then you are not on equal terms before the God-Emperor, nor can you dare think that you have any rights that does not derive from His generosity. How has a Talent, such as yourself, fail to understand that the God-Emperor is to be valued higher and holier than your mother, your father, or any of your ancestors in the eyes of all that is Holy and wise?

P: Customs, culture, morals are not owned by anyone. The so-called God-Emperor did not decree it to being.

I: So you assert that laws, customs, culture spring forth from nature itself? You, yourself, you begat by the force of will alone? You repeat the debunked heresy of “individual sovereignty” as if it is some eternal truth. Without the group and the greater race, from which man derive his identity, how can such a thing as “individual” even exist? Without the genetic heritage and cultural gifts of a million generations reaching back through ancient time, how can a man develop a sense of self or ground himself in self-awareness? Without the self of the group and the self of the greater race, man is a leaf falling through aether, being buffeted by all external circumstances with no sense of direction or purpose. History has shown you countless examples of individualist liberals, fearful even of a shadow of group authority, allowing their societies to fail and die. It is only those societies that place the self of the group, the self of community, and the self of the greater race that endure and thrive.

P: Ha! Communities, societies, nations, empires are composed of individuals. It is not by law, fiat, or divine decree that maintains order in a society, but individual decisions, individual morals, and individual actions. Every society that has suborned the individual for the collective has devolved into despotism, corruption, and decay. This mind-numbing hell that you call the New Collective will drown in its on decadence and stagnation. Suppressing individual freedom and action only leads to a dead-end. Your God-Emperor ought to reflect on the past dead empires, whose petty rulers lost grip on obtuse enforcement and information flow. If your propaganda and terrorism is disrupted even for one day, the chained people of your new world order will soon burst with freedom and vitality; our cause will be won by human nature itself.

I: The mark of an educated man is the suppression of his base qualities in favor of better ones. The same is true of civilization. Your individualism and freedom is nothing more than a system organised around the weakest and the bases qualities of humanity.

P: Bunch of . . . arg!

i: This time it was me.