"You're a sad, pitiful fool, my friend. You spend your days serving the world around you and your nights dreaming of a different one and you insist on doing both cheerfully, with style and gusto. What a maelstrom your mind must be! What a constant battle must be waged upon your soul!"

​

"You can't change your world if you're not in it, if you don't live it, if you seclude yourself in what pleases you and ignore the others around you. You can't share your ideals, your way of life, avoiding the people you want to share them with."

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"Ideals! Ideals! The world never changed with ideals. Ideals are fireworks! The brighter and louder, the more the people admire and gasp in awe if they are ready for them, or the more people are frightened if they are not. One way or another, they burst and fade, leaving a happy feeling or the relief of terror gone lingering in the souls of those who witnessed them.

​

No, my friend, in the end, ideals are like all the other children of this world. They adapt or they perish. Think of the great ideals, Justice, Equality, Freedom, Kindness, Goodness... When invented, when conceived, they changed the world and for a moment in history the world was hopeful they would last forever. But then they were forced to change, to adapt. So, they were given shapes like those governing a society, the shape of rules, banners, religion, labels or even punch lines in speeches. Oh, they appear, in their purest form, randomly, hectically, everywhere, from the brightest skies to the darkest shadows, from the kindest soul to the meanest tyrant, as they ever exist in our minds and souls and sometimes they find their way out. But those are memories of a broken promise, nothing more, efforts under a dark sky to reach the star that an ideal is. Well, no matter how big the star or how many, the gas flaming sphere that the laws of nature have appointed as the ruling light, will rise inevitably and make it flicker."

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"You've secluded yourself for too long, old man!" cried mr. Rem, angrily. "You have spent your days, your months, your years, alone and you've become bitter. You judge from the distance, scream of crimes and sins that others commit and you pat yourself on the back for being outside the fight. It's easy to claim be good, and just and honest, when you allow noone around, or only those who live like you."

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"Aye" replied the man, in a little more than a whisper. "I've been alone. But you accuse me of things without being able to answer, because you know I am right and ideals become symbols, banners, flags. I wasn't always alone, you know. I was there when the Empire was built and I was there before. I've seen the old and I've seen the new and I can tell you this. We think of new ways of living in an effort to live better, happier lives, but we end up in the same place but with different names and all the new freedoms we think we have achieved are a result of science, not of man's moral improvement. And now think this: since ideals change in time, since they adapt to survive to their environment and since they have taken the form they have now, what does that mean about their environment? What does that mean about us?

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Accept it, son. We, humans, are flawed by design and therefore all we think, invent, do or create as a species will be flawed in turn. And we can't change who we are"

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Mr. Rem's eyes narrowed.

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"I can't believe that" he said harshly. "This is why one should stay in the Empire, serve the Society, witness the flaws. Only then can one understand. Can humans be monsters? Yes. But given the life they are living, I love them for not being worse, for their courage to try, for their dignity and effort. If we were all flaws, why haven't we been consumed by them yet? Well I'm still in, I'm still among them, I live them and I tell you: People are still good, they always have been. There is hope for this world, there is kindness, there is understanding! And if the ideals can be changed, so can the flaws."

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"Why hasn't it then? We've been around for millenia and yet here we are. The Empire prospers while the rest of the world dies of hunger, wages wars and is consumed by itself. Face it. I do not doubt the wish of Man to be better. But in the end, we are frightful, pitiful beings that will accept any injustice to others as long as our comfort remains intact."

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Mr. Rem's eyes narrowed in anger. Then the anger left, through a sigh of depression. Then a smile.

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"Thank you" he said and turned to leave.

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"Where are you going?" asked Alqius, shaking his head. The writter turned to look at him, still smiling.

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"You are right" he said. "We are all you said we are. We want to reach the stars but are afraid to fly, comfortable in our belief that the sun will rise. We must realize we must fly or the gas flaming sphere will burn us."

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"And how do we do that?"

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"We must accept and love our flaws and we must twist them. We must make being comfortable unprofitable, being cruel painful, being fearful a death sentence."

 

"There are laws for that."

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"You can avoid laws, overcome them. They rely on fear of penalty but there is chance of escaping it. We need more. We need motive. We need choice."