"And now please welcome today's anti-terrorism speaker, Anonymous!"
[anonymous applause, dwindling out]
"Thanks, everyone. The reason I prefer anonymity should be self-evident, but just to make it clear, I wish to avoid the recrimination of the hostile element."
"Before I got here I was just reading, and believe me I'm still not believing, but it would seem, on the whole, that planetary aggression is on the slow."
A hand is raised
A hand is ignored
The speaker moistens his lips
Prepared to emit a bit more.
"I have stats and stories
Tortuous anecdotes about little girls and boys
Food and sanitation is a crime itself
And I'm prepared to say we live in our own hell."
Arms upheld wither down
As new hands reach for attention
But the speaker ignores them all
Intent on his own presentation.
"The reason for hate
Is more or less clear
We fiercely believe one thing
As they devoutly believe another.
But do not fear!
We are right and they are wrong
They saddle their own children with a death song
No cartoons of basic morality
Just legs with bombs
Made to go off remotely."
An angry rustle
Amidst lowered hands
Quieting now
Like they're getting the hang of it.
"Humans are robots
Programmable, malleable and sometimes trustworthy
Highly complicated machinery!
Indoctrination is the virus
That seeks to destroy the outside."
Again the raised hands
And eyebrows too
All these fluttering robots
Fluttering in a pseudo-free zoo.
Ignoring the obvious
The speaker plods onwards
But modulates his voice
Against their trained reactions.
"We need to accept and enfold
An ideology only thousands of years old
To mutate and twist
Into what our children might wish."
Someone yells "Disney!"
Another mutters "Black whiteys"
But there are a few
Who remain to hear it through.
"Despite what you think
Despite who you are
Against all you've been taught
We've come quite far.
You may not know your son
You may not know your daughter
But leave them alone
And tomorrow may happen.
Put the guns aside
Drink from your hidden bottles without shame
You are who you are
And you should let them be them."
This is not what anyone wanted
Anyone over the age of ten
This is not what anyone wanted
With children and the urge to brainwash them.
The room trickles out
Leaving the most devout
Devoted to the future
Any future left standing.
But amidst this group
Are hard-liner elements
And one has a voice
Cutting through it all
To ask, "What about bomber babies?"
And riding right on top
Is a fat slobbery Republican fop
Demanding in his self-entitled way
"What the **** about America?"
The speaker shrugs
As if to indicate
Which question
Is more stupid.
"We seek to leave the planet
And develop tech to make it happen
You go your way
And we go ours."
The room is smaller now
They indulge in eye contact
Personal communications
Words, hands, heads and eyebrows.
The speaker sighs
As if on the cusp of absolute honesty
Then spills his true guts
To these few radicals and emissaries:
"Our worst enemy is ourselves
Through millennia fashioning our own hells
Subjugation of non-prominent DNA
Believing destruction will pave the way.
But on a not-much larger scale
We're just cheap entertainment
For every other race
That crawled up this hill."
The crowd is slightly subdued
Probably more from shame
Than anything
Because shame is in the DNA
And experienced by everyone.
But we can always rely
On some fat Republican to decry
"But not me!
And for sure not my children!"
And now even more file out
Hearts emptied and minds afloat
Now it's just the sweating speaker
And a few odd haters.
"We're a microbial phenomenon
Miraculously still alive
And still inept
At staying alive."
He waves a casual hand like a maestro
And behind him the stage glows
A 30x30 screen descends
Illuminating bugs as they crawl.
"We're slightly smarter
But no more hardier
Than Hymenoptera
Except we can leave this planet."
Red-faced and obviously insulted
The old fat plushy storms out
Leaving now just a few
To adopt this future-flung view.
"We need to terraform and colonize
Sure, and design space suits
Pleasing to the eye
But ultimately,
We need to get the hell gone."
One clap, one frown
The speaker shrugs
As if wondering
Why aren't we all gone?
And so he is left
With the clean-up crew
And one fruitcake
Who asks
"Will God come with us?"