Eternity - Cowboy / Jonas Blane
“My fellow Americans:
We are in a time of crisis. I will not conceal the truth from you. There are serious - very serious - choices to be made which will affect the very landscape and fabric of our great nation for ages to come.
The Naki are not human. And, for a time, I thought - as many thought - that this should be no barrier to their joining us in the civilised brotherhood of nations; that we, who took the poor, the tired, the huddled masses longing to be free, could accept with the same righteous and uplifted hearts these visitors from another star.
They have proved false to us. They have betrayed that sacred trust which we, unstinting and innocent, held out to them. They have revealed the worm which gnaws at the heart of their Empire; a worm of conquest, of domination, a worm which seeks to enslave and subjugate every man, woman and child upon God's green earth.
We must not allow this to continue. As a free American, as a father and husband, I CANNOT allow my family and my nation to fall under the yoke of foreign ambition.
It is with a sad and heavy heart that I call on you to support your government and your people in this time of struggle. We are entering the crucible, and it is up to you, my fellow Americans, to ensure that we emerge the same great nation as we are today.”
”….sure, I was involved in that project. No, I'm not going to – turn the fucking recorder off. I mean it.
“And the one in your pocket too.”
[inaudible]
“Yes, you have one in your pocket. I can smell it. Don't lie to me. I can smell that too.
“I was involved in the project at an early stage. Blane was like me, an early prototype. They destroyed a lot of the evidence, after”
[static]
”…violent outbursts. The fact is that his family probably saved his life. A lot of the other guys, single men, they…”
[break in transmission]
”…couldn't really say what might have happened. It wouldn't have been pretty. There were positive effects though - yes, similar things. Yeah, he did survive that assassination attempt, didn't you wonder about that? They reported that there were only two shots, grazes to the torso, but I know what I saw on the TV transmission before they cut it, and…”
[static]
…human?” (laughter) “That's a very difficult question. Who's really human these days anyway? He's fertile, that's the important thing. As far as the program goes. I hear his daughter's doing great in junior high, a regular track-and-field star…”
[transmission ends]
“History will remember two Jonas Blanes.
One was a dangerous madman, the worst of American neoconservatism; a trigger-happy cowboy who unleashed the might of the United States' nuclear arsenal against an unassailable and unthreatening target, who plunged the world into warfare on a sclae unimagined and unimaginable by our fathers.
The other was a lone gunman, a conscientious but desperate man who made the decisions that the Senate was too afraid to take and Congress was too divided to hold to; that his eldery, ailing president could not confirm. A man who made the tough choices that had to be made, and who struck out to protect American frontiers against a lawless and savage enemy who could not be overruled by diplomacy, but whose violence had to be met with violence and force with force.
But the men who served with Blane, the politicians who worked with him, and - no doubt, his family, safely in hiding as they must be by now - will tell you that whichever Blane was the true man; ruthless warmonger or hero solier - he loved America first and foremost, and he would never rest while she was in danger.”