Koos was shaking by this point. The ferocity of his recruiters attack and the realization that he was prepared to die for this cause made him feel terrified and proud at the same time. He'd finally found his purpose, a cause that he was truly prepared to die for.
Of course, it could have been the agony he was enduring from the dual assault of the plasma burns he received from his computer terminal mysteriously exploding and the gaping gash in his head.
A singular image flashed in his head. "This girl" he choked, "This girl I saw on my way here". Her face was stuck in his mind: A young girl of about four or five with matted, dirty blonde hair, a little button nose and the biggest, most sorrowful eyes Koos had ever seen. "She was a slave, I think. She was *gag* barely old enough to read and here she was being carted along like she was an animal to be sold. She..must have been headed to one of the pirate bases. How can a system whose very name is "liberty" take people and treat them this way? How can it reduce them to something that isn't worthy of realizing her potential?" The image was from an episode he had had on his way to Baffin across Liberty from Rheinland. A slave ship had docked at a station he had stopped for fuel at in Pennslyvania. "I saw them. All of them, the slaves. I saw them in chains, being carted as though they were subhuman to the ship. As I stood watching the procession, looked at me as I at her. She must have thought I was one of them, one of those who were taking away her future, her happiness, her life."
"This is the system that I hate. Things like that, the barbarisms that we force on each other are all symptoms of a great evil that has plauged humanity since time immemorial. That evil is property. For all of history, the world can be equated to two classes. The haves and the have-nots, the bourgeois and the proletariat, the men and the women, the rich and the poor. The former trample the latter, but in a way that the latter do no realize. Everywhere humankind is in chains. The rich take everything from the worker and give back only what he needs to survive in order to replicate his slavery. He is always paid less than his work is worth because this empowers the rich. The great tragedy is that capitalism and property don't make the poor want to be free. It doesn't make them want to help their fellow man or add to the advancement of mankind. It makes the worst off want to become the best off. It makes the poor want to impose their will on the poorer. It makes the weak want to become the strong so that they can do a little oppressing of their own. What kind of a life is that? Even if you achieve success you aren't truly happy. You aren't truly free. You're only replicating oppression forcing barbaric acts on fellow humans."
Another event came to mind. It was when he was bumming through Rhienland with no purpose, no desires, and no friends. He had gotten lost in a Nebula in Dresden. His ship had taken quite a beating from radiation when he stumbled upon a gigantic asteroid base. Portraying himself as a disgruntled field hand, he was allowed entry to Vogtland base.
"I was once on Vogtland base after I had begun my conversion. I saw the same thing there. The Hessians only want to supplant the Rheinlandish government with their own. Sure some small injustices might be fixed with such a coup, but nothing will really change! Their goals are noble, but not far reaching enough. Workers, the bulk of mankind and the only true, noble people will be better off, but the slave chain of capitalism will still corrupt that land. The establishment of a moral society through immoral means is impossible. This is why I am convinced that the Coalition is the only organization that has all of sirius at heart. It is the only truly moral group in the sector.
The last few hours had let the gravity of his intellectual development sink in. The fundamental principles of Koos' life were becoming irrelevant to his newfound perspective. Soon irrelevance had turned into illegitimacy and illegitimacy into deepest injustice. Everywhere he had gone, the basic analysis afforded to him by the random stranger he had met in the bar and the writings that Koos had received from him served to explain the situation well. Everywhere Koos went, he saw those who worked being trampled on by the boots of the rich.
"The hypocrisy, sir, is that democracy and capitalism says that they are giving you freedom. Freedom to vote, to work, to choose for yourself. But nothing ever changes. That whore democracy blinds men. They think they have the chance to change things, to lessen their burden by electing leaders. This isn't true power. The regime itself is exploitative and poisonous. Democracy gives the people the illusion that things are always getting better, when they are just as enslaved as ever. The next guy, he's the one that will release us and make us rich. No, the one after that. No we were wrong, here's the one. It goes on and on. Capitalism is no better. The worker is perpetually alienated from his labor because he doesn't have ownership of himself. The master owns his entire livelihood."
The strain of this speech had drained Koos, who was quickly beginning to feel the loss of blood. He was sure he had lost feeling in his right arm and his head was even cloudier than it had been before. The white hot iron of pain that was unrelenting in it's assault on his head did much to keep him awake and aware. By fixating on it he found he could keep himself lucid.
So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.
