Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars
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All betterment discriminates and cleaves;
The first of any making is a monster…”
“The Martian clays were a rich heritage
Of predecessor forms of earthly life.
The Ares Project wrecked their habitat.
We at the Audubon Society
Doubt whether any now can still remain.
Effectively the project has preempted
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The natural destiny of a whole world.
Such human arrogance, Lords of Creation
As we thought ourselves to be, was the cause
Of ecocidal holocausts before.
There is no question that this man is guilty—
“Witness will not editorialize.
Does the defence desire to cross-examine?”
“One question. If you saw a crocodile
About to eat a baby, would you shoot it
Or leave it to its natural destiny?”
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“Shoot it if one must, one would suppose, but—”
“One would suppose. What if the crocodile
Were an endangered species, would ‘one’ then?
Be careful how you answer. ‘No’ makes you
Guilty in thought of an infanticide.
‘Yes’ says that you still inwardly believe
One human baby worth more than a species…”
The prosecuting counsel: “Tell the court
Why, Mr. Wills, you made these monster races
And sold them to be seeded in the world?”
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“Objection. Counsel is presuming what—”
“Sustained, but only on the grounds—” Ganesh:
“No, please, Your Eminence, I’ll answer that.
Truth is the little buggers made themselves…”
“Why do you ask me of my parents’ quarrel?
My mother’s not on trial; there’s fact enough;
Can you believe the impressions of a boy—?”
“Let’s leave that to the jury to decide,
Mr. Van Riebeck,” the judge counsels him.
“Well then,” says Garrison, who has been struck
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By the amazing honesty of thought he’s found
In old Ruhollah’s wisdom, and who seeks
In this limpidity the only way
To be redeemed, “I ask that you may see
How love may be a needle and a bludgeon.
My father truly loved my mother”—Here,
Guiltily, he catches Gaea’s eye
Across the court, and then avoids it swiftly—
“And she, I think, at first, loved him, but not
So much. He loved her so she had no room
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To love him back. He bullied her with love,
With the profusion of his being, his insight
Into the workings of the universe,
Into the workings of her soul. He knew her, as
The Bible says—” And now he sees his father,
Looking upon him with wide open eyes,
As one might at one’s god or at one’s death,
Calmly, with tears pouring down like a stream.
“…So it is not, as Prosecution says,
Irrelevant to seek the testimony
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Of a medieval scholar in this case.
Defense’s argument is partly this:
That recent legislation on the use
Of outer space disguises but revives
The ancient jurisprudence governing
The common lands, the heaths and unclaimed forest,
The village greens, and public rights of way.
For the wise Locke law was the sum of contracts
Bearing on how the bounty of the world
Might by agreement be divided out;
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And Hobbes’s chilly scalpel sheared away
The claims that God donates to chosen men
A knowledge of His will regarding nature
And thus a pattern for a natural law:
They were a filmy pretence that the fathers
Had woven to disguise their lust of power.
The prosecution argument, if I
May be permitted to provide coherence
To such a thing of shreds and patches, leans
Heavily upon these recent laws.
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But much more fundamental still, if we
May read between the prosecution’s lines,
Is an ulterior motive, and it’s this:
To reestablish Natural Law as God’s
Invisible vice regent in the world.
It is upon this concept that the other
Body of legislation in this case—
That under which my clients were arrested—
Concerning rights of other living species,
The mandate of the EPA, and suchlike,
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Is based and built. Now, for our case.
Professor Basileus’ expert testimony
Shows that the concepts of the commons laws
And those of natural law must contradict.
One assumes ownership by human beings
(Or aliens judged to be legal persons)
Of all estate, movables, thoroughfares,
Spaces and objects in the universe—
In common where an individual’s claim
Is not established by a homestead law,
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And where in common to be used and kept
To benefit the people as a whole.
The natural law assumes God’s ownership
Of all things in the world, or else that each,
Souled or unsouled, equal, owns itself.
This last idea—attractive as it is—
Will not endure a logical appraisal,
For the term ownership can have no meaning
If there is no distinction made between
That which can own and that which can be owned.
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Secular Naturalism fell apart
On just this issue; does the cheetah own
The slaughtered wildebeest, or should
The prey be confiscated from the hunter?
If nature may discriminate in value
Then we may naturally be its owners;
But if there is no value, and all’s equal,
Then there’s no value in preserving nature.
Our good friends in the Ecotheist church
Were quick to point this out; the logic’s theirs.
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What’s left is what the prosecution fails
To answer, lest it prejudice its case:
Does God or Humankind possess the world?
If Prosecution wants to make a case
Against my client, it must violate
The deep agenda that the Church assigned it:
The reenthronement of the Natural Law.”
And Orval Root: “Chance was a man who charmed,
Who seemed to give his heart to everyone,
But when it came down to the care that friends
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Take of the daily process of a friendship,
The time given to schmoozing, so to speak,
The warm complicity in shared complaint,
The deep admission that he is as you,
Partial, self-interested as you are,
Human, and not so grandly just as he would seem—
He wouldn’t go along. He would get chilly,
Distressed, businesslike, give you a gift
As if apologizing, and withdraw
Just when you’d showed your failings, weaknesses
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To him—you’d trusted him with that, and he
Gave everything but what you needed from him.
You’d think he didn’t put his pants on one
Leg at a time. You’d think he didn’t shit…”
“All that Defense can
offer to this court
Is flimsy argument, sophistication,
Bending of honest words and honest meanings
Out of their clear intent and common use.
The prosecution offers evidence:
These samples here of deformed animals
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And prodigies with leaves and mouths and lungs;
These photographs of what was done on Mars,
Showing the ancient landscape now convulsed
And slobbered over with a noxious slime;
The testimony of those folk who knew them
That the accused were arrogant and cold,
And were intent on global transformations
Unsanctioned by the People’s will, the laws
Of nature, and the clear decree of God.”
Ganesh again: “About those clays, your highness.
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That was one reason I agreed to work
For Charlie when he asked me to. The way
They were, those poor dumb Muddies had no future.
They’re columns of stacked films, one atom thick—
Ionized aluminum silicates.
They reproduce by printing off the pattern
Of polarized electric fields from top
Of the old stack to the next new slice up.
They were the scaffolding that RNA
Was built on in terrestrial history.
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Our living molecules began, my Lord,
As robot organelles or servomech-
Anisms for a bunch of moron clays.
But all the Martian carbon was locked up;
The hydrogen had mostly leaked away;
The oxygen was buried in the ground.
So where the clays would really want to go—
Switch genotype with phenotype, I mean,
And use their new organic body-parts
To carry their inheritance of form—
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That way was blocked for them. We opened it.
That’s why we started mining in the rings
For bergs to irrigate and fertilize
A symbiotic culture, Earth and Mars.
Sure, when the icebergs hit, they made a bang
You saw down here. But still it did no harm.
The clays would thank us, if they could, your honor.
They took their first breath in four billion years.”
Beatrice speaks, her face a mortal moon
Clouded by grief that she might not stand where
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Her father and her sister are accused:
“Consider choice, which many think is freedom.
Upon the magic island of instruction
A wise wizard discourses of the truth
And moral will, and of the rule of reason.
His daughter in this demi-paradise
Sits at his feet and cannot concentrate.
She is the one who looks out to the sea
And waits for something new, a prince perhaps,
Who’ll kneel before her with a ruby slipper
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A wicked witch made for her long ago.
I know this court does not want fairy tales.
Let me explain my parable: mere choice
Remains within the universe of discourse
Where it originated; given A
And B, choice must pick B or A.
Suppose A is the better choice, and that
The chooser knows it. Then she is not free:
She’s fated logically by the fact
That it is better; or determined psych-
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Ologically by whatever impulse, random
Or instinctive, has made her choose the wrong.
If A and B are equal, there’s no choice.
The only path of freedom is the choice,
From A and B, of C—which is to say
That freedom is not choosing but creation,
The making of a new alternative
Where none before existed, and its rough
Insertion in the bland ensemble of
Existent futures lined up for our choice.
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Freedom is not a state but a volcano.
My father never laid out all the choices;
He was a bad magician, if you like,
But a good man. He’d have us disobey him,
Reward us for our disobedience
When it created new coasts for the world.
The future does not yet exist, your honor,
Ladies and gentlemen of this court; we
Are just as at its mercy as we were
When in the act of loving generation
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Our parents came together, fools and gods
To make our souls and bodies out of nothing;
Unless we may be parents of ourselves,
For which, it seems, my friends here are on trial.”
(Hearing this blasphemy, the warrior,
Tripitaka, finds his breath short and painful,
For the blasphemer’s eyes have caught his soul,
Her mouth has made him helpless, as the bee
Is trapped and led by those encrimsoned streaks
That lead into the hot heart of the flower.
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That night under Ruhollah’s new instruction
He will, amid the savage practice of
His deathly art, be flayed and flagellated
By his own right arm, and his rage against
His mother turn to rag against his flesh.)
“The prosecution seems obsessed, your honor,
With one word like a magic talisman:
Evidence. No one here denies the facts.
They pound an unlocked door. What's evidence?
A man begins to watch and track a woman.
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He avoids her when she is with her husband;
He finds out where she lives and follows her;
He ascertains her name and checks her habits;
He seems to seek an opportunity
To get her by herself. Here’s evidence
Of dangerous and horrible intent,
The rapist’s study of his prey, the stalk,
And now the very moment of the kill…
‘I found this locket, madam, with your picture
And the picture of a man. Seeing you
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That day upon the street as I went down
To hand the property to the police,
And, by your likeness, recognizing you,
I was about to give it back when I
Perceived the gentleman you walked with
Was not the same as this within the picture.
I trust you will forgive the lengths I had to go
To be discreet. The gold engraving here
Is very nicely done. Good day, madam.’
I ask this court whether we have before us
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One, or two, sets of evidence today.
If one, then we may say that entities
Utterly different can share the signs
Of their empirical manifestation;
If this is so, then evidence is not
To be trusted in any court of law;
No test for truth could rest upon the senses;
The term ‘eye-witness’ would be meaningless.
Then are these two entirely different sets
Of evidence? What can ‘different’ mean
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If the same facts are different from themselves?
Not one, not more than one. Then what’s the answer?
It must be this. The first account, the stalk
Of the rapist, is made of evidence.
The evidence is constituted such
By the intent of rape. The second, though,
Is not so much evidence as the tact
And sensitivity by which the world
Of the evidential may be avoided.<
br />
If the Van Riebecks had set out, your honor,
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To rape the planet Mars, then what they’ve done
Is indeed evidence of crime. But we
Must look at ‘evidence’ within the context
Of whole universes of intention,
Hope, expectation, purpose, and desire.”
“My husband Chancellor Van Riebeck is,
As many here have stated, a free man.
But should, in this sense, any man be free?
He feels no guilt; all men ought to feel guilt.
What conscience can he have for whom the world
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Is all a game, whose loves are undertaken
Out of the goodness of his heart, the joy
Of self-reward, not out of debt or duty?
Is he not ultimately dangerous,
A law unto himself, free, if he feels,
To trample anyone without remorse…?”
At these words Chance, his face pale with attention,
Is almost ready to applaud; he’d have
Her win the argument, bear it away,
So taken is he with her fiery spirit,
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Her courage measurable with his own.
“Good girl,” he murmurs silently, “Good girl.
No shirking, eh? No giving on the line…?”
“If Root wants therapy,” says Freya coldly,
“He should avoid serious enterprises.
A man wants friends about him when he works,
Not a warm pink glow of supportiveness.
My father is a man. Therapy is
What Ecotheists take for sacrament.
Let him give up his ancient faith and be
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Another suckler at the junk religion.”
Two men watch her: Root, who she knows
Desires her love, and patient Charlie Lorenz,
Her dearest friend, who would be more, but this
Freya the white-gold will not ever know.
The great attorney argues with his client:
“Chance, if you do this thing we’ll lose the case.
We have it won on legal logic now,
And three jurors won’t take the party line.
I know it. They can see the Ecotheists
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Have overreached themselves and struck too early.
Even old Markov on the bench has heard
Too much good law to let it go the way
The prosecution wants. What’s wrong with Burke
And contracts, if they’ll save your legal bacon?”
“Giamba old friend, you’ve done a glorious job.
You’ve won the battle for us, I see that.
But there’s a war that must be fought, and we
Cannot give up into our enemies’ hands
The sword of natural law. There is a law,