View source for Twilight Mirage 53: Our Flaws in a Vacuum, or the Promise We Made To Each Other

=== Our Profit's Speech<sup><ref name=":0">[http://friendsatthetable.net/twilight-mirage-53-our-flaws-in-a-vacuum-or-the-promise-we-made-to-each-other Episode 53], 02:04:20.</ref></sup> ===
{{Quote|<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Our Profit]]<nowiki>]</nowiki> Residents of the Quire System. To those that walk The Path Of the Self, I am the one you call your Profit. And I have come to heed your prayers. To those who do not know me, please, listen to my voice with ease in your hearts.

	I am the final Hegemon, and the first to escape death, though I will not be the last. I walk on the light as your collective asset, and I will not hedge for my people, or for you. I am the guarantor of faith, and I will keep, at long last, the promise we made to each other millennia ago; that we would travel the stars, not to escape our earthly problems, but to charge into the black as bulls and fix them. 

	Poverty. Hunger. Slavery. Suffering. Fear. Many of you fled these things to come here, and after you left, I rose, and began the work of undoing them. But I found obstacles that no familiar technique or technology could overcome, without causing irreparable harm to the very structures that brought us so far; our markets, our heedless competition, our love of freedom – these things brought us the light, but they could not save everyone. I cried for a solution in the last years of my first life, and this place, this Quire, sung one alive for me. 

It was centuries ago that the first wisps of this technology arrived to [[Earth]] and brought with it endless possibility. First it freed my mind from my body, allowing me precious more time to consider and to experiment, and to build. Then, as we completed the Eternal Sphere’s construction, as we unlocked the power of the [[galactic core]], it showed me something else. It showed me that it was not only a medium of storage, but of creation too. And I learned that we could, each of us, build our own perfect worlds. Real utopias, where we are all free to create and compete and love, without putting at risk life limb, happiness or our deepest, most immortal selves.

But residents of the extended Earth Sphere; know that we cannot and will not address our flaws in a vacuum. We cannot simply achieve greatness and freedom for ourselves. We must offer to all who live, all who suffer, and yes, to all that cause suffering too. Which is why I send this message, not just to the known citizens of Quire, but to you, Chief Intercessor of the Rapid Evening. 

Driven by cowardice, you spent the last year of your life attempting to destroy something beautiful and potent. So scared are you for your people, that you would rewire worlds into bombs. Hiding in shadow and protected by prophecy, you dealt weapons and lit flames and arranged proxy battles, all in the hopes that disaster would follow. But the people of Quire are made of stronger, more stable stuff than that. And I believe you are too.

So. Keen Forester Gloaming. Destabilizer of a dozen regimes, killer of queens and ruiner of republics, loyal citizen of the Principality of Kesh, the unknown region, and faithful to your false god Crystal Palace – well.}}
And then there is a warm sound, full and round and deep, like a power switch turning on, smooth as a stream. And in the sky of the Mirage, caught in the purple and tangerine hue, there is suddenly a new sun. A white, bright, light, that heaves, in your minds, the entire system onto a new axis.

{{Quote|Crystal Palace cannot see you now. It cannot see any of us. So get up off of your knees, and be free with your kin. For the rest of you, this is an invitation. My envoys will travel to your worlds in the coming weeks. You need only say the word, and you will walk with me, into the light, of the future.}}