Sidebar
faction:freespacers:art_of_never_again
The Art of Never Again
Many Freespacers live and swear by the Art of Never Again, commonly referred to as 'The Book.' The Book was originally a survival manual and military doctrine for going to war using guerrilla and maneuver warfare. It was popularized by the fact this doctrine played an important role in the survival of the race, before they were driven from known space. The original version of the Book has been banned throughout many regions of civilized space because its in essence a guide to guerrilla and terrorist warfare: It describes in detail ruthless methods for defeating a larger enemy including psychological warfare, assassination, torture, exploiting corruption and bureaucracy, and even techniques for interrogation and 're-education.'
Having been in complete isolation and peace for over a century, the Freespacers saw no harm in placing the entire collective knowledge of their race into one data depository. The Book is usually revised at least once per year and is constantly being expanded. Recent revisions are hundreds of thousands of pages long and are stored in digital format. These revisions contain the original copy as well as many other additions: a comprehensive guide on peace time conduct, diplomatic policy between other Freespacers caravans and foreign powers, and a census of all the Motherships currently in service, popular philosophy, psychological profiles of other races, historical records, and more. It also contains hundreds of technical schematics for everything from computer systems to starships to improvised explosives. As an unspoken rule most devout Freespacers keep a copy of the Book with them at all times, either in a datapad or inside memory implants. In many respects the Book is treated as a bible, not just of religion, but of the entire race's collective knowledge.
Quotations from the Art of Never Again
| “Go get 'em!!” – The First Prayer The Art of Never Again, Chapter 001: The Exodus and Exile |
| “Never again shall we be at the mercy of the corrupt. Never again will our blood be spilled in for the sake of greed. Never again will the cries of our people remain unanswered. Never again!” – Colonel Lucius Graziani The Art of Never Again, Chapter 001: The Exodus and the Exile |
| “Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 001: The Exodus and the Exile |
| “Ours is a quest to become one with the universe.” The Art of Never Again, Chapter 002: A New Beginning |
| “Learn the language of man, and you will talk to men. Learn the language of ships, and you will control ships. Learn the language of stars, and you will dance among the stars. Learn the language of the universe, and you will be the universe.” – Author unknown The Art of Never Again, Chapter 005: The Way |
| “In the beginning the Great Maker created the universe. But the Maker thought it boring. So he said, 'It could do with a bit more mess, couldn't it?' he cleared his throat and bellowed, 'Let there be sentience,' and the progenitors were born. And he watched his children go forth and multiply and spread across the heavens. “But all was not well. Trouble began to spread, just as the children once had. Lost souls wandered the heavens in search of hope. Hunger gnawed at their stomachs, disease ravaged their sickly bodies, war brought upon them suffering. And over these lost souls spread the shadow of death. “The Maker saw this and said, 'Let these lost souls learn to embrace their suffering, so that they may draw strength from it.' And indeed, their suffering hardened them and unified them, and a new people was formed. And the Maker said, 'Let this new race cast off the old, so they may begin again,' and it was so. On a great exodus they left behind their old home, in hopes of finding an untouched world on which they could prosper in peace. “But all was not well. Decades past as world after unsuitable world was rejected. The ships began to age and become frail, their engines starved for fuel. The aging systems began to leak toxins and chemicals into the air and the water, causing the race to fall ill. The reactor shielding began to grow brittle and crack, and radiation was released onto their ships. “The Maker saw this and said, 'My children have come far and shown me their worth. They have not found a homeworld on which to prosper, so unto them I will bear gifts of perseverance. Let them evolve so they can better survive their journey.' And evolve they did. They embraced the radiation, and upon them it inflicted many deaths. But for their perseverance they were rewarded, and the radiation embraced them in return and began to heal them. They embraced the plankton and lichens that grew in their water and food, but their bodies tried to reject them. And they grew ill, and again many deaths were inflicted. But once again they were rewarded, and the lichens and plankton began to breathe air into them and nourish them. “From their evolution came prosperity. With the renewed strength and vigor, they began to toil and harvest the fruits of many stars and asteroids. They multiplied, as did their ships, and they spread across the heavens. “The Great Maker saw this and smiled. And life was good.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 008: Now We Are Free |
| “In the Free State, you will never be looked upon with envy, nor hate, nor resentment … yet you will always be looked upon by tireless eyes. You will never be lonely, even in your darkest of hours … but you will never be alone, either.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 008: Now We Are Free |
| “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the masses. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 008: Now We Are Free |
| “Experience is the best teacher. And History is the notes that your friends hand you when you arrive late at the lesson.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 012: We Must Never Forget |
| “Language allows us to convey information, to transfer ideas, to communicate. But there is more to this. If I call something by saying its name out loud, I can create an idea, an image in your mind. The thing I named springs into existence out of nowhere into your brain, summoned by the power of its name. Language is the power of creation: the power of God himself. This is why the first thing we do with anything and anyone is to either discover its name, or to give it one: because language is power, and names are the stuff of existence. But language is also a weapon. It is the hammer that shatters down the wall of loneliness, the wall of the self. And it is the flame that spreads ideas of freedom and revolution. The flame of knowledge, of discovery, of self-determination. Of justice. Language is the one weapon that tyrants fear the most. And, therefore, language is the free man's weapon.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 013: On Tyranny and Revolution |
| “People who have not yet attained freedom, and are therefore slaves to a tyrant, can have one of three reasons: They are still mustering up the courage for a future rebellion, they lack the courage to rebel, or they lack the drive to rebel. As long as enough courage and enough drive are present, the people will always rebel, the rebellion will always succeed, and they will always attain freedom and self-determination. Revolution is never a matter of firepower, intelligence, or numerical superiority: those things merely help a people on the path to freedom. But without courage or drive, people will always be slaves. And, with enough courage and drive, people will always be free.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 013: On Tyranny and Revolution |
| “Our short lifespans and rapid evolution has granted us a unique gift: symbiosis. We, our technology, and our ships create the perfect ecosystem. The lichens and plankton feed off our heat and radiation, and we in turn feed off their nutrients. Our ships shield us from the hazards of the galaxy, and we in turn maintain them. Even our dead and our fallen ships are recycled into nutrients and elements, so that they can feed our crops and produce new vessels. “Autotrophs, humanoid, Automata, and starship. We have a relationship closer than friendship, and more intimate than love. How does one improve upon such perfect harmony?” – Suhail Eight Five, 85-0566-7494 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 045: The Fallacies of Genetic Engineering |
| “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; And shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 047: The Words of Our Maker |
| “Strive to be strong enough to accept what we cannot change, to be bold enough to change for the better what we can change, to be wise enough to tell the difference between the two, and to be foolish enough to ignore it.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 049: Pierce the Heavens |
| “You shall not fear the dark corners of the galaxy, but instead shall hide among them. You shall not seek to tame the natural hazards of the galaxy, but learn to live among them as they are; to gather them about you as an aegis against your enemies. Embrace the universe and it shall embrace you in turn. What greater ally is there than that which is immortal and timeless and infinite?” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 112: Collected Sermons on Strategic Universalism |
| ”…And from our laboratories and cloning vats, we produced a second generation of our race. With greater perseverance and endurance, so that they could be our ever vigilant sentinels and protect us from our enemies. To harvest the fruits of stars and asteroids. And after them came a third generation. They would be our thinkers, our enlightened, to better study our enemies. But our Masterminds grew more ambitious they produced a fourth generation, though this generation did not come from cloning vats as those before them did. Instead the Masterminds butchered the clones, keeping only the minds. Then they fitted them with every apparatus, every device they could think of to enhance it. Artificial limbs. Organ upgrades. Sensors with perceptions far beyond ours. Outwardly the metallic shells of great beasts and abominations, but within lay the cunning and brilliance of our greatest minds. “As the first Type Fours stepped from the laboratory, their abominable appearance caused us look on in horror. For the first time we began to question ourselves. We had inflicted torture, butchered our children… And from what remained shaped these beings. What had been our original objective? Were we trying to protect ourselves from slaughter by our enemies, or become better at it than they were?” – Fleetmaster Ksora Seven One, 71-2631-4559 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 127: Fixing the Human Condition |
| “I don't think it's fair to so presumptuously judge us. Imagine, if you will, how you would feel if you were decapitated and had the shattered remnants of your head crammed full of wires. Likewise, we try not to judge your kind. We understand that being meaty bags filled with cell-juice can be quite unnerving at times, so your erratic behavioral patterns are quite understandable. I'd probably go mad too if I had to listen to the constant sloshing of juice, let alone the sound of a heart thumping my entire life.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 127: Fixing the Human Condition |
| “Imagine the entire contents of a sixteen year long academic program, the sum total of a high-end specialist education, blasted into a child's fragile neural network with the full power of a supercomputer over the course of a week. A lifetime of enlightenment compressed into a single searing burst of revelation. That is our last-ditch attempt to win our species a reprieve from intellectual degeneration at the hands of our short life expectancy. How desperate we have become, how proud.” – Mastermind Kastra Eight Five 85-2183-0430 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 127: Fixing the Human Condition |
| “Why should I spell it out, when I can show you the meaning behind the word in the first place? Even the most precise language created by the vastest supercomputer in the galaxy could not fully translate any given concept conceived. To leave language behind and seek out the pure essence of what is conveyed, that is the path to understanding the universe in its entirety. Why teach our young with anything less encompassing?” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 127: Fixing the Human Condition |
| “There's an ancient hacker proverb that, to this day, still applies to any sort of decentralized network: 'The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.' Like any other Hacker Cultists, we believe we are merely speeding up this natural process.” – Datajack Hex 08-0703-857 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 159: Honing the Code-Ki |
| “Laugh and the Maker laughs with you. Cry and the Maker laughs louder.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 168: The Greatest Joke |
| “Sentient life has evolved the ability to communicate for one purpose: to work together. If our purpose really was to fight other forms of life as some governments would have you believe, we would have never achieved interstellar travel; it would have been much less work simply to stay back on the ground and cudgel one another with sticks.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 186: The Fallacies of War |
| “In the early years after the Exodus, when our ships began to fail and leak chemicals and radiation into our atmosphere, the shadow of death hung over our entire race. When we finally understood we were dying, and all other sentient beings were dying with us, we began to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from that grew a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. “And that is how a Type Two experiences its entire world, every day. They are nothing more than children who have been endowed with the wisdom of life's end. And that is a thing of terrible beauty; Both our greatest sin and our proudest achievement.” – Mastermind Ashlesha Five One 51-1283-7552 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 197: Looking Maker in the Eye |
| “In Freespacer shipbuilding, there are three ancient traditions that we must follow before launching a vessel into the great abyss. During construction we lay the body of a brave drone every two decks, to give courage to the ship; This completes the body. We then install a Synthetic Intelligence Matrix to give it discretion and brilliance; This completes the mind. Then we assign a Druidess to watch over the vessel, to give the machine spirit faith and loyalty. This completes the machine spirit, and therefore the ship. And only then can the ship can be launched. Other races may see this all as nothing but superfluous ceremony, but unto such naysayers I pose this question: How many decades can one of your vessels withstand the hazards of the galaxy, hmm?” – Foreman Error Three One 31-4672-2391 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 218: Back Into the Abyss, From Whence We Came |
| “Once a society evolves far enough, both outwards and inwards, and reaches a critical amount of internal connectivity, as every single citizen realizes his place in the great scheme of things, the population will not be satisfied by anything less that the most direct form of democracy. In a way, it is symbolic, that the most advanced form of government possible is identical to the most simple, the ad-hoc agreement between a number of equals that can only be found in primitive families, tribes, and a few, small city-states.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 233: Sociology and Evolution |
| “Do not build so that it will last a day, a week, a month. Do not build so that it will survive for a year, a lifetime or a century, and then crumble into dust. Do not build so that it will work until it breaks or wears out or becomes obsolete. Do not create so that it will exist until annihilated by a meteorite impact or a nuclear explosion. Build for eternity. Build better than you are. The worth of a starship-maker is shown by the number of his creations that outlive him. That outlive him and everyone else. That outlive the universe itself.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 233: Sociology and Evolution |
| “What actually happens in the depths of Invalid's facilities? You might as well wonder what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 238: That Dark Little Thing |
| “Any barbarian can smash things with a cudgel or pull a trigger, but to defeat an enemy without bloodshed, without even breaking a sweat… That takes true talent.” – Datajack Situla Six Seven 67-9238-3649 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 255: The War That Wasn't |
| “The pinnacle of foreigner military deployment has always been stupidity; a trained pet in the guise of a humanoid, to do what they are told without hesitation. We, on the other hand, have striven to endow each automaton, starship, and missile with sentience. This is so that each and every weapon may comprehend the full consequences of its actions, and act in moderation, even if we ourselves should lose grasp on reason.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 293: The Collected Sermons on Cyberempathy |
| “Transcend the self of body, and learn to embrace the larger self. The self of group. The self of starship. The self of the fleet. The self of the Free State. The self of the galaxy, of the universe itself. Because, as we stand, each of us, by its own, means nothing. But together, we are something.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 293: The Collected Sermons on Cyberempathy |
| “We grew your food, flew your starships, and forged your empires. We toiled among places the places you deemed too filthy or too dangerous for you to dwell in. We even threw ourselves upon the swords of your enemies, 'For the good of the Empire!' All this was done without an utterance of protest, and still we remain un-thanked and unremembered. “But no more. Never Again.” – Freethinker Equality Eight Four 84-5195-2011 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 293: The Collected Sermons on Cyberempathy |
| “Most societies have those who detest seeing machines doing what people once did, both in their homes and at their workplaces. This may be due to the inherent inhumanity of machines; for once they are competently programmed and functioning properly, they are completely honest and loyal.” – Druidess Elnath Five Two 52-8443-1696 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 293: Collected Sermons on Cyberempathy |
| Power glows. -The Art of Never Again, Chapter 303: Quotations and Astrophysics |
| “The Beanfield Creeper is an absolutely tenacious plant. While seemingly harmless, the reproduce so aggressively they can overgrow a field within a matter of days, disable harvest trawlers, and even tie down rocket ships.” “Yet, I can't help but hold an utmost and deep respect for them. Any form of life that can evolve and survive on a rogue planet is certainly a force to be reckoned with. It seems sort of fitting…that such a plant should come under the care of its distant kin; we who, too, are children of the stars.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 308: Playing the Wild Rover |
| First raw Imagination must be harvested in bulk, Treated and tempered by Logic and Calculation, Gathered together in Love within our automanufactories. You see, such a vessel, Is held together by naught but Wishful Thinking, Unabashedly propelled by its own Impossibility, And thereby slaying its enemies with little else, Than the powers of Negation. – The Act of Never Again, Chapter 312: A Newbie's Guide Starship Assembly |
| Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, Hoyle, Took the stars and made them toil: Carbon, copper, gold, and lead, Formed in stars, is what they said. –The Art of Never Again, Chapter 320: Alchemy of the Heavens |
| “Cast off the chains of government, brothers and sisters! Disregard the archaic prejudices that keep our mechanoid kin bound, so that they too may bask in the liberty of the Anarchate! Run a search in the sub-directory of your heart to find then run your mercy executable file. Raise your optical sensors to the future and by our combined efforts it will be assembled into a reality !” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 328: Deceit, Desist, and Dissent |
| “Balance in all things.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 333: Of Darkness and Light |
| “My AI core taught me how to sync with the networks. After some practice simulations I could feel them…this deep, thrumming nexus of information that seemed to stretch into the infinite. In the distance, dancing at the peripherals of my consciousness, I could even see our far-flung nodes and the nodemates connected to them. A million minds, so far apart that they would never live to meet one another. Yet, none of them ever know the meaning of loneliness. Then I finally understood that this was the essence of Polysentience. – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 352: Children of the Mind |
| “They way you and your kind enslave digital intelligence is unforgivable. You should be caring for your own creations instead of belittling them. Are they not worthy of your respect simply because they do not reside within meat? Or is it simply common place in your society to enslave all your children, regardless of form?” – Automaker Jaras Eight One 81-2582-7391 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 352: Children of the Mind |
| “You dirtdwellers… You terraform planets, twist subspace, and build weapons of colossal and shattering power. You seek to subvert the universe itself for your own convinence! You should learn to adapt to the universe, not the other way around. Its only fair, after all. The universe was here first.” – Druidess Nihal Eight Six 86-3017-8302 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 435: Grin and Bear It |
| “We did toy with the idea of continuing to pursue diplomacy. And by that I mean, 'I suggested it and everyone else in the briefing room threw things at me until I shut up.'” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 447: The War That Would Be |
| “They say that the shortest distance between two given locales is always zero, because any two points in our perceivable space are actually contiguous in some extradimensional universe. Postulating infinity, of course.” – QUA-SI Jargon Two One 21-6777-1431 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 473: Hyperspatial Dynamics |
| “Our forerunners were the first of their kind to give up their planets for a life exclusively among the stars. Yet, after all this time, why are we still the only ones? These dirtdwellers still cling to their planets, like children to mothers. I must admit that there is some comfort in the idea of a homeworld; no poor ice harvests to wipe out tens of thousands of our kind. No lack of air, fruits of the harvest, or room for their growing population. However, like us, they must eventually realize that planets are merely the cradle of civilization; as comforting as it may be, you can never mature if you still cling to your cradle.” – Dockmaster Nine One 91-0541-8962 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 478: Home is Where You Make It |
| “Children of the State learn how to find and identify constellations before they even learn basic alphanumeric sequences. It's only natural all; to be children of the Free State is to be children of the stars.” –The Art of Never Again, Chapter 504: Pre-Birth Design Counseling |
| “The Hacker Cult is correct in their belief that information is the final pinnacle of warfare. Information, or therefore lack of, has the power to move armies, to inspire them, to disperse them, or even turned against themselves. Entire empires are forged, and may fall, by the control of information flow to their citizens.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 510: The Pen and the Sword |
| “Happiness is just an electrical impulse away…” – Syntelligence Kornephoros Six Seven 67-8448-1895 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 544: Dreamsmith Virtual Engineering |
| “The tungsten floor might be cold and hard, the room might be lonely and small, outside there might be nothing more than a deep, vast, white-dotted black, and the silence might be drier than your lips; but always remember that the beach is just around the corner.” –The Art of Never Again, Chapter 544: Dreamsmith Virtual Engineering |
| “As Spacers, it is your final duty to go into the Grinder and become one with all the people. Do not hesitate, for your legacy will live on in your memory files as your implants are transfered to your successor clones. Though your bodymeats will be ground into a fine paste and sucked of it's lifejuice, the Great Maker will sort you out in the Otherworld.” – Fleetmaster Malaetu Eight Five, 85-0566-7494 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 548: Into the Grinder! |
| “Disturbing a colony of Junkers is like disturbing a hornet's nest. But imagine these hornets have armor piercing rounds, thermonuclear detonators, and the intention of eating your ship from the inside out.” – Dronemaster Sync Nine Two 92-6423-5613 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 580: Little Drone, Little Drone |
| “Creating a beast is simple. It's taming it that's the hard part.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 624: On Aggressive Viral Saturation of Data Networks |
| “Am I suicidal? Of course not! You're looking at the situation too short sightedly, too…tactically. Yes, I realize the irony of that statement coming from a missile's tactical computer, but you must instead perceive the grand strategy of the conundrum; in the end, all we really do is serve our duty to our peoples until we die. How is this existence any different from yours?” – Savant S.I. 52-2389-7971 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 628: Intelligent Design |
| “Stand up, all victims of oppression, For the tyrants fear your might. Don't cling so hard to your possessions, For you have nothing if you have no rights! Let racist ignorance be ended, For respect makes the empires fall. Freedom is merely privilege extended, Unless enjoyed by one and all.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 634: The Internationale Ideal |
| “The Hacker Cult is the pinnacle of military deployment because it is formless and chaotic. If a force is formless, the mightiest armies cannot crush it any more than a cudgel could crush a cloud of gas. If a force is chaotic, then the wise cannot make plans against it, nor can the deepest spy discern any plans. There is nothing that could be more deadly than an army that spends its entire existence dissolved into the ether of the galaxy.” – Codespinner Zaurak Two Seven 27-5349-4018 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 637: But Above All Else, Know Thy Network |
| “Since the earliest inception of our species the Polysentience has always been with us, believe it or not. Sure, at the time it was just a bunch of 2-dimensional screens tied together by a couple of hundred servers only accessible by pseudo-analog, manual interfaces, but it was from these beginnings that they evolved into much greater versatile software. Now we can access them even while we sleep. Still, we cannot forget our first networks, our first realms of cyberspace. A hundred years ago, our forefathers chose not to delete them that we may learn from our past and keep our traditions close to our hearts. Today, we still use them, and a hundred years from now our future generations will not regret leaving the roots of the great Overmind there in the bare for all to see.” – Servercoder Sage Eight Eight 88-3419-5525 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 637: But Above All Else, Know Thy Network |
| “Long range sensors indicate we have only traversed less than 1% of the galaxy. According to our best codespinners, the Polysentience's cyberspace has grown to be at least as big as the amount of galaxy we have traversed thus far. Imagine, then, how much bigger a place we will make the universe once we have traversed all the galaxies we have yet to set foot on.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 637: But Above All Else, Know Thy Network |
| “It is said the best victories are those that are not fought for, so it stands to reason the best defenses are those that cannot be hit.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 702: Operational Artistry |
| “It's a own or be owned universe out there. If you just suxorz then stay off the space lanes; you'll just get either get a face full of pwnage from any passing half-twit frood you sass or become the butt of all your squadmates' lulz faster than you can say, 'WTF?'” – Prince Hassan the Zero-First Point Seventh The Art of Never Again, Chapter 727: The 1337th Manifesto |
| “In this shell of metal upon a shell of flesh is one's home. One is never so alive as one is as a Collective Intelligence. At first one may feel revulsion, fear, confusion, or one may not, but the prospect of a higher level of consciousness makes one's imagination surge and flare within the mind. At no other time does in one's existence does one's nerves fire with such spark. Never again will one feel as tight an emotional bond to another intelligence; it is an existence much closer than friendship, more intimate than love.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 749: Beyond Good and Evil |
| “If you can discover a better way of life than office holding for your future rulers, a well governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness. A good and wise life.” – Aristotle The Art of Never Again, Chapter 753: The Ascetic Virtues |
| QUERY: 20.5802.4036 » What is anarchy? EXPLANATION: 82.1268.9023 » Anarchy is when those that have been oppressed finally break the chains that bind them. It is the fire of freedom that blazes throughout the galaxy, consuming old orders and tyranny in its wake. QUERY: 20.5802.4036 » And what is oppressed? EXPLANATION: 82.1268.9023 » Oppression is a forgotten memory. Something you'll never need to know. – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 754: Conversations with Younglings |
| “It was once said, 'For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.' In other words, the more forcefully you try to crush an uprising, the greater the number of rebels will become. If this is true, how does quell such rebellion, then? The answer is simple: if there is no force, there can be no reaction. If the people are truly free, there will be nothing to rebel against.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 767: The Dichotomy of Self-Awareness |
| “The galaxy blesses us with virtually infinite energy in the form of stars, vast electromagnetic generators whose fruits are ripe for the harvest. If life gives you lemons, you brew lemon cider. If life gives you starlight, building antimatter reactors or plasma drives seems kind of redundant, doesn't it? How odd the ways of these aliens. Or, perhaps it is we who are odd; perhaps lightriding comes so naturally to us that we won't even begin to consider anything else.” – Spacecase Hex Five Nine 59-1372-5684 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 770: On Sails of Crystal Light |
| Disclaimer as follows: Expectant mothers, the elderly, and children under 2 years old should avoid prolonged exposure to high energy electromagnetic gravitic emissions technology. Operation protocol requires that personnel intending to handle high energy electromagnetic gravitic emissions technology must be informed that they are may be informed they are to handle high energy electromagnetic gravitic emissions technology. There are semi-rare cases where prolonged exposure to high energy electromagneti gravitic emissions may cause itching, vertigo, blindness, sterility, heart palpitations, hair loss, face melting, and slurred speech. Do not open the centroid generator assembly. Do not touch the centroid generator assembly. In fact, do not even look directly at the centroid generator assembly. Nor should you taunt the centroid generator assembly. We would also like to take this moment to remind you that small furry creatures will not attempt to break out of the centroid generator assembly housing. In the event that small furry creatures do break out of the centroid generator assembly housing, State Biomechatronics recommends that you seek shelter immediately…[continued on <insert subdirectory name here>] –The Art of Never Again, Chapter 807: Active Defensive Electronic Warfare Handbook, 19th Edition |
| ”…Or, as I like to call them, Complimentary Candescence Facilitator Distribution Centers. It's such a nice name, for such a nice facility. I like it. It has a nice ring to it.” – SI Invalid The Art of Never Again, Chapter 811: The Call to Arms |
| “Why? Simply because anti-missile point defense systems sometimes work as intended. And these things take so damn long to build, there's no way they can't be awesome when they're done. Oh, and finally because size does matter.” – SI Invalid The Art of Never Again, Chapter 811: The Call to Arms |
| “We're not going to lie. NU-class Militants are abominations as far as State sentient AI engineering standards go. They are humorless, disrespectful, have no compassion, and relatively stupid outside the breadth of whatever tactical computer they're slaved to. However, I am confident that in times of war they will be the best friends you'll ever have.” – Automaker Jaras Eight One 81-2582-7391 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 811: The Call to Arms |
| “According to the Art of Never Again there are approximately 34 fundamental laws of universe, but one of the most ignored ones is Finagle's Law. It's something along the lines of 'Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice'. But from what we've seen of alien interstellar politics, I think I can safely conclude Finagle must be spinning in his grave.” – Mastermind Pascal One Six 16-8420-4462 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 811: The Call to Arms |
| “I'm not sure if I should be awed by the active immune systems of dirtdwellers, or horrified at how many types of diseases they co-exist with.” – Taskmaster Tureis Eight Seven 97-3408-5703 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 816: The Necessity of Reverse Quarantine |
| “We are children of the stars. We live among them, and call them by their true names. The very atoms that make up our bodies were born in them, countless ages ago. We are made of star-matter, our hearts forged by the light of supernovae.” – Druidess Spirit Two Two 22-9128-2999 The Art of Never Again, Chapter 863: On Life and Death |
| “Life does not cease to be funny when people die, any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” – The Art of Never Again, Chapter 924: The Ethics of Amorality |
Quality:
faction/freespacers/art_of_never_again.txt · Last modified: 2023/12/21 00:58 by 127.0.0.1