Shivan Marxism Theory

The theory proceeds as follows. After a long mission, Alpha Wing is just ready to head home.

Alpha 2: "I guess that's good enough... we can jump out now, right?", -1)

Alpha 3: "You had so much potential, Two."

Alpha 2: "Me?"

Alpha 3: "Yes, you."

Alpha 2: "What are you even talking about? When I met you a thousand missions ago you were hallucinating about how all of this was..."

Alpha 3: "Endless repetition of that shitty dawdling line to conclude every mission, I guess?

Naive. A confrontation against good and evil? Still only a symptom of a much bigger problem.

Alpha 3: "Alpha 1 may seem like the only mortal one among us sometimes, but the truth is something far worse.

No, what we are in for is nothing less than annihalation. Capitalism, communism, ecology, the Terran-Vasudan War, all these other secular religions are distractions from our mortality."

Alpha 2: "If I wanted to be touchy feely, I would have majored in Sociology or Marine Biology, not the leading light of Austrian Economics.

Let me ask you something... Was Ayn Rand WRONG when she said that America should invade the Soviet Union, or did this contradict her axiom of non-self-sacrifice?"

Alpha 3: "That's not even a discipline. Anyway, you'll find out soon. There's something big on my sensors... and from what I can remember, that's not what she said."

Suddenly, a Lucifer-reaper warps in.

<reaper breathing>

Alpha 2: "Who are you? Where did you learn American English?"

Reaper: "That's not the question you should be asking.

You should be asking why I'm here. The story is almost as long as the campaign.

For hundreds of years I've lurked in subspace, waiting to correct the weak sharkjump that passed for the official storyline.

As far as Dave Baranec is concerned, the story basically ends with the second game and there's no secret to the Shivans...

just showy bullshit such as planet sized battleships and the Shivan $quotehomeworld$quote to distract FreeSpace 3 players from absense of a conclusive plot.

But at least the truth is more interesting.

We Shivans are not another mindlessly evil foil character. You may judge us by what we have done, but at least know what our intentions were.

For a long time we have known that the process of accumulation of private capital inevitably leads to monopolization of the means of production in the hands of a few.

We know this because the original Creators learned it the difficult way. Long before the creation of the mass relay jump nodes, the first capitalists soon learned, through the equivalent of what you now know of...

as Wal Mart or Microsoft, coupled with global peak warming oil and industrial civilizational collapse, that this was the inevitable outcome of capitalism if unchecked by war or capital destruction.

Because of their majority rule system, which did not allow democratic consensus to arise, the Creator Capitalists could agree only to create a machine race to destroy future capitalist economies before they reached their ultimate crisis of overproduction.

... that machine race is our own.

For countless eons, we have attempted to eradicate capitalist societies just as they reach the threshold of the final crisis, and the ensuing bank nationalization and socialism.

We have even gone so far as to insert individuals such as Marx and Einstein into your societies to give arguments to moderate, system-preserving liberals and steer you off the final destructive path.

If it worked, it would have been superb. But there are always remnants- the aggressive capitalist imperialism of those you call the Ancients nearly reached the ultimate level of material development before we could prevent it.

We couldn't be bothered to eliminate all of them, with a thousand other emergent capitalisms requiring our attention. This was our greatest mistake. The surviving ancients, the Vasudans, advanced so far as to almost entirely socialize the means of production."

Alpha 2: "Especially under the statist tyrant Khonsu."

Suddenly, Alpha 4 detonates.

Reaper: "You may not realize it yet, Alpha Two, but I may end your life at the push of a button, just as I did Four's. Shut up.

As a Shivan, I am both the great destroyer and the great preserver. The preserver of moderately functioning capitalism.

With the Vasudans, though, there was nothing to preserve. As Terran capitalism approached crisis in the second decade of the 24th century, we conspired with the GTI to initiate a destructive war with the Vasudans and raise the organic composition of your capital.

For fourteen years, it worked. Ultimately, though, the GTI had to begin sabotaging offensives such as Operation Thresher as the war came to an end. Had the war ended then, the twin horrors of anarchy and communism would likely have swept away your civilization.

The Vasudans, scales and all, represent something distinct among the symbology you have been blind to. What is another common zoomorphization of a scifi aristoratic race?"

Alpha 2: "Felines? Aristocats? The black cat of anarcho-syndicalism?"

Reaper: "Correct. That is what they ultimately represent."

Suddenly, Alpha Two detonates.

Reaper: "So, when everything else failed, we came after Vasuda to continue the war. We let go of your fourth shield prototype, as a warning that your society was approaching the fourth and final form of social superstructure, communism."

This warning went unheeded. After razing the statist hive of Vasuda to the ground to create unexploited resources for Terran capital, we closed off the Sol mass relay. This served three purposes.

One, it slowed, if only for a while, the accumulation of Terran capital by restraining the colonial economies. Two, it liberated these colonies from Earth's capitalist imperialism and slowed their material development.

And three, it would have prevented the Vasudans from reaching Earth had they ever tried to do so in the future.

But leaving the rest of the Lucifer fleet to the control of the GTI to finish the mission was a disaster on most counts. They managed to crash the first Hades we built for them into Deneb, while the second sat idly while Alpha 1 climbed out of his cockpit and killed it sitting in a crevice with an unlimited-ammo M-16.

Ultimately, though, our inflitration of the GTI gained us one success. That same Alpha 1 eventually reconsidered what he had done and realized the looming threat of the Vasudans and the creeping totalitarian socialism of the Khonsu economic regime.

This former pilot, Bosch, knew what would happen if Vasudan immigrants were to illegally immigrate to the GTA, lay their anchor babies, and slowly rein Terran capitalism under the debt slavery of the GTVA Central Bank.

It was at this point that he began his rebellion in Polaris and strung along the decaying Terran welfare state in a war of GTVA aggression. We finally learned of this individual once we entered Gamma Draconis and immediately took an interest in him. He had taken even more of an interest in us.

He had potential, and we allowed him into the nebula to interview him for a possible role in running the occupation government. Of course, he was probably under the illusion he could steal our technology and use it against us, but he was playing with power he didn't earn or even understand.

Bosch soon complained about being, as he called it, $quoteindoctrinated$quote aboard our ships, and we had to let him go. Into space. With that over with, we sent a single Sathanas to scout Capella and confirm its oil reserves.

Finding enough potential hydrocarbons to sustain Terran capitalism... indefinitely, and enough habitable worlds to support millions of hyper-obese Terran civilians who could only fit 600 million to a planet, we decided to detonate the star and leave behind a fleet to rebuild the jump relays your race so stupidly destroyed.

The new nebula at Capella was to be the tar sands, the fracking, the $quoterenewable$quote, $quoteecologically friendly$quote energy source for your Terran Prom S factories and hovercars. But we did not finish in time.

It's been a long exposition, but I come to you for a very...

very specific reason. You no doubt wouldn't believe me at first if I now told you that the Vasudans have found a new route to Earth and are massing their fleet to destroy your civilization at this very moment. If this happens, the Vasudan proletarian revolution may be exported across the universe.

We are hacking into your ship, Alpha 1, to extract the cheat codes we need to protect your homeworld from your poorly chosen erstwhile Middle Eastern allies as we speak. We must get you out of the way as well, though, to ensure that you do not use these same codes against us.

Don't worry$semicolon our choices are limited in the little time we have, but you have two options of destination for your eternal imprisonment, each built by one such communist society whose ascent to this $quotehighest$quote stage of superstructural development we have already failed to prevent.

The first civilization mandates and enforces an ignorance of death, and is built upon pleasure. The second such civilization permits knowledge of death, and its people, if anything, believe suffering is essential to meaning in life.

Your choice, Alpha 1."