Exercise 1
I’ve dedicated the past several days to Orson Welles, to that booming voice and that wonderful charisma. He was the virtuoso filmmaker and actor and magician, a student of Shakespeare, and the lifelong master of deception and trickery.
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Exercise 2
I’ve long been picturing a future for mankind, one that would set an incredible backdrop for an epic tale. This future is one in which mankind has spread across the far reaches of space, and due to the great passage of time since its Exodus, mankind has since forgotten its place of origin. It views Earth with the same degree of removal and mystery that mankind currently views Africa, as the place where we probably came from but still we cannot be entirely sure.
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This is the story of a different time, set hundreds of thousands of years after our own, in the era that followed the Exodus.
The Exodus, or so it was called, seemed to live only in legend. It was often referred to by many throughout the universe as the great beginning, or the new beginning. Whatever history of man existed before this time, before the Exodus, had been forgetten.
There were theories, but no facts. Among the most well founded of theories was that which claimed that human beings had originated from the planet Earth. The tiny blue system governed by artifical intelligence. It was an isolated system, one seldom recognized by man outside of its possible historical significance.
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Since the dawn of its existence, the progress of mankind had been measured by its technology. The role that it played in a society had defined that society; and at no time had this particular fact been more true than at the time of our story.
It had become a lingering moral question, for at the time of the Exodus, nearly all advanced technology was rejected outright.
Ultimately, however, later generations would once embrace a certain variety of its fruits, including mechanized weaponry and advanced transportation, and even the most controversial of all, artificial intelligence. These societies would prosper throughout the galaxy. They would once again form nations and countries. They would eventually hold elections and engage in commerce and trade with one another, and they would go to war.
Among the greatest and most powerful of these nations was Ceorpia Totem. A nation of passionate explorers and the most skilled and cunning warriors.
Furthermore, there remained many people across the galaxy who maintained the more humble, agrarian lifestyles of their ancestors. Perhaps this was out of deliberateness, one they either were taught or that came by instinct; or perhaps it was out of an ignorance that developed from years of separation from their more advanced brethren. Yet so they remained, isolated and humble, but established still, and content.
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Most unique to the character of Ceorpia Totem, its historians wrote, was its unwavering commitment to the power of the human spirit. One man has the power to achieve more in his lifetime than any machine can in a hundred lifetimes. He need only to not just believe in such potential, but make it his mission to realize that potential. This was the responsiblity of every citizen, and as far as the Grand General was concerned, every human being.
Ren Michael 