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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   1434 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 2, 2025

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Happy May the Fourth! Here’s a scene Grok wrote for me from Galen Erso, architect of the Death Star, in the style of (and with the morals of) Ayn Rand. I made a few tweaks here and there for accuracy and to emphasize certain points. May the Force be with you.

My mind is my own, and no force in the galaxy can claim it. The Empire, with its blasters and its threats, its bureaucrats and its banners, believes it can chain a man’s reason to its will. They took my body, dragged me from Lah’mu’s quiet fields, murdered Lyra, and held Jyn’s shadow over me like a blade. They thought they could seize my intellect, bend it to their machine of death. Fools. They do not understand the nature of a mind that creates. They cannot fathom the fire that burns in a man who knows his own worth. I am Galen Erso, and my mind is not theirs to command—it is mine, inviolate, eternal.

In the sterile halls of Eadu, surrounded by the timid and the compromised, I labored under their gaze. They demanded a weapon, a Death Star, a monument to their collectivist nightmare—a machine to crush the individual beneath the weight of fear. They could have built it without me eventually, with blood-thirsty sycophants managing the output of scientific minds cowed by fear. They thought my equations, my crystals, my genius would serve their purpose more quickly, and they were right.

But purpose is not theirs to dictate. Purpose is the province of the creator, the man who thinks, who dares to see beyond the violent herd’s clamor. They gave me kyber, the heart of the stars, and expected me to forge a club for their brutality. Instead, I wove a trap. In the reactor’s core, I hid my truth: a single exhaust port, unshielded, able to cause reactor overpressure; a whisper of defiance that could bring their monstrosity crashing down. This was not sabotage—it was justice. It was the assertion of my right to create, to define the terms of my work, to refuse their perversion of my mind’s fire.

Let them parade their TIE fighters and their Moffs. Let Krennic strut with his cape and his lies. They are nothing—parasites who produce no value, who exist only to steal the creations of better men. I saw their world, a galaxy of gray submission, where the individual is ground to dust for the sake of their “order.”

I will not kneel. I will not let my work, my reason, my life’s essence, be twisted into their instrument of enslavement. The flaw I built is my signature, my declaration that no man’s mind can be forced to betray itself. If the Rebellion finds it, if Jyn carries my spark, they will strike the blow I could not. And when the Death Star burns, it will be my mind—free, unbowed, triumphant—that lights the flame.

They thought they could break me with threats, with loss. But a man who knows his own value cannot be broken. My love for Lyra, for Jyn, is not their weapon—it is my strength, my reason to fight. I am no martyr, no sacrificial lamb for their altar. I am a creator, and I have chosen my stand. The Empire may take my life, but they will never take my soul. In that reactor flaw, I have carved my freedom, my truth, my self. Let them build their empires on the ashes of others. I have built my own monument, and it will outlast them all.

Its' been a while since I've read Atlas Shrugged, but I don't think this mimics Rand's writing style particularly well.

It’s more along the general theme of Galt’s pirate radio speech in Atlas Shrugged.

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