Do I remember?
Yes, I think I remember him. A long time ago, longer now than ever.
He wore a shiny spacesuit and a dusty leather jacket. His chin was square and his head was hard. His eyes were blue and his words were blunt. He was strictly no-nonsense and saw it everywhere. He came to us in a long, smooth steely shaft.
He called himself the rocket man, and that was all we knew.
The rocket man said he was here to bring us free-thinking, and the virtues of independent thought, as long as we were independent in his way and came to the same conclusions he did.
A couple of us weren’t sure of his arguments. He dismissed them as fascists.
The rocket man said he was here to bring us knowledge. Big machines and nano machines and a thousand ways of describing a parabolic arc that ended in a manly, thorough thud.
One or two of us queried him on the purposes of this, as the stars were very far away and our troubles were very near to heart. He dismissed them as simple-minded.
The rocket man said he was here to bring us enlightenment. He spoke long hours into our flickering wayfires about personal responsibility and self-government and the self-respect that came from the self-regard of self-ownership.
Several of us disagreed with this, preferring our current system, where any lonely may come to ask of a hubbery companionship. He dismissed them as communists.
The rocket man said he was here to bring us sexual revolution. He lectured us on the small-mindedness of taboos and the perils of falling prey to our superstitious and irrational culture, and the unmanliness of masturbation and thinking indecent thoughts about the same sex.
Some of us disputed this, saying that it was alright to not covet one’s own parents and that it was normal for some to brood with fellow-brooders. He dismissed them as unscientific.
The rocket man said he was here to bring us weapons. A million glorious kinds of kinetics, always kinetics, for the rocket man swore allegiance to two-fisted hard-headed sweat-of-the-brow rationality and the effeminate excess of light or plasma-based weaponry had earned his scorn many times over, or so he declared.
A number of us opined that hunting with the dazzle-caster and a sharp stick was still among our most successful methods of garnering small protein. He dismissed them as socialists.
The rocket man said he was here to bring us into the brotherhood of man, or the fatherhood, really – by the hand. The universe was vast and uncaring and it was dog-eat-dog out there, but we were very nearly hominid in shape, or at least nigh-tetrapods, and for this we were blessed with the most perfect of all shapes or close enough. Our opposable digits, our upright posture, and our two-footed gait had blessed us with perfection in form, and we had a galaxy of our (near) equals out there waiting to benevolently guide us in this glorious path.
Quite a lot of us staunchly spoke against this, pointing out our reliance on the potency and might of post-brooding brooders, and the usefulness and ferocious speed of the sixlimbed-life of the elderly. He dismissed them as populists.
The rocket man said he was here to bring us leadership. Our people were complacent, humble, and somewhat fair, and in our acephalous communities he saw future danger – if not conquest, then obsolescence. Stick with me, he said, thrusting out his chin, and I will raise you up, body and mind, and I will take you to the stars, the cold clean stars that are hard and bright and math and pure and no place for feeble women or watery-eyed weaklings.
Yes, I remember the rocket man. Your grandbrooder buried him two fields over, out back, under the big rock.