Knur: You are called Listening?
Gary: Negative. Listening is the process by which I attend auditory input. I am Gary.
Knur: Before I die, Gary, I request information.
Gary: I am listening, Knur.
Knur: My onboard televison-o-scope reports many of your fellow beings on a distant island were recently rendered exanimate. I offer comfort and support.
Gary: Your offer is accepted. On Earth we refer to these events as ‘massacres’.
Knur: These mass exanimation events, they are ceremonial? Ritualized?
Gary: Negative. They are unplanned, yet expected.
Knur: Curious. Confirm for me, please. Multiple exanimation events are regrettable, correct?
Gary: Confirmed. We experience sorrow.
Knur: My understanding is limited. This mass exanimation was implemented through the manipulation of a device intentionally designed to rapidly launch multiple projectiles driven by expanding high-pressure gas produced chemically by exothermic combustion of a propellant sealed within a prefabricated cylindrical package. Accurate?
Gary: Accurate.
Knur: Logic suggests the elimination of projectile-launching devices would decrease the incidence of mass exanimation.
Gary: Affirmative.
Knur: Therefore, would it not…
Gary: No.
Knur: And yet…
Gary: No. The elimination of such devices cannot be achieved.
Knur: Explain.
Gary: It is prohibited by the normative rules inscribed and certified by our progenitors.
Knur: Hail the progenitors!
Gary: Hail the progenitors!
Knur: The normative rules are immutable?
Gary: Mutable, but intractable.
Knur: By what manner, then, does your society attempt to reduce mass exanimation events?
Gary: By a twofold process. First, we offer an aim-oriented flow of ideas and associations intended to extend compassion to the victim’s consanguineous groupings and associations. Second, we appeal to an invisible being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. It is anticipated the two processes when combined will lead inevitably to a reality-oriented conclusion.
Knur: …
Gary: Also, the existence of the invisible being is not subject to proof or evidence.
Knur: …
Gary: …
Knur: Ineffective?
Gary: Affirmative.
Knur: …
Gary: …
Knur: That’s fucked up, Gary.