====== Jack Svenson ======

"Thank you, peoples of Terra Libre, for your brave actions in voting for me today. It is starting today that we take our first step towards a new future: a future where we do not just survive and expand, but live and grow. Humanity has travelled under the dark, weighty shadow of the apparitions for far too long, and yet we survive. We have travelled out into the light, and now we can rest, as we truly deserve - each and every person here is a survivor; our //society// is a survivor. And, that being what it is, we must begin to heal and close the wounds of old, or else we will always be bound by the hanging spectre of apparition.

The apparitions are, of course, something that we cannot, and should not, forget, but if we are to allow ourselves to be defined by fear and a lack of attachment in case the apparitions arrive again then we are not Humanity. New, or Old. Unless we hold our own, and grow beyond fear's talons, we are nothing but a puppet. Never forget that fear is healthy: it is a warning. We must allow ourselves the capacity to feel fear again."

--- Opening of the inaugural speech of Jack Svenson, //First Speaker for the New Humanity// 2110

"And so it begins in death and pain. These deaths were thought by the group URSULA to act as a first case to bring the apparitions down upon us..."

"...and in time there developed those in the fleet who seemed to have powers in some way related to the apparitions. The most notable of these and curious of these is the case of Tai Pullman. Following a ritual conducted by one Darwin Verrel she seemed to grow more attuned to the natural order of the deterministic parts of the universe. Following investigation, and talking to those closest involved, it seems that Tai had in some sense absorbed some part - we as well call it a soul - of the others involved in the ritual.

I hope over the next chapter to show you why I believe this is in some sense an antipathy of that which we called 'apparitions', and lay out what I imagine would have happened, were Tai to have indulged these powers..."

--- Quotes from //The Apparition Crisis: Explained//, 2099