For the first leg of its four-decade long journey, the Unity flew for only five hours and twenty minutes. At over a hundred miles per second, the great ship travelled over a million miles away from Earth. Then came the second leg. Like a dragonfly flapping delicate wings, it extended its humongous Bussard ramjet scoop to pluck spare hydrogen particles out from the void, shoveling the gas into its engines. For over a year, this process gradually accelerated the ship, bringing it to a cruising velocity of about eleven percent the speed of light.

It was during that Solar trek when a lucky minority of the travelers was temporarily awoken and allowed free rein to explore the vessel as it headed for the Kuiper Belt. These were mostly the command staff, other important crew members, randomly selected winning passengers, and honorary worthies- including Unity Franchise Holders.

Since few of the gilded tycoons of Earth actually went through with the dream to plunge into deep space, Nathan Weismuller found himself rather alone and apart as a ship's Investor. After his experiences with the senior crew officers, he assumed the role of a detached observer, a stranger on a strange ship. He wandered the buzzing halls of the halcyon days of the early mission, a time later historians would dub "the Starship Titanic."

Astro Lounge

Many on the Unity had cause to feel optimistic. After all, they were the lucky few to embark on mankind's first foray to a star, a cosmic voyage to settle a brand new world. They had been tested and passed, meant to represent humanity's best of the best, or at least the ones whom the rest of the planet could spare. A positive, dutiful mindset had been something the United Nations Space Authority and its selection committees had keenly screened for; Psych Chaplain Miriam Godwinson and her disciples ministered to those whose negative vibes fell below tolerance levels. And jetting past angry red Mars and rustic Ceres, even the most morose overlooked the possibility that they might have been the very last of the species; and the reality that they had left their friends, family, neighbors, nemeses, mentors, milkmen - everyone else they had ever known.

The ship's main mess hall exemplified the spirit of adventure and new beginnings. Not unlike a college cafeteria, or even an elementary schoolyard, it hosted dozens and dozens of groups from casually conversing couples to entire mobs centered around impromptu soapboxes, some even standing upon dining tables, all chattering away on what to do once they got there. Mission specialists gave mini-lectures on the fine details of the ship's approach and the selection process for landing pod sites. Geologists, naturalists, and urban planners debated what made the best spots to colonize. Xenobiologists, security staff, xenoanthropologists, and U.N. peacekeepers clashed over how best to handle first contact.

And all of that was dwarfed by the discussions about the right approach to handle humanity itself on Planet. In the inky blackness of space, the old divisions of country, creed, caste, and color slowly fell away. Instead, passengers debated amongst each other what had made those unenlightened masses back home decide to blow up everything. Where had mankind gone wrong, and what was the way to fix it. United by the infinite privilege of having escaped the seemingly doomed planet, and enlightened by their own intelligence, these fortunate sons proceeded to advance dozens upon dozens of proposals at how'd they get it right, this time.

Weismuller saw this teeming mass of humanity suffused with bold ideas and visions. A thousand schools of thought blending and bashing, reconsidering and remixing, reimagining the sum total of past human experience for the governance of the Chiron colony, and day-to-day existence. It was also, as he agreed with future historians, a haunting preview of the ideological wars that were to break out on Planet.

Freedom of Another Sort

He walked through the great dining commons turned marketplace of ideas, encountering thought leaders and manifesto writers proffering pet theories at each table. At the front you had U.N. mission loyalists smugly declaring that humanity had exceeded its grasp; on this new planet, firm control would be necessary to maintain order for a thousand years. Off to one side, ecologists and former environmentalist activists alike cast condemnations of climate change upon a group of indignant corporate representatives, loudly defending their mother companies' innocence on the old world, insisting they only wanted to build bases and mine minerals in the next. And freed from every earthly authority save for the lowest common denominator umbrella of the U.N., all of the radicals and reactionaries came marching forth, advancing revolutionary paradigms.

Like Paul in Athens, he could not feel but a little bit of distress at all of the gods being offered in the Unity mess hall- though unlike the apostle, it was not squeamishness towards idolatry, but simply sensory overload. While heading for the rear exits, too sick to endure further discourse, Weismuller first heard the clarion voice of the Society of Free Thought. In one corner of the room, standing on the flat floor, Snow Hart spoke to a half circle of avid listeners, enthralled by her message of freedom. On hearing his vaunted watchword, Weismuller crept over, and was greeted by the otherwise diminutive figure with the sonorous cry.

Hart spoke of how the late, great, Earth had been doomed not by over-permissiveness, but a lack of it. Even as the planet's environment worsened, the incompetent governments and the greedy corporations simply amassed their power for the sake of protecting power and riches, instead of serving the citizens and customers they were supposed to. But that was to be expected; these were but spooks in the Stirner sense, social constructs who were the products of mass consensual delusion. They had no power except of what they were granted, and they would cease taking if the people withheld it. Therefore the widespread chaos and lawlessness that had broken out over the world were not consequences of the breakdown of order, but rather the necessary steps towards creating a better, freer order. Humanity would be freed of the false spooks that had once ruled over them.

To this, Weismuller nearly recoiled, but stood firm in his convictions. And spoke. Freedom and liberty were the cornerstone to a functioning society, the financier said, but to permit any behavior to the exclusion of all laws would simply create a power vacuum that would profit new oppressors. Individuals would be deprived of their inalienable rights to follow productive self-interest with one another, as petty kings and warlords would creep into power, threatening life and private property.

At this, Hart turned to this interrupting interlocutor, as her following gasped at the temerity. Without betraying anger nor displeasure, she simply smiled at Weismuller. Inalienable "rights," she laughed. That which was so elevated by the United Nations and the liberal democracies, now corrupted and fallen, that had undergirded this entire mission. What, in the face of the rising sea and the guns of those now-degenerated democracies, were rights? Just another set of spooks propped up by those who claimed to serve but really just impeded.

What was property, she asked? Yet another "wheel in the mind", constraining human beings from realizing their true autonomy as individuals, free from any moral constraint. Private property was a spook propped up by authoritarians using coercion to guard imaginary contracts, depriving individuals. Illusions to be ignored, only to be followed by the individual where desired. The only correct social ordering are ad hoc "unions of individuals" with common goals and are free to leave at any time. All contracts are at-will.

At this, Weismuller bristled. Private property was an instantiation and implication of the law of equal liberty. Freedom and self-ownership of the individual was impossible without the ability to own physical things. According to the fundamental law, property was a fair and necessary grant within maximum possible freedom, so long as it did not infringe upon the liberty of others. So long as anyone could be a property owner, all would be free.

Snow Hart grinned and stated that attempts to formalize how liberty operated were more wheels of the mind. Spooks bandied about by authoritarians to inculcate their power. Limiting individuals from their full self-interest. And not simply by words- by force. Notions to the right of property restricted freedom as much as taxes did, with their claims to exclusivity and constraints on use. And as with taxes, for the price of its violation was swift destruction by the state. Property, Hart said, was violence.

This continued for quite some time.

At the end of it all, Weismuller defiantly left the room to the sound of boos and curses. But his opponent stood silent amidst it all, smiling all the while. Like Paul, he had stood before an Areopagus and attempted to convince them that the Unknown God they had followed was really his own. That their vision of freedom, paranoid and half-cocked, would be fulfilled by his veneration of freedom based on property rights, and the pursuit to acquire more of it. And while the disbelievers sneered, some had their thoughts jostled and hearts turned toward him. Later on, some of the founding signatories of the Cartel Charter would be former members of Hart's throng pre-Planetfall, embracing rational freedom at last.

Trysts in Space

And yet, that was not the last Weismuller had seen of the fiery-tongued egoist. She surprised him in one narrow corridor towards the Unity mid-section, a test tube of a hallway with floor-to-ceiling transparent windows looking out to the aquamarine haze of Uranus. Outside, the minty gas giant floated, the ship dangled in the empty void. It was just past seven bells, but he was unwilling to miss this once-in-a-lifetime sight to return to sleep. Some swore they could see storms beneath the featureless sphere of a planet, but Weismuller could see nothing but a perfect orb. It hung outside the ship with an almost creamy appearance, a great cyan-tinted ice cream scoop, subtly pulling the ship towards its gravity well.

He had turned every so slightly when Snow Hart had manifested herself. This time she was alone, no fandom in tow. Her off-white uniform, unstriped, seemed to dissolve into the beige tones of the Unity's spartan interior, clashing with the gold stripes of his Investor dress. Her pale-colored hair and complexion were a mirror to the sphere outside. She spoke first.

"Haven't had enough, have you?"

A chill ran down Weismuller's spine. He glanced all around in case more Stirnerites lurked behind pillars or in his blind spot. Once in Honduras he had been outside the fortress walls of the charter city when his car had been stopped by local looters playing at revolution. Improvising, he had thrown his briefcase into the jungle thicket, causing half the militants to chase after it in search of riches, while the other half to run for fear of explosives, while his driver had peeled off. That narrow escape had branded a new set of instincts within Weismuller that would save his life during the Fidelis siege of Ciudad Romer, leading him to board a Sea Rook transport helicopter days before the rebels had toppled the free enterprise zone.

Hart accosted him, seemingly with no entourage. She stopped at what felt like a handbreadth away from Weismuller. Her large eyes and intense gaze pierced his soul, but he stood firm.

"It would seem self-evident that our business is at an end."

She laughed. He had expected melodious, dulcet tones. Instead what emerged was the rasp of a chainsmoker- or perhaps one who spent formative years choking on the smog of latter-day London, and breathing in the chemicals from a hundred gas grenades at a thousand protests.

"You guys love to prattle on about 'private property' this and 'natural rights' that. But, tell me- outside of a boardroom, have you everreally taken something for your own?"

She stepped forward.

Some time later, after the rumors, gossip, and scratchy vidlink footage of covert lunches and shared promenade walks (captured by the pennysaver-paparazzi of Itala Palomino) had died down, Weismuller would ask Hart what had led her to pay him that night call, out by Uranus.

She chuckled in her tin man's wheeze and slid closer. She had seen something inside him that she could not quite explain. The mess hall retinue had denounced Weismuller that first time he had contradicted her ideals in public (no more or less, after later debates), but Hart could sense that there was a similarity- a sameness that existed in him. That he was the same, in some respects, to herself.

Stirner had called for the insurrection of "the unique" - for individuals who had truly rejected all self-denial and everything alien to authentic self-interest, embracing their ownness. By rejecting her philosophy, Weismuller had gone further than most in her flock. He had called her egoism out for being a spook of its own, dared to challenge her call for them to think for themselves and work it out for themselves.

That, Hart said, was why she had given him that night call. And now she had told him how she felt.

At this apparent confession to hypocrisy, Weismuller felt a chill again and asked if she was, after all, no more than a nihilist.

Hart smiled her Cheshire Cat grin and said quite the contrary. One whose belief system involved in labeling false notions as spooks and wheels of the mind had to be ready to turn such denunciations upon its own belief system. And be ready- to embrace- those who would do so, even when they existed outside of the ideology. Even when, she squeezed Weismuller, they held such charmingly moralistic and inflexible positions.

Over the weeks, Nathan Weismuller endeavored to spend less and less time with Snow Hart. Yet there was something about her provocations that could not help but to pique his interest, both at the public forum, and in their private interactions. This interest only waned when he met Adam Gieseler.

Notes

The description of the Unity's flight is as per the GURPS Alpha Centauri sourcebook, pg. 5

The account of St. Paul in Athens is in Acts 17:16-31

Some of the ideas explored in this chapter is based on the essay "Egoism in Rand and Stirner" by David S. D'Amato of Libertarianism dot org.