Why Long March?
When I was young way back in the stone age, before remote controls and mass numbers of channels on cable, I saw a short film on Showtime. It was a piece from a movie called Allegro Non Tropo set to the music of Ravel's Bolero. It was animated and basically portraited evolution. If you have not heard Bolero it has a very steady treading beat underlaying the melody. The creatures walk along in pairs marching to the beat of the music and evolve into more and more advanced animals as they go and eventually into man. This struck me powerfully at the time and has stayed in the back of my mind all these years and helped form my view of humanity. I see the human race and indeed all creatures as being on a long march from the darkest most distant past down into the future. Every generation is another step on the the road and another step toward a destination so far off in the distance we can't see it over the horizon. Perhaps there is no destination, perhaps it is the march itself that's important. It may be that someday we will misstep and be no more, but the thing that stays with me after all these years is that each pair of animals struggled on until they could become something more, something better than they were before. That is the essence of the Long March to me, the long steady struggle along the road in an attempt make our selves and our descendants better than we were.
In the our game man is taking that next step, becoming Novas, and it remains to be seen whether he falls from the path or strides into the future a better creature. There is one more aspect that ties in to the Long March that has yet to be reveled, but it is up to you to discover it. I hope you enjoy the journey and I thank you for walking along the path with me for a while.