Editing Blue Giant:Jack Rourke

What can you say about Jack Rourke that hasn't already been said. He's a goddamn hero, the greatest space ranger every to patrol the byways of space who gave his life to become the savior of the whole damn human race.

How many movies have been made about him, a couple of hundred maybe? How many do him justice? Maybe two or three. The best ones all tell the same tale.

Jack Rourke was already one of the most famous rangers ever to have lived when he retired to a small settlers stead on Cassandra Blue, in the Cygnus arm of the Galaxy. This was back in, oh, 2581 (old calander). Jack settled down, wooed a girl called Matilda May and was happy. Then the creatures that came to be known as Rourke's Spiders invaded. They landed in Levo'stown, took over and took the entire community into captivity, back to their mothership. The first Jack knew about it was when a shuttlecraft with four of the monsters landed in his stead, armed to the teeth, looking to round him up.

Jack fought back. He eventually killed all four of the invaders and, after receiving no word from Levo'stown, commandeered the spider's shuttlecraft and flew to town. He found the settlement in flames. Turning around he flew to the spiders mothership, forced his way on board and freed the colonists from captivity. He cleared a way for the colonists to reach the shuttlebay and to freedom, but Jack (after a farewell kiss to Matilda May) stayed back. 

He fought his way through the armies of spiders to their controll room, where he used their own communicators to warn all the nearby systems. Then having no-where to run to, he crashed the ship into Cassandra Blue's moon, which was destroyed, creating the ring system which still exists today.

His message reached Earth, and the United Nations raised an army in time to fight off the hordes of the Cygnan empire and save humanity.

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As with all heroes sooner or later someone has to drag them down.

''Historians'' point out that the famous space ranger Jack Rourke would have been 102 years old in 2581. They also say that he never went as far as Cygnus, and that his service record wasn't all that impressive anyway. A few pixilated old vid-records isn't real proof in my books.

They point at Benjamin 'Jacko' Jackson, a dishonourably discharged war veteran who ''might'' have settled on Cassandra Blue at ''roughly'' the right time. They tell us that 'Jacko' was a bad, mixed up man suffering from post-traumatic stress. They point at the ''arachnophobia'' listed right there on his service sheet. It's just a case of trying to make things fit. They even try to claim that no-one called Matilda May existed in the planetary records. Ok, maybe that wasn't her name but it 'was' her name NOW, if you see what I mean.

As further proof they point out that the Rourke's Spiders don't have any record of a ship visiting Cassandra Blue. I mean, come on, where do you start with a line like that? And let's not even bother with the Oruc-Pang's 220 year old radio message that doesn't sound anything like Rourke.

Rourke lived a hero and died a hero and none of us should forget it.

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''Barry B. Hopkins - 12th grade History Report - Utopia 5''