13 Jan 1010
You
seem rather quiet.
Melancholy. I think I'm going stir crazy. What I would do for a bathroom
door I could lock.
Did you have another nightmare?
It wasn't exactly a nightmare. Just melancholy.
Oh?
We were running through the night. Came up to a hurricane fence. It
had barbed wire along the top, but it had been cut down in a few places.
We hurried through to a low cement building. It had a door to a stairway
leading down.
Then there was this flash of light. Somebody said the war had started.
Did you start it?
No. I guess that's why it wasn't so frightenning. I wasn't causing
anything, just being carried along.
We went down into the fallout shelter. And these kids were all over.
Who was with you?
Who?
You said we.
The other adults. I don't know who. I never saw them. I did see the
children about nine and ten years old. It was slow maneuverring through
all of them.
Well, we had to keep them happy. We sang and played games. We put on
shows for them, but all the time I kept looking up. We where going to be
trapped in this concrete tomb for weeks or months.
Or years.
Or forever. Hunker down. Hide away on the inside and you'll be safe.
Do you dream about war? I used to dream about it. About how I started
it.
No. I told you, we haven't fought a war in centuries.
Oh,
right, your mythical republic. I suppose everything is safe and happy and
peaceful.
No. I said I come from outer space. I don't mean another planet.
I live, we all live in space. I grew up on a dis, a deepspace industrial
site. It's sorta a city that flies among the stars.
The thing is I've spent most of my life on the edge of a sudden,
freezing vacuum. Make a mistake and you die. Like my sister and many of
my childhood friends. It is not safe.
Why do you do it?
Because we're free.
Is it worth it?
Is living in a bomb shelter worth it?
You are so clever.
Is there that much to be afraid of?
Yes. And not just because I'm crazy. Don't you watch TV? Whites kill
blacks. Blacks kill Jews. Jews kill Arabs. Arabs kill us.
Television is only one way to see the world. What you need is something
so scary you band together instead of always quarrelling.... Jenny?
When I was young I didn't know about bigotry and all that against blacks.
We lived in the suburbs and there weren't hardly any blacks to be bigotted
against. The first time I heard about was when the riots started in Watts
and Detroit and everywhere else. I'm old enough now to understand why it
happenned, but I'm still afraid. I dreamt that blacks come into the suburbs
late one night, after us, burning our houses and murderring our families.
You feel guilty because you're afraid?
Yes.
Why? All you're saying is that you're prejudiced.
But that's bad.
Who
gave you that crap? Prejudice is just a defence mechanism. As you grew
up, you learned some situations, blacks in this case, can cause you pain,
so you defend yourself, even in situation which turn out to be safe.
So you think it's alright?
That depends. It's alright to feel afraid, but not to act out of
your fear. Your fear is part of your internal model. A model which is inherently
inaccurate. You must not inflict your model on the rest of us.
So your people solved this?
Yes, but it wasn't easy Our gene pool ended up eradicating most
variants.
What happenned?
Like I said, all of us have mutated from you. But it wasn't one
like day no mutation, the next day everybody had it. The families without
the mutation became extinct. It was like the Cro-Magnon supplanting the
Neanderthal.
You murderred them.
Oh, no. But we live in a dangerous environment, and the mutation
gives us an edge.
But they, we just wouldn't give up.
No. That's why I said it wasn't easy. Not only do we as individuals
wish to survive, but we want our children and our families to survive.
But we understood the anger and the tension, and we dealt with it.
I wonder...... If more people were willing to set aside their fear
and anger, for their children's sake, we could have fewer wars. Mary,why
is it easier to die in war for you children than to live in peace?
Because then you have somebody to blame.
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