Hey Everyone!! :-)
I've got a little more of Alyce's adventure to share with you, today! Enjoy! :-)
Excerpt from sci-fi satire novel:
As I stepped around the corner, I understood what he meant. This was certainly not something that could ever be considered appropriate for a collection of the wacky but harmless customs of Earth. Looking at it, I felt an odd sense of both strangeness and familiarity.
It wasn't that they had done a bad job of depicting the issue. They hadn't. It was just that I felt like I was seeing something out of history books recreated in modern-day America. It was disturbing on several levels, but most of all because I knew that it was something that was happening right then in a country I had thought was better than that.
I swallowed hard against the knot of tears and frustration the scene before me inspired. "No." I whispered, the words catching in my throat. "You didn't misunderstand."
Before me, I saw the smallest robot I had seen yet. It was the perfect size to represent the child it resembled. A child who was crying hysterically as two larger robots in uniforms put a robot that looked like a young woman in handcuffs and led her away. The sound in the exhibit was turned off, but the tears that rolled down the tiny face looked as real as the tears I had dried on the faces of my own younger siblings when we were kids. It would be a much harder heart than mine who could look at the face of that crying baby and not feel itself breaking. At least, that's how I remembered feeling when I saw the same images on the news.
"So, this really is just another example of how your society treats people who can't defend themselves?"
I nodded. What else could I do? The facts condemned us; the evidence was standing there before my very eyes.
"If so many people in your society are so concerned about the safety of children that they would seek to deny basic rights to half your population in order to protect them, I'm surprised that there isn't more of an outcry over this," said Yax.
I laughed bitterly and wiped at the moisture that had somehow appeared on my cheeks. "Ya know, sugar, I would be, too, if those self-same people weren't the ones who had voted the monsters who ordered this into power. But they're all too busy trying to defend the indefensible to concern themselves over some poor kids. Especially, when those kids don't even look like them."
"So this is another example of the racial bias that exists in your society?"
I nodded. "That and xenophobia."
"Your people believe these young-ones are from beyond your planet?" squeaked Squid-boy. I looked at the bewildered expression on his strange face. If ever anyone looked like an alien… A half-smile tugged at my mouth as I answered, "No, they know they're human. They simply refuse to treat them that way. There are a lot of ignorant, backward-thinking people in my country who call people from other countries 'aliens' in order to justify treating them as less than human. It's a sick, twisted mentality that is unfortunately all too common."
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