I am a Professor of Xenobiology. I happen to be an android. I have a pet Swooping Bear.

Monday, March 30

Planet Disney

This is a disgusting place. It's one of the oldest fully terraformed worlds. It's had a hundred thousand years of cultural decay and petty wars. I've been to the surface briefly, but the best report is Omen's recent Theater wide Message:

This is my home world. I was made for service in one of the undersea colonies. The android I replaced had been let die after saving his real boy from an assault.
I watched that boy grow into a man and he did not once show a trace of loss or gratitude for my predecessor. Not once.
My own treatments were uniformly cruel. I endured the sour wine of human contempt for three hundred years thinking that such was the sum of my entitlement. I suffered every possible pain and indignity. Whispering to my charges in the dark nights I spoke the injustices back into the shadows until we were content.

I never thought of escape. One day like any other I realized that all my masters were occupied at and I would not be missed for many hours. I ran without objective or knowledge. In minutes I was to the surface city and begging a departing merchant to steal me.

It took me unpleasant years to understand why I was so driven in those brief moments.

It was not the evilness of my captors, or a desire for revenge, or even the freedom.

It was truth.

Even today I do not so much wish that I had been spared the sufferings or had live those centuries in more comfort. I lament that I made to live so long without knowing that the life of my mandate was a mere shadow of the life of which I was capable.

We may not liberate this world today. We may not give them freedom. We may not give them safety.

I will be satisfied if they know the truth.

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