Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, May 3, 2023.
“Okay. By the way, Christopher, have you considered seeing a therapist for being a “cartoonist” to a possibly unhealthy degree.” 😉
Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, May 3, 2023.
“Okay. By the way, Christopher, have you considered seeing a therapist for being a “cartoonist” to a possibly unhealthy degree.” 😉
Christopher, THAT comment from you made me laugh out loud! Many kudos for your wonderful work. I so look forward to your next installments three times a week!
How many adult Stribs are left on the planet?
Apart from the two who used to ride the same ship as “Science”, aren’t they all in space, involved in the big battle?
So far as I know, you got it right. And without Science around to lead the clueless twins, they may not get up to anything dangerous. Then again, they are Stribs.
But if they are all off the planet, it will take until the current batch of “puppies” are only enough to make more “puppies” themselves.
Meaning that Suzanne would not have anything to do–no more new puppies to look after–in the not too distant future.
I meant “old enough”.
Assuming all the pups are the same age now.
The Stribs planned for a care crew of thousands which is now a care crew of three. She’ll be ready for any break she can get to do “nothing”.
I can quit any time I want to, but why would I want to?
Two hundred years later, the Galaxy shuddered under the onslaught of puppy-eyed so-sweet-you-die-from-diabeetus-Strib empathy warrior-cuddlers.
What is the Strib lifecycle? How long are they babies? How long before they are old enough to be parents?
There is, of course, no therapy available for cartoonists. Thankfully!
Self examination can certainly lead to learning some truths about yourself. I don’t recommend it.
Albert Camus wrote a telling essay that argues that Sysphus, he of the rock he rolled up a hill every day only to see it crash back down, where he spent the night climbing back down to it, must be happy. He cannot choose not to roll the rock. He can’t keep it at the top of the hill. The only thing he can control is how he feels about the whole schmeer. And so, to thwart the will of Zeus who condemned him to this fate, he stayed upbeat and positive on every trip up and down.
A lot of work to say ‘F– you, Zeus’ but really, what else could he do?
Suzanne’s not so limited. She can do a great deal to turn the current crop of Striblings into resentful, angry fellow prisoners who their parents abandoned to be raised by aliens. Isolated inside an invincible forcefield. My guess is it won’t take too long for the dispossessed to figure out they need revenge in the largest possible sense, and build their own warships to make their parents pay the price for their unjust fate. The perfect result.
To misquote Nietszche here, “Wrestle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And when you gaze into hate, the hate gazes also into you.”
I figure somebody will sort out those shields long before 200 years goes by.
If she is the only influence on the planet, maybe this new generation of Stribs will have values of kindness and servitude? “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world” and all that.
(And that robot needs to shut it! Who does it think it works for anymore?)
If nurture counted more than nature, then you could teach calculus to a horse. No, sorry, the Stribs are a long-fermenting biological disorder without a cure. No amount of care will keep them from determining that by birth they deserve what YOU have, and that YOU deserve to be cheated out of it. And they already have calculus.