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9/6/21 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akjeBook is almost done now. Yay! But alas, there are so many things I had to leave out because of plot changes, redundancy, etc. Like Elsie chatting with Drago in Eudonia after the Titan crashes. Sigh.
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Drago laughed, and Elsie looked up sharply from her drink.
"Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny?"
Drago gave himself a mental shake and attempted an air of seriousness. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, madam. But surely you were joking?"
"Why would I be joking?"
"Well, your people have run your country into the ground with their behavior, leaving a legacy of homelessness, poverty, crime, environmental devastation—"
"Not where I live!"
"Heh. Yes. Quite right. Well. Be that as it may, those evils and many more exist outside the vision of Screenland's elite all the same. Your country has a long history of famine, plague and poverty, and now you want to ship your surplus population across our borders to run our nation into the ground too?"
"You said you had a labor shortage!"
"Yes, we have a labor shortage. Which we're compensating for with artificial intelligence. What you don't seem to understand is that we like it this way. It's easy to get a job here, and all the work is high paying. This is one of the many benefits of underpopulation. Your society needs to become more like ours, not try to make ours more like yours."
"Sir! Our society is very good! We have the highest standard of living in the world! The only thing we're lacking is your health machine. If you'd just give it to us, then life in our country would be perfect!"
Drago rubbed his eyes. "Madam, in your hands our technology would become like weapons. Your people need to learn to control their procreation first. The reason we have a health machine at all is because our health is a priority due to the shortage of people. Whenever someone dies, it's a great tragedy to us. In your country, another death is barely noticed, and your health care system and its workers profit from people getting sick."
"Sir—"
"No, let me finish. You think it a tragedy that a pandemic is now rampaging through your land. Well, there are worse epidemics awaiting you. Plagues that cause blindness, deafness, paralysis, coma. Diseases that leave you with agonizing pain, blisters and excessive bleeding. These diseases and many more await you out in the woods, swamps and deserts. But you keep felling the biomes anyhow, destroying animal habitat and putting yourselves in contact with disease-bearing wildlife. And why? So you can build more strip malls, office buildings and housing for your burgeoning population. You need to learn to live within limits and shrink your population instead of accommodating continuous growth."
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Drago laughed, and Elsie looked up sharply from her drink.
"Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny?"
Drago gave himself a mental shake and attempted an air of seriousness. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, madam. But surely you were joking?"
"Why would I be joking?"
"Well, your people have run your country into the ground with their behavior, leaving a legacy of homelessness, poverty, crime, environmental devastation—"
"Not where I live!"
"Heh. Yes. Quite right. Well. Be that as it may, those evils and many more exist outside the vision of Screenland's elite all the same. Your country has a long history of famine, plague and poverty, and now you want to ship your surplus population across our borders to run our nation into the ground too?"
"You said you had a labor shortage!"
"Yes, we have a labor shortage. Which we're compensating for with artificial intelligence. What you don't seem to understand is that we like it this way. It's easy to get a job here, and all the work is high paying. This is one of the many benefits of underpopulation. Your society needs to become more like ours, not try to make ours more like yours."
"Sir! Our society is very good! We have the highest standard of living in the world! The only thing we're lacking is your health machine. If you'd just give it to us, then life in our country would be perfect!"
Drago rubbed his eyes. "Madam, in your hands our technology would become like weapons. Your people need to learn to control their procreation first. The reason we have a health machine at all is because our health is a priority due to the shortage of people. Whenever someone dies, it's a great tragedy to us. In your country, another death is barely noticed, and your health care system and its workers profit from people getting sick."
"Sir—"
"No, let me finish. You think it a tragedy that a pandemic is now rampaging through your land. Well, there are worse epidemics awaiting you. Plagues that cause blindness, deafness, paralysis, coma. Diseases that leave you with agonizing pain, blisters and excessive bleeding. These diseases and many more await you out in the woods, swamps and deserts. But you keep felling the biomes anyhow, destroying animal habitat and putting yourselves in contact with disease-bearing wildlife. And why? So you can build more strip malls, office buildings and housing for your burgeoning population. You need to learn to live within limits and shrink your population instead of accommodating continuous growth."
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