“When you look closely at the behavior of humans, you start to see that we are much more similar to the Alkanii than you would like to admit.” The professor pointed to a student in the third row. “You are going to walk out of this class, into the main grounds and then hop in your car and drive home, you do not consider yourself evil, or that you belong to a torturous species of invasive aliens. At least I hope you don't” several of the students smirked. The professor paused for a second before continuing “but your species had to destroy the land before paving it for this building, in doing so hundreds if not thousands of animals, bugs, plants and other life were displaced or killed. You never consider whether you accidentally will step on a worm when you walk to your car, do you? To you a worm is not even worthy of stepping over. You most likely eat meat, drink milk, and have a pet. In your mind you are a decent human, who does no harm; but to lesser species you are a genocidal monster who kills with no regard, enslaves and tortures” The smirks began to fade from the students. “We are…” she corrected herself “we were, the most intelligent species on this planet for thousands of years and every other species suffered while our species thrived, it's been a long time since we needed to use these other animals for survival and lest you all forget, we ARE animals. Well, now instead of surviving off our cousins, we use them for pleasure; when you can choose between a hamburger and a salad, only one of those choices has the moral burden of ending life. And we have been carrying around that burden like it weighed nothing. Well, the Alklanii came, and we cried about how what will happen is unfair and we asked how a hyper intelligent species could use us like this?”
She usually did not hammer home this message, but it was probably the final time she would ever be able to give this lecture. Year 10 had arrived. The Alklanii and the Vii forces were in orbit as promised, and frankly she didn’t give a shit anymore. She pointed to the same student “You ARE the Alklanii, and when the tournament starts, I hope that everyone one of those hamburgers was worth it, because for the first time in human history we will learn how the worm feels.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Professor Jordan finished her lecture and mercifully cut class 15 minutes short, half of it was to save herself the awkwardness in the room and the other half was because she was hungry.
Jordan buys her groceries every day after work, most people find it inconvenient, but it allows her to save money by only buying what she feels like eating at the time and she feels a semblance of normality being there. Here people would just silently walk and browse, there are no discussions about the impending fate of humanity or analyzing the odds of survival for our fighter. It was a small miracle that there is even anything in stock, in the first few years after the 'Submission’ it seemed like humans weren't even going to make it to year 10 without killing each other first.
As soon as the major world governments confirmed the Submission was real, chaos erupted. People started to panic, shelves started to empty and then the violence started. She tries not to remember those years, when she thinks back to what some people did, she almost convinces herself that maybe we deserve what's coming.
“Excuse me!” the elderly lady interrupted Jordans train of thought. “Oh, I'm sorry I was just thinking of... I was just daydreaming”. Jordan said.
“Seems to be a lot of that going on lately” The old woman curtly replied. She reached behind Jordan grabbed a can of tuna and walked down the aisle.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t be worried either if I was older than dirt” Jordan whispered to herself. Maybe I should get food for the whole week, she thought. The tournament begins in 4 days and people have behaving relatively well but that could change from one day to the next.
She decided against it, she could be stocked up for a whole year and it wouldn’t matter. The tournament will start, our Submitted wouldn’t make it past the first round and that would be that. It was what will happen to us when he loses, there was no point in planning past that.