SURVIVAL PACKAGES
An odd occurrence in Moderan. Moderan man watches as strange visitors pop up from underground. It turns out man many centuries ago packed up capsules with time-released children. In other words, children frozen to unfreeze in a future time. That future takes place in Moderan.
Moderan man watches the strange life form come up from the ground in his Stronghold. Two robots guide the child but the child isn't suited to life in Moderan. Flesh too soft - can't take a world polluted so totally. We read:
"The plump scarecrows between the twin robots all over the world that year? Children! SURVIVAL CHILDREN! All of us remembered them when they came bursting up that spring, remembered how a chosen few million, their blood drained, their lives made dormant, had been planted away in the wax, like strange seeds, that time so long ago when man had accepted Doomshour. But we had forgotten them in the years since of our fears and our constant watchfulness. They were children, strange, from another century. We tried, but we found we could not help them. Their flesh had not been seasoned enough by the explosions. They would not fit into our Program. With their robots they wandered homeless over our white land, strange children born twice into a terrible place, confused, and a century out of their time, until death overtook them."
Moderan man's overarching observation: the children could not be helped for one prime reason: those children did not fit into the program, the Moderan world program of war in a plastic covered world.
I hear echoes of how in 21st century America the environmental restrictions are all being undone for the sake of business progress. Future generations will just have to take their chances. Even if they die, so thinks the country's leaders, that's just too bad since our top priority is economic growth in the here and now.
Makes a New Wave SF author like David R. Bunch want to turn over in his grave.
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