Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

Fire again. What a cleansing friend. What a terrible enemy.

“You’re right. People do blame you for the things they do to you.

“These days, projecting blame is almost an art form.”

“You enjoy telling people what to do, don’t you?” I shrugged. “I like living, and I like being free. And you and I need to be able to trust one another.” I watched her now, needing to see all that there was to be seen.

“The best way to avoid it is to be ready for it,” I said. “Accept the reality that it might happen, and keep your eyes and ears open.”

Ordinary living skills like cooking and sewing were never on the agenda.

In that room she could go anywhere, be anyone, be with anyone. It was like a womb with an imagination. She could visit fourteenth-century China, present-day Argentina, Greenland in any imagined distant future, or one of the distant worlds circling Alpha Centauri. You name it, she could create some version of it. Or she could visit her friends, real and imaginary. Her real friends were other wealthy, idle people—mostly women and children. They were as addicted to their v-rooms as she was to hers. If her real friends didn’t indulge her as much as she wanted them to, she just created more obliging versions of them. By the time I was abducted, I didn’t know whether she really had contact with any flesh-and-blood people anymore. She couldn’t stand real people with real egos of their own.”

We’re all wounded. We’re healing as best we can. And, no, we’re not normal. Normal people wouldn’t have survived what we’ve survived. If we were normal we’d be dead.” That made her cry. I just held her. No doubt she had been repressing far too much in recent years. When had anyone last held her and let her cry? I held her.

“If God is Change, then… then who loves us? Who cares about us? Who cares for us?” “We care for one another,” I said. “We care for ourselves and one another.” And I quoted,

“Kindness eases Change. Love quiets fear.”

Do you believe? Belief will not save you. Only actions Guided and shaped By belief and knowledge Will save you. Belief Initiates and guides action— Or it does nothing.

But to my amazement, I missed my adoptive parents. I missed the church. I missed the life I had grown up with. I missed everything. And I was so lonely. I dragged myself through my days. Sometimes I barely wanted to be alive.

“That’s what Earthseed was about,” I said. “I wanted us to understand what we could be, what we could do. I wanted to give us a focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we ever have been.

But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become.

“You need to do what Jarret does.” “What!” I demanded, not wanting to do anything Jarret did. “Focus on what people want and tell them how your system will help them get it.

But that way didn’t work.

“Those people were willing to follow an 18-year-old girl because she seemed to be going somewhere, seemed to know where she was going. People elected Jarret because he seemed to know where he was going too. Even rich people like your dad are desperate for someone who seems to know where they’re going.”

People who could afford to educate their children in private schools were glad to see the government finally stop wasting their tax money, educating other people’s children. They seemed to think they lived on Mars. They imagined that a country filled with poor, uneducated, unemployable people somehow wouldn’t hurt them!”