Fledgling

by Octavia E. Butler

games like the trials humans have.

Haha

It isn’t about following laws so strictly that the guilty go unpunished or the innocent are made to suffer. It isn’t about protecting everyone’s rights.

“Human trials are often games to see which lawyer is best able to use the law, the jury’s beliefs and prejudices, and his own theatrical ability to win.

Absolutely!

Haha, he’s got a hard-on.

It dishonors everyone involved, and everyone remembers.

I wish that were the case with 21st century American politics.

She has no clue about the need for *evidence* and sees “truth” only through her own experience, which is not universal. However, what about the witnesses to the evidence gathered from the captured invaders?

You can count on us—my whole family—to back you up on what almost happened here at Punta Nublada and on what we learned from the prisoners,

“And don’t lose your temper.

Haha, that could be a problem.

“And never answer an accusation that hasn’t been made. Even if you believe someone is hinting that you’re delusional or otherwise mentally damaged, don’t deny what they say unless they make the accusation outright.”

Make them say what they mean. Make them support it with evidence.

it’s dangerous for anyone to lie about someone else’s questions or answers.

Maintaining a prison isn’t quite as unpleasant as being a prisoner in one, but it’s bad enough.

Amputations are punishments of pain, humiliation, and inconvenience.

if you had been anyone else, they would have succeeded. You not only survived twice, but you came to us with what you knew, and you led the fight to destroy most of the assassins and to question the survivors.

Haha irony

I decided that I had better protect him from his wants. He wouldn’t send me away, and he should have.

Ethics

two representatives each from the thirteen other families,

Or didn’t?

The thirteen families were Fotopoulos, Marcu, Morariu, Dahlman, Rappaport, Westfall, Nicolau, Andrei, Svoboda, Akhmatova, Nagy, and of course, Leontyev and Braithwaite.

There were six male families and seven female. I asked

Pr...

whether the balance of sexes meant anything. “Nothing at...

And there is no longer a Matthews family to be represented.

They should see that you have been seriously wounded, but that it hasn’t destroyed you.” “It has destroyed who I was.” “Not as thoroughly as you think, child.”

Wright had decided to stay with me through the proceedings,

Nice

“I’ve moved to Mars,” she told me. “Now I’ve got to go learn how to be a good Martian. Who better to teach me than the other immigrants?”

There was something comforting about having them on either side of me. They eased the stress I had been feeling without their doing anything at all.

Nice

Ominous

Milo Silk.

That world was Mars to me,

everyone seemed to expect Milo to do it. After all, he hadn’t been judged guilty of anything—yet.

Peter Marcu,

Preston Gordon,

Martin Harrison

Wright

said, confusingly, “Break a leg.”

Haha

Joel

Brook

Zoë Fotopoulos,

Joan Braithwaite,

Haha

Alexander Svoboda,

Peter Marcu

Vladimir Leontyev

Ana Morariu’s

Katharine Dahlman’s

Sophia

Alice Rappaport’s

Harold Westfall

During slavery and the Confederacy ….