Truth

Truth

By Fade

I’ve kept my silence for the last few months. I suppose I should have said something sooner, but I’ve had a hard time coming to grips with the truths of the situation. I think a sage among your people once said that the truth never makes you popular, and only rarely wins you friends. Then again, there is no telling if my memories are accurate. I’ve come to realize just how easy it is for a nation to manipulate the truth. I suppose when faced with an infinite amount of unknowns, and a very finite store of things known to be true, one must accept things as correct until given reason to distrust the source from which they come. I guess I am skipping several different steps in my story, and you no doubt now question my sanity. Let me back up, my name is Cindy, I am 10 and you might say I’m precocious. I’m writing because of the impending treaty between our two peoples.

I would imagine that this letter will cause quite a stir among your people, if it reaches the right eyes. If taken seriously it could have a profound effect on the relations between our nations. Consequently, I felt it was best to as you say “lay all my cards on the table.” Things like this are generally investigated quite thoroughly before they are accepted or dismissed, and the fact that I’m so young is very detrimental to my case. By letting you know initially that I am not of legal age in my country or yours, I hope regain some of my lost credibility while diffusing a possible problem.

You’ll have to excuse the format of this letter. I find that I think in a similar monologue and that it aids me in covering topics in their entirety. I feel this to be of grave enough nature that I don’t want to miss any supporting material, and I therefore hope that you can forgive me if I seem to wander at times-I assure you that every item is of importance at some point in my presentation.

Again I digress somewhat, please forgive me. I would like to relate a story with which you are very familiar. At the conclusion of the account I think that you will agree that the major details of the story are the same, but enough small things are changed that the end result is quite different. The story concerns two peoples, one of which is very much like yours. Forgive me if after saying this I highlight the fact that their culture was far from perfect. It had to walk that almost nonexistent line that balances personal liberty against justice and the rights of others. There was conflict between various groups, some of which ended in bloodshed. Despite this and the fact that it was definitely a class society, the members of this culture by and large valued the same things your people profess to value-honesty, justice, mercy.

Our second nation consists of what can only be considered a race of pathological liars. To give you an idea how deeply rooted deception is in their culture, I will use an example from their language. The Eskimo people, surrounded even immersed in snow from birth to death, have more than one word for snow. The decision of which word to use depends on factors that you and I never think of, such as the snow density. This second culture actually has no less than eleven words to cover the concept of lying. The degree of truth, whether or not the falsehood is meant to harm or hurt, and various other things determine what word is used to describe the lie. Amazingly the common practice of deception results in no deaths. Murder is unheard of, and other violent crimes are all but non-existent. The entire nation is at full employment, and they have a very impressive sense of unity-every member of society works towards the same goal in their professional life, and if their family and personal lives are of secondary importance, some would say this is a small price to pay for the other benefits the society provides.

Having given you what I feel to be a reasonably objective description of both societies, let me now tell you what happened when the two met. I will refer to the first society, the one similar to yours, as the natives because at the time in questions they were the ones who occupied the area of land which we will be discussing. The second society, the one which had elevated deception to its consuming ideal, I will now refer to as the settlers for reasons which become evident shortly.

The natives had existed as a civilization for quite some time prior to the events which will be related. Based on their calendar system, I would hazard a guess of at least 600 years as the length of the time period in question. I’m afraid that this isn’t conclusive proof, as your archeologists will no doubt confirm, but it is the best that I can do with the resources I have at my disposal.

It would appear that due to the somewhat isolated location of the native nation, they had managed to successfully avoid conflict and even contact with other peoples for a very long time. There is fairly substantial proof that they had developed a belief that the world ended on the other side of the mountains which sheltered their system of valleys, similar in many ways to the beliefs held by Europeans before Christopher Columbus.

The arrival of the settlers proved the invalidity of the natives’ view of geography, and there is some evidence that it challenged the religious beliefs of several of the dominate sects, creating something of a crisis of faith among the majority of the natives. Nevertheless, the natives apparently reacted without prejudice. They welcomed the settlers into their nation, and upon learning that this other people was fleeing a grave enemy of unknown powers, they prepared to defend their new friends.

At this point, I feel it important to note that it is entirely conceivable that they instead could have chosen to give the settlers up-appeasement has been practiced at some time or another by many countries. In fact, world history would indicate that this is what resulted in Hitler gaining such a foothold in Europe just prior to the commencement of general hostilities in World War Two.

Returning to the events under consideration, the settlers professed a desire to help the natives defend against the inevitable attack, and so were included in the natives’ small but rapidly expanding military. It was amazing the speed with which the settlers were included in just about every area of the natives’ culture. Within a period of about one month, there were representatives of the settlers present in government, education, agriculture, and law enforcement.

At the end of this month, the settlers struck. A chemical, I have not been able to learn what, was introduced into the water supply of every major native town. The chemical had the effect of making the natives amazingly docile. In the space of three days, the settlers had rounded up and drugged all but a handful of the natives, and effectively enslaved an entire race. There were of course a few natives who evaded capture, and resisted the new masters of the land, but by and large the drugs administered to the native slaves kept them obedient and complacent with regards to their newfound status.

Over the years, all of the remaining free natives were eventually enslaved save one. I have been unable to determine this fugitive’s station in life prior to these events, but his actions during the time he avoided the settlers were indicative of extreme intelligence and skill. For approximately ten years, this individual lived off the land while hiding from astonishing numbers of settler parties send to capture him.

In the tenth year however, the normal sequence of events was disrupted when the fugitive launched a surprise raid on the settlers’ largest town the night before their biggest holiday. Apparently the natives had long celebrated a holy day which commemorated the birth of some kind of important historical or religious figure who was later martyred . Upon enslaving the natives, the settlers decided to usurp this most important of holy days, making it their own, albeit with many modifications. As I understand the holiday was filled with all kinds of excess and was a time when it was customary to transfer the ownership of slaves. Whether the fugitive chose this day in indignation over the desecration of the holy day, in the hope that the transference of slaves would create enough confusion to aid his purpose, or for some other reason remains unclear, but all sources are in agreement that the night before the holiday was to be celebrated the fugitive struck in a most unexpected way.

Slipping into town shortly after midnight, the fugitive scouted for the most likely targets, and then waited until all the lights in the town were out. The locked doors and windows proved to be something of a obstacle until the use of a strong rope allowed entry through the chimneys of the settlers’ houses.

According to the most credible accounts, the fugitive had managed to free a large number of his people when he was seen by a very young settler. A truly hardened fugitive would have no doubt have killed this child, and made good his escape. Instead of taking this course of action, this fugitive of ten years listened to her inquiry.

“Why are you taking all these slaves away?”

I can only assume that he stopped out of fascination with the idea that this young settler might still have values similar to his own, but whatever his reason he paused in his escape to explain that he was taking these sick slaves somewhere they could get better.

Unfortunately, this delay allowed a recently awoken settler to realize his slaves were missing. As the alarm was raised, the fugitive ran off to meet up with the childlike slaves waiting ten minutes outside of town, but the flight proved to be of no avail. Within a few hours, the settlers had recaptured all the slaves, and imprisoned the fugitive.

As a reward for delaying the last free native long enough for him to be captured, he was awarded to me as my personal slave. My family took the events of this night as a sign of my great potential. To their sorrow, instead of becoming an accomplished liar I found that I always wondered why my slave had been so different from all the other slaves, and why he had become just like the others after that night. It led me to question everything I was taught, and to despise my culture and treasure the few truths I was able to learn.

I now ask that as Americans you each begin to question that which is told you by my people. It will not be easy, for they are excellent in their deception, but if you examine their statements closely enough you’ll find that they are not worthy of your trust.

Please learn from the experience of the natives, they are all gone now-exterminated upon my people’s first contact with yours. It was decided that keeping the slaves alive would result in too much of a risk that our falsehoods would be detected. I’ll never forget the look of confusion on my friend’s face as he was dragged away to be executed.

Please learn from my friend the Grinch and trust no Who, not even me, Cindy Lou Who.

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