Author : Eric C. Prichard
“There is a certain sickening irony one finds in the pre-contact “science” fiction of the Utamin. They depict people from other worlds as invaders. To be fair, sometimes they are kinder. Sometimes “aliens” are diminutive bug-eyed sage-like psychic helpers who visit the Utamin’s planet in order to warn them about the implications of the existential threat created by their nuclear weapons. It is as if they assumed there must be another race in the galaxy stupid enough to create a weapon powerful enough to destroy an entire planet, but which is somehow advanced enough to transcend the threat and become large headed super beings who travel around space and help other peoples actualize before accepting them into the interplanetary community. A hint of wishful thinking I suppose.
Well, we were foolish enough to accept them without even thinking twice about the A-bomb. Sure they are less intelligent and more aggressive than us. Sure they were mismanaging their planet’s resources. But they had resources! The Council of the Wise saw economic opportunity and couldn’t wait. We traded with them. Then we educated them. Then we armed them when they complained about intergalactic piracy. We should have read their history before we entrusted them with our technology. Now we speak their languages! English! Russian! Mandarin! Ugly Earth sounds. Even Utamin, one of the last words in Byruian still in common use, is derived from the English word ‘Human.’
In their fiction they imagined us as invaders because their history is merely a ceaseless list of invasions. Their heros are takers and conquerers! The ink in which their legends are written is a mixture of the blood and ash of fallen cities! To them, it is only natural that a new place and a new people are things to be exploited. We could have contained them from the beginning. Now our planet is a collections of “sphere’s of economic influence.” Make no mistake. Earth is 3 1/2 light years (now we even use the distance that light moves in one of THEIR years to measure interplanetary distances) away form us, but we are merely a fief under the thumb of our Utamin overlords.
People ask me how an Earth educated man like myself, someone whose very family became wealthy by being good little pets for the Utamin, could bite the hand that feeds me. Well, it feeds me no longer! I renounce my father and my wealth! I have seen Utamin ways. I have read their twisted conquest fantasies. And I now believe that open resistance in the only thing they will understand. Strength is the only thing they will respect. We are not Utamin. We are not Humans! We are better than that. But Byruian ways are no match for the violence of Human ways. To reclaim our Byruian identity, we must fight like Humans.”
-Excerpt from an Op-Ed in “The True Byruian,” a pro Byruian Resistance newspaper written during the ill fated Byruian uprising. Circa 2213 C.E. (common era, Earth calendar).
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