I have lived my entire life in fear, and only now do I realize that.

My pappy and me brudders wouldn't say that.  They say I'm full of guts,
the bravest member of the family for generations back.  Only I would
dare venture this far from our farm.  Everyone else would'a turned back
kilometers ago...but there's no more game to be found back there.  None
edible, anyway.

A curse on whatever demon set those robots loose.  They eat and
defecate just like all game, but they're stronger, faster, smarter, and
tougher than regular beasts.  They breed different, or so I'm told, but
I ain't never seen 'em do it - not surprising, since I hear they only
do it in the mountains near the old ore mines.  Even if you do shoot
'em, they ain't nothin' but a pile of metal, though their livers taste
the same.  Your best bet is to spot the gleam, or patches of grey, that
mark 'em as separate from real animals.  That's gotten tough of late,
since all the animals left grew up with shiny grey coats, but I can
still pick 'em out.  Every animal I passed on this hunt so far's been a
'bot.

I kept tellin' everyone we should catch a few of the animals and breed
'em for when the real ones ran out.  I knew this day would come, but
pappy wouldn't hear any of it.  He said there was always game in his
time and his pappy's time and his pappy's pappy's time, so there'd
always be food.  I checked the records, though: huntin's been gettin'
worse all through that time.  Not sure about my pappy-to-the-fourth's
time, though: that's when the records started, metioning something
about the Great Ice and how the world was all different before then.
He told about great cities and billions of people and enough food that
only greed kept some people hungry - sometimes their own greed, more
often others'.  Hard to believe, I know, but it sure do explain a lot
of the wierd stuff I've seen far away from the farm.

No one else even wants to talk about it.  They say anyone not in our
family wants to steal our food, and should be shot and ate just like a
rabbit.  That was true in pappy-to-the-fourth's time, but I ain't seen
none of the bands of thieves he told about, and neither have my pappy
or his pappy.  A couple of my brudders keep goin' on about how they
jumped this "surveycrew", an' they certainly got meat from *somewhere*,
but I felt sick after eatin' it.  Still, I could tell this woman in
front of me was a stranger.  I mean, none of us would wear white even
if we had that color of cloth: it'd get soiled so fast, we might as
well have made it brown or grey t'begin with...which we do.

So, here I am, face to face with what ever'one's told me must be the
enemy, and what do I do?  Shoot her on sight, of course.  I ain't no
fool.

Check that.  I *am* a fool.  So're all'a my family, even the women who
never speak up despite how we treat 'em.  (Shameful, really, but I've
got enough troubles with my mouth without speakin' up for 'em.)  I
realized that just after my shot bounced offa her.  Pappy-to-the-fourth
told about some queen in white who gave the world a choice between
slavery and exile, so he hid.  The description he gave matches this
woman perfectly.  I'm the only one of my generation who reads the old
books, so I should've remembered that part.  Too late.

She doesn't say a word.  She's just lookin' at me, all sad-like, and I
know what I gotta do...and I know my family will know, just as soon as
she sees 'em.

---

"Refugees Commit Suicide, Blamed For Murders And Animal Depopulation
(Queen Serenity First On Scene, Palace Insists She Investigated Only
After Shots Fired)"

Headline found on an old issue of Crystal Tokyo Gazette, date unknown

"There's no wrong way to destroy a human soul."

Caption from editorial cartoon in same issue
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