User:Korny247/sandbox

The Book of Martha

Summary

In the short story The Book of Martha a woman named Martha is chosen by God to stop humanity from destroying itself. God pulls her into another dimension one night after she works on one of her stories. She is faced with the decision to stop humanity from destroying itself. She chooses to let humans have all the pleasure they want through dreams to kill the desire to be destructive in the real world. They hope that this will curb the tendency of humans towards self-destructiveness and to offput the certainty of the destruction of mankind. But neither really know how it will turn out as God refuses to look in the future and Martha does not have the power to. God tells her this will destroy her career as a writer and so she chooses to forget what she did so she doesn’t have to live with her decision.

Quotes

• "This is what you're to do," God said. "You will help humankind to survive its greedy. murderous, wasteful adolescence. Help it to find less destructive, more peaceful, sustainable ways to live."
• "You're free to ask me questions," God said as tough he hadn't heard her plea at all. "You're free to argue and think and investigate all of human history for ideas and warnings. You're free to take all the time you need to do these things.· As I said earlier, you're truly free. You're even free to be terrified. But I assure you, you will do this work."
• Do you want to remember being here?" God asked. "No." On impulse, she stepped to God and hugged her... "No," she repeated. "I'm afraid of the unintended damage that the dreams might do."

Amnesty

Summary

The short story Amnesty is about aliens called “Communities” by one of their former captives named Noah. She is a translator for these aliens and usually is subcontracted by other Community entities to explain what the work in the alien host cities called bubbles entail of. In one of these meeting with potential human employees she explains what the Communities are as the are, as the Humans are still mad at the invasion. She tells them that the Communities were trying to find the limits of the human bodies when the first abductions occurred. That once they learned they were hurting humans they stopped certain experiments, whereas once she was released to humans she was detained by the government who tortured her to get information she did not have on her former captives. She chose to go back to the Communities because at a minimum any pain that occurred was accidental and the ones that really hurt were caused by other humans. When asked why they could just kill the Communities she explains that there were attempts to do so and that they failed miserably

Quotes

• "There was a moment of stillness. Then the employer stroked her, calming her and pleasing itselves. You insist on taking these jobs, but you can't use them to make the changes you want to make. You know that. You cannot change your people or mine. I can, a little, she signed. Community by Community, human by human. I would work faster if I could."
• "Noah shook her head. "I don't forgive them," she said. "They haven't asked for my forgiveness and I wouldn't know how to give it if they did. And that doesn't matter. It doesn't stop me from doing my job. It doesn't stop them from employing me. "
• "Half the nuclear missiles were ... returned?" Piedad Ruiz whispered. Noah nodded. "Half, yes." "What happened to the other half?" "Apparently, the Communities still have the other half along with whatever weapons they brought with them and any they've built since they've been here." Silence. The six looked at one another, then at Noah. "It was a short, quiet war," Noah said. "We lost."

The Evening and The Morning and The Night

Summary

The short story The Evening and the Morning and the Night take place in a world where there was a cure for cancer but the side effect is that the children born to these people who took the treatment are born with a neurodegenerative disease called Duryea-Gode. It is a disease that causes its patients to mentally disassociate and then violently harm themselves to the point of death. Any one who is around these victims during their violent episodes also end up seriously harmed or murdered. The story centers on a sufferer named Lynn who was born to two parents who also suffered from the disease. When she is fifteen she tries to kill herself and when she is about to graduate high school her father brutally murders her mother before violently disposing of himself. She attends University where she meets another DGD sufferer named Alan that she forms a relationship with. He too had parents who suffered from the same disease. They find his mother is alive at a retreat for people like them and go to visit her. There Lynn finds out she is a sort of hive leader to DGD sufferers as a female born to two people with the disease. The only cost is that people like her, female children of two DGD patients, tend to get very territorial with each other. She finds that she will be leading a future of keeping DGD people tamed in a retreat similar to the one she visits.

Quotes

• "They’d had a briefly profitable interest in Hedeonco: the magic bullet, the cure for a large percentage of the world’s cancer and a number of serious viral diseases—and the cause of Duryea-Gode disease. If one of your parents was treated with Hedeonco and you were conceived after the treatments, you had DGD. If you had kids, you passed it on to them."
• " I looked at Beatrice and couldn’t see anything to smile about. As we introduced ourselves, I realized I didn’t like her. I couldn’t see any reason for that either, but my feelings were my feelings. I didn’t like her."
• “Most DGDs have the sense not to marry each other and produce children. I hope you two aren’t planning to have any—in spite of our need.” She took a deep breath. “It’s a pheromone. A scent. And it’s sex-linked. Men who inherit the disease from their fathers have no trace of the scent. They also tend to have an easier time with the disease. But they’re useless to us as staff here. Men who inherit from their mothers have as much of the scent as men get. They can be useful here because the DGDs can at least be made to notice them. The same for women who inherit from their mothers but not their fathers. It’s only when two irresponsible DGDs get together and produce girl children like me or Lynn that you get someone who can really do some good in a place like this.” She looked at me. “We are very rare commodities, you and I. When you finish school you’ll have a very well paid job waiting for you.”

Bloodchild

Summary

The short story Bloodchild is about what happens on a world where Humans are used to help the local population to "breed". This symbiotic relationship is explored in the Human Gan and his partner T'Gatoi. T'Gatoi is a creature called a Tlic.Humans are referred to as Terrans (a reference to Earth) and are used by the Tlic to breed. Before Humans arrived the “Host Animals” that the Tlics used used to kill the eggs before they even had time to develop. Terrans are chosen by fertile Tlics and are implanted with eggs that create future Tlics. The implanted eggs grow into grubs that are then removed by the parent Tlic if they are nearby otherwise these grubs eat their way out of their Hosts. Gan had been chosen shortly before his birth to be a future parent for a Tlic named T'Gatoi a politian and a friend of his mother's. One night while she is visiting his family she hears a noise that turns out to be a "pregnant" man named Bram Lomas. Host are referred to N’Tlic. She helps him give birth despite not being his personal Tlic. Gan who helps her with the birth is traumatized at his potential future and almost kills himself. After threatening to instead impregnate his sister he chooses to be her N’Tlic and as she implants her eggs into him they discuss all the things that had taken place that night and what the future should look like in terms of Tlic/N’Tlic relations.

Quotes

• "I had been told all my life that this was a good and necessary thing Tlic and Terran didytogether -- a kind of birth. I had believed it till now.I knew that birth was painful and bloody no matter what. But this was something else. Something worse."
• " ...She wouldn't take you Qui. You don't have to worry...If anything happened to you... She'd take Xuan Hoa...Hoa wants it.....They don't take women... They prefer women but...they usually take men to leave women free to bear their own young."
• " I wouldn't have shot you...You could have...Not you...Would you have destroyed yourself?... I could have done that. I nearly did..."

Citation Practice

Octavia Butler was a shy child.