A cage is a cage is a cage.
It doesn’t matter that they put colors and cute things and soft lights and children’s music. Nothing could mask the fact that they could not get out, that there was always someone watching, that there was no place to hide.
An experiment, they said. For humanity.
As if that made confiscating liberty a palatable thing. The withholding of sunlight. The absence of the outdoors.
They hadn’t given permission to rob their present as justification for the planning of others’ future.
But they were orphans. Disposable cogs in the wheels of interstellar travel hopes.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © Lisa Fox
Na'ama Yehuda 
It was never going to be the fat cats, was it?
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Of course not … they are “too valuable” to experiment on. Better try things on others …
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Creative sci-fi spin, Na’ama. The proverbial dogs in space 😦
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Totally! You got it! Somehow (sadly), I don’t think it too unrealistic that something like this (e.g. experimenting on ‘less traceable children’ for discerning the effect of long-term space travel on their development, abilities, etc) can happen. I just hope it s not yet happening, someplace. God knows there have been plenty of experiments on vulnerable people in the past, many that did not exactly make headlines till decades later, when they were ‘declassified’…and even then, heavily redacted, minimized, and denied …
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I know 😦
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yeah ….
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it’s always those at the bottom of the totem pole who are offered up so that humanity might endure.
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Indeed, or to justify what other people SAY is for humanity to endure, when many a time it is for their own personal gain or fame or curiosity, with very little regard to humanity. Or they’d get consent from the HUMANS they use …
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Yikes, this was unnerving and sadly rings true in the past (and Charles Dickens advocacy against shild labor came to mind)
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Yes! Good point and good analogy! And … I hope that it won’t be something that will be used in the future, or … shudder … that is used someplace now … (for we know that there are those who justify awful things for what they believe will benefit themselves and care naught for the cost to others)
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yes – let’s hope not
🙂
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Amen to that!
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🙂
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A very moving story Na’ama
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Thank you, Sadje!
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You’re welcome ☺️
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The plight of the vulnerable everywhere is a tragic one. Excellent story, Na’ama!
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Thank you, Brenda! May we learn from it, as a humanity, and do better, for we surely can!
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Na’ama Y’karah,
Chilling sci fi story. A lot of fact in this fiction. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Thanks, Rochelle. Yes, too much fact, alas. And yet, perhaps – like the non-fiction you often share – it can keep some things in the light that otherwise are hidden in detriment to the vulnerable and protection of the powerful.
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Aw! Poor things. That ending made me sad.
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Thank you, Violet! I think that it is often the reality that the most vulnerable face the highest risks of exploitation. Shouldn’t be this way, but so it is … till we, as a society, fight to change it.
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