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