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    Backlash
    Backlash
    Backlash
    Ebook38 pages33 minutes

    Backlash

    By Winston Marks

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    They were the perfect servants—they were willing to do everything for nothing. The obvious question is: How much is nothing?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJovian Press
    Release dateNov 30, 2016
    ISBN9781537810690
    Backlash

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      Book preview

      Backlash - Winston Marks

      BACKLASH

      ..................

      Winston Marks

      JOVIAN PRESS

      Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review or connect with the author.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2016 by Winston Marks

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      BACKLASH

      BACKLASH

      ..................

      I STILL FEEL THAT THE ingratiating little runts never intended any harm. They were eager to please, a cinch to transact business with, and constantly, everlastingly grateful to us for giving them asylum.

      Yes, we gave the genuflecting little devils asylum. And we were glad to have them around at first—especially when they presented our women with a gift to surpass all gifts: a custom-built domestic servant.

      In a civilization that had made such a fetish of personal liberty and dignity, you couldn’t hire a butler or an upstairs maid for less than love and money. And since love was pretty much rationed along the lines of monogamy, domestic service was almost a dead occupation. That is, until the Ollies came to our planet to stay.

      Eventually I learned to despise the spineless little immigrants from Sirius, but the first time I met one he made me feel foolishly important. I looked at his frail, olive-skinned little form, and thought, If this is what space has to offer in the way of advanced life-forms ... well, we haven’t done so badly on old Mother Earth.

      This one’s name was Johnson. All of them, the whole fifty-six, took the commonest Earth family names they could find, and dropped their own name-designations whose slobbering sibilance made them difficult for us to pronounce and write. It seemed strange, their casually wiping out their nominal heritage just for the sake of our convenience—imagine an O’Toole or a Rockefeller or an Adams arriving on Sirius IV and no sooner learning the local lingo than insisting on becoming known as Sslyslasciff-soszl!

      But that was the Ollie. Anything to get along and please us. And of course, addressing them as Johnson, Smith, Jones, etc., did work something of a semantic protective coloration and reduce some of the barriers to quick adjustment to the aliens.

      Johnson—Ollie Johnson—appeared at my third under-level office a few months after the big news of their shipwreck landing off the Maine coast. He arrived a full fifteen minutes ahead of his appointment, and I was too curious to stand on the dignity of office routine

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