"I'm a Lower Vil, Master?" I reply tentatively, suspecting it's not the answer he's looking for.
"Yes, but do you know where you come from?"
I frown. "I was bred in the compound, Master; I must have a mother and father, but I have never met them."
"No, I mean..." He looks at me seriously. "Rose, your... species? People? I don't really know the right word to use. But you originally came from another planet; please tell me you know about the Vil?" he asks.
"We were shown photos, but the wardens said, that should we meet one, we were not to talk or make eye contact; that our owners would give us further instruction."
"And you never, I dunno... you never wondered what they were? Or why you were different from the wardens? Or anything like that?" he asks in amazement.
"Asking questions is disobedient, Master," I say, "I think..." I gulp before continuing. "I think, Master, because you are so kind, you don't understand what that means." Now that I'm committed, I barrel on, hoping I can at least finish before I end up over Master's knee or worse. "If I asked, if I made any of the wardens aware that I wanted to know more than they allowed me to know, they would have punished me; I would have been flogged or caned or even whipped."
Master says nothing, but I can hear the sound of crunching plastic as he grips the water bottle tight in his fist, his knuckles turning white. I flinch instinctively, drawing his attention. "I'm sorry," he says quickly; sincerely. "I'm sorry, Rose, it isn't you. It's just... I hate them."
"Who?" I ask quietly.
"The people who would hurt you like that, who
did
hurt you like that. The slavers and just the whole fucking system; I used to fantasise about burning the whole stinking thing to the ground. But now I know, I can't even do that anymore, not without hurting the Lower Vil. I feel completely helpless," he sighs, "Listen to me, complaining to a slave that I feel helpless, I'm sorry."
"Master," I say softly, watching a lone bird soar high above the abandoned city. "May I ask a question?"
He looks up, a smile tugging at his frown. "Sure sweetie, ask away."
"What does hate feel like?" I say, feeling a little foolish. Still, for some reason my owner likes it when I ask questions. And I enjoy letting my curiosity run wild, even if it is disobedient.
"What?" he asks, blinking.
"I'm sorry, Master, it's just they taught us hate was to very strongly dislike something," I say quickly, my confidence waning as I blabber, probably not making any sense. "But you..." I take a deep breath, "A moment ago I thought you might be about to hurt me; I've never seen you like that."
I feel my heart pounding in my chest as I wait for my owner to respond. Stars! What has he done to me that I would say something like that? It isn't my place to question his feelings! And even if he did want to hurt me, which given the fact I'm responsible for him fleeing his home would be understandable, that's his right.
"I would never, ever hurt you," he says gruffly, looking me straight in the eye. "I know you're expecting me to, but seriously Rose, I wouldn't."
"Yes, Master," I reply nervously, thrown by the intensity of his gaze.
"Right, you don't ask easy questions, do you?" he says, taking a sip from his water bottle with a thoughtful look on his face.
"I'm sorry, Master, I-," he raises his hand, cutting me off the bottle still pressed to his lips.
"I suppose the main difference between disliking something and hating it is rationality. It's rational, for example, to dislike getting out of bed on a cold morning. But it's completely irrational to hate someone based on the colour of their skin, or their species."
I nod; it's a good explanation. But surely no one would hate another person just for how they look; that's beyond foolish.
"Love works the same way; sometimes you feel strongly about someone and you can't rationally explain why. The problem is both love and hate drive people to do wonderful and terrible things." He points at the city before us, "Case in point."
"People don't live there anymore because they hated the city?" I ask confused.
He laughs softly, "Not quite." Picking up a twig from the ground he rolls it between his fingers. "I guess I should start from the beginning. I would rather arrive at the motel after dark anyway and if you threw up in my dad's car, I'm not sure any force on this Earth could save us."
I nod quickly, sitting up a little straighter in my seat, eager to learn.
"So about two hundred and fifty years ago, give or take, humans discovered two things in very quick succession. Faster than light drives and a wormhole, which is a kind of tunnel through space." He laughs, "Stars, I sound like a history teacher! Anyway, where was I?"
"A wormhole, Master?" I say helpfully.
With a smirk he continues. "So yeah, we found a wormhole and as you would expect, we soon ventured through it. And things went well, we ended up in another galaxy and more importantly humanity encountered its first ever advanced sentient life form, two of them technically, though at the time I don't think anyone realised the Lower Vil were a separate species."
"At first, our meetings were friendly; at least they are reported to have been friendly, but who knows for sure? However, at some point relations fell apart and the Vil removed us not only from their planet but their home galaxy. Obviously, more than one attempt was made to restore diplomatic relations but nothing seemed to work. In fact, any probes that managed to make it back through the wormhole showed us that the Vil were massing their forces at the event horizon on the other side."
"You understand about war ships and weapons and all that kind of thing right?" Master asks.
"Yes Master." I reply, quickly, trying to memorise all this new information.
"Good. Well, our response was to start assembling our own forces on our side of the wormhole. The Vil were the first to attack, but were driven back quickly, which is what happened to our own attacking forces, too. I think at the time the intention was never to invade each other's planets, rather to secure both ends of the wormhole, because whoever could do that would be at a massive tactical advantage. The back and forth went on for years, with hundreds of ships being lost on both sides, mostly to enemy fire, but it was also quickly becoming apparent that the wormhole itself was inherently unstable."
I nod, imagining a giant plug hole in space sucking ships in and spitting them out.
"Some ships were lost on their way through the wormhole, never to be seen again. No one really knew what became of them; some people think they were torn apart, others think they were thrown randomly into space somewhere, light years from anywhere. The point is, the wormhole was falling apart and had we or the Vil had any sense, they would have let it die. But neither side was willing to sacrifice what they saw as their property and so work began on both sides of the anomaly to stabilise it. It's funny in a way, even when the opposing side had control of an entrance, they would rarely interfere with the infrastructure being assembled there."
"I'm glad they didn't break it, Master." I say, "I would never have met you if they did."
"No, in a roundabout way I suppose that's true," he grins, "We wouldn't have ended up being hunted by the government either, though," he finishes with a shrug.
"I'm sorry-" Once again he holds up a hand to silence me.
"Wouldn't have it any other way. Now where was I? Oh yes, so in a staggering display of contempt for each other's existence, both ourselves and the Vil managed to stabilize the wormhole, basically guaranteeing a prolonged struggle for control. And so it turned out; for about fifty years there was this kind of tug of war, where one side would hold both entrances for a few weeks before inevitably being driven back and overcome on their side of the breach. Neither side actually got anywhere in all this time, but still, we kept building ships and sending young men and women off to their deaths in defence of something, that even if we won it, we would have no real use for."
"Obviously something had to change, and the Vil did. They sent through an invasion fleet as normal, but instead of attacking our forces they split; half of them jumped very quickly to FTL drive scattering and the rest retreated. Of course, the Vil had no real idea of where Earth was, and were quickly hunted down and destroyed, but it was the start of a new phase of the war. Death was no longer restricted to the entrances as it had been for years; suddenly nowhere in the Milky Way felt safe."
"Of course, we used the same tactic almost at once and what had started as a tug of war quickly turned into interstellar guerrilla warfare. And so it went. More ships were needed, and more bodies to man them. Mandatory conscription was introduced; a rule that all men and women over the age of twenty must sign up for military service."
