A Tiny Piece of Dialogue For You

From the Work In Progress, a post-colonial Space Opera that I SWEAR was in progress before I’d even heard of Ancillary Justice.  I’m not, like, super proud of it or anything.  It’s just that I can’t get the words out of my head, so they appear here in hopes of exorcising them.


“You didn’t just destroy our world. You suppressed our culture.  You robbed us of our language, all but a handful of our literature and music.  You took from us everything that made us what we are.”

“And yet,” the Empress drawled, “you are still human.  Fractious, rebellious, impatient.  We gave you our language, our literature, music, our structure–we gave you our Empire.  And you have rejected it.

“And so now we reject you.”


And now I foolishly go to play dodgeball against a bunch of students.

Published by Michael R. Johnston

Father of an eighth grader, high school English teacher, writer. Fifty years old and feeling almost every bit of it on some days, and not a bit of it on others. Based in Sacramento, California, USA

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