/lit/ - Literature

>>6412258
People didn't use to die, the old man says. That's what got us in trouble. We were soft. We had too much to lose. The overlords came with nothing, and had nothing to lose. I wonder how much I've got to lose. There's my home, and mom, and my sister - she's the resistance-mandated kid, the one my mom had to have, to keep our population levels up. I hate to think of how much she feels like she has to lose, but she's in the resistance already, mom says. There's also my knife that I made myself in smithing class, and there's all the learning I've got about math, history, home economics, and gunsmithing, but I'm not sure I can lose that unless I start drinking the moonshine more. I guess the still's part mine, come to think of it. Are the shovel and pick assigned to me at the mine something I could lose? I guess so. So there are things I could lose. I wonder if that makes me too weak.
When the old man's done, we file out his door. The sun in the sky says the time's dinner, and if I don't get in line I'm liable to get the bottom scrapings of the prote soup, but food is just one more thing I have to lose, and this old guy's interesting when he isn't talking. Mom says they do keep him alive like we all used to be kept alive, for hundreds of years, on account of the fact that he agreed he will toe their line about the war stories.
"Mr. P., are you done with storytime?" I ask, sweet as I know how. I hold my head down like mom taught me to when I'm asking for food, to look younger. The old man gets up from his rocker and starts to shoo me to the door.
"Yes, there's nothing more to say. Nothing more to say."
"Mr., what about the truth? Your stories don't make sense." I know I might get hit for it, but he doesn't look like he can hit hard or would particularly want to.
He looks at me. I wonder if I can remember all the stuff I was supposed to listen for in his stories, the parts that contradict each other, like Mr. Hoshaw said to listen for. I did catch some stuff.
"Like when you said they defeated us on the field of battle, that doesn't make sense because you said they fought bravely with guns in their own hands against our drones, not afraid to die, but when I spar with the drones in the courtyard they can always beat me. They just fight way better than any, uh, biological. So that doesn't make any sense."
He stops and looks at me. I want to piss him off, to make him snap out of it.
"Mom says you're a traitor to the Human Nation because you value your life over history, and you say we are weak when the overlords were strong, but Mom says that Mr. Colt made all beings equal, whether they were both with claws and poison sacs or not."

What's the most profound philosophical statement of all time?