The Moral Issue
Yumi
My parents nearly exploded on me when they found out I'd been lying to them for years. I'm pretty sure they understood why we had to lie, but the principle of the thing was. . .off somehow. They, and Jeremie's parents, accused us of numerous things, all of which we admitted to, and justified.
All texcept one, that is.
They accused us of risking the world because Jeremie loved Aelita. Now, of course, it's time to jusify that.
It's not entirely true that Jeremie's love for Aelita was the only reason we risked the world. It was our plaet, we knew what was at stake.
We all loved Aelita. Jeremie loved her, like I love Ulrich and Sissi oves Odd, but se all felt like she was our sister. After a while anyway.
Af first, she was a stranger. She was polite. She was kind. She wormed her way into all of our hearts.
At first, we didn't want to kill her because it would be murder. And then it became we didn't want to kill her beacuse of her.
You understand, of course, that by this point we were all used to risking our lives. For Aelita, for Earth, they became an interchangable. Our world depened on Aelita. And Aelita depended on us. And we depened on Earth. It was a circle.
It became natural. The lying, the fighting, even time resetting became normal. It didn't seem bad, or wrong to us. We always won. We never even considered that we might fail, and we never did.
It's amazing how parents can make you feel guilty for nothing. Sure, we did some things we're not proud of. And sure, maybe we did some bad things. It wasn't fun, lying all the time. Nor was it easy.
We all did some things we wish we hadn't. But we also did something amazing. We saved a piece of Earth, everyday for years.
And so, yeah, I'm proud.
Yumi Ishiyama-Stern, age 21
