It was in the evening that the great garbage haulers slowed, their stream-engines whinnying down in unison to come to a crawl before entering the slight drift of silence, the last tugging influence of inertia. The garbage men and women of those gargantuan, whale-shaped ships all tuned in to a transmission with nervous anticipation and tentative fear.
It would be the most important message they would ever hear.
The sets crackled to life and a fuzzy face slowly sharpened into clarity. It was a familiar face to those garbage men and women watching, grizzled and tired with deep lines dug like trenches, marks of the working man. Nodding heads and murmurs rippled in approval throughout the attending people, all on their respective garbage ships, watching the transmission as garbage men and women, listening to the leader of the Garbage People's Union.
'Good evening,' it said, with a chilling finality and the hairs of the collective pricked to attention. ' My name is John Bishop and I am here to tell you: that time has come.' He stared deep into the hearts and minds of every garbage man and woman, for every garbage man and woman was watching, their children at their sides. Husbands and wives clasped hands. Parents and children shared touch. Friends and loved ones exchanged comforting glances.
That time has come!
We have been fools, my people, to believe that we might change the tide of attitude overnight! It was foolishness borne out of fondness, out of sentimentality. They are humans, like we are, and despite our differences we have common ties. Our roots dig deep into the bedrock as do theirs. We all came from the same seed.
But the rumbling force of cultural inertia which has pervaded and persisted cannot be slowed by mere words. We have been in Space for hundreds of years, as garbage men and garbage women, as garbage children, as garbage people! We do not live on the planet unless we are sick or retired or disabled. We work, day and night, making our runs between this blue gem Earth and our magnificent sun, Sol.
The people of Earth have forgotten what we do. We have descended into the depths of history, lost. We have become figures of speech, part of lore and myth. We have entered the realm of the subjective, and in that realm rumor runs rampant!
We have become impure and inhuman to the peoples of Earth.
Dirty!
It is, perhaps, a sinister irony at work. We are no longer allowed to set foot in their cities. For years they have been planning this, secretly building a walled, enclosed city, a garbage city! They have told us when we come down to Earth to visit our home, to feel the tug of real gravity, we must go there, for we are dirty, virulent, and would only impose upon the purity of the peoples of Earth.
This may seem like a new development to you listening and watching, but it is not. The inertia of prejudice has swept through history like a tidal wave, covert, waiting to strike like a coiled serpent. For hundreds of years our families before us and their families before them have suffered under the toil of work and stereotype, of baseless judgment and cruel contempt.
We handle their waste, disposing of it into Sol, and we are dirty? We do not create that waste. Aboard our ships, our homes, we do not waste!
That time has come, my family. I spread my arms to you in accepting embrace. May you feel my love for you through this fight I have fought. No! Through this fight we have fought!
Like you cannot change the wind with the flap of your hand, our words and pleas greet the wall of prejudice like pebbles tossed by a child.
And so that time has come, my family.
We are not dirty. We do not carry disease. We are not despicable.
No, my family, we are the unsung heroes of the human civilization.
And we are leaving. We will find a new home, however long that may take and form upon it a new human civilization! One where humanity is not defeated by petty bigotry and superstition! Under these principles we will create a veritable paradise!
The journey will be long and perhaps even our children's children will not see this dream flower to fruition. But there will be that day that a planet is found suitable for life, beautiful in blue-green wonder, and our journey will be complete.
We leave in one week and rendezvous at the ice rings of Saturn on that evening. For this week we are on effective strike. Use all your currency to prepare for the long journey for it will be useless later.
Fear not, my family. We already live aboard our ships. We already educate our children aboard our ships, grow food and recycle water. We have skilled mechanics among our workforce, trained doctors and physicians.
We will make it!
I open my arms to you again and ask of you to join me. Leave behind the suffocating oppression of the peoples of Earth. Leave behind your monotonous duties that you are so cruelly judged for.
Come and find a new home.
Shake free the shackles of stereotype!
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