The Shelter (Survivors Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

madman’s face changed through all the colors that human face can take. Although the secretary did not amaze us with her kindness, his reaction seemed to be clearly disproportionate. It would not bother me that she read my story, even if I am willing to acknowledge that I did not put in my “story” everything that I would be able in a diary. In fact, I would have liked. The defiant and lofty secretary would have lost probably none of her arrogance, her insolence, her cold contempt for us, despicable insects, but I believe that it would have been made her admit that I was not so uninteresting that she assumed.
    “You―you could have res-respect my w-will, this is what you c-could have done!” he miserably babbled, losing his arrogance all at once.
    “How important is it that your secrets are known, Pierre? All that’s over now,” Ariane told him with a hint of cruelty. “Don’t you think that those extraordinary circumstances have justified a small infringement to good manners? Instead, I congratulate Dr. Leone for her initiative. Yes, because everything must be put on the table. We need to understand what happened. You must understand it. There is no other way. Believe me all of you.”
     
    Group therapy—because it was something like that—is normally quite entertaining and even exciting for people of sane mind. Yes I claim that talking about ourselves and even more hearing ourselves spoken of is the favorite activity of a large number of people including myself. Not only I am not afraid of it but I usually feel great pleasure, which perhaps explains that stern people like Francesca is that wary about it (I do not mean to include the woodman who certainly has other reasons for not wanting to talk about himself). Some people went so far as to falsely suggest that is the only reason for what I wrote books (may their souls rest in peace): it’s not my conception of literature indeed.
    Obviously, the situation was anything but normal. And to tell the truth, the notion of normality made no longer sense. In any case, I felt quite detached at this moment of the interview, or the therapy, not really concerned so that I could take all the fun out of it as an impartial observer. This added to the enjoyment of sharing a secret with a higher being like Ariane. My feeling was strange, I admit, and perhaps guilty, in the light of the situation. With what I knew, I should hate him and his fellow creatures, I was well aware of it but I was not able. It is possible that I am a traitor. Or at least that I would seem so to those who would read these lines if our species was to survive and our descendants would be eager to know the darkest chapter of our History. Too bad! However, I should add, to sketch a line of defense for my future and hypothetical trial, that when the enemy defeated you, so entirely and definitively, what good would it be wasting your time to hate him, what good would it do to fight still? The only reasonable option which remains to you are to learn from him—even learn to love him if it is required—or to disappear. This is what Dr. Leone was trying to do in her own way, I thought. The term collaborator had been very accurately chosen by Ariane to call her. That said, if you want to search for culprits, she was surely not as good as me. All proved that she had ignored so far the gravity of the plight, a curious ignorance in fact, almost inexplicable, that she unconsciously revealed by her speaking. And it was even clearer that she was not aware of whom she gave herself to.
    To put an end to this topic, I don’t believe at all that we, humans, have deserved what happened to us. I am not a fanatic like Lussius. On the contrary, I consider that our fate is unfair, iniquitous and immoral. Simply, I think that morality and justice have nothing to do with it. Was it fair and moral that Neanderthal man disappeared to make room for his successor, the so-called Homo Sapiens, that is to say us? And didn’t we