Vomon Paradox

Author's Note

And I finally wrote an Author's Note for this short story!

I love prison stories—from Prison Break and Jeffry Archer's books to Deadman Wonderland. Other than being an exciting prison break, I wanted this story to be a space adventure and a reflection on us humans. And here's the result.

I had fun creating the characters. Manda is a bit like Mando, and I named her after the snake from Naruto, since vomons have scaly skin. Nox is based on an undead butler character I created at uni for a 3D animation project.

Vomon Paradox has more than one paradox. The vomons are merciless "zombies" in the eyes of the humans of Nodrog, but can they be written off with that simple label? Are we humans merciful? That depends on which angle one looks at us (that popular Steve Cutts animation on the header shows us one angle).

This story is inspired by the work of Dr. Melanie Joy, a Harvard-educated psychologist and a former professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has a fascinating Tedx Talk that I think everyone should hear.

It's also inspired by K.A. Applegate's Animorphs, an amazing YA sci-fi series of 54 books. It contains baffling scenarios that explore morality—such as the depiction of Taxxons, a horrifying species that sort of turn out to be murderously innocent. The series also points a magnifying glass at humanity from an alien perspective. That twist at the end of Vomon Paradox may bring to mind a confrontation between a human and a parasitic alien in one of Applegate's companion books:

Human: Your race is sick! Sick and twisted and evil!

Yeerk: We are parasite, Mr. Gervais...Go ask a cow or a pig what they think of humans...

The title is also a play on "meat paradox"—what psychologists call our dissonance between enjoying meat while disliking the harming of animals. It's linked to the concept known as carnism. One work exploring this theme is the viral short film, First European Restaurant to Serve Cats. There's another I know titled Norm, which makes some interesting points. These are available on YouTube.

Thank you so much for reading! I apologize for any discomfort this story might have caused you with its creepy premise of a "zombie" city imprisoning young humans.