Jessica Cambrook, 09 Sep '12

We were gods. We took the unwanted humans, leeching from the rest of us, and forced them underground, away from civilization. We had no choice, in the beginning.

At first we gave them food and water, but when it rained their tiny underground village flooded and some died by getting trapped in crevices and tiny caves.

Next we gave them huts and bedding, but they got lazy. They stopped looking for a way out and instead began entertaining themselves, warding off the boredom until their next feed.

Then it became an uncontrolled experiment. For us humans ‘On Top’, as we called normal life, we became fascinated by the behaviour exhibited ‘Down Under’. They stopped existing as ‘people’ in our eyes, just a new form of entertainment.

We questioned their morals. We gave them contraception. Would they rather ignore nature’s call to reproduce so their offspring could be spared their dark and unfulfilling life? Or would they maintain their selfish ways and continue having children to please and entertain themselves, depleting their food and water shares?

Egocentric boredom won.

We felt like gods, deciding when they would eat. What they could do. When they would die. Occassionally, we would choose one of them and with a pull of the trigger they would be gone. Just to get a reaction. They started appreciating their worthless lives more after that.

When the children got old enough we almost considered calling the experiment off and flooding Down Under to spare them all. They would never be accepted On Top, killing them would be a mercy. The children were awful, with disfigurements I could never have imagined. Extra arms, missing eyes, no mouths, head-sized growths. It made us question our morals, something we hadn’t done for many years. We were fearful for our own Lord, after what we had created. However, our experiment continued as normal.

Until one of them escaped.