{"id":1118,"date":"2018-09-10T09:04:32","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T13:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1118"},"modified":"2018-09-17T09:12:37","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T13:12:37","slug":"the-old-city-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1118","title":{"rendered":"The Old City Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Vacation: Day 1<\/p>\n

Arrived in the city okay, it was an easy flight.\u00a0 I booked a little Bed & Breakfast right off the central square, in the old part of the city.\u00a0 It’s as beautiful as the pictures.\u00a0 I love the architecture…but I seem to have arrived in the aftermath of some kind of protest or riot or something.\u00a0 There were broken windows, burning debris and overturned cars.\u00a0 I also saw injured people being carried away.\u00a0 But…it was all cleared up in no time and the old city returned to its colorful, medieval charm.\u00a0 I love the costumes they dress up in for the tourists.\u00a0 Excited to begin exploring this place.<\/p>\n

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Vacation:\u00a0 Day 3<\/p>\n

There was a riot in the old city square again.\u00a0 It was very scary…and exhilarating!\u00a0 I had met some of the locals while shopping.\u00a0 They seemed nice enough but looked suspiciously at me, as a foreigner, and were wound up waaaay too tight.\u00a0 Events in the news had people on edge, but I managed to piece it together from gossip;<\/p>\n

I seems they had a popular athlete who used his fame and fortune to protest the discrimination of his own minority (brown skinned) culture.\u00a0 I noticed how they treated brown people in my brief interactions, so far, despite being the same species.\u00a0 There had already been several ugly riots…not to end the injustice, but to keep the status quo, so people could enjoy their sports without feeling uncomfortable.\u00a0 They smashed and looted brown skinned people’s businesses and burned the athlete’s swag and effigy in the old city square.\u00a0 It sounded ridiculous…<\/p>\n

This time people were upset because a prominent shoe company hired the same athlete to advertise their brand.\u00a0 A little research showed that the company used child slave labor in their factories…but that didn’t bother people.\u00a0 They just hated the brown people protesting.\u00a0 The government and the wealthy used the media to whip everyone up into a frenzy…and they rioted.<\/p>\n

People smashed and looted and gathered up all their shoes and burned them in the old city square.\u00a0 This place is weird.<\/p>\n

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Vacation:\u00a0 Day 6<\/p>\n

There was another riot today.\u00a0 No sooner had things settled down and I was able to get out to enjoy the city again, when new rumblings of trouble began among the locals.\u00a0 This time it was political.\u00a0 It took me about an hour of research to get the measure of their incredibly broken economic and political system;<\/p>\n

So…the city’s last big election featured two grossly incompetent candidates.\u00a0 The numerous crimes and scandals of the winner were already rich fodder for regular riots…but this time (with the help of elitist propaganda), instead of demonizing the source of uncomfortable information (as usual), they stirred people up against the press, the messengers of all the embarrassing and dangerous news.\u00a0 Once whipped into a proper froth, the rioters smashed and looted, rounding up journalists and writers, beating them bloody and burning all the books and newspapers in the old city square…they also burned down the city library.<\/p>\n

It’s too bad, it was a gorgeous building and some of their literature was extraordinary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vacation:\u00a0 Day 10<\/p>\n

I spent the last few days locked in my room.\u00a0 The city wasn’t safe.\u00a0 There was a minor riot yesterday, something about red haired people seemed to provoke a spontaneous fracas.\u00a0 They’re happening more and more frequently.\u00a0 This time ‘gingers’ were rounded up and beaten, they broke red stuff, looted red stores…oh, I don’t know!!!\u00a0 I was too busy dying my hair black to get the details.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter…there’s a new riot brewing now;<\/p>\n

People just found out that their children are being raped and abused by priests…but they LOVE their religion.\u00a0 I’m worried they might love it more than their children.\u00a0 I have to get out of here before they start burning their children in the old city square.\u00a0 This place is insane.\u00a0 I was supposed to stay two more weeks but I really can’t take much more.\u00a0 I’ve arranged for a flight out.\u00a0 I leave tonight…wish me luck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0***This is a new short story I did, this week, for a new sci-fi\/flash-fiction book I’m working on – with illustrations by John Allemand.\u00a0 The working title is, “A Poke in the Eye.”\u00a0 The image was originally a cover for the June, 2003 issue of Analog Magazine.\u00a0 You can find our current books at www.sallemander.com (see the link above).\u00a0 \u00a0-Marsha<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vacation: Day 1 Arrived in the city okay, it was an easy flight.\u00a0 I booked a little Bed & Breakfast right off the central square, in the old part of the city.\u00a0 It’s as beautiful as the pictures.\u00a0 I love the architecture…but I seem to have arrived in the aftermath of some kind of protest … Continue reading The Old City Square<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242,150,124],"tags":[79,250,248,38,176,99,252,19,96,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}