Mini-story: The Old

Humanity spreads everywhere, but there are also some abandoned places in the world. Former villages, and towns, and even cities, now left behind and given over to nature. It’s in those places that we roam. A mistake was made, somehow; a mistake of genetics. There are only a few of us, and we are as human as anyone else, but we’re also different. It’s in these forgotten habitats of humanity that we’re mostly safe from the rest of you. A person can exist for a long time in a place that society has chosen to forget. I’ve lived in hillside ghost settlements in far eastern Asia, and in a line of shacks along a beach beyond a flooded plain in Africa, and in the mountains of Europe, and many more places besides. I’ve also walked in your bustling cities, of course, and travelled on your trains, and flown in your aircraft. We have identities we can use for that sort of thing, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to evade detection. As your governments collude in their surveillance and…