This is the continuing story of the Continuum book TheYearOfMyLifeVR.com. Influence the direction of the storyline. Text me with your input: (702) 799-9377‬. And now, back to the Continuum….

“If she does not know anyone, we can let her know us.”

“My guess is she knows one person, her pimp. He’s the one who put her on the street to make money for him. I doubt she has much money of her own or any friends to go to.”

“Then we can become her friends, and she can come with us.”

“That sounds good on paper, but not in practice. Even if we steered her to places that could help her, she probably wouldn’t stay, or her pimp would find her and convince her not to. As her sole provider, she may have built up an emotional attachment to him. A kind of personal Stockholm Syndrome.”

“I read about that situation. Over a significant amount of time, a group of hostages began to trust the person who made them hostages.”

“That’s about the size of it. She either can’t or thinks she can’t go back to her family. It’s also possible that she may have been sexually abused by someone in her family. Either way, her pimp and the other girls in his stable have become her surrogate family.”

Victoria was staring at the girl. I couldn’t help thinking that it had to be difficult for someone who deals only in logic to maneuver through the maze of illogical emotional experiences.

“I think class is over for tonight. Let’s go home. I’ve figured out a way we can take Alien Airlines.”

We headed toward the pedestrian bridge elevator. It took a while before we ended up alone as we waited for the elevator doors to open. Before the elevator reached its destination above the Las Vegas Strip, we were home.

The next day, I learned that when you’re teaching an alien about life on Earth, you’re never really off the clock.

“What are you watching?”

I found it funny that someone of such advanced intelligence as this energism was intrigued by something as relatively low-tech as television.

“It’s a video about the exploitation of human children around the world. Why do people exploit these little humans?”

“Now, that’s a question I can answer very easily. They do it for nothing more than greed, plain and simple.”

“Why do not the older humans take care of the little humans?”

“Most times, adults aren’t around. These children don’t live normal lives. Sometimes, their parents have been killed as a result of conflict. Other times, they may have to work or have been sold because of extreme poverty in the countries in which they live. Either way, children go to work, or the family starves.”

“That is something I do not understand. Your planet is abundantly stocked with enough food for everyone. Why does not everyone have enough to sustain their lives?”

“You have just questioned one of the dirty little secrets of humanity. There are so many answers that it would take days to answer.”

Despite an unworldly intelligence, her brain only operated with logical statements. Humans may be a lot of things, but logical is not one of them.

“It’s not that we don’t have enough food. There’s plenty of food to go around for everyone. The problem is greed. The world revolves around greed. Sometimes it’s called business, but it’s really all about greed.”

“Is greed more important than the little humans ceasing to exist?”

“Actually, that has more to do with power than greed. It’s hard to explain because it goes into how the human mind works. Let me see if I can explain this.”

In my wildest dreams I never thought I would be teaching a course in economics and the distribution of world power to an alien, but this was turning out to be rather fun.