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The Last Soy Latte by Whitney Hall

Daenerys stood with her hand on the inside knob of her apartment door. Face mask? Check. Book bag? Check. Bunker Bootz? Check. Her choice of foot protection this day was lavender, selected from an array of fashionable colors and patterns found on the hazmat preparedness aisle at Target. She had been in more of a marigold mood, but decided indulging her own fashion whims was less important than showing solidarity with her LGBTPSQ allies who (unbelievably, in the year 2049!) were still forced to pay for their own in-vitro fertilization, embryo rectification, and species or gender transition procedures in some Unity Regions. Smart phone? Check. Daenerys (of course) had an identification chip implanted in her hand, but had not yet been able to afford the implantable smart-screen stamp, so she still had to carry her exsomatic device for some purposes.

Trudging down four flights of stairs in her heavy, acid-resistant boots, Daenerys’ mind was as blank as the pale, yellowing walls of the stairwell. After leaning her full weight against the thick metal door to open it toward the street, her senses were overwhelmed with smells and sounds. Sewage, chemical runoff, and food waste stench emanated from the sludge on the street, dulled but not completely blocked by her snug mask. Sounds from diesel engines and honking horns painfully penetrated her ears. If only the anti-progressives had listened to reason in the pre-Unity era, and passed the Green New Deal before it was too late! But the dominant Pallid regime had implemented short-sighted, selfish, and capitalistic policies, and subsequent generations were forced to live with the resulting contamination.

Historically, Pallid culture had done so much damage. Cringing with shame, Daenerys felt the weight of the collective crimes of which her skin was emblematic. She had learned at Amazon Unity Region University that the guilt she bore was embedded in her DNA and that there was no available gene therapy to correct it. Though her debt to the Melaninated could never be fully paid, she was obligated by morality and by law to make every possible effort to mitigate the damage. Of course, she would have been happy to undertake the pallotype suppression exercises even without the threat of being fined or jailed. It was the right thing to do. And the medley of African, Indian, and Asian music that was softly playing at all times in her dwelling unit was actually kind of nice. If it kept her brain from falling into pallotypical mental patterns, which as a Pallid she would always be prone to do, well, that was a just a bonus. The small electric jolt that emanated from her implanted ID chip when Daenerys used archaic, pallocentric language (like referring to Unity Regions as “states,” a common habit of Allies who were old enough to remember life pre-Unity) had been far less pleasant, but by now she had mostly purged herself of the forbidden terms, so it was no issue.

The reparative equalization fees were another contribution Daenerys was happy to make. As the first head of the Department of Reparations, Secretary Ocasio-Cortez, had explained many years ago, Pallid slaveowners had kept one hundred percent of the product of Melaninated slaves’ labor, so allowing Pallids to keep twenty percent of their own earned income was comparatively generous. Considering how difficult it was for Daenerys to manage on twenty percent of her own earned income, she felt immensely grateful for the mercy displayed toward her by the Melaninated.

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