What about those “Imaginary Lines”?

I've been thinking… What is the purpose of a narrator in a story about telepathic aliens? They already know the facts. So, it might be that my function is for you, the reader, trapped in your own solitary consciousness. I am the bridge, the translator of the impossibly vast and the coldly logical into something your neurology can process without overheating. Let us, then, immerse ourselves once more in a kitchen Jacksonsonville. The scent of nutrient paste is, as ever, disappointingly neutral.

The air, devoid of spoken words, is nonetheless thick with the traffic of inquiry. It is Krill, her mind a sharp, analytical green, who projects a carefully structured query toward her father.

“So, Dad,” her thought form begins, precise and clear. “I have been following the whole discussion that we have been having about those theorems on our telepathic network, in terms of the universality of food systems. And I have been, first of all, thinking, why are humans being discussed in the food systems? But more importantly, I took the time to go through a specific year in the archives and have a look at inequality on a border-to-border level. I noticed there would be some massive concentrations of population in certain parts of their territory that would be divided between imaginary lines.”

She pauses, allowing the data to transmit fully. “So that you know a bit of the numbers - apparently, there is one territory that they call Sudan. And as of 2025, there were 12 million people with no homes, which is not a basic possibility for a being to go under. It is said, indeed, that humans do have some kind of global constitutional rights, in that way, a prediction that all humans should at least have a home. How could it be that 12 million are with no homes?”

“I also noticed that a lot of them will have plenty of food and a lot more,” she continues. “But in this particular place, 3.7 million people are under severe malnutrition. It is weird to me. So I have been coming up with a theory. It might be that they value more the individual life of one human than the other. Is that the case? Or why would it be? And why would they go about it with so much violence when somebody tries to go to a territory that will be more plentiful?”

Grag sets his utensil aside, the metallic gleam catching the room’s soft light.

“Oh, it is interesting observations that you come up with,” Grag projects, his thoughts forming a calm, measured wave that stills the others at the table. “I actually have not noted what is happening in this specific territory. But this all happens from this false notion and a bit of hypocrisy that is inherent to their system. That is a case of them inherently thinking that they and their kin and peers are more valuable than what they cannot see. It comes back to the lack of a telepathic network. Although they do have their electronic network, it transmits data, not experience. They do not feel what it is like to be in the experience of these other people like them. So they automatically choose to ignore it, caring on an uneven basis for those in their immediate cycles.”

“This localised empathy is then projected onto geography,” he continues, bridging the concepts for his children. “Their nation becomes the largest manageable container for this in-group preference. For that reason, they grow attached to the notion that a certain piece of land belongs more to them than it would to others who just arrived. This is a profound misunderstanding of existence. They feel that the actions of their ancestors grant them a claim, which is nonsensical, considering their own total inaction in the historical events that led to their place of birth. It all comes down to a fundamental inability to perceive their own privilege in the simple, random lottery of being born on one side of an imaginary line instead of the other.”

“This perceived need to defend accidental privilege becomes their highest virtue, which brings us to the extreme example you have noted in their archives. For instance, in the place they call America, they have encoded the right to use weapons into their foundational identity, equating it with freedom. They feel they can vocalise their right to exist by possessing the means to terminate others. This is an evolutionary dead end, a position most of their other nations have abandoned, having learned, as we did long ago, that violence is a system failure, not a tool of protection.”

He pauses, and then continues…

“The hypocrisy is most glaring when you examine their own cultural data. You may know that one of their most followed moral references, a prophet from 2 millennia ago, is cited as a source of their ethical code. Yet the institutions they build in his name are often corrupt and distort the original message to manipulate the populace. This prophet explicitly stated that those who use arms for their own protection will, poetically, die by those same arms. And yet, the very people who profess to be his most ardent followers are often the most fervent proclaimers of the need for these weapons. This results in the absurdity of their leaders advocating for this freedom and then being struck down by the entirely predictable consequences, a human who has gone, as you say, out of their bits and acted on the violent potential the system itself provided.”

“Ultimately, all of these behaviours are symptoms of the same core condition; they lack a universal sense of quantifiable value from one life to the next. Your theory is correct; they do not value each human life equally. You could frame it as a technological problem. If their global network evolved to transmit empathy, to make one human truly see and feel the suffering of another, they might be forced to act. They might understand that their privilege must be compromised for another’s basic survival. But as it stands, the place you are born determines the value of your life. This is the great cognitive dissonance of Earth, they profess in their grand constitutions and global treaties a set of universal rights that their daily actions and systemic structures prove they do not actually believe.”

And so the conversation unfolds, charming in its academic purity. Grag’s points are, of course, entirely correct. Humans are tribal, hypocritical, and tragically limited by their non-telepathic neurology. It is all very neat.

One gets the cosmic equivalent of a headache listening to them debate the ethics of imaginary lines. This whole theatrical production of borders and migration, of scarcity and violence, is a sideshow. A magnificent, self-flagellating distraction from the actual plot. Why are those millions starving?

As Grag very well pointed out, the entire discussion is predicated on a false premise. They argue about redistributing the crumbs on the floor while completely ignoring the dragon hoarders sitting on a mountain of cakes. Honestly, it makes one sympathise with Brew’s culinary approach to political science. Why dissect the convoluted psychology of the starving when you could simply… interrogate the chef? Or, better yet, make him the main course.

Pardon the editorial flourish. One gets a bit carried away when the solution is so deliciously simple and the conversation so elegantly complex. A narrator should not pick sides, of course. He should observe as our well-meaning philosophers continue to meticulously map the symptoms, all while the virus itself sits laughing in plain sight, counting its tokens.

This story is the result of a collaboration between Marqv Neves and Barbara Williams. Together, they work on Can Fiction Help Us Thrive, a project that shares perspectives on sustainability through fiction. The aim is to bring some not so easy to find ideas into public view from angles that differ from conventional academic discussion, hoping to reach different types of audiences with themes that matter.

Conceptual framework by Barbara Williams, founder of Poems For Parliament and author of Saving Us From Ourselves.

Professionally edited by Rebecca Hughes

Written by Marqv Neves, Author of The Jacksons’ Debate

You may find the published book here -

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228994545-the-jacksons-debate