This account was recovered from writings on stone tablets from the ancient kingdom of Ionee’z’ee. Discovered a thousand years ago, these stone inscriptions were deciphered only recently when advances in AI helped archaeographers to decipher this ancient script.

Ionee’z’ee was an ancient country, whose inhabitants consisted of two unequal races: the superior Alazonis and the inferior Doulosians. The Alazonis claimed that their god had blessed them alone; a practice common to many tribal gods. The Alazonis owned all the capital in Ionee’z’ee, while the Doulosians served as slaves or wage-slaves. 

The Alazonis bragged they were sui generis. Such boasting is not unusual. Many ancient, and some modern, tribes make such claims, but the Alazonis took their claim more seriously than other tribes. They invented a mythology to support this claim, and over time these myths came to be regarded as history. Importantly, for this essay, the Alazonis also established institutions they claimed were unique. 

One of these unique institutions was a national lottery the Alazonis conducted every twenty lottery years to randomly change the membership of the two classes of inferior Doulosians: wage-slaves and slaves. In its time, this was advanced social engineering. No Alazonis sank into slavery or wage-slavery as menials. 

There is some evidence that the share of wage-slaves in Doulosian society increased in the second half millennium BCE, going up from one-third to two-thirds of their adult population. According to most Alazoni philosophers this was a sign of moral progress in their own society.

Few Doulosians concurred. The Doulosians slaves thought themselves lucky when they were not picked by the vicennial lottery to become wage-slaves. As slaves, they could count on a basic subsistence and basic healthcare.

Wage-slaves, on the contrary, stood to lose both whenever they lost their jobs. We need to document another unique Alazoni institution, the stately Pleasure Domes scattered all over the country. These were established to ensure that the elite males in Ionee’z’ee would never be without access to sexual adventures outside of marriage. The King spared no effort to ensure the stability of marriages among the elites.

Quite early on, therefore, the Alazoni King had passed a law allowing his security forces to recruit one-tenth of young female Doulosians and place them in the Pleasure Domes. These women were required to dedicate themselves to enriching the sexual experience of the elite Alazoni males. ¹This practice was both legal and moral in I’oneezee. It was enshrined in their traditions and their constitution. In fact, most Alazoni men were convinced that Doulosian women wished they could spend time in a Pleasure Dome; supposedly, they saw this as a path to improving their race. It is most unlikely that Alazonis could have prevented the Doulosians from finding out the truth about the Pleasure Domes, that the women dispatched to the Pleasure Domes never returned, and they were forced to abort their pregnancies.

Once recruited, these Doulosian women never returned to their families. They continued to serve in the hundreds of Pleasure Domes until their death. If they fell sick or were shunned by Alazoni men, they were removed to state-run kitchens, where their bodies were marinated in spices from the East Indies, baked, packaged and sold as a delicacy in stores accessible only to Alazonis.

An obscure journal of archeology recently published a tragic story of one Doulosian sex slave – named Widad, a common name among women of her race – who was notorious for her recalcitrance. She continued to accost each of her rapists, arguing that she too was made in the image of God and deserved the same dignity that Alazonis accorded to their own women. She never submitted passively to the demands of her rapists, even though this led to severe beatings by the Alazoni officers assigned to discipline the sex slaves.

Widad never attempted to escape from the Pleasure Dome; this was made impossible by the architecture of the buildings in each of the Pleasure Domes. Archaeographers have never found any report of a Doulosian woman who escaped her captivity.

Reports of sex slaves attacking their rapists are also very rare. This is because the rooms housing them contained no furnishing besides a wooden bed; over time, all objects that could be used to inflict injury on the Alazoni rapists were removed. 

Therefore, Widad could only delay her rapists – like Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights – with words, arguments, and stories. One night, however, after many years of unbearable humiliation, the wooden bed in Widad’s room delivered a surprise. One of the nails that had held the bed together came loose and dropped on the floor; it was three inches in length and its pointed end was still strong and sharp.

As Widad held the nail in her hands, she stayed awake that night, her brain pulsating with the accumulated rage from years of sexual assault, thinking of what she would do with this instrument. She knew that it could not deliver freedom from her captivity, that was practically impossible. She consulted the god of the Doulosians – yes, they too had a god – praying, asking whether she had the right to act in her defense.

She asked what message this nail could enable her to deliver through one of her captors, since her tormentors always came to her one at a time. The Alazoni thinkers were firmly opposed to sexual promiscuity inside the Pleasure Domes.

Widad also spoke to the god of the Alazonis, the god who is reported to have blessed the Alazonis and – by implication – laid a curse on her people. How could he allow and urge his people, the people he had blessed, to perpetrate such horrors on her people? We do not know what answers Widad received to her questions.

However, next morning, when an elite Alazoni male – who had been raping her every day for several years – climbed into her bed to rape her, Widad could feel the power of her god, the creator of all the worlds, coursing through her arteries, brain, heart and muscles, so that in two lightning lunges she plunged the nail into the eyes of her Alazoni rapist. She had blinded this superior man – and at least symbolically, blinded all the Alazoni men who had raped her over the years. 

Maybe, just maybe, stripped of his eyes, this rapist and all his accomplices would see more clearly than ever before, would see with their inner eye, the eye of the heart, the abominable monstrosities they had come to embody, the evil that had settled in their hearts.

On hearing the cries of the blinded rapist, a dozen armed guards rushed to Widad’s cell. They seized Widad and placed her in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.

At her trial, the prosecutor told the jury – all of them elite members of the superior race – that Widad had blinded an innocent civilian belonging to the superior race. He also told the jury that Widad had acted out of her race’s deep-rooted hatred for all Alazonis. No evidence was provided to support this charge. The Alazonis knew that the Doulosians hated all Alazonis because of their identity, simply because of who they are.

The die was cast. The Alazoni judge pronounced Widad guilty of terrorism; this was easily the most heinous crime any Doulosian could commit. He sentenced her to die the same day. The manner of her execution – used only against Doulosian terrorists – was death by compacting.

Widad was tied to a large flat granite slab, and another large flat granite slab was lowered mechanically on the victim until there was no daylight between the two granite slabs. All the leading judges in Ionee’z’ee were present at these executions. It was their religious duty to ensure that the execution did not violate any of their thirty-three commandments about the humane treatment of Alazoni men, women, young and old, children and infants.

Several Alazoni political scientists have written that this manner of delivering death by compacting the victim was unique to Ionee’z’ee. The next day, all the newspapers in Ionee’z’ee reported that a Doulosian women had been executed the previous night for her terrorist attack against an innocent Alazoni civilian.

In order to deter Doulosians from repeating this terrorist act, a military regiment was dispatched to the village from which Widad had been recruited. No one in the village was spared except the cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, ducks and pigeons.

In sparing the cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, ducks and pigeons, the Alazonis wanted to demonstrate to the world know that they were no savages. The heroic Alazoni regiment carted the cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, ducks and pigeons back to their villages, barbecued them, and ate them to celebrate their glorious victory over terrorism.

Some descendants of the Alazonis still alive – or those who claimed this connection – announced that they would build a monument to honor Widad, their brave sister and all sisters with the courage to resist evil – whoever the perpetrator and whoever his victim.

They would resist evil with their hands if they could, with their tongue if they could not, and if neither was actionable, they would resolve in their hearts to oppose evil, always, whoever the perpetrator or its victim.