The case for the Pod People

They are still those of the opinion that the arrival of the Pod People was a bad thing.

I don’t agree, and fortunately those that hold such an opinion are by far the minority.

Yes, of course it was a culture shift of titanic proportions. However, the benefits of the Pods arrival ultimately outweighed the negatives.

We were scared at first, remember? Those biased rabble rousing news reports from our predominately right-wing ad-space selling media that suggested entire towns were being taken over by these strange malevolent alien creatures; sinister emotionless doppelgangers from outer space. So pale and smooth, no marks of a life lived, their skin not even showing any signs of tanning from the sun.

Seems so silly now doesn’t it? How hysterical, how typically human we were then, so isolated from the bigger picture.

We assured ourselves that we were most important species in the universe; when the first Pods arrived we felt threatened.

We feared them, we were terrified that the ‘End of Times’ so gleefully predicated by the zealots had finally arrived and we were soon to be judge.

Have you seen those ridiculous films that depicted whole communities of changelings hunting down the last few ‘innocent’ humans, driving our species to extinction?. Such piffle.

Of course as any sane minded person knows the reality is that we, the Earth born humans are still the only creatures in all history to drive another species to the brink of extinction and beyond.

What the Pods actually gave us was a sober, thoughtful re-ordering of our societies which now enables us to live in a world that is as close to Utopia as we may never have dared to dream.

It is true many people changed, but why is that a bad thing?

The swap was not a wide spread snatching of bodies by snaggle-toothed alien invaders and a hive mind controlling all. Emotions weren’t wiped blank, quite the reverse.

Ask any person of change and they will tell you that they still love, only more so and with all doubt removed, they can still dream, but without once all prevalent fear of failure, now they can realise their dreams.

It is true they targeted certain personality profiles in our society, but these were the severally mentally ill, those with highly anti-social tendencies, and the criminally insane. All were swapped and all lost those elements of their being which had previously prevented them from functioning as normal happy human beings.

Yet the one argument we hear repeatedly against the change was merely the result of their somewhat overzealous attempts to help.

As you will recall there was a great deal of controversy when they began to swap over those with disabilities and physical impairments. Naturally it was met with resistance and in some quarters moral outrage.

However the situation was quickly addressed by a representative of the people of change who apologised sincerely, explaining they hadn’t fully realised the sensitivity such a change required and insisted they would only swap those with impaired bodies with fully mobile bodies at the bequest of said individual.

I even regained my bother. For many years we had argued and fought, resulting in a ten-year silence between us. He became one of the first to swap and almost immediately the division between us evaporated.

I still remember the phone call and him telling me that had always continued to love me, but it was simply his stubbornness that had caused the rift. I immediately saw that I was equally complicit and embraced the chance to reconnect with my lost sibling.

And this was a story repeated world wide. From the micro level such as my brother and I, up to the global stage which saw entire nations lay down their arms and embrace their neighbours with whom they had for many generations been in conflict.

So now we try not to differentiate too much, in fact it’s become a bit of a social faux pas to mention if someone is a Pod person or not, and if you really must say anything, the acceptable terminology is ‘Person of change’.

Of course there is still prejudice; You may well of heard terms such as ‘Poddies’ and ‘Veggies’, but the kind of people who would say such things would have been the same individuals that would previously directed have their petty prejudices inward to our species.

No person of change has ever explained why these types are not targeted for swapping; I can only assume that is the point of the people of change, they never swap those that do not want to be swapped…

Well not anymore anyway.