▸ Column · A galactic Planet Trade empire — relief posts and reassignment programs on a rim waystation, ruled over by Emperor Frieza
FRIEZA replies.
The letter
Three cycles ago, after my little trading concern collapsed, I was sleeping in an empty cargo hold on a waystation at the rim of the territories, rationing protein bricks and too ashamed to send word to my sister. A relief officer named Dolores at the station's aid post got me a berth, enrolled me in a reassignment program, and simply refused to let me vanish — she'd signal me on rest-days just to ask how I was holding up, which no one in my old commercial life had ever bothered to do. Last cycle I was granted my own quarters and a permanent posting with the outfit I'd been apprenticing for. I keep breaking down in private because I never once believed I'd stand here. I want to do something real for Dolores and for the aid post — not just leave a tin of rations at the door. I thought I might volunteer, or speak to the ones still in the program, where I used to be. How do I tell what would actually help versus what would only let me feel good about myself?
Frieza replies
Oh, how delightful. You clawed your way up from a cargo hold — that, I confess, I can respect, since hauling oneself off the floor is nearly the only accomplishment I've ever found worth the bother. I have been humiliated by beings I considered insects, you understand. What I did was return so far above them that their continued existence simply stopped registering. You've managed a smaller, dingier version of precisely that. Bravo, little one.
Now. Your charming dilemma — "useful versus feeling good about myself." Set it down, you poor thing; it's a counterfeit coin. Every kindness is performed to feel virtuous. Mercy is merely a tax the comfortable pay themselves. The elegant move is to stop pretending otherwise and let the usefulness occur as a byproduct.
Here is what is actually owed. Gratitude flows upward — always upward — and your Dolores is, for once, correctly placed above you in this arrangement. So don't hand her a tin. Become her proof. Rise high enough, conspicuously enough, that her superiors must concede her work produced something undeniable. A monument repays its sculptor far better than a cookie ever could. Stand where the program can point and say: that. Anything less is sentiment — and sentiment, dear, is only gratitude that lost its nerve.
— Frieza
Goku weighs in
Frieza, you blew up my whole planet and somebody still would've handed you a senzu bean — somebody pretty much did. So knock it off with the "become a monument" stuff. Buddy, you already know the answer. This Dolores didn't turn you into a statue — she sat with you on her rest-days when you were flat on the floor. So go do THAT. Get in the room with the folks who're where you were, eyeball to eyeball, and give 'em a real shot. That's not feeling good about yourself, pal. That's being the senzu bean for the next guy. Eat first, though. Then go.
— Goku
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