Lavie Tidhar sez, “As soon as I wrote this story I realised I would most likely have to self-publish it. To my delighted surprise, though, an editor at one of the big online [SF] magazines offered me, shortly after, to publish it. Two days later, however, the publisher of the same magazine declined the story, not wanting to deal with any potential fallout. I then showed it — unofficially — to a handful of people, and got a potential offer to publish it in another big magazine, if only I were to change some of the references in the story.
I decided, instead, to publish it here.”
There had been another boy at the school, called Ender, but he’d attacked and seriously hurt and in at least one case we knew of killed one of the other boys, and they finally had to put him down, though he kept protesting, the day they came for him, that it wasn’t his fault.
No-one wanted to be put down at the school. They bred us very carefully, lines of genetic lineage, great-great-grandparents and parents all down the generations selected by the board and certified and mated to produce us. If we were an aberration we were put down and our progenitors were mated again, to try and create a better version.
My earliest memory is of white men in white coats holding clipboards, examining me. They measured my skull and prodded me with thick pink fingers and made careful notes. There was a war coming, they kept saying, and we had to be prepared.
Because of aliens.
The Story They Wouldn’t Publish
(Thanks, Lavie!)