Ship's Holog: June 2078, fragment #21

One more thing you may have noticed about the way people here are dressed are the blue bandanas some of them are wearing, which identify them as marriageable citizens of New Brandon. Like those young guys over there, wearing them as neckerchiefs; that's how men in their twenties or thirties who somehow have managed to stay single tend to wear their bandanas, In contrast, most of the teeners, like the hacky-sack crew over there, wear their bandanas more dramatically, as hats of sorts, in the manner of nineteenth century pirates or like "do rags" of turn-of-the-century urban street gangs. Slightly older women, especially natives, like that woman who just walked past me (probably in her forties like me), wear theirs modestly, as head-covering shawls or babushkas. And, as you’ve probably noticed, the teener girls, like that attractive bunch gossiping together, are determined not to be outdone by their brazen male counterparts, so they often tie their bandanas on bare arms, or, more alluringly, wear them as halter tops, tied behind their necks and backs.

If you were to visit other towns in the Champlain Valley, you would see similar bandanas, but of different colors. Each town has its own color, meant to make identification of marriageable neighbors easier, as part of a campaign by the regional Health Authorities to discourage inbreeding and encourage inter-community breeding.

In my own family, we have taken steps to prevent inbreeding by sending our pubescent children to live with family members who reside and work in Burlington. These children are allowed to return to live in our valley only if they have found a spouse from the highly heterogeneous population of Burlington or else declare themselves to be homosexual with promises (if a woman) not to bear children unless by genetically monitored artificial insemination.

While you may think that sending away one’s children to live elsewhere is a pretty extreme precaution to take, we feel it's vital to the genetic health of our clan. Still, it's a painful step to take, especially when one of our children remains in Burlington with his or her new spouse. However, those who do stay in Burlington usually keep their emotionally ties to our family and eventually provide homes for the next generation of our pubescent children.

One unintended, but to us welcomed, outcome of this practice of our clan is that over the generations, ours has become an increasingly racially mixed family due to the racial diversity of Burlington. Unlike most of our neighbors in our racially homogeneous white valley, most of the younger generations of our clan have beautiful light brown skin, Afro-Eurasian-Mestizo- features, and dark hair that ranges from straight shiny black to long wavy brown to tightly curled black. Now that's what I call real beauty!