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You decide to <span class="mu-s">keep the money</span>, but not for yourself. You give it to the Scout troop. As charitable donations of money aren't very common, you'll have to put it on the ledger for a future large purchase or recruiting efforts. Giving charity is not common among the Swall; not only because all people are naturally self-interested for themselves and their families, but also because it sets a bad precedant for society. Just like your Mom and Dad always said; giving people things for free just makes them entitled and makes everyone else who didn't receive that treatment jealous; it causes more problems for society overall. They never had a problem with you joining the Scouts though, and if anything seemed happy. Maybe because of how good it looks on a resume...
The next day, after waking up and eating breakfast, you rise from the wet part of your family' home to the dry part, looking at the television.
Your Dad bought this model just five years ago. It's a Spectra LLV model. Decent screen resolution, capable of color with special filters applied to the screen; otherwise its black and white. It's already hideously outdated. You don't blame him for not wanting to get a new one though, the new one will probably be outdated in just a few years too!
Unsurprisingly, the <span class="mu-s">Hegemony</span> broadcast is playing. While not exactly huge fans of them, the Hegemony does have the best signal, the best picture quality, and has uninterrupted broadcasts with <span class="mu-i">zero commercials</span>. It's quite surprising they are able to run their network without any kind of advertising compared to normal Swall channels, who rely on it to stay funded. You heard that the very day the first color televisions came out, the Jaxtians had already begun broadcasting in color, while most Swall stations took at least a few months to adapt, like they were ready for it. As part of the agreement between InterCon and the Hegemony; they are allowed to broadcast to all of Swallia without government censorship or blocking. But, Swall are free to ignore the broadcasts if they want. Your parents are standing around watching this one though. It's about the <span class="mu-s">Death of a Jaxtian</span>.
You see a very old Jaxtian on the screen, and the narration goes over their painful and inevitable demise by a disease called the Geriatric Protien Collapse. You wince as you see the boils and pustules growing on the poor elders body. Their families must feel terrible being unable to do anything about it. Then the statistic that over 90% of Jaxtian will die from this disease, or more accurately be euthanized because of it. The broadcast shows a tearful goodbye of the primate's family and life-mate as they enter a pod to breathe their last. It's awful!
“That's what they get for playing with their genetic code.” Your father says, heartlessly. In a way though, you know he's right. Elderly Swall don't die of such terrible, unnatural fates.
