Set in the far, far future, “2,300 Years Ago” describes a world where many unbelievable things are true, such as anti-gravity. It is set “after humanity had reached perfection,” with Trudy McGary as the main character. She doesn’t wear the rose-colored specs everyone else does and finds there are disadvantages to this, including poor eyesight. However, she soon discovers what the goggles really do. After going into a vent that produces anti-gravity gases, she discovers that they are produced by human slaves. As she makes this horrific discovery, she is given the special glasses and watches as the slaves disappear.

What is so interesting about this short story is how it applies to our society. You might think that the initially perceived utopia in “2,300 years ago” couldn’t be more different from ours, but they are in fact nearly identical. A large percentage of the human population act as if bad things don’t happen. They like to pretend that poverty doesn’t exist, and that people don’t go hungry. The rose-colored spectacles represent censorship and “pretending the problem is not there.” They filter out what is unwanted. If the internet never existed and you stayed within your own community, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that no problems existed, that society was already perfect. This is the reality in communist countries, such as North Korea, where any information at all is altered to appeal to the ideals of the ruling party.  The power in this tale is that brings the problem of ignorance to the forefront, an issue that many people deny exists.