YMMV / The Ugly Little Boy

• Tear Jerker: A pediatric nurse is brought in by Stasis, Incorporated to care for their latest experiment; a neanderthal child brought to the present via a Time Machine. He must be kept in an enclosure because the enclosure is a special "not time" location that isn't the present, despite being accessible to people from the present. Everyone except the nurse treats the poor kid like an animal at worst, and at best a curious experiment, despite him being as intelligent as any human child. The nurse eventually thinks of the boy as her own child and attempts to remove him from the enclosure, but this fails and instead the nurse sends herself back in time with the boy. Their fate is unknown (though expanded upon in The Ugly Little Boy (1991)). The novel portrays the child's Neanderthal clan and how they deal with the Cro-Magnon "Other Ones" plus their own sense of foreboding that they will become extinct. When the nurse appears with the vanished child they assume she embodies their Goddess, and since she is clearly an "other one" but has cared for the boy and he's fine, this must mean that coexistence is possible.

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