Novel Treatments / The Intervention
The Intervention
The aliens invaded Earth out of pity. They did not swoop down from space in glittering death machines, but simply appeared out of the air in cities and towns all over the planet, knocking on doors, ringing bells and smiling at anyone brave enough to answer. Their unthreatening, somewhat ironic appearance (for they were small and green) made people want to let them in for a chat and they sat, squatted, and reclined in thousands of houses and huts, apartments and yurts, for a good heart to heart. It was the most peaceful invasion in the history of any country and naturally, all hell broke loose.
It doesn’t do to bypass the civil and military authorities when you invade a planet. They feel slighted. Leaders, elected or otherwise, are not the sort of folk who can stand to be ignored when foreign dignitaries come to town, without even a few tame journalists and cameras on hand to record their every word and gesture, and no defined talking points. There just wasn’t any dramatic video footage of suitably ferocious looking creatures from outer space shaking hands with Earth’s fearless leaders, or sitting around a table planning the future of the galaxy. There was only an endless film loop playing on all the networks, of kindly looking little humanoids popping into existence outside private residences, strolling along the sidewalks, doing not much of anything. Deprived of their digital moment in history, the presidents, prime ministers and dictators-for-life around the world did what politicians often do when their authority is shaken: they called out their armies. What followed was one of the quickest wars in military history.
The aliens did not defeat the combined armies of Earth so much as they ignored them. It was quickly discovered that the “Little Greenies” (which was the name that caught on), could not be attacked, or captured, or harmed in any way. Entire battalions of troops would stand in front of a single alien and it walked through them as though they weren’t there; shooting at them proved useless as well, a complete waste of time and ammunition. After a few days of total failure, large groups of people began gathering behind the troops for the sheer entertainment of watching a line of tanks trying to stare down a Little Greenie as it went up and down the streets of their neighborhood, seemingly unaware of the prodigious efforts spent to stop it. Now, at last, there was dramatic video to be had, though the evening news stories that began going out around the globe were not of the type that military or national leaders could afford, whether Chinese, African, or American. The troops began to melt away when it became obvious they were a source of much mirth among the worlds populace, and their commanders joined them, along with the rest of humanity, in hunkering down in front of TV’s and computers, watching, wondering just what it was the aliens could want.
Barbara Gifford found out before anyone else. She’d fled the pandemonium of her office early, leaving her staff clustered around the internet coverage of the alien advance to arrive home on a gorgeous June afternoon made for better things then invasions, or attending to the roughly fifteen pounds of briefs, depositions and assorted legal detritus waiting in the case she’d lugged in and dropped on the couch. The blessed ritual of swapping the smartly tailored suit worn to impress clients, shedding pantyhose and chic, but amazingly painful shoes for comfy-casual had been accomplished, as well as spooning out just the right amount of gourmet doggy chow into the beloved sluggo’s dish while he danced and slavered around her. She was flirting with taking him out for a brief amble under the butterscotch sun before settling down with left-over Chinese and juris prudence, when the door bell rang and changed her life.
She trailed the baying dog, hoping as usual that it was one of the kids come home for a visit, or even Fed-Ex with the inescapable legal paper trail and not any of the neighbors, whom she ignored on the principle that they had nothing in common, or too much in common, for any useful dialogue. But sluggo stopped howling halfway to the door, slumped down in a disinterested sprawl right in her path, forcing her to execute an awkward little hop around eighty pounds of English Bull Terrier or tread directly on his back. Muttering a curse upon his under-exercised butt, she peered through the security window of the door and discovered no children or couriers come to call, but, you guessed it, a Little Greenie.
A law degree from the University of Michigan and twenty years of private practice specializing in divorce, visitation rights, etc. had not prepared her for an extra-terrestrial on her porch and a brief, very un-lawyerly “ooh” escaped involuntarily from her lips at first sight. She quickly rallied though, and putting on her most forbidding “you’re six months behind with my client’s child support” face, did her species proud in demonstrating that humans have not become masters of earth, sea and sky by going to pieces in the face of the unexpected. She queried through the locked door.
“Yes? What do you want?” She kept her eyes on the creature while extracting the phone from the pouch on her belt loop, wondering, 911 now?
“Mrs. Gifford-Swinton? That is you?” Its lips didn’t move when it spoke, the pasted on smile remained exactly the same. So how was she hearing the words?
“Ms. Gifford. What do you want?” It knew her name, her married name; she’d been divorced five years. Obsolete information – its first mistake, but it didn’t seem to be trying to break in. Her thumb eased off the speed-dial button, remained poised above it.
“I wish very much to speak with you, to discuss many topics of mutual interest.” With her? That’s why politicians got the big money – to talk with little green men.
“You’ve come to the wrong place. You should talk to our leaders; they’ll be able to help you. I’m a private citizen.” Great line, she thought. What would this creature know of the distinction between public and private? She should just make the phone call, but what to say? Give it another moment.
“I assure you I have not made a mistake. I must speak with Barbara Gifford. Ann Arbor. Michigan. America. Earth. You are the first. We will speak with many others after you. May I come in?” An urgent tone to its voice, obviously it didn’t know that urgency sounded like weakness to one of the legal profession, a premature surrender of negotiating leverage. Or, she considered, a ploy. Stupid to attach human motivation to something that looked like a children’s cartoon character; but what to do? If it had conquered space travel it probably could kill her from outside the door and at least it would have to contend with sluggo once inside.
“I’m going to let you in, but I am in contact with the police. They know you’re here.” If this was a mistake, the police would probably never find her body.
She un-bolted the door and swung it open, glanced quickly back to the dog, expecting the sound of the front door opening to galvanize his usual loud aggression whenever strangers intruded, but sluggo merely rolled over and gave her the “about time for a walk” look, laid there, waiting for her to produce the hated leash.
She unlatched the screen and in it came, smallish and greenish, with a vaguely male face, smiling like a martyred saint. It looked up into her eyes for a moment and revealed its own tiny, jet black pupils, contradicting with a squint of deep concern the beatific smile.
“Thank-you. I very much appreciate this; you’re very brave.” It stood awkwardly just inside the doors arc, taking in whatever points of interest an alien could find in a foyer of painted dry- wall, ceramic tile floor, a glass topped table decorated with unopened mail.
“Please come through into the other room,” she coaxed, wanting only for it to move enough so the door would close. No sense putting on a spectacle for the entire street.
It moved slowly down the hall, with her following, watching. There was an air of uncertainty about it, a shuffling weakness to its walk. Was it sick? The only thing worse then an alien in your living room was a sick alien in your living room—ha! Settle down there, Barbie baby, she admonished herself, and let’s find out what this is all about.
“All right, I’m listening. You can sit if you want; I’m going to.” She took the wingback chair that was closest to the back door in case a hasty retreat became necessary. The Little Greenie climbed awkwardly onto the sofa opposite her, its eyes moving around the room, settling on her, waiting, hesitant.
“I’m amazed that my dog didn’t attack you,” she offered finally, after suffering through a half minute wondering just how one broke the ice with an extra-terrestrial and the absurdity of having to do so.
“Your pet does not sense me; as far as he is concerned I am not here.”
“How is that possible”, she asked in frank dis-belief. Even allowing that the aliens had proven capable of easily defeating any military force sent against them, with not so much as a stubbed toe on either side, selective presence seemed a bit far-fetched.
“Are you actually here… I mean, are you some kind of projection?”
“That is a very interesting question, Ms. Gifford,” it replied, “very astute.” “To answer I must first ask if you are familiar with what your civilization calls ‘wave-particle theory’?”
Christ, was this going to be a science lesson? Some weirdo, do-gooding spacefarers on a mercy mission to improve the abysmal technical knowledge of Americans?
“No,” she answered as flatly and emphatically as she could, hoping to squelch anything resembling a lecture.
“Then you may think of me as a sunbeam, Ms Gifford, come to dance for you. It is close enough to the truth for our purposes. We are beings of aggregated light photons, vibrating at a wavelength visible to you at the moment, but shielded from your pet and others. I am here for you, but not for your dog.”
Well, it really is true, she mused, you live long enough, you see everything.
“A sunbeam,” she repeated. “You don’t look like a sunbeam. You look like a little green man.”
“Yes, we are aware of your name for us; quite charming. I use “sunbeam” as simplification only, in the same way humans can be lumped together with dogs and elephants, as mammals – there is great divergence from a common origin.
We are able to bend light to appear as anything we like. We chose this form because it is non-threatening to you, but also to appear like nothing that exists on this planet. We felt this was the best way to approach you for mutually beneficial conversation without frightening you.
Unfortunately, the effect of our simultaneous appearance on your governments was miscalculated. It was not our intention to cause such uproar; I apologize… we apologize, for not taking this into account.”
They made mistakes; that was very good. She filed it away for the de-briefing the authorities were sure to want. What else would it reveal if she kept it talking?
“So how is it you can talk if you don’t have a body—no diaphragm, larynx, whatever.”
“It was quite a challenge for us to learn to make sounds which are audible to you. We communicate among ourselves in quite a different manner; more like your computers talk to each other. We learned to exert force on air molecules, and shape them into sounds, words, that you can understand. How exactly we do this is complex and probably not of interest to you.”
Too right; there were more interesting details she and the government wanted, needed to know.
“Where do you come from, which planet?”
“Why, we come from here, of course. We don’t so much live on a planet as in the space around it. We were here before any organic life began; we have watched your development with great interest since you descended from the trees and began walking upright. We’ve been living all around you for millions of years.”
She thought about this for a few moments: another sentient race, living all around us from the dawn of time, completely unsuspected. Nothing would be the same after this. Accepted scientific laws would be thrown out the window in the face of such revelation, not to mention what would happen to religion and anthropology. The atom bomb was nothing by comparison.
They’d been watching humans since their first development. Why? She wasn’t a scientist, but it seemed unlikely that a life form made up of light particles would covet anything human. And sunbeams, as far as she knew, did not require real estate.
“So why are you here now, contacting us after all this time, after a million years. What’s changed?”
The alien didn’t answer, but instead climbed down from the couch and approached a bookcase lined with novels, gardening tomes, various photos and small statuary. It picked up a hard cover edition of Pride and Prejudice, examined it carefully, ran its tiny fingers along the spine, over the binding, and replaced it on the shelf. Peered at the photos and assorted bric a brac just as carefully, touched the picture frames, felt the ceramic indentations along the bust of Cicero’s head, his proud Roman nose. Her easel, left out now that she lived alone, attracted the alien’s attention and it spent several minutes staring at the latest canvass stretched onto the board.
She waited, recognizing that her question had carried them beyond the preliminaries and into the main event. It wasn’t so different from her profession, where the client often required an interval to absorb the latest (usually bad) development and accept that it was time to distinguish the least awful plan from among several unpleasant possibilities. She waited.
The Little Greenie was holding the photo of James and Glenda posing, arms entwined in sibling affection, in front of U of M’s law quad after his graduation four years ago, before the job offer that sucked him to Houston, far away from his very recently divorced mother. Glenda was at grad school in Florida, an occasional visitor at holidays, phoning a few times a year for money and to act as a shrill conduit for the endless recriminations of her father over the divorce terms Barbara had supposedly forced him into against his will. Against his will. That delicious story he’d been serving up for public consumption ever since moving out of the house into his little love nest downtown, so conveniently near the bars that were apparently necessary to the middle-aged adolescent on the make.
After several years alone it was becoming difficult to remember what it had felt like when they’d all been together, a world unto themselves, of homework, family trips and cozy winter weekends watching movies with the kids on their laps. When disillusionment and cynicism were for other couples, with their pitiful, puling brats in tow at Little League picnics and school plays; not thin enough, or upwardly mobile enough to do more then orbit around the glowing bodies of her family, basking in their light… but the alien was asking something—
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“These are your children?”
“James and Glenda, yes. They’re grown now, on their own.” First time she’d ever really believed it; perhaps these aliens were good for something. They would certainly make an interesting entry in her journal: discrete scribblings that cleared the daily chaos from the mind, allowed the pretension that there was something more going on in her life then work and looking back at good times that would never come again.
She stood, asked: “I’m going to have some tea, can I get you anything?”
“We do not eat, as such, but thank you for asking. I have been unsure of how to begin to tell you about us, why we’re here and other information, and your offer has reminded me of the chemical nature of your lives. Food is a good place to start. I think you have already proven that we were correct to choose you as our first contact, the first conversation we are to have with your kind. Please get your tea, for I have much to tell you.”
“Go ahead”, she encouraged on her way to the kitchen, “I can hear you from out here.” She held the kettle under the faucet, placed it on the stove top, and discovered that her initial fear of this creature was no longer a physical dread of what it might do to her, but something more complex. There was fear, certainly, but also wonder and even a bit of pride that they wanted to talk to her first, although who knew why – they might think her more gullible then anyone else, she had to admit. But she wanted to hear it now for herself, not simply to gather information the authorities might want. She dunked a tea bag, listening.
“We chose to reveal ourselves because we have come to like humans very much, even to depend on you in a certain way, and feel that we must help you to avert a catastrophe that will affect all of us. I will explain this fully, but first I must tell you how we became aware of you, a long time ago.
We have existed around this planet for roughly two billion of your years, before anything more then water and congealed rock was evident on the surface. We watched the first blooms of microscopic plant life colonize the oceans and perceived their gradual change to larger, more diverse forms; noted with mild interest the development of the ammonites and other early animals. To us, who do not have any use for the physical aspects of planets, these developments were merely academic; something to exercise our intellect on and make predictions about what might happen next. This lasted for a very long time as you measure it, until something extraordinary and completely unpredicted occurred.
We are very sensitive to what is called electro-magnetic energy, one of the basic forces of the universe. We absorb this energy as a type of food, and it is the primary reason we congregate around your planet—for the large magnetic field generated by the metal core. We know exactly what this energy tastes like and all of a sudden it tasted different. It was better, richer, it made us drunk with a heady effervescence and we swarmed around the planet searching for the source of this wonderful elixir. We didn’t find it for a long time for we looked in all the wrong places. It was not the planets magnetic field changing again, as it does from time to time. It wasn’t weather patterns generating more electrical storms, or the effect of increasing levels of oxygen in the atmosphere.
It was you. Humans. Doing something we would never have believed possible from any talents you had displayed up to that point. You see, we had noted your descent from the trees with the same low grade interest with which we had observed snakes developing heat receptors and birds evolving different sized beaks. At best, we thought of you as a type of super ape running over the grasslands, trying to hold predators at bay long enough to reproduce yourselves. You didn’t come to mind when we went looking for an explanation of the fundamental change in the energy grid until, just by chance, one of us was investigating a mineral deposit near an encampment of your distant relatives and was almost totally incapacitated by an energy surge of incredible richness and intensity. Of course, we immediately swarmed to the area, but, to paraphrase the reasoning of a famous detective of yours, only after eliminating all the likely explanations did we entertain the un-likely:
You were telling stories in the dark. This was before you controlled fire, or wielded any tools more complicated then sharpened sticks; when your nights were filled with horror, real and imagined. Your ancestors were sitting outside their little grass shelters telling stories about the stars, and their minds were on fire with possibilities. These humans, these impossibly slow-footed bipeds with their small jaws and thin skins had created language, and even more astonishing, were using it to create stories about the stars and planets twinkling at them from the night sky. Stories which had nothing to do with what they were going to eat the next day, or how they were going to sneak up on it. Abstract thought is what you eventually called it, and only humans, out of millions of Earth species, could do it. It was pouring out of you, accompanied by a type of electro-magnetic energy completely unlike the feeble electronic resonances emitted by other organic life. We knew then we would eventually have colleagues in the galaxy.
Since that primordial evening our relationship with you has become incredibly close, although completely unknown to you. The ability to elevate your thoughts beyond the strict cause and effect, eat or be eaten internal dialogue of your fellow mammals actually changed, enhanced your brains electro-chemistry to emit energy which we find irresistible. We’ve watched you possessively for a long time, and I can finally answer your question of why now we have chosen to break our silence: you haven’t needed us until now.”
She’d returned to her chair; sat across from the alien again, mug in hand, contents untasted, unwanted; furious.
They were vampires, of a sort. Not blood, but human thought, or energy generated from thought. One-sided relationships never worked—trust a divorced divorce lawyer on that one, she thought bitterly.
“You’ve seen our wars, our famines and plagues, and you didn’t think we could use some help? You’ve been taking something from us and giving nothing in return. We call that stealing around here.”
“Oh come now, Ms. Gifford, we are all adults here, as I think you are fond of saying; how were we to know that wars and famines and plagues were not your favorite pastimes? We are not like you. We could only observe that you fought regularly amongst yourselves from the earliest times, attacked and killed each other eagerly for all kinds of reasons. Many of your famines have been the result of deliberate over population of an area, from cramming yourselves into cities while the surrounding land is over-tilled, over-grazed, and the water fouled. Disease follows closely, taking the mal-nourished first and then spreading among everyone else.
You have done this repeatedly for thousands of years. You’re still doing it. We thought it was deliberate, that you preferred to live always on the brink of extinction. Even now, when your technology has improved to the point that extinction is less probable you continue to suffer wars and famines and plagues. When you are not actually engaged in these activities, you are often reading books, or watching movies about wars and famines and plagues- as entertainment. And you ask why we did not intervene sooner? We didn’t want to spoil your fun. We still don’t. There are bigger fish to fry, from our point of view.”
It was hard, very hard to pose the question, because she was sure she wouldn’t like the answer:
“What’s bigger then wars and famines and plagues?”
“You are fading out Ms. Gifford. Human abstract thought is fading out, dwindling down year by year. We can feel it, taste the difference, and I am here today to warn you that there is no longer much difference between the mental processes of many of your fellows and those of their pets. Food and luxury and security and making more humans are what you are increasingly all about.
As I came up the street to your house, I observed small animals running over the ground and climbing the trees- squirrels, you call them. We are acquainted with their life cycles; essentially they eat and store food almost every waking minute of their lives. Their few other activities consist of defending territories, fighting for new territory and producing more squirrels. They do not compose poetry, explain the universe via mathematics, write novels, or design and build devices for mechanical advantage. Nor are they able to wish to do these things. They have an excellent reason for their limited existence for their brains are on the order of seven grams, and there are simply not enough neural paths to entertain anything beyond dogged survival. What is your excuse Ms. Gifford? What excuse do humans have for living in the same manner?
She just barely kept her seat, wanting nothing but to take a swing at the smirking little bastard. As if the human race needed to justify anything to anyone. She’d been polite up to now, but it was time to set a few things straight. They’d chosen to talk to her first out of several billion of her fellows, to spin this bizarre tale for her—fine, she’d rise to the bait, but they were sadly mistaken if they thought they had found a sympathetic ear.
“On behalf of the human race,” she intoned in her best courtroom voice, “I’d like to thank you for your well meant, though misdirected intervention in our affairs. I am sorry if we are not quite living up to your expectations, and, as you claim, our minds are not what they were. I am also sorry that you feel our efforts to raise our families, and by extension to ensure the survival of our species, are intellectually shallow. It is difficult to believe that you have studied us for so long and yet have completely failed to understand our delight in children, our absolute determination to provide for, and protect them.
Unfortunately, we cannot simply soak up sustenance like a bunch of cabbages, as you do, or lie around contemplating our navels without any effort required to obtain our daily bread. I don’t know if your kind has children—I rather doubt it, because if you did you would know what a challenge we face every day. Perhaps a million years hasn’t been quite long enough for you to figure us out and you should just disappear back to wherever it is you reside, and spy on us for another million years. We’ll try to struggle on without your help for a while longer.”
She glared at the alien, daring it to break in, though it showed no inclination to interject anything, simply sitting there watching her. She gathered her thoughts and plowed ahead.
“As for this dire catastrophe you warn of, there is nothing in it beyond your own self-interest. If our thought patterns are no longer generating as much of this weird energy you’ve become so fond of, how is that our problem? There’s been no change for us—humans are doing just fine, living our lives as we wish, and raising our kids. You’ve been taking this energy from us without our knowledge, without our permission. Why should we care about you? It sounds like the catastrophe is entirely yours.”
Let’s see how the little monster likes that, she thought, fairly confident she’d destroyed his argument. It was difficult, though, to gauge the effect on a creature whose facial expression never changed. It just sat there watching her. Well, let it watch. She drank cold tea and stared back.
“You are clever,” it said after a while, “though you are perhaps too clever for the good of your species. We have noticed over the course of our observation of humans that often your most persuasive arguments are those which advocate that no changes need be undertaken, that things will get better if only everything remains the same. Such reasoning will not work in this instance for change has already begun, and hiding behind your progeny will not help. Even mosquitoes have children, Ms. Gifford, and they put just as much effort into ensuring their survival as humans do theirs. Doing well by your children has never been any part of what elevated you above the other species of this world. Mosquitoes do not establish trust funds for their offspring, but in their own limited manner they do what they can for them. It is simply a matter of degree.”
It had climbed down from the couch again and wandered around the room in its shuffling manner, not really looking at anything closely, occasionally glancing at her with those tiny black eyes as though making sure she hadn’t gone anywhere. Finally, it came to a stop directly across from her chair. Standing, its face almost level with hers, it went on.
“The catastrophe which awaits you is yours alone, although we will be affected. You are like chocolate for us, a luxury which we have become attached to, and we should be very sorry to have to do without. But we can live without you, as we did for a very long time. You are a habit, nothing more. Humans, though, have a great deal more to lose—you will lose yourselves. We have appeared on your planet out of respect for what you have been and pity for what you are becoming. We know that you dislike pity; we are counting on this, on your anger, to begin to change what could be a very unfortunate outcome.”
“Well, you got the anger part dead on,” she snarled, “though I’m a long way from putting it to use for you, especially as I have no idea what this “unfortunate outcome” is. You’d better spell it out damn quick, or get out. One of our scientists used to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Do you have any proof, any facts at all to support this warning you’ve taken it upon yourselves to deliver?”
The Little Greenie leaned in toward her: “I’ve been hoping you would ask me that. I think I can accommodate you with a few facts, Ms. Gifford.”
The alien pointed to the entertainment center. “Would you explain to me the principles by which your television works?”
“What?”
“Your television, Ms. Gifford; how does it function?”
“There’s a picture screen. You turn it on and it receives programming from T.V. stations.”
“Yes, yes, and what are the fundamental principles the device utilizes to do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m not an expert.”
“I see. Well, then, could you explain how photosynthesis works?”
“The plant takes in sunlight and converts it to sugar, or something.”
“That is what happens, Ms. Gifford, but how?”
“I don’t know. Is there a point to this, because otherwise you’re wasting my time. You should consult a botanist, or somebody who deals with plants if you want to know how they work.”
“Please be patient. What about cement? Can you explain why it hardens?”
“No.”
“What is the solar wind?”
“I don’t know.”
“What makes bread rise as it is baked?”
“I’m a lawyer, not a baker.”
“Indeed, Ms. Gifford.”
The Little Greenie was silent for a time, still standing in front of her, a little too close for her liking. It stared off into space in what would have been a reverie if a human did it, then lowered its head and scaled the couch again. It turned toward her.
“We believe that humans are at their best as generalists. One of the greatest expressions of your mental capacity is the invention of the “Jack-of-all-Trades.” Once, all humans lived in small groups which made their own tools, produced their own food and invented their own entertainment. These small settlements lasted for a large percentage of your history, and still persist in small pockets around the planet. Specialization, in these settlements, was virtually unknown. Certainly, various talents were distributed among the population—this individual was a better tool maker, that one a better farmer, still another was proficient at cloth making, and so on. Most people, though, did a bit of everything and the ability to propel your minds along many avenues is why you are the most successful species on the planet.
Unfortunately, the society you have built over the past century bears little resemblance to what I have described. It is now possible for you to be well educated, prosperous, and yet know almost nothing of the world around you, or how in fact to manufacture the basic necessities of life. A well paying, highly specialized job is all that is required to ensure a flow of goods and services—provided by other, equally specialized workers. You need not produce or prepare your own meals, or clean up after them. Others weave the fabrics of your clothing, build your transport devices and your living accommodations. The stories your ancestors invented about the stars are now told by professional storytellers. The degree of specialization in your lives is limited only by your ability to pay for it. We sometimes amuse ourselves by comparing wealthy humans to queen bees, which, after killing their rivals and mating, lie in an egg laying semi-coma for the rest of their lives while the other hive members feed them, raise their young, and carry off their wastes. I wonder if this comparison will become literally true. I hope not.
The unfortunate outcome of this is a diminishing of your mental horizons, which is reducing your civilization to an increasingly fractious bedlam of very narrow interests, squabbling over trivialities. You know less and less about anything outside your profession, and demonstrate little interest in anything you can’t eat, or deposit into a bank account. And the accumulated self-absorption of your narrowly focused civilization could crumble at any time into murderous tribalism. There is no natural law, Ms. Gifford, which prevents humans from sliding back down to the level of your ancestors in their grass huts. All of your highly specialized knowledge will simply hasten your downfall.”
“But you’ve got it all backward!” she cried out before the silly creature could continue. They really weren’t very smart, or maybe their lives were so different from humans that jumping to ridiculous conclusions was inevitable. To think she’d actually feared this pitiable alien when it stood outside her door. She felt the same rush of pleasant anticipation as when opposing counsel showed up in court completely unprepared.
“Humans are successful because we’ve chosen to specialize in whatever each individual does best. We could never have built a modern civilization without complex skills and disciplines. You can’t expect surgeons to grow their own food. You can’t expect Supreme Court justices to build their own cars. They have to specialize in order to be good at their professions and take them to the next level. I certainly wouldn’t go to a doctor who spent as much time growing tomatoes as looking after patients, and I’m pretty sure no one else would.”
“Oh Ms. Gifford, you’ve made me very happy,” it said, while scooting out to the edge of the couch to perch precariously on the edge. It balanced there, bobbing back and forth and looking somewhat demented, and she edged away carefully from what now appeared to be a very excited alien.
“We predicted that many of you would use just such reasoning as justification, and miss our point. No justification is necessary for your specialization in all of the skills and disciplines which free you from physical want and drudgery. Those skills are the culmination of thousands of years of striving for better, longer lives, and you are quite right to point out that your civilization is built upon them. We wouldn’t want it any other way.
No Ms. Gifford, the danger arises from your increasing absorption into whatever you do to keep the wolf from the door. Not a specialization of skill, but of life itself. To limit your existence to the narrow constraints of job and child-rearing- this is the path to disaster in terms of the intellectual future of your species.
You could say that our sole purpose for intervening in your lives is to remind you that the equation 2+2 should equal 5 for humans, not four. Never 4. Those squirrels outside your home are entirely the sum of their parts. For them, 2+2 will always be 4. Likewise, give your dog food, water and love and it will return tail wagging, hand licking and territoriality. Given the same, humans will gain the stars if your existence does not decline into endless nut storing and tail wagging. If 2 and 2 remains 5. Write a poem, build a house, paint a picture, plant a garden, Ms. Gifford. Study bread making. None of this will make you any money—do it anyway. It will keep that remarkable brain of yours nice and limber and ready for anything, just like your distant ancestors. And you will make us happy as well, very happy indeed.”
“Why me?” she had to ask, despite an intense revulsion to uttering the hackneyed litany of losers everywhere; wretched tornado survivors, victims of stray bullets and violent relationships, paraded in front of cameras for public sympathy and private entertainment. “Why have you contacted me first?”
The alien just looked at her and it was all she could do to keep from squirming under its gaze. She had to know—hated that it was important to her, but had to. Why should it matter if these fools picked her first for this nonsense? It mattered. She refused to think about the implications of why it mattered, that she might need their approval as evidence of a sound life, a worthiness to be consulted first. She didn’t require anyone’s stamp of approval on her life. She’d done her best for herself and family, certainly better then many, and had nothing to apologize for. She sat with her hands clenched, certain that it didn’t matter what the alien would say, but unable to keep from straining to hear it.
“Oh, you’re very funny, Ms. Gifford. You sit there, wanting to deny me, telling yourself you don’t care and it’s all a pose. We’ve done our homework on you. We know that you have fought to be more then the sum of your parts. Lawyer, wife, mother, these have been the ripples on the pond. Always you plumbed the depths for more. In the secret moments of your life you put aside the getting of money, the stroking of male egos and the wiping of runny little noses to take up the pen and the brush. We know of your writing, we have read it all. There are no secrets to be kept from sunbeams. We have penetrated your defenses, found out the hiding spots for your paintings and inspected the brush strokes; judged the subject matter and weighed the totality of your existence.
You are one of us, no matter the objections you concoct. Your writings display thoughtfulness on such a range of subjects that only our intimate knowledge of them allowed us to stump you with a few, carefully picked questions. We chose to visit you first because we need an ally, someone of many parts who can lead the others we will contact; to begin the struggle against the fall of the human race into intellectual oblivion. There are only a few hundreds of thousands left on the planet, among billions. A few secret strivers like you, for whom job and family and luxury are not enough. Not very many to tip the balance, Ms. Gifford. You will need to employ subtlety against the majority of your fellows who read only for material profit, to whom reflection means plotting their next promotion. You must once again make the argument that the unexamined life is not worth living.
I will not waste time by asking for your decision. Your entire life has been preparation for this struggle and we know that you would take it up even if you remained unaware of the stakes. We will lend such aid as we can. Our help within your physical plane must be limited for our life form would be lethal to you, but we have much to offer in communications and strategy. We’ve learned a lot about how human societies work, about the levers which can be pulled to affect change. We can also offer a large boost to many of your sciences. It will be the ultimate Quid Pro Quo, Counselor. With our help you will usher in a world wide renaissance the like of which has never been dreamed of. We will hopefully get billions of stimulated minds, pulsing with energy. It is win-win, as you would say.”
This was how it felt to have your body ripped from you and replaced with another. She’d sunk down into the chair almost prostrate, her knees as high as her head, staring out the window at nothing. Everything felt strange. She looked around the room at someone else’s furniture. Yes, that couch was once mine, she assured herself, and so were the chairs and coffee table. This house was mine. I lived here alone, waiting for my husband to come back, for my children to need me again. That’s finished.
The aliens had swept away her old life. She’d countered their arguments, yet they’d won easily in the end by telling her the one thing she wouldn’t refute, the one thing her race would never tell her. That she was more. That she could aid others to be more, on the grandest scale possible. There was no fighting that. Could she do it though, that was the question, especially as she hadn’t the faintest idea of how to begin, didn’t even know what “it” would be. The thing to do, she told herself, was to start small.
“Do you have names? I can’t keep referring to you as “it” or as “Little Greenies,” you know.”
“Well, Ms. Gifford, my name translates roughly into “Arcing Current Which Bursts Across Space And Time.” A bit long in your language, don’t you think?”
“Umm, yes, it doesn’t exactly trip lightly off the tongue… but wait a moment; you mean arcing current as like electricity?”
“Exactly as like.”
“Well that’s easy enough. I christen thee “Sparky”. How do you like it?”
“If it works for you it works for me, Ms. Gifford.”
“Sparky it is then. You can call me Barbara.”
“I will do that,” Sparky replied, as he began climbing off the couch again. “And now I must go and visit with others. We will be in touch, Barbara.”
It was shuffling along toward the door, and she leapt out of the chair in sudden panic and ran after it.
“Wait… what am I supposed to do now? How do I start this thing? What is our strategy, how am I to contact an entire planet?”
“First things first, Barbara. We shall recruit your helpers and then we will see. In the meantime you can start with your neighbors.” Sparky pointed out the window to the house on the left, “Do you know that the man living there has always wanted to paint? He fears to begin because to his mind it is not a fitting thing for a man with a job and a young family to do. He fears ridicule, fears that he will not paint skillfully. He does not see that the journey is as important as the destination. That’s where you come in.”
She’d seen the guy, of course, but there hadn’t been three words spoken between them since he, his wife and three noisy kids moved in two years ago. They were a generation apart in age; it was plainly impossible.
“But they’re a young couple with kids. He’s too busy to take up something as time consuming as painting. Plus, I don’t even know them. How am I going to convince him to do this, Sparky?”
“I would not know, Barbara. You must figure something out. Perhaps you could tell him that taking up painting is the moral equivalent of war. We’ve observed that humans can always find the time for war. Farewell, for now.”
Sparky shuffled out the door onto the porch, stepped gingerly down the steps to the walk leading to the sidewalk. She stood on the porch watching as it slowly made its way down the street. If nothing else, its last remarks proved they needed her help. Imagine spouting something about the moral equivalent of war to a thirtyish wage slave with three young kids in this day and age. He’d run a mile. She’d have to find a way to meet the guy, have a conversation that wouldn’t scare him off, and slowly work in a suggestion or two. That was the way to start.
The golden afternoon had given way to luminous early evening. The leaves of shrubs and trees, still fat with spring rain, glowed verdantly under the softly caressing sun. Above her, a squirrel chattered defiance at all who would seek to invade the sanctity of jealously guarded oak trees, noted each new acorn with a miser’s greedy glee.
From the shrubbery came the faint whine of expectant mother mosquitoes waiting impatiently for the sun to wane that they might go forth to suck up their children’s futures. A car rolled to a stop in front of the drive next to hers and turned in. Damn, it was the neighbor! She started back inside, but too late, he’d already spotted her standing there like a dummy on the porch. Oh well, here goes, she thought and came down the steps toward him with her best smile as he shut the car door. A frown of puzzled consternation flashed across his face as he scuttled up the drive, pretending he hadn’t seen her. He disappeared through the side door of his house like a magic rabbit. She shook her head. This wasn’t going to be easy.
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you little one liners about law make your charater strong and make the reader respect you, the invasion, wonderful and unique, the fact they cant be hurt because they are partices, another nice touch. so far I am very impressed.
I love the theme of self consumption and lack of creativity as downfall.
without wasting point. I fat out love this story. Artist in everyone, so true, and so well written, I would love for you to invite fourtwenz on this site to your friends list so I can be informed wen this gets pubished/finished.
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You are a pretty talented writer, there is just a few things I’d like to ask and point out.
First off you seem to have Sloggo as a charector. Well its name needs to be capitalized instead of lower case.
Next i don’t get why you started out the way you did. I mean it personally did not draw me into the story. It seemed to me more like you were starting to tell the story yet it wasn’t in a very exciting way.
Besides that you did a good job keep writing.
I loved this. The voice was perfect. Barbara had just the right amount of apathy, and sarcasm expected from a woman being ‘visited’ by an little green thing. And lines like ‘No sense putting on a spectacle for the entire street.’ are a wonderful characterization.
Now for the stuff you pay credits for:
Two things jumped out at me, as well as a few edits.
The first one, was the opening. For me the invasion wasn’t the hook, but rather, Barbara’s feeding sluggo. I’d open with that, and move into the invasion. But that’s just me. What you have works, but to me it wasn’t nearly as powerful as her voice.
The second thing was the large chucks of alien dialogue explaining why he was there. Now, I understand you had to explain all that to Barbara, but how it was done was what I question.
Example:
“We chose to reveal ourselves because we have….
You basically have one page of dialogue…no editor is going to let you get away with that.
Who speaks in large chucks of speech like that? (Aliens apparently). I suggest breaking it up, or at least tagging through it. Make Barbara respond with an Oh, or a hand to her face, or some means of showing that this isn’t a good time for the reader to drift off…
Now, before I throw out the edits. I have to say how much I loved the do you know how a tv works? part. It made me laugh out loud…in the middle of my office. Great.
Edits:
I suggest you look at your semi-colon use. While technically correct, sometimes a period will do, which acts as a pace increases as well.
Example:
“All right, I’m listening. You can sit if you want;(.) I’m going to.”
More edits:
this was (were) a mistake,
After several years alone(,) it was becoming
earliest times, attacked(,) and
wagging, hand licking(,) and
Overall, great stuff. I hope you post more.
I like it, reminds me of Ray Bradbury, very whimsical science fiction. The opening is great, slows down just a little bit during the explanation, but very good stuff.
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