The Less Interesting TimesWhen Knowledge and Technology Invade

2008/01/22 The Alien

The door to the small apartment burst open. Jack threw the crimson haired man inside and shut it quickly behind him.
“What the hell were you thinking?” He asked in the loudest whisper he could muster. He knew the alien was letting him do this. With more than thrice his own speed and strength, Velorum could rip his head apart and be out the door before he himself hit the floor. The alien wanted to be reprimanded. He half sat, half fell on the moldy sofa and stared out the shuttered window into the dark city scene.
“You are supposed to be keeping a low profile. Care to explain what happened in the alley?”
“I’m pissed off!” He yelled at Jack who immediately grabbed the collar of his jacket and thrust him back down into his seat.
“Yeah? We’re all pissed off. Now deal with it. And shut up.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Velorum said, his voice crumbling to a whisper.
“Well, why don’t you fucking enlighten me?” Jack said and crashed in the opposite couch.
“Do you know why I’m here? Why I’m really here?”
Jack’s head fell on his open hand, he looked like he just lost a round of poker to a bluff. “I guess it’s not to fix your ship and get out.”
“Hardly. I was cast out of my own planet. Thrown away for trying to tell the truth. But they didn’t believe me. They said I was delusional, hysteric, what do you call it when you’re disturbed by a battle?”
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?” Jack said.
“Yes, that one or something like it. But it wasn’t that. It was a battle near a quasi-space hole. We were trying to defend it for it was the only way to the Jodantokai.”
“The what?” Jack interrupted.
“The Wise from Above. That’s how we call them. You probably heard of them as Little Green Men. They prefer Ariloulaleelay.”
“Little Green Men…” Since meeting the alien, Jack’s mind opened to so many new possibilities. “Ok. So what happened?”
“During the fight, I went through the hole. We had to defend it until it closed. One of the enemy craft managed to get passed us and I had to chase it down. I managed to destroy it but it closed on me so I was in with no way back. I took my ship to the Arilou homeworld and they let me in! Understand this: they never let anyone in. I went there and talked to them. No drones or sentries or nothing. I spoke to a representative. An ambassador or something. He told me the whole story. How they took us from Earth centuries ago and how they brought us to our new colony.”
“You’re from Earth?!” Jack could barely keep his seat.
“I’m not. But my race originally is. Right now we are as different from you, as you are different from a gorilla.”
Jack twisted his face and relaxed again. “I’ll try and not take offense.”
“So I was there and I asked them why. We’ve sent delegations before but it was considered uncivilized to question their motives. That is the main reason why my people banished me, for breaking taboos.”
“So… Why?”
“To protect you.”
“To protect me?”
“All of you, the human race. I asked the wise ones, one of the most advanced races in the galaxy if not the most, and that’s what they fucking told me. They dragged us half way across the sector and into the middle of the galactic mayhem so we could be your fucking guardians, so we could keep you safe from the rest of the fucking monsters out there who would sooner eat you with cooked Spathi entrails than shake your hand.” Velorum was standing now, his voice rising in volume with every sentence. Jack could feel the increase in temperature and was starting to fear what was to come next. “That’s what I said to the counsel but they wouldn’t accept the fact that we are some high-tech watchdog. They always thought that we were chosen by the Arilou, selected. They wouldn’t listen to me tell them that we went too far, that we used our technology to such extent as to remove ourselves from the natural order of things. And that is what the Wise Ones had always intended. But now that I’m here, on this miserable blue planet, I think the Arilou were wrong. Because you people are stupid and dangerous on your own. You don’t need a bloodthirsty conquering race, you can destroy yourselves all on your own. The drugs and the violence. You have millions of reasons to kill yourselves that would not be understood anywhere else out of this gravity well. How are you suppose to be the galaxy’s only hope when you can’t even help yourselves? How are you meant to reach ascension if you can’t survive the trip? That’s why I was bashing that guy’s brains out in the alley. Because he was dumb enough to do those drugs and he was right in front of me and he was making me feel like my life, my whole people’s existence, is a waste of fucking space.”
That was when Jack punched him, because he could smell the upholstery starting to smolder.
— The Fire Tiger Chronicles, a work in progress

Posted in From the Writing Desk by Eran with 9 comments.