kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"MisansweredDreams"

words

The sad thing is, I don't think they meant to kill us. I'm actually pretty sure of that. I mean, it wouldn't do to have such "enlightened beings," as they styled themselves, go about the universe committing genocide. If newspapers still ran, they'd be screaming headlines like "The Killing Joke," and "He Who laughs Last Isn't Dead." I think I'm still in shock. I'm told I'm the only survivor. The only human being left. Just. Me. And I'm a pretty pathetic specimen.

Balding and round-bellied, I'd had it pretty easy with the diplomatic life. Why, I've sat on councils from Madrid to Timbuktu. Sat. It's kinda funny just being paid to sit and talk with people. About the only thing it exercised was my mouth. Occassionally I had to use my knoggin some little bit to remember this or that politeness, the name of the wife and kids of some prime minister, or whether to eat with your left hand or your salad fork. Sure, I suppose I've got my doctorate in psychology of all things, but I might as well have been an anthropologist. In fact, it might have better served. The paper I had was just a ticket to sitting on my ass talking to people.

That's how I wound up here, of course. Talking panda bears landed square in the middle of Hickville, USA, and the wise beaurocrats, former diplomats who can't take the strain of sitting in other countries, thought I'd best serve them by going and talking with the pandas. The pandas landed knowing several of the main earth languages. They spoke fluent English, Japanese, Chinese, French and Italian. This wasn't just book learning, either -- they spoke it well, as opposed to properly.

The pandas weren't quite pandas, of course. Closer to Care Bears, maybe. Hell, that could be half of what led us to trust them. They stood about two feet tall, bipedal. Their eyes were strangely round and seemed to be able to operate completely independantly, which bespoke of an interestingly split brain, considering that they could also use them in tandem, and seemed then to have fine stereoscopic vision. Their hearing was quite superhuman, as was their self-control, for I found out later they heard the subvoc'd comments of many people who met with them, and managed to hide it completely at the time. The pandas colorations were as distinctive as fingerprints, but much easier to read. There were purple and red, green and blue, orange and chartreuse, and some such a dark grey that it almost faded into the black patterns of their backs and chest. And to top it off, they had two opposable "thumbs" on each paw.

They said they were a great and benevolent race, and would cure all our problems, from pollution of the earth and loss of natural resources to disease, and even aging, which they saw as simply another disease. Every yarn you could imagine coming from an enlightened race, they said they had it. Moreover, they said they'd share it.

As tokens of what they wished to do for us, they immediately began to educate our scientists in non-abstract multidimensional geometries. They told us of the other races they'd found, the gossamer winged Effluvians, the most logical Ardumers, the floating gas-spores whose names were shimmering colors, and the rabbit-like Klipsomics who lived upside-down under the shell of their planet. They showed us pictures of all these races, before and after they had "interfered with the prime directive," as our newscasters jokingly called it.

Always before, they showed planets decaying and stagnating, with the inhabitants aging and dying, moving morosely from day to day. And after, each and every planet, it's inhabitants with a bounce in their step, laughing and playing, and holding parades. It seemed too good to be to true, so we went for it.

The government upped and offered hundreds of guinea pigs for the pandas to test. The pandas wanted subjects so as to delineate in their minds precisely what was healthy for us and what was not. We expected years of research and selected from a large pool of volunteers that would test with a limited recompense for home and self. Well, suffice it to say, a week after starting their study, the pandas said they had our cures, made to order.

I had the privelege of watching their thorough testing once, and though I must say it was anything but spectacular, just that very fact amazed me. They took a subject, restrained them so that they could not move, and then scanned them. That was it. The scan was over in fifteen seconds, and they had us understood down to our genes. They scanned each subject once, and that was what took most of the week. Two days after that, and they had these little blue pills ready to deliver. I suppose they had something like nanobots, or fairy dust, or something inside of them, because they were supposed to destroy any chance of disease, or aging, or anything.

They even showed me some baby pink pills, that they said would make the imbiber incredibly happy without any side effects, psychological or physical. I doubted this some, as anything that can make you happy physically without any side effects is sure to develop a psychological addiction, but the pandas were smarter than that. They said the pills themselves proactively removed and hindered any possible addiction. Like I said, nanobots or fairy dust; call it what you like, those were miracle pills.

World leaders gathered together and decided that a worldwide celebration was in order, to thank the pandas. I'm not quite sure whether they were more excited that their reign would go down most spectacularly in the history books or from the actual fact that salvation was at hand, but in any case they were downright appreciative and knew where to place their thanks. Their constituents were en masse pleased with the idea of a celebration, and so the beaurocrats of some hundred odd or even countries and nations declared a single day free of work, filled with festivities for everyone.

The pandas wanted to help in the celebration. They said they'd prepare spectacular sky-shows for everyone: aerials, sky drawing, and fireworks. The proper arrangments were made, and the weeks passed, days counting down until the largest jubilee the world had ever seen.

And then it was the big day, and there were garlands of flowers, parades and cheering, crowds of people swarming the streets. And the pandas put on wonderful shows in every part of the world, zipping around from place to place, spreading joy, streaming pink spores of happiness. This they hadn't mentioned to anyone, but it seemed brilliant as soon as I saw their intentions. They were spreading the contents of the pink pills. They were going to make mankind happy, forget its troubles, for a day.

Or longer. Mankind was never going to regain its troubles. One by one, across the globe, the people began to fall to a strange malady. Slowly, but it spread with sureness, and no medical team could figure out what it was. They didn't really have the time -- the medics died just as simple as the rest of the people, hours at the longest. It seemed a painless death, what I saw of it from the ship. People just sorta laid down, slow motion, and stopped with smiles on their faces. In all truth, they had no more worries.

Looking back on it, maybe that was what the Pandas meant. My god... Are you listening to me?

"Yes."

Did you destroy us on purpose? Was this your gift?

"Yes."

Why???

"We brought you the peace you could never otherwise achieve. It is our gift."

So our genocide is a cure? All those other races you showed us? All dead? All destroyed by a powder, coating their planets as it coats ours, a burial shroud? My God, what of Mars? Is that yours as well? How many aeons have you killed, how many races gone because of your benevolence? If it were not for you, would mankind have been so alone? Perhaps with other races, a true end would have been found. But no. We are all dead. All. but. me.