THE GALAXYMBION ODYSSEY

“As a species you have accomplished so little in so much time. Where there was balance you brought chaos, where there was life you brought death, where there was beauty you defiled it with ugliness, where harmony ruled you overthrew it and where nature gave you paradise you turned it into hell as much and as quickly as you could. In the eyes of your blind, corrupt leaders, and their equally mindless champions or followers, these moronic barbarisms are revered as accomplishments to be proud of. I would like to commend you on your incredible superiority, yet I cannot because it exists only in your twisted imaginations.”

“But our culture; great art, science, philosophy, music and literature. These are our crowning achievements.”

“Indeed they are, yet those have always been the achievements of a rare minority; only Beethoven can take credit for his music, only Socrates for his thought, only Einstein for his scientific insight, only the good doctor for his saving of lives. Such are the works of individuals – not your species – and they are too often neglected by too many of your kind. You greet exceptional people neither as ubiquitously nor as enthusiastically as they deserve yet claim their uniqueness as common property. You defy logic and fail in the very quality you hold up as definitive of yourselves; humanity. You are shameful and shameless creatures.”

President Vamp huffed. He did not want his throat deactivated again or to be made unconscious, so was careful about his words. The U.S. forces were in comm blackout with all their weaponry inoperative and nowhere on Earth was there any working radar or regular communications systems. He could not muster allies in other countries or coordinate strategies with them. Absolutely nothing worked; no aircraft or land vehicles, no sea vessels or missile launchers. These visitors had somehow deactivated all military technology and sabotaged transport systems with this infernal Storm Catrina that they created.

To add to President Vamp’s already expanding headache there were stories steadily trickling in from Hospitals and other sources with independent communication ability in every state. Legions of aliens had been deployed anywhere help was needed and were busy using their intelligence and technology to heal stricken humans and make things better. Reports of humanitarian activities by the visitors were increasing; they seemed to have an endless capacity and desire for preserving life and eliminating suffering even if they saw foolish causes.

By ten o’clock all non-electrical weapons were systematically disintegrated, by the visitors. It was becoming increasingly difficult to levy any criticism against them, even using the flimsiest of arguments or the most bizarre irrationality. Everywhere they went they improved conditions, hurt nobody, protected people from harm and prevented those who could cause harm or suffering from doing so. Their abilities seemed Godlike, and their benevolence an exponentially magnified echo of one Jesus of Nazareth. Now only five Ledaran minutes were left before midnight.

Jor Kintara understood the human’s apprehension, as much as his historic bigotry. The Ekrian was also trying to be careful about his words. “In only four of your minutes your entire human population will be relieved of its burdens of ignorance, stupidity and contention. Then we will work together to repair the damage your species has caused this planet, and even its own kind, during its tenancy.”

“So, we just sit here, waiting? What will we feel when whatever it is happens at midnight?”

“There will not be any pain if that is what worries you. You will possibly feel a mild tingling sensation in your head and ears. It will pass quickly as the learning sphere establishes electronic interface with your mind. Once the link is active your thoughts will become clearer and your awareness sharpen astronomically. There is no physical pain at any stage and as your cerebral clarity increases your eyes will be opened as never before.”

“Great propaganda talk. You should have been a politician.”

“I would prefer it if you refrain from making such insults, President. Where I come from politicians as you define them do not exist. Instead our society is guided by entrenched, deep-seated honourability; public office can only be reached by demonstrating such personal quality in the highest degree. No single individual has supreme power and no committee can act for itself. Everyone is responsible for everyone else and everyone works together for the good of all; not merely their own kind.”

Vamp took a few moments to try and comprehend such a place but he was clearly struggling to see a society actually working without personal self-aggrandisement as its motivating purpose. “So, are you people some kind of radical socialists?”

“The Galaxymbion is neither radical nor any kind of political party. We do not have political parties, agendas or alignments. We are not dogmatic and we live life according to the provable, logical principles of reality.”

“So, when this gizmo of yours is activated what happens to psychos and evil maniacs? How can your gizmo correct them?”

“Those of your kind who are seriously criminally insane will cease to exist.”

“I thought you said nobody will get hurt.”

“They won’t. The device works through time wherever it encounters too much chaos to disentangle. It will work backwards through such people’s histories, unpicking their psychological decay as it goes. Once it has repaired their history they will become a sane, honest, psychologically stable and meaningfully positive individual.”

“I still don’t get it,” Vamp complained, “you said they would cease to exist.”

“Nor do I,” Wiggins amplified. He was also being careful about what he said. His eyes looked wild, as if he was coldly tracking an offending phantom that threatened his financial gluttony. He seemed convinced that he possessed the right to exist as a voracious parasite, and that anyone who tried to show him a better way was dangerous.

“I can see that you both find it difficult to comprehend such a vaulted concept as civilisation. Learning spheres are the disentanglement of evil,” Eriana observed.

“But we are a civilisation,” Vamp protested, as angrily as he dared. Eriana in return broadcast images of human ‘civilisation’ to him in such a way that they were assimilated instantaneously.

“Are you, really?” she stated. “Are the events you just witnessed truly evidence of civilisation?”

“How did you do that?” Vamp asked, evading the question.

“Unlike humans, all Galaxymbion citizens have extremely well-developed minds and never waste their intellectual gifts as you do. Millennia of cultivating and refining our cerebral matrices have provided us with logically focused self-discipline. Your obsession with warfare, crime, immorality and folly continually hold you back.”

“Well,” Jor Kintara chimed pleasantly, “now your species has a chance to achieve more of its real potential.”

Vamp and the other humans felt nothing immediately as a grandfather clock chimed twelve times. He and a few others present wondered if these aliens had defective technology. This was rather quickly settled, however, when he felt a slight tingling on his temples, pretty much how the alien had described it. It soon dissipated, replaced by a gentle numbness that lasted only a second. After that he began to feel a little light-headed, followed by a sensation of being lifted spiritually out of himself.

For a few minutes he attempted to resist the sensation, but then he adjusted to it and understood that it actually felt rather pleasant. There certainly was no pain involved and in fact quite the opposite; he began to experience real joy for the first time in his life. Not as before, because of empty reasons like earning his first million dollars. Not because of acquiring some luxurious yet quite worthless possession. This joy was different; it was a celebration of life, the universe and existence for themselves. He found himself floating through billions of years of cosmic history from the birth of cosmic reality to the centre of the sun upon which all life depended. He found himself swimming as a fish and flying as a bird; seeing life through their eyes. He sensed seemingly everything and everyone all at once. A servant, only three meters from him, who he knew nothing about except that she was from the Philippines; her childhood, her joy at learning to play the flute, her joy at coming to America, her disappointment with living in the West, her family back home who depended on her earnings, her mother dying of cancer, her sister killed in a road accident twenty-three years ago. Vamp had known none of her history, her personality, her achievements; worse, he had never asked her about herself or her home. He had only ever seen her as ‘the Philippino’, an underling, and been insufferably rude to her.

Then he was a seal pup, with a fisherman standing over him wielding a large wooden club. The blunt weapon fell upon his head and reality, life, everything poured out of him in this act of insane cruelty. The pain was unbearable, making him weep streams of tears for this creature’s suffering. Then he was a farm animal being butchered alive; he could feel every cut and blow. He had no time to try and evaluate how the aliens had recorded such experiences from the minds and souls of humanity’s animal victims. He was now a woman, caught by lascivious, foul, cowardly men and treated deplorably; all the sights, sounds and sensations coursed through him, making him feel sick to admit he was of the human race. He was a soldier in war, with the bullet and the bomb ripping him apart. It no longer mattered whose side he was on, what political or religious doctrine he fought for, where he had been born, what ideology he was chosen to suffer and die for. He experienced the torment of all that suffered, man or woman, child or geriatric, this skin hue or that skin hue, whatever religion or belief set, this species or that species, wealthy or impoverished. And for the first time in his life he realised what a complete asshole he was; a willing contributor to a vast litany of assholes.

And so his new experiences marched on through his consciousness, opening his mind to everything in the world. They showed him how his decisions, opinions and behaviours affected others. The employees he had fired because he was in a bad mood; the people he had written off in his own mind because he did not understand them, the appalling way he had judged others less fortunate, his indescribably unforgivable lack of good manners to those who disagreed with him, the victims of the wars he had supported or instigated.

And then everything switched again; he was seeing reality for the first time, not through prejudiced, money-hungry eyes, but through thought and understanding. The elegant balance of sub-atomic particles and energies holding everything together, the forces holding nature and the heavens together, the rarity of life and the gift of life, the pricelessness of it, the sumptuous harmonies of the cosmos, the elegant mathematics of everything, the great thoughts of poets and philosophers, not merely from Earth but also numerous other planets. He lost track of time, enthralled in this expanding vision of creation and wonder, of hope and symmetry and at last the release from human greed, stupidity and cruelty.

He did not want this incredible journey to end. And it did not. It continued to expand across time and space; whole galaxies and nebulae, all accurately catalogued and understood, filled his mind with wonder. Music he had heard but never paid much attention to, now completely understood; languages once ignored now appreciated for their elegance. Mountains and rivers, trees, life in every shape and form, the delicate balance of the environment, the folly of human history, the evil of war and crime and hatred; all swam before him leaving indelible impressions. What was good and to be striven for at all costs, and what was evil to be avoided at all costs.

And then it stopped; the images, the revelations, the ecstasy of seeing truth for the first time.

“I have been a complete idiot; life wasted, urgently pursuing blind stupidity and arrogant malignance. Our species; not saints as we see ourselves, but more devils. So capable of good yet so capable of failing to be good. Wanting to be loved yet so anxious to deny love to all other existence.”

Jor Kintara gently clasped Vamp’s left arm. “Your consciousness has just expanded more than two thousand times, and now sees and interprets everything in an accurate, unselfish way. At the same time you retain all your previous memories.”

“Yes, it is shameful how I spent my life till now. How can we ever put this ghastly mess right?”

“It is the first important step that you wish to. Get some rest, Mr Vamp. Even though your cerebral capacity and strength have multiplied, enabling faster and more complex reasoning and processing of perception and deduction, you will feel fatigued. We recommend a good night’s sleep for everyone on Earth. Being enabled to see, when having been blindfolded for so long, takes some time to adjust to; you will need to acclimatise yourselves to the light.”

“Yes, of course. Where will you go now? There is so much to be done on Earth; even with a will to sort out our monstrous historical mess, we could do with some help. You guys have millennia of experience in guiding and building civilisations – we now know what we need to do but the task ahead is daunting and we have no experience of running a planet properly.”

“Most of us will return to our vessels and our home-worlds quite soon; we have around four million technical experts with special training. Engineers, technicians, scientists, specialists in infrastructure systems and social organisation. We can help you dismantle the mess and develop a strong, healthy culture with empathic communication, coordinated planetary ecology, socially responsible design, resource guardianship, diplomacy and psychology. Tomorrow our specialists will begin working with you to heal your world and your society – to help you become worthy planetary custodians for Ledara. After a decorb only a few thousand will remain on your planet to continue assisting your people during their first three orbits of transition.”

“That’s wonderful, really kind of you people,” Wiggins commented. “I feel like I have been reborn. This is your Charter, right? I saw a lot about it when your learning sphere was empowering my mind with knowledge and coordinated structural thinking. Damian, Earth must adopt the Galaxymbion Inaugural Charter, even if we are still too backward and undeserving to warrant membership.”

“Tomorrow, Mr Wiggins, we can discuss all these fine thoughts and actions. Please get some rest now, otherwise you will wake with a rather strong headache.”

“Sure thing, miss Eriana Kalin. Thanks; to you, and Jor Kintara here, plus the rest of your people, for bothering enough about us to educate us instead of just wiping us out.”

“Wiping you out? Perish such a thought! The Galaxymbion is a galactic civilisation; we do not exterminate life, we do not harm life. You saw our Charter and our philosophy, our history, upon which it is founded. Ledara can have the same now.”

“Yes, I did see; magnificent what you people have achieved. You keep calling Earth ‘Ledara’; what does that mean, as I saw no explanation within your learning sphere?”

“The name means, as nearly as can be translated into English, ‘hell-place infected with a putrid epidemic of shitheads’. Apologies, it is quite uncomplimentary.”

“Yet, it is quite accurate. Humanity infected everything it touched, turning paradise into hell. God, how many of us who ran things really had shit for brains! Unbelievable. Sorry, but I am rather exhausted so I’m calling it a night. See everybody tomorrow.”

And with that thought all the humans, looking much happier, more alive, more purposeful and in tune with life, warmly bid their guests good night and left the room.

“That went well,” Eriana observed. “I believe Ledara will have a brighter future now. And humans will have a future.”

“Indeed, my sweet wife. And so will our galaxy. But we will have to stop calling this place Ledara. Let’s return to our Andromeda. There are seemingly endless preparations necessary for tomorrow and we also need rest. It has been a very, very long day.”

“Indeed, my husband. And to think, now we no longer have to keep our Exelon Scoutrider cloaked. Do you think we will be asked to remain here as Protectorate for as long as Balasaniwa and his team had to?”

“Hopefully, no,” was all that Jor Kintara said as they too left the room.

Samuel Georgeson turned the room’s lights off, smiled to himself and jauntily walked down the Whitehouse corridors occasionally kicking his heels together.