A Lesson in Humanity
A Flash Science Fiction Story
As wailing sirens fill the air, I look up into a sepia sky and wonder if my world is finally going to end.
My fathers drag me in from our backyard and rush me into our basement’s emergency shelter. It smells like mildew and gunpowder. My sister is already crying in the corner, sobs harmonizing with the echoes of alarms filtering in from outside. Dad grabs her and pulls her close, slapping his hand tightly over her mouth. Papa holds his index finger up to his lips.
She doesn’t understand any of this. She never has. She’s only been around for maybe a handful of these. The first ones are the hardest. But right now, she won’t shut up. Dad and Papa keep trying, but stray sobs slip through Dad’s plaster white knuckles.
“Declan, she has to be quiet!” I hear Dad whisper harshly.
“Well, fuck, what do you want me to do?” Papa says.
They’ve never let me help in the Visits. So, while they argue, I turn to run upstairs, hearing Papa’s hushed curses behind me. I sneak into my room and grab my model of the solar system that my sister likes to play with when I’m outside.
When I get back to the basement, Papa shoves me into the shelter and turns the locks, sitting between me and the door. I put the orrery on the floor and my sister goes quiet. She spins the planets around, wildly out of orbit. Dad opens his mouth to say something, but I watch his lips close.
“Hey, Sav. Do you know what this planet is called?” I point to Mars. I speak quietly. She shrugs and flicks Mercury around the Sun until it flies off its hinges. “Mars. It’s where we established our first colony.”
“Mars? What’s that?” she asks flatly. She yanks off the rings of Saturn and shoves them onto her chubby fingers.
“A planet.” I sigh. “Home.”
The sirens start to sound like a familiar song, the same chords I’ve heard so many times, buzzing with crescendos and humming echoes.
I forgot to tell my fathers that when I ran upstairs, I saw the Arrivals in the street — how I saw the shrubbery bowing and bending from their invisible hovering machines. That when I looked up, I met the blue iris-like glow of an Arrival in the street staring back at me, and I could have sworn he winked at me before falling back in line and walking towards the end of the cul-de-sac.
But the sirens pulsate until all I can think about is the way my fathers both managed to fall asleep, an antique M-16 rifle in the arms of Papa. And the way Sav is toying with the safety switch.
The Visitors, as we call them, were sent from our Creators across the Milky Way to save us from our own destruction. They are a technological sentience, given individuality and free will. My assigned partner, Tobias-8, tells me they decided they needed to intervene before we annihilated ourselves. He also tells me that I’m one of the few that listened to what he had to say. Most humans just answered him with bullets.
“I learned that in astrobiology at university. We didn’t know much about you, but we analyzed your messages,” I say. I stare down at my hands. “I guess I’m one of the few who believed them.”
Tobias-8 kicks up his boots and lays back with a smile. “First thing they program in us is that you guys shoot everything you don’t know or don’t like. Even if that’s at yourselves… or my pretty face,” Tobias-8 says. I stare back at him, brow raised.
“What? We can be a little vain, too, now and then,” he says, and both of us laugh. The orange light reflecting off his metal exterior reminds me of the old sunsets in the backyard on Mars, before the wars and the bullets and the bloodshed changed everything.
Tobias-8 enters my office and tells me that my sister is dead. Battle of New Boston. They were all given a chance to come with the Visitors after the white flags flew, but she said she’d rather die than be a traitor to her people.
The Visitors are doing what they can to stem the bleeding, but the casualties keep rising by the day. Tobias-8 and I sit in an uncomfortable silence until my throat opens enough to speak.
“Tobias — my sister, her soldiers… They were good people.” I stand up and walk to the window.
“Of course they were.” Tobias-8 walks over close to me. “The Creators said this is how it would go. Some groups of humans would rather fight than learn,” he says. “They told us it’s in your DNA.”
I feel my throat closing again.
“So, the Creators who made us, made you, and sent you back to save our lives… Are they good people?” I rest my head on the glass and look to the stars.
Tobias-8 comes up behind me and places a hand on my shoulder. We stand in silence for a few minutes.
Tobias-8 had invited me on an ambassadorial trip to the Creators’ home planet light years away when we got the news. Humanity had created a global government and agreed to a ceasefire. Tobias-8 was overjoyed that their mission had worked, and humanity would finally take their first intergalactic footsteps. He puts his arm around me and points at a small orange glimmer in the night sky, celebrating. A pinprick in the darkness from the Sun. Home.
“It is light from your Sun. Your home,” Tobias-8 said.
In this moment, I can’t help but wonder if Sav would still be alive if she knew Mars better than the barrel of a gun, if she’d ever taken the same amount of time she did shooting at the Visitors as she did learning about them. If she’d have ever figured out every bullet she fired at the Battle of New Boston was a waste of kinetic energy. If she’d be here, with us.
I point and cheer along.
Thanks for reading! Posting some of my story writing I’ve sat on for a while.❤
