The Judgement Conundrum
Lacerant Plainer
Copyright 2012 by Lacerant Plainer
Cover Art Copyright © 2012 Lacerant Plainer
Edited by (in no particular order):
Shaun Dawson
Ninja on Rye
Mz. Maau
Emil Hugo
Knut Torgersen
Jamez Frondeskias
Ted Ewen
Charles Strebor
Carrie Canup
Gita Jaisinghani
*****
Acknowledgements: The Author and publisher wish to express their warm thanks to all the above editors who have generously contributed to the process of editing and review, with a special mention to Emil Hugo, Shaun Dawson, Mz Maau and Ninja on Rye for their time and effort.
*****
The land was grey, uninviting and desolate - ruins were apparent everywhere one looked. There was virtually no sound or movement other than the dull scraping of small scavengers. Dylan watched the grey clouds as they scudded slowly across the equally grey sky. The texture of the clouds showing them up in relief was the only distinguishing feature of the sky. A monotonous grey on grey.
He stood in the middle of the ruins. The sky was a canvas devoid of all color. The only birds in view were crows, and even they were silent; winged messengers of destruction and ruin, looking for scraps of food. The buildings where Dylan stood had been razed; he stood amidst bricks and shards of cement, the detritus of the past. The bleak landscape reflected his own grim mood.
He turned slowly; he was never in a hurry these days. The featureless grey was everywhere. Where there had once been color; the dust, mud and ash had turned it all the same drab hue. He looked beyond the place where he stood. It had once been a thriving place of work with its malls and offices and people milling around, going about their daily routine. Dylan could remember a time when he used to be happy. Not anymore; it was all about survival now. Kill or run, hide, try to find food and a place to sleep. It was an endless cycle. He had to work hard just to stay alive and survive.
Today had been better. He had managed to kill a crow, and it had made for a satisfying meal. He had removed its feathers and roasted the meat underground, having found a coal mine depot earlier. Utilizing his native cunning, he often dug holes in the ground and put in hot coals with some meat. The results were often excellent. A meal fit for a king. Well, he thought to himself, a king in these times.
He wondered if They would come again. Thinking about Them made him shiver. He recalled that time had seemed to stop when they had come. Humankind had given in to despondency and despair.
Dylan was dressed in dusty clothes, the same ones he had been wearing for ages; a far longer time than he cared to remember. He crept away from the ruins where he was standing and went into a cave, the result of a landslide. It was his home. A huge concrete pipe had been in the way of the debris which had sloughed over the desolate landscape. The pipe was a luxury in these days. He crept into the small space and lay down for a fitful sleep.
*****
The night seemed to be far too short. It had been many days since he had slept on a full belly. Dylan did not stir until the heat of the day woke him from his slumber. Near him, rats stirred in the dusty gravel. With a start he realized that it was almost noon, he could see the Sun directly overhead. He moved out from the pipe and walked down the main road; it was deserted as usual. A flying insect heralded his arrival to whatever was left of the town center. There were still some scraps left to scavenge from this part of town; sometimes he would find a tin of food. Often there was no label left, the food could well have been rotten. He had forgotten how to be sure. Not that it mattered anymore.
Dylan wasn’t particularly keen on doing anything today. He remembered a time when he used to make plans; not anymore. His days were always the same. He heard a small noise in the distance; panicking, he ran into a shop which had been razed. Just one wall stood in the shop, the window blasted to smithereens. Dylan crouched against the wall. He listened carefully for any further sound. His alertness was vindicated by the whoosh of a vehicle passing by, its air cushion blowing out an immense amount of dust and debris.
Making himself as small as possible, he froze into a ball, waiting for the vehicle to pass. The sound continued and then there was an explosion, as someone fired at the wall where he had been hiding. He managed to somersault away from the wall as he smelt the ozone an instant before the blast. He crawled away slowly, moving an inch at a time.
The commander of the flying vehicle scanned the area again. The psi-scan showed a human in close proximity, but it seemed to be wounded. The commander was also human, or at least had been at one time. Since the end of days, there was no reason to acknowledge any kinship. The race was as good as dead.
She remembered when being human had been a reason for pride. That had also been the reason for the downfall of the human race. She grimaced and powered up the vehicle. It slid over the air cushion while she looked for dissenters. She had no compunctions about killing people arbitrarily. She was no longer "human" in that sense. She had been controlled.
Chole had been a commander in the armed services. Nothing was the same anymore; life as she had known it was over. Now she was an automaton, living only to serve her masters. She was not very sure whether living was a good thing anymore. What kind of world were their children going to be born in?
With the general apathy she felt, she didn't bother chasing Dylan; thus inadvertently saving his life. His survival would be temporary and pointless, just a delaying of the inevitable.
Dylan managed to crawl further away and hid in the bushes. Some shrapnel had punctured his forearm and he pulled at it, letting his arm bleed as the skin came off. He tore off a part of his dirty, dusty shirt and tied it across the gash. He would wait for things to settle before he made a dash for whatever he could grab before going back to the relative safety of his pipe.
*****
After a few hours of motionless hiding, Dylan managed to sneak away with some bandages and a can of food which was probably long past its expiry date. The bandages didn't look too sanitary, but he couldn't afford to be choosy. He stuffed the full roll of bandages in his pocket and walked moodily back, keeping an eye and an ear out for anyone close by. He had been spooked by the vehicle’s sudden appearance today.
The world had come to an end; there was no question about it. He just wondered why he hadn't been killed yet; that in itself was a miracle. A miracle he sometimes wished had not been visited on him.
He remembered how it had all ended. There had been so much strife. The world had been overloaded with people who reproduced at a phenomenal rate. Things did not get better and after a time resources were so limited that countries got into squabbles and wars over oil, water, food and land. All-pervasive scarcity had made survival almost impossible.
The large superpowers had been warring constantly over the last decade, and then they used weapons which should never have been used. Radiation sickness had overtaken the populace. From China to India to Europe and Australia and what used to be Russia and the Middle East, spanning the seas and up to the USA, and south to Africa and South America; the world had faced its worst nightmare of war and strife. Retributions by the warring nations had been swift and violent, and each attack had escalated into a cycle of war and enormous casualties. To add to the misery, natural calamities had wiped out large swathes of the population; extreme climate change had also played its part.
Humans had survived the holocausts because of their will to live and their hope for the future. But even that hope had been eventually crushed. With the advent of the global government, local resources were sucked dry by the author
ities and central monopolies were created, rendering the rebuilding efforts meaningless.
With everything failing around them, humanity had been dealt the cruelest blow of them all. They had found out they were not alone in the universe. And they had not handled it well.
Dylan remembered the time when there had been rumors that the authorities had captured aliens and had held them in custody. They had not bothered to inform the general public, thinking of the strategic advantage they would have; with alien technology in their hands. It had been very bad thinking on their part.
Within a few days of the capture of the aliens, Their armada had arrived, surrounding Earth and leveling everything in sight. The attack had been frighteningly quick and surgical, but it had still felt like Armageddon. Dylan had survived by virtue of being on a fishing trip. His small boat had caught a glancing blow from one of the alien rays and had been incinerated. Before the boat went up, Dylan had managed to jump into the water and had escaped being barbecued.
The global government had collapsed and the aliens "converted" humans to policing duty, imposed by force and some technology which he didn't understand. It was said they had controllers in their brains, but one couldn't be sure of the truth.
He felt glum, having expected that things would become better. But the fact that humans had continued to attack the aliens even after most governments had officially surrendered to the armada had brought further retribution upon them.
*****
Trasses was a Xylex, the alien species captured by the humans. During internment, it had been subjected to questioning. By virtue of its translator, it was able to understand the humans. It took some amount of tweaking the translator, but that was sufficient to understand the gist of the humans’ speech. Though the Xylex were telepaths, they used speech sometimes; and they had a lot of experience in associating with different species. The Xylex sibilant speech was impossible to understand without the help of their translator.
Trasses was neither male nor female. It was asexual, typical of its species. In physical appearance, it looked like a cluster of jumbled wires arising from a single strand (similar to a tree trunk) and spreading out into twelve tentacles and a small, almost invisible mouth. Its eyes were perched on top of its head - to the casual observer, the eyes would not be noticeable at all.
Kesses, one of the commanders of the armada, summoned Trasses with a wave of its tentacles. Kesses and Gresses were the commanders in charge of the armada; Kesses handled any conflict that they would face while travelling and Gresses handled technology. They were both at rest at their posts in the command ship. Trasses approached, knowing that this was not to be a casual meeting.
Trasses ‘spoke’ first, using a telepathic broadcast for the benefit of the gathered Xylex. Although the 'conference' was between Trasses and Kesses, in keeping with Xylex custom everyone was free to participate. Since the Xylex had never evolved what humans called "native cunning", they were open with their ideas and suggestions and did not lie or cheat. The reality of telepathy made for honest and straightforward communication.
Kesses stated, "We have determined that the captives taken by the humans were treated badly. But we gave them the benefit due a species lower on the evolutionary scale. Since then, we have found that they have very different communication methods from us; they don't always speak the truth. They have suffered enough by our actions, even if it was brought on by their own foolishness. It would not be wise to penalize them for their nature; but we still need answers."
It moved sideways to better accommodate its waving tentacles. It continued, "I have summoned Trasses here to tell us about its experiences on this planet they call Earth; we need to make some informed decisions". It signaled to Trasses to speak.
Trasses ’spoke’, "I had some interesting experiences. As a race the humans are hard to predict. As we all know, they are illogical in the extreme. Technologically, they are backward and stuck in a post-nuclear phase. We know of their limited knowledge by their inability to settle other planets. They seem to be content to look out at space through their observatories. Other than that, they have not even bothered to harness the power of their star or explore their neighborhood. They procreate ceaselessly and talk about a mystical kind of super being - I think the super being is supposed to save them". It paused and looked at Kesses - it was a telling indictment. They all shared a feeling of gloom.
*****
On Earth, there was a group calling itself 'The Resistance.' Even though they did not have much to 'resist' with, they managed to eke out a living and avoid the police who were in the employ of the aliens. They treated the police as traitors and had no qualms in killing them when they could. This was a rare occurrence, and only succeeded in bringing more violence to bear against them.
Xue, a woman who had previously been a champion weightlifter and bodybuilder, was their leader. The leadership position had been handed down twice in a week, the previous two leaders having been exterminated in quick succession by the aliens. Needless to say, the resistance was a losing cause.
Xue had made it her mission in life to get back at the faceless aliens who had wrecked her home world. When they did walk the Earth, they all had personal shields which were impossible to penetrate with anything known to humans. Xue did not give up. She redoubled her efforts to attack the aliens.
Today was a day when the aliens had gathered in the ruins of one of the cities which had been completely leveled. Xue remembered it as being a place she used to visit as a child in her holidays. It had been a beach resort on the West coast of the US. Now it was just rubble.
She adjusted a stolen anti-tank missile on her shoulders as she sighted the alien. The alien was speaking and was with another group of humans who had become slaves to them. She grimaced and waited. The alien turned and spoke to her directly "We did not attack you first," it said. She fired on reflex, the missile going true and exploding against the alien's body. The shield absorbed all the kinetic energy and the explosive force seemed to create slow ripples in the transparent shield. It had no effect on the alien at all!
The alien continued as if nothing had happened "This will not hurt me. If you do manage to hurt me, the rest of you will be targeted. Please give up this foolishness, we can talk." it waited patiently for a reply.
Xue signaled for the others to move out and yelled while backing away slowly. "We have nothing more to say. You have destroyed our lands and planet." With that parting shot she tried to run, but realized she was immobilized. A long thin cord swiftly tightened around her whole body and rendered her helpless. The alien said, "My name is Atesses. I want to speak to someone who can make some sense of this place." The alien was perched on a platform which hovered in the air. It came over to where she was restrained and picked her up in its tentacles. Surprisingly, the tentacles did not seem slimy and held her quite firmly. She screamed and tried to break free, but there was no way out of her predicament. She had been immobilized.
*****
Trasses was being questioned about human behavior and its own reactions to them. Trasses was very careful with its responses. It was not very sure of a lot of things, and it indicated as much. It said, "It is hard to be sure of the humans’ goals. Unlike most sentient creatures, they seem to have contradictory ideas of how things should work. Diametrically opposite in fact. Even the wars that they have had over scarce resources have been illogical. Most species would go out into space and use resources that are plentiful, but this species stayed on the planet and used all its resources to fight one another." Kesses gave a Xylex equivalent of a sigh and said "What makes them tick? We must know before we make a recommendation on their fate."
Trasses looked at the assemblage and waved its tentacles in frustration "I have absolutely no idea; on the face of it, they exist only to procreate, but that would be simplifying the situation. I would have to assume they are slow intelligent animals, who live in a contradictory world of the rational and the illogical." It bent sideways, a
sure indication of its unhappiness. It continued "They have the means of doing things which could help their race, but they think it 'expensive'. They would rather perish than try out new things." Trasses bent again; it was clearly distressed.
It looked at its fellows on the floor of the main command ship and said, "I have told you most of what I know." It fell silent.
Kesses asked Gresses, "What would you recommend as our next course of action? While these humans hold little interest to us as specimens, we have a responsibility to the universal community to see that we do not, even by default, let an aggressive alien species propagate through the universe. Who knows the untold harm they may cause to other species when they do discover space travel!" Kesses seemed to ponder the situation and continued, "Surprisingly, they do not seem capable of higher thought." Gresses replied, "Yes, it's strange. But I think some of them may be capable of looking past their primal instincts. That is the reason for our confusion. The thinking population is very small. The large population is made up of breeders and warriors. They procreate and fight but do not do much else. But there is a group of scientists and thinkers too. It's almost as if they are two different species."
The confusion continued, other Xylex present using telepathy to express surprise and consternation. Kesses said, "Let’s try and see if there is any precedent for this kind of dichotomized species anywhere else in the known universe." Kesses asked Gresses to go through the records and check quickly. In a few minutes, Gresses said, "We have had one more species on record, though not one which we directly came in contact with. It was a species called the Boiin which the Gazan happened upon."
Kesses asked, "And what was the outcome of that discovery?" Gresses replied, "They were considered a risk to all intelligent species, and their aggression was not tolerated by the Gazan. Their species was isolated and wiped out." Kesses ‘looked’ downright gloomy at the response.
*****
Dylan had decided not to go into town. Recently it had been just too hot in the ruins at the center of the town, and it was safer to stay put and hunt near his home, even if it was slim pickings. He squatted against the bark of a charred tree trunk looking at the horizon. It was all very quiet. He hoped he would be able to bring down another crow with his sling. He waited patiently for his meal to come to him.