Author: Martin Lochman
You love watching your human sleep.
You love watching as she lies on the bed almost motionless, eyes shut, her face a mask of perfect serenity. You love seeing what she is dreaming about behind closed eyelids – sometimes about her family, friends, lovers and other times about past adventures, journeys and travels to worlds known and unknown. You love it because when she sleeps you don’t have to control her.
Of course, you find sleeping to be a fascinating concept. The brain waves slow down, the entire body relaxes and the mind drifts away into a state of suspended consciousness only to return to the previous active state several hours later, everything fresh and energized. You didn’t always know that they need to sleep – you thought that they must be controlled continuously and that is why your previous human passed away so fast. From one moment to another his body simply stopped responding, slipping from your powerful grasp and there was nothing that you could have done to bring it back to life.
You love watching your human sleep because in those moments she doesn’t look like one of the vile and corrupted creatures who caused so much pain and suffering not only to their own kind but also to countless of other beings in the Universe in pursuit of their own shallow, selfish agendas. You remember when you first heard of them, of humans of Earth, leaving the safety of their homeworld and boldly crossing immense distances between stars. What curious little species, you thought back then and you were even impressed by their resilience and spirit.
But then you learned of their true nature and saw that they were not reaching out to depths of space as explorers but as conquerors. You were shocked when they started wars with different worlds over natural resources, beliefs, and opinions. You were horrified when they plundered entire systems, leaving death and destruction in their wake. You were appalled by what they did in the name of war and in the name of what they considered to be justice.
You remember like it just happened when they finally came to our world and wanted to force their ways on us. You witnessed up close the aggression, cruelty, and brutality with which they conducted themselves – yet when it came to deciding their fate you stood up against the majority. You didn’t want them to be completely annihilated, all traces of their existence removed from the Universe. You argued that despite their actions they should deserve a chance to mature and evolve – just like all other beings. So you proposed an alternative solution – to control every single human – and this solution was accepted.
You love watching your human sleep because it gives you hope that you were not wrong, that at one point in the future they will not need to be controlled and that they will be as calm and peaceful as we all are.
It gives you hope that eventually, you will not have your human anymore.
And I was so sure a cat was going to behind it all … 😉
Interesting concept, with some frightening connotations; who or what else could they control (and I’m guessing they’d not know they were being controlled). I wonder how much effort it takes to exercise such control, there is a hint of a suggestion it’s close to a full-time job (whilst the subject is awake, at least).
I enjoyed this.
I had a slight issue with the concept of controlling an entire race, but scale, scope and resources are unknown, so fair play.
The part i can never understand is how the ultra pacifist race can even ENTERTAIN the concept of genocide or of total slavery as a “better” option muchless how the pacifist overcomes the aggressor. That flaw in the internal logic of the fiction always kicks me out of the story.
ignoring that personal gripe about the whole “Humans Are the Real Monsters” trope the story flows nicely even after the trope makes itself obvious and telegraphs the end.
I would riposte with if something is surely going to end you, ending it first is a fine concept. 🙂
Your argument is valid. However, I am a believer that left-wing values need defending (hopefully only initially) with right-wing zeal.
So, in this tale we have your ultra-pacifist standing up for your viewpoint regardless of the path of least impact (my viewpoint) – because controlling an entire race probably involves some large-scale logistics that may well cause issues elsewhere. I’d side with total pest removal every time.
And humans are monsters. Our atrocities are merely normalised.
Missed the bit about them being a pacifist race, but I understand where you are going with your general point. In an ideal universe there’d be no need for any form of violence (beyond natural hunter/prey), but I suspect you’d need more than an infinite number of universes to find one that ideal 😉