James Gotaas makes this very short and very powerful original science fiction story so very, very real in so few words it is surprising. A masterful touch.

James’s stories are always amazing and different and powerful. This story is no exception.

“Your planet isn’t really dying, you know.” The words echoed inside me. They answered my despair rather than my thoughts. I was still astonished when the Daxili seemed to understand me so deeply.

I looked away from the wallscreen where Earth floated against the backdrop of stars in the infinite darkness. The Pacific hemisphere was dominated by ocean blue, with random splotches of brown and green, and just the faintest residue of white snow and ice across the southern polar region.

I still didn’t like facing our saviors, so I ended up looking away, staring at a pale pink wall patterned with random swirls of lavender. I was uncomfortable on many levels, from the too-cool air, from the slight reek of alien pheromones, from simply being there on the ship. My escort didn’t speak further, and eventually I felt obliged to respond through the comms insert in my skull.

“I know. I’m fond of them, despite everything.”

“They had their chance. They had their choice.”

I could only repeat myself. “I know.” And I did know. But the Daxili didn’t have the same genetic connections. They were of a completely different genome and world, a completely different evolutionary path. They said they understood, but that understanding was remote, cold, logical in an alien way, a chain of reason that didn’t convince or comfort me.

“Would you like to return to your chamber?”

“Can I just stay here for a while?” I wasn’t comfortable in that room, but I was even less comfortable in the small, sterile cubicle that was my resting chamber.

“You may remain in the Room of Witnessing for a short while. Then others must have their turn.”

It was a strange, uncomfortable ritual. Every day, each of us had to confront that screen, or one like it in one of the thousand other witness rooms. The view shifted as the Earth spun and the ship moved in its orbit, but it always displayed the flickering population density numbers superimposed over the raw geography.

As a group, we had decided. As a group, we were responsible for the alien implementation of tailored, selective plagues that were sweeping across all the continents. The deaths were supposed to be painless, but someone had to bear the pain of our decision.

So we did, each of us, every day.

I tired of staring at the pink wall and turned back to the screen, watched as islands across the Pacific turned a bright, fluorescent green, signifying the complete elimination of their human population.

Every day, I struggled with my guilt. I know many of the others didn’t, but I suspect that was a result of their inherent differences. Or maybe they just believed in the justice, accepted it as proper. Maybe they were even right.

I forced myself to look at the alien.

“Why didn’t you just render your own judgment?”

The strange, dark green eyes blinked rapidly in the long, pale yellow face. The thin orange lips didn’t twitch as the Daxili sent, “That wouldn’t be fair.”

“They weren’t all bad. Their actions were selfish, but not evil. Not deliberately.”

“Too much selfishness is an evil of its own kind.”

“But intelligence is so rare. You’ve told us that.”

“Intelligence must be married to wisdom, or it becomes a danger to all life. Life is also rare, if not as rare as intelligence. It must be protected wherever possible. Where there is a conflict between intelligence and the broad spectrum of life, a judgment must be made. And where possible, that judgment should be made by those concerned.”

I had no more words, so I just scratched my short black head fur, watched Indonesia go green, and struggled against a sudden, irrational desire to lift the slight Daxili over my head and break fragile alien bones and flesh.

The door de-coalesced with a soft hiss behind us. I turned to face the next of us to witness in this room. A remote proxy floated in, one of the sea dwellers.

“I apologize,” I sent via the comms we shared. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your time.”

“Apologize not. We think we should be together more. Together we judged, together we should witness.”

I recognized the tone of the response. It was a cetacean, maybe even a great whale. There was an underlying essence of humor, an awareness of the fundamental ridiculousness of our situation, a sense of companionship that the cold-blooded ocean denizens lacked.

“You do not belong together,” the Daxili said.

“Do we not now share our minds?” the cetacean asked, a quiet query.

“For a time. A short time.”

A short time. Only until the deaths were finished. Then the Daxili would dissolve the bioware networks in our bodies, return us to the world where we belonged, once more simple animals.

Part of me wanted to sob, as I’d seen human mothers sob when plagues struck their families. But my uplift had left me with the body of a gorilla, even as it raised my intelligence and made me fully aware, and I couldn’t even shed tears.

But I could cry inside. And while I could remember, while I was an active witness to our judgment, I did.