Across the Galaxy, on millions of planets, countless beings, some of them at summer camp, have gazed into the night sky and tried to picture a tour of the universe.
Coming from non-starfaring cultures, however, they have stood little chance of success.
For who from such a background would imagine hurtling along in an open, three-hulled vessel—a celestial trimaran—their head protruding into the vacuum and radiation of space?
Who would realize that invisible force fields could do the work of walls and windows, or that tour operators, locked in competition with one another, would generate winds that would blow in their customers’ faces and exciting engine sounds that would vroom in from all sides every time their vehicles accelerated?
But that is what a tour of the universe is like.
From the first moment that one of these trimarans drops into the space between the space between the stars, those aboard find it impossible to believe that anything separates them from the rushing infinitude. Again and again, conglomerations of matter and energy race at them, only to diverge at the last possible instant. Repeatedly, vistas of nearly unendurable beauty surround them, no, swallow them, until they feel utterly engulfed.
Then the trimaran jumps across space-time and engulfs them in something else: an exploding star, perhaps, or a towering gas plume. One moment they’re skimming atop the boiling surface of a newborn planet, the next barreling down a wormhole through tunnels of splitting, streaking light.
By any measure, then, the experience fulfills the dream of all the so-called semi-sentients who have ever gazed at the stars and yearned to go where they gazed.
Not that such individuals get their dreams fulfilled, of course. In fact, until recently, it had never happened. And when finally it did? Astoundingly, the semi-sentient it happened to didn’t care.
Marshall Shmishkiss paid his galaxy's greatest spectacles the same attention he paid to the docking area of the Zetan vessel when finally he reached it. Which was about the same attention he paid to his trimaran when finally he boarded it. And to the trimaran’s pilot: a bulky creature in a sprawling coat and a thick muffler that swaddled its neck.
He noticed it all with a vague and apathetic awareness, totally eclipsed by fear and anguish, self-recrimination and disgust.
How could he have been so stupid? Imagining he could thwart the Zetans—what idiocy! They had anticipated his every stratagem. Which meant there was no point in attempting any of them, or doing anything besides preparing for the moment, seventeen hours from now, when he would stand before Lorak, cast fear aside and declare that his choice was—
“Uh, little being.”
It was the pilot, turned in its seat, regarding him out of a huge, round and glassy eye. The eye was set into a head shaped like a blunted, forward-pointing triangle. Presumably there was an eye on the other side of the triangle, too. Meanwhile, a gurgling was coming from the muffler. That was what Marshall heard through his ears, anyway. In his brain, thanks to the translator, the gurgling was overlaid by a deep, male and predictably English-speaking voice.
“You know, not being familiar with your species I could be wrong about this, so pardon me if I am. But, uh, I get the impression, uh, you’re not really paying attention, are you?”
Marshall didn't know what to say. Briefly he looked about, at thousands of asteroids tumbling end over end, then back at the pilot. Was that enough? Did he have to keep looking? Was that also something Ethan would die for if he didn’t do?
“I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s your decision,” said the pilot, trying to read his passenger. “You don’t want to look, so what? We’re having a nice quiet ride.
“Not like most times I bring tourists on this route,” he added after a moment. “Most times, you wouldn’t believe the sounds that come from those seats back there. They’re calling out to their deities, crying like infants, sometimes just howling.”
His words were now replaced by sounds like oooooooo and aaaahhhhh and eeeeeeeeeeeee, which came from both the muffler and the translator. “Can you believe it?” he said, returning to comprehensibility. “Noises like that coming out of their mouths? Liquids pouring out of their eyes onto my fabric? Pile of eggs it’s annoying.”
With an angry twist, he turned back to his console, jabbing at it with pudgy, three-fingered hands. At once the asteroids disappeared upward, along with the stars, while the ship dropped into a blackness uninterrupted except by a single bright point in the distance. The ship went for it—a speck aiming for a point—and shot into a tube of streaking, scintillating color.
Violet, cyan, magenta . . .
But Marshall didn’t see. He didn't see anything except a knob poking out of the carpetlike surface of the floor. Black and rubbery, it may have been a stopper to prevent the unoccupied seat beside the pilot from sliding too far back towards his own seat behind it. Were such things needed in starships? He didn’t know and didn’t care. The knob, for him, was just something to park his eyes on, while inside his head dismal scenes played out, rewound and played again.
“Anyhow, as I was saying,” said the pilot, “you’re different from the rest of them—the kind of passenger I like to have. So I was wondering if you'd mind my receiving a broadcast while we continue the trip. It’s my favorite program, see. And while, true, I could catch it later, I would be exceedingly grateful if . . .”
He trailed off, embarrassed to be asking a favor from a lowly semi-sentient, yet loath to ignore the creature’s preferences. The Zetans, after all, had been very specific. Provide him with the full experience. Accede to his requests wherever possible. And the Zetans, as everyone knew, were sticklers.
Not to mention a major source of business.
So when the creature didn’t answer, he let the matter drop. Until a new possibility occurred. “Look,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ll keep it on audio only. Nothing to block the view, if anything comes along you want to see.”
Marshall might have shrugged. A grateful gurgle came from the muffler, and the pilot jabbed again at his console. Now a voice filled the space around the ship. A voice more powerful and resonant than any that had emerged from the translator so far.
“The nonsense stops here, folks,” said this voice. “The whole sorry spectacle of our galaxy being held back by thoughtfuls who think they know better than everyone else, well, it’s coming to an abrupt halt, today, on this program. The Roo Rootum program, of course. With me, your devoted host, Roo Rootum. Now look: I don’t care what you’re doing. Piloting a shuttle? Blasting the heads off theropods? Campaigning for collective capital punishment on Globula-5? Fine. You will want to leave off and pay attention. Because I’m telling you, after hearing this, the next time you run into a thoughtful, you will have in your possession an argument so powerful, so impregnable, so overwhelming, you will turn that self-important fool into a little pile of smoldering non-viability ready for a trip down the nearest exhaust tube.”
“Up the creek in thirteen leaps!” declared the pilot, pounding his console. “I knew I had to tune in today.”
He looked over to check on his passenger, who remained fixated on the floor and appeared not to notice the extraordinary words pouring into its brain.
“All right. Let’s begin,” said the voice. “As you’ll remember from last time, we were lamenting yet another outrage. For once again, a group of thoughtful misfits had trampled the dreams of their fellow galactic citizens. Heedless of decency, they alerted the semi-sentients on Berullia-9 to plans that would have converted that planet to true usefulness. The result? Chaos. The entire viability of Berullia-9 as a new home for the Anterior Vermiculins cast into serious doubt.”
“Open and oozing,” said the pilot ominously.
“I mean if you don’t call that terrorism, I don’t know what is,” said Rootum. “But as we saw, the worst came later, when you might have expected a little support, a little sympathy, for a species that had lost as much as those Anterior Vermiculins. I mean, wouldn’t you?”
“For s’creeting certain!” said the pilot, clearly in agreement with the speaker.
“But what do we actually hear,” that speaker continued, “from our academics, our artists, our media, in an age when thoughtfulness is advancing like a virus?” All of a sudden his voice went high and whiny. “Ohhh, maybe we should reconsider those colonization programs. Maybe we should give up on finding new worlds for the Anterior Vermiculins, the Zetans and all the others. Maybe the indigenous life forms are more sentient than they appear.”
“Into the sand with that!” cried the pilot, waving his arms.
“Well, maybe they are,” said Rootum, his voice back to normal. “How do we know that every murderous pack of bipeds that cobbles together a steam engine won’t soon be hopping into hyperspace and composing Teryllian symphonies? The poor adorable things. They just need time to evolve, that’s all. Let’s appreciate their wonderful music, their interesting languages, their enchanting myths. How dare we ask these unique and precious creatures to stand aside just so we have room to develop?"
“Slime in the muck! Slime in the fetid muck!!!” bellowed the pilot, outraged.
“And I don’t have to remind you,” added the host, “that the Galactic Council may soon be considering an outright ban on all interference with non-starfaring cultures for any reason whatsoever.”
The pilot slumped in his seat. “Up against the current,” he moaned. “Up against the current into the empty mud.”
“But wait,” said Rootum. “I promised you news, didn’t I? Good news. And I meant it. Because it turns out our cause is not lost. And there is someone these thoughtfuls will listen to, no matter how closed and deluded their minds.
“Not me, of course—they hate me. And not you either. But someone.”
The pilot stared with rapt attention at his console. Marshall focused equal attention on his troubled inner world.
“Don’t believe it?” said Rootum. “Then listen to this.”
Marshall ripped his attention from his inner world and sat straight up. His eyes were bulging. His ears, if they could, would have been bulging too.
He had stopped blinking, breathing.
But there was no doubt what he was hearing.
Although a human being myself, an inhabitant of planet Earth, I would not protest if this world were taken off our hands and protected from our ignorant actions.
It was him. Him! His own voice. Coming from the console.
It was his final transmission on ComeTakeMe.com, somehow broadcast here.
But why?
“Ever heard of a semi-sentient genius?” said Roo Rootum. “Well, Milky Way Galaxy, you are listening to one now.”
And again Marshall’s words filled the space around him.
Today there are seven billion of us, soon there will be ten billion. And what then? What advance in energy, in food production, in recycling, will make any difference? What will be the result except, eventually, total devastation? Not just of us but of everything: the other animals, the oceans, the air itself.
“This is no actor, folks,” said the host, breaking in as Marshall’s voice faded. “And he was not coerced. This is a semi-sentient mammal from out on the third spiral arm, whose message was received by the Zetans, who are partway through an atmospheric upgrade of his planet. Now there is no question, according to a Zetan I spoke to, that by our standards he is an unevolved halfwit. Lacks full consciousness. Easily manipulated. Probably spends his every recreational moment observing others of his kind propelling small spheres with their appendages. Nonetheless, somehow—and I do not pretend to know how—he has come to realize the truth about himself, his species and its place in the universe with a clarity it would seem beyond his capacity to achieve. Again I ask you to listen carefully to these words.”
And yet again, Marshall spoke.
“There are a great many wonderful environments here,” he said.
There are vast, fertile continents that could serve as a home for land-dwelling entities; even vaster oceans for aquatic ones; poles if you like ice; deserts if you like sand; but all doomed unless enlightened beings such as yourselves resolve to prevent it. And likewise, I would not consider it a bad use of my life—my pitiful human life—if I were to help make that happen. Want a nice planet? I’ll help you take it away from the primitive apes who are ruining it. And I’m just the ape to do it, too.
In another minute the rest of the transmission had played out, and silence replaced it, as the host allowed its implications to sink in.
“Now, friends,” he said finally. “Imagine, if you will, presenting this to a thoughtful. And not just any thoughtful but the most sanctimonious mush brain in your entire star system. How would he refute it? How could he go on trying to save his precious semi-sentients when a leading member of one of those species tells him not to bother, that the colonizers are right, that even a semi-sentient can see it?
“I’m telling you, folks. This is pure antimatter. And we have to spread it around. Because I don’t have to spell out how much is at risk, especially if you belong to a species now staking its future on one of the 277 planets where modification is either planned or under way. If so, perhaps you’ve been wondering whether your future is about to be ruined by a bunch of progress-hating animal lovers. Well, yesterday maybe. But today? After this broadcast? Let me tell you something. If each one of you—each one of the billions of you who tune in to this program—takes a little time to spread that little being’s speech around, then mark my words, every one of those 277 planets is going to finish its march to modification, reclamation and resettlement. Don’t you doubt it, folks: this program, you, me and this wonderful creature called a . . . uh . . .uh . . . a mushkiss, are going to put an end to thoughtfulness everywhere.”