The Human Condition
The cool air from the fan finally seemed to reach his glistening skin, enveloping his form in a moment of relief and bliss on the hot, humid, summer night. His eye opened slowly and he let out a drawn out sigh as the fan started to osculate back in the other direction. He sat up quickly, like he had just been released from some sort of restraint, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. If he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he might as well find a less miserable spot to delve into his thoughts.
Despite the miserable conditions the heat and humidity added, he wasn’t sure why he thought he would be able to sleep. The big vote was in the morning. The vote that would determine the trajectory of not only his career and life’s work but would change the world as they knew it for good. He pushed open the sliding glass door, the burst of effort needed to accomplish that simple task noticed audibly as the door let out a ear splitting screech that illicited a small groan from the middle aged man. He opted for closing the screen door behind him to save his ears the repeated agony and took a few steps into the cool grass.
A gentle breeze rolled over the landscape and a few lazy fireflies followed it’s path. The flickering light of the carefree bugs sparked his thoughts and he craned his neck to look directly upwards at the faint glisten of the heavens above.
Since the beginning of time, the stars and the heavens they had inhabited played such a huge role in human existence. As beings sought out civilization, it was the cyclical nature of the moon and stars that allowed them to plant and harvest accurately. The stars guided sailors over the uncertain and dangerous waters of the seas. To this day, space has remained the biggest mystery and greatest accomplishment of human kind. The moon landing changed human trajectory and doomed planet Earth. From that day forward, humans no longer had to concern themselves with the care of their home planet. If they could get to the moon, they could get anywhere, and if they could get anywhere, they could do anything.
Last year, human ideology was turned upside down with the discovery of a star. She wasn’t a new star, no, she was one that had been named by a scientist long ago: Vega. The discovery wasn’t made through a telescope as expected though, she actually crashed into the hard crust of the planet. And yet, here we all were.
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With Vega’s landing on Earth, we discovered that stars weren’t just large burning balls of gas that organized systems of planets and satellites but were beings that existed outside of what humans knew and had defined to be living. The inanimate, celestial balls of fascination were actually full of life and came with a whole society, one a little too familiar to that of human ideology and one that we were suddenly on the receiving end of.
Vega and her kind saw themselves as the keepers of the universe. As stars, they oversaw and tended to the life throughout the galaxy, a life much more expansive than we humans ever thought possible, even on our own planet. Changes in the heavens had actually been Vega and her kind coming to counsel, about us.
See, humans had been rather inconsequential in their eyes. We were a young new species, full of potential and needed to be given the freedom to explore and develop said potential. I don’t think I need to go into detail about how we started to look as time continued. Despite the wars and decimation of our own planet though, we weren’t a huge threat until the moon landing. Suddenly, our greed was solidified and the boundaries for that lust now expanded. They are going to take action against us, just as they had the dinosaurs in the past.
Many of us scientists have devoted our last year to studying and learning about Vega and her kind to best direct the world leaders on how we should proceed. Even among the educated, we are divided. Some stars, like Vega, are different. They don’t believe in the methods of their people and want to coexist and learn from each other. The majority though, the one’s in power, want to see us gone for the good of the universe as a whole.
Vega has given some people hope that there must be a way through the younger stars, the hopeful stars, to reach a peaceful negotiation for the sake of continued learning. I wish I could be one of those people. But in the year we have had to observe, study, and speak with them, we barely know anything other than they are very powerful and lack much empathy or emotion. I believe we have already been condemned, now we need to decide how we go out, what is the legacy we are going to leave behind on the universe?
He looked up to the brightest star in a specific constellation. Perhaps Vega would carry their story. Perhaps their elimination would lead to the eradication of human ideology in the galaxy. Perhaps some good would still come from this after all.
He turned and made his way back into the stuffy house, the screech of the glass door not bothering him any more. Sleep suddenly sounded really nice.
