Considering the never-ending conundrum of whether we are alone I came up with the following 500 word short story. I submitted it to a local science fiction community for a writing contest. While the story didn't win any prizes it was one of the finalists.
I suspect Stephen Hawking might find aspects amusing... or not. ;-) Enjoy! ______________________________________________________________________ THE SOURCE Were we alone? Surely that wasn't the case. But no one had ever answered our calls. When we finally mastered interstellar space travel we felt it was time to find out if that was truly the case. We soon discovered life existed outside the nurturing confines of our home system. Not only that, life was sprinkled everywhere, generously so. Then came the surprise. DNA, appeared to be the only blueprint used to build life throughout the universe. Even more astonishing was the fact that DNA samples taken from all our travels revealed that life seemed to have originated from a singular genetic source, origins unknown, including our own. Externally, life everywhere looked different, but underneath tissue, hide, hair, scales, and feathers, we were all related. How could evolution throughout the galaxy have spawned such incredible genetic uniformity? We obviously don't know how evolution really works; that's how we consoled ourselves. We eventually discovered advanced civilizations, some having even achieved space travel. They could have visited us long ago had they chosen to travel our way. Why hadn't they visited us? Clearly they must have been aware of our presence, our radio broadcasts. We had to know. We chose a candidate; a civilization we had repeatedly transmitted greetings to in the past. We dispatched our finest emissary ship and entered their solar system as non-threateningly as we could, all the while continuously broadcasting our peaceful intentions. We settled our ship as delicately as we could, close to a metropolis, next to what appeared to be a hastily gathered assemblage of officials - witnesses to the historic event. The ship's hatch opened. Dignitaries and ambassadors filed out one-by-one. Our greeters shuffled nervously, all the while remaining quiet. Eventually we broke the silence. We extended warm greetings, wishing them peace and prosperity. Finally, we asked them "Why haven't you answered our calls? We wish you no harm." "Leave, immediately!" was their answer. It was too late for us, they added. They demanded we cease all further communication, especially anything that could give away their position. And then they scurried back to the safety of their city, leaving us standing alone. We raced home, entering our system just in time to witness the armada assembling. Like a swarm of hungry hornets, black needles kilometers in length fired deadly energy beams that screamed through our home world's atmosphere, slicing through continents and oceans as if cutting through soft butter. The tiniest bacterium to the largest leviathans in our oceans, everything was sucked into vast geostationary interstellar refineries parked above. Molecular structures evolved over eons were unraveled, then recombined into new matrices more suitable to the nutritional requirements of an unknown consumer. After the armada's storage facilities were filled they sterilized our ravaged planet with bursts of deadly gamma radiation. The surface was then reseeded with a single bacterium possessing a unique genetic strain, a hauntingly familiar source. And then they left, content to let evolution once again grow to fruition. We discovered we were alone. __________________________________________ C 2012 Steven Vincent Johnson Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
