Hold still

Hold Still

“Where am I? Why am I strapped to this table?”

“We need to perform a final evaluation of your species. We chose a number of your kind to accomplish our goal. You are one of the chosen.”

“Lucky me.”

“I do not comprehend, lucky me.”

“It means, favoured by chance.”

A sound similar to the wheezing of bellows bounced off the walls.

“Incorrect,” more bellows wheezing. “You are to be dissected, but perhaps yours is a kinder fate than what awaits the others of your planet. The gas used for extermination is painless, but I bear witness to the process, emotions run rampant. It involves much screaming, wailing, and running about.”

“You are going to kill us … all of us?”

“Exterminate your kind, yes, unless this testing and dissection reveal something special.”

“Why? Why kill us all? What did we do to you?”

“Do to us?” Wheezing bellows again. “No, you misunderstand, this is not personal. We need your planet, nothing more. It is expensive to change a planet to meet our needs. It is easier to select one that is already suitable. Granted there are always environmental problems to be corrected. You have made quite a mess of yours, but if you weren’t destroying your environment your world would have never made our list.”

So you will … what … exterminate us, like we are bugs … like something you can squash beneath your boot?”

“Correct.”

“What gives you the right to do that?”

“We are superior in every way, superior mentally, superior physically, and superior morally and ethically.”

“Morally? Ethically? How can you say that? You are about to eliminate a complete species. Are you so racist that you can’t see that we have rights? We should be allowed to exist and develop in the same way you did.”

“Why?”

“Because we believe in equal rights, if you are so morally superior you must possess laws regarding correct behavior. We follow a Human Bill of Rights which guarantees equality for all.”

“As do we, but you are not allowed its protection. If you treated others as your Bill of Rights dictates, evaluation of your race may have been different. If you lived by your own laws you could have survived. Unfortunately your species doesn’t follow its own rules or even common sense where the environment is concerned. Now, hold still. This is going to hurt.”

End

© Dave Skinner, November 2015