I’m about to complete a tour of 72 years
on Planet Earth. It was in fairly decent shape when I first arrived, with a
population of about 2,556,000,053, but
now it’s in tatters, its climate in chaos, its oceans choked with plastic, the
dirt so tired and toxic the very worms have left it, the farmers have to punch
it with anhydrous ammonia to make it grow anything, bird and insect populations
have fallen catastrophically, the entire planet’s forests are on fire,
hurricanes and tornados annihilate cities, mass shootings are a daily
occurrence, and a current population of 7,584,144 humans are fucking themselves
silly. These humans are strange indeed: rather than cut back when their
resources appear depleted, they consume all the more passionately, as if lust
and gluttony were the correct answers to an equation of impending death and
catastrophe.
I
will provide a full report upon my return. Suffice it to say, this planet is
fucked. Our plans to integrate with the humans are grotesquely ill-advised.
Invasion is equally futile; by the time our ships arrive, there will be
nothing left but clouds of sulfuric acid, a lifeless surface saturated with
radioactivity, and a human called Keith Richards playing guitar to an audience
of brain-sucking zombies.
It’s been nice having a
human body and I will miss it. I’m especially fond of hands and fingers. It’s
amazing what you can with these things. You can squeeze things, point to
things, press things, pull things, juggle things, scratch your ass, pick your
nose, twirl sparkly batons in big parades and hold implements such as hammers
and forks.
Eating is strange. Here,
one puts dead organic tissue in the orifice of what is called a face and chews
it into bits with rows of hard, enameled dentin called teeth. The nutritive
material is then maneuvered to a passage called a throat, which uses
peristaltic motion to carry everything into a membranous cauldron called a
stomach. Protein and carbohydrates are extracted and the waste material is
extruded from an aperture in the rear called an anus. It’s an altogether messy
process, but humans seem to enjoy it.
Right now it’s 10:10
p.m., Pacific Standard Time. Ssenteews is folding her clothes. She has a
special way of doing it. She rolls everything into little cylinders. The resulting bundle reminds her of
the sdolgiram that grows on the planet Rednilyc.
Humans wear clothes. This
is fabric they use to cover their bodies, for which they feel shame and
embarrassment, and to keep them warm in the winter. Some add ornamentation and
doodads. A doodad is a gadget or object for which the correct name is unknown.
This is a phenomenon in English, the language Ssenteews and I chose as our main
communication device, by which the unidentifiable becomes minimally
identifiable. Popular doodads include pockets, buttons, horns, medals, zippers,
braids, cords, monograms, pompoms, sequins and tassels. A few frills and
furbelows might package an otherwise monotonous personality in explosions of
pink or frantic patterns of black. The effect is sad and wistful, what we on
our planet call suolucidir. And yet these same people have a fascination with
nudity. The males of this species are especially fond of looking at naked
females and are able to stimulate themselves sexually by watching videos on
their computers. This is called masturbation and is generally done privately,
as do some of the mammals on our planet, such as the eeznapmihc and allirog.
The practice isn’t exclusive to males, but the females are more skilled at
discretion, and exercise greater refinement in achieving more enduring results.
Humans spend a great deal
of time and effort making sounds with their mouths. This is a remarkable organ,
equipped with a muscular protrusion called a tongue, which is capable of
sculpting numerous shapes and colors out of thin air using vibrations and
frequencies of sound, if I may be permitted a fanciful allusion to synesthesia,
and the implementation of non-scientific terminology. The sounds burbling and
bubbling out of the heads of these creatures is fissionable, like stars, and
may warm and illumine a room with a torrent of cracks and hisses.
Humans have a fondness
for thinking their languages are steeped in reality, when the case is quite the
opposite. Their languages have so little to do with reality that they have
invented lawyers and politicians to distort it into eidolons and apparitions
that have the appearance of truth while nimbly and skillfully keeping
actualities hidden.
Today I had a
conversation with a spider. These creatures - who resemble us in many ways -
are far more intelligent than humans. Each minute of each day they achieve
miracles of engineering, yet humans find their creations annoying and sweep
them away whenever they encounter them. Humans have an inability to learn from
other creatures. They believe themselves to be the chosen ones of a God no one
actually sees. This is a God who lives in the sky and is prone to fits of
jealousy. What would these humans think if they discovered that their God was a
female spider and that everything in the universe is as intricately related as
an orb of silken thread?
It would be a different
world, and one with a future, instead of this sad, tragically collapsing sphere
once teeming with life, and now turning barren as a gas station on highway 15
through the Mojave Desert.
No comments:
Post a Comment