When The Lightlings Come

On November 5, 2021, this message was uploaded to Youtube with no visuals and a distorted voice. It quickly went viral:

Forget everything that you know for a moment and let’s start from square one. Intelligent life does not exist just in the form of carbon biped organisms. It also exists in the form of energy -- of light. Such beings visited our earth in years past and got mistaken for gods, fairies, and ghosts. Then after The Enlightenment, they felt we were on the right path and left us to our own devices. It was not until the new millennium that they returned, taking a specimen. That specimen was me.

Turns out, we’re very much not alone. There’s creators of all shapes, size, textures, and even chemical states. Each of us newbies entering the metal boarded ship were coupled with a partner -- a more “intelligent partner” they said. (I guess that makes my 1320 SAT shit in the grand scheme of the universe). 

My “partner” was a tall drink of water with translucent skin, a wide, cylindrical head, with cat-like eyes on either side that looked down on me like I was a gnat. That caused me to internally nickname him Francis after one of my friend’s cats -- who is also a loathsome creature with a superiority complex. As for pronouns for this creature, I went with ‘he’ because Francis was a dick.

Before long, I came to realize that by “partner” these guys meant “prison guard.” Yes, our rooms are pretty nice and actually an upgrade from the one-room roach parades I’m accustomed to on earth. If there’s anything I can compare it to, it’d be a very nice Holiday Inn suite with way fewer pastels. Also, you know those food replicators they have on Star Trek? They have those here, too. I can produce any food from thin air. From fillet minion to a peanut butter sandwich (I always opt for the PB & J, of course). But it doesn’t matter if you’re in a mud hut or the Taj Mahal. If your host’s demeanor makes you feel like a slave, you probably are.  

I began to wonder if Francis’s species was capable of talking in anything other than a command. For the first few weeks, all he would do was come into my room and point and say “Sit!” “Move!” “Come over here!” “Stay!” like I was a dog or something. But, if I’m being honest, dogs are treated with more warmth than that. 

Eventually, I became fed up. He barged in unannounced as I was butt naked. Unaffected by my state, he just pointed as usual, “You go there!"

I complied while getting dressed, but as I walked to the position he commanded, I made sure to add, “I do have a name, you know?”

I was not sure of how he would respond. But then the creature’s lips moved into an odd shape. Maybe something to express derision. I don’t know. “Ah yes. Names,” he said. “A primitive designator for a primitive species.”

Then he rattled off, “Names are too repetitive and prone to emotional manipulation. Numeric designators are way more efficient. You are Human 1632B.”

I tested his sense of sarcasm by remarking, “Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?”

When he didn’t respond, I tacked on a factoid, “You know we call some people by numbers, too. It’s usually in prisons. You know those little primitive things, don’t you?”

Francis actually seemed to get defensive, “This is not a prison. We all use numbers. I am Keplerite-452b.47.”

“I am NOT going to remember that name. Your name’s Francis.”

I gave him my name and held out a hand. He didn’t seem to absorb it. He just looked at my hand, finished his work, and left. But it was the most I had gotten him to talk. That’s when I realized if I was going to figure out what was going on, I was going to have to pull a reverse Stolkholm on this creature. Get the kidnapper to fall in love with the kidnapped. Or at least crack a fucking smile.

I made my move when he was doing tests on me. He was scanning my body with some beeping device -- a beep that sounded more like a squawk. It was annoying as fuck. Our beeps on earth at least maintained some semblance of musicality. Their beeps paid no attention to such aesthetic details. The upside was that these devices didn’t require drawing a quart of blood to test our vital signs. Just a few scans and they were done.

As the beam produced by the gadget moved up and down my body, I devised my segue into an extended conversation. I had read all these networking books with interesting ice breakers. Oddly, none of them covered conversation starters for extraterrestrial beings. I cringed at being forced to go with the most cliche question I could ask.

“So where are you from?” I said. 

He spit out, “Coordinates one-nine-four-four-dash-one-one-two-degree-sixteen-thirty-nine.”

Then he was silent, continuing his work as if no question had ever been asked. Not to be discouraged, I pushed on to the next one.

“Well, what’s it like?”

Then he unleashed another string of nonsense, “It is an exoplanet that weighs precisely 2.98642 times ten to the twenty-fifth kilograms with a radius of 5938.2 miles and an equilibrium temperature of 265 Kelvin.”

Then he was done.

“I asked what it’s like! Not for a Wikipedia entry!”

He simply said, “I do not understand.”

“I mean what was it like to live there.”

“There is no ‘like.’. There just is.”

Pulling teeth. I tried another approach.

“I mean, did you, like, have friends? Did you live with anyone?”

“You mean a cohabitation partner.”

“What a romantic name,” I mused. “Yes. A cohabitation partner. Did you have one?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She’s dead.”

Then he finished and walked out leaving me sitting there, feeling like a jackass. I stayed up the entire following night thinking about it. He sounded like he didn’t mind and I really didn’t like him anyway. But still, it bothered me. I was going to try to patch things up.

The next day, I got my chance while he was running his little screeching doohickey up and down my body.

“Sorry about yesterday,” I said.

“About what?”

Of course, he was oblivious, but my conscious wouldn’t let me get away without apologizing.

“About bringing up your dead wife. It was a pretty shitty thing to do.”

“She was not my wife. She was my --”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Cohabitation partner’.”

“And I do not know what you mean by ‘shitty.’” he said, continuing his work and it was dropped just like that. 

Still, I had to push forward. It felt uncomfortable, but I needed to evoke the emotion necessary to gain his trust. Shifting in my seat, I moved on to the next step.

“So,” I said, cautiously, “tell me how she died.”

Of course, it was nothing to him, he casually explained, “She died in the invasion of the Sifer-R12s. They were an inferior species. War-Hungry. Greedy. Tribalistic. Like yours.”

I shifted in my seat trying to stifle the savage burn that had just been dealt to my entire species.

“In the height of war, there were many deaths. That’s when The Lightlings came. They travel the universe rescuing creatures both from others and themselves. You probably would know them as gods in your ancient texts. But they came down and saved us from war and inevitable death, but they could not come in time to save my cohabitation partner -- or wife as you would put it.”

“And you don’t miss her?”

“We do not ‘miss’ things. Spending time on such feelings is a waste.”

I thought about my family. My friends. What they were thinking about. Whether they missed me. Whether they were OK.

He probably didn’t hear the hurt in my voice as I said, “I wouldn’t call it a waste.”

“We have developed technology that can extend life to a thousand years, weapons that can control the weather, devices that can send messages through time. When you waste your days fighting wars and digging your noses into social media applications, you have less time to advance the world.”

“You know, you’re a real DICK. I’ve been wanting to say that out loud since I stepped onto this ship. You’re a dick.”

“I am not familiar with your colloquial slang. What is a ‘dick’?”

“For starters, someone who craps on an entire species every moment he gets. That’s a dick. Some would call it racist.”

He stared blankly.

“Oh, what am I doing? You don’t have feelings, right? Are you done here?”

“No.”

“Well, yes you are. Get the fuck out.”

I was a little surprised to see him stand up and comply. The rest of the day, I cooled off trying to keep my mind focused on figuring a way out of there. But my temper carried me to the next day. I wasn’t planning on talking to the creature. However, halfway through his examination, he was the first to speak. His comment surprised me a little.

“We do have an area in our brains responsible for feeling you know,” the screeching beam moved up and down my left arm, as he continued. “It is merely dormant and we simply choose not to use it -- similar to the way humans sparingly use logic.”

I was still a little mad, but I saw my angle.

“So, what is there to lose by using it right now?” I started.

“You’re a very talkative species and I tire of talking in your language. Why can’t I just do my work?”

“But seriously. This IS your work. It’s why you have me here. To examine me. How can you examine a human if you don’t know what feeling is? First rule of logic: you have to know your opponent’s position before you savagely crap all over it.”

“Well, how would I know feelings?”

“Well, tell me about your wife. Why did you ‘cohabitate with her.’?”

“She was strong. Tall. Since I was smaller than average, having her optimized my safety. I slept in the crook of her legs and torso for optimal protection…”

“And do you have any feelings associated with that?”

He thought for a moment and then responded, “Yes, and I am afraid I still do not know why you feel… it is not a good feeling.”

“Yes, that bad feeling is called ‘missing her’, but you have to IMAGINE her. Imagine being in her arms right now. Imagine being in the crook of her legs and how safe you felt. Imagine how it was before the invaders came.”

He paused and lowered his instrument. His body became stiff and his eyes instinctively closed. He remained there motionless for just five seconds. Then his eyes opened. His head tilted in this eureka sort of fashion.

“Ah,” I thought I saw a smile, “That is why you feel.”

Somehow that led to the next comment as he continued his work “This missing her? Is that how you feel about your cohabitants on earth?”

“Yeah… I was wondering if I could talk to them.”

“That is impossible.”

“All this technology, and you can’t send like them a text to say I’m OK?”

“No, I said that is impossible.”

“Why?”

He actually stopped his work and paused to look me in the eye, as if trying to imitate a consoling nature.

“Because they’re dead,” he said flatly, “Your entire world is.”

I could barely breathe and was finding it hard to maintain balance. Tears were flowing mercilessly. My full reality had shifted in less than eight words.

After a while, I managed a response between angry sobs, “But -- but how? When did this happen?”

His emotionless nature didn't help as he coldly recounted the events.

“Right after you were taken. The Lightlings killed them.”

“But... but you said they SAVE people!”

“I said they save creatures from others and from themselves. They scanned your internet and saw the anger, the meaninglessness, the aimless quest for adoration, and self-gratification. The lust for pointless, material things, and the declining popularity of things like philosophy and books. They saw this and realized Earth-dwellers were on the way to a long and painful self-destruction. The Lightlings merely spared them the extra moments of suffering.”

Then it all came together. The ancient flood mythologies. The various gods of lore. Some cruel. Some merciful. They were always the Lightlings watching our steps and trying to guide us toward a more enlightened future. But we squandered that.

The good news is I convinced Francis to let me send this message to the past. To a time before our Armaggedon. To a time that gives us enough of a fair warning so we can change.

In theory, if you hear this and turn from your former ways I will continue to exist on this timeline where everyone is dead but at least a new and separate timeline will exist where you all continue to live in peace.

But here’s the bad news.

I’ve heard this message before.