Endling

“Do you know what an endling is, Captain?” the creature asked. 

“No. I haven’t heard that term before. What is an Endling?” the Captain entertained the question. 

“An endling is the last individual of an entire species.” He let that sink in. “That’s me. I am an endling.”

“All species come to an end eventually. Either through an extinction event or evolution, when they become a new, different species. Nothing is stagnant. The universe is ever changing”, the Captain reasoned. 

“Yes, but how do you think I feel towards you, knowing that you were the ‘extinction event’, as you call it, for my particular species? I can tell you it’s not kindly. I’d rather you just leave me alone to die, Captain. I’m not going to participate in any more of your pointless tests. I think you’ve gathered enough data on my species. There’s little point gathering any more, seeing as how we’re all dead.”

The creature crossed its cell, lay down on its narrow bed and turned its back to the transparent wall, where the Captain sat watching and observing the strange being.

It was a bipedal organism, mostly hairless and lacking any distinctive markings. Apart from superficial differences in the colour and length of their hair, the entire species was mostly homogenous, with only minor differences between the males and females. 

It had been captured on a scouting vessel, along with four others. They had been brought aboard the ship and interrogated and examined. The rigorous examination procedures had inadvertently caused the death of two of the specimens, however, this allowed a level of investigation that hadn’t been possible while they were alive, so the Captain didn’t consider them pointless deaths, due to the knowledge gained. 

It had been determined that, while they were intelligent beings, they had no form of hivemind, so without their technology they had no way to communicate with the others of their species, except for verbally. For this reason, they had kept the specimens separate from each other in individual holding cells, where they could be easily observed. 

The Captain and his ship had been returning from a clean-up mission of a solar system where a virus-like species had spread beyond their home planet and were causing the destruction of other nearby planets. They were beginning to expand outwards at an exponential rate and were posing a threat to neighbouring systems. The Galactic Government had determined that the species needed to be eradicated before their spread became uncontrollable. The Captain and his crew blanketed all the planets where the species had spread with a toxin that would kill all life, yet leave the planet intact, to recover from the effects gradually over the next hundred thousand years or so and allow new life to evolve in time.

After completion of the task, he turned his ship towards home but was stopped by a message from one of his crewmen advising that a small scouting vessel had just entered the system, it appeared to originate from the same species which they had just eliminated. 

While the ship wasn’t big enough to pose a recolonisation risk, the Captain still hated to leave a loose end and felt his job would be unfinished if he let the ship go. The scout ship was captured, along with its five occupants, and the Captain came in closer contact with the dangerous species than he had been planning to. He found them to be quite disgusting looking, so had few qualms about allowing his medical team to study them.

He had been surprised at how intelligent they appeared to be. He spent many hours communicating with the leader of the group. He had expected such a swarm-like species to have little individuality, but they each showed different personalities and they all seemed to grieve more over the death of their shipmates than they did over the loss of their entire species. 

When the Captain had explained to them that their home planet, as well as all their colonized planets,  had been cleansed of their species’ presence, the creatures had seemed to go into a state of shock. They stopped reacting to external stimulus for a while and became still and quiet. When they had been told of the death of a shipmate, however, they became extremely agitated and often made loud shrieking or wailing noises, and excreted a variety of fluids from their heads.

It confused the Captain why the loss of an individual, which could easily be replaced, should cause more distress to these creatures than the loss of their entire species.

The first two that died did so on the examiner’s table. The medics were trying to determine the internal structure and function of their organs. The examinations proved to be more than their fragile bodies could take. Once they were dead, though, a complete understanding of their physical functions was possible. 

The third death was self-inflicted. The strange little animal, it was one of the females of the species, just stopped eating. No words from the Captain, the doctors, or her remaining shipmates could entice her to resume consumption of food. By the time the Captain had the doctors intervene with a gastric tube, it was already too late. 

The fourth death had been an accident of unnecessary force. It was a male specimen who had managed to escape from his enclosure by attacking one of the crew who brought him his food. He managed to run to the cargo bay before he was captured again, but the captors had been too rough and he didn’t survive the injuries they’d caused. 

That just left this last remaining creature. There was no real reason to keep it alive. The scientists would get all the information they needed from the dead ones. This one was merely a curiosity now. An endling, as it had called itself. 

The Captain sat watching its back, its slow breathing moving it gently up and down. Such a strange being, the Captain thought. How must it feel to know you are the last of your kind? He felt the need to explain himself to this small, pathetic thing. He didn’t think it would understand, but he had to try. 

“The extinction of your race was necessary. After discovering your presence, we spent a number of years observing you. Our observations showed a tendency towards destruction, not only of yourselves but also towards any new territory you conquered. Yes, conquered is the right word. You didn’t merely expand, you conquered. Each planet in your system was gradually enveloped by your swarming species, one by one, until eventually you used it up and moved on to your next target. As your reach extended further and further from your home planet we knew you must be stopped. We had to stop your species before you encountered another species and took them over and destroyed them. We took proactive action based on your historical behaviour. We are justified. The universe is safe, now, from the plague of ‘humans’.”

The human endling cried himself to sleep, hoping for death to come soon, to make him the final full stop that would finish the story of the human race.