There is a great warm heart in the cold depths of space, a ship of wood and scintillating vapors like an alien’s idea of a dragonfly, spun out of glass and oak, coasting, huge wings catching the solar wind, the vessel pressed back by charged particles and sunlight. It had made a long journey in short time, hurtling forwards silent and still as it bent space to slip the bounds of mass. Now it was nearing earth, antennae perked up to listen to us talk, the loving and gentle mind inside the ship disappointed though it already knew what it would hear.
I stared down at my coffee. Shimmering rainbow oils bloomed and withered into grayness on the midnight brown surface. I took a sip, watched the oil bloom again as the cup was tilted. I picked up my newspaper again, put it down again. I don’t usually read it, but today, when it was less important than ever, I thought that the goings-on of the world were worth my attention, for once.
“Have you told anyone else?,” I asked the extraterrestrial in front of me. “About being here, on Earth?”
It rotated, counterclockwise. “A few.”
“And?”
It rotated again. “If they had done anything important, would I be here talking to you?”
“I suppose not.”
I took another sip; I could not help but see the iridescence of the creature’s many eyes winking and blinking at me in the oils of the coffee.
It rotated. I wondered, idly, if that expressed impatience. And what a clockwise rotation would mean.
“I do not come in peace,” it had said earlier, civilly and politely. “I come with a weapon, to see brother make war against brother.” It rotated. “I have come so that your life-forms may die.”
It was in my living room, stretched from floor to ceiling, a pillar made of countless small tendrils which merged into a single trunk about a foot from the floor, and split again a foot from the ceiling. The tendrils writhed whenever the creature rotated, turning the whole thing like a lathe.
The center of the pillar was studded with a continuous band of shimmering eyes, as glossy and sparkling and unblinking as the eyes of bugs, but smooth and unfaceted; its eyes seemed to almost be full of some sloshing colorful fluid, but I could never keep eye contact long enough to tell.
“Sure,” I said. “Okay. You want any coffee?”
It rotated, counterclockwise.
I poured two cups of coffee. If it didn’t want the second, I’d gladly drink it.
There was a raygun in front of me, on the coffee table. You know, the pulp sci-fi kind; a sleek silver spaceship-shape with rings, fins, greebles and a rounded handle, designed for human hands. For my hands. The turning pillar had no intention of using the weapon itself.
“So you want me to kill people? With the raygun?,” I asked for the third time.
“Would you rather do it with a butter knife?”
“I’d rather not do it at all.”
“You know I wouldn’t be here if I thought that was true. And if I’m wrong… I’ll find someone else.”
“And… what do I get out of this?”
“Simple. I just want you to kill twenty people using the gun. Don’t worry, you get to choose the people yourself. I’ll teleport you in, right beside them, and then you vaporize them with the raygun. No blood or guts or icky stuff like that, nothing that would upset you. Just a tiny pile of ash on the floor. And then I teleport you out.”
“You can teleport things?”
“How did you think I got in here?,” it asked, and rotated.
“And why do you want me to kill these… twenty humans of my choice?”
“I’m… testing a weapon, you might say.”
“And you can’t do it yourself?”
“Of course not,” it said, and rotated counterclockwise. “I would never kill anything. Not even one of your earth insects.”
It must be sincere, I thought, if it expects me to swallow an explanation like that.
I spent an hour picking out my twenty targets. It got easier picking them out after the first few, I must admit.
The assassinations were even easier. A sudden change of scenery, a pull of the trigger, a pile of ash. Repeat until all twenty on your list are dead.
After the second pile of ash I asked why the raygun didn’t make a beam of light, or a glow, or something.
“It doesn’t kill with light,” it said. “That’s why.”
“Then what does it kill with?”
“Kindness,” it said, and rotated counterclockwise, and I somehow knew that it was avoiding the question by telling me something far more important. If only I could figure out what.
“I could add a light to it, if it makes you feel better,” it said, rotating. “And I could make it vibrate a little, too. I realize now these things are important to you. To really feel like you’re using a weapon.”
“One of the people you killed was a relative,” it said after I’d finished rendering various politicians and other famous people into small piles of dust.
“What?”
“Yes,” it said, and rotated. “Your great great grandmother’s sister was his great great grandmother.”
“Huh. I never knew that.”
“And another one,” it said, “was the cousin of your best friend’s gym teacher.”
“Really?”
“Was.” It rotated.
“Do you think… Do you think I would have liked them better, or maybe wouldn’t have killed them, if I’d known them better? If I’d spent some time around them?”
“That seems to work with divorced couples.”
I wondered, absurdly, if it was married.
“I’m not married,” it said, and rotated clockwise.
“And as for whether or not you would have liked your targets… there are people you would hate much more than they, hate to the point of sickness, but they aren’t famous enough for you to know.” It rotated. “Perhaps I should have directed you to spend some time with them, instead.”
“There are such people? I mean, of course there are… but you know who they are?”
It rotated. “I’m not telling you.”
And I knew that it was, in some way, for my own good.
The next morning I woke up from a peaceful sleep. I picked up the newspaper, and put it down again. I knew what names would be in the headlines. All twenty of them.
It's waiting for me, in the living room. The coffee’s already on. How considerate.
“So, what’ll it be?,” I said, tired. “Do I get to shoot people with a gun that brings them back to life this time?”
“I have no such gun,” it said, and rotated. The rotation seemed sadder than usual. Or that might have just been me.
“Dammit. I was in the mood for a gun like that.” I slumped onto the couch. My conscience buckled slightly, just slightly, under the weight of twenty tiny piles of ash. “I don’t suppose we can rehydrate them or something? You know, pour some water on there and let them spring back to life?”
It rotated silently.
“So what do you want me to do?,” I asked. “Test your weapon some more?”
“The weapon needs no more testing.”
“And what are you going to use it for now, huh?”
“I have never used it. I do not use weapons. I do not kill.”
“And yet you gave me a raygun and sent me off to kill people.”
“Don’t you think they deserved it?” It rotated.
“Doesn’t matter. Do you? And could you stop rotating? It’s bugging the hell out of me!”
It rotated, counterclockwise.
“It is in your nature to kill those you think are deserving of death. I cannot blame you for that any more than you can blame me for… rotating.”
“Alright. So why did you help me?”
It rotated. And rotated again.
We teleported. A sudden change of scenery. I wondered if I died every time we did it, vaporized. I wondered if I had left behind twenty-two piles of ash. I wondered if I cared.
In any case, teleporting didn’t feel like dying. It didn’t feel like anything at all.
I hoped that the twenty piles of ash didn’t feel anything at all either.
I was standing in the alien spaceship. A view of the stars was overhead.
I looked down at the earth; it was, indeed, a pale blue dot.
“It looks very big, doesn’t it?,” said the pillar.
“Hmmm?”
“I said it looks very big. Huge.” It rotated.
I could blot it out with my thumb held at arm’s length, I thought.
“What do you mean?,” I asked.
“It usually looks a whole lot smaller. You can’t even see it on a telescope. But when you get this close to it, you can see it with the naked eye. It makes you think about just how important it actually is. It’s hard to think about that in the interstellar void.”
“And what is so important about it?,” I said, staring at my miniature home, wondering what it saw in that ball of water and rock.
“I cannot kill,” said the pillar, and rotated. “I have known of no living being that can kill. We used to think that non-killing was so obvious that nothing with even the semblance of a mind would be able to do it, but your biosphere has proven us wrong. Thousands of planets in this universe are hosts to life; yours is the only one which is host to death, constant and awful death. It is the only place in the universe where energy and nutrient transfer runs off of ‘predation’ and ‘parasitism’ instead of cooperation and commensalism. (Terribly inefficient, by the way.) Finding you is like finding an intelligent ‘cancer’, a ‘disease’ that can think.”
“But we don’t always kill,” I said, wishing that we had this conversation before I had gone on an assassination spree.
“And you don’t always have children, but you have the organs for it. All humans have the genes for a tail, and yet tails are rare indeed.” It rotated, counterclockwise. “You have a brain, and yet you don’t always think.”
“Was that directed against any person in particular?”
“All people are particular. It is what makes them people. And particular.”
“Hmmm. Okay. And that’s why you’re going to kill us?”
“I do not kill. It is not according to my nature to kill. We used to think that to not kill was the absolute truth, and that the truth revealed itself through reality, through our behavior. Now the truth has revealed some more of itself, through the behavior of others; and I know of you now, I know of your perspective. And I know that it is according to your nature to kill. It is your truth.” It rotated counterclockwise a few times. I wondered if it was agitated. I wonder if it was laughing.
“But we can choose,” I said. “We can choose whether or not we are murderers.”
“You can’t choose what is and isn’t true.” It rotated. “One does according to one’s nature. For example, we once discovered a species which were morally able to tell the truth even if it hurt people. I am of the understanding you are able to do the same but with lying.”
“I’m not a stellar example of my species, you know,” I said.
“Neither am I.”
“I suppose you’re an inter-stellar example, hmm?”
It rotated.
“All of us are.”
“I’m just telling you this so that you don’t judge me for doing this. For… killing.”
“You know I cannot judge you. You know I cannot choose what is true. And if someone else has a different truth, then it is not your truth to choose. That is why I looked for you. Why I selected someone with a different truth. A different purpose.”
“And my truth is killing?”
“Imagine a world where it wasn’t; would it not be full of life, and empty of death? I have seen worlds full of love and care. And I have seen your planet. And how different you would be if we were to step in and somehow fix you! Not that we could; that is not our truth. But do you truly hate what it is that you are? Would you see the killing species replaced by the non-killing ones?”
“Replaced?”
“Out with the old,” and it rotated with the grace and gravitas of a cosmic wheel spinning upon the axis of time, “and in with the new.”
“But replacing people?”
“You turned twenty people into small piles of dust. You’re clearly not that averse to the idea.”
“Alright.” I paused. “What do you want me to do?”
It rotated. “I want you to destroy the world.”
The ‘bomb’ was not recognizable as such. It looked like a gigantic eyelash of black glass, vaguely curved. I imagined it drifting slowly down to earth, and then, on contact— doing something. Something terrible. Something beautiful. Something miraculous. Something violent.
I walked closer. I had not realized the true scale of the thing, floating in the middle of an empty grove in this not-forest. I wondered if it was sharp. I wondered if it mattered.
“I’m not doing it,” I said.
“Then I’ll get someone else. I’ve had others refuse, you know. After getting paid their twenty. They used different weapons than you did, you know. Falling anvils. Enormous mousetraps. Fiery swords which turned every which way. Giant mallets.” It rotated counterclockwise.
“I don’t remember reading about that in the news.”
“You never read the news.”
I nodded. It rotated.
“I’m sure I’ll find somebody,” it said. “It’s easier than you think finding people willing to pull the trigger for those first twenty… and when the twenty are gone then they are more likely to reconsider the worth of the world. Maybe next time I’ll try a death-row inmate. Or a serial killer.”
“But it’s my home. My planet. My house is down there. And my job. And the grocery store I buy food at. And the little park I like to walk in.”
“I have made for you a garden in this place,” said the pillar. “I have filled it with plants that will please your eyes and fruits that are good to eat. They will give, as is their nature. You will take, as is yours.”
I looked around. It was, indeed, a nice garden. I decided to tour it as I talked with its creator a bit more about the sin I was about to commit.
“But why? You don’t kill, so why?”
“I do not kill. But you do. It is your nature.” It rotated, as was its nature.
“And so? What if it is, what if it isn’t? I’ve got a choice, don’t I?”
“Then choose. If it is your nature, if you love and adore it as I do mine, then push the button. Kill them. And if you hate your nature, then push the button anyway— to finally get rid of the killing kind once and for all. If it is not the nature of human beings to be the murderous species, if that is not their purpose— then let them be replaced by those who do a better job at love than they.”
“You can’t say ‘choose’ and then offer the same alternative three times.”
“I can if it’s the only alternative.” It rotated. “Your world of pain is in a world of pain. I do not know why your murderous animals survived, but I know that they need not survive much longer.”
I went to the grove where the eyelash floated, like the only tree that hadn’t gotten the memo that there was somehow gravity in this ship. I negotiated with the pillar about the details of my stay here, made sure to ask for all the music and literature I would ever need. It had already archived it all, of course; it wasn’t a barbarian, it said, and it loved our culture. I asked for a cat, too. I was granted a cat, a real Earth kitten and not a fabrication. I tried the fruits, the rivers of tea and the spring of soda, the melons of not-meat and not-tuna.
I pushed the button.
The black glass lash fell down, as if plucked from the face of God and hurled into the sink.
It kissed the ground and thus betrayed the earth.
The pillar showed me scenes from my planet projected on pools of rippling water.
I did not see what that black lash did, though I saw what it had done.
Creation stopped groaning to whimper. The lion laid down with the lamb and did not get back up. The world went still but for the wind; birds fell mid-song, crickets stopped mid-chirp, frogs stopped their chorus, never to start again.
I saw a vulture keep flying, and wondered why this eater of death had been spared, in time for a windfall of gigantic proportions, the whole world a banquet. I then realized that it, too, was dead, was not breathing, was not moving, was not flying, was merely gliding still in unnatural rigor mortis. I wondered how long it would take for it to hit the ground, whether it would get knocked off of a thermal in minutes by some stray wind, or if it would manage to stay airborne for days.
I wondered what was recording and transmitting all this. The thought of hidden monitors down there seemed absurd, like some kind of candid camera for the apocalypse.
I was the last of the human race. I was the last of the evil biosphere, ignorant and innocent in our iniquities. I wondered what love felt like on other, kinder planets.
Correction: there was one more creature of pain and violence left. I petted my kitten.
“Thank you,” said the pillar.
It rotated. “Those people you would have theoretically hated are dead now. I suppose you should feel good about that, at least.”
I looked up at it, at the ring of glistening eyes which girdled its midsection.
“You really would have hated them,” it added, and rotated. “You wouldn’t have thought the world such a loss. Hypothetically.”
It spun some more. “So you can take comfort in that. Without even having to go through the pain of knowing them.”
“I wish I’d vaporized you when I still had the gun. I wish I’d killed you.”
“You have that option still,” it said, and rotated.
“Hmmm?,” I said, looking up from the small face of the kitten. I wonder how many evil kittens had died down on earth. I hoped that they hadn’t been hungry, and I hoped that they had a bellyful of little mice.
“I want you to kill me.”
I stared at it. “Why?”
“I cannot die otherwise. The ship would feed me should I try to starve myself, would keep me alive out of misguided love. Not like my love.”
It rotated, counterclockwise. I wondered if that was a shrug, or a smile, or a frown, or a nervous habit, or simply how it breathed.
“And I must die. I want the truth to show itself. Please.” It rotated again, a bit faster this time, but still about as slow as it always was. “The truth. I have been myself and only myself for so long and have not known all the truth. I want to know it all. I set out, roving the universe on a wave of bent spacetime, to look for more truths, but the more biospheres I found the more I realized how ignorant I really was. I thought I would be wiser; all I know now is how much of a fool I have been. The truth, the truth…,” it rotated, even faster. I worried that it would break, somehow, would fly apart. “The truth,” it said, “which reveals itself through what is… for how would we know of it otherwise? But I wonder… ,” it said, and suddenly halted before beginning to rotate again. “What I wonder doesn’t matter. I just need to know the truth. The truth reveals itself in the structures, see? In the way the world is, in the way we are. But I want to know about the structures after death.”
“And what if you are nothing?,” I finally asked, thinking about piles of dust.
“Then the truth will reveal itself in that. If… there is a truth to be revealed,” it admitted. It rotated. I wondered, if I let it live, if I stayed my hand… if I ever would learn to read those rotations. If there was a signal in the noise.
“You will be fine,” it said. “The ship will live on. The ship will be yours to keep. It will take care of itself.”
“Does the ship have a name?”
“Does your body have a name? The name of the ship is the name of its mind. But then…” and it rotated, in a contemplative counterclockwise fashion, “My name is meaningless to you anyway. None who have shed blood could understand it. But the ship, once it is empty of me, will be yours… and then the name of the ship will be… ‘In Spite’.”
“In spite of what?”
The pillar rotated silently, wet jewel-like eyes glistening without reproach.
I thought of a beautiful ship of glass and wood gliding through eternity like a vulture. In spite of itself. In spite of what it was, in spite of what it had been. In spite of everything. In spite.
I raised the remote he had given me and pressed the button.
Nothing happened. I stared into those many eyes, confused. One second. Two seconds. Ten seconds.
“Why do you rotate half the time whenever you say something?,” I asked, finally.
“Isn’t it obvious?,” it asked, and exploded.