Undermind: Nine Stories (17 page)

Crimes against people that aren’t severe enough
to warrant death result in exile to a desert island populated by
like-minded people who have forsaken civility, or those who
voluntarily chose exile over a free living center.

When they are taken to the island, they bring
nothing but the clothes they are wearing. They are given a
flintstone and a roll of twine. They can never return - no matter
how penitent they are or how much they say they’ve changed, or
found God, or whatever.

It’s hard to argue with their reasoning about
how badly we did overall on the subject of crime and criminals. The
Guardians often use parables or similes or whatever you call them,
because they say we’re obviously too stupid to understand simple
things that other races less evolved than our own have no problem
grasping. Like sentencing murderers to prison and then letting them
go. The Prime Guardian, who is like a president or something asked,
“If a deadly snake slithering around in a preschool bit and killed
a child, would you box it up for a month as punishment, and then
release it to prey upon the children once again?”

Obviously we wouldn’t. We’d protect our children
from known dangers. Why then, they asked, do you box up your
murderous psychopaths and other predators for a time, and then
release them once again to prey upon the innocent?

What can we possibly answer – that we require
child predators to voluntarily report their presence to the local
authorities whenever they move so we’ll know who to suspect when a
child disappears? Sometimes I think we
are
as stupid as the
Guardians say we are.

They have only shown us a small amount of their
technology, and that little bit makes our most advanced
developments look like Legos. But I do think we should get some
credit for how far we got on our own with technology in just a
short time. A hundred years ago, many people didn’t even have
electricity. And just before the Guardians came, we were all
walking around with miniature computers that also functioned as
telecommunication devices. That’s something, isn’t it?

In the official talks between heads of various
nations and the Guardians shortly after they arrived here, leaders
of developed countries tried pointing out our technological prowess
in response to the Guardians saying that we were uncivilized.
 It’s not like we were cavemen before they got here.

The politicians admitted that there was work
that needed to be done in many areas, but, they argued; look at how
well we’re doing on the positive side of things. Every day billions
of people have good food and shelter; we have hot and cold water in
safe and comfortable homes.

Most people have access to education, they
pointed out, and the majority of people are law-abiding citizens
who have recourse through legal systems where they can safely
confront those who are not law-abiding, and justice is obtained.
Legal representation is provided for them if they can’t afford
their own. We have gone to the moon and back, and sent probes to
nearby planets, and have the technology to send high-definition
images through space hundreds of thousands of miles back to
earth.

Wireless technology has come so far, they
argued, the entire world is interconnected and in communication and
sharing knowledge. In the field of medicine, we’ve made many
advances in just the last ten years and are close to miraculous
breakthroughs.

The Guardians listened patiently as the chief
earth representative tried to build a case for earth sovereignty.
But the Guardians, even with their unnatural patience had heard all
that they could stand before the Secretary General of the U.N. had
even finished reading the first page of his prepared speech.

“Enough!” spat the Prime Guardian. “When the
food you eat has any nutrition remaining, it is incidental and
rarely by design. The water you drink is either extracted from your
own waste products, or when fresh, is deliberately poisoned in
treatment facilities. The education you provide is ridiculously
lacking in substance and efficiency. After twelve years of what you
call education, many of your people cannot even write in their own
language.”

“And why you spend twelve years “teaching” the
same subject matter over and over while omitting anything useful is
a mystery even we can’t figure out.  And it’s a criminal waste
of time. Your system of “justice” is a façade and is not concerned
with justice at all. Your space travel is akin to a child first
learning to walk and then progressing to the point where he can
jump. Your computerized technology is the only arena in which
you’ve shown any promise, but this accomplishment was only possible
due to greed on one hand, and the desire to be continuously
entertained on the other.”

“Nearly everything you do is for profit and
amusement. All of your accomplishments mean nothing in the face of
all that you have failed at. How well is a family when the father
is blind to one child randomly stabbing the other children while
yet another child is starving to death, and another is being
drowned by its mother, and another is eating itself to death while
yet another one purposely poisons itself with drugs? But you point
to the roof of the house and say, ‘But look at our satellite dish –
we’re getting great reception on our television.’”

“Enough. You’ve tried and failed. Being that we
are responsible for you, we must take responsibility for your
failure and correct your ways. If a father teaches his children how
to survive and prosper  and then takes his leave, then returns
much later to find that his children have become dangerously
incompetent adults in need of restraint, feeding, education and
supervision, does he allow them to justify how and why they should
be allowed to continue on a path of self-destruction?”

At that point, the Talks became the Listening.
Representatives from the Earth were no longer allowed to give any
input.  The Guardians haven’t explained yet how they’re
responsible for us. So I don’t know what they meant by that, but
they’re going to be re-opening the colleges soon and that’s when
they say we’ll learn everything we need to know. We’ll learn our
true history, our relationship to the Guardians, real science and
physics, biology and nutrition, and we’ll even be learning their
language, and, they say, our own language. Education will be
mandatory for just about everyone and it will take less than one
year.

They said we had progressed, “only in the
physical.” When something was profitable, we financed, researched,
developed, manufactured, marketed and sold it until everyone had
two. We would move the earth to make a dollar. But if something was
beneficial for improving the state of mankind, it would go largely
unknown because there is no profit in improving a mind or a soul.
The Prime Guardian said we were so proud of our technology, but
what of our philosophy and religion? When was the last advancement
made in either of those fields?  They said great teachers had
tried to give us some basic hints about how to make minor but
important improvements to ourselves several times in our history
but we never took to heart the things they said. Instead we
deliberately distorted their teachings and used them to justify
wars and enslavement, and we even figured out ways to exploit their
teachings to make a profit, of course.

They said our society is like our schools. We
worship all the wrong people. If a student in a school is
intelligent and excels at intellectual accomplishments, he is lucky
to make it through the day without being assaulted. We’re proud of
our technology, but they said we treat the very people who invent
it like outcasts. But, they pointed out, if another student runs
quickly with a ball and frequently accomplishes a meaningless task
like evading opposition to cross a white line while carrying a ball
or depositing a ball through an elevated metal hoop, we lift him up
on a pedestal and offer him wealth and adoration. Inventors are
outcast. Athletes are heroes.

Likewise, we ignore the greatest minds in the
world who could have led us to becoming better people. In fact,
many times, we kill them and then make a great show of our grief
over losing them while never taking to heart the things they said
or wrote which could have improved us all.

They acknowledge that they can’t change our
minds or our values, but they can and will change our systems and
the information we will at least have exposure to. What we do with
it, they say is up to us, more or less. We’re still not free, and
we still have rules, but they say we’ll get our freedoms back
later, after we’ve been properly educated. During the time of
education, we have very limited forms of entertainment. Movies,
television and professional sports are temporarily suspended.

Morally, they say we have the intelligence to do
the right things, but that we never do because we always put greed
and personal gain first. Actually, they say that a very small
percentage of the population is truly abhorrent, but all the rest
of us are culpable for going along with evil every step of the
way.

They gave us Hitler and the Nazis as an example
for what all of us are like. Of course we disagreed. All sane
people recognize the Nazis as being evil and we took offense at
being told we were no better than them. But once again, they proved
it. “How is it,” they asked, “that one man, no more able than any
other, but being more narcissistic, greedy and with an insatiable
appetite for power over others is able to control and subjugate
millions of free people who do not like him and do not wish to be
under his power?”

“One such man can kill millions of his fellow
citizens and no one can stop him? Your Hitler was not the first to
do this and he was not the last, nor even the worst. What kind of
people tolerate genocide of their brethren? The only one among you
willing to dispose of an evil dictator is the evil dictator in
waiting – the one who wishes to take his place and wield his power
himself. No others.”

It is kinda crazy if you think about it – that
one person could dominate millions of people. But they definitely
put an end to dictatorships. In fact, all of the political leaders
around the world were removed from office. They say we’ll be
allowed to elect delegates later so we can have a semblance of
self-rule, but the delegates will only have the authority to make
decisions regarding non-essential matters. I can’t wait to see how
the elections are going to work because the only thing they’ve told
us so far is that anyone wishing to hold office will be
disqualified from being a candidate based on his desire to hold
office.

One thing I’m surprised they haven’t changed
much is religion. Aside from forbidding Scientology and Islam as
being particularly egregious, they’ve pretty much left religion
alone. They warned that there would be no tolerance of violent
crimes committed in the belief that they are required by scriptures
or religious duty. They don’t hide their derision, but so far they
let people continue to worship however they please with the
exception that there shall be no religious order or scripture that
violates natural law or incites such violation. Natural law is what
they call the obvious right and wrong that they claim every child
knows. Kinda like the Ten Commandments. Basic rules like not
killing people or stealing. You can almost see how pathetic we must
look to them if you think about it from their perspective – we’ve
had the basic rules of civility for thousands of years and still
hadn’t mastered them.

It’s been five years since they came and changed
everything. And because they changed so much of how we lived
before, people have changed a lot too.

All of the improvements they’ve introduced have
kind of snowballed. It’s like the opposite of a dwindling spiral,
but I don’t know what you’d call such a thing. An ascending spiral?
Without crime, people feel more at ease now. It’s nearly 100
percent safe to go outside. There’s no fear – at least no fear of
being raped, robbed, beaten, or killed. Some people fear the
sickness they felt during the riot, but I don’t think anyone will
try that again. With no crime and with people feeling more at ease,
they’re nicer to each other and their minds are freed up to think
about positive things.

No one goes hungry any more, and with everyone
working, people feel a sense of contribution to the new world we’re
living in. The Guardians say, whether we know it or not,
accomplishment is the key to happiness and self-esteem. Think of
the difference between being a homeless bum, sitting in front of a
convenience store, begging people for money and cashing a welfare
check once a month, or being a part of making your town a better
place because you helped paint the buildings or planted the fruit
trees or landscaped the parks, or helped eradicate the pollution,
or whatever. The squalor is gone, and you were part of the
improvement project. I’ve never been homeless, but I can see how
that might change a person.

So now we’re all healthy, safe, living in
beautiful cities and are soon to be extremely well educated like
never before. Everyone has health care, a job, transportation of
some form or another. The air is clean, the water has never tasted
better – and that’s right out of the tap. Fish and wildlife are
flourishing. People are happier and the new children seem like a
completely different breed.

The Guardians insist they have done no genetic
modifications to account for the changes in children who were born
after their arrival. They say that happy, healthy children are
normal – we’re just not used to it. Now that people actually have
to talk to their kids and develop relationships with them, maybe
it’s true that they haven’t had their DNA altered. Apparently they
just needed parents to be parents and not leave them to be raised
by the TV, other messed up kids at school, and/or strangers at
daycare while they fought their way up the corporate ladder or
broke their backs every day to increase the wealth of
billionaires.