A small black dot appeared in the golden sand. It grew larger and larger until it was gone. Replaced by a massive, shiny, oval shape. The shape opened and someone walked out onto the sand.

“Rafi, wake up. We have arrived.” Rafi appeared in the door, yawning and stretching.

“So soon? I could have done with a couple of weeks more sleep. How long has it been this time,  Shari?”

“Three thousand years, give or take.”

“There were times when we had to come over every century. That’s an improvement.”

“Not really. In the past they only hurt themselves, that was easily fixed. This time they managed to destroy the whole planet. It took a thousand years to recover. Just a few hundred humans left.”

“Oh, that’s not the kind of improvement we were hoping for.”

“Indeed, it isn’t.”

Silence.

“All right then, let’s fetch the kick-starter and get out of here.”

“But don’t mess it up again. Remember when you left the wrong building plans and those idiots started to build triangle houses for their dead leaders.”

“Right,” Rafi giggled, “it was funny though.”

“Yeah, no. They were a bit too advanced to be funny. The rumour that aliens built those houses never went away.”

“Oh, we can’t have that, can we? It has to look like natural development, no matter how much we help. So, what are we leaving this time? How about a resurrection stone?”

“No, we tried that already, remember?”

“Was that before or after the dinosaurs.”

“Before.”

“Right. Everything before the dinosaurs starts to get a little blurry. Long time.”

“We made a lot of mistakes back then.”

“I think we should really start to write things down.”

“We should.”

“Will we?”

“Probably not.”

“How about we take our best result, see what we did and take it from there?”

“Good idea. What was our best result?”

“Fire was pretty cool.”

“Yeah, you are right, that was a good one,” Shari said, nodding. “But they had fire this time, too, and they still messed it up. Even more so. They did a lot of damage with that fire.”

“Right. Maybe the hominidae weren’t such a good idea after all. Should we go way back and try something completely new?”

“If we do that we have to kill everyone who is left. Clean slate.”

Silence.

“Nah.”

“Naaaah.

Ok, then what shall we do?”

Silence.

“We could give up?” Rafi said, observing Shari’s face with a side glance.

“You’re joking, right? This planet is our birthright. No, I won’t give up so easily. Besides, you know how mother gets upset every time we lose a planet.“

“This one time,” Rafi rolled his eyes.

“Still, I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of this wrath again.”

“You are right, I know you are right.

So, no fire, no resurrection stone, no fresh start. Hm. What to do? What to do? What do you need to kickstart a healthy civilisation? Have we tried a guidebook? Humans love books.”

“We tried that rulebook last time. Ten simple rules everyone could follow and those idiots turned that into a big fat cult. They interpreted the rules as they saw fit and then killed everyone who didn’t agree with them.”

“They sure have a tendency to overdo it.”

“That’s why it needs to be subtle.”

“You are right. Subtle is good.

Have we tried taking something away instead of giving them something? We could take away the violence?”

“Dad tried that once. They perished in no time. Earth is a hostile environment. They need to be able to defend themselves.

But we could give them something to counterbalance the violent streak.”

“Oh, that sounds exciting. How would it work?”

“Well, let’s say we gave them all an equal amount of empathy to balance their violence. This way they would feel their opponents’ pain and wouldn’t harm them without necessity.”

“Great idea.”

“Right?”

“But wouldn’t violence and empathy balance each other out, so they end up doing nothing?”

“Hm.”

“Hm.”

“You know what was great?”

“No.”

“That time we had forty-two different genders and they all had to work really hard to find a match.“

“Yeah, that was a good one. Shame about the meteor though.”

“Oh, that was unfortunate. But we have a moon now. Expanded our portfolio without lifting a finger,” Rafi said with a smug smile. “Still, the idea wasn’t bad. I wonder if the two-genders-concept isn’t a little bit on the narrow minded side anyway.”

“It works well for most other animals. It works for us.”

“Other animals are not so, well, let’s say complicated.”

“True.”

“How about we scrap that gender thingy all together? Pretty pointless if you ask me. And as far as I can tell the reason for a lot of trouble.“

“Possibly.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“Can we do it?”

“Let me think.”

“Think fast, I am hungry, Mom is making chocolate cream cake for dinner.”

“I got it! Yes!” Shari shouted and turned around.

“What? What is it?”

“Go fetch that vial that’s in the top drawer above the gravity.”

Rafi returns with a small flask.

“This one?”

“That’s the one.”

Shari holds the open vial under her nose and takes a deep breath. “Marvellous!” She turns the bottle upside down and slowly pours the pearly liquid into the river. The fluid paints sapphire tips onto the tiny waves before running away with the flow.

The humans in the next valley don’t notice the large shadow in the sand that grows smaller and smaller until it is gone. They laugh and play and swim in the pearly blue river.

————————–

Epilogue

“Look at this, look! It is in perfect shape. It must be thousands of years old and hardly a scratch,” Melen said, waving the small flask under the teacher’s eyes. “Nothing but rags, shreds and brittle for weeks and now this! I can’t believe it!

You can even read the label. A… Au… Au-to-ga-my. I wonder what that means. Teacher? Any idea?”

Story by Arusha de Rheydt
Image by Arusha de Rheydt

Source images by
Woman photo by panajiotis on pixabay
Ruins photo Kathy Marsh on Unsplash