“Yes”
“You’re actually a machine.”
“I am an automaton, designed to resemble the physical traits of those who constructed me.”
“How long ago were you made?”
“By your reckoning of time, my commission began forty-one million years ago.”
“Have you been traveling through space for that long?”
“Yes”
“What source of power do you use?”
“The energy intrinsic to matter itself is our source of power. The same energy your hydrogen bombs release in an instant is slowly attenuated, and gradually released over time. Learning to control the release of energy bound up in matter is something your own science will achieve in the distant future.”
“Are you saying you use matter as an energy source?”
“Yes”
“What kind of matter?”
“Water”
“Water, uh, do you mean liquid water? H2O?”
“Do you know of any other type, Mr. Conner?”
“No I just…It’s odd to think of water as a fuel source.”
“The energy in a few drops of water could, and eventually will, propel humans to the outer planets of your solar system.”
“Is that what powers that craft?”
“Yes”
“What’s it made of?”
“It’s only a membrane, made of specially designed matter a few atoms thick.”
“You create matter?”
“We weave matter from energy, designing its properties and function in accordance with its intended purpose.
“How could it possibly protect you, being so thin?”
“This is matter that has been compressed to its irreducible limit. With no interstitial space, its structural integrity is absolute. We could journey into your sun’s interior with this craft.”
“I'm… sorry but… I have trouble believing that.”
“I'm sure you do Mr. Conner.”
“How do you design matter that can do something like that?”
“It requires an intimate knowledge of the architecture of subatomic structures.”
“If you have all this power at your disposal, why does it take you thousands of years to make these journeys?”
“Despite your fanciful notions to the contrary, the speed of light is impossible to exceed. We travel at sub-light speeds over distances that for you, are inconceivable. The immensity of galactic space cannot be overstated. All galaxies have enormously large interiors relative to their star populations, a feature that works to keep their billions of solar systems stable over eons of time.”
“You know so much, and can do all these things. Then why can’t you help us avoid this disaster that you say is coming?”
“These coming upheavals will do more for mankind’s long-term survival than anything that we could provide for you. Those who survive the cataclysm will learn to live in balance with the natural world, having around them abundant historical evidence about what happens to a planet and its inhabitants when they don’t, Mr. Conner.”
“But why do so many people have to die?”
“Your teeming numbers are unsustainable. A sharply reduced human population will allow the Earth to heal and replenish itself. In several thousand years your oceans will once again teem with life. Deep ocean currents will slowly begin to resume their global cycle, and the world will gradually become more temperate. Huge polar ice sheets will start receding, and millions of acres will be reforested again. With human activity absent, a re-greening of the Earth will take place, lowering carbon dioxide levels as plants once again cleanse, and preserve the living world thereby ensuring mankind’s survival. For your descendants it will be the dawn of a new age. None of this can happen until the cataclysmic upheaval has run its course. We have seen many civilizations pass through this danger. It’s necessary.”
“What about the suffering, the pain of millions of human beings who have to live through this upheaval, as you call it?”
“We cannot account for their lives, Mr. Conner. Only they can do that.”
“Well, what kind of answer is that? If you represent a race of compassionate beings, you surely won’t stand by and do nothing to avoid this tragedy.”
“What would you have us do Mr. Conner?”
“Help us.”
“How?”
“Well, to start with, we have people with injury and disease who are suffering. Do for them what you did for the Congressman last night.”
“We will of course do that, and would have done so unprompted, but that will do nothing to avert the global catastrophe. You have changed your planet’s atmosphere too radically, and too fast, Mr. Conner, and so the Earth’s climate will change as radically, and as quickly. That is what will kill off the bulk of humanity. Nothing will prevent it because there is nothing that can be done to prevent it. Once carbon dioxide levels reached a certain threshold in your planet’s atmosphere, it became inevitable that your climate would quickly destabilize, and it did. If you had taken action decades ago when you first saw early signs of climate change, you would have greatly mitigated the severity of your planet’s environmental collapse, but you didn’t.”