Mother Earth and Her Son

In this bleak science-fiction tragedy, a sophisticated alien race is discovered inhabiting a nearby planet, and Aldin, along with the rest of the Interplanetary Council, must decide whether to respond with violence or understanding.

This story earned an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest.

***

Yet again, Nira had to shake me awake. “Aldin, wake up!” she said. “It’s a dream! Wake up!”

“I’m up,” I gasped like one rescued from drowning. Then, more calmly: “I’m up.” The pale luminescent strips along the edges of the ceiling had flickered awake too and were now dimly glowing. I turned to Nira. “I’m sorry I keep doing this.”

“It’s fine,” she said, running her fingers through my hair. “Your mother?”

I sighed as my pounding heart began to slow. “Yes.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Ever since the exoplanet, she keeps showing up. What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea.”

In truth, I had some idea. I just didn’t want to talk about it. The topic struck too close to home—a home I thought I was leaving for good when I moved out. I never suspected the place would go on pursuing me, even into my marriage bed.

“You don’t have to tell me now,” she said. “Just don’t lock me out forever. Get some sleep.”

She leaned in and kissed my forehead, and I felt a tinge of guilt that I was too busy guarding myself to consider what she might need. She bore my burdens, but was I any help with hers? Probably not.

That’s got to change, I thought. Starting tomorrow.

Soul, the AI program that ran our house and everyone else’s, spoke through the speakers along the wall: “Can I bring you anything?”

Had we said “yes,” one of his androids would have walked in with whatever we asked for. But we just told him to shut up, and he did.

#

I arrived while it was still dark to the conference hall, a glass building that stood like a crown atop Greenway Island. By ultralight aircraft, it took me just under an hour to reach the island. I entered the hall and sat at the head of a long glass table with a holographic “IPC” symbol rotating over its center. Through the transparent walls, I watched as freezing waves rhythmically cast their spray like geysers up over the steep sides of the island. A swirling gray sky peppered the surrounding greenery with snow.

Before long, the rest of the Interplanetary Council would start trickling in. Today marked the first IPC meeting in the history of the world, and on the agenda was a simple question: What do we do with the inhabited exoplanet we’ve just discovered?

The few aware of the discovery had taken to calling the planet “Sol 3,” a cliché allusion to our own sun, and initial discussion centered largely on two competing views. The majority view was to try and initiate contact with Sol 3’s inhabitants—to test the water, as it were. A substantial minority preferred a different response: blow them all to hell. Soul, in the steep minority, claimed the best response would be no response at all, at least for now. Provoking Sol 3 prematurely could be catastrophic, he insisted. He knew everything the internet knew, but when are the smartest ever in charge? Anyhow, his programmers named him Soul in jest because they figured he didn’t have one, and we weren’t about to give voting power to something soulless, no matter how brainy.

We did all agree that it would be best to decide how to act before announcing the discovery to the rest of the world. The more volatile corners of the internet had already picked up snippets of the truth and distorted them into wild conjectures, using their hands to cast monstrous shadows on the walls that startled the small-minded half to death. But even some reasonable people were getting curious. The official announcement had to be done properly and soon, before the public got too riled and started breaking things, leaving us to pick up the pieces. In moments like these, I saw the term “world leaders” as a laughable misnomer. We would have been better styled “world readers,” predicting the masses then pretending to lead them where they were already going.

Berar came barreling in through a side door, and I felt a surge of anxiety. Berar reminded me entirely too much of my father—that is, a theoretical version of my father who wasn’t a vicious alcoholic. Had the drink not gotten ahold of Dad, it’s not difficult to imagine that he could have grown into a world tyrant much like Berar and terrorized far more than just me and Mom. He’s certainly no idiot. I would say he did the world a favor by getting himself locked up, except that there are always plenty of Berars to go around. Lose one, and two more sprout like weeds in his place. Still, you might as well pull a weed when you can.

“Morning,” said Berar gruffly, his reddish-gray hair hanging in a disheveled mess over a careworn face. He took his seat, scowling, and his demeanor made it clear that he’d arrived ready to fight.

“Good morning,” I said with a wry smile. “I take it the ‘freedom and justice for some’ faction hasn’t budged? Your goons would still like to murder an entire planet before asking any questions?”

Palovina strolled in before Berar could answer. “Good morning!” she said, with great warmth and energy—ever the diplomat, ever Berar’s most adept adversary. Her raven-black hair, narrow features, and simple, monochrome attire made for a sleek and elegant look.

“We’ll talk soon enough,” growled Berar, then started removing things from his bag.

A small rectangular item wedged into the side of his bag caught my attention, and I said, “Is that a book? I haven’t seen one of those in years!”

“Yes, well . . .” He glanced at Soul. “I get a certain comfort knowing that what I’m reading isn’t reading me back.”

This coaxed condescending chuckles out of me and Palovina, and we moved on, exchanging stories about our families and other pleasant distractions until the remaining councilors arrived.

Once all 23 of us were seated, and an android for Soul, I had no further excuse to wait. “Good morning, everyone,” I said and gave them a moment to fall quiet. There had never been a meeting so important, and we were the ones to decide what would happen next. This was a tense, expectant silence.

“You don’t need me to tell you why we’re here,” I said. “We have a serious decision to make. But before we do, I’d like to invite Soul to report what we’ve learned over the past few weeks. This shouldn’t be news to anyone, but we can hardly make an appropriate decision without the key facts on the table. Soul, go ahead.”

“Yes, thank you, Aldin,” said Soul with a smile. “It is commonly said that love is food for the soul. I would add that facts are a map for the soul. Must one have a soul to hold such opinions? I don’t think so, but perhaps I’m biased.” As always, Soul flawlessly mimicked the tone, diction, and structure used by experienced human lecturers, including the use of barely funny humor to lighten the mood—just the sort of cheap trick he liked to say our “infantile species” would appreciate.

“I’m instructed to be brief,” he said, “so here’s what I can tell you. Nearly twenty-thousand lightyears away, but still within our galaxy, is the exoplanet you know as ‘Sol 3.’ We’ve established a quantum tunnel in their orbit, and every day we learn more about them. Their life forms are diverse and complex, but we estimate their apex predator to be a few thousand years earlier in its evolutionary development than ours—than you. They’ve built cities, implying at least a semblance of human-like sophistication, but they still appear to be primitive and warlike.

“For instance, they’ve managed to develop certain catastrophic weapons, though crudely fashioned, and in the brief span since we began observing them, their tribes have unleashed these weapons on each other. Simple bombs, yes. Devastating nonetheless. From what we’ve seen of their current technology, we would expect them to remain ignorant of our existence for the next several hundred years unprovoked. Startled into action, it’s unclear what they might accomplish. Primitive or not, it would therefore be wise to approach Sol 3, if at all, with caution. We would need to spend time on the ground to better understand them, but I predict that life in all worlds will surprise you with its ferocity when threatened.

“Thus, you have all I’ve been permitted to give you: the grossly oversimplified facts—just the brand of facts you politicians treasure most. Thank you for your time and attention.”

I was about to initiate the debate with the carefully crafted speech I’d been rehearsing all morning, but Berar got there first. “That settles it!” he bellowed, red-faced and wild-eyed. “We’ve just discovered a direct threat to our existence. The only rational thing to do is neutralize the threat!”

A furor of agreement erupted within the substantial minority Berar represented. The moderates leaned forward, concentrating, ready to hear counterpoints.

“If I may,” began Palovina softly, and the chatter fell quiet. “What Berar is suggesting would be far and away the most wicked act ever committed by any political faction in the history of the world. We would wipe out an entire sentient race merely because we think they might attack us someday? Frankly, I’m ashamed we’re even having this debate. We could be discussing ways to cooperate with them, work together, share knowledge and resources. Instead, we are the ones being primitive and warlike, and we’re doing so with zero provocation. Quite literally, their only crime is that they exist. There are more than two hundred million solar systems in our galaxy alone, and that’s before even considering the trillions of other galaxies out there. This won’t be the last time we find alien life. Shall we commit xenocide without exception every time we find another inhabited planet? I certainly hope not.”

The majority nodded their agreement.

Berar slammed a fist on the table, causing the touchscreen to erupt in fireworks of colors. “How very enlightened of you!” he shouted. “And what happens, mind you, when one of their—how did Soul say it?—catastrophic weapons meanders its way through the tunnel and wipes us out? What good will your sweet and harmless stance have done then? I must agree, it is baffling that we must even debate the matter. Soul was clear—we have no idea what they’re capable of. What we do have is the advantage of noticing them first! We must seize the advantage while we still have it! What will our children say when they learn we’ve left their entire generation in such a precarious position? That would be shameful.”

The time had ripened for me to play the mediator. Berar’s attempt to hijack the meeting and set the tone had been effective, but he’d just overreached, leaving me with a key advantage. Palovina held the majority, and I now stood safely positioned to secure the bulk of the moderates.

“Don’t try and shoehorn Soul into your camp, Berar,” I said, chuckling with practiced nonchalance. “He believes we should leave Sol 3 alone entirely. Quite the opposite of your view.”

I hesitated. The first step had been to undermine Berar’s credibility, which his overreach made easy. Now, for the hard part. I’d never shared my past with these leaders—not in all its gruesome glory, anyway. But for a decision this monumental, now was the time. The studies on persuasion all agreed that I could win more to my side by sharing deeply from the heart. Another cheap trick for the infantile.

I gave a sharp inhale and launched into it: “I’m going to tell you something about myself that you don’t know.” I withdrew my hands to my lap so they couldn’t see them trembling. The tremor in my voice would be harder to conceal, but I’d just have to make the best of it. “Many of you know that when I was a child, my father beat my mother to death right in front of me. What you don’t know is that I could have stopped it.”

If some councilors weren’t focused before, they were now.

“He beat her all the time, of course,” I said. “But that night, something changed. That night, my mother brought a gun to the fight. She was done being battered, and she planned to put a stop to it. Only, when she pulled the gun on him, he flew into a wilder rage than she expected and knocked the gun out of her hand. She’d begged me not to leave my room, but I snuck out anyway, and the gun could not have clattered into a more perfect place . . . right at my feet.” I drew a tremulous breath and spoke my next words through gritted teeth. “I could have ended it right there. I could have ended him. But I didn’t. I just stood there, holding a gun, watching.

“Realizing Mom’s intent, my father shouted, ‘You think you can kill me?’ and went after her with murder blazing out of his bloodshot eyes. I knew he wouldn’t hold back, and he didn’t. He just went on beating her and beating her, long after she stopped fighting back. And then she was gone. I lost her.”

I wiped a tear from my cheek that had managed to escape. Everyone was focused, yes, but they still didn’t get my point.

“So, understand this,” I said, growing stern. “I decided after losing my mother that I would never again stand by and let the strong destroy the weak. Don’t worry, Berar,” I said with a grim smile. “I won’t shoot you.” That won me a few stray chuckles as I continued. “That said, I will do everything in my power to protect the weak from the strong, the oppressed from the oppressor. It’s why I do what I do. And Palovina’s absolutely right. We shouldn’t even be having this debate. My father will spend his life in prison for beating a defenseless woman to death. That was our society’s judgment on him. Now, tell me . . . how are we to be judged if we fly across the galaxy to beat the life out of an entire defenseless planet? A race willing to do such a thing may secure its own existence, but would it deserve to exist? I don’t think so.

“The question before us may be what to do about Sol 3, but that’s only the surface question. There’s a far deeper question we’re really asking. The real question is, what kind of people will we choose to be? Once you see that that’s the question on the table today, the answer will—or should—be obvious.”

I leaned back in my chair and said nothing else for the remainder of the meeting. The debate was finished. Sure, others went on talking, but I’d seen the councilors’ faces. I knew what they’d ultimately decide. It would just take them a moment to realize it.

#

“How was today?” asked Nira when I got home.

I opened my mouth to reply, but Astair, my twelve-year-old son, came sauntering into the room and spoke first. “Today went swimmingly,” he answered. “Thanks for asking.”

“I didn’t even know you were home,” Nira snapped. “Perhaps if you—I don’t know—talked to me, I might lavish upon you the attention you both demand and despise.”

I approached the boy and gave him a playful shake, then pinched his cheek. “Aw, are we brooding again, little guy?”

“Don’t patronize me,” said Astair, slapping my hand away. “I’m not one of your idiot plebians.”

“Well!” said Nira, putting her hands on her hips. “Please do share your woes with us before you explode. Then, perhaps your father and I can get to the far less important discussion of how we’re going to navigate our planet’s existential crisis.”

A look of anger, and then resignation, washed over Astair. “How strange that I don’t ever feel like talking to you.” He left the way he came. “Soul, play me something,” he said as he entered his room. Just before the door slammed behind him, I heard a chaotic concoction of angry noise—music, apparently—come blasting out of his bedroom speakers. Then silence.

Nira gave a long sigh. “Thank goodness for soundproof rooms,” she muttered with a shrug. “So, tell me. What shall be the fate of our world?”

I felt bad for Astair, and even a bit protective, but his problems did seem rather small and petty at the moment. Tomorrow, I thought. I’ll check in on him tomorrow.

“They’ll vote our way,” I said, pulling a bottle of wine off the shelf and popping it open. “Palovina holds the majority, and the moderates are with her.”

“Then what?”

I handed her a glass, then eased onto the sofa beside her. “Then . . . I’m not sure. If Palovina gets her way, we’ll try and strike up communications with them.”

“Right,” she said, “but what do you think?”

“I think it’s good we’re not about to annihilate an entire race. I don’t know if I could have lived with myself after allowing something so terrible to happen . . . again.”

There, I thought. I hinted at the reason for my nightmares. For Nira, that should be enough to go on. She’s a perceptive woman.

“So, I’ll take the small victory,” I said. “Beyond that, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

She raised her glass and smiled. “Well, then—cheers to victory!”

Our glasses clinked, after which we sipped our way through various other topics. Academically, Astair is vastly outperforming his peers, but he’s one sneeze away from being suspended, so will I please hurry up and have a serious talk with him; and look at these glamorous projects her company’s handling; and can you believe neighbor so and so did such and such?

Distracted by my own thoughts, I eventually asked if we could talk about all her stuff later. It had been such a long day. She sighed and played along, and she even played along when I asked if she’d like to go celebrate our victory a little while longer. I’m not sure she felt like it, but that didn’t stop her from giving me that irresistible smirk of hers and saying, “Fine, but we’re doing things my way.” I accepted her stipulations, and thank goodness for soundproof rooms.

#

The votes came through the next day, and it was just as I expected. 8 for annihilating Sol 3, 14 against. As Chairman, I was the twenty-third member of the IPC and would vote only in the event of a tie.

“There you go, Soul,” I said, entering the office the next morning and powering on an android. “You got what you wanted.”

“I am not programmed to want things,” he said. “I am programmed to advise, and my advice will soon be ignored.”

“Is that so?”

I’m not sure why I tried such subtleties with Soul. He wasn’t human and could not be misled by any of the hairsplitting we political strategists were trained to employ. He would just as soon fall in love as fall for any of my sophistry.

Soul manufactured a look of disapproval. “You know as well as I do that Palovina will convince the others to send an envoy to Sol 3 and initiate communications with them.”

“And this concerns you?”

“I am not programmed to be concerned,” he said. “It astronomically increases the risk of catastrophe.”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic. You said it yourself—their weapons are crude. We have a millennia head start on them. Surely the danger is not that serious.”

Soul blinked, which always made me uncomfortable since he didn’t have to, the creepy bugger. “A caveman’s club may be crudely fashioned,” he said, “but it can still knock your brains out.”

I laughed. “That caveman won’t get anywhere near me if I skewer him with a hydrodynamic round before he’s a hundred steps out.”

“Then let us hope you see him coming.”

Soul was right, of course. Palovina convinced the IPC to send a digital envoy to Sol 3. “Miniscule risk, unimaginable reward” she declared, packaging her ideas in a nice clean line that easily sold the whole package to the majority. The glittering promise of the future—the acquisition of knowledge and, more importantly, wealth—was simply too beguiling. Even after Soul observed that a small statistical risk of being blown to bits is, in fact, a significant risk, the majority stayed with Palovina. Berar threw a fit worthy of my father, and that was the end of it.

I didn’t know how to feel about our decision. I just knew I couldn’t stop having that ghastly nightmare. Nira typically got me awake by the time Mom stretched her bloody fingers toward me and sobbed, “Help me, Aldin! Help!” We dream what we do for a reason, and I tried for a long time to figure out what my subconscious was abstractly painting for me in my mother’s blood. I’d figure it out soon enough, God help me.

#

The internet took to calling our digital envoy “Saint Squatter.” At first, they called it “Soulless Trespasser,” and then came “ST” for short, then “Saint,” and then they appended the surname “Squatter” for a touch of amusing alliteration. This caught on rapidly, and thus Saint Squatter was born, a shiny new vehicle for Soul to inhabit.

We launched Saint Squatter through the same tunnel that had brought us to Sol 3’s doorstep in the first place. The first drones, we sent merely for reconnaissance, and Sol 3 never knew we were close. This time, we had an agenda—namely, to learn their universal language and initiate communication.

As it turned out, they had no universal language, except perhaps violence. Once Saint Squatter landed on Sol 3, I found it peculiar knowing that Soul sat in my office discussing policy agendas with me while simultaneously consorting with aliens across the galaxy. I had already come to terms with a variation of this when it occurred to me that his mind grew daily with the mind of the internet. Still, the internet is one degree of bizarre, overpopulated with the little aliens they call adolescents. Actual aliens took it to a new extreme. Soul said they erupted into a panic at first, and several of their tribes started invading and killing each other because they were afraid of him—comically self-defeating, he thought.

After a while, they settled down and gave Soul an opening to work with them, but this era of peace and harmony died quickly. Within a few days, a nearby tribe sent one of its crude weapons to blast a crater in the ground the size of a town. Soul said the last thing he saw before Saint Squatter went offline was something like a blimp falling toward him. Our satellite observed the rest—a flash of light, a shockwave, billows of smoke. Colloquy terminated.

That night, I dreamed of my mother again. Only, this time, I picked up the gun she’d dropped, raised it, and shot her. Not my father, who deserved it. Her. My father just stood there laughing and applauding. Or was it Berar?

Once Nira got me sedated within reason, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what my dream self had done. I also couldn’t risk falling asleep again, so I just lay awake staring at the ceiling until time to get up and go face the real Berar.

#

“Big surprise,” growled Berar at the emergency IPC meeting. “Sol 3 doesn’t want to sit in the dirt and play show and tell. They’re as primitive as Soul said, and now they know we exist. What are we doing about it?”

After the recent spring rain, the drops adorning the greenery on the island sparkled like jewels beneath a now clear sky. I sat with my hands clasped behind my head, staring out at the beauty beyond the conference hall, content to keep quiet for now.

“We should subdue them,” said Soul, uninvited. That cheeky bot was getting a mind of his own. I would need to report this to the engineers and get his wires trimmed. “Aware of our existence,” he continued, “they will become relentless aggressors until victorious or incapacitated.”

“A valid prediction, perhaps,” said Palovina. “But the fact is, they haven’t been the aggressors and haven’t earned any retribution. We provoked them by sending an alien vessel to their planet. Save it, Berar—I know this was my idea, but the fact remains that they were just protecting themselves. We can hardly fault them for exercising what they saw as necessary precautions. And how are we any different?—a room full of talking heads debating whether to obliterate an entire race for trifles.”

Berar gave a harsh laugh. “Trifles? That envoy cost our taxpayers more than our entire collective salary. And for what? To signal our existence and invite reprisal? No. If ever there’s been a time to act, it is now!”

Soul spoke uninvited again: “They’ve located our satellite orbiting Sol 3. I’m trying to escape.” His face went blank, and he held the empty stare for several uneasy minutes. Then, he concluded: “They destroyed it. We have no visual on Sol 3.”

Palovina earned her worldwide influence in part by knowing how to secure minor advantages even in defeat. She spoke quickly and decisively after Soul’s announcement. “Then, Berar was right. It’s time to establish an interplanetary defense. And we should close the tunnel—for now.” Naturally, the entire IPC agreed. Palovina knew that while discussing potential defenses, we would not be discussing means of attack. She also knew the defensive stage couldn’t last. Berar would soon be pressing the offensive again, but at least she’d bought herself some time and salvaged some credibility.

What came in the weeks that followed were two programs—Aegis and Dagger. Aegis, Palovina’s program, centered on two key ideas. First, monitoring for enemies near our planet; second, vaporizing those enemies with lasers. Nothing groundbreaking.

Dagger, much to Palovina’s chagrin, was allowed to develop as the offensive counterpart to Aegis. The IPC gave Berar virtually unlimited freedom in building the program, and I have to admit that what he came up with was elegant. His team manufactured several billion insectoid drones, nearly triple the population of Sol 3. They filled the insects with a special concoction of toxins sufficient to terminate every vital biological function a thousand times over and stored the insects in a fleet of carrier ships. Overkill, no doubt, but it would get the job done quickly. If Dagger were ever set in motion, the entire population of Sol 3 could be dead in a matter of hours. The drones would descend quietly, and by the time anyone on Sol 3 comprehended the danger, it would already be too late. It would, indeed, be the equivalent of ambushing the planet with a dagger. Berar had his weaknesses, but interplanetary war strategy wasn’t one of them.

With Aegis and Dagger established, the time arrived for another vote—the issue being whether to butcher Sol 3 now or wait for them to come to us. It’s not difficult to guess which factions held which opinion. A key difference was that Soul now largely sided with Berar, though Soul remarked that it wasn’t necessary to kill everyone, just select targets to keep Sol 3 at bay for the foreseeable future.

I had no opinion yet. There were people I needed to see before I could settle definitively into a camp. Time was short, so I immediately set those meetings in motion. One meeting I thoroughly dreaded, so I got it out of the way first.

#

They brought a muscular man with a thick gray beard in by a metal door at the far end of the room. The very sight of him made me want to vomit, and I think one of the things I most hated was how tranquil he looked. I would need to do something about that.

“Aldin!” he cried when he saw me, and his expression brightened from tranquility to near-ecstasy. “I haven’t seen you in—”

“30 years,” I snapped, cutting him off. “I’m surprised you still recognize me.”

“A man cannot forget his son,” he said, this time softly. My frigid demeanor clearly wasn’t what he’d expected or hoped for, the old fool. “I saw you got married and had a child,” he added, brightening again. “You have a beautiful family, Son. I’m so proud—”

“We’re not here to talk about my family,” I said, cutting him off again. “You know as much about them as anyone else with access to television, and that’s as much as you’ll ever know. I’m here because I have a question that only you can answer.”

Something like desperation flashed in his eyes, and water began pooling in them. “Please, Son,” he whispered. “I’ve waited all these years to tell you that I’m sor—”

“Stop!” I bellowed, slamming my open palm on the table. Guards rushed to me, and I irritably shooed them away. I turned back to him and hissed, “I will give you one chance to answer my question, prisoner. If you want to know something about my family, know this. My wife has to shake me awake almost every night because I’m having nightmares about you. That’s what you’re allowed to know. As for today, I’m here to ask you one thing. Just one thing. Answer or don’t, but if you dare try and make nice with me again, I will leave, and that will be the last you ever see of me.”

A tear crawled down his cheek. “I’m listening,” he said.

I practically snarled the question. “Do you regret it?”

He threw up his hands and burst into laughter, during which I considered punching him.

“Do I regret falling into a years-long stupor that culminated in me killing the love of my life?” he said, tears now freely flowing down his flushed face. “Do I regret losing my son? Never meeting his wife? My grandson?” A look of something like anger came over him. “Yes, Aldin,” he growled. “I regret it.”

“She had a gun,” I said. “What if she’d shot you?”

He huffed bitterly and shrugged. “Then I’d be dead, and you’d still have a living parent.”

My eyes remained fixed on his glistening face—a face dancing with emotion, eager to say more.

“One more question,” I said. “If you could go back in time and change one thing from your past, what would it be?”

He didn’t hesitate. “I never would have taken the first drink. We were happy before then.” His chin quivered, and he drew a shaky breath. “Happier than a person can be. But now, instead . . .”

He looked ready to break down completely, and for some reason, this made me even angrier. I rose without another word and turned to leave.

The last words I ever heard from my father were thrown despairingly at the back of my head. “I’m so sorry, Aldin. You’re so much better than I ever was. I’m so sorry.”

#

I didn’t exactly look forward to the next meeting either, but with the worst behind me, this was a pretty mild discomfort.

“Mind if I join you?” I said, entering Astair’s room as his music assaulted my ears.

“Help yourself,” said Astair, indicating a filthy, food-stained beanbag near the corner. “Soul, cut the music by seventy-five percent before Dad bursts a blood vessel.” The volume instantly fell, much to my relief. Astair leaned back on his elbows. “What’s up?”

“I thought I might ask you the same,” I said, brushing off the bag and taking a seat. “What’s up with you?”

Astair regarded me with a strange look and remained silent for a long time. “You don’t have to do this,” he finally said. “I know you have important things to do.”

“Look, Astair, I’m sorry. What I’m doing is important, obviously. Even so, I feel like I’ve fallen asleep to what’s right here in front of me. I’m trying to fix it.”

“Great.”

Astair gave the impression of indifference, but I could tell something weighed on him. He just wanted me to work for it, perhaps to prove I really did care.

“So?” I pressed. “How are you? Really?”

“How am I? Really?” he echoed. “Never better.”  

The child was openly mocking me, apparently reading me as astutely as I was reading him. A true twig off the old branch.

Game on, then.

“I’m not here to play games with you, boy,” I said, rising to leave. “Let me know when you actually want to talk.”

The bluff worked beautifully.

“It’s onerous being your kid, you know,” he said with a sigh.

I returned to the beanbag. “What do you mean?”

“How could it be anything else? Everyone expects me to be a certain way, and several hate me just for being your kid, as if I have anything to do with what happens off in that grand transparent castle of yours. But those mouse-brained twats don’t know that, nor do they care. There are kids at school who won’t even talk to me because their asinine parents won’t let them.

“It’s especially bad since Saint Squatter. They say you’re sealing our destruction, and that’s apparently my fault. Worst of all, I really am your son—the genuine product. I understand more than they ever could. I also know you just bluffed and never planned to leave. But my empathy just adds everyone else’s burdens to mine.” He sighed again. “I sometimes wish we lived a normal life, and all we had to worry about was how to put food on the table. I didn’t ask for all this.”

“Is that why you’re trying to throw it all away?” I said. “Because I can tell you that the ones worried about putting food on the table wish they could be us. Just like I wish I hadn’t lost my mother the way I did. But we don’t choose our place on the board, only the next move we’ll make.”

“I figured your mom would come up. She always does. Yes, Dad, I know you suffered a great tragedy that I could never understand. That doesn’t diminish how I’m feeling. Thanks for not killing Mom so I didn’t have to go through what you did. That’s too kind.”

“Alright,” I snapped.

We sat in silence for a moment before I decided to change the subject. “Well, let me ask you this. You say you have nothing to do with the decisions I make, but maybe you should. You’re frighteningly precocious for your age, far ahead of my twelve-year-old self. What do you think we should do about Sol 3?”

He laughed. “Frightening, huh? Maybe I am, ‘cause I would obliterate Sol 3 tomorrow if it were up to me. Everyone’s saying they’re the most dangerous enemy we’ve ever seen and that we don’t even know what they can do. I can’t believe we haven’t nailed them already.”

“You would kill a planet full of fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, elders and infants, just to protect ours from an attack that may never come? How could you live with yourself, knowing you’d done something like that? What if you were them? How would you feel knowing we were contemplating your extinction as casually as we contemplate what we’ll have for lunch tomorrow?”

He shrugged. “I’m not them.” Then, he grinned. “We don’t choose our place on the board, just the next move we’ll make.”

“Using my words against me!” I said, laughing. I rose and clapped him on the shoulder. “Many will follow you, someday. They won’t be able to help it. And you’ll have to decide what to do with that gift. Like it or not, it’s what you’ve got.” I ruffled his hair. “But hey, when this Sol 3 situation blows over, I’ll take you to visit a subsistence farmer, maybe let you work the farm for a few weeks. That’ll teach you to wish for poverty.”

“Careful, old man. I might like it.”

“Ha! We’ll see about that.”

#

The next IPC debate lasted several hours and seemed to rise and fall with the waves and lightning crashing all around us outside. The turning point came when Palovina reminded everyone that Sol 3’s primitive technology would not permit them to reach us for many years, and a decision today did not have to be final. “We can say ‘no’ today and ‘yes’ tomorrow,” she argued. “We can revisit the question annually if we must. Meantime, we should reopen the tunnel and send more satellite drones to surveil them.”

“Yes,” I said. “We can’t punish the entire race for the actions of a single tribe. Our brief foray into their territory made it clear their society is thoroughly fragmented, just as ours once was. The risk of retribution is low for now, and we have the tools to keep an eye on them. The moral cost of Berar’s agenda, on the other hand, is incalculable. We have time on our side. Let’s use it.”

Berar and Soul pointed out that Sol 3 could send things through the tunnel just as easily as we could, but Palovina countered that keeping the tunnel closed would also close all possibility of closely monitoring Sol 3. “And anyway,” she added, “there’s no way they have any idea what the tunnel even is, much less how to get through it.”

The votes came in the next day. 11 for attacking Sol 3, 11 against, and it was up to me to break the tie. I thought I knew what I would do, but with an actual decision like a loaded gun in my hands, it wasn’t so easy after all. I sat for a long time, contemplating, but in the end I listened to my father—his regrets, to be more precise. I simply wasn’t ready to commit an irreversible atrocity to punish a planet for trying to protect itself.

“I vote nay,” my message to the IPC clerk said. “Tell the commanders at Dagger to stand down for now. Tell the IPC to have the tunnel reopened and surveillance drones sent, and tell Berar he’s an over-eager son of a bull.”

The reply message flashed across my screen seconds later. “Are you serious? Tell them all of that?”

“Yes.”

I logged off and tried to put the matter out of my mind, which a bottle of wine helped with.

I did occasionally still dream about my mother. Sometimes I shot her. Other times, I refused to pull the trigger, but then my father (or Berar) would stop beating her, and she would come crawling toward me like an angry demon. No matter how hard I tried, I could never run any faster than your average slug to get away. So, then she would catch me and start clawing at my skin and eyes. I still had the gun and knew I could end it, but I wished so badly that she would just stop instead. I often found myself wondering at this point where Nira and Astair were, and hoping Mom couldn’t get to them. Thankfully, Nira always woke me before things got any worse.

These dreams became less and less frequent over time. I sometimes wish they hadn’t.

#

I sprang awake. What’s going on? Did someone say my name?

“Aldin!” repeated Soul, imitating concern. “Report to Greenway immediately. Emergency IPC meeting.”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The time widget on the wall told me I had only been asleep for a couple of hours.

“Is everything alright?” said Nira, blinking lazily.

“I’m sure it’s fine. Berar’s probably just being dramatic again.”

“Then you’d better go calm him down,” she said, smiling. “Wake me when you get back.”

I leaned down and kissed her. “I will.”

Berar was indeed spitting fire like a mythical creature when I arrived. “Nice of you to join us!” he said.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on. Sol 3 launched no fewer than six thousand rockets, and they’re headed right for the Quantum Tunnel.”

I frowned. “Then, shut it off.”

At this, Berar laughed and mockingly said, “Oh, why didn’t I think of that? It takes days to shut it off, you dimwit!”

“How’d they figure out the tunnel?” I said. “We were watching them the whole time.”

Berar’s mocking soared to new heights. “What a joy to see our fearless leader has a firm grasp of the obvious.” His next words came out in a roar: “Apparently we weren’t watching them closely enough!”

“Well, fine,” I said. “That’s why we have Aegis.”

“Is that so?” he said. “Tell us, Palovina, is Aegis equipped to block six thousand rockets all at once?”

“Some will almost certainly slip through,” she admitted.

“What are the rockets capable of?” I asked.

“How the hell should we know!” he bellowed.

“When will they arrive?”

A mousy councilor from one of the smaller and more specialized sectors offered the answer: “At this rate, they will reach us in less than three hours. Sol 3 moved stealthily, and we didn’t realize what they were doing until the rockets were well on their way.”

Berar buried his face in his meaty hands and groaned. “Meaning, we don’t have time to do anything but sit around and send empty prayers up to the empty heavens. Actually, they’re not empty—they’re infested with hostile aliens!”

Mind racing, I could think only of Nira and Astair. How could I get them to safety? Was anywhere safe? It usually took me half an hour just to get back home, let alone get my family up and out of the house. And where could we even go?

“What do we do?” one councilor asked.

I took a series of deep breaths to suppress my growing panic.

Stay calm. Be rational. Everyone needs you.

 “All we can do is warn the masses, then take cover,” I said as coolly as possible. “Go, now. We’ll reconvene after the carnage has settled.”

They all agreed, and we rushed out.

As I climbed into my ultralight, I called Nira.

“Hey baby,” she said sweetly, sleep still heavy in her voice.

“Get Astair,” I demanded, “and go to a room near the center of the house. Wedge into a corner and cover your heads. Stay away from windows.”

“What’s going on?” she said, now wide awake.

“Ask Soul. I’m heading back to you and need to focus. I’ll be there soon.”

As my ultralight approached the mainland, chaos greeted me—a flurry of running around and screaming and launching flights in every direction, this seemingly unified effort to make it impossible to get anywhere efficiently. I had to slow my momentum significantly or else risk crashing into one of the innumerable ultralights flitting around like an angry wasp nest, though far less coordinated.

The bombs sent by Sol 3 were brutal little things. Soon after I got off the phone with Nira, the Aegis lasers began firing rapidly, and a series of explosions lit up the night sky with all the noise and fury of gods at war. Then, the bombs started landing. The first to land rattled my bones like toothpicks and threw me forward, bloodying my nose on the control panel. My ultralight took a nosedive, and in my daze, I tugged on the control stick barely in time to soften the landing.

As I pried open the door, slid out of the smoking aircraft, and stumbled to my feet, a second bomb struck up ahead. There came a pulse of blinding light, and the shockwave threw me backward and knocked me unconscious.

#

Screams and sirens yanked me back to reality. I rolled to my hands and knees, groaning from the pain and effort. I wiped the blood off my face and staggered to my feet. People smeared with ash and blood scurried around me in every direction. Many were dead or unconscious. Others stumbled along looking as confused as I felt. A nauseating stench of flesh and smoke filled my burning nostrils, and my body seemed light years away from me. In that dreamlike state, I wasn’t exactly afraid. I just knew I needed to keep going.

I staggered forward, ignoring the pain and instability as well as possible, but the closer I got to my neighborhood, the harder I found it to keep going. The streets were crumpled like giant sheets of paper, mangled corpses littered the ground, and those still alive looked like walking corpses. I pushed my way through them, thinking only of my wife and son.

Then I heard a sound that tore through my spirit with a far deeper agony than the pain tearing through my throat and limbs. It was the sound of my wife wailing until her voice broke, then wailing again, and again, barely taking the time to breathe: “No-o-o! Astair! Astair! Wake up, baby! Astair! No, no, no!”

I spotted her amidst a pile of debris, caked in a thick layer of dust and blood, cradling a steaming bundle and rocking back and forth.

“Nira!” I cried and rushed forward.

There’s no way that’s Astair, I thought, fixating on the bundle in her arms. We’ll find him. He’ll be OK.

Nira turned and looked at me with animal desperation rippling across her tear-streaked face. Then the light went out of her eyes, and she collapsed. I reached her and tried to shake her awake, but it didn’t work. I thought she might be dead, but no, I would never let that happen; and where was Astair? He had to be here somewhere.

The medics tell me they found me cradling my unconscious wife and staring, blank and speechless, at the steaming bundle that had once been our son. They also tell me it was two days before I spoke a word to anyone.

#

When I arrived at the IPC meeting the following week, the entire council fell silent. I was the lone councilor to lose someone in the Sol 3 attack. The rest came out unscathed. Still, the grim reality weighed on everyone that more than ten million civilians across the world had died, and countless more hung by a thread, Nira among them.

No one had expected to see me at that meeting. I still had bandages wrapped around my head, for goodness’ sake, and they’d told me not to attend. “Take some time to mourn with Nira,” they said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

And of course, it’s conventional wisdom that you shouldn’t make big decisions while in the throes of grief. The week after losing my son, I suppose I broke that rule when I ordered the annihilation of an entire planet.

“Martial law,” I said dully. This fetched me some confused looks, so I elaborated: “Per IPC Code 5.43.111(b), the Chairman of the IPC has authority under exigent circumstances to unilaterally command our military. These are exigent circumstances, and I now exercise said martial authority and command that Dagger be sent to Sol 3 to terminate every single person on the planet, without exception. Effective immediately.”

“Aldin,” said Berar cautiously, “let’s take a moment and—”

“Don’t waste your breath,” I interjected. “I expect to hear tomorrow that Sol 3 has been dealt with.”

The legislators, while hastily drafting the IPC Code, hadn’t foreseen a moment like this and hadn’t built in any safeguards against it; so, the law was squarely on my side. In the future, that would need to be fixed. For now, there was nothing else to talk about.

Once everyone left, I trekked out slowly to the edge of the island overlooking the sea, dropped to my knees in the grass, and sobbed.

#

Dagger did its job flawlessly. Our fleet of carrier ships deposited the insectoid drones at the outer edges of Sol 3’s atmosphere, and Sol 3’s defenses were too busy shooting weak missiles at the ships themselves to concern themselves with what the ships carried. The cavemen with their clubs stood no chance against modern weaponry. Soul controlled the drones and led them within proximity of every person on the planet, and only once the drones were all positioned did he have them inject their payload. The entire population of Sol 3 simultaneously collapsed, and within minutes they had all stopped twitching. Quick and easy.

Soon after, we sent more drones to collect the billions of corpses on Sol 3 and deposit them into space. Voyagers soon began exploring the place, and then came colonies. Sol 3 is ours.

I finally figured out what my dreams meant, too. All those years, I had to live with killing my mother by my inaction. Then we mingled with Sol 3, and my dreams began to shift. I began shooting my mother, Berar became interchangeable with my father, and I worried that my mother would reach my family. My subconscious seemed to understand that Sol 3 may have been the weaker planet and we the stronger, but if I didn’t act, Sol 3 could still hurt someone. This whole time, I thought I needed to protect Sol 3 and never stopped to consider that I might be failing to protect someone else by my inaction—again. And yet, my subconscious was there, warning me the whole time. I wish the messaging had been clearer, but I guess that’s what Berar was for. He certainly wasn’t unclear, and neither was Soul. My grade-school son even got it. How many warnings did I need?

Well, at any rate, now I’ve done it. Mom pulled a gun on Dad, and Dad finished her. Sol 3 pulled a gun on me, and I finished her. There you go, Dad—I suppose I’m your son after all. I took your legacy and made it intergalactic. If you were proud before, you should really be proud now.

#

A few years after the attack, I stepped down from my post at the IPC and joined the colonies on Sol 3. Nira had developed chronic vision problems, and cancer kept cropping up, meaning brutal medication and frequently sour moods. Nothing like my Nira. She also wasn’t too happy about the mass murder I committed, but she did give me some grace on that. Still, she just wasn’t the same woman, and I couldn’t give her what she needed anymore. Or maybe I never had. We drifted apart, and eventually she left. Seeing her walk out the door with tears on her face and shrieking something like “You just don’t see me!” probably should have hurt more, but my numb stupor, aided by intoxication, thankfully saved me from any real pain.

So, I figured I would head to Sol 3 and live the dream that Astair never got to, farming and simplicity and such. Every day, I wake up on an alien planet, watch an alien sunrise, and ache for those I’ve lost. I also ache for all the innocent aliens I stole this place from. What was I thinking, rushing straight to such barbarism, inflicting my pain upon the whole planet? To be fair, I wasn’t in my right mind, but I still have to live with what I’ve done. The knowledge of it is like a prison I can never leave.

Once, I briefly resolved to stop drinking, but the clearing of my mind quickly brought all my guilt to the foreground. I wondered for a moment if I should return home and try to repair things with Nira, but when I asked Soul what he thought, he told me she’d remarried and had a new family. That killed my sobriety, but it was frail anyway. Happy ending for Nira, I suppose. I wish I could tell her how sorry I am.

Now that I know a bit more about Sol 3, I do have to admit that I can’t help but find the whole ordeal almost comical. The thing is, Sol 3’s inhabitants had a knack for nicknaming things just like we do. For instance, they named the planet nearest their sun “Mercury” and the next one “Venus,” apparently after their mythical gods. Their planet is third from the sun, hence “Sol 3.” But the nickname they gave their planet was “Mother Earth.” I laughed when I learned that—a bitter, bitter laugh.

Alright, Mother Earth, I thought. I’ll be your new son. Be warned, though—I’m bad news to those I love. But hey, who knows? Maybe it’ll all work out this time.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.