It hadn’t been a false alarm this time, she figured. The war had really come, and it had come to Durham.
Amanda wore the same scrubs as before, but the vinyl tiles and fluorescent lights of Duke Cancer Center were gone. The entire ward had vanished in a flash and was replaced by an even white glow in all directions. And silence.
It wasn’t what she’d expected.
She’d seen a death every week or so at the hospital, and often the light left the eyes of patients far younger than her. She expected the destination to be oblivion. Not to be surrounded by some kind of warm, dry cloud. Not to be…
Amanda started pacing. She heard her own breath and her own heartbeat, but the hard, white floor somehow erased the sound of her footsteps.
She was here, but where were the kids?
Last she remembered, the oncology ward was still around a third full. Mainly with kids too sick to move down to the shelter, but also with some parents. Parents who hadn’t yet come to grips with the fact that, war or no war, they may soon have to go on living without their little one. Amanda was one of the docs who stayed upstairs to keep the ward running, again.
“You don’t have to keep volunteering to stay up here,” the senior attending physician had told her, “not every time.”
“It’s fine. It’s really fine,” Amanda had replied instinctively. She’d grown exhausted trying to keep up with the week-by-week escalations and de-escalations and had long since tuned it all out.
With still-muted footsteps, Amanda walked forward and forward through the whiteness. In a straight line? Could she even know? The very moment she asked herself this, she bumped into an invisibly white object about waist high.
It felt like a chair. Amanda took a seat.
Hello from the other side, she thought and shook her head. What was more unbelievable: that nuclear war was what sent her to this place, or that, against all odds, this place existed at all?
There was a hiss.
Amanda snapped her head to the left and saw a brightly-glowing orb appear against the dimmer white background. And out of that glow crawled a dark red octopus, a slimy creature over a meter tall. Amanda squinted in confusion, but then she realized: in this war between the superpowers, a war between humans, humans would not be the only victims.
“Hi, I’m Amanda. I’m not sure whether you know of humans or of war, but I’m sorry if you were –”
There was another hiss.
Amanda turned around in her chair to see an obese-looking lizard waddle in through a second glowing orb. Its lumpy dark green body contrasted its bulging blood red eyes, hands, and belly. It approached until settling in place. The way it watched Amanda made her skin crawl.
She knew that big octopuses lived down there, you know, in the depths, but she wasn’t sure where such a giant, hideous lizard could be found. Certainly not in North Carolina. Maybe not even in the present day.
What if this weren’t a heaven at all? But rather a holding area, a holding area for creatures in some chain of reincarnation? Could the octopus be the body she was headed into next? And the lizard be a body she had once lived within, eons ago?
There were two more hisses, out past the octopus and lizard.
Beyond the octopus entered a shining angel. It was a long lavender dragonfly with four elegant wings swept back. Its compound eyes glittered in all directions like indigo disco balls.
Beyond the lizard entered a demon of jet black. It looked like a giant armored teardrop, and it clacked its way to a position between the lizard and dragonfly. It was too wide and flat to be a centipede or millipede. Amanda racked her brain for where she had seen that demon before, something very ancient:
A trilobite.
The white realm was silent. Amanda looked around and saw the five beings had arranged into a pentagon: the trilobite, the dragonfly, the lizard, the octopus, and herself.
Could this be some sort of bizarre afterlife tribunal? One that would judge her words and deeds during her time on Earth? Amanda was running out of guesses.
Suddenly, the trilobite commanded to her with unmistakable authority:
“Speak.”
Amanda hesitated… “Am I… dead?”
“No.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you are not dead.”
“Then what is this place? And who are all of you?”
“WE ARE THE EARTH COUNCIL,” boomed all five members of the newly-formed pentagon, including Amanda herself.
Amanda touched her throat in shock. Okay, she hadn’t said that. Okay, okay, but she definitely said that.
The trilobite elaborated:
“The Earth Council is a body of representatives, one from each civilization born on planet Earth, including your own. For the past 500 million years, the Council has–”
“Wait – am I here to represent every human being? Excuse me, how did that happen?”
“Perhaps the octopus can answer that,” the trilobite replied.
Amanda turned to face the dark red octopus to her left.
“You chose me? Why me?”
“I chose you, human, because you are…” The octopus pointed a single trembling tentacle at Amanda. “In my mind, you represent what the human race could have become. I wanted the other members of the Council to see just how much will be lost. For them to see how much we all will lose when your kind destroys itself. And I wanted to see it, too.”
Amanda’s stomach dropped, and she looked down to avoid their gaze.
These creatures knew about our war, she thought, and they knew nobody would survive it. Or at least, they thought they knew. Didn’t they realize how resilient people were? She had seen plenty of kids, whose thighs you could grip in one hand, fight off the impossible.
A large, sky-blue disk appeared out of nowhere to meet Amanda’s downward stare. It looked like the Earth Council suddenly got a big, round meeting table. A slim black wedge on the table broke the blue sky in two. It extended from the trilobite, crossed the middle of the table, and pointed to Amanda. At the tip of the black wedge was a tiny missile, the first shot of humanity’s final war. Its flames slowly licked the black smoke it left behind.
“My kind was once so much like yours,” the octopus continued, staring not at Amanda but at the missile crawling towards her. “We were the most recent Earthlings to leave for the stars. But before we did, we made some selfish and reckless mistakes, and I am so, so sorry.
“If we had just taken the time, taken the time to break up the big uranium deposits and dilute them evenly in the oceans, it would have been much harder for your kind to –”
“Oh, give it a rest, Squishy!” said the lizard. “Do you really think those apes wouldn’t have found another way to kill themselves? Seriously, get over yourself!”
Amanda stared with horror into the lizard’s blood red eyes.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Everyone I love is about to be wiped out, and you’re sitting there advertising how little you care!”
“Oh, you get over yourself, too, Hairball. Ninety-nine percent of animals in Earth’s history have gone extinct, and you apes are just one more. And by the way, your little war is gonna drag a whole bunch of other creatures down with –”
“Enough! They are not just one more!” the lavender dragonfly snapped. The Council fell silent as the dragonfly turned to face Amanda.
“I know, human, that the outlook for your kind is bleak. No, humankind will likely not survive its coming war. My only question, human – Amanda, if I may – is… why?”
The dragonfly was cut off. Not by the opening hiss of another orb, not by some other interrupting member of the Council, but by its own tears. Back on Earth, Amanda never would have guessed that dragonflies could cry. Angelic dragonflies could, apparently. And Amanda joined in. Beyond the tears, the rest of the dragonfly’s question still lingered, but Amanda already knew it well enough.
“Why throw it all away? You humans are so noble and remarkable in so many ways. I’ve watched the precious bond a newborn human makes with her mother. I’ve seen the ability of each human to develop a unique identity at such a young age. I’ve watched the face-to-face lovemaking of lifelong human partners. I’ve seen the selfless contributions of infertile human elders to the greater good. And I’ve watched humans devote their lives to help strangers’ children cling to life. What conflict renders all of that worth wiping out? Why?”
The dragonfly wept. The octopus, lizard, and trilobite bowed their heads and stared down at the sky-blue tabletop. They knew that the dragonfly’s response to the present human and her race was the appropriate one. The only appropriate one.
And Amanda wept. How was she to explain the stupidity of human war? Of brothers killing brothers killing children killing grandchildren, all the way to extermination? The missile-tipped black wedge on the tabletop was a finger. A pointed finger blaming her, the human, for the destruction of one of the most incredible species Earth had ever known: her own.
Amanda sat in the white realm with the Earth Council. This was her chance. Her chance to stop the war from wiping everyone out. Even if all of Durham or even the whole country were gone, there was still so much worth saving.
“Can you, the Earth Council, or any of you, please save us?”
“SAVE YOU?!” boomed all five members of the pentagon, including Amanda herself.
“I haven’t yet gotten to explain the Earth Council,” said the trilobite, “the organization that has already ‘saved you’ more times than you can possibly imagine.
“Our mission is and has always been to keep Earth free from outside interference so that it can evolve naturally, as a wild planet. There are countless looters and colonizers in the galaxy who would do Earth harm, and ever since my ancestors founded the Earth Council 500 million years ago, the Council has defended its home planet against those threats.
“As a matter of policy, the Council will admit any Earth-born civilization that cleans up after whatever mess it made on Earth and attains good standing in the galactic community. This has been accomplished three times before, by exceptional species of dragonfly, lizard, and octopus.
“Even more central to our philosophy is our willingness to let the human race, or any other species, self-destruct as part of Earth’s natural progression as a wild planet. To interfere otherwise would be to commit the very offense we seek to prevent.
“I know it may be of little comfort to you, human, but civilization suicides are rare in general and have never happened on Earth before. However, the Earth Council can interpret humanity’s impending war in only one way:
“It is your will as a species to die.”
Amanda scanned the eyes of the Earth Council one last time. Their consensus was unwavering.
The octopus looked at her guiltily, as if its ancestors’ mistakes a hundred million years ago had somehow set humanity up for failure. The lizard stared emptily with perhaps a pinch of pity. The dragonfly had already deposited a teardrop on all thousand panes of its compound eyes. And the vision pits of the trilobite reminded Amanda all too potently of the darkness to come.
Amanda rested her sights on the sky-blue tabletop. The smoky black finger was a little bit longer now. Still pointed at her.
Love it!! Reminds me of The Egg and Armada by Ernest Cline. I want to know what happens next!