The other day, as I was walking along a pretty country lane, bordered by cornfields, a UFO landed not two minutes walk away. The breeze was light and the air was warm, the vibrant blue exuded a comforting presence. Soon enough, a small Martian came plodding down the road to meet me. Pleasant little chap he was, very polite and very well spoken. Curious stinger protruding from his chin.
"Hello there." He started, in a charming, slightly whimsical voice.
"I have travelled thousands of light years to find out all about humanity. Tell me everything you know." Naturally, I was a tad surprised by these events. This was usually a very quiet road. However, being the open fellow I am, I played along like any good sport should, and told him everything I knew.
"Well," I started.
"The human race has existed in its current form for thousands of years. We are carbon based creatures, composed mainly of proteins. Our genetic makeup is composed of DNA-'
"Sorry, one second." the little guy interrupted. He held out a slightly webbed hand and placed it on my shoulder. I learnt later that this enabled him to record everything I was saying. Dinky little device.
"Pray continue" he ventured gently, if a little archaically. Either way, I carried on.
"Composed of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. We occupy this world, which we call Earth, and have touched every corner of it. We split the world up into 7 huge areas of land, called continents-"
"Why did you do that?" My Martian friend interjected. I thought for a moment.
"A guess we needed a way to break down the world, make it more understandable, make it smaller. The continents were then broken down into countries, smaller portions of land, and these too were broken up, into states and counties and provinces." I paused for a moment to think. Perhaps my alien counterpart took this as he doing something wrong, some kind of bewildering faux pas on his account, for he took on an apologetic tone as he asked.
"Is something wrong? Can I help?" I smiled at his warm hospitality, but felt slightly embarrassed. He was the guest on our planet, and he was being a better host than I. I hadn't even offered him a beverage.
"No, nothing's wrong." I reassured him.
"It's just rather hard to describe all of humanity when put on the spot." The Martian nodded humbly, but I rather think he didn't quite understand my meaning. I invited him to take a seat on the short grass on the road verge. It wasn't an easy manoeuvre, his hand on my shoulder, my taller and less agile bulk, but we managed. Having composed myself, I carried on with the tale of Us.
"Humanity really got going when the first civilisation emerged. There is dispute over when this happened, but one of the oldest is undoubtedly the Mesopotamians. Then came the great civilisations, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome. In no particular order, the Persians, Mayans, Incas, all came along, and died away again."
"Why did they fall?" Asked my intrigued audience. It was a hard question.
"There were many reasons, different for all civilisations. Some were overrun, some fell from corruption and greed, others simply faded away into nothingness. Nothing lasts forever." I was pleased to see the Martian in awe of these seemingly wise words.
"The invention of language was a huge milestone in humanity. The Ancient Egyptians gave us the hieroglyphics, Latin predominated most of Ancient Greece and Rome, and nearly all of Europe's languages are a form of the dead language. Most countries have their own language, though the three most spoken are Mandarin, Spanish and English."
"Hold up a second," entered my bemused friend. All of this interrupting was starting to grate on me a little.
"Why would each country need its own language?" I considered.
"I suppose, as a country evolves, it wants it's own identity. It has it's own culture, cuisine, socio-political idiosyncrasies, why not it's own language?" The alien stared at me wide-eyed, a little taken aback by the rhetorical nature of my question.
"But you said that countries were just ways to split up the world, make it more understandable. Why would they need their own- he wrangled with the next word for a while- culture." I had to slightly readjust my definition of a country to cope with this.
"Well, a country is more than just a piece of land. It's home for the population. That piece of land is probably something they've fought for, something they feel entitled to. They want to celebrate owning that piece of land, and they celebrate with pride, what we call patriotism. They also celebrate by creating their own culture, behaving and communicating in their own special way, a slight variation from the rest of the world." The alien wasn't understanding, I could see it on his face.
"What is this, fighting, you speak of?" Now it was my turn to feel amusedly shocked.
"You've never heard of fighting!? You know, war, sparring, violence, hurting, killing."
"Yes yes of course." Replied the little green man who wasn't.
"We have had many a duel with the barbarous comsplaydabouts in years gone by, but I was under the impression that the wars you are referring to occurred on an intraspecific level, as in between your own species."
"You are correct" I replied hastily. I continued.
"Are you saying that you've never fought between yourselves as a species?" The Martian chuckled.
"Why of course not! Wherever would be the logic in that?" I must admit, my cheeks flushed slightly with the indignation of it. Who was he to question Us? I answered, rather brusquely.
"If we didn't fight, we would die. This world isn't a peaceful place." The Martian looked shocked.
"Why, this is unbelievable! Surely, if none of you fought each other, none of you could kill each other?" This suggestion was idiotic.
"That's the talk of a pacifist," I pointed out. I made clear it was
"Irrelevant talk. We don't live in a world where that is possible. If those who could fight chose not to, those who wanted to fight would quickly overrun the rest. So you see, we must fight to survive." The Martian shook his head.
"I'm afraid I still don't understand. Why would those in the same species want to fight? Don't you see how counter-productive that is to your existence as a species? You are blessed with a hospitable planet in an otherwise desolate and unforgiving cosmos. Why would you fight amongst yourselves." Now I was starting to lose my temper awfully, a heat was rising from within.
"Because that's what we do! That's what the human race does best! We insist on bickering and in-fighting. We do it for power! For wealth! For position! We do it because it is all we know. And we do it because we must. During The First World War, we encountered suffering on a world scale. It was all due to us fighting amongst ourselves. Why did it start, I hear you ask. We don't know! Not really. Not definitively. The causes are murky and grey. Huge loss, massive grievance. And it is known as the Great War. Not the Big War, not the Awful War, not the Never-Again War, the Great War. I think that shows you just who we are, just what humanity is." The Martian looked horrified. He took his hand off my shoulder and rose.
"You have taught me more than I could ever know, but now I must go." Without a word, he vanished into one of the nearby cornfields, his small stature lost in the swaying, golden crop.
Like an illness, he took away the idea of war, intraspecific war. He explained to the species elders, and a whole new branch of research was opened to try and explain the phenomenon. That was last Tuesday. I haven't heard from my Martian friend since, I hope he's okay.
But the truth is, the Martian friend is no more. The revelation that a species could fight within itself opened up huge new possibilities. The population of Homoragone quickly realised that they could benefit from it. Zacharim saw that if he killed beelgoroff, he could get his home rent free (or the Martians equivalent of). The pursuit of new found lust and power quickly overran the Martian's home world. The virus spread quickly, more quickly than anything else. The virus of war. Soon, an arms race began, the race to create more and more sophisticated weaponry, turned on one another without remorse or thought. The technology of the Martians far surpassed our own, and for that they paid the price. Within seven days, a nuclear warhead like device had been created. To the Martians this was nothing, and they failed to realise the impact it would have. Two duelling families set off seventy two of these devices simultaneously.
The explosions ripped apart the Martian's world, which was only three quarters the size of Earth, but with a population of near ten billion Martians.
The illness which humanity had sent wiped out an entire civilisation. The Martians weren't ready for that huge discovery, and it sent them on an ever downward spiral. Humanity is heading down the same spiral, albeit on a more winding route. You see, we are in fact very talented at intraspecific fighting. We know when to attack, and when to defend to a great degree of accuracy. But we are descending. Descending further and further into the pit of blood and death. We are losing. Humanity is losing. So long as war continues, we will continue to lose. But we cannot see that. We are blinded by the lust for revenge and blood. Stupid humanity. Stupid Us.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hi! This is only my third review so don't judge too hard, haha.
First off this story really made me think, which is a good thing! I love how you played with the idea that humanity is tearing itself apart. Its something I think of a lot, especially in today's world its definitely a looming threat.
There were some grammatical issues I found in the first paragraph with a run on and such. Another thing is that it was sometimes hard to tell who was talking. They both sounded very similar and the dialogue switched very quickly.
"'Yes yes of course.' Replied the little green man who wasn't."
To me this sentence sounded very awkward and bumpy. This is all nit-picky i know, but there should have been a comma between the both of the yeses. And I know what you were trying to say with "the little green man who wasn't." It simply sounded very strange. Maybe say something like his face was still confused to suggest he still didn't get it. Sometimes it's better to suggest then to upright "tell". For example, "His face was ugly." vs. "His face looked as if it were bashed in with a hammer and set aflame."
Overall I would suggest using more detail/describing words. I really liked the idea and how you went through with proving the point. It was very unique.
Good job!
Hey there! I like your username.
When I first opened this up, I was a little doubtful because I realized an alien would be a deuteragonist and science fiction isn't really my thing. However, I read on as I realized that this was not really a sci-fi story, but rather a commentary on a big crisis that humanity currently faces. And I think that is really interesting.
I commend you highly for the amazing creativity that is present here. It's a simple execution of a simple idea that I am sure has been done many times, but the execution is formidable. You seem to have planned out well and in a short while you have developed the personalities of two characters. I really enjoyed the fact that the protagonist is never given a name and yet there is a character arc that has an obvious beginning and end. I think that the protagonist is, in fact, an embodiment of all humanity or am I mistaken? Their personality is generally quite parallel with typical human strengths and weaknesses. I enjoyed how you employed them for the purposes of an allegory.
Another thing that I was pleased with was the fact that although you included lots of facts, it never really seemed out of place or awkward within the dialogue. Sometimes, people write and it feels like an information overload, but I never felt that. Everything was quite measured.
However, there are one or two things that I would like to draw your attention to, so that your story can be even more influential. One of these things is grammar within dialogue. Sometimes this can be a challenging thing to understand, but a line of dialogue can be part of a sentence. For example:
There is comma after the second 'bark' because the sentence isn't finished. If I placed a period in place of the comma, that would be grammatically incorrect as "Said the dog" on its own doesn't make a whole lot of sense because we don't know what he said. For more information on this topic, please check out [url]this article[/url].
Also, take note of possessive articles. The following is a line from your story:
Here, 'it' refers to a country and therefore it is possessive of its identity, culture, cuisine, etc. Here, you have used 'it's', which is actually a contraction of 'it is'. Be careful of that!
Lastly, I'd like to pause briefly on the subject of clarity. Sometimes, I found myself quite confused when reading this because you would have a line of dialogue and then the other character's reaction, which made it seem like they had said the line when it fact it was the other character who had said it. An example of this:
I realized later that the Martian had actually said this when I initially thought it was the human. Be mindful of how you form paragraphs and line breaks. You need to identify the speaker.
Overall, I quite enjoyed this and I think that with a few tweaks this could be quite a strong piece. You have an important message to deliver and I definitely think that you're on the right track! Let me know if you have any questions, etc.
Best of luck!
Lav