“There is intelligence,” a woman’s voice replied, and Bower could see her vague outline next to his.
Bower went to move forward, but her feet wouldn’t respond, leaving her stranded, bathed in the brilliant, white light. It wasn’t that she couldn’t move, but that her strength faltered and she found herself shaking.
“Where there is intelligence,” the woman continued, “there is hope.”
“They are mindless,” the male voice replied. “They destroy habitat, drive species to extinction.”
“But there is reason,” the woman protested.
“Reason enslaved by instinct,” the man said.
Bower turned, following them as they walked around her and Elvis, staying in the shadows.
“Who are they?” Elvis asked.
Bower was silent.
The woman replied coldly, saying, “We… are you.”
As she stepped forward into the light, Bower got her first good look at this strange woman. She was well over six feet tall and dressed in a long, flowing garment accentuating her height. Light played on her silky, white dress, giving off the subtle hues of the rainbow. Her arms were thin, almost anemic, while her skin appeared jaundiced. Her long straight hair was jet black in stark contrast to her soft features, while her eyes were a soft brown.
“I don’t understand,” Elvis said. Even he looked short compared to her.
Bower stood a mere five foot six inches and felt dwarfed by the thin woman.
The man stepped into the light beside her, easily seven feet in height, but equally as thin.
The woman spoke again, saying, “Based on our observation of naturally selective and sexually selective pressures within your species, and taking into account previous rates of genetic mutation, we are your future. Within fifty thousand stellar orbits, your species will approximate this state.”
Bower was stunned. She was speechless. Elvis, though, seemed quick to realize there was something cryptic and implicit in their appearance. He was astute, asking, “What is it you mean to do?”
The man ignored him, saying, “We have come many times before, sampling your world, observing progress.”
“Before?” Bower asked. “When?”
The woman answered. “By your reckoning, this would be measured with a frequency of millions of orbits. But never before have we seen such domination of the biosphere by a single species. You number in excess of seven billion. Each year, your births outweigh deaths by seventy million, causing your ranks to swell even further. Such increase is not sustainable, not without consequence. And so, you have achieved a hundred times the biomass of any large animal species we have previously encountered.”
The man’s voice was harsh, as though he were speaking out of bitterness.
“You have humbled nature. You have removed the natural checks on growth, but you have done so with reckless abandon, without regard for your planet and the diversity of life around you. You have lost sight of your place in nature.”
“So you’re going to interfere,” Bower said, piecing the threads of logic together.
She moved closer to Elvis. He responded, taking her hand in his. There was something eerie about their encounter with these tall humanoids, something surreal. Touch grounded her to reality. It was silly really, and yet both of them seemed to relish the touch of each other’s hand.
“We seek to restore balance,” the mysterious man replied.
“How?” Elvis asked. It was a good question, but Bower figured she already knew the answer inherent in this prophetic vision. She let go of Elvis and stepped forward within the light. Reaching out, she touched at the tall man standing before her. As she expected, her hand passed harmlessly through his ethereal image.
“We will not hurt you,” the woman said. “We mean only to remove the bias.”
“You’re going to destroy mankind,” Elvis said.
“Not destroy,” the woman responded. “Enhance.”
“But don’t you see?” Bower protested. “This is precisely what they were afraid of, this is why they lashed out at you. If you do this, you’re vindicating their madness.”
The two humanoids were silent.
“I don’t understand,” Elvis said, turning to Bower. “What are they going to do?”
“They’re not going to wipe out humanity,” Bower replied. “They’re going to change us, to transform us into this.”
“But why?” Elvis asked. “What would that accomplish?”
The woman replied, “Because the root of your irrational behavior is instinctive, inherited over thousands of generations. We will remove the source of your fear, your predication to violence, your irrational tendencies. We will lift the veil from your eyes.”
Bower understood. She looked at Elvis as she said, “They mean to fast-forward Homo sapiens to a time where these primal urges, these absolutist tendencies have mellowed.”
“Is that not what your religions ask of you?” the woman asked. “Peace on Earth?”
“He wouldn’t understand,” the man added, scorn carrying in his voice. “He is a warrior, a man of war, nothing but a brute beast.”
Elvis flinched, and Bower pulled on his arm, preventing him from stepping forward.
“Who the hell are you to sit in judgment of us?” Elvis cried, the veins in his neck standing out.
“Who are you?” the man asked in reply, raising his eyebrows. “Who gave you the right to abuse the evolutionary pedigree of almost four thousand million revolutions around this star? Who gave you the right to systematically decimate a planetary life system? You plunder and squander this planet for your own selfish ends with no regard for life.”
“You are stewards,” the woman continued in a notably calmer voice. “That is all. You are passing through, not staying. Your lives are fleeting. Your concern should be to extend the life of your planet into the future, not to exploit all you can now.”
“How long do you think Earth will survive under your reign?” the man asked. “Honestly? In the last hundred orbits, you’ve strip-mined the planet, tearing down forests, decimating ocean stocks, polluting the land and sea. How far will you go? How long will you persist at the expense of life? Another one or two hundred orbits? And then what? Then you’ll leave this planet a husk, an empty shell.”
“But you don’t know that,” Bower protested. “You don’t know where we will be in two hundred years. You’re assuming we won’t change, but you’re wrong.
“If you’ve visited our planet several times over millions of years then you must have seen tremendous change, not just in the species that roam Earth but in the very shape and position of the continents, the ice ages and dry spells. You must know that life is not static.”
Bower was driving her mind to grasp their perspective, to see her world from their point of view and hopefully find a weakness in their argument.
“Two hundred orbits is nothing,” she suggested. “For an interstellar species that catalogs worlds over millions of our years, a mere two hundred years is a blip on the radar. What if you’d turned up two hundred years ago? What if you’d seen us when horses pulled our farmer’s carts to the markets and trading ships sailed with the wind? What would your estimation of us have been then? Would you have drawn the same conclusion?”
Neither of the apparitions offered a reply.
“If you would not have condemned us then, how can you judge us now when you know not what will become of us? You might be able to simulate our evolution, but you cannot simulate our culture, our growth, our learning.”
“We will save you from yourselves,” the man said.
“You don’t even know if your intervention will work!” Bower protested. “By intervening, you could upset the balance and make things worse.”
“We won’t let you do this,” Elvis said, his lips drawn tight.