One Reason

By Kevin J. Phyland

I'm sitting in a park. It's quiet and I'm writing in my journal about how lucky I feel to have been allowed into this community. The diary I hope will survive. 

The aliens come up to me. Curious, as always. “What was your life like?” they ask. I tell them the same things. It was hard. A lot of us died. 

Until you understood us. 

They nod their heads and walk away...but some look over their shoulders and I see what passes for their lips moving. Talking about me and possible motives for me being here. 

Why they kept me is a mystery. As far as I know I'm the last human left. The aliens I speak to are as mystified as I am. They all just shake their heads and wonder unfathomable thoughts. 

Randomness seems to be a rather uncomfortable term for me. They chose me randomly. Just DNA. They said it was random. 

They wanted an ageing human. They wanted a product of the planet. Basically, they wanted an end product. What is it like to be a certain age. And they wanted someone who could explain things to them. Like a doctor.

Lucky me.

I saw the others. The children. The adolescents. The young adults. But they chose me. Weird beyond sanity. 

I offered my existence for the younger ones. They refused. They are gone...and nobody will really know if I offered or not. 

Then they told me. They didn't actually age. They rebirthed every so often. Every century or so. They had no idea of why we aged and died. 

Their obscure interest was how we tried to deal with the impending concept of permanent non-existence. It must have existed for them aeons ago before they developed the technology. But it had become so wrapped in mysticism that it was beyond memory or experience. Both of our times were running out to understand it.

Not their time. Mine.

Apoptosis it's called. Cell death. The telomeres slowly shortening until cell reproduction is so haphazard as to be random.

They would rush on...living and faux-dying...for endless periods of time. And yet they still wanted me to tell them something. 

They never understood us. How could they? If the worst problem you could ever have was being rebirthed with all your pre-existing memories...then your problems seem minor to mine. 

I was doomed to live until my actual organs could no longer be fixed. My eyesight was already shot. I had to sit down to pee. They just watched. You get used to it after a while. 

They knew I was eventually going to die. They needed their abstruse information faster than a child would give them. 

So I told them. 

I was about 80 years old by Earth reckoning. They had kept me alive for nearly 30 years. Most of my organs had been dissolute by the time they took me. It was then that I figured out why they hadn't taken children or fit adolescents. They wanted to watch the end. 

My arthritic fingers couldn't do the bird...but two fingers worked for a moment. Fuck it. Peace or screw you. I had asked just one question. “Why do you care?” 

Yet another mass conversation. Heads bobbing. Translations missed. In my head I thought I heard their final words to me. “Because we can't do what you are about to do.” 

And at that moment I most fervently wished that they could.

About the Author

Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.

Retired now from teaching he amuses himself by reading, writing, following his love of weather and correcting people on the internet.

He’s been writing since his teens and hopes he will one day get it right.

He can be found on twitter @KevinPhyland where he goes by the handle of CaptainZero and his work is around the place if you search using google or use the antisf.com.au archive.