Progress and Civilisation, despite themselves.
Shadows slowly fade.
Body falters, bathed in fear.
Mind’s flame
burning low.
My stay on this beautiful blue-green planet is a pleasant surprise.
I shall make the best of it - tourist-style for enjoyment and as lay social anthropologist for recreation.
Resident in a stable, developed region of Earth termed "western democracy", using adopted styles and phraseology of social peers (which I shall use in these letters home), I participate in what they call ‘the workforce’, selling effort for income, possess unremarkable identity - effectively invisible to all but 20 souls of this rapidly growing 6.5 billion.
Thirty-two new-born each ten seconds!
This body is mediocre at 57% of 100-year life span [rotation period typical G yellow dwarf inner planet], brain function perhaps slightly above median - 44% exceed it on processing speed though it downs 93 percentile dual-lobe integrated. My ’self’ cohabits the non-verbal hemisphere while the genial, amicable host blissfully directs his language and identity.
I might dwell another time on mental hosting refinements. But for now, these are an unusual bi-cameral species whose leap to conscious thought was still-born, or at least crippled at birth. They labour under a staggering dysfunction, achieving an iota of their capacity. Still, impressive.
Of several hundred distinct languages and thousands of dialects, several predominate and I use the most common of science, communication and commerce.
Earth endures turbulent times (when has it not?) on the cusp of a technology watershed. And if they are not careful, a polar watershed.
A large, conservative rear-guard resists change, labelling the developing frontier ‘infidel’ or ‘devil worship’ while being endlessly tempted and eroded by its lure, and plundered by its powerful ‘agents’.
Recorded history confirms turbulence normal for this DNA series. Since life began here, as predictable as the physics they believe in, forces of man - like those of nature - negotiate, dominate, disintegrate. Peoples grow and perish, nations bloom and die - and the very continents supporting them drift, separate and wash into the immense salty blue oceans coating most of the globe.
Sadly, such DNA firmware engenders universal paranoia; trust found fragile from family to federation. Only a vigorous, prolific intellect saves most from a life of abject horror - and the globe from cataclysm. Inevitably schizophrenia, curiously labelled disease, is ‘controlled’ by medication. Fortunately their genius and imagination are not!
Wise Teachers, I am truly privileged to visit Earth at this time. My stay will be time enough to witness the final outcome of civilization - which I believe can be predicted now. Their time is nigh, and, headlong on their course, will soon collide with Omega’s potency.
They seem unmindful of how toxic the well from which they slake their intellectual thirst.
Evolution as always will have its way, harnessed by their ‘free will’ of course; the sequel fervently anticipated!
For my Wise and Generous Mentors, to creatures of the Blue Planet
With Respect and Love, Your Trusting Protégé