Only Human

by Sylvain Neuvel

  —That is not the Ekt way.

  —It could be.

  —…We understand that our presence here is causing fear and confusion, and we won’t stay any more than we have to. We have given specific instructions to one of your peope, Drrr-

  —Doctor. Dr. means doctor.

  —Doctor Rose Frankyin. She wiy be our representative on Terra. Is there more?

  —No. This is it. I can take care of the rest.

  —I hope I do not make a bad bad mistake.

  —You’ll do great. I can have our people set up a microphone if you want to send that message from here.

  —I mean that I hope using your words is not a mistake. I can read your message from one of the giants. But I would yike to see Vincent before we go.

  —He’s inside Themis. Can you find her?

  —I can. Do I bring her here?

  —Yes. There is another robot with her. Bring them both here if you can. Eva is in there.

  —Rose Frankyin.

  —Yes?

  —I wiy use your words even if I do not agree with them.

  —Thank you.

  —I have one request.

  —The whole planet just surrendered to you. I’m pretty sure you can get anything you want.

  —Vincent said there are things that yive in the sky on Terra.

  —Things in the sky…Birds?

  —Yes. If you can find one, I would very much want to see a…bird before I go.

  —Would a pigeon—Never mind. You don’t know what that is. Yes, there are birds across the street. I’ll take you. You can even feed them if you want.

  —Thank you, Rose Frankyin. Do you have what you promised us?

  —Yes. I do.

  FILE NO. 2200

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN DR. ROSE FRANKLIN AND VINCENT COUTURE

  Location: United Nations Headquarters, New York, New York

  —What the hell just happened, Rose? One minute, I’m with Eva in North Korea, then some giant robot appears right next to us. Next thing I know, Themis and Lapetus are in the parking lot in front of the old EDC hangar. Now Enatast is here? I just heard his speech on TV.

  —It’s a long story, Vincent.

  —Then you better start talking. Did he say: “Resistance is futile”?

  —No, he did not.

  —Sure sounded like it. His English is getting good, though.

  —I helped with his speech a little.

  —You did? Did you do this? Did you get the Ekt to come here?

  —I didn’t know what else to do, Vincent.

  —What did you do?

  —I…called them?

  —With what?

  —The…I don’t know what it’s called. The thing they used on me, to bring me back after I died. It’s also used for communication. I sent them a message about two weeks ago. I didn’t know if they received it. I guess they did.

  —What was the message? Please invade us?

  —Not in so many words. I told them we—our people—were hurting, and hurting each other. I told them we had lost sight of our identity and we were…terrified, and lost. That discovering we were related to them robbed us of our past and destroyed our future. That we were killing each other trying to cling to an outdated notion of humanity. I told them it was their fault. All of it. Whether they want to admit it or not, they are responsible. They came here thousands of years ago, and they changed us. They made us into something different. They tried to fix it and killed millions of us instead, scared us into insanity. They did that. I told them they couldn’t simply wash their hands of it.

  —Are you…? Rose! Your alien friend, didn’t he tell you—maybe it wasn’t you, our nameless friend, whatever—that the Ekt would just…wipe us out? Isn’t that what he said? They’d send us into oblivion and let us evolve from scratch all over again if they thought…

  —He was wrong.

  —Oh, well, if he was wrong. Sorry I even mentioned it. There I was thinking we risked total annihilation.

  —Think about it, Vincent. They killed a few million of us, and that sent their world into a civil war. Their people—half of them anyway—see us as…I don’t know…cousins. We’re related to them. What do you think would happen if they killed all of us? Anyway, they didn’t.

  —You didn’t care.

  —I thought it was worth…Look. We needed help. We…It was their mistake. We couldn’t fix this. We don’t have what it takes. We just don’t. They could do it. They could make things right.

  —By force?

  —I try to convince myself it’s something else. Supervision? We’re children, Vincent. We’re all children. We were thrown into a grown-up world before our time. I thought…I thought we needed some adults to show us right from wrong.

  —Yeah, that makes sense, maybe. It sounded a bit like bullshit when you said it, though.

  —What do you want me to say, Vincent? That I believe in the human spirit? In our innate ability to face even the most insurmountable odds? I wish that were true, Vincent. I wish.

  —We could have done more.

  —Who? You and I? Eva? We’re not superheroes, Vincent. We got lucky a few times, but we can’t control the entire world. You thought you could help with Themis. Eva thought the same thing. Where did that get us? We had two of these insanely powerful weapons on Earth, and you and your daughter were each in control of one of them. What did you do? You pounded each other to the brink of death. We’re not…We’re not heroes. No one is. Every movie we watch, every book we read, we see people who can solve every problem, face every danger all on their own. But in real life, Vincent, we just call the cops. That’s what I did.

  —I don’t know, Rose, I—

  —They were executing people!

  —It’s not the first time. Probably not the last.

  —It’s the first time we did it everywhere. It’s the first time there isn’t anyone to say: Hey! Stop this. This is wrong. We’ve lost our collective mind. If that had happened to me, you’d have appointed a guardian. If I had gone insane, put my own life in danger, you—

  —Stop. Stop. I understand why you did it, Rose. I’m not sure I agree, but I understand. What I don’t get is how you got the Ekt to agree. They…This goes against everything they believe in. You just said, their world was sent into chaos the last time they came here, and now they’re…We just surrendered to them, Rose! The whole planet surrendered to them! Interference doesn’t even begin to…From what I know of them, the Ekt would want absolutely no part in this. They’d want the opposite of this.

  —You’re right. They wouldn’t have come. They wouldn’t have considered it. We had to give them something. How did he put it? We had to offer them something they wanted more.

  —And what’s that?

  —What they came for the last time they were here.

  FILE NO. 2202

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN DR. ROSE FRANKLIN AND MR. BURNS

  Location: United Nations Headquarters, New York, New York

  —Are you sure you want to go through with this?

  —Dr. Franklin, I’m a man of my word. Besides, I’m not sure they’d take no for an answer after coming all this way. There are so many of them! That message of yours must really have made an impression.

  —They’ll execute you right away, you know that? You and all your people.

  —Well, not right away. It will seem like right away, but it’ll take a good ten days to get back there. Technically, we have a few days to live.

  —I don’t want you to die for us. I don’t want you to die period.

  —I hope so! That’s a horrible thing to wish on someone! I don’t particularly want to die either, to be perfectly honest.

  —Then don’t do it.

  —Dr. Franklin, there are nearly two thousand people in the han
gar behind us. I’m sure none of them are eager to meet their maker, but all of them chose to come because they thought it was the right thing to do. A lot of them were locked up in camps waiting to be executed, they didn’t take much convincing. For over three thousand years, our entire lives were spent making sure no one knew we existed. When that changed, and millions of people died, most of us had a hard time dealing with the responsibility. For many, this is some kind of relief, knowing that no one will suffer because of us anymore.

  —No one suffered because of you. You’ve never done anything wrong.

  —Sins of the father, Dr. Franklin.

  —Somehow, you don’t strike me as the biblical type.

  —Oh, I love the Bible! So many stories in there. Do you know the one about Balaam and the talking donkey? There’s one about two bears shredding forty-two kids to pieces because one of them called someone “baldy.”

  —…

  —Does it help if I tell you it doesn’t hurt at all? I mean, I’ve never been there, and, who knows, they might have gone all medieval since then, but I was told that back in the day, they vaporized people with an energy beam. As far as I know, that’s painless. You would know! Did it hurt when you died?

  —I didn’t die. The other Rose Franklin did.

  —So complicated!

  —What I was trying to say is—

  —Dr. Franklin, I get it. You feel bad because I and two thousand of my friends and family are going to die. You feel responsible. You’ve said that, a lot. It’s cute the first hundred times, but it really gets old after a while. You couldn’t have forced us to do this. The simple fact is that my ancestors couldn’t keep it in their pants, and they messed with your gene pool. You’re probably better off, but that is the reason the Ekt came here and killed tens of millions of people. There’s always a chance they’d come again to finish the job. You have this thing hanging over your head, and I don’t think your species can move forward while it’s there, so we’ll just remove it. Life’s been around for millions of years. Whether I die tomorrow or fifty years from now really doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. We’re all dying. If I can do some good while doing it, why not? Also, we get a free trip!

  —Please stop joking about this.

  —I’m not joking! I know you think of me as the “alien guy,” but I was born in Michigan! I’ve never left this rock. You have! Does that seem fair? You’ve been to their world and, from what you tell me, it’s an interesting place. I wish it were under different circumstances, but I’m happy to go. OK, so there’s the dying thing at the end, but nothing’s perfect. Do you think the astronauts who died in the Columbia shuttle wasted their lives? They went into friggin’ space! That is the coolest thing anyone can do, besides traveling to a whole other world in a different galaxy inside a giant alien robot, but that’s not the point. Don’t feel bad for us! We’re going into space! Now if you really want to help: When I said don’t feel bad, I meant don’t feel too bad. You can feel a little bad. There is one thing you can do.

  —Name it. Anything.

  —There is this tiny little bakery on Fifty-third Street. It can’t be more than a ten-minute walk from here. They sell the best pistachio eclair you’ve ever tasted. If I miss anything from Earth it will be—no, it won’t be that, it’ll be the purri and chutney I had in Kerala—but this is close. Do you think I could get one of those eclairs before I go?

  —Sure. I’ll send someone in a minute.

  —I…You probably can’t get two thousand of them, but do you think you can get the whole store? I’d like my friends and family to enjoy a little treat before we leave. That, and I’d feel like an ass eating an eclair in front of all of them.

  —I’ll see what I can do.

  —Thank you!

  —No, thank you, for everything.

  —Oh, don’t thank me yet. Well, you can thank me for the other things, like saving your life—that’s probably worth some thanks—but this plan of yours might not work at all. There are plenty of people left on Earth with a bunch of alien DNA. You could end up right back where you started. Then again, it might work. With any luck, the Ekt will have scared people enough that the UN will mean something again. You’ll have the EDC, again. Themis and—what’s his name?—the other robot will be there to protect you if need be, but you’ll stop killing each other with—

  —I’m sending her back. I’m sending them both back.

  —What? You went through a lot of trouble to put that robot together, and by you, I mean you you. Seems a shame to do all that just to give her away.

  —We’re not ready.

  —Are you sure about that?

  —I am. I thought we were. I really wanted to believe we were evolved enough to handle this. But we’re not.

  —You didn’t strike me as a pessimist, Dr. Franklin.

  —I’m not. I’m not a pessimist.

  —…

  —Do you mind if I tell you a story? I’ve heard many of yours, now I feel it’s my turn. It’s a true story.

  —Oh, I’d love to hear it.

  —There’s a homeless man. I met him before we went to Esat Ekt. I’d see him around here from time to time. I think he went to the men’s shelter down on Thirtieth. We talked…maybe twice. Nothing more. Anyway, I saw him again yesterday on my way here. He was sitting on the stairs in the little park across the street. I wouldn’t have recognized him, but he recognized me. He said he was looking for a friend. He was worried the aliens might have hurt her. He told me they met there every Tuesday around lunchtime. She bought him chai tea. You should have heard him describe the tea, as if it were the rarest thing on the planet. She lent him a new book each week, and they’d discuss it at the park over chai. He hadn’t seen her in a few weeks. I told him maybe I could help find her. Her name’s Sarah, he said. He didn’t know much more than that, but he mentioned she wore a scarf on her head. I told him I’d do what I could. I had a hunch she might have worked at the UN. Sure enough. Sarah Smith, born Sara Dhanial in Karachi, Pakistan. She is—she was—an interpreter at the UN. Diplomats and their staff weren’t rounded up like the rest of the population, but Sara lost her job and they sent her to a camp in Connecticut. I went back to the park and told him what I knew. He was sad, obviously. I offered to buy him some food. He said no, but he asked if I could spare some change. I didn’t have any, so I renewed my offer to buy him something with my card. He thought about it for a minute, then told me he’d like a couple bags of chai, but that if it was too expensive, he’d settle for one. Then he asked how much a bus ride to Connecticut would cost him. He dug into his pocket and started counting how much money he had. He wanted to bring her tea. He seemed genuinely surprised when I started crying. The point is: There is decency in this world. We just need to look for it. Given enough time, I have absolutely no doubt it will flourish again. Then, maybe.

  I said we’re not ready now. Not yet. That’s not pessimism. I can’t make the forest grow faster because I want it to. I can’t will it to grow. It takes time. I hoped it could happen during my lifetime, but I don’t think it can. All I can do is plant some seeds, take care of the seedlings, and hope someone else does it after I’m gone.

  —You’re a good storyteller, Rose Franklin. I will miss you.

  —I’ll miss you too, so much.

  —Are you trying to make me cry, Dr. Franklin? I didn’t think I would be, but I’m a little emotional. Dying is fine, I prepared myself for the dying part, but the idea of leaving this world for good is…

  —I’m happy to go with you if you don’t want to be alone.

  —Alone? I’m going with all my friends and family. Alone is the last thing going through my mind right now. Besides, didn’t you spend the last nine years trying to leave that planet? I’d have to be incredibly selfish to ask you to go back just to keep me company. You’re needed here, Dr. Franklin. You have a
world to rebuild.

  —Me? No. I’m not rebuilding anything. I’m just here to remind everyone of what will happen if they don’t.

  —I can think of no one I’d rather have to remind me. I don’t think we have much time, Dr. Franklin. Let’s do something about those eclairs, shall we?

  FILE NO. 2205

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN DR. ROSE FRANKLIN AND VINCENT COUTURE

  Location: United Nations Headquarters, New York, New York

  —Did they all leave?

  —Yes, Vincent. They did.

  —You don’t seem happy. I can tell you everyone else is relieved that they left as promised.

  —Did you have any doubts?

  —It crossed my mind. My point is you should be all smiles. You got what you wanted.

  —It’s not that. I can’t stop thinking about Mr. Burns. Did you see all those people boarding the Ekt ships? It was like watching cattle being led to the slaughterhouse. These people did nothing but help us. And now they’ll die. For nothing.

  —It was their choice, Rose. They knew what they were walking into when they boarded those ships. They did it because they thought it was worth it. Don’t dishonor them by suggesting it wasn’t.

  —Maybe you’re right. It just feels…like one more wrong thing to end a long list of wrongs.

  —Since we’re talking about doing things for nothing, why the hell would you ask them to take Themis back? Lapetus, I understand, he was ugly and missing a leg. But Themis? We went through a lot of trouble—all of us—to put her together. You friggin’ died, Rose. I killed you for that. A lot of people died so we could have that robot. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, and the Ekt know we have it, what’s the downside to keeping her?

  —I’m surprised, Vincent. I thought—Haven’t you been paying attention? They were using her to kill people. Our people!

  —They can still do that. They’ll just use tanks or drop a buttload of bombs on each other. But we’ll be defenseless if some bad alien dudes decide to drop by.

  —That’s what you’re worried about, Vincent? Evil little green men?