January 30, 2013: Spaceman

Song: “Spaceman” by The Killers from Day & Age

Listen to it here

(Picture from 123rf.com)

A “classic” alien—large head, oversized eyes, small spindly limbs off a thin body, grey slightest bluish skin tone, walks through a door into a large sterile looking room. He, FEEZIL GOHF, yanks off what resemble latex gloves and throws them into a container (think garbage can). Feezil flops onto a chair and reaches up to turn on a screen. The screen is an empty box so he is actually speaking through the frame to the audience, but he doesn’t acknowledge this as the fiction is this is nothing more than a recording, akin to a video diary. He begins to talk into it. He speaks English, but let’s all just pretend that somehow we know his native alien tongue and move on, shall we?

FEEZIL GOHF (a set of papers with numbers on them in hand)

Electronic journal, installment—

FEEZIL pauses and scans the sheet, running his finger done until he finds what he is looking for.

FEEZIL GOHF (continuing, looking up to the screen after finishing reading)

—number 5XF7830116. As per the Hovoood Government Regulation CD98, I am recording this confidential log as an act of mental health maintenance. It will only be viewed in the case of my untimely demise to discern what, if any clues, might be contained in this record to explain said death.

Clears his throat, gathers thoughts.

Since all of this is confidential and the only way anyone will ever see it is if I get killed out here, I’ll go ahead and be honest. I don’t know why we do this. I don’t understand why we’re here.

I get that it’s important to explore and learn and…I’m just tired. And alone. I can’t stop thinking of what a waste this is.

I’m here, millions of miles away from home. Because of the way this sort of travel works, everyone I’ve ever known and loved is already dead or just about to be. Family, friends, my first rotation crush I never quite got over. Gone or on the cusp. Sure, I will see them again in the Space that Lies After, but who knows what that means.

Instead, I’m out here on this “tremendous” honor, hovering above this planet, this “Earth”—like 70 other planets haven’t called themselves that. Great job, creative types!

Anyway, we’re hovering here, cloaked, six of us in total, not a looker amongst us. And I include myself in that, believe me. I am well aware that I am no prize. I mean, look at how thin my arms are.

He holds his arms up high to be “in frame.”

Anyway, we snatch all these creatures, some resemble things we’ve seen before, some don’t, and we look them over, we stick them, we probe them.

He visibly shakes in revulsion.

Flouer’s tooth, the probing. That one I’ll never grow to understand. We do all these things or other Hovooodians like us and we find over and over again the same results. And none of it matters. Just facts and figures to fill books and ledgers and drives and to be glanced at for a few years and then rarely, if ever, considered again. The universe is vast and we have no purpose, no goal. We sacrifice the lives we knew to help the cause and we are rewarded with a nice domicile, some credits, and a world filled with Hovooodians we’ve never known who, we’re promised, will regard us as heroes but tend to only look on us as freaks or wastes of funds. Both of which are at least somewhat true.

And here, below us, the things we capture and analyze? If—IF—they live, they are never the same. Nightmare, disbelieved by their fellow pack creatures, always teetering on the edge of not trusting themselves.

He paused and runs his long fingers over his large head in a gesture we can all recognize as stressed sadness.

We do not belong here. We will not belong to our planet when we return. We exist to torture and horrify some planet which our world will forget about in a generation and we exist to ultimately torture and horrify ourselves with a world that is used to be ours but no longer will look, smell, or feel the same to us.

It’s just so damn senseless.

And I volunteered.