Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

  Rick raised an eyebrow in surprise. They had been thorough. How often had they been in his house, he wondered?

  “Your internet presence through your website also gives you some influence among your people. We have measured your following. You have more that you think.”

  As perverse as all this sounded, Rick had to agree. But his feeling of vindication was quickly squelched by his caution against being groomed, lulled into complacency by his enemy with pretty words. Synster was trying to appeal to his pride. And it was working. Foreboding followed, as he imagined he’d be tasked with approaching his brother for something, perhaps many things. He realized how his world would start to crumble. As for his internet site under his false name, Rick had always harbored concern that this might somehow conflict with his NSA career. But he never imagined it would be a conflict of interest by serving an alien conspiracy. Rick pondered, he’s already got you thinking how you’re going to fit into your new position. Resist and think, you idiot!

  Rick suspected that Synster considered this a question and answer period where Rick could satisfy his curiosity. Maybe Synster thought this might allow Rick the time to make the decision to join this scheme. He may never have a better chance to get his questions answered. He must seem random in his interests. He must get an understanding of their technology while not appearing to have questions that are too specific.

  It seemed as though Synster read his mind. “Your interest in our technology will only be satisfied to a limited degree, but suffice it to say, we are advanced far beyond your species. You have nothing that can compete with us, and any attempt to use force against us will be anticipated and crushed.”

  Rick stared at him. In an inept move to throw him off, Rick asked, “Do you have a last name?”

  Without hesitating, Synster replied, “Our last names are the accent and inflection with which our single names are spoken.”

  Rick thought about that for a moment. Shit, these things have language sophistication way beyond anything I can comprehend. “So you’re pretty good at language. That answers my next question.”

  “Yes, as a rule we learn the languages of almost all the beings we interact with. It is an excellent intellectual exercise and a process we enjoy.”

  Rick didn’t know how much time he had to ask questions. If they didn’t like him, they might kill him. He needed to be the operative Synster wanted, but the least he could do was try to get something he could use. Rick tried to concentrate on the information he thought he’d need. He was not likely to be able to use this session to pull any interrogation tricks. He knew he was outmatched.

  “How did you get here?” Rick tried his best to sound stupid. In his assessment, he was doing quite well.

  “We use gravitational waves powered by a binary neutron star contained at the center of this ship. It gives us the power necessary to create something like what you might call a wormhole. This ship, due to certain technology that I will not share with you, is protected from the effects of the gravity waves we create. These waves are focused at the space surrounding the ship, and it is that space, with this ship in it, somewhat like a protective cocoon, that relocates in the galaxy. By manipulating the focus of the gravity waves, we are able to create and collapse the wormhole where we choose. This provides our direction. The ship remains stationary in the space, while that section of space is what moves, or possibly the entire universe moves around us. It can be thought of as one or both. That part is still up for debate, as our calculations indicate. This avoids the detrimental effects on mass that your Einstein theorized would occur to matter traveling light speed.”

  Rick had thoroughly read about Special Relativity and almost understood it. He knew there was a time passage issue in this whole thing and was struggling to recall the lingo. “Do the issues of time travel still effect the ship?”

  “The effect of gravitational time dilation is significant. Ten years have passed for us since we were here last, almost twelve thousand nine hundred years for you on Earth. Enough of time travel.” There were certain topics related to this subject that Synster didn’t want to discuss. Best to impress him with the basics, but no need to give him the whole picture, he thought. “What else?”

  Rick made a mental note of Synster’s avoidance of the time travel issue. “Okay, why eat humans? Why not cattle?”

  “With our introduction of agriculture, humans can produce their own food. Cattle are not smart enough to do this. Cattle don’t explore, colonize new lands, or kill other animals that compete with them or prey on them. Humans do all these things for us while we are away. There are many exceptions, of course, but for the most part you manage yourselves, increasing your populations so that we don’t have to. For us, this is a commercial venture, and we take our nutrition very seriously. Both efficiency and quality product are very important. Human flesh, if properly raised, is both very nutritious and flavorful. For Provenger, it is considered a delicacy.”

  Rick had never thought he’d be described as a product and even a delicacy. He inadvertently shifted in his seat as the notion of being a better food than a cow massaged an untapped portion of his ego. The image of a barcode tattooed on his arm then flashed through his head. “Don’t you feel bad about eating another species that so closely resembles your own, that are self-aware, and you can talk to?”

  “No.” Strange question, Synster thought, coming from a species which has at one time or another eaten every other edible species on his planet, including many he can communicate with, to include his own kind. “You must see the hypocrisy of your question. We only consider cannibalism abhorrent. I might also add, since you seem concerned about the morality of what we eat, that if we had not intervened in the natural evolution of your species, you would have hunted to extinction all animals capable of domestication, as happened on the Australian continent and many islands around the planet. Where would you be without them? We stopped that. Without the animals you domesticated – the dog, the cow, the horse, and others – your development toward what you are now would have been permanently halted.

  “You see, you developed hunting techniques as a race on the continent of Africa with coevolving beasts for prey. Since they evolved with you, they developed defenses against you. When you emerged from Africa with those hunting skills, even the wildest animals of the other continents could not defend against them. They had little chance. As your weapons developed further, they had even less.”

  Rick had always wondered why there wasn’t the kind of large and dangerous animal diversity elsewhere in the world that there was in Africa.

  “That is how humanity spread so quickly once it emerged from Africa. Humanity hunted its way across continents. When we arrived, your race was at its zenith. All was good and there was plenty of game. But within a very short time, with a population explosion and most continents exploited and with the recent development of the bow and other hunting methods, you were on your way to exterminating them all. We let the mammoth become extinct as it would have been disruptive to agriculture. I had mammoth for lunch yesterday, by the way. Excellent texture. We could create living mammoth from the tissue we have if we needed. We have a few planets we’re looking at.

  “So you see, Rick, as a race, you would have been much less without us. If we hadn’t come, you would have hunted the relatively gentle cow and horse into extinction. Ever notice that there are only zebra left in Africa and no wild horses? What would have pulled your plows, carried your goods? You would be hunter gatherers reduced to chasing rats and eating grubs. We examined the outcome with our Algorithm. If not for our intervention, your population would be ninety-nine percent fewer. We made you what you are today. We can unmake you.”

  Rick understood his message. Mankind had regularly eaten all kinds of animals, hunting the easiest first. Rick realized he was still digressing and needed to get back on track. “Since we do look so similar, are we related in any way?”

  “We may be, as closely as you are related to a chimpa
nzee. We suffered horribly from a war not long ago. Much of our history was contained in electronic media that were destroyed in the conflict.”

  Rick inadvertently expressed doubt.

  Synster sighed and continued. “Imagine if your entire civilization’s academic community were destroyed in a horrible war along with all their records, computer files, and books. And all you had left to reconstruct your society was the military establishment that had managed to defend itself. That is what we endured. Those surviving Provenger reconstructed as much of our history as they could, but were not experts regarding all the details of all fields. Some large portions of our history were a complete loss. We have, of course, our ability to isolate our DNA and have found we do potentially have a common origin, if that’s the answer you’re looking for. But we are a very different species. We cannot interbreed.”

  Now that was a little more information than Rick was looking for, and he found it interesting that Synster added it, although Rick had already considered the topic himself during his brief tour of the ship. Despite the hatred and disgust he’d developed for the Provenger in the couple short hours in which his concept of the world had been crushed by them, he had to admit, they were very attractive, if you could get past the lack of eyebrows.

  During his tour, he’d seen many men and women, and they were all, without exception, tall, of strong stature, with well-developed musculature. So much so, he found himself questioning under his breath, “What are these people on?” At first, they all looked somewhat similar, but when he looked more carefully, he could see a diversity. Some were stockier, some were slim, and others had very delicate features while some were hard and thick. He saw none that looked even remotely fat, weak, or diseased. They all had straight teeth, solid posture, and clear skin. They had the appearance of super beings.

  After overcoming his shock and resigning himself to his situation, he was amused by their sense of style. The men went mostly bare chested, except for a circular collar draped from the base of their neck encircling it, with slight coverage in front, on the shoulders, and back. It was highly decorative and seemed so thin and supple that it was always in contact with their skin. A few wore a tunic, open at the front. Most had some kind of forearm coverings, somewhat like gauntlets, except without the knives that Synster had worn when he killed the cougar. They all had, hanging from their waists in the front and back, knee-length, highly decorative cloth panels that almost had the look of a kilt. Overall, their clothing looked very ancient in design. Rick felt like he was among warriors of ancient Sumer or Egypt. Most wore sandals on their feet, but many went barefoot.

  The females were the most interesting. Aside from being completely bald and their unnerving appearance with no eyebrows, Rick thought he might be able to get used to them. The young females wore a dress that reminded Rick of pictures he’d seen of the Minoan people. The entire front of their dress exposed their chest and stomach down to below the navel, with their breasts slightly crowded to the center by the raised collar of their plunging “neckline”. Their hemline was long to the ankle on one side and, vaulting up, it usually exposed the leg completely on the other. The dress was tight around the buttocks, possibly made of this same material that hugged the skin. It seemed obvious to Rick that this clothing was designed specifically to showcase their feminine attributes, and the effect was spectacular. “This is how our unmarried women dress in public,” Synster told him when he saw Rick’s surprise. If Rick hadn’t been distracted by the end of civilization as he knew it, he would have thoroughly enjoyed himself.

  “So you come to Earth thousands of years ago, introduce us to agriculture so we fill the planet, and return now to harvest us for food,” Rick paused. “You get a full ship, then you go home, wherever that is, to sell your product?”

  “That is a gross simplification. For us, it was less than ten years. But, yes, that is what we do.”

  “So,” Rick continued, “how do you make sure, if your form of travel involves forward time travel, or time dilation, that you arrive back to a time where you have others of your people… um sorry, your kind, there to trade with?”

  Synster was impressed with Rick. This was finally a good question. “We are all on the same travel schedule. We know when we must travel, and for how long, to rendezvous at the same place in time. It is all worked out before we depart.”

  “How many bodies do you need?”

  “I will decline to answer that question.”

  That answer means the number they need is so great it would disturb me. A tenth, half the population of the Earth, Rick wondered. “So how long will you be with us?” Rick considered this information vital.

  “I won’t tell you that exactly. I will only say that we will benefit from your company for approximately two to twenty years,” Synster said with a smile. “As for you, consider it a long-term relationship. Your future, Rick, lies with us.”

  Well, that narrows it down, Rick thought. “What other people will you be contacting? Will I be part of some kind of a team?”

  “You will not know that unless we tell you or they are allowed to tell you. There is no team.”

  At that moment, someone entered the room behind Rick, and Synster sprang to his feet as his face became at once either surprised or irritated; Rick couldn’t tell.

  “I apologize. The threshold cloak was flickering and didn’t indicate there was anyone in here,” she said. It was a voice so feminine and soothing that Rick was shocked

  “The cloak doesn’t work properly when there is a tag in the area,” Synster snapped while gesturing to the device on Rick’s arm. “You should know that.”

  “Oh yes, I do,” she replied while walking around to Synster’s side of the desk as he sat down. “But how was I to know that before I came in?” She sat down on top of his desk and folded her right leg over the left, exposing them both from under the long side of the gown. She had a plate of covered food in her hands. She put it down in front of Synster. This should irritate father, Nwella thought as she put her left hand on the table, leaned on it, and planted a broad smile on Rick.

  Rick could tell the good-smelling food was some kind of roasted meat along with something else he couldn’t identify. Human flesh, he thought?

  She was the most exotic female Rick had ever seen. For a moment, he thought that if Synster offered him this beauty, he would consider delivering the body and soul of every human being on Earth, both living and dead. An instant later, he wondered if this could be part of his recruitment. Her left arm crushed into her side as she leaned on it, demonstrating lean yet sizable muscles. She was unmarried, as indicated by her bare, round breasts protruding from her dress. Her naked legs, freed from coverage by the left side of her gown, and folded on the table, were tan and smooth. With her legs uncovered, her arms bare, and the entire front of her body exposed, there was so much glowing bronze skin in front of Rick it gave him the impression that she was completely nude. Rick couldn’t believe it when Synster said, “This is my daughter, Nwella.”

  Rick almost expected, or wanted him to say something like, “This is your prize for helping us eat all of mankind.”

  I must be in hell, he thought. She appeared to him to be about as young as a female could be while still being fully developed. Rick didn’t know where to look. All he was trying to do was gather information in a feeble attempt to save humanity, and here he had to deal with this goddess distracting him, displaying just about everything she had, and she was the daughter of his enemy. Then he was suddenly aware that all he was wearing was a thin robe.

  “I wanted to bring you your dinner since you were working late. And who is this?” She looked at Rick, turning her shoulders square to him, her breasts staring at him like a second pair of eyes. And he stared back.

  “You know who…” Synster paused and started again. “This is Rick Thompson, a human. Of course, you know that.” Synster seemed flustered.

  “Yes,” she said, looking him deep in the eyes, “How old are you
?” Nwella found him very interesting. His shaggy silver hair reminded her of the primitives she’d met years ago. She still had fond memories of them. And this one had silver hair on his chin. It somehow made him look wise.

  “Fifty.” Rick observed her surprise. He knew he tended to look older than he was, due to his premature graying. But when his hair was cut close and his face clean shaven, he looked twenty years younger. He caught himself wanting to be attractive to this thing. Why was that, he wondered? He should want to kill her.

  She smiled again. “Poor thing,” she said pursing her lips.

  I need to get back on task. Should I keep asking questions in front of her? Would it be rude? Rick decided to wait and say nothing.

  “Nwella dear, we need to get some things done,” Synster said, with irritation in his voice even Rick could detect.