—But I haven’t been to those in, what, almost twenty years!
—You weren’t in Chicago. I had a feeling you’d go back to old habits right away.
—Am I that predictable?
—Well, yes. Everyone is. I’d do the same thing. Old shoes, old shirt, a familiar meal. For a moment, the world makes sense again. Oh, and that lecture on Majorana particles sounds fascinating. Do you mind if I go with you?
—Aren’t you afraid someone will see you?
—The intelligence community at a physics lecture? I don’t think so. Though they might come if they read the title. They’d see Majorana and think everyone’s there to get high. The CIA is tapping your phones, but no one is following you.
—Good to know.
—Here. Let me pay for those.
—No, no. I got it.
—Dr. Franklin, aliens descended upon Earth to find people like me, and they killed one hundred million men, women, and children. Least I can do is buy coffee and cinnamon rolls.
—That was dark. You didn’t do anything other than being born, and you helped me when I needed it the most. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I chose to build Themis, I’m buying coffee.
—Do you really blame yourself for all of this? You weren’t even here!
—I don’t. I thought we were making self-deprecating comments to decide who’s paying for breakfast. I used to. Blame myself, that is. I thought everything that happened, every death, every city destroyed … I thought that was all because of me. I’d fallen into a hole and caused all that somehow. But I didn’t. I didn’t gas a hundred million people, the Ekt did. I didn’t bomb Madrid or torture people. I didn’t break families apart because one of them lost the genetic lottery. I didn’t judge or hurt people because of their religion or where they were born. I didn’t lock them up. The world did all that. So, no, I don’t feel responsible for all this. That doesn’t make me feel any better. That doesn’t help me fix it either. I can’t fix … us. It’s people that are broken.
—You’re being too hard on people, just like you can be too hard on yourself. People got scared. Rightly so! What happened here nine years ago wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just happened. People have the right to be emotional, and irrational, from time to time.
—Irrational? We’ve lost our collective mind! Scientists are ignoring their own findings. People are denying even the most basic scientific facts because it makes them feel better about hurting each other. Do you realize how horrifying that is? We’re talking about human beings making a conscious effort, going out of their way, to be ignorant. Willfully stupid. They’re proud of it. They take pride in idiocy. There’s not even an attempt to rationalize things anymore. Muslims are bad because they are, that’s all. Why would you need a reason? It’s one thing to let your child go blind because you read on Facebook that the measles vaccine would make him autistic, it’s another to ship him off to a work camp because he inherited his grandmother’s genes instead of Grandpa’s. Our entire race is trying to lobotomize itself. It’s as moronic and repulsive as someone cutting off their own legs.
—You’re not in a happy place right now, are you?
—I’m sorry. It’s just … Responsible or not, I want things to get better, and I don’t know how.
—Let me tell you a story.
—Oh please!
—There was this axolotl.
—Really?
—Yes. An axolotl. It’s an amphibian—
—I know what it is. It’s a salamander from Mexico.
—Then what’s your problem?
—I don’t have a problem. There just aren’t that many axolotl stories being told.
—I have lots of axolotl stories, thank you very much. May I continue?
—Yes. Yes. I’m sorry.
—There was this axolotl named Jeff. Jeff was sort of a local hero. He had once fought an African tilapia, all on his own, and lived to tell the tale. Axolotls are known for their ability to regrow limbs, but Jeff had lost all four of his legs along with his tail during that David and Goliath moment of his, and none of them grew back to their original size. Suffice it to say that Jeff looked kind of funny. But regardless of Jeff’s physical appearance, he was a good storyteller and little axolotl jaws dropped every time he told the tale of how he lost his tail. Not long after the ordeal, Jeff had decided that he would use what happened to him to do some good, make the salamander world a better place. He began giving motivational speeches to everyone who would listen—and everyone would listen. Even tiger salamanders would stop by to listen to Jeff. He became known across the lake for his pep talks, a little Tony Robbins with gills.
Jeff had a daughter, Lisa, a beautiful lizard-like baby girl with light pink skin and bright, purple gill stalks—they call those rami. Every little girl in town was jealous of Lisa’s rami. Lisa was happy—she smiled all the time—but Lisa was also shy, very shy. She faded away in axolotl company and, like any good father, Jeff wanted her to blossom. “It’s OK, Dad,” she said, “not everyone is a hero like you.”
But Jeff believed everyone had it in them to be a hero. After all, there was nothing really special about him. He wasn’t the biggest axolotl on the block, nor the baddest, and he had fought a giant tilapia. No one knows how big that tilapia really was; it grew a little every time Jeff told the story. I’m sure even Jeff didn’t know anymore. But he had fought a fish, that’s for sure. If he, clumsy, nerdy-looking axolotl that he was, could do something like that, surely greatness was within everyone’s reach. Lisa too was a hero. She’d just never had the opportunity to show it. All she really needed, Jeff thought, was a push, to be put in a situation where she’d have no choice but to be the best amphibian she could be.
So Jeff took Lisa with him for a long walk. When his abnormally short legs got tired, he found a good spot on top of a rock where they both could rest. He waited, and waited. Lisa wanted to go home, but Jeff told her to be patient. Finally, he spotted an Asian carp coming their way. The carp wasn’t as big as the elephantine tilapia he had once wrestled, but Lisa was young, and Jeff figured that vanquishing a midsize carp would be enough for someone her age. Jeff hugged his baby girl, gave her a big kiss, and threw her off the rock, right in the path of the bottom feeder.
The moral of the story is—
—Wait! Wait! What happened? What happened to Lisa?
—The carp ate her, of course. She was just a baby! You didn’t really think she was gonna make it, did you?
—I … Yes, I did …
—You want to know the moral of the story.
—I do!
—The moral of the story is … Jeff is a moron. A baby axolotl can’t fight a fish! You can’t expect babies to do the things adults do. You can’t expect anyone to do things they can’t do. If you ask me to lift five hundred pounds, I can’t. It doesn’t matter how much I want to, how much conviction I put into it. It’s just not something I can do. Maybe if I’d been training all my life, but not now, not tomorrow. The people on this planet knew nothing of real aliens before Themis was found, they had never seen one until the Ekt came to Earth. Now that I think of it, they still haven’t seen one. They’ve only seen those giant robots but never those inside them. They make first contact, and millions die. Then they learn they’re all a bit alien, some more than others. They weren’t prepared for this, for any of it. They can’t even comprehend what it means about who they are, their place in the universe. All they know is a bunch of people are dead, and their neighbor is more like those who killed them than they are. Fear is a pretty normal reaction if you ask me! The people on this planet are babies! Don’t ask them to act like grown-ups. Don’t push them in front of a carp.
—You’re right.
—I know I’m right! I wouldn’t say things if I thought they were wrong!
—We’re a bunch of babies, a few billion of them, all scared to death. We’re going to kill ourselves if we’re left to our own devices. What we need is …
—What do we need, Dr. Franklin?