Almost Human (© Tony Sandy)
Page 1 "Getting to know
you, getting to know all about you!" How ironic this
song now sounds. When we first
came to this planet, we'd been travelling for millennia of your time. Our
planet had been destroyed, when our sun went super nova. We piled into our
spacecraft and searched the universe for a new home, where we would be welcome
(again how ironic). Our first
contacts with your world, led to an exchange of technology and the development
of secret underground bases, where some of our people could live and work in
peace, cementing the relationships with our new hosts. Although we were only a
few hundred thousand, we needed more room than even these hidden places could
provide. Our forward bases provided us with data for colonisation and now,
fifty years later, we are here in force on this planet. It started with
internment camps all over the Earth. It was thought best to slowly acclimatise
the local inhabitants - firstly to our existence, then to us physically being
here. Reactions? The
heaven and hell of integration. The vast majority were apprehensive -
wondering and checking us out all the time (hoping for the best but expecting
the worst - disease, war, famine). Some hated
beyond belief - others loved but just a little too much and in a creepy,
perverted kind of way. I don't know which is worse - overly curious or overtly
hostile. It's easier to
kill or destroy that which is new, strange, than struggle to understand it.
Some of us have embraced these differences between us and seen it as a
challenge worth exploring and exploiting; others want to leave now, this
instant and wish we'd never landed. We are an old
race. We expected difficulties. we see it in our own people, let alone our
relationship to others. Your prejudices
cast their shadow over many areas of your lives: City and country folk; rich
and poor; male and female; young and old; straight and homosexual, left and
right wing politics, left and right handed; ginger haired and blond; black and
white - your smell, your looks, your clothes, your beliefs and now you've got
us - a whole new ball game, a whole new race of beings to love or hate, mend or
break, blend in with or reject and eject from your lives (new fears to overcome
or to overcome you). The world
governments fought hard to keep our existence a secret. at least at the start.
For that we thank them. Those were the best of times for us - interacting with
your officials, military and scientists. We are more interested in minds than
bodies. Our interests as a race drifted away from the physical aeons ago. Now
though, with more open contact with your people, we're forced to confront our
own physicality again and rekindle a form of life we thought dead. We are
being challenged by this touchy-feely world in other words. It has led to
clubs, where our race and yours interact (Wanting and not wanting to be a part
of something - denial and affirmation interplay). It has also led to more
emotional games that both our races deplore - gang warfare, with their
humiliating initiation ceremonies - in other words, pride and shame - the
temptation of forbidden fruit/ the betrayal of former allegiances: Wanting to
be accepted by a new culture, so rejecting the old one and its values. "Do-be-do, I
want to be like you: Walk like you, talk like you." We've found the
simplest things explain best what is happening between us and helps us
understand you. Childhood games for instance, tells us about your adult games
too - Catchings, Pass the Parcel (of responsibility), Snakes and Ladders, Cops
and Robbers. This mutual
exchange has led to some ugly episodes - vivisection, botched plastic surgery
to look like each other: We tell our young to use their minds, to alter how
humans see them but they say that doesn't stop them seeing who they really are,
when they look in the mirror. Thankfully we have machines that can mimic the anatomical
appearance of other races and for some that is enough. For others though, even
this doesn't satisfy them. For these beings, only transmigration of the soul
fits the bill. Their spirits enter a human body and they know what it feels
like to be truly human in every detail, even passing for Earth men in every
facet of their lives. [ Continue to page 2 ] |