The Perfect End

My English teacher told us to write a short piece on how to make the world perfect. Here is my solution.

The day they came was the best and the worst thing for which our planet could ask.  They came in a force the size of 500,000, yet they still managed to maintain control.  I recall the event like it had happened yesterday, although, in reality, it had been 20 years earlier. 

            They arrived in a large rocket ship, all metal and painted white.  When they came out and we saw the first of them, we were in awe.  It was as though the most beautiful humans on the planet had gathered in this one place.  Not only were their features perfect, but their movements were graceful and their words like silk.  They spoke our language in an eloquence that would rival Shakespeare, but they also had a strange accent that sounded like nothing here on Earth.  They were utterly mesmerizing.

            They informed us that they came from a planet far away in a distant galaxy.  Their home was called Awron, and they were the Awronians.  At one time, they had travelled to the Earth often.  Originally the Awronians had come to share their knowledge and science with our Homo sapiens ancestors.  The Awronians had even altered the early humans’ DNA, giving them much of the same intellect and appearances that we have now.  It was out of these humans that the first civilizations grew, the ones we had known well for their lasting temples and monuments.  These shrines were built to honor the Awronians and call them back to Earth.  The measly humans could not have gotten so much work done without their help, or so they told us. 

            Besides aiding in temple-building, the Awronians gave the humans fire, language, both spoken and written, hunting skills, medical knowledge, tools, and early astronomical ideas.  The reason these aliens came here to help us, they claimed, was to found a perfect society in a previously untouched land.  When they found that Earth contained life, they believed it was the ideal place to experiment.  And this they had done, and now they were back for their results.

            The humans they had left were perfect, not a flaw among them.  However, as time progressed, the humans became selfish, greedy, dominating, careless, cruel, until those qualities were all that was left of humanity.  Just before the Awronians came again, humanity had taken over nearly every space possible to live in.  The huge ice caps of the past (most were too young to remember them) had melted long since, and this led to the extinction of many species of animals and plants.  Freshwater had been running low in so many places: the deserts of central western North America, the vast desert of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Great Sahara of Africa.  Water had been redirected from the Great Lakes in the northern United States to other areas that needed it, and now they were all but dried up.  Trees, flowers, and bushes were a rare find these days, as none of them could survive in the dry conditions.

            But the Awronians came with the solution, the water to quench the fire they had sparked.  They killed off billions of people from everywhere, the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, nowhere was safe.  When the aliens had put the genes in our ancestors, their leaders had thought about a situation such as this happening, and they inserted a safety mechanism.  With practically the flick of a switch, hordes of people fell over where they stood and combusted, no burial needed.  Those of us that survived only did because we were pure enough, and the safety mechanism hadn’t been turned on; we were the only nearly perfect humans left.

            Our current population count is now at 5,000.  In 20 years we had only grown by 2,000 beings.  We had been herded to Iceland, one of the few places that had survived the apocalyptic nightmare.  The Awronians stayed, and are still here, and they taught us a unified language for communication purposes.  They aided us in building what we needed and in instituting farms.  We seemed to be the new perfect society; but however hard I tried, I could not believe this.  Humans had never been perfect, no matter what they told us, and no amount of alien technology could change us.  We may never become perfect, but anyone could tell we were trying our absolute best.                         

Author's Note

Comment freely.

Reviews

[szabcsee]

Exciting story and the aliens are very well crafted. I like how you include the ancient civilization and that they are beautiful, mesmerizing but cruel or maybe just thinking on the long run. It's a very good foundation for a great story I would definitely read. Good luck with it!

[Gracie G]

Thank you so much!

[Brynn White]

I thought it incredible! It really reminds me of something I would write, but with much better structure/organization. The message is great, very powerful.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on my stories!

[Gracie G]

Thank you so much! I appreciate the compliments. I will definitely check out some your writing soon.

[Jonah Parker Ryan]

I feel like my first response should be to think it disgusting that your solution is killing off nearly all of the world's population... but it really makes a lot of sense. I really loved this entire piece from top to bottom, I thought it was very well thought out and well written.

It reminds me of the various creation stories found in different cultures and religions as well as the story of the great flood found in the bible. I found a lot of parallels between saving two of every animal and starting over and saving the perfect humans and starting over with them.

All in all I thought this was really quite good. Really nice work, and best of luck in the future!

[Gracie G]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it. It is a little morbid, but I'm happy to hear it makes sense to you.