Little things made me suspicious.  My neighbor is a mother raising a family, but her behavior was just a bit synthetic.  Recently she confirmed my suspicions.  She is using her lifestyle as a cover, but keeping it secret is no longer necessary.  Besides no one would believe me if I were to tell her story.

 

It turns out that she hails from a far star system, and is here among us doing a field study to gather data for her Galactic Thesis – Self Extinction Behavior in Emerging Species.   It seems our species is a classic case study, but the window of opportunity to study us may be brief.
 
Coming from another star system as she does, her perspective is quite different.  For example, she marvels at our often-unreasoned behavior.
 
She wonders, for example, why drivers floor the accelerator to race away when the light turns green, simply to stop and wait at the next red light.  She points out that Americans could save thousands of barrels of imported oil and tons of pollutants each day with a moderate steady acceleration. 
 
She explains “The physics are simple.  There is no free lunch – you buy a little time, but you buy that time with an additional expenditure of fuel and an unnecessary contribution to atmospheric pollution.  What’s the point?”
 
She is almost finished with her research, and has shared some observations that are sobering – observations such as “Your species is plundering its environment for the bank account.  I asked myself why, considering the certainty that it will lead to the premature self-termination of your species.  My research has led me to the conclusion that yours is not in fact a species at all, but an aggregation of sub-species that fall into three classifications: don’t know; don’t want to know; actively suicidal.“
 
“The accelerated driver highlighted above would fall into one of the first two categories.  Such individuals can be educated, although sometimes getting an idea into their head is tantamount to pounding a turd into frozen ground with a pick axe.  The last of those, however, is the most dangerous of the subspecies.  It has no concern for the continued existence of what you call Humanity.” 
 
She put it into perspective for me with a parable: “On a trip to Los Angeles, I stopped at Quartzite, AZ and bought grapes.  An unripe grape dropped in the sand.  I left it behind.
 
“The sun baked down.  The grape ripened.  A great diversity of microbes sprang forth in the grape skin.  A religious caste sprang up amongst them and beseeched the multitudes to go forth and be fruitful in the rich supportive skin.  Not that they had to be beseeched, mind you.  Many generations passed and the population exploded, as did careless consumption, dumping of waste and your  blood sport called ‘War’. 
 
“Unmindful that this fragile tissue of grape skin was the only place in the vast desert universe that would support their kind, the microbe population was literally growing out of its skin by the time I reached the California border. 
 
“The business microbes and political microbes chanted, ‘That’s Progress - keep the economy growing!  Harvest the forests!  Drill for grape juice!  Build more cars! Attack our enemies! Drill… Harvest…!  Attack!!  And…’
 
“By the time I got to LA, the microbes had damaged their environment beyond recovery.   The still juicy grape became lifeless before the sun set that day.
 
“On the return trip, I stopped again in Quartzite, only to find that the grape was a hard dry raisin.
 
“My good neighbor, I will leave you and return to the stars soon.  I want to leave you with the sobering understanding that in the cosmic schema of time and space, you live in a microscopic grape skin tissue about a mile thick for perhaps a cosmic day. 
 
“I fervorently hope that your kind will beat the Bushes to identify the suicidal among you for what and who they are – and neutralize them.  Beat around the Bush to educate those that are just misled.  To do less is to cut your day in the sun short.  There’s no place else in the universe for you.”