ʻOumuamua
by Matt E. Lewis
In a moment, time has frozen. Everything on the planet has stopped in place. Large, rectangular ships in orbit then begin the process of removing every single person from the surface. Quickly, painlessly, everyone is transported into a small storage tube on one of these massive ships. They are unaware of their imprisonment, frozen in thought and action, more like a data file. The size and number of ships would be adjusted to accommodate the entire population. They can be organized in some fashion for the sake of coordination, but it is not essential. There are some exceptions — pockets of people that are spared, either overlooked by some unknowable criteria or random chance.
Soon begins the process of removing all imprisoned animals and relocating them to their natural habitats, using the same transportation technique. Domestic animals will be released where they are found. The majority will most likely not survive once time is re-started. This is unfortunate, but the damage is done. Then a fleet of hovering robots come into play. Billions scour the world, removing every piece of trash from the planet - all the trillions of useless artificial items from the land and sea. All the disposable forever things that they were convinced were important. All the pointless ephemera that was created in their day-to-day lives, most of the time simply to endure the next moment, not understanding that it would be an eternal legacy. If they are dug in too deep, they are left for some future being to discover, but hopefully none will ever find them.
All the trash is either recycled to power the robots or stored onto the rectangular ships. The robots begin to burn as many structures as they can, leaving no abandoned houses or buildings to linger. The vast, looming structures too big to burn or in vulnerable areas are cleared as much as possible and left to decay from time and the elements. The robots make their way outwards from their landing points, spreading across the entire planet in a grid pattern. Their task complete, they dock with the rectangular ships, snuggled into modular fittings like bee larvae in a honeycomb.
At least one ship contains a genetically diverse sampling of the species, enough to start another fledgling population. Just in case. This ship will remain, careening through space. The rest, however, begin their final mission. Activated automated pilots fly them all directly into the sun. The people, robots, garbage - all are burned away in seconds. There is no debris, no evidence left behind.
Time is re-started. Open-faced petals of flowers begin their ancient dance upward toward the sun once again. The fauna begin the long road back to retaking the landscapes that have been marred. Tentative steps. Quiet howls. And the people spared, those left in the remote places of the world, suitably altered by these visitors, go about their lives unknowing of what happened, because it was always this way.
Will they expand outward, as their ancestors once did, and repeat the process all over again? Will it be the same or different? And if they someday venture out to the stars, would they eventually stumble onto the strange rectangular vessel, scarred but still intact? What would they make of it, this origin beyond the origin? This proof that they’ve been given a chance again, again, and again — and to what end?
Art by Louise Zingarelli/Johnny Vita — via.