A little story

(Originally published June, 2006)

An intelligent species of life once found a strange planet. Upon analysis, they found something that they needed--the ingredients to make carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, most of the ingredients were trapped under the planet, in liquid form, and the rest was floating around in the atmosphere. This intelligent species wanted the ingredients, badly, but realized the tremendous amount of labour required in extracting them.

This planet had two other things that interested the intelligent species--materials to build crude processing machines, and sentient life. This life, however, was not quite ready to take on the task of helping. Though their brains were well developed and their digits were opposable, they lacked the brain structures to conceptualize machines. But the intelligent species had mastered genetic engineering, and soon, a new species was born and ready to turn the planet into a carbon dioxide processing. And so, this created species fulfilled its destiny.

A similar idea occurred to me when I was 21, around the time that I started smoking a lot of pot. The idea seemed plausible at the time and it scared me. But pot does that to you--gives you the notion that every idea you have under its influence is so profound and meaningful. Anyway, the idea is that life on Earth was either planted here in rudimentary form, or somehow modified, to suit some extra terrestrial species' needs or wants. Like this planet is a kind of free growing garden, or something. So if that actually happened, those responsible will come back eventually. Maybe they're from a similar planet that fostered carbon based life. They're probably going to want to eat us.

But holy shit, will they be surprised! Look at the mess; our species has poisoned every form of Earth-bound life, including itself. They'll fly in low and get a good whiff of all that smog and soot and industrial effluence. They'll wonder why we collectively do not behave like animals--nomadic, with a cyclical population pattern--but more like some sort of yeast colony. And then, knowing that something is brewing, they'll get the fuck out of here before they too become poisoned.

So relax! If those aliens do come to harvest us, they'll know better once they look around. If we continue trying to control the planet and worshiping our toxic machines, we'll be fine!

P.S. I am aware that you can find strains of similar ideas in science fiction. But at the time I had the 'alien garden' idea, I was not a consumer of science fiction, nor did I consciously draw from others ideas.