Preface: This report has been normalized for the reader, adding aspects of physicality, time and emotion such that is more easily understood. The events occurred where self-conscience awareness freely roams the universe.
Background: This was another standard survey mission. Our job is to wander the universe and identify creatures capable of supporting a soul. A soul will give the host creature self-awareness and to be conscience.
This is not an exact science. Some creatures do not adapt to the soul and self-destruct upon being given one. We have observed where those not yet with souls destroyed those given souls and as such, were abandoned as failed experiments.
We have seen situations where given souls, the host race became evil and violent while others are kind and benevolent. For various reasons, some races may only last a few thousand years before they die out while others last a millennia and in the process, achieve interstellar flight.
Those younger races in their starships can be annoying little buggers. They would stop by and cause some mischief with the locals, upsetting their natural evolution. In some cases, we had to distract them by subtly pointing them towards more interesting places to visit but in most cases, they left because they found the locals quite primitive and largely uninteresting.
Potential host species vary but in many cases, are organics although some of the inorganics have been interesting, especially those that are gaseous or molten metal. They are all mortal in some sense, in that they are born, live and die although their lifespan can be mere seconds or centuries. Immortals have souls but since they never die, they never get a new one. We’re with them.
The process is straightforward; once we have identified a race that we feel is capable of hosting a soul, we seed it with a small sample of souls. As those given souls procreate, their offspring are given souls. When the host dies, the soul is returned to us for cleaning and restoration.
When handing out new souls, our preference is to use ones that have been returned to us. The soul is an amazing thing because regardless of its experience or condition, when it comes back to us, it is made like new, with only a faint shadow of its previous host or hosts experiencing. The next being that is issued that soul has very little awareness of who hosted it and what they experienced, but it does have an effect on the new host.
Since this was a new planet, we came with a fresh supply of brand new souls, standard operating procedure. The planet in question would be known one day as Earth and the species that we identified are called humans. The had certain physical aspects that made them well suited; they could walk upright and had appendages that could be used for various tasks, like building things or killing one another. That is up to the hosts.
Our team was a standard three man crew; Bill, he issues souls when needed. Rusty takes care of receiving the old ones back into stock. I keep track of everything; inventory specialist, I believe the title was.
Implementation: As we had identified a suitable host, we seed various populations around the planet. In time, those with souls spawned and when that happened, we would issue them either a used soul, if we had any, or a new soul. Over time, hundreds of souls were in circulation and then it grew into the thousands.
The early part of this process is always difficult. Young races tend to be violent, technologically challenged and have poor living condition. Their life spans are rather short but that is not a problem as the soul just comes back to us in less time. It’s always tough when I see Rusty getting one back that Bill had sent out only seconds before.
However, during this period, the turnover is brisk and we generally had a good stock of used souls for deployment. Every now and then, Bill would have to issue a new one. As their ability to take care of themselves improved over time, they lived longer and we had to put more new souls into rotation.
There were a few significant events that caused us to have to work very hard. A plague or a war caused a great influx of souls, so it was all hands on deck in the receiving department. The bright side was that Bill rarely had to issue any new souls; he just fetched one out of the used pool and sent it out.
One thing that we found with the humans; they evolved in different ways in different parts of the planet. Some were in environments that were very challenging, such that it was all they could do to survive while others in better climates would grow and develop.
Some of the more slowly evolving subsets became more integrated into their environment. They knew how to live at peace with themselves and their surroundings. Some subsets, while more advanced, used their enhanced knowledge to do harm to others, including the less advanced. In some cases, they subjugated the less advanced to slavery or outright extermination.
One phenomenon that we saw was some societies would grow and flourish and then for whatever reason, simply cease to exist. This was often times due to local conditions, some kind of disease or the environment changing, leaving them without a means to survive. For a young race, a couple of bad harvests can spell doom.
The humans had an interesting characteristic in they wanted to believe in something greater than themselves. They would develop these belief structures, based around an entity or entities. They called them Gods and saw them as being responsible for everything from whether it rained today to their own self-inflicted misfortune. They developed elaborate rituals to pay tribute to whatever God or Gods they believed in.
This was an unfortunate turn of events. In time, they would fight over whose vision of God they thought to be true. Religion became one of the leading causes of war, so we knew that whenever one society was convinced that their religion was the best and only true religion, things would get busy in the receiving department.
The other part of this development was that it took the humans’ eyes off what was really important, their own growth. While praying to and fighting for their particular God or Gods, they didn’t evolve. In some respects, they devolved because now they had someone or something to blame when things went bad and didn’t give themselves enough credit when things went right.
They also had a tendency to develop God like adoration for more tangible things, like power and wealth although it could also be for something as insignificant as a car, an object they developed for transportation later in their existence. One of the things the humans did, which is not unusual, was develop a relationship with a lesser creature; they called them pets. Dogs and cats were common among humans. They sometimes wanted to think that another human was a God and that never ended well.
Now, this is not to say that religion or the belief in a God or Gods is a bad thing. In our previous experiences, we found races that used a common belief in something greater than themselves would unify around that and progress and grow more quickly. More than a couple of races developed interstellar travel in the hopes that they could find their God or Gods. Growth, by any means, is a good thing.
Now, there is more to this job than just sitting around and keeping track of souls, which can be a tad boring. Occasionally, we would insert ourselves into the mix and be issued as a soul. While with our host, we would be like any other soul, unaware of our previous experience except the faint shadow of our previous experiences.
Sometimes, this was quite fun. Bill got the Beethoven gig and Rusty the Michelangelo deal. It can be kind of tricky when the shadow is as long as ours is and to avoid the temptation that we are somehow special. Fortunately, our hosts are mortal and they would die before we got too full of ourselves.
I always seemed to get the lame ones, like a sheepherder although I did get one where I was a general in an army and sent thousands to their deaths. That did not make Rusty happy and I heard about it when I got home. He made me examine every one of my victims and experience their lives and death, which we can do in an instant.
That was always an interesting part of the job; the occasional spot check of returned souls. A young child, starving to death always made me wonder how humans could be so cruel. On the other hand, experiencing the life of someone who positively contributed to society, lived a long and productive life including nurturing his family to be as good or better then themselves, and then died peacefully, loved by all who knew them. Those restored my faith in humanity when it was shaken.
Overall, the mission was along in the way most do. There was a continued growth in the pool of souls in rotation as we would expect in a growing society. In Earth’s year 1804, we issued our 1 billionth soul, which was a big day. We left the soul distribution and receiving equipment on automatic and went out to dinner, had a few drinks, it was a good time.
Almost 100 years later, in their year 1930, the population had once again doubled. The humans had made enormous technological progress, exploring every corner of their planet and had developed the ability to travel quickly, including flying through the atmosphere.
Then a terrible darkness fell over the Earth. A man had been born and for whatever reason, when his soul bonded with him, great evil was the result. It should be said that while a soul is a fairly generic thing, how it bonds with its host is quite unpredictable and the senescent being that results can be very bad.
In some respects, it’s a good thing because once they’re returned and renewed, the subsequent hosts will never know. I remember the soul we issued to one Genghis Kahn that whenever it was issued after that, would go on to become a person of peace. I don’t recall where the soul that caused this particular calamity is currently deployed.
Their technology, as had often happened in the past, evolved. They used that technology to kill their fellow humans at an alarming rate. In a roughly ten-year span, 75 to 80 million humans died. Things were pretty busy in the receiving department, and it was heart rendering to experience some of these people’s live, such despair wrought upon them by others of their own kind, simply because they didn’t believe in the same things.
They created a weapon that if widely used, could cause the destruction of their planet. We were thinking that if they didn’t get a handle on this, we could be on our way to the next mission. But somehow, they found a way, a sort of uneasy truce that while they could disagree about what they believed in, they would not annihilate themselves.
Also, after the big war, we had a vast trove of used souls to put into rotation and we had found in the past, with plagues and wars and the such, this would have a positive impact of the population. We hoped that this would lead to a better future.
They continued to make progress. They built spaceships so that they could leave their planet, if only for a while. In the Earth year 1960, we issued our 3 billionth soul and once again, got the day off for a little rest and relaxation. They went so far as to send a manned mission to the moon that orbits their planet. They stopped having huge wars. We were very optimistic.
And then something went wrong. While continuing to procreate without the checks of disease and war, the population expanded and they did not seem to care much about the planet they occupied. Their wars were smaller but the differences that caused them, property, religion and politics seemed more acute. Instead of growing together, they were growing apart.
We were also suffering from a problem that we had seen in the past – too many new souls in rotation. 1974 saw 4 billion, 1987, 5 billion and in 1999, 6 billion. That meant the population had doubled in just shy of 30 years and almost half the population had a soul with less than two generations on it. When a population has this many new souls, it seems to lose it’s integrity.
This put considerable strain on their planet. With technological advancement, they were harvesting its resources at a faster pace, and since their manufacturing was still somewhat crude, they were fouling the air and water. Some raised concerns but most of the population simply ignored it – the Earth was so big, they figured they could get whatever they wanted from it and if they made a mess in the process, it could take it.
It can’t. The humans have yet to realize that they live in a very narrow environmental window. In the past, we have seen creatures that can survive in all manner of environments, some with broad temperature and pressure variation. The humans, despite all their self-assuredness in themselves, are somewhat fragile. If the temperature of their planet were to change by as little as five degrees up or down, their survival would be questionable.
At the same time, their technology was growing by leaps and bounds. They had developed thinking machines, computers, and these machines were improved upon ever quicker as the 20th century drew to close. This led to advancements in communications, which spread to the realm of entertainment. The distractions that the humans could avail themselves became endless. They became more self-centered, less concerned about their fellow humans and self-discovery became almost nonexistent.
Another aspect of their society was their focus in acquisition of wealth and power. Wealth and power can be used for good but in this situation, it was concentrated with those who simply enjoyed wealth and power at some else’s expense. The difference between the have and have not’s became vast. In 1999, the population passed 6 billion and 7 billion in 2007. We were still cycling reused souls out but the generation of new ones took most of our time.
It was quite sad to see. Here was a planet whose inhabitants had the ability to solve all their problems – feed their people and take care of their planet. We had hoped that after the last big war, there would be progress and were very optimistic as they took their first steps into space but that didn’t happen. As their population continued to expand, they spent their efforts fighting. Sometimes over resources, sometimes over religion, sometimes because they disagreed over something silly, like a flag.
Conclusion: We are convinced that the humans do not have a future. They are near the tipping point where their planet can no longer support the population. They show no signs of working to correct that, or trying to learn how to leave their planet. They will be gone before they develop even interplanetary travel, We estimate that the human race, as is currently configured, has only a handful of generations left.
We’re not sure how this will all ends. Perhaps instead of fighting little wars of land, wealth, and religion, they’ll break out their big weapons and vanquish their enemies and themselves en masse. Perhaps they will finally succeed at making their planet so inhospitable that a majority of the population will die off.
When that happens the influx of souls coming back will be overwhelming. The worst part is that until the planet recovers, if it ever does, we’ll be stuck taking care of billions of unneeded souls, which is neither interesting nor fun. As such, we request that we be allowed to set the machinery on automatic and be on to the next mission.
Such a shame; so much potential, squandered.