Top 12 Reasons Why the Aliens Must be Exterminated
by N. R. M. Roshak
Because in the years since their spaceship landed and they streamed out onto the steppe by the hundreds, they have not attempted to communicate with us even once. Not by voice, scent, radio, microwave, light, vibration nor by any other means we could imagine.
Because they are long-limbed and chitinous and quick, and although they have never attacked a person or even reacted to one's presence, they are terrifying.
Because they will not respond to our communications. Neither the spaceship nor the aliens on the steppe have responded to any method of communication we could devise, including violence.
Because when the spaceship landed, we had hoped for gifts of advanced technology, for revelations of art and music, for a communion of sentient species. But there has been nothing but silence.
Because the aliens have not been observed to communicate with each other, either. They silently go about their business in and around their ship.
Because they work tirelessly, inexhaustibly, harder than we could possibly work, toward ends we cannot understand.
Because there is no reason to believe that they are sentient. The spaceship must have been built by an advanced spacefaring race, but there is no evidence that the aliens that poured out of it were that race. They may not even have been flying the ship. They may be the alien equivalent of ship's rats, or termites.
Because even stealing one of their number from them, even driving into their midst and carrying away a dozen, isn't enough to provoke a reaction.
Because there is no evidence of a brain-like structure in their chitinous bodies. Yes, there are plenty of weird tangles and globs and structures that we don't understand at all. But there is nothing that we can unequivocally identify as a brain, and therefore, no evidence that they have one.
Because there is no evidence that they feel pain.
Because we hurt them and hurt them and hurt them, and they do nothing. We tear their limbs off and they stand and take it, they do not run, they do not retaliate. Over and over, they let us hurt them, they turn the other cheek, past all tolerance and understanding they turn the other cheek.
Because it is intolerable what they have let us do to them. They must be exterminated.
The End
This story was first published on Tuesday, June 13th, 2017
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