Story 39. Written by Jim Waitlord

Once upon a time, maybe it was true, in fact, it is true. European explorers stopped with a ship in the harbor of a giant island. This island was called Australia. Today, it’s a continent. They stumbled into a world that had been isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years and evolved separately. Creatures lived there that could not have developed anywhere else. There weren't the predators that would have been dangerous to them, the ones that lived everywhere else. The people gaped: "Are these also God's creatures?"

While they were gaping, two rat families swam ashore from the ship's hold. For them, this island was the promised land. It was like a 'table that sets itself.' There were birds that nested on the ground and couldn't really run very well. They just went over and devoured them alive, eggs and all. The rats immediately began to reproduce. "Multiply and increase," their rat god said to them, "This land is yours!" And they did what the Lord commanded, so much so that entire species were wiped out.

This story is an omen. A warning. Because we, homo sapiens, might be nothing more than the rats of the galaxy.

Homo sapiens evolved into its current form about 50,000 years ago. How?

Imagine a spaceship of an advanced civilization landing on a planet called Earth. The aliens look around: "A nice little planet!" they think. But what seems nice can also be deadly. Meanwhile, a "virus" dangerous to them lands from the spaceship, unnoticed. They don't even realize it. At home, on their own planet, they can keep this dangerous pest in check without any problem. They don't perceive any danger, and they don't even know that they may have dug their own graves here. But it's also possible that they were deliberate stowaways.

The spaceship was so huge that the virus was imperceptible within it. This civilization could only get here by traveling like a self-sufficient city. This wasn't the most advanced alien civilization out there. It was not capable of traveling through wormholes; it traveled by traditional methods. This dangerous pest, the offspring of the worm, was homo sapiens. However, although mentally and in every way inferior to the aliens, it possessed a critical advantage, much like a weed compared to cultivated plants: it would eventually be capable of traveling through wormholes, or achieving hibernation.

50,000 years pass. Homo sapiens fulfills its mission and is expelled from paradise. Inevitably, it renders the host planet uninhabitable. Then it acquires the key to survival and the instrument of further destruction: space travel. There are already signs of this today. The contamination of the Moon, the probes sent to Mars also carried microbes that survived space travel, thereby endangering the underground culture of Mars. This is not so dangerous; the locals were able to overcome it because life on Earth originated from Mars. That planet formed earlier, and the first cell came over from there in an impact meteorite. So, they were able to contain the epidemic.

But what will the future bring? The aliens have obviously become aware of the danger; they are roughly a hundred light-years away. Radio signals have already reached them. There is huge panic: "If this worm is released into the galaxy, everything could be destroyed! What should we do?"

Another being like that is highly unlikely.

David and Goliath – the reversed version

Goliath laughs heartily at David's militancy. The stone causes less damage than a mosquito bite. He pretends to be dead, let him rejoice, when he laughs at him, it's an earthquake. There are beetles that have horns and are so warlike that people would rather laugh at them and flick them away than kill them. The astronaut lands homo sapiens, like the rat in Australia. The aliens, however, are confronted with the fact that the many Davids and warlike beetles already pose a threat, just like the rat to the native fauna.

A scientist on the alien spaceship has a good idea. "Let's hire a species that can travel through wormholes and use them to curb this epidemic. But they are not as evil as homo sapiens, so they don't want to exterminate the human race."

What do you think, what is the mission of the Roswell 13?

The solution shouldn't be total annihilation. Although, it looks like homo sapiens themselves have pre-empted that solution – say the Roswell 13 – "There's nothing to worry about here."

Let's sit by the fireplace, wait, twiddle our thumbs. This problem seems to be going to solve itself, maybe on its own, as it looks now.

The Rat of the Galaxy