Paradise Lost

Calls for help came every day, in every language spoken from Alpha Centauri to Xanoid 10.

Meteor. Famine. War!!!

Help us, they pleaded. Whoever they was in that particular society that had figured out how to contact us.

“Please remain calm,” I used to say. “A unit will be dispatched to your location.”

But after our people went Silent, the calls went more like this: 

“Hello? We need help.”

“We're sorry, but Planetary Assistance is no longer available. Our thoughts are with you during your pending apocalypse. Goodbye.”

“Wait —”

And I would hang up and log the call for our directors, who would mark the planet for further study before its demise. No tears — just another experiment ending. 

Of course, Earth was different. It had been a special project for our people. A hunk of spasmodic rock that we imbued with the best of all things green and growing, soft breezes, clear, cold sea, and people — people who looked perhaps too much like us, in hindsight. 

Of course, we were sensitive when they called.

Help, they called when they were cold, and we brought them fire.

Help, they called when they were hungry, and we taught them our very own methods of tilling the soil. 

When they ventured out of their cradle to the hostile parts of the Earth, we ushered in ages of warmth and good fortune that propelled them to prosperity. 

But help, they called, because they wanted more. And like permissive, enamored parents, we continued to give it to them until they wielded the means of their own destruction. 

The phone rang one night on my watch long after the Silencing. I checked the caller ID twice. Earth. A little tingle of electricity ran up my spine.

“You’ve reached Thalia IX — how may I direct you?”

“Hello? Hello? If anyone out there is listening, please, I need your help. Things are really getting out of hand here —”

An understatement if I’d ever heard one given the mass extinction underway on Earth amid the megacolossal storms and nuclear annihilation on a hair trigger.

“I'm sorry,” I said, clearing my throat to prepare for the sentence that usually got stuck like dry wafer crumbs. “But the Planetary Assistance Corps of Thalia IX is no longer available for rescue requests. Our thoughts are with you during your apocalypse. Goodbye.”

The girl made an indignant sound of surprise as I hung up. 

It was the ninth call from Earth this week, I found in the log as I began to add my notes. All previous agents had deftly dispatched the callers begging us to intervene, to send another ship, to save them.

Caller reports escalation on Earth, I began to type. It would be of interest to the directors.

Shrill bells jangled again. Earth again. I frowned as I picked up the line.

“You’ve reached Thalia –”

“You can’t hang up on me,” the girl’s voice said. 

The script prepared us for this scenario, though it was rare. Usually, our callers were in such a state of shock to reach us that they didn’t try again. 

“Thank you for your call. While we understand you might be experiencing feelings of worry, anxiety, or dismay —”

The girl groaned in aggravation. 

“Would you can it? My girlfriend is missing. We were supposed to shelter together this week,” she said. “Please, can you help me find her? I'm worried that she's lost or hurt.”

Shelter where? I wondered, and would have asked if the girl hadn’t kept talking at a rapid clip. This girlfriend had fled their home after an argument about letting others into their shelter. Days on, she hadn’t returned. 

How human to want to face obliteration together, and to do it alone out of spite, I thought as she spoke.

Finally, the girl paused her monologue.

“Look, I know who you are,” she said in a low voice. “I know you’re not — from here. This planet, I mean. But I know you’re watching.”

This was highly unusual and would require immediate escalation to a senior agent. I thought I should keep her talking while I send a request.

“How did you find this line?”

“It was on my grandfather’s old Macbook. I live in his house now. He used to work for NASA. Had all kinds of notes with it —”

NASA was an ancient terrestrial space agency with whom we had coordinated many of our attempts at aid.

“What’s your location?”

“Reno. Well, northern America. On the West Coast. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“And your girlfriend’s name?”

She paused and her breath hitched, as if the answer would break a dam she'd built across her emotions.

“Angel.”

And then the nervous feeling I'd been fighting back twisted through my arms and into my fingertips that hovered over the keys.

I tapped a-n-g-e-l one letter at a time. That was the name the humans gave to us long ago. Before we abandoned them. 

No, not abandoned. Even Silent, we had sent our best ship to evacuate a few hundred of them. It had nearly torn us apart.

“Oh, shit, hang on,” the girl said suddenly.

A door burst open behind her. She set her phone down so the sounds were muffled, but I could just make out voices calling out in panic. A sound like static overwhelmed the line and just as I looked down at the phone to check if we had disconnected, the door slammed, and the noise stopped. Frightened  voices died down into a murmur. 

“Sorry. Newcomers,” she said as she picked up the phone again. 

I noticed that my heart had started to race. The protocol called this a sign of emotional investment — understandable, but a sign to cut contact immediately. Only I had a message from the directors to stay on the line.

“We’re unable to offer any additional assistance in departing the planet or averting disaster,” I said with genuine regret.

But the girl just snorted.

“I figured it was a limited time offer,” she said. “But please, could you find Angel? Could you help me bring her home? She has red hair and she’s very tall. Her cheeks are always red like she’s been slapped across the face, even though she’s way more likely to have slapped someone else. She has these lovely big round brown eyes and she was wearing fatigues when she left. She was so angry. I should’ve stopped her.”

She keeps talking, telling me all about how they met as children fleeing great ravages of dust with their families, and how they found each other again as revolutionaries.  

I thought I could perhaps grant this one selfless wish. It wouldn’t be intervening, not really, to find her partner’s location. It wouldn’t have changed anything about their fate. And I had a few moments before the directors would appear at my shoulder. 

“Standby,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper.

And for the first time, but not the last, I defied Thalian protocol. I accessed our cameras and saw for myself how our great experiment on Earth was ending.

A few clicks and the distinct figure of a tall, redheaded woman in military garb appeared on screen. She was standing at attention before a gate, eyes locked ahead in terror as others streamed past her.  

On our satellites, I saw the storm heading for the geographic coordinates of the caller.

The muffled static on the line grew louder.

“I can report that Angel is safe in a shelter in the next town over,” I said. And I covered the mouthpiece before I spoke again, so she would not hear the waver in my voice. Tears I couldn't control dripped down my arm. “Unfortunately, it may not be possible for you to reach her.”

One last moment of silence from this loquacious caller. She must have been able to hear the howl of the wind, the creaking of the timber board. She must have known before she called.

“I understand,” she said. 

The sharp steps of the directors began to rap through the hallway behind me. I had a vision of myself seizing control and forcing them to help. We could still help. 

“Thank you,” the caller said. “Thank you for finding her.”

Our thoughts are with you. The shallow words flashed through my head one last time.

Instead, all I said after the line was already dead, was:

“Goodbye.”