My Work Helping Humans

I should start with an overview of my assignment on Earth, and perhaps provide an example. I'll get into more details shortly, but the basic idea is that I use my perfectly natural powers to help humans with rather minor problems. I use the term "perfectly natural" from the perspective of Celestial Beings, of course. 

Sorry, but I want to remind whoever's reading this from the Celestial Gazette and Register staff: when you asked me to provide a few thoughts on my work helping humans, you did say you'd edit this, clean it up, make the narrative flow, and so on. Based on that, here are my few thoughts, not a fully developed narrative. Sorry if that sounds lazy, but I'm in the middle of a rather tricky situation involving a human with a sick cow, some lost chickens, and a growing rat colony.

The first person I helped--I remember this very clearly--was trying to plow a very rocky field. He was new to this bit of land, in fact new to farming in general. He'd been very worried about getting enough crops planted so he could feed his family (really lovely wife and kids, if I do say so), with enough left over to sell to buy some other things they needed. 

I felt badly for him; he was working needlessly hard. The part of his land he was trying to plow was absolutely the rockiest, the hardest, and generally the least-crop-friendly spot on his whole patch. I realized he had no way of knowing this, whereas any decent Level 3 Diplomatic Being (L3DB)--such as me, obviously--could've seen this from a hundred yards off. I offered to give him a breather by plowing a bit; as soon as his back was turned, I re-pointed the ox and the plow toward a much more promising bit of land. When he turned back, he started to object, but noticed I'd already plowed a nice, long furrow; he watched silently while I did a bit more, then took over and finished the rest in a couple of days.

I thought that was a fine start to my time helping humans. 

Perhaps a bit of background concerning humans generally would be useful. Like other sentient beings, humans have their own set of preconceptions and long-standing practices, whether they make much sense or not. Humans generally have funny ideas about how the universe is set up. Most of them want to simplify things to the point of being ridiculous. They often want to boil everything down to good versus evil, for example. The universe, as you know, is neither good nor evil; it simply is. Humans are very much capable of creating their own evil, but so are the sentient beings everywhere else in the universe. (It goes without saying that, also like other sentient beings, they are capable of tremendously unselfish acts for good.) I don't get involved with the really nasty stuff; my particular capabilities don't allow me to address things like famine or wholesale slaughter because some twit decides he needs more land.

Some humans--many of those I work with, in fact--might call me a god, if they knew what I was really up to. In fact, some of them think of me as a being they call "Gluff." It's taken me a while to work out what that means based on the context, but I think, to them, this Gluff is the Creator of All and Everything, and is the Ultimate Power for Good. I admit, I cannot definitively say there is no such being, but I've certainly never met or spoken to it. Humans may think my powers are vast, but then again, the ability to smelt iron might seem a supernatural power to, say, a bee. "Making honey, sure," the bee might think, "easy peasy, but getting metal out of rocks? That's magic!"

I was given my assignment by the Office of the Directorate for the Management of Quadrant Gnu. "You will work with this part of Earth," they'd told me; they had a rather detailed map, with a boundary drawn around many places where humans live close together in groups ("towns" and "villages"). The other areas around my area (if I may be so bold as to call it "my area") are assigned to other L3DBs. It's not strictly forbidden to work in a neighboring area, but it's considered bad form; if one does it often enough, one can expect a strongly worded communication from the Directorate. (That's bad, to be clear.) 

They'd told me, "The humans on Earth"--this was redundant, Earth is the only place in the cosmos one finds humans--"sometimes find things don't go as they want them to. You, as an L3DB, have some control over their immediate surroundings and circumstances, and are authorized to help them, either on an individual basis, or in very, very small groups."

I'd asked which ones I should help. "As an L3DB, you have discretion," I was told. "The general guideline is to help those who need assistance with activities that aren't intended to harm other humans. For instance, those needing help while trying to help other humans, or to even just be content with themselves."

I had many more questions, of course: what are the signs a human needs help? How will I know if I've actually helped someone? Is the food any good? But they were very busy beings indeed, so after a few more basic instructions--may not cause bodily harm, may not revive anyone from whom life has fled, may not create plague or pestilence, and so forth--they sent me on my way.

From that, you can see that I had to "learn on the job," as the humans sometimes say.

There are many things I can do that assist me with assisting humans. As far as deciding which humans to help, I believe one of the most important abilities I have is what they--the humans--call "empathy." I can sense what humans feel, if I'm near enough, though I can't actually read their thoughts. For thought reading, you'd need at least a Level One Higher Being (L1HB). Sometimes, deep empathy isn't even necessary; sometimes, the trouble would be clear even to another human.

Once I've identified whom to help, I can appear in whatever form is needed. I might appear as a kindly old man, or as a spirited young girl, or anything in between. I once appeared as something some humans call a "handsome prince." It all went fine, but during my time with the human I was helping, it became clear that they were what other humans would call "shallow," which I took to mean they didn't care much for anything beyond their own happiness, status, and so on. So in the end, I didn't feel great about assisting them.

As I mentioned, I work in an area with a number of towns and villages; many of them have rather lovely names, like Wood, or Stone, while others have the names of humans attached to them, like Parserton. I don't fully understand that one; Parser actually settled several miles from the town that bears his name. Then some families came and settled nearby, in a fine little spot by a lake, with good grazing and farmable land close at hand. Parser galloped in and told them it was his land, and they should give him part of their catch of fish or some of their wheat harvest or what have you. He was such an obnoxious bully they went along with it, and a few years later, he declared the little (but growing) village would be called Parserton. (To be clear, I did nothing to help this Parser. He was what many humans in the town called "a piece of work.")

As I implied when I mentioned helping humans with "minor problems," L3DBs are limited in what they can do, including how many humans they can help. For instance, I cannot be in two places at the same time (goodness, I dislike clunky words like "place" or "time"). At most, on a good day, I can help a few people. I can, though, move through space (another clunky word) very, very quickly, compared to humans. More than once, over the course of a single day, I've helped humans on nearly opposite sides of my area, a distance that would take them four or five days to cross by wagon.

Perhaps a couple more examples of how I've helped humans would be useful.

One case involves two schoolgirls who were desperate to do well on a math exam. They were very concerned with getting into "college," which I won't bother to explain. At the time, I knew nothing about human math, though I've grown to appreciate their devotion to it. They've realized that if they know, for instance, the speed and direction a wagon is traveling, they can predict where it will be at some time in the future. It's one of their attempts to step outside their limited view of space and time, to see, however imperfectly, into what they call the future. At least, that's the best I can come up with; otherwise, math seems a silly way to spend time.

So I took the form of the rather scruffy person who cleaned the school and got hold of the teacher's book and notes. Admittedly, it took me a solid fifteen or twenty minutes to work through it all, but then I had enough to help.

From there it was as simple as taking the form of a girl doing her math work to get the girls (my "helpees", dare I say) to start asking questions. They didn't know who I really was, obviously; for whatever reason, humans seem to naturally trust us L3DBs. In fact, they seem to be drawn to us; or at least that's my experience. In any event, I pretended to be working on math, and would occasionally mutter things like, "if x-squared plus three x..." And so on. They were drawn in, and I was able to talk them through what they needed to know in a way they understood. They both did very well on the exam, though they're still worried about how their families will find the money for college. That problem's beyond my pay grade (goodness, I do love that human phrase!)

The next example's a bit more complicated. I mentioned that empathy can be useful when deciding which humans to help. Sometimes, it's easy to see who needs help, and, importantly, what help is needed; other times, the "help needed" signs can be faint and murky.

I'd been doing some work in a village called Wood; it was a nice spot, and I'd found several humans who could do with a bit of my kind of assistance. There was a lad there named Drubel who was clearly unhappy, but exactly why wasn't obvious at first. Over time, it became clear that Drubel felt he didn't quite fit in, and that not fitting in meant there was something wrong with him. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him, of course. Humans have such silly, arbitrary rules sometimes, and his unhappy feelings stemmed from this. You know, I don't think I can even describe it properly. Perhaps this: if almost everyone in a town really likes corn, but someone in the town doesn't like it so much, but they really, really like rice... As I say, there's no way to make sense of this.

Anyway, Drubel and his best friend--the friend's name escapes me now, though I'd met him before--went out to find a hillcat. Fuddle! That was the friend's name. Wait...no, it'll come back to me. Evidently, seeing a hillcat was thought to be good luck, or very brave, or some other thing humans desire. Drubel had told another friend of his he'd find one and bring back a story to tell. The other friend, Klander, told Drubel how much he would admire such a feat. 

I could tell Drubel very much wanted to be admired by this Klander, that Klander's opinion of him was important, so I decided to help. Once Drubel and his friend (Floodle? no...) were nearing the end of their day looking for the hillcat, I managed some rather neat tricks with the weather. I timed it so they were very near a snug cave I knew of. Some heavy rain, some well-timed thunder and lightning, and I had them pinned down. I spent some time talking with them that night; they were among the better humans I'd met, honestly; they both cared deeply about their friends and family, about the entire village, really. I very much enjoyed our time together.

Once they were asleep, I set about rounding up the hillcat. Luring the hillcat was easy; like many creatures on Earth, hillcats are absolutely mad for bacon. Once I'd enticed it to the mouth of the cave, I went in ahead of it--hillcats can move much more quickly than humans, but can't compete with an L3DB--and dropped the bacon on the floor. The hillcat bounded in, and though Drubel and the hillcat were only in the cave together for a few seconds, he did indeed come away with quite a story to tell.

This sort of success is what keeps me going. I very much miss seeing other Celestial Beings; since we're assigned to specific physical areas, chance encounters are very rare. Of course, there is the regular Convocation of Celestial Beings of All Types, but that only happens about once each 20 human months. Still, helping in my small way can be very gratifying.

And so, as the humans say, I take it one day at a time, and I take the bad with the good, and I don't count my chickens before they're hatched (honestly, I still don't quite know what that last one means, or if it belongs with the other two). And so I beat on, as a boat against the current...no, sorry, that doesn't make any sense either.