THE MARTIAN (Image obtained from the Internet Network

THE MARTIAN

 

The night is still and quiet. The lunar oval peeks palely overhead. There is no star that shines its beauty in the sky. A sky that appears as an immense and endless mantle of black velvet.

I drive the car at moderate speed, surrounded by the silence and solitude of the countryside that, at such hours, become impressive. That's when I see a strange glow. If it were something ordinary, it would not attract my attention. But I find that intermittent flash so abnormal and unused that I can't help but step on the brake and get closer to see what that is.

My keen curiosity makes me go through a dark grove. Then I reach a small clearing, in the middle of the leafiness.

What I see leaves me stunned. My eyes open like plates and amazement shakes me. Because what I contemplate, I certainly do not know what it is, but it does let me glimpse that I am facing something extraordinary and unheard of and that escapes my limited understanding.

At first glance it looks like a gigantic and collosal pyre, I would define it rather as an indeterminate mass of chromatic and iridescent colors, which throws vivid and penetrating flashes.

I close my eyes instinctively, blinded by light. When I half-open them, a dense bluish haze begins to envelop everything, mysteriously, hiding from my view what I have around me. At the same time, a sweet, cloying smell invades my nostrils.

My legs dig to the ground like immovable stakes. Terror and fear intermingle within me, with savage bewilderment. The heart gallops frantically, completely out of balance.

A brain stimulus drives me strongly to leave as soon as possible. But the feet refuse to walk, as if they were imprisoned in unbreakable and invisible rings. A cold sweat gushes from my piel, in abundant torrents. I tremble. I think I'm going to faint. Physical forces abandon me. I'm going to roll on the floors when, in these harrowing moments, I notice that something touches me, almost imperceptibly. And instantly, as if a miracle were worked, a great change is made in me. The pulse returns to its normal course, my body regains its proper balance, and I feel an unknown sense of joy and optimism that drive away the cervical fear and dread that previously convulsed me. The paroxysm has ceased. What happened to me? Why such a sudden and favorable reaction?

- Fear nothing, earth, and get closer.

The voice sounds in my ears imperious, with a certain metallic reluctance. Far from frightening me, I advance a few steps. I begin to distinguish a thing detaching itself from the heterogeneous mass and approaching me, stopping two meters from where I am. It is like a yellowish and transparent beam of light, which does not produce radiance.

- I greet you, earthling, on behalf of all zooms.

I heard the same voice again, this time in a less metallic and kinder tone.

- Who speaks to me? -pregunto.

- Listen, I am a being from a world far removed from yours. I don't mean to hurt you. I just want to say goodbye, through you, to the human race before I go back to mine.

The serenity that overwhelms me makes my head think sanely and reason in the most opportune way everything that happens to me. The reality is palpable. There seems to be no fiction.) That rare must be a spaceship, a flying saucer. And what I have right under my nose, a Martian. No more, no less. I don't know how I recognize everything so naturally. I think it must be the inexplicable state I'm in.

- I know what you think. I can guess the thought. I'll tell you one thing. When you saw my ship, the emotion was going to produce a heart attack that would have been fatal to you. I applied my science to you and saved you, plunging you into a lethargy of tranquility and tranquility.

- I thank you for your gesture in freeing me from death. Now tell me, are you really a Martian? The truth is that I would never have thought that aliens were like this. I always imagined you in the form of little green men, with a trumpet-shaped nose and ears and feet similar to those of a frog. And with a pair of bulging eyes like those of a toad.

- I do not come from Mars, but from Zoomsia, a planet that is an infinite number of billions of light years from Earth. And I understand your surprise to see me as I am, and not correspond to the idea that humans have forged of us.

- It is hard to believe that a ray of light is the inhabitant of another world.

- I am not light, but energy. A powerful energy like your mind could never imagine.

- I don't know for sure what happens to me, the truth is that I'm talking to you just like I could with an old friend. I never thought I would find myself in such an implausible situation as the present one. If I have to be honest, I will confess that I always doubted the existence of flying saucers, and of Martians and other zarandajas. All this made me laugh, I assure you, a great laugh.

- Earthlings have always sinned naïve no matter how wise you believe themselves. Your science, your rockets, have barely seen a tiny particle of what is the vastness of the Universe. You think you are alone in the Cosmos, when in fact there are infinite millions of planets, of asteroids full of living creatures to overflow. You speak of spatial solitude, when you cannot be more accompanied than you are. Ah! The poor human race, which believes itself to be a great elephant when it is barely an insignificant ant that can be easily crushed.

- Why do you say that? Do you despise us? Do you mean to make fun of us?

- It is not my sentence to despise you, or even to mock me . I just want to make you see the little thing you humans are.

- If we are such a small thing, do you want to tell me what you are? I can't wait to hear.

The blissful Martian, or whatever, had driven me crazy, with his air of superiority.

- Forgive me, I didn't want to offend you. Look, a zoom can't be compared to a man no matter how much it is intended.

He paused briefly.

- You have fallen sympathetic to me, and I will answer all those questions that swarm in your thinking about the reason for my presence here.

- It's the best thing you can do.

- Some time ago we discovered that the energy from which we nourish ourselves was insufficient for all of us to increase in increasing numbers. Zoomsia was getting small. Then it was decided to send five ships in search of a new, larger world, where to set all the zooms. I went out in one of those ships. We went through the whole space from part to part, without finding what we were looking for. So, until we discover your planet. But we did not find it in the current state. There was nothing about him at all. Reigned the most impressive solitude and the most complete emptiness. By mysterious forces that we still do not know, the seas, the oceans, the continents were gradually created... The first living beings appeared on the face of the earth, either in the form of plants, or in the form of animals and others, of microscopic sizes. According to your measure of time, the century, these were happening. Some animals succumbed giving life to new ones, the lands took other perimeters, the oceans ran... Everything was transformed. But what most powerfully caught our attention was the evolutionary phase that insects followed. From insignificant animals that they were, over time and by complex mutations they became primates becoming what is now man.

- You've been telling me concepts that I already know from books.

- What I wanted to tell you is that we have followed the entire history of your planet since the first breath of life encouraged on it, until now. We study and assimilate to the smallest detail all your ways of life, culture, behavior, language. In a word, we know everything about everything. And we have come to the conclusion that the Earth, due to its natural conditions, is the ideal place for zooms. Here we could live all and infinite descendants more.

- So, are you implying that you will soon move them here? Are you talking about an invasion?

- You have just spoken in the typical language of the human being. You have said invasion. Zooms don't know that word. Its practical meaning has neither existed nor will ever exist for us. To settle our people on Earth, we should first of all fulfill a requirement without which our relocation here could not be realized.

- And what is that requirement?

- Erase man from planet Earth, exterminate him completely.

It is the calm state I find myself in that prevents me from reacting violently.

- You've said that the practical term "invasion" doesn't exist for zooms. And now tell me, isn't invasion breaking into the territory of others and destroying them, plundering them, sowing death and subjecting everything to the despotism of the invader? Wouldn't yours be the bloodiest invasion ever seen in the Universe? Nor do I understand that, since every invasion lowers, humiliates and subjugates the vanquished, who would you enslave if there would not be a single humanoid left on the Globe?

You want to invade an empty planet, without settlers. I don't find it meaningful.

- You have not understood my words. That requirement, to carry it out, would open the doors of your planet to us, but we cannot fulfill it, we are powerless for it.

- So that's it, you fear us. Our nuclear weapons, our war mills have convinced you that in a fight against us you would be the vanquished.

The zoom burst into what looked like a loud laugh.

- Don't make me laugh, do you think for a moment that your weapons stop us? You really are funny. Dreamer! With a small part of my strength I could turn your great planet into shatters, reduce it to nothing. And this would only be a minimal test of our power.

- And why then do you not carry out your incursion being so that nothing would stop you?

- Our unimaginable potential, the immense strength we possess,

it is a creative, constructive energy.

We have the faculty to do, to build, to rise above something that does not exist. But we could never – no matter how much we tried to – destroy, harm the most insignificant being, not even an aphid. We are not trained, made to kill, to reap lives, whatever they may be. There is only one thing that would easily end with us if we went down here.

- I am intrigued to know what is that terrible weapon that would suppress such indestructible entities.

- It is not a physical weapon.

- So... I can't guess.

- Hatred.

- Hatred? I don't understand.

- Ever since the first living bug put its paws on the ground, the Globe has always been bathed and waterlogged with blood. Already prehistoric animals were killing each other, devouring each other. Already then the man made us believe that his intelligence would save him from the bloody hecatomb. Useless guess. It became the most ruthless and bloodthirsty animal of all those who existed and exist. His favorite occupation has always been to kill. He slaughtered the animals for nutrition. But he exterminated and exterminated more and more his fellowmen, for a pleasure that he keeps and develops as soon as he was born. From remote civilizations to the present, the cult of death has become a faithful and unforgiving rite. An exact science to enslave, oppress, annihilate others has developed with dire consequences. The weapons have changed, but the killer instinct continues to stick to the man. And although agencies are created for peace, it is the same. It continues to be killed, plundered, destroyed, viciously, treacherously. And no regrets. Humanity kills The Huumanity because it enjoys doing so, even if it then wants to justify itself with banal pretexts of conscience. That exacerbated hatred that corrodes your hearts is what prevents us from coming down into your world. Because that hatred would engender destructive waves that, when collided with our creative force, would weaken and exterminate us. Do you understand now?

I can hardly babble anything.

- But there are good men...

- Yes, there are, and although her life is straight, the aggressiveness is inside capable of unleashing herself at any moment. No, we can't come, or even take risks. You miss it. If you were not as you are and lived together, no earthling would die of hunger or thirst or injustice. It would be enough to show knowledge to turn the entire land surface into fields of inexhaustible crops and the seas into wonderful nurseries. We would eliminate earthquakes, cyclones, we would subdue Nature. Diseases and sufferings would disappear, no one would ever suffer from any evil. Death would cease to be a nightmare for you. Everyone would be happy.

- It's very nice what you're saying. If that were true....

. It could be true if you did not have that breastplate of hatred with which you absurdly protect yourself from happiness and which constitutes your second skin. Moreover, all your theories do nothing but proclaim that the solutions to man's problems are in him, it is he who has to find them. It's your logic. Now I say... why can't such solutions come from other beings, according to you also god's creatures? Why not? What exists is not exclusive to man and therefore the development of the circumstances that surround him will not depend solely on him or his knowledge.

Whoever gave us zooms the energy we possess – which we ignore and of which we only know that it certainly exists – did not give us a purely passive role. If you change your behavior and the environment around you, so can we. In fact we will.

- Why do you want to save us?

- Because man is not qualified for it. Look, when a being full of hatred dies, another is also born that tomorrow will overflow with evil and mistreat its fellowmen. This forms like a chain that never ends and it is necessary to break. Deep down you give me pity.

I don't know what to think. The blissful zoom is absolutely right.

- When I tell all this you will not believe me.

- You better not do it, they would take you for a madman. In our research we manifest ourselves to many humans. Eyes of all races saw our ships cross the skies and tongues of all continents called into question our existence. And no one believed what was true. The same would happen to you.

- At first you told me that you were leaving the Earth. Have you found, in addition to ours, another planet suitable for you?

- Nope. Yours is the only one that serves us. Only here have we found what suits us.

The being made a silence that I did not dare to break.

- I will reveal to you something that no one knows. Twenty years from now all the races of the Globe will fight against each other. A great war will ravage everything. No one will be left alive, not even the smallest of microbes.

Another pause that only increased my bewilderment.

- I'm going to give you a chance to save you. Come with me to Zoomsia and nothing will happen to you. There you will not succumb to annihilation.

I think about a few moments.

- If, as you say, you have seen the future of humans and their total destruction, can you foresee what will become of me in a distant and different planetary system from mine deprived of what is proper to my human condition? What role will I play, a man alone in the middle of zooms? Will I not be a weirdo object of study and curiosity?

- None of that. This same proposition that I make to you was made to other men and women who accepted and live happily today in Zoomsia. After twenty years and once men are destroyed, we will all go down, earthlings and zooms, and build a new Earth. Then everything will be different, the human race will have lost its aggressiveness and fierceness and will be unaware of hatred and ambition. It will only be lived for happiness and love will preside over everything. Isn't this what you always wanted?

- Your offer is very generous. Don't take me for a fool if I tell you I can't accept. I must run my fate, the fate of every man of man descent. I cannot cowardly renounce my earthly nature and pretend to flee from the punishment that has engendered my hatred and evil. Do you understand me?

- Yes. Your position is that of a brave man. That's why I'll give you a talisman. Use it when you see chaos coming. He will immunize you by allowing you to receive us upon our arrival. Now I just have to say goodbye to you. – and without waiting for a response it vanished.

In the place it occupied, on the ground, there is an orange stone. I take it. It is unctuous to the touch. I wrap it in the handkerchief. Then I hear like a whisper and see the ship of that amazing being rise. Little by little he gets lost in the blackness of the night, releasing glows that slowly fade.

I think it's all a nightmare, a fictional event. I sense that I am going to wake up, from one moment to the next, on the bed. But my eyes are open, I am completely lucid and clear. My adventure has been real.

Plunged into a sea of confusion I return to the car and continue the march. Of all the thoughts that squeeze my brain, one issue stands out from the others. Will the end of the world be true 20 years from now? Only such a short period of life does humanity have? I feel my pocket with my hand. I have the talisman. And the question arises. Will I use it?

- - - - - - -

 

the end

Done