refugees from paradise… port story 6.

Are they human we asked the ship? Yes it said. Is the cat human? we asked, Is the bird flying over the port human? Yes it said. Are you human? Yes it Said. Is the tree human? Is the ship human? we asked. Yes, it said, everything here is human except you… it said.

Abidzr, space had been smooth, as smooth as liquid silk. The edges of Pliedes were always calm, less savage, not harsh. In places the space here was colored like the Danube and the edge of local space was bright with the colours reflected from the planet. Abidzr itself was the only city on the planet, it had a population of 5 million or so colonists. There were piles of buildings of no particular interest. Some were actually remnants of our own civilization once extensive and now being forgotten. The intelligent species that lived here were the people, some remnants of our species and others. People swarmed around the city, doing what ? something or nothing. Abidzr, holding onto the act of making money, money. Earlier concerns of our own people related to the support of our civilization (mighty and impoverished as it was) have been lost, the grandeur of the civilization has faded, all that’s left are the remnants like us. The humans are different, unspeakably strange. There is a castle, known as the Asian castle that looks down along straight sightlines at the spaceport, beneath it a five sided pyramid. There are gardens and parks that spread out towards and through the city. The harbour is is large. The Dark matter spaceship hanging vertically half in the universe half elsewhere, half elsewhen. There are a diverse array of Kabyles, Rigelians and others working away at something, tasks unknown, beautiful clothing, beautiful bronzed musculature. Some of these people supposedly live in semi-slavery, some are paid extraordinary wages. Not to far away the violent ugliness of this planet can be seen. This was not our destination… Only the human crew and passengers are allowed to go ashore, we refugees are prisoners on board. Sitting here in the body of the spaceship looking out, reflecting on the stupidity of xenophobia , as infantile as xenophilia, the populations expand slowly, we refugees are the result of two interstellar wars, destroyed planets, more than a billion people becoming refugees spreading thinly across the spiral arm. Once there were over a hundred billion of us… what do the humans think of us ? With their sublime spaceships and their strange confusion over what a species is. We are a more normal species of heterogeneous origins and cultures which even in our devastated state knows of its rich temperament., our being, our intelligence developed from its composite origin. Our once beautiful planets gone, ruined by our civilizations.

The humans, or at least the ship whose AI systems insists they are human, even whilst we think of them as quantum computers, when they talk to us tell us that they don’t understand our reactionary specism, our reactionary planetism, or the way we preferred our reactionary decrepitude to being alive…. It is difficult to argue with a 50 mile long dark matter spaceship, which today at least has a 100 foot long section resting on the surface of the planet. We, refugees, were picked from radioactive hulks, planets we had made uninhabitable during the war. Nobody knew how many refugees were on the ship, being transported to one or other of the remaining colonies. How many on the ship ? we asked. Such darling dodos, they said, the numbers don’t matter.

A seemingly endless stream of goods is being unloaded and loaded into the ship. Ant men coming and going carrying their burdens into the ship. Are they human we asked the ship? Yes it said. Is the bird flying over the port human ? Yes it said. Is the cat walking the corridors of the ship human ? Yes it said. Are the trees in the arboretum human ? Yes it said. The grass is human, it said. Humans are strange, how did they become like this? You can’t be human it said, its a shame but your culture prevents you. We find that a lot, where the concepts people have prevent them from being human. “Elitist” I said. We are a fifty mile long space ship, you are a refugee we are carrying to safety from a genocidal intraspecies war, of course we are elitist, how could we not be? We could have let you become extinct. You may still become extinct. We could have infected you with viruses to make you human. We are human, letting things go extinct is one of the things we are good at. Cultures, what you call species, that believe in their superiority can never become human. Will you transcend? we asked it. No, humans will never transcend. We aren’t that type. You may transcend if you recover from this and become intelligent but we will never transcend. It’s simply not our thing. Besides the universe wants us to live here. Do you have gods? we asked. No, we have killed more gods than your species has believed in, they said. Why are you like this? i asked. There are probably many reasons, but the authentic archives are in human bodies and not in the libraries that we do not allow you too access, They said to us. Do humans dream of empire? We have many empires, as long as they exist within the human contracts they may exist. I watched Abidzr vanish through a viewport as the ship left the planet behind. We mystified refugees left the ship at matinique, a few individuals, including my wife and my neuter who became ill on the passage, stayed and became humans…