They had been observing the Earth more often of late. The human beings were growing in numbers, and there would soon be no food for everyone, just hunger, misery, and gradual starvation. Already it was happening as many lay dying. They had observed this for years and finally resolved to take pity on these Earthlings. They would thin out the herd by harvesting it.
An armada of spacecraft was therefore sent out. Each squadron would encircle a populous area, land at various points along the periphery, set down its harvesters, who would converge toward the center. Markers would bring up the rear, choosing those carcasses fit for consumption, while carriers would load them on board for the long trip back home.
Around the Earth, the scene was the same: some resisted with primitive weapons, while others were resigned to their inevitable end. Millions of humans were thus quickly dispatched. In three days it was over, and the fleet was gone. As the ships sped homewards, the harvesters rejoiced in what they had done. They were fate's special envoys dispensing mercy and averting cruel death. No more would humans die from starvation. They had received a kindness Nature seldom bestows.
On Earth, the survivors searched for a meaning for what had occurred. Yet such was their limited vision that they couldn’t discern the blessing visited on them. Had they understood their good fortune, they would have been comforted that a Larger Plan was at work to thin out their herd to insure its survival.
Observing the Earth in later years, they noted that the humans were again growing in numbers. Another expedition was therefore sent out once again to avert human suffering. Before long, more expeditions routinely followed, only now there were rumors that this harvesting was becoming a strange sort of “sport” that had nothing to do with thinning the herd. Stalking the prey, the thrill of the chase, even, it was whispered, drunken bloodlust seemed hardly in keeping with good will and compassion.
The harvesters were puzzled as to why their critics, but especially the humans, couldn’t understand that pity alone had prompted their actions. Didn’t they have the long-term interests of the humans at heart? Why this shortsighted blindness when they were only showing them kindness?
What might to the superficial eye have seemed like bloody encounters between harvesters and humans were, in actuality, interactions far different. As the humans lay on the ground thrashing about and writhing in pain, the harvesters were wont to gaze into their eyes, not in a transport of rapture of killing their prey, but understandable pride in a job well done, for now at least these humans had been spared a slow death by starvation!
Nevertheless, these malicious rumors persisted and gave way to protests at the “perverse pleasure” being taken in this “blood sport.” indeed, there was shock at how such an activity could conceivably be called a “sport,” which was simply the “wanton killing of helpless creatures.” Some even labeled these expeditions “ritualized slaughter” that had become an addiction.
The harvesters, as can well be imagined, were incensed at this dismissal of their noble deeds. They couldn’t comprehend why their compassion toward these creatures, their public service and civic virtue were so unfairly vilified. Had they not saved the herd from the fate of an agonizing death? By dispatching these humans so swiftly, weren’t they softening the heartlessness of a pitiless universe?
Now Ramox was a veteran of countless expeditions and relished their pleasures. He too had heard the mounting protests but dismissed them as foolish. These detractors didn’t understand the spiritual dimension of these modern Knights Templar, the religious-like brotherhood in the pursuit of an ideal of compassionate love for all of creation, even toward lower creatures who existed only to serve those whom an inscrutable Fate had set over them.
But these considerations aside, the harvesters had yet another justification for their mission: wasn’t this inferior species of human beings put on Earth expressly to provide food for a superior species? The very notion that these humans could have value in and of themselves, that they had rights, or should be accorded respect, all this was dismissed as absurd. Where could these lower life forms have gotten these rights, or did they simply invent them themselves?
Weren’t they merely ripening crop to satisfy the wishes of a higher species to do with them whatever they chose? The weak were there to serve the strong, who had dominion over them. It was the Law of Nature. Might Makes Right! It was as simple as that.
As much as Ramox found himself drawn to this argument, he nevertheless sensed that it had one major flaw. What if the tables were turned and we were visited by more powerful beings who treated us in the same way as we were treating these human beings? By that logic, shouldn’t we, too, meekly submit and obey our new masters?
The logical answer would be an unequivocal Yes, but the question remained would we actually do it? And, of course, the answer would be a resounding No! We would resist to the bitter end. So the Might-Makes-Right argument would be convincing only if we were the Master. The argument, then, was only one of self-interest, or, as that old saying had it, a matter of whose ox was gored.
Ramox continued to go round and round with this question, but he could find no compelling rational or moral argument for what he was doing, for he wanted a solution that would give him the moral high ground and a clear conscience.
These reflections gave Ramox pause, for he had never before thought about these issues. In fact, he had never even realized that there were different ways of viewing these questions. He had always been led to believe that thinking too deeply on moral issues was dangerous and so he and his comrades shunned them. Not that this was discussed in so many words, but it was simply part of an unspoken code. When in doubt, act, for thinking led to confusion.
This was his creed and he continued to honor it until, one day, he chanced upon a curious scene. He was part of a group pursuing two frantic humans as they tried to escape their intrepid pursuers. As his group drew nearer, he could see a male and a female running with interlocked hands, when all of a sudden the air was rent by a shaft of light, and the female fell dead.
The male lost his balance, picked himself up, was about to continue when, looking for his companion, realized what had happened. Forgetting his pursuers, he knelt slowly beside her, and gathering her up within his arms, pressed her to himself and wept. There was a long reverential silence as though time stood still. Then a second piercing beam and he, too, fell dead.
Ramox was transfixed and turned away slowly. He wandered aimlessly until, chancing upon a dark forest, he entered it to compose himself. As he walked into the darkness, he grew weak and collapsed to the ground. He dreamt that he, too, was a fleeing human, frantically running to escape his pursuers. The dread of extinction was in his mouth as he heard the harvesters gaining on him. Never again would he walk upon the earth; never again behold those whom he loved, or lead a life that gave him meaning and happiness. Then he felt unbearable pain. The beam of light had found its mark.
Then he heard a mysterious voice: "Now you begin to see with the heart. We are all of us creatures in the abyss of this world. We are here but for a moment until death and oblivion will claim us all. But while we are here, no matter our place in the Great Chain of Being, we are all of us subject to the Dumb Brute of Pain, which is blind to life’s brevity and tragic beauty. It sees only its victims.
“We are all of us one with every creature -- the weak, the lowly, and the helpless, even the animals in all their innocence. We, too, share in their fate, for pain unites us in a common destiny. In the night of this world, how can we see another’s pain and not want to remove it? Or, worse, how can we inflict it on any creature, no matter what species, for although they may be unable to think, they can feel! They, too, have only a brief time here. How can we cause them pain or kill them and not feel guilt by taking from them their all-too-brief moment?"
Ramox awoke slowly. Lying there numbly, he stared at the heavens while lost in thought for a very long time. Then he arose and, returning to the awaiting crafts, he could see the markers busy at work.
Time passed, but the voice in his dream left him no peace. Inflicting pain, however disguised by grandiloquent words, was nothing else but inflicting pain, a perverse form of pleasure, which poisoned one’s soul. What kind of person had he become if all he lived for was killing? Why had harvesting made him feel so intensely alive?
Why did the spilling of blood give him a rapturous feeling of exaltation, an addiction without which he couldn’t exist? Why was he driven to kill things, needed to kill them to be happy? What was it about him that he needed to do this, while others found it repulsive or even deranged?
So many of his friends had brutalized their sons by bringing them along on these expeditions that coarsened these boys in the bloody work “of what it meant to be a man.” What kind of a role model was such a father? What must wives and daughters have thought of their husbands and fathers? How many wives had pleaded with their husbands not to expose their sons to this nightmare?
Why hadn’t the churches spoken out against this outrage, not only for its brutalizing effects on the harvesters and their sons, but also, and far more importantly, for the inimaginable suffering of these poor creatures? They didn’t exist to be the objects of the murderous impulses of a “superior species” that wantonly robbed them of life.
But the more he thought, the more he hoped that more harvesters would eventually free themselves from this heart of darkness. Too many were in the grip of some malignant power. They needed blood, needed to feast upon it, to gorge themselves with it to stay alive and renew themselves, for slowly over time, they had been transformed into something else, these modern Draculas.
This is an expanded version of a 1986 article (Vol. 2, Issue 2) that appeared in Between the Species, a publication of California Polytechnic State University, (http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/).