Farewell From the Firmament
This document is classified top secret
Subject: Decrypted contents of message picked up by SERENDIP at 0328 on December 22, 2020
(Note: The original message was in Mandarin Chinese, translated below to English. Any phrases that have been italicized indicate the closest approximation of meaning.)
Greetings, humans. Let me begin with an apology. This method of communication is harsher than what my mind is attuned to, and I might be prone to making mistakes. As for my chosen language, we believe this is the most common tongue on your world.
We’ve been watching you for a while now. We’ve borne witness to your admirable, if sometimes concerning, growth over the ages. We’ve nudged you on your path, our intentions never outright annihilation of your species, but merely weakening you, so we could step in as saviors from the heavens that you’ve always believed in.
And you’ve surprised us at every instance. Every pandemic, calamity, or disaster we engineered, you shrugged it off and progressed as a race. We had to exercise restraint, of course. We could have destroyed you with ease. The Council would have been overjoyed to wipe you out entirely, but it was I that interceded every single time and stayed their hand.
Alas, my time is drawing to an end. I might be extremely long-lived by your standards, but by no means am I immortal. The Council knows this and have grown brazen in their campaign against your kind. This past year, they’ve gone on the warpath, and have even taken the effort to set up an outpost on your neighboring planet. And curious creatures that you are, our biomarkers have piqued your interest. You suspect, maybe even wish, that it would indicate the presence of life, not knowing that it is to be the death of you.
They’ve forced my hand. An invasion would mean bloodshed and carnage, and the needless loss of life of my own. I’ve proposed another way. We’ve found a star whose trajectory would put it in an optimal position. All we need to do is overload the core and it will emit a gamma-ray burst, the radiation washing over your planet in the next x to xx xxxxx, and our forces shall eliminate any survivors. Your deaths shall be quick and painless. I owe you that much.
I want you to understand that I’m doing this because we have no other choice. The liquid we’ve squandered away, that your planet is inundated with, is precious to us. It is not vital to our lives, but it is the fuel we use to power our worlds. There are not many other planets with enough reserves to meet our needs. I tried bargaining with the Council, that there are other bodies in your system that can keep us going a while, but they insist that you’d look upon us a threat, and that it would only be wise to strike first.
It pains me, but I have no choice except to agree with them. We’ve seen what you’ve done to the other beings that inhabit your world, and to your own kind. It leaves no doubt as to how you’d treat with us.
It aches my heart that it has come to this. As a mother, it hurts, this loss of life. But better you than us. We shall remember you fondly.
Farewell, humans. I’m sending this message without the Council’s knowledge. Perhaps, you shall thwart our efforts yet again.
xxxxxxxxxxx
Queen Mother of the xxxxxxxxxxx
(Note: X’d out parts of the message, upon decryption, produced meaningless strings of characters; data irretrievable)
