Story originally written as a response at r/WritingPrompts (u/PrimitivePrism)
Prompt:
A benevolent alien offers to heal the Earth in exchange for 1 million humans. You offered yourself but were the only one rejected for unspecified reasons.
Response:
It didn’t tell us what one million of us were needed for, only specifying that we had to be volunteers. It would know if we really were, it assured the planet, its voice speaking simultaneously inside every human head, in the mother tongue of each person–for it had learned all of our languages. Some believed it was speaking no human tongue at all, but instead some cosmic lingua franca arisen from the root of the universe, common to all life, its quantum vibrations picked up and interpreted as our first and most familiar language by the individual antennae of our brains.
Free will, it explained, was for all intents and purposes real. No one future of the universe was written, though every possible future was, in a sense, stretched before us in a virtually infinite multiverse which the physical brains that had so far evolved on Earth would not be able to process on a fundamental level.
And that was okay, the alien told us, because with the great healing of the planet we would be given the option of time–if only we would work together to survive–to let our brains adapt through the cumulative mutations of thousands of generations, until they reached the shape and neuronal capacity to key into the understanding of that greater macrocosmos that was reality, which existed in all places and all times, waiting to be discovered.
I volunteered for the exchange with my whole heart.
Perhaps, I thought, this angel from interstellar space was in fact an ancient demon out of archaic human lore. Perhaps we were sacrifices, to be made to suffer for some unimaginable form of hellish eternity, or annihilated to satisfy the whim of another organism evolved from predators–those hunters and consumers of other lifeforms–in a universe constrained by rigid laws of evolution. Perhaps this angel was too much like us.
As though our visitor had tailored its request based on some vision of all those possible futures, exactly one million, just as it had asked for, volunteered with this same act of free will, the same commitment of spirit, to be exchanged for the healing of our blasted and dying home world. They came from every corner of the earth. The media was proud to trumpet that they represented us all, almost teary-eyed in their sentiment. The exchange had been made collectively by all humanity.
Yet I was rejected. The others, all 999, 999 of them, were taken to the stars. The alien, our so-called space angel, assured us that the healing would begin imminently–that even though one soul had been rejected, it was its wholehearted offer that mattered. In other words, I supposed, it was my thought that counted.
The night after the departure of the angel and our offering, I awoke to a voice. It was inside my head. The angel. It had returned.
It is time for the healing to begin, it said softly. Tonight you will drive to the lab. Use your Level E access key at the concealed side entrance. The main gate is locked. There are Zone-1-certified staff working tonight on Level A. Simply tell security that you are there to supervise.
I did as the space angel asked me. The drive took under 15 minutes, with no traffic at such an hour. The guards on duty scrutinized me with their expressions as I told them my story, but their voices carefully betrayed little suspicion. No lowly guard in the entire facility is above a Level E pass holder, and they know it.
Despite the warm night, the elevator felt deathly cold as it descended toward the subterranean Level E. As I was lowered deeper into the earth, the space angel continued to speak to me, almost congenially.
It was important to secure members of your species. Even after expiry of their living bodies, their genetic signatures will be preserved. One day, perhaps they can live again, on a more controlled and stable world. They can flourish, you see. What you might call the Garden of Eden in your literature. A bright new garden, with no dangers, no snakes, no predators to compete against. Their brains will be able to rest in their current state. Eternal calm. Eternal happiness.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I told it aloud.
Of course you don’t. But that’s okay. You are pure of spirit. That’s why I knew you were the Healer.
I scanned into the lab on Level E. I followed the space angel’s instructions. I retrieved the airtight steel capsules from their liquid nitrogen bath.
Earth will heal, whispered the space angel as I rode the elevator back up to ground level. Its voice floated disembodied through the corridors of my grey matter. Earth will be fine. You engineered this virus to thrive only in your own species.
I fitted my key–one of only three in existence–into the steel capsule, opening it with a hiss. I removed three vials with gloved hands, each of them loaded with the isolated specimens, floating like the angel’s voice in their cool saline liquid.
Such a warlike, predator species. I, too, evolved from hunters. I do not condemn you. But this galaxy is not suitable for too many apex predators, just as no closed ecosystem is–and likewise, I’m sure you understand, there can be only one apex intelligence.
I stared at the vials in my hand. I had so wholeheartedly been willing to heal the earth. I had been chosen by an angel out of space.
The subway station is two blocks away. You know the trains start at 5am. Monday morning. They will be packed to capacity. You will open the vials and drip them throughout the train. You will make sure that some drops land on the clothing of passengers, in relative proximity to their faces. You will also ensure that you contract the virus.
“I won’t do this,” I said.
You will.
“It’s my choice! I have fr–“
Free will. Yes, you do. You have the choice of all possible worlds. And I have seen all those worlds, my Healer. In all those worlds, you start the pandemic in precisely this way. Ten day incubation period, certain death within 48 hours of the first symptoms showing themselves. Humanity will fall. The world will heal, until another predator species rises.
“You lie.”
I have no need to lie.
I am already at the station. Then I am underground. Then I am on the platform.
The vials are in my pocket.
It lies, I think–yet the space angel hears me and denies it in the same instant.
I will walk away. I will call its bluff. I’ll return to the lab and re-secure these vials. I will turn myself into the authorities and tell them what I almost did.
The train arrives.
I will do it. I will walk away.
You won’t, Healer.
I have free will, I tell myself pleadingly.
Of course you do, Healer.
The door opens.
