©Jason I. Stutz 2019
He spoke through the EMF radio, his voice calm but purposeful. He is returning to Earth proper, Earth 1, where the race began. As his spacecraft lowered through the cloud bank into its atmosphere, he saw the masses of greenery rising up to meet him. It was overgrown with foliage and no civilization could be found on any part of the Globe. No one had been there for 2 billion years. It sang- the Earth audibly sang. His spacecraft filled with her vibrations. He typed the code into the on-board computer and cracked open the windows that separated him from Her.
Instantly, of course, he was arrested by interstellar patrol. His face was blanked by ecstatic bliss; tears flowed continuously from his eyes, which had beheld the Earth pristine. Even as the police took possession of his hands, he could imagine no suffering greater than if he had not witnessed it.
Humankind created Earth 2 after Earth 1 became too uninhabitable to support life in any practical way. Her anguish had become the baseline emotion felt by all through their own terrible diseases. Replacing her treasures, anguish filled the holes pocked into her, not by meteors, but by men. Earth 1 exulted when this man came to greet her, his face so bright, her heart melted all over again. Now, she remembered what she loves about humanity. She is like a mother who dotes upon children abuse her, but she is aware it is because of their own confusions- and, perhaps, because of something she had done, long, long ago. But, now, she’d give all she had, every day of her life, to have a man suckle her breast, again.
She moaned when he was plucked from her heart’s embrace no sooner than he entered it. The interstellar courts had ruled that humans are not yet complete in thier Earth 2 habituations for them to return to Mother 1. One day- perhaps only two more aeons hence, they may return to their original home.
The interstellar police who nabbed the man in the spacecraft, instantly removed him from Earth 2 population. They detained him as a specimen, their “Speciman,” they joked. They had not met one until now and were all very curious.
The man, the Speciman, soon accepted his destiny and understood that there would be no providence to return from whence he came. Of course, one glance at Mother 1, one instant’s taste of her superfecundated air, and he felt- when he thought of Earth 2 and the dilemma that faced her- only a deep, massive, and debilitating anguish, like a cancer that pock-marked his body, his belly, his brain. His whole body grieved for Earth 2, even as he was stunned, shocked by his mental acuity since he breathed that first sip of Earth 1 air.
His captors liked to entreat him with their many questions, and soon he felt a river of curiosity in him flowing for them, as well. They were light of disposition and, it seemed, joyously open to his responses to their ravenous but exceedingly playful curiosity. He felt he could amaze them with descriptions of cockroaches. They burst in astonishment to the point of incredulity, amazed with their whole bodies, when he said the word, “Houses,” and their faces pressed all the way forward with eyes widening with every sound of his voice. Their amazement, at times, was so peaked they could barely contain their astonishment!
“Newno!” they each said; that is their word for “It can’t be!- It is not so!- No way!” And his captors each grabbed the other’s shoulders and screamed like teenage girls on Earth 2. Our Speciman was feeling very impressed by the complexity of life on Earth 2, in retrospect.
The man enjoyed weeks and months of exploration with these sweetest and most ebullient of creatures. They read his mind as he adorned them with this opinion of them, and told him that the Angel who presided over their activities required such a temperament of sweetness in officers who uphold our laws as their profession. They thanked him for noticing and their cheeks blushed so deeply red that their faces might have burst. Suddenly, they felt emboldened to rise and embrace him with their long arms and necks.
The Speciman could not feel their skin, which looked the appearance of frog skin, but the spirit entity inside of their bodies felt as substantial as the gentlest flesh and blood. Again, they rejoiced and could not contain their excitement. “He sees! He sees!” they held each other’s shoulders tight as they jumped up and down in a childlike dance.
The Speciman sees. “Perhaps, I do,” he wondered.
The Speciman was granted to return to Earth 2 but never to participate in his life as it was before. His nervous system was reset and he felt the immediate results of that reboot. He felt, if only he had enough faith, that he could easily remember how to levitate. All the tiny aches and pains he had were replaced by an ebullient vitality.
He and his captors looked upon each other’s faces for a final time and clutched each other’s shoulders to express their powerful bond. He returned to his spacecraft which so many months earlier had ridden him Home to Mother.
His captors reached their heads and long arms into his spacecraft with boyish wonder. They hadn’t even thought to tinker with it before now. But they mind melded a second, and then programmed the on-board computer to take him safely back to Earth 2.
When the Speciman and his spacecraft pierced the corroded atmosphere of Earth 2, his heightened essential vibration made curious and significant changes to the frequency of that wounded and hobbling Mother. In the tabloid newspapers the following day, a spry journalist wrote her headline: “What if humans did not change the Earth- what would it become?”
Stutz's Fairy Tales and Poems 