Save the Whales

I had just finished my last Monday morning meeting before nine when the hunting started. Living right against the coast I was one of just a few who could hear the lunar aliens entering Earth’s atmosphere to begin their weekly sport. They didn’t want anything to do with the humans, only the meat from the already endangered animals. At this point it was just an event that happened aside from the noises and the low level earthquakes. The whale hunt was the biggest spectator sport on Earth happening in my backyard and it was all for free.

The World Leaders thought it was fine to save from a human genocide apocalypse. They were possibly as terrified as the rest of us that the aliens would kill us with hyper-futuristic technology we couldn’t even comprehend. As far as I could tell now, five years later, they were not really any worse than living next door to a very popular frat house.

When they first spoke their voices sounded like it was coming from a very old radio. They were confused as to why we sounded as clear as we did when their first visitor did not. They’d picked up Neil Armstrong’s radio transmissions and gathered English, and the radio filtration sound, through that. Their appearance was horrifying as well, seeing the confirmation of alien life here on Earth would be no matter what they looked like. When on land they emitted a projection around themselves to give the appearance of really tall humans in sixties astronaut outfits. Hunting from their space craft above the clouds they kept their greyish coloring with large black eyes and ancient curved heads.

My elderly neighbors fled and left their grandson, about my age, to live there. He had a telescope on an upstairs balcony to watch them. To enunciate how commonplace they quickly became part of our daily lives, he sold that telescope for a bigger television since all the aliens seemed to do was act just like us and hunt whales. He could get a better picture of them from someone else’s drone or satellite anyhow without getting a sunburn. I told him to let me know if they ever came to our houses at the coastline. Unknown to him, he was my lookout so the visitors wouldn’t catch what I did for work.

I went to Sea World in 1999 as a young kid and the Tilikum performances didn’t sit right with me even then. The more accidents I’d heard coming through his involvement the more I wanted to get the animals out of there. At fourteen I went around asking people to sign my petition to Save Tilly. I went to work with Greenpeace. Starting as grassroots volunteering, then to telefundraisers through college. I stuck with them and applied at every job until the recruiter and I were on first name basis. When the right one opened up for me I grabbed it by the horns and refused to let anyone else have it. I was an Outreach Campaigner, speaking from one coast to another specifically on Saving the Whales.

The aliens coming to hunt the very thing I spent my life wanting to save felt like a cosmic joke from the universe. They just seemed to be killing them for no reason and leaving us to have to deal with them before their bloated bodies exploded. My job currently was pushing for Congress that the need for a Green New Deal was more prevalent than ever and there needed to be communication between politicians and the aliens. Our feared question was what they were going to do when there were no more whales.

Following my morning meeting I would have my breakfast and sleep through the thunderous hunting. The aliens seemed to be particularly active today and closer than ever. Something hit my rough hard enough for it to land on my attic floor. I grabbed my bowl of cereal when I went up knowing I was probably going to need to do some repairs. I’d rather have it done there and then rather tomorrow when it could be completely fragile.

There in the dead center surrounded by a large cleared circle of dust was a box wrapped in brown paper. My name was scribbled onto it, but vertically with quite a Japanese style. It made me feel particularly insulted. Whales meat was apparently being put into school lunches there as well as dog food. I’d had frequent meetings in Tokyo over the last several years arguing for them to not do that. I knew clearly that this strange package was not delivered that way and it could have only come from the sky given the angle and absolute force. I pried it out of my floorboards and lugged the heavy gift over the hole. I was surprised with the weight that it didn’t crash completely into my kitchen.

Unwrapping the paper revealed a dark ornate box that had to be opened with a wind at the back. It opened slowly with jewelry box music playing. Rather than jewels, the box was filled with glass balls with a twirling colored smoke the way a bath looks after a bath bomb had been put in. I chose one at random and found they were light enough to not be what caused the entire thing to weigh so much. I held it up to the light for a better view and was given a small shock which caused me to drop it. It shattered the glass but it piled, not spread. I kept an eye on while walking backwards for the broom and dustpan.

The shards began shaking and moved up in a straight line. I would have assumed like a magnet, but they reached eight feet and stopped. They shifted and slid themselves into specific places until a glass person with eyes too large was standing before me.

“Hello. My name is Prix.” The voice was the same radio texture I was used to from the aliens but it didn’t make this moment any more comforting.

“Hello, Prix.” I greeted. “I’m Freya.”

“Nice to meet you, Freya.” He bowed politely. “Why do you want us to stop our hunt?”

I had given the Why Save the Whales? speech a dozen times in a dozen more countries and yet my words still caught in my throat. “It’s not good for human life.”

“You do not eat them.” He acknowledged. “What is the matter?”

“Well,” I swallowed, setting the broom aside. “I want to because they’re in danger. Others want to ensure the survival of other species in marine ecosystems. They have also helped with a lot of discoveries.”

“What should we hunt instead that wouldn’t bother your home?” He sounded genuinely curious, but she didn’t think it could be so easy.

“Mosquitoes? I’m not sure.” A laugh escaped me. “Taking something out of the food chain hurts something else that could ruin something else.”

“Human life is very fragile.”

“Why do you want them?”

“It is enjoyable.” He offered plainly.

“I really don’t know what to offer you instead. Maybe you can explore around and find something that we do that won’t hurt us anymore than we’ve already done?”

Prix turned his face to the side and seemed to speak to several other people around him. The glass balls in the box vibrated with energy. When he faced back to me, he pressed a button on his shirt collar.

“You are an enjoyable person. We have accepted your proposal.”

Before I could ask him to elaborate on what was going to happen next the sound of a thousand tornadoes seemed to descend around me. Prix picked up the box casually and let the human disguise filter away to reveal his true alien self. I had no time to see him clearly at the over abundance of sound bursting my ears. Prix set the box down where it might be safely and put his three fingered hands on the sides of my head to drown out the sound. I watched in deaf silence as half of my house was blown away piece by piece while the skycraft landed on the coastline directly in front of mine. Even my neighbor’s house, despite the proximity, barely had a shingle offset. He still heard the noise though because his head poked through when it was all over.

“My house is destroyed.” I was in shock. My hands trembled and I could hardly take a step but nothing emotionally struck me until I tripped over the hole where the box had landed in the first place.

“I apologize. I did forget what you mentioned about fragile lifestyle.”

One by one he dropped the glass balls while I stayed sitting on half my attic floor. Just as before, the pieces created more eight feet tall human-looking aliens. They introduced themselves to me and went around straightening up the place with such exact precision it would be terrifying under different circumstances. A four-foot tall one, childlike, sat in front of me and cleaned my tears with a bath towel. She made sure everything was gone so thoroughly that when I could see properly again I almost didn’t notice the expansion to my house. The little child ran off behind someone else.

“Thank you for fixing it.” I said to Prix. “Why is it bigger?”

“There isn’t a lot of room in the aircraft.”

“I have property lines. I can’t build this much without getting a permit.”

“Oh. We can adjust that.” He spoke to the one who the child ran to. They all got back to work once again, taking everything part and putting it back together. Still bigger than before, but nothing that would get me in legal trouble.

“Well, if that was fun for anybody then you would be excellent contractors.” I joked. Some of them made sounds of agreement. “Really?”

“Taking things apart and putting them back together in new ways can be enjoyable.” Prix stated. “You have been doing research on sustainable energies. Would that help humanity?”

“Very much so!” I grinned, thrilled myself at the idea of them assisting. “The climate isn’t meant to be this warm. The oceans aren’t right. There’s a lot going wrong in sustainability.”

“I was in charge of making our home on the moon better.” Prix boasted on himself. “I can help quite a bit. There was not much left to do there for me.”

“You need a new hobby. Is that part of the reason hunting was fun for you?” I asked, setting my books back up on their shelves.

“Your planet is a lot of water.” He observed the most important fact. “It came about when we were on a tour some years ago that those giant whales must be dangerous and it wouldn’t be harmful.”

“They can be, don’t get me wrong. My philosophy is if you destroy someone’s home and don’t expect anything to happen-”

“Right.” He agreed. “Who’s home was this planet before yours? Are they the ones making the oceans wrong and the climate rise?”

“It’s a little more than that, but the short answer is that it’s because of us.” I used to be self-conscious about discussing my climate advocacy so much, but if Prix was asking I’d rather have him err on the side of caution.

“A fragile species harming its own home? That is kind of silly.” His laugh was hesitant.

Right then like something out of an old sitcom, my neighbor swung open the backdoor to see a lot of human-disguised aliens poking around my house.

“Frey! Did you feel that tornado? Thank goodness it didn’t wreck our houses. Is it what brought your spaceship down?!”

“I brought the aircraft down.” Prix raised his hand.

“You are them! Don’t spy on Freya, she isn’t doing anything suspicious.”

Though Prix was confused, I just rolled my eyes. “Thank you, very much for your help.”

“You're welcome.” They both said in unison.