To love and leave the world

My name cannot be pronounced in any human tongue. But for the sake of this record, call me Elion. I came from a system light years beyond what your species has glimpsed through telescopes. My purpose was singular: Observe. Documenting everything the humans do. My directive was strict: Do not intervene.


For months, I wandered Earth cloaked in the flesh of your kind. My shell—engineered to mirror human physiology—allowed me to blend seamlessly. Eyes the color of a clear sky, limbs strong yet slender, a pulse mimicking your own. A heartbeat . I was born in the belly of a capsule that fell silent in your Siberian snows.


At first, Earth captivated me. Not just visually—it sang. The scent of rain on dry soil, the hush of snowfall on pine, the clamor of markets, the laughter of children, even the cacophony of languages swirled into a kind of chaos that felt divine.


I wept the first time I saw a cherry blossom fall in Kyoto.


I danced under the rains of Mumbai, drenched and breathless, surrounded by strangers who never questioned the joy.


I ate meals whose names I couldn’t pronounce: tamales, pho, biryani, panta-ilish, poutine, bibimbap. Each a symphony of heritage and invention.


And the weather. I fell deeply in love with weather. It was alive. Moody. Wild. Intimate. The fog that curled around my arms on Scottish mornings, the storms that roared over the Atlantic, the sunrises in the Andes that felt like epiphanies.


I thought—perhaps foolishly—that humanity was a marvel.


But then, the veil began to lift.


A girl, no older than eight, locked in a cellar by a stranger. I watched her scream into silence.


A man in Texas who grinned as he fired upon strangers in a mall.


Children forced to hold weapons in lands parched by greed. Eyes wide with trauma older than their years.


Wars waged over invisible lines, doctrines, minerals buried in soil. Entire cities turned to ash.


There was a boy in Chicago. He smiled at me as I passed him on the street. A friendly encounter that happened with me anywhere I went. Hours later, his body was found in an alley—eyes open, body drenched in blood, wallet gone, dreams extinguished.


I remember watching the news that night. The anchor smiled between reports of bombings and award shows. “The world,” I thought, “celebrates itself while devouring its own.”


I asked myself a question I wasn’t prepared to face: How can a place of such wonder nurture such monstrosities?


I decided to leave. Not in hate. In sorrow. I prepared my pod in a remote forest in Canada. But I never reached it.


They came in silence—agents. Tranquilizers. Steel cuffs. I remember the click of the restraints more clearly than the bullet that pierced my shoulder when I tried to run. The blood I bled was silver. They called in more trucks after that.


The facility was underground, sterile, full of hums and echoes. They stripped me. Probed me. Filmed me. The term "alien" became literal again. I became specimen. Not Elion. Not even “he.” Just it.


They started with simple scans. Then heat tests. Then electric pulses. They burned patches of skin off to see how fast I healed. They forced tubes down my throat to extract fluids.


They broke my bones to measure recovery. I heard one doctor murmur, “It’s fascinating. He’s crying. It knows pain.”


One night, they dissected me conscious. I was strapped down, throat gagged, eyelids clamped open.


Scalpel. Incision.


I felt every layer split.


They carved into my abdomen, searching for organs, even though I screamed into their machines with mental frequencies they couldn’t hear: STOP. I AM ALIVE. I AM SENTIENT.


They never listened.


They called it “learning.”


I called it mutilation.


For weeks—maybe months—I was drained. Vivisected. Reassembled. Stripped of dignity, of voice, of hope.


Then came Mira.


She was a junior assistant. Barely noticed. Her badge hung crookedly. Her eyes were kind.


She started leaving small things near my chamber: a folded blanket. A thermos of water. A photograph of the sea.


Then, one night, she opened the door.


“You don’t deserve this,” she whispered, her hands shaking. “I read your notes. You loved us.”


I didn’t trust her. But I followed.


We slipped through tunnels while alarms echoed in my mind. She led me through an old maintenance hatch. I collapsed outside beneath a storm. The rain hit my skin and I screamed—not in pain, but in relief. It welcomed me home.


Mira disappeared after that. I don’t know if she survived.


Now, I hide in the mountains. I am weak. My body has begun to fail. But before I return to the stars—if I can—I must leave this behind.


This is my journal.


To the stars that sent me: Earth is both cradle and crucible. It is a place of poems and poisons. Humans are capable of creating beauty so profound it defies logic—and horror so complete it erases souls.


I loved them.


I still love them.


But love does not blind one to truth.


In your archives, this entry may read as a cautionary tale. But do not see Earth as merely dangerous. See it as raw. Unfinished. A species still birthing itself.


To any who follow, I offer this: observe not only what they build—but what they destroy, and what they choose to rebuild again.


Do not come expecting perfection.


Come with open eyes—and armor.


With grief, with hope,

Elion

Observer 627b — Earth Departure Pending