What Do They Want?

            

      A woman in her fifties, the type of woman that lived the axiom, “A woman’s place is in her home and behind her man” – a woman that I can’t ever recall talking once. Yet, that evening, she spoke right up, to ask Captain Finbar a very compelling question.

      “Captain, she said in her little brittle voice, what do you think they want with us?”

      “Do you think they want to take over our world?”

      Captain Finbar said, “I’m not sure, I think if they wanted to forcibly take over the world, they could do it in a right smart fashion.”

      Neil the ex-pilot said, “Yeah, easily especially if the rest of their technology even comes close to their craft.”

      Looking at both Neil and Captain Jack, I asked, “What do they want?”

      The both looked at me, Neil just shrugged, and the Captain said, “They are curious, they are watching u. Maybe they even do experiments on us.”

      I was pretty naïve’ which I suppose was due to my young age. I said, “What do you mean experiments?” “If they are curious why don’t they just ask us?” “If they exist…I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw Captain Finbar’s one eye squinted hard at the word if.

      I stammered, “I mean since they exist, why don’t they just come forward and show them selves?” I said, “If the creatures and us worked together and shared what we know we could all benefit, right?”

      Neil said, “Well son, it wouldn’t make sense for them to come out in the open regardless of their intentions.”

      I asked, “Why?”

      Neil said, “Well for one thing, the human race on the whole has not been able to quit their bickering, their wholesale killing, their oppression, exploitation, and enslavement of others.” “As individuals or as nations, we humans don’t share knowledge or technology among ourselves, even to the detriment of our own long term existence.” “My being a military pilot is the direct result of this reality.”

      “We are stripping the resources of our planet --we are polluting our planet beyond repair.” Neil looked around the diner and he said, “Would anyone in here using their good judgment put their trust and their safety in the hands of anyone that acted insanely not only against others, but also against themselves?” Almost everyone shook his or her heads to the negative.           

      “There you go, Neil said, I doubt that these creatures would be stupid enough to trust us either.”

      Neil looked at me, and then he looked around the diner and then he said, “Even if they could trust us, what do we have to offer them?” “What could they learn from us by asking that they could not learn by watching us from the shadows, or from afar?” “What knowledge or technology could a chimpanzee give to us that would be of any advantage?” “I say, that there is nothing that we could offer them.”

      I persisted and said, “Well it seems like it would be easier if they still would come and ask us what they want to know.”

      Captain Finbar said, “Sonny, when yur out studying animals and bugs, you don’t always try and catch them, you kinda observe them don’t ya?”

      “Yes.” I said.

      He asked, “When you’re watching them, do you just come out in the open, and walk right up to them to watch them or do you hide to watch them?”

      I saw what he meant, and I said, “Oh, I see, I hide, because if I don’t they get scared and run away, or if they don’t run away, they don’t act normal?”

      Neil said, “That’s right, and neither would people.”

      Captain said, “When you go out, sometimes you collect animals and bugs, right?”

      “Yes, I said, sometimes.”

      “Why” he asked?

      I said, “So I can enjoy them, to study them, especially if I rarely see them in the wild, and if I find both males and females of any animals I put them together so that they have babies or litters.” “Eventually I let them go.”

      The Captain said, “Do you ever kill them to cut them open, to see how they work?”

      Uncomfortable, I said, “Sometimes, but only frogs, salamanders, or fish.”

      The Captain and Neil both asked at almost the same instant, “Why not other animals?”

      I said, “Well mammals seem closer to us, they seem like they have personality, you know, especially dogs, cats, monkeys, animals like that.” I was really uncomfortable.

      “It’s alright son, Captain Finbar said to me, I know you love animals, --I know that you want to see all the critters healthy and happily living wild and free.”

      Captain Finbar was very quiet again and I could see a myriad of emotions warred on his scarred face again. Finally, after a long time he looked up and he seemed to look each person in the face, and then he said, “I got the feeling that those, those… salamander creatures in some ways look at us like we look at the salamanders that we see crawling in the swamps.”

     “The feeling I got from them, was they don’t mean us harm, they just are watching, studying, us.”  “I also felt they look at us as monkeys with, with… promise.”

      He looked at me when he said that. Finbar continued, “I also can’t help thinking that if we keep doing what Neil said we do as people, they may not hesitate to end us, without anger, but just because it may be the right thing to do, and that is what also scares me, and it makes me sad.” “I just don’t see things changing for us.”

      “I don’t see us learning any lessons.” “I just see us making the same mistakes.”

      Neil sighed long and loud and said in a sorrowful tone, “Amen and God help us.”