Chapter 7

“Art?”, I asked. “How is it possible that you are able to dissolve all governments? It is easy enough to believe that you might have the power to disable weapons, given your technological superiority in space travel, but how does that translate into the ability to dissolve governments?”

“I’m afraid that we have not been entirely truthful in our representations to you and your people. This ‘island’ we are on is not an island, at all. This is our spaceship. The 32 billion beings we told you were coming have been here all along. I am not an artificial intelligence. I am the spokesperson for my race.”

“Oh!”, was all I could think of to say.

“As you surmise, there is no magic switch we can throw to dissolve your governments, but with our ability to totally disarm all existing governments and the fact that we outnumber you 3:1 gives us the power to replace your corrupt governments at will. We have done so. Our telepathic abilities allow us to anticipate any thoughts of retaliation. If our race were not entirely altruistic, we could simply annihilate the entire planet.”

“So, we should be grateful for our continued existence?”

“Your gratitude or lack thereof does not affect the reality. Our earlier observations, coupled with the explanations you have provided have proved to us that the path we have chosen is the correct path.”

“But won’t the people of Earth panic, leading to widespread unrest and destruction?”

“They might have, if we had not prepared some information resources. We will now inform all residents of this planet of the nature of our involvement, what might have been and what now will be.”

“How will you do that? Will you take over all the communication facilities? What about those who have no access to television or other communications?”

“Which of those are we using now, between us?”

“Oh. You mean you can communicate will all humans simultaneously, through mental contact?”

“Yes. I will transmit the first scenario now. It is a logical extension of the fate that will befall Earth if we simply disable your weapons and take no further action. The second scenario will present the alternative, which will likely follow our full involvement in saving your (now our) planet. I think it will be very clear to everyone which is the better of the two scenarios.

The first scenario began. It was if I were seeing the world through a window. Time was compressed so that events that would stretch over months and years were presented within a few minutes.

More than half the residents of the United States were suddenly jobless, with no income and no resources. Those dependent entirely on government pensions joined the jobless in their plight. Those who were heavily invested in government securities found them to be worthless.

“All governments” included federal, state, county and city governments. Police, fire and emergency services no longer operated. Aircraft could no longer operate because there were no air traffic controllers while the airlines struggled to come up with a plan.

Industries with government contracts, such as the Boeings and Lockheeds were shut down. The border patrol was disbanded. Anarchy reigned. Uncontrolled looting began.

The banking system failed, utterly. Their resources were no match for the demands of nearly all their depositors who wished to withdraw their funds in order to survive. They were leveraged far beyond their ability to meet calls. They had, in effect, printed many times the actual currency by their legally authorized leveraging.

Only the family farmers were in position to survive and of those, only the ones with enough firepower to safeguard their food sources from the hordes fleeing the cities, which had begun almost immediately after government services stopped.

No physical attack from space could have had the devastating effect on Earth comparable to that resulting from abolition of governments and the castration of their weapons that would have allowed them to maintain power.

The death toll mounted quickly, taking the most delicate first. Older people, those who required constant treatment to survive, government paper pushers whose only talents included the formulation and enforcement of regulations were the first to go.

The entire supply infrastructure of Earth collapsed inward on itself. No food, no fuel and very quickly, no pets, as they became replacements for chicken.

Remaining in the cities was untenable. The mounds of putrid bodies poisoned the air and the water. Those who recognized the signs of the impending crisis and left the cities immediately were the only ones who had any chance at all of surviving. The smarter ones collected all the seeds and survival instructions they could find on their way out of town.

In the absence of weapons, even hunting game was reduced to Stone Age methods. It was still possible to dig holes and herd animals into them, or even to trap them in corrals of some sort. Cannibalism was not too unusual, but once begun, was soon terminated for lack of volunteers. The taboos against cannibalism weren’t based on religion, after all. They were merely an expression of supply and demand constraints. Once we began eating our neighbors, the supply evaporated. Unlike food animals, no one raised humans for meat. When the existing population was gone, there weren’t any more.

All of Earth watched themselves dying.

When the scenes of collapse and decay has reached their inevitable conclusion, with only a few tens of thousands of survivors huddling in caves around the world, the second scenario was presented, showing a world ruled by the spirit of love.

Rather than a world ruled by greed and the thirst for power, this scenario showed the potential of a world in which all beings respected the one common element of every religion. This is what some called The Golden Rule, but it is a respected foundation of every religion on Earth. True, it is largely ignored by all of them, but it remains on the books.