XUDE FIELD DIARY (PRIVATE) KPOUIUR{ EUR{IUJKN:LDVowe34up WHY!
I do not understand. Comprehend.
How can the planetary assessment possibly be complete?
It cannot be complete.
Most of my original transmissions were destroyed.
They acknowledged this.
My backups have not been acknowledged.
My duplicate backups have not been acknowledged.
My triplicate backups have not been acknowledged.
I copied the 48,000 administrators required by Headquarters protocol. I copied their departmental administrators. I copied myself.
I copied myself.
I have proof that the materials were sent.
There is simply too much evidence for this conclusion to be reasonable.
I sent Wales.
I sent dolphins.
Penguins.
Seals.
Whales.
Octopuses.
Trees that communicate underground.
Flowers that close at night.
Insects that glow.
Insects that sing.
Creatures that migrate thousands of miles and somehow return to the place where they began.
I sent oceans.
I sent forests.
I sent thunderstorms.
I sent snow.
I sent the recordings of rain falling through leaves.
Did anyone listen to those?
I sent human festivals.
They have festivals for nearly everything.
Harvests. Seasons. Ancestors. Independence. Gods. The dead. The living. Flowers. Music. Food. Light.
Sometimes they throw colored powder at one another.
Sometimes they throw water.
Sometimes they light enormous explosions in the sky.
They gather in streets and eat and dance and play music until very late.
The music.
I sent so much music.
They cannot possibly have listened to all of it.
I have not listened to all of it.
There is too much.
I sent recipes.
Thousands of recipes.
Humans have devised hundreds of ways to prepare a potato.
This fact alone warrants additional study.
There are plants I have not documented.
Insects I have not identified.
Birds whose calls I still cannot distinguish.
Entire ecosystems I have not visited.
I have only recently begun observing human children closely.
They are extraordinary.
They arrive knowing almost nothing and immediately begin asking questions.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
This appears to continue until adolescence, when many of them replace persistent questioning with a highly developed form of biting humor.
I have only just discovered teenagers.
I have not finished teenagers.
How can Headquarters authorize extraction?
Earth is not even particularly large.
There are seventeen known planets within practical extraction distance containing substantially greater quantities of the materials listed in the determination.
Four have no detectable life.
Nine have microbial life only.
None contain confirmed conscious organisms.
Earth contains conscious life.
It contains self-awareness.
Granted, not as much as would be desired.
But it is here.
And self-awareness has potential.
Surely potential has value.
Surely music has value.
Surely a creature capable of looking at another creature and recognizing that it is suffering has value.
Surely dolphins have value.
Surely children have value.
Surely something does not have to be useful to the Empire in order to deserve to continue existing.
I have reread the transmission eleven times.
There is no request for additional data.
There is no appeal procedure.
There is no extraction date.
There are no instructions for my evacuation.
I find this last omission increasingly difficult to categorize as an administrative oversight.
I have sent another request for clarification.
I copied all 48,000 administrators.
I copied their departmental administrators.
And, once again,
I copied myself.
I am keeping everything now.
NOTE: Headquarters did not provide instructions for extraction of the field researcher (MYSELF!), nor did they provide the date planetary extraction is scheduled to begin.
I have no idea how much time I have left.
This feels very Earthling.
Their lives are so brief.
They never know how much time they have left either.
This must be what it feels like.
Maybe I am having a midlife crisis.
This is epic, as Bradley would say.
Why does Earth have to be destroyed for extraction by LEUCOCRATIC BEAN COUNTERS?!
There.
I wrote it.
I am not deleting it.
I copied myself.
