30 Stories in 30 Days #12 – “In a Rut”
In a Rut
“Have you ever thought there should be more to life?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we arrive at a planet with primitive lifeforms on it, kill everything, rip away all the resources we want, then return to the ship and go to the next planet and do it all over again.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, nothing, but what’s the point? Why go through all of that if our reward is just … mere existence?”
“Well, what would you rather do?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done anything else, so I don’t know what else I could do.”
“So, you what to do something we don’t normally do?”
“Exactly. Like, I don’t know, let’s not kill everything on the next planet we go to.”
“What? Then why go there?”
“Ah….”
“I mean, why spend all the time going to another planet if we don’t kill everything on it?”
“I … I don’t know.”
“See. Just stop being stupid.”
This entry was posted on April 12, 2012 at 15:29 and is filed under 30 Stories in 30 Days, Stories with tags alien invasion, flash fiction, short story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
oneoveralpha's 
April 12, 2012 at 15:31
One of the problems I have with a lot of alien invasion movies is that the aliens apparently only exist to invade planets. They have no other purpose in life. Now I’ll admit that in the vastness of the universe, there probably are mindless alien army ants who just take over everything, but you’d think any society smart enough to build interstellar ships would – I don’t know – pause to wonder if there was something else they could be doing. Or, as in this story, maybe they’re just in a rut.