Violent Acts

by

Elton Gahr

Jim woke up on a humid summer day, the elation from the night before beginning to wear off. His phone was buzzing, and when he picked it up, an image of several bouncing lights appeared, and an inhuman voice began to speak. He assumed someone was playing a bad practical joke until he turned on the TV to find every station talking about it. And the only thing they all agreed on was that it hadn’t originated with any humans.

The message read, “We have been monitoring your people for three hundred years. We hoped your species would grow faster than your technology, but you have not. We must now intervene. To protect the civilizations you will soon interact with, we are forced to remove those who have committed acts of extreme violence. To limit the chaos this will cause in your society, we will remove them as slowly and as painlessly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience to those of you who are not dangerous.”

Jim watched, like everyone else, questioning every word of the message. Could the aliens do what they said? What type of violence did they consider extreme? Could they know things that no one else did, or were they as ineffectual as any human police force?

The answer came the next morning. All across the world, the population of maximum security prisons began to die from an apparently painless disease. Jim felt no pang of sympathy for the deaths. He hadn’t allowed himself to feel pain over death since his parents had died. But, no matter how much he tried not to think about it, watching the news and the discussion of so many violent crimes brought him back to the most important day of his life. He could still replay the image of his parents bound, gagged, and then shot in the back of the head.

He wondered if Scott Ward was dead. He almost called the prison to confirm it was finally over, but decided against it. He had done everything he could to pretend Scott was dead since the trial, and he didn’t plan to change that now. Besides, there was a good chance he hadn’t died.

People tried to convince themselves that was the end. The aliens removed a problem and now they would move on. Jim understood violence in a way most of them didn’t. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where the aliens would feel the need to remove people already in prison and ignore the criminals smart enough not to get caught.

Nothing else happened for a full week. Jim returned to work, where people discussed the deaths of a million people with less enthusiasm than they discussed the latest episode of whatever TV show was popular. Jim ignored it. They weren’t being cruel. But none of them knew about his parents or Scott.

Then more people began to die. This time it was more random. Some were ex-cons, others had been found not guilty of crimes, and others were people no one had suspected of any crime. The only thing they seemed to have in common was that they were poor and most were unemployed. Some people assumed that was classicism, but Jim suspected it was more about not disrupting society to quickly.

With the chaos Jim invited three of his friends over for dinner. He knew them well and wasn’t surprised when Todd began to sweat and, after a couple of shallow coughs, tipped over in his chair. Jim considered how he had been right while his other guests almost fell over in their attempts to escape the table. Jim felt his own heart racing, but he didn’t have any of the same symptoms as the others.

Jim gave them a few seconds to calm down, then said, “All three of you killed someone through negligence. I couldn’t be certain that the pattern I saw would hold, but I suspected you might be next. It seems two of you were lucky and perhaps are free from the aliens’ judgment.”

“But why bring us here if you expected us to die?” Ellen asked.

“To enjoy the night with friends. All the more if it was the last night. Shall we bury Todd?” Jim said. There was no point in calling anyone, and no risk to burying him so long as they didn’t pick anywhere it would taint the water supply.

The three spent two hours digging a hole for Todd. Then, just as they were finished, Ellen collapsed. As exhausted as he was, Jim decided there was no choice and put her in the same hole, then, to save time, he dealt with the third of his friends as well.

An hour later he sat alone, trying to suppress his emotions. He couldn’t afford to let this overwhelm him.

The next day the news spoke of several million more deaths. Most everyone who died had made some major and easily avoidable mistake in their past.

Then it stopped for two more weeks. The world caught its breath, but far fewer people speculated it was over. Jim knew it wasn’t. In part, because all across the world, anyone who attempted a violent crime since the message had arrived had died, usually before they could actually commit the crime.

It was almost two months from the time the first message had arrived when the real culling began. It started with the aliens’ second message to Earth. It said, “By now, even your most skeptical citizens believe we tell the truth. We understand the fear caused and the high cost on those of you who have done nothing. So, we have limited ourselves to avoid disruption of your society. But what must be done, must be done completely. Tomorrow, your world will change.”

Jim was fairly certain what to expect, though the speculation on TV was so varied it was hard to be sure anyone else understood the pattern.

The next morning there were reports that veteran soldiers from all over the world had caught the same strange disease. Within days, every army in the world had fallen apart as those soldiers who were not sick left their respective armies and no one tried to stop them. War, it seemed, was a thing of the past.

This was when the masses of people who had been fine with people being summarily executed suddenly thought it was unfair. Sure, the soldiers had killed people, but they were doing it officially. Jim suspected that was part of the point. Still, Jim was alive. That meant either the aliens hadn’t gotten to him yet or they weren’t infallible.

He wasn’t sure why the criminals had died in minutes while it took the soldiers weeks. Perhaps the aliens thought it was benevolent to give them time to put their affairs in order. Whatever the reason, in the weeks it took for them to die, everyone talked about how much chaos it would cause.

Almost nothing happened. People didn’t loot and there were no attempted invasions. They couldn’t because anyone who did anything more violent than break a window was killed.

That continued as police began to disappear. Of course, the percentage was less. Many of them were soldiers who had been skipped. Luckily, with no violent crimes happening, the lowered number of police did almost nothing.

There were several pauses in the purge. The aliens seemed good to their word that they weren’t trying not to disrupt society more than they had to, though there was no way for so many people in the prime of their lives to die without disruption. Especially once the theory that this was all an excuse to destroy the military before an invasion began to spread. It seemed absurd to Jim. The aliens could kill anyone they wanted, so why would they need to lie?

After three weeks passed with the only deaths those triggered by ongoing violence, something changed again. This time even Jim hadn’t predicted it.

People began to die who hadn’t committed a direct act of violence but had instead given orders that caused deaths. This was a much smaller group, but by far the more disruptive as it included nearly every high-ranking military and political leader in the world.

The fail-safes in most countries were deep enough that they kept going. Sure, having the Secretary of Education or Agriculture take power wasn’t ideal, but with most of the life and death decisions eliminated, it wasn’t as bad as it could be, and what was left of the senates around the world took over most of the day-to-day governing, allowing the executive to focus on keeping people calm.

Even that wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. That was because, while people were scared, the aliens’ plan had worked. Women who had feared the back of their husbands' hands were now free to walk the streets alone at night, knowing no one would touch them and even if they tried, they would die before any real damage was done, and parents could let their children play with the only risk being injury because of accident or mistake. There weren’t even many bullies anymore, though calling people names didn’t seem to draw the aliens’ attention.

As the oppressed all over the world began to realize they were free, the changes began to accelerate. Governments that had ruled by fear fell apart as people simply ignored what was left of their military police. And while some bad governments survived, it mattered far less as the borders of the world became more suggestion than law. How could they not, since both the reasons and methods of border protection had become outdated? Even those places that had largely been cursed more by poverty than violence began to improve as it became safer and easier to help, and the military budgets of the world could be rerouted to more useful purposes.

It was in that upheaval that a small alien ship arrived. Little bigger than an airplane, it landed at a recently abandoned military base. There was talk of storming the base and destroying the ship, but not from anyone serious. So far as anyone knew, it would be just as impossible to attack the aliens as it was anyone else. So, everyone just ignored the ship.

When the count was done, almost twenty percent of Earth’s population was dead. Those who had died were scattered across all social and economic classes and in every country in the world. But, by now it was hard to argue that for the eighty percent who were left, things weren’t safer, and while almost everyone knew someone who had died, those closest to them had prepared thanks to both the aliens' warnings and their difficult and dangerous professions.

And all the time, Jim became more convinced every day that the aliens’ technology was flawed. He likely should have died near the beginning. But time passed and the only people who died were those who committed a current act of violence, yet Jim was still alive.

He was far safer than he had been in years. No one even considered the possibility that he was anything but a quiet middle-class office worker. Still, he avoided his nighttime activities, deciding that whatever the aliens did, they were almost certain to stop him if he spent another night indulging his true nature, and he wondered why they hadn’t recognized what happened at the end of his last dinner party when he had finished the job that they had started with his first two guests.

Then, almost exactly three years after the first message had come from the aliens, Jim received a personal message. So far as he knew, he was the first person not a head of state to be invited to the aliens' headquarters. He considered ignoring it, but his curiosity and sudden certainty they hadn’t missed him gave him no real choice.

The base was no longer recognizable as having once been a human base. It was a massive park with smooth round stones of a hundred different colors around a massive fountain. Surrounding that central area were alien flowers of a thousand different types and trees that had grown two hundred feet in less than a year. It was a beauty of a type that Jim had never understood. And at its center was a small building made of an impenetrable crystal.

There were no guards outside what had become the most important government building in the world. There wasn’t even a secretary to confirm that people had an appointment. It wasn’t necessary anymore. Even if someone uninvited showed up and burst in, there was nothing they could do but annoy the aliens.

Jim walked through the first set of doors into a meeting hall. It was big enough for about two dozen people with a table at its center split down the middle by a clear pane of crystal so clear and thin that you could forget it was there, yet perfectly protected the twelve aliens who had refused any physical contact.

The twelve aliens stood at the other end of the room and, behind him, the door that had slid open to allow him in slid shut. Once the twelve aliens were seated, the crystal glass turned into a fog and then dissipated. That made Jim the first human to stand in the presence of the twelve aliens who had become known as the jury. They were both remarkably human and remarkably alien. The air in the room was hot and muggy with an odd, otherworldly smell.

The aliens themselves were short with large eyes that were exceptionally human, except for the lime green and purple hues. All of those eyes watched him silently, looking through his mask, seeing him for who he truly was. It was as if he were standing here naked, but the secrets they saw were far more important than his skin.

The aliens then stood, and each made a gesture of touching the thumbs on either side of their hand together and turning all four thumbs towards him. Jim, lacking the alien’s extra thumbs, couldn’t return the gesture, but he did the closest thing he could. He then said, “Have you brought me here to finish your job? Did you want to see the most deadly of us die personally at your hands? Did you want to squeeze the life out of me as I have for the thirty-eight people buried at my grandfather’s estate? Or perhaps I will be allowed to die quickly, like the mercy I showed my parents.”

“It is true we have wanted to see you. But we are not like you. We abhor violence and understand what we must face the justice we have prescribed to others.”

As the alien spoke, there was a noise from behind Jim, and he looked back to see that the door and hallway he had entered was gone.

“We have not brought you here to be the executed. We need an executioner.”

Jim understood. Many had spoken of the aliens' hypocrisy. They had killed twenty percent of humanity because they believed that killing was wrong.

“You want me to kill you?” Jim said.

“We would ask no one to stain themselves with murder. It is not our way. We are volunteers sent to protect our kind. It is why we picked you. We are peaceful. Without our technology, which does not target this place, we are helpless. We know you will kill us. You will then find our machines. Machines that can produce everything you need to live. It is the kindest prison we could create. It will even allow you to kill.”

“But only those who break the rules,” Jim said.

“We will not automate a system that kills. That would be barbaric, so we offer it to you. You will live lifetimes doing that which you most love while preventing anyone else from doing the same.”

Jim looked at them, then pulled the knife from the sheath in the back of his belt. He grinned with a smile that only a few dozen people had ever seen. He didn’t have to lock himself away anymore. He didn’t have to pretend to be a sheep. He could spend the rest of his life being the wolf he had been born to be. And as he stepped towards the twelve aliens, he drew his knife and said, “You know me too well.”