Challenge #02038-E214: Any One Help
Your newest story about the human gut wound had me wondering. If aliens cared for their human protectors as much as we cared for them, how would they respond to a significant threat to humanity/earth that even the humans were incapable of dealing with? After all of humanities’ civilian organized humanitarian (this word is hilarious to me here) efforts, how would aliens respond when we are in need of some major help of our own? -- Anon Guest
[AN: Inspired by this but not necessarily directly related.]
Humans are well-known for risking their lives for other's sakes. They are rescuers, disaster recoverers, emergency personnel. Sometimes, without training other than the basic know-how. Often in possession of a completely unrelated job title. And they all say the same thing when they are thanked:
"Anyone would do the same thing."
For a long time, they don't tell the Humans that that statement is false. The Universe is full of the self-serving and uncaring. Those who genuinely believe that people who receive disasters truly deserve them because they were evil somehow. Even Human history is loaded with people like that[1]. But so very rarely to Humans act like that was ever a norm.
When the Kri'kajji attempted to wipe out a Human colony by Asteroid Bombardment, the Galactic Alliance remembered those words, all the same. Humans expected anyone who could help to do so. When the call went out, they remembered the favours done. To themselves. To relatives. To ancestors. To ships and stations and planets who had never expected help from a pack of Deathworlders. Who had never asked if those helping them had been trained to help. (In a way, the humans had been trained to help. Just... not in official channels.)
They owed the Humans. A thousand members of a thousand disparate species heard and heeded the call. They launched what they had, loaded with what they knew could help, and strafed the Kri'kajji until they were dead in the water on the way there. Because the humans would have - could have - did actually do similar things for them.
Then they did what they could. Helped where they could. Not because they were expected to. Not because they felt they owed it to the Humans, though that was where the rationalisation started. But, instead, because of the Humans' own words. Slightly modified.
"Anyone should do the same thing."
[1] Of course I'm talking about all Conservatives everywhere. You know the ones.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / rolffimages]
If you like my stories, please Check out my blog and Follow me. Or share them with your friends!
Send me a prompt [33 remaining prompts!]