Helping Humanity and How We Failed the First Time with Pud B'Scul (excerpt)

“Pud, I understand that the journey had many raw, visceral, and very emotional moments. You know, you travel to all these Human worlds that have been just devastated and the Humans suffered atrocity after atrocity, and you’re there to document as much as possible.”
“Yes,” I said, mainly as an interjection.
“Tell me then, what was one of the most profound, or perhaps the most profound, moment in that one-year tour of the Human worlds?”
I let out a long breath as I looked out at the audience, a mass of unfamiliar faces, their snouts pointed in my direction as they awaited my answer, along with Dim J’Ghor, the media personality who had arranged the whole thing and was throwing me a rather curious mix of both difficult and easy questions. I would characterize this question as somewhat difficult.
“That’s not an easy proposal, singling out one particular moment from just a whole spectrum of… of negativity. There was a general aura of despair, of hopelessness, of anger, and of sorrow, which of course, was very understandable given the circumstances of their species.”
“Mmm,” Dim uttered, nodding. He seemed to be less interested in the substance of my discussions and more interested in appearing to seem interested.
“But I do remember interviewing a Human space marine, and we were on this planet they called Reach. It was one of the oldest Human colonies, there were billions of Humans living on it, and then the Covenant came and killed many of them and glassed all the cities. Apparently it was the primary hub for the Human military, so its loss was a crippling blow to the Human war effort, and especially since it was towards the end of the conflict – well, neither the Humans nor the Covenant knew the war would end so quickly after that – it was that the loss of Reach was a massive psychological blow to the Humans, and it was probably only comparable to the Covenant attacking Earth, which is the Human homeworld.”
“But anyway, I spoke to this Human space marine on Reach, his name was Michael. We were in a glassed area of the planet, so I’m sure everyone would be familiar with that sort of landscape, you know, from TV, news, media, or maybe serving in the War in Shardaha. And we were standing in an area that used to be a town that Michael was living in. So, I’m talking to him and I ask him a simple question, you know, ‘Where are you from?’ He said, ‘Around here.’ I said, ‘What do you mean? Was your home glassed?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I asked him to show me approximately where his home was, and we walked for a few more minutes, perhaps six or seven, until we suddenly stopped at a small mound, a small ridge, a tiny one, almost indistinguishable from the rugged landscape. Michael stopped, knelt down onto the ground and said, ‘Right here. Here’s my grandparents.’ Then he put his left hand down and rubbed his hand on the ground.
There was silence, from both Dim and the crowd.
“I asked Michael what his grandparents’ names were, and he said the grandfather’s name was Alan, and the grandmother’s name was Judy. Alan and Judy. Then I asked, ‘Oh, they didn’t make it out in time?’ as a sort of probing question, you know, I wanted to see how he was feeling in this moment, and then whether I should ask him more questions or not or should I just give him some time to process his emotions. So I asked him, ‘They couldn’t escape in time?’ He said ‘No’ and shook his head. He explained that his grandmother had a terrible wasting disease and they couldn’t afford medical treatment.”
“What do you mean, they couldn’t afford it?” said Dim in disbelief. “What, they don’t have universal healthcare?”
“No,” I explained. “The Humans don’t believe that healthcare is a sentient right, so they have to pay for healthcare and medicine. Their society is very strongly thimin (an Erdellian term with no direct Human equivalent, but can be seen as a loose combination of corporatocracy, inverted totalitarianism, and military dictatorship). So anyway, the grandmother had this wasting disease and they essentially were unable to leave. And so I was standing there and Michael was on his knees, his hand on the ground, so I squatted down beside him and I asked, ‘Now that the war is over, how do you feel?’ He paused for a bit, probably trying to find the words, and then he said, ‘Angry. I feel angry. I feel sad, upset, angry, and I just wish I could kill a few more Covvies.’”
Another silence fell, but this one felt slightly more deafening.
“The… the hatred was visceral. I could feel it. I could see it in his eyes. The devastation of seeing your home essentially gone, two of your loved ones certainly dead, their remains unrecoverable because they were glassed, and the only thing Michael has left essentially is the military. And you know, this brings me to an interesting point. The devastation in the Human-Covenant War was – on Reach, what happened there, was replicated hundreds of times. You know, I only went to six planets. Six. And every single one of them had a man, or a woman, who had identical stories. You know, ‘My parents, or grandparents, and so on, didn’t make it out for whatever reason, and they were glassed along with their neighbors.’ Or it’s, ‘The evacuation ship my family were in was shot down and crashed onto the planet, there were no survivors.’ Or it’s ‘The Covenant entered my home village and forced everyone into the church and set the church on fire.’”
“Seems very reminiscent of the First Contact War,” said Dim.
“Oh yes, oh yes,” I replied. I continued, saying, “One of the most chilling accounts I heard was one on a planet called Tribute. I went to this open field just outside one of the cities on the planet and I had noticed that there was a great open area with disturbed ground. You know, it was as if someone had just dug a very large hole and just recently covered it over. And I sort of knew what was going on, but I wasn’t sure and I wanted confirmation, and so I asked another space marine, this fellow named Ashley, what happened here. And she explained that this was a mass grave of Humans. She went on and said that the Covenant had captured a nearby town, and apparently their ships weren’t available to just glass it, so the Covenant – it might have been a whole cohort of them – entered the town and forced the townspeople to dig a very large hole where the Covenant subsequently shot them and threw the bodies into.”
“My God,” interjected Dim with an apparent shock that was betrayed by his apathetic delivery. I expected his face to contort in horror, but he was unphased and stoic.
“Yes, a very common tactic in genocide, yes,” I added, nodding my head. I tried to use that specific word, ‘genocide,’ to see if I could elicit some sort of genuine reaction from Dim. He was undisturbed and quickly moved on.
“And what do you think all of this suffering, all this death and destruction, what’s that doing to the Human mind, to the Human outlook on everything?” Dim asked. It was an interesting turn of the conversation, and I could almost instantly see where he was going with this.
“I think that it’s an appalling tragedy what happened to Humanity, and it’s a terrible crime that should be condemned, should have been stopped, and it’s shameful for me, as a member of the Constitutionalist Party, to know that my president knew about the war for seven years and essentially did nothing because of the isolationist wing of the party and his own isolationist views. It’s- it’s- it’s- … revolting. Utterly revolting. It is a clear rejection of empathy and of compassion and I just cannot get behind the president anymore.”
There was loud applause, and both Dim and I briefly paused our conversation to allow it to pass. Some woops and cheers could be heard as well. Then, Dim, said, “Right, well…” in a loud voice, slightly above the commotion of the applause (although him being mic’d up helped), dispelling the surge of excitement in the auditorium.
“Would you vote for Vub D’Kut in the next presidential election?” asked Dim, perhaps his favorite question these days.
“No,” I quickly said, shaking my head in the negative. “No, I believe that this continued isolationism will damage the international standing of the United Erdellian States, it will damage our prestige among other nations, and most importantly, it will allow people like the Emperor to capitalize on UES weakness in international politics, and God knows what the Emperor will do next. Maybe he’ll invade the Apostolic States. Maybe he’ll invade us. Worst case scenario is that the Humans side with the Empire, and that’s going to be a massive diplomatic coup if that happens, and this government needs to do its utmost to stop that and it’s just milling about doing nothing.”
“So who will you vote for? Mordryn?” Sporadic laughter erupted from the crowd.
“I actually intend to write in a vote for myself.”
“Ah, you’re protest voting?”
“That’s correct, yes.”
“Would you encourage that for anyone else?”
“No, this is just my personal opinion, and anyone can vote how they please, although I will say that D’Kut has debased both the office of president and our international standing. He has brought in a culture of apathy and disrespect in the upper echelons of UES politics that has trickled down to civil servants, to all three houses in the Federal Congress, and thank God the judiciary seems immune, but all of this resulted in our own inaction in the Human-Covenant War, and I know that he’s mainly the tallest flower of this wave of brown wall traditionalism that isn’t the traditionalism that I voted for in the past or my parents voted for, but he is the culmination of the movement, and this is something entirely different and terrifying and we as a civil society cannot allow it continue.”
Applause followed my comment, but I didn’t want to focus on either the president or government policy in this talk.
“And-and-and, I’d just like to add something else,” I said. “I didn’t want to come up here talking about someone who looked like he was attacked by a chalkboard.” Laughter followed, but I didn’t give it time to die down on its own, holding my hand up saying, “Just a moment, just a moment.” The laughter quickly faded. “No, I came here to talk about the immense suffering of the Humans, and I’m honestly concerned that we’re not focusing on the absolute horror they faced and the absolute… deprivation that many of them live in today. Ninety percent of Humans live on less than five raki a day. Many billions are dead, and so they won’t contribute to the economy. The economy itself shrank precipitously because of losses against the Covenant and internal rebellion. It’s not looking good for the centralized Human government, and it’s going to get worse, there’s going to be more internal rebellion, and more worlds will break away from centralized Human control, which means more innocent sentients will be caught in the crossfire and suffer for it. It is our moral imperative that we send sentient aid (humanitarian aid) to the Humans. It is our absolute responsibility as thinking, feeling, living beings, to help our fellow sentient beings-“
An uproar of applause soon followed, followed by more cheering in the back of the room. I paused briefly, letting the applause die down someone so I could continue. Once I felt I could speak more clearly, I continued.
“It is our moral duty to help the Humans, regardless of faction lines or boundaries or what have you, sending them food, medicine, what have you, and more importantly, helping them redevelop worlds that have been devastated while at the same time focusing on making sure the worst-off Humans survive and live and are able to rebuild their lives. And the emotional trauma, the societal trauma, is going to be felt for generations. Every single Human alive knows someone who fought and/or died in this war against the Covenant. This event is really going to be the defining event of Humanity going forward. The casualties they sustained were unimaginable. I mean, they are approaching levels seen in the First Contact War. On both sides. Of course, it wasn’t such a hemorrhaging for the Covenant like the First Contact War, but it was still massively high for them, at least a billion Sangheili alone died. Not to mention the vast numbers of Unggoy and Kig-Yar that the Covenant just used mainly as cannon fodder.
“All of that had such a mental strain on the Human species, I think collectively. I mean, both Michael and Ashley looked to be on the verge of tears when they told me those stories. But it was also intense rage and anger. Ashley’s was a more quiet anger, but it was certainly manifest in Michael. I could see it, in his face. He wanted to lash out, but was even more frustrated when he just couldn’t, and that restriction of emotional venting is very dangerous in general, even more so for a soldier. Now imagine Michael, multiplied by a thousand-thousad, and that’s basically the shared experience of Humanity currently.”
I went on. “And you know, these Human soldiers, they’ve lost everything except the military. And, so, the military is everything they have left. And I guess I can make the connection where that could lead to more Humans relying on the military to just fix things quickly and with a loud bang rather than resorting to rule of law or a democratic process, and now with that I can see the Humans going down the path where the military gradually cannibalizes and replaces civil society, like what happened with the Red-Blue-Green dictatorship in this country. And some of the older people here…” I looked to the audience. Some heads were nodding, all of them elderly people. “Some of them may remember that, and so we have to be careful with Humanity.”
“Pud, it sounds like you’re advocating for us to influence Humanity in some sort of colonialist venture,” said Dim.
“No,” I responded, raising my hand as a halting gesture. “What I’m saying is that we should help them because it’s our moral obligation to help other sentient beings when needed.”
“And only if they ask for it.”
“Yes, and only if they ask for it.”
“Have they asked for it?”
“No. However, that’s primarily because they just don’t realize that help is out there. They know next to nothing about our species. And meanwhile, I saw dozens of journalists, aid workers, and most alarmingly, military officers, from the Erdellian Empire who are already on the ground with the Humans, interacting with them. We in the UES have to help Humanity now, with cooperation, mutual aid, mutual trade, trust, and friendship. The Empire will not give them any of that, and they certainly won’t respect Human sovereignty, but they are going in and trying to mislead the Humans into thinking that. We failed Humanity once through inaction, we should not and cannot fail Humanity again for the same reason.”
A loud applause erupted and more cheering could be heard. But I was too good of a journalist to know that all of this applause would have to be translated into votes to matter. And how many times can I fill an auditorium and have this reaction? And how people in here, or in any other auditorium, would care this much about someone else, when they still have their own situations to handle? And I also couldn’t help but wonder one other. My story is competing with a thousand and one other stories. Death, mass murder, economic woes, political scandal, and all-around awful stories. How can one pick a particular tragedy or crime above another in importance? What gives us the right to do that?
I try not to ask these questions of myself, admittedly. It gets in the way of me getting what I need to get the job done.
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