Chapter 11: Final Message to Planet X

It amazes me that you can still indulge in berating your cosmic standard-bearer when you have so little time left to save yourselves. Before addressing anything else, I would like to respond to your derisory offer of a clerical post. It is hereby rejected. I have no desire for a desk job, particularly not at the level you mention. Even making allowance for your fuddy-duddy mindset, I can’t believe that you maintain a straight face when replying to my reports. Anyway, kindly note that I do not wish to be a mere jobsworth – you’ll probably have to look that one up. If I had any such desire, I certainly would not wish in such an inferno as my original home planet seems to have become.

I had intended to convey many other things, including a detailed description of sport, a form of warfare unknown to us but very popular here, and an appraisal of radio and television broadcasting. However, your censorious retorts to so many of my observations suggest that this would be a waste of effort on my part.

This is a time for straight talking, so I must tell you that I have long been teetering on the brink of a major decision, and have now made it. You may be unable to put yourselves in the position of one who has been separated from you for so long. Maybe the best thing I can say is that yesterday has gone and tomorrow has not yet arrived, so today is what matters. Just as an experiment, you might try to grasp the idea that the expression ‘long-term’ is relative. Though no biologist, I assume that a housefly here considers the period from dawn to dusk as near-enough a lifetime, but doesn’t get worked up about that fact. An American fellow once said that it is not the years in your life that count, but the life in your years. See what I mean?

To keep it short, I am throwing in my lot with that of humankind. Yes, they are savages, but they have embraced the notion of jesting in the face of adversity and even death. As individuals, we survive longer than homo sapiens, but they are ahead of us in appreciating that, as one of their scribes put it: “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.” These creatures know how to live. What do we do? Where are our creative writers, painters, poets and composers? We have not produced any genuinely new artistic work for centuries. I said in my fourth message and I now say again that your objective is mere survival. Why do you want to go on? After all, you’re not achieving anything of consequence, are you?

With regard to my own lot, I was shoe-horned into a career for which I had the talent, but not the desire. Now I am free to choose and intend to share my life with Vulpina – don’t try to contaminate my mind with aspersions about her past. If she was once culpable of indiscretions, she is all right now. And even if things were not quite tickety-boo with her, there is my American friend Polly, who will take anyone, anytime, on financially acceptable terms – and thanks to one of your rare bursts of technical wizardry, I can lay hands on any amount of boodle whenever I like. Long live free enterprise.

Send Dwolfus Geriatricus if you wish, but note that the great stalker will draw a blank, as I am about to destroy the spacecraft which has been my domicile these many weary years, so there will be nothing to find. I shall vanish among the teeming millions here. You will not hear anything more from me, and as things are warming up at your end, my advice to you is fly or fry.

Your erstwhile obedient servant

Dweedles

The above item concludes the exchanges between Dweedles and Mission Control.