WELCOME TO

It Really is a Shame

by

Bill MacWithey

They had circled the globe several times, but found no sign of life on this beautiful planet. It was truly puzzling, since they had received intelligent signals from this world but a year earlier. The signals had been sent in search of other intelligent beings in the universe. They knew a highly developed race had lived here when the probe was launched into space. True, the signals were of a primitive radio type that had not been used on their world in so long a time they couldn't remember how long it had been. Yet the message contained intricate numerical patterns that didn't mean a lot to them except for the co-ordinates in space of this world. Now, the beings who had launched the probe were nowhere to be found.

Not only had the intelligent race disappeared, but there was no sign of animal life whatsoever. Yet, the planet was abundantly green with vegetation and appeared perfect for habitation. Rivers crisscrossed the continents and emptied into huge oceans surrounding the land masses. These oceans should have teemed with life, but appeared to be completely dead. They wondered at the sheer beauty of the planet, as they traveled around it, ever lower in each orbit.

Charles and Leonard had traveled six months to reach this world. They were emissaries from their world, sent to contact the beings who sent the signals.

It would be the first time their people had made contact with any intelligent form of life other than their own. A real stir of excitement traveled quickly around their world, when the news of the probe with its messages leaked out. The people had long hoped to discover other intelligent life forms on other worlds. Now, here was a message that proved they had been right about intelligent beings somewhere else in the universe.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know. Our calculations couldn't be that far off. This has to be the origin of the probe. There's no other planet in this system capable of sustaining animal life."

"Then where the hell is everyone? Where's all the animal life? Who launched the probe?"

"I don't know. It doesn't make any sense."

"Of course, the probe they sent out would have taken seventy five of their years to reach us. A lot could happen in that span of time."

"Yes, but I wonder what?"

"Well, there's only one way to find out."

"Let me run some checks on the atmosphere to make sure it's safe." Leonard and Charles had both begun to feel uneasy about this place, when they came within range to find life, but found none. They should have picked up stray radio signals escaping out into space, but they had found nothing. Their apprehension grew to utter disappointment when they were circling the world and found that whomever had sent the signals was no longer around.

"The atmosphere is amazingly like ours. It seems to be a bit richer in oxygen, but other than that, it's certainly breathable. We wouldn't know but what we were landing at home."

"Where do you think we should set down?"

"I guess in one of the large cities on the coast of a continent." They had seen what had been large cities all around this world, even though they seemed to be half taken over by rampant vegetation. The land masses between the cities seemed to have been divided up in such a way as to suggest it had been a society heavily into agriculture.

Leonard said to himself as much as to Charles, "It's like looking at our planet of the distant past."

"You really think our world looked like this at one time?" "I know it did," Leonard said with a smile. Charles was embarrassed for having asked such a stupid question. Leonard was so easy to get along with, Charles had forgotten he was the leading anthropological authority on their world. If anyone would know what their planet looked like in the distant past, Leonard would.

Charles grinned back at him, "You know, Leonard, you're such a regular guy, it's easy to forget the prestigious position you hold. If you'll forgive me for saying so, most people with a position such as yours are rather pompous."

Leonard didn't answer, but operated the controls to start descending toward a large coastal city. He hadn't told Charlie so, but he was glad he had him as a companion on this long journey. He'd traveled with groups of twenty or so on long flights, and then there were a lot of different people to talk to. But he had worried about traveling so far for so long with just one other person aboard.

His reservations had been unfounded. Charlie had turned out to be a great traveling companion. Not only was he witty, but highly intelligent, as well. He was the kind of person easy for anyone to like. No doubt, that's why he'd been selected for this expedition.

There was always excitement as one descended to the surface of a new world not yet explored, but knowing an intelligent civilization had lived here, then suddenly disappeared, dulled the excitement of this descent. The race that lived here sent out messages to seek out other intelligent beings, so not only were they intelligent, they were intellectuals, as well. Charlie and Leonard were both looking forward to unraveling the mystery of what happened to the creatures who sent the message. The thing that made it exciting for Leonard was, it was almost a mirror image of their own world. The shapes of the land masses were different, but they could have been descending to the surface of their own world of thousands of years in the past.

They hovered a half mile from the surface and flew around the perimeter of the city. Leonard had hoped against hope they might see some sign of life, even though all their instruments told them there was none. He dared to hope there had been something wrong with their sensors. That was grasping at straws, but it was just so disappointing to find a dead world, where such a short time before it must have teemed with life.

Charlie interrupted his thoughts, "What about that tall building over there? It seems to be in the heart of the city, and there looks to be some sort of landing pad atop it."

"Do you think it'll hold the weight of our craft?"

"There's only one way to find out." Leonard had learned to maneuver the ship from Charlie as they passed some of the long journey teaching each other the skills they had, but when it came to close in maneuvering, Leonard wanted no part of it. Charlie skillfully set the ship atop the building.

When the full weight of their craft had settled to the roof, Leonard said, "I guess they were pretty good engineers. The building didn't collapse."

"Good thing. We're a long way off the ground."

They stepped to the short fence surrounding the top of the building, and walking around the perimeter, surveyed the surrounding city without speaking. Charlie finally said, "It's really weird, isn't it?"

"I was thinking eerie."

They turned back to the ship and the small shuttlecraft. Descending to street level, the first thing they inspected were the vehicles that seemed to be everywhere. They sat in open parking lots, along the streets and in basements under buildings. They opened the engine cover of one of the vehicles and were surprised to find the people of this world had still used internal combustion engines. These had not been used on their world for a thousand years. As they continued up the street, they read signs on the buildings where the vegetation hadn't taken over.

They had gone a good distance, when they came to what had evidently been a residential neighborhood and moved just above a long, winding driveway covered with vegetation. What had evidently been a beautiful yard at one time was now overgrown with weeds and brush. When they ascended the steps and tried to open the front door of the dwelling, it wouldn't budge. Charlie kicked it in the center, and it fell inward, rotted at it attachments, and raised a huge cloud of dust, as it splintered upon impact. The dust was thick on everything.

They spent the next hour exploring the first floor of the dwelling, amazed at the type gadgets they found. They would have all been quite valuable relics on their world, but were evidently what the people here lived with every day.

Carefully climbing the stairway to the second floor, neither was ready for what they found.

When they opened the first door, a skeleton lay on a bed. They advanced toward it, feeling as though they had opened someone's grave. "My God, Leonard, it looks just like our skeleton."

"I would imagine that beings on a world so much like ours would have developed pretty much like us."

"Yeah, I guess so." Leonard smiled at the weapon he had to move out of the way in his bag to get to his recorder. They would have no use for the weapon here.

Charlie moved on to the next room, as Leonard recorded the inside of the room, including the skeleton. Then, Charlie yelled, "Leonard, come here"!

When he entered the room, he stopped dead in his tracks. Both men stood staring at the thing on the bed. It was the body of one of the former inhabitants, and it had mummified instead of disintegrating. Charlie pointed to the portrait on the wall and said, "My God, she was beautiful!"

"Yes, but she looks like any woman you'd find on our world. They looked just like us!" Both men stared at the picture for a long moment, feeling a sense of loss that neither could explain.

Finally, Charlie asked, "What do you suppose happened?"

"I don't know, but I do know they weren't just intelligent beings. They were human beings, just like us."

"I know, but how?"

"Let's see if we can find the answer." They quietly closed the door as if re-sealing a tomb, but not before looking back at the portrait for a long moment.

In the other rooms, was what appeared to be three more adult skeletons and that of two children. None of them had mummified, as had the woman. It was as if she had refused to give up her beauty, even in death. In fact, she had been dressed in what had once been a beautiful evening dress, shoes and all. Any number of pictures of the inhabitants set about on furniture and hung on the walls. Leonard recorded it all.

As they left the place, Charlie once more said, "Damned! They were human!" Back at their craft, they stood looking at what had been a beautiful mansion and speculated. "What do you suppose happened? It's as if they all just lay down to die."

"I don't know, but maybe we can find out. We need to find some kind of archives or something. Let's fly around the city a little, then go back to the ship and feed everything into the computer and see what it tells us."

The computer spat out two pages of information, but none of it gave them a clue to what had happened. Both men slowly moved their head from side to side, as they read the computer printout. The computer estimated it had been a city of fifteen million inhabitants, and they had all died within a period of seven days.

"Fifteen million people! Do you suppose some sort of illness raged around their world that quickly?"

"Charlie, if it had, there would still be some evidence of it that the computer would have picked up."

"The sensors don't register any sort of atmospheric conditions that could have caused it."

"Atmospheres change."

"Yes, that's true enough. Why don't we check some other cities."

"I'm all for that. I've been here long enough."

When they lifted off the top of the building, Charlie said, "I wonder how they could be human, like us, and be so far away from our world."

"I have a theory about that. You know, back about ten thousand years ago our world sent out these huge spaceships to explore the galaxy. There were perhaps four hundred people on each ship. They were totally primitive by our standards today, but they were sufficient for traveling long distances. Some of the ships eventually returned with the descendants of those travelers, but some of them never returned. I think perhaps one of those ships with the descendants of the original crew landed here on this world. It would have taken them several generations to have come this far, but the ship was capable of making it."

"But why would they have been so backward?"

"Possibly, the descendants didn't know how to do any of the things they needed to build a modern society when they landed. They may have reverted to living like the hunters and gatherers of our world's ancient times."

Once again, each was lost in his own thoughts, as they approached the large city on the opposite coast. They found room to land among the trees in the center of the city in what had evidently been a public park. A number of statues, overgrown with vines, were scattered throughout the area, and the remnants of what had been a large fountain set next to a small lake. Once more, they boarded the small hovercraft and went exploring.

It was the same. Here, they also found people lying on their beds, as if they had gone to sleep and never awakened. They also came across the skeletons of small animals here and there.

"Charlie, let's see if we can find a library. I'm sure they must have had something similar to our libraries. I think if we're going to find an answer, that's where it will be. I'm sure a society such as theirs would keep records of what was happening in their world."

They returned to the center of town and slowly made their way up and down the main streets. "Leonard, I just thought of something. I've been so busy wondering about what happened to these people, I hadn't realized that we have been reading our own language on all the buildings we've seen."

"I'd noticed that, but I thought you'd probably noticed also."

"I guess that pretty well proves their origin."

"I would think so."

Each was once more lost in their own thoughts, as they cruised up one street and down another. Suddenly Charlie said, "There it is!" He stopped before a tall building with the words "New York City Public Library" carved into the stone between the second and third floors. The huge double doors were propped open, as if they had been expected. When they stepped inside, a large, crudely painted arrow on the marble walls on either side of the wide hallway seemed to have been left for them.

As they walked down the dust covered marble floor of the hallway, another arrow painted on the wall to their right pointed up at a small sign hanging from a bracket attached to the marble covered wall. "Newspaper Archives" The arrow on the sign pointed down at a set of steps leading to the lower level of the building. When they reached the bottom, another sign hanging above a long counter at the front of the huge room read: "Check in here for access to archives."

Charlie said, "I wish there was someone to check in with." Behind the counter sat a half dozen of the old cathode-ray type computer screens that had evidently been used by the people working here. But, after covering the room thoroughly, they found not one newspaper. Everything had evidently been put on computers rather than stored in their original form.

"This kinda gives me the creeps, Leonard."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. I can see this place years ago, when it was filled with people going about their daily routine. My God, how could this have happened?"

Charlie asked, "Now what?"

"Do you think we could somehow hook the power supply from the ship into the building's supply lines, so we could power up the computers?"

"I don't think it would be too difficult."

"Good. Let's go do it."

They loaded the hovercraft into the ship, then moved the ship to the street in front of the building. It took until dark to get the power supply rigged to the building, and Charlie told Leonard he would just as soon wait until the next morning to investigate the files. "I think that's a good idea. I'm not only tired, I'm hungry."

They were up with the sunrise the following morning and marveled at the beauty of it. With the power restored to the building, they found the elevators inside still worked, took one of them to the top floor and walked out onto a balcony high atop the building. This is the point from which they viewed the sun coming up over the city. Once more, they wondered at how all this could have been lost.

Back in the archives, Charlie asked, "Do you have any idea how to operate this equipment?"

"I don't think it should be too difficult to figure out, Charlie." He had it up and operating in a matter of minutes. When the screen instructed them, "Enter Date", Charlie wondered aloud, "What date should we use?" Then, he told Leonard, "Enter June 1, 1999."

"Why?"

"Look at the calendar on the wall. It's for June, 1999."

When he entered the date, the screen lit up with "Publication?" Now he was stumped. How could he know the name of the publication?

Charlie said, "I'll try to find out while you browse through the files."

He once more roamed up and down the streets in the hovercraft, and an hour and a half later called Leonard and told him, "Try the New York Times."

When Leonard had entered it in the keyboard. he told Charlie, "Come on back, buddy. I have the New York Times on the screen!"

"I'm on my way."

They scanned the entire paper up through the seventh of June, 1999 before they found anything of any importance. Then, they read a small article on page thirteen that caught their eye. It was a warning by environmentalists that the ozone layer was breaking up, and it warned it could be the end of life on earth if they didn't do something quickly.

"I think we've found a clue as to what happened, Charlie."

Charlie answered with dejection in his voice, "Yeah."

They worked their way forward through each day's paper, and found more and more alarming warnings about the ozone layer. Then, the newspapers ended on the eighteenth of June. They continued to punch in the dates through June and finally found a publication for the 24th. It didn't have the banner at the top that proclaimed it as the New York Times, but rather a banner that read in large letters, "ALL IS LOST!" Below that were four columns, at the beginning of which was a salutation:

"To Whom It May Concern,

This will be the last edition of my beloved newspaper. I am sure if you are reading this, you will have discovered that mankind has destroyed himself and all living creatures on our beautiful world. You have probably also read previous editions of the newspapers of our city. This issue is not really a newspaper, but a postmortem for our world. I want someone to know what happened to us, and what fools we have been. Our world built every conceivable weapon imaginable to destroy one another. We finally reached the point where we had enough nuclear weapons to destroy all of Earth, but credit must go to the world leaders for finding a way not to use them. With the threat of nuclear destruction mostly behind us, we had to find another way to destroy ourselves.

Despite the warnings of the people who should have known what they were talking about, we pursued our own desires to the point of ignoring them and their warnings that we were destroying our world. We just went right on along living life to suit ourselves. We were not only committing suicide, we were condemning millions of people to death with our extravagances. We insisted we needed the goods our factories spewed out in great numbers, along with the pollution to our air they spewed forth. We paid no attention to the endless amounts of pollutants we dumped into our waterways and oceans. We ignored the dangerous pesticides we used in order that we might grow more and have more.

Years ago, when we could have begun educating a whole generation of children to the dangers of our lifestyles, we chose instead to bury them in the things they asked for that had to be produced at the cost of further injuring our environment. If only we had taken the care to raise a generation of people knowledgeable about the fragility of our world, and what needed to be done to preserve it, I might not be writing this postmortem. Perhaps our world would have survived. But mankind chose to ignore it all. All the signs that things were disintegrating, all the signs that we were killing ourselves. Now, we have paid the price for our ignorance. Instead of using our resources to create a utopia for mankind, we chose to destroy everything, including ourselves. What utter fools we have been.

It has been seven days now since the first incident occurred. We awakened that morning to a sun blazing down on us such as had never before been experienced. It was so bright as to blind you without the wearing of special glasses. Most people stayed inside with the blinds closed to avoid the terrible harshness of the light. The entire world was in panic when the scientists explained what happened. For years they tried to warn us, but we didn't listen. They warned us there were holes in the ozone layer in the polar regions. No one took them seriously. No one lived there, anyway, so what's the big deal? But a week ago, the scientists told us the ozone layer had split wide open, as they had warned it might. It separated from pole to pole and left the world unprotected from the terrible radiation from the sun. This fiery star, which first brought forth life on our planet, was now killing us!

Government leaders ignored the scientists and sought shelter underground. They had been told the radiation would not only penetrate through our bodies, but would also penetrate through the earth itself. The fools told us to remain calm. They said there must be a solution to this crisis. The damned fools! The solution had been offered for years, but they wouldn't listen!

The people began dying after just two days. A few at first, then hundreds, then thousands, then millions. The reason some have survived longer than others is a complete mystery to me. I am glad I have survived long enough to write this last account of our world's folly. Some of us have survived for seven days now, but we are very ill, and I know the end is only hours away.

There is no traffic in the streets now. The vehicles are all stopped and quiet. There are no airplanes landing at the airport. They, too, are parked, silent for eternity. No more will man leave the ground and soar as the birds of the air. The radio and television stations are all mute. There is no one left to run them. We still have power, because it is supplied by a nuclear reactor, which is fully automatic. They say it will continue to operate all by itself for at least fifty years before its fuel supply is depleted.

I sit here by the window looking out at the traffic light on the corner. It is so damned laughable. It keeps changing from green to yellow to red, then back to green to yellow to red. It signals but the movement of ghosts, now. I have cussed the damned traffic lights so many times, as if my life was so important that a red light was a personal affront. Now, they will be an affront to no one. Not even the thousands of taxi drivers who cussed them. They are all dead or dying, also. It is so quiet in the city, I almost wonder if this calamity was meant to be.

I have several people here with me, who are dedicated to helping me get out this last edition before we lay down to sleep for the final time. We grow more ill by the moment. My friends here also hope that one day someone might come along to read this. I will transfer this postmortem to the main library's computers and hope you will some day come along and find it.

There are several ironies to all this. The most laughable is, the scientists tell us Earth will repair itself in perhaps thirty years, without man's pollutants going into its atmosphere. If there were some way for just one fertile woman and one fertile man to survive, the world could some day be repopulated. But, maybe it is for the best. They might only do once more what has already been done. Another irony is the fact that the plant life is not being affected by this radiation that is killing us. Except that it is growing faster! Mother Nature, whom we have battled for control of the planet, is going to win in the end. She has, in the final battle, been victorious. The plants will once more take over the world. That, too, may be for the best. They do not make war or any of the nasty things which man does.

I would finally like to say this to you, if you are reading this, you must have traveled a very long distance to get here. I, as a representative of the few people left, bequeath this world to you. I would ask that you take better care of it than did we. I hope that some day, some race of intelligent beings arrives here who will appreciate the beauty, and live on it in peace with one another and in peace with this world we call Earth.

So, in closing, I would like to say, "Welcome, and Goodbye."

George Bennett, Editor in Chief, New York Times. In the year of our Lord, June 24, 1999.

Charlie and Leonard leaned back in their chairs and sighed. Neither wanted the other to see the tears that had welled up in their eyes, as they read the obituary of a world.

Finally, Leonard said, "I salute you Mr. Bennett. And perhaps your world will know intelligent beings again who will take care of it."

As they walked past the switch box that powered the computers, Charlie flicked a switch and all the terminals went dark once more - to rest again for many years, perhaps for all eternity, as Mother Nature regained her world. They walked out into the sunshine that would now be perfect for human life and sat down on the steps, where the vegetation had started creeping up toward the open doors. They glanced up and down the street, trying to imagine what it was like when millions of people lived here. Charlie walked to where the power was hooked to the building and disconnected the umbilical cord, that for a few brief hours had once more restored the place to life. After standing outside their ship, looking once more up the street, Charlie finally spoke.

"Isn't it a shame someone couldn't have survived until their world repaired itself."

Leonard shook his head and said, "I wonder if they ever had any inkling of their origin." After stowing the hovercraft and entering the ship, they rose well above the city and stood perfectly still, taking one last look at what had been New York City, United States of America, Planet Earth. Then, they circled the Earth one last time before setting a course for home, their computer containing a wealth of information about the people who had reached out to them such a short time before they all died.

Leonard said, "I really hate to take this story back to our people. They were expecting to make contact with another intelligent race, but we have to tell them they were our brothers from the past, and they deliberately destroyed the world their ancestors found. You know, it really is a shame."