Mother Earth.
She’s a bitch.
A hard ass bitch who tortured every form of life that she brought forth onto her surface. Every life form on her surface had to fight, feed and fuck. After that she didn’t care about what happened, only that they had improved on themselves perhaps a little bit.
Life on Earth has had to suffer through catastrophes that have on multiple occasions pushed it to the brink of total extinction, sometimes it looked as if the bitch had gone too far and destroyed the life she had spawned, but each time as if to spite her life survived.
Asteroid impacts, sulfuric clouds, ice ages, and nearly anything else your mind can conjure up Mother Earth has thrown it at the children she spawned forth. It was only in the last hundred thousand years or so that she decided she was ready to undertake her greatest challenge yet.
The naked and apes crawling around on the plains of Africa, she imbued them with just the smallest spark of intelligence.
Within the blink of an eye those naked apes took to her challenge like no other life ever had, they were more impatient then her it seemed. Discontent with the pace at which evolution might allow them to spread across the surface of Earth humanity said fuck that and changed the Earth to suit them.
Tearing into Mother Earth they wrenched from her surface what they needed to survive. They attacked animals not only to consume them for energy, but using sharpened stones stole their skins and wore them as if they were their own. They dug into the ground and extracted metals, shaping the very dirt to their needs. They went from the plains and the dirt to throwing themselves off of the Mothers surface and into the stars in less than ten thousand years.
They did not thank the Mother Earth, no Humanity slowly bled her dry and fought over the scraps of her corpse before she was even dead.
Humanity was meaner than their Mother, and with her dying breath Mother Earth was proud.
She was after all a twisted sadistic bitch.
Mother Earth did not coddle her children, no she was a better Mother than that. Every form of life she had created learned the single lesson that she repeated over and over.
Survival of the fittest.
Humanity leaving behind the burning and decrepit corpse of their Mother went forth into the stars like a plague, the weapons improved versions of the rocks they had once used to murder other animals and themselves on the plains of Africa raised ready to stake their claim among the stars.
“What?” asked the alien representative the mechanical translator it wielded twanging slightly.
“What threats should we be aware of on the political stage?” asked the human negotiator again.
“What threat would be present on a political stage?” asked the alien, the thin fronds on its head delicately waving in the air.
“Some external force to this coalition you represent, some military threat that we should be prepared for. What groups will not be happy with us joining you if that is what we choice to do?” asked the negotiator.
“What is a military?” asked the alien.
“Those who fight to defend their countries,” said the human negotiator his brow furrowed.
The alien was silent for a moment, “I don’t know what you mean.”
The human negotiator frowned and opening the computer console in front of him pulled up an image, an ancient army on a battlefield weapons raised and the corpses of the enemy soldiers beneath them.
The frail alien was again silent, the many small delicate fronds and tendrils on its body retreating in towards its skin.
“Are you alright?” asked the human negotiator.
“What is this? You killed your own kind?”
“Yes.”
The alien turned a deep green, and let out a trilling shriek that the translator did not seem to handle very well.
“Why?!” asked the alien now in obvious distress.
The human negotiator attempting to figure out what had gone wrong tried to recover.
“Limited resources, different ideologies. There is hardly an excuse that has not been used for humanity to go to war.”
The alien stilled, “You have done this other times?” it asked in a small voice.
“There has never been a time in our history where we have not been at war.”
“This is what you call war?” asked the alien gesturing at the image.
“This is a battle.”
“Then what is war, show me,” demanded the alien.
Pursing his lips but unwilling to disregard the aliens request the human representative slowly started going through images showing humanity through the ages, and calmly explained the art of war that humanity were masters at.
The alien was silent, either stunned or catatonic the negotiator was not sure.
After three hours the human representative finished.
“I am not sure how to respond, there is nothing like this in the history of any species inside the alliance.”
It was the human negotiators turn to look stunned, “No war? No fighting?”
“We might disagree, but we have never resorted to this. Out planets have always had plenty, you come from a death world, do you not?” asked the alien.
“What is a death world?” asked the human.
“A world where life did not cooperate, but rather contested and fought for resources. That is what humanity is. Most of those planets destroy themselves in time, it was until now thought that death worlds could not sustain complex life.”
“My planet has gone through six separate extinction events, after each one the planet was nearly devoid of life,” said the human.
“I need to talk to my government, I do not have an appropriate response to this.”
The alien quickly got up and retreated from the negotiation table.
The guards outside would escort it back to its ship.
The human representative looked down at the table and sighed, turning to the communication console behind him the image of the human council appeared. They had been watching the proceedings.
“I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult to get their mining resources,” said the human negotiator.
There were a few nervous laughs from the council members.
The oldest man sitting at the center couldn’t contain himself, and burst out laughing.
“This is too easy!” he said between bouts of mirth.
The negotiator allowed himself a small smile, “Indeed, it looks like the same threat to humanity remains. We have nothing to fear in space but ourselves.”
The polluted and decrepit Earth, devoid of all life but those microbes that could live inside of the toxic waste and nuclear radiation on the surface of the planet, joined the councilors in a silent laugh.
She had taught her children well, and now like a plague they would spread out amongst the stars. They had nothing to fear, nothing to stop them. She could rest easy knowing her children were safe.
Even if they did manage to destroy themselves, the microbes on her surface would survive. They were after all her children as well.