Letters Unsent and Letters Unwritten

I suppose that for me to tell you the story that took place in a small part of my life, I will first have to tell you my story. But for me to tell you of my life, I must first tell you of my family. And for me to tell you of my family, I must tell you of my people. Because my people had many ideas, we knew much about our world. This is good, because I am going to start there.

I lived on a planet named Post, which when translated from my tongue literally means ‘sheltering crevice’, but we use it more as you use the word ‘home’. We do not use your lettering system, why would we? Our planets did not meet until the last quasi of my life, or as you would refer, ‘century’.

Our planet existed in a small galaxy, much like your own. There were fourteen planets in our galaxy, each with a name, and inhabitants. All of our planets rotated on the same orbit around our sun. Our sun, or our ‘Kelf’ (‘light shining orb’), was a fair bit bigger than yours. Because of this, our planets were a fair ways further from our sun than your planet is from your sun.

My home planet, Post, did not rotate on an axis. The other thirteen did, but ours didn’t. Because of this one side of our planet was uninhabitable, due to extreme cold, while one point on the other side was also uninhabitable, due to the sun burning it bare. My people, the ‘Keldens’ (‘Light shine people’), live just a ‘days’ walk from that spot. We didn’t have the concept of a day on Post, without the rotation it was impossible.

Us Keldens adapted to this constant day wonderfully. We had thick, thick eyelids, we were very skinny and we were very small. By your measuring system, I’d say about three feet on average. This meant we needed very little liquid to sustain ourselves. This was good, as the planet didn’t have much water on our side.

On occasion we would travel the seventeen ‘day’ hike to the Polar Regions of our planet to collect ice. Under that half of the planet there were huge deposits of water that had shrunk away from the sun on our side. Geysers would break through the ice wherever it was weak, due to the pressure, and huge storms lined the border between the sun and the moon.

Did I mention our moon did not move? Our ‘moon’ was really another planet. It wasn’t a ‘moon’ in the sense you would have it, but it was a ‘moon’ to us, because that is what we called it. Literally it means ‘planet off orbit’, which is what it was, it wasn’t in our orbit, but it was right behind us, going at a speed fast enough to keep up.

We developed very high temperature resistance on our planet, able to withstand temperatures up to your 100oC and down to your -100oC, as those were the extremes on our planet.

Keldens were strange looking folk by your standards, not quite a humanoid, but not animal like either. We had thin skin, but very firm muscles. This let us repel the heat and conserve it as well, to survive the extremes. Again, we were quite short and skinny. Our eyes had lids all the way around them, allowing us to change the size of our eyes at will. This let us cope with the blinding sun by making our eyes small, and the intense darkness by opening our eyes wide. At their widest, I’d say our eyes would average at about four inches across. We had no use for measuring systems, so I can’t be exact.

We had small hands, precise hands. Our feet were much like you would see on a monkey, except they were at least twice the size of our hands. We could work very easily on small nanofibers with our hands, and could create huge stadiums with out feet. We could have, but we didn’t. We had the power to do that, but we didn’t. We lived in small hovels and at the age of one ‘year’ our young would get their own.

We grew fast, but lived long. In our first ‘year’ we would grow as much as your child would grow in twenty. This is partly because of the high death rate we had; we needed to produce young quickly to relieve any loss. Usually when losses occurred we would lose a lot at once. As we got older, our skin would thicken. This is because there was no way to remove dead skin cells. Our skin was always sticky, trapping any moisture it could grab, so when the cell died, it would stick to the rest of our skin. In this way we could have several inches of skin on our body over the course of a lifetime that did nothing for us, but leeched liquids out of us.  

With thicker skin came more heat retention. I said earlier we that could withstand about 100oC heat. Anything above that for more than fifteen point two seconds was fatal. Our temperature didn’t fluxuate much, but it would go up about one degree for one ‘year’, and then down the next.  With every inch of extra dead skin you would retain more heat, making an 89oC day (our average) feel like a 100oC day to your organs. So, in this way a degree or so above our average temperature would kill the elders. So even though a two degree raise wouldn’t happen often, it would take a large chunk out of us when it did.

We could have sent them further towards the Polar Regions, but that brings me to my family. Keldens have very strong family bonds. It might not seem like it, with me having said that our young at the age of one year would move out, but really that is because of the ‘love’ (‘Symine’ – ‘caring for all’ to us) we felt. We wanted our young to feel the wonders of parenthood as soon as possible, and only those with their own hovel would enter into courtship, due to our ‘religion’ (‘Genten’- ‘over power’). So we would not send the elders away, as that would remove them from us.

My family was a rather average one of the Keldens, I had two ‘brothers’ and three ‘sisters’. Perfectly symmetrical. A lot of our ‘culture’ was symmetrical. We were all born in pairs. If one of the children died before birth, the other would die shortly after, if not due to the conditions that killed the first, then by the parents’ hands. We believed that the souls of the siblings were intertwined, and that if one was to die then the other would live a life of sorrow and mourning. With the love we felt for our young we would not wish that on them, and so would take their life.

My oldest siblings moved out before I was born, but my second set of siblings left the year I was born. I saw them leave. It was a happy and sad occasion. Finally, I left the nest. I courted a girl of my village, and we lived together for a long time, trying to have our young.

There is one other thing my culture and religion would kill for. Barrenness. My partner was barren, and so she took her own life. Once you have courted one partner, you are not allowed to search out another. In this way, we keep our bloodlines pure. My sister, my ‘twin’ as you would say it, had courted an older partner. He was not barren, but he did not survive long enough for them to rear young.

We moved to the same hovel. It was customary for our kind to always live in pairs or a symmetrical number. We grew closer than we had been as young, and knew much of each other. Your mind might go to ‘incest’, but as I said before, once your partner dies, you may not court again. ‘Incest’ was a viable route in Kelden culture, as it strengthens our bloodlines, instead of weakening it as it does for you. Even so, only a few cases of ‘twin’ love had ever happened. ‘Twins’ shared a strange bond for us that courting each other would make it seem as though you were courting yourself. Easy to do, but strange.

This is about the time our planets finally met. Your people came to our planet, after a long journey, or so you said. You couldn’t understand us, but we could understand the primitive icons you drew, explaining your ideas. We tried to relay our ideas to you as well, but we used a galaxial language. We had previously thought it universal, but you proved us wrong. We used symbolics, a ‘language’ that had developed over all fourteen of the planets, even though for the longest time we did not have contact.

You thought we were primitive beasts, though with some type of intelligence. I should say now, that those ridiculous suits you wore when you got here were crazy. You said it was to help you breathe, but our air is purer than yours? My sister and I were on the way to the Polar Regions, and it was only on the border you could land. Everywhere else was too extreme of temperature for you.

Deciding our fate for us, you took me with you, and left my sister. You took several of my friends too, who had been travelling with us. I couldn’t understand why you would do that. Why would you separate the love? Disregard our wishes? I know now that it comes from your need to own everything you come in contact with.

You took us back to your home. Back here. You also brought a large amount of our vegetation and water with you. I didn’t understand, and still don’t quite see why. I believe you did tests on it, but I don’t understand why you needed to.

A year or so of your time went by in that strange ship, and then, finally, I saw your dwelling place, your planet. The people in the suits had fed us and kept us alive on the ship, but when we reached the surface of your planet, they left. We were taken in by other people, people who were nice, but strange. I was taken to some form of lab, and studied while being taught this thing you call ‘English’. I believe I learned it rather well.

On your planet, our life expectancy seems to rise. Our skin grew less sticky as we had access to more water. We couldn’t drink your ‘fresh’ water, only the salted water. You people marvelled at our processing of the water. When we ‘pee’ we excrete ‘fresh’ water and oxygen gas through our second mouth. I don’t believe I mentioned that particular part of our physiology; we had two mouths, one on top of the other. We fed off of what you call ‘pollutants’ and hydrogen. We had no need for the excess oxygen so we would expel it. The lower mouth was the one we would expel water and oxygen gas from, while the top has grinding teeth, for pulping the plants on our planet.

Speaking of pulp, I doubt I mentioned the fact that Keldens loved paper. We made beautiful paper, sometimes just for the sake of it. We wrote down everything. I heard at one point before the end, your people raided us of our papers, and stole our knowledge. Pathetic, really, you could have thought of the ideas yourselves, had you chosen to. Our papers, like us, could withstand extreme heat without catching fire. We did not know ‘fire’ as we did not need it. Our planet was hot enough. It had to do with the fibre we used, which came from the plants we had. They could survive, so our paper survived.

Anyways, to get to the story, finally. I was living on earth with you. I knew enough of your language and customs to blend in, had I not been a three-foot-high wide eyed skinny little creature. I was kept in a big building, something like a ‘zoo’. People would come and talk to me from around the world, and I would explain my people, my religion, and our customs. I helped revamp your primitive mathematical systems to such a level as to allow you to come and go from my planet with ease. Your mathematical systems were holding back your technology. I suppose I am mostly to blame for the raids on my people.

I suppose I am also to blame for the end of us too.

At some point one of the others who had been taken with me to your planet turned violent. Others followed. Soon I was the only one of the great number of us you had taken who had not turned violent. Your people viewed us as a threat, and quickly sought to remove us. Your ‘democracy’ made it so that you all had to vote. You voted against us. One life from your number taken by one of us meant that we all had to go.

They kept me. I showed no signs of aggression, and I did not feel much loss at losing my planet. Something dies in you when your only love is taken away. The rest of my comrades had still had partners, and were unreceptive to the teachings you gave. They acted only on the instinct telling them to get home. The instinct that was telling them their young were being born and they were missing it.

You people chose to remove my planet using my information. It was a sick and twisted game you played. What you didn’t know is that the ‘bomb’ I had helped you make was too powerful for you. You had made something in your past; you called it an ‘atom bomb’. Its power was no where near the power this had. It wasn’t much of a war, more an extermination.

You sent it. It hit Post directly on target. You were just trying to get rid of us. Of the fourteen planets around our sun, you had only explored five. Except for Post you had people stationed on all those planets, gathering information. And you blew them up because you were too foolish to think of the power of the bomb. It was the size of a matchbook, so you figured you had to use a lot of them. You bundled them together, and ended up taking out our whole galaxy. Your people will have suffered because of that. The people on those four planets didn’t even know you were sending the bomb. And you killed them.

When you realised this, you turned to me. You blamed me, saying I should have explained the power of the bomb. In reality, I didn’t know the effects the bomb would have. Keldens were peaceful, and never used such technology. We created the idea, but only because we allowed all ideas to flow through us. You gave me a week, and then you would execute me, removing the last of a ‘horrible unfeeling species’.

I spent my week writing. I wrote a letter to my sister. A letter unsent. I wrote this account of what has happened because of your foolishness.

Now my time has come, in a moment, you will call me forward. You will call me to rest on my knees, and pray to my deity. You will tell me my ‘crimes’ and blame me for yours. Then, you will kill me. In this way, you will remove your guilt. You will fix your souls. By destroying one, you will heal yourselves. A feature that I will never understand.

I have one last thing to write, a letter to myself. A letter explaining everything I did wrong in my life, every sin I committed, every time I thought conformingly, everything I blamed on someone else, and everything blamed on me. A letter to myself, a letter that will remain unwritten.