Keeping Life Alive

Gerald McKinnly stood behind the hand carved podium to call the meeting of the bunker families to order. The disaster happened five days ago and this was the first time everyone was in the same room. It was surprisingly difficult to get everyone together despite them all being confined underground.

The small group of fifty people had survived the nuclear disaster thanks to McKinnly’s preparations. But in less than a week fights had already broken out. No physical altercations yet, McKinnly and the handgun on his belt guaranteed none of that would be tolerated, but disagreements on who got which resources when had started. This meeting would address those problems. 

“As potentially the only surviving members of humanity it is imperative that we continue to get along and manage our resources wisely,” the group, which was composed of his closest friends and their families, quieted down as he spoke. “I never wanted this bunker to be used but us and the future generations of humanity that are to come thanks to our foresight will be—”

A crackle echoed through the small chamber room of the bunker as lights flashed. McKinnly rushed towards the fuse box on the wall to see what had failed so soon. He’d invested so much in this project he couldn’t foresee anything failing this early on.

The crowd gasped. None of the fuses had blown and the lights stayed on. 

He turned to the podium and saw two floating figures standing behind it. They shimmered a dazzling purple and red and seemed to have specks of stars floating in them. 

A high pitched whine filled the room. McKinnly drew his gun while the rest of the crowd covered their ears. The noise became so deep that it shook his chest like those damn Escalades that used to roll down the streets playing music. He was glad those were no longer in existence, even if the streets were gone too.

“This seems to be an acceptable auditory range,” one of the glowing figures said. 

McKinnly wanted to take down whatever floated in front of his podium but the pair being a cloud of gas he didn’t know what to aim at.

The two shapes transmuted their form into something that appeared humanoid but still had a reddish purple hue to the skin. Instead of wisps of gas extending from their body the creatures had a half dozen corporeal arms that seemed to come out of their back and everywhere.

“We come in peace, don’t shoot, all that nonsense.”

McKinnly shot anyway now that he had somewhere to aim. 

The bullet stopped mid air and the resulting gunshot was faintly muffled.

“I’m Grumbo and this is Henley, we’ve come to clean up your planet,” the being used its arms to gesture to itself and its companion.

“Clean it up?” McKinnly asked. “It’s a nuclear waste.”

“That’s exactly how we were able to find you.” the one called Henley replied. “The nuclear explosions that covered your planet were enough to notice you in the expansive void of space.”

“We’re contacted by alien life less than a week after we blew ourselves out of existence,” someone in the audience said.

“You couldn’t have come a few months earlier?” McKinnly asked. “Knowing other life was in the universe would have changed everything.”

“A few months ago you were just a cold rock floating in space.”

“But we had cities and satellites and radio waves,” McKinnly protested.

Grumbo made something that looked like a shrug, “lots of planets have those.”

“Anyway, we’ve cleaned your planet up,” Henley sounded proud. “We’ve got a few more to do this afternoon.”

“You can’t just clean up a planet full of nuclear waste,” McKinnly dismissed.

“They did,” Johnson’s kid said. He was in charge of monitoring the few sensors they had on the planet’s surface. “It’s still a mess out there but the radiation and dust in the atmosphere all settled down. Everything keeping us down here is fixed.”

“It should just look like a comet hit the planet a few dozen years ago,” Grumbo explained. 

“Why did you choose to reveal yourselves to us in this bunker?” McKinnly asked. Surely his preparedness had earned him an audience with these beings, or maybe they truly were the only ones left. He hoped they’d forgive him for his earlier transgression.

“We appeared to all the civilizations on this planet we could find. All in all there’s maybe 14 million of you left,” Henly answered.

“Not too bad, the last planet we left had only a half dozen survivors,” Grumbo added.

“Although they were a hive-like being that had trillions of worker drones.”

“You’d think they’d be able to get along considering the whole hive–”

“Wait there’s other intelligent life out there besides you and us?” McKinnly asked.

“Of course! Did you really think you were the only ones in the entire universe?”

“And they’re all blowing themselves up with nukes?” Johnson’s kid asked.

“A surprising number of them do that.” Henly replied.

“Keeps us pretty busy,” Grumbo added. “We show up and clean up afterwards trying to keep sentient life alive is surprisingly difficult.”

“Why don’t you warn them?” McKinnly was unimpressed by these being’s approach to their task. “You should tell them that there are others?”

“We tried that. Then they just used the nukes on us,” Hennly said. “Say, didn’t we already come to this planet?”

“Maybe a few million years ago. The habitants were a little bigger back then,” Grumbo replied.

“Are you talking about dinosaurs?” Johnson’s kid asked.

“It couldn’t be the dinosaurs,” McKinnly said. “They were knocked out by a comet.”

Grumbo distorted his face in a disgusting way then it landed on a smile like shape. “Try to do better than them this time around.”