Anna Vinogradov Neidle
“Just kill me,” Mirin said. “I don’t need a trial.” The Chief Justice smiled, and to Mirin’s dismay she couldn’t help thinking he looked cute, of all things. It was difficult, how much the Anukai resembled dogs. Giant mechanical dogs, with legs ending in spindles and no ears, but still they unmistakably recalled dogs to the human brain. It felt like the ultimate betrayal.
“This trial is not only about you, though it is very human of you to think so. It is our judgment of your species,” the translator said, interpreting the soft whirring of the Chief Justice. “You are merely its representative. I will be prosecuting you,” he went on, and Mirin did not bother pointing out that the judge and prosecutor should not be one and the same. “I accuse the human race of hundreds of instances of speciocide, countless massacres, unforgivable aggression, resource-hoarding, wastefulness, and general destruction of this planet and its species. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Me?” Mirin said. “I didn’t do those things. I was a pharmacist.” She meant, of course, in the time before the Anukai descended on the earth. They had seemed friendly at first. Maybe humans were taken in by their appearance, but they were also genuinely nice. They brought gifts, technologies humanity had never seen, news of other species in distant solar systems, an entire universe waiting for humanity to join it. They met with world leaders and organized conferences of academics and workers. Only later did the humans learn that this was the evaluation phase, and that they did not score highly.
“Did you consume other species?”
“I ate meat, yes. But most of us did! It was normal. We didn’t think . . . .” The Chief Justice was tilting his head, still looking adorable but also like he clearly thought she was proving his point. She pivoted: “The animals we ate were far less intelligent than we are. Were.” She didn’t know how many humans were still alive. She hadn’t seen anyone else in months.
“Humans believed intelligence gave them the right to everything, didn’t they?” The Chief Justice asked. “They thought it entitled them to waste this planet if it served their desires. What gave them that idea, that one trait was more important than any other, that it could justify any behavior?”
Mirin did not know how to answer. She looked around at the crowd of watching Anukai, crouching among the ruined office towers and broken video screens. One of the screens was still displaying the flickering image of a bra advertisement. The model was almost certainly dead. The Anukai had chosen Times Square as the site of their so-called trial of humanity, bringing her here from miles away, as if this place was significant to human civilization. Tourists, she thought, with an internal smirk.
The Chief Justice pressed on without an answer to his question. “Did you ever suspect, in your heart of hearts, that your civilization was abhorrent?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mirin said, after thinking for a moment. “But it had redeeming qualities, too. What about our literature, our art?”
The Chief Justice raised his front-right leg and waved it dismissively. “Human emotional masturbation,” he said. “You discovered pleasurable ways to manipulate your own feelings. It has no value to other species.”
Mirin, who loved books and the ballet and had believed human culture to be a great contribution to the universe, could not help being thrown by this perspective. “You won’t preserve it, then?” she asked. “Any of it?”
“There’s nothing to preserve,” he said. It was absurd, but this upset Mirin almost more than the end of humanity. Everything humans had ever created, every play and piece of music, would be gone.
“And why do you get to decide?” she asked, a couple of tears suddenly streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them away. “You act all high and mighty, but you’ve slaughtered us! You’re no better than we are!”
“We have pulled a destructive weed out of our garden,” the Chief Justice said, and all around her Mirin heard the other Anukai whirring in assent. “We are guardians of the universe.”
“You’re not even alive!” Mirin spat. “You’re made of metal and wires! Why do you deserve a garden?”
“What a very human thing to say. Whether we are alive is a question of interpretation. Our bodies house the souls of an organic ancient species.”
“And do those souls feel anything from human art?”
“We feel, perhaps, a tingle of pity.”
Mirin seized on this. “Then save one thing,” she begged. “A remnant of human culture so that the universe will remember us.” The Chief Justice made a sound that Mirin took to be the mechanical equivalent of a sigh.
“I don’t think that would be very useful,” he said.
But Mirin pressed on: “Shouldn’t you remember the species you judged and exterminated? It will help keep you from becoming monsters.” These last words, of course, were untruthful. The Anukai were already monsters to Mirin. But they did not see themselves that way.
“Alright,” the Chief Justice said. “What object would you like us to preserve?” Mirin wished she could spend days considering this question, but instead she opened her backpack and pulled out a battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, her own from high school. It had been her only source of entertainment for the last two months. She stepped forward and carefully laid it on the ground before the Chief Justice.
As she straightened, he shot lasers out of his dog-eyes and reduced her, the last human in the universe, to ash. The trial had been tiresome. He thanked the others and left to take a nap, kicking the paperback away as he went without a second thought.
Later, however, when night had fallen and the square was empty, the translator picked it up.
December 29th 2023
Anna Vinogradov Neidle is a New York-based lawyer. She immigrated to the U.S. as a child. While at Harvard Law School, she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her work has been published in the Harvard Law Review and Friday Flash Fiction. Find her on Twitter @AnnaNeidle.
.
more stories here
Wyldblood 14
Wyldblood 14 is available now
buy from us or from Amazon
Nine great new short stories and two drabbles in a fine new collection from Wyldblood. #14 is packed with science fiction and fantasy from imagined worlds to gritty reality a clutch of adventurous, thought provoking and sometimes sligtly unsettling tales which should give you plenty to read though the long winter nights. Available in print and digital formats.
From the Depths
Our latest anthology is packed with tales of the murky deep. We’ve got fifteen stories stuffed with selkies and sea monsters, pirates and meremaids, intrigue, adventure and more. Available in print and digitally.
ISBN 978-1-914417-15-3
Follow us and get our weekly Wyld Flash and occassional update posts here.
Download a free sampler of Wyldblood Magazine here.
Buy the latest Wyldblood Magazine here or get a six issue subscription here.
Read an interview in Black Gate with Wyldblood editor Mark Bilsborough here.
Read the Milford blog about Wyldblood here.
See us reviewed here and here.