The hideous spacecrafts, similar to the ancient cetaceans that once inhabited the seas of the Earth, take positions. A harrowing noise, like that of the strident trumpets played at wars thousand years ago, fills the air. The spaceships start aiming their deadly rays towards the reptilian population, who desperately run away, filled with terror and wrath, two of the very few emotions they can feel. Soon, it all turns blood, dismemberment, explosion. The impoverished and decadent reptilian planet is going to be mercilessly destroyed in no time. A reptilian leader contacts another. Both wonder who could be attacking them in such a ruthless and unexpected way.
An old advisor knows the answer: "humans, those who our ancestors created to their service and solace in the days when our race was a predator and warrior one, before we lost it all".
One of the leaders points out that those things had happened in a different and faraway space-time. Besides, he adds, as a result of such tyranny, the Earth ended on the verge of massive extinction.
"That's irrelevant", the advisor replied, "they're human, they don't forget nor forgive. They survive in extreme conditions and learn quickly. You may confine and torture them; you may make them lose their minds, but they will always manage to survive and get what they want. They're as creative as destructive. They love and hate and, what's more, they share part of their genes with us, though combined with other unknown and inexplicable ones.
Surely after this massacre many of them will devote themselves to poetry or other art forms. It's even likely that survivors, if there's any, be adopted as pets. They might even use our heads as emblems and bear some of our names. They might like our meat and preserve some of us for breeding. Then, they might sell our body parts in shops, decorated with pictures of happy and humanised reptilian faces. In spite of their omnivorous teeth, few predators are as voracious and refined as them. Our ancestors made the monster that is about to devour us".
This brief tale, freely and imaginatively done, depicts a distant future where humans become ruthless invaders. We've always been afraid of possible alien invasions. Our films show the most frightening alien monsters devastating the Earth. Reptiles, insects, molluscs, etc. come to our planet wether to destroy or enslave us.
However, have we known any crueller creature than ourselves? Our reptilian brain interacts with our limbic system and neocortex, thus creating an odd complexity that could be very dangerous in every corner of the universe.
The most terrifying interplanetary predator may be in the mirror.
