text: The year is 2020, but you knew that already, didn’t you? You know, in fact, you will never forget this year, embedding it in your mind with the utterance: “Not now 2020, we can’t take any more shit this year.” If only you knew how absurd that statement was. You think, and have thought for many years, that your actions don’t have consequences. Large corporations ruin the atmosphere by ignoring regulations and only focusing on profits? Mother Earth will clean that up. Either that or the poor, underprivileged populations around the world will bear the brunt of the pain that comes from these actions. Even better for you. Oh, is that not good enough for you? Maybe then you should create institutions that are designed to oppress those deemed “lesser-than,” and that will make you feel better about your small, insignificant lives. Wait a minute. You already did that, and what makes it worse is that you think that nothing can stop you. If only you knew that those people who you ridicule for bowing to a different “god” than you actually were right all along. If only you knew that your actions had consequences. One of your “scientists,” if that even is the right term, once said that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Haven’t you heard that in school? Maybe your pea-brains are too small to comprehend what Newton said. Let me tell you a little story, and maybe then you will finally realize what he really meant. We come from a planet called TARO-1, and I won’t be cliche and say that She was the most beautiful planet you’ve ever seen, but She was our home. She was as good of a home as you will find in this vast universe, and for a long time we were good stewards, deserving of all of the gifts that she gave us. These gifts were of a beauty that only She held, for no one on the planet could ever get close to replicating all that which made her perfect. These gifts that I speak of are not physical gifts, but natural ones, ones that your species are so quick to take for granted. She gave us air to breathe, land to walk on, oceans to swim in, and lives to live. You would’ve liked her, I think, for She was very much like your own Mother Earth. I will not bore you with the details of our lives or our society, for we don’t have a lot of time left, but rest easy knowing that we were more similar to you than you might think. We even share some similarities with those amongst you that are religious, although our long history allowed us to be much more enlightened than you. Our god was Karma, and although your society has some knowledge of it, you will never truly understand the role of Karma in our lives. You humans have your gods, fate, destiny, luck, and all of these concepts that you believe are different from each other. The best way to describe the all-powerful in this universe is to liken it to your concept of Yin and Yang. There is always a balance in this universe, and in your Yin and Yang representation this balance is between good and evil. While your ideas of systems such as this one, or the Christian idea of the Holy Trinity are all typical societal ways to explain the happenings in the universe, they are quite far off of the truth. The only balance that matters in this life is between a species and its creator. When I say creator, it might make more sense to you if I call it our “planet,” although in reality She is so much more than just a planet. Perhaps this lack of understanding can explain why you treat Mother Earth so much worse than we treated our creator, because from the beginning we understood how important She was to us. I will chalk this down to your youth. This balance must be preserved for a species to maintain prosperity, although not all are able to achieve this like we were. Since you won’t be around for much longer in this universe, I suppose it will be worthwhile to explain yet another concept relating to gods, so that you will be able to understand why your existence must end. The concept that I speak of is “sin,” which you also have on your planet. In essence, committing a sin is to break the contract between yourselves and your creator. There are a lot of ways to do this, many of which you will be familiar with since you have already experienced most of them. Betrayal of one’s commitment to other members of their species is one such sin. Another is the desecration of your creator and all that She provides for you. Who decides these sins you ask? God, or Karma as she is named throughout the universe, is the protector of this balance between a species and its creator, tasked with providing judgements to all that choose to commit sins. This is God. Not some fake deity that you pray to for forgiveness for all of your silly mistakes, but instead someone who holds actual power over your lives and all that you do. Karma is the embodiment of that idea which you teach in your schools, that everything has consequences. For us, after many hundreds of thousands of years living in peace on our planet, we chose to elect a leader who was consumed with greed. This poison of a person led many of our society down the wrong path: hoarding resources that our creator so kindly provided for us, imprisoning those members of society that were deemed to be inferior (despite our harmonious living for all of our prior history), and stealing from our creator. Slowly, we ran out of resources to live off of, and so we began searching for more. We dug, deeper and deeper, into the soul of our creator, searching for wealth that would make our leaders even more powerful. With this newfound power our leaders were able to overcome all resistance, and rule with absolute authority over 99% of the population who wasn’t able to bridge the wealth gap between themselves and those greedy bastards that held the power. Our creator, in all of her wisdom, sent disease after disease after us, attempting to weed out those that would harm her or her creations. In the end, though, it wasn’t enough. The greed beat back wave after wave of pestilence, eventually exhausting the will of our planet. She sent for Karma, as is the way these things work, to pass judgement upon our species as a whole. We were her first love, and her pride and joy, but in the end we were left defenseless against the consequences of our actions. Karma came seeking a price for our sins, and the only price large enough was our lives. Thus is the way these things go, and in a matter of seconds our species was enslaved by Karma. It forced us to wander the universe, telling our story to those that are next, in the hopes that they will at least understand their failures before being forced to do the same. When we first encountered you we didn’t know what to think, for there were so many of you that were focused on doing the right thing. But then we looked deeper, and laughed in despair as you blamed the deaths of your icons and the diseases plaguing your world on bad luck. For it isn’t luck that has brought the wrath of Mother Earth upon you, but your own actions. I can’t help but feel sad for the new, more promising generations on your world, because they have inherited the sins of your people. Many of you don’t know what it is like to lose your family, friends, or livelihood because of your sins, because there is no institution on your world with the power of God. You don’t know what its like to become trapped, wandering the universe unable to right the wrongs of countless generations, watching trillions make the same mistakes that you yourself made not long ago. You don’t know what it’s like. Not yet. But you will soon.