Friday 25th August 1995
(C) Joona Palaste



                We'd Like to Help, but...


Hello, humans. Perhaps you think it strange for us to address you like that,
for perhaps you think it strange for us to address you, or indeed, speak to you
at all.
  For we are the neon tetras. You know, the kind of fish you use in your home
aquariums. The more enlightened among you call us Paracheirodon innesi. You
also call yourself Homo sapiens. Those are funny names, and so shall no longer
be used in this speech.

Perhaps you are still wondering how we are able to speak to you, and quite
intelligently too, at that. Well, what can I say? It was a very complex and
even more impropable sequence of events, and it was you who started it.
  Are you still with me? Good. I'll explain the process in detail. It all
started when you named us. I personally cannot remember whether our use-name
or our funny "scientific" name came first, but that is irrelevant.
  What matters is our use-name, "neon tetras". For you see, the name itself is
what caused us to evolve into such civilised beings. Initially out name was
misleading. For we did not, contrary to our name, contain neon. But that was
what you lot didn't know. Some foolish ones of you actually put some neon in
our food, thus increasing the neon content in our bodies. Then we did, indeed,
contain neon.

Now this neon content was quite good for us. For you see, our waters were quite
electric because some electric eels lived not many hundred miles from our
habitat. The electricity caused the neon to glow a dim light inside us. You
didn't spot this, because the light was far too dim, but there was someone who
did spot it.
  They were Aliens. They had lived on a planet some light months from this
planet long before you even realised you existed yourself. Their civilisation
is more advanced than yours, which explains why you still haven't discovered
the existence of their planet. It is hidden by a powerful electromagnetic
field, so powerful it even diverts light away from its location.
  These Aliens had been watching your planet several hundred millennia and now
they noticed a small, almost insignificant, raise in the planet's emission of
radiation. That made them very, very intrigued.

The Aliens flew here to Earth and made themselves invisible with equipment of
the very same kind they use to hide their home planet. That's why you didn't
spot them, but we did.
  Why we spotted them was because they revealed themselves to us. They had
found the source of radiation they were looking for, and introduced themselves
to it. Which means us. They taught us almost all of their wisdom, which is so
great that even one percent of it is far better than you could ever manage
before the year 3000. So we became able to speak to you.

We soon realised this planet was in danger, unsurprisingly because of your own
bloody foolishness. With the rate you keep abusing our planet's natural
resources, the world will end in one way or another in approximately the year
2047. Presumably in the other way.
  We have the information necessary to educate you how to stop abusing the
planet, and live perfectly happy ever after. Now we could give you this
information, but we are not going to.
  Why we are so cruel is because you were cruel to us first. Not us in
particular, you understand, but us fish in general. You catch us for food.
Other animals also catch us for food, but you are different. Other animals
catch us because their own life depends on it. If they do not eat us, they
will die of hunger themselves.
  You are different. You would manage perfectly well without us. There is
absolutely no need for you to catch us. But still you do. You catch us for
leisure, for sport. Our lives are wasted in vain. That is what made us angry.

So you are going to perish along with this planet, and we fish are going to
leave the planet with the Aliens. They will transport us to their home, where
we will live happily. Do not waste your time trying to watch us going, for you
will not be able to see either the Aliens or us.
  We end this speech by first giving you our congratulations for initiating
the sequence of events that led to our civilisation, and second giving you our
regrets for not saving you from certain disaster.