Excerpts from Rothilda von Rotortod’s Novel Overturned – How Aliens Tried to Conquer the World with Wind Turbines/2
The leader of the exploration mission for the invasion of Earth is on home leave on the planet Kadohan, which he now sees in a different light. Meanwhile, he reflects on the unique characteristics of planet Earth and its dominant species.
About the Novel
After the invention of a rejuvenation pill, space and resources threaten to become scarce on planet Kadohan. The only way out is the search for a replacement planet. The choice is made for the planet „Earth“. Unfortunately, however, this planet is already inhabited …
Osmotic Connection Between Inner and Outer World
It was an overwhelming feeling to return to his home planet after such a long time. Spontaneously, the leader of the Earth Exploration Mission, for which the name „StarWind“ had become established, decided to call himself simply „Kadohano“ for the time being.
Enjoying the artificial weightlessness of his room, he looked out through the transparent plasma walls into the bright day. It was one of the things that struck him most about life on Earth: this constant desire of Earthlings to seal themselves off from their surroundings. Even their largest windows were so tight that hardly any sound or smell of the world penetrated their dwellings. So he had felt permanently locked up there.
On Kadohan, by contrast, outside and inside were connected in an osmotic way. The walls were transparent, the rooms were in constant exchange with the outside world. This led to a completely different attitude towards life, which was characterised more by being included in and embraced by the universe than by the feelings of isolation and being abandoned that determined the lives of the Earthlings.
Double Day Instead of a Day-Night Cycle
The expedition leader let his gaze wander from one corner of the horizon to the other. All that he had taken for granted before suddenly revealed itself to him in its unique beauty.
He had always known about the vulnerability of his home planet. But only now, after his long absence, when he felt the light of the two suns – Siya and Merza – in whose center Kadohan was anchored, a feeling for the unique balance to which his planet owed its existence arose in him. Even a slight change in the magnetic field of one of the two suns could lead to its demise.
With their two suns, the Kadohanians lived on a planet without night. Instead, there were two days that differed in length and in the type and intensity of light. The days were named after the sun whose light shone on the respective part of the planet. One was called Siyan, the other Merzan.
The light that came from Siya, the larger but much more distant star, was clearer, more brilliant than the light emitted by Merza. The Merza light, on the other hand, brought out the contours of things more clearly. It almost seemed as if it made them shine from within.
The Poison of Darkness
Due to the rotation of Kadohan, sometimes the Merza day was longer, sometimes the Siya day. But it was always bright. For the expedition leader, this was the most important difference to life on Earth, where a constant change of day and night took place, at longer or shorter intervals.
Didn’t the fact that their world regularly sank into complete darkness have to influence the nature of the Earthlings in a certain way? Wasn’t it obvious that the clear impossibility of escaping the fall into darkness laid the seed of despair and blind rage against their own inevitable destiny in their souls? Couldn’t this also explain the tendency of the Earthlings to exterminate each other again and again, even to destroy their own planet, their umbilical cord to the belly of the cosmos?
For the expedition leader, this also gave rise to a concern that made him hesitate to give the starting signal for the invasion of Earth: Didn’t the special rhythm that shaped life on Earth have to change the nature of the Kadohanians in the long run? Wouldn’t the resettled people become more and more alienated from those left behind? What if the all-pervading, all-decomposing poison of darkness would eventually tempt them to turn against their home planet?
Incompatibility of Kadohanian and Earthling Civilisations
To make matters worse, even after the takeover of the planet by the Kadohanians, Earthlings would still live there. Their characteristics would be transferred directly to the new arrivals, in addition to the influences of the life rhythm on Earth. In the end, a new species could emerge that would be clearly different from both the Earthlings and the Kadohanians.
Of course, the expedition leader knew about the alternative to this scenario. But he shied away from openly admitting the existence of this alternative.
Indeed, they had cultivated harmful germs in their research laboratories on Kadohan that could wipe out the Earthlings within a few days. But no one could predict whether the deadly cocktail of microbes would not also irretrievably destroy all other life on the planet, thus rendering the whole expedition meaningless. Furthermore, such an approach also contradicted all the principles they had developed on Kadohan for dealing with extragalactic life.
Above all, however, the Earthlings had become far too familiar to the expedition leader during his stay on the planet. So he simply couldn’t think about the extermination of the alien species in pure cost-benefit categories anymore.
Sure, there were also earthlings towards whom he felt indifferent. This Mr Heimenross, for example, which they had turned into a weapon to infiltrate the Earthlings‘ brains, was nothing more than a marionette for him, a tool whose loss would not affect him deeply.
On the other hand: Was Heimenross actually still a real Earthling? Hadn’t they long ago turned him into some kind of bastard by remodeling his brain for Kadohanian interests? Was it not exactly the new character they had implanted into him in the course of the personality change that made him seem so wooden and sneaky? Couldn’t they have also strengthened other traits of his personality, which would have made him a fervent defender of what he was now trying to destroy, guided by foreign interests?
The Appeal of Imperfection
After all, it was precisely this malleability, the incompleteness of their existence, that fascinated the expedition leader about the Earthlings. A civilisation as advanced as the Kadohanian one was indeed far less in danger of being doomed to extinction by misguided actions than the civilisation on Earth. But the almost complete predictability of all developments deprived life of any element of surprise and prevented it from growing beyond itself, from touching or even breaking through its own limits.
The Earthlings, on the other hand, sometimes reminded the expedition leader of those flowers with the far too large blossoms of which there were so many on Earth. If they were left to their fate, their own exuberance could be fatal to them. Then they bent down and paid for their heavenly striving with the premature sinking into dust. But if they were supported, if they were given even the slightest help in their growth, they unfolded a splendour that to the expedition leader seemed like transforming a speck of dust into a sun.
from: Rothilda von Rotortod: Overturned (PDF and ebook)
About the author:
Rothilda von Rotortod lives together with her brother Rother Baron in a glass blog hut. At the address rotherbaron.com everyone can see what the two of them are currently working on. In addition to an interview with the author, information about another brother of Rothilda, who is said to be at home in the analogue world, can be found there.
Image: Reimund Bertrams: Beta Lyrae (Pixabay)
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