Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders
Prelude

It was a clear, moonlit night in the year 2298 on Earth when my crew and I transported to an open field somewhere in the gritty Midwest on the continent of North America.

We were a Special Forces team from a similar planet called Rosen in the Brahams Galaxy. We excelled at covert missions disguised as wildlife species native to the planets we mapped and explored. It should have been an easy in-out assignment, but it was an unexpected calamity and death-defying challenge instead.

Especially, for me. I had an unexplained feeling of foreboding almost immediately. Not because of any known danger to us or because we were outfitted as furry little critters a third our normal size. Those things we could handle...it was the planet’s instability and unforeseen misfortunes of betrayal that would plague us in the end.

But I digress.

We knew that humans had started expanding further out into space and it was rumored they might soon be our galactic neighbors. So, we were masquerading as Great Plains prairie dogs on a mission to find out if Earth people were savage bastards or a benevolent tribe.

Prairie dogs? Yeah, that was my question, too.

At first, I thought it to be a clever choice, because they were reportedly personable critters that had adapted well to the planet’s harsh environment, but I would find out later, it was the only choice. Bigger wasn’t always better in my view. But most importantly, prairie dogs weren’t seen as a threat to people. We just had to find out if people were a threat to prairie dogs, because treatment of lower life forms was the true indicator of morals, and principled character in our non-violent society.

Word had filtered down via ancient deep-space probes over many centuries revealing a mixed story about human nature. Of most concern to Rosen officials was the report they were capable of brutality toward defenseless animals, like, say, prairie dogs—shooting, bulldozing and poisoning them irrespective of their importance to vital ecosystems, the soil and dozens of other critters—apparently for no other reason than man’s arrogant and self-serving purpose.

Human ruthlessness toward each other was offensive enough, but brutality against sentient beings that had no hope of defending themselves was not acceptable to the Rosen High Council. So, we were sent to observe the current level of human evolvement, and if it didn’t live up to the standards of our leaders, the unenlightened bullies would be blocked from our quadrant of the universe.

My team was programmed with prairie dog chatter, and five human languages, including slang, modern vernacular, profanity, clichés and other customary expressions.

Transforming our taller Rosenian bodies into subroutine programs for the smaller prairie dog disguises turned out to be a tricky thing. It gave our technician fits, so we ended up about 12 inches taller than any average prairie dog on Earth. It was a comical abnormality that I would later explain to the planet’s resident prairie dogs, by telling them we were from a remote colony of hybrid giant PD’s, which they would believe, because...well, we would be standing right there in front of them.

Prairie dogs were supposed to be a jolly, agreeable bunch, which would make my job of coming up with bogus crap and fictional details on the spot...sooo much easier.

We learned that mankind nailed its own coffin by not taking the external warming of the planet seriously, and climate change became its annihilation. Earth’s temperature reached a tilting point over a century ago that started a cascading collapse of its life-sustaining systems. Brutal wars fought over food, water and other natural resources launched humans into years of misery and by the early 22nd century, disease and starvation had killed off most of the 13 billion souls populating the planet.

People had first started exploring Mars in the 21st century, but it was experimental. After their world began to decline, human relocation to the Red Planet became a necessity for survival. So, over several decades of time, they colonized Mars to capacity inside shake-and-bake, climate-controlled, settlements.

Our assignment was to observe the interaction between the remaining group of approximately one thousand people staying in a domed community on Earth, and the prairie dogs living in a nearby colony.

Ironically, they called the PD town “Suburbia”.

Suburbia was our destination and our challenge was to become part of the community as over-sized, prairie dog cousins and earn their trust, so we could witness firsthand how the last remnants of mankind treated them.

Simple enough, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought at the time.

I also remember thinking that humans were an indomitable bunch. I did give them credit for that, because it was believed that a few were determined to revive their planet from the death-throws before it was relegated to the cosmic scrap-heap.

So, I figured if mankind had learned by its mistakes and evolved enough to show respect for lesser beings, we could be in and out of Earth’s biosphere in a matter of days.

But that didn’t happen. Why not?

Well, please allow me to tell you the whole story of our sweltering, struggle to survive unpredictable earthly entanglements and cowardly betrayal, because I suspected from the beginning there was more to the sudden interest in human character than who might be living next door.

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