My sisters and I were cleaning out the attic in Dad's home recently and found lots of artifacts from our childhood.  In addition to just about every birthday card we ever made for our parents, we also found lots of old school papers (including report cards, yikes!).  There was an entire suitcase full of my old school papers - class notes from US History, graded papers from 7th grade & up, and one curious picture mounted on construction paper.  It appeared to be a full page picture cut out of a magazine (see below).  I'm guessing it was from Omni Magazine, or something similar.  I was about to toss it into a trash bag when I ran across a handwritten story.  It was obviously a rough draft, since it was full of crossed out words and sentences.  There was no title, but I did sign my name at the top right corner.  After doing some reading, I realized it perfectly described the scene from the magazine picture!  Evidently we were given an assignment of looking through magazines and writing a story about any pictures that caught our eyes.  So I made a crude scan of the picture and posted it here, along with the story (re-typed).  I'm calling it Humanis Exterminus since I never got around to giving it a title.  Man, I had a pretty bleak expectation for humanity back then.



Humanis Exterminus

    Thomas Walker opened his eyes expecting to see the early morning light filtering through the curtains in his bedroom.  Instead, he saw a room full of lights that were the color of polished copper.  The walls were lined with rows of these lights - thousands of them.  There was a large circular object directly in front of him that was suspended from the ceiling.  It was concave like a dish.  Everything had the color of sunlight reflecting off a brand new penny.  Everything except the object on the platform in front of him.  It was a glowing pink rod, about a meter in length, that stood perpendicular to the platform.  It had an unusual pulsating glow.  Walker found himself staring at it for several seconds before he noticed the man gazing at him from the other side of the platform.

    "Who are you?  Where am I?" demanded Walker.

    "There is no sound that is even close to my name in your native language so we shall omit that question.  I can answer your second question, however.  You are in the laboratory of a one-man intergalactic science cruiser.  We are at present hovering behind the far side of your planet's natural satellite.  Now that I have told you where you are, your next logical question will probably be pertaining to the reason for your presence," said the off-worlder, almost routinely.

    "Of course!" sneered Walker, "Seeing as how I'm not a creature completely lacking in logic."

    "I have been studying the human race for fifty of your planet's solar orbits.  At the end of this period I am allowed to examine one specimen in detail."

    "Wait a minute!" yelled Walker, "You're not gonna dissect me to see what makes us tick!  If you want medical..."

    "Believe me, I do not resort to such primitive methods," assured the alien with an air of supremacy.  "I am simply going to electronically scan your mind to..."

    "You're not going to do anything to..." Walker's attention was drawn to the glowing rod which was beginning to pulsate very rapidly.  Almost immediately, he was in a hypnotic trance.

    "There is really no cause for concern," the alien said as he began pushing buttons on the platform.  "I'm merely interested in the large portion of your primitive mind that has no apparent use.  You humans are the only creatures we have come across that don't utilize their entire brain.  In our studies, we have found that different patterns of brain waves stand for different thoughts or feelings.  The amazing thing is that these patterns are universal.  Therefore, your brain pattern when you experience fear would be roughly the same as my brain pattern.  Using this method, I plan to examine the wave patterns from the unused portion of your brain and run them through the computer for analysis.  With enough information, the computer will make a logical projection as to the function of this portion of your mind.  Then it will provide the necessary electrical stimulus to activate this portion."

    Walker was hearing all of this, but he could neither say nor do anything about it.  The large dish-shaped object began buzzing and a high-pitched whine seemed to come from Walker's head.

    "It seems to be highly specialized for one function," the alien said while watching the indicators.  "Ahh!  It has to do with the reception of external psychic signals.  All it needs is an increase in the normal brain electrical activity - just like the amplifying stage of a radio."

    The alien pushed two buttons and adjusted a slide control.  Walker gave a sudden jerk in his chair and sat up erect.  He was seeing an image in his mind.  There were hundreds of rockets and missiles being launched at the same time from points all over the world.   The all carried nuclear warheads.

    "No!  Don't let it happen!" he screamed.

    "What do you see?  What is it?" the alien asked.

    The rockets remained on their original trajectories and began hitting their targets.  One after another, they exploded.  There were so many at once they began fusing with the atoms of the Earth itself.  This was it!  An uncontrollable chain reaction.

    "No!!!" cried Walker.  But it wasn't his voice that screamed.  It was the voices of millions of innocent people crying out for help when none could be found.  Walker fell to the floor in a heap.  His heart gave a quick contraction and then went into a muscular spasm that would never release.  Before the alien could get to Walker, several alarms went off in the control room.  He rushed into the room and took in the situation at a glance.  The radiation indicators were going off the scale.  He sat down at the controls and maneuvered his cruiser out from behind the moon.  The sight he saw filled him with disgust.

    "Those ignorant fool savages!"  he exclaimed.  But the feeling of disgust was soon overcome with the feeling of sorrow when he realized a tear was trailing down his cheek.  "There might have been hope for them,"  he said as he watched the planet being converted into a nuclear furnace.  "No other race had such a potential for extra sensory perception.  Walker witnessed the death of mankind in his mind and died from the horrible shock.  He might have seen it coming if I could have gotten to him sooner."

    The off-worlder punched the co-ordinates for his home planet into the computer.  As he was filling out his final report, a somewhat comforting thought came to him.   The Earth would more than likely become a star - thus giving birth to a new binary star system.  Chances are, with a new star, one of the other planets would be in an appropriate position for the spark of life to ignite once again in the solar system.

    "Maybe - in a few million years...who knows?" he said out loud.