8/17/22: Propofol Summer

Deep in the Amazonian woods, there remained one tribe which remained segregated from the modern world, unaware of its existence.

For years, anthropologists debated what to do. Should they initiate contact and bring them into the outside world, with all its perks of electricity, modern health care, and clean water? On the other hand, initiating first contact was irreversible and seemed mighty prescriptive.

The tribe was nicknamed “Heisenberg’s Tribe,” because the obvious solution (ask the tribe what it would want, in order to give it agency) would collapse the waveform into First Contact. 

Eventually, the world-at-large came up with a solution. Once a year, one of the tribe’s members would be shot with a tranquilizer dart and abducted. When they woke up, they would be given a debrief of the state of the outside world by a trained anthropologist well-versed in their language. After the update, they would be given the choice; would they want the Tribe to be assimilated into the outside world, or would they want to keep the Tribe isolated? All the while, a cocktail of propofol and ketamine would run through an IV in their forearm. 

Upon giving their response, they would be bolused an additional round of GHB, rendering them amnesiac of all events that had transpired, and then returned to the Tribe.

Sam was one of the anthropologists assigned to study the Tribe. In his second year, he saw one of the families he was following suffer its second preventable death, and in his heart of hearts he desperately wished to be able to introduce them to modern medicine so as to save them.

Over time, his thoughts changed. Maybe they were better off as they were. Free from TV screens, capitalism, the relentless barrage of living in a world which constantly seemed to be in crisis.

One year, he was assigned to the yearly Interview. The Tribe member, as always, declined to have the Tribe join the outside world. Sam found peace in this decision. This was something that was outside his control and that he could never change. He had had nightmares, for a while, of being abducted by a blinding light, and of being questioned by shadows in the corner of an alien ship, as if he was in the Tribe himself. After that day, these dreams slipped from his memory. He thought no more of them.

He left the research station for a steady job at a liberal arts college in New Hampshire. He settled down. Bought a nice house with nice amenities. Started a family.

Over the next decade, he thought of the Tribe less and less, until eventually both it and his dreams were gone from his daily thoughts entirely. He lived a happy life.

“I really thought he would be the one,” the Vorgon said to his colleague with a sigh. “If anyone would have agreed to having the humans join the Intergalactic Quorum, it would have been him.”

His colleague had no sympathy. “The humans will never change. Come. Let us steal a cow or two. It won’t be another month until the next Abduction is due. And I doubt that their answer will be any different.” 

There was a moment of quiet, then, as they both looked down upon the Earth from their saucer. The sun was high in the sky and the cloud formations were beautiful. And as they stole a cow and flew home to the Vorgon homeworld, the tiny blue dot retreated and shrunk into the blackness of space as if it had never existed.