I plan to live forever. So far, so good.

It’s easy to lose touch with Reality when you see so little of it.

He was a short, well-built man, with an ugly face and an equally ugly dog. If anyone ever passed his house, the dog would rush to the gate barking furiously. This was the sort of thing that pleased him most. At such moments his face would appear at the window and he would laugh loudly. He seemed to enjoy frightening people, and it was this that made everyone dislike him so much. And that’s why nobody could suspect that he was the one that saved our race from slavery…

“How could that be?” you’re probably asking yourself. As a matter of fact, he himself couldn’t be sure of it… It all started one Friday evening (or was it Saturday?), when he decided to go out. He didn’t go out much, and when he did, he usually “visited” one of the city’s taverns, which he considered to be the best place where he could spend his time. He didn’t take his dog with him that night…

The tavern was not so crowded as he had expected. When he entered, several heads suddenly turned towards the door, but they quickly withdrew and continued their former activities. He noticed an empty table and he ordered something to drink. One glass quickly became several and, all of a sudden, it turned out to be closing time… He gave the waiter a pretty big tip and left.

The streets were deserted. He could only hear his footsteps on the pave walk. The silence was unbearable. But a sudden noise made him shiver. It was a pretty quiet noise, more of a hum, and it seemed to be heading right towards him. He then saw several lights. He tried to count them, but he gave up… And then everything went black.

“So, this is the race that emerged and evolved in this stellar system?”

“It seems so… It is most surely the most intelligent life form on the planet. There must be billions of them down there…”

“Hmm… We are certainly in need of other slaves to work in our gundarium mines. It seems that we got lucky.”

“Of course, the first thing we must do is test this race’s capabilities… We can’t afford wiping out an entire planet and enslaving its inhabitants if we are not sure whether they will prove to be useful or not…”

“Well, then let us see what this individual is good at. I guess they are intelligent life forms, and this one seems pretty well-built.”

“I agree.”

“I can’t believe this. It can’t even carry a simple working tool. Look at it. It keeps falling and falling.”

“That’s most undesirable. Can’t it do anything right?”

“I don’t think so… We tried everything. The life form we are watching is unable to concentrate. It has a very confusing orientation capacity, it can’t carry anything without falling or bumping into things, and it doesn’t even seem to speak a fluent language.”

“Then what is your proposal?”

“Considering the facts, I think this race will most surely turn out to be pretty useless to us… So, my opinion is to leave them here, captive in their own stellar system, while we search for more intelligent life forms somewhere else…”

“Yes, I totally agree with you… You can take this hideous creature back where you found it.”

“It will be done.”

He woke up in front of his house. The sunlight was too strong, and it took a few moments for him to get used to it. He had a strange feeling of confusion. The dream from last night had been a pretty weird one. He went inside the house and he decided not to think about it anymore. He just fed the dog and then turned on the TV…

The short, well-built man, with an ugly face will never know that it wasn’t a dream. And neither will anyone else…