VEGETARIANISM: AN ALIEN VISIT

AN ALIEN VISIT

Thoth: -Hello earth dweller. I’m Thoth, the commander of this spaceship. What are your names?

Jacob: -I am Jacob. This is Mary, my wife.

Mary: -What a surprise. You speak our language. What planet do you come from?

Thoth: -We come from planet Worth.

Jacob: -What a huge spaceship! How many passengers does it take?

Thoth: -There are four seats for the crew and there is space for half a million corpses.

Mary: -Corpses?

Thoth: -We are here to get new provisions.

Jacob: -What kind of provisions?                                                              

Thoth: -Earth dwellers.

Mary: -Do you eat earth dwellers?

Thoth: -We love earth dwellers. My favourite dish is Earth dwellers with a sweet and sour sauce.

Jacob: -Earth dwellers with a sweet and sour sauce?

Thoth: -Yes, I love it.       

Mary: -How are you going to get those corpses?

Thoth: -By inviting people to visit our spaceship. Would you like to see its interior?

Jacob: -No, thank you. What’s the meaning of those symbols on your spaceship?

Thoth: It is the name of this spaceship in worth dweller script. It says, “Final Judgement”.

Jacob: -Final Judgement?        

Thoth: -It was Zeus’ idea.

Jacob: -Zeus?

Thoth: -He is the oldest on our planet.

Mary: -The gods rule your planet?        

Thoth: -All planet Worth dwellers are gods.

Mary: -And you eat earth dwellers?

Toth: -We do.

Mary: -But you shouldn’t. We earth dwellers don’t like to be eaten!

Toth: -But we worth dwellers like to eat earth dwellers!

Mary: -But that is terrible.         

Toth: -Why? You eat other creatures, don’t you?

Mary: -Yes, but they are different.

Toth: -No they aren’t. Are you religious?

Jacob: -Mary is religious. I’m not. Oh, wait a second! Why did you ask? Is it because you don’t eat earth dwellers who are religious?

Toth: -We don’t differentiate between believers and non-believers. Tell me Jacob, since you don’t believe in religion, you believe in science, don’t you?

Jacob: -Yes, but science is not something that you believe in. Science is about natural laws that have been proved to be right.

Toth: -No it is not. Science is about natural laws that you believe that have been proved to be right. We neither care about religion nor about science. What matters to us is wisdom, which is processing information right. Have you heard about Charles Darwin?

Jacob: -Of course I have.                                                                                                          Toth: -He demonstrated that all creatures on planet Earth have a common ancestor.

Jacob: -That is correct.

Toth: -Then why do you eat other creatures?

Jacob: -Because that was a long time ago.                                                                        

Toth: -We and you have a common ancestor, but that was also a long time ago.

Mary: -I had no idea.

Toth: -That was before your ancestors changed their diet and we expelled them from Worth.

Mary: -You expelled our ancestors for changing their diet?

Toth: -Yes, we did. Mary, do you have children?

Mary: -I have two: Sophie is thirteen and Jesus is less than a year.

Toth: -I love spit-roast baby. Crispy on the outside, tender flesh inside, absolutely delicious. But it is a lot of work to get that crispy crust. That is why we only have spit-roast baby on Doomsday.

Jacob:  -Doomsday?

Toth: -Every 5779 planet Earth years we celebrate Doomsday. According to our calendar, that will be three days after we get back to Worth from our humanitarian mission. We then get together with the family and eat spit-roast baby. It is a tradition.           

Mary: -But that is a terrible tradition.

Toth: -I thought earth dwellers never questioned traditions.

Jacob: -Why don’t you eat cows, pigs and chickens? That’s what we do. We have a lot of them. We can sell some to you if you want. Then you don’t have to eat us.

Toth: -One should eat a bit of everything! Isn’t that what earth dwellers who eat other earth creatures say to earth dwellers who don’t eat other earth creatures?

Jacob: -Who told you that? Have you been talking to a vegetarian?

Mary: -Are there worth dwellers who don’t eat earth dwellers?

Toth: -All worth dwellers eat earth dwellers, but we never eat those who don’t eat other earth creatures. We are fair: we treat a creature the way it treats other creatures!

Mary: -Worth dwellers don’t eat vegetarians?

Toth: -You got it.

Mary: -Sophie is a vegetarian.

Toth: -We won’t eat her.

Mary: -But Sophie loves her baby brother Jesus.

Toth: -Sophie will have babies of her own and they will not think of eating other earth creatures because when our humanitarian mission is accomplished there will no longer be earth dwellers who do so.

Jacob: -I hope that you don’t eat earth dwellers who are religious? My wife is a Christian and I was raised a Christian.

Toth: -But you are no longer a Christian, are you Jacob? What matters is not what you were in the past, but what you are today.

Jacob: -Will you spare Mary for being a Christian?

Toth: -Your wife is not a Christian. She only thinks she is a Christian.

Mary: -But I am a Christian. I go to mass every Sunday.

Toth: -That doesn’t make you a Christian, Mary. Real Christians don’t eat other creatures. Have you not read that Jesus Christ said that he had not come to change the law? And doesn’t one of the Ten Commandments say, “Do not kill”?

Mary: -But that means not to kill other people.

Toth: -Mary, isn’t it obvious that if it meant Do not to kill other people! it would say, Do not kill other people?

Jacob: -But we thought it did. Nobody told us that it is forbidden to kill whatever creature. The priests did not explain that to us.    

Toth: -Do not blame the priests. You have a brain, don’t you? And you can read, don’t you?

Mary: -But we assumed that commandment meant Do not kill other people.

Toth: -Look, we are going to sacrifice you NOT because you eat other earth dwellers, but because you have NOT figured out that Do not kill! refers to all creatures. We are going to sacrifice you because you have no empathy. For us, creatures without a soul are just meat.

Mary: We are not just meat. We have a soul.

Toth: -I’m afraid that the other creatures on earth disagree with you.

Mary: -Please, don’t eat us. We can learn. Teach us empathy. Give us a chance.

Toth: -We inspired several fairy tales that teach people empathy. Some people got their message, others didn’t.

Jacob: -I thought fairy tales were just entertainment.

Toth: -A lot of you earth dwellers only think of having fun. Some of you even have fun torturing other creatures.

Mary: -We don’t.

Toth: -But you eat other creatures. People who don’t understand what Hansel and Gretel tries to transmit have no soul.

Mary: -I was terrified when that evil witch put Hansel in a cage to fatten him because she planned to eat him later. I was so happy that Gretchen liberated him.

Toth: -Why didn’t this fairy tale make you empathize with the caged animals that earth dwellers fatten up because they plan to eat them later?

Mary: -Nobody told me to do that.

Jacob: -Please forgive us.

Toth: -You have had plenty of chances to learn empathy. The time has come to get rid of selfish people. People who continuously have to be told what is good and what is evil, because they can’t figure that out for themselves, are too much a burden for the universe.

Mary: -Please save Jesus. He is only 8 months old. He’s innocent

Toth: -No he’s not. All people on earth have been here several times before. You have all had many chances to improve your behaviour.

Jacob: -Are you telling us that we are the reincarnations of people who lived in the past?

Toth: -If you had processed information right you would have realized that yourself.

Mary: -I don’t believe in reincarnation.

Toth: -People who fall hurt themselves whether they believe in the law of gravity or not. All earth dwellers have been here several times before.

Jacob: -Will we reincarnate after you eat us?

Toth: -Those who have lost their soul don’t reincarnate. This humanitarian mission is called the Last Judgement because by eating unworthy earth dwellers we restore harmony on planet Earth.

Mary: -Look at those bright stars in the East! They are coming closer.

Toth: -They are not stars, but the other spaceships of our humanitarian mission.

Mary: -Oh, my God!                        

Toth: -Yes Mary, can I help you?

Mary: -I wasn’t referring to you, dammit.