Curator’s Note
When I was first asked to compile
the evidence of the Special Committee’s
investigation for a virtual exhibit, I was
hesitant. I am, after all, a member of one of
the concerned parties, and though I was born on
HoFe, Earth has become my true home. I started a
pollution cleanup business here; I was elected
to the Council of Elders here. I have neighbors,
and friends, and colleagues here. How could I
accurately reflect their struggle to pick which
species would stay on Earth?
As I began the process of
curating this exhibit, however, the selection
and ordering of evidence occurred quite
naturally. Partially this was helped by the
number of documents thrown out due to their
falsification—mostly on the humans’ side—and
partially by my determination to create, for
each viewer, the experience of seeing both sides
as equally valid. As I read these interrogations
and articles and pronouncements, I did not envy
the Special Council, and I understood why they
deliberated for so long. In fact, I came to
believe that neither side deserved to stay—that
we should all be swallowed up by an earthquake
and leave this planet to its more innocent
creatures—and my pessimism earned me the Council
nickname Jaded Joh. Perhaps you’ve seen the
t-shirts on my constituents.
Anyway, a decision was made, and
this exhibit is one old HoFeLaffian’s attempt to
reproduce the series of deliberations that
occurred in the closed chambers of the Special
Council. There will be others, I’m sure. Still,
I hope that this official site helps give some
context to the Council’s decision, and that it
brings its viewers some peace.
Long Laffa,
Joh the Elder
ARTICLE ONE
Official Order for the
Formation of the Special Council
September 1, 2130
This is a sad day—a day that we,
the members of the Council of HoFeLaffian
Elders, had hoped would never come. We had hoped
that peace would prevail—that laffa,
which has come to be synonymous with your word
life, would prevail—but the evidence
speaks to the contrary. Everywhere, fires are
burning. Everywhere, HoFeLaffians are dying.
Everywhere, humans mourn at the graves of their
lost loved ones and plan their revenge. Speeches
are made; attacks are planned. We go on, and the
battle goes on, and peace seems like an
impossibility.
Since the beginning, there has
been an ongoing call by HoFeLaffian politicians
to make a firm decision about the matter of the
HoFeLaffian occupation of Earth and its
repercussions for the human occupants,
especially in light of the humans’ behavior
since our arrival. Human interest groups have
also expressed concern about the violation of
HoFeLaffian beliefs by their new leaders, and
about the HoFeLaffian rights to Earth in
general.
We had hoped for peace—yet
perhaps we were naïve. Because of our
hesitation, chaos reigned. Because of our
hesitation, laffa was lost.
A decision must now be made.
Yet we cannot be hasty. This is a
complex matter, and one that requires intense
study and deliberation. Thus, as of today,
September 1, 2130, a Special Council of
HoFeLaffian Elders has been created to gather
evidence and hear testimony in this matter. Both
sides—the HoFeLaffians and the Humans—will also
submit evidence through a team of five
representatives chosen by popular election. We
want your voices heard.
By the end of this investigation,
we will decide, by viewing key documents and
hearing from witnesses who experienced different
parts of our history, whether the HoFeLaffians
or Humans will leave Earth for good.
You can read more as this
investigation unfolds by going to
.
ARTICLE TWO
Transcript of the
“Humans
for Humans”
Speech Delivered by Pastor Felix Canter
October 15, 2127
I want to begin today with a
quote from Matthew, chapter 24, verses four
through six: “Jesus answered: ‘Watch out that no
one deceives you. For many will come in my name,
claiming ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive
many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars,
but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such
things must happen, but the end is still to
come.’”
Let me tell you, people of God:
We have been deceived.
You see, the HoFeLaffians are the
pivotal deceivers. They came in their stolen
spaceship and then waged and won a war we never
knew we were fighting. By the time we figured it
out, we had already given these deceivers
everything: our homes, our jobs, and even our
humanity. Why? Because these foreign adversaries
convinced us to feel bad for them? Oh, how
terrible, that HealthCorp found their wasting
planets and gave them a way off of them—through
fair labor, by the way, as is noted in
HealthCorp’s public records. How tragic.
It is not our fault that the
HoFeLaffians decided to take a shortcut.
We should not pay the price for
their idleness.
Yet we do pay the price, every
day. Our people have become servants to these
deceivers; the ones that refuse to bend the knee
and beg on the streets for a few quarters. Yes,
that’s right, the best of us go hungry at night,
and in the winter, we huddle around a fire and
warm our hands and pray to God to deliver us
from these cruel masters.
But do not be alarmed.
The end is still to come.
Those of you who know your Bible
verses know what comes next in Matthew: “Nation
will rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes
in various places. All these are the beginning
of birth pains.”
Birth pains, because with every
act of uprising, we come closer to rebirth.
Birth pains, because soon we will
be free.
Some of you already know what I’m
talking about.
Some of you wait for nightfall
and steal back what was stolen. Guns. Homes. You
strike at these deceivers and reveal their lies,
especially their claim that they believe in
life—what they call
laffa—more
than anything.
What about our lives?
Thus we will bring the earthquake
of our fury upon these creatures, and we will
take back the kingdom that is ours. As Samuel
says, “the Lord will not abandon his people.” We
have not been abandoned, my fellow humans, for
God is with us, and he will make sure we triumph
over the plague of HoFeLaffian rule. We need
merely to rise up, and we will be guided to
victory.
So I, Pastor Felix Canter, say to
the HoFeLaffians who are on their way to arrest
me: “Let my people go.” Let us go, you so-called
life-loving, honorable beasts, for these are the
signs of the end of times—of your times—and with
your annihilation, we will be reborn.
ARTICLE THREE
TRANSCRIPT OF GENERAL FAH’S RADIO
TRANSMISSIONS
EARTH DAY THREE
Stand down; we are in control. I repeat, stand
down; we are in control. Preserve laffa.
Preserve laffa!
ARTICLE FOUR
From the Diary of Sonamin, Entry #455
Planet: Laffa
Discovered and Translated by Emily Marger
A few days ago the mansel trees
put out their fat white buds and blossomed, and
this morning I pulled my first mansel from its
thorn cover like a baby’s wet head guided out of
its mother. Ten pounds, I thought, shifting the
weight between my palms. Ten quillins, to trade
for ten seed bags—or perhaps a sefer like
Tamalin’s to add fresh milk to my table.
“Look at this,” I said to Tamalin
when I passed their door. They whistled at the
mansel in my satchel.
“At least nine quillins,” they
said.
“Ten,” I corrected.
“Like it matters,” they said, as
though a quillin couldn’t make the difference
between a row of tomato plants or an empty
garden edge.
Then I noticed they were dressed
in the blue uniform of the Laffian Space
Program. “Going to work?” I asked.
“Obviously,” they said, pushing
their shoulders back.
When Tamalin first got the
uniform, they had complained about the color.
Aren’t we
already blue enough? they grumbled as they
spun around for the benefit of nosy neighbors.
That’s the
point, I countered, resisting the urge to
plaster my laffaberry jam and toast onto their
chest. The
uniform is a symbol of our people—the first
thing a discovered species might see upon
arrival. Tamalin had laughed me away, but I
noticed they never mentioned the generic color
again.
“And where is your work, again?”
I asked. “The mud pits?”
“You know very well.” Tamalin
stepped out of their cottage to kick up dust and
rocks in my direction.
“Watch out, or I’ll kick back and
ruin your perfect little uniform.”
Tamalin retreated into the
darkness of their cottage, and I kept walking.
Is a perfect LSP entrance exam score and special
notice of the General really cause for such
arrogance? Then again, I suppose I would feel
the same if I was singled out as a genius from a
planet of herders and farmers.
Laffa.
Yet I couldn’t quite accept it. I
missed the old Tamalin—the one who had invited
me, an orphan, into their pack of siblings. The
one who threw me into the lake, and snuck me
into their room to play flack-flack, and never
told anyone about the time they found me
sleeping on my mother’s grave well after her
funeral season ended.
I missed my friend.
And soon enough, they might
couple and change again, this time into birth
parent or parent mate with a new body and a new
life…
Or maybe not.
After all, Tamalin seemed
incapable for caring for anyone but themselves.
After I got home, I bedded the
mansel in a baby basket and shook the pollen off
my picking coat. The right arm had a bloodstain
on the shoulder, and sure enough, I inspected
the skin beneath to find the wound weeping white
puss like streaks of storm clouds against a blue
sky.
Quick, Sonamin, I thought, realizing too
late that my eyesight was darkening into an
early evening haze. The poultice was across the
room. I took one heavy step, and a second, and
then my knees bent and felled me like a diseased
mansel tree.
This is how I die, I noted with
ambivalence, the poison having already numbed
any regret emitting from my
medial
orbitofrontal cortex. With egotistical
Tamalin as the last face I will ever see.
No. I forced my mind back, to a
memory of lying in bed with my mother’s hair
brushing against my cheeks as she leaned down to
kiss me. She smelled like laffaberries and the
slightly sulfurous scent that always lingered on
the other side of the mountain. The braid of red
string she dyed with the berries and now wore
around her head came closer and filled my vision
like a sunset on the horizon. Funny, that little
act of vanity to distinguish her from the other
pickers—from the other Laffian adults in
general—which did not at all fit in with her
idea of a harmonious Laffa. She was complicated,
my mother. I loved her.
And I love Tamalin.
I shook my head, but my vision of
them would not clear. Focus on the laffaberry
smell, I told myself, or on the red braid. Focus
on the way she used to whisper
Long
laffa, flower of my heart, and how even
after she left the room, I heard her echo until
I fell asleep.
Wait.
The real Tamalin stood over me.
“Where’s the poultice?” Tamalin
yelled at me, though their voice was a weak echo
by the time I processed the words. “Where, for
laffa’s sake? Can you hear me?”
“Yellow. Basket.”
Tamalin disappeared and then
appeared again with the basket, made by their
mother for mine the year before she died, with
the titanium box with my precious items—the
poultice, my mother’s wedding necklace, and this
diary—inside. They poured powder into their hand
and spit, and then used a finger to mix the two
together. “Brace yourself,” they said, and
rubbed the mixture onto my wound.
Fire on my shoulder. I screamed.
“Be brave, my friend,” Tamalin
said, and they took my hand in theirs. I was so
surprised I forgot all about the pain.
“Are we still friends, Tamalin?”
I asked.
They dropped my hand. “Of course
we are.”
The burning subsided into a dull
ache. Mansel poison works that way—either kills
you quickly, or, if you treat the wound in time,
leaves your system in minutes. When I could prop
my body up with my arm, Tamalin helped me crawl
to a low stool at the foot of my mother’s chair.
By the time I sat up, I felt entirely cured.
“Thanks for saving me.”
“Why do you still pick mansel
fruit, anyway?” they asked as they pulled the
green blanket on the chair over my shoulders.
“You could be more than just a farmer.”
“Oh, Tamalin, you understand
nothing.” I took the edges of the blanket and
wrapped myself up. “It’s the farmers who are the
lucky ones.”
I thought they would leave then,
but they sat in the other chair and asked, “What
do you mean?”
“Do you have any idea how
beautiful an orchard of mansel trees is in the
early morning, when the leaves mirror the sun
and the fruits pulse like large hearts in their
thorny chests? There is no better example of
laffa.”
Tamalin shrugged off my romantic
description. They had no interest in either
laffa the concept or Laffa the planet—their mind
was on the stars. “I have to get to my training
class,” they said. Apparently, the conversation
was over.
“Wait.” I stood up on unsteady
legs and found my balance. “I wanted to show you
something.” I dug in my picking coat pocket for
the falana flower I’d picked that morning. Its
bright orange petals were a little wrinkled, but
the beauty was still evident. A sweet honey
smell filled the small room.
“A flower? You wanted to show me
a flower?”
“It’s a falana flower,” I said,
smoothing the petals.
“Sorry, Sonamin, but I’m really
late, and I don’t have time to—”
“A lava flower.” I passed them
the stem. “I’ve never even seen one, just heard
stories about them from my grandmother. They
only grow in volcanic soil, and only at
unpredictable times. I thought that maybe you
could mention to General—.”
“I’m really late, Sonamin.”
Tamalin tossed the flower onto the table. “Tell
me tonight, okay?”
“Okay,” I said to their back. So
much for friends.
The truth is that I’ve noticed a
lot of weird things lately, like the early
harvest of mansel fruit, and the odd herding of
the usually solitary wild sefers on the
mountain. Their hair is balding in patches, and
their beards are thin and stringy. There is also
the birdcall, which is notable in its absence.
Not once have I woken this week to their
pleasant chirping. And now that I think about
it, the man who sells taniroak eggs at the bend
mentioned resorting to jarred product because
the taniroaks had not spawned in three days.
(Reminder to my future self: taniroak eggs taste
like algae, and not in a good way.)
That’s why I wanted to write down
some notes today, though I got sidetracked by my
story about Tamalin, as always. I can’t shake
this weird feeling I have…
But maybe it’s nothing.
Maybe…
Sorry, I dropped my train of
thought. My extra quill was jumping a little on
the desk, and it distracted me. I wonder if a
herd of sefer is coming down the road. Anyway, I
was saying—
There was a loud sound just now.
I wonder if it’s a landslide? I’m going to put
this diary back—
Oh, dear laffa.
