Carbuncle

They were a team with a problem to solve. Not that the group ever saw each other face to face. They communicated in code. You only saw the physical properties of those whose sector you lived in. It was a way of avoiding judging people for the way they looked, thought and spoke.

No prejudice, no emotional empathy just pure logic were the hallmarks of their job. Unlike those who’d created the challenge they were facing. Couldn’t the earthly tribe have foreseen that deforestation, eating more animals than was necessary, living in tall concrete boxes that needed energy to cool and heat them would be destructive to their human habitat.

The pus of misuse, overuse of their planet’s natural resources for their own self, hedonistic purposes was now about to take its final toll. The floods had started as the ice caps melted, rivers dried up, fire was licking its way across continents.

After all the opportunities they’d had. However, it wasn’t the team’s role to pontificate on or debate ‘might have beens’ and ‘should have dones’. Their role was simply to contain the mess and limit the consequences for the rest of the universe.

There wasn’t any quick fix and so it looked as if they’d have to do an emergency clean up. They would get rid of everything. Then put it on the repopulation list for action in a few millennia. After all they had had to do it with the dinosaurs.

Feedback flowed in from the team. Everyone was in agreement. There was no short-term remedy. The ‘depeople’ button was pressed and humankind vanished.