There are always times like this, when you ship out on one of the Alliance Star Cruisers assigned to the great unknown. Like when the drives are out and you’re plummeting toward some deadly black hole, and singularity tides have stretched your vocal chords so much that you sound like a thirteen-year old chanting yotzer on helium, or a castrati screeching Mozart on speed. Or when you’re swerving through teeth-rattling evasive maneuvers, with plasmonic disruptor explosions bursting on all sides, struggling to escape some nefarious Spertin ambush. At such moments, it is important to stay positive and composed around demmies, maintaining their favored image of us humans as stout fellows, wise and steady, if stereotypically priggish and stiff.

Even in the middle of a crisis, Demmies do love their stereotypes.

Only now, were Captain Ohm and the crew of Clever Gamble even still alive? Or had they fallen prey to the many kinds of ghoulish monsters that roamed this strange world? In order to find out, I must plunge through eerie darkness, skimming just above the rooftops of a metropolis that had every good reason to cower in fear – racing toward certain danger, while bellowing vulgar lyrics that were written (long ago) specifically to undermine solemnity. As if the force propelling me forward were distilled anti-gravitas.

As I grew hoarse, inventing new lyrics to the theme song from The Road to Transylvania, it occurred to me that – if truth be told – I was rather tired of playing The Role. That of a mature and dignified human. Straight man to all the demmie punch lines.

An “ancient one.”

In all of our ancestral legends about space travel, didn’t old-time authors envision humanity as the brash young upstarts? Intrepidly setting forth into the unknown, facing dire threats and deadly foes, making countless mistakes, but always persevering, brilliantly, against the odds? Moreover, in myth, weren’t we often assisted by some wise elder race? Admirable, patient beings, unresentful of our success and irreverent gumption. In those early romances, movies and threevees, from Roddenberry space operas to Tolkien fantasies, there were always kindly older brothers, unjealous and dependable; perhaps a bit stuffy and exasperated, but always sagacious, forbearing and kind.

What those ancient authors never pictured was a horrible possibility… that we might have to fill that role! That Homo sapiens should lumber along, responsibly, while someone else seized the destiny we thought ours. The privilege of Peter Pan – to stay forever young.

Oh, it isn’t hard to comprehend the driving motive of our foes, the Spertins – why they do terrible, misguided things. You have only to steep yourself in those ancient tales, our oldest dreams, and imagine a universe without Demmies.

But then, of course, it could have been worse.

This may not be the best of all possible worlds. But Pangloss never met Murphy. And things could have been very much worse, indeed.