Last Stop Willoughby

The weekend at the college
Didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand
--Reeling in the Years, Steely Dan

Kicking around on a piece of ground
in your home town
Waiting for someone or something
to show you the way
--Time, Pink Floyd

A place called Willoughby,
a little town I manufactured in a dream
--"A Stop at Willoughby" (1960)
_________________

Ranger recently roamed back to his old college stomping grounds of Bowling Green, Ohio, hoping to get a feel for a time past. He attended a grade school reunion while there . . . grade school! Who has heard of such a thing, yet here it was, 50 years on.

Sitting in Willoughby now is like being in the eponymous Twilight Zone. It is 50 years hence, and memories of the not-so-distant past intrude: A younger self walking the main street with friends, shotguns in tow, heading for the wilds of Kirtland to slay the wild rabbits.

Sitting in a coffee shop gazing out on the now-"101st Airborne Division Highway" honoring the local lads killed in the ill-fated 1985 Gander, Newfoundland crash, it appears yet another tragedy in a long line we vow we'll never forget. Though an airborne soldier, Ranger doesn't remember why these troops were deployed or why they died in a freak event. What is clear is that Willoughby was their last stop, too.

All of this has put Ranger in a sci-fi mindset. The old Twilight Zones seem mild and good-natured in comparison to the realities of daily life today. In remembrance of those simpler times, Ranger offers a Serling-inspired flight of fancy:

Imagine powerful extraterrestrials are collecting human examples to study for characteristics of our species, beaming them up like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse 5; their goal: To see how and if mankind should be integrated into the fraternity of intergalactic life. The decision whether to destroy earth or to allow it to continue on its path will be based upon these samples.

Following are the samples gathered:

[1] A fervent Christian returning from Texas Governor Perry's church group meet up in Texas.

[2] Rapper 50 Cent (An effort is made to decipher the earthling's language via his music, to no avail -- the language is deemed unintelligible.)

[3] Anders Behring Breivik is pulled from a Norwegian jail, leading the ET's to feel that while some of earth's residents suffer from insanity, this may not indicate endemic violent tendencies (using the principle of charity -- something the ET's possess by nature, but a quality considered callow among earthlings.)

[4] A Taliban member. The ET's find him dangerous but decide to go for a few more examples in the name of fairness; destroying interplanetary life violates the 10 Axioms and is to be avoided unless totally justified.

[5] The 5th and final member of the sample is a member of SEAL team 6, snatched just after completing the Osama bin Laden kill mission.

The conclusion can be guessed. The outcome will save the world because man will no longer exist to continue his destructive and impulsive behavior.

"No moral, no message, no prophetic tract: Just a simple statement of fact. For civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized. Tonight's very small exercise in logic, from the Twilight Zone (fr. The Shelter episode)."