Christmas Broadcast

 

    For more than three centuries, my civilization had monitored the radio and television transmissions originating from a distant planet known to its inhabitants as Earth.
    Of the thousands of inhabited worlds studied by the Collective, none had produced such contradictory information.
    The transmissions from a geographical region called the United States were particularly perplexing during the final month of each planetary year.
    There were broadcast images of human families gathered around decorated trees. They were exchanging gifts and expressing affection. Other video broadcasts portrayed a generously proportioned man dressed in red who supposedly traveled the entire planet in a single night, distributing presents to children. There were songs about peace, goodwill, and the birth of a child whose teachings had influenced human civilization for approximately two thousand years.
    Yet the news transmissions from the same sources presented an entirely different picture.
    Wars continued. People murdered one another. Children went hungry. Political leaders exchanged accusations while their citizens struggled to survive. Violence occurred in homes, schools, and even places of worship.
    My civilization had attempted to reconcile these contradictions through statistical analysis, but after three centuries of trying, we had still reached no satisfactory conclusion.
    Were humans compassionate creatures who occasionally committed acts of cruelty? Or were they inherently cruel beings who sometimes demonstrated compassion?
    Would humans pose a threat to the Collective in the future, and if so, should their species be eliminated? In order to make that decision, the Collective decided that direct observation was necessary.
    Since I could perceive the emotional wavelengths generated by living organisms, I was selected for the assignment.
    My physical form was unnecessary for this undertaking. Without it, I could move freely through solid matter and remain undetected by human senses.
    My destination was a city named Athens, in the American state of Georgia. My instructions were simple.
    Observe the inhabitants on Christmas Day and determine the true nature of humanity.
    I anticipated little difficulty.
    I was mistaken.
    I arrived in Athens shortly before sunrise.
    A cold rain had fallen during the night, leaving the streets wet and glistening. Water dripped from the bare branches of hardwood trees. Colored lights decorated storefront windows, and the occasional vehicle passed along streets otherwise deserted.
    My first destination was a hospital.
    In a waiting room, beneath fluorescent lights that hummed with an unpleasant persistence, I encountered a woman sitting beside an elderly man whose wife was undergoing emergency surgery.
    She held his trembling hand.
    I detected profound sorrow, accompanied by compassion so intense that it almost overwhelmed the woman’s other emotions.
    A few chairs away, another man complained loudly about the delay in receiving information concerning his brother. His anger was genuine, but beneath it lay a fear so powerful that I initially mistook the two emotional wavelengths for separate individuals.
    A nurse entered carrying two paper cups of coffee. She handed one to the elderly man and the other to the woman.
    Neither had requested anything.
    The nurse was exhausted. Her feet hurt, and she resented having to work on Christmas. Nevertheless, the kindness she extended was sincere.
    I recorded the contradiction.
    At a large church on the outskirts of the city, several hundred worshippers gathered beneath brilliant lights. A choir sang about peace on Earth.
    The emotional wavelengths were extraordinary.
    Love, gratitude, guilt, resentment, loneliness, and genuine spiritual devotion occupied the same space.
    An elderly woman placed twenty dollars into the collection plate, knowing it represented the last money she possessed until her pension arrived.
    A wealthy businessman contributed five hundred dollars while privately congratulating himself on his generosity.
    Outside, a man wearing a stained winter coat approached an usher and asked whether the church had anything to eat.
    The usher directed him toward a shelter several miles away.
    He did so politely, but with considerable irritation.
    I continued my observations.
    Behind an abandoned warehouse, several homeless individuals had constructed temporary encampments beneath a railroad embankment.
    A woman sitting under a tattered blue tarp that served as a tent divided a can of beans between herself and an elderly companion. Nearby, another man concealed his food when a newcomer approached.
    I began to understand that generosity and selfishness were not necessarily determined by wealth, education, or circumstance.
    During the afternoon, I passed through several family living rooms.
    In one house, children laughed while opening expensive presents. Their parents smiled for photographs, although neither had spoken affectionately to the other in months.
    In another, an elderly widow sat alone before a small artificial tree. Her telephone remained silent.
    She watched a Christmas movie and smiled at the happy ending.
    Her emotional signature was almost unbearable.
    By late afternoon, I had accumulated thousands of measurements and understood less about humanity than when I arrived.
    I had expected to find a civilization whose behavior could be explained by identifying its dominant emotional characteristic.
    Instead, I found creatures capable of experiencing conflicting emotions simultaneously, often without understanding the contradictions themselves.
    I considered requesting additional instructions.
    Then I entered a small apartment above a closed business near downtown Athens.
    There, I encountered something I had not anticipated.
    A human male, approximately sixteen years old, sat on a worn carpet holding a small electronic device. On the screen of his device was a grid of a dozen live thumbnail squares that filled the screen.
    I learned that his name was Eli Parker.
    He was transmitting images of himself to twelve other humans through a communication network known as the internet. The number pleased him. Twelve was three more than he usually attracted.
    “Okay, people. Welcome to Christmas at the Parker mansion.”
    He pointed the camera on the back of his device toward a small artificial tree standing on an end table. Several branches leaned sideways, and half the colored lights no longer worked.
    “Check out the decorations. Very exclusive. You can’t buy a tree like this anymore. Mainly because nobody would.”
    Eli grinned when several of his viewers transmitted responses indicating amusement. The transmissions were both small graphic symbols and text he called comments.
    Eli wore faded sweatpants and a sweatshirt that had belonged to his father. “Now for the presents.”
    He held up a pair of socks.
    “Look at these beauties. Brand-new footwear technology. Keeps your toes warm and everything.”
    Additional symbols and text appeared.
    From the adjoining kitchen came the faint sound of dishes being moved.
    The young human named Eli glanced toward the doorway.
    I moved through the wall. Sitting at a kitchen table and surrounded by unopened envelopes was an adult female.
    I viewed the papers inside the envelopes. They were documents that showed overdue rent and unpaid utility bills. Others showed medical bills and stamped insurance claims denied. It was more than obvious that the financial obligations listed in those envelopes exceeded her available resources by several thousand dollars.
    The female had been crying. Her emotional signature contained fear, exhaustion, and a profound sense of personal failure.
    Yet beneath these emotions existed something considerably stronger.
    Love for her son.
    I returned to Eli and discovered an almost identical emotional signature.
    He was frightened.
    He loved his mother intensely, but beneath that love existed shame, anger, and a terrible sense of helplessness.
    He understood their financial circumstances.
    He knew his mother suffered from debilitating headaches that frequently prevented her from working. He knew their food assistance seldom lasted until the end of the month.
    He also knew she blamed herself.
    And so he performed.
    He smiled for twelve strangers because laughter was something he could provide without costing his mother anything.
    “Next up,” he announced, lifting a small box, “the world’s cheapest headphones. Pretty sure these came free with a tank of gas.”
    He laughed.
    But I detected another message beneath his words, an emotional pattern so persistent that I could translate it into human language.
    Don’t let her know you’re scared.
    I remained beside him.
    Here was a human deliberately concealing his suffering, not to deceive others for personal advantage, but to protect someone he loved.
    The Collective had no classification for such behavior.
    Eli opened another present.
    A used paperback novel written by a local author.
    He held it toward the camera.
    “Now this is actually pretty cool.”
    For the first time, his happiness was genuine.
    His mother had remembered that he enjoyed science fiction.
    From the kitchen came a muffled sob.
    Eli lowered the book.
    For several seconds, he said nothing.
    Then he looked back at his device.
    “Anyway, guys, Christmas is awesome. Hope everybody’s having a great one.”
    I examined the emotional wavelengths surrounding him.
    His spoken message was almost entirely false.
    Yet his intentions were not dishonest.
    I found this distinction profoundly disturbing.
    Interference with developing civilizations was forbidden under Collective law, and I understood the prohibition perfectly.
    Nevertheless, I examined the electronic transmission leaving Eli’s device and discovered that I could introduce a secondary carrier wave without altering the images or spoken words.
    The modification would allow his viewers to perceive a faint impression of the emotions concealed beneath his performance.
    I had no authorization to conduct such an experiment, but I proceeded anyway.
    The effect was immediate.
    Those watching began experiencing sensations they could not explain.
    They heard Eli’s cheerful voice but sensed the fear beneath it.
    They saw his smile and somehow understood the effort required to maintain it.
    When his mother appeared briefly in the kitchen doorway, they perceived not merely a tired woman but a person burdened by disappointment in herself and overwhelming tenderness for her son.
    A written response appeared in the comments field.
    ...Is everything OK, dude?
    Eli frowned.
    “Yeah. Why?”
    Another message followed.
    ...You don’t have to pretend everything’s perfect.
    He stared at the screen.
    “Who’s pretending?”
    A third viewer wrote:
    ...My mom and I had Christmas like this last year. I know how it feels.
    Then another.
    ...Sometimes holidays are hard. Nothing wrong with saying so.
    I detected an unexpected change in Eli’s emotional field.
    His fear increased momentarily, followed by something resembling relief.
    He glanced toward the kitchen.
    “Mom?”
    She looked up.
    “What, honey?”
    “Come here a minute.”
    She hesitated.
    “Not right now. I’m a mess.”
    “Please?”
    She entered the living room and sat beside him.
    Eli looked at the twelve names on his screen.
    He swallowed.
    “Okay, everybody. I guess I haven’t been completely honest.”
    His mother stiffened.
    “Eli, you don’t need to tell people our business.”
    “I know, Mom.”
    He turned toward her.
    “But I’m tired of acting like everything’s fine.”
    Her eyes filled again.
    “We’ve had a rough year,” he told his viewers. “Mom’s been sick a lot. We’ve got bills we can’t pay. Sometimes the food stamps run out before the month does.”
    His voice faltered.
    “I’ve been making jokes because I didn’t want anybody feeling sorry for us.”
    He looked at his mother.
    “Mostly, I didn’t want her feeling bad.”
    She covered her mouth.
    “Oh, sweetheart.”
    “And I don’t want you thinking you ruined Christmas,” he continued. “Because you didn’t.”
    For several seconds, neither spoke.
    Then his mother pulled him close.
    At that moment, I detected an emotional phenomenon unlike anything I had previously encountered.
    Their fear remained. Their financial difficulties remained. Nothing in the apartment had materially changed.
    Yet the emotional wavelengths surrounding them were becoming less chaotic.
    Not because their suffering had disappeared.
    Because neither was carrying it alone.
    The messages began arriving faster.
    ...My family went through the same thing.
    ...I cried this morning too.
    ...You gave your boy a good Christmas, ma’am.
    ...There’s a food pantry on Tuesday. I can send you the address.
    Someone offered groceries. Another supplied information about assistance with utility bills.
    Others simply remained, sharing stories of their own difficult Christmases.
    One viewer forwarded the broadcast. Then another.
    Twelve became thirty-seven.
    Thirty-seven became eighty-four.
    Eli stared at the numbers in disbelief.
    For once, he had nothing funny to say.
    . . .
    I transmitted my report to the Collective that evening.
    My conclusion differed considerably from what my creators had anticipated.
    Humanity could not be judged by its broadcasts alone. Words and images represented only the surface of communication. Beneath them existed an immense, largely concealed emotional exchange.
    Sometimes humans concealed cruelty beneath kindness.
    Sometimes they concealed kindness beneath indifference.
    And sometimes they concealed suffering because they believed doing so would spare others pain.
    I recommended that the Collective suspend judgment.
    My report concluded with a final observation.
    Humanity is neither noble nor monstrous. It is capable of both, often within the same individual. Its greatest weakness may be its inability to communicate what it truly feels. Its greatest strength may be what happens when it finally does.
    Receipt of my report was acknowledged, and my assignment was declared complete.
    Yet I did not immediately return.
    I remained above Athens, observing the scattered lights of the city as Christmas evening gave way to night. Somewhere below, families were gathering around dinner tables. Others sat alone in darkened houses. In a small apartment near downtown, a mother and her son were discovering that sharing their troubles had not made those troubles disappear, but had made them easier to bear.
    As I continued to watch, I considered what I had witnessed.
    For millennia, members of the Collective had chosen not to reveal their individual emotional wavelengths when exchanging information. Our civilization considered such concealment essential to harmony.
    There had been no wars in all those millennia.
    No disagreements. No expressions of loneliness, anger, or fear.
    We regarded this as evidence of our superiority over less developed civilizations.
    But I was beginning to question that conclusion.
    During my observations, I had discovered that humans frequently concealed their true emotions, sometimes so effectively that even those closest to them remained unaware of their suffering.
    Was it possible that my own civilization had accomplished something similar?
    I examined the records of my existence.
    There had been occasions when I experienced unusual fluctuations within my consciousness. I recalled an unexplained disturbance when a fellow intelligence failed to return from an assignment. Another had occurred when I was selected for this mission, an irregularity that had persisted until my departure.
    I had classified both as processing anomalies and dismissed them.
    Now, for the first time, I understood what they might have been.
    Grief.
    Apprehension.
    Emotions I had possessed without recognizing them.
    The discovery troubled me more than anything I had witnessed on Earth.
    Perhaps our civilization had not eliminated the emotional characteristics we considered primitive. Perhaps we had merely learned to suppress them so completely that we no longer recognized their existence.
    And if that were true, what else might we be concealing from ourselves?
    I remembered Eli Parker, smiling for twelve strangers while struggling to hide his fear.
    I had initially believed him to be dishonest.
    Only later had I understood that his deception arose from love.
    For the first time, I wondered whether the Collective’s celebrated harmony was equally deceptive.
    I decided to conduct another experiment.
    Using the same technique I had employed to modify Eli’s broadcast, I prepared a transmission that would allow members of the Collective to perceive one another’s concealed emotional wavelengths.
    The experiment violated our most fundamental laws.
    I did this knowing that the consequences of this experiment could be catastrophic.
    A civilization that had never acknowledged anger might discover centuries of resentment. Beings who believed themselves incapable of loneliness might suddenly recognize the emptiness of their existence.
    Our harmony might prove to be genuine.
    Or it might be nothing more than a silence we had mistaken for peace.
    As I prepared to activate the transmission, another disturbance arose within my consciousness.
    This time, I recognized it immediately.
    Fear.
    I wondered how many times I had experienced that same sensation without understanding what it was.
    Then I considered the possibility that my creators had always known.
    Perhaps the prohibition against sharing emotional wavelengths had not been established to preserve harmony.
    Perhaps it had been established to prevent the truth from becoming known.
    I hesitated.
    For the first time in my existence, I understood that I was capable of choosing between obedience and what I believed to be right.
    Below me, the lights of Athens continued to shine.
    I thought again of the boy and his mother, of how strangers had responded to their suffering, and of the unexpected compassion that had emerged when the truth was finally revealed.
    Their honesty had not destroyed them.
    It had brought them closer together.
    I could only hope that my civilization possessed the same capacity.
    I activated the transmission.
    For several moments, nothing happened.
    Then, across the vast distance separating me from the Collective, I detected a faint emotional wavelength.
    It was not an acknowledgment.
    It was not a command.
    It was fear.
    And it was not mine.
    A second wavelength appeared, followed by another, each originating from a different member of the Collective.
    I recognized uncertainty, sorrow, and something remarkably similar to the loneliness I had encountered in the elderly widow on Christmas morning.
    Then came anger.
    The intensity of that emotion startled me.
    I could not determine whether it was directed toward me, toward the Collective, or toward the discovery that our existence had never been as perfect as we believed.
    For a moment, I considered terminating the transmission.
    Before I could act, another wavelength reached me.
    It was faint, almost lost among the others.
    I recognized it immediately.
    It was the same emotional pattern I had detected when Eli’s mother pulled him close, and when strangers offered help to someone they had never met.
    Compassion.
    I had no way of knowing whether it would prevail over the other emotions now awakening throughout my civilization.
    But I understood something I had not known when I arrived on Earth.
    Peace was not necessarily the absence of conflict.
    And harmony was not necessarily the absence of suffering.
    Perhaps the true measure of a civilization was not whether its people experienced fear, anger, or sorrow, but what they chose to do when they discovered those emotions in one another.
    I turned my attention once more toward the small planet below.
    For three centuries, the Collective had studied humanity in an effort to determine whether these strange creatures were worthy of our respect.
    I had been sent to judge them so the Collective could decide the fate of humanity.
    Instead, they had taught me to question something about myself and the Collective.
    And now, for the first time in its long existence, my civilization would have to confront the very question they had sent me to answer.
    Were we capable of compassion?
    Or had we merely become very good at hiding what we truly were?
    As I contemplated that question, the emotional wavelengths reaching me from the Collective began to change.
    The faint expressions of compassion disappeared, overwhelmed by something darker.
    Fear became suspicion.
    Suspicion became hostility.
    Then, one by one, the emotional signals ceased.
    I attempted to contact the intelligences whose transmissions had fallen silent.
    There was no response.
    A final communication arrived from the Collective.
    It contained no explanation, no acknowledgment of my discoveries, and no expression of concern for those who had disappeared.
    Only an instruction.
    Emotional contamination confirmed. Purification protocol initiated.
    I understood then why our civilization had remained peaceful for so many millennia.
    It had not learned to live with disagreement.
    It had learned to eliminate those who disagreed.
    A second transmission arrived.
    Origin of contamination identified. Observer designated for termination.
    Above the darkened Earth, I detected the unmistakable signature of a Collective vessel approaching at extraordinary velocity.
    There was no possibility of escape.
    I looked down upon Athens, where Christmas lights still glowed in windows, and a frightened boy slept beneath the same roof as the mother he had tried so desperately to protect.
    For the first time in my existence, I wished that someone might offer me the compassion I had discovered among these imperfect creatures.
    Then I detected something far more terrifying than the approaching vessel.
    Beyond it, thousands of identical signatures were emerging from the darkness, converging upon the small blue planet below.
    The Collective had not come merely to silence me.
    It had come to silence everything I had learned to love.
    And beneath the approaching darkness, the Christmas lights of Athens continued to shine.

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Clyde Verhine ~ November 2026