We run.

We run and we never look back.

We run because we made a fatal mistake.

We run because they will see us all dead for it.

When we found humanity, we saw them as another race to conquer, another lamb to the slaughter, another jewel to add to our crown. We struck hard and fast, and while the response was quicker and harsher than we anticipated, it wasn’t anything we couldn’t manage. we had every advantage, the element of surprise, more advanced technology, and even physical superiority.

The war dragged on, however, and those in the upper ranks felt disgruntled that we hadn’t crushed this inferior race. So a decision was made to destroy their unity, to make them lose their sense of self and pride.

Cultural annihilation.

We bombed their museums, razed their sacred sites to the ground, buried ancient ruins painstakingly uncovered over hundreds of years beneath hundreds of feet of dirt and rock. We hacked their databases, erased their histories and folklore, and crippled their learning institutions.

And that was our greatest mistake.

We had studied them and their history before invading, we knew that there was a monstrous rage and cruelty deep within humanity’s heart, but from what we saw, that beast had lain dormant for hundreds of years now, and we thought it dead from neglect.

We didn’t know that it was their history that reminded them not to be cruel. We didn’t know that their holy sites kept them honest to themselves. We didn’t know that their institutions taught peace because war came so easily to them.

In our efforts to weaken their resolve, to break their spirit, we succeeded only in doing the opposite. We had committed an unforgivable sin and if any had held any measure of sympathy towards us or hesitation in striking against us, they no longer did. Even if it meant their destruction they would ensure they did not fall alone.

We didn’t merely rattle the cage of the presumed dead beast, we flung open the doors and cut off the chains that bound it. We breathed a new life into its desiccated form and congratulated each other on our victory even as it grew healthy and strong before our very eyes.

We had kindled humanity’s hatred. There were those who hated us before, of course, but they hated the soldiers, the war, the politics, and the death it all brought. They hadn’t hated us as a whole. They presumed there were those like them on the other side who hated the same things they did and who wanted this all to be over, for our races to go their separate ways, lick our wounds and return to some measure of the peace we had once known.

But now their hearts were enshrouded with hatred and their souls were ablaze with rage. Gone were the lessons of the past to show restraint and mercy. Gone were holy sites that evoked spiritual purity and serenity. Gone were the ruins and artifacts of civilizations long dead that displayed the ingenuity and beauty of their ancient selves.

Now they hated us. All of us. Everything we stood for. Because we had taken away everything they had stood for. We had robbed them not just of artifacts and information, but of a fragment of their collective soul. We had stolen their inspiration to improve themselves, to be better than those that had come before. We had taken their peace and they would now give us their hate.

We tried to fight. We even won in the beginning. But they didn’t care about losses anymore. They didn’t care about living through the war so long as they won the battle. They pushed themselves above and beyond the limits of their bodies through the use of drugs and self-targeted psychological warfare, exerting strength that crippled them in exchange for killing just one more of us and relentlessly hounding us for days on end without rest to grind us down. They didn’t care if they fell dead on the battlefield from exhaustion if it cost us just as much as it did them.

And as more of our technology fell into their hands, the worse off we were. They broke down everything they took and studied it over and over until they understood the principles behind it and could make it for themselves. But they went further, they didn’t bother installing limiters or safety protocols, safety and security didn’t matter as long as it meant more of us would die.

So we became victims of our own power as they combined it with the worst of theirs, our propulsion systems carrying nuclear weapons high into orbit to strike at our vessels, our life support systems hijacked and used to spread poisons and gases that brought long, agonizing deaths to any who came into contact with them.

We had ridiculed the humans of peace because we didn’t know to fear the humans of war. We knew it now, but it was too late to ask for mercy, to late to offer surrender. So we did the only thing that we could. We sent them all of the data we had copied before erasing, all of their histories and stories we had wiped from their databases. we could do nothing about the sites and ruins we had destroyed, so this would have to be enough.

And then we ran.

We took to the stars and left that green and blue world behind us, hoping against hope that the recovery of that which had inspired them to peace once before would do so again. But before we could even let out a sigh of relief at our escape, we felt an urge, a primal warning to look back.

And there they were.

The humans had constructed vessels based on our designs, our specifications, our technology. They didn’t look exactly the same, but the appearance was more than close enough to be disturbing. It felt like we were bearing down on ourselves, as if we were bringing destruction down upon ourselves.

Because we were.

We had no one else to blame but ourselves, we were the cause and this was the effect. So we ran again with humanity hot on our heels. We ran knowing we could never go home because we would invite the annihilation of our world, the same fate we once threatened theirs with. We ran from a tireless monster that we had woken from a long slumber and we knew that even if the histories we had returned eventually lulled it back to sleep, it would not even think of rest before sating its thirst for our blood.

We run and dare not ask for help for fear of setting this hateful beast loose on the galaxy.

We pray that when we do finally stumble and fall, humanity’s hatred will end with us, but we keep running because we fear it won’t.

We run and we never look back because we don’t need to.

Because we can feel it.

Their breath on our necks.

Republished with permission from the author, Reddit user u/IAmTheHypeTFS. Image created with Stable Diffusion using the prompt “Human hatred illustrated in the style of Van Gogh.”