Solar Rejuvenation Project

Dedication

Over those two decades, I came to know my team very well. I watched them grow and mature before my very eyes. I heard them discuss their mating rituals. I attended three weddings, and more birthday parties than I care to count. Elves see all this as a waste, during our working years. Our master-work is completed before we have our families. Again, we have the luxury of time. If humans waited until they had completed their professional life goals to reproduce, there would be no next generation. They age so much faster than we do, that it seems like they live their whole lives on fast-forward.

I remember one instance that highlights this the most. It was a conversation with one of the team-members. Her name was Claire. I had been to her wedding, several years prior. I had been to what is called a 'baby shower,' which is basically a formal pregnancy announcement, where friends and family congratulate the soon-to-be-mother and shower her with gifts for the unborn child. Such things are often used as evidence of humans' failure to plan and prepare for things like the birth of a child, but that is, again, a gross misrepresentation. Her child had been planned for quite a long time; a baby shower is a cultural ritual that has nothing to do with actually preparing for a baby, and more to do with moving from one life-stage to another. It is a rite of passage into motherhood, and acceptance of the new roles within human society that such a transition entails.

I had long ago began joining my team for lunch, which is what they call their mid-day meal, as it was the time when the most ideas were exchanged among them. It was common for the team to break away from their work when it was most convenient, so I was not surprised or started to see that Claire began her lunch late. What surprised me was the reason.

Her mate had called her just before the lunch hour. They had a long conversation, and he sent her a video. It was a recording of their daughter saying basic words, not even sentences yet. The child had begun to speak that very day.

Any parent knows that it is a wonderful event, when a child begins to speak. It is long-awaited, and joyously celebrated. It is that moment that separates us from the beasts. And Claire had not been there for it.

When she played the video for all of us, only one of the humans commented on the fact that that event happened during Claire's absence. It wasn't an admonishment, nor was it a sorrowful apology. It was merely a wistful sigh. "It sucks that your daughter started talking while you're at work. It'd be nice if it were possible to schedule that stuff for the weekend." Cue laughter.

The commonality of it, the expectation that human parents would miss those moments of their child's development, was a shock to me. Of course, humans spend time with their families seemingly constantly, to the point where many of our kind think they spend too much time with their families and friends. Most humans believe, as I do now, that they do not spend enough time with their families.

Consider this. Claire not only missed her child's first words, but prior to that, her first steps. After that, she would miss her child's first sentences, and her first day of school. Claire did not complain; missing out is expected. Traditionally, human males make this sacrifice, while the females raise their offspring. In recent years, that tradition has fallen away, and now it can be either parent. It happened to work out in such a way for Claire that her husband was the one with the less demanding job.

I asked her once about how she didn't seem to mind that she missed those things. She told me, of course she minded. She wished with every part of her that she could be there for her child for every moment, but that her work was important. More important than your child, I asked, even though your child's children won't see the results if we fail?

She said, "It isn't about if the work is more important than my child. The question is if my child is more important than all the life on this entire planet, and the answer, as hard as it is, is that my child is not worth more than all of the known life in the universe."

She told me it didn't matter when the star would expand and burn away all life on this planet. It matters when we run out of time to solve the problem, and she could either choose not to miss out on her child's early development, or she could choose to contribute to the salvation of the entire planet. She did not have time in her life to do both.

Her daughter was less than two years old when that video was recorded. At an age when our children are still incapable of doing more than crying, theirs are walking and talking. By the age of three, she was speaking sentences. Human children begin school between the ages of five and six years.

Let me say that again. The entirety of a human child's early development takes place before their first decade of life. To us, that isn't much time at all. We could easily take a short vacation from our work and raise a human infant into middle childhood. To a human, that is a significant period of time. Humans are only physically capable of reproducing between the ages of fifteen and fifty years, though it is culturally expected that they will reproduce between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-five years, for health and economic reasons. Most humans are not capable of working past fifty to seventy years of age. Most humans die before they reach their one-hundredth year.

That means that more than one tenth of their life is taken up by their early childhood. It takes the entire period of time when they are expected to reproduce just to raise one child to middle childhood. It suddenly makes sense why they have multiple children at once, doesn't it? By the time their children reach adulthood, they themselves are becoming elderly.

Human society can not function the way ours does. They simply do not live long enough. To question their dedication and work ethic is not only a result of incredible ignorance, but of utter arrogance. Yes, humans spend time with their friends and family every day. Yes, to an elf, a human is constantly leaving work unfinished to attend to family, or friends, or some other leisure activity.

Absolutely yes, it is necessary for a human to spend their lives in such a way, and if they find way to accomplish their goals while spending even more time with their families, they are absolutely justified to do so. Could you imagine only having twenty years to raise a child? How much of it would you want to spend away from that child? And yet, humans have no choice but to spend most of their time away from their children as they grow into adulthood.

I'm sure many of you are wondering why I am talking about humans when I was invited here to talk about our Sun. Why I, an astrophysicist, am lecturing all of you on xeno-sociology.

Because the sacrifices made to stop the Sun from becoming a red giant are far greater than any of you realize. Because we cannot continue to be cold and callous to the lives of humans. As I said earlier, they will eventually surpass us, and we will depend on their goodwill to keep up.

Because our sister team in the Eastern University failed. The team of elves sacrificed nothing, and achieved nothing.

Because humans, not elves, saved our planet.