GBO Creative Writing and Visual Arts Contest

The tea was hot, the croissants were fresh, and the place settings were entirely perfect. But no one would show up to our little affair. We would be all alone once again. In our hearts, humans inhabit loneliness. Our history is full of lonely people searching to quell this familiar feeling. We search for comradery; in love and war, invention and destruction, family and friends, enemies and opponents. We become a part of each other. We seek to belong. Loneliness lingers in the periphery of our vision, a yearning that chokes at the heart when we gaze towards it. We are not alone, yet we are excluded. Humans inhabit loneliness.

It has been decades since their first contact. Humans were a brief curiosity to intergalactic high society. We were the Alpha Centaurians’ philanthropy project, they led the little humans onto the intergalactic stage but grew bored of us. They stopped responding to our invitations. We were out in the universe; without a sponsor to lead us into high society. Humans simply lacked class.

We were not alone, but we felt more alone than ever. Ignored and excluded, we set off to find a friend. We encountered indifference and hostility. We extended invitations to all the major planets in the universe, with no response. Then all the minor planets, with no response. Then we called every number in the intergalactic phone book, hoping for a callback. Finally, an answer, an invitation. We no longer cared for class, we could no longer bear to be alone.

Their name is unpronounceable in the human tongue, but we call them the Trialian. They are an old race, perhaps one of the oldest, yet they were like us, shunned by the intergalactic society. They have some weird ticks, but humans and the Trialian go along quite well. We both work on a principle of trial and error, though the Trialians are the extreme.

They never got the hang of calculus, and abstract concepts and symbolism evade them. Everything they built, everything they’d made, it had all come about simply through trial and error. Their history is almost a billion years of trials. Their technology was redundant, inefficient, and convoluted, but it worked. Their trials are their history, showing how they grew. Each rocket flies just a bit further with each flight, buildings getting just a bit taller, and they become just a bit more advanced. They were like us. They loved us too. Our history of trial and error for them to grow from. What worked, and what didn’t. How to simplify and how to learn. Our calculus, our symbolism, our understanding. Our technology expanded with an influx of new things to try, and theirs simplified, discovering efficiencies. We became better together.

Loneliness is motivation. Humans inhabit our loneliness and grow beyond it. We create lasting ties through collaboration and companionship. We saw it as a flaw, but loneliness is our power.