Without Remorse

all in german

One day large dark spots appear in the sky: extraterrestrials have discovered t he earth! What do the aliens want from us? What are they doing here?

Our song looks at this situation from the perspective of the aliens. Apparently they see the earth as a huge resource for their nutrition.

You can find the lyrics of the song here (pdf).

Little Susanna

Susanna carefully packs the chocolate beetles into her bag. This time she prevailed against her mother. Already at the last visit to the supermarket she insisted on getting these chocolate beetles.

"Susanna, if we go out now, please make sure that there is a bike path"! Five-year-old Susanna almost collided with one of these bike bullies the last time.

Susanna and her mother Helen leave the supermarket with their bags full. Something is wrong here: the people outside are looking up at the sky in surprise. It's a sunny day - just like the weather forecast predicted, and not a single cloud can be seen in the deep blue sky. When Helen looks up, she sees what apparently amazes everyone ...

You can read on here (pdf, 1.4 mb).

The whole story is a "short story" - and the song "Without Remorse" is the essential part of this short story. You can download the whole story here.

What is it all about?

This little science fiction story tells the first moments of the encounter between aliens and humans. The song specifically puts it in the perspective of the extraterrestrials: how do they communicate? What do they want? How do you rate us humans?

The attentive listener will notice over time that it is not only about this typical science fiction event, but that the intention of the aliens is also in focus. They are looking for new sources of protein in the Milky Way, and they have just found one in humanity. The question now is: will the aliens use humans as a source of protein - without remorse - or not?

Answer: Of course they will!

You can download and read here (pdf) exactly how this answer came about. It's a thought experiment that explores the aliens' arguments about eating or not eating us humans.

Download here (pdf, 800 kb).

Where are they from?

Well, the aliens visiting Earth in this song come from the system NGC-11382, which is 1439 light years away. They are thus "our neighbors" within the Milky Way, and yet their home system is unimaginably far away for us.

Even more interesting is the question: From which stage of evolution do they come? And the purely statistically probable answer is: They come very far from the evolutionary future. They are almost certainly far superior to us humans technically and culturally. They probably look at us the way we look at our primates - that is, monkeys or corvids.

The diagram below outlines the evolutionary time scale and places animals, humans and the extraterrestrials on this scale:

Length 5:41 min 7.8 mb

Music & words by andy enroe; guitars, bass: tanja soler zang; vocals, guitars, drums, percs: andy enroe; executive song advisor: tanja soler zang.

Space + earth images: NASA (license cc by-nc-sa); unknown graffiti-artist; all other graphics, moon and paintings: andy enroe; graphical construction: andy enroe (license cc by-nc-nd).

Short story (Little Susanna) & ethical considerations (What is it all about?): andy enroe.