I am concerned. I have listened to the questions and I have answered them all. Yet you seem to believe that you know best, even though you have no comparable knowledge of that species and its civilisation. What you know is what I have reported to you, and yet you seem to believe you know best. What are your reasons?

It is simple: we have listened to your answers. Unfortunately they only confirm our worst fears. 

Our reasoning is twofold. First, you have lacked judgment in what you have shared with those humans. Second, their own conduct since you got closer to them has not improved. Far from it.  So you are in breach of the galactic convention on developing colonies; it is very clear from your own accounts that you have told to them, admittedly a small number of them, some facts they cannot currently comprehend. However, you have said yourself that they learn fast. We know, for example, that only a few decades separated their guesses at the structure of matter and them developing an archaic atomic weapon! 

Those friends of yours are not very clever, but they are lethal. They have used these weapons on their own cities, developed more powerful weapons, ignoring the evident need for restraint and strict control. They are reckless with their own survival. They risked annihilation of their own civilisation at least twice in the short space of seventy of their years. You are best placed to know that they are now, as we speak, pretty close to poisoning their planet. They persecute their poor, torture their women, wage stupid wars for no rational reason, and you want to convince us we should still be lenient? 

As for you, you have ignored our warnings. You seem to be convinced to know more than you do; the Coven has met many such species in its long history, and you should pay more attention to our collective experience. Yes, you have incomparable first hand knowledge on what those creatures are up to. So you are doubly guilty; given what you know, you appear to be drawing exactly the wrong conclusions. They do not need help, they need discipline, quarantine, and probably a good scare.

You surprise me. You are talking like some of their worst leaders, as if you had universal knowledge, and represented all intelligent species in the universe. You do not. Even in our galaxy, the views of this Coven are respected but are not unanimous. I may well be in a minority regarding the human species. Indeed as a historian, I accept that I may at times be more sympathetic to their labour; they feel very isolated, they wonder why no-one has yet contacted them…

But surely, you, of all of us, you must understand why? No-one in their senses would approach them in the current circumstances. They massacre other mammals, they poison the earth, their home, they spend much energy and valuable resources on needless weaponry! And of course, mercifully, they live on the edge of their own cluster. Peace!

Picture: Judgment day

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