On the ship, Xing and Clamp went over their findings before they were to return them. It had been over two decades since their race had occupied and dominated earth and now they were finally archiving humankind’s history. Whether it was an act of kindness and remembrance for their defeated counterpart or an insult to them was still indistinguishable at this point. Nonetheless, they continued, dragging the earth’s monuments, tools,and documents back to their motherplanet.
Today had been a document day. Crate after crate had been collected and archived in the ship and Xing and Clamp decided they were going to sift through it themselves in curiosity. Immediately they found the arrangement of works to be in an odd order. There were private government documents (of course), instruction manuals and dioramas, historical documents, pictures, and then a set of crates they hadn’t even acknowledged picking up, titled:Collected Works of the Literary Greats.
With their ship on autopilot, in a half an hour, Xing and Clamp had read dozens of books. With their heightened photographic memories gifted to them by their ancestors, all they had to do was open and look at each page for a few seconds before fully comprehending what they were reading. This made the act of ingesting material a fairly remedial task. With about 4 hours left until they got home, they figured that they could have at least half if not more of the world’s composed works done by then.
“So fascinating,” Clamp finally chimed in. “The pieces are so detailed in terms of imagery and metaphors. What do you think the purpose of these writings were?”
“Entertainment, I suppose,” Xing said flipping and finishing through the last 50 pages of the novel he was on. “Does a fine job of entertaining me.”
It was after a long silence and a few more hours, Clamp spoke up again. “ It’s fascinating indeed, but why didn’t they just have this man do all of the writing,” he held up the John Steinbeck novel. “Clearly he was the best at writing.” Xing shook his head, holding up one of Vonnegut’s works. “You must be confused, I found this man to be the best author.”
They paused. Never had they found themselves varying in opinion. Their race had had their thoughts all streamlined together centuries ago. How could this be happening? Their eyebrows raised. This was certainly an intriguing new form of entertainment from the humans. “Clamp, reroute the ships autopilot to delay us a few hours,” Xing instructed. “I want to know what makes these pieces so special.” Clamp was obliged to do so. Re-routing their course, he began reading what earthlings called ‘contemporary works’ and wondered if possibly he could produce something as wonderful as these novels himself one day.
