The Gift by Arthur Pitchenik

One clear night, a freakish bolt of lightning felled a giant oak tree in a park, and a shapeless creature emerged from the smoking crater at its base. The creature flattened into a pool of “tar,” slithered under a boulder at the lake’s edge, and silently brooded there.

Weeks later, on a moonless rainy night, the creature ventured out from under its boulder, changed shape, and repeatedly croaked, “Groggor, Groggor, Grogger,” which could be heard for miles. It was a black amorphous blob about the size of a car that could change shape instantly. It had 20 bright orange eyes the size of teacups that ringed a circular mouth like a manhole with a 50-foot forked tongue that darted in and out of it to paralyze and kill prey. It zapped a hooting owl high up in a tree while motionless on the ground with all eyes shut. It slaughtered a curious possum drawn to its foreign stench. In one gulp, it paralyzed and swallowed a gator at the lake’s edge. It flattened into a giant Manta Ray-like creature, took flight, and engulfed a flock of geese in the sky. It looked like a harmless mound of tar when it lay motionless and quiet with its eyes and mouth shut.

The creature croaked in the night, “Groggor, Groggor, Groggor”. It was croaking its name and crying for its mother. It was panicked. It was angry. It was vastly more intelligent than humans and perilous.

Grogger was born during an intergalactic space exploration to a pure alien species that replicated themselves. They all looked and thought alike. Grogger was a rare mutant different from them, a mental and physical embarrassment. According to their law, Grogger was sterilized at birth, programmed to live 10 years, and discarded on the nearest primitive planet to mercifully live out its meaningless life. It was much too unsightly and primitive to live on its own planet or even have the dignity of a given name. Such creatures were collectively called Groggors.

Grogger was alone on Earth and aware of the strange creatures in its new world. It was mainly fascinated by humans. It could read their minds, experience their emotions, and even control their behavior. They thought, looked, and felt so differently but strangely got along. They were warm and wonderful. Grogger witnessed park picnics with physically crippled and mentally challenged human beings included in the fun. They were not discarded like it or euthanized. They were gifts to each other. The creature could feel their joy and grief for each other, and this was their gift to it. In time, Grogger became placid and lay peacefully at the side of the lake as part of the Park’s natural environment.

One evening, Grogger hatched a plan. A tree-killing pandemic was devastating the forests of Earth. It was caused by a highly contagious mutant virus for which there was no cure. Groggor saw stately trees in the park rapidly reduced to rotted skeletons. Grogger could feel them dying as the mutant virus encased their bark in green slime. The creature detached a small living piece of itself and slithered it around the base of a dying tree. It felt the tree’s relief as it healed. Humans will do the rest, it thought. A park ranger noticed a lone tree growing, blooming, and ridding itself of the killer slime. It was the only tree in the Park with a tar ring around its base. The ranger consulted a tree surgeon, who consulted a team of chemists to study the phenomenon. After repeated analysis, they announced,  “The tarlike substance encircling this tree contains an unknown chemical that destroys the tree virus.”  The new chemical was extracted, synthesized, and mass-produced in record time. The Park Ranger, the tree surgeon, and the team of chemists shared a Nobel Prize for “rescuing the trees of our world.”  It was, of course, Groggor who rescued the trees of our world. Gtogger orchestrated it all from start to finish, and no one knew.

As programmed, Grogger died after 10 years on Earth, could not replicate itself, and was absorbed by nature. As the creature lay dying with its eyes and mouth shut, it appeared to be a mound of motionless tar at the side of the lake. Scientists recognized this was the same tarlike substance that healed the trees and sampled pieces for study. They had no idea they were testing large chunks of a living, conscious alien creature far superior to them who was willingly submitting to their mutilation and directing their behavior. Groggor knew that its body, while still alive, would synthesize chemicals that would destroy the human cancer cells and every human pathogen it was exposed to. It knew its body defenses could cure many deadly, untreatable human diseases and ease much of man’s misery. Scores of novel lifesaving drugs were made from pieces of Grogger’s body at its subliminal direction, and this was the creature’s unsung gift to us.

Grogger was a newborn mutant who had been dumped on Earth as trash by a highly advanced alien civilization, but their trash was our treasure. 

Arthur Pitchenik

Image: Ian A Dickson – Lightning at night over a wood