Winston K. Marks

“ Please note, this is quite aside from a secondary instinct, that of reproduction or survival of the race, which is not unheard of elsewhere.
But in Prime's humans, this tremendous desire for survival of the individual grew into a virtual obsession. I tested Prime, himself, on this factor, and found him quite normal. He had no feeling at all on the subject of remaining self-aware. I had thought this unseemly human characteristic might have been a perversion from his unhealthy egotism, but patently it was not. ”

“ Later, by clever manipulation of the humans' sub-conscious emotions and instincts of self-preservation, Prime's culture ironically turned this unique attribute back on the humans. They were goaded into a self-destroying atomic war that accomplished Prime's vengeance in a very brief time.
True, a great number of diamonds were destroyed in the holocaust, but as I mentioned, Prime was not at all contaminated with this survival-of-the-individual instinct of his created life-forms. ”

“ Until this time, as I stated, the humans' extreme obsession with survival had been of no concern to Prime, although the instinct had brought his prize animal into a savage, vicious, condition of belligerence that resulted in highly destructive warfare among various groups.
Atomic power changed all this rather quickly. Where humans had previously only managed to slaughter other organic life-forms and each other, now they began detonating nuclear devices. ”

“ As you can see, this instinct for survival or self-preservation is a fabulously potent factor, and if man is ever allowed loose in the universe it is difficult to foresee where it might end.
In my opinion we are hardly justified in continuing the Life-Charter to the crystalline carbon element in this galaxy. ”

“ Of all 96 elements to which life has been separately assigned in various locations, carbon showed the greatest durability at the outset. The diamond, or crystalline form, in which self-awareness was vested in this particular solar system, could be predicted to make efficient use of light energy because of its index of refraction. ”

“ It seems that, through the ages, Prime and his fellow diamonds brought a most complicated life-form into being by a rather trial-and-error process of evolution. By psychokinesis they instilled a system of reproduction and heredity dependent upon bio-chemical devices he called chromosomes. ”

“ By a rather sluggish and clumsy system of electron-flow, the human's brain controlled physical activities, stored memories and managed a perverted form of thinking that was too intimately involved with sub-conscious, bodily interferences ever to amount to much. ”

“ At this point, I gather, Prime's egotism became somewhat sublimated into outrage and anger, that his adoring subjects could be so thoughtless as to destroy their precious diamonds along with their own populace.
After the initial incident in an area called Japan, Prime passed the word to all his fellows, and they deliberately spurred the humans on to produce great piles of nuclear ammunition. ”

“ Perhaps these factors account for the astonishing egotism which developed shortly after we activated self-awareness among them. Not that egotism, itself, is unique in the various elemental life-forms. You will recall, this inflated self-esteem has long proved to be a factor consistent with self-awareness in all matter. ”

“ Prime's animals maintained life, or at least a convincing simulation thereof, by ingesting other organic life-forms, both vegetative and animal, and through an awkward procedure of digestion and devious, chemical transformations, generated an interior source of energy. ”

“ Not only did he create a whole life-form and induce its members to worship him, but also he insinuated the desire and skill into humans to cut and polish their diamonds in a manner to provide a maximum of light refraction. Prime and many others of his Terra kin, enjoyed high stimulation from being so cut, polished, transported and worshipped. ”

“ It is fitting that the last human on earth live to pay respect to the creator of her race."
Instantly the female's whole attitude changed. With the realization that she had Prime in her control, she became demanding. ”

“ And so Prime's incredible motives were finally divulged.
A few years (see chart) before my final return, however, Prime's humans, in their sluggish way, stumbled upon some rudimentary universal facts about the construction of the atom. ”