What if life is actively being destroyed by some powerful civilization? For us life may be some beautiful miracle worth cherishing but perhaps there’s a brutal

What if life is actively being destroyed by some powerful civilization? For us life may be some beautiful miracle worth cherishing but perhaps there’s a brutal species out there with no greater regard for it than the weeds growing in our gardens. On an intergalactic timescale humanity has only been around for the blink of an eye. So probably not long enough for a civilization that operates on cosmic scale heartbeats to have noticed us yet. When they do though, they might cast off a gamma ray burst in our direction and sentence us to death, checking back to see the carnage several lightyears later, just like they have done with so many other planets teeming with life. They have made a critical error though: they are entirely too late. They should have done it when we were little more advanced than the beasts who graze on the grasslands. We are now on the brink of exponential technological advancement. By the time they fire off their attack we’ll see them coming and have time to prepare. They will have given away their position, and by the time they look for the dust of what was once our home they will find a hundred new starships and space stations, expanding rapidly away but a great portion moving closer in an ominous pattern. Then they will realize what they have done. This time, they messed with the wrong species. And then our message will arrive. As they look at each other right to left and left to right with some alien expression of panic, a malevolent vibration will carry the voice of humanity unified in a way that it has never been before. This will not be the peaceful, optimistic greeting of our Voyager. This will be something unmistakable in it’s intent, something that can only be promised by a civilization that’s been killing itself and nearly killing it’s own planet for all it’s existence, and now thirsting for revenge with a rage handed down from generation to generation. Whenever these beings sleep, if they must sleep, they will be haunted with echoes of our message, still ringing in their heads loud and clear: "We’re coming for you—motherfuckers."