So ... you might be one. Or your best friend, or your wife or husband, or that nice lady next door.
They aren't killers, or rampaging monsters; quite the contrary. They need us, something like the way we'd need maple trees if it came to the point where maple syrup was our only food. That's why we're in no comic-book danger of being destroyed, any more than maple trees would be, in the circumstances I just mentioned—or are, as things go. In a sense, we're rather well-treated and helped along a bit ... the way we care for maple trees.
But, sometimes a man here and there will be careless, or ignorant, or greedy ... and a maple tree will be hurt....
Think about that the next time someone is real nice to you. He may be a slizzer ... and a careless one....
How long do we live?
Right. About sixty, seventy years.
You probably don't think much about that, because that's just the way things are. That's life. And what the hell, the doctors are increasing our lifespan every day with new drugs and things, aren't they?
Sure.
But perhaps we'd live to be about a thousand, if the slizzers left us alone.
Ever stop to think how little we know about why we live? ... what it is that takes our structure of bones and coldcuts and gives it the function we call "life?"