“So, if they’re predators, surely they’d prey on something?” the lady from earlier posed.
“Another great question, but this goes back to that bottleneck that Marsha talked about in her last lecture on the Kardashev Scale and its Type One, Two, and Three Civilizations. The civilizations that can’t overcome their own aggressiveness, their own suspicions? They go extinct to become a statistic of natural selection…. Oh, and you see that word again taking us back to where our morals come from.”
He directed his address to the group who’d stood with him earlier, out in the foyer.
“To acquire interstellar travel and become a potential hostile threat to another planet or species, we have to learn to live with ourselves and get past our suspicions and pettiness. We have to see a planet and its hosts of species as holistic and in balance. Civilizations that may be out there in the cosmos that can’t get past their own base predatory nature, will tend to implode and wipe their own civilizations out, never becoming a galactic threat. For this reason, I think my esteemed late colleague Stephen was wrong. I think that any civilization that becomes interstellar has gone through the filter of its own predatory nature and emerged on the other side sensitive to environments.”
“You don’t think they want our resources? To enslave us?” the lady piped up again.
“That takes us into the realms of the Ancient Alien stories. The idea that the Gods we read about in the Bible and mythology were in fact from outer space. Aliens.”
“Yes.”
“I hope I was successful in opening this part of discussion by giving you a sense of why modern UFOs are unlikely. I also hope I simultaneously convinced you that visitors who have or do visit would be inclined toward hospitality and nurture. Now, let me deal with their motivation in coming here.”
He noticed JJ nodding and smiling, and he momentarily felt a pang for how he and his sister must be processing all of this cosmic grandeur on the very day that their private universe had imploded.
“We evolved due to the prevailing conditions on our Earth; according to its gravity and quite specific mix of gasses in the atmosphere. The chances that any creature from elsewhere could arrive here and be able to step out safely as we saw in the old Star Trek episodes, are, well… remote and probably impossible. That they could consume our meat, fruits or vegetables and derive nutrition is unlikely—their enzymes for digestion would be too specific to where they’re from. I mean, we share a lot with a cow; a lot of DNA and the same biosphere. We almost share the same morphology—body plan—yet we can’t eat grass and cows can’t eat meat. So, why on Earth would an alien to be able to digest grass or meat?”
“They’d probably want our water,” she persisted.
“There is a lot more water to be had with far less trouble elsewhere, than through dropping down into the gravity-well of Earth to get it, contaminated with microbes that are specific to this planet, as it would be from their perspective.”
“How about gold?” someone called out.
“Gold’s only valuable to us because it’s rare, but gold and other useful elements are plentiful in deep space. A Type One Civilization—the lowest level that could travel as we’re speculating—would have energies at their disposal that would make it laughably uneconomical to come here. There is no magic involved in making elements if you have the energy as they would have. You’d simply produce them from the raw materials of the cosmos, precisely as they have been naturally produced through fusion reactions in the middle of stars.”
A mighty growl of irritation went up in the middle of the group. Three big men with powerful legs, wearing the two-tone shirts and short pants that seemed a standard uniform for those who were perpetually grumpy, stood in unison and shuffled, grousing, past seated listeners, strode up the aisle and out, followed by a gaggle of women and children.
Al let the deserters go in silence.
When they were gone, the persistent lady relented. “Your arguments are very powerful. Thank you, it’s a lot to take in. My last question is this: Why—all over the world—do we see the same reports in history of the same sort of visitations and the same pyramids built?”
“Human brains are the same everywhere, and their neural architecture is almost identical. Their common experience as proto-humans and then as humans is six million years old or more. As a species we have only been out of Africa and having slightly different experiences for say, seventy thousand years; which is a fraction of that time. We are much more similar than we are different, so that our brains deal with the environment the same way wherever you go. We see lights in the sky and our common origins—which were not that long ago—compel us to think in the same way and come to the same conclusions. Because pyramids are wide at the base and narrow at the top—just like a cairn of stones—it’s how things pile up and it’s why all ancient human civilizations did it this inefficient way. Inefficient in terms of material used compared to the ratio of useful indoor space created. What would be remarkable is if various civilizations built inverted pyramids that contravened this piling tendency. Of course, we stopped building pyramids because we figured out how to make more sophisticated structures that were more efficient. And before I’m asked, if aliens built the pyramids, you’d think they’d have at least dropped a small piece of equipment, something more than a pile of stones, to say they were here.”
“Just one last question,” John announced, trying to close proceedings down.
“The gentleman over there,” Al said, indicating a young man wearing the two-tone shirt and short-pants uniform of the naysayers.
The man stood up and cleared his throat and pulled his pants up. He had a round and ruddy face echoed by a rotund body. “You people think an explosion caused all of this. This universe and life.”
“I think you mean the Big Bang, sir?”
The man agreed that he did. “Ja—and where’s it expanding into? Into heaven? You’ll eventually come to God when that happens whether you like it or not.”
Sporadic victory laughs sounded in the audience.
“Well, that’s strictly a question for my wife but I’ll take it and she can score me. I’ll do it what justice I can as quickly as I can, though we could spin it off into an entire conference on that question alone.”
The audience who had not just laughed now smiled and nodded.
“First—it was not an explosion, it was a very rapid expansion; there’s a subtle but important difference. Second—it was not an explosion in space and time—which is properly referred to as four-dimensional spacetime—but rather an explosion of spacetime. Not in, but of… that’s a very important point. It’s important because it addresses what we’re expanding into. You proposed heaven, right sir?”
The man nodded.
“I’ll agree with that,” Al said, and the man looked surprised. “I’ll agree that we’re expanding into a heaven. Let me explain why. The edge of our Earth is not toward the horizon, there is no edge to the surface of the earth, the edge is ‘up’… correct? It is not left or right or forward or back on the two-dimensional surface—that would just send you on a never-ending journey round and round the spherical ball. To find the edge of Earth, you don’t find it on the two-dimensional surface—like a cliff at the edge of the flat plain. You find it in the third dimension of up or down.”
The man inclined his head with suspicion, analysing the answer for a trick that Al seemed to be gunning for.
“I make this point because our ancestors who didn’t know that they were living on the surface of a sphere—a ball—thought that they could find the edge of their flat world by traveling over the horizon… Correct?”
The man didn’t answer, so Al pressed him to agree or not.
“Correct,” the man grudgingly agreed.
“So, the edge of Earth is not on the two dimensions we live on—on that we agree. Now, remember I told you we live in spacetime—spacetime is one concept, one thing consisting of three dimensions of space and one dimension of
time. Yes?”
“Yes,” the man said, but it was a hesitant agreement, his hackles and suspicions high.
“Well—the edge of the universe is not endlessly up. If you were to travel forever at unimaginable speed in any direction into space, you would not reach an edge. You would not reach a boundary, you would not cross into heaven; same as traveling over the surface of the Earth. You’d find no centre and no boundary. What our universe is expanding into does not lie in the three dimensions of space but in the fourth dimension of time. The centre of our universe is our past and the edge of our universe is our distant future. So—we are forever expanding toward your future, perhaps a heaven in the distance of time. I’d like to make it so.”
“I rate that a ten,” Marsha suggested.
“Aggghh…” the man made a guttural throaty sound. “You blerry scientists think you are so clever but it’s all bullshit.”
Chapter 30
Dominee Gert felt many years past his age as he shuffled up the steps to his pulpit. He had become an old man overnight, withered, tired and worn by tragedy and conflicts, broken and depressed by the loss of a brother in arms and dire realizations.
He surveyed his flock and there was not a seat to be had. It was many a year since every pew was crammed as it was today; even the aisles were overflowing with a crowd standing to the doorway, straining to hear.
A sea of silent sombre faces, mainly white, watched him worriedly as he looked like death hovering over the casket of his dead friend. It pleased him that the few brown faces peppering the throng were respectfully well away at the back of proceedings, out of the fold as he thought they should be.
But in that entire crowd, three faces leapt out at him, the black of their skin drawing his eye and ire: the boy—the Indian devil-child from his school and the boy’s father. Alongside them, his mistress, the mother of the child. Gert could not bring himself to recognize that they had been married in the eyes of God. With impertinence and no shame, they occupied seats that could have been taken by good people. They’d seized seats near the front, only a row back and sickeningly close to the bereaved widow, her daughter and the dead man’s mother; a pitiful trio alone on the empty plain of the front row bench.
With a surge of nausea, the reason was clear—they were at JJ’s right hand. JJ, the son who had driven his father to take his own life, the unrepentant prodigal child with no shame who now brought the instruments that caused this tragedy right into the holiest place; not just under God’s roof but almost up God’s very nose.
The insult of it all made him want to clear the entire church hall. This was a service for the eyes of his Lord and for the heart of his departed friend.
And then it struck him; this was God’s will that he should endure this provocation and prevail.
“I want to go,” Dara had insisted.
“But what on earth for?” Marsha had responded. In her opinion it was an exceedingly bad idea.
“To support our friends,” he’d said simply.
“I can’t fault that,” Al had shrugged. “Funerals are for the living—to say goodbye and to help the family say goodbye.”
And so, it had been arranged.
Marsha had spoken with JJ and he had agreed that it would be a nice touch. He’d agreed with the point of a funeral along the lines Al had suggested.
“Frankly JJ, I am rather concerned though. We are going into a hornet’s nest,” Marsha had fretted.
“I’ll take care of you. The first two rows always stand open for family and close friends. You are about my closest friends in this town right now, so you walk in with me and I’ll seat you close at hand. I’m coming to your address at the school beforehand, so we can go out for lunch and then straight on over to the church if that works for you.”
Dawie and Dara had discussed it and Dawie had wanted to go too, to make the statement of solidarity that Dara had explained to him. But his family would not allow it, not even with JJ’s protection.
“We are gathered here today to say our goodbyes to a great friend and pillar of our community. He was a brother to me…”
Uncharacteristically—in all his decades of preaching it had never happened before—Gert’s throat clamped tight and his voice fluted an octave too high as he dabbed at a tear that broke over the rim of his eyelid.
“A brother… A brother and a husband…” He looked at the widow, Johanna, so hunched and small on the hard, wooden benches. “A son and a father,” he continued, looking from Andre’s ancient mother in the family row to Sonja, his eyes passing over and through JJ as if he was not there.
“He has gone home to his Father and will for eternity remain in his Father’s Grace. Andre was a man of uncompromising justice. Like the Lord Jesus who was his model and guide, our brother Andre was a protector of the poor and a shield against evil. We are born in sin and many die in sin. And some are born in the Lord’s favour but become prodigals who leave and return in glory. And then there are sons who take the devil’s path and refuse to yield.” He glared at JJ long and accusingly, and JJ held his stare unblinkingly as if nothing had been said.
“There are many who cannot be with us today,” he went on, “and they have sent their apologies and condolences. I want to read from some of these for the family.”
He began to read them, one at a time, skipping past the condolences from Morgan for her estranged farther-in-law in favour of more deserving messages.
“To my father; Oom, since I was a small boy your name has rung in my mind as more than an ordinary man. For me you were like God. You were so big and so powerful and so scary that I really did think that perhaps you secretly knew God personally. That is foolish I know, but it is not a blasphemy. To a small boy your uniform was so impressive and your gun and authority… the confusion was easy to make. But as I grew in the Spirit and you became my guide as an elder, I could see for myself how the Lord can work through a man and raise him above his circumstances and cruel fates that hold him back, to give him the character to be better than those earthly ones who have oppressed him. I know I am now only a young man, Oom, and perhaps many will call me a foolish one for saying it, but you were like a prophet to me, lifting my mind to a higher power and urging me to be all that I could be. I wanted to be like you; I hope someday to be in your shadow when we walk together again through Paradise.”
It was signed: Neels Vermaak—Petersburg, Kentucky, USA.
Once more, Gert’s voice caught and he teetered near the edge of tears, his voice failing him, and becoming threadbare and undisciplined to his most urgent insistence that it should obey, slow its cadence and deepen its tone.
Hymns were announced and sung, and extracts of scripture recited. On and on the service went, reminding those present that they were sinners and that Satan, the Duiwel himself, was among them and that God was watching—testing and watching.
More hymns and more praise and more assurances that the only way to avoid a miserable eternity was to make the commitment today to follow Almagtige God.
Then the Dominee, coming to the end of the service, did something that nobody expected; he threw down a gauntlet.
“Too long have bad people ridiculed us here in our own home. To take one’s own life is forbidden, but the Lord knows that this is not the case here. Our friend is a martyr, his life taken from him by outsiders determined to destroy all that we hold dear. Only this morning,” he looked accusingly from JJ to the black faces, “they saw fit to besmirch our friend Andre’s good name by holding a service in praise of their beloved science, and their mammon.”
The despair that had shrouded him until this moment suddenly lifted, his voice beginning to soar.
“In honour of my fallen brother and by his blood I will send a challenge to these newcomers and their ways of error. My challenge will be that we turn the other cheek, to stand on a podium—to share a stage with them and address my people and allow the false prophets to reveal their faults before the living God.”
As his fury of
loss and passion for retribution built momentum, his white, knuckled fist clung to the rail of his pulpit like a sailor in a tempest. His other bunched fist began beating out a rhythm, thumping down again and again onto the lectern, punctuating his words. And then the old gesturing from his zealous youth began, his accusing finger scanning and tracking over the sea of faces, poking and singling out all those known to be wavering in their faith.
“We will hold a debate… here… in this church. A debate to expose all the lies once and for all. We will debate about morals and ethics, and we will show them that they cannot live a moral life without our God.”
Gert paused, raining a withering stare down at the row of heretics who had dared defile his church and this ceremony with their presence. He felt the surge and power of the Lord rising even higher within him, confirming that he was right to follow these suggestions prompted to him by others abroad, to make this challenge.
“We will challenge those who want to see us change our ways, and we will fight the heathen as we have always fought. I choose this topic for my friend, the man who was my right arm, for the man and his forefathers who tirelessly stood by me and by us for generations; fine men of morals and ethics.
“Let us expose these interlopers for who and what they are—they are men of paper, driven by the Devil. They have come here to challenge our Lord and His work, work of devotion that we have tirelessly offered and given so freely to the poor and wretched for generation after generation.”
Chapter 31
The service and days preceding it had exhausted the Dominee. He felt emotionally wrecked, yet duty still called.
He’d received a message from Kentucky in the USA, from the pastor with whom Neels was lodging, and it sounded ominous. The lad needed to talk, to talk in his own language to his own people.
Neels had wanted to see the Dominee, so Dr. Louw the Principal had arranged for Johannes van Doorn to bring his son, Frans, into school at 7 p.m. and set up a video conference call on the new SKA-donated computers and high-speed fibre line.
A Trojan Affair Page 27
