by Ufuk Özden
“I believe you would like to hear about my origins,” Baco says in an abrupt manner and moves on to tell me that he’s from a galaxy far beyond the ones that we can observe, including the ones we can only locate in the shape of a pixelated square. Like most single cell carbon-based beings, their ancestors used to die after minding their own business for a while. However, when Baco’s ancestors passed away after having fulfilled their joyful single-cell lives, they left an organic central core behind. “The cores could interact neither with the dead nor with the living organisms. At least they couldn’t take the first step, so to speak,” Baco explains. “But they could be interacted through an umbilical connection that the living organisms could establish, and the core could also gain access to the mind of the living to store its memories.”
For the living, it was an instinct to connect to these cores, and these links saved their species lots of times. A newborn member would gain the wisdom of the deceased and any living individual that had poked it before. Eventually the dead cores had become the manual for the living, waiting to be read.
Transferring know-how had never been easier.
I imagine it must be like taking a newborn baby to the cemetery, digging up the graves hosting the selected bodies, and connecting the baby via an umbilical cord hanging out like a cable. And the interactive bits of the deceased would pass its and dozens of others’ wisdom on to the infant in a matter of seconds. And you could call yourself a great parent for raising your offspring well.
“Your analogy can be accepted as a simplified explanation of what happened,” Baco nods. “Only the newborn members are already capable of searching for cores to bond with until they gather enough data themselves. Parenting is a disabling process, limiting the capacity of the adults with questionable success.” He tells me that humans would have eventually come to the same conclusion had they not been scheduled for harvesting. I tell him that many of us already came to that conclusion a long time ago.
“So based on your analogy again,” continues Baco, who ignores my comment, “the baby would be able to be born per say, without requiring any assistance or creating any distraction, while the mother is working, and crawl all the way to a cemetery by its own means.”
And he adds that the baby would never need to return home after the trip. It would crawl to work straight from there.
Baco asks me if I would like him to continue and I most definitely would. And so, he continues to tell me the story of a species that has cheated Death by all means and the tale of a member who grew tired of it.
Baco’s primitive grandparents kept on dying, making a pile rising on top of each other, covering the rocky surface of their planet. While the living worked and learned, so did the dead. Baco’s living ancestors achieved so much in such a short notice by cosmic standards and yet they still went back to the pile when they called it a day and died. When they died, their perishable bits were quick to dissolve under their vicious star’s heat, but their cores would remain.
One day, the surface of the planet which was entirely covered in a blanket of organic data cores had a moment of enlightenment.
Somehow kickstarted by the cellular energy of the living preying upon their wisdom, the network had awakened as a colony with self-awareness with access to anything that had ever been known by any individual.
It didn’t take long for that jiggly pile to reprogram unsuspecting living babies who were seeking wisdom. The cores transferred the deceased individuals’ minds into the babies. And that’s the story of how Baco’s people became immortal. They would still die but the colony would immediately use a baby to create a clone, based on the most recent data. Using babies as cloning materials was easier as they would pop up from slimy terrains on their own.
The colony was quick to get the upper hand, mind you. Having access to the memories, thoughts, and intellectual accumulation of all the dead and the living, it defined the rules of their evolutionary game. It was too late to desert when the colony suddenly gained self-awareness.
The hive decided that all the living members must work in eighty earthly-year shifts and take a break for approximately fifty earthly-years. Baco’s species had to stretch out, grow limbs, and get to work in their designed posts. They had to build labs and work in them to achieve the goals set by the colony. “And we would go back to the colony at the end of the day,” Baco says. “There was nowhere else to go except for the polar areas where we couldn’t have survived a day. The colony had made sure that we couldn’t do any research to make them habitable as it could not have survived there itself.”
And they would be assigned a new job each time they were assigned a new shift. What one knew was known to everyone else so there was no point in employing the same members. Baco had helped the team working on their rocket propellers. Then he had helped the team clean the lab. In his next shift he had to work for the astronomy division. Then he had to help the team in the kitchen.
For countless earthly years, Baco went to work for decades, took a few decades off, and eventually died, only to be reborn to rinse and repeat.
“My clone must be at work as we speak,” he says.
I ask him what happened to those who refused to work. Baco tells me that the colony would kill them in a very painful way to display its authority. Then it would reproduce a new copy that remembered exactly what had happened to the previous one. And it didn’t matter even if they managed to kill themselves. They would simply be reborn with most of their memories. That’s tough love for you.
“We’ve made rapid progress and we have eventually contacted alien species, as you would call it,” Baco says. “It has been a beneficial encounter. For instance, we did not have the technology for intergalactic travelling, but we knew those who could provide us with the service.”
I tell him that I’ve always assumed that any species that could travel in space would have developed their own independent technology. “That would have been a waste of resources. Most developing civilisations tend to focus on a selected number of key areas,” Baco says. “Your technicians do not try to build an automobile when they need a taxi ride. Many civilisations offer affordable transportation services. We offer highly secure data storage services. That’s how we were met with an offer to work with the civilisation subcontracting the harvesters, who will disintegrate every living being on Earth.”
We go silent for a moment. My mind’s a crippled ballerina who had an unfortunate stroke last week, and now she’s trying to grab the right words floating in the air to bind them together and make sense while she’s at it.
“I believe the etiquette would require me to say that I am sorry that no species on Earth were found worthy of making a deal with,” Baco says. I tell him that etiquette only works when you do what you’re expected to do without explaining why you did it.
A goat in the distance stares at us. I can never tell whether they understand, approve of, or ignore us. And we’re surely doing a poor job at breaking the ice with Baco eating them.
The Beautiful Cosmos
S o, I travelled on my holidays,” Baco says. “But I always made sure that I was back home before my next shift began.” He travelled across the galaxies, in fitting forms to respect the local etiquette about which he seems to be sensitive. He witnessed galaxies being born, watched swollen stars swallowing their solar system, and couldn’t help but feel sad when untamed neutron stars or gamma ray bursts destroyed random planets filled with life.
He saw civilisations that were able to build small planets by bending time and space to speed up the process. They even had a contest in which the contestants had fifty-six earthly years to terraform their moon sized planet and start life on it. And the one with the most advanced civilisation on their planet would win. Each year the contestants would draw a random card with random bonuses or debuffs as the human gaming community would call it.
“The best card anyone could hope to draw,” Baco says, “is The Technocrat Prophet. It is almost a game-breaking car
d. A wise figure with blueprints for previously unthinkable technologies and spreadsheets to end all common issues such as the satisfactory distribution of resources and efficient management of available assets. I believe humans are not familiar with the term.”
I tell him that we most definitely are not familiar with the term. Our prophets were so worried that we would enjoy life and try to make the best out of it. Science didn’t really help their cause.
“Once they declared the winner,” Baco continues, “they would fry up all living beings on the planets to prepare for the new season. One of the species created for the show even developed a faith system similar to your religions,” he says. “They were wiped off while they were working on their primitive rocket propeller systems to launch a satellite into their orbit. They were quite a peaceful folk compared to humans, which I believe contributed to their success.”
Baco says that he saw a pattern after having been everywhere and having seen it all. “No matter how incompetent or simple things are, they just want to be,” he says. “And they would always want more provided that their instincts or imagination demanded it. Once they got there, they would feel dissatisfied. It’s a pendulum between suffering and boredom, as some of your thinkers have also noted it.”
So, what did Baco Bobonts’ seven times grand ancestor do? It headed to the nearest planet scheduled for The Trip in his breaktime, but not without leaving a note for the next clone. The newborn clone only knew that the previous one had left to do The Trip somewhere in the universe. More and more clones decided to do the same. “They had no obligation to repeat the cycle,” Baco explains. “But the limits of their imagination had been widened which would explain the overwhelming sense of boredom that they had.”
Having experienced the overwhelming sense of boredom firsthand, this Baco Bobonts decided to travel to planet Earth decades ago, where he studied nursing and veterinary medicine, starred in porn movies, travelled, and tried to play the bagpipes but had to give up on it. Not a bad life story at all.
“So, do you have your ticket?” I ask, in an attempt to continue our conversation. Baco tells me that there are no physical tickets as we know them. “But the earth has been scheduled for The Trip a long time and I was familiar with the process,” he says. It appears that human minds have been manipulated into having the same perception. Baco notes that it’s how the harvesters work these days, outsourcing agencies to notify species that are capable of comprehending the process. “There has been some universal controversy in terms of species rights,” Baco says. “They used to harvest all carbon-based species lesser than Type III, similar to the way they’ve been classified in your Kardashev scale, without prior notice.”
He says they were disintegrated within approximately one and a half seconds and numerous civilisations criticised the harvesters for the procedure. Harvesters defended by arguing that they were subcontractors themselves subcontracted by another middle company. Still nobody knows who wants to collect the carbon atoms.
“Is that it?” I ask. “Is that all there is to it? The Trip is simply high-budget annihilation?”
He nods. “Someone in the universe requires them and obviously, they have sufficient funds to subcontract everyone.”
Baco tells me about an aquatic species not unlike the Portuguese man o’ war. To my understanding, they also were colonial organisms, but they seemed to be smarter than floating plastic bags, with three fully developed brains that displayed different character traits and behaviours. They were harvested when they were about to launch their first probe into space. That’s the final countdown for you.
He tells me the story of a race who could only keep forty-six members awake at one time who were handpicked by the central artificial intelligence that they had designed. “The greenhouse effect had made the planet uninhabitable,” Baco explains. “Ten billion of them died alongside all the other living beings on the surface. The remaining thousands retracted to a base with limited resources and energy supplies.” Luckily, they had perfected technology assisted hibernation and a central artificial intelligence that has access to all remaining individuals’ data and their hibernation chambers. The computer neural network would choose the forty six individuals, wake them up with a virtual kiss from their slumber, and put them to work on a four year shift so that they could work on a solution with the computer, send them back to sleep with a detailed record of their findings, and choose a team group to replace them. They’d just discovered the perfect combination of genetically engineered chemical compounds to terraform the surface to counter the greenhouse effect. And they were harvested for their juicy carbon atoms before they knew it.
Baco says that the computer is still delivering the same error message: “Eligible Hibernation Capsule Units Cannot Be Reached. Maintenance Advised.”
The Trip
I s that why some people had the same dream?” I ask.
“Let’s go to my tent before I answer your question,” Baco replies. “Human bodies are prone to the elements.” A goat mock-charges me on our way.
“Judging by their intellectual capacity, they outwit your domestic canines,” Baco says. “They simply do not have the same social etiquette. Displaying affection is usually troubled between different species.”
I tell him that it’s no easier between the members of the same species before we step into his dark green tent.
Baco’s tent is empty save for a mattress, a few earthenware jugs, a wooden basket, a roll of toilet paper, and a few porn magazines lying around. He’s old-school like that.
I pour myself some water and ask Baco why he took this specific form. He says he decided on the final form on his way here. “Don’t you feel that it’s a bit outdated?” I ask, pointing at his hair.
“I do not agree,” he says. “To my knowledge, humans evolve very slowly.
“I began to browse your data network as I was nearing the Earth. I was reading, watching, and listening. It took me approximately twenty-two earthly hours to scan enough data to learn everything that I had to know about your species,” he says.
“That is only the half of the process,” he continues as he unpacks a small sack. “I can look like any organism, but I need a sample of their DNA to feel like one. I need close contact for retrieving the sample, hence I became a porn actor.”
Baco says he doesn’t copy the exact sequence to avoid mutations that could damage his vessel form. He can filter out the bits that are not required for his touristic amusement and focus on what matters to survive and have fun while he’s at it, such as the fight-or-flight response, and instincts to deal with bodily needs, which includes sexual urges. He collects the samples to fear, hesitate, wonder, or feel anger. If he doesn’t pay attention to the process, he could develop a fatal disease and die from it overnight. “Your genes are very unstable,” he says. “It poses a problem given that you don’t have the means to monitor and control them.”
He pulls out pieces of what appear to be dried meat from his sack, puts a few of them in his mouth, chews on them and swallows them with a gulp. “Would you like some sun-dried goat meat?” I nod.
As the side of the earth that we stand on begins to turn its bottom to the Sun, we get down to business. Baco has not asked for my help but I’ve found myself walking after him, doing whatever he’s doing, and being grateful that goat manure is relatively easy to collect. Since the days are long, the early evenings are bright enough for work.
The setting sun eventually paints the sea, goats, and the naked Baco Bobonts in orange. He’s told me that the crew had to lend him their cameraman’s clothes since he didn’t remember where his shorts were. We go back to his tent to have some of his homemade wine.
“So, the dream,” I ask, “did your people do that?”
Baco says that it wasn’t their doing. “We have a different sort of agreement with the harvesters. I’ve already shared that information with you,” he says. “The intern at the agency must have applied a more invasive method for shapeshift
ing. The individual seen in your dreams has never been seen again. I believe the whole living organism was required for the process.” So long the tyre seller in a baggy suit!
Baco also reminds me that earthly minds are too simple to receive a more complicated telepathic message. A direct message from the agency would have put our brains in a situation where they would no longer be able to process whatever perception they were being fed. In other words, we would go insane for certain. “And a physical demonstration would have cost the agency too much with questionable efficiency,” Baco says. “But the way your brains have evolved is not without any benefits. It’s easier to be manipulated.”
“How so?”
“You, alongside all living beings in your world, have been scheduled to be disintegrated. And your primary concern is to find a favourable seat on a bus.”
“This is cruel,” I say. “We’re livestock marked for a trip to the slaughterhouse.”
Baco seems to give this some thought. “You do not show a video to your livestock or crops explaining the upcoming process.” He thinks this could be an opportunity for feeling grateful. Baco Bobonts seems to have no idea what grateful truly means.
When the reality gets too painful, it feels surreal. My anxiety is also building up crushing realities. I float around inside my head and I can’t react or tell myself if it is really happening. Everything eventually becomes terrifying and all the small details are absurd. These are the moments when anyone could use a good laugh.
A goat near me is chewing on a bus ticket. I make a move to grab it from its mouth, but it runs away.
I stroll back to Baco’s tent to find him reading a book titled How to Look after Meat Goats.
“So, how exactly do the harvesters do their job?” I ask him. He tells me that he’s not familiar with the technical aspects of the process, but the principles of our primitive scanning tunnelling microscopes could give a basic idea. “There is no reason for it to be painful,” he adds.
