Xenophobia

by Peter Cawdron

  "How do you know that? Maybe they're just like us. I mean, think about it, what is peace? I'll tell you what peace is, peace is an illusion, a dream. We came in peace at Plymouth Rock, and look how that turned out for the Indians. You wanna know what peace is, Doc? Peace is conquest. Peace is submission."

  Jameson was quiet. Bower looked over at him, looking to see if he was going to come to her defense. He raised his eyebrow as if to say, you're on your own on this one.

  "Peace is important," Bower replied, not sure quite what else to say to Elvis.

  "Oh, I don't doubt that, Doc. But whenever you get two parties together with differing viewpoints, differing opinions, there will never be peace. If there is peace, it will come because one group has subdued the other by force of arms."

  Bower was silent.

  Elvis continued.

  "You think that's what they mean to do, Doc? To subdue us? To force peace upon us? Just like we have brought peace to Africa with a gun? How well do you think that's going to go down in the US?"

  Elvis laughed. His teeth were pearly white. From this angle, he really did look a little like Elvis Presley, with his baby face, his full cheeks and wavy hair.

  "I tell you, Doc. Anyone that thinks these guys come in peace is kidding themselves. No one comes in peace. They bring peace as they always have, with a sword.

  “Seriously, what do you think civilization would be like without the police? Without someone to enforce peace?

  “Nah, I reckon those big green bugs know exactly what they're doing. They'll come down here with their silver flying saucers and ray guns and leave us in pieces."

  He laughed yet again. This was a joke to him. Although he'd raised some genuine concerns, his interest was fleeting.

  "My pappy saw a UFO once," he continued. "Damn thing took one of our cows. We found a shredded cow skin the next day. No meat, no bones, just the flayed, bloody skin hanging on a barbwire fence. You think it's the same ones? Like a scout ship or something? Sent ahead to find out our weaknesses. Or maybe there’s more of them. You know, like on Star Trek and stuff. Lots of different aliens from different places."

  Bower didn't know where to begin.

  "Do you think they can read our minds?"

  "If they can," Bower replied, seizing the opening. "They won't find much."

  Elvis burst out laughing, slapping the steering wheel. He smiled at her. Bower was surprised; she’d expected him to be offended.

  “So what of it, Doc? Why aren’t they talking to us. You know, like you and I are. Why not just come down here and say, ‘Hi, I’m Marvin the Martian,’ or whatever, and talk properly with us?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Bower replied. “Before going to Med School, I studied to be a vet. I made it through my first year, but my heart wasn’t in it. I realized I wanted to help people.”

  Elvis nodded his head thoughtfully. Jameson was content to listen.

  “My father was a microbiologist, always talking about chemistry and how molecules formed proteins, sugars and acids, but that was too abstract for me. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but I liked to work with things I could touch. Somehow, medicine seemed more real when stitching up a wound on a patient. Anyway, one of my first year veterinarian courses was on animal psychology. I got to work with cats, dogs, dolphins, cows, you name it.”

  Elvis laughed. “So you put a dolphin on a couch and ask it about its childhood?”

  “Something like that,” Bower replied, feeling the tension between them softening. She’d taken Elvis the wrong way. There was nothing malicious about him. He was just a good-old-southern-boy. He would probably like grits with a side of bacon and eggs for breakfast every day of his life if given the chance.

  “You see, we talk to animals all the time, thinking they understand us, but they don’t. They see the world through a different lens. There’s no doubt they’re intelligent, and that they think for themselves, but they don’t see the world as we do. You’ll never catch a cow admiring a beautiful flower, or a dog stopping to enjoy a radiant sunset.

  “We tend to project our own emotions and feelings onto animals, but its one way traffic. You and I see a dog as part of our families, the dog sees itself as part of a tribe, an inter-species animal pack. And just like a wild pack, your dog will want to know where it sits in the hierarchal order. You may think of it as being on the bottom rung, but I doubt it does, especially if you have young kids. You might think you’ve got your dog well-trained, but he thinks he’s domesticated you.”

  “Hah,” Elvis cried. “My pappy’s dog definitely thinks he rules the roost. He’ll chew anything in sight, and sit up on the couch like he owns the joint.”

  “Dog’s have emotions, though,” Jameson countered. “They genuinely care about us, right?”

  “Oh, they do,” Bower replied. “But through the lens of their nature, not ours. They show empathy when people are distressed, but emotionally they never really develop beyond that of a two or three year old child.”

  “What about cats?” Jameson asked.

  “Domestic cats are different. Apart from lions, there are no cats that move in packs, so they see their inclusion in a family as being part of a litter, and as such there will be parents and other kittens, your children. When your cat brings a live mouse into the house, they’re trying to teach you and your kids how to hunt. They must think we’re stupid when we never catch any mice of our own.”

  “Damn,” Elvis said, laughing as he chewed on some gum.

  “A few years ago, a bunch of divers freed a sperm whale from shark nets off the east coast of Australia. From memory, there were five or six divers. Anyway, once the whale was free it swam up beside each of them individually and took a good look at them. It drifted up to their boat, stuck its head out of the water and looked at the support crew on deck. It was, by all accounts, a moving experience. Those divers came away saying they felt the whale expressed a sense of gratitude and appreciation, but they simply projected their own emotional expectations onto the animal.”

  “How do you know for sure?” Elvis asked. “Maybe the whale was thankful to be rescued.”

  Bower laughed, saying, “Because, if they’d rescued a polar bear from a similar predicament, the bear would have eaten them.”

  “I don’t know about that, Doc,” Jameson replied. “I remember seeing a documentary on PBS about that, and the guy that cut the whale loose said it was nervous as hell at first, treating them like sharks or something, but once he started cutting the whale loose she calmed down. He said working with the whale was like soothing a rattled horse.”

  Bower listened intently. “Oh, there’s no doubt whales are intelligent, but the whale’s response could just as well have been one of astonished bewilderment, curiosity or disbelief as much as gratitude.

  “You see, the point is, these are our emotions, not theirs. If those divers had freed a hungry Great White Shark it would have probably attacked them, but if it hadn’t been hungry, it too could be described as grateful. The reality is, those divers freed a mostly docile aquatic mammal, one that doesn’t have Homo sapiens on the menu.”

  “Isn’t it a matter of degrees?” Elvis asked. “I mean, a cricket’s smarter than a rock. A lizard is smarter than a cricket. A dog is smarter than a lizard, and on a good day, I’m smarter than my dog.”

  Jameson laughed. “You wish.”

  “Haw haw,” Elvis cried, laughing in his southern accent.

  “In some regards, it is a matter of degrees,” Bower replied. “As there’s no doubt a doe cares for a newborn fawn, but too often we read too much into these behaviors. Chimpanzees share 98% of our DNA, but that doesn’t make them 98% human. We’re not the benchmark other species are trying to attain in terms of their intelligence and emotions. They’re quite happy being themselves.

  “There’s little in the way of common ground between us and other animals. Think about dolphins. Cute, cuddly, friendly dolphins. Everyone loves dolphins, right? They’re the good gu
ys of the ocean. And yet for all we think we know about them, we really don’t understand them at all. Dolphins will gang-rape females for days on end. Rival males will kill newborns to bring a female back in heat. As playful as they seem in a dolphin show, as intelligent as they appear, they’re not people, and we shouldn’t treat them as such. Our morals, our values simply do not apply to them.”

  “I can’t believe you’re picking on dolphins,” Elvis quipped. “Don’t they save swimmers by dragging them to shore?”

  Jameson added, “Yeah, but you never hear about the people they drag out to sea.”

  Elvis laughed.

  Bower continued, saying, “Try as we may, we can’t imagine life as a bat, relying on sonar rather than sight. We can’t imagine sensing electrical fields like a shark, or being a spider that sees four primary colors rather than three. In the same way, animals cannot imagine being human. We can teach chimps to use sign language, we can teach parrots to hold a conversation, but they’re adopting human precepts, not inheriting them as a child would.

  “Think about it. Does a dog care who’s President of the United States? Does a cat care how much you earn? Does a goldfish know if you’re married or single?

  “We surround ourselves with artificial constructs, things we think are real, and these influence our sense of culture, they carry emotional weight, and yet they’re meaningless to other animals.”

  “And you think these aliens are like animals?” Jameson asked.

  “Not terrestrial animals. But if we can’t communicate openly with any other species on our planet without reading our own emotions into their responses, what chance do we have of talking to beings from another planet? And what chance do they have of talking to us without there being some kind of misunderstanding?”

  “None,” Elvis replied grinning. “If any UFOs touch down south of the Mason-Dixon line, they’re gonna regret cashing in those frequent-flyer miles.”

  “You’ve got to see this from their perspective,” Bower added. “Saying, ‘We come in peace,’ is probably all they could say without someone, somewhere taking things the wrong way. And, even then, can you imagine the conspiracy theory nuts? Oh, they’ll be swinging from the chandeliers.”

  “Oh yeah,” Elvis said. “And I could name most of them. Ha ha.”

  Bower was excited about the conversation. The two soldiers might have had only a passing interest, but Bower was electrified to think about alien contact in detail. She made the point, “We don’t just speak with words. Some scientists estimate that words make up only about half of any conversation. Most of what we say is conveyed by our posture, our body language, our tone of voice, our eyes. More than that, most of what we say is an extension of what has been said before. Saying, I love you to someone after screaming at them for an hour in an argument doesn’t really mean anything, right?”

  “So you think these aliens are going to have a hard time understanding us?” Jameson asked.

  “We have a hard time understanding each other,” Bower replied. “Our alien friends simply won’t understand the subtleties and nuances of any one culture, let alone all of them. It doesn’t matter how intelligent they are, it will take them time to figure out our quirks and idiosyncrasies. They know nothing of our culture and idioms.

  “Someone from another world isn’t going to understand how heavily laced our speech is with references to our senses. Can you see what I mean? Can you hear what I’m saying? Has someone touched a raw nerve? Do you smell a rat? Find something distasteful? They may have none of these senses, so even our most simple sentences could be meaningless to them.

  “Here on Earth, we have creatures with completely alien senses. Stingrays detect the sensitive electrical impulses of a heart beating beneath the sand. Bats build a picture of the world around them using sonar. Butterflies taste with their feet. Chameleons move their eyes independent of each other, giving them two views at once. Imagine how confusing any of these senses would be for us and you get an idea of how confusing our perspective could be be to visitors from another planet.”

  “So,” Elvis said, “You feel these aliens will be alien in more ways than one?”

  “Absolutely, they’re aliens, right?” Bower asked rhetorically. “They’re not movie-extras in cheap plastic suits.

  “And as for feelings. Think about what feelings are. They’re a figurative extension of what we feel physically through our sense of touch. What about concepts like art, music or religion? There’s so much ground work that will have to be covered before we can even start to talk to ET about these subjects.

  “No, I think our alien visitors have said just enough: We come in peace. It’s not too little, it’s not too much. It’s just enough to let us know they’re in the neighborhood.”

  “So how do we talk to them?” Jameson asked.

  “Well, it’s just a guess on my part, but I’d say through science. Regardless of which culture you’re from, regardless of which planet you call home, two plus two equals four, hydrogen has only one proton, stuff like that. Science is universal, so it’s the logical place to start. Oh, these are exciting days.”

  “Yeah,” Elvis replied, sarcasm dripping from his words as he stared out across the dry savannah. “Real exciting.”

  An uneasy silence fell upon the cabin of the truck. Physically, the cabin still groaned and shook as the truck hit potholes and gravel flicked up to strike the underside of the vehicle, the old diesel engine rattled with a steady rhythm and the springs in the seats wheezed, but nothing more was said.

  Although the skies were clear, Bower felt as though a dark cloud had descended upon them. Was she right? Or was pride obscuring her point of view? She’d been so passionate, so confident, but since when were those tools of scientific investigation? In 1616, the pope was convinced Galileo was wrong, calling his ideas foolish and absurd. Was Bower being just as bullheaded? Was her conviction blinding her? Was she afraid of being wrong?

  Bower looked at Jameson. He was examining the map. He radioed something through to the Hummer, but she was barely aware of the words leaving his lips.

  The soldiers had deferred to her judgement, and why wouldn’t they? They were men of war, not science, but as for her, she was a medical doctor, not a scientist. She understood the principles, but she had no reason to be so confident in her position. She sighed, knowing passion had got the better of her, hoping she was right but knowing hers was an opinion, nothing more.

  Grasslands gave way to pockets of rainforest. Mud coated the track, making the drive difficult as the wheels slipped, and Bower had visions of trying to push the truck out of a ditch, but Elvis seemed to know when to drop down a gear and gun the engine so as to avoid sliding sideways into a rut.

  For a moment, Bower dared to consider she could be wrong, and not just about her academic understanding in regards to the sentience of other animals, about everything. Life seemed as incorporeal as the mist in the early morning. Everything she knew growing up in Europe, or about medicine and science, or the bitterness of life in Africa, it all seemed surreal. She had awoken from a dream. Reality had arrived from the stars, and it scared her to realize that everything she knew, every aspect of life she trusted was as frail as a house of cards. Everything that seemed so important suddenly became trivial and insignificant. Earth was a mote of dust drifting in a sunbeam.

  No one noticed when she shook her head softly, trying to clear her thoughts. Perhaps they did, but they didn’t say anything. For her, those few seconds had been terrifying. She’d lost her grounding. Bower breathed deeply, suppressing the anxiety welling up within. She had to shut down this train of thought. She clenched her fists. Her nails bit into her palms, her forearms flexed, and slowly a sense of calm returned.

  As the road dried out, Jameson and Elvis chatted idly about getting back to their base in Fort Benning, Georgia. They spoke with a sense of nostalgia, and yet Bower wondered if they were as enamored with the base when they were actually there. She doubted it. The grass was always
greener on the other side of the fence. In some ways, she envied them. They had a common bond, something they could bullshit about to unwind, leaving her feeling like a spare wheel.

  “So you think we’re going to make it, Doc?” Elvis asked after a couple of miles, coming up with his question out of nowhere. Bower wasn’t sure what he meant initially, but she could tell the question had been gnawing away at the back of his mind.

  “Out of Africa?” she asked, wondering why he would ask her.

  “No. I mean, are we going to make it through all this alien stuff?”

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” she replied with the scholarly authority only a doctor can pull of with aplomb. She had no idea, but she wasn’t going to let him in on that. It was important to maintain the illusion, if only for herself. Bower was disappointed. She’d thrown up a facade. Was it fear or pride that had governed her response? She wasn’t sure, and yet she felt she had to stay upbeat.

  Positive expectations are important, she thought, rationalizing her position. All too often in her medical career she’d seen situations where the gravity of a medical emergency or a chronic disease looked hopeless, and yet she’d learned she can always give hope. It wasn’t a case of lying, more of framing the truth in an optimistic manner.

  Looking into the eyes of a patient and telling them they had a 50/50 chance at living was heartbreaking. It had to be done, of course. But knowing that your life had no better odds than that of a coin toss was earth-shattering. Hope was a placebo. Hope could tip the balance. Hope endured when the body faltered. Bower had seen hope pull patients through against the odds. But placebos only worked if you believed in them, if you were naive to reality. For Jameson and Elvis, her words were a placebo, for her they were a lie.

  “The boys are taking bets on this being the end of the world,” Elvis continued. “Three-to-one against the aliens being peaceful. The smart money says they’ll attack.”

  “I’ll take on those odds,” Bower said in a show of bluster. “Put me down for twenty bucks on a nice, friendly neighbor. And if I lose, I doubt there will be anyone to collect.”