Orb

by Gary Tarulli

  “Changes to the spectroscopy array taking you longer than expected?” I asked. “Difficult work, huh?”

  “Why do you ask?” he said, irritated.

  Because I’m a glutton for punishment … Because I have an alter-ego that enjoys talking to arrogant assholes…Because somewhere in the infinite multiverse, I’m basking in the glow of one civilized answer….

  “No particular reason,” I said. “Just making conversation.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  I was glad to feel the welcoming warmth of the sun. Squinting in the bright light, I made out Kelly, Paul, and Diana standing beside a table, choosing items to bring on the picnic. Angie came running up to me. An obvious display of affection indicated she missed me. I reciprocated by scratching the base of her tail.

  “We were just coming to abduct you,” said Kelly, beaming. “Diana was worried you’d use some lame writing excuse in order to desert us. Said you seemed reluctant to become a member of the fold.”

  “Not to worry, Diana. But is Thompson OK with this little venture?”

  “More than OK,” Diana responded. “Thought we might be able to see the objects on the other side of the island.”

  “And what objects might that be?” I asked. I kept my face blank and looked questioningly at Paul.

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” he said. Convincingly, too.

  “You bastards!” Diana yelled at us.

  I liked teasing Diana, but there would be a penalty to pay. I proffered my shoulder and she punched it hard. I pretended it hurt more than it did to make her feel better.

  “Our expedition to the cove is getting a late start,” I said. “I suggest we jog there.”

  “Jogging is for sissies,” Diana responded, laughing—and took off at a run into the spires.

  She was damn fast. We sprinted after her but by the time we arrived at the cove she was already nude from the waist up, joyously splashing in the water. Unfazed, Paul stripped down to underwear and jumped in.

  “Two questions answered,” I remarked to Kelly.

  “Those being?”

  “Just how constrained we’d be by social conventions concerning modesty.”

  “The other?” she asked warily.

  I put a lascivious grin on my face. “—what Diana’s breasts looked like.”

  “Oh yeah?” Kelly said, taunting me while stripping down to shorts, “then you won’t mind Paul having his question answered.”

  And that’s how, without embarrassment or fuss, like a bunch of kids on a sugar rush, we managed to enter the water. Of the four of us, I incorrectly expected Paul to be the most reserved concerning the partial nudity. He was smart enough to realize that a potentially awkward moment would present itself, so maybe he prepared for it. The better possibility: People were not obligated to behave in the manner I predict.

  “Incredibly refreshing, the water,” Diana said. “I feel euphoric.”

  “Don’t ask me,” I responded, feeling the rush. “On Earth, I get that feeling every time I’m in the water.”

  I swam over to Kelly and whispered in her ear. She smiled and nodded.

  “Hey you two,” I said. “Kelly and I are going to swim around to the other side of the promontory. We’ll be back in a few.”

  Diana’s eyes crinkled as she looked from me to Kelly and back to me. She had good reason to be gratified with herself.

  “Don’t do anything we won’t be doing,” she said to us, flattening her body against Paul.

  For her, the statement was remarkably restrained.

  And so Kelly and I went off together, providing both couples time to be intimate.

  If I believed the private details of this time spent alone with Kelly were an integral part of this narrative, well, you’d be reading them right now, with scant left to your capable imagination. Instead they’ve been supplanted in importance by an evolving emotional entanglement, one that defies easy description. How significant (if at all) our involvement is to the mission is not yet clear. I have, however, become cognizant of outside influences affecting my perception of the relationship. Like Thompson’s opinion of Kelly. Like Diana’s machinations. Maybe even the ocean itself, bringing us together in its all-encompassing water.

  Kelly and I rejoined Paul and Diana and the four of us discovered a large flat area to eat dinner and enjoy each other’s company. As we conversed, and as the sun began to set, I couldn’t help but notice that Diana was distracted, repeatedly stealing furtive glances oceanward.

  “Angie’ll let us know,” I said, hoping to ease her anxiety about the objects returning.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s understandable.”

  “Nothing works,” said Paul. “She’s been beside herself all day.”

  In the declining light, I watched as Diana’s expression turned somber.

  “Have any of you thought about the hell we’ll be put through?” she asked.

  “In what sense?” Kelly responded.

  “There are twenty billion people on Earth,” Diana explained, “and almost to the last man, woman, and child they want this mission, us, to discover intelligent life, or at least life that’s a few orders of magnitude more complex than phytoplankton. OK, OK, so we come back empty-handed, maybe they can accept that. But to come this far, to see those extraordinary objects and offer no explanation as to what they are … well, knowing how I feel, I can’t see how the world is going to let us live down their crushing disappointment. We’d have been better off finding absolutely nothing….”

  The last words stuck in Diana’s throat as she fought back her emotions. She leaned into Paul for comfort. On the other side of her, Kelly, commiserating, patted her arm.

  “Oh, I know,” Diana said, dabbing her eyes, “that last part isn’t true.”

  But much of what she said was true and the truth of it, coupled with the depressing effect it had on her, aroused my sympathy. I was ill-positioned to give her a hug. She was going to settle for second best: Logic. Or my unique version of it anyway.

  “Maybe this won’t make you feel any better,” I began, “and I apologize profusely if it makes you feel any worse, but twenty billion people, myself among them, don’t have a damn clue what ‘intelligent life’ means. It’s ludicrous, and if the arbitrary criteria ‘self-awareness’ is applied, it’s even more ludicrous! Ha-ha … ah ha, ah ha ha ha!”

  I intentionally ended my speech by affecting the laugh and demeanor of a madman. I was going into full attack mode, and it was working: I had Diana’s attention, and Kelly’s and Paul’s, too, for that matter.

  “Hmmm…” murmured Diana, “is this tirade emanating from the antisocial Kyle, the writer Kyle or the just plain crazy Kyle?”

  “They’re all in there somewhere,” Kelly volunteered.

  “Wisdom is often misconstrued as madness,” Paul said. “Let’s hear him out and see if we can discern the difference.”

  “Perhaps you shall judge me mad,” I responded, “for my madness rests on this: Our ability to evaluate intelligence is highly suspect. The very definition of the word is fatally flawed.”

  “What makes you believe so?” asked Diana, a bemused look slowly supplanting the somber expression on her face.

  “Because we humans have hubristically assigned the criteria for being intelligent to perfectly fit ourselves. How convenient! Should we not obtain at least one impartial point of view? Is it not true, Doctor Kelly, that it is wise for the patient to seek a second opinion?”

  “And not to self-diagnose,” Kelly added.

  “Precisely, and to further my point: Would you not agree that the artist is a biased critic of his own work? If you say otherwise, I shall henceforth pronounce myself a genius, the world’s preeminent author, and who’s to disagree?”

  “Thompson would,” Diana pronounced, feeling better.

  “And exactly where,” asked Paul, “do you expect these unbiased opinions of our intelligence to
come from?”

  “Ah, there’s the rub,” I responded. “They may never come, and if they do, will we be able to recognize them for what they are? And once recognized will we be humble enough to listen and accept—humility not exactly being our strong suit as a species? Shall I venture a guess what that second opinion would be when our world and all the life on it groans with overpopulation, pestilence, and pollution—all caused by the most intelligent species, kings reigning over all. Ha! We are self-anointed; unduly coronated!”

  “Weren’t you trying to cheer Diana up?” Kelly said.

  “Oh, sorry….”

  “Oh, no, please continue,” Diana entreated. “I like not knowing what a person is going to say. Reminds me of myself.”

  “And since you’ve yet to call me mad, I shall venture on: The concept of self-awareness, often applied as a ‘litmus test’ of intelligence. Here at least we don’t get into so much self-inflicted trouble. Instead, we liberally parcel out suffering to every other living thing on ‘our’ planet. By extolling, then abusing, our sense of self-awareness we’ve conveniently placed ourselves above all life on Earth; it’s become either ‘us’ or ‘them.’”

  “But we’ve identified more than a dozen species that have at least some measure of self-consciousness,” Diana said.

  “And how long did it take us humans to reach this stunning conclusion? And what good did it do the species we’ve bestowed the honor? Or is it an honor? I’m not so sure … wait, let’s pose the question to another species, perhaps not as self-aware, but presently well-disposed to volunteer a second opinion.”

  And in saying so, I reached for Angie, placed her on my lap and began petting her. Her tail vibrated, her eyes sparkled, she licked my hand and gazed at me happily. As she exuded contentment, I spoke to her, sarcasm dripping into my voice.

  “My poor little pooch, if only you could be as blissfully self-aware as us humans. If only you knew what you were missing—”

  Angie rolled onto her back, expecting, and getting, her soft underbelly stroked.

  “What is that you’re saying, my little dog? You don’t understand why examining our belly button and then realizing it really is our belly button is such a big deal? You say you couldn’t possibly be more joyous than at this moment? That you couldn’t possibly give me one milligram more of affection?

  “See?” I said. “We have our answer. Still doubtful? OK, then.” I urged Angie off my lap. “Good girl, find Kelly! Find Kelly! Show her exactly what you mean.”

  Angie, nuzzling her way onto Kelly’s lap, received a tight appreciative hug.

  “She’s pretty convincing,” Kelly said.

  “She does a lot of my talking. Speaking for myself, there are times I consider self-awareness to be an affliction I wouldn’t wish on a dog. Oh, I don’t mean the casual ‘look in the mirror and realize the reflection is me’ kind, but the deeper kind of introspection, the gut-wrenching kind, where you stare at—and through—the reflection of your self in the mirror until you experience a tidal wave of shock, amazement, fear, and wonder that you exist. You exist, standing there naked in your clothing, part of, yet apart from everything that is and, in irony of ironies, are offered no solace, no hope of ever understanding why. And as the tide rolls out and only the memory of this experience remains, not the feeling itself, a lifetime of questions are found strewn like pebbles on the shore: Does life have any meaning? Why do I feel so alone? Why do I deliberately—”

  Noticing a strident voice, I stopped and connected that voice to me. Three people were intently staring at me. Giving Diana a hug would have been a whole lot easier.

  “What do I see in your faces? I’m crazy?”

  “You’re not crazy, Kyle,” Kelly told me in a low voice.

  “Don’t be too quick to judge,” asserted Diana. “You’re crazy, but not much more than any of us.”

  “Diana, the main point I’m trying to make, perhaps scant comfort, is the world awaits the discovery of intelligent life, but with a fatally flawed concept of what they’re hoping for. We may stumble on a life-form which is unaware of the boundary between where you stop and I start; that in their belief all things are interconnected has no concept of a self, yet may be more aware than we’ll ever be.”

  “Would they be less lonely Kyle?” Kelly asked softly.

  The words stopped me cold in my tracks; they were deliberately intended to evoke a personal reflection on my part, almost challenging me to do so. My voice wavered as I grappled with an appropriate response.

  “I … I don’t know. Do we always understand the depth and breadth of our own emotions, let alone guessing those of a completely different form of life? Birds see more colors. Angie hears sounds we do not. Similarly, another life-form, if we shall be so favored to interact with one, may exhibit emotions with greater or lesser intensity than we humans; or different emotions entirely—a realm completely beyond our capacity to fathom.”

  The twisted little smile on Kelly’s face, the one I hated to see, the one I’ve placed there before, expressed the inadequacy of my words. Paul also grasped my failure to personalize my response.

  “You may be justified,” he said, looking at me steadily, “in feeling existential loneliness more intensely than others; just as you have a right to continue searching for—and I believe you are driven to—a more fulfilling answer to Kelly’s question. And I’ll add this: You should not be surprised, as often happens in science, that the attempt to find an answer to one question facilitates the answer to another.”

  “I’m sorry,” Diana broke in, “but shouldn’t we be heading back?”

  We had failed to notice the time slip away. One by one, the highest tips of the spires, shining like beacons in the fast fading remnants of sunlight, were being extinguished by the setting of the sun.

  “Am I correct in assuming,” Kelly confirmed with each of us, “none of us had the presence of mind to bring a flashlight?”

  “Afraid so,” I said. “And, therefore, we must be prepared to meet one of two dire fates. The lesser, to be eternally lost in the dreaded darkness of the spire maze; the greater, to be ridiculed by Thompson for losing our way.”

  “I must say, Kyle,” Diana commented, quickly gathering up scattered articles of clothing and eating utensils. “You’re an amusing member of our fold.”

  “Not the black sheep of an errant flock?” I said.

  We found it necessary to make our way back slowly, intent on not losing our way in the enveloping darkness. The dusky quality of waning light; the spires’ imposing and twisting shapes rising up on all sides to wall us in; the muffled sound of our soles carefully seeking a path on the unforgiving stones—all these, as if portents, exhorted us to lower our voices to a reverent whisper. I deliberately hung back from the group until I found myself totally isolated in the quietude of a cavernous and deserted gothic cathedral. Looking up, I stared at the first pinpoints of stars. Cold, impassive company they were, randomly blinking a meaningless message to no one.

  A faint plea came to me out of the darkness: Kelly, saving me from myself.

  “Kyle? Where are you?”

  “Just here,” I called to her.

  “Again.”

  “I’ll come to you.”

  In the gloom I made out the reflective orange of Angie’s eyes. I followed the glow to Kelly.

  “We want you with us,” she said, clutching my hand.

  “I want you.”

  Cupping my hand, I caressed Kelly’s face in the darkness, feeling a wetness there. With one finger, I wiped the wetness away, then kissed her cheek, tasting the slight saltiness. Searchingly, I moved each kiss closer to her waiting mouth, supple and soft, waiting to be discovered. Not long ago, I thought, near this same spot, I had been a greater fool.

  She pushed away. “Come to me later?”

  There was no need to ask.

  Rejoining Paul and Diana, it occurred to me (and it should have sooner) to let Angie lead the way. We were closing in on Red Square w
hen Paul’s communicator chimed: Thompson.

  “Are you close? There’s something here for you to see.”

  “Ten minutes away,” said Paul. “Maybe more; we have no lights.”

  “Figures. I’ll set a lantern for you at the edge of the spires so Diana doesn’t go head first into a ravine.

  A second before Diana could grab the communicator from Paul, Thompson deliberately broke the connection.

  Leaving a light out for us had been a wise move on Thompson’s part: Despite the crevices veining its surface, Diana went bolting across Red Square, forcing us to keep pace.

  “Tell me everything,” she demanded of Thompson.

  “Just after dark they appeared,” Thompson offered. “Other than what you’re seeing, there’s not much else to tell.”

  We were perched on a huge stone block. Above us, a silver speckled sky. In front of us, an endless expanse of dark ocean. Dancing on that ocean, twelve mysterious colored lights.

  “Tell me,” Diana challenged, “these aren’t the same objects we observed earlier today.”

  There was commonality in the two sightings: In number, in approximate distance from shore, in Angie’s reaction. Only this time she was vocalizing with a few abbreviated barks. A signal of recognition, no more.

  The objects were emitting a pleasant soft glow, with shades of blue similar to those of the planet’s setting sun predominating. Twelve in number, they appeared to be randomly and abruptly altering their speed and bearing. All but two presented themselves as full spheres. With the aid of binoculars (cleverly enhanced by Doctor Melhaus) we were able to determine that most had lifted what appeared to be their entire mass out of the water!

  None of the comparisons made between the objects observed at night and those observed during the day helped in forming an opinion (or should I say consensus, for we all had opinions) that went to the heart of defining their very nature.

  “Think of it this way,” said Thompson, primarily for Diana’s benefit. “Starting with what Kyle saw, the visitations are becoming more regular, closer, and of longer duration.”