by Brandon Hale
As everyone moved to the blanket, Alice said, “There’s one thing I don’t understand about these guys.”
“One thing,” Jerry said. “There’s just one thing you don’t understand, huh.”
“Hush,” Alice said. “They can’t talk to us. Fine. They’re telepathic. I get that part. They probably don’t even have voice boxes.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Arthur said, “but you’re probably right.”
“Okay,” Alice said. “I get that. But they’re a civilization so incredibly advanced that they can travel thousands of light years. They have the ability to build cities on a new world for humanity. But they can’t write? They can’t just put up a big screen and type out what they want to say?”
“It’s not about being advanced,” Arthur said. “The trouble isn’t that language is too complex. That view is simply too linear. The problem is that language--in and of itself--is a completely foreign concept to them.”
“He watches the news for three days straight,” Lauren said, “and he’s suddenly an expert.”
“It’s like the Rosetta Stone,” Arthur continued, ignoring Lauren’s remark. “Do you know what that is?”
“Yeah,” Alice said. “It’s that tablet they found with the three separate languages on it. It allowed us to understand Egyptian hieroglyphs or something.”
“Very good,” Arthur said.
“This is what it must be like to be in his Western Civ class,” Jerry said.
Alice just smiled. “So they have no point of reference,” she said turning back to Arthur.
“That’s what I think,” Arthur said. “They’ve been telepathic for so long, they’ve never needed language, written or spoken. We speak languages. We write languages. Even with that, we had no way to understand the hieroglyphs because we had no reference point, until we found the Rosetta stone. Well, these aliens have it about a million times worse. Every one of them apparently knows what every other one is thinking, every second of every day. Something as simple as our need to use a stop sign and signal lights while driving is probably a mystery to them. I don‘t think they‘ve ever encountered intelligence like ours.”
“That’s a little arrogant,” Lauren said.
“No,” Arthur said. “I didn’t say they’ve never encountered intelligence as high as ours. Obviously, that’s not true. I think they’ve never seen an intelligent race develop communication like we have. You have to understand, we take for granted that our evolution is universal. It’s obviously not.
“Every science fiction movie, every book, every theory involving contact with extra-terrestrials assumes communicating with them is just a matter of learning each other’s’ languages. It doesn’t even occur to us that language itself is the communication barrier. We can’t even comprehend the idea that the development of language might be a uniquely human invention. So we end up assuming any advanced being will be able to communicate with us by learning our language. The problem is, they have to learn what language is. That makes things significantly more difficult.”
“But if they’ve been watching us throughout our development,” Alice said.
“Doesn’t really matter,” Arthur said. “Everything communicates, in some form. We’re the only species on this entire planet that uses language to do so. Maybe we’re the only creatures in the galaxy that uses language to communicate. Maybe before us, they’d only seen animals communicate by instinct or by telepathy. And we use neither.”
“Like the kid said,” Alice said. “We’re not like dogs and tigers and stuff, but we’re not like God.”
“That was the meaning I got from it,” Arthur said.
“Interesting,” Lauren said. “Really. You’re not a bad teacher, Art.”
“I know a few students,” Arthur said, looking at Alice with a smile, “that seem to appreciate my methods.”
“That was grotesquely inappropriate,” Lauren said. “Technically, we’re still married.”
“Sorry,” Arthur said.
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Lauren laughed. “My God, we’re weird.”
The door beneath the ship opened.
Without hesitation, Lauren jumped to her feet and ran to the ship as the small piece lowered itself to the ground.
The alien stood on the platform, looking at the town.
“At first,” Lauren said, looking at its shoulder, “I thought you people were just very curious about the environment here. Now I think it’s that you’re avoiding eye contact.”
The creature just blinked, looking at the street behind her.
“I know you’re about to be overwhelmed with requests like this,” she said, “so let me be among the first.” She closed her eyes. “Please take my diabetes away.”
When she opened her eyes, the creature was gone. The door was again closed.
“What did it do?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Jerry said. “It just returned to its ship.”
“Do you feel different?” Alice asked.
“No,” Lauren said. “But I’m not sure I would.”
“That was kind of anticlimactic,” Jerry said.
“Yeah,” Lauren said. “I guess there’s only one way to really know. Let’s go home.”
On the way back to the house, Arthur said, “Incidentally, I think the language barrier is why they were able to communicate through the children.”
“Because they aren’t restrained by the limits of language,” Jerry said. “There are tons of words they don’t know, so they process information differently.”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “I also think the breakthrough with the kids means we’ll be communicating directly with the aliens very soon.”
“The children are their Rosetta Stone,” Alice said.
“I think so,” Arthur said.
Goodbye to Disease
As soon as they stepped inside the house, Lauren walked through the living room and went directly to her bedroom. She lay on the bed and pulled up her shirt, staring at the tube connected to her abdomen. “It’s okay to come in here,” she said to the others as she took off her glasses and placed them on the bedside table.
They all stepped inside the bedroom, but didn’t speak.
“Well, here goes,” Lauren said. She reached down and disconnected the pump from her body. She put the small device on her bedside table and stood up. “Let’s go have some soda.”
The rest of the day belonged to Lauren‘s blood sugar. She would drink a soda, then check her blood sugar. She ate snack cakes, then checked her blood sugar. She drank coffee with sugar, following it with blood sugar checks. Every check showed small spikes in her glucose levels, but they never left the “normal” range.
About an hour after the sun set that night, Lauren sat at the kitchen table, looking at the number on her tester. Alice, Arthur, and Jerry sat in the other three chairs around the table.
“Well,” Arthur said. “What’s it say?”
“One-ten,” Lauren said.
“It maintained itself all day,” Arthur said.
She looked at Arthur, tears in her eyes. “I don’t think I have diabetes any more.”
“Holy shit, Laurie,” Arthur said.
“Yeah,” Lauren whispered, barely able to speak.
Everyone remained silent for several minutes. Finally, Lauren said, “All my life, my prayers have been selfless. I would pray for other people to be happy. I would pray for hungry people to get food, or for cold people to get heat, or homeless people to find shelter. If I wasn’t praying for other people, I was giving thanks. And when I did pray for anything personally, it would be vague things like asking for the strength to be a good minister. Things like that.”
She looked down at her stomach, instinctively rubbing her fingers over the scar tissue that had formed from a lifetime of tubes and needles. “Diabetes was always my weakness when it came to prayer. In my weaker moments, I would let go of the selflessness and just pray for a cure. I rationalized it by saying
it would free me up to be a better person, but that was bullshit. I was praying for a cure because I hated this disease. I hated it, Art. I hated everything about it.
“But mostly I hated the future it held.”
A look of disgust washed over her face. “Dialysis. Blindness. Amputation. I guess I really hated the fear of the future. It sucks always being afraid of tomorrow. I felt cheated because other people got to look forward to the future, while I could only dread it.”
“Understandable,” Arthur said.
“And now it’s gone,” Lauren said. She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, the fear is gone. The dread is gone.”
“Well,” Jerry said, “there’s still the problem with the asteroid that’s about to destroy all life on Earth.”
Lauren laughed. “You know,” she said, “for some reason, even that doesn’t seem as scary to me now.”
“Your prayers were answered,” Alice said.
“Yeah,” Lauren said. “And that’s the only disturbing part of this entire thing. Who cured me? God or aliens?”
“You’re afraid that both answers to that question are correct,” Jerry said.
Lauren just nodded. “I don’t know whether to give thanks in prayer or just go outside and yell it at the ship in the road.”
“They don’t know what thanks means,” Alice said with a smile.
“Oh, yeah,” Lauren said.
“You know,” Arthur said, “I find that to be the most inspiring thing about them.”
“The fact that they don’t understand what it means to say thank you?” Alice asked.
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “To me, the fact that they can’t comprehend gratitude suggests that they truly are superior beings.”
“As usual,” Alice said, “you’ve lost me.”
“He does that on purpose, you know,” Lauren said with a smile. “He randomly throws out big fancy statements just to get us curious enough to ask for more information. It feeds his ego.”
“I don’t do that,” Arthur said.
“You really do,” Alice said.
“Well,” Arthur replied, “I don’t do it intentionally.”
“Relax,” Alice said. “I find it charming.”
“Okay,” Jerry said, “I’ll feed the ego. How does that make them superior beings?”
“Because,” Arthur said, “it means they exist in a world where doing things like healing people and saving planets from destruction is the natural state. We show gratitude when someone does something nice. Even the small stuff, like opening a door for you at the grocery store, comes with an expectation of appreciation. In short, we expect rewards for our good deeds.
“Apparently, they don’t expect anything. What’s more, they don’t even understand the desire to expect something for your good deeds. To them, the deeds aren’t even good. They’re just what have to be done. I think that’s why they’re disturbed by the fact that we developed guns instead of space travel. The fact that war seems to be our natural state is probably more foreign to them than our language.”
“Unless they’re just full of shit, and setting us up for some great betrayal,” Jerry said.
“There’s no logic in that,” Arthur said.
“From our perspective,” Jerry said. “Just like you said, they think differently. What if they need human organs to feed their pet snarkboggles, and they understand human behavior so well that they understand this is the easiest way to get us to walk into those giant food processors sitting on every street corner?”
“Snarkboggles?” Lauren said.
“Yeah,” Jerry said. “I saw them on the ship during my abduction. They’re purple and look similar to unicorns, except they have mouths like alligators and they only eat human organs. It’s all coming back to me now.”
“Shush,” Alice said. “This is serious. Stop being you.”
“I see his point,” Arthur conceded. “We really don’t know anything about them. However, given the information we have, I don’t see any alternative beyond going with what we see as the most logical path. And that’s to believe them. They cured Lauren’s diabetes, for Christ’s sake.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem, there Spock,” Jerry said.
“Not always,” Arthur said. “But contrary to what you’ve seen in the movies, things usually are what they seem.”
“Fair point,” Jerry said. “You seem like a pretentious prick.”
Alice cackled.
Arthur tried to glare at her, but couldn’t stop the smile from creeping onto his face. “You win this time, Gerald.”
“I’m just looking forward to tomorrow,” Jerry said.
“What’s tomorrow?” Alice asked.
“Tomorrow,” Jerry said, “we’re going to see the world go completely ape shit crazy. We just found out these bastards can cure diseases. We’re about to witness hysteria that reaches apocalyptic proportions. I think we might want to just stay indoors tomorrow.”
“Can we talk about this crap later?” Lauren said. “Right now, I really just feel like basking.”
Arthur smiled. “You bet,” he said. “On a side note, where are your glasses.”
“Haven’t needed them all day,” Lauren said as she took a drink of her coffee and leaned back in her chair.
And basked.
Lauren’s alarm clock was the sunlight streaming into her bedroom window. Not being pulled from a dream because of the incessant beeping of her alarm clock was a strange feeling at first. She didn’t particularly like waking up without knowing the time. A lifetime of rigid discipline couldn’t be washed away overnight, even by curing her disease.
She looked at her clock.
9:10 am.
She sat up and checked her blood sugar. When she saw the normal reading, she smiled, shaking her head. It was still almost beyond her ability to accept. She no longer had diabetes.
She got up and slipped on her pajamas. Her relationship with the others had grown, but not quite enough for her to prance around the house in a t-shirt and panties.
“Good morning,” Alice said as Lauren walked into the living room. “How’s our former diabetic today?”
“Still in shock,” Lauren said. “So was Jerry right?”
“Yes,” Jerry said. He was sitting on the couch beside Alice, drinking coffee. “About what?”
“About the world going ape shit,” Lauren said with a yawn. “And is there more coffee?”
“Art’s in the kitchen making a new pot,” Jerry said. “And yeah, I was kind of right. There was a world-wide freak-out, but the aliens were able to handle it.”
“Really?” Lauren said, sitting in the recliner.
“Yeah,” Alice said. “I think it’s because there were so many of them. They’ve been helping people all night and all morning.”
“Look for yourself,” Jerry said as he turned up the volume on the television.
The reporter stood in the empty emergency room waiting area, looking into the camera and holding a microphone. “On my way here, Dan,” he was saying to the anchorman back at the studio, “I expected to see absolute chaos. That wasn’t the case, at least in this particular hospital. You’ll notice this room is empty. That’s because hospitals are no longer the best place for treatment. Interestingly, as soon as the news broke about the aliens’ ability, the staff here very quickly put together a plan. They pulled every ambulance, and made a list of patients, ranking their needs in order of urgency.
“The first patients they moved were the ones that were literally on death’s door. They took all of these patients, via ambulance, to the spacecraft parked around the area.”
The camera panned back to reveal a woman standing beside the reporter. She was wearing medical scrubs.
“This is Carrie Sanders,” the reporter said. “She’s a nurse here at the hospital.” He turned to the woman. “When you took the first patients to the ships, what happened?”
“When we saw it working,” the woman said, “we all just stared at
each other in shock. They were getting better instantly.”
The reporter turned to the camera. “They immediately drove back to the hospital and picked up a new group of patients. They’ve been doing that since about eleven o’clock last night. Most hospitals across the country have implemented similar systems, and the process is moving at break-neck speeds. They‘re doing this faster than anyone thought possible. It‘s taking seconds to cure hundreds. Maybe thousands.”
Back in the studio, the anchorman asked, “Are there any known limitations to what they can do?”
“So far,” the reporter answered, “we’ve not had any reports of failure. People have gone to have brain tumors removed, cancer cured, along with pretty much every other disease. The amazing thing is the fact that the aliens don’t even have to be present. Apparently, they’re doing it from the ships. People are simply walking up to the ships and are cured by nothing more than standing near them.” He pointed to the room behind him. “Twenty-four hours ago, this emergency room was packed with patients. The same would have been true today, were it not for the discovery that these aliens can cure us.”
“Fascinating,” the anchor said.
“It‘s more than just fascinating, Dan,” the reporter said. “We’re looking at nothing less than the complete and total annihilation of human disease.”
“What’s it like on our street?” Lauren asked.
“Crowded,” Arthur said as he handed her a cup of coffee, “but not the chaos Jerry predicted.”
“Yeah,” Jerry said. “I didn’t think about one important detail.”
“The amount of ships,” Lauren said. “I thought of that last night before I went to sleep.”
“Right,” Arthur said. “There are ships everywhere, so nobody has to travel far, and it only takes them seconds to be cured. I expect this entire event will be done by the end of the day. It‘s probably close to over already. I think this will end the debate about their intentions.”
