I glared at him, expecting an explanation, but he said nothing. Then I realized, the fear we had shared I no longer felt, because it was never mine to begin with. I was left with a weak sense that Earth was in danger, but it was purely speculative in my own mind alone, like the faded memory of a nightmare.
“I like you, Markus, a lot, and it is causing me to make mistakes. Our meeting is not an accident. There’s a reason why I’m here, and the reason is . . . unpleasant.”
“But you will tell us.”
“Yes. But there is time. I am not joking when I say I need to get to know you better. The messenger of bad news is more likely to be shot the sooner he says it, you see? Please, for my safety and purpose, wait.”
I heard Francis and Samantha talking. Francis knocked, and Ralph nonchalantly told them to come in. Respecting Ralph’s position, I said nothing, and they didn’t ask. The only option was to change the subject.
“What are your people like?” Samantha asked.
He responded like a child reciting a book report for his fifth-grade class. “My people are peaceful and scientific. Humor and art are a great source of recreation for us. We are silicon-based, just as you are carbon-based. This makes us very fragile.”
To have the possibility of silicon-based life verified so casually was thrilling. Carbon is a great building block for life because it can form long, stable molecules. Silicon can do the same, but the result is much weaker.
“You evolved your physical capabilities long before developing your minds, and for us, it was the opposite. We were talking about geometry long before we could draw a circle on something more permanent than a sandy beach. Our species had been passive participants in the world for so long, we developed hardcore religious prejudices against manipulating common objects. Our early experimental scientists were ostracized by the ancient church . . .”
“That part we can relate to,” I said.
“Oh, and violence, we didn’t even consider violence until much later in our development, whereas you started violent and are slowly moving away from it. Your early humans would tend to get violent as a first response to frustration, whereas in my people, frustration causes us to slow down and think. Violence is typically the last thing we consider.”
“How old are you?”
“I thought humans considered that a rude question.”
Francis balked, “It is on the list of questions we can ask . . .”
“I’m just fucking with you. Francis, really, you are much too serious. I’d really love to relax here, and it would help if you could do the same. You’ve all said funny things, but none of you have tried to make a single joke since I got here.”
“Please stop joking around and take this more seriously,” Francis said.
“Francis, what do you want from me?”
“What do I want from you? You’re the one who came here.”
“Clearly, and now that I’m here, what do you want?”
“I want you to . . . Take this meeting more seriously.”
“First and foremost, I want to be friendly, and friendly beings joke around with one another. I hope that isn’t mysterious. You do have friends, right, Francis?” Ralph asked, and waited a quarter-minute until Francis nodded sternly. “Good. That is good to know. I want to know I can trust you. I want friends, and friends joke around. Blah, blah, blah. I’m an alien, but I don’t want to feel like an alien right now. Don’t you understand?”
I tried to steer away from the social awkwardness. I was browsing the list of questions we couldn’t ask.
“Why can’t we ask you what your people are called?”
“Well, that would actually be rather rude, now, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Really? Well, look. If I told you I was a . . . Klingon, I’d risk being referred to as ‘the Klingon.’ I am a person, and I’m trying to make friends here. When there is a black person in the room, you don’t refer to him as ‘the black,’ do you?”
“Well, no, we wouldn’t, but this is different,” Samantha said, looking at me.
“No. It is not different. I’m trying to fit in and feel very self-conscious being the only alien on Earth. I’ve spent a decade on your moon, alone. I need to feel a part of your group here. Is this hard to understand? It doesn’t help to have to explain this. It’s like I’m surrounded by children with no social sense.”
It was strange to hear any being talk this way.
“So then, how old are you?”
“In human developmental terms, I’m a teenager, but I’ll be 19,000 years old soon.”
Evidently, one human year was equal to 1,000 years, developmentally.
“Really? How long can your people live?”
“We don’t really know. It seems there is no limit.”
“How is that even possible?” Samantha asked.
I answered, “It isn’t as alien as you’re thinking. There’s a creosote bush in the Mojave Desert, and it is over 11,000 years old. And there’s a certain jellyfish, I forget the name, but theoretically, it could live forever. Biologists call this ‘biological immortality.’”
“Thank you, Markus. The small jellyfish you speak of is a hydrozoa called ‘Turritopsis nutricula,’” Ralph said, astonishing us with his zoological knowledge. “At one point in time, we were just like you. We had males and females, and we’d have lots of sex all the time. But we’ve evolved far past primitive intercourse.”
With a smile, Samantha said, “But you said you wanted to mate with the president.”
“Oh, I do. I definitely do. But mating for me . . . isn’t really intercourse. I mean, it isn’t penis and vagina. Pardon my bestiality, but I could take any of the president’s cells and use them to mate with her. I would subsume her DNA, and it would combine with my own, and the net result would be a genetic improvement. I’m sure of it.”
“Wow,” Samantha said. “So have you mated with anyone since you’ve been here?”
“What? How could I?”
“Well, if all you need are some cells, for all we know, you’ve already mated with everyone in the room. Our hair cells and skin cells are all over these couches, right? And the president, her cells must be scattered all over the Oval Office. You could be mating with her right now.”
“Well, I could have done that, but I really want to ask first.”
“Why bother to ask?”
“Because . . . That would be rape.”
Samantha was drinking water and spilled some on her shirt.
“OK, Romeo,” she said, “if your people don’t have sex like humans, how do you reproduce?”
“Once I have mated enough, I will spontaneously produce another being with its own genetic makeup. I could even produce carbon-based beings,” he said, turning to me. “In fact, I can mate with any living creature, and I do mean ‘any.’ In rare cases, my offspring can even inherit my knowledge. Exactly how and why this happens is something even my people don’t fully understand.”
“How many beings have you . . . produced?”
“Two thousand, three hundred, and ten.”
To hear him talk about sex affected our libidos to the point of discomfort. More than once during these moments, Samantha and I stared in each other’s brown eyes, and . . . I’m glad I was sitting down. Even Francis snuck sultry glances at me.
“Your smile is very pretty,” Ralph said, facing Samantha.
I nodded as if I was fact-checking Ralph’s compliment.
“Well, thank you, Ralph. That’s very kind,” she said.
“But do you know why?” Ralph asked. “Do you know why you smile? There’s a special theory which explains it.”
“Special?” I asked.
“As opposed to the more general theory, but we can’t talk about that.”
“Really?” I said with disbelief, expecting another joke.
“Allow me to demonstrate,” he said as he stood up and approached the draped windows of the Oval Office. “Please, Mar
kus, come here, near me.”
I joined him near the closed drapes.
“Now, put your face up close to the drapes.”
I moved in until my nose touched the fabric.
“Good. Now, tilt your head up a little . . . a little more . . . stop. Good. Stay still. Don’t turn away.”
Ralph grabbed for the drapes, pulled them back, and slowly fell over. The sun burst its rays in the room through the tall windows and covered my face, which reacted naturally to the bright heat.
“Now, what are you doing?” Ralph asked triumphantly, lying on the ground.
“Wincing,” I said, my face clenched in the sunlight.
“Silly Markus,” Ralph said. “Your cheek muscles are flexed, your dimples are showing, and your mouth is in the shape of a semicircle. You’re smiling.”
“But,” Francis said, “what does that prove?”
“Well, it proves nothing to you, but it confirms the theory once more for me.”
“What’s the theory?” Francis asked. “And close the drapes.”
Ralph picked himself up and tried unsuccessfully to close the drapes. I helped.
“Thank you, Markus,” Ralph said. “Simply put, the theory is that smiling is a psychological metaphor for sun gazing.”
“What?” Samantha said, smiling.
“What you call ‘smiling’ is basically the same way your face reacts when it looks directly at the sun. When you smile at someone, it is your mind’s way of saying that this person reminds you of the sun. They make you feel warm.”
“Oh,” I said, as Samantha and Francis looked at me for explanation. “What you’ve found is that the way a face reacts to the sun is similar to how the face reacts when they are looking at someone they like, or something amusing. I mean, smiling.”
“Exactly, Markus. That’s what smiling is. And this isn’t just on Earth, you see, because most beings have faces, and most live on a planet orbiting a star. Of course, there are some interesting exceptions, and not everyone agrees on what counts as a face, but you get the idea.”
This theory of smiling was a small taste of Ralph’s knowledge about psychology throughout the universe. Though intrigued, I focused the conversation on the subject that mattered to me the most.
I had agonized over the question for a year.
“How does the lunar advertisement work?”
“How did you get it to suddenly appear all at once?” Francis added.
“The lunar advertisement, as you call it, is composed of the most efficient solar panels known. They were all in place for a month, soaking up the sun’s energy, before I turned them on. Before activation, they are almost completely transparent, which is why you didn’t see them beforehand.”
He added that he avoided detection from the satellites orbiting the moon by hacking them. We begged him to elaborate, but he would not.
“I imagine you are here to help us, to tell us ways to improve our world,” Francis said. “Am I correct?” To Francis’s ire, Ralph laughed. Ralph laughed long and loud, so loud I felt embarrassed for Francis and annoyed with Ralph.
He had tried hard to connect with us, to bridge the gap between his advanced civilization and ours, but here he faltered, and we could all feel the width between us.
“You want advice to improve your world? Really? Is it that mysterious? Okay, listen closely: take zero chances with your own environment because it’s your only one for a long fucking time. Do you have any idea how many alien species we’ve found who made their home planet uninhabitable? Do you?”
His piercing voice seemed to bypass my ears and imprint itself directly on my mind. He was glowing red. I had to say something.
“Thousands,” I guessed.
“That’s right, Markus, thousands. Thousands of cultures gone, thousands of histories obliterated, and only a single-digit percentage escaped to find new planets. The others killed themselves . . . And all we could do was come along and write books about how pathetic they were.”
I wished everyone could hear him.
“We have a special word for this,” Ralph said in normal volume. “The best translation I can think of is ‘suigenocide.’ It’s the saddest word in our language. Entire species destroyed because they could not think past their own little time period. They didn’t care about future generations, they only cared about themselves, and somehow, no one else mattered. Our poets will write a song about them, but no one knows all the songs.”
The word ‘suigenocide’ rang in my ears.
It was natural for Francis to ask how to improve our society, and I certainly would’ve if he hadn’t. In any case, Ralph’s lecture was stifling. We needed a different subject, and Samantha came to the rescue.
“Why the soup can?” she asked, pointing outside. “It seems so ridiculous.”
“My dear, I did it precisely because it was ridiculous,” he said as he slapped her knee. “I couldn’t risk being perceived as a god. Many of your people are still tribal. It was the best way to introduce myself without causing global panic.”
“You’re saying you haven’t caused a global panic?” Francis said. “What about the lunar advertisement?”
“I know well the trouble I’ve caused,” Ralph said, trembling a little. “You must understand, there is a whole science behind visiting an alien species for the first time, and I’d be embarrassed if you knew how much thought I’d put into this. Considering all your xenophobic sci-fi movies, you know I couldn’t just show up. A trigger-happy soldier might shoot an alien exiting a shiny flying saucer, but no soldier will shoot someone who pops out of a giant can of soup, especially if they are waving an American flag. It is simply too ridiculous.”
“I thought you were making some Warhol reference,” Samantha said after a pause.
“Andy Warhol! Oh my God. All this stress. I almost forgot,” Ralph said as his arms fumbled for his chest pocket. “Markus, help me. I have something amazing in here.”
I went over, opened his pocket, and peered inside.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Just put your hand in deep and search the bottom. It’s in there.”
“What am I looking for?”
“The moon museum,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s the moon museum. I found it on the moon.”
“What?”
When I found the tiny object and took it out, I had no clue what I was looking at.
The so-called ‘moon museum’ is a tiny, ceramic wafer left on the moon during the Apollo 12 mission in 1969. It has six miniaturized drawings from six artists, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Why NASA agreed to take it and leave it on the moon is another story altogether.
After I pulled it out and gave it to Samantha, Ralph explained all of this.
“I was wandering on the moon, wondering how to contrive a way to come down and meet you, when I found the moon museum tucked inside the leftover equipment from your astronauts. I had no idea what it was, of course, but discovered it was the moon museum with a little Internet searching. It was the inspiration for . . . well, everything.”
“So it is a Warhol reference,” Samantha said to double-check.
“Yes. Warhol is someone my people would relate to. But, as Warholian as it is, the giant soup can is just as much Claes Oldenburg.”
Andy Warhol, of course, was famous for creating art involving Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola products. And Claes Oldenburg is known for making gigantic sculptures of everyday objects. The giant can of Campbell’s was, indeed, a tribute to both artists, but that’s not all it was.
“Then what was the point of the lunar advertisement?”
“The lunar advertisement deflected any threat the cylinder may have otherwise created,” Ralph said. “Your soldiers outside, what are they thinking? What do you think your Secret Service is thinking? And the people who saw all this on TV?”
“It’s a fiasco. They think it’s a public relations stunt from Campbell’s gone to he
ll, just like they think the moon ad is a Coke ad which backfired,” Samantha said slowly, as if she was figuring it out as she spoke.
“Exactly, and I needed them to think that, to ensure my own safety, so I could be right here, right now. Are you ready to know why I’m here?”
We quickly nodded.
XI
EVIL
He did not laugh. Ralph’s entire body went motionless. The usual pink glow emanating from beneath his silvery Earth suit faded to a shade of purple.
“At the visitor school, we have a saying: the most frightening thing in the universe is an alien who shows up at your door and says, ‘I’m here to help.’” He paused for a laugh but didn’t get one. He hissed and dropped his arms at his sides. His purple glow grew darker.
“I am here to warn you. I am warning you that you will be visited by a race of aliens that are . . . evil. In fact, the word my people use for ‘evil’ derives from our name for them.”
He was bad at delivering bad news, and he shivered. Behind the drapes, a large cloud hid the sun and darkened the room. Insanely, I wondered if Ralph was somehow controlling the weather.
“Maybe this will be easier if you all have some wine,” Ralph said as he reached out for the bottle, fumbled it, and gasped as it fell to the floor, staining the presidential seal on the carpet. Francis quickly got some paper towels to sop it up.
Ralph made new sounds, which I couldn’t interpret at first, but it made me sad and frightened. The sounds were a type of crackling, a type of internal breaking, as if there were thousands of egg shells cracking open inside his suit.
“They will come, and they will not compromise . . . Things were not supposed to happen this way, none of this. We were never supposed to meet.”
“Ralph,” I said, “we need you to be clear right now. If there is some danger to . . . our people, you have to tell us.”
“I have been calling myself a ‘visitor,’ but I was only here to study, analyze, and report back—the anthropological dangers of this encounter are severe. But, some time ago, I received a signal indicating they were near your solar system. I had to warn you. I had to concoct some scheme to come down here and tell you. I put the message on the moon to make you think your advertisers were out of control, so that when the cylinder arrived, you’d think it was just another crazy advertisement.”
The Book of Ralph Page 7
