And, yes, he did begin to sing the last part. I kept thinking, shit, where’s my tape recorder now? “So could you go into anything? I mean, Rex?”
“Oh, maybe maybe maybe. But why? Pick and choose. Pick and choose. Let’s talk trees. The xylem and the phloem—pretty much fun. Stuff going places, chugging along. But the heart wood, that takes patience and a kind of appreciation for the long run. It’s learnable, and frankly, worth the learning to appreciate. But if you’ve done it once, you’ve done it. Know what I mean? The long, flat sine wave. The waiting? The long view of petty things in general.”
He stopped and took me by the shoulders as if he were prepping me for a kiss goodnight.
“So Jake, wouldn’t you? Of course you would. And then after a while you’d go back and do the greatest hits again. Lion, for sure. Shark and seal—not as much fun as it looks since sharks are … well, so basic, if you know what I mean. Basic is okay, though. You get to look after a while for synapses to occupy. You get to crave the action, you see. The slam bang, the merry-go-round of it. You usually get some of that with mammals. Some of your stinging critters, the nematocysts, the fiery ants, then way out there with the asps and mambas and pit vipers and …”
He trailed off, almost dreamy, maybe recalling a fine day’s kill. But then…
“Jake, are you buying this? Has the narrative got some appeal? I mean the story: Rex conquers the universe from the platform of a string of computer code? Kind of good, isn’t it? So … ? You in?”
I was back on my heels suddenly. Is he shitting me? Has he been shitting me all along? Do I get the big laugh now? What I got was a slap on the back, sort of a laugh. And then the gotta-go looking at his watch.
“More later, Jake. Jake? More later, I promise.”
I had been intrigued, courted, seduced, fucked and kissed goodnight. Had I? All so quickly I couldn’t entirely recall all that happened. The interview, fake or not, had its very high moments. Did I buy it? The big IT, the premise? Oh, yeah. Yes I did, and not only buy it, I found myself looking forward to the next date.
Now that I was used to the looking, I never had to look far to see Rex abroad in the world. Of course, my own growing paranoia helped fill in the pieces. I conceded the night to Doctor Sewall. I conceded the night to any other forces and demons and duendes and mysterious shit that wanted to claim any part of the victory. Sometimes the weird shit wins hands down. My voices fell silent and, worse, morosely silent as if they all turned their vocal backs and sulked. And skulked away. Guys? Where the hell are your irrational lovelinesses? Where the jokester who calls me by my name? Where the brightening air into which all wonder blows like the dust from butterfly wings?
I’d say I walked home, but I didn’t. I wandered and on the way hooked up the narrative-maker. I needed a story that would contain all this mess, that would hold like a bowl all the weird fruit tumbling into my life. A story could.
I walked and wrote.
Most of them seem to be able to use only one hand with any skill. The right side. Some few of them, about 10 or 11 percent based on observed samples use the left. And very few can use both hands with skill as we do. Sometimes we see them holding some object in the dominant hand and then when needing to do some skill they will transfer the object to the weak hand in order to use the skilled hand. We think this weakness can be used to our advantage when the time comes.
I walked with one foot off the curb so that I bobbed, high-low, high-low like a limping drunk.
They have an idea that a separate “self” is somehow constructed or inherent (not clear yet which) and that each individual has a lifelong goal to first find out what the self is and then to cultivate it. They spend an immense amount of time in the wealthier nations doing this cultivation and informing their young that this is the value of being alive—the pursuit of this fabricated “self.” Here is a representative case. I sat at a nearby table recording this. I have used the names they usually call their dogs because … well, because I think it fitting.
Their young. Their young. I’ll certainly keep that.
Rob and Maggie are sitting at a table outside a café in the afternoon. Rob speaks of what bothers him at his workplace. He says that his bosses want his “self” instead of just his labor. They want to crush the self into some larger enterprise in the name of profit. They want to use him up and then spit him out some figurative door without his self, but with some compensation for his participation in their goals. He complains to Maggie bitterly. He seems to think there is some form of death, some pre-death in this process. Some horror that will precede his actual death. The illusion of the self seems to be thorough and conclusive. Rob is an adult approximately thirty years old and repeatedly mourns himself to Maggie. She listens and nods. She has dressed in such a way as to distinguish herself from other females. She is, I think, doing the same thing as Rob is doing with words. She is continuing the narrative of the self in colors and cloth arrangements. Her shoes she keeps removing and then dandling on her toes because apparently they are uncomfortable but distinguishing of the perceived self. Rob has used words like “soulless” and “wrung out” and (repeatedly) “scream” (“I could just scream, I want to scream, I hear myself screaming silently in the meeting …”). My recommendation is that when the time comes we use this self-induced anguish. It seems painful, and we should be able to offer them either the chance to get away from the anguish of self (I personally don’t think this will work since the self concept is so heavily ingrained) or, better, offer them the chance to pursue a genuine self or an authentic self, what one of their writers called “an original relationship with the universe.” The other observers and I have repeated this phrase to each other many times and it never fails to amuse us. Once when we had gathered to discuss them, I began the meeting with: “We have come together today”—and then I paused and watched the observers’ faces—“to establish an original relationship with the universe.” Great hilarity broke out and it was nearly five minutes before order could be restored and we could proceed with our observations.
We should be able to offer every adult and the more advanced young ones these fictive goals. Our plans should always include what version we are able to concoct of this elusive self. It will take more study to find exactly what buttons we have to push to offer them a genuine self, but we all think it will be worth the effort eventually. The amazing thing is that across the many cultures we have studied here, this self-business seems universal. No matter what sacrifices are asked in repressing the self under various conditions like war, this “self” fiction persists. It’s as if they simply won’t continence the alternative. The truth: they are all the same. One of our members put forward the idea that we might confront them with this truth and that would be more effective, when the time comes, in disarming them entirely. The rest of us thought it would just make them angry and recalcitrant so deeply believed is the cultural fraud. We might try his theory on some captives to see what happens.
The other side to the fabrication of the self is the way they have all embraced some idea of the elusive and non-apparent soul. Originally concocted by a number of Greek philosophers approximately in the 5th century BCE, the soul has persisted as a way of distinguishing them from the rest of the living world. Some of what they call the “primitive religions” have not allowed a separate soul for humans and for the other living and nonliving things of the earth. The result is that these primitive religions have kept a continuance between people and the nature around them. And so what happens to one happens to all. This version of soul seems to us superior if equally mistaken at the base. The consequences of this continuous soul linking all things provides better results than the separate soul fiction. Either way though, the soul enterprise can be used when the time comes.
As a consequence of the previous observations, they educate their young as if each were a complete blank slate upon which the collected history of their kind must be slowly and painfully written by education. Each young human must sp
end countless uncomfortable hours ingesting the fictions, the narratives of its people. Again, there is no continuity since each one must be filled individually, and though some are more apt and more easily filled than others, the net result is much waste and no conservation of energy. When the time comes, I hope many of them will see our way as infinitely superior and efficient. They really won’t have a choice, but it would be more pleasant all around if, when the time comes, they just saw the truth suddenly and consented.
I could feel the high commander, or whatever he was, percolating in the story. I waited for a piece of late-night traffic to pass and felt I could lift the cars with my mind and get them out of the way. If I wanted to. If they interfered again. If it pleased me.
Next, the entire sexual business. Though there seems to be some range in size though virtually none in position, our locker room cameras have confirmed that there are only the two kinds of them. Through the information from our other cameras, we can also confirm that no matter what combination of male and female—two of the same kind, one of each kind, any number of each or a combination—there is apparently a limited range of activities given the original equipment. Our researchers were interested to learn the wide range of outside equipment they bring into the act, but essentially there are still possible only the activities initially associated with the anatomical equipment. And here comes the strange part: given these limitations—our sexual condition has far fewer restrictions since our parts are much more adaptable—they create the same kind of fictions they have about the self and the soul, but this time about sex. They have multiple names for all the potential combinations of participants doing the same things to each other. They seem to insist on right and wrong combinations of the truly limited equipment as if they somehow require an incorrect story and a correct story about very tiny differences. This baffled many of our observers—the strife, the pain, the shunning, the guilt and blame associated with proscribed combinations of activities. When the time comes there will, I should imagine, be general rejoicing among all people when we give them the gift of sexuality, their own sexuality, of course, since we are not fit to reequip them all entirely. Oh that we were! But that is not in keeping with our directive.
When the time comes, we expect great rejoicing on all sides, but for now we continue to observe. For example, we found the water of earth to be of truly uneven quality. If you accumulate more wealth, you drink better water. The graphs are conclusive—x-axis increasing wealth, y-axis increasingly more pure water—rising perfect graph line. And with human metabolism there was then a perfect correlation between cellular health and wealth, epigenetics, then healthier offspring. While historical exceptions did occur, viz. the Romans and lead poisoning, the key observation of our fieldworkers was that we can use the water observations nicely when the time comes. There is, clearly, no better battlefield than water. It is convenient for us that we will have such a focused center for our activities when the time comes. In past situations in other places, other worlds, we have had sometimes so many different fronts that our ultimate energies were diluted across multiple key conquests, and certain difficulties (and casualties) were incurred. With the earth’s water, we have a natural focus for our efforts when the time comes. They are, it seems, perfectly thirsty for our purposes.
Our fieldworkers. Maybe that was my role. The fieldwork. I’d report back, sometimes just make shit up, tell the committee whatever I wanted, just to see what would happen.
Coffee, and in some parts of the world, tea, present interesting possibilities. These are ritual stimulants, apparently, and large segments of the populations seem habituated if not addicted. By ingesting one or two cups of liquid people report that they are “okay,” or “that’s more like it,” as if some sort of completion has taken place. The important fact here seems to be that they were not okay before ingesting or that something essential was lacking that was completed by the coffee. In committee, we pondered adding a few DNA strands to the world’s coffee beans, apparently fairly easy to do according to our science people, in order to introduce a few alternative reactions to what we’ve come to call the “okay syndrome.” When the time comes the excitability engendered by the coffee can be directed to our purposes so that wherever there is morning in the world, our directives will be met with complicit and excited humans. The retailer, Starbucks, is a perfect place to begin since it seems to be an ubiquitous delivery system for what is being called the “new coffee.” That part of the world where tea is favored will be even easier to redirect since there seems to be only one tea variety responsible for most of the tea. There seems also to be a number of non-tea or coffee drinkers. I believe these will be of no real consequence when the time comes.
The Starbucks was closing; a few customers had to be rousted apparently, in order to close up.
One of our operatives has suggested that the car, specifically out of all the possible vehicles public and private, has reached cult status among humans, that those without cars yearned to have one, that those with inexpensive cars yearned to have more expensive ones, and that those able to drive very expensive cars wanted to have more of them. This observation, if borne out by research, will be useful when the time comes since any pattern of yearning has proven valuable in the past. Many languages of the earth have special forms and modes to express this yearning since the yearning itself has come to be identified with being human. The subjunctive or optative mood is what we find everywhere there is language. Part of the self discussed above is contingent on the recognition of humans as creatures that long after what they don’t have or know. This longing, of course, accounts for their knowledge base as well as the self-deception that marks their activity involved in seeking some kind of “authentic” self—their science and their religion, their illusions and their realities. When the time comes, this yearning after can be a key component in our enterprise. It seems that this wanting/yearning/wishing/hypothetical mood of humans is thoroughly part of each living specimen so that we have found no example high or low in intelligence, high or low in financial condition, that is without a substantial and essential portion of this business. When we know a trait, and especially a trait so perfectly distributed as this one, we can use it when the time comes. Configurations have been very useful to us in the past.
Our report would be incomplete without dealing with the tricky bits or inconsistencies of humans, those characteristics that might present problems when the time comes. I begin with what they have lumped together and called love. It is at once the most thoroughly imbued trait and the most fraudulent. It contains a little bit of everything I’ve mentioned—self, soul, purity of water, overstimulation of coffee, and sex. All these fictions come together and join up as the greatest fiction of them all: love.
Ah, love. What was it again? Maybe the way light fell through the cracks in the universe that sometimes made funny glows and then that was love.
As we found out in the past, whether some beliefs were based on reality or complete cultural concoction, it is not relevant when the time comes. This love business presents itself as an immense barrier to easy transition. From the smallest version—I love ice cream—to the most thoroughly encompassing love of a person for family or God or even self, love will have to be factored into the final formula for this world. We need to accommodate it, maybe even say yes to it publically at first, and then probably we’ll have to deal with its extinction by fully replacing it with a more substantial alternative. I think that our previous methods might not work here. The old switcheroo, as they like to say: we give them something that on the surface looks like what they’re fond of, and then slowly, slowly take that one away while slipping our alternative into its place. “This carob is just as good as chocolate,” our sociologist likes to say with a laugh.
The habit of self-stimulation among them seems to cross cultures and languages. Apart from sex, they all look for something new even if the result of the new experience is worse than what it replaces, worse than nothing at all
. We discovered a line in one of their songs, “I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all.” We will in time, of course, invite them to feel just that—nothing at all, a kind of cosmic heroin, I suppose. And so, when the time comes, there will have to be a significant redirection of what they are fond of calling human nature. What they mean by that is not entirely clear, but since we know we have to subvert what they think it is eventually, here are some speculative notions on what they might mean by human nature: (1) By an act of faith previous to any logic, many of them believe that human nature is separate from Nature-nature and by this separation they create for themselves a category in the natural world that is not open to any other flora or fauna. Apparently keeping all other living things out of this category is the central imperative and defining parameters for this category. It is a sui generis category that insists that including anything except humans would nullify the category completely. See the fictions about the soul above. (2) Human nature is precarious and though it is generously allotted to all humans, during times of war, one defined group can take it back from another group to more easily slaughter that group without moral repercussions. Their Bible documents a number of cases of this phenomenon. Their recent history is full of instances whereby one group (e.g., Catholics or Protestants, or Muslim and Christian, or two kinds of Catholics—an ancient or orthodox one and a newer or Roman one) withdraws the privileges of being human and returns the enemy to nature, effectively kicking that group out of the privileged category and into one with “lower” animals. It seems mass killing is made easier under the conditions of this redefinition. When the time comes, this will be a valuable distinction we can harness. They will certainly understand the distinction immediately. (3) Human nature can include but is not limited to essentialisms. That is, because of the flexible nature of definitions of this particular form of nature, people themselves have created what they call political entities to create official or state-supported versions. That is, if any definition gets particularly complex and difficult to manage because of too many exceptions, too many if-thens, the state steps in and simplifies the definition by the act of ridding the definition of its complexity, subtlety and nuance and replacing these with gross features that then constitute the official definition. This official act is a corollary to the condition of war that allows one group to remove the other group’s human status and return them to the realm of animals and plants. (4) Human nature, it turns out, is a thinly veiled kind of arrogance that the species cultivates. And a key to understanding human nature as they use it may well be for us to examine the arrogance itself.
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