The Arcturus Man

by John Strauchs

  “OK, we’ll talk. Whatever you want to know! I tell you anything, but you are really wired. You need to mellow out. We’re not going to have much of a conversation while you are so intense. Or are you telling me that you’re not?” asked Jared.

  “Yes, I’m intense,” said Jenny.

  “Analysis is paralysis! Analysis is paralysis! He thought to himself. He kept saying it in his mind. He concentrated on being responsive to her. He had to stop analyzing the moment. He had to quickly calm her anger. Once she started to vent, the opportunity for reconciliation might be lost. He wanted her back. And for that to happen, he needed to restore her self esteem. He strategized how to do it.

  “There isn’t anything better at relaxing the spirit than music.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a soprano recorder. He waxed the cork joint and then fitted the pieces together.

  “Do you really think that this ruse is going to distract me? No way!” she said. “Relax! Please!” he said. “What is the harm? Just a few minutes. Then we can talk,” he said. “Give it a try. This is a beautiful recorder, isn’t it? It is a Stephan Blezinger made of fine European boxwood,” said Jared

  “Fine. Fine,” said Jenny, “but just a few minutes, but then I don’t want any more excuses from you. Then we talk. Right? You promise?”

  The truth was that she wanted to be distracted. She wanted to lulled. She wanted Jared. She always knew that. She was weakening already.

  She turned to look at the recorder under the strong light of the desk lamp. The recorder was a work of art. It was certainly better than the plastic Yamaha she learned on.

  He smiled. “I have no dishonorable intentions Miss Nilsson. Just lovely music.”

  “The son of a bitch was trying to seduce her--again,” she thought. That was not going to happen. But then again, why was she putting up with this silly game. Did she want to be seduced again? It’s not like she didn't understand what he was doing.

  “I have to think for a moment. I haven’t read music since I was a little girl.”

  “It will come back to you quicker than you can imagine. I’ll help you,” he said.

  She closed her eyes and then opened them again as she stared at the notes. Jenny dry fingered the recorder.

  “I see you prefer the German fingering,” said Jared.

  “Yes, German!” She thought it was German. She wasn’t really sure. She didn’t know there was a nationality involved.

  “Let’s give it a try. You take the top. There!” He pointed. He took another recorder out of the drawer.

  “This is also a Blezinger,” he said.

  “Wow! May I see it?”

  He handed it to Jenny. “It’s made of Santos Palisander—a kind of rosewood,” said Jared.

  “I didn’t realize they came in different sizes. The only recorder we had in high school was like this one,” she said.

  “This is a tenor recorder,” he said.

  “It’s a work of art, Jared. I suppose you whittled it yourself.”

  He ignored the taunt. “Shall we? It is an advanced piece but I know that you’re up to it.”

  Jenny felt intimated. Why did she go along with this?

  “I am not going to let him humiliate me.” She thought. She concentrated as hard as she could. She put everything else out of her mind.

  They started playing. Jenny made it half way down the sheet and faltered, over and over. She misread the same note three times in a row. Then she lost her place. She missed her fingering. She rotated the barrel to line up with her fingers in a more comfortable way. The recorder was capable of soft, dulcet tones but it squealed and squeaked horribly when a hole was only partially closed.

  She intensified her focus. Jared’s playing was perfect. Each time she miscued, he led them back to the beginning to start over. He was calm and patient. Jenny lost track of time and lost sight of everything except the small black marks in front of her. Each time she restarted she made it a little further down the page. It was coming back to her. She had no sense of how many times they had restarted the piece. She grudgingly admitted to herself that Jared was being very, very patient. And then…it happened.

  They both played that entire sheet and she didn’t have a single misstep. Her eyes welled up with tears. It was that beautiful. The brevity of it wasn’t a thought. For a few fleeting minutes…or maybe it was seconds…she was a part of something almost ethereal. She had created utter splendor. She had never before experienced that kind of creative ecstasy. In her life she had never really played music before. She didn’t want it to stop. The two recorders were in perfect synchronization. She felt the rush.

  Jared glanced at Jenny. It made him feel happy. That didn’t happen often for Jared. He had been in torment for days. He sensed her joy and it made him feel good. He wasn’t expecting it.

  They started on the right hand sheet. She squeaked within a few notes of the new page. The spell was broken, but it was alright. She put down the recorder.

  “Was it seconds, minutes? It felt like hours,” she thought.

  “Jenny, don’t stop. You played magnificently. You can do it again. Beauty can be frozen in time,” he said.

  “Beauty frozen in time. Yes, I feel that. This is honestly the first time in my life that I really played music. It was really music. I want to do it again some time, but right now I want to quit while I am still ahead. It’s time to keep your promise, Jared.”

  “Of course!” He gathered up the recorders and put them away.

  “I am glad you convinced me into doing that, but now it’s my turn. I want to talk,” said Jenny.

  “Then we shall talk,” he said.

  She led him into his den. She sat is his large sofa. She moved to one end. She pulled a large cushion into her lap and curled her legs underneath. The cuffs of her pants were still wet. She didn’t like the feel of them. She wanted to take them off, but she knew she shouldn’t. She didn’t want to send the wrong signal. She waited until Jared sat down beside her and she turned to face him.

  He waited for her to start. She thought for a while. She didn’t know where to start.

  “Who are you Jared? Why couldn’t you be honest with me? Why did I have to learn who you are—what you are—from Father O’Connor—and others. I knew you were a child prodigy—I guess you told me that yourself when we met—but you are obviously so much more than that. Why couldn’t you be honest with me? Who are you Jared and what do I mean to you?”

  Now Jared sat silent for a time, staring into the fire. Jenny waited for him to speak. When the waiting became too intense, she glanced away from him and stared into the fire as well.

  “This is difficult to explain,” said Jared.

  “I’m just not smart enough to understand? Is that what you are trying to tell me?” she said.

  “Well, yes, that is part of it,” said Jared.

  The hurt in Jenny’s eyes was palpable. That was not what she expected him to say.

  “Please hear me out. Let me explain what I mean,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” said Jenny.

  “You’ve probably heard this from O’Connor already, but let me put it in my words. Some palaeoanthropologists, albeit not that many, have thought that human evolution was not uniform and gradual. The eventual development of Homo sapiens about 400,000 years ago was not evolutionary as much as it was cataclysmic. Millennia had passed since the earliest ancestor, possibly Australopithecus ramidus, about 5 or 6 million years ago, somehow acquired genetic developments that started the path toward modern man. These were just a few new threads in the fabric of human evolution. Modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens, developed not much longer than approximately 60,000 years ago, although some suggest 130,000 years ago. Either date is so recent it hardly matters. That is one-thousandth of a percent of the age of primates,” said Jared.

  “This is very interesting, but what is your point. I already heard all of this from Father O’Connor,” said Jenny.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear all of it. The
point is that once every 100,000 years, perhaps every 500,000 years, or even every million years—it scarcely matters what the period is—an individual is born who represents a massive advancement in human intellect, human physiology, or other development. It is an abrupt leap in evolution. It is a massive leap. Contrary to conventional wisdom, evolution is not steady and gradual. Evolution remains largely unchanged for thousands of generations until another great leap occurs. The leap begins in one generation; with one individual. Whether it was an aberration in one individual’s DNA or his chromosomes were struck by cosmic rays, suddenly, human evolution and development explodes and then remains largely unchanged again until the next time a unique individual is born.” He continued.

  “Most anthropologists have willfully ignored the obvious absence of any explanation why there is virtually no evidence of gradual and continuous development. They are forever searching for the missing links. That is, of course, an impossibility because they are searching for the skulls and bones of a handful of individuals hidden across the expanse of the entire planet. This inconsistency in data also led to the far-fetched theories of debunked theorists like Erich von Däniken who, among many others, claimed that these spikes in human development were the result of alien civilizations from other worlds experimenting with genetic engineering on our little world. Did you ever read Chariots of the Gods?”

  “No, but I saw a special about it on TV. I thought he was discredited and convicted of something. He was a German,” said Jenny.

  “He was Swiss and, yes, he was convicted of business fraud. He readily admitted to fabricating evidence in an infamous NOVA TV program, but you’re missing the point. The point is that alien tampering theories were concocted because everyone was searching for a rational explanation for the lack of evidence of continuous and gradual development of humans. The simplest explanation is usually the most likely to be true…you know, Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation for occasional explosions in human development is the birth of a single individual with a radically new genetic code. The point is…therefore…that I am one of those individuals. It’s that simple,” said Jared.

  “You are a missing link,” said Jenny. “This is B.S.,” she thought.

  “In a manner of speaking…yes. I was a freak of nature. I guess freak is a bad choice of words, but then again, it is technically accurate,” said Jared. “Evolution is based on mutations. Almost all mutations eventually prove to be either harmful or irrelevant, but a rare number are beneficial and an even rarer number of those are revolutionary. Let me give you a better sense of that. Our Milky Way galaxy moves through the universe at high speeds and its arms spin within. When both movements are aligned, the speed is about 160 miles per second,” said Jared.

  Jenny thought that it was a little interesting. Father O’Connor hadn’t explained it like this. She wasn’t sure how it related to her question, but it was interesting.

  Jared continued. “Every 63 million years or so, the galaxy collides with what we could call a gaseous cloud. The collision creates cosmic rays which, in turn, create ultraviolet—UV—radiation. Although cosmic rays could do the most damage in terms of capacity, it is the UV radiation that affects genetic materials the most. The amount of radiation is also greatly influenced by the position of the earth within the Milky Way. The earth moves around inside our galaxy. The closer we are to the edge, the greater the damage to all living things. And we don’t necessarily have to wait 63 million years for each wave of mutations. It’s happening all the time, albeit from shorter durations and from weaker collisions with minor gaseous accumulations. As I said, most mutations are not beneficial to mankind, but once in a great while, something spectacular occurs—a megagenius is created. No one can know what changes these individuals, male and female, may have precipitated over the history of humankind. Speech may have started from one nuclear megagenius family. Perhaps they invented metal working, the Atlatl, the bow and arrow, flint napping arrow points, weaving, writing, food preservation, farming, or what have you. These are very rare events that occurred over very long periods of time. The megageniuses that had progeny were probably extraordinarily rare; as rare as they were in being created. Most of them probably died one way or another before they could procreate. Many others were possibly killed by other early humans. Uniqueness is not tolerated. Others may have chosen not to have children. Yet others may have committed suicide because they couldn’t fit into the world they were born into,” said Jared.

  Jenny looked away when he mentioned suicide. She knew he was suicidal. It was another secret that he tried to keep from her.

  “So you are one of these megageniuses?” asked Jenny.

  Jenny’s mind raced. This wasn’t new information. This was pretty much what Father O’Connor told her about Jared, but it was important to Jenny to hear it from Jared.

  “And you’re the smartest man on this planet and the smartest in the last million years?” asked Jenny. She was very skeptical.

  “That was rhetorical, wasn’t it? asked Jared.

  “How fast can you read?” asked Jenny.

  “I’ve never bothered to measure it. Certainly, it must be several thousand words per minute.”

  She ignored that. “So I am a cave woman as far as you’re concerned. How can you bear to be around a primitive like me?” That was meant to hurt. It did! Jared knew it would be difficult to convince her. The whole explanation was hard to swallow.

  They were both silent after that. They didn’t look at each other.

  Jared turned to her. “I love you Jenny.”

  “How can you say that, Jared? How could you have been so dishonest with me and say that? This is as pathetic as an old movie, the one where the prince doesn’t tell the poor common girl that he is a prince. It sucked in the movies and it sucks now. I don’t know if I believe any of what you are telling me, but if it’s true, why wouldn’t you have told me this a long time ago. Why did I have to get this stuff from Father O’Connor?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry. I really am. I have never explained myself to anyone before. No one in my entire life. Just you. That isn’t an excuse, but it is an explanation.”

  “This isn’t about you being a prince. If this is true, this is about you being some kind of new species. I still don’t know who you are. Heck, I don’t know what you are,” said Jenny.

  “I am a man. I am a man who is in love with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you Jenny,” said Jared.

  She began to cry quietly. He hugged her close. He held her. They didn’t speak again for a long time.

  She whispered. “I love you too, Jared. I love you so much it hurts. I don’t know what to think,” she said.

  He held her tighter and gently ran his fingers through her hair. He said nothing. This was Jenny’s time. He waited for her.

  “You have to tell me everything about yourself. There can’t be any secrets. Nothing can be unsaid even if unasked. Think about what I should know and tell me, Jared. If we are going to spend our lives together, I have to know who you are. And, don’t treat me like a primitive. I may not be as intelligent as you obviously are, but I respect myself and what I have accomplished. And there’s something else…our relationship has to be more than sex. I couldn’t bear to be with you if I didn’t truly believe that you respected who I am as a complete person.”

  “That would be an impossibility, Jenny.”

  She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. He reached for a tissue.

  “No, don’t treat me like a child,” she said. “I can get it.”

  He knew that she was hurt and that she was feeling vulnerable right now. He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure what he should do. The strategy worked up to a point, but now he was in uncharted territory.

  “How long are you going to live? Is it going to be like the Highlander?”

  “Jenny, I’m not immortal. Highlander is one of the few movies I TiVo. I understand your concern, but I honestly don’t have an answer for you. I know th
at I age slowly but I don’t know by how much.”

  “I suppose that isn’t that important…I guess. Then again, how are you going to feel about me when you look like Dorian Grey and I look like his portrait?”

  “You’re not going to be Dorian Grey and I am not Oscar Wilde.”

  “Do you ever talk down to me, Jared?”

  “Yes.”

  Jenny was surprised again. He said something she wasn’t expecting. He was supposed to say no.

  “But I have always been honest with you, Jenny.”

  She didn’t know what to say next. She stared into the fireplace.

  “I suppose I should ask you to explain yourself, but this is all so overwhelming. I don’t want to talk about this any more…right now. But, thank you for answering honestly,” she said.

  Jared remained still and silent. He was looking into her eyes. It made her uncomfortable.

  “Are you really the smartest person on earth?” she asked.

  “I can’t know for certain, of course. Maybe there is someone else like me somewhere. Maybe there are several like me. However, the odds against there being someone else like me right now are astronomic.”

  “What about physical development? Are you a superman?” She smiled when she asked this question, but the smile was camouflage. It was a lame question. She was embarrassed asking something that stupid.

  “I am not superman or anything of the sort. I am significantly advanced physically. My physiology is unique. I am prewired for almost any physical activity whether it is athletics or it is playing the violin. It may take other people years of practice to learn—to use the violin as an example—I can pick it up in days, and sometimes hours. I heal very fast. Maybe you remember the gash in my forehead when I fell rock climbing. It was only a bruise by the next morning and it was entirely gone the second day. I am extremely strong. I am….”

  “This is unbelievable,” said Jenny. She didn’t allow him to finish the sentence. She was getting the picture.

  “I have never talked about myself like this to anyone else. I hope you can appreciate that it isn’t easy for me,” said Jared. “I’ve avoided people all of my life just so I wouldn’t have to answer questions or do parlor tricks for them.”