From early agricultural beginnings, mankind had probably gone through four hundred generations. On the series of asteroids, the number of generations was much less, only one hundred or thereabouts, but physically they had changed through natural, and unnatural, selection by a much greater extent than ourselves. When Exordicans had initially ventured out into their planetary system to live on other worlds, usually with a lower gravity, physical changes took place which gave them a different appearance. It would, nonetheless, have been possible to return to the main planet, maybe resting and exercising for a few years, enabling their bodies to accommodate once more to the higher gravity; they would resemble planetary Exordicans again. While the Exordicans of four million years of space living could empower their bodies for a temporary stay under high gravity, the other changes that had taken place were much more profound and also genetic in nature, thus making a return to their original appearance a virtual impossibility.
The Exordicans had adapted to their environment. Their bodies were thin, spindly and greyish in colour. In physical dimension they were less than shoulder high to an earth man and about one-third the weight of the same. Difference between the sexes was negligible to an untrained eye.
The grey colour of their skin had evolved after years living in the insipid light of an asteroid ship. Millions of years away from strong sunlight had removed all forms of protective pigmentation, so much so that it was impossible for them to stand on a planet under a midday sun, or even a sun low down in the sky. Direct exposure to ultra violet would be extremely harmful to them, as would ordinary light over a longer period of time. Physically, they weren't strong; an earth boy maybe twelve to fourteen years of age, if engaged in a square go involving Queensberry rules, would be able to give an adult Exordican a damn good thrashing.
Strength, of course, isn't everything. The average human doesn't have the strength of a large number of animals, including elephants, tigers, chimpanzees and gorillas. The chimp, that funny creature who masquerades as human at tea parties or advertisements for a certain brand of tea, has the strength to rip off a human's arm. What a human has to counteract a lack of strength compared to many animals is the ability to use intelligence and tools to effectively make him stronger. Mankind, that race of puny weaklings, has progressed so much that he has dominated all other animals and put a large number of them in danger of extinction.
The Exordican's weak body was more than compensated by an intelligent brain, augmented by genetic engineering and electronic implants. Excepting large dark eyes, they had heads that were virtually featureless. They had evolved into beings with large brains, large dark eyes and a small mouth and nose. No ears were evident.
The eyes had come about through a process of selective adaptation by the Exordicans themselves. Living for thousands of years within the depths of interstellar space, normal eyes like our own became ineffective. Our eyes, and that of the original Exordium inhabitant, were adapted to strong light and were ineffective in dark conditions. The eyes that they now possessed were larger to enable them to see into the infrared end of the spectrum—they could literally see heat. Within the confines of an asteroid ship, they could clearly see everything using only the minimum of artificial light. It would even be possible for them to see without lights by registering heat given out by living bodies. In fact, their vision would probably be the equivalent of our electronic night vision devices as used by the military.
Their noses were physically non-existent, as was their sense of smell which, of course, isn't always related to nose size. Living in an artificial environment like the asteroid ship, away from planets with atmospheres, weather, plants, animals and all the other things that would affect a sense of smell, the ability to smell had disappeared because it wasn't required and also because the areas in the brain that undertake such a task were now devoted to other mental tasks. It was, as we shall see, rather a blessing that they had lost their olfactory perception.
After four million years and one hundred generations, the Exordican digestive system had changed to be very different from its original form. Most of the food they ate was artificially derived from the plant and vegetation propagating facilities on the asteroid ship. The Exordican now ate a curious diet of a protein mixture derived from plant extracts.
Plants require a lot of breaking down to make them edible. Cellulose is composed of long molecules, basically sugars linked together. We are unable to eat cellulose, grass and many other types of vegetation because our digestive system is inadequate to break them down to constituents which we can utilise. Once broken down from cellulose to glucose, the glucose can pass from the gut to the bloodstream where it becomes food for cells which burn it in a respiration reaction. Respiration is essentially the reaction of glucose with oxygen to give carbon dioxide and water. It is the opposite of plant life photosynthesis which combines water with carbon dioxide to give glucose (or starch and cellulose) and oxygen.
Since it's relatively low in food value, green plants have to be eaten in bulk by herbivorous animals. Consequently they need large digestive systems. A herbivore such as a cow spends most of its time eating grass or chewing its cud. To get enough energy and protein to live, it must have a lot to eat. There is no possible way you could get a spaceship populated by cows: the additional spatial volume required for growing and storing their food would be enormous, they would spend too much time at the canteen and there would be an excessive amount of waste gases and solids.
Chimpanzees, which appear quite often in this book, eat both vegetation and meat with the former being by far the largest constituent. Looking at a chimps, its easy to see that they have pear shaped torsos caused by a need for large guts to digest the large amount of vegetation they eat. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden probably ate a large amount of vegetation too and consequently, without wishing to be irreverent, the various renaissance paintings of them are in error because they should be portrayed with very large bellies like chimpanzees. Fortunately, mankind developed farming utilising cereals, wheat and rice for example, which could be refined to make energy giving starch foods. You don't need huge guts to live by eating bread and rice, but, of course, we are also meat eaters which offers a more concentrated source of protein.
Some say that eating meat is a necessity to humans because only meat contains vital amino acids. Meat also has a lot of protein in it which is required for healthy replication of cells. I'm not so sure. Many vegetarians, including vegans, live healthy enough lives. Many adherents of the Hindu religion are vegetarians and you only need to look at India to see that they are not dying off because of a lack of meat in their diets. The population of India is, in fact, growing so rapidly that it will outstrip China to become the world's most populous country within twenty years or so.
Living in space, you don't have room for large fields and combine harvesters. Living in interstellar space for long time periods as with the Exordicans, there isn't unlimited space for storage. All growing food has to be provided with energy, in this case energy from fusion power, and then it has to be converted into something that can be eaten directly. Also, because the Exordicans live for thousands of years, their cells require a lot of protein to keep them in good shape. Initially, they refined the foods from their hydroponic gardens to make supplements which were high in protein, but after some time and experimentation with genetic engineering, they devised a method whereby plants would form a fleshy protein substance, just like meat, which was ideal for their constitution.
After four million years of living in space, the Exordicans had a diet composed of a high protein substance that enabled their cells to replicate almost without end and also enable their relatively large brains to function. Their brain cells lived for a very long time, but were also replaced by new cells. This wasn't a problem as it would be for us. Imagine if our brain cells were replaced every year? Memories would be lost, not to mention physical abilities. The Exordicans had brains with electronic implants which could store and regulate ma
ny of their functions, so maintaining the appearance of a healthy and continuous brain over thousands of years.
They didn't eat much either, and it was possible to maintain enough of the genetically modified plants growing in the hydroponic gardens within the asteroid to keep them going indefinitely. Amounts of protein substance were required daily but since it is concentrated compared to huge loads of vegetation, their guts were relatively small. Exordicans had relatively large chests, which tapered down to a small waist. Had they not invented the protein farming, life amongst the stars would have been more difficult. Early in their interstellar existence, the Exordicans ate other animals; there were large stores of animal proteins available. Later they became vegetarians but further hence, a return to occasional meat eating had taken place. This was a matter of choice and not necessity. Where did they get their meat supplies? Plenty of supplies were available from life bearing planets they visited on their nomadic travels.
The Exordicans also had telepathic abilities but this wasn't a natural gift, it was a product of electronic engineering. They had long since discovered that brain implants could be used to transfer some form of conscious thought patterns to electronic devices, so making them operate by the mind alone. The next step was relatively simple: thought messages could be transferred to a central relay system, which was then transmitted to other beings with similar implants. Implants were not crude metallic objects as we would envisage with our technology: they were biochemical devices which used biological molecules as minute switches rather than silicon devices employed in chips today. This made them very small and, with a bit more engineering, almost compatible with real brain tissue. With all the Exordicans possessing implant devices, conventional talking was used only rarely.
Reproduction was no longer a matter of boy meets girl. Considered as unreliable and risky, that action had long since passed away to be replaced by a laboratory process whereby all factors were calculated to give the best possible outcome for the results desired. New beings weren't even gestated within a female: they developed embryos within biomechanical devices, strictly controlled in all areas. While some still practised sexual relationships, it was an activity that had been declining in popularity for some time and most found the activity boring. Society was composed of a group of individuals some of which happened to be male and others female, and, with no social differentiation between male and female, society was based on equality and not sex. Marriage didn't exist. While on earth, courting couples may make promises to love each other forever and then go on to cohabit for half a century if lucky, extending this bonding for twenty five thousand years is a different matter. Waking up each day to see the same person beside you for even a fraction of that time would defy description. Sex with the same person for twenty five thousand years ... unlikely, as would be sex with half the ship's population. The act, however varied and inventive, and without the reproductive drive, would lose significance long before a lifespan was concluded. If even sex can lose its charm over twenty five thousand years, think what would happen to other activities? Only those with a certain type of mind could have the ability to endure! Longevity wrecks family life, family cohesion and social convention. Society becomes a collection of bored and boring individuals and regardless of the high risks involved, the approaching of an inhabited stellar system must arouse a modicum of excitement in some of them.
So, let's look at what we have. A grey creature, smaller than a human with spindly limbs, large head and large dark eyes. We've all seen this picture before. In fact, we're very familiar with it. Such a being is the logical product of genetic selection from millions of years in a space environment.
What would the asteroid ship look like to a human? From the outside, it would look just like any other asteroid; a dark object, perhaps a few miles across with craters of all sizes pockmarking the surface. There would be no visible signs of life or activity from outside unless, of course, someone was lucky enough (or maybe unlucky) to witness small ships coming and going. This wouldn't be witnessed from earth or any planet near the sun because the asteroid ship always parked billions of miles out in a safe and secure orbit.
What about the interior? One can only imagine. Perhaps the Exordicans kept a tight and clean ship in the early days of their existence on the asteroids but, being genetically engineered to be immune to any form of disease caused by their own hygiene, or lack of it, one suspects that standards declined somewhat on the later ships. Housekeeping on board a ship wouldn't be all that easy either. On a planet, open to the air, winds and water, there's no problem maintaining a fresh environment but a self-contained asteroid ship is much more restricted and doesn't have the elements of a planet. With absolutely everything being recycled for hundreds and thousands of years, perhaps things get into a bit of a mess, something maybe not obvious to the inhabitants.
Compare this to an ordinary household say, where cabbage, curry or smoked fish had been cooked that day. People living in the house would not be totally aware of the odours present until someone came from outside to exclaim, “What's that smell?". A more realistic comparison to the asteroid ship could be made with the Mir space station which was continually inhabited, save a few months here and there, for fifteen years until deorbited in March 2001. Originally planned to have a life of only five years, Mir was a marvellously successful space station which produced many scientific results, not the least being the effect of weightlessness on humans but, towards the end of its life, there had been so many occupants (about 100) and so many modifications that the interior looked a bit of a mess. Large tubes led through openings which had been designed to be closed, pieces of equipment were fixed almost at random to the walls and Heath Robinson devices were abundant everywhere. A problem of dampness and mould existed and with people over the years going through spells of vomiting, excreting and urinating, not always in the appropriate places, there was a slight hygiene problem. After all, it wasn't exactly possible for a team of cleaners to arrive with mops and buckets to give the place a good going over. Astronauts described the initial smell on entering the space station from the shuttle as being a mixture of sweat and rubber, with other obvious ingredients which were not mentioned publicly but nevertheless hinted at. That was fifteen years in a small space station. Can you imagine what a large asteroid ship would be like after a million years? It doesn't bear thinking about.
It is likely that an asteroid ship, if entered by a human straight from earth, would be absolutely disgusting to all the senses. Dark and mouldy in places, and also in need of a good clean, the bucket would need to be in close range. The recycled atmosphere ... well, I leave it to the imagination.
How do these Exordicans think? Let's look at the facts. Being long lived, they will be fearful of many things, much more so than the early beings who first set out in the asteroid ship four million years before. With a very good idea on how to conduct themselves at the minimum of risk, everything and every action would be carried out with a great deal of thought. We would probably think of them as a tedious and boring lot.
Anything that was going to change their future would be looked upon with great suspicion, including beings from other star systems. The Exordicans would be ultra conservative and xenophobic in the extreme! Their high intelligence and long lives may give them an arrogant, supercilious, disdainful, overbearing and contemptuous attitude to other living beings. After all, they possess the knowledge, experience and learning of thousands of years. How could they be compared to grubby ape-like creatures living and working for less than a century, learning nothing and knowing nothing? With us probably meaning little more to them than a short lived butterfly, they would consider themselves as existing several planes higher on the evolutionary scale. Perhaps a couple of individuals possessing an enlightened attitude could regard us with a modicum of respect but as soon as we became troublesome, that attitude would quickly change. One thing for certain though, a planet of humans, while regarded as little more than monkeys, will also be feared
for their violent nature.
The act of self-preservation for Exordicans takes priority over all other matters. This is the preservation of the selfish gene, the end justifying the means in all their actions. Would there be kindness, mercy and benign emotions emanating from them with regard to other so called lesser beings? Perhaps yes, in as much as a farmer feels for his cattle, pigs, sheep or goats, but then market time comes and in their hearts there's nothing but necessity, cold hardness and profit.
There was a time in Exordican history when a stellar system of a yellow G type star became the next target. Deceleration of the ship began. They came to know quite a lot about this planetary system by listening and viewing radio and television transmissions emanating from the third planet. The huge asteroid ship parked itself in a slow orbit somewhere out in the Kuiper belt, about three billion miles from the star where many frozen objects existed. The ship, undetectable with the third planet's primitive technology, remained unseen.
Towards the yellow star, several other planets existed. There were two gas giants of a blue / green colour, next a larger gas planet with a huge ring system then another, even larger gas giant with bands of turbulent clouds in its atmosphere. Then came a small red planet followed by the third planet from the sun which was a blue, green and white world possessing an atmosphere and an inhabited biosphere. This planet was earth!
* * *
Phase 8
Arrival at Earth
So far in this story we've looked at a world called Exordium, following its people on a nomadic journey from their planetary system, through interstellar space, eventually reaching earth some four million years later. Of course, the planet Exordium doesn't really exist but the story is one which may have taken place anywhere in this galaxy. What I've tried to do in writing this book is to show the logical outcome from a given situation. To reiterate the vital points, the situation is as follows:
Alien Psychology Page 9