polkingbeal67: I was coming to that. Uh, you might want to sit down.
smolin9: Why? Oh no, I can sense the onset of a colon-hyphen-left-parenthesis moment.
polkingbeal67: Huh? Your orders are to return to Morys immediately. After a thorough de-briefing, you’ll be sent out to assist yukawa3 who’s investigating a planet in the Kolosimo 922 system.
smolin9: But I was going to get married on Saturday! I must speak to Melinda.
polkingbeal67: Bubblehead! It’s out of the question! It’s so unnatural. Absurd. Stop thinking with your heart! It’s ridiculous. Do my eyes speak? Do my hands see? Do my feet smell?
smolin9: Well, since you mention it…
polkingbeal67: What? You know that whole interplanetary relationship thing gives me nightmares! Anyway, you’ve got a whole lifetime of asinine relationships ahead of you. How can you expect to be truly happy with a woman who insists on treating you as if you were a perfectly normal human being? The portal is all set for your return. Please prepare immediately.
smolin9: Couldn’t I stay here and be like king of the ants? I’d be really nice and kind-hearted to my subjects. I wouldn’t be a tyr-ant. Ha ha. No, I wouldn’t walk all over them. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, okay, I’m getting ready. But I’ve got unfinished business here, so keep the wormhole open.
Investigator Diary 12.19.19.8.3:
This is not an official report by the investigator. It was transmitted by an earthling a short time after the planet investigation was terminated. The Commission decided to retain it as part of the record for reasons that will become clear.
Hello? I don’t know if anyone can hear me out there. My name is Melinda Hill and I’m speaking to you from Camden Town. That’s in London on, um, Earth. Yeh, erratic, isn’t it? I’m a friend, well, fiancée actually, of smolin9′s. He left this microwocky thingy behind when he left. I used to watch what he did with it when he used to send his reports. So, I know it’s insane, but I’m hoping to get a sort of message through to him. He said he used a wormhole or something, but to be careful with it because it involved sub-atomic forces – like radiation and stuff. Wow! How erratic is that! There must be some bright worms out there! Ha ha. In more ways than one! It does my head in, all this time travel and so on. Perhaps none of this has actually happened yet! Literally. Totally erratic.
Anyway, you don’t want to hear me wittering on, so I’ll get to the point. Since I met smolin9, I’ve contacted other people who have met aliens like you. Sorry, do you mind if I call you aliens? I know you come from a planet called Morys Minor, so maybe I should call you Mortians or Minors or something. Ha ha. Insane. Mortians! I’ve spoken to abductees and all sorts. I think they’re incredibly brave to come out about their encounters. I know for a fact the American President has met smolin9 and polkingbeal67, but there’s no way we’ll ever get to hear about it. It’s like, y’know, you’re so tempted to share your experience with other people, but, well, let’s just say they’d give you such a hard time over it. Lots of the abductees seem to have had bad experiences, but I must say, in your defence, well, you guys are really cool. Yeh, mostly. I mean polkingbeal67 is a bit like a gorilla on amphetamines, but I suppose he’s okay when you get to know him. Anyway, it’s totally erratic to know there’s intelligent life on other worlds. Sometimes I wonder if there’s any intelligent life here on Earth! Ha ha. Totally. I love all you guys up there!
Anyway, if this message gets through to you, smolin9, I want you to know I feel terrible about being a jilted bride, but I’m not angry with you. I can’t possibly understand your life but I know you’d have been there if you could have been. And I know it will have been as hard for you as it has been for me.
Obviously, I got to know your human transformation best, but right now I’m thinking of you as your true self. Literally. I’m thinking of those big, soulful, inky-black eyes and I’m imagining I see tears in them. We have a famous film here where one of the characters is a tin man who goes off to find a wizard who might give him a heart. The wizard tells him he’d be better off without one and in the end the tin man says: “Now I know I’ve got a heart, ’cause it’s breaking.” Well, I know you didn’t like us much to start with, but, eventually, you said you wanted to be more like us. It’s insane, but I came to understand that you already were quite like us. You had whatever that thing is that we call humanity. You just had to tap into it. Literally. And it was beautiful. And I bet, like the tin man, you’re wishing you hadn’t found it, ’cause it’s hurting you like hell now.
Ugh! Sorry, there seem to be ants everywhere here! So, anyway, I’ve got to go – I left something cooking. And no, it’s not a frying saucer! Ha ha. Insane. I’m glad you touched my life. Totally. It was erratic and I loved every moment. Oh, what’s that?
smolin9: [crackle] [hiss] Hello?
Melinda: What? Is somebody there? Hello?
smolin9: [crackle] Is that you, Melinda? We just picked up the signal. I’ve been tuned to your hyper spatial coordinates for ages waiting for you to make contact!
Melinda: Wow! Erratic or what? Hi, how are you?
smolin9: I’m fine. Listen, we’re all set up to get married over this wormhole comms link. Our revered leader is here and he’s happy to officiate. And polkingbeal67 is here as a witness.
Melinda: What? But I… I haven’t…I’d have to get my dress and…
smolin9: We haven’t got time for any of that. This has to happen now. Are you happy to go ahead?
Melinda: No. Well, yes. Okay. This is insane, but go ahead, yes!
polkingbeal67: Can I just say I object most strongly to this union? As far as I’m concerned, smolin9, something terrible must have happened to you during the quantum entanglement process of your visit to the Pale Blue Dot. Are you sure your electrons are okay?
smolin9: I’m positive. Let’s get on.
Leader: Do you, Melinda Hill, take this interdimensional being, smolin9, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till wormhole DNA mutation or death do you part?
Melinda: Wormhole DNA what now? Okay, whatever. I do.
Leader: Do you, smolin9, take this earthling woman, Melinda Hill, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till wormhole DNA mutation or death do you part?
polkingbeal67: Please don’t.
smolin9: I do.
polkingbeal67: Oh help.
Leader: By the power vested in me by intergalactic law, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now transmit a holographic image of yourself to kiss the bride.
Melinda: This is just unbelievable. Literally.
smolin9: Keep my skateboard polished till I get leave to visit Earth again! You’d better free up the channel now.
Melinda: No, you hang up! Ha ha. Literally. Keep the wormhole open!
INVESTIGATION CLOSED
2
EARTHWATCH UNCOVERED
(from the private journals of anthropologist, MMBC producer and palace adviser, nipkow4)
When studying smolin9′s wormhole reports, as an anthropologist, I was much struck with certain facts in the evolution of scientific discovery on the planet called Earth, more commonly referred to as the Pale Blue Dot. These facts seemed to me to throw light on that mystery of mysteries, the inability of human earthlings to progress in a linear fashion beyond the level of hunter-gatherer-trader goopmutts. It occurred to me, towards the end of the 13th baktun, that I could perhaps make something out of this by patiently observing and reflecting on everything that could possibly have any bearing on it.
The rise and fall of civilisations. Ascents and descents. Evidence of cyclical development all over the planet: the pyramids, the Great Sphinx, Stonehenge and the Ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia. The Aztecs, the Maya, the Incas, the ancient Greeks, the Roman Empire. The timeline of social organisation, cultures and complex technologies on the Pale Blue Dot shoots off at tangents and l
oops back around again. It’s a bewildering roller coaster of progress, transformation, stagnation and regression. It is widely believed that the early bipedal hominids on the planet discovered the use of stone tools for tasks such as digging – and promptly buried them so that no one else could have them! Staggering advances undermined by atavistic tribal regression.
From the safe distance of our advanced civilisation on Morys Minor in the constellation of Cygnus, it is tempting to view the earthlings’ plight as amusing, no, downright funny, no, absolutely hilarious, but I wanted to inject a degree of scientific objectivity to my Earthwatch project for the Morys Minor Broadcasting Corporation. With the benefit of hindsight, it was probably therefore a tad unwise to enlist the services of smolin9 and polkingbeal67. In our defence, we could not have achieved such amazing viewing figures without the idiosyncracies of the show’s presenters. And, of course, they were credited for discovering the Voyager spacecraft in the first place. How could we have overlooked them? Also, you have to put the thing into context. We were under the impression that our entire race was threatened with extinction at the end of the katun cycle. Smolin9′s investigation into the suitability of the Pale Blue Dot for colonisation may have been deeply flawed but it still represented a watershed moment for us. A mass migration to a planet riven by conflict, natural disasters and tribal strife would have been a devastating mistake. No one could deny that smolin9′s absorption into the mainstream culture of earthling life had been instructive and illuminating. Above all, it had been entertaining in an irresistible way. We had to have him.
But that was our first problem. Smolin9 had been sent on a mission to a planet in the Kolosimo 922 system and was enjoying himself selling “Why Always Me?” t-shirts to the inhabitants. Come to think of it, I have no idea how that worked out anyway. Not only did the Skolli people know nothing about the earthling sport of football, but also they have six arms, two heads and spinal columns the shape of giant rockcrawler treads. In the end, I appealed to smolin9′s sense of romance and sentimentality and his duty to his earthling wife, Melinda. Okay, that didn’t work, so I offered him a staggering three hundred shergs per appearance and he was on the next shuttle to Morys quicker than you could say Mario Balotelli.
As for polkingbeal67, well, he just leaped at the opportunity to appear as a presenter on peak-time tele-immersion. He had been working on his autobiography entitled ‘Polkingbeal67: The Ultimate Fan Book’, so the only thing holding him back was the same thing that was propelling him forwards into my clutches – his ego. I will put my hand up and admit I never gave enough thought to what polkingbeal67 brought to the table. In hindsight, believe me, there were times when I felt there was one thing I really needed from him, something only he could provide – his absence.
So there we were, the three of us, in MMBC’s central meeting pod, knee deep in reports and microwocky clips of earthling behaviour, trying to agree on the focus for the first show. I would like to report that the presenters’ contributions were constructive and fruitful, but the truth is: smolin9 was too busy practising his singing voice (I have no idea why) and compiling a list of football clichés he intended to drop into his patter, while polkingbeal67 spent most of the time persuading the make-up artist how essential it was that he should be allowed to wear his battle helmet.
“Reflections? I don’t care about reflections,” I remember him saying. “It’s got to be shiny. This helmet… this helmet is no ordinary helmet. Why, this helmet saw the great battle of Tharsis Crater on Ynonmaq Decimus. This helmet dodged ionizer blasts during the liberation of chilloks in the Fourth Intergalactic War and led the charge against General Vog in the famous defeat of the Trox army at Ybesan…”
“You weren’t actually underneath it on any of those occasions,” smolin9 pointed out. “Somebody else was wearing it.”
“That’s not the point,” said polkingbeal67, pounding the table for emphasis. Unfortunately, between his fist and the surface of the table was, well, his sherg-encrusted battle helmet. The spines punctured his skin and his face contorted with pain. “Stupid hat!” he yelled, and angrily whisked it off the table. It ended up embedded in the pod wall, quivering gently. Everyone went quiet for a moment.
“So, this Earthwatch show - are there any dance numbers?” smolin9 asked.
. . .
We moved the microwockys aside and gathered around a pile of draft scripts for the series. I thought it would be a good idea to use these as a starting point for our collaboration. As I have already mentioned, one of the concepts I was keen to get across in the series is the phenomenon whereby earthling evolution refuses to be progressive. Organisms on the Pale Blue Dot tend to adapt for survival through a process of natural selection, and yet many species do not end up perfectly suited to their environments. To some extent, this can be explained by the volatility of life on the planet. Traits that are beneficial for a particular habitat turn out to be unsuitable when the environment changes. Beset by extreme weather phenomena, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, landslides and asteroid strikes, the Pale Blue Dot has plenty to contend with, without self-inflicted behaviours such as violent conflicts, species invasions and reckless fuel and weapons generation. Throw mutation, migration and genetic drift into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for chaos. Tracking earthling evolution is like watching a clock – you expect it to be an undeviating measure of time, but it’s just hands going round and round.
Whereas we Mortians have been fortunate enough to enjoy a linear and progressive evolution, culminating in the creation of the beautiful, adaptive, intelligent creatures that we are, earthling creatures appear to have suffered the consequences of what I call ‘skewed aspiration’. In other words, they simply never make up their minds about what progress should look like. Take spiders, for example. To some of them, the best measure of progress might be the potency of a venom delivery system. To others it might be the efficiency of web-spinning glands or external digestion. Some value camouflage, others do not. Some yearn for cognitive ability, others dismiss it as pointless. They just cannot get their act together. And don’t get me started on earthling humans!
Anyway, I tried to convey this to the show’s presenters as I felt it was important they should be aware of my thinking behind the series. After a while, I began to realise I was not getting through. It’s not that smolin9 and polkingbeal67 were dismissive of the theme. Not as such. As I remember the conversation, it went something like this:
“So, you see,” I said to them. “Explaining about spiders and similar earthling species, other than humans, might be a good starting point.”
“Yeh, no,” said smolin9. “I hate spiders. The way they do that scuttling thing. I’m really scared of them.”
“You crazy prokaryote! That’s ridiculous,” polkingbeal67 scoffed, while he straightened out the spines of his battle helmet. “Your fear of spiders is probably just a deep-seated, pathological anxiety about something that occurred in your childhood. You need aversion therapy.”
“Yeh, that’s right. Aversion. I need to avoid spiders. Yuk! Every time I think of them, it gives me butterflies in the stomach.”
“Eh? Maybe it’s butterflies you should be worried about.”
“No, I’m okay with butterflies. Human earthlings are strange like that though, aren’t they? Despite the ridiculous disparity in size, they’re very nervous about little insects. All insects.”
“Irrational,” said polkingbeal67. “Is Melinda scared of insects?”
“Oh yes. Terrified. But humans are very confusing. While I think of it, there’s a story I’ve got to tell you.”
“Yes, do tell,” said polkingbeal67, yawning.
“Well, it was the first time we’d slept in the same bed. Melinda was snoring away and I noticed an insect on her bare shoulder.”
“Are you sure this is something you ought to be telling us?” I asked, seriously wondering where he was going with this.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said smolin9. “It was
n’t a spider, thank goodness. It was a butterfly. Anyway, I knew she’d be upset if she woke up and saw it there, so I sprayed half a can of insect repellent on it. It didn’t do any good at all. So I ended up wacking it a few times.”
Polkingbeal67 carefully placed the fully restored battle helmet on his head. “Interesting. Was she grateful to you?”
Smolin9 grinned a little sheepishly. “Not exactly. It was a tattoo.”
It was at this point I abandoned the theme for the first episode. “We’ll just stick to the humans then,” I said.
I knew what they both really wanted. They wanted the first episode to tell the celebrated story of how they discovered the Voyager 1 probe. The earthling spacecraft had been towed through interstellar space by goopmutt bandits travelling at superluminal speed. In an effort to conceal their crime, the goopmutts had manipulated the data on the craft’s digital tape recorder and had left it in the heliosphere where its signal could still be picked up from the Pale Blue Dot. Eventually, they had abandoned the rest of the craft in the Centaurus galaxy where smolin9 and polkingbeal67 came across it during a spacecombing trip in their Mark III Zeplock mineral spotter. It was all very fascinating, of course, but I thought it would be a distraction from the main point of the series and I was determined to resist it. I knew I would be in trouble if I failed to rein in their egos at the start of the project.
Through The Wormhole, Literally Page 5