The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  And it took me no time at all to figure out how, because a girl, a young woman who had been sitting at one of the tables, stood up and started to walk in our direction.

  "It would definitely be amusing, Mr. Parker," I said, "if that young woman coming towards us were to stop and ask me if she could meet up with me this evening. Don't misunderstand me, nothing untoward involved, just meet. How about that?"

  He smiled at this, nodded briefly. And the girl looked great. Not beautiful, but attractive, very pretty face surrounded by shoulder length dark brown hair, dressed in a stylish short white coat and, boy, what legs, the kind of legs we men always say we would die for—which we wouldn't, of course, we would look for another pair—but certainly the kind of legs which start you thinking about what you would do like to do with them, and, as far as one could tell, the rest of her figure was great as well. Ah, and what do we mean by that? We mean a flat stomach, a nice ass, not too big, not too small, and of course great breasts, also not too big and not too small, and preferably nicely round-shaped and firm. Most women don't appreciate this kind of thinking at all. They don't wish to be viewed as sex objects—except, needless to say, those who have no chance of ever being viewed as sex objects—but they can't change it and there's nothing they can do about it, and it's just the way things are, tough luck. Nor can we men change it either, but then nor do we want to, there is no tough luck for us, no sir, not at all.

  When I refer to 'we men', I am of course referring only to men such as myself. I agree that there are other kinds, including homosexuals.

  As she approached us, she suddenly looked up at me, her face broke into a huge wide smile—incredibly white teeth as well, another turn-on—and she said, "Hi, great to see you again. How are things?"

  "Uh…hi…do we know each other? I'm terribly sorry… but I don't seem to recall…"

  "Oh that's understandable, "she replied, "we were in a group of people and it was only for a short while. My name is Caroline. But I'm glad we've met again, there is something you could maybe help me on. Might we perhaps meet for a coffee or something? I don't suppose today would be possible, would it, sometime this evening?"

  Well, by chance it would be possible, I told her. I gave her the hotel phone number and my name and my room number and suggested we meet in the lobby at 8 o'clock, maybe have dinner if she had the time. That's fantastic, she said, what a piece of luck, I look forward to it tremendously, and with a gay smile and a wave to both me and Jeremy, off she went. And I watched the legs as she went. Oh man, oh man.

  Yes, and I reserve the right to describe her smile as 'gay'. I choose to ignore those of a certain sexual inclination who have purloined the word and twisted its meaning into something else, presumably because they don't like the perfectly lucid and accurate word 'homosexual', which is nevertheless what they are.

  "I would be grateful," said Jeremy, "if, although presumably against your inclination, we could go back to my office and finalize our conversation, one way or the other. Whichever way it turns out to be. I shouldn't think it will take more than another 10 minutes or so."

  You can imagine, I dare say, the state I was in. First of all, it was a concrete fact that I was in the presence of a deranged person suffering from mind-blowing delusions. Mind-blowing ones. Perhaps it was Jeremy Parker himself, escaped from his mental institution. And at the same time, it would also appear to be a concrete fact that he was in possession of some extraordinary powers, telepathic powers, with the ability of being able to steer others into performing certain actions and saying certain things. An amazing state-of-the-art hypnotist perhaps. And a person with those kinds of powers had to be a dangerous person, a very dangerous person indeed. I didn't even want to think about what events such a person could trigger if he felt like it, wandering around as he was on the loose.

  It was clear to me that I should really report him to both the police and the appropriate health authorities as soon as I possibly could. Like now. But at the same time, what could I tell them? That he says he is an extraterrestrial and that he can make people do things? And if he denies the former and refuses to demonstrate the latter, and states that he is a normal, law-abiding citizen and a respected businessman to boot and can prove both, what then? Perhaps I would be the one to be taken into custody, or worse, perhaps he could even sue me for slander. Or, God or Allah forbid, perhaps he could even make me do and say things which could get me into very serious trouble. If he were able to, of course. Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, my brain was still attempting to arrive at a conclusion as to whether or not it had factually experienced what it had.

  Confused is a poor word to describe my feelings. I am not your jittery type of person, but I was, no arguing, feeling jittery. Disordered. But I decided I wouldn't mind asking him a couple of additional questions before I cleared off, never to return, never again, no way thank you very much. Fun is fun, but enough is also enough. And so I followed him back to the office, back to the meeting room, sat down, declined his offer of a drink and looked him straight in the eye.

  He pulled unnecessarily at his shirt cuffs. He tugged on his cufflinks. They were expensive ones, no doubt about it. He was nervous. Wondering whether I was convinced enough—or greedy enough—to continue being an actor in his fantasy theater.

  "As you now know and hopefully accept," he said, "I can cause certain things to happen. Only with people, their brains. I could not, for example, cause this building to fall down, or have a bottle of water fly over from that corner table. No physical objects, no material, no matter. But I can influence the brain's electrical impulses. I can use Jeremy’s small inheritance and have a bank manager authorize me a small amount of credit. I can influence the owner of a small loss-making company to sell it to me for very little in return for me taking over the company's crippling debt burden. I can meet with potential customers and have them order from me instead of from my competitors. And, having expanded my company and made it extremely profitable, I can buy other companies and create a strong business group whose stability is reinforced by the fact that it operates in a variety of different manufacturing and financial sectors. Diversity, you understand. More than one leg to stand on."

  He ran his hands through his short blond hair. Tugged on his cufflinks again. Gave me a querying look. Received a blank stare in return.

  "Nobody was hurt," he continued. "I repaid the bank loan. I saved the business owner from bankruptcy. And my customers buy products and services which are as good as, and frequently better than, those they could obtain elsewhere - and, more often than not, cheaper. In addition, they can change their supplier whenever they want to, and some have done just that, I undertake nothing to forcibly retain them. And I personally receive more money than I need. Salary, bonuses, expenses, stock options, dividends, and so on. And I use it all freely for my research purposes, in addition to providing my physical self with a pleasing standard of living while enjoying the hospitality of your planet. Hopefully this answers most of the remaining open questions we had?"

  "Interesting, Mr. Parker, and understood," I said, "but if you don't mind, I have a couple of additional questions. For example, why are you studying this particular planet?"

  "No problem. I simply form part of a student group which will eventually join the bureau responsible for monitoring life forms throughout the universe. In order to complete our doctorate studies, we are required to choose a current life form and write a thesis about it. I just happen to have chosen yours—for no particular reason. I could have chosen somewhere else."

  "O.K. Next question, can you read our minds? Can you read my mind?"

  "Ah, another unavoidable question! No, I can't do that, Mr. O'Donoghue. Furthermore, I would consider it highly undesirable were such a thing to be possible, and presumably you would also." Another chuckle.

  "But you could make me say and do things against my will, is that right?"

  "Yes, that is right, I could. But I wouldn't. First of all, we would never man
ipulate the minds of research interviewees; that would be counterproductive and self-defeating. Secondly, we are in any case not allowed to; it would be contrary to our university code of ethics. And thirdly, our particular species is a benevolent one, as you would naturally expect of an intelligent species—as opposed to one like yours—and any use we make of this capability with regard to third parties is always harmless. May only be harmless in fact, not that, by our very nature, we would be otherwise inclined. So on that front, you need have no fears at all for yourself personally, nor indeed for anybody else."

  "But back to the girl I spoke to just now, down in the street, I've been thinking about it. She knew me, she recognized me, so there was no input from you, was there? It was just a coincidence. In fact, the more I think about it, it could also have been a coincidence that that waiter dropped his tray."

  "Some coincidences," he replied, "don't you think? No…with regard to that young lady, I merely thought up a scenario as to why she might want to meet you this evening, or rather why she would think she might want to meet you. And I hacked into her mind and placed the thoughts."

  "Just like that? No work involved? Were you born with this ability?"

  "Not really, but it is something we learn when very young. The result of technical advances made during our evolution. It is a simple technology, one which your species will fully acquire in the not too distant future. In fact, you have already started. There are documented cases of certain doctors healing patients by means of hypnosis. You have hypnotists who can do other things, including on stage. And the next step for you is to learn how to communicate with each other without the need to use either speech or the written form."

  Now that did send a small shiver up my spine. Or down it, I am never sure in which direction the shiver is supposed to go. Because I happen to know by chance that we have recently started to do things like that. Using magnetic resonance tomography, for example.

  "During my research into this field, I came across a neurology professor in Canada," Jeremy said, "who has recently commenced communicating with a traffic-accident patient who has been in a coma for over a decade, albeit awake. The patient is placed in a kind of brain activity scanner and is asked questions such as 'are you in pain?' and the scanner reads the resulting brain activity and determines the yes or no answer. That is a first step," continued Jeremy. "It can only work if the patient's reticular activating system is still working of course, but that appears to be so in this case."

  "And", he continued, "I also see that you have made initial advances at universities around the world. In the USA, I have read with interest of the work going on at Harvard's Laboratory of Neuromodulation and the research at Washington University, among others. I have read that the latter has two neuron research experts, Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco, who have been able to send magnetic impulse commands from Rao's brain to Stocco's, by means of computer-connected headsets and using the Internet. I understand that an early experiment allowed Rao to cause one of Stocco's fingers to move. Without words, you understand."

  "Did you say the Internet, Mr. Parker? That sounds a little far-fetched if I may say so."

  "You may indeed say so. But your brains are capable of far more than the Internet. I notice that your World Wide Web currently has about 20 billion websites which are connected by about a trillion links. Your brain tissue, however, contains nearly 100 billion neurons, connected by about 100 trillion synapses. Not bad when you consider that it weighs only 1.4 kilograms on average. And you have roughly 90 billion glial cells which, by the way, are the non-neuronal cells providing a support function to the neurons and certain of the neurons' activities. Human brains, the intelligent ones I should say, are capable of far more than the Internet. Just imagine the potential."

  I was certainly imagining all sorts of things. But it all sounded too theoretical to me. The world is littered with brilliant hypotheses which have never made it. On the other hand, it has to be said, the world is littered with a few brilliant hypotheses which have made it.

  “Also of interest to me,” continued Jeremy, “was the alternative approach being pursued by your Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology in Holland. They have reliably achieved the teleportation of quantum information (the ‘spin state’ of electrons in this instance) from one place to another without actually moving the physical matter to which the information is attached. They have done this repeatedly over a distance of three meters with a 100% success rate. This has solved the problems encountered by your University of Maryland a few years ago, in which only one of every 100 million attempts succeeded.

  “It certainly sounds fascinating, Mr. Parker, but……”

  “Allow me if you will, Mr. O’Donoghue, just to summarize. In Delft, they are now testing at a distance of more than a kilometer. And if they succeed at that, they will have obtained an answer to the Irish physicist John Bell’s 1964 theorem, which raised the query as to whether particles connected via quantum entanglement can communicate information; and not only that, but faster than the speed of light. That is all I have to say at the moment, Mr. Parker. You have started on the path and you will one day achieve the ability my species already possesses, assuming of course that you survive long enough. And whether you choose to call it hypnosis, telepathy, thought transfer, or teleportation doesn’t really matter.”

  "Uh huh, well maybe. But it all sounds very futuristic to me, Mr. Parker. Nevertheless, and be that as it may, it seems that I do owe you some thanks. It certainly looks as if I have the chance of an agreeable evening ahead of me. And, if you will allow, I have a final, last question on another subject. I am an interviewee of yours. Why me? And have you any others, have you paid money to other people as well? And based on what criteria do you select them?"

  "I must admit, Mr. O’Donoghue, that I was wondering whether you would ask this question as well. The search for interviewees has indeed been very haphazard, for two major reasons. First of all, I am not in a position to be able to judge in advance if a person is in possession of the necessary intelligence and necessary knowledge which, needless to say, only genes and an education of a certain level can provide. I have consequently been obliged to talk to many people, nearly all of whom were inadequate for my purposes, and a few were simply not interested. Not unexpected of course. But there were side-benefits to the search in that I was able to increase my insight into the wide deviations in your species' individual intelligence and knowledge levels."

  He looked at me again. I looked back at him again.

  "I then abandoned the ad hoc search idea” he said, “and applied specific research criteria to determine which candidates would merit a contact. The criteria used are individual to each case and of little interest to you as you would not understand them anyway. There have been five people who appeared to meet the necessary standards up to this point. Three of those agreed to a meeting with me but didn't appear, presumably judging me to be a fraudster or a lunatic, or both. A fourth person, a young lady, did turn up for our meeting and received her €100,000 in the same way as you have received yours. But that was the last I saw of her. She didn't appear for the next meeting as planned and I haven't heard from her since. I presume she arrived at the same conclusion as the other three, perhaps also concluding that the situation was not without risk, perhaps even a potentially dangerous risk of the kind specific to young females on your planet. And that this risk outweighed the slight possibility, as she probably evaluated it, of receiving a further €400,000."

  Understandable. Weigh the size of the risks and compare to the potential benefits, see which way the scales fall, and take a decision. As I am doing right now.

  "And the fifth person," he continued, "is yourself, Mr. O'Donoghue. I need only one interviewee for the purposes of this project and I would be delighted if it turns out to be you, you seem to fit the bill very well. Nevertheless, I appreciate that may turn out not to be the case. In which event, I shall simply have to continue with th
e process until I am successful. Which I will be, eventually, a mathematical certainty."

  Maybe, maybe, I wasn't going to argue the point. But it was more likely a probability rather than a certainty. I am no laggard in mathematics, including probability mathematics, and I considered this exercise of his to be compatible with the mathematical rules governing the vehicle registration numbers' game. If you take the last two digits of vehicle registrations, you obviously have a hundred possibilities, from 00 to 99. And if you are driving your car or walking down the road and if you note these two digits from 20 consecutive vehicles, you are going to find that two of them are the same. From a sample of only 20 vehicles, mark you. But although this works ten times out of ten on many occasions, it works on average only nine times out of ten, and is therefore a mathematical probability rather than a certainty. Even so, if you bet on this a few times with a friend, it's an easy way to earn yourself some money or a few drinks.

  But…as I have said, I wasn't going to argue the point with him, I wish him well, he'll have to find it out for himself and without my cooperation, I won't be around.

  "A final minor point," I said, "which has just come to mind. Totally unimportant and definitely my epilogue question of the day. Why do you only have a mobile 'phone number on your business card? That is unusual and not particularly professional, wouldn't you agree?"