“Then we can talk openly and honestly with one another. I, George Krinkle, want to personally welcome you to our planet if you come in peace. I have no official status but I believe I represent the thinking of the best of my species. It will be a great satisfaction if we can get to know about one another’s planets and people…uh guys.”
“I, Nerber of the planet we call Ormelex, do personally gratefully accept your kindliness welcoming. I share the hope that we can learn to do better how we make things happen by sharing some thinking about its results.”
“That’s my formal and sort of ideal world greeting,” Krinkle said. “I have to pretty quick though do a reality check and admit that many of my fellow humans aren’t open to the idea of visitors from afar. Not even from just across the nearest land border if the truth is to be told. I add that so I don’t set you up to misunderstand the true situation.”
“For to be honestly talk-talking I must say that my trip here is to record me making contact with some of your kind which will be shown to my kind. The under the working surface goal that is only supposed to be known to the few who are inside the secret plan-making programs though is that our leaders want to find out if our kind could come here and take whatever we want with your kind not able being to stop us.”
Krinkle gasped. “So you are the scout for an imminent invasion by forces hiding behind the moon!”
Nerber gestured him to stay calm. “That is for real I think the long term aim but no, there is only one ship for long through-space travel use near your planet. And that one, which brought me here, has only for the truthness the what is needed to make an entertainment show to beam home to keep the masses amused so they will stay under control. I am a visitor, not an invader. There are no weapons on Whizybeam, the ship I came on, and no way for the few on it to attack your world.”
Krinkle pointed to the mattress against the closet. “Obviously you have some powers we don’t even begin to understand that could affect us.”
“Small and local effects, yes. But stiffening your lie-on-them-to-sleeps hardly makes the few of us in your solar system instantly your masters. We are advanced enough to have detected signals from here very far from our world but not good enough for us to have correctly interpreted those. The ones who talk-talk on what they say are your news reports make it a clearness that your leaders are rushing to destroy us first, then wonder what message we maybe wanted to deliver to your kind. For to be straight out honestly talk-talking, most on Ormelex are violent and little-thinking. They will always want to kill visitors rather than learn from them.”
“Sad to say but that’s ditto for humans. The masses get scared and, being not too smart on average, panic.”
“And the masses run things by pressuring the official leaders, who then make agreeing to whatever the loudest factions are shoutening for. What it takes to stay in favor.”
“Apparently supposed leadership is sadly much the same on both our worlds.”
“So you and me, baby, we’re having unusualness because we are making friendshipness to one another, is true no?”
“Baby?”
“Is of giving the offense that? The zerpy’s build their vocabulary by analyzing the talk-talk detected in what they decipher are your for-amusing-the masses signals. They pick up bits to use that we know may be only by a few used but if the same is detected regularly it is tried for having a fit.”
“Gotcha. No offense taken but it did make me wonder where it came from. Now I know. The verbal quirks of songs played a lot on the radio or bits of dialog from TV shows aired a lot in repeats get googled into seeming importance.”
“Gloogled?”
“It’s googled and it’s nothing for you to concern yourself about. You have bigger thoughts to think. How about this one? How do you see yourself in coming here?”
Nerber frowned in a way that might mean he was having trouble understanding the silent translation of that or that he was giving it deep thought before answering. Or maybe that Ormelexians sometimes have gas pains.
“I can try to rephrase that if I’m asking it poorly.”
“My grasp is that it makes the bigness of sense to me and I am ponderance making about how to answer.”
“If I’m overstepping with that I apologize and we can forget I asked it.”
“Not a to be desired change. To the large pointed part it goes and opens for me the way to say to another what is truth-most in my innards. My bigness most wishing is to come here as an ambassador of peaceful working together for the bestness of both our planets and species. Fame and fortune at home were nice attracting to do this things and not whats I would reject if I am the winning contestant but they are only in lesser of important stuff place to making first contact between our worlds be for goodness, not for see how to use and defeat the others purposing. Makes that of any sense to be?”
“Yeah, I think I understand. I admire you - both for your good intentions and for your honesty in revealing your underlying agenda.”
Nerber indicated the loose-leaf binder. “What things are in your notes to talk about with one from another planet if you were to ever be meeting one? If you made those over a long time they should be trimmed to the topics you value as most important or interesting to know. At least-most it will of interest to me be to see how your core topics or questioning fit with mine.”
“There’s a long list but most of those are details, the things we do and you don’t and the reverse. The exact ways we each do the things we both do.”
“Give Wowseyla a pause to sort through... Okey-my-dokey, I seem to have a comprehensiveness of what you said. What are the biggies though. Is an okay to use as a word, biggies?”
“Yeah, it fits the context nicely. What are the big picture topics or questions?” He glanced over a page of his typed notes. “Three topics that may overlap to some degree are near the top of my list. First, religion. What do your kind think happens to you when you die? And what ideas do your kind have about the origin and development of the whole universe? Oh, and do you have a concept like evolution. And if so what do you personally think about that topic?” He looked up to find Nerber with his eyes closed and frowning in concentration.
“Oh, sorry. Maybe I should only ask about one topic at a time. I don’t want to overload your or the zerpy’s circuits.”
“Not a problem is it being. It does take some processing for Wowseyla to decipher some of your terms and find references among what is in the background to fill me in on your meaning and maybe understanding of the subjects.”
“Too bad you can’t surf the Internet, there’s tons of information available on there.”
“Our zerpies have been doing that since we arrived near your planet. They work fast but need direction to sort among the many, many places to find ones that are worth making some reliableness in. Excuse my language but there is muchness of crilmentzee on there so becoming misguided is too much easy.”
“Agreed. Take your time. A pondered reply will always be more satisfactory because better thought through. I’ve thought about my questions for years now.”
* * *
Penelope Regimentator was always determined but never more so than when she had actual evidence to support her suspicions that she was close to a pay-off. The combination of Krinkle’s weird outfit, the way he acted sneaky and suspicious at that park, and the way he must be going to a lot of trouble to keep her from finding him all pointed to him keeping company with a creature she could make big money selling photos of.
This brought her back to the area around the motel to continue her search for Krinkle and his secret buddy.
Maybe it was the high-test coffee she had consumed or the change in the light as an area of dark clouds rapidly approached, or that she was jostled by a pothole that only looked obvious after she drove over it but there was Krinkle’s car off to the side. She concluded that he parked it there away from the building just to confuse and annoy her but she always assumed she was the center of everyone el
se’s universe.
She stopped beside his car and got out. It was rapidly getting dark and the wind was picking up. There would soon be a storm so she wanted her car only a step away.
Finding his car doors locked as made sense, she looked in the passenger side windows to see what might give her clues about his recent activities and anything worth knowing about for the future.
The two cartons on the back seat were of interest.
She moved to where she could see those better. “Those boxes are still in the back. Foreign origin detection device and jammer. He must have a lousy memory if he needs to write the names of things on them. No way to know what either one does if it really does anything for real.”
She went around the front of the car to look at things from the driver’s side. She pressed her face close to the back window on that side. “The foreign detection thing seems to be on anyway. No way to know about what he calls the jammer. The dial on the detector thing moves around a bit so there must be a battery in it. It seems to give a higher reading when I get in close and to react less when I step back. No way to know what that means but it’s probably not a car alarm system since I’m close and even tried all four doors and no siren went off. Maybe it’d be good if one did ‘cause that might bring him out into the open to see what’s going on and I’d have him. Would I stand outside and argue with him or slip inside behind his back and lock him out until I had lots of good pictures of whatever the alien thing is? Best to decide that on the run. The best advice I ever gave myself was, ‘Always stay ready to take advantage of anyone at anytime’.”
Suddenly she took two steps back and reached up to rub her face where it had been against the car window. But she stopped that move before her hand touched her face. She hurriedly fumbled a tissue from a packet from her pocket and rubbed her face vigorously with it. “Maybe that thing’s some kind of a radiation or infection detection system. Maybe the wiggle of the dial means getting close contaminates you. I might be dealing with an alien monster as well as a hopeless dweeb so I had better not take any chances.” She threw the tissue on the ground – then stepped on it since she wasn’t looking at her feet and it stuck to the sole of her shoe.
That interruption, plus a few scattered big drops of rain hitting the cars, prompted her to look around.
What she was glad to notice while they were still at a distance even if looking this way were too men, a big one and a small one, walking slowly by the motel looking everything over. “Car thief alert,” she muttered to herself. “Type cast and conspicuous as can be. And not to be messed with if it’s possible to avoid them. Hell, are those the ones from that pickup truck coming looking to give me more trouble? Can’t be sure but that’s even more reason not to tangle in close with them.”
She ran around and jumped into her car as the whole area was suddenly engulfed in a torrent of rain. It came fast, it came down hard, and it made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.
So she sat and waited. And noticed the tissue stuck to the bottom of her shoe but now sodden from the rain. She used a pencil from down between the front seats to remove that but couldn’t figure out what to do with it once it was removed.
* * *
Inside the motel room the conversation had stopped as Nerber’s fears soared at the sudden strange noise outside.
“Let me check but that just sounds like a rain storm. It’s nothing for you to be afraid of,” Krinkle said as he hurried over and peeked out between the drapes without opening them. He waved Nerber over to take a look, still careful not to let themselves be seen from outside.
That was general prudence and at this moment special prudence since the two men Regimentator had spotted stood nearby on the covered walkway outside the rooms just out of easy view from this window. They were looking out, watching the rain come down so they didn’t see the slight movement of the drapes of room fourteen. Whether they would have noticed if those drapes were opened fully while they were nearby we will never know.
“That is water that falls from out of nowhere?”
“It’s water but we understand how it cycles. It evaporates at some spots and travels in the air as single molecules. At some other spot because the air gets cooler those single molecules come together and form drops that are too heavy to stay in the air so they come down as rain like that. It’s not usually as heavy as that but a storm like this will move on and be over soon. Then the evaporation part begins again. Don’t you have rain on Ormelex?”
“Truly we do not. At least not that they tell us about. Certainly not at our cities where I would have seen it.”
“See, its slackening off already. It’ll stop raining here in only a few minutes. Storms can be like that. Start fast and end fast.” Krinkle went back to his chair. Krinkle somewhat reluctantly went back to his.
“You were saying you find the idea of evolution as I’ve explained the theory to you preposterous.”
“It has no fitting in with our other official ideas.”
“But you’ve explained that your kind have no concept of gods or other powers to account for creation.”
“This is why we call us conservatory. We administer to us what you say should be called as drugs to make happen that they dumb us down so we get not bothered by questions that do not be straight out explained by themselves. That is the conservatory principle of my kind. We proudly of ourselves for that are.”
“It’s fascinating how different groups face the same questions and come up with different answers. Are you willing to talk about some more topics?
“I am for proposing the next ones if okay is.”
“That’s fine. Give and take is a great way to proceed.”
“What are the things that are all around and seem to be having like they are a little alive but do not move?”
“They’re called plants. They are full life forms but they do things very differently than animals like my species are.”
“So they eat things?”
“No, they get their energy from light or from certain chemical reactions. The rest of us are totally dependent on them. All the animals must eat plants to get the energy we need to function since we can’t get it from non-living sources. Ours is a ‘plants make food, plants become food’ system. That brings me to a major question – what do you eat?”
“We sit in the light... Oh. We sit in the sun and feel us filled up with energy. This...”
“That must mean you’re photosynthetic like the plants on our planet. Except that they’re mostly green because the most common chemical processes for them to do that involve materials that appear green to us. You’re not green so you must use a different process.”
“What looks like what your kind call green? I may know but should verify.”
Krinkle thought for a moment, looking around the room, then realized that the answer was at his finger tips. He pointed to areas of several shades of green on his motley clothing. “Here, here, here. Those are different shades of green. Some are...”
Nerber nodded his head slowly. “We are green. We maybe do the stuff you said.”
Krinkle let his doubts show as he gestured toward Nerber’s head, feet, and hands, his only exposed skin parts.
The alien gestured to give him a minute and unbuttoned his shirt front several buttons so his torso showed. It was green. “I took a special pill to change me so I might not seem so strange.” He quickly buttoned the shirt again. “The drug only works on skin that the light is seeing. If more of me is seen by light I will use the effect too fast and I do not have more pills. They are nastily yuck to take. I did it to be a winner in The Far-Out Show contest but not with eagerness.”
“Okay. So some of the same features can appear in very different living types in different places. That’s amazing and yet, by our ideas about evolution, not impossible to believe.”
He glanced over at the TV that was on with the sound muted. There was a news update so he apologetically drew Nerber’s attention to that and tur
ned on the sound.
Beth Regards was on the screen saying, “The president is quoted as saying that organized chaos is better than the regular kind so the states are okay to search out and deal with any alien invaders any way they choose. The National Guard will be called up to assist the Army in setting up check points on all major highways. That will take a few days but everyone is urged by the governor to stay in their homes with their doors locked and think nice thoughts and everything will be fine. The sanitation department will patrol the street in special dump trucks to remove any dead bodies left outside without a lot of questions. Have a nice day and if you’re still alive in an hour tune in for our latest undated unchanged news report.”
Krinkle muted the set with the remote. “Can your producers transport you back to your ship to get you out of your real and present although not immediate danger?”
“They should be possible to do that but as you heard Wilburps report, my contacts with them are not to be believed as reliable. Truly to tell, they may even prefer to have me killed since I am not obedient like they want. But only if Wilburps can record that in the happening at that moment. Then they will completely destroy my body or suddenly, muchness of surprises, find they can transport it back to Whizybeam after all. The lastness line of the page is not to leave my body or its parts to be examininged by your scientists. That is on orders from our governors who do not want your kind to learn enough to make better your defenses if we ever return.”
“So you do think others from his planet will be coming?”
“At the start-most time that was a maybe plan. But now is not a likeliness though. Now we are being in the knowing that our ideas about life here were wrong so this is not a place of further interest to our kind. Probably.”
“I understand your ultimate disclaimer.”
“For me the hugeness of a question is how much is the likeliness that I can stay here undetected and share ideas in peace?”
“It may be possible but only after the short-term scare is over. And I can’t offer guarantees either.”
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