Yngve, AR - Alien Beach

by Alien Beach (lit)

  "But you can try to."

  She nodded theatrically, imitating human manners. She explained that Tmmtenaa was a former criminal of sorts. Like most of his comrades, he had been born on the homeworld. When others replayed his recorded dreams they discovered that he was disturbed; he was planning to destroy and kill. So they waited until he made the attempt, stopped him, and decided to change his brain, take away the parts of it that made him want to kill. Tmmtenaa remained altered as he grew older; he would be childlike and naive for the rest of his bodily life.

  Her explanation might have come uncomfortably, but she showed no distress - she once cast a glance at the sitting Tmmtenaa, without blinking or lowering her voice. How obvious, Takeru thought. In a perfect society where thoughts can be recorded, where do all the killers and maniacs go?

  He asked Namonnae how the other Sirians had reacted to the Sirian impersonator in New York. Her answer: they had registered a living being in the suit, but weren't certain whether the suit was a part of the being; only later had they learned about the animatronic disguises. Another obvious thing, Takeru realized - beings who never wear clothes get confused about the distinction between apparent skin and actual skin.

  "But why would you bring along Tmmtenaa on a long and dangerous journey to another world? How many of you are there, out in the mothership?"

  "Lesss thaan ffour hunndred peeople... sleepinnng."

  "Why haven't you told us how many you were before?"

  Namonnae said nothing, climbed down the sloping trunk, and set her feet on the ground a few meters from Takeru.

  "Becausse itt iiis... diffiiicult too knnow whhen yoou are prrepaared ffor nnew iinforrmatioon. I muust thinnk ssmall thenn... liike yyou thinnk..."

  In spite of the warm, humid air, Takeru felt himself blush. And he knew it didn't matter how he reacted, because Namonnae would see it as proof of her superiority.

  He clenched his fists and walked away without a word.

  Chapter Eighteen

  "Yesterday's worldwide broadcast from the Sirians came with almost no advance warning; it was broadcast without agreement from the United Nations or the U.S. government.

  "The broadcast lasted about one hour, during which the same message was repeated three times. This show of strength stunned many, but the message was one of reconciliation - a formal apology from the Sirian Tmmtenaa who survived the assassination attempt in New York. The Sirian plea for peace and reason was welcomed by many world leaders, including the U.S. President; the governments of Saudi Arabia and Iran declined to give any official comment.

  "This just in... the management of this network has decided that CNN will set aside funds for public information on the Sirian visitors, in order to promote a spirit of trust and cultural exchange between humans and extraterrestrials in the future.

  "Next: 'Fashion goes to space.' Crimson coveralls and gray bodystockings are hot... after this."

  The cult was changing rapidly, yet predictably - and the soldier tried to conceal his growing fear to the other cult members. Discipline was slacking considerably - the overseers were getting so careless, he could easily herd food for himself and avoid unpleasant orders. But at the same time, the members were becoming so fanatical that the overseers were scarcely needed. The bald-shaven cultists dyed their red robes black like their leader had done. His every whim and minutest utterances were closely observed and obeyed.

  And the orgies began.

  The soldier hid himself from the tents where the orgies occurred, but sound traveled far in this part of the world. Throughout the day and into the night he could hear the manic group chanting, the insane wails and rants of the leader and his flock, the excess of drink and debauchery that merely underlined how lost they were.

  The cult's once so hypnotic cheerfulness and solemnity was gone, replaced by the exhilaration of imminent doom. The soldier kept planning in his head how to snatch Patty with him, away from the island, but every scenario stumbled on one fact: she had no wish to leave. Ever since the assassination attempt on the Sirian, Patty spent all her time following Tanii - whenever the fat, but increasingly hollow-eyed leader opened his mouth, Patty replied "Yes!" or "Our father!" with an illuminated gleam in her eyes.

  If the soldier had dared to outright kidnap Patty, she would have the cult lynch him. He had to wait, stay sober and out of the worst, until the others were too crazed or dazed to resist. Or he could kill the leader and run; the idea didn't make him happy. A vision from the aliens would have been a great comfort, had it come to him - all he had now were just ordinary nightmares and a daily existence like lifted from a bad dream.

  DAY 93

  Carl read his transcript of Ranmotanii's taped monologue, over and over again. It was easier to grasp the words this way, than in the awkward diction of the Sirian himself. He recalled the beach, the signs they drew in the white, wet sand, and Ranmotanii's words:

  I want to show you, Carl... like a joke? We will laugh? Because now my people has learned more how your people think. Like so... your people draw lines and points in the sand. And like so, you believe all the world is like lines and points in sand. You call it "symbols". Then but! My people begin their living in water. We see and know and hear and talk through water. The world is like so... we are in water all time. We should laugh?

  When we live the first years as living things, then the water is to us... like the air is to your kind. Like so we learn to think, we talk a water-language. We talk sound-signals that give us positions, like your dolphins - not positions like drawn in sand! Positions from one human to another, from one real thing to another. The water is only... something that hides the real things from us.

  Many periods time go, thousands of years. Then but! My people finally learn that the air above the water, and the space above the air, are the same type of real. We learn and then know always... then that there is no point. No line. No space... No time. No life. No thought. No symbols. We should laugh? Not real... only the things are real, the small things you call elementary particles, or energy, or the smallest measurable distances. But funny! We living things are not real like the smallest things that make us, but we think and breathe unlike smallest things. So we can influence... good word... influence real things. Or become more like the real things, but not be dead things. Not dead, but real!

  Years before this, I saw a television transmission from your planet. And in that, a land-human said: "There are things man was never meant to know." It took me a long period to understand the meaning of this he said. Until this now. My young relative Namonnae understood this before I could. There is so much I want to say, but that is too early to say, and your language is too small, too young to describe. When, you can choose that, maybe your kind learns to think like my kind. The mind-recorders we gave to you are a start... one small step for a man, but a giant leap for mankind... like so a land-human said.

  Though he hadn't written down his taped response to that, Carl painfully remembered his every word, once there were no others within hearing distance:

  I do want to learn to think more like a Sirian, if it helps me understand more, understand better. But I am old! I will die soon, too soon. Is there... if you could... make my life last longer, then -

  Carl had hid his face in his hands, ashamed to show his inner turmoil. The humiliation, the desperation was too much; he had almost begged the aliens to give him longevity. Ranmotanii's reply had been sad:

  I can see you are not well healthy. Our machines have learned to read your bodies now. I saw you have been much sick, almost dead. And will be maybe similarly sick soon. You want to live a longer period of time than others.

  Carl had tried to defend himself:

  No... please... not that. Not just for me. I want all land-humans to live longer. We need it, we need more time to learn a better life. Our time of living is too short, shorter than yours.

  And Ranmotanii's last comment, before he had retreated to the Sirians' huge underwater vessel:

  Great mu
ch shorter.

  Carl reflected, as he lay on his cot with his personal computer in his lap, facing the transcript on the screen: Perhaps there will be no outcome of this visit at all. Perhaps all my dreams of alien contact were just delusions, confused religious yearnings like Lazar calls it. Then all the real visit could do, was to destroy those delusions. Leaving humanity with...

  But if they cannot dream themselves away from reality, how do they cope with their own inevitable deaths? What can they have to live for?

  He got up, and looked at his small quarters. On the wall hung photos of his wife, friends, and children. A printout of an e-mail note from his oldest son was pinned to the wall. Carl read:

  I'm proud of you. You are the bravest, finest person I know. We are all counting on you to make this year the one when mankind finally got out of its 100,000-year childhood. I love my father.

  Designing space probes and watching the stars had never seemed all that important to his kids before... not like this was. Carl had grown aware recently that the team members were impatient with him. They were demanding better response and support from the outside world. Yet, like him, they were also afraid to show the world their amazing discoveries. A part of him was hoping that public interest would start to fade. In the following months, maybe the Sirian visitors would become yesterday's sensation? Ordinary people had a remarkable ability to adjust themselves to change.

  And then, not sooner, would the ECT team step down from the proverbial mountain and reveal a whole new outlook on reality to mankind... and nothing would ever be the same again.

  "I hope you'll still love me after I've screwed up your entire world," Carl said to the photos on the wall, and touched them. He typed down in his computer what he had to tell the group - and eventually, the world:

  We must go on, or be destroyed by our own fear - by the doubt that has beset every discoverer who ever ventured into the unknown. Not the fear of being wrong - but the fear of falling, without a foothold for the mind. Take that step, and you will fall for a short while - until you find a new foothold. Because you must. Refuse to fall, and you will become less than scientists, less than human - just grunting animals who are afraid of the dark.

  Like it happened to Bruno Heinzhof. The last thing Carl had heard of him, was that Bruno had retreated into a small room and refused to leave it, ever.

  Carl thought about his son's respect and love. He put the silvery helmet-like device on his head and found the knob that activated it.

  The device squeezed tight -

  DAY 95

  Early in the morning, air cold and rank, the soldier sneaked out of his nightly hideout and went to see if Patty was all right. Last night's orgies had sounded nastier than usual; the chants had been harrowing, and a ghastly scream had pierced the air.

  Why don't the local authorities raid the place? he thought. Rumor was circulating, that rich financial backers - some of them now loyal cult members - were providing legal protection against police inquiries. Or, the soldier glumly reflected, maybe just nobody gave a damn about a bunch of bald, skinny rejects on a remote Pacific island - he felt at his scalp, where his hair was just starting to grow back. If the cult members let their hair grow back, they would soon regain a bit of individuality...

  The soldier tripped on some junk and fell into the dirt - the open place at the outdoor stage was a mess after last night. If not for the loud snoring of a couple of cultists who lay unconscious at a corner of the stage, surrounded by beer cans and bottles, the silence would have been eerie. The soldier got up and peered down at the thing he had stumbled upon. His sandal-clad foot was smeared with blood - he swore, believing that he must have cut himself when he tripped. Then he saw the thing in the dirt, from which the red smear had come.

  A white, round object, about the size of his head.

  A severed human head, dirtied with sand and blood, stared up at him with glazed dead eyes. The soldier gave out a short scream, and bolted away from the open place. Flashbacks from the war rushed through his fevered mind - enemy soldiers being cut in half by gunfire, body parts lying scattered around blast craters, a blinded man screaming for help as he ran without seeing. The soldier had tried not to remember, tried to forget with booze, pills, flippancy, and cynicism.

  Stumbling, running, crying, the soldier shouted at the indifferent morning sky: "Aliens, you! Why didn't you warn me! I never wanted to join an army again, never join a bunch of butchers again ... I hated the war, I hated the killing... and I went and joined this atrocity they call a church! I don't deserve any of your visions... just kill me now and put an end to the madness! F***ing high-and-mighty bastards..."

  He stopped and leaned against a tree, holding his chest and forcing his heart to pound slower. It wasn't Patty's head in the sand, he told himself. It wasn't her this time.

  The sky, at least above this small island, remained indifferent.

  DAY 102

  Lazar and Carl had been discussing the question with a few colleagues, in the presence of Oanorrn, who had graciously offered his advice in spite of his weak health. They were sitting under the stars, while a soft breeze fluttered in their light clothes. A small campfire provided just enough illumination for Carl's group to see each other's faces.

  Carl concluded: "So you mean, Oanorrn, that all beings of the same species can replay each other's dreams and thoughts with no physical harm."

  "Yes."

  "And your people do this whenever you feel it to be necessary, but never against your will."

  "Yes."

  "And when you gave us these devices, you assumed we would like to use them for our own good, instead of relying on our own more primitive devices."

  "Yes."

  Carl was about to reproach his colleagues, but he changed his mind. Better to act. He stood up and held out his Sirian thought-recorder for the group to see. The device, small enough to fit into his two hands, glistened in strange rainbow patterns, as if the metal surface was a soap-bubble. The pseudo-living cells of the machine were restless, waiting for the next command. Carl swallowed, and gave the other scientists an unflinching blank stare.

  "Here are my recorded dreams of the last two weeks. I want you to share some of them with me."

  The others sat dead silent around him, barely breathing: Stone Pound, Mats Jonsson, Takeru Otomo, Andrea McClintock, Lazar Mahfouz, Bishop Edmund Soto and Oanorrn. Only Lazar and Oanorrn seemed less than tense. A minute passed. Carl did not move; neither did the others.

  Lazar stirred, somewhat disappointed: "I'll do it then."

  "Wait," Andrea said, her voice rasping. "Let me."

  The British biologist, a heavyset woman of fifty-eight with eyeglasses and a permanently pinched expression, stood up unsteadily and reached for the device. With slightly trembling hands, she fitted it over her head; it became softer, molding itself after the shape of her skull. With gestures, Oanorrn showed her how to activate it. The device gave out a sound signal. Andrea shut her eyes hard - not that it would have made any difference. The sudden input from the device completely overrode her normal senses. Carl gasped, seeing Andrea's expression change when his sleeping thoughts and emotions invaded her mind - her otherwise tight-lipped mouth opened wide in astonishment, her face became childlike, vulnerable. She mumbled to herself, as if in her sleep...

  "Oh, Carl, I'm so sorry I doubted you... I didn't understand I was being so wrapped up in myself and my petty little neuroses... I love you too... your family is so lovely, I wish I had one like you... ha ha... what a rude joke... you silly boy!...

  "What? What's that? No! Mr. President, you must not attack the Sirians... stop the missiles, stop them... help! "

  Her stubby fingers fumbled blindly for the control knob; Carl stepped forward and turned the device off for her. Andrea opened her wet eyes and gasped for air, then became fully aware that the dream had been cut off. She spontaneously clasped Carl's hand as he removed the device from her head.

  "I-I can't... express... so many thought
s... so much like me, yet... It was like being you... I thought I was the only one who... I'll never feel... alone again."

  Both grinned spontaneously at each other; both experienced the sensation of being close, like having become twins; this was way more intimate than sex could ever be, yet totally different. Carl thought of his wife back home in the States, and prayed she would forgive him for sharing thoughts with another woman - and perhaps, in time they would be able to share the device too.

  "You're very brave, Andrea. Now you have a little piece of me in you - a piece of my thoughts remembered. I trust you with it; and I trust any of you who might come across that memory from her thoughts."

  Andrea stroked her sore scalp.

  "I was afraid it was going to hurt," she confessed to the group, "but it really doesn't feel that bad. Heh... once when I was a young student I dropped acid and thought I could read other people's minds. Hippie bollocks! This is much better - much more terrifying too..."

  Andrea looked Carl in the eyes; they both saw they were thinking of the same element in Carl's dreams. The image of the U.S. President, helpless to stop an attack on Alien Beach. Images of military aircraft, ballistic missiles, and the blinding flash of an explosion...

  "Just a dream, Andrea. Not reality."

  Oanorrn smiled at them. "Wwhen thiis ttechnnolooogy wass innventedd, iit chhanged mmy peoplle greeat mmuch. During manyy yyears' time, wee chaanged. Thhat waas beffore thee tiime off thhe rreal Annncestorrs..."

  Then suddenly the wrinkled old alien seemed self-conscious, and excused himself. They all bid him goodnight, and he wandered slowly off to a waiting transport-robot shaped like a huge metal egg.

  "Who's next?" Carl asked.

  Takeru rose to his feet almost before the question had been finished, but faced away from Carl and remained mute. He could not bear revealing his betrayal of his colleagues' trust. I have failed as a scientist, he thought. I wish I were dead. Carl became curious, but assumed Takeru was simply afraid of sharing the intimacy of another person's dreams. Then the black bishop came forth, crossed himself briefly, and bowed his head.