“Madame President, are you all right?”
The president had a sour look on her face as she sniffed her drink. Her eyes became crossed and unfocused. Her glass of soda slipped out of her hand. The interviewer reached out to hold the president.
“Do you smell almonds?” the president asked, breathless.
I stood up and shouted, “NO” at the television.
The president collapsed to the carpet as the Secret Service rushed into view from different angles, bumping and jostling the camera. Male and female shouts and screams exploded as Gwen Ifill’s face expressed the shock her audience felt.
“Turn it off,” a strong male voice yelled offscreen. “Turn it off.”
Seconds before the camera cut off, the president spoke her last weak breath into the microphone still attached to her lapel. The name was unmistakable.
“. . . Ralph . . .” she said.
Ralph’s glow grew purple as the president’s eyes closed for the last time.
XXI
CRASH
I turned off the television. I was afraid I would smash it if I left it on.
“I don’t understand. Will the president be okay?”
“No. She won’t be okay.”
“Not at all?”
“Ralph . . . She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“She’s dead, Ralph. Dead.”
“How can you be sure . . . Maybe she just got sick.”
“She drank from her glass and said something about smelling almonds, then collapsed. It was cyanide poisoning. It smells like almonds and kills immediately.”
“But maybe she’ll be okay . . . You don’t know.”
“Whoever was clever enough to put cyanide in her drink would be clever enough to put in enough. It may take an hour for the White House to announce, but she’s gone . . . Damn it.”
By the next day, the full story was clear. As with the assassination of JFK, a plethora of conspiracy theories developed, but the official story was correct. Initially, the assassin, Secret Service Agent Brian Summers, was thought to be another victim. His body was found not far from the Oval Office. He too died from cyanide poisoning, but he was his own Jack Ruby.
The suicide note in his home, also a note of confession, revealed it all. Sandra Summers, his wife, was critically injured in a car accident seconds after the appearance of the lunar advertisement and died later from internal bleeding. Like so many, he blamed Coca-Cola and became increasingly angry with the president for defending her former employer. Wanting his job, he kept silent.
When the cylinder arrived, Agent Summers unraveled. He didn’t know about Ralph, but he knew the White House press release was a lie. He assumed the cylinder was a public relations stunt from Campbell’s gone wrong and was certain the president was covering for them. In the twists of his mind, she had to pay.
“Why did she say my name?”
If I could have picked the worst word for the president to utter before death, ‘Ralph’ was it.
“Markus, she called out to me. Maybe we should go. Maybe we can help.”
“Can you bring humans back from the dead?” I asked half-seriously.
“No,” Ralph said.
Ralph’s crackling noises punctuated his speech. He was acting like a child, and I didn’t feel like comforting him. He was scared and I was angry.
“Markus, I don’t feel so well.”
“Really? You don’t feel so good? None of this would’ve happened without you,” I said, surprising myself with such cruel words.
“I have a terrible feeling. It is what you would call ‘nausea.’ I have not felt this in . . . decades. Markus, I’m scared. I don’t know if I will survive this . . . failure.”
I held his arm, and he turned toward me. Suddenly, black tidal waves folding and crashing invaded my thoughts. I pulled away, and Ralph fell over me. Something inside Ralph was falling.
“Keep holding me . . . Do it . . . Please,” he moaned.
The crackling noises Ralph emitted were sharper and louder than ever. Holding him, I felt the crackling more than I heard it. Like a dream, my mind used symbols to interpret something I could not understand. I was awake, but my senses idled as Ralph’s feelings overrode my imagination. I envisioned a planetwide earthquake with mountain ranges for teeth breaking out into space and chomping the moon in half.
A sudden deafening thud extinguished my senses. Whatever was falling inside Ralph had crash-landed, and was so loud I feared Lieutenant Barber would hear. I didn’t know if the thud was imagined or real, but either way, my whole mind went numb. I maintained consciousness, but I couldn’t hear, see, or feel.
Slowly, my senses returned, and I was uncertain how much time had passed. I looked at a motionless Ralph, his glow black and shiny. Fearing death, I called his name.
“Ralph.”
No response.
“Ralph?” I said, gently shaking his frail body.
“. . . Markus . . .” Ralph groaned with a bare whisper, his voice radically different.
“Ralph, can I do something?”
“I am survived . . . we stay . . . me rest . . . we talk.”
At that moment, I did not know what Ralph had endured, but I knew it was over. He was convalescing and had lost his spritely demeanor.
My pink cell phone rang, and I immediately thought it was Samantha. It was Francis.
“She’s dead,” Francis said with a cold whimper. I could hear the shock in his voice.
“We saw it. Ralph and I were watching.”
“I can’t believe she’s dead. Someone poisoned her.”
“It was cyanide.”
“How did you . . . oh, I’m talking to a scientist. Look, Markus, I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean? The president is dead, and now the vice president will take over. He doesn’t know about Ralph or any of this. How the hell am I going to tell him what’s happening? I can’t even begin to think how that conversation starts.”
“Don’t do it alone. You should take Samantha with you, and I’ll go too if you think it will help. He’s got to believe if all three of us tell him.”
“I can’t think about that right now.”
“This is something you should sleep on. I should go—something happened with Ralph.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. All I can say is . . . He had a negative reaction to the president’s death.”
“What happened?” Francis pressed.
“I think he’s blaming himself.”
“Oh . . . Look after him tonight. Don’t let him go suicidal on us. We need him more than ever now. Look after yourself too. I’ve gotta go.”
“No problem.”
“Good night.”
I returned to Ralph, whose dull black glow had turned a shade purple.
“Can you talk?”
“I can,” Ralph said, sounding a little better.
“What was that? It sounded like something inside you . . . collapsed.”
“Something did collapse.”
“What was it? What was that thud?”
“It was my ego.”
“Your ego?”
“It crashed.”
XXII
HUMILITY
It seemed like just another joke Ralph might make, but his tone was morbid.
“You’re telling me I just literally heard your ego crash?” I asked.
“Yes. It is different for us. It is easier for humans to hide embarrassment and shame, but my species can’t hide it like you do. When reality takes a nice chunk out of your ego, humans often deal with the pain for years. For us, it is more immediate.”
“I know you’re in pain, but . . . I don’t understand.”
“It is like . . . Some of your animals have skeletons on the inside, like humans, but some have exoskeletons, like a lobster. Similarly, my ego is external; call it an ‘exoego’ if you like, and I can’t hide it wh
en I’m hurt, mentally. If I wasn’t wearing this helmet, you would see my ego directly, and that would be mortally embarrassing. It may sound funny, but I’m not joking: masks are a fashion necessity on my planet.”
“So, psychologically speaking, you’re a crustacean,” I said, attempting humor.
“Exactly,” Ralph said, completely serious. “I don’t want to dwell on our differences, but our mental pain is typically much more severe and sudden than yours, and I truly envy you for this. My people can literally die of embarrassment, disappointment, or shame.”
I instantly recollected some of my greater failures: vomiting on the first day of kindergarten; rejected by the first girl I ever asked on a date; waking up in a jail cell.
“What would happen if I did see your ego directly?”
“It would kill us both,” he said.
“Ralph . . . I’m sorry . . . but that sounds completely ridiculous.”
Taking no offense, he tried to help my understanding. “Think about how difficult it was for my people, when we learned that most other beings have their psychology neatly hidden inside a head,” he said, followed by some more lingering crackling.
“OK,” I said, “all things considered, you’re an alien, and I should expect radical differences between us . . . But why would it kill us both if I saw your ego directly?”
“I would literally die from embarrassment. And you . . . Your psyche would crumble from second-hand embarrassment.”
I paused in thought. Being human, I knew what it’s like to be so embarrassed I wanted to die. And I understood the concept of second-hand embarrassment—feeling embarrassed for someone else. But, I’ve never felt so much second-hand embarrassment that I wanted to die. I wondered if any human ever has, but Ralph’s people really are that sensitive.
He continued, “If you saw my ego directly, and do not ask me to explain, you would instantly feel everything I’ve ever regretted or feared. That’s thousands of years of information, and your mind would implode. If one of my own people saw it, they too would die from second-hand embarrassment. It would just be too much. This is why we all wear masks.”
“But you’re not born wearing masks,” I said.
“No, but a child’s mind is pure. There’s no danger being exposed to it. In fact, a child’s mind is one of the most beautiful objects in the universe. It’s a rather somber rite of passage, in my culture, when a child gets their first mask.”
“And all this, your whole reaction . . . This was brought on by the president’s death?”
“Well, my belief she’s dead. You convinced me. You talked to Francis?”
“I did. She’s gone.”
Ralph responded with some residual crackling.
“You don’t hate me, do you?” he asked. If I had said ‘yes’ in an angry tone, he might have crumbled and died on the spot.
“No. We’re in this together. And in any case, it is good to know even an advanced species fails sometimes,” I said.
“You have no idea.”
“How exactly does your ego collapse?”
“The same way egos collapse throughout the universe,” Ralph said, mystified I would even ask. I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders.
“Markus, we need to talk. I haven’t been entirely truthful with you.”
“You’ve lied to us?” I was not in the mood.
“. . . Yes,” he said with pain. “But the Kardashians are real, and they are coming. You’ll be detecting them, at the latest, by tomorrow. And I’m afraid, with the president gone, of what will happen. Oh, Markus, it was so beautiful. I was going to save Earth, or most of it. Everything was going so perfectly: the lunar ad, the cylinder, meeting the president, and convincing her not to attack the Kardashians. Now, I honestly think we’re . . . This is not good. Your vice president will take power now and . . . He is a man of war . . . He doesn’t even know I exist, and I don’t see him going along with my advice.”
Ralph’s uncertainty raised many questions, but I could only ask one.
“What have you been hiding?”
He paused. “You remember, in the Oval Office, when you asked me if the Kardashians truly believe they were gods? Or were they just con artists? Do you remember?”
I nodded.
“I convinced you I didn’t know.”
“I remember.”
“That was a lie. I do know. They do not believe they are gods. They are as evil as can be, and they know it.”
I expected him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“All right, but does that really change anything? And why would you lie?” I asked.
“What you need to understand . . . the differences between my people and the Kardashians . . . the difference is . . . philosophical,” he said, still struggling with speech.
Ralph paused to gather his thoughts. There must’ve been a lot because he paused for ten minutes. But I did not want to wait. I was disturbed and seething with bad energy. Knowing Ralph had suffered, my anger with him had deflated. But I was in no mood for his jokes, flippancy, and alien innocence. I was tempted to go outside and talk to Lieutenant Barber. I wanted to commiserate with another American, another human, over the death of my president.
I thought of people all over America talking and crying. I was irritated to be excluded, and I was angered to imagine the president’s harshest critics welcoming her death.
I bet most people would love to talk to an alien and find out what they believe is important. But at that moment, I was not in the mood for a philosophical discussion.
My president had just been assassinated, and a primitive part of me felt under attack as well. Yet Ralph was hinting at some insight, and while I waited for him to say something, I convinced myself the Kardashians were to blame for everything that had happened in the last year. I told myself, if talking about this will save lives, I should stop thinking about myself and listen.
“On my planet, there is a specific ritual we have before talking about this. I wish I could perform the ritual now, dearly, but I cannot. We don’t have the proper masks and paraphernalia, so it will be difficult for us . . . There is no easy way to go about this, so I’ll just ask you . . . Markus . . . in all seriousness . . . Why do you think we are here?”
“What?” I blurted with an angry laugh.
“What do you believe? Why do you think you are alive?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about what you call ‘the meaning of life.’”
“. . . I usually avoid these conversations.”
“You don’t think this is important? I think about this all the time,” Ralph said.
“I do think about it . . . but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s a good sign, but you must indulge. This is important. Do you want to know what is really going on or not?”
“Of course, I do.”
“Then answer my question. Do you think life is just some silly accident, some meaningless cosmic coincidence, or do you think there is a deeper purpose?”
Ralph was serious and I had to answer. I was acutely afraid of embarrassing myself. I didn’t want to seem shallow, but I didn’t want to sound like a kooky earthling either.
“I hope there is a deeper plan, but that’s about it. Whenever I hear people talk about this, they are usually too sure of themselves. It seems useless to talk about, because no one can really know.”
“No one knows, but I can tell you what we believe, what we and the Kardashians believe. Keep in mind, I’m not here to convert you. You just need to think about it if you want to understand why all this is happening.”
“You’re not saying you’re in league with the Kardashians . . .”
“No. But there’s a basic belief system we share. In fact, every civilization we’ve surveyed eventually comes to the same basic belief system. I hate to sound like an ass, but to me, and almost everyone throughout the galaxy, it all seems rather obvious. But I won’t be offended if you don’t accept it. N
ot all of it is easy to hear.”
“Then start with the easy part.”
“All right. Now I will ask you a truly ancient question,” Ralph began with a tiny spark of glee. “If the universe does have a purpose, why is it so big? Why is there all this extra empty space which doesn’t do anything? The sheer size of the universe makes life seem rather insignificant, because we are all so ridiculously small.”
“So . . . You’re telling me there is no purpose,” I said.
“You don’t get it.”
“No. You’re just making me skeptical.”
“Darn, I hoped you would see it. My dear Markus, the purpose of the grand size of the universe . . . is to make us feel small,” he said excitedly, though I didn’t catch the significance.
“Well, if that’s the purpose, then OK, but . . . So what? That just sounds—”
“It is only part of the purpose . . . You don’t see it?” he said, grabbing my arm. He wanted me to understand without saying it. By touching me, he was hoping I could feel the answer from him. I closed my eyes and recalled the cylinder and how I felt standing next to it—dwarfed by something so much larger than myself. I knew what Ralph wanted me to say.
“You’re saying that the universe is so immense . . . to humble us?”
“Yes,” Ralph said with excitement. “Humility is the key—the key to everything.”
I never heard Ralph say anything more seriously. But I was not persuaded. The thought seemed too easy. And it wasn’t clear how this was relevant to Earth’s safety.
“But isn’t it a little too big? I mean . . . Does the universe really need to be as big as it is?” I said, pointing outside at the sky. “Half the size would still be equally humbling, right?”
“You don’t understand how big egos can get,” he said.
“You’re serious?” I laughed. “You’re saying that the universe must be as big as it is . . . in order to keep my ego in check?”
“Not just your ego, my dear Markus, but all the egos of all the minds scattered about the universe. You look at the universe and see mostly empty space. I look at the universe and see a spacious zoo of comically different beings, each with their own egos that need to be kept in check. So yes, that is what I’m saying. In essence, the universe is an exquisitely efficient and maximally elegant, ego-crunching machine. That is what it does.”
The Book of Ralph Page 12