The Book of Ralph

by Christopher Steinsvold

  She spoke again, and my eyes opened. “Allow me to introduce myself, please. I am Queen.”

  The innocence in her voice was overpowering.

  “My true name is difficult to hear with your ears.”

  She pushed herself gently away from the lens. This brought her naked body into view and revealed she was floating in zero gravity. I moved closer.

  “We are neighbors in this Milky Way. We call our planet ‘Kardash.’”

  Suspiciously, her two opposing arms and legs had five fingers and five toes. Her hands and feet were small and had no nails. She had no sharp edges.

  “We plan to visit.”

  She looked almost human.

  “Plan to be friends.”

  Below her gorgeous inhuman eyes lay a single nose. Below the nose was a lipless mouth which opened to reveal a slice of darkness completely unilluminated by the harsh ambient light. The lighting was so forceful, the contours of her body often disappeared, making her invisible, except for that bulging blue heart.

  “We have a large ship near your dwarven planet Pluto. You can look. It is white.”

  Her skin was sharp white all over. Her chest bulged and pulsed, seemingly forced outward by the huge blue heart that pounded beneath her chest, as if it were trying to escape.

  “We have many other ships, smaller ships, near Earth. We are hiding.”

  I could see no malice in that heart.

  “We do not want to scare you, and we are not shy.”

  She smiled. It was a spectacle. It forced me to do the same.

  “We have studied your transmissions and find them attractive. We have learned about you and desire more. You too will learn, and there are many things we desire to teach. We know the spiral of your history and are afraid for you, afraid for your guidance.”

  Her gaze did not control my beliefs, but it teased my empathy and overtook my attention. I looked outside the window at Ralph. He was on his back, motionless.

  “We are sorrowed to interrupt your entertainment and sorrowed to know the death of your American president. We know death is difficult and common for you. We want to help.”

  There was a turn of sadness in her gaze, and her words became more reluctant. I had to review later to confirm, but for one second she looked offscreen and made an expression of annoyance. Someone was watching her.

  “We are ready to share the true message of God.”

  I glanced outside at Ralph again.

  “All we ask is that you listen to the prophecy.”

  The dance in her voice was over. Her sincerity was hard to measure with her exotic locution, but the hooks were in. The seeds of conversion were planted.

  Then, she moved closer to the lens and said something Ralph never warned us about.

  “As we travel to your planet, expect large words, sentences, messages in your sky. You will see the words soon. These are the words of God . . . the God that loves you.”

  She then quickly turned away, unfurled her smooth white wings, and flew out of frame like an angel. Her wings were useless on Earth, but they aided her maneuverability greatly in zero gravity.

  Before the broadcast ended, there was another voice. It gave a cold screech in alien tongue. The deep black body of the voice passed in front of the lens and the transmission ended.

  The screen flashed back to white with the following sentence on-screen:

  FOR EVERYONE WHO EXALTS HIMSELF WILL BE HUMBLED

  AND HE WHO HUMBLES HIMSELF WILL BE EXALTED.

  The quote is from the Gospel of Luke, 14:11, in the Christian Bible. It remained for approximately fifteen seconds before a terrestrial test pattern appeared. Then the Internet, radio, and television channels were released from alien control. I muted the television and waited for Francis to say something, but he was just as speechless.

  “Ralph mention anything about ‘messages in the sky’?” Francis asked.

  “He said nothing about it.”

  The messages in the sky are what media outlets would soon euphemistically call ‘sky banners,’ while converts would refer to them as ‘signs,’ ‘signs from heaven,’ or ‘signs from God.’

  Though they appeared in the sky and were easily legible, these banners were thousands of miles outside the normal orbit of Earth—high enough, large enough, and bright enough to be seen by the entire continent they continually faced. The first sky banner would appear within minutes of my hanging up with Francis.

  Francis exhaled a full sigh. “Presumably, it doesn’t matter. Looks as if Ralph was right. Now that they’ve announced themselves, I won’t need you or Samantha to back me up. I’m speaking to the vice . . . the president, in an hour. You should stay there. He may want to go meet Ralph in person.”

  “Wait, you haven’t told him anything about Ralph?”

  “No, nothing yet.”

  “I can’t believe you. It’s like with Samantha, you’re afraid the president won’t take you seriously. Ralph’s the only person on the planet who knows what the fuck is going on around here.”

  “Fuck you, Markus. Fuck you. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to breach that subject?” he shouted and then continued with a dopey imitation of my voice. “Oh, hey, there, Mr. New President. I know you’ve got wars and terrorism and the recent assassination of the last president and your new job and everything else to worry about, but remember that Diet Coke ad on the moon and the big can of soup? Well, they were created by an alien who will rescue us from Kardashians . . . You think I can tell him that in an e-mail or memo and just send it to him? Keep in mind what’s been going on around here. He hasn’t even announced his VP choice yet, and he’s barely been in the White House. Everything’s in lockdown until the Secret Service revets everyone and finishes the investigation. It was difficult enough just to get an emergency appointment with him.”

  At the time, I was shocked. But, with the fresh chaos of the assassination, it was understandable Francis hadn’t told the new president. In any case, I’m sure, at that moment, Francis had every intention of informing him about Ralph.

  XXXI

  MESSAGE

  Despite what would soon happen, the public’s immediate reaction to the queen’s broadcast was not frantic. Later polls revealed most people were initially overcome with a sense of relief, as if an unknown tension had been wiped from their mind. Of course, these polls only include the survivors.

  For those few peaceful minutes before the first sky banner, most Christians celebrated. By coincidence, both the Vatican and the Westboro Baptist Church simply tweeted ‘Welcome,’ though the Vatican would later delete it. Jews, Muslims, and other mainstream religious groups had mixed reactions, but there was no immediate panic.

  Though the takeover of our communications should have been enough, not to mention the images from Keck and other observatories, some humans were still skeptical the queen was alien. Actual aliens announce themselves, and moron conspiracy theorists thought it was a government conspiracy.

  But, the immediate reaction to the queen’s broadcast matters little. After the first sky banner appeared, all calm attitudes and good feelings died. The world was about to slice itself to shreds. It just didn’t know it yet.

  When I walked outside, I looked at the sky and saw nothing new. Ralph looked over at me, waved, and stood up. We met each other halfway.

  “How did she look?” Ralph asked.

  I wanted to say ‘Good,’ but I didn’t. I tried to be angry with Ralph for not being more forthcoming, but I was still enchanted. I suspect he knew.

  “How did you know it would be her?”

  “They always use the most seductive.”

  “. . . And how do you know this?”

  “I told you,” Ralph said, annoyed, “my people have studied the aftermath of the planets they’ve visited. The only difference now is that one of us, I mean me, got here before they did. As long as your new president follows my advice, humanity should have the upper hand.”

  I believed him.

&n
bsp; “What are the ‘messages in the sky’ she was talking about? Does she mean something like that?” I asked, pointing at the moon.

  “No. She means something . . . very different.”

  “What will the messages say?”

  “I can’t say, but they will be . . . disruptive.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “The first message should be the most disturbing . . . How much gas is in your car?”

  “Maybe half a tank. Now answer me: how disturbing?”

  “Something much more disturbing than that,” he said, pointing at the moon. “So disturbing, we may have to leave.”

  “What are you talking about? No one knows we’re here.”

  “Enough do,” he said, glancing over my shoulder.

  Before I could turn around to see what Ralph was looking at, a bright light spread out overhead. I looked up. The sky banner technology was being implemented.

  Approximately 120,000 miles above the Earth’s surface, halfway between the Earth and the moon, a pure white sky banner revealed itself. It was tall and long enough to be seen all over North America. Its beaming light bleached the night sky.

  The banner was 150,000 miles long and 50,000 miles tall. From my perspective on Earth, it was a gigantic blank flag in the sky. At first, it was beautiful, and it became more beautiful when the blank white surface gained colors.

  First, the top strip of the banner turned red, forming a long red stripe across the full length of the top of the banner. Then, a second stripe, just as thin and long, turned orange, directly beneath the red stripe. Then a yellow stripe right under the orange stripe, then a green stripe, then blue, and finally, the bottom purple stripe—all the colors of the rainbow neatly represented.

  “Why a rainbow?” I asked, mystified.

  “Oh no . . . Markus, I think I know what it’s going to say,” Ralph said as his voice weakened. “Those fucking bastards . . . Oh God . . . Francis . . . Markus, did Francis tell the new president about me yet? Did he?”

  “No, not yet, calm down. He’s going to tell him soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “About an hour.” I didn’t get why Ralph was asking.

  “Oh God. That’s too late. Markus, we need to leave,” Ralph said as he fell down and covered his visor with his Earth mittens. His behavior bewildered me. I nervously wondered: how bad could a message written on a rainbow be?

  Ralph shouted a prayer, “God, please, don’t do this to them; anything else, but not on their rainbow. Please let me be wrong.” He was so unnerved he lapsed into his native tongue and hissed spastically.

  I watched as the first three letters were written. Each manifested as if God was writing the black letters by hand on the rainbow flag.

  ‘GOD’ was the first word of three.

  “What’s going on?” a female voice screamed out behind me.

  It was Alice Higginbotham, though I didn’t recognize her. After she had crept out of my car, she’d been hiding and lurking around the barracks all night. The battery on her smartphone had run out hours ago, so she didn’t know about the queen’s broadcast. She didn’t even know about the image from Keck. I swiveled and watched her faint from the incomprehensibility of it all.

  I ran to her limp body and found her still breathing. I checked her belongings, found her New Jersey driver’s license, and when I read her name, I understood.

  “This ruins everything,” Ralph cried.

  I looked over at Ralph on the ground, staring at me and pointing at the sky.

  “Markus, we need to leave. Now.”

  I looked up at the sky and froze.

  ‘GOD HATES FAGS’ was writ black across the rainbow flag.

  XXXII

  ESCAPE

  I was the only human on the planet who knew what the Kardashians were really doing. Nevertheless, everything seemed unnatural and lost. The world felt broken, impossible, and slow. If it weren’t for Ralph, I’d have been unconscious on the ground with Alice. Instead, I was awake in a night of the surreal.

  Dizzy from cognitive dissonance, I lay down and closed my eyes. Ralph’s earlier words reflected in my mind: They will take the worst of Earth’s culture and twist it back at you in force—expect the ultimate forms of mockery. They will seduce your people with great trickery and power, appealing to the worst of what you know.

  ‘GOD HATES FAGS’

  Of course, the Kardashians didn’t care about homosexuality at all. They only knew it polarized humanity. If homosexuality had been accepted on Earth, they would have chosen something else.

  Future readers will find it difficult to understand, but this was a time when many humans would openly, in casual conversation, blame earthquakes and hurricanes on homosexuality. Even before the sky banners, it was common to hear stories of homosexuals beaten to death, by total strangers, simply because they were gay.

  In 2013, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church claimed the recognition of same-sex unions by Western countries brought us closer to the Apocalypse. There were still scores of countries where homosexuality was illegal, sometimes punishable by death.

  Supine under the light of the first banner, I opened my eyes and stared at the awful sky. I asked what everyone asked: why? But I already knew the answer. I closed my eyes and Ralph’s words streamed through consciousness: They believe that by becoming monsters, they can learn to be at peace with monsters. They think that by acting intolerant, they may truly understand those who are. They are coming to Earth to act as terrible as possible, just to fulfill this twisted purpose. Become evil, to overcome it, like a reductio ad absurdum of evil itself.

  When Ralph said this earlier, it seemed too abstract, but the reality was hovering above me in high geostationary orbit for all of North America to see. The message scraped at my thoughts, even when I wasn’t looking. I feared I might believe if I looked too long.

  I checked on Alice again.

  “Markus,” Ralph said standing over me, “will she be okay?”

  “She was overwhelmed. You knew she was here the whole time, didn’t you?”

  “She seemed harmless, and I didn’t want you to call the guard. We should take her with us.”

  I should have been worried what Alice might say to her boss at the New York Times about Ralph, but the thought didn’t occur to me, the situation being so ludicrous. In any case, because of what would soon happen, I wouldn’t have to worry about her talking to anyone.

  “Markus, we need to leave.”

  It is embarrassing to confess, but I started to laugh. I swear it was nervousness—the laughter began slow and escalated quickly. I lost control.

  “Markus, don’t laugh. This is serious.”

  My head agreed but my lungs couldn’t stop jiggling.

  “Markus, this isn’t funny. We’re not safe anymore. Don’t you see that?”

  “Did they see us hugging?” I asked deliriously.

  “I’m talking about Francis.”

  Francis was gay. This was not a secret. In fact, Francis was a well-admired figure in the gay community. When I imagined Francis in danger, my laughter calmed, and I regained control.

  “Francis is safer than most,” I said.

  “. . . You don’t understand.”

  I didn’t understand. Ralph was not scared for Francis. Ralph was scared of him. If I was less bewildered, I would’ve been afraid too. I did not connect the dots.

  “I’ll call Francis,” I said as Ralph shook his head.

  “I’m getting ready to go,” Ralph said and walked inside the barracks.

  “Go where?” I yelled. He did not respond.

  I checked on Alice again while I called Francis. Alice was still breathing, and Francis didn’t answer. I dialed Samantha, and she didn’t answer either. Through the cracked open upstairs window of the barracks, Ralph called out with a low voice.

  “The soldier’s coming,” he said, not knowing Lieutenant Barber. “Get up here.” I looked and saw no one, but remembered Ralph’s vision was exce
ptional. “You have to protect me, Markus. There’s a gun in his hand.”

  I got a text message from Francis: I’m sorry. I can’t let you or Ralph interfere.

  Ralph’s advice in the Oval Office was clear: Don’t fight them. Do nothing.

  Francis had played along until the first sky banner appeared. Then, all bets were off. He couldn’t sit by while the Kardashians preached the absolute hatred of his community. He couldn’t risk Ralph or I anywhere near McAllister—he wanted no chance for Ralph to persuade the new president. With Ralph and I out of the picture, nothing Samantha could say would matter—she would have no direct evidence Ralph ever existed.

  Francis ordered Lieutenant Barber to kill us, and by the time I figured most of this out, I could see the lieutenant walking up the gravel driveway. We only had one weapon, and it would be difficult to control.

  I ran upstairs to join Ralph.

  “Markus, he has a gun. I think Francis sent him to kill us,” Ralph said, trembling. “I’m going to die here on Earth, aren’t I? Oh God . . . Stay with me, I don’t want to die alone.”

  But I had an idea.

  “Ralph, when you scream, like you did in the Oval Office, do you have control over it? Or is it completely involuntary?”

  “I only do it when I’m scared or frustrated,” he said, shaking. “But by the time I get scared enough, I’m not sure I can hold back.”

  “I don’t want you to hold back . . . at all. Can you do it now?”

  “Right now?”

  “No, not this second. I mean, when Lieutenant Barber . . . the soldier outside, when he comes up here, can you do it then?”

  “. . . I could.”

  “Will it knock him out?”

  “Well . . . I guess so. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But it will knock you out too.”

  He was right. I hadn’t thought it through. If Ralph’s scream knocked Lieutenant Barber and I unconscious, it wouldn’t do Ralph any good if the lieutenant recovered before me. And I had no way to deflect the blast of Ralph’s scream. Ralph was too physically weak and pacifistic to do anything to an unconscious Lieutenant Barber. I doubt Ralph could’ve even tied him up.