The Book of Ralph

by Christopher Steinsvold

  “I saved his life, and we vowed to protect Earth . . . from your people. He said I had to leave Earth, and I could not go home again. He told me things . . . and made me promise never to tell another human.”

  Dekon cocked his head and eyed me. “You must tell me.”

  “He told me what you already know, or believe, about psychology, so I doubt you’d want to hear it.”

  Again, Dekon was taken aback. “Indulge me. It will tell me how important you are.”

  I paused and said, “Ralph told me about the second law—”

  Dekon pushed off the wall to float away from me. “Don’t lie to me, human. Father would never tell a primitive such a thing. I know him too well. You overheard something perhaps, like a child listening through a keyhole. You did not understand what you heard.”

  “The second law is that all hatred is envy.”

  Dekon paused for some time, studying me. Finally, he laughed with an ugly smile and said, “Now I understand. He told you, but you do not believe it.”

  “No, I don’t. We had a conversation. I wasn’t convinced.”

  “You humans are so pleasantly stupid. Of course you can’t see what is sitting on your face. I forgot how amusing it is to meet a primitive.”

  “Sitting on my face?”

  “It’s a Kardashian expression. I’m sure you can figure it out.” Dekon was getting lighthearted. He looked comfortable when he patronized. “Why do you think my people rebelled against Father? Hmm? Why is it that, all over the universe, generation after generation, the youth rebel against their parents, hmm?”

  “I don’t know . . . an innate desire for freedom?”

  He let out a shady chuckle. “What a prude American answer. And where is this innate desire for freedom in all those humans who viciously fantasize of being sexually dominated?”

  I paused and closed my eyes. “Do all aliens talk about sex so often?”

  “Only primitives are uncomfortable talking about sex. Answer the question.”

  “There’s just something wrong with those people. They’re sick.”

  Again he laughed. “It is you who are sick, Uncle Markus, if you believe that. Did you know,” he said with a smile, “there’s a whole fantasy called the ‘plantation fantasy,’ where an African American woman fantasizes about being a slave, sexually dominated by her white master? It is so exquisitely humiliating, but I doubt your primitive mind can comprehend its full beauty.”

  I groaned in disgust.

  “The reason each generation rebels against their parents, Markus, is because each generation is given a set of rules, and they must break some of them. They must do what they know is wrong—the second law commands it. Your prissy philosopher Plato actually argued that no one could knowingly do the wrong thing . . .” Here a rumbling quake of laughter derailed his speech. I waited a minute for him to stop and realized something.

  “This is about violence, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Ah,” Dekon said, as if he was proud of me, “now you glimpse the truth. But say it, so I know you see clearly.”

  “Is Ralph really a pacifist?”

  “Yes, it is his nature.”

  “So then he must have tried to raise you, his children, as pacifists.”

  “He tried and failed. We are his wretched devils. This is why he abandoned us.”

  “What are you planning to do with him?”

  “I can’t say what the females are planning. But when our festival ends, I will destroy him.”

  XLIV

  HISTORY

  My confusion was overwhelming. I’d been assuming everything Ralph said in the Oval Office was a lie. But Ralph’s story was more incomplete than incorrect.

  “How exactly did Ralph become your father?”

  “Millennia ago, the ancient Kardashians landed on the planet of Father’s ancestors.” This much Ralph had already told. “Upon ravaging the planet, these Kardashians wisely chose to kidnap a few hundred of the inhabitants. As time went on, the silicon-based creatures became a scientific-slave class within Kardashian society, and a tense symbiotic relationship developed.”

  My surprise must have shown on my face. Dekon paused and looked at me. “Father was born on a Kardashian ship, you see. He’s a descendant of the members of this class. But Father was not like the others, who dared not mate with the Kardashians. Indeed, he was rather promiscuous. By mating with the Kardashians, he hoped to create a whole new breed, a peaceful and more intelligent race.”

  “And you’re the new breed. What happened to the old breed?”

  “We destroyed them. We are more peaceful than my ancestors, but we’re not unreasonable pacifists like Father. When Father knew he could not control us, he took the rest of his people and escaped, we suspect, back to the home planet of his ancestors.”

  “If you wanted him dead so badly . . . why not go to their home planet?”

  “He deleted from our databases all information about his people and their planet before escaping. This is why he must be destroyed. He knows too much about our ships and technology. Our females are like human females, you see. They are overly sentimental—they don’t know how dangerous Father is. He must be destroyed.”

  “What will happen to me?”

  “You will be kept alive,” he said.

  “And the converts?”

  “Why do you care about these converts?”

  “I want to know what happens to them. Your Father never told me.”

  “Don’t you see we are helping Earth? All those losers and religious extremists—do you care about them? Can’t you see your planet is better without them?”

  “They’re still human.”

  “Humans who believe everyone else will burn in hell—who want everyone else to burn in hell.”

  I gave him a curious stare. “You haven’t answered my question. What happens to the converts?”

  “We will fulfill our promise and send them to heaven. I’m sure God can overlook the number of the beast on their forehead.”

  I shook my head. “You’re going to kill them.”

  “We’ll fly them all straight into your sun,” he said with a dark cackle.

  Like a fool, I lunged at Dekon, wanting to feel my fist punch his hide. But he outmaneuvered me in zero gravity and brushed me aside. I lunged again with the same result.

  “Take this human away before I murder him,” Dekon shouted.

  A pain shot through my spine and I passed out.

  XLV

  DEATH

  When I awoke, I was floating numb and naked in a simple prison cell. Outside the cell was Dekon, along with ten male Kardashians, each wearing the most imposing earplugs I had ever seen. Each rubbery black plug stuck out a foot from the ear, each fixed in place with black glue. The defensive earplugs could only mean one thing. I looked behind me. Ralph was floating in the corner, naked, except for his helmet.

  When I saw Ralph, the pain entered consciousness. My spine felt loose and my skin felt tight. I reached my hand to my lower back and felt a clean surgical scar.

  “What have they done to me?” I asked, wincing.

  With a deep voice, Ralph answered, “When they brought you onboard, you were implanted with a device which gives perfect nourishment. It provides your body with only essential nutrients, and you will not excrete any waste. But it also controls your nervous system. They used it to knock you out.”

  I said nothing.

  “Markus . . . Do you hate me?”

  I shook my head.

  “You sure?”

  I pointed at Dekon. “He explained your . . . relationship.”

  Ralph said nothing.

  “When their holiday ends, Dekon will kill you,” I said.

  We were in an all-white cell, reminiscent of a human prison cell, with round, vertical bars, two inches apart. Dekon had his back to us at a computer terminal opposite the cell, typing, while the ten male guards stared through the bars, their claws dangling in zero gravity.

  T
hey were assassins-in-wait—waiting for the holiday to end to kill their father with impunity. None of them blinked while glaring at Ralph, and none of them even glanced at me. Their cold eyes revealed a mix of fear and anticipation, and I suspect the earplugs protected them from Ralph’s guile, as well as his scream.

  “I begged my daughters to put us together. I waited so long. I got anxious.”

  “I’m all right.”

  Ralph paused, looked at the guards, then looked back at me.

  “Markus, I need a hug,” he said, flinging his silicon tendrils around my naked body.

  “Look at me,” he whispered in my ear.

  I looked into his visor, inches from my face. And just like the night when Ralph experienced his first snowfall on Earth, he wrote messages on his face with his thousands of thin, tentacular limbs. As he wrote each sentence on his face, his sight watched my eyes. When I was done reading, he erased and wrote the next sentence, pacing my comprehension perfectly.

  “You see the camera above?” he wrote.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The guards can’t hear us, but the camera has audio. Try not to speak,” he wrote.

  I nodded.

  “I can’t write how happy I am to see you.”

  I smiled lightly, and Ralph’s glow grew pinker as he gripped me tightly.

  “I can get you out of here, but we must trust each other.”

  Escape was the least likely option, but Ralph had a plan.

  “I must get to that computer terminal,” he wrote, as if Dekon wasn’t floating right in front of it—not to mention the ten male guards. Yet, he was serious. I had no clue what he was planning and feared he’d gone insane from stress, but there was a confidence in him I could not explain.

  I started to wonder.

  Setting aside the guards, I imagined Ralph could slip between the bars of the cell, but quickly realized, though Ralph could physically fit his jellyfishlike body between the bars, mentally he could not.

  Ralph was naked except for his helmet, and his helmet couldn’t fit through the bars. So the only way for him to escape was to remove his helmet and slip through. But because his ego is externalized, if he took off his helmet, he’d risk his ego being seen. As Ralph had said, if someone sees his ego, it would kill him and anyone who saw it. A fantastic claim, of course, but it was neither a joke nor a lie.

  “You must stay in this corner and face the wall.”

  I wanted to argue, but he told me not to talk—the camera was listening. I could only nod or shake my head.

  “Promise me you won’t look, no matter what happens.”

  I nodded and Ralph shimmered wildly in the light.

  He leaned in close and wrote, “It is finished.”

  He embraced me again, constricting me tighter than ever before and then released. He looked at the guards, then back in my face. I heard a guard growl.

  “Now, you must hide your sight completely. You will hear me scream, but do not protect your ears. Keep your eyelids clenched and your hands over your eyes—no matter what.”

  I rotated and stabilized my floating body, squatting in the corner with my feet on the floor, elbows on the corner walls, and palms pressed over my eyes.

  “I love you, Markus,” he said aloud.

  How I know what happened next must wait to be explained. The events are as incredible as my knowledge of them.

  Ralph took off his helmet to expose his ego, slipped through the bars, and commenced screaming. His blaring scream muffled the bashing explosions of the guards’ skulls, and I felt their warm, alien flesh splatter over my skin in successive waves. All the guards—and Dekon—died within seconds of seeing Ralph’s ego.

  After that, Ralph had little time.

  I passed out from the pain, while Ralph continued with his plan. He typed rapidly at the computer terminal as his ego disintegrated under the weight of public exposure.

  Remember, the Kardashians’ ships were made of the same malleable and programmable substance as Ralph’s cylinder—a technology Ralph was all too familiar with. As Dekon had feared, Ralph knew more about those ships than the Kardashians ever did.

  He had time for two things.

  First, he programmed the walls of the cell to form an airtight room around me.

  Second, he incinerated the rest of the ship, along with every Kardashian ship in our solar system. He programmed them all to overheat until obliteration. It was the greatest thing Ralph ever did, maybe the greatest thing anyone has ever done.

  Every one of the new breed of Kardashians, slowly and painfully, melted and died in the burning hell they deserved. I’d never thought I’d be content to know of the complete genocide of a unique species. But I was, am, and always will be, at peace with their annihilation.

  The makeshift escape pod Ralph created for me was the only existing remnant of their ships. There was no point in Ralph trying to escape with me. He knew what would happen the second he took off his helmet. By the time he finished hacking the entire Kardashian fleet, it was over.

  Ralph was dead.

  XLVI

  LIFE

  But I didn’t know Ralph was dead. My perspective was near total ignorance. The shock was so great I could barely think. Nonetheless, I now know Ralph died, and my source for this information must be correct.

  One moment Ralph was screaming, and the next he wasn’t. When I recovered, I didn’t know I was floating free in space or that Ralph had programmed a trajectory for me to the far side of Earth’s moon.

  For ten minutes I floated in that room as the alien innards encrusted on the walls and gelled on my skin, waiting and hoping for Ralph to communicate with me. I had no idea, but I was traveling to a destination planned for me all along.

  My flying cell crashed onto the surface of the moon, smashing me to the wall. Once settled, the room twisted back and forth, grinding and maneuvering mysteriously but deliberately . . . downward. A small hole opened in the wall and shot cool oxygen inside.

  ‘DO NOT PANIC’ appeared on the wall.

  My vessel sank deeper. The walls undulated as the vessel squeezed itself deeper into the moon’s crust. A zoo of whirling beeps and pressures stung my ears as my breathing eased. I was descending into Ralph’s secret base on the moon, located deep beneath the Tsiolkovsky Crater.

  When the vessel finally rested, I felt heat on the walls. Everything was still and quiet for a minute, then a door manifested and opened.

  “Markus.”

  Behind the door was Ralph. He wore only a small, aluminum beret, and he hugged me.

  Ralph was alive. And his glow was golden.

  I can explain.

  As Ralph had explained in the Oval Office, when he mates, he takes the cells of another being, incorporates those cells into his own cellular structure, and eventually, a hybrid version of himself and the other being splits off from him. This is what he did with the ancient Kardashians to create the new breed.

  But when Ralph arrived on the moon, he was alone. A highly sexual being like Ralph, lonely for such a long time, is inevitably going to do the obvious.

  “I mated with myself . . . a lot.”

  Eventually, he reproduced, and the result was an exact copy of Ralph. It is easy to think of the copy as a twin, an identical twin, but it was still more than that.

  Ralph had not only created a physically identical twin, he was also a mentally identical twin. According to Ralph, their brain matter intertwined at the quantum level—via what physicists call ‘quantum entanglement.’ They shared exactly the same memory, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs, though they were in two different places—one stayed on the moon, while the other flew a large cylinder down to Earth.

  From his perspective, he was in two different places at once.

  “So your twin was a carbon copy of you, mentally and physically?”

  “Well, a silicon copy.”

  Everything Ralph ever said about his externalized ego was true, but there was another reason he didn’t wan
t anyone to see his ego—as soon as anyone physically observed his ego, it would decohere the quantum entanglement, thereby separating his mental identity from his twin. So when Ralph revealed his ego to Dekon and the other Kardashian guards, he killed them all and simultaneously ended the entanglement. Only then did their mental identity end.

  The last thing Ralph did, before dying aboard the Kardashian ship, was disintegrate those terrible sky banners. Ralph, the one that is alive with me on the moon, could not have done it. It had to be done from a Kardashian computer terminal, just as the destruction of the fleet required internal access. On the other hand, Ralph was able to incinerate his cylinder from the moon.

  It took more than a few Earth days to explain all of this to me, and I never understood it completely. I asked him, “But if your twin, I mean the one that was on the Kardashian ship with me, died from embarrassment, how come you didn’t?”

  “Once my twin’s ego was exposed, the entanglement ended, and I stopped experiencing what my twin experienced. I never felt the full horror of my ego’s exposure. For me, it lasted less than a terrible second. Then it was over. I’m sorry I didn’t reveal my secret identity earlier, but, as you can see, this isn’t easy to explain.”

  His twin was identical physically and mentally, and also morally.

  “Moral identity is the highest type of identity,” he said. Though they could operate independently, one twin could never do something the other wouldn’t. Guilt by one was instantaneously shared by the other.

  “The guilt was nonlocal, something Einstein would have a hard time with,” he said.

  “So you were responsible for what your twin did?”

  “Yes. We knew what we were doing.”

  Ralph was responsible for the genocide of an entire race of beings he fathered.

  “Violence was my greatest fear,” he said. “And now you must do the same.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Markus, have you forgotten your greatest fear?”