The Invitation-kindle (18 page)

“If what you say is true…”

The Vice President breaks off, and pauses as he looks over his shoulder. He sees his own image alongside that of his alien counterpart projected across a quarter of the night sky, and a sudden realization grips his mind. He will be the first human being to not only communicate with an extraterrestrial intelligence, but will have an articulated conversation with this creature, and have it while the entire population of the world is watching. What should he say or ask? Does he try to represent the whole human race in this incredible dialogue? If not, what exactly is his role? These questions quickly flash through Scott Conner’s mind. He gathers his thoughts, and begins again.

“How can we know if what you say is true?”

“What we have shown you is consistent with data your own science acknowledges.”

“But what you’ve shown us is far more dramatic. You just told us that 99 percent of human population will die off, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Do you expect us to accept that? How can we know if this is real?”

“Your skepticism is a common response. I’m sure your Doctors have examined Mr. Kearns. Why don’t you ask them, Mr. Conner, if what they’re seeing is real?”

“If…if what you say is true, why didn’t you appear earlier in our history to warn us, so we could avoid what you say is now inevitable? You’ve shown us these terrible things, and now you say it’s too late. How does that help us?”

“Only when a civilization is on the brink will our message resonate. Your species is willful and obstinate. Resistance to change is a general human trait. For you, only living this tragedy can teach you what you need to learn.”

“What you tell us is too bleak. If you know anything about us, you know we will never accept any situation that’s hopeless, either now or in the future.”

“The story we have told you is anything but hopeless. It’s a story of human survival.”

“But at what cost?” the Vice President asks.

“What price could be too high for survival, Mr. Conner? Not all civilizations are as fortunate. Those who fail to learn from their experience simply go extinct. Your planet’s biosphere is particularly robust. That and that alone will guarantee human survival.”

“This global disaster that’s coming…I still don’t understand. If this is true, then why don’t you help us prevent it?”

“Only you can walk out of your own darkness. Your questions are defensive, Mr. Conner. Why don’t you let your imagination express its curiosity? That might be helpful.”

“Because I’m more concerned about the death of billions of human beings, that is, if what you say is true.”

“Why do you fear death? Your own religions teach that it’s an illusion. Awaiting each one of you are millions of journeys. Your present human lifetime is only one of them. There is no finality in this, only an endless becoming. All speaks to the inner being.”

“You sound like one of our poets.”

“Maybe you should listen more closely to what they’re saying, Mr. Conner.”

“How is it that you can show us images of things that haven’t happened yet, that are still in the future?”

“An astute question, Mr. Conner. The images that you and the people of Earth were shown are based on predictive models.”

“What do you mean?”

“From the four million civilizations across the galaxy we have profiled from our general catalog, we extract their individual planetary histories. Our predictive models are based on this data.”

“Then you don’t know for sure if your prediction is certain or not.”

“Sunrise is only a prediction before it happens. Our models have an accuracy rate of 100 percent, Mr. Conner.”

“You say you’ve cataloged over four million civilizations. How do you know how to find them?”

“We permanently roam the galaxy listening for electronic communication, a universal signature of technical civilizations. We were forty-seven light years away when we detected that signal from Earth.”

“You say you permanently roam the galaxy. How can you possibly live long enough to make such a journey?”

“Living creatures could not endure the endless tedium of these long expeditions. Only automated representatives can make these epic journeys.”

“You mean machines.”

“Yes”

“Is that what you are?”

“Yes”

“You’re actually a machine.”

“I am an automaton, designed to resemble the physical traits of those who constructed me.”

“How long ago were you made?”

“By your reckoning of time, my commission began forty-one million years ago.”

“Have you been traveling through space for that long?”

“Yes”

“What source of power do you use?”

“The energy intrinsic to matter itself is our source of power. The same energy your hydrogen bombs release in an instant is slowly attenuated, and gradually released over time. Learning to control the release of energy bound up in matter is something your own science will achieve in the distant future.”

“Are you saying you use matter as an energy source?”

“Yes”

“What kind of matter?”

“Water”

“Water, uh, do you mean liquid water? H2O?”

“Do you know of any other type, Mr. Conner?”

“No I just…It’s odd to think of water as a fuel source.”

“The energy in a few drops of water could, and eventually will, propel humans to the outer planets of your solar system.”

“Is that what powers that craft?”

“Yes”

“What’s it made of?”

“It’s only a membrane, made of specially designed matter a few atoms thick.”

“You create matter?”

“We weave matter from energy, designing its properties and function in accordance with its intended purpose.

“How could it possibly protect you, being so thin?”

“This is matter that has been compressed to its irreducible limit. With no interstitial space, its structural integrity is absolute. We could journey into your sun’s interior with this craft.”

“I'm… sorry but… I have trouble believing that.”

“I'm sure you do Mr. Conner.”

“How do you design matter that can do something like that?”

“It requires an intimate knowledge of the architecture of subatomic structures.”

“If you have all this power at your disposal, why does it take you thousands of years to make these journeys?”

“Despite your fanciful notions to the contrary, the speed of light is impossible to exceed. We travel at sub-light speeds over distances that for you, are inconceivable. The immensity of galactic space cannot be overstated. All galaxies have enormously large interiors relative to their star populations, a feature that works to keep their billions of solar systems stable over eons of time.”

“You know so much, and can do all these things. Then why can’t you help us avoid this disaster that you say is coming?”

“These coming upheavals will do more for mankind’s long-term survival than anything that we could provide for you. Those who survive the cataclysm will learn to live in balance with the natural world, having around them abundant historical evidence about what happens to a planet and its inhabitants when they don’t, Mr. Conner.”

“But why do so many people have to die?”

“Your teeming numbers are unsustainable. A sharply reduced human population will allow the Earth to heal and replenish itself. In several thousand years your oceans will once again teem with life. Deep ocean currents will slowly begin to resume their global cycle, and the world will gradually become more temperate. Huge polar ice sheets will start receding, and millions of acres will be reforested again. With human activity absent, a re-greening of the Earth will take place, lowering carbon dioxide levels as plants once again cleanse, and preserve the living world thereby ensuring mankind’s survival. For your descendants it will be the dawn of a new age. None of this can happen until the cataclysmic upheaval has run its course. We have seen many civilizations pass through this danger. It’s necessary.”

“What about the suffering, the pain of millions of human beings who have to live through this upheaval, as you call it?”

“We cannot account for their lives, Mr. Conner. Only they can do that.”

“Well, what kind of answer is that? If you represent a race of compassionate beings, you surely won’t stand by and do nothing to avoid this tragedy.”

“What would you have us do Mr. Conner?”

“Help us.”

“How?”

“Well, to start with, we have people with injury and disease who are suffering. Do for them what you did for the Congressman last night.”

“We will of course do that, and would have done so unprompted, but that will do nothing to avert the global catastrophe. You have changed your planet’s atmosphere too radically, and too fast, Mr. Conner, and so the Earth’s climate will change as radically, and as quickly. That is what will kill off the bulk of humanity. Nothing will prevent it because there is nothing that can be done to prevent it. Once carbon dioxide levels reached a certain threshold in your planet’s atmosphere, it became inevitable that your climate would quickly destabilize, and it did. If you had taken action decades ago when you first saw early signs of climate change, you would have greatly mitigated the severity of your planet’s environmental collapse, but you didn’t.”

“Is that all you can say? You came all the way here to tell us we’re about to be wiped out, and there’s nothing to be done about it? What help is that? You say you’ll come back when it’s over with some invitation to join you, but how does that help us now? If we pass through this crises without your help, because that’s exactly what you said is going to happen, then maybe your help won’t seem so valuable when we don’t need it as much.”

“I can assure you, Mr. Conner, you will need help.”

“But you haven’t done anything to help us now. Please, I’m just asking, what’s the point of joining you if you’re not going to help us when we need it most? Where’s the benefit?”

“Protection is one benefit.”

“Protection from what?”

“Your solar system is a very dangerous place, Mr. Conner. As a courtesy to all civilizations that we add to our inventory, we monitor their solar systems for possible impact events, including yours.”

“How do you do that?”

“The same way you would. We optically scan all objects in your solar system that orbit your sun, all the way to the Oort cloud, all asteroids, all long- and short-period comets, all Kuiper Belt objects, anything large enough to pose a global impact threat, including every object in your teeming asteroid belt. These objects number in the trillions. Collision are prevented thousands of years in advance.”

“You can prevent an asteroid collision?” The Vice President asks.

“Yes”

“Have you ever done that?”

“Yes”

“Have you…ever prevented a comet or asteroid from striking Earth?”

“Yes”

“When did that happen?”

“Thirty-eight thousand years ago, when your numbers were a few scattered millions, a long-period comet passed through the asteroid belt and teased out of its orbit a massive object over twenty miles wide. It collided with another object even larger, and was ejected from its orbital path. For twenty-six thousand years it erratically orbited your sun. Crossing Earth’s orbit, it would have collided with your planet eleven thousand years ago, just as the dawn of human civilization was beginning.”

“And you prevented this?”

“Of course”

“What would have happened?”

“You’re a scientist, Mr. Conner. What do you think happens when a twenty-seven-mile-wide asteroid strikes a planet like your Earth? It would have meant human extinction.”

“You did this eleven thousand years ago?”

“We took preventative action long before that.”

A stunned silence comes over the Vice President as he tries to mentally digest the implication of what he’s just heard. If the words of his alien counterpart are true, it means literally that the human race owes its continued existence to the protective intervention of a race of beings twenty-six thousand light years across the galaxy that we had no idea existed. This is simply too much for a human mind to grasp. What exactly does one say after being told such a thing? A mere thank you seems ridiculous. As the Vice President grapples with this realization, all of coeval humanity hears, and ponders it as well. Finding it hard to believe, the Vice President asks again.

“Did you say that object, that asteroid, was twenty-seven miles wide?”

“Yes”

“That’s five times larger than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Isn’t it? Isn’t that right?”

“If you’re asking if your arithmetic is correct, Mr. Conner, it is.”

“That would have destroyed the Earth.”

“It would have killed off all surface life. Over ninety percent of it was composed of iron.”

“It was made of iron?”

“That’s right Mr. Conner. Your science aptly calls such an impact a ‘total evaporation event’. When an object so large, and dense physically collides with your world, the enormous amount of heat energy released boils away all surface water, killing all indigenous life. Only specialized subsurface bacteria survive the onslaught.”

“I’m, sorry I…Are you saying a twenty-seven-mile-wide asteroid made of iron would have struck the Earth eleven thousand years ago, and you prevented it from happening?”

“Yes”

“I don’t know…that…that would’ve meant…”

“It would’ve meant the evolution of life on Earth would have to start over again. That has happened on your planet more than a few times, but at a very early point in Earth’s history, when only microbial life was present. For such a cataclysm to occur when advanced life is extant would be a pointless waste.”

“That’s…that’s hard to comprehend.”

“Why?”

“If that’s true, then we…I mean the human race wouldn’t be here if…What do you expect from us?”

“We want nothing from you, Mr. Conner, but your survival and success as an emergent species of luminary beings. Your own future is inviting you into itself. We would like to see you accept that invitation. That is all we would like from you.”

“How do we do that?”