First Contact (10 page)

“I didn’t like the food much,” Nixon said to Kissinger, “but the wonton soup was pretty good.”

R
ALPH CONSIDERED
J
ESSICA AND
what she had said and realized she was entirely serious.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jessica said. “I’m thinking about moving to Tibet.”

“Tibet?”

“I’ve had the idea in the back of my mind for a long time.”

“What would you do?”

“I think I will teach English in an orphanage.”

“Oh,” Ralph said.

T
IBET IS A BEAUTIFUL
country in the foothills of the Himalayas with sweet people and lots of goats and llamas and alpacas, which are themselves sweet and gentle animals. One of the great Tibetan delicacies is mono, a dumpling filled with seasoned meat or vegetables. It is often eaten with yak butter tea, which is really much better than it sounds. Mono is pretty good too. It has the same appeal as the wonton.

The spiritual leader of the country is—or was—a gentleman known as the Dalai Lama, a Tibetan Buddhist. I say “was” because the Chinese invaded Tibet in the 1950s and drove the Dalai Lama into exile. They did this in the name of progress, which is a very important concept to the Chinese. In the case of Tibet, progress included destroying many of the historic Buddhist temples. They have been replaced with important things such as supermarkets and highways.

“I
S THIS THE RIGHT
time?” Ralph asked. “It’d be a shame to let all the work you have put in go to waste. You could finish law school first and then go teach if it’s something that still interests you.”

“I suppose,” said Jessica.

“It’s important to have a career.”

“Depending on one’s priorities.”

“Or you could teach here for a while and make sure teaching is something you like. I mean there’s lots of time. It’s not like there’s any rush to make a decision.”

Jessica nodded and chewed on a wonton. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “But I have been feeling a sense of urgency. I’m starting to think it may be later than we think.”

“That’s funny,” Ralph said.

“What?”

“The ambassador’s deputy said the same thing to me when I met him today.”

“That’s a strange coincidence,” Jessica said.

“Sure is.”

“Do you think it means something?”

“I have no idea.”

T
HE
T
IBETANS AND THE
Dalai Lama subscribe generally to the teachings of Gautama Buddha, who believed the true nature of reality can only be discovered through years of spiritual cultivation, investigation of existing religious practices, and meditation. So the Buddhists believe in controversial ideas such as peace and love and forgiveness. They believe in acting and speaking in a manner that does not cause harm to other people, in improving oneself ethically and spiritually, and in attempting to view life with a clear mind so as to see things as they really are. They strive to attain Nirvana, the end of all suffering, which can only be achieved by extinguishing all worldly desire. This means, either cruelly or ironically depending on one’s view, they have very little use for highways and supermarkets.

“W
HY DON’T YOU COME
with me?” Jessica asked.

“To where?”

“To Tibet.”

“I can’t just do that.”

“Why not?”

“We have the dinner with the aliens tomorrow and that will create all kinds of work, I’m sure. And the President will have to start thinking about his reelection campaign soon. I can’t just leave him in the lurch.”

Jessica asked again, “Why not?”

R
ALPH FELT AT THIS
moment a knot in his stomach, which could have been caused by the bowl of greasy Chinese noodles he had devoured but more likely, in fact almost certainly, was due to the irresistible urge he felt to drop everything in his life and fly away with Jessica to work in an orphanage in Tibet. He knew all about Tibet and had fantasized about traveling there and trekking in the shadows of the Himalayas and sipping yak butter tea. In light of this, going to Tibet in the company of a woman with whom he was very much in love seems like it should have been a pleasant thought for Ralph and not the source of stress. But Ralph was self-aware. He understood that he had resisted many such temptations
before. What really caused the knot in his stomach was that he knew he would never be able to bring himself to do this thing he really wanted to do.

Ralph was, in this respect, like anyone who does something he knows to be bad for himself—like falling in love with a married person or sticking a Q-tip into one’s ear to get wax out knowing it will just make matters worse. More accurately, he was like someone who fails to do something he knows would be good for himself—like going to the gym in the evening instead of watching television or keeping an appointment with the chiropodist to have a bunion filed down. Or traveling somewhere exotic with someone you love.

R
ALPH SIPPED SOME BROTH
.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I have a sense of responsibility. I have duties. Maybe that will be different someday.”

The truth was, though, Ralph didn’t understand his own reluctance.

“I don’t think that will ever be different,” Jessica said as she considered his words. “It never gets easier—there is only more and more duty.”

Ralph nodded.

“Why can’t you live like you said we should on the night we met? Live for the moment. Not just that day, but every day.”

Ralph returned his last wonton to the bowl.

“I don’t know,” he said, and that was the complete truth.

A
S A RESULT OF
losing her driver’s license and the use of her auto-mobile, Maude Anat-Denarian was stuck in her house with lots of time on her hands. Normally she would have used this opportunity to tend to her garden, but Maude believed her ruminations about broccoli had been the cause of the accident outside the Trader Planet. She thought often about the incident, and about the health of Nelson Munt-Zoldarian, for whom she had genuine concern. She even sent him a get-well card. This went against the advice of her attorney, but Maude did not care. She felt quite guilty about the whole thing, so guilty that even the thought of broccoli made her uncomfortable.

Maude was resolved to put this extra time to good use and decided to make her son her project. Once and for all she was going to get to the bottom of his problems in class. She made a point of
making breakfast for Todd every morning and being there every day when he got home from school. She would ask him how things had gone and what he had learned. These conversations only confused Maude further because, by all indications, Todd seemed happy and healthy. He interacted politely with Maude and, when he had no other plans, willingly played cards with her in the evening. He looked well and had nice friends and even a young girlfriend, of whom Maude approved. He certainly showed no signs of being involved in drugs or gangs or any of the disreputable temptations that sometimes lead teenagers astray.

With respect to school, Todd said he studied and tried his hardest, but had simply not done well on some of the tests. He did not think a tutor would help the situation. He liked his teachers fine and thought highly of the school. All of this only made the situation more confusing.

One evening, when Todd had gone to dinner at a friend’s house, Maude went into Todd’s room, opened his schoolbag, and pulled out his notebooks. She felt quite guilty about this. Maude was a good person who respected people’s privacy, but these were extraordinary circumstances. Maude collected the notebooks, made herself a pot of tea, and sat down on the sofa for a read. She opened first the notebook, which was labeled “Physics.”

Maude was no physicist herself, but she had some sense of what a physics notebook should contain. She expected to see complicated equations and formulas and derivations of theorems. She found very few of these. Mostly what she found were doodles. Some of these were quite elaborate and good. Each was dated. That morning in physics class Todd had sketched a remarkable likeness of a dollowarrie.

A
DOLLOWARRIE IS A
bird found on Rigel-Rigel that is in every respect indistinguishable from the African gray parrot. Both have four toes on each foot and feed primarily on nuts and fruit. Both have highly developed language skills and a striking capacity for mimicry. Both make excellent pets. The main difference is dollowarries live on Rigel-Rigel while African gray parrots live on Earth.

Such a striking similarity between animals on planets separated by hundreds of light-years may seem like a strange coincidence, but in fact is unremarkable. It is an example of what biologists call convergent evolution. This is the idea that unrelated organisms sometimes acquire
similar characteristics while evolving in separate environments.

For example, birds, insects, bats, and pterodactyls all fly—or flew—pretty much the same way, but each evolved its wings separately. Echidnas, porcupines, and hedgehogs developed their spines independently. Lots of animals have evolved a lens for the eye. The reason for all this is there are only so many ways to fly, see, and defend oneself against predators.

This would all seem perfectly natural if we were talking about a mathematical problem instead of a problem of dealing with one’s environment. I expect it would surprise no one to learn that both Andrew Wiles and Mort Erev-Dalsarian arrived at the same proof to Fermat’s Last Theorem or to learn, as we have, that traffic is a problem throughout the universe. People need to get around and, as they say, there are only so many ways to slice an apple, or a plique, depending whether you live on Earth or Rigel-Rigel.

It’s the same thing for animals, just a different kind of problem. African gray parrots evolved their distinctive feet to effectively pick at fruits and nuts. They learned to speak as a way of facilitating cooperative feeding. The same was basically true of dollowarries.

I
N AN IDEAL UNIVERSE
,
I would include here a reproduction of Todd’s sketch of the Rigelian dollowarrie. The great Kurt Vonnegut used to include simple sketches with his fiction. Vonnegut wrote about trendy topics such as time travel, free will, and the bombing of Dresden. Sometimes he illustrated these lighthearted discussions with simple drawings, which were pretty lousy but fun. For many teenage boys, viewing the sketch of the “wide open beaver” in
Breakfast of Champions
is a transformative moment in their lives. Unfortunately I do not possess even rudimentary drawing skills. Thus the sketch of the dollowarrie is not included.

W
HEN
T
ODD CAME HOME
that evening, Maude sat him down for a chat. She explained that she had looked through his notebooks. She apologized profusely for the intrusion into his privacy. It was a bad life lesson, she said, but she thought these were exceptional circumstances. She wanted very much for Todd to succeed and was concerned about his performance in school. She had gone through the notebooks in the hope of getting to the bottom of what was bothering Todd at school.

Todd said he understood and was not mad.

“So why are you doodling in class?”

“I like sketching.”

This was the first Maude had ever heard of her son’s interest in sketching.

“Why didn’t you ever mention this before?”

“I didn’t think Dad would approve.”

“Why wouldn’t your father approve of you drawing?”

“I don’t just like to draw as a hobby. I want to be a sketch artist.”

Todd was right. His father would not approve.

Maude said, “Oh, I see.”

“I’m really good at it,” Todd said. “It’s what I really want to do.”

Maude wished yet again that Ned was home and not off in another part of the universe. This was the kind of challenge to which parents needed to present a united front, but Maude knew her and her husband’s initial reactions to the crisis would be quite different. Ned would not approve of drawing as a career. Maude, on the other hand, did not care what her son did so long as he finished school and was happy. She and Ned would agree at least on the importance of finishing school, so this is what she chose to emphasize with her son.

“Well,” she said, “it’s one thing to want to be an artist and another to fail out of school. Why are you doing this in class? And why in physics? I didn’t notice so many drawings in any of your other notebooks.”

“It’s boring.”

“You don’t find the subject interesting?”

“Actually the things he teaches us about are pretty interesting. But he’s not interested in the ideas. All he’s interested in is the math and the formulas.”

“What is he teaching you?”

“He’s teaching us that the universe is going to end faster than anybody has realized.”

Maude said, “Oh.”

O
N
R
IGEL
-R
IGEL, APOCALYPTIC PREDICTIONS
are almost unheard of. This is part of the reason for Maude’s reaction. On Earth, however, they are as much a part of life as the World Series and the Running of the Bulls. They can be traced back as far as the second century,
when Montanus prophesied the end of days. Several are currently pending.

Generally speaking, these predictions have been incorrect. Charles Taze Russell, founder of a group of Bible students who later became known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, boldly predicted the world would end in 1874. Russell and his followers later revised this prediction to 1881, 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1941, 1975, and finally 1994. Their current position is that they don’t know when the end will come, but that it is certainly coming soon.

In 1974, astrophysicists John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann caused a stir by noting that all nine planets of the solar system would align on March 10, 1982. They predicted this would increase gravitational pull and cause an increase in solar flares and earthquakes. The world did not end as feared, but Gribbin and Plagemann were right about the solar flares and earthquakes and the resulting increase in gravitational pull. The March 10 high tide was approximately 0.04 millimeters higher than usual.

A Korean group called the Mission for the Coming Days predicted the world would end on October 28, 1992. They had no apparent basis for this prediction, but thousands of Koreans nevertheless sold homes, quit jobs, and had abortions to prepare for the day on which 144,000 believers around the world would be lifted into heaven (so long, apparently, as they were not homeowners, employed, or heavy with child).

And, of course, the most famous prognosticator of all time, Nostradamus, foretold, hundreds of years earlier, that Armageddon would occur in July 1999. History did not prove Nostradamus to be a competent sooth, but he was, by all accounts, a fine apothecary.

L
ATER THAT EVENING
, M
AUDE
did something stupid and called Helen Argo-Lipschutzian, the president of the Rigel Prep Parent-Teacher Association. After the conversation with Todd she needed to talk with someone. Maude would have preferred, of course, to discuss the matter with Ned, but she had already spoken with Ned several times that week about the car accident so the roaming charges were mounting, and she knew he was about to make an important first contact; in fact he could have been in the middle of it right then. So she called Helen. Helen was a nice woman, but she had a tendency to take things too far. She had lots of money and lots of time on her
hands and liked to take things on as projects. She was also a bit of a gossip.

The Anat-Denarians and Argo-Lipschutzians socialized, so Helen already knew Todd had been having trouble in school. Maude explained that Todd wanted to be an artist and that he had been sketching in physics class because he was bored. He found the idea that the universe is going to end faster than anyone realizes interesting, but all those formulas and equations just weren’t for him. Frankly, Maude confessed, math hadn’t been for her when she had been in school either and she could understand where the boy was coming from. No one should be forced to learn anything they really didn’t like. And, besides, who really needed physics anyway? You didn’t need to understand quantum mechanics to clean out the filter on the cold-fusion generator. But Ned would never buy it. He would be upset. And Ned was away and she didn’t want to upset him in the middle of a mission but this upset her and what was she going to do? All of this left Maude a bit breathless.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Helen said. “What did you say the teacher said?”

“Well, that’s not really the point of the story.”

“But did you say the teacher was telling them the universe is going to end faster than anyone realizes?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“About eighteen months from now.”

“That’s decidedly inconvenient,” Helen said. “We just bought a summer time-share. It includes use of a cabana and free fruit.”

“Well, maybe it’s a few weeks longer, give or take,” said Maude. “But it’s certainly a lot shorter than the prevailing guess, which I think is fourteen billion years.”

“Who does this teacher think he is?” Helen asked, more agitated now. “What right does he have to tell our children the universe is about to end?”

“Todd said the better math students thought the proof was pretty solid.”

Helen would have none of it. “No wonder Todd is failing,” she said. “No wonder he’s doodling in class. Do you know how upsetting it would be to a young man to be told the universe is about to end?”

“Actually, Todd said the teacher is pretty good. Todd just doesn’t like physics.”

Helen still would have none of it. “This is outrageous,” she said, her voice rising. “This teacher has absolutely no right to be filling our children’s head with this kind of nonsense. He’s going to have to answer for this.”

“Really,” Maude said, “I just wanted to talk about Todd.”

But Helen had already decided.

“I’m going to take care of this,” she said. “We’re going to make an example of this professor and show the school they can’t teach our kids whatever they want without fear of repercussions. You just relax, Maude.”

Helen hung up the phone then, but Maude did not relax. She suspected, correctly, she had just made a very bad mistake.

A
LL AROUND THE UNIVERSE
,
PTAs are a disruptive force. They are filled with nice people with good intentions but too much time on their hands. When people with too much time on their hands get together, they cause nothing but trouble. This is another example of convergent evolution.