First Contact (13 page)

“How could you do that?”

“Ned.” The Ambassador nodded in the direction of his assistant. Out of a bag he had stored under the table, Ned pulled a massive
document, which he handed to the Ambassador, who in turn handed it to the President.

“This is a hundred-thousand-year-long longitudinal study of two thousand three hundred seventy-five planets. It examines the effect of environmental destruction on the long-term viability of indigenous sentient species. In other words, it examines what happens when intelligent creatures purposefully destroy their environment. In short, it demonstrates that where a balance is not achieved with the environment, the offending species is thirty times more likely to become extinct itself.”

The President grudgingly accepted the document. “How do I know this is reliable?”

“It’s peer reviewed,” the Ambassador said.

The President rifled the pages of the mammoth document.

“This is quite impressive,” the President said with gravitas. Those associated with the President had seen him thumb the pages of many other research and advocacy documents and comment in the same manner. Generally speaking, he did not like to read anything longer than a page.

“Of course,” the President said, “even if this research were true, it would not prove the same thing would happen here.”

“That’s true,” the Ambassador said.

“And we all know the problems with peer review,” the President said. “It’s just a bunch of professors helping one another get tenure.”

Even the Ambassador could not deny the truth of this.

“I
APPRECIATE YOUR COMING
here,” the President said. “I really do.”

He really did not.

“But I think we’re going to just have to make our own mistakes and figure things out for ourselves. I have faith in mankind. We have proven ourselves quite resourceful. We’ll find a way to manage our environment, and I’m sure we’ll find a way to somehow resolve all of our religious differences too.”

The Ambassador nodded. “I understand,” he said.

He really did not.

“Let me ask you a question, Mr. President.”

“Okay.”

“What is the fundamental tenet of your religious beliefs?”

The President thought about this for a moment.

“I suppose,” he said, “it is that God created man and Earth.”

“What if I could disprove that to you?”

The President smiled. “How could you possibly do that?”

“Ned.” The Ambassador again nodded in the direction of his assistant.

Ned reached into his bag once more, this time producing a spiffy handheld holographic video projector.

“Human beings were the product of a genetic experiment,” the Ambassador explained. “The Aurorans were a race from a star system near this one. They had begun to tinker with modifying DNA and they set out to see whether they could introduce genes for sophisticated speech and written expression to primitive primates. This is a video record of the experiment. It is in Auroran with English subtitles.”

The Ambassador nodded to Ned. “Go ahead,” he said.

The footage had been filmed in front of what was unmistakably the Great Pyramid of Giza. Standing in front of the pyramid was a two-legged gecko in a white lab coat, apparently an Auroran scientist, holding what appeared to be a human infant. Text of subtitles follows:

T
HE STORY OF THE
Aurorans’ demise is a sad one. They were a sweet, fun-loving people who enjoyed Chinese checkers and jelly beans.
They had a generous philosophy of life, were nice to children, and possessed great intellectual curiosity. On top of it all, they were long-lived and physically robust. Their thick exoskeletons rendered them impervious to injury by flying coconuts and other dangerous projectiles. They had only one Achilles’ heel, which in the case of Achilles was his Achilles’ heel: they were allergic to nuts.

They never saw the end coming. When the meteor approached Aurora, they confidently proclaimed it would destroy itself in the atmosphere, which it did, splintering into a million little pieces, and how could they have known, even with their spectacularly sophisticated technology, that the offending asteroid, which had traveled millions of light-years across the galaxies, came from a planet made of pralines?

“W
AIT A MINUTE, WAIT
a minute,” the President said. “These Aurorans believed in God?”

“Not the same god as you,” the Ambassador said. “They worshipped a different god, a guy named Bert. But the concept was the same. The word ‘god’ is simply the best translation available.”

“And these Aurorans built the pyramids themselves?”

“Yes.”

“And created humans?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to them? Why haven’t we heard from them?”

“They are extinct now.”

“So the beings that created man are themselves extinct.”

“Right.”

“Because they believed in God?”

“No, it was an allergy to nuts, but that’s not the point.”

“And you’re telling us the name of the scientist was Humbert Wollongong?”

“Names are so difficult. It is again the best available translation.”

“How do you expect us to believe that?” the President asked, his voice rising slightly. “We have no idea what Professor Wollongong is saying. How are we supposed to know these subtitles are accurate?”

The Ambassador, doing his best to suppress his glee, said, “You’ll just have to take that on faith.”

“This is too much to handle,” the President said. “I cannot accept any of this.”

“You’re skeptical,” the Ambassador said, “because you need to believe in a higher power. You need to believe things happen for a reason.”

“We
choose
to believe.”

“No, you
need
to believe.”

“Don’t we have a right to believe as we want to believe?”

“You do. But we believe we have an obligation to tell you the consequences of your beliefs.”

“So you’re telling me your people think things happen by chance. You’re telling me you believe life in the universe arose randomly. You believe our meeting here today is just an accident.”

“The universe is a very big place, Mr. President. Lots and lots of things happen. So many things happen, many of these things are bound to appear coincidental. The appearance of meaning is just an illusion.”

“And you’re telling me it doesn’t bother your people to believe things just happen by chance?”

“Not at all. On the contrary, we find great humor in the rich, varied ways that life unfolds. You would too, if you were programmed a bit differently.”

“I doubt it.”

“I could prove it to you.”

“How could you possibly do that?”

“Why don’t we discuss that over dessert?”

A
FTER THE DINNER PLATES
were cleared, the Ambassador gestured to Ned, who produced from his seemingly bottomless bag an oversized Bundt cake. Ned handed this to the Ambassador, who in turn handed the cake over to the President with an air of formality.

“I present this to you in the name of all of the people of the universe, Mr. President,” the Ambassador said. Then with less formality, he added, “I always like to bring a cake when I visit people for the first time. It’s sort of a welcome-to-the-neighborhood thing.”

A B
UNDT CAKE IS
the name for a dessert cake cooked in a Bundt pan, which was the creation of David Dalquist, the founder of Nordic Ware. He invented the pan at the request of the Hadassah Society of Minneapolis. They wanted a pan that could be used to make
kugel
, a Jewish dessert. The pan became popular after a Bundt cake won
second place in the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-off. Dalquist knew this, and it pleased him greatly. What he did not know was that the Bundt cake, together with Woody Allen movies, Police albums, and Sour Patch Kids would become one of the handful of products of human culture that were popular throughout the universe.

T
HE CAKE WAS THE
first plus on the Ambassador’s ledger. The President was far more pleased to receive it than he had been to receive the immense peer-reviewed study setting out the data on environmental destruction and the decline of sentient species. The President was a great fan of cake and considered himself an expert on the subject.

In the President’s opinion, the key to a good cake was moistness. This was what separated, for example, Devil Dogs from Ring Dings. Each was a Drake’s product, and each was chocolate cake filled with cream, but the Ring Ding was infinitely better than the Devil Dog, which was a dry cake. Ring Dings were moist and delicious. But too moist was no good either. Hostess Cup Cakes, for example, were too moist. The Bundt was a simple choice, and though not especially popular in the twenty-first century, could be wonderful if prepared just right. It so happened the Ambassador had brought a fine Bundt. After the President sampled the cake and judged it worthy he ordered the Bundt be sliced and shared with all members of the party.

For many who had not enjoyed the kosher state dinner it was welcome nourishment. For the First Lady, however, it was just more torture.

A
S
A
RNOLD
N
ENE
-Z
INKELREEN RANG
the bell of Professor Fendle-Frinkle’s front door, he thought to himself that the house could use some work. The architecture had some inherent charm, and the home must have been nice in its day, but it had lapsed into a state of disrepair. The garage door had a hole in it. Ivy had crept up the side of the house and was wearing away the mortar. The gutter system had collapsed, leading water to drip down the side of the house, dislodging chunks of brick and stone in the process.

The lawn was an absolute disaster, years past the point where it could even be called a lawn. The weeds had vanquished the grass and established a flourishing empire. These weeds were rich in their diversity—some had flowers, some had spines, one had a cylindrical protuberance that discharged toxic pollen. This all stood in sharp contrast to the other homes in the subdivision with their finely manicured yards.

The front porch was littered with a peculiar mélange of garbage—some traditional suburban fare such as empty diet soda cans and pizza boxes and, incongruously, the wrappers of organic energy bars and spent containers of homeopathic remedies. The deck had fallen through in two places. A pair of orange cones warned visitors of the danger. Even the doormat was in tatters and had split down the middle. Divided in this way, the Rigel-Rigel word for welcome could have been construed as a sexual reference.

Arnie wondered about the owners of the house. His potential client, the Professor, seemed nice enough when Arnie had called after reading about the brewing controversy at Rigel Prep. But he asked few questions about the nature of Arnie’s work and seemed shockingly disinterested in his own potential demise. After seeing the house, his apathy seemed somewhat less shocking.

A gentleman answered the door in an old flannel shirt and wrinkled corduroys. He seemed in every respect a part of the house.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m Arnie Nene-Zinkelreen,” said the attorney. “I’m here from the Intergalactic Civil Liberties Union.”

“Of course,” said the Professor. “Everyone knows the good works of the ICLU. My wife is a longstanding member.”

I
N FACT, ANYONE CAN
join the ICLU for the eminently reasonable fee of twenty-five dollars or its equivalent in the unit of intergalactic exchange, the Iuro. The ICLU puts this money to work protecting the rights of oppressed people throughout the universe. In addition to supporting important litigious causes, such as the rights of teachers to teach what they want to teach, upon payment of annual dues, members receive three sheets of self-adhesive return-address labels. Given the reality of faster-than-light-speed travel and object teleportation, mail is not a popular method of communication, but the labels enjoy a strange, ongoing vestigial popularity among civil libertarians.

“P
LEASE
,”
SAID THE
P
ROFESSOR
,
beckoning the attorney to enter. “Let’s go down to my study. It’ll be easier for us to chat.”

Arnie followed the Professor downstairs. There appeared to be a pleasant living room up just a few stairs, with a nice couch and loveseat, but the Professor bypassed this room and led Arnie instead to the basement, where he offered Arnie a seat on a bridge chair, just
in front of the hot-water tank. The Professor sat at his desk, which was really just a sheet of plywood suspended between the washer and the dryer. The desk was cluttered with papers containing elaborate calculations, unmatched socks, and underwear that had been marked in red ink. The attorney became conscious of his own underwear, which was all of a sudden bunching uncomfortably.

“So what can I do for you?” the Professor asked.

“It’s what I can do for you,” Arnie said. “The ICLU has been monitoring your situation. We want to offer our help.”

“What is my situation?” the Professor asked. Some water dripped on the Professor’s forehead from an overhanging pipe. He did not flinch.

“The Rigel Prep PTA is irate over your lesson about the contraction of the universe. They are demanding your dismissal.”

“I see,” said the Professor.

“The ICLU believes this is an issue of
academic freedom
.” Arnie said these last words slowly, with emphasis, as if it were a novel and important concept. “As a teacher,” he continued, “we believe you have the right to control the content of what occurs in your classroom.”

“I see,” said the Professor.

“We believe this is the start of a
slippery slope
.” The attorney said the words “slippery slope” with emphasis, as if it too were a novel and important concept. “The school board is trying to characterize this as a question of values,” he continued. “Once the board controls the contents of a physics lecture it is only a matter of time before it dictates what books are read and what philosophies are taught.”

“I see,” said the Professor.

O
N
R
IGEL
-R
IGEL, CENSORSHIP IS
almost unheard of. This is part of the reason for the Professor’s reaction. On Earth, however, it is as much a part of life as the Labor Day parade or the Iditarod. Attempts at banning books can be traced as far back as the third century B.C., when Qin Shi Huang, first ruler of the Qin dynasty, burned all copies of the
Analects of Confucius
, and ordered that followers of Confucius be buried alive. Confucius’s philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, and sincerity.

Religious tracts have been a common target for censorship. The Spanish suppressed the Koran in the sixteenth century. The Catho
lic Church spent much of the Middle Ages attempting to suppress the Talmud. Pope Innocent XI ordered King Louis XIV of France to burn all copies. In 1536, William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. Tyndale believed, heretically, that the word of God should be known even to common people.

Some targets seem obvious. Darwin’s
The Origin of Species
was banned in Tennessee, which, for half of the twentieth century, prohibited teaching evolution. Others seem counterintuitive. Children’s books, for example, have met surprising resistance. Laytonville, California, banned Dr. Seuss’s
The Lorax
because it criminalized the foresting industry. A Colorado librarian removed Roald Dahl’s
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
from the shelves because she believed it espoused a poor philosophy of life. The Alabama State Textbook Committee rejected Anne Frank’s diary because, they said, it was a “real downer.”

But no genre has met greater disapprobation than science fiction novels, which rival religious tracts in the frequency with which they have been the object of censorship. Past targets include:

Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse Five
by Owensboro High School in Kentucky because of the sentence: “The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the fly of the God Almighty.”

Madeleine L’Engle’s
A Wrinkle in Time
, by a Florida elementary school, for grouping Jesus with scientists and philosophers who defend Earth against evil.

C. S. Lewis’s Christian allegory,
The Chronicles of Narnia
, by the Howard County, Maryland, school system, because it failed to adhere to “good Christian values.”

Orwell’s
1984
for being pro-communist.

Huxley’s
Brave New World
for focusing on “negative activity.”

And, finally, Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451
, a book about censorship.

B
Y CONTRAST, THE PEOPLE
of Rigel-Rigel had the broadest possible conception of civil liberties. The Rigel-Rigel constitution protected freedom of speech and freedom of association and freedom of religion. It also protected the right of privacy, construed in the broadest possible sense. This meant that people were free to do whatever they wanted in their homes and free to do whatever they wanted with their bodies so long as these activities did not harm other people. A person could drink alcohol or smoke or take any of the vast array of
drugs available for consumption with impunity. One could have sex with whomever one liked—man, woman, alien—so long as it was consensual. Not only could they have sex with whomever they liked, the constitution assured that the law would treat the relationship in the same manner as the traditional relationship between a man and a woman.

This tolerance was a source of pride for the citizens of Rigel-Rigel, who respected even the most eclectic of preferences. For example, the Rigelian press celebrated the strange case of Rothlorian, a decorated army veteran who married a plant. It was a highly evolved plant, with a conspicuously succulent leaf, but a plant all the same. Nevertheless Rigel-Rigel law protected the relationship to the fullest. When Rothlorian died, the plant collected the residual of his pension.

I
N LIGHT OF THIS
cultural predisposition, the question is why the parent-teacher association of Rigel Prep would have felt comfortable attacking the civil liberties of Professor Fendle-Frinkle. The answer is that Helen Argo-Lipschutzian and the rest of the PTA did not see this as an issue of civil liberties. Helen believed it to be about a much bigger issue: how a hypothesis passes from tentative conjecture to accepted fact, and which among the many hypotheses scientists develop should be presented as truth.

This is really an epistemological question. It is a question about whether we really know anything and, if we do, how we know it, and how we can differentiate among the things we are sure we know, the things we know we don’t know, and the times we are just guessing.

Helen would have put it differently. She would have said teachers should not teach anything about which they are not certain, particularly when it is something likely to be upsetting to children.

Helen also believed another crucial issue to be at stake, which did not affect civil liberties in any manner: asserting the power of PTAs.

F
ROM THE DISTANT TOP
floor of the house, a shrill voice screamed, “Tissues! We need more tissues upstairs!” The Professor waved his hand in front of his face, urging the attorney to go on.

“You see,” Nene-Zinkelreen continued, “this is just the latest attempt by the emerging conservative element in our society to erode our civil liberties. They are frustrated by the rights granted
to our citizens by the Intergalactic Constitution, rights that have been protected for millennia. They want to teach their values in the classroom, but the line they are trying to cross is sacred. We cannot surrender so much as an inch. If we relent, the battle will be lost for all time. Professor, these people do not have the right to keep you from teaching what you believe to be true.”

“Kleenex!” screamed the Professor’s wife, but he dismissed her again with another wave of his hand. (Of course, she did not scream “Kleenex.” It is merely the best translation available.)

“Why not?” asked the Professor.

“How’s that?”

“Why can’t they stop me from teaching this?”

“How can you even ask that?”

“Well, what difference does it make?”

“It’s the difference between teaching science and teaching fiction.”

“They’re not telling me what to teach. They’re trying to stop me from teaching something.”

“But by not teaching that something you’re denying a basic reality.”

“So what if they want to believe a fiction?”

“I can’t believe of all people you, a man of science, would say such a thing.”

“Well, it seems quite important to them,” the Professor said.

“But this is school,” said the lawyer. “Parents can teach their children whatever they want in their homes, but the government does not have the right to teach fiction in the schools.”

“They teach novels in school.”

“That’s totally different.”

“How?”

Arnie stumbled on this for a moment, but he was a fine attorney and he had an answer to all questions.

“The existence of the novel is fact. The teaching of it doesn’t endorse the message of the book. A school does not, however, have the right to rewrite a novel or to censor one or to pretend novels don’t exist.”

“I see,” said the Professor. “That’s an interesting distinction.”

Arnie felt bolder now.

“We’re going to go to all of the major newspapers with this.

We’re going to make sure the whole galaxy knows what is being done to you here on Rigel-Rigel. And you, Professor Fendle-Frinkle, are going to go down as one of the great defenders of freedom of thought in the history of the universe.”

The Professor said, “I see.”

A
RNIE COULD SEE FROM
the Professor’s nonplussed, less-than-enthusiastic reaction that he did not particularly want to go down as one of the great defenders of freedom in the history of the universe. In fact, Arnie had some sympathy for this position. Originally, Arnie had not wanted to be an attorney. He had wanted to be a jazz musician. As a child, Arnie had excelled at playing the cocleteen, the horn of a ramlike animal, which is blown, atonally, on the first day of a new year. He dreamed of someday playing professionally.

One day, after a particularly bad class, Arnie dropped out of law school and resolved to play the cocleteen in a jazz band. He didn’t succeed. It is hard enough to make it as a jazz musician if you play a popular instrument such as the saxophone or the trumpet. Jazz bands have hardly any demand for cocleteen players. Furthermore, as soon as he left school, Arnie’s mother began a relentless campaign of guilt, morning, noon, and night. She had always dreamed her son would grow up to be an attorney, and Arnie ultimately succumbed to her pressure.

So Arnie returned to his studies, reluctantly at first, but over time more willingly, until finally he fully embraced his role and fancied himself a young Clarence Darrow. More accurately, he fancied himself a young Lionel Hut-Zanderian, the great Rigel-Rigelian attorney. Arnie believed, given time, the Professor would overcome his reservations and similarly embrace his role in life.