13.
‘Thirty nine,’ boomed Castor’s voice. ‘But that’s wrong. The correct answer is four hundred and eighty four using the formula four pi r squared.’
‘You’re listening to my thoughts!’ said Emily stomping her feet.
Click
She teleported up to the moon.
‘Castor, you must not listen to my thoughts! That is just too, too nosey. They are my thoughts. My private thoughts!’
‘Well, you shouldn’t think so loudly then!’
‘I wasn’t thinking loudly.’
Stomp!
Castor said nothing but rolled his eyeballs to the heavens and looked exasperated.
‘Teroids!’ he said, in dismay and was silent for half a minute. ‘Let me explain. If you think loudly, everybody hears. It’s like shouting out for help, which is why I helped you. I was closest.
‘You can also think loudly but direct it at someone like a phone call. Have you seen any cell phones since you got here? No, not necessary. It’s more or less private and you can speak to anyone up to a light year away. The next level is thinking quietly in an open line to everyone in a group, say in your house, a sports team or a construction gang. Then comes your own thoughts that you want to keep to yourself and are normally best kept to yourself.
‘The trouble with you teroids is that you are always thinking loudly. It clutters up space. It’s the white noise that you see on your TV screen. Human thought is a huge problem. Because of this constant background clutter, there was lobbying to have Earth destroyed or at least the teroids exterminated. We’ve been fighting on your behalf; life would be so dull with you all dead. The magnetic field that we installed helps a lot. It keeps the thoughts in and has at least stopped the calls for demolition but with Zeus’s siphoning off the ozone layer to support his habit the problem is getting worse again.’
‘So you can hear my thoughts. Does everyone know my secrets?’ Emily asked feeling a little worried.
‘Yes they do!’
She went red.
Castor gave Emily a wink, ‘Just joking!’
"Us sentry slugs have morals, doubtful morals maybe, but we have morals and your secrets are safe with us. Safe with us as long as you don’t become a security threat.’
‘So you know about Enzo?’
‘Shhhh,’ said Castor. ‘Please do not think so loudly or you’ll have no secrets. We’ll start thought training tomorrow.’
‘So you do know?’
‘Yes, Enzo is amazing. You’re either a very brave or a very stupid girl. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Oh, the moment when Enzo settled in your hand! I’ve kept that secret,’ he said, giving Emily a wink. ‘Do you realise that if word got out, it would mean that we have to rethink the whole way we see the Universe?’
‘Why not just accept it the way it is?’
Flicking up hundreds of surveillance images on his window, Castor changed the subject, ‘You would think that with all this information, there would be no secrets, no privacy.’
‘How could anyone have a secret or do anything sneaky?’ said Emily, agreeing with him.
‘Do you believe everything you read or see on the Internet? No, some of it may be true, but every piece of information, every picture has a slant on it. Information has been left out or altered in a subtle way to try and influence the reader. It’s the same with the information us sentry slugs give out. Most information that comes in is someone’s opinion or viewpoint and we decide what we send on, subtly altering it to suit our agenda. It’s nothing malicious, well not normally; you do the same every time you communicate.’
‘How come everyone speaks English up here?’
‘Ha, ha, ha, ha,’ chortled Castor. ‘It’s a fad. With the Internet, US movies and popular human culture it has become the latest craze across the solar system! Everyone is speaking English. It’s creating chaos. ‘Hey Mon, Ow’s it go’in mon? Giv us hi five mon’. With spoken teroid language, English in particular, just about every word has more than one meaning. Every phrase can be interpreted in several ways depending on the words, the tone of voice and the circumstances it’s said in, and how the listener chooses to hear it. It’s so clumsy, it’s wonderful. It’s not communication, it’s art!’
‘How do you normally speak then?’ asked Emily.
‘We don’t speak, we use the universal language.’
‘Love?’
‘I wish! No, every creature and many plants use the universal language, Unilangue. It’s thoughts with pictures. Clear precise ideas, like a blueprint. There’s absolutely no room for misinterpretation.’
‘But who uses them, aliens?’
‘Yes, everything except humans. Teroids have got themselves in such a pickle; they’re running around in circles, chasing the tails they don’t have. What other creature wears clothes, reads newspapers, votes for politicians, saves for retirement, worships gods, or wipes its bottom after going to the toilet? None, not in the entire Galaxy! Because of the stress put upon them by this huge daily burden, they have lost the ability to communicate. They have lost touch with nature, with reality. If you ask me, Zeus’s problem at the moment is that he’s been dealing with teroids so long that he is starting to think like one. You’re so quirky, so likeable!’
‘But the anodes and zinodes wear clothes.’
‘That’s all part of the fad that’s sweeping the Galaxy.’
‘Look’ said Castor. The screen zoomed in on Emily’s house in Sheffield, then in further again to focus on the rubbish tin in the backyard. The metal was filtered out to show two slugs underneath it in the mud.
‘Yuck slugs!’ said Emily, then put her hand over her mouth. ‘Whoops!’
‘That’s okay,’ said Castor laughing. ‘Aren’t we disgusting? Yellow bits, yuck!’
‘Sorry,’ said Emily, feeling sheepish.
‘Hector the slug on the right is currently playing stress, a sort of 3-dimensional chess, with Josephine, a dolphin in the Red Sea, Yorang, a monta from a planet near Sirius, myself, and two anonymous players, probably sea sponges. It’s six player, one starts from each face of the cube. The object is to reach the throne in the middle.’
An amazing 3-dimensional board with alien looking pieces in six colours appeared next to me.
Pieces moved randomly, sometimes just moving to another position, other times battling it out with one or several other pieces using hand to hand combat or lasers.
‘Stress,’ called a player.
A red griffin moved to a little throne in the centre of the board, a crown appeared on his head and he glowed golden. The remaining pieces all saluted him and threw flowers at his feet then the board shimmered and disappeared.
‘There, Hector, your slug has won,’ said Castor. ‘What a move! What a game!’
‘I can hardly get my head around chess,’ said Emily, ‘let alone stress!’
‘It’s not lack of intelligence,’ said Castor. ‘Just too much clutter. Would you like a game of backgammon? You really need to practice.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Bin Laden will be up here sometime soon and we’d like to see you beat him this time. Grab the board; it’s just under the dash.’
Rummaging around amongst all the horrible things that live under a slug’s dashboard, Emily found the board and set it up, Castor giving her a few pointers as to where to put the pieces.
‘You start,’ said Emily, thinking she had him this time. How could he move the pieces with no arms?
The dice rolled and a piece moved. ‘Your shot,’ he said.
‘How did you do that?’ asked Emily. ‘Your piece has moved.’
‘If slugs needed arms and legs, we wouldn’t have lost them millennia ago! Ha, ha. Darwin was right with his theory of evolution!’
‘I thought I had you there.’
Emily lost.
And the next game.
And the one after that.
Then she started to get the hang of it. Castor sen
t her little thoughts, little suggestions, and she started to get a feel for the tactics.
Then Emily beat him.
‘You let me win,’ she said accusingly.
‘No, you beat me fair and square.’
‘It must have been beginner’s luck.’
‘Let’s play again then,’ said Castor.
Emily won the next two games.