Chapter 5 “Spaceship”
Everyone woke up groggy like before, only this time they were in a big black limo. Dr. Becker looked around and noticed that Joe wasn’t there. She had recorded the journey on her smart phone video. She smiled and felt good that she got away with it. She would check it out later.
“Hey, Joe’s not here again” Steve blurted out to no one in particular.
Dr. Becker wished Steve would keep his mouth shut. She didn’t want Joe to think they were suspicious of him. She wanted him to let down his guard, hopefully revealing something important. She put her hand on Steve’s arm and gave him a look. Confused, Steve started to say something when Joe walked in.
“This way, you know the drill” Joe acted as casual as possible to no effect.
Everyone filed into the same viewing room. Bill and Dr. Zanagar just followed everyone else. Such a beautiful sight to see Mars this close.
“How does this ship go undetected?” Dr. Zanagar inquired.
Joe looked over “It doesn’t, you could detect it if you were looking for it.”
Dr. Zanagar nodded. “Why Mars? Have you been monitoring our robots here?”
“We were making sure you did not get into any trouble.”
“Trouble? What do you mean by that?” Bill replied not taking his eyes of the view.
“There are some ruins there, if you ran into them it would only confuse you.” Joe said in a rather matter of fact tone.
The group in unison froze and looked over at him. Realizing what he just said must have been a shock.
“Mars was once a thriving human colony. So was Venus.”
“What happened?”
“It, didn’t work out.” Joe nonchalantly motioned for them to follow him.
“You will be filled in on all the details later, please trust me.”
They all walked into the same briefing room as before which was familiar to everyone except Dr. Zanagar and Bill. As Dr. Becker sat down she had an eerie feeling, things did not seem right, the more she found out the more distrustful she became.
“Why now, you ask? Well, this is not the first time that contact has been made. We’ve made contact several times throughout your history but your world was too fragmented. Most of the time we were thought of as Gods, and it usually made a mess. After several attempts, we decided to wait.” Joe leaned back casually in his chair.
“The last time was in your year of 1786. We made contact and gained the trust of one of your elder statesman. A very inquisitive man with many questions, just like yourselves. He didn’t trust us at first but slowly we won him over. After many discussions, we agreed to wait. He suggested that communication had to be instantaneous around the world before such an event should take place. Benjamin Franklin, a very smart man.” Joe could not help but smile at look of bewilderment on their faces.
Bill raised his eyebrows with a you gotta be kidding me look. All this seemed too much.
“Do you have any proof? Pictures of you with him?” Dr. Zanagar did not believe a word.
“We do have a letter but it’s only for the President, we made that promise to Mr. Franklin. I’ll give it to you so you can give it to the President when you brief him. If you have any questions please speak up anytime you like.” Joe tried to continue but Bill interrupted him.
“If you were involved in our history why didn’t you stop all the wars and suffering? Why didn’t you stop Hitler?” Bill could not hide his sarcasm.
“Well, we can’t get too involved, it’s important you develop naturally.” Joe paused for a second realizing he had to be careful. “We’re not perfect. Sometime we’ve made the situation even worse.” Joe stood up and leaned forward on the table. “Sometimes, like your government, we do things with the best intentions only to make the situation even worse. You see this is the first planet developed with freeformed humans. Let me give you some background.” Joe took a deep breath and began.
“How we got here is a mystery. We only have fragmented information. We do know we were created out of several other humanoid creatures, but that is all.” Joe could feel his pulse increasing, he hated giving speeches.
“What is highly suspected is that we were created for pleasure. Humans have a vast neurological network of sensors to perceive the outside world. Sensations like touch, smell, taste, sight are believed to be unique. Emotional feelings like love, hate, happiness, and joy are also believed to be exclusive to humanoids. Perhaps these creatures created us to experience these things, but who knows. Hopefully one day our true history will be revealed but until then we can only speculate since these creatures no longer exist. What’s left is three planets we call the homeworlds. Outside of that are several other solar systems where human colonies exist. These systems are near wormholes, making travel possible. All these colonies have regular humans though, not freeformed humans like your planet.” Joe could see the doubt on their faces, but he continued.
“Most humans on the homeworlds and surrounding colonies have their emotional center dampened. This dampening is done because if a human is left to freely form, they end up destroying themselves. The out of control emotions will override all logic and common sense and nothing but mayhem will ensue. All human colonies with freeformed humans end up killing each other. Wars, death and famine are the result of uncontrolled emotions and the actions that they inspire. The only reason you haven’t destroyed yourselves is because you’ve had help. A lot of help. But even with our help you guys have come close to wiping yourselves out.” Joe could see that he had their attention. He continued to walk around the table behind them.
“Dampening the emotional center will control emotions, but it also has a negative effect on the intelligence center. The average IQ of an emotionally dampened human is around 70, some more, some less. Some dampened humans with normal IQ’s end up being the leaders and run the homeworlds.” He stopped and gazed at the wall for a moment. He bowed his head.
“About 10,000 years ago an attack on an Earth like human colony took us completely by surprise. An unknown group of humanoid creatures carried out this vicious assault. Before this happened we thought we were the only humanoids left in existence. This attack proved otherwise.” Joe paused for a second looking off as if recalling those events.
“We had no choice but to destroy them. We had no idea of their intent, what they were after or where they came from. We had no other choice.” Joe looked away as his emotions welled up inside, it took a second to gather himself.
“We’re not people of war, we have no weapons. However, we do have the ability to manipulate gravity so we can reign down meteors on any planet or shift its orbit, destroying all life. This was the first and only time we’ve done this. Those meteors destroyed all life and any ships around that planet. They didn’t know what hit them. They probably thought they stumbled across a human planet in the early stages of development. A few people we had on the planet’s surface tried to negotiate, tried to reason, but the invaders never gave them a chance. There only intent was to destroy that place, their violence would make even an Earth human shutter. If they discovered the Outpost, they could find their way to the homeworlds. We couldn’t let that happen. We had to destroy them even if it meant destroying our own colony, destroying our own people, killing our own kind. After that it was decided to breed our own freeformed humans.” Joe sat back down and leaned forward putting his elbows on the table.
“Earth is the grand experiment, most of us are surprised you’ve made it this far. Most colonies with dampened humans are very benign and uncreative. They need help just to get out of the Stone Age. Earth took off like wild fire compared to other places. The most surprising thing out of all this was once humans were allowed to form freely there was this immense creativity and inventive drive. Earth’s different art forms surpass anything in existence, anywhere. One such art form that is relatively unique to Earth, is music. Earth music touches and warms the soul like nothing else. Everywhere you go on the homeworlds and
any Outpost you will hear music, from modern to the classics. It is truly the freeformed human’s gift to humanity. It is your creativity and inventiveness that will be your most important gift. You see, humanity has lost its way. On the homeworlds they no longer try to better themselves, they are culturally, scientifically and morally stagnant. They lack the ambition to figure out how to fix the machines left on the homeworlds. They need your drive for life, your curiosity, your spirit. You are humanity’s future.” Joe stared at the group bracing for the response.
“Bullshit” Bill bluntly broke the ice shifting in his seat, he couldn’t help himself.
“You expect us to believe that crap?” Bill glared at Joe. Not wanting to start an argument, both Dr. Zanagar and Dr. Becker looked at Bill holding up their hands. They both tried to speak at once.
“Look, this is a lot for us to absorb. I think I can speak for everyone by saying that we are overwhelmed.” Dr. Zanagar looked around the room.
“Proof” Dr. Becker spoke up. “We need solid proof. So far you are the only person we have really talked to except for that one person who seemed afraid of us. What was his name, Onney?”
“Oh yea, some of you have meet Onney,” Joe scratched the back of his head.
“He’s a good friend of mine,” Joe looked around making sure the doors were shut, he lowered his voice and leaned forward on the table. “Onney isn’t freeformed. He’s smarter than most but he’s really afraid of freeformed humans. He gets scared when you guys start to shout.” Joe leaned back in his chair holding his arms out. “Look, you want proof, I’ll give it to you. I’ll take you to our Outpost on Pluto.”
“Pluto?” Steve grinned.
“Yeah, we have a monitoring Outpost on Pluto, near the center where it’s warm.”
Before the meeting began with the Earth delegation Joe had met with some of the people from the Outpost. He knew they would be angry at him. Joe never had authorization to make contact with Earth.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Stan, the Outpost director shouted at Joe. “We’re going to get in big trouble for this and I’m not backing you, you’re on your own.” Stan glared at Joe. Stan was also a freeformed human. He had been to Earth several times but he spent most of his time between the homeworlds and the Outpost.
“We need them and they need us, we have to do this now.” Joe angrily replied.
Stan sat there shaking his head, not knowing what to say. Silence filled the room.
“I’ll go to the homeworlds and talk to the council myself taking full responsibility for what’s happened.”
“You spent too much time among them. You think you’re one of them.” Stan replied sarcastically.
“We are them and they are us.”
“Oh, don’t give me that shit Joe, you sound like one of those Linies.”
Joe gave a small laugh at Stan’s remark. “I was not aware you had a sense of humor Stan.”
Joe and Stan looked at each other for a moment in silence. Stan got up and started to walk out the room.
“You have lost your mind!” Stan yelled at Joe as he was leaving.
“I am going to bring some of them here.” Joe called out to Stan who abruptly stopped. He turned and had a slight smile on his face.
“Having trouble convincing them? No, you can’t bring them here.”
“I will take them right to the homeworlds then.”
“You need this station to open the wormhole.” Stan stood there with his hands on his hips. He paused knowing that Joe knew that, Stan moved forward. “You can jump through another wormhole? I thought this was the only one around here?” Stan could not hide the concern on his face. Controlling the wormholes was how they maintained all their systems.
“There are other ways.” Joe sat there tapping his fingers on the table. “Other wormholes and energy sources.” He hoped Stan would not call his bluff. He wanted the Earth group to see the Outpost before going to the homeworlds.
“Keep them out of my sight and make sure someone watches them the whole time.” Stan shook his head. “How long will they be here?”
“Well, I need to explain some more things to them.” Joe rubbed his chin in thought.
“What have you told them, how much to they know?” Stan walked to the table leaning forward on both hands.
“I haven’t told them everything, just what they need to know.” Joe shrugged his shoulders. “We’ve known each other for a long time, you know we have to force this issue. The homeworlds will not survive unless something changes.”
“Maybe we weren’t meant to survive. After all we are not a naturally occurring being.” Stan sighed as he sat back down at the table.
“I don’t believe that, we are more than the sum of our parts. Humanity is better than the lethargic beings that clutter the homeworlds.” Joe shifted in his chair.
“Be careful, that mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble, like always.” Stan shook his head and chuckled.
“These people from Earth are the key to humanities survival.” Joe replied as Stan looked at him. They have been though a lot together. Stan and Joe had known each other their entire existence.
“Okay, I will go along with it. Bring them here and show them around.” Stan got up to walk out of the room, but he stopped and turned to Joe, “Sorry for calling you a Linie.”
They were called Linies, a strange religion on the homeworlds. They believe the body’s energy needs to return to the lines of energy that flow throughout the universe. They would partake in this deadly meditation called a wright, where they would not eat, sleep or drink anything. It would last for days as they attempted to “connect” with the energy of the universe. Some would die during this meditation. The religion was not really organized, there were no churches or priests. The people who seemed to be in charge were the ones who lived through the most wrights. The ritual meditations would take place four times a year and they would spend their entire time preparing for the ritual or recovering from it. Their lives became consumed with this wright. Many people had been sucked into this religion and it was destroying humanity. It took away peoples free thinking, and in the end, it took away their lives.
Joe sat there wondering how he would explain this. He did not know how to tell the delegation about the state of humanity on the homeworlds. Some people were engrossed in this strange religion, while others succumbing to drugs and the pleasures of the flesh. Even though their emotional center was dampened they still experienced intense sensory pleasure that could not be controlled. In a way all the humans on the homeworlds were after the same thing, to change the way there feeling, if only just for a moment.