OUR EXTRATERRESTRIAL NEIGHBORS
By: Shelton Ranasinghe
This is work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN: 9780989276351
Copyright © 2014, by Shelton Ranasinghe
2665 Devon Hill Road, Rocky River, Ohio 44116, USA
[email protected] This book is revised edition of Heaven at SETI’s Doorstep
Buddha Impetus to Primitive Psyche
Self – A Delusion?
Are We Being Fooled By Our Brains?
Hilarious Emails
The Phone Rang in the Middle of my Shower
Published in United States of America
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.
DISCLAIMER
All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to any real person either living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred. All organizational names, trade names, product names and trademarks of third parties, including any trademarked characters, used in this book are used without the authorization, permission or consent of those third parties. No authorization, permission, consent, sponsorship, endorsement, affiliation or other association by or with any such third party exists or should be inferred.
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Lovingly dedicated to the kindest woman on earth my wife Dilani and to my two wonderful children Ayesha and Sajeev.
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Sincere thanks to my good friend Bunchy Rahuman for his wholehearted efforts to improve my book. His expert knowledge of English, clear & objective viewpoints and brotherly attitude were what I appreciated most.
Our Extraterrestrial Neighbors
SETI institute seeks evidence of life in the universe outside the earth. SETI is an acronym for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Their main activity comprises scanning of the skies for any radio signals or radio waves originating in outer space, presuming they are sent by intelligent beings living on other heavenly bodies. According to current scientific thinking, life can originate and perpetuate on any planet with a suitable environment, given a sufficiently long period of time to evolve and stabilize. Once life emerges, evolutionary processes will eventually lead to development of a life form equipped w
tion in the habitat; especially the water plants that grow in the lakes.
The moon people have been using fire for thousands of years for cooking and lighting. Man-made lamps and torches are used for illuminating the dwellings and public areas as an additional light source. However, the total light produced by all the light sources mentioned above is nowhere close to the luminosity of the dimmest evening on earth. Probably the best light condition in the caves may be equated to the hazy light at late sunset during winter time. But
eveloped at least to the level of exchanging basic ideas? This was the biggest question. Although very many hours were spent by a panel of experts on this subject at the planning stages, so far none of their ideas and attempts led to any useful outcome. This was a big deadlock that the Seth and Max faced right now.
The SETI-NASA team knew that they were dealing
imicking coded messages. The team also realized that the two scientists should be very intelligent for having the ability to prepare a brilliant light beam to respond to their LASAR signal. The source of the powerful pale blue light beam was still a question. As to why the miniature thermal emission spectrometer on the probe did not detect any heat images from the light source, also puzzled the earth scientists. Why people gathered on that particul
revent its destruction. I believe that this is the duty we are bound to perform and it will be our biggest contribution to our community”, he then fell silent. Everybody nodded their heads indicating their agreement. He started to talk again, “Dooda and Loola, we really appreciate the enormous work that you have done for our society. I know it is a very difficult thing for all of us, especially for you two, to agree to this. But we should immediately terminate all connections that we have with the earth people and go back to the normal life routines that existed before all these events took place. I know you will all do it for our people. Please maintain dead silence on this matter and do not discuss anything or tell anyone why we had to do this”.
Everybody looked at Dooda and Loola. This was a shock for Dooda and Loola. Loola looked at Dooda thinking he might have something to say. Dooda tried to speak but no words would come out - he seemed to be about to have a mental breakdown.
Summoning a great deal of courage Dooda asked the leading elder whether he could speak to Seth for one last time. He said he would explain all these things to Seth and request him not to seek to communicate with them or plan any mission to the moon to meet them in the future. The leading elder looked at the other elders. All nodded their heads to indicate their agreement to his suggestion. The leading elder requested Dooda to contact Seth as soon as possible and complete the task within a day or two.
As a final statement, the leading elder requested Dooda to take action to destroy the TV screen if Seth did not remove it from their vicinity. All these measures were discussed and arrived at in a very gracious manner. However, the tone of the leading elder’s voice indicated the inherited, authority and finality of a typical elder evolved through thousands of years within a proven successful and unbroken social system.
Dooda handed over the camcorder to Loola as he did not want to hold on to it anymore, symbolizing the near end of his link with the earth people. He then started walking back to the research station very feebly. Though Loola was following him, the emotional environment they were in did not warrant conversation. Halfway down, Loola separated from Dooda and headed towards the probe location. Dooda saw Loola going towards the probe but did not ask any questions. After having a last look at the camcorder Loola put it in the special slot it was meant to be placed in. The team on earth on duty at the time wanted to speak to him but Loola walked away at a faster pace than usual. The team wondered this was done deliberately. The team members on earth wondered what was going on with Loola, as they had never seen such behavior in him before. There were nothing new recorded in the camera.
Dooda was a completely broken man now. He was not sure how he could convey the sad news to Seth and the group on earth and then make an abrupt termination to their warm relationship. The fact that he had to talk to Seth for the last time and cease all communications with the outside world from the very next moment, was an extremely traumatic emotional stress that his mind would not be able to cope with. Neither Dooda or Loola could sleep restfully anymore, they were both thoroughly depressed.
As the issue of faith figured as a topic in their previous discussion Seth and Max immediately sought advice from Joe Campbell who was an expert on human psychology. After absorbing the details of all that had happened, Joe mentioned faith as a very emotional & delicate subject to deal with and blamed Seth for discussing it with the moon people. Joe narrated the whole debacle as follows: “Hell, heaven, angles, ghosts and similar things that people believe are only mental projections. Proving or disproving the existence of these mental objects is not possible. Assume that we people on earth see a four foot diameter moon like space object in the sky. This object is visually bigger than the moon and blue in color and shines like a gem. This object is millions of light years away from the earth, but due to sheer size, it still looks large when viewed from earth. Say, due to the vast distance from us, it is impossible for the scientists on earth to get any information on this obj
ect other than to obtain an idea of the material that it is composed of, from a light spectrograph. Thousands of years ago when we became hunter gatherers someone introduced it as or claimed that this object was heaven. As nobody could prove or disprove this idea and this concept really helped to keep our mind and body in harmony the people on earth believed that this was in fact heaven. They already had a description of heaven which was that it was a place of happiness happier than any happiness one can feel experience or imagine. People were even ready to commit suicide to protect this idea. If a scientist denied this or someone even drew a cartoon ridiculing this idea the ardent believers would become very violent and militate against such challenges. Irrespective of any strong arguments that might try to pull down this idea, the idea will survive until it is conclusively proven to be wrong. The large blue colored shining gem in the sky is our heaven and this idea symbolized by the object helped us over millions of years. When we are in trouble we go out, look at it and offer prayers seeking help from it. We get immense relief from our troubles at least psychologically every