I've only recently been connected to cable television, and it's a wonderful time-waster. One of the best things to waste my time on is watching some of the obscure SF movies and TV series that they manage to dredge up. Abortive pilot episodes, short-lived in-season replacements, and quickly-cancelled series and serials seem to be a specialty on cable. Although the quality can be variable, the five-episode canon of an axed SF series that never made it to network television often wins out for me over the tedium of episode 1598 of Star Trek, if only by reason of the novelty factor.
Moving on to the contents of this issue, it begins with a short story from a new contributor, Patrick Burger, which I am sure you will enjoy. We next welcome back our regular reviewer Fred Noweck who has found time to watch some movies in between reading books.
The intense allegorical future serial Land of the Ancestors follows, and we conclude with another spaced-out poem from Richard Stephenson. Richard is the author of twelve collections of poetry. He teaches, runs a reading series, and occasionally performs his work with the jazz-poetry troupe Naked Ear in clubs in Southern Alberta. No one's punched his ticket yet, but he remains hopeful that there is intelligent life "out there".
Short story: The
Search for Intelligent Life by Patrick Reinhold Burger
Please, thought the pale, middle-aged man in a shabby tan suit who stepped out of the elevator on the twenty-third floor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration building in Houston. It was cool in the air-conditioned building. Almost cold, while outside the July sun poured its merciless radiation down into the stone, concrete and glass canyons of the Texas city. But this man with glittery grey eyes, grey eyes that darted about nervously, was sweating even in here. This is my last chance, he thought.
Martin Jobberts was this man's name, and he pulled on the clear plastic handle of a glass door before him. The metal rim on the bottom of the door scraped the tight, nylon shag of the blue carpet with a staticky rasp. The fingers of his left hand tightened convulsively on the sweaty handle of his briefcase, and he felt hot and uncomfortable in his old, wrinkled suit.
"Marty!"
A paunchy, red-faced man with thinning white hair slid out from behind a substantial oak desk. Martin smiled into the familiar face of Sid Aibell. Sid had lost some more hair since the last time he'd seen him, but the man's sapphire-blue eyes were shining with a genuine light. He had his white shirt crumpled up to his elbows, and his tie flopped loosely.
"Hi, Sid," Marty replied, holding out his right hand. The two men locked hands for a firm handshake.
"How're you doing, you old sonuvagun!" Sid exclaimed, giving Martin's hand a final, sharp squeeze. "What've you been up to lately? I kind of lost track of you after that Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence program was cut."
"Been keeping myself busy," Martin replied, blinking quickly several times as he involuntarily glanced at the floor.
Sid either noticed the subtle sign, or was simply following his regular greeting behaviour, because he immediately gestured with a hairy arm to a black leather chair that waited before his desk.
"Have a seat, Marty," he said invitingly. "Bring me up to date."
"Thanks," Martin mumbled, heading for the elegant seat. Sid maneuvered himself and his paunch back behind his big desk. Airy, cow-like sighs emanated from the leather chairs as both men settled into them. Sid presented to Martin a mildly concerned and non-threatening countenance.
"How's the wife?" Sid asked.
"Fine," Martin responded automatically, about to brush the question aside. He caught himself, and added, "Vera's okay. I guess she misses the kids a bit, though."
"They've all flown the nest, huh?"
"Jason, our youngest, left last August for Cal State Long Beach."
Sid nodded as if he expected more words to come on the subject, but Martin just looked down at the briefcase he had set by his feet. Sid's smile faltered. He glanced upward, searching his memory for something to say.
Before the silence grew uncomfortable, Martin looked at Sid again. His eyes were unguardedly vulnerable.
"It's about SETI that I've come, Sid."
Sid shifted his weight. He leaned forward and intensified his open, 'you can talk to me' manner.
"Haven't found any new work since the cuts, huh?" he guessed gently.
"I haven't even looked, Sid. I want - hell, I NEED - my old job back."
Sid grimaced as if he tasted something sour. He sighed, his eyebrows going up innocently. "I'm not that big a fish at NASA, Marty, you know that. There's not much I can do about it. Those cuts came straight from Congress."
Martin nodded, his eyes blinking. "I know. I've talked to everybody else, but it's no-go."
"Armstrong wasn't sympathetic?" Sid wondered with mild surprise. "That project was one of his babies."
"He's distancing himself from it," Martin said accusingly. "Suddenly everybody seems to think that it was a total waste of time and effort."
"That's not what they said ten years ago, is it?" Sid ventured compassionately.
"No, Martin glowered, "but that's not the worst of it."
"No?" Curiousity made the pitch of Sid's voice rise as he nibbled the bait. "What is?"
"I've been doing research independently - at home," Martin began, his tense shoulders dropping a bit and his back straightening a little. "I've got one of those XP-38 antenna dishes - you remember those, don't you?"
"Sure," Sid replied, taking the cue. "It was one of the few saleable spin-offs to come from SETI. It paid SETI's way for a couple of years. Sure, I remember it."
"Well, I've got it hooked up to a working prototype of that multi-band wave separator I was working on just before the cuts," Martin said, his eyes sparkling with excitement now, and sweat beginning to glisten on his forehead beneath his limp black hair. "Every night I scan a different sector of sky. It's not the greatest operating procedure - a little hit and miss, I know - but for the small scale I'm working on it's alright."
Sid leaned back and glanced at the digital clock that faced him. "Get anything besides the usual static?"
"Yes!" Martin hissed triumphantly. "Almost every night - no matter what sector of sky I'm working on! Every night, Sid! Every night I get a transmission! Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes for as long as hours! Slightly different patterns, but always similar Sid!"
"You sure you're not picking up some TV or radio signal?" Sid said skeptically.
"I've taken all my tapes in to the sound technos in Huntsville - they still owe me a few favours - and they tell me that the patterns don't match anything on file."
"What do they think it is?"
Martin's hot face darkened. "They think it might be some interference from some kind of machinery in my house," he said dismissively. "But they admit, Sid, they admit that it would be some of the most irregular, weird machinery ever." He gripped the edge of Sid's desk with one hand. "And I don't even have a microwave, Sid. Most of the time I can't afford to turn the AC on!"
Sid's head bobbed slightly, as if he were trying to decide something.
Suddenly an electronic ring issued from Sid's phone. He picked up before it rang again.
Martin's body sagged, his back bending, feeling the momentum he'd built with Sid vanish more with very twitch of Sid's face as he became totally engaged with whoever was on the other end.
"Shit," Sid swore, "I totally forgot. Yeah. No, I'll be there. T-40 files? I'll see if Madeleine's got them ready. Yeah. Sure. Don't worry. Yeah, bye."
"What I was wondering was -" Martin piped hopefully as soon as the phone clattered in the cradle.
But Sid held up a finger and snapped, "Wait." His face was rigid with harried concentration, as if he were trying to concentrate on a very faint melody. "Sorry. I've got to talk to my associate." He picked up the phone again, and pressed a few buttons. He stared down at his desk.
Martin heard a faint elfin voice come from the receiver.
"Hi, Madeleine," Sid replied. "Are you finished with the T-40s?" Sid listened intently. "Great. I'll pick them up on my way to see Armstrong."
Sid sprang up from his chair and bustled to the coat rack by the glass door. "Sorry to rush out like this Marty, but that was Armstrong. We have a budget meeting at ten, I totally forgot."
"I have tapes," Martin pleaded, throwing words like hooks at Sid. "I want you to listen to what I've got." Martin got up from his chair and followed Sid. "This is what SETI was looking for all those years! I've got proof that we're not alone, Sid! I swear, these transmissions prove that there's other intelligent life in the galaxy besides us!"
Sid grimaced at the burning desperation in Martin's eyes. He twisted away from Martin as he pulled his ash-grey jacket on. "Why don't you leave one of those tapes here, Marty? I'll get to it as soon as I can and I'll give you a call. Maybe we can do lunch."
Martin stared at him, his fingers squeezing the handle of his briefcase so that the knuckles of his pink hands went white.
Sid brushed past him and opened the door. "Take your time leaving," he said, smiling, "but I've got to run. Oh, and give my love to Vera and the kids."
And then the glass door rasped closed over the blue nylon carpet, and Martin watched Sid's body, shimmering and distorted by the glass, recede down the hallway.
Martin slammed the door to his blue '86 Toyota Corolla and walked up a narrow path of crumbling brown bricks. Spiky Kentucky blue grass threatened to overwhelm the walkway on either side. Martin didn't see the wild lawn, and he blindly inserted his key into the lock on the white door of his house. He heard a click and then pushed on the scratched golden handle.
He stepped onto a grey mat and closed the door behind him. He was welcomed by the rousing music of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He bent to slip his shoes off.
He walked along a thick orange shag carpet, pausing and petting a black dog that came up to him. The dog's tail wagged happily.
"Good boy, Beau," Martin muttered to the black Lab without enthusiasm.
He straightened up, seeing where his wife lay in baggy white track pants and a pink sweater on the dirty living room couch. Her dull grey eyes were on him. She glanced quickly at the TV and then back to him.
"Hi, honey," Martin sighed, continuing on down the hall.
"How was your day?" she called after him.
"Fine," he said over his shoulder. He trotted down the carpeted basement stairs, the dog at his heels. He flicked a switch on the wall as he passed, revealing gyprock walls, a stained grey carpet, and a cheap desk cluttered with computer hardware shrouded by plastic dust covers.
Martin sat down at the desk and pulled the plastic from the monitor, printer, keyboard, hard drive, and the box that housed the controls for the XP-38 antenna dish on his roof. He dropped each plastic cover to the floor, creating a pile of stiff, yellowing, semi-transparent stuff beside a machine that was raw with wires and exposed circuit boards. It looked like some high school whiz kid's science project. A colourful sheaf of wires exited the home-made machine and snaked past Marty's leg to connect in the back of the computer on the desk above.
It was this machine that had winnowed out and recorded the cosmic sound patterns that Martin had so often heard.
Martin pressed the power button on the hard drive, and the computer responded by emitting an electronic burp followed by what sounded like the cracking of chicken bones. This crackling sound gave way to a whine, and before it had become a breathy, electric hum, Martin's fingers already played over the keys.
Sid had been the last chance. There was nobody else to go to now. Martin gnawed his lip. He keyed in commands that angled the dish and activated the multi-band wave separator.
Static crackled from the computer's cheap speakers. And then he heard it again. Within the random static, a pattern. Unmusical, unsymmetrical...yet every so often some crackling motif or theme repeated. Martin listened, spellbound. He quivered with excitement, and wished he could share this with someone. But no one cared. No one believed. He tensed suddenly, and the thought flashed through his mind that he should run his filtering programs again. He had compiled hundreds of thousands of frequency patterns - everything from machinery to weather - and he had checked them against the patterns he picked up on his computer. Not a single match, ever. So why bother doing it again? Nobody cared, and he certainly didn't need to convince himself anymore.
He wasn't crazy...everybody else was. The planet was blanketed with these signals from intelligent forms of life! They were surrounded by non-human intelligence and nobody noticed! Nobody! He shook his head, dismayed, delighted, defeated.
Beau was stretched out behind Martin's battered old swivel chair. He slept, and twitched in the throes of his dreams.
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Hi, space cadets and cadettes! Boys and girls, mesdames et mesiours, dammen und herren ..... oops, I'm flashing on Caberet.. I'm ba-aack!
I have some great stuff for you in this issue. Movies, books, I've been really busy.
First, the movie The Bicentennial Man starring Robin Williams as the
robot. This movie is based on the Asimov book by the same name. There are a few
updated sections to make the story more believable but on the whole, the movie
follows the book pretty well. Bring a hankie when you go to see it; it's a
tear-jerker.
Now the downside of TBM, the fellow who did the screenplay of the book was obviously not very familiar with Asimov's work, as I noticed at least four instances when Williams, as the robot, violated one or another of the Three Laws of Robotics (hardwired in so that it is impossible to violate them). All in all, though, I enjoyed it immensely.
Next, Galaxy Quest with Tim Allen. Allen plays the Captain of the Protector, who when his TV show was cancelled, went on the convention circuit. He and his former crew have been playing conventions for eighteen years. Allen is still full of himself but his crew is sick and tired of it. Enter the Thermians. They have been watching our 'archives' that have been broadcast into space and feel that Allen and the crew of the Protector are just the thing to save their race from extinction... to the point that they made for him a duplicate of the Protector from the plans as shown in the 'archives'... only this one works!
A hilarious romp through the world of SciFi conventions and the people who go to them. I was laughing so hard that I'm going to have to go see it again just to catch the parts that I missed while I was laughing!
Two other movies that aren't out yet (at the time of this writing) are Titan: AE (After Earth) and Supernova.
Titan: AE is animated. The story concerns the fate of the few remaining humans looking for a new home in an alien universe. Looks like it might be good.
Supernova I don't know too much about, but it looks like a pulse-pounding terror flick from the little that I have seen of the previews. More on these later.
Now the books. This issue we have:
MindSpan is a collection of Dickson shorts (hmm.... that sounds a little dirty) from the 60's and 70's. I had read most of them before in other places, but it was still fun reading them again.
Dragonseye concerns the second appearance of the Red Star after the human colonists landed on Pern. It has been two hundred years and the old warnings for the most part have been ignored or forgotten. Anne has brought to life the world of Pern again, taking us through the early years of the colony... most of whom have forgotten that they came from someplace else. Keep up the good work, Anne.
Cat's Pawn is a story in a story. That is, the majority of the book is a diary which came to light after the death of the writer, Bill Anderson, who was stranded on the homeworld of the Orians. Orians are a large feline race who have been working to forestall the encroachment of the insectile Kaz. The Kaz come from the Core Stars and since the Core Stars have a comparatively short life span, the Millionyear Kaz empire is moving in our direction.
There are many races mentioned in the book, few of which are adequetly defined. It makes an interesting read of plot and counter-plot, friendship and betrayal, but I kept reading it to see if it got better.... it didn't.
That's all for this month. Send questions and/or comments to: Freddy47@aol.com. Who knows? Your letter may see print!
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They were off and running that hot, high-altitude desert morning. Hessia's Firebird foamed and snorted as it left behind the mountains of the Taos frontier in a cloud of dust, and before they both knew it, they were in the Lone Star Duchy of Oklahoma. Cautious minds would have left behind this Texan imperial possession all together, but it was well known to Hessia that the Cherokee Nation had a millennium of hatred for their Texas overlords, and who better to find safety with than the very people Texas had repeatedly brought misery to.
On this red morning, burned by the Sun of old, the two highway travelers on board an antiquated Firebird, made their way into the Oklahoma land where armed camps of enemies faced off against each other. These enemies were the Indian Nations, resurrected a thousand years ago at the start of Americas 'Commonrealm Period'. Their enemies, recently on the upswing, were the Suburban Fortresses built only recently during the spread of American Revivalism.
Shiloh and Hessia were just two more examples of all the opposites and dualities that had always made up America.
A look inside their minds said that much:
Shiloh looked at Hessia and saw what everyone else saw; one of the most beautiful women in the whole world, and a face to set a thousand engines to wail. He told himself he would try to paint a picture of her in the nude once they had arrived in the Palace of Kir-sten'ya. He would do this portrait just as all the great masters had done before, and he laughed inwardly at the childhood fable that anyone who saw a Neo-Cola Classicist in the nude was torn to bits by the hounds of hell.
Hessia looked at Shiloh and saw what everyone saw in the nobility of Texas; aristocrats with powdered, pink wigs having sex in the royal gardens of the Waterloo capital. No matter his reasons for leaving behind the frolicking decadence of his royal upbringing, and no matter his good intentions to join the 'the Eternal Renaissance' in the Palace of Kir-sten'ya, he was still accountable for the Lone Star Empires destruction of her homecity on the banks of the Mississippi river, legendary Cahokia, the last symbol of the Earth's thousand year golden age.
They both were gone now, everything golden, that had once been touched by the Sun.
Back to the cold North, away from the long hot days of the endless sunsets in Oklahoma...
The Last Sailor had been walking for days, as if on a mission to not rest until he could light his torch in the company of one honest person. He had continued the exploration of the land of his ancestors into the northern grasslands of a place that for centuries had been known as Wyoming, but now politically belonged to the Fellowship Lands- lands allotted to the Von Strauven Imperium by the nations of Northern America.
Today, the Last Sailor smelled an all-together, to- familiar smell in the air.
Burning human flesh.
He had once smelled enough of it in his past to make someone want to die.
This was all the convincing he needed to explore the origin of the smell.
Heroes are also wise fools.
He crawled over a small hill, where the scent of burning flesh was a thick ripple of burning nausea. Overcome with sickness, he peered into the oblivion.
Before him, in the nearby valley, was a smashed and over turned semi-circle of stone cairns and megaliths that looked they had once been an astronomical observatory for pagan rituals, but had recently been turned over in desecration.
He soon saw who had done this. The reason was in a smog of burning flesh. It was human pollution. It was a camp ringed in laser wire and fences made of steel razors. There were emaciated men, women and children imprisoned here. They were being worked to death. They were slaves and that was the plan. This was a concentration camp, and these people had been brought here to die.
Bodies stank of death. Where humanity had once dwelt there was a hole. In that hole, a skull, named atrocity.
Before the Last Sailor could take another breath laced with holocaust, he heard the distinctive electric whirl of a plasma rifle pointed at him from behind. He slowly turned around.
The brandisher of the weapon was a hooded person, who upon closer inspection was a young woman. She looked strong and dark. Her tribal dress of uniform was unique, almost military style. She had an 'insignal patch' on the right arm of her parka, and under her hood was a soldiers cap with another pagan 'insignal patch'on it.
The Last Sailor had a good idea what he was dealing with here. He responded appropriately, and spoke to her.
"Long-Live-The-Many-Faces-Of-God"
The Last Sailor knew she was an Engineer, a rare pagan soldierhood, who themselves were descended from an even older warrior order that had helped build the legendary Commonrealm a thousand years ago.
The woman soldier put down her plasma rifle, but still looked stern.
"You'd be wise to get out of here," she warned. The tone of her voice had the easy lilt of the simple countryside. "We're busy evacuating all of our pagani people away from here. These Christian soldiers..." and the Engineer spit with hatred and disgust, "...These Christian devils are too overpowering here."
The Last Sailor asked a question.
"Where am I?"
The young woman pagan soldier replied.
"This is the land my people once lived on. It used to be called 'SahV-HehW Adrien,' but those damned Von Strauven bastards and their thievery took these lands, and called them the Fellowship Lands - And those murders with the deathcamp claim this as the crusader-state of Edessa, validated by Incorporated Law as a Christian nation clean of pagans- My people!"
The Last Sailor had had enough of the smell of burning flesh.
"So who is running those deathcamps?"
The Engineer answered.
"Damned Teutonic Knights,"
she spit again, "My name is Janus, and you're my guest," she smiled a
country grin, "Why don't you come with
me?"
The Last Sailor shook her hand, and agreed, happy to leave this place. They both left together, unknowing of the wounds they both shared.
The two strangers to one another left the valley of death that day in an ancient Brazilian-made Sergio automobile that stank of putrid hempoline. The Engineer, Janus as she had introduced herself, told the Last Sailor that the engine of this car had been around since the Recognition Wars. The Last Sailor doubted that, afterall, the Recognition Wars had happened a thousand years ago, on the eve of the breakup of the decrepit 'United States of America'. But knowing these pagan Engineers, and their long history, it was not improbable that Janus was correct.
"My roots go way back to the Baalist exiles to Antarctica..." she explained about herself, "My last name is 'Southcross,' named after the southern pole star constellation. That's how I know."
They drove north that day. Janus the Engineer explained that they were heading towards a place called Montana, part of a greater land called Taiga. She explained the places they drove through enroute, principally the atomic wasteland of southern Montana that had been destroyed by the nuclear missiles of the former emperor of the Earth, Maximillian, during the Crisis.
Janus explained the significance of this place, and what it meant to her.
"This was once the land of my pagani ancestors. They were destroyed by their own vanity. This has always been the pitfall of my people."
After hours of driving through fertile farmland full of the superstitious people of the American countryside, they arrived at their destination.
The Last Sailor was amazed at what he saw. Built into the mountains was a giant assemblage of stone houses and temples. It was a primitive metropolis, made up of villages collected around each other into a large mountain community. Janus explained to him that the model of this settlement was based on High Commonrealm Era architecture, built by her ancestors a thousand years ago. She then went onto explain to the Last Sailor about the rulers of the mountain settlement.
"It's called Communitaria, protected by the dual armies of the Red and Black Banner. The Taigan philosopher-kings permit this agrarian nation to exist in their kingdom."
As the two of them walked around through villages of the mini-city, the Last Sailor witnessed the life behind these High Commonrealm Era walls.
It was a refuge for the sick and old who needed assistance. It was a place of schooling for the young. And it was a place of religious tolerance and cultural diversity. All around that the Last Sailor could see, it was a strange, eclectic community of diverse people. They lived here in hope for greater human prosperity in an age when uncertainty gripped the planet.
Janus told the Last Sailor that the soul of Communitaria was embodied in an old man named "the Monkey Messiah". He was the spiritual leader behind an esoteric religion that she could only explain as "the -Wolf- who- Eats- the- Body- of- God".
Janus then cryptically added:
"It's important that you meet him."
In no time at all they were dining with the religious leader of Communitaria, the Monkey Messiah, and in the late hours of the feast it became a drunken orgy of alcohol, and screaming monkeys throwing their own feces.
The Monkey Messiah recognized a stranger at his table, who of course, was the Last Sailor. He yelled across the table at him.
"YOU - STRANGER! Tell me what you have seen of my America. How does 'the Wolf' eat 'the body of God' in your eyes? Tell me, or my monkeys will shit on you!"
The Last Sailor nodded at him.
"Let's get some more drinks poured, and then you'll have your cable monkey man."
That was done, and before the Last Sailor could begin his accounts of what he had seen of America, Janus the Engineer, pagan soldier and defender of her people, said a prayer underneath her breath.
The Last Sailor removed a harmonica from his coat pocket, and played the opening bars of an instantly recognizable tune. The song was famous.
It was the 'Star Spangled Banner.'
He then spoke in a voice comfortable with the powers of alcohol, and the powers of storytelling. His voice had an easy gait to it, as he began to explain himself.
It was obvious from the start he would reveal little about his past.
"My name is Anacreon Oregenamen, and in this age of our subjugated planet, under the yoke of the Octopi Incorporated Lords, we see a glimmer of hope in the heavens. In the dual moon sky of Luna and Ceres, we see some cause for celebration..."
"But not much..."
"My story begins in America with great loss. I am here because I have no where else to go. The days of adventure on the seas of the Pacific are over for me. My friends are dead, and the flames of destruction have made a humiliating trophy of the figurehead that my life one was..."
"But my story of loss is not special. It's not more important than anyone else's stories of loss. In the land of my ancestors, I understand that great pendulums of history have swung back and forth. Justice is in transit continually here. What is wrong is eventually righted in America. No culture can truly supersede another culture, without some form of resurgence happening here. I have some faith in this, but I think I pale in importance to all the other injustices in America which need to be corrected..."
"I will wait my turn..."
Anacreon Oregenamen began with the California Archipelago, the first stop he had made in the land of America.
"I suppose you all have your own fables and tales of Golden California to go along with your ideas of Classic America. I've heard that California is referred to as the mythical Atlantis of America, a place to incredible to believe, lost forever beneath the ocean during the Tribulations, its secrets only myths, and that is all, and no more. I can only tell you of what I have seen. Nothing remains of what California used to be."
"The people that remain there now on the islands and atolls of what is left of California are truly amazing- and as equally horrifying. I think they've found the true meaning of California that its earlier technological predecessors never connected with. California has always been a place of upheaval and always temporary. The primitives that live there now understand that their lives on that land, like the land itself, is not permanent."
"That makes them real Californians..."
Anacreon talked about his next stop, and a place he knew too well, the waterport city of Viva Las Vegas.
"Some say that the gold coffers of ancient Las Vegas are the last vestiges of the richness America once had, and, once was. Some talk about it like it's the proof of a fabled time. If that is true, and that greatness is supposed to mean armed thuggery, and state-support of piracy against the weak and unprotected, then the Gran' Duchy of Viva Las Vegas is indeed the last bastion of an American greatness..."
"Crime"
"What I've seen is a city ready to sell away its own safety for the price of American 'creature comforts.' The pirate mercenary fleets of Viva Las Vegas have been granted port and call in the city as long as they keep the golden life of the city protected for all its citizens. Now, it's a city over run with the very mercenaries hired to protect it. The horror of that reality is something that the rebel muses of the city sing about. They hope that Viva Las Vegas may truly- 'live.'"
"At the cost of getting their dosages of golden age America, ancient Las Vegas enjoys a macabre death show, live and televised."
"In the house that Brigham built, and Jonathan Saul Lee almost destroyed, there is a gentle prosperity that Moab Stevens saved. It's called the Kingdom of Deseret, Mormon Zion, where the green alkaline valleys are hoisted upright by the words of the Old Utah saints..."
"Here my canoe first ground ashore, and I looked straight into the pounce of the Lion of Judah. When I would have expected a challenge because I was a trespasser in the 'Kingdom of God,' I was instead greeted with assistance, and this hospitality, came from a people who had repeatedly been persecuted by outsiders. These people, that have had to repeatedly send out their own Nauvoo Legions to keep 'Hannibal away from the gates,' instead welcomed me, when they had every reason to shoo me away. This confounded me. Why the openness? Where was their anger at being tricked time and time again by those with the crueler hearts?"
"I did not expect to meet such a reaction in America, the land of my ancestors."
It was then that the winds of debate entered the tale of Anacreon. A draft swept itself from the shoulders of the Monkey Messiah. He spoke loud and clear.
"What bothers you, is that our Mormon cousins, should have never have helped you at all, is that right?"
Anacreon responded.
"Given I was a stranger, yes. Given again, their long history of being persecuted by outsiders- why should they have trusted me?"
The Monkey Messiah screeched with laughter.
"Who said they trusted you, dear sailor? The point is- yes, they as a people have been visited by death more often than not, but that opens them up to life. Being comfortable with the hardships is not closing up oneself."
Anacreon disagreed.
"Fate is cruel, monkey man."
The religious leader of Communitaria screeched.
"Listen to the twisted branches of my life, and hear how more cruel we can be than fate, when we fear that imminent death, of any kind, at the other end of every action we think of taking. When that happens, life doesn't open up. It's closed upon itself, creating- the pain of life we see all around us."
Janus the Engineer, pagan soldier, spoke at this moment.
"The storyteller is the vessel of blame, unless he accepts his burden as the wise fool- Tell our guest Anacreon about the Astronaut-Who-Fell-To-Earth..."
In that instant, more liqueurs of wildness were poured. The room of acolytes and monkeys became excited with the expectancy of hearing the Monkey Messiah's tale. Obviously, the tale was a popular one among them all.
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Well, you got us on your radar.
Yeah, you think you got a bite.
Gonna pay a little line out
and let us fuss and fight.
Gonna pay a little line out,
let us run with all our might.
Pay a little line out,
then drag us into sight.
But we ain't no cetacean, baby;
ain't no big fish on your line.
Your technology is ancient,
and you know we're feelin' fine.
You'll think you're reelin' us in
as we flash and splash,
then we'll leap out of the ocean
with style and panache.
Yeah, a porpoise with purpose,
we'll breach your frothy wake,
hit the sky in hyperdrive
and force you wide awake.
Cos we're OINTs in silver saucers
from the antediluvian sea.
Can't squeeze us into ointment
Yeah, got no ambergris.
Your jets are just a joke, babe,
compared to our technology.
We're gonna mess with your magnetos.
Yeah, switch polarity.
Only one cat's got our number, babe.
You ain't payin' him no mind.
You think he's just a crackpot
and his thinking's so maligned.
He says we're other intelligences
calls us OINTs for short
and points to vile vortices
where time and space distort.
Yeah, ol' Ivan had it right, man:
we're an underwater clan.
Got no scales or flukes or flippers
cos we travel in a can.
We're an antediluvian species.
We live beneath the sea.
Bin on the earth forever
before you were climbin' trees.
Got bases on other planets
on Venus, Jupiter, and Mars.
Were warpin' in and out of worm holes
while you were building cars.
So now we scoot like Pac Men
across your radar screens,
and when you try to tag us,
we bag a few marines.
You get their last transmissions
of sighting UFOs,
but can't guess by gosh or golly
where their bones repose.
See, your boys may seem to vanish,
their planes plum disappear
when we gobble them like Pac Men
and turn space time on its ear.
But they're not nudgin' noses
with no friends of Davey Jones.
Their molecules are fine
they've just crossed the line.
They may be discombobulated
from the weft and warp of time,
but they're hail and they're hearty;
their new genotypes are fine.