Time and Aliens
Chapter 1
People have been waiting for a sign of life on another planet. They will have to wait much longer to get an answer. I, Maveez Smartass, am a man born in 2399. Yes, indeed. In my time aliens have not yet been discovered, though another thing has been discovered...
You must be asking two questions now: What has been discovered in my time, and what the hell were my parents thinking when they gave me that weird name. Well, since the first question is more important, I will answer your second question first. Maveez is a fairly common name these days. It started off with Maveez Jones (2284-2368), USA president in the years 2340-2348 and continued with Maveez Levi (2297-2379), Israeli Prime Minister in the years 2344-2352. Then the name Maveez became a global name.
Back to the point...
I started researching time in 2436, and I started building a machine out of (you won’t believe this..) a 20th century television screen. I completed the machine, after 8 months, on the historic date 12th of January 2437. I had discovered “Time Manipulation”! On my first use of the machine something went wrong, and instead of the going to the year 2438 (I was afraid to go too far into the future) I ended up in a distant year. I don’t know the exact date because the only thing the locals told me is that it was the 14th of Geasov 9814. I freaked. “In the future they use different months”, I thought to myself, not knowing if I really was in 9814, or even maybe a later date. I looked around and there it was, standing in front of me. A big, weird, stinky creature...
Chapter 2
It came to me and said: “Jah Den, Setasem”. I looked at the creature and he probably saw that I didn’t understand this bizarre language. “You don’t know Saterrian? You must have been hit real hard on your skull, human man”. I looked at this thing, obviously an alien, with fear, even though he looked harmless. He didn’t look anything like the perception of aliens we have, or more to the point- had. He wasn’t even humanoid, and didn’t remind me of any of the Star Trek or Babylon 5 aliens. He wasn’t a Klingon, Vulcan, Ferengi, Minbari, Narn or Centaury. He was beyond words.
He started speaking Arabic (just about the only earth language I don’t know). “English, that’s what I understand”, I said, “I am a man from the past. I was supposed to get to January 1st 2438. Instead, people tell me it is the 99th century”. He looked frightened suddenly. He reached into his pocket and took something out. I stepped back a few steps- better be safe than sorry (yes, that irritating phrase is used in the 25th century too).
“Don’t be scared”, he said, showing me a Nokia phone. “Is it yours?”, he asked, “I checked and it’s the 2430 model”. I was shocked. If that is really from about 7 years before I got on my journey and it’s in good shape, it just might be that I’m not the first time traveler!
“Can you please let me see that for a moment”, I asked. He looked frightened again. I asked him why he seems to be scared and a man came over to me and said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, man. The Satters don’t have the same body language as humans. He’s furious at you, real furious...”
Chapter 3
I didn’t know what to do. Here I was, in an unfamiliar place and time, pissing off a huge alien. “Excuse me, I don’t understand...”. “Angry”, the man said. “I know what it means”, I said, “I just don’t know why”. “Kill!”, said the Satter, “Kill”. I was speechless. Two men came and started dragging me around. “Don’t kill me”, I finally said, “I didn’t mean to anger him”. The men laughed and dumped me on the ground of what seemed like a prison cell. They left without saying a word, just giggling. I was locked inside. ‘Is this Death Row?’, I thought, despaired.
Several hours later a man came. It was the guy who pointed out the Satter’s anger. “Why? Why are they going to kill me?” I asked the man. He looked surprised. “Who said anything about killing you? You’re a psycho”, he said and approached the exit. Suddenly he stopped, turned around, and said with a smile, “I know why you think you’re about to be executed. ‘Kill’ in Satterien means the English sentence ‘Take him away to psychospital”. I guess psychospital is short for a psychiatric hospital. I tried to get him to tell me why I was there, but all he said was “No comment”. That really pissed me off. I’m not a reporter, I’m the patient-prisoner here!
Thirty six hours I was all alone. Suddenly the door opened, and in came a Satter. “You have made the police commissioner very angry, so he sent you here for evaluation. It seems you weren’t trying to fool him, Mr. Maveez Smartass. You are just insane. So it is my duty to do this. Oh, and one last thing- nice last name”. All I saw was his huge claw-like hand coming towards me at an alarming velocity...
I woke up. It was just a dream. I was at home, in my warm bed, and my dog, Valen (I’m a great fan of the show Babylon 5 from 4.4 centuries ago), beside me. My wife wasn’t there, but I just assumed she was already awake and went downstairs. I wondered why she hadn’t woken me up, since it was my turn to make breakfast (equality between the sexes is in the majority now. There aren’t many chauvinists around in the 25th C.). I was walking to the bathroom when I heard Valen bark. He never barked inside my bedroom before. I looked at him and he got up on two feet and started to transform into a Satter. He was holding a cell phone in his hand. It was not a dream after all...
Chapter 4
The Satter came closer to me. He had the same expression as the first Satter I met. He may have been the same Satter, but all Satters look alike to me. I saw the cell phone. It wasn’t a Nokia, it just had a symbol resembling Nokia’s. “You are now undergoing depsychotization. It gives you sanity”, he said. “You are in here because we believe it can help you to be in a familiar place. Even if it’s just your imagination”.
“I am not crazy, dear Satter”, I said, “Not crazy at all”. “You really believe you’re from the past”, he said, “You filled your head with false memories. So many, that it’s incredible! No human or Satter has ever been in such a... a... Well, such a deep craziness”. I was despaired. He explained that I’m dreaming all this and will not wake up, unless my depsychotization is complete. ‘How the hell will I wake up? I’m normal now’, I thought to myself.
“That little thing there”, I said, pointing at the gadget that looks like a cell phone, “What is it?”. “‘What is it?’, you say? You don’t know what a remote control looks like?” he said and started making the weirdest noises I’ve ever heard. I assumed it’s Satterian laughter.
-“I’m an idiot, I know. But what does it control?”
-“Idiot. Humans don’t use that word anymore. Where have you been for the last 500 years?! Oh, right. Time traveling. The remote control is for implantees”.
-“Excuse my stupid ques...”, I was interrupted by him because he knew what I was going to ask. Either it’s because he’s actually in my head or the question was just obvious. “Humans and Satters who can’t recover from their insanity. We give them 1 hour to recover in the depsychotization, though usually 35 minutes are enough. The unrecoverable people are taken into a lab, where their brain is replaced with an implant brain. They have no will or desire for anything but serve the people with remote controls. You just might become one yourself. It’s been exactly 34 minutes, and nothing has changed”.
Chapter 5
“The countdown has begun”, said the Satter. He started counting from 45, and zero was zeroing in on me... 4... 3... 2... 1...
I woke up, and I was on the operating table. I was all alone in a big lab, and I had a weird feeling in my head. There was a large bandage on my forehead. I walked to the door and reached out to the knob when I suddenly heard a sound that was like the unlocking of a big high-security safe. I stepped back, since I was unsure if it would be a good idea to open the door, which, by the way, had a poster of a new movie called
“E-mailing beyond 83 years” (at the time I didn’t understand it, but later I did, as you will soon). Stepping back was very good, since a second later the door swung open and smashed into the wall. Had I been in it’s way, I wouldn’t be alive to tell the story. A man came in and said, “You are needed for testing”. “Did I pass the depsycho-whatever you did to me?”, I asked, but he said he’s only a first year intern with no information about that.
We entered a big room, resembling examination rooms in alien ships in 20th and 21st century movies. “I am Dr. Alexander McCormick, but you can call me Alex”, said the oldest scientist in the room, “Do you have any questions before we proceed?”. I, as a scientist myself, asked the scientist more than he expected:
- “Did I pass the depsychotization?”
- “No. We received a message from the president of the NAU, Julia Bernstein, to let you go. She won’t time it good, so it got here when we already started cutting your skull. Don’t worry, there won’t be any permanent damage.”
- “You said ‘won’t’ as in the future, not the past.”
- “Of course, the message is from 3 days in the future”
Chapter 6- Special Two Page Finale
“The message is from 3 days in the future”, I heard Alex, the doctor, say.
- “Excuse me, Alex. What do you mean, the e-mail from the president is from the future? I thought time travel is impossible in this time. I mean, you thought I’m crazy when I said I can do it.”
- “This is not time travel. It’s t-e-mail, time electronic mail. We can send mail to a destination in the future or the past.”
- “Why didn’t you send t-e-mail to the beginning of e-mail in the 20th century?”
- “It isn’t possible. We can send it to a time that is up to 30,312 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes and 24 seconds away. Or in short, about 83 years away. But t-e-mail can’t cause the change of events, because of very complex reasons. This t-e-mail shows that, in 3 days we will know of a good reason to keep you alive, so the president will send the e-mail to keep the timeline. Well, like I said, it’s complex.”
Now I understood the poster I saw, but I didn’t understand what they were about to do to me. I knew they were going to perform tests on me, but I didn’t know if it would include unnecessary surgery. They wouldn’t tell me anything about what they were going to do to me. They answered everything with: “That’s confidential. Ask us about other stuff, but there is no way in hell that we’ll tell you anything about your tests. And I remarked, “So it’s good that we aren’t in hell”. I thought that was a witty response, but they didn’t like it and started sedating me.
“This is not constitutional and it conflicts Alex’s ‘ask me anything’ attitude”, I said and Alex answered, “Well, I lied”.
I felt bad. Drowsy. Then I was asleep again. Actually, half asleep. And they asked me questions. I answered them. “The bastards pumped me up with truth serum,” I thought, disgusted. After I told them everything I fell asleep. This time, 100% sleep. I had told them all I know. This could truly be a hazard to security. Time security!
The next thing I knew I was in a prison cell. I spent a few days there and nobody was there. And then I suddenly heard a deep voice saying: “I shall help.” A very big alien stood before me and said: “I feel sorry for you. You think you are a very long time in the future, but it isn’t as late as you think. About 200 years ago we got here, and we interacted with the humans. It was the Earth year 2710, but we influenced them so much that after our planet exploded and two million of us came here, that they changed the year count to our count.”
-“Why are you telling me all this?”
-“I just assumed you’d be interested. After all, why would you journey in time if this wasn’t what you wanted to know!”
-“Yes, but why?”
-“We have feelings, too, you know. I can’t stand seeing any living creature in captivity for no good reason. This is the least I can do. Now, do you want to hear or don’t you?”
-“Yes. How could two million saters make so much impact on a few billion humans that the humans change a major system in their life?”
-“I don’t really know. That is just a fact and… Somebody’s coming. I will be back.”
As soon as he left there was an earthquake. It wasn’t a real one, but it was just as dangerous for me. Very sharp blades were coming out of the ceiling, and once they were completely ready to kill, the ceiling started going down. It seemed like the end for me. And then I heard the deep voice of the Sater: “I got your time device.” I ran to the closed door. He was running from far away, as fast as he could, with my time device between all three hands. I got it in the nick of time.
I went back to my time. And I traveled a few more times, but they were to safer times, so I had no special adventures in them. After I traveled so many times, and those times I got to the exact time I wanted, I decided to set out on another adventure. I wanted to discover why the Saterrian time count will replace the one we use now. I set my time of arrival to October 1st 2710, the end of the year in which the first contact took place.
I found myself in an open cornfield. It was frightening: above and below. The ground was burning and with it the corn. In the sky, a huge amount of warships were fighting. I could see humans in the cockpits of crashing ships, and Saters in the cockpits of the big, strong, and very destructive ships. One of the Sater ships descended and a laser came right at me. I blacked out and woke up here. They say it’s just 1997 and this is the psychiatric ward at the hospital. They say my name is actually John Stone. They expect me to believe that! Why not just say my name is John Doe!?! Some of the orderlies are in the conspiracy against me, and some just don’t believe me. But you believe me, don’t you?