What Aliens Would See...

There has been a stir of excitement across the media lately! What I find incredible is the sense of optimism that we may not be alone in the Universe after all. And this is not from a group of pseudoscience crackpots who are devotees of author Erich von Daniken, but instead, this sense of optimism has arisen from a team of accredited academics - four I can think of straight away, because their names appeared in the Press in direct association and support for this latest phenomenon - a passing meteor, comet or asteroid resembling a spaceship. Not that this alien space-travellers belief is just a passing fancy, or a momentary fad. Rather, I had already observed as far back in 1997, that just about every other shop at Santa Barbara in California displayed these inflatable alien dolls for sale, with their characteristic large heads, large featureless eyes, a small nose and a tiny mouth, all held by a long thin neck joining the head to a slender and rather puny torso, with flailing arms and legs. In short, these creatures sporting a rather large cranium had evolved into super-intelligent beings whose bodies had gradually allowed their alimentary canal to degrade until all but obsolete - hence no longer the need to eat and drink for daily sustenance.

  

And these scientists had to contain their excitement until hard evidence for extraterrestrial life contained in this passing object is verified. These four scientists were the most prominent among others who held an optimistic view over the likelihood of the existence of alien spacemen. They are Stephen Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA, English Theoretical Physicist and Cosmologist of Cambridge University, Professor Avi Loeb, an Astrophysicist at Harvard University, Dr. Andrew Siemion of SETI, California, and Dr. Jason Wright of Penn State University who, in all seriousness, believes that the spaceship - which recently passed so close to our planet and caused such widespread excitement - has broken down engines, hence causing it to tumble through space at 196,000 miles an hour. And so this four hundred metre-long cigar-shaped structure pays a visit to our Solar system, its course gets deflected by the gravity force of our Sun, and skims past the Earth before spiralling away towards outer space. This object, because of its unusual shape, conforms to intelligent design and engineering specifically to travel through outer space with the minimal risk of strikes by meteorites and space dust, hence their belief in it's artificial origin. By contrast, it was always observed that any other natural space rock is normally spheroid, including potato-shaped.

The object was given an affectionate name Oumuamua, an Hawaiian name to mean A messenger from afar arriving first. So here, assuming that it is a spaceship manned by rather handsome-looking humanoids with enormous heads in relation with their slim, rather weak and emaciated-looking bodies, I'll make a daring assumption on the conversation which took place among the crew as the ship passes over our planet, translated from silent telepathy into verbal English.

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Captain Ziglad stood, looking at the large crystal in front of him. The crystal itself, being nearly a metre in diameter, was quite an imposing piece of alien equipment. Then by telepathic will, he was able to zoom in on the image to see a city bustling with people, with streets crammed with slow-moving vehicles. What appears to be a river cutting through the middle of the metropolis, making it into two distinct halves, yet still connected to each other by a series of road bridges. The captain sighed, shaking his head.

His Lieutenant asked, "What's the problem, sir?"

"These primitive-looking tribes inhabiting this planet! They actually use fuel-consuming motors to propel their mode of transport. No surprise that their atmospheric consistence doesn't look very good. And furthermore, there looks to be a huge maggot crawling along - several of them, in fact."

The Lieutenant looked closely. "Third rock from its star?"

"Yes, that's right." The captain answered, just as the Lieutenant's young son runs into the large cockpit chamber from another part of the ship. "I'm focusing on what looks to be an odd-shaped island just off a huge continent to the south of it. The island is located off the far north west of the continent by a narrow strip of ocean, and looks to be heavily populated."

A third crew member, Jor-El, who was also looking closely at the crystal, chipped in. "You mention several large maggots? I believe that they are not giant insect larvae, in fact, they aren't even organic, but instead they are a form of public transportation. It does look as though they run on distinct tracks, separate from the smaller vehicles."

"Well," the captain concluded. "This planet was first visited by our sister ship The Nostromo, some time ago."

"When?" the boy asked rather excitedly.

"Well, going by our calculations, it's only a few months back." Jor-El answered. "But according to their calculations, it was more than two thousand solar years ago."

"Solar years? What's that, sir?"

The Lieutenant chipped in, "Ziggy, every planet travels on a path circling its star. This is known as an orbit. When the planet completes its orbit, that is, finishing at the same point where it started, we call that a complete "year". Since we call this particular star Solaris, we say one solar year. The Nostromo hovered over this planet just over two thousand solar years ago. To the inhabitants of this planet, the Nostromo shone for a while as a very bright star hovering in the sky."

"Wow!" Ziggy exclaimed.

"And furthermore - " Jor-El contributed, "Our unusual star was shining down on this planet about two thousand solar years after The Nostromo was launched from our home site. And according to what my instincts seems to be telling me, the timing of the launch itself seems to indicate some kind of promise our God Yahweh had made to them. Hmm, could it be that God had actually visited these inhabitants in person at a time coinciding with our Nostromo's visit? A very interesting speculation indeed! Especially when considering no divine visits were ever made to us." Jor-El was speaking more to himself than to Ziggy or to the other two in the cockpit.

"Surely these inhabitants cannot know the same God who created us!" Ziggy exclaimed, shocked with surprise.

"And why not?" Jor-El asked. "There is only one God, and if he had created us, he must have created these inhabitants as well. And fairly recently, as with us. Furthermore, I venture to say that his divine name Yahweh is known by these people too."

Both the Captain and his Lieutenant studied the live image within the crystal with single concentration. It was Jor-El, apparently the most outspoken member of the crew, who remarked, "This is rather like one of our scientists examining microbes swarming within a single drop of water. In God's name, every vehicle, every ship, even their airships, are all powered by fuel-burning engines!"

Then the Captain added, "How very much unlike the rather large telepathy-monitored crystal located within the rear of our ship Oumuamua, with no need for any fuel whatsoever, yet capable of powering our spaceship up to close to the speed of light. And furthermore, its velocity remains in full control of my own will. No doubt, down there they must have some physical, hand-controlled gadget, or even a set of gadgets, to monitor their mode of travel."

Then by zooming further into the image, again it was Jor-El who remarked, "The anatomy of these people consisting of a smaller head in relation to body size. Not only does this indicate almost an entire lack of telepathic powers and the possibility of lower intelligence, but their stronger, more muscly torso, legs and arms indicates the use of heavy labour as a daily necessity."

"But it's their behaviour which bothers me." the Lieutenant responded. "They all seem to be rushing about, without real peace within themselves, and looks to be prone to committing violence against each other. Furthermore, they are all clothed, and not naked as we all are. Do you think this matter of clothing might had something to do with their relationship with their divine Creator?"

"A strong possibility!" Both Captain Ziglad and Jor-El answered in unison. Jor-El continued, "Chances that sometime in their history they, or their ancestor, had disobeyed God. Considering that all the other creatures we had seen inhabiting this planet are not clothed yet able to survive well, indicates that clothing has to do with their standing with God rather than coping with the cold."

"I doubt whether their clothing has much to do with mere atmospheric conditions." Captain Ziglad agreed. "A little earlier I took a look at the planet's equatorial area and I saw several cities in that region with everyone wearing clothes. Lighter dressed, as this region is considerably warmer than where we have been observing, but still the need for clothing. This shows that it's little to do with the climate. Rather it has a much deeper meaning."

Just then Amor-El, the Lieutenant's wife and Ziggy's mother, walks into the cockpit. "It's time for your protein pills." she announced. Everyone present held out his hand to receive from her a small and easy-to-swallow pill which suited their tiny mouths. They all knew that this pill is enough to sustain them for a long while. And there were plenty more in stock.

After this the party withdrew from the crystal to sit at a lounge adjoining the cockpit chamber. Captain Ziglad waved his weak arms as if to indicate a conclusion to the whole matter. "We believe that these inhabitants were created by God to enjoy his love and friendship, just as we were. But unlike us, somewhere along the line, they disobeyed some command God had given them, and therefore in need of reconciliation. How that was accomplished I cannot say, but I believe that it involves at least two, if not three stages. The first is the need for them to cover their nakedness, the second is a visitation from God himself, perhaps in the form of an incarnation - for God to become one of them and to identify himself with them, and thirdly to atone on their behalf, one way or another, for we don't know how. This is only a speculation, for all this is mysterious to us."

Ziggy then piped in. "But if God became one of them, then who would take care of heaven? His angels?"

Jor-El answered, "The knowledge of our Creator God is a mystery to us, but somehow I don't believe heaven was vacated. There is a connection between all this and God's omnipresence."

The captain then announced, "We shall inform the rest of the crew on this ship, all seventy of them, that we have accomplished our mission, and we shall divert this ship for the course home."

The actual course of  Oumuamua, was deflected by the Sun.

"But were we originally meant to land on this planet of Solaris?" Jor-El asked.

"This was considered," the Captain answered. "But there were two issues which came up on the crystal. The first was the question of whether our compatibility with its atmosphere would have sustained us, or whether our incompatibility would have killed us from asphyxiation. And that would be the very first death among our species. As I studied the crystal image, it was not difficult for me to analyse the atmosphere, and I was able to conclude that we would have survived only for a short while before passing out."

"That sounds serious!" Jor-El gasped.

"Yes it is." Ziglad agreed. "But had we landed, we would have been a shock to the population, and going by the crystal images, they have a quarantine system, which means we would have been in custody for heaven knows how long for."

"So you, Lieutenant, and you too, Jor-El, back to your posts. We are setting our ship home bound."

Having crossed the orbit of Mars, the spaceship Oumuamua began to accelerate rapidly without a sound as it sped towards the outer Solar system towards home.