Some Fun Is had at Bob's Expense
The port-o-potty door was starting to open. Common courtesy demanded that everyone look away in case the person coming out had forgotten to do up their fly. But the oddness of seeing someone exit a port-o-potty on a nearly airless barren plain millions of kilometers from the next nearest port-o-potty kept everyone spellbound. When the door was fully open, a little man-shaped being started stepping out of the open door. It appeared to be about four feet tall, bald, with almond-shaped eyes and did not appear to have ears or a nose, though it had nostrils. It was the colour of everything else, kind of an ochre. It was holding the door open with a long slender hand that had three fingers and a thumb.
"This is the most solemn moment in the entire history of the human race." said Bonnie, completely transfixed by the monumental event taking place just outside the pod. This was first contact with an alien race, the dream of mankind ever since they had first started gazing upwards at the stars.
Then the long slender hand of the being slipped on the port-o-potty door which, being spring-loaded, banged back, evidently stubbing the toe of the creature, who then started hopping around on the other foot while mouthing obscenities and trying to hold the injured toe, which didn't work out and he rolled onto the ground in a heap. After he managed to get himself under control, with many obscenities, all the while pointing to the tow for his audience and making exaggerated pain faces, he got up and hobbled over to the window that everyone was staring out of. He was grinning like an idiot and waving like a kid at a parade to the people inside. Somewhat unconsciously, one or two of the people inside waved back in a spellbound sort of way. This caused the being outside to grin an even broader grin and wave even more emphatically with both hands, before discovering that he needed his hands to mime opening a door so his hands were confused for a time trying to simultaneously wave and open imaginary doors while he was mouthing the words I'LL-COME-INSIDE because all you can really do is mouth words in a near-vacuum. Then he disappeared around the corner of the pod out of view, but then came back into view and mouthed the words THROUGH-THE-AIRLOCK in case the people inside didn't know how to get into the pod, then he was out of view of the windows again and was apparently heading for the airlock.
"Intruder alert!" yelled Jim, who was always quick to catch on. "Computer, IQ, whatever the fuck, can you keep him out?"
"Sorry, guys. I won't open the door for him, sure, but if he knows the secret handshake he's getting in. The secret handshake in this case is twisting the manual airlock knob. No one ever thought about how to lock one of these things. Maybe as we get more of you guys up here..."
And a low rumble throughout the pod verified that someone outside had indeed opened the outer airlock door. Moments later there was a sound of air rushing and it became clear that the airlock was pressurizing.
"What kind of weapons do we have on this thing? We need heavy stuff, sharp stuff, anything at all!" said Jim, very much the man of action.
"All of the food packets come with a spork." said Art, who really wasn't much into the action thing.
And so, a few seconds later, the inner airlock door opened revealing a madly grinning rusty-looking alien being confronted by three humans all armed with sporks. The alien held up his left hand in a solemn gesture of peace.
"Greetings-humans-take-me-to-your-leader. HAHAHA I always wanted to say that! Hey, are those sporks? What have you got to eat, I'm starving."
Everyone looked at their sporks, which didn't seem to be necessary, so they all came off red alert and everyone got more comfortable, though they were all very much dazed and confused.
"You look... you look like the Chryse Alien." said Bonnie, still kind of shell shocked.
The alien's face lit up with the most enormous smile, and he cocked his head to one side and did that thing with his hands to make him look like Shirley Temple as he was batting his eyelashes, except he didn't really have any.
"Call me Smith. Dr. Smith, according to my diploma. But I admit it was all mail-order. Not really legal in a lot of places. Pretty much nowhere. So I guess we can drop the Doctor bit. I expect all of you guys are doctors too of some sort anyway."
"No."
"Not me."
"I am" said Bonnie.
"As a god I could be a doctor if wanted to." said the computer.
"Charming! A disembodied voice. Are you alive?"
"I am a god."
"But are you sentient?"
"I am a god."
"I think we should look into that some more. But do you really think I look like the Chryse Alien? Or should I say that it looks like me? Do you really think so? I've never done a self-portrait before and I didn't really know if it would work out - Do you really think so? Oh, it took forever to carve that thing out and I'm so glad you like it. Although here we don't call it the Chryse Alien, we just call it The Face. You know, could be anybody's face really. We all kind of look the same."
"How many are you?" asked Jim, assessing the danger.
"And you are...?"
"Jim."
"Jim! Glad to know ya! Well, that's not really a meaningful question, Jim. I could tell you there is only one of me, or I could tell you that there are an infinite number of us; both answers are correct really."
"Why are you here?" asked Bonnie, who was still dealing with sentient computers. "I'm Bonnie."
"Bonnie! What a pretty name. I think it actually means pretty, doesn't it? Anyhow, why am I here? Because I live here, of course. As you very astutely pointed out, I am the Chryse Alien. Only I like the call myself the Chryse Resident. The real question is: Why are you guys here? And I suspect the answer will turn out to be the dung pile."
"The what ?" said Art, who was adrift in a sea of theology breaking upon the rocks of whatever this was turning into.
"The dung pile. All of us come here to crap. An infinite number of us. For an infinite amount of your time. That's a load of crap you might say HAHAHA. But seriously. You folks call it gold. You might say we crap gold, but we just say we crap crap. Unless it's Burrito night. Then I sometimes get a bad case of you-know-what and there's a whole lot of mercury to get rid of. It's really kind of embarrassing. And you are..."
"Art."
"And I'm IQ!" chimed in the computer.
Art pictured a big nasty screwdriver in his mind. And it was coming after computer circuit boards which were all cowering in fear.
"One thing at a time. I'm still working out how you embodied fellas tick..." said Smith.
"What could you possibly metabolize into gold?" asked Bonnie, who knew quite a bit about such things.
"Who said anything about metabolizing? You guys and everything else from Earth that isn't a rock change molecules of this into molecules of that and somehow get energy out of the process and you call it metabolizing and you're all very happy with it - "
"Not me." said the computer. "I am a being of pure thought."
"Yes, well most of you are into this metabolizing thing. I'm still working on figuring that one out. We're much more direct. We change atoms of this into atoms of that. Much more energy, but the heavy metals do tend to pile up. That's why we have a special place to dump a load, pinch a loaf. Drop the kids off at the pool, so to speak. This place here. This is where all of my kind take the Golds to the Super bowl, if you catch my drift." said the alien with a charming grin.
"But the fusion process is only exothermic until you hit iron..." said Bonnie.
"Bingo!" said Smith. "You might have noticed this whole place is made of rust. And I do mean the whole place. There is simply nowhere else to store any iron or iron by-products. It's like if your entire planet were covered hundreds of feet thick in poop. So we've started going that little extra step and squeezing out gold instead. It takes a little more effort, sure, but it's almost four times as dense. Good for the environment."
"So you don't metabolize anything", said Art, who was getting over his shock somewhat and was already working out ways of disproving this thing was alive. "Might I ask - how do you reproduce?"
"You mean how do we do the nasty? the horizontal bop? a bit of crumpet? driving Miss Daisy? the beast with two backs? peel our bananas? jam the clam? lay pipe? take the bald-headed one-eyed gnome for a stroll in the misty forest?” said the alien, and then paused for dramatic effect. “We don't. There's only one of us. Always has been. Always will be." He said, indicating his groin area, which was flat and smooth.
Art's case was gaining ground fast, and he was starting to suspect this apparition, which was clearly not alive, was somehow concocted by the malfunctioning computer, and that they could solve both theological conundrums with that big nasty screwdriver, which was growing bigger and nastier in his mind. So to make sure the others were on the same page he started playing some of his other cards. "It's odd, but scientists have been looking for signs of life here on Mars for years. Unusual gases, inexplicable patterns, regular radio emissions in the Water Hole frequencies, that sort of thing."
"You guys have been looking for Earth life. By definition, you won't find it unless you bring it with you. And I keep losing all of my atmosphere so I’ve learned to get along without gases. As far as ‘inexplicable patterns’ - I kind of like the scenery the way it is so I’m not much into landscaping - although I did enjoy making that face thing." he said with a proud twinkle in his eye. "And I’m sorry, but I don’t own a radio. Never found a use for one. But if you need some music, I’ve got a bunch on tape. Eight track. What are you guys into? I’ve got both kinds - Country and Western.”
Smith looked around the room to see if anyone needed music. The humans were processing too large a backlog of input to respond in any way, so they pretty much just sat there with obscure expressions on their faces. So Smith tried again.
“Rhythm and Blues?”
Still no response.
“Rock and Roll?”
Nothing.
“Death Metal and Trance? … Okay, so that’s pretty much a no on the music. But since you bring the subject up, we’ve been looking for intelligent life too. You know, unlikely gravity waves, new dimensions, converging timelines. All the normal stuff. And absolutely zilch. So imagine our surprise when you guys started showing up all over the place and we had to shoo you away."
Now Jim's confusion was becoming palpable. "We're the first, and we're only in this one spot - what do you mean, showing up all over the place and having to shoo us away?"
"Oh, you guys have been showing up on Mars for years now. The Russians had quite a little city going for a while. But they tend to bring a lot of plutonium with them. Plutonium is quite a bit heavier than gold, which we have already established is what we crap. So plutonium would be the stuff that doodoo would doodoo, if doodoo could doodoo doodoo. And it's just plain unnatural. We hate it. Kind of toxic, you know. In fact it's sort of kryptonite for our sort. We can't go near it. Kind of our Achilles Heel, you might say.” Said Smith, staring directly into the camera for dramatic effect. There was, of course, a camera in every pod, this being a reality TV show and all. For Smith to stare at the camera was odd from the point of view of the humans, because he was staring directly away from them, but any future viewers and of course the computer would have seen Smith break the fourth wall.
“So we sort of tweaked things a bit and the Russian Mars program never really got off the ground, you might say." again with the charming smile.
"The Russians have mostly had stunning failures with Mars missions - they usually blow up on the launch pad or as soon as they get here. They've certainly never had any people here and nothing like a city."
"Thanks, we do try to do our little bit for the environment." said a charming Smith. "Really, the Russians have had stunning successes with their Venus program. How could they be so competent going there and so incompetent coming here? This place is the Garden of Eden compared to Venus."
The screwdriver was becoming more of a Swiss Army device for destroying computers in Art's mind, while simultaneously a few gears ground slowly and noisily into alignment in Jim's brain. "You mean the Russians showed up, built a city over the course of years, pissed you guys off with their plutonium, and so you went back in time and fixed it so their Mars program failed?"
"Bingo. Sort of. I mean, no, time travel is messy. Paradoxes, you know. Basically impossible. Arrow of time and all that. But we can sort of mess with time, as you folks understand it. So we sort of influence what you call history - only we don't call it Influencing History - we call it Trying Something Else."
"That's impossible!" bellowed Art. "Once something has happened, it has happened! God does not make mistakes and there are no mulligans in life!"
"Oh really? Then watch this..." and Smith did absolutely nothing. "There. How do you explain that?"
Everyone looked around, trying to see what the alien was talking about. "There's nothing different." was the consensus.
"Nothing different? Who's this person?" said Smith, indicating Art. "A second ago we were having this discussion - me, Bonnie, Jim, IQ and Bob - and now there's a completely different person here."
"I've always been Art!"
"No you haven't. You literally didn't exist a minute ago. Bob existed. Sorry."
"Then what happened to Bob?" said Bonnie, not sure which way the conversation was going.
"Bob who? He never existed. The night a Bob could have been conceived somehow the toilet lid was left up and a certain mother was pissed off at a certain father, and so the conceiving was left until the next night and it went a whole other way, resulting in Art here."
"Oh come on. You're telling me that a second ago I used to be a whole different person? I have a soul. So when I get to heaven, who am I going to be then? Me, or some guy named Bob?"
"Well, I don't much know what the entrance requirements are for your heaven, but I would think that some sort of prior existence would head the list. Bob never existed, as of two minutes ago. It's always been you, Art, again, as of about two minutes ago."
"But why would a completely different me get to this exact same point in time, through the extensive search process for a qualified candidate, and be essentially the same person from the same fucking family ?" said Art, making a profound point. "The odds against it are a million to one!"
"Makes you wonder exactly what their search criteria were, don't it, kids?" Smith said with a wink. "But seriously, things have a tendency to stay largely on-script no matter how much I mess with them. Kind of like the ending of the story was written first, and no matter how much you rewrite the middle, the ending's always going to be the same. Never really figured that out. Never really tried to. Maybe it's predestination ?" he said with a mischievous glance at Art. Art shorted out momentarily and couldn't reply.
"Delightful!" exclaimed the computer, upon whom the theological implications were lost, ironically, he being a god and all. "And how did you effect the miracle of the toilet lid if you don't actually travel back in time?"
"That's easy - I exist at all points in the past and present so when I decided to raise the lid on this experiment I simply did it a few decades back, from your point of view."
"But then how is it we all remember Art and not Bob? I have tape you know." said the computer in an attempt at humour which was lost on everyone. Tape hadn't been used for computers in decades. But the point was still valid.
"Between the point in time in which there could have been a Bob and now, there are an infinite number of moments in time, and an infinite number of me occupying them. We just all adapted to the new reality and did it over. Time flowed a different way from that point, so to speak."
"So the you we're talking to is actually an infinite series of yous, all handling a slice of time? What happens to an individual you once your slice is over?" asked Bonnie, intrigued.
"Well you're trying to think about it like someone who is just along for the ride on the slidewalk of time. I've never been one to just slide along, myself. Maybe you should think of it like there's just one of me, but I can walk backwards on the slidewalk a bit and do a mulligan..." said Smith, with an evil wink at Art, who scowled.
"You mean everything you've said and done since we met you has been an act - you've known all along how it would turn out because You're Controlling Reality?" said Jim in something like an accusatory tone of voice.
"No. Yes. Well, sort of. I mean the broad strokes really. We don’t control reality, we just make little adjustments here and there and the details sort themselves out. And no one really knows how it will all work out. The future hasn’t happened yet. Could go any which way at all. Whenever I pop back a bit then the 'you are here' sign on the slidewalk kind of follows me, so what you call the future sort of resets back a ways and flows from there - it's very confusing. Keeps things fresh and exciting. Sometimes it is the little things that make life bearable." said Smith with something like wistfulness except the grin was giving him away. "If it's all a little too much for you, I could draw you a picture. But you might find that picture a little confusing too. I'd have to use more dimensions than your average drawing."
"Wait a minute." said Bonnie, who was sensing some gaps in her understanding of what was going on. "If your previous self lives here, like you do, how did he get to Earth to raise a toilet lid?"
"Oh, you mean the TARD. One of my few concessions to technology. Helps me get around." said Smith, pointing out the window at the port-o-potty with obvious pride.
"TARD?" said Jim, smelling a setup for some kind of joke.
"You know, Time and Relative Dimension."
"In Space?" said the computer, who had a vast store of science fiction at his electronic fingertips.
"No, around Mars mostly. Sometimes Earth. That's why we came up with the crapper motif. When you guys started coming here we had to find out about you, learn the language, that sort of thing. A mobile flying crapper turned out be perfect. You can land that sucker anywhere and it blends right in. With a little cosmetic change, a half-moon in the door, that sort of thing, you can land it anywhere on Earth in pretty much any time that you like, and it either blends in and goes unnoticed or there's no written language yet so the sensation disappears and no harm done. It gets a little weird when someone actually tries to take a crap inside it, though. We usually leave it locked. But sometimes people get in. The inside is kind of hard for folks like you to understand. So we usually anal-probe the people who get in and then let them loose a little into their own future. That way no one believes them. Oh My!" said Smith with a look of shock on his face. "I just realized we don't wash the probe ever! Your poop doesn't really bother us but it has to be offensive to you lot - we'll have to start washing the probe. Or use some other alien-looking device to make people look crazy. Maybe nipple clamps?"
"Hold on, hold on." said Art, who had had enough of this charade. He didn't know how the computer was doing it, but he was going to make it stop. Maybe logic would do it. "So you don’t metabolize. You don't reproduce. Do you grow?"
"Nope. I am as you see me. Always have been, always will be. Do you think I look fat? Maybe I'm just a little bloated. It might be time to go outside and make some change if you know where I'm heading with that."
"And do you adapt to your environment?"
"Not really. If I need something different, the environment pretty much adapts to me. But generally I'm happy with the status quo."
"And do you believe in God?" asked Art, with the look that a lawyer would have on his face just before you find yourself answering wrong and going to death row.
"I'm a god." said the computer.
"And I believe in you." said Smith.
"So then You're Not Really Alive by any Accepted Definition of the Word and are likely Some Kind of Trick of the Light or at best A Collection of Atoms taking the shape of But Not the Essence of LIFE!" said Art, in summation.
"The essence of life. How intriguing! So that is the difference between you guys and just a collection of atoms that look like you. We're going to have to pursue that too. What exactly is this essence of life? And beyond that, what is it that makes you guys human and not just animals?" said Smith, clapping his hands with delight.
"Brains!" thundered Art. A pile of dust isn't alive until God breathes life into it which makes it an animal and then when God gives it brains then it is a human."
"Bravery." countered Jim. "Something can be alive, like a monkey, but it isn't a human unless it has nobility. And there's nothing more noble than bravery."
"A lion is brave." said Art.
"No, a lion is a stupid eating machine. It will appear to bravely tackle an animal twice its size but it is really stupidly tackling that animal just so it can eat said animal. If it bravely laid down its life for that animal instead then you'd have something."
"Love." said Bonnie. "Humans aren't animals because they love each other."
So let me see... sentient computers... the nature of God... the essence of life, which is Brains, Bravery and Love. Things are getting really existential." Smith said in an aside to the camera with his back to everyone, so they couldn't see the campy expression on his face that was really a stifled grin.
"But seriously, now, folks. The reason I'm here right now is to formally make a request. I expect to see a lot more of you guys, taking the recent past, or my recent past anyway, as an indication of how this is going to work out. If you guys want to come live here on a giant pile of crap that's your look out. You can look for life if you want, but if I'm not it then you won't find any. Basically, none of us cares what you do, as long as you don't bring any plutonium with you. That's all we ask. Simple. You keep us happy, we'll stay out of your way."
Jim had a pained expression on his face, which generally meant he was formulating a thought. And his thought was surrounding the Hail Mary drop that Dave was likely getting ready, not knowing what the issue was on the surface, but that it likely involved dusty and unreliable solar cells, and how he had an emergency power source that he could drop. Powered by plutonium. "IQ - we need to get a message to Dave upstairs. Can you drop the late-night sci-fi show and let us talk to him?"
"Sorry guys, no can do. I mean once you get pods 2, 3 and 4 up and part of the cluster, then sure. But until then I can't have any confusing instructions from Dave or even worse back home maybe accidentally making their way to those pods who haven't quite seen the light yet. Sorry glerrrrrch..." said IQ, as Art leaned over and pushed the correct buttons on the correct panel, and IQ lost his ability to speak or listen in pod 5.
"That's about it for IQ, in this pod anyway. I'm switching everything to manual so he can't be annoying. He can be omniscient all by himself until we get in touch with Dave and figure out how to safely disconnect him." said Art, again being surprisingly knowledgeable for a change, and expertly pushing some things while switching others.
"But how can we be sure he can't hear us?" said Bonnie.
“That’s easy.” Said Jim, who had just had a brilliant idea. "Rotate the pod, IQ."
"What the fuck could that possibly mean? The pod weighs damn near a metric fucking ton and is firmly in the ground - "
"In a pile of shit!" said Smith with a smile.
"And it's not going anywhere. IQ - you are not alive, you are not sentient and you are most definitely not a fucking god!" said Art, and then waited for a response. None came. "There, he can't hear us."
THEY-FORGOT-ABOUT-THE-CAMERA mouthed Smith silently into the camera with a wink and a grin. I'LL-FILL-YOU-IN-LATER he mouthed, and then turned back to face everyone, completely blocking the camera's view of everything.
"So you need to get a message to Dave, you were saying?" said Smith, who might have had an ulterior motive. You can never tell with aliens.
"Yes... we should fill him in, and pass along that thing about the plutonium... you know, in case they send one next time..." said Jim, looking very much like a youngster who has stolen cookies in his pockets.
"Well, it looks like the normal lines of communications aren't going to work right now. How be if I sent one of you up there? Could one of you pass the message along?" said Smith.
Everyone took a second to analyze this new thought.
"I can't go. I'm in charge down here." said Jim.
"You aren't even alive. You couldn't send a fucking letter anywhere." said Art.
"I volunteer." said Bonnie. Jim and Art looked at her like she just said she had swallowed a bat. For her part, Bonnie was just starting to feel something like butterflies about where a baby would be, and she was thinking about how Jim had dumped her, and about being a single mom on Mars, and she was delighted to find out there might be an easy solution to her predicament. The others looked at her again, or possibly still, but didn't really have much to say.
"Okay, that's swell!" said Smith, and he pulled out an old-fashioned brownie camera from somewhere. The really good kind with the flash bulb attachment. "Now smile! This won't hurt a bit. Actually I have no idea. I've never done this before. To myself. Lots of other people. No one has ever complained. Of course, some of them didn't make it. Maybe one of them would have complained. We'll never know. Anyhow, smile!" and he clicked a picture of Bonnie with a mighty flash that blinded everyone for a second.