Thursday, October 02, 2003
The Excitement Continues: Partying with Adolpho
(Note: This is now the fifth bit of a serialized story that is going Hut-ward this week while I unburden myself of words and thoughts without regard to postworthiness, in response to the ancient obligation to get my groove on for the jewish new year. You can find the introduction here, part one here, and part two here, and yesterday’s post with part three is here. Read fast, you have mere seconds to spare before this commercial is over and we return you to your regularly scheduled daily portion of --
ADOLPHO’S BIG NIGHT, part IV: The Visitors
Adolpho had been bopping along to the beat, resting his eyes and savoring the physical sensation of a deep, strong bass line. As he raised his glass to drain the final mouthful of lager, he stepped back for balance. Doing so, he felt a strange sensation – like a cuff wrapping around his ankles. Looking down, where the club’s dim light barely penetrated, he saw a gleaming balloon-like object hovering near his feet. As it twisted rapidly towards him, he realized that it was a cranium – a ghastly white bulbous head, about eighteen inches in diameter, gleaming translucently as if internally illuminated. Black almond eyes peered at him from a flat brow and long tentacled forelimbs worked quickly to fasten something cold tightly around his shins. “What the hell,” Adolpho muttered just before a paralysis swept him, starting at the cuffs on his legs and rising quickly through his body to his face, leaving him feeling rigid and petrified. His hands and feet felt too full of blood, hot and turgid and tingling; he felt a vibration in his bones that started gently but quickly grew almost unbearably intense, as if his bones were about to shake themselves out of his body. His visual field began to blank out; whiteness filled his peripheral vision in a snowy encroachment. The last thing he saw before going completely blizzardblind was the creature’s strange eyes, glossy and black, looking up at him from near the floor, inscrutable and perceptive.
It seemed that, within a moment of losing his vision, it began to return. The tingling and throbbing in his hands and feet soon filled his whole body. When he tried to move, he found himself strapped upright to a board of some sort, spread-eagled and helpless. He couldn’t even turn his head; a band seemed to be holding it in place. The floor seemed to start well below his feet. He couldn’t move, and he didn’t want to. The room was very bright; the light was diffuse and seemed to radiate from the walls. Though he couldn’t look down to see them, he felt sure that a few beings like the one he’d encountered in the club were gathered around his feet. As his eyes adjusted to the bright and unfamiliar light, he was able to discern two of the little fellows running a handheld scanner of some sort over his body. He was still dressed, he realized, relieved – either nothing too gruesome had happened to him yet, or he’d slept through it. He blinked audibly and the creatures both quickly looked up at him from their scanners. One came forward with a tentacle outstretched; the other slapped it and the two went eye to eye for a moment before the first of them stepped back, a beige flush running up its lardaceous complexion. Both backed out of the room; a hissing seemed to indicate a door had opened but the room beyond was also white and glowing and Adolpho couldn’t tell where one chamber ended and the other began. The two beings didn’t turn and leave him, nor did a door seem to close them off from him – they just pixilated out into more whiteness, leaving Adolpho trapped and dangling.
The light changed: the walls dimmed and a central fixture began to shine incandescently. Shadows formed where shadows would be expected. A hiss behind Adolpho’s right shoulder was followed by two long slender shadows falling on the floor in front of him, yet he still couldn’t turn to see what was casting them. A voice spoke to him, synthetic but nearby: “You have nothing to fear; we only need your advice.” The band around his head loosened – disappeared, in fact; Adolpho turned his head to see what had spoken to him. A being unlike those he’d seen before stood holding a small box in front of its thorax; it was at least seven feet tall, with three legs, three arms, and a face that seemed to wrap around a long podlike head part. Two eyes peered at him intensely; a third at the back of the head seemed to glance at a second being that was moving into the room behind it. Their arms were long and multiply jointed, moving as gracefully as seaweed in gentle ocean currents, terminating in a cluster of rootlike fingers. Their legs were thick, looked to be extremely strong, and moved in a loping pattern, the rear one reaching forward and then the two front ones extending in concert. From the two beings, Adolpho could hear a series of sounds - high whinings and clickings that seemed to emanate from below their chests.
The foremost being moved the small box in front of itself again and the synthesized voice spoke to Adolpho: “We regret taking you from your friends. We had no choice. We will let you down but request that you not to move from this room.” Adolpho said, “Okay,” his voice hollow and small. The two beings peered intently at the box and then raised their eyes to each other and whistle-hissed together. The box repeated to him, “ha ha ha ha ha,” with a joyless cheer. Before the last synthetic chuckle had faded from his ears, long tuberous fingers swiftly began unfastening his bonds. Even once his arms and feet were freed, however, he remained lifted up above the floor, a sickly tingling in the soles of his feet. “We’re going to let you down now,” the voice advised him emotionlessly, translating the buzzing sounds the beings directed to him. The second being turned a dial on a wall where Adolpho had not previously noticed a dial, and he dropped softly to his feet as the tingling faded and then disappeared.
Gravity seemed a bit light here; he felt as if he could easily jump up to the high ceiling but didn’t want to try for fear of upsetting his hosts. He just rubbed his wrists and looked around at the blank walls and the two spectral alien life forms, and kept quiet. “We have been observing your planet for some time,” a creature said through the box; Adolpho thought perhaps it was the rearmost being that was now speaking to him. The box continued, “We have traveled a long distance to meet you. It was our intention to travel elsewhere, but we encountered your planet’s electromagnetic transmissions and felt it necessary to stop to learn more about you. There are many intelligent species in the universe about which we have yet much to learn. But we had not anticipated that beings like you existed. This is why we are communicating through this clumsy device – we have not had time to learn to speak your language properly, and it is necessary that we obtain your advice quickly.” The room fell silent; it was Adolpho’s turn to speak. He wanted to conserve his breath, his words, his welcome. These things could obviously do with him what they wanted; he preferred to give them no reason to take action of any kind. Still, he had to ask them their purposes, their intentions. “Why?,” he inquired.
The beings consulted, clicking and waving rapidly. The box eventually was utilized to voice their reply, “Excellent! This is exactly why we brought you here. Do you not see the difference between us? You are bilateral in design, whereas we are radial! Our anatomy, physiology, biology are based on the circle. Our sense organs are arranged around our whole bodies. Our arms and legs extend from a central point in three directions. Yours proceed to either side of a longitudinal bisection. As a result, we enjoy certain advantages in logic, math theory, and reproduction. We are faster and more sturdy than your species. But we lack an essentially bi-lateral trait – that of linear thinking. In monitoring your transmissions, your television and radio, for example, we note that your species is able to resolve issues in a dialectic manner that is unfamiliar to us. When this kind of logic is applied to our strategic decisions, it results in unusually high success rates. We think around problems – you think through them. We need to learn your thinking to progress beyond our current capacity.”
“Great,” said Adolpho slowly, speaking toward the box but watching his handlers carefully. “What do you want me to do about it?” “Advise us,” said the one in back. “Teach us how to think as you do. We will share our technology with you, and give you all that our culture offers. Make us like you and you will have all you could desire.” With this, a door slid open behind Adolpho. Wary, he spun around to see what was coming. It was a platform, floating toward him without visible means of support, bearing a shimmering cloak, a long pointed metal stick with a brace at the back, and a small metal box. “This is a translator box, so you can speak with us at will. This is a weapon that can kill any of us instantly, even at a remote distance. And this is the raiment of honored guests; it will give you access to every degree of the circle of our social structure. If you want us to return you, we will remove ourselves from your memory and you will be placed back among your friends without incident or delay. But please, consider what we have asked. You have so much to offer us. We have so much to offer you.”
Adolpho considered the two beings that stood with quiet hope before him, one eye on each other and two on him. He looked at the items he was being offered; they were of inexpressibly fine workmanship and he wanted to run his fingers over them. “Okay,” he thought to himself, “now things are really getting way too interesting....”
