Jo-el

Chapter 2 CIRION

Ka-el’s face jumped to life. “I’m from a world we call, Cirion. Your astronomers on earth have not discovered us; Cirion is one hundred and three million light years away. Our sun is visible in earth’s Western sky.”

I pushed the pause button, bit far-fetched I thought. Did whoever write this script think anyone would believe it? The urge to close the computer was strong, but I was amused and fascinated enough to see where this crazy story was going. It was totally ridiculous, but sort of fun. It seems silly but I wanted to believe him. I guess my boredom was affecting my judgement. Dave Murphy, simple guy from the old country, nothing special to look at, so Mary pointed out too often, but with potential and such a nice (don’t you hate that word) guy. Older than he wanted to be, too short to scare kids, oh, and balding. Yes, folks your true and original world saver. I laughed and threw my coat over the chair next to me. It missed and fell on the floor. I sighed, picked it up, and hung it in the coat closet. Gingerly I reached out and continued the video.

Ka-el continued. “I realize that what I’ve just told you is very difficult to believe. I would ask you to try to be patient. This recording is more than eighteen hours long; I believe that you will trust what I’m saying by the end.”

Whoa! Eighteen hours! Couldn’t imagine for one second I’d get to the end of eighteen hours. Then I wondered how such a large file had got onto my computer and what had started it off? This whole thing felt less like a hack. Surely, a hacker wouldn’t send eighteen hours of video and go to all this trouble? Shit! Maybe he knew I was well-off? That made me feel a little hot under the collar. But I wasn’t that rich, not if you read Forbes magazine.

“We will never meet. Our technology has not conquered the ability for living creatures to travel faster than the speed of light. Our people are similar to the people on earth, but we have developed further. We estimate our technology is two hundred million years ahead of your planet. Our history indicates that we reached your level of technology almost four hundred and fifty million years ago, but there have been long periods of little or no advancement on Cirion.”

I was enjoying the story, even though I wasn’t buying into any of it. I remember being hooked on Sci-fi as a kid, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, but had read very few novels of that kind in the last few years. This could make a great novel.

Ka-el continued. “We went through long periods of contentment; life was easy and we became lethargic about intellectual growth. Every man and women on Cirion could have just about anything they desired; our medical knowledge had solved almost all illnesses. There appeared to be nothing new for us to learn or explore. Things changed maybe two million years ago, when a catastrophe threatened our world. We solved our problem and became less prosaic. We began to search the universe more deeply and found greater fulfillment in our lives. We also resurrected projects that our ancestors had initiated. Monitoring the development on Earth was one of those projects. Let me show you our world.”

Ka-el face disappeared and a planet, seen from space, filled the screen. Like Google Earth. But even from space I could see it was not earth. There were none of the familiar outlines of the continents in the shapes that I knew. The land masses were different and at first glance there was less ocean. Then the picture zoomed in, picking a land mass close to an ocean, arching down until buildings were visible. I guessed they were buildings. Vastly different from our cityscapes. Multi-colored, mostly pastels, but some frighteningly bright, with smooth edges and corners and no windows. None that I could see. Between the buildings were what looked like walkways? Multi-colored vegetation lined the edges with trees of a kind that I had never seen before. I searched for streets and vehicles, but could not see any. The picture moved in closer, people were walking between the buildings in multi-colored clothes, strange outfits with unique designs. I sat back suddenly when I saw that the people were all different colors, some bright, others red or green or blue. Their shapes were human, two arms and two legs and they walked just like us, maybe a lighter step, more bounce. Most wore hats but of those I could see that did not, that lump on the back of their heads was distinctly visible, as if their skulls had swollen. A childlike figure skipped past, much faster, almost springing, chasing a small animal that scampered like a dog on four legs. I guess it was a dog, I’d never seen anything like it before.

I leaned back in my chair, mesmerized by the scene, trying to take it all in. I could only believe that this was an elaborate depiction of someone’s imagination. A Hollywood Sci-fi movie. If it was, it was very good. The camera panned to an odd creature, dark blue with patches of silver but no mouth or nose to speak of. Just a hint of a human face. Where its legs should be, was a circular base that appeared to hover above the ground. It carried items that looked edible in a tray of some sort. It stopped and two of the green people took what must have been food from the tray. They took bites from their purchase and grinned at each other. I say purchase, but I did not see a financial transaction of any kind.

“This is a small city on Cirion, called Lomasir.” Ka-el voice came from my speakers. “That blue and silver droid is what you would call a robot. It is supplying snacks for whoever wants them. You will notice that there are no vehicles, that mode of transport died out hundreds of millions of years ago. We discovered anti-gravity a long time ago and moving by personal flight is typical for us. This particular area of the city is for walking, a popular pastime, we are very aware of the need to exercise. Our life span is one hundred and fifty to a little more than two hundred of your years, substantially longer than your life expectancy due to our medical technology. It is possible on Cirion to keep a brain alive forever and replant it in an artificial body, however we have rules to control our population and anyone who wishes to live past a specified age in that mode must move off-world. We’ve found that most of our people become bored with life eventually and voluntarily terminate.”

I paused the video again to imagine a people that voluntarily ended their life when they had reached a certain age, it made me think of my parents and the pain they suffered late in their lives. They would have ended it if they’d had the opportunity. I wondered if this imaginary world of Cirion had cured pain. I pressed the arrow to restart the video.

The scene changed to a river running through a pristine looking green meadow. More earth-like, I appreciated that. People were sitting by the river, presumably, eating and drinking. The sky in the distance was blue with a deep reddish haze as it met the ground. Those robot thingys could be seen in the background.

Then my doorbell rang. Damn! I pushed pause. It was Betty my neighbor, who had taken it on herself to check up on me almost daily since Mary passed. I stood up and went to the front door, down the hallway.

“Hi Dave, how you doing?”

“Betty, what time is it?” I replied.

“Ten to six, are you ready?”

“Huh!”

“Cooking!”

I gave Betty my most dumbfounded look. “Can’t do it this week, sorry. Busy with something.”

Her face soured and her mouth opened slightly as she considered a response. I had not missed Tuesday night cooking class since she’d taken it on herself to be my savior. I enjoyed the company mostly and the cooking tips had proved useful to a single guy who’d been spoilt by a wife who truly enjoyed fixing culinary delights of all sorts and had a figure to prove it.

“What on earth are you doing, Dave?” She exclaimed.

If I told her I was watching a movie she would have said I could pause it and finish it later, so I lied and explained that I’d promised Maggie, my daughter, I’d help her with her application to become a Sergeant. Which was completely feasible, as I had told Betty recently that Maggie was growing restless in her current position as a Q-3 officer in the San Francisco Police Department.

“Oh!” said Betty, “that urgent, is it?” I could tell by the tone in her voice that she did not buy the story. Betty had recently turned sixty-four, her husband Ken had died suddenly from a brain aneurism two plus years ago and now she lived alone with her cat, Whiskers. Her ne’er-do-well son Eric was her only regular visitor; he drove up from San Jose in the little Honda Civic she had bought for him. Usually he pleaded poverty and scrounged as much as Betty would part with. I had told her to put her foot down and refuse any more funds until he showed some gumption in the work department, but Betty was a typical mother, dotting on her only male offspring and constantly blinded by the diatribe of lies he spun. She enjoyed our evenings at the cooking class, she had persuaded me to attend and to be honest I think she had a small crush on me.

I smiled as sweetly as I knew how and grabbed the edge of the door as if to say, ‘on your way’. She took the hint. “Well, next week then, or maybe you could come over later in the week, I’ve been practicing with that crockpot, I bought.” She threw me a warm smile and turned away.

I stood leaning against the door for a moment, wondering why the video of Cirion had so consumed me that I had lied to Betty. She had become an island for my sorrow in the last three months and I owed her more than dishonesty. I would make it up to her.

I fixed myself a Black Label on the rocks and returned to my Sci-fi movie. I was quite excited to keep watching and eagerly continued the recording. An hour quickly drifted by and I learnt more of the world of Cirion. Ka-el voiced over much of the scenes, explaining what this or that was. I discovered that the people of Cirion were peaceful and no war had taken place on the planet for more than a hundred million years. Their years were longer than ours as the planet was marginally larger and rotated slower. Their normal gravity was also less but was irrelevant as they had the ability to counter its effects. They had colonized many planets within their solar system, one of which was allocated to people who wished to extend their life artificially. He glossed over how those people lived but I presumed that all their physical needs were taken care of by the robot droids. Another planet, which he called, Lo-an was what he termed raw. I was told that the word translated loosely as “work” from a previous generation on Cirion. People from the mother planet who had rejected the “lazy” lifestyle they had achieved on Cirion would emigrate to Lo-an and live what appeared was a life not unlike that in the wilds of Alaska or remote islands in the warmer climes of earth.

My Black Label had evaporated and the ice melted. I was enjoying the buzz but I needed something to soak it up. I paused the recording and warmed up some left-over chili I’d prepared a couple of days previously. I sprinkled it with a liberal coating of red chili flakes and tabasco. My choice of beverage was diet coke; I knew my limits with Scotch and thought I’d take a pause saving my second glass till later. As I enjoyed the chili, which always seemed to taste better after a few days, I imagined the source of the recording. My mind was holding firmly to a scam to elicit money, maybe based on turning the Sci-fi story into a movie or television series. I wondered how many others were watching the same video right now. There are so many gullible people in the world, one heard of the most ridiculous scams that worked repeatedly. Not on Dave Murphy though, way too tight with money, maybe I should have been born in Scotland instead of Ireland. The name thing was very clever; I’d give them that.

I think the Black Label and the food were enough for me to lose interest in the recording and I considered watching television to divert my fascination. Maybe if I tried re-booting the computer Ka-el and his story would disappear. It was still early so I cleared up and sat down once more in front of the computer. I was about to press the on-off button for the required four seconds when, for reasons I can’t fathom, continued the video. I watched more of the explanation about Cirion for about ten minutes, then Ka-el’s face appeared on the screen.

“You have seen something of our world.”

Okay, here comes the plug for cash. I wondered how much he would ask for?

“Now I must ask you to do something, that may seem a little odd.”

Here we go, I smiled at the screen. I was right.

“We want you to retrieve some equipment.”

Ah, that’s different. A box containing a return envelope?