One Like Us — Excerpts
“Access denied. You are not authorized to operate this vehicle,” the computer announced, its voice rendered raspy by the forty-year-old loudspeaker. Seventeen-year-old Veronica Weslin blew a breath of exasperation at the black hair dangling in her face and initiated the retina scan a fifth time. “Access denied,” her ‘57 Caddy proclaimed again.She grabbed her big bag of books and headed off to school. With a little sprinting, she might actually make class on time. Her roommate and best friend, Melanie Lansing, had already boarded the school bus, and the head of the household, Mel’s uncle, Dr. Jacob Lansing, had left for work hours earlier. As she trotted off with her load of books, Veronica began, for the first time, to regret her decision to go with real text books rather than electronic.
The heavy burden brought her thoughts back to her car. “A fifty-seven Caddy is a fine piece of machinery,” Dr. Lansing had told her, “but 2057 was a long time ago. The car’s more than twice your age, Veronica. I’m surprised they can still find parts for it.”
“Mole Nation’s philosophy is nowhere near the philosophical center of the environmental movement, and they are an embarrassment to serious environmentalists,” Jake assured her. “Fitch’s impromptu religion teaches that Earth is a god and our bodies and souls are manifestations of that god, so if we are laid to rest anywhere but on planet Earth our souls will wander the galaxy aimlessly in search of rest.”
“And…?”
“And he perceives me, because I founded the Aerospace Governing Council, to be public enemy number one,” Jake explained. “People are being interred on the moon and Mars, or torpedoed into the sun. Fitch sees the other planets as evil gods and the interment of Earthlings on them as an offense against his god.”
“And you’re to blame,” Veronica observed.
“Apparently.”
“You don’t decide where people will be buried, do you?”
“Of course not. Fitch blames me because he sees me as a prime mover in space travel. His goal is to put a stop to all space travel.”
“That’s a pretty ambitious goal,” Veronica noted.
“They called me Little Angel Girl.”
“Really? Could be worse,” he assured her.
“I guess, but I didn’t like it. I had just turned fourteen and while eating my birthday cake my dad had told me about how tradition had it that Mary was only fourteen when she gave birth to Jesus, so I figured fourteen was old enough to call myself a woman. So I told those girls, ‘I’m not an angel, I’m a woman!’”
“What did they say to that?” Jake wondered. Veronica hesitated a bit. “That bad, huh?” he asked.
“They were always so vulgar,” she said with a sigh. “They said, ‘Woman? You don’t even have tits yet!’”
“Ah…the size of the breast, the small mind’s ultimate measure of womanhood,” Jake noted.
Finally Jake turned and said, “It’s a miracle, that’s what it is!” He scratched his noggin with scientific drama. “I don’t know why I went up to the attic tonight. I didn’t need anything from up there. Something just told me to go up, so I did, as if I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time and was finally getting around to it. And why did I bring this old thing down and turn it on when I didn’t for a second believe that it would still work? And now this,” he said pointing to the screen. “The data it was running contains evidence of an artificially produced waveform!”
Mel frowned quizzically. “Isn’t there a large chance it’s just interference from some source on earth?”
“Actually, no, and I’ve seen plenty of these graphs. See on the ends here,” he said, pointing, “how the amplitude tapers up and then back down at the other end? That’s the profile of an extraterrestrial signal. You see, this signal was picked up by the ancient Arecibo fixed dish radio telescope.”
“Wait a minute. Isn’t that the one we visited in Puerto Rico? The one that’s been turned into a museum and theme park?” she asked.
Dr. Weslin’s eyes grew wide. “That’s…an alien talking?” she stammered.
“Well, we don’t know that,” he said. “Could be human. However, this we know: this radio message was not generated on planet Earth.”
“What I was saying is how this trip to the FM planet will require married couples, or at least, eligible single folk. No astronaut’s spouse is likely to want his or her better half to leave for anywhere from twelve years to forever. The spacecraft will need to be equipped with a nursery,” he explained.
Her thick black hair played peek-a-boo with her lace bedecked right shoulder, while from between the lace doves, her bosom beckoned him to the promised land. He had waited many years to cross the Jordan, to explore the sacred hills and valleys that lie beyond. Now his crossing had brought new challenges. Like most of the rest of the world, would he come to take milk and honey for granted? Would he wallow in the nectar without appreciation for the flower? Indulge in the gift, without a thought to the Giver? Would he discover what all lovers eventually discover? That the only discipline tougher than abstinence is that of true appreciation?
“How dangerous do you think it is?”
Jake pondered the question as he stared out his office window. Though the morning sky was cloudless, a pervasive haze hugged the AGC air fields, blurring any distinct forms on the horizon beyond. “Extremely!” his contemplation yielded. “It’s extremely dangerous. We might hit undetected space debris. Traveling over a half billion miles per hour is no walk in the park. We might make the journey just fine but be killed in a political skirmish on Freqmod, or die of some disease for which we have no immunity. Who knows? "We have far more questions than we have answers. This mission is about as sure a deal as the first moon shot or Leif Erickson’s voyage. As you may recall, in neither instance did they take along the wife and kids.”
“When he died in Israel, the Americas were another world. Why didn’t he live and die here also? There were people here. It took fifteen hundred years for missionaries to get here. He died once for all flesh, and for all time. It is our mission to spread the good news, even to other worlds.”
“But everyone on this world, regardless of what continent they occupy, is a descendant of Adam and Eve,” Veronica insisted. “Christ became one of us in order to redeem us. Wouldn’t he need to become a little green guy with a huge brain and big bug eyes in order to redeem little green guys with big brains and bug eyes?”
“I’m breaking with tradition today, students,” he began. “No lecture. Instead, I want to challenge you and see how you apply what we have learned.
“Intelligent life has been discovered on a planet just 4.3 light years away. By the sound of the voices we hear on their radio signals, they are almost certainly humanoid. So…are they a fallen race, or are they sinless?”
Antonio, always ready for a lively debate, answered, “Fallen.”
“Why do you say fallen, my friend?”
“Well, if I lived in a garden where all of my needs were met; if I walked with God and had the love of family; if I suffered no illness, war, or crime; if I slept in perfect comfort outdoors; in short, if my life was perfect, would I wake up one day and say, ‘I think I’ll invent the radio today?’ I don’t think so. Necessity and laziness are the parents of invention, and neither of these flaws would be present without the fall.”
“Well, that brings up one big question for me,” said a student known simply as Doofus. “How could it be paradise if there’s, well, no running water?”
“Really?” Jasmine asked, cynically.
“Really! Scripture says that he desires intimacy with us. He wants to be our spouse,” Veronica proclaimed joyfully.
“Our spouse?”
“Yeah, St. Paul talks about it all the time, and Isaiah says, ‘…your Maker is your husband.’ Isn’t that cool!”
“Ha! Trust me, honey; no self-respecting god wants to be my husband!” Jasmine declared as the Nexus gently plopped into the beach sand at the end of the ocean-front parking area.
“Why? Because you’re a sinner? We’re all sinners, Jazz.”
“Sinner? You?” Jasmine jeered as she got out of the car. “Listen, you great big sinner, you don’t even know the meaning of the word. Don’t tell me there’s a god out there who wants to get cozy with a slut like me!”
“…before you gave your life to Jesus, you denied your guilt; you tried to drown it in booze and numb it with drugs. You tried to rid yourself of the gift of conscience. Now, letting go of your guilt scares you because you don’t want to go back to being what you were. The Devil wants to trap you right there, in a circle of doubt. If you let him have his way, your fear will paralyze your progress while your guilt gives you a sense of false righteousness. You’ll snuggle safely in the arms of guilt, and the longer you stay there, the longer you resist perfect forgiveness, the more your guilt will become your god. Give it up…Give it back to God! Worship the Giver, not the gift!"
“Pleasure, Father,” she said. “Satan hates it when we use pleasure to stay fixed on God, because he thinks pleasure’s his territory.”
“Did you hear that class? Isn’t that interesting! Is pain an essential good or an essential bad?”
“Bad,” several students blurted simultaneously.
“Wouldn’t that leave pleasure as an essential good? But Dr. Lansing thinks that the Devil sees pleasure as his territory. That would make pleasure a painful dichotomy for a demon, wouldn’t it? Of course, they have a similar situation with pain, which is their territory, so to speak. They enjoy our pain until we make a sacrifice of it to God—an act that’s gotta drive ‘em absolutely nuts! Hmmm…"
His life had been about survival. Though he was a famous survivor, he had to ask himself, What’s so great about survival? It’s characterized by fear, by crafty preparation for the next great threat! Still, as the word chased through his mind it sounded somewhat…noble. He thought that perhaps instincts are the only real virtues; after all, aren’t instincts from God? But to hell with fear! If he was to survive, he would do so with style and grace, and that would require power. He had always been taught that survival is our strongest instinct. His developing theology now made it the principal virtue.
And what was the second strongest instinct, closely tied to the first? Why, it was procreation! He had laughed at the philosophical tone of the mission charter, but now the charter’s eloquent words about propagation loomed in splendor. Children were humankind’s first retirement investment. There would be no way to collect those glorious pension checks he had earned! So there it was: His flirting with the pretty doctor was a virtue, a response to his survival instinct. God is good!
They pulled on their jammies and snuggled into bed. Antonio was on his back with Jean’s arm across his chest and her head on his shoulder. Her fine, straight brown hair spilled across his neck and face. Right before he fell to sleep, he brushed her hair from his face and whispered, “I don’t think I can fall to sleep with you touching me.”
He dreamed of his wedding night. He was dancing with his twin sister, Juanita. In his dream she teased him as she had that night: “You and I have always done everything together,” she had said. “Half the time we finish each other’s sentences.” Then in reference to the impending honeymoon, she had asked, “Are you sure you’ll be able to do this without me?” Antonio laughed out loud in his sleep, waking Jean.
“Captain, you skip stones very well!” the old prophet complimented.
“Oh…Oilenroc. Please…forgive my disturbance.”
“Quite all right, Captain. Isn’t this a wonderful place?”
“Indeed it is…a good place to filter through one’s thoughts and feelings.”
“Filter? Perhaps. To me, contemplation is more like a settling pond; some ideas sink and some float. You see, rotten things tend to float, to rise to the top before they eventually sink, a good thing to remember when sorting ideas, especially new ones.”
The captain surveyed the old prophet’s face. He wondered what people found prophetic about such meandering utterances; still, probing the old man might be of some use.
She stopped just inches from him and looked him in the eye, as best their difference in stature would allow. “Not long ago, you and I had dinner on the Covenant. We talked about power. Do you remember the conversation?” she asked him.
“I never forget a moment with you, my dear. You said something to the effect that one’s greatest strength, and therefore, one’s ultimate power, lies in knowing one’s own weaknesses. Yes?”
“You remember it, but you don’t believe it!” she observed.
“Quite to the contrary, Angel! You said that self-pity and denial of your true feelings were your own greatest weaknesses, and that at times you had allowed them to trap you in a nauseating swirl of indecision. But you forgot to mention one other weakness of yours: transparency. I can see the amazement in your eyes, woman. You’re astonished that I remember the details of a conversation we had weeks ago.” Veronica broke eye contact in an effort to derail what seemed to be an impending romantic overture. With a finger he gently lifted her chin, regained eye contact, and said, “But unlike you, I have only one weakness, and she will not be my undoing, will she!”