The summer sunlight filtered through the trees and warmed the straw roofs of the huts. As soon as the first rays shone through the skylight windows, the children leapt from their sleeping places and came running out to meet the day, laughing and tumbling their way to the village water trough. There they splashed, teased, shared scraps of dreams, watched fondly by mothers and fathers already about their own morning tasks.
Arunj laughed along with the rest, tying up long, glossy black hair before putting face to refreshingly cool water: laughed, but with a new wariness in the keen brown eyes.
For Arunj was thirteen, and today was Deciding Day. Come nightfall, life would be different.
Breakfast for the children was the usual meal: yoghurt from sheep's milk, fresh red berries, fire-baked bread, kaff, a hot drink made from a bean that grew nearby, that made young children alert and ready to learn. Arunj savoured every bite, every swallow, thinking: Today is the day. After today, I will not be a child. I will not eat with them, nor sleep with them. I will have a different life.
Breakfast was particularly sweet, as Arunj secretly studied the faces of companions who would soon be companions no more, still children...and the face of contemporaries who would be going along on the journey, the thirteen-year-olds who shared their Deciding Day.
In particular, Arunj caught the eye of Cics, a dear friend and constant companion. The two smiled at one another, and then looked quickly away. Perhaps Cics, too, was wondering, as Arunj was wondering? Each hoping that the other had decided...?
It was forbidden to tell before the Deciding. It would displease the gods, Grandmother Olana said. It would make a child Decide wrongly, snorted Grandfather Brunjo, that was all.
No matter. Forbidden it was, although Arunj could see it in the faces of the other Deciders - the hope, the fear. And in the faces of the adults. Perhaps a mother secretly wished...? Perhaps a father had always wanted...? No matter. The Decision was made on Deciding Day. The child must decide.
After breakfast, Arunj ran across the square, child's bare feet pounding on the hard-stamped ground, to the house of Arisha, the weaving instructress. This was a class Arunj enjoyed very much. All the children loved Arisha, the patient way in which she taught her skills. They loved, too, her jokes, the stories and songs she shared while they practised the weaving that all the tribe learned as children, that clothed them and gave them goods to trade. Arisha looked up from her loom and smiled as she saw Arunj.
'Come here, little one, ' she said. 'Are you ready for tonight? Do you have your clothing ready?'
Arunj nodded, eyes solemn. 'May I show you now, Arisha?' Arisha nodded, smiling.
Arunj went to the wicker chest in the corner - each pupil had one assigned - and took out the two sets of garments made, carefully, over the last year - the garments for the Deciding - one to wear, and one to give away, one yellow, one green. Arunj carried them carefully to Arisha, who touched them gravely, examining the patterns of the duol woven in lines of shining thread, the pattern that celebrated the passage from childhood to adulthood. She looked at her pupil, eyes shining.
'They are beautiful,' she murmured. 'And you are beautiful, my child.' She held out her arms. 'Come, let me embrace you. After today, you will no longer be a child. After today, perhaps, who knows, I may not...' She left the sentence unfinished, but both knew what she meant. A last embrace between pupil and teacher, and Arunj took the new clothes home to store, taking the back stairs to the children's loft, not wanting to see Mother, because Mother was not easy to talk to lately, Mother was preoccupied...
So Arunj went to see Eralto, the gruff trainer, who sat polishing copper breastplates on the steps of the armoury. Feared by the fiercest warrior in the village, Eralto was beloved of all the children. Arunj somersaulted across the practice yard and landed, laughing, beside the grey-haired old fighter, who pretended to be angry at the disruption in his day's routine, but only for a moment. Then he invited Arunj to sit beside him and help with the work. They did not speak much, but the companionship itself was more eloquent than words. Arunj loved this teacher, and knew that Eralto would never speak of what was in his mind - what he, perhaps, hoped for from a star pupil, the best runner, the most agile...but Deciding was not for discussion. They finished the work and shared a lunch of bread and goat's cheese, almost in silence. Then Arunj impulsively embraced the old man before turning and running...
...away, out of the village, toward the river, away from the village landing and its fishing boats, downstream a bit, around the bend, where no one could see...past the gate to the fenced garden, the garden whose trees produced a special fruit....above all, Arunj did not want to think about that garden and that fruit, not just now...
Arunj lay down on the bank and cried, just a little.
Deciding. How to Decide? What to become, what to choose? Would the choice make one friend happy, one unhappy? Would the choice make the village stronger, weaker? What talents were best?
Which garment to wear to the council fire tonight - the yellow or the green? Which to wear, which to give away to a beloved friend?
With eyes closed, Arunj could see the two sets of duol patterns - the intricate patterns, weaving in and out, that spoke of choosing and of destiny. But how to know? With eyes opened, Arunj looked up and saw two butterflies dancing above the tall grass, dancing as butterflies dance in summer. Arunj smiled.
The butterflies seemed almost identical, large, with white wings...but one had a green spot on each wing, the other a golden one. Together they danced, their fluttering wings kissing the air as they skimmed the top of the grass. Arunj gazed at them, at the spots which appeared and disappeared as they flew, until they flew away up the ridge behind the river.
Eyes closed again, Arunj saw the two sets of spots...green, yellow, yellow, green...one brighter than the other.
Arunj smiled. The Deciding had come. And with it, the need to jump up and run, run fast, back home to bathe and dress and prepare for the ritual of Deciding.
The elders were solemn as they led the singing at the council fire. The songs told of choice, of joy, of responsibility. The parents waited nervously, holding hands tightly, as their children, soon to be children no more, approached and announced their decisions.
Arunj waited in the shadows as, one by one, the others stepped before the Elders, showed themselves to the tribe, and received their First Fruit. Arunj was sometimes surprised at the choice, sometimes not...but one choice in particular brought a surge of joy to the heart.
Finally, the master of ceremonies called Arunj's name.
Stepping out of the shadows, Arunj could hear Father gasp as the firelight caught the shine of the golden threads in the green shirt and trousers. Arunj addressed the assembled group in prescribed, formal speech:
'My fathers and mothers, I have decided. My name is Arunj-o.'
Tears were shining in Mother's eyes, whether of joy, pride, disappointment, there was no time to learn.
'I bring a gift for my friend, and I ask for the birthright I have chosen. I ask for the green fruit of manhood.'
A smiling elder handed Arunjo the fruit - the green fruit from the special garden - that would trigger the physical process that would make him what he had chosen to become.
And great was Arunjo's joy as he solemnly offered the other garment - a bright yellow dress, lovingly made - to his dearest friend, the beautiful woman-to-be, his own Cics-a.
04 December 2010
01 December 2010
Teleportation - An Inside Look
As someone - I can't quite remember who - once said, the secret to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Teleportation (or quantum locomotion, if you prefer) operates on a similar principle - forget that you have a body.
The first thing that is difficult for those who were brought up on planets to understand is that you are not your body. Those beings raised in a eco-dependent biosphere have trouble believing this, because it is counterintuitive. After all, you came into existence on the planet as the result of some sort of reproductive process on the part of your parent or parents, be it sexual congress, spawning, cloning, or simply spitting on the sidewalk(1). You live within the biosphere, subject to its laws of energy exchange, requiring food and liquid to maintain your body(2), and then, finally, your body gives out, and you die - that is, you disappear from your native biosphere, and all your friends and relatives are unhappy, and hold a funeral(3). And, as far as anyone within the biosphere can tell, that is that. End of story.
The truth of course is quite different, as it so usually is in these chronicles. For, by dying, by exiting the shell with which you have interfaced with your native biosphere, you perform your first quantum leap. Because it is then - and, for most sentients, only then - that you discover what you should have suspected all along. You are not your body(4).
A sentient being is in reality a nexus of energy fields in space-time which reacts to materiality generated by dimensional gravity wells in the multiverse by attaching itself and forming a material interface in accordance with the narrativium(5) of the material dimension. It is the nexus - itself a complete noncorporeal entity - which constitutes sentience per se - the rest is window dressing, as it were.
The fact that so many beings in so many dimensions expend so much time, energy, and fan email on the window dressing part is subject for another essay(6).
Be that as it may, the desideratum of the teleporteur in spe should be to be able to change dimensional loci without first undergoing bodily dissolution - largely because it is painful, expensive, and basically no fun at all.
The first step to this - one which is mere child's play to anyone who has managed to read this far(7) - is a lively imagination. After all, you can't go anywhere unless you look up your destination first.
The second step is more difficult. You must become aware of your mind. Not your brain, not your thoughts, not the part of you that does the Times crossword in ink every Sunday afternoon(8), but the nexus. And that, too, is easier than you think. It simply requires you to be completely absent-minded.
The nexus is actually just the part of you that knows what it's like to fly, even if you have never fallen off the roof. The part that knows how a peanut butter milkshake would taste(9) - and acts accordingly.
The nexus knows - but the narrativium-obsessed interface mind, the one that remembers how to tie shoelaces and find the blasted car keys - does not.
For this reason, most space stations have transporter equipment. After all, a few hundred thousand poscreds' worth of hardware - and a tech to push the buttons - is cheaper than an army of Jungian gurus tasked with persuading the unwilling into taking the leap(10).
The purpose of the equipment is twofold. One - to inspire confidence in the traveller. There's nothing like a strobe light, hologenerator, and a bit of neon to convince your average sentient that he is in the capable hands of Science.
The second is to accomplish the real task of teleportation - that of moving the focus of the nexus off the current location in space-time. The destination coordinates are preset, and are no problem at all(11). This the transporter does by creating an unnatural, contrary-to-fact state in the mind of the sentient.
'Oh no!, he thinks. I'm going to leap out of reality! But I can't! But I must - Aunt Tilda is waiting on Betelgeuse with cakes and jam! Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh...IS THAT A PURPLE COW??? Leap.
You see? Nothing to it!
May all our problems be so simple to solve. And may technology pave our way to a brighter tomorrow - or yesterday - in the space-time locus of our choice.
Happy wanderings, friends!
FOOTNOTES:
1 Which, besides being in contravention of the Gross Indecency Act of 2555, violates Good Housekeeping rules, so don't do it. You have been warned.
2 And often being required to do the most awful things to obtain them - such as work.
3 Your enemies are glad, and throw a party. Unfair. I know. We live to make our friends happy, and our enemies sad - we die to make our enemies happy, and our friends sad.
4 A fact hitherto suspected only by dieters.
5 Or plot-rules.
6 And, occasionally, sadness.
7 Or, indeed, any other of the demented screeds of this writer.
8 What else is there to do until teatime?
9 De gustibus non disputandum, as the hummingbird said to the fish.
10 Have you looked at what kind of salaries those fellows pull these days? Ye gods.
11 See Carlos Castaneda, complete works.
The first thing that is difficult for those who were brought up on planets to understand is that you are not your body. Those beings raised in a eco-dependent biosphere have trouble believing this, because it is counterintuitive. After all, you came into existence on the planet as the result of some sort of reproductive process on the part of your parent or parents, be it sexual congress, spawning, cloning, or simply spitting on the sidewalk(1). You live within the biosphere, subject to its laws of energy exchange, requiring food and liquid to maintain your body(2), and then, finally, your body gives out, and you die - that is, you disappear from your native biosphere, and all your friends and relatives are unhappy, and hold a funeral(3). And, as far as anyone within the biosphere can tell, that is that. End of story.
The truth of course is quite different, as it so usually is in these chronicles. For, by dying, by exiting the shell with which you have interfaced with your native biosphere, you perform your first quantum leap. Because it is then - and, for most sentients, only then - that you discover what you should have suspected all along. You are not your body(4).
A sentient being is in reality a nexus of energy fields in space-time which reacts to materiality generated by dimensional gravity wells in the multiverse by attaching itself and forming a material interface in accordance with the narrativium(5) of the material dimension. It is the nexus - itself a complete noncorporeal entity - which constitutes sentience per se - the rest is window dressing, as it were.
The fact that so many beings in so many dimensions expend so much time, energy, and fan email on the window dressing part is subject for another essay(6).
Be that as it may, the desideratum of the teleporteur in spe should be to be able to change dimensional loci without first undergoing bodily dissolution - largely because it is painful, expensive, and basically no fun at all.
The first step to this - one which is mere child's play to anyone who has managed to read this far(7) - is a lively imagination. After all, you can't go anywhere unless you look up your destination first.
The second step is more difficult. You must become aware of your mind. Not your brain, not your thoughts, not the part of you that does the Times crossword in ink every Sunday afternoon(8), but the nexus. And that, too, is easier than you think. It simply requires you to be completely absent-minded.
The nexus is actually just the part of you that knows what it's like to fly, even if you have never fallen off the roof. The part that knows how a peanut butter milkshake would taste(9) - and acts accordingly.
The nexus knows - but the narrativium-obsessed interface mind, the one that remembers how to tie shoelaces and find the blasted car keys - does not.
For this reason, most space stations have transporter equipment. After all, a few hundred thousand poscreds' worth of hardware - and a tech to push the buttons - is cheaper than an army of Jungian gurus tasked with persuading the unwilling into taking the leap(10).
The purpose of the equipment is twofold. One - to inspire confidence in the traveller. There's nothing like a strobe light, hologenerator, and a bit of neon to convince your average sentient that he is in the capable hands of Science.
The second is to accomplish the real task of teleportation - that of moving the focus of the nexus off the current location in space-time. The destination coordinates are preset, and are no problem at all(11). This the transporter does by creating an unnatural, contrary-to-fact state in the mind of the sentient.
'Oh no!, he thinks. I'm going to leap out of reality! But I can't! But I must - Aunt Tilda is waiting on Betelgeuse with cakes and jam! Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh...IS THAT A PURPLE COW??? Leap.
You see? Nothing to it!
May all our problems be so simple to solve. And may technology pave our way to a brighter tomorrow - or yesterday - in the space-time locus of our choice.
Happy wanderings, friends!
FOOTNOTES:
1 Which, besides being in contravention of the Gross Indecency Act of 2555, violates Good Housekeeping rules, so don't do it. You have been warned.
2 And often being required to do the most awful things to obtain them - such as work.
3 Your enemies are glad, and throw a party. Unfair. I know. We live to make our friends happy, and our enemies sad - we die to make our enemies happy, and our friends sad.
4 A fact hitherto suspected only by dieters.
5 Or plot-rules.
6 And, occasionally, sadness.
7 Or, indeed, any other of the demented screeds of this writer.
8 What else is there to do until teatime?
9 De gustibus non disputandum, as the hummingbird said to the fish.
10 Have you looked at what kind of salaries those fellows pull these days? Ye gods.
11 See Carlos Castaneda, complete works.
28 November 2010
Colossus
The day the Giant Alien Head showed up in the back forty, I knew we were in for a heap of trouble.
I suppose it's usual to say 'It was a day like any other', but it wasn't. About three a.m. there'd been an earthquake.
Just a tremor for us, and in Greater Hudsie we're used to it, it's a seismic area, but what with the rumbling and the bed vibrating, it woke me up - not my wife Manuela, she sleeps through anything - and I got up to check on the livestock in the pen, but they settled down pretty quickly, and there were no signs of sinkholes, so I reckoned we'd got off easy this time. Later I heard it had been a bigger shock over in Hattie, where it had knocked down a shack or two on the outskirts, and even made a new crack in the pavement in Greenglass. But the cows seemed contented enough, so I went back to bed, which is when Manuela woke up a bit and grumbled at me. She likes her sleep.
I'd been up for the second time, to move the cows over to the summer pasture, and was having a caff in the kitchen, when I looked out the window and saw It, reared up from behind the bobwire in the field where I was cultivating sandgrass, trying to get some more pastureland to take hold. Like I said, we're desert.
The kids saw it, too, and got excited. 'Hey, Da, ' said Jose, my eldest, 'You been buying scrap again? That is the biggest, and ugliest, thing I've ever seen in my life.' We moseyed out to see it.
Jose was right. I'd never seen the like of it, and I hope I never do again. There in my field was a Giant Alien Head. It was huge. It was green. And it was like nothing we'd ever seen before
My daughter Juanita craned her neck to look up at it. 'What kind of crittur is it, Da?' she asked. I scratched my head.
It stood on its shoulders, this head, standing up out of the sparse grass. It was hideous - its neck seemed too thin to support the head, which sported a ribbed bone plate with seven vicious-looking spikes sticking out from it. Underneath that were ropy appendages tucked behind protruding organs where its ears should have been. Two sightless eyes looked out at the pasture above a sharp probiscis, and underneath, two fat slugs that must have been lips curled in a sneer.
As if it knew a secret about us, I thought, and didn't think much of it.
'A ugly one, that's for sure, ' I said aloud. 'Big, green, ugly monster.' Carlito, my youngest, liked the sound of that, and kept chanting it until Manuela, who'd come out to look, told him to shut up.
She shook her head. 'This is trouble, chico. Big trouble.' I nodded in agreement. Big, ugly monsters are trouble. Big, ugly monsters mean big, ugly archaeologists, with big, ugly equipment.
Big, ugly equipment means I don't get my back forty back till they're through studying the Phenomenon. And writing papers. I'd be lucky to get a dollar-fifty compensation out of them tightwads in the government, too. I sighed.
'Jose, get on your bike and go to Garcias'. They've got a phone. Tell 'em to call Hattie, let 'em know what we found. And don't let Mrs Garcia feed you. You got food at home.' As Jose, grumbling, went to get his motorbike out of the shed, Juanita turned to me, curious. 'How'd it get here, Da?' I shrugged again, though I had a theory.
When I was a kid, a possum had scared the life out of me. I was visiting my aunt and uncle down South, where it's wetter, and they got a bait of them things. Possums are ugly, but that wasn't why it had scared me.
It was just after a rainstorm, you see, and I was sitting on the front porch, looking around for a rainbow for the novelty of it, when the bushes at the side of the house started rustling. They shook and shook, and then this possum just emerged from inside the bush, not like he was climbing out, but like he just rose from the bush. Like the bush gave birth to him. He must've got wetter than he liked, and just come out.
I figured the Giant Alien Head was like that. The earthquake must've disturbed it, and the sands shifted, and then it just worked its way on up into the field.
I just wished it'd been somebody else's field. I needed that pasture grass come winter.
As I'd feared, trouble came in waves, and with official stamps all over it. The environmental folks checked for lead. Nope, it was copper, hence the green, they said. I shrugged, what's copper? Some old metal, it turned out. Okay by me, but apparently it was safer than lead.
The guys from the local paper showed up, too, and took our picture in front of the Head. We made it to the front page, just above the story about the new schoolhouse. Manuela was proud, went to the beauty parlour for it, and all.
Then the archaeologists showed up in droves. They measured. They took soundings. They sat around our kitchen, drinking up our caff supply, and argued about what it all meant.
Vandermolen, the big noise from Hattie, was sure he knew what it was. 'It's proof of Alien Visitation,' he claimed. 'I have long been of the opinion that this planet was visited by terribly advanced aliens from outer space, who seeded our civilisation. Look at the pyramids. Look at...'
'Balderdash,' said Rickerts, the guy from out west. 'It represents an ancient, but totally native, development.' The alien appearance of the statue is merely due to a religious idea. It represents some ideal of the ancient civilisation - however repugnant its visage is to us.'
Vandermolen snorted. 'So we put it in the museum with the usual sign, eh? 'Cult object'? I am not ready to concede defeat so easily, my dear colleague.'
They went on like this for days, while I moved my cattle over to my brother-in-law's to keep 'em out of the way. Too many archaeologists spoil the milk, I've found.
Then came the shocker: there was more of the blasted thing underground. It just hadn't come up yet. I didn't want to think about what the body of that monster would look like. Even less did I like to think of what my pasture was going to look like when they finished digging. I was ready to dig in my heels and send for a lawyer.
Then the cavalry arrived, in the form of Juan Sanchez, Simon's oldest boy, who had gone to college and was now working for the government up in Hattie. He showed up with a government grant in one hand and a reimbursement form in the other. Seems the government thought this discovery was so big - it was big, all right, too big, in my opinion - that it 'warranted further on-site study'. And so they were willing to buy us out.
I had no complaints about the settlement. We got a nice price for what amounted to 200 acres of scrubby, sandy soil, and we moved over to my brother-in-law's while we scouted around for a new place to start a spread. The kids were closer to the new schoolhouse, Manuela got along with her sister-in-law like a house on fire, and I helped Pablo with the cows and watched the Big Dig from a safe distance. It was a win-win situation, in my book.
After the first big shock, the paper people left me alone - after all, I had nothing interesting to say except 'yup, I seen it' - and hung around the dig itself. But one day, Dr Vandermolen came by to drink some of my sister-in-law's caff, and told us how it was going.
They'd dug up the whole shebang, except for a piece that was broke off. They hadn't found that yet, but they were still hoping. The whole thing was so huge you could get inside it. And it had writing at the bottom. They were still arguing about the writing, and what it meant.
Over his second piece of shoofly pie (and his third cup of caff), Vandermolen told us that they were going to make a museum out of the site as soon as they'd finished, and we'd all be able to go over and see it - right now there was a big wall around it, maybe they didn't want to spoil the surprise.
Vandermolen still believed in his alien theory, and was glad to explain it to an audience that didn't fight back with footnotes. 'I think these aliens were flesh-eaters,' he said. 'The statue served as some sort of collection point for human sacrifices.' He gestured in the air with his fork, and I dodged shoo-fly crumbs. 'First, because the staircase inside could hold a lot of people. They probably forced them up and out the holes at the top, letting them fall to the their deaths. It was probably presented as a religious sacrifice.
I was glad the kids were in bed - I didn't want them to be thinking about how they'd grown up on top of something like that.
Vabdermolen continued 'At least, that is how I interpret the verse at the base of this Juggernaut.'
The verse was in some ancient language, but they'd sort of puzzled it out. Vandermolen handed me a copy of the translation his graduate student had made. It read:
'Give me the tired ones, the poor ones, The big crowds that can't breathe [well], Give me the garbage, too [?], that washes up on the tide, Give them all wet from the ocean to me. I hold up my light beside the Golden Gate.'
Professor Vandermolen explained that last bit. 'We think the Juggernaut promised the victims a better life in the world to come. That might have made them more willing to be sacrificed.' He went on to say that the diggers were pretty sure that when they found the missing piece of the statue, it would have a lantern, or a torch, in its upraised paw.
'I think I can prove that Earth was the victim of an invasion of man-eating aliens, ' he concluded. I nodded, convinced by this smart man.
'I'm just glad they're gone, ' I said, putting out my arm and pulling Manuela to me, nuzzling the soft fur on the back of her neck. 'They look like they were a nasty species.'
Manuela growled softly in agreement, and lashed her tail.
I suppose it's usual to say 'It was a day like any other', but it wasn't. About three a.m. there'd been an earthquake.
Just a tremor for us, and in Greater Hudsie we're used to it, it's a seismic area, but what with the rumbling and the bed vibrating, it woke me up - not my wife Manuela, she sleeps through anything - and I got up to check on the livestock in the pen, but they settled down pretty quickly, and there were no signs of sinkholes, so I reckoned we'd got off easy this time. Later I heard it had been a bigger shock over in Hattie, where it had knocked down a shack or two on the outskirts, and even made a new crack in the pavement in Greenglass. But the cows seemed contented enough, so I went back to bed, which is when Manuela woke up a bit and grumbled at me. She likes her sleep.
I'd been up for the second time, to move the cows over to the summer pasture, and was having a caff in the kitchen, when I looked out the window and saw It, reared up from behind the bobwire in the field where I was cultivating sandgrass, trying to get some more pastureland to take hold. Like I said, we're desert.
The kids saw it, too, and got excited. 'Hey, Da, ' said Jose, my eldest, 'You been buying scrap again? That is the biggest, and ugliest, thing I've ever seen in my life.' We moseyed out to see it.
Jose was right. I'd never seen the like of it, and I hope I never do again. There in my field was a Giant Alien Head. It was huge. It was green. And it was like nothing we'd ever seen before
My daughter Juanita craned her neck to look up at it. 'What kind of crittur is it, Da?' she asked. I scratched my head.
It stood on its shoulders, this head, standing up out of the sparse grass. It was hideous - its neck seemed too thin to support the head, which sported a ribbed bone plate with seven vicious-looking spikes sticking out from it. Underneath that were ropy appendages tucked behind protruding organs where its ears should have been. Two sightless eyes looked out at the pasture above a sharp probiscis, and underneath, two fat slugs that must have been lips curled in a sneer.
As if it knew a secret about us, I thought, and didn't think much of it.
'A ugly one, that's for sure, ' I said aloud. 'Big, green, ugly monster.' Carlito, my youngest, liked the sound of that, and kept chanting it until Manuela, who'd come out to look, told him to shut up.
She shook her head. 'This is trouble, chico. Big trouble.' I nodded in agreement. Big, ugly monsters are trouble. Big, ugly monsters mean big, ugly archaeologists, with big, ugly equipment.
Big, ugly equipment means I don't get my back forty back till they're through studying the Phenomenon. And writing papers. I'd be lucky to get a dollar-fifty compensation out of them tightwads in the government, too. I sighed.
'Jose, get on your bike and go to Garcias'. They've got a phone. Tell 'em to call Hattie, let 'em know what we found. And don't let Mrs Garcia feed you. You got food at home.' As Jose, grumbling, went to get his motorbike out of the shed, Juanita turned to me, curious. 'How'd it get here, Da?' I shrugged again, though I had a theory.
When I was a kid, a possum had scared the life out of me. I was visiting my aunt and uncle down South, where it's wetter, and they got a bait of them things. Possums are ugly, but that wasn't why it had scared me.
It was just after a rainstorm, you see, and I was sitting on the front porch, looking around for a rainbow for the novelty of it, when the bushes at the side of the house started rustling. They shook and shook, and then this possum just emerged from inside the bush, not like he was climbing out, but like he just rose from the bush. Like the bush gave birth to him. He must've got wetter than he liked, and just come out.
I figured the Giant Alien Head was like that. The earthquake must've disturbed it, and the sands shifted, and then it just worked its way on up into the field.
I just wished it'd been somebody else's field. I needed that pasture grass come winter.
As I'd feared, trouble came in waves, and with official stamps all over it. The environmental folks checked for lead. Nope, it was copper, hence the green, they said. I shrugged, what's copper? Some old metal, it turned out. Okay by me, but apparently it was safer than lead.
The guys from the local paper showed up, too, and took our picture in front of the Head. We made it to the front page, just above the story about the new schoolhouse. Manuela was proud, went to the beauty parlour for it, and all.
Then the archaeologists showed up in droves. They measured. They took soundings. They sat around our kitchen, drinking up our caff supply, and argued about what it all meant.
Vandermolen, the big noise from Hattie, was sure he knew what it was. 'It's proof of Alien Visitation,' he claimed. 'I have long been of the opinion that this planet was visited by terribly advanced aliens from outer space, who seeded our civilisation. Look at the pyramids. Look at...'
'Balderdash,' said Rickerts, the guy from out west. 'It represents an ancient, but totally native, development.' The alien appearance of the statue is merely due to a religious idea. It represents some ideal of the ancient civilisation - however repugnant its visage is to us.'
Vandermolen snorted. 'So we put it in the museum with the usual sign, eh? 'Cult object'? I am not ready to concede defeat so easily, my dear colleague.'
They went on like this for days, while I moved my cattle over to my brother-in-law's to keep 'em out of the way. Too many archaeologists spoil the milk, I've found.
Then came the shocker: there was more of the blasted thing underground. It just hadn't come up yet. I didn't want to think about what the body of that monster would look like. Even less did I like to think of what my pasture was going to look like when they finished digging. I was ready to dig in my heels and send for a lawyer.
Then the cavalry arrived, in the form of Juan Sanchez, Simon's oldest boy, who had gone to college and was now working for the government up in Hattie. He showed up with a government grant in one hand and a reimbursement form in the other. Seems the government thought this discovery was so big - it was big, all right, too big, in my opinion - that it 'warranted further on-site study'. And so they were willing to buy us out.
I had no complaints about the settlement. We got a nice price for what amounted to 200 acres of scrubby, sandy soil, and we moved over to my brother-in-law's while we scouted around for a new place to start a spread. The kids were closer to the new schoolhouse, Manuela got along with her sister-in-law like a house on fire, and I helped Pablo with the cows and watched the Big Dig from a safe distance. It was a win-win situation, in my book.
After the first big shock, the paper people left me alone - after all, I had nothing interesting to say except 'yup, I seen it' - and hung around the dig itself. But one day, Dr Vandermolen came by to drink some of my sister-in-law's caff, and told us how it was going.
They'd dug up the whole shebang, except for a piece that was broke off. They hadn't found that yet, but they were still hoping. The whole thing was so huge you could get inside it. And it had writing at the bottom. They were still arguing about the writing, and what it meant.
Over his second piece of shoofly pie (and his third cup of caff), Vandermolen told us that they were going to make a museum out of the site as soon as they'd finished, and we'd all be able to go over and see it - right now there was a big wall around it, maybe they didn't want to spoil the surprise.
Vandermolen still believed in his alien theory, and was glad to explain it to an audience that didn't fight back with footnotes. 'I think these aliens were flesh-eaters,' he said. 'The statue served as some sort of collection point for human sacrifices.' He gestured in the air with his fork, and I dodged shoo-fly crumbs. 'First, because the staircase inside could hold a lot of people. They probably forced them up and out the holes at the top, letting them fall to the their deaths. It was probably presented as a religious sacrifice.
I was glad the kids were in bed - I didn't want them to be thinking about how they'd grown up on top of something like that.
Vabdermolen continued 'At least, that is how I interpret the verse at the base of this Juggernaut.'
The verse was in some ancient language, but they'd sort of puzzled it out. Vandermolen handed me a copy of the translation his graduate student had made. It read:
'Give me the tired ones, the poor ones, The big crowds that can't breathe [well], Give me the garbage, too [?], that washes up on the tide, Give them all wet from the ocean to me. I hold up my light beside the Golden Gate.'
Professor Vandermolen explained that last bit. 'We think the Juggernaut promised the victims a better life in the world to come. That might have made them more willing to be sacrificed.' He went on to say that the diggers were pretty sure that when they found the missing piece of the statue, it would have a lantern, or a torch, in its upraised paw.
'I think I can prove that Earth was the victim of an invasion of man-eating aliens, ' he concluded. I nodded, convinced by this smart man.
'I'm just glad they're gone, ' I said, putting out my arm and pulling Manuela to me, nuzzling the soft fur on the back of her neck. 'They look like they were a nasty species.'
Manuela growled softly in agreement, and lashed her tail.
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