Quite a pretty though heavy wet snow on
ground and on surrounding tree limbs and bushes.
Too heavy for shoveling and I'm afraid also too heavy
for the snow blower; also arthritic hands this morning. Unusual but here it is.
We shoveled a little of the driveway (moving snow away from the garage door by
several feet. I just need to shut my eyes for a few minutes -- a bit of glare
from outside but I don't want to shut the window -- a pleasant and peaceful
winter view which will be melted away in a couple of days. (0905)
You've warmed your hands after shoveling and
using the snow blower. Jared offered to do the rest of your driveway after
Carol had done about half with the shovel while you were napping. Earlier both
agreed it was too wet to shovel and you were waiting for Jared to do his
mother's driveway, but you were thinking that it was too wet to use the blower.
You were wrong and are feeling bad that you didn't do more; yet more angry at
yourself because what you did shovel by hand hurt your lower back but you'll be
damned if you tell anyone about it. Do I have that about right? - Amorella
1150 hours. You do. I told Jared I was getting old when
I handed him our snow blower back. He just said, "We all get old, Mr.
Orndorff." Then I felt worse. I don't know why. I don't think I'm getting
old but I am. Using the keyboard doesn't take much physical work and even the
exercises don't compare to lifting wet snow; and it has been two years. No
excuses, this is just recognition on how life is. (1200)
When you are in any manner working of these
projects you do not think of age because from my perspective you are as the
Dead (in the book) busy doing what you love in your heartansoulanmind, your
spirit, if you will. - Amorella
This is embarrassing to read, Amorella.
More embarrassing than your physical
ailments? - Amorella
No, but when you mention heartansoulanmind it feels so
non-masculine and childish.
Now we get to the truth of it, boy. Think of
how the Dead (in the story) might feel from time to time. We might as well as
this human dimension to it. - Amorella
I guess. Another dimension, huh. I would have never
thought such.
Carol has the weather on; officially Mason has five and one-half inches. (1223)
1655 hours. We had lunch watched NCIS-LA and I had a
nap. Once up and refreshed I finished the audio draft for chapter one.
Drop it in for safe-keeping. - Amorella
It flows much better.
***
AUDIO MODIFIED NEARER FINAL DRAFT
BEGUN 5 MARCH 2013
Richard H. Orndorff
5320 Hidden Creek
Circle
Mason, Ohio
45040-1778
All rights reserved. No part of this e-book near
final draft
may be copied by any information storage retrieval
system
without the email written permission of the author.
However, readers of my encountersinmind blog
may,
at present, make a
personal copy of Great Merlyn’s Ghost
for their individual selves but not for
distribution.
rhorndorff@gmail.com
Copyright © 2001 - 2013 by Richard H. Orndorff
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names,
incidents, mythology, culture and dialogue are the products of the author’s
imagination or they are used fictitiously.
GREAT MERLYN’S
GHOST I
A Personal
Exploration In Consciousness
By Richard H.
Orndorff
Dedication
This book is
dedicated to each of my former students and to the many trusted colleagues with
whom I taught for thirty-seven years. The schools are: Magnetic Springs School,
Magnetic Springs, Ohio; Whitehall-Yearling High School, Columbus, Ohio; Escola
Graduada de Såo Paulo (The Graded School), Såo Paulo, Brazil; Indian Hill High
School, Cincinnati, Ohio; and William Mason High School, Mason, Ohio. You know
who you are, which is a good thing because I am not so good at remembering
proper names, including my own sometimes. Nevertheless, with a smile and a tip
of my well-worn black beret, I wish you all well. This is not the beginning of
yet another literary lecture.
***
Acknowledgments
Many
of the legendary historical names, historical settings; the romantic and
neoclassical ideologies; and the scientific concepts and theoretical plausibility’s
entertained among the words and page margins can be found throughout Wikipedia
and the web.
I thank my life partner Carol, daughter Kim and son-in-law, Paul for their
diligence and patience. I also thank my good friends and the initial readers of
my original Merlyn’s Mind trilogy: Angie; Bob and Patti; Cathy and Tod;
Craig and Alta; Fritz; Gary; Jeanne and Jim; Laney; and my Aunt Patricia and
Uncle Ernie for their observations and helpful comments.
I
especially thank my dear old friend and literary colleague of forty years, the
late Thomas Robert Pringle, for his friendship and for his continued permission
to use a selection of his previously published and unpublished poems in this
novel.
Also, a special thanks to my two mostly unseen Muses; and, to my quite real
theoretical physics advisor with whom I discuss the many plausibility’s
presented this heavily revised self published Braided Dreams into this
re-titled, Great Merlyn’s Ghost, lifelong friend John Douglas Goss, PhD.
Physics.
The writer within is Amorella. During these last twenty-five years Amorella has
continued to help, advise and teach me to better communicate my intuitive sense
of human reality through writing.
My
objective is to present myself as a better writer with a more intellectually
stimulating and entertaining human spirit in this venture; mostly, I must say,
for my two young grandsons, Owen and Brennan. It is my hope that these works
will become a good part of their memory of their Papa who still loves
them.
Richard H. Orndorff
September 2012
Prologue
If the
reader chooses to better understand the present existential circumstance of
this Merlyn’s human spirit since his physical death in AD 670 read on.
Merlyn the Bard
***
Chapter One
The Supervisor has a little
saying:
Ring-a-ring
o'rosies
A
pocket full of posies
"A-tishoo!
A-tishoo!"
We
all fall down!
We
rise from clay
On
Judgment Day
Be
we dead or still alive.
Merlyn
has this little ditty memorized to the point it sits in stemmed reverence from
which the chapter dream grows. Merlyn kneads his dreams for those with an
imagination that casts no shadow.
The Dead 1
This is Merlyn. The date is 15 December 2009. I have been here
entangled between the living and the dead since the book Merlyn’s Mind was
published in May 2008. This twenty-first century Earth is not at all the Earth
I left in the seventh century. This is for me how it is being entangled between
your heaven and earth.
This
is Merlyn's Supervisor. Merlyn has a green felt
covered billiard table with six standard billiard pockets in mind; but his mind
never knows which is the pocket to the heart and which is the pocket to the
soul. No one knows how or why the secret tunneling exists to heart and to soul.
Here is another nearby spiritual entity.
“Merlyn,
this is your ancestral mother. You are indeed entangled between our ancestors
and descendants. We are all entangled whether we like it or not."
Upon
hearing Mother, Merlyn felt the smoothly rolling and solid black 8 ball whisper,
'Life is armor for the spirit.' This quiet comment quickly moved across the
table of mind to tip at Merlyn's soul’s pocket in a spin, then the ball
re-crossed the table to fall into his heart's side pocket instead. A fact of
being dead is that no one knows which pocket is which at any given time.
'I
am sick at heart,' popped out of the yellow 1 ball on the diamond cue mark and
was unconsciously cue tapped to the near center of the table.
Always
the 8 ball, Mother proceeded to sit on the diamond shaped and white cue mark on
green and said, "Merlyn, it is confusing to be so placed on this table."
A
quiet nearly invisible smirk crossed Merlyn's newly visible burnt orange 5 ball
near the far side pocket.
Mother,
caught his slight smirk in a reflection on the ball.
Resting
small but human-like on the cue mark, Mother stated, "It has been almost
three years and you are still adjusting to the twenty-first century."
Such
a direct statement shocked Merlyn's mind from the billiard thought balls and he
immediately found himself sitting on a favorite large rock on a granite slab in
the meadow-of-mind staring at a petite beautiful woman with the darkest eyes.
Her long curly black hair swirled over her magically feminine arms and legs,
fingers and toes and she appeared a legendary Celtic faery without wings or
wand.
With a natural wizard's re-presence of mind, Merlyn asked,
"Are you our once original ancestral Mother, Glevema, the granddaughter of
Panagiotakis, or are you her later ancient Greek look-alike twin, Sophia?"
He continued without waiting for her response, "Are you Sophia the Greek
during the time of the First Rebellion in HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither?"
"I
am Glevema, your ancestral Mother of the Dead and all those presently born and
living on Earth." She stood slim, dark skinned and royal at her former
living height of five full feet at less than ninety pounds.
Merlyn
stood, bowed slightly and announced as in a whisper to the world of the Living,
"m'Lady."
Amused,
Glevema politely asked, "When did you last see Sophia?"
Merlyn
responded, "She was in charge of constructing a bridge across the River
Styx." It was only hours ago, thought Merlyn, that I witnessed the
beginning of the Rebellion of the first fully conscious ten thousand human
spirits in Elysium, the Place of the Greek Dead. The First Revolt of the Dead
happened during the earthly time of the great Greek storyteller, Homer who
lived in the ninth century BC
(900-801BC). A brief and passing thought rolled slowly in a solid green
6 ball to the center billiard table of Merlyn’s mind, 'Wait,' he thought,
'Today's Earth date is Sunday, 19 August 2012. I am an entrapped spirit within and without time both at
once.’
***
The Brothers 1
Robert
Greystone gave a swift glance at his younger brother and arrogantly said,
“Richie, what the world are you talking about?”
Richard
continued his spiel, “The brain and the mind are separate entities. It is
possible to be in two places at once.
“And,
you say the Leo Lamar in your mind writes the Merlyn books for you.”
“Yes,
he does. My fanciful Captain Lamar brings me slave stories on his ferry across
the Ohio River in my head. Lamar is a writing persona.” He thought, Lamar is
real too, but he would never say it aloud.
“Right.
Lamar’s small ferry travels from Mason County, Kentucky to Ripley, Ohio in your
head.
“He
does. Captain Lamar follows the famous route of the historic Underground
Railroad.”
“Richie,
why would you conjure up such a literary devise?”
“Captain
Lamar is from the underground in my head. The slaves are long held concepts,
too long held for the modern world.”
Robert
quipped, “So is your fiction, Dickie."
“The
stories are corded from the spine to the brain and then on to the mind,"
responded Richard.
“Why
don’t you just stick to writing the poetry?”
Richard’s
eyes narrowed, “You’re the better poet.”
“True.
I am.”
“Your
poetry is clear, concise and with no nonsense.”
Robert
expressed his amusement with a ‘yes, of course’ chuckle he knew his brother
hated, and said, “That’s because my brain and my mind are in the same place. I
don’t have a cigar chewing, ratty old Captain Leo of the whimsical good ferry, Stardust,
bringing me poems hot from the northern hills in the Kentucky of my mind.”
“Captain
Lamar just delivers the stories, Rob. I’ve told you that a dozen times before.
“It’s
all in your head.”
“Of
course it’s in my head. I know where it’s from, Rob, but the mind is not the brain.”
“Is
this what floats your boat, Dickie? Because if it is, you as a college
professor should know better.”
“I’m
retired just as you are,” noted Richard, “neurologists argue on the definition
of mind. Here’s the first revised Merlyn chapter, read it over.”
“This
is what I mean, Richie,” said Rob, “you have how many other drafts? Why didn’t
your Captain Leo deliver the final Merlyn goods the first time?”
“I
have a better understanding today,” answered Richard truthfully.
“I
thought you wrote from your imagination.” Robert paused and drew a waggish
smile, “Do you remember when we first went to Ripley to see the Underground
Railroad?”
“Sure,
I was about eight. Grandma and Grandpa took and showed us where John Rankin
lived, the setting in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Richard chuckled, “I thought
there was going to be a real railroad.”
“So
your stories float up from the underground railroad in your head.”
“Look
Robbie, people still want freedom from slavery.
“We
live in America. We have freedom,” said Robert. “You liberal thinkers are all
alike.”
Richard
retorted, “And you surgeons are really tight fitting bloated conservatives.”
“Too
many years of slave mastering your students is getting to you isn’t it?”
taunted Robert.
“I
wasn’t a slave master. I never had a student do anything I hadn’t done myself.”
“The
way I remember it you enjoyed whipping your freshman expository classes into
order every year."
Richard
scoffed, “They are called first year students today."
Robert skimmed the first half
page of manuscript in the nondescript blue folder and said, “Is this your final
draft?”
“Near
final. One chapter at a time.”
“I’ll
read it,” said Robert abruptly, but who's to say this is any better than your
first self published attempt?"
“You
are. Surely the significant poet in you can understand how writing a novel is.”
“I don’t know why you can’t just
stick with poetry," said brother Robert. “We could publish a good book of
poems together. This is what we were going to do when we retired. We each have
a lifetime of poems. We could set a theme, pull from a batch and have them
published.”
“I thought golf was more
important for retired doctors than getting poetry published.”
“A different vocation.”
Richard smiled nonchalantly,
“Balls and words both cut and slice.”
Robert
looked over his glasses after a quick skim of the chapter. “There are four
sections in each chapter?”
"Old Merlyn
is dreaming four stories simultaneously, one with the Dead, one in the present,
one in the past, and one in the future. The Dead dream like this,” declared
Richard with an air of unconscious authority.
“Where’s
more of “The Brothers” dream segment?”
"Read what you have,
carefully please. I'll get that segment to you. I'm reworking it,” stated
Richard. He left Robert to read more closely while he headed downstairs to see
spouse and sister-in-law. Of all things, he thought, here we are, two at-odds,
lone wolf identical twin brothers each married to the most compatible and
popular of sisters, Connie and Cyndi Bleacher, who were born a year apart but
who are otherwise almost identical twins themselves. Who would have thought?
***
Grandma’s Story 1
This
is Grandma Earth. I am here to show the DNA, the chromosomes, the genetics
lines of the Greystone and Bleacher families. It is not so complicated as one
might think. You may consider this genetic memory if you are not inclined to
accept the fact that human beings have a heartansoulanmind memory.
Grandma
Earth doesn't care what human beings think. She considers all consciousness a
child of herself. You come from the earth and you return to it, that's what my
stories are about. You have a spirit of higher consciousness that moves on
whether you like it or not. I have assembled twenty-one stories for this first book,
one for each chapter. Without the physical ancestors of the Greystone's and the
Bleachers, Robert and Richard and their chosen life partners Connie and Cyndi
wouldn't exist. Grandma’s old dark eyes glanced off the page, “And without your
ancestors you would not exist either.”
***
I have a long ago story for you,
said Grandma. I picked this memory from a direct ancestor of Rob and Richard; one
whose heart is still worldly troubled. Here is the beginning of his and his
granddaughter's unresolved conflict.
It is dawn and my shoulders
shiver. This is the way it is. I hear the crickets and other small creatures
around the swamp. I am in a hole in a wall and there is no way out. This is the
way it is. I cannot get out. Let me out. I am stuck. Let me out.
My
fingers are cold and full of ice. It is winter in spring. The birds sing. I am
no bird. It is cold, and I am ice forming on the river. I am floating and cold.
The river is not what I am. I am continuity, the common ground in icy hands.
I had a dream last night, and it
was a whopper. It was about these people who live way out among the stars, and
how it is when they are stuck too.
I
will tap out my message as people caught in a cave do. I have ice-cold fingers,
the Living listen. I remember time; it is in my own cold dawn. I am almost
eighteen thousand years old. I am stuck frozen and flat in the ice near the
cold stone that surrounds the pond of stars. I am here then and now. I am the
shaman dancing and I am in half a spirit living and half a spirit dead.
The dancing stopped. The shaman,
Panagiotakis, alive on earth in the man's memory looked to his audience,
pointed to a not so bright star in the night and said, “We are from there,”
then he pointed to the soil beneath his feet, “to here.” That is what the now
shivering shaman said. None of the onlookers slept well that night.
One
of those attentive listeners to the shaman, Panagiotakis, is Glevema, his
granddaughter. She tossed and turned and suddenly unexpectedly thought, ‘How
can we be here and there at the same time?’ Later in life, she died and found
herself waiting for members of her group to join her once they died and did not
die too. People had become respecting of the Dead in the time of the Shaman who
still felt freezing cold, and people buried the Dead with rites and passages,
thus accommodating both the Living and the Dead at the same time. The Living
had made a conscious decision, to be in two places at once, to be with their
living friends and to be with the memories of their dead friends. Glevema
became the first human consciousness-in-spirit to enter the Place of the Dead.
*
Glevema
knows Grandma Earth with her white teeth gleaning through white paper usually
unsoiled with shadows. She looked out on her listeners young and old alike.
Child,
she said, you ain’t got a clue on what words are. I’m gonna sit on this here
stump and hope it won’t stain my pretty blue and white dress floating along in
a gentle breeze. To look into Grandma you need to search deep down into
yourself. You may not like it but I am your nature inside and out. The kerchief
on my head ain’t nothin' but the stars. You keep that in your head, if you got
a free mind and the will.
Grandma
glanced up beyond the dark sky of her head. The white of her puffy eyes showed
mysteriously dark pupils. I got me a chant to take us from a human story in the
past to a human story in the future. I am the heart on which the shamans dance.
Like other higher consciousnesses, Merlyn, in dreams or not, realizes existing
deadanliving is more than meets the eye. For instance, his lover, sweet Vivian,
who is his friend first wherever she is, meets his eye when it counts most.
From these two
ancient hearts by soul made one
Show these stories
where passions are begun.
Our well-known
druidess and druid will do,
They are in the same
like spirits that make up you.
In a timeless
corridor where musing memories rightly tie
Our Vivien and Merlyn
do consciously lie.
From romance and
Grandma's tooth-filled gums
Our narrative in
past, and also our future comes.
***
Diplomatic Pouch 1
Pyl
Williams-Burroughs sat upfront, to the left of the pilot, her brother Blake,
The second row seat behind Pyl had been taken out allowing her thirty-three
year old husband, Justin, to comfortably sit stretching his legs from the third
row of cabin seats. With the engine in idle the three awaited runway departure
instructions for take off from Detroit's old city airport to Burke Lakefront in
Cleveland. "On the Road Again" had just begun playing in the background
on the satellite radio with interspersing interruption from the tower.
Pyl
turned excitedly, "Jus, what'd you think of the auto show?"
"I
liked it. I liked the new Ford Fusion the best."
"I
liked it too. Which one did you like best, Blakey."
"Right
now, I like the weather best. Sunny and mild, not bad for a third of the way
through January 2012."
"Who
would have thought we would fly to this year's show back in October,"
commented Justin.
"Warm
winter, so far," added Pyl somberly while thinking, if we ditch in the
lake we'll have no ice to land on.
Eyeing
his brother-in-law, Justin asked, "Isn't this a pretty old plane?"
"Hey,
the only thing we didn't add was a leather seat. We should have never ordered
these lamb covers. They are over ten years old and I can't stand them."
Pyl
reflected, when this plane was new Daddy had the most comfortable leather
seats, then said aloud, "Daddy loved this plane, didn't he Blakey?"
Sighing
in the upcoming air of redundancy and wondering how many times Justin had heard
about the Cessna, he dryly commented, "Daddy loved this plane, Pyl.” Being
too kind to his sister, he added the roughage, "Dad truly loved this plane
for the business it brought rather than pleasure it gave."
Pyl
cracked back, "We took so many family trips." She grumbled at her
wishful thinking, "No more kind Blakely, the B-butt is back."
Justin
perked at Pyl's fresh defensive tone and musing, ‘never-ending family
squabbles. I don't know how their parents put up with it.’
Talking
deeply and under breath, Blake commented matter-of-factly, "We are a go on
33."
Justin
leaned forward to sit up straight, adjusting so he could watch the instrument
needles fluttering and the worn but solid asphalt runway begin disappearing
beneath the rotating three blade prop as they were underway.
An
hour into their flight Blake and Justin were enjoying the quiet drown of the
engine along with the darker blue above and the gray blue waters of Lake Erie
thousands of feet below. Dusk around five, brooded Blake when the tip of the
left wing lightly tapped an unseen object. Blake quickly adjusted and settled
the flight.
"Was
it a bird?" asked Pyl cautiously.
Justin
a bit more apprehensive than his wife, said, "Sounded like a new tire
kicking up a stone,"
Blake
picked up the small binoculars for a quick inspection, "There's a crack
near the wing tip light. Damn, I just paid fifteen hundred for those." His
puffed lower lip and grumbling demeanor lead to another round of silence
through the uneventfully landing in lowering sunlight at Burke Lakefront
Airport in Cleveland.
Once
on the ground and parked Blake visually inspected the landing light held
fiberglass wingtip more closely he observed a minute gray spongy substance
within the slight crack, it was secondary to the fact that the crack appeared
repairable for a lot less money than he had anticipated.
"What
is that?"
"I
don't know, Justin." Then after a pause, "Probably bled out bird
gut."
"Squeeze
me some," ordered Pyl. "I'll have it analyzed. I want to see what kind
of bird it was."
"What
for?" moaned Justin.
"Not
much thanks Blakey. Justin, get me something to put it in."
A
quiet stranger walked up to the wing and seemingly began inspecting the damage.
Before
her brother spoke, Pyl asked politely, "May I help you?"
"I
saw you coming in. I am interested in buying an old Cessna P210N like this
one," commented the otherwise noncommittal stranger.
The
woman has such an odd dialect, thought Justin as he picked up a small envelope
for Pyl. Noting the stranger’s dark Mediterranean-like eyes, he first gave Pyl
the envelope and then extended his hand and said, "I'm Justin. This is my
wife, Pyl and that's her brother, Blake, on the stool."
The
words echoed through Friendly's marsupial humanoid mind and into her marsupial
humanoid heart. 'I am Justin - this is my wife Pyl and that's my brother Blake
on the stool.' This is my first formal introduction to a primatial humanoid.
This was not our plan. We cannot phantom why Ship allowed the collision.
Blackanot was on. At least there is no physical or mental harm to these
earthlings, but Ship requests we have this plane for deconstruction and
analysis. She quickly gathered herself into a warm smile, "Hello, I'm
Mykkie."
"That's
your name?" questioned Pyl.
"Yes,"
Michael Carlson gave her hand to Pyl, "that's my given name, and you are
Pill?"
Pyl
giggled, "My brother couldn't pronounce my real name so I have been stuck
with Pyl ever since."
Mykkie
turned slightly and shook Justin's hand, "And you are the brother?"
"No,
he's my husband. Blake is still inspecting the damage."
Blake
commented, "We think a bird hit the wingtip light. A slight crack, but it
appears repairable."
"I
have a trace of the remains," added Pyl. "I'm going to have it
analyzed to see what kind of bird it was."
A
slight crack, thought Mykkie. Our Ship was considerate. He would have been more
so had he not allowed the hit at all. Interrupting her thoughts she said,
"Well, good luck with making the repair. I assume you are not interested
in selling."
"How
much would you give for her?"
"Blake,”
complained Pyl, "Daddy would never want us to sell this plane. She's
family."
Looking
directly up into Blake's face with a renewed confidence for a quick end to the
matter, Mykkie said, "Upon a decent inspection and fly about, I’ll give
you up to four hundred thousand dollars for it, and not a dime more." She
concluded with a quick hard bargaining smile.
"Give
me your card. I'll contact you tomorrow," responded Blake with a bit more
politeness than he desired.
***
We can rework Pouch
13 and continue a bit later. Take the audio draft and delete the original
chapter one in Page so you have it in iCloud. Post. - Amorella
2006 hours. You were right,
Amorella. I did all the correcting listening to the audio on MacAir and
transferred the document to MacBook and made a Natural Speech tape where I
could control the pronunciation of words. It is a more distinct male voice that
is on both computers and iCloud and on blog. It will be easy to re-dress to a
real near final draft. One major correction I made was changing Friendly's name
to Mykkie when she was at Lakefront the first time with Blake and company. As I
cannot foresee where the chapters are going until after I have read them there
are small pieces that have to be clearer for the reader who has not yet read
the work.
For the time being, each time you audio
draft we drop it in these notes. Let's go to Pouch 13. - Amorella
2115 hours. I have some 580 words. It is coming along,
but I need a break.
We will resume later or tomorrow. Post. -
Amorella
I need to savor what Friendly is saying.
***
Diplomatic Pouch 13
Ship
analyzed all personal and public information recently gathered on Pyl, Justin
and Blake as well as their fine lined DNA substructures and ongoing vital signs
many degrees beyond those presently possible or even known on Earth. With what
Ship has presently he can create a female and/or a male twin of each individual
earthling for non-rejecting fully mature and transplantable whole body or body parts
within twenty-four hours. Objective intake of raw and cooked data analyses
initially leaves no residue of subjectivity. Other observations of living e.vitals while anywhere on Ship are
compartmentalized into Box-UsefulanMixeData.
After
explanations as to how the control room sorted data, and general safety
procedures on Ship and a comfortable sit down at an accompanying table and
chairs in a small pushanpull bump-out room for a short break with familiar
drinks of choice and a few assorted well known tidbits, Justin asked a
question.
"I'm
sure Pyl and Blake are fascinated with the overall mechanics of operation as
what you say reminds me of a flight manual. I appreciate that this is a general
review as I am somewhat overwhelmed with the size and detail. This is almost
too much too soon for me. You mentioned that because you are an older species,
that you have about a twenty thousand year head start on science and
technology. To carry through with this what is the form of social control used
on your three-planet solar system, that is, how is society organized so that
you could build such a ship as this? "
Friendly
spoke, "First, the point is that we are not any more intelligent than you
are. Our species developed differently for a variety of reasons even though the
physics of our planets is quite similar to your own. We can breath your air,
drink your water and eat some of your food without momentary illness. We
evolved similarly because we are from similar habitats." She paused taking
a sip of water and relaxing at a slower pace of speech, "Think of your
family automobile and how it is built. First, it is a vehicle to take a person,
friends or family safely from point A to point B."
Blake
slightly raised his hand but interrupted, "But we have a choice as to what
vehicle we buy."
Yermey
raised his index finger and touched the slight smile forming but said nothing.
Friendly
continued, "We had choices too, over the millenniums, we tried many
choices but after about five thousand years of whittling down to the best
choice for us, we chose one that while not perfect, as nothing ever is, worked better
for us. We could and cannot predict social change but change happens, just as
your species has had to adapt, so do we. Our being here is an example of this. We
are here on our own because ThreePlanets is not ready for you, not because of
your lack of technology or even the physics of your bodies. ThreePlanets is not
ready for you because you are different. One great difference from our point of
view; is that you fight when you think you are cornered while we run. This is
basic instinct. We decided long ago not to fight, but from you, the four of us
will not run."
"At
least not yet," added Yermey with a grin.
Hartolite
smiled in agreement with her comrades. "We want to show you our humanity
because we feel our humanity is really no different than your own."
581 words
***
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