Discussing UFO’s at a table in Starbucks, two motorcyclists traded litanies of data they recalled about extra-terrestrial visitors and reports worldwide of strange events, as well as stories from seemingly sensible folks about things witnessed in secret government hangars and laboratories containing alien ships, equipment and contracted projects that back-engineered alien technology for U.S. scientific advancements and corporate profit.
Voicing appropriate skepticism, one guy asks the other, Why would our government keep us in the dark about anything so wonderful as vehicles and visitors from far away across the galaxy? Maybe the authorities, whoever they are, fear the public may become psychologically unsettled in ways that rouse people to demand things authority is loath to allow, and to get out of easy control by ordinary means, replies the other guy. A third guy down the tables suggests, Maybe those authorities are afraid of something else, not their own people, including us. First guy responds, What could that be? This third guy answers, Well, maybe it has to with guilt about how they’ve appropriated property that belonged to a race from another world. Our upper-crust people are curst with a kind of craziness about property and legal rights. Ah, says the second guy, that makes sense.
He goes on, suppose there were an off-world federation with its own laws and courts to adjudicate such matters, and our government scientists knew earth-people could be in deep trouble if held to account by a more advanced civilization after we had opened up enough to each other to make treaties and common enterprises. They might not have the sunset clauses and statutes of limitation that we have, on torts and other wrong-doings, for going too long inactive with no charges or settlements. The third guy chimes in, Yeah! Nobody puts out more effort at protecting their backsides than bureaucrats and corporate officers! A lot of ‘em would let the earth get invaded by green spider-men before they’d let themselves be singled out for punishment. You’d find ‘em hiding in every possible crawl-space to evade admitting to expropriation of alien properties and unlicensed development of new technologies and mechanisms out of them. Someone off our world must hold patents to their space craft and fancy devices for purposes we know nothing about.
The first guy concludes, Gee, maybe they’re not like us at all. Maybe they’re so far advanced that neither private nor public property distinctions interest them the least bit! It’s possible they outlived our kind of dominant, egotistical craziness ages ago.
No Comments