The 2084 Precept Read online

  ***

  "I should," he continued, "perhaps begin with where I come from, how I got here, and why I look and sound like a human being, albeit an insane one as far as you are concerned; at the moment anyway."

  Feel free, old chap. And I can help you here. The reason you look like a human being is because you are a human being. And the repetitions, including the insanity one again, clearly indicate you are a neurotic one.

  "It happens," he said, "that your scientists are now beginning to notice things which are very far away. They have recently discovered a quasar which they have named APM02879+5255. A quasi-stellar radio source, or quasar in its abbreviated form, is an unimaginably—for you—hot and bright object in the center of a galaxy, fueled by a vast input of matter being dragged into a supermassive black hole, as you call it, supermassive being a term you use to denote anything of around 1 billion solar masses or more. It is very hot, tens of millions of degrees, and very, very bright, thousands of trillions of megawatts."

  He paused and looked at me for a moment, presumably in case I was going to accuse him of exaggerating his numbers. Which I wasn't. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't, I hadn't a clue.

  "Now this particular quasar," he continued, "is about 12 billion light years distant from you, using your U.S. term for a billion by the way. And your light year is a measure of distance, not time. You calculate it by multiplying the speed of light, which in your terms is over 1 billion kilometers per hour, by 365.25. In other words, your light year represents slightly less than 9 trillion kilometers, give or take a bit. And I'll leave you to calculate the rest, the impossible number of lifetimes you would need to be able to even come close."

  Well…at least we both understand a billion to be a thousand million. This is no longer exclusive to the Americans, by the way. The Brits, as in so many things, have copied them and it is nowadays more or less common usage in the U.K. as well. Not so, however, in Germany, for example. Their billion remains the English Long Scale version, a million millions, just as it always was. And a trillion is a million billions as opposed to a thousand billions, just as it always was. And yes, the Germans have created a different word - Milliarde - to denote a thousand million. Useful to know if you are a translator. Or even if you're not.

  "Whatever…" he continued, "you are not seeing things as they are at present, you are seeing what was there long before your solar system even existed, let alone, of course, yourselves. And what you are looking at is approximately 35,000 times the mass of your sun—mass not to be confused with size—and it emits about 1 trillion times as much energy; yes, that's one trillion, if you can imagine that, which you can't.”

  He looked at me, presumably to see if I was interested in this particular monologue of his. Which I wasn’t. But I was pretending to be. Well enough for him to persevere.

  “To enable you to put this into perspective”, he continued, “your sun has a maximum temperature of around 15 million degrees centigrade at its core, and its nuclear fusion converts roughly 700 million tons of hydrogen into helium and energy in the form of gamma rays every second, thereby emitting some 400 trillion megawatts of power. So just try imagining a quasar like this one."

  "What exactly is a megawatt?" I asked. Keep him humored, let him think I find all of this interesting. But don't overdo it, don't give the game away, keep it simple.

  "A megawatt? A megawatt is a million watts."

  "Uh huh…difficult for me to grasp the magnitude of the numbers you're talking about here, Mr. Parker." Small talk, keep up the interest.

  "I know," he said, "I am aware of that if you don't mind my saying so. Just imagine yourself trying to explain your planet to a group of ants in your garden, assuming you could converse with them. They would hear you, but you would know in advance that they could not possibly understand the immensity and complexity of what you were explaining. And that is the position I find myself in with your good self, no offence intended at all, it's just the way things are."

  I didn't say anything, no point. Lunatics live in a world of their own creation, there's nothing you can do about it. And be thankful for small mercies, I told myself, at least he's not pretending to be Napoleon, with his cavalry waiting for him around the corner at Waterloo. Waterloo Station, I mean, just over the river from here.

  "To continue," he said, "I and my brothers currently live in that region. We have a planet, which circles a star, which is close to 500 times larger than yours. Not as large, for example, as Eta Carinae, a star of which your scientists are aware and which is 800 times larger than your sun and which, as they also know, will soon explode, a supernova you call it. In fact, the biggest star you are aware of is the one you call Canis Majoris, which is a red giant and on its way to being two thousand times larger than your sun. Your scientists also believe they have detected a few stars which are even larger, but their measurement accuracy is too uncertain due to either cosmic dust clouds or to other phenomena. And your scientists are guessing that there are even larger stars than those out there which they can't see. And it just so happens that they are right."

  "So let me describe my star," he continued, "as being a medium-big one. In all other respects it is similar to your sun, in that it is a sphere of hydrogen and helium gases—nearly everything of importance in the universe is a sphere, as you may know—and, like all other stars, it is en route to its death, merrily burning away its matter in a chain of nuclear reactions. In exactly the same way as your sun is doing, which by the way has about another 4.5 billion years to go. So that's the region I come from. And now, I assume you will want to know how I got here, am I correct? Not physically, obviously, and I'll explain to you why. But to be able to do that, I will first need to give you a few additional ad hoc ideas concerning the dimensions, distances and speeds involved in the universe of which you are a part. So that you can consider the situation in its proper perspective."

  He stood up, picked up his glass of water and went over to the window, looked out at the building opposite. Keep silent, I instructed myself, he is clearly in full flow. Full lunatic flow.

  "You are in a galaxy, a word you have chosen from your Greek language, 'Galaxias'. It actually means milk and is why you refer to your own galaxy as the Milky Way. You are situated more towards the outer edge of your galaxy than you are towards the center, you are in what you call the Orion arm. But even if you were able to travel at the speed of light, which as I have mentioned is over 1 billion kilometers per hour, it would still take you 26,000 years to reach your galaxy's center. Which you wouldn't want to do, by the way, as the center is something you call a Black Hole, a relatively small object of almost infinite density, and about which you still don't know very much. But one thing you do know, black holes swallow everything that comes within their sphere of influence. There is no escape, not even for light, which is why there is nothing there for you to actually see, nothing at all. But believe me, Mr. O'Donoghue, you wouldn't want to have your planet situated even halfway closer to your galaxy's center, because the cosmic radiation would kill all life. You wouldn't exist, you couldn't exist. Your planet's fortuitous location within its galaxy is just one of the many, many random circumstances which allow it to harbor life."

  He stopped and looked at me. I looked back again. He gave me one of his polite smiles and continued with his astronomy lesson.

  "Your galaxy contains about 200 billion suns, or stars as you also call them. Quite a lot you may think. But some galaxies have a lot more. And, you may well ask, how many galaxies are there? Well, some of your estimates say there are about 400 billion. Quite a large place you might think…but that only refers to a part of it, the part you know and can 'see' and which you call the universe. And if I were to tell your scientists that there are over a trillion of their so-called universes, why, they would simply laugh at me."

  He turned from the window and peered at me to see if I was going to laugh as well. But I wasn't, at least not until I had checked my bank account.

  "A
nd if I were then to tell them," he continued, "that in fact there are not a trillion galaxies but an infinite number, that there is no 'end', that they go on into infinity, why, then they wouldn't even bother to laugh. And that's because the only concept they are capable of grasping at the moment is the one in which everything, absolutely everything, has a 'beginning' and an 'end'."

  He peered at me again, but you could have mistaken me for a stone Buddha.

  "Now, as you probably know, everything in your universe, and I mean everything, is moving. Your planet itself is spinning around on itself in a counterclockwise direction—as viewed from your north celestial pole, i.e. from the direction of the star you call Polaris—at a speed of around 1,000 kilometers per hour. At least for you that is, where you live—if you lived near your equator, it would be closer to 1,500 kilometers per hour, not that you would notice the difference. One full turn is what you call a day. And as well as rotating on its own axis, your planet is travelling around your sun, also counterclockwise, at a speed of over 100,000 kilometers per hour, and one complete round trip is what you call a year. Your moon of course follows you, while at the same time circling you at differing speeds, fairly slow, let's say at an average of 3,000 kilometers per hour and—surprise—also in a counterclockwise direction. Your sun itself rotates of course, and also in a counterclockwise direction, but being a plasma of hot gases as opposed to a solid, it simultaneously rotates at differing speeds depending not only on latitude, but on other factors such as depth, gas composition and so on. At its equator, one complete external rotation takes 25.6 earth days. It is also speeding along at your galaxy’s current speed of around 1,000,000 kilometers per hour, pulling you along with it of course. And you have various conflicting theories as to why your galaxy’s speed is increasing, but we don’t need to go into the reasons here and you wouldn't be able to understand them anyway. Sorry…no offence intended Mr. O'Donoghue."

  Pleased to hear he's maintaining a modicum of courtesy. It helps, if not a lot.

  "None taken," I said. How much longer is this going to go on for?

  "Naturally, being borne along at all of these speeds doesn't affect you, nor do you notice it any more than you would if strolling down to the restaurant car on a train doing 200 kilometers per hour, or walking down the aisle on a plane travelling at 800 kilometers per hour. So…everything is moving and sometimes there is what we might call a crash. Your scientists have recently noticed two galaxies colliding, VV 340 (North) and VV 340 (South), as you call them. These two galaxies collided 450 million years ago. But 'colliding' is perhaps the wrong turn of phrase, as very few of the stars actually crash into each other, the distances between them being too great. And your galaxy, as it happens, is also going to collide with another one, a much bigger one which you call the Andromeda Nebula. Andromeda has around a trillion stars and you can see it on a moonless night with the naked eye. However, Andromeda is roughly 2.6 million light years away and, although you are approaching each other at an accumulated speed of close to 1 million kilometers per hour, it will still take another 3 billion years or so before the collision occurs. That is admittedly well before the end of your sun's lifetime, but…in spite of that, it is nothing to prevent you sleeping at night, obviously."

  At this, he chuckled. Come to think of it, I thought to myself, his face looks a bit like a moon as well. A moon-faced madman, albeit an agreeable moon-faced madman. Agreeable so far, anyway. An apparently agreeable moon-faced madman, let’s say.

  "No, Mr. O'Donoghue," he continued, "your sleep would only be disturbed by the arrival of a large enough asteroid, or by your species’ self-extermination, possibly by nuclear suicide. These appear to be the mathematical favorites for the not too distant future. By which I mean anything between 100 and 8,000 more orbits of your star."

  He considered me for a moment. "Of course," he added, "a major gamma ray storm from outer space, or even a big enough one from your sun, would also disturb your sleep."

  Indeed it would, I thought to myself. Permanently disturb.

  "You are being very patient," he smiled, "and I would like you to know that I very much appreciate that. Now… if you wouldn't mind, just a couple of additional pieces of information to complete the picture. Your Voyager 1 spacecraft, now leaving your solar system at a speed of close to 20 kilometers per second, will still need another 300,000 years to reach one of the planetary systems closest to your own—such as, for example, the one you call Gliese 581, which is only 20 light years away, or around 190 trillion kilometers. I am aware of the fact that even small distances such as these are difficult for you to conceive—and this is a small distance, very small—even if you could envisage being able to live for 2,600 consecutive lifetimes travelling at Voyager's speed in order to get there."

  "And for all you know," he continued, "there might be nothing there for you to find anyway. However, and just for your information, there is something there for you to find. There is life on one of that star's planets, although to you it would merely appear to be a colony of reddish swamp scum surviving in an atmosphere of chemical components that would spell death to you guys within a microsecond, mainly a mixture of hydrogen, methane, helium and ammonia as well as some water in evaporated form. And as for your closest galaxy, the one you call Canis Major, well, that is 80,000 light years away, and if you were travelling in Voyager I it would take you 10 million consecutive lifetimes to get there."

  Poor lunatic Jerry stopped his window-gazing, walked over to the corner table, picked up a bottle of Coke, raised his eyebrows at me to which I replied with a nod, brought two bottles and a bottle-opener over to the table and sat down again. He was regarding me with a seemingly bemused expression, obviously aware of what I was probably thinking. He opened both bottles, handed one to me, and started off again.

  I have decided to give this one more hour, maximum. Saturday evening is coming up, I have things to do.

  "O.K.," he said, "that rounds off the piecemeal picture I wanted to paint to assist you in understanding some of the things involved. Obviously I couldn't travel here in the way that you understand the word 'travel'. Your Einstein stated that the maximum possible speed in the universe is the speed of light, 300,000 kilometers per second, or over 1 billion kilometers per hour as mentioned already, and part of his reasoning was that the faster matter moves, the heavier it becomes, and at the speed of light its weight would reach unbearable levels. On the other side of the coin, some of your scientists have recently been looking more closely at neutrinos, particles so small that they can move through granite, indeed through your whole planet without any trouble at all, and a few of these scientists actually believe that these particles can move at a speed faster than light, and perhaps by taking a short cut via an unknown dimension. Well, as regards the speed for physical objects, they are wrong, and your Einstein is right. But as regards an unknown dimension, they are definitely right, although they don't know it yet. There is unfortunately no way I could attempt to explain that dimension to you, you will just have to take my word for it. By entering that dimension, I have been able to arrive here on your planet. Not my physical presence of course—that would be impossible—but my brain."

  "Just what kind of physical presence do you have, if you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Parker? I mean what do you look like back home?" I asked. Still prepared to show some interest, keep the game going for a while longer, then it's along to the nearest pub at a high rate of knots, believe me.

  "Well, we're not like you, Mr. O’Donoghue. Everything in the universe is made up of matter, either solid or gas. You, like your planet, are what one would call physically solid, water being as far as we are concerned also a solid, and constituting a large part of your bodily configuration. We, on the other hand, are a form of gas, with a nucleus, similar to the composition of, let's say, your sun or your planet Jupiter, and our form is surrounded by a membrane. Just like you, you have a membrane, you refer to it as skin. Can you imagine what would happen to your protruding int
estines and other organs without a membrane? We are also much smaller than you, about a quarter of your size. Difficult no doubt for you to conceive of an intelligent life form as dwarfs in the form of a gas, but that's the way it is and we'll just have to leave it at that. So…what happens is that a copy of my brain is made and transmitted via what, for descriptive convenience, you may choose to call the fifth dimension, to wherever we want to send it to."

  "The fifth dimension?"

  "That's right. It is a dimension you are unaware of. As I have said, I can't explain it to you in any way that would be intelligible to you. Your scientists are currently only aware of three dimensions, plus, if you will, an imaginary fourth one to account for the imaginary direction in which matter is supposed to extend in addition to the three dimensions of Euclidean geometry."

  "So…why do you look like a human being?"

  "You mean, I suppose" said Jeremy, "why do I look and sound and behave like a human being? Hmm…what would be the best way for me to clarify that?"

  He looked at me with one raised eyebrow, drank some coke, saw that I was not about to provide him with any suggestions, and continued. "Let me try this—I assume you know what a computer hacker is in your world?"

  "Yes."

  "A good one can enter into other people's computers, private computers, big business computers, military computers, virtually any computer, and manipulate the data, the programs and the processes within those computers. He can directly influence how the computers and their programs function. And if he is particularly talented and malicious, he can also in some cases copy the data or destroy all the data and the programs as well. Eliminate them entirely. Without needing to be anywhere near the computers themselves of course."

  "Indeed, Mr. Parker. But I.T. disaster recovery procedures usually include security methodologies to counter attempts at data and program manipulation or elimination. And in any case, everything is subject to continuous back-up operations. I do agree, nevertheless, that it can cause temporary chaos. And I also agree that the copying of sensitive data can have dangerous consequences of course."

  He looked at me with a polite but patient stare, like someone attempting to teach in a kindergarten.

  "Yes, well, there are no back-up possibilities for your brains, Mr. O'Donoghue. I zeroed in on a mentally handicapped patient, of which there are around 6,000 in your U.K. hospitals. This was a sad, hopeless and incurable case. And I installed the copy of my brain into his. In the same way as you install chips into your computers or mobile phones, except that my chip is not made out of physical material. I am walking around in his body. I use the undamaged parts of his brain for the purpose of all physical functions, which are controlled of course by my own brain, which, in addition, has taken over the management and operation of all the active mental functions. I speak your language because that is the language stored in the patient's memory—grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and so on. Just like your computers, brains operate on electrical impulses and there is, for us, nothing particularly complicated about this methodology."

  My feelings were now becoming pretty mixed. On the one hand I would like to get out of here. On the other hand it is definitely fun, but then again, overall I am beginning to feel quite sorry for the guy. He is obviously far gone, totally zapped, away on another planet—great allegory—and here I am playing games with him. Which I shouldn't be, I really shouldn't. But he's totally crazy, deluded enough to be taking everything seriously, and he might really have wired me the €100,000. Or not. Probably not, but let me just push him along a little bit further, just for the hell of it. Just for the fun.

  "Mr. Parker," I said, "this is all very interesting for me to hear and, as you will no doubt agree, equally difficult for me to understand, let alone believe. Tell me please, what documentation do you carry, how did you create or get hold of these companies, where did all that money come from?"

  It is a game I shouldn't be playing. But let's see what else he can come up with.

  "Simple," he said. "The patient was a man called Jeremy Parker and under my auspicious direction he completed a miraculous, comprehensive and undeniable recovery which left them with no alternative but to eventually hand him his papers and release him back into society. Jeremy was on his own. His only remaining relation, his mother, had died some two years previously and, of course, they wanted to keep me under regular observation, to study me in fact. But I severed my contact with the community care people almost immediately, and I have never been back to the asylum and I don't believe they can force me to in any way."

  "And the rest?" I asked.

  He finished off the last of his Coke, smiled that gracious moon-smile of his, and said, "Before I answer that, I will need to demonstrate something. At this point in time, you still don't believe a word of what I'm saying, that's evident, it's natural and I don't blame you, any other attitude would be irrational. You are not quite sure about the fraud angle, I would guess, but you've determined with absolute certainty that I am a lunatic, a raving one probably, out of my mind in a big way. But as I said at the start of our meeting, I hope to be able to convince you otherwise and my attempt at this will only take a few moments. Would it be O.K. with you if we went down to the street for a minute?"

  "Sure it's O.K.," I said, "no problem."

  Quite right it's no problem. On the contrary, I am not coming back up again, superb way out, terminate this afternoon's waste of time, well…weird bit of fun.

  He led the way down, then around the corner, and there he stopped. There were plenty of pedestrians and a few people occupying outdoor tables at a café just down the street. It's not cold, but it's not so warm either, I wouldn't be sitting outside at this time of the day, but Brits are Brits. I checked my watch, around 4 p.m.

  "Think of me, if you don't mind," said Jeremy, "as a computer hacker, and ask me to hack into one of these people's minds and make him or her do something, something innocuous, something that will cause nobody any harm. Go ahead."

  "Anything?"

  "Yes, anything innocuous, anything at all."

  Well, well, well, well, is this going to be intriguing, I don’t think.

  "Well now, let me see…let's take that waiter who has just appeared. Do you think you could you make him drop his tray with everything on it?"

  It happened within two seconds. The waiter dropped his tray, and two bottles, two glasses, and a cup of coffee smashed across the pavement. A confused and apologetic waiter, briefly startled customers, and an incredulous, disbelieving me.

  I looked at Jeremy and he just held up his hands and shrugged. "One more go?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at me, completely relaxed, nothing unusual going on here as far as he was concerned. My mind on the other hand was racing with all kinds of ridiculous thoughts, as you may imagine, electrical impulses flashing back and forth and around and around, and finally arriving at the only conclusion their logic would allow, namely that what had just happened could be—no, had to be—an extraordinary coincidence of the mind-boggling kind. And having told me this, my brain took the next logical step and told me to check this out, test him again, and to make it something difficult this time, don't mess around.

  And it took me no time at all to figure out how, because a girl, a young woman who had been sitting at one of the tables, stood up and started to walk in our direction.

  "It would definitely be amusing, Mr. Parker," I said, "if that young woman coming towards us were to stop and ask me if she could meet up with me this evening. Don't misunderstand me, nothing untoward involved, just meet. How about that?"

  He smiled at this, nodded briefly. And the girl looked great. Not beautiful, but attractive, very pretty face surrounded by shoulder length dark brown hair, dressed in a stylish short white coat and, boy, what legs, the kind of legs we men always say we would die for—which we wouldn't, of course, we would look for another pair—but certainly the kind of legs which start you thinking about what you would do like to do with them, and, as far a
s one could tell, the rest of her figure was great as well. Ah, and what do we mean by that? We mean a flat stomach, a nice ass, not too big, not too small, and of course great breasts, also not too big and not too small, and preferably nicely round-shaped and firm. Most women don't appreciate this kind of thinking at all. They don't wish to be viewed as sex objects—except, needless to say, those who have no chance of ever being viewed as sex objects—but they can't change it and there's nothing they can do about it, and it's just the way things are, tough luck. Nor can we men change it either, but then nor do we want to, there is no tough luck for us, no sir, not at all.

  When I refer to 'we men', I am of course referring only to men such as myself. I agree that there are other kinds, including homosexuals.

  As she approached us, she suddenly looked up at me, her face broke into a huge wide smile—incredibly white teeth as well, another turn-on—and she said, "Hi, great to see you again. How are things?"

  "Uh…hi…do we know each other? I'm terribly sorry… but I don't seem to recall…"

  "Oh that's understandable, "she replied, "we were in a group of people and it was only for a short while. My name is Fiona. But I'm glad we've met again, there is something you could maybe help me on. Might we perhaps meet for a coffee or something? I don't suppose today would be possible, would it, sometime this evening?"

  Well, by chance it would be possible, I told her. I gave her the hotel phone number and my name and my room number and suggested we meet in the lobby at 8 o'clock, maybe have dinner if she had the time. That's fantastic, she said, what a piece of luck, I look forward to it tremendously, and with a gay smile and a wave to both me and Jeremy, off she went. And I watched the legs as she went. Oh man, oh man.

  Yes, and I reserve the right to describe her smile as 'gay'. I choose to ignore those of a certain sexual inclination who have purloined the word and twisted its meaning into something else, presumably because they don't like the perfectly lucid and accurate word 'homosexual', which is nevertheless what they are.

  "I would be grateful," said Jeremy, "if, although presumably against your inclination, we could go back to my office and finalize our conversation, one way or the other. Whichever way it turns out to be. I shouldn't think it will take more than another 10 minutes or so."

  You can imagine, I dare say, the state I was in. First of all, it was a concrete fact that I was in the presence of a deranged person suffering from mind-blowing delusions. Mind-blowing ones. Perhaps it was Jeremy Parker himself, escaped from his mental institution. And at the same time, it would also appear to be a concrete fact that he was in possession of some extraordinary powers, telepathic powers, with the ability of being able to steer others into performing certain actions and saying certain things. An amazing state-of-the-art hypnotist perhaps. And a person with those kinds of powers had to be a dangerous person, a very dangerous person indeed. I didn't even want to think about what events such a person could trigger if he felt like it, wandering around as he was on the loose.

  It was clear to me that I should really report him to both the police and the appropriate health authorities as soon as I possibly could. Like now. But at the same time, what could I tell them? That he says he is an extraterrestrial and that he can make people do things? And if he denies the former and refuses to demonstrate the latter, and states that he is a normal, law-abiding citizen and a respected businessman to boot and can prove both, what then? Perhaps I would be the one to be taken into custody, or worse, perhaps he could even sue me for slander. Or, God or Allah forbid, perhaps he could even make me do and say things which could get me into very serious trouble. If he were able to, of course. Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, my brain was still attempting to arrive at a conclusion as to whether or not it had factually experienced what it had.

  Confused is a poor word to describe my feelings. I am not your jittery type of person, but I was, no arguing, feeling jittery. Disordered. But I decided I wouldn't mind asking him a couple of additional questions before I cleared off, never to return, never again, no way thank you very much. Fun is fun, but enough is also enough. And so I followed him back to the office, back to the meeting room, sat down, declined his offer of a drink and looked him straight in the eye.

  He pulled unnecessarily at his shirt cuffs. He tugged on his cufflinks. They were expensive ones, no doubt about it. He was nervous. Wondering whether I was convinced enough—or greedy enough—to continue being an actor in his fantasy theater.

  "As you now know and hopefully accept," he said, "I can cause certain things to happen. Only with people, their brains. I could not, for example, cause this building to fall down, or have a bottle of water fly over from that corner table. No physical objects, no material, no matter. But I can influence the brain's electrical impulses. I can use Jeremy’s small inheritance and have a bank manager authorize me a small amount of credit. I can influence the owner of a small loss-making company to sell it to me for very little in return for me taking over the company's crippling debt burden. I can meet with potential customers and have them order from me instead of from my competitors. And, having expanded my company and made it extremely profitable, I can buy other companies and create a strong business group whose stability is reinforced by the fact that it operates in a variety of different manufacturing and financial sectors. Diversity, you understand. More than one leg to stand on."

  He ran his hands through his short blond hair. Tugged on his cufflinks again. Gave me a querying look. Received a blank stare in return.

  "Nobody was hurt," he continued. "I repaid the bank loan. I saved the business owner from bankruptcy. And my customers buy products and services which are as good as, and frequently better than, those they could obtain elsewhere - and, more often than not, cheaper. In addition, they can change their supplier whenever they want to, and some have done just that, I undertake nothing to forcibly retain them. And I personally receive more money than I need. Salary, bonuses, expenses, stock options, dividends, and so on. And I use it all freely for my research purposes, in addition to providing my physical self with a pleasing standard of living while enjoying the hospitality of your planet. Hopefully this answers most of the remaining open questions we had?"

  "Interesting, Mr. Parker, and understood," I said, "but if you don't mind, I have a couple of additional questions. For example, why are you studying this particular planet?"

  "No problem. I simply form part of a student group which will eventually join the bureau responsible for monitoring life forms throughout the universe. In order to complete our doctorate studies, we are required to choose a current life form and write a thesis about it. I just happen to have chosen yours—for no particular reason. I could have chosen somewhere else."

  "O.K. Next question, can you read our minds? Can you read my mind?"

  "Ah, another unavoidable question! No, I can't do that, Mr. O'Donoghue. Furthermore, I would consider it highly undesirable were such a thing to be possible, and presumably you would also." Another chuckle.

  "But you could make me say and do things against my will, is that right?"

  "Yes, that is right, I could. But I wouldn't. First of all, we would never manipulate the minds of research interviewees; that would be counterproductive and self-defeating. Secondly, we are in any case not allowed to; it would be contrary to our university code of ethics. And thirdly, our particular species is a benevolent one, as you would naturally expect of an intelligent species—as opposed to one like yours—and any use we make of this capability with regard to third parties is always harmless. May only be harmless in fact, not that, by our very nature, we would be otherwise inclined. So on that front, you need have no fears at all for yourself personally, nor indeed for anybody else."

  "But back to the girl I spoke to just now, down in the street, I've been thinking about it. She knew me, she recognized me, so there was no input from you, was there? It was just a coincidence. In fact, the more I think about it, it could also have been a coincidence that
that waiter dropped his tray."

  "Some coincidences," he replied, "don't you think? No…with regard to that young lady, I merely thought up a scenario as to why she might want to meet you this evening, or rather why she would think she might want to meet you. And I hacked into her mind and placed the thoughts."

  "Just like that? No work involved? Were you born with this ability?"

  "Not really, but it is something we learn when very young. The result of technical advances made during our evolution. It is a simple technology, one which your species will fully acquire in the not too distant future. In fact, you have already started. There are documented cases of certain doctors healing patients by means of hypnosis. You have hypnotists who can do other things, including on stage. And the next step for you is to learn how to communicate with each other without the need to use either speech or the written form."

  Now that did send a small shiver up my spine. Or down it, I am never sure in which direction the shiver is supposed to go. Because I happen to know by chance that we have recently started to do things like that. Using magnetic resonance tomography, for example.

  "During my research into this field, I came across a neurology professor in Canada," Jeremy said, "who has recently commenced communicating with a traffic-accident patient who has been in a coma for over a decade, albeit awake. The patient is placed in a kind of brain activity scanner and is asked questions such as 'are you in pain?' and the scanner reads the resulting brain activity and determines the yes or no answer. That is a first step," continued Jeremy. "It can only work if the patient's reticular activating system is still working of course, but that appears to be so in this case."

  "And", he continued, "I also see that you have made initial advances at universities around the world. In the USA, I have read with interest of the work going on at Harvard's Laboratory of Neuromodulation and the research at Washington University, among others. I have read that the latter has two neuron research experts, Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco, who have been able to send magnetic impulse commands from Rao's brain to Stocco's, by means of computer-connected headsets and using the Internet. I understand that an early experiment allowed Rao to cause one of Stocco's fingers to move. Without words, you understand."

  "Did you say the Internet, Mr. Parker? That sounds a little far-fetched if I may say so."

  "You may indeed say so. But your brains are capable of far more than the Internet. I notice that your World Wide Web currently has about 20 billion websites which are connected by about a trillion links. Your brain tissue, however, contains nearly 100 billion neurons, connected by about 100 trillion synapses. Not bad when you consider that it weighs only 1.4 kilograms on average. And you have roughly 90 billion glial cells which, by the way, are the non-neuronal cells providing a support function to the neurons and certain of the neurons' activities. Human brains, the intelligent ones I should say, are capable of far more than the Internet. Just imagine the potential."

  I was certainly imagining all sorts of things. But it all sounded too theoretical to me. The world is littered with brilliant hypotheses which have never made it. On the other hand, it has to be said, the world is littered with a few brilliant hypotheses which have made it.

  “Also of interest to me,” continued Jeremy, “was the alternative approach being pursued by your Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology in Holland. They have reliably achieved the teleportation of quantum information (the ‘spin state’ of electrons in this instance) from one place to another without actually moving the physical matter to which the information is attached. They have done this repeatedly over a distance of three meters with a 100% success rate. This has solved the problems encountered by your University of Maryland a few years ago, in which only one of every 100 million attempts succeeded.

  “It certainly sounds fascinating, Mr. Parker, but……”

  “Allow me if you will, Mr. O’Donoghue, just to summarize. In Delft, they are now testing at a distance of more than a kilometer. And if they succeed at that, they will have obtained an answer to the Irish physicist John Bell’s 1964 theorem, which raised the query as to whether particles connected via quantum entanglement can communicate information; and not only that, but faster than the speed of light. That is all I have to say at the moment, Mr. Parker. You have started on the path and you will one day achieve the ability my species already possesses, assuming of course that you survive long enough. And whether you choose to call it hypnosis, telepathy, thought transfer, or teleportation doesn’t really matter.”

  "Uh huh, well maybe. But it all sounds very futuristic to me, Mr. Parker. Nevertheless, and be that as it may, it seems that I do owe you some thanks. It certainly looks as if I have the chance of an agreeable evening ahead of me. And, if you will allow, I have a final, last question on another subject. I am an interviewee of yours. Why me? And have you any others, have you paid money to other people as well? And based on what criteria do you select them?"

  "I must admit, Mr. O’Donoghue, that I was wondering whether you would ask this question as well. The search for interviewees has indeed been very haphazard, for two major reasons. First of all, I am not in a position to be able to judge in advance if a person is in possession of the necessary intelligence and necessary knowledge which, needless to say, only genes and an education of a certain level can provide. I have consequently been obliged to talk to many people, nearly all of whom were inadequate for my purposes, and a few were simply not interested. Not unexpected of course. But there were side-benefits to the search in that I was able to increase my insight into the wide deviations in your species' individual intelligence and knowledge levels."

  He looked at me again. I looked back at him again.

  "I then abandoned the ad hoc search idea” he said, “and applied specific research criteria to determine which candidates would merit a contact. The criteria used are individual to each case and of little interest to you as you would not understand them anyway. There have been five people who appeared to meet the necessary standards up to this point. Three of those agreed to a meeting with me but didn't appear, presumably judging me to be a fraudster or a lunatic, or both. A fourth person, a young lady, did turn up for our meeting and received her €100,000 in the same way as you have received yours. But that was the last I saw of her. She didn't appear for the next meeting as planned and I haven't heard from her since. I presume she arrived at the same conclusion as the other three, perhaps also concluding that the situation was not without risk, perhaps even a potentially dangerous risk of the kind specific to young females on your planet. And that this risk outweighed the slight possibility, as she probably evaluated it, of receiving a further €400,000."

  Understandable. Weigh the size of the risks and compare to the potential benefits, see which way the scales fall, and take a decision. As I am doing right now.

  "And the fifth person," he continued, "is yourself, Mr. O'Donoghue. I need only one interviewee for the purposes of this project and I would be delighted if it turns out to be you, you seem to fit the bill very well. Nevertheless, I appreciate that may turn out not to be the case. In which event, I shall simply have to continue with the process until I am successful. Which I will be, eventually, a mathematical certainty."

  Maybe, maybe, I wasn't going to argue the point. But it was more likely a probability rather than a certainty. I am no laggard in mathematics, including probability mathematics, and I considered this exercise of his to be compatible with the mathematical rules governing the vehicle registration numbers' game. If you take the last two digits of vehicle registrations, you obviously have a hundred possibilities, from 00 to 99. And if you are driving your car or walking down the road and if you note these two digits from 20 consecutive vehicles, you are going to find that two of them are the same. From a sample of only 20 vehicles, mark you. But although this works ten times out of ten on many occasions, it works on average only nine times out of ten, and is therefore a mathematical probability rather
than a certainty. Even so, if you bet on this a few times with a friend, it's an easy way to earn yourself some money or a few drinks.

  But…as I have said, I wasn't going to argue the point with him, I wish him well, he'll have to find it out for himself and without my cooperation, I won't be around.

  "A final minor point," I said, "which has just come to mind. Totally unimportant and definitely my epilogue question of the day. Why do you only have a mobile 'phone number on your business card? That is unusual and not particularly professional, wouldn't you agree?"

  "Indeed I would," he laughed, "but the answer is a simple one. This card is not a business one. The number on this card is exclusively for contact purposes in connection with my student activities. I strictly separate these activities from my business ones and," he continued with a knowing glance, "there are the small matters of encryption and GPS location blocking. To avoid unnecessary complications, you understand, which from time to time might arise as a result of any unwelcome interest on the part of certain third parties."

  Hats off to him, he has the answers for everything and they all fit with a certain amount of logic into that imaginary world residing in his demented brain. He's certainly got it all worked out. This fantasy of his has probably been developing over a period of several years, and he has been building up more and more details as time has gone by, accumulating a whole series of convincing micro-delusions to support the macro one. Not, as I seem to have read in some medical report someplace, that this is an unknown or unusual symptomatic manifestation. Fascinating in a way, but then all I want to do now is return to the real world. The sane world. The one I live in.

  "I understand and accept," said Jeremy, "that this has been an unexpected and extremely confusing conference from your point of view. And I would guess that you are far from being convinced about any part of it—but I would be grateful if we could provisionally agree to a time and date for another meeting. Just on the off-chance of course."

  "Well," I said, "no harm in that. Let me see. On Monday I have a conference at a factory in Slough, then nothing to do for a whole week after that, and so I'll be travelling home to Germany on the Tuesday. I'll be travelling back on the following Saturday and attending a meeting here in London on the Monday. So…a week on Tuesday would be convenient to me; how does that sound?"

  But he looked somewhat disappointed at this. "Yes," he said, "I saw from your C.V. that you are domiciled in Germany. Forgive my forwardness," he continued, "but that would constitute an unfortunate delay for me. Is there the slightest chance, Mr. O'Donoghue, do you think, that you could possibly return to Germany a day later than planned, thereby allowing us to meet next Tuesday?"