Chapter 41
JONES AND THE X-IAN
4 See second paragraph, pagexiii of ‘‘An Outline.’’
5 Early in the 1914--18 World War a wealthy hobbiest, named Colonel Fabian, became piqued by War strategy problems. He imported military technicians from the Allied Armies to his multi-acred property in Geneva, Illinois, U. S. A. These military experts dug-and-built every manner of trench employed in the War zones of Europe, and this trench laboratory became tactically useful to U. S. War professionals when the U. S. A. subscribed to the War notion.
6 Colonel Fabian had other hobbies, such as the scientific analyses of the characteristics of sound, for which he built the ‘‘Sabin’’ Laboratory, the first of its kind in the U. S. A.
7 Another hobby was a study of the Baconian cipher. This cipher, as postulated and demonstrated by its exponents, when applied to Shakespearean verses apparently proves that Lord Bacon was the author of the works ascribed to ‘‘W. S.’’ Bacon, says his supporters, motivated by modesty, or humor, and being peculiarly astute, was wont again and again to indicate by cipher, as with delicate water marking in paper, that Shakespeare was only his stooge.
8 With the entry of the U. S. into the War, there developed a necessity among U. S. militarists for the deciphering of enemy messages
9 unfathomable to regular staff men engaged in such work. Now, Colonel Fabian, as a cipher hobbiest, had been in correspondence with many of the amateur Baconian cipher fanatics. So, aware also of the deciphering problem through his trench-tactician contacts, Colonel Fabian, at his own suggestion, was commissioned by the government to convene a deciphering corps at his Geneva, Illinois, hobbylab home. The Bacon detectives proved themselves ingenious in deciphering intercepted enemy communications. In off hours they were allowed to study other laboratory hobbies of the Colonel.
10 Among the post-War demobilized, Bacon-or-the-enemy decipherists was a man named Alfred Jones. Following the War and while working for accountants and more recently for no one, Alfred Jones developed in his increasing spare time, a war-born hobby of his own, to-wit—HYPER SHORT WAVE RADIO.
11 On the evening of June 27, 1937 Jones was testing on his latest one tube set, which he had designed for use in the infinitesmally short waves above the visible light wave octave. (The current short and long wave radio utilizes octaves below visible, and heat wave lengths.) Suddenly Jones tuned in on signals of novel characteristic. Immediately he hooked in his self-invented, aural-to-visual via sound and light sensitive cells, recording device, with inverse spectroscopic analyzer. This was an instrument with both ciphering and deciphering functions which he had designed for War communication.
12 Simultaneously with throwing-to the switch, there occurred a static screech-roar of deafening proportions, lasting for only the space of a flash. It was like the sound of an explosion. The recorder ceased recording, and, too quick for Jones to see how it had happened, there stood—leaning against the bench-edge in front of the recorder—a girl, strangely clothed, smiling,—‘‘BEAUTIFUL.’’
13 Jones’s heart dropped into his toes, zoomed to his throat, looped the loop. His lips moved as in motion of speech, but were speechless. The stranger grinned, likewise moved her lips in the manner of speaking and also gave forth no audible words.
14 Jones heard distinctly, however, as with the unuttered words of ones own thought, ‘‘Yes, I am alive and here, and though to you miraculously materialized, to me, by virtue of experience, the incident is no more wonderful than the infinity of phenomena to which we become carelessly accustomed through recurrent association. Relax, Jonesie! Have you a cigarette?—I haven’t had a smoke for 150 million of your years.’’
15 The stranger went on to explain that the wave length of her speech was sub-audible and directly reactive upon the brain.
16 ‘‘Who ARE you?’’ thought Jones, scheming to test if this method were two way and, therefore, possible without his own lip motion.
17 ‘‘I’m from Planet 80 XK 23 in trapezoidal segment 727831 of the star layer of the expanding universe. Eighty XK 23 is one of 100 planets of one of 40 billion star-groups in our spiral nebula, which is one of the plus billions of what you term the EXTRA-galactic nebulae. You are so conceited a bunch here in your piker nebula, and puny solar system, and on your infinitely tiny planet ‘CHIZLA,’ that you always characterize your external fringe observations by names strong with the inference of the subordinate quality of an ‘outsider.’ EXTRAgalactic, indeed! Like speaking of a Chicagoan as a non-Bostonian.’’
18 ‘‘Our planet is NOT called ‘CHIZLA,’ it is called ‘EARTH,’ ’’ said Jones.
19 ‘‘Oh!’’ smiled the stranger, ‘‘How amusing! We had nicknamed it by the most oft-repeated thought emanating from it…‘Earth?’ What a funny name for a planet which is, for the brief moment, but a ball of fiery gaseous elements externally crusted with rock, 3/4 water surfaced and with but 10% of its land surface dusted ever so thinly with an admixture of eroded rock, vegetable and animal compost, and star dust…Earth? Ha ha! A romantic name, like your ‘HOME, sweet complexity home,’ evolved, I suppose, by one of your early superstition-chiselers as another illusion means of mesmerizing the ‘flock’ into a moral betrapped exploitation.’’
20 ‘‘Devastatingly sarcastic intruder, how did you get here, and why?’’ mentally queried Jones, emphasizing this time with lip motion.
21 ‘‘I am a reporter for the Interstellar Gas Inquirer and the Nebulae News. I also conduct a column entitled Parallax and Paradox by radio correspondence in The Milky Way Times and The Expanding Universe Chronicle.
22 ‘‘Planet 80 XK 23 is 100 earth diameters in size, and has a day, or axial rotation, equivalent in duration to 24 thousand DAYS and ten thousand days to its year, or orbital passage around its star center. Wherefore:
23 1 XK hour equals 1,000 EARTH days
24 1 XK hour equals approximately 3 EARTH years
25 1 XK day equals 24,000 EARTH days
26 1 XK day equals approximately 66 EARTH years
27 1 XK month equals 158,400 EARTH years (10 to a year)
28 1 XKyear equals 1,584,000 EARTH years
29 ‘‘Due to the thermal index of our star, our seasonal and yearly changes are approximately identical to yours so that relative only to our specific planets my experience has been somewhat similar to your—if you don’t mind, PLEASE—‘CHIZLA’ experience. The main difference is that on XK we have but one continent and our human species developed from a single source and spread out slowly in a land of plenty, as the single mammalian species. Being vegetarian, we have escaped the predatory, hoarding and property proclivities. X-ians speak but one tongue and, therefore, accredit one another with facility and fearlessness by virtue of non-exploited understanding. The successive and constantly accelerating rationalizations of biodynamic phenomena become readily clear to them through their understanding of the SEGREGATION of animate and inanimate, finite and infinite. …I am 35 years (XK) old, which interpolated into earth years is 55’/2 million.’’
30 ‘‘One would never guess it,’’ said Jones, sincerely incredulous. ‘‘You look just sixteen.’’
31 ‘‘Sixteen which?’’ asked Miss X-ian, and, smilingly appreciative of Jones’s frank admiration, added, ‘‘We do not wither on XK as you do on CHIZLA; we bud and bloom and hold full bloom until exit.
3233‘‘I left XK planet a year ago (XK time), approximately 1!4 million years ago ‘Earth’ time, searching for interstellar news and paradoxical material for my column. From my studies of‘CHIZLA’ for its last 6 thousand years, I don’t believe I could have found better material on any other planet. The managing editor of 'The Nebulae News’says: ‘When food eats the man, that’s news.’
34 ‘‘The way we travel from XK is as follows:
3536‘‘The prospective interstellar traveler stands in the reflection center of an energy radiation beam-focuser, which latter is aimed, by careful calculation, at the center of some planet of thermal equivalence to XK, in such a manner that if means is not found for transmutation, upon contact with the objective planet, the traveler rebounds with accuracy to XK.’’
37 ‘‘What if the shot is bad?’’ asked Jones.
38 ‘‘Just too bad,’’ she laughed, and continued:
3940‘‘The orbital courses of all interstellar bodies, potential of interception of the passage, must be accurately taken into calculation, including the subsequent position of XK for the return contact. When all is ready, the traveler is subjected, by ionization-analysistuning-synchronization, to an energy wave-and-frequency index, determined by the traveler’s specific elemental energy-dominant.
41‘‘The electron-proton course-and-speed location-predicter is then tuned in with the elemental index, and, at the calculated moment, a splayed photon shot is fired in such manner as to close the inter-electron-proton space, thus depolarizing the dominant elemental structure and uniting, in infinite energy, the corpuscular structure of the traveler, who is reflected forth on his course in the form of beamed cosmic rays—a very simple and neat process. He, or she, then travels with the speed of light. I have been traveling at an earth-measure time-and-space rate of 16 billion 86 million earth miles a day, for a million and one half earth years, or 5871 billion 536 million miles a year, a distance known to earth astronomers as a light year. Since my departure from XK, I have traveled a distance of nine hundred billion billion earth miles (900,000,000,000,000,000,000). I passed the sun 8/2 minutes before cracking into your set, when I was retransmuted to original form through your tuning coincidence to my index.’’
42 ‘‘Wait a minute …WHOA!’’ exclaimed Jones. ‘‘You are going so fast I can’t follow. If you have half a second, your XK time, how about telling me something regarding the XK philosophical development so that I can set myself straight on how you think. Don’t be too detailed, you know—just give me a condensed idea that I may note down for future reference.’’
43 ‘‘Gladly,’’ said the X-ian. ‘‘First, we evolved a completely ABSTRACTED, DEPERSONALIZED, UN-SELFED BIBLE, which is a rationalized account of the GAME OF LIFE, segregating its unity of totality into chaotic multiplicity and subsequently rationally recomposing it to unity, to symmetry of unity and to completeness through synchronization, which is the checkmating of time, against which the game is played by the totality TRUE COMPREHENSION.’’ Laughingly, the X-ian explained, their Bible always gave X-ians a great kick because it was really great fun.
44 This attitude caused Jones to realize with astonishment that his earth Bible, through its mysteriously confused insistence upon explaining the reality of truth in terms of grossly imperfect interpretation of the tangible man mechanism, constantly provokes inability to explain the logically superman realities of totality; with the result that, in terms of the imperfect self mechanism, understanding of the realities has to be unreasonably recognized by a SURRENDERING BELIEF IN MIRACLES, these miracles in turn evoking an aweful, fear-ful, wide-eyed, secretive, cultish herding around SECRET THEORIES OF EXPLANATION OF REALITY in the TERMS OF UNREALITY, which, thought Jones, is certainly no fun.