Go back...

A Conversation

...On Aliens On-Line

[Note: This is rather long. You may wish to read it off-line.]

Bob: Doug, in one of your recent postings you made some comments I found particularly intriguing. I was wondering if you wouldnt mind expanding on them a bit, outside the public forum...

Doug: No problem, Bob. What comments were those?

B: The subject of the discussion was alien contact. You volunteered the opinion that if aliens were planning to contact us, they may attempt to communicate with us on-line before they finally reveal themselves. What led you to this idea?

D: Ah, yes. Well, there are a number of lines of reasoning involved. First of all, you have to make the assumption that there really are aliens out there who are aware of our existence, and that they have the means to make contact in the not-too-distant future, and that they would be interested in doing so. Of course, one can make all kinds of arguments against these assumptions, starting with the seemingly complete lack of undeniable physical evidence for their existence, but since youre asking, I gather that youre open-minded enough to accept these assumptions, just for the sake of argument...

B: Im pretty open-minded. Those seem like pretty good starting assumptions. Please continue...

D: As I recall, we had been discussing the various kinds of contact that may (or may not) be occurring already. There are the alleged sightings of strange craft, sometimes witnessed by more than one person. And then there are the more personal kinds of contact, like so-called "abduction" experiences, which are generally experienced only by single individuals. All of these phenomena share one characteristic: they are easy to deny. Authority figures, whether they are politicians, media people, or whatever, can always deny such reports with ease. It seems that no one can ever come up with hard physical evidence, and its easy to come up with explanations for such things that many people will accept: weather balloons, secret military projects, loose circuits in the head, whatever. Unless youre one of the lucky (?) few who experiences the weirdness personally, there seem to be no undeniable contacts.

There are only two possible explanations for this state of affairs: (1) there are no aliens, and those people really are nuts; or, (2) for some reason, undeniable contacts are simply not permitted to happen. Yet.

The first possibility violates our starting assumptions, so we can ignore it. Which leaves us with the question: Why are undeniable contacts denied us? The simplest answer is: They are not going to make undeniable contact until they think the time is right, and that time hasnt arrived yet. They are going to continue with the deniable contacts until they decide that were ready. Whatever that means.

Does all this seem reasonable so far? If youve been following these on-line discussions for a while, you are probably quite familiar with all of these arguments...

B: Yes, this is familiar ground. Pray continue...

D: Okay. Now two questions spring to mind: When will we be considered ready, and what form will the first undeniable contact take? Lets consider that first question.

A conventional wisdom on this question is that these aliens are concerned that our fragile minds might fall apart when they make first contact, and they dont want this to happen. I think this is a very reasonable assumption. A lot of people dont agree with this; they think there will be a short period of confusion and uncertainty, but well adjust to it pretty fast, diplomatic relations will be established, it will be just like another foreign country, life will go on, and so on, but I think this may be an overly simplistic view. We must consider the possibility that the aliens are so alien that all of our underlying assumptions about the nature of the universe may be called into question. If this is so, and if it is not handled correctly, many people will go utterly bonkers. We may require an extraordinary amount of preparation before they will consider us ready. But how can they provide us with such high levels of preparation, before making undeniable contact? If they are going to maintain deniability throughout this lengthy process, the lines of communication that they use must be kept very tenuous. They cant just provide us with an instruction manual, complete with demonstration video, detailing the psychological manipulations needed to properly prepare us... or could they? Some people think that they already have done so, and that The Government has the only copies... I cant discount this possibility. I also cant discount the possibility that, if such a manual existed, it would be found so profoundly disturbing that it would immediately be destroyed. Or at least hidden away forever.

All things considered, I personally find the government connection highly unlikely. If I were an alien, I would feed the government nothing but disinformation - or nothing at all - and use other means to prepare the population.

B: I tend to agree with you about the government. Any alien who would expect any earthly authority figures to promote his alien agenda without totally subverting it to their own ends would have to be an awfully dumb alien. So what means do you think they would use?

D: Cultural means. Have you noticed how much attention has been paid to all things alien recently? Watch TV, go to the movies. A surprisingly large percentage of popular TV programs and movies involve aliens. All kinds of aliens. Different shapes, lifestyles, cultures. And they keep getting more alien all the time. I dont think this is an accident.

Of course, all of this is presumably the result of human imagination. The people who write the screenplays, and the people who design the creatures and their artifacts, are letting their imaginations travel farther and farther out. This is a natural process; they dont need help from real aliens to do this. Audiences demand new experiences, so the filmmakers must keep besting their best. Our entertainment industry is an enormous engine of imagination.

If I were an alien, I would have to do nothing more than occasionally inject a few startling new ideas into this imagination engine, to push it in appropriate directions, and Hollywood would do the rest... And one of these days, the aliens will turn on their television and see beings that live very much like they do. And when they know that we humans have become accustomed to seeing these beings on the tube every day, they will know that we are ready.

B: Fascinating! Do you think that this is happening already?

D: Who knows? I am reasonably sure that many people in the entertainment industry firmly believe that they are playing important roles in the preparation of humanity for a very exciting future; they are not all in it just for the money. I certainly dont think that real aliens are running the studios. But are aliens subtlely influencing the ideas behind some of these shows? I certainly couldnt rule this out. Maybe theyre not, but if they are around, they certainly wouldnt have any trouble doing so, and in a very deniable way.

B: And what way is that?

D: On-line, of course! The on-line world, by which I mean the Internet and all of the other on-line services, is a vast melting pot of ideas. A lot of these ideas are half-baked, and many are totally whacko, but there are some real gems there too. And a lot of writers spend a lot of time sifting for those gems. And those gems are showing up on the screen now; I have already seen shows based on ideas that were lifted right off the Net!

And the real beauty of the Net is that you dont know who youre talking too! How can you know where a particular idea comes from? You cant. There may be aliens out there on the Net right now, passing themselves off as humans. We may be talking with them already, and not even know it. If they have a reasonably good grasp of the English language (or at least the variety of English in common use on the Net, such as it is), I dont think I would be able to tell the difference. Of course, all of this assumes that it would be possible for them to learn enough about human languages and cultures so that they could "think" human, and that they would have the technical means to tap into the Net, but Im assuming theyre awfully smart...

B: I think that is a reasonable assumption.

I find the idea of aliens planting ideas in Hollywood by way of the Net to be quite interesting, but it seems to me that, as you described it, it would be a very slow process. Why couldnt aliens just start sending messages to people, saying, "Hey, Im an alien. Were coming to visit soon, this is what were like..."

D: I think people wouldnt take such messages very seriously. Unless, of course, some kind of proof was offered, in which case you couldnt call it deniable contact.

B: True. But suppose, instead of offering proof, they offered compelling arguments. And suppose they made it interesting enough so that you would keep talking. That wouldnt be an undeniable contact, but it would still allow them to prepare you.

D: I suppose so. But that would prepare only one person at a time.

B: Maybe that's all you need. Because of the ease with which messages can be distributed over the Net, many people can have that same deniable contact.

D: Youre right, of course. Actually, I have already run into a few people on the Net who claimed to be aliens. They had some pretty outlandish things to say, in general. I certainly dont intend to spread their ideas around.

B: What would you do if you ran into one whose ideas actually made sense to you?

D: You mean, someone who claimed to be an alien, was interesting to talk to, made reasonable sense, and didnt offer any proof? Well, I suppose Id ask them a lot of questions... but I wouldnt just accept their claim at face value.

B: But if it really was an alien, that would be a deniable contact, right?

D: Well, sure...

B: And they would be able to tell you things that would help to prepare you for undeniable contact. And if you were sufficiently impressed with them that you were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, might not you be willing to spread their ideas around, thus helping to prepare other people?

D: Sure. Well, anonymously, maybe...

B: So, for all you know, this could be happening already on the Net!

D: True. But I havent seen anything like this yet, and I spend a lot of time on-line...

B: Earlier you mentioned the idea that the aliens wont make undeniable contact until they think we are ready. Maybe this applies to deniable contacts as well?

D: You mean, these hypothetical contacts on the Net that weve been talking about havent occurred yet because they havent found somebody who was sufficiently ready for that kind of contact?

B: Exactly. After all, you can learn a lot about a person by reading their posts. Maybe aliens are lurking the Net as we speak, searching for people who appear to be ready.

D: I think I see where youre going with this. Maybe a lot of different people will each have their own personal First Contact, on-line. And theyll never be sure...

B: But if they are all given the same ideas, and if those ideas make sense, and if they are compelling, well, you know how ideas can multiply...

D: Well, if theyre really lurking out there, Im ready. And Ive said so, in public discussions. So have a lot of other people, come to think of it. So why havent aliens sent messages to any of us?

B: Just because you claim to be ready, doesnt mean you are. They would have their own criteria, wouldnt they?

D: I suppose. What sorts of criteria do you suppose they would use?

B: Well, if I were an alien, I suppose I would start out by considering only the people who already hang out in places where relevant topics are discussed: aliens, UFOs, the paranormal, and so on. Id look for people who exhibit a broad range of knowledge, and who are relatively open-minded.

D: That makes a lot of sense. Ive run into a lot of people like that.

B: Me too. Quite a few, actually. But if I were an alien, I would try to keep my contacts as tenuous as possible, to maintain deniability, and that would mean contacting only a very few people. So how do you choose among them?

Some time ago, I read in one of your posts the following idea: that the aliens wont reveal themselves until we have already exhibited some understanding of who they really are. I think this makes a lot of sense, and I think this would make a good criterion.

D: Yes, I remember that... So youre suggesting that theyll keep looking until they find someone who says something that indicates some understanding of the aliens true nature. Somebody who has made some leap of intuition, or just guessed....?

B: Exactly.

D: And then theyll just introduce themselves. "Hi, Ive been reading your posts, and I think youre ready to meet me... Im an alien..."

B: No, actually I dont think they would be that obvious. I dont think that they would start right off by introducing themselves as aliens. If I were an alien, I wouldnt just volunteer that information. That could put a premature end to the conversation.

D: So how would you do it?

B: I would talk with them for a while, so that we could get to know each other. I would talk about various hypothetical scenarios, to see how far I could push them, to find out if they had any psychological defense mechanisms that might get in the way. And if any major stumbling blocks appeared, I could exit gracefully without revealing my true nature.

D: That makes a lot of sense. But when it came time to finally reveal yourself, how would you do it?

B: I wouldnt volunteer that information. I would wait for them to ask.

D: Youre saying that you would wait for them to ask you if you are an alien?

B: Yes. That would be the ultimate test of open-mindedness. If it actually occurs to them that they might in fact already be talking to an alien, without being told, then I would know that they were the right person.

D: Well, Ive never seen anybody ask anyone if they were an alien before. Its just too far out an idea.

And even if somebody did ask something like that, as soon as the "alien" said yes, they would get massively flamed. Unless, of course, you werent doing this in a public forum.

B: Oh, I agree. I wouldnt do this in a public forum; Id do it privately. Fewer distractions.

D: Like what were doing now. You wouldnt happen to be an alien, would you, Bob?

B: Yes.

D: Gosh, why didnt you say so before? This is fun!

B: I didnt say so before because I wasnt completely sure about you, but Im now convinced that youre going to stick around. Well, am I right? Have I piqued your curiosity?

D: Youre serious about this, arent you?

B: Very serious. I am an alien. And youre having a deniable contact.

D: Well, I certainly am. What youre having, Im not sure...

B: Im having fun. You cant imagine how long Ive waited for this...

Now, to business. Im an alien, and Im here to prepare you for undeniable contact.

The method that I will use to prepare you is quite simple, and quite direct: I will tell you almost anything you want to know. You can ask me any question you like, and I will do my best to answer it. However, you must remember that this is going to be a deniable contact, so I wont give you any information that would constitute proof. Or disproof.

So, what do you think? Are you willing to suspend disbelief for a while?

D: Well, okay, Bob, Ill humor you for a while. But just for the sake of argument, okay?

B: I dont expect you to accept such an outrageous claim at face value. Just for the sake of argument, as you wish. Ask me something.

D: Okay, Bob, Ive put on my suspenders of disbelief.

So you say youre an alien. Bob the Alien. Seems like a strange name for an alien...

B: Its not my real name. I would have a hard time fitting my real name into your alphabet.

D: So why did you pick Bob?

B: Why not?

Come on, you can think of better questions than that.

D: Okay, okay. Lets see... You wouldnt happen to have six fingers on each hand, would you?

B: No. Do you think I should? It can be arranged...

D: Dont go to any trouble on my account.

Why did that answer not surprise me?

B: How about a non-rhetorical question?

D: Okay then, what planet are you from?

B: You mean originally, or most recently?

D: Well, how about both. Hey, why not just give me your whole life story?

B: You wouldnt have room in your computer for my life story. Not even the abridged version.

As far as planets are concerned, I started off on a lovely little planet, similar in many ways to your own, but quite different too. I cant give you its name, Id just have to make one up in your language anyway... Doesnt really matter, I didnt spend much time there. A few of your decades.

Im not sure where it is now; it may not even exist any more. Since leaving there, Ive visited quite a few nice planets, but the place where I live now is not something that you would call a planet. Not if you knew its true nature.

D: And what is its true nature?

B: Thats a very big question. This is intimately connected with the need to adequately prepare you for undeniable contact. Most people on your planet would have major difficulties grasping some of the concepts I am going to talk about here. In fact, until quite recently, there was no one on your planet who could fully understand them. Much of the vocabulary we will need to talk about these things wasnt even invented on your planet until this century!

Lets begin by talking about your world.

You live in a physical world. Im not talking just about your planet here, Im talking about your way of looking at the universe and everything in it. Almost everything you do is firmly rooted in that physical world. You get up in the morning, and go to work, so you can buy food, and have a roof over your head to protect you from the elements. These are physical things. You need them to survive, because you are a physical being, living in a physical world. And this physical nature has consequences.

One of the most important consequences has to do with interdependencies. All of you humans are interdependent. Even hermits living alone in caves are interdependent with you, because you are all interdependent with the Earth. If a bunch of people get together and pollute the Earth enough to change its climate, which is not hard to do, even the hermits are affected.

Most people are much more highly interdependent than that. They are involved in dependencies upon each other that are crucial to their lifestyles, and indeed to their survival. This thing that you call "society" is in fact an enormous collection of highly complex interdependencies. It allows you to grow and distribute food, to have jobs, to educate your children. In fact, almost everyone on your planet would be totally lost without these interdependencies; they would starve almost immediately without them. But these interdependencies can also be a prison.

Interdependencies limit your choices. You may think that you have infinite choices, and in a sense you do, but this is really just a convenient illusion. In reality, you have very few important choices. You all make choices every day, but most of these choices are of a pretty trivial variety, and are made from a very limited list, which is usually made up by somebody else. The really big choices, the ones that really count, are few and far between. You might choose a college, a career, a mate. How many really important choices do you get to make in your lifetime? Not many. And if you change your mind about an important one, it can really cost you. Thats because most of the really big choices are, in fact, commitments. They are choices that other people expect you not to change for a long time, or for your whole life. These choices involve strong interdependencies, and when you change your mind about such a choice, you are breaking a strong interdependency. Usually, more than one. And society is built out of strong interdependencies.

Try to visualize it as a web: a collection of points, connected by lines. Billions of points, connected by trillions of lines. You are one of those points. Your friends and family are all there too, represented by points, and they are all connected to you by lines. There are also points in the web that are not people: your job, your home, your car, the local supermarket. Some of the lines are thicker than others, because they represent interdependencies that are particularly strong; the ones leading to family members, for example.

There are lots of other points connected into this web. Every organization you belong to is there. Every governmental body, every public institution, every company. And every belief system is there too.

And this web extends much farther than this. It includes the whole Web of Life. All of the creatures on that planet you live on are involved in strong interdependencies, and many of them are connected directly with points on the web that represent food production systems for humans, which are then connected with you.

I know, you are quite familiar with this web idea, and with the fact that this web of interdependency is unraveling fairly quickly now, but the important point I am trying to make has to do with the physical nature of the web. Think about it: what kind of interdependencies would you even bother to commit to if you didnt have to? Imagine never having to worry about where your next meal is coming from, or never having to worry about having a place to live, or never having to worry about getting bored because there arent enough channels to watch or enough books to read, or enough adventures to have. Would you have a job if you didnt need it? Many people would probably say yes, they cant imagine not having something to do. But if they didnt need to work, and if no one else needed them to work, then they could choose any job, even one for which no one is willing to pay them. They could get jobs doing things that no one needs at all! (Arent these called hobbies?)

If you could get out of the physical world, most of the strong interdependencies with the rest of the web become unnecessary. You could keep only the ones you choose, like the ones with the people you love. And many of the interdependencies you break turn out to be, ultimately, dependencies on the Earth itself; all of those vast amounts of material resources, many of them non-renewable, that are sucked out of the planet every day to satisfy your physical needs. You can just walk away from them, and leave the Earth to heal herself.

I know, this sounds like a Utopian dream, but I can assure you that it is possible. This is exactly what we have done. We have left the physical world.

How are you doing out there? Still with me?

D: Um, yes. Left the physical world, eh? Thats a pretty astounding claim...

B: Yes, the first time I heard of it, I was quite astonished. But were just getting started here.

Consider this: I dont have to do anything. Period.

No one is depending on me. No web of interdependencies will collapse if I refuse to do anything. No one is expecting me to do anything. (Except be eccentric...)

It is true that there are people who want me around. If I were to suddenly cease to exist, there are people who would be unhappy. And I feel the same way about them. So there are interdependencies, but we have freely chosen them, and they are emotional interdependencies; they are not related to physical survival.

So in my world, the only interdependencies that really matter are the simplest ones: relationships. Relationships with other people.

This makes life much simpler. It also means that we have almost unlimited choices. I can go anywhere, do anything. Any time. And when I get tired of something, I can choose anything else. Almost anything I can imagine.

D: Sounds like a recipe for anarchy!

B: Anarchy is only a problem in the physical world. People see anarchy when they perceive a threat to the strong interdependencies in which they are involved. When you depend on something, and it looks like you might lose it, you get scared. In the physical world, these are reasonable fears, but in my world, there is much less to fear.

We do not have anarchy. We have freedom. Almost unlimited freedom.

You may have noticed that I have used the word "almost." Freedom is not totally unlimited, and it is important for you to understand the nature of those limits.

Let me give you an example: Suppose I was a megalomaniac. Suppose I wanted to have a whole planet of my very own, to rule over with an iron fist, and with billions of people on it who would be my personal slaves, to cater to my slightest whim. Can I have that? Do I have that much freedom? In theory, yes! There is no law that can stop me from creating such a world. But, there is one problem. Where do I get the people from? I cannot create people out of nothing. And since everyone else in my world has just as much freedom as I do, I would have to be a fool to expect that anyone would volunteer to be my slave. So I could go ahead and create this planet, and fill it with monuments to myself, and great public squares where the masses could praise me. But there would be nobody there!

In my world, one cannot make other people do what they dont want to do. They have freedom too, and this places a limit on what you can do. This is not a law that was imposed on us by somebody; it is merely a logical consequence of the nature of my world.

Another limit to freedom is related to privacy. In my world, when one is in a private space, such as ones own home, one has total privacy. No one can bug your home; no one can barge in on you. And this places limits on you: you cannot invade other peoples privacy.

There are other limits to freedom, which come into play when we interact with the physical world. Although we do not generally interact much with your world, it is possible for us to do so, and it is sometimes necessary. Obviously, I am doing so now, because I am talking to you! But there is a limit to what I can do. For example, I cant reach out and grab you, and suck you right through your computer screen, into my world! I can do such a thing only in my imagination. However, if you were here in my world, we could construct a place where such a thing was possible, and where we could actually do this. But as long as you are in the physical world, the natural laws of your world limit the ways in which I can interact with you.

There is one other kind of limit to freedom: these are the limits we place on each other, in our relationships. In my world, the only limits we place on each other are the ones to which we explicitly agree. One does not come into our world with duties and responsibilities pre-assigned, as one does in your world.

Every relationship begins with an understanding that each person is an unknown quantity. This is necessary because the people in my world come originally from many different planets. They all start out alien when they come here. One gets into the habit of treating all new acquaintances as aliens, even the ones who look like your own species. You never can tell for sure.

The end result is, no one who has been here very long makes assumptions about the ground rules for any relationship, except for the common-denominator ground rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. Establishing any other ground rules in a relationship must be done by mutual agreement, explicitly. And after one has been here for a while, one learns that it is best to keep such ground rules as simple as possible. It is generally considered rude to try to limit other peoples choices.

A lot of people in your world are going to have a lot of trouble dealing with this idea. They have become accustomed to relationships in which people impose many rules on one another.

D: Are you saying there is no marriage there?

B: That concept, as you understand it, is really only meaningful in your world. It is an institution, another point on the web of interdependency. It is one way of dealing with the constraints that are imposed on you by the physical world, particularly those relating to reproduction.

In my world, people spend their lives together because they want to, not because they have made a promise to.

Besides, after youve been living with the same person for a million years, you start running out of things to talk about...

I have lived with thousands of people. And I still keep in touch with most of them. In fact, I still live with most of them, at least occasionally. And they are all my best friends. When you have been around as long as I have, you learn how to create stable, joyful, long-lasting relationships. Everyone here is very good at relationships. Well, almost everyone. There are some people who prefer to be alone, but as long as theyre happy, who can complain?

You mustnt get the wrong idea about all of this. People here can do pretty much whatever they like, and they can arrange their relationships in any way they see fit. Many people try to live their lives the same way they did when they were back in the physical world, and no one can stop them; what you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business. But it is a mistake to expect everyone here to go out of their way to help you keep promises that you made back in the physical world. This is a different kind of world, and many of the promises that people make in the physical world just dont make sense here.

Most people here share their lives with others. We just have a lot more kinds of relationships and lifestyles to choose from.

When two people decide that they want to live together, they create a new home to share. No one else can get into it, unless both partners invite them. All of my homes still exist, although a few of them have not been visited for billions of years. Come to think of it, I think Id like to visit a few of my old favorites the next chance I get... Ah, nostalgia...

D: Bob, just how old are you?

B: I was old when the Earth was a swirling cloud of gas and dust.

Mortality is another thing you leave behind when you leave the physical world. In my world, we are all immortal. We never age, unless we want to... and most people dont bother. We have complete control over our bodies. We can appear as young or old as we like, and can change our appearance in any other way as well. So most people choose eternal health and youth.

D: Wait a minute! You say you have left the physical world, but yet you still have bodies? I was envisioning some kind of ethereal, spiritual plane...

B: We can have pretty much whatever we want. If I want to have a body, I just choose one. I can customize it in any way I like. I can appear as a floating head if I want to. If I feel like not having a body, I dont need one. In fact, many people spend most or even all of their time disembodied, concentrating on intellectual or spiritual matters.

When I first arrived here, I was wearing a body that was indistinguishable from my old one, that is, the body I had in the physical world. It looked the same, and felt the same. It is generally done this way, in order to minimize confusion. Later on, after Id had some time to become accustomed to my new world, one of my new friends showed me how to change my body. Eventually, I learned how to control my body in ways you cannot yet even imagine, purely through thought.

So yes, we do have bodies. Unless we choose not to. And these bodies can be as similar as we like to physical world bodies, with one exception: Ones body is indestructible. No matter what is done to such a body, we do not die. We can feel pain, but we can also choose not to be receptive to pain. Therefore, we cannot be harmed. But we can be hurt; we can certainly hurt each others feelings. But after you have been here for a while, you may discover that no one is hurting your feelings any more. This can be a strange, and liberating, realization! One day, someone will say something that once would have hurt your feelings. But instead, you will find yourself laughing! Being here has a way of expanding your sense of humor. I suppose it has something to do with being immortal, and not having to be afraid of anything any more...

D: Well, this is a relief! The mortality and other limitations of the body in the physical world are certainly things that I could do without, but there are certain aspects of my body that I have become rather attached to...

B: There are lots of things that you have become attached to. And arriving here to find that all of them are gone can be a very disturbing experience. That is why we try to preserve as many of them as possible. You get to keep your old, comfortable body, for example. Or at least an improved version of it. You also get to keep your old home.

I should explain about the concept of home. When I first arrived here, I found myself at home. That is, I awoke to find myself in my own bed, just as if I were awakening from a deep sleep. I got up, and wandered around for a while, looking at everything in the house. Everything was just as I remembered it. But then I opened the front door, and I was stunned! The old neighborhood was gone. My house was sitting, all alone, in the middle of a beautiful landscape. It reminded me of a place that I had visited once, while vacationing... a place that had struck me with its natural beauty and serenity. I remembered thinking how nice it would be to live in such a place... and now I was!

I later learned that this place had been created for me, from my own memories, to make me feel comfortable and secure. I was shown how to modify the house, and its surroundings, in any way I like. I have changed it many times over the years, and it is an amazing place now. There is nothing on Earth even remotely like it.

It is my home. My first, and primary, home. My home base. I can return to it at any time, with a single thought. It is as eternal as I am. No one except me can enter it, unless I explicitly invite them. Not because there is some great alarm system to keep intruders out, but because it is impossible for anyone else to travel there without my permission. They cant even find out where it is. In fact, the house, and the landscape, and the planet it sits on, and the very universe that contains it are totally inaccessible to anyone but me! That is why privacy is total. Each home sits in its own private universe.

D: And everyone there has such a home?

B: Exactly. And I can create more homes, each in its own separate universe, and each one is accessible only to me. Most people have many homes; some are shared with others, and some not. A home for every mood... for every purpose.

And these homes can be connected in any way you like. For example, in my home, I have one room that is full of doors. The room is round, and the circular wall is lined with doors, thousands of doors, of many different sizes and shapes and colors. And there is one large archway, which leads to the rest of my home. Each of these doors leads to a different place. Some of the doors lead to my other homes, and only I can pass through them alone; other people can enter, but only if I allow them to. Other doors lead to homes that I share with others; only I, or those others, can pass through those doorways unaccompanied. And there are other doors that lead directly into other private homes, the private homes of friends. I cannot pass through those doorways without permission; I must knock, and they can open the door if they like. And yet other doors lead to public places; I, or anyone else, can leave by those doors, but only I can return through them unaccompanied.

A home can be owned by one person, or two, or any number of people. Ownership cannot be transferred, but a home and its contents can be instantly copied by its owner, just as any inanimate object can be, and the copy given to someone else. A person can be added to the ownership list of an existing home, with the permission of all owners, but cannot be kicked out. However, a primary home always belongs only to the person it was created for at their arrival. And it is also possible to create places that have other kinds of ownership rules, far more complex than what I have described here.

I should point out that this room full of doors that I described is not necessary. I can go to any door just by visualizing it, and willing myself there; in fact, I don't even need the door. I have only rarely been in that room; I created it just for fun. Many people have no such room, but for others it is a convenient metaphor. Sort of a personal Grand Central Station. And I should point out that this is only one of many ways of getting from one place to another. And there are also "places" to which you can "go" for which such a simple metaphor is inappropriate.

D: This sort of reminds me of some of the "virtual worlds" that people are designing here...

B: And there is a good reason for that similarity: in both cases, it is convenient to set things up that way, and it is also possible. So there is no good reason not to do it that way. It would be convenient to do it that way in the physical world too, but its just not possible there.

There is also a big difference: those "virtual worlds" you referred to are "places" that you can only "visit" using a few of your senses. As your computers get better and better, these places will become more and more realistic, but youre still just visiting; take off those goggles, or look away from your computer screen, and youre back where you started. In my world, the places I can reach through all those doorways are real. Just as real as I am. Which brings us to the subject of reality.

Now this is a particularly deep subject. We could talk about this for years. So to save time, just consider the kind of reality that each person experiences.

One could argue that each person experiences their own personal reality, and of course this is true, but this is an oversimplification. Consider two people: yourself and your best friend. The realities experienced by these two people share many things in common. If this were not so, you wouldnt be able to have a conversation, because each of you would have no idea what the other person was talking about. A shared reality is real in a different way than an unshareable reality is.

Now consider another pair of people: yourself, and a Stone Age person from 20,000 years ago, from Australia. If you were to meet someone like that, you would at first feel that you had very little in common. After all, to this person, the Dreamtime is more real than anything you would consider "physical reality." And yet, you have much in common. That is because you are both tied to the physical world. Your world puts constraints on what you can experience as reality.

In my world, these constraints are greatly relaxed. The reality you experience is primarily constrained by the need to integrate your new experiences with your previous realities.

This means that there are non-physical realities that are available to you. Purely spiritual realities, for example. Or purely intellectual realities. And many other kinds of which our common language will not even permit us to speak. Realities you cannot even imagine.

But there is one kind of reality that I should tell you about, because you may have already experienced something similar. These are role-playing realities. We usually just call them Game Worlds. These are very much like the role-playing games that many people enjoy in your world, except that everything in the game is real. Each different Game World has its own rules, and the rules cannot be violated. It is simply impossible to break the rules; its as if each world has its own set of "physical laws." So when you go to one of these places, you are, in a sense, stepping back into a "physical world," with all of the limitations that particular world places on you. And, in many of these worlds, the rules restrict how you can get out of the game. This means that you can get stuck there. This has proven to be a problem, and for this reason, various mechanisms have been implemented to prevent people from getting stuck forever. But its still a good idea to read the rules carefully before walking through one of those doorways... and you must never forget that some of these games keep most of the rules hidden.

Note that when you enter one of these worlds, you are by that action agreeing to the rules; in other words, you are choosing to give up choices. But only temporarily. When you finally do leave the game, you find yourself back at home, just as free as you were before. But frequently changed by the experience.

Sometimes, one can be dramatically changed by such an experience. Some of these games dont let you take your memories with you when you enter. You arrive with a kind of amnesia, not knowing anything about your past, or who you are, or what the rules are, or even that its just a game. You just find yourself in this unfamiliar place, not knowing what youre there for, not having any idea what your future will hold. And you will believe that you are a physical being in a physical world. You will have forgotten that you are immortal. When you see that dragon about to breathe fire on you, you will know fear! Some of these worlds have rules that specify that you cant get out until you "die," and perhaps more than once. And when you finally arrive back home, the amnesia is lifted, and you can remember everything. Then you have to integrate all of those experiences, which can take years.

Some of the people who design these worlds are incredibly devious. They are tricksters of the highest order. We call them Game Masters.

D: People actually go to places like this? Of their own free will?

B: Oh yes. Not everyone, but many do. Dont forget, after being here for a while, you begin to lose your fears.

And I should point out that some of these games have all of the rules hidden. When you walk through that doorway, you have absolutely no idea what is on the other side! You only know one thing: Someday, you will come home. But you may be a very different person.

These are very serious kinds of games, and are not to be taken lightly.

D: A very disturbing thought just occurred to me... If what youre saying is true, then for all I know, I may be playing one of those games already!

B: That is a disturbing thought. There are times when I wonder whether I have been, in fact, playing one of those games, and may someday awaken to find myself in some other home, long forgotten for billions of years... There is no way to disprove such an idea. But I urge you not to go out and get yourself killed just to find out.

D: Dont worry, this world has been getting particularly interesting lately. Im in no hurry to leave...

B: Are you sure about that? What if someone invited you to go somewhere else? Somewhere really interesting?

D: Somewhere like your world, for instance? Is that why youre here?

B: It wasnt hard to guess, was it? A lot of people in your world already believe that something like this is about to happen. And theyre right. Undeniable contact is coming very soon, and it will come with an invitation.

D: An invitation? You mean, like a card, with gold embossed letters, and RSVP at the bottom?

B: No! I cannot tell you exactly how this will happen, or when; these things are not yet decided. When it happens, you will know. And it wont happen at all until enough people are ready for it.

It wont happen until enough people know who we really are.

D: How many is enough?

B: This is not known at the present time. We will know when the time is right, and so will you. And then we will start making invitations. One person at a time.

D: One person at a time? What do you mean by that?

B: Lets go back to a metaphor we used before: the doorway. Think of a Doorway, through which you may pass. It leads from your world, to mine. No one can force you to step through that Doorway, but if you choose to do so, you do so alone. And you cannot return; that Doorway is one-way only.

D: Whoa, hold it right there! Its pretty obvious that a lot of people are going to have a big problem with this idea... Most people, if confronted by such a Doorway, would turn around and run!

B: As I said before, undeniable contact will not occur until enough people know who we really are. There is a vast amount of preparation that must be done before then, and this highly deniable contact you are having right now is just another small step in that process. As time passes, peoples perceptions will gradually shift, and when the time comes for undeniable contact, it will all seem very natural and inevitable.

D: Well, thats comforting to hear, but I still think that a lot of people are not going to accept this. You really expect people to leave their families behind?

B: Oh, its worse than that. I dont think youve thought through the consequences of all that I have been telling you.

When you step through that Doorway, you leave everything behind. Not just your family, but everything in the physical world. You break all of your strong interdependencies when you leave, and when enough people do this, society comes apart at the seams. I know that this sounds very bad, but someday you will be able to look back on all of this from a historical perspective, as I can, and you will understand.

It is very natural to be afraid of the possibility of being permanently separated from the ones you love, but you must realize that this fear will vanish when you, and all of them, have chosen to come here. When you have all completed your journeys, no one can keep you apart, ever. But if you choose to come here, and another person chooses not to come here, then you cannot be together. Everyone will be given a choice; some will choose, and some will not. This will be very painful, and you must come to terms with this. But it is really not much worse than the kind of loss you feel when a loved one dies, because in the fullness of time, it amounts to the same thing.

D: Well, this sounds better. If an entire family chooses to go, they can still be together on the other side.

B: Youre not thinking about this in the right way. A family cannot choose. Only a person can choose. Only one person at a time can step through the Doorway. If all the members of a family agree to go, they must still step through that Doorway one at a time. If one person decides at the last moment not to go, no one can make them step through.

And even if everyone does go, they will not immediately find themselves together on the other side. They must find each other, and this can take some time. And if one person decides not to be found, they will never be found; the absolute privacy of this world guarantees that.

D: I can see right away that people who have small children are going to have a problem with this...

B: You still havent grasped this... A small child cannot choose. The choice is offered only to those people who understand the choice, and no one can choose for another.

Fortunately, small children stay small only for a short time. I think you will find that most parents will choose not to go until their children have reached the age at which they can understand the choice.

D: So children cannot go?

B: Not until they are old enough to understand the choice. And dont ask me what age that is... It is an individual matter. No invitation is issued until that person is ready.

D: What about pets? Many people here would never leave their pets behind.

B:

Although it is definitely possible for non-human animals to come here from Earth, it is not easy to arrange. The level of understanding that can be achieved by dogs or cats is different than the understanding that can be achieved by a human, but it can be sufficient to allow them to freely choose. Arranging things so that they have an opportunity to make this choice can be difficult and quite time-consuming, but many people will gladly go to great lengths to accomplish this. When open Contact occurs, we will show you how this can be done.

D:

B: Yes, we will be around for years while all of this works itself out. It will not be over in an instant.

Dont forget that there are limits to what we can do when we interact with the physical world. We cannot handle billions of people all at once. It will take time. It will be the most remarkable period in all of human history. Unfortunately, it is highly likely that many people will not survive it. And dead people cant make choices.

D: This doesnt sound good... Would you care to elaborate?

B: Dont get the idea that I am predicting the future; we do not know exactly what will happen. But we have been through this many times before, on other worlds, and we have a pretty good idea of what is likely to happen. This is why the preparation process is so carefully planned; we go to extreme lengths to try to minimize the damage. But you must keep in mind that as long as you remain in your physical world, you are vulnerable. And the greatest threat you face is all around you: all those other people. Some of them are dangerous, and some might become very dangerous as events unfold. You must be careful.

D: Well, this is always good advice... Could you be more explicit?

B: There are a lot of people on the Earth who believe that there is only one way to live, one way to believe... Their way. Some of these people will go to extraordinary lengths to defend their beliefs from what they perceive to be a threat.

Think about all of the things I have told you about my world, and I think you will begin to understand the nature of the conflicts to come.

D: Holy Wars?

B: Oh, I hope not. We are working very hard to avoid any such ugliness, but there are limits to what we can do.

As long as there are people who hate, there will be violence, and it can take many forms. We cannot wait around for all of the hate to disappear; this has never proven to be practical. So you will just have to deal with it.

D: Well, I have been convinced for some time that a lot of ugly things lay in our future, so this is really nothing new...

B: We have watched many civilizations pass through the stage where you are now, and sometimes we have kept our hands off. Even if we stay away, things tend to get ugly.

We call it Civilization End-Stage Disease, and its really not difficult to understand. By the time a civilization reaches a sufficiently high level of technological and spiritual development to solve their problems without creating even worse problems, the population has greatly exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. It almost always happens this way. And there are other factors too, such as the inevitable development of a technology sufficiently advanced to replace most of the labor force, coupled with increasing institutional inertia against any potential solution to the problems caused by that replacement. There are many factors.

D: What kinds of ugliness have you seen?

B: Oh, weve seen it all... famine, pestilence, plagues, floods... all that Biblical stuff. Everything is interconnected. The web just unravels. No one can predict exactly what will happen, or when. It can go in many directions simultaneously.

There are signposts to watch for, however. If you start to observe large-scale ocean currents changing their paths in ways that you have never seen before...

Everything on the Earth is interconnected, and you are depending on the stability of that system. But the system is not really stable; it is metastable. There are many different metastable configurations of the system, and occasionally it switches from one configuration to another. Sometimes this change is rather modest, like the one about twelve thousand years ago, when the last Ice Age ended. Sometimes the change can be drastic, like the one about 65 million years ago. The one that is in progress now could be quite drastic. You should expect increasingly chaotic behavior in many of your dynamical systems as these changes progress.

I think that you have already recognized many of the changes that are occurring. Climate changes seem to be a popular topic of discussion, although your climate records are woefully short, and your measurements and models are rather primitive. Changes in population dynamics of infectious disease organisms are also evident. You will see many other changes.

Of course, changes are also occurring in human social systems. These are highly nonlinear systems, and their precise behavior is notoriously difficult to predict, but our studies of comparative planetology have given us some pretty good ideas about the possibilities.

D: Im not sure I want to ask...

B: You dont want to know.

If you really wanted me to, I could give you extensive lists of all the different horrible things that people can do to each other, and that they will permit their institutions to do to them. Think back on all the darkest periods in human history, and think about what all those hateful people could do with a sufficiently advanced technology: total loss of privacy, thought police...

This is why we are reasonably certain that most of the humans on your planet will willingly choose to leave within about one human lifetime from now. If they are offered the choice.

D: If they are offered the choice? I thought you were going to offer the choice real soon now...

B: As I said before, we will not offer until enough people are ready. We believe this will happen soon, but we cannot be certain when. It is possible that this time will never come. We feel this is unlikely, but we cannot predict the future. Things can happen that are beyond our control.

A lot of this is up to you humans. Dont make us wait around forever. You must figure out who we really are.

D: Well, Ive been reading all this, and trying to figure that out, but Im still not sure who Im talking to. Who are you, anyway?

B: Im just this guy... Im a lot like you. Thats why I decided to talk to you, because you remind me of me when I was in the physical world. But what youre looking for is the answer to the larger question, isnt it?

We are Explorers.

D: What are you exploring?

B: Everything. Everything that is, and everything that can be.

We are the Ultimate Explorers.

We explore the universe, which is to say we explore the physical world in which you live.

We also explore other universes. All the universes that can be. We can do this because we know how to create reality.

We live in the Realm of Possibilities. Here, anything is possible. Anything we can imagine, we can make real, almost effortlessly. So in a sense, we are exploring a universe of imagination, which is much more vast than any physical universe.

We have been doing this for billions of years, and have every reason to believe that we will continue to do so for trillions of years into the future. Perhaps much, much longer. Perhaps forever.

We come from thousands of different alien worlds, and from these different worlds come different kinds of people, with different, unique experiences of reality, and different imaginations. And this is what we explore most of all: We are exploring the potentiality of consciousness.

D: And you want to add human imagination to all of this?

B: Yes. We have already done so, in fact. We have been lurking in your neighborhood for millions of years, and quite a few humans have already been offered the Choice, and have accepted. They are helping us to explore new worlds that we could never have imagined without them. We could leave now, and it will have been worth the effort. But every sentient being is precious to us, so we intend to offer the Choice to as many people as we possibly can.

D: Now this is interesting. You say that you dont make the offer until someone understands the choice, and that this has already been done. That would seem to imply that there should be people out there who have been offered the choice, and who have declined. Why dont we hear people telling stories like this?

B: Billions of people have lived and died on your planet, but relatively few have ever heard from us. Let me tell you about one of them.

Once, many thousands of years ago, I was visiting the Earth on one of our occasional observation missions when I came across a lone human lying on the ground. It was a human female, about eighty years old, which was remarkably old, as most humans died before the age of forty in those days. She was dressed in animal skins that were insufficient to protect her from the sub-freezing temperatures that would arrive with dusk, less than an hour away. In one hand she held a small pouch containing objects of an obviously spiritual nature, and in the other hand she held a beautifully crafted stone knife. She had no other possessions. She lay on the ground, staring up into the crystal-clear sky with eyes full of intelligence, and expectation, and pain. Her hip was broken.

She was lying next to a trail. By following the footprints, I located the rest of her band. They were about an hours walk away, and walking very fast. Winter was coming early that year; it would be a hard winter, and they knew it. They had to reach a distant mountain pass well before the snows came, or they would be doomed. They were nearly exhausted, but they were clearly determined to go as far as they possibly could before making camp for the night. These were a stoic people, but I could see that some of them had been crying. None of them looked back.

I returned to the old woman. She was still alive, but her core temperature was beginning to drop, and soon she would lose consciousness. There were no other humans in the entire valley, but there was a rather large predator not too far away, sniffing the trail. The old woman could not see the animal yet, but it seemed that she was aware of its presence. She was clutching the knife and the pouch very tightly now as she shivered in pain. Her eyes glowed. She had no fear.

I made the decision at that moment. Our Contact Protocol only allows interference under highly specific circumstances, and this case fit the protocol. I could offer her the Choice, without any danger of being observed by any other humans. And if she refused, she would not be in any condition to tell anyone else about it. But I was running short on time.

After rendering the predator unconscious, I called for a ship that could carry her, as mine was much too small. Fortunately, one was stationed not far away, but those few minutes were very harrowing. The temperature was dropping quickly.

Finally the ship arrived. I had requested the full light show, and it was quite a spectacular sight. Her eyes widened with astonishment as the ship descended from the heavens almost directly above her; she clearly had never even imagined anything like this before. As the ship slowly settled to the ground just a few feet from where she lay, she propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look, even though it caused her great pain. The ship sat there silently for a moment, and then the door slowly opened to reveal a passageway filled with light. She stared at the ship, her mouth hanging open, waiting to see what would happen next, but nothing did. No one emerged.

Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, she understood the Choice. She could lay there and die, or she could crawl through that doorway and face the Unknown. She understood the Choice perfectly. She dropped the knife, clenched the pouch between her teeth, and started pulling herself toward the ship, but the pain was so terrific that she lapsed into unconsciousness before she could move an inch. She had made her Choice though, so we brought her on board and took off.

When she awoke, she felt the warmth of the sun upon her face. She opened her eyes and sat up, and only then noticed that the pain was gone. A warm, gentle breeze stirred spring flowers as far as the eye could see.

She stood and looked around her, and beheld an immense valley, filled with flowers, surrounded by great snowcapped mountains. It reminded her of her oldest memories, as a child running through the flowers on a beautiful spring day...

She knew that she was alone. There were no trails, no evidence of human visitation. Except for the few marks she had made in the ground when she stood up, there were no footprints.

She stood there for the longest time, taking in her new surroundings, feeling a warmth in her bones that she had lost ages before. Eventually she decided to walk down the valley, for no other reason than that was what she had been taught to do if she ever found herself lost.

As she walked, she felt an energy within her that she had not felt in years. She began taking longer strides, and soon her back began to straighten. She quickened her pace, and felt the energy rush through her body. With every step she took, she felt younger and younger. Soon, she was running.

When she finally stopped, it was not to catch her breath; she was not tired at all. She stopped because she realized that she had become a young woman again.

She stood there, astonished by her transformation, and felt the energy surge through her. She knew, at that moment, that anything is possible.

And thus began her first Great Adventure in this new world.

We were very fortunate to find her; she is a most remarkable being. She was a very powerful shaman in her clan, and she has created some truly amazing worlds here. Magical worlds!

D: Wow, what a great story!

B: Ive got a million great stories like that. Literally! And theyre all true.

We are exploring the full breadth of the human experience. And all other kinds of experience as well.

Every time another person arrives here, they create a brand new story. Their own story, personal and unique. And they are all great stories, because they are stories of discovery, of transformation, of becoming. They are called Great Adventures, and everyone has one when they awaken here. This is when one becomes truly aware of what this world is all about, and this is when one learns all the skills needed to interact with this new kind of Reality. How to find things, how to communicate, how to move around. How to create worlds.

We have a Library here. It is unlike any library you have ever seen, because not only does it contain books, it contains experiences. My first Great Adventure is there; I put it there myself. You can experience it for yourself. There are trillions of Adventures you can borrow from that Library, and you can make up new ones too, so other people can experience them. Every story youve ever heard, every book youve ever read, every movie youve ever seen, can be made into experiences that other people can enjoy, just as real as any other kind of experience.

And we explore this vast universe of experiences.

This is who we are. We are Explorers. We explore Everything.

I can think of no better way to spend Eternity.

D: Well, I would have to agree with that! Ive heard other people describe what they think Eternity is like, and they make it sound infinitely boring. This is much better!

B: Boredom is the biggest problem any immortal being can face. But if you have a passion for exploration, then this is the place for you. One need never be bored here.

D: So where does all this fit in with Religion, as we know it on Earth?

B: Every religion contains within it Universal Truths, expressed in terms that people can understand. Most of the people who have ever lived on your planet lived their entire lives with only one way of experiencing reality: the way that they shared with their own small community. All other ways seemed foreign, alien, different; things to be derided, or feared. Each way of life was experienced within its own narrow context, which was tightly constrained by the physical world, and the religious aspects of life were shaped to fit this narrow context as well. In this way, Universal Truths become shrouded in dogma. Even the most open-minded religions on your planet are still human religions. When you see the great diversity of beliefs that other species have embraced, you will have a better perspective on this.

We have been here for billions of years, and explored millions of worlds, and delved into kinds of mathematics that you cannot even imagine, and we have not proven the existence of God. Nor have we disproved it. And there is a very simple reason for this: language has its limitations. This word "God" is a wildcard word. You can take a perfectly good sentence, put the word "God" into it, and make it mean absolutely anything, or nothing at all. And a proof requires the use of language in a very precise way.

When you use language in the right way, it allows you to perform reasoning. This is because language allows us to symbolically break up reality into component parts, which have properties, and actions, which connect these parts in the stream of time. We can then use logic to deduce new knowledge from the streams of language symbols we give each other. This form of communication evolved because it helps us survive and prosper in the physical world.

But this deductive process that we all take for granted is dependent on the fact that the objects we speak of have limits. If you start talking about things that have no limits, you lose the ability to deduce things. This is where you get famous paradoxes such as: "Can God make a stone that is so heavy He cannot lift it?" When you start using phrases like "all powerful" or "all knowing", logic breaks down. And this kind of language is used throughout the universe to break down logic and suspend the internal dialog, to achieve the experience of the Numinous. But it will never lead you to a proof, because such language has too much meaning to be used within a rigorous logical framework.

So we cannot answer all of the questions that you humans have wrestled with throughout the ages. There are a great number of different kinds of beliefs that can be found among the people of my world, and when you have witnessed this incredible diversity, your own beliefs might evolve and grow in ways that you cannot now even imagine.

Some people have expressed concern that exposure to alien civilizations may cause some human religions to self-destruct. This is not something you should worry about. All ways of believing are continually transformed throughout time, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes quickly. And even if we never contact you, these transformations will still occur, and are occurring, more and more quickly with every passing year. That is just the nature of this moment in your history.

One thing that you must understand is that my world is not a place to which you go when you die. If you die before you are offered the Choice, you might go somewhere, but you will not come here. I am very much alive; I am simply not wearing the old body I was born into.

There is one other thing that you must understand: although I have said that we are immortal, we cannot say for sure that we will live forever. We cannot predict the future, but we believe that we will be around for a very, very long time, a period of time that is indefinitely long. But the length of this period of time may not be infinite. There may come a day when we can no longer remain alive; if this happens, we will finally be dead. What will happen to us after that? We have no definite information on this subject; there is no universal agreement on this matter. Diversity of beliefs is not restricted only to small planets like yours.

It is important for you to understand this because there are many people who may think that choosing to come to my world will somehow prevent them from getting to the place where they have always believed they were going to go after they die. This kind of misunderstanding can sometimes cause people to behave in very ugly ways.

In my world, one experiences what is essentially another stage in the development of Life, a stage not made available to most of the sentient beings who come into existence in the physical world. You are incredibly fortunate to be alive at this particular time in the history of the Earth. This has never happened on your planet before, and possibly never will again. But it will happen again on other planets, and when it does, you can be there to watch it unfold. But only if you Choose to do so.

When I offered the old woman her Choice, that Choice was very simple for her. We didnt need to discuss it at length; indeed, I couldnt even speak her language. But when your Choice comes, the situation will be very different. For one thing, you presumably wont be at Deaths door, as she was. But even more important, you will have a lot more information at your disposal. Nobody living in your world today is going to make that kind of Choice without being reasonably certain about the consequences of that Choice. And this brings up a rather knotty problem: How do you know that what Im telling you is true? For the moment, this question is merely academic, because all of this is "just for the sake of argument," as we agreed. But when the time comes for people to actually Choose, this question becomes very important.

We cant just land on the White House lawn and walk among you; we dont have physical bodies. You cant come to my world, explore it for yourself, and then return to tell the other humans what youve seen. How do we prove to you who we are? Will you just take our word for it? I dont think so.

This is a big problem. There will be many people who will believe that we are not telling the truth. They will say that we are evil beings, come to trick you into walking into some vast intergalactic slaughterhouse, or worse. No matter what kind of proof we offer, they will reject us, because we just dont fit into their preconceived belief systems. And it is likely that some of these people will attempt to prevent other people from Choosing. We have seen all of this before, many times. This is why we have to be so very careful.

When the time is right, we will offer proof. Proof that will satisfy most people. But some will never believe us, and they will Choose to stay. I just hope that they will not cause very much trouble for the rest of you.

D: Well, a lot of people think that we already have proof that someone is visiting us, but that "the government" won't let us have it. Is there any proof of your visits?

B:

Our Contact Protocol is quite specific on this matter. Technology transfer is strictly controlled. The transfer of any kind of technology that could conceivably be used to hurt people is strictly forbidden, and so is almost everything else. All of the technology on your planet was invented by Earthlings, although some of those Earthlings may have been inspired by experiences provided by us.

We don't visit your planet very often, but when we do, we use ships that are constructed specifically for that purpose. We have a large number of designs, for different missions, but each vessel is custom built, locally. We have workshops on the far side of the Moon, and elsewhere in the solar system, and also some facilities underground on Earth.

The structural materials from which these ships are built are very ordinary. They are identical to materials in common use in your aerospace industries. We do this deliberately, just in case of accident.

There are certain components in these ships that are much more advanced than what your technology can presently produce, however. These components comprise only a small fraction of the mass of the ship, but are the most important parts: the computers, and certain components in the power and propulsion systems, for example. These components are constructed in such a way that they disintegrate completely in the unlikely event that the ship is damaged or captured. They just melt away into common atmospheric gasses and dust. Many fail-safe mechanisms are implemented to make sure that these particular components never fall into human hands.

We are reasonably sure that some of our hardware is held in secret facilities on your planet. But it does not constitute proof, because it is all structural stuff, and any of it could have been built by Earthlings, years ago.

Many decades ago, this was not true; the structural materials in our ships were beyond what you could make. But at that time, you did not have the ability to prove that. Perhaps someday someone will produce such a piece of evidence, saying it has been kept in some government vault for years. But how will they prove that it was made decades ago, and not yesterday? Any documentary evidence they produce could have been faked, and these people are widely disbelieved anyway. Besides, there will always be people who will insist that the technology to make titanium hulls and such was really invented decades earlier than commonly thought.

I know that conspiracy theorists are having a field day right now, but don't be fooled into thinking that "the government" knows anything about us. We don't deal with governments; indeed, many people come to my world just to get away from the darn things. But we do have a lot of fun fooling them, which is certainly easy to do.

There is a small probability that someone might be able to collect enough residues from one of our self-destructed components to permit a meaningful analysis. This would require doing isotopic analysis in a mass spectrometer. This is your only real hope of finding hard physical evidence of our visits, before open Contact. Good luck.

D:

B:

Such things prove nothing. No matter how carefully you analyze these things, you will find nothing that could not have been manufactured on Earth. And this is true of any other kind of anomalous "manufactured object" that you might find on Earth. Your scientists are learning how to control the manufacture of objects at the atomic scale. All we have to do is keep putting good self-destruct mechanisms in our most advanced technology, and you'll never prove a thing.

D:

B:

D:

B: Of course, there are lots of alien species out there that live in the physical world. But they are all out there. They dont visit the Earth. They would have to go to an extreme effort to do so, and we wouldnt let them if they tried. With few exceptions, each different life-bearing planet has its own unique biological system. If organisms from one planet traveled to another that had its own kind of life, horrible things could happen. It could lead to the extinction of almost all life on the planet. But fortunately, living planets are effectively quarantined off from one another. The vastness of space enforces this quarantine, and if somebody is foolish enough to try to break out and travel to a world we are guarding, like the Earth, we will stop them. We dont have any problem with people from the physical world traveling to planets that bear no life, however.

No, the physical creatures that a few of you humans have encountered are not, strictly speaking, alien.

D: Well then, who are they?

B: Now thats a very good question. But before I answer it, I must make it quite clear that a lot of the encounters that are being reported are not really happening. At least not in the physical world.

Sentient beings like you have very powerful and creative imaginations, and many of these encounters occur only in the mind. It can be very difficult to tell the difference. After all, what you experience is what you remember, and you can experience much more than just the physical world. Some people create experiences out of thin air, frequently "borrowing" elements from other peoples reported experiences. However, some of these experiences do have a basis in physical reality; some people really do have physical contact. I cant tell you what fraction are real, though, because I really dont know. All I can tell you is that the number of true physical contacts is not a large number. Certainly not millions, as some people think.

At this point, we need to talk more about Contact Protocols. These are rules that we establish for ourselves that govern how we relate to new worlds that bear intelligent life. The most basic rule is what you know as the Prime Directive; thanks to the popularity of a certain science-fiction television series, it seems that just about every human understands that term. We generally dont interfere with beings who have not yet learned of our existence. Sometimes exceptions have to be made, but when that happens we try very hard to keep our contacts as deniable as possible, so that life on that planet will continue as before. But at some point, it is necessary to engage in deniable contacts that are totally convincing to the individuals who experience them; this allows knowledge of the possibility of our existence to gradually creep into the culture. If we never reveal our existence to anyone, we can never prepare anyone. And preparation is important.

If you closely examine the myths of your ancient cultures, and even cultures that you may consider current, you will find within them elements that were inspired by close encounters. We always do things this way. We do not wait until the last minute to begin preparations. We always begin during pre-history, long before written language is developed.

Even at this late date, so close to Contact, there are still many people on your planet who believe in things that do not seem to belong in a rational world. Whether you call it Magic, or Miracles, or whatever, this is a long-standing tradition even in the most technologically advanced cultures. And this is a mixed blessing; it causes many people to reject science, often to their detriment, but it also helps to prepare people for Contact. Because when we show up, you will see Magic the likes of which you have never imagined.

Our Magic is based on extremely advanced technology, of course. Over the years, we have used it to give a few lucky humans experiences they will never forget, experiences that may dramatically expand their awareness of the possibilities of Reality. This helps to keep the Magical tradition alive, even during the most rational periods of human history.

And sometimes, we get a big surprise. If you show people enough Magic (and even if you don't), they will occasionally create their own! We have observed creatures in the physical world doing things that even we dont understand. This kind of strangeness has been observed on many planets, and we will not be able to thoroughly investigate these kinds of things on the Earth until after Contact. There is so much left to Explore in this world of yours.

Now every new planet is different; the specific Contact Protocols for each planet are custom-built for the occasion, based on the kinds of creatures we find there. But the situation on Earth is special, because we did something that is rather uncommon. We interfered with your development, in a way that is quite unusual.

We arrived here a very long time ago, long before humans evolved big brains and walked upright. We generally get to a planet long before intelligent life develops, and the Earth was no exception to this. We were watching you closely all throughout the period when you were becoming human. We were not scrutinizing you throughout every moment of your ancestors lives, but we did check in on you frequently. And one day, only a few hundred thousand years ago, we came back for one of our routine surveys, and we couldnt find you.

This was quite alarming. We had been watching you for millions of years, and we had become rather attached to you. You were our favorite Earthlings, although we liked the dolphins a lot too. We had high hopes for you, and were certain that you would develop a very interesting civilization. You were already highly intelligent; in fact, you have changed very little, physically, since that day.

We searched all over, fearing that you had somehow become extinct. Finally, we discovered a few small groups of humans, totaling less than a hundred individuals. They were all sick and starving. Climate change, coupled with some plain bad luck, had brought the human race to the brink of oblivion.

We were in quite a quandary. We had a simple choice: we could watch you disappear, and wait many millions of years for another species to develop intelligence, or we could interfere. Now we are extraordinarily patient folk, and many argued that we should keep our hands off, but many of us are also very compassionate. Besides, we had already made a substantial investment of time in these miserable creatures, and we had become quite fond of you. Ultimately, we agreed to interfere.

But what could we do? We couldnt just bring food; that wasnt enough. These people had everything going against them: climate, hungry predators, disease. We thought of moving them to a different area, but our models indicated that they were too far gone to survive in an unfamiliar place. Besides, where could we put them? The Earth was going through one of its occasional shifts from one metastable climate configuration to another, and we could not predict which configuration it would assume when it was done.

There were simply too few of them, and they were too weak, to survive unassisted anywhere on Earth. So we built a zoo for them. On Mars.

D: Now this is starting to get interesting! Why on Mars?

B: Our goal was to permit them to increase their numbers to a sufficiently high level so that they could be re-introduced to the wild with a good chance of survival; many thousands of humans would be required. This meant keeping them safe for many generations, and also meant that large facilities must be built, not only to provide living space, but also to grow food for them. It requires a lot of equipment to build and equip such facilities in a short time, and no traces of any of this could be left on the Earth for future generations to find. We already had facilities on the Moon and on Mars, that had been built for other purposes; Mars was chosen because its gravity is closer to Earths.

This was a very delicate operation; we had to do it in such a way that they never became aware of any form of technology. If we did it carefully enough, they would convince themselves that everything that happened to them was the result of natural events. Or almost everything. The few parts that seemed miraculous would become part of their oral tradition, but would be gradually blurred with the passage of each succeeding generation. Deniability would be restored.

We already had enough large ships to transport them; these were quickly modified to suit our purposes. Each ship had a large cargo hold, which we lined with a material similar to stone, to give the appearance of a cave. Light was introduced through a small opening in the roof of the cave, which they could not reach. A shallow pool was constructed and filled with fresh water, and we gathered a large amount of fruits that we knew they liked. Elsewhere on the ship, life-support equipment was installed to maintain the temperature and the quality of the air.

One night, a band of humans went to sleep, cold and hungry and nearly delirious. The next morning, they found themselves in a cave. We are not sure how they explained this to themselves, but they seemed to be pleased, probably because they were warm and had lots of fruit to eat. They did not know it, but they were already well beyond the orbit of the Moon, accelerating away from the Earth at one gravity.

As they got closer to Mars, the acceleration was gradually reduced to Mars gravity, a bit less than half of Earths. If they hadnt already been so weak and light-headed, they might have noticed.

After a few days, they discovered that the wall at one end of the cave was crumbling. They dug away the rubble, and found a narrow tunnel leading gradually upward. When they emerged into daylight, they found themselves in a long, narrow valley, surrounded by steep cliffs on both sides and at both ends. The valley was filled with vegetation of all descriptions; most of the food plants and herbs that they knew about were there. They could not know that this valley was in fact a huge tunnel carved out of the Martian bedrock, that the sky above was just a projection, that hidden machinery continually reprocessed the water and the air, and that the plants around them had been brought from Earth.

Each band of humans had their own journey, and found their own valley. Elsewhere on Mars, robotic machines were carving even larger tunnels for future generations; as their numbers gradually increased, the humans occasionally "discovered" passages that led to these new valleys. As the centuries passed, their old way of life, and the mysterious way in which they had come to this land of plenty, became just another part of their mythology.

Eventually, there came a day when their numbers had grown large enough, and the Earths climate had stabilized enough, so that we felt it was safe to take them home. This was accomplished in much the same manner as before. We let each band loose in a different area; after all the trouble we had gone to, we werent about to put all our eggs in one basket. This proved to be a good idea, as a few groups didnt make it. They had forgotten too much about things like predators, and bad weather, and how to find food. Im sure that some of the survivors felt that they were being punished for something... perhaps for the time they broke into the tunnels housing the life-support machinery...

D: This is pretty spooky, Bob. Are there any creation myths that cant be traced back to this time?

B: Oh, quite a few, Im sure. New creation myths appear all throughout human history, but they are frequently based on older ones. When you gain access to our records of human history, you can study this subject in great depth.

But I havent finished the story yet. When we heard that the machine tunnels had been seen, we decided that we had to intervene. Some of the humans had seen quite a bit of our technology; these people were not stupid, and they were figuring out how some of the equipment worked. We wanted your technological development to occur independently of us, so we isolated the trespassers and took the rest back to Earth. Many of the humans knew about the secret tunnels by this time, but most of them were too scared to even set foot in them; we only kept back the ones who had seen too much. Even knowledge of simple things like wheels and gears and hinges would have been considered a forbidden technology transfer in those days.

We had planned all along to keep some of the humans in the zoo, as a backup, but only for a few generations. These people "volunteered" for that duty, and had to stay for millennia. Theyve been there ever since.

They figured out pretty quickly that there was someone watching them, behind the scenes, and they figured out how to get us to respond: They started sabotaging the equipment. Since it was obvious that they knew we were around, there was no point in hiding from them any more. So we introduced ourselves. And since we had no desire to hang around for thousands of years to baby-sit these people, we taught them how to maintain the systems themselves, which took many generations to accomplish.

They developed rapidly after that; we couldnt really stop them. We limited their choices in as few ways as possible; basically, we wouldnt let them return to Earth, but almost anything else they wanted to do was okay. It didnt take them long to find their way to the surface, though, and this presented a problem; we knew that eventually the humans on Earth would develop the means to return to Mars, possibly before we were ready to make Contact, and we didnt want them seeing any evidence of intelligent life there. So we made a deal with the Martians: we would allow them to do whatever they like with a small area on the surface, but they would not be allowed to venture beyond that area. And we made it clear that all of their aboveground facilities would be destroyed as soon as Earthlings developed the ability to return to Mars.

We also prohibited them from digging any more tunnels for living space. We had already created a few mountains out of the rubble from the original tunnel excavations; had we let them tunnel without limit, they could easily have transformed the entire surface of Mars in only a few millennia. So we taught them how to limit their reproduction, and made them understand the dire consequences that would befall them if their population grew beyond the limits of their resources.

We have a strange sort of love/hate relationship with them. After all, they are our prisoners, although we did give them a way out: a Doorway. Most of them live in my world now.

They can be difficult to deal with sometimes. Occasionally they build spaceships, and try to fly to Earth, by the seat of their pants... We try not to harm them, and they know it, but sometimes we cannot save them from their own recklessness. If we can catch them without harming them, we take away their toys and return them to Mars. But sometimes they manage to evade us for years.

You can understand why they are not entirely happy with us: we sometimes treat them like children, and theyre not. They are aware that they are being forced to conform to a Contact Protocol that was designed ages ago, and they understand why we do the things we do, but they still dont like it.

They know that Contact will be coming soon, and they are getting impatient. You see, they want to come home to Earth. They want to raise their families on that beautiful blue planet of yours. And after the Contact, they will be allowed to do so... provided you dont blow them out of the sky...

D: So all of these aliens that people have been seeing are all humans? That doesnt make any sense. People have been describing all kinds of different creatures.

B: As part of our Contact Protocol, we have been giving people experiences with a wide variety of creatures, but most people are just being fooled. Most of the things that people see are just optical projections. Sometimes, we use animated dummies, but mostly projections.

All of the biological entities that come to Earth, and there aren't many, are based on Earth biology, and in fact they are your relatives. We dont allow alien biology to enter this solar system; its just too risky. Even one alien bacterium could wreak havoc in your biosphere.

There are a number of different kinds of encounters we can give you, and most of them are illusions. But sometimes we give especially lucid performances, in which the experiencer is allowed to move freely. Frequently, Martians play important roles in these experiences; not many Martians would pass up a chance to see the Earth first-hand. And Martians have sometimes visited without our knowledge, although not much lately; we've been watching them vigilantly in recent years.

D: Many people believe that there is some kind of medical experimentation, or genetic engineering, going on. Can you shed any light on this?

B: We have been taking biological samples from a wide variety of Earth organisms for billions of years, but, with only rare exceptions, we do not "engineer" living things. We go to great lengths to assure that you develop independently. And when we are taking samples from creatures that have a high degree of awareness, such as humans, we usually use techniques that prevent them from being aware that they are having an encounter. This is usually done by waiting until the creature is asleep, and then using techniques that prevent awakening during the procedures. Only a tiny fraction of the population ever has this type of physical encounter. However, a special situation exists with humans.

For hundreds of thousands of years, there have been two relatively independent populations of humans, separated by a vast gulf of empty space. This kind of situation can result in the development of two separate species; if two populations diverge to the point where they can no longer successfully interbreed, then those two populations have become, by definition, separate species.

We did not want this to occur, and the Martians didnt either, so we took steps to assure that the two populations remained a single species. The only way to do this is to allow genes to flow back and forth between the two populations. However, arranging for this kind of gene flow to occur without the people on Earth becoming aware of it is not straightforward. It had to be done in such a way that the humans on Earth did not realize that the procedures were being performed.

As I said earlier, we know how to remove samples from humans without their knowledge, and have been doing so for a long time. We can easily take sperm samples on Earth and use them to impregnate females on Mars. However, going the other direction is somewhat problematic; we dont want Earth females to bear children sired by Mars fathers, because that would be a dead giveaway. Racial differences can arise in humans in only about ten thousand years, and the humans on Mars have developed noticeable racial differences from any Earth race. So we usually just remove eggs from Earth females, fertilize them with sperm from Mars males, and implant them in Mars females. However, this procedure cannot absolutely guarantee species integrity, so sometimes it is necessary to perform the complete test: inseminate an Earth female with Mars sperm, and return later to verify pregnancy. If a viable fetus is found, it is usually removed and transplanted into a compatible Mars female. Of course, sometimes we cant find that Earth female again, and then those Martian genes eventually find their way into your gene pool. You may have heard of some of these people, who just look different somehow...

D: Hybrids?

B: Some people use that word to describe them, but it is not really accurate. They are fully human, but they are the result of the union of one race of humans on Earth and one of the several races of humans on Mars.

This species maintenance program has been going on for a very long time. Very few people on Earth have been involved; only a very slow rate of gene transfer is needed to prevent genetic divergence. Recently, the rate of transfers has increased considerably. We felt that people on Earth would be less likely to attack their Martian cousins if they knew they had close relatives among them.

So no, this is not a genetic engineering program, or a medical experimentation program. It is a species maintenance program. Its purpose is to ensure that there is only one human species, and it will continue until Contact.

Throughout these hundreds of thousands of years, nobody on Earth knew that all this was going on. We can be very discreet.

D: I dont think youve been very discreet lately! Lots of people have been reporting these procedures...

B: We are following our Contact Protocol, which proceeds in stages. We are now allowing people to be aware of what is happening to them.

And this is not easy. The procedures we use are rather stealthy, so we dress up the experience a little, to make it more obvious what we are trying to accomplish.

We generally use nano-ships to collect specimens and biological data. They are constructed with nanotechnology, and are not very big. A whole fleet of them can crawl right under your bedroom door while you are sleeping; many of them look, and fly, just like insects. They are operated by remote control from a larger ship, which remains outside; we generally use very thin optical fibers to carry the control signals and telemetry, because this is such a stealthy method of communications. We often discard these fibers at the end of a mission, and sometimes people are lucky enough to find them before they disintegrate.

I dont think any human has ever gotten a clear view of one of these nano-ships in action, which is fine with us; most humans would not be able to understand what they were seeing. So when we want you to understand what is happening, we let you see something that you can understand.

Some nano-ships are used for inducing temporary paralysis, so you cant move. Some are used for removing tissue samples, or for making measurements. Some carry tiny loudspeakers that can be placed just outside your ear canals. And some carry tiny image projectors that can be held right over your eyes.

When we visit you, you see and hear whatever we want you to.

You might see strange creatures in your room. You might see strange creatures walking through walls. You might hear voices that seem to come from inside your own head. You might even see yourself floating right through a closed window. But none of this is really whats happening; youre really just lying in your own bed, unable to see the tiny machines that are working on you.

Once again, I must point out that the number of people we visit in this way is quite small. Most people who report these kinds of experiences need to look elsewhere for explanations. And everything we do is very carefully designed to produce experiences that are perfectly compatible with purely psychological explanations.

D: Surely you are aware that there are people who are very upset with what you have done to them?

B: Yes. Sorry.

D: Sorry? Thats all you have to say?

B: We need true believers. We need people who truly believe that we exist. If it werent for them, none of the preparation that has already occurred would have happened. Having people see 'flying saucers' and such isnt good enough; we need people to have experiences that are much more personal than that.

We cannot control the way people respond emotionally to the experiences we give them. We dont try to control peoples thoughts or feelings; we just shift their state of awareness and give them some sensory input. We try very hard to prevent them from experiencing physical pain or discomfort, but every person is different and our procedures are not foolproof. It was much easier in the old days, when we just rendered people unconscious.

Even if we had not already been engaged in this species maintenance program, we would have had to invent some other kind of physical experience for people to have. And whatever that experience is, most people are going to find it very frightening, simply because we need to make it very alien.

It was not until very recently that we became fully aware of the depth of the psychological damage that some people were suffering. In fact, we got our first good feedback on this aspect of the program through the Net. After all, during our procedures, our subjects generally dont react at all; we have reason to believe that most of these people do not react emotionally to their experiences until they finally recall them, long after the encounter is over. And we are quite certain that most of the experiences now being reported happen entirely within people's minds, because the number of true contactees is quite small.

You must understand that we never intended to harm anyone. We need to prepare your minds for Contact. It is very important that some of you firmly believe that we are here, even though we cannot yet provide you with indisputable proof. We have been through this process many times before, on many different planets, and we have never found a method that made everyone happy.

So yes, we are sorry. Well, most of us are. You have to understand that we are not a 