If you looked up into the sky on the night of April 5th, 2012, you wouldn’t see anything. Well, you would see something. Depending on how close you were to a city, whose bright lights absorb the light from the stars, you might see endless black. To think that that blackness is empty, though, would be to think like a fool. In that blackness are machinations that the human mind has a pretty tough time grasping. Swirling vortexes of gas, stars and suns dying and being reborn, maybe even other planets that could sustain intelligent life. Though “intelligent” relative to the life on Earth could mean anything.
If you lived away from the city lights, somewhere out in the country, maybe Kansas or one of those other flat states, or maybe in the countryside of England or Ireland, or maybe somewhere in Asia or Australia, or probably definitely Antarctica, you may look up at the night sky and see those stars. Their light is free where there is no light of our own. And probably you would not see that much else. Because dodging to and fro in that illuminated sky on the night of April 5th, 2012 is a small alien about the size of the average adult male’s foot.
He inhabits one of those planets other than Earth that can sustain intelligent life, and much like the humans on Earth, his people have spent time scouring the universe for life other than their own. Here this alien, whose name is largely unpronounceable by human vocal cords, sits above Earth’s atmosphere looking down. And if you were looking back up, chances are you wouldn’t have seen him, because his spaceship was only about the size of an average adult male’s torso.
This alien’s spaceship was designed for just one member of his species at a time. His species name is largely unpronounceable by human vocal cords as well. There will come a point in this story where the alien will tell his name and his species’ name to the humans, but they must reform the sounds they hear by emulating the names with their own vocal cords. After this confusing process, the alien will become known as Zenoplex and his species known as Korkashourt.
During the flight from his planet, Zenoplex spent a cumulative total of three years asleep in his bedchamber and five years at the controls of his ship. You see, Korkashourt didn’t require as much sleep as humans did. And a year on the Korkashourts’ home planet was just as long as a year on Earth, because the two planets were the same distance from their suns. Zenoplex’s planet had a name, but he never told anyone on Earth, and as such, it will remain unnamed in this story.
Zenoplex once had the Earth equivalent of a wife, but he was now the Earth equivalent of a widower, and she was the Earth equivalent of a rotting cadaver. And so when the mission to find “intelligent” life was announced, Zenoplex volunteered right away. He wanted to escape his planet and the memories of his now dead wife.
The first year of Zenoplex’s travel was a sad one. He spent much of his time in the bedchamber of his ship. He left the ship on autopilot as he watched old Korkashourt movies of his wife before she was dead. Korkashourt movies were a lot like human movies except they broadcast from the Korkashourt’s brain into the air in front of him so he and others could see it. That’s what Zenoplex did for that first year.
After that he tried landing down on a planet far away from his own. This planet had no name because the creatures that inhabited it were a far cry from what the humans and the Korkashourt might call intelligent. These animals were like furry dinosaurs and they battled for food and territory. They ripped flesh from bone. Poor Zenoplex hid under a blue bush as two of the furry four-legged beasts lashed out at each other with razor-bladed tails just a few feet from where he landed his tiny torso sized ship.
There may have been intelligent life on this planet. Maybe somewhere on the other side, or perhaps just a bit down the road, but Zenoplex didn’t stay long to find out. As soon as the furry violent creatures were far enough away, Zenoplex retreated into his ship and then his ship retreated into the comfort and confines of space.
It was another lonesome year before he tried anything as crazy as landing on a planet again. In that time, Zenoplex saw stars explode and he drove his ship past many swirling galaxies. There was a lot of blackness out there in space, but he certainly wouldn’t have said space was empty. Zenoplex wondered if maybe somewhere out there in that vastness, he might find God.
God exists differently for the Korkashourt than He exists for most humans. Humans have so many different religions that depict God in a different way. Sometimes when two large groups of religious people disagree with each other, they hurt one another so much and so badly until the group being hurt the most finally says, “Yes, you’re right after all,” although this concession rarely happens and both groups usually just keep going on hurting each other.
For the Korkashourt, God exists as the idea of chance. Just like humans, the Korkashourt have no idea how the universe began. Just like some humans, the Korkashourt surmise that chemicals and particles and things much smaller may have bunched together and exploded outward somehow creating everything that exists. And the Korkashourt believe that this all happened by what humans would call “chance.” As chance would have it, the Korkashourts were created through their own little chemical reactions on their home planet. As chance would have it, Zenoplex was born when his parents’ chemicals and fluids mixed together in just the right way. As chance would have it, Zenoplex grew up and enlisted in the Korkashourtian military. There, thanks to chance again, he met his wife who, by chance happened to be hit by the Korkashourtian equivalent of a bullet in the Korkashourtian equivalent of her temple. By chance, the bullet didn’t kill her immediately, but left her mental capacities in disrepair.
The saddest part is that the Korkashourt have never known war. Their military is there, in what an Earth phrase describes perfectly, “just in case.” Zenoplex’s wife was shot when a police officer dropped his gun two towns over. Korkashourtian bullets go much farther than human bullets.
By chance, Zenoplex’s wife’s head stopped the bullet. No one knew this, but if it weren’t for Zenoplex’s wife’s head stopping the bullet, it would have continued until it hit a young boy and killed him instead. Maybe if Zenoplex knew that, he would have felt the slightest bit of comfort in his wife’s death. But he didn’t know.
Zenoplex didn’t arrive at Earth on April 5th, 2012. He had actually been there for a few weeks already, but he knew from past experience that he was better off scouting a planet out first before setting down and fully exploring. The Korkashourt didn’t have a word for this, but on Earth, this strategy was often called doing “reconnaissance.”
Zenoplex did reconnaissance for over a month by flying around the planet at different times of day. It only took his spaceship a few seconds to circle Earth, and he circled Earth several hundred times a day. Some days he found a city that he liked, like Kyoto, or Edinburgh, or Chicago, and he would stay above that city all day watching the people get in and out of their cars and buildings. He watched from above as they went about their lives, and he inferred many of their laws that governed their societies.
It took Zenoplex a few days to realize that on Earth, the humans lived in different societies. And it took him a few more days to try and understand why. It didn’t take long for him to gain full understanding; that societies were made up of large groups of humans who had similar interests and who were similarly different than the humans in other societies. Some of these societies got along well with other ones, but some of them liked to fight over things like religion or territory or food or natural resources. Some people liked to kill others just for fun or for their God or for what-have-you. This made Zenoplex a bit frightened, but he determined that most of the humans were harmless for the most part.
The night of April 5th, 2012 was the night that Zenoplex came down into Earth’s atmosphere completely undetected by any human surveillance. His ship had the most advance sensors and Korkashourtian stealth technology. It was on this night that if you looked carefully, you might have seen the telltale glint of the stealth technology kicking into full effect. After that split second, the ship would be almost completely invisible. No one was looking up at that particular torso sized section of the sky when Zenoplex engaged the stealth mechanism though.
Zenoplex made his first contact with a human at a tourist attraction in Chicago known by some people as “the bean.” “The bean” was a metal structure designed by Anish Kapoor that was shaped like a bean and polished to perfection. You could see your reflection in it and it would be distorted a bit and cast back down on you. “The bean” was actually called the Cloud Gate, but not many people used that name because it looked more like a bean than a gate.
Zenoplex stood on a table near “the bean” and motioned for the man to come nearer. The man’s name was Roger Cronish. He was a lawyer for a law firm based in a large skyscraper in Chicago. There were skyscrapers all over Zenoplex’s home planet, so he was very familiar with them when he got to Earth. They made him think of home. That’s why when he was doing reconnaissance, he spent most of his time over cities with skyscrapers.
Roger Cronish was in his early thirties which, for a human, was often considered fairly young. At the time, Zenoplex didn’t know that though. Humans aged differently than the Korkashourt did. The older a Korkashourt got, the taller he or she got. The oldest Korkashourt ever recorded in Korkashourtian history was around two and a half feet tall. He had been alive for six thousand years. Most Korkashourtians only lived to be about one and a half feet tall. That’s about one thousand years.
The ten oldest humans who ever lived were all female for whatever reason. The oldest, Jeanne Calment, was one hundred and twenty two years old when she died. Zenoplex looked up this information in his spaceship while he was doing his reconnaissance on Earth. He also looked up the regional language of the humans in Chicago because, for whatever reason, many humans spoke different languages based on what region or society they hailed from. The concept of language was new to Zenoplex as well, but it was a concept that made sense based on the societal structure of Earth. Zenoplex could find little fault with it.
And so it was that Zenoplex spent the final two weeks of his reconnaissance teaching himself to speak English, which was weird to him that English was the native language of this country and one called England. Well, it was weird until he researched it and saw why.
Zenoplex spoke slowly. “I am here for doing discoveries.”
Roger didn’t speak back. He screamed and ran. The scream was unlike any noise that Zenoplex ever heard. The only thing he could liken it to was the cry of the furry creatures he saw that fought each other for territory and food back on the first planet he had ever explored. He was crestfallen. All that time he spent researching the humans and their planet seemed wasted. But he didn’t give up. This time instead of speaking, Zenoplex broadcasted one of his mind movies into Roger Cronish’s mind. This made Roger stop and turn around. As Zenoplex played the history of the Korkashourt, Roger began to understand. His fear waned and he drew closer to Zenoplex until their hands touched.
Roger then turned to dust and blew away in the early morning wind.
There was some strange reaction of chemicals within Zenoplex’s body and Roger Cronish’s body that caused the molecules of Roger’s body to come apart. There was no way that Zenoplex could know this would have happened. He felt horrible, but at least now he knew. Better that this happened to poor Roger Cronish than to a powerful world leader. Zenoplex returned to his spaceship and flew to Washington DC. He knew this is where the leader of this country resided.
A week later, Roger Cronish’s wife and children called the police to report him missing.
Zenoplex played the same movie for the President that he played for Roger Cronish, but this time he knew not to touch any humans. After explaining that he was only there to discover intelligent life, Zenoplex returned to his ship ready to bring the proof back to his home planet. But instead of leaving, he stayed in Earth’s atmosphere and watched as the planet celebrated the contact with another form of life. He watched them declare that day a worldwide holiday. He watched for months and learned more about their laws and what made the human race tick.
Then he wanted to see what would happen if he posed a challenge to the human race. He broadcasted his message to every human in the world that could understand such a message. The message said something along these lines: “For one day, do not murder one another. If you do this, I will tell your planet the secret of immortal life.”
Zenoplex didn’t know the secret of immortal life. In fact, he was more than ninety-nine percent sure that there was no such thing as a secret of immortal life. But he felt that was an adequate prize for such a challenge.
But it was a challenge that the humans could not live up to. There are normally an uncountable number of murders every day on Earth. In the time frame designated for Zenoplex’s challenge, there were nine thousand four hundred and thirty two murders. There were one thousand two hundred and sixty attempted murders.
The concept of murder was not unknown on Zenoplex’s home planet, but it was rare. Since the Korkashourt were very small and their planet fairly large and fertile, they didn’t need to kill each other for food or land. Usually murder happened when a leader was incompetent and couldn’t complete their expected task, and in that case, murder was okay. But even that rarely happened.
Zenoplex decided to alter his challenge. This time he broadcasted his message only to those who drove vehicles. “Obey all vehicle laws,” he told them. “Don’t speed your vehicle over the posted limit. Always stop at the red signs that say ‘stop.’ And so forth.”
There are even more traffic disruptions than murders every day, and in the case of Zenoplex’s challenge, things were no different. There were more than one million traffic laws that were disobeyed. Zenoplex concluded that humans didn’t want to know the secret of immortal life.
Now he flew his ship back down to Washington DC. He wanted to ask the President why no one on Earth would heed his challenges. Didn’t they want to know the secret to immortal life? But when Zenoplex flew near the President’s house, bullets started to hit his spaceship. He was frightened because he wasn’t aware of the strength the bullets possessed. It turns out they didn’t have much strength compared to Zenoplex’s spaceship. He was perfectly safe in there. The spaceship had weapons “just in case,” so Zenoplex activated them and shot the people who were shooting at him. The beam made the people set on fire and melt almost instantly. Unlike bullets against spaceships, heat lasers against humans were quite effective.
Zenoplex wondered why the humans were shooting their weapons at him. He didn’t bother asking though as he flew his torso sized ship into the President’s house and shot the people who tried to shoot him. When he finally found the president, Zenoplex got out of his ship and said, “Why do you now try to hurt me?”
“Zenoplex,” the President said. “You’ve been here for so long and you threaten us all the time with your challenges. We thought you would leave. We want you to leave.” Zenoplex was confused. He pondered what the President had said as he returned to his ship. He understood that the President was an important part of this country’s inner machinations, so he apologized for the confusion and left the President their cowering in his own home.
Zenoplex left Earth and returned to his home planet. While he was at Earth, Zenoplex had killed five people including Roger Cronish. In the time since he had left his home planet, there were no Korkashourtian murders. In the past ten thousand years, there had only been two Korkashourtian murders, and they were both of unjust leaders. The last innocent Korkashourt to be murdered doesn’t exist, because by chance, no innocent Korkashourt had ever been murdered.
Zenoplex thought on this as he began his long journey back home. Perhaps he had murdered five humans on Earth, but think of all those he may have saved with his challenges! Unlike when the bullet had spared the child by killing his wife, Zenoplex could find solace in this.
He elected not to share his findings of Earth. The planet and its humans would live unbothered by the Korkashourt; they would sit in their strange chemicals and reactions and they would murder each other, and some would help others, and some would grow old while others died very young for one reason or another and it was all left up to chance.
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