Name of Alt

Name of Alt

Smashwords edition

Copyright © 2010 Kevin A. Kierstead

Kevin A. Kierstead

Second printing

All rights reserved.

ISBN-10: 1456581902

ISBN-13: 978-1456581909

DEDICATION

For Jo, who made me Boompow, and who knows they are hiding stuff.  Lots of stuff.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to NASA, The History Channel, National Geographic, Neil Commins (The Hazards of Space Travel), Erich Anton Paul von Däniken (Chariots of the Gods?), my friends and family who believed in me, and my daughter, Marlowe, whose daddy longs for her hug every single day and couldn’t imagine being a Douzian Explorer if not for missing her. I will always be with you, Marlowe, no matter how far away I get.

Chapter 1

Hello

I’m a goddamned alien who is 172 years old.  Whoopty-damned-doo.  Listen, humans: not only are you not alone in the Universe, but your extra-terrestrial neighbors classify your planet as a relatively boring and uneventful shithole.  Those are the words Khan wanted me to begin with so I did, because I owed him a favor and I chose to pacify him so he would stop nagging me.  Don’t judge me for that tasteless opening until you have endured a sustained campaign of nagging by Khan.  Please forgive the temporary absence of class in my opening.  With that out of the way, let’s move straight to business after a more tastefully expressed introduction.

My name is Altinison Borahamen. 

To be truthful, that’s not a perfect representation of my name, but that’s the closest sound to it in your world. 

Even stranger to you may be the fact that where I’m from, my whole immediate family has the same name.  I specify immediate because we tend to refer to our species as our family, which I’ll explain later.  Our immediate family members are separated only by a unique identifier that is something like a number behind each of our names as well as a star location symbol which we also pronounce and which changes with location; we believe the place we are currently located is a part of who we currently are, because as places change, we change. 

We don’t have the sense of personal pride that would make us strive to have individual names; only some difference between our names within a given family—I’ll spare you how we can shorten all that using a type of slang.  Right now, I’m just trying to reach out to you, so please, call me Alt.

I’m going to be sharing information with you in summarized fashion in the first part of this message, giving details about that information in later sections.  I’ll touch on some things that I believe you would want to know more about early on and I will describe most of those things, with depth, and examples/science/proof in later sections of this story.  These chapters will not be in an obvious order—not chronological, for certain—but will be in the order that I believe will best build a foundation of understanding for chapters that follow and I believe you will agree with me by the end of the story that the order was most suitable for transmitting this kind of information between our two families, or, if you insist, species.

First matter; why I’m here. 

I’ve lost my way.  My navigational and communication equipment has failed or been disabled and now, although I’m not entirely at your mercy—I can leave anytime—I am in a non-functional state because I cannot get home without this equipment functioning and home is where I want to go.  Home is a place I’ve been away from for far, far too long.  All I really need are a few metals and liquids from you.  As it turns out, however, I’ve decided to make my visit something more than a pit stop…

I’m from about 40 light years away which is not too far in intergalactic travel, depending on your travel technology, and my people, or kin, or species—we think of ourselves more as a family than a species as I

implied—has no comparable sound in the spoken tones of humans to name ourselves as a group, except for the first syllable or sound, which is comparable to the French word for twelve which is douze, pronounced in English as dooze (not dews or dues). Therefore, I will refer to my species, if I must use the word species, as the Douze, or Douzians.

I did not know I would be contacting you; making new friends is not a habit I cultivate within myself.  I have lost a close friend, girlfriend, wife or child every 8 years for my entire life, on average.  The first time, I was 11-years old and it was my father who was only 63 at the time.  He was not an explorer like I; he was an inspection manager for one of the four large bio-domes we have which I’ll talk about later.  He was killed when a delivery robot malfunctioned; instead of slowing down it accelerated to about 200mph and at the size of a Frisbee but the weight of a small car (they carried secure information; one had to touch the robot to get the information) it basically went through him. 

The medical Douze told me then and still tell me now that he didn’t feel anything—that he died instantly—but I have my doubts.  I received his work gloves, of sorts, from his personal affects and they were bloody but not damaged so I know he was working on himself. 

After that came my first wife; disappeared explorer.  After that, two kids in a transport accident.  Then two more.  Then another wife.  I won’t mention the others; this much loss is more than any living creature should have to bear.  I don’t have pity on myself because I find that wholly depressing and wasteful, but when I think about the pain of the loss, it can entirely shut down my ability to function normally.  When it does, I’ll let the ship cruise and I won’t do any labs or studying.  I’ll sleep through the pain of the thoughts, when I can, but usually I can’t.

Chapter 2

Physiology of the Douze

My physical appearance is similar to yours.  My eyes are slightly larger, golden with touches of red and green, and semi-luminous and metallic/reflective in appearance and I have no hair.  I don’t really have a nose—just an inconspicuous hump with one nostril or opening. My skin is a medium sandstone color.  I have two relatively large fingers and two large thumbs on my hands and my feet are flat and do not have toes although they are shaped much like human feet otherwise. 

I stand about 5 feet tall and weigh about 230 lbs.—our bodies are relatively thin but dense.  Our skeletal structures and organ systems have similarities with humans but are, overall, fundamentally different. 

Our bodies include a self-regulating temperature system like yours, but ours also contain a self-regulating pressure system using a series of glands and gas bladders to push out or in against the skin and skeletal structures; a system that allows us to sustain high G-forces, as well as high air and water pressure (deep liquid submersion).  In other words, Douzians essentially have built-in G-suits.  That may sound fantastic, but compared to some of the complex life forms we know of throughout a relatively small portion of the universe we have explored, we’re staggeringly simple creatures.

We require hydration with water or other liquids—just about any non-acidic liquid will do—and we require food for energy.  We produce waste as you do, but very little by comparison.  Our digestive processes are efficient but incredibly slow compared to yours which coincides with our movement and behaviors in general… we Douze move slowly, much like a current creature on your planet, the chameleon, although we do not have the same camouflaging staggered walk.  Zvet is usually cold, and slow physical movement is how we have developed for the last 2.6 billion years.  We do not feel this cold as an uncomfortable condition, but we are sensitive to heat.    My life span is 225.4 years, set aside for accidents. 

Diseases do not kill the Douze as we have a sound system of medicine that focuses on prevention and cure and uses highly advanced chemistry and biological processes, manufactured all.  What we can’t be immunized against, we kill.  What we can’t kill, we trick into leaving the body.  If it doesn’t fall for the trick and leave, we simply install cells that will occupy the attention of a given disease so that it leaves our own cells alone.  Douzians die from various things—mostly accidents involving space travel and extra-atmospheric construction (especially on our bio-domes which I’ll tell you about later) but not disease.  Disease hasn’t won a battle with the Douze a single time in our entire history.  This may sound remarkable to you as well, but for comparison, it is the same as if you had to explain to Cro-Magnon man (whom I’ll be referencing regularly in this story) that you had lived your whole life without even going a single day without food or drink.  Remarkable to them; not very implausible to you.

Chapter 3

Laying the Foundation

If I seem overly echt or artless at any time, it is not intentional; it is in my nature as a Douzian to share or exchange information as quickly as possible and that can come across as being acerbic or even crude.  To the contrary of that impression I may give, we Douzians are kind creatures.  We just don’t put much effort into inserting kindness into our communications—politeness and a giving nature are qualities we show in our behaviors instead, at least during moments when we aren’t observing injustices. 

From what I’ve learned of humans, if you had to choose one over the other, you’d do well to exchange your kind words for a resolute change toward kind behavior.  Where I’m from, life is fair.  We make it fair and keep it fair.  There are no laws; only concerned friends and neighbors.  As such, kind behavior is all but guaranteed.  Kind communications, however, are more of a calligraphic art form among a family composed mostly of penciled writers in Douzian culture. 

When we communicate, we combine our relatively advanced vocabulary which can combine many actions or things into a single word with our hand, arm, head, face, and waist-bending movements and sounds to communicate at about four times the speed humans typically communicate.  Even now, it is taking some effort on my part to avoid coming across as roused and impatient in my writing to you.  That’s nothing against you, nor should it evoke in you some perception that I am haughty.  You’ll understand soon.

It will not be easy for me to convey to you what our lives are like where I’m from.  Your languages are extremely limited in words and definitions and your knowledge of physics is not adequate for me to be able to freely express information, but I believe I can offer a general story of our life at home and what I believe is happening with humans, with some specifics to help you understand it. 

It’s not as if what I have to say is complex, in some way, far above your comprehension—it is just so very much different on so many scales and I will have to use approximate words with definitions that change for you depending on language on culture.  In 25,000 years or so, if you make the types of choices that allow technological growth and life at large to continue between now and then, you will have a very powerful vocabulary, both social and scientific, and around that time, we could communicate more accurately and readily.  To answer the begged question; yes, we’ll be 25,000 years more advanced as well, but our language skills have peaked and plateaud.  We have been around a very, very long time. 

With the language limits, all I can promise you is that I will do my best to describe things as accurately as possible for the purposes of this story.  Some things that may sound ambiguous are that way because it was not possible to go into more detail regarding that issue with your languages.  Where appropriate, I will use analogies that you can understand but even then, there will almost always be separation between how you comprehend something I’m saying and what you would think if you could experience the thing I’m describing for yourselves. 

My primary communication effort and goal is to keep that separation as small as possible; to try to convey information to you with accuracy.  I’ll gladly accept my portion of the responsibility for whatever may be lost in translation—perhaps if I were more articulate, I could form a better presentation for you in this effort to bring what I know to you. 

With that, I’d like to state my first analogy; my position right now in explaining things to you is something like you would face if your situation required you to explain e-mail to Cro-Magnon man.  Imagine if you had to teach him about e-mail with no background instruction, keeping in mind, also, that at that stage, humankind only used 15 words (cross-cultural average) and had no written language except for symbols that were not universally understood yet or agreed upon as a standard among a given people. 

For example, early man had symbols like drawings of two circles that initially were meant to represent the sun and moon and even then, the teaching of those symbols suffered for hundreds of years—as the instruction was given, one would point at the two circles and then point at the sun or the moon, but never both at once.  You may find it interesting that these two circles eventually became the infinity sign, and that specific eventuality seems strong and clear for obvious reasons.  Not only was it confusing as to whether the sun followed the moon or the moon followed the sun, but it kept happening and happening, every 24 hours… 

To stay on point with this analogy, imagine interrupting one of these lessons from early man to his clan as he tries to explain that wherever these two circles are drawn (dirt, cave walls, painted on body) he is trying to give a message or ask a question about the sun and/or moon—imagine interrupting his lesson and taking over the lesson to then teach the intended pupils about e-mail, all the while trying to make a deadline.  That’s where I am.  I lack the bridge of information to bring you easily into the world of the Douze or even to allow you