Paranoid’s Delight
Interview with the Alien

The Backstory
On the sloping banks of Buffalo Bayou in the heart of downtown Houston is a little municipal green patch known as Sam Houston Park. There, with skyscrapers in the middle distance and a half dozen 19th century houses in the near distance, your reporter sat on the pedestal of an over-size statue of the archangel Michael that surveys the bayou—and that not infrequently disappears temporarily beneath flood waters—and spoke with a person who demanded anonymity for the interview. Suffice it to say he is very highly placed in the Houston establishment, in terms of money, influence, and accomplishment.

The reader’s questions—why this interview? why the anonymity? why? why? why?—will be at least partially answered below.

One possibly troubling detail: If you had walked by during the interview, you would not have been aware that anything unusual—indeed, that anything—was happening. You would have seen two men sitting on a park bench apparently doing nothing more than taking the sun and watching ducks navigate the pond at Michael’s largish feet. Only midway through the interview, you see, did your reporter realize that, well, we weren’t talking, that twixt soaring buildings and gliding Interstate, quacking and honking, telepathy was occurring. Bigtime…

Note: Occasional, odd pauses occurred, indicated below by asterisks.

The Interview
The Alien: How did you find me?

Magellan’s Log: A dream. I had a long—in fact it seemed to last all night—dream in which many encounters with your ilk occurred. I was so stubborn in my insistence on verification of what they were telling me that finally, just before I woke up, one of them blurted out your name and yelled, "Talk to HIM! Talk to HIM!"

A [smirks].

ML: And just why is it that you’re here? Surely entities of your ability have better things to do than mess about with such as us, whom my dream creatures last night kept referring to as "such primitive minds."

A: Come, now. There are many reasons. Why do so many humans explore the jungles of South America? Some of us are here on holiday, so to speak. Others are truly fascinated and are doing what you would call "research." Others are just passing through, killing time between flights, so to speak. You also get the occasional, um, teen-age—so to speak—joy-riders who are not above causing a bit of mischief.

ML: You make it all sound trivial.

A: Much of it is. Again, I’d remind you to think of the range of human behavior in exotic territories.

ML: The simple attractions of primitives, eh?

A: That, yes, but your planet itself has its own qualities that draw us here.

ML: For example?

A: You no doubt expect me to sing the beauties of mountains, rain forests, and the like. Sorry to disillusion you but such physical features are a dime a dozen throughout the galaxies… You have, you see, not even got close to the warp and woof of interstellar space. How to put this? Galaxies have, well, let’s call them "nervous systems," which in turn have nodal points, where what you might call "information" conglomerates and is, in your present jargon, "processed." Stars and their planets are often links in such networks, with each planet having its own unique signature. I know. It must sound utter nonsense to you. But you asked why we’re attracted to your planet. That’s why. This body you call "earth" is a, um, sort of nodal point with, um, unusual characteristics. Ask me again in 10,000 years and maybe you’ll get it.

ML: OK, can we get it down to my scale. What’s your favorite human thing?

A: Most of us quite like your orgasms. We perceive them as delightful, uncontrolled natural phenomena, like a meteor shower, or wee volcanic eruption, something like that. And, I have to confess, we do, so to speak, ride the pleasure. We get precisely the same jolt from the moment that you do. I know, you want me to mention your great art, your great philosophy, science, and so on. Sorry, my friend, it’s all—all—scribblings on kindergarten tablets. And nothing like as much fun as your sexual releases.

* * *

ML: So you’ve been coming here quite a while.

A: Oh my, yes.

ML: And just how is it that you continue to escape notice?

A: If we’re ten, or a hundred times cleverer than you think we are, and if we are not constrained by what you think of as physical reality but move rather in realms and worlds of which your scientists have not even dreamed, how could you possibly know that we’re here? And of course we’ve not entirely escaped notice. Certain, um, mischief-makers among us delight in giving glimpses—often of the most extraordinarily fantastic kind, what you call UFO’s, crop circles, that sort of thing.

ML: And just how does such adolescent behavior jibe with this extra-galactic wisdom that you’re telling me you possess?

A: Of course some of us are mischief-makers, even—and this is a reach—some whom you might call "felons." And yes, we grow, from youth to maturity. Which means we have adolescent problems, call them "trans-dimensional delinquents." Some of us meddle in places others of us would rather they not be, even into the minds of some of your prime ministers, presidents, generals, writers, artists, actors, even—sorry if I’m treading on sensitive toes here—would-be saviors, and so on, planting all sorts of fanciful, often quite absurd idea-seeds, just to watch what happens when they germinate. Please bear in mind, our, um, "perspective" is both larger and different from yours, so we don’t react to these little "incursions" with quite the viciousness that characterizes your methods of dealing with disruptions in the social order.

* * *

ML: Do you interfere in more benevolent ways?

A: Does the gardener interfere when she waters plants in need of water, when she weeds, when she re-arranges a garden?

ML: So you do interfere?

A: I’d rather say "intervene." One way we’ve come to see the mystery of being is our perception of the nurturant universe. If you can avoid such judgments as "violence" and "indifference", which we’ve come to believe are the judgments of kindergarten minds, and if you can accept pain and pleasure as an inseparable, paired phenomenon, you are left with the endlessly fulgent reality of growth and growth and more growth. Not that we understand it, only that that is the lesson of eons. We’ve found that all—note that "all"—reflective entities come to that realization. We observe. And on occasion we intervene to encourage growth. But bear in mind, our interventions are always subtle and often—if you somehow come to sense them—paradoxical. And not, I hasten to add, always successful in the ways we had hoped.

ML: So you’ve had disastrous interventions here?

A [wryly]: Indeed.

ML: Can you be specific?

A: I’ll just say this. We plant seeds in what we think are the best growing environments. Given the complex of forces in play everywhere and from the remotest parts of the universe, the planted seeds are always at some risk. Behavioral pointers that we saw as future sources of hopeful growth sometimes suffer the profoundest distortions toward violence, mindless intolerance, and almost gleeful destructiveness.

ML: You’re talking about religions.

A: Yes. Some.

ML: Most?

A [sadly]: Almost all.

ML: Which is why for many centuries you’ve backed off from that kind of, as you call them, "interventions"?

A: Yes. Sometimes gardens are best left to their own inscrutable devices.

ML: And yourselves too? I assume, from what you say, there are entities above you also. I take it interventions have occurred in your own affairs, not always with the best outcomes.

A: Apparently. Though, as with you contemplating and trying to puzzle out your own history, it’s difficult for us to discern what has been "intervention" and what is simple paranoia or evasion of responsibility for our own shortcomings and mistakes.

* * *