Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration
(quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind.
These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat,
irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if
anything comes of them. z
Z
SF Trope:
Benevolent Alien Invasion (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BenevolentAlienInvasion)
Current Event: http://fortune.com/2016/06/01/poverty-simulation-camps/
Landon Smith
shaded his eyes as he looked up into the crystal clear Nebraska sky. September was
an odd time for an Alien invasion. “What do you suppose this group wants to see?”
he asked the girl next to him as he pulled off his cowboy hat and wiped at the
band of sweat. Even though school had already started, it was still a scorcher.
Clarkson in Omaha had drawn him from his hometown with the brass ring of the
first full-scale Theoretical Alien Psychology and Philosophy PhD in the
country.
Olivia Williams
had come for the same reason, though she hated the fact that she’d also
promised to the college place-kicker on the football team. She sighed. She
STILL wished people wanted her for mind more than her extra-point record. She
said, “The same as all of them – poverty-stricken Earth People.”
“Yeah, but…” he
began.
“Why come here
and not Harlem or…” she added.
"Addis Ababa or
Dakar…”
“Or any of a
hundred other places?”
“Why here?” they
said together.
“It’s not like
they talk to anyone – or even pay us any attention. We could be stray cats as
far as they’re concerned.”
“Have you ever
watched one of their ‘poverty retreats’?” Landon said as they first pallet jack
rolled past with a platform of weird aliens. He knew he wasn’t supposed to feel
that way, but they were all but incomprehensible to him – or any other Human
for that matter. Not one single alien conformed to a body layout that even
remotely resembled something on Earth. The “parallel evolutionists” were
rethinking their theories at an alarming rate. The Laws of Evolution were being
seriously considered as totally outmoded and insufficient to explain, well…anything
living. One of the reasons he’d decided to major in TAPP.
“They’re so
weird, they aren’t even creepy. Even in my worst nightmare I wouldn’t have been
able to imagine these intelligences.”
“That’s why they
aren’t particularly scary.” Landon said, “They don’t remind us of ourselves in
any way, so they CAN’T be frightening. They’re…alien.”
They said the
last word together again. She shrugged, “Well, I for one am looking for some
way of breaking through their indifference.”
“You don’t hold
with Feng Youlan’s theory that they simply cannot see us – that we’re so far
outside of their realm of experience that their brains can’t interpret us at
all?”
She laughed and
they walked away, arm in arm. Behind them, one of the aliens twitched something
that might have been an eye and might have blinked in what could be thought of
as interest.
Names: ♀ common Arkansas names, ; ♂
common Idaho names
Image: https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQiPkIbgRb9_t_Hpv-90EhpoQ9rnHwdh4QMlMLhE8Gxt7Y1OeYbFw
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