Search for Terrestrial Intelligence

Sans Uri Lines shoved her way through the narrow door into the
cramped stateroom, feeling along the wall for the light switch. Turning
the large knob until it snapped and the overhead fluorescent light
begin to flicker and sputter to life. She was wearing a form fitting
black synthetic suit that followed the primal lines of her figure with
state of the art precision and tall leather boots with heavy metal
buckles. The stateroom was small enough for her to reach the folding
bunk on the far bulkhead in four steps and she violently shook the
figure nestled comfortably beneath the covers with a thick, cozy
blanket drawn up tightly to his nose.

She said forcefully, "Captain, we're under attack!"

"Sound General Quarters," Colemann Sands bolted upright and threw off
the blanket. He took Lines by the shoulders, set her aside neatly and
grabbing his duty coveralls off the back of the chair at his desk.
"Everyone in pressure suits and helmets."

"Aye, sir."

"Who's the duty officer?"

"Goodfellow Downs."

Sands rubbed his face as he leaned with one elbow on the bulkhead and
his head near the wall intercom. He twisted the intercom knob over and
spoke into the speaker. His voice crackled with sleep. "Report,
Goody?"

"Incoming missiles, sir," Downs' voice broke through the static.
"They're new to me. Some kind of solid rocket fuel, unmanned vehicles
carrying payload capsules that contain some kind of nuclear chain
reaction explosives."

"Nuclear warheads?" Sands did not sound impressed. He angrily twisted
the springloaded switch again. "Bearing and range?"

"Port four eight point five five eight. Eight million kilometers and
closing."

The public address system reverberated throughout the steely
passageways lined with utility conduits and water lines of Indra. At
first was a distinctive, high pitched digital piping whistle, followed
by a computer generated female voice. "General Quarters, General
Quarters! All hands man your battle stations! Set damage control
condition Zulu throughout the ship! General Quarters, General Quarters!
All hands man your battle stations! Set damage control condition Zulu
throughout the ship!"

"Slow to one quarter, prepare to disengage the artificial gravity for
evasive maneuvering," Sands shouted over the public address system into
the intercom pick-up. "Time to impact?"

"Five hours, twenty-three minutes, Captain."

"Five hours?" Sands zippered the front of his coveralls closed. "We
have time to weave a blanket. What are they shooting at?"

"Captain, frankly, I don't have any idea," Downs said. "Seems like
those things would be more hazardous to whoever handled them than to
anything they could hit with them. The ship is slowing to one
quarter."

"Very well, Goody," Sands said, all of the urgency drained out of his
voice. "Get everybody on the bridge in EVA suits. No helmets for right
now. I'm on my way."

When Sands reached the top of the ladderwell from C corridor onto the
bridge, he was wearing his full EVA pressure suit with the metal helmet
ring open to finish the suit with its heavy, pressurized radio helmet
at a moment's notice.

"Captain on the bridge!" The helmsman, Midshipman Prints, shouted out
from his position at the tiller.

"Where'd they come from?" Sands checked over a few computer readouts on
the bridge. "Mr. Hobbes? Is it the crew of the Ark?"

"They came from Earth." Hobbes was busily tucking the frazzled locks of
his long, grey beard inside the helmet ring of his space suit. "The Ark
didn't have anything like that onboard. I couldn't imagine why they
would manufacture something like that, my guess is their plasma
weaponry is not functional and they think our vessel is a large meteor
on a collision course with the planet. They might be hoping these
weapons would break apart the meteor and divert the trajectory of any
large pieces."

"A meteor that turns and broadcasts signals?" Goodfellow Downs
countered sharply.

The ship's Navigator interrupted them. "Captain, Deck Department
reports they have fifteen escape pods that have been taken over for
storage. Even if they could launch they're so overweight any gravity
field in the system would burn them up on reentry like a skeeter in a
campfire."

"Break the Zulu condition on those decks and leap frog those people out
through the containment doors to an area where we can pack them in
other pods." Sands turned to Lines as she stepped up to the plotting
table in the center of the bridge. "So, what did we broadcast?"

Sans Uri Lines touched a section on the table and it began a cascading
view of various different overlapping screens.

Sands read from one of them. "Of the Vedas I am the Veda of songs, and
I am Indra, the chief of the gods. Above man's senses I am the the
mind, and in all living beings I am the light of consciousness."

He looked among the other officers gathered around the plotting table
in their pressure suits. "What's so threatening about that?"

"Where's that from?" Midshipman Prints asked Hobbes.

"It's from the Bhagavad Gita, my good fellow," Hobbes indicated the
ship around them. "It's where our ship gets its name."

Downs shrugged. "They should recognize that, for crying out loud. How
many Indras can there be?"

"Coming into scanner range of the planet, sir," Prints announced.

"Okay, Mr. Hobbes," Sands tried to see over the older man's shoulder at
the computer readouts on the plotting table. "Where's the Ark?"

The stately Mr. Hobbes shook his head. "Oh, my word."

"Well?" Goodfellow Downs asked. "What is it?"

"There is no Ark." Hobbes said as he continued to read. "There are
astrological patterns in this region consistent with a large space
vessel passing into a temporal distortion. They passed far out of time
with us during light speed."

Lines asked tentitively. "So, we have to wait for them?"

"On the contrary," Hobbes turned from the plotting table to the windows
of the bridge. He studied the bright blue orb with white swirls of
cloud formations that floated in the vast, ink black cosmos. "They are
over fifteen thousand years ahead of us."

Sands turned to the windows as well. He leaned one hand on the table
and put his hand on his hip through the heavy suit. "We're being shot
at by descendents of the crew of the Ark?"

"It would appear so."

"Well, they should still know who Indra is," Downs said. "Fifteen
thousand years? That's only - What? Five hundred generations or so.
Those people should still know what the Bhagvad Gita is."

"I'm not so sure." Hobbes said cryptically as he returned to the data
scrolling across the plotting table. "Captain, I don't think they were
expecting us. I don't think they were expecting anyone. The
transmission traffic on the planet indicates a planet-wide panic and
state of emergency. Those missiles are the extent of their trying to
defend what they call their 'way of life.' "

Downs looked sideways hard at Hobbes. "The only space vessels capable
of getting here would have to be able to generate more power than their
sun and travel at speeds a hundred million times the speed of light,
and they respond to it by shooting missiles that take fifteen minutes
to leave the atmosphere? They must have scuttled common sense along
with the Ark's plasma weapons."

"What if they lost the records of the Ark, Captain?" Lines offered.
"These people have never encountered a vessel from outside of their
solar system before. Everything about us would have extraordinary
significance for them."

"Significance?" Downs glared at her. "They are shooting nuclear weapons
at us."

"Cole," Sans Uri Lines called the Captain by his first name. "Look, the
Bhagvad Gita was dictated by Krishna on the field of the final battle
between good and evil. I can see how people could misinterpret it as a
threat."

Sands rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger. "We've come
a long way, so I'm willing to stretch a bit, here. But, I'm telling you
now, I don't listen to what people tell me, I look at what people do.
Mr. Hobbes, what's going on down there."

"That's a very cynical approach to interpersonal relationships,
Captain," Lines said while Hobbes looked over the computer
readouts.

"Yeah, but it keeps hypocrites from yanking my chain."

"A lot of encoded transmissions, military codes and so on," Hobbes
reported in his unhurried manner. "Telephone transmission lines and
airwave traffic is substantial. We've certainly got the neighborhood
a-buzzing, Skipper, that's for sure. Facinating. They have a global
satellite relay system for telephonic communications and visual
imagery. The visual images are then interpreted in viewers called
televisions. They're ubiquitous. Nearly universal. Except for the areas
where people appear to be starving to death."

"What are the images of?"

"Well, most of them appear to be advertisements for people to purchase
things."

"What kind of things?"

"Internal combustion engined land vehicles," Hobbes went down the list.
"Lots of advertisements to drink one drink or another of fermented
alcohol and then as many others for something known as fast
food."

"Am I missing something from basic human physiology?" Downs asked.
"Wouldn't drinking fermented alcohol cause brain damage and dangerously
high blood pressure?"

"It would really impair human judgment, too. There'd have to be rampant
crime and violence," Lines surmised. "I'd bet high levels of sexual
promiscuity and unplanned pregnancy."

"And depression and suicide." Sands said. "Probably as bad or worse
than lead poisoning."

"Well, by the looks of this, it's not nearly the worst they do to
themselves," Hobbes told them.

"All right," Downs said. "I give up. So, what is fast food?"

"Well," Hobbes carefully cross-checked the definition in the ship's
library system. "It is mass produced, ready-made food. Foods mass
produced in factories with lots of animal fats and refined sugars for
high taste and lots of sweet things that are nutritionally worthless.
Pretty much what any kid in a candy store would eat. Mostly meat from
other animals."

Lines put her hand to her mouth. "If everybody is eating animal meat,
they must have epidemic levels of high blood pressure and heart
disease, diabetes and cancer. Not to mention bone deterioration. Animal
fat interferes with the absorption of calcium."

"Yes, well, strangely, a great amount of resources are expended on
hospitals and the care of the chronic illness and the re-active
treatment of symptoms." Hobbes stroked his beard. "Very little time or
effort spent on pro-active health. It's as if they truly believe they
can be healthy without proper diet and an active lifestyle with regular
exercise. Extraordinary, really."

"There must be just as many psychiatric centers to deal with the
psychological burden, too," Lines shook her head in disbelief. "The
stress must be overwhelming at times."

"With all of those internal combustion engines running, what does the
atmosphere look like?" Downs asked.

"Yes, well," Hobbes looked over the console. "It looks as though they
have compounded the problem of atmospheric decay by deforesting large
areas of land for pastureland and grain fields to feed all those feed
animals. There's heavy concentrations of immissions from land vehicles
and commercial factories that exhaust straight into the atmosphere,
especially around the large population centers. There is widespread
toxic levels of pesticides and herbicides used in mass production
farming, there's even pesticide residue in the farthest reaches of the
Northern pole and in the deepest areas of the planet's oceans. They
have dammed up rivers with electricity generating plants and made them
uninhabitable for life with discarded chemicals and refuse. The vast
majority of the land surface is jumbled with asphalt roads and utility
lines for individual, mass produced, horribly inefficient wooden houses
that Earthlings mortgage away their entire lives for."

Sands asked. "Where are they going in all those land vehicles?"

"It doesn't look like they go anywhere in all those land vehicles. They
sit in them in long lines along asphalt roadways for a few miles from
their homes and back. They work outside of their home at some kind of
place of employment where they exchange a large amount of time of their
day for the majority of their lives in return for currency. They use
this currency to purchase things like food and to pay for their housing
and so forth."

"How can you force somebody to pay for housing?" Downs asked.

"According to this, their way of life is based on a concept of private
ownership of land," Hobbes explained. "They take the natural world and
divide it up on a map and section off one area or another for each
person and their family. Especially now that the Earth's surface area
is all claimed and the only way to get a piece of land is to buy it
from someone else or take it from them with violence. It's really quite
extraordinary. They've live in a perpetual state of war over it. No end
to the conflict."

"Well, if they do all of this and dedicate so much of thier lives to
work, this work must be pretty damned important," Downs crossed his
arms as best he could in the clumsy pressure suit. "What do they
do?"

"Well," Hobbes struggled. "It's a very bureaucratic system where it
doesn't look like they actually do anything other than work for the
sake of working. They all do different things to contribute to this
'way of life.' Some of them do hard, manual labor like fixing the
asphalt roadways for the land vehicles and repairing the engines on the
land vehicles. Others build the houses. Some sit at computer terminals
for hours on end, completely isolated from the planet's fresh air and
sunshine and manage the payment of the currency for others. It's quite
elaborate what they do for currency. They're always coming up with new
work to do."

Downs shook his head. "Wouldn't it just be easier and less invasive on
the ecosystem to get together with a bunch of friends, buy one of these
pieces of land and grow everything you need to eat? You could do some
kind of crafts or something to barter for anything else you wanted? You
could have a small generator and a solar panel to generate electricity
if you still wanted to watch the television every once in a
while."

Hobbes shrugged.

"Who do you buy the land from? If somebody sells you their land, where
are they going to go?" Lines asked.

"Not everyone who owns land lives on the land."

"So some people own more than one piece of land while others have
none?" Downs asked, incredulously. "And none of them use it to live
free on their own?"

"Well, it's all very complicated," Hobbes told him. "Apparently there's
fine print put into the man-made laws to stop anybody from doing that.
There are social status considerations and so forth. Why, there's
really no way around all of the various municipal codes and federal
statutes and so forth. It's all very complicated."

"It's all bullshit."

Sands held up a hand to quiet Goodfellow Downs. "So, they have to
realize this way of life can't continue indefinately. Don't they want
to live on and pass down their traditions and ideas to the future?
Surely, there's some stuff that's worthy of being remembered? Why don't
they cooperate with one another?"

"In addition to this idea of privately owning land, their way of life
is also based on the idea of fundamental inequity," Hobbes told the
Captain. "They very strongly believe themselves to be superior to other
animals. They believe they are superior to other animals and that each
one of them is superior to and more entitled to exploit the natural
resources than the next fellow. Even that one person is more entitled
to life than another. Humans kill other humans with as much everyday
frequency as they kill any other animal. That delusion of superiority,
that belief in a fundamental inequality, is the basis of their suicidal
empire. Inequality and conservation are mutually exclusive."

"If I may, it is somewhat summed up in the line from the Bhagvad Gita
that says all beings are born in delusion, the delusion of division
which comes from desire and hate."

"This has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard of," Downs
said. "Who benefits from all this?"

"Oh, there are beneficiaries, to be sure," Hobbes aid. "There is a tiny
percentage of the population who live in extraordinary luxury. They get
to life an even more wasteful lifestyle than anyone else, wear lavish
clothing, drive the fast and stylish land vehicles. They have other
people serve them and do their work for them while others starve to
death with nothing."

"All right, all right," Sands interrupted them. "What are those
missiles for?"

"Apparently they developed a large stockpile of these types of nuclear
warheads in order to destroy the planet."

Sands rubbed his temples again. "So, why are they going to destroy the
planet they live on?"

Hobbes stroked his beard thoughtfully as he read from the computer
screens. Finally, he waved a hand over the computer screen helplessly,
showing that the explaination was too involved. "Apparently it was one
of these way of life issues."

"Captain, couldn't we go down there and disarm them?" Lines asked. "We
could disable those nuclear missiles and offer to safely dispose of the
radiological waste? We could get them started towards building
self-sufficient housing where they could live and grown their own
healthy foods within the limits of the resources in their given area.
They wouldn't have to keep doing that work thing and they could get rid
of all those ridiculous land vehicles and make those lazy wealthy
people do their own work. I mean, they could feed the entire population
of the planet several times over with the planted ground they use to
feed all those animals. They already have the technology, it would just
be a matter of showing them how to put it all together. We can't just
leave them all to die fromt he health problems and stress they're
under. How much of that is from not knowing where they came
from?"

"No way," Downs said. "I'm not going down there. We came here to check
up on the crew of the Ark and they've been dead and gone for fifteen
thousand years. Our mission to Earth is over."

Sands shook his head. "Why are you guys making me feel like Arjuna? I
am not the holy avenger. What would be the point in wiping out all
their weapons if they're just going to build more? We can show them how
to build and live in ecoplexes, but from what I'm seeing, it would be
just like in Aesop's fables, where the grasshopper who doesn't want to
do any hard work will come along and take away everything the ants have
put away. They like division and inequality, I'm not going to spare
them from the consequences of a choice like that. Let the stress kill
them off."

"You're not Arjuna, we're people. We don't have the right or the wisdom
to make a decision like that for seven billion people," Lines said.
"Those people in charge with the missiles who benefit from this whole
insane situation are not going to go quietly, Cole. They're going to
take everybody else with them. They would rather wipe themselves out
rather than change their way of life because they're too stupid and
lazy to change, but I know everybody down there can't think like that.
Statistically, it's just too crazy to get that many intelligent people
to fall for it."

"What about those people down there who want to live?" She asked Sands.
"What about the people who want a future and who want change? Are we
going to leave them to watch their world get destroyed, way outnumbered
and alone surrounded by a bunch of angry children who understand
nothing but violence and hate?"

"We can't explain equality to somebody else. It's inequity to even
presume we can." Sands asked. "How do you get somebody who is
benefiting from inequity to realize and admit how wrong they are and
quit being greedy and wasteful and start cooperating with one another?
How do you get somebody to sit down and spend the effort it takes to
work out a compromise when it's so easy to just kill the bastard and be
done with it?"

"Cole, look at it," she pointed to the porthole in the command bridge.
"You don't explain it to them. You said it yourself you can't go by
what people say. But people will believe us if we go down there and
show them. Instead of using up one area and moving on to another one,
we can show them how to live for ever."

Even compared to the most exotic gas storms and nebulas, planet Earth
was indeed a beautiful sight, a sparkling blue and white sphere in the
fathomless cosmos. An inviting oasis for any space traveler, endowed by
physics with a wink from the Creator to be the perfect distance from
fiery Sol to have an ideal environment to support human life. It had no
extremes in weather, such as on Jupiter, where the ion storms would
sandblast the surface four kilometers deep and the gravity would make a
human weigh as much as a school bus. The atmosphere was perfectly
breathable with fresh, clean oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen. The land
surface area and the oceans were endowed with too many wonders for any
number of people to ever possibly experience them all within their
lifetimes.

"It can't be done in a day or overnight," Lines admitted. "I don't
think we're going to see it in our lifetimes. Maybe we're not meant to.
We only get to see it like Moses did, we only get to see the Promised
Land from the mount. We won't be going with them. But we can plant the
seeds for those who come long after us to sit in the shade."

"It's a lunatic asylum down there, Captain. And the worst lunatics are
in charge." Downs stood away from the plotting table. "They will kill
everybody on this ship and take it over for intergalactic expansion the
instant an opportunity presents itself."

"They're not lunatics, Downs. They're children," Lines pleaded. "You
can't blame children for their upbringing. Violent and misbehaved
children, I'll grant you, but children none-the-less."

"Captain," Downs argued. "It's obvious the Ark mission is lost. I
suggest we just come about and get out of here before somebody gets
hurt and we end up unleasing a pestilence on the universe."

Hobbes touched a few areas on the plotting table and closed down his
sensor interpreter readouts. "Well, I suppose the scientific debate is
answered. What would happen if children were left alone to fend for
themselves and start their own civilization? I think the Ark has shown
us more than we ever wanted to know about our species. I have to agree
with Goodfellow Downs. I don't see how we have any official obligation
here. Indra's mission here was over fifteen thosuand years ago."

"Captain," Prints interrupted them. "Incoming transmission. It's on one
of those low frequency comsat channels from Earth. Probably some
backyard radio setup."

Sands nodded for Prints to transfer the message over to the plotting
table. When it appeared he read it outloud for the others. "Because the
man of pure vision, without pride or delusion, in liberty from the
chains of attachments, with his soul ever in his inner Spirit, all
selfish desires gone, and free from the two contraries known as
pleasure and pain, goes to the abode of Eternity."

"What's it mean?" Prints asked.

Hobbes stroked his beard and explained to the young helmsman. "It's
from the Bhagvad Gita."

Colemann Sands turned and looked out through the windows of the Indra's
bridge at the lonely planet ahead of them. The homeworld of the
immortality of high school and the promise of graduation. A planet of
endless countries awaiting discovery by explorers with a sense of
wonder to see the world fresh and new. Shiny and bright washed by May
rain. Snowflakes on a crisp morning single digit days before Christmas.
An old man seeing something that gives him infant eyes. A girl talking
too much on a first date. The planet of Nirvana of Brahman where it is
possible to lie down in a field of grass and feel the peace of
god.

"Disengage the artificial gravity, all hands prepare for evasive
maneuvers. Let's port around those missiles and make for Earth at best
speed," Sands ordered. "We've come this far. Let's plow a furrow into
this way of life of theirs and see if we can't sow some seeds of
change."

Climbing into the command seat, he began to fasten the restraining
harness that would hold him in place. He mused quietly. "Facing us in
the field of battle are teachers, fathers, and sons, grandsons,
grandfathers, wives' brothers, mothers' brothers and fathers of wives.
These I do not wish to slay, even if I myself am slain. Not even for
the kingdom of the three worlds, how much less for a kingdom of the
earth."

The ship's Navigator reported. "Captain, we've shuffled all those
escape pods and we've still got four people without abandon ship
stations."

"Very well. Send them full forward to the bridge escape pod." Sands
told him, grinning. "I'm going down with this ship."