Social Commentary - Aliens
“Space…..the final frontier…..” which once existed in the minds of men…... would begin the story of a culture made in the imagination of mankind. Its reality humans related to because of its “could be true” presentation. It was successful in preceding others into the minds of audiences.
It was in postmodern world that the cultures were enthralled most by the hope and promises of the future. People were able to ride into space at lightening speed, and confront the imaginable, finding it exiting and fascinating. The trip to the stars, as fanciful as it was, portrayed and disguised the human frailties that accompanied the adventurers; engaging the audience in vicarious participation while searching for habitable planets and civilizations. One was whisked off in spacecraft capable of all sorts of maneuvers, never returning home, which with every passing voyage, would become a fading memory. The adventure had no end, but it had the advantage of curiosity and made the future possible; it was theirs. Those who tuned in every week were to find themselves traveling distances that were almost incomprehensible. The sleek space craft and universal crew would emulate advanced humanity and invite them to go along.
On a planet, not so long ago and not so far away … was found a species of humans who lived for a time, then changed. They had become like creatures with unfamiliar forms, which had strange languages and customs. Odd beings looking alike, behaving alike, who would employ a hedonistic conceit which mocked the customs of their ancients and gave them away to meanderings. It was as if a shift had occurred and no one had noticed the difference. It had happened gradually, but in the journeys that were taken, time was not something constrained by imagination. For them it had sped up but they were yet, motionless.
Beyond the galaxies were regions of uncharted illusions, but on earth alien creatures walked about separate from one another, yet possessing the same space and time. There were creatures which had a void instead of a form, effacing a body’s norms with images but no content; always in a time concurrent with the present and analogous to the future. This is what was seen, but what they had become were aliens unto themselves, unseen.
History progressed rapidly for them. Light speed had been prophetic once, but now they seemed to own it. The acceleration into the future was noticeable even though it crept by slowly. Immobilized as they were by its speed, it became a perception of time held in possession for brief moments, that brought them knowledge and an intuition that one should seize it before it hurriedly advanced past the ability to control it. There was acceleration but no one dared to question it. The past was leaving at an alarming velocity. Ownership of it was an immaterial element, foreign to the science of the day and to be understood sometime in the future. No one could grasp it; the past would not posses its anchor. The philosophy of it all lay beyond the outer reaches of their thinking as they sought to travel within the confines of outer space. The search for new life would not reveal what they were looking for, but for a time, would alter their search into a revelation more revealing of themselves.
Vices have with humanity a certain quality of character, which are inseparable from their host, and when not linked to the past become loose aberrations looking for attachments. As if a mirror hung in front of oneself, one could see the image of the future, yet distant and distinct with a view, detached. The present was a knowledge which could be dealt with, if their vanity would allow it; their character would not.
The future illusion was their vision, the driving force which allowed them to imagine a universe free of the rules of the present even though the rules of the future were nowhere to be found; they were to be written as the voyage progressed. Time for them was relative. The past forgotten.
The aliens walked amongst themselves. It seemed the whole of them were consumed with brashness, crudity, a vulgar portrayal of refinement. They wore odd clothing, costumes, and paraded about everywhere as if they were in distant places, worlds apart, all to be seen; on display. They loved their appearances. It was the new way to” Trek” the universe of familiar things and places. Although the human form had not escaped them, they were different and took care not to divulge the obvious, yet it was.
They were a boastful bunch, proud, blaspheming anything and everything. The habit of breaking every contract, pledge and custom, was one of their many impairments. Their thereness offended, they were violent and seditious. A noise-some presence encompassed everything about them. It was difficult to find any of them who were otherwise. They were heard before they were seen. And there were those of the opposite form. A positive pole attached to a negative in such a manner as to attract one to the other seamlessly; indistinguishable from physics or biology except for their ability to meld form with function and appear common. In transition constantly they evolved toward the base no more that the others who about them continued with the illusion; rising only long enough to appease themselves with new delusions of grandeur, puffery and pleasure. The percussion from their mannerisms split the ears and pounded anyone beyond sight and certainly within hearing. There was not found among them any one of credible virtue.
They were all corrupted, and by what, none of them knew. All alien, all alien life forms to each other; manufactured.
No one knew the distance from Earth they had traveled, it had been done surreptitiously and the return was not considered. Without knowing what occurred they had become estranged. Without leaving the planet they had gone to the farthest reaches of the universe and taken their faults with them only to find the familiar. Discovering the grip of their depravities more difficult than imagined, more visible as one saw only what was acceptable to be seen, their attachments would hold them in time and place only long enough and until, desire would conquer their lives and expose them to items that no longer existed. The earthlings had become what they wished to seek after, they were alien.
It was an adventurous voyage but it was not logical. It was a star ship on an exploration replete with everything the mind could conjure up. It was incredulous as it was pretentious. It was fun until it reached the end; there it ended when the mind overcame the imagination and reality confronted the alien. When they looked back and saw themselves within the distance traveled, the beginning starred at them from the farthest point of the universe. The inescapable distance of time and imagination would prevent their searches from continuing. They found the strange life forms, the civilizations, which for better or for worse, were a reflection of humanity in its attempt to conquer itself. Inner space was the universe they had searched. The life forms they had found were the ones they left with. The mind was an empty universe of lost souls.
It was no longer possible to explore strange new worlds; they had seen them all. They could no longer discover the unknown universe, it was only sufficient to peer into the various aberrations of themselves and discover the alien life forms of earth. There were search-able confines to this vast place; the deadness of it and its lack of definition placed them at a loss but they were free to explore it. Imagination and truth would part company there. The mind and soul would leave on separate journeys to become strangers, so very far apart but relatively close. To be lost here was to be unknown, the worst form of being.
No longer could they reach out and imagine while looking for the future. That last frontier had become unreachable. They had become unreasonable and no longer capable of enduring any voyage, not even the imagined trip into space. It would continue to elude them. They had found only one thing, the very thing they had scoured the universe for. The time spent traveling revealed the only alien form discoverable. The space they sought after was found in the emptiness of their lives. That lonely eternity marked by darkness and time. Some would say death would retain ownership of that place because it was deep and long and had become an overbearing entity whose existence could be felt; they were aware of what it was but could not see it. Vision was a utensil of the past; it no longer mattered and was useless.
With nowhere else to go, no more voyages, they endeavored to search out their own. The reality had become obvious but only after all of the departures had escaped them. The aliens were recognizable. The same ones were on the starship; the captain, the first officer, the crew, every human who ventured into the time it took to open and close the apparition. Alien began probing out after alien. A to and fro variety of movements that made repetition look civil was what defined their attempts to grasp what reality could be found. It was a display of perverse affection. Only they could glance at one another and reveal the vastness and emptiness and lifelessness. One journey into the future was all it took to imagine what they had left behind. They would return every week until they succumbed to the habits of finite men and live the vicarious life of vagabonds searching for meaning among the dead and the dead among the living. The distance between each of them was as if the farthest points in the universe were but feet away, yet their attempts to reach across it would further distance them one from another. The realms of infinity would grow closer as the boundaries of their hearts became more constrained and a deeper blackness would confine them. The hope that once seemed to guide them dimmed the possibilities of their searches. Their journey outward was really nothing more than an inward look. It was the future, it was the end, space was closed and there was no going back. They were home where inner space would make them confront their musings. The journey would begin were it ended as their appetite would not be quieted with more adventures. The aliens would continue in motion while motionless. The galaxies and constellations and civilizations would elude them time and again. It was that quantum perception which beckoned the brave to wait on the next voyage where the timid would be left behind and the bold would embark once more to go were no one had gone before; if only they could.
In the silence, in the distant halls of the universe where borders are nonexistent, where the eyes are overwhelmed by the imagination, where mirrors reflect no light and the sound of the stars is heard by God alone, fiction takes liberty with the truth, but the soul cannot escape it.
Fascinating !