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Imagine if you will... the leader of the fifth invader force speaking to the
commander in chief...
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet,
took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're
completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars."
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The
signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the
machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in
sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race
in the sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes
through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of
their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of
meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A
meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei.
But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat!"
"So... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is
the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to get in
touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"So what does the meat have in mind?"
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the universe,
contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat?"
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello.
Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how
when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at
each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient
races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favor.
Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with
meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's it
going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they
can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C space. Which
limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making
contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who
have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure they
won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and
smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we can mark this sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone
interesting on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine
star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be
friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe
would be if one were all alone."
“What the hell are you talking about?”
*********8
Sounds Monthy Python-ish to me! Anyone know?
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AB,
Very amusing. It does sound Pythonish but it was written by one Terry Bisson and first appeared in OMNI magagazine in April 1991. Here is Bisson's home page--
http://www.terrybisson.com/
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Thank you kindly lars! [img]biggrin.gif[/img] [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
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Good one AB! It sounds familiar from a lomg time ago but I can't remember where I heard it, could be Monty Python. You should mail this to Art Bell, I bet he's post it on his site and someone would find the source. [img]smile.gif[/img]
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how bout this one?
Tis all a checkerboard of nights and days
Where fate with men for peices plays
Hither thither moves and mates and slays
Then one by one back in the closet lays
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peices? i like that. sounds sorta fishy. maybe an Egyptian god maybe. sounds like bedtime
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It's an easy one but maybe a bad idea. I'd probably blow given a stanza of your favorite. Still, try;
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stubled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and
scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he
called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face
though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank to his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
Ya gotta get that one.
This one's tougher. Guy won 5 pulitzers while still alive but wrote too much. My favorite;
She fears him and will always ask what fated her to chose him.
She meets in his engaging mask all reasons to refuse him.
But what she meets and what she fears is less than are the downward years
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs of age were she to lose him.
(relax ladies. it's a story about a house)
