The Conversation(William Cline) The Conversation

The Conversation was a local radio show originating from (redacted). Richard Foster was the host for many years until his sudden disappearance in (redacted). Show # (redacted) took place on (redacted) and was the last show broadcast prior to Foster’s disappearance. What follows is an excerpt from the final report on Foster’s disappearance done by the (redacted) police department. This excerpt is a transcript of the last call to Foster’s last show. Soon after, the station lost its FCC license and ended broadcasting. The tape of the show disappeared shortly after this transcription was completed.

Additional information used to produce this document was taken from interviews with the show’s engineer.

An extensive search was made to find anyone within the broadcast area of the station who could verify this conversation took place. None was found.

Conversations, with Richard Foster

(Mid-way through the broadcast, after a commercial break)

Foster: And we are back. This is Richard Foster with you tonight, and if you just joined us, the topic of conversation is aliens; visitors from outer space; whatever you want to call them. Are they real? Are they here, and if so, why? If you have an experience you would like to share or just have an opinion, give us a call at (redacted). Let’s keep the conversation going with Oda on line three. Oda, are you there?

Oda: (a woman’s voice) Richard, how are you? (pause) I’m sorry, should I call you Richard, or do you prefer Rick?

Foster: Rick is fine, Oda, and I’m doing well, thank you. What would you like to add to our conversation about aliens tonight?

Oda: Well, Rick, I think I can add insight that your previous callers could not. I’ve been on your planet a long time, Rick, studying your civilization, but it is time for me to leave.

Foster: Leaving my planet? (In a condescending voice) Oda, are you an alien?

Oda: Yes, Rick. Isn’t that what we are having a conversation about? I am an extraterrestrial being: a being from another planet or another part of the universe, especially in works of science fiction. That definition fits, though I think I would leave out the science fiction part. I got that definition from one of your online dictionaries.

(Engineer: At this point I got the signal from Rick to find some reason to end the call. Usually this meant hanging up and blaming it on a bad connection. This also meant not allowing this person to go on air if they called back. The signal was Rick twirling his hand above his head.)

Foster: Are you from a planet close by, like, say, Mars?

Oda: No, Rick. While there is life on the planet you know as Mars, its ecosystem is too harsh to cultivate anything but the simplest of life forms. Existence there does not allow for life to evolve beyond simple multiple cellular organisms. While they are sentient, they do not have the capacity to evolve any form of intelligence.

Rick, I am from a planet that orbits a star about sixty light-years from Earth.

Foster: So, you travelled sixty light-years just to join our conversation?

(Engineer: Rick is smiling, shaking his head, even laughing a bit under his breath. Clearly he felt Oda was a crank call.)

Oda: No. Sorry, Rick, I guess I should have been clearer. I’ve been here almost twenty five of your planet’s orbits.

Foster: Really, twenty-five years? That long?

(Engineer: At this point I tried to disconnect, but the call continued. Rick looked over at me, twirling his hand again. All I could do was shrug my shoulders and try again. The call refused to disconnect.)

Oda: Is that really what you want to talk about, Rick? How long I’ve been on your planet. I would think you have more pertinent questions for me.

Foster: Oda, I guess I have an issue with your believability. You have not offered me anything to go on here.

Oda: I thought you might harbor some doubts, Rick. How can I convince you I am who I say I am? At least give me a chance.

Foster: Okay, Oda. Let’s start by having you describe for us what you look like.

(Engineer: The lights in the studio dimmed perceptibly. In a corner of the studio a figure appeared. It was slightly taller than a man, a largish head shaped like a pear, with two huge eyes. Its skin was a dusky gray, though it might have been olive green. Its body was thin, with long arms and legs.)

Foster: (visibly shaken) Uhh, what the…? How are you…? Is this…?

Oda: Do not worry, Rick. It is a holograph. I do not look like this. This is just one of the ways your media portrays aliens. You call this creature a Gray. Your race has an interesting tendency to categorize different sub-groups within the main social group by their color. I have never been able to figure that one out.

(Engineer: The first figure disappeared, and in its place there was a shape, perhaps seven or eight feet tall – as tall as the ceiling in the studio, with tentacles, one large eye, and a mouth full of long, pointed teeth.

Oda: This is an example of some of what I would term ‘evil’ aliens; aliens that are characterized as being destructive toward your race. There are several versions of the evil alien, but I do not think I need to go through all of them. And, in interest of time, I will forgo the half living half machine aliens that have begun to populate your cinema.

What I look like is not as important as understanding why I look that way. We are all shaped by the demands of our environment. As life evolves, it takes on the form that best allows for survival on its journey to intelligence and, possibly, enlightenment.

Foster: How…how is this possible? How are you…?

Oda: What? Sending you a holograph, or controlling your phone lines? Neither one is that difficult, Rick, but I can’t tell you how to do it; sharing technology is forbidden.

Foster: It’s hard to believe…

Oda: It is a lot to take in, I’ll grant you that. But, I am a bit surprised at you, Rick. You’ve always been open minded. And I have to tell you, I find your media’s obsession with aliens a little unnerving. First of all, regarding some of the wilder speculations brought up earlier, we are not here to enslave you. Nor are we here to mate with you, eat you, or wipe you out and take all of this planet’s natural resources. There are abundant sources of water, hydrogen, and metals in the galaxy. You can keep your resources; we don’t need them.

(Engineer: The huge evil alien disappeared. Just above the table where Rick sat, and just below the armatures that held the microphones, a holographic image of what appeared to be a galaxy appeared. Its center was a brilliant white streaked with red and blue, and its arms curled around the central bulge, glowing with white, red, yellow and blue. It slowly rotated, casting eerie shadows throughout the studio.)

Oda: What you are looking at, Rick, is a holographic representation of our galaxy. Do you recognize it?

(Engineer: Rick sat mesmerized by the holograph. You could tell by his eyes and the way his mouth seemed to be trying to form words that he was struggling to maintain composure. It was always hard to tell what was going through Rick’s head when something unexpected happened with his show, but he always found a way to capitalize on it and come out ahead.)

Foster: Sixty light years, that’s…that’s a long way.

Oda: About three point five times ten to the thirteenth power miles. We do not use miles as a unit of measurement, but I am trying to adapt the information to what you will understand.

Foster: How do you do it? How can you travel those distances. We are always being told that interstellar travel is impossible.

Oda: I am forbidden to share our technology with you. We would have a better conversation if you would quit asking me to.

Foster: Okay; okay. Oda, you have to give me a minute here…

(Engineer: Rick took a deep breath. He began scribbling notes on a pad of paper. He had done this before with callers he wanted to get more out of, to interrogate.)

Foster: Oda, can you tell me why you are here?

Oda: I came here to study your civilization. I am a historian for the Imperial University and I study life on other planets; life that has evolved intelligence.

Foster: Imperial University? What…where?

(Engineer: A bubble near the central bulge of the holograph defined itself by turning a pale green.)

Oda: This is our empire. The name does not translate into any of your languages, but it is sixty-six light-years across, contains over a hundred million stars with one and a half million habitable planets not requiring planetary engineering.

Rick: You study us? Why? Obviously you are much more advanced than we are. What could you possibly learn from us?

Oda: Originally, Rick, I was part of a program to study life that had failed; life that had evolved from sentience to intelligence, and then destroyed itself to a degree that its re-emergence as a dominant life form was either in question or impossible. We, the historians from the Imperial University, do this to find out why they fail, and hopefully provide insight to our Emperor on how to avoid the same happening to us.

Rick, this galaxy is littered with the remains of life that has failed; civilizations that have destroyed themselves. These are civilizations, like yours, that have attained a level of intelligence which allowed for the development of political structures, agriculture, advanced forms of communication, some type of legal system, art, and formal education.

Foster: You study civilizations that have destroyed themselves so that you can avoid their fate?

Oda: That is exactly it, Rick. In our studies, we have found some common traits, some very strong indicators that predict the fall of a civilization.

(Engineer) Rick put his pen down after this exchange. For a moment he looked up at the ceiling, then back down at the holograph of the galaxy. He had never before behaved like this, like he was at a loss as to where to go with the conversation.

Foster: (After a long pause) Oda, why are you here; why on earth? We are not…we have not destroyed ourselves.

Oda: Our program changed, Rick. Our Prime Historian, the head of our department at the University and the personal counselor to the Emperor, decided that it would be advantageous to study civilizations that are in their various stages of development, beyond sentience and a burgeoning intelligence.

Foster: You mean civilizations that have not been destroyed, or have not destroyed themselves…yet.

Oda: Yes, that is what I mean. We had learned so much from extinct civilizations that it was possible to synthesize the massive amount of information we gathered and developed axioms concerning the causes of the survival or demise of advanced civilizations. We have been testing those axioms in order to gauge their accuracy.

Foster: Is it that simple?

Oda: Yes, that is why I came here; and that is why I am leaving.

(Engineer) Rick put his hands over his face; stayed that way for a long time. The caller was also silent during this time. Finally Rick ran his hands back across his hair, leaned back in his chair, pushed the pad of paper he had been using to take notes away.

Foster: Oda, don’t you feel any moral obligation to use that information to prevent civilizations that are violating those axioms from destroying themselves.

Oda: No obligation at all, Rick. In fact there is an edict against any such action. But, in all honesty, it would require a significant intervention on our part to change that outcome for most advanced civilizations that are indicated as failures.

Foster: What are the axioms?

Oda: The axioms, Rick, have everything to do with what a civilization values. The first axiom states that life is valued above all other considerations. To understand the significance of this axiom, Rick, you must understand that life permeates the galaxy; life evolves everywhere. Life is the connective tissue, the linkages, between the stars. Rick, I know you won’t understand this, but life is the sound, the voice that sings in the dark emptiness.

Foster: Does it control us?

Oda: No. Life does not control; it just is. It imbues the elements with that spark of consciousness; that may lead to the evolution of sentience and intelligence. Those advances are random and arbitrary, dependent upon the environment in which the life began. But, even the most hostile environment, as your scientists are discovering, are connected to the rest of the galaxy by life.

Foster: Does valuing life mean never killing anything?

Oda: No, Rick. Killing takes place all the time. It is an environmental dictate. It simply means that when you take life, value what you take.

Foster: That’s it? That’s all it means?

Oda: No, Rick. It means so many things. But that is all I am allowed to tell you.

The second axiom states that the highest purpose of life is to nourish and expand the mind. Life exists; that is all. Most living things never evolve beyond sentience and do not attain mind: intelligence. This life is unable to attribute a meaning or purpose to its existence. To reach a point where meaning and purpose become a part of existence requires expansion and constant nourishment of the mind.

Foster: Learning…?

Oda: Teaching, discovering; yes. Understand, Rick, that you will never know everything there is to know. There is no end to expansion of the mind. It is a way of life.

The final axiom brings the first two into focus; ties them inextricably together. It says that there are no absolutes.

Foster: Absolutes? What…?

Oda: Rick, I know you have so many questions. I did not call you to give you answers. The best I can do it give you reasons. I know that what I have to say may be difficult, but it is clear, based on these three axioms, that your civilization will not last.

(Engineer: Rick was silent, hands spread out over the pad of paper he was using to take notes, his head hung. I can only think that possibly he was saying to himself that this was not true. Somehow that we had been shown was a hoax; an elaborate hoax. But we all knew. It was not just the holographs, it was her voice. While it sounded human, there was a quality about it that, on a subconscious level, made you aware that you were listening to a creature not of this earth.)

Rick: Why did you call if there is nothing that can be done?

(Engineer: She said nothing. The walls of the studio disappeared and we were in an open space: shadowy-dark, smoky, acrid fumes burning our eyes. In the distance were what looked like the shells of tall buildings, walls partially gone; windows broken in random designs. Water, thick and choked with debris, covered in an oily sheen, gathered in pools about us. We remained seated, but still moved through the desolate scene.)

Our journey through Oda’s demonstration took us out beyond the destruction of the city, into what could only be surrounding countryside. There were no trees, no plants; only scorched earth and mounds of refuse. There were trails through the dirt where it was obvious small creatures moved about. The horror of what we were seeing was multiplied by silence.

I glanced over at Rick; he was leaning back in his chair watching the scene as it unfolded. His hands gripped the armrests so tightly that his knuckles were white. On the horizon we saw a dim glow through the murky air. We could not tell if it was the sun rising through the thick clouds, or a fire in the distance. The light from this glow added a weak level of clarity to what we were seeing. Moving forward we saw a small hill rise up. It was light enough to see movement, both on the surface of the hill and in the air above. My gut clenched tighter as we neared the hill because, as we neared the hill it became clear what we were looking at. In the air the carrion birds flew in, landed, their beaks pulling and tearing, and the creatures that made the trails across the burned landscape were squirming and crawling up the hill. Rick screamed as the glow revealed the nature of the hill. Then the scene slowly faded and we were in the studio again.

Oda: I am leaving now, Rick. I do not anticipate returning; though it might be my task to do so.

Rick: (Standing and yelling at the microphones) Why? Why the…why did you show us that? You don’t care. You don’t give a damn about…(Crying) Why?

(Engineer: It was at this time that Rick was enveloped in some type of darkness; where he had stood, there was a cocoon of twisting gray shadow. There was no sound, though the twisting cocoon churned as if it were a living thing that should have made a horrific noise. When the cocoon disappeared, Rick stood there with his hands over his face, sobbing.)

Oda: Goodbye, Rick.

(Engineer: Rick walked out of the studio on his way out of the building. As he passed by my control board I tried to stop him, to see if he was alright. He jerked his arm away from me when I reached out to him. He walked away, but with energy in his stride that made me think he had a purpose, a place to go.)

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