Travelogue 1160 – 3 January
The Alien Speaks

Someone manufactures a video for social media. It is black and white and captions itself as recorded in 1964. The camera never moves; it is an interview scene. The subject is an alien, grey, big-headed, with glowing eyes. It speaks English somehow, though in a spooky, gravelly voice. I wish it were smoking a cigarette. Its demeanour is submissive, as an enemy captive’s should be, and it is longsuffering. But it is wise, and it is willing to talk. Naturally, the interviewer is less interested in where the monster came from or its technology than he is in philosophies of life and death.

The two have spent many hours in that room. Time has stopped. The alien explains in a languid manner how unjustified our existential fears have always been. Everything the gurus have told us is true. Death is an illusion, and love is the force that binds the universe together. The alien stares at the camera, docile, resigned, enlightened, and bored. This is what this particular life has come to. Captured by a benighted species of ape, his dashing days as an interstellar explorer have been cut short, and he will grow weak in a poorly lit prison light-years from home, tutoring his ill-mannered hosts in the basics of the spiritual sciences.

All right, I have the few minutes that the video requests. It is a successful bit of fiction: I am moved by the piece, acknowledging it as sophisticated schlock. I wonder who made the video and why. How long did it take? What was the motivation? I suppose it would be fun to animate a creepy alien figure. Then you have to figure out what it would say. The more the figure moves, the more you challenge belief, and thus the attitude of resignation arises. It is an alien; it is smart. It must say something wise. And the product is obvious. This is exactly the kind of thing we would like a wise and hard-bitten old pilot from Planet X to tell us. Relax, it says, the universe is a game, and you have won before you even started.

The video is posted in the manner of a leak. The audience knows it is fake; the author knows that the audience knows it is fake. We all enjoy the process. Inside, we reserve a secret space from doubt. It might be real. But “real” isn’t the issue, if we are to be honest with ourselves and each other. Social media was never a place to find truth or reality. It is a discursive medium. It is, in potential, a place to discuss truth or reality. That distinction is where our alien video finds its traction. It is a rhetorical ploy; it offers a proposition. Though the video is obviously a fake, it says to its audience, “this might be real”. And even though we all know it is fake, we respond with, “this might be real”. An exchange about reality has taken place, and we feel strangely satisfied.

Going further to examine the evidence that the video is fake misses the point. And it doesn’t affect whatsoever the conditional conclusion of the audience that “this is real”. Furthermore, going on to unpack the argument that “this is real”, to analyse the philosophy, to analyse the implications of captured alien intelligence, also misses the point. It misunderstands the method of social media. It’s not discursive in that way. Social media is made for call and response only. It posits a thought, elicits an emotional response. All other comments are meant only to echo and amuse.

Travelogue 1159 – 1 January
Return to Janus

Once again, we have slid through the gates of Janus. On this side of it, we witness a quiet morning. Only the wind by the door. But around the gate, there were such kinetics and noise that one wondered what purpose remained in the minds of the celebrants. People shouted, and people danced. There was joy, and there were noise-makers. In a snapshot of it, one searched for any sense.

In spite of the excess, the movement across the threshold was silent and internal. It happened, quite without volition, without knowledge, and, despite the atomic clocks, it happened without precision. One blinked to find the other side.

Now people sleep. I am left with the image of the Metro ride home yesterday, grim and portentous. It was four in the afternoon, and the many passengers around me were solemn. There was little sense of celebration, and if there was anticipation, it was the sort that dreads. They were people preparing for a storm.

But all right, let’s find some cheer. I stop by the café on the way to the barber. It’s a new year. The morning is quiet, but the line at the counter is long. Most cafes and shops are closed. Here, the customers wait patiently, and even with good humour. It’s a holiday ritual, of sorts. They stand, and they smile. They chat. After the long wait, there’s a table for me. Next to me is a couple of young women who haven’t seen each other in a while. They hug, and they exchange gifts. They catch up; they check their phones. They run out of things to say, but they are happy to see each other. A family settles at the long reading table. They are loud; their energy contrasts sharply with the subdued morning outside. No one is bothered at all.