Second to the Last Word on UFO

Like a chronic persistent itch that comes and goes, visitations by UFOs - now revised with a more "acceptable" definition as  Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UAP  - preoccupy the public mind in intermittent doses at irregular intervals. We have it again lately as recent files were released by the U.S. government. Interestingly, neither  China nor Russia did the same nor did the European governments. 

The bottom line is that until such time that the label "unidentified" is completely peeled off without any shadow of a doubt, the idea of alien visitation from somewhere or anywhere outside of our planet or our solar system will remain just that - an idea, videotapes and personal accounts notwithstanding.  Until then, we speculate.  

But there is one strange story. From someone who claimed to be an extraterrestrial alien but a non-believer in UFOs or UAPs.  Please reserve your judgment until you read about what he had to say.

It was on an ordinary day under very ordinary circumstances at an ordinary place when I first met Theo. It was at first nothing more than a casual chat – one that was not likely to happen again because most conversations by happenstance are usually like that. People talk with each other for a while after a chance meeting and then they go on their separate ways never to meet again. On this one ordinary day, however, the conversation took a startling turn I could not have anticipated in the proverbial million years! Theo declared with the unexpected suddenness of a thunderclap that he was an alien – an alien, alien, that is.  Not the international-border-crossing one but a cosmic voyager of some sort.  He also claimed that he was at least many thousand years old.  

You, my dear reader, will not be acting on impulse if your immediate reaction is to wonder why or how I could ever have let the conversation continue, let alone keep a record of it. You may even be tempted to stop reading this right now.  

If possible, I like to swim in my own lane at the fitness pool.  It has four lanes so if I get there early enough in the afternoon on a weekday I get to do just that – have a lane to myself.  However, no matter how well I time it the pool does get busy even at odd hours, so lanes are shared.  It was a Wednesday and I was midway through my regular twenty lap freestyle when on the turn someone from the side motioned if he can share the lane.  There was really only one polite response - the hand signal that said “sure, okay” - and I kept on swimming without stopping.  On my return to the same end of the pool, this gentleman of about my height of five-foot-eleven but leaner, with thinning short hair, was already in the water. I figured I’d rest and resigned to not do all 20 laps continuously but instead swim 5 and 5 drills. I thought I’d observe him for a while and maybe he won’t stay for very long if he’s not such a good, efficient swimmer.  He didn’t seem to have an ounce of fat in him but he appeared to be in his seventies, almost frail looking.

I was wrong.  He swam with such ease and style that surely, I thought, he had to have been a competitive swimmer in his younger days.  His flips at each end of the pool were done with the precision of a trapeze artist.  He may even have made the varsity team in college, I thought.  I stopped longer than just for a while as I watched him go back and forth.  When I did finally resume swimming he was passing me like I was treading water.  Then he was done.  I rested briefly as he was about ready to get out of the pool. I asked him how many laps he did.  “Thirty laps”, he replied.

Jokingly, I said, “Wow, tell me what it is you eat or drink. If it’s legally and commercially available, I’d like to get some”.

By way of a response but ignoring what I just asked, he introduced himself, “I’m Theo”.  I told him my name and we shook hands.

Then he said, “You must be wondering how I am able to swim as I did with this 76-year-old body. What if I told you I’m really 76,000 years old?  I’m from another part of the cosmos, really”.  He smiled with the “I’m not crazy” expression on his face.  He got out of the pool and said, “See you around”. 

I felt foolish. I thought to myself, what the heck was that all about?  I went to swim a few more laps but my concentration was unsettled and my rhythm was erratically discombobulated.  I kept thinking about me and my idea of making small talk with just about anybody.  I thought it was a gift.  My wife hears this from me all the time that no matter whom it is I meet for the first time he or she will talk about his or her life in no time.  I have this genuine sincerity to listen and people sense that and they talk.  If psychiatry was all about listening I could have been a psychiatrist.  Or, at least, pass for one.  People would confess to me personal stuff in the first few minutes of talking.  But this Theo was something else.  He was not telling me about personal stuff.  He was telling me lies!  How could I have given him that impression?  Did I have “Mr. Gullible” written on my wide forehead? This is one episode I won’t be bragging to my wife about.

I got out of the pool after completing however many laps I did because I lost count.  Before I could gather all my stuff, the door that led to the shower room opened and there was Theo all dressed up in his street clothes, smiling or grinning, looking dapper like he was on his way to a book club.  I thought to myself, “Oh no, he found a sucker and he wants to pile some more on me before he leaves”. I’m being duped into providing amusement for this guy. But his engaging smile forced my sentiments to shift to neutral.

He said, “Listen, I was not being facetious or even joking.  I certainly didn’t want to make you feel foolish.  You seem like a very smart guy so that was not my intent.”  I smiled and kind of mumbled some futile words.

Sometimes we are compelled to listen when someone makes claims like Theo’s purely for its entertainment value, I began to rationalize.  We allow this kind of conversation to continue for a bit longer than it should until we’re completely assured of our own normalcy and recognize those who are not.  However temporary it may be, it makes us feel good about affirming our own sanity.  Once I’ve established that I was actually okay, relatively speaking, then it was just going to be an amusing anecdote and what a tale it would be to tell my friends.  So I let the conversation go on for a while.  He looked so ordinary for such an extraordinary claim.  

“I was hoping I’d piqued your curiosity enough and you are dying to know more about your first extraterrestrial.  Or, you may just want to know if I’m nuts or I’m for real.  So, can I buy you coffee, and a pie, perhaps? That café a couple of blocks from here has at least three kinds of pie to choose from.  It’s my treat, what say you?”

If there ever was a perfect moment to get out of an awkward situation, it was presented to me right there and then.  But I was caught between being rude and searching for  polite words to decline. But then this gift of mine to listen to people was compulsively pushing from the other end, tilting the balance.  

“Take your time to shower.  I’ll go ahead, get a table.  Two minutes and you’ll be there.”

And the best I could come up with was, “Are you for real?” He did look normal with a speaking voice of a learned man to match. Those could be deceiving but there was no reason to be fearful of him.

“Over coffee and pie is the best way to answer that.  I know you’re dying to know.  See you there”. 

When I arrived at the cafe a few minutes later, Theo waved me over to a corner table.  His steaming cup must have just been refilled because the saucer on the side had nothing but crumbs and a used fork on it.  He already had his pie.  I ordered. When the waitress left, Theo said, “So, you want to know if I’m for real”.

“Look Theo, coffee and pie is a fine way to have a conversation.  Honestly, you don’t have to explain anything to me.  I’m not one to judge and I don’t have any reason to be concerned but if you’re just wanting to talk I’m listening.” 

"First, dispel the idea of space travel as envisioned by human science fiction writers or even by Elon Musk. The universe is unimaginably and unforgivingly huge. UFOs or UAPs, or any kind of space vehicles will not survive or are survivable during any interstellar travel. It is impossible, it is infeasible.  In other words UFOs are fiction! Period. I leave you to do your own research on that".  

Theo began his story. 

“The world where I came from did it this way.  I trace myself to a trillion of exact clones, each a mere one hundred times the size of a virus, released almost one to two million years ago from a double star system that was at that time a few  light years from your solar system along the same path circling the Milky Way.  The planet of my ancestors orbited a medium sized star, slightly larger than your sun.  Its partner star two hundred million miles away had a much bigger mass - a hundred times bigger. The bigger star as most stars that size had a shorter life span.  My ancestors’ advanced technology knew that and had actually predicted its end and the consequent fate of their own star system as well.”

“They embarked on a huge scientific project to insure their survival. So, they started sending out payloads aboard billions of space probes for the sole purpose of finding a new home. As good as the science was, the scientists and engineers were not able to target specific points in space.  For propulsion they used the partner star’s impending implosion and subsequent explosion to scatter the probes across the galaxy. So, billions of probes were sent out to orbit the dying star.  The probes orbited the rapidly spinning star, at least for a few hundred years, until some of them were sling-shot into unknown directions at very high speed.  Some were propelled even faster as they caught tongues of plasma ejected from the big star at unimaginable velocities.  The exploding star sent the rest of the probes even further away.  That ushered the abrupt end of life for my ancestors but not before sowing seeds through those probes.”

“Aboard each probe were hundreds of spherical vials each with microbes.  I just use that term so you will understand the context.  They were actually organic microscopic data carriers – not unlike strands of DNA, except that they were carriers of highly advanced organic material with far more adaptive capabilities than DNA, a trillion of them cloned from one specific individual. There could have been billions of individuals cloned. I was one of those.  As was expected, many will not make it but if only one did, it was considered a success.  But the challenges remained astronomical, as you can imagine, pun intended”.

“A trillion copies might seem like a lot but relative to the cosmos, it was like a droplet in the bottomless ocean of deep space. If one clone landed on a habitable world it was to latch on to a living organism.  It had to “learn”, and what I mean here is that it had to do the arduous task of adaptation and evolution through that living organism.  I estimated that I arrived on this planet about two hundred thousand years ago.  By the way, planets like earth are plentiful in this galaxy alone but unimaginably far in between. Believe it or not I latched on to a microorganism – a bacterium.  That hastened my development more than, say, if I landed on a fern.  That would have taken a far longer process if I were to be a human species as I am today.”

“My awareness which was programmed to develop over time was limited by my host.  I saw what a bacterium “saw” or sensed.  Then slowly as I moved from one host to another my senses developed with the host organism.  Recycling is universal. So, much of how I transferred from one host to another was through that process.  My senses and awareness built up over time so that as host organisms moved up in scale – say, from a shrew to a porcupine to a wolf to a bear, my intelligence was enhanced accordingly.  Remember, my potential intelligence was built in and all it took was for me to keep moving up until I got to the level of the dominant species on whatever planet I was in.  Obviously, the planet’s environment was the upper limit as to how high up I can develop the host species. It was meant for me and anyone else of my kind to take the dominant species to as high a level as it could achieve. It is possible that some of my clones landed in more advanced civilization while others to this day remained in very primitive development as when earth life was a billion years ago in another planetary system.  By the way, once we latch onto an organism we become discrete individuals.  In other words, we become that organism until we move to another.  However, I do not know of anyone else who came this way, at least not another that I am aware of.  But I must conclude that if I made it then there are bound to be others.  They had to have taken different paths”.

“Are you with me, so far?”  Theo had to revive me from the effects of a mental wrecking ball that struck my unbelieving mind, jolting me once again but worse than when he first told me he was an extraterrestrial.

It took me a full ten seconds before I could say anything.  “You know how unbelievably incomprehensible this is?”  

"Yes!" Theo replied.  He stood up. "Look, we may not see each other again but thanks for listening".  He shook my hand then turned and headed for the door. I can't remember what I said, if I said anything at all. 

I never saw him again to this day.