Safari
An alien on vacation at a human safari makes a shocking discovery.
“Dear passengers, we’re currently experiencing a slight turbulence. Please fasten your seat belts and ensure that your seat back and tray tables are in the full upright position,” the stewardess announced telepathically.
Carl hated hyperspace flight.
Traveling faster than the speed of light had always disagreed with his bowels, not to mention the stench whenever he was near a black hole. “When you pack things so tightly, it’s definitely gonna smell,” Steve used to say, and he was right. Black holes were just faulty cosmic toilet bowls that never stopped flushing, yet the smell never went away. They packed everything within their event horizon into a singularity like some faulty plumbing in the cosmos, and now, he had to breathe through his mouth whenever he was transiting near one. Living in a four-dimensional world shouldn’t be this hard, Carl thought. Interstellar travel was instantaneous; nobody died of natural causes anymore. Yet hyperspace sickness was still a mystery till this day — that, and manners.
Three rows behind him, the passenger at seat 37B had been babbling non-stop throughout the flight, showing off her knowledge of humanity. “They drink something called coffee,” 37B said to her friend beside her. Every word she said made Carl’s skin crawl. And her voice was getting louder by the minute. Why is she speaking? Carl thought. Doesn’t she know sound waves distort into an unpleasant soup of cacophony in four-dimensional space? Just telepath like everyone else! Colonial idiots, he thought as 37B’s reedy voice continued to grate his ears.
Without warning, the entire cabin dipped in hyperspace. Carl tightened his tentacles and arms around the edge of his seat as a stewardess passing him in the aisle smiled at him. He returned a nervous grin and reached for a brochure in his backpack tucked under his seat, wondering which was more vexing: the turbulence or 37B.
Resort World Eden is the universe’s first human safari resort where guests can experience the wildness of humanity from the comfort and safety of higher dimensional reality, the brochure said.
“Coffee helps them get through their day without killing each other,” 37B said, her voice pestering Carl enough for him to extend his bulb-like periscopic eye from the top of his head to peek behind him. Some passengers around 37B were staring at her. Others were reaching for their complimentary in-flight headsets. Further away, a young couple about a few hundred years old were eyeing a stewardess serving refreshments from her trolley along the aisle. The stewardess choreographed a smile with a few helpless nods and went about her duties instead.
The growing sensation of his innards being turned inside out somehow subsided, yet his annoyance with 37B had not. He distracted himself with some in-flight entertainment, which proved futile when he realized halfway through telepathing a documentary about moonwalking that it had nothing to do with humanity’s first steps on the moon. He wound up dream surfing with his headset on, dream-slapping 37B over and over again in a lucid dream until he was interrupted by a voice in his head announcing they were landing.
At Resort World Eden, Carl plopped on the bed in his suite, already getting over his earlier flight experience. Though he was a little warp-lagged, he managed a smile on his face, feeling pleased with himself that he was upgraded to a safari-view suite when he told the hotel concierge about his flight. The suite had a living area, a bedroom, a private balcony, and featured amenities like an infinity walk-in wardrobe with unlimited storage capacity, a 360-Omnivision projector with 4-Tera-K resolution, and a supernova bathtub in the ensuite bathroom, which like an actual supernova, made gold while a guest enjoyed a relaxing soak in the tub. On his god size bed lay a hollowed-out chestnut-shaped object in blue-yellow color, a color both bluish and yellowish simultaneously which, he was told once, was something impossible for creatures less evolved to perceive. Beside it, a holographic note said it was provided as part of the safari experience for a guest to use freely during their stay. Carl picked up the chestnut-shaped object gingerly with his arms and coiled his tentacles around it to be sure not to drop it. Though he had never used an omniscope before, he knew it was expensive; a luxury item he could never afford on a measly salary of a security guard of an abandoned solar system. Had he been outspoken enough, he would have been a cosmic tour guide; or a world engineer — if only he were smart. But neither terraforming nor public telepathing were his forte. Till this day, he still struggled to interact with more than three people telepathically. He drifted over to the balcony where the curtains balleted around him in the cosmic breeze.
From his suite’s private celestial balcony, he could take in the full view of Earth, the birthplace of humanity just a few galaxies away. Fiddling around with the omniscope for a nanosecond, he quickly realized he could cycle through humanity’s entire history with its time filters and see events unfold right before his eye. It could even narrate historical fun facts when directed at something of interest. Slipping the omniscope over his periscopic eye, he adjusted its lenses to sneak a peek at some recommendations, leaving the time filter as it is at the year 2020. The top recommendation was the White House in the United States.
From 2017 to 2020, American President Donald Trump made stupid the new smart when he galvanized humanity’s stupidity, racism and xenophobia against its scientific facts, common sense, and rudimentary logic during his term as president, the omniscope narrated telepathically to Carl as he watched White House staffers went about their day with varying degrees of fake smiles and a hint of sadness hidden in their faces. Carl zoomed the omni-lens a little more, peeking into the oval office, where he saw US President Donald Trump speaking into a phone as he reached into a bucket of KFC fried chicken sitting on his desk for a drumstick. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I also don’t care,” he said.
Turning his attention to a gym at a state residence near Sochi in Russia, Carl spotted Russian President Vladimir Putin flexing his muscles at a mirrored wall in his three-thousand-dollar custom-made yellow tracksuit to a Russian pop song called “One Like Putin” playing in the background. Carl did not know the exchange rate. But he gathered it was not a lot in omnicoin, or a world leader would have bought something a little less ugly.
He had wanted to find out where the North Korean totalitarian leader Kim Jong-un kept all his snacks and his hairstylist, which was what the omniscope recommended next, but it was getting late and he wanted to be up early the next day.
The safari tour office was surprisingly empty as he glided in the next morning. He suspected it might have something to do with the casino next door where guests could bet on anything ranging from the lifespan of cloned human celebrities like Lady Gaga and Beyonce to pointless answers to an even more pointless question the human clones asked each other every single day: What’s for lunch?
At the safari tour office, all the counters were closed except for one, where a service staff was dozing off, oblivious to Carl’s presence until he was close enough to read her name off her tag. Her name was Myrias. When Carl slid his keycard across the counter, Myrias immediately jumped up and ushered him into a VIP booth and shuffled away, returning with a beverage menu while Carl was flipping through a telepathic brochure about a half-day time travelling tour. Myrias insisted on serving Carl a complimentary drink even though he was not thirsty. A particular beverage caught his eye.
Dark Lager: The finest dark matter in the universe brewed to perfection; topped with a layer of rich, creamy dark energy foam that contains nutty notes of gravity and a hint of electromagnetism.
But when the drink came, all Carl detected as he sat there in his booth pretending to enjoy his drink were nutty notes of metaphysics and a hint of bullshit. But as it was free, he could not complain. He took another sip and wondered what might happen if he fed a human the abysmal beverage in his hand. To the limited human mind, dark matter was the invisible glue that held the universe together; an elusive substance that, along with dark energy, formed a large part of the universe. Surely a human would love to know how it tasted. He shook off the silly idea almost immediately. Guests were not allowed to intervene with the ecosystem of humanity, let alone interact with humans directly. It was against cosmic laws and carried a maximum fine of five thousand omnicoins. Moreover, humans could only experience a tiny fraction of reality. Giving them a taste of dark lager would be as good as giving them nothing — literally.
Carl continued browsing through the telepathic brochures for an interesting era of human history he might fancy touring. The prehistoric and the Middle Ages were a little too archaeologically boring, but on the other hand, the Space Age was a little too sterile, familiar and brief. It was a little hard for him to decide. In the end, he settled for the high fashion of humanity’s industrial revolutions, where technological advancements, for a large part, were mostly driven by a focus on comfort, convenience and self-indulgence — The Digital Age. It was the least popular of all the tours. As Carl hated crowds or rubbing shoulders with the other tourists, it was the perfect choice, or so he thought.
Carl showed up five minutes early at the waiting area and waited five minutes more before a yawning Myrias walked up to him saying she was also the tour guide. As they waited together for the rest of the tour group, she told Carl the tour office was understaffed, and most guests were more interested in gambling anyway. “Watching human misery without a wager is as exciting as watching a bunch of ants avoiding rain. There’s not much going on actually,” she said. They waited for another five minutes before the rest of the tour group showed up. His tour group consisted of five people: him, the young couple from the hyperspace liner, a tourist who complained briefly about not getting any WIFI signal on her uniPhone, and Dave.
Dave was absolutely the worst.
For a start, he complained that the tour bus was “an old piece of crap” even though it was self-driving and moved faster than the speed of light. Then, he kept interrupting Myrias with idiotic questions touted as intellectual observations.
“Why is humanity a Type 0 terrestrial civilization?”
“To become a Type I planetary civilization, they must harness energy on a planetary scale,” Myrias explained telepathically.
“Er, that’s not what I’m asking. I meant why can’t a scale for measuring technological advancement start from one?” Before Myrias could furnish a response, he said, “Nevermind, carry on,” and started filming a dog outside the tour bus licking its balls on his omnicam like a paparazzi reporter.
That’s not all. Dave took snapshots of every mundane detail as they time-jumped from city to city on Earth, nearly causing a thunderstorm in Beijing in 2015 and creating a lightning that almost struck the Eiffel Tower in 2016 when he forgot to switch off his flashlight. Despite Myrias’s warning of a seismic storm on their hands if he did not stop, Dave continued doing his favorite thing, ruining the tour for everyone, especially Carl.
“Humanity’s progress on the cosmic ladder was cumbersome during the Digital Age,” Myrias continued as they cruised along the streets of London in 2017. Scores of people were flooding the streets during the morning rush hour, their eyes glued to their mobile devices as they went about their day. “Though they invented a rudimentary planetary communication system, accelerating their progress towards becoming a Type I planetary civilization, they were beset by the savagery and limitations of human consciousness.”
“In some parts of their world, humanity rejected the creation of a multicultural and scientific civilization,” Myrias said while they passed through a town in northwestern Syria in 2018. Soldiers were seen piling up dead bodies beside a partially destroyed mosque as sounds of artillery shelling and sporadic machine gun fire raged on nearby. “Some imposed monoculturalism and theocracy onto others by force with acts of violence,” Myrias explained, right before the tour bus time-jumped to the United States of America in 2019, where the group got off for a quick tour of a nuclear missile silo.
“Others blindly developed and stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, which they claimed were for their own protection, but instead gave them the ability to commit planetary suicide at a moment’s notice,” Myrias said as she led the group through a wall into a nuclear missile bunker where men, whose jobs were to launch missiles, were trying desperately to prop open a faulty blast door with a crowbar.
“They didn’t understand diseases much either,” Myrias said when they entered the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland in 2020. Remaining undetected in the fourth dimensional space, they hovered over an international committee of infectious disease experts sitting in a boardroom. Dave was armed with his omnicam as expected.
“How about COVID-19?” someone said.
“What does it stand for?” another asked.
“Coronavirus Disease 2019. ‘CO’ stands for corona, ‘VI’ for virus, ‘D’ for — ”
“We get it, Jane,” said a mustachioed man with a tired frown sitting at the far end of the table. He took off his glasses, taking his time to wipe it with his shirt like he was in charge. “Alright. Let’s go with it.”
“Hold on,” a woman said as he was standing up to leave. “But we named the swine flu H1N1.”
“And?”
“Erm.” The woman cleared her throat in annoyance and continued. “It was named H1N1 because of its characteristics. The ‘H’ and ’N’ stands for the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase protein that — ”
“What’s your point?” The bespectacled man interrupted.
“Shouldn’t we also name this coronavirus based on a more defining set of characteristics?”
“Look, we know nuts about the virus, and we need an official name before this pandemic turns into a race war too. What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. Something other than a name that sounds like an industrial strength solvent. No offense, Jane,” the woman said.
“None taken,” Jane said.
“Fine.” He sat back down begrudgingly. “Anyone?”
An intern sitting at a corner taking notes slowly raised his hand.
“Put your hand down, Jeremy. You’re not in eighth grade for god’s sake. What do you have?”
“Erm. How about we name it after its most common symptoms? Cough, fatigue, and fever.”
The man rolled his eyes and exhaled. “That’s not how it works, Jeremy, but out of curiosity, what would that be?”
“COFFE-19.”
“That’s literally worse.” He looked around the room. “Anyone else? No? Looks like COVID-19 is back on the table.”
“It’s too generic,” the woman protested.
“I have a press conference in five minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s either COVID-19 or what Jeremy said.”
“COFFE-19,” Jeremy murmured.
“Shut up, Jeremy. Go get me some coffee.”
“Fine,” the woman said begrudgingly.
With Dave constantly gliding in front of Carl to record the exchanges on his omnicam, it was hard for Carl to care about what he had just witnessed. He decided he would wander around for a bit on his own at the next stop in Singapore just so he could get away from Dave for a bit.
He drifted through Singapore’s urban landscape aimlessly until a notification popped up on his omniscope promising an up close and personal experience with a human. It turned out to be a rather disappointing encounter when he found himself in a tiny room of an apartment hovering over a man snoring with his face on his desk. He glazed out the window at the light in the evening sky, now fading like his last shred of enthusiasm for his trip. He was more than ready to hit the jackpots as soon as he got back to the resort. As he turned to leave, the omniscope prompted him to read a translation of something on the man’s laptop in front of him. Carl could not care less, but what was the harm since he was already there. Switching his omniscope to xenotranslator mode, he leaned in closer to read. It was a story of a character with the same name as him:
Carl hated hyperspace flight.
Traveling faster than the speed of light had always disagreed with his bowels, not to mention…
Amused by the similarity to his own holiday experience, Carl read on, giggling at Story Carl’s chronicles until the things mentioned in the story started to seem a little too familiar, such as what an annoying passenger said during a hyperspace flight, a fellow tourist also called Dave, and a tour experience exactly like his own. How was it even possible? Was someone watching his every move the whole time? Was this a bad joke concocted by the resort? If so, it was a gross invasion of his privacy and warranted a full refund of his entire trip. But first, he had to find out what was happening, so he could sue if necessary. He hesitated for a moment, worried about breaking the law. No. He was, if anything, the victim here.
“Erm. Excuse me?” Carl said through the xenotranslator in his omniscope.
The man sprang up, spraying flakes of saliva onto the screen in front of him.
“Yes? Who is it!” He jumped to his feet, wiping drool off his face and searching frantically for the source of Carl’s voice.
“Hi there. I’m Carl. Can I ask you — ”
“Where are you? Show yourself!” The man shouted, brandishing a pen he grabbed from his desk wildly.
“Calm down, human.”
“How the fuck did you get into my house! Where the hell are you?”
“I apologize for the intrusion, but for reasons I won’t get into, you can’t see me because I’m not from around here.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m a Tesseractorian.”
“A what?”
“A Tesseractorian.”
“Is that like a fancy word for ghost?”
“Ghosts don’t exist.”
“Then what the fuck are you?”
“You have to stop swearing. I’m a four dimensional being. An alien.”
“Is that why I’m hearing your voice inside my head?”
“Yes. I’m communicating with you telepathically using a xenotranslator.”
“A what? Look man, you sound really weird, like you’re sucking on a tube while talking.”
“That’s just because of the poor WIFI connection.”
“Huh?”
“Nevermind. What’s your name, human?”
“It’s Paul.”
“Hi It’s Paul.”
“No, it’s just Paul.”
“Alright, It’s Just Paul.”
“No, it’s — Nevermind. Where are you from, Carl? And what do you want?”
“I’m from the planet Centurion Prime in Andromeda. I just wanted to — ”
“That sounds awfully far. How did you get here?”
“Tour bus.”
“Some tour bus you got there.”
“It’s basically an invisible time machine powered by an exploding star.”
“I don’t know what that means. Are you really here on a holiday?”
“Didn’t I just say I came in a tour bus?”
“Well, excuse me for finding it hard to believe there are a bunch of aliens out there watching us for fun like we’re a bunch of fucking animals.”
“It’s just the five of us and our tour guide actually.”
“Somehow that sounds even sadder.”
“I agree.”
“Do you mind showing me what you look like?”
“If you insist.”
A bunch of distorted shapes expanding and contracting out of thin air appeared before Paul. “What the…you look like something I’d see if I were tripping on acid.”
“What you’re seeing is just a projection of my shadow. Your eyes are not built to see four-dimensional things.”
“So, tell me, Carl. Are you God?”
“No.”
“Then is there a God?”
“Define God.”
“An omnipotent supreme being that created the universe, has power over everything, and is the only one we are supposed to worship. Someone like Jesus or Allah or Morgan Freeman from Bruce Almighty.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did you ask me for a definition?”
“I was just curious if your definition of God was different from ours.”
“Which is?”
“A hypothetical asshole.”
“Sounds the same to me. What about heaven and hell? Is there even an afterlife?”
“I don’t know. Look, I need to get back to my tour bus. If I could just ask you about something on your — ”
“What about multiple universes? Do they exist?”
“I don’t know, but they could.”
“You don’t seem to know much, do you?”
“Well, I know humans will become extinct in the year 2124 and — ”
“What!”
“Oops. Spoiler alert.”
“You did not just drop that on me without any warning.”
“Sorry.”
“So, was it like a nuclear war, a zombie virus pandemic or a toilet paper famine?”
“It was a vacuum bomb.”
“A what?”
“It’s basically a temporary black hole created to clear out planets before a construction project. The world engineers do it all the time. In the case of Earth, it was sucked out of existence with a vacuum bomb to make way for a galactic space mall.”
“What? We were wiped out because of shopping?”
“I guess so.”
“Wasn’t there an alternative?”
“Probably. But it would’ve been really expensive, and Galactica Engineering is not known to give a shit about relocating sentient beings from a backwater planet.”
“I have so many questions I want to ask you, but right now, I’m just too bummed to ask,” Paul said as he plopped down on his bed beside his desk, staring blankly ahead of him. Carl could see he was visibly upset.
“What can I do to cheer you up?”
“Do you know next week’s lottery numbers?”
“No.”
“Then it’s fine.” An awkward moment hung in the air as Carl struggled to fill the silence.
“Erm. I’m sorry for ruining your day. I should probably get going then. My tour bus is waiting.”
“Whatever. Bye, I guess.”
“Before I go, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Did you write this?” Carl said, pointing at Paul’s laptop.
“This? Yes. Why?”
“The character in your story is basically me. How did you know about every detail of my trip?”
Paul closed his eyes slowly and smiled. He did not say anything for the next ten seconds or so, then he took a deep breath, exhaling it with a look of serenity on his face and stood up. “I’m glad you asked. Your tour guide Myrias told me.”
“What? How did you know her name? I didn’t even tell you that.”
“Carl, this was a test.”
“For what?”
“To determine if you are a suitable candidate. All we are looking for is religious neutrality, an open mind, some empathy, and a tiny bit of curiosity. And you’ve passed.”
“What are you talking about? Look, I’m not sure how she put you up to this, but this tour is getting a one-star rating and a scanting review when I get back.”
Paul seemed unfettered by Carl’s outrage. “What if I told you that this universe was coming to an end, that in order to survive, you would have to leave it behind and come with me.”
“I would say come again?”
“Carl, your universe is on the verge of colliding with a parallel universe. A collision that would obliterate all life in both universes.”
“That’s absurd. How would you even know that? You’re just a human.”
“Actually, I’m not.”
Without warning, Paul morphed into an orange tabby cat right before Carl’s eye.
“Ah! What the…holy fuck! How are you even doing this?”
“This is just an astral projection. I can morph into anything I want. I’m actually a multiverse migration officer working for MILF,” Paul said, brushing the fur on his ear with a paw.
“MILF?”
“Multiverse Intelligent Life Fund. It’s a multiverse agency responsible for preserving lower intelligent life forms in the likely event of a catastrophic collision between universes.
“Did you just indirectly call me stupid?”
“I was sent here to facilitate your relocation to another universe,” Paul said, transforming into a peace lily instantly.
“What the…how the…wait. This is a lot to take in. I need a minute to process what you’re saying,” Carl said.
“Places like Resort World Eden and many like it throughout the universe were created to serve as refugee collection centers to gather suitable intelligent life forms for inter-universe migration,” Paul’s leaves swayed as he continued, before suddenly morphing into a lava lamp in an instance.
“But why go through the trouble of all this or whatever the hell you are doing?”
“We want to be discreet and appear non-threatening to potential candidates during the vetting process. After all, inter-universe migration is a massive endeavor, and we can’t afford to relocate every single life form in the universe.”
“It’s hard for me to take you seriously when you’re speaking to me as a lava lamp.”
Before Carl even got to the end of his sentence, Paul was back in his human form.
“Alright, It’s Just Paul. I believe you. So, what’s next?”
“Well, I will beam you up to the MILF Ark, which will ferry you to another universe where a new life awaits you. You’ll eventually get a new passport, a new social security number, some basic necessities and enough omnicoins to get you started. But first, you’ll have to go through an orientation program to get acquainted with your new universe. Are you ready?”
“Wait. Before I go, can I ask, what about my friend, Steve?”
“Steve is already there.”
“And Dave? He’s not coming, is he?”
“Nope.”
“Perfect. I’m ready. Let’s go.”
