As previously, he studied the glass before the thing from his mouth snaked out and sucked up the bourbon. With the glass empty, the thin trunk disappeared back into his mouth and I couldn’t help but notice a slight smacking together of what were probably his lips. The little yellow devil had enjoyed his booze.
“Remember to pick up some duty free before you take off,” I suggested.
I sipped my drink, savouring the warm familiarity of it. Creative crap aside, I needed reassurance. The bourbon was now my anchor on normality. Ironic, really, as it was normally my escape from all things mundane and normal.
“No money,” Joe said. “Not buy alcohol.”
I had this depressing idea of me going to live on Mars, with damn all to do and no bourbon with which to deaden the pain.
“You lot must do something on your planet. C’mon Joe, enlighten me.”
He paused a moment and then said, “We think.”
It was the way he said it that I found disturbing. I mean humans think, even I think; too much for my own good sometimes. But I sensed a deeper significance to Joe’s remark. I was sure he meant, you humans think, but we Martians really think. Was that it?
“About what, Joe? Tell me what you think about.”
Another pause. “We …connect…with each other. Our thoughts multiply and grow. Our intelligence becomes unlimited.”
This was one hell of a concept to grasp. “You mean all of you? Everyone on the planet…sort of…links up together with your minds?”
“You would enjoy the experience. Your mind goes on journeys an individual could not imagine.”
I was beginning to understand. “This is why you don’t have booze or anything else. You all get off on, well, just being together, joining your minds, your thoughts.”
“With our minds as one, we also grow as individuals. Our intelligence increases and our wisdom, too.”
“Wow. I can see that that would be an amazing experience. It sounds incredibly beautiful, Joe.” The more I thought about it, its purity, its simplicity, the more beautiful it became. It had that whole, ‘I see rainbows in the evening’, sort of purity. “Tell me about it, Joe, help me understand.”
At the back of my mind, something nagged to remind me, this is possibly the first and only chance given to humans to converse with a being from another planet. Its significance was not lost on me and I would be a fool to let the opportunity go without trying to extract from it every morsel of information I could. After all, wasn’t Joe doing exactly that to me?
“I do not have your skill as a writer to put images into words,” he admitted, “But I will try.” He said nothing for sometime, and his eye stalks examined every nook and cranny of my modest living room, looking at everything but seeing nothing. “Imagine…being in conversation with your closest friend, talking deeply of some far reaching philosophy, something abstract but engaging. And then, another friend joins in, adding his or her own experience and ideas. And then more friends join in and suddenly, your whole world is a frenzy of debate. It becomes a tangible and exciting event.” He paused and studied me again. “I doubt if you would survive the experience.”
He didn’t elaborate, and I could only surmise the meaning of his statement. Did I, as a mere human, not have the mental capacity to be a part of such an event? Was our intelligence so far behind that of the Martians that to take part would destroy our minds? I didn’t pursue it because I feared the answer would depress me too much.
“And I thought you were boring,” I said. “Do you regard us…me as primitive?”
“An interesting question. As a race, you are capable of great achievements. But…”
“I knew there’d be a but.”
“But also, you are capable of being obscene and grotesque. You make barbarism into an art-form. We find your capacity for atrocity unbelievable.”
I picked up on the ‘we’. Obviously, Joe wasn’t the only one keeping an eye, or in his case, lots of eyes on us. “Nobody's perfect,” I reminded him. “When you go home, you know, back to Mars,” I nodded towards the ceiling, with no particular idea if that was the correct direction, “Not that I’m trying to get rid of you, mind, what makes you think I won’t tell the authorities here all about you? You realise I will, of course?”
The slit where his mouth might have been puckered a little and I imagined that to be a wry smile. A sort of, you don’t know anything, little smile. “Could I allow that to happen?” he asked, frankly.
An unpleasant tingling sensation stroked my spine like a wicked call-girl with a perverted sense of humour and a feather duster. (Now that was a night.) With my heightened tendency towards paranoia, always my permanent cross to bear, I naturally considered the worst of all possible options. Scenarios played rapidly through my mind, and they nearly all ended with me becoming a pile of grey ash on my living-room carpet, and Joe standing over me with a smoking ray gun in his tentacle. From which part of his naked anatomy he was to produce this weapon of my destruction, I had absolutely no idea. So terrifyingly clear was the image I saw with my minds eye I had to shake my head vigorously to remove it.
“You will not remember even meeting me, when I have gone.”
I liked that. It sounded a hell of a lot more upbeat than having my atoms fried. I could live with forgetting all about Joe and our conversation.
“Fair enough. A pity in a way, though. It would make a good book, all this.”
“E.T.”
“You watched E.T.?”
“We all did.”
I couldn't help wondering if Joe and his kind cried at the sad bits, dabbing tissues at all four eyes.
'I must go,' he said. 'Air not good.'
'I haven't farted,' I assured him.
'Your air not good for me too long.'
'Well. Its been inter....'
The little joker had gone. Just damn vanished.
'Hmm. I got news for you, space cowboy. I still remember everything.' He suddenly came back. But he wasn't where he'd been sitting. He was by the bourbon. His tentacle wrapped around it.
'Bye,' he said. Then he was gone.
Who was gone? Something had gone. What had gone? I had the most peculiar feeling, something had happened but I couldn't put my finger on it. I needed a drink. There was an empty space where the bottle had been. I really have to cut down.
The end.
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