SNAKE OIL Chapter 8

Updated Sunday 21 February, 2010 12:15 PM

SNAKE OIL

By Doctor What

Chapter Eight

Money

It's a crime

Share it fairly

But don't take a slice of my pie.

Money

So they say

Is the root of all evil today.

- Pink Floyd, "Money", The Dark Side of the Moon

February 7, 2017

The Greeks referred to it as “Selene”, the Romans used “Luna”, the Hindus referred to it as “Anumati”, Indonesians preferred using “Dewi Sri”, certain Pre-Columbian societies used “Ka-Ata-Killa”, while the Incas referred to it by the quite charming name of “Mama Quilla”.

When Western Civilization came into dominance, they took a good long, hard look at the plethora of names given to Earth’s only natural satellite by the literally thousands upon thousands of religions, cults and assorted societies that had come before them and after careful and detailed analysis, settled on the term…

“The Moon”.

Probably made sense at the time…

At a distance of about 1,000 miles above the surface of the Moon’s South Pole, something odd began to happen.

Space began to…change.

To describe the effect visually would require hiring about a thousand highly specialized technicians, the use of a dozen super-computers, the services of Steven Spielberg, and cost at least forty or fifty million dollars in special effects.

Since none of these are currently available to the author, the best way to describe the effect was that an area of space about twenty miles in diameter became all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, and squibly-skwobly.

A moment later, a mile long rectangular shaped space ship suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

All things considered, it was a pretty cool effect…

Michael shook his head and tried to clear the effects of the … jump? … from his addled brain.

Twice in twenty minutes…and I already feel like the day after an all-night bender. How do these Lytasians handle this?

Michael glanced around and noticed that the other forty or so assorted aides and assistants and whatnots were all looking more or less the same as how Michael felt. He glanced to his side and saw Dr. Kasjusz shaking his head and cleaning his glasses on his shirt.

“Are you alright, Doctor?”

“Hmmm?”, replied Loew, putting his glasses back on and turning to face Michael. “Oh yes! A bit of a crazy ride but no major injuries!”. Loew quickly ran his hands over his body, tapping and thudding various body parts and extremities. “Yup! All there! Although I fear that last jump may have made my brain a bit addled…”

“Did it now?”, replied Michael, his voice carefully neutral.

Loew scrunched up his face, deep in thought.

“Let’s see now…” Loew stood there with his eyes shut, seemingly deep in thought, for a full twenty seconds, mumbling under his breath. Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he let loose a hearty laugh, very loud and more than a bit disconcerting in the quiet vastness of the Observation Room. Shaking his head and grinning maniacally, Loew turned to face Michael.

“I must be feeling a bit addled! Imagine that! I actually mixed up ‘ngirta with ‘niana for a minute there! Ha!”

“Shocking, Doctor.” replied Michael, his voice still neutral.

“Yes. Yes it is.” Loew glanced up and looked out the window in front of him. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day!”

Michael followed Loew’s gaze.

The Moon….

It filled nearly the whole width of the observation deck, fat and pock-marked and yellowish-white.

At any other time, the sight of the Moon so close to him would have been seen as the culmination of a lifetime dream.

It still did—but there was something else that was fighting for his attention.

At the South Pole of the Moon, barely visible at this distance but definitely there, was a large…thing.

The immediate image that came to his mind was Moonbase Alpha from Space:1999 – a set of three or four irregularly shaped concentric rings with a wide assortment of ‘spokes’ and ‘knobs’ and ‘wedges’ scattered about and extending from the site itself. If he had to guess, Michael would have pegged the site to be about four or five miles across.

“Ah yes—our processing plant. You like?” said a voice behind Michael.

He turned around to see –“Bob” the Guide.

“We tried to make it as unobtrusive as possible, given the projected production demands,” continued Bob.

“You built all that in just two weeks?” asked Michael incredulously.

Bob nodded.

“Fairly simple modular design. We have thousands of those set up throughout our territory. It becomes – how do you say? – child’s play after you’ve done it that many times. A simple matter of inserting tab A into slot B, really.” Bob stopped talking and looked around conspiratorially. He leaned close to Michael and whispered, “Just between you and me though – the instruction manuals that come with the thing really need work though – there’s always a few bits and pieces left over that you’re not quite sure what to do with.”

“Heh—reminds me of IKEA furniture,” replied Michael.

Bob’s antennae started waving again.

“Yes—we are aware of this ‘IKEA’ you speak of through our monitoring of your communications and entertainment systems,” replied Bob.

Bob paused for a moment, a look of vague confusion and concern on his face.

“You sure that we are the only aliens to have contacted your race?”

“Well—if you believe some people – we’ve been contacted by the Grey aliens. But they have this habit of only contacting people in isolated areas and they tend to have this distressing habit of doing weird experiments on those they pick up.” Michael replied, laughing.

Bob started laughing too. It was a very weird laugh; the pitch rose and fell almost—but not quite – the same way as a human laugh. It was off just enough to give the laugh a weird… disconnected … sound to it that gave Michael an involuntary shudder.

“Oh—those guys! Yeah—never mind them--they’re harmless for the most part. It’s what they do when they’ve had a few too many grixcling and start wanting to show off to their friends. They are what you would call … uh … fat boys. No, wait – frat boys! That’s it!” replied Bob, shaking his head in amusement.

And with that, he turned around and started walking away from Michael.

“Huh? Wha…?” replied a stunned Michael at the rapidly receding Lytasian.

“Ok people!” shouted Bob, “Let’s continue the tour!”

“And here we are back in the hanger!”

Michael paused to catch his breath. It had been a very weird, informative but ultimately disappointing tour.

Weird in that virtually every stereotype he had had about alien spaceships were destroyed now. The Lystasians seemed to adopt the same attitude to the rest of the ship as they did with their ‘spaceplanes’ and hangers. Functionality –and rather boring functionality at that – over form. If it had not been for the omnipresent appearance of the Lytasians and the occasional weird piece of technology seen, virtually everything on board the ship would have hardly merited a second glance at any Army Base, Navy ship, warehouse or office building back on Earth. Lots and lots of rooms with people hunched over machines or desks or staring at screens or running too and fro carrying stuff. Hardly the stuff of ‘whiz bang’ science fiction epics.

It was informative in that ‘Bob’ was quite the chatterbox and although Michael was fairly certain (in his own paranoid manner) that the group’s tour had been very restricted to just those areas deemed ‘safe’, Bob liked to talk about the accomplishments of his race and had made numerous slight and subtle references and remarks about his race, their civilization, history and the other aliens they’ve interacted with. Michael was absorbing every piece of info – no matter how minor – so that he could look over it later for analysis. It was a skill that had come in useful lots of times back in his military days and in his consulting life. Even after all this time, the Lytasians were still very reluctant to talk about themselves too much and any bit of info, no matter how minor or insignificant, was considered useful.

It was disappointing in that – ultimately – with the possible exception of the ‘side-trips’ that were done -- the entire tour was actually dull.

Michael was feeling very confused about this whole thing.

Still—there was one thing that he needed to know…

“Now comes the moment you’ve been waiting for!” said Bob, cheerfully. He pulled out what looked like a PDA and started punching some buttons on it and reading the screen. “Now before I start handing out the items that we’ve agreed to, are there any final questions?”

“I have one,” said Michael, stepping forward.

He noticed out of the corner of his eye that the assembled forty people were staring at him with a mixture of emotions running the gambit from confusion to vague annoyance to – in the case of Loew – a goofy grin.

“Yes?” inquired Bob.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Bob, but I have to ask you this.”

Bob shrugged his shoulders. Or at least – attempted to shrug his shoulders. Like his laugh it was subtlely … wrong. Like his shoulders weren’t quite set up the same way as a human…

“So ask me…” replied Bob in a frighteningly accurate Jewish Grandmother voice.

“You guys obviously have the technology and the ability to set up those processing plants anywhere in our solar system. Hell—you could have set up the one on the Moon in full view of our planet and there would have been nothing we could have done to stop you. So—why not? All these deals you’ve been making with everyone will be useful to us obviously– but hardly lucrative to you, at least in the short term.”

Bob’s antennae started waving again.

“Ah—an excellent question! And one that you’ve already partially answered!”

“Oh?”

“Yes—we could have set up processing plants on every planet and on every satellite in your solar system and completely exploit this system for its resources and not have to share anything with you. But that is not our way! You see – we do not see your planet as a mere one time source of resources. Instead we see your planet as a wonderful opportunity for us to establish long-term trading system – one that can be mutually beneficial to both of our people.”

Bob was smiling now, a big grin on his face. It was so huge that if it got any bigger, it would be in danger of cutting his head in half.

Michael was reminded of a used car salesman going into his pitch.

Or a wolf seeing a wounded deer…

“If we had set up those plants everywhere without regard of your rights, then you would have seen as an invader—or at the very least, a trespasser. Who knows how you would have reacted? Why—we could have ended up at war with each other! Maybe not this year and maybe not in five years time – but one day in the future we will be setting up plants in another system, blissfully unaware, and then be attacked by your race’s ships, vowing revenge! There would have been chaos! Anarchy! Destruction! Loss of resources and trade goods!”

Bob shook his head, seemingly depressed and sad and almost upset.

“But this way – we become…partners.” The grin got bigger, the sadness gone now. “Yes—we start off much slower in the short-term but in the long-term – ah!” More grinning. “Think of it—we can act like your mentors! Your guides! Your teachers!”

Bob was becoming nearly ecstatic now; his voice rising and his arms were mere blurs as he emphasized many points with numerous hand and body gestures.

“We will slowly complement one another, using your resources to make us achieve a better lifestyle while you use ours to usher yourself into the grand and exciting Ocean of Adventure of Space itself!”

Bob’s voice was reaching a crescendo now.

“And do not think that we are mere parasites! We are not interested in just mere commodities like minerals or metals. No! NO! No I say again!” – Bob was starting to sound and act like a Baptist Minister now – “We are not barbarians, interested in just raw materials!”

Bob leaned back, still grinning, but now he was beginning to calm down a bit.

By ‘calm down a bit’ it was from acting like a monkey afflicted with ADD who had just snorted some cocaine to acting like a monkey afflicted with ADD who had a cup of coffee…

“No. You see—we are connoisseurs. We enjoy the finer points of life. That is why we did not make arrangements with the nations of your world for ‘just’ raw materials. We also made arrangements to sample all that your world has to offer. For example – we made an exclusive deal with the nation of the United Kingdom to give them one million units of this device” – Bob produced from a pocket a large pen shaped device, about half a foot long, covered in various protrusions – “an all-purpose tool we use. Very useful too—it has a million and one uses – everything from detecting radiation, repairing defective equipment, unsticking jammed hinges and locks, and even – or so I’ve been told – occasionally even driving in screws.”

Bob started smiling again.

“And one million units of this device to them every year for a yearly exchange of a mere one hundred million bottles of that wondrous substance known as Scotch Whisky!”

Ah—so that explains the jump in price thought Michael.

Bob was having A Moment again.

“Yes! Raw materials, finished goods, the necessities of life and luxury items – all connected with each other in the Grand Circle of Consumership, Trade and the pursuit of stock benefits!”

Bob let out a long and satisfying sigh.

“And then the cycle begins again, renewing forever and forever.”

Bob leaned back, a beatific smile on his lips.

“What once was, will come again,” he intoned with a solemn voice.

Bob opened his eyes, a smile on his lips.

Seemingly coming out of a reverie, he stared at the assembled humans – who were staring back at him with various combinations of shock, confusion and incomprehension.

Bob smiled and waved his hand nonchalantly.

“Oh but look at me – always going on about philosophy! Shall we get back to the subject at hand?”

It took about an hour to hand out the assorted generators, disease cures and various other bits and pieces of technology that had been promised.

It took another hour to hammer out various additional deals and work out exactly who was suppose to do what at tomorrow’s ‘official’ meeting.

It took yet another hour for the ‘spaceplane’ to get back to Earth and for all the assorted aides, assistants, hanger-ons and so forth to give their soundbite to the small army of reporters waiting for them.

Sometime during those three hours, Michael realized that he had to make a choice about his future working with the Lytasians.

It took him considerably longer than three hours to make his decision…

~~

On to Chapter 9

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