By Peter Wilhelm
After almost 60 years, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is giving every evidence of becoming as pointless as the quest to find the partner of the solitary red sock that’s come to the surface in the drawer where you stash such things. Did your cat eat it? Did your partner vacuum it into non-being while ridding your shack of menacing objects harbouring bacteria? Are you a communist?
The history of SETI is as boring as that of Louis II of France – known as “the universal spider” given his penchant for weaving webs of intrigue and duplicity. But since we appear to exist in a near-infinite cosmos with billions and billions of stars (© Carl Sagan) there ought to be another one or two planets wriggling with the semblance of life.
SETI generally adopts the posture of a submissive poodle lying on its back to expose its dozens of teats to a predator. One assumption of the star-searchers (with their radio telescopes and space probes) has been that the ETs are super-intelligent and will pick up our plaintive signals.
Then (having heard recordings of The Beatles, grating rants by Richard Nixon, and witnessed TV broadcasts such as “Coronation Street” and “Days of Our Lives”) they will come calling at Nkandla and other centres of popular misrule. They will kindly inform us what happened before the Big Bang and how your other red sock made its way into a nest of puffadders.
However, an increasing number of folk with nothing else to worry about are questioning the wisdom of this approach. What if the ETs want free housing and social support? Worse: what if they are interstellar barbarians who brush us aside like bees on a rhubarb pie and take over our remaining habitats?
Even a leading SETI boffin recently said: “A lot of people [say] it’s like shouting in the jungle. You don’t know what is out there; you better not do it. If you incite the aliens to obliterate the planet, you wouldn’t want that on your tombstone, right?” Personally, I suspect the aliens have different ideas.
In my dreams I see them as huge balding elephants with several trunks. Perhaps they have already held a conference to discuss the alarming signals from our pale blue dot. Who is sending them?
The initial conclusion would be that Earth is inhabited by nematode worms. Nematodes are infinitesimal but ubiquitous – accounting for 80 percent of all species on our planet, and, among themselves, found everywhere in all their variety. Humans have counted 25 000 sub-species although estimates range up to a million. They are mostly parasites encountered in stomachs or upon the bare feet of hippies.
In addition, they have tubular digestive systems with openings at both ends and reproduce sexually in a rather disgusting manner. So my many-trunked elephants would be entirely baffled by why nematodes want to transmit their debased porn and cannibalistic feeding habits.
However (in my private fantasy) there is among the multi-trunked ETs an Einstein-elephant. Flapping his ears to attract attention he points out that, on closer inspection, another viral parasite is spreading across the Earth. These things – call them people – are even more appalling than the nematode culture. Our Einstein-elephant then spouts this listicle (an article of lists):
- Humans worship ferocious supernatural entities, then turn upon and incinerate or otherwise maim and destroy anyone who deviates from their own magical gabble.
- They do not have trunks or tusks yet seem willing to destroy those that do, so they can build casinos and motels upon devastated wilderness areas.
- They guzzle listicles with headlines such as ’37 WAYS TO SPICE UP YOUR SEX LIFE’, ‘TEN CITIES WHERE YOU CAN BE RAPED WAITING FOR A TAXI’, ‘UK TO DEFORM INTO 217 AUTONOMOUS REGIONS’, and so forth.
- They pay excessive attention to their health by frequenting doctors’ waiting rooms and hospitals where nematodes hatch fresh diseases daily.
- Celebrities pay vast sums for facial restoration in salons where live snails are allowed to crawl over exposed skin and deposit faddish slime.
“In one week alone,” Einstein-elephant goes on, “public attention was seized by three oncoming elections on three different continents – Britain, America, and Africa. In SA several contestants for leadership of a supremely divided and broke political party hurled insults, accusations of racism, and even sexual innuendos at each other. The SA race to the bottom did not even offer up a woman for president, or a reactionary lunatic.”
Perhaps – to facilitate demographic transformation – Mmusi Maimane could undergo gender reassignment and check into Valkenberg?
After serious consideration, the ET conference decided on an open vote – each delegate waggling their trunks. It was finally agreed that a cautious response to Earth would be to acknowledge the existence of the clearly superior life-forms: the nematode worms.
