I Saw Them Mate
Note: This story contains some adult themes. It may not be suitable for younger readers.
Entry #245635,
Personal Journal of F.B. Romero, PhD.
Staff Chaplain, Advance Camp, Planet DFKL#9 (aka New Canaan)
I was watching them mate, but I didn’t feel dirty. Maybe this was because sex for them looked so unlike sex for me.
As I watched them, I was struck again by how they look so much like us and yet are so different. They look different and nauseating, if I’m being completely honest to Dunamis in this journal. Mind you, I say this as someone who has lived among them peacefully and happily for years.
It’s really amazing to hear myself still say that. I’ve travelled for almost half my life to meet them, but deep down I suppose that’s still the way it is. It’s sad, really, because even though I’ve received their kindness and hospitality in abundance, sometimes I still wake up in a cold sweat after having seen them in my nightmares.
I remember hearing as a child that the most frightening monsters are the ones that resemble us in a deep way. As an adult I know this to be true, although I consider one of those monsters to be my best friend.
Their eyes are smaller than ours, piercing, and set further apart. Their bodies are hairless and crisscrossed with long, highly-developed muscles. They have almost no body fat and so their thin coffee and cream skin stretches against their muscles, nearly to bursting, or so it looks to me. Every ripple and exertion, almost every pulse, is visible in great detail to the unaided eye.
I had no idea how unsettling this sight would be until I saw it for myself. It was like encountering a planet of skinny body builders or, more truly, a world populated by cadavers stripped of their skin and awaiting medical experimentation. This image is intensified by the fact that they have never in the past, currently do not, and do not in the future plan to wear clothes.
Although their skin doesn’t conceal much, it’s actually a few shades darker than my pallid flesh. This is true for a simple and sad reason, which also happens to be the main reason I and other humans have come here.
Their skin has spent its whole life touched by a kinder sun than my skin ever knew on the world of its birth. Their planet is a brighter and cleaner place than the Earth I departed a few decades ago, an Earth where few of us venture outside and still less do so with any patch of skin exposed to the elements.
Their noses look a lot like ours but are sharper, harder, and much longer. They are constructed with more bone and less cartilage. When annoyed by parenting (aren’t we all at one time or another no matter what planet we call home?), they sometimes use their noses to poke their children in the abdomen. Once I got used to the custom, it made me chuckle every time I saw it.
Stranger still, when sharing a confidence, a celebration, or what qualifies in their culture as a good joke, they rap their noses together once or twice like two swords clashing.
Over lunch the other day one of the Advance Camp medics, a funny man named James, remarked their gesture reminded him of an archaic human custom. Then James went into this over-long description of the hows, whens, and whys of two people slapping hands above their heads in celebration. Although neither of us could remember the name of the custom, he was right, the two customs were very similar.
(Addendum: I consulted the computer. The name of the human custom is the “high-five.”)
The first time one of them tried to rap noses with me, I almost lost an eye, but I knew I’d been accepted, at least as much as an alien could be.
Obviously, their evolutionary tree is not the same as ours, but it was planted in the same forest. To try another image, their physical development is a song of different lyrics set to the same tune.
Unlike many who accompanied me here, I believe there is a gardener tending the forest, a composer bending over the piano. Indeed I have staked my life on the conviction that this One knows both me and the natives of this place. Dunamis.
For their part, the natives feel the same. They say they have often felt her gardening presence, guidance, and even love. They look around and hear her music playing in their purple clouds and even in their deaths. It is this shared sensitivity to this dimension that bonded me to them, and this bond eventually led to them inviting me to witness their mating ritual.
I am the first of our kind to have seen it.
Before my invitation, in the private Leadership Council meetings of our Advance Camp, we often discussed whether we would ever witness their mating. We had only heard the faintest hints of what it might entail.
Truthfully, we couldn’t blame them if we never had the chance to see it. It was only fair, after all. During our five years on their planet, they had never seen us mate, and none of us on the Council planned on volunteering to change this state of affairs.
This isn’t to say we avoided the subject of procreation with the natives. As a way of encouraging them to open up to us about the topic, we’d been open with them about the technical knowledge of how we do it.
And, in private conversation, we’d tried to communicate more than what raw biological schematics could offer. We had tried to speak of human love and emotion, of betrayal and forgiveness. As you know, none of these topics is an easy one to discuss, even if both parties in the conversation are human. Still we did our best.
But, when the conversation turned to them, all they offered us was silence, and our imaginations ran wild. Some of us, particularly the biologists who wield such intellectual power in the Advance Camp, did more than wonder. They coveted the chance to see it. They practically lusted after the chance, but only in an intellectual sense, of course. (I smile as I note my choice of words).
Yet, despite the desires of arrogant biologists (there, I said it), the original residents of this planet ultimately invited me, the Advance Camp Chaplain. I am not bragging. That is simply what happened.
When the invitation came, I was as shocked as the biologists were when I told them about it. One of the natives, my friend named 12, had invited me to witness the mating of what he called in our language his “Triad”. His invitation was sudden.
As we did every few days, 12 and I had been walking through a small forest in the deepening dark and talking amiably under the light of the pale, triple-mooned sky.
12 decided to ask me a deeply personal question. During a pause in our conversation (I had been trying at the time, quite unsuccessfully, to describe the significance of animal pets for humans), 12 abruptly asked his question.
“Tell me a story about your own ancestors that matters to you a great deal.”
“I will need to think on that in silence for a few moments, 12,” I answered.
In response I heard 12 emit what for us is usually called a “sigh” but for him was a nonverbal sign of agreement. We walked on in silence as I simultaneously plumbed my memories and tried to maintain 12’s pace. Every one of 12’s strides is equal to nearly two of mine. After a few moments I was ready to respond.
“12, my great-great-grandfather, my mother’s father’s father, lived in a great cluster of buildings people called a city. This city had once been proud but now was forgotten. Many of the buildings and the people groups living there were falling apart, decaying, coming to pieces. But people were trying to renew the city, and this was why my ancestor had moved there.
“There was a young girl who lived across the street from my ancestor. She would be called a “whelpling” by your people and a “teenager” by mine. She was no longer a child, but also not yet an elder.
This girl was shot in her home by a gun. A bullet lodged in her brain. She lived, but because the bullet was stuck inside her she became different, broken. Her brain was now that of a rent, a baby, but her body was soon full-breasted. She was both frightening and sad. To all the people living there she was also a sign of the bad powers at work in the city.”
Without warning 12 stepped in front of me and blocked my path. He bent his eight foot frame at the knees, his grasshopper knees, which look much like our knees, but bend in the opposite direction.
12 lowered himself so he could place his face immediately in front of mine. I did my best to avert my eyes from his horror-show legs. No matter how many times I’d walked beside 12 and seen his legs bend, it still, ever so slightly, turned my stomach to watch them work. I hoped he did not notice.
12 puckered his lips as if to kiss me. But this was not his intent. Puckered lips for 12 were the facial signal for a question. So, instead of kissing him or running away in revulsion, I simply waited.
“Bullet?” he asked in his high, sing-song voice, a voice which had always seemed out of keeping with his towering frame.
I un-holstered my sidearm and held it out. “12, the gun that shot the girl looked much like this,” I said. “But in the time of my ancestor guns projected pieces of hard metal instead of compressed waves of sound.” I rapped my fabri-steel helmet. “Metal. Pieces. Gun. Bullet. Hurt.”
12 sighed his affirmation. He understood. Then he unblocked my path, we continued to walk together, and I took up my story again.
“My ancestor decided to throw a gathering at his home for the broken whelpling with the mind of a rent. It was a great success. The girl and her family were there. Other people from the city, people born in places from all over our world but now living in this same city came together and played and sang and danced and gave gifts to the girl. It was beautiful.
“12, all of it – moving to that strange, decaying place, caring for the fragile whelpling, giving a gathering in her honor – my ancestor did it out of love for Dunamis. By loving the girl, my ancestor was loving Dunamis. It was such a small thing looked at from eyes in the sky, but nothing is small if Dunamis looks upon it and smiles. This is a story of my ancestors that matters to me.”
12 sighed and asked me if there was anything else I wanted to add to my tale.
I said, “Sometimes when someone blends into Dunamis it is like, in a way, how your body appears. What is happening inside, every step their Inner Voice takes into Dunamis is obvious on the outside, clearly written on the face of the flesh. But other times, it is like the way my body appears to you. To those seeing the outside, it is not so clear what is happening on the inside of the body. But it is no less real.”
12 seemed to think for a moment and then said, “Yes, I understand. You have told me Jesus once said that if you give up food in order to blend more fully into Dunamis, you should make yourself look to others as if you were eating well. Such hidden gifts of love Dunamis honors.
“True that.” I said.
But 12 was not finished. “Yet has not Jesus also said that you are not to hide your deeds of Life? He says you are to hold them up like flames of fire for others to see and so give thanks to Dunamis upon seeing them. The movements of your heart are to be clear to others, like the pulse of my blood is visible to you. How are both things so?”
For a few moments the only sound was the crunch of our feet on the path. Then I spoke. “12, you know much. Not only about yourself and your world, but also about me and mine.
“Keeping your Inner Voice low to the ground comes naturally to your people, but not to mine. By giving us such tension and mystery, Jesus helps us who often fly too high the opportunity to stay low in the ways that matter most to Dunamis.
“To be true, 12, we often do not listen to Jesus, but it is by such mystery that Jesus makes us ready to blend into Dunamis when we do listen. Without his clear words full of mystery, we would be forever trying to order Dunamis around like a little, bump-nosed rent.”
That last, strange image, the one comparing Dunamis to a baby of 12’s kind, even down to its undeveloped nose, was my attempt at both humor and theological subtlety. I had no idea what his response would be.
Thankfully, it worked. I heard 12 laugh. His laugh sounded halfway between a cat’s purr and an old man’s hacking of phlegm. As he laughed, 12 lengthened his stride, moved passed me, and stepped across my path to block me yet again.
Once more 12 bent his misshapen legs to lower the height of his eyes to my own. Once more he came entirely too close to my face. (Their sense of personal space leaves so much to be desired.) Yet this time 12’s lips were not puckered in a question. This time he had an offer.
“Romero, you may come and see my Triad mate, if you desire it.”
I was stunned. “12, do you mean ‘you’ as in all of us from the Advance Camp? Or do you mean just me?”
“Just you,” 12 said. Then his wet, ripping purr of a laugh returned. “Your language is as limited as you are short.”
We walked on in silence for the final half hour before we bid each other good night. I was afraid to ask any other questions.
********
Discovering their planet had been such a shock to us on Earth. Their planet turned out to be so close to ours, at least as far as such things go.
Was missing it for so long an oversight on our part? Did the inhabitants here hide from our scans in a way we can't imagine and they won't admit? Or, was there a third party involved?
There is a saint of the church, a Martin of Birmingham, now martyred two centuries, who once said, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided people.”
Saint Martin was right in his time, and he is still sometimes right in our time as well. Perhaps the unbalance Martin saw within us needed to be corrected in a deep way before, like Saint Paul, we were ready for the scales to fall from our eyes so we could really see.
I did not know any of this for certain, but what I did know was that once the planet was found, I needed to go there. For almost every evening of my life I had prayed the words of an ancient prayer called The Phos Hilaron:
Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, O Son of God, O Giver of life, and to be glorified through all the worlds.
I had always thought that “worlds” in the prayer was just a linguistic decoration, but now the plural was a reality, an actual place with real inhabitants. I needed to go. I needed to glorify Dunamis under a different sky.
Despite what my nightmares sometimes shriek at me while I sleep, the hospitality of the people here has always been excellent. This has been the case ever since we first arrived five of our years ago (about seven of theirs).
Even when we first arrived, they never seemed afraid of us. To use a reference you may or may not know, they received us like Abraham and Sarah received the three angels of God who wandered into their camp millennia ago. However, the natives of this planet never thought us divine, even though we came to them in chariots of flame that had carried us across miles almost too great to count.
Instead, when we arrived the people of this planet seemed to think of us as pilgrims in need. Once we had devised a way to communicate, the way they put it to us had been, “You traveled to us. You must be weary. You must need something from us since you came all this way.”
Such a perspective was rational, not at all arrogant, and yet it put them, in a subtle and effortless way, into a position of superiority. And with such a sentiment the relationship between our two planets began and the struggle to love one’s neighbor as yourself ventured into uncharted territory. Now, as a part of this experiment in love, I have watched them mate.
For the full impact of the experience, I have retained the present tense of the observations I shared in my initial report to the Leadership Council. I watched them mate three weeks after 12’s invitation:
….The three of them step near one another and link their arms in a circle by placing their hands on the shoulders of their neighbors. In perfect synchronization each takes a step to the right followed by a pause of about fifteen seconds.
Then the three, moving as one, take two steps to the right followed by a briefer pause. And then three steps coupled with a still shorter pause. Soon the pauses have stopped altogether and the three are stepping faster and faster to the right.
The ever-quickening movement of the Triad at first becomes a visual blur, but then the blur becomes something more than a trick of the eyes. It becomes something real. I do not know how to say it other than their flesh blends together.
It is so hard to describe. When they blend, their hands and shoulders don’t melt into a hideous fusion of disparate shapes. They blend into one another as if they were made to do so from the beginning. Joined in this way the bodies of the three form a new, supple, breathtaking whole.
But then, before the speed of the union altogether surpasses my ability to make out the detail of the spinning bodies, the velocity evens out and something perhaps just as unexpected happens.
The noses of the three persons in the Triad elongate far beyond their normal, already super-human length. Their noses extend until the three tips touch in the middle of the Triad. It seems to my eyes that the tips of the three noses also interpenetrate one another and fuse.
I imagine if I were looking from above, the Triad would appear to be a great, spoked, spinning wheel.
As the speed increases (and, as I later learned, the cellular blending begins), a hum emanates from the Triad. It deepens and deepens until, at the climax, the hum seems to shake my very molecules. And then it is over.
The three collapse to the ground exhausted. All of their arms are once again separate, connected only to their original owners. Their noses return to their original length. The three members of the Triad take leaves from a basket set in the middle between them and chew. It is quiet, still. They feed one another. This goes on for an hour….
After the time of rest had passed, 12 rose, came over to me, and said, “My Triad has done this two times in our lives, and this is our third and final time spinning together. When we blend, Romero, something glorious happens each time.
“For a brief time during the spin we are joined all the way down to our cells, all of them joined. Each of my cells is also 73’s and 1008’s. I cannot describe it other than to say that in those moments wherever I look within myself I am me, but I am also all three of us.
“And then it is over. Our cells part and my cells are solely my own again. Except for one. One cell remains joined in the fullness of the Triad. That cell is the beginning of a rent.
“You humans talk of getting pregnant with a baby. We speak of spinning a rent. The first time we spun, the rent rested within 1008. The second time it settled within 73. And now…now is my time, Romero.”
“12, I do not, I do not know what to say. I just don’t. Other than, thank you for the honor. Thank you.”
“Romero, you said all you needed to say when we walked on the path and you talked of your ancestor and the broken girl. You said that small things are not small when Dunamis smiles upon them. Nothing is smaller than this spin. Nothing is smaller than what is within me now. But Dunamis smiles, and all is made great. Living is glorious, Romero.”
We sat in silence for some minutes. 73 and 1008 slept quietly less than ten feet from us.
“12, I have a question.”
“Ask, Romero.”
“What is it about the noses, their growing, touching, and blending in the center of the Triad? What part does that play in the spinning of a rent?”
12 said, “As far as I know, it serves no purpose, other than to feel pleasurable, if that passes for a purpose in your mind.”
I don’t know what got into me at that point. It was like some long-forgotten cultural memory flooded into my mind. The memory forced out of me an ancient joke of questionable origins and even more questionable taste. I told 12 the joke before I knew what I was doing, before I fully reckoned how inappropriate the humor was.
“12, you have made me think of a human laughter story from a long, long time ago. In it there are two characters – a legendary princess named Cinderella and a famous, magical boy named Pinocchio. Cinderella is a normal one of our women, but Pinocchio is made of wood, not too unlike the trunks of your trees. Except the earth wood is brown while yours is bright green.
“Anyway, this wooden boy Pinocchio has a strange condition. When he says things that are not true, his nose grows longer and longer. Well, in the joke, Pinocchio longs to blend in the typical human way with Cinderella’s body. Finally, Cinderella says she is willing to blend. And Pinocchio is ready. Very ready. Excited.
“12, you have read the books and seen the vids. You know how we do such things. But when the time comes for Cinderella and Pinocchio to blend, Cinderella grabs Pinocchio’s head and thrusts his face, and more specifically his nose, down beneath her waist, down in front of her body’s entrance. And Cinderella shouts with passion, ’Lie, Pinocchio, lie!’”
Dead silence. I came to my senses, was ashamed, and felt cold, flop sweat start to collect on my brow. “That was a long laughter story, Romero,” 12 said. More silence.
But then I heard the noise. It was almost inaudible at first, but the volume grew and grew, not unlike the growing speed of the Triad’s spin. It was the sound of purring and phlegm rolled into one. 12’s laughter grew and crested and then he took a deep, heavy breath. Finally 12 spoke.
“Romero, I do not have a laughter story to share in response. I wish I did. But I do have two thoughts.
“First, I suppose on whatever planet Dunamis meets us she has a way of raising our spirits with laughter and the stories that bring it forth. Despite our differences, this is so. Despite the ways we look horrible to one another, this is so.
“Second, my planet’s sun is large and red and rises in the west. Yours is small and yellow and rises in the east. I see the way you turn your eyes when I bend my knees. I see that you are puffy and I am lean. When I consider your puffiness, I have to subdue my revulsion.
So, Romero, I ask you to think on this. Why would the patterns of your planet dominate mine? Or mine yours?
“But, Romero, also think upon the patterns of Dunamis. Those patterns we share even though there are many patterns of flesh we do not share. That is where our connection is. That is where our future will be. That is why we asked you to come and see the Triad.
“Romero, two humans blend into one and your faith teaches this is a reflection of how Dunamis and his people are to be joined in trust, vulnerability, and unity. But does not your faith also teach that Dunamis within herself is one and yet three? Have you not seen this pattern of Dunamis reflected in the Triad tonight? Your blending and mine are so different and yet Dunamis shines forth in both. It makes me tremble with wonder.”
As I tried to take in what 12 had said, I pulled at a blade of grass and wondered at how the alien grass so strangely stretches and stretches like rubber until it finally gives way with a quiet pop. So different, and yet I knew it was grass.
Then I exhaled a massive and shuddering sigh of understanding. 12 sighed in response. Then we sighed together.
I heard the grass rustle, and I raised my head as I turned toward 12. He had risen, moved to my side, and was crouching before me at eye-level. As always, 12 was too close for comfort. I was shocked yet again. I didn’t realize he could bring his towering frame so close to the ground, but there he was.
12 turned his head to the right and prepared to strike me across the face with his nose.
I closed my eyes, now even more unnerved by the custom than I had been before seeing 12’s Triad spin. But then I pushed that thought from my mind and prepared myself. I prepared to receive his blow as an offering of peace, shared understanding, and humor.
Personal Journal of F.B. Romero, PhD.
Staff Chaplain, Advance Camp, Planet DFKL#9 (aka New Canaan)
I was watching them mate, but I didn’t feel dirty. Maybe this was because sex for them looked so unlike sex for me.
As I watched them, I was struck again by how they look so much like us and yet are so different. They look different and nauseating, if I’m being completely honest to Dunamis in this journal. Mind you, I say this as someone who has lived among them peacefully and happily for years.
It’s really amazing to hear myself still say that. I’ve travelled for almost half my life to meet them, but deep down I suppose that’s still the way it is. It’s sad, really, because even though I’ve received their kindness and hospitality in abundance, sometimes I still wake up in a cold sweat after having seen them in my nightmares.
I remember hearing as a child that the most frightening monsters are the ones that resemble us in a deep way. As an adult I know this to be true, although I consider one of those monsters to be my best friend.
Their eyes are smaller than ours, piercing, and set further apart. Their bodies are hairless and crisscrossed with long, highly-developed muscles. They have almost no body fat and so their thin coffee and cream skin stretches against their muscles, nearly to bursting, or so it looks to me. Every ripple and exertion, almost every pulse, is visible in great detail to the unaided eye.
I had no idea how unsettling this sight would be until I saw it for myself. It was like encountering a planet of skinny body builders or, more truly, a world populated by cadavers stripped of their skin and awaiting medical experimentation. This image is intensified by the fact that they have never in the past, currently do not, and do not in the future plan to wear clothes.
Although their skin doesn’t conceal much, it’s actually a few shades darker than my pallid flesh. This is true for a simple and sad reason, which also happens to be the main reason I and other humans have come here.
Their skin has spent its whole life touched by a kinder sun than my skin ever knew on the world of its birth. Their planet is a brighter and cleaner place than the Earth I departed a few decades ago, an Earth where few of us venture outside and still less do so with any patch of skin exposed to the elements.
Their noses look a lot like ours but are sharper, harder, and much longer. They are constructed with more bone and less cartilage. When annoyed by parenting (aren’t we all at one time or another no matter what planet we call home?), they sometimes use their noses to poke their children in the abdomen. Once I got used to the custom, it made me chuckle every time I saw it.
Stranger still, when sharing a confidence, a celebration, or what qualifies in their culture as a good joke, they rap their noses together once or twice like two swords clashing.
Over lunch the other day one of the Advance Camp medics, a funny man named James, remarked their gesture reminded him of an archaic human custom. Then James went into this over-long description of the hows, whens, and whys of two people slapping hands above their heads in celebration. Although neither of us could remember the name of the custom, he was right, the two customs were very similar.
(Addendum: I consulted the computer. The name of the human custom is the “high-five.”)
The first time one of them tried to rap noses with me, I almost lost an eye, but I knew I’d been accepted, at least as much as an alien could be.
Obviously, their evolutionary tree is not the same as ours, but it was planted in the same forest. To try another image, their physical development is a song of different lyrics set to the same tune.
Unlike many who accompanied me here, I believe there is a gardener tending the forest, a composer bending over the piano. Indeed I have staked my life on the conviction that this One knows both me and the natives of this place. Dunamis.
For their part, the natives feel the same. They say they have often felt her gardening presence, guidance, and even love. They look around and hear her music playing in their purple clouds and even in their deaths. It is this shared sensitivity to this dimension that bonded me to them, and this bond eventually led to them inviting me to witness their mating ritual.
I am the first of our kind to have seen it.
Before my invitation, in the private Leadership Council meetings of our Advance Camp, we often discussed whether we would ever witness their mating. We had only heard the faintest hints of what it might entail.
Truthfully, we couldn’t blame them if we never had the chance to see it. It was only fair, after all. During our five years on their planet, they had never seen us mate, and none of us on the Council planned on volunteering to change this state of affairs.
This isn’t to say we avoided the subject of procreation with the natives. As a way of encouraging them to open up to us about the topic, we’d been open with them about the technical knowledge of how we do it.
And, in private conversation, we’d tried to communicate more than what raw biological schematics could offer. We had tried to speak of human love and emotion, of betrayal and forgiveness. As you know, none of these topics is an easy one to discuss, even if both parties in the conversation are human. Still we did our best.
But, when the conversation turned to them, all they offered us was silence, and our imaginations ran wild. Some of us, particularly the biologists who wield such intellectual power in the Advance Camp, did more than wonder. They coveted the chance to see it. They practically lusted after the chance, but only in an intellectual sense, of course. (I smile as I note my choice of words).
Yet, despite the desires of arrogant biologists (there, I said it), the original residents of this planet ultimately invited me, the Advance Camp Chaplain. I am not bragging. That is simply what happened.
When the invitation came, I was as shocked as the biologists were when I told them about it. One of the natives, my friend named 12, had invited me to witness the mating of what he called in our language his “Triad”. His invitation was sudden.
As we did every few days, 12 and I had been walking through a small forest in the deepening dark and talking amiably under the light of the pale, triple-mooned sky.
12 decided to ask me a deeply personal question. During a pause in our conversation (I had been trying at the time, quite unsuccessfully, to describe the significance of animal pets for humans), 12 abruptly asked his question.
“Tell me a story about your own ancestors that matters to you a great deal.”
“I will need to think on that in silence for a few moments, 12,” I answered.
In response I heard 12 emit what for us is usually called a “sigh” but for him was a nonverbal sign of agreement. We walked on in silence as I simultaneously plumbed my memories and tried to maintain 12’s pace. Every one of 12’s strides is equal to nearly two of mine. After a few moments I was ready to respond.
“12, my great-great-grandfather, my mother’s father’s father, lived in a great cluster of buildings people called a city. This city had once been proud but now was forgotten. Many of the buildings and the people groups living there were falling apart, decaying, coming to pieces. But people were trying to renew the city, and this was why my ancestor had moved there.
“There was a young girl who lived across the street from my ancestor. She would be called a “whelpling” by your people and a “teenager” by mine. She was no longer a child, but also not yet an elder.
This girl was shot in her home by a gun. A bullet lodged in her brain. She lived, but because the bullet was stuck inside her she became different, broken. Her brain was now that of a rent, a baby, but her body was soon full-breasted. She was both frightening and sad. To all the people living there she was also a sign of the bad powers at work in the city.”
Without warning 12 stepped in front of me and blocked my path. He bent his eight foot frame at the knees, his grasshopper knees, which look much like our knees, but bend in the opposite direction.
12 lowered himself so he could place his face immediately in front of mine. I did my best to avert my eyes from his horror-show legs. No matter how many times I’d walked beside 12 and seen his legs bend, it still, ever so slightly, turned my stomach to watch them work. I hoped he did not notice.
12 puckered his lips as if to kiss me. But this was not his intent. Puckered lips for 12 were the facial signal for a question. So, instead of kissing him or running away in revulsion, I simply waited.
“Bullet?” he asked in his high, sing-song voice, a voice which had always seemed out of keeping with his towering frame.
I un-holstered my sidearm and held it out. “12, the gun that shot the girl looked much like this,” I said. “But in the time of my ancestor guns projected pieces of hard metal instead of compressed waves of sound.” I rapped my fabri-steel helmet. “Metal. Pieces. Gun. Bullet. Hurt.”
12 sighed his affirmation. He understood. Then he unblocked my path, we continued to walk together, and I took up my story again.
“My ancestor decided to throw a gathering at his home for the broken whelpling with the mind of a rent. It was a great success. The girl and her family were there. Other people from the city, people born in places from all over our world but now living in this same city came together and played and sang and danced and gave gifts to the girl. It was beautiful.
“12, all of it – moving to that strange, decaying place, caring for the fragile whelpling, giving a gathering in her honor – my ancestor did it out of love for Dunamis. By loving the girl, my ancestor was loving Dunamis. It was such a small thing looked at from eyes in the sky, but nothing is small if Dunamis looks upon it and smiles. This is a story of my ancestors that matters to me.”
12 sighed and asked me if there was anything else I wanted to add to my tale.
I said, “Sometimes when someone blends into Dunamis it is like, in a way, how your body appears. What is happening inside, every step their Inner Voice takes into Dunamis is obvious on the outside, clearly written on the face of the flesh. But other times, it is like the way my body appears to you. To those seeing the outside, it is not so clear what is happening on the inside of the body. But it is no less real.”
12 seemed to think for a moment and then said, “Yes, I understand. You have told me Jesus once said that if you give up food in order to blend more fully into Dunamis, you should make yourself look to others as if you were eating well. Such hidden gifts of love Dunamis honors.
“True that.” I said.
But 12 was not finished. “Yet has not Jesus also said that you are not to hide your deeds of Life? He says you are to hold them up like flames of fire for others to see and so give thanks to Dunamis upon seeing them. The movements of your heart are to be clear to others, like the pulse of my blood is visible to you. How are both things so?”
For a few moments the only sound was the crunch of our feet on the path. Then I spoke. “12, you know much. Not only about yourself and your world, but also about me and mine.
“Keeping your Inner Voice low to the ground comes naturally to your people, but not to mine. By giving us such tension and mystery, Jesus helps us who often fly too high the opportunity to stay low in the ways that matter most to Dunamis.
“To be true, 12, we often do not listen to Jesus, but it is by such mystery that Jesus makes us ready to blend into Dunamis when we do listen. Without his clear words full of mystery, we would be forever trying to order Dunamis around like a little, bump-nosed rent.”
That last, strange image, the one comparing Dunamis to a baby of 12’s kind, even down to its undeveloped nose, was my attempt at both humor and theological subtlety. I had no idea what his response would be.
Thankfully, it worked. I heard 12 laugh. His laugh sounded halfway between a cat’s purr and an old man’s hacking of phlegm. As he laughed, 12 lengthened his stride, moved passed me, and stepped across my path to block me yet again.
Once more 12 bent his misshapen legs to lower the height of his eyes to my own. Once more he came entirely too close to my face. (Their sense of personal space leaves so much to be desired.) Yet this time 12’s lips were not puckered in a question. This time he had an offer.
“Romero, you may come and see my Triad mate, if you desire it.”
I was stunned. “12, do you mean ‘you’ as in all of us from the Advance Camp? Or do you mean just me?”
“Just you,” 12 said. Then his wet, ripping purr of a laugh returned. “Your language is as limited as you are short.”
We walked on in silence for the final half hour before we bid each other good night. I was afraid to ask any other questions.
********
Discovering their planet had been such a shock to us on Earth. Their planet turned out to be so close to ours, at least as far as such things go.
Was missing it for so long an oversight on our part? Did the inhabitants here hide from our scans in a way we can't imagine and they won't admit? Or, was there a third party involved?
There is a saint of the church, a Martin of Birmingham, now martyred two centuries, who once said, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided people.”
Saint Martin was right in his time, and he is still sometimes right in our time as well. Perhaps the unbalance Martin saw within us needed to be corrected in a deep way before, like Saint Paul, we were ready for the scales to fall from our eyes so we could really see.
I did not know any of this for certain, but what I did know was that once the planet was found, I needed to go there. For almost every evening of my life I had prayed the words of an ancient prayer called The Phos Hilaron:
Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, O Son of God, O Giver of life, and to be glorified through all the worlds.
I had always thought that “worlds” in the prayer was just a linguistic decoration, but now the plural was a reality, an actual place with real inhabitants. I needed to go. I needed to glorify Dunamis under a different sky.
Despite what my nightmares sometimes shriek at me while I sleep, the hospitality of the people here has always been excellent. This has been the case ever since we first arrived five of our years ago (about seven of theirs).
Even when we first arrived, they never seemed afraid of us. To use a reference you may or may not know, they received us like Abraham and Sarah received the three angels of God who wandered into their camp millennia ago. However, the natives of this planet never thought us divine, even though we came to them in chariots of flame that had carried us across miles almost too great to count.
Instead, when we arrived the people of this planet seemed to think of us as pilgrims in need. Once we had devised a way to communicate, the way they put it to us had been, “You traveled to us. You must be weary. You must need something from us since you came all this way.”
Such a perspective was rational, not at all arrogant, and yet it put them, in a subtle and effortless way, into a position of superiority. And with such a sentiment the relationship between our two planets began and the struggle to love one’s neighbor as yourself ventured into uncharted territory. Now, as a part of this experiment in love, I have watched them mate.
For the full impact of the experience, I have retained the present tense of the observations I shared in my initial report to the Leadership Council. I watched them mate three weeks after 12’s invitation:
….The three of them step near one another and link their arms in a circle by placing their hands on the shoulders of their neighbors. In perfect synchronization each takes a step to the right followed by a pause of about fifteen seconds.
Then the three, moving as one, take two steps to the right followed by a briefer pause. And then three steps coupled with a still shorter pause. Soon the pauses have stopped altogether and the three are stepping faster and faster to the right.
The ever-quickening movement of the Triad at first becomes a visual blur, but then the blur becomes something more than a trick of the eyes. It becomes something real. I do not know how to say it other than their flesh blends together.
It is so hard to describe. When they blend, their hands and shoulders don’t melt into a hideous fusion of disparate shapes. They blend into one another as if they were made to do so from the beginning. Joined in this way the bodies of the three form a new, supple, breathtaking whole.
But then, before the speed of the union altogether surpasses my ability to make out the detail of the spinning bodies, the velocity evens out and something perhaps just as unexpected happens.
The noses of the three persons in the Triad elongate far beyond their normal, already super-human length. Their noses extend until the three tips touch in the middle of the Triad. It seems to my eyes that the tips of the three noses also interpenetrate one another and fuse.
I imagine if I were looking from above, the Triad would appear to be a great, spoked, spinning wheel.
As the speed increases (and, as I later learned, the cellular blending begins), a hum emanates from the Triad. It deepens and deepens until, at the climax, the hum seems to shake my very molecules. And then it is over.
The three collapse to the ground exhausted. All of their arms are once again separate, connected only to their original owners. Their noses return to their original length. The three members of the Triad take leaves from a basket set in the middle between them and chew. It is quiet, still. They feed one another. This goes on for an hour….
After the time of rest had passed, 12 rose, came over to me, and said, “My Triad has done this two times in our lives, and this is our third and final time spinning together. When we blend, Romero, something glorious happens each time.
“For a brief time during the spin we are joined all the way down to our cells, all of them joined. Each of my cells is also 73’s and 1008’s. I cannot describe it other than to say that in those moments wherever I look within myself I am me, but I am also all three of us.
“And then it is over. Our cells part and my cells are solely my own again. Except for one. One cell remains joined in the fullness of the Triad. That cell is the beginning of a rent.
“You humans talk of getting pregnant with a baby. We speak of spinning a rent. The first time we spun, the rent rested within 1008. The second time it settled within 73. And now…now is my time, Romero.”
“12, I do not, I do not know what to say. I just don’t. Other than, thank you for the honor. Thank you.”
“Romero, you said all you needed to say when we walked on the path and you talked of your ancestor and the broken girl. You said that small things are not small when Dunamis smiles upon them. Nothing is smaller than this spin. Nothing is smaller than what is within me now. But Dunamis smiles, and all is made great. Living is glorious, Romero.”
We sat in silence for some minutes. 73 and 1008 slept quietly less than ten feet from us.
“12, I have a question.”
“Ask, Romero.”
“What is it about the noses, their growing, touching, and blending in the center of the Triad? What part does that play in the spinning of a rent?”
12 said, “As far as I know, it serves no purpose, other than to feel pleasurable, if that passes for a purpose in your mind.”
I don’t know what got into me at that point. It was like some long-forgotten cultural memory flooded into my mind. The memory forced out of me an ancient joke of questionable origins and even more questionable taste. I told 12 the joke before I knew what I was doing, before I fully reckoned how inappropriate the humor was.
“12, you have made me think of a human laughter story from a long, long time ago. In it there are two characters – a legendary princess named Cinderella and a famous, magical boy named Pinocchio. Cinderella is a normal one of our women, but Pinocchio is made of wood, not too unlike the trunks of your trees. Except the earth wood is brown while yours is bright green.
“Anyway, this wooden boy Pinocchio has a strange condition. When he says things that are not true, his nose grows longer and longer. Well, in the joke, Pinocchio longs to blend in the typical human way with Cinderella’s body. Finally, Cinderella says she is willing to blend. And Pinocchio is ready. Very ready. Excited.
“12, you have read the books and seen the vids. You know how we do such things. But when the time comes for Cinderella and Pinocchio to blend, Cinderella grabs Pinocchio’s head and thrusts his face, and more specifically his nose, down beneath her waist, down in front of her body’s entrance. And Cinderella shouts with passion, ’Lie, Pinocchio, lie!’”
Dead silence. I came to my senses, was ashamed, and felt cold, flop sweat start to collect on my brow. “That was a long laughter story, Romero,” 12 said. More silence.
But then I heard the noise. It was almost inaudible at first, but the volume grew and grew, not unlike the growing speed of the Triad’s spin. It was the sound of purring and phlegm rolled into one. 12’s laughter grew and crested and then he took a deep, heavy breath. Finally 12 spoke.
“Romero, I do not have a laughter story to share in response. I wish I did. But I do have two thoughts.
“First, I suppose on whatever planet Dunamis meets us she has a way of raising our spirits with laughter and the stories that bring it forth. Despite our differences, this is so. Despite the ways we look horrible to one another, this is so.
“Second, my planet’s sun is large and red and rises in the west. Yours is small and yellow and rises in the east. I see the way you turn your eyes when I bend my knees. I see that you are puffy and I am lean. When I consider your puffiness, I have to subdue my revulsion.
So, Romero, I ask you to think on this. Why would the patterns of your planet dominate mine? Or mine yours?
“But, Romero, also think upon the patterns of Dunamis. Those patterns we share even though there are many patterns of flesh we do not share. That is where our connection is. That is where our future will be. That is why we asked you to come and see the Triad.
“Romero, two humans blend into one and your faith teaches this is a reflection of how Dunamis and his people are to be joined in trust, vulnerability, and unity. But does not your faith also teach that Dunamis within herself is one and yet three? Have you not seen this pattern of Dunamis reflected in the Triad tonight? Your blending and mine are so different and yet Dunamis shines forth in both. It makes me tremble with wonder.”
As I tried to take in what 12 had said, I pulled at a blade of grass and wondered at how the alien grass so strangely stretches and stretches like rubber until it finally gives way with a quiet pop. So different, and yet I knew it was grass.
Then I exhaled a massive and shuddering sigh of understanding. 12 sighed in response. Then we sighed together.
I heard the grass rustle, and I raised my head as I turned toward 12. He had risen, moved to my side, and was crouching before me at eye-level. As always, 12 was too close for comfort. I was shocked yet again. I didn’t realize he could bring his towering frame so close to the ground, but there he was.
12 turned his head to the right and prepared to strike me across the face with his nose.
I closed my eyes, now even more unnerved by the custom than I had been before seeing 12’s Triad spin. But then I pushed that thought from my mind and prepared myself. I prepared to receive his blow as an offering of peace, shared understanding, and humor.