What’s it all about?

Alphy, so named, but known only to him, (him being the human construct he had adopted whilst on earth); in honour of his home planet of Alpha Centauri (AC). Alphy was similar to Mormons (in one way only, having relinquished religious beliefs many Millenia ago), they often volunteered to do Missionary work on other planets, typically for a period of two to three earth years duration.

The purpose of the mission was to observe and record first hand the ‘civilisation’ they were studying. One of the purposes of the study was to determine if it might be necessary to intervene to save a life-form, given it was indeed a life-form worth saving. In the case of the Homo-Sapiens (referred to by Alphy somewhat sympathetically as the ‘Saps’) this was still subject to debate back on AC.

Alphy was in a house share with two Saps Janet and John who referred to themselves as young professionals. Alphy had raised a few eyebrows when he initially explained to others he was sharing a house with a couple of pros, (he had observed that Australians seemed to abbreviate words constantly, and he tried to emulate, not always successfully).

The house was located in Carlton, a suburb that had long been gentrified. A curious term thought Alphy, noting that male dominated terminology seemed to infiltrate the language continuously. With the recent resurgence of female assertiveness in Australia, especially noticeable in the many coffee shops around Carlton, he had made the observation that he thought that Carlton had moved from gentrification to sisterfication, however this attempt at Sap humour didn’t seem to go down well and had elicited a few ‘death stares’.

Alphy had spent a year or so on Earth, or to be precise Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Earth, outer spiral arm of the Milky Way, Galaxy sector reference 4.367FLA. Well, the last bit he had made up. He often wondered what he would say if he was discovered to be an ‘alien’. ‘So where are you actually from mate?’ ‘Alpha Centauri’. ‘And where’s that?’ ‘4.367FLA.’ ‘FLA?
'Fucking Light-years Away’ ‘Right, cool’ (Alphy had noted that in Australia it wasn’t a case of expletive deleted, more expletive required).

He had arrived just as it had broken out. Disease on AC had been eradicated many millennia ago, so this was a unique ‘experience’. The Sap’s had been pretty unsophisticated in their response. For example, in Melbourne locating people who had an extremely high probability of having Covid, transporting them to the most populous parts of their civilisation, that is, the CBD of a major capital city. Then servicing them with workers who were allowed to have multiple jobs in other high exposure areas, and contained them with poorly trained security guards.’

However, this was positively genius compared to what was happening in other countries. The American Saps were demonstrating Darwinian selection at its best, those refusing to wear masks being the most likely to contract Covid.

Their recently departed leader was a particular interesting case study back on AC. One of the great advances in AC evolution was the development of a referential intelligence that determined if a fact was indeed a fact. The voracity of the intelligence had long been accepted by Centurians who referred to it by some huge and improbable intergalactic coincidence as ‘Siri’ — in their case after Sirius, the original developer. So, a thousand of Earth years ago, Siri was used to validate all statements, especially those of major ‘public’ figures. ‘Hey Siri, was that statement by the Prime Centurian correct?’ Almost overnight, fake views were revealed. Misrepresentation and lying were exposed and the new era of fact-based decision-making began and progress in AC societal development was exponential, until eventually within a couple of generations truth triumphed. In turn, this in large part led to the attainment of pure intellect by all on AC.

For amusement on AC they used their Siri to analyse the tweets and statements of ‘he of the convoluted comb-over.’ As part of their analysis they would calculate the ‘fact to fiction’ quotient, (or as Alphy would have described it to an Australian, the bullshit factor). In their studies of various ‘advanced’ life-forms, they had never seen such consistently low ratings. What confounded them even more, was the fact that the lower the quotient, the more his supporters seemed to believe it.

When Siri initially became all pervasive on AC it did have some unintended outcomes. A young Centurian asked Siri ‘if Mother Galactica (somewhat analogous to Santa Claus) really existed? ‘Of course not’ replied Siri, ‘this is a fictitious contrived character designed to provide young Centurians with an exciting fantasy figure’. ‘So who leaves the presents for us at the time of Celestial Solstice?’ ‘Well your assigned guardians — duh.’ Thereafter, Siri was programmed to respond to young Centurians below a certain maturity threshold with ‘white lies’ when appropriate.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Alphy was watching the next episode of the Covid saga unfold. The race to get the Saps vaccinated had begun. In Australia, there was a particularly high resistance to the Astra Zeneca vaccine, being the most prevalent (and in many cases the only) vaccine available; but causing an outbreak of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ due to extremely rare incidences of clots in recipients. (Alphy had tried another attempt at Sap humour by commenting that there were more clots in the Federal Parliament than would occur due to vaccines. Janet and John, being Australia were, of course, known as Jano and Johno, replied laconically ‘yeah right’.)

Alphy had been amused by the name of the vaccine. It being strikingly close to a very high level meditative state practiced by many Centurians including Alphy, known as Astral Zen.

Whilst Australia is relatively fortunate in having virtually no community cases of Covid, (at this point in time), the situation around the world in many countries is spiralling out of control. Of particular focus at the moment, especially from the Australian perspective, is that of India.

The Australian government has announced it is preventing all arrivals from India, (regardless if they are Australian Citizens, of which many thousands are.) Opinion polls seem to suggest that the majority of Australians are supportive of the move, fearing the inevitable consequences of large-scale ‘Indian takeaways’.

Robert Stygall