Wilyem Clark
10-10-2015, 02:39 PM
One day, aliens dropped out of the sky and landed on Earth. By “aliens” I mean: planet-hopping extraterrestrials, superior-minded busybodies, secularly shrouded divinities from heaven. They came to be known—with no paucity of humor—as the Visiting Team.
There was a lot of clamor and pageantry surrounding their appearance. The Visiting Team met with the heads of all nations (the Home Team) in secret and issued this mandate: That seven should be chosen from the entire human population based on an impartial method; that the human authorities may quarantine the seven candidates for a week in order to narrow that field to one; subsequently said individual would stand before the galactic envoys that they might administer the Test, the outcome of which would determine the fate of mankind. The Test consisted of a single question, rather short on implication, namely: Are you happy? The Visiting Team had with them a machine that functioned as a sort of lie detector. If the selected human representative answered Yes, and the machine confirmed the truth of the statement, then the descendants of apes would be salvaged, their civilization preserved, and they would gain admittance to the pantheon of interstellar cultures. If the person answered in the negative or the machine sensed duplicity, then all constituents of the species would be annihilated, for these otherworldly beings had determined that discord and disgruntlement among intelligent lifeforms were the chief threats to social stability and almost always undermined a society on a large scale. They had developed the Test to separate good crates of eggs from bad and had proven empirically that theirs was a sound approach.
The Home Team implemented a global lottery and seven random Homo sapiens were transported to a luxurious palace cordoned off from the public and the press. Per the aliens’ preconditions, no information about what awaited the seven could be shared with them, nor could they be groomed or coached. The Visiting Team promised they would monitor the quarantined subjects closely, and cautioned that any violation would be dealt with harshly. The Earth’s leaders were permitted to ask the Test question in advance, however, to prime the psychic pump. Since most of the candidates had heard of the outsiders’ arrival, they assumed they been sorted out to fulfill some future plenipotentiary mission, such as serving as cosmic ambassadors. So, when the citizens were asked about their emotional condition, they thought it was part of the screening process, and all responded truthfully, but with an eye on taking advantage of their newfound importance.
The first of the seven, a woman, replied to the query this way: “I suppose I’m okay. I’d be happier, though, if I had a companion. As it is, I am often lonely, having no one to talk to.” Hearing this, the earthlings’ commanders decided a remedy would erase any lingering doubt, and they paired the woman up with a man they believed would be an amiable partner.
The second, a gaunt laborer from a poor nation, said: “I would like to be able to eat whenever the mood strikes me. I have struggled to survive my entire life, and have faced starvation many times. Nothing more than a copious meal or two would make me happy! Rich dishes, too, not just sustenance.” To appease him, they appointed a chef, backed up by a fully staffed kitchen and well-stocked larder, to provide him with exquisite fare day or night at the push of an intercom button.
Encouraged by the granting of these first two wishes, the third person in line, a one-time contender in beauty contests, piped up: “My ears are too big. They are out of proportion with the rest of my face. I’d be on cloud nine if they could be scaled down.” Accordingly, a skilled surgeon was hired to trim her ears.
The fourth selectee, a college student not quite out of his teens, wanted to grab part of the bounty as well. He desired nothing more than a fancy sports car, and he got it.
The next two lottery winners—one of each sex—made the most audacious requests. Their happiness could be guaranteed with money, piles of money, the more the better. Treasuries and pension funds were raided in order to buy these swindlers’ approbation (or so officials thought).
Lucky number seven, a man of decent age who came from an impoverished and dusty village in a remote crevice that most atlases could not identify, never interacted with any of the others, nor did he seem to appreciate his extravagant surroundings. When not fast asleep or slurping down his meager daily bowl of porridge, he spent his time sitting on the floor and twirling a top. When his supervisors asked about his state of mind, he merely shrugged.
“What is the matter with him?” the world leaders wanted to know. The prime minister of the man’s country made inquiries, and reported back: “The villagers say he has always been this way. His father is unknown, and his mother died delivering him. The community has cared for him since birth, but he has never shown any interest in the people or things around him, except for that toy. The majority dismisses him as damaged goods; the rest consider him a saint.”
“Well, we can’t risk presenting him to our guests,” the chair of the Home Team ruled. “Leave him be and concentrate on the remaining candidates.”
As the week progressed, serious problems surfaced. The woman who longed for a companion was dissatisfied with the one given to her; the two bickered and squabbled incessantly, and they had to be separated. The man who had been hungry all his life binged on the fatty foods his chef devised for him; the twice-tormented soul now suffered from cramps and blockages. The one who underwent cosmetic surgery reinspected the arrangement of her face, and concluded that as a result of the ear reduction, her nose loomed too conspicuously in the mirror. The young man awarded with a sports car drove his prize off the road encircling the palace and was recuperating in the hospital. And the two enormously wealthy people were also upset—each envied the other’s net worth and demanded larger sums in a constant competition to outdo the rival. No one was happy.
The hour of the Test arrived and the upper echelons were at a loss. What to do? It was plain to see the first six harbored gripes and grudges, and if prodded, might not mince words or might emit traceable thoughts about their complaints, dooming everyone. The only possibility for survival rested with the antisocial villager. Yet even he might react unpredictably. With great reluctance the cadre of bigwigs led the self-contained man into the hall reserved for the Test. Once released from his escorts’ grasp, he resumed his mindless activity, that is, sitting on the floor and spinning his top.
The aliens were amused but not deterred. They hooked him up to their machine and posed that all-important question. As before, he simply shrugged. The pattern on the machine’s readout did not vary a fraction from its neutral configuration. They pressed him again, and again. At last he spoke: “I don’t really know if I am happy or not. I only know I am content for the moment. Some days are joyful, some are sad. They average out. What difference does it make as long as one has achieved inner peace and can contemplate those things worthy of contemplation?”
(Now some interpreters of ancient lore suggest that this savior of our ancestors’ necks was not a wise or even wizened spouter of ascetical guidelines, but rather that he was a spoiled young boy who had been raised by a well-to-do family, a brat incurably addicted to his hand-held electronic game module. The current teller of this tale prefers the classic text’s intimations of nobility, and so he will finish the story as he began it.)
The trusted machine showed no variance, plus or minus. The Visiting Team was perplexed. Their scientists were accustomed to clear, concise, explicit answers. The ambivalence of the human subject’s response violated their aesthetics. They packed up their belongings—their propagandistic media, exhibition displays, and ingenious devices—and departed. Humanity bungled on alone as it had in the past without any further outside interference for a good two thousand years.
There was a lot of clamor and pageantry surrounding their appearance. The Visiting Team met with the heads of all nations (the Home Team) in secret and issued this mandate: That seven should be chosen from the entire human population based on an impartial method; that the human authorities may quarantine the seven candidates for a week in order to narrow that field to one; subsequently said individual would stand before the galactic envoys that they might administer the Test, the outcome of which would determine the fate of mankind. The Test consisted of a single question, rather short on implication, namely: Are you happy? The Visiting Team had with them a machine that functioned as a sort of lie detector. If the selected human representative answered Yes, and the machine confirmed the truth of the statement, then the descendants of apes would be salvaged, their civilization preserved, and they would gain admittance to the pantheon of interstellar cultures. If the person answered in the negative or the machine sensed duplicity, then all constituents of the species would be annihilated, for these otherworldly beings had determined that discord and disgruntlement among intelligent lifeforms were the chief threats to social stability and almost always undermined a society on a large scale. They had developed the Test to separate good crates of eggs from bad and had proven empirically that theirs was a sound approach.
The Home Team implemented a global lottery and seven random Homo sapiens were transported to a luxurious palace cordoned off from the public and the press. Per the aliens’ preconditions, no information about what awaited the seven could be shared with them, nor could they be groomed or coached. The Visiting Team promised they would monitor the quarantined subjects closely, and cautioned that any violation would be dealt with harshly. The Earth’s leaders were permitted to ask the Test question in advance, however, to prime the psychic pump. Since most of the candidates had heard of the outsiders’ arrival, they assumed they been sorted out to fulfill some future plenipotentiary mission, such as serving as cosmic ambassadors. So, when the citizens were asked about their emotional condition, they thought it was part of the screening process, and all responded truthfully, but with an eye on taking advantage of their newfound importance.
The first of the seven, a woman, replied to the query this way: “I suppose I’m okay. I’d be happier, though, if I had a companion. As it is, I am often lonely, having no one to talk to.” Hearing this, the earthlings’ commanders decided a remedy would erase any lingering doubt, and they paired the woman up with a man they believed would be an amiable partner.
The second, a gaunt laborer from a poor nation, said: “I would like to be able to eat whenever the mood strikes me. I have struggled to survive my entire life, and have faced starvation many times. Nothing more than a copious meal or two would make me happy! Rich dishes, too, not just sustenance.” To appease him, they appointed a chef, backed up by a fully staffed kitchen and well-stocked larder, to provide him with exquisite fare day or night at the push of an intercom button.
Encouraged by the granting of these first two wishes, the third person in line, a one-time contender in beauty contests, piped up: “My ears are too big. They are out of proportion with the rest of my face. I’d be on cloud nine if they could be scaled down.” Accordingly, a skilled surgeon was hired to trim her ears.
The fourth selectee, a college student not quite out of his teens, wanted to grab part of the bounty as well. He desired nothing more than a fancy sports car, and he got it.
The next two lottery winners—one of each sex—made the most audacious requests. Their happiness could be guaranteed with money, piles of money, the more the better. Treasuries and pension funds were raided in order to buy these swindlers’ approbation (or so officials thought).
Lucky number seven, a man of decent age who came from an impoverished and dusty village in a remote crevice that most atlases could not identify, never interacted with any of the others, nor did he seem to appreciate his extravagant surroundings. When not fast asleep or slurping down his meager daily bowl of porridge, he spent his time sitting on the floor and twirling a top. When his supervisors asked about his state of mind, he merely shrugged.
“What is the matter with him?” the world leaders wanted to know. The prime minister of the man’s country made inquiries, and reported back: “The villagers say he has always been this way. His father is unknown, and his mother died delivering him. The community has cared for him since birth, but he has never shown any interest in the people or things around him, except for that toy. The majority dismisses him as damaged goods; the rest consider him a saint.”
“Well, we can’t risk presenting him to our guests,” the chair of the Home Team ruled. “Leave him be and concentrate on the remaining candidates.”
As the week progressed, serious problems surfaced. The woman who longed for a companion was dissatisfied with the one given to her; the two bickered and squabbled incessantly, and they had to be separated. The man who had been hungry all his life binged on the fatty foods his chef devised for him; the twice-tormented soul now suffered from cramps and blockages. The one who underwent cosmetic surgery reinspected the arrangement of her face, and concluded that as a result of the ear reduction, her nose loomed too conspicuously in the mirror. The young man awarded with a sports car drove his prize off the road encircling the palace and was recuperating in the hospital. And the two enormously wealthy people were also upset—each envied the other’s net worth and demanded larger sums in a constant competition to outdo the rival. No one was happy.
The hour of the Test arrived and the upper echelons were at a loss. What to do? It was plain to see the first six harbored gripes and grudges, and if prodded, might not mince words or might emit traceable thoughts about their complaints, dooming everyone. The only possibility for survival rested with the antisocial villager. Yet even he might react unpredictably. With great reluctance the cadre of bigwigs led the self-contained man into the hall reserved for the Test. Once released from his escorts’ grasp, he resumed his mindless activity, that is, sitting on the floor and spinning his top.
The aliens were amused but not deterred. They hooked him up to their machine and posed that all-important question. As before, he simply shrugged. The pattern on the machine’s readout did not vary a fraction from its neutral configuration. They pressed him again, and again. At last he spoke: “I don’t really know if I am happy or not. I only know I am content for the moment. Some days are joyful, some are sad. They average out. What difference does it make as long as one has achieved inner peace and can contemplate those things worthy of contemplation?”
(Now some interpreters of ancient lore suggest that this savior of our ancestors’ necks was not a wise or even wizened spouter of ascetical guidelines, but rather that he was a spoiled young boy who had been raised by a well-to-do family, a brat incurably addicted to his hand-held electronic game module. The current teller of this tale prefers the classic text’s intimations of nobility, and so he will finish the story as he began it.)
The trusted machine showed no variance, plus or minus. The Visiting Team was perplexed. Their scientists were accustomed to clear, concise, explicit answers. The ambivalence of the human subject’s response violated their aesthetics. They packed up their belongings—their propagandistic media, exhibition displays, and ingenious devices—and departed. Humanity bungled on alone as it had in the past without any further outside interference for a good two thousand years.