TRYST WITH RHETT BUTLER: Part 2

By Prakash Subbarao (Prakash@3xus.com)

It’s a very strange feeling entering a hotel room with an unknown man. But curiosity had gotten the better of me. I was just dying to know why he was following me, how we was tracking me and how he knew of my fondness for Solan No. 1. Strangely some sixth sense told me that he was a good ‘un and meant no harm.

We entered the room and we settled down in the ante room. There was ice in the fridge. I took out two glasses and looked at him but he shook his head to indicate that he wouldn’t have anything. I opened my suitcase and took out a bottle of Chivas Regal.

“Would you prefer to drink your favourite drink” he asked me in his strangely accentless voice. “Yes, I would” I said with heavy sarcasm. “I would just love that”. I put a lot of emphasis on the “love”. He said nothing. When I lifted the bottle to pour the whisky into the glass I noticed with shock that I was now holding a “Solan No. 1” bottle. I shot a glance at him. His face was expressionless.

“How the devil did you manage to do that?” I blurted out, involuntarily.

“Oh, there’s nothing to it. I will teach you how to do it in a few days” was his breezy reply.

I poured a hefty slug of whisky into a tumbler that I found nearby and took a healthy sip. Ah! The whisky felt great going down. I looked at the refrigerator.

“Are you looking for ice?” he asked and magically an ice bucket appeared in front of me. It was filled with the most perfectly looking spheres of pure, transparent ice. Each sphere was half the size of a golf ball. I had never seen anything like it before. It was so clear that I could see right through it without any distortion!

“Soda?” he asked. “Yes thanks”. I said. A bottle of chilled soda instantly stood before me.

I normally don’t take soda with my Solan No.1. I had said ‘yes’ just so that I could examine the bottles of soda that appeared to see what the label said.

The bottle standing in front of me was of the clearest glass that I had ever seen. It looked so fresh! Like a glass sculpted from the purest of ice from the Alps. Significantly, there was no label. Just 300 ml of bubbling, sparkling, soda in that crystal clear glass bottle.

“Allow me” said Rhett, with a smile, and poured the soda into the glass.

So here I was, in a strange hotel room in Singapore with a strange dude doing all kinds of strange things and yet the mind was calm. Collected. I knew that this stranger meant me no harm.

“I am going to tell you a story that you may find hard to believe” Rhett said. “But I assure you, it’s all true”.

I can smell a good story coming instinctively. “To hell with it!” I told myself and let my guard down. “Go ahead!” I said, smiling.

“As you may have gathered, I am not an inhabitant of earth” he said. “We – the inhabitants of where I come from - are amazed at how you perceive ‘aliens’ as a hostile lot. You show them as invariably inferior to yourselves. You invariably happen to capture these so called aliens in your science fiction movies and TV programs such as the X Files and subject them to all kind of scientific experiments. In reality, aliens surround you in vast numbers and are not at all what you think they look like”.

I thought it best to say nothing at this stage, so I just nodded. A very neutral nod, understand. It was not meant to indicate any support. But at the same time it was not designed to reveal any incredulity.

“We have been monitoring your earth for the past 200 million years” he continued. “We visit it every ten years to check on how things are going and file the data in our knowledgebase. There are several such “earths” like yours spread all over. We monitor all of them in the hope of learning something new. However, we consider ourselves the most intelligent and civilized of all the civilizations that have so far emerged in space”.

“Really!” I interjected. “And how many civilizations are there?” I couldn’t hide the note of sarcasm in my voice.

“Oh! Over ten thousand space civilizations” he replied. “And several hundred are in the near vicinity of earth. But we are amazed that you guys have not detected them”.

Shit! This was unnerving.

“Do you know that several thousands of them have been beaming signals in the hope of finding other life forms and being found themselves?”

“No” I said.

“Yes” he went on pensively. “The problem is that every civilization has its own unique thought-process-wavelength and this seems to act as a beta-blocker. It gives each civilization a narrow window to peer into, the width of the window being of course, determined by the particular bandwidth of that particular wavelength of that particular civilization”.

“Hey, slow down” I protested. “I just lost you”.

“OK. Let me put it like this. You guys have this big bang theory of evolution. You have this Darwinian fantasy that man first crawled ashore from the sea, then developed four legs, then slowly tried to stand up and then finally did. One branch of the apes then went on to become man and the rest, as they say, is history”.

“You mean all this didn’t happen?” I said, gaping.

“Of course not!” was his prompt reply.

“Tell me more” I commended him, now deeply interested.

“The biggest mistake you guys made was coming out of the sea” he said. “In the sea you were comfortable. In the sea you were at peace. In the sea you defied gravity. In the sea you were almost weightless. In the sea you were streamlined. ‘Aerodynamic’ you call it. In the sea you were practically invulnerable. You guys came out of the sea on to land and that’s where your problems began. Your biggest mistake was coming out on to land”.

“Hmmmmmmmmm” I said. This was intriguing.

“In the sea you lead a simple life; there’s no dog-eat-dog there. There are no “cold wars” at sea. There are no territorial divides; there is no problem transferring information when underwater - either electrically or by sound, the sea is a better conducting medium than air. One can send an ultra-low wavelength sound signal out several hundred kilometers with practically no fuss. Yes………………your biggest mistake was coming out of the sea onto land. Then you needed to ‘mutate’, to ‘evolve’. You needed ‘lungs’. All the rules changed. That was your biggest problem”.

“Is this guy crazy or insane” I asked myself.

“Oh, I’m perfectly sane!” he immediately replied. He had read my thoughts.

“One thing that never struck your dumb race was that the sea provides all the nourishment automatically. You guys have now “conquered” space but you know practically nothing about the sea! Giant 90 metre long whales live on tiny krill! Where do the krill come from? You don’t know! Nutrients come from deep in the sea. Where and how large are these reserves? You do not know.

He had a point.

I was feeling tired. The journey had sapped my strength. The time zone made it that much more difficult. If it was ten p.m. in India it was not 12.30 a.m. I longed to get into bed.

“ I will leave you now. I can see that you are tired. Let’s talk tomorrow” he said.

I just nodded, grateful that he had read my mind.

In the blink of an eye he was gone.

And so were the soda and the ice.

And the bottle of Solan No.1.

In its place was a bottle of Chivas Regal.

Unopened.

But I knew by the buzz in my innards that I had had several drinks.

……………………..to be continued…………………