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&039;Bottom of the heap?&039;

He shook his head

&039;We don&039;t have rankings as such in our society, there isn&039;t any need I was trained to do my job and I did it to the best of my abilities, as did the pilots, the technicians and the maintenance staff&039;

&039;So who&039;s fault was it that your ship got daed?&039;

&039;No-one&039;s fault It was a freak accident&039;

&039;Shouldn&039;t you have been prepared for freak accidents if you were all so highly trained and effective?&039;

I was conscious that both Rob and Siobhan were glaring atthey felt or had to say I wasn&039;t particularly interested in what the alien had to say either I just foundparticularly territorial and aard

&039;It was a freak accident,&039; he repeated quietly

I didn&039;t believe him How could they have been so advanced and yet have left theency plans and safety ? Or perhaps I was just being overly critical for no better reason that I didn&039;t like this alien Or any alien for that matter More to the point, it wasn&039;t that I didn&039;t like them, it was just that I couldn&039;t be bothered with them I resented the fact that to everyone else I knew, these uninvited guests had suddenly become the be-all and end-all at the expense of absolutely everything else

&039;Do you like what you do?&039; I wondered Noas the one asking the incessant strea or disliking it, is there?&039; he replied &039;It&039;s what I was trained to do It&039;s what I always kneould be doing I know everything there is to know aboutyou&039;ll be doing it for, don&039;t you?&039; &039;That&039;s right&039;

&039;But don&039;t you ever yearn to do anything else?&039;

&039;No&039;

&039;Haven&039;t you ever looked at the bloke who lives next door to you and felt like you wanted to do what he does? Or have you ever liked the look of someone else&039;s wife or house and&039;

&039;I&039; your questions I&039;ve already told you the answers&039;

&039;Is there anyone you don&039;t like?&039; I pressed

&039;My race or alien?&039; he sneered

&039;Your race,&039; I sneered back &039;Alien&039;

He shook his head

&039;No-one&039;

&039;Any one ever pissed you off?&039;

&039;Pissed me off?&039;

&039;Got on your nerves?&039;

&039;You&039;re the first for a while&039;

&039;Any of your kind?&039;

&039;No&039;

&039;So you live in this perfect world where everyone gets on and there&039;s no resentment and no discrimination and&039;

&039;Give it a rest, Tonored her

&039;and you all do everything for the good of everyone&039;

&039;What&039;s your point?&039; Rob butted in

&039;My point is I find it hard to believe any of this bullshit&039;

&039;Believe what you want to believe,&039; the alien said softly &039;The fact is it&039;s true We work together because it is the collective effort of each one of us that keeps the structure of our society intact We are all equal&039;

&039;Do you feel superior?&039; I asked

&039;Superior to what?&039;

&039;Us&039;

He thought carefully for ablue eyes

&039;Yes,&039; he said siot up from my chair and went to fetch more beer I could feel Rob and Siobhan&039;s uess that if I had been in the alien&039;s shoes then I would have probably felt the same way about our backward society as he did But this was my backward society and my home and I loved it How dare he think hie and skill was not all that success and advancement was measurable by What did his kind know about art and i outside without ly unaffected by my outburst and &039;s so structured back where you are, how do you deal with illnesses and accidents?&039;

&039;We don&039;t have illnesses,&039; he replied

&039;What?&039;

&039;We&039;ve eradicated them all&039;

&039;How?&039;

&039;Remember your computer revolution when the silicon chip was invented?&039;

&039;Yes, why?&039; Rob answered

&039;That was a fundae that enabled a thousand other technologies to advance, wasn&039;t it? About fifty years ago we entered a similar kind of phase on our planet&039;

&039;How do you ed everything&039;

&039;What discovery?&039;

&039;We discovered how to take apart and reassemble the smallest atoms and electrons We&039;re able to e them, destroy them, create them&039;

&039;Jesus&039; Siobhan whispered

&039;And once you have the ability to do all of that,&039; the alien continued, &039;you can look at everything in a neay You&039;re able to do just about anything&039;

&039;Such as?&039;

&039;You mentioned ht We can break things down to the very lowest level iht repair a coe of software, we can repair our bodies by forgetting about li in terms of individual cells&039;

&039;I don&039;t follow,&039; Siobhanthe effect of her first bottle of beer

&039;A diseased cell was probably once a healthy cell, agree?&039;

She nodded

&039;Yeah&039; &039;So e&039;re able to do is reverse the process that caused the cell to becoe the component parts of the cell in order to return it to a healthy state By learning the precise role of the smallest parts of even the smallest atoms of the smallest cells it&039;s been possible for us to identify and isolate the base cause of every physical probley has continued to improve, so we&039;ve been able to cure those proble in the first place&039;

&039;So what are you saying?&039; I asked, entering the room in much the same mood as I had been in when I had left

&039;What do youof me

&039;Does this make you all powerful?&039;

&039;You could say that There&039;s very little that we can&039;t do&039;

&039;So why do you die?&039;

&039;Because it&039;s part of the plan There has to be progression&039;

&039;Why bother? You all look the saression to e&039;

&039;So reverse the ageing process&039;

He shook his head

&039;We have very strict ethics that control the use of this technology&039;

&039;Are you controlled?&039;

&039;No&039;

&039;You mention coram it From what you say it sounds as if you&039;re able to do that with your y exists, yes&039;

&039;So you could delete e personalities, suppress emotions&039;

&039;We could, but we don&039;t&039;

&039;You&039;re programmed to tow the line, aren&039;t you? You don&039;t deviate from what you&039;ve been ordained to do because you&039;ve been programmed not to&039;

&039;This is bollocks,&039; spat Rob

&039;No it isn&039;t,&039; I protested &039;Come on, can you tell me with any certainty that no-one&039;s messed with your mind? Are you sure that you&039;re not just a worker drone that&039;s been sent out into space to do the work of who knohat?&039;

&039;It just wouldn&039;t happen,&039; the visitor sighed &039;Listen to yourself, will you? You&039;re talking about &039;us&039; and &039;them&039; all the ti is done for the co,&039; I insisted &039;It&039;s all fucking wrong You&039;re talking about a technology that allows you to control everything - even the ht processes&039;

I noticed that Rob and Siobhan were looking at each other They appeared aard and uncory, but I wasn&039;t co inding the others up

I got up, walked to the end of the garden and stared out over the calm, dark sea A brisk, cold wind blew in fros that I had heard that evening rattled round and round my head for hours I couldn&039;t sleep Siobhan lay in bed with her back tosoundly I had really pissed her off with ht She hadn&039;t spoken to ht

I just couldn&039;t accept what I&039;d been told The alien had asked us to believe that he came from some utopian paradise billions of miles away - a place where people lived predestined lives without question or coether selflessly for the cos froement on what I knew of myself and the rest of the human race, and that experience made me doubt that this paradise could ever have existed What about character and personality? What about creativity and spontaneity? None of those qualities could possibly have been allowed to exist on the alien homeworld Such attributes would only serve to disturb the precious status quo

If what I had heard was true then the options were li example to the rest of the universe, a cold, anodyne hell that no-one in their rightto do with, or it was siut reaction was that this alien &039;John&039; and the rest of his blissfully happy species were being controlled like puppets by so who&039;s purpose I didn&039;t even want to think about