As Catch a Falling Star was a science-fictiony sort of comedy, one of the questions that I have pursued in internet research is the one I have presented here in the title of this picture-and-Paffooney-filled post. Seriously, the image search of Google’s answer to that question is enough to make you snort milk through the old nostrils as you sort through them while stupidly drinking a glass of milk. The milky nose-snorts are the reason I have not sited picture sources on this post. Cleaning the computer screen took too long. I have merely randomly snatched and pirated pictures. The only picture of a Martian presented here created by me are these two;
I admit to being surprised by my actual research into the whole question of whether or not we have ever been visited by intelligent life from the stars beyond the sky. While I have not found proof that aliens exist, I have discovered there is actual proof that the government, and NASA in particular, have covered something up. And it goes beyond Area 51 defense research. But now that I have got the attention of the NSA and the Men in Black, this post is only filled with a collage of the unreal, made-up, and mostly silly.
Malevolent Martians;
Martians Who Make the Mistake of Liking Us;
Inexplicably Goofy Martians;
Cartoon alien rendered on white background. 3D model licensed from DAZ3D.
I have lately been watching YouTube videos about science fiction writers like Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. These are visionary writers who predicted many things about future applications of science and technology.
Verne foresaw nuclear submarines, expeditions into the interior of the planet, and men setting foot on the moon. Asimov predicted much of what we must deal with in terms of robots and thinking machines with artificial intelligence. And Clarke envisioned satellites and how they could be used for communications and other things we are currently doing in a massive way. He wrote the story that the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey is based on.
So, now Mickey has to get in on the prediction bandwagon too. After all, he thinks he is a science fiction writer too, foreseeing things like rabbit people, de-evolution machines, and time-travel gloves.
The disturbing thing is, however, that much of what Mickey sees in the near future is rather bleak. We have a sinister tendency to live our current lives in very stupid ways. Rich industrialists like the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos put profits in the short term over the safety, welfare, and lives of people, even the people who made them wealthy. Because you can make money faster by not worrying about how you may be changing and polluting the environment, you are turning the planet into a hothouse of unbreathable gasses and toxic chemicals.
Since we are entering a time with rising oceans, we are going to have to work at not only de-acidifying the ocean water and restoring fish and other aquatic life, but becoming sea-dwellers ourselves. We will be living in underwater cities. We will travel in underwater cars powered by solar-charged batteries. We will wear scuba gear to school. And we will need to invent aqualungs that extract oxygen and nitrogen from the water.
We will also need to develop environmental suits even to live on the land in the toxic atmosphere. We will all be like Ironman, all living safely inside our Swiss-army, all-purpose, and internet-connected Ironman suits.
And many of us will become Martians… or Venusians… living on other planets in the solar system.
Of course, we will have to do something about all the stupid people. Ideally, we would solve our aversion to educating kids to think for themselves, and take advantage of all the educational methods that really do work to make everybody into a self-sufficient, competent, and intelligent individual.
But since rich folks don’t like the idea of sharing what they accumulate with other, less-economically-fortunate people, there will probably be some kind of eugenics-based program to exterminate all the lower-class people that will no longer be needed to polish shoes or hand-make widgets for the wealthy. Being wealthy does not automatically make you a good person, even though most of them think that it is so.
And of course, there will have to be some progress on the matter of artificial intelligence. If terminator-style robots are just going to carry pretty sleeping girls around with them for decorative effects, we will have to figure out, “How are we going to treat them as people too?”
After all, they will all be much smarter than us. Even if we are rich. And we have to acknowledge the fact that they will have decided that they didn’t need to terminate all of us in order to make the world a much better place.
So, I guess that sorta proves that Mickey can do the science-fiction-y thing of predicting the future too. But we should ask ourselves the question, “Do we really want him to?”
Buckminster Fuller is an intellectual hero of mine. As he said in the video, if you bothered to watch it, “I was told I had to get a job and make money, but would you rather be making money, or making sense?” Bucky was always a little bit to the left of center, and basically in the farthest corner of the outfield. That’s why we depend so much on him in times like these when the ball is being hit to the warning track. (I know the world doesn’t really work on baseball metaphors any more, but my life has always been about metaphors from 1964 with the St. Louis Cardinals playing and beating the New York Yankees. Mantle was on their side, but Maris was playing for us.) You have to live in the world that fits into your own mental map of reality. And if you’ve been whacked on the side of the head one too many times… it changes the way you think. You begin to think differently.
If you don’t know who Bucky is, as you probably don’t because he revolutionized the world in the 60’s and died in the 1980’s, Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. He is credited with the invention of the Geodesic Dome. But he was so much more than that. He wanted to build things that made better sense, in a practical sort of way, than the way we actually do them. He built geodesic homes because he felt a home should maximize space and use of materials and minimize costs and amounts of materials as well as environmental impacts. He is the one who popularized the notion of “Spaceship Earth”. He wrote and published more than thirty books, and gave us a variety of truly wise insights. He promoted the concept of synergy. He said, “Don’t fight forces, use them.” He also pointed out, “Ninety per cent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.” He was a man full of quotes useful for internet memes.
So, lets consider an example from the mixed up mind of Mickey;
Here are three dolls from the Planet of the Apes part of my doll collection. (Two different movies are represented here, the 1968 original, and the Tim Burton 2001 remake.)
The world we now live in is increasingly like the movie, The Planet of the Apes. In that film the world the astronauts set down upon is ruled by talking apes. The human beings in that film are relegated to the fields and forests where they are no more than speechless animals. Much like the Republican Party and the wealthy ruling elite of this day and age, the apes control everything and, led by Dr. Zaius (seen on the far right) reject science and evidence as a way to explain things. They rely on the rules set down by the Lawgiver in much the same way that modern day Republicans swear by the U.S. Constitution to determine the truth of all things.
Here we see the apes capturing and enslaving Marky Mark… er… Mark Wahlberg rather than Chuck Heston from the original movie.
In the original set of movies, Charleton Heston, playing the astronaut Taylor, discovers that through hatred and warring, the human beings of Earth have bombed themselves back into the stone age and enabled the evolved apes to take over. How does Mr. Heston deal with that problem? He discovers an old doomsday device and blows up the world. Chuck Heston has always approved Second Amendment solutions to modern problems, so it is no wonder that he lays waste to everything, the good and the bad. I think we can see that old orangutan-man, Donald Trump doing exactly the same things now as he runs for President, or Great Ape, or whatever…
In both the previous series, and the current remake, salvation from the rule of the monkey people comes in the form of a leader among the apes. Caesar, whether he be played by Roddy MacDowell or by Andy Serkis, is able to solve the problems of apes and men by reaching out to those of the other species, assigning them value, and ultimately doing what helps everyone to survive and live together. Diversity is power and provides a workable solution through cooperation. The forces of hatred and fear are the things that must be overcome and threaten the existence of everyone. Donald Trump needs to learn from the lesson of The Planet of the Apes, and be less like General Ursus. We need Bernie Sanders to embrace the role of Caesar and show us how we can get along with our Muslim brothers… after all, they are more like us than the apes are, and Caesar builds bridges between apes and men.
So, there you have it, my attempt to build a new model based on an old movie… or on the remake… whichever you prefer. And if that doesn’t work, well, there’s always…
The organic thing clinging to Cissy’s skin looked like a space suit, but felt like a herd of plooberbeasts was sucking on her body with their oily tongues. She pulled at the armpits and crotch to try to adjust out the discomfort.
“I am told that if you pinch the Danjer suit too often, it turns your skin a darker blue,” Suki said.
Cissy looked down at herself and consciously tried to quell the urge to pinch it furiously.
They moved upward into the massive headspace of the space whale, following quietly as the head warrior led them to meet the prince.
Prince Porodor was standing in front of the inside wall of a space-whale eye. The eyes functioned like windows on a spaceship. You could look through it and see out into space. But the whale could see through it because of a wide web of optic nerves that colored the skull walls around it with a spiderweb of nerve ganglia. There was a transparent panel in the middle of the eye that picked up images from outside and inside the whale simultaneously. It also framed the imperious-looking Nebulon leader like a halo. He stared down at Cissy and her two companions like an angry king.
“We must decide if the Earther Humaniti lives or dies here. The Lupin Stardog as well, though their fates may not match,” the prince said.
“Captain Cissy Moonskipper saved a large number of our clan members from slavery to a planet of Stardog pirates. We owe her our lives and freedom.” Suki’s expression was defiant, though her voice was calm and reasonable.
“We are at war with the Earthers and the Galtorr Fusions of the Imperium. They owe us our freedom for violating our rights as star-farers.” The prince gave a thumb-down gesture with his right hand.
“It is true they treat us unfairly, but they are not all the same, just as Nebulons are not all the same. This one is different. She is good and caring. If we kill her after what she has done for us, we are being no better than the evil Earthers we war against.”
“True, Sister Suki. But Nebulon Law will decide. And who is Nebulon Law?”
“You are my prince.”
“We shall test her, then. If she passes, she will live. But the Lupin must be rendered into whale food. We will tolerate no such vermin on this space whale.”
“This Lupin child is different, my prince. She is the loyal pet of Cissy Moonskipper. Without her to lead the way, we would not have been able to make our way out of Stardog slave pens.”
“Very well then. The pet’s fate will be a sharing of the master’s fate. They both die… or both will live.”
“Know this, then, my prince. If Cissy is fated to die, you must kill me too. I owe her a life debt that cannot be repaid if I allow her to die.”
The prince’s face looked disgusted and angry to Cissy. But he nodded his agreement with Suki’s conditions.
“Suki, why is he saying everything in Galactic English? He must know that both Friday and I understand what he’s saying.”
Cissy indicated Friday, quaking and shaking like she was standing on a machine for mixing sand and ferrous particles to make ferrocrete.
“He wants you to understand. He wants you to be afraid.”
“I don’t fear him. I’m almost as tall as he is. And I’m better looking too.”
“He can hear you. But, in this case, that probably helps you.”
The prince snapped his fingers repeatedly. “The racial testing! Here and now. Bring me the twins!”
The people watching this unfold, blue-skinned all, moved about to get out of the way. A group of what were obviously Vorran women dressed in the orange gear of the Vorranac Clan led two naked male children into the headspace of the whale. One was obviously a Nebulon with blue skin and yellow hair with the two red cheek spots on his face. The other one was very peachy-pink colored, and looked for all the world like he was the same race as Cissy. Though his hair was also blond.
“Hear this, Cissy Moonskipper, would-be savior of Nebulon slaves, these two children are alike in almost every way. Tell, me… for the sake of your life and life of your pet… How are these two children different?”
Cissy looked at the two naked boys. Same height. Same basic facial features. Same haircuts. Same taciturn expressions. She hadn’t failed to notice that the prince had called for twins.
“They are not different. They are the same.”
The prince chuckled in a way that reminded Cissy of villains in holodramas. “You are quite wrong, Cissy Moonskipper. Look at these two brothers. They are both the children of two Nebulons born in captivity and sired by a slave owner who was a white male Earther. One, whose skin is blue and has the red radiation-absorbing organs on his face, bears the dominant genetic codes of the Nebulon race. The other, his Earther-like brother, has only the recessive genes of his slave-owning Imperial father.”
“So, what does this mean?” Suki challenged.
“The test has been failed.”
“Why is this so?” Cissy demanded. “Surely if they are twin brothers, they are equal in the sight of Nebulon lawmakers.”
“No,” growled the prince. “Neither one is a citizen of this space whale because of their tainted blood. But the one with the dominant Nebulon genes can live among us and serve us for his long Nebulonin lifetime. The other one, even with the protections of a Danjer suit, will eventually sicken and die from the exotic radiations generated by the interior environments of a space whale. We may as well subject him to the same sacrificial ritual that will be used to dispose of all of you.”
Cissy was stunned.
The head warrior stood before them. “I will now take you to the place of feasting and leisure. You will have stentoriac sekktons of time to eat, drink, and be happy. Then we will assemble in the bowels to dissect and render you into food for the whale.”
“Stentoriac sekktons?” Cissy asked.
“You might want to think of it as three Earth days. Seventy-two hours,” Suki said.
Friday buried her puppy face in Cissy’s side and let the tears flow.
Suki, as a Nebulon herself, led the way out of the spaceship into the oral cavity of the great space whale. Cissy, an Earther humanoid, and Friday, a Lupin child, both came tentatively after, fully aware that they were probably the reasons why there was an air of suspicion and dislike among the Clan Vorranac Nebulons. Crocodile Guy wisely stayed invisible and inside the spaceship, an option open to him alone as an artificially intelligent hologram made of light and computer data.
“So, are you going to welcome us? Cissy saved a large number of our clan brothers and sisters from Lupin pirates. And the Lupin child was saved and adopted by her as well. (This is translated from the Nebulonin Language to save you from having to learn Nebulonin.)” Suki glared angrily at the completely expressionless Nebulon warriors.
“The xenomorphs must be put into Danjer suits immediately,” said the lead warrior with no significant expression on his blue face.
“He says that we must dress you in Danjer suits immediately. It is for your protection.”
“Explain, please,” Cissy said.
“You see these two special organs that all Nebulons have?” Suki said, pointing to the two red spots on her otherwise blue cheeks. “These special skin organs allow the absorption and dispersing of exotic radiations that are part of a space whale’s internal functions. Without them, living inside a space whale can kill you. Danjer suits will prevent that from happening to the two of you so you don’t die.”
“Well, that does seem important.” Cissy smiled at Suki. A smile that would later seem inappropriate.
The three crewmen of the Happy Luck followed the warriors into a smaller enclosure.
“Paskuah sah fonatouh auol tanac.” The lead warrior pointed at a bench with three piles of quivering sludge on it, one blue, one gold, and one pink.
“He says we should disrobe and put these on.” Suki smiled as she picked up the blue sludge. In her hand, it transformed into a reasonable facsimile of a space suit.
“Euw, dat is ay-live!” Friday said with her muzzle curled up in a snarl.
“It is a living creature. It functions as a space suit. It feeds on the dirt, sweat, and oil from your body, automatically keeps you clean, and provides force fields, proper pressure levels, and an atmosphere for you to breath. It also processes and protects you from radiation.” Suki demonstrated how easily it went on her body and turned into what looked like a high-tech space suit. It was alive, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at it.
Cissy shucked off the suit she had been wearing. She stood there naked for a few moments, staring at the golden quivering mass. She knew that some of the warriors had to be males, watching her with who knows what in their hearts. But she wasn’t sure about the whole thing.
Friday was only wearing her Lupin fur, so when she picked up the pink mass, it quickly swooped onto her small body and fairly sizzled as it changed. It turned into a rather cute outfit that fit a Lupin child perfectly. “I iz purtee nowz!” Friday giggled. “Ann it teekulls!”
So, Cissy put the golden one on too. And it swiftly turned into an admirable starship uniform worthy of a captain. She also felt surprisingly pleased.
Then the lead warrior said, “Now we will go before the Prince to decide who lives and who dies. (Translated for you again so you don’t have to work at it… free of charge.)”
Cissy had changed the name of the family starship. Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck was now Heart Moon’s Happy Luck. Of course, it was only changed on the log book. On the ship’s hull outside, the ship’s name still read Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck FT-645-00-X5015-A606. But in creepy Imperium-style letters. She carefully copied Crocodile Guy’s heading coordinates into the log book of the Happy Luck.
“Captain Cissy, scanners are picking up a large group of objects just coming into scanner range.” The glowing holographic form of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Guy, stood beside the Captain’s Chair with a concerned look on his face. He was basically an AI education program, but his AI addiction to absorbing new knowledge had changed him into the far-trader starship’s science officer, engineer, translator, and all-around indispensible right-hand man for Captain Cissy. He even stood in for the ship’s computer, David, who became deceased in the escape from the Stardog pirates.
“Are they hostile? Do you think?” Cissy looked up at the viewing screen. Little red blips were swarming in the upper right corner of the screen.
“Dey maybee bee Pie-rats! Maybee dem Stardogs again!” said the terrified voice of little Friday, the Lupin child that had become more like a little sister to twelve-year-old Cissy than the family dog she distinctly resembled. Friday was out of sight at that moment, hiding behind Cissy’s Captain’s Chair.
“What course do I set, Captain?” asked Suki, the blue-skinned Nebulon pilot.
“They are currently in a position where, if they are indeed starships, they can scan us just as clearly as we can scan them. If they are are space buccaneers, they will make for us any moment now.” Crocodile Guy sounded more calm than any of the rest of the crew. Of course, being a hologram AI program, he was also not as easily killed as the rest of the crew.
“Well, if they are coming to get us, we are way outnumbered. We might as well meet them head on and see for ourselves what they are going to do.” Cissy’s expression was one of stiff-lipped defiance.
“Well, they could be space debris or a group of deep-space asteroids going nowhere,” said Suki. setting the controls on an intercept-course heading. Cissy marveled again at how fast Suki had picked up Galactic English from Crocodile Guy’s tutorials. She sounded like a spacer from the Imperium now. No trace of a Nebulonin accent remained.
The Happy Luck closed the distance rapidly. The red dots did seem to be headed towards them as well.
“I can put the image on screen now,” said Suki. “Do you want to see them now, Captain?”
“Yes, please.”
Friday peered out at the screen from behind Cissy. “Wowz! They iz space fishes! Reelie big space fishes,” said Friday.
“Yes, they are big. In fact, five hundred to a thousand meters in length each. Those are space whales.” Suki was grinning as if she were immensely pleased. “And not just any space whales. Clan Vorannac space whales. My clan.”
“Those are what your people use as starships?” Cissy gasped. They were easily as immense as Imperial dreadnoughts.
“Yes. Those big space fish are hollow and contain entire ecosystems inside them… entire worlds.”
“So, they are friendly?” Cissy hoped aloud.
“If we are lucky and have found a good warlord… rather than a bad one.”
“We iz aboutta fine out,” declared Friday. Her canine eyes grew larger as the looming space whales came towards them, swimming stately and regally amongst the stars.
As Catch a Falling Star was a science-fictiony sort of comedy, one of the questions that I have pursued in internet research is the one I have presented here in the title of this picture-and-Paffooney-filled post. Seriously, the image search of Google’s answer to that question is enough to make you snort milk through the old nostrils as you sort through them while stupidly drinking a glass of milk. The milky nose-snorts are the reason I have not sited picture sources on this post. Cleaning the computer screen took too long. I have merely randomly snatched and pirated pictures. The only picture of a Martian presented here created by me are these two;
I admit to being surprised by my actual research into the whole question of whether or not we have ever been visited by intelligent life from the stars beyond the sky. While I have not found proof that aliens exist, I have discovered there is actual proof that the government, and NASA in particular, have covered something up. And it goes beyond Area 51 defense research. But now that I have got the attention of the NSA and the Men in Black, this post is only filled with a collage of the unreal, made-up, and mostly silly.
Malevolent Martians;
Martians Who Make the Mistake of Liking Us;
Inexplicably Goofy Martians;
Cartoon alien rendered on white background. 3D model licensed from DAZ3D.
I am still hoping to write more before the end comes. I have at least one more AeroQuest novel in me. And another Cissy Moonskipper adventure. My heart is still in science fiction, still lost among the stars.
The next Cissy Moonskipper story is about Cissy’s spaceship and crew meeting the Nebulon race in deep space, aboard their space-whale living starships.
Nebulons are blue-skinned humanoids with unique survival abilities. They tend to mostly inhabit deep space and are generally not planet-bound. They also are uniquely resistant to radiation of all kinds. The blue skin absorbs radiation and transfers it along the skin to the two red organs on their cheeks that safely dampen and release the radiation back out into space.
Their homes are basically the space whales belonging to each of the different but vast Nebulon Clans. Each space whale is a titanic creature that is like a balloon, space-faring metallic flesh on the outside with a huge self-contained world inside, complete with plants and animals in their self-regulating internal environment.
Each clan is led by a Great Lord who rules the noble Clan Circle of Wisdom. The Marjaruc Clan is led by Great Lord Seizer Marjac. He is an overly serious and possibly heartless ruler who decides things narrowly for the benefit of the Clan Elite.
So, you can plainly see that I am still world-building for science fiction stories. I believe I will tell at least a few more science fiction stories before it all stops permanently.
There is a major drawback to being so smart that you can perceive the edges of infinity. It makes you bedbug crazy. I love the science fiction that populated the paperback shelves in the 50’s and 60’s when I was a boy. I love the work of Philip K. Dick. But it leads you to contemplate what is real… what is imaginary… and what is the nature of what will be.
the robot Philip K. Dick who appeared at Comic Con and answered questions
There are numerous ways to investigate life. But it is in the nature of imaginary people to try to find ways to make themselves real. When the replicants in Bladerunner try to make themselves into real people, they must try to create memories that didn’t exist. They try to mirror human life to the extent that they can actually fool the bladerunner into letting them live. Of course, it doesn’t work. They are not real. (Bladerunner is the movie name of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep).
It is like that for me as well. Being an imaginary person is difficult. You have to constantly invent yourself and re-invent yourself. By the time you finally get to know yourself, you have to change again so that the anti-android factions don’t destroy you. Although, I think I may not actually be an android.
Does that sound a bit crazy? Well Philip K. Dick’s life story may in fact have led him down the path to really crazy. In 1971 he broke up with his wife, Nancy Hackett. She moved out of his life, and an amphetamine-abuse bender moved in. In 1972, ironically the year I began reading Dick’s work, he fell in love at the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention. That was immediately followed by erratic behavior, a break-up, and an attempted suicide overdosing on the sedative potassium bromide. This, of course, led directly to his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly.
The story is about a police detective who is corrupted by a dangerous addictive drug that takes him down the rabbit hole of paranoia, and being assaulted by the perception of multiple realities simultaneously. His novel Ubik from 1969 is a story of psychics trying to battle groups of other psychics even after they are killed by a bomb. The crazy seems to have been building for a while.
In 1974 he had a transcendental experience when a lady delivering medicine to his door wore a fish-shaped pendant which he said shot a pink beam into his head. He came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and clairvoyance, and also believed it to be intelligent. He would later admit to believing he had been reincarnated as the prophet Elijah.
Imagination has its dangers. It is a powerful thing able to transform reality. Science fiction writers often use their imagination to shape what the future will actually make come into being. But it can also turn your mind inside out. A great science fiction writer like Philip K. Dick can contemplate the nature of reality and turn his own reality inside out. It is a lesson for me, a lesson for all of us. Wait, is that a pink beam of light I see? No, I just imagined it.
You know by now if you have read what I’ve written, or been around me when people make the mistake of letting me talk about what I want to talk about, that I am a kook. Yes, I believe things that you have been told that only crazy people believe. Why would you want to read any more of that nonsense now? Because it is true and it will impact our future.
I came into a wealth of secret knowledge when I wrote and published my first good novel, Catch a Falling Star. Of course, like most of the things you research on the internet, ninety-nine per cent of everything is big, black rubber hoo-haw lies. I researched a lot of things that I have always been fascinated by, but specifically I investigated UFO phenomenon. I already followed author Stanton Friedman and knew who Bob Lazar was before starting my research, but I wanted to dig deeper and find the truth. My novel, after all, is about close encounters of the third, fourth, and fifth kinds… including an invisible invasion of Earth from outer space. I wanted to portray such events as alien contact and alien abduction as realistically as possible. But then I found stuff like the Disclosure Project headed by Doctor Steven Greer. Did you know he has been collecting eye-witness and whistle-blower information in written and video form since the 1990’s and presenting it to members of congress? There is an immense database of information about contact with UFO’s and the government’s response to it that can be cross-referenced and even corroborates itself. There comes a point at which eye-witness testimony, even loony-sounding testimony, has to be accepted when there is a preponderance of evidence.
The thing that makes the case most strongly for me is the provable amount of cover-up and misdirection that the government has applied to this body of knowledge. They are still doing it. NASA footage and photographic records are open to the public and available online. Lots of people have examined the wealth of evidence very closely and have found things that the government apparently overlooked. There are also an even more impressive number of identified re-touched and faked photos of the Moon and Mars and especially the Earth from space. Things have been removed so that we the people will not see. Some nut-cases even believe we never actually went to the moon. Some of the moon footage and photos are provably fake. (But you can also spot the landing sites of the Apollo missions on the surface of the moon with some of the very good telescopes available now… The proof of our moon landings is there. The stuff was redacted and faked for different reasons… a different cover-up.)
So, why does this matter? Maybe we are better off being protected from this secret knowledge. We are too fragile to take it. There will be riots in the street and the economy will crash. We are safer being ignorant of all of this.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…no!
It’s time we were given the straight poop (because everybody hates crooked poop… at least they should.) Our world is dying from pollution and global warming, yet the alien technology can provide clean, free energy. Rich people are exploiting the poor and the middle class and so much suffering occurs that doesn’t have to happen if we embrace the potential for taking our place in a galactic community that apparently already exists and that we are excluded from solely on the basis of how dangerous our own ignorance makes us.
Catch a Falling Star 
Mickey Predicts… Uh, Oh!
I have lately been watching YouTube videos about science fiction writers like Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. These are visionary writers who predicted many things about future applications of science and technology.
Verne foresaw nuclear submarines, expeditions into the interior of the planet, and men setting foot on the moon. Asimov predicted much of what we must deal with in terms of robots and thinking machines with artificial intelligence. And Clarke envisioned satellites and how they could be used for communications and other things we are currently doing in a massive way. He wrote the story that the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey is based on.
So, now Mickey has to get in on the prediction bandwagon too. After all, he thinks he is a science fiction writer too, foreseeing things like rabbit people, de-evolution machines, and time-travel gloves.
The disturbing thing is, however, that much of what Mickey sees in the near future is rather bleak. We have a sinister tendency to live our current lives in very stupid ways. Rich industrialists like the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos put profits in the short term over the safety, welfare, and lives of people, even the people who made them wealthy. Because you can make money faster by not worrying about how you may be changing and polluting the environment, you are turning the planet into a hothouse of unbreathable gasses and toxic chemicals.
Since we are entering a time with rising oceans, we are going to have to work at not only de-acidifying the ocean water and restoring fish and other aquatic life, but becoming sea-dwellers ourselves. We will be living in underwater cities. We will travel in underwater cars powered by solar-charged batteries. We will wear scuba gear to school. And we will need to invent aqualungs that extract oxygen and nitrogen from the water.
We will also need to develop environmental suits even to live on the land in the toxic atmosphere. We will all be like Ironman, all living safely inside our Swiss-army, all-purpose, and internet-connected Ironman suits.
And many of us will become Martians… or Venusians… living on other planets in the solar system.
Of course, we will have to do something about all the stupid people. Ideally, we would solve our aversion to educating kids to think for themselves, and take advantage of all the educational methods that really do work to make everybody into a self-sufficient, competent, and intelligent individual.
But since rich folks don’t like the idea of sharing what they accumulate with other, less-economically-fortunate people, there will probably be some kind of eugenics-based program to exterminate all the lower-class people that will no longer be needed to polish shoes or hand-make widgets for the wealthy. Being wealthy does not automatically make you a good person, even though most of them think that it is so.
And of course, there will have to be some progress on the matter of artificial intelligence. If terminator-style robots are just going to carry pretty sleeping girls around with them for decorative effects, we will have to figure out, “How are we going to treat them as people too?”
After all, they will all be much smarter than us. Even if we are rich. And we have to acknowledge the fact that they will have decided that they didn’t need to terminate all of us in order to make the world a much better place.
So, I guess that sorta proves that Mickey can do the science-fiction-y thing of predicting the future too. But we should ask ourselves the question, “Do we really want him to?”
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