Хосе Гомес - A Planet for Rent

I know perfectly well that the policy on Tau Ceti is not to grant citizenship to every human who comes here begging on his knees for it.

But I believe that you will make an exception for me…

I’m aware of the technoscience quarantine laws that have caused terrestrial science and technology to lag so far behind. I fully understand their true purpose, underneath all the altruistic demagoguery: to knock us out of the competition. To guarantee that we will eternally be a market, not a producer. A buyer, not a seller. Dependent, in a word. To sideline us in the galactic struggle for power.

They don’t allow us know the mechanics of controlled thermonuclear fusion, or how antigrav systems work, or the theory of hyperspace flight…

Especially that last one. Because… can you imagine what would happen to the delicate balance among the races if humans suddenly developed an instantaneous transport system that works across the universe? The chaos that would be unleashed if all the hyperspace shops that xenoids boast were suddenly rendered obsolete?

I have created such a system. Based on classical teletransportation, of course… but capable of transferring a virtually infinite mass between two points separated by galactic distances.

It does not require astronomical amounts of energy or special technical knowledge for installation. It does not even need a corresponding piece of equipment at the point of arrival, unlike systems currently in use. Of course you’d need one to return… but you could send it by teletransport, too. The system is, pardon my immodesty, simply brilliant. Or brilliantly simple, if you prefer the sound of that.

And if you do not grant me Cetian citizenship, I will publish all the details of my discovery.

Imagine every Earthling building his own galactic teletransport booth, and my race spreading across all your worlds like the plague you’ve always tried to contain.

I see that you’re smiling… Perhaps you are thinking that simply wiping my memory clean, or, if worse comes to worst, physically eliminating me will easily put an end to that possibility. Sorry, but I’ve already thought of that.

At a secret and secure location in my lab at the Center—and at five other sites, just in case—I have left computers with all the data stored in their memory. Each is connected to the holonet. If I return, or if I disappear; if my name or fingerprints or retinal scan show up on any list of passengers to Earth, or if I simply fail to send a specific signal each month, everyone will learn of my invention.

I suppose you could consider this blackmail. But at the same time… don’t you think that is more than sufficient reason to declare me suitable for becoming an honorary citizen of Tau Ceti right away?

“Do you consider yourself a mentally sane individual, please?”

My galactic teletransport system is really very simple. But it is based on a very original set of principles and theories, which run diametrically counter to the concepts that advanced science currently employs on Earth. This fact is a logical consequence of my characteristic mental model of reasoning…

As I have mentioned, I am one of that odd class of mental freaks that some call “idiot savants,” and others, such as Hermann and Sigimer, much more euphemistically call “natural geniuses.”

My emotional and social activity is almost entirely atrophied in favor of the disproportionate development of my logic, intuition, and memory skills. I have limitations, of course. For example, you will have noticed that my capacity for abstract thinking is merely… average. Although I have recently been getting better and better at expressing my thoughts in the abstruse system of physical and mathematical formulae that seem to be the lingua franca of science, I am still more comfortable working with physical objects or analogies than with hypotheses. My mind works better with images than with words or concepts. I’m a born empiricist, not a theorist. That was what allowed me to make my… discovery.

Of course, I also have a photographic memory… which means that I may have given you the impression of having a much greater facility for social analysis than I actually do. That was a purely involuntary effect; I merely repeated verbatim a few analyses of the situation on Earth that have fallen into my hands by means I would prefer not to mention—but whose points of view I share one hundred percent, though I admit that I would never be able to draw such conclusions on my own.

I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve no doubt caused you. Constantly drawing on my automatic memory predisposes me towards a bit of logorrhea and incoherence… towards digressing and answering questions that I haven’t been asked yet, or that I was asked long ago.

My mother always told me that I had all the answers. That my real problem was finding the questions that went with them.

Perhaps that is the dilemma of man and of all intelligent life.

But enough of cheap, sentimental philosophy. With regard to your question, specifically, I think that from a statistical point of view it would be simply impossible for another human being to have reached the same discovery at the same time as me.

Absolutely not.

“Fine… The assessment interview has concluded. Alex Gens Smith, you have been determined suitable for receiving honorary Cetian citizenship. Our colleagues will inform the rest of your delegation of this decision. Your personal belongings will soon be transferred from the accommodations reserved for humans where you have been staying. An official request will be sent to Earth asking to have any personal objects you wish to keep immediately sent to you. Including your recordings of Joanman Uelser Rat. You will be provided with all the information you will have to learn in order to adjust as quickly as possible to life in our society.

“Welcome to Ningando, Alex.

“Forgive my previous coldness. We are no Centaurians, but that is our… official attitude in cases such as yours.

“Now, speaking unofficially, I’d like to pass on some information to you that you are obviously unaware of… and to ask you a question of a more… private nature.

“Your ‘discovery’ of galactic teletransportation was made eight years ago by us—the xenoids. It is currently in the experimental, pilot project phase. If it hasn’t been widely deployed yet, that is because, as you inferred, it will drastically change the entire system of transportation lines across the galaxy, rendering the huge investments of various races in the hyperspace transport fleet useless and obsolete.

“Three years ago, another human physicist, Dr. Dien Lin Chuan of the University of Beijing—perhaps you have heard of him—appeared before our Centaurian colleagues with the same discovery . And he filed a request identical to yours. I am authorized to inform you that Dien Ling Chuan is currently a Centaurian citizen with full rights…

“My question is: Are you fully aware of the fact that this interview has concluded favorably for you exclusively because it is in the interest of the races you call xenoid to prevent the species to which you belong from having any chance of technological development?”

Madness is very relative, don’t you think?

An anonymous ancient Arabic poet and philosopher once said, “In this mad world, the greatest madness is to claim to be sane.”

I have also heard it said that madness is any behavior or way of thinking that diverges from what is “normal.”

My life can’t be considered very “normal,” I don’t think. And every man thinks as he has lived.

So, according to both these views, I must be crazy… and I don’t care. On the contrary, I’m proud of it.