Humankind’s Savior
By Martin Rosales
Please, sit down and let me tell you a tale of the first contact humanity ever had with the outside world — with the various other universes. For the longest time, we hadn’t a clue as to the full scope of the many, many universes that lay adjacent to ours. However, this story isn’t about the many worlds that surround us. No, it is about the man who the outside world specifically requested to see . . .
This is his story, recorded in paper form. Let it be known that it is not Cleopatra, Shakespeare, or Einstein who gets to claim the title of most important human in history. No, by the end of this story, you will see that that title is reserved for one man and one man only. The single man whose brilliance and incredible fascination with his . . . hobby brought about cooperation and coexistence between humanity and the aliens. This is the story of Dave.
Dave sighed as he arrived at his apartment after his nine-to-five office job as a lead sales associate. After opening the door, he did the same routine that he always did: kicking off his pants, grabbing a beer, and sitting down on the couch. It wasn’t the most dignified way to celebrate a hard day’s work, but it was his way. It’s not like he would ever find a woman in his life to chastise him for his laziness anyway.
Grabbing the remote, he began flicking through the various T.V. channels on the small flat screen until he landed on the kids’ channel. SpongeBob was airing. He sighed as he relaxed deeper into his couch, slumping into the fabric like mashed potatoes. Perfect.
But then, disturbing the peaceful bubble-blowing atmosphere, came a sharp rapping from the front door to his apartment. Dave cursed. Who could it be to come to bother him? It wasn’t the landlord . . . He paid his rent on time, and it wasn’t time to collect anyway. A neighbor, perhaps?
The person at the door continued to knock unceasingly. It is one thing to knock on a door loudly, another thing entirely to knock continuously. Was this an emergency? With a curse, Dave sat up from the couch and walked over. Pulling open the door a crack, he tried to peer at the person interrupting Spongebob.
Whoever was on the other end suddenly pushed the door open forcefully, sending it crashing into Dave’s side. He cursed in pain at the sudden blunt force that scraped his ribs and shoulder. “Oi, what the —” He cut himself off as men wearing military uniforms began to pour into the room.
“Ah, uh, what is going on here?” He asked, suddenly panicked. Men wearing camouflage and bearing long black rifles at the backs began to rifle through his apartment — opening drawers and removing couch cushions. One of them, a tall, narrow-faced woman wearing a black suit with matching dark hair, strode over and stood before Dave.
“Are you David George Whittaker?” She asked with the most gravelly baritone Dave had ever heard on a woman.
“Ah, yes, that’s me,” Dave stuttered. “What’s—”
“There isn’t much time for questions,” she interrupted. “I am the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You may refer to me as Director Balles. Your name came up in something of national security. I will now be escorting you out of here as agents clear through your apartment to search for anything incriminating.”
“I, ah, what?” Dave said, confused and overwhelmed. “Take me where?” Director Balles grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him not very gently out of the door. “I’ll explain on the way. There is a car waiting for you downstairs.” Dave turned to her, his heart beating wildly in his chest. “What’s going on? Can’t I at least put on some pants?”
The director shook her head as two soldiers appeared at Dave’s side. Dave jumped as they each grabbed one of his arms and towed him out through the apartment hall.
None of his questions were answered as he was forced into an all-black sedan with tinted windows and driven out of the city. The car was made so that Dave could not look at where he was being taken, and there was a divider between the back seats and the front seats. It completely isolated him from the world — like being placed in a sealed box with leather cushions for seats.
For a torturous few hours, Dave did not know what was happening or where he was going. At some point, he had closed his eyes and slept. However, he was awoken rather suddenly by the fact that the car had rolled to a complete stop. As he began to blink away the tiredness from his eyes, someone opened his door.
Bright, luminescent lights flooded his senses. Looking around, dazed by the bizarre surroundings, he saw that he was in some sort of building that didn’t have windows. He shimmied out of the sedan. There were people all around him, and his first thought was of how the car had gotten there in the first place.
It was a stereotypical secret government facility — much like the kind he’d often seen on T.V. With pristine white floors and high ceilings, there was an impressive scattering of high-tech computers and screens throughout the building. People of all shapes and colors walked past him, everyone either wearing a suit or army gear.
Immediately, he was bundled along by a pair of soldiers as they pushed him towards a separate room. Here, Director Balles was standing with a few other people, some wearing white lab coats.
“What the hell is going on here?” Dave demanded, though any intimidation he could have mustered was lost due to his visible underwear. He looked around the room. It was a rather bleak-looking room, lacking any plants or paintings. The only thing of note was a long rectangular mirror looking out into another room that had nothing inside of it save for two chairs and a table — a typical interrogation room.
The director stared at him, seemingly sizing him up with her intense dark-brown eyes. Dave was suddenly made self-conscious about himself. He wasn’t much to look at, portly and greasy, with an unshaved neckbeard and a rapidly spreading bald spot. He didn’t exercise, he was pale, he occasionally had acne, and his legs were unusually hairy.
“Sir,” she said gruffly, “anything and everything that you know about this situation, we need to know ourselves. We were unable to find anything in your apartment, on your phone, or through your contacts, so we’re going to need you to be frank here.” The director turned and pointed at the room visible through the one-way mirror. “We have reason to believe that the second that you — and only you — step into that room, an alien will appear. A sentient, intelligent alien that has threatened global annihilation should his request not be fulfilled.”
Dave turned and looked at the director in muted silence. Was . . . Was this a joke? Was he getting played here? Would a camera crew step out the second he walked into the room to record his reaction to the gag?
“You can’t be serious.”
Director Balles’s lips drew into a thin line of distaste. “Sir, if you do not enter that room, I will grab you and throw you in there myself. This is a matter of national security, and we have it on good authority that there is an alien in there.”
“You can’t be serious,” Dave repeated. “Stop it. This isn’t funny, and I want —” The director raised her hand as if to slap Dave like a redheaded stepchild. Dave cringed away while raising his hands up weakly — he never had been much of a fighter. “Please!” Dave begged. “Please just get me some pants. I’ll go in there, but I just don’t want to be in my underwear.” Instantly, Dave felt all the eyes in the room turned and looked down at his hairy legs. He flushed a beetroot red.
The director looked down at the watch on her wrist and then scowled. “Fine. Somebody get this man something to cover his legs. And quickly!” She roared the last part, and one of the soldiers in the room bolted out the door in search of a pair of pants for Dave.
“Argh, this will take too long,” said the scientist to Dave’s left as he began taking off his white lab coat. He was an older man with frizzy gray hair and a small soul patch. “Here, wrap this around your legs and get in there,” the scientist said brusquely as he handed the coat over. Dave gratefully complied. “It’s good that you’re here, Dave. You don’t know me, but I’ve been the head researcher on this case ever since we got the first message from the alien. You may refer to me as Dr. Charlie. I’m sure that the Deputy Director hasn’t done too much in explaining what is going on,” he said while glancing slightly at the director, “but to her credit, it is because we don’t know too much about what is happening either.”
Dave knotted the sleeves of the lab coat together. “Then what can you tell me?” The scientist shrugged. “There’s an alien in there. He wants to see you.”
“Are we talking Independence Day or E.T.?” He asked as he walked over to the door that led to the interrogation room.
“I have no clue what either of those means,” the scientist replied truthfully. “Really?” Dave was shocked. “Those are two classic alien movies. How’ve you not seen either—”
“Get in there!” Director Balles barked as she pushed him through the door. Dave stumbled as he was launched into the room. He awkwardly bumped his side against the small table, knocking it over. It clattered loudly atop the tiling floor below, and his face flushed sheepishly. Moving quickly so as to hide the embarrassment from his face, he picked the table back up and said it upright.
Looking around, he saw that the fluorescent lights illuminated the room overhead was a jarring, artificial yellow. There were cold, gray tiles on the floor, with concrete walls forming a perfectly square room. He stood awkwardly for a second before sitting down at the table. The chair opposite to him remained empty.
There was a brief pause before he heard it.
“Hello, Dave,” an otherworldly voice called out to him.
Dave jolted in his seat as he looked around for the source of the noise. What was that? It was English, but it sounded . . . garbled. Discolored. Inhuman. “You took a long while to get here,” the voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Suddenly, a humanoid form began to materialize on the empty chair. There were flashes of bright purple and blue, and a nebulous shape began to appear there. Dave had to squint his eyes beneath the bright glare, but just as abruptly as it started, the light settled, and in its place was left a blonde man, suddenly and unexpectedly transmogrified.
“Hello, Dave,” the man said pleasantly, speaking in perfectly fluent, red-blooded American — all previous signs of inhuman alien garble lost. “I’m sure you have plenty of questions, so let’s start by hearing them out.”
The alien sitting across from him looked like any random stranger he would encounter at his local grocery store. White, with a cleft chin and thin eyebrows, he wasn’t anything to look at, yet he seemed incredibly realistic. This wasn’t some Hollywood superstar with model cheekbones and a crisp jawline made for the big screen. Instead, this was just about as human-looking of a human as Dave had ever seen. Not that he’d ever looked at someone and thought that they weren’t human before.
“Ah, hello,” Dave said, his palms suddenly sweaty. Up until this point, the entire situation had been a prank. Some form of a practical joke. But after seeing the flashing lights and the government facility, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure.
“You are unsure as to what is real and what isn’t, no?” The alien man said. Dave blinked at him. “Yes . . . Well, no. I know what’s real. I think. I’m just not sure if you’re really an alien or not.”
The alien man nodded his head as if unsurprised by the statement. “Yes, one commonality that many forms of sentience have when being visited by higher beings is the questioning of what they are being visited by. Do not worry, Dave. I am an alien through and through.
“But let me get one thing clear here,” the alien said seriously. “Do not attempt to anthropomorphize me. I appear human but I am from another universe entirely separate from this one. You cannot ever hope to understand what I truly am because you are limited by the world around you. I, on the other hand, have much more complex technology than you. I, unlike you and your entire species, am capable of transferring between universes.
“See, and I’m sure that those scientists on the other side of this one-way mirror will get a kick out of hearing this, but the world that I come from does not have the same laws of physics that you do. We don’t really have concepts such as space and time like you do. Gravity does not constantly wear down on our bones. Not that we have bones to even begin with. Or cells. Or atoms. The very subatomic bundles that construct your world are done differently in our universe. If I were you, I wouldn’t even try to wrap my mind around that because it would serve no purpose — you wouldn’t get anywhere. The only reason I even mention this to you is so that you can get the slightest scope of where my standing is here. I have analyzed your universe and learned everything that there is to know. Every atom that has ever shifted in this entire universe I have learned of it, and I now know of it. I know every tiny minutiae of this world, and judging from that, I have decided to come speak to you, Dave.”
Silence.
Dave watched the alien in mute horror. “Is this—”
“—A prank?” The alien interrupted him. “No, it is not. See, Dave, I took a snapshot of every atom in the universe. I know of everything that has happened and everything that ever will. In all practicality, it’s predetermined now. I can properly calculate anything and everything that will ever happen in this universe because it is now a closed system. I have accounted for everything. Knowing this, please be assured that this is not a prank.”
Silence befell the interrogation room again. Dave fidgeted awkwardly, picking at the skin along his nails. “Why do you look like that?”
“Why do I look like a human?” The alien clarified. “Well, why wouldn’t I choose to look like a human when talking to a human? I don’t have a body made of atoms back in my universe. I myself am not even truly here right now. My consciousness is the one being transported across universes and dimensions.”
Dave’s mind boggled at that. Most of what the alien had said had flown over his head, but the alien probably already knew that. Everything that it has said, it had done knowing that he wouldn’t fully understand. So that left one crucial question. . . . “What’re you doing here?”
The alien nodded as if expecting that response. “I’ll answer that question later because that’s the question that you believe yourself obligated to ask.” The alien winked knowingly. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind?”
He stared at the alien. It was true. There was one question more pressing on his lips than the one he asked. One more pertinent to him than anything else. . . . “Why me?”
The alien whistled. “‘Why you?’ What a good question. I love those types of questions. The existential ones. ‘Why me’ indeed.”
Dave waited a few seconds after that last word with a hushed breath. When nothing more was forthcoming, he opened his mouth. “Well?” He prompted. He was met with a shrug. “I harbor no favoritism of any of your species above the other. I looked to the beginning of humanity, I looked to the end, and I looked to every piece of time between. Nobody impressed me. Not Napoleon, Aristotle, Washington, or Marx. None of them. So, I ended up choosing randomly. One person out of everyone who has ever lived or ever will. That person ended up being you, Dave. I understand that you are not regarded as exceptional by any of the metrics human society has placed upon you, but in reality, you are the most exceptional of them all purely by chance. You have not done anything to deserve this honor, yet you have been selected all the same.”
He looked down at his hands. There was just so much going on. He understood that he had been chosen randomly . . . Still, it had to stand that such an intelligent being as this would have a secret reason . . . Yes, of course. There had to be some sort of ulterior motive for having chosen him. It just didn’t make sense otherwise. There was something about him that neither Columbus, Jesus Christ, or even Stephen Hillenburg himself had. Something that was a strictly Dave-like quality. Davesque knowledge, if you will.
Dave looked up and met the alien’s eyes. He smiled knowingly.
“I bet that you don’t have SpongeBob in your universe.”
The alien nodded, though he frowned at the statement. “I’m surprised that you said that. But yes, it is true. SpongeBob is not something that we have. For starters, we don’t have photons of light that—”
“Season two, episode fifteen.” Dave interrupted. “Episode title: Band Geeks. This episode of SpongeBob is perhaps one of the greatest cinematic masterpieces to ever grace American television for three distinct reasons. Care to listen to them?”
The alien looked at him and cocked his head. “Interesting . . . It seems that I made an error in my calculations here. When I first analyzed your world, I calculated everything that would ever happen by learning the location of all the atoms in existence and going from there. However, I hadn’t considered how I myself would be taking a physical, matter-based form in this world, too. I threw a wrench in my own math. Just now, I did not expect you to talk about SpongeBob . . .”
“And now you suffer the consequences,” Dave told him. “The first point that I would like to make is the transcendence of that episode. From this, I would like to draw attention to the litany of memorable quotes in the episode. For instance, in the first few seconds of the episode, Squidward picks up his ringing phone and greets the person on the other end of the line with, ‘Hello. You’ve reached the house of unrecognized talent,'” he said in a near-perfect imitation of Squidward’s voice. “This quote, in addition to Patrick’s hilarious zinger of, ‘Is mayonnaise an instrument?’ and Harold’s rebuke of Mr. Krabs’s ‘Big, meaty claws!’ are all commonly repeated phrases in American society — especially amongst millennials and gen-z individuals.”
The alien stared at him.
“The consistent relevancy of these quotes for such a sizable age range in the U.S. currently would already be enough to bolster Band Geeks into the spotlight of American television. But, this isn’t even considering my other two points — the second of which deals with the incredible score and memorable songs featured in the episode.”
The alien raised his hand up. “Enough, Dave. I do not care to learn more about your opinions concerning SpongeBob. I have traveled from a realm that harbors neither time nor space just to speak with you, and I did not expect to converse about a children’s cartoon show. Please, let us speak of anything else.”
Dave frowned, slightly hurt by the callous dismissal of Band Geeks. “Why do you not like Spongebob?” He asked incredulously.
The alien furrowed his brow as if plagued by a headache. “I don’t dislike Spongebob. I don’t have any opinion on Spongebob, frankly. I don’t care. Just like how I don’t care about the first human who invented the wheel or about how the sun will eventually collapse. Or how I don’t care about the eventual collapse of the sun. Time is a meaningless construct in the grand scheme of reality. This particular universe has its particularities like any other universe, and I don’t care about it.”
“Living without caring is a terrible, terrible life,” Dave reproached. “Life is too short to live without Spongebob.”
“I don’t live!” The alien shouted, suddenly standing up and flinging the chair backward in the process. “I am not a living organism! How do you not understand this? I am beyond space and time. I came here to speak to one of you humans to get a proper gauge of what sort of sentience this universe has cooked up. And lo and behold, all I am greeted with is an obsessive attachment to a fictional television series. Not intelligence.”
The alien slumped back down to his chair as if exhausted by his outburst. “This feeling of anger . . .” he trailed while glancing down at his hands. “I know what it is . . . But it is quite unlike the sentience found in my dimension. Our existences do not have emotions per se. We have something remarkably similar, yes, but not exactly akin to this.” He then glanced up at Dave and his glossy, dim eyes. He waved his hand dismissively. “Do not try to linger on this concept too long, Dave. It is pointless. We are on two separate planes of existence, and you could never hope to truly
understand what I am trying to say. I am just . . . taken aback by the potency of emotions. How you people manage to survive as a species while dealing with these is miraculous. But then again, your world is just temporary. You are all just momentary suspensions of stardust accumulated into a form capable of employing the chemicals necessary for conscious thought. The existences found in my universe are different. More longevous. We do not have time or space, and so we do not have death. Though we do not have life either.”
“That sounds complicated,” Dave said truthfully. He leaned forward in his chair. “Hey, do you want to go watch some Spongebob?”
“I’m going to go get him,” Deputy Director Balles said, a strong note of panic in her voice. She moved from her standing position by the one-way mirror and went to grab the door handle leading to the interrogation room.
“No!” Dr. Charlie said loudly as he grabbed her by the shoulder. “We can’t interfere! The alien’s message made that clear — if there is any interruption of any kind from us, then he vaporizes the planet.”
“Bah!” The director threw her hands in the air with angst. “The fate of the world is on the line and he just asked the alien if he wants to go watch Spongebob!” Dr. Charlie felt his stomach knot over. “It isn’t ideal . . . but it’s what we’ve got. We can’t do anything about it except wait and see.”
The director crouched down on the floor and put her head in her hands, showing an usual amount of emotion for the typically stoic woman. “The entire fate of the world hinges on a children’s show that I have never seen. This Spongebob had better be good enough to make the alien like us.”
Dr. Charlie frowned as he looked back at the pair through the one-way mirror. By this point, the only thing that they could do for the sake of humanity was to have faith. Have faith in Dave; have faith in Spongebob.
There was a long pause as the alien considered the proposition. “Dave,” he said slowly, “would you say that you love Spongebob?”
“The show?” Dave asked. The alien nodded. “Well, yeah. Of course I do. I watch it pretty regularly.”
“Dave, is love . . . similar to anger?”
He blinked at the alien, confused by the question. “Ah, yes? Probably? I’ve never been in love before. At least not with a woman — probably because I watch too much
television. Heh . . . ‘Once, there was an ugly barnacle. He was so ugly that everyone died. The end!’”
The alien stared at him, a clear lack of understanding on his face. Silence flooded the room. Though he couldn’t see everyone on the other side of the one-way mirror, he could just imagine them cringing at his reference if they didn’t know Spongebob either. But that was downright unlikely — only an alien has the excuse of not having seen Spongebob.
Dave cleared his throat. “That was from season one episode two . . . But yeah, ah, I would say that love can be pretty similar to anger.”
“And love feels . . . good?” There was longing in the alien’s voice. Dave didn’t quite know what to make of that.
“Yeah. Of course it does.”
“Show me Spongebob,” the alien demanded. “I know everything in this universe. I know the inner intricacies of physics and mathematics down to its most complicated forms. I know of the full possibilities of the periodic table, and I have essentially solved chemistry. I know everything there is to know about this universe, but I have never gotten to experience it before. Knowing how action potential shifts in neurons to create emotions is one thing, but experiencing them is another. . . . Will watching Spongebob elicit love in me?”
Dave shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re saying, but it could be. You might like Spongebob. You might not. There’s only one way to find out.”
From there, it was a short step to a laptop being brought into the interrogation room harboring all thirteen seasons of Spongebob Squarepants. Both Dave and the alien binged the first two seasons of the show before the alien stood up and declared that life on the planet Earth was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. In his exact words:
“The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma. I came to this universe with a firm knowledge of the objective world, and I left yearning to learn more about the subjective. Spongebob is certainly one of the greatest landmarks not only of human creation but of all forms of creation across the infinite scale of universes. Dave, you brought such an experience to my existence with this show that I simply must go back to my universe and report it. No form of sentience has ever managed to display such aptitude and zeal that yours has. Spongebob is an experience that simply cannot go without being shared amongst the various different universes across all of reality.”
And then, he left just as he had arrived. First came the bright flashes of purple, and then nothing. Off he went to carry the good news of Stephen Hillenburg’s creation to the far reaches of the many universes.
The Trinity Review 