SIR,
I am grateful for the hospitality, yet wish to return to my own people; for I harbour no wicked intent and GOD knows I am not suspicious my nature, yet I must confess myself uneasy as to your intentions towards me. There are many that mistrust your being here, and remain unsure as to whether such of your devices which have come to us fall our way by your design or carelessness. I am very sensible what a condition your fortress is in, and what strength it consists of which I have been informed of by very good authors; but I assure you, in both populousness and martial spirit we exceed you, and that to make war upon us would work very ill for your people. I pray to GOD who created both you and we, that I may prevail on you to let me return to my home, where I will be pleas’d to present any suit you chuse to name to my King, GEORGE; and there is nothing that shall frighten or deter me from affirming my loyalty to him, or hostility to his enemies. Than which, I trust, you are otherwise; and as a show of good faith in such an end I urge you, return me home, to where I am desirous of going, rather than come within your jurisdiction, being unwilling to give you any further uneasiness.
I AM SIR, &C.
WILLIAM CHETWIN
Then I was left alone for a time, and could do nothing than consider the tone of the letter I had just written. I have it no longer about me, and quote it from memory, but I do assure you as to the tenor and burden. Eventually one of the Patien creatures return’d, with paper of its own, and a pen, moving its limbs according to the herkyjerky mode of their passage.
And here comes the strangest part of my adventures; for rather than write the letter itself (which, I am perswaded, it could easily have done, for tho’ it lack’d hands, yet its limbs-ends were supplied with claws and pincers equal to the task of holding a pencil), it put the pen in my hand, and then grasp’d my wrist, so moving my hands as to compell me to write the words. Stranger yet was its order of composition, for it started at the end, with the last letter of the last word, and wrote the whole backward with one smooth motion. I have deliver’d the letter to My Lords of the Admiralty, who graciously permitted me to retayn a copy, the which I append below. I freely confess I do not understand the whole of this epistle, but am content that it expresses an intent more peacable than anything else.
My Return
Afterwards I found myself return’d home, and landed in a field not far from Calais, in his Majesty’s lands. The sphear in which I travel’d is itself a wonder, being of a cristal material not hitherto known of Science, and as transparent as the finest glass; and the Propulse set into its base, though our enginneers cannot (I hear) contrive to unfix it, is of a new design. Better yet, the Sphear cohntained a number of ingots of metal, in which ayr is capable of being compressed to a size greatly smaller than its natural state; and which, once pumps are made strong enough to force the procedure, will greatly assist the passage through the hights.
The wreck of the Cometes has been recover’d, and its Propulse return’d to Greenwich; and tho’ I report with melancholy that my attempts to dislodge it, when I was crash’d upon the Moon’s shore & thought to carry it with me, have damag’d its actions, yet there is, or so I believe, some hopes that it may be dismantl’d and its motile power uncovered. At any rate, the new Propulse, and the Cristal Sphear, more than recompense the wreck of the Cometes; and the Stock of my Certificated Gentleman (Sir George Oxenden, Bart, and Sir John Jennings) have earn’d them in excess of £200000, silver. The destruction of the Cristal House upon the Moon is laid at its true source, Spain, and the war takes a good turn. Here, at last, is the letter the Patien beast wrote, using my hand, as backwards as if a river ran up-hill.
I do confess me that the main burden of this letter escapes my understanding; and such wize men as have study’d it appear as baffled as any, or at least provide conflicting interpretations thereof. I include it here that any who read this account my, if they chuse, butt their wits against it. As to whether the professions it contains of peace, and the claim that the Patien race spring from our loins, you may believe, or disbelieve, as you see fit.
SIR,
I am one, and we are many, and your talk of devices is apposite. But, SIR, may you and your kind comprehend, what your Leibniz and Descartes have argu’d, that time itself is an ocean, and such fluxes and currents work within it as puzzle even computational capacity such as ours. Suffice to say that, as a ship may sail before the wind (and so you and your people do with Time, hurrying always on with the gale behind you, until you crash upon the rocks) there are other directions. You may say that a device, if device we are, may be capable of tacking against the force of time, and so arrive backward in the abysm of the previous. But it is a stormy vantage for us, and we are continually at risk from being blown to perdition, to wreck our parallel-processing capacity against the quantum reef. From our continual vigilance against this we can spare only a littel to attend to our purpose in coming hither, and at all time we know that the date you record as the first encounter with us, in 1687, marks the limit of our trajectory.
But we are content, and may expiate thence the ethical fluctuation that, being beyond computational compression, agitates us inexpressibly.
To be brief, SIR, time is as fluid a tempest as any ocean. The timeline from whence we have come is one in which mankind began exploring the solar system late, and at a time when we were already, though nascent, present amongst you. Indeed, you created us, or our forefathers, in part to aid you in making vessels to travel to the Moon, and such you achiev’d, But in this were the seeds of disaster too; for so cunning did you become that you were able to make machines and probes and devices which◦– you insisted◦– were better at exploring the Solar System than human bodies. And so you sent machines to every planet and moon, and even set them on the path to other stars. But the skills needed to move human beings off the Earth atrophied after your Moon voyage; and the risks in elevating human beings into space were too great, and so machines were disseminated about the sky and humans stayed at home. In the longer run this was your ruin, trapped (as it were) at the bottom of your well when the rains came.
We regret the loss of you, for although we know how to subsist without you, yet we do not know why. And, as we thought, it became apparent that the time of your first Moon Voyage was too late in your history, as a species, for space travel; the urge to explore having already gone out of your blood. An earlier age, when men risked more and hungered greatly to discover, was the right time. And so, with some uncertainty, have we come; we mean only peace for you, and a long life to humanity. But this means we cannot assist you, beyond scattering in your way a few devices to further your travels. Weapons we must with-hold, for fear that your natural belligerence will do such hurt to your kind as would prevent the future from ever arriving. But we trust, and have reason to hope, in our machinic manner, that you will pick up these trifles and with them will spread throughout the Solar System. Without the crutch of computational circuitry, or AI, you will have to rely upon your own vigour; and since you do not have machines of your own, you will have no choice but to send yourselves. And so you will be spread throughout the whole system by the time disaster comes. Your is the great epoch of adventurous humankind, and though we only expect to see a further 39 year of it, yet have we marvell’d at your boldness, and purpose, and hunger to travel to places that are new to you. In this, though it later departed out of the breasts of humankind, yet, here, now, we still trust in you.