“And he told you?”
“He smiled and said my name, and took me to a quiet park nearby–”
“You should be wary of men who suggest quiet parks.”
She smiled. “But you see, I knew then that he was not a man, I mean a real man.” She waved a hand. “And then, when we are quite alone in the park, he becomes a golden figure and tells me that there are hundreds of thousands of his kind passing as human — and, moreover, have been for many, many decades.”
She stared at him with large eyes as much to say, “So, what do you think of that?”
“Amazing,” he responded on cue. “What else did he say?” He thought of the self-aware entities going among the human race for decades, doing their good work…
“Not a lot, other than if I were to try to broadcast what he had told me, or write about it for publication, I would find myself unable to do so. I would… what is the English word…? spasm.”
“But I take it it’s okay to tell an audience of just one?”
She shrugged her bare shoulders. “Evidently. Anyway, do you see me spasming?”
He recalled her original question. “So… because there are a legion of golden figures working amongst us, you think that the reason we… we gather in the obelisks is not merely to hand down the wisdom of the Serene, liaise with the powerful and such?”
She pointed a pistol finger at him. “Exactly so, Geoff.”
He nodded. “Intriguing. So… what do you think we do in there?”
She pulled a glum face. “Ah, now — I was hoping that you might be able to shed some illumination on that.”
“Sorry to disappoint, Nina. I’ve no idea. But what about the other representatives you’ve met?”
She made a carefree gesture. “Oh, they too do not know.”
“But do you have a theory? Come on, an intelligent journalist like you…” he said mockingly.
She smiled. “Of course. I think they are studying us.”
“Studying us?”
“I think, like in a horror movie, once we are inside the obelisks they take us apart atom by atom and see how we work.”
He tried not to laugh. “Funny, when I leave the obelisks — always assuming, of course, that I enter them in the first place — I feel pretty well for a man who’s been deconstructed atom by atom. I don’t suppose you have any valid reason to think this?”
She shrugged her tanned shoulders again. “Just, as you say, a hunch.”
He shook his head. “A wild hunch, if you don’t mind me saying. The Serene have had plenty of time to study us, take us apart, before they came here — if what you say about the SAEs being here for ages is correct. At this stage I’d say it was pretty late to be studying us.”
“Well, what is your hunch?”
“I don’t have one. Sorry, but in this instance I think speculation is useless. We couldn’t have guessed at the capabilities of the Serene before they came here, so trying to second guess their methods now is futile.”
“So you’re happy to be their tool, and ask no questions?”
He thought about it. “Yes, I am. The Serene have rendered the human race incapable of committing acts of violence. That’s a pretty magnanimous gift. I’m happy to do their bidding in return.” He looked at her. “What about you?”
She nodded. “I think what the Serene have done here is wonderful.”
“Did you listen to the nay-sayers in the early days? The right-wingers and libertarians who foresaw the end of the human race as we knew it?”
“I listened, and thought them wrong. You?”
“I heard what they said and hoped they were wrong, but feared they might be right.”
The newsfeeds and internet had been rife with doom-mongers in the first couple of years after the Serene intervention in human affairs. They forecast that such a radical alteration in the mechanism of the human psyche — the total abnegation of an individual’s ability to carry through acts of violence — would have dire psychological consequences. So-called experts stated that violence was a safety-valve which, if not allowed to blow from time to time, would store up untold mental pressure which would in time burst with catastrophic results.
Now Nina said, “I always thought they were wrong, Geoff. Okay, so if everyone on the planet committed acts of violence every day, day in day out, then they might have had a case. But think about it — how many acts of violence did you perpetrate before the coming of the Serene?”
He shrugged. “Not many. In fact… I can remember defending myself against a bully when I was twelve, and once or twice wanting to hit someone, but never carrying out the urge.”
“There you are then. I am the same, along with the majority of the people in this square, I think. The nay-sayers, as you call, them were wrong. Violence is not a pre-requisite of being human, just a nasty side-effect of social conditions. And violence is certainly not a right, as some would claim it is.”
He smiled. “I think you’re correct there. Nina.”
She pointed to his empty cup. “Would you care for another coffee?”
“I’ve had two already. Another one and I’d be hyper.” He looked at his watch. “Our train is in forty minutes. Tell you what, a beer would go down nicely. For you?”
“Do you think they have Peroni, Geoff?”
He asked the waiter, but the only foreign lagers available were Leffe and Red Star. She said she would prefer Leffe, and he ordered two glasses. “My wife’s favourite,” he said.
“And what does she make of being married to a representative of the Serene?”
The beers arrived and Allen took a refreshing mouthful. “I think she’s… proud, and intrigued.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Proud to be married to you, because the Serene picked only the best?”
He looked at her. “Did they? I never claim that.”
“When I was chosen, Geoff, I asked the golden figure who was shepherding me: why me? It replied that I was selected because of my humanity.”
He nodded. “I recall being told something similar. But there are millions of others out there with just such qualities who weren’t selected.” He shrugged. “Sally, my wife, was a doctor in Africa before the Serene arrived. She had a… a deep-seated need to help others, which I suppose came from being the daughter of dyed-in-the-wool socialists. I don’t know. My wife is just as good a person as I am, if not better.”
Nina nodded without replying and watched him as she sipped her drink. “Can you think of any negatives to the coming of the Serene?” she asked at last.
He had to think about that. “Personally, no. I know that some evolutionary biologists have argued that the Serene intervention has steered our race away from the course on which it was set…” He shrugged. “But then who’s to say that that course was in anyway sacrosanct, or the right one, so to speak? It’s an argument that has raged in politics since the days of colonialism — should ‘super-powers’ dabble in the affairs of so-called lesser or undeveloped nations, even if for their good? The Serene are here. That’s a fact, and in my opinion the world is a better place because of it.” He sipped his beer and added, “Of course, some religious fundamentalists still claim the Serene are in league with Satan.”
She waved that away as if swatting a fly. “Nut cases and cranks.”
He smiled. “The world’s religions have taken something of a battering, thanks to our alien friends,” he said.