The 2084 Precept by Anthony D. Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

it. What a story for the Green Tree pub. And my
chances for the €100,000 have definitely risen a notch. This guy
might be as crazy as the best of them, but he also appears to have
money and he might really be mad enough to have transferred
that cash already, who knows? Well, I don't know, and maybe he
hasn't, maybe he just tapped away on his laptop to give me that
impression.
    On the other hand…I am happy to take the
chance. It's worth finding out. I have to be careful though.
Lunatics, even apparently harmless ones, can be dangerous, turn
violent in a second, you're dead before you know it, stay wary and
on your toes, all of the time, oh yes.
    Meantime, it would be appropriate for me to
switch into full actor mode, humor the guy, put my psychological
talents to work, another of the skills which serve me well as a
consultant. Well, well, well, who would have thought? What a
Saturday!
    "An extraterrestrial?" I asked, as
innocently as a whore telling you she's in love with you. "Now
that's interesting. Interesting indeed, but…as I am sure you agree
Mr. Parker…quite unbelievable. Surely you can't expect me to
believe something like that?"
    "Oh no, I can’t and I don't," he replied
with that smile of his, "not at all. I mean, who would? No indeed,
but hopefully you will bear with me while I try to explain and,
again, I hope to have convinced you in the end anyway. And by then,
you will hopefully have been able to discard the thoughts you are
harboring about whether or not I am a lunatic, or dangerous, or
both." He smiled again, leaned forward a little, both elbows on the
table, and said, "Now that is a reasonable goal for our meeting,
wouldn't you agree?"
    Well, Mr. Jeremy Parker, I thought to
myself, you are right about the dangerous bit, and I've already
decided about the lunatic part all by myself, right up-front, sorry
about that. And I took a drink of water to fortify myself for the
effluence I was about to hear, a shot of whiskey would have been
more appropriate.
    * * * * *
    "I should," he continued, "perhaps begin
with where I come from, how I got here, and why I look and sound
like a human being, albeit an insane one as far as you are
concerned; at the moment anyway."
    Feel free, old chap. And I can help you
here. The reason you look like a human being is because you are a human being. And the repetitions, including the
insanity one again, clearly indicate you are a neurotic one.
    "It happens," he said, "that your scientists
are now beginning to notice things which are very far away. They
have recently discovered a quasar which they have named
APM02879+5255. A quasi-stellar radio source, or quasar in its
abbreviated form, is an unimaginably—for you—hot and bright object
in the center of a galaxy, fueled by a vast input of matter being
dragged into a supermassive black hole, as you call it,
supermassive being a term you use to denote anything of around 1
billion solar masses or more. It is very hot, tens of millions of
degrees, and very, very bright, thousands of trillions of
megawatts."
    He paused and looked at me for a moment,
presumably in case I was going to accuse him of exaggerating his
numbers. Which I wasn't. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't, I
hadn't a clue.
    "Now this particular quasar," he continued,
"is about 12 billion light years distant from you, using your U.S.
term for a billion by the way. And your light year is a measure of
distance, not time. You calculate it by multiplying the speed of
light, which in your terms is over 1 billion kilometers per hour,
by 365.25. In other words, your light year represents slightly less
than 9 trillion kilometers, give or take a bit. And I'll leave you
to calculate the rest, the impossible number of lifetimes you would
need to be able to even come close."
    Well…at least we both understand a billion
to be a thousand million. This is no longer exclusive to the
Americans, by the way. The Brits, as in so many things, have copied
them and it is nowadays more