pdf file - Notes from An Alien

Dominion
How to describe the first mental taste of a world in another star system...
This is exactly what happens inside me—I have a distinct taste in my mind. If it's strong enough, it can
spill into my mouth and become a physical taste.
That's what happened with your World. It had a very sour taste in my mouth. But, under that, like an
aftertaste, was a deep sweetness.
As I pursued my exploration and narrowed my reception of various parts of your World, I realized that
the sourness was coming from very few and very specific places. Most of your World's mental taste is extremely
sweet, lots of it bitter sweet, but small pockets are very distasteful.
After I'd narrowed my search for those deeply interested in life beyond your World, I discovered two
classes of mind:
*Those looking out trying to find another example of who they were.
*Those looking out and wide open to whatever they were graced to find.
The first group are mainstream astronomers and astrophysicists.
The second group includes artists of many kinds.
Let me add that I'm egregiously oversimplifying this separation of types of people. Some belong to both
groups. Some in one group secretly believe ideas of the other group. Fully exploring the variations of people on
your World who seriously consider the cosmos would take another whole book.
I'd narrowed my search to ten individuals who seemed possible candidates for reception of a message
from me. And, let me make it clear, the previous five Worlds I'd contacted had no individual consciousnesses I
felt able to send a message to. All those Worlds needed many years of study before we could reveal ourselves to
them.
There's something about your World that sets it apart. It has to do with the stage of evolution of your
culture.
Out of the ten possible, one continued to stand out. Not because he was intelligent or particularly
scholarly. Not because he had some important position in World affairs or had connections to those who did.
He was a nearly unknown man who had done some writing, had spent forty years learning a lot about
what are called Mantic Arts, had served a few years in one of your military establishments, and had been born to
parents who were both ministers of an evangelical Faith. The story of his search for the balance between faith
and science would take a book of its own.
He's the co-author of this book and is sitting there right now, typing these words onto the page and
debating with me in his mind about all this reference to him. He's sixty-four of your years old and used to be a
rather argumentative man. The various experiences of his life have taught him just a bit of humility.
Alexander and I had many conversations before he sat down to help me write my people's history. It
wasn't as simple as me speaking in his mind and him just typing away like a secretary. A literal transcription of
my Worlds' tale would read somewhat like a description by one of your World's most respected authors: “...a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
So, this story has been mine but it's been translated by Alexander to, shall we say, conform to the normal
understanding of a citizen of Earth.