Aliens?

Captain Jamal Arafat sat at one of the low tea stained wooden tables at the tea House in The Gagarin city star port. His neatly trimmed beard framed his brown weather beaten face, which was becoming sterner and sterner as he looked over his ship’s, The Ibn Battuta, repair requirements. The cost for repairs was going to be very high, much higher than he had expected. Jamal had known that when the gravitic phase inducer regulators had burned out that the repairs would take some time, but had not realized when they had burned out that they had caused a neutral power feedback loop which had turned the negative shift plasma coils into slag. Replacing them was going to be very costly.

Captain Arafat came to the sudden realization that there was someone standing next to his table. He looked up and saw someone who he immediately tagged as a local. This was because the man was pale skinned with a bushy brown beard and wearing the local fashion which looked to Jamal as long white lab coats with far to many zippers and buttons. The man looked at him with watery blue eyes and asked in halting Arabic if he was indeed Jamal Arafat captain of the C.S.S. Ibn Battuta? Jamal confirmed this and the man Introduced himself as “Valentino Tereshkova no relation” and sat down and started talking about aliens.

After listening to Valentino gush enthusiastically for about 5 minutes, Captain Arafat rolled his dark brown eyes and said “there are no aliens; man is all alone in the universe. We are outside of Jinn and Angels the only sapient race that there is.”

“But what about the ruins found on Saxony prime?” asked Valentino.

“The ruins on Saxony prime was a failed Chinese colony, Confederate archeologists have proven that.”

“The Memphis spotted on its sensors an Alien spacecraft which escaped from them at unheard of acceleration. That cannot be explained”

“Sure it can. Their sensors were malfunctions and they were chasing a sensor ghost.”

“Other ships have seen things or picked them up on their sensors which cannot be explained.”

“My friend I have picked up strange things on my sensors and seen things so bizarre it is a miracle that I have not gone mad. It is called malfunctioning sensors and optical illusions, not Aliens. Look, as a Muslim I believe in Man, Angels and Jinn. Only man needs a space ship to get travel between the stars. Now I realize that you consider your self a man of science and probably do not believe in the Quran, so I will try to explain this to you using science” he said. He then picked up the stained and chipped tea cup he had been drinking out of and finished off the last of the tea. Valentino offered to get more tea and Captain Arafat agreed. Upon returning with the cup refilled and a cup of his own Valentino sat back down and Arafat continued.

“In the 21st century there was a rather brilliant Zoologist on old earth, by the name of Siti Nurhaliza, who made a very simple observation. That out of eight planets in the solar system humanity knew that one had life and was utterly crawling with it. Every environment on earth that man had explored he found life, no matter how hostile the environment. Dr. Nurhaliza also noted that through time billions if not trillions of species had lived on earth. And therefore she concluded that life was most probably spread widely across the galaxy. Of course when man did start exploring our galaxy we discovered that Siti Nurhaliza was indeed correct. But let me get to your point of Aliens for you see Dr. Nurhaliza also noted that while earth had gone through several cycles of very different species dominating the planet and while their had been trillions of species on earth , in all different shapes and sizes; carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. Some with horns or antlers, some with claws and fangs, some big and well armored, some small and quick, some with wings, some with flippers. And with all of these different methods come up with by different species to survive only humanity had evolved sapience to survive. So from an evolutionary stand point intelligence is way over rated and from that observation she concluded that while the universe was most likely teeming with life that we were all alone in the universe as far as intelligence went.”

Valentino stood up slowly and said slowly in low tones “yes, I see the point. Sorry about that.”

“No problem and thanks for the tea” and with that Mr. Tereshkova shuffled out of the tea house looking just a little befuddled.