The Question

     The year was 2130 when the pulsating, radiant, oblong-shaped alien ship suddenly descended undetected late one night in New York’s Central Park. Of course humans had been relieved that the occupant was humanoid and better yet friendly. Better still, the treaty that he offered promised to be a blessing to mankind.

     So an assembly of scientists had been gathered in a grand hall in order to evaluate the recently arrived alien's friendly propositions in more detail. The proceeding had gone smoothly until a what appeared to be a very controversial question had been asked that left the alien baffled. "I do not understand your question." the recently-arrived alien ambassador of the Orion Galactic Arm Federation uttered as he sat sat puzzled before the panel of scientists and the rest of mankind watching the event.

     It had been a grand event until that moment. The alien Ambassador’s proposition had been exceedingly generous, the offering of membership in the league of planets if humanity were found worthy and judging by how marvelously things had been going it appeared to be a certainty.

     Humans were excited at the thought of being able to finally traverse the vast distances considered insurmountable with their technology. Their worrisome and dreadful sense of universal isolation would suddenly vanish, and they would finally be exposed to a host of kindred benevolent creatures capable of reasoning All of Earth’s sciences would benefit from the vast knowledge these space-faring humanoids had achieved. All would be guaranteed depending on only one concession that would prove them worthy. What the crucial concession on which everything depended was no human knew. But it would be revealed today after a demonstration of just how much the aliens knew, and they knew plenty.

     Human scientists had been allowed to ask questions and the alien had responded effortlessly to all inquiries as the scientists in the audience furiously took notes on their portable computers and television cameras recorded the historic event for posterity. Gifts were interchanged and the alien was about to take the podium to deliver his message when the crucial question had been asked.

     Someone, a reporter, it is said, had suddenly shouted it from some area of the balcony-shadowed back seats, and it had brought everything to a halt. Initially, the audience had responded with silence. Then it was followed by hisses, hoots, whistles and few whispered imprecations. The alien saw two burly guards removing the questioner forcibly while he struggled in vain and demanded his rights to his personal belief.

     Then the former excitement among the gathered scientists had been replaced by an inexplicable murderous rage and the former enthusiastically beaming faces were now grotesque masks of hatred taut with barely suppressed outrage. This was accompanied by the audience’s mocking laughter as if on cue, as the man’s voice began to fade in the distance and was finally silenced. The entire incident had been very brief, no more than thirty seconds, but it had brought everything to a sudden ominous halt until the alien had interrupted the raucous laughter with his statement.

     “I do not understand," he had repeated it twice with a dour, almost panicked expression on his pale humanoid face.      It was as if he were suddenly realizing a great truth and a great folly that he would never have fathomed. As if the incident had been an affront to his own sense of dignity so great that it defied all verbal expression and broached no tolerance. The alien began searching his vast memory for some precedent that might make sense of the anomaly. Recalling the hundreds of civilizations that spanned the galaxy. Yet among all the universes reasoning creatures, he found no such reference point and no prior logic, no previous precedent with which to unravel the illogical absurdities that their reaction to such a question implied. He had been about to offer membership to creatures that were obviously unable to reason cogently, unable to perceive the obvious

     “But why?” the earthmen would ask for centuries to come. “Why had the alien responded so drastically?“ After all, the question had been a simple one that even a child could have easily answered in the negative. Yet here is where the great obstacle to interstellar membership had been endangered? It seemed absurd.

     The alien rose ponderously and slowly to his majestic fifteen-foot height, his satin while robe glittered prismatically under the crystal chandeliers of the great meeting hall, his undulating-white hair flowing down to his broad shoulders and his countenance exuding a benevolence that no other human could ever hope to convey. An angelic- like figure, if there ever was one. But this was the year 2130 and such a possibility was considered totally absurd, and the few holding such archaic ideas were considered ignorant and under educated and treated as pariahs in earth society.

     He stood gazing down at the shorter earthmen who had reacted negatively to the questioner. Then he silently walked past them toward his ship. Earth’s high officials had pleaded and begged him to reconsider, but to him, they no longer existed as intelligent beings. They gazed up at him in utter dismay-as if the distance he was about to create was intolerable. But they were no longer there. It was as if he had preferred to believe that he had never visited the Earth.

     As the Earthmen looked up at the rapidly-dwindling light that was the alien's ship, and as it joined the thousands of others which silently dotted the dismal dark sky, they wondered. Why would such a simple question and their reaction to it have triggered such a drastic reaction? Why would he feel utterly compelled to keep earth at a very far distance? How he could refuse them membership in a Galactic League based on their reaction to such a ridiculous question was an absurdity-an impossibility from all Earth society’s perspectives. Why would they be denied such a grand future for mocking the existence of a God?