Data Transmission Retrieval Event

Origin of Transmission: Unknown

Date of Transmission: Unknown

We will make our report as if we tell a story, though we doubt that it will be received. Our name is nou: en. oh. you. It’s a name that looks the same when written for the mirror as it does when scratched into the earth. We were taught on our homeworld that truth is a matter of the imagination. When she was a child she was hypnotised by her dentist.

We used to watch transmissions from other worlds and study them. We found that we could learn a lot from other species but also that watching only goes so far. We set up institutes in order to train ourselves to move through time and space so that we might visit other worlds and attempt communication with other beings more directly. We constructed machines to protect and to propel ourselves. We became sleek with our movements and could move swiftly, easily, like otters moving against the river flow.

Forgive our immodesty, we discovered we had a talent for communication, particularly with younger beings who often have open mouths and wide open windows too. Most beings, as they get older, start to close those windows, making profound or embedded communication virtually impossible. Contact is after all a two-way street. But what of our homeworld? Context is important.

We are a society of distinguished scientists, though there are artists and poets inside us all. We are respected at the hearth and on the heath by all out beautiful sisters and brothers alike. We have just one word which describes our philosophy and our mission. Our manifesto if you like, though it does not have a single literal translation. It could be, to strive or perhaps, to suffer. It could be            to the stars the hard way.

per aspera ad astra.

At the institute we carpeted the surface above our heads with cages for hundreds of young beings. We had frequent conversations, twitching and chittering and squeaking as we bent close to the fellow creatures trapped in their hutches. We wanted to discover the very essence of them. Their experiences. Their language. We would try to imagine ourselves into their skins. We can see now that we were commiserating with them. One day we dreamt a collective dream.

We dreamt the creature’s slavering jaws crushed down through broken arteries of shrieking innocence. Death to the many merry many. Death to the creature and to all the young beings. Death, sooner or later, to the inventor and storyteller. So they die in jerking agony under the sun and the creature gulps them all into his belly and his juice dissolves their once lively and sentient flesh. We think we dream of the end of the world.

We discussed at length the possibility of a mission without a known retrieval or termination point. A mission, almost it seemed, without an end. And in the interests of our species we went on that mission. In the interests of our species, I went.

You are a young child. You are riding your bike along the lane that runs between two rows of houses. Suddenly a dog dashes out of a garden and starts to chase you, snarling and biting at your trousers and ankles as you peddle faster and faster.

You find a dead wasp on a window ledge. You put it in an empty matchbox and make a little bed for it to lie in out of tissue paper. You carry it around in your pocket for a week. Then you put it in the bin.

You leave your flat in the middle of the morning and walk along the city street. Everyone else on the street is standing still and the cars have stopped. You turn and see a young faun walking along the middle of the road. A teenage boy starts to film it on his phone.

You live with a cat that is too frightened to go outside. You try to carry her into the back garden but as you walk down the stairs she claws and your shoulder. She jumps from your arms and runs to the doormat.

You are on a train. As it stops at a station you look out of the window and see a fox. It is mangy and skinny. It has a piece of blue plastic wedged over its muzzle.

You hear a strange sound. Very close yet unrecognisable. It sounds as if an airplane is moving dangerously low to the ground. You look up in time to see two swans flying directly over your head, using the road to navigate their route. You reach up with one hand and you feel the air moving between your fingertips and the belly of the second animal.

You buy a cheap fake tiger skin jacket for $10 and wear is all year round. One day you open up the lining and discover that the fur is real.

We cannot tell with full certainty where we will enter and exit. We might aim for a distant planet inhabited by incredible five-pointed radial beings yet still we might end up wrapped in cotton wool or drilled deep into enamel closer to home.

Wake up!

I open my eyes. I close my eyes. When I open my eyes when I awoke I believe I am awake I believe I am awoke. I awoke and I opened my eyes. All I could see was whiteness. The whiteness made me wonder if I had gone blind but that surely, is a redness and a darkness, blindness. And I could see everything as one unflinching whiteness. Shadowless. I moved my eyes I thought. I thought I moved my eyes, trying to make out a shape, searching for definition. But still, all was whiteness. And a texture maybe. A pale and microscopic undulating texture. Like the shell of an egg or the edge of something. I tried to send a message home.

I decided to perform a test to see if my body was still with me. I concentrated and contracted hoping to feel my arms and my legs and I could. I could feel them! Still covered in fur. A fur so soft and familiar and dense that it was uncertain when I had begun to feel it. My limbs ached with a muscle memory which my mind could not remember. Evidence of some great and unusual effort. The biological effort of a terrible noise. Of my blood in my mouth. The acrid and metallic taste of blood in my mouth. All the while, I sent messages home. I sent out electrical messages.

I recalled a furious chase that pushed my body along a trajectory of which I was not in control. Sucked out of my time-space vehicle. Looping over and over and over. Over and over and over. Over and over and over. Over and over and over. Over and over and over. Over and over and over. Over and

And slowly, as I focused my vision on an imagined speck in the nothingness, the pale texture started to undulate and define itself into a kind of space. It was a space that my body appeared to occupy entirely. Its edges could be felt if I stretched a miniscule muscle in any direction. My body had grown to fill the void or the void had been designed for my very own body, I couldn’t tell which.

My breathing was slow. I felt heavy and I felt light. I felt as if I was floating in space. I felt as if I was buried deep underground. I closed my eyes. Memories of the chase, of panic and shocking speed rushed into my mind. I opened my eyes and welcomed the whiteness flooding into me, like milk.

My nose was itchy and my teeth tickled. I wasn’t feeling myself. I rolled my eyes around and around in their sockets and the whiteness offered no resistance. I close my eyes. I open my eyes. I close my eyes. I open my eyes. I close my eyes. I open my eyes. I close my eyes. I feel heavy and I feel light. I feel like I am floating in space. I feel like I am buried deep underground. I feel like the lid has been screwed on. I cannot hear or maybe I hear nothing.

To pass the time I make up stories. Some may have arisen from books I once read or transmissions I once watched. It is also possible that some may be the result of a changed state of consciousness.

we are not absent from your history. we generate it and transmit our progress back home. we are powerful, cohesive agents, networking all communities. we are in you and of you. it is impossible for you to prove or disprove us.

Though I try I can no longer communicate with mission control. That is to be expected. I think I remember planning for this. I believe that we had planed for this. I open our eyes.

I open our eyes to a new all-consuming vision. All our senses are awoken simultaneously. The air smells chemical, clinical, like the institute. And yet a little grubby too, like a warm burrow. I know this is an illusion. It is because of my training that I feel so at home. In the air is the buzz of the mechanical powered by the electrical. Her arm, mine too, is wrapped in stripes. We are sitting amongst machinery as if in control of a time-space vehicle very much like my own. We are helped out of the driver’s seat and onto our feet, our own two feet, and we are led out of the room and into

When we were a child we were hypnotised by our dentist.

What we are going to do today is do that little filling for you and we are going to do it in a very nice special way. You’ve never had this before so I want you to enjoy it. Jane is having her first filling but without a pain-killing injection. This film will show how patients, dentists and doctors are using hypnosis. I’m so pleased Jane because this is all about imagination. Ok? So what I want you to do is, I want you to imagine that this little bit of cotton wool is a baby bunny and this is a mummy bunny and when I turn on the engine they go round and round and round. And you’re going to see them going. Listen now I want you to pop your wee head back and I want you to keep looking at these bunnies and you’re going to watch the bunnies going round and round and round and very soon you’re going to see a foxy, a foxy chasing them you’re going to see a foxy. Let me know the moment you see the foxy. And the moment you see the fox

Hypnosis

And

Healing

your left hand will go very, very light and you’ll lift it up for me let me know and now I see your hand is beginning to lift so just let it lift your little left hand that’s lovely your left hand how lovely! And you can see that lovely little foxy. Now what I want you to do for me is I want you to help me. I want you to help me save the bunnies because the bunnies there they are hiding again you see? I want you to help me save the bunnies. Of course you can see the foxy chasing them now. We’ll save those little bunnies shall we? Yes. What I’m going to do is blow some air into that little toothy of yours and I’m going to blow some lovely happy air cos you know it makes a funny wee noise. And we’re going to blow the air on the toothy and that’ll clean out the little hole in your tooth and we’ll let the bunnies go into the hole and hide. Shall we? Oh shall we?

Data Transmission Retrieval Event

Ends