To preface the paper slightly, the following paper shines a light not only into what was going on in my head 13 years ago, but also into how strange a place my mind is still. It also explains why I have never participated in NaNoWriMo. This was the final and primary project due for my Literature of Science Fiction class, and somehow it earned me an A+. I hope my...I mean "its"...oddness brings a smile to your face today. Without further ado...
"WARNING: Thoughts Under Pressure; Assume Nothing"
by Amber Dawn Cheney
December 13, 2001
Now all I needed to do was figure out an aspect of humanity that I wanted to contrast. I considered evaluating the value systems of humans. I considered writing a story in which an alien species would punish us for a transgression against their species with a punishment familiar to mankind. Thus, all humans would be killed by the aliens. However, I thought the story might be a bit too morbid and lacking intrigue. I even considered writing a story that would show how stupid humans are by detailing all of the ridiculous mistakes humans would make when trying to relate to a newly discovered alien species. Finally, I decided to write a story showcasing human assumptions.
The idea for exploring human assumptions actually came from thinking about the moronic things that humans do. For example, when trying to communicate with someone who does not speak English, many monolingual Americans tend to begin speaking more loudly and more slowly. It seems that they hope English is a natural language that will make its message clearer as they speak it more deliberately. At first I thought that this example was purely that of stupidity, but then I realized that it might point to a human tendency to make assumptions. However, I was not entirely willing to discount that this was merely an example of human stupidity, so I tried to think of other examples of assumptions humans make.
I started thinking about all of the many assumptions that seem to be made in science fiction stories. For example, we tend to assume that when directing speech to an alien, we should aim that speech toward the top front of the alien. We also assume that aliens would be motivated by self- or species-preservation and other foundational values and motivations that humans have. We even expect aliens to have at least all five of our senses and to use them in similar ways. I started realizing that our aliens are not always that alien to humankind.
I wanted to create an alien species so distinctly foreign to humans that a story about the interaction between humans and the aliens would point out the many ways that humans make assumptions. After trying to come up with a culture for them, I realized that I first needed to focus on the biology of the aliens because differences in anatomy could drastically affect the way they relate to each other. I decided to consider what would happen if the aliens’ senses were not used in the same way human senses were used. What would happen culturally if they used their senses for different purposes? The aliens were not going to have any additional senses or lack any senses that humans have. I wondered what would happen if touch had no sexual connotation for them, but I did not want them to reproduce asexually. I made taste a sense used solely with reproductive purposes. For this to be the case, the aliens could not need to eat, so I gave them porous skin through which they could absorb all the nutrients they needed for an energy-making process similar to photosynthesis. The reason taste would be a sexual sense would be that the chemicals they exchanged through what would look like a long kiss would contain the bio-chemicals necessary to create offspring. This exchange would take place between more than two individuals to create one egg out of which an alien child would later hatch.
Then, I thought I would share this assignment with Chris, so that the work would be easier on me. The rest is his contribution. I’m not even sure what he wrote, because I’m not going to proofread it. Enjoy.
Running with me hands in me pockets.
One time I was running with me hands in me pockets.
And I tripped and fell and busted me chin on a ladder.
A doctor man stitched me up and told me not to run with me hands in me pockets anymore.
So the next day I was running with me hands in me pockets.
And I tripped and fell over the same ladder.
Except this time I broke me left arm.
The doctor man gave me a cast and asked what he said about running with me hands in me pockets.
And I was pissed off that me cast didn’t go down into me pocket.
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Sorry about that. My friend Chris decided that he wanted to be a part of this paper. I wrestled the keyboard back from him however, and I am now back in control of this paper. Sort of. Actually, quite a few of my friends and family have been involved in this project. I don’t even know how many hours I’ve spent talking to them about what could go into my short story. If you couldn’t tell from the previous pages, I was going to write a short story for this assignment. You may be wondering by now, why I did not write that short story and what this paper is exactly. Well, let me try to explain (not that you have any choice in the matter except to stop reading at this point). You told us to “think scientifictionally,” to “think profoundly,” to “play,” to “encounter cognitive displacement,” to “employ and/or examine the rhetoric of science,” and to “make use of the readings and ideas from the semester.” I have been doing all of these things throughout the semester and in much more concentrated doses during these last few days. You told us that you wanted us to take away from this class a mind that asks “what if?” I, and my friends and family, have been asking “what if?” for days now trying to come up with the basis for a fabulous short story. Every time we answered a “what if?” question, three related questions would arise, and we would discuss those. I knew that I could not include everything we talked about in a short story. In fact, I grew to feel that I could not do the Essen justice in a short story. (We named the alien species Essen because it is a scrambled SENSEs.) I knew that the readers would bring their own assumptions into the story and judge the Essen, and more importantly, I knew that I could not write a story without using some of the very same assumptions that I was trying to showcase. No short story that I could write could do all of our ideas justice. The story could not include all of the ideas that we came up with in play. So, I decided to write a paper instead, but I realized that no formal paper could truly express the extent of the playfulness and the cognitive displacement that I experienced in coming up with ideas for my story. Thus, this odd non-paper has emerged.
Science fiction is written to entertain curious intellectuals that question what is usually accepted as normal. I hope that this paper entertains you and shows you that I met all of the goals of the assignment.
Amber’s guarded and directed “stream of consciousness”:
So, if taste is entirely sexual for the Essen, then they would use smell to tell if someone is attractive or not. Smell would be very important for them. But, I’m thinking about the human relationship between taste and smell. Just because there’s a strong relationship between the human senses of taste and smell doesn’t mean that there’s any relationship between the Essen’s senses of taste and smell. That would be another assumption. But, I want to make smell important to them. I think that smell will represent identity for them. They will be able to identify things and each other by their scent, and they will be able to change their scent by will. They could deceive each other that way, but they do use their other senses as well. Smell is just very important for them. In fact, that will be how they “talk” about each other. They will make themselves smell like the objects or the other Essen that they are talking about.
How will they communicate? It would be easier to explain human and Essen interactions if they communicated with sounds, but I don’t think that they do. Since feel has no intimate connection for them, I think that they will use their senses of touch and smell for communication. Their positions, their movements, and their scents will change as they communicate. They touch each other as they talk in order to feel what is being said. For example, they could change their positions based on their emotions. Wait. That’s another assumption. I’m assuming that their bodies would express emotion through tensing and loosening muscles like human bodies do. Well, I’m not sure that they would express emotions through body positions, but I want them to communicate in some way. So, they are going to do it through touch and smell. What would they use hearing for then? They use smell for most of what we use hearing for. Well, I guess it could be a sense that they just don’t use very often. I mean, how important is taste to our survival? How often does a gas leak spring up that requires us to use our sense of smell to avert danger? If we had to, we could do without one or both of them. They will keep hearing, but they won’t use it for much. I want them to be able to hear the humans that will come to their planet.
What do the Essen look like? How will the humans react to seeing them? Well, they apparently get some energy from their sun and the nutrients in the air. They will need a lot of surface area for that to work. They could be very large. In fact, being skinny could be a disability or birth defect on their planet. Would they just be walking spheres? Let’s see…they get their energy through a process similar to photosynthesis. Plants on earth get lots of surface area with leaves. They could have many appendages, or they could have what look like bushes growing out of their backs. Plus, their mouths could be long tube like things, similar to what anteaters have. They could look like anteaters with bushes coming out of their backs. No, they need to be able to touch each other while talking, and I don’t want my readers to think that they are primitive just because they are not bipeds. That’s an odd assumption of ours. Anyways, I want them to be able to walk on just two legs. They are going to be kind of a bluish translucent color. They will be bipedal but have three arms since touch is so important for communicating. That should help with group discussions. They will have these odd bluish fleshy “branches” coming out of their backs with some bluish fleshy leaves that are on them. If these are damaged or amputated, they can grow back. On the front of them, the particularly healthy ones will seem very chubby, and they will have smooth “skin.” I will give them a cranial appendage where they have eyes and their mouth. I’m really only giving them that because I’m becoming attached to them, and I seem to want to make them somewhat human now. Wait. That was what I was trying not to do. Oh well, they will have cranial appendages for eyes and protruding mouths, but their sense of smell will not be concentrated there. That will be on their torso.
They wear no clothes because they need to leave their surface exposed, and the planet has a very temperate and stable climate. If the climate is stable and temperate everywhere and if they do not need food, then why would they need to work? They don’t need to provide food or shelter. It never rains on their planet. What do they do all day? Would they get bored without something to do? Would humans? Yes, humans would get restless or bored or something bad without work to do. We, in fact, seem to find some fulfillment in a “job well done.” Would the aliens already be fulfilled? Or maybe they find fulfillment in something else? Maybe they believe that God has given groups of them particular tasks to perform on the planet, and that is how they find fulfillment. What would be their purpose in life? I think their task would be to make things aesthetically pleasing to themselves. They think that is what God has told them to do.
What could thwart them in this task? There could be animals on their planet that make things “ugly” to the Essen. Why don’t the Essen just stop the animals somehow? What if the planet turned very slowly so that it took months or maybe even years for the planet to rotate once? The Essen could live only on the light side of the planet while the animals live on the dark side. They could spend all their time making the planet beautiful once it comes “out of the night.” That’s what they do. Would the slow rotation of the planet affect anything else? That seems like a physics question. I have no idea if it would affect anything, so I’m going to call my physics gurus now to ask……Ok, I got hold of one of them. He said that there is no rotational force at the North Pole and the most (for Earth) rotational force at the Equator. He assured me that the difference in gravity at the North Pole and at the Equator is very small, so I do not need to worry about slowing my Essen planet down. If I were to have it spin extremely quickly, then things would change. However, people survive at the North Pole with no problem (except for the cold), so I don’t have to take make any other physics changes on my planet.
Now, the Essen have a purpose to life, and they have a very slowly rotating planet. What does this planet look like? I want them to be under a green star. Is that possible? What would that change? Well, after talking to my “expert,” I think it would be possible for them to live on a planet of a green star, but apparently they might have infrared vision then. He said that Earth is a planet of a white star, and our range of vision can be drawn as a bell curve from red to blue, but the bell curve for the Essen would be moved to the left, cutting out blue and adding infrared. Thus, they would be able to see humans at night. This is because humans emit radiation. Will the Essen and other lifeforms on this planet emit radiation? I think they would, but I would need to talk to some more experts. I don’t even know if they’re going to have DNA as the building blocks. I’m not even sure what nutrients they get from the air. What do they need in the atmosphere? That could change the color of the sky for them. I don’t know enough to be able to really figure this out. I’d need some good scientific grounding, but how much of that would be based on human observations on Earth? Science, on Earth, requires observation. Just because things exist one way on Earth does not mean that they would have to exist that way on another planet. Does it? Would all of our science change if we could get data from planets in other galaxies? It would be impossible for me to write a science fiction story without using some human assumptions. They are ingrained in me. I use them to survive, to make judgments. I guess part of being human is to make assumptions.
Or is that just an assumption?
