A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact (35 page)

What would happen to the aliens of Lee’s imagination, as well as to that of other comic book writers, once we know aliens are real, and we have confirmed photographs of them? Lee thinks that comic writers will adapt and assimilate quickly. They will soon be telling stories starring the Others, trying to help their readers work out their own feeling about them.

Contact as a Laughing Matter

The revelation of first contact with an alien intelligence is a serious matter. Still, like almost everything else in the world, it will be treated by someone as the inspiration for a joke. Whether it is a riff on “To Serve Man” being a cookbook, to an alien fixation with probing and crop circles, Disclosure may well usher in boom times for joke-telling.

Chris Rush is a New York comedian and an original contributor to the
National Lampoon
series. When he spoke with the authors, he was in the final preparation for a one-man comedy show called
Reality: The Myth
. He is a devoted “verbal cartooner” who revels in the art of the ad-lib and could see himself immersed in the coverage of Disclosure. Then, he would get himself down to a comedy stage, armed with three or four premises, and let loose.
³

Maybe they won’t be little gray guys with Jiffy-Lube and anal probes. Maybe they will be advanced cow-like creatures who have come to our Earth to arrest Ronald McDonald for war crimes. Or maybe their IQ level compared to ours would be like a human trying to talk to yogurt—armed and violent yogurt. So maybe they will sterilize the Earth, turn the Moon into a gigantic mothball and store their winter clothes there. Even so, you’re still gonna have some shit-kicker with a shotgun on the New Jersey Turnpike aiming at them.

One of the reasons Rush thinks people will need to laugh is that the most potent comedy comes from things that, underneath, are scary to the audience. He thinks Disclosure will create a climate where people need to laugh more than ever.

Rush was friends with comedy great George Carlin, and the two had spoken at length about the nature of reality. As Rush notes, “The UFO thing just naturally falls in there.” In their discussions, Carlin expressed his opinion that the “planet’s owners” have known about the Others for a long time, but have not confessed their knowledge because they never felt they could control what would happen if they did. Carlin thought that knowledge of how complex the universe is and how other life has come here would “put us in our place and make us think.” Also, that “the
them
and
us
thing here on Earth might disappear.”

Visions From the Future

Every artist in the world—whether they be American or Chinese or Iranian—will have something to say about humanity’s changed circumstances. Trying to imagine this explosion of content is nearly impossible, given that there will be hundreds of millions of minds trying to express it when the time comes. By way of example only, here are a few possible turns in this coming story:

A traveling museum containing exhibits of alien artifacts and bodies that will generate lines like the earlier King Tut exhibit, times 10.

Competing stadium rallies, pro and con for increased contact, will force singers, actors, and politicians to choose sides.

More than 1,000 new books about contact will be available for purchase within two years AD. Entire sections of libraries, real and virtual, will be devoted to the topic.

Apple will release a new laptop/tablet computer hybrid, incorporating design elements from recovered alien wreckage and our own technology, known as the iFusion.

As it always does, art will draw from life. In many cases, it will create new forms of commerce around its expression. All this is unpredictable, except that it will surprise us.

But what art will the Others bring? Will we get to see their culture as they have seen ours? Or is it possible that among their great works of art is humanity itself?

The Next Great Healthcare Debate

Consider the state of biotechnology today, independent of any interference or assistance from the Others. Humans stand on the verge of dramatic breakthroughs in genetic engineering, synthetic biology, anti-aging drugs, stem-cell treatments, body implants, and regenerative medicine. By 2020, it is likely that the human genome will be understood, meaning that the ability to manipulate human DNA will be vastly greater than it is today. This means that a genetic transformation or beneficial remodeling of humanity will be possible. A more frightening thought is that it portends the possible temptation for a genetic transformation of some humans into a kind of Master Race.

What if the Others already began this process?

Abduction reports suggest that our reproductive systems and DNA are of interest to them. There is belief among many researchers that some form of hybrid species has been the end goal. There has also been ample speculation that the Others have manipulated the human genome in our ancient past. We may be their creation, or been biologically influenced by them.

If it turns out that the Others have played God with our biology, it would shake us as much as the basic confirmation that we are not alone. It not only would make us feel less unique; it would shatter any perception of equality we might have with them.

The debate would then move to motive. We would look for evidence—in abductee reports, DNA study, the revised historical record, and from the Breakaway Group—as to what the Others hoped to get from this. Do they think of us as their children and are simply trying to make us better and healthier? Or do they think of us as livestock, put here to populate the planet for their return and colonization?

If anyone wants a scenario for panic in the streets, it will come from this. This discussion may not start immediately on Day One. It may take years, as new information is released and discovered.

Although the shock from such a revelation would be deep, its effect may be greater still on our current debate about using genetic tampering to create everything from clones to healthier humans. If we have already been manipulated, one might argue that it removes a key obstacle to further tampering. Some will undoubtedly argue that it is better for humans to manipulate their own genes than to have another species do it for them. Our own scientists, now armed with public support, may work to accelerate human evolution in order to make us stronger to a dangerous interloper from elsewhere.

Conversely, it may turn out that the knowledge and help of the Others will enable humankind to live longer and healthier lives.

Whatever the motivation, if Disclosure creates scientific conditions where human DNA can be altered without a great morality debate to hold it back, our children or our children’s children may grow up in a world where they have been given a bonus allotment of years. This might give the individual much more time to experience the glories of being alive but, for society, it may be a mixed blessing. Our population is already testing the carrying capacity of the Earth. If we live longer and die less, Earth’s resources may simply exhaust that much faster.

There is no doubt that the state of medicine today is changing rapidly and great advancements are coming, contact or not.

Dr. Jeffrey Galpin specializes in Infectious Disease Medicine, Molecular Biology, and AIDS research, and was the principal investigator who applied the first gene therapy for HIV/AIDS. He also contracted polio when he was 8 years old, something that changed his life, and gives him pause to consider what an advanced intelligence could offer us, if they wanted to. He held out hope that “there would be a sharing of intellectual properties between our civilizations.” This could lead to better treatments and preventative measures for our most feared illnesses. Still, humanity needs to beware of such gifts. The molecular genetics of life is tied to and
dependent upon the universal clock of aging and death. All manipulations, therefore, will have consequences.

Such changes could affect the economy, expanding the number of productive years that people would want to be in the work force and lengthening the years they would live in retirement. If such gains come with a need to have our bodies tinkered with like a car getting a replacement part, some of us will sign on and others will not.