Adam Smith Period 4 10/19/10

The Fall
The alien scouts returned to the mother ship, bringing critical data of Earths geology to the ships captain. They were gathering information to asses the susceptibility of Earth to an attack. Frequent acquisition of new territory was necessary to maintain the plantlike aliens iron grip on the galaxy. The planet is ripe for the picking, sir, reported the lieutenant who had headed the scouting mission, stifling laughter. Whats so funny? asked the captain. Theres nothing hilarious about an invasion. Anything could easily go wrong. And there are always official reports to file, bureaucracy, and. The lieutenant cut him off. Not this time. This planet is absolutely hopeless. Their most advanced form of life, homo sapiens, cant even understand calculus by the age of seven! What! The captain guffawed. If thats the case, then we could rule them in a week! It would be like stealing candy from a sapling! You have no idea! You should see their government. They routinely steal from each other so much that they have no more property to buy, and their economy crashes And thats not even the funny part. Afterwards, it takes centuries for their most educated economists and historians to figure out what happened! The entire crew roared with laughter. Balled green tentacles pounded tables and approximated slapping motions against what looked something like knees. None of them had laughed this hard for years. I bet they dont even speak their first words until theyre, like, eight weeks old! said one private. Not even close. They dont even speak until theyre around eighteen months! chortled the lieutenant. Months? MONTHS? Retards! exclaimed the captain. Tell me more. Oh, theres lots more. For example, even though theres plenty of food and land, they all kill each other becauseget thisthey think theres a man in the sky who has ordered them to kill anyone who doesnt believe in him, continued the lieutenant. I dont understand. If they all believe in him, why do they kill each other? asked the captain. Theythey disagree about his name, of all things. Oh thats rich. So what do we do, fire a few lasers, or wait for them to kill each other? He paused while the laughing died down. Alright, this planet is clearly easy money. We wont even bother with captives. Take her down, pilot. Aye, aye sir Meanwhile, on the planet below, his Holiness was preparing to have a special Vatican mass before rallying the newly re-instated military branch of the Catholic Church to reclaim for their LORD and savior Jesus Christ the land of Israel. (Their motto being,

Proselytize Assertively). At the same time, a Hindu priest was preparing the inhabitants of the local village for a soon-to-be ill fated assault against a nearby Islamic community, and a Buddhist holy man consented to have himself locked away in a cell in hopes of becoming enlightened. As it turned out, the first of these events came the closest to having any significance. The Papal armies marched into Jerusalem quickly, burned the Masjid alHaram, and set up a temporary throne on the foundations of the ancient temple beneath it. When the alien envoy arrived over the city of Istanbul to announce its presence and proclaim ownership of the Earth, many people began to realize that there were, in fact, aliens, although critics like Michael Shermer remained highly skeptical until the very end. They said things like, Wow, there are such things as aliens after all! Few of them had ever actually considered the possibility of alien intelligence. Most of them waited for their superiors to tell them what to think. The aliens sparked interest in the scientific community, and many scientists took photographs of the aliens, who seemed to be capable of photosynthesis, but whose cells apparently lacked walls. Thus, the aliens ate little and moved freely. The political leaders of Earth were also busy scrambling to ensure peace and, possibly, earn the favor of the aliens. Their immense intelligence was immediately recognized, but they seemed to be indifferent with respect to Earths condition. Most of the leaders had anticipated a hostile invasion or a pacifistic, oh-please-get-peaceful-before-you-destroy-the-universe response. They were caught off guard by the aliens apathy. The aliens, actually, were anything but apathetic. They had decided that, due to the common mans perseverance under terrible conditions and denial of basic freedoms, humans would eventually become a galactic slave race, performing cheap labor on planets in other solar systems. The aliens agreed that the natural beauty of Earth was remarkable, and decided to take a shore leave before reporting back to their home planet. Many transport ships would be needed to extract the immense quantities of natural and labor resources found on this planet, and to tell beings even as ignorant as these that their planet was at the top of the to-conquer list would be unwise. Everything was going perfectly to plan (Indeed, how could it go otherwise?) when one of the alien invaders, assigned to determine the collective history of Earth as punishment, asked a catholic metropolitan about the history of his religion. Rather than launching into a discussion of the finer points of Catholic doctrine and the lives of the saintswhich he would have done happilythe metropolitan simply said, Jesus loves you. This caught the alien off guard. What? Whono, what, is Jesus? God, said the metropolitan, He created all things, and wants to help you and be your friend. This Jesushave you seen him? asked the alien. No, but I dont have to. His essence lives inside me, guiding me and comforting me. The alien considered this for a while, and thought of how he had been forced to study the history of Earth while the rest of the crew had a good time. Then he thought of all the times his parents had yelled at him for what they considered mediocre performance in school, when the whole time he had tried so hard to keep up, but in the end wasnt smart enough. Now, after he had joined the army, they wouldnt even speak to him. This Jesus can he help my parents love me? he asked.

Of course he can, responded the metropolitan. He made you. Putting logic aside, the alien hoped blindly. Now, he could be free! He thought about all the years he had wasted, drinking euphoric tree sap and running from his fears. What must I do to accept Him? he asked. The metropolitan patted himself on the back. He would certainly become a cardinal, probably be elected pope, and maybe even made into a saint. All he had to do was say these words: repeat after me: I am sorry for all the wrong things I have done, dear Jesus, and I want you to forgive me. Repeat after me: I am sorry for all the wrong things I have done, dear Jesus, and I want you to forgive me, said the metropolitan. The alien carefully said the words and was glad that all troubles were over. He would not have to feel his own pain any longer. The metropolitan finished the encounter by warning him that all those who did not accept Jesus as their savior, go to mass, and confess their sins, and pray to the saints would go to a place of fire and torment called hell. He also added that a gift of gold or silver was customary to support the church, which the alien gave him happily. The metropolitan supplied the alien with a copy of the Bible and a book of Catholic doctrine before he departed, and rushed to arrange a meeting with his Holiness. The alien proceeded to tell the others of his conversion and his newfound happiness. Most, of course were skeptical, but a few converted. None of them had yet realized the implications this sequence of events would soon have. Soon, the religion reached the home planet of the aliens. There, it found fertile ground among the lower classes whose standard of living had been carefully balanced to ensure domestic tranquility. The newly converted masses gave money and other resources to their local leaders, who in turn gave much of it to the Vatican. This outflow of money decreased the standard of living and the lower classes became unhappy. They demanded that their leaders convert to Christianity, support Christian missionaries, increase the pay allotted to the lower classes, and declare war on countries that mistreated, ridiculed, or ignored the new missionaries. A civil war erupted, with the upper classes refusing to accede to the unreasonable demands of the public. They might have succeeded in controlling the masses if they had received aid from other planets, but many civilizations saw the unrest as a chance to undermine the galactic hegemony of the plant people. When the under classes were at last victorious, they used their mighty empires immense resources to evangelize their empires vast holdings. The spread of Christianity to many planets was marked by three phases: evangelism, where the populace was informed of the belief system, destruction, which only occurred on reluctant planets, where the resistance was shattered, and colonization, where the emptied landscapes of said reluctant planets were colonized by people of the Faith. In some cases, only the first phase was necessary. Eventually, the inhabitants of planets who faced the arrival of the encroaching Christianity learned to convert peacefully to avoid much pain and suffering. They feared that they would be forced to forever pay lip service to his Holiness and the saints. However, things took an unexpected turn when, at the furthest reaches of the giant empire, a creature called Ume Ukunah proclaimed that he had himself received a message from the Almighty. His religion unified the remaining planets against the spread of Christianity, whose rapid spread was already putting a strain on the empire, and consequently, was

slowing significantly in its spread. Other individuals within the empire itself caught wind of the new religion and took hope. More importantly, locals founded other religions which were adopted at varying rates and undermined the stability of the over expanded empire. Finally, there were thousands of religions around the galaxy, which achieved varying degrees of popularity. No one religion could claim dominance over another, although much violence ensued. Hundreds of trillions of beings died in wars of various sizes as each religion sought to attain supremacy. Among the most popular religions that emerged in the end were Christianity, Ukunahism, Islam, which had spread rapidly after the grip of Christianity had weakened (The idea of 70 virgins seemed to appeal to the males of many species, although there was some dispute about praying toward Mecca in the vast reaches of outer space), and Buddhism, whose relatively pacifistic ideas pleased the most war battered areas, whose peace-starved inhabitants gladly embraced quiet meditation. Some planets that had been recently colonized were left without supplies, and the settlers quickly lost all their parent empires technology. As they did so, their collective memories faded and they were left guessing as to their origin. From them originated some of the strangest religions of all, often involving angry or disappointed gods who had abandoned their world after some wrongdoing by the legendary originator of the race. The new, disjointed universe seemed to be in a state of dynamic equilibrium, with many wars that cost numerous lives, but amounted to nothing. A few planets desperately attempted to restore the old, peaceful, agnosticism that had been seen in the empire before religion, or at least introduce some idea of tolerance, but their efforts were squashed by the zeal of the new converts of new religions. It seemed that the converts feared losing religion altogether more than being overtaken by a new one. Despite the unrest of those early days, sections of the galaxy at last achieved an uneasy peace, and the fanaticism of new converts was dulled by time and luxury. The fighting, however, had taken its toll, especially among the upper classes. The intellectual giants of the old empire were no more; in their place were blithering idiots whose virtually non-existent intellect was a product of genetic decay and selection against the smartest minds of the galaxy, who failed to pass on their genes because they were either killed or forced to become monks. Now, even the smartest of the aliens were almost eighteen months old before they spoke any words, and most aliens could not understand derivative calculus until their twenties, indeed, if at all. And when economies crashed, historians and economists spent centuries putting the pieces back together.