2ami

CHAPTER 2

FLYING JIM

“Come stay at my house,” I suggested because it was already getting late.

“Let’s not involve adults in our friendship,” he said, smiling and wrinkling up his nose.

“But I have to go.”

“Your grandma is sleeping soundly. She’s not going to miss you if we talk for a while.”

Once again he surprised me and made me admire him. How did he know about my grandma?... Then I

remembered that he was an extraterrestrial being... and that he could read my mind...

“That’s not all, Jim,” he said, after picking up on what I was thinking. “From my ship I saw that she was just

about to fall asleep.” Then he exclaimed enthusiastically, “Let’s take a walk on the beach!” He jumped to his

feet, ran to the edge of the very high rock and... jumped off!

I thought that he was going to kill himself! Frantic, I ran over to look down into the abyss. I couldn’t believe

my eyes! He was descending slowly, gliding like a seagull, his arms extended in the air. But then I immediately

remembered that I shouldn’t be too surprised at anything done by that happy, extraordinary child from the stars.

I carefully got down from the rock as best I could and joined him on the beach.

“How do you do it?” I asked, referring to his incredible glide.

` “By feeling like a bird,” he responded and began to run happily along the surf.

I thought that I would like to act like him, but I couldn’t feel that free and happy.

“Yes, you can!”

Once more he had read my mind. He came over to encourage me and exclaimed enthusiastically, “Let’s run

and jump like birds!”

He took me by the hand and I felt a surge of energy pass into my body. We began to run on the beach.

“Now... let’s jump!”

He was able to jump much higher than I and pulled me up after him. He seemed to hang suspended in the air

for a few moments before his feet hit the sand again. We continued running and every now and then we

jumped.7

“We’re birds; we’re birds,” he cried, encouraging me, making me feel giddy.

Little by little I stopped thinking the usual way; I was changing into a different person. Encouraged by the

extraterrestrial child, I was deciding to be as light as a feather, little by little accepting the idea of being a bird.

“Now... up!”

Marveling, I could tell that we were beginning to stay in the air for a few seconds. Gently we descended and

continued running, only to rise up in the air again. Each time we were doing it better. That surprised me...

“Don’t be surprised... you can do it... Now!”

With each try it got easier. Illuminated by the moon and starlight, we ran and jumped along the edge of the

waves like a slow-motion scene in a movie.

It seemed like another way to live, another world.

“For the love of flight!” he encouraged me. A little later he let go of my hand.

“You can do it! Yes, you can!” He kept inspiring me as he ran beside me.

“Now!”

Slowly, we leapt up, staying in the air for a few seconds and then beginning to fall very gently with our arms

extended, as if we were gliding.

“Bravo! Bravo!” he congratulated me.

I don’t know how long we were playing that night. For me it was like a dream.

When I felt tired I threw myself on the sand, breathing hard and laughing happily. It had been fabulous, an

unforgettable experience.

I didn’t say anything out loud, but inside my head I was thanking my strange little friend for having allowed me

to do things that I had thought impossible.

At that time I didn’t know just how many surprises that marvelous night had prepared for me...

The lights of a larger beach resort sparkled on the other side of the bay. Delighted, my friend contemplated

the shifting reflections on the dark water. He was deliriously happy, stretched out in the sand, which was bathed

in bright moonlight. Looking at the full moon, he laughed, “How wonderful! It doesn’t fall! This planet of yours

is really beautiful!”

I had never thought about it, but now that he was saying this... Yes, I thought, it was beautiful to have stars,

the ocean, the beach and a beautiful moon suspended there, and, what’s more, it wasn’t falling...

“Isn’t your planet beautiful?” I asked.

He sighed deeply while looking at a point in the sky to our right. “Oh, yes, it’s beautiful, too, but all of us know

that, and we take care of it...”

I remembered that he had insinuated that we earthlings are not very good. I thought that I understood one of

the reasons: we don’t value our planet or take care of it; they do take care of theirs.

“What’s your name?”

He thought my question was funny. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not? Is it a secret?”

“Go on! It’s just that the sounds don’t exist in English.”

“What sounds?”

“The sounds in my name.”

That surprised me. I had thought that his language was English too, and that he just had a different accent.

But then I remembered that even here on Earth there are hundreds or even thousands of different languages

and dialects. In the rest of the Universe there would have to be millions more.

“How did you learn to speak English, then?”

“I don’t speak it or even understand it...unless I have this,” he replied, while he took an apparatus from his

belt. “This is an ‘interpreter.’ This little box explores your brain at the speed of light and transmits what you 8

want to say to me; and when I’m going to say something, it makes me move my lips and tongue like you would

do... well... almost like you. Nothing is perfect...”

He put away the “interpreter” and began to contemplate the sea, pulling his knees up to his chest as he sat on

the sand.

“Is that how you know what I’m thinking?”

“Of course. Although I’m also making progress with my telepathy.”

“What should I call you, then?” I asked him.

“You can call me ‘Ahmishim-shimahhh’, which is my language means ‘friend,’ because that’s what I am, a

friend of everyone.”

“Ha, ha!” I laughed really hard when I heard those strange sounds. “I’ll just call you ‘Ami.’ It’s shorter and it

sounds like a name. Do you like it?”

He looked at me happily and then exclaimed, “That’s perfect, Jim!” And he gave me a hug.

At that moment I felt that I had formed a new, very special friendship.

And so it was to be...

“What’s the name of your planet?”

“Whoa! The same problem. There’re no equivalent sounds, but it’s over there.” Smiling, he pointed towards

the stars.

While Ami was observing the sky, I started thinking about all the space invaders films that I’d seen on

television and at the movies. “When are you going to invade us?” I asked him.

He thought my question was funny. “Why do you think that we’re going to invade Earth?”

“I don’t know... in the movies the extraterrestrials always try to invade Earth... Are you one of those?”

This time he laughed so loud that it was contagious and I started laughing, too.

Then I tried to justify what I had said. “It’s just that on TV...”

“Of course, the television! Let’s see one of those space invader films!” he exclaimed while extracting another

apparatus from his belt hoop. He pressed a button and the screen lit up. It was a small color television with a

amazingly sharp, clear picture. Ami changed channels rapidly.

What was surprising was that, even though there weren’t very many stations in that area, a whole bunch of

them appeared on the screen: movies, live programs, news shows, commercials. The shows were in all

different languages spoken by people of different nationalities.

How could he get so many stations without subscribing to a cable company?

“The films about space invaders are really ridiculous,” said Ami, amused.

“How many channels can you get there?”

“All of them that are transmitting at this moment on your planet...”

“All of them!”

“Naturally. This apparatus receives the signals picked up by our own satellites, which are invisible to you

people, of course. Here’s one from Australia. Look!”

On the screen appeared some creatures with octopus heads and multiple, bulging eyes crisscrossed with little

red veins. They fired off green rays at a crowd of terrified human beings. My friend seemed to be having a

good time watching this film.

“What a laugh! Don’t you think it’s funny, Jim?”

“No. Why?”

“Because these monsters exist only in the monstrous imaginations of the people who invent these films...”

I wasn’t convinced. I had spent too many years seeing all kinds of scary, evil space invaders. That idea

couldn’t be wiped out in one fell swoop.9

“But if here on Earth there are iguanas, crocodiles, octopuses... Why couldn’t really ugly creatures exist in

other worlds?”

“Oh, that. Yes, of course they exist. But they don’t construct ray guns. They’re the same as here; they’re

animals. They aren’t intelligent.”

“But maybe there are worlds where evil intelligent beings live...”

“Evil intelligent beings! That’s like saying, ‘bad good people,’ or ‘skinny fat people,’ or ‘ugly pretty people.’”

Ami was laughing his head off.

I just couldn’t understand. What about the crazy, evil scientists who invent weapons of mass destruction, the

ones that all the cartoon superheroes on TV fight against?

Ami could read my mind and explained, “They’re not intelligent. They’re crazy.”

“Well, then it’s possible for a world to exist that’s full of crazy scientists who could destroy us...”

“Other than those of the Earth...impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because crazy people destroy their own civilizations before reaching the scientific level necessary to

abandon their own planets and invade other worlds.”

I didn’t completely believe him. I thought that it was possible that some planets could exist that were inhabited

by crazy people who weren’t all that crazy... I mean, people who are intelligent, cold, scientific, efficient, and, at

the same time, cruel and evil...

He, of course, knew what I was thinking and to him it was really funny.

“And where are all those intelligent monsters who are so cold and so evil? How come they’ve never invaded

and destroyed any earthly civilization?” he asked me, with an innocent look on his face.

I thought for a while before answering but couldn’t find any examples of extraterrestrial evil in our history,

except for those modern stories of alien abductions and “X-Files”...

“C'mon, it's all book- and film-selling fantasies that you believe in spite of a complete lack of proof.... Cosmic

paranoia!” he added, laughing.

I thought he was right, but, anyway, I wasn’t all that certain of the “innocence” of all the inhabitants of outer

space. There were probably good ones, like Ami, and bad ones, too, just like on Earth.

He tried to reassure me. “Believe me, Jim, in the Universe there are ‘filters’ which keep out the undesirables.

Up there is not completely equal to down here. When the civilizations of the Universe reach a certain level of

development, there are no more horrors and the people are not as bad.”

“Are you completely sure that there is no civilization that’s scientifically advanced, but cruel?”

“All I can tell you is that it’s much easier to develop the technology necessary to build bombs than it is to build

intergalactic spaceships. If a civilization without wisdom or kindness reaches a high level of scientific

knowledge, sooner or later it will use that knowledge against itself. That will happen way before it would be able

to travel to other worlds... Luckily for us...”

“But they could survive on some planet, by chance...”

He said that the Universe is the reflection of a perfect, superior order and that nothing happens by chance,

because everything is interconnected. And he also explained to me that when the scientific level of a world

exceeds its level of love by too much, that world self-destructs.

“Level of love?”

I could easily understand what a planet’s scientific level is, but the idea of “level of love” was hard for me to

grasp.

“The love that the human beings on a planet radiate can be measured by our instruments,” he said.

“Really?”

“Sure, because love is an energy, a force, a vibration; and if a world’s level of love is low, there is

unhappiness, hate, violence, division and war. And if, at the same time, there is a high level of the capacity for

destruction... Do you understand what I’m saying, Jim?”

“Not really. What are you trying to tell me?”

“I have to tell you a lot of things, but let’s go slowly. Let’s continue talking about your doubts.”10

He knew that I continued having doubts about the intelligent, evil monsters.

“Too many movies!” Ami exclaimed and then added, “The monsters that we imagine are within ourselves. As

long as we don’t let go of them, we won’t deserve to reach the heights of the Universe, full of marvels that are

there, waiting for us to elevate our eyes so that they can reveal themselves...”

“Sometimes it’s hard for me to understand you, Ami.”

“The evil beings are neither intelligent nor beautiful.”

“But... What about those beautiful, bad women in the movies?”

“Either they’re not beautiful or they’re not bad.”

“I’ve seen some that are bad, but at the same time they look real good...”

“Maybe they look good to you on the outside. But what about on the inside?... For us, true beauty has to be

joined with intelligence and love. If it’s not, we don’t consider it genuine beauty.”

I didn’t much agree with his way of seeing things, but I didn’t say anything.

“Do other bad people exist in the Universe, other than those on Earth?”

“Well, in the first place, we don’t divide people into ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ Some are more advanced; some, less.

That’s all.”

“All right. Then, do beings who have advanced as little as those here exist anywhere else?”

“Of course. And many who are much less advanced, as well. Worlds exist where you couldn’t survive for half

an hour. A million years ago there was a real inferno right here on Earth... And there are worlds inhabited by

real monsters.”

“You see? You see?” I exclaimed triumphantly. “I was right! You just admitted it yourself! Those were the

monsters I was talking about...”

“But don’t worry. They are ‘below’ you, not ‘above’ you. They inhabit worlds much more backwards than this

one. Their coarse minds keep them from even discovering the wheel. They’ll never arrive here at this rate...”

That was comforting to hear.

“Then, we earthlings aren’t the worse inhabitants of the Universe, after all...”

“No, but you’re one of the silliest ones in the galaxy.”

We laughed like good friends.