QUANTUM SPACE TRAVEL

I have been contacted by alien ambassadors---or so they represented themselves. They took me by surprise, not in mind-merge but as voices in my head. They told me that to travel from star to star, nobody uses metal ships. They use the 2 = 1 experience in which one mind looks out at the world through two bodies. And where these two bodies could be located on different planets or galaxies. All spacefaring races use mind-merge to travel to distant worlds---they teach mind-merge to their young in kindergarten. All space travellers prize the capacity for deep intimacy as the highest possible form of intelligence. Most sentient beings possess no symbolic language at all but are fluent instead in a dozen different styles of mind-merge.

Learning to be a star traveler means practicing reaching out to other minds across the widest emotional gaps imaginable. If you wish to join the galactic club---say the aliens---there is no better practice than reaching without armor into the hearts of your enemies. As paradoxical as it seems, quantum combat may be mankind's ticket to the stars.

I asked the aliens for some hints about practical ways for humans to achieve mind-merge. They laughed and said that there are dozens of nearby alien races who would love to teach mankind the "quantum facts of life" but they are inhibited by a deep cultural taboo. Humans have such an undeveloped capacity for deep intimacy that to mind-merge with us would be the alien equivalent of the sexual molestation of children.

Aliens won't mind-merge with us but they did offer some practical advice for Quantum Diplomats-in-training---a way of thinking that would in their opinion optimize our chances for success in our own tentative attempts to merge minds with other beings: "Give out what you expect to get," was their advice.

"Give out what you expect to get?" I exclaimed. "That's just another version of our Golden Rule, isn't it?"

"Yes it is," the aliens replied, one voice speaking out of many mouths. "Perhaps you could call it Golden Rule 2.0. It may not seem like much to you now, but, believe Us/Them/We, to devise imaginative ways to show off your mastery of Golden Rule 2.0 is mankind's first-class ticket to the stars. Putting out what you expect to get back is also not a bad way of handling non-quantum relations. But preemptive reciprocity will turn out to be crucial when humans learn how 2 = 1 really works, when humans actually learn to reap the consequences of the simplest and most important equation in the universe."

In closing, I would like to thank the aliens for their help in nudging our baby-step physics towards a radically new way of investigating this lovely universe. I hope to meet my alien advisors again some day in deep space where we will play/fight/copulate/study one another in the mutual unconditional surrender of quantum combat. I wish to thank again the Nobel Prize committee for its foresight in giving its highest award (Nick holds up Nobel medal) to this grateful grandson of Ukrainian-American Appalachian coal miners.

And so, having opened Pandora's Box by handing out the secret of Weapon X to every nation on Earth, I am ready to face the War Crimes Tribunal. There is no need for handcuffs, gentlemen. We are not barbarians.



[thanks to Rian Fike for illustrations: see FullBodyTransplant for more.]



NO MORE SAFE SCIENCE




See also:
A Nobel for Nick
Stanford Grad Indicted for War Crimes
First Quantum Human Sighted
Jabir Proposes Middle East Peace Plan
Jabir's Final Solution for Peace in Palestine
Weapon X--the Ultimate Atrocity