Outopians
Written by Ifay Chang on
Thanksgiving Day
for
his family especially for
Jerray, the fourth grader (2007)
Preface – Outopian and
Outopian Language
1. A Misty Thanksgiving Eve
2. Strange Sighting
3. Midnight Adventure
4. Jerray’s Secret Discovery
5. The Zipper
6. Somers Town Police
7. Interaction with Zipper
8. FBI’s Investigation
9. Outopia and Outopian
Language
10. Why Did Zipper Come to
Earth?
11. Zipper’s Discovery
12. CIA Clinic – ALC
13. Reflection on Earthlings
– 1907 to 2007
14. Retention by FBI
15. Worst Scenario Through
the Eyes of Zipper
16. Interrogation
17. Searching for A Best Scenario
18. How Did the Story End
Blue Golf Ball
for Christmas
Written by Ifay Chang on
Thanksgiving Day
for
his family especially for
Jemmin, the second grader (2002)
http://www.scrammble.com/bluegolfball4christmas.html
Outopians
People on Earth evolved in
millions of years to a very advanced civilization. We now can fly with an
airplane at a supersonic speed to distance of tens of thousands of miles. We
can send a man or woman to another planet in our solar system. We can
communicate with each other through cell phone between almost anywhere on
Earth. We surround our world with multimedia to fill our senses’ capacity. We
produced digital information of 161 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes or 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 bits, 8 bits equal
to one byte) in 2006 alone.
(~1.5 zetta bits) Quite an impressive deed huh? Not really! Not in the
minds of Zipper, an Outopian boy, the principal character in this story.
According to Zipper,
Outopians live on a planet called Outopia in another galaxy. The Outopians paid
a visit to us, Earthlings. They left some clues to indicate that Outopia is
about 100 light years away. They communicate in a language transmitting close
to zettabits per second peak rate. They came and gone without a trace but they
humbled Earth, us Earthlings, by leaving behind Zipper, an Outopian boy, like a
toy object in human eyes, shaped like a golf ball and colored blue and shinny.
The blue golf ball was found by a child who named it Zipper.
Through Zipper, the
Earthlings were taught a glimpse of Outopia and the Outopian language.
Earthlings probably would never be able to communicate with an Outopian on an
equal footing but they had learned a great deal from Zipper about Earth. This
story was what Zipper wanted to tell every Earthlings, please read on if you
had not heard it before.
People
never know what kind of weather they may get for Thanksgiving Holiday in the
Town of Somers, State of New York. Some years they had gorgeous sun the whole
week and some years their backyards were covered snow white on Thanksgiving
Day. Never, never before, had they had a stranger weather in the Thanksgiving
week in 2007. The author knew it was not a smart way to start a great story
with weather but please bear with him; a strange weather report was what
started this mysterious, unbelievable but earthly story.
It
started out cloudy and cold on Monday making this Monday worse than the usual
miserable Mondays people didn’t like. It drizzled on or off all day and continued
on to Tuesday making everyone putting
off any to-do plans. Then it became very chilly and misty on Wednesday, the day
before Thanksgiving. The children didn’t mind having a lousy weather on school
days but it was just not fair to have a bad weather, a strange one, on
Thanksgiving weekend - a rare five-day weekend. Gloomy weather just makes gloomy holidays, but not this one I am
going to tell you. It was exciting to say the least.
As the Thanksgiving Eve was arriving, it was
pitch-dark, damp and misty, you could not see ten feet ahead of you if you were
driving. From Chang’s house, you could not see any car going by all evening. It
reminded me the scene in the Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho, a lone house on a
hill in a silent misty night just waiting for something horrible to happen. The
children were not afraid, of course, the four brothers were all together that
night completely absorbed by Crystal Battalion, their favored computer game.
The 4-J brothers were playing Crystal Battalion on
Play Station II in the family room. For a change, Jerren and Jerray were
winning against Jesseon and Jemmin. Jerray scored a lot with Jozo’s sling bomb.
Just as Jerray made Jozo to leap up to the crystal spaceship to chase Shotz,
they saw a green fireball suddenly appeared on their 42-inch TV screen. It grew
in size immediately until it filled the entire screen. 4-Js usually kept their
family room dark when they played TV games, but for a brief moment the room
seemed to be lit up green as if they were in the Crystal Battalion.
“Hey! This is not part of the game!” shouted Jemmin
“What were you doing? Jerray.” questioned his
partner Jesseon, the oldest among the 4-J brothers.
“We didn’t do anything. What did you guys do?” Both
Jerray and Jerren as teammates replied at the same time.
“Nothing!” Jesseon and Jemmin replied.
The four brothers (friends called them J-brothers or
4-J) now thought there was something wrong with their TV set or their game
console. They quickly switched to television. It was set on Channel 12, the
famous local news station always giving you all the local traffic, weather,
shopping scenes…about Westchester County but too much petty crimes in Yonkers
which up-county people didn’t care to watch. This evening, the J-brothers set
the TV on Channel 12 for local weather for a good reason; they would like to
know when the miserable weather would change. Guess what, it was right on, the
bushy silver-haired Mr. Rao was reporting on Westchester’s weather.
“I
am sorry to bring you a bad weather report. Tonight, Thanksgiving Eve, a heavy
fog is looming all over Westchester County, a very unusual weather in our
county history of weather. The visibility is less than 20 feet in downtown
Yonkers. That may be because the city of Yonkers is saving electricity, but no
better in White Plains. Motorists are advised to exercise caution in driving.
Stay home if ….. you can. ………(black fade-out on TV)”
“Sorry,
we are interrupting our regular weather report to bring you a special message.”
Rao, the senior meteorologist announced.
“We
have received several phone calls just a few minutes ago from residents from
Northern Westchester. Several residents reported that they had sighted a
strange phenomenon, a brilliant fireball like object in green color was sighted
appearing in the sky, rising from the horizon like a firework except it was too
big and then disappeared into the space with no flare in just a few seconds.
The times reported were about 11 PM, just a few minutes ago. These sightings
appeared to be authentic. They were reported by prominent residents, including,
Jack Norman, our County Chief Information Officer. This sighting has already
been reported to the authorities. We will bring you further updates if anything
develops.” Reported by Ms Rose, the Director of Channel 12 News apparently took
over the camera shot.
“The
local authorities are investigating these sightings. They advise residents not
to be alarmed since there appears to have no danger from this phenomenon.”
Continued Ms Rose.
“Wah!
Did you hear that? We must have seen the reflection on our TV screen. It must
be coming from our backyard or the golf course.” Said Jerren.
“Wow,
Let’s go outside and check it out.” Shouted Jerray.
The
J-brothers don’t get excited easily but this time all four brothers were pretty
excited. They all dashed to the windows to look out to Angle Brook, the golf
course butting their backyard. It was pitch dark, but Jerray swore he had seen
a faint green light moving in the sky. His brothers didn’t believe him as
usual. They called him an imaginative kid.
“Let’s
tell Dad first and then go out to look.” Jemmin said
Midnight Adventure
The
boys quickly went downstairs and told their parents about the news. They then
turned the kitchen TV on and tuned to Channel 12, but all they could see and
hear were the great sales Walmart and Target were going to offer on
Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. The younger kids never understood the term
Black Friday, right at that moment they were only occupied by the green color,
not the money, but the sighting. Jerray was so eager to describe to his parents
what he saw on their TV screen and what Channel 12 had reported, he couldn’t
make complete sentences.
“Now
boys, may be you did see something, but it is almost midnight, you are not
going out there in the dark. Wait till tomorrow morning then you can go out and
check. You said so yourself, Channel 12 advised residents to be calm. May be it
will all be explained by a simple story by tomorrow.” Said Mom.
“No,
Mom, it is different. The green light must have started from our backyard or we
will not be able to see it on our TV screen. It happened on our property, how
can we ignore it?” Jerray blurted out and echoed by other boys.
“Dad, If there is no danger, why can’t we look?”
said Jerren, logically.
“Well,
it is not you can’t, Mom is saying you don’t have to look at this minute. It is
way past your bedtime. Perhaps you can get up early in the morning and check
around, how about it?” Dad said with a wink of eye.
“Ohh….we
are not tired!” Jerray said without understanding Dad’s wink.
“Take
a good offer when you are offered one. Go on brushing your teeth and get to
bed. In the morning, I will go with you to look, how is that?” said Dad.
In
4-J’s home, they had a two party system but very much opposite to how US
congress works or acts. Dad and Mom never challenged each other’s authority in
the open especially when kids were around but yet it seemed that they did have
lots of differences. When matters were big like voting for Bush or Kerry, Mom
yields to Dad and rarely argued about it. When matters were domestic like what
to buy and what to eat, Dad yields to Mom absolutely even ignoring his high
cholesterol concern. Mom liked chocolate, ice cream, rich tasty food and she sometimes
slept in late so the boys sided with her a lot. Dad liked playing sports,
games, adventures and staying up late so the boys also sided with him a lot.
Sometimes when matters fell in between the big and small, the parents would
have differences in opinion but still they exercised a lot of diplomacy and
self-sacrifice to resolve it. The smart thing the kids did was just to go with
the flow. Like this green light phenomenon, it was one of those medium matter,
they didn’t know yet how they would resolve their differences. Mom probably did
not want to get involved and Dad would be likely to take on a semi-serious
investigation.
Jerray’s Secret Discovery
“Hey,
Jerray, are you still awake?” A whisper into jerray’s left ear.
After
brushing his teeth, Jerray put on his pajamas over his regular clothes. He was
hoping Dad would come to wake him up to investigate the green light. Dad woke
Jerray up many times for fun things, to see baby crabs crawling on the beach,
to take a bike ride before everyone got up in the scout camp or to take a walk
through his backyard on to the golf course very early in the morning – one time
Jerray would never forget; he found a blue golf ball with Dad. Dad never needed
much sleep, sometimes he would work all night skipping a night’s sleep and Mom
even did not know about it. This whisper came from Dad for sure, he did come to
wake Jerray up!
“Yes,
Dad, are we going to the backyard?” I whispered back.
“Yes,
if you are up to it. It is about 2AM.” Said Dad in a low voice.
“Dad,
I would like to go.” Said Jemmin in the bed opposite to Jerray’s, obviously
awake.
“What
is going on? Are you going out?” Voice came from the adjacent bedroom.
“Since
you are all awake, yes, we are going out to the backyard, but you must be very
quiet not waking anybody up.” “I got the flash lights, you just have to put on
warm clothes.” Dad raised his voice to let everybody know.
Their
property is about two acres and so is every neighbor’s. They all have lots of
trees, mostly Maple, Pine, Oak and Blue Spruce. It was great fun to do laser
tag in the woods. 4-J’s backyard is adjacent to the Golf Course, Angle Brook, a
sprawling 18 hole course serving a few exclusive members. It was only this time
of the year before snow and after leafs fallen, they could see the golf course
from their house through the woods. The fallen leafs made a soft cushion to
roll in for animals, even kids. Squirrels and chipmunks were busy collecting
Acorn nuts. Wild turkeys and deer often zoomed through the woods to find their
favorite restaurants. Tonight, I should say this morning, it was very quiet and
very dark, not a single star visible. The air was damp but smelt fresh. The
only sound they could hear were their own footsteps in the leafs and the
cranking noise as they charged up their crank chargeable flashlights.
“You
guys pair up, move slowly and stop when you see anything unusual.” Cautioned
Dad to everyone.
“Be
careful with tree branches. Put your hand in front of your head and keep the
flashlight downward.” Dad added.
Jerray
was trailing his brothers with his Dad and Jemmin. Jesseon and Jerren were
about dozen feet ahead of them. As they gingerly moved closer to the property
line, marked by a disintegrating stonewall, the leafs under their feet got
thicker from years of accumulation. They could sink their boots completely in
the leafs. The thrashing sound seemed to cause goose bumps to grow on Jerray’s
skin. Jerray wanted to discover things by himself but he also did not want to
stay too far behind his Dad.
“Wow,
come and look. This Blue Spruce tree was burned. Almost half of it.” Shouted
Jerren, standing next to a 20 foot Spruce.
“Only
near the base though, as if something hot had touched the tree.” Added Jesseon.
Dad
and Jemmin hurriedly moved towards the Blue Spruce where Jesseon and Jerren
were standing. Jerray could hardly see them from where he stood. He could hear
them talking: …. it is weird…. Some branches are burnt and some are not….. The
tree is alive just lost some green needles on some branches….. Jerray wanted to
join them and he leaped forward but fell face down. Luckily there was no big
rock or he would have injured himself. As he got up again, he noticed that he
had dropped his crank-charging flashlight. A panic came over him. No, he
couldn’t see a thing without the flashlight, how could he find his light?
Jerray was going to call his brothers but then a tiny, very tiny green light
zipped in his view a couple of feet away. He thought it might be a snake or
something. He wished he could have his flashlight in his hand. Then all of a
sudden, a bunch of leafs moved and let the flashlight shone through. Jerray saw
the tiny green light next to his flashlight. A thought zipped in his head: pick
up the flashlight and examine what is the tiny green light. He then reached
towards his flashlight, the green light stayed stationary. He picked up his
flashlight and shone over the green light. Another thought zipped in his head:
Look closer, it is harmless. Jerray then kneeled down somewhat voluntarily or
may be involuntarily to examine what was this tiny green light.
Wow,
the light came from a blue ball, the size of a golf ball, with a shinny crystal
on top. The green light came from the crystal. Another thought zipped in his
head again: Pick it up. You had found something unusual. Jerray reached out his
hand and picked up the blue golf ball. Wow, he felt an electric jolt going
through his body, perhaps more through his head. Flashes of images and
thoughts, green light on his TV screen, Ms Rose reporting the sighting, his
brothers examining the blue spruce branches, a police car coming to their house
arresting all of them, hiding, hiding the blue golf ball, …..
Jeray
did not understand why but he immediately put the blue golf ball in his pants
pocket, like the last one he found, and walked carefully towards his brothers.
Jerray
knew he had discovered something very, very unusual but he was compelled to
hide his secret discovery.
The Zipper
Jerray
joined his brothers to examine the blue spruce tree. It was rather odd that a
tree would have some branches burnt in an intermittent way. The first question
their father asked was,
“Did
anyone come to our backyard to play recently? Did you guys play over here in
the last few days?” Dad asked but the answer was no.
“Let’s
see what else we will find.” Said Jemmin.
“OK,
let’s spread out from this tree and focus on the ground beneath the leafs and
see what we can find.” Dad pointed to a ten-yard circle around the tree.
They
spread out and began checking anything unusual beneath their feet. Jerray
followed his brothers and they looked a long time, seemed hours, but they did
not find anything unusual. There was no other track marks except theirs.
Nothing heavy seemed to have passed through, not even deer foot prints. Just
based on the burnt branches on a spruce tree, Dad could not come up with any
plausible theory. Dad usually had answers for most things. They sometimes liked
it and sometimes hated it. Dad had no answer this time. Finally, he said,
“Well,
we tried but we could not find anything from our backyard to link to the
sightings. We shouldn’t trespass to the golf course. The burnt branches might
be caused by a disease or by some chemicals animals brought to the tree. Let’s
call a quit. We will think about it whether this is worth reporting to the
police or other authority. Let’s move quietly back to the house. Don’t wake up
Mom.”
As
they were heading back to the house, more thoughts zipped through Jerray’s
head. It was like million questions and million answers at the same time.
Jerray was an imaginative kid but he was not a super fast thinker that morning.
He never had so many thoughts rushing through his head before. He had a strange
feeling; these thoughts had something to do with the blue golf ball. Well, he
thought of giving the ball a name – he then named his secret discovery the
Zipper. He was dying to understand what and who Zipper was.
The Somers Town Police
They
sort of tiptoed back to their bedrooms when it was nearly five O’clock in the
morning. Dad told them to get some sleep and he would work on the computer to
see whether there were any reports related to the green light sighting.
Just
as Jerray was dozing off to his dream land, He heard a commotion downstairs. He
and His brothers all woke up immediately and witnessed what was going on. From
the window, they could see two police cars with flashing lights parked on the
street. The police were in the house talking to their father.
“Sir,
sorry to disturb you on a Thanksgiving Day. It is the last thing we want to do.
However, we have received an urgent report from two of your neighbors that they
have seen a bunch of flashlights zooming around in the woods for hours last
night. For what they could determine, the activities were mostly in your
backyard. Can you tell us what was going on? Do you mind we do an investigation
in the backyard.” Politely declared a police officer.
The
father was caught by surprise and he hesitated a moment or pondered a while
then said,
“The
flashlight activities were in our backyard. My sons and I were investigating
the green light sighting reported on the news. We did see something unusual
about our blue spruce tree but other than that we did not find anything.
Everything seems to be fine. You can look for yourself.”
“So
you don’t mind we take a look at your backyard, then.”
“OK,
no problem.”
As
the 4-Js looked out the window and saw two policemen went to the backyard and
walked around. They did stop at the blue spruce for a while writing some notes
down but then came into the house. They asked whether they could ask the kids a
couple of questions. Dad then called the boys down.
“Were
you all up in the woods last night with flashlights? What were you doing?”
asked the policeman.
“We
were investigating the green light. We each had a flashlight. We thought the
green light might have come from our backyard but we did not find anything
other than the burnt branches on the blue spruce.” Jesseon replied for all of
them.
“You
explained the flashlight activities. We are not officially investigating the
green light sighting, but we will report to the authorities that your
flashlight activities are triggered by the green light sighting. Why do you
think the green light may have come from your backyard? Do you have anything
else to tell us?” Asked the policeman again.
A
thought zipped through Jerray’s head again, he blurted out:
“We
saw a green light reflected from our TV screen right before the news telling us
about the green light sighting. We were just curious and we didn’t have
anything else to say.”
Then
the policeman asked their father to sign a document which said he had
truthfully reported to the Police about last night’s incidence then left. A
thought zipped through Jerray’s head, did his action make his Dad a liar to the
Police. Would he be put in jail if found out Jerray wasn’t telling the truth.
Jerray suddenly realized that he had to be extremely careful with Zipper.
Interaction with Zipper
Having
Zipper in his pocket seemed to generate lots of thoughts in Jerray’s head. He
was wondering whether he should let his brothers know. If he let them know,
they had to keep the secret as Jerray had to. Could they? Would they? If he did
not let them know, Jerray would have to hide everything from them. That
wouldn’t be easy and he did not really want to do that. Suddenly, a thought
came to his mind, he should ask them to swear to secrecy before he would tell them about Zipper. Jerray imagined that
they would form a Zipper club with their secret rules. They would only take
Zipper out in their bedrooms at night when no one could see it. They would try
to understand what Zipper was. Was it just a toy? A practice golf ball? Was it
an alien object? Could it talk to them? Could it understand them? They would
keep a secret diary recording everything they could learn about Zipper.
On Thanksgiving night, they were allowed to stay up late. They played Wii games until their parents had gone to bed. Mom was tired out by her cooking all day and Dad was exhausted from skipping sleep last night. At midnight, Jerray called for a meeting in his bedroom. His brothers were curious enough to go along with him. Jerray said to them:
“I
want you to swear to secrecy before I will tell you a big secret. It is
something to do with the green light.”
“Oh,
yeah. Did you have a scary dream last night?” Snorted Jerren.
“No
it is not a dream. It is real and I have proof.” Jerray said.
“OK,
Just tell us if you have anything to say. We will keep your secret if it is
real.” Said Jesseon.
“It
is not just my secret. It will be our secret. I want you all to swear to obey
the secrecy rules before I show you.” Jerray insisted on getting their sworn
agreement.
“What
are the rules? Jerray” Asked Jemmin.
“The
rules are: We will be the only members of our secret club. We will all keep
this secret after I tell you. We will only have our secret meetings in my
room.” Jerray said it with a serious voice.
“All
right, Jerray, let’s hear it.” To Jerray’s surprise his brothers all said at
the same time.
Jerray
tiptoed to check no one was still up but them. He then closed his bedroom door.
He turned off the room light. Jerray then whispered to his brothers: Sit down.
Then he took out Zipper from a shoebox under his bed. Wow! Every one shouted
half way then covered their mouths with their hands. Every one saw the
brilliant green light in Jeray’s palm and gradually they saw this round object
resembling the blue golf ball Jerray found on the golf course a few years back.
“Jerray,
is this a trick? Is this your blue golf ball?” asked Jerren.
“No,
this is not a trick. I found it last night when you were checking the burnt
Spruce.” Jerray replied and continued.
“I
call this ball Zipper because lots of thoughts zipped through my mind ever
since I had Zipper.”
As
soon as Jerray finish saying his sentence, his mind is flipping with images and
thoughts. Jerray saw Jesseon was holding Zipper and nodding his head. Jerren
was talking with hands to Zipper. Jemmin was staring at Jesson’s face and then
Jerren’s face as if he was following their conversation with Zipper. All these
flashes came and gone quickly. Then Jerray heard,
“Jerray,
Zipper is from outer space. Somewhere one hundred light years away. Zipper
understands us but his language is too advanced for us. Zipper can teach us
things. We will just have to learn.” Jesseon said it with a stern face.
“Right,
Zipper understood me when I had a lot of questions to ask him. Zipper is not a
toy. He is an Outopian. His planet is called Outopia.” Followed immediately by
Jerren.
“Jerray,
they are right. Zipper can understand all of us simultaneously. He is making us
to understand him simultaneously if our mind can keep up. I somehow had heard
the same information as what Jesseon and Jerren just spoke. Do you get it?”
asked Jemmin.
“I
do. I do. I was experiencing the flash images and thoughts zipping through my
mind ever since I had Zipper; they now make sense after hearing what you have
just said. My God, Zipper is a genius.” Jerray cried out.
FBI’s Investigation
Johnny
Appleseed is the head of UFO department at FBI. Johnny has worked on numerous
UFO projects; to his credit, he has solved most cases with a rational
explanation. A few unsolved cases would have to be kept on file due to lack of
further information. UFO has always been a controversial subject. UFO Sighting
reporters usually swear that what they have seen are real but then the
investigation usually turns up contradictory facts. GL112107 is the code name
for the green light sighting on Thanksgiving Eve in Northern Westchester. The
case is now in Johnny’s hand for nearly two days.
“From
the timing data and orientations of the sighting reported by six residents,
including a prominent county government official, there is a high likelihood that
the sighting event is real. All six residents saw the same event.” Johnny was
conducting his Friday briefing to his department.
“Furthermore,
the calculation for the timing data and sighting orientation all pointed toward
a single origin of the green light event. That origin is located at the
boundary of the Angle Brook Golf Course and a private Residence in the town of
Somers.” Suduki Itzuki, a math genius in Johnny’s department offered his
comment.
“Coincidentally,
the local police of Town of Somers had reported that the children in the
private residence were alerted by the green light sighting and made an
investigation on Thanksgiving Eve in their backyard. Mind you they did discover
some burnt pine tree branches which could not be explained by any natural act.”
Johnny continued with remarks.
“All
physical evidence have been exhausted and there is no more information to
confirm the green light to be an alien event. The only logical clue left is to
assume Dr. Chang, the head of the household and his children may be responsible
for the green light sightings. The question for you is how are we going to
investigate the Chang family to put this UFO case to bed?” Johnny finished his
presentation with the question bugging him for the past two days.
“Chief,
from what information we have gathered about the Chang family, there is no
cause for interrogating them. Dr. Chang is a law-abiding citizen, never even
had a parking ticket in town. He is currently serving as a school board member,
a honorable but thankless job, most people say, in the Somers school district.
He is devoting his retired life to education and creating learning games. His
children are all high achievers in their schools. On what grounds, can we
interrogate them?” Interjected Mary Cunningham, deputy head of the UFO
department.
“Well,
as you know some of the most noble citizens or brilliant minds may still
conduct criminal act. We just have to make sure.” Said Denise Haywire, the
Criminal Psychologist. “In my Opinion, the children are probably innocent, the
adults should be investigated.”
“That
sounds reasonable. We will proceed next Monday then. Mary, you and Suduki,
think of a way to bring Dr. Chang and Mrs. Chang to our available Interrogation
facility near them. Denise, you will prepare the interrogation plan. I will
join you in the interrogation when you are ready. I hope we can wrap the case
quickly. OK, I appreciate your hard work, giving up your Thanksgiving Day for
Uncle Sam. Have a good weekend every one.” Concluded Johnny.
Outopia and Outopian
Language
Jerray was so glad that they had a five-day long
weekend. 4-Js did not have to get up early nor go to bed early. This gave them
chance to have their second secret club meeting on Friday night. On that night,
Mom went to rest early after supporting Black Friday all day. Dad as usual was
working in his study racing against his own deadline set for the long weekend,
writing a short fiction of some sort. The children were left alone to convene
their club meeting.
Before they took Zipper out under the bed where they
hid him, Jesseon led his younger brothers to prepare a list of questions to ask
Zipper. First they wanted to confirm that he was from another planet, Outopia,
in fact, another galaxy. Second they wanted to know more about Outopia and why
he had come to Earth. Then they wanted to know his language and how 4-Js may
learn Zipper’s language….
Once Jerray took Zipper out of a shoe box, he knew
something was not right. The green light was dim and a lot of, no, a huge
amount of garbled images zipped through his head; connecting through their
heads the brothers sensed the same garbled images. None of them had any idea
what the images were about. Jerray was very worried and held Zipper in his
hand. Then a thought flashed through his head, it urged him to go to the Blue
Spruce. Jerray told his brothers. Jerren then said he would go with Jerray.
They quietly went to the backyard and walked towards the Blue Spruce. As they
came near the Blue Spruce, Zipper spinned out of Jerray’s hand and landed on
top of the tree. Jerray was very sad and called out: Don’t run away. We will
not harm you.
Jerren then came over to Jerray and said:
“Jerray, I don’t think Zipper is running away. I
have a feeling he just needs to be close to the Bruce Spruce. I see Zipper’s
green light is getting brighter and I am getting an image of a planet full of
green and blue trees.”
“Jerren, I also see a planet full of trees and lots
of bird nests on the trees. May be Zipper is showing us what Outopia is like.
Yes! Zipper is showing us Outopia. I see many blue balls just like Zipper on
those trees resting in the bird nests. Now I see books with pages flipping
rapidly. I don’t understand what it means. Oh, those books look like our
encyclopedia. The flipping slowed down. The pages stopped on L. Oh, Language,
then advanced language. Jerren, do you see the books?”
“Yes, Jerray, I also see the encyclopedia, it showed
me a page, labeled Thought-Based Language. I get it, the Outopians are
communicating with a Thought-Based Language. They communicate on thought level.
Zipper needed more nutrients from the Spruce so he can send information back to
Outopian and teach us about how they communicate. Except our brains could not
keep up with their communication. I get it and I do get it!” shouted Jerren.
Just as Jerray was going to ask Jerren how can they
get Zipper back, Zipper dropped right into his palm. What a ‘thought’ or ‘mind’
communicator. An image of Jesseon and Jemmin waiting for them flashed on
Jerray’s mind, he then said to Jerren,
“let’s go home.”
Why Did Zipper Come to
Earth?
As soon as they got back to their bedrooms, Jesseon
and Jemmin said to them,
“Wow, Zipper is an Outopian. The Outopians have a
very powerful language. They can communicate on thought level and they can
communicate simultaneously with many parties.”
“How did you know?” asked Jerren.
“We were watching you through the window but it was
just like we were there with you. Your thoughts and Jerren’s thoughts were all
transmitted to us by Zipper. That is why we know what happened out there and
the Outopian language is a Thought-Based-Language.”
“Zipper wanted to come back with us. He just needed
to be close to the Blue Spruce for a while. The Outopians seem to be living on
trees. May be we should build a tree house for Zipper tomorrow.” Jerray
suggested to his brothers.
“We should
ask Zipper what he wants. We should ask him why he came to Earth, Shouldn’t
we?” said Jemmin.
“Yes, we should. Wow, I got Zipper’s message, too
much and too fast. Slow down, Zipper. Tell us why did you come.” Jerray said
slowly deliberately.
In a blink,
a set of images came to Jerray, sort of like a slide show. First, it was a
picture of the planet Outopia, then a group of Outopians, actually four of them
spinning and dancing around a tree like a pine. Then the two larger one were
hovering above the two smaller one, one of the smaller one had to be Zipper
with his distinct blue color. Then the group flew to a taller pine and met with
other Outopians. Then they all spun around one large Outopian with a golden
ring on top of his green light. His green light was extremely bright and he
acted like a leader. Then we saw the leader touched every group and set them
off on a Journey. Next image was a green fireball travelling through space; it
was like a flying comet except it had a long green tail. There were four
Outopians in the green fireball, Zipper was one of the four. They were heading
towards a star, wait a minute, the star was the Earth. A large Earth image was shown
next. The next image was a beautiful golf course where the four Outopians
quietly landed at the edge.
“Hey, Guys, it is way passed midnight, why you guys
are still up? You know you are not allowed to have more than 2 hours of games
even on holidays doesn’t matter whether you have finished all your homework or
not. Go, brush and get to bed.”
They all said yes and began to change their clothes
and taking their time to brush teeth slowly. Then Dad said:
“Hey guys, got a call from a lady at FBI and she
said she would like to see me on Monday. I bet it is related to the green light
sighting. It will be interesting to hear what she has to say or ask. OK, you
all had a long day, good night and sleep tight.” Dad then walked down the
stairs.
There was no way 4-Js could go to sleep after they
had seen a most exciting virtual slide show in their heads. Funny thing was
they all had the same idea, that was, turning off the lights, getting their
flashlights out, closing their bedroom doors and to continue their club meeting
Zipper’s story became quite understandable after
getting a few concepts explained. They asked their questions and they got the
answers. The Outopians were highly developed beings. They essentially had
infinite life span. They were like vegetarians and they could synthesize all
required nutrients from nitrogen, oxygen and resin acid. Zipper explained to
them that the resin acid was abundantly produced by pine trees. That was why
Outopians liked pine trees. The physical body of Outopians were shaped like a
sphere for minimum resistance in their movement in high speed. They moved by
spinning to high speed and use the spin energy to propel to the desired
trajectory. Their highly developed civilization was represented by their
thought-based language and their ability to process information at a peak rate
of 1 gigabyte per microsecond by their brains. On average, a Outopian had a
memory capacity of million zettabytes.
Zipper’s story was just too fascinating to allow
them to stop. They didn’t even want to go to bathroom for fear of missing any
part of the story. The slide show was so vivid and clear and they simply
understood and absorbed everything. They wished their school slide shows were
that good. Then they heard Dad’s footsteps coming up the stairs. They had no
choice but said good night to Zipper.
Naturally next day we got up late. Dad had given them a chore to do, to sweep up the fallen leafs in their yard and dump them into the pit in the backyard. They were happy to have the assignment. They could bring Zipper out and place him on their tallest blue spruce in the backyard. The day and chore went very fast.
After
supper, they excused themselves to go to bed early. That was pretty convincing
since they worked all day. What actually happened was they convened their third
club meeting to interact with Zipper. The most exciting part was when Zipper
had told them why Outopians visited Earth and 4-Js, through another virtual
slide show.
The
Outopians launched a citizen ambassador program to encourage citizens to visit
foreign planets. They were encouraged to study the planet’s civilization and
natural environment. They would bring back the study results to the Outopia
museum which was an amazing forest of structures shaped like a Christmas tree
farm. Earth had shown signs of some primitive civilization by their
telespectroscopic probe done by their senior sensorians (*Sensorians had the responsibility of defending Outopia against
unforeseen problems). Zipper’s
family had chosen Earth planet to visit because nitrogen, oxygen and resin acid were abundant on Earth.
Zipper showed 4-Js they had chosen to land on their backyard because of their
backyard was like a small forest and they were intrigued by the hundreds of
white golf balls 4-Js had collected in the backyard.
However, when Zipper’s family arrived on Earth, they
discovered to their dismay that the Earth’s civilization had advanced far less
than their estimate despite of a nitrogen and oxygen rich atmosphere. What was
more surprising to them was that the Earth civilization was heading to a
self-destruction. Her natural environment was deteriorating at an alarming rate
by Earthlings’ abuses. In addition, the Earthlings were developing hatred among
races eventually leading to self-annihilation of the human race, a species of
the highest intelligence on Earth.
Zipper’s family arrived only a few Earth days but
they were able to study the Earth’s evolution and scanned her most recent one
hundred years of history in microscopic detail. They loved the Earth
environment, an atmosphere rich with nitrogen and oxygen and plenty of resin
acid. However, they were shocked by their study of human history; two world
wars had happened within one century. They were saddened by their observations
that Earth was blind-sighted to pursue fairly primitive technological advances
under the doctrines of democracy, socialism and religion but failed miserably
to cultivate human virtue, ability to love, minds to reason and capability of
cooperation. Zipper was surprised to see famine, homeless children, stockpiling
of weapons for self-destruction. They
finally concluded that the Earth would be self-destroyed if no intervention was
going to take place.
Zipper was the one pleaded his family to save the
Earth. After a debate, Zipper convinced his family to help. They would bring
the data they collected back to Outopia and present to their Sensorians to
analyze them and make a projection into the future one hundred Earth years.
They would then bring the analysis and hopefully a model for salvation back to
Earth. They left Zipper behind to monitor the situation and report back if any
disaster occurred early. There was a risk that Zipper could be trapped in this
self-destruction, but Zipper was willing to take that risk for saving Earth
Planet.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of United States hired lots of intelligent people to perform intelligence work. CIA had almost unlimited resources in pursuing intelligence gathering and technology development for that purpose. One of the highly guarded secret programs was the ALC (Advanced Language for Communication) Clinic. Sean Signqvist was the program director of ALC. Sean was born in Sweden and was recruited by the CIA as the man with highest IQ, 235. The IQ score always had different definition and test; in his case, it was the intelligent age (or mental age) determined by a test divided by his chronological age and multiplied by 100.
Sean was working late as usual on Sunday night. He loved to examine the monitor report spit out by the L-Cruncher, a super computer Sean had built from scratch. CIA agents and staff could submit any communication in any language to L-Cruncher for analysis and eventually receive an intelligible report of what it meant in English. Any submission that did not get an intelligible report would be automatically notified to Sean. Sean was always eager to get notified. Sean and his research team would work on the problem and solve it and make improvements on L-Cruncher.
Tonight, Sean was reviewing the analysis his team had done for the past two days on an anonymous submission. First irregularity was that they could not figure out how the submission could be submitted anonymously. That meant breach of security of the highest level. Secondly, the submission had hogged L-Crunch’s processors and memories for hours, that would be like years in human brains. Sean’s team had used all available computing power from the Cloud Net to analyze this submission they code-named Z-file.
Z-file was very big and not intelligible. After hours of partitioning, recompiling and decoding, the ALC team had only made some small progress by finding out that the file contained pieces of data reminiscent of highly compressed image files. What was most encouraging was that the “image’ like sub-files could be recognized being repeated numerous times. But what was most discouraging was that the ‘image” like sub-files could not be decomposed any further; they simply refused to be broken apart.
Sean, challenged by this problem, was trying to use his
latest toy, a computer machine named Iballer to tackle this puzzle. The Iballer
simulates human vision in analyzing images captured by all sorts of video
camera and intelligence gadgets. After working all night, he was able to
understand that the sub-files were indeed meant to be processed by human brain
not computer processors. If they could understand these images they would be
able to solve the puzzle. So he decided to send an email to his colleagues
about his findings, urging everyone to continue along his path. He then alerted
the security department to investigate how the security was breached by this
submission. He called a quit on Monday morning 6 AM and head home for a few
hours rest.
Monday at ALC was not much different from other days or even weekends. People came in at their preferred hours so long they would attend a departmental briefing at 3 PM. After the briefing you could leave if you wished or work all night if you would like. Today at 3 PM, the departmental briefing was attended by everyone except a few on travel. The big news was that Iballer finally cracked some of the images in Z-file. As a matter of fact, most of the discernible images seemed to be taken from various Encyclopedia.
Sean
walked in at 3:05 PM with a big smile. He thanked everyone for their hard work
so part of the Z-file was now intelligible. He then turned on the 3-D projector
and began to show his staff the intelligible images from the Z-file. The
sequence of images were originally sorted chronologically, roughly from 1907 to
2007, and presented in different categories:
I.
Public health: influenza, 1918 Spanish flu, common cold, bird flu, AIDs….. up
to recent MRSA
II.
Natural disaster: drought, San Francisco earthquake, tidal wave, hurricane…. to
recent Katrina
III.
Wars and battles: WW I, WW II, Korean War, Viet Nam War, Middle East War…to
recent Iraq War
IV.
Politics and economics: portraits of leaders including fourteen American
Presidents, dictators, Hitler German Eugenics, Communism, Capitalism, 9-11
Terrorists attack, Wall Street Crash….. Summit of G7
V.
Religions: Christian, Moslem, Buddhism, Cults, Mormon, Amish, Jewish…. TV
Evangelists
VI.
Human Society: Hunger, Famine, Agriculture, Industrialization, Genetically
Engineered crop, Homeless Children, Divorce, AIDs, Cancer, DNA, Genetics …to
recent stem cell research
VI.
Earth Environment: Air pollution, Water pollution, Ice and Snow Avalanche,
burning Forests, Garbage Dumps, Nuclear waste, Endangered Species… to global
warming effects
Sean
and his team were happy that they had decoded part of the Z-files but they were
gloomed by the depressing images they had seen. The images did not present a
pretty picture on human history.
Sean
concluded with the briefing by saying:
“We will continue to decode the Z-file, hopefully we would see some nicer pictures and resolve the hidden messages in the file. OK, go back to work and see you tomorrow if not earlier.”
Monday was 4-Js’ first day of school after a long weekend, an extremely exciting one for them, J-Brothers. Even though they all wanted to talk to their best friends, they knew they had to keep Zipper a secret. So they did not talk much about their holidays at school. In fact they were anxious to go back home to meet Zipper again.
Jesseon and Jerren, the high schoolers, were first home. They immediately sensed that something was wrong. No one was home. Dad was not in his study. He left his cell phone on the kitchen rack. Mom’s cell phone and blackberry were not there. They began to call Mom at her office and she was never in since morning. They then called her cell phone and got no answer. Then they turned on the computer and checked for any email messages and there were none. Where could they be? They usually would leave a message on the kitchen table for the kids if they knew they would not be home when the kids came home.
“What should we do? Call Auntie Marina?” asked Jerren
“Let’s wait a while, it is possible either Dad or Mom is picking Jemmin or Jerray up from school.” Said Jesseon.
Then the doorbell rang. It was Jemmin and he had no idea where Mom and Dad could be either. Jerray walked in shortly after, while they were still debating whom to call. A thought came to Jerray,
“let’s ask Zipper, may be he knows.” Jerray said.
“Great Idea!” Everyone agreed.
As they took out the shoebox where they kept Zipper with a small branch of Pine tree, Jerray immediately sensed some images flashing through his head. He then said,
“Zipper, slow down, tell us what you know about Mom and Dad, why they were not home.”
Then those images became clear to the boys. They saw an image showing Mom driving her green Ford out of the garage. Then another image showing two black cars drove to their driveway. Three men and a woman came out and rang the doorbell. They saw Dad opened the door and let them into the house. They were talking to Dad and asked him to go with them but Dad refused. Then they just forced Dad into their car and drove off. The second car then drove to Somers Town Center where Mom worked. Mom was just getting her stuff from the trunk. The two approached her and ushered her into their car and drove off.
The boys all had these images but they could not identify who those four people were. They looked like criminals; Jerray was wondering whether they should call the police. Then they saw a big sign image: ‘FBI?’ flashing in their heads. It dawned on them those guys had to be FBI agents since on Saturday night Dad said something about FBI agent will come to visit him.
“Hey, those guys are FBI agents. Zipper remembered what Dad said about FBI agent visiting him. Zipper did not know what FBI was so he flashed a question mark to us.” Jerray shout to his brothers.
“Zipper, FBI is Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are Federal Police.” Jesseon then said to Zipper.
Now they knew the FBI took Mom and Dad but what should they do? They couldn’t call the police, could they?
Worst
Scenario Through the Eyes of Zipper
They continued to ask Zipper about Mom and Dad, but all they got was two images that Mom and Dad were in separate rooms having a meeting with a bunch of FBI agents. They looked fine and they were served coffee and donuts. W felt a little better now knowing they were not kidnapped by some real bad guys but were just having a meeting with the FBI.
Then Zipper signaled 4Js that he would like to go out to the backyard by showing himself resting on top of the Blue Spruce. So they decided to take him there. Wow, something happened to Zipper that they had never seen before. Zipper opened himself like two half golf balls! The boys could not see what was going on up at the top of the tree. All they could see is that the green light got intensified and blinked rapidly. This did not take long then Zipper closed up like before and descended on Jerray’s palm.
“What happened, Zipper?” They all blurted out the question.
Zipper showed them an image of sending signals to the galaxy; he was sending messages back to Outopia. Then he showed them another image; they were all sitting on Jemmin’s bed and listening to Zipper. The boys kind of understood that Zipper would like them to get back to their room and listen to him.
“Zipper, tell us what were you doing outside?” Jerray immediately ask Zipper when they got inside to his bedroom.
“Was something bad happened, we want to know everything, please tell us.” Jesseon asked Zipper in an urgent tone contrary to his usual calm manner.
In the next few moments, it seemed a long, long time, they were flooded with images, horrible images far worse than the encyclopedia pictures Zipper had shown them before. It started with an image of the Earth Globe, then, more pictures came in….
I. The image of Earth is a grayish globe with large brown, black and grey patches.
II. New York City is ten meters below sea level, no streets and side walks, no neon lights, no yellow cabs, no inhabitants in most building, lots of water bikes.
III. State of Nevada, no sign of Las Vegas, buried long ago by dust storm, just vast areas of desert with some small villages with a few people, people all bald, standing inline for a drink of water from a drip-drop faucet.
IV. State of Iowa, no Bussey lake, no Duck lake, no Mud lake, no Spirit lake, no corn fields, no people, no sign of State Line.
V. State of California, San Francisco in ashes and some parts still burning, lots of red cross signs replaced white crosses and other church signs, many people infested by insect-borne disease, no sign of red wood forest and Golden Gate Bridge.
VI. State of Florida and Gulf Coast, sea rose 11 meters, everywhere scene of hurricane disaster, orange groves disappeared, warning signs on diseases everywhere.
VII. New York State, Lake George appeared as a massive amphibious cemetery, floating coffins on water and dense tomb poles near shores.
VIII. Pictures of famine, drought and floods everywhere in India, China and Africa, mountains of animals skeletons, forests burning under wild fire, people with sick faces and sad eyes with no signs of hope, many children with no adults around.
IX. Pictures of fighting, riots, battles and wars everywhere, especially between races, immigrants against old settlers, and among different religions.
These horrible pictures did not make sense to the boys at first; gradually they figured out these pictures were prediction of what might happen to the planet Earth. It was really terrifying. Zipper also transmitted some explanation for these pictures. They were projections from Zipper’s analysis based on what was happening on Earth today. They were sent to Outopia Sesorians to figure out if there were some preventive solutions to keep the Earth from destruction.
Zipper explained about the rising sea level due to Global Warming. Global Warming was caused by manmade air pollution which caused Icecaps in the Antarctica to melt. Drought, wildfire, dust storm, floods and hurricane was created in different regions of the Earth as the result of the climate change and the rise of nine degrees in average global temperature. Why people were all bald? Zipper explained it was due to shortage of fresh drinkable water, People’s hair all fell out for lack of water to drink and lack of water to keep hair clean. The water bike and drip-drop faucet were new inventions to cope with the environment. Water bikes were human powered. The drip-drop faucet forced people to conserve water by drinking in drops.
The scenes of famine - people were fighting over tree barks, the scenes of diseases -thousands of sickbeds covered by nests in hospitals in each city, the scenes of disasters -abandoned flooded houses and buildings burnt to ashes, and the scenes of killings - not only human corpses lying on the streets but also dead animals everywhere, some species were entirely wiped out….. these images were just too graphical for the boys to watch any longer. They begged Zipper to stop and tell them what to do.
The
two black limousines drove straight to the Stewart airport, instead of boarding
a plane, the J-brothers’ parents were led to two separate conference rooms to
be interrogated. These rooms were video conference rooms directly connected to
the FBI headquarter, the J. Edgar Hoover Building
located at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington DC.
While
the technician was establishing a live connection for the first video
conference room, Mary spoke to Dr. Chang,
“I
am Mary Cunningham, deputy head of the UFO department in FBI. I am sorry that
we have to bring you here this morning. We are investigating the ‘Green Light’
UFO which was traced to originate from your backyard. Please accept my apology
in advance for our behavior and the behavior of the interrogator. Please do
cooperate with him and tell him truthfully all you know about the Green Light.”
“I
accept your apology. I am just as curious as you are to find out the truth of
‘the Green Light’. I certainly will cooperate with the FBI.” Dr. Chang said in
a relaxed manner.
In
the second video conference room, Suduki was with Mrs. Chang; there the
atmosphere was not so calm.
“Why
did you bring me here? Where is my husband? What do you guys want from us?”
Mrs. Chang continuously asking questions but Suduki simply kept quiet. This
infuriated her more but there was nothing she could do but wait to see what
would happen.
John
Appleseed, Denise Haywire and Emmy Gordon were in a special video conference
room in the basement of the Hoover building. Denise and Emmy each sat in front
of a mini-theater with three video screens in front of each. The first video is
live showing Dr. Chang chatting with Mary Cunningham, the second video is also
live showing Mrs. Chang and Suduki Itzuki and the third video shows the
interrogation plan prepared by Denise and an PIP picture of John Appleseed.
This
set up is the brainchild of Denise; he called it RVDI, Real-time Verifiable
Dual Interrogation. The idea is to simultaneously interrogate two suspects with
a planned set of questions to flush out corroborating testimonies and clues for
solving a case. John was sitting in front of a video station with a big video
screen showing what was going on with the simultaneous interrogations. He could
communicate with the two interrogators and modify the interrogation plan in
real-time.
Denise’s
interrogation plan essentially consisted of getting a detailed time and
location account of the Chang family’s whereabouts for the last week, a couple
of days prior to the sighting up to the interrogation, and a list of questions
related to the sighting: when they became aware of the sighting report, what
they did subsequently, especially on Thanksgiving Eve, what did they tell the
local police, what did they find from their backyard, …. And trick questions to
check whether anyone was not telling the truth. You had to give Haywire credit,
RVDI was a very effective tool in getting answers or at least in finding out
truth or false in testimonies.
John
was watching the progression with full attention. He could see that Dr. Chang
was relatively relaxed giving to-the-point and logical answers to the questions
while Mrs. Chang was somewhat emotional giving surprising and sometimes
irrelevant answers to the questions. In either case, the interrogation could be
interpreted as a professional performance or just plain real reaction to the
interrogation.
“Der
ling Der ling …..” The red phone on John’s video station rang. This was very
unusual, since he was not supposed to be interrupted unless something extremely
important or something related to the interrogation came up.
“John
Appleseed here. Who is calling?”
“Hello,
John. This is Tony Serrio at the CIA ALC, Advanced Language for Communication.
We understand you are investigating the Green Light Sighting and interrogating
the Chang family whose backyard was the possible origin of the sighting.”
“Hi,
Tony. How did you know we are interrogating them?” asked John, apprehensive of
any leak from his department.
“John,
relax, we received evidence independently; as a matter of fact, we received
extra-terrestrial evidence that the Green Light was possibly produced by
out-of-space aliens or by some real smart cats outsmarted all of us.”
“What!?
By aliens!? Are you sure? What are your evidences?” asked John
“We
are never sure when it comes to alien stuff. All I can tell you is this, we
have received information from an intelligent source unknown to the
intelligence community, a bunch of highly coded images suggesting that someone
somewhere they were interested in study us Earthlings. They visited Earth and
left with the Green Light.” Tony gave an accurate summary except neglected the
part - the information was delivered to their secret super computer L-Cruncher
bypassing all security measures.
“John,
my chief felt we should alert you guys with this information. What did you find
out from the Changs? Anything to share with us? “ Continued Tony.
“Wow,
if this is real, this is too much. We would like to see your information, you
say coded images? How did you decode them?” John was obviously overwhelmed by
Tony’s remarks.
“Tell
you frankly, we are still investigating this code; some parts of the file were
decoded for us as if they knew we would not be able to crack their code
quickly. As I said, we were not real sure what was this really about but we are
now sure this information must have come from somewhere with much higher
intelligence than we do. In our opinion, the Chang’s backyard was just a random
coincidence. They had nothing to do with the Green Light unless you tell me
they are aliens. Personally, I think they might be the few friends selected by
the aliens without themselves knowing it. I would treat them nicely.” Tony said
with unusual frankness.
“Well,
We did not find much new information from the interrogation. The Mr. Seems to
be a calm and rational person and the Mrs. really did not know what was going
on. I will terminate the interrogation and we will come over to see your
evidence immediately.” Said John.
“Good.
See you at Z Street, just ask for room Z-2007. Good-bye.” Tony hung up.
The 4-J brothers were disciplined good students. After coming back from school they usually do their homework right after a snack. They could hardly focus on homework now. They were relieved that their parents were with FBI not captured by some mean crooks; but still they were very concerned what would happen to them. Nothing would be better than continuing their interaction with Zipper. So they gathered around Zipper again in their bedroom.
They knew Zipper was dealing with an extremely complex problem. They Earthlings had no clue what to do. Zipper gave the boys some hope. He told the boys that the problem might be solvable but it would require collaboration of everyone. He didn’t mean just the four brothers, he meant everyone on Earth to deal with it. Zipper was hoping that their wise Sesorians would come up with a solution quickly to save the Planet Earth. The Outopia being so far away, Zipper was worried that the solution might come years too late for saving the Earth.
At this moment, the J-brothers were more concerned about their parents, so they asked Zipper,
“Could you tell us more about what is happening to our parents?”
“They were coming home.” The boys saw an image that their parents were taken to a helicopter, Mom seemed to have a half smile and a half frown on her face, perhaps she was happy the meeting was over but frowned at riding a helicopter.
Then the boys saw flashes of Dad and Mom being interrogated at the FBI headquarter, then they saw CIA agents were hovered over a giant computer terminal watching slide shows that they had seen before. Then someone said, “This had to come from aliens. They were actually telling us they were aliens. They said the Chang family was their innocent friends. They showed us the horrible pictures about Earth. They wanted us to understand the rest of the file to save the Earthlings.” Then there was a picture showing two people on the phone talking, after that, they stopped the interrogation and apparently sent Mom and Dad home.
Just as 4Js were going to ask Zipper again what should they do to save the Earth, their doorbell rang. Their parents were home. Jerray dashed to the door and hugged them and said,
“Thank Zipper, he saved you.” This just came out and it was too late for remembering that Jerray supposed to keep Zipper as a secret.
“OK, everything is OK. Who is Zipper? What were you talking about?” asked Dad
Since the secret was out, Jerren, Jemmin and Jesseon were all eager to tell them who was Zipper and Jerray just went upstairs to get Zipper down to show them. The boys could see their Mom and Dad’s eyes having the shock look and for a long while, Mom said,
“Zipper is an alien? You found him in our backyard. The Green Light Sighting was all true!?”
“Yes, Yes, Zipper and his family visited Earth. They discovered that the Earth is heading to self-destruction. Zipper wanted to save us. His family went back to Outopia for help. Zipper left behind to help us.” Jerray blurted out while held Zipper in his palm. As if Zipper wanted to hug Dad and Mom, he spun up and flew around them. (What the boys later found out was Zipper had given them a brain-dump; Zipper gave them a fast-forward of what Zipper had taught the boys in his slide shows.)
“I am not surprised Zipper realized that Earth is destroying itself. Many intelligent people on Earth were saying that too. We just don’t know when and how fast it will happen. Can Outopians really save us? They are one hundred light years away, right?” Dad amazed the boys with his remarks as if he were with them all this time interacting with Zipper.
“Right, we got to do something ourselves. What if the Outopians could not get back to us soon enough to save us?” Mom added on, amazing the boys even more.
“Well, let’s not wait. Let’s work with Zipper to get started. I am sure Zipper is willing to help us.” Jesseon said.
“Zipper, will you help us?” The J-brothers all asked at the same time.
All of sudden, they heard a soft and warm music and a bright picture appeared in their minds. It was a picture of many people of all color and races holding their hands together, dancing to the tune of the music. The picture was somewhat familiar, like those flyers promoting some events sponsored by United Nations. The people all sang:
This is our home.
We love our home.
We all work together,
To build a safe home.
Outopians are friends.
We love our friends.
We all build together,
An Utopia for friends.
How
Did the Story End
4-J’s
family now just realized Zipper had suggested a scenario for saving the Planet
Earth. They had to get everyone to understand the dangerous situation Earth was
in. They had to get everyone to cooperate and work towards saving the Earth
Planet. Since the Outopians were one hundred light years away, it might take
centuries to get any help to Earth. Earthlings got to get started to stop the
rate of destruction. It might take decades or a millennium to reverse the
damage.
Zipper made the 4-J family to understand the song and what humans had to do to save themselves.