ESSAY#7: "I have seen the face of the alien"
Bernardine
ESSAY#7: "I have seen the face of the alien"
TOPIC: Time travel and the XF Universe
Bernardine, April 18, 1997
Ironically as I write this it is Friday night and a replay of an Outer
Limits episode is humming in the background. It is the episode where
Amanda Plumber, as a morally-infectious scientist, invents time travel
and uses it to go back into history to assassinate killers and other
predators before they can kill. Proof positive that time travel is
both a well explored theme of our existence and still very much
contemporary.
Since H.G. Wells charged up his fantastic machine we have been
fascinated with the concept of a cyclical time, or at least, a linear
time that continues to exist beyond our experience of the present.
Perhaps the one way in which time travel is most consistent with the
X-Universe involves my favorite theory of ET visitations to earth: the
time travel/portal theory.
Now bear in mind that the thing about this theory that I enjoy most
details that the beings we know and love as various ETs are not
extraterrestrial at all, but rather are evolved humanoids using time
travel to revisit human history. The theory continues that evolved
humans at a very advanced stage of physical and technological
evolution travel back into time to study or intervene somehow in early
human development.
Many of the commonly debunked or irreconcilable problems with current
ET visitation are much better addressed by this theory. The medical
experiments that are often reported as part of alien abduction are
often scoffed as irrational. Why would an advanced ET race sneak
around our skies, furtively stealing or borrowing people from their
beds to perform bizarre and invasive medical experiments? Rather this
theory holds that *we* -- our human descendants -- are traveling back
in time to study "ourselves". Perhaps the future human race loses
their ability to reproduce, perhaps they seek antibodies to fight off
killer diseases. In any case, it is certainly -- to me -- more
logical that humans would need to study themselves than an advanced
and highly superior other-species traveling light years to study
humans.
Although many have claimed to sight UFO's, the only explanation
available for the lack of physical evidence from military or other
recording sources are the Conspiracy Theories that are most prevalent
in Our Favorite Show. Of course the military knows about the UFO's --
how could they not? They're HIDING the information. Because one
would rationally presume (although anything is possible of advanced
technology) that an aircraft that can be seen cruising the night skies
would easily be seen around the world on any number of radar screens.
But what if the object travels in and out of a portal? Or what if,
given the unreliability of eyewitness testimonies in general, what the
witness really sees is the portal itself, and the small beings that
emerge are passing from that other dimension, not the "Bridge" or
"10-Forward". And finally, the greatest dispute of alien life
visitation is that the beings witnessed are humanoid. While it is
generally accepted by even the staunchest skeptic that given the size
of the universe that life must surely exist elsewhere, it is
statistically improbable that another life form would both closely
resemble humans AND capably visit our earth. The possibility that the
humanoids being witnessed are advanced forms of our own then, is again
more palatable.
The plausibility of the incorporation of a time travel theory and ET
visitation has not been unexplored in SF writings. Roddenbery's
StarTrek has been especially fond of the themes, with an episode of
ST:TNG having Riker and other crew members taken from their bunks and
"transported" into another dimension. The show dealt with all the
classic abduction scenarios and themes. Many other episodes feature
the advanced StarTrek crew traveling back in time from their century
to one far earlier where they inevitably must conceal their true
identities and advanced technology.
Whenever time travel in general is explored in SF, it is usually with
a realization that the owner of the technology has an absolute onus to
not disturb the past time lines. Understanding as we do how
intricately meshed and intermingled each human life and world event
is, we know that even a slight tweaking of a past event could change
the present dramatically. Given that we have that knowledge,
awareness and respect of time and history today, I have to believe
that out descendants would most certainly have strong moral and
ethical guidelines for time travel, if indeed the technology were
available. The stability of their own world (present time line) and
indeed each and every existence would depend greatly on it.
And so, in terms of the X-Universe, time travel is (now) both within
the realm of technical possibility and may even prove a more
scientifically plausible explanation for the oft appearance of
Mulder's little green men. Indeed one day he/we may look into the
face of our nocturnally evasive enemy and see that it is us.
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