h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Alien Life Found!!!

And you get the scoop! This is not going to be on any other blog or news site. Thanks to my insider information, I can get the story straight to you! We have finally found alien life – here on Earth!

It has long been a matter of speculation that life on Earth might not have started out here, but arrived from elsewhere, carried as ‘spores’ on bodies like asteroids or comets. Occasionally these drifting pieces of ice or rock, or bits of them, entered our atmosphere. Even though these would have burned up as meteors, some of the living spores carried on them might yet have survived. Only a few such spores, carried to the Earth over three billion years ago, might have been the ‘seeds’ from which all subsequent life has evolved and diversified.

It has been a hypothesis, not yet supported by incontrovertible evidence. But there have been hints. There have been strangely life-like fossil impressions in meteoroids that appear to have come from Mars; but these might not have been alive, or might not have come from Mars, having instead been contamination of the meteorite sample with living creatures from Earth. But it is possible indeed that there was life on Mars long ago, before its oceans dried up and its atmosphere dissipated. Mars, too, got hit by comets or asteroids, and bits of Mars got blasted out into space, this Martian meteorite being one of them. Some of the Martian lifeforms might have been carried along with these fragments. And there have been signs that life, even quite complex life, could survive in space. Water bears, also called tardigrades, are tiny but multicellular creatures, and they have been found alive and clinging to the outside of spacecraft. Small worms used in space experiments have survived after the satellites carrying them crashed to Earth. Ancient bacteria dredged from the deep Arctic permafrost or from cores drilled in Antarctica have been revived after millions of years of being frozen! All of this shows that it is far from preposterous to suppose that life from one world could end up on another, surviving the necessarily long trips through the intervening space. This solves a problem for evolution: it still seems to be highly improbable for life to evolve from living matter. But if life can be carried from one star system to another, life only would have needed to evolve once, somewhere out there in the cosmos, and then could have been carried from world to world by comets and asteroids.

But there has not been a clear demonstration of life actually arriving, clearly alien life. If, as the water bears suggest, even complex multicellular life can actually survive out in space, then we can suppose we should get some of those still. After all, there are still comets and meteors encountering our planet. And a complex alien lifeform will clearly not be the result of evolutionary processes operating on the known species on Earth. Finding just one of those would cinch the matter.

Well … consider the matter cinched! Enter the Zaxaquaabians. These first came to the attention of science at the start of the 21st Century. They join a great many creatures that were discovered by camera traps. These are cameras set out in areas where animals are supposed to be moving about. They are equipped with shutters triggered by motion, typically using infra-red beams. So, the moment an animal breaks the beam, the camera takes a picture of it. Today these traps work better than ever before, since modern digital cameras can take thousands of pictures on a single memory storage unit. In this way, a great many secretive critters have been imaged.

But back when the zaxaquaabians were discovered, the technology was still in a primitive stage. It happened in the country of Zimbabwe, itself not exactly the forefront of modernity. One camera trap, amidst many pictures of mongooses and squirrels, returned a photo that didn’t have any animals on it, only a bunch of what looked like reddish flowers. It was considered a glitch. Flowers can’t move, after all. But then later, other camera traps in the area also churned out shots with no animals, but these red flower-things instead. It was a mystery. Until the day when a camera trap turned out two consecutive photos of these ‘flowers’ … and in the photos, the flowers were in different positions! Not just as if they had been blown by the wind a bit, but completely different, as if they had uprooted themselves and moved.

Science took note. Botanical experts were called in but none could identity these brush-like red things as any flowers known to exist on this planet. Even the local people questioned in the places where these photos were captured, insisted that they had never seen such flowers themselves, in the bush or anywhere else. Science shrugged.

Only one individual had the foresight to envision the true identity of the entities portrayed in these photos. Professor Kristof Müller, of the Ippschweig Xeno-Astrobiological Institute, hastened to Zimbabwe, to try and find these things for himself, determined to discover what they really were, and with a vague but strong suspicion that indeed, they were not of this Earth. Arriving in Zimbabwe, he set out to reach the remote locations where camera trap evidence had suggested the greatest concentrations of these entities to be.

Unfortunately, as anyone who follows the news would know, this happened exactly at the time when the country of Zimbabwe was destined to experience a massive economic collapse and grievous social upheaval. This is not the place to go into the details, but the bottom line is that at that time Zimbabwe was not the safest place for a person of European extraction to be. Professor Müller’s expedition immediately came under suspicion. He himself at the time was not aware of the politics, his mind being all on his quarry. He didn’t know, but soon he himself was being hunted by the police.

Fortunately the places where he sought these fuzzy red things were well off the beaten track. Save his small teams of helpers, he was alone amidst vast expanses of wilderness. But he had little time. And he had only just made his most fascinating discovery when he was at last found and arrested on suspicion of espionage, as an agent for ‘imperialist powers’.

He and his team were imprisoned … indeed he himself could not say where the place was. He was driven there blindfolded; nobody was informed … there was no chance whatsoever of speaking to a lawyer, and the government did not even mention to anyone that they held him. As far as the outer world, including Professor Müller’s university and all his relatives and loved ones back home knew, he had vanished in the wilderness, perhaps succumbing to a tropical disease.

But in truth he was held. He was questioned repeatedly and treated roughly, even tortured using electrical shocks. He was kept in tiny cells, given an inadequate diet of mostly spoiled food. He was kept in one prison for a period of some months, then moved, in the middle of the night, bundled blindfolded in the back of a police van, and driven several hours to a different prison, all because of the paranoia of the Zimbabwean authorities. He had no bedding or extra clothes save what he had on his skin upon arrest, and even in Zimbabwe the winter nights get freezing cold. There were no sanitation facilities … his cells were stinking, festering and crawling with flies, cockroaches and rats. There were no official charges, there was nothing said about a trial. He was simply held, in these deplorable conditions, on a completely unfounded suspicion.

But during all of this the professor managed to hold on to sanity. He had after all made the greatest discovery in human history! All his notes, all his possessions had been taken, but in his mind he held everything in his memory.

It is incredible to think that this went on for years. What brought the situation to an end was when at last, in November 2014, one of Prof. Müller’s assistants managed to escape from the different jail where he had been kept. Making it to Harare, he contacted the German embassy and told his story. Everyone was incredulous, but he could prove his identity with his fingerprints. There followed an affair of incredible international embarrassment. It was kept out of the papers for this reason. It is believed that Professor Müller just barely escaped being shot and buried in an unmarked grave in the Zimbabwean back country but at last the government admitted that he was alive and that yes, they held him. He was released, but under extreme secrecy. His ordeals had reduced him to an emaciated condition, barely recognizable, but still possessing all his mental faculties. Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, threatened massive reprisals against all people of European heritage, and to kick every single ‘western’ company out of the country, should a word be breathed about what had happened.

Unfortunately the incident involved what prof. Müller for no money or force or threat in the world would keep secret: the discovery of alien life on Earth! His notes and materials were returned to him, showing the proof of what he claimed to have found. He called them the Zaxaquaabians.

The Zaxaquaabians were never before seen by human eyes, being more secretive than anything else on this planet. Professor Müller believes that they have the power of telepathy. They are aware of any minds, especially complex minds, in their vicinity. This makes them impossible for any observer to catch by surprise. But the camera traps, being mindless devices, could capture them. Here you see one of Prof. Müller’s photos, showing a large assemblage of them making their way through the tall grass:

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/zaxaquaab_zpsfswjypm0.jpg

(Photo courtesy of Prof. Kris Müller)

You can mostly only see their brush-like cerebral appendages, which the professor believes are used to focus their telepathic beams. The Zaxaquaabians are very social, but make no sounds, another aspect strongly suggesting their telepathic powers. At the least disturbance, the professor found, they were able to withdraw their head brushes into their torsos, and were able to withdraw their entire bodies down into the soil, becoming mere, round, bulb-like lumps.

Professor Müller gathered masses of camera-trap photos, by means of which he was able to calculate how the Zaxaquaabians moved, indeed was able to deduce much of their way of life. They would set out into the bush in the early morning, gathering grass and pieces of wood. Working through the day they nevertheless perfectly managed to elude perception, even in regions close to human habitation. They would at the end of the day retreat underground. The professor believes they have constructed several large underground living spaces, one could even call them ‘cities’. The professor nevertheless failed to actually find any of these cities, despite being sure they must exist. Where else would the Zaxaquaabians go during the night? Their actions were clearly those of intelligent creatures with a large and complex level of cooperation.

Upon Professor Müller’s release he agreed to secrecy on proviso that he be allowed to continue his investigation. The hardest of all was that he was aware that his loved ones would still believe him to be dead. But he was sure that his discovery was more important than that, that it was indeed the most important event in our time. So, after two months to recuperate from his ordeal and regain his health and strength, and gain back the 40 pounds of bodyweight he had lost, he returned to the wilds … this time with the most modern of camera equipment. And here is just one of the thousands of incredible images he captured:

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/zaxaqabian%204_zpsedjnos7d.jpg

This, beyond any shadow of doubt, shows clearly that the Zaxaquaabians are nothing like anything else on Earth! They clearly have the glint of intelligence in their inhuman eyes. Yet they cannot be called primates, they cannot be called vertebrates, indeed they cannot be assigned even to any of the living kingdoms we are familiar with. They have features we would assume to belong to plants, as well as features more pertaining to animals. But in actuality they are neither! And indeed it has been confirmed. Professor Müller finally managed to get some tissue material from a Zaxaquaabian. It was one of the petal-like projections just underneath the brush-like crown of cerebral extrusions. The Zaxaquaabians shed these from time to time. They look no different than small, dry leaves like any one the countless fallen leaves that cover the ground of the Zimbabwean bush in autumn and winter. Going back to an area where Zaxaquaabians had foraged the past day, he managed to find one of these. Using DNA analysis, another technique that he did not have available when he first set out years ago, he confirmed that indeed the Zaxaquaabians are genetically entirely distinct from all other complex life forms on Earth!

But tantalisingly, they are still based on DNA just like ours, and their body chemistry is also unsettlingly similar. They have the same amino acids with the same chirality. They do indeed share many genes with us. Intensive study has made it clear that they must have diverged from us at a level corresponding to the simplest bacteria; in terms of time, the divergence must have happened about three billion years ago. There must therefore have been three billion years of separate evolutionary development between them and us. And yet, there is no trace of that development here on Earth … they have no living kin and also no relatives, beyond those primitive bacteria, in the fossil record.

The only conclusion is that they are from an entirely different evolutionary lineage from all life beyond the prokaryotic level on Earth … which is only possible if they came from space! But they have the same bacterial ancestors as ourselves, proving that either life here originally came from elsewhere, or bacteria from Earth somehow landed in another star system, or that both the Zaxaquaabians and ourselves originated somewhere else. Them somehow making it to Earth means that these separate lines are finally reunited after all these billions of years! Professor Müller believes that at least the Zaxaquaabians he studied must be of fairly recent arrival, the colonies in Zimbabwe perhaps having been on Earth for only a couple of thousand years. He does not believe they are space travellers that use machines, such as the UFO’s thousands of reliable witnesses have been reporting from all over. They have an advanced social organization but no complex technology. He therefore believes they must be astoundingly hardy. They grow from incredibly tiny spores, such as could indeed have been carried to Earth by comet.

Apart from their social organization, there is their telepathic abilities. They appear to not only detect, but also influence human thought. They keep humans away from their cities by means of this telepathic influence. Nevertheless, by using computer technology and robotic explorers, which don’t have minds the Zaxaquaabians can influence, the professor managed to find one of their underground cities. These they build much as termites do, but on a much larger scale. Architectural elements within this city show fascinating similarities with the ruins at Great Zimbabwe. Prof. Müller hypothesizes that there might have been a Zaxaquaabian influence on the ruins. Perhaps they were built at a time when there was trust between the aliens and ourselves, the aliens having directed the building process. Perhaps soon after that time, there erupted hostilities between the Zaxaquaabians and the Zimbabweans, as a result of which the aliens retreated underground and used their telepathic powers to remove knowledge of themselves from the brains of the humans, and to keep themselves hidden from that point onward. Prof. Müller even theorizes that many of the puzzling constructions of history, such as Stonehenge, the pyramids, the cities of the Mayans and others, might have been influenced by Zaxaquaabians. Their spores might have been landing on our planet at various times throughout human history, and each time there might have been a period of goodwill between us and the Zaxaquaabians. But humans being what they are, these times would inevitably have been short until hostilities erupted, with the Zaxaquaabians, peaceful beings without weapons of war, each time having to go into hiding. Some colonies might even have died out. Prof. Müller believes it is imperative we try to find more colonies, and suggests we search around ancient megalithic sites world-wide. But he is still not sure how to initiate communication with them. At the moment, there still has been no actual meeting between our species, all evidence of them still coming from cameras, computers and remotely controlled robots and drones. Even with their telepathic powers, they likely still don’t know that we are observing and studying them. How to initiate contact without causing them to telepathically wipe our memories again, and to go into even deeper hiding?

And in all of this professor Müller is still swaddled in secrecy. Neither Zimbabwe, nor the world, can right now afford it all coming out … and yet, how can this world-shaking knowledge be kept secret for any longer?

But for better or worse, the secret is out! Just the previous week, a Zimbabwean refugee, fleeing the still dismal situation, came over the South African border clutching a small folder of documents. It contained, written in Professor Müller’s own handwriting, the entire story, as well as several photographs including those I show here. The South African authorities didn’t know what to make of them. Being recognized as an expert on earthly biodiversity as well as for my philosophical and speculative writings, I was one of several experts called in and asked what we made of it. Having read and studied the pictures, I said that I was certain they were authentic. We, too, were asked to keep ‘schtumm’ until the authorities had a clue what to do.

But look: I hardly trust the South African ‘authorities’ a millimetre more than I trust the Zimbabwean ones. This news belong to the world! There is no spin they can put on it to suit themselves or to take advantage of. This goes beyond politics. I won’t allow anyone to try to exploit this. For now I am releasing this only here on h2g2 and on DeviantArt. Since I only have a handful of friends, I am hopeful that we can keep this under wraps … for now. Of course it will soon go out to the whole world. But for the moment I just want you all to know this. I don’t think I’m in any danger but you can’t know for sure. But the bottom line is that we need to make the whole world aware of this alien life in a good and positive and safe way. The implications are beyond astounding. So … how do we go about it?

Gracious, that is quite a story as well as an astonishing discovery! Those plants sort of look like your paintbrush lilies. I feel sorry for the population of Zimbabwa. If they managed to treat outsiders so badly--the native population must be really oppressed.

A bit of a classic, Willem. A legendary masterpiece, I'd say.

They are rather endearing, The Zaxaquaabians. I could almost call them cousin. Hullo fuzzy cousins. Welcome to April 1st.

The Ippschweig Xeno-Astrobiological Institute really must be visited at certain times in a life, I'd say, if one is to evolve as a human being. I feel for this Professor Kristof Müller. He is devoted and dedicated. He suffered for his truth, prepared to risk it all for photographic evidence.

Just got an email off a Zaxaquaabian refugee who has manages to get $14 million dollars out of Zimbabwe and will share it with me as soon as it gets my bank account details.....nice one Willem

Just colour me gullible Willem. Belated .

Hi all, glad you like my silly story! FWR, I hope you asked that Zaxaquaabian if they were US dollars or the old Zim dollars. If the latter ... even if it is legit, a million Zim dollars are not even enough for buying a flake of dandruff.