Betty came in with two large apples. She glanced at me for approval, and when I nodded, offered them to the patient. he took them from the little tray. "Red Delicious!" he exclaimed. "My favorite!" After offering us a tastem which we declined, he took a large, noisy bite. I dismissed my assistant and watched as "prot" devoured the fruit. I had never seen anyone enjoy anything more. He ate every bit of both apples, including the seeds. When he finished he said , "Thanks and thanks"... [p5]
"Will you tell me your name, please?"
"Yes." Evidence for a sense of humor?
"How did you get to Earth?"...
"It's a matter of harnessing the energy of light. You may find this hard to believe, but it's done with mirrors." ...
"You travel at the speed of light?"
"Oh no. We can travel many times that speed, various multiples of c. Otherwise, I'd have to be at least seven thousand years old, wouldn't I?"
I forced myself to return his smile. "That's very interesting, " I said, "but according to Einstein nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, or one hundered and eighty-six thousand miles per second, if I remember correctly."
"You misunderstood einstein. What he said was that nothing can accelerate to the speed of light because its mass would become infinite. Einstein said nothing about entities already traveling at the speed of light, or faster."
"But your mass becomes infinite when you--".
His feet plopped onto my desk. In the first place doctor brewer - may I call you gene? - if that were true then photons themselves would have infinite mass, wouldn't they? And beyonf that at tachyon speeds--"
"Tachyon?"
"Entities traveling faster than the speed of light are called tachyons. Look it up"... "tachyons, you see, travel faster than light, and therefore backwards in time. Time passes for the traveler of course, and he becomes older than he was when he left" [p7-8]
"If I understand you correctly, you sort of 'hitched a ride' on a beam of light" [p8]
"All life is intelligent" [p10]
"Can you say something in Zairese? Any dialect will do."
"Certainly. Ma-ma kotta rampoon."
"What does that mean?"
"It means: Your mother is a gorilla."
"Thank you."
"No problem." [p12]
"First, how do you account for the fact that, as a visitor from space, you look so much like an Earth person?"
"Why is a soap bubble round?"
"I don't know - why?"
"For an educated person, you don't know much, do you gene? A soap bubble is round because it is the most energy-efficient configuration. Similarly, many beings around the UNIVERSE look pretty much like we do." [p14] ...
Can I just say that the above quote this is an insult to our intelligence - I know it's science-fiction but the author should have at least thought-up a more credible reason.
...Russell, our resident Christ, and thousands like them live in worlds of their own, realms just as real to them as your and mine are to us. [p16]
Are we all Drs. Jekyll and Messrs. Hyde? [p17]
Note the plural of 'Mr' in the quote above! And it's valid.
No comments:
Post a Comment