The Fold.

(Part two).

It is dusk as Alec helps Steve pull the shutter down in front of the cafe. Most of the remaining shops in the run-down high street have already closed for the day and one by one the street lights are flickering into life.

Steve snaps the padlock and turns to Alec, “Cheers, mate. See you tomorrow.”

“OK. See you then.” They head off in opposite directions and Alec is deep in thought as he makes his way around today’s obstacles: an upturned bin and hailstones of glass from a shattered bus shelter. He passes the shops: the off-licence with its window grilles and serving hatch like a bank, the tattoo parlour and nail salon, Ray’s Gym. By the time he reaches the corner and becomes aware of the black Range Rover that has been crawling along just behind him, it is far too late to run.

The passenger door is held open and there is a flash of gold teeth as Johnny smiles widely, “In.”

Alec registers the two men in the back of the car as he gets in and hears the doors lock. No-one speaks during the ten minute drive and the car stops outside a corrugated iron wall beneath a railway arch. All four get out of the car and Alec is led through a heavy door and a large, dimly lit room full of crates and boxes, then up a flight of metal steps to a mezzanine office overlooking the store-room. A large, grey haired man sits in a leather chair, wreathed in smoke from the cigar he holds. He looks from Alec to Johnny and back again, unsmiling, unblinking.

“This is him,” ventures Johnny in a tone Alec has not heard him use before.

The old man nods at Alec, “You do tricks?” his voice is a depth-charge.

“No,” replies Alec, without apology or explanation.

The single word is so shocking the old man finally blinks, “What?”

Johnny panics and steps in, “He does! I saw it! I swear. He made a leaflet disappear.”

“I don’t mean I can’t do it. I mean it isn’t a trick,” Alec says, still unnervingly calm.

“Explain,” says the old man.

“Geometry,” Alec’s one word answer hangs insolently in the air until he sees the old man tilt his head to one side the way a Doberman does before it attacks, “like origami, where you take a two dimensional shape and fold it into a three dimensional shape.”

“I know what origami is. It don’t make stuff disappear,” the old man’s head is still tilted.

“But our senses have only evolved to work in three dimensional space,” continues Alec, “So if you can fold something into higher dimensions, it collapses up and out of our sensory range.” Someone grabs Alec’s arm and twists it up behind his back.

The old man leans forward, “If you don’t make something disappear, I will.”

Alec holds his stare, “Let me show you,” he looks around for something the right size. “That,” with his free arm he points at a huge map of London that covers one wall of the office. The old man narrows his eyes sceptically for a second then nods. a couple of the men take down the map and spread it out on the floor. They all gather round to watch as Alec begins.

The high wind blows patches of cloud quickly across the cold night sky, hiding and revealing the moon and bathing the dark streets with washes of black and silver. The corrugated metal door scrapes open and a dog starts barking nearby. Alec closes the door behind him and walks through the rushing shadows, past the abandoned Range Rover, back towards the lights of town. No-one follows.

The Fold.

Part one.

Five o’clock and the sign on the door is finally flipped over. The cafe is closed for the day. Steve, the owner, is listening and nodding as he walks back to the counter where Johnny, a big man with a livid scar across his face, is talking loudly. A tall, thin young man with longish hair is sweeping between the tables near the window. Dust motes swirl in the shafts of sunlight.

“Business Studies he said he wants to do: thinks he’s going to sit on his arse at Uni for a couple of years then waltz in and start taking over. I didn’t need any business studies. Just got stuck in: worked on the doors, got to know all the faces. Made me way up the hard way. So I told him, soon as he leaves school he’s getting a job, anything, long as it pays. If he can stick to it, I might take him on, but he does it my way,” Johnny looks over at the man sweeping up and calls out, “What do you reckon, mate? Need an apprentice? Teach my boy to sweep up?”

The young man looks up, smiles, shakes his head and carries on.

“See? Even he can’t use him,” says Johnny.

“Alec there went to Uni,” Steve nods at the young man.

Johnny looks from Steve to Alec and back again, “Who? Him? Well, there you go then: look where it got him. Aye, Alec. What you do at Uni then?”

Alec looks up again, “Maths and philosophy.”

“Maths and what? What’s that, for Christ’s sake?” Johnny scowls.

“Told you,” says Steve, “He’s a clever lad.”

“Clever my arse! He’s pushing a broom round. How clever’s that? Maths and philosophy,” Johnny sneers.

“Seriously. He’s forgotten more than we’ll ever know,” Steve calls over to the young man, “Don’t mind him, Alec. Come and show us that thing you do with the paper.”

Alec looks reluctant,”Oh, I don’t know. Some people don’t like it.”

Johnny frowns but is obviously interested, “What thing with the paper? What’s he do?”

Steve is now full of enthusiasm, “Just you wait. Here, tell you what. I’ve got a tenner here says you can’t work out how he does it.”

“What, like a magic trick? Nah, seen it all, mate. Easy money. Come on, then.” Johnny beckons to Alec as he and Steve put their money on the counter.

“There you go, Alec. Come and show us it,” Steve grins.

Alec shrugs, leans his broom against a table and walks over, “Alright. Have you got any paper?”

“Here,” Johnny hands Alec a photocopied leaflet from his pocket, “And if I can’t work out how it’s done, you get this,” he puts a twenty on the counter with the other notes.

Alec hesitates, but when Johnny starts to curl his lip into a sneer he takes the leaflet and flattens it on the counter.

Both the other men watch closely as he starts to fold. His movements are relaxed and unhurried yet they seem to struggle to follow what he does. Johnny winces like he’s straining his eyes. Within a few movements the leaflet has been folded into an unusual shape: full of planes and angles that seem like they shouldn’t fit together. Johnny frowns and blinks, trying to clear his head, then Alec makes a final fold and the note disappears.

“What?” Johnny jumps back and nearly falls off his stool. Steve laughs but Alec just stands waiting and watching. From the moment he started folding he seemed different, more confident and serious, and his manner is almost as unnerving as the disappearance of the leaflet.

Johnny stands up and kicks his stool back, pointing at Alec, “Don’t move! Don’t move a muscle!” He seems angry and confused, slighted in some way he doesn’t understand, “Show me your hands,” he grabs Alec’s hands and turns them over, then back again, spreading the fingers to check between them, then checks further up the arms. Alec is wearing a short sleeved t-shirt: there is obviously nothing there. Johnny checks the the counter and the floor on both sides of it. Nothing.

He pushes the notes across to Alec and Steve, who stopped smiling when Johnny’s agitation became apparent.

“No, it’s all right, mate. I was only joking about the bet.”

“Take it,” Johnny turns back to Alec, “So, how’d you do it then?”

“I folded it.”

“Yeah, but what did you do with it? Come on, you can tell us now, I’ve give you the money.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Well where is it?”

“It’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know. It’s just gone.”

They stand staring at each other for a moment, the big man breathing heavily, deciding, before he glances at Steve then turns and walks out of the cafe, slamming the door behind him.

Steve looks shaken, “I didn’t think… I shouldn’t have made you show him. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of him.”

Alec shrugs. His reply is flat, without reproach, “I said some people don’t like it,” He walks back over to the tables, picks up his broom and starts sweeping. Dust motes swirl in the shafts of sunlight.

(copyright K.VALIS, 2015)

Hard Time.

“Is this it?” The Senator’s voice was quietly controlled as she looked down at the new ‘project’. The little row of whitewashed bungalows had a communal vegetable garden in which several prisoners were diligently working. She turned from the window to face the Govenor, who was grinning broadly at her, despite seeing her aide wincing and shaking his head.

“That’s it,” he nodded, still grinning.

Senator Riley glared at him and took a second to compose herself before continuing, still quietly,

“I don’t know what the hell you find so amusing, Thompson, but you know very well I was elected on a strong law and order ticket and this State, strong law and order means harsh punishment, which does not mean turning a maximum security prison into happy valley.”

Thompson was still smiling as he handed her a sheet of paper.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a summary of the report on the project.”

“I don’t care about the damn…”

“Look at it!” Thompson’s interruption was such a shock to her that Riley actually did stop and look at the paper.

“The recidivism rate. At the bottom.”

He watched as the Senators jaw muscles slowly relaxed and her mouth actually fell open. He enjoyed seeing her lost for words for once.

“Well…How…I mean, that’s incredible but surely it depends on who…How long has this been running?”

“Three years,” said Thompson, smiling again, “We started with a few of the less serious offenders, just to see how it went but, well, see for yourself,” he leaned forward, “We have some of the most dangerous men in the country, let alone the state in here but, just like it says, this project has a hundred per cent success rate.”

“So far,”

“So far,” he conceded, “Come and take a look,”

They took the stairs down to the ground floor and went through a couple of sets of security doors to reach the wide open area where the prisoners were tending their garden in the sunshine. As they approached, the noise of the prison faded, to be replaced by birdsong and the buzz of insects. Thompson led the way over to where an elderly man was conscientiously hoeing the soil between rows of carrots.

“Hey Jim! How’s it going?” he reached out to shake hands with the man who nodded and smiled nervously.

“Oh, very well, thanks Govenor.”

“Jim, this is Senator Riley. Senator, Jim.”

“Hello, Jim,” she shook the frail hand that was meekly offered.

“Nice to meet you, Ma’am.”

“What a lovely garden you have. Must take a lot of work.”

“Oh, we’re all just happy to have the opportunity, Ma’am. Every day’s just a b, b, blessing,” the old man stammered.

“Well, we can see your busy so we’ll let you get on,” said Thompson, “have a good day, now,”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir, Ma’am,” the old man returned to his hoeing as they walked back towards the main prison complex.

“What did you make of him?” asked Thompson.

Riley shrugged, “Pretty nervous but harmless enough.”

“He is completely harmless, and I would personally recommend him for parole right now if it was up to me,” Thompson stopped and turned to face Riley, “You know who that was? That was Jim Marsden,” he watched as the colour drained from Riley’s face.

“That..?” she was shaking.

“Yeah, that Jim Marsden.”

“How many did he..?”

“They only identified eleven but it could easily be twenty. He doesn’t really remember. The point is that now he’s weak as a kitten and twice as nervous. And the same goes for everyone that’s been through this programme. It really works.”

The Senator shook her head, “I don’t know, Thompson, I really don’t. I mean, sure it looks like it works but the public reaction to high profile cases like his… I just don’t think they’ll buy it, no matter how good the numbers are.”

Thompson thought for a moment, “OK.Come and meet the doctor.”

“So, is it a drug treatment, like chemical castration or something?” asked Riley as they walked along another corridor.

“No, nothing like that. No drugs or chemicals at all. I suppose it’s more like a kind of aversion therapy. If the inmate gives their permission to become part of the programme I try to put them up for parole and speak to the board about the effects of the treatment. But as you say, it gets more difficult with the high profile cases. That’s why I need you on-board.”

Thompson knocked on the door at the end of the corrider then opened it and they stepped into a small office,

“Senator Riley, this is Doctor Tasker.”

As Riley stepped forward to shake hands, the man behind the desk stood up and up until she thought his head would hit the lampshade. She guessed his height at six feet eight or nine and he was thin and pale with white hair in a severe crew-cut and bright blue eyes behind thick glasses and a sharp nose. It occurred to her that he was far more frightening than any of the prisoners she’d seen.

“Doctor.”

“Senator.”

As he loomed over the desk to shake hands she felt like a fish about to be speared by a heron.

“You’ve achieved some amazing results with this programme, Doctor. Have you worked on any projects like this before?”

“No. Not quite like this,” He looked from Riley to Thompson, who realised an explanation was required.

“The Senator’s concerned that the public will think we’re being too soft on serious offenders. I thought a more detailed explanation from you might help, and maybe even a look at a subject…in treatment?”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes slightly at this last suggestion then look back down at Riley, who was quick to back up Thompson’s request,

“Well, of course, tax-payers are always worried their money’s being spent on things they don’t approve of and, as far as they’re concerned, the buck stops with me.”

“This programme isn’t costing tax-payers an extra cent,” said Tasker, coldly, “Private donors have funded the whole project, including equipment and medical orderlies.”

“Really?” Riley looked at the Governor who nodded confirmation, “Well, I suppose that does put things in a slightly different light but… why are you doing it?”

The Doctor smiled thinly, “Research, of course. We are doing work of great importance here. I believe this is the future for all prisons.”

Riley considered for a second, “I’m sure you believe in what you’re doing, Doctor but ultimately I’m responsible for the prisons in this state. I need to see the treatment.”

She couldn’t see his eyes for the light reflected in his glasses, but he seemed completely emotionless.

“Very well,” he stepped across his office, opened a side door and led them down a flight of stairs to a sub-level where a stocky medical orderly sat watching a bank of screens. In the dimly lit corrider beyond they could make out ten cell doors, five on either side.

“We currently have the equipment for up to three inmates at a time on the programme,” said Tasker, indicating the screens, “and we monitor their vital signs and physical well-being at all times.”

Riley looked at the three live screens. Each showed a figure strapped to a bed-like structure in the center of the room. Their eyes were covered by some kind of visor while the various tubes and wires attached to them appeared to be for sensors and life support systems as the top right of each screen showed the subjects vital signs. The bed-like structures were tilted up to near vertical and all the occupants appeared to be shaking or convulsing in some way.

“Is it some kind of prolonged electro-shock therapy?” asked Riley.

“No.”

The Senator ignored the terseness of the reply and looked closer at the heart rate and blood pressure readings: they were abnormally high for men strapped onto beds. She looked down the dim, silent corridor,

“Why’s it so quiet?”

“The cells are all soundproofed… For the sake of the staff,” the Doctor said.

“Can I go in one?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The Doctor looked coldly down at her, “Most people would find it too…upsetting.”

“Look, if I’m going to convince the public that this isn’t just an easy way out for dangerous offenders, I need to know more. I won’t interfere with anything. I just need to be able to say I’ve actually seen it for myself.”

“We really need the Senators help if we’re going to expand the progamme,” added Thompson.

Tasker, still expressionless, considered briefly, “Alright. Just for a moment.”

They walked along to the first door on the left. The Doctor unlocked and opened it, and Riley stepped inside. She walked over to the figure shaking on the bed. He was whimpering and sobbing pitifully, with the occasional wail coming out so raw that he must have screamed himself hoarse long before. He was, without doubt, the most terrified person she had ever seen.

“What’s wrong with him? Is he in pain?” she asked, still staring.

“We’re not in the Dark Ages, Senator,” said Tasker with a strangely mocking tone in his voice, “We do not inflict any physical pain on the subjects: that would violate both State and Federal law. And the subjects have all given prior written agreement to undergo the treatment.”

“What exactly is the treatment, Doctor?”

“It’s just a kind of virtual reality programme.”

“What? What are they experiencing?”

The Doctor was smiling far too widely now: too many big, white teeth in that long, bony face,

“Lift the earpiece. Have a listen.”

Riley could hear her own heatbeat thumping too fast now, and suddenly felt like this had all got very strange, very quickly. She saw her own perspiring hand reach out towards the sweating, shaking figure on the bed and lift the earpiece.

The shock of sound hit her: a raging, snarling inferno of screaming agony and terror. She dropped the earpiece and jumped back like she’d been burned.

The Doctor picked it up and replaced it, then steered Senator and Governor from the cell and locked the door.

Riley was sweating and shaking as she tried to recover.

“What is that? What is it they see?”

Part of her already knew the answer and was dreading the response even as she asked the question. She shuddered as the Doctor grinned widely and she watched his lips form the single syllable that would echo around her mind as she saw stars and staggered back to the Governors office to sit and gulp the brandy she was given.

She still heard the word above the searing screams from the earpiece as she lay down and closed her eyes that night and silently prayed like she had never prayed before: prayed for those lost, tormented souls. And she remembered, God help her, she remembered what she’d said to the Governor as she sat, shocked and shaking in his office,

“Alright,” she’d said, “I can sell that.”

Long Haul

I must have fallen asleep again because I came to with one of the omnipresent cabin crew beaming at me,

“Can I get you anything? Drink? Snacks and nibbles?”

“Uhh? Oh… no, no thanks,” I mumbled, still groggy from the last round of refreshments.

“Okay, then,” came the cheery reply as he went on to give the same spiel to the next passenger.

The screen in the back of the seat in front was blinking at me, indicating that I had another ‘urgent’ message waiting. I sighed, put on my headphones and tapped the touchscreen, which proceeded to tell me that Skyflix had a new range of movies and boxsets available, specially chosen for me based on my previous purchases.

I took the headphones off and closed my eyes. I had a headache and some kind of strange ringing in my ears.

I fumbled in my pocket for the foil strip of painkillers and took one with a swig of bottled water. After a few minutes the headache started to fade but the noise didn’t. I frowned and opened my eyes again, turning my head to try and pinpoint the sound. It definitely seemed to be external, like, really external, as in outside the cabin.

I pushed up the blind and squinted out of the little window into the sunshine. Below us the tops of the clouds were a dreamscape of melting ice-cream while the sky above was a very dark blue.

I caught the crew members attention as he passed by again, still smiling, “Excuse me, but what’s that noise?”

“Noise?” he looked up, smile temporarily replaced with open-mouthed concentration, before giving a slow shake of the head, “No, sorry. I can’t hear anything.”

“It’s really quite loud,” I grimaced.

“Well, we are still accelerating. Maybe that’s it. Nothing to worry about,” his smile returned and he carried on along the aisle.

The screen was blinking at me again, but this time I ignored it completely and tore a couple of corners from a tissue which I rolled up and stuffed in my ears, then went back to sleep.

I started to dream I was flying over huge green plains and grasslands, before I found myself being shaken awake by the attendant, whose mouth moved silently until I remembered to take out the earplugs,

“Sorry, Sir but you’ve gone over the allowed number of unread messages,” he pointed at the screen which was now flashing and beeping furiously. I put my thumb on the touchscreen wearily to stop the alarm but didn’t put the headphones on as the messages started playing. The attendant looked from me to the screen and back again, expectantly.

“I don’t want to hear it anymore,” I said.

He frowned, “Sorry?”

“The ads. I don’t want them.”

He looked confused for a moment, then regained his smile, turned and walked back down the aisle.

I put the makeshift earplugs back in and closed my eyes, hoping to recapture the dream of flying. After what seemed like just a few seconds I was jolted awake so violently the earplugs fell out and I was thrown into the noise of passengers screaming above the whine of the engines. I felt a pain behind my eyes and ears and couldn’t work out how much of the high-pitched ringing I heard was in my head.

One of the cabin crew was now holding on to the seat in front of me for dear life, professional smile contorted into a rictus grin.

“What the hell was that?” I shouted over the noise.

“Oh, nothing,” she shouted back with her now bloodshot eyes swivelling like those of a terrified horse, “just a little turbulence.” I noticed her nose had started bleeding.

“That’s a terrible noise the engines are making,” I said, “Surely we shouldn’t still be climbing? Isn’t the air getting too thin?”

“Yes, that’s right!” she nodded and grinned manically,dabbing at the blood pouring from her nose with a tissue before turning and trying to pull herself forwards along the aisle, which now pointed up steeply.

I looked out of the window and saw sparks and flames flying out of the engine, accompanied by horrific scraping noises.

The intercom buzzed and crackled into life with a badly distorted, overamplified voice,

“EZ ZAPTAIN… ZURBULENCZ… ZELERATING… ZUPWARDSZ…”

With that the cabin suddenly pointed up at an impossibly steep angle and almost immediately one of the cabin crew flew back and crashed into the back wall of the cabin, closely followed by the refreshments trolley that landed with a sickening thud on top of him.

Some of the overhead lockers burst open and a couple of passengers were knocked out in the ensuing rain of overfilled hand luggage.

An alarm went off and I was smacked in the eye by a falling oxygen mask.

Over the maelstrom of screaming, vomiting passengers I caught a couple of words from another crew member as they fell past, still smiling,

“…keep going..”

The whole plane shook with a series of massive concussions as the engines, pushed beyond all possible limits, finally exploded, one after another.

As I blacked out, my screen was flashing at me, telling me I had urgent messages.

Not writing a novel month (NoWriNoMo)

Seeing all the recent posts that many bloggers have devoted to the trials and tribulations of NaNoMoJo…WiFi, ah whatever, month, I was reminded of my own agonizing attempts at novel writing, before I realized I’d rather write a good short story than a bad novel.

So, being something of an expert at not writing a novel, I’d like to present by far the best piece of writing I came up during that period.

‘The Novel’.

They say that everyone contains one novel,

Right, let’s have a go at writing mine.

Perhaps I’d better start tomorrow,

Trouble is, finding the time.

Have a coffee, read the paper,

Then get straight on down to work.

Watch TV for inspiration,

Peruse the contents of the ‘fridge,

Friends phone up: it’s someone’s birthday,

Down the pub, a celebration,

“Happy Birthday! Mine’s a pint,

I’m a novelist, you know,

Lot’s of projects in the pipeline,

Always something on the go.

No, no, no. I’ve nothing published:

Couldn’t prostitute my art.

I’ll let you read it when it’s finished,

Oh, yeah, cheers. I’ll have a half.”

Later, back at home, alone,

I wonder if the muse has come.

I sidle over to the table,

Take a look and there it is,

Still lying there, all white and perfect,

Unsullied and unblemished. Still,

Can’t start now, it’s far too late,

Better sleep on it, I think,

Inspiration in the morning,

When I’m feeling in the pink.

Now off to bed and dreams of fame:

“My book’s made me a household name!”

My epitaph I guess you’ve heard:

“He never wrote a bloody word!”

(ValisUmbra, 2001).

Writing: quality versus quantity?

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” – Albert Camus.

Camus obviously had no doubts about the importance of writing. His determination to ask big philosophical questions is everywhere in his work. Not surprising for a man who was active in the French resistance.

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” – George Orwell.

Orwell was another writer perfectly ready to fight and die for what he believed in, as witnessed by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. His concerns about the control of language are echoed in this quote from Philip K Dick:

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” – Philip K Dick.

What would these great writers have made of the effectively endless blizzard of words online, where new writers are encouraged to maintain a constant presence in the form of an endless stream of posts, tweets, likes and shares.

In this constant push for ‘content’, is there any time for thought?

“Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.” – Joseph Conrad

Some time before the First World War, E M Forster wrote a short science fiction story called ‘The Machine Stops’, set in a far future where humans live in individual underground cells with all their physical needs catered for by ‘The Machine’, a sort of intrusive, steampunk version of the internet. They only communicate through ‘The Machine’ and have a horror of direct experience of the outside world, preferring instead to spend their days re-examining and re-interpreting the thoughts and opinions of endless chains of others. How ridiculous.

Please re-blog, re-tweet and share this if you like it.

Thinking about thinking.

Last week the BBC repeated an episode of the science programme Horizon, subtitled ‘How You Really make Decisions’, originally shown in 2014. It caught my attention because it dealt in depth with one of the issues I touched on in my essay ‘Victims of Success (posted 19.11.17).

It focussed on how much of our thinking is fast, intuitive ‘type one’ thinking as opposed to slow, rational ‘type two’ thinking and how this leads to ‘cognitive biases’ that can seriously impair our ability to make good decisions. Over a hundred and fifty cognitive biases have been identified including over-confidence, risk aversion, loss aversion and, in my opinion the most serious, confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is our tendency to accept information that confirms what we already believe and reject information that disproves our existing beliefs. The programme illustrated the strength of this bias in a training exercise taken by a group of defence and security analysts in which only one out of twelve correctly identified the extremist group responsible for a simulated attack. What hope for the rest of us if such highly trained and supposedly logical people can’t overcome these biases? Can we overcome these problems if we are aware of them? Rhesus monkeys were also shown to exhibit biases like loss aversion, which would seem to indicate that this kind of thinking has been hard-wired into us for at least thirty-five million years.

The more we learn about the human mind, the more the apparent chaos of the modern world becomes understandable and the more inadequate our current social, economic and political structures appear. A good understanding of psychology is essential for civilized societies.

Disaster capitalists (via science fictional @ wordpress)

“The wealthy and powerful may in fact take climate change seriously: not as a demand to modify their behaviour or question the fossil-fuel driven global economy that has made it possible, but as the biggest opportunity yet to realize their dreams of unfettered accumulation and consumption. The disaster capitalists behind Eko Atlantic have seized on […]

via Disaster Capitalists — science fictional

Victims of Success

This is a mystery and a scare story. But it isn’t fiction.

S.E.T.I. (or Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) projects have been operation in one form or another since the nineteen-sixties to look for any signs of intelligent life beyond our planet. Far from being the result of wishful thinking, they are based on mathematical probabilities, summed up in the 1961 ‘Drake Equation’ of Cornell University astronomer, Frank Drake.

Even allowing that for life to develop a planet must be in the so-called ‘Goldilocks Zone’ (just the right distance from its star to allow liquid water, and gravitationally stable and sheltered enough to let intelligent life evolve), the  sheer number of solar systems* should mean that a huge number have intelligent life and, of these, many should have developed the technology to communicate across space. {*Our own galaxy is estimated to have between one hundred and four hundred billion stars, and ultra deep field observations by the Hubble space telescope led to the estimated number of galaxies in the observable universe being revised up to two trillion in October 2016}.

All of the different SETI projects duly went about trying to detect any sign of these technological intelligences in the form of regular looking patterns of signals anywhere on the electromagnetic spectrum, coming from deep space. Over the years the size, power and range of the telescopes has increased dramatically, as has the computing power used in analysing the results.

Decades later they have found absolutely nothing. Apart from being frustrating for those searching, many observers have found this strange, given the apparent probability of extra-terrestrial life (in the 1950’s, the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi asked the question ‘Where are they?’, leading to the lack of evidence for alien intelligence being called ‘The Fermi Paradox’).

Why has nothing been found? One of the elements of the drake equation is how long a civilisation lasts, and in a universe 13.8 billion years old this is an important question. Even if we imagine a technological civilization lasting as long as our entire recorded history of ten thousand years, that is the blink of an eye in the life of the universe. But once a civilization has achieved space travel, surely it should be able to foresee and avoid such calamities as meteor and asteroid impacts, or even the death of its own star, after all, our own scientists are already theorizing about such possibilities.  In trying to answer the question ‘Where are they?’ it seems that all we really have to go on is the example of our own evolution and history.

Perhaps we are unfairly biased in viewing our intelligence as a long term survival tool. The most useful adaptations, like eyes, have evolved independently in many different animals because they are good answers to common survival problems in most of earths environments, but only one out of the estimated five billion species that have ever lived here has evolved high intelligence. Yes the human brain is unique (the most complex natural object in the known universe), but the history of evolution is littered with extinct species with unique mutations.

Human dominance is the result of us being omnivorous, opportunistic hunter-gatherers, evolving large brains to cope with the problem solving necessary for that way of life. This ability has enabled us to adapt to changing circumstances as required: exploiting new food sources and whole new environments in a way that no other animal has been able to, making us a unique global super-predator.

Human language developed as part of our problem solving ability, allowing a level of communication that let humans co-operate to hunt larger, more dangerous prey and pool their resources for survival in general. Somewhere in pre-history (the archeology  seems to suggest around forty thousand years ago, judging by the sudden jump in sophistication of objects found from that point onwards), our ability to form and communicate ideas underwent a change as we went from just being able to make a few sounds to represent physical things we saw in the world around us to developing true language with the grammatical ideas of past and future. This let us form abstract thoughts: to remember the past and plan for the future in ways not previously possible.

Historically, and understandably, we have always seen our unique intelligence as a good thing: when your survival depends on it you’re not likely to think otherwise. But for most other life on earth, increasing human dominance has been catastrophic. Most of the largest creatures that lived alongside our distant ancestors were annihilated thousands of years ago. In the present ‘Holocene’ period the scale of plant and animal extinctions due to human activity has become so huge that many scientists want to rename the period from the industrial revolution onwards the Anthropocene period, with an extinction rate somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times the natural, ‘background’ level (with estimates of up to 140,000 species now disappearing every year).  It is only in the last thirty to forty years that we have begun to realize how much we can damage the delicate balance of complex natural systems that have evolved over millions of years by, for instance, killing the natural apex predators that might compete with us in some way.

It is understandable that our distant ancestors worshipped a natural world that seemed limitless to them. It’s also understandable that later people looked at the abundance around them and thought that our ability to exploit it must God-given. Modern people don’t have the luxury of those illusions. From the late ‘sixties when the first Apollo missions looked back and saw the earth we have all known just how small and fragile it really is: the ‘pale blue dot’, hanging in the dark infinity of space.

When agriculture began, around ten thousand years ago, the global human population is estimated to have been about five million. As the philosopher John Grey wrote in his 2002 book, ‘Straw Dogs’,

“The shift to farming did not have a single source. But wherever it happened it was both an effect and a cause of growth in human numbers. Farming became indispensable because of the larger population it made possible. From that point onwards there was no turning back.

History is a treadmill turned by rising human numbers. Today GM crops are being marketed as the only means of avoiding mass starvation. They are unlikely to improve the lives of peasant farmers; but they may well enable them to survive in greater numbers.”

The wealth and luxury that many people in developed countries enjoy today are proofs of human intelligence and technical ability, but much of humanity has been left behind. The sweatshop workers in poorer countries, who spend their days churning out goods that they can’t afford themselves, do not enjoy lives much better than those of our distant ancestors. Is this progress? Is this civilization?

In 2017 there are nearly seven and a half billion people in the world, all with the same problems, hopes and fears that people have always had.

Every day there are an extra two hundred thousand people. That’s about the size of a large town in England.

Two hundred thousand. Every day.

When agriculture began, around ten thousand years ago, the global population was about five million. It now increases by that amount every twenty five days.

Does economics provide an answer to the worlds problems? Hardly. The greatest negative impact on the planet does not come from the fast growing numbers of the worlds poor, but from the relatively small number of the vastly over-consuming rich whose wealth, contrary to what they have been telling us for decades, does not appear to have ‘trickled down’ to solve the problems of wider society. All over the world, in fact, natural resources have been and continue to be exploited for the private profit of the rich while the poor are left with the public, environmental costs. Our global economic system is based on the ideal of continuous growth in production and consumption. That is exponential growth: growth that continues for ever.  All mainstream political parties, economists and business leaders support this as the only sensible model. Yet basic arithmetic tells us that continuous growth of any finite resource is mathematically impossible (for a full explanation see Professor Al Bartlett of Colorado University’s YouTube video, ‘Arithmetic, Population and Energy’).

How about politics? Well, the utopian political dreams of the nineteenth century died in the industrial warfare and totalitarian nightmares of the twentieth, yet still, generations growing up in the cold war of the nineteen seventies and eighties looked forward to the twenty-first century when, surely, war and conflict would be things of the past. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the historian, Francis Fukayama announced ‘the end of history’, as if we had actually reached a new age of reason and peace. Then came ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, then genocide in Rwanda, then 9-11, Afganistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, waterboarding and Syria.

Many people look for hope and salvation in religion, believing that humans are uniquely made in God’s image. Historically, this belief has fostered the idea that humans are somehow above and separate from other living things, an idea that still persists a hundred and fifty years after ‘The Origin of Species’ and ever-growing mountains of evidence to the contrary.  Perhaps the most important thing about religious belief is what it shows us about human psychology: the absolute refusal to accept anything but what we want to believe, regardless of the facts.

Our histories are full of arrogance and folly: recurring cycles of aggressive nation or empire building followed by decadent decline or full dark ages. Knowledge and true civilization (which has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with behaviour) are fragile: easily lost or forgotten within a single generation in the chaos of war or disaster. Instinct and emotion, however, are always with us, always ready to supply quick and easy answers, however wrong.

How is this possible for beings as clever as we think we are?

A few years ago, some major charities, including Oxfam and the World Wide Fund for nature, commissioned a report to find out why their attempts to inform the public about the problems they were fighting were not bringing in more donations. The report, ‘Common Cause’, is an important document, with far wider reaching implications than originally intended.  It urges the charities to stop using the old ‘Enlightenment’ model of human psychology, in which people will always make the right moral and logical choice if given enough accurate information, because this is obviously not how most people think.

“Instead of performing a rational cost-benefit analysis, we accept information which confirms our identity and values, and we reject information that conflicts with them. We mould our thinking around our social identity, protecting it from serious challenge.”

Broadly speaking, our social identity falls somewhere between two poles: intrinsic, in which the dominant concerns are about empathy and community; and extrinsic, in which personal gain is always put first. In psychology, the structures of value systems that we fit new information into in order to make sense of the world are known as deep frames. Studies in nearly seventy countries have consistently found that people are more concerned with defending the views and values already embedded in these frames than with finding objective truth. Once embedded, these views and values become part of how we see ourselves. That’s why we hate being told we’re wrong or mistaken about something: we feel it emotionally as a personal attack that must be aggressively countered rather than reasonably considered.

The ‘deep frame’ values that people hold can be slowly and subtly changed over time with repeated exposure to information and imagery that promotes either intrinsic or extrinsic values. The advertising industry, as well as other parts of the media and some political parties have been using these methods for decades, promoting a culture of ever increasing consumption and obsession with wealth, fame, vanity and escapism that suits the aims of their extrinsic billionaire owners very well., despite all the evidence that this kind of over-consumption is pushing civilization towards disaster. What they have not done is examine their own psychology and motivations in the light of this knowledge.

We  see the same patterns of behaviour repeated throughout history and in the present, because they are driven by the instincts, emotions and immediate needs of individuals, not by concern for the greater good. Both our intelligence  and the technologies we create are just tools we use to get what we want: they do not make us more ethical or more civilized. Reason and logic are more often used to justify our actions after we have made decisions based on prejudice or greed.

We are now racing towards global catastrophe, led by people who are psychologically unable to admit the truth of the situation even to themselves.

In conclusion, I suggest the reason we find no evidence of any other technological intelligence is because, using our history as a model, beings clever enough to create the necessary communication technology will, like us, be the products of millions of years of evolution in which the aggressive, immediate survival instincts of individuals always overcome the powers of reason and logic necessary for the long term survival of the whole species and the wider environment. In short, they destroy themselves before they can transmit much evidence of their existence.

Space, though probably not lifeless, remains worryingly silent.