Of course, the air was only part of what was great about this place. Then, he opened his eyes and got to take in the scenery. Deejay had seen some great forests and preserves before, but this was unparalleled natural beauty. This made the Adirondacks back home look like a cheap bonsai garden. All around, plants of all shapes and sizes were flourishing. Ferns and shrubs covered much of the ground, and the trees seemed to grow as tall as sky scrapers.
He turned to look down the hill, and was equally impressed. The river down below was crystal clear. The water cascading over the rocks was almost mesmerizing. Watching the water flow past gave him a deep sense of peace. For a while, anyway. Then it made him have to go to the bathroom.
“Okay, enough sight-seeing for one day,” Deejay said to himself. “I gotta finish this report and get back home. I kind of feel like I’m corrupting this place just by being here.” He looked down at the hi-tech clip board in his hand and quickly wrote up the beginnings of his report.
Entry #183
Location: North America, Earth 4-D
Country: N/A
Synopsis: The planet appears to be devoid of human life, being covered mainly in dense forest. My hypothesis at this time is evolution on this planet took a different path, meaning the great apes, among others, never came into being. Further research on the local animal populations should confirm this.
Deejay turned back to the forest and made his way further in. He carefully weaved around between various plants and shrubs, trying not to step on anything. He really didn’t want to disturb this place. Plus, he had no way of knowing which plants were poisonous. He turned back once, just to make sure he could still see the ship on the edge of the tree line, then kept moving into the forest.
As he reached a particularly large tree, Deejay stopped to rest. He sat at its base and leaned back against the trunk. He took out his PDA and tapped on the screen, bringing up the data from the scan he’d made with a probe earlier. The little map onscreen was color-coded based on the temperature readings the probe had made. According to it, Deejay was probably the largest animal in the area.
“Dang,” he said. “I was kinda hoping I’d find some exciting new animal species here. Guess I’ll just have to settle for a couple of plant samples...” Just then, Deejay noticed what looked like an insect fluttering around in front of him. “Well, hello there. Sorry to intrude on your lovely forest; I promise I’ll be out of your way soon enough.”
Deejay dismissed the creature for a butterfly or moth of some kind at first glance, but after a second look, he realized the body looked too long and slender. What’s more, it didn’t act like any butterfly he knew. It seemed to fly with some intelligence, moving in straight lines and graceful arcs. Intrigued, he held out his hand, wondering if he could get it to land on his finger. Incredibly, it did with little hesitation.
“Heh. You’re kinda cute,” Deejay said with a smile. As he looked more closely at the creature, he believed what he was seeing less and less. He shook his head, thinking his eyes must be playing tricks on him. With his free hand, Deejay slowly fished a magnifying lens out of his pocket, and held it up to his eye. One look at the magnified creature, and his jaw dropped.
“No. Way. This has got to be a dream.”
But it wasn’t. Sure enough, at the tip of his index finger, he saw a naked young woman, with long red hair and beautiful butterfly-like wings on her back, standing no more than two-and-a-half inches tall.
“Okay... This is definitely going in the report.”
When Deejay got back, he immediately went looking for Ty. He found him on the couch in his room, watching Men in Black for the umpteenth time. The door was wide open, but Deejay still knocked to be polite.
“Yeah?” Ty said, still looking at the wide-screen television in front of him.
“Hey.” Deejay stuck his head in the doorway, then stepped fully into the room.
“How was, uh, Earth 4-C?”
“4-D. And it was cool.”
“That’s the one you said was uninhabited, right?”
“Yes. No. I mean, it’s devoid of human life, but it has a flourishing global ecosystem. Nice variety of plant life... some very interesting species of flora and fauna.”
“Cool.” Ty thought that would be the end of the conversation, but after a few moments, he realized Deejay wasn’t leaving. He stifled a sigh, then picked up the remote and paused the movie. He finally turned and looked at Deejay.
“Uh, I kinda wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Okay.” Ty slid down on the couch so Deejay had room to sit. “What about?”
Deejay sat down somewhat gingerly on the end of the couch. “Well, it’s just that on today’s trip, I started thinking, and uh...” He scratched his head, trying to find the right words. “Well, you know how sometimes the wheels get turning in my head, and... you know, things occur to me from time to time. Just.. random, kind of hypothetical things.”
“Uh huh...”
“Right, so... Okay, you ever watch those old episodes of Star Trek?”
“No.”
“Well, you kind of know the show, right?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Okay, good. Well, you know how there were all those alien races and whatever. But they looked a lot like humans. I mean, obviously they were humans; they were human actors. But on the show, they played aliens. And you know, sometimes the aliens were female. And I was trying to remember, did the captain ever, like... you know, have relations with the aliens?”
“What, you mean like, diplomatic relations?”
“No, I mean, like...” Deejay held up his hands, making a circle gesture with one hand, and inserting his index finger of the other hand.
“Dude, I’m not wearing a wire for the smut police. You can talk about sex with me.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, okay. Good.” Deejay fell silent for a second, restlessly kicking his legs. “So, say I’m captain of the Enterprise-”
“No.”
“Come on, you didn’t even let me finish.”
“Are you asking me if it’s cool if you have sex with aliens?”
“Kind of.”
“Then no.”
“Ty, come on, at least give it a second thought. I mean, say I met some hot young thing on another planet, and you know, things started happening-”
“Deejay, you can’t be serious.” Ty stood up. He was obviously a little uncomfortable with the idea.
“Why not? What’s so wrong about it?”
“What’s wrong about it? Did you miss the part where she’s not human? I’m sorry, but there's just no way.”
“So what if she’s different? She’s not that different. She’s still a person, just a slightly different species.”
“Don’t you see? That’s the point. Similar as she might be, she’s an alien species. That might be okay for some sci-fi tv show, but putting it in practice is a whole ‘nother story. Allowing interspecies dating would set a dangerous precedent. If I said I was okay with this, it wouldn’t be long before you started meeting and experimenting with other alien species, and then who’s to say your tastes wouldn’t become even more bizarre? Saying it’s okay to go outside your species would be like saying bestiality is okay.”
“What? You’re joking right?”
“It’s a slippery slope situation, Deejay. Even if I ever did accept the possibility of relationships with alien races, we’d have to have strict rules to dictate what species are okay and what species are off-limits.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not going to get into bestiality just because I like an alien. And besides, you can’t make any general rules like that. It’s not a distinct line between what’s a person and what’s not.”
“I’m pretty sure I could come up with some decent guidelines.”
“Like what? Just give me an example.”
“Well, for starters, how about nothing that has a tail? I’m sure you can agree that as a well-adjusted human being, you should never, under any circumstances, engage in a sex act with any species that has a tail.”
“Well, what about those cat girls you see in anime shows sometimes? You know, they’re like regular girls, but they have cat ears and little tails.”
“They’re cartoons. They don’t exist.”
“Well, just hypothetically, let’s say they did. What then?”
“I think it would still stand in that case. If they have tails, then cat girls would be off limits.”
“But they’re practically human. Without the tail, you wouldn’t see any difference.”
“If it has a tail, it doesn’t matter what the rest of it looks like. You can’t consider it to be human.”
“Will you listen to yourself? You want to discriminate against people based on how long their spine is. I’ve got news for you: all people have tails at the base of their spines, just not very big ones.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The tailbone; it’s the small segment of spine at the base of the spinal column that extends just past the pelvis. Technically, that counts as a tail.”
“That’s not a tail; it’s just part of the spine.”
“It is too a tail. It’s even called a ‘tailbone.’”
“It doesn’t matter what it’s called. I have a funny bone in my arm, and there isn’t a damn thing funny about it.”
“It’s funny when you bang it on something by accident and it sends pins and needles all up and down your whole arm.”
“That's not funny. It’s an extremely unpleasant experience.”
“I know.” Deejay grinned. “That’s why I said it’s funny when you do it. You always look so pissed.”
“Now I know how that home video from summer camp got on the Internet. Can we stay on the subject at hand, please?” Ty sighed and took his seat again. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve already made up my mind. I’m not going to set any bad precedents here. No relations outside your species: that’s the rule.”
“Ty, that’s not fair. You still haven’t given me a good reason. You’re just being a closed-minded bigot, and dare I say it, a racist.”
“Racist? Are you kidding me?”
“This is no different than being against interracial couples. Well, maybe that was how we thought about things back in the 20th century, but these days it’s common and acceptable for two people of different racial backgrounds to be romantically involved.”
“Deejay, you’re talking about two completely different things. Racism was wrong because it discriminated between different human beings based just on where they’re from and what they look like. What we’re talking about here is an interspecies relationship. That’s a big difference.”
“You only say that because it’s not something you’re used to hearing. Just because you’ve never been romantically involved with a member of an alien species, that doesn’t make it wrong.”
“And you base this on what, exactly?” Ty asked, crossing his arms.
“Well, let’s look at dogs for example: there are all kinds of different breeds of dogs, in all different shapes and sizes. And then you get into wild dogs and wolves; they’re completely different species altogether, and yet they’ll still breed with dogs sometimes, and no one cares. If a dog and a wolf decide to mate, no one really finds anything wrong with that.”
“They’re dogs; they hump anything that moves. And if they can’t find anything that moves, they’ll just hump inanimate objects. Do you really want to model your conduct after an animal that is physically attracted to a footstool?”
“First of all, don’t get down on someone for humping a footstool. We’ve all done a little experimenting in our hormone-soaked youth.” Ty rolled his eyes at that, and Deejay stood before continuing. “Second, you’re blowing this out of proportion. This isn’t some slippery slope situation that’s going to end in rampant bestiality throughout the universe. This is just two people who happen to have a slightly different genetic makeup; two people who, unlike you, had the heart to see the similarities in each other instead of the differences.”
Deejay started pacing around as he spoke. For the first time, Ty started to wonder if they were putting too much thought into this.
“Now, if you can wrap your brain around that,” Deejay continued, “let’s start talking about the big picture. The human race is a finite thing. You know it as well as I do. Sooner or later, the Earth we know and love is going to die off, and most of the human race will probably go with it. When the end is near and there’s only a handful of human beings left in the universe, what do you think is going to happen? They might last a couple generations by themselves, but pretty soon they’ll have to worry about negative effects of inbreeding. If they really want their race to live on, they’ll have to open themselves to possibilities like what we’re talking about right now. Eventually, human beings will have no choice left but to procreate with alien species to keep from dying off. I know it; you know it; the Japanese know it; and the writers of Doctor Who knew it, too. And when the time comes, you’ll have to accept it and be thankful for the fact that we have similar enough races to our own to fall back on. As for me, I’m just getting an early start on friendly intergalactic relations.” He crossed his arms confidently. “So what do you say to that?”
Ty immediately started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Deejay asked, annoyed at Ty’s reaction.
“I can’t believe you thought I’d go for that. Do you expect me to believe we're going through this for the sake of mankind? Let me guess: you’re just worked up because you found an alien with a nice rack, and now you’re trying to come up with an excuse to justify pursuing it.”
Deejay didn’t have a comeback for that.
“I guess your canine analogy works better than I thought. You really are just like a dog, aren’t you? You’ll screw anything that moves.”
“That’s not true at all.” Deejay sat down again. “As a matter of fact, I happen to think I have a very normal libido for my age.”
“Well, at the very least, you’ll to screw anything that has a pair of breasts. Am I wrong?”
Deejay hesitated. “…Artie Lange has breasts. I don’t wanna do him.”
Ty laughed again. “Well, it’s nice to know you at least have some standards.”
“Ty, I don’t care what you say. If I meet an alien chick, and we both like each other, and we decide we want to have a more intimate relationship, isn’t that our business? If we have love for one another, isn’t that all that really matters in a relationship?”
“In human ones, yes…” Ty pondered a moment and grinned. “…Except, if you recall, when one person happens to be young enough to be considered a minor as defined by the state, and thus cannot legally consent-”
“Arg! Will you stop bringing that up?! It was one time; she said she was 18.” Deejay gritted his teeth. “Anyway, don’t you change the subject. The fact is, morality and common sense dictate that whatever two consenting adults do in private is their business, and nothing you say can change that.”
“Alright, alright…I’ll admit you made some decent points.”
Deejay’s eyes lit up. “Really? So, if I want to get serious with an alien, you’re not gonna stop me?”
“Well, I’ll at least give it some consideration.”
“Consideration’s better than nothing, I guess. Thanks, Ty. I’m glad we had this talk.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The two brothers fell silent for a beat. Deejay was about to get up and leave, when Ty added: “How about this for a rule: nothing that has an exoskeleton?”
Deejay briefly considered the mechanics of that experience. “...Okay, I could get behind that one.”
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