Pam and the Alien Memory Biz

Click here for a PDF version of this post.

Nobody expected libertarian aliens to set up a memory trading post off the west coast of Antarctica, but they did, and now Pam and her mates on the good ship Forget Me Not were entering the UN-patrolled waters around the Human Exclusion Zone or “the HEZ” as everyone called it. The HEZ was a human-specific force field that projected more than a hundred kilometers around the HEZ’s central spire. If you tried to cross the HEZ, you would feel a greater and greater force pushing back until you couldn’t advance. The HEZ blocked only humans and their machines. Birds, fish, marine mammals, and insects penetrated the HEZ unimpeded. Nobody had a freaking clue how it worked.

From her position on the ship’s bow, Pam saw the thirteen-kilometer-high transparent alien spire in the center of the HEZ. The Spire shoots out of the west Antarctic Sea and climbs like a charmed, coiled diamond cobra to heights far beyond the engineering prowess of naked apes. The Spire made it crystal clear (why not use a crystal tower when making things crystal clear) that the libertarian aliens had technology thousands of years beyond human levels and were not to be fucked with.

Everyone remembers where they were when the libertarian aliens announced their presence. It was during the last US Presidential debate. The old, demented moron was squaring off against the old orange moron. The “debate” (please, no laughter) was going as expected when suddenly a Star Wars’zy apparition appeared between the old morons.

“Greeting citizens of Earth. Forgive this intrusion. My name is Sam. I am here to say that our new west Antarctic memory trading outpost is open for business. Look for the Spire. The first thousand customers will get two life memories for one. Tell them Sam sent you.”

Sam made a big impression. Post-debate polls showed he was the clear winner. Everyone wanted to vote for him. Sam radiated rizz (charisma) and seemed vastly more knowledgeable and trustworthy than the old morons who, with their blank diaper-filled faces, couldn’t have looked more pathetic.

We later learned that the Secret Service shat giant gooey bricks when Sam appeared. They made frantic attempts to cut power to the debate stage, but the libertarian aliens easily circumvented their primitive naked ape technologies. Within minutes global social media forgot about the orange morons’ threat to democracy, the never-ending wars in Ukraine, the middle east, the Congo, and now Guyana (come on, people), our out-of-control global inflation, deficit financing, the plight of the BIPOC’ky transgendered, global warming, climate justice, land back hysterics, microplastics, reparations, the great Pacific garbage patch, antisemitism in the academy, the lack of diversity in whatever was up people asses today, and most miraculously Taylor Swift’s divorce. Suddenly, all our baby problems didn’t matter. Most people wanted to know one thing: were they on alien menus? How to prepare man, “it’s a cookbook,” was top of mind.

Lucky for us, the libertarian aliens were vegans. It was the first time in recorded history that people were happy to learn somebody was vegan. Even better, the libertarian aliens didn’t brag about their diet. Imagine that: vegans with a sense of perspective. The universe really is queerer than we can imagine.

After our fears of appearing on dinner plates subsided, we wanted to know why the libertarian aliens were here. What exactly are they trading?

As if reading humanity’s collective thoughts, Sam’s Star Wars’zy apparition appeared on the UN General Assembly podium and explained.

“Since my last appearance, there’s been a lot of buzz about ‘the aliens.’ Just what’s their deal? What are they up to? Why here? Why now? Well, Earthlings, the answer is both complex and simple. Because you are limited naked apes, I will give you the simple answer.”

Sam said, “There are three paths for intelligent life in the universe.”

“The first path is easy to understand. Extinction! Extinction is the typical outcome. Some species disappear by natural means, and others do themselves in. When species breach certain destructive technology barriers, many cannot resist the urge to self-purge. Humans like to think of themselves as apex assholes, but I can assure you that humans, while not particularly bright on galactic scales, are more civilized than most. You thought the Star Wars galaxy was mean; news flash, reality is super harsher.”

Sam paused and looked around at the dumbfounded faces (just another day in the UN General Assembly) before continuing, “The second path is what we call Narcissistic Collapse.”

“Narcissistic collapse occurs when a species’ ability to simulate reality eclipses their desire to deal with it. Here on Earth, many of you go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, about how young people (males) waste their lives playing video games. Imagine if you could plug into a hyper realistic video game and erase your memory that a real universe exists. Many species voluntarily confine themselves in Matrix fantasies of their own devising and lose all interest in the actual universe. Narcissistic collapse occurs far more often than the last alternative.”

“The last path will be hard for many of you to understand, but here’s the dumbed-down version. Species with immortal ambitions have a problem with ordinary baryonic matter. I don’t think I will alarm you with a little physics spoiler. The proton is not stable. I know you’ve conducted your own experiments and concluded that if the proton isn’t stable, its half-life is greater than 10³² years. You are right. The half-life is 10³³¹ years. So long that probably not a single proton in the entire observable universe has decayed, but while 10³³¹ is essentially forever on human, or even Big Bang timescales, it’s not. In a mere 10¹⁰⁰⁰ years, everything in this universe ends with one exception: space itself. “

Sam looked up at the UN delegates. It was like an auditorium of drugged deer in an 18-wheeler spotlight. The normally fatuous and stupid UN delegate creatures looked even dumber than usual. Before any of them could speak, Sam went on.

“The only way to live forever in this universe is to insert yourself into space. Advanced species and their AI descendants have been doing this all over the observable universe for billions of years. Years ago, your astronomers detected a mysterious increase in the rate of the universe’s expansion. You call it Dark Energy. It seems that the expansion rate accelerated about five billion years ago, and nobody knows why. Well, here’s another physics spoiler. As more and more advanced species insert themselves into the fabric of space, the universe’s expansion rate increases. Don’t ask me to explain; your minuscule minds wouldn’t understand. The rate was constant before the insertions because it took roughly eight billion years for advanced species to evolve. Beings of such power (gods) that they alter the expansion rate of the observable universe are not concerned with the antics of naked apes confined to one little shit-ball planet. About one in a million intelligent species that dodge extinction and narcissistic bullets ascend to the dark energy realm. Still, there are trillions of galaxies hosting sometimes millions of intelligent species. Over vast time and space scales, it adds up.”

Sam ended his little lecture by explaining the libertarian alien business model.

“This brings me to what we are trading. While basically true, the three paths have what your NPR Karens call ‘nuance.’ Clearly, there’s no business case for the extinct or the ascending dark energy gods, but the narcissists have unique needs that the galactic market can address. Narcissists always stimulate the economy. While most species rapidly develop the capacity to simulate whatever they can imagine, they also quickly discover they cannot imagine as much as they would like. Good old-fashioned reality with blind natural selection, humdrum physics, and chemistry plodding over billions of years exhibits far greater imaginative works than any narcissistic species. The universe is not only queerer than you can imagine, it’s queerer than all your alien peers can imagine as well.”

Sam dramatically paused to let this sink in but remembered he was projecting in the UN, where nothing ever sinks in, and continued, “There is a real hunger out there for brave new worlds. Not tedious hacky fantasies, but nitty-gritty unimaginable alien realities. Your memories, your sense of self, and the daily crap you carry in your tiny naked ape skulls has great value simply because reality is beyond simulation. There are trillions of creatures, very different from yourselves, that hunger for lives they cannot imagine. Their hunger is so great they are willing to cross interstellar space and trade their memories.”

The porcine, docile, and vacuum-headed UN delegates started murmuring, but Sam silenced them with, “I know what you’re thinking. What’s in it for us?”

“IP rights. We retain the right to duplicate client memories and reuse them. Some lives are just more popular than others. You think Taylor Swift is a big star. You have no idea what a real galactic star is! But, for this month only, you can find out if you present yourself at the HEZ boundary and trade your memories for Milky Way’s biggest celebrity. Remember, this is a time-limited offer.” With that, Sam’s Star Wars’zy apparition vanished.

Pam was Zeus-struck by Sam’s UN speech. As an uber-swiftie she was appalled.

“There are bigger stars than Taylor Swift. Impossible. Blasphemy!”

Pam immediately blasted out a dozen social media posts, informing a breath-baited world that she was offended and outraged (#CancelAlienSam). For a few days, Pam bathed in the affirmations of her swiftie herd, but then a nasty mind worm started eating her confidence. The aliens knew a lot more than us. Everyone says that. Maybe there is a bigger star than Taylor. Maybe her entire life is a lie. Maybe everything she believes is parochial bullshit. She looked up the meaning of “parochial.” She thought it had something to do with the “patriarchy.” Pam couldn’t be “parochial.” That sounded almost racist, or all lives matter’ey. What would the NPR Karens think? To circumvent imagined parochial horrors, Pam decided to take Sam up on his offer.

As a mega-online influencer-boss, Pam cut a deal to Tok (TikTok), Gram (Instagram), and X, her voyage to the HEZ, where she would broadcast her memory trade with Sam. Nobody, including the libertarian aliens, puts anything important on the mainstream media anymore. As the good ship Forget Me Not reached the designated trade spot, a crystal-clear slab (libertarian aliens love their crystals) with Sam’s Star Wars’zy apparition approached the good ship Forget Me Not from The Spire.

The slab hovered alongside, and Pam boldly stepped where no one had stepped before. Then Pam’s social media entourage, her video and podcast crew, stepped where one had stepped before. Soon, a little nucleus of self-important naked apes gesticulated around Sam’s Star Wars’zy apparition on the floating crystal slab.

The first order of business was signing the ATOS (Alien Terms of Service).

The ATOS was an unenforceable bit of bureaucratic tentacle-kissing bullshit. It was getting to the point where you couldn’t run a business in the galaxy without some GAG (Galactic Advisory Group) slime mold smothering you. Want to get libertarian aliens going? Ask them how they feel about unnecessary galactic regulations. What, you thought your MAGA neighbors ranted?

With the ATOS signed, Sam explained how the memory trades worked.

“Memory swaps between alien minds are unstable and not advised by the GAG. When the swap is complete, you will awake as an alien in an alien world. Your life, your human sense of self, will seem like a vivid fading dream. As you become fully conscious, the dream will fade away. You will forget everything you have ever known about yourself and your life. You will be something else, somewhere else.”

As Sam blah, blah, blahed on, Pam interrupted with, “How will I post this? My followers need to see something.”

Sam, used to dealing with recalcitrant customers, said, “No problemo!” Sam was binging Schwarzenegger’s early movies. He found much to like in, crush your enemas, flush them before you, and hear the lamentations of the vaginas.

Then Sam continued, “Brain activity can be rendered as images. At no extra cost, we will broadcast what your brain perceives to your entourage.”

Satisfied, Pam said, “Let’s get started.”

Sam dropped a final caveat, “The stress on your brain will be so great that the swap will only last for a few days. We will have to shut your brain down when this time is up. I know that sounds bad, but from your point of view, it will be as if you have lived a full alien life. The galactic star, the super Swift, whose memories you will assume, comes from a long-lived species. Theez (human sex doesn’t apply here) is around twenty thousand years old. You’re trading your shortish human life for a longish alien one. It’s a great deal.”

Pam considered Sam’s words. So, the libertarian aliens would flood her mind with memories that would wipe hers and kill her in a few days. But she would live the long life of a star greater than Taylor Swift, and (what mattered to Pam) her every thought would be tsunami-splashed over global social media. Imagine the likes, the reposts, the basic-bitch envy, the cringe-incel whining, the masturbating emojis! As an uber-swiftie, Pam couldn’t imagine a more heroic sacrifice.

“Like I said, let’s get started.”