The Unveiling

Chapter Five: Convincing aliens

"Give it up, sis," Nick said. "Reality is sitting right in front of you. We can finally get some intelligent answers to the really big questions of life without having to listen to you quote scripture all the time."

Stephanie's face visibly soured, but she ignored Nick's insult. "How can you be the perfect God that I worship?" Stephanie asked. "You admit to making mistakes and Xsalma started a rebellion of sorts. That is not my idea of perfection."

"It depends on how one perceives 'perfect'," Acin-om said. "Yes our kind makes mistakes and has conflicts occasionally, but our motivations and heart attitudes are pure love: that is perfection. We don't have to be motivated by ideas of rewards and punishments, but are self-motivated by love always, even if we disagree sometimes on how best to express it. It will always be difficult for you to fully comprehend our existence until you share it. It is pure joy, but you must experience it to fully understand."

"Yeah, Stephanie's idea of perfect is primitive and influenced by religious dogma," Nick said. "Your conscience-bubble mind implant has done a really good job brainwashing her."

"It affects you too, Nick. You are just not consciously aware of it. It exerts a very subtle yet powerful effect on every human being, mostly on a deep subconscious level. You have to understand that the conscience-bubble broadcasts a certain standard message to every person's mind, but we have to inject specific messages into each individual's thoughts to optimize influence over that person's actions. We've known everyone intimately who has ever lived, and we have always customized our hidden interactions with people on an individual basis to moderate their actions."

Nick's left eyebrow crocked into an inquisitive gesture. "Give us an example of how you might use these techniques to prevent a rapist from hurting someone."

"Well, we can't always prevent it because people choose to go against our influence all the time. It pains us to see you hurt one another, and we feel terrible manipulating people, but we mostly have to let bad things happen for the greater good of the survival of your species. But to answer your question, we would typically try to induce fear of temporal consequences like getting caught and going to jail. This is the conscious influence. Then we would subliminally suggest to his subconscious that if he can be brought to justice in this life, it follows that God will justly punish him in the afterlife, and therefore he is in danger of eternal damnation. If he's familiar with the Bible, we'll try to use hellfire verses to enhance this fear of punishment. Then we might try to instill a reward thought to the subconscious by suggesting developing a consensual love relationship instead, and that this good behavior would produce more happiness in this life and lead to obtaining the reward of eternal life in heaven. We can do all this almost instantaneously, and you sense our influence more on an instinctive and intuitive level."

Nick's lower jaw dropped open and his eyes widened, as he shook his head. "I'm beginning to understand the depth of the mind-fuck you guys have been putting over on humanity for thousands of years."

"I'm not sure I approve either," Valerie said. "And watch the foul language, mister, or I'll take your video games away for a week."

"Fine," Nick said. "But then I'll just point out that you have no right to object to the Balazons. Threatening to take away my video game system is no different than what the Balazons do. You're using the same primitive reward and punishment techniques to manipulate my actions."

Suddenly Valerie felt as if Nick's words were a baseball bat and he'd just reached over and smacked her upside the head. He was right! What a terrible mother she must be to manipulate her son and interfere with his freedom of speech. She felt her face flush and her cheeks got hot, and she felt as if something like a hot dagger stabbed her mind. She felt terribly guilty, just terribly so.