Page 103 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Secrets of the Endosphere

public. The terse press release did not indicate how far the military
scientists had gone in constructing and test-flying a dirigible fitted out
with digital camouflage, but did point out a basic flaw unnoticed at
the creator’s demonstration: no matter how well-disguised a huge
airborne object might be, it still had to cast a shadow. “Cade Laid an
Egg!” blared the headlines, and he was forced to change his address
and start over in a new line of business: backhoe and skip-loader
rental. When recognized by clients he would become belligerent,
declaring his scheme no crazier than incendiary bombs strapped to
bats or pigeon-guided missiles—both subsidized by the American
military in the past.
The effusions of his restless mind could not be dammed; only
diverted. He again wound up with a preoccupation influenced by
occupation. From the sky to the earth fell his gaze. Archaeology,
geology and mining became his new passions. At this time SETI, the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence, was in the news. Huge radio
telescopes scanned outer space for evidence of alien life at least as
technologically advanced as Homo sapiens. Cade, having been
laughed out of the heavens, seized upon that quest as a chance for
vindication and retribution: he sent a letter to the editor of a scientific
journal declaiming the hitherto unconsidered possibility of signs of
otherworldly directed activity being found not light-years away, but a
few kilometers—underground. He dismissed as absurd the efforts of
both the astronomers and the flying saucer conspiracy theorists.
Look down, he commanded: not up. The odds, he demonstrated,
were just as likely that visitors from beyond the solar system had
already come and gone as for them to be so far behind in evolution
that they wouldn’t even be able to try for millions or billions of years.
The likelihood of that contact occurring right now, out of all the eons
past and future, was almost infinitesimal.
Therefore, he concluded, at least half the budget for SETI should
be dedicated to digging through the past—literally. Superficial
structures, had any been present while the earth was still cooling,
would long be gone, disintegrated by climate and catastrophe. He
discounted the apocalyptic fervor behind “looking in plain sight” at
pyramids, prehistoric carvings and the Nazca lines for signs of
visitation on the planetary surface. But what if outsiders, possessing
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