‘Correct. I should perhaps explain that worlds tend to group together, just as twigs on a tree all belong to one small branch, and several smaller branches all belong to one major branch. Thus there is an entire major branch of universes in which Homo Sapiens became the dominant life form on Earth, and another major branch in which my species exists instead. The differences in the histories of our physical universes are quite small – at Stage 2 level – but just enough to encourage the development of one group of species rather than other. In your world the conditions which favoured the dominance of dinosaurs continued for scores of millions of years, but without the right kind of environmental challenges needed to stimulate the development of high intelligence. The dinosaurs became over-specialised and unable to respond to hostile environmental changes when these eventually occurred. Ironically, in my world the conditions were less benign for my species, but in a way which rewarded the development of our intelligence, and mammals have remained a minor branch of the animal kingdom, just as reptiles are in yours.’
I smiled. ‘So what do I call your species?’ As usual with names, the response was both instantly intelligible and completely untranslatable, so I thought for a moment and said; ‘I expect I’d better refer to you here as saurians.’
An equable response.
‘How is it that we can communicate like this? We are entirely different species, yet our minds must be very similar for us to understand each other so well.’
‘An interesting question. In part, it might be because we share some far-distant ancestor – it is not as if we developed on different planets. The environments and evolutionary pressures our species faced were also very similar, and it is not surprising that they stimulated the development of the same kind of intelligence. It may be that there are some basic similarities in the way in which intelligent minds function. Most significantly, however, it seems the changes which took place in your brain to increase your sensitivity may have altered it in such a way that it has become sufficiently like ours for communication to be possible.’
‘You somehow managed to reach me first of all without even a headnet.’
‘Yes, it took all three of us linked together a huge mental effort just to persuade you to switch on the television. We discovered long ago that we can in this way reach saurian minds in worlds parallel to our own, but it is scarcely possible.’
I mulled this over for a few moments. ‘Why didn’t you just ring me on the phone to start with?’
‘For technical reasons it was easier for you to ring us – and anyway, would you have taken any notice of such a call?’
I laughed. ‘I don’t suppose so. All right, then, how did all this happen to me? I presume that some experiment went wrong?’
‘I’m afraid that will take a lengthy explanation. First, you need to be aware of several things about us. We evolved much more slowly and incrementally than humans, but the process started much earlier. Our civilisation has developed more or less continuously for over two hundred thousand years.’
I pondered that one for a moment. It was approximately as long as modern humans had existed as a species. Our earliest recognisable civilisations formed about ten thousand years ago, and they were long gone.
‘This has given us a certain perspective which humans lack, reinforced by the fact that we have always been relatively long-lived; in fact, we can now live almost as long as we want to, barring accidents.’
‘How do you manage that? And how do you control your population?’
‘Our technological development has been far slower than yours and in some respects you are already catching us up, but we have focused on two areas; genetics and, more recently, the parallel worlds. We have complete knowledge and control of our genetic structure, as well as that of all other living things in our world, and long ago mastered the ageing process. For a long time now we have only had children at the rate needed to replace losses, which are partly due to accidents but more frequently the result of people deciding that they don’t want to live any longer. After a few centuries, life tends to become dull and repetitive. So our population is stable at about one hundred million, compared with over six billion on your Earth.’
A thought crossed my mind; ‘have you always had these mental abilities?’
‘No. We used to be like you, communicating by sound – something which we now use for singing, otherwise we would probably have lost the ability altogether. A few tens of thousands of years ago we observed that some individuals showed signs of extra sensitivity, and since we already had a thorough understanding of our genetic code we investigated the cause of this. It did not take us long to isolate the genes concerned and to begin to reinforce them, to the point which you now know. So in a sense, we are our own creation.’
‘So what happened to me?’
‘That was a consequence of our exploration of the parallel worlds. Our scientists first became aware of the probability of these several thousand years ago, but we could not initially detect them. Eventually our technology enabled us to pick up signals within the electromagnetic spectrum which emanated from parallel worlds, and we began to receive their traffic. For a long time we were only aware of other worlds within our own local branch, because it is necessary for a civilisation to have developed radio before we can notice them. At first, we were only able to receive radio and TV broadcasts, but more recently we have developed the technology to pick up visual images; we can open a one-way window, so to speak, to look wherever we please, although we cannot receive sound unless it is broadcast electronically.’
I smiled wryly. It had long been speculated that the sphere of our radio and television broadcasts, expanding at light speed from the Solar System, might eventually attract the attention of another intelligent race in our galaxy, but no-one had imagined that they would be received in a parallel Earth.
‘The discovery of your local group of worlds caused great excitement because it was the first time that we had encountered a non-saurian civilisation. I have to say that there are few Stage 3 saurian worlds, the main source of variation being those who, for philosophical and/or religious reasons, rejected the idea of altering their genetic make-up to enhance their mental abilities, so they still communicate by sound, as you do. We have therefore concentrated great efforts in finding out as much about you as we can, and in developing our technology to try to communicate with you.’
‘Well, you seem to be doing OK so far.’
‘Yes. We know a lot about you, and our various research groups have each concentrated on a particular human language and cultural group. You would no doubt be amused at some of the human-inspired cultural fashions which have percolated through our society. Although we three are the core of this research group, many others can speak English well enough to communicate. Finding you, Cade, was a bonus; we were not certain that we would be able to form a mind-link with a different race, and in fact we cannot with ordinary humans. With them, we are limited to verbal and visual communication via electronic means, as with the telephone and television.’ His mood became one of uncomfortable embarrassment.
‘I have a feeling that you’re getting to the point.’