It bewildered most who viewed
it. It showed up on CNN and was instantly written off by many as a hoax. Who
could believe there was a race of people who were polka dotted? Not the simple
polka dot of black and white, but an array of all the colors of the spectrum.
Well, in reality, it turned out to be just the seven primary colors, but most
assuredly a hoax. They lived in a remote area of the Great North. It is a place
that had barely been explored or even by the heartiest of adventurers. Sitting
above the Arctic Circle, and nowhere within reach of any trail, road, or hint
of a path it had gone unnoticed until a satellite picture revealed it to the
world by accident. The satellite had been in a collision with one of the errant
pieces of debris abounding in space and knocked off trajectory.
The proliferation of Global
Warming had left it accessible for a while in the spring and a team from the
Royal Geographical Society launched an expedition to investigate the heat
readings that suggested life in this far-flung location. They found a small
village of people who were unlike any previously known to exist. They took DNA
samples and about a million pictures and went back to civilization to study
their findings. They left a small team of two – one man, and one woman
researcher.
They intended to return in a
year when the weather permitted travel for a larger contingent of scientist.
The two they left were a biologist and an anthropologist. What they found was
that these people were not necessarily human but had enough genetic markers to
be a distant cousin. Well, they rather had identifiers to suggest that they
shared a common ancestor with humans, but not like simians such as apes,
gorillas, or monkeys. These “people” were of a higher formation on a cognitive level.
The village had been frightening in its modernity. They had, in everyday use,
technology far surpassing human expertise, and seemed to be able to survive in
the harsh environs with little difficulty. They had a grasp of language to the nth
degree. The expedition had been there barely a month and all the adults and
half the children were fluent in English with some of them also picking up
French from a cryptozoologist who had talked his way on to the team.
They were advanced in areas
of agriculture and food production that should not had been possible and
refused to let the expedition leader go hunting for polar bears. They informed
the team that the eating of meat was restricted to those species bred by them.
These creatures were also polka dotted in the same manner as the people. The
chickens laid eggs that produced multiple egg yolks for higher protein content
as well as normal eggs for fertilization in use for the propagation of their
flock of chickens. Miniature cattle were present as well as pigs, rabbits, and
some fish. The entire village was enclosed in buildings produced by small trees
growing in a garden/forest they had on the edge of the village. They practiced
population control and held meetings twice a day to speak of spiritual matters.
The village was not so concerned with the outside world showing no desire for
contact with the outside world. They were hospitable, though, with all in the
expedition being treated as valued visitors.
When the team came back the
next year, the two team members they left were both married and greeted their
colleagues with infant children in their arms. This brought about a vehemently
harsh reaction from the team leader with grumblings of cross species
contamination and other modern day issues. The two scientists sat and listened
to the complaints and politely informed the rest of the team that their
concerns were unimportant and that they had no intention of ever returning to
what they had been erroneously titled “civilization.”
The room erupted into a
yelling and screaming mess. The explorers all railed against the two newest
members of this society holding their multicolored children. They cited all
sorts of scientifically sound arguments for the breach in ethics the
researchers were perpetrating, and the disservice to the Society they were
committing.
All of which fell on the deaf
ears of the new parents sitting before them.
The woman went first by
explaining that the reason she had become a scientist, and took part in the
expedition as well as other missions of discovery was because she had been
diagnosed when she was a girl as not being capable of mothering any children.
She did not marry and chose a career that would be of interest to her. The male
scientist informed him that he was also in the same predicament as his friend
and colleague. Mumps as a child had left him sterile. Here, with these people
he was able to father one child, and had another on the way. They both likened
the life in this environ as what one might, on a romantic level, the fictional
city of Shangri La. They would never leave.
The leader of the team sat
for a minute and took it all in. He was not unsympathetic to what had been
said, but pragmatic on the reality of the situation. He explained that the
report on this place had already created a vast consequence for its future.
Now, everyone wanted to see these “things” and that as they speak, there was
probably a number of teams searching for the location with camera film crews,
and reality show producers eager to get this on television. The idyllic world
these creatures lived was about to be invaded by humanity, or rather Hollywood,
in all its obtuse, self-interested, self-seeking, venal, and greedy best.
The leader of the tribe had
been sitting in the back listening and whispered something in the ear of one of
his mates who got up and left. He walked to the front of the room and informed
the head of the explorers that they would have to pack their things and leave.
He invited them to eat a meal and get a night’s sleep but they would, indeed,
have to leave. He explained that he and his people, he gestured towards the new
parents, had to make preparations to move the encampment to a place of safety.
When the scientist almost as
a single voice, began informing them that there was no place for them to go, he
held his hand up to them and smiled. He sat down and calmly explained that it
was not a concern they should take on. His village had been in existence for
somewhere around four thousand millennium and would probably last another four
thousand.
He went on to detail the
history of his people. They had been part of the primordial soup that all life
on the planet had come from. There had been a race of people from another place
in the galaxy that had seeded, or “peppered” our world, as well as many others
throughout the galaxy. There was little more they did to any of these world
except leave the trace ingredients for a group of beings such as those who
lived in this village. The proper sequence of events occurred that allowed them
to evolve and become the first bi-pedal beings on the planet. Growing apart
from the rest of humanity, they were able to grow and flourish as they do now.
Some expeditions into the other paces on the earth had allowed them to learn of
the ideals and practices of agriculture and their natural intelligence had
allowed them to adapt to the realities of this planet. One thing they did not
find necessary to accede was the proliferation of violence. When their
explorers came back and detailed for them the realities of how human treat
humans, it was a unanimous decision that they would not participate in that unpleasant
activity in their culture. That was why they settled where they settled. And
they would not allow for any violence to infringe on their life today. He got
up and walked out of the room.
The next morning, the team
bid farewell to their colleagues and the polka dotted people and left. They had
met before leaving and decided that the information they brought back would be
that the village had disappeared and could not be found. Satellites were
re-tasked and teams sent in search of these strange creatures, but to no avail.
Hollywood called it a purposefully perpetrated ploy and all of the original
team members lost their jobs. Many of them never found work in their field
again.
The cryptozoologist kept his
word and remained silent. His field had always been written off as cranks and
he just went on about his business. He moved on to a number of other searches;
Big Foot, a definitive decision on Loch Ness, and the search for a Nagual werewolf in Central America. He just went on about
his business and finding himself in early winter in the Andes Mountains on a
similar werewolf search. He was staying at a remote village near the border of
Chile and decided to take a hike up into the higher regions. He was packed for
an overnight as a precaution and did not expect to be gone more than a few
hours. The weather turned bad and he found himself in the midst of a snow storm.
He got himself turned around and lost his compass. He stumbled on for a few
hours and decided to give up and set his tent up to wait out the storm. He
found a flat spot with little snow and crawled into the tent. The wind was
fierce but his tent held steady. He went to sleep and woke up the next morning
to sunshine. He opened his tent flap and was surprised by the sight of a child,
about ten years old holding a kitten…both spotted with the primary colors of
the spectrum. The child was smiling.
