"No. We were both women. Of course we'd have a lot in common?"
- @HalimedeMF 11 April 2025 on Twitter replying to Kanye West

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My hands are moving red and green balls up and down in the air and I am trying not to think about the numbers on the bill for that ‘great meal’ we had earlier, nor am I trying to think about those numbers in relation to the numbers in my bank account and how readily she paid for and suggested we go here in the first place. And I am definitely not trying to think of the fact that she’s naked too, and holding her phone at an angle that tells me that she’s only probably not filming this. She’s smiling the way I would if I was though.

“Wait, that’s messed up, there’s no way that’s real?” Aliyah mutters to herself, flicking her finger on her screen a bit more passionately than before as her attention is very pointedly directed at something other than me. 

“What can’t be real?” I ask, the brief lapse of concentration already enough for me to almost fumble one of my balls onto the floor.

“Oh there’s just thi-Holly you’ve heard of the MS movement before right?” she asks, brief sound clips I can barely make out coming from the side of her room as she keeps flicking through something.

“No? Is that like, a political thing or?” she gives me a weird look, but waves it off. 

“Right, I forgot that you’ve been living under a rock. They’re this… Weird art movement that’s gotten big recently? They’re all about pushing the boundaries and imagining a world free from the weight of our past, they come up with things like… performance art meals, abstract literature, and I think one of them got shot a year or two ago because he hired some professional thieves to fake a heist with the museum’s help but one of the guests pulled out a real gun and decided to be a hero.” 

“What?” my hands slip and one ball follows a few others down to the bed.

“Yeah they’re all like that, intense. Anyway I was scrolling through the map and apparently one of them called uhh, the High Visionary is running this massive event at a quarry out of all places that’s uncovered ‘the archeological discovery of the century’ apparently. I mean it’s probably bullshit, that’s usually how it goes for them, but it’s not too far from here if we rent a car? And I kind of want to check it out.”

“‘The archeological discovery of the century’? What did they dig up an old helmet one of our great great great great grandparents wore before the oxygen set in or something?” I take a seat, wipe a bit of sweat from my brow as if I’ve been working, and sip down a bit of water.

“I wish, no they’re saying that they found proof of aliens or something, I mean look at it,” she flips over her phone to show me and I can barely make out what looks to be a photograph of a person’s helmeted head sculpted out of largely indigo colored metal with bronze weirdly shaped horns, a massive yellowish crystal on its forehead, red almost glass looking eyes, and a feminine lower face made out of grey metal with blue lips. Fairly interesting stuff, and then I realize that it’s supposed to be the size of a small building.

“Whoa, did they build that thing? That must have cost a small fortune.”

“Probably, but you know how it is, it’s supposed to be ‘one of many artifacts’ they dug out from the quarry, and I can’t help but wonder what it’s all for you know? Like what their deal is with this one,” she flicks through a few more images, most of them are of the head allegedly at different points of its excavation but there’s a few that’s just random articles of mostly smashed up jewelry that I guess you’re supposed to find at a digsite like this?

“You know what, sure I wouldn’t mind checking it out with you, you said we could just drive there right?”

She looks back down at her phone, and smiles, “Uh, yeah definitely, it’s only a… Hey you did remember to get your driver’s license right?” _________________________________________________________________________

It’s a distraction, all of it. The heat of the crowd, the too thin tent cover barely shielding us from the three suns, the humidity of the still warm air blown to and fro by the large and eerily silent fans, the fact that I have been awake for almost 7 whole hours straight and know that we walked past a comfy enough row of bunkbeds getting here that I spied past the window of what I am damn sure is the one air conditioned building here for miles and miles. 

But there are slides changing on a piece of white cloth in front of me. A woman wearing an opaque replica fishbowl astronaut helmet (and appropriately enough for the weather, not much else save for a vest and loose pants) connects the dots (figuratively) between the ruins near Jupiter with the recent discoveries in this quarry as the remnants of a long lost human civilization (a speech or person important enough to herald nap disturbing applause and cheers upon leaving and entering the stage). In the corner of my eye I can see glimpses of Aliyah artfully panning the camera we brought that let us bluff about being real press™ to follow the first speaker’s every movement across the stage without missing a damn beat (she of course, got to sleep on the way here).

I can’t speak (for fear of disturbing her’s or any other stream), I can’t stand up to leave (because I’m sitting too far in the front to not seem like I’m making a statement), and I can’t remember how I got here to begin with (I remember driving the car over, I’m struggling to remember what she said that made me think this was a good idea).

There’s a man in front of me with a tray with drinks on it, he shoots us an apologetic look after accidentally walking in front of the camera and Aliyah is making shooing motions with her free hand, but I spot a few long glasses of something black and possibly caffeinated and I reach out and grab one and of course it’s hot, why wouldn’t they serve hot drinks in a hot room? I smile at him with just my eyes and fish out a straw from my pouch and slide one end into my port and the other end into the drink and it’s coffee mildly sugary no milk and wow.

It has a kick but I don’t so much jolt awake as feel myself slowly dragged back into something almost resembling alertness as fishbowl woman gives way to glasses woman on the stage. Wait no I think I can remember other names now, High Something right? Weird name, well it’s probably a title. I think glasses woman is Cynthia and probably professor, wait no that’s, wrong way round? Ugh.

Sip, sound. Sip, words. Sip-
“And once again I want to thank our sponsors the Dilmun Concern for allowing me and my team to carry out our work in their quarry, to thank the High Visionary for that ah, wonderful speech of her’s, and of course to thank all of you fine folks of the Mental Sovereignity movement in attendance this day who are here to ah, witness history in the making.”

Laughter from the audience at a joke that simply flies over my head as I sip and watch professor Glasses smirk a little.

“Sorry - sorry, my assistant keeps telling me I need to lighten up a little, crack a few jokes every now and then. Anyway! Before we wrap up and move on to the stunning feast for the senses you are no doubt looking ever forward to - we’d like to table a short Q&A session. So if any of you have any burning questions to ask you can start raising your hand from… now.”

For the first time in a while I turn my head around to look back at the crowd, hoping desperately that they’ll all read the room and just let this one slide so I can stumble off into a cold and dark room for a while. So of course Aliyah raised her hand.

The professor made a few motions at Aliyah’s general direction as she spoke, “Okay! Can someone give the person standing next to the camera a-yeah that’s right. Could you introduce yourself first?”

Aliyah tapped on her mic a little, noting the little pressure waves it made, “Hi, yes my name is Aliyah Ziegler, I’m a freelance documentarian with a focus on history, and let me just say that I really really appreciate all of the hard work you and your team put into this, I loved the presentations you and Ms, should I call her Miss or The High Visionary?”

Some of the people in the crowd behind me helpfully chimes in to say ‘the’ before the woman herself could turn on her mic about it. “Yeah, I think they were both very interesting.”

The professor smiles at that, interrupting her to say, “Thank you, thank you, that’s not really a question but I’m glad that people are seeing the value of our work.”

“Oh I wasn’t finished, I was going to ask… ok you kind of took the wind out of my sails a little there, give me a moment,” Aliyah reaches out with her free hand, to grab my half full glass from my hand and quaffs the rest of it down, only stopping to let out a pleased sigh before she continued with, “Was any of that real?”

There’s a burst of laughter from the crowd behind us, some frantic but mostly surprised sounding, like they can’t believe that someone would actually go out and say that, which was uncomfortable, but not as bad as looking up at the stage and realizing that the professor wasn’t laughing along with them.

“I mean I still appreciate all of the artistry and effort you all put into it!” Aliyah said, continuing to dig her own grave with me in it, “The lengths you’ve all gone to make this seem convincing is just,” she audibly kisses her hand, “Borderline perfect, almost no notes.” 

“But it’s just…” she’s thinking through it, trying to unwrap her head around it all, “I mean even if the MS movement weren’t so heavily involved we’re talking about a prehistoric spacefaring human civilization stemming from Alpha Centauri here. It’s just too ridiculous, too far fetched to be true, and well, frankly why would anyone in this movement want to present more human history unless all this was another intellectual provocation against the whole concept. It just doesn’t make sense is all, sorry.” 

The laughter had long since died down by now, and for a moment it was just me there squirming out of secondhand embarassment as the professor just looked thoughtful for a while. “Well that’s just one interpretation isn’t it? The whole prehistoric colonization angle, that’s something the High Visionary thought of that could be plausible but I wasn’t-”
She furrows her brow a little, “Okay so I need you to understand that we are still at a very early phase, this field of xenoarcheology is a new one and I want to say that I am pioneering right? We are all taking bold new steps forward here, and when you’re pioneering you want to keep an open mind right? As open as you can while still based on as many best practices and evidence you have? Do you understand?”

Aliyah said a clear “Yes,” and was very clearly attempting to say something more before the professor continued with, “So when our sponsor said okay there’s this woman, this wonderful, intelligent woman named the High Visionary who will be handling the catering and the event organizing and doing a speech right after your’s and I said okay right? I said okay, but I had to ask, what would the speech be about? Is it anything political? Should I be worried about what she will say?”

The professor turned her gaze back at her still seated guest of honor, as if gauging her approval, “And they got her in touch with me, this wonderful woman. And she said that she noticed links, potential commonalities between the artifacts we dug up and the material the Jovian ruins were said to be made out of, the ones that helped most of our ancestors get here and settle down. She told me all this right? And she said she wanted to talk about what that could imply, the material culture or shall we say ‘lost prehistoric civilization’ that could have been shared between the two, and I’ll be honest I said to her what I will say to you now, I think that’s going too far.”

There’s awkward laughter coming from the High Visionary herself, who nonetheless lets the professor have her moment as she continued with, “We don’t have any samples of the Jovian ruins to compare with these artifacts, we don’t have any proof that these artifacts are even all that advanced outside of how big the metal head is, and they’re not even that ancient, the most conservative estimates range sometime between 4 or 5 thousand years old, younger than the Pyramids would have been back on Earth!”

The professor started smiling again, slipping into an earnest confidence as she said, “But I also told her that ah well, it’s not so impossible that it could have never happened, it’s a new field and we need to keep an open mind. I don’t want everyone to be set on this theory of our homeland being the origin point of some extinct humanlike spacefaring race. We don’t have the fossils, we don’t have records or proof of infrastructure, all we have to infer all of this history from is a damaged space station our ancestors explored what? 100-200 years ago? And one temple complex in another star system entirely.”

Her eyes dart at someone to the side, and I catch a brief glimpse of a stagehand’s… hand moving away from a watch, “But what we do have is very real, very old, and very humanoid, and I think one thing you got right Ms Ziegler is that the MS movement is very preoccupied with seeing history as propaganda right? That all history is in some way. And so what I want to propagandize is that these artifacts are real, this planet was inhabited before we colonized it, and it’s people had a history that’s no less important to study and remember and consider than our vaunted Earth’s what? 10-12K years we can remember that led up to us being here in the ruins of someone else’s home. Thank you.”

There is a round of deafening applause and despite the apparent time limit the mic gets passed on to at least seven more people before the Q&A session ends.

I wish I could die.