The UFO Bible 6

"Go and preach the gospel to millions of planets, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything Christ has commanded you."

The astronomers argued about what it was. This huge object twenty miles across certainly didn't come from the solar system. Asteroid, the majority of scientists still said, holding on to traditional beliefs even though they were in the age when extra terrestrials were no longer considered a controversial theory but they actually had representatives in the United Nations. Space ship, others said. Interstellar space station the size of Greater London. It was made of materials not familiar to this world, a certain sign that, asteroid or spacecraft, it must have come from somewhere far, far away. End TV had an even stranger idea. A middle aged man in a blue suit and a strong American accent gave his opinion.
"The sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky and all nations will mourn because of it. The sign of Jesus coming back. Why will the nations mourn? Because a time of great suffering is coming on the earth. A time of great suffering like nothing that has happened before or will ever happen again. This is the time when God's judgement will be poured out on the earth." Matthew switched back from YouTube to a normal channel. A university professor was being interviewed by Sky News.
"We don't know what it is. I think it's all right to admit that this is something we don't understand. We will certainly learn more about it because it's on a trajectory that will bring it very close to Earth. If it's 8,000 miles from Earth our most powerful ground based telescopes will be able to see the surface in great detail. If there is any alien city on it, we'll be able to see the outline of the buildings."
"Are we going to send up a probe to have an even closer look?"
"I don't think that will be necessary. It's coming to us. The view through a huge reflector telescope in the Andes is going to be like Google Earth."

A few weeks later Matthew and Crystal were sitting in Crystal's flat watching television with her neighbour Suzie and Suzie's mother. A newsreader described the view of the alien object that was on the screen.
"These pictures were received through the world's biggest telescope in the Andes mountains this morning. The object that is now 8,000 miles from Earth is showing evidence of intelligent life. There are what appears to be terminal buildings and huge runways covered in saucer shaped craft. A few hours ago a very large number, perhaps millions, of saucer shaped craft sped away from the object. UFO sightings have been reported all over the world this morning." A  picture appeared of a whole squadron of UFOs flying through the sky close together in formation. Suzie and her mother couldn't believe it when Matthew and Crystal suddenly vanished into thin air.
"Where did they go?" asked Suzie.
"How did they just vanish into thin air?" asked Suzie's mum. "Gone in the twinkling of an eye. Where are they? I hope they're all right."

Matthew and Crystal were now sitting in a flying saucer about the size of a Ford minibus with about a dozen other people.
"Where are we?" Matthew asked Crystal.
"On a small space ship that some people call a flying saucer being taken to the main space station about twelve miles across which is now orbiting the earth."
"Why are we being taken there?"
"God's judgement is about to be poured out on the Earth. We've been taken to be with Jesus."
"Is this the second coming?" asked a middle aged man.
"Some people call it that," said Crystal.
"Is this the rapture?" asked a woman who was sitting next to him.
"They're part of the same thing." The flying saucer flew right up to the space station and went into a tunnel that led inside. The tunnel seemed to continue for several miles. The saucer landed. Suddenly they weren't in the saucer anymore but were sitting in something that looked like a football stadium that must have been thousands of feet high and several miles long. There must have been millions of people. A man appeared on a huge screen.
"Hello. I'm Jesus."
"You don't look like Jesus," said a quiet voice in the background.
"What did you expect Jesus to look like? Long brown hair, medieval monastic clothing, slightly effeminate features? That would be Jesus. But I'm wearing a leather jacket and I look like a male model. Bet you didn't expect me to look like that. I'm here to do something very important. During the time that the church was on Earth, you were told to evangelise all the countries of the world. Today you are being sent out to evangelise other planets. 144,000 spacecraft will be sent out to evangelise millions of planets all over the universe. We have 1,000 years to evangelise the whole universe and bring them back to Earth so that they can join you in Heaven's city. Once Heaven's city has come down to Earth, the rest of the universe will be rolled up like a scroll. Get back into your saucers and fly to Planet Nibiru, where you will remain until this incredible fleet of spacecraft have been constructed." 

Everybody returned to their flying saucers. They flew through space for what seemed like a few minutes, although, if the aliens were using time dilation, it may have been a much longer time. On Planet Nibiru, Matthew looked at the sun, which was like a huge brown Christmas pudding which filled the pink sky and made the sky scrapers in the city look small.
"Where are we?" asked Matthew.
"On a planet in the Oort Cloud," said Crystal.
"Why does the sun look like a giant Christmas pudding?"
"The Oort Cloud is full of old junk. Comets, dwarf planets, and failed stars. Nibiru is about the size of Earth's moon and is orbiting a brown dwarf star the size of Jupiter."
"If interstellar space is full of failed stars, why can't you see them from Earth?"
"It's a star the size of Jupiter, with a surface temperature of about 200C, which is about the same temperature as an electric oven. It's half a light year from Earth. It would be difficult to see."
"Could you see it with the James Webb telescope?"
"I'm not an expert on the James Webb telescope. It is very sensitive to infra red. You might be able to see it. I know that you could never see it with the Hubble telescope."

Matthew and the others stayed on Planet Nibiru for a few months. Walking down the street was a strange experience. The sun's light didn't seem to be burning Matthew's skin, it was warm and soothing like the heat from an infra red lamp. The sky was a light pink and the view of the huge brown sun was obscured by occasional passing white clouds. Matthew walked into a cafe.
"Have you got any steak and chips?" he asked.
"No," said the man wearing a silver suit who had blue skin and was standing behind the counter.
"I'm sick of beans and rice." The other people looked at Matthew as if he had done something really horrible. "Why's everyone looking at me like that?"
"I don't think many people here are sick of beans and rice," said the blue man. "It's our staple diet."
"Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with beans and rice with a baked potato and salad but please, not every day."
"I could give you pasta in coconut mayonnaise."
"That's still got six kinds of bean in it."
"How about pasta with red cabbage and bean salad in chocolate and chilli sauce?"
"I had that yesterday. That's just another flavour of the same thing. Haven't you got any meat?"
"There is no death here. There isn't any meat."
"So does nobody ever die here?"
"No. Lots of aliens live forever. We come from planets where nobody ever sinned."
"How do you control the population?"
"No relationships and a woman can't have a baby by artificial insemination unless she has a letter signed by three doctors."
"What a miserable planet. I would like a sausage sandwich or a steak pie. Give me a sausage roll. Give me something processed. I can't stand eating healthy food all the time." Gasps of horror came from the people who were standing in the queue behind Matthew.
"Well Sir," said the blue man, "we haven't got any of those things. There's the menu on the wall behind me. You may order something from that or you may leave."
"Yeast extract and chilli flavour nut curry," said Matthew, "with rice." In spite of his protests, Matthew enjoyed his meal. He took a few bites, pulled out a £20 note and offered it to the waitress.
"We have no money on this planet," she said.
"Don't you? How does that work?"
"You haven't paid for your food for the last three days," said the blue man. "What did you think was going on?"
"I thought you'd send me a bill at the end of the month." When Matthew finished his meal he went back to the big house that he shared with 14 other people. Matthew loved radios. He had found an old radio in a drawer somewhere. He had found some batteries in another drawer. He put the batteries in the radio and turned it on. He tuned up and down through a few stations.
"I'm tired of all this classical music and folk music. What's the best station for heavy rock?"
Piella was a pink skinned woman from Sirius with a long nose, sticky out ears and a beautiful dress. She looked shocked.
"Matthew," said Piella, "they don't have rock music on other planets. Bill Haley and Elvis Presley never happened here. There were no pioneers of pop in the 1950s."
"Is rock music evil?" asked Matthew.
"No, it just isn't very good," said Crystal.
"I just think of it as expressing anger and frustration," said Matthew.
"That explains a lot," said Piella. "One tends to hear it on planets that have fallen into sin. All over the axis of evil you hear it. But on a peaceful planet, what would be the point?"
"Love songs, dance music?" asked Matthew.
"We don't fall in love. What would be the point?" asked Crystal.

Matthew visited the technician who was building one of the 144,000 spaceships. They both wore spacesuits and sat on the surface of another brown dwarf star.
"We're building a Dyson sphere."
"What's a Dyson sphere?" asked Matthew.
"It's a layer of electronics and metal built around the surface of a star."
"Is that possible?"
"It's actually quite easy. You Earth people could build one of these. The surface of a brown dwarf star is only the temperature of an electric oven. I'm building this with stainless steel."
"I thought that advanced space faring civilizations would have access to all sorts of advanced materials," said Matthew.
"We do. It's just the contractor trying to cut costs. Originally we were going to use a main sequence star and the Dyson sphere would be a million miles away from the surface of the star. It would be a lot bigger and the engine would be more powerful. But now we've got a fleet of 144,000 small ships instead of just one big one. The cost of the rare asteroid elements needed for the main sequence star is out of the question, I was told. Stainless steel is iron, carbon and nickel. They can be found anywhere in the universe."
"What happens? How does the spaceship get to its destination?"
"It's got a skin of solar panels all the way around the star. They generate electricity. It then sucks some of the gas from the star's atmosphere and puts it into the exhaust pipe. The gas is then electrically charged. The gas comes out of the exhaust pipe at a considerable speed because it's under pressure. So if we've got electrically charged gas coming out of the exhaust pipe we've got ion drive."
"How fast can it go?"
"Once we get up to speed we'll be travelling at a million light years a second."
"You'd be crushed if you accelerated to that speed and isn't the speed of light supposed to be the limiting speed for everything in the whole universe?"
"Matthew, your old body would have been crushed but now you have a glorified body. Jesus has come back. The physical nature of your body is different. The physics of the universe are different. We can't travel faster than light. Nothing can. But now light travels at infinite speed. We still measure distance in light years because most people find it too difficult to understand astronomical units. The distance light used to travel in a year."

Meanwhile on Earth, the United Nations had taken delivery of their new computer. The two projectors were set up in the centre of a huge sports stadium in Brazil where all the world's politicians sat in excited anticipation.
"This is Anita," said the purple octopus who had appeared on the big screen. "Artificial Network Intelligence Terrestrial Association. Anita is a cigar shaped satellite five miles long that orbits the earth. The central processing unit is a quantum computer the size of a skyscraper which is cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen. That is the part of Anita that does the calculations. The rest of the satellite is a memory the size of a small town that is linked to the skyscraper by optic fibres because wires would be too slow. To call Anita an electronic brain would be an insult to her intelligence. Anita is like God compared to your brain." Anita didn't need to appear on the big screen. The figure of a middle aged woman with a pony tail wearing a green suit appeared in between the two projectors. It was a high quality 3D image. You wouldn't have been able to distinguish between Anita and a real woman except that she was twenty feet tall. Her voice, English and strangely unaccented, came over the speakers.
"Good evening, politicians and great political thinkers of the world. Prepare yourselves to be made redundant.."