PART THREE OF A FIVE-PART STORY
PART THREE
The excitement of this strange arrival was too much for Jane. She immediately went into labor. She reminded Dick of all their lessons from their Lamaze classes. He immediately shoved Marilyn and Marlon off the bed, ignored the little green figures, and began to coach Jane in her breathing exercises.
Since the little green figures, sex yet to be determined, gave birth through their nostrils, they were awestruck to see how humans delivered babies.
“Look at that!” one said.
Another responded, “Can we do that?”
They kept bending each other over and looking to see if there was an orifice through which they could birth little green figures. Not seeing how this was physically possible, they conferred with each other.
“It’s a miracle,” they declared as they admired the new-born child.
Both Dick and Jane believed that the birth of their first child was indeed a miracle, and they explained that their child was a blessing from God.
“God!” said one of the green figures. “We rejected such myths centuries ago. All things have to be measureable and quantifiable to be real.”
“Still,” said another, “it is a scientific fact that in all our travels throughout the universe, we have never seen anything as wonderful as the birth of a baby, especially one that comes from that part of the anatomy. It seems to make logical sense that there must be a designer behind this universe.”
“Can you tell us more about this God?” one of them asked Jane.
“It’s all in that Bible over there. Marlon, could you get that Bible for them to read?”
“Uh, where’s it at?”
“It’s over there, underneath that poster that says, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’”
Marlon swore that he hadn’t seen the sign before but offered to get the Bible for the little green figures, sex yet to be determined.
Since the little green figures read with lightning-like speed, they read the whole Bible in a nanosecond. They turned to Marilyn. “Have you read this astounding book?”
“Well, I haven’t read it,” she admitted, “but I saw the movie, and I thought the acting was terrible.”
The little green figures conferred and announced, “We have found this book so inspiring that we have decided to convert to the religious faith of this planet. As a first step, we will immediately count the ribs of every member of our crew, including those in the mothership that circles the earth, to determine who is male and who is female.”
“There is more to faith than just knowing who is male and female,” said Jane.
“OK, tell us more about the faith of this planet that comes from this wonderful book.”
“That might be a problem,” said Dick.
“Why?” asked the lead green figure, who had just discovered that she was female. “Do you discriminate against beings that have six arms? Aren’t you supposed to love your neighbor as yourself? Clearly we come from a neighboring solar system.”
“It’s not that,” Dick explained. “It is just that there is no one faith on this planet. There are hundreds of them, and even the major ones have divided into thousands of sects.”
“We can help them,” said one of the green figures. “We have learned how to count ribs and we can tell them what type of sex they are.”
“Not s-e-x. It’s s-e-c-t-s,” explained Marilyn. “If it were s-e-x, I could have helped them out a long time ago.”
