[bilal]

Aliens after all. Gods and prophets. Ancient astronauts. What a revelation. Conjectured extraterrestrial visitors to Earth in its distant past. Human beings are either the descendants or creations of aliens who landed on Earth millennia ago, and much of our culture was given to us by extraterrestrial visitors in the time of pre-history.

What a revelation, thought Mukhtar of Sector 687. What would the ancient religionists think. Or would have thought. This moment had it come five hundred years ago, the vanishing of religion would not have required the Philosopher Kings. The Kings under which all sectors of the world lived.

Mukhtar was taught about the end of religion at the communal school he was sent to by his test-tube parents in Sector 969. It was a one thousand-fifty-year process. But the philosopher kings finally rid the world of religion. However, even they didn’t know a lot about how to exactly react to the revelation. At least that’s what Mukhtar thought. And hoped.

But he was still interested in the meaning of his name. And its historical context. It meant nothing, he was always told. Just an ancient name. But why did he always felt like an anachronism? An artifact which appeared out of place archaeologically or geologically.

Did he not belong to this day and age? Was he lifted from a past and put here by aliens? And if so, why would the aliens do that?

Police State. Yes, Police State, he thought. He had read this expression somewhere. Where? And why was he usually cautioned by his parents about its usage? He asked, but was never told. Just to be be careful. The Philosopher Kings don’t appreciate such old-hat, worn out nonsense.

Thus Mukhrar did wonder: Was a Police State something bad. Bad enough to make the Philosopher Kings think that their ways embodied this badness? Or at least a part of it?

Whatever, the news about the revelation kept pouring in through the sonic receptors inbred in the population’s inner ears. There was talk, discussion, Q&A sessions about an alien called Merlin by the ancients experiencing time backwards and helping build the Star Blocks of Sector 996 in West Timberlands. Star Blocks were once called Stonehenge by the ancients. Then there was also talk, discussion, Q&A sessions about how aliens helped ancient prophets like one called Muhammad to ascent to giant sky stations which were thought be and curiously called “heaven,” returning before a glass knocked over had spilt its contents.

The philosopher kings had gotten rid of religion because it was inherently evil and violent. This was what Mukhrar was always taught. And that any assertions, and the beliefs arising thereof, must be justified without faith. He believed it. The people believed it. But why, he thought, so many ancients still insisted on having a theistic belief?

And would the aliens return? Or were the Philosopher Kings put there by the same aliens? If so, then did the aliens believe they were wrong to help the ancients in ways they did and that to rectify the mistakes, put the Philosopher Kings? And more so, maybe the Philosopher Kings were aliens as well!

Because usually people were like Mukhar. Quietly doubting what they were taught in logic, science, philosophy and the arts and instead having a silent but strong yearning for a belief in something they could not understand or comprehend but believe in nonetheless.

If only he could use one of those few micro-wormholes the grand science masters were perfecting in the bent-gravitational labs around Sector 51 in Plot-Dust. He would like to go back at least two thousand years from now. To live in a world where there was belief in Gods and prophets.

But Mukhar’s father thought this to be a naïve yearning. You wont survive there for more than an hour, he used to tell him. There was always great bloodshed, death, irrationalism and silly behavior among the believers, he told him. And anyway, if the Philosopher Kings ever knew about certain people’s yearnings in this regard, they would not be happy. They’ll have them frozen in the dreaded Cold Logic Areas.

Worried about his son’s yearnings and troublesome questions, Mukhtar’s father had requested one of his own teachers, Mater Ching-Fu, at the Grandfather Paradox University of Rational Time Travel Theories & Possibilities, to spend some time talking to his son. The University was one of the oldest, built soon after the last Post-Clergy-Turmoil some five hundred years ago. Its faculty and students weren’t always on the Philosopher Kings’ invitation and special audience lists. So he was safe to assume Master Ching-Fu wouldn’t write a Caution Thesis on Mukhtar for the Sector Philosophy Vanguards.

Master Ching-Fu began his specially designated lecture to young, troubled Mukhtar …

“No objects have an intrinsic characteristic of truth. Therefore everything that we perceive to be true can only be mere individual or social constructions, or the meanings that we attach to them. Therefore the world is a social construct with no objective truth.”

Mukhtar was awestruck. Master Ching-Fu was not using the thousand-year-old Philosopher Kings’ reasoning about rationalism to curb Mukhtar’s yearnings for an unseen, unexplicable God who trancedents both space and time. And neither, like most of the university’s teachers and students, was he indulging in forbidden thoughts of recreating such a God. He was saying something totally new. Master Ching-Fu carried on:

"There is no truth. This statement at the very first glance is self-contradictory. It propounds that there is no truth. But for this to be true, the doctrine itself would have to be false. Therefore the doctrine is claiming simultaneously that there is no truth, while at the same time that it, itself, is true. How’s this for a belief?”

But Mukhtar was suspecious. Is this the Sector Philosophy Vanguards new way to tackle Ancient Cognitive Allergies? And was Master Ching-Fu actually a Sector Philosophy Vanguard? And worse, was his father too?
“Tell me,” said Master Ching-Fu, if given a choice, what religion would you like to choose for yourself if managing to travel back two
thousand years in one of those micro-wormholes?”

“I’m not sure. Of whatever little I know or have been taught of them, they all sound the same. I just want to experience the …err…the silly beliefs and rituals that were associated with them.” Said Mukhtar.

“So you think ancient astronauts were silly?” Asked Master Ching-Fu.

“The religionists were silly.” Said Mukhtar. “You know that. The Philosopher Kings have always said how violent and silly they were.”
Master Ching-Fu smiled: “Two thousand years down many would be saying the same about the great Philosopher Kings.”

“But I’m not, I’m not!” Said Mukhtar, almost panicking.
“I know you’re not saying this,” said Master Cing-Fu. “I am!”
He told Mukhtar how excited he was to hear about the revelation.
“So,” Mukhtar wondered. “Maybe Master Ching-Fu is an alie