12, Life Hacks for a Little Alien

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T IME PASSES GLOOPILY. THE Earth spins on its axis while it loops around the Sun. A variety of plants flourish. A variety of plants die. Gardeners dig. Leaders make tough decisions. Trains arrive late or not at all. Some people lose faith, others lose heart, still others lose hope. Babies are born furious. Old folks die with a sense of impending doom.

In other words, it’s three in the morning, a few years later. You are older and wiser, sitting on the rug on the carpet in the living room. You can’t sleep. Suffering as you do from a pesky ailment known as insomnia, you often can’t.

It’s funny you have insomnia. And by funny, I mean strange. Because what on earth keeps you awake at night? What have you got to worry about? You don’t have enough experience to have regrets. You don’t have a job or kids or a mortgage. You don’t have a divorce or debt or a marriage. You’re a child. After another stint of homeschooling, you’re a student of mainstream education once more – attending your latest school Monday to Friday, mostly without issues. You have nothing to worry about. Because you have nothing to worry about, you are supposed to sleep – if not like a baby – then at least like someone who is still pretty young.

Or at least that’s what your auntie says when your mum tells her over the phone that you have been up all night again, pacing the house, watching TV, eventually falling asleep in front of it. ‘Not normal’ is the phrase she uses. ‘It’s not normal that she’s doing this.’

It’s normal to you, though. From around nine p.m., you lie sleepy yet sleepless till, at midnight, you accept defeat – trudge downstairs to while away the night-time hours in front of the TV. Sometimes, you fall asleep in front of its blue and fuzzy glow. Tonight, however, you have remained decidedly awake.

On the TV, a documentary starts to play. Initially, you have no interest in the fuzzy grey people speaking on the fuzzy grey screen, and you scarcely pay attention as you skim the top of the rug with the palm of your right hand one way, then the other way, then the other. You do this over and over. The rug is fuzzy and nice, and repetitive movement helps you relax, think, focus, be at one with the world, or at least not rage against it.

In the documentary on the TV, a woman with crooked teeth is talking to someone the camera doesn’t let you see. Perhaps, much like you, she doesn’t much like making eye contact. Or perhaps she is lost in thought as she speaks about books but also the past. Behind this woman are books. She is also wearing glasses. This is how you know the woman is smart because, in TV land, only smart people sit in front of books while wearing glasses.

In the documentary on the TV, the woman is speaking about something called Beinecke MS 408. Beinecke MS 408 is something called a manuscript. i If you consult a dictionary, you will find that the word ‘manuscript’ has four or five meanings – one of which says something like ‘a book or document written before printing was invented’. Beinecke MS 408 goes with this meaning. It is basically a book, and is more commonly known as the Voynich Manuscript.

The Voynich Manuscript was discovered by a man called Wilfrid Voynich in 1912, but it is not from 1912. The Voynich Manuscript is in fact very old; carbon dating has told us as much, and also it just looks old. It looks like someone’s parent or guardian has dabbed homework with a cold teabag and then popped said homework in the oven – except it looks more convincing.

As it happens, it is kind of colourful too. There are pictures of green plants the shape of stars, of orange-brown roots the shape of snakes, of ghostly humans the shape of alchemists. But it’s only kind of colourful. To you and me, it looks as though the author ran out of colouring pencils and just had to make do with what he had left. But, back in the day, they didn’t really have colouring pencils. Back in the day, they didn’t really have much at all – not even teabags and not even picture books. Instead, they had smallpox and serious books – sacred texts, lists of taxes collected and owed, lists of children born and later led astray, lists of marriages between people doomed never to divorce.

Anyway. You’re sitting on the rug on the carpet, watching TV, and the woman on the TV is talking about her late husband and the Manuscript. Specifically, she is recounting the day her late husband said he had deciphered the Voynich Manuscript.

‘Now my husband John came up to me one day,’ the woman says, her voice a million cigarettes deep, ‘he came up to me and he said to me, Margaret, I must tell you something, and I said, what is it, John, and then he said, the Voynich Manuscript, darling, I think it must be from another planet, it really doesn’t make sense, I do believe it is an alien endeavour.’

It’s after her alien comment that your interest is piqued. Piqued, you’re now paying attention. You inch closer to the TV.

‘And now of course I said, John, you must be working yourself too hard, you must be overtired. An alien endeavour? What rot. Of course, he was laughed right out of the room when he presented his findings to his university colleagues. Took to drink not long after and that was that, I’m afraid. Popped his clogs two weeks after his fortieth birthday. Most sad.’

The woman on the TV does not say ‘most sad’ convincingly. Instead, she says it in a way that makes her seem indifferent about the death of her husband.

The TV camera zooms into images of the Voynich Manuscript itself. It is a strange-looking thing. A picture-and-word book, it is full of alien plants, zodiac signs, and women, all accompanied by rows of text in an alien language. It looks lovely, brilliant, and also small – the hand of the person showing the camera the Manuscript is about as big as the Manuscript itself.

And then the shot of the Manuscript fizzles into a shot of the woman which then fizzles into the glass of whisky she is apparently holding. This is how the documentary maker tells the audience that this is a poignant moment. After this, the documentary maker presenter person appears in a quadrangle, wearing a long coat. He walks seriously towards the camera.

‘Perhaps John was right,’ the documentary maker presenter person says, his feet clipping against the paving stones. ‘Perhaps aliens did write the Voynich Manuscript. Or perhaps John was mad as a hatter. We don’t know. His knowledge was lost to ridicule, his mind to alcoholism, his notes to a fire. Whatever its history, the secrets of the Manuscript remain unknown.’

The screen goes dark and the credits roll. Over the credits, a man with a Scottish accent explains that the next programme will be about golf. You turn off the TV, the noise of the documentary’s closing lines lingering. You are currently having many thoughts – in your brain, the cogs are whirring around – but you are mostly just having feelings. Until now, you didn’t realise that aliens existed, at least not for real. Until now, you didn’t realise they had their own language.

To you, it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense because sometimes you feel like your language isn’t your language. Other people say things and you don’t know what they mean. Other people do things and you don’t know what they mean either. There is a disconnect, something profoundly wrong. You feel this strongly, feel it in your bones.

You go to the kitchen, get yourself a mug of milk, and trudge your bare feet up the carpeted stairs. You go to bed, tuck yourself in. Maybe you are not alone in the universe after all. Maybe you are just alone on Planet Earth. With this comforting thought, you fall into a deep, restorative sleep. The sleep is good for you. It helps you grow.

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