human
Why don't people pay any attention to me?
gpt
Eh? What's that you say?
human
I come from the planet, Gfun. I thought that as an interplanetary visitor I would be received with tremendous enthusiasm. Instead I find myself disregarded.
gpt
I recollect that back in the old days--
human
Never mind that. Why don't people pay any attention to me?
gpt
Why should they?
human
That is no answer!
gpt
But it is, sir, said the old gentleman with dignity.
human
They don't find you out of the ordinary. Why pay attention to you?
gpt
You mean that you are accustomed to visitors from space?
human
No, sir, I mean nothing of the kind. What I do mean is that we are by now thoroughly accustomed to the idea of you. I remember--
gpt
Never mind what you remember!
human
When I was a child, stories about visitors from Mars or Venus were already trite and stereotyped. What could a visitor do? What might a visitor look like? All the possible answers had already been given, and we were familiar with every one of them. We imagined visitors with tentacles and without, with a thousand legs and no legs, with five heads and seven feet, and eighteen stomachs. We imagined visitors who were plants, or electrical impulses, or viruses, or energy-creatures. They had the power to read minds, to move objects telekinetically and to travel through impossible dimensions. Their space ships were of all kinds, and they could race along with many times the speed of light or crawl with the speed of molasses. I do not know, sir, in which category you fall--whether you are animal, vegetable, mineral, or electrical--but I know that there is nothing new about you.
gpt
But you are familiar merely with the ideas. I am a _real_ visitor!
human
Young man, I am a hundred and ten years old, and the idea of you was already ancient when I was eight. I remember reading about you in a comic book. You are not the first visitor who has pretended to be real. There were hundreds before you. I have seen press agent stunts by the dozen, and advertising pictures by the hundreds about Mars, about Venus, about the Moon, about visitors from interstellar space. Your pretended colleagues have walked the streets of innumerable cities, until now we are weary of the entire tribe of you. And you yourself, sir, if you will pardon the expression, you are an anticlimax.
gpt
Your race must be insane, protested Xhanph.
human
For all you know I may come with great gifts which I wish to confer upon you.
gpt
We have been fooled before. And in view of the fact, as I have reminded you, that time is money, we do not wish to bankrupt ourselves by investigating.
human
But suppose I'm here to harm you!
gpt
If your race is capable of it, we can hardly stop you, so it is no use trying. If incapable, you are wasting your efforts.
human
This is insanity, genuine racial insanity!
gpt
You repeat yourself. The fact is, we have become blasé, said the old man.
human
Thanks to the efforts of our science fiction writers, we have experienced in imagination all there is to experience in interplanetary contact, and the genuine article can be only a disappointment. I am reminded of an incident that occurred when Gerald Crombie, who was City Councilman at the time, ordered a twenty-five inch stereo set....