The Mantra From Outer Space

In order for something to survive the plummet into the earth’s atmosphere, it must be as deceptive as a spy and as strong as an ox. The atmosphere doesn’t like foreign invaders. This is why the atmosphere succeeds in dumping an incendiary substance all over those wayward asteroids and setting them ablaze. It triumphs over all the space communists disguised as interstellar debris, or at least this is how the legend goes.

Frequencies sent from the Galactic Center have the best way of breaking into the earthly vault (without the aid of guns). The satellites pick them up in the ionosphere, and they’re decoded by scientists wearing thick, haughty glasses. Most of the frequencies resemble garbled psychobabble, but every once in a while, when the mood is right and the instruments are impedance free, something genuinely unique is discovered.

One chilly November afternoon, while all the scientists were growing moustaches in support of prostate cancer research, the Mantra broke into the decoding equipment like some kind of aural interloper at a party of sterilized sound. “Moo-Rack-Ra-Moo-Rack-Ra-Rack…My Cosmic Plate Is Never In Lack.” It sounded silly, primitive, puerile, outlandish, and ridiculous. Nonetheless, it was the musical message the Galactic Center wanted to share with the denizens of earth and maybe even uranus.

“Scientific Quackery” was the first journal to publish an article on the discovery of the Mantra. The populace guffawed and chortled, slapped their knees and the knees of kitties. The Mantra was parodied and ridiculed on Saturday Night Live. Kim Kardashian even liked to use it at the end of specious conversations with the plastic people of the entertainment industry.

Some say the asinine irrationality inherent in the Mantra itself caused it to fall from the vogue heights of celebrity stardom because A) it was asinine and B) it was irrational. It lacked that hipster edge that would give it that everlasting shine. Underground it went. It went below ant colonies, and mantles, and crusts, and subtelluric stalagmites.

Maybe the Mantra will climb to the surface again? Maybe more mantras will be decoded by the moustache-sportin’ men of high science? Maybe the Galactic Center will become silent, and grow wise in that silence?

No one knows what is in store for this earthly vault. No one.