It
was not, as has sometimes been reported, a ball or a sphere. Balls and
spheres occupy three dimensions (four if you count duration). Dots,
on the other hand, only have height and width, without depth. When
viewed from the side, a dot will disappear, while a sphere will look
exactly the same. In fact, the only times a dot will look truly round
is when it is viewed directly from the front or back. A cunning dot
may very well pass itself off as a ball by turning itself so that it
always faces the viewer, creating the illusion of depth. But even the
most cunning of dots could not deceive two or more observers standing
in different locations.
Nor
was it an eye. While its blue color could easily remind one of the
eyes of a long-lost love, there was no black spot in the middle. And
while the manner in which it avoided obstacles and assaults indicated
that it did have some kind of sensory apparatus, its lack of depth
(see above paragraph) meant that lens-style refraction was simply out
of the question. What most people don’t realize is that the eye is
far more complex than it seems when it stares out from the socket of a
skull. But so quiet and unassuming is the eye as it goes about its
miraculous work, people start thinking that any old round surface
could be an eye. This is simply not the case, as any good
ophthalmologist will tell you.
While
a great deal has been written about the dot, most of it has been
speculative in nature, or simply asinine (for example, Peter Vennum’s
ridiculous essay “The Blue Dot: Heralding the End of
Humanity?”). Here are the absolute facts that can be discerned
without a doubt:
1.
When Mr. Johnson got on the crowded bus on 8th Street, he
was alone.
2.
When Mr. Johnson got off the crowded bus on 27th Street,
there was a blue dot about the size of a dessert plate hovering eight
or nine inches up and away from his left shoulder.
Scientists
questioned the thirty or so people who were on the bus when the dot
must have appeared, and came to the firm conclusion that people riding
on buses don’t look at each other.
Since
it was the left shoulder to which the dot seemed oriented, many people
jumped to the conclusion that it was (literally and figuratively) a
sinister apparition. Amongst the hardships Mr. Johnson faced over the
next few hours was the occasional grain of salt in his eye–thrown
by true believers. Of course, since the salt was almost always thrown
from the left side of Mr. Johnson, and since people
were throwing at a dot and not a sphere, almost all of the salt struck Mr.
Johnson’s head (which was more or less a sphere). It is very
hard to hit a dot in the side (see first paragraph). Any good
ophthalmologist will tell you not to get grains of salt in your eye
as it can be a very painful experience.
Cultural
theorists have pointed to this odd salt-throwing behavior, and argued
that it illustrates the relativity of experience and knowledge. Had
the dot appeared in a culture where rocks or human waste were seen as
effective evil repelling agents, Mr. Johnson could have been even
worse off than he was.
Another
interesting aspect of the dot was that it could not be captured on any
kind of recording medium. In the early minutes of the event, before
this unique capability was noticed, news agencies across the country
were broadcasting what could very well be the least interesting
footage ever televised: a crowd of people gasping and pointing at an
empty space a few inches away from the head of a confused and
frightened but ordinary-looking man. The media tried every possible
technology to seize the dot’s image, but nothing worked. Digital,
film, video–all showed nothing but air. In desperation, one
channel hired a courtroom sketch artist and flew him to the site.
Everyone agreed that the resulting drawing made Mr. Johnson look very
guilty indeed.
As
a result, only people who actually saw the dot were able to describe
it. Luckily, since less than two thousand people caught a glimpse of
it, and less than three hundred got a good long look at it,
there were mere tens of thousands of completely different eyewitness
versions of its qualities, size, and mannerisms. One person (who
received extensive attention from the media) claimed that when you
looked at the dot, you could see your true self. Pundits commented
that any decent mirror should have the same effect. Another person
claimed that looking at the dot caused him to black out for a few
hours, only to wake up miles away lying in the gutter at the side of
the road. Blood testing established that this had actually been caused
by a formidable amount of rum. A third person told everyone around her
that she couldn’t even see the dot, but this was because, although
she was only a few meters away from Mr. Johnson, she had never taken
her eyes away from the screen on her digital camera. Many people
credited/blamed the dot for their feelings of awe, blindness, closure,
displeasure, emptiness, fraternity, godliness, hatred, insanity,
jubilation, kindness, love, madness, nihilism, orgasm, pain,
queasiness, rapaciousness, sadness, tension, unhappiness, vacuousness,
weariness, xenophobia, youth, and zeitgeist. Others argued that this
was simply the human condition, and that people would have had those
feelings anyway.
Whatever
they were experiencing, it cannot be denied that the dot inspired
certain actions in its audience. The most common were attempts to
catch or strike the dot. As mentioned earlier, the ease with which the
dot avoided such efforts indicated that it was aware of its physical
surroundings, and also that it had an interest in not being caught or
struck. In fact, so adept was the dot that to many it seemed that not
only was it sensing and reacting to the physical world around it, but
it was predicting and anticipating. This idea was supported by the way
that the dot would not react at all to feints, or to blows that would
have missed.
Eventually,
people abandoned using their hands, and began throwing sticks and
rocks. These enterprising individuals had no more success than their
salt-throwing brethren at hitting their target, but they did change
Mr. Johnson’s attitude towards his mob. While he encouraged, and
even took part in earlier grabbing/striking endeavors, it took very
few blows from poorly-aimed rocks to disenchant him with this new
offensive. When a bullet narrowly missed his ear, his disenchantment
turned very quickly to terror, and he fled the crowd (dot in tow). The
crowd mindlessly (the only way crowds do anything) took chase, and
pursued Mr. Johnson down the street. The only person who did not do so
was one Debra Leitch, who remained at the bus stop (the bullet that
had narrowly missed Mr. Johnson’s ear had found its way into Ms.
Leitch’s head, where it stopped its flight. When it was retrieved,
it turned out to be from the pistol of one of the police officers who
were attempting to control the crowd. The officer was reprimanded).
Just
as a crowd of fifty or sixty people is not as intelligent as the
equivalent number of people on their own, so too a crowd is not as
fast as its individual components should be. A running crowd trips
itself, steps on its own heels, tries to get ahead of itself, and
knocks itself down. Had they been able to catch up to Mr. Johnson, it
seems very likely they would have beaten him to death. (When a mob
is chasing someone, and they catch up to him, there are very few other
possible finales.)
At
this point, there is little agreement as to where Mr. Johnson
went. Many people reported seeing him and the dot jump into a small,
unattended fishing boat and sail out to sea. One person said he saw
Mr. Johnson climb up into the dot and disappear. Another sobbed that
the dot had consumed him, leaving behind only one shoe (which she
clung to while telling her story). Others maintained that he got in a
cab and headed to the airport (it is unlikely that he boarded a plane
with a small floating blue dot as his carry-on, not in this age of
heightened airport security). There were rumors that he had been
captured by the authorities, and was being held by the state. More
than a dozen people came forward that day announcing that they were
Mr. Johnson. At one chaotic press conference, there were no less than
three Mr. Johnsons, and one of them had a blue helium balloon on a
string tied to his arm.
Several
religious leaders made statements concerning how appearances of blue
dots were foretold in their various books and scriptures, and all of
them quoted obscure passages out of context to prove their claims. Mr.
Johnson was considered a martyr by some, a false prophet by others.
The Church of the Blue Dot was formed, and despite having many
self-contradictory tenets and bizarre rituals it soon had a large
following.
As
of this writing, there has been no sign of Mr. Johnson, and there have
been no reappearances of floating dots of any size or color. The bus
stop on 27th street where the event took place is now
considered to be holy land (the largest and original Church of the
Blue Dot is one block west, in a building shaped like a large purple
sphere. A dirty wingtip that is claimed to be Mr. Johnson’s
authentic shoe is kept there behind bullet-proof glass. At last count,
there were over ninety other such authentic shoes in other locations).
Most
reputable scientists now dismiss the entire affair as a mass
hallucination. Some of the bolder scientists dismiss Mr. Johnson
himself as an hallucination, despite the countless pictures that exist
of people pointing to the empty space just over his left shoulder. And
a handful of the boldest scientists entertain the idea that
they themselves may be no more than hallucinations.
© 2005 Nathan Radke
