* There were personal qualities about me that created a higher probability that I would enjoy a mental partnership with an alien. The aliens knew this. It was a good bet. There weren’t runners up. It was only me. A few minutes before I was born, the aliens put all their eggs in my basket.
** After so many years of silence, I met with the group of aliens and learned what it will mean to accept this role, to fully awaken the alien mind sleeping in my brain. I have an opportunity to let it go, but I’ve decided to continue.
*** Looking back, I wonder what my life would be like if I hadn’t chosen this path, but I suppose everyone feels that way about major decisions. I’m glad that I chose this one. These years of preparation have been so interesting.
• •. •
For one whole day, on every newspaper, television, and computer screen, there is nothing else besides the following message:
Hello, sorry to interrupt everything, but first contact is coming. It’s going to change how we think about ourselves, our planet, and the universe in general. It’s going to be a substantial psychological jolt.
I was chosen somewhat at random from all the people on Earth many years ago to begin my training as a guide, a spokesperson, an ambassador to serve in this moment.
Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking from The White House in The United States.
It’s perfectly fine to consider this message like it’s just some mediocre science fiction, or a prank. In time, you will go back to review it, and be glad you had first read this when you were more relaxed.
What follows are some of the details on how it’s all going to happen.
Ready? Okay.
When I say “first contact” what I mean is intelligent life from another world wants to have a relationship with us, a relationship based on friendship, trust, sharing, and mutual survival. It will be the most significant singular event since the nova of our sun.
This is big news. Take a deep breath.
We are not alone in the universe. We are not alone. There are others, and these others want to know us.
Please, take another deep breath.
The reason I’m having you pause like this is that in order to be able to take in the next thing I’m about to say, everyone needs to take a moment to let this initial, outstanding and gigantic fact sink in: after millions of years of life, and hundreds of thousands of years of living in societies, and tens of thousands of years of advanced languages, and thousands of years of scientific development, and hundreds of years of living in an increasingly modern world of self-awareness, freewill, a capacity to learn, solve problems, and love, after all of that, after all of these years of doing it all alone, and not knowing if we had anyone else out there like us, there’s this new fact: we are not alone. WE ARE NOT ALONE.
Keep breathing.
• •. •
The next day, on every television and computer screen, including ones not plugged into a power source, a live video spontaneously began to play. The video showed an ordinary looking man standing behind a podium. This was Fezdak Clamchopbreath.
Hello everybody. I’m the designated spokesperson for The Alien Network.
I’m speaking to you from a familiar place, The White House in Washington, DC. I picked this place because everyone knows The White House, although not a lot of people know me.
Some of you are wondering how I’ve been able to do this, be simultaneously on nearly every form of electronic communication, and be inside the White House without credentials for the last few minutes without being interrupted or removed.
It isn’t magic. It’s just sophisticated technology, far more advanced than anything we’ve had on Earth before.
I have spent my adult life preparing for this moment, to be your ambassador to the group of aliens who are hoping to make first contact. I have been in regular communication with them.
I am not an alien. I am one of you.
And, I’m also from another planet. It’s complicated. Part of me was born here on Earth in 1973. My physical life started just like everyone (when I was born), but another part of my consciousness was delivered to my brain when I was an infant. Before reaching me, that consciousness belonged to an alien also named Fezdak Clamchopbreath. Upon transmission of that consciousness into my brain, on his home planet, the other Fezdak’s alien body died.
While I am very much a product of my mother and father, and a product of my upbringing and life experiences, I am also deeply infused with the personality and thoughts of the alien Fezdak Clamchopbreath, with whom I share my mind.
I don’t feel a separation between the two of us. There is no US. I simultaneously have recollection of my alien life before I was born, and my life on Earth. The other Fezdak was a philosopher, scientist, and an early pioneer of an alien Network. He lived a full life, a life of love and learning. I have too.
So, I am both from the Earth, and not. I am infused with the memories and attributes of a person from a faraway place, a person who was a great thinker, and with his help, and the long-distance help of his friends, I have prepared for the role that I am playing now.
One thing that should seem stunningly mysterious is that no one has removed me yet from The White House. I must admit, I am also surprised. I am trespassing. I have no permit to be here, and I feel a little guilty about the little ‘trick’ that has allowed this to happen, but I hope in time I will be forgiven, and not face consequences for the felony that I admit I am committing.
With assistance from some alien technology, I created a psychic turbulence that inspired every occupant of The White House to have a desire to go outside. This included the people in charge of guarding this historic place. Once everyone was out, I locked all the doors. The people who were tricked into leaving are watching this in the same manner that you are, on one of several screens just outside.
It’s my hope that I can reach the end of this talk, that those charged with the protection of U.S. historic properties and global communications systems will not be so upset about this that we can’t mend fences, and more importantly, will see how necessary this all was in order to make my important statement. I’ll use the Boston Tea Party as an example of breaking a law for the sake of making an important statement. In this case, at least I’m not ruining good tea or polluting an aquatic environment.
How about I talk about who the aliens are? Well, first, I should talk about who WE on Earth are. Life on Earth has evolved to a point where we have one species (us) that has developed tools, language, and technology that allow for greater survival, understanding of the world, and some limited exploration of the greater universe.
There are currently twenty-two known worlds where this has also happened. Those worlds have formed a group. This groups calls themselves The Network. The Earth is the twenty-third planet to be identified.
There’s a great deal that the alien worlds have in common with the Earth. There’s an uncanny similarity to the pattern of evolution. There’s a common modern political history that goes from slavery to war to climate change. The rate of evolution on all the known planets has been constant, what is variable is its starting point. That’s set by the date of the nova of the central star, however, in every case, an evolutionary clock runs predictably. After 4.6 billion years, if there’s a planet in the Goldilocks zone, there are people just like us living on it.
How did this Network begin? Our first planet was Buelivia. The star around which it orbits was born five billion years ago. It’s possible there are older life-sustaining planets in the universe, but we haven’t encountered an older one.
Humans on Earth and the people on the other twenty-two planets have about as much different from each other physiologically, anatomically, and practically as any two humans on Earth. That’s not to say that there isn’t tremendous diversity. After all, no two people are ever quite the same. This is as true here on Earth between any two people as it is between any two aliens from two different planets.
It’s possible one day we’ll find intelligent life that’s radically different, insect-like beings or other wild creations of science-fiction. So far, we haven’t.
What’s next? Let’s talk about the stones. Everyone is about to get a small smooth rock. We picked a rock because it’s familiar. Of course, it’s not a rock. It’s a small durable computer. If you decide you don’t want yours, you can toss it into any pond, lake, or ocean without concern for pollution. It’s biodegradable. If you discard or lose your rock, you can also get it back by saying the phrase “rock-rock-rock” and it will come back. It will work for one hundred years.
The stones function like an advanced version of a smart phone. These will help you get answers and make sense of things. The stones will answer questions and display information concerning The Network, its inhabitants, history, and anything else you might want to know about The Network or the known universe.
Each stone is paired with a buddy alien from The Network. Your buddy is unique to you. No one has more than one. No alien is assigned more than one person from the Earth.
There’s plenty of time to think about this. We have several weeks before the first ships would reach our solar system. The ships would join the Earth’s orbit revolving around the sun at a safe distance, at one of the La Grange points.
The ships aren’t really ships, but manufactured terra-formed planets that have the capacity to move through space. They are large, a few times larger than the Earth. These planet-ships have an atmosphere and an environment very similar to our own. Passengers on the ships don’t feel like they are on a ship, or that they are moving through space.
Each ship travels with a companion generator, a small portable star around which it revolves when away from a natural one. This creates day and night, tides, and seasons. On the planet-ships there are rivers, lakes, mountains, deserts, forests, oceans, and weather. There are animals, plants, fungi, and all manner of life. The planet-ships are sustained biospheres.
Just as it is nearly impossible to visit every part of the Earth, it is nearly impossible to visit every part of a planet-ship, although one can try (and some do). There are countless cities, natural wonders, and wilderness areas.
When the first planet-ships from The Network arrive, they will be bringing several empty ones. These are ships that are for our use and will allow for our first delegations to travel to Network planets and explore the universe. There will be room for many millions of passengers. You may consider being one of them.
Network aliens will assist as needed with implementing new technology and help with our ongoing participation in The Network.
The first thing you’ll see on your rock is a letter from the aliens. I’ll be back here in a week to follow up. Thank you all for listening to me. I’m looking forward to what comes next.
• •. •
Smooth stones, dark grey river rocks appear out of thin air. A note is projected in the space just above them.
Dear Human Person of Earth,
Given your planet’s history with violence, slavery, and persecution, we understand how suspicious you are going to feel. The thing is, if we wanted to hurt you, or conquer you, I suppose we just would, and there wouldn’t be a letter like this.
Let us assure you, our weapons are incredible. To us, your own weapons are like cotton balls and a handful of taffy. We have millions of years of evolution on you.
It’s not our intention to awe you, or attack, but it’s also not our intention to calm your fears. You’re going to have to work your way through that, or not. Hopefully, it will be plain to you when you consider how far we are coming, and how abundant our resources are, that subjugation and psychological manipulation just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Despite your colorful body of science fiction work, there isn’t war in space; we don’t maintain a military. We exist for mutual survival, cooperation, to expand knowledge and for peace. Our intention is to cultivate trust between our worlds. We want to learn from you.
Presently, there are twenty-two planets in our group. We want you to join us.
If there is an enemy, it is the enormous and dangerous forces of the cosmos, forces that could crush any of us like bugs if we aren’t careful. We have met this danger with an ability to quickly get out its way.
We have practice at making first contact, and with helping planets like yours make the transition to being part of our group.
The first step is trust.
We’ll work with you on ending any remaining wars you have, cleaning up your pollution problems, and sharing our technology. We believe our developments in energy production will be of great interest to you.
All of us, from the first planet to achieve interstellar travel, to our latest member, emerged from a similar awkward and violent past, hard years marked by war, subjugation, injustice, and a distrust in others, especially foreigners. This is a common theme in the early development of all societies everywhere throughout the universe. It is equally common to quickly end these horrors forever, get on the other side of it, and to exist in a perpetual state of peace.
For the next few weeks, we will be visiting you through virtual holographics. We’ll get to hear and see each other, and have a chance to answer your questions.
We look forward to getting to know you, learn from you, and share what we know. We look forward to welcoming you to visit with us on our ships, look forward to when we can visit you on Earth in person and have you visit our planets.
You have time to ask us questions, weigh options and decide as a planet what to do next.
We hope you’ll approve of us to orbit your sun at one of your La Grange points. You will be able to see our ships periodically in the night sky. They will appear like planets, although the smallest of them are approximately five times larger than the Earth, and each will have several trillion residents on board.
The device you are holding and reading this message on is yours to have, enjoy, learn from, and use to communicate with us. Each one of you has been assigned a buddy on our ship. There are instructions for initiating contact with your alien buddy.
Sincerely,
The Twenty-Two Planets of The Alien Network
•. •. •
A week following that first White House broadcast, on every screen everywhere, another live video feed spontaneously began playing.
Hello again. It’s me again. I’m back at the White House, this time without any hocus-pocus. I apologize for last week. I’ve had a chance to mend fences with everyone involved.
What a week. At this point, a lot of your questions have been answered via the stones. Most of you have initiated talking to your alien buddy.
What’s next? The next step towards first contact is a ballot which will be received tomorrow. The ballot is a question: do you want to make contact and join The Alien Network? Yes, or no?
There will be a ten-day period to meditate on this question. Ballots will be cast via the stones.
If humanity votes yes, then the ships will enter our solar system.
If humanity votes no, then no further contact will occur for one hundred years. The stones will remain on Earth. In one hundred years, new stones will arrive and a new ballot will occur. In the interim, people may enjoy (or dispose of) their stones, may study The Alien Network, the universe and all that is known. The Earth will not be directly contacted. However, alien information concerning governance, agriculture, ecology, technology, art, and countless other subjects will be shared via the stones.
If humanity votes yes, following the arrival of the planet-ships, a subsequent ballot will appear on the stones. The second ballot is a question: Would you like to be an ambassador from the Earth and become a passenger on a Network planet-ship? Yes, or no? Everyone will have an eleven-day period to meditate on this question.
Everyone who votes yes may visit a planet ship and go on tours led by members of the Network via holography. At any time, one may end a visit. At any time, one may decline becoming a passenger. Those who initially vote against being a passenger may change their vote and return to Earth.
Travelling to a ship and returning to Earth is instant, regardless of distance. For this reason, one may consider being a commuting passenger, staying on the planet-ship for a few hours at a time, returning home for meals, or to sleep. Some prefer coming home for holidays or vacations. Others remain for long stretches, even indefinitely.
Once a passenger has completed basic orientation, they may apply to become a member of The Alien Network. A member of The Network may freely travel to other Network planets and other Network planet-ships.
STORIES FROM OTHER PLANETS
Planet No. 3
Our world was slipping further from the sun and things were getting cold fast. In a week, one could drive a car across the ocean. A week after that, nearly all life had perished. The few survivors crowded around hot springs and vents of acrid gas from volcanic fissures. In a cave in the north, my family was one of fifty others who had stockpiled all manner of food on the banks of an underground lake that normally boiled at around three hundred degrees. Presently, it was only reasonably warm.
We can’t build a fire because there just isn’t enough air-flow in the cave, nor is there sufficient fuel, but we are warm in blankets and heavy coats. We eat our meals at 110 degrees, the average temperature of the lake. There’s plenty of water to drink, and our waste is tossed into a seemingly bottomless pit on the south end of the main cavern. We’ve done the math. We can survive like this for another decade, but if we stretch the food, we might make it for fifteen years.
We make regular expeditions to the surface to attack the ice that is always forming, always threatening to seal us into a suffocating death. This is that section of the tunnel where the warm moist air from below mixes with the frigidity outside. It gets down to ninety below zero out there. Luckily, this area is at a wider part of the tunnel, and the ice that forms is brittle. It’s almost a fun exercise to smash the ice cakes with hammers and drag it back into the lower areas where it melts and trickles back into the lake. Also, it gives us something to do.
It’s nearly impossible to reach the outdoors. One loses consciousness a few feet from the mouth. We were able to get a remote camera out on the back of a drone. What we saw was the forest is gone, the trees have all exploded into dust and blown away into the endless winds of the endless ice desert.
We can extract current images of the planet sent down from one of the few working satellites. All the water on the surface, even at the equator, is solid.
It all seems like a very bad dream.
* Three years went by before the first ships arrived. They pushed the planet back into its former orbit, and the climate became habitable again.
Planet No. 6
As the first in-person visits from the aliens started, I felt oddly relaxed. I knew this wasn’t due to some drug or psychic calming the aliens were dispensing. My calm was coming from within, from a long dormant memory of an ancient benign relationship. We are all formed from the same great dusts of space. These are our older cousins from far, far away. They look like us. They sound, and even smell like us. We are family, although they are so much older.
Planet No. 7
I live on an island on a small hill in the forest in a cabin made of logs. I’m part of a community where I make bread. One day a great storm is warned of, but when it comes, it’s too fast, it’s too late, it’s clear that it will destroy everything, and kill everyone. There is panic because there’s no way off the island or a way to take shelter. Everyone heads uphill to high ground, but the rising seawater isn’t stopping. At the last minute, salvation comes from a strange source: the sky. It’s a floating platform, a barge silently hovering by some mysterious technology. It lets down a rope ladder. I am dubious, but looking around, it’s either climb the ladder or drown. So, I climb up. My friends and neighbors do too. I’m overjoyed to see everyone has been saved, but now what? The wrath of the storm can still be felt in the open-air ship. Our group of cold, wet refugees watch in horror as wave after wave destroys everything-- trees, houses, the city hall, the supermarket, cars, stop signs. Finally, a wave swallows the island, leaving nothing but fuming ocean below. Now, here we are. Safe? What is this strange hovering thing? Where are we? The group turns from the railing and faces a friendly crew. The captain explains that while we are all safe for the moment from the storm, we cannot linger here. The ship will run out of fuel. We must find a place to land, but there’s the problem. This is not an isolated storm. It’s global. There is no safe place to go. Everything has been swallowed by the sea. Looking closely at the pilot captain, in his face it’s clear, the reality begins to dawn on me that he, his crew, and the ship are not from here. There is an offer to take us to a mothership docked just a few million miles away orbiting the sun, and there we will find safety, food, and most of all, time, to gather our senses. The storm rages. It is widely agreed to leave. The captain nods and a glass dome rises out of one edge of the barge as the ship climbs. The planet shrinks first to a disk, then to a ball, and finally a dot of bluish green light. In an impossibly short time, we pass the great gulf of space and reach our destination. To call this thing a ship is a gross understatement. We pass through clouds, make our landing in a field of blue-green grass, and the glass dome rolls open. The terrain of the so-called ship planet further violates our mental picture of what is meant when one says the word ‘ship.’ The ground is flat and unmoving, the horizon makes it appear to be endless, the air is pleasant and easy to breathe. The grass feels just like grass. There are buildings in the distance and beyond that, trees. I hear birds. I see a vehicle moving across a road getting closer. We assemble in chairs and are addressed by dignitaries who emerge from the vehicle. We learn how the crew of our rescue barge is a small part of a far larger crew who operate this so-called ship-planet. All these people are part of something like an intergalactic Coast Guard Red Cross whose mission is to seek out distressed planets such as our own and offer salvation, and a second chance. We are being welcomed to stay here and travel the universe on this ship-planet for as long as we want, and become citizens if we abide by their constitution, laws, and social order. We also have the option to remain in this solar system, be given support and the technology to fix our broken flooded world, and make it habitable once more. In either case, we’ll be invited to join this volunteer group and learn to do for other planets what they will do for us. We are invited to consider a visit to the home planet or the other planets that are part of a growing Network. We are welcome to become ambassadors, to travel the cosmos. We learn about the previous planets, ahead of us in evolution, who also faced doom at their own hands, but were rescued just as we were. One of those planets, Buelievia, the very first, nearly perished if it weren’t for a few survivors rebuilding from the ruins of their own disaster. In the aftermath of that first holocaust, a memorial was established to never forget or let it happen again. This memorial led to a budding space travel technology that allowed them to be the first stewards of salvation.
Planet No. 12
Wars ended abruptly as soldiers read from stones, crying tears of joy, and sat on the ground discussing the news with former enemies. In prisons and sweat shops, former inmates entrusted former guards, former slaves entrusted former bosses.
The chains that held us were breaking. A new world had been inspired, was being born. We would need help from the aliens, but we weren’t waiting to get started.
The planet voted overwhelmingly for contact.
Soon after, the ships arrived followed by a second group of empty ones.
We had so many questions.
How? Where? Who? What? When? Why?
They had good answers. This was not their first first contact. There were large hall Q&A sessions with a panel of holographic aliens sitting behind a table on the stage. You could watch it on television. You could tune-in to alien-hosted call-in radio talk shows. There were individual sessions for those who were off the grid, or for those who just preferred to ask questions in private. Families met with holographic aliens in their living rooms. Some hosted picnics, barbecues, potlucks, and block parties. Others organized camping trips and took the aliens backpacking in the mountains or rafting down rivers.
There were tours given of the ships.
Each ship had a companion star that gave it energy, warmth, and light as it moved away from a fixed star. The travel stars were shut down to not overpower our sun, but it gave off a faint pink afterglow.
Each ship had a second sphere, a moon that functioned just like our moon. It created tides and was ballast for propulsion and orbit. The travel moon was also a gigantic luggage compartment. It was also a refrigerator. It was also a gas tank. The travel moon had a very moon-like silvery appearance.
Our most pervasive questions related to getting along. If millions of us all got on one of these planet-ships, surely hostility would travel with us? No?
No. They were sure that we were on the verge of a major psychological shift in this regard. It had already started.
Previous planets had similar skepticism. On each one, it all changed quickly. Vestigial behaviors-- racism, sexism, classism, etc. found in every early society as a phase in development, faded quickly in the days following first contact.
We read the stories about the previous planets. All of them had been in a major crisis at the moment of first contact.
Planet No. 15
The timing wasn’t a coincidence. It was called The Printing Press Clock. When six hundred years passed since the invention of the printing press, a society was ready to shed slavery, greed, despair, violence, and all the other training wheels that people endure as they evolve from primordial slime to computer science.
It was our turn. It was our time, and we were ready to take a big step. The aliens were our mentors. They were maestros of emotional grace. They had endless patience. This was matched by their equally endless physical energy (seen in their portable stars). Their physiological advances allowed them to overcome illness and accelerate bodily repairs. This made injury a non-issue. All of them were old, some had years in six digits.
We wondered if they ever got bored of being alive for so long, or ever wished for the rest of a final sleep. They explained it was an option to forgo healing, and let demise take one into the eternity of death. However, with many trillions in their populations, few in practice craved it, let alone chose it. It turned out that living without death was not boring. There were endless things to learn, to explore, to experience.
Some aliens were coupled. Some had children. With the exceptions of the youngest ones, the aliens appeared to us to be in their mid-20s, despite being several hundred thousand years old.
The aliens were funny. Their humor was inspiring, and hilarious. They were relaxed, happy, generous, and good. The aliens could truly party. They were good at being silly, at playing. They behaved like teenage clowns. They were relaxed about sex. They were deeply romantic.
I was ready to experience life without death, community without discord, marriage without poverty, parenting without exhaustion, work without slavery, art without competition, education without career, beauty without sexism, sport without violence, religion without judgment, nourishment without guilt, breathing without old age, water without pollution, travel without gravity.
The aliens could fly. They had discovered a part of the brain that could alter one’s relationship to gravity. With only a little training, and making a gentle mental effort, one could skip off a sidewalk and bound into the clouds.
Of course, countless remained skeptical. They toured the ships, they spoke to aliens from the other worlds. They took their first bites of new foods, watched as humans fell in love with aliens, and aliens fell in love with humans.
Doom never came. The story never turned into a dark allegory. They cried as their cancer was cured. Months and years went by in this way. We were no longer preoccupied with survival. We shifted our attention to creativity and learning, to loving and renewal.
The numbers of the skeptical dwindled to zero. Long-held secret hopes were restored. Play became rampant. Flying replaced all forms of transportation. The aged and gray seemed to grow younger, more vibrant. The young remained that way.
Entire industries shrank to the size of a display case in a museum. The museums took in choice samples, the tools we once used to mine energy, or the furnaces and vehicles it powered.
There were somber memorials to the sad props of our violent past, commemorative sculptures welded from guns, rockets, bombers, and battleships. There were exhibits made of the antiquated beauty industry and other preposterous ways of our still recent past.
The trappings of old government, farms, factories, classrooms, police departments, pavement, trash disposal, the military, and all the countless electrical gizmos were brought to the museums. We stared at it all because it was now part of a past that seemed so very ridiculous. We needed those museums, and we would need them for a while. We needed to reflect, remember, to cry, and to laugh.
Since our evolved bodies no longer suffered chill or the discomfort of heat, architecture radically changed. It was unnecessary to build most structures. Houses, apartments, and skyscrapers became planters for all manner of growing things, birds, and wild creatures. People took shelter from storms in caves, but most nights they slept outside under the open sky.
Many chose to stay on the planet, but the majority left to go exploring. The ones who stayed were heroes. They were called ‘the holy janitor stewards.’ They helped heal the planet and restore it to an unspoiled garden. There was a ceremony for the disposal of the last nuclear weapon.
We ate less because we took sustenance for pleasure more than need. Some went months without eating. We gained the ability to take nourishment directly from the sun.
We came up with new recreations. We invented new holidays. There were enthusiastic parties, wild orgies.
Time that went to work was now given to humor, to reading, to searching the small things, the inner landscape, microscopic mysteries.
Planet No. 18
In another galaxy, on the far end of the universe, on a planet with a lovely name, there’s a port crowded with people gathered to bid farewell to an enormous planet-sized ship bound for here. SHE is on that ship. Our meeting is as inevitable as the speed of light, although she is moving far faster than that towards me. This isn’t just a love story in space. This is the ripple of steam vacating the grand fissure in the heart of the galactic center. This is a movement of sound, the rhino of energies, shocking the stone cathedrals, then bouncing out into the vast void of the holy nothing. This is the recurring dawn that hasn’t given up on my eyes. This is the glare of the witch’s fire burning green in the late-night forest cold. I will not wait. I am moving too. I am the silver starlight cracking jokes in the cosmos. I am the golden hierophant placing rocks in the eye socket of surrender. I am the fire of Judah. I am the holder of the word. I am the tracker of god’s children. I know what they said. I know what they all really said. I have it all written down on the back of my hand. It’s a simple phrase. It’s stunning that anyone ever thought there was more. To keep our bibles of nonsense, or testify on them, adds absurdity to an already absurd practice. Today, you can use a bible for entertainment, or as a door stop because today all you need is this little phrase: LOVE IS IT.
Planet No. 24
It has been several thousand years since the Earth joined the Network.
It has been six hundred years since the printing press was invented here on this next planet.
I’m here along with dozens of former Earth residents born on Earth before the Earth’s first contact. I’m excited to be part of this. It brings me a giddiness to consider this twenty-fourth planet where they have no idea what’s coming. They are embroiled in countless global problems.
I am from a generation born in space. So many of us travel to Earth to see where our ancestors were born, and grew up. All of us make the pilgrimage and start at the place where the initial first contact occurred, the front yard of the home of a curious writer.
That writer, so many years before the first aliens arrived, had been given a choice as a teenager, and became the vehicle for the next Fezdak Clamchopbreath. He wrote a clumsy skeleton of a science fiction essay printed in a collection of his other works. Not many thought much about it, but he’d made an incredible and unlikely prophecy.
His day came, he walked into The White House and welcomed everyone to the next chapter. A few thousand years later he died when his mind was sent to a baby on Planet No. 24.
I have been lucky to be part of the Network support team for the next Fezdak ambassador-spokesperson of Planet No. 24. This person is also a writer, a writer filled with similarly strange ideas, ideas that soon won’t seem so strange.
Hello, sorry to interrupt everything, but first contact is coming and it’s going to change how we think about ourselves, our planet, and the universe in general. It’s going to be a substantial psychological jolt.
I was chosen somewhat at random from all our people about fifty years ago to begin my training as a guide, a spokesperson and ambassador to serve in this moment.
