Now You Know

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us— we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

Stray Child sky, clouds

more art by straychild

Sunshine, like love.

*is in the manga section of the bookshop* *sees another person* HAHA! what a nerd

Hey kids let’s get meta for a moment.

Let’s say aliens are real, and let’s say we communicate with them, and let’s say they find out about this weird internet thing where humans write little mini stories about future human interactions with aliens.

Can you imagine how fucking confused and concerned they would be? These two-legged assholes who were so enamored with the concept of meeting other intelligent species, even though for the longest time they had NO CONCLUSIVE PROOF that said other species exist, that they wrote stories about those other species, to the point of making up creatures and systems of mood communication and names for their made up aliens? 

Which brings me to my Great Theory About The Purpose Of Storytelling: it’s practice. We tell stories about that time we had the flu really bad to practice getting the flu with our friends so we all know how to properly manage the symptoms. We tell stories about our children to practice dealing with their unpredictability. We tell stories about war and famine and pestilence to practice dealing with disaster. And we tell stories about aliens to practice etiquette for dealing with aliens. 

We tell stories of our own ferocity and ingenuity to practice for the day we have to either defend our planet or invite ourselves into an alliance. We tell stories of our aggressive pack-bonding to practice bonding with creatures that are literally alien to us. We tell stories about trading chores for passage on space ships to practice Just Because They’re Aliens Doesn’t Mean You Can Be Rude. 

And of course, if we can practice bonding and cooperating with creatures that may not even breathe oxygen, we can practice bonding and cooperating with each other.

[slides nasa $20] so, tell me about the aliens

Douglas Beekman, 1978