#plus it looks like we might be able to terraform our houses now which is something I wanted for a while

[rosenfey]

🍄🍂 anyway new palia update preview has me foaming at the mouth 🍂🍄

[valotar]

i don’t know why, in the movies, the aliens always just crash their ship here and start destroying things, killing people, you know, for no good reason. i mean, you wouldn’t do that, would you? you wouldn’t go to someone’s house and just start smashing stuff. you wouldn’t just go tear up a crow’s nest for the hell of it.

and why would the aliens be inherently evil? i mean, humans aren’t. why would they be?  

consider this: we get a voyager-esque weird-ass golden record from an alien civilization and nobody has any idea what it means. there's weird pictures that look like we’re not seeing everything that’s really there. there's some strange markings, circles. there's a weird smell to it and when you listen to the recording attached you can somehow feel it in your teeth. there's a bunch of strange rocks. i mean, if they count as rocks, we're not exactly sure.

and then they send robots. tiny little space robots that seem to be testing the atmosphere. take some soil samples. and people try to figure out where they came from, of course, because hey, you can't just have unmarked drones flying around, that’s illegal. but then, they're not sure how to contact the owners, they can't figure out who's controlling them, or how they’re even flying, and to be honest, those don't look like anything they’ve seen before. those don’t look like a human made them. man-made drones aren’t supposed to be able to stay in flight for that long nonstop. but do those even count as drones, really, anymore? and where did they come from? 

it's probably some weird dude in a basement with way too much time on his hands trying to be clever and pull of a hoax to become internet famous, right?

...right?

and then, eventually, the aliens arrive. people are scared, of course they are, because they've all seen the movies, they know how this goes. only, the people in charge are not military, this time. they're not presidents or kings or billionaires. they're scientists. because, let's be honest, they're the only people with the skill set and rationality to deal with things like these.

and they scope out the spacecraft's flight path, and it doesn't seem like it's headed for any of the large cities, and it doesn't seem like it's about to crash, and it doesn't seem like they're trying to do us any harm.

there's a radio transmission they pick up. a repeating pulse. not complicated, but definitely intentional. they debate on wether or not to answer, but then again, if they're hailing us and they're intelligent enough to come here they've gotta know about us already, right? and this ship is pretty big, and complicated, and does that mean there’s somebody in there? more than just robots?

they answer the transmission.

and the craft gets here, burning through the atmosphere, and all the major news organisations follow. none of them are live, of course, in case something bad happens, but they're all there. watching.

the aliens land in the ocean. because, what else would they do? this planet is practically one big ocean, you know. they want to study it. plus it was good for their craft, the water cools off their engines, and it’s a much softer landing than the ground, if you know what you're doing.

the humans observe them. try to make contact. they don't answer, not with words, but they send back radio signals. repeating pulses. the humans can't make out the meaning, but the fact that it's repeating means that it's intelligent. not that that’s surprising, at this point, but at the very least it tells us something about them even if we can't make out what they're saying.

it tells us they sense radio signals. they hear things, probably. they know about the whole wave thing. and they know we know too. so we've got something in common already. that’s good; it might mean they communicate with sound.

it takes a lot of effort to keep the military idiots from attacking the strange vessel. their first instinct is to blow it up, of course. it takes a scientist pointing out that if that ship is capable of interstellar travel, which it obviously is because there's no way a thing like that came from this star system, we might not have been looking up for long but we're not that blind, thank you, but see, here's the thing: we have no idea what kind of an engine it has, or what kind of fuel it uses, because it could be anything from splitting atoms to warping spacetime, and it wouldn’t be a very good idea to just, you know, shoot at it and see if that blows up this whole planet or not. not a risk i'd like to take, sir. besides, if they're capable of coming here, from across the stars, they've obviously got some stuff figured out that we don't, and i don't think that’s a fight i want to start, you know? 

so the military doesn't do anything. they stay at a safe distance, gritting their teeth. the conspiracy theory/UFO podcasts are all having a field day with this. the government people are all suffering from blood pressure problems now. most ordinary people think it's a hoax or just simply not worth their time, and their life goes on as usual, apart from the occasional news about the strange structure in the sea and the weird shift in what’s trending on twitter now.

the beings emerge, eventually, wearing some versions of space suits. they're not trying to blow up our buildings or eat our children or hunt us for sport. they don't want our planet. they're not here to steal our trees or terraform our planet to fit their needs. (our planet, that’s strange; they didn't realize this was our planet. no, if you'd ask them this would seem like the planet of the tardigrades. or the things that live in the oceans, maybe).

but they've figured out, while observing this place, that we're the ones to talk to if they want someone's opinion. it's not like the tardigrades are going to answer if they ask about the atmosphere or the plants or the moon. we're the ones who talk and build things and make songs and plant flowers where we want them to grow, and isn’t that amazing?

so they come to us. they don't attack, they don't demand to see our leaders, they’re not here to hurt us, no. they're just here to learn.

they're scientists. they just want to take some samples. see what life's like down here. they're fascinated by the way humans take pets and care for plants and talk to them even when it's clear they're not going to talk back, and live in small packs and help each other even when there’s no direct tactical advantage, and the way the people seem to live on land when there's so much water. that confuses them. the water thing, not the kindness thing.

we don't understand them, of course. they don't speak in any way we could decipher. and they don’t look anything like us, but they don't really look alien, either. not the way we're used to, not the way aliens always look in movies. they're not humanoid, not even close, but they seem to have eyes and ears and mouths and opposable thumbs, like us.

they are peaceful. they just wanted to learn about the life here. and they think the tardigrades are absolutely fantastic, do you think they could study them for a while?

it's not that different from the way we send our little tiny space robots out there, to look at the strange new worlds for us. because we don't know how to fly that far yet, but they do.