First Contact
A Science Fiction One Shot
First contact with aliens was not like in the movies. There was no great invasion by a flying saucer, nor a benevolent species inviting us to join with a galaxy spanning community of sophisticated aliens, and there were no little green men. Technically there was no real contact. Humanity has yet to meet any space-faring aliens. What we have is a message, a short cryptic space post-it note.
The message read: “Be quiet, they can hear you.”
The original message was in English and so slight a signal to be barely perceptible to our telescopes but stood out clear as day when someone was looking for a signal.
There was no follow up explanation, no return address, not even a vague direction. A great many top brass of everywhere thought it best to continue sending signals out into space, asking questions, trying to find out who sent it. Fortunately their advice was, mostly, ignored and instead humanity returned to a quieter existence, for the most part. Less radio wave clutter, fewer signals sent out into deep space, those searching for extra-terrestrials were forced to close, funding ceased. Hobby equipment made illegal. We had proof but it was not the kind we wanted and some couldn't let their belief in a galactic community die.
The same cannot be said for every nation on Earth. Some of the more braggadocious peoples continue to search for life, replying to the cryptic message, asking questions of the great black nothing of space.
They have had no reply.
Claims of the message being a hoax grew in number but it is impossible. The signal came from hundreds of light years away and once received, vanished. How the senders knew we'd received it I don't know, perhaps they only sent it for a short time and hoped for the best. Whatever “best” is.
There were also theories that an alien civilisation was playing a trick on us. A possibility but one that would have been uncovered by now. Other signals, other messages, a response to those still trying, something. But there was nothing of the sort.
For twenty years we remained in limbo, frightened by a message from hundreds of light-years away that we could not verify nor act on in any meaningful way. The question of who they were was written about ad nauseam, not of it satisfying, almost all of it barely masked science fiction.
That was until Earth was visited proper. A vast ship, the size of a small moon, appeared in our night sky one day. Too distant to be seen by the naked eye, at first, but as the nights went on it drifted through our solar system and there was no doubt where it was headed. A week later and it orbited Earth, the smooth spherical form looming over us. It did not respond to attempts to make contact. There was an attack, rockets launched into space from the ground and from a handful of military satellites. That did exactly nothing and the presence responded with an electronic pulse that destroyed all our satellites and bricked all of our electronics.
Humanity sits in the dark and the cold adjusting to a life we have not lived in centuries. Order has crumbled. Simple tasks, like drinking a glass of water, must now be thought about, considered, planned into the day. Food will run out soon enough, harvest time will be difficult and without artificial fertilisers will be lower than necessary. Mass deaths are expected.
The months ploughed on and there was nothing from our new sleek black moon, visible only because of its slight reflectiveness. Aliens had visited us but they were not the talkative type. Without electricity there was no real way to attempt contact and so we waited. And waited. And waited.
And we continue to wait.
What it is there is no doubt in my mind it is the “they” the message spoke about. Some beast of the dark forest, prowling the infinite night for its prey. We live in the monsters shadow, an incomprehensible being summoned by our own hubris, and now we wait to see if it will kill us, enslave us, or merely enforce a technological limit that means humanity never expands beyond Earth and that we may only support a fraction of our current population.
How many other civilisations have been hunted, destroyed or imprisoned in the steam age? The galaxy, the universe, could be teeming with life but we would never know.
Some have begun to worship our new moon, maybe that is its intent. To gain followers, to create an interstellar religion merely by showing up and disabling electronic technology. Is that better than being destroyed?
Survival... mere survival. Future generations will adapt, perhaps live out meaningful lives, but for us who experienced life before and life after... it is too much. Time has slowed. Simple tasks now require planning and hard work. News from other places is non-existent. Night time is dangerous once more. To be forced backwards through time, to regress... even now I can hear the younger generations who have known no different chastising me for the word choice. There is no regression or progression, there is only what is and our new moon and its Dark Age is merely the world we live in.
Humanity had twenty years to prepare. Twenty years to camouflage our communications, innovate to become hidden yet remain technologically advanced. The warning message we received was, I believe, from one such civilisation somewhere far, far away. They figured out how to remain hidden. We failed.
And now we suffer under the ever watchful warden of the skies who prevents anything electrical from working, I do not understand it but without electricity I do not see how humanity overcomes this fate.
We are doomed.
Thanks for reading.
The idea for this vignette came from re-reading about the Fermi Paradox. Simply put it asks why have we not encountered any aliens when the conditions for life are somewhat common throughout the galaxy/universe. The conditions for life being common is because of the sheer scale of space, hundreds of billions of stars, many older than our Sun, means millions, if not billions, of planets in the habitable zone, and many millions to billions of years for life to develop before anything had begun on Earth.
One of the possible explanations is that communication through space is dangerous, nowadays called the Dark Forest hypothesis (named after Liu Cixin’s novel The Dark Forest). A similar idea is the Berserker hypothesis which suggests rogue self-replicating drones systematically destroy all life they find, this also derives its name from a scifi series by Fred Saberhagen. I have not read either of these book series but they are now on my to-read list.
this was chilling! absolutely love this whole concept.