If aliens arrived tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d ask them?
Perhaps I’d ask whether they intercepted one of our Voyagers, drifting silently through the darkness, carrying a golden record from a little blue world whose inhabitants desperately wanted to say:
We are here.
Perhaps I’d ask whether the Greys really are the leaders of the universe, as some among us dare to believe. Or whether we humans are simply that much of dreamers.
But then again…
What if some of the lifeforms we imagined were never entirely imaginary?
Is it perhaps they who returned?
Or is it the interlopers who seem to hang around in every freaking space station in the universe?
Maybe I’d ask them what the word interloper really means. Not according to one of our dictionaries, but according to them.
And if they decided to teach us a word or two from their own vocabulary, I have a strange feeling that Grah! would be one of them.
Although I would have absolutely no idea why they’d shout it while handing me a multi-tool.
And if, after all those questions, they looked at me strangely — as though I had somehow stumbled upon something I was never supposed to know — I think there would be only one question left to ask:
“How many?”
16 // 16 // 16 // 16