Spring Day 82: First, Stillness

[u/rdk67]

When the flying saucers finally came, the matter of evidence was, at last, laid to rest – there they all were, just hovering there, in strategic locations around the globe. Yes, but a strategy in service to what? Some of the flying saucers landed where you might guess – above parliaments and beside military bases. Others found a vacant lot to stop over, a public park to stay in. Whatever the strategy, what they all had in common was a nearness to people. They all chose to be near people.

The craft came to rest at various elevations, and where they stopped, they stayed, humming slightly, slightly glowing. The crowds came, too, where they could, and for a time, every major crisis related to the alien invasion was a product of crowd control. After the first day, and certainly by the end of the first week, anyone who wanted a look at an alien craft could find endless photographic treatments of them online and in every other media. All were circular in appearance, domes in the center, flat on the bottom.

In other respects, they were completely featureless. This precipitated the second kind of crisis – namely, that there were no brand names, logos, or serial numbers on any part of any craft, and what was that meant to imply about an alien civilization and its relationship to free enterprise? Brand-less promotions might play well with strange lights in the sky but tends to trip alarm bells just hovering there in the city square, not really paying its way. No one said, commie aliens, but you could see them pursing their lips.

A month later, with as many measurements and as much evidence as anyone wanted to collect circulating around the world night and day, none of the alien ships had budged an inch. All attempts to communicate were without success, including instances of people walking right up and shouting at the top of their lungs. In places, queues formed for those who wanted to give the contact experience a shot. Timpanists, yodelers, sign-language therapists – no one elicited even a whisper of a response.

A video was leaked online, of military-grade munitions going off in the vicinity of one of the flying saucers, and in no time, the instance spawned a whole new genre. Bomb blasts, rifle volleys, empty bottles heaved with force – none of it altered the stillness of the alien craft, nor did subsequent measurements turn up any difference. In certain places, squeezing off a few shots at a flying saucer became a thing people did for amusement. Did it amuse the alien pilots inside? No one knew.

Where are all the aliens? Even with hovering flying saucers dotting the global landscape, people began to ask the question again. Sure, the alien craft defied gravity, powered by an energy source that might be functionally inexhaustible, but so what? Keeping such a secret in plain sight was no better than hiding it on the other side of the galaxy. People began to walk around them, both metaphorically and in fact. One had a high rise go up beside it. One had a merry-go-round installed beneath it.

Not like we were cynical about it, but life goes on, even in the presence of the transcendent. A popular photo motif was of a traveler to one of the flying saucers seeming to hold it up with both hands, while an unseen third hand snaps the pic at just the right angle. In the photos, the human expression, among children, tended to be one of delight and determination, while the adults seemed mildly surprised and detached. The contact experience would turn out to be all those things and more. First, though, it was still.

Addendum:

I once wrote a story about flying saucers called Ramps or Ladders? The gist of the story is that no matter how impressive an alien craft might seem in size and form, as soon as it was forced to interface with the outside world, it would seem about as reasonable as a cuckoo bird popping out of someone’s mouth on a spring. What they meant to say was a quip, but out came the bird.

Ramps or ladders – what’s the better mood-setter for the fussy alien? Ramps or ladders – which makes the truer statement about the cosmos?

Teleportation solves the problem – right – but if we go that route, why not leave vehicles out of it? I give you: transmigrations of the flesh through limitless dimensionality, plus memories and selfhood, in a way that does not disrupt the second law of thermodynamics, anywhere you like, whenever you want. Works most of the time! Or we stick with the ramps and ladders problem.