Communications Node 45:61:72:74:68

The parties that night are still the stuff of legend. I was offered money, drugs, fame, sex - anything I wanted, if I would just come to this or that person’s party and tell all the guests about the alien ambassador. Paul Allen offered me anything from the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, which was a very tempting offer. But, I had a feeling that most of that stuff was going to be heading to various collectors off our planet very soon, so I didn’t take him up on it.

Money was going to be worthless very soon, too. This was going to be a disruption of everything we had ever known. Capitalism, communism, class divisions - that was all gonna be going bye-bye before too much longer. All that mattered was our culture, and how much of it we could transmit to alien civilizations. I thought that the aliens would probably resist changing us as long as they could - if they influenced us too much, after all, our cultural output would start lining up with theirs, and that would make us less valuable to them.

So, I picked the parties I went to by how good the sex was. Hey, I’m only human. 

The Union Ambassador had either a religious or orgasmic experience in the bookstore we took her to, which just confirmed in my mind that she had been completely serious in her speech. The manager wanted to comp her everything, but we told him that it would be better to see what she had to give in trade. I had a feeling that the Ambassador would have something, and sure enough, I was right.

The Ambassador wanted to make sure that the creators of the work she was taking would be compensated, and we assured her that with a large enough exchange, they would be. She seemed pleased about that, and then handed us a small bottle of what looked like pills. "They are not to be ingested," she warned us. "They are nanite generators. Place them in a computing device for a few hours in order for them to learn how the device operates, and then they will record a few small technological advances onto its storage." We asked if the secret of their own construction was part of what they would record, and she said that would be a later trade.

She left the store with a few dozen books, graphic novels and magazines, thanking the store manager the entire time. I had a strong feeling that the authors and artists who had created at least a few of those things would become part of earth’s export quota very shortly. 

    So, she stood up there for over three hours blathering on about cultural exchanges and Star Wars, and most of the assembly got very restless. One of the ambassadors even found the nerve to say that he didn’t think the aliens were going to give us advanced, next-level tech for a bunch of movies. When the alien ambassador patiently explained that these were going to have to be very good movies, I started believing her.

    It made sense, really. I mean, they had or could make any material object they could possibly want. Matter transmutation would eliminate hunger, as well. So, what else could they want from another species? From what she was saying, she was over 14,000 years old and had been a member of this galactic union for her entire life. I suppose they might still fight over territory, but space is pretty big. All they have to do all day long is consume cultural output. The cultural output of a species that they’ve never met before would be as valuable as, say, the secret of matter transmutation would be to us.

    I tried to make sure that Ambassador Khalilzad understood this. What she was saying made total sense, even if the assembly didn’t think it did. We were going to need to make sure that artists of every stripe were made available to the Union. And those artists were going to need to put forth their best efforts, because they were going to be humanity’s export to the stars.

    I would love to be an agent right about now… 

At least it wasn’t an interstellar bypass.

They aren’t very easy to spot, but astronomers all over the world, amateur and pro, keep track of the asteroids in our solar system. When several hundred began moving on their own towards the edges of the solar system, at the same time, they noticed.

They weren’t moving slowly, either. No, these asteroids were cruising along at 10% of the speed of light. They were all also heading to one of 6 points circling our solar system. Two at points above and below the plane of the solar system, and 4 at equidistant points around the plane of the solar system.

This wasn’t making anybody on earth happy except for the kind of people that were holding up signs at the beginning of Independence Day. Every telescope on the planet and off was trained at those 6 spots in space, and when the asteroids reached them, we all held our collective breaths. I know I did.

Watching those first videos of the asteroids melting together and flowing into new, obviously artificial structures was humbling to most of us. We saw the massive, raw power being wielded at the edge of our awareness and we could only pray that these were benevolent beings.

Other people were less interested in prayer. In those first few weeks, there were raving lunatics, some with the power to make it happen, who demanded that we concentrate all of earth’s efforts to nuking those 6 sites. It was pointed out to these people that all it would take to destroy us as a species was one large asteroid nudged into our planet, and our mysterious visitors had demonstrated the capability to do that, if not the will.

We were all extraordinarily tense, as you can imagine, I’m sure. So, when a request was sent to the UN for a general assembly meeting by someone identifying herself as The Ambassador of The Union, you can understand why there were riots in New York City and pandemonium across the globe. You can understand that, right?

I was lucky enough to be at the UN a couple days ahead of time, because there was no way to get into the place after that, unless you were one of the ambassadors with plenty of security and a private helicopter. News crews managed to get in, like they always do, ready to broadcast the story of their lives. I made sure that the American ambassador knew I was available for consultation; hey, might as well use the NASA cred I’d built up. That got me a spot standing in the back of the room at the time of the meeting.

I jumped along with everybody else when the woman just appeared at the podium. But, unlike most of them, I began to think about how she did it. I also tried to think of reasons for why she looked so human.

I needn’t have bothered. She was going to tell us.