had been at least six boxes in that field in St. Louis, and surely that wasn’t the only place where they had sent out a summons. “How many people did you . . .” I searched for the right word, before finally settling on “Invite?”
“147,162. You’re a bit less than unique, Doc. But hey, you’re still quite rare, so feel good about that.” The alien pointed a thick purple finger my way. “You are special.”
My nervousness and fear were gradually giving way to a sense of frustration. George was giving me responses, but they weren’t really answers. I turned to a different approach. “I’m not an expert,” I said, “but doesn’t first contact between cultures with different levels of technology always end with the less technologically advanced culture being destroyed?”
To my surprise, the answer was both instant and blunt. “It does. It will.”
“You mean . . . you came to destroy us?”
George shook his head, which required him to actually twist his whole body. “Not at all. We’re not here to fight you, Doc. We don’t want your planet or your stuff. If we could meet you without harming you, we would. But you’re right; that’s not the way these things work.” George made a rough, rumbling noise that might have been a sigh. “Even if we leave right now, today, just the fact that so many have seen us, that you know we’re out here, will very likely result in disruptions that deeply alter your society. Sorry about that.”
I tried for a moment to think what must be happening out in the world. People from all around the planet had climbed into boxes and been taken away. There was a ship the size of a city hanging in the winter air over Wisconsin. If people hadn’t already started losing it, they would soon. One of those people would probably be me.
“Aren’t there rules against that sort of thing? Aren’t you supposed to . . . not do that?”
The question brought a fresh attempt at a shrug. “If you mean, do we have something like a ‘Prime Directive,’ a rule against meeting with species that aren’t yet capable of interstellar flight . . .” It paused and spread its heavy arms wide. “The answer should be obvious. We can’t be too picky about that, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“You . . .” I drew in a breath, trying to think of how I could ask this question without sounding rude. Or at least too rude. “You know a lot about us. That’s clear from the popular culture references.”
“True,” said George. “I personally have watched every season of Project Runway and can sing the Gilligan’s Island theme song in three languages.”
I tried not to wince. “So, if you know that much, you probably know our history. Like, the history of what happened when European explorers reached the New World.”
The big alien shifted on its bench. “Let’s take a look,” it said.
George gestured to his right, and when I looked that way, I saw a beach. The image was so clear, so detailed, that it took me a few seconds to realize it was an image and not some kind of doorway opening improbably out onto some remote tropical location. For several seconds after that, I simply stared, slack-jawed, at the incredible tangle of unfamiliar trees, and the miles of untracked, undeveloped, pale sand. “Where is this coming from?” I asked.
“More like when,” said George. “Keep watching.”
The waves pounded against the shore for a few seconds longer. Then there were feet. The feet appeared at one edge of the image, first one pair, then three. The feet were attached to hairy legs, and as the people they were attached to stepped a bit farther down the beach, I could see the ragged, stained bottoms of what looked like kind of odd, quilted leggings. “What . . .” I started, but before I could say anything more, a figure stepped from the forest. She was young, little more than a child, slender, tan, and also naked. Not that I had much time to look at her, because two seconds after she stepped out of the trees, she was stumbling back. At the top of the image,