First Contact

The General looked inquisitively at his subordinates. They all shrugged. No one knew what to make of the initial statement given by the alien visitor. "Apprehend him!" the General said eventually.

"Open with a joke he said," the alien muttered. "They will be less inclined towards violence he said."

Several military men rushed to grab the multi-legged alien. However, an invisible field prevented them from getting too close. The soldiers fell back one by one from the three-legged space suit of the alien, each receiving a slight electrical shock.

"Perhaps I should have said Gort! Deklato Rosco!" continued the alien. "It might have been slightly more apropos, but that line is not nearly as memorable."

General Hever ordered his men to stand down. They were not going to be able to apprehend the alien physically in that manner. He told his men to ready their weapons.

"Maybe they have not seen The Day the Earth Stood Still," he said continuing his muttering internal dialog. "I should have stuck to the classics."

"Surround the alien, but hold your fire," ordered the General.

They had previously observed that their weapons had no effect upon the visitor from space. The bullets of the projectile weapons bounced off the alien's shielding. The energy from the energy weapons was simply absorbed by the shield making it even stronger.

"I just did not want to sound so clichéd," muttered the alien ignoring the actions going on around him.

"Prepare to move in!" ordered the General.

The soldiers did not fire or lower their weapons, but they continued to eye the alien with suspicion.

"I come in peace," stated the alien with a highly dejected tone. "Take me to your leader..."

"You speak English?" asked the General with some surprise.

"We have encountered your transmissions. When you beam signals into space, you should expect others to encounter them. Actually, we have been studying you for quite some time. I have spent the entire voyage studying your transmissions. I particularly like the Friday After Dark episodes on one of the channels. They are filled with your species copulating, and I find them most entertaining. Nonetheless, I am capable of speaking, with rudimentary fluency, several of your species' languages."

"Will -- you -- come -- with -- us -- peacefully?" asked the General in a slow broken tone.

"Do not patronize me!" insisted the alien. "Your weapons are useless against our technology. I could destroy everyone within several miles of here. However, I have not. I will follow you, if I am taken to someone of authority."

"We will take you to the aircraft carrier Richard B. Cheney," responded the General. "The President of the United States of America will meet you there."

"Lead on and I will follow," replied the alien. "I will be unable to ride in your vehicles, but I am capable of high speed travel."

"Very good," the General replied waving his arms to indicate to his men to stand down and fall back. "Soldiers -- to the George W. Bush Naval Facility."

The soldiers lowered their weapons and boarded the waiting vehicles. General Hever boarded the vehicle in the front of the convoy and led the soldiers towards the naval base.

The alien's spacesuit glowed for a few moments and then the alien was airborne. From a safe operating altitude, he followed the General and the convoy towards the ocean. He landed beside a large statue of the naval yard's namesake, George W. Bush. The statue had the inscription Always Remember.

He followed General Hever onboard the aircraft carrier. The General walked into a room, but the alien did not follow. "This way," insisted the military commander.

"I am sorry, but my suit will not allow me to enter," insisted the alien. "We will meet upon the deck."

The General re-entered the room, and after a few minutes, a tall stately gray-haired man emerged. The man was dressed in a dark blue suit with a red tie. He was wearing sunglasses and he said a few inaudible words to himself.

A few moments later, a tall stately gray-haired woman emerged. She was wearing a dark gray suit. "I am President Fogarty," the woman said.

"I must admit," started the alien, "that I am surprised."

"Surprised to see a female president?" she asked.

"Oh no!" replied the alien. "The fact that not only has your species survived, but your country is still democratic."

"Why does that surprise you?"

"I live very far from here, and your transmissions take a long time to reach us. When I left, a particular political party of yours had been rigging your political process. They took the voice of the people away from them. They abused every aspect of the political process."

"When was that?" asked the president.

"Time is a relative measure Madame President. Everyone has different measures and names for those measures. However, the president at that time was George W. Bush."

"Ah! Early in our 21st Century, that was about 100 years ago," replied the President. "I know it well."

"Every aspect had been played towards the advantage of that President's party. They had entire networks playing propaganda -- friendly to their point of view. They were highly critical of the opposition and friendly towards their political viewpoint. The general public was only getting half of the information required for a free and open society."

"Not only that," added the President. "They stifled science. They misrepresented scientific findings in many areas such as climate science. They impeded research in biology and many other areas."

"Further," insisted the alien. "The President had a belief in an End of Times scenario. Many people, who believed in him, blindly accepted his policy to bring about the end of the world. Our researchers were certain that they would succeed and end most life on Earth."

"Perhaps it was this belief or the greed of oil reserves," added President Fogarty, "that led this political party to get involved in wars in the Middle East. There seemed to be few countries with vast oil reserves that they did not covet."

"However, here I stand in a Naval Yard aboard a vessel dedicated to these very scoundrels," insisted the alien.

"Every man, woman, and child in the United States knows those stories," replied the President. "They are taught in every history class with great regularity. You see, it was because of those scoundrels as you call them, that the citizens of the United States of America learned several valuable lessons. Shortly after *all* of the scandals were revealed, the public rose up and demanded a fair system. They began to pay greater attention to the political process. No longer were they satisfied with the election process, and they clamored for change. If the electorate had not risen up against these political shenanigans, I do not doubt that we would have destroyed ourselves. That is why we dedicated these entities so that we Always Remember."

"I am most glad to learn this, and a little disappointed. You see, I was sent to prepare this planet for my people," replied the alien. "From your reports we did not think that you would be able to stand at the brink and not fall into the abyss. However, you managed to survive this crisis -- as you had so many others. I congratulate you on that. We will look elsewhere. I look forward to viewing the reports of this revelation as they reach our world. Perhaps our peoples will meet again."

Before President Fogarty could say anything, the alien had taken off and returned to the alien spacecraft. Moments later the space vessel was gone. Earth had fought off its first alien invasion simply by continuing to exist.