What if we really aren’t alone… what if on the other side of the universe somewhere there is another civilization reaching out to find intelligent life… and they found it: us.

The score was 4-2… I was playing ping pong with my co workers.  I’m not really good at it though… I try to pretend like I’m better by holding it like those Asian superstars (you know upside down with some swag).  We were forensic scientists and later that day I was going to go on the field to investigate an occurrence.

The house looked decimated, had some disaster occurred here? I had no idea… but there were pits in the ground that appeared burned.  There were still some patches of grass that burned in the wind.  The smoke could be seen from a mile away.  What had happened to the people that lived here?  Maybe they were on vacation?  This would be a mess for them to come back to.  I collected my samples and headed back to the lab.

***

I was running around playing tag with my sister… for some reason I was 7 now… No longer a forensic scientist.  But my dad was one!  I was going to trick her and go into the office next door when she wasn’t looking.  She’d never find me there… she was 8, a year older.  She wasn’t looking! QUICK I dashed out the door and down the hall into the office next door.  As soon as I entered… I noticed the people were talking in some weird language… I don’t think they knew I was there since I was barely the height of the partitions.  I snooped around trying to avoid any contact. It sounded like some plan to take control of the planet… What was going on here? I was just trying to play tag… looks like I definitely was in for more than I bargained. Bam they spotted me.. I was scared “shitless.”

As I stood still like a deer in headlights… They murmured a few things to each other.

“You know too much.”

“What should we do with him?”

“Dispose.”

I ran out the door, back to my dad… told him everything, but they were right at the door.  Now we all knew too much. Everyone.

“DISPOSE!”

***

I didn’t know what to do after realizing what my son had told me was true… A few flashes later, and the same burn pits that I had collected samples from in the field… were now in my office and three of my coworkers were… not.  I threw whatever I could grab behind me in their direction, and I ran. I ran as fast as I could.

***

Weeks had passed, the city of Philadelphia was nothing but a scene of disaster now.  Burning buildings, broken glass, picture the scene of a zombie movie or when the Phillies won the world series.  Life had seriously turned quite upside down.  Meet the predator… and the prey, us.

So is it possible then? For intelligent life to have in fact found us before we find them?  The universe is extremely old and our existence is nothing but a small miniscule fraction of what was and will be.  If something happens to our planet, we could be wiped of existence and there will be zero record that humanity existed.   And isn’t it more possible that if Intelligent life has evolved elsewhere, they will find us first?  We are very young as a species, and in the grand scheme of things… nothing. We are nothing. Just a glorified ant farm with some self conscious awareness.  We have worker ants and the queen, just in another complexity of hierarchy.  I always knew my substitute teacher was really an alien.