What If We Have Been Looking for Aliens at the Wrong Scale?
If aliens arrived tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d ask them?
Perhaps Our First Contact Is Happening Under Our Feet
We have a very specific stereotype of aliens.
Big head. Bigger eyes. Bald. Usually green or blue. 👽 And, naturally, a UFO 🛸 large enough to make a dramatic appearance above a major city.
But what if we have got the scale completely wrong? What if their spacecraft are the size of mosquitoes 🦟 or a ladybug 🐞?
We wouldn’t even notice them.
They could have been visiting Earth for centuries, quietly observing one of the planet’s most organised civilisations.
Ants. 🐜
Perhaps Ants Have Better GPS Than Us
Ants can remember routes.
We call it an in-built ability. But what if it isn’t?
What if ants have a navigation and communication system far more sophisticated than ours?
We have GPS satellites, smartphones and navigation apps. An ant simply leaves its colony, wanders around for hours and somehow finds its way back.
Perhaps it isn’t remembering the route.
Perhaps someone is giving it directions.
And if millions of ants are doing this across the planet, who knows what is happening beneath our feet?
There could already be an underground United Nations of Ants.
We simply haven’t been invited.
The Mosquito-Sized UFO Problem
And then there is the more interesting possibility.
What if the ants aren’t doing all this alone?
What if mosquito-sized UFOs have been visiting ant colonies for centuries?
Perhaps ants have an established extraterrestrial relationship that humans simply haven’t noticed.
We keep looking into the sky for enormous spacecraft. Our giant observatories try hard to detect our version of electromagnetic signals, while perhaps ignoring an entirely different communication channel as nothing more than radio noise.
Perhaps their technology doesn’t work the way ours does.
Perhaps their messages are already reaching us.
We just haven’t recognised them as messages.
Maybe First Contact Has Already Happened
And maybe some of these mosquito-sized aliens have already attempted to communicate with us.
Directly.
In our ears.
Perhaps they have been trying for centuries.
And we have simply ignored their communication channels.
Or worse…
slapped them.
Maybe humanity hasn’t failed to discover extraterrestrial life.
Maybe extraterrestrial life has been trying to discover whether humanity is worth talking to.
What if the answer they have received so far is:
“Please stop buzzing around my ear.”
— The Intern from Technology Department
More from The Intern
Switching life with a fictional character?
Latest posts
- Travellers Maximus: The Species That Knows Everyone
- What If We Have Been Looking for Aliens at the Wrong Scale?
- The Life Skill Nobody Teaches: Not Listening
- When Virtue Becomes a Vulnerability
- Procurement Paralysis: The Ministry vs. the Fast-Food Menu
Switching Lives With a Fictional Character?
If you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week, who would you choose?
Information Security Department Advisory
Switching your life with a fictional character?For a week?
Have you thought this through?
While you are busy enjoying Wonderland—possibly in a completely different dimension altogether—someone else will be living your life.
Because that’s what switching means.
Someone will have access to your phone.
Your email.
Your internet banking.
Your UPI.
Your OTPs.
Your biometric authentication.
And possibly your memories.
You are essentially giving a stranger administrator access to your life.
And you are calling this a holiday.
Of course, you may argue that the person isn’t exactly a stranger.
You know the character. You find him trustworthy.
You’ve read the book. Watched the movie. Seen the anime.
But you know only the public version of the character.
What about the traits and vulnerabilities that were part of the character development but never disclosed by the author?
What about the darker side that’s already there in the canon, but somehow gets ignored whenever people are asked to choose their favourite character?
The dangerous thing is about to happen
Now imagine that character getting a physical form.Your physical form.
Your shoes suddenly have someone else’s feet in them.
You may have spent at least 18 years developing your personality.
Your fictional replacement may have spent only a small fraction of that time being developed by an author, screenwriter, director, illustrator and possibly a couple of ghostwriters.
And now this half-baked individual has access not just to your phone, but to your memory.
There is no password reset for that.
No two-factor authentication.
No “Forgot Memory?” option.
Nothing can be done except trust.
You could make the fictional character sign an NDA. But what happens if the character goes rogue?
He’ll simply disappear into a fictional dimension.
Try serving a legal notice there.
Advocate SheThem may be interested.
While you are enjoying your wonderland, your surroundings may witness chaos.
Your emails may be opened.
Your UPI may be explored.
Your credit card may experience a period of unprecedented economic growth.
Your family may meet someone who looks exactly like you but has completely different opinions about dinner.
This article has intentionally not touched upon several other aspects of your life that would also be affected by the switch.
You know what we mean.
The Information Security Department has decided that some vulnerabilities are better left undocumented.
After all this, would you still consider making that switch?
Or has the Information Security Department successfully ruined your fantasy?The Intern from Technology Department
Related reading: The Time Machine Worked. The Message Didn’t.
- Travellers Maximus: The Species That Knows Everyone
- What If We Have Been Looking for Aliens at the Wrong Scale?
- The Life Skill Nobody Teaches: Not Listening
- When Virtue Becomes a Vulnerability
- Procurement Paralysis: The Ministry vs. the Fast-Food Menu
