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First Contact
a short-short story
by Steve Anderson
Published
in The Loop #5/6
(c) 1995-2005, Steve Anderson, www.Writer.SGAcreative.com
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When she had accepted the job five years ago, it had sounded like a dream come true: probing the
vast reaches of the universe, searching for signs of unknown intelligent life. By now, though, it had
become unbearably dull.
There was, quite simply, nothing out there. Or at least, in all her
years, she had found nothing worth reporting. Just the fizzle of stars, the long echo of the Big Bang,
the echoes of her own planet's transmissions....
And, of course, the incessant chatter across
every known band, so loud it interfered with the most routine of transmissions even here, tens of light-years
from its source. They had known about the planet since their own earliest radios had picked up errant
transmissions of overlapping programming, and every schoolchild knew about the difficulties of transmitting
around such a level of background noise.
She wished sometimes that her people would go ahead
and make contact. "People of Earth," she imagined them saying, "SHUT UP, ALREADY!!!"
But, of
course, that would never happen. For despite their sophisticated, overpowered transmitters, the fare
the Earthers broadcast--combative sports, violent "adventures," crude comedies, and the like--demonstrated
beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were not, in fact, intelligent creatures. Or at least, that they
were not creatures her people wanted to have anything to do with.
And so, like the science student
stuck in the fraternity house on last night's transmission, her people just grumbled, stuck cotton in
their ears, and let the loud and drunken orgy go on unabated downstairs.
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