As Seen On TV

It was a momentous occasion, I remember, as most of my generation do, broadcast live on CBS as well as being  watched by TV owners all across the globe; history in the making; the laying of the first transgalactic warp communication cable; a tiny, narrow worm hole, only as large as a pin prick in fact,  but through which, just like a coaxial cable, radio and television signals could be carried to other galaxies in seconds.

TV boffins sitting around a large coffee table in a TV studio assured us that if the planet Earth was ever going to communicate with Extra Terrestrial intelligence in other galaxies; Warp Communication was the very fastest and most feasible method of doing so.

Little did those boffins or the scientists ‘laying the cable’ expect, however, that in the next few minutes the televisions of Earth would start to receive Alien TV programming; Alien Soap Operas; Alien Movies; Alien News Broadcasts; even alien sporting events, all with a bizarre alien looking channel logo in the corner of the screen that looked something like an upside down letter Q.

Trillions of people watched, astonished, as the bizarre looking half-humanoid, half reptilian presenters of Channel Q discussed the daily matters of their planet over hot, bubbling cups of what looked like luminous green slime and, in movies, news items and documentaries they saw vast alien metropolis’s made of what looked like multi-coloured plastic; shining crystal;  blue, green and pink metals and, above them, green skies, with a ringed moon and a purple sun,  crowded with strange aircrafts with wings like hummingbirds and spherical floating buildings suspended by some invisible force and heard music; a strange eery kind of music that sounded almost like a radio being tuned and saw not just one alien culture but hundreds of different alien cultures from countries all over the alien planet; reptilians dressed in all kinds of bizarre garments and headdresses.

In fact, so many bizarre alien things came through the TV screen that day that it would have taken a set of  encyclopedias a hundred, thousand miles long to contain them all.

And the human race loved it.

First of all, the boffins loved it and went to work trying to learn and decipher all that they were seeing on their TV’s; experts in languages attempting to translate the strange hissing and gurgling language of the reptiloids; xeno-anthropologists trying to decode all the symbols and customs of the alien cultures they saw and engineers and scientists trying to analyse and replicate the miraculous alien technology; even one philosopher wondered perhaps whether it all could be just a computer generated cartoon that only looked real and infact might represent an alien civilisations fantasy narrative rather than a real alien civilisation.

But, beyond that, ordinary people loved it. The alien creatures on their TV sets became their new celebrities; they wanted to look and dress; talk and act like them. Alien was the new chic.

Of course there were some things about Alien TV which didn’t appeal so much to the people of Earth; certain things which the aliens seemed to do casually which we humans regarded as taboo but which, within the alien culture, seemed to be the norm.

And it wasn’t long before various government and church organizations started calling for the Alien TV transmissions to be digitally censored and complained that they were corrupting the morals of our youth; some extreme right wing religious groups even branded them ‘demonic’ and claimed that the TV signals were actually coming from Hell.

But then suddenly all that ceased to matter for then, after four days of continuous programs, the two day long commercial break began and that’s when hell really did start to break loose all over the world. The aliens you see were masters in a hypnotic kind of subliminal advertising; their commercials didn’t just make products look appealing; they made you want to die for them.

In cities everywhere, riots broke out as people demanded the alien products they were seeing on their TV; drooling like Pavlov’s dogs over the mysterious alien carbonated beverages and alien fastfood; breakfast cereals, clothing; soap detergents and motorvehicles they’d seen advertised and, of course, it was a demand that could not be met although various corporations tried their best to take advantage of the demand by making things which resembled the alien products.

Eventually, it was decided, after the toll of death and carnage caused by the adverts reached cataclysmic proportions that the TV signal had to be blocked.

Oh but that was all a long time ago; long before SETI, using that warp cable received the aliens reply to the message they’d originally sent out. Now the aliens say they’re coming to Earth only now, the scientists have started re-examining their war movies and their police thrillers even their bizarre alien romances; the extreme violence in them and the habit that the heroic victors in those movies have of taking slaves and eating their enemies alive and now they say the human race may have reason to worry.