All of a sudden, they were here. The experience of shared mental space occurred within every one of us simultaneously and without warning. Many despaired and panicked, while many others laughed and rejoiced at the transcendental sensation, at once unfathomable and undeniable. At first, the exchange was slow and repetitious. They understood that this was our first guided telepathic contact and waited for us to simmer down and steady our initially tumultuous output. Although we spoke more than seven thousand different languages, the self-evident simplicity of this new form of communication enabled us to quickly shift into an expression of meaning and intent rather than the phrasal constructions common to most of us.
Their first message was a greeting. Attempting to transcribe it into words, it would resemble something like “Hello there, members of ours that we have not encountered before,” but could very well have been understood by some as “There you are, part of our body we did not realize had been missing.”
For some time this message was looped, progressively becoming clearer as our minds adapted, even without full comprehension, to this conceptual reality.
Collectively, we imagined their physical forms. Though logic would maintain that these must be self-imposed images, we sensed they were received—like a visual aid, sent along with the greeting to facilitate our comprehension. The avatars they sent us at first seemed very like ourselves, until the image stabilized and became better defined. Then we saw, as if a part of our brain was now fully devoted to imagining these creatures, that their skin texture and color was significantly altered. We suddenly understood a plethora of minute details about their physical form. They were bipeds, with two arms and legs, like us, a torso, neck and head, like us, but their body movements were wholly novel. Having internalities developed in an alien climate, their joints, bone structure and nervous system seemed to fit less rigidly, and every gesture of theirs seemed a dance to us, who had never imagined humanoid bodies moving in this manner. Their natural poise seemed more to us like jellyfish floating in pulsating motions in water than people standing on solid ground.
Slowly, we attempted a reply. In our minds we perceived our own cacophony, as if they had held up a mirror to let us hear what we sounded like, what our thoughts resembled: billions of individuals reaching out in thousands of different languages. We perceived ourselves, learned from ourselves, navigated the difference between linguistic thought and intentional thought, and quickly recreated our message, learning from the more prominent “voices” of those of us quicker to adapt to this new form of communication.
Our message, at first quivery, was something like “Who are you?”, “What are you?” or “Where are you?”
Of course, there were those whose transmissions were more along the lines of “We are so delighted to meet you. You are majestic. It is an honor.” and more than a few thousand that blurted out “What do you want from us?”, but the overall message we were able to resonate was that of curiosity for their identity.
Once the question was clear, it was a matter of moments before our heads were filled with answers. Through images, sounds and ideas they revealed themselves to us. A lot of us sat down as we received what seemed like a rushing river of knowledge that taught us not only about them, but about their concepts of the universe. We grasped that they lived on a violet-tinged planet on a solar system with dozens of orbiting worlds. There were different peoples on neighboring planets, each with its own distinct culture and society. They had the capacity for interplanetary coordination, but for the most part lived in global societies and defined themselves by their home planet. Their body movements were fluid, as were their thought patterns.
In a matter of seconds, all of us underwent the unfamiliar experience of being something else. We felt what they felt, we saw what they saw. Our heartbeats slowed to accompany theirs. They had hearts, lungs and brains; although differently named in their language. A pleasant sensation of tranquility and joy came over us as we floated in place, looking out at valleys and mountain ranges of lilac and violet hue, covered in many places with seemingly biological structures resembling an intricate mesh of emerald algae. We knew these structures were living beings, constantly being molded into habitable environments from the day they sprouted, and we knew they were home, but the knowing was not ours.
Only for a few seconds did we remain in these lavender visions, before they replied with a repetition of our first question. “Who are you?” or maybe “What do you resemble?” and to some “what do you feel?” while to others it seemed more like “where do you reside?”
The posing of the question amazed us, and we could feel the excitement ripple among our group as we marveled at this now somewhat successful telepathic transmission. Everywhere, people had been halted in the middle of their activities and frozen in place, enraptured by the experience happening within their minds. We now began to unfreeze and look around at each other with wide eyes, gaping mouths, grins, expressions of terror, shock and enlightenment.
Without wanting to drop the connection, we attempted to visualize our answer. We imagined ourselves: flesh, bones, hair, red blood, toenails, tee shirts, pants, dresses, parkas, swimsuits, hanboks, chamantos, muumuus, blue eyes, brown eyes, and green eyes. It was enthralling to see these images of each other, floating through our thoughts as we tried to concentrate on our own projections. Thousands of strangers, of skin tones, of garments and languages were all of a sudden within each of us; a humanizing and aggregating experience. We imagined our planet; green and tan continents surrounded by blue ocean, circling around the sun in our simple solar system (much smaller than theirs). We offered visions of skyscrapers packed into city blocks and of bucolic wooden houses tucked into thick forest, connected by dirt paths where children ran. All of it, all of us, we shared with them and with each other.
Thus began the conversation which later became known as the first global telepathic event, or First Contact. Most of it was a continuation of the beginning: a revelation of self between two worlds, separated by unknown amounts of time and space, connected by an indescribable force that seemed to emanate from the mind, but reverberated through the whole body.
The manner in which this communication was established was essential to what came after. Foremost, it came from them. It was an ability that they had developed and which was now revealed to us as possible. Second, it exposed us to ourselves. Each of our voices was heard democratically and simultaneously in our minds, in a manner previously considered impossible by our scientific community. Our differences were collated and we projected an amalgam of ourselves, and the idea of this amalgam was accepted and cherished by the overwhelming majority. We experienced a mass realignment of perception. Although we exited the conversation much closer to each other as a species, it was undeniably exhausting to be connected to ourselves. Most were overjoyed during the event, but many others were filled with anger, fear or distrust. While the visitors’ expression through the telepathic bond was of serenity, curiosity and camaraderie, ours was like a raging sea of emotions. The anger and fear from us, though lessened to a minority of voices, re-emerged in small waves throughout the entire ordeal.
We continued our contact for long and weightless hours; a continuous exchange of information between two parties separated by light-years. The vision of their planetary society, symbiotically relating to their world’s ecosystem by living inside biological structures, impacted us profoundly. They wore no clothes, their sexual organs were retractable and their sexual energies much more placid. Many aspects of their lives left us surprisingly embarrassed by ourselves, and our systems were much harder to explain than theirs, but their sincere friendliness and endless curiosity warmed our hearts and no sense of pride came between us. At last the event ended and the contact was closed. Many hours had passed and altered the course of history forever. Most of us went directly to sleep after the exchange before speaking to anybody else, even those living in areas where the sun still shone brightly in the sky.
There was much to think on. They had given us a mission. There came a point in our discourse where we could no longer speak about ourselves or our planet without disagreeing. We did not quarrel internally, but every time we “spoke” our voices formed an incomprehensible dissonance. So we ceased our output for a short spell and simply remained connected, feeling the sensation of their cosmic presence. Then we asked them if we could meet. Could they come to us, could we go to them? They seemed impossibly far away, but we had been alone until now and felt an overwhelming desire to continue connecting.
They replied that they could not come to us, but we must come to them. Explore the galaxies, they said, venture out beyond your world. We will be waiting for you.
To aid us in our journey, they offered us a gift. They said it was clear now, after our communication, that the purpose of our contact was for them to share with us this gift, which they simply called “Understanding.” They felt satisfied and fulfilled at this realization. They ended the conversation with one final message: “We are the same.” Which, of course, some received as “We are equals” some as “We are siblings” some as “We are connected” and some as “Separation is an illusion; we are all part of the same cosmic being.” Although this was an affirmation of what some already believed to be true, it left us all equally entranced and introspective. The sleep that overtook us after the contact was restless. We had vivid dreams about a faraway planet with amethyst soil and violet-hued skies. Then came the aftershock.
The innumerable implications of the cataclysmic gathering were difficult to process. Arguably the most important event in our collective history, it had been attended by every living one of our kind. Even before considering the implications of the meeting, the revelation of intelligent life, the mere form of the encounter, the prolonged mental connection with all the minds of our planet and theirs, was so utterly ineffable and unprecedented that all concepts of normality had vanished by the next day.
It is possible that the non-responsive would have numbered much higher were it not for the urgency of our newly found presence amongst each other. We had started the day on billions of individual life paths that by nightfall had been irrevocably unified. The history we had been writing had been closed and a new one had begun.
The gift we had received from our distant communicators and the way it affected our perception of the world was immediately felt, if not entirely evident. When we looked upon each other, we were naked to the mind’s eye. Our eyes could trace every detail of a person’s physical demeanor to all its possible meanings with immense accuracy of deduction. On every person a history was readable and we had lost the ability to overlook its evidence. Haircuts, jewelry, clothing, posture, eye movement, body language, choice of words, intonation, hand gestures, leg stances, even eyebrow movements; the significance of these variations filled our minds even in the briefest of stolen glances. It was as if the processing power of our brains had been immensely upgraded. To see an object, plant, animal or person was to be suddenly filled with all of the relevant information from our memory that might be useful in understanding what it meant to be that object, plant, animal or person.
It seemed to us that for our entire lives we had been half-asleep, experiencing the world in a state of voluntary blindness, in which we ignored most of the overwhelming amount of information in front of us at all times. Some might have considered it a curse, were they not so busy altering every aspect of their lives to adapt to this new form of existence, for they could not walk down the street without being acutely sensitive to the inner experiences of everyone around them.
In the first weeks after the event, one of the most common activities was the redistribution of material possessions. Many people stripped off their clothes and belongings and gave them away. The constant recognition of personal privilege elicited a paralyzing sense of embarrassment. Although the wealthy felt a violent compulsion to get rid of all of their status symbols, the poor did not desire these ostentatious possessions either, and everybody began to collectively realize that this vast accumulated empire of clothing, houses, cars, boats and high-definition televisions was just trash. Regarding it as trash, however, did not mean we were free of the responsibility for its existence. We could not toss all of it into the ocean where it would throw ecosystems off balance, therefore many of us started to devote our time to the industry of recycling discarded objects.
Food distribution was another main priority and those who knew how to farm were called to educate those who did not. In every city, parking lots surrounding abandoned commerce were transformed into never ending gardens where the food was produced for all to be fed. Many of the structures and institutions that had previously existed for the purpose of profit began to reconfigure themselves toward humanitarian projects. These projects included: food distribution, recycling, cleansing of the atmosphere, oceans and lands, urban redevelopment (society had to be redesigned for a non-profit civilization) and so forth.
Because of the inescapable sense of awareness that we felt when in the presence of others, constructing a society free of inequality, persecution and oppression became a collective priority. There was always somebody that could be helped, some new system that could be invented for the benefit of all, and since food and shelter were provided freely and nobody had desire for any sort of accumulation past their own needs, people had free time to devote to their causes in whatever way was needed.
Having been given the mission to travel beyond our atmosphere to meet our visitors, the advanced development of spaceflight and astrodynamics were amongst our highest priorities. As more and more people had free time to devote to their personal projects, the sciences developed at a rapid pace. We had been gifted not only with a radical new form of self-awareness, but also with a purpose. After the discovery of intelligent life on far-away planets, we became less and less divided on ours. Soon enough, we had numerous space stations in orbit, and shortly after that, a mega-space station orbiting the moon. Next, we developed space stations around both of the planets nearest ours and soon had a constant flow of transportation between these. We created our first colony on another planet, and then our second. We became a space-faring people.
With the creation of new global communities, we became divided once more. Each colony began to develop its own identity, its own unique way of solving the planetary challenges presented to them and a culture developed around the specificities of their home world. The understanding united us though, even separated by individual concerns, and our meetings were always guided by mutual empathy.
Eventually, we forgot about our home planet. The story of the visitors from space lost its importance and faded from our memories. There were so many unique planetary societies now, it was hard to imagine a time when contact between two of these was an extraordinary discovery. We believed things had always been this way, and the idea of feeling alone in the universe seemed mythological.
On each planet, people, plants and animals evolved in alignment with the nature of the place they were in. Skin and hair tone differed from world to world, and were as varied as the colors on the spectrum of visible light. Some were as tall as trees; some redeveloped a quadruped stance. Each group adapted to the conditions set upon them by their position in the universe and the circumstantial narrative of evolution.
Out of all these worlds, there was one group especially dedicated to the processes of mental communication. On this planet, it was common for us to go months without verbal exchanges. We practiced and developed the understanding that so many centuries before had been key to our ancestor’s expansion into space.
Our favorite pastimes were games of the mind, and we would engage in these exhaustively until they were perfected into art forms. In one such game, we would mirror each other’s movements, walking side by side and performing all activities simultaneously whilst two feet apart from one another, the goal being to keep it up for as long as possible and to anticipate the other’s movements without looking.
While we were verbal, we loved inventing new forms of speech. We played at omitting words containing a specific letter from our daily speech, adding more forbidden letters each day, for a week. Our speech became distinct among the universe for the logical leaps we would take between sentences, and many neighboring civilizations considered us almost mystical for our piercing form of communication. When asked about practical matters we often replied with a single word that either nullified or resolved the issue at hand. We grew quieter and quieter on our home-planet as we found ourselves increasingly able to understand each other non-verbally. Our culture adapted as we developed this practice, and our understanding of physical and metaphysical phenomena was significantly altered to encompass the new types of scientific and philosophical discussions that were transpiring in silence. Eventually, we stopped vocalizing altogether.
We shared a sense of scholarly pride in our accomplishment, and in the first year of our planetary silence, we resolved to have an assembly. All of the inhabitants were to gather in one place for the first time ever, for an exercise in generating a communal connection for silent communication. We could not explain what compelled us, but it quickly became evident that the desire to gather was unanimous, so we all set to work materializing the encounter. We searched for and chose a location that could accommodate all; a vast expanse of flat grassy fields that flowed into the base of one of our widest and most beautiful mountain ranges.
Once we had all arrived, we cooperatively began our exercise, though we had no preconceived plans about what that would be. We spread out so that each person had about two arm-lengths between them and those around them, and looked into each other’s eyes, holding a gaze for an intuitively determined amount of time before shifting our eyes onto someone else. In the manner of our culture, we read each other’s histories in our eyes, faces and bodies. It was an exercise we were used to performing daily, during most interactions, but there was a transcendental quality to this performance on a massive scale, with all of the world’s inhabitants gathered in the same place.
As our eyes moved from person to person, a great pattern began to emerge. It began quite simply, with a basic understanding of how much one had traveled to arrive at this gathering, their tiredness from the activities of the past few days, whether they had been eating properly, whether they had changed their minds about an issue recently, and so forth. All this data was shared and redistributed every time our gazes moved on to the next pair of eyes. Through our dedicated concentration, we were able to distinctively hold everyone’s past few days, weeks and months in our psychic fields. With our acutely visual imaginations, we could see each other, not only in the crowd in front of our eyes, but in our mind’s eye like fourth dimensional beings, living all of our collective past moments anew, metaphysically and timelessly.
We immersed ourselves and relived tens of thousands of memories at once. Each individual lifetime was recounted and absorbed, shared and felt, held and appreciated, day by day, year by year. In understanding ourselves, we understood our parents, and saw their whole lives as well, followed by the lives of their parents. Soon enough we were contemplating the first settlers to arrive on our magnificent violet world, fascinatingly different from who we had become.
They looked and felt fleshier, bigger and less agile, having lived their whole lives inside artificial environments on spaceships. They were euphorically happy to conclude their journey and arrive at this place of colorful wonders and gentle nature. From so many different worlds they had come and to all those worlds we traveled in our shared memories.
On those fields where we had gathered to commune, days turned to nights and nights into days without our notice. In one sense, we were far away from our bodies; in another, we had dived deep into them. We re-experienced countless interstellar voyages, rediscovered the fierce exploratory nature that lay dormant within us, and undertook one more great expedition. Through planets of many sizes and colors, with cultures varied in so many ways we could hardly believe we ever came together into such a homogenous little tribe.
All of the ancestors we visited could see us, we realized, and in looking into each other’s eyes, we looked into their eyes and knew that they knew us. We felt simultaneously young and old, a wise and advanced civilization from the future, but also a naive and inexperienced lot. We understood, as we had always supposed, that our ancestors’ travels had been expansive, spreading out from one central spot in the universe, and the voyage we now took felt like a journey to the center of that universe, to the seed we had bloomed from.
That is how we arrived at a planet of blue, tan and green. These ancient ones were significantly shorter than us and walked as if they were rooted to the ground beneath them. Their skin types varied along a spectrum of euchre tones and they all wore garments of different styles. Out of all the ancestors we had felt, been, and understood, these were the only ones who did not look up into our eyes. They were completely engrossed in their busy lives in what seemed to be a smoky overpopulated world and could not see or feel us.
It became immediately obvious that if they could not look into our eyes, we would not be able to see beyond them into our timeline. Our journey was halted. Quickly and intuitively we did something we had never done before, and discovered it was possible in the moment of its doing: we reached out and communicated with our memories.
Immediately, as if they had been waiting for us to do it, they connected to us and began to chatter loudly with unfathomable plurality. Recognizing their own cacophony they paused, regrouped, and rapidly organized themselves mentally to communicate more clearly with us. They asked us about ourselves and very gradually we were able to look into their eyes. It was a tremendous shock to realize that they did not have the power to understand. Simultaneously, it was obvious and perfectly coherent that they did not have the power to understand, just as it was suddenly clear to us what had compelled us to assemble in this great valley to meditate. Inside our cellular memory lived the ancestral knowledge that we must one day return to ourselves. Even in an overpopulated world, they needed us to help them see each other. For us, it was an enlightening reconnection to long-lost ancestors, for them, an end to landlocked solitude. We passed on to them the mission that had once been passed on to us.
Once the conversation was finished, we slowly lifted out of meditation and returned to our bodies on the fields by the mountain range. We shared a feeling of triumphant camaraderie and joy in having helped those in need, in bonding with our ancestors, and in being alive. We had traversed space and time and participated in the first time loop of our collective history. We felt fulfilled, full-hearted, exhilarated and exhausted, and in the stupor of a sunny day we laid down into a deep slumber in which countless parts of ourselves were finally laid to rest.