Getting a Technology System in Modern Day

“Ugh... I might literally die of anticipation,” the tech snarked in an attempt to dissipate his impatience.

“Do you really think so?” his neighbor cheerily chirped, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

“I know, I know, it’s just that...” he sighed, but realized that the distraction of talking with his neighbor was an effective cure for his impatience. Well, that plus the continually arriving new data, that is. It might not be complete, but there was something satisfying and cathartic in watching the display slowly grow on his screen.

As the two continued discussing the map and their plans for the very near future, another team of researchers were having heart attacks and existential crises of their own as the results of their scans were coming in.

“Well, soo... yeah, that’s a thing,” one of them announced, listening to bits of a radio broadcast that, to the best of their knowledge, was a mere five years old.

The TSF Proxima had multiple sensors studding her exterior, and of course some of those were radio antennae. The radio pickups were an important part of astrogation, as the primary method of fixing their position in the galaxy depended on receiving signals from known pulsars. And without knowing where they were, the task of figuring out how to get to their destination would become incredibly difficult—especially over interstellar distances, where deviations beyond the tenth decimal place could cause an astrogator to end up literal light years from their intended destination.

(Ed note: Pulsars are neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation on specific, identifiable frequencies from their magnetic poles as they spin. To this date, no two pulsars have ever been found to share the same signal frequency. While it’s possible, theoretically, for the signals to *temporarily* align, the environmental factors, rate of rotation, and individual properties of each pulsar ensure they won’t align for long. It’s like how cars’ windshield wipers sometimes go in and out of sync with each other.)

Thanks to the multiple radio antennae and the layers of redundancies in them, the team had turned the entire cityship into one enormous radio receiver. Their crazy idea had paid dividends; they were picking up snippets of a broadcast from five years ago on Earth. And what they heard, specifically, had them caught firmly between laughter and tears. If any extraterrestrials were capable of decoding the signal, then Earth would be in trouble.

“Who knew that Howard Fucking Stern would get to Proxima Centauri before we did?” one of them joked. “I wonder, if they exist, will they enjoy the crass humor of ‘shock jocks’ as much as we once did?”

“I’m more wondering if the conspiracy theorists had it right,” another mused.

“Conspiracy theories?”

“Yeah. There was one a while back before the satellites all got taken down in the Last War that talked about Sirius being a sockpuppet for the US government and their satellites all being spy satellites.”

“Well, their signal’s powerful enough to reach Proxima Centauri, so... it wouldn’t surprise me. Still, I can’t help but wonder what kind of impression we Earthlings have made on who, or whatever lives here. If anything does, anyway.”

“They’d need to crack our signal for that, not to mention learn English. Then they’d need some kind of cultural information to really ‘get’ the jokes, but I think even if they don’t understand them, their confusion might lead to some terribly awkward moments at first contact. I mean, imagine them thinking that dick and fart jokes are some kind of greeting and the first words they speak to us are ‘Did you bring us pussy?’”

(Ed note: When talking about the Iraq War on his show, Howard Stern joked about “taming” the region of Iraq by giving them access to, quote, “strip clubs and whores”. His reputation as a shock jock is very well earned. You can google some of the outrageous things he’s said if you’re interested; this reference is incredibly tame compared to some of them.)

They were obviously joking to break the tension; given humanity’s complete lack of caution in terms of signal security, Howard Stern having an influence on any extraterrestrial society would be the absolute least of their concerns.

“But they probably have decades—decades!—of signals to work through. I’m sure we’ve been broadcasting for far more than just a mere five years, but I’m also sure that, thanks to the inverse square law, a lot of those decades of signals you’re talking about probably didn’t have any kind of coherence outside the Sol system,” another researcher interjected.

“Still, think of the kind of things we’ve been broadcasting over the past... however many years we’ve had access to high-

strength, high-fidelity broadcast signals,” the second scientist replied. “Nothing good will come from that, assuming they’ve cracked our signals.”

“Coming from what? Them having more information about us?”

“It’s not a bad thing for them to have more information about humanity. The problem I’m seeing is what KIND of information they have about us. Even the past five years have been... less than peaceful, shall we say. And having that information, in the post-9/11 era of media fearmongering and violence on television, mass riots like Arab Spring, the Paris riots, the US race riots... the list goes on and on. But what I’m saying is, if you judge humanity based solely on the media we regularly broadcast and consume, that’ll give you the completely wrong first impression.

“Most of humanity is made up of good people just trying to do their best in their day-to-day lives. I know that, you know that, we know that, every single human being KNOWS that. But the media....” He shook his head with a sigh. “Our media thrives on chaos and fear, all of it. And our entertainment media is almost all violence. Well, except for Bollywood. Let’s just... let’s hope they saw more Bollywood and less Hollywood. Maybe then the worst they’ll expect from us is that we’ll randomly break out into choreographed song and dance numbers.”

The team he was a part of fell into silence for a few minutes after he explained his position.

“Damn... so if they’ve pegged us, and even without knowing the language, there’s a lot of information you can pick up just from what you just described...” the first researcher shook his head and slumped into his seat, “we’re fucked. Absolutely, one hundred percent, completely and utterly fucked.”

The executive officer of the Proxima happened to be passing by and listened to that conversation. He saw how unmotivated and afraid the scientists were and said, “That’s just a theory. There’s no way to know if they’ll understand all of it, or what they’ll think of us even if they do. So stop borrowing fear and speculating, it won’t do any of us—least of all yourselves—any good at all.

“Get back to work, we’ve only got a little more than two days until our initial survey is complete and we’ll be entering the system after that. There’s no time to waste at all, let alone on your unfounded speculations... am I clear?”

“Crystal clear, Sir!” the researchers chorused, then returned to their assigned tasks.

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