The Snowflake Chronicles

Harbinger harpings

5 Mashiyyat 163 B.E. – October 1, 2006

"Harbinger harpings"  voices echoing, sonances reverberating through deep space. Radio signals, television signals, light waves, thoughts moving from star system to star system. Searching, seeking, exploring, and expecting to find what? Extraterrestrial life, intelligence, sentient, self-aware beings who in turn have their own versions of SETI. When we find each other – and we will find each other (for those who seek always find) – who or perhaps what will we find?

Perchance we have already encountered them. Perhaps we met them in the distant past, in prehistory before our migrating ancestors settled into farming communities, when the tribes of humanity followed wandering herds across cotenants and land bridges. If we did meet them, before the raise of city-states, who or what did we encounter?

We Search for Etra Terrestrial Intelligence. We talk about life on other planets. We believe that humanity is not alone in the universe. Yet how many of us have the faith to continue to believe, when our astronauts touch down on Mars or on a Jovan moon and do not fine the alien life or the extraterrestrial intelligence we so passionately desire. Faith is not only the belief in things unseen, but it is breathing without air. Faith knows that when we step naked into the vastness of interstellar space and inhale, oxygen atoms form out of nothing and fill our lungs.

When we finally do meet sentient, soul possessing beings from other planets, other star systems, other galaxies, how will we treat them? Will our xenophobia get the better of us and cause us to destroy them and ourselves in the process? Or will we have stepped beyond the prison of intolerance and blind terror?