When the aliens came, we were caught completely unaware.

They showed up, interrupting the

season finale of Earth’s greatest prime time television show. Governments had banded together in
unity so as to mobilize the resources necessary to ensure that every family had at least one TV
capable of playing the show. Mankind was not disappointed. The aliens were, however.

They had sought us out and spent decades, a century nearly, developing the technology to
send an envoy to Urth. Apparently they had received some idle chatter between an old lost-times
space shuttle and some place called Huustin, Techsas. A piece of the conversation had been
scattered by a meteor reflecting some of the optical wavelengths they used to transmit data back
in the days before mass-produced telepathy. They played their fragment of the conversation to
the world leaders in front of an emergency summit of all national representatives. Even Fission
Lord Svenderfeld was wheeled out in his little catatonia machine. The three dead ministers of The
Sovereign Sybranian Suburbs were channeled through by a séance. The fourth dead minister
preferred voodoo and possessed a chicken.

The fragment of conversation was oddly plain. We all expected it to be some relic of old-speak,
people too busy with science and progress to enjoy life. Instead, they were simply going on about
an old TV show called “I Love Lacy” or something. It’s good to know how far our television has
come since we started concentrating technology on generated scripts and mind-altering wave
transmissions. Apparently, this “Lacy” was seen as some ancient god of the aliens. It was an old
religion of theirs, most likely the first organized religion on their home planet, and was still studied
by their theologians and historians. It was widely viewed as complete and utter bunk, the result of
earlier members of their kind living largely off of hallucinogenic berries. The berries weren’t
hallucinogenic to humans; they just gave us diarrhea.

When the past-learners of their civilization heard of the strange transmissions received from
two-thirds of the way across the galaxy, they grew ecstatic. Not only had they finally contacted
extra-terrestrial life, us, but they were overwhelmed to hear us preaching stories of their All-
Mother. Over night, religious revolution and fervor swept their entire star system and all their
efforts were concentrated on reaching us. And here they finally stood before a congregation of our
leaders, asking for their All-Mother "Lacy". Of course, none of us knew who the hell she was.

Finally, some relic of the Immortality Accident of 2017 stepped forth. He was the last person on
Urth to know anything about the star ventures and the old ages. All the other Immortals had
succumb to "age madness" and killed themselves by now. His speech was direct and poignant. He
explained how "Lacy" was from an old sitcom back before TV had color, much less 5 dimensions.
The aliens couldn't make sense of any of this. It seems their culture had put more emphasis on
life-extension and space exploration than it had entertainment. Like some vague memory after a
drunken night, they haunted us with visions of life before we had learned to focus on more
important matters. Then it dawned on them that the All-Mother had been a lie, never real to begin
with. So they blew it all up and reported finding a dead civilization on their return. Humorless
Bastards.